Podcast appearances and mentions of michael yes

As business owners, we often feel imposter syndrome or worry about our status. Have you ever wanted to elevate your image and be more relevant? In this episode of the #DoorGrowShow, property management growth expert Jason Hull sits down with Michael Sartain, CEO of Men of Action Mentoring to talk about how to make high-status friends and attend VIP events. You'll Learn [03:27] How to Utilize Networking [19:03] Becoming High-Status Using Social Media [26:54] How to be Relevant [38:58] Social Media is Fake [53:21] Authenticity vs Effective Content Tweetables “You need to be the person who always solves problems for other people and ask for nothing in return.” “You're building a brand. Status is status.” “A lot of our beliefs that we're holding on to that are holding us back.” “You make millions of dollars from solving other people's problems, not by doing what you love.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Michael: Your ability to grow is based on your perceived status, your perceived trustworthiness, your perceived know how. Not your actual know how.  [00:00:11] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow property managers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing a business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently, then you are a DoorGrow property manager. [00:00:30] DoorGrow property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:10] Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:13] So I have an awesome guest today. I actually joined his program just for kicks. This is Michael Sartain. Michael, welcome to the DoorGrow show.  [00:01:22] Michael: Hey, what's going on, man? Hey, I gotta be honest with you. Two years ago, I didn't know what doors meant and then I started hanging out with Justin Waller and he's like, "yeah, man, I have 300 doors." [00:01:29] I was like, "bro, what are you talking about?" [00:01:31] And then he's like, now he's got 400 doors. And I was like, "oh, it's like all these different properties." And then my buddy Myron he's got 17 homes that he owns up in Connecticut. He told me about, and I didn't understand how this whole thing worked. And then the property management side of it, like "my company, we're like, we're buying properties because we want to use the depreciation. And we need someone to keep, you know, these places rented, blah, blah, blah." And then the property management, I don't know that much about it. So that's why I was really excited to come on here and check this out.  [00:01:57] Jason: Cool. Well, yeah. And I didn't know very much about like maintaining a presence. [00:02:03] Looking cool, like actually looking cool on social media instead of just trying to look cool. And and so I've learned some good things by being in your program. So let's get into a little bit of background about you for those that are like, who's this Michael guy? And maybe how you kind of got into entrepreneurism and I think that'd be relevant to anybody listening. [00:02:25] Michael: So I'm originally from East Dallas. I grew up on the good side of the tracks and went to high school on the bad side of the tracks. And graduated from my high school, barely like did anything. It was not a very good experience. And I got into UT Austin because I was in top 10 percent of my class. [00:02:39] Went there four years, studied astronomy and business and then got out of there. And then I ended up managing a nightclub for a while, for a couple of years because MCI Worldcom and Enron had gone out of business. So if you know, UT Austin, Enron was like a huge supply of jobs once you graduated you know, as a Longhorn. [00:02:56] Once they go out of business, none of us can find jobs. I ended up working at a strip club for like several years as a DJ. And this is the first point in my life where I'm like, "okay, there's something going on here. There's things that I've been taught growing up, but there's something different now." Of course, I want to preface this. [00:03:10] By no means am I saying that people who go to a strip club or people who work in a strip club are indicative of the median of society. They clearly aren't, clearly are not. What I am saying though is that you can see the extremes in society when you go to places like that and from those extremes, you can see overt reactions. [00:03:27] One of the things that I do in my course is I teach how people can network, get invited where the cool kids sit like that phenomenon of where the cool guys are and the not cool guys, the hot club versus the not club that the club people don't want to go to, or the party everyone's trying to get into. [00:03:42] What is it that causes that phenomenon of popularity and status? There has to be something that can explain it. And so what I've been trying to do for the last 15 years is use evolutionary studies in order to figure out a way in order to do that. And so a lot of times when you do that, you know, you can see subcommunication between a man and a woman and you don't really know what's going on. [00:04:02] They have the internal focus of what's going on, but when you see it in like a nightclub or a festival or someplace like that, you see very overt communication. And from that, you can learn a lot of cool stuff. It's like watching, you know, crows you know, pick at a carcass versus watching a giant white tiger go kill a gazelle. [00:04:18] Like that is overt examples of predation that you can see and be like, okay, this is how biology works. This is how natural selection works, et cetera. And I know for your audience, you're like, "where the fuck's he going with all this?" Yeah. The reason why, just to explain. I got fascinated. I did seven years in the military after 9 -11. [00:04:33] I joined and I flew a KC 135 as an instructor navigator. And then I was I did counterintelligence for about the last two years I was there. And then, so, in that time period, I learned how a very structured business could work and like how accountability works. Accountability and leadership, I learned very much during that time period. [00:04:49] But at that same time period, I was also going out a lot and I was like very interested to me in like, what is it that caused certain men to be phenomenally good with women and get a lot of people to show up to an event and then what caused other men to just not get it. And I always, I also noticed that there was a very small group of men that got it. [00:05:05] And then a very large group of men that didn't understand this concept whatsoever. So I became fascinated with that idea of 2011. I ended up retiring from the military and I ended up moving to Las Vegas and this is the first time when I started going out to some of these nightclubs and these venues here in Las Vegas. [00:05:19] And I meet a lot of real estate agents. I meet a lot of accountants. I meet plastic surgeons, doctors. And it was very clear to me like that some of them got it and some of them didn't get it. I threw a real estate event recently where we took a blue heron home. And then we had a charity event for animals. [00:05:33] And while we're there, I invited every single female influencer in the city to show up. Well, these, some of these girls were interested in getting into real estate, but I just want you to imagine it was just like a regular real estate event that you have, except you're doing it for animal rescue. [00:05:47] So now all these people who are in real estate, mortgage brokers, et cetera, property managers like yourself, they would show up to this beautiful three story house. It was catered. It was beautiful. And then every pretty girl in the city in Las Vegas who wasn't working that night showed up to this thing. [00:06:01] So now you're drinking champagne. There's three times as many girls as guys. Some of you guys are listening to this and you're like, "okay, now I understand. I'm starting to understand what he does." You're able to create these incredible environments and in doing so, just imagine, everyone... I try to teach networking through events. [00:06:17] That's basically how I try to teach networking through small events at your house or large events, you know, like a CES conference. I try to teach networking through those mechanisms. And then I try to show how evolution created humans throughout history. Dr. David Buss writes in his book the evolution of desire throughout history. [00:06:34] The men who have worked in groups and in tandem with one another always had access to more resources and always had access to more women. And so that's the reason why, you know, I teach these concepts. And so what happens is that blue Heron thing that we did, the guy who ran it, he's at the forefront and he goes, "I want to just thank you guys for coming out here and helping me, blah, blah, blah." [00:06:52] He had endeared so much goodwill with every mortgage broker, real estate agent. It was really crazy. All these other real estate agents wanted to train under him. People started sending him business. His business blew up. Another example I give, that's Jeremy Green's name. I have another example of my buddy, Mark Pearlberg, who's one of those also in my program. [00:07:09] Mark is an accountant. Mark started to see the way that I would use zoom calls and on the zoom calls, Mark would go on and show. How he understood accounting backwards and forwards better than everyone else who was listening, he showed himself to be a subject matter expert in the zoom calls. He was hosting in doing so, just imagine Jason, like, you know, I don't believe accounting is your specialty, but if you listen to accountant at first, it's interesting, but after like an hour and a half, you get to the realization, like, "this is interesting, but I don't want to do this." [00:07:37] And then at about the two hour mark, you're like, "This is interesting. I don't want to do this. How much do I have to pay you to do this?" And so because what we did and he started hosting a podcast and because he started hosting these zoom calls with other professionals, now he tells me, he's like, "I actually had to slow down the podcast because I can't handle all the business that I have. [00:07:55] There's not enough of me. In order for me to be able to do this." And he works from home. He just, an incredible lifestyle that he's created. So when we go back to what we're saying before, you know, I learned initially, "okay, what are the mechanisms that cause people to be cool or not cool, to be popular, not popular, to be low status or high status?" [00:08:13] I learned that when I was working in Austin, you know, nightclub, I learned that when I was in the U S military, like what good leadership and bad leadership was. And then I learned it in the last 13 years here living in Las Vegas. And I took all those lessons and I, from the last say, 25 years, and I put them into a course called the men of action course and try to concisely take this 25 years of knowledge and put it into one space so that everyone can learn how to do these kinds of things. [00:08:35] Now, here's where it might be confusing for some of your audience, the mechanisms that men use in order to show status with women in order to date them and the mechanisms that men and women use in order to pitch an idea or to sell a product are the same mechanisms. They are the same. This is difficult. A lot of people don't grasp this. if you guys ever want to see a great example of this, great book you should all read is Oren Klaff's book called pitch anything. Listen to some of the words he uses. Jason, you remember eliminate neediness. [00:09:06] Do you remember that? Eliminate neediness. Where does that come from? Where does that come from? It didn't come from self help. Eliminate neediness is a dating concept. Okay? Avoid beta behavior. Do you remember? Oren Klaff says this in his book. He goes, "avoid beta behavior." Where does that come from, Jason? [00:09:21] That is a dating concept. So where do these things come from? At the highest level Jordan Belfort, he calls it goal oriented communication. So goal oriented communication is, "will you go on a date with me?" Goal oriented communication is, "Ken, will you invest in my project?" Goal oriented communication is, "will you come work for me?" [00:09:36] Goal oriented communication. I'm doing this because this is like the apex of community of goal oriented communication. All these places meet at the apex, and that is the understanding of basically Dale Carnegie's how to win friends and influence people, get people to talk about themselves. You can find common interests, figure out ways to break rapport, all these different things. [00:09:53] And like what I teach my clients, Jason, the number one thing I teach my clients when it comes to high stats networking is you need to be the person who always solves problems for other people and ask for nothing in return. A great example is, do you remember Harvey Keitel in the movie Pulp Fiction? [00:10:08] You remember he's the wolf? Do you remember Pulp Fiction? I haven't seen Pulp Fiction. Okay, so tonight you're going to watch Pulp Fiction. Every single other person watching this has watched Pulp Fiction. [00:10:17] Jason: I know, everybody else has watched it but me, so.  [00:10:19] Michael: There's a point, there's a point where they have to clean up a dead body and they have to call this guy named the wolf and he just, he fixes things. [00:10:25] He's a cleaner. The wolf shows up in his Acura NSX, it's Harvey Keitel and he just fixes things. He goes, "are you going to listen to me or do you want to go to jail?" And he does, he just fixes everything. That's what I become. I'm the guy who fixes things for other people. I have a bunch of friends. I help them find people for their sales team. Most of my friends have met their boyfriends or girlfriends through me. I help people find their employees. I'm the hub. I'm the hub of the social wheel. And that's what I teach you to do in my course. If you cannot replace your social circle, your girlfriend, or your job in 15 minutes, you don't have enough abundance and I need to teach you how to have more abundance. [00:10:56] And so how do you do that? There's just certain mechanisms that people who have an abundance mentality and understand networking have, and when they use those techniques, then they can have anything they want. They get into any door. So another example, Jason is like the guy who goes to the Tai Lopez conference or the Taylor Welch conference or goes to see Cole Gordon or goes to see Wes Watson or goes to see whoever. [00:11:17] The guy who is like, "Hey man, thank you for your time." The one who like goes and pays Patrick bed David for his counseling. And then there's the guy who Patrick Bet David who goes to see Patrick David for his counseling. And then Patrick David was like, "Hey man, can I come visit you and hang out? Come meet my wife. Let me take you out to dinner." Does that make sense? There's a mechanism you'll see, like with a lot of people have asked me this before. Why is it that, you know, other people are like paying to listen to Justin Waller speak, but like Justin Waller and I are like close friends? [00:11:42] Why is it that other people like buy Rollo's book, but Rollo is one of my best friends? Why is it like all these other people call me and I'm not trying to say this to brag, but the reason why I'm trying to say this is there's a status line that you get to where you're a customer, and then you're his friend. [00:11:56] How do you cross that status line? This is such a key for those of you who are like, trying to get into sales or trying to understand networking. It's just like, I'm paying this guy, like how much, like I'm paying Tony Robbins. I'm a customer. I'm customer. Now Tony's like sending me messages on my birthday. [00:12:09] What is that status line? Some people's like, "well, you just need to have more money." And I'm telling you that is not what the case is. That's definitely not what the case is.  [00:12:15] Jason: Who would want to connect with people that they're only connecting with you because of money? I mean, that'd be a really shitty reason to be connecting with somebody.  [00:12:22] Michael: In the beginning, you will. But after a while you learn, whenever I go up and talk to my favorite influencer, let's say I paid for his coaching program is my voice cracking or my eyes getting big is my vocal tonality changing because I see this person as high status. [00:12:38] Am I dressing too fancy to try to show off? Am I doing too much or am I just like just the normal dude? I am. Oren Klaff, one of my favorite YouTube content creators. I don't know if you are not Oren Klaff. I'm sorry, Orion Terriban. All right. His name is Psych Hacks. Well, I had him on my show a couple of days ago. [00:12:54] He kind of converges behavioral economics with evolutionary psychology. And he basically talks about the sexual marketplace as far as economics is concerned. Okay. Really great person. Have him on my show. Ask him a bunch of stuff during the show. One of the things I talk about is like, "Hey, Orion, I know that you do some sales stuff, some coaching stuff. If you want my help, I'll help you how to, you know, put out a low ticket offer, high ticket offer, how you can like buy back your time." he's like, "yeah, you know, I can't scale myself that much." I was like, "okay, so you're going to read buy back your time by Dan Martell." [00:13:21] And then I gave him a bunch of books, you know, that would probably help him. And then at the end, I was like, bro, anytime you want to call me and you ask me about any of this stuff, I'll help you. The guy who has the world, you guys look it up. The guy with the world record in the high jump on planet earth is a guy named Darius Clark. He went to Texas A& M. He's the leading scorer in slam ball. Have you ever seen slam ball, Jason? Remember the trampolines and the basketball, they go dunk on each other. Anyways, I bumped into Darius at a slam ball game. We started talking and I'm, and then Darius is like, "Hey man, I want to level up my social media." [00:13:50] And I'm like, "Darius, let me figure out ways that I can help you level up your social media." So it's like one guys are like a professional athlete. Another guy's an accountant. You might be saying like, "why is it you're able to do all these different things?" And the reason why is because these are evolutionary problems. [00:14:04] These are evolutionary challenges that all men we're looking for. There are three things that really differentiate men from women. Three massive things. There's more than three, but these are the three biggest ones. Jason here. Number one, this is the most obvious one. It's upper body strength. Men are about two standard deviations stronger than women as far as upper body strength, meaning the medium grip strength for a man it puts them in the top, you know, 98 percent and top 2 percent of women. Makes sense.  [00:14:27] Jason: Yeah. Which also throws off our balance is higher. Yeah.  [00:14:31] Michael: Correct. Also. Yeah. It also, there's a reason why some of the reasons why men live shorter lives is because they keep their weight up here around their waist. [00:14:37] Whereas women keep it below their hips. And that's really, it's further away from their heart. There's a couple other things according to that now that's the first thing. The second one is a variety of sexual partners. Men are again, two standard deviations. Yeah. Far more like meaning the median man is interested in more women than the other way around but puts them in the top 2%. [00:14:55] But the third one, and this was a really interesting one and I knew this one, but it was Tai Lopez I was at his house last Wednesday. And he was explaining this, do you know the main thing where women just do not care that much about at all? But men are obsessed with, you know what it is? It's in your title. [00:15:09] No, it's in your title.  [00:15:10] Jason: Let's see, friends, high status, what I don't know?  [00:15:13] Michael: Status. Women in general do not care as much about status as men do, meaning women don't kill each other over status as men have been doing for the last hundred thousand years. So in fact, Dr. Buss, women care about men having status. [00:15:26] Jason: Women care about men having status.  [00:15:28] Michael: Women care about the men that they're with having status, yes. Yeah, okay. Yes. I see. Meaning they care about status as an object to obtain, but not as a something for themselves. Or rather, if you've ever, if you've ever lived on a military base, it's one of the strangest things. [00:15:41] Whoever the base commander's wife is, she's like the leader of the wives. It's so weird. She did nothing. She didn't go to officer school. She didn't do shit, but because she's married to the 06, the base commander, whenever they have engagements, she is... it's so funny. Anybody who's been in the military, you know, this is true. [00:15:58] Whoever the base commander's wife is. She's all of a sudden like the leader of all the events, even though why? Because she's married to the base commander. That's the way it works. So men, women in general in gendered into themselves, don't care as much about status as men do men severely care about status far more than women do. [00:16:16] And so because of the, these concepts, that's why you'll see like with a lot of the stuff I'm saying when it comes to sales, this is for men and women, but when it comes to dating, women do not sit there and have to show their status in order to attract men. But the other way they do. Does that make sense? [00:16:29] Yeah. And that's why it's like an important differentiation to make. And that's one of the other things I teach in my course. Like when you also, when you're selling to men versus women, it's something that you need to understand. You don't necessarily need to sell to women based on status. Like how, "Hey Sherry, how'd you like those big shoulders to show off those muscles to get those guys?" No, they don't. It's that's a status thing shoulder to waist ratio is like a male strength machismo testosterone status thing that women just aren't as interested in, you know, so there's just interesting concepts like that. [00:16:59] This divergence innate differences between men and women and where do we find these differences? We find them in evolutionary studies.  [00:17:05] Jason: So I think it's really interesting what you talked about earlier. You mentioned like this gravitation towards basically what works, right. And we see this everywhere. [00:17:14] Like I've been in lots of different programs. I've worked with lots of different mentors, coaches, read lots of different books and I'm noticing more and more I evolve as a human being. I'm noticing more and more parallels between the best ideas. Like I just read a book on kids. It was like how to talk so kids will listen and how to listen so kids will talk. And it's probably one of the best communication books I've ever read. Like anybody could learn from reading this book because to some degree, we're all little kids in bigger. [00:17:44] Michael: Even without kids.  [00:17:45] Jason: And also I was like, this is brilliant, like self talk like psychology even in this book. [00:17:51] And I'm like, this could be applied to so many different things. And it talks about empathetic, like being empathetic in your communication. I'm like, this is brilliant. This will work so effectively for sales or for anything. And people think, "oh, it's for kids." Right. And so what works works. [00:18:05] And I read another book, something about relationships by David B. Wolfe. It was a really good book, and this was for grownups, but there were so many parallels between these things. And you had mentioned also with dating and you know, for example, sales really, there's so many parallels between going out and trying to get clients and trying to get dates. [00:18:27] Michael: The higher you go, they're not parallels. They're exactly the same. When you get to the top, they're exactly like what I'm saying is when you get to the top, meaning like Hugh Hefner, like when you're at the top and then you just see, it's just a total presentation and it's nothing but just showing status. [00:18:42] Oh, it's the same thing. It's the same. I bought a Tesla that like Playboy is a brand. Tesla is a brand. You start to see they're doing the same thing to your brain.  [00:18:51] Jason: So for the business owners, listening to this, who are not trying to be Hugh Hefner. Right. They're not, and maybe they're married like me and they're not like trying to get women, but they do want to increase their sales. [00:19:03] They do want to increase their status and they want to figure out how to attract more business. What are maybe some of the things that they could do to be more attractive to the real estate investors that they're trying to get as clients?  [00:19:18] Michael: Yeah, I will tell you the first thing is you need to be a way more cognizant of how you are perceived socially and for a lot of people, one of the things you have to understand is the more things become digital and the more your image can be spread across social media platforms, the less your actual merit of your business matters and the more the perception of your business matters. [00:19:40] Jason: Yeah. How do they get an accurate view of how they're perceived?  [00:19:46] Michael: You could ask other people. I mean, generally the market is going to tell you, right? What is the price of of a commodity? The market's going to end up telling you right. In a free market economy, but it's like when you make social media content, you need to make them the content to market your business in a sexy, fun way that catches people's attention, but it doesn't have to be extremely representative. And I know this is really hard for a lot of people to do because they're like, "no, I'm just going to be myself and make content that feels organic." And I'm just telling you that doesn't work. [00:20:14] I don't care what Gary Vanderchuck told you. That is not the way the world works. Everyone else is stunting. Everyone is using FaceApp and Facetune. All these other people are just showing images and pictures of the best parts of their life. I post on social media all the time. I did not post anything about me feeding my cats this morning. [00:20:30] Like, the people want to see the cool stuff. That's just generally the way it is. So, you're, the way you are perceived on social media again, that's what we, you know, Men of Action, our group, is when you're in a community that gives you accountability and feedback to let you know, hey man, this is not a good post or this is a good post. [00:20:45] When we are on Instagram specifically instagram trades, a currency and that currency is called status. That's all Instagram is. Facebook is not like that. By the way, you guys will notice for those of you do any kind of marketing, Facebook is going to work really well for your 38- 40 year old audience and older. [00:21:01] And Instagram is going to work for your audience below 38 to maybe 28 and then maybe to 25 and below 25, it's going to be TikTok. And you'll notice, depending on which audience you're trying to get to, that's where you're going to see the most prevalence on those different platforms. Also, you're also going to see the most politically progressive of those platforms will be TikTok and the most politically conservative all those platforms will be like Twitter or X. So you, these are kind of the things that you have to learn. What you need out there is a perception that people have of your business and you have it as an entrepreneur. So you need to be trustworthy. You need to seem like, you know, more than everyone else, like you're a subject matter expert and you need to seem extremely motivated. [00:21:40] And in doing so as well, when you show images of your business and you personally, you need to show relevancy, competency, access to scarce resources, and social proof. Those are the things that will help. So what I mean by social proof? Other people in the industry following you on Instagram is a great way to almost look like a testimonial or maybe they leave comments. [00:21:59] That's a great way to show social proof, relevancy. Are you trying to use banner ads from 25 years ago? Or you're like, "Well, I'm still using email blasts." Okay. If I'm talking to a guy in real estate and he's telling me about email blasts, I know he's not relevant anymore. If I'm sitting there talking to stuff, if that's all he's talking about, right? [00:22:17] If he's sitting there being like, you know, he doesn't use Instagram, but he's got an SEO guy. I'm like, okay, he's not relevant anymore. He doesn't know. He hasn't changed things. But when I talked to a guy and he's like, "yeah, what I did was I started a podcast and in my podcast, I do 20 minute interviews with different people using restream. And then I have a guy come through and make clips and then I have, and then the best clips I end up promoting those clips on Instagram or using meta. Facebook Ad manager, meta ad manager, and in doing so, then I make the best ones and I turn them into advertisements and I put a CTA at the end." I'm like, okay, that guy's relevant, that guy gets it. [00:22:49] Jason: Then we're relevant here at DoorGrow.  [00:22:51] Michael: What you're doing is extremely relevant.  [00:22:52] Jason: If they have an AOL email address, they're like, "what's your email?" [00:22:56] Michael: That's exactly, it's not relevant.  [00:22:57] "It's aol.Com." [00:22:58] "I have a Facebook, but I don't have an Instagram." You're just not relevant. Like I can tell you're not relevant. When people are like, "well, my audience isn't on Instagram." It's like, it doesn't matter if your audience is on Instagram, you're trying to grow your audience. And by the way, the market will tell you what it wants. And every day, I'm sorry for those of you who don't want to hear this. Every day, each one of these platforms becomes slightly less relevant. Okay? [00:23:19] TikTok is on its uprise right now. Instagram is becoming less relevant because of TikTok, Rumble, YouTube, and Facebook to a certain audience is also already completely irrelevant. You'll see women below a certain age do not have a Facebook, but they do have an Instagram. [00:23:32] So the answer is to have all of them. All of you should have, you should be making 30 to 90 second content, the up and down type of content. Not landscape of profile content. You should be making that and it should be going on Snapchat. It should be going on X. It should be going on YouTube. It should be YouTube shorts, TikToks, and Facebook and Instagram reels. [00:23:50] It should be going at all those different places. You can use HubSpot or some other platform in order to post that content. And the content doesn't just have to be clips that go viral from podcasts. You can do man on the street videos. And here's a big one. All of you can do this. You can do reaction videos. [00:24:04] All of you can do reaction videos. They're so easy to do. And by the way, you don't even have to like, you're just like, "Michael, I don't know how to use OBS and I don't know how to do a reaction video." All you have to do is sit like I'm sitting right now. I'm in my den. You know, obviously I put some soundproofing behind me, but I'm in my den, I got a big ol ring light in front of me, and somebody comes up to me and goes, "Michael, what do you think about the Trump assassination attempt?" [00:24:23] Or "Michael, what do you think about, you know, Kamala Harris or whatever?" And I'm like, and I just turn my camera like this, like I'm talking, "Man, I'll tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." And you just say, and as soon as people watch the video and they're like, "This guy's about to tell me what he's thinking." [00:24:35] Then everyone will watch. And then some of you are listening right now and you're like, "I'm just a property manager. I don't want to talk about politics. Really go watch Ryan Pineda. Go watch Bradley, go watch Codie Sanchez, go watch Tom Bill. You go watch any of these guys who are crushing it in their fields. [00:24:51] They give their opinions on everything. Did you guys hear Alex Hormozi now talks about dating? What? Yeah. You're building a brand. Status is status. Like nobody cares. This is the other thing, Jason, a lot of your clients, and this is something I've talked to you about, and everyone in my program hears me talk about this ad nauseum. [00:25:08] Is the concept of like, I'm afraid that I'm going to post the wrong thing and nobody holds you accountable for anything you have to say, like, I was just looking at a video of Kamala Harris at a P Diddy party, walking around with Montel Jordan. No one seems to care that ever happened. No one cares about Joe Biden talking about, "I don't want to send my kids to school with the monkeys." [00:25:26] Nobody cares about it. No one cares. Like you said, like Donald Trump had sex with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and they brought it up during the debates and no one cares. Literally one of the most popular movies of all time The wolf of wall street is a about a man who did 15 months in prison for securities fraud, punched his wife in the stomach, kidnapped his own kid, did quaaludes and slept with prostitutes, and then afterwards, he is one of the top sales trainers in the world today. But you guys think anyone cares. Caitlyn Jenner runs over someone, kills them, and then four months later is named woman of the year. But you're like, "Michael, I'm a property manager. What if I post the wrong thing?" Here's another thing, Jason, and this is a poor reflection on humanity, but it's absolutely true. [00:26:09] If you get popular enough, they will forgive you for anything. And if you don't believe me right before OJ died, I had a conversation with him and they had offered him millions of dollars to do a fantasy football podcast, and I was like, OJ, what about those people you stabbed 56 times? Nobody cares. So many of you are watching this right now and you're like, you have 400 followers on Instagram and you're like so worried about posting the wrong thing, bro. [00:26:32] You don't have 400 followers on Instagram. You have four followers on Instagram and one of them's your mom. No one cares what you're doing. Most of you on social media are irrelevant and because you're irrelevant on social media, in reality, you're invisible. Listening to this, when you ask me what the advice is, your job is to become visible. [00:26:49] Some of you will be offended by what I say and the rest of you will be successful. You've got to decide which one you want to be.  [00:26:54] Jason: So I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second here, right? A lot of property managers, they think "I'm going to go start posting about property management. And maybe I'll get some investors that want to like work with me." [00:27:06] And so they start posting property management with this false assumption that people really care about property management, right? And so the analogy I'll usually share with property managers is I'll say, "how many plumbers are you following on social media?" And they'll say, "none." [00:27:23] "Why?" I said, "they want your business. Why aren't you following them?" And so there's this false reality that these social media marketers will sell to property managers. They're like wasting their time. And some of them spend a lot of money and time with these social media companies, wasting time promoting their property management business on social media, when nobody gives a shit about property management, even their clients don't wake up in the morning and go, "man, I'm thinking about property management." [00:27:50] Jason, what should they be doing instead?  [00:27:52] Michael: Yes. Jason you saying that just got me. I want someone who's watching this to do this and then tag me in the video when you do it. Jason, as a property manager, do you ever have nightmare tenants?  [00:28:03] Jason: So to be clear for those listening...  [00:28:05] Michael: yeah,  [00:28:06] Jason: I'm not managing properties. I'm coaching property management business owners, but they would say, "yes," they have nightmare tenants. All the time.  [00:28:12] Michael: Do you ever have nightmare vendors? Like guys who come like when I say vendor, what I mean is the plumber, the carpenter, the guy who comes...  [00:28:18] Jason: Yes, they have problems with vendors constantly, they have nightmare owners. [00:28:21] They're managing properties.  [00:28:22] Michael: What about, well, I wouldn't do nightmare owners cause you're trying to get business. I wouldn't talk about nightmare owners. What I would talk about is. I would start off a clip just like this. "I had a nightmare tenant. This guy was destroying," and then it would just show pictures. [00:28:34] "This guy was destroying everything in the place. I swear. He didn't know how to, he couldn't aim and hit the toilet. He has just destroyed the place. And this is what I did to fix it. And here's three tips for you to deal with a nightmare tenant." Viral. Yeah. Viral. Not only are you viral. Everyone's coming to you. [00:28:52] It's like, "man, I don't want a nightmare tenant. I just bought this two bedroom, two bathroom. I don't want a nightmare tenant. I'm going to go do what he does."  [00:28:59] Jason: I don't want it to be a meth house eviction. Like, yeah.  [00:29:02] Michael: Yes. Yeah. You know what i'm saying? Like that's what I would do. I would go over like what are these and because what you're going to do is what are the biggest fears of the people who are hiring property owners, my nightmare tenant, my tenant who doesn't pay. Like those kind of things, and I would make content. What are the three steps that I did to do with the five tips that a lot of people's in this place don't do right? I would make content like that. And you could do opus there's these ai software apps that'll basically take the clip and then they'll just inject B roll that fits whatever the words you're saying. [00:29:33] You don't have to hardly do any work when you do it and then all of a sudden it's like, "it was a nightmare. This guy's made my place look like a roach house. Roach infested." And then it'll actually pull up an image like a whatever, a stock Shutterstock image of a roach infested home, whatever. [00:29:47] Jason: Now they're using ai. Even I'm seeing a lot of AI images Just flashing. Yeah. Yeah. Or, yeah. Correct.  [00:29:51] Michael: It could actually illustrate using artificial intelligence, illustrate the image for you. You could actually do that. So you don't have run into any copyright issues. Right. Or any permission issues. [00:30:00] There's just so many ways to do this. But what are you doing? You're showing relevancy and competency. You know how to use Instagram. You know how to create a clip using artificial intelligence. You have good audio. You have good lighting. You're showing relevancy. You're showing competency. You're showing high intelligence. [00:30:15] You're showing high social status. And then in the comments, you're like "LMAO." Like people are laughing my ass off. "This happened to me." "Oh my God, Jason, same shit." "100 percent true." And now I have social status. I have all these things. Why? Because I made some content that was engaging about something that is incredibly unsexy, which is property management. [00:30:35] That's how you do it. What are those ultimate fears that your prospective clients have? And I would just do nothing but make content about that. I have a friend of mine, FedEx fearless. His name's Bismarck. And this guy, he goes, "these are three reasons why you are ugly." And I'm like, "what?" [00:30:48] And like, he really goes after people. "This is the reason why your girlfriend is cheating on you right now." And everyone just, I'm like, "what?" And I don't want to watch, but I'm like, I need to watch this video.  [00:30:57] Jason: What's going on there? Yeah.  [00:30:59] Michael: It's so great. It's so great. " No, Michael, you need to be authentic with your social..." no, you don't. You don't need to be authentic. You need to capture people's attention. You need to be attractive. Your primary job is to be attractive on social media. Now what happens is now you got them with the hook, "Here are the top three things that I do to deal with this horrible tenant that I have" And then when they come in the hook now throughout there you give those three, explanations But you also throw in a little piece of advice that shows just a little humble brag that shows "In my 27 years of property management, this is the thing that I've learned." [00:31:30] Okay, little humble brag. And at the end, it goes, "if you want to learn more, comment, the word guide below," or if you're on YouTube, you'd be like, "go down into the description and click the link. And then blah, blah, blah." And it just ends up right down your sales funnel, maybe to a low ticket offer, maybe an ebook that you wrote something like that. [00:31:45] And the next thing, you've 10xed profits. You've 10x revenue. You're selling a course on property management while writing a book on property management, while having a podcast on property management, while being a property manager, all of it at the same time. And then you got to hire a new accountant because you got too many write offs. [00:31:59] Like you don't have enough time to pay your taxes. You got to get too much money. That's it. That's how this works. And that's about what I just explained to you. It's just the difference between getting it and not getting it, being relevant and not being relevant. And so a lot of people, what they're, they listen to me and they always make me out to be the bad guy because cause what I do is I tell people, no one cares about you. And no one likes to hear that. They like to think that the rest of the world cares about property managers. But like you said, no one's following plumbers. Right. But if I was a plumber, I would do the same thing, "man, I walked into this house and this toilet had exploded and just have an image of it." [00:32:30] And it'd be like, "okay, I need to hear what this is." "And then a monster crawled out of the toilet." I'm just kidding. And like, I would just, that's what I would do just to keep people's attention.  [00:32:37] Jason: So for those listening, can we qualify you a little bit related to social media, because you've got a good following? [00:32:43] You've got a sizable business because people listening if they don't know who you are, I want them to recognize you're very qualified to talk about this. Not so humble brag about yourself for a second.  [00:32:55] Michael: I have a men of action. We have 1600 clients that have gone through there. [00:32:58] 200 video testimonials if you go on the school server. And also we have a free community a free school server. What's about 43-4,500 guys in there. You're welcome to message. One of the things that I've told people is that if I join a group and they tell me not to talk to the other people in the group, I know this is a scam. [00:33:12] You'll notice sometimes with MLMs, you'll see that. I implore you to talk to anyone, any client that's ever gone through my program and they will tell you how incredibly satisfied they were. Also you, Jason, I'm sure you've seen my course is extremely comprehensive. It's about 65 hours long. That doesn't even include the live calls. [00:33:29] And then also there's a book, there's a required book list that you have to read in order to go through the course.  [00:33:33] Jason: I'll tell you right now, like an eight figure business for you.  [00:33:36] Michael: Just today, we've done eight figures in total, but as of this month, this is the first month we'll recross the mark. [00:33:42] It was what? 833 a month or something like that. We cross that this month. So that's about, yeah. So we're doing about a little bit under eight figures in revenue per year.  [00:33:50] Jason: This is more than any property managers probably listened to my show. So just for perspective. Okay. Yeah. Got it.  [00:33:57] Michael: Yeah. I mean, because coaching is scalable. [00:34:00] That's the reason why. And like the other thing I want you guys understand is a lot of people got into real estate because they were trying to find a scalable way of making income and they're using you to make their lives scalable. So if you guys read, buy back your time by Dan Martell, they're paying you to buy back their time as real estate owners. [00:34:15] That's what their job is. And essentially you're going to eventually do the same thing. You're going to pay someone to buy back your time from them. So the main difference, and I'm sure many of you entrepreneurs already know this, but. When you start off in the workforce, you are trading your time for money. [00:34:28] You're working at Chick fil A or McDonald's and you're being paying an hourly salary later on. You're trading your money for time. I pay one guy. He comes into my house. He turns on my computer, he turns on my camera, he turns on my lights, he sits me down, and then he just starts yelling at me to talk about certain subjects, and I have no idea, I'm just like, drinking coffee, and I'm like, what up, and he goes, "what do you think about this?" And I'm like, "oh man, let me tell you something, and then they record it," and then it's just a reaction video, and I do nothing. [00:34:53] I pay to get my time back. I have several editors that live in Romania and Nigeria and all these, because I don't want to edit videos anymore. I used to be a video editor and a videographer. I don't want to do it anymore. I pay one place to do the live editing for my podcast. I don't want to do that anymore. [00:35:07] I pay to get my time back. For those of you who are considering hiring a personal assistant, once again, highly recommend Dan Martell's book, Buy Back Your Time. In the book, he talks about taking your yearly salary and divided by 8, 000. And that's what you pay the guy hourly. Take your yearly salary, how much you make in a year, your yearly income divided by 8, 000. [00:35:24] That's it. They go over the reason why, but it ends up becoming like a 40 hour work week. You end up paying him one, you pay him half of what one hourly wage for years. So if your time is worth a thousand dollars an hour, you might pay him 500 an hour to get certain things done for your life. And one of my favorite sayings in that book is something done 80 percent right is 100 percent awesome. [00:35:43] And like, it was one of the hardest things to give up. The guy who does my timestamps, that was really hard. I love doing timestamps because timestamps were giving me clips and those clips would go viral and the virality would make me money, but I had to give that up. And eventually you're going to give up all these processes. [00:35:57] Another thing I'll explain for you guys who are entrepreneurs, one of the greatest tools you will ever find is an app called loom. Look up loom. What loom is allows you to make videos, but the video it's like, it's showing the screen on your phone or it's showing the screen on your computer while they're listening to your voice and you send it to your person. [00:36:12] So like, for instance, I do mass invites for certain events that I do. So I'll go on loom and I'll have a guy, maybe he speaks you know, Farsi or maybe this guy speaks like his English. Isn't that great? What I'll do is I'll go through my invite slowly and I'll do it like for 30 minutes, I'll just do invites and I'll show so he can see what it looks like. [00:36:28] And then I send it to him and then he looks at it and he has no questions. And my invites are done like that. Loom is one of the greatest way of passing along SOPs to people and then using them in order to buy back your time. So understanding all these concepts, it makes you more relevant, makes you more competent. [00:36:43] It gives you higher status. It gives you more access. And these are the things that you're looking for. In any walk of life, but especially in something like property management and you guys also understand as property managers Your job isn't sexy So what you have to do is you have to show the sexy parts of your job, right? [00:36:57] When I my favorite one are accountants and dentists. They're not my friend my friends who are dentists who know what they're doing, they show the fucking horror job teeth, You know car accident, messed up teeth, meth addict, whatever, and then they get the teeth back to 100%. And like me, as someone who doesn't care that much about dentistry, I'm just like staring like, "Oh my God, that was incredible." [00:37:17] Yeah. what you do is you figure out people's primary driver emotion and their biggest fear. And then from those things, from the primary driver emotion and their biggest fear and from those things then you make your content attacking those primary driver emotions and those biggest fears, okay. And when you do so it doesn't make any difference if you're an accountant It doesn't make any difference if you're a property manager doesn't make any difference what it is that you sell people will watch and they will be obsessed. [00:37:42] My brother, he watches videos of horseshoes. They basically, you know, they shave off the end of the horse's hoof and then they put the shoes on. He said it's like the most relaxing thing in the world to watch. And I wouldn't even think about that, but why is it? It's like something we don't even think about that much, but it's pretty amazing. [00:37:56] Like when you see, it's like very relaxing to watch stuff like that. You can do stuff like that.  [00:38:00] Jason: There's a guy that's viral for just, he finds distressed houses. And he just cleans up their lawn and the sidewalk. He's like, "Hey, could I mow your lawn? And it's like relaxing to watch the transformation." [00:38:12] Yeah.  [00:38:12] Michael: Another one that's great was if you guys watch the early Ryan Pineda stuff, what was he doing? He was flipping couches. He would find crappy couches, clean them up, and then he would sell them again. And he made a living from flipping couches. There's just all these different things. And like the concept of it sounds so boring, but I want to watch someone do it. [00:38:28] Right. It was the one where you'd buy those storage units and then you'd see whatever's in this. Oh, I forgot what that was. It was pawn shop, pawn stars or something where the people would buy storage units and open up in there. And there's like, sometimes there'd be nothing in the storage unit. Sometimes there'd be like a dead body in there or some crazy shit. [00:38:41] Like they find like a skull and like all of a sudden. Bag full of money. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, you guys know the producers were putting that bag of money in there, right? Like that wasn't real. That wasn't real.  [00:38:52] Jason: Reality TV isn't real either. You like to say social media isn't real and that's okay or something. [00:38:58] Michael: So rule number four in men of action is social media is fake and I'm okay with that because the money's real. And the world isn't fair. And I'm okay with that.  [00:39:05] Jason: Yeah.  [00:39:06] Michael: The world isn't fair and I'm okay with it. Rule number four in a, in social and of action is about acceptance. It's about accepting the world the way it is and never being a victim. [00:39:14] It's sure things are hard for you, but you're never a victim. You might be too short. English might not be your first language and you're having a hard time speaking it. You might be born poor. You might be born with some kind of ailment or disability that you feel like holds you back, but that's where you are. [00:39:27] You start from where you are. And then you create from there. Okay. You were saying something before about how you notice like all these books kind of converge in to the same place, three books that have nothing to do with each other, but it's the same concept. Ready? The power of now by Eckhart Tolle, the subtle art of not giving a fuck by Mark Manson and sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. [00:39:45] You're like, wait a second. It's all the same thing. It's all the same. It's all this. I get to choose how react. I get to tell myself stories that change my behavior. It's all three of these books that have nothing to do with each other end up being the same book, not exactly the same book, but similar books. [00:40:00] Because once you get to the highest levels of enlightenment, transcendence, goal oriented communication ends up being the same thing for everyone.  [00:40:07] Jason: There's a one of my favorite books is by Byron Katie called Loving What Is. And basically, she takes you through this process of just asking yourself these four sort of questions to challenge your current view of reality. [00:40:21] And it takes you out of this victim sort of view. It's very much like cognitive behavioral therapy, maybe, or something like this, right? Yes. Or CBT or something. But yeah, so asking this question, is this belief that I have actually true? And a lot of our beliefs that we're holding on to that are holding us back. [00:40:36] And like, if we're not getting results in life, it's because we currently have beliefs that are not working for us. And so, if you see people that things are working well for them, even though you think, like, somebody might be watching right now going, "Michael is completely full of shit. He's throwing out all these crazy stuff and he's, he worked at a strip club" and somebody's like, so against that or whatever. [00:40:56] They're like their own stumbling block and they're in their way and they won't pay attention to the truth or the things that you're sharing that are good because they're so stuck on everything in the universe having to look a certain way that they are not even open to receiving more, they're not willing to challenge their own thinking. [00:41:13] They're not going to progress. They're going to stay stuck.  [00:41:16] Michael: They identify more with their identity than they identify with success.  [00:41:20] Jason: Yeah. Good way of saying it. And I love how you talked about kind of these currencies. One of my mentors in the past was Alex Charfen. And he's from here in the Austin area as well. [00:41:30] And he was talking about time, energy, focus, cash, and effort. He calls the five currencies. And Hormozi went through Alex Charfen's like coaching with me. I met Layla and Alex in this. And one of the things that I then saw Alex talk about these currencies. But what I thought was interesting is Alex said the most significant of those five currencies in order to scale and grow your business is focus. [00:41:52] It's the most important to scale, grow a company. And then Dan Martell, I once saw him teach this framework that was, it was like about the power of one. He's like, "the most effective business is a business has one sales funnel, one product, one..." it was like all ones, like, And I see property managers, a lot of times they'll try and like start five different businesses. [00:42:14] They're like, I'm going to start a cleaning company, a maintenance company, like all these other things.because they're complimentary real estate brokerage. And then they wonder why none of them are growing because they lack focus. And so all these things kind of converge, making sure that we have focus. [00:42:28] You also mentioned Dan Martell, who I think is a brilliant entrepreneur, he generally was coaching like software companies, SAS companies to help them grow and scale, but his stuff's applicable to coaching businesses. I've noticed it's applicable to anything because the principles are valid. [00:42:44] And one of the things I've had my clients do to get them to that next level, to basically get their time back is to have them do a time study to where they become accountable for their time, which things are positive and which things are negative, like plus or minus, which things give them energy in life and which things take it away in their own business. [00:43:00] And I have them do this like usually once a quarter. And when I did my first time study, I realized I was doing like four hours of podcast production in a week. It all added up and I was like, holy shit. So then I just hired a company to do it. It was a no brainer to let that go because it was stupid at that point for me to hold on to that once I could see that challenge. [00:43:20] And you mentioned loom, awesome tool for like one of my favorite tools, like it, which is next level. It's like loom, but it's Wistia's video recorder. It lets you actually record the screen and yourself. And then after the recordings made. You can then have it mid recording. You can switch which parts are showing and have segues between the two. [00:43:42] And it's super fast. It's like super cool. But we use tools like that.  [00:43:46] Michael: Productivity. Yeah, definitely.  [00:43:47] Jason: Yeah. So, I love all these ideas for collapsing time. Michael has dropped several awesome tools, knowledge bombs, ideas for those that are listening and also how to leverage content social media wise. [00:43:59] So what you know, if we were to bring this full circle what would you say is the most important thing that maybe business owners or property managers could be doing to scale and grow their business?  [00:44:13] Michael: Right now? Again, one more time. It is: understand, your ability to grow is based on your perceived status, your perceived trustworthiness, your perceived know how. Not your actual know how. Like, I can tell you so many guys that I know that are real estate experts on YouTube. And then I have my friends of mine that are real estate agents. And they're like, "that guy doesn't know shit." And I'm like, "no, he's coaching the white belts." That's the why, the reason why he says the things that he says. [00:44:39] And they have a hard time dealing with it. So, understanding that concept. And then. You have to leave yourself. You have to subvert your own ego, go on places like TikTok or Instagram places you'd never think to go to, and then look at who's going viral, who's in your exact industry, and you're going to need to take pieces from what you see. [00:44:56] Like, what are the kinds of videos that do really well? And you're going to be able to find those very quickly. You can literally right now would go on Tik Tok and look up property management and you'll find a bunch of videos, like just pick the ones that go the most viral or a real estate, a podcast, and then pick the topics that go the most viral and just blatantly steal them, steal, blatantly steal everything. [00:45:19] You in the beginning, no creativity necessary, just steal. Okay, and you do that for a while and then you start to sort of get your footing And then you start to realize wait a second, I've been running ads and my ROAS per dollar my ads is x 1. 2 or 2. 0 or whatever but in organic my cost per lead is like nothing because my organic traffic, it costs me so much less to get a lead. [00:45:44] It's incredible. Then I go on someone else's podcast because my content is getting better and better. And then all of a sudden now, you know, Rich Summers and Ryan Pineda want me to come on their show to talk about, you know, maybe I'm on ice coffee hour or whatever, talking about real estate. [00:45:58] And then I get on bigger and bigger shows and now my cost per lead decreases even more because I just had this simple understanding that the way it works is my perceived status my perceived know how and my perceived trustworthiness to other people are the reasons why people will buy my product. Now you may already obviously everyone who's listened to this if you have any success in property management You already have your funnel is probably dealing with either word of mouth shaking hands, or it's dealing with some sort of paid advertisement, but I implore you try organic. Try to use organic and then organic meaning using Instagram posts or Facebook posts. [00:46:33] And then once you do that, try to take your best content and turn your best content in an advertisement and promote those, promote that content. That's something we've also been doing. And if you want examples on everything I just said, a great book, a great place to start is the 100 million offer series by Alex Hormozi. He goes over every single thing that I just talked about. It's absolutely fantastic. It's really great stuff. The difference is with my program, MOA, we're a little bit more bespoke for what it is exactly that you're doing. But we're mostly talk about networking. And then the other thing is, When you actually meet that person in person that you want to work with, do you come off as a fan boy? [00:47:06] Do you come off as too eager? Do you, does your body language show signs of neediness or signs of low status? Are these things that you can watch? And then how do you figure that out? You watch yourself on camera. Do you watch yourself on other people's podcasts? Because that's one of the things is like as social media grows and more people are exposed to more people, just remember like if you consider in the plasticine, you know, we live in hunter gatherer societies of 150 people and now we can legitimately have a hundred thousand friends on social media in that kind of situation because we're exposed to more people, we are more attuned to status, physical appearance, et cetera. And so now what happens is humans essentially become more shallow. [00:47:46] They become more attuned to other people's status and rightly or wrongly. Is it a negative commentary on humans? Yes, it probably is, but it's the world you live on. And if you want to get rich, you need to listen to what I'm saying. And if what I'm saying, offends you, get ready to stay poor. Like, I'm sorry. [00:48:01] If you guys are listening to this right now, and you're like, "No, social media is going to go away and we're going to go back to walking up to doors and do an email blast and buying banner ads." If that's what you think, go back to your AOL. com email and just keep believing that's the case. [00:48:16] It's all about the handshake. It's like, if that's what you believe, that's fine. But for the rest of you who are ready to understand that if you think things are bad, I got news for you. They're only going to get worse. Meaning people aren't going to put their phones down at dinner. People aren't going to take fewer photos. [00:48:30] People. I was reading something. It was like, like in one day, now more photos are taken in like an hour than were taken during the entire year of 1985 or something like that. It was like the amount of photographic and video data that's uploaded in one hour exceeds the total photographs taken in an entire year back in the 1980s. [00:48:49] Some absurd number like that. If you think things are going in one direction, things are getting faster. They're more virtual. They're more digital. Digital, they're going to be controlled by artificial intelligence and they're going to be more scalable. You need to get on that train. The train is leaving. [00:49:05] You need to get on the train. Now, if you don't want to get on the train, that's fine, but notice as the world passes you by and the rate at which it passes you by only increases every year. If you want to learn about that, read Ray Kurzweil series called the singularity is near, and you can see how he talks about the rate of change is increasing, and then the rate of change is also increasing. [00:49:24] Jason: Okay, so this is awesome stuff. So Michael one thing I want to point out for those that are listening. Because I think you've sold your Men of Action short a little bit. So I'm gonna, I want to say something about it because what I think is in, what people think is in there probably based on what you're saying is it's a bunch of social media stuff and it's like how to, maybe how t

We all love when our peers agree with us online, but could this be hurting our mindset and creativity? In this episode, I sit down with Jennifer Pearce to explore the perils of groupthink and the profound impact of mindset on success in the dental industry. We dive deep into how maintaining a healthy, critical approach is crucial for dentists, especially when transitioning from larger DSOs to private practice. Jennifer passionately discusses the dangers of groupthink, revealing how it can obstruct innovation and stunt personal growth.Through examples and insights from her coaching experience, Jennifer sheds light on the necessity of evolving one's mindset. Whether you're just starting in the field or looking to make a significant career change, this episode is packed with practical advice and thought-provoking ideas. Tune in to discover how critical thinking and self-awareness can become your greatest assets in navigating the complexities of a dental career.What You'll Learn in This Episode:What is groupthink, and how does it affect personal and professional growth?Why mindset is critical for success in dentistry, especially in private practice.How to transition from working in DSOs to establishing a private practice.The importance of critical thinking and self-awareness in overcoming industry challenges.Real-life examples and insights from Jennifer's coaching experiences.Practical tips for evolving your mindset at different stages of your dental career.Strategies to maintain an independent and creative approach in a collaborative environment.How to identify when you're falling into the groupthink trap.Let's get into our episode with Jennifer Pearce today and learn how to steer clear of groupthink!‍‍Sponsors:Studio 8E8: Dentistry's story-driven marketing agency. Traditional marketing repels. Story-first dental marketing attracts.We bring your story to life in a way that captivates and connects: https://s8e8.com/affiliates/tdm?utm_source=tdm&utm_medium=affiliate&wc_clear=true‍You can reach out to Jennifer Pearce here:Website: https://prosperitydentalsolutions.com/Email: jennifer@prosperitydentalsolutions.com‍Mentions and Links: Terms:Groupthink‍People:Travis Kelce‍Events:Super Bowl‍Football Teams:Dallas CowboysKansas City Chiefs‍Insurance Companies:MetLife‍Companies/Brands:American Airlines‍‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey, Jennifer. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning? Jennifer: Good morning. Um, the first thing I would like to say is group think is a powerful thing. It's also can be a very harmful thing and your mindset is pivotal. But how you establish that mindset is more pivotal, and this is why I bring up the subject of groupthink. Michael: Okay, so groupthink, and then you, one thing you mentioned is how you establish your mindset. First and foremost, how do we establish a good mindset? And what would be good? Jennifer: I don't think that you wake up one morning and say, I'm going to get a good mindset. I think it's an accumulation of experience. things that you do right, things that you do wrong.We all tend to learn more from things we do wrong. But I do feel that it needs to be, um, critical as to what you're trying to accomplish. Because. What I see a lot of today, and this is why I talk about groupthink, is, oh, I'm experiencing this. Let me go on social media or Google and Google what I'm facing and see what other people say or think about.current conundrum, problem, or whatever. And so when you're a dentist and you're raised in the critical thinking, genre in your schooling, that's great. But sometimes I feel like the critical thinking or the awareness of the mindset thinking gets a little bit muddy when we're looking for a solution to a problem.So this might seem a little like a vague answer and I don't mean it to be, but mindset is. It's not something you wake up one morning and say, okay, I'm going to do a through Z. And then I'm going to have a good mindset. It has tributaries. It has things that take you off of stream. And then you come back onto the stream and being in the ebbs and flows of your mindset, awareness, and growing sometimes for dentists being highly technical thinkers, this gets scary, muddy, um, overwhelming And that's part of it, too. It's part of the process. So I think mindset a little bit is an overused word or a misunderstood word, but your mindset and how to fix your business is pivotal. So let me give you an example, if I may. Michael: Yes. Jennifer: So when you're a new practitioner, you've decided I've come out of school and I'm going to go work at a DSO and I'm going to get some skills, whether it be becoming faster at your skills.better at your skills, whatever. your mindset at that time is knowledge acquisition, time inefficiency, learning how to be with a team, what you need from the team, those kinds of things. I coach some people, some doctors who have come DSO environment, go into a private environment, and it's not the same they've evolved.What they expect from their team could be different and they haven't done enough work on their mindset. They've mainly worked on their technical skill sets. So there's technical prowess, there's a mindset, and there's leadership. And all of these are pivotal pieces to your practice growth.If you decide to have one or your own, clinical growth. If you decide not to have a practice and be within a DSO environment. could be DSO. It could be ideas. So it could be a number of things. I use DSO. It's a very broad term for private. Versus corporate versus anything you do not own. Okay.So a lot of the doctors don't realize they have been put into a mindset and leadership, path or story. And sometimes they're not aware of that's what's happening. And they adopt some of that as their own. So this is where I say your mindset is very important because it's almost like you've been kind of in a cult and you may not know it.And then you come out of the cold and you decide I'm going to open a practice or I'm going to do this. Your mindset has to be your path. Your mindset has to be where you take it. It becomes your vision. It becomes your, your style of business. I often say with mindset, I'm from Texas, so pardon my frankness, but if you do not choose your saddle, your saddle will choose you.Michael: And it may not be a good saddle for you. So people choose to go into different business models within dentistry for whatever reason. There's, so many reasons we can give for why people choose. But. the mindset that got you there when you choose whatever you choose. And then the mindset that takes you along your career, five years, 10 years, 15 years in has to evolve because what got you the first five years won't get you to the next five years.Jennifer: What got you through the first 10 years may not get you through the next 10 years. Um, because I probably am not telling anybody anything they don't know, but we are in what I consider to tonic shifts in dentistry. which I've been in for 30 years. So over the last, I would say 12 years, I've seen tectonic shifts, whether it be from technical disruptions, team disruptions, COVID, you know, incidents, which has changed us all.So, mindset is something that has to always be, brought to awareness and, challenged with inquisition of what you really want, not just challenging, just to challenge. Yeah. Michael: Yeah. Cause I feel like, well, then let me know, Jennifer, when it comes to mindset, let's just say we come out of a DSO.This happens a lot, right? We come out of a DSO, we enter into a private practice, then we start liking the private practice. Oh my God, the doctor was amazing. I love the way she works and everything, but it's time for me to open up my own practice. Right. And so they open it up. They take systems from the private practice.They take some things they like from the DSO, but they hated it. They're like, I hated the, the non. You know, we were like a drill and fill and get out kind of thing. Right. And so where is it with the doctor who's opening up the practice where they're like, all of this is mine, my mindset, or is it okay enough for us to kind of take pieces of stuff that we like and things like that.But maybe later on, we never questioned it. And then we're like, I never really liked that. I, it just worked to make money kind of thing. And I guess. Jennifer: It's called the status quo. I coached two practitioners right now that did just that. They were very successful in a DSM environment.And so yes, event, they knew eventually they were going to have their own. That's no big secret. It's something that happens, right? But they love the, the systemization. Yes. Of what they had at the DSO. And they were then in this illusion and bubble of what the DSO had created as far as the continuity of how things went, whatever leadership had been established.They may have liked pieces of the leadership as a doctor, but not the other pieces. Michael: You Jennifer: know, there's so many little intricacies to this conversation about that, but they never realize. The stress. The amount of personal time everything's going to take till they buy it. And then, uh, one that I have been coaching now for a year and a half, but unbeknownst to her, a dumpster fire, she did not know what she bought because.A lawyer told her it was okay and a broker told her it was okay, but she never really looked the business itself and in got in the practice management software and all those kinds of things. So, and many times she has said to me, I was really good at this and a DSO environment, but in this environment, it's completely different.And I said, so yeah, we've got to work on. Your mindset towards now that you own it, your leadership style. Now that you own it, which systems did you like? Which systems did you not like? Let's make this saddle fit your ass. you now own the saddle, you own the horse, you own it all. and they just don't realize it's like anything else.None of us realize till we jump into something. And then we're like, wow, I can't swim this fast or chew this fast. What do I do? How do I get it? Right. And I think the hard thing for all this is then we're talking to somebody who now has a husband or a wife. and children and life and those things may not have been part of the stressors to begin with, right?So your mindset towards what gets your attention at what times and then focusing that attention, um, cause usually dentists, as you know, and it's no big secret that they're technical. they're the technical tinkers. They want to work with their hands and all that stuff. So. Michael: Interesting.Okay. So internet show group think Jennifer: yeah Michael: is powerful. You said, but horrible sometimes. Jennifer: Yes Michael: In the sense of when can it start becoming horrible for someone? Jennifer: So I'll see something being said. let's just talk about, you know, on Facebook because it's something everybody understands, right? And you'll be in a group and there'll be, you know, a doctor will state something and then 60, 70, 500 comments come along with other doctors and it's.Same, same, same, same, same. Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: So, one of the things that I really work individually with people on is standing in your rightness. R I G H T N E S S. But when you get a hundred things of agree, agree, agree, agree, and you realize there's, there could be some nuances to that answer, not judgment or this is wrong, whatever.Um, you realize they're all group. Think group. Think feels comfortable group. Things feels vindicating group. Think feels, Oh, I must be right. If I can just get everybody else to listen to me. My pain will stop and no, you're all actually maybe only a skosh wrong, but you're wrong, you know, in how maybe you're leading or how you're trying to get something to be accomplished or whatever, which then over time leads to status quo, where they just.Pull back. And they just say, this is too hard. I pay my team. They're doing okay. We're doing okay. I want to be with my wife and children or my husband and my children. This is okay. This is enough. This is, this is what dentistry was for a very long time. You know, it was a cottage industry business. and the dentist would show up to do his or her work, tinker.Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: They'll go home. Now we have more entrepreneurial based dentists. We have more competition. We have the insurance derivatives. DSOs, you know, different models. And so it's like a pressure cooker now. And I think the pressure cooker. gives groupthink a place to go and kind of hang out for a minute and yeah, yeah, yeah. So funny share. Okay. Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: I love football. I'm from Texas. I'm a football girl. If I could buy the Dallas Cowboys and flip that team, I would. Okay. So watching the super bowl, most people tend to watch the super bowl. So it tends to be a good bonding discussion. And Travis. Kelsey, and his coach with the, Kansas city chiefs, you know, they were having a moment. They were having an intense, passionate moment with a top performing athlete. Okay. Did the coach get all reactionary and bench him because he was like misbehaving or speaking inappropriately to the coach at the moment?No, that coach has been around a while. That coach just looked at him and he heard him. But is that the time to punish him, get into it or whatever? No, he let, he let him have his moment and they went on to win in the celebration of the super bowl, what were that coach and player doing, loving on each other, high fiving.They just made a ton of money. And one of the group things I saw in one of the chats on Facebook was he was disrespectful, he should have been benched. He should have been this. Very much standing in rightness at the end of the day, that coach was very wise with a very talented person. Let him have his moment, let him blow some steam and then let him ride, let him fly, let him get out there and do what he needs to do.And I think sometimes this is what I see in group thing in dentistry, killing a little bit of our ingenuity, our creation within our team, our advancement. Really crucial talent in our teams. So sometimes the doctor's like, well, they did this and I'm going to, you know, and I'm like, Hmm, that person closed 500, 000 in your books last year.Is this a battle or is this a war? Cause you're making it a ward. It might just be a battle we might just let this one go. So this is mindset. This is mindset. And you can tell how much I love this. I'm very passionate about it. I can go on, about it because I think in dentistry, one of the most, the biggest blessings I had is my clinicians that I worked for, male, female.I've, I've had both that I've worked for as an employee. Michael: Mm-Hmm. . Jennifer: they empowered me. They let me take my passion. They let me. You know, grow and do things. And they allowed me also to challenge their mindset at times about how they were thinking about something. the first one happened very young in my career when my dentist wanted to get in network with MetLife, we were completely fee for service practice, like literally the patient came and got a crown, they gave us a check.We gave them a super bill to melt to their insurance. And he says, we, we need to go in network with MetLife. And I said, tell me what that means. Not a clue. Michael: Yeah. Jennifer: We were right down the street from American Airlines hub at DFW Airport. We had pilots, we had flight attendants, we had baggage throwers, and he said, well, we can get more patients.And I said, we have three operatories. We're booked out six months. in hygiene right now because we have one hygienist. look at the fee schedule. So I looked at it and I said, you want us to take a 40 percent decrease in our pay. You want us to see more patients. We don't have capacity. Why would we do this? He said, they're going to leave us. Who told you this? Mindset. Michael: Mm hmm. That's why. Gotcha. That's nice. That's nice, Jennifer. Awesome. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for being with us. It's been a pleasure. If anyone had further questions or concerns, where can they reach out to Jennifer: you? You can find me at Prosperity Dental Solutions.That is my website. Um, my email is jennifer at prosperity dental solutions. I'm reachable through there. That's probably the easiest way to get ahold of me. Michael: Okay. Awesome. So that's going to be in the show notes below. And Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us on this Monday morning episode.Jennifer: Thank you for having me.‍

https://theapsocietyorg.wordpress.com/news-and-events/suntree-retreat-2024/   Episode from 2022 Suntree: https://thewonderpodcast.podbean.com/e/live-from-suntree-retreat/   ----more----     Mark: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm your host, Mark, Yucca: And I'm Yucca. Mark: and today we have a really exciting group of people to talk about a really exciting upcoming event, which is the Sun Tree Retreat, which is the second of these retreats that we've held in person for atheopagans from all over the world who can come. Held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and it's going to be over Labor Day weekend this summer. So, I'd like to introduce our two panelists here, who were at the last one Rana and Michael. Michael: Hello. Yucca: Rana, we Mark: I can't hear you at all. Rana: Oh, thank you for having us. Yucca: Welcome. And I think both of you've been on the podcast before, right? So, welcome back. Michael: Oh, thanks. Can Yucca: Yeah. Michael: put that Yucca: So let's, let's start with the, some of the details because that's coming up really soon, right? That's Mark: It is, Yucca: two months, which is not very long. Mark: nope, not very long, especially if you have to get plane tickets and that kind of thing, so, Really encourage folks that want to go to get registered and get organized around it, because it's going to be a really good time. So, details. The event is August 30th, which is a Friday starting in the afternoon through noon ish or one o'clock or so 2nd. Registration includes nine meals. As a part of your, your registration fee you also need to register for lodging, which is very affordable and you can find all the information about it by going to the Athe O Pagan Society website, which is the ap society.org, THE ap society.org, Yucca: And the lodging has several diff oh, Michael: notes as well for this Yucca: absolutely, yeah, we'll put that in the show notes so that people can just go ahead and click on it. I was gonna say the lodging has several different options including tent camping, and yurt and Mark: guest house, you're. Yucca: I think it's dry camping, but you could, if you have an RV and you're in the area, you can do an RV too, is that correct? Mark: Yes, there are no hookups, but but there is parking for RVs. We had a couple of people, at least one couple came last time, actually in a school bus, Yucca: was really cool. Mark: was converted. It was really cool. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: So, Michael and Rana we wanted to talk some about why this event was so cool last time and what we're looking forward to going into this next one at the end of this summer. So why don't we start with kind of golden moments. Michael, you want to go ahead? Michael: I wanted to just say beforehand, you mentioned the meals, and one of the high points of it was the options available. Like, every dietary requirement was accommodated, I think. Mark: Yeah, Michael: The catering team there are fantastic, and I think people shouldn't feel concerned about food at all because the options were great the food was really high quality I think everybody felt really good about the food, so that was an important, that was a real high point so just wanted to make sure we got that mentioned. And, Mark: Yeah, great. Thank you. And, and eating together was really a high point for me. Just sitting down for meals, you know, they had these round tables that I think seated eight or ten or something like that, and different combinations of people would sit together for different meals. And so we got to know one another better in those mealtimes. So that was a high point for me. Somebody want to go with another cool thing that they remember from Suntree in 2022? Yucca: well, I remember Robin led these I'm not sure what you would really call it,  Rana: yeah, the meal acknowledgement. We have talked about them in the group, but it was really different being able to experience it together. And it was things like bringing to mind the history of our food or thinking about the systems that brought it to us today or the hands that it passed through. And we've had some discussion in Mihal's full moon. We were doing like a full moon lunch thing for a little while as well where we kind of continued that conversation and, and thinking about that, which is something that I find really enriching and really enjoy. Also want to strongly second the dietary accommodations that they had. I really, really appreciate it because I have a little bit of an odd diet and I felt. Really good and definitely did not lack for good options for food. Mark: Mihal, you want to go? Michael: yeah, what I found really interesting about the, The whole experience was how quickly we created a community in space particularly when we did our Fire Circle get togethers. And the kind of spontaneous sharing that occurred at those events was really amazing. People really just suddenly kind of created this family. in situ and it was it was great to be part of that. Just sometimes if you go to other kind of retreats it can take a while to kind of break down those those barriers we put up. Just as just as being human but it seemed within a just a few hours we'd kind of already started to create a special Sun Tree community and I thought that was fantastic. Mark: Yeah, I really agree with that. I mean, I've been to a whole lot of various kinds of pagan gatherings and retreats of various sorts. And it seemed as though we just kind of got at this visceral level that we were among, you know, people that were of like mind and similar values. And so that we were safe. Right? We were all, we were all going to play nice with one another, and so we could talk about really deep stuff in our, in our lives, and in our, our experience. And I found that really moving throughout the whole long weekend. It was, it was, it came up over and over again. Yucca: I was also really struck just by the immediate level of respect and consent that was just part of the, Everybody had going in. So I had my five year old with me and in a lot of situations in our culture, people you know, will go up and touch five year old's heads and give them hugs and, you know, all of those sorts of things. And I remember it just being great because people automatically were so great with her about asking for her permission. Like, do you want a hug? And would you like to shake hands? And that was just the culture of it. And it was just so refreshing and wonderful to just be in that space, just from the get go. Like Mark: and I mean, we had, we had laid out guidelines around consent and around conduct because, you know, we wanted to be very clear about, you know, what the expectations are, but it seemed like people read them and were like, yeah, that's civilized behavior. That's how I'm going to be. And the subject Honestly, never came up. There was never a situation where somebody felt like they had been inappropriately touched or or somehow invaded in that kind of way. And I thought that was, that was really pretty amazing. Michael: I just wanted to talk about the actual place as well. The Retreat Center is Really, really phenomenal. There's this beautiful forest. You're kind of just on the edge of Colorado Springs, so it's not too far from any stores or anything that you might need. But once you get in there, you suddenly feel like The outside world has disappeared just in this beautiful forest really a fantastic place just to go for walks just to go into the forest by yourself if you want to go for I think one of the big highlights was that we had a lunar eclipse while we were, while we were there, and being able to all, for the whole, all of us to go out there onto this big lawn and just stare up at the, at the moon together, and people howling at the moon, it was It was just a really fantastic experience as well especially just having that, we, we had the the Ponderosa Lodge, which is this big log cabin lodge that we can use for a lot of our activities, for rituals, and for our workshops. And that's a real, that's, that's a really nice space as well, there are different rooms, so you can kind of break off and do different things with people, or you can kind of come to the main room and have a bigger discussion. We had dance parties there, we had the Carnival of Change, which was a chance to kind of take on a different persona, like dress up. be a different version of yourself for the evening. So I think the whole, the whole retreat center just kind of facilitates that. There's a, there's a labyrinth there as well, which we didn't really incorporate too much into any rituals the last time around, but I think we're going to try and bring that in more this time around. Mark: Yeah, it's a beautiful spot. Rano? Rana: Yeah, the, the shared experience of the lunar eclipse was pretty special and it, it just so perfectly aligned with what we were doing. It was the same night as the Carnival of Change and it just felt like great, like the weather cooperated and we got to see this cool celestial event. It wasn't even at a super late time, like it was, it felt like a Yucca: like eight or nine. Yeah, Rana: Yeah, yeah, it felt like started our evening, kind of, or, you know, it didn't, it wasn't, you know, too far on late night or anything. The Carnival of Change itself was really fun, just to be able to play dress up together and listen to some music and, and just have fun. And I also like, like Michael said being able to split off into other little rooms and areas. It And I think for me, something that I really appreciated was the ability to have these just kind of unplanned moments where so much of our online interactions are very scheduled and it, you just show up at a certain time and there's a group of people and that's kind of mostly how it's gone. But, like, I just remember some folks were up later one night just all chatting and hanging out. And I love that feeling of if you're up late and feeling a little bit chatty or sociable, you can just kind of see who's up and just take a seat and hang out for a bit. And that's something that otherwise has felt like not really something we have access to. So it was particularly nice just to be able to connect in a more organic way, depending on how you're feeling. Mark: hmm. Yeah. Nihal? Michael: Yeah I think we, there was a lot of, there's been some learnings from that event as well, and I think there, we were really concerned about accessibility this time around, because there was a lot of movement between different areas. And so this time around we are definitely going to be making it more accessible as well. There's going to be designated drivers, so we want to make sure that everybody feels comfortable and everybody's able to take part in all the different events that we're having. So, I, I know that there's going to be a lot of more accessibility this time around, especially just in terms of shuttling people around the property. Yucca: Because there were a few hills and we were moving from the bottom of the hill back up to the dining room and then back down. Michael: Yes, yes, yeah, but I think we, Mark: and we were at 7, 000 feet. Michael: that was another, yeah  Mark: yeah one of the things that we learned from the Sun Tree Retreat in 2022 is that we had programmed a lot of the time, but some of the most memorable and wonderful moments were the unscripted times. The, the, The break periods when we could just gather together and socialize, or plan what we wanted to do for a rite of passage during the rite of passage period that we had later on, which was one of the most moving things to me. That was really an experience. So this time we've programmed in more free time. There's still plenty of workshops and, and rituals and experiences to have, but we've made it a little bit looser so that people have opportunities just to hang out and experience the place and one another. Michael: yeah, yeah, I just wanted to I might talk about the rites of passage a bit more because that was quite a unique experience. I guess we didn't really know how that was going to go because it's kind of like, it's a make your own ritual event, basically. You, you just DIY it with some help from some friends. So I think people were, they had various things that they wanted to celebrate or commemorate and or mark the end of a period in their life, or the start of a period in their life. And we all came together and celebrated those those events together. And I think what was really amazing was just the creativity that people brought to their rituals. Really very moving and even though they were very personal, I felt that We all kind of, as a community, came together and it became something for all of us. Mark: Yeah. I felt so included in all of those rituals. I felt like my being there mattered. And even if just as a witness and that. You know, that there was room for everyone to have the kind of experience that they wanted to have. And it, and we, we ended the rites of passage with a wedding, which was sweet. It's kind of, you know, the classic act four of the movie, right? And that was really lovely. So, I was, I was super happy with that, and we're doing that rites of passage process again this summer. Michael: Maybe we could talk about some of the workshops that took, that people liked. Mark: Oh, yeah. Michael: I really, I think one of the highlights was the Cosmala workshop, bead workshop, which is basically making a bead necklace that, with each bead representing an important part of, in the life of the universe, or in your own personal life, or just various different events that you want to commemorate. That's, that's kind of right, isn't it? Or was there any Mark: John Cleland Host, who is our friend and a real innovator in the whole realm of naturalistic paganism, one of the earliest people to write about it in its new resurgence. He has this amazing more than a hundred bead string. Of, that all, it starts with the Big Bang and it works all the way until, at least until the Sun Tree Retreat, because he had special beads made for the Sun Tree Retreat that he distributed to people so they could put them on their own cosmola. That was very, very cool. And some of them are signed by people like Starhawk and Jane Goodall and just really a fascinating, wonderful ritual tool and evocative piece of art. Yucca: so there were a lot of different styles of workshops too. There was a, like a history one and there was a John did another one which was like the Wheel of the Year, which he had some really cool handouts for too for that. Mark: We live the year for families, which I thought was really wonderful. You know, a lot of people in our community have families that they're working to build traditions with together, and so, and John has really, you know, pioneered some of that, you know, working with his, with his wife and his sons. And just had a lot of great ideas about different things he could do at different times of the year and was, you know, freely sharing all that stuff. It was great. Rana: There was also a group guided meditation that we did outside overlooking Pikes Peak on their big, expansive, beautiful lawn with all the ponderosa pines, which I'd never, I don't think I'd ever seen them before. I'd never been to Colorado before. And that was really lovely just to kind of take a moment to be there and be present. And there was also a body painting. Which, I appreciated the, like, especially interactive stuff because it's something we're normally restricted about online. And I really loved Mihal's presentation about virtual meals because I think food is just such an integral way to connect with other people and you can infuse it with all this symbolism. And it gave me a lot of ideas. I need to revisit my notes on that and thinking forward to the next one a little bit too, just that ability to share food and those meal acknowledgements really adds to that feeling of making meaning with other people and making community. Michael: Yeah, we had a food altar as well, which was kind of cool. An abundance of food. People brought stuff to share. And I thought that was fantastic as well. Just, uh, one, one person brought some really good kimbap, which I love. So that, if you don't know what that is, it's Korean sushi, basically. And it was just really good. Mark: Yeah, there, there was there was just a vibe of generosity and mutual support. Mutual affirmation. You know, I came away from it feeling like, you know, I've got these amazing, super cool people in my world, and they feel the same about me, and that's just good for my life, generally. Even if I'm not going to see them for a couple of years, except online, just knowing that we shared this experience together just helps me to feel affirmed in who I am and what I do. And I, I, I think I think that was the general vibe that people got out of the event. Yucca: That certainly was, I felt that strongly as well. I was, you know, riding that for several weeks after coming home. Michael: Definitely an afterglow of, kind of like, hard to come down from the high of the event as well. It took a while because it was so special. Mark: yeah, absolutely. So we want to talk a little bit about some of the offerings we're going to have this time. Some of them are repeats from last time, but some of them are new. Let me see if I can pick one. Oh, go ahead. Michael: I was just going to say, maybe everybody's had a chance to look at the program and if you, if there's any particular highlights you want to, that you'd like to talk about that maybe you're looking forward to. Mark: There's so many things. Um,  Michael: Well, should we talk, let's talk about the theme first. Mark: sure, of course. That's a great Michael: we didn't, we didn't have a theme last time, but we do have a theme this, this time. Mark: Which is Solarpunk, a chosen family reunion. The idea being that Solarpunk being a very kind of optimistic movement for the betterment of the world, the betterment of our relationship with nature rather than kind of the doom and gloom that we, that we see everywhere around us now, Solarpunk is a, It's a genre of of writing and of art that is optimistic and looks to the future as, yes, filled with challenges, but also filled with opportunities for us to grow and change and do better. And the chosen family reunion part is I mean, I certainly felt and I think that a lot of us felt at the last Sun Tree Retreat that these, these people were my chosen family. It was, it felt like, oh, wow, all my cousins and uncles and, and nephews and nieces have all shown up and now we're having this great sort of family hoopla together. It was, it was great that way. Yucca: And one of the workshops is going to be on solar punk and atheopaganism more specifically, right? That's Mark: yeah. Michael: Yeah, Hanna is going to be leading that one. Mark: Mm hmm. I'm looking forward to that one as well. And of course we'll have some some elements that will be around, you know, learning how to organize rituals or to you know, to design them. Or you know, kind of learning the observational skills about getting more in touch with the processes of nature around you. Mm hmm. That was something about the, the lunar eclipse last time that it really dovetailed with something that, that Yucca and I talk about on here all the time, which is just about, you know, paying attention, about being present and experiencing the moment and observing what's happening in nature, and That was such a dramatic event. It really, really riveted our attention for about an hour or so. Michael: We're bringing back the Cosmala again, because that was so popular, and I think, I'm sure that new people are going to want to try their hand at making Cosmolas. Mark: I've never made one. I, I'm, it's an oversight. I have to do it now. Going to do a reader's theater. I'm organizing that of a reworking of the myth of Hades and Persephone and Demeter in Greek mythology. Because, even though that's a very popular myth in pagan, kind of modern pagan circles and a lot of different groups have done reenactments of the Eleusinian mysteries that enact that story, it's a pretty terrible story, really. I mean, Hades, Hades captures the innocent daughter Kore, drags her away and makes her his wife. That's terrible. Not so cool in modern, Yucca: way of putting it, Mark: yes, that is a very polite way of putting it, yeah. So, so I rewrote it. I rewrote it to have a different kind of ending and a different set of teachings than the original story did. And we're going to do a reader's theater where people who come to the workshop can pick up a script and take a part and we'll all read it together. And and it'll be fun and hopefully people will enjoy it. So that's another thing we're going to do. Michael: Yeah, we've occasionally done death cafes online which are kind of opportunities to talk about death and, you know, I think our movement's kind of a death positive movement, and we want to kind of honor that, and so something I'm going to be leading is an Irish wake kind of experience, and, you know, at an Irish wake, it's not just mourning the dead, it's kind of celebrating life. And kind of celebrating chaos and causing mayhem. So we're gonna have we're gonna have a bit of an Irish wake experience and I'm, people are gonna be invited to bury the things they want to bury, or remember the things they want to remember. And then we will also cause some mischief as well. Mark: Sounds great. I'm up for all of that. Yucca: And on Saturday, at lunchtime, we're planning to do the same thing that we did last time. to do a live podcast episode, and that may be an opportunity for folks who can't attend in person to zoom in and connect. Yes, Mark: Yes, cross, cross your fingers for the internet connection at the Retreat Center. Yucca: that's why we say May, we're going to try really hard, technology willing, right, Rana? Rana: So, the last time we had Sun Tree, we hadn't yet started our adult salon. Which we recently rebranded as Adult Forum, and I'm really excited to be able to have that in person for the very first time. I've really valued it as a space to connect and share resources and share a little bit about our experiences and our lives. And for folks that might not be as familiar with what it is, it is a peer support space to discuss adult topics openly, and it is, we consider it kind of semi structured. We usually start with a topic just as a starting point of conversation, and then we let things naturally flow depending on what the participants want to talk about, what's on their minds, can go through multiple topics in one session. It is a confidential and non judgmental setting where we're really there to learn from each other's experiences, share our knowledge, especially if you have a range of ages. There's folks that have just lived different lives or experiences that may have things to share feel less alone. In a lot of things that we encounter in life I know. There's a real epidemic of loneliness, especially in America, and it's something I always have felt really deeply about, but don't really know what to do about it, so I appreciate being able to be a part of this space and have this space together in order to continue that kind of connection and We're going to have a way for people to anonymously submit topics or questions while we're at the event so that the people that are there attending are really crafting what it is that we want to talk about and the topics have really ranged in the past and included things like money, relationship styles, aging, death, altered states, sexuality, and more and Yeah, I've just been really looking forward to it. It is an 18 plus event, and I just, I can't wait to have that in, in person. I think it'll be a great version of it, just because we've always had it remote. Mark: Yeah. Michael? Michael: I know there's one of the FAQs we get around this is that you know, is it going to be recorded? Am I going to be able to participate online? And unfortunately, no, it's just for some of the reasons we discussed. First of all, technology, it's not always reliable, so we can't really do live stuff. I think it's possible that some of the workshops will be recorded. That depends on the presenter. And, but we don't want to, we want to also, honor people's confidentiality as well. So it's possible that we can record some of them, but maybe some of them won't be recorded. But that's why we also offer our totally online conference every other year as well. So if you can't make it in person to SunTree, we will be doing our web weaving online conference next year. So that is just a way of bridging that gap where if you can't make it in person, there is still an online space for you to take part in. Mark: Right. Right. And I, and I should point out the adult forum will not be recorded. It's, it's a totally confidential, just live action space for people to, to have discussions about sensitive stuff. So you needn't worry that you're going to find yourself on the internet talking about personal things. Yucca: Right, and for any of the presenters who do choose to have their, their presentation recorded, it would just be of them, not of the audience. So there'll be the private, privacy for the folks in the audience. Mark: Yeah, because, I mean, there are, in our community, there are people who are You know, in various stages of outness in relation to their non theist atheopaganism, right? Some are out as atheists, but not necessarily the pagan part. Some are completely solitary in, in their You know, practice of their path, and we want to be respectful of all of that. So, it's really important to us that people be able to participate without endangering something that, that is important to them. Mijo? Michael: Something that's New this time around, as well, is that we will be kind of having formal vendors. I will be sharing a sign up sheet for people in the coming days, where you, if you want to, if you've got anything you want to sell, or products or services we will have a space for you to do that. So, if you're, it could be anything, you could be selling, selling your own craft, or, I guess, doing Readings or things like this. We'll just sign up and we'll we'll reach out to you if we need, if we have any further questions about the kind of stuff you're going to be sharing with us. Mark: We should say, though, that, that the vending is going to be during a particular window of time at the event, because what we don't want is for a vendor to be there stuck behind a counter, and for the entire event and unable to participate in the various activities, right? Because they're part of the community and we want them in with us doing all the stuff. So we're going to have a marketplace slot in the program, and that's when you can do your vending and, you know, promote your services and all that kind of stuff. So what else should we say about this? I mean, we know because we've been there, it's really cool. Hope that our listeners Yucca: to just put that out there for that part of the world. It's a nice warm time of year. Last time Michael: Will the swimming pool, Yucca: May, which was a little bit iffy, we got really lucky. last Mark: we did. Yucca: I think it started snowing right after we left, Mark: Yeah, something like three days afterwards it started snowing at the retreat center, but that's not going to happen this time, because we're on Labor Day weekend and it should be pretty temperate and nice. Michael: I think there's a swimming pool there as well. Mark: Oh, that's right, it was closed when we were there before, but there is a swimming pool there. Yes, Michael: We should double check if we have access to that, but I think we will, but we should probably double check that. Mark: yes, that's true. Ha ha ha! Michael: I guess you should definitely get booked in quickly if you are intending to come. Because we're, it's coming up fast. I can't believe it's only two months away, so you really need to start thinking about getting your, making your way there and booking your tickets. Mark: Yeah, yeah it's very affordable especially when you consider that it includes nine meals and the lodging for the, the Yurt guest houses is only 75 for the entire event. So it's you know, we, we, we set price points low because we wanted people to be able to access it and we know that there are travel expenses associated. We if you, if you want to come, but there are, you know, financial issues, we have limited scholarship support, so please contact us. You can use the the Wonder Podcast queues at gmail. com, podcast email address to contact us, and we'll get back to you about that. But we'd really encourage our listeners, you know, if you like what you've been hearing on this podcast for the last five years now come and, come and meet us. Come and, and, you know, meet the community and, and check us out. Michael: It was just, I don't know if I expressed how Amazing it was, but it was just such a unique, a singular event and kind of a highlight of my life, I'd really say. It was just spectacular, and I don't know if I, I don't know if I captured that before, but I just thought it was just an amazing thing to be part of. And I think it's going to be just as amazing this time around. Mark: Me too. Yeah. I, I, I can't wait to see you all. And and other folks that, you know, I met two years ago. I'm just, I'm so looking forward to it rana, I Rana: so for me, it, it really felt like coming full circle, like I'd connected with you all, and we spent so much time together during the pandemic. so much. My personal life was also going through some transition and Suntree was actually pretty emotional for me. It was good But I don't know it's a little hard to explain But it just felt like I did a lot of emotional processing while I was there But I very much felt like I was in community I was able to finally meet these people that I had connected with and So now it just feels like I have something to look forward to You going forward knowing that we're gonna do this with some regularity. And for myself as well, it also gave me some more confidence traveling alone because I'm used to traveling with a partner if I go somewhere, especially airplane travel. And so it helped me feel a little bit more adventurous and confident feeling like I went to a state I've never been to before and met up with some people and everything went great. Like, no, no complaints. Mark: really felt that same sense of just really being able to be myself. And I was surprised by that because as one of the organizers last time, I thought I was kind of going to have to be on and sort of be a host. You know, for the whole weekend. And that really wasn't the case at all. I, I, I just felt like, you know, I was, I was welcomed there, warts and all, and there were plenty of other people to help. And it was great. It was just really a good, good time. Well, listen, thank you. Oh, Michael: Hopefully we can do the, the firewalking this time, because last time we couldn't do it because there was a burn ban, but there is potential for doing a firework walk. So people are into that, that might be available. So we'll see what happens. Yucca: Keep our fingers crossed. Mark: that would be exciting. I've never done that, and I'd like to try it. I don't know why I'd like to try it. I, but I would. Michael: That's the ultimate ritual, I guess. And for anybody who's kind of, their ears are pricking up when they hear that the person leading that has got decades of experience. Mark: Yeah. And, you know, very, very careful rules around, you know, everybody having to be absolutely sober, you know, being, you know, a lot of focus, doing this in a really sacred kind of container, so that's that's That's all to the good. Let me see. So, we're gonna put the link to the the event in the show notes. You can go, you can read the program, you can read about the event, you can see a picture of the Ponderosa Lodge and Atheopagan Society website, there's also a gallery of photos that were taken at the last Suntree retreat. So you can take a look at that.  Michael: Could you add in the show notes as well? Could you add the episode we actually recorded? Yucca: Oh yeah, let's link to that because we, yeah, that would be nice to go back and listen to actually. And what was it like in the moment? So that'll be in the show notes too. Mark: yeah, yeah, I just, I just remember we're sitting there and we're talking and people would cruise up to the table glowing and sit down in front of the microphone for a little while and talk about the experience they were having and then toddle off and somebody else would come by. It was just, it was lovely. So listen, folks Sun Tree Retreat, you don't want to miss it. Please come join us, visit with us. We, we would so love to see you. And we will be back next week with another episode of The Wonders of Science Based Paganism. Thank you, Rana and Michael. Thank you for being here. Michael: Thank you.   

