Podcasts about mike for

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – For the past half-century, our mainstream media, movies, television, more than half of our politicians. as well as schools at all levels of education have been veritable fonts of anti-Americanism, depravity, racism, and mandatory disrespect and even hatred for the republic's Founding generation of leaders, the war for freedom they...

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – For the past half-century, our mainstream media, movies, television, more than half of our politicians. as well as schools at all levels of education have been veritable fonts of anti-Americanism, depravity, racism, and mandatory disrespect and even hatred for the republic's Founding generation of leaders, the war for freedom they...

Surely it's nothing that a show-tune or two can't fix! A message from Michael Moore: Silence.  Thinking.  Then acting.  In that order. The internet. The television. The noise is not helping. The answers are already inside us. Enjoy the music. You did the right thing.  More to come… — Mike ******************** For more of  Michael's work, subscribe to his Substack at https://www.michaelmoore.com/ Write to Mike: mike@michaelmoore.com ******************** Music featured in today's episode: “Cheek to Cheek” — Fred Astaire, from Top Hat “Put On a Happy Face” — Dick Van Dyke & Janet Leigh, from Bye Bye Birdie “Some Enchanted Evening” — Giorgio Tozzi, from South Pacific “Climb Ev'ry Mountain” — Peggy Wood, from The Sound of Music “Singin' in the Rain” — Gene Kelly, from Singin' in the Rain “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin'” — Gordon MacRae, from Oklahoma! “Follow the Yellow Brick Road” — Cast of The Wizard of Oz (1939) “Everything's Alright” — Yvonne Elliman & Ted Neeley, from Jesus Christ Superstar

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – For more than 40 years, Chinese citizens have come to the US and have established businesses and careers from which they can execute directions from the CCP that are meant to contribute to the destruction of the US. Indeed, some of these U.S.-based Chinese are now positioned to help the many thousands of military-age Chinese males who have illegally entered the US via the southern border...

The National Security Hour with Col. Mike and Dr. Mike – For more than 40 years, Chinese citizens have come to the US and have established businesses and careers from which they can execute directions from the CCP that are meant to contribute to the destruction of the US. Indeed, some of these U.S.-based Chinese are now positioned to help the many thousands of military-age Chinese males who have illegally entered the US via the southern border...

If you missed the other episodes with thoughtbot Incubator Program partcipants and founders Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito of Goodz, you can listen to the first episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e2incubatorgoodz) and the second episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e4incubatorgoodz), and the third episode (https://podcast.thoughtbot.com/s3e6incubatorgoodz) to catch up! Lindsey Christensen and Jordyn Bonds catch up with the co-founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal, where they share insights from their journey during the Incubator program, including the usefulness of the application process in aligning their vision and the challenges and benefits of user interviews and the importance of not overreacting to single user feedback and finding a balance in responding to diverse opinions. They reveal the varied reactions of users to Goodz's product, highlighting the different market segments interested in it. As the Incubator program nears its end for Goodz, Chris and Mike reflect on their achievements and future plans. They've made significant progress, such as setting up an e-commerce site and conducting successful user interviews. The co-founders discuss their excitement about the potential of their product and the validation they received from users. Mike mentions the importance of focusing on B2B sales and the possibility of upcoming events like South by Southwest and Record Store Day. Transcript: LINDSEY: Thanks for being here. My name's Lindsey. I head up marketing at thoughtbot. If you haven't joined one of these before, we are checking in with two of the founders who are going through the thoughtbot Startup Incubator to learn how it's going, what's new, what challenges they're hitting, and what they're learning along the way. If you're not familiar with thoughtbot, we're a product design and development consultancy, and we hope your team and your product become a success. And one way we do that is through our startup incubator. So, today, we are joined by our co-founders, Mike Rosenthal and Chris Cerrito, Co-Founders of the startup Goodz. And we also have another special guest today, Danny Kim, from the thoughtbot side, Senior Product Manager at thoughtbot. So, I think, to start off, we'll head over to the new face, the new voice that we've got with us today. Danny, tell us a little bit about your role at thoughtbot and, specifically, the incubator. DANNY: Yeah, sure. First of all, thanks for having me on, and thanks for letting me join in on all the fun. I'm one of the product managers at thoughtbot. I typically work for the Lift-Off team. We usually work with companies that are looking to, like, go into market with their first version MVP. They might have a product that exists and that they're already kind of doing well with, and they kind of want to jump into a new segment. We'll typically work with companies like that to kind of get them kicked off the ground. But it's been really awesome being part of the incubator program. It's my first time in helping with the market validation side. Definitely also, like, learning a lot from this experience [laughs] for myself. Coming at it specifically from a PM perspective, there's, like, so much variation usually in product management across the industry, depending on, like, what stage of the product that you're working in. And so, I'm definitely feeling my fair share of impostor syndrome here. But it's been really fun to stretch my brand and, like, approach problems from, like, a completely different perspective and also using different tools. But, you know, working with Mike and Chris makes it so much easier because they really make it feel like you're part of their team, and so that definitely goes a long way. LINDSEY: It just goes to show everyone gets impostor syndrome sometimes [laughter], even senior product managers at thoughtbot [laughter]. Thanks for that intro. It's, you know, the thoughtbot team learns along the way, too, you know, especially if usually you're focused on a different stage of product development. Mike, it's been only three weeks or a very long three weeks since last we checked in with you, kind of forever in startup time. So, I think the last time, we were just getting to know you two. And you were walking us through the concept, this merging of the digital and physical world of music, and how we interact with music keepsakes or merchandise. How's my pitch? MIKE: Good. Great. You're killing it. [laughter] LINDSEY: And has anything major changed to that concept in the last three weeks? MIKE: No. I mean, I can't believe it's only been three weeks. It feels like it's been a long time since we last talked. It's been an intense three weeks, for sure. No, it's been going really well. I mean, we launched all sorts of stuff. I'm trying to think of anything that's sort of fundamentally changed in terms of the plan itself or kind of our, yeah, what we've been working on. And I think we've pretty much stayed the course to sort of get to where we are now. But it's been really intensive. I think also having sort of Thanksgiving in there, and we were kind of pushing to get something live right before the Thanksgiving break. And so, that week just felt, I mean, I was just dead by, you know, like, Thursday of Thanksgiving. I think we all were. So, it's been intense, I would say, is the short answer. And I'm happy, yeah, to get into kind of where things are at. But big picture, it's been an intense three weeks. LINDSEY: That's cool. And when we talked, you were, you know, definitely getting into research and user interviews. Have those influenced any, you know, changes along the way in the plan? MIKE: Yeah. They've been really helpful. You know, we'd never really done that before in any of the sort of past projects that we've worked on together. And so, I think just being able to, you know, read through some of those scripts and then sit through some of the interviews and just kind of hearing people's honest assessment of some things has been really interesting. I'm trying to think if it's materially affected anything. I guess, you know, at first, we were, like, we kind of had some assumptions around, okay, let's try to find, like...adult gift-givers sounds like the wrong thing, adults who give gifts as, like, a persona. The idea that, like, you know, maybe you gift your siblings gifts, and then maybe this could be a good gift idea. And I think, you know, we had a hard time kind of finding people to talk in an interesting way about that. And I think we've kind of realized it's kind of a hard persona to kind of chop up and talk about, right, Chris? I don't know [crosstalk 04:55] CHRIS: Well, it also seemed to, from my understanding of it, it seemed to, like, genuinely stress out the people who were being interviewed... MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: Because it's kind of about a stressful topic [inaudible 05:03], you know, and, like, especially -- LINDSEY: Why? [laughs] CHRIS: Well, I think, I don't know, now I'm making assumptions. Maybe because we're close to the holiday season, and that's a topic in the back of everybody's mind. But yeah, Danny, would you disagree with that? Those folks, from what we heard, seemed like they were the most difficult to kind of extract answers from. But then, if the subject changed and we treated them as a different persona, several of those interviews proved to be quite fruitful. So, it's just really interesting. DANNY: Yeah. It really started, like, you kind of try to get some answers out of people, and there's, like, some level of people trying to please you to some extent. That's just, like, naturally, how it starts. And you just, like, keep trying to drill into the answers. And you just keep asking people like, "So, what kind of gifts do you give?" And they're just like, "Oh my goodness, like, I haven't thought about buying gifts for my sister in [laughs], like, you know, in forever. And now, like [laughs], I don't know where to go." And they get, like, pretty stressed out about it. But then we just kind of started shifting into like, "All right, cool, never mind about that. Like, do you like listening to music?" And they're like, "Yes." And then it just kind of explodes from there. And they're like, "This last concert that I went to..." and all of this stuff. And it was much more fruitful kind of leaning more towards that, actually, yeah. LINDSEY: That's fascinating. I guess that speaks to, especially at this stage and the speed and the amount of interviews you're doing, the need for being, like, really agile in those interviews, and then, like, really quickly applying what you're learning to making the next one even more valuable. MIKE: Yeah. And I think, you know, like, we launched just a little sort of website experiment or, like, an e-commerce experiment right before Thanksgiving. And I think now, you know, we're able to sort of take some of those learnings from those interviews and apply them to both sort of our ad copy itself but also just different landing pages in different language on the different kind of versions of the site and see if we can find some resonance with some of these audience groups. So, it's been interesting. LINDSEY: Are you still trying to figure out who that early adopter audience is, who that niche persona is? MIKE: I think we -- CHRIS: Yes, we are. I think we have a good idea of who it is. And I think right now we're just trying to figure out really how to reach those people. That, I think, is the biggest challenge right now for us. MIKE: Yeah. With the e-commerce experiment it was sort of a very specific niche thing that is a little bit adjacent to what I think we want to be doing longer term with Goodz. And so, it's weird. It's like, we're in a place we're like, oh, we really want to find the people that want this thing. But also, this thing isn't necessarily the thing that we think we're going to make longer term, so let's not worry too hard about finding them. You know what I mean? It's been an interesting sort of back and forth with that. CHRIS: From the interviews that we conducted, you know, we identified three key personas. Most of them have come up, but I'll just relist them. There's the sibling gift giver. There was the merch buyers; these are people who go to concerts and buy merchandise, you know, T-shirts, albums, records, things along those lines to support the artists that they love. And then the final one that was identified we gave the title of the 'Proud Playlister'. And these are people who are really into their digital media platforms, love making playlists, and love sharing those playlists with their friends. And that, I would say, the proud playlister is really the one that we have focused on in terms of the storefront that we launched, like, the product is pretty much specifically for them. But the lessons that we're learning while making this product and trying to get this into the hands of the proud playlisters will feed into kind of the merch buyers. MIKE: Yeah. And I think that, you know, it's funny, like, this week is kind of a poignant week for this, right? Because it's the week that Spotify Wrapped launched, right? So, it's like, in the course of any given year, it's probably, like, the one week of the year that lots and lots and lots of people are thinking about playlists all of a sudden, so trying a little bit to see if we can ride that wave or just kind of dovetail with that a bit, too. LINDSEY: Absolutely. And do you want to give just, like, the really quick reminder of what the product experience is like? MIKE: Oh yeah [laughs], good call. CHRIS: This is a prototype of it. It's called the Goodz Mixtape. Basically, the idea is that you purchase one of these from us. You give us a playlist URL. We program that URL onto the NFC chip that's embedded in the Good itself. And then when you scan this Good, that playlist will come up. So, it's a really great way of you make a playlist for somebody, and you want to gift it to them; this is a great way to do that. You have a special playlist, maybe between you and a friend or you and a partner. This is a good way to commemorate that playlist, turn it into a physical thing, give that digital file value and presence in the physical world. LINDSEY: Great. Okay, so you casually mentioned this launch of an e-commerce store that happened last week. MIKE: It didn't feel casual. LINDSEY: Yeah. Why [laughter]...[inaudible 09:45] real casual. Why did you launch it? How's it going? MIKE: I don't know. Why did we launch it? I mean, well, we wanted to be able to test some assumptions. I think, you know, we wanted to get the brand out there a little bit, get our website out there, kind of introduce the concept. You know, this is a very...not that we've invented this product category, but it is a pretty obscure product category, right? And so, there's a lot of sort of consumer education that I think that has to go on for people to wrap their heads around this and why they'd want this. So, I think we wanted to start that process a little bit correctly, sort of in advance of a larger launch next year, and see if we could find some early community around this. You know, if we can find those core people who just absolutely love this, and connect with it, and go wild around it, then those are the people that we're going to be able to get a ton of information from and build for that persona, right? It's like, cool, these are the people who love this. Let's build more for them and go find other people like this. So, I think, for us, it was that. And then, honestly, it was also just, you know, let's test our manufacturing and fulfillment and logistics capabilities, right? I mean, this is...as much as we are a B2B, you know, SaaS platform or that's what we envision the future of Goodz being, there is a physical component of this. And, you know, we do have that part basically done at this point. But we just, you know, what is it like to order 1,000 of these? What is it like to put these in the mail to people and, you know, actually take orders? And just some of that processing because we do envision a more wholesale future where we're doing, you know, thousands or tens of thousands of this at a time. And so, I think we just want to button up and do some dry runs before we get to those kinds of numbers. CHRIS: I think it also it's important to remember that we are talking in startup time. And while this last week seems like an eternity, it's been a week [laughs] that we've had this in place. So, we're just starting to learn these things, and we plan on continuing to do so. MIKE: Yeah. But I think we thought that getting a website up would be a good way to just start kind of testing everything more. LINDSEY: Great. Danny, what went into deciding what would be in this first version of the site and the e-commerce offering? DANNY: I mean, a lot of it was kind of mostly driven by Chris and Mike. They kind of had a vision and an idea of what they wanted to sell. Obviously, from the user interviews, we were starting to hone in a little bit more and, like, we had some assumptions going into it. I think we ultimately did kind of feel like, yeah, I think, like, the playlisters seem to be, like, the target market. But just hearing it more and hearing more excitement from them was definitely just kind of like, yeah, I think we can double down on this piece. But, ultimately, like, in terms of launching the e-commerce platform, and the storefront, and the website, like, just literally looking at the user journey and being like, how does a user get from getting onto a site, like, as soon as they land there to, like, finishing a purchase? And what points do they need? What are the key things that they need to think through and typically will run into? And a lot of it is just kind of reflecting on our own personal buyer behavior. And, also, as we were getting closer to the launch, starting to work through some of those assumptions about buyer behavior. As we got there, we obviously had some prototypes. We had some screenshots that we were already working with. Like, the design team was already starting to build out some of the site. And so, we would just kind of show it to them, show it to our users, and just be like, hey, like, how do you expect to purchase this? Like, what's the next step that you expect to take? And we'd just kind of, like, continue to iterate on that piece. And so... LINDSEY: Okay. So you were, before launching, even showing some of those mockups and starting to incorporate them in the user interviews. DANNY: Yeah, yeah. I mean, we tried to get it in there in front of them as early as possible, partially because, like, at some point in the user interviews, like, you're mostly just trying to first understand, like, who are our target customers? Who are these people? And we have an assumption of or an idea of who we think they are. But really, like, once you start talking to people, you kind of are, like, okay, like, this thing that I thought maybe it wasn't so accurate, or, like, the way that they're kind of talking about these products doesn't 100% match what I originally walked into this, you know, experiment with. And so, we, like, start to hone in on that. But after a certain point, you kind of get that idea and now you're just like, okay, you seem to be, like, the right person to talk to. And so, if I were to show you this thing, do you get it, right? Like, do you understand what's happening? Like, how to use this thing, what this product even does. And then also, like, does the checkout experience feel intuitive for you? Is it as simple as, like, I just want to buy a T-shirt? So, like, I'm just going to go by the T-shirt, pick a size, and, you know, move on with my life. Can we make it as seamless as that? LINDSEY: And so, you mentioned it's only been a week since it's been live. Have you been able to learn anything from it yet? And how are you trying to drive people to it today? MIKE: Yeah, I think we learned that sales is hard [laughs] and slow, and it takes some time. But it's good, and we're learning a lot. I mean, it's been a while since I've really dug deep in, like, the analytics and marketing kind of metrics. And so, we've got all the Google Tag Manager stuff, you know, hooked up and just, you know, connecting with just exploring, honestly, like the TikTok advertising platform, and the YouTube Pre-Rolls, and Shorts. And, like, a lot of stuff that I actually, since the last time I was heavily involved in this stuff, is just totally new and different. And so, it's been super interesting to see the funnel and sort of see where people are getting in the site, where people are dropping off. You know, we had an interesting conversation in our thoughtbot sync yesterday or the day before, where we were seeing how, you know, we're getting lots of people to the front page and, actually, a good number of people to the product page, and, actually, like, you know, not the worst number of people to the cart. But then you were seeing really high cart abandonment rates. And then, you know, when you start Googling, and you're like, oh, actually, everybody sees very high cart abandonment rates; that's just a thing. But we were seeing, like, the people were viewing their cart seven or eight times, and they were on there sort of five times as long as they were on any other page. And it's this problem that I think Danny is talking about where, you know, we need to actually get a playlist URL. This gets into the minutiae of what we're building, but basically like, we need to get them to give us a playlist URL in order to check out, right? And so, you sort of have to, like, put yourself back in the mind of someone who's scrolling on Instagram, and they see this as an ad, and they click it, and they're like, oh, that thing was cool. Sure, I will buy one of those. And then it's like, no, actually, you need to, you know, leave this, go into a different app, find a play...like, it suddenly just puts a lot of the mental strain. But it's a lot. It's a cognitive load, greater than, as you said, just buying a T-shirt and telling what size you want. So, thinking through ways to really trim that down, shore up the amount of time people are spending on a cart. All that stuff has been fascinating. And then just, like, the different demographic kind of work that we're using, all the social ads platforms to kind of identify has been really interesting. It's still early. But, actually, like, Chris and I were just noticing...we were just talking right before this call. Like, we're actually starting to get, just in the last 12 hours, a bunch more, a bunch, but more people signing up to our email newsletter, probably in the last 12 hours that we have in the whole of last week. Yeah, I don't know, just even that sort of learning, it's like, oh, do people just need time with a thing, or they come back and they think about it? CHRIS: Yeah. Could these people be working on their playlists? That's a question that I have. MIKE: [chuckles] Yeah, me too. CHRIS: It's like, you know, I'm making a playlist to drop into this product. It's really interesting. And I think it gives insight to kind of, you know, how personal this product could be, that this is something that takes effort on the part of the consumer because they're making something to give or to keep for themselves, which is, I think, really interesting but definitely hard, too. DANNY: Yeah. And I also want to also clarify, like, Chris just kind of said it, like, especially for viewers and listeners, like, that's something that we've been hearing a lot from user interviews, too, right? Like, the language that they're using is, like, this is a thing that I care about. Like it's a representation of who I am. It's a representation of, like, the relationship that I have with this person that I'm going to be giving, you know, this gift to or this playlist to, specifically, like, people who feel, like, really passionate about these things. And, I mean, like, I did, too. Like, when I was first trying to, like, date, my wife, like, I spent, like, hours, hours trying to pick the coolest songs that I thought, you know, were like, oh, like, she's going to think I'm so cool because, like, I listen to these, like, super low-key indie rock bands, and, like, you know, so many more hours than she probably spent listening to it. But that's [laughs] kind of, like, honestly, what we heard a lot in a lot of these interviews, so... LINDSEY: Yeah, same. No, totally resonates. And I also went to the site this week, and I was like, oh damn, this is cool. Like, and immediately it was like, oh, you know, I've got these three, you know, music friends that we go to shows together. I'm like, oh, this would be so cool to get them, you know, playlists of, like, music we've seen together. So, you might see me in the cart. I won't abandon it. MIKE: Please. I would love that. CHRIS: Don't think about it too long if you could -- [laughter]. LINDSEY: I won't. I won't. CHRIS: I mean, I would say I'm really excited about having the site not only as a vehicle for selling some of these things but also as a vehicle for just honing our message. It's like another tool that we have in our arsenal. During the user interviews themselves, we were talking in abstract terms, and now we have something concrete that we can bounce off people, which is, I think, going to be a huge boon to our toolset as we continue to refine and define this product. MIKE: Yeah, that's a good point. LINDSEY: Yeah. You mentioned that they're signing up for, like, email updates. Do you have something you're sending out? Or are you kind of just creating a list? Totally fine, just building a list. MIKE: [laughs] No. CHRIS: It's a picture of Mike and I giving a big thumbs up. That's, yeah. [laughter] MIKE: No. But maybe...that was the thing; I was like, oh great, they're signing up. And I was like, gosh, they're signing up. Okay [laughter], now we got to write something. But we will. LINDSEY: Tips to making your playlist [crosstalk 19:11] playing your playlist -- MIKE: Yeah [crosstalk 19:13]. CHRIS: Right. And then also...tips to making your playlists. Also, we're advancing on the collectible side of things, too. We are, hopefully, going to have two pilot programs in place, one with a major label and one with a major artist. And we're really excited about that. LINDSEY: Okay. That's cool. I assume you can't tell us very much. What can you tell us? MIKE: Yeah. We won't mention names [chuckles] in case it just goes away, as these things sometimes do. But yeah, there's a great band who's super excited about these, been around for a long time, some good name recognition, and a very loyal fan base. They want to do sort of a collection of these. I think maybe we showed the little...I can't remember if we showed the little crates that we make or not, but basically, [inaudible 19:52] LINDSEY: The last time, yeah. MIKE: So, they want to sell online a package that's, you know, five or six Goodz in a crate, which I think will be cool and a great sort of sales experiment. And then there's a couple of artists that we're going to do an experiment with that's through their label that's more about tour...basically, giving things away on tour. So, they're going to do some giveaway fan club street team-style experiments with some of these on the road. So, first, it's ideal, provided both those things happen, because we definitely want to be exploring on the road and online stuff. And so, this kind of lets us do both at once and get some real learnings as to kind of how people...because we still don't know. We haven't really put these in people's hands yet. And it's just, like, are people scanning these a lot? Are they not? Is this sort of an object that's sitting on their shelf? Is it...yeah, it's just, like, there's so much we're going to learn once we get these into people's hands. LINDSEY: Do you have the infrastructure to sort of see how many times the cards are scanned? CHRIS: Mm-hmm. Yep, we do. MIKE: Yeah. So, we can see how many times each one is scanned, where they're scanned, that sort of thing. CHRIS: Kind of our next step, and something we were just talking about today with the thoughtbot team, is building out kind of what the backend will be for this, both for users and also for labels and artists. That it will allow them to go in and post updates to the Goodz, to allow them to use these for promotion as people, you know, scan into them to give them links to other sites related to the artists that they might be interested in before they move on to the actual musical playlist. So, that's kind of the next step for us. And knowing how users use these collectibles, both the kind of consumer Good and the artist collectibles that we were just talking about, will help inform how we build that platform. LINDSEY: Very cool. And right now, the online store itself that's built in Shopify? MIKE: Yeah. The homepage is Webflow that Kevin from the thoughtbot team really spearheaded in building for us. And then, yeah, the e-commerce is Shopify. LINDSEY: Y'all have been busy. MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: Is there anything else maybe that I haven't asked about yet that we should touch on in terms of updates or things going on with the product? MIKE: I don't know. I don't think so. I think, like Chris said, I mean, we're just...like, now that the site has kind of stood up and we're really switched over to kind of marketing and advertising on that, definitely digging into the backend of this kind of SaaS platform that's going to probably be a big focus for the rest of the, you know, the program, to be honest. Yeah, just some other things we can do on the next front that could eventually build into the backend that I think can be interesting. No, I guess [laughs] the short answer is no, nothing, like, substantial. Those are the big [crosstalk 22:26] LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, that was my next question, too, which is kind of like, what's next, or what's the next chunk of work? So, it's obviously lots more optimization and learning on the e-commerce platform, and then this other mega area, which is, you know, what does this look like as a SaaS solution? What's the vision? But also, where do we start? Which I'm sure, Danny, is a lot of work that you specialize in as far as, like, scoping how to approach these kinds of projects. DANNY: Yeah. And it's interesting because, I mean, we were just talking about this today. Like, part of it is, like, we can, like, really dig into, like, the e-commerce site and, like, really nailing it down to get it to the place where it's like, we're driving tons more traffic and also getting as low of a, like, cart abandonment rate as possible, right? But also, considering the fact that this is in the future, like, large-scale vision. And there's, like, also, like, we're starting to, I think, now iron out a lot of those, like, milestones where we're kind of like, okay, like, we got, like, a short-term vision, which is, like, the e-commerce site. We got a mid-term vision and a potential long-term vision. How do we validate this long-term vision while also still like, keeping this short-term vision moving forward? And, like, this mid-term vision is also going to, like, help potentially, either, like, steer us towards that long-term or maybe even, like, pivot us, like, into a completely different direction. So, like, where do you put your card, right? Like, how much energy and time do we put into, like, each of these areas? And that's kind of, like, the interesting part of this is starting to talk through that, starting to kind of prioritize, like, how we can maximize on our effort, like, our development and design effort so that things just kind of line up more naturally and organically for our future visioning, so... MIKE: Yeah. A lot of different things to juggle. I saw there was a question. Somebody asked what the URL is, but I don't seem to be able to [crosstalk 24:10]. LINDSEY: The same question as me. We got to drop the link for this thing. MIKE: Yeah, getthegoodz.com. CHRIS: That's G-O-O-D-Z. LINDSEY: Get in there, folks MIKE: Yeah, get [crosstalk 24:23]. LINDSEY: And let us know how it goes. MIKE: Yeah, please [laughs]. Any bugs? Let us know. Yeah. I think that those...yeah, I mean, it's a good point, Danny, in terms of juggling kind of the near-term and longer-term stuff. You know, it's a good kind of reminder our big focus, you know, in the new year is going to be fundraising, right? We're already talking to some investors and things like that. So, it's like, okay, yes, as you said, we could tweak the cart. We could tweak the e-commerce. Or, like, can we paint the big picture of what the longer-term version of this company is going to be in a way that makes it compelling for investment to come in so that there can be a long-term version of this company? And then we can build those things. So yeah, it's definitely a balance between the two. LINDSEY: Oh, also, just casual fundraising as well. [crosstalk 25:06] MIKE: Yeah, yeah. LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: But it's hard. It's like, you wake up in the morning. It's like, do I want to, like, write cold emails to investors? Or do I want to, like, look at Google Analytics and, like, tweak ad copy? That's actually more fun. So, yes. LINDSEY: Yeah, life of the founder, for sure. All right. So, that's getthegoodz (Goodz with a z) .com. Check it out. We'll tune in and see what happens with the e-commerce site, what happens with the SaaS planning the next time that we check in. But Chris, Mike, Danny, thank you so much for joining today and sharing what's been going on over the last few weeks: the good, the bad, the challenge, the cart abandonment. And, you know, best of luck to you over the next few weeks, and we'll be sure to check in and see how it's going. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Transcript:  LINDSEY: Thank you to our viewers and listeners. We are catching up once again with one of the startups going through the thoughtbot Incubator. My name is Lindsey Christensen. I'm joined today by Jordyn Bonds, who heads up the thoughtbot incubator, as well as our Co-Founders of Goodz, Chris Cerrito and Mike Rosenthal. Welcome, everybody. MIKE: Thanks, Lindsey. LINDSEY: Before we get started, before we put Chris and Mike back in the hot seat, at the top here, Jordyn, we have a special announcement for our viewers and listeners. JORDYN: Application window is open for session 1 of 2024, folks. You can go to thoughtbot.com/incubator and apply. And Chris and Mike can tell you how easy or hard applying was. MIKE: It was easy. It was totally easy. It's a very straightforward process. CHRIS: Yeah, it was way more straightforward than a lot of applications that we've dealt with in the past, for sure. JORDYN: Ha-ha. And if you've got a business idea that involves software but you haven't gotten anything out there yet, come talk to us. We will help you make sure that it's a good idea and that there are people who might buy it, and maybe get you even a little further than that. MIKE: We actually have a friend who's considering applying. I'll tell him applications are open. He's worried his idea is not big enough to actually be a business idea, so we'll see. CHRIS: Even the process of doing the application was really helpful for us because it helped us get aligned on exactly what we were doing, yeah. JORDYN: I love that. And I found that to be true when I was a founder applying to some of these things, in particular, applying for an SBIR grant was one of the most challenging things that we did, but it was so productive. I was so annoyed by it at the time, and then I cribbed from that thing. It actually sort of forced us to make a business plan [laughs], and then, basically, we ran it, and it was great [laughs]. CHRIS: Yeah. I think that was, for us, that was our point where we were like, "Is this idea fleshed out enough to move forward?" And we were like, "Yes, it is. Let's go. Let's do this." JORDYN: So, use the application as a forcing function, everybody. It will help you clarify your thinking. LINDSEY: Yeah. Jordyn, what would you say to Mike's friend who's questioning if their idea is big enough? How do you respond to that sentiment? JORDYN: That is a fascinating sentiment because I feel like so much more often, I am trying to help founders with the opposite problem where they think this thing is so big that they are not thinking about what step 1 is going to look like. They're just, like, in 10 years, we're going to be the next Amazon, and I'm like, "Maybe [laughter]. Let me help you figure out how to get to that giant vision." So, I don't come across the "Is this big enough to be a business?" question as often. And, I don't know, what would I say? I guess I need the details. LINDSEY: It could be a perfect fit MIKE: It could be. JORDYN: It could be a perfect fit. LINDSEY: In a way, that's what you're answering, right? MIKE: Right. LINDSEY: In some of this work. MIKE: That is true. So, yeah, you guys would certainly...just thinking through the process we've gone through the last two months, it would definitely help them flesh that out. LINDSEY: Which is a great segue. MIKE: Great segue. LINDSEY: Chris and Mike, we're actually coming up to the end of your incubator time. CHRIS: It's so sad. LINDSEY: Can you believe it? MIKE: It's gone by really fast. I mean, eight weeks is not a long time, but it has gone by very, very fast. CHRIS: It felt like a very long time in the middle of it. MIKE: [laughs] CHRIS: But now that it's over, it feels like a blink that it's coming to a close. MIKE: I don't know. It's funny. I think we had some note in our retro today that was like, maybe the very end of the year is not the best time to do an accelerator just because you have, like, the holidays kind of jumping in here in the end. So, that might have helped make it feel like a... I feel like the end of the year always feels like a rush anyway. So, I think just life gets a little bit busier this time of year, too, but yeah. CHRIS: Yeah, my gingerbread man decorating game is, like, really down this season because we've been so busy. Tragic. LINDSEY: Chris, can you remind our viewers and listeners who might not be familiar what was the idea that you and Mike have been exploring with the incubator or, like, what did you come in with? CHRIS: So, with Goodz, what we're trying to do is make little, physical collectibles objects that connect back to the digital content that a user loves. The idea being that today, we are awash in these digital files, links, so many things on our desktops, on our phones, on our devices, and it's really hard to tell which part of those are really, really important to us. So, by giving them a presence in the physical world, that denotes that's something that's really important, worth keeping, worth sharing, and showing off to your friends and family. And to start this off, mostly because Mike and I are both kind of music nerds, we're starting off with a music focus, but at some point, we're hoping to move into other realms, too. LINDSEY: And a lot of the incubator, as repeat listeners will know, is focused on really kind of evolving user interviews all the way through and narrowing in on, you know, a core audience, a core market. Mike, how has that evolution been? I think the last time we chatted was around three weeks ago. What has the latest iteration of user interviews looked like in terms of the people you're talking to and even what you're asking them? MIKE: It's been a really fascinating process. I mean, I'm trying to think of where we were exactly the last time we talked to you, but I think we'd probably just launched the e-commerce site that we had been experimenting with putting up. LINDSEY: Yeah, exactly. MIKE: And so, and we really then started cranking on user interviews kind of once that was live. And so, moving away from the conceptual and more into like, "Okay, share your screen. Here's the link. Like, tell me what you think is going on here," and really sort of getting users who had never, you know, never heard our pitch, never been involved with us to sort of try to wrap their heads around what we are and what we're doing just based on that website and trying to sort of make iterative changes based on that. You know, for me, because I had not done user interviews very much in the past, like, it's very tempting, like, you get sort of 1 note from 1 person in 1 interview, and you're like, oh, we need to change this word. That word didn't make any sense to them, or this thing needs to be blue instead of pink. I think, for me, it was like, all right, how do we kind of synthesize this data in a responsible way? And it emerged naturally, which, I mean, Jordyn and all thoughtbot folks said that it would, but you sort of started hearing the same things again and again. And we never really got to a place where, like, you heard the exact same things from everyone. But there were enough buckets, I feel like, where we're like, okay, like, this part really isn't making that much sense to people, or, like, we do really need to, you know, structure this differently to convey. So, it was a bunch of that kind of work over the last three weeks or so and sort of just getting a sense of like, are we conveying our message? It's hard. I mean, it's a new, like, we're not the only people making physical products with NFC chips in them, but it is not the most common, like, product. Like, it is kind of a new category out there. And so, really trying to understand just right off the bat, do people get it? And you get wildly different answers [laughs] as to whether they get it or they don't, which has been fascinating, too. JORDYN: Yeah. [crosstalk 7:12] LINDSEY: Chris or Jordyn, anything to add there? JORDYN: Yeah. You get the best, like, bootcamp in the don't overreact to a single user interview experience in some ways because we [laughs]...it would literally be like, interview in the morning someone says this thing. Interview in the afternoon, someone says the exact opposite thing [laughter]. And you're like, okay [laughs], like, which one of these things are we going to respond to, if either of them? CHRIS: Yeah. It's hard. As somebody with, like, a strong desire to please, it's hard to reign yourself in and want to change things immediately, but it definitely makes sense to do so in the long run. MIKE: But yeah, but, I mean, like I said, I do feel like it kind of came down to buckets. It's like, okay, you're that. I can, like, categorize you with all those other people and you with all those other people. And yeah, I hear you. I'm like, yeah, it's tempting to want to please them all. But I think with this one, we're fighting hard to be like...or we sort of have a philosophy that this product is emphatically not for everyone because, at the end of the day, you get a lot of people who are like, "Wait, you're just putting a link to a streaming playlist on a physical object? Why don't I just text someone the link?" And sometimes that breaks down by age group, like, 18-year-olds being like, "What are you talking about, old man? LINDSEY: [laughs] MIKE: Like, why the hell would I do that? It makes no sense." But it sort of skews all over the age ranges. But then there'll be other people who are 18 or 20 years old who are like, "Wow, I never had cassettes when I was growing up," or "I never got to make, you know, mixtapes or CD-Rs for people." And like, you know, so it's, yeah, it's about finding the people who are the early adopters. As Jordyn has said a lot, it's like, we need to find those early adopters and, like, make them love us, and then other people will come later. CHRIS: I mean, some of the most gratifying moments, I think, are there's been some interviews where people have been so excited that after the interview, they've gone and purchased our products, which is just, like, the coolest feeling ever. LINDSEY: Wow. MIKE: Yeah, it's pretty cool. LINDSEY: Are you open to sharing a little bit more about what those buckets or what those segments look like? CHRIS: I mean, I think there's folks who outright just get it almost immediately, and I think those people tend to be hardcore music collectors, hardcore music fans, Jordyn and Mike, please feel free to jump in if you disagree with any of this. They just get it right off the bat. Then I think there's, in my experience, there's another bucket of people who are a little more hesitant, and maybe they wouldn't buy it, but they seemed really excited about the idea of getting one as a gift, which is really interesting. They're like, "I don't know if I'd buy this, but I'd really like to have one." And then there is another segment, like, which Mike just mentioned, of folks who just don't see the value in this whatsoever, which is totally fair. MIKE: Yeah, totally. I think it's also...I see it almost as, like, a matrix. There's, like, desirability, and, like, technical understanding because people were like, "I technically understand what this is, and I do not want it in my life." Or like, "I get what this is and, oh my God, I have to have that," or like, "I don't really understand what you're talking about, but, man, I love physical stuff. Like, sure I want..." you know, it's like, it goes across those two planes, I think. JORDYN: I will say that it, I think you alluded to this before, Mike, but, like, we're going to run a whole analysis of...because we did a ton of interviews, and we haven't actually done that, like, sort of data-driven thing of like, are there trends in the demographics somewhere that we're not getting? Because the pattern has not been there. Like, someone will talk to an 18-year-old, you know, at 1:00 p.m. who is just, like, "Why on earth would I ever want this?" And then I, like, you know, will talk to a 21-year-old who is like, "I love this." And it's like, why? Like, this is the answer. The thing we're trying to get out now is, like, what is the difference between those two people? It's not a demographic thing that we can see from the outside, so what is it instead? But with consumer stuff like this, often, you don't necessarily...you don't need that in such great detail when you're starting. You just kind of, like, throw it out there and see who grabs it, and then you start to build sort of cohorts around that. And that is kind of what these interviews have shown us is that there are people who will grab it, and that was part of what we were trying to validate. Are there people who Mike and Chris do not know personally who will, like, get this and be psyched about it immediately? And that is, you know, check unequivocally true. Like Chris said, there are people that we were, you know, that we had recruited on this user interviews platform [chuckles] who then just turned around and bought the product because they were so psyched about it. One of the guys I interviewed was like, "Can I invest in your company right now?" Like, during the interview, and I was like, "Maybe?" [laughs] CHRIS: There was, like, another person who wanted to work for us immediately... JORDYN: Yes, great. CHRIS: Which was really interesting and kind of awesome. JORDYN: Yeah, they're like, "Are you hiring?" You're just like, okay. So, it's validating that there are people all over that spectrum. Like, where those trends lie, though, which is, I think, what you were asking, Lindsey, not as straightforward and in a fascinating way. So, we still have a little more, like, number crunching to do on that, and we may have an answer for you later. LINDSEY: That's exciting. Exactly. I'm curious: what are the connecting dots between the folks who are really into it, and how might that impact how you approach the business? MIKE: Yeah, it's hard. It's definitely going to be a niche to start. And so, we got to figure out kind of got to crack the code on how we find those people. LINDSEY: And, Mike, I think you had also mentioned last time that, you know, you or both of you have a network kind of in the music industry, and you've been floating the idea past some people there. Have you been having more of those conversations over the last few weeks, too? MIKE: We have, yeah. Well, so yeah, we've had a couple more just kind of straight-up pitch calls versus like, "Hey, there's this cool thing we're doing," and having those people be like, "Cool. Let's do a pilot." And so, they're ordering, you know, 500 or 1,000 units at a time, which is rad. LINDSEY: Whoa. MIKE: For the first...yeah. LINDSEY: Okay, very cool. MIKE: Yeah. The first two or three of those should happen in January or maybe early February, but yeah, those are done and in production and arriving soon. So, that's really exciting with some cool bands. We won't say the names in case it doesn't [laughs] work out, but it does look like it's going to work out. LINDSEY: And so, it's specific bands that are creating merch for their fans. MIKE: Yeah, yeah. So, we're working with one artist manager on a band that he manages, and then we're working with a record label. And they're going to try with a couple of smaller artists. And so, yeah, it's actually really good for us. One is going to be straight-up sales, most likely, and it's, like, selling these things. And the other ones will be given away as kind of promo items on tour artists, which is also a really interesting use case for us, too, that we're excited about and using them as a way to sort of get email addresses and, like, fans engaged and stuff, so... And then yeah, then I had another conversation, and they want to talk about doing some pilots. So far, like, that side of things is going great. We're sort of 3 for 4 in terms of initial calls leading to pilots right off the bat, which is kind of unheard of from [laughs] my experience. LINDSEY: Yeah, I'd say so. No, a lot of very good signals. MIKE: Really good signals. But then we were able to turn some of those into user interview conversations, actually, as well over the course of the last couple of weeks, which has been really helpful, like, talking to manager and label-type people about what they might want out of a software product that is associated with this because we're not just thinking about making physical products but sort of coupling that with an online toolset. And that part, we haven't gotten as far along as we did with the direct-to-consumer e-commerce, but it's been fascinating. LINDSEY: So, what has been happening with the online shop? As you noted the last time we talked, it was just a baby less than a week-old Shopify site getting, you know, some first hits of people going around maybe putting things in their basket. I'm sure a lot has happened over the last few weeks. What kind of work, what kind of insights have you seen around the site? CHRIS: We've been, I mean, we've been selling stuff at a slow but steady pace. It's been great because it's enough to, you know, because our product really straddles the line between physical and digital; there's a lot of physical aspects to this that we need to figure out and kind of the level of orders that we've been getting have been really...it's, like, the perfect number to think about fulfillment issues, things like what kind of package does this go in? How do we mail this out? Things along those lines, just very basic, practical questions that needed to be answered. But yeah, it's been great. We actually, I mean, we hit our goal for the amount of these that we wanted to get in people's hands before Christmas, which is pretty awesome. And we continue now with the lessons learned. I think our plan is to try and make a push for Valentine's Day because these seem like they would be a great Valentine's Day present: make a playlist; share it with your loved one; share it with a friend; share it with somebody you don't like at all. Who knows? LINDSEY: [laughs] CHRIS: But yeah, that's kind of our next sales push, we think. LINDSEY: The hate playlist. CHRIS: [inaudible 15:40] hate playlist. MIKE: Yeah, perfect. Real passive-aggressive. CHRIS: Just Blue Monday, like, by New Order, like, 14 times. LINDSEY: [laughs] Yeah, every song is just like a sub-tweet... MIKE: [laughs] LINDSEY: About something they've done and [inaudible 15:53] Have you updated the site? Like, how do you decide what gets updated on the site? [laughter] Everyone laughed. MIKE: It was a little haphazard, I would say, there for a minute. But -- CHRIS: We got the site up very, very quickly. And from my perspective, I've been dealing a lot with the physical side of things, just getting great product photos up there, which is, like, something that thoughtbot has actually been super helpful with. You know, everybody on the team is starting to submit photos of their Goodz in the real world and using their Goodz, which is great. And we continued to update the site with that but also making sure our text made sense, refining copy in response to things that people said during user interviews. The checkout process, the process of adding the URL that we point the Good to that, we did a bunch of experimentation there based on what people were saying during user interviews. So, it has been a little haphazard, but we have made a bunch of changes. LINDSEY: Jordyn, has there been any experiment, like, structured experimentation around the site or how you're getting people to the site? JORDYN: Mike actually did a little bit of ad funnel work that I don't think we've, like, even remotely scratched the surface of. So, I wish I could say that was conclusive, but I think we've found a little bit more...here are plenty of sales that are from people that nobody here knows. MIKE: True. JORDYN: So, people are finding out about this somehow [laughs]. But I think it's a little bit, like, word-of-mouth sort of chain of events is our sense so far. I wanted to say, though, about the site, we did get what Chris was saying about, like, this experiment was, in part, about fulfillment and figuring out how fulfillment would work and packaging, and not just messaging and not just closing the sale with consumers, but also, just, like, how do you fulfill these? But one of the really fun things we've managed to do in the last, since we talked last time, which I can't even believe...I feel like this wasn't even a gleam in our eyes for this project, but we managed to get out, like, stood up and out the door, and working in production in the last few weeks is a way for folks to actually assign the URL to their mixtape themselves. Previously, the plan had just been for Chris and Mike to do that, which is fine but a little bit unscalable, right? CHRIS: That was a huge dream or, like, that was high on our wish list. And we didn't think we'd get to it. And it's been pretty amazing that we have, yeah. JORDYN: Yeah, so that was one thing that is an update to the site. So, then we had to do a little bit of, like, micro iterating, on, like, the messaging around that. Like, how do you communicate to people? This is, like, a little bit of an abstract challenge, right? Like, here's this object. It's going to point to a digital thing. How do you tell the physical object which digital thing it's pointing to [laughs]? So, a lot of our recent interviewing has been to sort of get inside the mind of the consumer about how they're thinking about that and how we can best communicate that to them. So that's been a lot of the, like, recent iteration is getting that mechanism stood up and then the messaging around it. CHRIS: It's also really cool because it adds to the utility of the object itself in the sense that now our Goodz, when a user gets one, they can add a URL to their Good themselves, but they can also change that URL. So, it's much more malleable. JORDYN: Which is something that in one of our early user interviews was, like, a hot request [laughs], and we were like, "Someday, someday." And it's, you know, I should actually go back to her and be like, "Someday is today." [laughter] MIKE: Well, yeah, and just as Chris was saying, it just makes it so much easier to ship these out without having to manually load them, and you could sell them, and yeah, retail outlets, like, it just opens up a lot of opportunities for us for them. LINDSEY: And Mike mentioned that some of the, like, kind of future looking aspirations for the solution are, you know, how might you figure out the B2B, like, SaaS aspect of it? Jordyn, is that something that's been explored at all at this point, or is it early? JORDYN: That experiment I just described is actually sort of the link between the two projects. It sort of proves the concept and proves the value in some ways, and it has given us a little bit more visibility into sort of how we're going to execute some of this technical stuff. Like, how easy, how difficult is it going to be? These little experiments all build your confidence around your ability to do those things and what it's going to look like. And so, this experiment absolutely feeds into that question. But I would say it was really this week where we got to have a really fun brainstorming sort of blue sky conversation about that that I don't think would have been nearly as both creative and blue sky or rooted in reality as it was if we hadn't done these experiments and hadn't talked to so many...we had so much work...we could participate in a conversation like that so much more confidently and creatively because all of us had a lot more shared context. So, we really got to dream big, like, what is a SaaS platform built around these physical objects? And I don't want to, you know, I'm not going to give it away at this moment because we had a lot of, like, really cool ideas. It's one part talking to the B2B customer, which, you know, you mentioned earlier, getting what their pain points are, and what they're looking for, what they need, but then also dreaming big about now we understand the technology a little bit more and how it feels to use it. What does that unlock in our brains? The analogy I used in that conversation and that I use all the time is like, the users of Twitter invented hashtags, right? Twitter did not invent hashtags. And so, hey, everybody out there, newsflash: users invented hashtags, not Twitter or something else, if you didn't realize that Twitter was where those things kind of emerged. But there was just a user behavior that was happening in the wild, and Twitter was just very good at making that easier for them, looking at that and being like, "Oh, hey, is this a thing you all want to do? Here, we'll make that even more useful for you." And it was part of Twitter's early success that they were able to do that. And so, that was the kind of thinking we were trying to employ here is, like, now that we have these objects and we understand a little bit more how it feels to use them, you get these second order effects. What does that then make us think of? What is then possible to us that we wouldn't have been able to dream of previously because we didn't quite get it? So, that was really happening this week. LINDSEY: So, as the incubator time wraps up, what are the kind of final activities or deliverables, one, that Goodz wants and you know that they're going to get? What are the parting gifts as we send you out into the next phase? MIKE: Yeah, well, loads of stuff. I mean, we're getting all that code that [SP] Guillermo and the guys worked on to let people set their own playlist settings. And we've got that up in a GitHub repository now. And we've got a bunch of great design work that's all being handed over, like Chris was saying, product shots that a bunch of the team members were taking, synthesizing all the user interviews. We're actually sort of making some kind of final reports on those, so it's kind of more usable, actionable data for us. The whole website, you know, that didn't exist before. And that will sort of continue to grow as the entire website for Goodz moving forward. I don't know. That's a lot. What else was there, Chris? CHRIS: As a result of all that, I mean, one of the things I'm most excited about is now we have a small user base who actually has the physical products that, hopefully, we can get them to answer questions. That's huge for what's coming next. Starting the path towards the SaaS platform, too, it's really helped narrow our scope and think about, you know, how to make that successful or if it will be successful. LINDSEY: Yeah, that sounded like a big discussion this week that I know has been on your minds from the beginning. Wait, the last time, also, you said you were starting to get emails, too. Have you emailed anyone yet, or are you still holding on to them? MIKE: Oh. No, I still haven't sent a newsletter out [laughs], actually, but we have Mailchimp set up. Yeah, no, we've got a good kind of core of our, yeah, early folks on there. We'll start getting a newsletter out with some sort of regularity. We're building up the socials very slowly just focusing on Instagram mostly right now and trying to get back into that game. It's been a long time since I've had to do kind of social marketing stuff. And so, it's a lot of work, as it turns out, but we'll get all that cooking. I think this was just such a sprint, working with the thoughtbot folks and trying to get all this stuff done. Before the end of the year, now we can sort of take a breath and start engaging folks in the new year. LINDSEY: Yeah. Well, so, do you know what you want to do next or what the next phase looks like? Are you going to do fundraising? MIKE: We're certainly going to continue to have some fundraising conversations. We've had some conversations emerge over the last, you know, since we've been in thoughtbot, again, not the greatest time of year to try to be raising a round. But we're also not, like, desperately, urgently needing to do that right this second. I think, you know, part of it is the fundraising landscape, you know, doesn't look amazing. And we're still sort of building out a lot of traction, and sort of every week, there's some new, exciting thing, or we've got some new, big artists who wants to do something. So, I think, in some ways, to the extent that we can bootstrap for a little while, I think we will, yeah. So, we will focus on...I'd like to get back to focusing on, like, B2B sales. I'd like to hit the ground in January and just start talking to a bunch of music industry folks. And thinking ahead a little bit, sort of Q1 and Q2, like, what are the big tentpole events? You know, you got South by Southwest coming up in March. You got Record Store Day in April, or whenever it is. But, you know, there's, like, a bunch of those sorts of things that it's like, oh, let's not let those things suddenly be tomorrow. Like, right now, they're all still two or three/four months out. Like, let's make sure we're queued up for those things and see what happens. And Jordyn has been giving really good advice on the fundraising side where it's just like, just keep getting cool stuff like that and just do almost like little drip campaigns with funders who aren't maybe giving you the time of day or think it's too early, and just kind of keep going back to them. Like, the best excuse to go back to funders is like, "Hey, we just closed this new thing. We just launched this new thing. We just got this thing working. Hey, we're launching with this major band," Like, enough of those happen, and I think the fundraising will happen more organically. It's a strategy. CHRIS: I think we're really lucky in the fact that, you know, now, at this point, we're not talking about vapourware, you know, like, these are actual things that actually exist that, like, anybody could go onto our site right now and buy, which is awesome. And because of that, the product's going to continue to evolve, and, hopefully, our sales record will continue to evolve, too. LINDSEY: Amazing. Well, that feels like a good place to wrap up, maybe. Are you going to hang around in our incubator Slack, the thoughtbot incubator Slack for all our past founders? MIKE: Yes. Emphatically, yes. LINDSEY: Okay. We're holding you to it then [laughs]. CHRIS: I'm excited about that. We met with the other founders yesterday for the first time, and it was a really great and interesting conversation. It was cool seeing how diverse all these projects are and how folks are working on things that we had no idea about and how we're working on stuff that they have no idea about, and it was really great. It felt like a good cross-pollination. MIKE: Agreed. LINDSEY: That's awesome to hear. Jordyn, any final thoughts? JORDYN: [inaudible 26:58] out there listening and watching and want to join this community of founders [laughs], don't you want to have office hours with Chris and Mike? LINDSEY: All right, thoughtbot.com/incubator. You can apply for session 1 of the 2024 incubator program. And yeah, you two, if you have more recommendations, referrals, definitely send them our way. Chris, Mike, Jordyn, thank you so much once again for joining and catching us up on all the exciting developments for Goodz. MIKE: Thank you. LINDSEY: A lot of really cool milestones. JORDYN: I got to say, so much good stuff. And like, you know, just wrapping it all up almost diminishes the impact of any single one of those things that we just talked about, but it's, like, pretty amazing. People out there, apply to the incubator but also go buy yourself a Goodz mixtape. It's cool with playlists on it. MIKE: It's a good point. JORDYN: Give it to your BFF. Come on. LINDSEY: Getthegoodz.com. MIKE: Getthegoodz.com. Awesome. LINDSEY: All right. Thanks, Chris and Mike. AD: Did you know thoughtbot has a referral program? If you introduce us to someone looking for a design or development partner, we will compensate you if they decide to work with us. More info on our website at: tbot.io/referral. Or you can email us at referrals@thoughtbot.com with any questions. Special Guests: Chris Cerrito, Jordyn Bonds, and Mike Rosenthal.