In this profound episode, Jonathan is joined by esteemed theologian and author Michael Horton to discuss his latest book, "Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us." In a world teetering on the brink of chaos—from unsettling politics to the lingering effects of the global pandemic—Horton's book offers not a typical self-help guide but a deep theological exploration of how a proper fear of God can liberate us from our myriad earthly fears.Dr. Horton, Professor of Theology and Apologetics at Westminster Seminary, explains what it truly means to fear God—both biblically and theologically—and how this reverential fear can effectively drive out fears of the future, others, and even death itself.Throughout the episode, Dr. Horton discusses the different types of fears that plague our society—from cultural anxieties to personal struggles—and how these stem from a lack of genuine fear of God. He emphasizes confronting our earthly fears with the hope found in Christ, rooted in the Gospel, and the shift from self-preservation to a Christ-focused life.This episode is a humbling, thought-provoking, and hope-igniting journey that challenges listeners to replace false securities with the profound joy of knowing Christ, who commands us, "Do not be afraid." Join us as we explore how cultivating a healthy fear of God can recover our sanity in these turbulent times.To ask Jonathan a question or connect with the Candid community, visit https://LTW.org/CandidFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/candidpodInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/candidpodTwitter: https://twitter.com/thecandidpodTRANSCRIPT:This transcript recounts Candid Conversations with Jonathan Youssef Episode 249: Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears That Divide Us: Michael Horton.  [00:01] Jonathan: My very special guest is Mike Horton. He is a professor of systematic theology and apologetics at Westminster Seminary in California, and he is the author of many books, including The Christian Faith Ordinary and Core Christianity. He also hosts the White Horse Inn radio program. He lives with his wife, Lisa, and their four children in Escondido, California, and it looks like he's on his back patio,  having a conversation with me and being very gracious with his time. Mike Horton, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Candid Conversations.[00:45] Michael: Thank you, Jonathan.[00:50] Jonathan: I do thank you for your time. Now Mike, I've read your books, I have subscribed and I do recommend all of our listeners subscribe to the White Horse Inn. If you could just give us a quick, whirlwind tour of your story, we can talk a little bit about the podcast and some of your books as we progress through the interview.[01:19] Michael: Well, thank you, Jonathan. Yeah, I was raised in a Christian home and came to understand the doctrines of grace partly through my older brother. Kind of had my own little, not little, my own Romans revolution and then started digging deeper into Church history and theology and biblical studies, and eventually went to Biola University, Westminster California, then to Oxford for doctoral studies and then post-doc at Yale and came back to teach at my alma mater and have been here for 25 years. Blessed to be able to have a hand, with my colleagues, in training pastors; pastors training pastors.[02:17] Jonathan: I've been a recipient of many of the students of Westminster Seminary who taught me at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta, and I've been really blessed by your work. You've got a very jovial, friendly, California vibe to you, but when you speak, you're like a double-edged sword. It's so penetrating. And I think there could be a theological issue that I've been struggling with for months and you'll say it so concisely in a few sentences, and I'll think, Where was that when I needed that?[03:09] Michael: You're too kind. Thank you.[03:11] Jonathan: Tell us a little bit about the White Horse Inn. It has been on for something like thirty years.[03:17] Michael: Yeah, thirty-plus, almost thirty-five years now. It has been such a fun thing. I've learned so much from my colleagues on the program. I still learn from the new team. We produce a magazine, too, Modern Reformation Magazine, which is really—I encourage people to subscribe to that. It's a good digest of topical theology related to culture. The umbrella organization is called Sola Media, and one of the things that we do that I'm so excited about being a part of is called Theo Global, where we host theological conversations (like we do on the White Horse Inn) between Baptist, Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican traditions and bring people together from a particular region. So we've been doing it for eleven years in India and also almost that long in Nigeria or in Kenya, in Nairobi. And then also Cairo for the Middle East. We just did one in Thailand that Pakistanis and Indians were able to come to, because they're not able usually to see each other. And then we are, Lord willing, starting another one in Southeast Asia, probably Singapore.So these have been so rich. Out of them are coming, a series of theology books from the global church to the global church. And so instead of having just regional theologies or theologies that pretend that they're not culturally contextual, we want to hear the voices of people from different locations testifying to the same Gospel, and that's just really been lots of fun.[05:42] Jonathan: Well, having ministered near that area of the world in Australia, you're right, there can be a disconnect between the cultures. We read each other's books and that sort of thing, and those are Western cultures, but I think we miss out on hearing about what is happening in Southeast Asia, Because they do face similar obstacles but also some quite different. As one of the points of your book is, there is still the one true God and the one Gospel that reaches across those cultures and reaches across so many of those things that we would consider barriers. And I think that's wonderful. I pray the Lord would bless that.[06:30] Michael: Thank you. One of the things I find, Jonathan, is there is a sweet unity around the Gospel that binds us when I go to these other places. Wherever I am in the world, I don't feel like I'm a stranger because I'm with my brothers and sisters. I wish I felt the same way in America. It's very different here.[06:51] Jonathan: Yeah, I was going to say it's interesting that what you're doing is you're unifying and uniting across denominations, across cultural things, and yet that's working almost in the opposite direction of where we see things here, which is there's division within denominations; there's division within small regions. You're undoing what is happening on a bigger scale in some of the Western parts. It's exciting to hear that's not happening everywhere, that there's actually some unification taking place and that's encouraging. And I know that's going to be an aspect of what we talk about in our conversation about one of your new books.Now, I know that you had some health issues with your heart a couple of years ago. Maybe for some of our audience who didn't know or having heard any updates, are you healthy?[07:54] Michael: Thanks for asking. Yes, what it was was a valve that just exploded in my heart, so it was an emergency open-heart surgery. But they said—they know my arteries and my heart better than anybody, they said, you'll die of something, but it won't be of heart disease. You have a good heart; you have good arteries; this was just a fluke.[08:24] Jonathan: Unbelievable.[08:25] Michael: So—yeah. I'm fully recovered. They said I could go bungee jumping again if I want to.[08:32] Jonathan: Again. I'm glad that you were already doing that—I picked up your book a while ago and I've been wanting to have you on the podcast ever since reading it. And the book is called Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us. And my goodness, what a perfect title for everything we see. Give us a little bit of the reason for writing and the timing of the book.[09:18] Michael: Well, it had been percolating for years now, actually. I wrote a book many years ago called Beyond Culture Wars: Is America a Mission Field or a Battlefield? And this is in a similar vein, but really in light of the fears that really divide us today. And the center used to be the Bible, the Gospel, getting the Gospel right and getting the Gospel out. We have our doctrinal differences across the evangelical mainstream, but basically we had different political views and those political views didn't divide between brothers and sisters and churches.And what I've seen lately has just been like a food fight in a cafeteria, and political issues and social issues raised to the level of the Trinity. And it's like, okay, well, we can argue about that over coffee, but we don't bring it into the church. That used to be kind of how people thought about things. These things are important, but they're not as important as our unity in Christ. But I hear people attacking pastors, pastors attacking their flock, back and forth over these issues. And I think people don't get this heated over the doctrine of election or justification or the Trinity. Does it suggest that these issues are deeper in our hearts than the truth of Christianity, so what really binds us?And I looked at it and I said what really binds us is salvation, what we think we're saved from. If we think we're saved from the people over there who are threatening our values, or the people over there who are different from us ethnically, or the people over there who have a different view of economics and social justice? What are we really afraid of? What are our ultimate fears? And I argue that we have all these secondary fears. The real fear deep down, the mother of all fears, is the fear of death. And none of the solutions that can be offered by FOX or CNN, there is no solution to that. But we have it. Why isn't that on our dashboard as central, getting it right and getting it out?[13:01] Jonathan: In the book you cast a broad net in kind of what you've just said up here, picking out a few of the issues that you're seeing so much division over. But then you lay out some of the theological framework to reorientate your reader to where fear should rightly be placed. And it's away from the fear of one another and having a right fear of God.And you use the word sublime in the book, which I found really helpful as an aspect of God. I wonder if you could give us a little bit of explanation and walk that out for us.[13:52] Michael: Sure. I love that word. Sublime is really, I think, what we're talking about when we talk about the fear of God. Some people will say, “Well, it's not really fear. It's reverence, awe.” Fear is a big part of it, but it's a kind of fear that attracts. Think of what happens if you've ever stood at the mouth of a volcano, looking over it, watching the lava flow. Or I live in Southern California, so we have fires, and there's a kind of weird attraction to going to the fire and seeing it. Or you're out on the ocean and you're terrified. A squall comes up you're afraid, but you're also kind of your heart is racing not just because you're afraid, but also because you're kind of in awe of what's happening. In awe of the waves.God, you know whenever an angel shows up in the Bible, an emissary of God, what's the first thing? You know the number-one commandment throughout Scripture? The number-one command is “Be not afraid.” Because when even the mailman of God shows up, people are terrified.[15:31] Jonathan: Yeah, or Moses's face is a little too bright.[15:36] Michael: Yeah. Hey, put a napkin over that or something… That's what, really, is the basis for all sublime events, encounters that we have is really the fear of God. And so it's … A Jewish writer, John Levinson, puts it well. He says, “In the Hebrew Scriptures God beckons with one hand and repels with the other.”So there's a kind of don't get too close. Even Jesus in His Resurrection, “Don't touch me. I'm different.” God is different from us. And that sense of awe, of majesty, of even terror. Think of the disciples in the boat with Jesus. They were afraid of the storm, and then Jesus calmed the storm and they were afraid of Jesus. Who is this who has control over the winds and the waves? They were terrified. And that's the kind of Who is this? What am I dealing with here? The kind of shock and awe, the surprise is something that is missing, I think, from a lot of our experience as Christians today.[17:11] Jonathan: Well, and I know in the book we've seen a lot of the statistical evidence that comes in support of what you've just said, which shows that evangelical Christians really don't know what they believe. They have a complete misunderstanding of God, of the nature of Christ, of their roles.[17:51] Michael: If the fear of God is not the beginning of our wisdom, then something else will be. We'll fear something else. We will fear other people who are different from us and we'll fear cancer, we'll fear losing our job, we'll fear environmental collapse and catastrophe, we'll fear these other people taking over. It's not that those … that there aren't legitimate concerns of a political and social and cultural nature. But we have a disordered fear. And if we have disordered fears, we have disordered loves.God is not only the source of our greatest fear, legitimate fear; He's also the only one who conquers our fears and says, “Welcome home, prodigal. Welcome home, here's the feast.”[19:22] Jonathan: And deals with our, as you refer to it, the mother of all fears.[19:27] Michael: Death. We're dying. In California, people aren't allowed to die; they pass away; and we put these cemeteries out, far away from view, or we turn them into parks and things. And it used to be every time you walked into a church there would be headstones, and it reminded you as you walked in why you're going in there. The Gospel is for dying people, and we're all on that road. And so the question is, How do we face death? … How is that ultimate anxiety relieved? We mourn, but not as those who have no hope. So what does that mean for my daily life now? I could be twelve years old and I'm dying. I could be eighty and I'm dying. So what … Let's talk about that. Let's talk about the dying and the resurrection of the dead and being attached to Jesus so that what He is in His humanity right now, glorified, we will be. Let's talk about that. That's a lot better than anything on CNN or FOX.[21:00] Jonathan: I love it. I think in the book you tell the story of when you went to a debate with, I might be messing this up, but I think it was with an atheist and you sort of said, “Yep. Great. Can I talk about Jesus now” and kind of put him off, and he sort of like, “I wasn't prepared to debate that.”[21:22] Michael: Yeah. This was years ago. Bill Nye the Science Nye.[21:24] Jonathan: Bill Nigh, that's right.[21:25] Michael: He was talking about how religion is based on false fears and so they develop myths and so forth.[21:37] Jonathan: And you were like, “Well, that's true.”[21:39] Michael: Yeah. I don't disagree; that's a pretty fair analysis of religions. I guess you'd have to take one by one and analyze it, but as a generalization, now can I talk about Jesus and His Resurrection? Let's keep getting back to the main business here.[21:59] Jonathan: The main issue. Yeah. In the book you draw this distinction between naturalistic and hyper supernatural, but then you sort of carve out this third option of ordinary. Can we talk a little bit about that and how we see that playing out in our world today, particularly in the Church?[22:23] Michael: Sure. Often what you see today is a naturalism underwriting the progressive agenda and John Lennon's “Imagine.” On the right, you tend to have a hyper supernaturalism wedded to a conservative agenda. And so what do I mean by that? Well, a naturalistic worldview says, of course, God isn't involved. If God exists, then He's not involved in this world. He didn't create it, it's self-evolving and so forth.A hyper-supernatural worldview says that God works miraculous. You know, to say that God did it means it's a miracle.[23:34] Jonathan: Yeah.[23:35] Michael: Whereas in the Bible God does all sorts of things. Mostly, He doesn't perform miracles. What about all the times when we cut our finger and it heals after a week? What about that? What about a child [who] has a brain bleed in NICU and it resolves in 24 hours. How about those? Those aren't miracles. People say, “the miracle of childbirth.” There's no miracle of childbirth; it's just a spectacular example of God's providence. That's part of our problem is we're looking for God only in the spectacular, only in the extraordinary, only in places where we can point to and say, “Oh, God did that.”So we can't explain how somebody recovered from cancer; we say, “Well, God did it, not the doctors.”[24:46] Jonathan: Right.[24:47] Michael: Well, how about God did it and the doctors did it. God did it through the doctors.[24:52] Jonathan: How much control does God have here?[24:55] Michael: Right. He has control of everything. It's not just supernatural events; it's not just miracles. God's in control of every second, every breath. Every breath that you and I take is under His dominion.[25:11] Jonathan: That's right. He holds all things together. You know, I hear that phrase a lot, “That was a God thing. That was a God thing,” and I always have to stop and say to them, “Everything is a God thing.” I mean, conversations. The fact that your brain works. The ability to read. The ability to understand and reason. It's like I hate when you get that narrow scope, as you're saying. We've lost the sublime. We've lost an understanding of how much—you know, it's almost a deistic view that, you know, God sort of—[25:42] Michael: Yes![25:43] Jonathan: He's put some things in place and then He occasionally steps in and—[25:47] Michael: That's why I argue that actually naturalism and hyper supernaturalism unintentionally conspire with each other against Christianity—[25:57] Jonathan: Right.[25:58] Michael: —you know because, you know, we get to the place where we don't see God in our ordinary, everyday existence, but only in these punctuated events, and we've got to raise things. I think we do a lot of pretending. We pretend that things that have an ordinary explanation are miracles because we have to have God in our life. These large swaths of our lives where there are no miracles are upheld by God's marvelous providence.[26:40] Jonathan: Right. Amen to that. In the book, one of the fears you mentioned is fear of losing your job. And I think in the book you helpfully distinguish between calling and vocation or job and helping us understand and distinguish the two things. I wonder if we can talk a little bit of bringing clarity to that, because we're longing for something to put our identity in. Is it a football club? Is it a university? We're currently, I don't know when this will air, but we're in the middle of March Madness. Who did you pick? What's your university? What's your background?And vocation is very much one of those things we can put our identity in, and yet I think you talk about the ultimate and the penultimate between calling and vocation. I wonder if you could bring some clarity to that, and then we'll turn to some of the practical outworkings of the division we see after that.[27:53] Michael: Yeah. Well, one of the things I try to maintain throughout the book is, look, the things I'm talking about are not unimportant. They are legitimate fears. There is a legitimate anxiety. The question is, where do we go with that? But yes, let's affirm it. It's real, it's a deal, but penultimate not ultimate.For example, if I am in a circle of people I've never met before, we're having breakfast, and I ask them, “Tell me about yourself,” very ordinarily they'll say, “Well, I'm a dentist. I'm a …”Now okay, there's an example. That is part of our identity. Vocation is a gift of God; it's a calling. So to say, you know, we shouldn't place our identity in our vocations, well, not ultimately. That's the problem. It's a part of our identity, just like being a father is part of my identity. That's a calling. And we have to realize, as Luther said, we have many callings, many vocations during our life. We're parents, we're spouses, we're children, we are extended family members, we're dentists, and cleaning movie theaters. We have all kinds of callings/vocations. Sometimes we have a vocation to suffer, to carry a cross. Sometimes we have a vocation to be a friend. We have lots of vocations, and keeping them in balance is very important.Keeping them penultimate, not ultimate, is my point. My ultimate identity is chosen, redeemed, justified, being sanctified, will be glorified, in union with Christ. That's my identity and that's really who I am. Paul talks about himself as if he's almost collapsed into Jesus. His identity is so bound up with Christ that he can even say his suffering is something he glories in because it shares in Christ's suffering. That's my identity; that's where I really find who I am. The other stuff is not just stuff I do, that turns it back into a job. It is part of my identity, but it's penultimate, not ultimate.[30:57] Jonathan: Well, as we said at the beginning, we see division in so many different places. We're, of course, as you know, we're in another election year, and that—fear is going to be used as a … it's going to be weaponized this year, particularly this year, in America. And we have an international audience, so I want to be sensitive, but I know that internationally also they see a lot of American news as well. I think you talk about how, in the book, two sides to the fear coin. You mention both in the book. One side, fear is easily exploited as a motivator. On the other, fear is a weak motivator in the long term. Why is that? Let's kind of unpack that a little bit.[32:07] Michael: Yeah. I use the analogy of deer who are … there is this fight or flight that God gave us and the animals as well. It's purely instinctual, instinctive. You don't … Whether you're a deer or a human being, you don't really think about, you don't contemplate, you don't calculate, you don't explore what … You have a car coming towards you, you flee. You get out of its way if you can. But what happens is—That's adrenaline. That adrenaline rush is just a marvelous gift of God's providence. The problem is what would happen is deer had this disease of constantly being afraid, every crack of brush of another deer drove them wild running in fear? That's what I see us doing now, and what happens is it works in the short term. If you're going to cynically use fear to get a herd of people to do what you want them to do, that might work in the short term, but long term, people can't live like that. Long term, people actually become cynical. They won't participate at all. They'll just turn it off because “I've had this scare a thousand times and I'm not going to have it anymore. I'm tired of it.” It just runs out.And that's what I think a lot of people are feeling right now with American politics. So I'm not an analyst of American politics by any stretch of the imagination; I'm simply looking at it on the pastoral side. What is driving us to be like the deer in the headlights every five minutes? And it's exhausting us.[34:33] Jonathan: Yeah.[34:34] Michael: Each side whipping up the other side against each other. If I don't win this election, dot, dot, dot. If the other person wins the election, dot, dot, dot. It's apocalypse not. I especially find offensive any use of God or the Bible or Christ for that fear. Anyone who does that, particularly cynical leaders who don't even go to church, aren't professing Christians really, but they use the lingo to gain the nomination of particular groups. When Christians participate in that, they carry crosses to the U.S. Capitol to storm it and talk about hanging the vice president, and they're carrying crosses with Bible verses, this is the sort of thing that must just aggravate our Lord and Savior whose name is taken in vain.And yeah, is that a critique especially of evangelical political conservatives? Yes, it is. Because they are my brothers and sisters closest to me. The secularists aren't really invoking the name of Jesus and Bible verses and carrying crosses. I'm more worried about evangelicals distorting the gospel than I am about who wins this next election.[36:54] Jonathan: What is that doing to your testimony to those people who don't know the Lord? What message is it giving them?[37:10] Michael: That Christianity is about power.[37:11] Jonathan: Right, exactly.[37:12] Michael: It's not about a cross with God who has all power becoming flesh being spat upon and then being crucified upon a cross, bleeding for our sins. It's about basically choosing Caesar over Jesus, making Pilate our hero rather than Jesus.[37:45] Jonathan: I found that chapter, I can't remember if it's the Christian nationalism chapter or the one before, but it was really helpful the way that you walked out American history in a way that probably a lot of the readers might say, “I don't know if I understood that.” Or “I don't know if I fully understood Thomas Jefferson and his letter to the Danbury Baptist Church in Connecticut.” Understanding separation of church and state, understanding like how we got to where we are and the creating of even thinking between the British … French revolution and those different paths that were laid out before us. And even just understanding our own history and how we got to where we are, I think a lot of it is just cast as Christian nation. And I found it helpful the way you distinguish that.Because I hear this a lot in the church in terms of America being the new Israel, are there blessings that have come with certain things? Sure, fine. Our Constitution is well put together. I love the history of Witherspoon, the Scottish Presbyterian, and you can see some of that in the language that comes out through the Constitution. Again, I think it's helpful to have your historical understanding rather than this reinterpretation that we have now that it's, as you said, it's this feeling like someone's come in and taken this from us. And now, to use the title of your other book, now we're at war, right? It's not a mission field, it's a battlefield. We're fighting for the honor of our country. And all that's done is create us and them division and a lack of clarity and a lack of what we're called to in a mission sense as Christians. Where was I going with that? Who knows? Anyway, I found it helpful.[40:10] Michael: You said it better. Preach it, brother.[40:16] Jonathan: Just random thoughts. Just reading your books and regurgitating it to the people. So later on in the book you sort of walk us through the areas where division has come in. So we have Christian nationalism has certainly seeped into churches. Then you have some really helpful, short chapters with issues with LGBTQ+ community, cancel culture, racism. Let's just kind of walk through some of these and help Christians who are listening to this who are saying, I thought this was the right way to handle that situation but you're saying something else. Let's kind of walk through maybe even just one or two of those. Again, you had a really great illustration under your LGBTQ+ chapter of the young man whose family had sent him to you and you were pastoring him and what happened with all that. If you could tell us a little bit about that, just to help kind of encapsulate what we're talking about here.[41:35] Michael: Sure, this brother struggling with homosexuality, his dad was on the board of a prominent evangelical organization, and his pastor had told him that we basically don't want your influence in the church, so he was considering leaving the faith. But then he read Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, a book I wrote a long time ago, and came out to work at our organization as just a pretext for just hanging out and shepherding this guy. He became a part of our church and a lot of people looked after him and we got a lot back from him.He went back home, and his pastor said that all this reformed teaching he was getting was heresy and so forth, and no, you've lost your salvation. Romans says that He gave them over to a depraved mind. So he committed suicide and …So what is it? Why do you do stuff like that? Well, you do it out of bad theology, to be sure, but also out of fear. There are a lot of churches that just don't want to deal with it. They don't want to have this problem. They don't want to say that they have people in their congregation who are really, really suffering. If you're a secularist, you don't suffer from homosexuality. You don't suffer with gender dysphoria. Only Christians do. And only Christians suffer with greed and envy and malice and other sins that are listed in these same sin lists in the New Testament. You don't lose your salvation over those.The key is repentance, right? We're called to a life of repentance. Whatever our tendencies are towards particular sins, we're all corrupt in heart. We're sinners and we're sinned against and we are in a sin-cursed world. And so where do we go with that fear? And then once that fear is solved objectively in Christ, having been justified through faith, we have peace with God. That's an objective fact. With that now as an objective fact, how do I respond to this brother or sister who's justified just as I am, and who is being sanctified just as I am, but has propensity toward a particular sin that I think is particularly serious, particularly great? How do I love this person? How do I respond to this person?John Calvin said a pastor needs to learn how to have two voices: one for the sheep and one for the wolves. And what I've seen in some very close cases to my own experience, what I've seen sometimes is pastors confusing the sheep for wolves and treating them as apostates or as people who, you know, if you really were a Christian, you wouldn't be suffering with that. Well, they're not saying, “I have a right to this sin.” They're not saying that it's okay. That's why they're struggling with it—and they're struggling with it in your church.So one of the surveys, actually a couple of the surveys concluded that about 80 percent of people in the LGBTQ+ community were raised in conservative Roman Catholic or Protestant churches.[46:39] Jonathan: Give that statistic again because I think we need to hear it again.[46:42] Michael: I don't know exact, it's in the 80s, 80 percent.[46:46] Jonathan: Over 80 percent.[46:49] Michael: Right. And what's even more striking is the same percentage said that they would come back to church, even if they didn't change their rules, but listened to them and cared for them. That's what I found amazing. I was glad that they asked … they added in that survey even if they didn't change their beliefs but they were kind and they listened and they cared for me.So if I'm fearful, here again the adrenaline, the deer in the headlights, that's a gift God gave us for fleeing something that is imminently threatening. This is not imminently threatening. If I come to understand that, then I'm not a deer in the headlights; instead, my brother or sister, my friend, parent, I'm someone who is looking out for the best of this person and now I can actually get ahold of myself and think and make judgments and articulate things. And ask questions and get information. That's a big part of it. It's not all spiritual. People are suffering from mental health disorders, and that's physical, that's brain chemistry. All kinds of things.People are suffering from sins that have been committed against them in the past. A lot of this is very complicated, and it's not all that person's direct fault. Again, we're all sinners, sinned against, and live in a sin-cursed world. And all those factors play into what we have to consider when we're not the deer in the headlights but can sit down with people over a long time, be willing to walk with them over a long time, be willing to read up on things, ask them questions, we're that interested in them and understanding what they're going through, understanding their pain. It's like if they have cancer we'd be at their house with casseroles, but if they have these things, you know … So let's … fear of the Lord drives out the fears of everyone and everything else. This is the beginning of wisdom.[48:52] Jonathan: Exactly. Well, I think we could probably have this conversation for probably another four more hours, which we might do just because we're having so many technical difficulties. You know, I can't recommend this book enough. Mike Horton, Recovering Our Sanity: How the Fear of God Conquers the Fears that Divide Us. I told my team I want to re-air this as we get closer to November so that we can all be reminded once again of what we're called to. Mike, what are you working on at the moment?[50:35] Michael: I've been kind of obsessive compulsive about a project, three volumes with Eerdmans. First volume is coming out in May, titled Shaman and Sage. This is a very different project. It's the history of spiritual not religious. Where does this come from? You have this divine self within trying to break out of all constraints. And so I trace it all the way back to ancient Greece and to the Renaissance. And then the second volume, Renaissance to the scientific revolution. And then the third volume is covering Romanticism to the present.[51:31] Jonathan: Oprah.[51:32] Michael: Exactly.[51:35] Jonathan: That's going to be a massive help for believers, because that's the one we see a lot in those statistics. Yeah, I hear that from quite a few people, spiritual but not religious, or whatever the phrase is. But well, Mike Horton, it's been such a privilege. I'm so grateful for your time and coming on to Candid Conversations and sharing with us.[52:10] Michael: Jonathan, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.[52:14] Jonathan: Thank you, brother.  

At the AI Pioneers Summit we announced Latent Space Launchpad, an AI-focused accelerator in partnership with Decibel. If you're an AI founder of enterprise early adopter, fill out this form and we'll be in touch with more details. We also have a lot of events coming up as we wrap up the year, so make sure to check out our community events page and come say hi!We previously interviewed the founders of many developer productivity startups embedded in the IDE, like Codium AI, Cursor, and Codeium. We also covered Replit's (former) SOTA model, replit-code-v1-3b and most recently had Amjad and Michele announce replit-code-v1_5-3b at the AI Engineer Summit.Much has been speculated about the StackOverflow traffic drop since ChatGPT release, but the experience is still not perfect. There's now a new player in the “search for developers” arena: Phind.Phind's goal is to help you find answers to your technical questions, and then help you implement them. For example “What should I use to create a frontend for a Python script?” returns a list of frameworks as well as links to the sources. You can then ask follow up questions on specific implementation details, having it write some code for you, etc. They have both a web version and a VS Code integrationThey recently were top of Hacker News with the announcement of their latest model, which is now the #1 rated model on the BigCode Leaderboard, beating their previous version:TLDR Cheat Sheet:* Based on CodeLlama-34B, which is trained on 500B tokens* Further fine-tuned on 70B+ high quality code and reasoning tokens* Expanded context window to 16k tokens* 5x faster than GPT-4 (100 tok/s vs 20 tok/s on single stream)* 74.7% HumanEval vs 45% for the base modelWe've talked before about HumanEval being limited in a lot of cases and how it needs to be complemented with “vibe based” evals. Phind thinks of evals alongside two axis: * Context quality: when asking the model to generate code, was the context high quality? Did we put outdated examples in it? Did we retrieve the wrong files?* Result quality: was the code generated correct? Did it follow the instructions I gave it or did it misunderstand some of it?If you have bad results with bad context, you might get to a good result by working on better RAG. If you have good context and bad result you might either need to work on your prompting or you have hit the limits of the model, which leads you to fine tuning (like they did). Michael was really early to this space and started working on CommonCrawl filtering and indexing back in 2020, which led to a lot of the insights that now power Phind. We talked about that evolution, his experience at YC, how he got Paul Graham to invest in Phind and invite him to dinner at his house, and how Ron Conway connected him with Jensen Huang to get access to more GPUs!Show Notes* Phind* BigScience T0* InstructGPT Paper* Inception-V3* LMQL* Marginalia Nu* Mistral AI* People:* Paul Graham (pg)* Ron Conway* Yacine Jernite from HuggingFace* Jeff DelaneyTimestamps* [00:00:00] Intros & Michael's early interest in computer vision* [00:03:14] Pivoting to NLP and natural language question answering models* [00:07:20] Building a search engine index of Common Crawl and web pages* [00:11:26] Releasing the first version of Hello based on the search index and BigScience T0 model* [00:14:02] Deciding to focus the search engine specifically for programmers* [00:17:39] Overview of Phind's current product and focus on code reasoning* [00:21:51] The future vision for Phind to go from idea to complete code* [00:24:03] Transitioning to using the GPT-4 model and the impact it had* [00:29:43] Developing the Phind model based on CodeLlama and additional training* [00:32:28] Plans to continue improving the Phind model with open source technologies* [00:43:59] The story of meeting Paul Graham and Ron Conway and how that impacted the company* [00:53:02] How Ron Conway helped them get GPUs from Nvidia* [00:57:12] Tips on how Michael learns complex AI topics* [01:01:12] Lightning RoundTranscriptAlessio: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space Podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO of Residence and Decibel Partners, and I'm joined by my co-host Swyx, founder of Smol AI. [00:00:19]Swyx: Hey, and today we have in the studio Michael Royzen from Phind. Welcome. [00:00:23]Michael: Thank you so much. [00:00:24]Alessio: It's great to be here. [00:00:25]Swyx: Yeah, we are recording this in a surprisingly hot October in San Francisco. And sometimes the studio works, but the blue angels are flying by right now, so sorry about the noise. So welcome. I've seen Phind blow up this year, mostly, I think since your launch in Feb and V2 and then your Hacker News posts. We tend to like to introduce our guests, but then obviously you can fill in the blanks with the origin story. You actually were a high school entrepreneur. You started SmartLens, which is a computer vision startup in 2017. [00:00:59]Michael: That's right. I remember when like TensorFlow came out and people started talking about, obviously at the time after AlexNet, the deep learning revolution was already in flow. Good computer vision models were a thing. And what really made me interested in deep learning was I got invited to go to Apple's WWDC conference as a student scholar because I was really into making iOS apps at the time. So I go there and I go to this talk where they added an API that let people run computer vision models on the device using far more efficient GPU primitives. After seeing that, I was like, oh, this is cool. This is going to have a big explosion of different computer vision models running locally on the iPhone. And so I had this crazy idea where it was like, what if I could just make this model that could recognize just about anything and have it run on the device? And that was the genesis for what eventually became SmartLens. I took this data set called ImageNet 22K. So most people, when they think of ImageNet, think of ImageNet 1K. But the full ImageNet actually has, I think, 22,000 different categories. So I took that, filtered it, pre-processed it, and then did a massive fine tune on Inception V3, which was, I think, the state of the art deep convolutional computer vision model at the time. And to my surprise, it actually worked insanely well. I had no idea what would happen if I give a single model. I think it ended up being 17,000 categories approximately that I collapsed them into. It worked so well that it actually worked better than Google Lens, which released its V1 around the same time. And on top of this, the model ran on the device. So it didn't need an internet connection. A big part of the issue with Google Lens at the time was that connections were slower. 4G was around, but it wasn't nearly as fast. So there was a noticeable lag having to upload an image to a server and get it back. But just processing it locally, even on the iPhones of the day in 2017, much faster. It was a cool little project. It got some traction. TechCrunch wrote about it. There was kind of like one big spike in usage, and then over time it tapered off. But people still pay for it, which is wild. [00:03:14]Swyx: That's awesome. Oh, it's like a monthly or annual subscription? [00:03:16]Michael: Yeah, it's like a monthly subscription. [00:03:18]Swyx: Even though you don't actually have any servers? [00:03:19]Michael: Even though we don't have any servers. That's right. I was in high school. I had a little bit of money. I was like, yeah. [00:03:25]Swyx: That's awesome. I always wonder what the modern equivalents kind of "Be my eyes". And it would be actually disclosed in the GPT-4 Vision system card recently that the usage was surprisingly not that frequent. The extent to which all three of us have our sense of sight. I would think that if I lost my sense of sight, I would use Be My Eyes all the time. The average usage of Be My Eyes per day is 1.5 times. [00:03:49]Michael: Exactly. I was thinking about this as well, where I was also looking into image captioning, where you give a model an image and then it tells you what's in the image. But it turns out that what people want is the exact opposite. People want to give a description of an image and then have the AI generate the image. [00:04:04]Alessio: Oh, the other way. [00:04:06]Michael: Exactly. And so at the time, I think there were some GANs, NVIDIA was working on this back in 2019, 2020. They had some impressive, I think, face GANs where they had this model that would produce these really high quality portraits, but it wasn't able to take a natural language description the way Midjourney or DALL-E 3 can and just generate you an image with exactly what you described in it. [00:04:32]Swyx: And how did that get into NLP? [00:04:35]Michael: Yeah, I released the SmartLens app and that was around the time I was a senior in high school. I was applying to college. College rolls around. I'm still sort of working on updating the app in college. But I start thinking like, hey, what if I make an enterprise version of this as well? At the time, there was Clarify that provided some computer vision APIs, but I thought this massive classification model works so well and it's so small and so fast, might as well build an enterprise product. And I didn't even talk to users or do any of those things that you're supposed to do. I was just mainly interested in building a type of backend I've never built before. So I was mainly just doing it for myself just to learn. I built this enterprise classification product and as part of it, I'm also building an invoice processing product where using some of the aspects that I built previously, although obviously it's very different from classification, I wanted to be able to just extract a bunch of structured data from an unstructured invoice through our API. And that's what led me to Hugnyface for the first time because that involves some natural language components. And so I go to Hugnyface and with various encoder models that were around at the time, I used the standard BERT and also Longformer, which came out around the same time. And Longformer was interesting because it had a much bigger context window than those models at the time, like BERT, all of the first gen encoder only models, they only had a context window of 512 tokens and it's fixed. There's none of this alibi or ROPE that we have now where we can basically massage it to be longer. They're fixed, 512 absolute encodings. Longformer at the time was the only way that you can fit, say, like a sequence length or ask a question about like 4,000 tokens worth of text. Implemented Longformer, it worked super well, but like nobody really kind of used the enterprise product and that's kind of what I expected because at the end of the day, it was COVID. I was building this kind of mostly for me, mostly just kind of to learn. And so nobody really used it and my heart wasn't in it and I kind of just shelved it. But a little later, I went back to HugMeFace and I saw this demo that they had, and this is in the summer of 2020. They had this demo made by this researcher, Yacine Jernite, and he called it long form question answering. And basically, it was this self-contained notebook demo where you can ask a question the way that we do now with ChatGPT. It would do a lookup into some database and it would give you an answer. And it absolutely blew my mind. The demo itself, it used, I think, BART as the model and in the notebook, it had support for both an Elasticsearch index of Wikipedia, as well as a dense index powered by Facebook's FAISS. I think that's how you pronounce it. It was very iffy, but when it worked, I think the question in the demo was, why are all boats white? When it worked, it blew my mind that instead of doing this few shot thing, like people were doing with GPT-3 at the time, which is all the rage, you could just ask a model a question, provide no extra context, and it would know what to do and just give you the answer. It blew my mind to such an extent that I couldn't stop thinking about that. When I started thinking about ways to make it better, I tried training, doing the fine tune with a larger BART model. And this BART model, yeah, it was fine tuned on this Reddit data set called Eli5. So basically... [00:08:02]Alessio: Subreddit. [00:08:03]Swyx: Yeah, subreddit. [00:08:04]Alessio: Yeah. [00:08:05]Michael: And put it into like a well-formatted, relatively clean data set of like human questions and human answers. And that was a really great bootstrap for that model to be able to answer these types of questions. And so Eli5 actually turned out to be a good data set for training these types of question answering models, because the question is written by a human, the answer is written by a human, and at least helps the model get the format right, even if the model is still very small and it can't really think super well, at least it gets the format right. And so it ends up acting as kind of a glorified summarization model, where if it's fed in high quality context from the retrieval system, it's able to have a reasonably high quality output. And so once I made the model as big as I can, just fine tuning on BART large, I started looking for ways to improve the index. So in the demo, in the notebook, there were instructions for how to make an Elasticsearch index just for Wikipedia. And I was like, why not do all of Common Crawl? So I downloaded Common Crawl, and thankfully, I had like 10 or $15,000 worth of AWS credits left over from the SmartLens project. And that's what really allowed me to do this, because there's no other funding. I was still in college, not a lot of money, and so I was able to spin up a bunch of instances and just process all of Common Crawl, which is massive. So it's roughly like, it's terabytes of text. I went to Alexa to get the top 1,000 websites or 10,000 websites in the world, then filtered only by those websites, and then indexed those websites, because the web pages were already included in Dump. [00:09:38]Swyx: You mean to supplement Common Crawl or to filter Common Crawl? [00:09:41]Michael: Filter Common Crawl. [00:09:42]Alessio: Oh, okay. [00:09:43]Michael: Yeah, sorry. So we filtered Common Crawl just by the top, I think, 10,000, just to limit this, because obviously there's this massive long tail of small sites that are really cool, actually. There's other projects like, shout out to Marginalia Nu, which is a search engine specialized on the long tail. I think they actually exclude the top 10,000. [00:10:03]Swyx: That's what they do. [00:10:04]Alessio: Yeah. [00:10:05]Swyx: I've seen them around, I just don't really know what their pitch is. Okay, that makes sense. [00:10:08]Michael: So they exclude all the top stuff. So the long tail is cool, but for this, that was kind of out of the question, and that was most of the data anyway. So we've removed that. And then I indexed the remaining approximately 350 million webpages through Elasticsearch. So I built this index running on AWS with these webpages, and it actually worked quite well. You can ask it general common knowledge, history, politics, current events, questions, and it would be able to do a fast lookup in the index, feed it into the model, and it would give a surprisingly good result. And so when I saw that, I thought that this is definitely doable. And it kind of shocked me that no one else was doing this. And so this was now the fall of 2020. And yeah, I was kind of shocked no one was doing this, but it costs a lot of money to keep it up. I was still in college. There are things going on. I got bogged down by classes. And so I ended up shelving this for almost a full year, actually. When I returned to it in fall of 2021, when BigScience released T0, when BigScience released the T0 models, that was a massive jump in the reasoning ability of the model. And it was better at reasoning, it was better at summarization, it was still a glorified summarizer basically. [00:11:26]Swyx: Was this a precursor to Bloom? Because Bloom's the one that I know. [00:11:29]Alessio: Yeah. [00:11:30]Michael: Actually coming out in 2022. But Bloom had other problems where for whatever reason, the Bloom models just were never really that good, which is so sad because I really wanted to use them. But I think they didn't turn on that much data. I think they used like the original, they were trying to replicate GPT-3. So they just use those numbers, which we now know are like far below Chinchilla Optimal and even Chinchilla Optimal, which we can like talk about later, like what we're currently doing with MIMO goes, yeah, it goes way beyond that. But they weren't trying enough data. I'm not sure how that data was clean, but it probably wasn't super clean. And then they didn't really do any fine tuning until much later. So T0 worked well because they took the T5 models, which were closer to Chinchilla Optimal because I think they were trained on also like 300 something billion tokens, similar to GPT-3, but the models were much smaller. I think T0 is the first model that did large scale instruction tuning from diverse data sources in the fall of 2021. This is before Instruct GPT. This is before Flan T5, which came out in 2022. This is the very, very first, at least well-known example of that. And so it came out and then I did, on top of T0, I also did the Reddit Eli5 fine tune. And that was the first model and system that actually worked well enough to where I didn't get discouraged like I did previously, because the failure cases of the BART based system was so egregious. Sometimes it would just miss a question so horribly that it was just extremely discouraging. But for the first time, it was working reasonably well. Also using a much bigger model. I think the BART model is like 800 million parameters, but T0, we were using 3B. So it was T0, 3B, bigger model. And that was the very first iteration of Hello. So I ended up doing a show HN on Hacker News in January 2022 of that system. Our fine tune T0 model connected to our Elasticsearch index of those 350 million top 10,000 common crawl websites. And to the best of my knowledge, I think that's the first example that I'm aware of a LLM search engine model that's effectively connected to like a large enough index that I consider like an internet scale. So I think we were the first to release like an internet scale LLM powered rag search system In January 2022, around the time me and my future co-founder, Justin, we were like, this seems like the future. [00:14:02]Alessio: This is really cool. [00:14:03]Michael: I couldn't really sleep even like I was going to bed and I was like, I was thinking about it. Like I would say up until like 2.30 AM, like reading papers on my phone in bed, go to sleep, wake up the next morning at like eight and just be super excited to keep working. And I was also doing my thesis at the same time, my senior honors thesis at UT Austin about something very similar. We were researching factuality in abstractive question answering systems. So a lot of overlap with this project and the conclusions of my research actually kind of helped guide the development path of Hello. In the research, we found that LLMs, they don't know what they don't know. So the conclusion was, is that you always have to do a search to ensure that the model actually knows what it's talking about. And my favorite example of this even today is kind of with chat GPT browsing, where you can ask chat GPT browsing, how do I run llama.cpp? And chat GPT browsing will think that llama.cpp is some file on your computer that you can just compile with GCC and you're all good. It won't even bother doing a lookup, even though I'm sure somewhere in their internal prompts they have something like, if you're not sure, do a lookup. [00:15:13]Alessio: That's not good enough. So models don't know what they don't know. [00:15:15]Michael: You always have to do a search. And so we approached LLM powered question answering from the search angle. We pivoted to make this for programmers in June of 2022, around the time that we were getting into YC. We realized that what we're really interested in is the case where the models actually have to think. Because up until then, the models were kind of more glorified summarization models. We really thought of them like the Google featured snippets, but on steroids. And so we saw a future where the simpler questions would get commoditized. And I still think that's going to happen with like Google SGE and like it's nowadays, it's really not that hard to answer the more basic kind of like summarization, like current events questions with lightweight models that'll only continue to get cheaper over time. And so we kind of started thinking about this trade off where LLM models are going to get both better and cheaper over time. And that's going to force people who run them to make a choice. Either you can run a model of the same intelligence that you could previously for cheaper, or you can run a better model for the same price. So someone like Google, once the price kind of falls low enough, they're going to deploy and they're already doing this with SGE, they're going to deploy a relatively basic glorified summarizer model that can answer very basic questions about like current events, who won the Super Bowl, like, you know, what's going on on Capitol Hill, like those types of things. The flip side of that is like more complex questions where like you have to reason and you have to solve problems and like debug code. And we realized like we're much more interested in kind of going along the bleeding edge of that frontier case. And so we've optimized everything that we do for that. And that's a big reason of why we've built Phind specifically for programmers, as opposed to saying like, you know, we're kind of a search engine for everyone because as these models get more capable, we're very interested in seeing kind of what the emergent properties are in terms of reasoning, in terms of being able to solve complex multi-step problems. And I think that some of those emerging capabilities like we're starting to see, but we don't even fully understand. So I think there's always an opportunity for us to become more general if we wanted, but we've been along this path of like, what is the best, most advanced reasoning engine that's connected to your code base, that's connected to the internet that we can just provide. [00:17:39]Alessio: What is Phind today, pragmatically, from a product perspective, how do people interact with it? Yeah. Or does it plug into your workflow? [00:17:46]Michael: Yeah. [00:17:47]Alessio: So Phind is really a system. [00:17:48]Michael: Phind is a system for programmers when they have a question or when they're frustrated or when something's not working. [00:17:54]Swyx: When they're frustrated. [00:17:55]Alessio: Yeah. [00:17:56]Michael: For them to get on block. I think like the single, the most abstract page for Phind is like, if you're experiencing really any kind of issue as a programmer, we'll solve that issue for you in 15 seconds as opposed to 15 minutes or longer. Phind has an interface on the web. It has an interface in VS code and more IDEs to come, but ultimately it's just a system where a developer can paste in a question or paste in code that's not working and Phind will do a search on the internet or they will find other code in your code base perhaps that's relevant. And then we'll find the context that it needs to answer your question and then feed it to a reasoning engine powerful enough to actually answer it. So that's really the philosophy behind Phind. It's a system for getting developers the answers that they're looking for. And so right now from a product perspective, this means that we're really all about getting the right context. So the VS code extension that we launched recently is a big part of this because you can just ask a question and it knows where to find the right code context in your code. It can do an internet search as well. So it's up to date and it's not just reliant on what the model knows and it's able to figure out what it needs by itself and answer your question based on that. If it needs some help, you can also get yourself kind of just, there's opportunities for you yourself to put in all that context in. But the issue is also like not everyone wants these VS code. Some people like are real Neovim sticklers or they're using like PyCharm or other IDEs, JetBrains. And so for those people, they're actually like okay with switching tabs, at least for now, if it means them getting their answer. Because really like there's been an explosion of all these like startups doing code, doing search, etc. But really who everyone's competing with is ChatGPT, which only has like that one web interface. Like ChatGPT is really the bar. And so that's what we're up against. [00:19:50]Alessio: And so your idea, you know, we have Amman from Cursor on the podcast and they've gone through the we need to own the IDE thing. Yours is more like in order to get the right answer, people are happy to like go somewhere else basically. They're happy to get out of their IDE. [00:20:05]Michael: That was a great podcast, by the way. But yeah, so part of it is that people sometimes perhaps aren't even in an IDE. So like the whole task of software engineering goes way beyond just running code, right? There's also like a design stage. There's a planning stage. A lot of this happens like on whiteboards. It happens in notebooks. And so the web part also exists for that where you're not even coding it and you're just trying to get like a more conceptual understanding of what you're trying to build first. The podcast with Amman was great, but somewhere where I disagree with him is that you need to own the IDE. I think like he made some good points about not having platform risk in the long term. But some of the features that were mentioned like suggesting diffs, for example, those are all doable with an extension. We haven't yet seen with VS Code in particular any functionality that we'd like to do yet in the IDE that we can't either do through directly supported VS Code functionality or something that we kind of hack into there, which we've also done a fair bit of. And so I think it remains to be seen where that goes. But I think what we're looking to be is like we're not trying to just be in an IDE or be an IDE. Like Phind is a system that goes beyond the IDE and like is really meant to cover the entire lifecycle of a developer's thought process in going about like, hey, like I have this idea and I want to get from that idea to a working product. And so then that's what the long term vision of Phind is really about is starting with that. In the future, I think programming is just going to be really just the problem solving. Like you come up with an idea, you come up with like the basic design for the algorithm in your head, and you just tell the AI, hey, just like just do it, just make it work. And that's what we're building towards. [00:21:51]Swyx: I think we might want to give people an impression about like type of traffic that you have, because when you present it with a text box, you could type in anything. And I don't know if you have some mental categorization of like what are like the top three use cases that people tend to coalesce around. [00:22:08]Alessio: Yeah, that's a great question. [00:22:09]Michael: The two main types of searches that we see are how-to questions, like how to do X using Y tool. And this historically has been our bread and butter, because with our embeddings, like we're really, really good at just going over a bunch of developer documentation and figuring out exactly the part that's relevant and just telling you, OK, like you can use this method. But as LLMs have gotten better, and as we've really transitioned to using GPT-4 a lot in our product, people organically just started pasting in code that's not working and just said, fix it for me. [00:22:42]Swyx: Fix this. [00:22:43]Alessio: Yeah. [00:22:44]Michael: And what really shocks us is that a lot of the people who do that, they're coming from chat GPT. So they tried it in chat GPT with chat GPT-4. It didn't work. Maybe it required like some multi-step reasoning. Maybe it required some internet context or something found in either a Stack Overflow post or some documentation to solve it. And so then they paste it into find and then find works. So those are really those two different cases. Like, how can I build this conceptually or like remind me of this one detail that I need to build this thing? Or just like, here's this code. Fix it. And so that's what a big part of our VS Code extension is, is like enabling a much smoother here just like fix it for me type of workflow. That's really its main benefits. Like it's in your code base. It's in the IDE. It knows how to find the relevant context to answer that question. But at the end of the day, like I said previously, that's still a relatively, not to say it's a small part, but it's a limited part of the entire mental life cycle of a programmer. [00:23:47]Swyx: Yep. So you launched in Feb and then you launched V2 in August. You had a couple other pretty impactful posts slash feature launches. The web search one was massive. So you were mostly a GPT-4 wrapper. We were for a long time. [00:24:03]Michael: For a long time until recently. Yeah. [00:24:05]Alessio: Until recently. [00:24:06]Swyx: So like people coming over from ChatGPT were saying, we're going to say model with your version of web search. Would that be the primary value proposition? [00:24:13]Michael: Basically yeah. And so what we've seen is that any model plus web search is just significantly better than [00:24:18]Alessio: that model itself. Do you think that's what you got right in April? [00:24:21]Swyx: Like so you got 1500 points on Hacking News in April, which is like, if you live on Hacking News a lot, that is unheard of for someone so early on in your journey. [00:24:31]Alessio: Yeah. [00:24:32]Michael: We're super, super grateful for that. Definitely was not expecting it. So what we've done with Hacker News is we've just kept launching. [00:24:38]Alessio: Yeah. [00:24:39]Michael: Like what they don't tell you is that you can just keep launching. That's what we've been doing. So we launched the very first version of Find in its current incarnation after like the previous demo connected to our own index. Like once we got into YC, we scrapped our own index because it was too cumbersome at the time. So we moved over to using Bing as kind of just the raw source data. We launched as Hello Cognition. Over time, every time we like added some intelligence to the product, a better model, we just keep launching. And every additional time we launched, we got way more traffic. So we actually silently rebranded to Find in late December of last year. But like we didn't have that much traffic. Nobody really knew who we were. [00:25:18]Swyx: How'd you pick the name out of it? [00:25:19]Michael: Paul Graham actually picked it for us. [00:25:21]Swyx: All right. [00:25:22]Alessio: Tell the story. Yeah. So, oh boy. [00:25:25]Michael: So this is the biggest side. Should we go for like the full Paul Graham story or just the name? [00:25:29]Swyx: Do you want to do it now? Or do you want to do it later? I'll give you a choice. [00:25:32]Alessio: Hmm. [00:25:33]Michael: I think, okay, let's just start with the name for now and then we can do the full Paul Graham story later. But basically, Paul Graham, when we were lucky enough to meet him, he saw our name and our domain was at the time, sayhello.so and he's just like, guys, like, come on, like, what is this? You know? And we were like, yeah, but like when we bought it, you know, we just kind of broke college students. Like we didn't have that much money. And like, we really liked hello as a name because it was the first like conversational search engine. And that's kind of, that's the angle that we were approaching it from. And so we had sayhello.so and he's like, there's so many problems with that. Like, like, like the say hello, like, what does that even mean? And like .so, like, it's gotta be like a .com. And so we did some time just like with Paul Graham in the room. We just like looked at different domain names, like different things that like popped into our head. And one of the things that popped into like Paul Graham said was fine with the Phind spelling in particular. [00:26:33]Swyx: Yeah. Which is not typical naming advice, right? Yes. Because it's not when people hear it, they don't spell it that way. [00:26:38]Michael: Exactly. It's hard to spell. And also it's like very 90s. And so at first, like, we didn't like, I was like, like, ah, like, I don't know. But over time it kept growing on us. And eventually we're like, okay, we like the name. It's owned by this elderly Canadian gentleman who we got to know, and he was willing to sell it to us. [00:26:57]Michael: And so we bought it and we changed the name. Yeah. [00:27:01]Swyx: Anyways, where were you? [00:27:02]Alessio: I had to ask. [00:27:03]Swyx: I mean, you know, everyone who looks at you is wondering. [00:27:06]Michael: And a lot of people actually pronounce it Phind, which, you know, by now it's part of the game. But eventually we want to buy Phind.com and then just have that redirect to Phind. So Phind is like definitely the right spelling. But like, we'll just, yeah, we'll have all the cases addressed. [00:27:23]Swyx: Cool. So Bing web search, and then August you launched V2. Is V2 the Phind as a system pitch? Or have you moved, evolved since then? [00:27:31]Michael: Yeah, so I don't, like the V2 moniker, like, I don't really think of it that way in my mind. There's like, there's the version we launched during, last summer during YC, which was the Bing version directed towards programmers. And that's kind of like, that's why I call it like the first incarnation of what we currently are. Because it was already directed towards programmers. We had like a code snippet search built in as well, because at the time, you know, the models we were using weren't good enough to generate code snippets. Even GPT, like the text DaVinci 2 was available at the time, wasn't that good at generating code and it would generate like very, very short, very incomplete code snippets. And so we launched that last summer, got some traction, but really like we were only doing like, I don't know, maybe like 10,000 searches a day. [00:28:15]Alessio: Some people knew about it. [00:28:16]Michael: Some people used it, which is impressive because looking back, the product like was not that good. And every time we've like made an improvement to the way that we retrieve context through better embeddings, more intelligent, like HTML parsers, and importantly, like better underlying models. Every major version after that was when we introduced a better underlying answering model. Like in February, we had to swallow a bit of our pride when we were like, okay, our own models aren't good enough. We have to go to open AI. And actually that did lead to kind of like our first decent bump of traffic in February. And people kept using it, like our attention was way better too. But we were still kind of running into problems of like more advanced reasoning. Some people tried it, but people were leaving because even like GPT 3.5, both turbo and non-turbo, like still not that great at doing like code related reasoning beyond the how do you do X, like documentation search type of use case. And so it was really only when GPT 4 came around in April that we were like, okay, like this is like our first real opportunity to really make this thing like the way that it should have been all along. And having GPT 4 as the brain is what led to that Hacker News post. And so what we did was we just let anyone use GPT 4 on Fyne for free without a login, [00:29:43]Alessio: which I actually don't regret. [00:29:45]Michael: So it was very expensive, obviously. But like at that stage, all we needed to do was show like, we just needed to like show people here's what Fyne can do. That was the main thing. And so that worked. That worked. [00:29:58]Alessio: Like we got a lot of users. [00:29:59]Michael: Do you know Fireship? [00:30:01]Swyx: Yeah. YouTube, Jeff Delaney. [00:30:03]Michael: Yeah. He made a short about Fyne. [00:30:06]Alessio: Oh. [00:30:07]Michael: And that's on top of the Hacker News post. And that's what like really, really made it blow up. It got millions of views in days. And he's just funny. Like what I love about Fireship is like he like you guys, yeah, like humor goes a long a long way towards like really grabbing people's attention. And so that blew up. [00:30:25]Swyx: Something I would be anxious about as a founder during that period, so obviously we all remember that pretty closely. So there were a couple of people who had access to the GPT-4 API doing this, which is unrestricted access to GPT-4. And I have to imagine OpenAI wasn't that happy about that because it was like kind of de facto access to GPT-4 before they released it. [00:30:46]Alessio: No, no. [00:30:47]Michael: GPT-4 was in chat GPT from day one. I think. OpenAI actually came to our support because what happened was we had people building unofficial APIs around to try to get free access to it. And I think OpenAI actually has the right perspective on this where they're like, OK, people can do whatever they want with the API if they're paying for it, like they can do whatever they want, but it's like not OK if, you know, paying customers are being exploite by these other actors. They actually got in touch with us and they helped us like set up better Cloudflare bot monitoring controls to effectively like crack down on those unofficial APIs, which we're very happy about. But yeah, so we launched GPT-4. A lot of people come to the product and yeah, for a long time, we're just we're figuring out like what do we make of this, right? How do we a make it better, but also deal with like our costs, which have just like massively, massively ballooned. Over time, it's become more clear with the release of Llama 2 and Llama 3 on the horizon that we will once again see a return to vertical applications running their own models. As was true last year and before, I think that GPT-4, my hypothesis is that the jump from 4 to 4.5 or 4 to 5 will be smaller than the jump from 3 to 4. And the reason why is because there were a lot of different things. Like there was two plus, effectively two, two and a half years of research that went into going from 3 to 4. Like more data, bigger model, all of the instruction tuning techniques, RLHF, all of that is known. And like Meta, for example, and now there's all these other startups like Mistral too, like there's a bunch of very well-funded open source players that are now working on just like taking the recipe that's now known and scaling it up. So I think that even if a delta exists, the delta between in 2024, the delta between proprietary and open source won't be large enough that a startup like us with a lot of data that we've collected can take the data that we have, fine tune an open source model, and like be able to have it be better than whatever the proprietary model is at the time. That's my hypothesis.Michael: But we'll once again see a return to these verticalized models. And that's something that we're super excited about because, yeah, that brings us to kind of the fine model because the plan from kind of the start was to be able to return to that if that makes sense. And I think now we're definitely at a point where it does make sense because we have requests from users who like, they want longer context in the model, basically, like they want to be able to ask questions about their entire code base without, you know, context and retrieval and taking a chance of that. Like, I think it's generally been shown that if you have the space to just put the raw files inside of a big context window, that is still better than chunking and retrieval. So there's various things that we could do with longer context, faster speed, lower cost. Super excited about that. And that's the direction that we're going with the fine model. And our big hypothesis there is precisely that we can take a really good open source model and then just train it on absolutely all of the high quality data that we can find. And there's a lot of various, you know, interesting ideas for this. We have our own techniques that we're kind of playing with internally. One of the very interesting ideas that I've seen, I think it's called Octopack from BigCode. I don't think that it made that big waves when it came out, I think in August. But the idea is that they have this data set that maps GitHub commits to a change. So basically there's all this really high quality, like human made, human written diff data out there on every time someone makes a commit in some repo. And you can use that to train models. Take the file state before and like given a commit message, what should that code look like in the future? [00:34:52]Swyx: Got it. [00:34:53]Alessio: Do you think your HumanEval is any good?Michael: So we ran this experiment. We trained the Phind model. And if you go to the BigCode leaderboard, as of today, October 5th, all of our models are at the top of the BigCode leaderboard by far. It's not close, particularly in languages other than Python. We have a 10 point gap between us and the next best model on JavaScript. I think C sharp, multilingual. And what we kind of learned from that whole experience releasing those models is that human eval doesn't really matter. Not just that, but GPT-4 itself has been trained on human eval. And we know this because GPT-4 is able to predict the exact docstring in many of the problems. I've seen it predict like the specific example values in the docstring, which is extremely improbable. So I think there's a lot of dataset contamination and it only captures a very limited subset of what programmers are actually doing. What we do internally for evaluations are we have GPT-4 score answers. GPT-4 is a really good evaluator. I mean, obviously it's by really good, I mean, it's the best that we have. I'm sure that, you know, a couple of months from now, next year, we'll be like, oh, you know, like GPT-4.5, GPT-5, it's so much better. Like GPT-4 is terrible, but like right now it's the best that we have short of humans. And what we found is that when doing like temperature zero evals, it's actually mostly deterministic GPT-4 across runs in assigning scores to two different answers. So we found it to be a very useful tool in comparing our model to say, GPT-4, but yeah, on our like internal real world, here's what people will be asking this model dataset. And the other thing that we're running is just like releasing the model to our users and just seeing what they think. Because that's like the only thing that really matters is like releasing it for the application that it's intended for, and then seeing how people react. And for the most part, the incredible thing is, is that people don't notice a difference between our model and GPT-4 for the vast majority of searches. There's some reasoning problems that GPT-4 can still do better. We're working on addressing that. But in terms of like the types of questions that people are asking on find, there's not that much difference. And in fact, I've been running my own kind of side by side comparisons, shout out to GodMode, by the way. [00:37:16]Michael: And I've like myself, I've kind of confirmed this to be the case. And even sometimes it gives a better answer, perhaps like more concise or just like better implementation than GPT-4, which that's what surprises me. And by now we kind of have like this reasoning is all you need kind of hypothesis where we've seen emerging capabilities in the find model, whereby training it on high quality code, it can actually like reason better. It went from not being able to solve world problems, where riddles were like with like temporal placement of objects and moving and stuff like that, that GPT-4 can do pretty well. We went from not being able to do those at all to being able to do them just by training on more code, which is wild. So we're already like starting to see like these emerging capabilities. [00:37:59]Swyx: So I just wanted to make sure that we have the, I guess, like the model card in our heads. So you started from Code Llama? [00:38:07]Alessio: Yes. [00:38:08]Swyx: 65, 34? 34. [00:38:10]Michael: So unfortunately, there's no Code Llama 70b. If there was, that would be super cool. But there's not. [00:38:15]Swyx: 34. And then, which in itself was Llama 2, which is on 2 trillion tokens and the added 500 billion code tokens. Yes. [00:38:22]Michael: And you just added a bunch more. [00:38:23]Alessio: Yeah. [00:38:24]Michael: And they also did a couple of things. So they did, I think they did 500 billion, like general pre-training and then they did an extra 20 billion long context pre-training. So they actually increased the like max position tokens to 16k up from 8k. And then they changed the theta parameter for the ROPE embeddings as well to give it theoretically better long context support up to 100k tokens. But yeah, but otherwise it's like basically Llama 2. [00:38:50]Swyx: And so you just took that and just added data. [00:38:52]Michael: Exactly. [00:38:53]Swyx: You didn't do any other fundamental. [00:38:54]Michael: Yeah. So we didn't actually, we haven't yet done anything with the model architecture and we just trained it on like many, many more billions of tokens on our own infrastructure. And something else that we're taking a look at now is using reinforcement learning for correctness. One of the interesting pitfalls that we've noticed with the Phind model is that in cases where it gets stuff wrong, it sometimes is capable of getting the right answer. It's just, there's a big variance problem. It's wildly inconsistent. There are cases when it is able to get the right chain of thought and able to arrive [00:39:25]Alessio: at the right answer, but not always. [00:39:27]Michael: And so like one of our hypotheses is something that we're going to try is that like we can actually do reinforcement learning on, for a given problem, generate a bunch of completions and then like use the correct answer as like a loss basically to try to get it to be more correct. And I think there's a high chance I think of this working because it's very similar to the like RLHF method where you basically show pairs of completions for a given question except the criteria is like which one is like less harmful. But here we have a different criteria. But if the model is already capable of getting the right answer, which it is, we're just, we just need to cajole it into being more consistent. [00:40:06]Alessio: There were a couple of things that I noticed in the product that were not strange but unique. So first of all, the model can talk multiple times in a row, like most other applications is like human model, human model. And then you had outside of the thumbs up, thumbs down, you have things like have DLLM prioritize this message and its answers or then continue from this message to like go back. How does that change the flow of the user and like in terms of like prompting it, yeah, what are like some tricks or learnings you've had? [00:40:37]Michael: So yeah, that's specifically in our pair programmer mode, which is a more conversational mode that also like asks you clarifying questions back if it doesn't fully understand what you're doing and it kind of it holds your hand a bit more. And so from user feedback, we had requests to make more of an auto GPT where you can kind of give it this problem that might take multiple searches or multiple different steps like multiple reasoning steps to solve. And so that's the impetus behind building that product. Being able to do multiple steps and also be able to handle really long conversations. Like people are really trying to use the pair programmer to go from like sometimes really from like basic idea to like complete working code. And so we noticed was is that we were having like these very, very long threads, sometimes with like 60 messages, like 100 messages. And like those become really, really challenging to manage the appropriate context window of what should go inside of the context and how to preserve the context so that the model can continue or the product can continue giving good responses, even if you're like 60 messages deep in a conversation. So that's where the prioritized user messages like comes from. It's like people have asked us to just like let them pin messages that they want to be left in the conversation. And yeah, and then that seems to have like really gone a long way towards solving that problem, yeah. [00:41:54]Alessio: And then you have a run on Replit thing. Are you planning to build your own repl? Like learning some people trying to run the wrong code, unsafe code? [00:42:03]Michael: Yes. Yes. So I think like in the long term vision of like being a place where people can go from like idea to like fully working code, having a code sandbox, like a natively integrated code sandbox makes a lot of sense. And replit is great and people use that feature. But yeah, I think there's more we can do in terms of like having something a bit closer to code interpreter where it's able to run the code and then like recursively iterate on it. Exactly. [00:42:31]Swyx: So you're working on APIs to enable you to do that? Yep. So Amjad has specifically told me in person that he wants to enable that for people at the same time. He's also working on his own models, and Ghostwriter and you know, all the other stuff. So it's going to get interesting. Like he wants to power you, but also compete with you. Yeah. [00:42:47]Michael: And like, and we love replit. I think that a lot of the companies in our space, like we're all going to converge to solving a very similar problem, but from a different angle. So like replit approaches this problem from the IDE side. Like they started as like this IDE that you can run in the browser. And they started from that side, making coding just like more accessible. And we're approaching it from the side of like an LLM that's just like connected to everything that it needs to be connected to, which includes your code context. So that's why we're kind of making inroads into IDEs, but we're kind of, we're approaching this problem from different sides. And I think it'll be interesting to see where things end up. But I think that in the long, long term, we have an opportunity to also just have like this general technical reasoning engine product that's potentially also not just for, not just for programmers. It's also powered in this web interface, like where there's potential, I think other things that we will build that eventually might go beyond like our current scope. [00:43:49]Swyx: Exciting. We'll look forward to that. We're going to zoom out a little bit into sort of AI ecosystem stories, but first we got to get the Paul Graham, Ron Conway story. [00:43:59]Alessio: Yeah. [00:44:00]Michael: So flashback to last summer, we're in the YC batch. We're doing the summer batch, summer 22. So the summer batch runs from June to September, approximately. And so this was late July, early August, right around the time that many like YC startups start like going out, like during up, here's how we're going to pitch investors and everything. And at the same time, me and my co-founder, Justin, we were planning on moving to New York. So for a long time, actually, we were thinking about building this company in New York, mainly for personal reasons, actually, because like during the pandemic, pre-ChatGPT, pre last year, pre the AI boom, SF unfortunately really kind of, you know, like lost its luster. Yeah. Like no one was here. It was far from clear, like if there would be an AI boom, if like SF would be like... [00:44:49]Alessio: Back. [00:44:50]Michael: Yeah, exactly. Back. As everyone is saying these days, it was far from clear. And so, and all of our friends, we were graduating college because like we happened to just graduate college and immediately start YC, like we didn't even have, I think we had a week in between. [00:45:06]Swyx: You didn't bother looking for jobs. You were just like, this is what we want to do. [00:45:08]Michael: Well, actually both me and my co-founder, we had jobs that we secured in 2021 from previous internships, but we both, funny enough, when I spoke to my boss's boss at the company at where I reneged my offer, I told him we got into YC, they actually said, yeah, you should do YC. [00:45:27]Swyx: Wow. [00:45:28]Alessio: That's very selfless. [00:45:29]Swyx: That was really great that they did that. But in San Francisco, they would have offered to invest as well. [00:45:33]Michael: Yes, they would have. But yeah, but we were both planning to be in New York and all of our friends were there from college at this point, like we have this whole plan where like on August 1st, we're going to move to New York and we had like this Airbnb for the month of New York. We're going to stay there and we're going to work and like all of that. The day before we go to New York, I called Justin and I just, I tell him like, why are we doing this? Because in our batch, by the time August 1st rolled around, all of our mentors at YC were saying like, hey, like you should really consider staying in SF. [00:46:03]Swyx: It's the hybrid batch, right? [00:46:04]Michael: Yeah, it was the hybrid batch, but like there were already signs that like something was kind of like afoot in SF, even if like we didn't fully want to admit it yet. And so we were like, I don't know, I don't know. Something kind of clicked when the rubber met the road and it was time to go to New York. We're like, why are we doing this? And like, we didn't have any good reasons for staying in New York at that point beyond like our friends are there. So we still go to New York because like we have the Airbnb, like we don't have any other kind of place to go for the next few weeks. We're in New York and New York is just unfortunately too much fun. Like all of my other friends from college who are just, you know, basically starting their jobs, starting their lives as adults. They just stepped into these jobs, they're making all this money and they're like partying and like all these things are happening. And like, yeah, it's just a very distracting place to be. And so we were just like sitting in this like small, you know, like cramped apartment, terrible posture, trying to get as much work done as we can, too many distractions. And then we get this email from YC saying that Paul Graham is in town in SF and he is doing office hours with a certain number of startups in the current batch. And whoever signs up first gets it. And I happen to be super lucky. I was about to go for a run, but I just, I saw the email notification come across the street. I immediately clicked on the link and like immediately, like half the spots were gone, but somehow the very last spot was still available. And so I picked the very, very last time slot at 7 p.m. semi-strategically, you know, so we would have like time to go over. And also because I didn't really know how we're going to get to SF yet. And so we made a plan that we're going to fly from New York to SF and back to New York in one day and do like the full round trip. And we're going to meet with PG at the YC Mountain View office. And so we go there, we do that, we meet PG, we tell him about the startup. And one thing I love about PG is that he gets like, he gets so excited. Like when he gets excited about something, like you can see his eyes like really light up. And he'll just start asking you questions. In fact, it's a little challenging sometimes to like finish kind of like the rest of like the description of your pitch because like, he'll just like asking all these questions about how it works. And I'm like, you know, what's going on? [00:48:19]Swyx: What was the most challenging question that he asked you? [00:48:21]Michael: I think that like really how it worked. Because like as soon as like we told him like, hey, like we think that the future of search is answers, not links. Like we could really see like the gears turning in his head. I think we were like the first demo of that. [00:48:35]Swyx: And you're like 10 minutes with him, right? [00:48:37]Michael: We had like 45, yeah, we had a decent chunk of time. And so we tell him how it works. Like he's very excited about it. And I just like, I just blurted out, I just like asked him to invest and he hasn't even seen the product yet. We just asked him to invest and he says, yeah. And like, we're super excited about that. [00:48:55]Swyx: You haven't started your batch. [00:48:56]Michael: No, no, no. This is about halfway through the batch or two, two, no, two thirds of the batch. [00:49:02]Swyx: And you're like not technically fundraising yet. We're about to start fundraising. Yeah. [00:49:06]Michael: So we have like this demo and like we showed him and like there was still a lot of issues with the product, but I think like it must have like still kind of like blown his mind in some way. So like we're having fun. He's having fun. We have this dinner planned with this other friend that we had in SF because we were only there for that one day. So we thought, okay, you know, after an hour we'll be done, you know, we'll grab dinner with our friend and we'll fly back to New York. But PG was like, like, I'm having so much fun. Do you want to have dinner? Yeah. Come to my house. Or he's like, I gotta go have dinner with my wife, Jessica, who's also awesome, by the way. [00:49:40]Swyx: She's like the heart of YC. Yeah. [00:49:42]Michael: Jessica does not get enough credit as an aside for her role. [00:49:46]Swyx: He tries. [00:49:47]Michael: He understands like the technical side and she understands people and together they're just like a phenomenal team. But he's like, yeah, I got to go see Jessica, but you guys are welcome to come with. Do you want to come with? And we're like, we have this friend who's like right now outside of like literally outside the door who like we also promised to get dinner with. It's like, we'd love to, but like, I don't know if we can. He's like, oh, he's welcome to come too. So all of us just like hop in his car and we go to his house and we just like have this like we have dinner and we have this just chat about the future of search. Like I remember him telling Jessica distinctly, like our kids as kids are not going to know what like a search result is. Like they're just going to like have answers. That was really like a mind blowing, like inflection point moment for sure. [00:50:34]Swyx: Wow, that email changed your life. [00:50:35]Michael: Absolutely. [00:50:36]Swyx: And you also just spoiled the booking system for PG because now everyone's just going to go after the last slot. Oh man. [00:50:42]Michael: Yeah. But like, I don't know if he even does that anymore. [00:50:46]Swyx: He does. He does. Yeah. I've met other founders that he did it this year. [00:50:49]Michael: This year. Gotcha. But when we told him about how we did it, he was like, I am like frankly shocked that YC just did like a random like scheduling system. [00:50:55]Alessio: They didn't like do anything else. But, um. [00:50:58]Swyx: Okay. And then he introduces Duron Conway. Yes. Who is one of the most legendary angels in Silicon Valley. [00:51:04]Michael: Yes.So after PG invested, the rest of our round came together pretty quickly. [00:51:10]Swyx: I'm, by the way, I'm surprised. Like it's, it might feel like playing favorites right within the current batch to be like, yo, PG invested in this one. Right. [00:51:17]Alessio: Too bad for the others. [00:51:18]Swyx: Too bad for the others, I guess. [00:51:19]Michael: I think this is a bigger point about YC and like these accelerators in general is like YC gets like a lot of criticism from founders who feel like they didn't get value out of it. But like, in my view, YC is what you make of it. And YC tells you this. They're like, you really got to grab this opportunity, like buy the balls and make the most of it. And if you do, then it could be the best thing in the world. And if you don't, and if you're just kind of like a passive, even like an average founder in YC, you're still going to fail. And they tell you that. They're like, if you're average in your batch, you're going to fail. Like you have to just be exceptional in every way. With that in mind, perhaps that's even part of the reason why we asked PG to invest. And so yeah, after PG invested, the rest of our round came together pretty quickly, which I'm very fortunate for. And yeah, he introduced us to Ron. And after he did, I get a call from Ron. And then Ron says like, hey, like PG tells me what you're working on. I'd love to come meet you guys. And I'm like, wait, no way. And then we're just holed up in this like little house in San Mateo, which is a little small, but you know, it had a nice patio. In fact, we had like a monitor set up outside on the deck out there. And so Ron Conway comes over, we go over to the patio where like our workstation is. And Ron Conway, he's known for having like this notebook that he goes around with where he like sits down with the notebook and like takes very, very detailed notes. So he never like forgets anything. So he sits down with his notebook and he asks us like, hey guys, like, what do you need? And we're like, oh, we need GPUs. Back then, the GPU shortage wasn't even nearly as bad as it is now. But like even then, it was still challenging to get like the quota that we needed. And he's like, okay, no problem. And then like he leaves a couple hours later, we get an email and we're CC'd on an email that Ron wrote to Jensen, the CEO of Nvidia, saying like, hey, these guys need GPUs. [00:53:02]Swyx: You didn't say how much? It was just like, just give them GPUs. [00:53:04]Alessio: Basically, yeah. [00:53:05]Michael: Ron is known for writing these like one-liner emails that are like very short, but very to the point. And I think that's why like everyone responds to Ron. Everyone loves Ron. And so Jensen responds. He responds quickly, like tagging this VP of AI at Nvidia. And we start working with Nvidia, which is great. And something that I love about Nvidia, by the way, is that after that intro, we got matched with like a dedicated team. And at Nvidia, they know that they're going to win regardless. So they don't care where you get the GPUs from. They're like, they're truly neutral, unlike various sales reps that you might encounter at various like clouds and, you know, hardware companies, et cetera. They actually just want to help you because they know they don't care. Like regardless, they know that if you're getting Nvidia GPUs, they're still winning. So I guess that's a tip is that like if you're looking for GPUs like Nvidia, they'll help you do it. [00:53:54]Swyx: So just to tie up this thing, because so first of all, that's a fantastic story. And I just wanted to let you tell that because it's special. That is a strategic shift, right? That you already decided to make by the time you met Ron, which is we are going to have our own hardware. We're going to rack him in a data center somewhere. [00:54:11]Michael: Well, not even that we need our own hardware because actually we don't. Right. But we just we just need GPUs, period. And like every cloud loves like they have their own sales tactics and like they want to make you commit to long terms and like very non-flexible terms. And like there's a web of different things that you kind of have to navigate. Nvidia will kind of be to the point like, OK, you can do this on this cloud, this on this cloud. Like this is your budget. Maybe you want to consider buying as well. Like they'll help you walk through what the options are. And the reason why they're helpful is because like they look at the full picture. So they'll help you with the hardware. And in terms of software, they actually implemented a custom feature for us in Faster Transformer, which is one of their libraries.Swyx: For you? [00:54:53]Michael: For us. Yeah. Which is wild. I don't think they would have done it otherwise. They implemented streaming generation for T5 based models, which we were running at the time up until we switched to GPT in February, March of this year. So they implemented that just for us, actually, in Faster Transformer. And so like they'll help you like look at the complete picture and then just help you get done what you need to get done. I know one of your interests is also local models, open source models and hardware kind of goes hand in hand.Alessio: Any fun projects, explorations in the space that you want to share with local llamas and stuff? [00:55:27]Michael: Yeah, it's something that we're very interested in because something that kind of we're hearing a lot about is like people want something like find, especially comp

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

Michael Sullivan is a property management entrepreneur who has grown his business to 275 doors. Join property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull as they chat with former DoorGrow client Michael Sullivan to learn about his experience starting and growing a property management business. You'll Learn [01:44] Getting started in the property management industry [07:49] Growing a property management business [24:01] Having support and feeling fulfilled in the business [28:13] Growing and scaling to the next level Tweetables “To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash if you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level.” “If you're not making mistakes, you're not learning.” “A lot of us business owners, we have a bit of ego.” “Being an entrepreneur can be one can be very lonely, and it is really important to have people in the same industry kind of in your village.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Jason: To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash. If you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level. Welcome DoorGrow hackers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrow hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management, growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, the co owner and CEO of DoorGrow. [00:01:09] Now let's get into the show and our guest today is Michael L Sullivan. Michael Sullivan is here hanging out with us. He is a client of ours and of Sullivan property management. Did I say that right? MLS ullivan property management. All right, your initials. Got it. And Michael, welcome to the show.  [00:01:33] Michael: Thank you. Thank you very much. Good to be here.  [00:01:36] Jason: We're glad to have you. So we've really enjoyed having you in our program and it's been really amazing seeing your progress. So maybe to kick things off, let's start with talking about how you got into this crazy industry of property management. Like you woke up when you were like maybe five years old and said "property management is the thing for me" maybe. [00:01:57] Michael: Yeah, like every little boy and girl, dreams about being a real estate agent or a property manager.  [00:02:03] Jason: It's right there next to veterinarian and firefighter. [00:02:06] Michael: I think that's right. That's right or professional baseball player so, I left the teaching profession in 1993 and became a real estate agent, a general brokerage real estate agent here in the Greater Research Triangle region of North Carolina, and I did very well. I, on average, sold anywhere between 5 and 15 million dollars worth of real estate when our average sale price was $150,000. Yeah, we were shifting a lot of shacks, and it was a good life. And for the 15 or so years between 1993 and the Great Recession of 2007, 2008, my biggest fear was, "what is going to happen when the market flips?" Because inevitably, real estate flips. It goes from a boom market to a bust market, a buyer's market to a seller market. And so during those years, I socked away cash. When the market crashed in 2008, I had an inventory of 40 general brokerage homes that were for sale. I had clients that were still moving to Massachusetts or Plano, Texas, or Austin, or Seattle, you know, to the other tech hubs in the United States and my clients were like, "All right, problem solver, what are you going to do because we still have to move?" And I was like, "we're going to rent them." And so with an Excel spreadsheet and time, because I had lots of time then I started managing property and in the first year, our goal was 30 homes and we had 50 and it was me and one part time assistant and an Excel spreadsheet. Well, after about 18 months, that didn't work anymore. So I went out and I found what I thought was a reasonable property management software. And then over the course of the next decade or so, we got up to 110 properties or so and things were good, you know, we were chugging along and profits were good, but I really didn't know what I didn't know, I kind of. [00:04:22] Believe that once you had an Appfolio or a Buildium on board that you had won the day and that your business was set and you know, it should be easy. And I soon discovered when I got to 115 doors and just kind of got stuck there that the business wasn't growing the way it should be. And I couldn't figure out why. I was on Facebook one day. And there was this guy, Jason Hull, talking about this company called DoorGrow. And so I did the click, click, clickety click. And then I started listening to some of his podcasts and I started researching DoorGrow and I thought, " huh, this guy knows a whole lot about this industry and maybe this is someone I need to engage with." and so that's how I came to DoorGrow about two and a half years ago, I think.  [00:05:21] Jason: And now you're on one, you're on one of the podcasts.  [00:05:24] Michael: I know.  [00:05:25] Jason: So what challenges did you start to realize you were dealing with at the time? Because generally, you've made a ton of changes in your business since working with us, and you know, it's been impressive to watch. What do you feel like were your challenges at that time? Like, what did you not know that you did not know? So  [00:05:43] Michael: I knew that there were currencies in a business, but I didn't know that there were five of them. And I knew that I was working really hard. So the currency of effort was there. Yeah, my bank account showed me that the currency of cash was there. Yeah, the currency of focus was really lacking because I was still doing a lot of general brokerage and still trying to do property management. The focus of energy was lacking. Because it was draining me kind of going in these different directions. And then there was a lack of time. I didn't have time to take off. I didn't have time to turn it off because it was me and an assistant property manager at that time, I was still doing all of the day to day operations and the round pegs in the round holes work. And figuring out those currencies and how to better divide them and focus on them was one of the things that I didn't know and that once I could put a name to it and once I could focus on fixing where there was a deficiency, then I kind of won the battle. I felt, you know, before you launched all of your different systems to help property managers, I listened to you and I went out and got Lead Simple. I went out and got Property Meld and kind of brought them into the fold. And I recognize that those tools, which you paid dearly for using these outside vendors, really bring you a wealth of time that didn't exist before. So I was able to capture that currency and by extension, the currency of effort was able to kind of tamp down because I had systems now in place to deal with the endless maintenance requests that having a practice that. Goes up over a hundred percent in growth is going to require.  [00:07:48] Jason: So let's talk about that growth. You had mentioned you'd gotten up to maybe, where were you when you started with DoorGrow?  [00:07:56] 118. [00:07:58] 118. Okay.  [00:07:59] And where are you at right now?  [00:08:01] Michael: 275.  [00:08:03] Jason: I mean, it sounds like you had pretty decent profit margin before. Well, what was that? If you don't mind sharing, what is it? [00:08:09] Michael: So, on a gross per door basis, when I joined DoorGrow, we were right at about $122 a door per month. Yeah. And today we're up. $153 and 82 cents per door per month.  [00:08:26] Jason: That's very specific. So, you know, your numbers, which is good.  [00:08:30] Michael: Well I try. Yeah. And year over year revenue increases from last year is up 58.7%.  [00:08:36] Jason: Wow. That's awesome. So money's up. So the cash currency has improved the focus currency. Have you been able to do less in the business and narrow your focus?  [00:08:48] Michael: Yes. So Saturday is my benchmark. I call it my Zen day. And if Saturday can be a Zen day for me, where I don't feel like I have tasks that I have to accomplish, that I can do the things that I want to do, still working on the business, not in the business, then I feel like the week has been a win. If I feel like there are pressing tasks that I have to work on within the business on Saturday, then I feel like the week has not been a win. So if Saturday is Zen, if I come into it feeling very kind of centered and relaxed, then I feel like things are in balance the way they should be. [00:09:34] Jason: So what percent profit margin are you operating at now?  [00:09:37] Michael: So coming into this year 2022, we were at 27 percent profit margin, but a lot of that was really underpinned by very robust general brokerage sales. I made a concerted effort this year to pour gasoline on the fire to really grow the business. The goal is to be over 300 doors by the end of the year. So we're 25 away. Nice. I'm pretty sure we're going to make that, you know, that goal. But our profit margin right now is at. 11 and a half, 11 and three quarters percent. So it's down substantially, but that was deliberate.  [00:10:14] Jason: Got it. And is deliberate because  [00:10:18] Michael: why? [00:10:18] Because we're making an investment in people. We're making an investment in systems and we're making an investment in things like vehicles and computers and marketing.  [00:10:30] Jason: Yeah. So I think that's an important thing for business owners to recognize that. To go faster, you need to invest the currency of cash if you want to get more of the other currencies and to get the business to the next level. And you can grow faster if you have thinner margins, which can feel a little more dangerous. And you know, if you're investing into the growth of the business and into the future, but you know how to add doors, so this isn't a concern for you. [00:10:57] Michael: It isn't. My bookkeeper and my accountant were a little apoplectic until I told them like, this is where we're going. And what I said to my bookkeeper was before the great depression of 1929, Ford motor company was the preeminent motor car company in the world. They had an amazing market share. Then the stock market crashed and the economy tanked and Ford circled the wagons, folded their tents and got very conservative. They scaled back. General Motors, by extension, said, "ah," and they saw it as an opportunity and they poured gasoline on the fire. And for the next 70 years, General Motors was the dominant car company in the world. And so I kind of am using that model.  [00:11:47] Jason: Yeah. So, now a lot of people listening to this might think, well, cool, I can get Property Meld, I can do something, you know, get something like Lead Simple, or we have a better tool now, which is DoorGrow Flow. " I can go and get tools and maybe I can do it on my own." Because I think this is the challenge. A lot of us business owners, we have a bit of ego. " I've made a lot of mistakes in the past and we think I can do it myself. Maybe if I watch enough YouTube videos, listen to enough podcast episodes, I can figure it all out on my own. I don't need DoorGrow or I don't need it." Like, so what would you say to people that listening to this or thinking that?  [00:12:22] Michael: So I would say to them, when I think back to me and one assistant and 115, 110 doors and good profit margins. You know, and a good life. I was in a really kind of felt very isolated and very alone I didn't have other friends or colleagues in the property management space that I could talk to. I felt like I was the only person in the world that was doing this, and once I joined DoorGrow and made very valuable, long lasting friends within the organization that I can call on off hours to discuss specific problems related to property management, that burden of feeling on my own and alone disappeared. Being an entrepreneur can be one can be very lonely, and it is really important to have people in the same industry kind of in your village. And that's why that's 1 of the benefits of joining DoorGrow is that I can call friends in Texas, Idaho, Pennsylvania, California and say, "hey, I've got this going on. What do you think?"  [00:13:40] Jason: Yeah, and I think you know, that's a testament to you is that you've been such a contributor that in the mastermind that it's allowed you to connect with all of these people, you know, there are some people that join the program and they still stay somewhat isolated. They're like, "I'm going to watch videos I'm going to learn stuff and do my own thing and they maybe don't get some of those advantages or benefits But I think that's key. [00:14:02] So yeah Yes. I mean, Sarah, when she had her property management business, I imagine you experienced some of the same sort of things of thinking it's. You know, this is, you're the only one in the world doing this. You're on your own.  [00:14:17] Sarah: Yeah, very much. And especially in the area that I was in I was always different and I just kind of do things differently and I think differently and oftentimes people are like, she's nuts, like, why would you do that? [00:14:29] Even my mom, sometimes she's like, are you sure you're going to do that? Like, are you sure? Like, I'm kind of nervous. But I've just always done things a little differently. And it's so, it is really lonely. And I think the mindset that I had back when I was in Pennsylvania versus, you know, the mindset I have now really has a lot to do with who you surround yourself with and that can. [00:14:53] I think it can just give you hope and it can show you like, Hey, like, I'm not so crazy. Like I've got it. Like I've got it figured out and I'm like doing the right thing and I'm on the right path. And you know, it feels right, but sometimes it's just, you know, you're like, Oh, is this really right? [00:15:07] Because it feels good to me, but man, everybody else is doing something so different.  [00:15:12] Michael: Yeah. And that's another benefit that DoorGrow has given me is. I now have the ability to say no. So I am the business development manager. I have someone in charge of maintenance. I have someone in charge of tenant experience. [00:15:28] I have someone in charge of ops within the office. They color within their lines and we are good. My job is to go out and build the business to work on the business, not work in the business. And until I joined DoorGrow, it didn't matter what came my way. Property wise, I was going to take it last week. I turned away more properties than we took on because they weren't the right fit. [00:15:53] And I have a very nice conversation with prospective clients about qualification and that they're qualifying us to make sure we're a good fit for them. But at the same time. I'm qualifying them, their mindset, their properties, their attitudes toward spending money, their attitudes toward maintaining their properties, and if those things don't align with what we believe here, that housing is a human right that people have the right to live in nice homes that are maintained and maintained properly, then We're not going to accept the business. [00:16:30] We're also not going to accept people that are rude, mean and abusive. Because I've learned since kind of letting the stress of being a general brokerage real estate agent. Slip away that there is plenty of good business out there and that it's more important to have the Philosophical fits with the business than it is to take just any property no matter what the cost  [00:16:57] Jason: Yeah, your ability to say no in business Gives you a business that you feel you can easily say yes to each  [00:17:03] Michael: day. [00:17:04] That's right.  [00:17:05] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It's nice to not have to wake up and go, man, I really don't want to do this today. And that's because we're setting boundaries for ourselves and that boundary in those containers allow us to create a business that we really like to be inside.  [00:17:20] Michael: Right. That's correct. Yeah. Now,  [00:17:22] Jason: when you came. [00:17:23] To us DoorGrow initially. I remember like you really had this mindset that you, and now you're doing business development, you had mentioned, you really believed you were the operator. It all was on your shoulders to operate the business, do operations, and you were good at it, but you believe that was your primary gift, I think, to the business and what your contribution needed to be. [00:17:45] And and I know you had some conversations with Sarah and some shifts in that, so could you touch on that a bit?  [00:17:51] Michael: Yeah well, control freak and always have been a control freak. I know one of those. You know, own it. And to a certain degree, I still, I observe. I trust and verify, but I don't get involved. [00:18:07] My number two said it best the other day. He said, yeah, with you. I only have to come to you if I know it's a problem that I can't solve. So I have kind of empowered the people who work with me to color in their lines. And when they are in trouble, come here and ask and we'll figure it out. I have also given them permission to make mistakes because if you're not making mistakes, you're not learning. You're static, and I let them see that I make mistakes and that I admit when I make a mistakes above all else. I expect complete honesty here. We make mistakes. We admit our mistakes. You know, if we have to eat it because it's a financial error that we've made well, then by golly, we're going to eat it because it was our mistake. And we come by it honestly the empowerment of becoming a business development manager is I don't have to worry that the books are balanced every week because I know that there is someone who I've paid good money to who has balanced the books and they can't hide because the system has been created where I can see that it's been uploaded into the accounting software and that the books are in balance. [00:19:25] I can verify that the financial piece of the puzzle in the business is running properly because I get a report monthly from my accountant and my bookkeeper that says, "this is where we are. This is your cash flow. This is your profit. This is where you're spending a lot of money. Are you okay with that?" and I pay them good money to do those things. I have a maintenance coordinator who deals with maintenance and on the Property Meld dashboard, which I log into every morning. I can see the tasks picking off or I can see things progressing and I can see that we're handling our maintenance requests in 3 to 4 days on average and that's fine. I've also told him to maintain his sanity because he's a bit of a control freak. If it's after hours and it's a garbage disposal in a dishwasher and it's after 5 o'clock, you don't need to deal with that today. If it's a leak and we have a catastrophe, then you deal with that after five o'clock, but the small stuff can wait until tomorrow. [00:20:26] It's still important. It's important to get it done and move it off our plates, but you don't have to deal with it when you need to be spending time with your children at soccer camp or baseball practice or whatever he does in the evening with his four kids. And then my other teammates, I can see that they are moving their tasks forward and that I don't have to worry about the job that they're doing. And that's empowered me to go out and find the right properties to bring into the practice for us to manage.  [00:20:56] Jason: You know, one of the gifts that I see in you, which I think really sets you apart, Michael, is coming into the program you're really intelligent. You know this. You're an intelligent guy. I think everybody can pick that up just by hearing you and listening to you. But even though you're intelligent, you have humility about, you know, and this openness to learning. And you've come into the program and you just started to do stuff. Like you tried it out. You experimented, and you allowed yourself the time to prove whether or not it would work or not. And some of the times we get clients that are intelligent, but they're not humble and they're usually the biggest stumbling block to themselves. So I just wanted to point that out. I'm curious what Sarah's experience has been of you as well, because she worked closely with you on like reviewing some of the systems, reviewing your team assessing you and some of this kind of stuff. [00:21:54] Sarah: So, yeah, I think I definitely agree with what you just said about being open to learning and trying things just a bit differently. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, we do things differently. We're okay with that. But sometimes if it's not our idea, then we're like "I don't know if I want to do it because I didn't think of it." right. So, I think Michael is, he's open to thinking differently. He's open to trying things out and implementing a system. He'll do the research. He doesn't just, you know, blindly jump and he's like, well, Jason said to do this, so I'm going to do it, but he'll do the research and he's very thorough. And I really appreciate that about Michael. He's all into the details and he knows exactly what's going on in his business. He's not like, "Hey, I'm just going to kind of sit back and like, let the team run everything, and then I just, I'm going to cross my fingers and hope and pray that everything is going well, right?" like we know that it's going well because you're not the one who's doing it, so you've been able to get out of the hot seat in a lot of different ways and get yourself more into the things that you actually enjoy. because I remember that conversation with you about the operations and you said, "well, I really just, I love to sell" like, okay, then let's let you sell. Like if you're doing things in the business and you're just holding on to them going, "well, I have to be the one to do this." I think it's really common for us to think that like, " well, I own the business, so I have to do this piece or I own this. And it has to be me. It doesn't always have to be you." do you have to know what's going on? Absolutely. Do you have to have the right people on your team? Absolutely. And do you have to set it up so that things can run smoothly? Absolutely. But do you have to be the one who's actually like doing the work? Right. And I think that's one of the biggest shifts that I've seen in you is that you're able to say, okay I don't have to do this part and I don't want to do this part. [00:23:54] This is where I want to be. So I'm going to move closer to this and I'm going to figure out how to get these pieces kind of offloaded.  [00:24:01] Michael: Yeah. Yeah. When you taught me how to write R docs and after I had a disastrous hire two years ago, disaster, and I had to fire someone, something I'd never had to do, but it was my fault. There was nothing wrong with the person I hired. She was just the wrong fit for the job. And then we sat down, we wrote R docs. With detailed job descriptions and parameters and that made bringing on the next person who is now in that role a dream because she fit the culture. We knew what her profile was before she even interviewed with us. We knew who the person was and then she walked through the door and poof, there she was. And that's one thing I didn't know. I just thought you could teach someone into a position. Well, you can teach skills, but you can't teach the human touch. And that's what I had missed with the disaster, the mistake that I made.  [00:25:02] Jason: Yeah. You'd learn some concepts from us, like the three fits , mapping out R docs. One of you explain what R docs are for those of us. This is DoorGrow speak here.  [00:25:11] Sarah: I know it is. So an R doc, it's just basically a fancy word for job description. We call it R doc because every section on it starts with 'R.' [00:25:20] Jason: There you go. So the ultimate job descriptions. Awesome. So, yeah, so all of these little pieces and systems and mindsets that you've installed in your business have really, I think, primed your business for a lot of growth. Like, where do you see the business going in the future?  [00:25:37] Michael: Oh, so that's another thing I learned. And it was at, I think, Austin at the Austin meeting. And it was you said it in the first like two minutes and I got my nugget and I was like, okay, I can go home. I got it. You said, don't limit your growth. And I had constantly said 200 doors, 200 doors. That's where I'm going. That's where I'm going. And you already passed that now. Yeah, you said that. And I was like. " Why would I create like this false ceiling that I'm going to just bump into and stop at?" Yeah. So, ultimately, and I'd like to retire in the next 10 to 12, 15 years, maybe. We're realistically thinking in the neighborhood of 1,000-2,000 doors. Yeah, people have started to come a calling about, "Hey, do you want to sell your business?" And the time is not right. Some of the financial offers that have been made already are very intriguing. Yeah. But then I'm like, " what will I do with myself?" You know, "what's the next iteration?" And I think until I figure that out, we're going to just stay the course. [00:26:47] Jason: Yeah, I think that's one of the key things that I think a lot of people realize in the program that if it was just about money, then maybe you'd cash out, but it's not just about money, right? There's other things we want out of our experience here on this planet. And that's something else you got a lot of clarity on is what really personally drives you, which allowed you to build the business and the team around you so that you really could move into those plus signs and out of those minus signs. [00:27:13] Michael: Yeah, so the key is I went to the Netherlands in May to see art because it's my thing. Cool. And a little ostentatious to fly to Europe to see Vermeer, but I did it. And I was gone for a good long time and things here chugged right along and it was beautiful. And I knew then that we were doing things right, that I could leave and not be here for 10 days, and the business continued to operate. I continued to watch and check in. But they didn't need me.  [00:27:49] Jason: And how's that different from before you came to DoorGrow?  [00:27:53] Michael: Oh my God. Like the first meeting in Austin that I came to, I had I came really close to not coming because I was like "I can't leave. I just can't leave. I can't leave them." I was wrong. I was wrong and I went to Austin and I went to Vegas and you know, things were good. Yeah.  [00:28:12] Jason: Yeah. So awesome. Well, it's been really cool to see your progress. We really appreciate. Seeing your growth and yeah, there's no question in my mind. A lot of people hear you say, Oh, maybe a thousand, 2000 doors. And they probably think: this guy is ridiculously off his rocker that he could just believe that and the audacity to have that mindset. And I'm sure when you first came to DoorGrow, a thousand doors was like, probably magic, some magic, like pipe dream in the ethers that you would never even consider. I don't know, but. [00:28:40] Michael: 300 seemed unimaginable.  [00:28:43] Jason: Yeah, but now it seems very doable. And you're aware of the DoorGrow code and like we've got clients breaking a thousand doors. We've got clients doing it. And there's no question in my mind. You could easily do this in the next two to three years. If you really wanted to easily.  [00:28:57] Michael: Yeah, I work my golden 100. That's another thing I learned at DoorGrow. To have people that are valuable people that I love and care about that. I have to touch every 30 days because they love and care about me and buy it. So they send business. They ask questions and we share information. Yeah. And for that, I'm indebted to you.  [00:29:19] Jason: Not at all. Well, great. Well, yeah we, it's been really awesome seeing your growth. So cool. Anything else we should ask Michael? We've got him hanging out here with us. What's next for you, Michael? What's next?  [00:29:31] Michael: Well, once we go over 300, then the double it again. [00:29:34] Jason: Yeah. So what I see next for you is you've got some of the systems installed. And then I think what it will be next is to level up your three key systems of. People, process, and planning and maybe starting to build out even a little bit more of that executive team. I think you've got a good team going now and I think then what would be next would be maybe starting to acquire you'll be the one eating up some of these other companies. And I think, maybe working with us on acquisitions, and I think that'll be the quick pace to grow. And that also bring you really great people too, if you want. So [00:30:07] Michael: we're working on two. They're on a slow simmer because companies that I'm looking at have some. Bookkeeping issues. We'll just put it at that.  [00:30:17] Jason: It's an opportunity. Yeah. Always do.  [00:30:20] Michael: So we may be able to fix the problem. Definitely.  [00:30:24] Jason: You'll be able to fix the problem. Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Well, I'm excited to see what you do in the future. I know like, I've seen companies hit all these different stages. I know. We know the challenges that you're going to hit at these different stages in growth. We're here to support you. And for those listening here on the DoorGrowShow if you are struggling, you're hitting some of these sticking points, these milestones, you're stuck in your mindset, whatever. Be like Michael, be like Mike, not Mike, but all the reference, be like Michael and you know, talk to us and let us map things out with you and see if we could help you out. We'll be sure with you. So, well, Michael, appreciate you coming on the show. We appreciate having you as a client and grateful for you.  [00:31:09] Michael: Thank you. Thanks. I appreciate it. Have a good day.  [00:31:12] Jason: All right. Cool. So, if you're wanting to get into our free community of property management entrepreneurs on Facebook, go to DoorGrowClub.Com. We have some free gifts that we want to give to you. You'll provide your email as you join the group, we'll give you an, a drip, an email drip of some free gifts, including a fee Bible and some vendors that you can use and some different tools just to help you help yourself and help the industry level up. [00:31:42] And we, and if you provide your info, we will also reach out to see if you'd like to have a conversation with us and see if we could help you grow your business, which the answer usually is. Yes, we can. So we would love to support you and help you out. And if you're wanting to test out your website, which you think might be amazing, go to doorgrowcom/quiz and test your website. A lot of times, this is a great gateway to realizing that you have some blind spots in your business. When you see that your website is leaking lots of money. Which is something we can help you out with. There's a lot of other leaks you can't see, and this might crack your mind open, get you to be open minded like Michael and allow us to be able to help you and support you and make a lot more money, have a lot more freedom and make a bigger difference out there in the marketplace. [00:32:34] We appreciate you listening to our show. If you could do us a favor and leave us a good testimonial on, if you're hearing us on iTunes or like, or comment all of these things help us out and help us get the message out to enact our vision and our mission for this industry of helping it level up. [00:32:50] And until next time to our mutual growth, everybody, bye everyone.  [00:32:54] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:33:21] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