Mike Goldsmith, Staff Software Engineer at Honeycomb, joins Corey on Screaming in the Cloud to talk about Open Telemetry, company culture, and the pros and cons of Go vs. .NET. Corey and Mike discuss why OTel is such an important tool, while pointing out its double-edged sword of being fully open-source and community-driven. Opening up about Honeycomb's company culture and how to find a work-life balance as a fully-remote employee, Mike points out how core-values and social interaction breathe life into a company like Honeycomb.About MikeMike is an OpenSource focused software engineer that builds tools to help users create, shape and deliver system & application telemetry. Mike contributes to a number of OpenTelemetry initiatives including being a maintainer for Go Auto instrumentation agent, Go proto packages and an emeritus .NET SDK maintainer..Links Referenced: Honeycomb: https://www.honeycomb.io/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Mike_Goldsmith Honeycomb blog: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikegoldsmith/ 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: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted guest episode is brought to us by our friends at Honeycomb who I just love talking to. And we've gotten to talk to these folks a bunch of different times in a bunch of different ways. They've been a recurring sponsor of this show and my other media nonsense, they've been a reference customer for our consulting work at The Duckbill Group a couple of times now, and we just love working with them just because every time we do we learn something from it. I imagine today is going to be no exception. My guest is Mike Goldsmith, who's a staff software engineer over at Honeycomb. Mike, welcome to the show.Mike: Hello. Thank you for having me on the show today.Corey: So, I have been familiar with Honeycomb for a long time. And I'm still trying to break myself out of the misapprehension that, oh, they're a small, scrappy, 12-person company. You are very much not that anymore. So, we've gotten to a point now where I definitely have to ask the question: what part of the observability universe that Honeycomb encompasses do you focus on?Mike: For myself, I'm very focused on the telemetry side, so the place where I work on the tools that customers deploy in their own infrastructure to collect all of that useful data and make—that we can then send on to Honeycomb to make use of and help identify where the problems are, where things are changing, how we can best serve that data.Corey: You've been, I guess on some level, there's—I'm trying to make this not sound like an accusation, but I don't know if we can necessarily avoid that—you have been heavily involved in OpenTelemetry for a while, both professionally, as well as an open-source contributor in your free time because apparently you also don't know how to walk away from work when the workday is done. So, let's talk about that a little bit because I have a number of questions. Starting at the very beginning, for those who have not gone trekking through that particular part of the wilderness-slash-swamp, what is OpenTelemetry?Mike: So, OpenTelemetry is a vendor-agnostic set of tools that allow anybody to collect data about their system and then send it to a target back-end to make use of that data. The data, the visualization tools, and the tools that make use of that data are a variety of different things, so whether it's tracing data or metrics or logs, and then it's trying to take value from that. The big thing what OpenTelemetry is aimed at doing is making the collection of the data and the transit of the data to wherever you want to send it a community-owned resource, so it's not like you get vendor lock-in by going to using one competitor and then go to a different—you want to go and try a different tool and you've got to re-instrument or change your application heavily to make use of that. OpenTelemetry abstracts all that away, so all you need to know about is what you're instrumented with, what [unintelligible 00:03:22] can make of that data, and then you can send it to one or multiple different tools to make use of that data. So, you can even compare some tools side-by-side if you wanted to.Corey: So, given that it's an open format, from the customer side of the world, this sounds awesome. Is it envisioned that this is something—an instrument that gets instrumented at the application itself or once I send it to another observability vendor, is it envisioned that okay, if I send this data to Honeycomb, I can then instrument what Honeycomb sees about that and then send that onward somewhere else, maybe my ancient rsyslog server, maybe a different observability vendor that has a different emphasis. Like, how is it envisioned unfolding within the ecosystem? Like, in other words, can I build a giant ring of these things that just keep building an infinitely expensive loop?Mike: Yeah. So ideally, you would try and try to pick one or a few tools that will provide the most value that you can send to, and then it could answer all of the questions for you. So, at Honeycomb, we try to—we are primarily focused on tracing because we want to do application-level information to say, this user had this interaction, this is the context of what happened, these are the things that they clicked on, this is the information that flowed through your back-end system, this is the line-item order that was generated, the email content, all of those things all linked together so we know that person did this thing, it took this amount of time, and then over a longer period of time, from the analytics point of view, you can then say, “These are the most popular things that people are doing. This is typically how long it takes.” And then we can highlight outliers to say, “Okay, this person is having an issue.” This individual person, we can identify them and say, “This is an issue. This is what's different about what they're doing.”So, that's quite a unique tracing tool or opportunity there. So, that lets you really drive what's happening rather than what has happened. So, logs and metrics are very backward-looking to say, “This is the thing that this thing happened,” and tries to give you the context about it. Tracing tries to give you that extra layer of context to say that this thing happened and it had all of these things related to it, and why is it interesting?Corey: It's odd to me that vendors would be putting as much energy into OpenTelemetry—or OTel, as it seems to always be abbreviated as when I encounter it, so I'm using the term just so people, “Oh, wait, that's that thing I keep seeing. What is that?” Great—but it seems odd to me that vendors would be as embracing of that technology as they have been, just because historically, I remember whenever I had an application when I was using production in anger—which honestly, ‘anger' is a great name for the production environment—whenever I was trying to instrument things, it was okay, you'd have to grab this APM tools library and instrument there, and then something else as well, and you wound up with an order of operations where which one wrapped the other. And sometimes that caused problems. And of course, changing vendors meant you had to go and redeploy your entire application with different instrumentation and hope nothing broke. There was a lock-in story that was great for the incumbents back when that was state of the art. But even some of those incumbents are now embracing OTel. Why?Mike: I think it's because it's showing that there's such a diverse group of tools there, and [unintelligible 00:06:32] being the one that you've selected a number of years ago and then they could hold on to that. The momentum slowed because they were able to move at a slower pace because they were the organizations that allowed us—they were the de facto tooling. And then once new companies and competitors came around and we're open to trying to get a part of that market share, it's given the opportunity to then really pick the tool that is right for the job, rather than just the best than what is perceived to be the best tool because they're the largest one or the ones that most people are using. OpenTelemetry allows you to make an organization and a tool that's providing those tools focus on being the best at it, rather than just the biggest one.Corey: That is, I think, a more enlightened perspective than frankly, I expect a number of companies out there to have taken, just because it seems like lock-in seems to be the order of the day for an awful lot of companies. Like, “Okay, why are customers going to stay with us?” “Because we make it hard to leave,” is… I can understand the incentive, but that only works for so long if you're not actively solving a problem that customers have. One of the challenges that I ran into, even with OTel, was back when I was last trying to instrument a distributed application—which was built entirely on Lambda—is the fact that I was doing this for an application that was built entirely on Lambda. And it felt like the right answer was to, oh, just use an OTel layer—a Lambda layer that wound up providing the functionality you cared about.But every vendor seemed to have their own. Honeycomb had one, Lightstep had one, AWS had one, and now it's oh, dear, this is just the next evolution of that specific agent problem. How did that play out? Is that still the way it works? Is there other good reasons for this? Or is this just people trying to slap a logo on things?Mike: Yeah, so being a fully open-source project and a community-driven project is a double-edged sword in some ways. One it gives the opportunity for everybody to participate, everybody can move between tools a lot easier and you can try and find the best fit for you. The unfortunate part around open-source-driven projects like that means that it's extremely configuration-heavy because it can do anything; it's not opinionated, which means that if you want to have the opportunity to do everything, every possible use case is available to everyone all of the time. So, if you might have a very narrow use case, say, “I want to learn about this bit of information,” like, “I'm working with the [unintelligible 00:09:00] SDK. I want to talk about—I've got an [unintelligible 00:09:03] application and I want to collect data that's running in a Lambda layer.” The OpenTelemetry SDK that has to serve all of the [other 00:09:10] JavaScript projects across all the different instrumentations, possibly talking about auto-instrumentation, possibly talking about lots of other tools that can be built into that project, it just leads to a very highly configurable but very complicated tool.So, what the vendor specifics, what you've suggested there around like Honeycomb, or other organizations providing the layers, they're trying to simplify the usage of the SDK to make some of those assumptions for you that you are going to be sending telemetry to Honeycomb, you are going to be talking about an API key that is going to be in a particular format, it is easier to pass that information into the SDK so it knows how to communicate rather than—as well as where it's going to communicate that data to.Corey: There's a common story that I tend to find myself smacking into almost against my will, where I have found myself at the perfect intersection of a variety of different challenges, and for some reason, I have stumbled blindly and through no ill intent into ‘this is terrible' territory. I wound to finally getting blocked and getting distracted by something else shiny on this project about two years ago because the problem I was getting into was, okay, I got to start sending traces to various places and that was awesome, but now I wanted to annotate each span with a user identity that could be derived from code, and the way that it interfaced with the various Lambda layers at that point in time was, ooh, that's not going to be great. And I think there were a couple of GitHub issues opened on it as feature enhancements for a couple of layers. And then I, again, was still distracted by shiny things and never went back around to it. But I was left with the distinct impression that building something purely out of Lambda functions—and also probably popsicle sticks—is something of an edge case. Is there a particular software architecture or infrastructure architecture that OTel favors?Mike: I don't think it favors any in particular, but it definitely suffers because it's, as I said earlier, it's trying to do that avail—the single SDK is available to many different use cases, which has its own challenges because then it has to deal with so many different options. But I don't think OpenTelemetry has a specific, like, use case in mind. It's definitely focused on, like—sorry, telemetry tracing—tracing is focused on application telemetry. So, it's focused on about your code that you build yourself and then deploy. There are other tools that can collect operational data, things like the OpenTelemetry Collector is then available to sit outside of that process and say, what's going on in my system?But yeah, I wouldn't say that there's a specific infrastructure that it's aimed at doing. A lot of the cloud operators and tools are trying to make sure that that information is available and OpenTelemetry SDKs are available. But yeah, at the moment, it does require some knowledge around what's best for your application if you're not in complete control of all of the infrastructure that it's running in.Corey: It feels that with most things that are sort of pulled into the orbit of the CNCF—and OTel is no exception to this—that there's an idea that oh, well, everything is going to therefore be running in containers, on top of Kubernetes. And that might be unfair, but it also, frankly, winds up following pretty accurately what a lot of applications I'm seeing in client environments have been doing. Don't take it as a criticism. But it does seem like it is designed with an eye toward everything being microservices running on containers, scheduled which, from a infrastructure perspective, what appears to be willy-nilly abandoned, and how do you wind up gathering useful information out of that without drowning in data? That seems to be, from at least my brief experience with OTel, the direction it heads in. Is that directionally correct?Mike: Yeah, I think so. I think OpenTelemetry has a quite strong relationship with CNCF and therefore Kubernetes. That is a use case that we see as a very common with customers that we engage with, both at the prospect level and then just initial conversations, people using something like Kubernetes to do the application orchestration is very, very common. It's something that OpenTelemetry and Honeycomb are wanting to improve on as well. We want to get by a very good experience because it is so common when we come up to it that we want to have a very good, strong opinion around, well, if you're running in Kubernetes, these are the tools and these are the right ways to use OpenTelemetry to get the best out of it.Corey: I want to change gears a little bit. Something that's interested me about Honeycomb for a while has been its culture. Your founders have been very public about their views on a variety of different things that are not just engineering-centric, but tangential to it, like, engineering management: how not to be terrible at it. And based on a huge number of conversations I've had with folks over there, I'm inclined to agree that the stories they tell in public do align with how things go internally. Or at least if they're not, I would not expect you to admit it on the record, so either way, we'll just take that as a given.What I'm curious about is that you are many timezones away from their very nice office here in San Francisco. What's it like working remote in a company that is not fully distributed? Which is funny, we talk about distributed applications as if they're a given but distributed teams are still something we're wrangling with.Mike: Yeah, it's something that I've dealt with for quite a while, for maybe seven or eight years is worked with a few different organizations that are not based in my timezone. There's been a couple, primarily based in San Francisco area, so Pacific Time. An eight-hour time difference for the UK is challenging, it has its own challenges, but it also has a lot of benefits, too. So typically, I get to really have a lot of focus time on a morning. That means that I can start my day, look through whatever I think is appropriate for that morning, and not get interrupted very easily.I get a lot of time to think and plan and I think that's helped me at, like, the tech lead level because I can really focus on something and think it through without that level of interruption that I think some people do if you're working in the same timezone or even in the same office as someone. That approachability is just not naturally there. But the other side of that is that I have a very limited amount of natural overlap with people I work with on a day-to-day basis, so it's typically meetings from 2 till 5 p.m. most days to try and make sure that I build those social relationships, I'm talking to the right people, giving status updates, planning and that sort of thing. But it works for me. I really enjoy that balance of some ty—like, having a lot of focus time and having, like, then dedicated time to spend with people.And I think that's really important, as well is that a distributed team naturally means that you don't get to spend a lot of time with people and a lot of, like, one-on-one time with people, so that's something that I definitely focus on is doing a lot of social interaction as well. So, it's not just I have a meeting, we've got to stand up, we've got 15 minutes, and then everyone goes and does their own thing. I like to make sure that we have time so we can talk, we can connect to each other, we know each other, things that would—[unintelligible 00:16:35] that allow a space for conversations to happen that would naturally happen if you were sat next to somebody at a desk, or like, the more traditional, like, water cooler conversations. You hear somebody having a conversation, you go talk to them, that naturally evolves.Corey: That was where I ran into a lot of trouble with it myself. My first outing as a manager, I had—most of the people on my team were in the same room as I was, and then we had someone who was in Europe. And as much as we tried to include this person in all of our meetings, there was an intrinsic, “Let's go get a cup of coffee,” or, “Let's have a discussion and figure things out.” And sometimes it's four in the afternoon, we're going to figure something out, and they have long since gone to bed or have a life, hopefully. And it was one of those areas where despite a conscious effort to avoid this problem, it was very clear that they did not have an equal voice in the team dynamic, in the team functioning, in the team culture, and in many cases, some of the decisions we ultimately reached as an outgrowth of those sidebar conversations. This led to something of an almost religious belief for me, for at least a while, was that either everyone's distributed or no one is because otherwise you wind up with the unequal access problem. But it's clearly worked for you folks. How have you gotten around that?Mike: For Honeycomb, it was a conscious decision not long before the Covid pandemic that the team would be distributed first; the whole organization will be distributed first. So, a number of months before that happened, the intention was that anybody across the organization—which at the time, was only North America-based staff—would be able to do their job outside of the office. Because I think around the end of 2019 to the beginning of 2020, a lot of the staff were based in the San Francisco area and that was starting to grow, and want more staff to come into the business. And there were more opportunities for people outside of that area to join the business, so the business decided that if we're going to do this, if we're going to hire people outside of the local area, then we do want to make sure that, as you said, that everybody has an equal access, everyone has equal opportunity, they can participate, and everybody has the same opportunity to do those things. And that has definitely fed through pandemic, and then even when the office reopened and people can go back into the office. More than—I think there's only… maybe 25% of the company now is even in Pacific Time Zone. And then the office space itself is not very large considering the size of the company, so we couldn't fit everybody into our office space if we wanted to.Corey: Yeah, that's one of the constant growing challenges, too, that I understand that a lot of companies do see value in the idea of getting everyone together in a room. I know that I, for example, I'm a lot more effective and productive when I'm around other people. But I'm really expensive to their productivity because I am Captain Interrupter, which, you know, we have to recognize our limitations as we encounter them. But that also means that the office expense exceeds the AWS bill past a certain point of scale, and that is not a small thing. Like, I try not to take too much of a public opinion on should we be migrating everyone back to return-to-office as a mandate, yes, no, et cetera.I can see a bunch of different perspectives on this that are nuanced and I don't think it lends itself to my usual reactionary take on the Twitters, as it were, but it's a hard problem with no easy answer to it. Frankly, I also think it's a big mistake to do full-remote only for junior employees, just because so much of learning how the workforce works is through observation. You don't learn a lot about those unspoken dynamics in any other way than observing it directly.Mike: Yes, I fully agree. I think the stage that Honeycomb was at when I joined and has continued to be is that I think a very junior person joining an organization that is fully distributed is more challenging. It has different challenges, but it has more challenges because it doesn't have those… you can't just see something happening and know that that's the norm or that that's the expectation. You've got to push yourself into those in those different arenas, those different conversations, and it can be quite daunting when you're new to an organization, especially if you are not experienced in that organization or experienced in the role that you're currently occupying. Yeah, I think the distributed organizations is—fully distributed has its challenges and I think that's something that we do at Honeycomb is that we intentionally do that twice a year, maybe three times a year, bring in the people that do work very closely, bringing them together so they have that opportunity to work together, build those social interactions like I mentioned earlier, and then do some work together as well.And it builds a stronger trust relationship because of that, as well because you're reinforcing the social side with the work side in a face-to-face context. And there's just, there's no direct replacement for face-to-face. If you worked for somebody and never met them for over a year, it'd be very difficult to then just be in a room together and have a normal conversation.Corey: It takes a lot of effort because there's so much to a company culture that is not meetings or agenda-driven or talking about the work. I mean, companies get this wrong with community all the time where they think that a community is either a terrible option of people we can sell things to or more correctly, a place where users of our product or service or offering or platform can gather together to solve common challenges and share knowledge with each other. But where they fall flat often is it also has to have a social element. Like ohh, having a conversation about your lives is not on topic for this community Slack team is, great, that strangles community before it can even form, in many cases. And work is no different.Mike: Yeah, I fully agree. We see that with the Honeycomb Pollinators Slack channel. So, we use that as a primary way of community members to participate, talk to each other, share their experiences, and we can definitely see that there is a high level of social interaction alongside of that. They connect because they've got a shared interest or a shared tool or a shared problem that they're trying to solve, but we do see, like, people, the same people, reconnecting or re-communicating with each other because they have built that social connection there as well.And I think that's something that as organizations—like, OpenTelemetry is a community is more welcoming to that. And then you can participate with something that then transcends different organizations that you may work for as well because you're already part of this community. So, if that community then reaches to another organization, there's an opportunity to go, to move between organizations and then maintain a level of connection.Corey: That seems like one of the better approaches that people can have to this stuff. It's just a—the hard part, of course, is how do you change culture? I think the easy way to do it—the only easy way to do it—is you have to build the culture from the beginning. Every time I see companies bringing in outsiders to change the corporate culture, I can't help but feel that they're setting giant piles of money on fire. Culture is one of those things that's organic and just changing it by fiat doesn't work. If I knew how to actually change culture, I would have a much more lucrative target for my consultancy than I do today. You think AWS bills are a big problem? Everyone has a problem with company cultures.Mike: Yeah, I fully agree. I think that culture is something that you're right is very organic, it naturally happens. I think the value when organizations go through, like, a retrospective, like, what is our culture? How would we define it? What are the core values of that and how do we articulate that to people that might be coming into the organization, that's very valuable, too, because those core values are very useful to communicate to people.So, one of the bigger core values that we've got at Honeycomb is that—we refer to as, “We hire adults,” meaning that when somebody needs to do something, they just can go and do it. You don't have to report to somebody, you don't have to go and tell somebody, “I need a doctor appointment,” or, “I've got to go and pick up the kids from school,” or something like that. You're trusted to do your job to the highest level, and if you need additional help, you can ask for it. If somebody requires something of you they ask for it. They do it in a humane way and they expect to be treated like a human and an adult all of the time.Corey: On some level, I've always found, for better or worse, that people will largely respond to how you treat them and live up or down to the expectation placed upon them. You want a bunch of cogs who are going to have to raise their hand to go to the bathroom? Okay, you can staff that way if you want, but don't be surprised when those teams don't volunteer to come up with creative solutions to things either. You can micromanage people to death.Mike: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I've been in organizations, like, fresh out of college and had to go to work at a particular place and it was very time-managed. And I had inbound sales calls and things like that and it was very, like, you've spent more than three minutes on a wrap-up call from having a previous call, and if you don't finish that call within three minutes, your manager will call your phone to say, “You need to go on to the next call.” And it's… you could have had a really important call or you could have had a very long call. They didn't care. They just wanted—you've had your time now move on to the next one and they didn't care.Corey: One last question I want to ask you about before we wind up calling this an episode, and it distills down to I guess, effectively, your history, for lack of a better term. You have done an awful lot of Go maintenance work—Go meaning the language, not the imperative command, to be clear—but you also historically were the .NET SDK maintainer for something or other. Do you find those languages to be similar or… how did that come to be? I mean, to be clear, my programming languages of choice are twofold: both brute force and enthusiasm. Most people take a slightly different path.Mike: Yeah, I worked with .NET for a very long time, so that was, like, the place—the first place that I joined as a real organization after finishing college was .NET and it just sort of stuck. I enjoyed the language. At the time, sort of, what 15 year—12, 15 years ago, the language itself was moving pretty well, there was things being added to it, it was enjoyable to use.Over the last maybe four or five years, I've had the opportunity to work a lot more in Go. And they are very different. So, Go is much more focused on simplicity and not hiding anything from anybody and just being very efficient at what you can see it does. .NET and many other languages such as Java, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, all have a level of magic to them, so if you're not part of the ecosystem or if you don't know particular really common packages that can do things for you, not knowing something about the ecosystem causes pain.I think Go takes away some of that because if you don't know those ecosystems or if you don't know those tools, you can still solve the problem fairly quickly and fairly simply. Tools will help but they're not required. .NET is probably on the boundary for me. It's still very easy to use, I enjoy using it, but it just… I found that it's not that long ago, I would say that I've switched from thinking like a .NET developer, so whenever I'm forming code in my head, like, how I would solve a problem, for a very long time, it was in .NET and C#.I'd probably say in the last 12 months or so, it's definitely moved more to Go just because of the simplicity. And it's also the tool that is most used within Honeycomb, especially, so if you're talking about Go code, you've got a wider audience to bounce ideas off, to talk to, communicate, get ideas from. .NET is not a very well used language within Honeycomb and probably even, like… even maybe West Coast-based organizations, it seems to be very high-level organizations that are willing to pay their money up for, like, Microsoft support. Like, Go is something that a lot of developers use because it's very simple, very quick, can move quick.Corey: I found that it was very easy for me to pick up Go to build out something ridiculous a few years back when I need to control my video camera through its ‘API' to use the term charitably. And it just works in a way that made an awful lot of sense. But I still find myself reaching for Python or for—God help me—TypeScript if I'm doing some CDK work these days. And honestly, they all tend to achieve more or less the same outcome. It's just different approaches to—well, to be unkind—dependency management in some cases, and also the ecosystem around it and what is done for you.I don't think there's a bad language to learn. I don't want this to be interpreted as language snobbery, but I haven't touched anything in the Microsoft ecosystem for a long time in production, so .NET was just never on my radar. But it's clear they have an absolutely massive community ecosystem built around it and that is no small thing. I'd say it rivals Java.Mike: Yeah definitely. I think over the last ten years or so, the popularity of .NET as a language to be built from enterprise, especially at larger-scale organizations have taken it on, and then, like, six, seven years ago, they introduced the .NET Core Framework, which allowed it to run on non-Windows platforms, and that accelerated the language dramatically, so they have a consistent API that can be used on Windows, on Linux, Mac, and that makes a huge difference for creating a larger audience for people to interact with it. And then also, with Azure becoming much more popular, they can have all of these—this language that people are typically used to using Linux as an operating system that runs infrastructure, but not being forced to use Windows is probably quite a big thing for Azure as well.Corey: I really want to thank you for taking the time to talk about what you're up to over there. If people want to learn more, where's the best place for them to go find you?Mike: Typically, I use Twitter, so it's Mike_Goldsmith. I create blogs on the Honeycomb blog website, which I've done a few different things; I've got a new one coming up soon to talk about different ways of collecting data. So yeah, those are the two main places. LinkedIn is usual as ever, but that's a little bit more work-focused.Corey: It does seem to be. And we'll put links to all of that in the [show notes 00:31:11]. Thank you so much for being so generous with your time, and of course, thank you Honeycomb for sponsoring this episode of my ridiculous podcast.Mike: Yeah, thank you very much for having me on.Corey: Mike Goldsmith, staff software engineer at Honeycomb. 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 an insulting comment that we will then have instrumented across the board with a unified observability platform to keep our days eventful.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.