On this episode, we get to converse with Rashidah McCoy. While her background is in communications, she also has put her knowledge to use in addressing issues concerning Diversity Equity, and Inclusion. However, first, she wants us to know that, coming from Pittsburg she is a fan of all things Pittsburg. Good to be loyal. Like so many, she learned to survive, thrive, and grow, in spite of her environment and a disability which, as she says, she embraces today.   During this episode, Rashidah and I get to have a great discussion about communications, the ever-expanding number of ways data is thrown at us, and especially about information overload and how we should handle it. Rashidah has some wonderful thoughts on how we all can handle the vast amount of information we encounter every day.   We also spend time about how to change the conversation regarding diversity and inclusion to be more inclusive, as it were. Rashidah offers some great and wonderful observations concerning this and how we, as a society, ought to move forward concerning truly including everyone.   Rashidah offers us much to think about. I hope you will find this program as thought-provoking and pertinent as did I. I'd love to hear your thoughts.   About the Guest:     Rashidah McCoy is a communication professional with 7+ years of diverse background in public relations, marketing, digital engagement, advocacy, DE&I, and storytelling. She's skilled in executing comprehensive campaigns, integrated outreach, and developing strategic strategies to help deepen the connection with stakeholders and attract new constituents through the consistent execution of transmedia and traditional experiences.   Rashidah has worked on award-winning campaigns and concepts for the National Restaurant Association, CNET, Budweiser, Aon, CharmClick (located in China), and many more. She's a firm believer in building a strong relationship with clients to ensure goals are met and organizations flourish. As a testament of her dedication to the nonprofit sector, Rashidah received the Association Forum Forty Under 40 Award for her accomplishments, leadership skills, and commitment to the industry.   Rashidah graduated summa cum laude with her Bachelors degree in Mass Communications from Delaware State University and received her Master's of Science in Journalism with a concentration on International Public Relations from West Virginia University. When she's not knee deep in the marketing communications world, she enjoys baking, traveling, and family time with her daughter and fiancé.    Ways to connect with Rashidah:   LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashidah-mccoy/  Twitter: @Hey_RashidahPR Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maven_marketingllc_/ Website: https://www.mavenmarketing4you.com/about      About the Host: Michael Hingson is a New York Times best-selling author, international lecturer, and Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe. Michael, blind since birth, survived the 9/11 attacks with the help of his guide dog Roselle. This story is the subject of his best-selling book, Thunder Dog.   Michael gives over 100 presentations around the world each year speaking to influential groups such as Exxon Mobile, AT&T, Federal Express, Scripps College, Rutgers University, Children's Hospital, and the American Red Cross just to name a few. He is Ambassador for the National Braille Literacy Campaign for the National Federation of the Blind and also serves as Ambassador for the American Humane Association's 2012 Hero Dog Awards.   https://michaelhingson.com https://www.facebook.com/michael.hingson.author.speaker/ https://twitter.com/mhingson https://www.youtube.com/user/mhingson https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelhingson/   accessiBe Links https://accessibe.com/ https://www.youtube.com/c/accessiBe https://www.linkedin.com/company/accessibe/mycompany/ https://www.facebook.com/accessibe/       Thanks for listening! Thanks so much for listening to our podcast! If you enjoyed this episode and think that others could benefit from listening, please share it using the social media buttons on this page. Do you have some feedback or questions about this episode? Leave a comment in the section below!   Subscribe to the podcast If you would like to get automatic updates of new podcast episodes, you can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. You can also subscribe in your favorite podcast app.   Leave us an Apple Podcasts review Ratings and reviews from our listeners are extremely valuable to us and greatly appreciated. They help our podcast rank higher on Apple Podcasts, which exposes our show to more awesome listeners like you. If you have a minute, please leave an honest review on Apple Podcasts.     Transcription Notes Michael Hingson  00:00 Access Cast and accessiBe Initiative presents Unstoppable Mindset. The podcast where inclusion, diversity and the unexpected meet. Hi, I'm Michael Hingson, Chief Vision Officer for accessiBe and the author of the number one New York Times bestselling book, Thunder dog, the story of a blind man, his guide dog and the triumph of trust. Thanks for joining me on my podcast as we explore our own blinding fears of inclusion unacceptance and our resistance to change. We will discover the idea that no matter the situation, or the people we encounter, our own fears, and prejudices often are our strongest barriers to moving forward. The unstoppable mindset podcast is sponsored by accessiBe, that's a c c e s s i  capital B e. Visit www.accessibe.com to learn how you can make your website accessible for persons with disabilities. And to help make the internet fully inclusive by the year 2025. Glad you dropped by we're happy to meet you and to have you here with us.   Michael Hingson  01:20 Well, hello once again. And yes, you are listening to unstoppable mindset. I am your host Michael Hingson. And today, we get to chat with Rashidah McCoy, who is a communications expert. She knows a lot about marketing and a variety of subjects, including one of the ones that we get to talk about often here on unstoppable mindset, diversity, equity and inclusion DEI. And we will be talking more about that as we go forward. I am sure, but we'll worry about that as we go forward. But for right now, Rashidah Welcome to unstoppable mindset.   Rashidah McCoy  01:56 Thank you, Michael. Thank you for having me. And I appreciate your viewers listening in.   Michael Hingson  02:00 And how are you surviving the day?   Rashidah McCoy  02:03 It's a good day so far. So we'll be out here in Maryland, so I'm not gonna complain.   Michael Hingson  02:09 What's the temperature?   Rashidah McCoy  02:11 It's like the 40s. You know, what a cool breeze. I'll take that over the snow from Pittsburgh any day.   Michael Hingson  02:16 Wow. When I checked the temperature here in Victorville just a little while ago, it was 50. I was like 55. So that's okay, actually not too bad. We are. We're a little bit up in the mountains. So our temperatures are pretty close to what you usually experience. But we don't get the snow. We're in a valley and the the water passes a spy which is okay.   Rashidah McCoy  02:42 I love it. Well,   Michael Hingson  02:43 we'll cope. Well, listen, I'd love to start by you just kind of telling me a little bit about you growing up and what life was like and all those kinds of things. So if we could start with that, and we'll go from there.   Rashidah McCoy  02:54 Sure, Michael, no problem. So I want to raise in Pittsburgh, I'm a Pittsburgh Steelers fan and Paris fan. You name it all things Pittsburgh. So I grew up in a single parent household. My mother was amazing. And my grandmother was even more of an amazing foundation for our family. And being a Pittsburgh was it's kind of hard. I'm from the inner city from Pittsburgh from the Hill District. We're August Wilson was born and raised. And a lot of times, a lot of us aren't expected to make it out. When we don't make it out, unfortunately, just because of the hardship and the property and so forth. But it is a beautiful city. I had a great childhood. My mom worked three jobs to keep me in private Catholic school, from kindergarten to eighth grade, I made some great friends I was loved on and I did my best always to strive for excellence, because I knew education was my only way out. It was for me, I didn't play a sport. I was low asthmatic girls, I didn't play a sport. But I definitely was always involved in school. Because for me, first generation college student, that was important for me to go to school, to make a difference and to show my family, not only my little brothers and sisters, but also my cousins and my mom, that you know, all this effort that you put forth in life. You know, there's more to it. There's also more outside of Pittsburgh. So being able to do that has been great. And I left Pittsburgh for high school, and I went to Delaware State University. And after that I kind of went on to Washington University. Got to travel the world. So now now I'm almost 32 And it all feels good. And it was somebody to travel the hardships make it a lot brighter today.   Michael Hingson  04:35 Do you think that the troubles and hardships and all those challenges helped you as you were growing up or now that you're older that that benefited you?   Rashidah McCoy  04:43 Oh, most definitely. I have a greater understanding and empathy for individuals than I would have in any sense of life. If I would not have gone through some things. Just some things that people think are minor aspects from disabilities as a young girl who had eczema, sometimes a point in my life where I was out of school for two weeks because I was hospitalized for severe eczema and my skin broke out so bad, I couldn't walk. I'm having asthma, had severe asthma, severe allergies, those types of just hardships, understanding who I was and loving on myself, I know we are at an age right now where self care and self love is big. I did not grow up with a lot of that, because I was I looked different, you know, I was itchy girl, I didn't have the longest hair. And I didn't come from, you know, the greatest background where I had Jordans. And, you know, my mom and I shop at the thrift stores on Sundays. And I took pride in that. But as I got older, I realized that those hard moments made me more empathetic and made me love on people more and want to serve others and help them get through those moments.   Michael Hingson  05:50 So did you outgrow the eczema and asthma and so on? Or do they still somewhat be with you?   Rashidah McCoy  05:57 They're still with me. They're still with me. But at this age, I've learned to not only maintain them, but embrace them. I get allergy shots about once a month now, what's one of maintenance, and for me, I embrace it. I am someone who I used to not even wear shorts or skirts. I used to wear jeans and tennis shoes all the time. Now it's like, Listen, this is who I am. This is how I look to talk, Phil, I'm going to embrace this black excellence that's pouring from the inside out. And I raised my head a lot higher now. Because I love who I am. I am a new mommy. So that's another stage of loving who I am. You know, my body's changed, my mind changed. My outlook on life has changed. But what it has done for me is put me in a perspective of like, listen, love on yourself and love on others who around you are going through some of the same things you may not even though what every day.   Michael Hingson  06:49 So do you consider eczema actually a disability? Is it classified as a disability or anything like that? Or do you? No, no,   Rashidah McCoy  06:58 it's a skin condition. It's a skin condition. And for mine, it's a very, I have also sale ptosis. So it's a condition where I lacked the molecule of moisture is held in my skin. So it's not a disability. But for me, it has disabled me.   Michael Hingson  07:13 I'm sure now I understand that. Yeah. So under the like Americans with Disabilities Act, it isn't considered a disability as such.   Rashidah McCoy  07:20 No, but asthma is yes. Yes.   Michael Hingson  07:23 Could always you could always just hold your breath longer, I suppose.   Rashidah McCoy  07:29 Breath in my nose and my mouth.   Michael Hingson  07:33 Yeah, that's gonna happen. Right? Oh, yeah. So you got your bachelor's from Delaware?   Rashidah McCoy  07:44 Yeah. Delaware State University.   Michael Hingson  07:47 Hmm. And then you went on to West Virginia to get your Masters and and what were those degrees in   Rashidah McCoy  07:53 your, my degree from Delaware State University was a mass communications. And my degree from West Virginia University was in journalism with a concentration on international public relations. And my research, it focused on the mentorship and the importance of mentoring young minorities, specifically millennial minorities, as we enter the communications and marketing space, and making space for young millennials, black, brown and indigenous.   Michael Hingson  08:21 So what is fascinating to me about that is that communication is, in some ways has in some ways haven't hasn't changed over the years. That is we still talk to each other some sometimes we talk to each other. And sometimes we don't but but the the methodology or the ways that we have available to us to communicate, certainly has changed a great deal. So what do you think about now we have social media and now we have such ease of access to electronic communications and so on, set a plus that A minus or how would you how would you   Rashidah McCoy  09:01 really in between discuss that? I think is it in between? Honestly, Michael, I think that the spaces that we have have a lot of opportunity to communicate with each other in different forms and fashions. You know, for not only individuals who are in different states and countries on the internet, you know, you can now get your Google in a different language or you can transfer your translate your documents and communicate with people easier. From an app on your phone or even speaking into your phone. You can have it translated. Social media has put us in a in a space where you can look at and talk to your favorite celebrities all the time or keep up with family members. We haven't talked to in years or may not talk to every day, but it has put a pressure on young individuals like myself and my age and the current generation has put pressure on them to live up to what they see in here. In an on social media, you know, you're able to see the BBL is happening, you're able to see the money flow and whatnot. slike easily easy work. You're also a lot of space to see the news and real time, unfortunately, you know, we have, unfortunately and unfortunately, you know, we have police cams on chest now out on their chest, now you can those videos are automatically uploaded, or we can record it on our phone and it's seen or you can go live. Those are moments yes, that are positive for us to be able to fight racial injustice sees, but also those are traumatic for individuals who are black and brown to see those types of injustice happen in the streets in front of you as you try to live a quote whatever normal life looks like for us now, you know, we see it, we hear it, we're around it. But how we consume it, oftentimes can embody us as human beings.   Michael Hingson  10:46 Well, and whether it's black, brown, indigenous or white, for that matter. How are we doing? Or what can we do better? Maybe that's a loaded question. But concerning the whole, the whole issue of absorbing and really dealing with the incredible amount of information that we get today. And you know, what I, what I keep thinking of is and what you just mentioned the news, we get so many videos that we get to look at we we hear so many people talking about different things on the news, or we have so many other ways of getting information like social media and so on. How do we deal with that? And how do we start to learn to put all of that in perspective, as opposed just reacting? Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really love it. I suppose that   Rashidah McCoy  11:37 one? Yeah. Honestly, I think having a balance to the best of your ability. I know we again, mentioning the self care, self care comes in different forms of fashions. It comes in a bubble bath that comes in chocolate, but it also comes in sometimes not opening the Facebook, Instagram or Tiktok app for a week to just Just breathe. You know, it's harder, it's easier said than done. And it's not just the social media. It's, you know, it's the TV, it's a lot at us, and we're still getting newspapers, we still get magazines, we're still gossiping, we're still talk, I think taking that time for yourself, to also figure out what information is best for you in your life. You know, how do you divulge this information and you share it, but how do you also take it in in order for it to be reshard? You know, are you taking that in in the morning, noon and night because it will keep you up at night? Statistics say that you're looking at social media, between nine and 12, you're liable to stay up a little bit longer at night, though, I think is taking that time to figure out how to separate it, you know, what does that mean for you? For me, personally, that means that I try to log off at least by nine o'clock at night, and I still like you know, and just be done with it. For me, I used to when I was an agency like I'm in a larger agency and a smaller agency, we had TVs mounted to the walls were all day CNN, Fox News, ABC, NBC was running. And it was like an overload of information just coming in from around the world, from different places at different times, but different information and different topics. And it was information overload. So for me now being a nonprofit, we're actually going back into the office in two weeks, I actually asked that question I was on their TV in the office, do we have to listen to the news all day? You know, are there certain times we can listen to it on key moment? 6am 3am and 6pm? What does that look like for us five o'clock news. Because you have to watch what you take in because then oftentimes you project that out? And that becomes a part of you.   Michael Hingson  13:44 How do we teach people to do that? I mean, I agree with what you're saying. And so in a sense, I I didn't mean to say it was a loaded question in the try to obviously trap you in something. But how do we teach people what you just said? Because it's so very true. And the other part about it is, you've talked about young people? Well, I'd love to hear your thoughts on older generations and so on and dealing with it. But how do we first of all, just how do we teach people to back off, because so many people have just learned to let all of that overwhelm them. And they get overwhelmed and they react very negatively to it. How do we fix them of that?   Rashidah McCoy  14:27 I think that starts with teaching people how to balance it. I think that starts in the space of understanding yourself and what you're consuming and why. I think when we think about that, go back to the old school moment where you're just jotting down what you're looking at and what you're consuming. You know what how is this information positively impacting my life? Do I need to be on social media for five hours a day? What does that mean for me? sitting back and thinking about you know, taking the moments to block off some time during the day for you to have your scrolling moments, saying what you do for your emails at work, you may set times on your calendar to particularly look at emails in the morning and in the afternoons you can get work done in the middle of the day. Another example, I think, also is taking the time during certain times of the year to reflect also on the in the things that are on your phone, all the apps, you know, we can have the phones and there's 1000 apps on them, take a moment and look and see and reflect like, Hey, do I really need to talk social media, CNN, uh, you know, naming all the apps running down even the games, you know, what is there for me, that is important for me. And I know it sounds selfish, to think about just, you know, consuming that for yourself. But sometimes you have to be selfish in these moments for your own self care and self growth. Because we tend to what you know, what's your take in? And what you put out, you know, how do you speak to yourself, it's also how you grow within your space, you know, those positive affirmations, those positive moments, you're consuming positive content and important content, that you're oftentimes going to kind of reflect that same thing. But sometimes when your content isn't as positive, or it's a little bit harder on whoever you are, what you're doing, it makes you more critical yourself. So just taking those moments. Okay, those are a couple of tips and tricks people can use.   Michael Hingson  16:14 I think you're absolutely right. The fact is, we don't tend to take time for ourselves, we don't reflect at the end of the day, what went on today, how was it? What could I have done that? I could do better? Or even the good stuff? What can I learn from that? We never seem to want to do that. And we just keep going on and on and on. But the reality is, if we don't stop to take time, to reflect, and to process and analyze, and then decide what works, we're just going to continue down this rabbit hole, which is so scary.   Rashidah McCoy  16:53 Yes, terrifying. It's terrifying.   Michael Hingson  16:55 It is. What about older people? I mean, I know that there are more and more people who are getting more accustomed to using computers, although they're a bunch of people who say I'm not going to learn all that newfangled technology and all that. But the reality is, some of them do. And the reality is, but the other reality is it is here, whether we like it or not. Yes,   Rashidah McCoy  17:19 and you have to adjust to it, I have a friend who actually has a business. And what he does is he teaches older individuals how to use technology. He actually does it goes to a library around different parts of his state. And he sets up days out of the month where older individuals 40 Plus can come on in, and he shows you how to set your apps up on your phone. So it shows you how to use the voice notes on your phone. So shows you how to use simple things that we think are simple, but are often hard how to use Google Maps, you know how to go onto your computer and use a Word document and to type something out and use the spellcheck to assist you in your spelling. Or even if you're someone who has to say well how to use the read on your Word document how to set that up on your phone to translate if you may speak a different language. I think that's something that's definitely needs to be considered because technology is not going anywhere. And COVID has high end it for us has high end not only our understanding of the lack thereof, resources to distribute to individuals during a time of technological challenge, but at the same space is like how do we ensure that everyone knows or has access, but it's I know, I see a lot of people who are like my friend doing some of the work in the communities to do that.   Michael Hingson  18:34 I think some people may think me crazy for saying this, but I will anyway, the reality is that we're doing the same things we did 3040 50 and 60 years ago, just using different tools. You know, we used to write things that you said down on paper. When we were students we would turn things in, we didn't have computers to help with a lot of stuff. But the reality is that what we're doing is the same stuff. We're just doing it with more and more efficient information dissemination tools, and it's also allowed us to spread the word to a whole lot more people, which can be a plus and which can be a minus but the reality is communications is still communications and basic process hasn't changed.   Rashidah McCoy  19:21 Not at all. Not at all. It has not I think we've lost the art of just conversations like this, you know, getting on the phone and talking to a friend rather than shooting a text and saying, gee am i i seen a social media post yesterday said it literally said someone texted me said GM Have a good day and they said well General Motors a YouTube you know, take the time to pick the phone up and say Hey, good morning. How are you? Have a great day miss you love you. Okay, bye, you know, take minutes to have that human connection with people. I think we kind of have lost the art of that and I am that person who makes my friends it sounds weird but makes my friend wants to hang up as opposed to Hey, love you. Because you don't know what's going to happen next Tomorrow is not promised. So taking that moment to embrace that old school, quote unquote, community, and old school communications, it means a lot, you know, go visit your friend, you know, they live down the street, don't just text them and say, Hey, checking on you go, you know, check them and set up a time to actually meet and have lunch and have dinner. And as my grandmother was saying, me my say, lay eyes on, you know, make sure they're well, are you well know what someone's really going through. And I think sometimes, we indulge ourselves in so much, from media, to social media, to whatever's around us and happening to us, we forget to check on people, and you that who that human is and what they're going through, because every one is going through something, whether we know it or not.   Michael Hingson  20:53 Yeah, the reality is, again, communication is still the same. It's just that we are we are forgetting part of that. And you're absolutely right. The fact is that that personal contact is extremely important. And there's no reason that we shouldn't be doing it, the art of conversation has really gone away, in a lot of ways. I, it took me a while to get a mystery solved in my life, which is, why is it that we hear about the stories of a family driving down the road, and the kids are in the backseat texting each other? Why did they do that? Why did they do that? And somebody finally said to me something that unfortunately, makes sense, I suppose, which is they don't want their parents to know what they're talking about, which is so unfortunate. And so we're getting away from this whole concept of conversation, and, and trust. Because why should it really matter if your parents know if you really trust your parents? Now, the parents have to earn trust, too. It goes both ways. But definitely trust and respect. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But the fact is that we've, we see people, especially younger people texting, because we don't want our parents or other people in the car to know what we're talking about. Well, that's pretty bad. And we've got to, and unfortunately, I'm not sure how it's going to happen. But someday, that's gonna come back to bite people.   Rashidah McCoy  22:26 I agree with that one friend. I agree with that one. Yeah,   Michael Hingson  22:30 it's a real, it's a real challenge. Well, you went off to college, and then what did you do when you graduated?   Rashidah McCoy  22:35 After I graduated Washington University, I took a fellowship at one of the largest marketing communications agencies in the world. And I was a diversity equity inclusion fellow where I worked there for about a year and I worked under you name it, I did sector health, I did social media, I did marketing. I worked with larger clients, smaller clients, military clients. And after I left there, I continued on to a smaller agency, where I had bigger clients ranging from AON to Budweiser and National Restaurant Association, it was amazing. Being able to work in I call it that the rat race phase I was because it was like, you know, the earlier the better, the later you leave, the better. You know who it was kind of like who can say the longest, you know, who's watching office. So that was my younger face. And I thoroughly enjoyed it gave me a lot of exposure to a lot of different organizations, cultures, languages, media relations, techniques of writing aspects of politics, I got to work with multiple clients at one time, I also got to help mentor and most amazing, young, bright magnet scholars, and help them start their career off. But I'd really ultimately realized like I'm meant to serve. So after I left those agencies, I went to work with migrants or refugees. The one that's how when President Trump was locking down the borders, so I had the opportunity to work with refugees and migrants and tell their stories and give a voice to them. I also got to spend some time in South Sudan, where I got to tell the stories of those individuals that the organization was helping and get money for them to fund different programs to help them with the psychosocial work, to assist them with their rehabilitation programs and stuff. And that was amazing. And then another after that role, I left and went to work with an organization that works for Racial Equity and Inclusion amongst lower income children, to help them have whatever they need to succeed by any means. In school and beyond. And now I'm at the organization that where I'm at now with more than a membership organization bringing together nonprofits, foundations and charitable organizations for the greater good of the US. So I've had a pretty good career along the way, and it has been one that has been up and down, had some challenges in between But the work I do, and I'm still doing is one that's close to my heart. So you   Michael Hingson  25:05 started out at a big company, why did you then go to a smaller company?   Rashidah McCoy  25:10 The closeness, um, I needed more from my team. My fellowship also ended that too. Yeah, that part too. But also, I knew I didn't want to stay in the big agencies because I wanted to be closer to the on the ground work. And for me, that meant more than being at a higher level in that space.   Michael Hingson  25:34 So the whole idea of, of being closer and, and being able to accomplish more, because you were in a smaller organization, where here we go, again, you can communicate with people, we get something done.   Rashidah McCoy  25:46 Exactly. I got to actually go to those meetings and sit one on one with these individuals, and be close to them and talk about their work. And what do you need me to do? How can I help put together strategic plans and alliances amongst partnerships and do media relations for them, develop not only strategic plans, but you know, execute them, you know, develop the social media campaigns and editorial calendars, and put together dei calendars for them and also help them see their work through a dei lens, which oftentimes is ignored. When you're doing storytelling work, you're telling the story of someone else, but you're not allowing that person to use their own voice, when they're telling the story because you're telling their story, which is actually not equitable at all. So I've done a lot of that work to over the past few years.   Michael Hingson  26:34 So as you've been involved in this whole concept of Dei, for a long period, what does that mean to you? As a as an African American woman, what is what does the whole concept of dei mean to you?   Rashidah McCoy  26:54 For me, it means space, to not only have a seat at the table, but have a voice. And it means for me to have a space, have a voice and be able to mentor and bring along other individuals who look sound like me, or who are facing in justices every day. You know, a lot of times I get into the rooms, and I get asked the question, hey, who else is coming? And I'm like, Oh, it's just me. It's little me. I've also been asked, you know, oh, how old are you? You know, I've even had the question. You know, is it just you coming? Are you skilled, do you understand what you're doing? And for me, that gives me a moment of teaching. Because not only do I understand, but I'm good at what I do. And I'm even better at educating and mentoring the young individuals who are coming behind me to do this work, I want them to be better. I want them to have that space and time to ensure that people know who they are. They're educated, and they're self educating. And also beyond inclusion, the word belonging, making sure you have a space where you belong. You get into a room and you have a voice and you're not afraid, a comfortable space, where you can be yourself and do your work in order for you to serve society for a better tomorrow. I mean, it sounds cheesy, but for me, it's that's important to me. You know what, I have a three year old daughter I have a three year old little girl. Her name is Yara and for me I need to make space for Yara Yara needs to be able to walk into a room and not be questioned because she's young, black or excellent. I need for people to understand that Yara and my little brother Rashad have an understanding of who they are, that they stand on the backs of ancestral giants. And they will and can make a difference in this crazy world we live in.   Michael Hingson  28:40 Well, so here's a question. And not not trying to make it too challenging. But nevertheless, it is. So you've talked about dei in terms of race, which is absolutely true. But the problem is that some of us have found that that limits to race. So we talked about a number, any number of people who talk about diversity when we talk about black people and the fact that they need to be included. But the reality is one of the observations and I was thinking about it before we started this interview this morning. One of the things that I find is that people get locked into their particular area of diversity or equity. So the real question is when we're dealing with this whole idea of diversity, equity and inclusion, how do we get people to really recognize there's more to it than just their individual sphere, if you will?   Rashidah McCoy  29:44 Hmm, good question. Thank you for that, Mike. Well, I honestly think it's these open, honest conversations. In some spaces. I am the person to bring the discomfort to the room in a positive manner, of course, but let's have the conversations that it's not thought about just your aspect of dei or of inclusion or where you are me, particularly as a black woman, you know, there's an equities for individuals who are deaf blind who have medical conditions, you know, what does that mean for them? I think having those open, honest conversations, and not only the conversations, but bringing solutions to the table with these individuals of how they want to be talked about how they want to be seen and heard, and work that can be done to address the some of the injustice sees that they face every day, I think can help bridge those, those gaps that we often face.   Michael Hingson  30:37 Yeah, it's a trick. Because mostly, when I ask people to define the whole idea, what do you mean by diversity, they'll talk about race, or they'll talk about sexual orientation, and so on, and disabilities and disabilities usually get left out. And so diversity has kind of been so defined that it leaves all of that out. And I've said that many times on on this podcast before. But the other side of it is that, what do you do if you're going to deal with inclusion? You either are or you're not. And if you're truly inclusive, you can't leave different segments of the population out, but people are so locked into one area of it. How do we get people to really change that mindset? Because, you know, most people who happen to be black or who have a different sexual orientation, just want to focus on that. But we are inclusive, because we include those people, but you don't include the rest of society. How do we how do we really change that idea?   Rashidah McCoy  31:42 I think is, of course, it's going to take time, it's something that will never happen overnight. But I think it has a conversation between those different communities, per se. And then putting forth the efforts for us to put up the work, develop strategic plans, take the time, one by one, to have this conversation in the groups and within the communities and lift them up, you know, going to conferences, meeting like minded people, putting forth those changemakers and influencers and putting them in front of these different audiences and giving them the tools and keys, and also the proper words and terminologies. But in order for them to help us bridge those gaps for belonging, I think the word we need to use instead of inclusion oftentimes is belonging. Because inclusivity is like yes, everyone's here. We're welcome. But do I belong? So I'm in this space? And I'm included? But do I feel as if I belong? Like you said people use the DEI term? And it's like, okay, diversity, equity and inclusion, I'm included in the conversation, as a black woman are included in the conversation as a white man who was blind, but what does that mean for my belonging? What have you done to ensure that when I'm in this space, not only do I have a voice at the table, but you have also done the physical part, and made sure that my voice is heard, or made sure that, you know, there's Braille on the books in our, in our meetings and things of that nature, the conversation goes beyond that. And I think a lot of the work needs to be put forth. And I think the people who have the platforms to do it need to be equipped with not only the resources to do so, but also I think teaching our youth, the same thing, you know, teaching our youth, they, it's not just how you look and what you see about someone that may be a disability, you know, sometimes you can't see someone's disability until they may have a speech impediment, or something of that nature that impairs them from being accepted, or included, are feel as if they belong. So having those conversations with teenagers and myself, for a three year old, you know, my daughter, I have a lot of conversations with her as well, too early, of course, on her own level, but I think that helps as well. And one last thing I think also would be helpful is putting the academic research behind it. putting data in front of people, oftentimes numbers speak volumes, they still do, you know, money, talks, numbers talk, you oftentimes can't ignore the numbers in front of you. And what that means, you know, humanizing those numbers and breaking them down. In order for individuals to understand that, listen, it's not just a black brown thing. It's not just a racial thing. It's not just your sexual orientation or your gender. There's more individuals out there who feel as if they're left out, let's figure out how we can better include them. And what are the next steps to get them in these conversations so that change can be made.   Michael Hingson  34:30 So you and I talked a little bit in the past as we were getting ready and preparing for doing this podcast, about some of the things that are going on when we deal with diversity. You mentioned Rhonda Santos and his idea of banning diversity programs in public schools. Tell me more about that.   Rashidah McCoy  34:50 It's a disturbing pattern for me, that we keep seeing this is honestly like the silencing of black voices and the aggressive attempt to literally wipe out black history, it puts me in a space where I'm one uncomfortable, but to ready for change, it's like come on, are we still doing this years later, because it's also an attack on some of the most vulnerable, marginalized people in history who are still fighting for this. And in that sense, if this attack continues, it then leaves for our younger generations to be ignorant and have a lack thereof of knowledge of the country's history of its own. And then it denies them the skills and understanding to break down this information to make the decisions of how they want to be a part of this change, or if they want to be a part of change, and how to enact change, to change historical things and continue to make a difference. I think that then just leaves people blind and by and blind sighted in the sense of like, how do we then not understand that history is here, history is real. People are in classrooms, and they need to learn about who they are, and where they come from, in order to have a better understanding of where they want to go. And I pulled a quote that I want to share from Miss Janae Nelson, she'd had a New York Times article a couple of weeks ago. She's the president and director of counsel from the Legal Defense Fund. And she quoted and said, students will arrive at institutes of higher learning, Ely equipped to engage with historical fundaments of the fast up foundations of this country, which include and are inapplicable from the history of black Americans. More over it will deny future generations the full story of turmoil and triumph that is in America. And it will also so racial divides that are enabled through white supremacy, which the FBI has identified as a major domestic security threat to thighs. I think that was such a powerful thing that she said in that article. It just literally leaves people without knowledge as they continue to thrive and try to grow and learn. But they don't understand what the who the backs of this country were built on.   37:07 And again, going back to the question earlier, it goes further because it isn't just black Americans or, or different races LGBTQ plus   Rashidah McCoy  37:17 friends or family. Yes, it's not just color.   Michael Hingson  37:22 But we're dealing with a country where the unemployment rate, for example, among employable persons with disabilities, is 65%. Yeah, and, and so that quote is great. But it doesn't include discussing disabilities. And the question becomes why and how do we change that? Because quotes like that, really cover much more than race, color, gender, sexual orientation, and so on. But yet, it continues to be that, that the reality is that one of the very largest minorities in this country are left out that is people with disabilities who make up over 25% of our population. Yeah. And so somehow, the people who champion specific areas of diversity, need to recognize that it goes further. And yeah, that's, you know, that's kind of really the issue that I was thinking of. Hmm.   Rashidah McCoy  38:27 No, I agree with that completely. I think a lot of that conversation has to come from the forefront of just because Janae did speak a larger into her article, as she mentioned, LGBTQ plus individuals, and so forth. But I do think a lot of times, like you said, that ability community is left behind. I think maybe having individuals who are at the forefront, continue to be an influence and speak out on these topics as well, because it is very important that they not be left out of these conversations are the solution as a bigger thing, the solutions are, to me, most important outside of the competence were the next steps, after we had the difficult conversations, and make sure that everyone the proper stakeholders are at the table to make a difference, and have their voices heard. And again, like I said before, and that change from the beginning to the end, but they have to be present in the rooms. And I feel like oftentimes, individuals with with disabilities, excuse me, are often left out of these spaces.   Michael Hingson  39:25 Yeah. So unfortunately, another another thought that comes up with this. You so we've talked about Rhonda Santos, did you happen to watch President Biden State of the Union address, and then the response from Sarah Huckabee Sanders? Yeah, yeah. And so what was one of the major things that Sarah Huckabee Sanders talked about? She was very proud of the fact that after becoming governor, she made sure that critical race theory was banned in public schools, and so on. And so again, we see this continuation of not Recognizing that there have been some significant challenges and blocks thrown in the way of a lot of us by some of the people who should know better.   Rashidah McCoy  40:13 They definitely should know better and should do better,   Michael Hingson  40:16 and should do better. You're absolutely right. But it is one of the things that that we do face. Well, in your job, what kinds of discriminations or challenges have you faced, and how do you deal with them from a standpoint of inclusion or diversity and so on, or   Rashidah McCoy  40:38 out, a lot of times, I laugh because just thinking about it is, sometimes it hurt to remember some of the things that I went through, because it's, it has put me in a space where now as a young professional, I can look back and know that those challenges helped make me who I am as a professional. But I've been told that I've hit plateaus because I could not bring in additional black or brown media hits, or that I was in a space where I was, where it wasn't short, that I still belonged, because I could not provide them black insight. Or I then became the black voice or the female voice in the room as well, too. But also in the same sense, I've gotten a lot of discrimination for being young. I got a questions about like I said, I think I mentioned this earlier on, like, you know, how old are you? Should you be here by yourself? You know, is there someone else coming? That to me is not only disrespect, but what is negating to who I am and the work that I put forth. But when it comes to those moments I've learned over the years, and I will admit at first I was not the comments, Michael. It takes time, that I'm a little older now, I think when people walk into the room, and they do ask who else is coming? You know, is there is it just us or I had asked for my resume and asked for my qualifications before, or spit their accolades to me and asked me to, you know, recite mine back to them. And I have combated sometimes in that sense, where I'm like, Well, I'm a gate scholar, you know, I have a master's degree I've studied in South Sudan, you know, things of that nature. But I've learned to calm it down over the years, and ask them the same question back in a sense of pain. And that place of where you're asking me is a my belonging, let's ensure that you understand that I'm a young professional, and I put in the work. And yes, someone else will be joining us for this conversation. But I am the director in this room. And moving forward, I would like to understand that there's a level of respect that's given. And we returned to you. So I think boundaries are a big thing that I have put forth, as I've gotten older, as putting up boundaries. And also, having people understand that that's not how you interact with people. That's not how you communicate with individuals, as you walk into a room. And the first thing you see is that it's a black woman, or just a woman in general, and you should be condescending, I think taking the time to educate people, but also addressing them and their biases in the most professional and empathetic manner. Because some people just don't know, they should know. They should, yes, they should. But some people just don't know, Michael, and they have gone along so long in life where people have not addressed them or just said, Hey, listen, that was not right, that was not polite. And I prefer not to be addressed like that moving forward. And there's nothing wrong with standing up for yourself in those spaces, or standing up and the next individual in the room. And if you see it happen, address, it helps someone else who may not feel that they have a voice, or that they have been silenced, because I had been that individual who has worked in these spaces, and then had my work taken from me have my credit removed from an assignment or a test or plan or strategy that I've put together had someone else's name put on it, I think is taking the time to address it. And oftentimes asking for help, if you do have individuals who can support you in those moments, whether it's, you know, some friends at work, who've been through the same thing, or talking to HR about the policies that are put in place for these types of moments.   Michael Hingson  44:17 Yeah, tokenism is alive and well in the world and in people's attitudes isn't   Rashidah McCoy  44:24 very much so unfortunately, very much so.   Michael Hingson  44:28 And it is a it's a hard thing to break and hard thing to get people to recognize that we're all people. Because people don't view us all as people and they don't. We haven't taught people to truly recognize understand and accept   Rashidah McCoy  44:51 difference. Exactly. And it has to be taught, hatred is taught, but acceptance of indifference is also Who taught? You know? Have you asked me about my childhood, that was not an easy time being a girl had eczema, it sounds like something to some people very minut. But I had eczema. And I had very itchy, very dry skin, and it was very visible on my face, my neck, my hands, my feet, you know, children are cruel. So when you don't teach your child, how to address someone, or how to talk to someone who looks different from them, or sounds different from them, that child then continues on as an adult, and thinks that those actions are okay. I heard you mentioned in previous podcasts that a child came up to you and said, I'm sorry, you can't see. And I wouldn't respond the same way you can. I'm sorry, you can't see. You know, teach your children to respect people, to talk to people with love. Everything people should do should be left with love. When you open your mouth to communicate, or you write on a pen or paper or you're on social media, remember that the things you're saying to people affect them, there's a person behind that screen, you know, there's a person standing in front of you respect that individual wholeheartedly, and for the entire person that they are. I've leaned on that for a very long time.   Michael Hingson  46:19 And should actually, yeah, I and the issue with that that child. He wasn't he was being a person, I'm sure he will say demonstrating pity where it didn't belong. But he wasn't he certainly wasn't saying it out of hatred. Now his mother almost immediately pulled him away. Which is really the big problem, because having the opportunity to talk to that young man was a good thing. As long as it lasts. Yeah,   Rashidah McCoy  46:52 yeah. And I bet that moment was a teaching moment. You know, I'm sure Chuck said didn't mean it out of harm. But teach your child take that moment as a teaching moment. And you as someone who's calm and loving and willing to teach and has taught many people in spoke about your story, that then put that child in a space where they could learn not only to understand difference, but maybe accept it. You know, acceptance is also another thing when you put someone in a space of belonging.   Michael Hingson  47:23 Yeah, and it as you said, it is a teaching moment. And part of the problem for those of us, all of us who are different, which really is everyone, but part of the problem, for those of us who are viewed as being part of a minority is, and it does get to be hard. Sometimes, we have the opportunity to be teachers and deal with those teaching moments. But it's a tough thing to be patient enough always to do that, too, which is the other side of it.   Rashidah McCoy  47:55 It's easier said than done. It's very easy to say, oh, go ahead and teach, you know, bring our wants to the table, and we'll talk about it. But sometimes those conversations don't want to be had. It may be traumatic, someone may be reliving something, maybe a PTSD moment. And I think that then leaves space for the grace. It's a word that I've used heavily over the past three years, give people grace. Again, you don't know someone's going through, but you don't know how what you may say, may affect them. And they may not be ready to be an advocate in the front that you are, you know, give people time, help them find a different way to make change. It doesn't always have to be through your voice. You know, maybe you're writing a letter to your representative. Or maybe you're you know, you're taking time to have small conversations, or you're seeing something on social media. When you see something that's a great quote or a testimony from someone or a video. That's an education, that's educational. take that time to do that. But don't expect other people to advocate the same way you do. And give them again, Grace, time and space to be ready to have those tough conversations.   Michael Hingson  49:12 Sure, for you who or what kinds of situations have really made you stronger at dealing with this whole idea of diversity, inclusion and equity and social justice.   Rashidah McCoy  49:27 I think a lot of the moments that have put me in a space is being a first generation college student from Pittsburgh. I grew up in our city I didn't have anyone to know, got me through school. So when I did leave Pittsburgh at 18 and go to the go to Delaware State University. It was pertinent for me to go to an HBCU to understand that I'm built and bred off the backs of giants. And I wanted to know who I was before I stepped into a world who may not accept who I was, or may not warmly welcome me, which may not will not, you know as so reality. So that for me going to Delaware State helped me learn the importance of loving on myself as a black woman, and also encouraging the youth in the generations behind me. And putting forth that model as a mentor. For individuals who are going through it with me or after me, I think it still puts me in a space of understanding when I'm in marketing, how to see things through a dei lens and be empathetic to people. Because I do understand what it means to be from a state or a place in a family, where not many of us make it out. So I think that was like my first opening to that. And then it continued on is things heightened, of course, in college when I went to Western University, which is a predominantly white school, I walked to the school and I wasn't accepted automatically by some people. I had different experiences to individuals who were in my cohort. But what that did was that made me want to write about that, that made me want to tell stories about that in a positive fashion and educate people. But then it does sometimes infuriate me when I see the racial and justices that happen in our country, and I have gone to protests after the killing of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin. You know, those moments have made me proud. It made me cry, but it made me work even harder for change, for belonging. And for again, like I said, my daughter cannot hopefully face as much injustice that I had to.   Michael Hingson  51:45 How many siblings? Do you have? Too many? There you go.   Rashidah McCoy  51:50 drive me crazy. Michael. Um, I come from a blended family. My both my fiance and so my mom has my brother in law. And on my dad's side, I have four sisters.   Michael Hingson  52:00 So any or all of them gone to college as well?   Rashidah McCoy  52:04 Yes, my younger sister who's right under me has gone to college. Yes, she is the amazing grad from Kent State University. And she's also in the same sorority Delta Sigma Theta as me so reincorporate it. So we do a lot of work through delta as well. We have both gone to Capitol Hill when we're active when we were active on campus. And she was doing the same work as me as communications and marketing. And it made me proud. I couldn't be prouder of her and all of my siblings.   Michael Hingson  52:31 Well, that's cool. Well, yeah, so you, you now blaze the trail, but others are going to college as well, which is cool.   Rashidah McCoy  52:38 Most definitely. My future husband, his siblings are impeccable to breaking the mold, breaking the cycle. My little brother on his side is also in college, doing amazing work. And just to see them thrive and push through and, you know, call and ask for help about certain things, even a little thing, you know, you don't think college students will ask my like, Hey, I have a question. But can you edit my paper, you know, to me, that's a big moment that I feel good about that, that I have come so far, that not only through education, but experience, I can talk to my siblings and and mentees about the moments that I face and how they can overcome them. And here's some tips and tricks that may help you in this space or just be a listening ear. Sometimes you just gotta be quiet and listen to people.   Michael Hingson  53:26 And so do they call on Big Sister occasionally for advice or guidance?   Rashidah McCoy  53:31 Oh, they do. They do. And some of them have lived with me. So it's quite interesting to help mold them into these young adults and then see them like go into these spaces or call for like, hey, how long should I eat this tomato it? You know, it's been a frigerator. Can I still eat it like, though? But also advice or just how to navigate the office space? Or how to go to college? And how do I organize my time? You know, it feels good. I love that feeling. It's a proud Big Sister moment for me all   Michael Hingson  54:02 that that is great. Well, what kind of advice would you give to other people, young people, but people in general who are facing social injustice or challenges? What What? What would you suggest to them?   Rashidah McCoy  54:18 My suggestion would be to honestly, lead with love. When you face these moments, try your hardest not to give people back the same ignorance or disrespect that they give you. I don't know. It's so hard. So hard. But I think if we put ourselves in these moments where we are ready to make a difference. Sometimes leaving it with a little bit of force is good, but sometimes taking a moment to step back and realize who you want to be in this moment and how you can change that moving forward, I think makes a big difference and how we then move on We're as a country and as a people, as a culture, I think that moment where you have those mums in front of you where you're confronted with it, breathed first, breathe. And think about the next action and how it can affect not only you, but others around you, and how you can take that moment again, and be a change that you want to see. Again, I know it sounds cliche, but take that moment. And if you have the opportunity to do have moments like this and have conversations with individuals like you, Michael, who had different experiences, do it. Have those conversations, go and make change, go talk to representatives, go to Capitol Hill and protest, be a part of your HOA in your community, just little things like that. People think don't have an impact, but they do know.   Michael Hingson  55:52 And be patient.   Rashidah McCoy  55:54 Always, always be patient and give grace. Give grace, don't tell us to give a hug.   Michael Hingson  56:02 Even to somebody you don't like there's nothing wrong with doing that. If you don't start to show the friendship, then they're never going to get the message.   Rashidah McCoy  56:11 Exactly who will. Yeah, I know, my friends laugh at me sometimes. And like you're always trying to help somebody, we can't help everybody. But sometimes you can help one person, if you can help one person, I think it makes a difference. And for me, I have the opportunity to serve through communications and marketing every day, and do the best of the nonprofit sector to help as many people as I can come together to make that change. And for me, that's important. And it's very important that the message that we put out into this world, the messages that people see and read and receive are ones that can change, you know, once that can educate, once that can be of you know, sometimes give a laugh, you know, in these tough moments, but also highlight the difference. And also give people a chance to have a voice and a seat at the table. That is literally important to me and everything I do especially my work as a marketing and communications professional.   Michael Hingson  57:13 You mentioned earlier that you you write some things, have you published anything I have   Rashidah McCoy  57:18 I was low, younger, haven't published anything most recently, but I did have opportunity to publish an article with the Public Relations Society, about the importance of mentoring millennial minority youth. I also have published research from when I got my master's degree. I've also had an opportunity to do some speaking like you might go I'm trying to get on your level. I went back to WVU last year and gave a presentation on you know the balance between racial inequity and trust what that means. I also spoke to some young students and got to help them understand what that means as well. When you're doing marketing and communications. I'm including, again, seeing through talent, storytelling, good the island. So I continue to do some more published research, hopefully, and also some more speaking engagements because I feel like I have a story to tell. And also I want to help other people tell their story.   Michael Hingson  58:13 Well, if people want to reach out and maybe contact you explore your firm or learn from you, how do they do that?   Rashidah McCoy  58:20 Sure, sure. I am on Twitter at Hey_RashidahPR. I'm on LinkedIn as Rashidah McCoy. I also have my own marketing communications agency called Maven Marketing LLC. You can find us online at Maven Marketing four number you.   Michael Hingson  58:37 Once you spell that Maven Oh, sure.   Rashidah McCoy  58:40 No problem. M A V E N  marketing M A R K E T I N G  number four, Y O U@gmail.com. And also.com is the website. So yes, we are here to help. We are a woman led and owned organization. And we see of course, like I said to a dei lens, but we are with you every step of the way. As you decide to, you know, build your communications plan, build your editorial calendars, as you plan events. And we also do a lot of pairing and partnering of the clients that I have and move forward with to do work in the community with individuals who are have different disabilities and who are black brown individuals from the LGBTQ plus community. So we're looking to do more connection and partnership to again make change and enact different voices to be heard.   Michael Hingson  59:32 And by the way, Rashidah is spelled   Rashidah McCoy  59:35 R A S H I D A H  last name McCoy M C C O Y Phillips? Yes. Michael Yes.   Michael Hingson  59:47 Um, but you know, it's the way to get the word out.   Rashidah McCoy  59:50 It is it is definitely get the word out and I appreciate it. I appreciate you helping us spread the word and spread the joy.   Michael Hingson  59:57 Well, I appreciate you being here and spreading the joy and help Need to spread the love. And I hope that you as you're listening out there will follow what Rashidah says and help spread the joy and the love as well. We'd love to hear from you. And I'm sure Rashidah would as well. So please reach out. I'd love to hear your thoughts, please email me at Michaelhi M I C H A E L H I at accessiBe A C C E S S I B E.com. Or go to www dot Michael hingson H i n g s o n.com/podcast. And wherever you're listening today, please give us a five star rating. We love your reviews. We love your thoughts. We love your comments. And we really appreciate you adding value to this podcast and Rashidah for you and for anyone out there listening. If you have any thoughts of other people we ought to have as podcast guests here on unstoppable mindset, please let us know. Email me reach out. We'd love to explore all your friends and guests. And we will do our best to bring them on and continue these kinds of dialogues. So Rashidah one last time, thank you again for being with us today.   Rashidah McCoy  1:01:05 Thanks for having me.   Michael Hingson  1:01:13 You have been listening to the Unstoppable Mindset podcast. Thanks for dropping by. I hope that you'll join us again next week, and in future weeks for upcoming episodes. To subscribe to our podcast and to learn about upcoming episodes, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com slash podcast. Michael Hingson is spelled m i c h a e l h i n g s o n. While you're on the site., please use the form there to recommend people who we ought to interview in upcoming editions of the show. And also, we ask you and urge you to invite your friends to join us in the future. If you know of any one or any organization needing a speaker for an event, please email me at speaker at Michael hingson.com. I appreciate it very much. To learn more about the concept of blinded by fear, please visit www dot Michael hingson.com forward slash blinded by fear and while you're there, feel free to pick up a copy of my free eBook entitled blinded by fear. The unstoppable mindset podcast is provided by access cast an initiative of accessiBe and is sponsored by accessiBe. Please visit www.accessibe.com. accessiBe is spelled a c c e s s i b e. There you can learn all about how you can make your website inclusive for all persons with disabilities and how you can help make the internet ful

Michael Isbitski, Director of Cybersecurity Strategy at Sysdig, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to discuss the nuances of an effective cybersecurity strategy. Michael explains that many companies are caught between creating a strategy that's truly secure and one that's merely compliant and within the bounds of cost-effectiveness, and what can be done to help balance the two aims more effectively. Corey and Michael also explore what it means to hire for transferrable skills in the realm of cybersecurity and tech, and Michael reveals that while there's no such thing as a silver-bullet solution for cybersecurity, Sysdig can help bridge many gaps in a company's strategy. About MichaelMike has researched and advised on cybersecurity for over 5 years. He's versed in cloud security, container security, Kubernetes security,  API security, security testing, mobile security, application protection, and secure continuous delivery. He's guided countless organizations globally in their security initiatives and supporting their business.Prior to his research and advisory experience, Mike learned many hard lessons on the front lines of IT with over twenty years of practitioner and leadership experience focused on application security, vulnerability management, enterprise architecture, and systems engineering.Links Referenced: Sysdig: https://sysdig.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-isbitski/ 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: Tailscale SSH is a new, and arguably better way to SSH. Once you've enabled Tailscale SSH on your server and user devices, Tailscale takes care of the rest. So you don't need to manage, rotate, or distribute new SSH keys every time someone on your team leaves. Pretty cool, right? Tailscale gives each device in your network a node key to connect to your VPN, and uses that same key for SSH authorization and encryption. So basically you're SSHing the same way that you're already managing your network.So what's the benefit? Well, built-in key rotation, the ability to manage permissions as code, connectivity between any two devices, and reduced latency. You can even ask users to re-authenticate SSH connections for that extra bit of security to keep the compliance folks happy. Try Tailscale now - it's free forever for personal use.Corey: Do you wish your developers had less permanent access to AWS? Has the complexity of Amazon's reference architecture for temporary elevated access caused you to sob uncontrollably? With Sym, you can protect your cloud infrastructure with customizable, just-in-time access workflows that can be setup in minutes. By automating the access request lifecycle, Sym helps you reduce the scope of default access while keeping your developers moving quickly. Say goodbye to your cloud access woes with Sym. Go to symops.com/corey to learn more. That's S-Y-M-O-P-S.com/coreyCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud, I'm Corey Quinn. I periodically find myself in something of a weird spot when it comes to talking about security. I spent a lot of my time in previous lives having to care about it, but the word security was never in my job title. That's who my weekly podcast on the AWS Morning Brief and the accompanying newsletter goes out to: it's people who have to care about security but don't have it as part of their job title. They just want to know what's going on without all of the buzzwords.This promoted guest episode is brought to us by our friends at Sysdig and my guest is Mike Isbitski, Director of Cybersecurity Strategy at Sysdig. Mike, thanks for joining me.Michael: Thanks, Corey. Yeah, it's great to be here.Corey: So, you've been at Sysdig for a little bit, but your history is fascinating to me. You were at Gartner, which on the one hand would lead someone to think, “Oh okay, you talk about this stuff a lot, but might not have been particularly hands-on,” but that's not true. Either. You have a strong background as a practitioner, but not directly security-focused. Is that right?Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that is correct. I can certainly give the short version of the history lesson [laugh]. It is true, yes. As a Gartner analyst, you don't always get as hands-on, certainly talking to practitioners and leaders from all walks of life, different industries, different company sizes, and organization sizes.But yeah, as a Gartner analyst, I was in a different division that was much more technical. So, for me personally, I did actually try to tinker a lot: set up Docker, deploy Kubernetes clusters, all that fun stuff. But yeah, prior to my life, as an analyst, I was a practitioner, a security leader for close to 20 years at Verizon so, saw quite a bit. And actually started as enterprise architect building, kind of, systems and infrastructure to support all of those business needs, then I kind of transitioned over to application security towards the tail end of that career at Verizon.Corey: And one of the things that I find that I enjoy doing is talking with folks in positions like yours, the folks who did not come to the cybersecurity side of the world from a pure strategy advisory sense, but have been hands-on with these things at varying points in our careers, just because otherwise I feel like I'm sort of coming at this from a very different world. When I walk around the RSA show floor, I am consistently confronted by people trying to sell me the same dozen products over and over again with different words and different branding, but it seems like it's all buzzwords aimed from security people who are deep in the weeds to other security people who are deep in the weeds and it's just presumed that everyone knows what they're talking about already. And obviously worse. I'm not here to tell them that they're going about their business wrong, but for smaller companies, SMBs, folks who have to care about security but don't know the vernacular in the same way and don't have sophisticated security apparatus at their companies, it feels like a dense thicket of impenetrable buzzwords.Michael: Yes. Very, very fair assessment, [laugh] I would say. So, I'd say my life as an analyst was a lot of lengthy conversations. I guess a little bit of the secret behind analyst inquiry, I mean, a lot of times, they are hour-long conversations, sometimes multiple sets of them. But yeah, it's very true, right?There's a lot of nuance to how you work with technology and how you build things, but then also how you secure it, it's very hard to, kind of, condense that, you know, hours of conversation and many pages of documentation down into some bite-size nuggets that marketers might run with. So, I try to kind of live in that in-between world where I can kind of explain deep technology problems and business realities, and kind of explain that in more common language to people. Sometimes it's easier said than done when you're speaking it as opposed to writing it. But yeah, that's kind of where I tried to bring my skills and experience.Corey: It's a little counterintuitive to folks coming out from the other side, I suspect. For me, at least the hardest part of getting into the business of cloud cost optimization the way that I do with the Duckbill Group was learning to talk. Where I come from a background of heavy on the engineering and operations side, but being able to talk to business stakeholders who do not particularly care what a Kubernetes might be, is critical. You have to effectively be able to speak to different constituencies, sometimes in the same conversation, without alienating the rest of them. That was the hard part for me.Michael: Yeah, that's absolutely true and I certainly ran into that quite a bit as an enterprise architect at Verizon. There's kind of really need to work to identify, like, what is the business need. And typically, that is talking to the stakeholders, you know, what are they trying to achieve? They might not even know that, right, [laugh] because not everybody is very structured in how they think about the problem you're trying to solve. And then what is their daily workflow?And then you kind of arrive at the technology. I'd say, a common pitfall for anybody, right, Whether you're an engineer or a security practitioner is to kind of start with the technology or the solution and then try to force that on people, right? “Here's your solution to the problem that maybe you didn't know you had.” [laugh]. It kind of should work in reverse, right? What's the actual business need? What's your workflow? And what's the appropriate technology for that, right?Whether it's right-sizing the infrastructure or a particular type of functionality or protection, all those things, right? So, very similar kind of way of approaching the problem. It's just what you're trying to solve but [laugh] I've definitely seen that, kind of, Kubernetes is all the rage, right, or service mesh. Like, everybody needs to start deploying Istio, and you really should be asking the question—Corey: Oh, it's all resume-driven development.Michael: Yep, exactly. Yeah. It's kind of the new kid on the block, right? Let's push out this cool new technology and then problems be damned, right?Corey: I'm only half-kidding on that. I've talked to folks who are not running those types of things and they said that it is a bit of a drag on their being able to attract talent.Michael: Yeah, it's—you know, I mean, it's newer technologies, right, so it can be hard to find them, right, kind of unicorn status. I used to talk quite a bit in advisory calls to find DevOps practitioners that were kind of full-stack. That's tricky.Corey: I always wonder if it's possible to find them, on some level.Michael: Yeah. And it's like, well, can you find them and then when you do find them, can you afford them?Corey: Oh, yeah. What I'm seeing in these other direction, though, is people who are making, you know, sensible technology choices where you actually understand what lives were without turning it into a murder mystery where you need to hire a private investigator to track it down. Those are the companies that are having trouble hiring because it seems that an awful lot of the talent, or at least a significant subset of it, want to have the latest and greatest technologies on their resume on their next stop. Which, I'm not saying they're wrong for doing that, but it is a strange outcome that I wasn't quite predicting.Michael: Yeah. No, it is very true, I definitely see that quite a bit in tech sector. I've run into it myself, even with the amount of experience I have and skills. Yeah, companies sometimes get in a mode where they're looking for very specific skills, potentially even products or technologies, right? And that's not always the best way to go about it.If you understand concepts, right, with technology and systems engineering, that should translate, right? So, it's kind of learning the new syntax, or semantics, working with a framework or a platform or a piece of technology.Corey: One of the reasons that I started the security side of what I do on the newsletter piece, and it caught some people by surprise, but the reason I did it was because I have always found that, more or less, security and cost are closely aligned spiritually, if nothing else. They're reactive problems and they don't, in the general sense, get companies one iota closer to the business outcome they're chasing, but it's something you have to do, like buying fire insurance for the building. You can spend infinite money on those things, but it doesn't advance. It's all on the defensive, reactive side. And you tend to care about these things a lot right after you failed to care about them sufficiently. Does that track at all from your experience?Michael: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just kind of flashing back to some war stories at Verizon, right? It was… I'd say very common that, once you've kind of addressed, well, these are the business problems we want to solve for and we're off to the races, right, we're going to build this cool thing. And then you deploy it, right [laugh], and then you forgot to account for backup, right? What's your disaster recovery plan? Do you have logging in place? Are you monitoring the thing effectively? Are your access controls accounted for?All those, kind of, tangential processes, but super-critical, right, when you think about, kind of, production systems, like, they have to be in place. So, it's absolutely true, right, and it's kind of definitely for just general availability, you need to be thinking about these things. And yeah, they almost always translate to that security piece of it as well, right, particularly with all the regulations that organizations are impacted with today. You really need to be thinking about, kind of, all these pieces of the puzzle, not just hey, let's build this thing and get it on running infrastructure and we're done with our work.Corey: A question that I've got for you—because I'm seeing a very definite pattern emerging tied to the overall macro environment, now, where after a ten-year bull run, suddenly a bunch of companies are discovering, holy crap, money means something again, where instead of being able to go out and gets infinite money, more or less, to throw at an AWS bill, suddenly, oh, that's a big number, and we have no idea what's in it. We should care about that. So, almost overnight, we've seen people suddenly caring about their bill. How are you seeing security over the past year or so? Has there been a similar awareness around that or has that not really been tied to the overall macro-cycle?Michael: Very good question, yeah. So unfortunately, security's often an afterthought, right, just like, kind of those things that support availability—probably going to get a little bit better ranking because it's going to support your customers and employees, so you're going to get budget and headcount to support that. Security, usually in the pecking order, is below that, right, which is unfortunate because [laugh] there can be severe repercussions with that, such as privacy impacts, or data breach, right, lost revenue, all kinds of things. But yeah, typically, security has been undercut, right? You're always seeking headcount, you need more budget.So, security teams tend to look to delegate security process out, right? So, you kind of see a lot of DevOps programs, like, can we empower engineers to run some of these processes and tooling, and then security, kind of, becomes the overseer. So, we see a lot of that where can we kind of have people satisfy some of these pieces. But then with respect to, like, security budgets, it is often security tools consolidation because a lot organizations tend to have a lot of things, right? So, security leaders are looking to scale that back, right, so they can work more effectively, but then also cut costs, which is definitely true these days in the current macroeconomic environment.Corey: I'm curious as well, to see what your take is on the interplay between cost and security. And what I mean by that is, I did the numbers once, and if you were to go into an AWS native environment, ignore third-party vendors for a second, just configure all of the AWS security services in your account, so the way that best practices dictate that you should, you're pretty quickly going to end up in a scenario where the cost of that outweighs that of the data breach that you're ostensibly trying to prevent. So—Michael: Yes.Corey: It's an infinite money pit that you can just throw everything into. So, people care about security, but they also care about cost. Plus, let's be very direct here, you can spend all the money on security and still lose. How do companies think about that now?Michael: A lot of leaders will struggle with, are we trying to be compliant or are we trying to be secure? Because those can be very different conversations and solutions to the problem. I mean, ideally, everybody would pursue that perfect model of security, right, enable all the things, but that's not necessarily cost-effective to do that. And so, most organizations and most security teams are going to prioritize their risks, right? So, they'll start to carve out, maybe these are all our internet-facing applications, these are the business-critical ones, so we're going to allocate more security focus to them and security spend, so [maybe we will be turn up 00:13:20] more security services to protect those things and monitor them.Then [laugh], unfortunately, you can end up with a glut of maybe internal applications or non-critical things that just don't get that TLC from security, unfortunately, for security teams, but fortunate for attackers, those things become attack targets, right? So, they don't necessarily care how you've prioritized your controls or your risk. They're going to go for the low-hanging fruit. So, security teams have always struggled with that, but it's very true. Like, in a cloud environment like AWS, yeah, if you start turning everything up, be prepared for a very, very costly cloud expense bill.Corey: Yeah, in my spare time, I'm working on a project that I was originally going to open-source, but I realized if I did it, it would cause nothing but pain and drama for everyone, of enabling a whole bunch of AWS misconfiguration options, given a set of arbitrary credentials, that just effectively try to get the high score on the bill. And it turned out that my early tests were way more successful than anticipated, and instead, I'm just basically treating it as a security vulnerability reporting exercise, just because people don't think about this in quite the same way. And again, it's not that these tools are necessarily overpriced; it's not that they aren't delivering value. It's that in many cases, it is unexpectedly expensive when they bill across dimensions that people are not aware of. And it's one of those everyone's aware of that trap the second time type of situations.It's a hard problem. And I don't know that there's a great way to answer it. I don't think that AWS is doing anything untoward here; I don't think that they're being intentionally malicious around these things, but it's very vast, very complex, and nobody sees all of it.Michael: Very good point, yes. Kind of, cloud complexity and ephemeral nature of cloud resources, but also the cost, right? Like, AWS isn't in the business of providing free service, right? Really, no cloud provider is. They are a business, right, so they want to make money on Cloud consumption.And it's interesting, I remember, like, the first time I started exploring Kubernetes, I did deploy clusters in cloud providers, so you can kind of tinker and see how these things work, right, and they give you some free credits, [a month of credit 00:15:30], to kind of work with this stuff. And, you know, if you spin up a [laugh] Kubernetes cluster with very bare bones, you're going to chew through that probably within a day, right? There's a lot of services in it. And that's even with defaults, which includes things like minimal, if anything, with respect to logging. Which is a problem, right, because then you're going to miss general troubleshooting events, but also actual security events.So, it's not necessarily something that AWS could solve for by turning everything up, right, because they are going to start giving away services. Although I'm starting to see some tide shifts with respect to cybersecurity. The Biden administration just released their cybersecurity strategy that talks about some of this, right? Like, should cloud providers start assuming more of the responsibility and accountability, potentially just turning up logging services? Like, why should those be additional cost to customers, right, because that's really critical to even support basic monitoring and security monitoring so you can report incidents and breaches.Corey: When you look across what customers are doing, you have a different problem than I do. I go in and I say, “Oh, I fixed the horrifying AWS bill.” And then I stop talking and I wait. Because if people [unintelligible 00:16:44] to that, “Ooh, that's a problem for us,” great. We're having a conversation.If they don't, then there's no opportunity for my consulting over in that part of the world. I don't have to sit down and explain to people why their bill is too high or why they wouldn't want it to be they intrinsically know and understand it or they're honestly not fit to be in business if they can't make a strategic evaluation of whether or not their bill is too high for what they're doing. Security is very different, especially given how vast it is and how unbounded the problem space is, relatively speaking. You have to first educate customers in some ways before attempting to sell them something. How do you do that without, I guess, drifting into the world of FUD where, “Here are all the terrible things that could happen. The solution is to pay me.” Which in many cases is honest, but people have an aversion to it.Michael: Yeah. So, that's how I feel [laugh] a lot of my days here at Sysdig. So, I do try to explain, kind of, these problems in general terms as opposed to just how Sysdig can help you solve for it. But you know, in reality, it is larger strategic challenges, right, there's not necessarily going to be one tool that's going to solve all your problems, the silver bullet, right, it's always true. Yes, Sysdig has a platform that can address a lot of cloud security-type issues, like over-permissioning or telling you what are the actual exploitable workloads in your environment, but that's not necessarily going to help you with, you know, if you have a regulator breathing down your neck and wants to know about an incident, how do you actually relay that information to them, right?It's really just going to help surface event data, stitch things together, that now you have to carry that over to that person or figure out within your organization who's handling that. So, there is kind of this larger piece of, you know, governance risk and compliance, and security tooling helps inform a lot of that, but yeah, every organization is, kind of, have to answer to [laugh] those authorities, often within their own organization, but it could also be government authorities.Corey: Part of the challenge as well is that there's—part of it is tooling, absolutely, but an awful lot of it is a people problem where you have these companies in the security space talking about a variety of advanced threats, of deeply sophisticated attackers that are doing incredibly arcane stuff, and then you have the CEO yelling about what they're doing on a phone call in the airport lounge and their password—which is ‘kitty' by the way—is on a Post-It note on their laptop for everyone to see. It feels like it's one of those, get the basic stuff taken care of first, before going down the path to increasingly arcane attacks. There's an awful lot of vectors to wind up attacking an infrastructure, but so much of what we see from data breaches is simply people not securing S3 buckets, as a common example. It's one of those crawl, walk, run types of stories. For what you do, is there a certain level of sophistication that companies need to get to before what you offer starts to bear fruit?Michael: Very good question, right, and I'd start with… right, there's certainly an element of truth that we're lagging behind on some of the security basics, right, or good security hygiene. But it's not as simple as, like, well, you picked a bad password or you left the port exposed, you know? I think certainly security practitioners know this, I'd even put forth that a lot of engineers know it, particularly if they're been trained more recently. There's been a lot of work to promote security awareness, so we know that we should provide IDs and passwords of sufficient strength, don't expose things you shouldn't be doing. But what tends to happen is, like, as you build monitoring systems, they're just extremely complex and distributed.Not to go down the weeds with app designs, with microservices architecture patterns, and containerized architectures, but that is what happens, right, because the days of building some heavyweight system in the confines of a data center in your organization, those things still do happen, but that's not typically how new systems are being architected. So, a lot of the old problems still linger, there's just many more instances of it and it's highly distributed. So it, kind of, the—the problem becomes very amplified very quickly.Corey: That's, I think, on some level, part of the challenge. It's worse in some ways that even the monitoring and observability space where, “All right, we have 15 tools that we're using right now. Why should we talk to yours?” And the answer is often, “Because we want to be number 16.” It's one of those stories where it winds up just adding incremental cost. And by cost, I don't just mean money; I mean complexity on top of these things. So, you folks are, of course, sponsoring this episode, so the least I can do is ask you, where do you folks start and stop? Sysdig: you do a lot of stuff. What's the sweet spot?Michael: Yeah, I mean, there's a few, right, because it is a larger platform. So, I often talk in terms of full lifecycle security, right? And a lot of organizations will split their approaches. We'll talk about shift left, which is really, let's focus very heavily on secure design, let's test all the code and all the artifacts prior to delivering that thing, try to knock out all quality issues, right, for kind of that general IT, but also security problems, which really should be tracked as quality issues, but including those things like vulnerabilities and misconfigs. So, Sysdig absolutely provides that capability that to satisfy that shift left approach.And Sysdig also focuses very heavily on runtime security or the shield right side of the equation. And that's, you know, give me those capabilities that allow me to monitor all types of workloads, whether they're virtual machines, or containers, serverless abstractions like Fargate because I need to know what's going on everywhere. In the event that there is a potential security incident or breach, I need all that information so I can actually know what happened or report that to a regulatory authority.And that's easier said than done, right? Because when you think about containerized environments, they are very ephemeral. A container might spin up a tear down within minutes, right, and if you're not thinking about your forensics and incident response processes, that data is going to be lost [unintelligible 00:23:10] [laugh]. You're kind of shooting yourself in the foot that way. So yeah, Sysdig kind of provides that platform to give you that full range of capabilities throughout the lifecycle.Corey: I think that that is something that is not fully understood in a lot of cases. I remember a very early Sysdig, I don't know if it was a demo or what exactly it was, I remember was the old Heavybit space in San Francisco, where they came out, it was, I believe, based on an open-source project and it was still taking the perspective, isn't this neat? It gives you really in-depth insight into almost a system-call level of what it is the system is doing. “Cool. So, what's the value proposition for this?”It's like, “Well, step one, be an incredibly gifted engineer when it comes to systems internals.” It's like, “Okay, I'll be back in five years. What's step two?” It's like, “We'll figure it out then.” Now, the story has gone up the stack. It originally felt a little bit like it was a solution in search of a problem. Now, I think you have found that problem, you have clearly hit product-market fit. I see you folks in the wild in many of my customer engagements. You are doing something very right. But it was neat watching, like, it's almost for me, I turned around, took my eye off the ball for a few seconds and it went from, “We have no idea of what we're doing” to, “We know exactly what we're doing.” Nice work.Michael: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Corey. Yeah, and there's quite a history with Sysdig in the open-source community. So, one of our co-founders, Loris Degioanni, was one of the creators of Wireshark, which some of your listeners may be familiar with.So, Wireshark was a great network traffic inspection and observability tool. It certainly could be used by, you know, just engineers, but also security practitioners. So, I actually used it quite a bit in my days when I would do pen tests. So, a lot of that design philosophy carried over to the Sysdig open source. So, you're absolutely correct.Sysdig open source is all about gathering that sys-call data on what is happening at that low level. But it's just one piece of the puzzle, exactly as you described. The other big piece of open-source that Sysdig does provide is Falco, which is kind of a threat detection and response engine that can act on all of those signals to tell you, well, what is actually happening is this potentially a malicious event? Is somebody trying to compromise the container runtime? Are they trying to launch a suspicious process? So that those pieces are there under the hood, right, and then Sysdig Secure is, kind of, the larger platform of capabilities that provide a lot of the workflow, nice visualizations, all those things you kind of need to operate at scale when you're supporting your systems and security.Corey: One thing that I do find somewhat interesting is there's always an evolution as companies wind up stumbling through the product lifecycle, where originally it starts off as we have an idea around one specific thing. And that's great. And for you folks, it feels like it was security. Then it started changing a little bit, where okay, now we're going to start doing different things. And I am very happy with the fact right now that when I look at your site, you have two offerings and not two dozen, like a number of other companies tend to. You do Sysdig Secure, which is around the security side of the world, and Sysdig Monitor, which is around the observability side of the world. How did that come to be?Michael: Yeah, it's a really good point, right, and it's kind of in the vendor space [laugh], there's also, like, chasing the acronyms. And [audio break 00:26:41] full disclosure, we are guilty of that at times, right, because sometimes practitioners and buyers seek those things. So, you have to kind of say, yeah, we checked that box for CSPM or CWPP. But yeah, it's kind of talking more generally to organizations and how they operate their businesses, like, that's more well-known constructs, right? I need to monitor this thing or I need to get some security. So, lumping into those buckets helps that way, right, and then you turn on those capabilities you need to support your environment, right?Because you might not be going full-bore into a containerized environment, and maybe you're focusing specifically on the runtime pieces and you're going to, kind of, circle back on security testing in your build pipeline. So, you're only going to use some of those features at the moment. So, it is kind of that platform approach to addressing that problem.Corey: Oh, I would agree. I think that one of the challenges I still have around the observability space—which let's remind people, is hipster monitoring; I don't care what other people say. That's what it is—is that it is depressingly tied to a bunch of other things. To this day, the only place to get a holistic view of everything in your AWS account in every region is the bill. That somehow has become an observability tool. And that's ridiculous.On the other side of it, I have had several engagements that inadvertently went from, “We're going to help optimize your cost,” to, “Yay. We found security incidents.” I don't love a lot of these crossover episodes we wind up seeing, but it is the nature of reality where security, observability, and yes, costs all seem to tie together to some sort of unholy triumvirate. So, I guess the big question is when does Sysdig launch a cost product?Michael: Well, we do have one [laugh], specifically for—Corey: [laugh]. Oh, events once again outpace me.Michael: [laugh]. But yeah, I mean, you touched on this a few times in our discussion today, right? There's heavy intersections, right, and the telemetry you need to gather, right, or the log data you need to gather to inform monitoring use cases or security use cases, a lot of the times that telemetry is the same set of data, it's just you're using it for different purposes. So, we actually see this quite commonly where Sysdig customers might pursue, Monitor or Secure, and then they actually find that there's a lot of value-add to look at the other pieces.And it goes both ways, right? They might start with the security use cases and then they find, well, we've over-allocated on our container environments and we're over-provisioning in Kubernetes resources, so all right, that's cool. We can actually reduce costs that could help create more funding to secure more hosts or more workloads in an environment, right? So it's, kind of, show me the things I'm doing wrong on this side of the equation, whether that's general IT security problems and then benefit the other. And yeah, typically we find that because things are so complex, yeah, you're over-permissioning you're over-allocating, it's just very common, rights? Kubernetes, as amazing as it can be or is, it's really difficult to operate that in practice, right? Things can go off the rails very, very quickly.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking time to speak about how you see the industry and the world. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?Michael: Yes, thanks, Corey. It's really been great to be here and talk with you about these topics. So, for me personally, you know, I try to visit LinkedIn pretty regularly. Probably not daily but, you know, at least once a week, so please, by all means, if you ever have questions, do contact me. I love talking about this stuff.But then also on Sysdig, sysdig.com, I do author content on there. I speak regularly in all types of event formats. So yeah, you'll find me out there. I have a pretty unique last name. And yeah, that's kind of it. That's the, I'd say the main sources for me at the moment. Don't fall for the other Isbitski; that's actually my brother, who does work for AWS.Corey: [laugh]. That's okay. There's no accounting for family, sometimes.Michael: [laugh].Corey: I kid, I kid. Okay, great company. Great work. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.Michael: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Mike Isbitski, Director of Cybersecurity Strategy at Sysdig. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn and this has been a promoted guest episode brought to us by our friends at Sysdig. 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 an angry, insulting comment from your place, which is no doubt expensive, opaque, and insecure, hitting all three points of that triumvirate.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.

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

PHIL Hello and welcome to episode 0391 of Five in the Eye, Colourful Radio's weekly news review show. This is Phil Woodford in London. I hope you and yours had a great Christmas and are looking forward to the new year celebrations. Michael and I thought this would be a great opportunity to look back at some of the more lighthearted stories that caught our eye during 2022. MICHAEL Yes, this is Michael Ohajuru joining Phil via Zoom from Liverpool and revealing that we've trawled through our back catalogue for stories that have sat in the number four or number five slot on the show. Many of them made us laugh and we hope they brought a smile to your face too! Let's reminisce together… ++++

"But Natalie," you say, "If Michael is back, why is this a My Friends & I Special and not just a normal episode? Is it because you weren't done being the main character?" First of all, ouch. Second of all, I will have you know it's because the next episode of My Ex & I is going to be our Episode 100, and we wanted a little time to plan something special. After all, Michael had only been out for a day when we recorded this.  "Out?" you ask, "Out from where? Prison? Did he finally get caught for egging cars?" Just play the episode, dear listener, and all will be explained. Special thanks to Paige for editing this episode. She's going to stay on as our editor now. Look at that! We're a three-person team now! This just goes to show that teamwork can persevere in the face of adversity. 