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 8 – Unpacking ICUCARE Guests: Dr. Pamela Seda & Dr. Kyndall Brown Mike Wallus: What does it mean to offer our students a culturally relevant experience in mathematics? This is a question on the minds of many, particularly elementary mathematics educators. Today we're talking with Pamela Seda and Kyndall Brown, authors of “Choosing to See: A Framework for Equity in the Math Classroom.” We'll talk with our guests about what culturally relevant mathematics instruction looks like and identify practical steps educators can take to start this important work in their classrooms. Mike: So, hello, Pam and Kyndall. Welcome to the podcast. We're so glad to have you with us. I'm wondering if both of you would be willing to take a turn and just talk a little bit about what brought you to writing the book. Pamela Seda: OK, well I'll start. This book really started with my dissertation research. And when I started my Ph.D. program, I was very well aware of the achievement gap and the lack of opportunities for so many students, and I just wasn't satisfied that there was a gap. I had to find answers. And so, my Ph.D. program was my quest to find answers. In the process of finding answers, I created this framework that came out of my study, and I had the opportunity to think about how to support teachers. Firstly, implement it in my own classroom and then figure out how to help teachers implement this. And it was just one of those things that I knew that there were a lot of people who wanted to do better for their kids, but they weren't quite sure how to do it. And so, therefore, this book was really kind of a nuts-and- bolts place to start. Mike: And, Kyndall, if you can pick up the story, how did the two of you start collaborating around the book? Kyndall Brown: So, I met Pam at the National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics Conference in Boston in 2015. I was doing a keynote presentation focused on equity and mathematics, and Pam was in the audience. And at the end of the presentation, she approached me and suggested that we start doing presentations together. So ever since then, we were collaborating to do presentations at national conferences. I had been approached by a publisher about writing a book focused on equity in mathematics. So often when those of us who've been doing this equity work over the years, what we hear from math teachers in particular is, ‘What does it look like in the math classroom?' In language arts, you can read the literature that's reflective of your student population. And [in] a social studies class, you can study the cultures of the student populations in your classroom. But math teachers were always wondering, ‘What does equity look like in a math classroom?' And so, one of the first things Pam did when we met was, she introduced me to her ICUCARE framework. It just made perfect sense to use her framework. I asked if she would like to collaborate. She said yes, and this is what we did during the pandemic. Mike: Well, I'm wondering if the two of you could just start and unpack the premise of the book and describe the framework that you all have proposed for people who may not have read it yet. Pamela: Well, ICUCARE is the acronym. The first part is, ‘I include others as experts; C, be critically conscious; U, understand your students well; and then the second C is, use culturally relevant curricula.' Kyndall, you want to take it from there? ( laughs ) Kyndall: ( laughs ) Sure. The next principle is, ‘Assess, activate, and build on prior knowledge; then comes release control; and the final principle is, expect more.' Mike: You know, we could do a podcast episode for every component of the ICUCARE framework, but today we're really focused on using culturally relevant curricula. I suspect there are many educators listening who are kind of in the shoes that Kyndall was describing earlier, this idea that they're interested in the work, but they're not sure how to start, particularly in the math classroom. So, I'm wondering if you all could just spend a little bit of time talking about the guidance you would offer folks when it comes to culturally relevant curricula in a math classroom. Kyndall: Well, first of all, in order to make a task or your curriculum culturally relevant, you have to know who it is that you're teaching, right? You can't make assumptions and assume that you know who they are based upon some physical characteristic or some other information that you might have with your students. The first thing you have to do is get to know who they are, what their interests are, what their concerns are, and then you can begin to start making the curriculum culturally relevant. Mike: Hmm. Pamela: I always say, if we're talking about a task, let's start with something that is cognitively demanding; something that is accessible but also cognitively demanding. And so, oftentimes we describe that as a low-floor, high-ceiling task. And it's real important that students have that opportunity to be able to have cognitively demanding tasks. I say that's a good place to start. We can use textbook problems, we can go to websites—things like Jo Boaler and Achieve the Core and Bridges—those kinds of things. And that's a good place to start. And so, then you might say, ‘OK, well how do I know that's culturally relevant?' Well, that's what we start with, the good task, and then we're going to take that and make it culturally relevant. And one way I say to take a baby step is, take that task and then just change the names and put some names in there that are meaningful to your students. Pamela: And I say, put your students' names in there rather than just trying to come up with some ethnic-sounding names. Put your students' names so that they can see themselves in there. Put your school's names, put the other teacher's names. The key is students need to be able to see, ‘I am a part of mathematics, that mathematics is a part of who I am, a part of who we are.' And so, I think that's a very good baby step to take is just put meaningful names in there. I know that it was very effective. My students really enjoyed it. I could tell, like, even I purposely oftentimes would do that on tests to help reduce the anxiety level of taking a test. And my students, you would see them kind of smile and look around for the persons that they saw whose name was mentioned in the problem. Pamela: So, that's a good first step. And then I would say, the next thing you could do after you've changed the names is then change the context. Change the contexts to things that are meaningful. But as Kyndall said, this is going to require you understanding something about your students. And some things that you can do to understand your students: You can interview your students. And one of the things we talk about in our book is empathy interviews that you can do. You can have listening conversations. Just have conversations with your students in the hall. What are they talking about in the hall? What are they talking about at lunch? What are they talking about at the bus stop? Just pay attention to those conversations, those social conversations, to figure out what's important to them. And then just do community walks. Find out what's in the community. What are popular places that kids hang out, that they go? What's meaningful to them and their families? And incorporate those contexts into problems. And then after that, if you've gotten used to changing the context, then I suggest what I call go to a Stage Four Task. And then you try to engage their agency and help them understand that math can be a tool to use. Mike: I would love for you to—either of you—to talk a little bit more about that last bit that you mentioned, Pam, when you talked about ways to build up kids' sense of agency. Would you be willing to indulge and just go a little bit further down into that conversation? Pamela: Absolutely. So oftentimes, even if we have these wonderful contexts that students will solve problems and become engaged problem-solvers, there's always the question is, like, ‘So what now? What do I do with this? Why is this important to even get this answer?' And it has to be more than, ‘Well, it's going to be on the test,' right? ( laughs ) And so, helping students understand and solve problems that help them see that they can be a part of solutions [to] things that are important to them. So, for example, I remember taking a problem. And it was something about increase in numbers. There was something about what percent did this increase? And I changed the context to the housing market because we had just actually had some storms that had come through our state and had created a lot of damage to houses and homes. And so, then the very next step was I started having them think about, ‘Well, how much might it cost to rebuild these homes? Were some houses damaged more than others?' Pamela: And ‘What could you possibly do to help?' Those are just some kinds of things to help kids understand that, ‘Oh, well, I'm not just trying to find percent increase or decrease, but there's some contexts here that matter, and it may cause me to do some more research.' And even thinking about, ‘Well, if there are neighborhoods that were impacted, what are some things that I can do? Could there be some money that we raise? If I'm going to rebuild the house, how much might I need to spend? How much might I need to invest so that this maybe doesn't happen again?' Those are just all different types of questions to help students understand that you can use math as a part of your community. I also talk about an example of how I was teaching a unit on regression equations, and I know this is an elementary audience, but it was just an example of the fact that we give tests all the time. Pamela: We give those state standardized tests, and I decided to use our district's data for the schools in our district, and things like that, to actually do the mathematics. And students care about that. They got to see their state scores, and they got to see the scores of their neighborhood, of friends who maybe go to a school down the street. And then not only did they get to do the math with that, then they got to have some input. I gave them that opportunity to basically talk to fellow students, talk to fellow teachers, talk to fellow administrators about, ‘What do you think should be different now that you've analyzed and looked at this data?' Kyndall: And I would just add that Lisa Delpit, an education scholar, wrote this book in the early 2000s called ‘Multiplication is for White People.' And that's an extremely provocative title, but it was actually a quote from an African American student of ours. And it kind of spoke to that student's math identity. The actual quote was, ‘Multiplication is for white people, addition and subtraction is for Black people,' right? And so that speaks to what that student's identity was about. The ability of certain people to do math based upon their racial or ethnic background. So, it is very easy to go through the U.S. educational system and come to the conclusion that mathematics is pretty much the domain of mostly white, European men, right? Mike: Certainly. Kyndall: When nothing could be further from the truth. There's an excellent book called ‘The Crest of the Peacock: Non-European Roots of Mathematics' that shows very clearly that mathematics is a cultural endeavor. It's a humanistic endeavor that all humans all over the planet have engaged in. And that other cultures have made significant contributions to the field of mathematics. And so, we need to do a lot better job of exposing students to that so that we can make sure that they see mathematics is as much a part of their culture as any other racial or ethnic group. And they need to see examples of people that look like them in the math textbooks, on the walls of their classrooms, as another way to help build that mathematics identity. Mike: You know, and I think that is actually one of the things that I really appreciated about the way that you all structured the book. I know that I've heard other people who have read it say how much they appreciated being able to hear the stories from your own classrooms, the experiences that you had with students, and really being able to put those out there in a way that help people see where there might be pitfalls and where there might be opportunities. I'm curious if either of you would be willing to share a story about culturally relevant curricula and the impact that you saw on a particular student. Kyndall: Well, Pam has a couple of really good stories in that chapter, so I'm going to let her ... Pamela: ( laughs ) Yeah. So, one of the things I talk about is Jasmine. Jasmine was one of my students who, we'll just say we didn't see eye to eye on most things ( laughs ). Jasmine was very openly hostile towards me, and I was expending a lot of my energy just trying to get her to do anything. And she just made it very clear to me she wasn't interested in doing anything I asked her to do. And so I gave her that project that I talked about, where we decided to look at our test scores, our standardized test scores throughout the district, and applied the math content of the standard that we were using to this, to where she got to make an analysis and be able to see if there was a relationship between the percentage of Black students in our school and then our college and career readiness index, and those kinds of things. Pamela: And I was just really amazed about the transformation that happened with her. Because previously, not only was she not willing to work with me, she didn't want to work with her classmates either ( chuckles ). Mike: Mm. Pamela: And she, as a result of working on this project, asked to be a part of a group. When she found out that she had made some mistakes on some of the data, she willingly stayed after school to fix her mistakes. And I even remember the day that the project was due. She stayed late to put her finishing touches on it. And so, I just was amazed. She was just ... became pleasant. And as a result, I wanted to talk with her about the impact that this project had on her. And she said she really wanted to do it. It wasn't like it was just for a grade. She really wanted to learn the information. And the other thing that was kind of interesting is she didn't really see it as math. She didn't really think that what she was doing was really math, even though she was using Excel spreadsheets and she was using formulas. What that told me was how her perception was that school math wasn't what real math was, and that what we were doing that was connected to her community didn't feel like math. And I felt like that's something that we really need to change. Mike: Yeah. Kendall, I saw you nodding on the other ... (this podcast was recorded via Zoom with video) Kyndall: Well, I think the general public has come to believe that the only thing that counts as math is what you do in school, in a math classroom, right? Mike: Uh-hm. Kyndall: That all of these ways that people are engaging in mathematical thinking and reasoning all day, every day, they don't see as math. And so, they don't see themselves as math people, right? Because they were not successful at school math. Right? Mike: Right. Kyndall: And so how do we undo that perception and get people to recognize the myriad of ways that they're engaging in mathematical thinking and reasoning all the time? Mike: Absolutely. Yeah. I was just going to ask you if there's anything in particular you think might be important for an elementary math educator to be thinking about when they're trying to apply the ideas, some of the suggestions that you all have when it comes to ‘Choosing to See.' Is there anything in particular that folks who are operating at the elementary level might consider or might think about that has come to y'all as you've brought the book out into the world and had people interact with it? Pamela: Well, one thing that I've come to understand is that, while we do need to have good tasks—and the work that we ask students to do needs to be meaningful and needs to be accessible—tasks don't teach kids. And we need to think about how do we structure how kids experience the mathematics in our classrooms? And that to me is what the framework does. It's a lens to help teachers think about, ‘How do I engage my students? How do I structure the instruction so that kids have a positive experience around the mathematics?' So, it should not be thought of as, ‘Oh, this is just once I get the math, then I'm going to go and think about this as a add-on.' Mike: Hmm. Pamela: There are myriads of strategies out there. It's not saying that you should throw out everything that you've ever done before. It's just look at the strategies and the things, the rituals and routines that you've been using in your classroom. And think about them in terms of this lens. If you're getting ready to do an activity, you might say, ‘OK, here's a routine that I normally have. How can I adapt it so I can include others as experts, so I'm not the only one that's doing all the talking? How can I engage my students so that I expect more out of them?' Right? So that they're doing more of the work? So, it's really a lens of how to think about the work that you do and the work that they do. Mike: That totally makes sense. Kyndall: Right. And the research shows that tracking begins very early in elementary school, right? And so elementary teachers need to be conscious of all of these different issues so that they can be on guard at the very early stages to not allow that tracking to begin. Mike: For educators or instructional leaders who are new to the conversation, in addition to reading ‘Choosing to See,' are there other resources that you think would be helpful in supporting people in learning more about equity in the mathematics classroom? Pamela: Well, yes, I know that I've just started reading recently, it's a new book this out called ‘Engaging in Culturally Relevant Math Tasks: Fostering Hope in the Elementary Classroom.' And it's by our good friends Lou Edward Matthews, Shelly M. Jones, and Yolanda Parker. It's at Corwin books, and I definitely recommend that that is a great resource. Kyndall: There's a new book that just came out. It's called ‘Middle School Mathematics Lessons to Explore, Investigate, and Respond to Issues of Social Injustice,' by Robert Berry and his colleagues. In 2020, they released a high school version of the book. And in the fall of 2022, they're planning on releasing an upper- and lower elementary version of these books. And the first section of the book is really talking about the kind of pedagogy needed to implement social justice tasks. And then the second part of the book has lessons aligned to the different content strands that are social justice focused, a lot of digital resources. And so, I think that is an excellent resource for teachers. Mike: That's fantastic. Pam and Kyndall, I want to thank you both so much for being here with us today, for sharing the book with us. It's really been a pleasure talking with both of you. Kyndall: Thank you. Pamela: Well, thank you. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Episode 145 - Genie+, Individual Lightning Lane, and More! Genie+, Individual Lightning Lane, and More Hey everyone, I'm Mike, she's Sophie, and he's Grogu, and we're On the Road with Mickey! Brenda will be back with us next week! This is episode 145 for November 14, 2022, and today we're talking about Genie+, Individual Lightning Lane, and More! Grab your favorite beverage, sit back, and relax, and tell us in the comments below what you think! Here's the rundown of what we talked about: Cheddar from the Big Cheese Sophie: The new Disney+ Series Zootopia+ premiered on the streaming channel last Wednesday, November 9th. Did you watch it? If so, what do you think? Also, what do you think of Andor? Let us know in the comments! Mike: For those of you who like the PhotoPass photos that you can purchase with Memory Maker, Disney is adding new Holiday Magic Shots for your photos at the Magic Kingdom. They will be available through January 7, 2023. Connect with us! Here's how:  Facebook: https://facebook.ontheroadwithmickey.com Facebook Group: https://facebookgroup.ontheroadwithmickey.com YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OntheRoadwithMickey Instagram: On the Road with Mickey Email: info@ontheroadwithmickey.com Feature Topic: Genie+, Individual Lightning Lanes, and More Genie+ Individual Lightning Lanes MK - 7 Dwarfs Mine Train E - Guardians of the Galaxy Cosmic Rewind AK - Avatar Flight of Passage HS - Rise of the Resistance Entering the Parks MagicMobile Uses your iPhone, Android, or Apple Watch in conjunction with the My Disney Experience app to provide many of the features you get with MagicBands and Key to the World Cards. One difference is that you currently can't use MagicMobile for your room key. However, there is another feature within the MDE app that allows you to unlock your room door with the app. MagicBands MagicBands have functionality like the Key to the World Cards, but they also have a long range RFID system for capturing ride photos and linking them directly into your account. What I've learned is that the long range RFID requires a battery and that it will go out after a couple of years, but the short range RFID – for things like entering the parks as your park ticket and so forth, does not require a battery and so that part of your MagicBand will still work. Key to the World Cards A Free alternative to using your phone or buying a MagicBand. Here is what you can do with Key to the World Cards: Unlock your Disney Resort hotel room door Enter theme parks (with linked valid theme park admission and park reservation) Connect Disney PhotoPass images to your account Gain access to virtual queues (currently in use for Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind) Redeem Lightning Lane ride reservations booked via Genie+ or the a la carte purchase option Charge to your Disney Resort hotel folio during your stay MagicBand Plus The MagicBand Plus really has two sides to it, the original MagicBand side that works the same as the original MagicBands, even if the battery is run down, and the “Plus” side that incorporates all of the additional features and requires your battery to be charged in order to access them. That includes the special effects (such as for the 50th Anniversary Statues), minigames, interaction with the shows, and so forth. If the battery runs out, those won't work but the original MagicBand features will still work. This Day in Disney History for November 14: 1940: Fantasia premieres in New York Disney Who's Who Character Randall Boggs from Monsters, Inc. A little bit of Walt “Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life…They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought—sometimes it isn't much, either.” - Walt Disney Coming Next Week: Brenda's experience with Royal Caribb...