Today, we welcome Billy Keels back on the show to discuss how he went from living the corporate life to running his own business. We discuss his motivations, the mindset shift, the challenges, and finally, the rewards of his decision. Before becoming a real estate entrepreneur, KeePon Cashflow's founder Billy Keels worked in the corporate world. In fact, he was one of the best “corporate soldiers” you'd ever want to meet. Billy says that he was happy enough in his J.O.B., but something was missing. An emptiness and longing for a different life chewed on him, pulling him to what he knew he wanted to do more than anything else. Billy wanted to be an entrepreneur who brought two worlds together. So he took steps and kept on the path to his goals. Today, Billy is an international real estate entrepreneur, problem-solver, author, coach and mentor. He sees opportunities where others often don't in real estate. --- Episode Links: https://www.firstgencp.com/ https://www.firstgencp.com/paylesstax https://www.linkedin.com/in/billykeels/?originalSubdomain=es --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum, and today with me I have Billy Keels back on for another episode. For anyone who missed it Billy is an entrepreneur business owner ex former tech sales guy, and he's gonna be sharing with us today about how he started his business, why he started his business, and really the mindset shift around going from employee to entrepreneur. So let's get into it. Billy Keels, welcome back for round two, man. How are you? It's so good to see you. Billy: Michael, what's up man? I, um, super excited to be back. This is nice.   Michael: I'm super excited to have you here. So for those listeners that did not catch our first episode together, give us the quick and dirty who you are, where you come from, and what is it you're doing in real estate.   Billy: Very cool. But you know what? You know what I have to do first man, because you're very kind to welcome me back and I just wanna say everybody, by the way, if you haven't already, Leave Michael a nice, wonderful, honest written review as well as rating. It helps to… Michael: Oh my gosh…   Billy: Bring guests to you, which is phenomenal. No, I mean seriously. I mean.... The energy, you all bring the organization, you bring the structure. Uh, and also I know a lot of the things that you are doing are making positive impact cause you're helping to educate people and also inspiring them to take action. So it's the least I could do also as a fellow podcaster, um, to go out. Uh, and, and, and ask of that. So, um, but yeah, Billy Keels, I'm still the, the same guy from the Midwest, uh, of, uh, of Ohio, who has spent the last 26 years of his life, uh, in corporate up until recently, uh, no longer, uh, in the corporate world. I've also been spending the last 21 years, uh, living in Europe. I know Michael, that's close to your heart as well? Michael: Very much so. Billy: And specifically, yeah, specifically between, uh, France. Italy and most recently Spain. I am someone who really, really had a great corporate experience. I really enjoyed it. It was fantastic. Some personal things happened in life that helped give me some clarity that was time to do some other things. Uh, and now I am very, very fortunate to be living, uh, you know, I'm living my, my best life and, uh, was able to make my nine to five optional and doing that in a point in time where I'm still in my forties and, uh, living between, uh, the US and, and Europe and that was part of my life goal. Uh, very, very fortunate and super excited to be back here and share another conversation with you, man. Michael: Oh my God, I love it, I love it. Billy, before we jump into it, I'm just curious, do you remember the best compliment you've ever received? Just outta curiosity. Billy: The best compliment. So you've kind of putting me, putting me on the spot, man. Um, I don't know. I think that's when you have to ask my parents. I don't know because they're , you know? I don't know. I just, I don't know. I, I, I can't remember. But usually it's, it's probably something that's not related to me, but something that I would've learned from my parents. More than likely. Um, but I don't remember specifically why, Why do you ask? Michael: I love it. I'm just curious, man. I'm curious to know if people remember, like human psychology, if people remember the compliments more, or do they remember the insults more? Billy: I spent 26 years of my life, uh, 20, one of the 26 years in sales and sales leadership roles. So the, the bad stuff I've learned to just kind of let it go. , the good stuff. I try to. Um, but if it, like, one of, part of the process that's happened with me is I try not to internalize too much of this stuff because then I kind of keep that and there's a tendency to say, Well, I've heard this so many times, therefore I am, um, I always try to work and be in the best version of myself, so even if I get a compliment, it's kinda like cool. I appreciate that. I probably learned that from my mom, from my dad. It's something I've seen from my brothers or something that my, my wife is helping me to be better in. Michael: I love that man, I love that. Can we turn back the clock a little bit, Billy, and talk about. Your corporate career, because I think that you have a, a similar story to a lot of folks, especially listening, have an amazing corporate job, are killing it in whatever it is they're doing. Um, and they can see themselves doing that maybe forever you had kind of a life change. I'm just curious, like why did you decide to go into business for yourself? Billy: So, you know what, Michael, this is actually super, um, such a wonderful question and I can tell you, I think the last time I told you that there was something that happened to me when my, um, it didn't actually happen to me. It happened for me when my son turned three, I missed his birthday right and I, because I chose to go to a business meeting that was in Germany because I was chasing the corporate dream. I was, you know, that was the thing that I was supposed to do, I was a really young father in that day. It was, I felt an incongruency in my, like, in my being right. I was, I woke my wife and son up to, you know, wake them up and our one year old just to give a hug to our three year old and kiss and then I was out the door. So that was the thing that made me realize like, hey, look, I've gotta kind of take action. I really like my, my corporate career, but I got lost somewhere along the way and my priorities got outta whack and so that helped me to take, start taking action, stop reading a lot of books. Cause I'd been reading books for probably three or four years, right? I knew all the numbers, all the theory, all the stuff, but I didn't take any action and I'm very, very proud to say that I've just celebrated a decade later, right? A decade later, I was able to accomplish the goal, which was being able to make my nine to five optional and even though I went in probably for the last three years and I didn't actually financially need to, I chose to go because, um, the life balance that I had was much better than it had been the previous years. Um, I was still enjoying the things that I was doing in my role. I was really well recognized. I was, you know, making way more money than I thought I ever should be, Uh, making and a decade later, like I literally just came back from, uh, Ohio, uh, where I was, uh, over visiting some friends, got to go to a, a sporting event, which was fantastic. Saw family members and then was able to be back here. Uh, for my son's 13th birthday. So a decade later, I recognized that the action that I took for a decade while I was working my day job, having this side hustle, like it really, it's paid off and it hasn't been perfect. Michael, Um, not even close to perfect, but the fact of the matter is I got outta my own head. I started taking action. I started seeing results, and then I started multiplying on that action and. Even though I left the corporate, because something also non-financial, and I think we talked about this last time, happened with my dad, and it helped me to realize like, okay, I really like what I'm doing, but there's some other things that I can do now less than a year later and my son's, you know, 10 year, 10 years later, his 13th birthday, I'm at a point where I'm like, wow, you know, all these things that I dreamt and wrote about on my dream board. They actually came to fruition. Um, not perfectly, like I said, but you know, being able to be in this point now is, I, I, you know, I'm glad that I started taking the action and I'm glad that I started that side hustle and I know that I worked through a lot of, you know, a lot of crazy hours during some of that time, but it wasn't all for nothing. Michael: Yeah. That's amazing, man. Well, first off, congratulations. That is super, super exciting to hear and I'm sure your family is super thankful as well. Let's talk about like, I think so many folks get it in their head that they can't have a side hustle, or they can't go build a business of their own either because they don't feel creative enough, they don't feel inspired enough, they don't feel called to do something, or they just feel like they don't have enough time. So talk to us about the mindset around. I'm working my nine to five scraping by or doing really well, not even scraping by just doing really well, but I'm exhausted at the end of the day. How does someone like that even think about doing something else? Billy: Yeah, so, and you know, I, I guess I kind of put it in a, there's a couple different things inside of me. I kind of always knew that I wanted to do something else as well, because I think one of the best things about working in a corporate role is in specifically like I was in the IT sector, right and not only in it, I was in software. So this is like super cutting edge, massive profits, and so it was great place to be every single day and so there are so many, like I realize like for a while, I just wanted to continue to work and be an employee and, and things were great and I was really, really fortunate because I had great salary. Um, you know, I was given opportunities to learn to grow leadership opportunities, great training and so for that period of my life that I didn't really wanna do anything. This was like, this was the most amazing thing ever. But then also as I started getting into the other phases of my life, I realized like, hey, listen, there are other things that are really important to me. I want to be able to be here or be there, or just be nowhere when I want to do it and not have to worry about somebody else telling me when and so when those things started happening for me once again, I started realizing like, okay, well, number one, the things that, because I didn't grow up with money at all, but I got into a point where I actually was not just saving money, but investing money, but then I realized that it was outside of my control. Like the stock market couldn't control that, but that was the only thing that I'd been taught to do, which was buy low, sell high, not really a winning strategy, and I didn't take enough time to get educated on that. That happened in 2000 when the DOT combo will happen, and the same thing happened again in 2008 I lost 33% of my portfolio, so I knew that even though I was in a really great c. Opportunity and create corporate experience inside of me. I needed something else. I wanted something else. I just didn't know what it was and so it wasn't until I came across that little purple book that so many people have read that that started turning like the idea on in my mind. But even with that, my goal, like I said, it took me like three and a half, four years to go from theory to practice and it took me missing my third, my son's third birthday to actually start to take that action and so, once I started, uh, you know, being able to, to take that action, I realized like, hey, listen, as long as I continue to give the outputs, cause I was in sales and sales leadership, like what are the outcomes that are expected In my role, I always performed at a high level. Like I was in the top talent program. I was going to Hawaii every other couple years for, you know, overachievement against quotas and stuff like that. So I felt like it was always important to be able to give everything that I gave during my corporate time because that was also providing me the income to be able to do the investments in the other stuff, which is actually creating my runway for my own life, like the one that I was building for my family. So it was finding that balance between being, a really good sometimes great. Uh, corporate employee, I think even, well, I don't think for on my, for a while on my, um, on my LinkedIn it said, hey, you know, happy corporate employee like that was my moniker. So that, that was like the thing and people were like, You really a happy corporate employee? Like yeah, I mean it's treated me really, really well. Yeah. Um, but it was something more that was inside of me that said, hey listen, it's time to do something else and I was afraid for a really long time because I was a high paid executive who was visible and people, you can't be doing anything else, man. You like, you need to be client facing all the time. You make a lot of money, you're doing this, you're doing that. But I knew that it was, um, it was something that I, I really wanted to do and there was sacrifice that also went on, right? Cuz you, you, you're in that type of role, you're expected to be on. Almost 24 hours a day. So I was waking up really, really early in the morning and I was staying up really, really late at night and fortunately both my, my, my wife and my kids understood that, um, once I got back on track, um, and, and it was about being able to find that balance. So I know it's maybe a little bit of a, kind of a longwinded answer, but I think it was about, you know, recognizing how fortunate I was in the corporate role that I was in and I did like it. Uh, I liked it a lot and at the same time, at a certain point I knew that I wanted something more. I knew that I wanted. The control. Initially it was of the financial, uh, outcomes of my life and what I realized it was, I really wanted to have more control over my time and it manifests itself just a couple days ago, which was a decade later, which was me being able to fly to my hometown, stay there for a week, hang out, and then be back for my son's 13th birthday. So, um, yeah, so that's. Hopefully that answers your question. Michael: Freaking amazing, man. So let's talk about like the next obvious question because you were an executive in it, tech sales. So what did you end up doing? Like what kind of business did you start?   Billy: Yeah, so, um, so the thing that I started to understand was it was a thing that came across. It was really, this is kind of dumb luck. It happened, it just really happened that I read that low purple book. The proof of concept was really simple. He was like, okay. I was working in this intangible world selling software. You can't touch it. You pay multimillions for it and then there was, hey, you pay a couple hundred thousand, then a couple million, and you get this actual, physical, tangible thing that you can touch. People wanna sleep in it, so they'll pay you for it. So that's the revenue line. By the way you've gotta make sure that this place stays in order. So you've got some operating expenses, you know you gotta pay your insurance taxes, maintenance and operations, maintenance, repairs, things like that. Then afterwards you get to this line, which is net operating. Well cool and if you have some debt service or mortgage, you pay that mortgage and everything else you get to keep. I was like tangible, simple business model and there's a need for it. So I went and started investing in real estate and I think we talked about it last time, but here based in Barcelona, Spain, but investing always back in the United States, exclusively in the US. So I started with the, with the smaller multi-family and then I bought a mobile home park and then I opened my mind to thinking about new things and I was like, okay, cool. Once I understood that, I get the education, start to build a network around people and then start to continue to take action on this imperfect information I started seeing my asset base grow and those assets, you know, the smaller multi-family, the mobile home park, the ATM machines, and then I started investing with other people because that made a lot of sense for me because I was a high paid executive. So I started realizing like, this is really, really cool, but it's taken a lot of time. I need to do something where I can actually leverage the e efforts and expertise of other people and I was somebody who was a credit investor. I figured that out later and so then I started giving, or not giving, but investing my capital with other people and things like the ATM machines and things like, um, larger multi-family buildings and some development projects in the hospitality space and then I kept having this one specific problem, which was, I was investing in all of these, and I don't wanna get too technical, but passive streams of income, like IRS definition of passive income and I kept still paying 40 plus percent in income tax, and I was like, this doesn't work. So then I started realizing that I needed to start asking different questions. I got into a specific area within the energy space, and that energy space helped me do a couple things, which was continue to build my asset base. That was generating income. This time it was active income, but it was also helping me out as a high paid executive. It was really helping me on my income tax because there were some specific, um, tax code rules related to energy production that helped me not just generate, you know, income moving forward, but it also helped me keep more of my income through income taxes and income tax deductions. So it was looking at all of these different things. At a certain point when I left my corporate career, I thought, I really like this building the asset base. I like continuing to do it and I'd build a lot of relationships and the one thing that really made the biggest impact on me as a high paid executive was the, the thing that was helping on the generating active income and, and keeping more of my active income. So today I really focus, uh, my company in that area through syndicating capital with accredited investors, uh, for those people that are very similar to the way that I was when I was in my corporate role. Uh, and that's, my business has continued to evolve, uh, today. So hopefully that answers the question as well. Michael: I love it, I love it. And Billy, can you give us, I mean, because you're in the energy sector and if anyone's been paying attention to the news or the world or living not under a rock, the energy sector has gone a little bit haywire over the last couple months, years. So can you walk us through like, what has your business gone through over the last couple years with Covid and the war in Ukraine and this sort of thing? Billy: Yeah, man. So this is, so this is really, really interesting, right and one of the things that I appreciate us as, uh, as investors in real assets, right, is number one, it's just, and whether we start in real estate or we start in something else that's tangible, it, it starts to open up our mind to way of thinking, right? I remember when I was just doing stocks, I just thought about stocks. But then when I started investing in real estate, it was like real estate. Oh my gosh, this is simple. this makes sense and okay and yeah, and then it opened my mind to other things and so I was then open to, uh, doing other things and it's very similar, right? If I think about now what I'm understanding about energy, like energy has always been super important, right? If you think about it at a very high level, every single output that we have, it has two component. The first component is labor and the other is energy and I thought, wow, okay, well yeah, that kind of makes sense and as I start realizing that, and then I started saying because of some of the incentives that are related to energy and energy production specifically, it made it a place that I really wanted to learn more about right and, and it, I've now started learning about a lot of different types of energy. But to your point, because energy is everything and everything is energy regardless of what's happening at, um, at your house down the street or even across the world. There's always something that is going to impact energy and the need for more energy, and so, It's very similar to what I started thinking about from a, um, basic needs perspective. When you need a place to live or you know, you need or want a place to live, the proof of concept already exists and so being able to explain the need for energy, to your point, I don't, you don't, I don't really need to explain it. It's just a matter of how is the energy being produced. That's where more of the, the explanations come. Um, and because of that, because it's something that most of us understand or understand the need for um, that part has made it relatively, uh, easy to have conversations about. Of course, there's always, um, very specific conversations or if I'm speaking to somebody who's in, uh, for instance the energy or oil and gas space, and they may be an expert, I always learn stuff, uh, as well. So, um, so just recognizing all the different things that have happened, uh, in the energy space and also having now a real focus on it. It's something that I've seen my business expand exponentially. Like what do I mean by that? So remember I was, uh, a high pay professional. I was, you know, very visible and at the same time I was, you know, syndicating capital, bringing people together around common goals and common dreams and just to kind of give you an idea from the first year, more or less that I was doing this, or a little bit year and a bit, Um, while I was still working my corporate role, since I've left my corporate role and have now done focus just specifically on helping accredited investors that are looking for these, uh, types of investment opportunities that generate returns and also help with income tax problems, um, our business has multiplied by seven right and so what that means to me is one, I have more of a focus now. Um, I'm understanding the accredited investor base that we are serving because also it helps that I am one of those people. I understand, uh, what it's like to go every single day, all day from early morning to late night and recognize that you're doing a hundred percent of the work, right? I was doing a hundred percent of the work, and many times I would bring home, you know, 50, 55% of the work at a certain point, I didn't like that, especially because I was open to learning about new investment opportunities because the real estate that helped open my mind is now continued to keep my mind wide open and so, now being able to look at new opportunities, evaluate those new opportunities, understanding the teams behind those opportunities, it's just, it's one of the things that's now an extension, uh, of where my business is and how we're serving, uh, those accredit investors and why and the energy spaces is one that's, I think, gonna be around for quite a while, kind of like real estate. Michael: That's great, man. I'm curious, Billy, for yourself, I mean, you're clearly a super bright individual. You're very open, you're very curious for the person that is just getting involved in the investment space or maybe in the real estate space that's new for them. They're high paid professional, they don't understand that world. They don't have maybe the same curiosity that you do. I mean, what's the mindset shift around hey, I know stocks and bonds. This is what I've always done and it's worked for me. Why should I bother with this alternative asset class this, this, something different? Bolly: Yeah. So I'm gonna probably, um, cheat a little bit here because we're asking the question and you are asking the question of me and the person that's listening that had that question. Here's the good part, You're already here listening, so you know that something inside of you knows that something's wrong, knows that there's something more that's out there. So what I would suggest is that you've already taken the first step, right? You're already here listening to Michael. You're learning from the guests that are here. So, you know, continue to go down that path. The curiosity's already there because you're already here, right? Yeah. Um, and the, and the reality find out, listen, um, you know, talked about it before. I mean, you have an opportunity to even leave an honest review and in your review, say, hey look, I would really like to have this question answered. I guess what, somebody's probably gonna respond to you and it's about being able to take the steps that you feel comfortable with, um, as an investor. The curiosity's already there. You're already here you heard the question asked, so give, you know, I would say I would give. The ability to continue down this track. Listen to more of the podcast. Start to read about the things that you believe will help to, um, move you forward, move you closer to whatever your, your goal is, um, because everyone has a, you know, have as an investing goal and allow yourself to get educated, move towards the things that you really want to be able to do and ultimately that's gonna help you. So, um, I only say that because I know that they're listening. If they're here, they're listening to the question that you ask, and they just need to give themselves the, uh, ability to keep going down that path. Michael: I love it, I love it. I'm curious, Billy, for most of the clients that you work with, the credit investors you work with, are you having to sell them on this idea of, of your business model and what it is that you're doing or are they already here coming to you saying, hey, I've already done the research. I know who you are, I know what the asset is, like, let me give you money and, and or throwing money at you. What does that look like Billy: Well, so I'm, I'm pretty particular, right? Like, I don't, um, if our relationship started that way, it wouldn't be a relationship that would last very long and, and what I mean by that is, is yeah. What I mean by that is if someone just wants to throw money, uh, at you, I don't want a transactional relationship right I want to build a long lasting relationship. It, that may be the person's intention. Hey, look, I, I eventually want to invest with you, but the type business culture that we're building is we're building an investor family. And so in the same way that we want to get to know one another, you know, I'm very intentional. Hey, let's you know, let's invest 20 minutes in getting to know one another. At least have a 20 minute conversation, 30 minute conversation, understand a bit more about your goals, your dreams, priorities, and also understand about me and my business, what are our business goals and priorities because if there's an alignment, then it makes it really easy for us to take the next step and say, okay, well listen, you can, I know you have an investment, uh, opportunity. You've probably seen something about me somewhere online, or you've listened to this wonderful podcast and you're thinking, okay, well listen. I think because we sound pretty similarly aligned, so what's the harm in investing 30 minutes to get to know one another, right? I'm doing that multiple, multiple, multiple times a day. Um, and so from there that, that's the first part is to, to be able to, to start the relationship on the right foot. Getting to know one another, getting to, to like one um, you know, one another, you like one another, eventually you trust one another. But also, like, one of the things, and this is probably comes from, you know, the 26 years of, of working in, um, you know, really a relationship based type of roles in the last 21 years in, you know, high value type of, of selling, um, and relationship building.   It's really about like, I wanna always help and I want our company to always help those accredited investors that we're serving to make an informed.  because what we do, like the solution that we offer, it's the solution. Like it does what it does. So you have to be comfortable, you have to be informed, you have to ask all of the questions that you feel uncomfortable asking, and my team and I have to be able to give you the information or the data in the way that makes the most sense to you, so that you ultimately can make an informed decision. Because the worst thing that can happen is you look at something, you're like, Wow, this looks absolutely awesome. The numbers are fantastic. You don't spend time getting to know the person or the company that you are going to invest with. You don't know if you're aligned and you're making a decision just based on some numbers that you saw and when as soon as things don't go according to plan and you haven't done the prep work on the front. That's when things get really, really wild and out of, out of control. Like at least that's what I've seen at least in the last 21 years of my experience and so I do have a lot of focus on, you know, being aligned up front, being able to get to know one another, and then also being able to help someone make an informed decision and then after that, you know, if they're informed decision things go. Hey, listen, at least they were informed, they knew about the risks and you know, we will also wanna protect on the downside and, and talk about risks, because that's something that's also very, very important to helping someone make an informed decision. So, um, I don't know if that's a little bit long winded, but hopefully that answers the question. Michael: No, it's, that's great, man. I mean, as you were saying that, I had this, this question you were saying, you know, we're not transactional. We wanna develop this relationship and in my head, I'm, I'm thinking, why, why, why, right? Because from a, from a growth standpoint, from a revenue standpoint, Yeah. I mean, people could look at, at you and say, well, Billy, you're doing it wrong. You're taking too much time with this person. You're spending too much time there. But I think you've explained the why so eloquently and it is because you're protecting the downside when something, if something, probably when something goes side based when something happens, you've got, you've got that foundational relationship to look back on and say, Hey, this, you know, we trust each other. There's not a finger pointing game going on, I would imagine. Billy: Yeah. Well, that's part of it and then also too, you know, I guess this goes back to the company, is that I've worked, been fortunate enough to work for, a lot of this is about business models. It's like I was talking about earlier, Well, let me, let me put it this way, maybe so, I like food. My kids like food and there are things that, like my son, when he's given the opportunity to go somewhere, well, he chooses to go to McDonald's, right and so that's where he likes to go and he likes to eat McDonald's.  Um, I don't so much, but, um, the, well, sometimes when you used to a lot when I was smart, younger, and then there's other places… Michael: There Mc Flurry outta control, right? Billy: All right, I'll go agnostic, I'll go agnostic. Some people like fast food. I probably should have done it that way. Some people like fast food, right? Um, and there was a point in my life where I like fast food as well. I'll change it up a little bit. Um, there's also another point in my life where I like to be able to sit down and I wanted to have more of a, you know, you wanna sit in the booth and you wanna talk and you, um, you just wanna spend a little bit more time and then there's also a.  in my life where I like to take my wife to. Very nice. Sometimes one, two or three Michelin star restaurants, right? The thing is, each one of those business models work. They can all be profitable. But the thing is the business models are very, very different. Do you like fast food? Do you like slow dining or do you like Michelin restaurants? All of them are profitable and it coming back to… Michael: It's got tingles, man, that's such a… Billy: But it's, but, but it's coming back to the question that you ask. , our business is not a high volume business, right. I would rather invest the time to build a deep, valuable relationship and that also means that the, the, the, the investor base that, that my company is serving, I is the investor base that we've decided to do is a, is an accredited investor, is typically a busy high pay professional. That once they have more control over their time and I recognize that for some people that's gonna be a challenge, but it's also for the person that's willing to invest the time. I know that that person has a much higher probability of getting to the goals that they're, that they're really wanting because they're gonna invest that time outside of the stuff that they're, that's keeping them busy and they're gonna be investing the time on the things that's gonna get them closer to their life priorities. That's our business model. There are other models that pretend that will prefer to go to a high number of, right? It's, but there's no wrong business model. That's just the one that I think works the best for me because I'm kind of that person today. Uh, that's the person that I understand the most. Michael: Yeah, man, I love that I love that so much and, and your analogy, the restaurant, different service types just was like, loved it… Billy: Use it whenever you want. Michael: Yes, Yes. I'm gonna, It's, you know, tm Billy Keels. Um, this has been so much fun as always. For everyone who's stung, who stuck with us this far, and there's like on the edge of their seats, what is the name of your company if they're like, I have to invest with this guy. Billy: Yeah, it's first Generation Capital Partners that you can find it at firstgencp.com and actually for people who are the credit investor, having that challenge around, um, being able to find things that where you can find investment opportunities that are gonna get you closer to your life goals, generate income for you, as well as provide tax benefits earned income side of things. We have a guide for you. You can go to firstgencp.com/payless tax. Um, that's a probably the best way to find out exactly, you know, what we're doing. Have a nice little white paper there and if it makes sense for you to continue to move forward, love to be able to get on the phone call and talk. Uh, have a conversation with you, Michael the other thing is, and this is the kind of, people can find out more about me as well, but they should go. Um, the going Long podcast, episode 2 21, where you absolutely crushed it . So going long, podcast episode 2 21 with your buddy Michael. Uh, and then from there, I, I think I'm the only Billy Keels in Barcelona, Spain. So if you wanna look me up on LinkedIn, you can go there. Uh, like I said, Billy Keels, Barcelona, Spain, just let me know that you heard Michael and I, uh, having a conversation here and it's gonna help us to, uh, keep our conversation going. So, uh, with that, I, you know, I love being able to be back here. I, I feel very, very thankful, grateful, uh, for the, uh, for the ability to be back here and share a little bit more of my story. Uh, Michael team really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Michael: Oh no. The pleasure is ours, Billy. Thank you and we will definitely be in touch, man. I'm looking forward to doing this again soon. Billy: Thank you. Michael: Take care. All right, everyone. that was our episode. A big thank you to Billy for coming on again, opening his vest a little bit, showing his cards, being a little bit vulnerable, and sharing some of his mindset and what was going on in his life when he made some of those massive transitions. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, we'd love to hear from you with a rating or review wherever it is to get your podcast, and we look forward to seeing you on the. Happy investing…

Aaron Chapman is a veteran in the finance industry with 25 years of experience helping clients better understand, source, and finance cash-flow positive investment properties. He advises over 100 clients a month in the acquisition and financing of their investment properties and primary residences. Aaron is ranked in the top 1% of mortgage loan processors in the country, in an industry of over 300,000 licensed loan originators, closing in excess of 100 transactions per month. In today's episode Aaron gives us his take on the current interest rate and inflationary environment, where he sees things going, and his thoughts on what investors should be doing in a time like this. Episode link: https://www.aaronbchapman.com/ https://apps.apple.com/uy/app/qjo-investment-tool/id1533823468 --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor Podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the remote real estate investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Aaron Chapman, who's a lender, investor, bearded man and entrepreneur as well as an author and he's going to be talking to us about inflation and using long term debt as your battle ax against it. So let's get into it.   Aaron Chapman, what's going on, man? Thanks for taking the time to come hang out with me. I appreciate it.   Aaron: What's happening brother thanks for the invite. I think I kind of pushed my way in a little bit but I just   Michael: Invite, forced invite.   Aaron: Let's put that way.   Michael: Ya, no happy to happy to and it's been a minute since since we saw each other over think Realty in Tampa. How you bee?   Aaron: Been very good man. Think Realty in Tampa seems like so long ago, because I've been to Tampa two times since then. Miami a couple of times. Literally, I don't get to see very much of anything. But seats 3d of American Airlines is what it seems like.   Michael: And that's pretty close up to the front of that first class?   Aaron: It's always first it's what I've discovered in my career, it used to be you know, you got to you got to hang on to your capital is really kind of dumb to spend money unnecessarily. But then I got to thinking. So like I said first a few times, and I sat next to some amazing people. So it's not about the seat. It's about the person next to you. And more often than not, it's often enough, let's put that I sat next to some people, just some amazing conversations that end up doing business with some people when they didn't want to talk to me. And then it wasn't long, they were talking to me. And then they're giving me pointers, one guy who was like one of the executives over at the Business Journal. And I was finally DC next year, he's telling me all the cool places to go in DC. And now I've seen him pop up online. And I'll check in with him to see what's going on just a really cool guy that I recognized him by couldn't place who he was, until I got in talking. And then I found figured out who he was. So it's just, that's the kind of person that I ended up sitting with. And it's more the conversation than anything.   Michael: What a different way of thinking about things like so many people see the price of the ticket. They're like, Oh, I don't want to pay that or like the experience. But you're you're approaching with a whole different lens. I love it, man.   Aaron: Well, it's kind of how I approach going out for an expensive dinner paying a big tip, things like that. It's like, we know what's happening with the dollar right? It's not doing a whole lot sitting in our bank account. And believe me, I agree with holding on to cash, I believe I agree with investing wisely. But I also agree with taking that capital and putting it someplace where you're building relationships and building up somebody else. And so there's times when somebody does a great job, man throwing $100 tip on a on $100 Dinner is not an uncommon thing in my world. And that's not me beating my chest. It's that person earned it and what's that 100 bucks going to do in my world? My wife will ---- it away on somebody Amazon, right? So it's really not going to, it's not going to enhance our lives that much. But you'd be amazed at what it does to that person. And you walk back in there to that place you think that person forgot you? Well, they definitely don't forget me with the braids.   Michael: I was gonna say yeah, with a look like that. Yeah,   Aaron: Yeah, that's remembered. But then they remember that. And then it's there's this, I talked about the economy of gratitude a lot, and that autonomy kicks in. And they will do more and go above and beyond. Of course, now you're kind of stuck to $100   Michael: That's the minimum, yeah, the bar has been set.   Aaron: So you got to be careful of how often you do go back or when you go back, you'd be amazed at the interaction you have with this person. It's a life changing experience. Because our like our lives are changed by the people that we interact with. And not necessarily what what we what we grow in it or what we amass in it is the relationships that we have.   Michael: I love it. I love it. Let's give people the quick and dirty of who you are and where you come from and what is it you're doing in real estate and then we'll jump into kind of the meat what I wanted to cover today.   Aaron: Very cool. So the quick and dirty is not so quick and but it's kind of dirty. So the interesting thing I was sitting in an event happen to be in Tampa, we were just talking about Tampa. This was years ago and one of the main speakers there talked about the lending industry that being a loan officer and he said the reason people become a loan officers because they can't get a job doing anything else. And it rang really, really true to me because that was my story. You go back to you know, I grew up on a cattle ranch in high school and from there to work in the oil fields in Wyoming drove truck ran heavy equipment, found myself in the mines in northern New Mexico in the late 90s. And they started to shut down the project and so I got laid off and I thought no big deal. I'll find a job easy and I had a wife and kid back in Arizona and I was up in northern New Mexico I go back and forth, went back and I couldn't find a job for nothing. I tried like crazy everything I applied for I got this this statement of being overqualified. I kept getting turned down.   And things were getting dire at that point, I needed to make something happen. And as I left to go apply for a $10 an hour truck driving job to me, it was like the worst thing I could possibly do, but it was gonna put, bring money so I can at least feed my family. My wife as I left gave me a coupon for free diapers. So I drove over to this place, I applied the general manager turned me down again said I was overqualified. So I'm 23 years old, I feel broken, and walking down to my truck up coming from the type one of those job site type trailers go down the stairs. Get on my truck, said a quick prayer. I was really just I was trying to hold back the tears started up my truck and I started pointing myself to this grocery store. Well, as I'm headed to the grocery store, my gas light comes on in my truck. I had never ran that thing long enough to find out how long ago on a gas light. So I quickly found a store that had a groat a gas station on the corner. I pulled up that pump, got my debit card out, I said a quick prayer, prayer, I swiped it and I got declined.   So I rifle through my truck looking for a lost dollar, found a few coins, I closed it lock the door, I started walking that grocery store pocket parking lot. And as I'm looking around, you know, I would find something on the ground look, make sure nobody's looking, reach out quickly pick it up, put in my pocket. This went on for what seemed like a couple hours. And then I got enough change that I thought would give me a couple gallons of gas. Luckily, it was 97 were Yeah, 1997 I think gallon, a gallon, a gallon gas, like 89 cents. So I went and exchanged my change, which was a couple hours of my life for two gallons of gas, went into the grocery store with my coupon, found those diapers hurried up and went to the checkout counter. I don't know if you've ever been this position, but nothing feels worse to, in my opinion, to have one item and your coupon for that one item. Right. And now it was just another just another crappy feeling to the day. So I got my stuff put in the bag, and I'm screaming either as fast as I can. And somebody recognized me.   He called me over and I didn't want to talk to anybody. But he asked me how things were. And I told him what I just told you. He goes, Let's go to dinner. I'm like, Dude, I can't afford dinner. And I hated saying that. He was no, no, no, I got a gift certificate to Red Lobster. I'll take you your wife out. So we went to Red Lobster a couple of nights later. And that's where he told me about the mortgage industry. He explained to me what happened in it? And I'm like, Dude, how can I do this? I know nothing about that. I think there's numbers involved, and I cheated my butt off to get that C in high school. If it wasn't for the fact that could pick a lock, I would not have graduated.   So I went in, I cut a foot off of my hair, I shaved. My mom bought me some business likes clothes, and I wouldn't do an interview. And they started me as a telemarketer in 1997. So that's how I got going. So going from a telemarketer to working actually some of my own leads to building this up and going through the crash and all kinds of stuff. And there's a bunch of stories in there. To now, you know, I was just called by an outfit by modex. And they recognize me I think is the number six guy in the United States. For transactions closed. I was number one guy in Arizona, I didn't even realize that I didn't really pay attention to the statistics, there's 1.6 million people in United States that do what I do. And from what I can tell, I'm ranked number six for how many deals I closed last year. So it's kind of an interesting dynamic to consider that swing.   Michael: Yeah, I'll say, Well, you know, congratulations on how you've come clearly a long way. That's really exciting.   Aaron: Well, thank you. And there is campfire story after a campfire story of of the different things we'll probably talk about this in the series of stuff we talking about the beatings that a person takes to become successful. And you don't what's really interesting is people say, How do you get there? How do you how do you achieve success? Mike, I'll let you know when I do. Because you just don't feel like it all the time. It's a consistent grind. You're always trying to be ahead of the head of everybody else. And once you achieve something, it's way harder to keep it.   Michael: Yeah, I think people think it's like this just flat curve, you know, flat line once you've achieved something, but really, it's very sinusoidal. It's up and down and valleys and troughs. And you're like, man, some days suck. And some days are great, but the like, I think it's about the end destination right? Where you're trying to get to   Aaron: 100%. So I look at it like Everest, right? You get up there. And I don't know, if you've ever really paid attention. Maybe you've climbed the same for all I know, but how long a person sits on top of Everest, it's a matter of minutes, and they're getting back down because that sucker will kill you. You know, and so it's it's just like any other achievement, we get the second you sit back and you relax and put your feet up. It's gonna kill you. You need to keep moving, you got to get down, you got to get to the next Everest. And it can be debilitating to think that we're constantly hunting the next goal. The next goal, the next goal, instead of just finding the happiness, you know, and you our viewers know who Larry Yatch is he says, you know, success is a optimized daily experience consistently achievable, right, something to that effect there are and so and it's sustainable over time. Yeah. I gotta find that optimized daily experience. Here's what I got to do. I don't think I've achieved finding that yet.   Michael: I'm right there with you, man. We're in the hunt together.   Aaron: Yes. And we'll keep hunting and maybe we'll keep communicating about one of these days. You're like, Dude, I found it.   Michael: Yes. let me show you. So, let's shift gears here a little bit and talk about a topic that I think is on everyone's mind. And that's inflation. And you're working in the mortgage industry for a long time, you've seen a lot of ups and downs, sideways lifts, REITs give us a little bit of insight into why is inflation being talked about so much? And what do we as investors need to be cognizant of, and either using it or being abused by it.   Aaron: So inflation is definitely an interesting animal. And it's talked about a lot, everybody is talking about this constantly. And what I point a lot of people to just even understand inflation is go to a place called Shadowstats.com. When you go to shadow stats, you're gonna go to, and I always encourage everybody to get log into it get to pay for the 100 bucks for the year, whatever, you're gonna go over to alternate data, you're gonna scroll down to inflation, you're going to find this chart, and what this chart has, it's going to be going to show you from 19, from the early 1980s, up until now, and it's going to have two different lines, a blue line and a red line. And they're going to be, they're going to be diverging at some point, they're gonna stay together at one point, they're gonna go down to when they show inflation started work its way down, and then they start to kind of break apart. And what you're watching there is the federal funds rate itself, or not the federal funds rate, but the CPI that the Fed tends to track, and it's what they have changed the index to contain. Right?   So you're familiar with the Dow and the NYSC. And the and the NASDAQ, right? s&p, right, the s&p, none of them have the exact same value Correct. They're all different because they have things in them. Well, if you didn't get into, if you look at the the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, they will stack certain things in there that they can manipulate with monetary policy. And that's what they'll go off of. And you can see in this chart, that it's going to show that that that red line is skipping across the bottom right around their 2% Mark quite a bit, and then it spikes up to about eight and a half 9%, which is where we've been at recently. But if you look at the real rate of inflation, which is the shadow statline, it's going to be pushing up closer to 17. Why is that?   Well, because back in the 80s, they took everything into account, what is the person really literally spending money on to on their day to day life, and they're going to track it so they can see how much their life is changing year over year as far as their expenses. But then they wait a minute, it's getting out of hand, because what we do to pass the law for will increase their their benefits or their social security and the retirement benefits to the rate of inflation. Well, we need to keep this to 2%. Right. So we don't want to raise that really, really quick. That's where you start seeing this particular manipulation? Well, if we're looking at 17%, people should really, really, really be concerned about what's happening with their dollar, because what's the dollar value doing with inflation?   Michael: Decreasing.   Aaron: Decreasing, right? It doesn't spend as far. So what I like to do is talk about this in the sense that it's always been that way. And when we're talking about real estate investing, you know, the, in my opinion, where a person does best when it comes to real estate investing is leveraging the property, you know, the way to leverage the properties, get some sort of financing instrument on it, if you're gonna get financing on it, you want to get it for as long as you possibly can. Because at that point, the longer you take a pay, the less you actually pay, because the dollar you're paying it with is worth less and less and less every year.   So I know in today's higher rate environment, we're talking about inflation is pushing interest rates up. And if you look back at the history of inflation, last time, we saw inflation of this, this magnitude, you'll see in some charts that will show the history of inflation, and how it's somewhere right around 20%. But then you can see the history of the interest rates and the interest rates were closer to the same 17-18% for a 30 year fixed. Well, if we're where we are, as far as inflation is concerned, actually inflation was right around this 13 to 15%, where we are today. And then we're talking to interest rates at 19%. Well, the federal funds rate achieved over 20% at that timeframe. We're not there right now. So explain to people is the gap that we have there as a gift.   Right now we're seeing somewhere in the sevens for 30 year fixed interest rates. And that's, you know, we're talking about this in October, the 2022. Do I expect it to get higher that I really do because of all the uncertainty within the market. But if you've locked it in and that interest rate for 30 years, and inflation stays consistently higher than that, you're never even going to pay back what you borrowed. In fact, I have an app to prove that, you know, people want to go to just go to my website, shoot me a message, I'll get you the app. And you can download this thing on your phone. And you can calculate your amortization table and then see what inflation did and how you paid less than what you borrowed over a 30 year window even though you're paying higher interest in what you hoped.   Michael: We have to come back to that point because that's so counterintuitive and the exact opposite of what everyone tells you. When you look at the sum total you paid over a mortgage. But before we get there, I want to ask is it appropriate to look purely at The rate of inflation against interest rates? Or do we also have to take into account just the pure purchase price that we're seeing today? Or is it become irrelevant?   Aaron: I think they're all a factor. Because sometimes when you're let's look back at interest rates go backwards a year, right? Interest rates were in the threes and fours were people buying investment properties. Unbelievable, we'd never actually seen that, and never thought that I would ever see that. But what's happened to the prices of houses, what what you're doing is you're opening up where they were, they say the affordability index had a right how that worked in and more people could afford houses. Well, the more people that could afford houses, the more people bidding on those houses, right, the more of those houses got bid up beyond their real value, price does not equal value in an environment like that people are just willing to pay an enormous amount of money.   Well, because of that, all that affordability, it was so so called built into it because of lower interest rate was getting eroded by the fact that pushing the price so high. So now we're at this really interesting point where the prices are still fairly high compared to, to the, I'd say the real value of real estate because of what people are willing to pay. But our interest rates have increased to not quite to the highest it could and it's really not as high as the national as the average has been since 1971. But it's going to slow that down, I think an equilibrium equilibrium is going to kick in here at some point. And you might see those prices start to decrease a bit. And then of course, it's going to make a little bit more sense. So there's going to be people sitting on the side and waiting and watching. But then again, are they going to increase or decrease that much this begs the other question, were five point I think 5.2 million units short to fulfill the needs of that for housing United States. And then you're we're already short on that. We don't have as many building permits happening. We don't have the supply chain we used to, and now we have how many houses just got wiped out in Florida, you start compounding all this out, man. I'm telling people if you're in a contract, you probably want to stay in that thing. Because if you're backing out of a contract, because you don't like the price, you don't like the rates. Expect, just imagine what you're gonna like and a year from now, I don't think it's gonna get prettier.   Michael: Yeah. Yeah, that's really interesting perspective. Let's come back to what you said before about, when you look at the total amount you've paid. Over time, it actually ends up being less than the original amount you borrowed because of inflation. Walk us through that again,   Aaron: Gladly. And you're probably have to say that a lot to our conversation. Let's go back. You start with a topic. And now I go 100 different ways, because my mind is one, obviously, beautiful mind. There's a dude in here.. just just see it. So you've got. So when you think about our inflation, right, now, let's just take the BS metric that the feds throwing out there eight point, I think we're at 8.63%, if I remember correctly, right. So 8.3%, that means the dollar is losing 8.3% of its value every year. So if you take 8.3%, I'm gonna get my calculator out here on my phone. And we're going to divide that by 12. That means we're losing .691 percent of the value every single month. Is that not alarming .619% of the value every single month. So that's pretty well. So what I have here, and I'm just going to launch my launch my my app here, and anybody can get it is to QJO investment tool, you can go right to the app store and get the QJO investment tool. They may bleep me out here, guys, but it stands for the quit ------- off investment tool, because I think that's all a person does when they're so worried about interest rates.    So if we're doing say, a 20%, down on a $200,000 property, and you're putting, let's say it's a seven half percent interest rate, you're gonna have a payment of a principal and interest of $1,118.74. Not real bad, right? But now you're gonna pay over that period of time on that interest, you're gonna pay $402,747.56, right? 402K. You got a $200,000 house, you put 20% down, that's $160,000 loan. Right? And then you're going to pay $400,000 In principal and interest people like there's no way in hell, I'm going to do that. But when you recalculate, every time you make a payment, that payment is worth what did we say? Point six 9%? Less? So I'll write $6.90 per dollar. Last, is that right? Or is that? No, that's not quite right. It's eight, it'd be eight cents per dollar per year. So it's point 06 cents per mile. Right? Right. But when you per dollar when you recalculate that every time for 360 months, the actual inflation adjusted payment over 360 months is $152,466. That's less than what you borrowed and that's based on 8% inflation, just 8%   Because you think about that the dollar you're borrowing is seven and a half percent. You're paying a Back at an 8% decline, right now it's bigger than it's 8.3 8.4%. In fact, if you want to look at shadow stats, if you look all the way back, when you look how they track it, it's been over 8% since 2012. So in reality, you're never paying back what you borrowed because you're paying less them what they're getting in the form of interest. You're paying, you're literally getting paid to hold their money. And what's really, really cool about this is where it gets awesome. Because of inflation, we get to raise rents, how much are rents going up year over year right now in the United States?   Michael: Like seven to 10%.   Aaron: Last time I saw it was 12. Right? When you average it all out? Dang. Yeah. To a fact,   Michael: I haven't looked for a while. Clearly,   Aaron: Property manager in Kansas City. I had him check it out. They ran their books, they figured they said there was like 14.2, we looked at the last year, Mike, wow, this is crazy. I'm looking at what my kids are paying right there. They're in these apartments, and they're bumping up two to $300 every year. To me, it's kind of immoral. Now I get there's costs go up, taxes go up, upkeep goes up, because you got you got supply chain issues, right? You've got workers, the man ain't fixing anything over there really fast. So it's not like I think that they're, they're hurting themselves. From what I'm hearing, right? They're staying in my house now. And again, because of the darn AC has out for a couple of days.   Those kinds of things. So when you think about that, what's going on in that type of environment, they're raising it like that? Well, let's see what I always tell people, we get to raise rents, even at just 5%. That's every time you raise rents, that's a compound on the previous year's rent, and then you compound it again and compounded again. So as you're compounding the increase in your income, you're compounding the decrease in what the lender makes, because they don't get to raise the payment because of inflation.   So eventually, it may suck for the first 2-3-4 years because of your start rate. And because of all that, and you know, people always like to use cash on cash return is their metric. I think it's a BS metric. Guys, that's not that's not ratio, focus. There's other places to focus, we'll talk about it. But when you start adding that up, and really, really working out the math on it over time, you start killing it at about years 5-6-7 And just compounds huge. Those who don't want to be able to hang for the first three to four years of the ones going to be off on the sidelines. And they're the ones going to say that real estate's not the place to be because of interest rates will they're the they're the the people in the crowd. They're the ones that are the spectators, that people on the field, know where it's supposed to be at and they understand it. And those are the ones going to take opportunity.   Michael: Love it. Aaron, let me ask you this, the Fed has tried to maintain inflation at around two to 3% annually. Right now we're up in that eight plus range. And so we did the math behind if inflation stays there for the duration of the 30 years that you're holding that loan. But if they get things under control, and it drops back down at 3%. I mean, did all of that benefit just get eroded?   Aaron: Well, we also have to look at what they're dropping by 3% They're dropping their index by 3%. And that's dropping the real rate of inflation by India by 3%. So I don't see that as being eroded because you look back at you know, go back to shadow stats, start looking at what they were they calculate real rate of inflation. We've been over 8% Since what since 2012. You have a consistent increase in inflation, it's going consistently up cost of living has not gotten cheaper. Now, I don't know when you were born, but in 19 in the 1980s I could jump on my, it was the late 80s I could jump on my skateboard my mom gave me $1 Literally $1 Bill, I could go down to the corner store, get a gallon of milk, buy some candy for me and bring change to her. how possible is that right now?   Michael: Um no, can't even buy the candy for the dollar right now? No, I just bought a KitKat for a buck. 75 Check it out. That's ridiculous. Dude, it's this dark chocolate and mint. KitKat I'm like such a sucker for dark chocolate. It was amazing. But yeah, Buck 75.   Aaron: Well, it's probably probably an extra 10 cents for the blend, right? But, but again, kefir dollar 75. So that's what I'm saying a gallon of milk and I could get into it. It wasn't like the big jumbo candy bar, nut it was something. And I brought that change. But that was possible in like 1986, I think is when that was okay. It feels like a little while ago, but it shouldn't have changed that much. But it did. So if you look back at that's not a 2% inflation increase. That's common. That's some serious increase, especially the price of milk today. Right. So we started looking at that the Fed has never really kept it under 2% control.   The other thing is, is our inflation today, I don't know if we're really know the full outcome of what's going to happen with what they did with those printed dollars. They have put $8.9 trillion into the markets that they never were in before. If you look at their holdings with respect to mortgage backed securities and treasuries, $8.9 trillion. Then we have they backed off by point zero 2 trillion. And now we have interest rates more than double what happens when they back off by half. Right? So when you start thinking about what they did, and what we're that we're the the amount of money that's in circulation, there's got to be some really massive moves here to get this under control and One of the things that really kind of stands out to me and if you heard this conversation were Powell, the chairman of the Fed was speaking. One of the things he said, I don't remember the exact words. He says one thing we've learned about inflation is we know very little about inflation. That's alarming.   Michael: Yeah, big time.   Aaron: And that was said within the last 45 days, I think 45 to 60 days. So what I am taking by that is inflation. There's this big loaded oil tanker, right, and it's headed towards ground right now. And they didn't get off the throttle early enough with all the stuff they're doing. Now. They're dropping all these anchors, they're hooking up tugboats. They're doing everything think everything they can, but it's too, it's too late. It's going to run aground. And what that happens when it runs aground, I don't know. But it's going to be pretty ugly. And so that's why I tell everybody I'm dealing with, you need to control what you can control for as long as you can control it. And the one thing we can control right now is a 30 year fixed loan. An ARM, Are these things they call, what did they call this thing be all in one loans, it's an adjustable rate, just a single adjustable rate, kind of a credit line? Yeah, great concept. But we have no idea how it's going to react in an environment like this. So for me, it's like whatever you can do to maintain it and keep control of it. And then when you know, we know for a fact that sense right now to close on this 30 year fixed and pay the points and get the rate.   But what I do know is you're not going to pay it back, you're gonna pay less than what you borrowed. When you go with what the bank say, let's go with a five year or seven year, you have to do something with that loan, at some point. What did you just become a new client for the banks, that's what they want. That's what they say in the background, sell the arm because you're insuring your business for the future, the business for who the loan originator, not the person buying houses to rent out and to maintain a business, you are now become somebody's servant, you become a business, somebody else's future, you're a commodity. And I try and tell her but don't become somebody else's commodity control it for as long as you can. Only pull refinances, you can pull the money back out and reinvest into other things. Other than that, let that sucker sit there as long as you can run that out and let somebody else pay the freight.   Michael: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Aaron, I know you deal exclusively in residential mortgages. But can you give any insight into why the commercial markets only have 5- 7-10 year options on their mortgages, as opposed to the 30? year fixed? I mean, I have seen a 30 year fixed, but it's not the Colt 45, like it is in the residential space?   Aaron: Yes, you're right. It's it's very, very uncommon. Well, because most your commercial mortgages have to be made up by by investor capital or by banks, right. And so banks are going to take depositor capital, and they're going to create this or they're going to create their own type of security. And they're going to be able to get investors come into most investors don't want to let their money sit for 30 years. Most people don't know that when you're letting your money sit for 30 years in an inflationary environment, you're not getting your money, right, we all expect a certain rate of return on if you do any sort of hard money lending. Or if you've ever done anything to that effect, or fix and flips, you're going to calculate your return on investment annually. And I searched for a 12 plus. Right. And I don't know if you listen to Warren Buffett, Warren Buffett was talking about where, you know, some lady came to him. And, you know, she was trying to figure out how to how to invest her money, and it was a lot of money to her, but not to him. And he said, we have any credit cards? And she goes well, yeah. And he goes, we'll pay that off first. Because why would I do that? I'm not making any money. He goes, What are you paying your interest? 18 20% Because I can't make 18%. So I was I don't know how to do that. So get rid of the debt, you know, then I can show you how to make at least 12 to 13. So that's what we all are wanting is get that 12 13%.   You're not going to make that in a 30 year fixed, you just aren't. So what we've had we've we've created a way to kind of subsidized by the system. And we've got this Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. And what they did was they created the mortgage backed securities, luminary did that for anybody who watched the The Big Short. And if you haven't actually watch it. I know this is a family family show. So don't let the kids in there when you watch it, but it explains the history of the mortgage back series security, where it came from. And now what you have is now a tradable piece of paper that people keep just trading around. That's where its value is. Its value is in its trade ability in its liquid tradability as well as the fact that it the performance of the note people making the payments on time. That's what makes that's a valuable piece of paper, not to sit and hold it for 30 years. It's not valuable at all, you're losing money on that paper.   So that's why I think in the commercial world because they have not had this initiative from the from the government say we need to create housing or we need to create people's businesses, right. They didn't have that initiative. They had the initiative when you create housing, when you give people opportunity to live in a home when you give them the best opportunity and mortgage financing. So they created a 30 year fixed and a 30 year fixed has caught hold and become kind of the gold standard is now the the the Qualified Mortgage, if you will, when you get into anything else. So those where you're not really a qualified loan, you don't have safe harbor from the government or do anything outside of that. So that's about my best guess is you can't get anybody to want to put money up for that long for so cheap and lose it, and just and not make a return is really what it boils down to. They probably just rather own the building.   Michael: Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Aaron, one final question before you before I let you out of here 15 year fixed versus 30 year fixed, you'll often see a pretty big spread on the interest rate. Does it ever make sense?   Aaron: We're not seeing as big a spread now as we used to. But here's where I look, it used to be a bigger spread. It's not real big right now, if there is a spread at all. So and one, two reasons we're not seeing as big a spread as we used to, we have a lot of uncertainty in the labor market right now. And as a result, that uncertainty lenders like I don't know, if I want to saddle somebody with a bigger payment, when they may have a an issue with their income in the near future. And if they do have an issue with their income, what is their ability to pay this higher payment versus a 30 year fixed, so we're gonna price it in a way that kind of leads them back to good old fashioned 30 year fixed, because our value in our portfolio is them being able to make their payment. So then when you do compare them side by side, even if it's a lower payment, you can use my, you can't use my calculator, I don't have that feature in this, we will in a future iteration, by run the numbers, when you're paying off a 15 year fixed, even at a three eighths of a percent lower interest rate or even a half, I have found you actually pay more in actual dollars. The reason being you're paying those dollars while they're worth more, rather than stretching out over time when they're worth less, because in 15 years, they're going to be worth a hell of a lot less than they are within the first 15 years.   So those who pay that off quick like that, yeah, feels good. You're getting equity in your house and all that kind of stuff. I'm of the mindset pay the 30 year fixed stretch as far as I can take the extra money I would have paid for 15 and reinvested somewhere else. And as a result of being able to do that multiple different properties and compound it that way I'll generate a lot more wealth. Because when you have when you have a home and I tell people if you're gonna buy real estate investments and get those those single families, duplex, triplex, fourplex, you have two jobs, right, you have to pick the right people to work with on the real estate side. And on the lending side to understand what you're trying to do and will guide you not try and lead you to make them money but lead you to make you money, and then pick the right asset to buy the stays reasonably rent it for the entire time you own it, you can raise rents, if you have that, who pays off the mortgage?   Michael: The tenants,   Aaron: the tenant, so if the tenant pays it off, and it's easy to do the math, guys just take 100,000, let's say it's 100? Well, you have to say it's an 80,000, or only about 100,000, our house with 20%, down, you got an $80,000 loan, you divide that up by 30, which is how many years are taken to pay it off, you'll find that it pays off. They're all they're basically giving you $2,666.67 per year, they're giving that to you, right, and that's what you're paying off the mortgage with? Well, you divide that into your investment, which is the money you invested 20,000 plus a 6000 in closing costs as 26,000 your investments grown by 10.25%, every year, do the math, you figure it out yourself. If they're paying it off, you did your job. And that's all you made was done paying off the loan, you made no more cash flow, you put no more out of your pocket, that's 10.25%, predictable, you still have the tax benefits, you still have the appreciation on the home.   So that's before all, all cash flow. So what I tell everybody is let that drag out, it doesn't matter what you do, if you do it on a 15 year note, you're more than likely have to go to your pocket, you're more than likely have to try and maintain that in other ways. And if you're out of a tenant for a month or two, that's really going to hurt your pocket, stretch that thing out. If you really feel like you want to get it paid off 10 years you can all in 15 years, you can always pay a 30 like a 15 You can never pay a 15 like a 30.   Michael: Yeah, it's very I always tell people to there you have the optionality with 30 year and that you don't have the 15. Arron: Options or everything. You know, that's all people want is to be able to make a decision for themselves. But when you pitch and you back yourself in the corner, and you're not allowed to decide for yourself, that's when you're frustrated, that's when you get angry, leave yourself out. It's a good business move to leave yourself out. The other thing of it is going back to the to the arms these other stuff, man, we're going off of hope. And hope is not a good business strategy. You need to go off of what you know and stick with what you know and control for long as you possibly can.   Michael: Love it. And this is an awesome place to put us pause until our next conversation. Until then, where can people find out more about you reach out to you if they have questions or want to reach out to you for your services?   Aaron: Best Places go to AaronChapman.com If you can't find me there because sometimes there are some some browsers don't like it you have to type in Aaron B chapman.com. Just type in Aaron Chapman a Google if you find a bearded redneck lender you found him.   Michael: Right on. Right on. Well, hey, thanks a lot, man for hanging out with me and walking us through this really kind of tumultuous time appreciate you. And we'll definitely be chatting again soon.   Aaron: It was my pleasure brother. And again, thanks for letting me under to poke some holes in in people's heads out there.   Michael: All right, everyone. That was our episode A big thank you to Aaron for coming on and dropping some really interesting Insights for us on where we're headed in the market. As always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing

Brian T. Bradley, Esq. is a nationally recognized Asset Protection Attorney. He has been interviewed and a featured guest on many top shows such as: Bigger Pockets Rookie, Flipping America Podcast with Roger Blankenship the “Flipping America Guy” and member of the Forbes Magazine Real Estate Council. Brian was selected to the Best Attorney's of America's List 2020, Lawyers of Distinction List three years in a row (2018, 2019, 2020,) Super Lawyers Rising Star List 2015, nominated to America's Top 100 High Stake Litigators List, nominated to the 2017 Law Firm 500 Award. Brian also writes on high-end asset protection. Ownership of real estate has many benefits from an investment and tax standpoint. There is downside risk, however, since the value of real estate holdings may be significant and can be used to cover damages awarded in a lawsuit. Therefore, it's important to consider asset protection strategies relating to real estate holdings in order to minimize such risk. In today's episode, Brian lays out how asset protection really works from a legal standpoint and dispels some common myths that are thrown around in the industry. Episode Link: https://btblegal.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by Brian Bradley, asset protection attorney and he's going to be dropping some knowledge about all the things we should be aware of as real estate investors when it comes to protecting our assets. So let's get into it.   Brian, what's going on, man? Thanks so much for taking the time to hang out with me today. I really appreciate it.   Brian: No, absolutely Michael, thanks for having me on. It's going to be an important topic, a fun topic, I'm gonna try to keep it fun and not legally dense and you know, just like I'm not anyone's, you know, Attorney here legal guru. So we're just gonna be talking generalities, right? We're gonna learn a lot in this, you know, it's gonna be a lot of fun and as you're building scale and making more money, you know, you're getting a bigger red button on you and so like this world of where we're gonna be talking about asset protection is kind of a big deal. There's just a lot of ways to skin a cat, different layers, different strategies for where you're at in your life. So, you know, I think as we break these down, hopefully I can, you know, make this will make a little bit more sense for you and your listeners.   Michael: Yes, it will. Thank you. I am super excited to learn a lot because before we hit record here, you and I were chatting about some of the topics that we'll be covering today and I was like, what is that totally brand new. So I'm really excited from a self-serving perspective. So give everyone that quick and dirty background who doesn't know Brian Bradley, who you are, where you come from, and what is it you're doing in real estate today?   Brian: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, I'm an asset protection attorney, you know, we're talking about it off recording, like from Lake Tahoe, so you know, big snowboard ski, you know, ski bum, you know, Lake bum, I got into asset protection from the litigation side of the law, I was selected to America's best attorney list 2021-2020 Super Lawyers rising star 2021-2015.   Michael: My guess is that no, that's not like an online survey, you filled out to get that…   Brian: Oh, no, and another do with me, that's really just people that you work their butt up in court, and then they recommend you or judges recommend you and I have nothing to do with it and it's actually pretty, you know, I appreciate even just the nomination, let alone winning it, you know, to where I think they only say 1% of all attorneys in the nation even get nominated for those awards, let alone then, you know, 1% of those even gets picked to as a as a winner and so…   Michael: Congratulations…   Brian: Thanks, yeah and for me getting into, you know, asset protection, which will define what that is, you know, in a minute, like, that'll be like our think our base starting point. I just, I just got into this weird area of law, because when I like money, I like investing, I like, you know, not paying as much taxes as you know, as I can and as you grow, you got to be smart with your money, right and who can take it from you and so as a trial lawyer starting out, I just had so many clients who were being sued and their lives just turned completely upside down coming to me after they're already being sued and at that point, you know, you're just too far down the rabbit hole, you know, it's like going to get a car insurance after you already got in an accident or, you know, home insurance after your house already, you know, caught on fire, it's just, it's not gonna happen and so I see a lot of people thinking that they don't need to do anything is another misconception. You know, it's kind of human nature, right? You know, like, I'm just gonna ride lady luck. I'll deal with it when I when, you know, it hits me later on and that's just not how anything that needs to be proactive in the legal sense is going to work like insurance or asset protection. Wishful thinking is not a protection tool. You know, that's how everything you know, like, go to Vegas, go to breaks and hit the roulette table and see how long your wishful thinking is gonna last for you, right? You know or, you know, as you're leveling up, people forget about this. Like, as your wealth is leveling up, you're leveling up, you don't level up your protection, you don't level up your insurance. Yeah, people go buy an umbrella policy, but they don't realize what an umbrella policy is just like everything else, right? You know, it just provides more access and money to, you know, for coverage, but it doesn't, it's not the same escape clauses, you know, like, there's no insurance in the world that's gonna say, okay, hey, if I go punch you in the face, are you gonna cover it for me? No, like, they don't cover you for intentional wrongdoings or allegations of fraud and intentional wrongs and so that's how they have their escape clauses out especially for very big cases. You know, if you're talking about like a million dollar or more lawsuit. A couple other big misconceptions that we need to address as we lay this landscape is just, you know, the revocable living trust, if people think like, oh, yeah, I have a trust, right, that you know, they don't realize trust. There's a lot of different types of trust. Your family estate plan, your revocable living trust are not designed to protect you while you're living in they don't have the lead have teeth to be able to. So once you pass, they're only designed to avoid probate not protect you while you're living from lawsuits and then over the last five years, I've noticed this massive misconception about the use of limited liability companies. LLCs and they just think that they're like, you know, Silver Bullet Dracula slayers and you guys miss, like, first word first letter, like limited, I tell you. Whereas, whereas this happened, where's this come from? Like, they're not hiding the fact they tell you like they titled it telling you limited liability. So like, now we have to reeducate people on this, like, yeah, don't put everything in the world under one LLC. Otherwise, if it gets pierced, you're gonna lose it on like, What are you talking about, which we'll break that down, you know, in a little bit. And then the sad thing is like, and I think it's worth explaining is this, if you just look around, and you look at, you know, our legal system and the world we live in, it's just broken, it's a broken system, you know, and we're so happy nirvana and just to like, kind of lay this framework down a little bit more. We're no longer about justice. We're about redistributing wealth from the haves, which is you, your listeners, people trying to grow and accumulate more to the have nots and over the last 40-50 years, things that didn't happen in the past, or that weren't allowed to happen in the past like contingency fee lawyers or law from advertising their common place. and then this created a cultural shift of a predatory legal system that's no longer about justice. So it's about profits now and then when you get on the road of high net worth, in affluent families and wealth, this level of protection, now we have to deal with taking a macroeconomic, more of like a global look about what's going on and the big picture here is really that we have a global financial system that has structurally deep rooted issues. You know, we have government backed fiat currencies that are now in question. This is also including the US dollar. So don't think like, just because we're in the US, we're exempt from all of this, you know, monetary policy today, you know, the one that exists is, you know, inflate or die and then you got governments looking for a deep and accessible pools of financing and meaning our money, you know, the hard workers, the people who are investing, along with financial repression, monetary economic manipulation. So this just adds all the challenges that we have to deal with when we're looking to protect your assets and so asset protection is that modern best bet to level this playing field by using a lot of the tools and the combination of the tools that we're going to talk about today to make it very hard for you to be collected on and so what this is really about is just like a talk about giving you peace of mind, lifestyle preservation, and you know, really just how collectible are you at the end of the day…   Michael: Love it. But well, I am all about doing things to help peace of mind and insulate ourselves from the world at large. This you happy world at large. So help us understand Brian, like, what are some of the things when someone says asset protection to you like, Brian, I gotta protect my assets? What does that mean to you? What alarm bells are going off in your head?   Brian: Yeah, absolutely. One is like, do you understand the difference between tax mitigation and asset protection and I've been getting this a lot, you know, especially this last year, obviously, as we see what's going on, you know, within inflation, taxes and everything right now, asset protection is not tax mitigation, like that's your CPE and wealth managers job. If creating an asset protection plan or an asset protection, trust or going offshore, you know, where to create tax havens like one that's illegal, it's fraud, you know, so system won't work, and then you go to jail for that type of stuff.   Michael: So don't do that is what you're saying.   Brian: That's not what this is about. So people always like, oh, I want to protect my assets and I don't want to pay taxes, completely two different things. The asset protection plan is to protect your assets from predatory lawsuits and litigation, not saying I want to not pay taxes, that's tax mitigation, talk to your CPA and wealth managers. First, lock down your assets from lawsuits because if you get sued and lose everything, what's your miracle working CPA going to be able to do for you if you have nothing for them to work on, so order of operation, protect your assets, then let them work through the system that's created to actually like mitigate, you know, forced depreciation, all those wonderful things that they do cost segue analysis…   Michael: Yeah but Brian, to that, to that point, really quick. I'm just curious, like, do you work with a lot of CPAs because I can see, I can envision a scenario in which the legal side of things is super buttoned up super tight, but maybe isn't very tax efficient and so my guess is there's probably a happy medium, or some input that a CPA or wealth manager can inject into the situation to help make both things as tight as possible.   Brian: Correct. You got to, you know, the issue generally is people don't involve their lawyers until later on down the line and it creates a lot of problems. So for example, a lot of CPAs will set up S Corps for investors, especially real estate investors for some reason, and great for tax purposes, horrible for litigation and I get this call a lot, you know, and most of my clients are calling with like 50 $100 million of real estate all stuffed in one S Corp. Okay, great again, for tax mitigation, horrible for let's say you get sued and now you're S Corp and all the shares get frozen and cease, there is nothing I can do for you. At that point, I can't move assets out and then even if I want it and you realize like, oh my god, I have so many pieces of property under one corporation like this is very risky, I need to start diversifying and employing these assets out, you're stuck, you're not going to be able to and I just had this call yesterday with a potential client. The reason is, when you're all the benefits of the S Corp, right? You know, deferred taxation and all this stuff, you're kicking the can down the road, once you start taking the assets out, you have to pay the money back and so people don't generally have millions of dollars sitting in their bank account saying like, okay, hey, I feel like you know, taking all the assets out of my S Corp now and now I'm going to go and pay the piper and the IRS. So because you don't have that money sitting around to pay the IRS and the taxes, we can move the assets for you and I'm not going to force you to go, you know, and have the IRS coming after you to collect on you and move the assets out anyways, because now you're just creating a bad situation for the client. So the lesson here to learn is if you're thinking of investing, you need to talk to both the lawyer and the CPA, because a lot of CPAs, they shouldn't be giving you legal advice. They're not lawyers, and they're not going to understand the aspect of what happens actually in court with s corpse and C corpse, when it comes to litigation, and why we don't want to use those to protect your assets. So we have to all talk together. The problem is I get this all I get the mess after the fact right, and then I have to start supporting afterwards and so when done, right, really, the modern, you know, estate planning is asset protection, what we're doing is creating legal barriers between your assets, and your potential creditor, the person suing you, the person trying to come after your money before it's needed and that's it, you know, it's like a safe for your gold or your guns or your valuables. Anything of value, you know, you want to put behind the legal barrier and out of your personal name so that it's not easily attached with a lien or reached and so I just like the rich, I really liked the Tony Robbins saying success leaves clues. The rich don't own things in their personal names their businesses do their trust, do they just get the beneficial use and enjoyment out of them while separating out that legal liability and we do that through just like different tools and mechanisms that we have kind of like key concepts and roadmaps like LLC is limited partnerships and trust.   Michael: Got it. Okay and so when real estate investor comes to you, they're just getting started. They are moist clay, you can totally mold them, they don't already have a bunch of issues. What is your go to, like ideal scenario for asset protection?   Brian: Yeah, so there, I mean, you're just starting out your green horn, like really just going to be an LLC and insurance and that's where you're gonna go, okay and as you think about how to use these systems and how to grow within them, okay, I want you and your listeners to think about winter, okay, like we were talking about this before we started recording like I'm from Lake Tahoe, snow, cold snowboarding skiing, I lived in Michigan, freezing cold arctic, you know, minus 40 degree weather for a while, well, I'm in Portland damp cold, you got to really layer you and so the first entry layer is as your base layer, when you're getting dressed, it's going to sit on your skin. This is the equivalent of an LLC and insurance. This is you know, when you're just starting out investing in you have zero to three units, or you know, zero to three properties, you're exposed net worth generally is like 250,000, net or below and then as you grow, and you add more assets, and you hit around that four unit or four property mark, you could be starting to invest in a couple different states as well, you know, you have now around like 500, to 700,000 exposed nets, what you need is a mid-layer, which is usually a little bit thicker, that's going to be made out of like a merino wool sweater, or for you ladies a car and again, this is your management company, like a limited partnership and I can break down that later on if we have time and then when you hit around that 1 million net worth mark, you know, you're gonna want to water shell waterproof layer. This keeps you nice and dry and warm when the weather's really bad. You know, this is your doomsday lawsuit protection layer is going to be an asset protection trust and specifically for our clients, we use a hybrid trust, which is combining an offshore trust and domesticating it through the IRS. So when a client comes to me, I receive it I realistically, you want four things you know, you want you're going to want an effective plan to have, you're going to want to control your plan. Three, you want a reasonable and sustainable cost, you know, depending on what layer you're at, is going to be individual for the for the client profile and then four you want a plan that's going to be easy to maintain compliance on what the IRS like I can create the strongest thing in the world for you. But if you're not going to be maintaining it and you don't want to do the IRS compliance with it, eventually you're just going to stop doing it and the whole system falls apart. So as you go through the valuation process and you're talking to different attorneys and you're vetting the process, just remember the acronym ECCC effectiveness, control cost and compliance and as long as you can start checking off all those boxes, you know you're gonna have a really good system. If you want to I can break down the first layer if you want to Trying to kinda go there like LLCs, or just really wherever you feel like directing this.   Michael: Yeah, so I think our listeners probably have a good handle on LLCs. But I would love if you would walk us through what this hybrid trust is because it's not something that I'm familiar with, I've never heard of before.     Brian: So yeah, and I think the reason why is like not many people focus on asset protection at a high level, you know, I think events like insurance, a lot of people wonder not only purely asset protection attorneys, right, they're generally business attorneys who do some asset protection or their real estate, you know, attorneys who do a little bit and they take continuing legal education course, learn about LLCs, and the kind of stops there and like insurance, they kind of tried to cast a large net nationwide, what was one thing you can cast nationwide and LLC and so I kind of think that's why like, the base layer, knowledge kind of stops there, because not many people just focus on, you know, very, very strong protection. This comes with the asset protection trust. So it's this final layer, the bad weather, you know, the outer shell waterproof layer, is this asset protection trust, it's going to be really the heart and soul of the system, especially when you have over 1 million exposed and that wealth and what I mean exposed is like your 401 K is exempt. So I don't include that in a net worth evaluation, because it's already a reset protecting some states, like if you're a Florida resident, we have a very strong homestead exemption of 100% of your of your primary residence. So I will take that out of the equation too, depending on the state you're in and the homestead. So what we're looking at is exposed unprotected, and that, you know, equity and wealth, all right. The great thing about trust is that they can be sculpted, to fit how you need them and they can morph as you need them without dealing with funding issues that you're going to fall into an LLC and other business entities that get their protection pierced, meaning now you're going to be held personally liable. So I just love trust and having a trust at the very top of the planning is very powerful and this is where picking the proper jurisdiction for a trust really comes into play. The standard 101 trust that I'm sure like everybody's familiar with, you know, kind of started in the 60s is the family revocable living trust. So you know, like when trust, you know, trust don't die. So then when you do, you act, and you fund your trust, which a lot of people forget to do, like, oh, I created my estate plan, and then they never transfer title into it. Remember, fund that fund the trust, if it's just, you know, your revocable living trust, the benefit of it is when you pass you don't have to go through probate, you can just skip the court system and probate and it changed the landscape of estate planning. Then you have what are called land trusts for real estate, you know, you hold your land, and then you connect them to an LLC. But land trusts don't have any protection in and of themselves. They're only as strong as the LLC that they're connected to, you know, so they're just a privacy mechanism, not a protection mechanism. Okay from there, you have higher levels of trust. They're called asset protection trust and I really want to spend the time, you know, with this and break down the three different types, you know, and after this, I think you and probably 99% of your listeners are going to know more than 99% of all the attorneys out there about asset protection, trust, they came, yeah, they came about in the early 1980s. You know, and so an asset protection trust is what's called a self-settled spendthrift trust. All sell settled means is that you created it for yourself, you know, they're for you, by you, as your own beneficiary, and they have very important spendthrift provisions in them. So this lets you protect your assets while you're actually living, you know, from creditors trying to sue you from not having to relinquish control of your assets. The difference is that they allow you to protect your assets, not just for your grandkids, but for yourself, which you weren't allowed to do in the past and then like I said, you're probably familiar with another type of self-settled trust the revocable living trust. They're the same and that they're self-settled created for you by you. The difference is that with an asset protection version of this trust, it includes these critical provisions called spendthrift provisions and what spendthrift provisions are is they are provisions that allow you to protect your assets from the creditors, they're the actual teeth behind it and for those to work, the trust them has to be not revocable, but it will revocable. So it's a very different type of trust, you know, just like chocolate or vanilla, both ice cream, just different types of ice cream.   Michael: Yeah…   Brian: You know, this is where the fun really starts to actually happen. There's two major school of thoughts here you can go international meaning offshore, another country jurisdiction, you know, you hear about Cook Islands, Cayman Islands, Belize, in the Bahamas, or domestically here in the US, you know, Nevada, Delaware, Wyoming, Texas, um, so you can set them up here in the United States and you know, if you don't mind, I think a great way to talk about it, just kind of talking about it through historical context, because I think if you understand the foundations of both offshore and domestic then you understand the principles of how we combine them together and why you want to   Michael: Yeah, let's do it.   Brian: Alright, cool. So again, you really have these three options, right, you can establish them offshore, you're going establish them domestically, and then we can hybrid them out like a hybrid car, take the best of both worlds put them together. So from the historical concept, the offshore trust actually came first, in 1984, when the famous Cook Islands, they created the first asset protection trust. I like and choose the Cook Islands if and when it's applicable, just because it literally offers the best home court advantage and why it's the best is because asset protection is just what these trusts in the Cook Islands were specifically drafted for and the power here is they have this wonderful word called statutory non recognition of any other jurisdictional court orders in the world, including the United States and so what this means is that if you have a judgment against you, in the United States, and you took it down to the Cook Islands, your US judgment is literally worthless, it literally has no value whatsoever. statutorily the Cook Islands they prohibited from recognizing it even from their own constitution and so if somebody wants to sue your trust, and it has a Cook Islands, you know, clause in it. So as a Cook Islands trust, they will have to start their case all over from scratch, the person who's suing you, they're going to have to prove their case beyond the reasonable doubt. This is the murder standard, the highest legal standard in the world that 99% sure standard. Not that you know, 51%, preponderance of the evidence, I'm not sure we don't know what happened. But we don't like the way they look right now. So let's just let's just give it to them. You know, you can't get a contingency fee attorney to represent you, because they're just not allowed down there. It's an ethical in the Cook Islands, just like it used to be unethical here in the United States. But then that got changed in the 60s, the claim meaning the lawsuit, you know, it's not amendable. So what this means is that it can't be changed or amended after the discovery process starts like we can do here in the United States. Like we can literally just say, okay, I'm suing you for this, dig around start discovery, then completely change what We're suing you for, because we started using as a fishing expedition. The person suing you, yeah, no, I mean, this is just like standard trial tactics is like, okay, hey, let me just flood you with discovery and like, start poking around and say, oh, hey, we didn't even know this was right here. Now I'm gonna add this to the complaint and sue you now, for this looks like a better cause of action anyways, I can't do that down there. But we can do it here all the time in the US.   Michael: So it sounds like I need to go move to the Cook Islands.   Brian: Now. Well, here and maybe not right, because you know, there's, there's cons to things, we'll get to the cons in a minute. So the person suing you, they're gonna have to front the entire court costs by the judge from New Zealand and if you lose your pay, you know, and I honestly think this is one of the worst things that we don't have here in the United States, though, like the loser doesn't need to pay the legal fees and the cost of the winner. So if you get sued for something completely bogus, I mean, a frivolous lawsuit, and you spend $200,000, defending yourself on legal fees, then the judge finally is like, this is ridiculous. I'm throwing this case out, you're still out 200,000 bucks, you know, the person who sued you, they're not going to be getting the bill for that because our legal system in the United States, they just that will discourage lawsuits and our legal system is run by trial lawyers who don't want to discourage lawsuits and there's only a one year statute of limitations. So if you go back to those four things I mentioned, right, remember, like effectiveness, cost, control, compliance, I mean, effectiveness, five out of five stars, nothing really nothing beats statutory nonrecognition. So what about the other ones, right, you know, control costs and compliance. This is kind of his kryptonite, you know, these are the drawbacks. If you're going to be purely foreign, like a purely foreign trust, you have a lot more IRS reporting, compliance and disclosure. So you have these things called IRS forms 3520 3520 A's. What this is, is a full balance sheet disclosure of everything that trust owns, and sometimes even the entire trust agreement to be disclosed and submitted to the IRS and it is expensive for this IRS forms to be done every year. Also, you're going to have factor compliance, because you're going to have a foreign bank account at that time.   And of course, we're these trusts to work, you're going to be out of control of the trust. That's why they work so good. That's why they're the creme de la crème and clients are just not comfortable with this. So while we literally have the most effective trust in the world, by far, it's not something that I generally start with, I probably only say like 1% of my clients, I will go to a purely foreign trust with which then brings us right to the second option. Okay, we're not going to be going forward and what about these domestic trust? Yeah, they came about 10 years later down the road of all places, Alaska started it out and then not to be outdone, obviously, you're gonna be like, Well, hey, we're Wyoming and Nevada and Delaware like this is what we're known for. So we're jumping on the gravy train, right and then now about 19 other states now have created some form of asset protection, self-settled trust statutes. So we're seeing as a state starting to jump on board seeing yeah, our legal system is a threat and things have to get done to protect your assets and so as to protection the United States is very is very important to understand this ballot on It's just the concepts like how you go about doing it is very important. The issue with a purely foreign under the purely domestic asset protection trust is that, you know, we live in the United States of America, we have a Constitution, Article four section one for Faith and Credit Clause. What this provides and means is that every state has to grant the full faith and credit to the judicial proceedings of every other state. What this is means what it's telling you is that, for example, Nevada can pass and has passed an asset protection statute, okay, but it cannot ignore a California or Washington or like another states court orders. So where the Cook Islands can literally just throw that California judgment in the trash. Nevada can't do that. Nevada has to respect it constitutionally and even litigate it and then you have courts that are just simply ignoring the choice of law clause. So I mean, like literally, like bait levers more dissent in re Hubber, cucumber Steelman, Dover still all great facts, all great cases, they should have one of those cases, and judges literally just use their superpower public policy, we're ignoring the you know, choice of law clause, trust is breach means loss of assets, that's just completely unacceptable and so because of the case law that we're seeing, I'm not a big fan of a purely domestic asset protection, trust or anything purely domestic without something offshore built into it. This is why I prefer the hybrid version called like, we just call it a bridge trust, but it's really just like a hybrid, hybrid trust, think of them like a hybrid cars, okay? What we're doing just combining the best of both, and then making a better product and so these trusts have been around for almost three decades. So they're not, you know, the new lady to the dance, they've been around for about 30 years now and at the end of the day, what you're doing is taking a fully registered foreign Cook Island, offshore asset protection, trust, what all that for two years of solid case law, again, so it's fully registered offshore from the day we created with the offshore trustee, they're there in standby just in case you need them and then we build a bridge back to the IRS for IRS classification. So the IRS is literally taking this foreign trust and then they're classifying it as a domestic US trust, by complying with USC Section 7701. It's called the court test control test and so because of that bridge, as long as we have our compliance in place, we stay classified domestically and what this does is that the trust is now going to be cheaper to create. So generally, a purely foreign trust is going to cost like 4550, even $60,000 plus $12,000, a year to maintain very expensive, a hybrid trust is going to be cheaper, you're generally gonna be talking about, you know, 23 to 30,000, to set up a hybrid trust, plus no IRS tax filings whatsoever, while you're domestic because it's classified as a domestic US grantor trust, so you have no more IRS tax filings, unless God forbid, we have to break that bridge and now you also get the power of the offshore trust. If and when we need it. It's in our toolbox now, just like a contractor who says like, okay, hey, I don't need to use all my tools today. But I'm going to need them possibly at some point. So now I can use them as I need them. Versus coming to me later on after the fact oh, my God, Brian, I mow somebody over with my car, like, can you help me? You know, like, I want that foreign trust? Well, no, sorry, it's after the fact I can't do it now. But if we have the hybrid, I could have engaged it. So that would be like during the State of duress, we would break the bridge, stop being an IRS compliance, you are what you are a foreign trust. Until that point, you want to be classified domestically. So that hybrid trust is very, very effective, you may control of your assets, you may take control the trust, right up until that doomsday scenario where you don't want to be in control of it anymore. You know, maintenance and compliance with the IRS. Very simple. So at that point, you've now checked off all the boxes, effectiveness, cost control and compliance check, check, check, check, check and so this is where you know, for our clients, we generally are starting with these hybrid trust.   Michael: Wow, this is wild, is super cool and so are you thinking that most folks that are in that kind of million dollars of expose net worth, this is where that starts to make sense.   Brian: That's exactly like, so our main client profile that comes in you would think they'd be like, you know, 10s of millions of dollars for us, like realistically, I would say 75% of our clients generally around that 1.2 million, exposing that. Some high risk, probably like a doctor or surgeon lawyer, or just straight real estate investors. I have some of my favorite clients, nurses, firefighters, cops who self-funded their retirement through cash flowing properties, and now they're about to retire and they realize like, I can't lose all of this now because this is literally my nest egg and my legacy. Yeah, they need to lock it down and so you generally see the average client profiles like 1.2 to 2 million of exposed net with some risk, and it makes sense at that point. Yeah, get the LLC get the limited partnership get the trust for like 30,000 dollars locked down a million plus, and then sleep well at night. That's when the investment kind of makes sense for this type of protection.   Michael: Yeah, that makes total sense and what would you say because I would imagine, after listening to this folks might go to other attorneys they work with mentioned this type of hybrid trust and they might be told now you don't need an LLC is good enough. I mean, what's the I know, we've talked about kind of a counter argument, but how does that conversation get ahead?   Brian: Most of the time, I was, say, like the one the estate planning attorney, they will know about this, because their knowledge base, you know, is just not going to be around, let alone foreign trust. I mean, there's not that many people who even know like that much detail about how a foreign trust works, let alone using the incorrect domestic asset protection trust, you know, how many times I have California residents, using the Nevada asset protection trust, and the person who set it up for them, like the lawyer has no idea like, okay, what about this case? We're still in 2012, California case that said, hey, you're a California resident, we don't recognize asset protection trust, because we don't have the statutes here. So your Nevada asset protection, trust, and sorry, it's worthless, it's not gonna it's not gonna work, you know, so unless you go to an actual specialist and say, hey, here's the case law, here's what's going to happen down the run. Most people don't have that level of education, because they're not in that world. They don't exist in in it. So I feel bad for the clients because where's the knowledge come from? You think you're going to an attorney who was specialized in this, but you're not taught this in law school, you're not taught this for the bar exam, so how you develop this level of knowledge is really just did you get into the right group of people and were you passionate about it enough to like transition your practice into it… That's why I do these talks is just to educate people and you know, just the base thing, like, why not just an LLC, they're disregarded entities for tax purposes. So they're disregarded for taxes. That means it's disregarded to you for lawsuits and liability, meaning you're pierced. If you're using them for real estate. They're not businesses, they're holding companies, which means the number one argument that will win and pierce that every time is well, Your Honor, this is an actual business. It's an extension of Michael is just a holding company. Boom, you're pierced funding issues, bad accounting systems, like there's four ways to pierce that veil right there and I don't even have to think part about it. Charging, charging order protection mean, like what state do I go set these things up in? You know, how many times I hear people like, oh, just go create a Wyoming LLC? Are you a resident of Wyoming? Is the asset in Wyoming and the answer is no to either one of those, you just tried to buy another state's jurisdiction, that you have no connection to try bringing another state's laws to like California and other state that you're not connected to, and there's no reason to, you're gonna get laughed out of court. Like, it's just you can't go by other states more beneficial laws and bring them, you know, to another state that, you know, that has no jurisdictional connection to it and anonymity is the other like, really, like, flavor of the last like, two years is like, oh, create this anonymous, Delaware or Wyoming? Trust and Ghost the lawsuits, right? Yeah, well, that's not how these that's not how it works but that's how it's being sold by, you know, law firm salesmen and promoters. Yeah, create this and get a really crazy operating agreement and then next thing, you know, like, you're never gonna have to show up in court. I'm sorry, you have a personal agent of service for these out of state law firms their sole job, like, let's say, Mike here is my, you know, personal agent of service, he's gonna get my service and he's gonna say, hey, Brian, here's your service. That's why dude, you just…   Michael: Got to show up in court…   Brian: Court now and amenities done at that point. So the only way that an amenity works is you show up the court, a judge is gonna say, Hey, you're getting sued for a million bucks. Here's your you know, asset disclosure list. Tell me everything that you own, because we didn't know what can be collected on or not, at that point, and amenity or a quote, unquote, air quotes, Secrecy is now up to you. So you're gonna decide, am I gonna lie under oath and hope to god, I don't get you know, my operating agreement will hold up and commit perjury in court, or do I just disclose it. So like, you're the weak link at that point and then if you lie and commit perjury, under oath, you're going to jail on top of losing your assets. So it makes more sense just to say, hey, create a proper asset protection plan, LLC in the state that is layered up into a management company, once you hit the net worth put in the trust, and then sleep well at night because at the end of the day, I don't care if you lose your lawsuit. I care about it for your collectible or not, you know, like you can lose the 10 $50 million case. I just if the asset protection trusts setup strong and in the right jurisdictions with a proper exit strategies, does it mean that you can be collected on and then it lets me settle a case for pennies on the dollar…   Michael: Dang this is nuts, Brian… This is like or this is earth shattering stuff. We got to have you back on to talk more about this. But I want to be very respectful of your time get you out here for people that have a similar response and you're like, holy crap, I gotta call this guy Brian, immediately. Learn more about this, reach out for your services. What's the best way for folks to get in touch get a hold of you?   Brian: Yeah, one great resources, jump on my website, www.btbegal.com , I use it more as an educational resource with a lot of case law client studies. I just want you to be educated at the end of the day like, listen this here's the case law. Like, that's what lawyers should know about, especially trial lawyers. That's why I'm a good trial lawyer. I tell stories through case law and then another great way is through my email, you know, Brian: B R A I N @btblegal.com. I do you know, free 30 minute consultation, whether we're a great fit or not, like we'll figure that out over the phone. I would just rather how people have an educated decision, and then they can like go shop around.   Michael: Love it, love it. Well, hey, man, thanks again for coming on. Really appreciate the time and we'll definitely be in touch.   Brian: Yeah, for sure. Thanks brother…   Michael: All right, everyone. That was our episode, a big thank you to Brian for coming on talking about a lot of things that we've never heard before on the show and definitely bring up some excellent counterpoints to be thinking about as always, if you enjoyed the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is to get your episodes and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

“We're going to have a number of paradigm shifts in the next five years, so it should be a fun time,” says Michael Shuffett, co-founder and CEO of Compose.ai. “There's going to be a new way of creating all of that.” This paradigm shift includes a major disruption across all content creation including writing, images, video and audio, and Compose.ai is poised to be a big part of that in the timesaving space with things like autocompletion, rephrasing writing, and generating full content. Basically, Michael asks you to imagine having a full time assistant who knows you inside and out at your disposal.   Unlike other AI companies who take a more vertical approach, Compose.ai has a broader mission to aid humanity by making AI an extension of the human. It hopes to achieve this by placing a layer of intelligence in the gap that lies between human and computer.  The conversation also covers the ethics of AI. Michael and Compose.ai hope to find a way for technology to make life easier without buying and selling users' attention. Michael and Brendan also discuss the pitfalls of becoming an entrepreneur only for financial gain. Quotes: “I was replying to an email and I think it was the tenth email I wrote in a row. It was just the same repetitive response and it hit me that we have all this crazy technology, but people are still typing every word of every sentence. It just seemed very obvious that even five years from now, that's not going to be the case.” (4:23-4:46 | Michael)  “Yes, there's a ton of value that can be created by bringing AI or machine learning into businesses. That field is still early. Most large companies have huge untapped potential there. But, really this was largely about creating a bigger global impact for humanity, essentially.” (7:09-7:31 | Michael)  “We are a mission-driven company and we have a pretty broad mission, and that is to make AI an extension of the human.” (14:29-14:37 | Michael) “Really what we need is more of a ubiquitous layer that sits between all interactions between a human and a computer and allows us to layer on intelligence to that surface area.” (14:55-15:12 | Michael) “If you look at the typical Big Tech companies, they're all essentially buying and selling your attention. They more or less want to addict you to the technology. I'm not judging it, but they want to addict you to the technology, sell your attention for ads, and really we need the opposite of that at this point. That's where Compose.ai comes in. We're trying to get you to an outcome in technology with as little effort as possible, ideally zero effort. I see it as being on the other side of this attention economy.” (27:13-27:57 | Michael) “Think about what it would be like to have a really trusted assistant that knew everything about you.” (28:29-28:36 | Michael)  “We're poised for all types of content creation to be majorly disrupted across writing, images, video, audio. There's going to be a new way of creating all of that.” (33:54-34:07 | Michael) Connect with Brendan Dell: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendandell/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendanDell Instagram: @thebrendandellTikTok: @brendandell39 Buy a copy of Brendan's Book, The 12 Immutable Laws of High-Impact Messaging: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780578210926    Connect with Michael Shuffett:Twitter: @mshuffett; c_omposeaiCheck out Michael's recommended books:   The Feeling Good Handbook: The Groundbreaking Program with Powerful New Techniques and Step-By-Step Exercises to Overcome Depression, Conquer Anxiety, and Enjoy Greater Intimacy by David D. Burns  https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780593189788   The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins  https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780198788607   Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depends On It by Chris Voss; Tahl Raz https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062407801   Please don't forget to rate, comment, and subscribe to Billion Dollar Tech on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Use code Brendan30 for 30% off your annual membership with RiverSide.fm  Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm