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…

Freeze, creep! This week, we're checking out the 1995 and 2012 attempts to bring Judge Dredd to American movie audiences. Spoiler alert: It didn't work out like the studios hoped.  ----more---- [00:00:00] Mike: That's a little too thirsty, I think. Welcome to Tencent takes the podcast where we violate Mega City One's judicial codes, one issue at a time. Coming at you live from the hot box of my closet; I have not showered in 24-hours, and I smell fantastic. I'm Mike Thompson and I am joined by my co-host, the princess of pain, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Yaar! I'm also - Mike: How are you smelling? Jessika: God, I'm in a hotbox of pain at the very least, I had to go to work like physically into the office today. So I actually, you know, had to be decent enough to be around people that are masked, so the deodorant had to at least be applied, but. Mike: No hard pass. I work out of my bedroom now, you're lucky if you get pants. Jessika: Well, that's nice. [00:01:00] Mike: Would you like to explain why we are here? Jessika: You know, we're here because we love comics. Mike, Mike: True. Jessika: We love comics. We want to talk about all the comics. We want to do deep dives about our favorite comics and their heroes, and where they came from. And wild little stories that we find out about them and bringing in nefarious characters like Eric Estrada. He's not a nefarious. Mike: He's a little nefarious. He was involved in a really weird kind of scammy land sale thing. He did also endorse Trump on Twitter. Remember that where he was like - Jessika: Oh God. He is nefarious. Gosh, darn I, why do I always want to give Eric Estrada so much credit? I'm like way too nice to the guy. I don't even know him. I do follow him on Twitter now, but. Mike: No. He literally told Donald Trump on Twitter that he should run for president because he tells it like it is. So thanks, Eric. Thanks. Appreciate that. Jessika: No. That was a bad idea. Like, for [00:02:00] the record, I don't know if anyone else knows that. Everyone else knows that, every other country knows that. Mike: They do now. Jessika: Oh man, we're going to get into some hot topics today, too. This is already a good start. Mike: Yeah. So before I interrupted you, is there anything else that we'd like to cover or talk about or look at? Jessika: Oh, their video games, all the related media movies. Everything, everything comics related, we want to talk about it. Mike: Fair. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Well, today we are going to hop on our Law Masters and cruise the Cursed Earth as we check out both the cinematic adaptations of Judge Dredd. But, before we do that, before we dive into this episode, we'd like to acknowledge a small milestone because this is our 10th episode and we've received over 500 downloads. So, you know, that may not sound like anything major compared to a lot of podcasts out there, but we're incredibly proud of what we've been able to achieve and how far we've gotten so far. And if you're listening to us, we're super [00:03:00] grateful that you've just given us your time. We really appreciate it. So to celebrate, we're going to do a giveaway. If you go to our page on Apple Podcast and leave a rating, and then email us a screenshot of said rating and a review, but that's only if you're inclined, really, we just care about the rating. We'll enter you to win a $25 gift card from NewKadia. NewKadia actually offers international shipping too. So, even listeners outside of the continental us are eligible. Jessika: That's super exciting! Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So Yeah. Rate us, review us. We appreciate you all. Mike: Even you. Yeah. So I'm talking to you right through your car stereo right now. Jessika: We're there with you driving along. Hey, watch the road. Mike: All right. We're at the point of the episode where we like to start off with one cool thing that we've read or watched lately, do you want to start off? Jessika: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I needed a little bit of a palate cleanser after watching the [00:04:00] 2012 dread film so much gore. So I ended up watching Guardians of the Galaxy 2, which I hadn't seen before, and it was super fun. Loved the music as always characters had a really good chance to further develop. Okay. But I have to say, dude, I like still Stalloned myself. I did not know he was in that movie. And then he just shows up and I was like, what the fuck? Cause I literally had just watched them both in a row. And so I literally had just seen Stallone like the movie before that. And then he shows up again and I was like, good lord. Mike: Well, and you know that his crew is like the original Guardians of the Galaxy from the comic books. Jessika: I do. Yeah.I do. Now. I know I looked that up afterwards and I was like, oh, okay. All right. Mike: Yeah. And it was like Michael Rosenbalm, who did the voice of Superman and was Lex Luther in Smallville and the Michelle Yeoh and Ving Rhames. I was totally here for that cameo. That was great. [00:05:00] Jessika: Yeah. It was, once I looked that up, I was like, oh, that makes more sense. Cause I wasn't aware of that. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: it was super fun, but then I Stalloned myself again because I today a guest hosting of trivia for North Bay Trivia in Santa Rosa, at Shady Oak Barrel. And they have like a little arcade game. That's Stallone on the front. And I can't remember, I sent it to you, I think, cause I frickin' Stalloned myself again, secondary Stallone. Mike: I feel like you did. And I can't remember what it was. Jessika: I'd have to look it up, but I'm too lazy to look through my phone. So we'll just leave it. Anyone knows I don't, I don't care anymore. Mike: Fair. Jessika: So, back to the Guardians of the Galaxy after that Stallone detour, I really, really liked the evolution of Gomorrah, Nebula's relationship. Mike: I love that. I thought it was fantastic. Like I thought honestly, Almost all the characters had really nice [00:06:00] development, except really, I mean, I don't know. I feel like Peter didn't actually develop that much as an actual character. Jessika: No, he was just taken on some Shamaylan twists and turns. Mike: Yeah. But yeah, the whole bit where, Yondu is yelling at Rocket about, you say that I don't know you, but like you're me. And it was oh, oh. Jessika: Gosh. I definitely cried during that movie. I'm not going to lie, but I'm a crier. Mike: There's a lot of feels. There's a lot of feels in that movie. Jessika: Yeah. Oh, it was so good. So overall two thumbs up. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: What about you? What have you been reading? Watching? Mike: Yeah. So, Sarah and I started watching Loki because that just began airing last week, and ahead of that I wound up reading a couple of old issues of Thor, specifically Thor 371 and 372, which are the issues that actually introduced the Time Variance Authority. And the funny thing is that these issues also introduced a character who [00:07:00] may look a little familiar to you, especially as we've been prepping a bit for this particular episode. So check out the cover and tell me if he reminds you of anyone Jessika: Okay. That looks like a, that's so funny. That looks like Captain America, but it also looks like one of those those Doctor Who, like, what are those things called? Mike: The Daleks. So if you take a closer look at that guy that is so his character, his name is Justice Peace. And if you look at the shape of his helmet and he's actually on a sky cycle. Jessika: Oh shit. Mike: But, yeah, it's a pastiche of Judge Dredd. Jessika: He does look like Judge Dredd. You know what threw me was the bright colors, because Judge Dredd has darker tones. So I kinda got drawn more to that kind of vibe, but you're right. He's got the helmet across his face. You can see one of his eyes and the other one looks like it's probably bionic. And it's kind of like a samurai helmet, it looks like. It's, I think it's supposed to be shaped like more of a samurai style. If I'm not mistaken. Mike: Kind [00:08:00] of which - Jessika: It's big. Mike: Like actually the, Jessika: I don't. Mike: The old school Judge Dredd helmets, actually, like some of them have actually taken on that look too. Like they've kind of played with the shapes, but anyway, I thought it was just kind of a funny, a funny, a full circle moment. Jessika: He's got some arm bandoliers too. Mike: Yeah, man. Those were big in the eighties. Jessika: I guess. So, dang dude, I'm loving this. Mike: Yeah. It's a lot of fun. We are going to be talking about Judge Dredd in general. We're not going to do a deep dive on the comics, but we're going to talk a bit about the background. And so before we actually do that, I felt like we should take a minute and talk about how of us have grown up with pretty close connections to law enforcement. Do you want to go first? Jessika: No. Sure, sure, sure, sure. So my dad was a police officer for, I think, close to 30 years. And for a lot of it he worked in public safety, which is really like policing and [00:09:00] firefighting and they rotate duties. So you have to know both, you go through both academies. It's supposed to be that you're a little bit more well-rounded and involved, and I don't know, it was. At the time the community was a lot smaller and it probably made more sense, but it's getting bigger. And, I don't know how much sense it makes, but I'm also not an expert. And I haven't lived there for a while, so I don't know what the politics there are these days surrounding that as much as I used to. As far as police officers go, I do know a few really decent people who are police officers and, you know, growing up, I had mostly good experiences. However, that hasn't been the case for everyone. And my privilege of being raised white and a child of a law enforcement officer has absolutely shielded me from so many of the issues and policing that plagues our country. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And I have to say like, unironically, my dad was a decent cop. He's still alive. But when he was still in law enforcement, he was a decent cop and [00:10:00] he definitely let his ethics guide him, and he left positions based on his moral compass. And I'm really proud of him for leaving organizations that were more on the corrupt side or that weren't doing things that he thought they should be doing and abiding by their own rules. However, he's also the one who taught me about profiling, which is a conversation I remember having with him around 9 or 10 years old, maybe earlier than that. And that's just such a racist tactic that has never really sat right with me. And that I adamantly oppose now that I'm older and I have a better understanding of how we as a society, villainize people of color just for existing. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So without getting too far into what is a really, really massive conversation and discussion, the judicial system in this country is absolutely broken, and we statistically arrest convict and give longer incarceration timeframes to people of color. Mike: Yeah. I mean, there's, [00:11:00] that's just a fact. Jessika: It's a fact. There, there are numbers, you can look it up, you know, it's yeah. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: So, I know, on that fun note, whatever, I'm such a downer. Mike: That's okay. I should have known better than to start us off on this, you know, really positive note for the episode. Jessika: I already got fired up. I'm already going to have to edit out my mumbling. Mike: That's all right. You know, it's funny because I have to wonder if my uncle actually knew your dad because my uncle was in the same area and works in public safety as well. So, he always did the firefighting and police work as well. My uncle is the guy that I grew up idolizing when I was a kid. He was the cool uncle to me. He taught me the basics of photography. And I worked as a freelance photographer for awhile. He was a forensic specialist dealing with fingerprinting. So you and I [00:12:00] grew up in the 90's in the Bay Area. So Polly Klaas is a name that any, anyone who was here during that time knows, and she was a girl who was kidnapped out of her home, basically just taken while she was having a sleep over with some friends out of her home in Petaluma. And the FBI apparently came in and did a Palm print, but they use some fluorescent powder that the local PD couldn't read, but my uncle had the training and I guess the equipment, I don't quite know all the details, but so he worked the Polly Klaas case. He and my aunt are both retired police and they were both so incredibly cool to me when I was growing up. And I've since had to reckon with the fact that, you know, not all cops are good, and I'd hope that they were great. I hope that they were the bar that other cops were measured against, but who can say it, this. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: So we, we both have connections to law enforcement, and I think it's safe [00:13:00] to say that we're approaching Judge Dredd from a perspective that is influenced both by our backgrounds, as well as the current environment that's going on because we're recording this in June of 2021 when things are still real bad in a lot of ways. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: So now that we've got that highlight out of the way. I'm curious, what was your awareness of Judge Dredd prior to this. Jessika: You know, besides name recognition, I didn't know much about the plot line, other than some vague notion that it was futuristic or post-apocalyptic. So, I came into this super fresh, and I'm super excited to learn more now. Mike: Yeah. So, I definitely have a lot more familiarity with the character. I read some of his stuff in the 90's and 2000's. I would just kind of randomly find things and I thought he was pretty cool. When I was in roller derby, my roller derby name actually wound up being Judge Dreadful. [00:14:00] And so I've since then bought a number of collections. I've read most of the big storylines that they did from the 70's up until the mid-90's. And then I also read one of the more recent American series as well. I've seen all the movies. Dred is still one of my favorite movies of all time, even though we'll talk about that later on, it's got its own issues through today's lens. I guess the best way I can describe myself is: I'm more than a casual fan, but I'm not a diehard fan. Part of it is just because there's so much lore at this point. So, I have an unfair advantage in terms of familiarity, I guess. Sorry. Jessika: No, that's okay. That's why you're hosting this episode. Not me. Mike: Yeah. So, we're going to do some basic background. Dredd was originally created in 1977 for this newly launched comics anthology called 2000 AD. There was this guy, he was an editor named Pat Mills and he brought on a writer that he'd worked with named John Wagner to create new content for this magazine. [00:15:00] And, basically comics, anthology magazines, they were printed on like newspaper stock. They were magazine format. And what it was very kind of, you know, old school pulp magazine, like where it was serial stories usually, or a little one-offs. So it'd be four to five pages, usually of content per story. And then a lot of times they would end on a cliffhanger so that, you know, the readers would come back the next week. And that's generally how British comics have worked. At least that's my understanding of it. That's how a lot of them are. And actually when they were trying to do US style sized comics, supposedly they didn't do as well because they would get covered up basically and overshadowed by the sheer size of these magazines, which were much bigger and flashier. So Wagner came into 2000 AD. He'd had a lot of success writing this Dirty Harry kind of character called One-Eyed Jack for another anthology series called Valiant, and both he and Mills realized that 2000 AD needed [00:16:00] a quote unquote, a hardcore cop character as part of the magazine's content. So, Wagner has since then described, dread as a psycho cop with no feelings. And then he worked with this artist named Carlos Escuera to create the character and then Escuera wound up designing a character who reflected that kind of hardcore, no feelings ideal. He actually died a couple of years ago and the Guardian ran a really, it was really nice ,tribute talking about his accomplishments and his style, but there's this really great quote, which I think you should actually read out. And it gives us a lot of background in a nutshell of Dredd and who he is. Jessika: Escuera started his career drawing war comics in Barcelona before moving to the UK and working for the anthology 2000 AD and others, He brought the iconography of fascist Spain to Dredd's extremely weird and [00:17:00] vivid design and combined it with his experiences of living in Croydon through the 70's and 80's, the punk movement on his doorstep and TV images of policemen, charging striking miners. The Eagle motif and helmet were drawn from fascism, the permanently drawn truncheon from police on the picket line. The zips chains and knee pads from punk. I was living in Franco, Spain, he told an interviewer last year, but also I was living in Mrs. Thatcher's England. Mike: I think that kinda tells us all we need to know about what they're going for with the vibe of Judge Dredd. Jessika: Yeah. No, that, that definitely showed. I was thinking that about the Eagle. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: When they were showing the big building and it was super, everything was just cement and. Mike: Yeah. It's got that brutalist kind of architecture. Yeah. Jessika: Yes. Mike: Yeah. So Dred exists in this world. That's left standing after World War III, and [00:18:00] most of the planet's just been devastated. America is largely uninhabitable, say for a couple of what are called Mega Cities, which are these autonomous city states that housed hundreds of millions of people. At one point in the comics, I think it's up to 800 million and they've had different events where they've kind of knocked it down repeatedly, Jessika: Yikes. Mike: And at one point it got as low as like 120 million or so I think that was kind of after I stopped reading though. But anyway, mega city one was originally going to be a future version of New York City. But that was quickly retconned to that specific part, being some sort of capital area for this urban sprawl that covers most of the Eastern seaboard. And from the get-go, Dredd stories were kind of this extreme form of satire. It was presenting the society where democracy basically failed, and the office of the president of the United States has been retired, and society now runs under this, to be honest, terrifying gaze of the Judges. How would you sum up the [00:19:00] Judges based on what we saw in the movies? Jessika: As a whole, they were pretty robotic and unfeeling. They were doling out the letter of the law as it happened and per their protocol, and their justice is swift and immediate, which is really terrifying. Like you said to imagine. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And what's even scarier is that all crimes were treated the same. You are either sent to a prison called an isopod, or killed right then and there. There was, there were no middle grounds between those points. It was like, you're hauled off then, you serve a sentence, or you're just killed. Mike: Yeah. I mean, that's really not that different from the comics. Jessika: And then, as far as their appearance, as with most uniforms, they dress the same with helmets and body armor and they are just armed to the gills and they look just as scary as they act. Mike: Yeah. And, I think a safe way to describe the system of Mega City [00:20:00] one is to call it authoritarian, but it's just a little bit different than what we normally associate with that term. Jessika: Yeah. I wonder if there's some sort of like a law-tarian like judiciatarion. I don't know, somebody is going to @ me and tell me how stupid I am, but that's fine. I already know. Mike: I like, I like, I liked judicialtarion. I think that's, uh, if that's not a word we should make it one. Jessika: Here we are, TM TM. Mike: Yeah, we're just going to sit back and let the royalties roll in after this. Yeah, but in spite of all this, there's this very weird, dry, British humor that kind of makes the whole narrative a little more palatable. So like one of the early stories is focusing on how robots were doing most of society's work and that's resulted in rampant, unemployment and boredom, so citizens of the mega blocks start engaging in what they call block wars, where neighboring blocks basically just start opening fire on each other because they want something to do. There's another story where the Dark Judges, who [00:21:00] are, they're effectively movie monster versions of the Judges as we know them crossover into Dredd's reality. And then they start slaughtering people, indiscriminately, because all crime is committed by the living. And, thus the sentence for life is death. Jessika: Yikes. Mike: Or, there's also the idea that recycled food is, what they call it, is how they eat these days. But recycled food is actually made from people you know, it's Soylent Green Jessika: Oh, How Soylent Green. Yeah. Mike: Yeah. The Dredd comics always have this kind of underlying tone of absurdity. It's that slight bit of levity that makes this really brutal comic actually pretty enjoyable because it becomes ridiculous. It's a comic of extremes. Over time, the comics gone on to deal with things like Dredd having to resolve how the system that he represents is actually problematic, and it needs some kind of reform. The ramifications of how the push to move back to democracy fails and, [00:22:00] you know, actually fleshing him out as a character who occasionally has feelings, not all the time, but just sometimes. He goes from being kind of a lawful neutral character to a lawful kind of good alignment, like sort of good, kind of, some of the time. There's only so long that you can have a character be a robot for justice, if nothing else before, you know, people are going to sour on them. Jessika: You mean a veritable killing machine? Mike: Yeah. The other thing is that the core Dredd stories haven't really been reset. They're still going from 2000 AD, so at this point we have nearly 50 years of stories that are all canon. And the other thing is that they keep on aging Dredd in realtime. So, at this point he's absurdly old and they hand wave it away by he spends time in the Rejuva-pods or whatever they are. But as a result, he's the same guy who has seen everything that has gone on in the comics. [00:23:00] And as a result, he's matured and changed a bit. And it's kinda neat. So in the UK Dredd's a pretty big deal, but his presence in America isn't quite the same. Like UK comic magazines back then were very different from comics here in the states. So, when they decided to bring them over here across the pond, 2000 AD wound up working with this guy named Nick Landau, who a couple of years earlier had created tightened books to publish comic collections of Judge Dredd in the UK, and then was publishing more collections of other things. Landau had just created Eagle Comics to collect and publish Dredd stories and other 2000 AD stuff. Uh, here in the States in 1983, the Eagle series lasted for about three-ish-is years, and then it moved on to another publisher. And this is pretty much how Dredd existed in the states in the 80's and 90's; a publisher would pick up the rights, and then try to make them click with American readers, and then the [00:24:00] series would get canceled, and then someone else would pick them up and try to do it again. And arguably his most quote unquote mainstream moment was when DC comics published an 18 issue series from 94 to 96. I've only gotten through a couple of these issues and they don't quite bite like the originals. They feel more like an action sci-fi series. Some weird kind of sarcastic humor, but it doesn't quite translate the same way. It feels like a knockoff product, to be honest. I mean, honestly the best American adaptation I've seen is from the 2012 series that IDW did. And that condensed several of the iconic Dredd storylines from the original British run. So they were a little bit more palatable for American audiences, but basically American awareness of the characters generally stayed that level of, oh yeah, that sounds kind of familiar. And then he's never really been a household name, which was what the 1995 movie was trying to change. [00:25:00] Jessika: Yeah, well, it didn't change it for me, but I was also, you know, I was also nine in 1995. So. Mike: *Sigh* I was 14. Jessika: You're only a few years older - you say that like you're 90 now, by the way, every one for the record, Mike is 90. Mike: I am. Jessika: Since he's making a huge deal out of it. Mike: I'm waiting on my Rascal. Scooter Just gonna, just gonna drive through downtown Petaluma with my dogs in my side car. We're all gonna be wearing goggles and flight helmets. And you'll see me go by and just gol “RASCAL!” Jessika: My dude, you can do that now. Mike: Sarah has told me I can't do that yet. We've had this discussion. Jessika: Oh, that's too bad. Mike: Now that we've got the background out of the way, why don't we actually talk about what we're here to talk about? Which is the 1995 Judge Dredd movie. [00:26:00] Jessika: Here we are. Mike: Yeah. Do you remember those TV schedules that used to be in the back of the newspaper, they would show you like A) what was on the air that night and B) provide one sentence summaries of what the movies were? Do you remember those? Jessika: I do because I loved reading those. Mike: I know I did too. How would you summarize Stallone's Judge Dredd, if you were writing it up in that format? Jessika: Oh, need a throat clear for that. In a world where chaos reigns, one man stands between justice and lawlessness. But what happens when the Judge becomes the judged? Find out this Wednesday at 6:00 PM Pacific standard time, 9:00 PM Eastern on Spike TV. I just assume Spike TV would play that. Mike: Spike TV would be all over this. Are you kidding? Jessika: Yeah, no, exactly. That was the first television channel that I thought of that was like, yeah, they would [00:27:00] absolutely have this on like they'd have a Dredd marathon. Mike: God, what an absolute time capsule of a TV channel - is, Spike TV isn't around still, is it? I don't know. Jessika: I have no idea. I was my, my 90's brain just woke up and was like, this is what you say. Mike: God. I remember that was such a mid to late aughts TV channel. It was basically toxic masculinity, the TV channel. Jessika: Yeah. It was, it was either super masculine movies like this, or it was just a game show about people falling all over each other and just laughing at people. Mike: Oh yeah. Was it Most Extreme Challenge? Jessika: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge Yep. As I sit here and I know exactly what it, cause I didn't watch a million episodes of that. Mike: No I'm, that was the only reason that I would turn that fucking channel on. Jessika: Yeah. It's true. My brother and I would roll. Mike: No, so, okay. I just looked it up and we don't need to [00:28:00] actually record the sorry, uh, Paramount Network, formerly Spike, which is still used for the Dutch in Australian feed as an American, but you know, whatever, fuck Jessika: The Australians don't even listen to us. I'm leaving all of this in, and the Australians don't listen to us, yet. Oh God. They're going to listen to us now. And they're going to be like, oy yes we do. I can't, I'm not even going to try, not even to try to do some like, incredibly offensive Australian accent. Mike: No, no, don't do it. Jessika: No, no, I know about it. Mike: Okay. Let's go for an actual movie summary now. Jessika: Sure set in a, oh, sorry. Regular voice, Jessika. Set in a dystopian future complete with a densely populated metropolis and flying cars, order is dictated and carried out by people called Judges, whose job is to convict, judge, and punish those moving outside of the law. The punishments [00:29:00] are severe, being jailed or even killed for their transgressions. Stallone, who plays Judge Joseph dread is seemingly one of the most feared and respected judges until he is framed by a maniacal and presumed to be dead ex-judge Rico. Dredd has to prove his innocence in order to continue providing his particular brand of justice. Oh, and how can I forget about Rob Schneider? Whose main role in this film was to say Dredd's named really loudly. So they would get caught when they were trying to be covert. I mean, at least that's how it felt. Mike: Yeah, whenever I talk about this movie, I always sit there and reference how Robert Schneider is the worst choice to provide, you know, it's not even comic relief. It's like air quotes, comic relief. Schneider was really big at that time. Like, he had just come out of SNL and I never found them really to be all that funny. But, this was like at the [00:30:00] start of his whole 90's. I don't know. What would you call that movement? Jessika: God, it was like the stupid humor movement. Mike: Yeah, it was that Adam Sandler. Jessika: I talk like I'm a baby. Adam Sandler. I can deal with, to a certain extent. There are some movies, I'm just like, whatever, but I've liked him in some things even, but I feel like Will Ferrell is a result of Adam Sandler. I feel like Adam Sandler, birthed will Ferrell and I'm not happy about it. I do not like Will Farrell Mike: Man, I. Jessika: @ me Will Ferrell. I do not like you. Mike: Just watch, he's going to like angrily tweet and then we're going to get a bunch of, you know, I guess, angry gen X-ers I'll all up in our DMS. Jessika: OPress? Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that bad press wasn't just good press also, because it is. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, this was before Schneider was given starring [00:31:00] roles in movies like Deuce Bigalow, which I have yet to see a Rob Schneider movie that I don't find absolutely abhorrent for a number of reasons. Yeah. Jessika: Especially in retrospect. Mike: Yeah. I mean, he's not offensive in this movie, he's just not very funny and kind of useless, even though he's supposed to be the plucky comic sidekick, which, I mean, this was part of that era of buddy action cop movies, except just in a different setting. Jessika: Yeah. I don't know. It was just very grating. The humor Mike: Yeah. , Jessika: And forced. Mike: Yeah. So, your summary is spot on. There's also detours into the Cursed Earth where Dredd is wrongfully convicted. And then, this is something where they diverged from the comic lore, but they're traveling to the penal colony in Aspen, when actually the penal colonies are all off-world. So it's, you basically get sent there for hard labor, off-planet and it's not exactly described what, and then he has to come back from the Cursed Earth, after dealing with the [00:32:00] cannibalistic Angel Gang. And then there's the reveal that he's a clone, which at this point in time is not really a big deal. Like, everybody knows it in the lore and yeah, we get a climactic battle at the statue of Liberty. Also, Joan Chen shows up for no real reason other than to be a woman for Diane Lane to fight. Jessika: Yeah, exactly. Mike: But yeah, it's not a great movie. Jessika: No, no. Mike: But there are parts of it that I still really enjoy. Sarah and I wound up watching it together and all of the practical, special effects that they did are still so good and they look so good. And, and honestly the action scenes are pretty decent for, you know, a mid 90's movie, even where there's that bit with the flying motorcycles, where they're being chased and they knock off one of the Judges chasing them that bit, where he's falling into the bottomless abyss of Mega City looked [00:33:00] really good and I couldn't help, but think of Ninja Turtles 3, where on the other hand, the bad guy getting knocked off into the ocean looks like garbage. Jessika: Yeah, no, that, I was really impressed by that. Especially considering the timeframe it was in. Mike: Yeah. So this movie really tried to smash together a lot of those classic Dredd moments from the comic book. And it was trying to basically create something new while giving fans a lot of nods that they would appreciate. The funny thing is that it was really focusing on the story of Rico Dredd after he comes back from serving his prison time, but in the comic, he only shows up for a one-shot serial story. If I remember right where he comes back from serving prison time in a colony on Saturn's moon of Titan. So if I remember this, right, he's just this kind of one-off character who shows up pretty early in the Dredd stories. Like, I, [00:34:00] I don't think the Dredd stories had even been published for a year by that point. It's like the 30th issue or so, and then he's shot down by Dredd in a duel and the whole, the logic behind it is that he tries to get the drop on Dredd, but his reactions are slower because he's been operating in lower gravity for a while. Jessika: Interesting, but he's still supposed to be a clone, right? Mike: Yeah, he's he, it's originally noted that he's Dredd's brother. And then there's the whole club thing that, that shows up later on and all that, but he also looks way different from Armand Assante in the movie, I'm sending you an image, you can take a quick look and see what Rico Dredd looks like after his prison time in the comic. Jessika: Oh, you would not get those two confused. Mike: Yeah. It's um. Jessika: This guy's got this, guy's like a metal face. Now he's got a nice little head band with probably a laser coming out the top. And then he's got like, no nose any longer. He's just got metal over his nose. There's metal stuff going into his mouth. And like [00:35:00] half of his face just doesn't have skin anymore. And you can tell one of his eyes is blind. It's pretty wild. His hair is all crazy. He's not having a good hair day. It's a look. Mike: It's a look. Yeah. So the whole idea is that when you get shipped off to these colonies, you are basically surgically modified to survive in the environment. Jessika: Oh. Mike: Yeah. So, definitely not what we got in the movie. Jessika: No. You had a guy that actually looked a lot like Stallone. They did a pretty good job of that, if they were going for lookalikes. Mike: Yeah. They were both very fit dudes who had those very strong chin lines. And then they also gave them cosmetic contact lenses so that they would actually have blue eyes, which is why. Jessika: That's what I thought. Mike: When you look at Stallone, you're like, mm, pretty sure God didn't make those eyes. That color. Jessika: Yeah. It's not so bad from certain angles, but other ones you're like, wow, Snowpiercer what's up. Mike: Yeah, it looks [00:36:00] very weird when you're, especially when you're watching it in high-def these days, it looks unnatural. I'm not sure how it would look on a TV or in a movie theater in 1995. I'm a little curious because I didn't get to see it. I was too young to go see an R-rated movie back then, womp womp. But yeah, so likewise, the character of Hershey, who is Diane Lane's character, she first appeared in a 1980 story called the Judge Child, which is this it's this cool thing where it starts off as a road trip across the Cursed Earth, and the Angel Gang who we see in the movie shows up, and then it becomes this weird space opera as Dredd winds up chasing after the Angel Gang and the kidnapped Judge Child across multiple star systems, which again, talking about the weird absurdity of Judge Dredd. So, it's weird to see her in this movie because I always associate Diane Lane with Under the Tuscan Sun. I mean, I've never even seen that movie, but that's just always what I [00:37:00] think of when I see her. Jessika: Oh, same. I definitely see her in an Italian villa and I have not seen that either. Mike: Yeah. Although she did play Superman's mom in the DCEU. Jessika: Oh yeah. Mike: So there was that, her finest role, you know, when she gets sad about Superman with Lois Lane, and then it turns out to be a Martian green dude. Jessika: We're going to have so many movie stars, not happy with us. Mike: I know. Jessika: They'll just be crying in all of their money. It's fine. Mike: Oh, no two lame nerds on the internet were mean to me. I just, uh. Jessika: My nightmare. Mike: They made vaguely negative remarks about me. All right. Jessika: Oh, let me use this 50 to dry my tears. Mike: Anyway. Yeah, so [00:38:00] Diane Lane shows up in Judge Dredd, and she's like way more of a damsel in distress and then weirdly a romantic interest for Dredd than anything else. And that was really bizarre to see, because with the hindsight of the comics, that character in Dredd A) Hershey is like a bad-ass cop. She is a hardcore street Judge. But she and Dredd actually have often had kind of an antagonistic relationship based on differing perspectives about how the justice system should operate. Jessika: Oh, interesting. Mike: Yeah. And eventually, she goes on to be the Chief Judge. Jessika: Oh, good for her. Mike: Yeah, you know, she busted through that glass ceiling. Jessika: Man. It just took, you know, going through a third world war, ladies, this is what we have to look forward to. Just wait for the flying motorcycles. We'll be there. Mike: Well, you know, you don't have to cook because we're just recycling people at that point. So, you know, frees up a lot of time. [00:39:00] Jessika: Oh, perfect. Mike: You don't have to, don't have to stand in the kitchen and make all of us men folk roasts all day. Jessika: Oh, perfect. Well, dang. What will I do? Mike: Okay. overthrow the patriarchy, I guess. Jessika: Let's do it. Mike: Yeah. And then additionally, you know, Dredd himself was pretty different from what we had in the comics. The movie violated this key component of the character by spending a lot of time focused on Dredd out of uniform, which means that we got to see his face. And it's such a known thing that this is not something that Dredd does, but it's actually one of the first points in Dreads, Wikipedia article, if you would be so kind. Jessika: Sure. Dredd's entire face is never shown in the strip. This began and is an unofficial guideline, but soon became a rule. As John Wagner explained, it sums up the facelessness of justice. [00:40:00] Justice has no soul, so it isn't necessary for readers to see Dredd's face. And I don't want you to. Mike: Which I mean, I think that's actually a really cool defining aspect of the character. Jessika: And it's always scarier if you can't see what you're fighting. Mike: Yeah. Agreed. Jessika: I mean, that's basic horror film rule, you know, it's always scarier if you can't see what's chasing you. Mike: Yeah. I kind of equate it to the recent Alien movie that they did. Alien Isolation, where they explained the origin for the alien species. And I was sitting there and going, there is nothing that you could tell me that would be worse than what I come up with in my mind when you've got a really nebulous origin. Jessika: Exactly. Mike: And then I watched the movie and I was like, that's dumb. I'm going back to my original design. I like that better. Jessika: Yeah. It's like Signs was really scary until they brought that stupid alien life being in. And then I was like, well, there it goes. Mike: Yeah. [00:41:00] Curse you, Shamaylan! Judge Dredd is one of those movies where when you watch it, it feels like the people that were involved with making it really had a lot of fun, and were really passionate about what they were doing. Like I've got the making-of book, and you can actually see the set that they built basically on a patch of farmland that became the street for Mega City One. And it's crazy. It wound up having hundreds of neon signs after they built it. It looked like a living, breathing street from this strange city in the future. It was really cool. And likewise, there's that ABC warrior robot that we get to see a couple of times who looks absolutely incredible. And the costume designs are really cool. They don't quite work because you know, it's spandex, but it's very faithful to the comic. And, even the final scenes in the Statue of Liberty where you're in the lab and you've got all those clones being grown, I don't quite understand why the clones are [00:42:00] mostly grown, but we can still see their intestines, but they look really cool. Jessika: I agree. Yeah. Mike: That said, the movie had a lot of production problems. And in fact, it actually had to get re-cut and submitted to the NPAA five times in order to get just an R rating down from an NC 17. Jessika: Dang. Mike: And by the way, we need to talk about the fact that this movie is rated R and if you watch it, it does not feel like an R rated movie. It feels like maybe a PG 13 movie at this point, maybe. Jessika: Maybe, I mean, and that would just be for the violence, Mike: I mean, yeah, but, compared to what gets rated PG 13 these days? Jessika: Yes. Mike: I think if I remember right, one of the Aliens vs Predator movies, maybe both of them are rated PG 13 and they're way more violent and gory. Jessika: Really? Wow. Mike: I mean, I could be completely wrong. Jessika: Who rates these movies? I mean, not a real question. We don't need to get into that, but that's wild to me. Mike: We'll go on a very tiny side tangent, but. Highly recommend you watch the movie. This [00:43:00] film is not yet rated, which talks about the NPAA and the ratings board and how weird and secretive it is. And just a how dumb and arbitrary their system is. Jessika: I might watch that tonight. Mike: It's great. I highly recommend it. So there was an interview with Steven D'Souza, who was the guy who actually wrote the script for Judge Dredd. e was talking to Den of Geek, he shed some light on how the movies, problematic production wound up leading to this mess that we wound up receiving, if you would be so kind. Jessika: Why sure. Judge Dredd was actually supposed to be a PG 13 movie, the production company at the time, Synergy, they were having some financial troubles, so they didn't have any UK executives on location in England. And in their absence, the director, Danny Cannon, wanting to make it true to the comic book, was making everything more and more and [00:44:00] more violent. So when the movie was delivered to be cut, it was rated X and it was rated X four times. They say you can't appeal after four, four is all you get. Somehow the producer, Ed Pressman, managed one more time to get it rated R which actually wasn't a victory because this was supposed to be PG 13. They had made a deal with Burger King, oop. I think, and a toy company. And you can't advertise toys for an R-rated movie and no hamburger plays, wants toys for an R-rated movie. So they hamburger people and the toy people turned around and sued Disney, the distributor whoop. Mike: Hmm. Oops. Jessika: Well, Disney then said, we'll take this out of the director's hide because he signed a piece of paper saying he would deliver a PG 13, but Synergy who was releasing it through Disney at that point had never done [00:45:00] anything, but an R-rated movie, nobody in the entire company had ever had the experience of putting that piece of paper in front of a director. So they had to pay him. They couldn't withhold his salary for violating a legal promise they never asked him to make. Mike: I kind of love that. Jessika: Blunders. Mike: Yeah. That interview also notes that the scene where the reporter gets killed by Rico and he's framing Dredd. It was way more violent and gory, and it looked like something out of Robocop. And then additionally, there was the bit where Rico tells his robot to tear off the arms and legs of the council of five Judge that he's been working with. And he says, rip off his arms and legs and then save his head for last. And so it was originally supposed to be a scene where basically it cuts away to Rico walking away or something like that or shadows or something, and then you just hear the screams and that's it. But [00:46:00] apparently they made a full animatronic robot that had the arms and legs actually getting ripped off and like spewing blood. Jessika: Yikes, no. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Guys. Mike: Yeah. So this was clearly one of those things desires were not clearly communicated. So Stallone gave an interview to Uncut Magazine in 2008. And he talked about a bunch of the things that, that went wrong with that movie, including this weird story about Danny Cannon, where he said, I knew we were in for a long shoot when for no explainable reason, Danny Cannon, who's rather diminutive, jumped down from his director's chair and yelled to everyone within earshot. Fear me, everyone should fear me. Then jumped back up to his chair as if nothing happened. The British crew was taking bets on his life expectancy. Jessika: Yikes. Yeah, the guy's going to give himself a coronary. Holy moly. Mike: It reminds [00:47:00] me a little bit of the stories that were coming out of the Suicide Squad set. Jessika: Oh. Yeah, I'm hearing more and more stories of just things that actors are being put through on set, and it's just, I don't care who you are, you shouldn't have to deal with this bullshit while you're working. Mike: I don't envy them. Jessika: Yeah, I don't either. I mean, there has to be ways that doesn't hurt people to entertain us. Mike: Yeah. Back onto this topic of Judge Dredd itself, it was this movie that costs $95 million and that's in 1995. So adjusting for inflation, that's roughly $190 million in 2021 dollars. Jessika: Whew. Mike: For reference there's a bunch of MCU flicks that when adjusting for that inflation costs less than Judge Dredd did. The R rating in turn, and kind of the lackluster end product, resulted in $113 million at the box office worldwide. And that was a lot less than Stallone, and really everyone else, was hoping for, [00:48:00] they were legit hoping that this was going to be just a blowout success story, and they could make a franchise out of it. So we've already talked about how they were trying to make this into something that they can market to kids. And we still got some products that show that was the plan. There were a couple of associated products, like a junior novelization, and a comic adaptation of the movie from DC comics itself. And then a video game that's actually, it's not bad. It's like a side scroller and the movie story ends about, I think, halfway through. And then you go on to a bunch of different worlds and end up fighting those Dark Judges that I was talking about earlier, which is kinda cool. Yeah. It's fine. But anyway, none of these tie-in products really seemed to land. How did you feel about this film overall? I'm curious. Jessika: Is it bad to say a came across as a little cheesy? Mike: No, not at all. [00:49:00] Jessika: Like a nice wholly Swiss cheese. There were some mega plot holes that were very apparent. That kind of took me out of the experience saying that a lot this episode, but way to go guys. And it made me really overthink aspects of the storyline. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: Like the whole, how did you not know where were clones? Did you not accidentally ever pick up the other person's gone and we're like, why can't I use this? If you have the DNA testing, it just, it didn't make a lot of sense. And how can you sequence two different guns if you only have one sequence of DNA? I don't get that either. Mike: Yeah. Part of that is just because it was 1995. DNA was still like a really hot topic for plots. It was new science. It was really exciting. I mean. Jessika: That's fair. Mike: We were in the throws of the OJ Simpson trial, and so DNA evidence was a really big thing there, but yeah. Jessika: Hot button item. You're right, I think, buzzword. Mike: And so that kind of goes into the whole [00:50:00] idea of clones as well, but that's an established plot line of Dredd itself. But I mean, like I remember, there's a bit where they focus on the flying Law Master motorcycle and they say, well, if you can ever get it to work, it will be yours. And they bust out and then there's several other flying Law Masters chasing after them. Jessika: Well, when they're talking about those motorcycles, I think they're trying to liken them to really bad quality, government issue, like these things are a piece of shit, but you can probably get em into the air, and have the worst model sitting there for the newbies to fuck around with. But I don't know, that's that was my takeaway from it just because I also remember, not that the cars are bad necessarily, the police cars, but it's like, they're stripped down to nothing, they're just like a car. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: None of the fancy shit. Mike: Yeah. Those, those good old Crown Vics. Jessika: Oh Yeah. And I think that part of it for me was the serious scenes, like the courtroom scene, especially mix in Rob Schneider in any of [00:51:00] those situations. And it was just a little much. Mike: Yeah, absolutely. Stallone played it really straight and really intense and it doesn't quite work. It feels almost like a high school drama production where you're watching those kids onstage, they're acting too hard. They've turned their acting dials up to 11 and you're like, okay buddy, we needed it like a seven. Jessika: I'm just imagining a man, like a child on stage, shaking. His arm is shaky. He's got a skull in his head and he was just screaming out lines from Hamlet. You're like, ooh, buddy, calm down. Mike: Yeah. Yurick can't hear you Hamlet. He's already dead. I think it's okay. Jessika: Womp womp. Mike: Yeah. My take on it, aside from the fact that it's a little bit too faithful and too earnest is that this reminds me of that situation where you take a bunch of different ingredients that you think are going to taste amazing and you've slapped them together into a sandwich. And then you realize the combination doesn't work, but yet you end up eating it anyway. [00:52:00] Jessika: Been there. Mike: Like, we talked about the sets, the makeup, the costumes, even the special effects, those are all great, but the script and then Stallone's performance really kind of do it a disservice, and even Sly has acknowledged that the movie missed the mark. So that earlier interview that I mentioned with Uncut Magazine, he had a really great point where he talks about how it didn't work. Jessika: I loved that property when I read it, because it took a genre that I love what you could term the action morality film, and made it a bit more sophisticated. It had political overtones. It showed how, if we don't curb the way we run our judicial system, the police may end up running our lives. It dealt with archaic governments. It dealt with cloning and all kinds of things that could happen in the future. It was also bigger than any film I've done in its physical stature and the way it was designed, all the people were dwarfed by the system and the architecture. It shows how insignificant [00:53:00] human beings could be in the future. There's a lot of action in the movie and some great acting, too. It just wasn't balls to the wall. But I do look back on Judge Dredd as a real missed opportunity. It seemed that lots of fans had a problem with Dredd removing his helmet because he never does in the comic books. But for me, it is more about wasting such great potential there was in that idea, just think of all the opportunities there were to do interesting stuff with the Cursed Earth scenes. It didn't live up to what it could have been. It probably should have been much more comic, really humorous and fun. What I learned out of that experience was that we shouldn't have tried to make it Hamlet. It's more Hamlet and eggs. That's so funny that I brought up Hamlet! I didn't read ahead. Mike: I was laughing about that actually. Yeah. And I mean, he's not wrong. I think he played it too straight and too serious. And they also tried to make it an action buddy comedy [00:54:00] movie, which it just, it doesn't quite work. Like the, the tone with Dredd is you have to walk a really fine line. They didn't stick to it this time. Yeah. I feel like it was trying to be extremely faithful to the source material, which always walked this very fine line tonally, and then it blew past it to create something that's just it's way too earnest. And over the top, it kind of reminded me of Jupiter Ascending. If you remember that movie. Jessika: I do. Mike: Yeah. It's this movie that has crazy high production values, a pretty great cast actually, and a really big story. And then it all combines into something that's honestly kind of underwhelming. Jessika: And forgettable, cause I kind of forget what that whole plot line of that movie is. And I think I've seen it twice cause I was like, I don't think I've seen this before. And I sat through the whole thing again. It's one of those movies. Mike: I just remember a lot of shirtless Channing Tatum and. Jessika: Oh, yeah, he wasn't at sea. I don't even know. Mike: Yeah. Do you have any more thoughts before we move on to [00:55:00] the 2012 remake kind of, it's not really a remake. It's just the 2012 movie. Jessika: No let's Rob Schneider, our way out of this. Mike: I'm not sure I liked that verb. Jessika: I was using it as: do something really stupid to get out of a situation. And I think I did it just by saying that. Mike: All right. How would you describe this movie? Give it, give another quick summary. Jessika: Mega City One. The future. There are still flying cars, but less of them. In a packed city rife with violence, Judge Joseph Dredd is assessing a new potential recruit to the force. This recruit isn't like the others. However, she is psychic; a mutant! In answering their first call, they inadvertently get themselves involved in a large scale drug operation and have to kill or be killed in order to survive. This film has no sympathy for innocent bystanders, who are killed by the dozens each [00:56:00] scene. And the Judges are swift to kill any who might oppose them. They finally escape using their wits and these psychic's ability, all while taking down a drug ring. Ta-da, all in a day's work. Mike: Dread came out right around the same time, I think a little bit after, as this movie out of, I think Thailand called The Raid. Which it's about a police force. That's basically working their way up through a skyscraper. And it's another really intense action movie. It's got really kick-ass action scenes. It's really good. And the sad thing is it's just that and Dredd have a similar plot based on that, but it's also very different. So there were a lot of unfair comparisons to that at the time. Jessika: I see. Mike: How do you feel this movie compares with the Stallone one? Jessika: It was definitely more serious and more bloody, for sure. It really leaned into the death and carnage aspect [00:57:00] becoming more and more creative and destructive as the film progressed. Like was it strictly necessary to aim towards and blow up an entire floor of a densely inhabited building? I dunno. It was kind of hard to watch some times, it was pretty graphic. I did like that it took on a more serious tone though. And I think the reason that it's so hard to watch for me is more for the social implications. Like, when the film made it clear that vagrancy could carry a similar sentence to other more serious crimes. Mike: Right? Jessika: Which was really wild. Mike: Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like it did a lot more subtle world-building with moments like that, or when they're describing the Mega Block that they're investigating and it's noted that there's only a 3% employment rate. It's weird because it's such a violent movie and don't get me wrong, I think the action scenes are just incredible. They look great. But at the same time, it's a more [00:58:00] subtle movie in a lot of ways than the Stallone one was. Jessika: Yeah. Definitely it's scarier. Like the idea of it is more, it seems more real and in your face, and for me, it definitely put a spotlight on how scary policing can be to targeted groups. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: And this might be an extreme example, but how extreme is it really? Mike: Yeah. And it's interesting because you and I talked about this before, this is a movie that is very, it's very binary with its morals. Like there's only the good guys and the bad guys. This isn't this, isn't one of those movies where you sit there and you watch it and are really given a lot of moral things to consider. There's not a lot of philosophy here, but it doesn't sit there and say that Dredd and the Judges themselves are in the right. It's basically showing that there is a force who is basically the gang that is running the apartment block that they are in, which is headed up by a fucking terrifying Lena Headey and A), [00:59:00] they really uglied her up. Which, I was actually really impressed. I didn't recognize her because this came out right after game of Thrones had just had its first season. I think maybe its second season had hit, but I mean what a stark contrast between her in the mama role and then Cersei Lannister. Jessika: Stark. I like what you did there. Mike: Hey, was totally intentional. Or that was totally, that was totally intentional. I totally did that on purpose. Jessika: Okay. Mike: Like I said, there is no wiggle room. They sit there and they basically say no, this woman is a monster, and she does need to be taken down. You know, to the movies credit, the judges, don't really mow down innocent bystanders, it's all the thing of, no, they're going up against bad guys who have guns and are trying to kill them. But at the same time, it does also acknowledge how they aren't completely in the right either. Like there's a scene where they take shelter in an apartment. And Olivia Thirlby's character reads the mind of this woman who they're basically holding up to give them shelter for a few minutes. [01:00:00] And she realizes that, oh, this woman's baby daddy is one of the gang members that they just killed a few minutes ago. Jessika: She herself had killed that guy. Mike: Yeah. And I appreciated that. There are those moments where it takes a more mature look at, maybe everything that's going on isn't great. And then there's that moment at the end where Anderson sits there and talks about how, when she lets the hacker character go, because she realizes that he is just as much of a victim as a lot of the other people in the block are, even though he's been aiding Ma Ma. Jessika: Yeah. And then I like how Dread tries to call her on it. She's like, I've made the judgment. He's a victim. Mike: Yeah. And I thought that was great. Also, that actor is the guy who played General Hux in the Star Wars movies that we got recently. Jessika: I thought I recognized him and I could not place him, and I was too lazy to go on IMDB. Mike: But yeah, thought it was a much more, it's weird to call that movie subtle, but I felt like there were a lot of nice little subtle moments in it. [01:01:00] And I really liked how A) Ma Ma was a genuinely frightening villain, especially because you never see her flying off the handle or being over the top or anything like that. She delivers everything with this really kind of scary, calm, in which we see in the first few minutes, when she tells her officer to skin, some guys who were selling drugs on her territory without her permission. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And then the order is given after they've been skinned, to be given hits of slow-mo, which is the drug throughout the movie that slows down perceptions of time. So they were thrown off the top story of this apartment block. And basically they have this long, awful, painful plummet into the courtyard below. Jessika: God, that's gotta be so terrifying. Mike: And that really set the tone for who we were dealing with, which I thought was incredibly effective. Jessika: I thought they did such a nice job on the cinematography on that, by the way, when they did those scenes with the slow-mo and they [01:02:00] had it kind of shimmery and they put you in the mindset of the person having used the slow-mo, and I thought that was such a good technique. Mike: So yeah, and the whole thing was that they released this movie in 3D. So, you can tell that those scenes were filmed specifically for 3D cinematography. Jessika: That makes so much sense. Mike: I actually saw this movie opening night in the theaters and A) I remember tweeting about it and saying that movie was way too good for the theater to be that empty on a Friday night. But I remember that was the first, and really that's the only time, I've ever enjoyed a movie in 3D because I felt the 3d actually added something as opposed to just being a cheap gimmick to ring an extra couple of bucks out of my wallet. Jessika: That's usually how I feel about it. Mike: Yeah. But I liked how Olivia Thirlby's character Judge Anderson was actually way less of a damsel in distress than Diane Lane's character Judge Hersey. And then on top of that, a lot of the [01:03:00] superhero movies rely on that whole female heroes have to fight female villains trope that it always feels like they don't get to participate in the end boss battle. And I thought it was really cool how Anderson wound up using her powers to A) escape, her captors, B) actually rescue Dredd, and then C) really be a giant aid to him throughout the movie. She felt like a viable, real character as opposed to just kind of, window trim. Jessika: Yeah. Agreed. I was nodding vigorously when you were talking about that, because I am an absolute agreement. I was a little worried when she first got captured, cause I was like, oh, here we go, so fucking typical. But then when she was actually using her powers and she was getting out of the situation herself, it was like, okay, fine. You got this. You're fine. Mike: Yeah. On top of that, the intro to the movie we get is so tight and efficient. And aside from the intro where we get a chase scene, where we see slow-mo and effect, we see how brutal Dredd is himself. We also get [01:04:00] the intro to Anderson, where she's demonstrating her powers by basically reading the mind of Dredd from behind a two way mirror. And there's that great line about like, oh, well, you know, there's another Judge with you. He's male. I sense control and anger and then something, something more something. And then the judge cuts her off just like, that's enough, that's fine. And I'm like, cool. So we've got a really good summary of who Dredd himself is. Okay. We get it now. This is all we need. Jessika: Yeah. It was a really good narrative tool. I did like that. Mike: Yeah. And then, in the comics, Anderson actually won is a pretty big ally of dread himself. And she's also never romantic interest, but she winds up being key to defeat those monster movie versions of the Judges. And actually, it's been a little while since I read this, but if I remember right when she first confronts Judge Death, who is the leader of the Dark Judges, she winds up, trapping him inside her own mind because he's this psychic entity. And so I was really happy that they took a strong character and [01:05:00] kept her really strong. Jessika: It's good to hear that she also had a really strong role within the comics. Mike: And then the other thing is that I kind of liked how they had Dredd himself be a little bit more subtle. Like, Hey, we never haven't take off his helmet, which I thought was great. And I thought Karl urban, I mean, how did you feel about Karl Urban as Dredd compared to him? Jessika: I thought he was great. And I think I, it would've made less sense if he had taken off his helmet just as far as the character goes. And honestly, I think in this situation, there wasn't much room for him as a character to have his helmet off because they were pretty in a battle mode. Mike: Yeah. Jessika: The whole movie, truly, except for the introductory first few minutes. Mike: Yeah. And I liked the bit where, so Anderson loses her helmet pretty early on and Dredd actually calls her out on it. And he says, you're not wearing your helmet. And she goes, oh, well, the helmet interferes with my psychic abilities and you just go solo bullet and then that's it. That's Jessika: Yup. Mike: I thought that was great. Jessika: Yup. He'll give her the advice he will give, but he's not going to [01:06:00] tell her to do it, which I thought was good. Mike: Yeah. I'm curious. We're going to get to this in a minute about like how it is through the 2021 line. But did you enjoy the movie? Jessika: I think for me, because I'm such an empath, it was a little bit too much innocent blood death. Mike: Okay. Jessika: Even just like, they didn't need to kill the vagrant, it, that was a very like, oh, the gates closed. And the Vagrant just happened to be sitting there and he got squashed and they both kind of looked at it like, well, guess we don't have to deal with that. And I was like, well, fucking hell guys, come on. Mike: Yeah. And I mean, at the same time, from my perspective, and I understand where you were coming from with this, but from my perspective, it was kind of the embodiment of that weird absurdist, gallows humor that is often prese