Mike Simmons, a real estate investor, author of the book Level Jumping (linked below), has shared the stage with some of the greats like Gary V. Has made over $1 million in profits in 12 months!! He knew he wanted to invest in 2003, and bought his first flip in 2008....why did it take so long? Like a lot of people starting out Mike was afraid to tell his spouse because of the difficult conversation. It wasn't until he finally decided he was tired of allowing fear to be his excuse that he dove in. Today, Mike shares his inspiring story of how he left his job, entered the real estate world professionally to begin wholesaling and flipping houses. Episode Links: https://www.mikesimmons.com/ Level Jumping   --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: Hey, everyone, welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me, I'm joined by Mike Simmons, author, CEO, business coach speaker, and we're gonna be talking about Mike's business, wholesaling and flipping houses, and what we should be aware of if you're going to get into either of those businesses. So let's get into it.   Mike Simmons, what's going on, man? Welcome to the real estate investor.   Mike: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.   Michael: Oh, my gosh, no, the pleasure is all mine. Super excited to have you on and really excited for our conversation today. So Mike, I know a little bit about your background and a little bit about what you do but for all of our listeners who are not familiar with you, give us a quick and dirty who you are, where you come from, and what is it that you do in real estate today?   Mike: Yeah, no problem. So, you know, I always say that my background is probably the least remarkable. I didn't sell baseball cards, I didn't go around the neighborhood looking for lawns to mow or things to do. I was a normal kid, probably on the lazy side. You know, and my parents were, we're in the automotive industry, and we're very blue collar Michigan, right. So the life that was displayed before me through example, and through explicit, you know, direction from my parents, and the Blueprint was, you got you finish high school, you go to college, or just as maybe even more preferable, you get into a union factory type of environment and it's very secure and you work there for 30 to 35 years, and you retire and you hopefully save some money and you scrimp buy and that's how you that's how life goes. That's just life. That's what people do, that's normal. Yeah, there wasn't one single person in my family or anybody on the horizon that was doing anything remotely entrepreneurial. So I did that I went to school, I went, I finished high school, I got a job with UPS, Teamsters, my parents could not have been happier with me being in the Teamsters and I went down that path, and I got married young, and I was working at UPS and like, unfortunately, UPS is a great company.   But there are injuries that happen because people you know, lift wrong and all that and at 25 years old, 24 years old, actually, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning without going to the chiropractor three times a week as a 24 year old, otherwise healthy man, oh my gosh and I knew I couldn't retire from there, because I was already almost too hurt and crippled to do the job I had to do at that time and I was in my early 20s and so I got another job in the automotive industry. It was a desk job and I started working there and this was, we were the mid to late 90s at this point and the automotive industry, like most industries, were starting to decline starting to have some problems. We were heading toward 2000 where a lot of bad things happen and in, you know, people think about tech and what happened if tech the big boom that happened. But the same thing happened in the automotive industry, essentially, we went from, you know, booming industry to many, many suppliers, going out of business struggling, it was really bad for a while and so I had to look around and ask myself, and I'm one thing I'm good about one thing I one of my superpowers is I'm a very honest, and I can I can very objective about myself and part of that is because it can be a tough thing to do. It's most people I don't think are, are objective about themselves and I'm not saying this to brag, I'm gonna tell you why I'm objective, and it's gonna kind of be like a poor, poor guy. My dad was a Marine, and, and he made it real clear what our shortcomings were on a daily basis as kids and so I have no problem. being real, honest, in a way that say, these this is what I'm not good at.   This is what's not great about me, like I'm very aware, I'm very easy for me to for me to figure that stuff out and so I asked myself at this point in the automotive industry, and things were declining, I didn't have a college education. I would I hire me if I were without a job and I was in the position of HR and I was, you know, somebody like me was across the table. What is there anything about me, that makes me more hirable than the 1000s of people who've been laid off over the last few years and it was easy. There was nothing about me that was remarkable. I had no college experience and I had very little practical experience. So why hire me when there's so many really, really talented people that were being laid off because of the industry. So went back to college, got a degree and I was working I'm kind of fast forwarding a lot, but I got my degree and I doubled my income. Like the minute I retire, graduated, the minute I graduated, I got a job, which literally was twice the annual salary and I was like, here we go, baby. There's no stopping and so just to kind of illustrate how that went, so I went into a company, it was automotive and I was working there for about six, seven years and at one point, it's seven o'clock at night and it's everyone had gone except my team. Everyone had gone home for the night, obviously, it was a five o'clock, most people were gone. It was seven 30 and I'm in at work and there are our client is there too, because there was something going wrong with our program that we are working on and he's there and in we're discussing the problem, and the guy gets really agitated the client, I'm not going to say which automotive company I'm talking about, but it rhymes with board.   Break company, I have an F 150. But he gets in my face and basically start screaming at me like dressing me down, like very much, really like when I was a kid like my dad did write down. Yeah and he was and it was seven o'clock at night. We're all working overtime. We're all clearly busting our butts to solve the problem and he gets in my face. They're screaming at me and he's the client, right? He's a big client and I can't really say anything back, except I'm really sorry. We're working on it and after he walked away, I went to my manager who was there too and I said, what are we doing here? What is happening right now? Why are we here? I'm getting screamed at we're doing our best, like there are issues I get it but nobody, nobody was negligent. We just have we have things that have happened, and we're working through but why are we still here? We should be at home and he said to me, I'll never forget, you need to get your priorities straight and I thought you are correct. I absolutely do, I have young children at home, I have a wife at home. I've been working overtime all week on this project. I didn't say this but in my mind, I'm thinking, you are correct, my priorities are wrong and from that point, I decided to take my side hustle that I was doing, which was real estate, flipping houses not doing a particularly great job at it, but just kind of stumbling through it and I said that is going to become my career priority. My priorities need to get dialed back to my family and make sure I'm at home and I'm spending the evening with them. I'm eating dinner, putting my kids to bed but from a career standpoint, that now becomes my focus and I will get my priorities straight and so he essentially put me on the right track. Inadvertently, he obviously was referring to work priorities but it worked the other way and so I from that day, I started making my side hustle, my main focus and I will say I a year later quit my job and the first year that I was in business and real estate full time that listen to this, this is true and I did this math, the first year that I was in business full time for myself as a real estate investor, my company's gross profits were equal to the total sum of my salary for the previous 25 years that I was working for somebody else, year one, which was a million dollars, I made over a million dollars in my real estate and over the years, like I'm talking going back to 18. When I started working right, I was making very little money and in the middle, I wasn't making a ton toward the end, I was making more but if you just take the average, which is about $40,000 for me, and you times that by 25 and is $1 million. My company grows that in in one year.   Michael: That's crazy, Mike! So where did you take it from there? I mean, are you still flipping houses today where you focus exclusively on that? Give us give us the insider scoop?   Mike: Yep… Yeah, good question. So I was flipping houses. When I was working full time, my wife and I were flipping houses and like I said, we weren't doing a particularly great job of it because she worked full time as a teacher, I was working full time plus as an automotive person and we were getting flips done. But we weren't particularly profitable, like we should have been. We didn't have any processes in place. My wife is extremely risk averse and so I kept trying to do more and do it faster. And she was slowing like brakes, brakes, brakes, right because she was nervous that we were getting ahead of ourselves and she probably saved me from really screwing up bad in the beginning. But at some point, she said, You know what? This is great and you clearly love it. I don't love it as much as you do. In fact, this is making it hard for me to sleep and it's making me hard for me to focus on my day job with the kids and I'm a teacher and that's what I do and I love you, I love the I love real estate but it's the roller coaster, the mental roller coaster is too much and I really would rather you go on without me and let me pull back and I'll just cheer for you from the sidelines and I totally support you and this isn't a negative this is actually a positive I just trust you to do it better without me and I did in and that's when things started taking off because I started doing way more activity like before we would get a house under contract. We would get it quoted out, you know, we would renovate it, we would put up for sale, we'd go through the wholesale process closed, check in the bank, before we started looking for the next day and that's not really a that's not how you scale anything, right?   So when she backed out, I was like, okay and I started putting offers in on multiple houses a day, like I was putting offers on everything and I started getting multiple deals at one time and so I had to learn how to raise money and I had to learn how to manage groups and what a forced me to do was, it forced me to come up with a process in a system that was repeatable and could handle scale. Before that, nothing we did was scalable, is all very manual, we'd go to Home Depot, we'd pick new colors for the walls, we'd pick out different cabinets, different flooring, like everything was custom to the house that we were working on and what I realized was really, really good house flippers who do it at scale, okay, and I'm not talking boutique flippers, who go into a town and they buy a $3 million, you know, historical home, and they like, put it back together with love. It's I'm not talking about that I'm talking about the people that are flipping 20-30 at 100 200 deals, they are not falling in love with every single house and going in there and making it the route, right, it's turning burn a little bit and so I learned how to turn and burn a little bit more in my business and scale it in a in a way that had systems and processes. But I still hadn't hired anybody. It was still just me, what changed the game for me and that changed the game for me in terms of, you know, a racing analogy, but, and again, this is not like I said all this in front of my wife as early as like the last month I've said all of this and she 100% agrees but she was like the governor in a race car, right? They put the restrictor on there. So you can only go so fast. Once that got pulled off. I pushed the gas all the way down to the floor, and I never stopped like, and so things just go faster when you're doing that much volume and back then, you know, now we're talking about 2014 ish timeframe. It was easier to get deals, I'll be honest, like, as someone who coaches people in real estate, I'm not gonna lie. It's harder now than it was back in 2014.   Still possible now, but it was easy back then. So I was getting deals off the MLS and it was going pretty fast. Fast forward another year or so and it started to get harder to get deals off the MLS and I was struggling a little bit and so I had to do some research and figure out and I was I was going to all the meetup groups and I was asking all the other house flippers like, where are you guys finding deals like what's happening? Where are you guys getting your volume from and they were all like, man, it's hard, like we're not getting deals like we're struggling and I'm like, Well, where are you looking? Where are you trying to find deals and everybody said the MLS everybody. I only knew one wholesaler in my market and I reached out to him. I'm like, Dude, I know you're not buying off the MLS. So where are you finding deals? He's like direct mail, I'm going direct to sellers and I'm like, what do you mean, go direct to sellers? How do you do that and so I took him out to lunch. He gave me the down and dirty playbook for how to do direct mail is what I was doing at the time and I started doing that and the deal flow started happening again and I started building and what I realized was and there's a whole story behind it that we don't necessarily have to get into but I changed my model from house flipping to wholesaling and it wasn't because of that guy. To finish in a nutshell, I was overly dependent and this is a huge mistake that new investors make all the time. I was overly dependent on one contractor and one realtor, they were everything the realtors, he found all the deals for me and they ran the numbers and they told me what was a good deal and my contractor was my only contractor and he basically made her are broke my rehab and on the same project as chance would have it. The realtor missed the numbers pretty badly and my contractor started flaking.   Now if you flip houses or renovate houses, or you have rentals, and I say my contractor flake, you probably don't need more information than that you go I'm with you, my contractors flaked too, right. But essentially, he stopped showing up he started charging me for things that he wasn't doing. He started making up half truths about stuff that he did do and so I was forced it and by the way, I was getting deal flow because I was direct mail, right. I had to let both these individuals off my team, to say the least and I had no backup plan and so as these deals were coming in, I reached back out to my wholesaling friend, I'm like, What do I do? I don't know how to wholesale. Can you just tell me what that even means? Like, what do you guys do and he again, gave me the down and dirty playbook and I called a house flipper friend of mine who I had recently talked to and he's like, I can't find anything and I said, Hey, man, I got this deal under contract. Do you want it for 110,000 at the time, that was the price 110,000 he's like, let me take let me look at let me look at the numbers coming back in 10 minutes. He's like I'll take it, I got it under contract for 95,000. I made $15,000 in like 10 minutes and In Michigan at that time, a normal flip 15 to 20,000 is a good flip number. Right, profit. Yeah and I was like I made almost the entire profit with a phone call. That was cool and probably a lot easier sold.   So much easier to do. No, by the way, no contract, right? No realtors. So I got another deal under contract. Ironically, it was also a contract for $95,000 and it was in a similar neighborhood. I called the exact same guy and I told him the exact same thing. I've got a deal for 110,000 It's yours. He said, give me five minutes. Call me back, he said, I'll take it. This all happened within four weeks to deal. I was like, I felt literally talked about love at first sight. I was in love with the model of wholesaling and so I switched my model over to wholesaling and I started, I started scaling it up and what really changed everything for me though, because although I was scaling up and I was starting to have some success, I still wasn't really running it like a true business I was I was a little bit scattered, I was a little bit unfocused and I joined a mastermind, a friend of mine at the time who lived in California, he had a podcast, and I knew him just through podcasting, and I was listening to his podcast one day, and at the end, he signed off, thanked his guest signed off, and I was doing dishes actually, at the time in my house and I saw I let it go, it was it's just kept going because I wasn't able to turn it off. My hands were wet and if it was over, he goes, Hey, if you're still there, I want to let you know about this very exclusive opportunity. I am pulling together some of the best real estate investors from around the country. We're going to form a mastermind, we're going to share ideas, we're going to help each other it's going to be awesome. If you want to get involved, you know, send me an email, whatever.   So I did $25,000 mastermind. Well, I $25,000 bazillion dollars to me at the time, but I was I was doing wholesale deals, right and at the time $25 was like two wholesale deals because I was averaging around 12 $13,000 per deal and I thought, I mean, if I surround myself with these people, will I do two more deals as a result of the relationships and the knowledge that will be exchanged. It seemed reasonable that I would and so I joined and I met someone their mentor, more than one person, but one person in particular, who laid out his company, he just laid it out. This is how I run my company is exactly what I do is what I did right and wrong over the last decade and he had the company I wanted and I said to him, his name's Andy, I said, if I if I see what you did, and I see what you're telling me, I should do and I totally agree with you. But you took you 10 years if I knew everything that you know now, and I apply it proactively. Couldn't I condense that timeframe? Like could I do any year and he said, I don't see why not? That's exactly what I did and I sort of came up with this term that, that I didn't think about a much until I've said it on podcast, and people resonate with it but I think the most powerful thing you can do in business is to use other people who are successful use their hindsight, which is 2020, as they say, right, as your foresight and so I used Andy's hindsight, all the things he did right and wrong, as my foresight going forward and I was able, that's what I was telling you that first year that I was doing the full time because I applied all of Andy's principals and I went from doing a couple of deals here and there to 10 to 15 deals per month and scaled up to a million dollars in that first year.   Michael: That is amazing and so right now your business is focused exclusively on wholesales, are you still doing flips?   Mike: Historically, it's always been wholesales but recently, and I have a business partner to its which is a whole story in itself kind of interesting about hiring and identifying talent. But so my partner and I have started strategically buying properties outright and then doing in Michigan, what we call them land contract, or we basically play the bank, we own the property, and we sell it to them and we hold the note as a company. So we started doing a lot of that. So we do like 100 deals a year, but half of those or more, but at least half would make fantastic land contract deals for us and so, and because of you know, COVID kind of showed us this a little bit and over the last several years that we've been in business, every business has ups and downs every industry has, you know, markets go up and down, right. So revenue kind of fluctuates and we thought how do we level that out a little bit? How do we make the valleys much higher, you know, so they don't go down and so we're doing a lot of this land contract stuff because it's every it's like you know, monthly recurring revenue and so we make the valleys much shallower and the peaks are still there. So we're probably wholesaling half of our deals and the other half we're buying inland contracting out…   Michael: Okay, let's dig into land contracts live because it's just not something I know very much about and we always joke on the podcast that we get to ask self-serving questions of our guests... So walk our listeners through asking for a friend walk us through like how land contract works and why it's so wide, so interesting.   Mike: Yeah, it's pretty straightforward but the concept and I'll kind of give you a peek, like a little bit behind the curtain here, right? The real like mechanics or the real like logic behind it. Me and my partner both as of a year ago, I had about 25 rentals, okay, which I have sold recently and I did it for a couple of reasons. Now, because rentals aren't great, they're great and actually, the rents are higher now than even when I sold them. So rent rents are going up, which is awesome. But for me, I bought them really, and I bought them like 2015, most of them and so the equity in them was very tempting to tap into and I recently have started doing lending on a grander scale, like I've scaled up my lending company, and I wanted to put that equity, that money into my lending company, it's just more of my focus now. But so what we're doing with land contracts, and why one of the reasons why we love them is unlike a rental, we are not responsible for any maintenance, any vacancies like we are, what the bank is to your mortgage, we get the mortgage payment, regardless of whether or not they have a leaky roof or whatever has to happen, right, we don't have to deal with any of that stuff and what we're able to do at least in Michigan, this doesn't work necessarily everywhere, the same way, because the rents aren't high enough in the house prices aren't low enough for to work in a lot of areas.   But for us, if you take someone who's living in a neighborhood, and they're renting, and let's just say they're paying for the sake of round numbers, they're paying $1,000 in rent, okay and they're renting a certain level house in that neighborhood, I can buy a house in that neighborhood that maybe is a little bit in distress that I can go in and buy it inexpensively and put some work into it and if someone were to buy that house with a traditional mortgage, especially a year or two ago, when rates were like high twos, low threes, they could buy that house and their mortgage payment might be $600, right, right. But they can't get approved for a mortgage for whatever reason, right? They have bad credit, or whatever it is, right? But I can buy that house, I can renovate it, and I can sell it to someone and really the pitch to them is listen, you want to own a home, and you're not currently in a position to get approved for a mortgage through a traditional mortgage company. But what if you could have homeownership, and you would pay no more than you were paying when you were renting, right still give me $1,000 give or take. But you own the home and you can build equity and in three to five years you can refinance out at a lower rate and you can own the home and probably drop your payments a little bit. Is it important enough to a person to own the home? If they're if all things being equal rent 1000 I have to pay this company 1000 for the house, but I own the house. That's what we do we buy the houses now, the reality is the interest rates are a lot higher than what you might get at a mortgage company, right. But we're also taking a bit of a risk. These are folks that have defaulted on things in the past and their interest and their credit scores are not great, but they have homeownership at this point and if so they if they have a down payment, and they want to own a home, we can get them into a home for no more than they would pay to rent a home in that neighborhood and three to five years, the goal for them is to fix things in their life and be able to refinance out at a lower rate and move on forever and then. So we're typically an average deal for us might be, you know, we buy it for 50. The ARV is 100, we put 20 into it. So now we're into it for 70 and we sell it for 85, right, we're still a little undervalued. So they're getting some instant equity, they have home ownership but when they go to refi in three, five years, we're getting a $15,000 check or whatever it is at that point, right. So in there's no calls from tenants, and there's no vacancies and none of that stuff. So that that's the that's the allure for US interest…   Michael: Interesting, I mean, isn't that similar, like rent to own or is it different?   Mike: It's similar, but they're not renting, right? a rent to own it, depending on how it's structured. Obviously, you can have some portion of the rent go toward whatever, but you still own the house, right? You still own the house as the person who's having that rent down. We don't own the house, necessarily. We own it, just the way the bank owns your house when you have a mortgage, right. But we're never getting calls from the city for law for Tallgrass. We're not getting calls about the maintenance issues or whatever. We don't have to worry that they didn't, you know, they left and they didn't finish their contract like it's a mortgage and if they if they don't pay their if they don't pay their mortgage, then we will foreclose we can foreclose on them.   Michael: Yep, interesting and so that like when you place these tenants into the home, there's a recorded sale that happens and so you're literally just playing bank, interesting…   Mike: Yep, just playing bank. Yeah, because we both had rentals, both of us and like I said, rental they're awesome but there's just a different level of responsibility for us playing the bank than then playing landlord and that's just what we're choosing to do. We both of us have rentals and it's, it's awesome. I rentals have been fantastic for me. It's just, it's not what we're doing now and we were just like, gonna get rid of the rentals and just wholesale. That's it but then this model presented itself, somebody we mutually knew in the industry is kind of like, hey, I'm doing this and they're doing it in Texas and it works down there too. I don't know that it would work in Los Angeles or San Diego or I don't know that it would probably not as well because the house prices but if you have house prices that you can get a house in a nice in these are like safe blue county collar neighborhoods, we're not talking about like war zones, but by any means I wouldn't buy a house there but in a nice blue collar brick ranch neighborhood, if you can get a house between 50 and 150,000. It could work when they start getting up to a half a quarter of a million, it just doesn't work as well anymore. You can't, the numbers don't work out.   Michael: Okay, okay. Good to know and just out of curiosity, I mean, how many folks end up refinancing out of your mortgage and then truly then own the house versus how many what percentage defaults or you have to go through that?   Mike: Really good question. We started doing this, like, eight months ago. So okay, I don't know, we don't have a loop. Yeah, but the friend of ours who kind of introduced this concept to us. He said about half of them refi out. Very few defaults, very few defaults because it's home, you know, people it's their home, right? They don't default, like they do necessarily on a lease, because it's not as transient. So according to him very few defaults. But we also screen people pretty well to like you would with a rental, like we're not just letting anybody in there, right? If they clearly have a pattern of defaulting on everything they've ever done, we could expect to default to we're not special but people have certain circumstances where their credit cut takes a pretty good hit but it's you know, it's something that is understandable, or it has a you know, story behind it. That makes sense. So I'm not expecting a lot of defaults, how many people will refi out? You know, our plan is to be a little bit more proactive with helping them with credit repair right now, we're not really getting involved in that but I suspect as we do get more involved with helping with that, that the number of people who actually refi out will probably go up, you know, so I don't really know right now how that's gonna go down. We'll see, we'll see how that goes. I don't know. Sure…   Michael: Okay, we'll have to have you back in 24 months to see. See what that looks like…   Mike: For sure, for sure.   Michael: Awesome. Well, Mike, let's shift gears here just for a moment and talk about wholesaling because, I mean, like you were mentioning a bit ago, it's no surprise that deals are a bit tougher to come by today. I think in the industry as a whole it's probably no surprise that wholesalers don't have the best reputation out there. Yeah, so I mean, I have I'm going to share kind of my thoughts on I think what makes you different but curious to get your thoughts and share with our listeners, me what makes you different as a wholesaling company and then what are some things that people can do to protect themselves from the not so great actors out there who are wholesalers?   Mike: The problem with wholesaling and the reason why it can get a bad name Is it is it is advertised and when I say advertised, I mean if you go out on the internet and say how do you become a wholesaler? Should I be a wholesaler? It's billed to people as this no money, no experience and that's how you get started in the industry…   Michael: And no risk…   Mike: Yeah, no risk. You get this, like, this mentality of this person who thinks they're just gonna roll out of bed open up their eyes, and money's gonna pour through the windows of their house if they're a wholesaler and it's not true, obviously. So you asked me what I do that makes me different. Here's what anyone can do to make their business different, but it doesn't it's not, you know, just for wholesaling but you have to run it like a business and a lot of wholesalers are very transactional in their thinking. They only care about the cheque they're getting next they don't care about future checks. They don't care about consistency, or predictability of their of their business and so they treat wholesaling, like this little dirty act they have to do before the real serious business comes along and in the reason why a lot of wholesalers get this bad reputation also is because there's something called daisy chaining in real estate, and most real, most wholesalers I'm doing air quotes if you guys aren't watching.   The reason most wholesalers or a lot of wholesalers have this reputation is they're not really wholesalers as much as they are what's called daisy chains and a daisy chain er is okay I'm a wholesaler I market to sellers I go into a seller's home. I create rapport and trust and in understanding of what's happening. I get a purchase agreement with them and I take that purchase agreement and I market it out to the other real estate investors in my community and some person who sees this takes the pictures, they take the text, and they mark up the price and then they send it out to a bunch of people, a lot of times a lot of the same people at a higher price and it's like called them and so you call them and you say, hey, I'll take it because you didn't see my marketing, you saw their marketing for whatever reason, you say, I'll take it. They don't even know me and I don't know them. But they're representing that they have this this deal under contract and meanwhile, I'm working with my buyers and I come to an agreement with a buyer and then this person calls me who's was also marketing up my contract and says, hey, I want to buy that house and I go, I've already sold it. Well, he's already told his buyer that they can have it for that price. But I already sold it because I have it under contract. Now he has to go back to the buyer and say, sorry, we have to back out of this deal, right and so it looks like a wholesaler is a really bad business person, bad guy, dishonest, whatever, misrepresenting himself, but he never had the deal and so that happens that's runs rampant. That's a real epidemic in the wholesaling world. So you also asked me, How do you tell the difference or how do you how do you avoid the bad ones?   The first question is that because I get people who send me deals, and frankly, I'll look at them if some other wholesaler finds a deal, and they were they offer it out at a price that my company might be able to land contract that house and we want to buy it, we'll do it. So the first question I asked them is, do you have this under contract yourself or are you representing somebody else and a lot of times they do and sometimes they don't? Sometimes they say they do and I say good. Then before I would buy this, I would need to see the agreement between you and the seller, your company in the seller, what's the name of your company, and I verify this stuff because if they don't have it under contract, I don't even care if they say, yeah, it's not me. But the guy who has under contracts a good friend of mine, and he gave me exclusive rights. I want to talk to who has entered a contract always deal with the person who has an order contract with the seller, with the seller, right? All right, that's, that's key. That's huge and we don't, we don't allow daisy chaining, we don't ever allow people to market out our deals, we only market them out and so all of our buyers know, we've told them several times, if someone if we're marketing a house and you see the same house being marketed by someone else, believe me when I tell you, they're not authorized to do that, they will never be able to sell it to you. So and as a wholesaler, I always make sure that I'm dealing with the end buyer, not a middle person, right? So if someone comes to us, though, and says, hey, I've got a buyer, and they're gonna, they'll pay you this much money and it makes sense for us. We'll give them a check like, well, we'll compensate them for bringing that buyer. But we're not going to we're not going to be what's going to be all transparent, we're going to let everyone know what's happening and so transparency in the wholesale process is important between us as the wholesalers and the buyers total transparency. Now, I'll say something that your audience may not love. There is not total transparency between us and the seller and does that mean that we're lying to them? No, it's not it doesn't. But here's what I always tell people to illustrate my point. Nobody loves or trusts me more than my mother, nobody.   My mom has heard me explain what I do as a wholesaler 1000 times and she has been all ears like she's could not be more dialed in to hurts her baby boy and what he does, and she's so proud and so happy and she's listening intently. But if you call my mom and put her on the air right now and said, Could you please explain to me what your son does? How he does it? She wouldn't know she might even tell you. I'm a realtor. She just doesn't know. It doesn't make sense to her. It's just it's too obscure. Right? So when we're in a seller's home, we don't say to them, Mr. Mrs. Seller, I know you're under a lot of duress. You have to move maybe there was a death or divorce or whatever there was right? Something happened in your life is spiraling. Here's the deal. I want to sign a contract, saying that I'm gonna buy your house, but I'm not buying it. I don't even know who's gonna buy it. I don't know where the money is coming from. I don't know who's gonna show up at closing. I'm not even sure if I'm gonna be able to close. Can we sign the deal now? It nobody would say yes. Okay and that's an a character characterization of what a wholesaler does. But on some level, it's facetious, but it's sort of true, right? I'm signing a contract. I don't exactly know who's going to buy it. In my case as a wholesaler and what I think makes what I do ethical is I have the financial backing to buy any house that I put under contract. If worst comes to worst, I can buy it right and that's not that doesn't come in the beginning. new investors don't always have that luxury. But what you can do as an investor and where you can be transparent and you should be transparent is do not sign a contract and imply or explicitly state that you will for sure be closing on the house without exception, you can't say that in most cases.   So what I say is some version of this, Mister seller, when I came here I was prepared to offer you $100,000 for your house, that was the highest number that I was authorized to offer you, you cannot go below 110,000 That is your lowest, that's the number. That's the gap, right… You want 110 minimum, and I was maximum allowed to offer you 100 but here's what I would like to suggest. Let's sign the contract for 110. Okay, I'm gonna go back to my investors and people who make decisions and help me buy these houses and I am going to see if there is interest at that price, I anticipate that there is not going to be but there very well could be but at the very least, if you can give me two weeks to talk to my investors and go to bat for you, and try to make them understand now that I'm here, I see this house is very nice. I didn't know is this nice but it is a very nice house. I think I can get this done but give me two weeks and I will come back to you in two weeks or less by the way and I'll tell you one of two things either, we can't pay 110 and so we need to rip this contract up and just part as friends, because we all knew that that was a possibility or we're going to move forward at this price and everything is good and I guarantee you will close. Okay, can if you couldn't give me two weeks. Now, if you don't want to do that, I totally get it. If you go to a realtor, they're going to want you to sign it like a three month contract where they get three months to market your house. I just want two weeks and if it takes me two days, I'll come back in two days. Either way, I'll be totally honest with you and it will be up to you what we do from that point we rip up the contract or not. It's totally up to you. Is that? Is that something that you can live with just for a week or two and nine times out of 10? They say yes. Now, when I when I go out now I am going out to my buyers and I'm saying hey, I got this this opportunity who's interested, right? If I get crickets and it's like, nope, nope, nope.   Then usually we'll try to figure out what our buyers would pay, right? That's the next question. Okay, you don't want it? It's fine. But what would you pay for this and we start getting that feedback and so we can go back to the seller and say, listen, I was right. 100,000 is the best we can do but I'm totally willing to rip up this contract because you want 110 or we can talk about a reduction or, or the or we get buyers that are like, yeah, I'll do it for that price. That's great, right and it's a little better than we thought and we go back and tell the seller, hey, if we go out to our buyers, and we find out that 110 is a really good price for us still, we'll still make the money we thought we were going to make we always go back and say we'll honor the 110 because I think that's the question I would be thinking in my mind if I'm listening to this interview? Well, what happens if they get really great offers? Do they still always go back and try to get that lower number? No, we don't. If we can make what we thought we would make or pretty close to it, we'll pay a higher price, right? We're, my goal here is to get to heaven not to make an extra $5,000, right. So I'm not trying to be a bad guy. But the key is the ethical wholesalers versus not the ethical ones, prepare the seller for the potential for a renegotiate or a cancellation up front and so when we go back, how often are they irate because we come back and say, hey, we can't do the 110. Almost never, because we very thoroughly explain what we're doing and we prepare them that we may have to come back and discuss the reduction or cancellation. The people honestly, they just want clarity.   They just want to know what's going to happen. What people get mad about are surprises. So when you say oh, great 110 done deal. I can't wait to close with you in a few weeks. This is so exciting and then you come back in three days and say we have to cancel the contract. They're mad 100% of the time, because they weren't you're not clear on what was happening. You surprise them with bad news and nobody likes being surprised with bad news but when you come back and say, hey, remember when we talked a week ago and I said this? Well, we can't do the 110. You know, we tried nine times out of 10 they're totally fine and honestly, seven times out of 10. They say well, what can you do and then we have that discussion. So, man, it's all about setting expectations.   Michael: Yes, 1000 times yes, as funny as you were going through kind of your pitch. I was like, Oh yeah, like that makes sense. That's such a different, like feeling that I got as you were giving as you were giving that Spiel than what I was expecting or than what I've experienced with wholesaler. So I mean, kudos to you and your team. It's clearly it's clearly working for you, so keep up keep up the great work.   Mike: Well, honestly, we have gotten deals, where and I know that sounds cliche, but I swear to you, this happens all the time and it we only know that when people tell us right so my guess is it happens more than we even know but we get deals where they got a higher offer from another wholesaler. But because we come in and we are professional, and we do address their concerns, but we wholesaling is not really about buying houses. It's about solving problems and again, sounds cliche, totally true. You can figure out what their pain point is and you can focus on that the sale of the house is secondary and I know that because we've had sellers tell us listen, we had somebody come along and offer us more than you guys, but we're not going to sell to them, we're going to sell to you because we believe you, we believe what you're saying and we like working with you. So professionalism matters and just to illustrate that point, underline it real quickly, one of our reps went into a house one time, and he was talking to a seller and they were going through the whole thing, it was like halfway through the meeting, and then knock on the door, and the seller says, oh, I forgot.   There's another investor or another, whatever. They call them coming in another person who wants to look at my house and my rep was like, oh, okay, and he kind of stood aside and a guy came in, my rep looked outside, and he saw the guy was driving a Mercedes, nothing wrong with that Mercedes fine but he left it running. He was wearing a suit, he came into the house, briefly said hello, and started walking around, pointing out all the flaws in the house, this is all this has to be replaced. That's no good. Nobody wants that and he shot a number at her with what he would pay and said, think about it and he got in his car and left. Like, everything that guy said, that wasn't verbal screamed, you are not that important to me. I'm way too big of a deal for you and I don't even have time to turn my car off. That's how little I think about what is your situation. I'm just telling you what I need and what I want and what I'll give you and I'm out of here, right and understandably, the seller was floored. She's like, that was the rudest thing I've ever seen, like, that was awful. I feel so like, offended by that. Yeah and of course, my rep was like, yeah, I would be offended too, right. Like, I agree with you. They're horrible. We're great. Let's get back to talking about how great we are. So it matters, like paying attention to their pain points, and not being all about the number. If you start talking about price right off the bat, you can almost guarantee you're not gonna buy the house. Yeah, if you start by listening, and addressing their problems, and let the sale be last. It'll work out for you much, much better.   Michael: I love it, I love it, I love it. Mike, we could go on, I think probably for days talking about this stuff but I want to be very respectful of your time and get you out here. For anyone that wants to learn more about you, your processes your business, where's the best place for them to do that?   Mike: Yeah, thank you for that by the way, I appreciate it. The best place to get a hold of me would be at my on my website, https://www.mikesimmons.com/ . If you go on mikesimmons.com, you can find anything about me and also my podcasts. I have a podcast called just out real estate. You can find the link to that on my on my website as well.   Michael: Right on…   Mike: Which you were on right, you were my guest.   Michael: We had a lot of fun.   Mike: Yeah, we did.   Michael: Well, Mike, thank you again for coming on and sharing so much wisdom with our listeners really appreciate it and I'm sure we'll chat soon, man. I look forward to it.   Mike: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.   Michael: Likewise, talk soon.   All right, everyone. That was our show a big thank you to Mike for coming on. Super, super insightful stuff. I learned a ton about the wholesaling business and wholesalers in general, and some really great questions that we as investors can be asking wholesalers to protect ourselves from the downside. So as always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your episodes, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

Today we chat with Cisco's head of developer content, community, and events, Michael Chenetz. We discuss everything from KubeCon to kindness and Legos! Michael delves into some of the main themes he heard from creators at KubeCon, and we discuss methods for increasing adoption of new concepts in your organization. We have a conversation about attending live conferences, COVID protocol, and COVID shaming, and then we talk about how Legos can be used in talks to demonstrate concepts. We end the conversation with a discussion about combining passions to practice creativity. We discuss our time at KubeCon in Spain (5:51) Themes Michael heard at KubeCon talking with creators (7:46) Increasing adoption of new concepts (9:27) We talk conferences, COVID shaming, and blamelessness (12:21) Legos and reliability  (18:04) Michael talks about ways to exercise creativity (23:20) Links: KubeCon October 2022: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/kubecon-cloudnativecon-north-america/ Nintendo Lego Set: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HVXMQ87?ref_=cm_sw_r_cp_ud_dp_ED7NVBWPR8ANGT8WNGS5 Cloud Unfiltered podcast episode featuring Julie and Jason:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep125-chaos-engineering-with-julie-gunderson-and-jason/id1215105578?i=1000562393884 Links Referenced: Cisco: https://www.cisco.com/ Cloud Unfiltered Podcast with Julie and Jason: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep125-chaos-engineering-with-julie-gunderson-and-jason/id1215105578?i=1000562393884 Cloud Unfiltered Podcast: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/cloud/podcasts.html Nintendo Lego: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HVXMQ87 TranscriptJulie: And for folks that are interested in, too, what day it is—because I think we're all still a little bit confused—it is Monday, May 24th that we are recording this episode.Jason: Uh, Julie's definitely confused on what day it is because it's actually Tuesday, [laugh] May 24th.Michael: Oh, my God. [laugh]. That's great. I love it.Julie: Welcome to Break Things on Purpose, a podcast about reliability, learning from each other, and blamelessness. In this episode, we talk to Michael Chenetz, head of developer content, community, and events at Cisco, about all of the learnings from KubeCon, the importance of being kind to each other, and of course, how Lego translates into technology.Julie: Today, we are joined by Michael Chenetz. Michael, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself?Michael: Yeah. [laugh]. Well, first of all, thank you for having me on the show. And I'm really good at breaking things, so I guess that's why I'm asked to be here is because I'm superb at it. What I'm not so good at is, like, putting things back together.Like when I was a kid, I remember taking my dad's stereo apart; wasn't too happy about that. Wasn't very good at putting it back together. But you know, so that's just going back a little ways there. But yeah, so I work for the DevRel at Cisco and my whole responsibility is, you know, to get people to know that know a little bit about us in terms of, you know, all the developer-related topics.Julie: Well, and Jason and I had the awesome opportunity to hang out with you at KubeCon, where we got to join your Cloud Unfiltered podcast. So folks, definitely go check out that episode. We have a lot of fun. We'll put a link in the [show notes 00:02:03]. But yeah, let's talk a little bit about KubeCon. So, as of recording this episode, we all just recently traveled back from Spain, for KubeCon EU, which was… amazing. I really enjoyed being there. My first time in Spain. I got back, I can tell you, less than 24 hours ago. Michael, I think—when did you get back?Michael: So, I got back Saturday night, but my bags have not arrived yet. So, they're still traveling and they're enjoying Europe. And they should be back soon, I guess when they're when they feel like they're—you know, they should be back from vacation.Julie: [laugh].Michael: So. [laugh].Julie: Jason, how about you? When did you get home?Jason: I got home on Sunday night. So, I took the train from Valencia to Barcelona on Saturday evening, and then an early morning flight on Sunday and got home late Sunday night.Julie: And for folks that are interested in, too, what day it is—because I think we're all still a little bit confused—it is Monday, May 24th that we are recording this episode.Jason: Uh, Julie's definitely confused on what day it is because it's actually Tuesday, [laugh] May 24th.Michael: Oh, my God. [laugh]. That's great. I love it. By the way, yesterday was my birthday so I'm going to say—Julie: Happy birthday.Michael: —happy birthday to myself.Julie: Oh, my gosh, happy birthday. [laugh].Michael: Thank you [laugh].Julie: So… what is time anyway?Jason: Yeah.Michael: It's all good. It's all relative. Time is relative.Julie: Time is relative. And so, you know, tell us a little bit about—I'd love to know a little bit about why you want folks to know about, like, what is the message you try to get across?Jason: Oh, that's not the question I thought you were going to ask. I thought you were going to ask, “What's on your Amazon wishlist so people can send you birthday presents?”Julie: Yeah, let's back up. Let's do that. So, let's start with your Amazon wishlist. We know that there might be some Legos involved.Michael: Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, you just told me about a cool one, which was Optimus Prime and I just—I'm already on the website, my credit card is out and I'm ready to buy. So, you know, this is the problem with talking to you guys. [laugh]. It's definitely—you know, that's definitely on my list. So, anything that, anything music-related because obviously behind me is a lot of music equipment—I love music stuff—and anything tech. The combination of tech and music, and if you can combine Legos and that, too, man that would just match all the boxes. [laugh].Julie: Just to let you know, there's a Lego Con. Like, I did not know this until last night, actually. But it is a virtual conference.Michael: Really.Julie: Yeah. But one of the things I was looking at actually on Lego, when you look at their website, like, to request one of their speakers, to request one of their engineers as a speaker, they actually don't do that because they get so many requests for their folks to speak at conferences, they actually have a dedicated part of their website that talks about this. So, I thought that was interesting.Michael: Well listen, just because of that, if they want somebody that's in, you know, cloud computing, I'm not going to go talk for Lego. And I know they really want somebody from cloud computing talking to Lego, so, you know… it's, you know, quid pro quo there, so that's just the way it's going to work. [laugh].Julie: I want to be best friends with Lego people.Michael: [laugh]. I know, me too.Julie: I'm just going to make it a goal in life now to have one of their engineers speak at DevOpsDays Boise. It's like a challenge.Michael: It is. I accept it.Julie: [laugh]. With that, though, just on other Lego news, before we start talking about all the other things that folks may also want to hear about, there is another new Lego, which is the Van Gogh Starry Night that has been newly released by the time this episode comes out.Michael: With a free ear, right?Julie: I mean—[laugh].Michael: Is that what happens?Julie: —well played. Well, played. [laugh]. So, now you really got to spend a lot of time at KubeCon, you were just really recording podcast after podcast.Michael: Oh, my God. Yeah. So, I mean, it was great. I love—because I'm a techie, so I love tech and I love to find out origin stories of stuff. So, I love to, like, talk to these people and like, “Why did that come about? How did—” you know, “What happened in your life that made you want to do this? Who hurt you?” [laugh].And so, that's what I constantly try and figure out is, like, [laugh], “What is that?” So, it was really cool because I had, like, Jimmy Zelinskie who came from CoreOS, and he came from—you know, they create, you know, Quay and some of this other kinds of stuff. And you know, just to talk about, like, some of the operators and how they came about, and like… those were the original operators, so that was pretty cool. Varun from Tetrate was supposed to come on, and he created Istio, you know? So, there were so many of these things that I just geek out knowing about, you know?And then the other thing that was really high on our list, and it's really high from where I am, is API quality, API testing, API—so really, that's why I got in touch with you guys because I was like, “Wow, that fits in really good, you know? You guys are doing stuff that's around chaos, and you know, I think that's amazing.” So, all of this stuff is just so interesting to me. But man, it was just a whirlwind of every day just recording, and by the end that was just like, you know, “I'm so sorry, but I just, I can't talk anymore.” You know, and that was it. [laugh].Jason: I love that chatting with the creators. We had Zack Butcher on who is also from Tetrate and one of the early Istio—Michael: Yeah, yeah.Jason: Contributors. And I find it fascinating because I feel like when you chat with these folks, you start to understand the context of why things were built. And it—Michael: Yes.Jason: —it opens your brain up to, like, cool, there's a software—oh, now I know exactly why it's doing things that way, right? Like, it's just so, so eye-opening. I love it.Julie: With that, though, like, did you see any trends or any themes as you were talking to all these folks?Michael: Yeah, so a few real big trends. One is everybody wants to know about eBPF. That was the biggest thing at KubeCon, by far, was that, “We want to learn how to do this low-level kernel stuff that's really fast, that can give us all the information we need, and we don't have to use sidecars and things like that.” I mean it was—you know, that was the most excitement that I saw. OTel was another one for OpenTelemetry, which was a big one.The other thing was simplification. You know, a lot of people were looking to simplify the Kubernetes ecosystem because there's so much out there, and there's so many things that you have to learn about that it was super hard, you know, for somebody to come into it to say, “Where do I even start?” You know? So, that was a big theme was simplification.I'm trying to think. I think another one is APIs, for sure. You know, because there's this whole thing about API sprawl. And people don't know what their APIs are, people just, like—you know, I always say people can see—like, developers are lazy in a good way, and I consider myself one of them. So, what that means is that when we want to develop something, what we're going to do is we're just going to pull down the nearest API that does what we need, that has the best documentation, that has the best blog, that has the best everything.We don't know what their testing strategy is; we don't know what their security strategy is; we don't know if they use other libraries. And you have to figure that stuff out. And that's the thing that—you know, so everything around APIs is super important. And you really have to test that stuff out. Yes, people, you have to test it [laugh] and know more about it. So, those are those were the big themes, I think. [laugh].Julie: You know, I know that Kerim and I gave a talk on observability where we kind of talked more high-level about some of the overarching concepts, but folks were really excited about that. I think is was because we briefly touched on OpenTelemetry, which we should have gone into a little bit more depth, but there's only so much you can fit into a 30-minute talk, so hopefully we'll be able to talk about that more at a KubeCon in the future, we [crosstalk 00:09:54] to the selection committee.Michael: Hashtag topics?Julie: Uh-huh. [laugh]. You know, that said, though, it really did seem like a huge topic that people just wanted to learn more about. I know, too, at the Gremlin booth, a lot of folks were also interested in talking about, like, how do we just get our organization to adopt some of these concepts that we're hearing about here? And I think that was the thing that surprised me the most is I expected people to be coming up to the booth and deep-diving into very, very deep, technical-level questions, and really, a lot of it was how do we get our organization to do this? How can we increase adoption? So, that was a surprise for me.Michael: Yeah, you know what, and I would say two things to that. One is, when you talk about Chaos Engineering, I think people think it's like rocket science and people are really scared and they don't want to claim to be experts in it, so they're like, “Wow, this is, like, next-level stuff, and you know, we're really scared. You guys are the experts. I don't want to even attempt this.” And the other thing is that organizations are scared because they think that it's going to, like, create mass hysteria throughout their organization.And really, none of this is true in either way. In reality, it's a very, very scripted, very exacting stuff that you're testing, and you throw stuff out there and see what kind of response you get. So, you know, it's not this, like, you know—I think people just have—there needs to be more education around a lot of areas in cloud-native. But you know, that's one of the areas. So, I think it's really interesting there.Julie: I think so too. How about for you, Jason? Like, what was your surprise from the conference or something that maybe—Jason: Yeah, I mean, I think my surprise was mostly around just seeing people coming back, right? Because we're now I would say, six months into conferences being back as a thing, right? Like, we had re:Invent last year in Vegas; we had KubeCon last year in LA, and so, like, those are okay events. They weren't, like, back to normal. And this was, I feel like, one of the first conferences, that it really started to feel back to normal.Like, there was much better attendance, there was much more just buzz and hallway tracking and everything else that we're used to. Like, the whole reason that we go to conferences is getting together with people and hanging out and stuff, and this one has so far felt the most back-to-normal out of any event that I've been to over the past six months.Michael: Can I just talk about one thing that I think, you know, people have to get over is, you know, I see a lot online, I think it was—I forget who it was that was talking about it. But this whole idea of Covid shaming. I mean, we're going to this event, and it's like, yeah, everybody wants to get out, everybody wants to learn things, but don't shame people just because they got Covid, everybody's getting Covid, okay? That's just the point of life at this point. So, let's just, you know, let's just be nice to each other, be friendly to each other, you know? I just have to say that because I think it's a shame that people are getting shamed, you know, just for going to an event. [laugh].Julie: See, and I think that—that's an interesting—there's been a lot of conversation around this. And I don't think anybody should be Covid-shamed. Look, I think that we all took a calculated risk in coming—Michael: Absolutely.Julie: To this event. I personally gave out a lot of hugs. I hugged some of the folks that have mentioned that they have come up positive from Covid, so there's a calculated risk in going. I think there has been a little bit of pushback on maybe how some of the communication has come out around it. That said, as an organizer of a small conference with, like, 400 people, I think that these are very complicated matters. And what I really think is important is to listen to feedback from attendees and to take that.And then we're always looking to improve, right?Michael: Absolutely.Julie: If everything that we did was perfect right out of the gate, then we wouldn't have Chaos Engineering because there'd be nothing [crosstalk 00:13:45] be just perfectly reliable. And so, if we take away anything, let's take away—just like what you said, first of all, Covid, you should never shame somebody for having Covid. Like, that's not cool. It's not somebody's fault that they caught an illness.Michael: Yes.Julie: I mean unless they were licking doorknobs. And that's a whole different—Michael: Yes. [laugh]. That's a whole different thing, right there.Julie: Conversation. But when we talk about just like these questions around cultural adoption, we talk about blamelessness; we talk about learning from failure; we talked about finding ways to improve, and I think all of that can come into play. So, it'll be interesting to see how we learn and grow as we move forward. And like, thank you to re:Invent, thank you to KubeCon, thank you to DevOpsDays Boise. But these conferences that have started going back in-person, at great risk to organizers and the committee because people are going to be mad, one way or the other.Michael: Yeah. And you can see that people want to be back because it was huge, you know?Julie: Yeah.Michael: Maybe you guys, I'm going to put in a feature request for Gremlin to chaos engineer crowds. Can we do that so we can figure out, like, what's going to happen when we have these big events? Can we do that?Julie: I mean, that sounds fun. I think what's going to happen is there's going to be hugs, there's going to be people getting sick, but there's going to be people learning and growing.Michael: Yes.Julie: And ultimately, I just think that we have to remember that just, like, our systems aren't perfect, and neither are people. Like, the fact that we expect people to be perfect, and maybe we should just keep some mask mandates for a little bit longer when we're at conferences with 8000 people.Michael: Sure.Julie: I mean, that's—Michael: That makes sense.Jason: Yeah. I mean, it's all about risk management, right? This is, essentially what we do in SRE is there's always a risk of a massive outage, and so it's that balance of, right, do what you can, but ultimately, that's why we have SLOs and things is, you can never be a hundred percent, so like, where do we draw the line of here are the things that we're going to do to help manage this risk, but you can never shoot for a perfectly, entirely safe space, right? Because then we'd all be having conferences in padded rooms, and not touching each other, and things like that. There's a balance there.And I think we're all just trying to find that, so yeah, as you mentioned, that whole, like, DevOps blamelessness thing, you know, treat each other with the notion that we're all trying to get through this together and do what we think is best. Nobody's just like John Allspaw said, you know, “Nobody goes to work thinking that, like, their intent is to crash everything and destroy the company.” No one's going to KubeCon or any of these conferences thinking, “Yeah, I'm going to be a super-spreader.”Julie: [laugh].Michael: Yeah, that would be [crosstalk 00:16:22].Jason: Like, everyone's trying not to do it. They're doing their best. They're not actively, like, aggressively trying to get you sick or intentionally about it. But you know—so just be kind to one another.Michael: Yeah. And that's the key.Julie: It is.Michael: The key. Be kind to one another, you know? I mean, it's a great community. People are really nice, so, you know, let's keep that up. I think that's something special about the, you know, the community around KubeCon, specifically.Julie: As we can refine this and find ways, I would take all of the hugs over virtual conferences—Michael: Yes.Julie: Any day now. Because, as Jason mentioned, is even just with you, Michael, the time we got to spend with you, or the time I kept going up to Jfrog's booth and Baruch and I would have conversations as he made me a delicious coffee, these hallway tracks, these conversations, that's what no one figured out how to recreate during the virtual events—Michael: Absolutely.Julie: —and it's just not possible, right?Michael: Yeah. I mean, I think it would take a little bit of VR and then maybe some, like, suit that you wear in order to feel the hug. And, you know, so it would take a lot more in order to do that. I mean, I guess it's technologically possible. I don't know if the graphics are there yet, so it might be like a pixelated version, like, you know, like, NES-style, or something like that. But it could look pretty cool. [laugh]. So, we'll have to see, you know?Julie: Everybody listening to this episode, I hope you're getting as much of a kick out of it as we are recording it because I mean, there are so many different topics here. One of the things that Michael and I bonded about years ago, for our listeners that are—not years ago; months ago. Again, what is time?Michael: Yeah. What is time? It's all relative.Julie: It is. It was Lego, though, and so we've been talking about that. But Michael, you asked a great question when we were recording with you, which is, like—Michael: Wow.Julie: Can—just one. Only one great question.Michael: [laugh].Julie: [laugh]. Which was, how would you incorporate Lego into a talk? And, like, when we look at our systems breaking and all of that, I've really been thinking about that and how to make our systems more reliable. And here's one of the things I really wanted to clarify that answer. I kind of went… I went talking about my Lego that I build, like, my Optim—not my Optimus Primes, I don't have it, but my Voltron or my Nintendo Lego. And those are all box sets.Michael: Yep.Julie: But one of the things if you're not playing with a box set with instruction, if you're just playing with just the—or excuse me, architecting with just the Lego blocks because it's not playing because we're adults now, I think.Michael: Yes, now it's architecting. Yes.Julie: Yes, now that we're architecting, like, that's one of the things that I was really thinking about this, and I think that it would make something really fun to talk about is how you're building upon each layer and you're testing out these new connection pieces. And then that really goes into, like, when we get into Technics, into dependencies because if you forget that one little one-inch plastic piece that goes from the one to the other, then your whole Lego can fall apart. So anyway, I just thought that was really interesting, and I'd wondered if you or Jason even gave that any more thought, or if it was just fleeting for you.Michael: It was definitely fleeting for me, but I will give it some more thought, you know? But you know, when—as you're saying that though, I'm thinking these Lego pieces really need names because you're like that little two-inch Lego piece that kind of connects this and this, like, we got to give these all names so that people can know, that's x-54 that's—that you're putting between x-53 and x-52. I don't know but you need some kind of name for these parts now.Julie: There are Lego names. You just Google it. There are actual names for all of the parts but—Michael: Wow. [laugh].Julie: Like, Jason, what do you think? I know you've got [unintelligible 00:19:59].Jason: Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting because I am one of those, like, freeform folks, right? You know, my standard practice when I was growing up with Legos was you build the thing that you bought once and then you immediately, like, tear it apart, and you build whatever the hell you want.Michael: Absolutely.Jason: So, I think that that's kind of an interesting thing as we think about our systems and stuff, right? Like, part of it is, like, yeah, there's best practices and various companies will publish, like, you know, “Here's how to architect such-and-such system.” And it's interesting because that's just not reality, right? You're not going to go and take, like, the Amazon CloudFormation thing, and like, congrats, you're done. You know, you just implement that and your job's done; you just kick back for the rest of the week.It never works that way, right? You're taking these little bits of, like, cool, I might have, like, set that up once just to see what's happening but then you immediately, like, deconstruct it, and you take the knowledge of what you learned in those building blocks, and you, like, go and remix it to build the thing that you actually need to build.Michael: But yeah, I mean, that's exactly—so you know, Legos is what got me interested in that as a kid, but when you look at, you know, cloud services and things like that, there's so many different ways to combine things and so many different ways to, like—you know, you could use Terraform, you could use Crossplane, you could use, you know, any of the services in the cloud, you could use FaaS, you could use serverless, you could use, you know, all these different kinds of solutions and tie them together. So, there's so much choice, and what Lego teaches you is that, embrace the choice. Figure out and embrace the different pieces, embrace all the different things that you have and what the art of possibility is, and then start to build on that. So, I think it's a really good thing. And that's why there's so much correlation between, like, kind of, art and tech and things like that because that's the kind of mentality that you need in order to be really successful in tech.Jason: And I think the other thing that works really well with what you said is, as you're playing with Legos, you start to learn these hacks, right? Like, I don't have, like, a four-by-one brick, but I know that if I have three four-by-one flats, I can stack those three and it's the same height as a brick, right?Michael: Yep.Jason: And you can start combining things. And I love that engineering mentality of, like, I have this problem that I need to solve, I have a limited toolbox for whatever constraints, right, and understanding those constraints, and then cool, how can I remix what I've got in my toolbox to get this thing done?Michael: And that's a thing that I'm always doing. Like, when I used to do a lot of development, you know, it was always like, what is the right code? Or what is the library that's going to solve my problem? Or what is the API that's going to solve my problem, you know?And there's so many different ways to do it. I mean, so many people are afraid of, like, making the wrong choice, when really in programming, there is no wrong choice. It's all about how you want to do it and what makes sense to you, you know? There might be better options in formatting and in the way that you kind of, you know, format that code together and put them in different libraries and things like that, but making choices on, like, APIs and things like that, that's all up to the artist. I would say that's an artist. [laugh]. So, you know, I think it all stems though, when you go back from, you know, just being creative with things… so creativity is king.Jason: So Michael, how do you exercise your creativity, then? How do you keep up that creativity?Michael: Yeah, so there's multiple ways. And that's a great segment because one of the things that I really enjoy—so you know, I like development, but I'm also a people person. And I like product management, but I also like dealing with people. So really, to me, it's about how do I relate products, how do I relate solutions, how do I talk to people about solutions that people can understand? And that's a creative process.Like, what is the right media? What is the right demos? What is the right—you know, what do people need? And what do people need to, kind of, embrace things? And to me, that's a really creative medium to me, and I love it.So, I love that I can use my technical, I love that I can use my artistic, I love that I can use, you know, all these pieces all at once. And sometimes maybe I'll play guitar and just put it in the intro or something, I don't know. So, that kind of combines that together, too. So, we'll figure that piece out later. Maybe nobody wants to hear me play guitar, that's fine, too. [laugh].But I love to be able to use, you know, both sides of my brain to do these creative aspects. So, that's really what does it. And then sometimes I'll program again and I'll find the need, and I'll say, “Hey, look, you know, I realized there's a need for this,” just like a lot of those creators are. But I haven't created anything cool, but you know, maybe someday I will. I feel like it's just been in between all those different intersections that's really cool.Jason: I love the electric guitar stuff that you mentioned. So, for folks who are listening to this show, during our recording of the Cloud Unfiltered you were talking about bringing that art and technical together with electric guitars, and you've been building electric guitar pickups.Michael: Yes. Yeah. So, I mean, I love anything that can combine my music passion with tech, so I have a CNC machine back here that winds pickups and it does it automatically. So, I can say, “Hey, I need a 57 pickup, you know, whatever it is,” and it'll wind it to that exact spec.But that's not the only thing I do. I mean, I used to design control surfaces for artists that were a big band, and I really can't—a lot of them I can't mention because we're under NDA. But I designed a lot of these big, you know, control surfaces for a lot of the big electronic and rock bands that are out there. I taught people how to use Max for Live, which is an artist's, kind of, programming language that's graphical, so [NMax 00:25:33] and MSP and all that kind of stuff. So, I really, really like to combine that.Nowadays, you know, I'm talking about doing some kind of events that may be combined tech, with art. So, maybe doing things like Algorave, and you know, things that are live-coding music and an art. So, being able to combine all these things together, I love that. That's my ultimate passion.Jason: That is super cool.Julie: I think we have learned quite a bit on this episode of Break Things on Purpose, first of all, from the guy who said he hasn't created much—because you did say that, which I'm going to call you out on that because you just gave a long list of things that you created. And I think we need to remember that we're all creators in our own way, so it's very important to remember that. But I think that right now we've created a couple of options for talks in the future, whether or not it's with Lego, or guitar pickups.Michael: Yeah.Julie: Is that—Michael: Hey—Julie: Because I—Michael: Yeah, why not?Julie: —know you do kind of explain that a little bit to me as well when I was there. So, Michael, this has just been amazing having you. We're going to put a lot of links in the notes for everybody today. So, to Michael's podcast, to some Lego, and to anything else Michael wants to share with us as well. Oh, real quick, is there anything you want to leave our listeners with other than that? You know, are you looking to hire Cisco? Is there anything you wanted to share with us?Michael: Yeah, I mean, we're always looking for great people at Cisco, but the biggest thing I'd say is, just realize that we are doing stuff around cloud-native, we're not just network. And I think that's something to note there. But you know, I just love being on the show with you guys. I love doing anything with you guys. You guys are awesome, you know. So.Julie: You're great too, and I think we'll probably do more stuff, all of us together, in the future. And with that, I just want to thank everybody for joining us today.Michael: Thank you. Thanks so much. Thanks for having me.Jason: For links to all the information mentioned, visit our website at gremlin.com/podcast. If you liked this episode, subscribe to the Break Things on Purpose podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or your favorite podcast platform. Our theme song is called, “Battle of Pogs” by Komiku, and it's available on loyaltyfreakmusic.com.

Your home can be a powerful source of ready cash to fuel financial growth, add value to your property, or even provide a cushion should an emergency occur. Refinancing your mortgage and taking a home equity line of credit out on your home are two ways to make that capital available to you. HELOCs and refis are quite different from each other, though, so knowing which one fits your strategy best is important. In this episode, Pierre and Michael talk about the attributes of each and what situations might be best fit for either of them. Links mentioned: www.roofstockacademy.com  --- Transcript   Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Pierre: Hey, everyone, welcome to the Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Pierre Carrillo and today I am joined with…   Michael: Michael Albaum…   Pierre: ….and today we're going to talk about refinancing and HELOC and which ones make more sense. So let's jump in.   How's it going, Michael?   Michael: Good here, I was telling you yesterday, my van broke down in the middle of California. So I had to get that taken care of and get a lift home from a buddy of mine…   Pierre: In my hometown?   Michael: In your hometown. That's right, that's right. We were smoking off the highway. So he said, oh, we got to pull over and get this thing fixed and it was going to be a week to diagnose it and get parts. So we just said let's leave it down there and then a buddy of ours was able to give us a lift home and we were like on our way home from being on the road for a month and a half. So we were super excited, super close and then wahh wahh wahh…   Pierre: Not usually the best place to get stuck, I left…   Michael: Yeah, if I had to point if I had to pick and choose it would not have been in this particular town. But that's okay, it's how it goes.   Pierre: All tight. Okay, so let's talk about refinance, what just roughly, what is a refinance? And why would someone want to use it.   Michael: So a refinancing that's not familiar is basically just getting a new mortgage on top of an existing one and it basically this new mortgage is going to replace the old one and so there are kind of there are two different types of refinances. One is called a rate and term refinance, where you're simply just changing the rates and the term of the loan and so if you have a 30 year fixed mortgage at 4%, and you go get a new 30 year fixed mortgage at 3%, because interest rates are better, but the loan balance remains the same. That would be a rate and term refinance, the other kinds of refinances called the cash out refinance and that's basically where you're actually you're getting money out of the transaction and so if you have that same 30 year fixed mortgage at 4% interest, and you have a balance of $200,000, but your home is appreciated significantly, or the property has appreciated significantly, you might be able to go get a new mortgage, a 30 year fixed mortgage at maybe the same 4% but for $300,000 and so that new mortgage is going to replace your old one, it's going to pay off the 200,000. But there's $100,000 left, that goes to you as cash in the form of tax free cash and so that can be a really, really powerful mechanism or lever to pull if you need access to cash and so those are kind of the two different types of refinances and how they work.   Pierre: So those both sound like awesome options. Why wouldn't everyone always just refinance?   Michael: Yeah, it's a really good question and a lot of people do they refinance, and refinance and refinance throughout the life of their property or maybe their own lives because it is such a powerful tool.   Pierre: Refi till you die.   Michael: Yeah, refi till you die, so it was it was not shocked to swap your job for the 1031 refi till you die. I love it. So yeah, I mean, it's a very powerful tool and of course, everyone's probably thinking, wow, if it's so powerful, like, is there no downside? I think that there are some downsides that we do have to talk about and understand. So first and foremost is it costs money to refinance, and some lenders will tell you oh, we can wrap the closing costs into the loan and so what that basically means is, if we go back to our initial example of like, $200,000, if it cost five grand to refinance, your new loan might be $200,000, to pay off that initial $200,000 loan, but it might, your new loan might actually be $205,000 and so they're wrapping your closing costs into the loan. So you don't have to pay anything out of pocket upfront day one. Now, you're still paying interest on that extra $5,000 over the course of that 30 year loan and so it ends up costing a lot. But for from a day one cash out your pocket perspective, it might not and so that's an option for folks to be asking their lenders about is that an option for them, depending on their situation. The other thing I think it's really important to keep in mind is that it resets the time clock, and for how your payment is broken down and so on a 30 year fixed mortgage or any kind of fixed mortgage, your monthly payment every single month is fixed, we know it's not going to change, it's gonna remain the same for the duration of the fixed period of the loan. But what does change over time is the amount that goes to principal and the amount that goes to interest and at the beginning of a loan, the majority of your payment is going to pay down interest. So if someone is towards the end of the life of their loan, they're paying down their principal very, very quickly and so if you go do a refinance again, that time clock is going to reset and now you're going to have a duration that you determined for the loan, but most of your payments going towards the interest. So that's important to understand that distinction as well.   Pierre: What is a HELOC and how is it different?   Michael: So a HELOC is an acronym and it stands for a home equity line of credit and basically, that is a line of credit against the equity that you have in the property and so a lot of refinances, they will give you 80% or 75% of the property's appraised value or they'll simply just replace the mortgage if you're going to take a lesser amount. So if you've got a $200,000 property, and it's worth 400k, but you do and rate and term refinance, you're gonna go get another $200,000 mortgage, that would be a 50%, LTV loan, versus going maximum 80%, LTV or 75%, if you're going to take out $300,000 loan, then you're going to be at 75%, you're gonna get cashed out. So a HELOC is basically on the equity and so if you have a let's say you have $100,000 of equity in the property, and a lender says, hey, we'll give you 80% equity line of credit, that means that they're going to give you like a line of credit of say $80,000 and the cool thing about line of credit is that they just sit there until you use them or until you need them and so if you set one up, you set up a line of credit, they're often free to set up with lenders, and never touch the thing, you're not going to pay a penny in terms of interest or principal payments, because you're not drawing on that line and you can think of it like a credit card. So with a credit card, if you're not spending any money on a credit card, you don't have any payments to make, there's no interest accruing. Same thing with a line of credit, so a lot of these lines of credit have a checkbook associated with them or an account associated with them. And so if I needed a $10,000, tomorrow, or in two days from now for repair, I could write myself a check, write Michael Albaum, a check from Michael Albaum line of credit, I'll deposit the check with my mobile deposit depositing app, it'll have $10,000 in my account, by the time the check clears now is when the time clock starts running on the interest payments and he locks are going to be traditionally interest only payments and the interest rate is going to be fluctuating it's going to be variable and it usually changes monthly. And there's oftentimes a ceiling and a floor. But so if I have a $10,000 balance, let's say my payments 100 bucks next month, if I make that $100 a month interest only payment, my balance hasn't decreased at all. So I'm not getting this benefit of the loan pay down like I am in a fully amortizing loan, which is basically what a cash out refinance or writing term refinances. So I want to just be very cognizant of what my balance is, what my interest rate is, and how much I'm paying off every month. Because you could pay off the entire thing tomorrow, or the day after, if you got a big $10,000 check in the mail, you decided, hey, I'm gonna go pay this thing off. There's usually no prepayment penalties, you can pay it off as aggressively or as slow as you'd like. It has a set period of set life that you have to pay it off in X amount of time. But that's going to be HELOC specific, but it's a very flexible tool and so your cash out refi is gonna be full interest, full interest and principal payments, fully amortized loan, your line of credit tends to be an interest only variable flexible line of credit you have access to.   Pierre: Okay, cool. I have a few questions on so the So you're essentially on a HELOC, you're borrowing that money from the equity in your property?   Michael: Yes.   Pierre: So when, who are the interest payments going to?   Michael: They are going to the bank, they're going to the lender that has that line if you have that line of credit with.   Pierre: Okay, all right. Next question is you said it's a variable rate.   Michael: Yes.   Pierre: What okay, so say you're, you have a certain amount of equity in your property based off of its current valuation, and there is some like major market correction where the value of your property drops down significantly. Does that new calculated equity in your property, then replace the amount that you had available to you and that HELOC?   Michael: It's a super good question and so it's something that a lot of people were very concerned with, sort of COVID is, hey, I've got these lines of credit out, are our lenders gonna start calling them do which they can, they're legally allowed to do that and it's all in the mortgage language and so it's important to read and understand that language very closely. But it can happen, lenders can say, hey, major downturn, like we're closing your line, you need to pay it all back and understanding what that mechanism is and how that works is going to be specific to your lender and your HELOC. Traditionally, I haven't seen that happen a whole lot, because values tend to fluctuate with time and lenders when they're looking at how much line of credit will extend to you. They're building in buffer and that's why lenders are only giving out 80% loan to value or 75% loan to value. They're like hey, Pierre, you've got to have 20% 25% skin in the game and so the property has to drop 25% before their investment is even at risk. So same thing with the locks they tend to go a little bit higher on the LTV I've seen up to 90% and so there's still that tempers sent buffer, which lenders that's how they're underwriting things, but to your question, short question long answer, they can close these lines of credit, yes.   Pierre: Okay and then how do the HELOC affect your credit rating? I mean, it's pretty big chunk of credit that you're then pulling out on $80,000. That's a huge credit card.   Michael: Yeah, potentially. So it's a lot of it'll show up as a second mortgage. That's really what it is. It's a second loan against the property and I, I'm not 1,000% sure. So I would ask the lender that you're getting the line of credit from, but my understanding is that most lenders when they do a credit poll, they'll see the full balance, the full amount of the line of credit as a debt on your credit score and so they'll just assume that you're making the minimum monthly payments on that loan, affecting your debt to income negatively. So I hope that answers your question. But again, I'm not 1,000% sure. But that's how I've seen it done in the past.   Pierre: Going back to the variable rate on a HELOC are can that rate just change from one day to the next or is there a schedule that it changes? Well, you can you plan ahead, you know, and say, you know, did you can use it within this certain time period before the rate rises or is it just like, rates are variable, we changed it.   Michael: Most lenders do monthly rate adjustments, and there tends to be a ceiling and a floor and so you know, going into it, okay, this is my maximum interest rate this, this will ever be throughout the life of this HELOC, which tends to be five to 10 years. So you can have an understanding, but no, it's really tough to forecast. Okay, rates are gonna go up on this date, and this is what they're going to go to. Okay and if you figure out how to do that.   Pierre: Alright, so that brings us to, when do we use which one? When does a HELOC make sense and when does a refi make sense? Which one's better?   Michael: It's a super good question and one that I get in the Roofstock Academy all the time, I'm constantly chatting about it with folks, especially given today's market environment where there a lot of people have made a bunch of equity in their home over the last couple of years. So it really depends which one is better, it really depends on it's a case by case basis. What I often share with folks is if you have a plan for the cash, within six to 12 months, I would go cash out refinance, if you're not sure, but you just know you want to have access to cash. I go with the HELOC because again, in that in that cash out refi scenario, you're paying on those borrowed dollars, day one, independent of what you do with the money independent what you do with the proceeds. So if I've got $100,000 proceed from a cash out refinance, but I don't quite know what I'm gonna do with it, I'm just kind of having it sit in my bank account that's costing me principal and interest every single day it's sitting there.   Versus if I go the HELOC route, I set up a line of credit for $100,000. I can access it tomorrow if I needed it, but doesn't cost me anything to have the ability to access it on a moment's notice. So it really depends, I would say on what you're planning on doing with the proceeds. It also depends on your current loan terms, and what your new loan terms would be in terms of a rate and term or cash out refi if you're at a two and a half percent loan, 30 year fixed, and you would have to go through a five and a half percent. If you want to do a cash out refinance, I would think long and hard about that depending on the loan size on the smaller the loan less impactful a delta and interest rates gonna be, but on a really big loan, that can be really really, really impactful to your monthly payment. Now you could make the argument that oh, I can always refinance again down the road. Yeah, but today, I know exactly what your payment isn't at two and a half percent and I know it's pretty darn attractive. So in that instance, too, it might make sense for someone to go the HELOC route if they have to give up a really attractive or really a really solid loan.   Pierre: Okay and can you use, is this a product like a HELOC? Can you just use this on your primary residence or can you use this on every one of your investment properties?   Michael: Yeah, also really good question. They are most predominantly used and given on owner occupant primary residences, there are lenders that will give them out on investment properties, but there are fewer and far between it comes in, it's much easier to get on an investment property. If the lender already has the first mortgage. I'm investigating this right now with a investment property that I own. I'm going back to the same lender that has the primary mortgage and say hey, can I get a line of credit on this thing, there's a ton of equity that they're being open, too or r if you own it free and clear, that tends to be very easy. But what lenders don't like to do is specifically on investment properties because it is a second loan. They're in essentially in a junior position. So they don't want to be second in line to foreclose on the property. If you're not making your HELOC payments to them.   Pierre: Okay, and so you take a HELOC out on your primary residence and then move out and now it's kind of you're renting it out as an investment property. Do you have to close out that HELOC or can you just keep that open?   Michael: Yeah, it's a great question. It's that's going to be lender specific as to what they have in their language, I would imagine you can continue keeping it in effect in force if it's if you're making payments to them. That's kind of like when you get a primary mortgage and then move out and rent it out. You don't have to close the mortgage, but it's going to be lender specific and product specific as to what you have to do what you have to disclose if it can becomes a rental and it was a primary at one point.   Pierre: Okay, cool. I think that's those are all of my questions on this topic. Do you have any, like final tips that you should that that you want to leave everyone with about both of them?   Michael- Yeah, I think they're both really powerful products, really powerful tools to have in your tool belt, there are applications for both. But if you're not sure, definitely do your research. But also, it doesn't have to be one or the other and there's this kind of hybrid approach where depending on what your new product you're going into, from a rate and term or a cash out refi is, you don't have to take your maximum loan to value. So let's say you've got $100,000 of equity to play with that you can get a loan against. Maybe you take 40,000 in cash out refi and then 40,000 in HELOC. That way, you give yourself a little bit of cash today, but you also give yourself a little bit of flexibility down the road. And again, you really want to think long and hard. What is the plan for the proceeds? What am I going to do with this money once I have it in my account and again, for me, my kind of number is six to 12 months. That's what makes me comfortable. But if you're sitting out there like no, I'm okay having this money sitting my account for two years because of the uncertainty or because of whatever justification you have. Great. But again, it's not an all or nothing type situation for either product. So definitely start chatting with lenders and it's easiest to start with the lender that currently has the mortgage if you're interested in HELOC, but there are plenty of lenders out there that have just HELOC only products that can that can complement a mortgage.   Pierre: All right, Michael, that definitely covers it. Thanks so much for sharing, anything else?   Michael: Now this was great, man. Thanks so much for that for the awesome questions here.   Pierre: All right, let's get out of here.   Michael: Let's get out of here.   Pierre: Thanks everyone for joining. Please subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen to it. If you're watching it on YouTube, hit the subscribe button that really helps us get out to more people. Thank you all for joining us and we'll catch you on the next one. Happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing.

A lot of real estate investors start out with single-family homes and soon realize that multifamily helps them scale much faster. But multifamily properties can come with more complications and many investors appreciate having learned the ropes in the single-family space before taking on this asset class. So is it smart to start small and work your way up or just dive into the deep end?    In this episode, Emil and Michael share their experience on this topic and point out the pros and cons of either strategy. --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today I'm joined by my co-host…   Emil: Emil Shour   Michael: …and today Emil and I are going to be chatting about does it make sense to start with single family or with multifamily? So let's get into it.   Alright, Emil, how's it going, man? It's been a minute.   Emil: Good dude. How you doing?   Michael: Hanging in there hanging in, I got a couple of refinances that just close today that I'm working on for a long time, so really excited about that. So I'm going to be redeploying some capital here to some short term rentals. How's, how's the triplex sailing all smooth?   Emil: Yeah, I haven't, I haven't received an email in weeks. So that's my favorite kind of news is no news for my property manager.   Michael: It's a good sign. Yeah, oftentimes I would say.   Emil: Yeah, yeah… We've got tenants in place, you know, they're all fresh, no bad news. So fingers crossed, it keeps staying that way.   Michael: Sweet! Well, today, Emil and me want to talk about if it makes sense to start with single family or multifamily as you're just getting started. And you are someone that started with single families, right?   Emil: I did! My first investment property or actually any property I purchased. It was an investment property. It was a single family in Jacksonville, Florida in 2017.   Michael: Okay, and now you're a seasoned investor, you've got six units, I think, you've done some multifamily.   Emil: Yes sir.   Michael: Should you have done differently?   Emil: I am happy I started with single family. I think starting with one tenant, one home one unit, is the ideal way to start. I don't think, I don't think this is like one of those. There's a better or worse way. I think it's what is what is your appetite for pain? Do you do want to like learn really fast and deal with a lot of craziness at first or do you want something slow and steady and just like an easy on ramp? So for me having a full time job, at the time, starting with a single family was perfect. It was like, I got to learn how to manage a property manager different things that can go wrong. It was just an easier transition for me and I'm happy I started that way.   Michael: Yeah, it's funny you say appetite for pain. I think we just want to be careful to not give people the impression that single families can't be a highway on ramp to pain because you know, my first, my first investor was also a single family and it was like the most painful one ever. So I think it's, it's you can have you can have it either way. You can have horrible experiences with single family, you can have amazing experiences of multifamily. So it really just depends, I think how the asset is structured and where you're buying it.   Emil: Yeah, but you could… let's say you bought a quad Plex, right? You had the same thing, but times fours. It's just like your percentage. No, actually, I don't know, you could look at it either way, you could say, well, I have 4 units, my likelihood of 100% pain is much, is much less likely than so I think personally it's just easier to go with one, learn the ins and outs. Again, you're learning, especially if you're remote investing, you're learning how to do that, you're learning how to deal with a property manager. I think overall, it's just easier with one.   Michael: Okay, and let's dive a little bit deeper. I mean, talk to talk to us a little bit about like, when you say learning the ins and outs, what does that mean? What did you learn from investing in that single family that then better prepared you to invest in that triplex and what was totally brand new? Like what caught you off guard with the triplex?   Emil: That's a good question. I think it's just, you know, if you never if you've never owned your own home, there's all these moving parts of a home that you're not really like, I don't know how an H back works. How does plumbing work? What's uh, what's the main line? What's all these things? I've even forgotten already, as we're on this podcast, but like all, all these bars, all these parts of a home that you just you don't really know. I think that's one just getting more familiarized with all the moving parts.   Michael: Does it matter that you didn't know how an H back works? I mean, you don't know how a car engine work. I mean, I assume I don't want to I don't want to put words in your mouth. But do you know how a car engine works?   Emil: Here's the difference. A lot of things go wrong with your property. I don't say a lot, but things go wrong, right? And it's on you to know, how much does it cost to get that fixed, right? Like if someone said, Hey, your condenser broke? We're gonna replace it for $10,000, how would you know if that's accurate or not?   Michael: I gotcha, I see what you're saying. Okay!   Emil: So that's that's one thing.   Michael: But it's the same thing with car if you take your car to the mechanic and they say, oh, you're continuing to trance function or is broken. We're gonna turn into $1,000 to fix it. So our concept, right, I guess you have to you have to chat with other people…   Emil: Well my first car was a $6,000 used car. So I would just say, okay, you guys keep it, I'll go get a new one, you know what I mean…? I mean, it's like, it's, it's also, in most cases, less less dollars in, right. So a multifamily is going to be more dollars in your learning on more dollars versus single families less dollars in potentially, so less dollars you potentially have on the line to learn.   Michael: All right, all right. I will, I'm gonna I'm gonna take a… alternative position on that one and push back, I think that you can actually find multifamily in particular markets that are as inexpensive or less than some single family. I mean, they're single family all over the place in the 2,3,4- $100,000 verse multifamily, you can find properties that are less than so I think that's a very common misconception that people fall into is oh, multifamily is automatically more expensive and I don't know that that's necessarily the case for every market.   Emil: Yeah. But then you're putting you're potentially putting the cart before the horse, right? You're saying I'm going to go find a market where it meets this versus you should find a market that you like, and then look within that market?   Michael: Hmmm… Yep. So you're letting the deal dictate the market or letting the market dictate the deal?   Emil: Right! I think it's like some people will just I started that way, right. I said, okay, this is how much I want to spend, which markets kind of fall into that, which is one way, but I don't know if that's the right way. I don't know if it's the wrong way. But I would, I would rather if I could start it all from scratch, say like, what is the market I want to really invest in? And then secondarily, who is the property manager, I want to invest with?   Michael: Oh, that's very well said. And so you're someone that wants to kind of cluster their investments in the same market? It sounds like…?   Emil: I would yeah, I think I've said that, like on previous episodes being scattered across couple different markets, I think finding one market you like, you're finding good deals, you have a good property manager, again, to me, that's the key is finding a property manager. It's tough, it's like how do you find that good property manager without trying several markets, right?   Michael: If you get some perspective and you go other places, you realize, oh, man, my manager was amazing, or well, my property manager kind of sucked.   Emil: Right, right. Well, that's the value of I think networking and talking to other people who are doing real estate investing rather than just going solo.   Michael: Totally, totally. And I cut you off before to go down this rabbit hole but you were saying, you were talking about what the ins and outs were that you actually learned that prepped you to be ministers as a multifamily investor.   Emil: I don't think I'm a successful multifamily investor. I have one drive legs and that's been a big learning experience. I don't know, it was just it was a different learning experience in that I had multiple tenants leave at the same time. You know, single family, you're not paying a lot of the utility bills, right. So you're learning on the multifamily, like, what are my actual expenses? What do I cover? And how much are they each month? So it's like, yeah, you can estimate and talk to people, but like, it's just things you're going to learn by doing and buying? I don't know…   Michael: Yeah, I think it makes a lot of sense, I think it makes a lot of sense…   Emil: Those are of the things that come to mind.   Michael: Yeah.   Emil: And then, you know, how long does your average single family tenant stay versus multifamily? Like, yes, their stats online, but it's to me another one of those things you learn by doing?   Michael: Yes, very much so, very much so. See, it's so funny, so many of the points you brought up for single family, I agree with and I think are valid, but I have like the opposite experience and I experienced those things with multifamily. So I actually have another episode too, like my first two investments were single family. I had the tenants leave every single year, they did a ton of damage on the way out and had to go to small claims court. So I was like, oh my God, this sucks. So that's ultimately kind of what led me to multifamily, I was like, oh, I gotta do something different. This is not this is not working out. So had much better luck with multifamily and that's where I've been focusing on since.   Emil: For the record, where are your single family, those two single families you bought?   Michael: They were both in California, in Southern California.   Emil: Southern California is a tough market for landlords, man…   Michael: It very much is…   Emil: That I think probably played some into it, potentially for you.   Michael: I think so, I think so. But also I mean, like given that I've also purchased I purchased two flip properties. One was in Birmingham, Alabama and the other in Kansas City, KC Mo, and that's been those have been paying to the butts too and so I think it's it's not a one size fits all like you were saying and it's it's very much personal preference.   Emil: Sure   Michael: But some takeaways that I had from investing in small multifamily, so two, three and four units is, as he touched on earlier, was the likelihood that you have both tenants or all of the tenants having issues or vacancy or causing damage, the Cisco likelihood just goes down. And so that's why a lot of people buy multiple properties because if you have one property, the likelihood of having one vacancy is fairly high if you have two that goes down, so on and so forth as you expand your portfolio. And so you can do that and acquire more units and increase the statistical likelihood of success.   Success in this case, meaning not no vacancy and less repairs, with fewer transactions and so it just becomes, easier from a management standpoint and easier from a mental capacity standpoint, when you're thinking about, okay, I've got one address to worry about, these are all the things going on there as opposed to these five different addresses to keep track of and so I think for from a small multifamily perspective, like, again, those two to four units, it's fairly similar from a how to own and operate perspective and I think you nailed that also talking about like the expenses and so from that perspective, it can be a little bit different, and your expense load and what your operating costs look like, and who pays what and how often you might have a turn. And but the cool thing is, the financing is the same. So if you go buy a one single family or a two to four unit, and you're getting conventional financing, that's the same, which is really, really cool. It's not until you make that gap into that five plus unit space that it changes into commercial financing.   Emil: Right. And that's probably something important to consider here as well, if you're like thinking about multifamily or single family is, well, if you have less time, let's say you wanna invest real estate, but you have less time, right? Multifamily, we know is valued on how well can you make it perform, it's more like a business, tather than, you know, one to four unit, you're kind of writing the ups and downs of the market to value it right. It's all sales comps. So maybe if you have more time, and you can you feel like you can manipulate the NOI on that property, get it valued higher to do those things. Maybe multifamily makes more sense for you and then but maybe if you're you know, super busy and you want something a little bit more passive, I've just found that my single family has been more passive, my attendance stay longer. I haven't done the triplex for a ton of time. It's been a year and a half. But my tenants stay longer, I hear less things overall, is what I've is my personal experience with, very limited units, so…   Michael: Yeah, I think you've made a great point talking about time, time perspective, I would just add to that, that if you're just starting out and taking on a multifamily investment, finding something that's that has a value add component might be tough. And it really comes down to like, I know, I was way in over my head with my first multifamily deal I had. Because I just feel like you don't know what you don't know and so you're jumping in, like you mentioned, to this multiple unit situation where all of these things are new, versus trying to figure it out with one tenant and one property in one door, where everything is still new. And so I think that there it's it's often an easier pill to swallow. But if someone is super gung ho and wants to take risks and has the financial wherewithal to back it up, and is like yeah, I know I'm gonna I'm no, I'm gonna learn lessons, but I want to learn lessons hard and fast. Multifamily can be a really great way to do that. Most value add now layering that on top of that is another way to learn even harder and faster and more expensively. So if someone's just starting out, I think and they're gung ho about multifamily, I think a turnkey multifamily can be a really a really great way to go.   Emil: Yeah. That's something interesting you kind of bring up their trauma to me not trauma, but like recollection of my this, this triplex my first multifamily is when you're wrong on your calculated repair costs and all that it compounds, right. So if you have three units, you got a turn, and you think it was 5k each and you were wrong, it multiplies faster than oh, the the kitchen on my multimeter and my single family, I thought was gonna be 5000 ended up being 6000, right. Like, you just multiply it if you're wrong multiple times.   Michael: Yeah. No, it's such a good point, it's such a good point. I wholeheartedly agree.   Emil: Yeah. But it's good. That's a good learning experience that, you know, people should go through.   Michael: Yeah, well, I would argue I would have preferred to have someone else go through it and tell me about it and then I could learn from their mistakes, which is why we started the Roofstock academy. By the way, we talked about, hey, this is purpose built for investors, by investors for all the crap that we had to go through that we wish other people had told us ahead of time.   Emil: True, true and it's also valuable in that, like, your cost will change from market to market, right? So having other people in the same market you invest in, it's just so valuable.   Michael: Totally, totally. And oh, I forget who said it. I don't know if it's a famous quote, or it was someone I just heard talking, but they're saying like, not every dollar of rent is created equal, in that in every market you go to, just because it looks attractive on paper doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to be, you know, a rosy walk in the park and so be very particular and do your due diligence around okay, what is the market do? And what is the market doing? And why is this thing, both single family or multifamily, the price that it is both from a rental perspective, as well as a cost perspective. So if you're like, holy crap, I can go buy these $200,000 property rents for five grand a month. Why is that? You know, what, did you find a unicorn? Maybe? And let's, you know, go figure that out, just because it's so good. It shouldn't scare you but you should definitely put up a red flag and say, okay, well, let's investigate this further and find out why this is the way it is.   Emil: Right.   Michael: Awesome. Any other points Emil, before we get out of here?   Emil: No, I think I think we actually cover this one pretty well, in terms of our individual experiences, pros and cons of each thing and it was well covered.   Michael: Love a good humblebrag… Awesome, let's get out of here.   Emil: More so by you, you're just grilling me and I'm like, uh,… I still remember Michael, it was four years ago.   Michael: You tried to block it out of your mind? Forget about it.   Emil: Yeah, I'm like, I don't know. I just it's kind of one of those things where you're like, you just put one foot in front of the other and you know, you're drinking from the firehose, so…   Michael: Totally. Yeah. Well, but real quick, so last question, before we get out of here. How has that investment panned out for you, that first single family?   Emil: My first one?   Michael: Yeah.   Emil: So yeah, it's been a cash cow and if you hear crying in the background, that's my newborn baby in, shout out in.   Michael: My baby boy in… baby boy… Emil: Baby boy… So when I bought it, I think the rent was somewhere around 900 and we've just had steady rent increases and the same tenant for four plus years now. So I think now it's at like 10350 or somewhere like that. Yeah, and just having the same tenant is so valuable. I love it. It's so nice. That's my favorite thing was single families. They seem to stay longer.   Michael: Love it. So what was probably a good deal at the time has now turned into if you saw it today, a great deal, it sounds like…   Emil: Yeah, I think it was a, if I'm being objective. It was a decent deal at the time and now it's become a pretty good deal for me.   Michael: Love, time, compounded with like good decisions. That should be like an equation time. Time plus good decisions equals, I don't know, killer deals. Hey, everyone…   Emil: Michael Einstein, the Einstein of real estate.   Michael: So dumb… awesome. Well, let's get out of here, Emil. That was our episode, everyone. Thank you so much for hanging in there with us through all those rabbit hole side tracked conversations. As always, if you liked the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your podcast, and we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing.   Emil: See you later.

Whitney is a real estate investor and personal finance trainer whose vision is to help thousands of families on their path towards financial independence. After purchasing her first rental in 2002, and hitting a home run, then nearly losing it all on her second deal, Whitney took control and figured out how to invest in real estate the right way. She realized that success must leave clues. So, she studied and using her skills in research,  business operations and training, she replicated the very personal finance and wealth creation strategies the wealthy use to create financial freedom. Today, Whitney is a partner in $900M+ of real estate assets, including 6,500+ residential units, 1,400+ self-storage units, including flipping over $3M in residential real estate. In this episode, she shares her journey and explains how to build the mindset, skills, and strategies necessary to succeed as a real estate investor, so that you live the way you want to. Episode Links: https://www.passiveinvesting.com/whitney/ https://ashwealth.com/ --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me we have one of our favorite recurring guests: Whitney Elkins-Hutten and she's gonna be talking to us today about what do you need to be a badass rockstar, female investor? Let's get into it.   Whitney, what's going on? Thanks for coming back yet again for another episode of record with me really appreciate you.   Whitney: Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. I'm so excited.   Michael: Oh my god, this is… I'm more excited. I'm the most excited. So today, we're gonna be talking about your thoughts, advice, recommendations on how to become a badass rockstar, female investor, because you've done it. So curious to get your thoughts from a high level, you know, what is it that people are getting wrong with their mindset? Or is it something physical that they're doing?   Whitney: Well, yeah, so I don't know if it's something that somebody does wrong, right. I think there's really three key components to like being a successful investor period, but, and we can kind of like dive into like, you know, those nuances between females and males and like what females can do to like, kind of elevate themselves. But really, it boils down to three things: mindset, skill sets, and network. So I mean, if you've read any of the works, you know, thinking grow rich or anything by Kiyosaki, like it boils down to those three things. But just knowing those three words is not enough, like you have to understand how to act on them.   Michael: Here, I was thinking, man, I know the three words, I got the secret recipe now, I'm good.   Whitney: All right. Well, I wish it were that simple, right? You know, that's half the battle like, right, I know that right there. But um, you know, on the mindset piece, um, you know, that that's like the foundation like we're building a pyramid for like, your entire investing business to live off of, like, you have to have a good foundation. And that foundation is like your operating system, like what's in between these two years of yours. And unfortunately, like, or, I mean, we've evolved our society over the years, but this operating system still is like, you know, it's, it's, it's still like in the mastodon air, like, it hasn't like really caught up. Evolution is slow but you know, if you believe in evolution, but yeah, it's a little slow. So we have to, like really work on this on a daily basis and condition it daily and it's so hard in today's environment to do that.   Michael: So, yeah, what are some what are some tips or tricks or steps that you've taken, or you've seen others take to be successful to change their mindset?   Whitney: Well, I can speak for me personally and these are questions that like, I mean, I've had so many mentors and coaches in my life and these are like questions they've given me, too, that I have to continue to ask myself on a regular basis, sometimes daily, like if I'm going through a tough time.   But, you know, if you're getting into real estate, you have to know why you want it. Like why do you want to invest in real estate because real estate is a tool, right? There are some people that love real estate, and you know, you and I are chatting before the show, like, there's your strengths and then there's your gifts, right? For a lot of people, they they have a strength that a translatable skill they're bringing in it thinks that they might be good at investing in real estate, but end of the day, they don't want to own houses, they want the result that the houses give them, right? So know what you want, like, do you want time freedom? Do you want cash flow? Do you need a net worth bill do but I mean, even getting down to that, that freedom of choice, freedom of time, freedom to travel? Like, what is that freedom that you want? And then more importantly, why you want it?   And being able to answer those questions, you know, will reinforce what you're doing. It's like your North Star, like nothing will be able to derail you. Because no matter where you are in your investing plan, if you're just like, I know, I want to have control of my time and this is why because I want to spend it with my family, I want to spend it traveling. Like that's your north star and it can be like a filter for guiding all your decisions.   Michael: I love that.   Whitney: So that's like, yeah, it's like that's like, I mean, it really under it really boils down to getting the right questions in the right sequence, and then pass that deciding it's yours. Okay, just make giving yourself permission. I know for me as a female, like the way I was raised, um, um, you know, borderline millennial Gen Z, right? Like, my mom was very much, you know, pro feminist and stuff like that. You know, I have no problem with that, or very little problem with that, like, I mean, that's just the infighting meant that I was raised in but I'm not. That's not how everybody, everybody came on, right. But you have to decide it's yours. Like, I'm going to go after that, and I deserve it. And there are going to be things that knock you down. Yeah, that happened. throw you off course.   I was just speaking to one of my coaching clients earlier today. And, you know, she's going through divorce now. She's just like when I thought it was getting all this momentum. And I'm like, do you still believe in what you're doing? Yeah. Like, is it yours? Yes. I'm like, okay, great. Like, now let's focus what we can control. And, you know, but those types of things, you know, we feel we're very empathic, but yeah, those type of things get kind of, like derail you a little bit. But really, like just having this, you know, two key decision or two questions and a key decision, like, written down can really help you move forward in that mindset piece.   Michael: I love that and Whitney, I'm curious if we just take a step back for a second for making, you know, knowing your why, and kind of making that decision? How important is it and how granular do you recommend people get, because at the restart Academy, we talked about smart goals and use that acronym for goal setting. But I know so many people are like, oh, I want to invest in real estate because I don't want to work anymore, like, is that enough? Or like, how do they get?   Whitney: I mean, it's a good story. Tony Robbins has this like great exercise like we've ever done unleash the Power Within or any of his bracer series, like, it's the first time you do it, it might actually feel very unsettling and awkward. Like, it's called, like, the seven reasons and so you you name like, why do you want to invest in real estate, right? Because I don't want to work anymore. Why do you want that? Well, because I want to travel great. Why do you want that? Well, I want to see the world and like, you start getting people's puzzles looks on their face, they're like, see me…   And you're like, but that's that gets down to the core essence. Because, as I explained it to, you know, people like Coach is that first level knee jerk, why is what you're running from?   Michael: Hmm…   Whitney: When you ask seven layers deep, you finally figure out you might not be able to articulate the first two or three or four or 5-10 times that you sit down to do that exercise. It may take you months, or even a year or two, you're then figuring out what you're running towards and what is going to get you more motivated, okay, you know that day to day pain, it might be like, understanding what you're running from, like I want to get I don't want to work for you know the company anymore. I don't want to work for my boss, I want to have my time back, blah, blah, blah, right?   But what you're running towards is what's going to be your that Northstar guiding post for you long term, it's what is gonna have you help you build the right real estate business for you, right, because there's so many gets down to that last one, that seventh why and they like, I want my time freedom and they come to me and they're like, teach me how to flip. I'm like, thinking hold on…   Michael: We'll need a little bit of alignment.       Whitney: Yeah, well, that was like, now, you know, we can use flipping as a means to an end to build the real business they want. But you know, we have to understand, you know, you know, where different modalities fits into different phases of the business, but got a little off course in the wild, but that's why you want to make sure that you sit down and kind of go through the exercise. It's, it's hysterical. I mean, I went through the same experience, like, the first time you do it, you're like, why am I asking this question seven times, like I got it the first time…   Michael: I study for the test…   Whitney: It is not the same question. Because now you you're figuring out why you want the next thing that you named.   Michael: Hmm. That is very interesting, I like that, I like that a lot and so who do you who should be having these conversations? Who should be asking these questions of the potential and would be investors? Is it spouses, partners, friends, colleagues? I mean, who should who's a good person to have these conversations with?   Whitney: I mean, you know, you can some people are like introverts they want to do it with by themselves. If you have a good partner or a good friend that can help lead you through that exercise and interrogate reality with you… you know, kind of like, open and honest way, then fantastic. I think the more the merrier. My husband and I we sit down and we do a couple schools setting retreat every year and you know, normally we've like gone back answer the questions that what of what we want for the year ourselves and then come back together and we kind of formulate a plan.   This year, we sat down in the same room and did everything live with each other and I'm like, you know, like peeking on his paper. I'm like, well, yeah, like, what was that like? That but I get to learn so much more about you know, who he is and, you know, we're just gonna there are things that I learned about when we've been married, I mean, she's gonna kill me like, you know, we've been married for a really long time and he's just like, you know, we know everything about each other. I'm like, No, you don't. We don't at all. It was that's so much fun. But you know, really like, if you're open to like having helped, you know, somebody asked these questions with you, so you can help deepen your own like, it frees you up from being the the questioner and also the answer, answer or if you can bring somebody in in that process. You can just take on one role.   Michael: Yeah, I dig it, I dig it. Okay, so that was mindset and then you mentioned what was stuck to…   Whitney: Yeah… So that you know for you to do anything in life you have to have the right mindset you know, the the fact that you know what you want why you want it and that you are going to go after you have given yourself permission to go after it right, that's mindset.   Once you once you understand that you might be standing there going, the person on the street going, Grant, okay, I want real estate, I want financial freedom. Where do we go from here, right. Now you're down to the skill sets, okay? Like the kind of get into the how do we get things done? Now, here's the trick, I'm going to give you you know, people a couple of different ways to look at it first, we can look at what's what you have and what you don't. Okay, so, if you come from business, you've probably heard a SWOT analysis. So where you're, you're listing out your strengths, your weaknesses, your opportunities to your investment, like what can you bring that is really cool that you can really utilize in your threats, like, you know, um, you know, if you have a family like, I've got a nine year old at a time that can like bomb me anytime in any podcast, and I'm doing like the doors latch, right… Handle that threats what…   Michael: Threat destabilized…   Whitney: …disarmed, those are, you know, really sitting down on all seriousness, the strengths and the weaknesses, you know, focusing there first, and I don't like thinking of weaknesses, but those again, you know, that's what the acronym is, but those are areas that your blind spots, you know, what are what don't you have that, you know, that you need in order to succeed?   Okay, taking, taking, like 510 15 minutes, you know, to look at your strengths and weaknesses and revisit those on a regular basis because as you start, you don't know what you don't know. And as you start digging into, like, whatever path or real estate you're going to go down, you will uncover things like, oh, I need to have a property manager and I don't know how to interview great like, that's, you know, that needs to over here as an opportunity or like, you know, weakness that I need to fill in.   You were talking about strengths. I think there's a confusion that people have, right. Between strengths and gifts. Yeah, in strengths are things that we are good at, we have been trained, we have learned over time we have mastered them, you know, it can be through schooling, training, on the job training and stuff like that, it doesn't actually mean that it's a gift and then it's our net that it lights us up on the inside. Case in point: I'm an epidemiologist by training, I love thinking through critical things. You handed me like a regression analysis and like on software and spreadsheets and stuff, like like that, I can do it. I'm really fast at it, I'm really good at it, do I love it? No, it's a strength, but like, if you if I doubled down on that strength and just solely honed in on that, that being a core part of my business, I would struggle, right because it's not a gift of mine. Like I would eventually hit a wall and go I don't love doing this at all I need to reengineer my business. So even getting more granular so once you have your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, you know, written down on that strengths, separate them out of like things that you've been trained that that you're just good at but then also what do you love? What, what would you do, if you never got paid? Like for me like I love talking, I love educating like, you know, I could I get up I'll do it in the morning. I go to bed doing it at night. My husband is like, can you please just get off the phone? Like I'm on it… and like for women, you know, we have some you know, but there's some big differences between men and women like women we naturally come you know, probably more culture with like communication report building organizational skills, and attention to detail and not so much like being able to focus on detail, but also like handle like, you know, more and I hate the word multitask, but like attention to detail and multiple areas all at the same time, right. Yeah, that's, you know, we were the gatherer part of the chain. You know, we had to pay attention to the kids running around, is there a saber toothed tiger in the area? Where would I get those last berries, that didn't make me sick? Right like we had to pay that into all those details and that is part of our physiology, it's part of this operating system up here in our head.   Michael: It's so funny, you mentioned that yeah, the other day, we had some contractors at our house and I was outside chatting with them, we got along just fine and then I was gone for 10 minutes and my wife, Claire was outside, and they're like, best friends in 10 minutes and she's like, oh, yeah, we just get along, we're buddy, buddy, like, how do you do that? How do you build rapport people so quickly? So I love that you mentioned it. I'm like, yeah, first, first, it's really happening in my household…   Whitney: Yeah, I mean, it's in every, like I said, it's not like, it's not a blanket statement. But identifying what those strengths are and, you know, I think for women, when we're getting into like a very male dominated industry, I think there's an expectation that we have to go toe to toe with them, you know, with males, I'll give you an example: I was on a, speaking on a panel last month at a conference and two incredible male investors with me, I mean, couldn't be, you know, on the stage with more nice, nicer people and I was like, a little nervous, because I was like, these guys are gonna go over deal specifics and numbers, and they're gonna hammer home their deals and returns and I was just like, I'm like, I'm gonna take a different approach. And so whenever I got asked my questions on a panel, I turned back to the audience, and I, like engaged in a conversation with the audience and I had like them laughing and rolling over each other. Because I was in, you know, it was just a different way of connecting, right, like, so um, you know, in the in, you know, not what, there's not a one size fits all solution. But you know, some people would have resonated with that a little bit better, so…   Michael: Absolutely. Oh, how cool. That's great.   Whitney: And, and then, you know, so when we understand what the strengths are, we've got the strings, we've got the guests. Also, we have to switch back to that that awkward the weakness column, and I hate to say I hate the word weakness, I always want to call it opportunities, because it just feels better. Like, this is an area it's kind of my blind side is what area for me to get better. But when we're talking about scaling a business, really, do you just need to be aware of the blind spot and do you have to fix it? Or do you need to find out who to help you, right? So if you don't if you ever read the book, who not how? Michael: Yes, love it!   Whitney: …and the title says it all, who not how... Done, you don't have to read the book.   Michael: Yeah, we just saved you two hours' worth of reading...   Whitney: Right, but you know, really, you know, how can, you know, you really tap into understand what your blind spots are, and what how they might be limiting for you. If we all can do better in like, you know, fixing our blind spots, when you're building a business, you may not have that luxury or time, go find somebody that that you can bring in that has a complementary skill set.   Me, I found out really fast when I got my first like actual rental, like when we placed tenants in our properties. I was like, okay, I love talking to the, to the tenant, I could build a report, I could get them in, I have got sales skills, not a problem. But when it came to day to day communication with them, I wanted to have nothing to do with it, like I was just like, yeah…, I checked the box, right. Um, but it takes a very special person to do that right to, you know, to manage the tenant and obviously, I mean, I need a property manager, that's my who, like, take me out of this role. Like, I remember standing in the Children's Museum in Wisconsin, I hadn't seen my friends for two years, our kids are playing, and my husband's on the phone talking to our tenant for an hour and a half and this the whole experience of our kids playing because we didn't have a property manager. So that's what I mean by who, right, it was a blind spot for us, we thought we could power through it, but at the end of the day, um, you know, the tenant would have been better served with property management and so we would have we two totally needed to who, in our business…   Michael: When I'm gonna get real vulnerable with you and everyone for a minute, I am not the best identifier of my own blind spots, my wife can attest to that. So how I mean, so much of the who should this conversation be had with question that I was asking you previously? How can we identify or how can we get our blind spots identified and not be, not be rude about it not be you know, have our claws out when that conversation is happening?   Whitney: That is a little tricky, right? Like, who likes being told that you're not so good at this?   Michael: Tell me all the things I can't do well, yeah, it's not a fun conversation.   Whitney: Right, so I think, you know, um, you do having that conversation with somebody that you know, love and trust. I did this this is I started this off like years ago, I sent me an operator, ,I sent a survey out to like my best friend, like my 10 a small group of friends and I asked them, it was anonymous. They, they could say whatever they wanted on the survey, now, it's only 10 people, you kind of figure out who like said, What, but that, like, what do I have an opportunity to develop? And you know, it's really, it was really interesting, I got some great feedback and that's how you have to take it, it's feedback, right…   Michael: It's not criticism…   Whitney: …Like, we look in the mirror, we're looking at a direct reflection, but we're not seeing the back of our head, there's just no way for us to see, you know, around our body, like how many times you've walked out a bathroom got toilet paper stuck on the backside of your shoe, right? Like you just, there's just no way, so we have to get somebody that has seen all sides of us and the good guy, my ugly, right?   I'm also like, I love having those people in my life and it's just radical candor, okay, it doesn't mean that it's not love. I actually, you know, find it more endearing and more empowering. If I have somebody that's willing to tell me where I like with, you know, with some love and just like, hey, listen, like, you know, you move really fast up into topic, I know you and I know, you don't mean to do that but it'd be really cool if you could just like look me in the eye and say that you understood where I was coming from before you saw the problem and that that's for me, like, that was feedback that I got? No, I was just like, what do you mean? You know, my first I was, I was first taken aback and then I was like, you know, what, do you know how many thoughts went through my head before the words came out of my mouth? Like, I was like, thinking about her mom and thinking about this, like all these different situations and how I could help her and then like, I would love from her telling me what's wrong in her day to like me telling her, this is how we're going to fix it and I didn't… I, my problem is I don't actually like say all those things are going through my head first to create empathy. I think those are amazing things to hear back because it just gives us an opportunity to create a richer relationship with people…   Michael: Oh, that's so good, that's so good and I'm right there with you. I'm so guilty of the same thing, I'm like, oh, cool, here's the problem, well, here's the solution. It's like, well, maybe that's not always the best way to go about it. There's a lot of other things that we could do in the in the in between…   Whitney: Yeah, I mean, it gives you an opportunity to kind of put tools in place. When I was given that feedback. Um, I, I like when searching for tools, like, do I just need to, like, ask more questions. That's always a great thing and, but also, like, I, my question now that I asked is one I'm like, do you need me to help you solve this? Or do you just need me to listen, you know…   Michael: Yes, yes…       Whitney: And half the time, it's like, no, I just need you to listen, I'm like, okay, then, of course, I'm like, I got a solution.   Michael: I have the answer, it's a magic.   Whitney: Yeah, but anyways, you know, we've kind of like, you know, dove down a rabbit hole there but I think it can be a blind spot in any sort of way. Like, I think it's just, you know, again, you know, we're, it, we're having a human experience, right, I heard a quote from one of a, an old coach of mine, he was like, we're just here, you can have any human experience, we're all walking each other home and so you know, you just can't take that feedback about your blind spots too, personally, because really, at the end of the day, the person is, you know, really trying to tell you what you can do to improve yourself. I would be more worried if somebody said, you don't have any blind spots, right? You're just kind of like, really? There's nothing for me to work on, like…   Michael: Yeah, totally, totally. Awesome, okay. So we covered mindset, we just tackled skill set, what's the third thing to be aware of…   Whitney: Networks, right. So this is an extension of the who, not how, and I think women really excel at building networks and but I want to dive deeper, because it's not exactly building the network, but building the right network, right.   So the network is, you know, when you hit a level of achievement, you're missing, you know, a skill or a person to help you get to that next area. So I mean, I think this is a huge thing. You know, we've all heard the quote from Jim Rohn, you are the average of the five people that you surround yourself with. I would really challenge you, I do this with my coaching clients every single year and they they hate it and they love it at the same time. We do a purge exercise, I have them list out everybody everything in their life and move things to a purge column that just aren't serving them. Now, the first time they do this, they're just like, there's no way that I'm going to like stop talking to that family member and I'm like, I'm not asking you to stop talking to them, I'm asking you to identify those areas in your life, those toxic relationships, maybe like relationships that are holding you down, right? They're not elevating you to that next level of business where you want it be, they challenge, they challenge you in some way, they, they're holding you back.   Maybe there's double standards there, they can do it, but you can't, right. Or maybe they've just have a victim mentality, and you just need to throw them back the rope and be there be loving, be open, but like, You got to figure out your problems on your own because I, I gotta go solve this over here, not that, right. So, um, you know, surrounding yourself with the right people that need to be in your world in order to get to that next level. I know, when I got into real estate, that was super hard for two reasons: One, nobody around me was doing real estate, I didn't have, I didn't feel like I had permission. I was, I was crazy. I was like, you're buying your, you're spending how much on a house I'm like… I'm not spending, it's investing…   And two, my mom was still alive, bless her soul, I mean, it's such a strong, amazing woman to learn from. But I was, I was scared of my mom, like when I needed her permission to invest in you know, she finally just kind of like understood, like, before she passed away that I was I needed to do what I was gonna do. But we had, like, we had some odds there. But I eventually had to be like, you know what, we're gonna agree to disagree and I'm still gonna, I'm still here, I'm your daughter, I love you and you just need to let me do what I'm going to do. But that's hard, those are hard relationships to kind of set aside. But once you kind of create that space, right, you know, whether you actually put boundaries on those relationships, or eliminate the toxic… toxicity and double standards, you can you the first time you do that exercise, you may or may not actually take any action, but over time, you'll realize you have to in order to move up to the next level. Now you got to fill the void when you start moving those people out, now you got to fill the void and backfill with people that are, you know, maybe just right above you that are doing what you have are what what you want to do, go find a mentor, go find the quote, scope be part of a mastermind, right? When you help fill that void at the next level…   Michael: And how I mean, you mentioned it, and I think it's so applicable for so many people, especially a lot of our listeners, maybe who are just getting started who don't have five other people to surround themselves with. How do you build that network? How do you go? Yeah, how do you how do you build that network?   Whitney: So internet… You know, that's great. I love this question and I'm really glad you're one of my favorite ways is actually through podcast?   Michael: Oh, really…   Whitney: I'm in, you know, when we think of network, or a mentor, or coach, it doesn't actually mean that you have to exchange money, I think there needs to be a time at some point in time that, you know, if you really are serious about building your business and scaling, you're gonna find you want to short cut your path to growth, right, you want somebody like looking over your shoulder partnering with you. But when you're just starting out, um, you know, maybe it's like, choosing like, you know, visiting, like a math meetup, like locally finding some, a couple local investors that you resonate with and then like two or three podcasts, people that you love, and you follow, and you just, you know, these are the people again, it's kind of like you're the gifts part you just, like, want to listen to them all the time.   You know, that can even be like a great way to surround yourself in that environment until you can actually, you know, build out that the physical network and to do that, again, meetups can be great. And now that we have zoom, you know, it's proliferated in the past couple years, you know, meetups, a lot of meetups are still virtual. I love conferences, too because conferences, you get like a high density of like, like, a awesome, like investors and operators and stuff like that. So can you find those conferences? For me, I'm attending best ever conference here next week in Denver, Colorado. But that's geared towards multifamily and self-storage, new maybe you're more into single family homes, there's a, there's a conference out there for that, like attend those events. One, you can get your stuff around operators, which we've talked about in length, but too you can get around yourself around other investors that are doing bigger and better things and that you that you want to do…   Michael: That's so good and just one kind of piece of advice, piggybacking off that is when you go to these events, and you go to these in person conferences, or even just these zoom meetings, set an intention, and then follow up on it because I think so many people go to these conferences and it gets super excited and get super hyped and then go back home kind of bored. They might be isolated and don't have a network around them, they're like, oh, well, that was cool but now I'm you know, back to reality here and you never do anything with it…   Whitney: Well, it's all about execution, right? You don't go to the you go to the conference right to learn information, but how can you carry the whole point in building the network is to reger… is for regular engagement. How can you make two or three friends at that conference that you're going to maybe like, do put together a little mini mastermind yourself, you guys are going to meet monthly and hold each other accountable on your goals. You don't have to be doing the exact same thing, you're just like both kind of like, you're all just kind of, you know, going in the same direction in your build, right, your wealth build. You know, you can join, you can join paid masterminds for that type of thing. But it's just it's about the consistency and the persistency of staying engaged, right? You can't, you can't just like attend one conference and go, hey, I built a network.   Michael: I did it now…   Whitney: Yeah, now we just have to be cultivated. I mean, I think people hate the word networking, I actually do a module like with my coaching clients on this. Networking is just us having a conversation. It's really me just asking for directions, right? So how can we like you know, you know, make that just like a regular regular thing. I'm part of the women's go abundance and there's, you know, there's four of us that meet like, every two weeks, whether we have like anything that's for progress forward. We meet every two weeks, we set an intention and I know I've done this, I'm guilty of this. I know like our meeting is on Thursday, I committed to some things two weeks ago, they're not done… I got, I got a report on that, right… And why and it's sometimes it's just like, well, darn, it's just easier for me to get it done but it keeps you moving forward and that's part of the networking it's the accountability, too…   Michael: Totally! I think networking, so often has this connotation around me using someone or you being used by someone else but really, I think renaming it or reframing it to call it relationship building is that a stitious?   Whitney: Yeah, rapport building relationship building, like, there's you don't have, there doesn't have to be an exchange of anything other than just like report initially and, you know, I mean, we've all been to those events, that the networking events where somebody is like shoving all their cards in your hands, that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about actually finding somebody that you just like, you know, at the core fundamental that you resonate with, like, either you guys are walking a similar path, or they're just like, I like put, I like being in the room, or I am the dumbest person in the room. Like, I love that, and it pushes me, but at the same time, I also put myself in situations where I'm the mentor, and I'm giving back and it's just as rewarding.   Michael: That's so good, that's so good. Whitney, we covered mindset, skill set, networking, anything else that you'd recommend to be a rockstar, badass woman investor?   Whitney: Well, I think it's just continuing to, like, revisit these questions on a regular basis, right, because every time you you, you level up a part of your portfolio or achieve a goal, you now have to change who you have to become to get to the next level. So the mindset that got me to buying my first one or two single family properties, compared to the mindset that I have to have it now is entirely different. So it is an evolving process. You're constantly having to level up your mindset, your skill sets in your next your network to reach the next level. So it's not stagnant, this isn't one and done, this is like perpetual work that you have to do on yourself.   Michael: That's so good because I think so many people think about it. If I can just get this one deal, I you know, I'm there if I can just do this one thing that I'm there but it sounds like that's not the case, it's this ever evolving kind of evergreen cycle.   Whitney: I mean, I knew very few investors that have gotten like four or five or 10 single family properties that didn't want didn't go hmm oh, I have a multifamily look great, now you gotta like level level up right? You got to learn or do at least a whole new skill set and you know, probably expand your network to like figure out how to do the multifamily property.   Michael: I love it, I love it. Really this was so good. If people have questions for you want to reach out to you what's the best way for them to get in touch?       Whitney: Yeah, so you can reach out to me at https://www.passiveinvesting.com/whitney/ and you know, I know there I have tons of free downloads on how to get started with passive investing in multifamily and self-storage, real estate. You guys can find me there, but also just happy to jump on the phone and answer any questions for people.   Michael: Oh my god amazing. Well, thank you again for coming on. Always a pleasure to see you and I'm sure we'll do this again soon.   Whitney: Alright, thanks so much, Michael.   Michael: Thanks Whitney, bye…   Alright, well, that was our episode, a big thank you to Whitney for coming on yet again. She shared tons of knowledge, tons of wisdom, really some insightful stuff. So if you like the episode, feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your podcasts and as always, we look forward to seeing the next one. Happy investing…

Matt Faircloth is the co-founder and president of the DeRosa Group, a real estate investment company that specializes in buying and renovating residential and commercial properties. Matt and his wife, Liz, started investing in real estate in 2004 with a $30,000 loan. They founded DeRosa Group in 2005 and have since grown the company to managing more than 370 units throughout the east coast. DeRosa has completed more than $30M in real estate transactions involving private capital—including fix-and-flips, single-family home rentals, mixed-use buildings, apartment buildings, office buildings, and tax lien investments. He is the author of Raising Private Capital, has been featured on the BiggerPockets Podcast, and regularly contributes to BiggerPockets' educational webinars. In this episode, Matt shares his background in real estate investing, and a roadmap for investors looking to raise more private capital to close more deals. Additionally, he talks about the reality of running a real estate business.   Episode Links: https://derosagroup.com/ https://www.instagram.com/themattfaircloth/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mdfaircloth/ https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/contributors/mattfaircloth --- Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Michael: What's going on everyone? Welcome to another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. I'm Michael Albaum and today with me I have Matt Faircloth, author, podcast speaker, co-founder, president, investor, syndicator. He does a lot and we're gonna hear a ton from Matt about what he's been doing in the real estate space, and what he's currently putting together and actually closing on today. So let's get into it.   Matt Faircloth, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Really appreciate you taking the time to hang out with me.   Matt: Michael, I appreciate your time and having me on your show, man. Thank you.   Michael: Absolutely, absolutely. So I know a little bit about you but I would love if you could share with our listeners who maybe have never heard of you. They've been living under a rock for the last couple of years, who you are, where you come from, and what you're doing in real estate?   Matt: Where did you come from…   Um, it's cool that my company's called the DeRosa group and I just love saying this, that we're a company dedicated to transforming lads real estate through real estate transforming lives to real estate. We can get into that in the show if you like. I… where I came from, let's see, I grew up Baltimore, bopped around the East Coast for a minute. Before I landed in Philly, met the woman of my dreams because she put Rich Dad Poor Dad in my hand, and we were still dating, that got me to read that. And that that gave got me to drink the entrepreneur Kool Aid, which I guzzled and quit my job in 2005 to start a real estate company, bumped into a lot of walls, you know, did a lot of it, made a lot of mistakes, made some money and then and then just built it and grew over time and just learned how to run an effective real estate company through the school of hard knocks. And now I've been doing it for 16 years and just apply what I've learned over the years, you know, attracted more and more the right people who work with me and build what I think to be a phenomenal brand now.   Michael: Oh, that's awesome, man. That's awesome. You said that once or twice before I can tell it just rolled off your tongue there so nicely.     Matt: You know, this is not my first podcast. Sometimes people ask me, let's just get real, screw it, man. Let's get real right now…   Michael: Let's do it.   Matt: What I get I go on a lot of podcasts and when you go on a lot of podcasts, people tend to ask the same questions, Michael, right and so when they do, it's almost like I'm that guy, I'm the DJ sing in a DJ booth and then in the in the DJ booth of Matt's brain. And then people ask like, Hey, Matt, tell me about your first deal and I'm like, okay, let's get the first deal track pull the first track.   Michael: Go, pull the file.   Matt: You know, yeah, go pull the file, first deal, right. Tell us about the first time that you raise money, tell us about a mistake you made. Okay, let's go ahead skip, let's go pull up mistake file eight. Okay, let's write that file out, right. So it's more fun to go curveball. You know, like…   Michael: Totally   Matt: Yeah, that was a good curveball in the first five seconds of the show that you and I went down right and you into it, you can't help it you end up just going to a script a lot of times you know talking about things on podcast over and over and over again and I was it that a want to be plastic like that, but you end up like, if I've told that story six times the seventh time it starts to come off the same way over and over again, right.   Michael: I totally get it, and I hope that today is not one of those repetitive podcasts.   Matt: You're getting not to be that show already man, you are curve balling, I love it. Keep it up!   Michael: Well as a follow up Matt, what's your favorite mammal, man?   Matt: It's good one, I am, okay, growing up, I have an eight year old, right, so my eight year old is always: Daddy who would win… I wish he was here because you and me, we would have a ball right now… Daddy who would win when a colossal squid or a great white shark? And I'm like Simon, first of all like, but he'll even be like a gorilla or a colossal squid and like girl is gonna drown buddy battle…   Give me more data, that would depth are we talking about the ocean? Are we talking about like 3000 gorillas... To you question, I probably go a gorilla, if I had to pick or, or maybe I don't know why, but growing up I loved Black Panthers.   Michael: Mm hmm. Okay, pretty majestic animals.   Matt: Yeah, I don't know, I don't know, the majestic, they are majestic animals. Yeah, so that would be my favorite, those are my two favorite man…   Michael: I love it, well so real real quick change because we're already on this rabbit hole. You know that there was a show put on by I think NatGeo or discovery that answered your son's questions they would pit these two animals together in a simulation… like that exists…   Matt: You can google and they would show cuz he would be like, daddy who would win a saltwater… It's just you can google saltwater crocodile versus great white shark…   Michael: Great white shark, I saw that episode…   Matt: It's good, it's good, right. Good job displaying well you see the saltwater croc would try and take the deathroll on this or do that...   Oh, he was my son's itch was scratched with that, you know. I don't know, why he is up to the Komodo dragons. Komodo dragon versus anything you can name, that's what you want to talk about…   Michael: That's a battle royale this century… Oh my god. I love it.   Matt: Well, dragons are badasses man, these are like, there they are… Would you know that?   Michael: Yeah, that's the kiss of death, yeah… Matt: It is! Not only the monstrous lizards like little dinosaurs, but they also the venomous bite, you know…   Michael: It's such a ridiculous concept like, oh, let's take two of like humans worst fears, like, long tailed long tongue lizards, and then give it venom, sounds awesome.   Matt: Right! Give it nasty teeth. Yeah, like a really weird awful roar and give them venom, too…   Michael: Oh my god, so good.   Matt: They're nasty creatures, man. Good thing that'll make them in North America.   Michael: I know, I'm stoked, I'm stoked. All right, well, if we bring it slightly back towards the real estate, you know.   Do you want me to do a whole podcast on mammals like komodo dragons… So you started a company, your real estate company in 2005 and when people hear that, I think it might be ominous to some people, you know, what is a real estate company mean? And so what was the transition, like, I mean, like, what is the DeRosa group do first and foremost and then what was that transition, like going from just owning stuff on your own to now I have a business focusing on it?   Matt: That's interesting, you know, that man, um, interesting concept, because a lot of people out there are running real estate investing, like it's a gig, you know, like, or it's like driving Uber, you know, you could just decide to not do it at some point, you know, I mean, it's not a gig, it's a real estate investing is a business because it's a marathon, unless you're wholesaling or just doing a deal here and there something like that. Not for nothing. This business… the business of real estate investing is a business and you should treat it as such. And we didn't always do that the first couple years, I treated it like a hobby and I bumped into walls and did a bunch of different things but like once I really got my legs underneath me, as a real estate investor and really found the calling found the purpose and got and got and got focused on real estate investing. I got clear that it's a business that is like a living animal it's a it's a living thing…   Michael: It's a living Komodo dragon?...   Matt: Real estate investing is like a Komodo dragon, right, it needs food, you know… It can have a venom's bite and can be nasty and shit and can get the fuck out of you. And a lot of people are scared of it, you know, right… Yeah. People read articles about it only exists in certain places we can keep going. But it is something that needs, you know, if you want to grow real estate investing business and sustain yourself in this, in this industry, and not just make it a hobby, you have to have a company that's got you know, clean books and has a purpose and has a mission and has roles and responsibilities and job descriptions and stuff like that, because there's sucky things in real estate you have to do and it's like, well, you know, and you could look on Instagram. And if you look on Instagram for real estate investing, people think that it either means you close deals every day, because it's the people every time people close stuff, they put it on Instagram, or they go to it's like, Instagram thinks that for real estate investors, all you do is close deals, go to conferences and go on vacation That's what you see people doing on Instagram, the real estate investing, right? But there's actually like, this sucky part of real estate investing, which is sitting on your desk and answering emails and you know, just corresponding and looking for deals and swinging and missing and dealing with knucklehead tenants and stuff like that that want to, you know, recently Michael, we had a tenant, had his girlfriend come in and he must have done something bad because she went, put all his clothes on his bed, dumped gasoline on the bed, lit it on fire, walked out.   Michael: Mike dropped…   Matt: This is what happens, that's real stuff, you know… That did not make on Instagram unfortunately, you know…   Michael: No, that wasn't the highlight reel.   Matt: Living my best life, look it's amazing…   Michael: Well, so you bring up a really great point that and that it should be treated like a business and I, I wholeheartedly agree. But so what about all the people out there that are just getting started that could never see themselves as a business owner as an entrepreneur but hear about real estate investing as a great side gig like you mentioned that what about what about all those folks? Where are they left?   Matt: Okay, they need to decide if they want to do it full time or not, right…And there are people out there that have a day job that they love and it's, it's probably something that's very fulfilling to them, or maybe they went to school for a long time, like a doctor or an MD or whatever. I mean, Jesus, those folks go to school, God bless them for like another 12 years after they get out of college, right? So why would they change careers, right? They want, there are people that really in their heart of hearts probably ought to go passive for real estate investing, as a side gig and as a way to build wealth. And there are people that that are doing it because they want to build up the passive income and become a business owner out of it. So you got to choose if you want to be an investor or be, let's remember Robert Kiyosaki Cashflow Quadrant book, right. Yes, ESBI, remember that thing?   Michael: Mm hmm.   Matt: Do you want to be a B or an I, B= business owner, I= investor. And if you're willing to put in your time and and you know, quit your day job eventually become a business owner and that's what you need to do. But unfortunately, people, a lot of people misunderstood Kiyosaki, to think that to be a real estate investor, you have to be an active operator, you have to do it full time. You can make the passive income all you want as an I-quadrate investor and just passively invest in things. And I think that that's, I think it's probably the most misunderstood function in a lot of his books, people that quit their job that really should have never done that they should have just passively invested their way to financial freedom.   Michael: Yeah, okay. And let's talk about that for a minute because you wrote a book about raising capital and I think capital is so often the biggest obstacle for people, the biggest hurdle people overcome. So do you see the kind of this roadmap for people? Where if passivity, is it really time is the goal, right? That's what everybody is after and we get there by either usually being a B or an I, by being at B that sounds terrible, don't be a B. So if people are capital is their obstacle, using real estate as a active vehicle to then take a backseat and invest passively?   Matt: Yeah, well, that's I mean, my book talks about that and then it goes back to like, let's just keep walking to the B and I road, right. So if you're a B quadrant business owner, we're rising D quadrant business owner for real estate, and you either want to do it full time, you already are doing it full time, then at some point, unless you win the lottery, or unless, like, you know, you just got a silver spoon in your mouth, and you got billions of dollars waiting on the sidelines, from your friends from your family or something like that. You're going to need capital, right? You're gonna run out man you are. And so on the other side of it, you've got I quadrate investors, and they have either retirement accounts, real estate equity, cash, any of those things that they want to put to work and not have to put in the time to make that money, you make that money, do what it's supposed to do, you know, then they can those two can marry up the B quadrant business owner of real estate versus the quadrate investor that wants to make a return on their money without trading money for time. Those two can have a really happy partnership. My book talks about all those things, how those two things can get structured together and how the why in my book are called the cash provider, as SI quadrant investor.   Robert Kiyosaki is a good guy, but he probably sue the hell out of me if I use his terms of my books. I didn't use that, I did, I did the the deal provider and the cache provider. The deal provider is the D Quadra business owner, the cache provider is the I quadric investor.   Michael: Okay, awesome and what is your book called?   Matt: Raising private capital. So funny Michael you asked that it happens to be right here behind… They can get it on Amazon or they can get it on biggerpockets.com.   Michael: I was just gonna ask. Alright, so it's called raising private capital and without giving the book away. What can people expect to find in it?   Matt: Along with a lot of my personal story on on you know how I got from guy that quit his job in oh five to you know, running a company that runs that owns, you know, multi 1000 doors of multifamily real estate. It's got that journey in there. And and that but also it's it's got a lot of tools and lessons, it's a how to really on how do you look in your own personal network as an investor, I'm sorry, as a B quadrant designer, it's how to look in your personal network to find the money, you need to do deals because you don't have to go to private lender, or you don't have to go to hard money lenders, you know, if you go and go more corporate level, or sell your soul to get the money you need for the deal that you're trying to do. You can look in your own network to find that money and raising private capital talks about how to find the money you need for deals in your own personal network.   Michael: Okay, all right, Matt can we do something kind of a silly exercise?   Matt: Please.   Michael: Can you because, I think a lot of people are really nervous to have that conversation and I think they feel slimy or gross. Can you pitch me on a deal that you're putting together as someone that would be in your your kind of sphere of influence? Let's let's see. Let's see what that sounds like and feels like.   Matt: Well, it depends if you're accredited, or not, Michael, because if you're not accredited, we have substantial relationship. But if you're accredited, I can talk to you, I can do a Facebook ad that you notice, right? All joking aside, let's pretend you and I are friends. We already know each other you already like and trust me, because I'm me, right and my book recommends that those are your first targets. You know, and that so hey, Michael, how you doing today?   Michael: I'm doing pretty good, what about you, man?   Matt: I'm awesome, man. Hey, listen, I happen to remember you saying that you were working over a company XYZ. You did a great job, didn't you. It's good. But you better get an opportunity to come up with ABC Company. And I'm really grateful for that you were able to move over to that did take on that new job. How's it going?   Michael: It's going really well. XYZ was terrible, ABC is infinitely better. Thank you so much for man, remembering you've got a killer memory.   Matt: No, it's great, I swear to you… I also barely remember going further, Michael, is that XYZ day as much as you hated what they did, and you know, and I'm so grateful you got out of there. But XYZ had a great comp package they did as I remember, you told me they paid you a really great 401k program.   Michael: Yes, yeah, it was pretty.   Matt: Those markets been taken off lately, right. So no, it's maybe maybe hit a top here and is starting to get a little squirrely and everything like that. So I want to tell you that we did you happen to know, Michael, you can take your retirement account and invested in things not Wall Street, you know, in that retirement account you have with XYZ company because you don't work there anymore that retirement account could be put to work in real estate. Did you know that?   Michael: I had heard that. But I didn't really know that I could do anything about it…   Matt: Well, you can now that you've left XYZ company, right, you can take that retirement account that they have, and they probably were paying you and lots of company stock, take the chips, man, take the chips off the table cash in, sell that company stock and roll that and roll that retirement account, which is now by the way was a 401k. Now it was an IRA. And you can roll that IRA over to a third party IRA custodian and you can do all kinds of cool stuff you can buy, you know, shares of companies, you can buy your own your own real estate investments, you can lend that money out and you can also invest it in deals like we have, I, we are right now Michael buying 670 units in two states, five apartment buildings in two states. That's the deal, we're in the middle of right now, produces phenomenal returns, produces, we're going to fix these buildings up and we're going to refinance them over time and as we refinance them, we're going to give some of that money back to you to your retirement account. So you can then take it and parlayed invest in another stuff. It's a great return.   I know a lot of people that we work with are really happy with work that we've done as a company. So you and I should talk further as a matter of fact, I have some Ira custodians that can handle this whole thing for you, if you'd like, I'd like to introduce you to a few of them that I love. You know, and then they we do a lot of work with them. So they give us white glove treatment. Can I introduce you to them for you?   Michael: Yeah, that'd be great, man, thanks so much for doing that. I appreciate it.   Matt: Yeah, and I'm going to mail you the offering. And if you don't, if you're not happy with my, if you don't like the returns, and you're you're nervous, whatever, it's okay, I get other things I can send you over to, I really want to help you build your wealth while I build my business. Because we're building a great real estate company and we're, our mission is to transform lives through real estate, I want you to help me do that. By me helping you earn money with your retirement account. Well, we do the work. So we can do that for you. And if it doesn't work out, that's okay. I have plenty of other friends for this awesome network called biggerpockets.com, you should check out and you can look on BiggerPockets to and find other things to invest in, like private loans and other cool things that can show you that are not real, like that real estate that I mentioned, even though that's a great deal. There's other things you can do to and I'll hold your hand the whole way. What do you think?   Michael: Oh, sign me up, man, I'll be looking for your email.   Matt: Cool, no problem.   Michael: Man, that was awesome. That was so so so good.   Matt: Thank you, thank you…   Michael: So firstly, for first and first and foremost, you've now got to send me that email because I'm sold. But secondly, what I love about what you did is the conversation felt very much, let me help you, let me put provide value for you educate me around what I could do with my retirement funds, which I might have not even been aware of, and then to tell me how you're able to help me, before even the you being helped in the process, being able to your own deals be my financing was even mentioned.   Matt: Yeah, well, so is a few facts, right, um, of the $10 trillion, that's currently in IRAs, right now, not 401k, it's just IRAs of the $10 trillion, it's out there. 4% of us invested in anything else outside of Wall Street and so if you're looking to get your capital game going, the easiest low hanging fruit, and the thing that everybody has is a retirement account that has if they've got a job, and they used to work at one company, and they now work at another company, their retirement account, they had the first company is now eligible to get rolled over to an IRA. And with the big run up the stock markets had it that's what you should be talking to people about, is like, hey, you used to work over here. Now you work here, don't you are you got laid off, you quit whatever it is, they don't have you there them a job. Now they just have to use to have a job. It's such an easy, low hanging fruit conversation and it speaks to their needs too. Because everybody's get a little squirrely and where Wall Street's going, it's just been a great run. You know, it's had a great run over the last 12 years. But now it might be time to pull a few chips back. So I think that that's something that's probably the most underutilized conversation out there. For those looking to raise money, is to talk to anybody that's got a job about investing their retirement account with them with their real estate company.   Michael: That's so good. I think so many people when when thinking about having that conversation, think, well, I don't know anyone who has money, because they might not be in cash assets or liquid assets on the you know, in a taxable account, but the retirement side of things brings into focus a whole another option.   Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Well, you can and there's other ways you can go about it, too. You can kind of sniff out, my book talks about like how to sniff out people that are in your network that likely have a lot of cash. What does what are the signs that a lot of cash leaves, you know, my book talks about that, my book talks about, there's another vehicle that they can they can invest with you and as those are people with free and clear real estate.   Last time I looked, Michael 30% of America owns their home, their primary residence free clear 30%. You know, but they don't. It's not it's not to get paid to ask a different color when it's paid off. It's hard to tell. Like all the purple houses in America are free and clear. Yeah, no, I don't know. So, but my book talks about the signs to look for free and clear real estate. And I also can tell you, here's the free clear real estate conversation. Here's the those with cash conversation and here's the retirement account conversation to have. I just pulled that into my playbook because it seemed like the most obvious one to go for is retirement account is probably the most, it's the most underutilized one. But I think it's the one that's most unnecessary right now, in today's world.   Michael: That makes so much sense, that makes so much sense. Matt, you mentioned before we hit record here that you are actually in the midst of closing the biggest deal that you've ever done to date today. Can you talk to us a little bit about what that looks like?   Matt: That was a by the way, Michael that was it bullshit. That was a real deal. I was pitching you on for your retirement account when you were working for XYZ comm your XYZ IRA could be invested in the deal that we're closing part of right now. Yeah, it's 670 units. It's in it's in two states. It is a five apartment buildings and we're closing two of those today. The other three close in a couple of weeks.   Michael: Amazing, okay, and what attracted you to this deal?   Matt: Um, that okay, so two of the buildings are in Winston Salem, North Carolina, and that is a company that is city we're already heavily invested in and it's a city that's showing phenomenal growth, 14% rent growth last year, RD on pace to do at least 12 this year percent rent growth and this owner hasn't increases rents in the last two. So he hasn't seen any of the rental upside that's been happening, the rent growth has been happening in that market has not been realized on those properties. So great opportunity, we already have property management in that town lined up and Lexington we own six other apartment buildings. So we are a niche down company. We're not going to just invest anywhere that is a good deal. We invest in super specific markets, so those are there were three markets Lexington, Kentucky, the Piedmont triad in North Carolina, and in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, of all places. Those are the three markets that we're in. That's it   Michael: If it works, it works…   Matt: So…I like about it. I also like that it's diverse meaning like it's it's different geographies, different management strategies, even different property conditions. I like all those things about it that it brings a lot of things to the table, that make it more of a stable asset.   Michael: Okay, okay..   Matt: But it's stable investment, like stable here, but poised to go up.   Michael: Okay and we've had a lot of folks on the show recently talking about passive investments. And you know how you're really evaluating the operator more so than the deal itself. But can you give folks listening some tips about how to evaluate maybe the deal? I mean, what, what details of the deal itself should people be looking at to feel comfortable?   Matt: Yeah, um, you should look at…, I'll tell you why I'll tell you, what people will do to make their deal look better than earlier is, you have to look at what their exit criteria is. That meaning like, they might be saying, okay, we're going to buy the property for this number, and then we're going to invest this and then we're going to sell it for this, like that nine times you paid for it, then you investors aren't going to make any money till we sell it, or you're not going to make very much money until we sell it, if the majority of investor returns are projected to come through the sale and the end, the syndicator is assuming that the markets gonna stay very stagnant, that cap rates are gonna stay down and streets gonna stay down, yada, yada, then they're kind of making a lot of assumptions that may or may not come true. So that's one thing to be concerned over. So make sure that they're conservative that their crystal ball is is, you know, that they're looking into has some conservatism's as it in it, because that's one thing. That's one thing, as indeed a syndicator can do is they can predict that the markets going to be super favorable at some point in the future when they go to sell and that makes the deal look really good right now.   Michael: Right, right…   Matt: Yeah, make sure there's a lot of there's some experience on the team that have been it's okay to have new new and to work with new people, because we're all new at some point. But make sure somewhere on their team, there's some deep, there's a deep bench of experience.   Michael: That's great, that's great. Yeah, no, I love those points, I love those points. I think I've seen that too and a bunch of syndication deals like oh yeah, we're gonna buy it at a six cap and we're gonna exit at a three cap and it's like, really look.   Matt: Phenomenal… 22% IRR man, what's the cash flow? Oh, it's only gonna pay like 3% cash on cash. But you know, magic fairy dust, get sprinkled on the deal, and it's gonna get sold and you're gonna make you're gonna triple your money. You know, three right now when I sell it, and that's how it's gonna go, right… When the crypto rises, you know…   Michael: No, that's a great point, those are great points, Matt. And I'm curious to know what do you you know, in your book, I'm sure talks about this but for anyone listening, that's thinking about starting to raise money but doesn't really have experience. They've you know, they've got the hustle, but they don't have the experience and they don't have the capital. You know, what should those people be doing right now?   Matt: Okay, I'm getting smudge get as much exposure as you can. Some folks do that through investing some some people that I know, that are very successful, syndicators now got started investing in other people's deals to learn the ropes, right. And that's it, do that get some exposure, we know why you can to other people's deals, you know, network, do what I did. But to start small, like we're on our 50 we're closing, this is our 15th syndication that we've done. But our first syndication was a guy my wife went to college with put in 50k into it into one into a deal that we did, we bought two single family homes with his 50k, right, that was our first syndication. So you can start small, find the one person that has some capital to work with in your in your network, and do a deal and then expand it out, do another deal, expand it out, do another deal, expand that out, do another deal. So for those that are looking to get started, it's okay to start small. It's not sexy to start small, but it's also okay and there's a lot further there's there's a lot smaller distance to fall and a lot easier to course correct on a small deal than it would be to correct on a behemoth issue first. Michael: Yep, I think that's such a good point, I think that's such a good point. I know I've spoken to people and I thought, well, my first deal would be a 10 year multifamily, because multifamily is the best everyone's talking about it. It's like yeah, okay, well, have you done a single family deal? Well, no…   Matt: I'm telling you, I hear people like, oh, I'm gonna do 100 unit multifamily deal. You know, like, that's my first deal I want to do, I've never done a deal before my life. But I want to close 100 units is my first deal. I get it and I want that, too for you, you know. But you might have to bang your head against the wall a lot. Where you could just go and syndicate a duplex right or syndicate like get your Mama to go give you a couple give me a couple of dollars and you and your Mama would go buy a duplex right, you know…   Michael: But then I can't post it on Instagram. No one wants to see me my mom and me doing deals…   Matt: I can't fake it till I make it that right, you know, or pose next to the Lamborghini that I just bought because I've been, I've been investing in real estate for the last few months.   Michael: So good. The last question I have for you before I let you out of here is, you were talking at the beginning of the show about how you did all these things and kind of rally different directions and then you really niche down and you got really focused. How did you do that? I mean, how did you, what did it take for you to get hyper focused? Because I think so many of us as they get started real estate like, oh, I could do long term buy and hold or I could do flipping or I could do wholesaling or I could do burr investing. And there's so many different ways to go. How do you know when you found the right one?   Matt: Well, first of all, Michael, I just got I just get tired to get my ass kicked, you know…   I'd like to wholesale deals going on at for fix and flips going, I was buying a bunch of rentals and everything like that, and it wasn't sleeping awake, you know and I was doing everything media doing a mediocre level, any of those three things that I was doing, I was involved in some other stuff, too. Any of those three things that I was doing could have gotten to me to my financial goals. But the mistake that I made with all this tribe was doing a bunch of things, mediocre lee versus doing one thing really well, right. And so I found that I was, you know, good at being a landlord, because with the landlord properties that we had raised very well. And it's also good at raising money and explaining what I do land lording in a very simple fashion to people and so I was like, okay, well, I'm awesome at those two things. Let me just focus on those. And the more I focused on those, guess what, Michael, the more money I made, like, money's good. I like making money. I do enjoy my family. You know, that's good. So how about anymore, though? Yeah, I'm not good at managing contractors, some too nice that I believe them when they tell me that their car broke down. And that's why they couldn't show up on the job site, but they still need me to give them 10 grand, you know, and I believe them. Okay, here you go. And that, so I just knew I didn't have people in my network to outsource that to at the time and so it made sense. I had tried partners to run that fix and flip division, my company didn't work out. So I needed to abandon the things that weren't working, and focus on the things that were and for those that are looking to niche down and focus. It doesn't have to it doesn't have to be apartment buildings, believe me, don't listen to Instagram does not have to be apartment buildings. It can be other things, I promise.   But figure out what you were calling your core genius, right? Your God given talents, what are you gonna call it, figure that find out those and how you can best bring those to the real estate table and even better, how they are benefiting your business today. And then just easy, Michael, do more of that. How about that, there's two more of those things, if it's working, you do more of it, and less of the things that aren't, you know, it could be that simple and that's kind of how we grow in and I found people that were able to sit in the seats that I needed for me to focus more on raising money and more on the land lording , and I'd filled in those seats and I got it, you know, tight and I expand that up and I was like okay, land lording is amazing, but I could probably scale faster if I outsource that and hire third party management companies. So we did that I could focus on raising money and I could focus on building the team and enrolling and inspiring and being the leader of my team. Now that's really all I do is I lead my team and I raise money and I talk to you…   Michael: I love it, I love it. That, this has been so much fun Matt, if people have questions for you want to reach out to you are interested in investing in some of your deals, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?   Matt: There's a ton of stuff on my LinkedIn bio. My LinkedIn is the Matt Faircloth, I'm sure there's plenty of other Matt Faircloth in the world but my Instagram handle…   Michael: You stake your claim…   Matt: I've claimed it, there also the Instagram I'm the only Matt Faircloth, @themattfaircloth and there's a there's a link in my bio on Instagram and there's a ton of stuff there you can go and invest in my and you can hear about investing in deals with us if you're an accredited investor you can join our mailing list because you do a non-accredited deal sometimes for those that are that we have a preexisting relationship with so you can join that list or you know hear more about that. You can buy a copy of my book there you can you know join all kinds of different cool things we have going on and Masterminds webinars, all that jazz is on the link in my bio on Instagram.       Michael: Sweet, well Matt thank you again, man, from Komodo dragons to passive investing, this has been a blast. I'm sure we'll be chatting soon.   Matt: My family and I play a game at dinner called: True two truths and a lie and I'm going to slay it right in two true and a lie there that I was on an interview and me and this guy talked about Komodo dragons. Nobody's gonna believe that. But I totally got my family, totally gonna crush them at true two truths and a lie tonight…   Michael: I love it, I love it. Well, I am glad I could be a part of it.   Matt: Thank you.   Michael: Awesome, take care man.   Alright everyone, that was our episode. A big thank you to Matt for coming on. It was super fun from Komodo dragons to real estate syndication. I didn't think we'd be able to get there but we kept it on the rails. As always, if you liked the episode, please feel free to leave us a rating or review wherever it is you get your podcasts and we look forward to seeing you on the next one. Happy investing!

The past years have seen a confluence of different factors affecting the real estate market: a global pandemic and government's responses to it; the following economic environment, with record inflation, hikes in interest rates, and significant migration; and social unrest around the world. All of this is occurring in an already extremely competitive market. So, how do you keep up with it all? How do you continue to grow your portfolio, protect your assets, or even minimize your losses? In this episode, Emil and Michael will share their insights how to adapt, grow, and prosper in the current environment. --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Estate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Emil: Hey, everyone, welcome back for another episode of the Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Emil Shour and today I'm joined by…   Michael: Michael Albaum.   Emil: And on this episode, we're going to be talking about adjusting your expectations as the market changes. So something that's probably on a lot of people's minds, and we want to address it on this episode. So let's hop into it.   Emil: Michael…   Michael: Emil…   Emil: Tell me, is this something that you get a lot in the academy, like people come up to you and say, hey, you know, a couple years ago, I was shooting for an eight to 10% cash on cash and now it's just not really possible with how property values have gone up and rents are growing, but not as quickly? What do I do?   Michael: Yes, absolutely. I get the question regularly in the sentiment regularly. And my response is usually quite similar. And it's either you're looking in the wrong market. So what you're looking for exists, but just not where you're looking for it. You aren't looking hard enough. So maybe it exists in your market, but you're only looking at the MLS and maybe you need to go off market or wholesalers or change the avenue which are looking for those properties. Or maybe you just need to adjust your expectations. Maybe what you're looking for doesn't exist. And so those are usually the three options.   And the three suggestions that I give to people to go try. And and so I think it's it's absolutely, the market has changed the conversations we were having a year ago, just we're having different conversations now and so you can't go, you know, it's like when a sport that's go to a sporting event, and the rules have changed, you can't keep trying to play the same game, because you're not going to do well. And so I think we absolutely have to adjust expectations for the current conditions. What are you seeing man? Are you are you hearing similar sentiment and kind of the circles that you're running in?   Emil: Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm a less active more maintenance real estate investor currently. So I haven't been making offers or anything recently. But you know, I follow a lot of real estate guys on Twitter, including you. And it is it's either you two things happen. You either just say I'm done doing deals, or you adjust your expectation. And I think Michael Zuber talks about this a lot, our old pal from one rental at a time, he says you have to stay active in your market to know what's going on in your market. Maybe five years ago, you were doing 10% cash on cash returns, but markets change. Maybe a good deal now is a 7% return, right. And it's it's about finding the good deals in your chosen market versus like just arbitrarily finding a number and scouring to find that.   Michael: Yeah, I totally agree, I totally agree. And I think it is like you and I and Michael Zuber we talk about hyper hyper local, like real estate investing is hyper local. And so it's really tough if you're chatting with a friend that invest in Kansas City, and they're like, oh, I can't find, you know, I'm.., I'm trying to make 8% cash on cash return and having a difficult time doing that. And then you're over there in Austin, Texas, like 8%, holy crap, I kill for 8%, I can't make 3% work. So I think it's it's hyperlocal. And you have to really understand your particular market. From A and I know this everyone asks like what is the return? Like, what's the number and everyone's I think a little bit gun shy, myself included because A it's not an evergreen type of situation like today, we're recording this and end to February 2022. So if you're listening to this, in the future, you might think there's no way we're getting those kinds of returns, it could be either way better way worse.   But I think on average, like the number spread of five to 7% levered. So that means like your cash on cash with debt, I think is what is realistic for a lot of people in a lot of markets these days. And a year ago, two years ago, that was just not the case. You know, like you mentioned eight to 10% was totally doable in a lot of different markets. And again, this totally is dependent on the asset class, and the neighborhood and the market and so you might be listening to this, even as we're recording this and say, oh, there's no way I could I can't possibly do that. I'm in San Francisco, California. Okay, yeah, well, that might be true. So you're someone that where the market takes a massive effect and impact on and you can't make those numbers work. So again, take this with a total grain of salt, but just know that the number expectation for me included has totally shifted, has totally, totally shifted.   Emil: Yeah… So you mentioned you tell people, you engineer the number right or like there's different levers you can pull to get maybe one of the return metrics You're trying to aim for it. Can you talk about that more?   Michael: Totally yeah, because I'm a reformed engineer, I still like engineering stuff and so, you know, I've learned now that you can really engineer your return. And there are just like mentioned a couple of different levers to pull. So one is obviously purchase price. And so we don't often have a big impact on what the purchase price is, because the seller does, and especially because of how competitive the market is. So we might not be able to affect that lever very much. But we might be able to for making all cash offers. And so if you're able to bring all cash to the table, you might be able to be more competitive. And therefore, you might be able to pull that lever a little bit more than your average bear.   The second lever you can pull, which you absolutely have, I would argue more control over is your down payment amount. And so if you're someone that's using an 80/ 20 mortgage, you're bringing 20% down bank or lender is giving 80%, you're gonna have some expected cash on cash return, and some expected cash flow based on your numbers and how you however you underwrite. Well, if you put down 25% or 30%, you might get not only a better interest rate, but now you're going to have a smaller mortgage amount, which is going to translate to a higher cash flow. Now, we talked about this all the time on the podcast that, in my opinion, I think you should be looking at both cash on cash return, and monthly cash flow in terms of dollars because you can have instances where your cash flows through the roof, but your cash on cash return is a metric how hard your dollars are working for you is like minuscule, right, I can show you how to buy $1,000 a month property, something that cash flowed $1,000 a month. But if you have to go spend a million bucks to get it and might not be worth your while.   And going the other way with it, I could show you how to buy a property that might yield you 50% cash on cash return. And people hear that like, oh, duh that like that would be amazing. But if it only cash flows 27 cents a month, nice property goes negative, like that might not be a good situation either.   Emil: Right, right…   Michael: So I think most investors want to find a balance of the two, they want a strong cash on cash return, they want their dollars working for them, but they also want to put dollars in their pocket. And so you can you just simply engineer that by your down payment amount. And a question that I always tell people to ask their lenders, if they're using a mortgage is, hey, where are the interest rate threshold breaks?   So if I'm putting 20% down, this is my interest rate. If I put down 25%, what is the interest rate do if I put down 30%? What is the interest rate to if, what if I put down 35% and go find out where those thresholds are, because you might see that there's a really big jump, or a really big change in the interest rate and depending on the loan amount, and again, depending on your particular deal getting a lower interest rate, even if you have to put more down might actually translate to a better cash on cash return. And that's kind of counterintuitive for most people, because I think a lot of us think of the less you put down, the better our returns will be overall, which isn't necessarily the case. So I've seen tons of instances where actually putting down more cash will yield you both a higher cash flow monthly cash flow number, so more dollars in your pocket, as well as a higher cash on cash return metric. So actually getting your dollars working harder for you, because they're not fighting so much interest headwind.   Emil: That's a fantastic point to bring up and one of them is that higher down payment you're bringing that. The other point of that other benefit, I guess I would say of that is let's say you think prices are higher, right? When I think if you put your borrowing less, right, you're, you're protecting your downside a little more as well, depends on where you think we are, you could say, nope, I think prices are gonna rise for the next 5-10 years, whatever. But if you're unsure, that is one way you can provide yourself with a margin of safety is a little bit less leverage…   Michael: Totally less leverage and more equity. Absolutely, absolutely.   And so I think it's important and we were talking a little bit before we hit record here, that in today's market, you might have to sacrifice on one metric or the other. I talked about looking at them in unison and trying to maximize both. But that's often not the case, they often tend to be competing against each other and so you know, pick a number that you're okay with and maybe you have to give a little bit up on the cash and cash return side, maybe your dollars aren't working as hard for you. But you're more excited about the amount of dollars you're putting in your pocket. Or maybe your dollars are working harder for you. And you're you know more excited about that. And you got to give up a little bit in terms of actual dollars going into your bank account. And so it just being flexible, adjusting with the times just in your expectations for where we are in the current market cycle where interest rates are and you know where, where prices are.   Emil: Yeah. Solid, so what do you think is the let's take away market timing. What do you think is the evergreen takeaway here for just expectations around returns as things go up, down, sideways, all those?   Michael: Yeah, I think we just have to take into account all of the things. So all of the things in my opinion are purchase prices, whatever prices doing and what are owner occupants doing because 5-10 years ago, we had, I think we saw much less demand from owner occupants and the pandemic has really shifted that, so everyone is trying to buy homes owner occupants and investors, which puts a lot of upward pressure on the market, so that's a change. So we can't, we can't no longer, we can no longer as investors go in knowing, that we're only competing with other investors, and figure out the best way to engineer our offer so that we make the best return, because now we're competing with people that are paying way less than interest, because they're owner occupants. So we've got to change our strategy out again. So what the Evergreen takeaway is, is figure out what levers you have in your back pocket to pull and so if you can make an all cash offer, think about what that looks like and how that might affect your returns. If you could put more money down, think about what that looks like and how that affects returns and then just run the numbers and it shouldn't be an emotional decision, it should be a fact based and number based decision and like hey, how do I generate the best return for myself and again, that could be heavy on the cash flow and light on the cash on cash, it could be heavy on the cash and cash flow and cash flow or it could be maximizing both, but I think you got to do whatever it takes to get the deal done and in an acceptable like with acceptable metrics, whatever that means for you. And so again, moving those three levers tends to be the best way to that I've seen to get deals done and in today's market, but also I mean think about alternative financing options with like owner seller financing or private capital like these are other ways to give yourself an edge a competitive edge and so think about how those might be able to affect your returns as well.   Emil: I dig it, good tips. I will… I will leave with my evergreen tip being know your market, study your market, like Michael Zuber says, we talked about earlier, know your market, right, the market, your market your individual market will change and it's about knowing what a good deal is in your market, not what a good deal what you used to think was, right, so know your market what is the average return and try to beat that.   Michael: Yeap… Adapt or die, right.   Emil: Yep, exactly.   Thank you everybody for tuning in. Hope you found this episode useful if you did, please leave us a review, a comment, we love all those it strokes our ego and it helps us find new episode ideas for you guys. So with that, we will check you on the next one. Happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing…

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

In this episode, we take a look at how AI turns your sharing into business growth. Grant Okay, welcome, everybody to another episode of ClickAI radio. So I'm very excited to have here with me today ShareThis business development leader. I think it got that right. Michael Gorman, business development leader. But before I go any further, Michael, would you introduce yourself? Michael You bet. Grant. Yeah, it's great to be here. Like you said, I oversee business development, but also product and marketing at ShareThis. I've been I've been with ShareThis for a couple of years. In that role. I have a background in data, really, data and analytics has been my passion. Also media and marketing sort of themes. I've worked for big data companies like Axiom, I've worked for an email marketing leader, digital impact, they got bought by Axiom. That's how I got there. And I've also worked for big consulting firms. And for ESPN back in the earlier days of my career. Grant Oh, wow. Could you maybe give us a play by play? I bet you could write ESPN. Interesting. Wow. Michaels It was a fun period. I was like years eight through 11 of the history of of ESPN, which, so is a fun time to be there. Grant How fun. All right. And he did some some consulting roles as well. So data and analytics, huh? Yeah. Right. All throughout all throughout the career. So what led you into this work was ShareThis what was it was the journey there? Michael Well, one thing is that, that I've worked with our CO CEO on the past, at axiom, so we knew each other, but ShareThis is a really, really special data asset. In a lot of ways, and within the world of the of the advertising that I've worked in for quite a few years. It's it was well known. So when I had an opportunity to do a little consulting for them, I jumped into it. And that led to the to the role. It's a Yeah, sure this is, you know, it's Well, shall I tell you a bit about the company? Or is that? Grant Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, tell me a little bit about how it got started. And its purpose and sort of the vision of it. Michael You know, well, like a lot of companies, it started with one purpose and, and things evolved a little bit over time, it, it started off in the early days of social networks, when Facebook was still a new idea and mind MySpace was, was beginning to slow down, it was with the idea of making it easy for any website to make to make it easy for their users to share content to all the social networks that they might have an interest in. And so a developer with a simple, taking, you know, taking a piece of code and pasting it on their website that they could then have sharing. We and so it was one of two or three tools that really started in those early days and became a leader in the space. We actually have a how to still maintain a trademark on that little little V on the site there. Yeah, I mean, that's what you're known for. Yeah. So it's a sign if that's there, it's a sign that sharing is you know, sharing tools are present. It's essentially the balance value for the for the publisher for the owner of the site who doesn't have to does no work to have sharing available will get some analytics as a result, sharing is valuable because it makes it attracts more people to the site new users more more content. And, and so it's it's grown up naturally. And we're, you know, so really well established. But a number of business models were tried over the years, but but about five years ago, we started focusing, moving towards being 100% about our data, is that really as a special asset, we have around 3 million publishers using us sort of our live arm 3 million now, that's been pretty stable, you know, half to three quarters and in the rest of the world, a quarter in the United States, a little biased towards English language, but we have every language in the world represented among the users on the sites. And, and so that data and and we'll talk more about this when we get into things like, you know, the the technology in the AI. Yeah, but we're really just, you know, it's like a window into what, what people are what's on people's minds? What are they looking for? What are they searching about online, and we can, you know, discern trends and also, you know, make sure that advertising is more relevant for for users. Grant So I have a question for you on that. So you've, of course, are familiar with the terminology of neuromarketing, right. And, you know, as a way of sort of tracking, how are people interacting with a site, right, and where do they go? And where do they point and click and, you know, there's organizations that look at, you know, extracting what the user is doing on the site, this feels like this starts to come into that world right that day. I mean, I don't know that it's tracking every single movement, but it's tracking, obviously, the event of I want to share something. Any thoughts on that? Michael Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to make inferences about about people, we tend to focus a bit more on the on the broad, the broader picture, that the thing that's that, I mean, there's, like you say, so many choices. But the thing about online content is, it's very rich. So when a person visits a site, there's a lot of things there, there's a lot of things on the page they're looking at. And so what we've really focused on is using the page as a source of clues about what a person is interested in, we also might look at the link in and out of the page, and get a clue from, say, a search term as well, that's a that's useful, and clearly when someone shares, you know, content that's that that sort of zoned in on exactly what they care about on the page. But we've opted more for the broad picture of focusing, you know, taking all that richness and attributing some probability of interest that for you, for user to the things that are on the page. And that way we can we have just such a broad, you know, broad palette to work with. And I think also from the point of view of, of, you know, user consent and user experience, it means that what we're actually collecting is is relatively light, it's just that this user was on this page at this time. And any inference we make is not based on what he or she did, or how are their eye movement, there's no no personal collection, we just have the that event, and we get all the all the power. Grant So it's when they were there. Is it anything about how they got there? Or where are they left? Michael Yeah, exactly. We do. We do use the inbound links and outbound links when we can get them. And that sometimes, as I said, yields a search term, those can that was sort of part of the of the link the part of the information that what came with the user, you know, the referring search term or so that so there's some some useful data there as well. Grant Yeah. So so when you collect this, and then that's got to be a massive repository, I think I saw somewhere else and I'm looking at, was it three terabytes of raw data and 100 million keywords in 200 languages a day? Is that right? Michael It sounds roughly right. I haven't counted it lately. But, yeah, you're right. But But yeah, we we see about half a billion, you know, unique, what we call events, something, you know, something happened at a point in time, visits a share per day. Grant This is a grounds for, you know, a playing field for AI, right, just you have so much data. So tell me what it is you learn from it with the AI, right? What kinds of problems are you looking to solve? As you and I know, when we pursue AI, we, it would tend to be better served if we're going after a particular question or thought in mind. Now, obviously, we get surprised with AHA insights from Ai. But going intentionally after something makes a lot of sense. Can you give a scenario the kinds of things that you're looking for? Michael Well, the I would say that the theme that has worked for us so far, is to try to do is to focus on being the able to represent and reflect human interest, what are people interested in? And yeah, and so. So we, we use, and I guess where the AI comes in is that we use the latest techniques of language analysis and language modeling. So we capture all of the linguistic content on the page and then we represent it in a number of ways. What are all the prominent keywords? What are the what are the entities that are you know more that are Unusual, you know, a brand name, a celebrity name, a business name? What are the what is this page about the concept? Or what are? What are some of the concepts that accurately describe what this page is about. And then we have some standard categorization techniques are basically a taxonomy of topic interest topics that we we screen for, you know, and and it's not, it's not a yes, one of the nice things about this is it's not a, a, it's not a, it, we don't have to decide one thing, you know, we were able to say, all of the prominent keywords, and all of the interesting entities and several concepts and all the categories that this page is about. So it could be a page, it's about, you know, mountain climbing and and what shall we say? And Utah, and the, or the American West and, and road vehicles? And, you know, and beverages, you know, skiing or whatever? Right, right. Exactly. Grant Yeah, so some form of an ontology there, right, that allows you to sort of connect these together? Michael Yeah, we used a number of techniques that you said, One is, we built a custom ontology, using relative and you know, we're, we're not a huge company. So we, we try to wherever we can do something open source or free as the entry point we do that. And so we, we use some Wikipedia, it's slash DBPedia is a source for us. And, as is some Google free offerings that help us sort of the provide the raw material for building our customer ontology. We've also take great advantage of some of the latest open source language modeling tools. One is when it goes by the name of the Google released one, I forget what the what the acronym stands for, but one that's called Bert, and then more recently, one that's called Muse. Yeah, we use muse. Okay, that, that allows us to represent anything, either a word or a sentence, or the whole page as a as a set as a vector of 500 numbers. And if two pages have the same values for those 500 vectors, then they are about the same thing. Yeah, you got you have some affinity there right now, even though in practice, they might be in different languages use totally different, you know, different sets of words, but they're still about the same thing. That's, that's, that's really, for us that technology has been a real breakthrough. Because it's we've been sometimes keywords and can be very, you know, they can be false positives or No, yeah, negative. Grant I mean, there, yeah, there's nothing that governs some, you know, webpage designer to, you know, say, hey, are they using the actual right keywords? Right? Michael Yes, or even? Or even? How do you a lot of words have multiple meanings? How do you disambiguate to get the right one? Yeah. So this this, embedding technology, this Muse model helps us do that. And then Facebook is given we use a tool, they think it's called Facebook. Ai similarity search. Yeah. And both of these are open source tools, y'all you have to put in the effort and have the knowledgeable people to master their use. And that allows us because great, it's great that you've now got all these numbers you can compare, but that's a lot of numbers. That's you half a billion a day, you know, and we have we see 600 million unique pages every month. So so how do I great, I want to rank the 600 million pages to see which ones are most about skiing in Utah. Yeah, that's, you know, how do I do that quickly, and then and affordably? So fate, the Facebook tool helps us a lot with that. Grant So let me ask you a question that So so far, you've been talking about leveraging AI technologies to help you get your arms around that sheer volume of data on a daily basis and to try to extract some meaning and semantics and understanding from it. That's a good point that's on the side of ShareThis and the benefits to ShareThis. What about it from pivoted to the other side? What does it mean to it is, you know, I talk a lot with small medium organizations, how does that benefit them? What takeaways or values come over to help them through something like that? Michael Well, what the I mean, the industry that we started with, is was is advertising and programmatic online advertising as a place where we make our solution available. And so we were at this point, probably the leading source of the ability to target ads based on interest. So if if A small business were doing online display advertising and they went to Google's, if they use Google's platform or trade desk, or any of the major platforms, and they searched on, I want to find people interested in skiing in Utah, our data would be one of their choices to find that. And so it's designed to provide a broad set of individuals who in the last 30 days have shown some interest in that topic. And it could be, you know, it might be at the level of skiing, and they might, then they might, but but the nice thing about it is that we we've, I mean, it's hard, this is harder for the stats, that's what's available for the smaller business. That's, it's, it's right off the shelf, you can, you can use $1 worth or $10 worth or $100 worth if it works for you. But then on the big company side, we use some of those tools I talked about for is, well, what if, what if we don't actually have ski in Utah, we just have skiing, right? Well, we well, for an advertiser can can say, well, I need to skiing in Utah. In fact, I need to, you know, skiing in snow. But what is the alter? You know, we can create a segment using keywords and, and topics that is just about that is exactly what they need. Grant So if I were to look at maybe an advertising opportunity, leveraging, you know, this great insight that you have, does it allow me to target specific demographics, specific locations or locales? So like, you know, you're able to? Michael Absolutely, it's pretty much anything you could, I mean, because every kind of website needs sharing, we have our, our customer base, our base of publishers use our tool is pretty representative of the internet as a whole. And so if your interest is travel, we've got sites that are about, you know, traveling Las Vegas, traveling to Europe traveling to do outdoor activities, if you're interested in financial products, we can we can find things, you know, content that relates to whatever be at a mortgage or or FinTech to know. And we we represent those in about 1500 standard audiences that we distribute every day. And every day, the nice thing about our data, compared to a lot of datasets is we refresh it every day. Yeah, Michael I mean, it's every second, right? I mean, yeah, it could be, you know, people talk about real time, and we were always looking for people who've got a real time use case. But yeah, at this point, the the most frequently we refresh for a client, the customer is up by a by his hourly. Grant Oh, it's hourly, okay, that's, that's still really up to date. Yeah. I mean, if you had hourly insights on what the what's in the mind of people are the consumers that's really fresh data? Michael Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah, one of the areas that we that we are moving towards is trying to go beyond advertising and inform other activities like demand forecasting, you know, how much should we order for a store in a given location? Well, our data about how much interest is being shown on the products of that store, and in that store, in that area, we can sort that way, and provide that as an input. Grant That makes that makes a lot of sense. You know, there's, there's some retail organizations I've worked with with AI. And obviously, it always comes back to or not always, but most of it comes back to the supply chain, right, getting further and further left in terms of their their demand forecasting. And if they were able to understand you know, where that interest lies, it does almost gets to, oh, I know, this is a stretch in terms of language, but it's kind of a sentiment analysis, a play on that. Right. It's the ability Yeah, the ability to say I understand what the sentiment is in terms of where their interests are. And if I understood what that was, in terms of particular set of products or other things I'm offering, and I could get that further into my, into my supply chain, that would be really valuable to Yeah, Michael I mean, it's nice that you mentioned that we do we do actually score the sentiment of the content on the page. So we're sentiment is useful, either to only talk to the people who are in favor or opposed or the middle, we can we can build an audience that or provide that as a data element as well. Grant Yes. See, that's that's powerful to understand the the sentiment of the page itself, even how people are talking about it, or what they're doing, have you ever ran into the ability to use it in terms of IP tracking, right. So in other words, if there is an organization that had a certain set of IP and, and and really, yeah, they felt like oh, my IP, I've lost control my intellectual property, it's showing up in other places. Michael Oh, that's interesting. You know, I was thinking of I was thinking of the I the the IP address the Internet Protocol address. Yeah. Should have been more clear. Yeah, I'd love to answer that question. But that wasn't what you were asking. Well, yeah, answer. Oh, we'll start with intellectual property. Yeah. One sec. Regarding intellectual property? You know, we have it. Let me think about that. Let me give you the scenario. I had, one of the things I've thought about that we haven't taken on it, you know, is that is, is using using intellectual property as a data set? Yeah. If if we were to, to read to do the same kind of analysis I talked about earlier on trademarks. Yeah, it could mean be the means for discovering which, what sites were about branded products by seeing the correspondence between the trademark and the, because that's always you run into difficult How do you tell something's a brand? When is Jaguar a brand? You know? Exactly. Grant Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating problem. I had a company reach out to me and say, Hey, can you develop something in this area, and we did some work on that. I called it smart catch, but they were looking to protect their IP, their intellectual property, which was, we've got this corpus of information. And, and we've got others that are, you know, getting access to it and are promoting it, you know, elsewhere out into the, you know, online universe there, or metaverse. And, and I want to be able to discover, you know, when it's opportunistic, and you can use, you know, SERP and other technologies to try to find some of that stuff and do lots of scraping. But that's got its own challenges in terms of a solution. And where you've got this opportunity to listen. Right, right, to observe what people are sharing and to the to compare that against a corpus of protected material, right? Michael Kind of an intro you're giving, you're giving me a product idea. Seriously, one of the things that we've done this year, is to create what we what we call, you know, similarity scoring. So similarity, and that's gonna cause Yeah, you can literally give someone who was curious about the dispersing dispersion of intellectual property, give us a domain. Yep. And, or a, you know, the piece of content that describe their, their stuff, and we would rank our sites for which ones had it most. Right. And, you know, whatever the top 100, you know, and you know. Grant What I found interesting on that, when I built the initial piece on that was that I found that, in some of the discovery, in some cases, what I found was a foe. And in other cases, it was a friend. Exactly right. That, you know, okay, just because I found it doesn't mean it's an enemy. But, but it might be, and so you want to then notify them? Is this? Is this someone that's an ally or not? Anyway, interesting thought? Michael Because I think I think that sometimes there is a, you know, I don't know, there's a presumption that fraud detection or a bad actor detection is, is, you know, worth more, etc. But I do find that in a lot of cases, the pro cases are actually, you know, sometimes you just by suppressing something, you do more yourself more harm than good. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. That's another I wanted to touch on the other meaning of it. Yeah. Yeah. Now IP address. Yeah, yeah. So So an IP address is one of the four or five things that we capture for each case. And there's a lot that you can tell from an IP address, like, it can be translated into a location of origin, we approximate we resolve that to within half a mile. So that it's still relatively privacy compliant, and you know, not too revealing, but it certainly helps understand, you organize the data by where it's coming from example. And so the one use that is, has been an important one for us is business to business. So we, we have a number of the major companies that are in the business to business world license our data as one source where they're able to see people from a from an intellect Internet Protocol address that is owned by or been associated with a particular company. Oh, and then see what sites that that IP address is showing interest in? Oh, it just can be. Yeah, so it can be a signal that oh, it seems like you know, Chevron is interested in a new CRM system because they're you know, there's there's a big spike in that kind of traffic Awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Talk about so almost like a lead management. Yeah, solution for sure. That's, that's powerful. Yeah, to do that. that. Oh, there. Yeah. And that's yeah. And IP in general, I think the location implications are a really well, it's how I can, how we can do that demand forecasting I mentioned earlier, it's about looking at the origin of the data. Grant So some of the AI solutions that I've built take into consider location. So So in other words, okay, but in what I've been doing is more around, oh, some transaction occurred? Where was that transaction initiated? From? Oh, this, you know, here's the IP address. Okay, I know that where they are on the planet. Now, tell me what the context of what's taking place in you know, at that location? What is what's the weather like, right, what are other events that are taking place in that location? And then then use an AI to help draw inferences on, you know, to what degree are those factors affecting it? It sounds like you might be doing some similar things with that Michael I well, I think we could be a great contributor to any solution that was along those lines. I was adding that dimension of what are people looking at? What are people interacting? What topics? Are people in this location more engaged by then people in general, fascinating those comparisons? Grant Yeah, it's fascinating is okay. Very good. All right. So let me ask you on. Okay, so we've gone from the the big corpus of what you're collecting on a daily basis, or hourly, actually, hour by hour. And then we talked about the impact to, you know, maybe businesses organizations, when when is there a particular case or outcome that you feel like you could talk about some specific example where some organization used the advertising from that? What you did, and it had this sort of impact or effect on them? Do you have any sort of case study like that? Well, it's, Michael I guess that some of the ones that are coming to mind, I think, I mean, there's some of it's very straightforward. Yeah. An advertiser, like Western Union, is looking for people who want to make payments, you know, at a distance, I mean, wire wire transfers and payments, and we offer people showing interest in wire transfer, so that the simple act of being able to get your message in front of people who have recently shown interest in it is the is the, you know, it just doesn't need no explanation. We've taken that though, one of the things we did this year that I'm proud of is we were inspired by some of the events of last summer, to get more try to take a more active role and figure out what our data was good for. Beyond commercially, and, and we ended up creating a data for good part new part of our taxonomy, we call data for good. And so people interested in social justice loving people entered interested in veterans issues people wanted in. And so and those those segments, you know, have gotten are getting a growing amount of usage by advertisers who either, you know, wanting to demonstrate their commitment to the court to a cause, like, or to find or teachers or to, you know, communicate, right people who have concerns of that kind. So that's been one. Yeah. Another kind of it's, it's not in the mainstream of what we do. But we've, I think this data could be really great as a as a resource for educational institutions. So we've actually a major business school has has is testing I've taken a take taken a subsidiary six months of our data, and they're looking at using it in a project that they have to investigate unemployment. So fascinating. How could you How could you see earlier unemployment trends in a in a location or region that could help the for the process of forecasting the unemployment rate, and it sort of feed into it? Because I've, what I've, I think that lots of people govern organizations included, are somewhat frustrated by the fact that, you know, traditional means of forecasting that were invented before there were personal computers or barely work computers. Take a long time, you get to find out that 40 days after the month, what happened in the month, I love both data can be used to generate that much more quickly. Grant Yeah, Michael, that's I love how you're bringing that up. It seems like it has both the opportunities for not only the capitalistic aspects, but the altruistic aspects of this, the values and benefits that can help society and be pulled out of that. I think that's awesome. So all right. I've thrown a lot of questions at you. So let me ask you this, if you will. To direct direct my listeners to where to go to learn more, where would you send them? Michael Well, I would, I would love them to visit our site, because and in particular to, you know, to ShareThis.com, look, look at our news and our, our blogs, we we basically we publish both as you know, as a demonstration of our the value of our data. And and it's just a general service, we publish a lot of educational and informative information about trends in the economy, and, and public interest generally about how to do marketing well about trends in data. So so we we, we try to be a resource for people and I love I'd love people to visit that content, sometimes. Some of the best stuff is is not on on the nightly news. It's like putting some of it out. I could also you know, I can give you some examples. It would be fun. I go right ahead. Knowing that knowing this audience I we are getting a sense of who maybe was listening is interested in the show, I asked our team to identify some current trends. Yeah, I guess as we come to the end of 2021. Yeah. And so so we put these together. So what one is that, that, that while the world isn't, we're seeing the trend of the gradual resumption of events in person events, even though COVID continues to cycle up and down against the backdrop of COVID. So as of August, for example, 77% of advertised events were in person events, there was a period where, you know, year and a half ago, there was there, they basically no almost having anything, it was just shut down. It was virtual or nothing. That's interesting. So as we adapt, we are adapting. And so as you as you think about should I make plans for a virtual vet, should I invest in advertise? Should I invest in participating in virtual event? Yep, don't count them out. Even if you're nervous, you know, they, they're coming back steadily. Another thing, pattern we observed in finance, that again, you know, COVID is inevitably one of the backdrops to what any of us are thinking about, but people are continuing to be engaged with saving money. So, it so as you think about what, oh, you know, what is what's going on in the in the economy? As the, as virus uptake increases, as one of the things to extract is, is increased saving? And so if that's a, again, depending on your business, how that factors in if savings is your business? Yeah. When your could be good, good to you. If if, and then let's see, what's another one? Let's see. You know, we've heard a lot about supply chain issues. And you know, what, but what, if your retailer what a consumers most worried about? When and so the top concern is shortages and out of stock, and 51% a second costs, inflation and rising prices at 28%. And then staffing issues like worker shortages and strikes, 14, and last last of all shipping delays. So it's thinking about communication strategies, what's on people's minds that might make them not come to the store? That sort of thing? So I'm not surprised. Yeah, yeah. So and we're, we're putting out new new stuff of this kind every, every month in the blog. And and I firstly, look, I think we did we have Superbowl trends out, as of yesterday, I think. Grant So it's already started to build right. That's right. That's, that's amazing. So So you gather it on an hourly basis, and then you do the AI on it Michael Truthfully, truthfully, Grant, it's being gathered continuously. Okay, that's, that's what I thought, yeah, I thought we built we build it as it happens, okay. We literally, you know, record a record for each thing. That's, that's, that's filled out all the way with all the data that will that will need eventually. And then once an hour, we some or as we frequently as our we'll sum it up into a distribution and push it to someone but the most people get their get their data delivered overnight. Amazing. It's picking it up on their AWS bucket. Like Well, this is Grant Fascinating. Any final comments as we wrap up here? Michael Well, you know, I guess that I hope I've given you a sense of the I mean, AI is critical to our business. We are you know, we When we started on this track, we were about a 50 person company, we're approaching 100 person company. And so you don't have to be, you know, IBM to use AI AI to build a great business. So it's a combination of finding the right tools and a core of of talent, the right kind of talented people, and you can and and then, frankly, sustained effort over a period of years and you can build a business that is really hard to replicate, without without it, so very hard. Right. That's, that's my thought. That's, that's Grant Wonderful. Well, Michael, thank you so much for taking your time today. I appreciate you sharing your insights and guidance with us today, everyone. Thanks for joining another episode of ClickAI Radio and until next time, go get some ShareThis.com. Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.  

We recently did an episode on the 10 cheapest cities to buy property in so we wanted to follow that up with a look at property taxes across the country. We pulled up a list compiled by Business Insider on the states with the lowest property taxes. In this episode, we go through the list and comment on what this means, and point out potential shortcomings of a list like this. This episode will answer questions, but it is really a starting point of where to do your own homework on this topic. And like Michael always says, "make sure to call the local county tax assessor".  --- Transcript Before we jump into the episode, here's a quick disclaimer about our content. The Remote Real Etsate Investor podcast is for informational purposes only, and is not intended as investment advice. The views, opinions and strategies of both the hosts and the guests are their own and should not be considered as guidance from Roofstock. Make sure to always run your own numbers, make your own independent decisions and seek investment advice from licensed professionals.   Emil: Hey, everyone, welcome back for another episode of The Remote Real Estate Investor. My name is Emil Shore. And today I'm joined by Michael Albaum,   Pierre: Pierre Carrillo   Emil: And today's episode we're going to be do some similar as we did on a recent episode, which was the if you guys remember the episode 10 most affordable states to buy a home, we're actually going to be covering the top 10 states with the lowest property taxes and this will be 2021 data that we're going to go over to help you you know, as you're looking for markets looking for states invest, hopefully all this data will help you in that journey. So let's hop into this one.   Alright guys, so we are sans Tom today. But we got we got Michael and Pierre, which Dynamic Duo here. Very excited for this episode. Last time, we did some fun where I have the list in front of me. And you guys guessed, I think you each took three guesses and see if you made it in the top 10 list. So let's follow that same style. Pierre, you get to start this time. So we'll go we'll go back and forth. So Pierre, you'll go one, Michael, you'll go one and we'll just flip flop back and forth. And I will tell you guys, if that state is in the top 10 list of lowest property taxes,   Michael: Love it.   Pierre: All right.   Michael: Good luck Pierre. You're gonna need it.   Pierre: Yeah, I'm just trying to remember all the different agents we've had on over the over the last year so definitely not Texas because they don't have income tax.   Emil: That is correct.   Pierre: I'll say Alabama because that was one of the reasons we chose Alabama because…   Michael: Dirty dog   Pierre: Man was it low.   Emil: Alabama. Ding ding ding That is correct.   Michael: Nice.   Emil: Alabama is one of the top 10 Lowest property tax states good job Pierre. Alright, Michael, what you got?   Michael: All right. I'm gonna take a flier here and I'm going to go and say Tennessee is going to be in the top 10   Emil: Tennessee… Eeen. Tennessee is not in the top 10 Lowest property tech states. Sorry, Michael.   Michael: Ah, swing in a miss.   Emil: Pierre looking good, dude. All right. What you got for your second guess.   Pierre: Can Kentucky   Emil: Kentucky is not on the top 10 list. Sorry.   Pierre: Oh man.   Michael: All right.   Michael: Virginia. Show me Virginia.   Emil: Show me Virginia. EEEn. not on the list. Sorry Michael.   Pierre: Oh man we're strugglin.   Emil: Mike you're struggling. You guys did so much better on the other episode. I feel like it was you guys were doing really well on that one. Come on guys. All right Pierre.   Michael: Alabama, Arizona Arkansas, California Colorado. Remember that fifth grade project the state's project and school you have to remember every state every capital.   Emil: Yeah. Those are some…   Pierre: Oklahoma   Emil: Oklahoma final guess. Oklahoma is not on the list. Alright Michael chance to tie it here or just go down in terrible blaze   Michael: Of glory. Like a like a phoenix rise from the ashes of embarrassment. Show me Mississippi.   Emil: Ding ding ding Mississippi.   Michael: Yes. Eat it Pierre.   Emil: Redeems himself. Hold on you guys.   Pierre: Just not Jackson, Mississippi.   Emil: You guys died. Good job. One a piece. You know, you have 33% You both failed. But you both at least got one on the board.   Michael: I went to engineering school 33 is passing for sure. Passing like that's like the highest grade oftentimes.   Emil: I get it. Yeah, if it's based on a curve, you guys both pass.   Michael: Sweet. This is a list compiled by Business Insider. And again, this is for 2021.   Michael: So top 10 states with the lowest property tax. We'll start at number 10 move our way to number one, or so like this is 10th least expensive. Number one is going to be the least expensive in the country. Right? How this list works?   Emil: Yes. So counting number one will be the lowest on a percentage basis property tax. Starting with number 10 We got New Mexico at 0.55% of assessed home value.   Michael: I just gotta say already this list is garbage. Because the way homes are assessed is so different in every state. So I guess that's just something to highlight and point out is like, look to understand and every county does differently, by the way. So like understand how your county that you're interested in purchasing property calculates property taxes. So is it assessed value is it sale price, sometimes those two numbers are the same. So it's really important to go do a little bit more digging after this episode. And these 10 places can be a great place to start. But I just had to get I had to get that off my chest. Assessed value is a bunch of garbage like they two assessors for different states who like the same property, and it says it differently. So whatever that's worth.   Emil: I've been the beneficiary of this on on my triplex in Missouri, the assessed value they gave was insanely low. So I've been the beneficiary of that. But yeah.   Pierre: You're just bitter that you're a veteran that tied with a newbie here, so.   Michael: Looking for any excuse to just to claw back some knowledge, some knowledge share.   Michael: What's number nine Emil?   Emil: I'm curious, Michael, if you know this so assessed home value, is that literally the structure? Does that include land? Does it not include the value of the land? Do you know how that works?   Michael: It's usually broken down between land and building is how I've seen it.   Emil: Yep.   Michael: And then I think oftentimes, the assessed value is the sum of those two. And so you're not depreciating the land on your taxes. But I do believe that the land is still taxed, because if you just go buy raw land, I think you'll still have property taxes to pay on that. It's going to be significantly less than but that's, that's my understanding.   Emil: Okay, so that's interesting. I just really quickly looked up an article on what is the assessed value of a house. So I'm just gonna read this. This is from a website called Value penguin by lending tree. So it says officials review other relevant information such as neighboring property values and the sales history of the property to determine the assessment value. This estimate is generally made without actually inspecting the home which can lead to an inaccurate valuation, which is a testament to what you were saying, Michael. If the assessed value is higher than the fair market value, the property has most likely been over assessed by the town and the owner is probably paying too much in taxes, which is one reason you know, you can actually fight your property taxes.   The assessed value of a home usually lags in comparison to the market since the valuations are only adjusted annually. While market values can change multiple times per year, the home that has recently been resold tends to be closer to the assessed value than a home that has not sold in a long time. Depending on the area's legal restrictions. Most assessed values cannot increase more than certain percentage each year. So interesting. Okay.   Michael: And I mean, that's another question to ask your cat like local county assessor is how often is the property reassessed because there are some jurisdictions where it's like once every three years or once every regular, some kind of frequency so it's not always an annual thing?   Emil: Yep. Yeah, I remember when I was recently buying that treeplex, triplex I just mentioned in   Michael: The treeplex!   Emil: You know, what, we have a new kid at home, I'm allowed to have brain farts like that. I called the assessor and they gave me like, the Calculate the formula that they use to calculate it. So a lot of times again, if you're looking anywhere, you can call the county assessor, they'll either give you the formula, or they'll give you a breakdown of how they kind of calculate these things. But anyway, back to our list. Number nine, we got Mississippi which is 0.52% of the assessed home value. Good old Mississippi, and.   Michael: MI SSI SSI PPI.   Emil: You like geography, didn't you? You're getting geography class,   Michael: Dude. I love geography. Yeah, I really like geography. My wife and I will sometimes play the geography game where she'll you know, we'll go back and forth naming countries and you gotta name the capitals. The good fun brain brain game.   Pierre: Have you guys ever played the National Geographic board game?   Emil: No. Tell us. Oh, it's, it is awesome. So I found this at the Goodwill. The Goodwill here has an entire row of board games. So we went there. And they're like, 3.50 each. So in board games are like 50 bucks each sometimes. So anyways, this is like a game from 1986 or something. And it's anyways, you build a globe flat out. So you have a bunch of hexagons and you you build a globe, and then you answer things about markets and people, geographic or planet planet Earth and you have like four categories and you get points based on it's a real fun game. So as a geography lover, you might really enjoy that game.   Michael: I'll Check it out. And that's cool that you build the earth flat because that's how it actually is in reality, so I mean.   Emil: That's right.   Pierre: Yeah. Well, because you make it flat you can make 4 Earth's because it's like when you unpeel an orange peel, it doesn't lay perfectly flat it leaves up open surfaces. Anyways, National Geographic plug right there.   Emil: Nice. There's, there's this app I downloaded a couple years ago and it like helps you learn continent geography so it'll pull up Europe and you know, it'll have the outline of each a bunch of countries and then I'll like list 10 And you have to like tap where you think that country is. So it helps you like are there in different continents. So it's cool to alright, that's cool. Number eight.   Michael: Back on the rails.   Emil: Back on the rails number eight, we got Arkansas at the same as Mississippi 0.52% of assessed home value. So we got to a tie between Arkansas and Mississippi. Moving up the list. This is a very popular hot state for for Mark for rental property and investing right now South Carolina at 0.5% of assessed on value.   Michael: Interesting. All right. All right.   Pierre: Yeah. Interesting, because we've had both Jackson, Mississippi and Columbia, South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina, right. Yeah. And those were both very high in taxes. So this is just kind of an average of the states. And no necessarily those metropolitan centers.   Emil: Correct.   Pierre: Or metropolitan.   Michaela: Right cause every county can do it different.   Emil: Alright, moving up the list we got I think somebody mentioned Virginia but number six on the list was West Virginia.   Michael: Ooo man. Emil: Was that you Michael?     Michael: That should totally count Yeah.   Pierre: If that counts, Kansas counts for me. I'll just the add the Ar!   Emil: On Jeopardy. What is Virginia would not be the same as what is West Virginia. Sorry, Michael.   Michael: Alright, seems reasonable.   Emil: 0.49% of assessed home value on West Virginia.   Michael: West Virginia was actually I think the number one state that was on the top 10 list of most important places to buy. That's interesting. And get a cheap house and pay very little property taxes.   Emil: There you go. Alright, moving up. We got the District of Columbia DC at 0.46% of assessed home value. Obviously, homes are very expensive there. So you're still paying a lot in terms of nominal dollars, but percentage wise on the list of top 10.   Alright, number four, Delaware, we got 0.43% of assessed value. So business friendly, right. Some people like incorporate a lot in Delaware and then looks like low property tax there as well.   Number three, this was Pierre's guess Alabama 0.33% of assessed home values. Tiny.   Michael: Nice.   Emil: Go Alabama. Number two, this one was surprising to me. Hawaii, Hawaii 0.26% of assessed home value.   Michael: What? That I guess I figure you're paying so much for the purchase. You're still giving them like you said a lot  of nominal dollars.   Emil: Exactly. And then number one, can I get a drumroll please guys?   Louisiana 0.18%. Nothing's 0.18% of assessed on value. Crazy.   Piere: Beautiful.   Michael: Makes total sense.   Emil: And that is our top 10 list of states with the lowest property tax.   Michael: We should do another episode ranking the best school districts or the best school systems in the country and see if there's any any over overlap or direct correlation or parallels we could draw between high property tax states and very good school systems since that's so much of what those dollars go to fund. That's I think, like looking at the property tax breakdown, that's often the biggest portion of the bill in terms of like dollars and percent goes to the school system.   Emil: Right. It'd be interesting, though, because again, even though you could have, like California, I think is probably the bottom third, or it's definitely in the lower group, the bottom 50% In terms of percent, I think, but just because home values are so high here, again, like just so much property tax revenue. So I wonder if it's like, you know, this percentage matter? Does it just matter of like overall dollars being pumped into the system?   Michael: That's a good question, too. So for California, it's I think it was Prop Eight, I think I'm talking.   Emil: 13   Michael: Prop 13. That's it, where you have 1% of the sale price at a minimum   Emil: Forever and then never gets reassessed.   Michael: Well, it does it goes up with time. But like your base value, your base assessed value is at 1% of the sale price. And so   Emil: I thought either prop 13 in California was like your basically your property tax never changes. I thought that was the whole thing behind prop 13 is like once it sells it's calculated that value forever. I thought that was the thing with Prop 13. Otherwise, you know, you have someone who bought a home in California 30 years ago. And now their property taxes like astronomical compared to when they bought it because their values have gone up so much.   Michael: Well, I think it goes up nominally every year like, look at your last two years of property tax payments on your house. Like it will have likely gone up a nominal amount.   Emil: Okay, yeah, you're okay. So proposition 13, declared property taxes were to be assessed by their 1976 value and restricted annual increases of the tax to an inflation factor, not 62% per year. Okay, you're right.   Pierre: And don't some areas charge more on property taxes based on whether or not you're going to be investing or whether or not you live in the property?   Emil: Yes, I have a home in Indianapolis and you pay a higher rate if you're an investor, rather than if you're a owner occupant buying that home?   Michael: Yeah, I think it's like point 2% of the assessed value versus 1% For investor versus owner occupied. So like doubles?   Emil: Yeah, I think that's right. There's a there's a exemption to in California homeowners exempt or a home homestead exemption. It's pretty, it's pretty minimal. It's pretty nominal. But in other markets, it can be pretty impactful.   Emil: Yeah.   Pierre: Do you know if any of the states that we covered on this list are subject to that?   Michael: I don't.   Pierre: Okay. So that might be something to look into. You know, you might think it's the lowest place but then you go to invest.   Emil: That's right? This is only a starting point. We're leaving our our listeners with a lot of homework.   Michael: Yeah, well, it's just I think it's such a good place to start. And especially if you go listen to the other episode and overlay. Okay, where are their affordable homes to purchase and also affordable property tax rates? Could be a new new market for you.   Pierre: If you listen to more than two episodes, you will have heard Michael say more than more than five times call your county tax assessor.   Emil: Michael “call your local county tax assessor” Albaum.   Michael: Well, it's just one of those things like people are like, Oh my god, I totally burned by the property tax. It's like well, you didn't do the one thing that you should have done. It's so easy.   Emil: Raise your hand if you fell victim to that on like your first or second property. That's me.   Michael: Yeah, see?   Pierre: I heard it. I heard it too a million times.   Emil: Well, that's when was more so like the home in Indianapolis? I didn't again I didn't call the tax assessor I just looked at okay, what is it as a percentage? And I didn't look into Oh, for an investor it's higher so it's like you know during escrow I figured all that out. All in all still fine. Indianapolis is been a solid market could appreciate all those things. But again, you know, just got to go in eyes wide open.   Michael: Yeah, it could have not been.   Emil: Exactly It could have not been. The the joys of a bull market. Make Mistakes   Michael: Still win.   Emil: Feel the impact of a lot less. Alright, thank you everyone for tuning in. Hope this was a helpful episode for you. And we will catch you all on the next one. Happy investing.   Michael: Happy investing.   Pierre: Happy investing.    