Picking up where we last left off, it's time to learn about Marvel's second attempt at comics for Christian audiences. Highlights include comic adaptations of "classic" Christian stories and the creation of an evangelical superhero, but the results were decidedly less impressive than the "Saint Series" from the early 80s.  ----more---- Episode 8 Transcription [00:00:00] Jessika: Good, I can see, perfect. No sneaking up on me, Jesus.  Mike: Welcome to Ten Cent Takes, the podcast where we partake in comics' forbidden fruit, one issue at a time. My name is Mike Thompson and I'm joined by my cohost, the muffin of mayhem herself, Jessika Frazer. Jessika: Hello.  Mike: How's it going? Jessika: Oh, pretty good. Even better, now that you're calling me a muffin. I love it. Mike: I mean, it was either that or the scone of scorn and I liked muffin of mayhem better. Jessika: Oh, either way. I mean, it's very close. I do have a cupcake on my shoulder as you know. Mike: Yes.  [00:01:00] Well, as always, the purpose of this podcast is to perform deep dives on comic books in ways that are both fun and informative. We want to look at their coolest, weirdest and silliest moments, as well as examine how they're woven into the larger fabric of pop culture and history. Today, we're picking up where we left off with our last episode and concluding our look at Marvel's short-lived run of Christian comics. Are you ready? Jessika: Yeehaw.  Mike: Well, I'm going to give you a quick break before we actually get into that. What is one cool thing that you have read or watched since we last recorded? Jessika: I started reading the Princeless series by Jeremy Whitley.  Mike: Nice. Jessika: Yeah. The art for the first book was by M Goodwin, but there are other artists involved, including Emily Martin, who is local to our area, which is super neat. Mike: Yeah. I met her at Luma [00:02:00] Con a couple of years ago.  Jessika: Oh, that's rad as heck. Nice, nice.  So, the story follows a princess, Adrienne, who from a young age, is not at all on board with the conventional helpless role she's expected to take as a princess, and is not happy about being locked in a tower alone. So she decides that she doesn't need to continue this path that has been chosen for her and escapes to help others. She's also a person of color and her hair care routines and style reflect that, which is wonderful. And I'm only one issue into the first book, but I'm so excited to see what destiny Adrienne writes for herself.  Mike: I think I read the first volume a couple of years ago and I really enjoyed it. It was a really fresh feeling story. Jessika: That's how I felt about it, it was very refreshing.  Well, what about [00:03:00] you? Whatcha been reading?  Mike: So, one of the series that I have on my pull list at Brian's comics up in Petaluma is We Only Find Them When They're Dead from Boom. It's about six issues. And now it's this really cool sci-fi fantasy sort of series by Al Ewing who has really gotten big while he's been writing the Immortal Hulk, which I also highly recommend because that takes the incredible Hulk storyline and turns it into pretty much a horror story. Jessika: Oh, cool.  Mike: It's really neat. And it's really unnerving and, he's been writing it for over 30 issues now, I think, but it's really solid. And the whole idea is that the Hulk is effectively an immortal being and he can't die. But how that comes into play is genuinely terrifying at times. But Al Ewing did this new series called We Only Find Them When They're Dead. The series is just incredible. And it's set in this weird dystopian future where [00:04:00] the bodies of these giant space gods, for lack of a better term appear out of nowhere. And then humanity is so stretched thin for resources that, that what they've started doing is they have these spaceships that will harvest the bodies for parts. And nobody knows where these gods come from until the crew of one of these harvesting ships decides to solve the mystery. It's this really tight kind of small scale story so far, but it's set against this really insane, massive cosmic backdrop. And it's also very queer, so, I think you would probably enjoy it more so than usual. Jessika: Very nice. Very nice.  Mike: All right. Let's turn back to Marvel's Christian Comics. Would you be so kind as to give us a quick recap of where we left off after the last episode? Jessika: Sure. Last week we went [00:05:00] through the first years of the Marvel Catholic comics, how it got its start printing religious material, cue the power of asking that we keep discussing on this show, and who was involved in making these particular Comics. Our focal comics were the Saint series, comprised of the stories of St. Francis in Francis Brother of the Universe, Pope John Paul. I can't not do it that way.  Mike: It's so good. Jessika: Pope John Paul II, and Mother Teresa. Oh man. Do we want to take a quick second and talk about the recent news? It was so timely about Mother Teresa. You wanna? You want to talk a little bit about that, Mike?   I just had to talk about it. It was so freaking timely.  Mike: Oh, absolutely.  I think this happened a day or two after we recorded the article.  So over the past couple of days there's been a number of stories that have come out, basically highlighting that [00:06:00] Mother Teresa was running a cult and I think the headline that I sent you was, “Are there still people who didn't know Mother Teresa was running an alleged cult?” And.  Jessika: Cue.  Mike: I think.  Jessika: Cue me raising my hand.  Mike: Yeah, I think this was a day or two after, after you and I had recorded and it just felt ridiculously timely. It was really funny. Jessika: Oh, serendipitous.  Mike: No,  she was not a good person by the increasingly numerous accounts that I've been seeing.  She was quote unquote good by a very narrow definition that unfortunately it was kind of like what the media presented her as back then in the eighties. And since then, I mean, if she was operating today, there's no way that she would have received the Nobel Peace Prize. But. Jessika: Oh, no, absolutely not.  Mike: But you know, we're talking, she received that 40 years [00:07:00] ago, so. Jessika: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh. Well, back to what we were talking about last week. After the St. series, after all of that wrapped up, Marvel seemed to decide to walk away from religious content after these winning Comics, we did however, land on a bit of a cliffhanger because Mike, you teased that they took another swing at religious comics in 1992.  Mike: That is correct. So, to set the stage, the late eighties and early nineties were a massive boom for the comic book market.  There was this huge speculation bubble that was going on, and as a result, Marvel and DC and other imprints were just seeing an unprecedented amount of success.  On average, a lot of major books were seeing over a million issues in circulation, which, even today, they don't see.  I think in 1991, X-Men number one, the new series that was [00:08:00] drawn by Jim Lee and written by Chris Claremont had something like 12 million issues move for the.  Jessika: Oh. Mike: For - yeah. It's bonkers. And then shortly thereafter, the rug basically got pulled out from under Marvel's feet. So the early nineties really went from being awesome to really rough in almost no time flat. And that was because the company's top artists were freelancers and they weren't happy with Marvel's compensation plan. So they left and they founded Image Comics back in early '92. And that was essentially the top artists from really well-performing comics, like X-Men, Spiderman, Guardians of the Galaxy, and X-Force just to name a few, became Marvel's competition overnight.  And DC was having some major commercial successes at the same time with events like the death of Superman, and Batman Knightfall, which is when he got his back broken. [00:09:00] So Marvel was suddenly scrambling to keep their share of the market in that light Christian book, publisher, Thomas Nelson, reaching out to former commercial partnership must have seemed like a, uh, well, for lack of a better term, a godsend. And up until that point, Evangelical Christian audiences were a largely untapped demographic outside of their specialty markets.  Now that said, I haven't been able to find any old press releases from when this deal was announced. It honestly seems like both. Marvel and Thomas Nelson, would just like to have everyone forget about this whole venture since neither company mentions the partnerships on their sites. I can't even find them on archive or anything like that.  Jessika: Oh, wow. Mike: That said - Yeah. It's, it's like buried pretty deep, but that said, I did find an article from Christianity Today, of all places, that fills in some of the details. So, it's kind of a long-winded meandering puff [00:10:00] piece, but there are a couple of relevant details. Would you do me a favor and read the first bit explaining why this deal came to be? Jessika: Sure. Some Thomas Nelson staff, whose young children were drawn to comics noticed there was little available from a Christian viewpoint. Realizing they did not have the resources in house, the publisher struck a deal with Marvel comics to produce a series of comics under Nelson's editorial direction. Using Marvel artists and writers that resulting comics would be marketed in Christian markets by Thomas Nelson and in comic bookstores by Marvel.  Mike: Yeah, so, honestly, it sounds more like Thomas Nelson hired Marvel rather than the two were in a legit partnership.  Thomas Nelson was even setting the price point for the books, which wasn't cheap. For reference the average Marvel comic cost $1.25 in 1993.  The least expensive [00:11:00] Nelson comic, for its single issue Life Christ books, that we'll talk about a little bit, and each of those was going for $2.99, a pop. So that's almost $6 in today's money. Illuminator, which we're really going to talk about for a bit, was going for $4.99 a book, which means Thomas Nelson was expecting kids to shell out the equivalent of $10 bucks per issue for a comic with like zero name recognition. Jessika: Right.  Mike: Yeah, and that's actually called out in the same article. Like Christianity today couldn't even give them a complete puff piece, they actually called out how maybe Thomas Nelson was a little bit high on their own fumes. If you'd be so kind to read that section as well. Jessika: The primary difficulty in selling the Illuminator to the secular comic book market is not the subject matter, but the price. As a book publisher, Thomas Nelson wants the comics to look as high quality and [00:12:00] book-like as possible. They have more pages than standard comics, carrying no advertising, and are printed using higher quality paper and ink than standard comics. Thomas Nelson likes to call them illustrated novels, a variation of the comic industry term graphic novel. Because of this, the 48-page Illuminator sells for $4.99. As one comic store owner put it, “that's a pretty stiff price for a comic with no well-known characters, artists or writers”. Yikes.  Mike: When you can't even get to pull its punches for an article like this, that kinda says a lot. I feel, yeah, so I don't know what kind of marketing was done, but I haven't been able to find any ads for the Nelson comics in any of my Marvel issues from 1992 to 94, nor have I been able to track down [00:13:00] anything on the web. I mean, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence, but it certainly seems like the partnership got rolling and then nobody really wanted to draw the attention to the end results. Which, based on what we've seen of  the end result of the product, uh, maybe, maybe that's kind of understandable. Jessika: Big sigh.  Mike: Yeah, that said, I do have the Illuminator comics in my collection and they are definitely higher quality in terms of production. Like, you know, the colors still pop they're definitely thicker. But, if I had seen this in the comic store, I would have blown right past it when I was kid.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: So speaking of Illuminator, do you want to give us an elevator pitch for that comic? Jessika: Oh my, well, if you insist. I mean, other than calling it a hot mess? Mike: Other than calling it a hot mess. Jessika: Okay. So this high school-aged [00:14:00] kid named Andy Prentiss goes to summer camp, is bullied a lot, and gets tricked into going into the forest in the middle of the night where he is abducted? Mike: It's pretty vague. Jessika: By a beam of light? Yeah.  Mike: It's super vague. Like, they don't ever actually, we'll get into that. Okay.  Jessika: It's very strange. And he, he somehow becomes the light? And has powers for no explicable reason? I know there are a lot of question marks behind my, my sentences, because that's how it feels. He gets semi-brainwashed by a local reverend and convinced that his powers are from God himself.  Mike: Was he actually a reverend was, I thought that dude was just like a… Jessika: I don't know.  Or maybe he was just a janitor. I don't know what he was. Mike: It's never really explained. Like. Jessika: I'm giving him a lot of credit.  Mike: Yeah.  Sorry. I derailed it. Jessika: That's okay. Well, he [00:15:00] convinced him that his power, whoever this dude was who worked at this church. He was always sweeping, he was probably a janitor you're right.  Convince him that his powers are from God himself and that he is acting because God directed him to. But like slippery slope my dude. Thus, the Illuminator was created after that all of the villains are supposed to represent really obvious, evil being demon-like creatures, trying, and being mostly successful at tempting the public into acting sinfully.  There isn't a great explanation as to why any of this happened, like we said, or is being aimed at Prentiss himself, who didn't seem to be very religious in the first place when this thing started? Mike: No, he was just kind of like an earnest, sort of naive teenager. Jessika: Yeah. But I'll tell you what there is, there is a healthy amount of [00:16:00] slut-shaming.  So that's certainly exciting for me because, you know, I hate that bullshit. So.  Mike: Yeah. It's definitely uncomfortable to read.  Also, I wanna note that his superhero design for the Illuminator persona feels like a rip off of Long Shot, who was this popular character in the eighties who palled around with the X-Men for awhile. Like, here's what he looked like. Take a look, tell me what you think. Jessika: Oh, he even has the little star. Okay. This does look really similar to the other comic we read. He's wearing like a black kind of jumpsuit, but it could, it really could be a motorcycle jacket and pants. He's got boots on. He has a little bullet necklace or a bullet sash? Mike: I believe the term is a bandolier. Jessika: A bandolier, thank you. He has a bandolier, I'm cutting all of that bullshit out. He has a bandolier [00:17:00] and he's throwing, like, I don't know, a little, are those knives? Mike: Knives.  Jessika: Oh, okay. Mike: He, like that's Long Shot's thing, is that his power is he's super lucky. He has slightly enhanced strength and hollow bones, which makes him a better acrobat.  Jessika: Got it. Mike: And then his weapon of choice is he throws knives that basically he just can hit anything with. Jessika: The problem is they kind of look like sharp popsicles.  Mike: Kind of yeah.  Jessika: So.  Mike: But yeah, I mean like Long Shot is one of my favorite characters.  Jessika: Nice. Mike: And I was reading this book again and I was just going, oh my God, they added a helmet and then kind of removed the bandolier and added some extra padding and called it a day. He's even got the mullet.  It's just a different color.  Andy's a dirty blonde and. Jessika: Yeah. Mike: And Long Shot is platinum.  Jessika: It's like three shades off, real close.  Mike: So you gave a pretty solid summary of the comic itself. I gotta say [00:18:00] the comic series felt very unfocused.  It doesn't feel like it really conveys much of a Christian message.   Andy's powers are so vaguely delivered, as you called out, and there's no real specific link to Jesus or Christianity at that point.  He only becomes the Christian super hero when he retreats into a church to escape, apparently a demonic opponent? Bu, the only reason that we know that he's demonic is because he doesn't want to go in the church.  And then he gets a pep talk from this one-armed wise man who lives there, apparently. I feel like he still approached things in a very standard superhero way: punch first ask questions later.  Did you notice that there was no trying to solve problems in a way that would result in anything other than a fist fight with powers? Jessika: Oh, no, it was just like, oh, there's a problem, I need to go beat someone up. That was absolutely the vibe.  Mike: Yeah, I was genuinely surprised by that. I would have expected a little [00:19:00] more Jesus-inspired approaches such as turning the other cheek, or lifting people up who are suffering, things like that. But no, it was just a superhero fights with people or things that were designated as evil from an evangelical point of view. And I mean, we should talk about that. Like, each of the comics comes across a super victim-blamey.  Like, there's that party where Nightfire, the first demonic entity, shows up and starts draining victims, and it shows they're all drinking or doing drugs or being slutty. Jessika: Yeah. They're at a party and there are girls on guys' laps and apparently, that's not good. Mike: Apparently, but then they all become Nightfire's sort of undead army. So it's that implication that sinful behavior leads to damnation later on. Um. Jessika: Okay.  Mike: And then [00:20:00] in the second issue, the story paints college campuses out as godless places, full of temptation and being devoid of morality. So, they're susceptible to this mad scientist, who's splicing together weird animal human hybrids, which, I mean, that felt like something that was written by someone who has never actually been on a college campus. Jessika: Yes.   Mike: And then the third issue was absolutely trying to link Satanism and Wiccan beliefs.  I'm not crazy, right? Like that actually, that's how it felt. Like, Satanism and crystals, that  they're just hand in hand. Jessika:  Yeah, it was super gross. Mike: Yeah, it was really bad.  I mean, the book only had three issues or illustrated novels or whatever they want to call it before it was canceled. So, I personally think that the probable lack of marketing that we discussed really hurt it, but it also seems like there were some production problems that caused it to be [00:21:00] delayed because the third volume has a cover date of August, 1993, but it turns out it didn't actually hit the shelves until February of 1994. I could not find sales figures for the months that the first two volumes came out, but the third issue doesn't even crack the top 100 issues being sold in the market when it actually hit the shelves. You brought up the slut-shamey aspect to it. And in the end of the third issue, it really felt uncomfortable where Andy was, these days it would be incel kind of logic, where he's really mad that the girl he saved didn't go to him. Jessika: That is so how it felt. I was just like pointing at you viciously right now, like, really aggressively. Mike: Yeah. When you were doing that, I was like, what did I do wrong? Jessika: Ya know that's exactly how it felt. It felt like he's like, well, I saved her and I'm the better guy. So she should just be with me.  Mike: Yeah. And then. Jessika: He just expected it. It was gross.  Mike: And then they kind of have a teaching moment where they're like, well, you know, that's not always how it works, [00:22:00] blah, blah, blah. And then she shows up to be another disciple of Christ or whatever, and blah. Jessika: Yeah. She's like, I broke up with that other guy.  Mike: Oh yeah. That. Jessika: She's wearing a knee length skirt and like. Mike: Yeah. And before that she'd been wearing kind of form-fitting jeans and tank tops and. Well, the other guy, I can't even remember his name, but he was at the party. That's the only time we saw him. And he was basically trying to make it okay that everyone was drinking. So, you know. Jessika: Yeah. And then he was in the mall scene and he was like, trying to convince her like something stupid, something else stupid.  Mike: Yeah. That was after they got returned to their bodies. That's right. I, I actually thought that she was the mom of one of the other characters originally because she had such a mom haircut and it was like, oh, it's kind of the sexy mom. And then oops. It was, the ages of those characters was very [00:23:00] ill-defined. Jessika: Agreed.  Mike: And then, like I said, like this was clearly written by someone who had not experienced really anything of the real world, it felt. Nightfire is a drug dealer who just hangs out outside of high schools and tries to randomly sell drugs to kids? Like, my dude. Do you not understand how drug dealing works? Jessika: That's not how that works. Yeah. Your kids don't have enough money for drug dealers to be interested in them.  And they're definitely not giving your kids free drugs. Like I know I say that a lot, but it's because I believe it a lot. They're not just going to get rid of their revenue. Mike:  It was the same thing with that college campus, with the mad scientist professor who was, he was in a wheelchair for no really defined reason, he just was. And then apparently he's just creating an army of [00:24:00] man-animal hybrids. Which, again, I was sitting there and I'm like, man, I took biology classes in college and they were never this cool, like, are you creating an army of mutant supermen at your college? Yeah, sign me up. I'll pay that tuition. I'll take out a loan. Jessika: Well, and it was happening in this way that wasn't really logical, to where they were kind of meshing into this larger, like alligator with massive arms and walks around like a human, but then I don't know. It was strange. He was making them come apart with his, God-light. Like they could become two separate things. Again, it wasn't like he was chopping things up and sticking them back together or making a new creature. I don't really understand how this was supposed to be happening, from a scientific aspect.  Mike: His powers were really, ill-defined like he, he could fly and he could shoot light. And then I guess, theoretically add super strength, but. Yeah, that whole, like God-light separating the things out, but then it turned out it killed them because they'd been bonded too long to get, I don't know, whatever [00:25:00] it was, it was fucking dumb. Yeah. So that was the thing was Trisha goes to a crystal store where it's apparently a front for a demon cult. And again, I'm like, I don't know, man,  if I went to a crystal store and they told me that I could traffic with demons, I'd be much more likely to buy one of their ridiculously expensive geodes. Because I've been taken on a date to a crystal shop, because I was sick and my date wanted to buy me a healing crystal and I was. Oh, God, Jessika: That's, that is very sweet.  Mike: I did not respond well to this.  Jessika: I'm sure you did not.  Mike: Which. I'm sure does not surprise you, but. Jessika: No. Mike: I'm just saying if he'd instead offered to induct me into a cult where they hung out with demons, I might've actually gone out for a second date with him. Hmm. [00:26:00]  Do you have any more thoughts on Illuminator before we move on to our next entry? Jessika: I mean, I didn't care for this comic. Other than the first one that was establishing his origin story, it felt like the same story in each of the three issues. It was some demon character sucking the life out of people that were making bad choices. It was literally the same story each time, not even well masked. Mike: Yeah, exactly. Jessika: And, it was hard to follow and it was hard to figure out the incredibly vague, read not there, ties to Christianity that this character and his actions and powers were supposed to have, like we were talking about. It felt like a stretch at best.  Mike: Yeah. They were just trying to shoehorn it in at the end where he would go talk to, the guy's name was George, I think, where he would go and talk to his mentor at the church.  It felt like a very kind of vague, well, if you look at it this way, this could be your lesson from Jesus. [00:27:00] Jessika: Yeah, exactly.  And you were bringing up another point that I also didn't like, they were just making fun of other religions, for example, naming someone Chakra, and mocking other spiritual practices with crystals, it was really disrespectful and in poor taste.  Mike: Which, I mean, I can't say I'm really surprised given how evangelical culture typically goes these days.  Jessika:  Christianity, isn't the only religion and I'm tired of mainstream society being okay with Jesus-washing everything, and then being offended when any other religion is given any space.  It's deplorable.  Mike: Yeah. And then also, these stories just felt very lazy and dumb. The big one that I keep on thinking about is, again, that second issue where he's at a college campus and there's the mad scientist and it's revealed the mad scientist kidnapped a football player, like the star football player from the university's team, and then [00:28:00] turned him into, I think, the alligator hybrid that we were talking about.  Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: I was sitting there going my dude. You're mad that they pulled your funding. What do you think they're going to do to you when you remove their giant cash cow of college football from the campus? Jessika: Yeah, exactly. And like, do you not know the cardinal rule of  picking people who don't have people looking for them? Mike: Right? Jessika: But, like, I'm not planning on doing anything bad and even I know that. Yeah. So, yeah. And other than just the audacity that Andy has making assumptions that he and Trisha are gonna get together based on the fact that he saves her from what he perceives as a bad situation.  Mike: He's a nice guy. He is that proverbial nice guy trope. Jessika: Hint to everyone out there: Don't you ever slide into my DMS and say you're a nice guy, because you will be [00:29:00] blocked so quickly.  Mike: On that note, what do you say? We move on to the next books in our discussion.  Jessika: Let's mosey.  Mike: So, I mentioned the Life of Christ comics that were single issues. These are the two issues that were put out to retail; the Christmas and Easter stories. They were both written by Louise Simonson and illustrated by Mary Wilshire, as well as Eisner award winner Coleen Doran, she apparently helped with the Easter issue. Simonson is a major name in comics alongside her husband, Walt. She co-created the character, Cable, from the X-Men; she helped launch the long running series, Superman, the Man of Steel; and she was one of the major stakeholders in the death of Superman storyline. And she also helped out, if I remember right, I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that she was a major [00:30:00] part of Walt Simonson's really acclaimed run on Thor, to the point where both of them appear in cameos in the original Thor movie. Like I think, I  think they're both featured at the end when they're celebrating at the hall of heroes, or whatever it is. But  it was a nice little nod because they created a lot of stuff like Thor: Frog of Thunder, and, Beta Ray bill, if I remember right.    Likewise, Mary Wilshire did a ton of stuff for Marvel in the eighties and nineties. She was best known for her work on Red Sonja and Firestar. And then Colleen Doran, goddamn, she's this incredible illustrator who's worked on a ton of properties. I always associate her with Neil Gaiman's Sandman. So.  Jessika: I just started reading that.  Mike: Yeah, like all three of these women are Legit Big Deals, like capital letters at the start of each of those words.  And that's why it's so weird to see their names in these issues. I can't believe how bland and [00:31:00] boring everything about them felt. Like, is that mean? Am I going out of line?  Jessika: No. No. I'm surprised to hear about the acclaim that these illustrators have, because it felt very elementary. Am I supposed to have received this as a coloring book?  Mike: Yeah, it's really flat, like, okay. So for comparison, here is a painting that Colleen Duran did for Sandman. Check it out.  Jessika:  Oh, wow. This is cool.  Mike: Right? Jessika: Wow. Okay. There's a lot going on. So I'll just describe this really quick.  There's a ton going on. So at the very top, there's a Swan couple swans, a swan and a, some sort of a harp, maybe a harpsichord thing. And you've got some planets and moons and a dude gargling some blood, it looks like. Mike: I [00:32:00] think that's supposed to be Orpheus. Cause he, if I remember right, he was Dream's son and then Orpheus is eventually ripped apart by the Bach the Bachinal. I dunno, whatever there. Jessika:  And then there is a legit goth lady who has this amazing, I'm not too far into it, obviously, as you can tell.  Mike: Right. So  that is death. That is Dreams sister. I mean,  Jessika: That's great.  Mike: Yeah. If, if you're not too familiar with it, I don't want to spoil all the elements for this, but this painting features a ton of major characters from throughout the Sandman series, which she provided a lot of illustration for. And it's a beautiful piece of work. Jessika: It's a feast for the eyes, honestly. I mean, there's so many different elements, I mean, part of it looks like it's supposed to look like stained glass and other parts of it, don't look that same way. It's very interesting.  Mike:  Yeah. So it's very [00:33:00] much not what we got. Likewise, I want you to look at some of Mary Wiltshire's art, here. Jessika: Oh, wow. See, that's fun.  Mike: Right? Jessika: Red Sonia. See, I want to read some Red Sonia.  Mike: Yeah. The 80's series is fun. I think Marvel might have the rights back, because it's part of the Conan properties. Oh no, wait, I think Dynamite has Red Sonia. I don't know. You can probably find some books on Hoopla if nothing else. Jessika: This is great. I mean, the color vibe is great. There's all this shading, which there really wasn't in that other one at all. Mike: Yeah, I noticed that, too. It was just flat color, other than they used some crosshatching within the illustration, but  that was kind of all they did, except for Jesus's hair. That was such a, like, it was a choice, I guess, they just, the only thing that had any sort of shading was, like, Jesus's hair looked like it was a tie dye masterpiece, so, [00:34:00] oh, wow.  Mike: Both of these books feel very, for lack of a better term, very paint by numbers. Jessika: Yes, very much. So.  Mike: I mean, we've all heard these stories before, too. There wasn't really anything new. The most exciting artwork for both of these books was on the cover. And, the one weird thing that really stood out to me, was that the Easter book felt kind of anti-Semitic, I don't know if I was just reading a little too much into that. Jessika: No, you you're. I've I read that too. Yes. Mike: I feel like  there was an abnormal focus on making Pontius Pilate into not being the bad guy. And instead of keeping the blame on the Jewish elders, it felt very weird and very gross.  Jessika: It did. Mike: And it's, I know that is an argument that is somewhat popular with certain extreme right-wing sectors of evangelical Christianity, too, is that the Jews killed Jesus, [00:35:00] which, I don't know how to respond to that. Like it, it just, just. Jessika: It felt very much like they were saying, yes, we know the Romans did it, but it's your fault, Jews. And it's like, what? No, no, no, no. Mike: Yeah. It was very uncomfortable to read. Jessika: Absolutely. Yeah. I agree. A hundred percent.  The other thing that bothered me from the birth issue was the angels. Like, I've read what angels are supposed to look like. If it's not some beautiful human woman with wings floating down gracefully from the clouds. It is a terrifying multi-eyed creature that shows up in some really jarring way. The whole situation seemed way too peaceful for what I've read from the actual Bible. Like, I have read the Bible in its entirety.  I was bored at [00:36:00] 13,  don't ask, but yeah. So, but that's not the vibe. Like, people are always really terrified when angels come down and there is a reason.  Mike: Yeah. And that's something that I remember is that when I was growing up, you know, I was presented with the very, kind of Renaissance style angels. And so I never understood when I was reading as a kid or having the stories read to me, why are people scared of the angels? Because you know, they're just glowing people with wings. And then later on it was, oh, oh, they're fucking monsters. They are, they are straight out of HP Lovecraft. Okay. I get it now. Jessika: Yeah. Because technically the humans are supposed to be the ones that are like, what? In God's image. There's nothing about angels being so. Mike: Nope. We're the, we're the mud people.   Jessika: Yes. Mike: Well, moving on from that, aside from those aforementioned single issues, Nelson Comics published, [00:37:00] what was dubbed the Christian Classic Series, which are comic adaptations of kind of big name Christian literature.  I was able to track down digital copies of the Pilgrim's Progress and In His Steps; What Would Jesus Do? Let's talk about that one first. I had actually heard of iIn His Steps before this, because it took that titular phrase and it kind of brought it into the popular culture. It was originally written in the late 19th century. It's basically about a reverend who is moved to challenge his congregation to use the question when making life decisions. It's a dry book and the comic was super dry as well. It just, it felt like a lot of expository dialogue set in late 19th century settings with a bunch of very prim and proper white people who, for the most part feel pretty monied and pretty privileged.   Jessika: Yeah. Mike: There's occasionally some sort of [00:38:00] over-the-top situations where our Christian heroes are facing persecution, but it's like, it's made up persecution. It's that idea where Christians are like, we're the victims, people don't like us. And I think maybe because you're assholes, I don't know how to respond to that otherwise. Jessika: Yeah. Maybe it's not about your religion. Maybe it's just you. Mike: Yeah. If everyone's telling you you're an asshole, maybe it's not anything else, maybe it's just you. I agree. But yeah, it's just, it's a boring slog and it took me way longer than it should've to get through this. Jessika: They were awful. I'm not gonna lie. I read them, but I skimmed them because I couldn't sit there and like, let that infest my brain.  Mike: No. There's also a sequel novel that they didn't adapt.  Jessika: No. Mike: But basically, I think if I remember right, the sequel novel has Jesus actually showing up, like, it's like the second coming of Jesus. If I remember right. I  Jessika: Man, they already got so close to that in this one, because they had that one [00:39:00] dude show up who is a scraggly stranger.  And then the reverend has a dream that Jesus is actually lying in the bed and he's like, oh my God, it was Jesus all along.  Mike: Yeah. Oh God, that was. Jessika: So heavy handed. Smacked me across the face with that message. Jeez.  Mike: Oh, and what is it? The tramp has a daughter who the reverend and his wife take in to raise as their own. Jessika: Oh yeah.  Mike: On what planet…? Jessika: Because apparently. Mike: Ugh. Jessika: No, it's awful. No, we all know that Christians don't care about the children once they're born. Mike: We, there are so many signs around my town, at least in our area because we live right near a Catholic church where it's the pregnancy crisis centers. And I keep on, resisting the urge to go spray, paint them or something, they're so gross. Jessika: Oh, we have the ones up that have a picture of a baby that say my eyes are formed after blah, [00:40:00] blah, blah days or whatever.  Mike: Gross. Jessika: Yeah, I know they're awful. And every once in a while they do get spray painted.  Mike: Good. Jessika: Obviously I have nothing to do with that, but I walk past and I go, okay. Yep. Yep. Yeah.  Mike: Side tangent, completely unrelated to comics, but there was a Reddit post within the last year, I think, from some guy who was really upset about how his girlfriend would go and deface, the local pro-life billboards that would go up near their house. She would add things like citation needed for some of the claims, or just cross them out, or whatever. And he was saying, would I be justified in breaking up with her? Because I feel like, she's putting herself at legal risk doing all this. And literally every response was yo dude, you should break up with her and then give her my number because she sounds fucking rad. Jessika: Seriously. Oh my gosh. That's great. Mike: Anyway. Jessika: Hero of heroes.  Mike: Yeah, the hero we need. [00:41:00] So, turning to the Pilgrim's Progress. This is a Christian allegory novel from the 1600's that's extremely surreal. I'd actually never heard of this book before now, and I had to do some basic research just to see how close they mirrored the plot. And I'm really bummed that actually, the comic is a pretty faithful adaptation of the source material. Which means there is a giant prose novel that is just this dumb and insane, but without at least the somewhat arresting visuals that we got. Jessika: It's basically Pinocchio.  Mike: Yeah, I mean, it's not far off, except there's a second act where the dude's sinful family follows him, which. Jessika: Oh my God. They just kind of get abducted into the nether though. They don't do anything.  [00:42:00] He's the one that does everything and then they're suddenly just there.  Mike:  Before we get into this discussion. It's about a protagonist named Christian, on his pilgrimage across this metaphorical landscape, where he confronts temptation and he learns, I don't know, moral lessons, I guess. I wasn't entirely certain about a lot of those, but whatever.  And then after he makes it to heaven, his wife and kids follow him, because he couldn't convince them to come with him originally. This was written in the late 1600's, originally it is updated and adapted to what's supposed to be modern day, New York. And there's a lot of like really thinly veiled criticism being leveled at environmentalists for some reason, which I did not understand.  Jessika: It was really strange. I don't know where that came from. I read that, too.  Mike: Yeah. And then in the novel, after he makes it to heaven, confronting all these challenges, [00:43:00] his wife and his kids follow him. And then they have a sort of angelic guardian, who helps protect them along the way, who she shows up in the comic book, it's whatever, the kids, and this was actually kind of a weird diversion from the novel in the novel. The kids become adults throughout the journey, cause it's a long journey and they get married and they have families of their own. And so at the very end, they don't go with the wife, but they stay behind. And, basically they're living Christian lifestyles. And in the comic book for some reason, and it's not really explained well, they're left behind with their aunt who was also on the journey with them.  And then the mom was just like, okay, bye. I'm going to go off to heaven now with your dad. Jessika: Yeah, he just like sticky handed her up there or something, like you earn the right to  snatch your wife from earth. Maybe that was the rapture. Mike: Yeah, maybe. Well, and then at the very end, his friend, who was like, oh no,  [00:44:00] you know, we're, we're doing our part. We're recycling and taking care of the planet. He's denied access to heaven by St. Peter for some reason, that's not really explained. Jessika: Which was so strange. Like, yeah, please, don't recycle friends. What, what a strange takeaway from this whole thing. Mike: It just, it feels kind of like this religious acid trip with occasional detours into misogyny and racism. Correct me if I'm wrong. Jessika: Not at all. Very, very same page as you.  Mike: The one piece of praise that I can offer these books is that they definitely have the best art of the Nelson comics line. Jessika: It was decent. Yeah.   So I found for both of these comics, both In His Steps and the Pilgrim's Progress, unsurprisingly, they keep replaying the same messages that have been consistent with these comics: be faithful against these huge temptations that are supposed to bombard you every day.  I would expect there to be women and men of loose morals [00:45:00] falling at my feet to tempt me constantly is all I'm saying, like, let's make it happen. Disappointment.  Mike: I'm, I always see these things talking about like women have loose morals or, or ill-repute,  I clearly was not hanging out in the right neighborhoods. Jessika: That's what I'm saying.  Mike: Yeah. Bums me out, man. Jessika: There's always some messages about staying on the path of God, which is always very vague and sometimes literally a path, which come on. And Beelzebub constantly shows up, because the only real villains are the devil and your inability to resist temptation, apparently. Once again, though, didn't see any queer people, which is fine because the Bible really doesn't say anything about them anyway. And I guess God didn't really start hating us in mainstream media until later on then. Huh?  Mike: Man, I don't know. I mean, [00:46:00] like, there's that whole thing about Sodom and Gomorrah, and how we're all sodomized or whatever, but I don't know when, when it became really okay for Christian people to hate on the gays. Jessika: Yeah. I don't know. They need to step back. Oh, did I say that out loud? Mike: Yeah.  Jessika: They're right behind me, aren't they?  Mike: Not yet, at least. Jessika: And also, why is it such a theme that these main characters, low key become cult leaders every single time  Mike: Right? Jessika: It's like, yikes, Catholicism, have some awareness about what a cult-vibe you give off, just like, generally. All in all, the religion is so forced in there that the plot lines of these stories rarely made any sense. It felt like the comics were a game of tug of war, trying unsuccessfully to write a cohesive storyline while still shoehorning in religion, which ultimately caused the comics to feel frenzied and disorganized.  Mike: Yeah. On top of that, these are just [00:47:00] so dry. They're so dry. I get the Thomas Nelson was trying to adapt, quote unquote, major works of Christian literature. But, I can't think of anyone who really reads these books, let alone kids. I'm not really familiar with the whole Christian allegory genre of fiction, but there's gotta be better stuff out there than these books. I know the Thomas Nelson for this line, they also had CS Lewis' Screwtape Letters turned into a comic, I couldn't find it to read, but I'm kind of wondering why they didn't try adapting some of his other work, like the Lion, the Witch, the Wardrobe, you know, Aslan is very much a Jesus' allegory and - Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense not to do something with more name recognition. I mean, hell, Thomas Nelson has an entire collection of fictional books in their catalog. I just scoped out their website today, and I don't understand why they didn't do a comic adaptation of something from there. But, [00:48:00] don't know, I guess that probably would have required extra effort involving research and the author's permission. And it seems - Jessika: Oh no. Mike: Like no, I mean, that, honestly, that seems like more work than the publisher really was interested in committing to this whole endeavor. Jessika: Fair.  Mike: You know, and unsurprisingly, the Nelson comics imprint wasn't long for this world. And it was abandoned by 1994, reportedly due to low sales. Between the quality and the apparent lack of marketing and also the high price points, I can't say I'm surprised. I did find it really funny when I was looking at their website, they have  some limited edition of Dracula on their website and Shakespeare, and I'm like, those things are not Catholic friendly, or evangelical friendly.  Are these edited, are these just like, did he just decide to do like limited edition reprints? I don't know.  Jessika: That's interesting.  Mike:  Weirdly though, Thomas Nelson's recently gotten [00:49:00] back into comic books with Bible Force, which was a comic or a graphic novel that went on sale this year. Here, take a look at this cover, just check it out and tell me and me what you think. Jessika: Yeah, let's see. Oh, oh, wow.  Mike: Right? Jessika: Okay. So, who's supposed to be the dude in the middle? Mike: I don't know. I don't  Jessika: Okay. So there's like some dude, there's some dude in the middle, he's got a sword, and it's thrusting out towards the viewer. There's. What is it? Joseph and his Technicolor coat, I'm assuming that's what that was. Um,  Mike: That's what it looks like. Jessika: Uh, it's what it looks like. It's a color, her coat there's there's Noah's Ark. There's definitely Jesus with arms outstretched. Although, of course, white Jesus, because why be historically accurate? All of these people are Caucasian. I might add in this entire comic, all of these people were Caucasian, except for a very few in the Jesus [00:50:00] episodes. And those were just  people from far away, quote unquote, everyone else was very, very light-skinned. Mike: Also, if you're going to give us white Jesus, can you at least give a shirtless white Jesus? I want to see some washboard abs. Jessika: That's what I'm saying.  Mike: Right? Jessika: That's what I'm saying. So yes, this is just, it's very exciting. Says, Bible Force, the First Heroes Bible. I think that's Probably. Mary as well on the front. It's a woman also Caucasian, and she's got a head scarf of some sort on, it's pink, which they absolutely had magenta back in Bible days. I am sure, absolutely feasible. I'm there. Believe it.  Isaac Mizrahi's in there like designing, designing Mary's outfit. Oh honey, you're going to look great in this.  Mike: He is all about the [00:51:00] timeless looks, isn't he? Jessika: Yes.  Mike:  So, I mean, that's the Nelson comics. Short-lived imprint. Do you have any final thoughts? Jessika: Well, can't say I'm surprised that these didn't continue on. I can't imagine that they were really keeping kids' attention, or giving them any type of cohesive and thoughtful messages.  Mike: No. I mean, probably not. I don't think many comic retailers were carrying them either because this was right at the height of my teenage collecting years, and I don't remember seeing any of this stuff in any of the shops that I frequented. Jessika: Yeah, it was pretty much like here: look at the colors. Oh, and have some antisemitism, enjoy.  Mike: And some casual misogyny. It's fine. Jessika: Yes. Yes, exactly.  Mike:  If you could sum up the titles from this imprint [00:52:00] in one word, what would you use? Jessika: Confused.  Mike: I was going to go soulless, but that's also good. Jessika: Oh, yours is better.  Mike: Now is the time of the show where we discuss our Brain Wrinkles, which is the one thing comics or comics-adjacent that has been just stuck in our head for the last couple of days that we just want to talk about. I guess we should talk about the recent Highlander casting news. Would you like to take that away? Jessika: Oh, oh certainly. Certainly. Oh my goodness. So, during our Highlander episode, Mike, you mentioned that there has been a Highlander reboot in the works since 2008 Mike: Yep. Jessika: And we were speculating on who would be good to cast. Well, there is a reboot in the works, but we were both incorrect about casting, and sorry about that, Chris Pine and Channing Tatum, because either of you [00:53:00] would have been most fabulous in this role, but it landed and it turned out to be Henry Cavill who will be our new next Highlander. And I'm sure he'll have a new name because that's kind of how we trend with the Highlander series, which is good.  Mike: Yeah, they haven't announced the actual role that he's playing yet, but it's assumed that he's going to be the MacLeod who's the main character. Jessika: I would think so. Wouldn't it be interesting if he was like the Kurgan or something that would be really funny.  Mike: Yeah. I think I mentioned this, supposedly Bautista is going to be the Kurgan, but that he'd signed on, I think back in 2015. So it's been six years since then? Jessika: Well, I have to say though, I'm not all that upset about this turn of events. What about you, Mike?  Mike: No, not at all. I just tore through the Witcher series on Netflix last week, over the course of a couple of days while I was working, I had it on in the background. And it was really nice to see Cavill in a role that wasn't [00:54:00] Superman, which is, you know, I use the term, unfortunately, he is just so associated with that role right now. And, honestly, I like him as Superman, I just wish they gave him better scripts and movies to work with.  Jessika: Yeah. And it's hard to feel typecast as well. You don't, you know, you don't want to be Daniel Radcliffe, you know, playing Harry Potter for 20 years and then not being able to do anything else, although he's done very well. So I, can't say that. Mike: I was going to say I actually really -  Jessika: You know, not a good example, I suppose.  Mike: I love the choices that the Daniel Radcliffe has made since Harry Potter, Jessika: Yeah, me too. Mike: He has chosen so many insane roles. It's great.  Jessika: Yeah. Mike: Um, yeah, no, like, you know, honestly, Cavill. First of all, I just, I really like Henry Cavill, like, he's given the interviews where he's talked about how playing Superman makes him want to be a better person, because he is portraying this character who is a role model for so many, especially the little kids. And that just [00:55:00] makes me really fond of the dude.  Jessika: That's so sweet.  Mike: He seems like another Chris Evans, and I'm, fine with that. That said, he is fucking grumpy in the Witcher, and it's really fun. He basically just has this very surly charisma throughout the entire show. And he's still jacked, but he's not as yoked as he is for the Superman rules. Like he doesn't look like a bodybuilder, he just looks like an incredibly fit dude, and I'm fine with that.  Also, he does action scenes really well. The guy who's handling the reboot is Chad Stahelski, who did the John Wick movies. Dude knows his way around an action scene. And if you ever want to see an example of Henry Cavill in good action scenes, watch the Witcher or the Mission Impossible movie that he was in, where he literally does that thing where he reloads his arms and then puts up his Dukes. I can watch that scene on repeat for hours. It's great. Jessika: Nice. I'll have to watch that. I haven't seen the Witcher [00:56:00] yet.  Mike: Yeah. It's fun. We'll talk about that later on, but it's good. I really liked it even coming into it without having any real familiarity with the games or the books that it's based on. Also, I got to say that Highlander heart group that we were in, some of those people were grumpy at the casting. Jessika: Yes. Some people were very grumpy. It was, it was a mixed bag. Some people were very excited and some people were very, very, very grumpy.  Mike: And even - Jessika: Okay.  Mike: To their credit, even the people who were unhappy, weren't toxic, like in some other groups we've seen. Jessika: Oh, correct. Yes. That was very refreshing, cause, you know. Mike: Yeah. the backstory to your listeners is that we have been a part of other Facebook groups that are just heinously toxic nerd culture groups. And we swipe left pretty quick when we're in there. Jessika: Yeah, I don't want to feel like I can't like things or I don't want somebody telling me the amount of a fan. I am the type of fan I am.  Mike: Exactly.  Jessika: Gatekeeping is awful. Don't do it.  Mike: Yeah, don't be a jerk, [00:57:00] I have to say the news that has been coming out about the reboot for Highlander sounds pretty promising. So fingers crossed that it doesn't suck but, we'll see. Jessika: Yeah.  Mike: I believe that's it for this episode, so we'll be back in two weeks, and until then, we'll see y'all in the stacks. Thanks for listening to Ten Cent Takes. Accessibility is important to us; text transcriptions of each of our published episodes can be found on our website.  This episode was hosted by Jessika Frazer and Mike Thompson, written by Mike Thompson and edited by Jessika Frazer. Our intro theme was written and performed by Jared Emerson-Johnson of Bay Area Sound. Our credits and transition music is Pursuit of Life by Evan MacDonald and it was purchased with a standard license from PremiumBeat. Our banner graphics were designed by Sarah Frank, who goes by cut_thistles on Instagram. Jessika: If you'd [00:58:00] like to get in touch with us, ask us questions or tell us about how we got something wrong, please head over to tencenttakes.com or shoot an email to tencenttakes@gmail.com. You can also find us on Twitter, the official podcast account is @tencenttakes. Jessika is @jessikawitha, and Jessika is spelled with a K, and Mike is @vansau V A N S A U.   Mike: Stay safe out there. Jessika: And support your local comic shop. 

Mike C-Roc Ciorrocco is the CEO of People Building, Inc., and the powerhouse behind the "What Are You Made Of?" movement. He is a performance coach, author, dynamic public speaker, visionary, and thought leader. He has been featured by Yahoo! Finance as one of the Top Business Leaders to Follow in 2020 and is on a mission to build people. He is driven to inspire others and he measures his success on how he is able to help others achieve greatness. C-Roc had a fire lit in him at an early age. That fire has ignited him with a fierce desire to compel people to see the greatness inside themselves using past life events to fuel their fire. Past hardships can be a powerful gravitational force that keeps you down and forces you to think small. To get out of orbit you need Rocket Fuel. Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco shows you how to convert past adversity into ROCKET FUEL to break free from the negative pull of pain and despair. In his new book, C-Roc offers life-changing lessons in personal transformation by asking yourself What Are You Made Of? This powerful question will ignite within you a thrust to greatness! Learn how to overcome painful past obstacles and achieve a fulfilling life where you're in command of your future. If you're ready to shoot for the stars, C-Roc says, "Thrust is a must!" Strap in and get ready for the ride of your life. Mike's latest book: https://amzn.to/3wwkTX5 CEO - People Building, Inc. C-Roc's Website: https://www.mikecroc.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mikeycroc/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikeciorrocco YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGWHuKojqZfcXmvGCAi_t1Q LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-ciorrocco/ Email: info@peoplebuildinginc.com Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.libsyn.com Subscribe, Rate & Review: I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to: https://joecostelloglobal.lybsyn.com Follow Joe: https://linktr.ee/joecostello Transcript Joe: Ok, welcome, everybody. Today, my guest is Mike "C-Roc" Ciorrocco. I'm really excited to have this talk with him and I know you're going to enjoy this. Mike, thanks so much for coming on. I appreciate it. Mike: Thank you, Joe. I'd like to start every interview that I go on with gratitude and just really express that to you for allowing me to come on and share with you. And thank you to your audience for listening and showing up. Joe: Absolutely, man, I love that gratitudes a huge thing in my life, so I'm right there with you. I appreciate it. I think it's important that everyone has their back story makes up sort of what they've become in life. You know, it doesn't define who they become. But there is something about what has happened throughout your life leading up to where you are now that has molded this person that you've become. And I Mike: Right. Joe: Am interested in that. And and I always start with this, just like you always start. What is it? What are you made of? Right. That's what you Mike: They Joe: Start Mike: Had to turn your head sideways, I love Joe: perfect! Mike: It, you know, now, you know, I came from a broken home. I don't remember my parents together, Joe. I grew up around a lot of broken people, alcoholics, drug addicts, people suffering from anxiety, depression. My grandmother committed suicide after taking too much anti anxiety or depression medication. You know, a lot of things I went through as a kid just watching just destruction. And, you know, I think that decisions we make and Focus's that we have either go towards living and surviving or destruction. And I was seeing the destruction part and I wasn't OK with that. And I didn't want to accept that. So I would always try to help people switch around even from a young age. I was just not OK with what I was seeing. And, you know, my mom when I was three or four years old, I just remember her always telling me that I inspired her and I was going to be a leader. And I think subconsciously, subconsciously, she was doing that because she knew what was going on in the family and knew that I was gonna have to deal with some things. And so I had that programmed into me. So I was always just looking for people to help, looking for people to show them a better way and not buying into what they were telling themselves. And so, you know, that's just something I experienced at a young age. And really when it came down, what lit my fire and what I made of, I would say, is rocket fuel. Because when I was eight, my mom was moving on to her third marriage and I wasn't really up for going into another man's house and learned another man's rules Joe: Hmm. Mike: And but decided to give my dad a try who was moving on to his second marriage. And at that time, you know. I broke my mom's heart by doing that. I didn't know that at the time, but she told me later on that, you know, she cried herself to sleep at night when I left and I was our first child, you know, and when I moved to my dad's, everything seemed fine at first. But after three years, you know, during that three years, there was a lot of conflict. You know, there's a when you had step parents into the mix, any time that stuff happens. The kid is the only link between the past relationship and so a lot gets taken out on the children and anybody that's been in a broken home that dealt with child support, custody battles every other weekend, things that parents jealous, things like just everybody that's been through that knows what I'm talking about. And so a lot of that time they're in from eight to 11 hours, experience a lot of emotional, psychological abuse threats, things like that that were really probably not directed towards me, but came my way. And at nine years old, I would sleep with my baseball bat a lot of nights Joe: Wow. Mike: Because I was scared. And no kid should have to go through that, through that, of course. But that's what went into making me look. I went through these things. I went through court, child psychologists, to see if I was mature enough that at a young age to figure out who I wanted to live with, like all that kind of stuff Joe: Make Mike: And. Joe: Your own decisions, all of that, that crazy. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: And seeing parents fight Joe: Yeah. Mike: And, you know, just just not not happy environment, and so that's what went into me. But the thing is, is that I was always on the right side of the track. Thank God. I was always looking at how can I be better not being accepting of it. Let me look at the bright side of things. Let me look at, OK, what is this doing and how can I take advantage of using this to a better life? So one weekend I was coming home from my mom's house Joe: And Mike: And Joe: So Mike: I Joe: I don't mean to interrupt. Was this Mike: Noticed Joe: All Mike: For. Joe: In Maryland or all back on the East Coast or. Mike: This is in Pennsylvania, outside of Philly. Joe: Ok, cool. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. Mike: So so my mom was living in Maryland, and you know what, I got to about 10, some 10 years old, give or take. I was coming home from my mom's house one day, one weekend after being there and my stomach was in knots. I was anxious. I don't want to go back. And my mom was saying something was wrong. She questioned me and I told her, you know, when you go through abuse, anybody that's been through abuse, you can probably relate to this. That one you don't just like to share because you're afraid that people won't believe you, too. You kind of you're so accustomed to going through it, you're not sure how bad it really is. Somebody on the outside would be like, holy cow, you're dealing with that really. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But as you're going through it, you just think it's ordinary. Another thing, maybe you're embarrassed that you let it go on for that long. And then the weirdest thing is that you're actually concerned with your abuser. You're like, what will happen if I share this to them? Joe: At. Mike: You know, just a weird thing. So I finally came came to the realization that I need to share that my mom said, you know, I'm going to get you out of there. I'm going to file court papers. You don't need to be going through that. That's not ordinary. You need to, you know, in a better situation, she said. But if you do if I do this, you need to stick to your guns. You've got to be like really, really firm because they're going to try to talk you out of it. And in life, when you believe in something, you've got to stick to your guns, man, because people will have agendas and they're going to try to talk you out of it, move one way or the other. And at the end of the day. If you do that, you're not going to live the life you want to live, so she reminded me that, you know, 10 years old, you know, filling my head with great stuff, you know, and I went back home that day and waited and waited weeks went by and waited for those court papers to be delivered. You know, I just knew it was going to happen. And I didn't tell my dad about it, of course. And then finally, one day I come home from school and the tension in the house, you could feel it like it was something was up. And I knew what the deal Joe: Mm Mike: Was. Joe: Hmm. Mike: I had to feel the first. I thought I did something wrong. You know, I'm looking around like, what did I do today? He had his papers in his hand. My dad did. And I knew, like, oh, here we go. And he told me to go to my room. Now, my dad was my hero. He had a successful masonry business, very hard worker, big forearms, rough hands. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, you tell he's a hard worker and he always cared a wad of hundred dollar bills in his pocket. And I thought that was the coolest thing and had a rubber band around Joe: So Mike: It Joe: Did Mike: And. Joe: My partner, it's so buddy. Mike: Yeah, yeah, it must be the last thing Joe: Yeah, and. Mike: He would always show me the money, and I thought it was a cool hundred dollar bills, Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, so he came back in front of me and I didn't get into the discussion with him because my mom said, stick to your guns. So he proceeded to tell me how my mom would have guys coming in and out. Why would you want to go there? You have it made here. You have everything you need. They're poor. They don't have anything. You know, my mom was I mean, we look at the houses. Twenty five, thirty thousand. Our house broken down cars in the driveway. You know, we went on vacation to the Jersey Shore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: But we stayed in a rundown motel, one room for kids, two adults, and we were I just remember just the other day, we were actually able to bring some friends with us sometimes, which just makes it like just I don't even remember how that worked. And we would take black trash bags as a suitcase. So, you know, share my story. By the way, back in the day, I was kind of embarrassed by that. I just didn't like to share that, you know. Joe: Yep. Mike: But I started to realize that the more you share your story, the more impact you can have and the more people that can relate to it and maybe change your life for two Joe: Yep, Mike: Or millions, Joe: Yep. Mike: You know. So I started sharing that. But just to wrap it up real quick, so when I did confirm that my dad took that wad of hundred dollar bills out of his pocket, peeled one off, crumpled it up and threw it at me and said, if that's the case and you want to move there, you're going to need this when you're living on the street with your mother one day. And I remember that 30 some years I lived off that spark that was lit right there because I'm stubborn, my shirt that I think is, say, Joe: And. Mike: Stubborn, perversely unyielding, it's a good thing when it's on the right thing. But, you know, I was like, I'm not going to let that happen. And so 30 some years, I was driving off that spark until two years ago. I really subconsciously I was doing that. I really realized two years ago, wait a minute here, there's something magical that's going on. My life keeps going on its upward trajectory. No matter what happens, no matter screw ups, let downs, disappointments, what is happening here and what I found, which I wrote in my book that's coming out Monday, May 3rd on Amazon Rocket Fuel, I was taken everything that would stop normal human beings or slow them down, store it in my fuel tank instead of my truck, would weigh you down and converted it into rocket fuel for my future to become unstoppable. And I found that and I realized, wait a minute, this is not just a concept. This is an this is a law. If you do this, you really are unstoppable to live in the life of your dreams until you're plucked from this planet. So that's why I decided to write this book that Grant Carter wrote the foreword because it was so powerful. I got to get this message out to people. So that's a little bit about the story. There's you know, that's the short version, actually. Joe: No, that's all good. That's exactly what I wanted, the only piece that I still need to figure out is what did you do? How did you figure out what you wanted to do in life in that middle section of where people go to college or they get a job? Or what Mike: Yeah. Joe: Did you do during that time? Mike: Well, I played football and I didn't drink any alcohol or party all through high school, I played football, baseball wrestled, but football was my love Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: And I just I always thought about I want to go to Ohio State, play football, because I just love their team. I watched them play Michigan all the time growing up. And I never grew tall enough, never grew fast enough Joe: I feel your pain. Mike: That. Yeah. So five, six and three quarters, you got to be really, really fast if you're five, six Joe: Yeah. Mike: And three quarters. So I decided to go to Division three. I played football in college study business. But when I got to college, Joe, I lost my focus and I started chasing girls and party in which I never did before. And it was like Disney World first, you Joe: Yeah, Mike: Know what I mean? Joe: Yeah. Mike: And I just lost, man, I four, five, six, seven years in that range. I was just it's all I cared about was parties where the girls at and I need to be around people. And so that's that's the lead up to that. And then eventually I met my wife, who just the commitment to my wife straighten me up. And I was off to the races. I think that my thing with my wife right now, I joke with her all the time, is I have to outsource. I have to earn her spending on Amazon and deliveries to the house. So it's constantly like this. The other day she's like, I look I go up in the kitchen and there's a piece of decking, like the composite decking. Joe: Oh, you know Mike: We Joe: That Mike: Have Joe: That's Mike: A wood Joe: Going Mike: Deck. Joe: To be redone. Mike: And I'm like, I already told you, oh, not right now. It seems like I already had somebody come over measured Joe: Oh, Mike: On my car and drive back down into the cave. Joe: That's Mike: I call this my studio, my cave. I got to go make some money now. Joe: That's so Mike: A Joe: Funny. Mike: Great motivator. Joe: That is awesome. All right. Well, that's where and was college. Mike: Salisbury University in Maryland. Joe: Ok, and then ever since you've stayed in Maryland, Mike: Yeah, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: Now Mike: Moved Joe: You're Mike: To Joe: In Mike: Connecticut Joe: Ocean City, Mike: For a period of time, Joe: Yep, Mike: But we moved to Ocean City Joe: Yep. Mike: Now. Yep. Joe: Which is beautiful. I love it there. OK, cool. Yeah. And I'm Mike: Thank Joe: On the East Mike: You. Joe: Coast. I'm originally from New Mike: A Joe: York. Mike: Cool, Joe: So. Mike: Cool. Joe: So this leads right into the question that since you're going to do the decking, are you still doing. Are you still in the mortgage business because that's your. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Yeah, Joe: Ok. OK. Mike: Yeah, we have a have a division that I run with three best friends, they take care of the day to day operations Joe: Yep. Mike: And it's a large division under our nation's lending. And we run it like our own business. And it's great people, great culture. It's just phenomenal. Joe: And Mike: So. Joe: You've been doing that quite a long time, right? I've saw Mike: Yet. Joe: You've gotten rated as number number one in Yahoo! Finance are right. I mean, you have. Mike: Yeah, so 2006, I got into it and started as a loan officer and just went from two employees and started a branch and vision and two employees up to 40. Joe: Wow, that's incredible. OK, cool. So when did you make this shift of and you talk about this in one of your videos about sharing your story and you share. You also mentioned it when you were giving your story, how important that is. And when did you make this when did you allow yourself to say, OK, I have this business and I have great partners and people to run this business? When did you decide to at least start your company now with what you're doing with your podcast, in your book and everything? What was the trigger for that? Mike: Yes, so early, twenty, nineteen, my stepfather, George, she took over from my dad when I was 11. He was a great guy and he passed away in twenty eighteen and a heart attack suddenly. And I wrote about this in the book, the story about how he found out and everything. It's it's you know, but but at the end of the day, he had a passion when he was passionate about something like football, baseball, hunting, fishing. He would get up and just go nuts, like deep voice, like everybody couldn't, like, really understand him. He was like so passionate, like they would be taken aback by him. And when he passed away, you know, a couple of weeks after he passed away, I had this passion or energy, something spirit come inside of me. Like, I just felt different. And I realized that I wasn't playing a big enough game in life. You know, I was doing well in the business and the mortgages and all that. But it just that's not the game that I was designed for. I was playing small and I started to realize, wait a minute, I need to open myself up to other opportunities, because if I just focus here, this is where I'm going to stay. And I was having truths that I was telling myself and beliefs that I was telling myself is that this is it for me. This is I'm stuck, you know, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: I don't necessarily love the mortgage business. It's great and all that. But the end of the day, I just had a bigger, bigger calling. And so I started trying to figure out, OK, how can I get known in this calling of building people? Because that's what I actually do at the mortgage business. It wasn't the mortgage business. It was I was building people. I was helping develop people. And so I said, how can I get known more in a bigger, bigger scale mystate instead of just my town? Then I was like, that's not big enough. I'll come up short. How about the country and then the globe? And then I was like, you know, what? If I start really expanding my mind, I'm like, if there's aliens, which I've never seen one, but if there is, let me see if I can get aliens to know who I am and really go for that and then come up a little short and I'll be all right. And that's the way I started thinking about things and started trying to impact and share my story with tens of millions of people, hundreds of millions of people. How can I do that? And I started to obsess about that. And that's when the podcast came. The book idea came and and I just started networking like an animal and going on. You know, I've done three hundred interviews in the last year. Joe: Oh, that's crazy. Mike: So just really lean into it and that's how it all started, and then now I'm into tech, into the tech world where I'm developing a tech product. I co-founded the company. And also we have other we're creating a tech portfolio of other co-founders, non tech entrepreneurs that have ideas that think that they can never do it. They usually go to the grave with those Joe: Mm Mike: Things. Joe: Hmm. Mike: We're bringing them into the world and giving them the resources they need to actually co-found their companies and creating unstoppable people. Because my mission, Joe, is all people are unstoppable to live in the life of their dreams. And so everything I do, I filter through that mission. Joe: It's so cool, man, and it's so funny because you hit it right on the head with with the same thing with me, it's like you don't have a successful business. But I know it's not my calling. It's not what I was put here to do. And and everything that I do should be so much more impactful and so much bigger. And I've had this I had the conversation with David Meltzer. And at the same Mike: Yeah. Joe: Time, he brings you back in focus and he's like, yeah, but you should know that you you have everything you need. You just got to get out of your own way. It's not a matter that you should focus on wanting more. You have it all. You're just Mike: Yep. Joe: You're literally getting in your own way of getting it done. Mike: Yeah, and that's the thing, it's the truths that we tell ourselves we're living an illusion, we let the illusions that we have based on our beliefs and past experiences, and we let that affect us and limit us and block us. And really, at the end of the day, you know, we'd rather explain our life instead of actually intervening in it. We'd like to explain with excuses, you know, and justify things and, you know, at the end of the day, man, we just tell ourselves what we can tell ourselves that helps us survive. And to me, that's not good enough, because you're going to always come up a little short, so why not thrive and really go after it? And, you know, there's not everybody that's going to be able to do what we do. So why don't we take it up a notch and get get really abundance, like go after abundance so that we can help other people and distribute this information to other people. So that's the kind of things that I started thinking. I started hanging around people that coach and mentor me the right way, thinking big, you know, also, you know, still like Dave Meltzer talks about, you've got to be happy now. It's not like later, Joe: Yeah, Mike: So. Joe: Yeah, so I don't want to go down the current path, I follow him, I love the stuff that he does. I know that it fits the mold for a lot of people that are in the real estate world. And but Mike: Yeah. Joe: I also know that he's doing a lot of other things. But how he wrote the foreword to your book, which is amazing, how how much did he influence you making this jump to doing what you're doing now? Mike: So when George died, my stepfather, my brother was read in the next room and he said, Mike, you've got to read this book, this guy sounds just like you. I'll take a look at it. I started I saw Grant before and like pictures, but I thought he was like a real estate. Joe: Yep, Mike: I thought he trained realtors, Joe: Yep, Mike: I wasn't even sure, Joe: Yep. Mike: Right, so I read the book and I'm like, holy cow, this guy speaking to me, he's going through similar situations that I've been Joe: Yeah. Mike: Through. Like, I can totally relate. And I but but the big thing was about it was I've always had this big think, but I got cocooned for a while by people that I surround myself with that were broken thinkers, broken mindset, people, people that didn't fit my culture, but they produce. So I kept them around and people that quit on me. And I let that affect me personally. And I got into this situation where I was invalidated, me myself. I felt invalidated on being the animal that I actually am. And so when I was reading that book, I'm like, wait a minute, this this shows me something. I'm not the crazy one. Those people are the crazy ones. I have an animal. So I did unleash it. So I was able to unleash the beast and that's what it did for me. And then I just immersed myself in this content, hung around with all these people, build relationships inside his company, because I just want to be around those types of people. Joe: Yep. Mike: Great, great friendships. Like I said, Jerry Glantz, a friend of mine, I just you know, I'm proud to have them in my in my circle. And so when when I wrote the book, the book actually came from an idea that I got while I was interviewing grad on my podcast about I asked him the question, what would it take to get into outer space? Not like literally, but figuratively speaking, getting away from all the gravity and negative suppressors of people and things that can mess with you. When can you get that amount of money or that amount of whatever it is? And he said people aren't ready for that discussion. He said that's just something the answer doesn't people don't like the answer to that question and I'm like, well, what would it take? You know? And I started thinking about rocket fuel. Rocket fuel is what it would take. Take it all that stuff, converting it and fuel your way up there. And then once you do that, you remove all that stuff out of your way. There's nothing to stop you and you become unstoppable and indestructible. And that's the thought that started going through my head and I started obsessing about it. I'm like, I got to write this. So when I did that, I'm like the only person that would make sense to be writing the forward for this book is Grant. I don't know if he does afterwards. I don't know if he charged me. I don't know anything. I'm going to make it happen, though. And that's what I started thinking all the time. I just dwelled on it, wrote it down and. Book is almost done, and I made a phone call and there are some details that went into doing that and I just got done and his name is on the cover of the book is for Written Joe: Yeah, Mike: By Grant. Joe: Yeah. Mike: So that adds to credibility that I may not have had before, but the content in the book is just so powerful, man. It's just I actually can be honest with you about something like like I'm always honest, but like just totally transparent. I read that book over and over again during the editing process. Right. And I got so sick of it and because I've read it so much, but then I haven't read it in a while and I went back and my team, we go through in the morning and we'll pick a passage to read out of it just to see what what we come upon. And I don't even remember writing some of the stuff. I'm just like, wow, this is like this is really good stuff. Joe: That's cool, Mike: So it's a weird Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's a weird mind game when you're writing a book and then to see the actual finished product. It's a good time. Joe: That's really cool, yeah, I look forward to reading it, I it's, you know, just talking with you, I can tell we're in sync on a lot of this stuff. You're ahead of me because you wrote a book and I haven't done it yet, but I know that it's a good process to go through. Where did you figure out where you wanted to start in the book in regards to your life? Mike: So, you know, I started share my story that I share with you and I have other parts of my life in there, too, that are just crazy, blew people's minds. But I really what I did was I started writing in my phone while I was on airplanes and I would just write ideas in my phone and and I would write stories that happen in my life. And then my podcast, we transcribe the podcast episodes, the first few that were a monologue style, and we just created a framework. And then it doesn't look anything like it started. That's how I got started with it and just started, you know, what kind of what went into me, what am I made of? And I just went into that and started sharing it. And then the lessons that broke off from each of those things, because, you know, a lot of people have been through there's people that have been through a lot more than I have. But my story is pretty crazy. Like there's some stuff that happened to me that nobody could imagine going through. But I'm still here, brother, and I'm still going hard. Joe: I hear you. I see that and you brought up a good point and one of the videos that I watch where you said people discount their story, right? They don't think, why would anybody care? It's not that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Special. Well, when were you able to actually take your own thoughts as part of your own story and make that switch where you said, wait a second, you know, what I've gone through is important. If it can help one person in the world, that's value enough. I mean, when did you or did you not ever doubt that your story was powerful? Mike: No, so I would I never shared it and I saw Pete Vargas share his story on the 10x growth conference stage in twenty nineteen, I'm sitting there watching and this is the first big stage, I think, that Pete was on. He was nervous and scared and his face, you could tell, is sweating and he would tell you this. I'm friends with Joe: Mm Mike: Him, so Joe: Hmm. Mike: It's not something I'm talking about. Joe: Yeah, no, no. Mike: But I thought to myself, I'm watching that. I don't know who he was at that time, but he was telling a story about his father and he was like really connecting with me and the relationship and how he grew up in a rough spot. And then they came back together and how it all worked out. And I'm like, wow, this is just like powerful. I felt like everybody else disappeared in the place and it was just him talking to me. And I'm like, I need to learn how to do that. And if he can do it, I know I could do it. That's what went through my head. And I told the guys I was with when we got in the car afterwards, I'm like, I'm going to be on that stage. I'm going to share my story one day and I know I can do it. And so then I started sharing the story of one person, two people, five people. And they were like, that's all. I really can relate to that. Then I said, Well, shit, I need to go to ten million people Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: If I could do it and how can I do that? And that's when I started obsessing about getting known and sharing that story. And, you know, I was able to talk to Pete after that and actually learn from him how to share your story. And but I shared that that that story about seeing him in the audience and how everybody just disappeared and how he connected with me. And so it's pretty powerful stuff, Joe: Yeah, Mike: Man. Joe: That's really powerful, but that's got to be a little eerie to just be sitting there Mike: The. Joe: And all of a sudden it's just like a movie where everything around you blurs out and it's just Mike: Yeah. Joe: The two of you. Yeah, Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's incredible. Something real light like question I have for you. The logo is it is a logo. And I'm going to take a guess and I'm probably going to be wrong. And you're going to say, well, nice try, Joe, but does it have anything to do with the Lynch? Mike: So the sirocco, the blue. Joe: Yeah. Mike: Yeah, so it's just upside down, see, and in two hours that are, you know, for Cerak and then it just has a little dude in there holding up the world, if you can see him. That's what it has now. It doesn't. I Joe: Ok, Mike: Didn't see that. So linchpin, Joe: Only because Mike: Huh? Joe: When I read some stuff from you talking about, you know, in some of the verbiage that I read about you and on your website, you mention Mike: Yeah. Joe: The word linchpin. I can't remember the context, but it was. Mike: Yeah, no, you know what, I. Joe: And then when I looked at a picture of a lynchpin, I was like, wait, it is Mike: I Joe: Round. Mike: Got to Joe: And Mike: See what a picture of a linchpin Joe: You Mike: Looks like Joe: See Mike: Because Joe: Now Mike: Because, Joe: I have Mike: You know, Joe: You thinking. Mike: Like that's. Yeah, I got to look at this because maybe maybe, yeah, maybe it does, Joe: The. Mike: So I didn't design the logo myself I had professionally done, and maybe he had that in mind as well. Joe: Only because it's mean you could kind of say it a little bit. I don't know. Mike: Yeah, yeah, I see what you're saying, Joe: Right, Mike: Yeah, Joe: It's Mike: No, Joe: Round Mike: I didn't Joe: With Mike: Have Joe: The Mike: That. Joe: With the thing through it, and I'm thinking, OK, well, maybe it's kind Mike: Yeah. Joe: Of hinting towards it and and I Mike: Now, Joe: Said, Mike: It was really just the sea Joe: Yeah. Mike: And the two hour and holding up the world and helping lift up the Joe: That's Mike: World, Joe: Cool, Mike: That's what Joe: That's even cooler, so you can Mike: The. Joe: Throw my idea right out the window, Mike: Now, Joe: But Mike: I Joe: I Mike: Like that, I like that. Joe: Do I do some upfront investigation of the person I'm talking to in the life and all of that stuff. And I saw that, you know, because you're doing your mortgages. And I saw that Jennifer is in real estate and I don't Mike: Yeah. Joe: Know if she still is, but. Mike: Yes, yes. Joe: So that's a really cool synergy between the two of you, first of all, I think that probably works really well. But just for the people in the audience who had a great relationship with their significant other, how important has that been in the balance of your life, especially what you went through as a young, you know, a young man being able to have that support in and you found the love of your life and it's you know, there's that whole synergy there between you. Mike: Yeah, I mean, it's it's everything, I mean, like I said, I made a joke about trying to earn her spending with that, but then on the day she does a great job, she did she was a stay at home mom for a while until our youngest was in school. And then I said, you know what? I'm going to try to you know, we've got to figure out something because I'm giving deals away Joe: Uh huh, Mike: To people. Joe: Yep. Mike: And, you know, it would be great if you get a license and she ended up doing it. And she's just the type that if she gets into something, she goes hard with it. And she did great the first two years, just fantastic. I didn't even realize how much money she made last year until I saw ten ninety nine. I'm like, wow, you did great. But she's just phenomenal and aligns well with our business. Obviously I don't do mortgages much anymore. Joe: Yeah. Mike: I don't do it all. I just I work on the business maybe an hour a day. My team runs the day to day. They do a fantastic job. And so but it aligns well, obviously in a lot of our people, their spouse got their real estate license, too, because it aligns so well. Joe: Mm hmm. Yeah. Mike: So, yeah, but but at the end of the day, we are you know, I'm very clear with what I'm trying to do, my dreams. And she is clear on the fact of her dreams and the fact that she's willing to support me and run through fire for me. And Joe: Yeah. Mike: It's just a great feeling because I can't do it without her, obviously. Joe: Yep, yep, I just wanted to sort of bring that up, because I think it's important I have the same sort of relationship with Joel Mike: And Joe: And Mike: It's Joe: My significant Mike: Awesome. Joe: Other. So it's Mike: Yeah. Joe: To me, it's super important. And with what happened with covid, you know, a lot of things just stopped. Right. And Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: Changes were made. And so she got furloughed from doing her day to day job and has not been brought back. But she's always had this dream of doing photography. And so now I basically have said to her, you are not going back and you are going to from this point forward until whenever the world ends for you, you're going to follow your dream. So I Mike: Awesome. Joe: Think it's important. Right. And to Mike: Yeah. Joe: Support each other and it's nice to see that you have that same relationship. Mike: Yeah, so, so, so important that it aligns I mean, so much conflict comes from just not being aligned with the mission, Joe: Yep, Mike: You know, Joe: Yep. Mike: And I think that people need to realize that their personal dream, their mission, I call it their purpose, their mission. It's it's more important than anything when it comes down to it really is. Joe: Yeah. Mike: And that's why it's so important to share that with your partner, to make sure that they're on the same page with you. Joe: So let's talk about that. I'm sure I'm probably older than you at this point, but we're Mike: Yeah, Joe: At Mike: Definitely, definitely. Now Joe: The. Mike: I'm 40, I'm 40 for some, I'm Joe: Oh, Mike: A Joe: My gosh, I'm so Mike: Young Joe: Old, Mike: Pup, Joe: I can't. Mike: But I am going on 18 years of marriage. This May so. Joe: Congratulations, that's awesome, yeah, Mike: Thank Joe: Joel Mike: You. Joe: And Mike: Thank Joe: I Mike: You. Joe: Are 20, I think, at this point. Mike: Ok, cool, congrats. Joe: Yeah, I turned fifty nine this past February, so, Mike: Oh, man, I Joe: You know. Mike: Can't tell. I really can't Joe: Yeah, Mike: Tell. Joe: Well thank Mike: Maybe Joe: You. Mike: That's why that's why you shave your head, because that way you can't see any Joe: That's Mike: Gray hairs. Joe: Exactly, exactly right. They got my eyebrows Mike: Hey, Joe: Are still dark, Mike: Look, I'm with you the way the. Joe: So do you ever look at where you are now and you look back and go? I mean, and I think we've talked about this with some of the great people, like, you know, we can bring up David Meltzer again because he's just he's like one of my mentors. I love the guy at the Mike: Is Joe: Death. Mike: Awesome. Joe: You know, what is what's the saying? Something like the the teacher. The teacher appears when the student is ready, Mike: Yeah. Joe: Right? Mike: Yeah, yeah, yeah, teachers. Joe: Yep. Mike: Yep, exactly. Joe: And it's the same thing with life. Like things come when the time is right. And some people would argue against that. Some people would say whatever. But you just started on this path now, right. Something flipped when you're 40, when your stepfather passed away, it said there's you know, and you might have felt that your whole life because you people like you and I always were pulled towards something. Right. We're entrepreneurs. We've always worked towards a greater goal of whatever. Do you ever look back and go, God, I wish I had started this sooner? Or is it like, no, it's this is the time. This is the right time. It's happening now. You know, I'm interested in what your thought process is on that. Mike: Well, I'm curious, asking the question, you must have felt some kind of feeling about that in the past, maybe. Joe: I constantly go like I had, I chased another dream up until this point, and that Mike: Yeah. Joe: Dream didn't happen for me and I openly admit all the time that I didn't put in the work to make that dream happen. I'm Mike: The. Joe: I'm a trained you know, I went to college for music. So my whole life has been surrounded by music. And one day I was going to tour the world and be this famous drummer for and I always use the example because I love his music. John Mayer. Mike: Yeah. Joe: That never happened for me because I know now I can look myself in the mirror and go, You didn't put in the work. You didn't put in the Mike: Yeah, Joe: Tent. Mike: The commitment, Joe: Yeah. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: Didn't do the ten thousand hours. You Mike: Yeah. Joe: You would rather had gone down to the college campus bar and had a bunch of beers and chicken wings with your buddies Mike: Yep. Joe: Instead of going back into the practice room and spending another four hours at night. So I am fine with I get it now, but now Mike: Yeah. Joe: I'm trying to take like the rest of my life and make it amazing and live much Mike: Yeah. Joe: Bigger. And so I am at the stage right now doing that change, shifting Mike: Mm hmm. Joe: My my frame of mind. I know the world is abundant. I know that everything you know, I just have to look towards the good of everything. And the more I focus on the good and the abundance and the gratitude, more of it just keeps coming in. In the last two months, it's been incredible for me. And so and it's I always was the oh, woe is me. Like I work my ass off. Why am I not getting that? Why am I not Mike: Yep, Joe: Doing that? So Mike: Yeah. Joe: That's why I asked you this question Mike: Yeah, Joe: When that, Mike: Yeah. Joe: You know, was the shift with your with Mike: Yeah. Joe: Your father, your stepfather passing away and you just saying when you said you felt it in your heart, you were like, I need to do something bigger. Was that the pivotal point for this? Mike: Yes, it was, and I did look back and be like, man, I cannot believe when I started finding out things and becoming aware of things, I cannot believe I didn't start this sooner. I didn't know that. Like, I just felt like I had wasted I went through a period of time where I felt like I wasted time and time is so valuable. And I said, you know what? I don't know how much longer I have on this planet, but you know what, at this point, the window keeps shrinking. I got to pick up my urgency. I got to move faster. I got to demand more and be louder and be more impactful and be just more intense than I would have had to if I started a long time ago, that's all. And so at first I did look back and with some regret. But then I quickly got out of that and said, OK, what have we got to do to get this done in the window that I do have left? So, yeah, I definitely and that was the pivotal, pivotal point, of course, working towards it my whole life, not knowing it. Joe: Yeah. Mike: You know, there's a story in the Bible and they made a movie about it with Steve Carell about Noah's Ark. You know, it was told over some years he took to build this big arc and he didn't really know why he was doing it, he was just being told to do it by God. If you believe in God, Joe: Hmm. Mike: Which I do, or if it's intuition or whatever. And he got these animals and people were laughing at him and discouraging them and he just kept doing it anyway and building a ship in a place where there's never rain. Joe: All right. Mike: And did it make sense, it didn't seem to make sense at the moment, but he kept doing it and he kept being committed and doing it and doing it and doing it before you know it. The rain came, washed everybody away, and he survived with all the animals that he had and his family. And so I look at that lesson and I started to see this now. I started to see that the things when I'm committed and obeyed to my purpose, my mission, and I filter things through that, whether it's the people I hang out with, my actions, my words, my thoughts, my environment, when I start to filter through that mission. I'm obeying what I'm supposed to be doing and things just magically work out and I start to see opportunities everywhere, but when I don't do that, they're missing. And so you don't need to know what the end game is necessarily. You should be shooting for something, but just be looking for the opportunities. As long as you're obeying your mission and filtering everything through your purpose or mission or whatever you want to call it. Joe: Yeah. All right, well, that makes me feel good that I'm not the only one that had some regrets, so thank Mike: The. Joe: You for being vulnerable and saying that because I definitely have gone through it and I have like I said, I'm older than you. So I think, you know, think, Mike: None of us are alone, Joe. None of us are, you Joe: Ok. Mike: Know, I've anything that you go through, there's somebody else out there experiencing it for sure. Joe: Right, and I think that's what you're a lot of what you talk about is it's so important to share your story because it literally could help one person, which would be a huge help. You never know where they are in their state of mind. And if it lifts them, that's awesome. But imagine being able to help tens of thousands of millions of billions of people. Right. So I understand that's what the goal is for people like us who want to do that. So I I wish you the best of luck in doing that. And and same Mike: Thanks. Joe: With myself. Mike: Yeah, Joe: They've Mike: You, Joe: Got Mike: Too. Joe: To get it done. Mike: That's right, Joe: Ok, Mike: That's right. Joe: So you said something earlier about the book, which is the name of the book is Rocket Fuel. And you said it's May, May 3rd. Mike: Yeah, May 3rd, Monday, May 3rd, it's coming out on Amazon, and, you know, it should be a best seller based on we have we presold it. So I'm thinking that it's not going to have a problem being a best seller, number one best seller. Joe: Yep. Mike: What we shall see. But I'm going to do a bunch of lives that day, Instagram and Facebook lives, and just have some fun with it Joe: Cool. Mike: And celebrate. Joe: Ok, cool, so let's talk about it a little bit. Mike: Sure. Joe: You said something earlier that I thought was really cool, which was taking you said something about taking whatever comes in and not putting in it in the trunk, but putting it in the fuel tank and making rocket fuel. So explain Mike: Yep, Joe: That again Mike: Very Joe: To me, because Mike: Good. Joe: I I loved Mike: Yeah. Joe: It when you said I was like and I didn't even write it down. Mike: Yeah. Joe: I was like, no, that's got to go up here in my brain. So I would love to Mike: Well, Joe: Hear that again. Mike: Well, when you want something in life and things come your way to stop it or slow you down, if you remove a one thing, obviously that's going to help. But removing is not good enough for me. So I take all that stuff. Haters, people that discourage me laughed at me. What I'm trying to do, screw ups of my own people trying to screw me, all that stuff I just stored in my fuel tank. And usually people put it in their trunk and that weighs them down. You know, most people quit on their dreams because other people are talking Joe: Mm hmm. Mike: About them and saying, no, you're not the same. Why are you doing that? In all kinds of different things? I take all that and say, you know what, like here's an example, by the way, I stored in my tank, my fuel tank, to convert it into rocket fuel rather than my trunk, where it weighs me down. And some of the people closest to me, you know, like some of my business partners and friends and they know who they are. I talk to them about it. And I said, you know what? You keep saying the stuff like, hey, why don't you go do your podcast? Hey, you know, just this stupid digs like that, right? At the end of the day, they're trying to get at me, but they're really just talking about themselves, reflecting upon themselves and the fact that they should be doing that and they're not. And so I know that. And I tell people, you know, you want to say that, great, you're not going to achieve what you think you're going to achieve because all you're doing is giving me more fuel and I'm going to push it even harder. So when somebody says that to me, I'll do it on purpose, where I'll push harder and then I'll show it up in their face a little bit more to about. They're seeing so many posts on Instagram, I'll make sure I send it to them in a direct message, because that way it shuts them Joe: Yeah, Mike: Up Joe: Yeah, Mike: For Joe: It's weird, I don't Mike: Not Joe: Understand, Mike: Being. Joe: I don't understand, like people want to bring you down to their level, right? We deal with that all the time. And and social media has done so much to expose those people. And I just don't understand why they can't be happy for you. But they. Mike: Well, they can't because so I've already realized this in my mind now I know this, it's not them personally, it's their mind. And what it's happening is they just the subconscious mind just justifies where you are. It's trying to justify the truths that you told yourself and when something comes in to threaten that. You have to basically there there things fire off to protect their subconscious beliefs, and so it's not really them personally that's doing it and that's why you can't take it personal. You need to understand it. And then when they're doing it, you need to lay it out to them and let them know, hey, listen, I know what's going on here. I get it. You're where you are and you're trying to justify where you are. And you're saying this stuff to me. I don't take it personal, by the way. I use it as fuel. So thank you. And if you want to say more, continue to give me fuel. Great. But I would rather be able to help you. On break the like, just open up your truths and change them, change your beliefs. And expand your mind and see what you can achieve instead of worrying about what I'm doing and that's the way I handle it, I don't really get fired up or angry or take it personal. It's just a situation where they're going through it. And I think we've all been through it Zoom. I think I'm more understanding of it, Joe: Yeah. Mike: But I will not. But if they don't listen to me when I talk about that, I will not spend time with them because I'm not going to spend time with people that don't align with the mission. Joe: Totally agree. So the book Rocket Fuel coming out May 3rd on Amazon, who is this book for? Mike: Specifically, this is for people that have gone through things in life. And they feel like they keep getting held back or slowed down by things are stopped and they're just they're just done with it. They're they're at the point right now where they've had enough. They're getting sick of where they are and they want to do something about it. And they are looking for that breakthrough that that that superpower, because really it is it's like John Maxwell, House leadership, because this thing is so powerful. And I validated it so, so thoroughly that it's a law, it's the Rockefeller law. And so it's for people that are just sick and tired of being where they are. And they want to advance. They want to have a better life, life of their dreams. And I believe, like I said, my mission is all people are unstoppable to live in a life of their dreams. And so that's what's for. Joe: Yeah, and I saw that it seems like part of the focus is about past pains and obstacles and how you you basically help with the book to to change, take people and turn it around and say, you know, like you're saying, use those things as rocket fuel to get you to the next level. So don't lean on them. Don't have them in the trunk, don't have them as baggage, but instead take what you've learned, take what has happened and convert it to rocket fuel by doing whatever you talk about in the book. Mike: Yeah, Joe: Right. Mike: Yeah, the magic, the magic, here's the magic, right? The magic is when you have something happen and you get that feeling in your chest, that's where it hits me, by the way, like something Joe: Hmm. Mike: Bad happens and like this speed to which you can recognize that and convert it and look for opportunity. That's when you master the Rockefeller law. That's what it's all about, the longer time it takes, the more doubt creeps in, Joe: Yeah. Mike: A more negative energy creeps in, the more victimhood creeps in. And the missed opportunities happened during that period. So you want to shrink that window to as little as short as possible because we all feel it. We're all going to still feel it when something bad happens at first, but recognize it as fast as possible and start to look for the opportunity, not play the victim role, take responsibility for everything. Joe: Yeah, that's great. OK, I want to honor the time we have that we so we're going to do an hour or so. I want to just go through this real quick. So you have your own podcast, which is what are you made of? Which is on the wall behind you, where you interview. I assume, you know, other entrepreneurs and people that have amazing stories to tell and share. You release one week, twice a week with a human. Mike: Well, it started out once a week and then I had so many that I was doing, I had to do two weeks. Right now we're on a two week schedule. Joe: Ok. Mike: So, yeah, I just load up. I go hard, man. Like, if I see somebody I want to show, I go after him like an animal. I get them on the show and I don't care how many I've already had in the can. I just still just keep loading them up Joe: That's awesome. Mike: And uh. Yeah. So. Joe: Ok, cool. Besides that, you are you do some performance coaching, correct? You do some coaching in general, you Mike: Yeah. Joe: Are doing some speaking. You're going to continue to to build that Mike: Yeah. Joe: That part of your career. You're going to be on stage with Grant one of these days. Mike: Well, yeah, but so the coaching part, I want to do, the coaching part of switching that into, you know, I still have a couple of clients, but really focusing on the tech side of things and developing these entrepreneurs and young entrepreneurs into this tech world and using my specialty performance and business coaching and what have you into that, not getting paid directly for it. But but from the companies that I'm developing, Joe: Yeah. Mike: I'm really focused on that. And then I was on a 10x growth stage this past March. Joe: Oh, congratulations. Mike: Let me tell you, it took me two years to step on that stage. Joe: Hey, Mike: Thank you. Joe: That's awesome. The tech thing is it is there more that you can tell us about it or a way that people can find out about it or a. Mike: Yes, so the best thing to do, really, I mean, if you if you message me and follow me on Instagram, you're going to see all kinds of stuff coming out here very shortly on it. But I have a tech product called Blueprinted. It's being printed. This is my the one I co-founded. And this product basically, I looked at digital training and video training and I saw, like, how ineffective Joe: Mm Mike: It was Joe: Hmm. Mike: And the fact that only 20 percent of people actually complete the courses. So that means the people that are marketing these courses that are good at marketing are making money without concern for the Joe: Correct, Mike: Success Joe: Yeah. Mike: Of their student, their clients. And I thought that was an ethical problem. And I looked at why people get bored. They don't finish it, they get distracted, they don't retain the information. Or when they get done, they're like, what's the next step? Like, what am I supposed to do? Where do I put that Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Where where do I take that and how long do I do that? And so I thought to myself, what if there's a way to have a project management based software technology that has a marketplace where people that have had success can come in and algorithmically step by step, put the success steps to what they've done, whatever vertical, Joe: Mm Mike: And Joe: Hmm. Mike: Build that blueprint in our platform and then sell it on the marketplace to to people that want to know how to be successful in that area. So it could be anything from a business to a podcast to digital marketing agency, whatever it is. Because if you look if you're going to build a house, you wouldn't want to watch a YouTube video. And on building that house, Joe: All Mike: You'd want the blueprints. Joe: Right. Mike: So this is a market disrupter, industry disrupter. And I can also see another industry being created from this, like there's web designers when websites came out. Well, there's going to be a lot of people that don't want to build their own blueprints. They want to take the content and give it to somebody and have them do the blueprint for Joe: Mm Mike: Them. Joe: Hmm. Mike: So there's going to be a whole industry just on blueprints. And so, yeah, this is a phenomenal thing. And it's coming out hopefully in the next 60 days, give or take. And I'm just fired up to get it in people's hands, man. Joe: That's great, man. You got a lot of irons in the fire. I like Mike: Yeah, Joe: It. Mike: But Joe: That's Mike: Thank Joe: Awesome. Mike: You. Joe: All right. So I want everybody to go and check out your podcast. The book is released on May 3rd called Rocket Fuel. Get in touch with you on on any of the social media. What's the best way to get in touch with you Mike: Instagram, Joe: On. Mike: Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, either one, but Instagram, it's Michy Cerak. Joe: Like you see rock on Instagram. Mike: Yep. Joe: Perfect. All right, man, this is a pleasure for me. I love talking Mike: Metohija. Joe: To another person Mike: Yeah, buddy. Joe: And it was great. And I really wish you a ton of luck with the book. I'll make sure when this episode gets released, I'll have a cover of the book. This will also go like you do on your podcast, will go to the YouTube channel so people will Mike: Thank you Joe: Be able to Mike: To. Joe: See it. I'll put the link to the Amazon in there. Anything else I can do to help? Let me know. But it was a real pleasure to speak with you. I appreciate Mike: Well, Joe: Your time Mike: Thank Joe: And. Mike: You. Thank you, Joe, I appreciate it was a great interview. Great questions and I really enjoyed it. Joe: Thank you, ma'am. You take care. Good luck with the book. Good luck with the podcast. Good luck with the tech software and Mike: Thank Joe: Everything Mike: You. Joe: Else. And just have an amazing year. Mike: Thank you, you, too, bye. Joe: Thank you.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号：VOA英语每日一听Clare: So did you have a choice about what sort of job you were going to have in the military?Mike: No we don't. Once you enlist you have to go through a ... what do you call ... a health medical check-up and you'll be given grade A to F. If you get an F you don't have to serve in the military. And grade A and B you have to, and for grade I think C you have to but you'll be given a clerical job mostly.Clare: Is there ... can you say how exactly the classification works or is it just the medical people who decide this?Mike: For example, for a grade C personnel you might have things like a ... what do you call a "ligament laxity" which means it is easy for you to get sprains, ankle sprains or back injuries or stuff like that. And you might have in the past, if you have sweaty palms, that might pass you as grade C because you can't through a grenade but now they don't take that excuse anymore. Another thing is if you're ... if you have a history of asthma attacks ...Clare: Well I can see why they would not want people who have asthma being a soldier ...Mike: Right, but if you're obese, that doesn't qualify you for grade C because if you're overweight what they make you to do is spend an extra two months for Basic Military TrainingClare: Ouch..Mike: ... or what we term as BMT, so for the average Private, or actually recruit, you have to do three months for BMT ...Clare: Ouch ...Mike: ... but for obese personnel you have to do up to five months ... so the extra two months is a lot of training, especially cardio training.Clare: Do you know anyone who had to go through five months of BMT?Mike: Both of my cousins ... and quite a lot of my friends actually, because Singaporean diet is actually ... yeah, I'll just leave it as that.Clare: So I imagine if many Americans had to go through that training program, I know I probably would have to take the five months.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号：VOA英语每日一听Clare: So did you have a choice about what sort of job you were going to have in the military?Mike: No we don't. Once you enlist you have to go through a ... what do you call ... a health medical check-up and you'll be given grade A to F. If you get an F you don't have to serve in the military. And grade A and B you have to, and for grade I think C you have to but you'll be given a clerical job mostly.Clare: Is there ... can you say how exactly the classification works or is it just the medical people who decide this?Mike: For example, for a grade C personnel you might have things like a ... what do you call a "ligament laxity" which means it is easy for you to get sprains, ankle sprains or back injuries or stuff like that. And you might have in the past, if you have sweaty palms, that might pass you as grade C because you can't through a grenade but now they don't take that excuse anymore. Another thing is if you're ... if you have a history of asthma attacks ...Clare: Well I can see why they would not want people who have asthma being a soldier ...Mike: Right, but if you're obese, that doesn't qualify you for grade C because if you're overweight what they make you to do is spend an extra two months for Basic Military TrainingClare: Ouch..Mike: ... or what we term as BMT, so for the average Private, or actually recruit, you have to do three months for BMT ...Clare: Ouch ...Mike: ... but for obese personnel you have to do up to five months ... so the extra two months is a lot of training, especially cardio training.Clare: Do you know anyone who had to go through five months of BMT?Mike: Both of my cousins ... and quite a lot of my friends actually, because Singaporean diet is actually ... yeah, I'll just leave it as that.Clare: So I imagine if many Americans had to go through that training program, I know I probably would have to take the five months.