In this episode, we take a look at how AI turns your sharing into business growth. Grant Okay, welcome, everybody to another episode of ClickAI radio. So I'm very excited to have here with me today ShareThis business development leader. I think it got that right. Michael Gorman, business development leader. But before I go any further, Michael, would you introduce yourself? Michael You bet. Grant. Yeah, it's great to be here. Like you said, I oversee business development, but also product and marketing at ShareThis. I've been I've been with ShareThis for a couple of years. In that role. I have a background in data, really, data and analytics has been my passion. Also media and marketing sort of themes. I've worked for big data companies like Axiom, I've worked for an email marketing leader, digital impact, they got bought by Axiom. That's how I got there. And I've also worked for big consulting firms. And for ESPN back in the earlier days of my career. Grant Oh, wow. Could you maybe give us a play by play? I bet you could write ESPN. Interesting. Wow. Michaels It was a fun period. I was like years eight through 11 of the history of of ESPN, which, so is a fun time to be there. Grant How fun. All right. And he did some some consulting roles as well. So data and analytics, huh? Yeah. Right. All throughout all throughout the career. So what led you into this work was ShareThis what was it was the journey there? Michael Well, one thing is that, that I've worked with our CO CEO on the past, at axiom, so we knew each other, but ShareThis is a really, really special data asset. In a lot of ways, and within the world of the of the advertising that I've worked in for quite a few years. It's it was well known. So when I had an opportunity to do a little consulting for them, I jumped into it. And that led to the to the role. It's a Yeah, sure this is, you know, it's Well, shall I tell you a bit about the company? Or is that? Grant Yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, tell me a little bit about how it got started. And its purpose and sort of the vision of it. Michael You know, well, like a lot of companies, it started with one purpose and, and things evolved a little bit over time, it, it started off in the early days of social networks, when Facebook was still a new idea and mind MySpace was, was beginning to slow down, it was with the idea of making it easy for any website to make to make it easy for their users to share content to all the social networks that they might have an interest in. And so a developer with a simple, taking, you know, taking a piece of code and pasting it on their website that they could then have sharing. We and so it was one of two or three tools that really started in those early days and became a leader in the space. We actually have a how to still maintain a trademark on that little little V on the site there. Yeah, I mean, that's what you're known for. Yeah. So it's a sign if that's there, it's a sign that sharing is you know, sharing tools are present. It's essentially the balance value for the for the publisher for the owner of the site who doesn't have to does no work to have sharing available will get some analytics as a result, sharing is valuable because it makes it attracts more people to the site new users more more content. And, and so it's it's grown up naturally. And we're, you know, so really well established. But a number of business models were tried over the years, but but about five years ago, we started focusing, moving towards being 100% about our data, is that really as a special asset, we have around 3 million publishers using us sort of our live arm 3 million now, that's been pretty stable, you know, half to three quarters and in the rest of the world, a quarter in the United States, a little biased towards English language, but we have every language in the world represented among the users on the sites. And, and so that data and and we'll talk more about this when we get into things like, you know, the the technology in the AI. Yeah, but we're really just, you know, it's like a window into what, what people are what's on people's minds? What are they looking for? What are they searching about online, and we can, you know, discern trends and also, you know, make sure that advertising is more relevant for for users. Grant So I have a question for you on that. So you've, of course, are familiar with the terminology of neuromarketing, right. And, you know, as a way of sort of tracking, how are people interacting with a site, right, and where do they go? And where do they point and click and, you know, there's organizations that look at, you know, extracting what the user is doing on the site, this feels like this starts to come into that world right that day. I mean, I don't know that it's tracking every single movement, but it's tracking, obviously, the event of I want to share something. Any thoughts on that? Michael Yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, there's a lot of different ways to make inferences about about people, we tend to focus a bit more on the on the broad, the broader picture, that the thing that's that, I mean, there's, like you say, so many choices. But the thing about online content is, it's very rich. So when a person visits a site, there's a lot of things there, there's a lot of things on the page they're looking at. And so what we've really focused on is using the page as a source of clues about what a person is interested in, we also might look at the link in and out of the page, and get a clue from, say, a search term as well, that's a that's useful, and clearly when someone shares, you know, content that's that that sort of zoned in on exactly what they care about on the page. But we've opted more for the broad picture of focusing, you know, taking all that richness and attributing some probability of interest that for you, for user to the things that are on the page. And that way we can we have just such a broad, you know, broad palette to work with. And I think also from the point of view of, of, you know, user consent and user experience, it means that what we're actually collecting is is relatively light, it's just that this user was on this page at this time. And any inference we make is not based on what he or she did, or how are their eye movement, there's no no personal collection, we just have the that event, and we get all the all the power. Grant So it's when they were there. Is it anything about how they got there? Or where are they left? Michael Yeah, exactly. We do. We do use the inbound links and outbound links when we can get them. And that sometimes, as I said, yields a search term, those can that was sort of part of the of the link the part of the information that what came with the user, you know, the referring search term or so that so there's some some useful data there as well. Grant Yeah. So so when you collect this, and then that's got to be a massive repository, I think I saw somewhere else and I'm looking at, was it three terabytes of raw data and 100 million keywords in 200 languages a day? Is that right? Michael It sounds roughly right. I haven't counted it lately. But, yeah, you're right. But But yeah, we we see about half a billion, you know, unique, what we call events, something, you know, something happened at a point in time, visits a share per day. Grant This is a grounds for, you know, a playing field for AI, right, just you have so much data. So tell me what it is you learn from it with the AI, right? What kinds of problems are you looking to solve? As you and I know, when we pursue AI, we, it would tend to be better served if we're going after a particular question or thought in mind. Now, obviously, we get surprised with AHA insights from Ai. But going intentionally after something makes a lot of sense. Can you give a scenario the kinds of things that you're looking for? Michael Well, the I would say that the theme that has worked for us so far, is to try to do is to focus on being the able to represent and reflect human interest, what are people interested in? And yeah, and so. So we, we use, and I guess where the AI comes in is that we use the latest techniques of language analysis and language modeling. So we capture all of the linguistic content on the page and then we represent it in a number of ways. What are all the prominent keywords? What are the what are the entities that are you know more that are Unusual, you know, a brand name, a celebrity name, a business name? What are the what is this page about the concept? Or what are? What are some of the concepts that accurately describe what this page is about. And then we have some standard categorization techniques are basically a taxonomy of topic interest topics that we we screen for, you know, and and it's not, it's not a yes, one of the nice things about this is it's not a, a, it's not a, it, we don't have to decide one thing, you know, we were able to say, all of the prominent keywords, and all of the interesting entities and several concepts and all the categories that this page is about. So it could be a page, it's about, you know, mountain climbing and and what shall we say? And Utah, and the, or the American West and, and road vehicles? And, you know, and beverages, you know, skiing or whatever? Right, right. Exactly. Grant Yeah, so some form of an ontology there, right, that allows you to sort of connect these together? Michael Yeah, we used a number of techniques that you said, One is, we built a custom ontology, using relative and you know, we're, we're not a huge company. So we, we try to wherever we can do something open source or free as the entry point we do that. And so we, we use some Wikipedia, it's slash DBPedia is a source for us. And, as is some Google free offerings that help us sort of the provide the raw material for building our customer ontology. We've also take great advantage of some of the latest open source language modeling tools. One is when it goes by the name of the Google released one, I forget what the what the acronym stands for, but one that's called Bert, and then more recently, one that's called Muse. Yeah, we use muse. Okay, that, that allows us to represent anything, either a word or a sentence, or the whole page as a as a set as a vector of 500 numbers. And if two pages have the same values for those 500 vectors, then they are about the same thing. Yeah, you got you have some affinity there right now, even though in practice, they might be in different languages use totally different, you know, different sets of words, but they're still about the same thing. That's, that's, that's really, for us that technology has been a real breakthrough. Because it's we've been sometimes keywords and can be very, you know, they can be false positives or No, yeah, negative. Grant I mean, there, yeah, there's nothing that governs some, you know, webpage designer to, you know, say, hey, are they using the actual right keywords? Right? Michael Yes, or even? Or even? How do you a lot of words have multiple meanings? How do you disambiguate to get the right one? Yeah. So this this, embedding technology, this Muse model helps us do that. And then Facebook is given we use a tool, they think it's called Facebook. Ai similarity search. Yeah. And both of these are open source tools, y'all you have to put in the effort and have the knowledgeable people to master their use. And that allows us because great, it's great that you've now got all these numbers you can compare, but that's a lot of numbers. That's you half a billion a day, you know, and we have we see 600 million unique pages every month. So so how do I great, I want to rank the 600 million pages to see which ones are most about skiing in Utah. Yeah, that's, you know, how do I do that quickly, and then and affordably? So fate, the Facebook tool helps us a lot with that. Grant So let me ask you a question that So so far, you've been talking about leveraging AI technologies to help you get your arms around that sheer volume of data on a daily basis and to try to extract some meaning and semantics and understanding from it. That's a good point that's on the side of ShareThis and the benefits to ShareThis. What about it from pivoted to the other side? What does it mean to it is, you know, I talk a lot with small medium organizations, how does that benefit them? What takeaways or values come over to help them through something like that? Michael Well, what the I mean, the industry that we started with, is was is advertising and programmatic online advertising as a place where we make our solution available. And so we were at this point, probably the leading source of the ability to target ads based on interest. So if if A small business were doing online display advertising and they went to Google's, if they use Google's platform or trade desk, or any of the major platforms, and they searched on, I want to find people interested in skiing in Utah, our data would be one of their choices to find that. And so it's designed to provide a broad set of individuals who in the last 30 days have shown some interest in that topic. And it could be, you know, it might be at the level of skiing, and they might, then they might, but but the nice thing about it is that we we've, I mean, it's hard, this is harder for the stats, that's what's available for the smaller business. That's, it's, it's right off the shelf, you can, you can use $1 worth or $10 worth or $100 worth if it works for you. But then on the big company side, we use some of those tools I talked about for is, well, what if, what if we don't actually have ski in Utah, we just have skiing, right? Well, we well, for an advertiser can can say, well, I need to skiing in Utah. In fact, I need to, you know, skiing in snow. But what is the alter? You know, we can create a segment using keywords and, and topics that is just about that is exactly what they need. Grant So if I were to look at maybe an advertising opportunity, leveraging, you know, this great insight that you have, does it allow me to target specific demographics, specific locations or locales? So like, you know, you're able to? Michael Absolutely, it's pretty much anything you could, I mean, because every kind of website needs sharing, we have our, our customer base, our base of publishers use our tool is pretty representative of the internet as a whole. And so if your interest is travel, we've got sites that are about, you know, traveling Las Vegas, traveling to Europe traveling to do outdoor activities, if you're interested in financial products, we can we can find things, you know, content that relates to whatever be at a mortgage or or FinTech to know. And we we represent those in about 1500 standard audiences that we distribute every day. And every day, the nice thing about our data, compared to a lot of datasets is we refresh it every day. Yeah, Michael I mean, it's every second, right? I mean, yeah, it could be, you know, people talk about real time, and we were always looking for people who've got a real time use case. But yeah, at this point, the the most frequently we refresh for a client, the customer is up by a by his hourly. Grant Oh, it's hourly, okay, that's, that's still really up to date. Yeah. I mean, if you had hourly insights on what the what's in the mind of people are the consumers that's really fresh data? Michael Yeah, yes. Yeah. Yeah, one of the areas that we that we are moving towards is trying to go beyond advertising and inform other activities like demand forecasting, you know, how much should we order for a store in a given location? Well, our data about how much interest is being shown on the products of that store, and in that store, in that area, we can sort that way, and provide that as an input. Grant That makes that makes a lot of sense. You know, there's, there's some retail organizations I've worked with with AI. And obviously, it always comes back to or not always, but most of it comes back to the supply chain, right, getting further and further left in terms of their their demand forecasting. And if they were able to understand you know, where that interest lies, it does almost gets to, oh, I know, this is a stretch in terms of language, but it's kind of a sentiment analysis, a play on that. Right. It's the ability Yeah, the ability to say I understand what the sentiment is in terms of where their interests are. And if I understood what that was, in terms of particular set of products or other things I'm offering, and I could get that further into my, into my supply chain, that would be really valuable to Yeah, Michael I mean, it's nice that you mentioned that we do we do actually score the sentiment of the content on the page. So we're sentiment is useful, either to only talk to the people who are in favor or opposed or the middle, we can we can build an audience that or provide that as a data element as well. Grant Yes. See, that's that's powerful to understand the the sentiment of the page itself, even how people are talking about it, or what they're doing, have you ever ran into the ability to use it in terms of IP tracking, right. So in other words, if there is an organization that had a certain set of IP and, and and really, yeah, they felt like oh, my IP, I've lost control my intellectual property, it's showing up in other places. Michael Oh, that's interesting. You know, I was thinking of I was thinking of the I the the IP address the Internet Protocol address. Yeah. Should have been more clear. Yeah, I'd love to answer that question. But that wasn't what you were asking. Well, yeah, answer. Oh, we'll start with intellectual property. Yeah. One sec. Regarding intellectual property? You know, we have it. Let me think about that. Let me give you the scenario. I had, one of the things I've thought about that we haven't taken on it, you know, is that is, is using using intellectual property as a data set? Yeah. If if we were to, to read to do the same kind of analysis I talked about earlier on trademarks. Yeah, it could mean be the means for discovering which, what sites were about branded products by seeing the correspondence between the trademark and the, because that's always you run into difficult How do you tell something's a brand? When is Jaguar a brand? You know? Exactly. Grant Yeah. Yeah, it's a fascinating problem. I had a company reach out to me and say, Hey, can you develop something in this area, and we did some work on that. I called it smart catch, but they were looking to protect their IP, their intellectual property, which was, we've got this corpus of information. And, and we've got others that are, you know, getting access to it and are promoting it, you know, elsewhere out into the, you know, online universe there, or metaverse. And, and I want to be able to discover, you know, when it's opportunistic, and you can use, you know, SERP and other technologies to try to find some of that stuff and do lots of scraping. But that's got its own challenges in terms of a solution. And where you've got this opportunity to listen. Right, right, to observe what people are sharing and to the to compare that against a corpus of protected material, right? Michael Kind of an intro you're giving, you're giving me a product idea. Seriously, one of the things that we've done this year, is to create what we what we call, you know, similarity scoring. So similarity, and that's gonna cause Yeah, you can literally give someone who was curious about the dispersing dispersion of intellectual property, give us a domain. Yep. And, or a, you know, the piece of content that describe their, their stuff, and we would rank our sites for which ones had it most. Right. And, you know, whatever the top 100, you know, and you know. Grant What I found interesting on that, when I built the initial piece on that was that I found that, in some of the discovery, in some cases, what I found was a foe. And in other cases, it was a friend. Exactly right. That, you know, okay, just because I found it doesn't mean it's an enemy. But, but it might be, and so you want to then notify them? Is this? Is this someone that's an ally or not? Anyway, interesting thought? Michael Because I think I think that sometimes there is a, you know, I don't know, there's a presumption that fraud detection or a bad actor detection is, is, you know, worth more, etc. But I do find that in a lot of cases, the pro cases are actually, you know, sometimes you just by suppressing something, you do more yourself more harm than good. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. That's another I wanted to touch on the other meaning of it. Yeah. Yeah. Now IP address. Yeah, yeah. So So an IP address is one of the four or five things that we capture for each case. And there's a lot that you can tell from an IP address, like, it can be translated into a location of origin, we approximate we resolve that to within half a mile. So that it's still relatively privacy compliant, and you know, not too revealing, but it certainly helps understand, you organize the data by where it's coming from example. And so the one use that is, has been an important one for us is business to business. So we, we have a number of the major companies that are in the business to business world license our data as one source where they're able to see people from a from an intellect Internet Protocol address that is owned by or been associated with a particular company. Oh, and then see what sites that that IP address is showing interest in? Oh, it just can be. Yeah, so it can be a signal that oh, it seems like you know, Chevron is interested in a new CRM system because they're you know, there's there's a big spike in that kind of traffic Awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Talk about so almost like a lead management. Yeah, solution for sure. That's, that's powerful. Yeah, to do that. that. Oh, there. Yeah. And that's yeah. And IP in general, I think the location implications are a really well, it's how I can, how we can do that demand forecasting I mentioned earlier, it's about looking at the origin of the data. Grant So some of the AI solutions that I've built take into consider location. So So in other words, okay, but in what I've been doing is more around, oh, some transaction occurred? Where was that transaction initiated? From? Oh, this, you know, here's the IP address. Okay, I know that where they are on the planet. Now, tell me what the context of what's taking place in you know, at that location? What is what's the weather like, right, what are other events that are taking place in that location? And then then use an AI to help draw inferences on, you know, to what degree are those factors affecting it? It sounds like you might be doing some similar things with that Michael I well, I think we could be a great contributor to any solution that was along those lines. I was adding that dimension of what are people looking at? What are people interacting? What topics? Are people in this location more engaged by then people in general, fascinating those comparisons? Grant Yeah, it's fascinating is okay. Very good. All right. So let me ask you on. Okay, so we've gone from the the big corpus of what you're collecting on a daily basis, or hourly, actually, hour by hour. And then we talked about the impact to, you know, maybe businesses organizations, when when is there a particular case or outcome that you feel like you could talk about some specific example where some organization used the advertising from that? What you did, and it had this sort of impact or effect on them? Do you have any sort of case study like that? Well, it's, Michael I guess that some of the ones that are coming to mind, I think, I mean, there's some of it's very straightforward. Yeah. An advertiser, like Western Union, is looking for people who want to make payments, you know, at a distance, I mean, wire wire transfers and payments, and we offer people showing interest in wire transfer, so that the simple act of being able to get your message in front of people who have recently shown interest in it is the is the, you know, it just doesn't need no explanation. We've taken that though, one of the things we did this year that I'm proud of is we were inspired by some of the events of last summer, to get more try to take a more active role and figure out what our data was good for. Beyond commercially, and, and we ended up creating a data for good part new part of our taxonomy, we call data for good. And so people interested in social justice loving people entered interested in veterans issues people wanted in. And so and those those segments, you know, have gotten are getting a growing amount of usage by advertisers who either, you know, wanting to demonstrate their commitment to the court to a cause, like, or to find or teachers or to, you know, communicate, right people who have concerns of that kind. So that's been one. Yeah. Another kind of it's, it's not in the mainstream of what we do. But we've, I think this data could be really great as a as a resource for educational institutions. So we've actually a major business school has has is testing I've taken a take taken a subsidiary six months of our data, and they're looking at using it in a project that they have to investigate unemployment. So fascinating. How could you How could you see earlier unemployment trends in a in a location or region that could help the for the process of forecasting the unemployment rate, and it sort of feed into it? Because I've, what I've, I think that lots of people govern organizations included, are somewhat frustrated by the fact that, you know, traditional means of forecasting that were invented before there were personal computers or barely work computers. Take a long time, you get to find out that 40 days after the month, what happened in the month, I love both data can be used to generate that much more quickly. Grant Yeah, Michael, that's I love how you're bringing that up. It seems like it has both the opportunities for not only the capitalistic aspects, but the altruistic aspects of this, the values and benefits that can help society and be pulled out of that. I think that's awesome. So all right. I've thrown a lot of questions at you. So let me ask you this, if you will. To direct direct my listeners to where to go to learn more, where would you send them? Michael Well, I would, I would love them to visit our site, because and in particular to, you know, to ShareThis.com, look, look at our news and our, our blogs, we we basically we publish both as you know, as a demonstration of our the value of our data. And and it's just a general service, we publish a lot of educational and informative information about trends in the economy, and, and public interest generally about how to do marketing well about trends in data. So so we we, we try to be a resource for people and I love I'd love people to visit that content, sometimes. Some of the best stuff is is not on on the nightly news. It's like putting some of it out. I could also you know, I can give you some examples. It would be fun. I go right ahead. Knowing that knowing this audience I we are getting a sense of who maybe was listening is interested in the show, I asked our team to identify some current trends. Yeah, I guess as we come to the end of 2021. Yeah. And so so we put these together. So what one is that, that, that while the world isn't, we're seeing the trend of the gradual resumption of events in person events, even though COVID continues to cycle up and down against the backdrop of COVID. So as of August, for example, 77% of advertised events were in person events, there was a period where, you know, year and a half ago, there was there, they basically no almost having anything, it was just shut down. It was virtual or nothing. That's interesting. So as we adapt, we are adapting. And so as you as you think about should I make plans for a virtual vet, should I invest in advertise? Should I invest in participating in virtual event? Yep, don't count them out. Even if you're nervous, you know, they, they're coming back steadily. Another thing, pattern we observed in finance, that again, you know, COVID is inevitably one of the backdrops to what any of us are thinking about, but people are continuing to be engaged with saving money. So, it so as you think about what, oh, you know, what is what's going on in the in the economy? As the, as virus uptake increases, as one of the things to extract is, is increased saving? And so if that's a, again, depending on your business, how that factors in if savings is your business? Yeah. When your could be good, good to you. If if, and then let's see, what's another one? Let's see. You know, we've heard a lot about supply chain issues. And you know, what, but what, if your retailer what a consumers most worried about? When and so the top concern is shortages and out of stock, and 51% a second costs, inflation and rising prices at 28%. And then staffing issues like worker shortages and strikes, 14, and last last of all shipping delays. So it's thinking about communication strategies, what's on people's minds that might make them not come to the store? That sort of thing? So I'm not surprised. Yeah, yeah. So and we're, we're putting out new new stuff of this kind every, every month in the blog. And and I firstly, look, I think we did we have Superbowl trends out, as of yesterday, I think. Grant So it's already started to build right. That's right. That's, that's amazing. So So you gather it on an hourly basis, and then you do the AI on it Michael Truthfully, truthfully, Grant, it's being gathered continuously. Okay, that's, that's what I thought, yeah, I thought we built we build it as it happens, okay. We literally, you know, record a record for each thing. That's, that's, that's filled out all the way with all the data that will that will need eventually. And then once an hour, we some or as we frequently as our we'll sum it up into a distribution and push it to someone but the most people get their get their data delivered overnight. Amazing. It's picking it up on their AWS bucket. Like Well, this is Grant Fascinating. Any final comments as we wrap up here? Michael Well, you know, I guess that I hope I've given you a sense of the I mean, AI is critical to our business. We are you know, we When we started on this track, we were about a 50 person company, we're approaching 100 person company. And so you don't have to be, you know, IBM to use AI AI to build a great business. So it's a combination of finding the right tools and a core of of talent, the right kind of talented people, and you can and and then, frankly, sustained effort over a period of years and you can build a business that is really hard to replicate, without without it, so very hard. Right. That's, that's my thought. That's, that's Grant Wonderful. Well, Michael, thank you so much for taking your time today. I appreciate you sharing your insights and guidance with us today, everyone. Thanks for joining another episode of ClickAI Radio and until next time, go get some ShareThis.com. Thank you for joining Grant on ClickAI Radio. Don't forget to subscribe and leave feedback. And remember to download your free ebook, visit ClickAIRadio.com now.  

What you'll learn in this episode: Why you won't see results if you have a “set it and forget it” mentality about your website Why jewelers should give their website as much attention as a brick-and-mortar location How jewelers can use tricks of the trade to encourage customers to purchase items online, even if jewelry is traditionally bought in person  How jewelry brands can take advantage of the new shopping feature on Instagram Why the jewelry business is more like Crate & Barrel than Sephora—and why that distinction is important About Michael Burpoe Michael Burpoe is Director of User Experience for Punchmark, a digital marketing agency that specializes in the jewelry industry. Michael created Punchmark's UX team, which was assembled to take very specific initiatives toward fine-tuning tools and features, and improving the platform on both the front-end and back-end. Since early 2019, Michael has also headed up the strategy, planning, and execution behind Punchmark's Livestream Education program, the In The Loupe podcast, and the Punchmark Community on Facebook. Originally from Saranac Lake, NY, in Michael's spare time you can find him practicing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or painting cityscapes.  Additional Resources: In the Loupe on Spotify In the Loupe on Apple Podcasts Website Blog Facebook Photos: Design Themes: Podcast Logo: Website Samples: After working with jewelry brands of all sizes for the last several years, Michael Burpoe has learned a thing or two about the strategies that make jewelry businesses more successful online. As Director of User Experience for Punchmark, Michael has helped even the most hesitant jewelers invest in their websites and reap the rewards of a fine-tuned digital marketing strategy. He joined the Jewelry Journey Podcast to explain why selling jewelry online is only going to become more common; how to make customers feel comfortable buying luxury items online; and how jewelry companies can use digital marketing tricks to increase sales. Read the episode transcript here.  Sharon: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Jewelry Journey Podcast. Today, my guest is Michael Burpoe with Punchmark. Michael is the Director of User Experience for this marketing agency, which specializes in creating effective and compelling websites for the jewelry industry. Today, Michael will talk with us about his journey into the world of jewelry. He'll also share with us some of the secrets about what it takes to create an effective website, one that drives revenue. Michael, welcome to the program. Michael: Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Sharon: We're so glad to have you. How did you get into the jewelry industry? I'm sure that's not where you started out when you decided to take this path. Michael: Yeah, great question. The starting point is, I went to school for design. I went to the Rochester Institute of Technology, which is called RIT, in Rochester, New York, and while I was there I was studying graphic design. I knew I wanted to study user experience. For people who aren't fully aware, that's the overall shopping ease when it comes to websites. It can extend beyond that, but that's where I was most focused. While I was doing a lot of application design and things that were related to e-commerce, I was scouted by this guy, Daniel Sirois, who is my CPO at Punchmark. He hired me on, and I've since found myself in a niche when it comes to e-commerce strategy and web design. I now am Director of User Experience at Punchmark. I lead our dev team as well as the overall production strategy when it comes to that.  Sharon: That's really interesting. I'm so surprised to hear you say you went to RIT because that's a heavy design school. All kinds of art jewelers come out of there. Michael: Yeah, it has a major, I think, in metal design as well as jewelry design. What's crazy is they do these installation pieces. I'm sure you're already aware of these pieces that almost orbit around the head, these really dynamic pieces. It might be one of the only master's programs in the U.S. for jewelry design. These pieces are absolutely stunning. They almost install around the head and then have a singular earring. It's all about how the piece is presented. It's very fascinating. I went to a couple of their shows, unbeknownst to me that I end up in the jewelry industry in the end. Sharon: I guess I thought you'd say you studied computer science. You were saying e-commerce.  Michael: Yeah. Sharon: What does Punchmark do, and why the name Punchmark for the company? Michael: The original idea behind Punchmark, as it's been told to me by the founders, is that a coin is just metal until it is punched with the original insignia that denotes its value. For example, a quarter is made of the same type of material as a dime; it's just a punch that makes the difference. That's how we see ourselves in bringing brands and businesses to life: everybody starts out, more or less, on the same footing. It's what you add to the process that adds the value.  We try to our best to stay ahead of the cutting edge and see where the ball is going, so that way we can lead our leaders. We were one of the first people to be doing serious e-commerce websites for the jewelry industry. Now, with a lot of things shifting toward e-commerce in addition to brick and mortar, what we call an omnichannel solution has had a definite, huge rise in popularity. It's really exciting to be a part of. Sharon: I really like that. That's an interesting concept. It's all the same; it's just what size, which President is on the face. We talked a little about this, but tell us more about the transition you're seeing with jewelers getting into the e-commerce space. Michael: Absolutely. Whenever people ask me about the shift towards e-commerce—obviously Covid had a huge impact on the jewelry industry, especially right in March 2020, the reason being that prior to those events, the vast majority of sales were done inside of brick-and-mortar stores. When I refer to jewelers, I'm referring to jewelry retailers. We also work with vendors and production companies and technology companies, but specifically jewelry retailers. They were doing so much of their business in their stores. When their stores were forced to close at that time, there was this real uncertainty about what they should be doing. I hate to say I told you so, so I won't, but I will say that we've been constantly pushing people as much as possible to take their online presence seriously. One of the things we are always saying is that your online store should be considered just as important or require as much time as any of your brick-and-mortar stores. Some of our retailers, they have three brick-and-mortar stores, and their website should their fourth. That's how we see it, and that's because it takes a lot of work and a lot of extra stuff. Sharon: That's a great way to look at it. It does; it takes a lot of nurturing, a lot of care and feeding to get it right. Michael: Absolutely. Sharon: I'm thinking about the dealers, maybe not so much the retailers that I've talked with. I remember an antique jewelry dealer telling me they had resisted for a long time even doing a website—this was years ago—and the first online sale they made was one of the largest sales they ever made. I know there's a lot of talk about, “Well, everybody has to touch and feel,” but I think a lot of people are getting past that. What do you think? Michael: I think it comes down to who the target customers are. What you just mentioned, being loath to adapt to these online businesses, it's very understandable. Tech is constantly changing, constantly evolving, and it can be extremely overwhelming to get into. That said, it's like learning a language. Once you learn, you learn how to learn, and then you learn how to adapt and pick up new things. That online presence, what we're seeing is—say you're a 60-year-old or 70-year-old retail jeweler. Your shoppers are not all 60 to 70-year-old shoppers. A lot of the target consumers are going to be younger.  Now millennials are buying engagement rings and jewelry in general. Gen Z is starting to have enough money that they can start shopping. These generations and Gen X as well are very tech fluent, extremely tech fluent. Speaking for myself as a millennial, I was brought up with a computer. I have had the internet as a part of my life for as long as I can remember, so the idea of me spending $200, $300, $400 online for a product that I have not touched is not as foreign to me as some retailers seem to assume because it's true for them. We're seeing that a lot of shoppers that are coming through are first-time jewelry shoppers, first-time ring buyers.  We run a podcast; we sometimes interview consumers for engagement ring buyers, and we're finding that people love the idea of sitting home alone. It's the middle of the night; their significant other might be in bed, and they're shopping online, finding information, getting an idea of what that engagement ring should look like. Whereas before, they walk into a store to buy that engagement ring, and it is intimidating because the store owner is—not breathing down your neck, but very interested. Some people just have social anxiety, and they don't want to talk to anybody. The idea of having all that information in front of them is very attractive to them. Sharon: That's really true. You mentioned two things I want to follow up on. First of all, you mentioned your podcast called In the Loupe, which is a great name; I love it. Michael: A jeweler's loupe, yep. Sharon: Tell us a little bit about that. Michael: Sure. In the Loupe actually started as a different podcast called the Jeweler Survival Kit. This launched in March 2020. Like I mentioned before, there was a lot of uncertainty when it came to how the pandemic was going to impact these businesses. There was all this silence from the movers and the shakers in the jewelry industry, and we decided to come through and be like, “Alright, here's how you do it. You should cash up your inventory by selling your unwanted products, selling them at a discount or doing Facebook sales and stuff like that.” As we did a couple of episodes of it, we realized that Coronavirus wasn't going to go away in one month or two months. We decided to shift to In the Loupe and make it more of a podcast along the lines of educating and advocating. So, not just telling people how things worked, but also saying, “You should be doing this about emerging technologies in the e-commerce space.” We talk about things like SEO, digital marketing, selling online, stuff like that. It's since evolved into a comprehensive look at the jewelry industry, and it's been a lot of fun to be a part of. Sharon: It sounds very interesting and necessary, but I could also visualize a lot of jewelers, retailers, manufacturers shutting it off and saying, “Forget it.” Michael: Yes, we started it like, “Alright, we've told you a million times that you should get SEO, which is search engine optimization. It's how you rank higher in Google. Well, we're going to tell you how it works.” We talk about Google and how it works, hoping that even if they don't buy SEO with us, they start to think, “Maybe I should get SEO.”  What we've learned is that trepidation and hesitancy towards these techniques, that doesn't go away in one day or one week or one month; it's a long-term process. I see myself as a steward for the industry in that if I do my job right with In the Loupe, which is a partnership with the Smithee Group, who we coproduce it with—if I do my job right, fewer jewelry stores will fall upon hard times in this really uncertain state. More jewelry stores will adapt and be ahead of the curve instead of being behind the curve, which the jewelry industry historically has always been. Sharon: Do you have people who have worked in the jewelry industry on your team? The reason I ask because I can see prospects pushing back and saying, “What do you know about it?” Michael: We have a GIA-certified gemologist as our CEO. He actually spent a considerable amount of time in the jewelry industry working at a jewelry store. That's how he got his founding. Also, our CTO spent a considerable amount of time in the jewelry industry— Sharon: CTO, you'll need to explain it. Go ahead. Michael: CTO is Chief Technology Officer. The Cockerham brothers, they spent many years in the jewelry industry. They grew up at a jewelry store and have done many trips to Antwerp, Belgium for different buying trips. The reason why we got into jewelry is because we have roots in the jewelry industry and we can relate to these jewelers on a deeper basis.  Sharon: First of all, you said something and then we jumped about. You said something about “we're going to tell you how to do it.” Could you just repeat that and then stop? Michael: Yeah. We're going to tell you how to do it. Sharon: What you've told me about your team, it sounds like you have deep jewelry experience on your team. Do you find that prospective clients breathe a sigh of relief when you say that?  Michael: It depends. Punchmark was founded in 2008. We've been in the jewelry industry for quite a while, and we have a history in the jewelry industry and have made a name for ourselves. We call ourselves the largest online provider for jewelry websites. We have almost 500 clients, and we can see the statistics that are inside our network. I've seen people be, again, loath or behind the curve when it comes to pushing forward with this emerging tech, but at the same time, we've also taken jewelers who are very slow to adapt and turned them into making frequent sales online. It only seems impossible before you start. Sharon: That's great. I have to remember that it only seems impossible before you start. I remember a lot that my father taught me, but one thing that always sticks in my mind and is very motivating is that he would say, “All beginnings are hard.” Michael: Yes. I also think anything that's worthwhile in business doesn't come out of the box, ready to rock and roll. There is some setup. It does require a little bit of hard work, and it requires some communication. You need to be on your email and, like I said before, it needs to be seen as a significant branch of your business if you want it to be a significant part of your business. The thought of, “Oh, I'm just going to load it up with some images and they're going to sell,” well, in reverse, let's think about it yourself. Would you buy a piece a jewelry if you have a photo of this necklace that's going for $1,000, and you took a photo through the display box window, and it's kind of grainy and the details about it are, “This necklace has 14-karat gold and it's $1,000.” Well, that seems crazy. I would never buy something with that little information, because who knows? It could be a scam. How do I know the details are there? Also, it doesn't look good.  That's why we're always advocating through In the Loupe saying, “If you want to sell, you almost need to market to yourself.” What would you look for in this jewelry? For me, at least, I want good photos, lots of details. I want to know everything about the piece of jewelry. I want to be assured that if I'm going to buy a $1,000 bracelet or watch or whatever have you that I am not going to get scammed. It's real; it's available, and I need to be assured about that. Sharon: It sounds like you are marketing to yourself. As director with user experience, you really are looking at what's going to build that trust in terms of, “this isn't a scam.” Let me ask you this: somebody we had on the podcast, a dealer, said they thought the most important thing when it comes to user experience is the return policy. What do you think about that? Michael: Absolutely. Return policies, warranties, shipping information, data policies, all of those accoutrements for an online sale, all of that information is what comes in for the trust factor. We can't get around it: jewelry is a luxury good. You can even think about a wallet or a pocketbook; these are all luxury items. When it comes to that kind of stuff, you can do without it. That's the nature of luxury; it's a want, not a need, but what ends up happening to it is that the other factors are just as important. If I buy this watch and it breaks the first day, am I SOL or am I going to be able to come back and have it refurbished? If I need a new battery, can I come in for that? If it gets shipped to me and it gets lost in the mail, am I out $1,000? All of those things are the trust.  At least with millennials and Gen Z, we're finding that they are so tech fluent that they know how to comparison shop much better. If they're not shopping at your store, if they see that there's no information and it feels like a risk, they can easily comparison shop and find the exact same product or a similar one somewhere else. That's the battle you're always going against. You want to have all of the checks in your box as much as possible. Sharon: I think that's such an important point, no matter what industry. If somebody is shopping for something, whether it's a service or whatever, and they go to one website and there's no information or it takes a long time to load, they're gone. That's it; they're on to the better website. Michael: We see that all the time with things like bounce rate. That's the rate of someone visiting your website and then leaving within, I think, 10 seconds. That means you need to load quickly. You also need to have eye-catching imagery and what we call “above the fold,” which is the information that loads that's visible on the screen first.  At lot of times, shoppers, they don't even know what they want when they start shopping. They start out as an open shopper. They're going in and they know they need to buy something for their significant other, and they know they like fancy jewelry. Well, they don't know if they want a hoop earring or a stud; they don't know that answer. It's up to you to convince them and show them the way so they can shop without feeling stupid or intimidated. I think that also has to come into the above the fold information.  

@JamesGarland is a Director at @DGB. He has a long-standing involvement in #fundraising in the #notforprofit area and #branddevelopment.He's also a #smallbusiness #owner and #investor.Dalton Garland Blanchard a boutique agency that works strictly with #forpurpose organizations and groups, large and small, including #startups that have plans to really transform themselves in the communities that they serve. DGB undertakes  #transformationalprojects. Larger scale, more complex growth projects, that help to build #organisationalcapacity.  DGB help with #fundraising for those projects.In our discussion we talk about;leaving #university and entering the  world of #advertising #marketing #mediasales #agencies #campaigns #promotionsIiving in #london and having a #careerdefining moment from working with a charity involved #childsafety, part of a #UKgovernment program called "Personal, Social, Health Education"#mum asking  "What are you doing? It sounds really interesting. It's very different. It's not what I thought you would do. Is it what you really want to do?"finding a whole lot more #workmeaning in working with organizations and engaging my #passion and my skills in things that are #changingtheworld, or at least #changinglives of people, rather than #sellingwhitegoods or something elsethe #business of #notforprofit#socialenterprise#thirdsector #privatesector #publicsectorconnecting with the passion of the #whyworking at @worldvision @savethechildrenhis sense that everyone is starting to realize that our #socialfabric and the #health of other people who are less fortunate actually impacts everybody, that we are in #onebigworldthe estimated (@deloitte) $100B size of the "third sector"the real #impact of the #thirdsector (not really about #finance or #economics) is on people, the #environment, on animalswhy the #thirdsector should really be the #firstsectorhow #innovations are really big drivers of some of the #coolest not-for-profit movements that are coming outregeneration of environment as a real hotbed for innovation, people talking about #plastics in the #cleanocean #cleanerworldthe need for #socialenterprises to make a profit so it can support either its supply chain, or employeesthe importance of #valuesalignment in #socialenterprise and who starts it, who runs it, who works in it, and who carries it forward #successionwhat happens when social enterprises become so successful - they become brands in their own right, they become really well-known, they become sought-after entities or businesses. The conundrum for #founders when this occursthe key day to day challenges in the #thirddsector;finding employees - really good, highly skilled people who can build relationshipsmatching the private sectorfundingthe pivotal role of the #thirdsector - doing what #government can't - taking risks that government and #privatesector can'twhy sometimes #failing as a natural outcome of trying to alleviate social issues because you can't roll out a #lowrisk private-style business plan to deal with major societal issues#foundations @cathyfreeman has done a huge amount of work for #indigenous #kids and #communities#scaling for #impact#sophisticatedinvestors#sophisticated #philanthropists#goodcorporates quietly funding #multimilliondollar transformational projects, some not heavily publicised at all and done because that organisation believes in something that it's a line with their #mission#worldchange and a #fairersociety is going to have to come at the cost of hard profits at some point - and the #hope that because people that have had success or intergenerational wealth are more attuned to social need than ever before  these #sophisticatedphilanthropists will make the differencewhy #gettinginvolved in #communityactivities is highly rewarding for self, and never more important than now because of the #mentalhealth benefits it can bring #selfless #senseofself@kerrcapitalA full transcript is below.Michael Kerr: Hi. It's Michael Kerr here, presenting Small Business Banter.A healthy micro and small business sector means a successful economy and a more vibrant society. Small Business Banter is about helping regional business owners better prepare for current challenges, but also for the next stage of business success.I'm Michael Kerr, founder of Kerr Capital, advisors to business owners.Each week, I interview a fellow small business owner or an expert, and they share their stories, their lived experiences, the wins and the losses, and their best advice to help you, the listener, get the most you can from your own business.Small Business Banter is brought to you from the studios of 104.7 Gippsland FM and is heard across Australia on the Community Radio Network. Thanks also to Kerr Capital, supporters of the show. Okay. Welcome to another edition of Small Business Banter radio. Today's guest, James Garland. James, the Director at the DGB group, he'll tell you what DGB group does, but he's also had a long-standing involvement in fundraising in the not-for-profit area, brand development. He's also got some personal interest in small businesses and investments. What we're going to chat about today is the business of the not-for-profit social enterprise, third sector. We're really looking forward to this chat, welcoming James. James Garland: Hey, Michael. How are you doing?Michael: Excellent. Thanks for calling in from a car, somewhere in Regional Victoria.James: No problem. I spent a fair bit of time here, so it's often a car call. Michael: Yeah. The sound is coming through really nicely. It's great to have you in. Look, I gave a really tight description. Do you want to expand a little bit more on your professional background, and also today, where you are with DGB group?James: Yeah, of course. I came out of university and went into the world of advertising, marketing, media sales, and working in agencies around State[?] campaigns, promotions, that side of the commercial world. I was over in London, working in an agency, doing live events, merchandising, marketing, and one of my clients was a charity involved in children's safety or child safety. I thought it might be a good thing while I'm away from home and tripping the light, fantastic across Europe, to maybe explore some different things in my career.I took a job that was offered as part of a big roll out by the UK government around what they call "Personal, Social, Health Education" for kids about being safe, and I just fell in love with it. I was young at the time. I was in my mid-20s, and I think a lot of people get into the not-for-profit or for-purpose sector a bit later in life, but it was really early for me. Out of what I thought would be a career in Commerce, I fell into the not-for-profit world really early, and I've been there ever since.Michael: It's a bit of a calling, was it?James: Well, I think I said to my mum, I remember she said, "What are you doing? It sounds really interesting. It's very different. It's not what I thought you would do. Is it what you really want to do?" I said, "Well, I'm finding a whole lot more meaning in working with organizations and engaging my passion and my skills in things that are changing the world, or at least changing the lives of people, rather than selling white goods or something else that, quite frankly, a well-loved[?] fridge." I really connected with the passion of the "Why?" while I was doing the work, and came back to Australia, took a contract at World Vision, Save the Children, worked at Cancer Research, a whole bunch of different not-for-profits on the inside, and loved them all. I went outside to the consulting side, and it's even better. You get to work with a dozen not-for-profits at any one time to, again, try and hopefully make the world a better place.Michael: Yeah. You really acted on something that came to you in your mid-20s which was something that you couldn't turn away. Working today in DGB across with not-for-profits and for-purpose businesses, what exactly does the DGB group do? James: Yeah. DGB is really, for guys who came out of advertising, naming it after the 3 principal directors is not exactly super creative, is it? Dalton Garland Blanchard, we're a really boutique agency. We strictly work with for-purpose organizations, so large and small, summer startups, some of the most exciting stuff in a sector's coming out of not-for-profit startup still. We work with those groups, specifically, that have plans to really transform themselves in the communities that they serve. We talk a lot abouttransformational projects, not so much your traditional tin rattling or, "Can you give us a gift this time at Christmas so that we can keep the lights on?" We work more so on a really larger scale, more complex growth projects, and our role is to help that organization build capacity, help them get ready, and help them carry out the fundraising for those projects.Michael: Okay, and bringing that experience you had in marketing and brand development to this sector, which I think, broadly, is called the "third sector" incorporating not-for-profit social enterprise, for-purpose. How big is the third sector, if that's the right term, at the moment?James: It's big. It's really big, and it's getting bigger off the back of what we've seen in the last few years. Everyone's starting to realize that our social fabric and the health of other people who are less fortunate, perhaps, than others, actually impacts everybody. We're in one, big world, and I don't think anyone could start. There's been a time, perhaps more prevalent than now, that everyone's really realizing that. We don't talk about the third sector much, but you're right. It is the sort of term, the "third sector", "private sector", "public sector", and then this "not-for-profit voluntary sector", but the contribution, economically.I think Deloitte did a study which was talking over $100 billion in Australia alone is the economic contribution of that sector, but I think the difference with that sector is that the impact is not really about finance or economics. It's actually about impact on people and the environment, on the world, on animals, on all sorts of things.It's interesting that we are now turning to needing the world to be a better place, in terms of climate, health, pandemics, and poverty, yet we call this sector the "third sector". Maybe it's the third thing that we've really cared about, but I don't know, maybe it should be the first sector [crosstalk] because if we don't have a planet to live on, private and public sectors doesn't mean much, does it?Michael: It certainly doesn't. It probably is an old term, but I was looking for something to collectively describe what you do, but it sounds like it's at a pretty exciting stage with the energy around startups. Would a lot of those startups call themselves social enterprises? If yes, can you describe what a social enterprise is and how it operates?James: Yeah, for sure. Definitely, social enterprises, it's more than a buzz. Perhaps I'll come back to that because some of these startups are just traditional not-for-profits that someone's got a great idea, or they innovate. Innovations are really big drivers of some of the coolest not-for-profit movements that are coming out.Regeneration of environment is big. In fact, environment's a real hotbed for innovation, people talking about plastics in the ocean and developing technologies that can create cleaner worlds, when obviously, some of that sits in biotech and agritech, and those sorts of industries. A lot of people do also go, "Hey, we've got a great idea. Instead of commercializing it, we're going to make a not-for-profit. We're going to allow everyone to invest in this and own it globally. Environments are great hotbeds for that at the moment.The social enterprise is kind of this next step in not being, a [inaudible] not-for-profit, because really, you want a social enterprise to make a profit. It's there to actually make a profit so it can support either its supply chain of fair trade coffee or the young people that it's giving a job to. It's different because it needs to be profitable, and it should be profitable. It's definitely getting a lot bigger, social enterprise. I think, fundamentally, the public wants all companies to have an element of social impact unconscious[?], and social enterprise is probably the peak of that, I guess, where all prophets, all outcomes, and all impacts go back to that social cause.Michael: Yes, it's a very clear purpose for that organization or that business if you like.James: Yeah.Michael: Yeah. I've certainly had some involvement in advising social enterprises and it's kind of what you said, it has to be a viable or sustainable business model because otherwise, all that energy, all that hope, it can all disappear if you don't have a fundamentally sound financial base. The social enterprise is kind of a blending of business and other objectives, and measures of success.James: Correct, yeah. I think you've got to have a values alignment around who starts it, runs it, works in it, and carries it forward. I think sometimes, social enterprises can be so successful, they become brands in their own right, they become really well-known, they become sought-after entities or businesses. Your values are going to hold true to, say, you could almost turn it into a retail chain, you could commercialize it. It's difficult because really, the function is there for what it is, a social enterprise. The people that are in it want them to be committed for the long term for it to remain that social enterprise piece.Michael: I think it could create a conundrum for the founders of these things because it is so successful, it does have value for other organizations. That's some of the experiences I've had with these founders, and they're unsure about how to take it forward.James: Totally.Michael: With the DGB group and the work you do, what you've acknowledged, it's a very significant sector. Did I have the same set of issues that for-profit businesses have? At the end of the day, are they struggling under finding employees and other day-to-day challenges that business faces?James: Yeah, massively. I'd suggest even more so, in particular, in the area of growth of business. If you're looking to recruit people under an award for community services or disability, generally, there's hardships in recruiting those people also, but certainly on the side of the work that we do around big transformational projects, project management, we're putting a different type of business case together for any one of these organizations, and they need really good, highly skilled people internally, who can build relationships much like some of your work around capital and advisory. You're dealing with sophisticated people that want to invest in social change. You need some pretty savvy people. We see a massive shortage of really good, savvy, articulate, strong relationship builders in the sector. The good ones get snapped up very quickly, and organizations that want to connect with philanthropists, major corporates, big businesses with government, they need really good people to be able to build those relationships, and you got to hold those relationships long term. It's really hard to get good people in the sector who probably do have to take a bit of a pay cut, because most [crosstalk] not-for-profits are pretty tight, [crosstalk] so it's tough.Michael: It reinforces the need, and however transformational the cause is and the energy, it's got to be underpinned by revenue, capital, and profits to be able to survive. [crosstalk]James: A hundred percent.Michael: On today's episode of Small Business Banter, we're talking with James Garland, who's a Director at DGB group and a very experienced operator in the not-for-profit social enterprise sector.Sounds like there's some heavy lifting being done by the sector. Is that what for-profit businesses aren't seeing, what don't want to follow some of these imperatives, and that's the opening for not-for-profit social enterprises to really take on these transformational projects?James: Yeah. That's an awesome question because it is absolutely rooted in one of the greatest things that the third sector or the full purpose organizations can do, and they can do what government can't. They can take risks that government can't. Private companies owned fundamentally by their shareholders, they can't necessarily always take the risks that are needed to generate social change. The third sector, not the largest, in terms of economic impact, is one of those places where you can play and you can fail, and many do. You're trying to alleviate social issues like child trafficking, poverty, and stuff like that. You can't roll out a low-risk private-style business plan to deal with something like that. You're going to need to adapt. You're going to need to find ways to achieve those goals. [crosstalk] It absolutely has this great role.Michael: Yeah. Do you need the founder to be totally absorbed, connected, and driven by that particular cause to really see the business, the social [crosstalk] enterprise?James: Yes. That's an interesting angle, too, because a lot of organizations come from our founders' passion. Over a period of time, what that organization will need will be much more than that founder can give because they're one person. Like in any business, you'll need a multidisciplinary approach to how you're going to tackle the root cause, so they're being great people that have started their own foundations, and people be aware of them are famous athletes, started foundations dedicated to specific issues. Cathy Freeman has done a huge amount of work for indigenous kids and communities, and is super passionate about that. Lots of these organizations start with a small number of founders, but as they gather steam, like any commercial business, they need a really good, strong, well-rounded team to be able to scale for impact.Michael: Yeah, it parallels exactly. You know what happens in startups.James: True.Michael: You need somebody or a team of people to see the opportunity and make it happen. It's got some shortcomings, and then it's a cycle, like a management team or a more broadly experienced team comes in. One of the things that I was exposed to in my work in social enterprise was, there's only so much money to go around from benefactors, foundations, and from government. The imperative was find your own revenue streams, which I think the UK has been pretty innovative in building and fostering the social enterprise sector. It seems like what you do with your client is also taking them to the next level, in terms of raising the money they need to deliver the transformational change.James: Yeah. We talked a lot about a lot of not-for-profits, and we've all been to the Black Tie ball, the luncheon, or have something arrive in the mail box saying, "Hey, we're a new charity, too. Can you support us?" There's a lot of low hanging fruit that a lot of organizations engage in, in order to try and keep those lights on, and it's all really valued. It's already really valuable investment. We probably look at more sophisticated approaches similar to any business, a startup, or organization looking to raise capital. We work with a lot of sophisticated investors, people that are real philanthropists themselves, and look at how they invest their money in not-for-profits. We work with the government, obviously, who have got to mandate across a lot of these issues to either be supportive, or help drive, and of course, big corporates, the big retailers, and others.Michael: That is some absolutely fantastic work.James: As to the banks, probably a lot of the time, we hang it on the banks, big retail, and other groups like that, thinking that they're just in it, making money, but we've seen some of our clients in the last 2 or 3 years, multi-million dollar contributions to not-for-profits from these big corporates, not just pocket change, but absolutely transformational support for different projects. Some of them aren't heavily publicized at all. It's just that organization believing in something that it's a line with their mission, and they invest accordingly. We work on those larger scale projects that really do require multiples of millions, but the impact will be really significant. That takes time, like all good things, you've got to do planning, you need strong budgets, you need to ask yourself all the questions that someone else would ask. It's certainly not as simple as shaking the team in the street, so to speak.Michael: Yeah. It's next level, I suppose, but I think the future for the social enterprise for-purpose sector is pretty bright because there's a lot of problems and challenges, and they're possibly more exposed than ever. It's that energy for people to take something on, is incredible. It's really wonderful to see somebody connect.At the smaller end, I think there are a lot of really, incredibly valuable work being done by small micro social enterprises where someone's attached to a cause, and they've created themselves a job, while also supporting the cause. Yeah, there seems to be a host of problems, the sector outlook pretty strong and bright.James: Yeah. I think that we're going to see slightly new models, too. There's a social enterprise group/organization forming, which I'm a part of, in a voluntary capacity. Traditionally we've seen this move to this, not necessarily be equal[?], but more social enterprise, where people start a cafe and they source all of their products ethically, they employ people with disadvantage, and so every step of their supply chain, they're engaged in social impact. That's great as a standalone business. I think the next evolution of social enterprise will be broadening that, so that social enterprise isn't just hospitality driven, cleaning, or some of those things where there's a logical fit. It will be really great when we have real social enterprise across financial sectors, across potentially, resources, and other services, so that it can be seen as an actual business model for all sectors. It does tend to be a bit pigeon-holed at the moment, but we don't have this, as far as I know, any social enterprise real estate agency chains or car dealerships. There's space for this model to play everywhere, so I think there's still a huge amount of growth in [inaudible].Michael: What's the cap on that, James? Is it just being brave to take on some of those much bigger businesses in bigger industries, or is that capital?James: Yeah, it's a good question. It could be all of the above there. I mean, we have a pure shareholder financial return model traditionally for [crosstalk] any business, directorship, or ownership.Michael: Three monthly reporting and bottom line, bottom line?James: That's right. More of the single bottom line than the triple bottom line, and then versus social impact in a fair society. Now, there's some really great intent out there, but we've all got to want to change the world and have that fairer society. That's going to have to come at the cost of hard profits at some point, but again, there's still a lot of hope, because people that have had success or intergenerational wealth are more attuned to social need than ever before, and we see that. We call these people, they're sophisticated philanthropists, they are looking at opportunities for this change to be made, and they're not necessarily wanting anything in return. Some underwriting some will invest in a social enterprise, some will just gift philanthropically, but there are some absolutely wonderful people out there who are really putting their money out as gifting seed funding contributions to real game-changing projects.I think that's where the magic might happen, Michael, where you get those really savvy people saying, "Listen, I'm fine, financially. I don't want for anything. That's a great idea. I'm just going to back it because." There is a lot of that out there, but again, in order to present those cases and in order to excite those people and align their passion with an area of social cause that floats their boat, it takes time. You got to really tip[?] into that, what we call a "case for support", which is fundamentally a business case for the for-purpose.Michael: Yeah. There's got to be more effort, doesn't it? Anybody that's got a profile and is well-off, I'm sure they get approaches all the time and [crosstalk] for anybody you see, there'd be individuals and companies around, but they are going to have their own processes to use a boring term, but to select who they're going to support and why? [crosstalk] You got any tips for the next generation of business owners, maybe they're in school now, or just out of school, in terms of encouraging them into the sector?James: As I said, I sort of fell into it early on, but there's a lot you learn from a sector, too, at an early age. In this day and age where we're rightly so looking at greater diversity on our boards and in governance, we want youth representation because everyone understands that young people have a different view point on the future, young people like you and I, Michael, and others even younger than us.Michael: Younger at heart.James: Yeah. It's exactly right.Michael: Yeah.James: Getting involved in community activities is highly rewarding for self. We often talk about how you can get involved, what you can do, but it's almost the giving to others is being shown that, especially modern days, and I'll bore you with a bit of MRI, health sciences on philanthropy, but it triggers the brain and lights the brain up when you give, you're involved, you give selflessly, and you're engaged in things above and beyond your own self. I'd encourage people to get engaged with this sector, with the altruistic, if we can call it the giving sector, not just for what you might learn and how you might connect with, on boards or in projects, and obviously, just to do really good stuff in the community, but do it for yourself.The days of mental health, being such a high agenda issue, it's incredible, the goodwill and the feeling that you get. People who are pretty much full-time philanthropists now will say, "The work that I do now is just so much more rewarding than anything I ever did commercially, because it gives me a sense of self."Michael: Yeah. That's excellent advice. That's a great, unfortunately, way to leave our time today, James, but I think that message is, "Get involved in something," and it's almost wide into you that there's lots of ways you're going to benefit and contribute.James Garland from DGB Group, thank you very much for your time today.James: It's a pleasure, Michael. Thanks for having me.Michael: That is all for today's episode of Small Business Banter. I continue to be inspired, bringing you small business experts and other small business owners, and hearing their stories.Do you want to listen to any past episode? Jump onto your podcast platform of choice and search Small Business Banter. There, you will find a diverse and fascinating collection of small business owners and experts openly discussing and sharing their experiences.For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today, or to contact me, please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com, or you can find us on Facebook and Instagram.It would be great to have you tune in the same time next week for another episode of Small Business Banter.[END]

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

@richardthomas is #cofounder of @wormlovers where he is a #wormfarmer #breedingworms and the business supplies, services and educates on everything to do with #composting #nutrientcycling #soil #worms. He also co-founded @Boogiefestival #musicfestival (after being integrally involved with another iconic festival @bigdayout ) and @treecredsRichard went to #Artschool @sydneycollegeofthearts in Sydney and evolved an #artpractice, which was around very much focused on #ecology #conservation #sustainability #environmentalism. The businesses were also built, ground up, on the same  foundational principles. It's a ripping chat with someone who does care, you'll hear it the way he speaks and see it in what has done - in the episode Richard talks about;#lovetheworklovetheworldhis self described 'accidental but sort of interesting journey'modestly exhibiting his art in 15 countriesthe profound experience of #livingofftheland in #Tasmania as a teenagerstarting new businesses with great friends on #enviromental #sustainable values  #homecompostingwhy #earthworms #soilhealthare just so fundamentally important to all of us the #Covid19 induced struggles for #smallbusinessownerstrying to find #balance between home and workwy it's time to #exit  #businesssale  @wormlovers the support he feels when talking to other #businessownersA full transcript is below.@kerrcapitalWelcome to another edition of Small Business Banter. This morning, I've got in Richard Thomas. Richard has a really diverse business background. We're going to chat to him about these businesses. He's a founder of @Wormlovers which is-- he's a worm farmer, and we'll talk about recycling, environmentalism. He's also co-founder of the @BoogieMusicFestival and a founder of another @Treecreds, which is a carbon reduction project. It's a really interesting mix, but firstly, welcome in Richard Thomas. Great to have you in our studio.Richard Thomas: Thanks, Michael. Great to be here. Michael: Perhaps you just want to expand a little bit on those three ventures that you've been involved in, and then we can pick up a couple of conversations around them.Richard: I guess, starting off with the Wormlovers, really, it's been something I've been doing for about 20 years I was a sole trader until around 8 years ago, and then we established it as a Pty Ltd business. But, nearly 20 years of #breedingworms and doing everything to do with #composting and #nutrientcycling and #soil and #worms, from that perspective. #Boogiefestival started about 15 years ago, and that came out of my experience. I worked for 20 years on the #BigDayOut festival as a kind of art coordinator and then, that evolved into running a part of the festival with a stage and various other activities, working in the core team of the Big Day Out from its inception, right through until when it finished, I think about 6 or 7 years ago. And through that... what my journey has very much been things have just come up. I don't know how much planning has gone into it. It's just sort of like being somehow an accidental but sort of interesting journey. Originally, I went to #Artschool in Sydney and then evolved an art practice, which was around very much focused on #ecology and #conservation, #sustainability, #environmentalism. So, these other projects that are being involved in have always been related to that sort of foundational, sort of vocation, I guess, as an #artist. And I had a quite long career as a practicing artist and showed in my work in probably about 15 different countries and had commercial galleries and was pretty much active in that world for 20, probably nearly 30 years. Michael: Wow.Richard: The Big Day Out was a gig that provided me with enough income to sort of subsidize my art practice. So, that was what was going on for most of those years. And then, I've always had a really strong interest in, I guess, #nature and #naturalprocesses. When I was a teenager after I left school, I went live with my uncle down in #Tasmania. This is in the late 70s, early 80s. He was #livingofftheland there, I guess you'd call him a-- he's not a sort of a hippie-ish looking guy, but I guess some of his values are very much about #backtoearth, you know, #growinghisownfood and he and his family had #drafthorses, they had their own #sheep, they're making their own clothes at a huge #veggiegarden, they would make #beehives, they were #makingtheirownbooze and generally living off the land. So that was a really influential experience for me.Michael: You lived there as a teenager, or?Richard: Yeah. I think when I was about 17, for a couple of years I lived down there. So that was a really profound experience for me. At that time, there were a lot of people, maybe similar to what's going on at the moment. It was a lot of people who were just fed up with the mainstream world, and people moving down to Tasmania, a lot of young people, people from different parts of the world. You know, the land was cheap and there were a lot of people who were building their own house, going #offgrid, and stuff, which is now sort of becoming again. It's coming back into the mainstream a bit more, but at that time, there was a real kind of sense of movement happening.Michael: Yeah.Richard: So that's the kind of background.Michael: So, you talked about-- it's not opportunistic, but you know, there were things that piqued your interest, say, you'd go after it?Richard: Yeah, that's right. And so, when I went to Art school in Sydney, I'd already had that experience, living in the country and being really connected to all these natural processes. So, that's sort of carried on into my developing art practice. Michael: What art were you producing, Richard? Richard: Well, I went to @SydneyCollegeoftheArts, which is an incredible place and an incredible time to be doing that. The '80s were a really incredible time to be an artist. So many ideas and so many different streams going on. Painting sort of returned. There were also a lot of conceptual ideas around and it gave me the opportunity to try out a whole lot of different media and different approaches, but always around sort of nature, somehow connected to nature. So, initially, I went to do photography, and then I jumped into the painting department, and then I moved on later to more installation work, even some video work. But mostly, painting and installation work, and often using natural materials or landscape paintings, photography, yeah.Michael: It really does sound like that experience living off the grid in Tazi[?] was quite formative for you because I think Wormlovers is a recycling environmental business wholly, but I think Boogie Fest was really differentiated itself based on its environmentalism credentials. Is that right?Richard: Yeah.Michael: You know, you were really looking hard to tread lightly on the earth.Richard: Yeah, absolutely. And I think... you know, I started Boogie Festival with some really great friends who are-- a lot of those relationships that evolved out of the Big Day Out, and we used to go to a lot of festivals together, and so, we just came up with this idea of doing a festival. But it's always been a passion of mine to consider the environmental impact of everything you're doing, to me, that's a sort of fundamental principle that I think everyone should adopt, really. So, it's not just a sort of sense of going. We've got this guy; he's doing a bit of green stuff on the side. And then we'll just keep doing what we're doing because we're sort of taking care of the environmental stuff. I think that sort of attitude often with some businesses, I think, with some corporations, in particular, can be a bit of a problem because it's just the sideline, the guys that are doing the sustainability stuff. But with Boogie, we tried to really embed that with things, like we introduced--- We got rid of #disposablecups, so we had plastic pots for all the beers. We brought in #onsitecomposting, we'd set up a whole sorting operation site and[?] all of that to increase our recycling. And we did a carbon offset, I think that that was through Treecreds, which is another enterprise that I'd started. And the idea of that was that when you came to the festival as a punter, you would be able to purchase a #carbonoffset for your #travelemissions to the festival.Michael: Yeah. So rather than paying not lip service, necessarily, but like as you say, the bigger groups, bigger companies might have sustainability area. Richard: Yes.Michael: Boogie Festival is ground up. The whole thing is built around a few core values, one of them which is environmentalism. So, you mentioned, people-- and as we've interviewed on this program, quite a few people involved in, I guess, activating #regionalareas and more people are moving to the regions. But do you think environmentalism is at risk at the moment? Or do you think it's the best opportunity it has ever been for people to reconsider how they treat the environment? It's strange times we're in.Richard: Yes, it's certainly strange times. And I think it's a complex question because there's so much that is going on, and there's so much that isn't going on that needs to happen, really. I feel like these certain parts of the world that-- or sectors of the economy or demographics or whatever you want to call it, people who are really moving ahead quickly with this stuff. And I feel like there's a big lag there as well. So, it's hard to put your finger on it and generalize about it because there's so much activity, but I still feel a little bit like, you know, sustainability is something that people are talking about, generally more than they're actually doing. And I think part of the problem is that we've fundamentally lived in a world, which is all of the systems were built up in the structure of the global economy. And the way that the industrialized world works is it's heading in one direction, which is unsustainable. So, it's like turning around a gigantic supertanker, you know?Michael: Yes.Richard: Yeah, it's a long process, and we have to change people's attitudes as well as their behavior.Michael: [crosstalk] And you've had a really good crack at doing that, and as a businessperson as well, right? Through Boogie Festival, which I think, sadly, that we've had the last Boogie Festival we're going to have, are we? Is-- Richard: Yeah. Well, there might be another festival but we're just not sure this time, obviously, stating the obvious. But you know, a situation with events is so uncertain. It's already become-- the game's changed a lot from the days when something like the Big Day was happening. Anyway, it's much harder to sell tickets that the costs are going up in the event industry. There are a lot more #compliance and #hurdles and complexity and cost that goes into putting on these events while, you know,-- and it's harder to sell tickets so it's a much more difficult #businessmodel to maintain. So--Michael: It seems like there's maybe a move to these micro[?] owner, it's like called micro festivals, but smaller, more niche festivals, I mean, plenty of people are getting to the regions. But, look on today's episode of Small Business Banter, we're talking right now with Richard Thomas.Richard, another way you've kind of lived out and your sort of core personal values, I think, is through Wormlovers. Do you just want to kind of give us a snapshot of what Wormlovers does right now?Richard: Yes. So, we started Wormlovers, as I was saying, about 8 years ago, and really, there were a number of reasons for setting it up. And I guess the core, the main sort of motivation was really #my passion and my #businesspartner, Gail Davidson's passion for what we were doing. And the sort of-- and also, the sense that there was a time, it felt like it was the right time to do this. I'd had this idea in the back of my mind for a long time of sort of specializing in worm farming and home composting and developing an enterprise which would kind of be part education but part commercial. So, the vision part of it is really important. We do, you know, we have to educate-- we feel like part of what we're doing in Wormlovers is kind of inspiring people to change the world with a worm farm. Michael: I think, one that your tagline or motto is "Love the worm, love the world"?Richard: Yes. And you know, I feel like there's this fascinating thing happening that maybe a lot of people are not aware of, you know, that the species like the worm, the #compostworm, or the #earthworm is so fundamental to our lives. We wouldn't be here without soil, without healthy soil because all of our food comes and all the higher creatures on earth really are dependent on the ecology of the soil. It regulates climate, it's connected to water - the water cycle, it's connected to the nutrient cycle in particular, of cycling nutrients from food and #organicwaste back into the soil, being replenished or back into a worm farm or a compost bin and turning back into healthy nutrients to create more food and more plants and more wellbeing. So, we see ourselves as a vehicle to provide the ability for individuals, both in a home, but also across the board of anyone who eats food. From schools to cafes to councils to, you know, you name it, anywhere where there's food waste produced is a potential site to engage in this process, this incredible process of setting up a worm farm and cycling your organics on the spot, so--Michael: I can hear the purpose of the connection with that core purpose and in the way you talk, but it's taking on a lot to-- You know, when you talk about having a business that is commercial and also educational, it's a big task, isn't it?Richard: Yeah.Michael: To educate through your business, a very honorable one. Wormlovers operates out of a precinct, currently where you've got. It's in... is it Werri...?Richard: Yeah, Werribee.Michael: Werribee, yeah. And so, as part of a complex of a few #environmentalbusinesses down there, but you are farming worms and you're reselling related equipment for households and for small businesses, I guess?Richard: Yeah, that's right. So just to sort of summarize that, these different aspects of the business. And I guess our core business is really our #onlineshop. The operations yard is really there to support the online sales, but also, any commercial work we're doing. We leased some land from @MelbWater out of the #Westerntreatmentplant, and that's where we actually breed our worms, and there are some byproducts from that process. We have big beds that where we breed the worms and we feed them on a mixture of different #feedstocks, #manures, and #coffeegrounds, and #organicwaste. And then, we package those worms up. We also store our inventory of composting products worm farms, such as we import a worm farm from #NewZealand in container loads, called the @hungrybin, which had been probably the best design worm farm that we've ever come across. We have a range of accessories and things that we sell as well. So that yard, basically, supports our online part of the business through online sales. And then, we also do sort of outreach work where we-- and sadly, with the lockdown, this has been one of our struggles as it is for so many small businesses. There's a lot of that work that involved us going out on site. You say got going into a restaurant or a school or a council to set up worm farms and educate people on site.Michael: You just haven't had the opportunities? Richard: No, we just did-- All of those big facilities have just been shut down or so restricted. So, what's happened there is that immediately, people are not eating food because they're not at all on-site. So, there's almost no food right on those sites. There's no--Michael: Everyone's at home. Richard: Yeah, so that's been a real struggle for us because part of what we would do is going out-- Well, particularly around, obviously around Melbourne, and help people set up and troubleshoot their worm farms. We also had a number of contracts; our biggest client was the @cityofMelbourne. With the lockdown, they had to shut down all of their sites and so we lost that contract to actually help. We had about half a dozen sites, and we do monthly or regular visits to work with the staff and just keep the worm farms in good health. We also had gardens that we're managing, so often, we'd set up really high yield #containergardens and some of these gardens are on #rooftops and in schools and in line-wise around Melbourne and community centers and things like that. So anyway, all of that work was lost with the lockdown sadly so that's been one of our struggles.Michael: Yeah, as you said, it's affected so many businesses and so many people and really forces you to rethink the way you do business. And, you know, we all need that inspiration when things are particularly tough, so personally, with Wormlovers, you're probably getting to the point where that's seen natural cycle, you move on...?Richard: Yeah. I think after 8 years of just eating, sleeping, as is for almost small business owners, you know, it just takes over your life.Michael: It can completely dominate, particularly, when someone like you who is so connected, enthusiastic, with the reason the businesses is there.Richard: Yeah. [crosstalk] No, you're absolutely right. And I think there are positives and negatives about that, being so connected to what you're doing because you've got to have a passion, you've got to have belief, and you've got to really get your up in the morning and believe in what you're doing. But at the same time, I think it's probably healthy to be able to maintain some kind of distance as well from what you're doing. And that's, I think, one of the struggles, I think that trying to find that balance can be difficult.Michael: I don't know in the work I do that that many people get that right. You know, that maybe you get it right for a period of time and it's certainly not to say you shouldn't be aiming to find that a bit of a boundary between the two but, you know, sometimes, you can't help yourself.Richard: That's right, yeah. And I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm sure these small business owners all over the country that have the same struggle of sort of, you know, they're still thinking about it late at night, you wake up in the morning, it's the first thing you think about, and just the ongoing, you know, it just doesn't stop, does it? So--Michael: It doesn't stop and I think there comes a time-- you know, for you, there's a time when you start to think about perhaps a #newventure, a new pathway. So, in your case, I think you're looking at a venture in Tasmania?Richard: Yeah, that's right. So, what I'm looking to do over the next couple of years is to basically work towards, maybe exiting Wormlovers or looking for a joint venture or reconfiguring it in some way or another. And obviously, putting a lot of thought into how that might manifest.Michael: Yeah.Richard: And then, looking at this project, down in Tassie, so I've had a share in a beautiful spot down on the #MerseyRiver in northern Tasmania, an old farm. And we're looking at sort of developing that as a sort of #sanctuary or #retreat. It'll be a multipurpose, sort of location for potentially-- It's got incredible #fishing there[?], so for as a fishing lodge, but also making it available for sort of events of one sort or another. We've had a couple of weddings. We've had some sort of parties down there, like 50th birthday or whatever. But also, for things like, maybe meditation, yoga, retreats, maybe somewhere for, you know, any kind of group to really go and be in this really beautiful natural environment surrounded by wilderness on this river. It's got a really incredible sort of vibe. So that's sort of what I'm looking at next, it's working on that. And that part of that will also be probably incorporating a lot of these sustainable, environmental kind of themes that I've been working on.Michael: They're not going to go away from you, right? Those--Richard: No [laughing]Michael: It sounds like, also Tazi, you spent some formative time there, and you're kind of going back there. Richard: Yeah, it's like a full cycle. Yes. Nice. Michael: Yeah. Just in closing, Richard, it's so wonderful to talk to business owners, that's what we're about on Small Business Banter, and sharing that. There's a pathway for you to move on from Wormlovers and on to something else, but I'm just keen in the last minute to kind of if you got some sort of tips or ideas or people that influenced you heavily in the way you go about running your day-to-day business that other owners could come[?] refer to.Richard: Yeah. Well, I'm probably not the-- I probably don't-- maybe I'm not having a very clear way that I look at this., but I do tend to talk to other business owners. I think that's probably my main source of sort of understanding, and I'm always intrigued by how other businesses work. So, I'm always trying to find out, "How does that thing work?" You know, you see something that you've never heard of, and you go, "That's a business? That's fascinating. How did someone get that turn into a business?" I think that's part of the-- but I'm kind of inspired by people like @David Holmglen who started the #Permaculture movement. Obviously, not from a business perspective, but I guess I'm interested in the philosophy of working with nature and how sustainability works, so I do a lot of research in that area. So yeah, I guess it's--Michael: I think the, you know, talking to other business owners-- as long as you're talking to somebody, right?Richard: Yeah.Michael: Ideally, some [inaudible] can kind of, you know, because it is a battle, and it's been hard, through the last 12, 18 months, especially. And sharing with other owners, which is kind of like this program, we often get on owners and they talk about their successes and their challenges. So, I think that's as good as any, you know, for other people listening in, talk to owners, like other owners like Richard does.Richard, we're out of time. I just wanted to say thank you very much for sharing that fascinating background, that crossing over environmentalism, music, business. It's wonderful to hear. I really appreciate your time and I wish you well as you kind of move down to that next venture in Tazi and maybe pass on Wormlovers to somebody else to take up the fight. Richard: Yeah, great. Thanks, Michael. I really appreciate it, it's great to talk to you. Michael: Alright. Thanks, Richard. Richard: Thanks. Bye-bye. See you.Michael: So that's all for today's episode of Small Business Banter. I continue to be inspired, bringing new small business experts and other small business owners and hearing their stories and their experiences. For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today, or just to contact me, please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com or find Small Business Banter on Facebook or Instagram. It'd be really great to have you tune in at the same time next week for another episode of Small Business Banter.[End]

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.

Happy Father's Day to all you dads out there! And Happy Father's Day to us! To celebrate, we have the most dad movie we can possibly think of. Not only is the movie universally revered, but we here at NYFM all give this movie a unanimous 5 stars. Also, can you think of a dad movie more dad than this? Because we definitely can't.  Join us as we discuss the family empire. The corruption of Michael (Yes, that Michael). The power and family of Vito (no, the other Vito). We also heap tons of praise on this movie and all discuss our favorite scenes in depth. This podcast has a lot of murder, drama, mob violence, scheming, and intense talking. The movie we are talking about also has all those things, so it really worked out. If that sounds even vaguely interesting or if you just love The Godfather, then give this a listen!

Welcome to Your Anxiety Toolkit. I’m your host, Kimberley Quinlan. This podcast is fueled by three main goals. The first goal is to provide you with some extra tools to help you manage your anxiety. Second goal, to inspire you. Anxiety doesn’t get to decide how you live your life. And number three, and I leave the best for last, is to provide you with one big, fat virtual hug, because experiencing anxiety ain’t easy. If that sounds good to you, let’s go. Hello friends, you are going to love this episode. Holy smokes, I just recorded it, so you’ve got me fresh, and I’m so excited. I just had such an amazing conversation with Mike Heady. He is an LCPC and he treats OCD and anxiety disorders. We talked about shame and shame and shame and shame, and he brought so much wisdom. You guys are going to love this episode. It is packed full of all the good stuff. So, I’m not going to waste your time. I just want you to get straight there and listen to it. Before we get started, if you haven’t left a review, please do so. I love getting reviews from you. When we get good reviews, it doesn’t just stroke my ego. That’s not the point. It is because the more reviews we get, the more people will come and listen to the podcast, which means then I get to help people with these incredible tools, these science-based tools. Hopefully, even just from today, if you’re first time listening, welcome. We are talking about shame, and you are going to get so much from this. So if you are listening, please do leave a review. I would be so grateful. And enjoy the show. ----- Kimberley: Welcome. I am so excited to have with us today, Mike Heady. He is an LCPC. That’s correct. Right? Michael: That is, yes. Kimberley: Yes. We’re going to have a conversation that actually might be my favorite topic in the whole of the podcast. We’re talking about shame. So, welcome. Michael: Thanks for having me. I share your passion for the conversation. Kimberley: Yes. Not that I love shame, but I like talking about shame. Michael: Yes. I agree. It’s hard to say you love shame. It’s like saying I love fear. Kimberley: Exactly. So, why are you interested in this topic? Michael: It’s been a professional evolution for me, originally being trained to treat anxiety disorders and OCD. We talk a lot about fear and uncertainty and we have a ceremonial way of responding to shame. We’re like, “Oh yeah, and there’s a shame too.” In the last couple of years, I’ve really done a deep dive into like, “Well, what is this?” Because a lot of clients are having a hard time getting better. I don’t think it’s the fear that’s hard for them to get past sometimes. I don’t think it’s the uncertainty. I think it’s the shame. I think it’s a different animal. When I started doing a lot of digging, I realized there’s a whole world of shame out there in the literature, and how it applies to OCD fascinated me. So, that’s my new passion project. Kimberley: Yeah. Same. Exact same experience. Also seeing how much fear in and of itself is a generator of suffering. But as you said, there’s this shame that’s generating suffering at exponential levels. So, I’m so grateful to have this conversation with you. for those who are listening and who might not really understand shame, would you be interested in giving me your working definition of what shame is? Michael: Sure. Are you okay if I elaborate on it a little bit? Kimberley: Yeah. Go for it. Michael: Okay. I think a good definition is that shame is a really painful, aversive, unpleasant emotional experience. Fear or disgust, it’s natural or instinctive for us to want to back away and get rid of shame. Shame is often brought on by some kind of real or perceived violation of a social norm that we actually believe in. So it’s not this mystical emotional thing. It’s a thing either real or perceived occurred. And then I experienced this negative, painful emotion of shame. That’s the short version of the definition. I think it’s worth talking about shame as having two levels of shame. We might call an adaptive kind of shame, the shame where we view it as a response to a specific episode, rather than some generalizable character flaw or full-on assault of our identity. I violated something I believed in, I feel bad, which is different than guilt because guilt is about apologizing to the other person for something you’ve done. But I might feel bad for violating a norm I believe in. Okay, there’s nothing toxic about that. There’s another level of shame that we tend to want to talk about more. It’s the toxic shame. That’s the shame that is unworkable. It’s always unhelpful. It is a response to a perceived or real violation of a norm that has broad sweeping characteristics to it. It is a full-on assault on our identity. It is a condemnation of the self. That’s the toxic shame. I can wrap up this as saying, what was incredibly helpful for me when I was going deep dive into what shame was is, yes, shame is an emotion. We know what emotions are. We all feel emotions. We’ve all felt shame. You and I, as therapists, spend our careers trying to help our clients have a different relationship towards painful emotions, and understanding what an emotion is, specifically around shame, I think was really enlightening for me. I derive a lot of this understanding from some work that occurred in the sixties and seventies, probably before then, but the work from the sixties and seventies is what brought it to my attention, that emotions are an emergent experience constructed by an interaction between our biology and our biography. The biography piece comes out of Silvan Tomkins work in the late sixties where he suggested that, yes, there’s a universal kind of biological experience that contributes to an emotion. But the part that completes it is our own narrative, which is unique to us. My interaction with the world, as I develop from a child to an adult, the experiences I have, my environment, that’s the secret ingredient to my shame. So what makes me feel shame isn’t necessarily what makes you feel shame. For instance, if I were to, while talking to you, suddenly break out into a red flush on my face, start sweating, and my voice start cracking, I might experience that as an embarrassment, like a small shame. But if you perhaps had terrible social anxiety disorder and the same thing happened to you, the same exact event, you might see that as a humiliation. Both are derivative emotions of shame. But humiliation is different from embarrassment in orders of magnitude of pain. Humiliation is closer to trauma than it is to anxiety. This is anyway my long-winded way of saying, yes, shame is a complex animal, and that’s the working definition I tend to have. Kimberley: Yeah. It’s a different way of explaining it. This opportunity makes me so happy. What you’re saying is, it’s on a spectrum, would you say? Michael: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Kimberley: Now, let’s play that out. We’re talking about the biology, and then there’s the story we tell ourselves. Would you give an example for you? You and me, let’s say we both got embarrassed. Let’s say we both made a mistake or something. We embarrassed ourselves in front of each other, which is not going to happen here. But if we did, what might be a difference in the story we told each other which would indicate that higher level of shame or toxic shame? Michael: Sure. Let me clarify the story. It’s not just how we appraise the shame itself. That’s a part of it. But the story is like my upbringing. I was brought up in a blue-collar family. There wasn’t a lot of room for emotions, especially for the male members of the family. So if I encountered a situation where I felt vulnerable or sensitive or hurt, the expression of that emotion could be shut down. That expression of that emotion could be punished, ridiculed. Not that I was ridiculed, but it could have been. Someone’s narrative about a negative emotional experience could have been that and ongoing. They could have been bullied for being a sensitive kid, whereas you may not have. now you both may experience the same thing as a generic sense of shame. “I wasn’t the way I wanted to be. I wanted to be put together and intelligent and I made a stupid GAF, and I came across looking silly.” One kind of embarrassment for one is not necessarily the embarrassment for the other. That’s what I mean when I say “the narrative.” Kimberley: Yeah. Okay. This is wonderful. I think that maybe we want to take a look at, and I know I have a few questions. What I’d love to take a look at is, why would, let’s say someone feel shame for having a mental illness? Michael: Well, yeah, that’s a great question. I think there’s a whole lot of reasons why someone might feel shame. One of them could be, I feel shame because the mental illness – we can say OCD in particular since this is one of the things I primarily treat – is that the content of my obsessions themselves could have a taboo theme or they could be otherwise conceived as bizarre. That’s going to create a sense of “I shouldn’t have this thought, there’s something wrong with me I have this thought.” The helping field, in general, commonly misinterprets and doesn’t understand OCD. If you present this set of thoughts to them, you’re going to get a sense of judgment and rejection or humiliation, and that’s not made up fear. That’s a real fear. That stuff happens to people. That’s an example of how someone with a mental health issue can develop shame. It’s because they may have gotten that feedback or fear rightfully so that they would get that feedback. Another way of looking at it is just, “I shouldn’t have this because having this means I’m not working properly. I’m otherwise defective or broken.” It’s a silent problem for people – these emotional and psychological things. We have a lot more empathy and understanding for people with a physical problem than we do for someone who has a psychological or emotional problem. So, I think that there’s this built-in-- Kimberley: Stigma. Michael: Yes. Stigma. Right. Thanks. Yeah, exactly. And then there’s the people who’ve tried to get better. I’ve certainly seen a number of clients who’ve gone through years of therapy. They’ve worked diligently with great therapists, all very well-intentioned, and they failed to get better. “What’s wrong with me? I must be really broken.” I’m sure there’s countless other ways, but I’ll pass that off to you, I think. Kimberley: Yeah. I mean, I think these are all societal expectations that are placed on us. It’s funny, you brought up the question about the concept around being humiliated for having an emotion. Somebody had written a question like: How can I be considered “the man of the house” if I have anxiety? I mean, there’s so much shame in that question. There’s so much societal expectations in that question and stigma in that question. I think it’s definitely there, and I think you’re right. For the things that are unknown, I see that to be more shame. I think everybody understands sadness. So we don’t feel so much shame around it. But fear of harming your baby – let’s not talk about that. You know what I mean? Let’s push that down. Michael: Right. And not only because it’s universally taboo. We know that instinctually. We don’t need to really be told that. We know that, because that’s our response if we were to hear that from someone else. Until we have that intrusive thought ourselves and they’re like, “Oh, me too?” Shame, I think it’s distinguishing shame from the other negative emotions that people have, because I don’t think they’re all the same. Oh, negative emotions or negative emotions – let’s just learn how to handle them. Fear, that’s a tough one. But shame? Shame is the most painful. Kimberley: It’s ouch because it’s in silence too, I think. My thing I say all the time is that shame thrives in secrecy. One of the best things you could do is to tell it out loud. Michael: I was having a conversation with colleagues about this a couple of weeks ago, and someone brought up a slogan that comes from AA, which is, “We’re only as sick as our secrets.” It’s such a powerful message. The idea that speaking that secret allowed, speaking that shame aloud can be healing. Now it can also be traumatizing. We can probably get into that later in the episode. But I think that there’s discernment about how and who we share with, and us as therapists creating a space where that’s good and healthy for the person. But you’re right. Absolutely. The things that thrive in darkness are painful. Kimberley: Okay, so you have a client and they have just very typical symptoms of OCD, even if it’s very typical taboo, obsessions – this is for people listening – any disorder, depression, BFRB, eating disorders, how do you work with that shame with your patients? Michael: That’s a fantastic question. I’m always evolving on how I figure that out with a particular client. I think if I were to try to distill that down to something helpful to the listeners, I think as a therapist, it would start with the very first interaction I had with the client. The first contact is the first opportunity, probably the best opportunity to provide a safe space that’s understanding, validating, authentic so that the client can then experience this interpersonal interaction that they’re having with this therapist as welcoming towards disclosure of a secret or their shame. I think that that first contact is vital. You can come across as the kind of person they want to talk to and try to set the stage and make that an effort, build that therapeutic alliance, continue to work on a therapeutic alliance because if you don’t, it might be a lot harder to build the work to let them disclose that shame. And then from there, I think education about what shame is, like I brought up in the beginning, that shame can exist on this continuum, that there is actually an adaptive kind of shame. We don’t tend to talk about it. We don’t tend to see it because we talk about the toxic and the pathological shame, the one that keeps people stuck in hurt. Through that education, through a demystifying of it, I think, is incredibly valuable. I’ll talk about the compass of shame in a minute. I don’t want to steal all the time from you. It’s like I talk a lot. Kimberley: Go for it. No, do. Michael: I’ve been thinking about this in preparation for our conversation today. I was thinking like, how would I want to set up an ideal way of dealing with shame with a client and again, creating that therapeutic space that they’d want to share that. And then if we have this experience that once we hand our secret or shame over to another person like, “Here you go,” that’s what the clients are doing to us, they’re handing it to us. If we receive it and hold it with compassion and understanding, if we hold it with acceptance of them as a person, I think we introduced them to common humanity – one of the three things that show up with self-compassion, that common humanity – perhaps for the very first time in their life. Because this is such a secret, quiet problem, this might be the first time they’ve ever been met with common humanity and acceptance when they’ve revealed this. I think that’s immeasurably powerful for the client. I think it helps them create a healthy distance from that narrative that’s been telling them to keep it a secret, keep it a secret, or else you’ll get rejected. “Wait a minute. I wasn’t rejected.” Kimberley: Yeah. It normalizes it too. Right? Michael: Yeah. Kimberley: Sometimes when I hand over the why box that has all the different obsessions, that in of itself can be a shame killer because they’re like, “Oh my goodness, all of the things I have are right here on this piece of paper and you don’t seem alarmed at all.” Michael: Yeah. I’ve had email interactions with clients who are like, “Have you ever heard of this kind of presentation?” I’ll shoot them links to three books written about it. They’ve written entire books about this so you’re not alone. It’s so helpful for them. Kimberley: Yeah. Tell me about the compass. Michael: Yes. I was introduced to this through one of my mentors, and it really rang true for me as a useful concept. The compass of shame was developed in the 1980s by a psychiatrist by the name of Donald Nathanson. I don’t want to bore the audience with the history, but he researched shame basically that was his career. Nathanson had found through his research that there are four predictable and common unhelpful responses to shame. I’ll say toxic shame. We’re all talking about toxic shame. Those four represented the four points of a compass – north, south, east, and west. It doesn’t matter where they go. One of the points is withdrawal. Withdrawal is when we get quiet, silent, small. Like a dog who got caught chewing on the cash knows they did wrong. They get small, they get quiet. They try to disappear into the moment. That’s one common response to shame. Another one is avoidance, behavioral avoidance of situations and people and circumstances, but also through substances, through food, through sex, through anything that would be a direct response to a cue, “I’m going to avoid this feeling.” Then another part of it is to attack others. This shows up when you felt humiliated or embarrassed by someone else. Someone made you feel this way, so you’re going to lash out verbally or physically. In a sense, the way I think of it is in the sense of trying to balance the scales. “You’ve made me feel small and vulnerable and insignificant. I’m going to try to balance that out by making you feel the same way.” The last one I think by far the most common in the people that we’re going to be working with is attack the self. This is self-criticism, this is berating ourselves, self-condemnation, degrading ourselves. It’s often seen as “I’m going to be holding myself accountable for this failure real or perceived,” and that’s going to make it better, that there’s somehow a utility to this attacking self-response. But when you poke at it just a little bit, it’s completely unhelpful. It’s just a massive perpetuator of the problem. So, that’s Nathanson’s Compass of Shame. I think his point in bringing this up is, look, everyone’s toxic shame response is going to fall probably into one of those four. Where do yours? if we can bring awareness to that, maybe we can learn to pivot to a more functional or helpful response instead. Kimberley: Right. I think that that awareness, again, it’s validating and it’s normalizing the normal response to shame, which helps the shame, I think, in and of itself. Okay, so let’s play this out. If something happens, you’ve made a mistake or you’ve had a thought that you’ve deemed unacceptable, or you showed up in a way that created shame, you did all four of those things, what do we do from there? Or you did one of them. Now that we have this awareness, how might we meet shame instead in your thoughts, in your mind? Michael: I think hearing that from a client and I was watching it unfold in the moment, I might say, “Can we pause for just a minute? I think shame showed up for us.” He might even be able to see some of the behavioral changes in their eye contact and the postures. I think shame showed up. What are you doing with that right now? Because again, it’s silent. It’s not broadcasting this out loud. It’s silent. What are you doing? What’s going on in your mind? Probably reveal what you said, they did one or all four of those things – I would point that out, give it a name. We understand this process. This is somewhat of a predictable response. Can we hit the pause button and can we now make a choice to pivot to a different response. Pivot to what? Pivot to self-compassion maybe. That might be a teachable moment. What is self-compassion? Can I give you an experiential exercise on meeting this moment with self-compassion? I can model meeting this moment with you with compassion so you can see what that looks like and feels like. Instead of spending time in the head, in the verbal, in the ruminative come back to the feeling, because that’s what we’re trying to avoid. When we criticize ourselves, we’re trying to avoid and escape criticism, or using criticism to try to avoid and escape shame and humiliation. Okay, let’s come back to that. That’s painful. We can learn how to sit with that without having to beat ourselves up or escape it. I think people can sit with it in different ways. You can use it as an exposure opportunity for people who are feeling smaller kinds of shame, like embarrassment, like let’s do some exposure towards what it feels like to be embarrassed. If we’re dealing with a much more painful kind of shame, that humiliation kind of shame, let’s meet that with more direct self-compassion in this moment. I think it gets sticky a little bit when we introduce self-compassion, if we haven’t already introduced it, because like any intervention, it hinges on the client buying into it and thinking that they deserve to receive it. Kimberley: Right. I’ll give you my personal experience with this because I think, and I see a lot and I would add a fourth point to the compass, which is, now as you’re talking, I think this even different than what we talked about in previous conversations, just the two of us, is I think if I were really to track it, I think that another thing that I did when shame showed up is I swing into perfectionism. The stronger shame was, the more I would do good or be good. It’s an interesting reflection for me because I think the more I felt imperfect and the more shame that brought up, the more it’s like compulsive do good kind of thing, which I think again, might be why some of our clients get stuck around shame because there is that sort of self-punishment. “Well, I did a bad thing. Well, I have to neutralize that with a positive, good thing.” I don’t know. Just something I’m thinking about. Michael: No, I think that’s really great. I’m sure a lot of people listening are thinking right now, nodding their heads, “Yup, I go into perfectionism.” If I can channel Nathanson for a second, I imagine he would say, “That’s a type of avoidance. It’s an avoidant behavior. You’re doing this thing and it’s a compensation to numb, or to balance the scale.” If I do enough good, it cancels out the bad. The message is that that thing is intolerable to feel, and it’s not. Kimberley: Good catch. That’s true. It is. It’s like neutralizing the compulsion, right? Yeah. Okay. This is amazing. I have some questions from the audience that I think is a perfect segue, and there’s one that really hit me, really deepened my heart and I wanted to ask your opinion on. Somebody had asked, how do I manage shame for having symptoms? They didn’t express which ones, but I’m assuming it’s having symptoms of being a human of some respect. But I also have privilege and resources and the ability to get care, how do I manage shame when I have privilege? Michael: That’s a really great question. I think if I can flip that around a little bit, I can say that the cost of your privilege towards access to care, towards a good community of people, the cost of that isn’t more shame. We don’t want to shame ourselves for having opportunities. In a way, it moves you away from doing something about that, about that privilege. If you recognize I have privileged shaming yourself is useless. Who’s that for? That’s a silent response to try to balance out this. It’s an avoidance. It’s a running away from. So can we try to meet that? I’d say first with patients and then recognition, yeah, there is some privilege here and I feel bad about that, and then move into a “what’s next” kind of a mindset. Like, I still need to work on my own shame about having these symptoms. It’s not like I have to suddenly stop working on that because I also happen to have the privilege and the capacity to work on those. But I think we throw it into the same mix. It’s like, okay, so you’re shaming yourself. Which one of the four points of the compass are you doing now in recognition of a privilege? Once we get off of that unhelpful response, we can then maybe find a more helpful way to recognize the privilege, to speak out against the privilege, to prop other people up and help other people have access, things like that. But we can’t do that if we’re shaming ourselves, because shaming yourself, criticizing yourself, avoiding isn’t workable. Kimberley: Yeah. There’s so much of this like self-punishment involved as a response to shame. Like, okay, so I have this one privilege, so I must be punished for that before I can address the problem that I have almost. I’m so grateful that you answered that because I have seen that multiple times, many, many times with my patients and I’m guessing you too. You’ve talked about shame around lots of emotions. Interestingly, there were two very common questions, and I’ll leave these as the last two questions for you. There was a lot of questions around having shame for anger and there was a lot of questions around having shame for having a “groinal response,” which I’m assuming is in relation to some kind of sexual obsession or maybe even sexual orientation as well. Can you share your thoughts on those? Michael: Sure. Shame around anger, I think... I’m trying to interpret the question a little bit. I imagine it goes beyond just the feeling of being angry, but maybe the act of being aggressive, if I can make some interpretation there. I helped the client recognize that anger, like any other emotion, is universal. It’s an emergent experience. It’s not really up to you about whether you get angry or not. We don’t have to act on the anger. We don’t have to become aggressive either passively or physically aggressive about it. So, teaching them that there is some workability in our response to anger and that if we accept anger as an emotion, if we make room for anger as an emotion, we don’t need to have a response to it in the same kind of way. We can let it in. Susan David, in one of her Ted Talks, she said that emotions are data, not directives. I love it. Super helpful way of organizing your thoughts around that. It’s just, let the emotion be data. It’s if you’re responding to something in your life, something happened that it shouldn’t have happened and it wasn’t fair, and then you felt angry. Okay, I understand that process. I don’t need to do something about it to get rid of it because there’s that relationship to an emotion that can be unhelpful. Now I have to find a way to control or get rid of it. Notice we only do that with the negative side of emotions. We don’t tend to be like, “I have to get rid of my joy.” Kimberley: Too much joy. Michael: Too much joy. Kimberley: Unless we feel privileged, so then we’re not allowed to have too much joy. Michael: Right. Yeah. In response to the groinal stuff, I think, again, it comes down to your biological, your physiological, your groinal response isn’t really up to you. I think Emily Nagoski does a really great job in her talk about unwanted arousal, and such a powerful Ted Talk and really great education around that. Your body’s going to respond, whether you like it to or not. I used to joke around and say, the reason why the 13-year-old boy isn’t standing up at the end of Spanish class is because he wants to get more lessons. It’s because he’s waiting to not be embarrassed when he stands up. It’s not that he’s attracted to Spanish as a language –maybe he is – it’s because he had a response and it wasn’t really up to him. Okay, so bodies respond to things. Can we separate that out from the thing that was in our mind? Bodies respond to sex generically. It doesn’t matter who it’s with, what it is. Just the idea of it, the notion of it, the hint, and it response. So even people listening to us now, using the words like sex, might respond to the word, and that doesn’t mean you’re attracted to the word or to this podcast. Maybe you are, but it’s probably not. It’s that your body responded to things because of all these associative learning cues that are going on. That education is powerful. And then, of course, I treat shame the way I treat any toxic shame, which is, the response to it is the biggest problem that needs to try to meet it with something a little bit more akin to self-compassion and common humanity. Kimberley: I love it. Thank you. Oh, you nailed it. Is there anything else you want to share? Michael: I mean, not off the top of my head. I’m sure that we could dive into so many different rabbit holes on the subject, but I think this was a good intro to it. Kimberley: Yeah. Intro, but also with depth. I’m really grateful. I love to give as many applicable tools as we can. I feel like there is some better understanding. The compass is so good. It’s so helpful to be able to deconstruct it that way. Michael: Yeah. That was a game-changer for me when I heard about that too. I will add a couple of things, just in passing other ways of therapeutically addressing shame. Once we’ve agreed that those four points in the compass are not the way we want to handle it, we have to have a new way. There’s a, what used to be, I think, a Broadway show called Get Mortified. It’s now a podcast, and it’s people sharing humiliating and mortifying personal stories. Again, this is going out to strangers and this is an idea that I’m normalizing these experiences in my life. Maybe someone else can relate to it and maybe we can bring some humor to it. It’s not about making fun of the person or the situation, it’s about saying, can we all just laugh at the fact that we’re busy concealing something that is so universal and ubiquitous. Kimberley: Yup. Life happens, right? It doesn’t go to plan. Michael: Yeah. I think that’s the other piece. Once you’re ready for it, humor is hard to think of a more helpful response to shame. Kimberley: I’m holding back every urge right now to be like, “What’s the most mortifying thing that’s ever happened to you?” Michael: That’s a different podcast. Kimberley: I was once on a podcast where he asked that, a very similar question. It was on OCD and he asked me a similar question. I think I completely went into your shame compass, like all the things, “What can I do to avoid this conversation?” Michael: Yes, yes. I think that would be like a few cocktails and we’re going to record a podcast and maybe we can talk about that. But again, you can see, you can notice how even here, I could easily come up with two very shaming experiences in my life, and the difficulty of sharing that when I think that other people are listening to it. Why should I care? It’s because it’s a painful emotion. So even us therapists have a lot of work to do with personally so that we can show up with the client in a way that’s helpful. Kimberley: Right. When I was doing one of the Mindful Self-compassion intensives, this is with Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer, one of the activities where we had to stop and do activity with the puzzle we came with if you came with someone. And then you had to turn to a person you didn’t know, and you had to tell them one of the most painful things that’s ever happened to you. They didn’t really give you a lot of choices either. They were like, you’re here, you’re going to do it. The whole act was there was tears everywhere, flying across the room. But the thing was then, the person who’s listening was not allowed to say anything, except “Thank you for sharing.” It was so powerful. It was so powerful. They weren’t allowed to say, oh. You weren’t allowed to touch them. You weren’t allowed to say anything, except “Thank you for sharing.” Michael: And again, an immeasurably effective and important thing. That wasn’t self-compassion. That was compassion, right? This is why I think like you with your Instagram work and people like Chrissie Hodges and OCD peers, and anyone who’s an advocate for OCD that is building a community of people where they can interact like OCD has a community of people. These communities allow other people who are struggling with OCD to interact with each other. You create this group acceptance. The group has accepted you in, shame and all. You no longer need to conceal or keep secret this thing. The weight, the anvil that gets lifted off your shoulders, you no longer have to be weighted in the past. It’d be nice if we could generalize that outside of an OCD community and just say, the community at large has now been sufficiently educated about what OCD is and isn’t, what depression is and isn’t, what eating disorders are and are not, trauma, so we can be a lot more understanding of one another. Perhaps that’s a little Pollyanna-ish to hope for, but I think that that’s the direction we should head on. Kimberley: That’s the mission. Yeah. Well, I actually think that this is a perfect place for us to end because I think that that is where we’re at. That common humanity, we all have it. You’re not alone. Yes, it’s the most painful thing you’ll feel. You’ll feel like your heart is breaking at the time. All of these things are so normal and part of being a human. So I love that that’s where we’re at. Thank you. Michael: Thank you for indulging the conversation. Kimberley: Easily, so easily. Tell us about where people can hear more about you and know about you. Michael: Sure. As you mentioned, my name is Mike Heady. I’m the Co-Director of the Anxiety and Stress Disorders Institute of Maryland. I work with my other Co-Director, Dr. Sarah Crawley, who’s a Child and Adolescent Psychologist. The Executive Director and Founder is Dr. Sally Winston. She’s written a number of books on OCD. We’re in Baltimore, Maryland. We’re an outpatient, private group practice. We have over 20 clinicians that specialize in depression, OCD, anxiety disorders, and other related conditions. Yeah, that’s us. That’s me. Kimberley: Amazing. Well, thank you. I really am grateful. I feel so calm after these conversations too because I feel like it’s the more you guess, you get to settle into it. So thank you. I’m so grateful personally, and for the community here, who sounded like they were very excited about this episode. Michael: Well, thank you for having me on. Kimberley: My pleasure. ----- Please note that this podcast or any other resources from cbtschool.com should not replace professional mental health care. If you feel you would benefit, please reach out to a provider in your area. Have a wonderful day, and thank you for supporting cbtschool.com.

Todd: OK. Michael, you are into spearfishing.Michael: Yes, I enjoy going spearfishingTodd: OK. Can you talk about that a bit?Michael: Yeah, sure. Spearfishing basically is a sport that you dive under the water with the aid of flippers, a wet suit, and weights but you don't use oxygen at all. It's all-- you hyperventilate before you go down to get your oxygen levels up then you dive down.Yeah, then you have to you sometimes hide under rocks or actually stalk the fish and when you see a species that is edible and of legal size you can catch the fishTodd: Oh, Wow. Now spearfishing, does that mean you throw the spear?Michael: No, you use spear guns which uses surgical rubber to propel the spear you just pull it down to cock it. It's kind of like a crossbow without the crosspiece at the front.Todd: So do you ever see sharks down there?Michael: Yeah, you occasionally see sharks. It depends on where you are. You see a lot of.. there are some sharks called wobbegongs which are harmless sharks and they are actually quite friendly, they won't attack you but if you've caught some fish and you keep them on your purse and the blood goes into the water it can attract bigger sharks. And a few times when we've been spearfishing, we've actually had the sharks come down and take the fish while we're there and it's a little bit scary but the sharks themselves are.. they just sit there and watch you in the water. They're kind of like dogs, they're scary because they follow you and they look at you, and you turn around and they'll be sitting there looking at you. So most of the time we like to.. when we catch the fish, to keep the blood out of the water. We put them on a float that floats a fair way away from actually where you are fishing as a safety precaution but if you know..of course, you see too many sharks you just get out of the water...but now, it's nice and exciting.

Todd: OK. Michael, you are into spearfishing.Michael: Yes, I enjoy going spearfishingTodd: OK. Can you talk about that a bit?Michael: Yeah, sure. Spearfishing basically is a sport that you dive under the water with the aid of flippers, a wet suit, and weights but you don't use oxygen at all. It's all-- you hyperventilate before you go down to get your oxygen levels up then you dive down.Yeah, then you have to you sometimes hide under rocks or actually stalk the fish and when you see a species that is edible and of legal size you can catch the fishTodd: Oh, Wow. Now spearfishing, does that mean you throw the spear?Michael: No, you use spear guns which uses surgical rubber to propel the spear you just pull it down to cock it. It's kind of like a crossbow without the crosspiece at the front.Todd: So do you ever see sharks down there?Michael: Yeah, you occasionally see sharks. It depends on where you are. You see a lot of.. there are some sharks called wobbegongs which are harmless sharks and they are actually quite friendly, they won't attack you but if you've caught some fish and you keep them on your purse and the blood goes into the water it can attract bigger sharks. And a few times when we've been spearfishing, we've actually had the sharks come down and take the fish while we're there and it's a little bit scary but the sharks themselves are.. they just sit there and watch you in the water. They're kind of like dogs, they're scary because they follow you and they look at you, and you turn around and they'll be sitting there looking at you. So most of the time we like to.. when we catch the fish, to keep the blood out of the water. We put them on a float that floats a fair way away from actually where you are fishing as a safety precaution but if you know..of course, you see too many sharks you just get out of the water...but now, it's nice and exciting.

Todd: OK. Michael, you are into spearfishing.Michael: Yes, I enjoy going spearfishingTodd: OK. Can you talk about that a bit?Michael: Yeah, sure. Spearfishing basically is a sport that you dive under the water with the aid of flippers, a wet suit, and weights but you don't use oxygen at all. It's all-- you hyperventilate before you go down to get your oxygen levels up then you dive down.Yeah, then you have to you sometimes hide under rocks or actually stalk the fish and when you see a species that is edible and of legal size you can catch the fishTodd: Oh, Wow. Now spearfishing, does that mean you throw the spear?Michael: No, you use spear guns which uses surgical rubber to propel the spear you just pull it down to cock it. It's kind of like a crossbow without the crosspiece at the front.Todd: So do you ever see sharks down there?Michael: Yeah, you occasionally see sharks. It depends on where you are. You see a lot of.. there are some sharks called wobbegongs which are harmless sharks and they are actually quite friendly, they won't attack you but if you've caught some fish and you keep them on your purse and the blood goes into the water it can attract bigger sharks. And a few times when we've been spearfishing, we've actually had the sharks come down and take the fish while we're there and it's a little bit scary but the sharks themselves are.. they just sit there and watch you in the water. They're kind of like dogs, they're scary because they follow you and they look at you, and you turn around and they'll be sitting there looking at you. So most of the time we like to.. when we catch the fish, to keep the blood out of the water. We put them on a float that floats a fair way away from actually where you are fishing as a safety precaution but if you know..of course, you see too many sharks you just get out of the water...but now, it's nice and exciting.

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

This week our theme was Michael and we are not quite sure what we meant! This week our theme was Michael and we are not quite sure what we meant! So listen in and see if you can guess before we do! This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

Michael: Okay. Hello, my name is Michael. Next to me I have Goron from Italy and Win from Vietnam. And today we're going to do discuss movies, and specifically, we're going to discuss about Hollywood movies. Do we like Hollywood movies, what is typical in our own countries and so on? So we're going to start with you Goron. Please.Goron: I will say that generally, I like Hollywood movies. They are -- if I want to be like without thinking anything, you just like lie down on my couch and just eat something and drink and watch a movie, I would choose like a Hollywood movie. They are pretty fun. They are well done. They spend – they have huge budgets for those kinds of movies. Like the last superhero movies now, there's about Ironman, Spiderman, the Avengers, all those kinds of movies. The story or the plot is pretty weak but, you know, you have this like visual effects which the impact on you is strong. And you just think, or at least I think, “Oh wow, how did they do that?”Michael: Yeah. I will give like that example there. You have Avatar. You know, the story is – it's a huge cliche.Goron: Yeah. We heard about this story for…Michael: I knew how the movie would end. But, you know, just going there to see the good 3D effect that movie had, I think it had good 3D. It really immersed you in this whole world. You know, you saw those flying things from the forest.Goron: Yeah, but if you think, it was recorded by a 3D camera because just the camera was a million of dollars.Michael: Yes, but…Goron: The other 3D movies are really crap because everything in post production. So you can tell, “Oh this is 3D?”Michael: Yes.Goron: I mean, it's dark and you have to wear glasses. And if you already have glasses, it's uncomfortable. So it's kind of – it sounds – it seems like a technology that's trying to steal your money.Michael: It was a huge hype, I would say. They were charging more for it, and everyone tried to get on the 3D bandwagon. All the movies went into 3D and it became more normal for there to be 3D movies in cinemas than normal movies. But yeah, I agree totally with you. They went too far. Avatar was made, you know, from the ground up. The idea was to make it in 3D, and they really worked hard to provide a good 3D experience. While those other movies, they're…Goron: I guess…Michael: It's just not the same.Goron: Technology is not ready yet, probably.Michael: And I also agree with you that, you know, there is movies that you watch for the story, which are really good, and you love them. They don't have to be 3D. They don't have to be and you just focus on the story. And then you have the movies, like – you know, even Transformers with lots of explosions, lots of effects. It's entertaining in another way.Win: I mean it depends on how we look at entertainment. I mean, some days you could – I mean, you want to watch something emotional and romantic, and then some days you just want some really easy stuff.But I'm just saying that Hollywood isn't all about the blockbuster and effect-heavy movies. I think Hollywood has made some really good thinking, really good food for thoughts. And it's not that all bad.

Michael: Okay. Hello, my name is Michael. Next to me I have Goron from Italy and Win from Vietnam. And today we're going to do discuss movies, and specifically, we're going to discuss about Hollywood movies. Do we like Hollywood movies, what is typical in our own countries and so on? So we're going to start with you Goron. Please.Goron: I will say that generally, I like Hollywood movies. They are -- if I want to be like without thinking anything, you just like lie down on my couch and just eat something and drink and watch a movie, I would choose like a Hollywood movie. They are pretty fun. They are well done. They spend – they have huge budgets for those kinds of movies. Like the last superhero movies now, there's about Ironman, Spiderman, the Avengers, all those kinds of movies. The story or the plot is pretty weak but, you know, you have this like visual effects which the impact on you is strong. And you just think, or at least I think, “Oh wow, how did they do that?”Michael: Yeah. I will give like that example there. You have Avatar. You know, the story is – it's a huge cliche.Goron: Yeah. We heard about this story for…Michael: I knew how the movie would end. But, you know, just going there to see the good 3D effect that movie had, I think it had good 3D. It really immersed you in this whole world. You know, you saw those flying things from the forest.Goron: Yeah, but if you think, it was recorded by a 3D camera because just the camera was a million of dollars.Michael: Yes, but…Goron: The other 3D movies are really crap because everything in post production. So you can tell, “Oh this is 3D?”Michael: Yes.Goron: I mean, it's dark and you have to wear glasses. And if you already have glasses, it's uncomfortable. So it's kind of – it sounds – it seems like a technology that's trying to steal your money.Michael: It was a huge hype, I would say. They were charging more for it, and everyone tried to get on the 3D bandwagon. All the movies went into 3D and it became more normal for there to be 3D movies in cinemas than normal movies. But yeah, I agree totally with you. They went too far. Avatar was made, you know, from the ground up. The idea was to make it in 3D, and they really worked hard to provide a good 3D experience. While those other movies, they're…Goron: I guess…Michael: It's just not the same.Goron: Technology is not ready yet, probably.Michael: And I also agree with you that, you know, there is movies that you watch for the story, which are really good, and you love them. They don't have to be 3D. They don't have to be and you just focus on the story. And then you have the movies, like – you know, even Transformers with lots of explosions, lots of effects. It's entertaining in another way.Win: I mean it depends on how we look at entertainment. I mean, some days you could – I mean, you want to watch something emotional and romantic, and then some days you just want some really easy stuff.But I'm just saying that Hollywood isn't all about the blockbuster and effect-heavy movies. I think Hollywood has made some really good thinking, really good food for thoughts. And it's not that all bad.

Michael: Okay. Hello, my name is Michael. Next to me I have Goron from Italy and Win from Vietnam. And today we're going to do discuss movies, and specifically, we're going to discuss about Hollywood movies. Do we like Hollywood movies, what is typical in our own countries and so on? So we're going to start with you Goron. Please.Goron: I will say that generally, I like Hollywood movies. They are -- if I want to be like without thinking anything, you just like lie down on my couch and just eat something and drink and watch a movie, I would choose like a Hollywood movie. They are pretty fun. They are well done. They spend – they have huge budgets for those kinds of movies. Like the last superhero movies now, there's about Ironman, Spiderman, the Avengers, all those kinds of movies. The story or the plot is pretty weak but, you know, you have this like visual effects which the impact on you is strong. And you just think, or at least I think, “Oh wow, how did they do that?”Michael: Yeah. I will give like that example there. You have Avatar. You know, the story is – it's a huge cliche.Goron: Yeah. We heard about this story for…Michael: I knew how the movie would end. But, you know, just going there to see the good 3D effect that movie had, I think it had good 3D. It really immersed you in this whole world. You know, you saw those flying things from the forest.Goron: Yeah, but if you think, it was recorded by a 3D camera because just the camera was a million of dollars.Michael: Yes, but…Goron: The other 3D movies are really crap because everything in post production. So you can tell, “Oh this is 3D?”Michael: Yes.Goron: I mean, it's dark and you have to wear glasses. And if you already have glasses, it's uncomfortable. So it's kind of – it sounds – it seems like a technology that's trying to steal your money.Michael: It was a huge hype, I would say. They were charging more for it, and everyone tried to get on the 3D bandwagon. All the movies went into 3D and it became more normal for there to be 3D movies in cinemas than normal movies. But yeah, I agree totally with you. They went too far. Avatar was made, you know, from the ground up. The idea was to make it in 3D, and they really worked hard to provide a good 3D experience. While those other movies, they're…Goron: I guess…Michael: It's just not the same.Goron: Technology is not ready yet, probably.Michael: And I also agree with you that, you know, there is movies that you watch for the story, which are really good, and you love them. They don't have to be 3D. They don't have to be and you just focus on the story. And then you have the movies, like – you know, even Transformers with lots of explosions, lots of effects. It's entertaining in another way.Win: I mean it depends on how we look at entertainment. I mean, some days you could – I mean, you want to watch something emotional and romantic, and then some days you just want some really easy stuff.But I'm just saying that Hollywood isn't all about the blockbuster and effect-heavy movies. I think Hollywood has made some really good thinking, really good food for thoughts. And it's not that all bad.

George:  Alright, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the money. The George show a free for all Friday and the mind of Georgie belongs in a straight jacket, but luckily podcasting lets me share it with you. And speaking of straight jackets on the mind, I have to give a proper intro to my friend who was on the podcast today.I am super stoked to have Michael Bernoff wrote a book called average sucks and basically helps businesses and people. Optimize their life move from where they are to where they want to go and helps people like me that have struggled with self sabotage and mind blocks and past traumas, get through them and realize that we don't have to be a victim of our past.And that in every moment we get to choose where we go with all the tools, situations, and some of the best energy without the creepy hand clapping that I've ever seen when it comes to personal development. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome my friend, Michael, to the show. Michael. Good to see you, man.Michael: I appreciate it, brother. You'll be zero hound. Like that's all you get is handclap clap, like right there. That's the creepiest creepy as we get George. So it's exciting to be here. I appreciate the invite. Let's change some wine. George:  I'm stoked. And we were, we were overdue for a catchup, everybody. So I just said, get on the podcast and we'll just catch up there and we'll tell it a day.And so Michael, the first question. This kind of kicks everything off for everybody on my show. But when you think back, you've been in this game for a long time, you've been doing personal vellum. You've been doing business, you've been doing high level coaching. You just been helping people transform their lives. But when you look back and reflect on yours and Debra's journey, what was the biggest mistake that you ever made? And what did you learn from it? Michael: Interesting. Biggest mistake overall, or the one that I keep on making that I'm looking to get out of. I mean, which one I'll go, I'll go either direction, Number one is hiring myself. That's it? That's the biggest mistake I made in business is looking for me has been the biggest mistake I've made over the years. I kept on. I kept on bringing on people. I like, I enjoy, I want to hang out with their might buddies. They're my peers. And it was probably the biggest mistake I ever made.And I caught onto this after watching the, the men who built America that show. And I watched that Carnegie had brought on again in Frick, who was the absolute opposite of him. It took me eight years. And probably cost me half a million dollars in salaries and different things over the years, bringing on high level people that are identical to me that were not the opposite of me.And that's been my biggest mistake. I'd say in business, one of the hardest things that I've had to work on getting over is finding the missing link instead of finding a companion as crazy as it sounds.George: I'd say a really good one. And so what's the one you keep making over and over.Michael: You know, what's interesting is every time and we do really, really well, which is all the time, right?We get to this point where we've got this little chunk of this little chunk of space and time and meaning like we've got extra time, we've got extra money, we're in a good spot, which is predominantly my life where we can get this little bit of extra. I get this feeling every once in a while, but I could buy my problem away, meaning that I can hire a person.I can get it thing and do it. Instead of, I realize that I've got to do that myself. So I'm not saying you can't grow, you can't scale, you can't hire. But I'm just saying a lot of times when I get comfortable, have found that I looked four and I'm way beyond the normal comfort of people. But yeah, I find that I want to get to the next level and I think of it as throw money at it or throw something at it.I can make it go away. Instead of realizing that I got to put a little pieces in place myself first, before I can add that extra thing or person. So that's been a big one for me. Hopefully that makes sense. I break it up or am I good?George: I no, you're perfect. You're perfect. Well, I want to actually unpack that because I think that's probably one of the most common themes in the entrepreneurial world.I see. It's just the wrapping paper changes. We get to that place and it's like, it's like silent self sabotage. And like comfort comes and then you're like, Oh, let off the gas pedal for a minute. Okay. I have this space and for me it happens a lot, but what ends up happening for me is like, I'll be recording podcasts, like crazy, and I'll get a big buffer and I'll slow down and then I'm behind again.And I actually let go of the thing that created the space in the first place and then expect you to be able to recreate it overnight. And so I think it's a super, super common thing. I know for me, it isn't everybody I worked with. So as you recognize that, right, I think you nailed something that's so powerful in the entrepreneur world.We're here at all the time. Well, if you have money, you don't have a problem. I was like, well, that's true to a sense, except the foundation still looks the same and another floor as much as you want, but the foundation still can't support it. So like, when you say. For you like doing the work on me, you're looking at like, what are you talking about?And what do you look at and what work are you doing to help set yourself up, to get to that next level? Michael: Well, again, I'll give you a prime example. So I'm the best promoter of what I do. Meaning that when I promote what I do there's two beliefs. I talked to someone recently said the fastest way to change.What you do is to stop believing you're the best at what you do, even though there's certain things I'm phenomenal at the best of the world, the language communication, one of the best of the world at that. Believing that is probably a limitation inside of myself because as soon as I believe I'm the only one that can do it, I give up looking or trying to find anybody to help me.So I give an example. I bring on a business people to, I bring up, forgive me. I bring on myself. I'm excited about what it is that I do. I get excited. I pumped out our business. We make things happen. I promote, I sell. I do. And then I get busy with the infrastructure of taking care of all of it. And then I forget to put in place the things that work like for instance, If I'm training somebody new and I was working with them instead of just training them, I normally train them how to do what I do, show them the things that I do instead of thinking this old way of training or this old way of sharing.Like give an example if I'm great at selling what I do, I'm great at promoting great at selling can do some amazing stuff from stage. How do I duplicate that inside of another person? So doing the work to take the time to actually educate somebody to do it rather than I did the work. Did you see what I did?I hope you, you can do it. That's a big piece of the puzzleGeorge: Yeah, no, no, no. It makes sense. It's something, I pick an analogy. You're the language expert here. I just dabbled in it. I dabbled in the dark arts of language to get myself in trouble. Like that's how I see it, butI think what you nailed is that.You know, I have that same thing. I thought about it before. Like there's things in the world that I'm quote unquote, the Basta and then still having to improve, but I stay there. And then when somebody comes in, I hand them an outcome and I expect them to get there a certain way without giving them the actual way points or the touch points to get there that way.And the truthis that what I've struggled with? Because I'm just going full disclosure in the beginning is a lot of the times, I don't know. How I got there because I don't take the time to reflect or sit down or create that to make it repeatable because gets into my fear of success. Or my story might be wrong or, you know, all of those different pieces.And so Keith Cunningham nailed this one for me in his book, the road less stupid. it kicks me in the nuts every time I listen to it in the best ways, but, uh, yeah, that thinking time has been a really powerful determinant for me on like, just getting clarity and realizing that business.And I'm pretty sure personal development will be the same way as that. My thought with entrepreneurship is like immediate gratification, right? Like if I do this, I'll have this. If I. Launch this I'll make this, but it's just these short term results over and over and over again. And I feel like I've made those swings in my life as well to where it's like, Oh man, I got dad bod during COVID go run 12 miles on a broken the next day.Oh, I pissed them off when I said this, I'm just not going to speak for the next six days. Right. Like all those extreme. So like, how do you. Navigate that response. So I, and I'm only gonna speak for myself. You can use me an example yourself or whatever, but I know that there's times in our life where we're hit with this clarity, or we have to hire, or we get met with this resistance, or this fear comes up and we can either react or respond.And I know practices daily trying to increase that wedge between. You know, trigger and response, but like, what do you do? What's your practice? What do you recommend people do that? So it's not hasty and they can get into training that person the right way, or, you know, replicating their self. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.Michael: and so do me a favor, cause my add kicked in massively. I'm gonna ask you the question. Could you summarize that question? It's a bunch of pieces of the puzzle. Where do you want me to start on that? Cause that's a big, old question. I want to get this for the listener. I want to get that. So pinpointed where there's just like an exact answer.George:  So I'm driving the Zeigarnik effect home to the T with Michael right now, but. The core of the question is entrepreneurs are going to be faced with either. I need to hire somebody, grow them a moment. A lot of them are emotional based situations. They're either hit with fear or something along those lines, and they have two choices they can react to respond.So how do you recommend somebody navigates that? So we're not making reactive decisions, just trying to buy our way out of the problem and getting into the steps or the way points required both personally, and for the people on the receiving endMichael: So the first thing we've got to figure out is I believe you said earlier, we gotta be focused and yeah, the one thing is we've got to know what it is that we're after and what it is we want at the end of the day. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes people make. I teach this to my HIQ program, as simple as it is. A lot of times we think outcomes is just our goals, but that's going to be questions.Like, what do we want this to do? That's a crazy question. And it's the people that can ask that question a lot that they really get really comfortable. Like, what do we want this to do? Like, I play ice hockey, right? So I'm going out, like, am I going to just go play hockey? Or like, what do I want to do this shift?Where are we at the approximate? Cause my outlet to get out of the zone as quickly as I can use energy efficient and then go up the other side of the ice. So most people, what I've recognized is they do not really know what they want. What it is they're doing to actually do. So I would start there with people.Number one is like, if you're hiring people, like, what do you want them to do? Like, I know you think you need somebody, but like, what does it look like when it's working? These are questions. Most people don't know how to ask. So, like I say to salespeople all the time, like when you're great at sales, what does it look like?What are the results you're getting? I'm saw a lot of people were making a lot of money. What does it look like? Because if it's just about sales and making money, You're missing it, the quality of life. What is the thing that we're after? So I think the biggest question we've got to ask right off the bat is what is it that, what is it you're after?What is it you want it to do? Because I think a lot of times the decisions we make in our lives, this is where my book average sucks comes in. It's like a lot of times people think it's about being better than other people, but we make decisions in life. I would say 99% of our decisions we make are out of problem mode.We're out of like. Something's screwed up or, Oh my God, I got a bandaid issue here. Put a bandaid on it. Just lost everything. I gotta to figure it out. So what happens is we get to a point where we're not where we want to be, and we're willing to take anything other than what it is we have versus ultimately getting what it is we want.So what I always say to people is that if you really stopped and thought your entire life even becoming an entrepreneur, Came out of damage mode. It's like either at a job, you hate, you want it to be your own boss. You wanted to figure it out. You were pissed off. It's about something that you became an entrepreneur. If any of us thought this through, we probably never would have bothered becoming it's crazy to be an entrepreneur, gotta be a whack job, screw up, screw loose person. But then we get so into it. It becomes our identity. So I'd say one of the biggest things issues. We run into it where we all need to start a big starting point is what do we want it to do?And number two, it, because when we realize we're here to solve a problem, What is the alternative to this problem because, Hey, we don't have enough leads. What do we do? Oh, you sell leads. I'll take you come here. But then we're asking, like, what kind of leads do we want? Is this the kind of person we want a relationship with? How long have we worked with this person? So we make very rash decisions. When we're not where we want to be. So that's one mistake that all human beings make and entrepreneurs, especially. So hopefully that's the beginning of an answer for your question. George:  Yeah, no, it's no, it's super good. So, you know, I think outcome based thinking is something that I just started to like really, really understand. Andthis might sound really weird. I hadn't done enough worker forgiveness on myself, even get into outcomes prior to this point, like I was using entrepreneurship as a tool, right. Like I knew where I wanted to go. But when it came to like being able to describe it with texture or detail or an outcome, I couldn't go there.I couldn't think about it. There was like this block. And so I had to kind of like, I don't want to say earn the right, but I kind of had to go through some licks and lessons to get into that clarity. And so now that I have that outcome based thinking it started to change everything for me, and I'm noticing a lot more alignment, but also requires a lot more patients on my side.Because I'm healing from that dopamine and gratification. So when you say outcomes, step one is clarity. And I think that that's probably been the most helpful one for me. And so somebody sitting here like, okay, To have this problem. I need more leads, my website's not converting.Nobody's buying my offer. Right. The easy immediate thing to do is react, knee jerk, jump in and be like, Oh, let me get more. And then creating permanent damage down the roadMichael:  thinking it through, you're thinking short term now, long term.George: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how do you, what are like some of the tools that you can use? So like I use ice baths, right? Like for me, like it's the only thing that shocks me into the present moment. Ice baths, man,Miachel: wake your ass up.George:  Whew. Like you want me present? You put me in an ice bath. Right? All thoughts go away. All emotions go away. And I am in then here and now faster than I could ever get there. But. I know what it feels like, like during COVID, like we lost a couple of companies, I lost seven figures, right? Like I felt there were times that if I didn't have the tools in my toolbox, I would have been immobile, like paralyzed, like not knowing what to do because the weight was so heavy. And I have so much empathy and compassion those moments. Cause I know what it's like to feel stuck and frozen PTSD and all those other things. And so, yeah. You know, we're like, Oh, have outcome have clarity, but then once you have it and you get hit with that resistance, like what are some of the tools or processes or things that people can do in their life, help them navigate those times.Michael: Yeah. So let's take a real example here real quick. Let's let's bounce back and forth. You and I are cool. Let's do it real. Let play off this real quick. Let's think a real world equation. Let's  like, I'll take it just on me, but like, you got me here and we're lot. I have let's take bill, the entrepreneur, what he's dealing with and all, but on the dime. Cause I can give you a generic or I can help you personally, or somebody you've met like right now like there's somebody dealing with this on the show. So I'm going to throw it back at you.George: Yeah, I got bill. I got a lot of bills, myself being bill included.Michael: I can get in as we're listening. Keep going.George:  Oh yeah, yeah. Plugged me in. So our computer doesn't die over here. So bill all pre the world being shut down. Everything was good, was cruising. Things were predictable. Revenue was coming and then all of a sudden, the world gets shut down and locked down.Amazon changes, loses product, you know, sales chop, 90% having to make hard decisions. And now bill through that, but it's almost rebuild or relaunch where we are, but there's so many things happening that emotionally it's completely like all over the place. And so there's a lack of clarity. Number one because the state of the world is so crazy and nobody knows what it's going to look like and then how to find the right levers based on what's there.Now you do business coaching. So I'm asking about this particularly. So for me, bill is I either have to close this business or I have to make a big shift right now. Right? Like my social's kind of working, but it's not converting to sales. The people that I had, aren't buying again. I have to go find a new avatar.My product didn't get listed or it's not converting my website, my ads aren't working, but I think the root of it is there so much that can be done and everything was working and everything broke at one time. And so it feels paralyzing.Michael: So let, let's play with the words here real quick. And we'll just, I say we stay together here cause I'm going to want to watch this, your bill and the word. So I watched you're in California, right? George: I'm in Cali.Michael: So I watched not going to get into politics, but I watched the guy who makes the deal decisions over there, make the announcements right around March and he goes, California people, please stay home. This is what he said.  Please stay home.And then a minute later, The LA times is like California's on lockdown. He never said that. They said that terminology lockdown is designed in a strategic language to literally lock you down and mobilize you in place. It is designed by media companies to literally make you sit and read, sit and watch, and basically fuck yourself.Get nothing. Does that make sense? I don't know a better way to put it, but it's made to make you go, huh? It'd be down like this and they own, you that's designed no different than Netflix, that little button that makes you go to the next episodeof madman or whatever it is that's on next. So it's designed to do that.So one of the things is language is the fastest way to change anything. So I'm gonna give you a little bit of little technique. This is my favorite statement is that. Communication is the most underdeveloped underutilized asset that we have as human beings to achieving anything you want in this world.I'll say it again. Medication is most underdeveloped utilize asset that we have as human beings. So when people are like saying to themselves, the world is hard right now. Let me ask you a question. Is it hard or is it not what you want it to be? Because one of those is you're immobilized. It's difficult.A Navy seal would not call it hard. They would say, this is not optimal. I know that I worked with tons of Navy seals. They would say those circumstances are not optimal. And that is why they're Navy seals. Why we admire them. We go like this. Even if you don't like the military Navy seals are like this, we look at them go bad-ass.They're amazing. They are communicators galore. Hostage negotiation. They do incredible things. I've met a lot of these crazy guys over the years. So one of the things that I've recognized is human beings look at their situation and they do not set it up to win. I don't want you to be positive and go.This is great, but I want you to see it for what it is. Ultimately COVID is what's called an inconvenience. It's a massive inconvenience. You had a life that was different. The other alternative is you said you want a simple technique for people. How old are you now? George? George: 37Michael: 37 years old. How many months have we been dealing with nonsense?George: Seven. Six.Michael: Okay. You're good at math. You're good at math. What seven months too. Like my daughter asked me quickly today what's 2000 seconds. And how many hours is that? I go, 33. I'm quick with math. So what I recognize, you got to see me at a blackjack table. It's scare you what I can do,but what's interesting.I take over the dealers' minds. It's a fascinating concept. We do. But if I were to say at a 37 years of your life, seven months of which have been very inconvenient, correct? A lot of times we think our lives are over, but if you take 37 and you divide seven months into it. This is ridiculously like not a big deal, but most people it's been going on for 37 years in seven months.We're good. I'd be very concerned. Well, most people don't realize. We use words like quarantine. We use words like Corona. We use all these things that are going on and we're losing. The other thing that we're doing is most people. And I used to teach this. This is called a phone, right? Remember these things.George: Oh, Oh, wait the cable with a cord Michael: with the cable. This is like the old school right now. Back in the day when I'd call people, I'd say I'd have a lot of clients that call people money in motion. There's a lot to do with what you're sharing with me and they give people too much credit. So they're calling a guy that just, he just loved Google got 300 million bucks.He was one of the founders of Google. And you work for UBS financial. You want to transfer that money into your account. So when you call him, the guy could be five foot six, and you could be six foot five. And you're looking up at them. You're putting them on a pedestal. I think most people don't realize they put their problems up here.The reason Joel Olsteen has big Joel Olsteen is cause we picture up there power. We picture big up top. Most people position their problem incorrectly. Like it, when we were kids, it was Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Mike Tyson. That was it. That was okay. Tiger woods. That was it. Bumping bang. Boom. And what did we do? We put them on a pedestal, but anytime you put a problem or a person on a pedestal, you put yourself on the ground. So one of the things we need to do is call the Smurf and I hate to say the word Smurf, but when I call people, I picked I'm three foot two. And the reason why is it allows me to dominate in the situation.Most people are picturing COVID Amazon not working. They're like looking at, if you're watching me and not listening, I'm like cowering down to this thing. Instead of looking at it, like the spec, when the IRS sends me a letter in the mail, I know I don't want to read it. I look at it. I imagine it in my head, some little guy in a cubicle sent me this letter with his typewriter.Let me see what I got to deal with that I opened it up and I learned to deal with it. But if you picture big, bad, scary agency with machine guns, which the IRS doesn't have, you're picturing them with AR fifteens and your picture of them knocking on your door. They're their pencil pushers. George: They have a stapler and pocket protector.Michael: Yes there, the guy from office space or whatever it is, right. You're getting at it's all of it comes down to framing your life gets easy when you frame. So like I noticed this in my relationship when I first got married, my wife would say to me, listen, we're arguing. It's not over. We're just arguing. Like, it doesn't mean I'm like, Oh, okay, got it. This is.an argument in a relationship. George: Oh yeah. Aye. I say this because I think this is such a valid point and I don't know what part and just full disclosure, a lot of you're listening to, I've done a lot of personal mom or Michael, somebody I like highly respected. So all of this is very validating, the work that I work on every day, but one of the things for me that I noticed back in the past, and it's still cause the not compartmentalize, it still comes up, but I still have a default emotional state that comes up sometimes where it's like this happened.It's the end of the world, or I didn't communicate effectively. She wants me to move out or that didn't happen. The business is over. Now. I have the tools in place to be like, okay, no compartmentalize, like not like frame it. Right. Container it. And be like, okay, Nope. In this moment. Right. And one of the things I asked myself a lot is who am I.Who am I? Who am I? There's this awesome movie called chasing great,chasing presence. But, the professor, I forgot his name, but he's the leading professor on duality. Michael: I'm gonna write this down.Geroge: Yeah, it's called chasing the present and he's the leading professor, like most acclaimed, every award ever when it comes to duality and it was this really simple concept because in that moment, I asked myself that question, like, who am I?And I'm like, Oh, I'm this scared little boy. And it's like, what was I born that way? No. And I'm like, Oh, who am I? And I'm like, Oh, well I'm being compassion, but also fearful, empathetic and scarce. And I was like, was I born that way? I'm like, no. And then like it gets down. Yeah. And eventually there's no answer to the question and I'm who I want to be or whoever I am in that.Moment to moment . It's a really interesting perspective. So when you think about containers and language, cause like you're a master at NLP and framing and all those different things. I mean, it, it lands heavy when you, when you sit here, talk about like the media and the consumption and, you know, having to protect our lives from all that poison out there.But then what are some of the, like the self-talk statements? Like what are some of the empowerment things that people can do or say in those moments to create that container or frame those emotions or that experience to help them navigate that?Michael:  Well, let's let's, let's do something really interesting. Let's take a step back. I feel like we're I feel like we're debating. It's like I watched the debates. It's hilarious.George: OkayMichael:  Sure. Train really well, but not a bad debate. Let me go back sentence to what you were talking about. Then I'll pick it up. I have add like most of your listeners,  solve this. So one thing you said is pretty interesting about identity right there. So like when I was writing my book, A nine year old boy was trying to write the book. I didn't realize that Tucker had to call me out on it. It's like, Hey dude, what are you doing? Okay, what are you doing? Right. It's one of my, one of my best friends.And he's like, Hey, call me. I was like what are you doing? What's wrong with you?, And I realized that a nine year old boy that was trying to prove a point was writing the book. and then one day I looked in the mirror and go, why am I feeling thing so much of what am I doing? And then I realized something very interesting that I was trying to prove a point that I could do it myself, that I didn't need anybody else that I wanted to get it done.I wanted to heal myself, whatever it is I thought I was dealing with. And then one day I looked in the mirror and I was actually talking to Brad. Brad stands at one of my buddies. I was talking to Brad about this and I called him out right away the podcast. I said, Brad, how old are you? And he told me he was like 40 something.And he told me I will do this. Let me tell you a little story. I go, I believed I couldn't get into the book. And then myself who is writing the book and the nine year old boy was trying to write the book. That's where the idea of the book came in trying to be important. Then I said, well, what would a 41 year old man was a year ago?What would a 41 year old man me, that has worked with hundreds of thousands of people all over the world. That's happily married with great kids. What can that guy do? And what's amazing is most of us haven't updated our identity in a long time to make decisions from the who we are now versus who we were then.So one of the first things I'm going to, all of you is take a minute today. Look in the freaking mirror. You don't want any work to do. You don't have 90 seconds look in the mirror and go, who am I today? I don't care if your life sucks today, I'm a guy or girl that has been through a bunch of shit still alive, and I've made it is different than I'm a person that doesn't know what to do.So what I'm getting at is most of us have to, the first thing we need to do is look in the mirror and goes, who's actually making this decision. The problem is as a business owner, Most of us are still operating off who we were instead of who it is we want to be. So when I sit down with people from a coaching perspective, the first thing I ask them is what was your original reason for making money?And they're like, Oh, I wanted financial freedom. And I wanted to prove a point and I want it to be, how long have you been in business? Eight years. Awesome. Do you have financial freedom? Kind of. Okay, good. Are you on bossy ass? Have you proven a point? Yes. Then shut up and work on the next thing. Now it's about being profitable.We've got to move on. Most of us do realize that you're farther along than you think you are. It's just your old, you is running your life. There's multiple inside of ourselves. So a lot of us don't recognize that your brain is different than your mind. Your brain is. Your your, like in origin your mind is the operating system.Like your Mac computer is your brain, the operating system, snow leopard 46, eight seven three two Oh S. That is your mind. And your mind's main focus is keeping not you alive is keeping your identity alive. What you've said is necessary to be true. So that's going back to the thing we showed a minute ago.Now, the next question you asked was. The next question you asked is what do people do? And, and can you frame that last part for me again, because I'm going to add these two things together. George: Yeah. So keep it, to keep it short. So when feeling that way and getting into framing, like what do they do to, to reframe, right.And then take a step forward in that new interpretation. That empowering interpretation.Michael: There's three things. Everything we do. Number one is language. Language is made up of 85 different things, language I'm just making up 85, 80,000 things. There's the words, the intensity, the words, the tone, the word choice, the modality of the words, a million things.Number one is check your language. And the reason I'd say is there's another way to say what it is. You're saying more intense or less intense. Is it a failure? Is it a catastrophe or is it an inconvenience? Those are three different words with three different sets of emotions. I call it gradient language, but on each side of the room word is another way to say it less intense, more intense.Now you've got to ask yourself which way you want to go. Number two is pattern. We all have patterns in our life and you've got to ask yourself, like right now we have patterns we havewhat do we do? Realize when COVID first hit. I'm  personal responsibility, survivor type. Like I actually sadistically do really well during chaos.So when I'm playing hockey and a guy the other day got a blade cross his neck, I got a EMT, a plastic  three doctors and a lawyer. Everybody runs, but me and the plastic surgeon, the people that are used to blood, I go, you. Yeah. Even the referee didn't know what to do. You take your Jersey off, wrapped around his neck.You go call the ambulance right now. I do really well during chaos. So what's one of my patterns. So I've got to learn how do I selectively create chaos when I need it? Now, if you do not do good during chaos, you've got to then find a way to frame that differently yourself. So we've got language, we've got patterns.And number three is it's our state of being like, what state are we actually in? And I always know that a lot of times we try to fight through lowering your head and trying to get through your problems. The stupidest thing you can do. I always tell everyone, just give up. And the reason I say give up for an hour, give up for a day back in the day.And I didn't feel like working. I would go to Dave and Buster's, I could love video games. And the reason why is you're not going to do it, the reason you don't want to do it, if you were fearful, that's one thing. But if you've been in business eight, 10 years, and you're having a bad day, you're done, day's over.You're done. Don't go drink. I don't really, I'm not a drinker. I mean, if you want to drink,  I don't recommend drinking. It messes with the brain, but go do something, go play tennis, do an ice bath. Get that out of there. You need a clear perspective. You will not solve the problem inside of it. You've got to get into a different state.So Virginia city are one of my earliest mentors that I had. She's one of the people like the predecessors of NLP said, we've got three States. We've got decision making mode. Okay. We've got problem mode and we've got resource mode. But you can't make a decision unless you're in resource mode, but you won't be in resource mode when you're in the problems.So just imagine for a sec, I can get three cards in front of you. Like these are three napkins, but imagine one napkin said, problem. One napkin said solution, or a resource. And the other one said decision, and you put them out in front of you and go which mode I am, problem, resource and decision.And if you can't find. A, if you're in a problem, you need to very quickly get into a resourceful state. So you can make a decision and then you come back and solve the problem. And that's the one thing I gotta recognize learning how to become aware of that is how you get a Navy seals mentality. George:  Yeah, man, I love that those three modes it's actually similar to how Disney did it when they were doing business.They had three separate offices for ideation for the execution then for the critic.That, that same frame is really powerful and you and I are super alike and this has come up a lot in my life. Because I grew up in chaos, I then joined the Marine Corps for three combat deployments and I Excel.  it's somewhere hidden in the corner over here. I excelled in that, but then one of the things that you just said that really caught me off guard in a good way, and I think is going to be super helpful for me is there's a lot in my life where recognizing that pattern, I made that pattern wrong.That like, I was good under chaos, or I was good under pressure because I was framing it incorrectly. And you said knowing when to create that or when to turn that on. Um, so I dunno can you just expand on that for me? Because that one's super well to me, Michael, like I tend to subconsciously or unintentionally create chaos.Things will be good and I'll lob a bomb, right. Because then I'm comfortable or like somebody will talk to me. Give me feedback and it'll be completely nothing and I'll blow it out of perspective so I can win my way back. Cause I'm I thrive in that situation. Michael: But you like problems, you like solving things?George: Yes Michael: Okay. So there's a bunch of ways to, there's a bunch of ways to take this one on number one is we've got to realize that everything we do has a positive intention. That's one of my favorite beliefs and it's hard for people to accept that quitting is a good thing and procrastination is good. Some of you listen and go screw this guy.What'd you talk about. Quitting is good. Let me explain real quick. If you can quit little league, you can quit. You can  quit smoking when you get older, if you can procrastinate, which is a wonderful, full technique. How is procrastination? Good procrastination? Yeah, it's fantastic because if you can procrastinate over eating, you will be in better shape.Most people do not recognize the procrastination, quitting is positive things. So your ability to. Go into chaos and solve problems is a beautiful thing. When used appropriately would you, haven't learned how to do is understand the margins when to turn it on and when to turn it off. So here's the deal. If you need it to get going, I don't want you to get rid of it. Cause you'd get boring. I wouldn't like you anymore. You wouldn't be in town. If Mike Tyson didn't know how to work of a frenzy, he would never have been Mike Tyson. We would have never looked up to him. He would never be one of the greatest fighters in the world.No chance in hell. So we've got to learn how to do it. So the question is, do you know. How to turn it on. Yes. But do you know how to turn it off sooner than before it's too late? Like, do you know how to use it to your advantage and recognize what it is? George: No, not yet. Not yet like full, full disclosure. And like I guys on the pod we're going there. Cause I love Michael. I trust them inherently. So a lot of thousands of you get to listen to this live or, or when it's, when it's released. But no, for me I can turn it on now with all the right reasons and all the right parts. The margin. I blow out by a landslide and I don't see it until after, like, I haven't got the distinction of the awareness when I'm in the margin yet I missed the cues because I'm still, what, what I make up is I'm still, I have some unhealed trauma or I've just so far in it, like blinders on because I'm so comfortable, but also so afraid at the same time that I can't, I can't see those margins.  So, no, I haven't figured that out yet. Michael: Are you comfortable? Are you being effective?George: I'm comfortableMichael: Okay. Very good. So you're comfortable in the chaos? George: Yeah. Super comfortable. Michael: Okay. Very good. Very good. Okay. Are you uncomfortable when the chaos goes away? George: A lot of timesMichael: Okay, very good. Is it because you're bored and you like solving problems?  So you identify as a guy that likes to solve problems. Correct? George: I derived my vow. I've derived my value and worth from my ability to add value or solve something, which is the work that I do on spending time alone, because inherently I have a lot of codependent tendencies in nature due to my childhood. So I spent a lot of time alone working on being comfortable in that absenceness, or just by myself. Michael: Okay. So are you a codependent? Like, is that, is that like, is that a diagnosis? George: Yeah. Yeah, no, that was, that was a, yeah, that was a previous diagnosis. I've been through a couple of 12 step programs and all of that. So those were tendencies I had from my childhood in my trauma that have come into entrepreneurship. Well, and basically,, I'm super uncomfortable when there's no chaos. Michael: Okay. Was he uncomfortable? You don't know what to do. George: I don't know what to do. Okay. Michael: Those are two different things.  So let me just ask you again, are you uncomfortable or you don't know the next step? George: I don't know the next step. Okay.Michael: So do you know the difference between building and solving. well, tell me what you think the difference is. Cause those are words and they're interesting how words have meaning.  What's the difference between solving and the building?George: the difference between building and solving is,in a building would be the doing executing the task or the solution that you came up with solving. So solving would be ideating getting clarity, creating an outcome, and then building would be executing what you created that clarity on.Michael: Okay. So are you less comfortable in building something and more comfortable and solid? George: I am more comfortable in solving things. Yes. Michael: So no one really taught you how to build things. No. Okay. So bottom line is you don't have sophistication when it comes to building, but the thing you want revolves around building, so you really have a lack of understanding of building.  You really don't have a codependency issue. It's that building requires you to take responsibility for actually to build something. From scratch. So you like to build things or like it's a hallucination, the way you're building is you're building by solving a problem. So you like to hallucinate build versus what you really want is things to be sturdy, correct?George: YesMichael: Okay. So, um, so with that said, you've never looked at it that way.  So the issue you're having is no different than other people is it's not that things, aren't the way you want them to be. It's not that you like chaos so much. It's that. Chaos is comfortable and building is something you're not very familiar with, but what happens when you decide to get good at something and dedicate your time to it?  What happens? George:  go hard in the paint all the way.Michael:  What does that mean? George: Um, just tangible examples. Like I want it to be good at golf. So I got down to three handicap. I want it to Scott out of a thousand jumps in a year and a half. I wanted to scuba dive. So became a dive master rescue diver in a week and a half. Like I, I just tend to go all the way. Got it hard.Michael: So this is just an area that you've never actually applied yourself yet. George: Yes. Yes. And it comes up everywhere. It comes up primarily in interpersonal relationships.Michael: So do you believe possibly, and I had thrown you out there on your show will help you out with this. You had some challenges as a kid on sounds like parental stuff. I don't know your whole back story. There's some stuff, mom, dad, different types of things. Challenges does that, whatever, blah, blah, blah, whatever. Yeah. We'll leave that where it belongs. We'll let the therapist handle that. But the point is.What I realized, and we stunt our growth. We think we can't grow and we like to protect versus grow. So my question is, what if you did, when I said, and you thought about this, like, what is the, what are you capable of today? Like, this is the question that I asked Brad. And I asked you what can you do from the position you're in?Like, what could you, you build, like, if you were to be outside of you and hire you, what could that guy do? George: If I was to be outside of me and hire me, what could he do?Michael: stories without the like, cause you hired you, you would, that person wouldn't show up with the drama and the stories and the diagnosis they would show up with the ability,  So you would never hear about it. Like if you hired them and you paid you 150,000 bucks a year to accomplish a job, what job could that guy do? George: Yeah. So applicably in my business right now could write the curriculum for my mastermind could record the seven video ads could develop the email strategy for the next three months in a matter of an hour..Michael: Okay. That guy can do that. Yes, it may. Cause you would hire that guy to build. So the question is, have you put this person in the right job? What you have this person doing in the Marines? There's there's like the commander, there's the nightwatchman,there's the guard. There's PT duty.There's, you know, cutting potatoes. Like what job did you sign yourself up for? Like, what is your automatic job that you're signed up for? Is it protector as a builder? I think you forgot that you how to protect yourself right now. You know how to use a weapon, you know how to use your hands, you know, self-defense or badass.I think he forgot that you could stop protecting because you've already got that part down. And I think you need to flip into a different mode, which means your identity needs to shift. And I think you just forgot to update your operating system. You're operating off of an LG. What was that thing? Back in the day, you're operating off the old razor phone. Remember the razor? The star tech and you forgot, do you have an iPhone X, Y for seven six, and you realize you've already got production protection. 99% of the world would never want to get into an altercation with you physically or verbally. Yeah. So you've already got protection down. I think we could put that off to the side and we can go into building mode.And I think a lot of people can get out of lockdown mode. And a lot of people can get out of worry mode and we can start going into building. And I think we're just a little bit behind. George: Yeah, man. I'm actually, I have tears welling upMichael: I know I can see it. I love you. That's why I'm doingGeorge: And this is why I have people like you in my life. Cause I could coach this by Stefano. It's all the time I talk about this all the timeand the distinct and I love it.  I'm, I'm protecting and it's this interesting thing and it almost seems like a conundrum to me because I say like, I. I'm comfortable in the chaos. And then but when I'm in it and it motivates me, then I'll protect myself even more. Cause it gives me some semblance of safety. Michael: So you value value, protection massively, don't you?George: I do. I do. Michael: And when you value protection, you protect every aspect, you protect your finances. You don't want to lose things. You worry about stuff, all that kind of stuff, but here's the thing. Nobody could pay you to stop being a protective person. It's who you are. It's your soul. So you could actually stop trying to do it. You'll do it automatically. What if you were to take it down 20% and not even try to do it anymore?Fuck it. I'm just gonna put it off to the side. I'm done protecting. I'm gonna focus on building. I think for the next six to eight months, I'll always be a protector cause that's who I am innately and it'll show up as I need it. Well, let me ask you a question. You've never attempted to shift your identity, right?George: Oh, I have a lot. Michael: You moved it to something like building versus protecting.George: Yeah. That's why we have a podcast. Took me nine years. Michael: I get it. But have you ever said that to yourself? Very simply that you know what, I'm going to shift my perspective. I don't need to worry about protecting you.George: No, I've never, I've never used language to do that.  Or like made that declaration. Yeah. Michael: I wouldn't, I would give it a shot. I believe you've already done it. I see it leaning forward and how simple it is to do, but I'll tell you that you've got a venue you're automatically going to be a protector, like automatically every one of you is going to be an entrepreneur. You need to stop trying to be an entrepreneur. I need to stop building something. Stop trying to prove to people you're an entrepreneur and start building something that works. So anyways, that's just a side note on everything. I can't solve everything in one, one.George: I think. I, I, I actually think it's super, super powerful, not even a side note, like just the main, the main, it's a massive, main vein for me.And I know it's out there a lot because like, as you even said that, and you're talking about like me being the protector, I also will intentionally default to it. Out of, uh, out of the fear of growth, right? Because that creates vulnerable. And I don't know what it looks like and I have to build, and  it's like I've had these opportunities to declare myself a builder and, but I will only declare myself a builder in that container in which I think I can control.And what you're saying is very powerful for me. It's very, very powerful. I think it's powerful across the board. Like when you think about this and COVID and everything like,  I'm super, super excited, grounded and emotional in this moment and present because this is the narrative of my life and it applies everywhere.AndI do this work all the time and. You know, there's parts of my eye. A lot of the times I even, I even call the work hard. Like I make the work hard because I'm like, look how hard I can do it. Look, I'm protecting look. And it's just recreating all these patterns from, you know, the abuse as a kid, the sexual abuse, the physical abuse, the death in the Marine Corps, all that stuff and I've never intentionally Michael: shifted the identity, like it to be hard as you get em, You get more validation when it's hard, because thousand percent of that you could do something. And we love things to be difficult. That's what entrepreneurs sadistic. We like things to be hard. And I can only speak to this because I understand and I've been through it.We want it to be hard cause we feel like we'll get a double reward or a double validation. Wake up. Call is this. You don't get extra credit for being harder. Okay. A win is a win is a win is a win. It depends where you're at. So if you're a basketball or hockey or football, whatever it is, when you win, you won.Whether you beat a good team or not good team, a WCW.A win is a win. We think we get extra credit for doing something more difficult. That's our ego talking. So for a lot of people, we want to find that instead of realizing your job in life, if it's defined to make your life easier than it is not to make it more complicated.So the reason you're doing it is, and then I'm going to explain it, whether you're trying to impress your dad or you're trying to show some how tough you are. Prove a point, whatever. Finally get loved that you never got whatever that story is. And the reason why I hear people starting to use the word trauma, I think about that.It's like that word is so debilitating in a lot of ways, because trauma means permanent scar that cannot be gotten rid of bottom line is like, when I talk about AA, a lot of times, I always say it's step 13 is missing. And step 13 is after you've been sober three, four, five years. Step 13 is I used to live a way that didn't work for me.It's a better way to put it. Step 13 is declaring. I used I'm different now. And really owning that instead of I'm an alcoholic, you've been over 50 freaking years. You don't need to declare an alcoholic at 50 years sober. I think you'll be okay. You've been sober more than you've been drunk, but the point is, and I don't mean no disrespect.They've been around bill W's program for a long time. I don't drink myself, but the point is the why I'm bringing this up to you and why it's important is. Is understanding that we need to leave that where it was, you are not that person anymore. And that's a big piece of the puzzle. A lot of us have to realize it's not March anymore.We're not in lockdown anymore. We just have a different world than the one we had prior and we need to accept things. Aren't the way I want them to be. How long am I going to cry? And then we gotta move on.George: Yeah, man. Yeah. Thank you for that.Michael: I don't know what that does, but it does something good. George: Yeah, of course it does. I mean, I, and just so everybody know, watching or listening, we're on video and I know Michael really well, so I know he's watching everything I do with my body, like leaning in and do it. And this is his absolute mastery, but Michael, one of the things for me is what that simplified for me is I've been in this game for a long time doing this work and having it.And it really always comes down to the simplicity of it. Right. It really, really, we're not getting an extra trophy, but even that just simply really plugging in or, or putting myself into one of those mindsets to observe and see where I am and then creating a different mode is powerful.One thing I did want to ask about, and I think that this is, you said this earlier, but I think it's, it was prevalent for me. So I know it's probably prevalent for other people. When I started as an entrepreneur, my drive for success was to prove I could be it right. I could prove I could do it.And then I made it. And then I kept that belief and I lost a lot of it again, because I felt like I'd lost the fuel. And then a lot of the times for the years, like I was like driven by insecurity. I was driven by fear. I was driven by external validation. And then, you know, there are times in my life where I've been grounded and present and not really knowing how to value myself.And I was afraid and I've had moments of like, in those moments, I don't know what to do. Right. Like what do I do? Where do I go? And. You know, we talked about it with building, but I just think, I don't know. I just don't think this topic is talked about enough in entrepreneurship because it's so easy to live in the hustle culture.That should be cancelled culture. And I just think it needs to be talked about more. So, yeah, I don't, I dunno. I dunno if you have any other thoughts on that. Cause when you said it earlier, you're like, you know, we build something to do it, but then you don't change your identity. Like, Oh, you wanted to create financial freedom, then you did it.You wanted to do this, then you did it. And the thing that I struggled with is that. When I was in those moments.When I started to shift, I felt like I had no fuel. Like, I felt like I had no energy because I didn't know the outcome or the clarity, and I wasn't trying to prove anything anymore. And so I felt, I took me six months, by the way. Like when I walked away from a company before I like really got into flow again, it was like six months of going to Dave and Buster's, this was a 2016, 2016 when I walked away from.Michael: And that's the part people don't get that's okay. We live in this world. We think we have to push all the time. You don't have to be on all the time. That's the part. Most people don't get. You do not have to be on it all the time. so when I talk about this, your original reason for going into business, that's the reason I love that question. I ask people that they tell me, and then I look at them and go, have you achieved that already? Okay, great. Are you willing to stand on top of that now? And build from there. You can always go back that or be willing to stand on. The fact you've already pulled that off. Our reasons for things change. I'll give you an example. Like I had trouble exercising and my mid thirties couldn't figure out why I couldn't do it.I'm an athlete. My whole life played hockey, male life gain in some way, not feeling good. Why can't I exercise? And I realized my original reason for going to the gym was a 16 year, 15 year old boy. I was playing ice hockey, wanted to defend myself. I wanted to impress women. I wanted to look good and I wanted to what was the other reason? I, my buddies did it. And then I'm 35 years old. I don't have any buddies that work out with Madison. I have that right now. I'm going to get a kid, right? Nothing going on there. I attracting other, women's not a good idea when you're married. It's most people that's probably not recommended. We're gonna avoid that.Some people are into that. That's not our thing. I'm beating people up. You go to jail,  when you do that at that point in life. So I couldn't do it. Work out to me, meant something. I say, I'm going to do that. I don't do so in my head, I said, let's go to language. And I started training for a Spartan race.Think of a different spin word train, which is a fresh new word I've never used before. And then there's the word workout. Most people, the word entrepreneur needs to never be used again. I know you want to impress people by it. It means you work hard. It means you think you're special. Stop thinking you're special.It's your issue? Entrepreneur leader leads to the death graveyard of impossibilities and burnout, right? Leads that Gary Vee grind and hustle. I don't want us freaking life making a video every day of the week. I never seen his kids unless he's got a system I don't have. The dude's obsessed with working.George: Glad I'm not the only one that said this. Cause I've said this publicly before, I'm like, well, training your children. That work is more important than them because you never see them. Michael: Yeah. I've been realizing this now. Like I'm working my ass off during this stuff and my kids are home more. I'm like, damn, I, I. I'm not liking, maybe even what I set up for myself. So maybe we need to stopstop calling an entrepreneurship, stop calling a business owners. Cause our connection to those is hard work. Would you does require to get started? I'm talking to the guy, that's been a girl that's been in the game five to seven to 10 years, 15 years, 20 years.I'm not talking to the new newbie, crush it, kill it. Go work as hard as you can get moving for the people that have been in the game a long time. Maybe we need to revaluate what we even call ourselves instead of realizing. I'm building something that allows me to do this, that I'm not a business owner I'm seeking out opportunity.I don't want to be cheesy about it, but like when I ask what your original reason for going to business was to impress people or to prove a point, then you're a decade later, you're looking to do the same thing you've got to, we've got to mature past that. So the part of that is re languaging. It is.So I went from working out to training and now training is not hard. It's something I worked towards and it's got a target. Now I train my body in my mind. George: Well, when it comes back to what we talked about in the beginning, like, what is the first step it's having an outcome, like a clear outcome and you know, back in the day, do personal development, it was like, you, you can't hit your new destination when you're staring at the back of the boat, right?Like you're just going to sink the Titanic. And I went through something similar, by the way, in my mid thirties about like the fitness. Cause I went from this hard Marine CrossFit competitor to all of a sudden I was like, hating the gym, not getting up, eating like crap. And it was, I wasn't, I was trying to out-train my past instead of like, Looking at something that I wanted to accomplish.And I think at super they're what Mike McCollough, cause it, you might appreciate this. He says you're never allowed to call yourself an entrepreneur for the same reasons, call yourself a shareholder. He's like, because your performance and your payment is directly tied to the success of your company, where your hands are in.And I think it's a really, really novel point.to not own those labels and to not carry those around. Right. And so that one was distinction for me. That's funny because I've probably met 300 people since I read that book and I've said like, Oh, what are you doing? An entrepreneur? Ah, I'm a shareholder.And they're like, all right. And I still correct myself and it feels like the word entrepreneur is like toxic tongue for me at this point. And I haven't like broken the habit because it was a really powerful label for me. I was like, look, I'm the only person in my family that didn't end up on drugs dead or in an addiction facility.And I own things. And so, you know, like there was a part of me until probably 36 years old that just wanted, when anybody from home, like people, I don't talk to her. If that magical Facebook friend adds me 25 years later and they ask her, see what I do. I'm like, look, I fucking made it. I showed you. And. At the same time.It wasn't really doing anything for me. I wasn't spending more time Michael: Here's the cool part. This is why I married the right woman. My wife would look at me. Of course, you made something now, what are you going to do? So that's, my wife would say, so if you, if you actually saw you for what you were you wouldn't be impressed by what you've done yet.George: Five, seven Michael: big. Do you play George: about six 10? Michael: You sure. Are you sure? You're not playing five one compared to other people? You're sure you're not playing five one. Compared to what you're capable of in your heart, how big you play, and maybe you got it wrong  Are you at sales? How good are you at sales?George: Really good. Michael: Okay. Compared to Bobby Axelrod and billions, how good are you at sales? Geoge: On a scale of one to 10? Like a three.Michael: Okay. So my question is why do we keep on telling ourselves we're tens? Our biggest issue in life is we think we're great. That's our biggest fuck-up.George: Why are you the greatest in the world? That language. Michael: One of the greatest and that that's a specific marketing. Kidding. I'd love you and I, what? No, let, let let's, let's let's really play with that for a minute. I leave that for marketing purposes and for belief systems, but then I'd have to regulate myself so that I know I just said that, but I need to get you to own that total at the boutique, in the area of my life.So now here's the deal I've been working on it 20 years. You know what I mean? I've been at this a long time, 23 years old. I started in 43 next week. The point is, the point is why I'm bringing this up is you got to realize all of us, I sat down with a sales guy, how good are you at sales? He goes, I'm great.What'd you make? Last year? I made 92,000. Great compared to how much you want to make. How good are you? I guess I'm not that great. So the point is if all of us recognize we're not as good as we think we are your day or life changes. Is when you accept, you're not where you want to be. Yeah. That is the most beautiful thing.So I learned that you live in the life you have when you were in the Marines that I don't want to do this anymore. You said I don't want to be here anymore. What else do I want to be? An entrepreneur? Never thought it through. Started building a box, made an identity. I'm an entrepreneur. I struggle got some people that are gonna cheer you on.You built your box. I call it your average. You built this box for your life, but everything you want is outside of it. So there's three ways to get where you want to go. I'll give it to you. Real simple. Number one, build a ladder. Get out of where you're at. It's very hard, but build a ladder. Good luck.Learning how to build a ladder with any wood. Number two, lower your head, try to get through the wall. That's what we do. Doesn't work. Number three, let somebody help you very hard. And number four is outgrow the wall and how you outgrow it is by working on becoming honest. And here's why I say this is if you actually would look in the mirror and yeah, I'm not as good as I think I am and I'm okay.Actually capable of, but I'm actually capable of 10 times more. That gives you room to grow and it makes unlimited possibilities and massive insecurity in the same breath. But how cool is that? Your insecurity is that you're capable. You just don't know how, and then all you gotta do is figure out how to grow again. That's my, that's my excitement.George: No, I love it. And two things cause everybody listening Michael, I've spent a lot of time in person together and I love going back and forth, but  in full disclosure, there's a lot of times that I hang my current value on my past achievement. And that keeps me small.And it keeps me in that box of average or comfortable. And so like, I love this conversation. I appreciate it because there's been some big shifts even as of late, like different levels of noticing that and where I can improve. And it's funny because for the first time ever, I've brought an outside help, like four people better than me and all of these areas that are helping me get there, coaching me and building with me.But one of the things that you just said, and you said this earlier, and it's been an open loop for me that I want to close.  One of the things that I caught subtly is when you were talking about, about language. I forgot the two words you used, but you just used another one of insecurity.And my immediate go to is noticing how there's no negative meaning on the word. It means opportunity. It means possibility. And there were two other ones you used earlier, too. But even in that moment, I found myself when you said insecurity getting uncovered from like, Oh, I don't want to be insecure.I'm like, no, I do, because it's Michael: what is insecure on country. Think of the word. Let's just go to the word. Let's think all the meaning out of it. What does it mean insecure? I'm not secure about it yet. I

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

Today, Lucy Branch talks to Michael Speller, charismatic contemporary sculptor who has many works in public places in the UK including outside the iconic Millbank Tower in London, Greenwich Hospital and Loch Lomond as well as abroad. His work is all about distinctive figurative forms which play with ideas around balance and rhythm in our lives. Michael discusses his creative journey in becoming a professional sculptor, his inspiration and his love of bronze. Join us and BE INSPIRED BY SCULPTURE. You can find images of Michael Speller's work and a transcription of the interview at https://sculpturevulture.co.uk/figurative-sculpture-with-michael-speller/ If you are looking for a new book, the novel mentioned in this interview is currently available free from Sculpture Vulture. This podcast was brought to you by Antique Bronze Snippet from the interview: Lucy: I began our discussion today by asking him, if he'd always been creative? Michael: Yes. I've been creative all my life in different guises, really. I suppose the first thing was I created my own mobile beach cocktail bar and ended up taking it to Corfu and doing a summer in Corfu. So, there was a commercial element to it, but also the most important thing to me was just creating something that had never been created before. And this was like a big ball wheelbarrow but built up with a wooden stretcher and a trap door underneath a parasol with a parrot called, Harriet, hanging off the side of it and crushed ice underneath and cocktails. Now, the funny thing with it, the whole idea was it was supposed to move but basically it never moved because everyone ran to me and were so enthusiastic about this mad thing on the beach that I always had queues and I was handing in brochures the next summer to all of the core marketing people. Lucy: That's fantastic. really entrepreneurial as well. Michael: Exactly. And then progressing from that my catering element was where I started…that's what I did at college. I did a catering management course at Oxford Poly as it was then. Then I went on to start my own catering business which, again, was a little bit unusual. We're talking a hell of a long time ago now but it was the first, sort of, delivery service. This is before even pizzas were delivered or they were just starting to be. This was an up-market delivery service with monkfish and prawn sort of pies and loads of exotic ingredients. And I was racing around in a dinner jacket serving these in Blackheath and Greenwich. Lucy: I bet they loved that.

Michael Strausz is an associate professor of political science at Texas Christian University. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST. TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: One thing I really miss from pre-COVID days is hosting dinner parties. One day, I hope soon, we're going to get back to that point where we can safely invite people into our house, but until then we can dream about dinner parties and what we want to make, and we can learn how to be most prepared to host dinner parties. ZAK: Today, cousin Mike, we're going to talk about meal planning, right? MICHAEL: Yes. Specifically for a big group. So I think the place to start is the people. You need to think about who you have coming over. If they have allergies, if they have strong preferences, if they're not a very adventurous group. This is, it goes back to my years doing high school debate when you'd always think about judge adaptation, you'd want to make an argument that would appeal to the judge that you were debating for. It's like the same kind of thing with food. Yeah. So, audience adaptation. So then, then the second thing you do... try to pick a main dish that's going to appeal to the largest number of your guests as possible. It might not be possible to appeal to everyone. If there's some people, you know that they can't eat it for allergies, then you want to make something really good for them as one of the side dishes. Make a grocery list. And then ideally you want to try to make a plan that's not like, okay, I'm going to make this dish. Then I'm going to make this dish. Then I'm gonna make this dish, but that's allowing you to work on multiple dishes at once. So you want to look at all the steps, then all the different recipes and try to think, okay, while, this is warming up. I'm going to do this. You kind of integrate the steps. And often, you know, when I'm cooking, I'll make a list that will include things like, you know, get the oven heating up, set the table, and then like stir-fry the vegetables. And it incorporates things that I want to do around the house with different steps for the different dishes. So there'll be sort of a master list. And then I just work my way down that list. And as I do, I get the house ready and then I get all the dishes ready. ZAK: Let me ask you this. After you've put on this beautiful dinner party, do you clean up the night of, or do you wait until the next morning? MICHAEL: So I would say this is a place where, um, there are some marital differences for me. If I were living alone, I would probably do it all the next morning. But, uh, my spouse, I think, does not like to wake up to a disgusting house. So she likes to at least get a significant amount done the night before. I am Michael Strausz. I'm an associate professor of political science at Texas Christian university. And I'm the cousin to Zachary Rosen. ZAK: Thank you for listening to the Best Advice Show and Food Friday. If you're enjoying this show, please consider rating and reviewing on Apple podcasts. And if you don't listen on Apple podcasts, no big deal. Maybe you can consider sharing the show with your network. I'd really appreciate it. Talk to you soon.

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

James: Hey, audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Through Value-add Real Estate Investing. Today, I've Cody Payne and Michael Tran from Colliers International out of Dallas market. Hey guys, why don't you say hi to our audience and why don't you introduce what you guys do? Michael: Oh, Hey everybody. Michael here. You know, we focus mainly on multitenant, mid-rise office buildings or industrial buildings or industrial parks. Anything between three to 25 mil is our typical range that we work on. Cody: And I'm Cody Payne and I work with Michael and that pretty much sums it up pretty well. We sell investment office and industrial buildings in Dallas Fort Worth. James: Got it, got it. So you guys are brokers, right? Do you own any of these as well? Cody: Yeah, actually we do, we actually just did a syndication not long ago where we pulled together a few investors and bought a portfolio of five office buildings down the mid-cities. And we've even done some development also. James: Got it. So office and industrial; nobody has talked about this asset class in the show. So I want to go really deep into how people make money out of this asset class because I'm a multifamily guy. I'm so used to multifamily and a lot of people knows multifamily very well. It's like seems to be like the only asset class out there. Right? But I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who's killing it in industrial and office. Right? So, I want to go deep into, you know, how an active investor would look at these two asset classes and you guys absolutely will be you know, giving a lot of value in this discussion. So let's start with industrial. Can we define what is an industrial asset class and how does it look like when I drive by, how can I say this is industrial and is there any different types of industrial that I need to be aware of when I drive by and when I'm going to look at something? Cody: Yeah, absolutely. So industrial is going to be, you know, your big box, tall, concrete warehouses that you'll see as you're driving along the freeway or in some other parts. These things can range anywhere from tenants utilizing just a couple thousand square feet up to a large shipping receiving warehouse that you'll see, that can be half a million-million square feet. A lot of things that I think a lot of people are familiar with is, seeing those tall, 24 36 foot tall concrete structures where a lot of 18 wheelers are backed up to that are loading, unloading, cross-docking and things of that nature. That's what your typical image of a warehouse industrial is. And a lot of people look for that and that's one of the key asset classes that a lot of investors are looking for right now. James: Well, so you said a lot of investors, I mean, it's a very relative term, right? And I'm not sure you guys know how much people invest in multifamily. So is that same equal in people investing in industrial and office or is it like coming from your knowledge in a multifamily is like crazily too many people and industrial is like a niche [03:26unclear] ? Cody: So the office and industrial it is a little more niche. I wouldn't say there's as many buyers for it as there is for multifamily. I mean, you, obviously there's a lot more multi-families than there are mid-rise office buildings, especially out here in Dallas, Fort Worth and even in Texas as a whole. But it's very niche specific. And so, that's why a lot of times you'll see a multifamily guy refer out if someone's looking at buying an office building or even vice versa. Because we won't sell a multifamily complex just because we're not as aware of it but the buyer pool is still very good. We get a lot of multifamily people, especially over the past three, four or five years, that have really started to hone in on the office industrial market as compared to my 10 years prior to that. James: Got it. Got it. Yeah. Even in my book, I mentioned that, you know, all these asset classes, they are somebody who's really good at these asset classes. And a lot of passive investors just look to, you know, seek to this kind of operators who are really good at industrial office or multifamily. There are people who specialize in this and they're really, really good at it so they have to seek for that operators. So that's good to know. It's very niche market. So, coming back to industrial, how do I identify a sub-market...how do I find an industrial, which is a really good, in terms of location, how do I say if I look at this building, I can say that this building is in a really good industrial location. How do I say that? What are the factors I need to look at? Michael: You know, one of the main ones nowadays is access. A lot of the logistics chains, they kind of make sure they can get the 18 wheelers in there, parked. That's why a lot of the users that are looking out that way, they're always making sure that they're centralized too. So like, let's say the great Southwest district here just South of DFW Airport; that's one of the biggest industrial hubs over here, you can get to almost any part of the metroplex within 20 to 30 minutes max. And then you'll have Alliance, which is in North Fortworth. I think that's a sleeper town that a lot of people overlook here but they're just building more and more bigger boxes up there. And it's due to 35 West Highway that goes all the way down to Austin, even down where you guys are at. So that's become another major hub press as well. And FedEx, Amazon they're all up that way. And you've got little pockets up in Plano as well which is probably about 30 minutes from the airport and they've got some major like Toyota is looking to move up that way. And they've got everybody else just following them over here. James: So do you look at, like for example, in multifamily, we look at household demographic, we look at median household income and income growth, job growth and all that. But it looks like industrial is different, I guess. Like you have to look at how convenient it is for the 18 wheelers to meet and compare and also seems to be some kind of adjacency with the certain key distributors like Amazon or Toyota. So is that key factors, I presume? Cody: Yeah, absolutely. And actually, we've got a map behind us.  James: So those who are on YouTube, you can definitely see the map. Cody: Yeah. James: To really, you know, talk numbers in terms of what? Cody: Just as the Dallas Fortworth airport right here. And this is the great South West district that Michael was talking about. This is where you'll have a lot of warehousing and a lot of it up North as well. Amazon's got a large center as well. So you've kind of have the same thing, which is growing a lot out here where Hillwood has their Alliance airport. And then the same thing back over here where Dallas load field is, there's a lot of warehouses over there and there's a lot off limits. So you know, a lot of these guys where we see a lot of tenant velocity and things of that nature are going to be closest to the airports because that [07:49unclear]  Fortworth because here and going to Fortworth and go to Dallas and go South and go North and they can receive from one of the largest airports in the world right here. James: Got it. So it's basically access to the airport and access to the highway and how can we get to go to other big cities, I guess, right? Fortworth, Austin. Cody: And they don't necessarily need highway visibility cause that's your most expensive parcel of land, but they need good access to it. And so having that nearby that airport, they've got access to I-20, I-30, 183, 360, and so that's a really good hub. And that's why that district is such a large district and continues to expand. James: Is there like a park, like an industrial park where the city or the government is allocated or is it like, is there random everywhere? Cody: They're more spread out. James: So there is no like tax incentive offered by any government or any cities, I guess. Cody: Well, yeah, certain cities will offer certain tax incentives. I know Dallas offers quite a few in certain areas and even if you start getting into like the opportunities zone areas and things of that nature. James: Got it. Got it. Got it. So, you talk in terms of industrial, in terms of square footage, right? That's what you said, or square footage and access, access is also an amenity. But I presume, what is the average price per square feet in terms of industrial buildings? Michael: So that is a very good question cause those can actually range anywhere between 50 a foot all the way up to, you know, building new. It also depends on the age of the building, ceiling height, [09:39unclear] in the building. So there's a lot of factors in industrial that you have to account for. How many docks as well. Dock high, grade level doors or are you familiar with any of these terms? James: No, no. This is all completely new. But it's important. I want you guys to share that level of detail because I want people to really learn how do you, cause I'm going to go to their underwriting later on. So that's going to features of the industrial, is that like a class A, class B, class C industrial buildings? Cody: Absolutely. Go over some of the rates that you see on some... James: Yeah. What are the class As? Cody: Are you asking for rental rates? James:  Rental rates and also buildings, right. I presume that's all correlated? Michael: Yeah. So rental rates, you'll see anything, depending, like I said, very niche-specific stuff. So like you'll see anything from $4 a foot all the way up to 10 and sometimes even higher and triple net or some of the newer industrial products coming out. And then you have if it's, you know, if it's in the less desirable area, they'll Teeter with the four to seven modified gross or industrial gross as you'll hear. And those usually have some expenses in there that are charged back to the tenant. As for space, if the space is less desirable, you're going to see more of that industrial gross number anywhere between, you know, five to seven. Newer stuff, like I said, $10, sometimes triple net, just depending on area and access. Cody: And a lot of times is that building size gets larger, that rental rate, well a lot of times go down. James: Okay. Okay. So before we probably go further, can you define triple-net because a lot of people in the residential stage, they are not used to this triple net. Can you define triple net, what does it mean? Michael: Yeah. So if you can ever in residential, try to charge them triple net. But when I was saying it's a triple net, basically it's taxes, insurance, and common area maintenance is charged back to your [11:46unclear]  Sometimes you can get an absolute triple-net deal and that's where the tenant also care of the roof and structure. It's not as common in industrial unless it's a single-tenant deal, but most of the time you're going to see this regular triple nets. James: Okay. Right. Interesting. Because we don't have that in multifamily. That'd be awesome. So triple net also means that if the property taxes go up, the landlord doesn't get any impact. We still get the rents that we supposed to get, I guess. Michael: That's correct. And sometimes, you know, your tenant, if they're a little more savvy they'll have like a protection on no higher increase in five to 10% on their common area maintenance or taxes. So let's say like your lawn guy wants to charge you way more, that'll force you to just find a new one at a more reasonable price. James: Got it. Got it. Got it. So what is the landlord responsible for then? Michael: Roof and parking lot. Structuring the building if it's triple net. Yeah. James: So does the landlord still get the tax benefits of owning the real estate? I'm presume so, right? Because you own the building, you own the roof and you own the real estate, I guess, right? Cody: Yes. So, well it depends on the tax benefits that they're getting, but if it's, you know, ownership of the real estate tax benefits, yes. Now if it's business-related or some of that nature, that's for them, obviously. James: Correct. Correct, correct. And I think the depreciation schedule for industrial and an office, I just want to cover that, is 39 and a half. Is that right if I'm not mistaken. Cody: I believe you're correct. James:  I think in residential it's 27.5 and all of the asset classes like 39 or 39.5, I can't remember. But that's a good distinction within triple net and the normal deals that we buy in multifamily. So, coming back to my question, I know we talked about different rental rates, but are there any classes that you guys have categorized in terms of industrial buildings? So it's just based on how old they are and there's no real definition... Cody: Yeah. So they do have classes, you've got B, you've got C, you've got A class and a lot of times that is determined by age and location and building quality and things of that nature. James: Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it, got it. But definitely have to be in some way accessible near to their distribution part I would say, or distribution hub. I guess Cody: That's when a lot of them like it, they are very keen on location. But like I said, I didn't have to have highway frontage. In that access is very key. James: Okay. What about the, who buys the industrial? I want to interview a buyer of industrial parks and industrial buildings and I can never find, but you guys know all these guys, but who buys...what are the typical buyer characteristics or where does it come from? What does he look for? What is his appetite in terms of investment whenever they buy these industrial buildings? Cody: Absolutely. So there's a lot of buyers for industrial and they increase every day. And you know, even for the small Bay warehouses, you know, we have so many of those people that keep pouring into the marketplace and not just Texas, but in the US as a whole. But yeah, I mean industrial probably gets some of the most cross product or cross asset buyers that we've got. You know, people from self-storage buy these, people retail, past experience, they buy these. We even have apartment owners and operators buy these. But you know, there's a lot of REITs and institutions and things of that nature that are big in it. But no, a lot of, I would say the past 10 industrial buildings that we sold, probably I think, I want to say seven of those were an out of state owners. James: Got it. Are they from coastal city? Like New York and California? Are they local? Cody: Yeah. Canada, Florida, Chicago, absolutely. James: And do you see that this one guy buying across the nation or it's still very localized? Cody: No, a lot of these people will buy across the nation, but this is a market that a lot of these people will look into.  James: Texas, they like a lot of Texas? Cody:  Oh absolutely. Yeah. And like Michael was saying, you know, because of the Dallas Fortworth economy and things of that nature, it gets a lot of eyes. James: Got it. Very interesting. So, let's go back to underwriting and industrial building. So I presume that's a rental of the building where the tenants...is it like usually one tenant or is it like multiple tenants or how does that or is it all the 17-wheelers parking need to pay rent?  Cody: Yeah, it can be one tenant. We just sold a very large complex off of 360 and about 80 tenants in it. So, it can be very, very intense with a lot of tenants. And I think the group that bought that had a lot of multifamily experience as well. James: So 80 tenants in one building. I mean, do they have like counters in it or do they have docks? Cody: Yeah, so it was a bunch of buildings in a business park and so it was about 22 of them. And so it was just park. James: So it's like an industrial park where everybody had buildings and they ran the... Cody: Yeah, they had their own suites and things of that nature. James: Okay. So if it's triple net then probably there's nothing to do with expense ratio for a landlord. Right, because you get [17:30 crosstalk] Cody: One of those, I believe, were on gross leases still, but with industrial, a lot of people that aren't on triple net are going that way. James: Okay. Explain what's the difference between gross lease and triple net? Cody: So a gross lease, you'll find a lot more in office, in general office. You will absolutely find it in an industrial and gross lease is going to be where the landlord's taking on commonary maintenance, landscaping, repairs and maintenance, you know, HVAC, things of that nature. And so it's more management intensive. Your expenses on the landlord are going to be higher and that's a gross lease. But then you start getting into other types of leases. You know, you've got full service, you got gross, you've got modified gross and you get into like net, double net, triple net. James: Oh, okay. And what about full service? As you mentioned, because I've seen Cody: So full service, you're really only going to see that in office. And what I mean by that is landlord pays everything. They pay the utilities, they pay the janitorial, they pay the common area maintenance, they pay taxes, insurance, they cover everything. A tenant goes in as you know, a price per square foot and that's all they pay. James: Got it. Got it. Very interesting. So let's go to office. I mean in general, people are worried about office. Because you know, people say the trend is working from home. So is that still true?  Cody: Not here. James: Not probably in Dallas, I guess. Cody: No. I think office is actually trending a lot more towards coworking and things of that nature. And that's a model that has just expanded and blown up like crazy, especially out here in Dallas, Fortworth. James: So what is a typical investor who's looking to buy office space, office buildings? Where do they come from, what do they look for in an office? What kind of hold time do they have usually? Michael: Yeah. So their hold time can range anywhere between five and seven years. But you know, we just did a major value-add project in Plano where Toyota's headquarters is. State Farm had moved out and it was probably 20% occupied. That buyer actually, you know, did a bridge loan and he's going to go ahead and get that filled up very quickly, just cause the area's occupancy is not any lower than 80, 85%. But where these buyers come from, same thing as the industrial guys, cause a lot of industrial buyers also look at office and office guys look at industrial as well. But like I was telling you the other day on the phone, we've noticed a huge influx of multifamily buyers moving into office just because the returns are a little higher. And so, we had like that last guy, California we've got one in Chicago looking at one of our deals right now. We've got a couple of local groups out here that know these office buildings really well too and they know the trends of the area and how the occupancy is. So one specifically we're working on right near White Rock Lake in Dallas. That one's at 92, 93%, and that one's always been full ever since anybody can remember. So that's where these buyers come from. Any other questions? James: Yeah. How do you decide this office space is in a good location? Other than knowing, I know Plano is hard and I know free score is hard, but how, what are the parameters you look for in terms of like like you know, jobs growth in that particular submarket? Michael:  So, yeah, so you look for competition within the area for that office building, comparables in that market to the building because if you know the market really well and you know every building, you'll see that some gives you like a better bang for your buck. You know, some will have a lot of amenities that they're starting to offer. [21:48unclear]  groups are starting to do incubator spaces where they have a smaller coworking model and then their tenants will grow into spaces that are available in their building that they have rooms. And so they'll convert, you know, a small executive office and they can charge anywhere, you know, 35 to $45 per square foot just for a room. And as that tenant grows, they can grow within the building. But if you want to look at like specific markets like Las Colinas Irving area, are you familiar with that area? James: Yeah. Michael: Yeah. So you know that area has a lot of office and that's one thing you need to make sure of when you're looking at a deal. How many other class B or class A properties can your tenants look at before they commit to a space? But if you're looking over in Dallas, like where White Rock is, our building is the only building for the next two or three miles before you hit a highway, either going towards 75 or going North towards 635. And so that's why this building has been able to capture a lot of the people who don't want to drive all the way to 75 and fight that traffic every day or drive North on  635 and fight with that traffic as well. James: So you probably look at a cost, what the VPD, vehicle per day drive on that nearby highway, I guess. And I think you probably...I mean, as you mentioned, you look at other office supply in that area and I'm presuming you look at vacancy rate as well, on nearby office. And what tool do you use? Is it CoStar that you guys is primary for this industrial and office? Cody: Yeah. So there's a lot of tools you can use CoStar and Craxi and things of that nature. There's a lot of, you know, real capital analytics as well. They track a lot of good stuff. What I would also say on the office side is it's probably one of the product types. It's a little closer to multifamily as far as kind of a how to make them successful and things of that nature. Because, you know, when people go look at a multifamily complex, they usually have a couple options. And so a lot of times what they'll look at is amenities, access, recent renovations, things of that nature. What can they do for me on a new move in? And so office is very much a model that is driven just like multifamily. And so, keeping up with the times, making sure the renovations are good, making sure the building offers things like the deli or wifi and stuff of that nature or coworking style environment. Those things all help office buildings succeed. James: Got it. And what about this vacancy rate? Cause sometimes they're not...I mean multi-families and people that need a place to leave and vacancies are pretty low I guess comparatively to office, I mean different tenant profile. Right. So what is the average vacancy rate? I mean, how do I know like this area, this is the vacancy rate because somebody can be like six months, one year or somebody can be a few months, right? Depends on the area, I guess. How do you determine what is the vacancy rate for office and what are the lease terms in office? Cody: Absolutely. So the vacancy rate is going to be area driven. And so, you'll have certain areas like downtown Fortworth, which will have a certain vacancy rate and then that is going to be very much different than Las Colinas, downtown Dallas, Plano Allen, McKinney, Frisco. We pulled something earlier today working on a few things out in the Allen and McKinney area up there by Frisco and you know, they're class B office spaces around 5% on the vacancy side, which is very good for office, especially with more and more supply continuing to come up out there. In Los Colinas, it's gonna move a little bit more. And so, in my career, I've seen Los Colinas go down to almost 30%, and come up to somewhere around 10. But there's a lot of supply out there and there's always things shifting. Fortworth, I believe their occupancy is higher than what's being shown, but that's because XTO owned a bunch of the office product out there at one time and they recently sold a lot of that off. So some of that's being converted to hotels and things of that nature. But what you want to look at when you're buying an office building is yes, the area of vacancy, the area rental rates, but also the velocity of tenants, how many tenants are moving in that area. And then you also want to look at what are the size of tenants, the square footage sizes that we have and what is really the area tenant size. And so, some people will buy a building and they'll have 10,000, 15,000 square foot units, when the area is really commanding three to 5,000 square foot tenants. And so they'll see a lot longer on market time. And so what they need to do is chop those spaces down. James: And do people who buy, you know, I just want to add industrial. So industrial office, are they people who syndicate deals, like what a lot of multifamily people do? Or is it REITs or is it some institutional or some rich guy from the coastal areas? Cody: It can be a rich guy like yourself or it could [27:23crosstalk] James: I'm in Austin, Texas.  Cody: It varies. When you start dealing under $5 million, a lot of that's going to be private. James: But is it a lot of syndication happening? Cody: Oh yeah. James: Oh really? Okay. So, syndication is not a multifamily game only is also in the office and industrial. Okay. That's really good to know because I didn't know that. Michael: Yeah. And to go back on your question, you're asking about these terms. So you want to make sure that, area driven but you also want to make sure that your TIs are not going to eat you alive. James: Yeah. So TI is tenant improvements; just for our audience, for them to know. Michael: Yes. So and you'll see a lot of these guys in office that are moving. Sometimes they really want like a gold plated wall finish out and you just can't do that for them. You need to make sure you get that lease term where it can get your TIs not in the red for the first year. I even try to keep that around like $10 or so per square foot. But you'll see those terms go just depending on what they need done to the space, how many offices they need built out. You'll see that range anywhere between three years, five years, seven or 10, sometimes 15. That's really big one that's usually the range you'll see on a lease term. James: Got it. So I think it's all up to negotiation and how much the landlord is going to pay and how strong is the lease terms and all that. How do you qualify your tenants? I mean, let's say I'm a buyer, I'm buying an office space with 10 different tenants in it, how do I say this is a class A tenant, this is a class B tenant and this is a class C tenant. And how do I say that? Michael: So when we underwrite a lot of these deals, we're looking at the tenants, how long they've been there. We can also reach out to the seller or ourselves if we know the tenant what their credit rating is. And you can give a write upon them. Like we were selling a three tenant deal out in Las Colinas and some of the tenants themselves put in their own money. They put in 500,000 in improvements to the space work for them. So that was one of the things that we made sure that we had in our OM when we were underwriting that deal and how much time they had left. Cause when you're looking at these, you're like, Oh man, this guy, he's only got a year or two left. But you know, a year or two ago they put $500,000 into this space. So sometimes it was a really big key factors, explaining these commitment levels of the tenant. James: So you said credit rating. Is there data that you pull out from them or you just look at history and how they [30:18unclear] Michael: Yeah, all those things combined. James: But is that something that way you can pull from the credit rating of the tenants? Is that a system or you just have to look [30:30unclear] Michael:  Yeah, not always, but you know, when you're working a lease deal when I used to lease back from the day, we would get tenant financials from them, sometimes, yeah. James: So based on their financials and what's their commitment to the space that's where you establish their credit rating, I guess? Michael: Yes. And comfort level and then like, Oh, okay. I feel like their financials are good enough for me to say. James: So it's very subjective then because I mean, somebody who want to sell the deal, he may say to all my tenants are A-plus credit rating, I guess. So, I'm just trying to quantify that a bit more, but I think it looks like there's no real... Cody: Sometimes you would have like an A-plus credit rating or something of that nature is when you've got like a DaVita or something of that nature in the building or a FedEx or something like that. But a lot of times, office buildings will have, you know, a little bit more generic companies, local regional firms. And so that's why Michael said if they're going to spend a lot of money on the finish out, they'll say, Hey, we'd like to see your business financials just so we can make sure that the money we're spending that you look like someone's going to be in business for the term. And you know, they're pretty much used to that. James: Got it. Got it. So let's say a building is being sold right now and some of the residents have like one or two years left in their lease. If they get to know that somebody's going to buy this building, will they start negotiating with the new buyer or the new buyer have an option to know whether they're going to be renewing? How does that work? Cause you know, that basically increases your risk. Michael: Yeah. So typically they do not know until you're pretty far along in the process. So they'll usually get attendant estoppel, which will signal to them that, Hey the building may change hands to a new owner. But although they're getting that, it's mainly just a lease verification to make sure also their security deposit is transferred over as well. And you know, you don't want to alert the tenants, but you also want to make sure that when you're working on these, they're paying what they're saying on the OM and it's matching what it has on the estoppel as well. James: Got it. Got it, got it. Well, Michael and Cody, thanks for coming. I mean, can you tell our audience and listeners how to get hold of you? You guys are doing really big deals in the DFW area. I'm not sure, are you guys covering any of the areas other than DFW? Cody: I'd say 95% of the business that we've got is in DFW now. We will branch out and sell a couple of things here and there. We're actually about to bring out a 20 story office tower out in Corpus Christi. That's a relationship that we have. James: Let me know if some of the towers in Austin is coming for Salem. Probably I can even buy one. Cody: Absolutely. James: I just heard there are 37 new towers coming in Austin. Cody: Well, there's a lot of people that are looking out there, I can tell you that. James: Yeah. So why not you guys tell our audience how to get hold of you guys. Cody: I'll do it. So yeah, Cody Payne, Michael Tran. Our number is (817) 840-0055, we're with Colliers International, we're office and industrial specialists and we've got some really good self-storage and retail guys here as well. James: Good, good. Guys, look for a specialist because all this asset class, there's a lot of nuances to it as so much of details. Not everybody can do this. And you know, these guys are some of the best in the industry. Thanks for coming on Cody: See you.