In this weeks episode of Better Call Saul, Mike and Jimmy break down the episode, discuss what is going on with Kim and the Judge with Mike Daffron’s misophonia, how the show is unwatchable, Anita Dick, and what are the jobs Gus has for Nacho and Mike For more information visit watchersonthecouch.com. Use our socials […]

In this weeks episode of Better Call Saul, Mike and Jimmy break down the episode, discuss what is going on with Kim and the Judge with Mike Daffron’s misophonia, how the show is unwatchable, Anita Dick, and what are the jobs Gus has for Nacho and Mike For more information visit watchersonthecouch.com. Use our socials […]

How do you get started in the note business? In this episode of the DistressedPro Professional podcast we have Mike Ruscica and Barbara Gelok. They will be walking us through their most recent note investment and highlighting just how easy it easy to invest in mortgage notes. This episode is full of insight into exactly what it takes to be successful in this business. Video Interview Transcript: Brecht: Hey everybody! This is Brecht Palombo with distressedpro.com and I’m on here today with Michael Ruscica and Barbara Gelock. Alright. Barbara: Thank you. That was correct. Brecht: I didn’t think I was going to get that right. Barbara: Most don’t. Brecht: I was talking to Mike the other day. Mike and Barbara have been working together for about a year. I was talking to Mike the other day. You were telling me about an excellent deal that you’ve been doing on the notes space. I wanted to bring you on to talk about that because I think that it is the kind of story that folks should hear if they are considering getting in to this business at all. So, I’m hoping that you’ll just sort of lay out all the pieces of that for me. Click here to Download the Note Conference Case Study PDF Brecht: Mike, we’ve known each other for seven years, something like that? Mike: 2010. Brecht: Too long anyway. Mike: Yeah. Yeah, too long I’m sure. Yeah, in 2010 I got a subscription to your Distressed pro and I’ve been using it ever since. Brecht: And you guys have been, you are certainly one of my main go-to guy when things come in, and I’m not sure what to do with them or if I think somebody would be better advised by someone other than me, I send them to you and it’s for reasons like the deal that you were going to tell us about right here. So, we dive in here, and you kind of tell us about … You’ve been a full time note investor for that same time right? Eight, nine years, something like that 2010? Mike: 2007. Yeah, I stumbled onto this non-performing note business the day that I sold my last flip house. And I didn’t know it was my last flip house and I didn’t know that the market was going to head to where it headed in 2007 and I luckily found out about this distressed note business and I really found my home with this business and so I mainly purchased non performing second mortgages. I liked that space. I can buy them cheap enough and really screw up and still make money and really if I pay twice what I should have paid for it I can still get away with a profit and that to me is important because before we know it we’re all going to be hitting it 100 percent buying average. So yeah, I can buy a couple bad ones and still get out alive. Brecht: Cool. Mike: It buys me a lot of room. Brecht: So tell me about this good one that’s what I want to hear about. Mike: Yes, so today’s Tuesday we close on Friday on note that Barbara, Barbara is my student, we’ve been doing this for about a year. Barbara, why don’t you give us the rundown from A to Z on how this note went and how it started off rough. Barbara: Sure, okay, this particular note is in a non traditional state, was purchased last April. It had been in contact on and off with the borrower. He planned on putting the house on the market, never did throughout the entire summer, then we revisited. We actually set the demand whether through an attorney last September and I started responding more. Tried to come up with a solution. We do have a contact that we do a refinance and we tried that avenue, but after two months we found out that he did a loan mod on his first decision. Therefore, he would never be able to refinance for a twenty-four month period. So, every option we explored dead-ended and then we wound up not hearing from him, starting January of this year. Brecht: When did you guys buy the note and how much did you pay? Barbara: Purchased it last April. Mike do you wanna? Mike: I don’t recall the purchase price. Barbara: We went 50/50. I would say about 22 grand, if that, 20 grand. Mike: Yes, so you’re into it for 11.5, I think, and I was into it for 11.5. Barbara: Correct Brecht: And what was the unpaid principal when you bought that? Mike: The unpaid principal, I would say, was around sixty thousand dollars. Then we had an arrears of another twenty-two or twenty-three thousand. Brecht: Alright, so you paid 25 cents – 23 cents on the dollar, something like that – in that ballpark. Mike: Yes, and we always just talk about the unpaid principal balance. We never purchase the arrears; the arrears kind of come along for free. Brecht: Okay. Mike: Okay, so in this deal with Barbara – the way I try to structure these deals with my students is: the student takes care of interviewing the attorneys that we are going to use in foreclosure, because she is going to be the one that has to work with this attorney. It has to be someone that understands our process. They understand that if we foreclose and we take it all the way to sell, then we’ve both done a bad job. We want to foreclose to get the borrower to do something. Mike: In this situation, Barbara started foreclosure, interviewed the attorney and now this forced the hand of borrower to do what he said he wanted to do when we first bought this note; which was sell the house. So, he thought that he was in the driver’s seat – he would sell it when he was darn well ready and willing to do it. We needed to accelerate that. We accelerated that by starting foreclosure and coming up with a sell date. Mike: So, the sell date, believe it or not, was … Didn’t the sell date actually end on the day of this guy selling his house? So we actually had to postpone another 14 days past that date, so that he could actually get his house on the market; under contract and sold for us to get a full pay off. I checked my accounts on Friday, kind of forgetting that this closing was coming. I just went in and I checked all my different accounts that I had, to see what payments came into my bank accounts. I’m like “Whoa! Where did this extra 83 grand come from?” I called Barbara and I said that I guess we had that closing today and I can’t even repeat what she said. Mike: I don’t know if you remember Barb, but it was like – Barbara: Yes, I was out and with my son in public and everyone turned their head. Mike: And that part I did not know. That was the first time your son had ever heard you speak like that, I’m sure. Barbara: Of course. Brecht: Was it the first big pay-off for you, Barbara? Barbara: No, actually not. Last year was my first. Actually, the first one I started working with performed very well. But, this was pretty amazing as well. Brecht: How quickly did things getting going after you got started, Barbara? Barbara: Pretty quickly. I think it was the boot camps that Mike provided. I went through each on and took notes; was able to go back on my notes. For each one, they wrote pretty lightly, so I had a good base. I’m not shy when it comes to having something to do or something to accomplish. It was different; I never really had to contact attorneys. Some attorneys understand that we just want them to perform; others start questioning statutes, craziness. You just have to find the attorney that you want to work with. It’s pretty smooth after that. Mike: Yeah. So, let me add to that. This business of note investing; once you acquire the notes, that is definitely another big part of why you and I are together. You are helping me source product and then once we acquire the product doing the do-diligence, there’s really only three factors that we work with. One of them is borrower management, servicer management and attorney management. If you can manage those three, or you can eliminate any one of those tree, it’s an even better day at the beach. So, I’ve eliminated a lot of my servicer management because, as Barbara stated, we went right to foreclosure with this one. So the attorney is acting as our compliance officer; I guess you could call it. They are handling the communications between the borrower and us. So, we’ve go the legal comfort that we are doing everything by the book. Then, in this situation, it was Barbara speaking with the attorney. Then, we are speaking with the borrower’s realtor and she was informing us of the progress and gave us a copy of the purchase contract that came in. The offer was for full price. It looked like the borrower was still going to walk away with a nice chunk of change, even after we got paid. This was a fairly sizeable mortgage. We buy second mortgages, this was a second mortgage that we purchased. So, we did get a full pay off on this one; with all of the arrears and all of the unpaid principal balance. Brecht: Nice. Mike: Barbara is a great student. She calls me up, “Hey, what are we gonna do here.” So, Barbara’s got 75,000 dollars on the line, that she purchased five or six notes 50/50 with me. So, she’s got some incentive to get these things going. We have a weekly call. We review each note. We say okay, “Where are we at with this one, this one is going to foreclosure, this one is in bankruptcy.” We need to … file … I’m looking at my board of the things I’m supposed to be doing … We need to file proof of claim with the bankruptcy attorney on that one. Another one, we’ve got three performing, I think Barbara? Barbara: Yes. Mike: So, we’ve had some really good success. Another note that we own together, unfortunately, I’m only 30% partner on that one. She is 70%. We got a 24 thousand down stoke on that one. Right? Barbara: Yes Mike: 24 payments of $1000 each. That was the new negotiation. Because we negotiated with this guy, it turned out that he was getting like a 40 thousand dollar discount. If he could come up with a thousand dollars a month, for 24 months – we’ve received five or seven payments of that so far. Barbara: Yes. Mike: Five, with another nineteen to go. Brecht: Cool. Mike: So to date; I’ve just counted up Barbara’s numbers, she had 75,000 in – maybe another two or three thousand she had to add for attorney fees. With this large wind that we just go on Friday, she will have received back 77/821. Brecht: Cool. So, with what outstanding still to come in? Mike: So, we have the most recent not that Barbara worked at with the borrower as a $375/month payment until the year 2040; only 82 I think. Brecht: And still kicking. Mike: You’ll be 92 Brecht. So, there is $375/month coming in off of that one. Another one is getting $328/month for another 25 years. This other note we get nineteen payments of $1000 each, for the next two years. We still have three outstanding we still need to do something with. So, it’s a total return on investment. Brecht: Yep. Mike: All the cash back and having a lot of upsetting. Brecht: Yep, that’s fantastic and just in a little more than a years work. Mike: Yep, I think that’s about right. Barbara: Yeah. Brecht: Nice. Well, what would you say to somebody who is looking to get started in this business who has been kind of shy, or maybe they’ve been lurking around, reading some stuff; now they’re kind of listening. Maybe their thinking about it. Brecht: Let me ask you this first: Barbara, do you have any experience before you started working with Mike? Barbara: I have been in real estate since 2000. Brecht: Okay. Barbara: I actually do have a real estate background. I do have my MBA in fiance, so I understand the financial part of it; calculating forbearance agreements and general rate of return. Brecht: So, why work with Mike? What’s the difference. Why not just go do it yourself? Barbara: Well, Mike provided all of the bootcamp and all the tools to understand the business. I can’t say that’s just because I have seventeen years of real estate background and a degree, that I definitely needed his help when it came to educating myself to the business. Brecht: Yeah. Barbara: The weekly coaching; conferencing that he had, extracurricular finds that keep me on base, actually, to obtain my goal. Mike: Can you speak a little bit clearer into the microphone? It sounds like you are breaking up, Barb. Barbara: Sure. Barbara: Like I said, I could not just dive into this business without Mike’s help. Brecht: Yeah. Barbara: For Sure. Mike: Well, thank you. Brecht: It’s that kind of business, I think, where there’s sort of a lot of components. It’s not rocket science, but it is sort of black box-ish, even if you’ve been in real estate for a while. Brecht: Mike, what would you say to somebody who’s thinking about getting started, now? Mike: It’s kind of … I mean, when I first got into this business, I realized that this is a team sport. I can rely on people that are in my network to help me along. There’s a lot of different things that could happened. There’s a lot of moving parts; as far as having an attorney in the right state, in this situation, Barbara actually had to go out and interview four or five different attorneys, foreclosure attorneys.Had I not had Barbara; had I been doing this not myself, I probably would have reached out to my network and said, “Hey, who’s got a good attorney in Colorado?” – or wherever the note is. I treat this as a team sport, just like I treat my students on relying on their input to further all of our success. Mike: I have a group of people, about a thousand people that ar in my network that I reach out to. Had I not had an attorney in Colorado, I would blast this out to my people. I would’ve gotten thirty responses: “don’t use this guy, use this person, this one is great” – all above. It is definitely a team sport. I treat it as such with my students, my partners; with my associates that are in this business. You include it. Mike: So, for somebody that … I would have never even dreamed that this business existed, if it wasn’t for my mentor reaching out and saying, “Hey, check this out.”. Like we are doing now, check this out! We did this on Friday! Mike: It took us from April until October to get it done, but once we started moving, we were moving in the right direction. Brecht: Yeah. Mike: The lessons that we learned, just on this one alone, Barbara – we catered to the borrower more than we probably should have. Brecht: How do you mean? Barbara: Yeah. For sure. The conversations I had with him; it just seemed like he was stringing us along for a good three months and I was getting frustrated. Again, trying to figure something out and yeah. It finally [inaudible 00:18:21] in the long run. Mike: Yeah and three months is nothing. Mike: I mean, you are an excellent student, Barbara to have, because we work well together. We move right along and so it is definitely a team sport. Mike: For someone, like you had asked, is sitting on the fence or something – go find yourself someone that will walk you through the paces that has as much at stake as you do. Mike: Barbara had 75,000 dollars at stake to get these things up and running. So, I had something at stake, she had something at stake and so we needed to get to the end game; which is getting our money back – and now getting it to the [inaudible 00:19:07], Brecht: Right. Mike: So now, even if we didn’t do another deal, we would have probably … we are going to get two or three more of these things performing. We’ll have had no cash flowing for the next thirty … at least twenty years on all of them. Twenty years of multiple streams of income. That’s why you and I were talking about affiliate marketing; getting these multiple streams of income to flow into your life. Brecht: Yeah. Mike: Whether it’s notes … the note business for me has worked for the last ten years – to build up my portfolio of streams of income coming in. So, that I can do the life that I want to design for myself and for Barbara. Barbara signed up for my course … How long did it take before you quit your job? Barbara: Four months. Brecht: Wow. Mike: Four months to feel comfortable and start realizing profit; and realizing that this has potential. You can really put some legs on this thing. Mike: Yes, 75 grand – 77 thousand coming in. I think, Barbara, you own maybe three or four rentals, right? Barbara: Four rentals and I am purchasing a vacation rental at the beach; if it doesn’t storm again. Mike: Yeah. Barbara’s down in Florida; in Jacksonville area. Mike: Yikes. We are just watching these things roll through. It allows us to … Barbara travels ten times more than I do. I mean, it’s amazing. This business allows that type of lifestyle. Barbara doesn’t physically have to be anywhere to do this business. So, she proves it. You’re testing it out, right Barb? Barbara: Yes, I actually do better when I am away. Mike: That’s good. Brecht: It’s a phenomenon, isn’t it? Barbara: Yes. It never use to be that way though. Brecht: Right. Mike: Yeah. Not with your j-o-b hanging over your head. Brecht: Yeah. Well, here is what I would say: If you are watching this video and you’ve been kicking it around and you’re serious about it – you’re looking for a mentor, you’re looking for somebody whose notes show up; someone who is gonna hold your hand and have skin in the game and get a deal done with you – I can’t recommend Mike enough. He’s been excellent to me over the years. He’s been here for Barbara. He’s been excellent for students. We are gonna have some information right here on this page about how you can find Mike and how you can get started with him. Brecht: Mike, thanks a lot for coming on here. Barbara thanks for coming on and telling us the story of that note. Mike: Yeah. Thank you – thanks guys. Barbara: Thank you. Mike: Thanks Barbara. Appreciate it. Click here to Download the Note Conference Case Study PDF https://www.distressedpro.com/noteconference-case-study/feed/ 5 noBrecht Palomboreal,estate,reo,foreclosures,distressed,note,buying,non,perf

https://youtu.be/elKu8H8x1SY Biggest Takeaways: If you missed our Facebook live event on November 16th, below is the conversation with Matt Green and Mike Duley about how he & The Duley Group (Powered by HRG) closed $50 million dollars in volume their first year in business using social media! Do you want to be like Mike? For 13 years, Mike used to sell large retailers for fortune 200 companies before switching to real estate. One of the things that helped him carve a successful path in the real estate business was his experience with large brands, of how they approach the market, and their market strategy of reaching consumers through social media, which he and his team translated to real estate. Mike did not get to be the Director of Growth for Hergenrother Realty Group and the Founder & CEO of The Duley Group which has locations in Arkansas, Omaha, Kansas City, Charlotte, and North Carolina out of pure luck. At the start of his venture in real estate, Mike figured out that social media is the easiest and most cost-effective way to get through to his audience and get this information to a lot of people. He was purposeful in his approach that when he created the social media platforms, he immediately developed it as The Duley group because that wants to achieve for his organization. That vision gravitated people and made them want to be a part of it. One pivotal moment for this group was when they converted a FSBO and sold her home for $700k by posting a video of it on Facebook with 4,000 friends and highlighting it differently. This young mogul shaped his social media strategy by following people with great engagements and tailored fit it to their team. They took note how to effectively use hash tags, made sure they had a great photographer for sharp contents and has someone that will get involve and engage with their audience. Mike also credits his social media strategy and success with the Keller Williams classes and events that he attended and successful agents that came before him. During his first year, he attended around 20 events, listened, and figured out how he can apply what he learned. Some of his great influencer's are Adam, Tim Howell, Cody Gibson, and The Kristan Cole Network. When it comes to social media strategy, he highly recommends listening to Jeff Wood’s podcast who is doing a great job with his 360 marketing plan. Looking at these people, he realized that social media has to work from recruitment standpoint to working with sellers and buyers achieve their goals. According to Mark King, it takes 13 days for someone to forget you’re in real estate, so Mike emphasized that it’s important that they are sharing their story and sharing it the right way. His team realized that people are going to different social media platforms for different reasons and different platforms also call for different contents, which is why all their postings are being done manually by their marketing managers. These marketing managers also use the social media for their 33 touch. They look up their leads’ social media accounts and utilizes mutual friends to build up the warm connection with these leads. Since social media is dynamic, Mike makes sure that they are investing and learning every day. At the early stage of their business, one of the biggest mistakes that they have made is posting sporadically on all their marketing channels. They took a step back, realized their mishap, and started building their own marketing strategy calendar. They also take their email list of clients and potential leads, upload it on Facebook, and market specifically to that group, which brought them higher ROI at a lesser cost. Facebook Live Events are a great way to organically grow and engage with your audience, and this is being used strategically by the Duley team. One great piece of advice that Mike gave was to be very specific on time. One can’t do it anytime and expect the same level of engagement.

Our guest here in Episode 26 is Dr. Martin Gibala, the author of the book, The One-Minute Workout, Science Shows a Way to Get Fit, Smarter, Faster, Shorter. Martin Gibala, Ph.D., is also a professor and chair of the kinesiology department at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His research on the physiological and health benefits of high-intensity interval training has attracted immense scientific attention and worldwide media coverage.  Dr. Gibala and Adam Zickerman compare and contrast the high-intensity interval training as Dr. Giballa explains in his book with high-intensity strength training performed at all 7 InForm Fitness locations across the US.For The One-Minute Workout audio book in Audible click here:  http://bit.ly/OneMinuteWorkoutTo purchase The One-Minute Workout in Amazon click here: http://bit.ly/IFF_TheOneMinuteWorkoutDon't forget Adam's Zickerman's book, Power of 10: The Once-a-Week Slow Motion Fitness Revolution.  You can buy it from Amazon by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ThePowerofTenTo find an Inform Fitness location nearest you to give this workout a try, please visit www.InformFitness.com.  At the time of this recording, we have locations in Manhattan, Port Washington, Denville, Burbank, Boulder, Leesburg and RestenIf you'd like to ask Adam, Mike or Sheila a question or have a comment regarding the Power of 10. Send us an email or record a voice memo on your phone and send it to podcast@informfitness.com. Join Inform Nation and call the show with a comment or question.  The number is 888-983-5020, Ext. 3. For information regarding the production of your own podcast just like The Inform Fitness Podcast, please email Tim Edwards at tim@InBoundPodcasting.comThe transcription for the entire episode is below:26 Life is an Interval Training Workout InForm Fitness - The One Minute WorkoutAdam: Dr. Gibala, you have this book with an eye-raising title called the One Minute Workout, and the argument, if I may,  is this. That what you're saying is the benefits we gain from traditional two and a half hours of recommended a week exercise with moderately intense exercise, also known as steady state exercise, can also be obtained with just one minute of extremely intense exercise. Now for many this sounds too good to be true, and I'll allow you to explain how these exercise benefits can be obtained in just one minute. Now before you do that, maybe we should start with what are the benefits of exercise that we're looking for?Dr. Gibala: We're mainly interested in three primary outcomes, one being cardiorespiratory fitness so, of course, that's the cardio health that everybody normally thinks about. The ability of the heart, lungs,  blood vessels to deliver oxygen to muscle. We know that's a really important measure for athletes, but it's equally important for health. We also look at skeletal muscle health, so we'll take biopsies and look at the capacities of muscles to use the oxygen to produce energy, so we like to think of that as a measure of muscle health, and we'll also measure health-related parameters like insulin sensitivity, as well as things like blood pressure. So we're looking at a range of physiological markers that translate into improved health outcomes, and we know that any type of exercise is beneficial for all of those parameters. We're of course interested in time efficient versions to produce those benefits.Adam: Exactly. So speaking of those time efficient ways, you have termed it high-intensity interval training and would you agree with that? That's the official term for the protocol?Dr. Gibala: Absolutely. Why I just raised my eyebrows a little bit, it's been around of course since the turn of the century so high-intensity interval training is rediscovered every decade or so and that was my only reason for doing that.Adam: Got you, you're right. So how can these benefits be obtained in one minute, using the sensory old protocol?Dr. Gibala: So where the title of the book comes from is work in our lab where we've had people do as little as three twenty second hard bursts of exercise, so that's the quote unquote, one-minute workout. Now typically that's set within a timeframe of about ten minutes, so you have a little bit of warmups, cool downs, and recovery in between, but as you alluded to in your intro, we've shown that that type of training program so one minute of workout done three times a week can confer at least over several months, many of the benefits that we associate with the more traditional approach to fitness. So in our recent study where we directly compared that type of protocol to the hundred and fifty minutes a week of moderate-intensity training, the improvement in cardiorespiratory fitness was the same over three months of training. The improvement in markers of muscle health was the same, and the improvement of insulin sensitivity was the same as well. So in our lab when we made these head to head comparisons, we have some pretty compelling evidence I think at last over a couple of months, you can reap the benefits that we associate with a more traditional approach with these short, intense workouts.Adam: Let's talk a little bit more about these intense workouts. I'd like you if you will to take us back to turn of the century, 2004, when you were brainstorming with your grad students. Can you please tell us about that first experiment, and what did those muscle biopsies show? Since your first study, as a follow-up, have the results been repeated in similar studies and with other independent labs as well?Dr. Gibala: Yeah, so I guess our work at the turn of this century was influenced by work from a hundred years prior and part of my interest in this topic was I teach a course in the integrated physiology of human performance, and my students are always interested in the training regimes of elite athletes. They would wonder why do these elite endurance athletes, world champions, Olympic distance medal winners, train using these short, hard sprints. So in short, how can short, hard sprints confer endurance capacity. So that really influenced our thinking, and we wanted to ask the question well how quickly can you get these benefits, and how low can you go? We've subsequently gone lower, but at the time, there was a very common test and physiology known as the Wingate test, I'm sure you're familiar with it. It's a test that involves thirty seconds of all-out exercise on a cycle odometer, and we knew that Wingate training was effective from some other studies, but we said okay, let's have people do just six training sessions over a period of two weeks. So we argued back and forth about the number of Wingates, and how long we would have the training program last, but we settled on this very simple design; a two-week study with six sessions of interval training over the two weeks, and our primary outcomes were endurance capacity, so basically how long subjects could ride a bike until they fatigued, and muscle biopsies to look at those measures of muscle health. Lo and behold after just two weeks of training, we found a doubling of endurance capacity in the recreationally trained students, and so it was a very dramatic illustration of the potency of these short, hard workouts, to confer endurances like benefits. Since then, we've continued to push the envelope I guess in terms of how low can you go, and our work has extended out to less healthy individuals, so we've done work on people with type two diabetes, and of course have been very pleased to see other laboratories around the world replicating and extending these findings as well.Adam: We're going to get to that, what you're referring to now, with Catarina Myers work for example, that you mentioned in later chapters. What I wanted to ask you was when you said, what I want to point out right now, what you said is that you're seeing these incredible improvements and you said that study lasted two weeks. That is mind blowing. Two weeks to have those changes occur? So first of all,  I want to point out number one that that is mind blowing, secondly have you done other studies where you would do it for longer than two weeks and have those changes gotten better even after two weeks, or do they just basically stabilize at just being fantastically endurance but you're not seeing it continually — like a straight line, maybe it's more of — obviously it plateaus a little bit eventually, but anyway what do you think?Dr. Gibala: Our longest studies have gone out to a couple of months, so I think you continue to see improvements but the rate of improvement starts to decline. So in some ways it's a microcosm of what happens with any training program, the longer you do it, there's points of diminishing returns and of course, that can be very frustrating to people and it leads to periodization and all these techniques that we use. In short, you get a lot of benefit early on, so there's a tremendous boost of fitness early on, and like I said, a point of diminishing returns after that so it's not a continuous straight line. I think that's one of the benefits of interval training is you can get a boost in fitness very very quickly, and in some ways that helps with lots of other sports and events that you might want to take on after that, but you get this rapid boost in a very short period of time.Adam: Great, so now let's get to who I just mentioned a little bit earlier, Catarina Myers. The German cardiovascular physiologist who did some important research trying to answer this question: what sort of exercise can substantially slow and possibly even reverse the age-related loss of our cardiovascular function?Dr. Gibala: Catarina Myer, and actually the history there is fascinating because some of her training dates back to other classic German researchers. The Germans have had an interest in this since at least the late 1950s. Catarina Myers worked in the late 80s and early 90s — what was particularly unique about her work is she was applying interval training to patients with cardiovascular disease. So in a cardiac rehabilitation setting, these individuals who had had a heart attack and what was the best way to train these individuals to improve their function,improve their heart capacity. So it was quite revolutionary at the time because it'll go back 30 or 40 years, if an individual had a heart attack, they were basically told to take it easy, right? Lie on the couch, don't challenge past your system because you were worried about subsequent adverse events, and so Myers' work, she had cardiac patients exercise at about 90% of their maximum heart rate for typically about one minute at a time, with a minute of recovery, and she showed very profound improvements in their health outcomes and cardiovascular parameters. So she was a real pioneer I think in applying interval training to disease populations, and in particularindividuals who have cardiovascular disease, and since then, her work has expanded. In Norway for example, there's another large research center that's doing a lot of this work. It's quite common to incorporate interval training in cardiac rehabilitation settings now. Adam: It's breaking major paradigms there, to think that you could apply high-intensity exercise to somebody that just had a heart attack. It's fantastic. I'm familiar with Dr. Myers work actually. One of her papers in particular was this paper that she published in 1997. This paper was showing that of three groups, only the group that performed very intense exercise at 80% of their max were able to improve their cardiovascular function. So she had another group at 60% of their max and the control group didn't do anything, and neither one of them showed the kind of the improvements. These kinds of improvements I'm talking about is increased venus return, decreased systemic vascular resistance, an increase in cardiac index, and an increase in stroke vine. Now these are consistent with her other research that you were talking about because she did a lot of these, and what struck me about this particular one is that these cardiovascular improvements in function were done on a leg press. They weren't done on a bicycle, they were done on a leg press, so my question is do you think high-intensity resistance training can also be used to change our physiology? That it can improve our endurance, our VO2 max, and citrate synthase for example, if you were to do a muscle biopsy. The same way as say a bicycle or a treadmill.Dr. Gibala: I don't think you get the same effects, but it's going to depend on the protocol there. I think without question, high-intensity resistance exercise can be applied in an interval training manner, especially if you keep recovery durations short, and you can see some aerobic improvement. There's research to show that interval style resistance training can improve cardiorespiratory fitness, can boost some mitochondrial enzymes, can improve other health-related indices as you alluded to. My personal opinion is that a varied approach to fitness is always going to be best, and I don't think you're going to see the same cardiovascular fitness improvement with interval based cycling as you might see with high-intensity resistance exercise, but of course, the gains in strength or hypertrophy that you might see with the bike protocol are going to be markedly lower as well. So I think high-intensity resistance training applied in an interval based manner can sort of provide multiple benefits. You can get a cardiovascular boost and obviously get muscular strengthening, and some hypertrophy benefits as well.Adam: So you think the high-intensity strength training protocol is really a separate and distinct program?Dr. Gibala: I do. I think the resistance exercise element is different there, and so the stimulus for adaptation is not going to be exactly the same. Adam: Has that been tested? Have you compared let's say a Wingate type of protocol with say somebody doing a high-intensity strength training program where you're doing one set to failure with major compound movements. You're going from machine to machine with the heart rate staying elevated, and each rate is going to at least 20 seconds of what you would probably consider an interval. Like a twenty-second sprint, those last twenty seconds on the leg press ,for example, are pretty darn intense as well. Do you think it would be worthy of comparing those two types of protocols to see if you get the same benefits and improvements in citrate synthase that way, VO2 max, etc?Dr. Gibala: Yeah, I think without question it would be. Of course,we can come up with all of these comparisons that we would like and there are only so many ways that you can do it in the laboratory. When you do a Wingate test for example, we know that there's no stimulation of growth pathways, so if we look at [Inaudible: 00:13:35] signaling and some of these pathways that we know lead to skeletal muscle hypertrophy, even though Wingate test is perceived as very demanding, the relative resistance on the leg, or the relative stress on the leg is quite low as compared to heavy resistance exercise. So with most forms of cardio based, high-intensity interval training, you're not seeing growth of muscle fibers because the stimulus is just not sufficient to provide the hypertrophy stimulus. Now when you do high-intensity resistance training, as you alluded to, especially with short recovery periods, you maintain the heart rate so it's elevated, you can see improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness in addition to the strengthening and hypertrophy elements as well.Adam: I'm with you on that. I think you're right. What would you think for example, we don't know everything yet about how low we can go and the style, what tools we use for these things. I'm wondering, knowing what we know at this point, what would you think would be the perfect — for somebody who is pressed for time and doesn't have the time to put the recommended 150 minutes a week into it. What do you think would be perfect, do you think maybe two interval training workout sessions a week with some high-intensity strength training? Like what are you doing, what do you recommend to a relative of yours that just wants to get it all, and what do I need to do?Dr. Gibala: Obviously an open ended question and it depends a lot on the specific goals of the individual, but I'll sort of take the question at —Adam: Not an elite athlete. I know you work with a lot of elite athletes, we also have the population that Myers works with. Your typical person, your middle aged —Mike: Busy professional who just wants to be in shape and have the markers that you were talking about before.Dr. Gibala: If they want the time efficiency aspect — you alluded earlier, what do I do. I'm someone who trains typically every day, rarely are my workouts more than thirty minutes, and I typically go back and forth between cardio style interval training, my go to exercise is a bike. I can't run anymore because of osteoarthritis in my knee, so typically three days a week I'm doing cardio cycling. As the weather starts to get nicer it's outside, but typically in long Canadian winters, it's down in my basement. 20-25 minutes of interval based work for primary cardiovascular conditioning. The other days are largely body weight style interval training, I sort of have the classic garage set up in the basement. I've got a weight rack, I do large compound movements to failure, pushups, pull-ups, and so that's typically the other three days of the week. Usually a rest day a week, or I'll play some ice hockey as well. That's something that works really well for me, so I think for individuals, I would recommend that style of approach. If you're someone that can mentally tolerate the demanding nature of intervals, because let's be realistic here, there's no free lunch at the end of the day, but if you want that time efficiency, high quality workout, then I would recommend that alternating pattern of some sort of cardio style interval training with some sort of full body resistance style training. If you're really pressed for time and you have maybe three sessions a week, then using all interval based — maybe two resistance sessions and one cardio or vice versa. Obviously a lot of the work that you advocate is showing tremendous benefits with even one session a week, and maybe even two sessions a week in terms of that quality of style training.Adam: The search continues. Like you said, it depends on a lot of things, goals, and body types, genetics, response to exercise, and even somebody's neurological efficiency. So I get that, and the question always is when we work with thousands of individuals on a monthly basis, do you mix intervals with their strength training, how much of it, balancing all of this with their schedules, with their schedule, with their lifestyle. Are they stressed out, max type A people, do they get enough sleep. So that's why it's so valuable to talk to you, you're on the cutting edge of doing a lot of this stuff and trying to incorporate research into somebody's every day life is the art and trick to all of this I think. Until we keep learning more and more.Dr. Gibala: Absolutely, and sometimes the most fundamental questions science still doesn't have the answers to which is quite ironic, but you're right. The book was written really as an effort to translate the science around time-efficient exercise. As you all know, the number on cited reason for why people don't exercise is lack of time. Nothing wrong with the public health guidelines, based on really good science, but 80% of us aren't listening and the number one barrier is time. So if we can find time-efficient options so that people can implement this style of training into their every day life, we think that's a good thing. The more menu choices, the better. The more exercise options the better, because then ideally, people can find something that works for them, and there's no ‘one size fits all' approach.Adam: That brings me exactly to the next thing that I wanted to talk about. It's this idea that we're being told we need 150 minutes. That's two and a half hours a week to work out, and you make a very interesting point in chapter five of the One Minute Workout. You say despite knowing that exercise has all these near magical qualities, approximately 80% of the people from America, Canada, and the United Kingdom don't get the recommended 150 minutes that they need, and you say that's a problem. You point out something very interesting, I didn't know this, it's very cool. You point out that lifespan has jumped ahead of our health span, and I'd love for you to tell us what the difference is between lifespan and health span and what that means.Dr. Gibala: Yeah sure. So lifespan is just that, how long you're going to live, but health span encompasses — I call it how close to the ceiling you can work. So basically you want to live a long life, but ideally, you want a long, healthy life as well so you can think of it as functional capacity in addition to longevity. I think most of us, you want to live as long as you can and as my grandmother would say, you sort of fall off the perch right at the very end. In a high standard of living, a high quality of living, so that you can do all the things that you like as long as possible and so exercise I think is a tremendous way to do that. You bring up a good point, that as we age, perhaps there's a little shift there. Obviously, strength is important and cardiorespiratory fitness is important, but especially as we start to get older, functional strength is really important. If you look at what's going to keep people out of assisted living, it's basically can you squat down and go the toilet and get up from that.Mike: It's getting off the floor, exactly.Dr. Gibala: So functional training to maintain lower body strength, that's what we're talking about in terms of health span. You may be living a long time but if you need all this assistance in order to get by, that's not necessarily a high standard or quality of living. So that's what we're really talking about here and improving both of them.Adam: So think about this. Despite knowing how important it is to put those 150 minutes in because you're going to have this life of misery and your health span is going to be horrible, people don't do it. You quote this guy Allen Batterham from Teesside University in the United Kingdom, who says that we have, I'm quoting him — actually quoting you quoting him, that we have this perverse relationship with exercise. So here we are, we know what we have to do but we don't, and this is where high-intensity training is so cool because — well first of all, why do we have this perverse relationship with exercise?Dr. Gibala: There's a multifaceted answer. I think Allen made the observation that we have hunger pains to get us to eat, so there's that innate biological drive. For reproduction, there's a sex drive, but there's not necessarily this innate biological drive to be physically active and that was the perversity that Allen was making the point, that even though it's so good for us. Obviously, you can take the evolutionary perspective and for the vast majority of human civilization, we had to be physically active to survive. We had to either sprint and hunt down an animal and kill it and eat it, or you had to spend a long time gathering food. Especially over the last hundred years or so, we've done a great job of engineering physical activity out of our lives through the ways we designed cities and — so now we basically have to make time to be doing this activity that's so good for us, and ironically we seemingly don't have time to do it. Clearly an excuse for a lot of people, you just look at time spent on social media, but a lot of lead very busy, time pressed lives so we're looking for more efficient options to be able to fit all of that other stuff into our day, and I think this is where intervals can play a really big role.Adam: Exactly, it's fascinating. So keeping this exercise avoidance issue mind, what has your friend and exercise psychologist, Mary — how does she pronounce her last name — Jung, I'm assuming there's no relationship to the psychiatrist Carl Jung. What did she discover and what was her advice, because you talk about that she has these five tips for starting an exercise program.Dr. Gibala: Sure, and I'm not a psychologist — what I tried to do in the book was consult with some other experts, and there's a real rift right now, as we make the point in the book, around the potential application of high-intensity interval training for public health, there's sort of two schools of thought. The traditional school of thought would be that people aren't going to do this because if exercise is intense, they find it uncomfortable, they're unlikely to do it and stick with it, but there's a whole new school of thought and Mary epitomizes this. We're saying wait a minute, continuous vigorous exercise is very different from vigorous exercise where we give people breaks, and especially if they don't have to do very much of it. So Mary is very interested in issues of motivation, mood, adherence; what keeps people to stick with healthy behaviors, and her research is showing that a large number of people actually rate the enjoyment of interval exercise higher, and they would prefer this type of training and they're more than willing to make this type of tradeoff between volume and intensity. So if they have to do less total work, they're more willing to work hard for short periods of time. We get this habit, Mary makes the point that if people can't do 30-45 minutes of continuous exercise, they consider themselves a failure, they might beat themselves up a little bit. She's like wait a minute, even if you can do a few minutes of exercise, take a break, do it again, let's celebrate that. So rather than beat yourself up, view it as I'm an interval training, I'm doing this type of training that elite athletes have used for a long time. It's sort of turning a negative into a great message.Mike: For us, failure is the only option.Adam: When you were talking about this in your book and talking about her work, I was screaming amen, because for twenty years that I've been in the high-intensity business myself, I'm seeing the same thing. So many people would much rather do this, in a much briefer time and get it over with than drag it out all week long. I remember when I told my mom twenty years ago that I was going to do this for a living, and she knew that I was a little nutty when it came to high-intensity work and she said Adam, people are not going to workout that hard, you're nuts. I would never workout the way you workout. Granted I was doing crazy like Crossfit stuff, high force, dangerous stuff. I've created a more gentler, kinder way of doing that but nonetheless, it was really intense but much shorter. I said mom, I don't know, I think if someone thinks they're going to be — number one safe, and getting it over with even though it's more intense, I think they're going to do it. I said wish me look, because I'm going for it, and by the way I'm moving back into the house because I have no money. Anyway I moved out a year later. I didn't know about Mary Jung's work, and I was reading in your chapter I was like see mom, I told you there's proof now.Dr. Gibala: In some ways science plays catch up a little bit. You alluded to the fact that you've been doing it for twenty years, so people are seeing this in real life and again the book was really just an effort to say there's some gaps in the science, but here's science to hopefully validate what a number of individuals are already doing, but they can point to this and say see it is backed up by science. So it was really an effort to translate that science into a message, that hopefully people can find in an accessible read, and hopefully in a compelling manner as well.Adam: So without getting into every single work that you describe because you get into a whole different number of variations, maybe you can just give us two typical ones that you would recommend for someone who really has never done intervals before, and how would you get them started?Dr. Gibala: As crazy as it sounds, we have a workout that's called the beginner which is just. So if we have people who are completely new to interval training, we'll just say just get out of your comfort zone. Don't try to go from zero to a hundred overnight, but just push the pace a little bit and back off. It's based on research that shows that even interval walking is better for people at improving their blood sugar, improving their fitness, improving their body composition, as compared to steady state walking. So that's about as simple as it gets, interval based walking, but it can really effective. One of my favorites is the 10x1 which is workouts based on Katarina Myers' work, so it's twenty minutes start to finish. Not super time efficient but it's not a 45 minute jog either, and I like that workout — so this workout involves ten one minute efforts at about 85 or 90% of your maximum heart rate, so you're pushing it pretty good but you're not going all out, and that workout has been applied to cardiovascular patients, diabetics, highly trained athletes as well, so it's a type of workout that can be scaled seemingly to almost any starting level of fitness. It's also then I think the type of workout that can be scaled to other approaches as well, so if you want to bring in resistance type exercise, it's a little more suited to that type of protocol as well, and then, of course I love the one minute workout as well because it's so effective and so efficient. We've had people do the one-minute workout on stairs now, just three twenty second bursts of stair climbing. Again, you can do it anywhere, in your apartment, in your office complex, showing that you get a big boost in fitness with that type of workout as well. So those lower volume workouts I think, they're in your wheelhouse I'm sure and really resonate with some of the stuff that you've been applying for a long time now.Adam: Yes, and I'm so glad that your research has been making me realize that my life decision twenty years ago, my instincts weren't so off, so thank you so much.Dr. Gibal: To go back to this idea that the public health guidelines, only 20% are listening. For those folks who say people won't do this, I would point at the ACSM, worldwide fitness trends for the last couple of years. Interval training and body weight style training, on the top, two or three many years running now, so I think there is a lot of interest in this type of training, if only to provide people with more options number one, and on those days when they are time pressed and might otherwise blow off their workout, no. Even if you've got fifteen minutes, you can get in a quality training session.Mike: Everybody sees the trends, the New York Times with the seven-minute workouts, the bootcamps, you can see all the chatter. Fitting Room is one of the things that they have in New York City, I don't know if it's beyond New York City but what we're trying to present is a safe option for creating that exact same stimulus in the same time.Adam: Especially when the safety is around weight training. So all the weight training injuries, so it becomes even more important when you have weights attached to your body to make that intensity safer. Dr. Gibala: Absolutely and you're spot on there. I think maybe it's a little bit easier for some people to apply these cardio style workouts on their own, but getting qualified instruction from people who know what they're doing is really important, especially when it comes to the resistance based stuff.Adam: So now, you end your book with a nutrition chapter and I don't know, weight loss. I've never really put too much credence in exercise for weight loss, it's generally a diet thing, but there's definitely a synergy if you will, an approach. If weight loss is part of your goal, and I always joke around, only half joking around because there is truth to this, that a lot of people that do these high intensity workouts and workout in general, they always that I'm concerned about my cardiorespiratory health, but if I told them that it doesn't help your cardiorespiratory health — or actually if I told them that it doesn't help them lose weight, they just wouldn't do it. They say they care about their heart, but really if they found out that they're not going to lose any weight doing this, they walk out the door. So let's face it, we all care about losing weight and what is the contribution of high-intensity interval training to weight loss and is there a one-two punch with high-intensity interval training and diet. And sorry if the sirens in New York City are overpowering me.Dr. Gibala: It's fine, and I agree with you, whether it's 90/10, whether it's 80/20, clearly the energy inside of the equation is much more important. Controlling body size, body composition through diet is the primary driver there. Exercise can play a role with weight loss maintenance I think over time. High-intensity interval training just like it's a time efficient way to boost fitness, it's a time efficient way to burn calories, but the primary driver is still going to be nutrition, and so we've shown in our lab that a twenty minute session of intervals can result in the same calorie burn as a 55 minute of continuous exercise, so again, if you're looking for time-efficient ways to burn calories, intervals can be a good strategy there. Personal trainers talk about the after burn effect, this idea of a heightened rate of metabolism in recovery. It's often overstated but it's real, we've measured it and demonstrated it in the lab, but again, they're small. As you all know, the key controlling variable there is the nutrition side and you use the exercise side to help maintain that over time, and it's mainly important about cardiorespiratory fitness but you're right, the people are still interested with how they look in the mirror, absolutely, all of us are.Adam: I'm sorry, it's not going to be in your exercise camp. Exercise does a lot for us, but we put too many attributes on exercise's shoulders if you will. Let's leave that one off please. It does enough, you don't have to also ask it to lose thirty pounds.Dr. Gibala: People think you exercise to lose weight and that's what confers all the fitness benefits. We like to just remind them, there's that straight line between exercise and fitness, regardless of the number on the scale, and if you want to attack that number on the scale, you've got to make changes on the diet side. Adam: I appreciate all your time, and I've been monopolizing the whole conversation. I'm just curious if Tim or Sheila or Mike had any other questions or comments they'd like to make before we wrap this up?Tim: Sure. If you don't mind Dr. Gibala, one of the questions that I had was for somebody middle aged to pick up this high-intensity interval training, HIIT, what are some of the risks involved for somebody that says look, I haven't worked out in years, I want to get started. You mentioned earlier a beginner program but what are some of the risks you'd be looking out for?Dr. Gibala: The first one is our standard advice is always that if you're thinking about starting or changing your exercise routine, you want to check with your physician. We're doing a study right now with interval training in people with type two diabetes, and most of these individuals are fifty, sixty years old, many of them are overweight. So the first thing is they go through a full, exercise stress test cardiac screening. Now that's obviously in a research setting, but I think checking with your doctor is always good advice on the individual level, because that's going to potentially catch something, or maybe there's an underling reason that you might not be cleared to engage in vigorous exercise so let's get that out of the way. That being said, interval training has been applied broadly, in many different ways, to all of these people that we were talking about. Cardiovascular disease, type two diabetes, metabolic syndrome, elderly individuals, and so I think there's a type of program interval training that's suitable for just about anyone. I go back to my earlier comments, you want to start out easier, so don't go from being on the couch to the one-minute workout of sprinting up stairs as hard as you can. Progress to that beginner workout or maybe the 10x1 or some of these other workouts that we star in the book. Again, it sounds like common sense and it is. Start out slow, build, progress from there. So the risks, exercise carries a transient risk. Let's be realistic about that and so when you're engaged in exercise, your risk of having a cardiac event is slightly higher, but the other 23 and a half hours of the day when you're not exercising, your risk is markedly lower. So if the choice is even a single weekly bout of high-intensity exercise or nothing, you're much better off doing the exercise. Here in Canada, you read the high-profile reports of the ice hockey player skates on a Friday night in a beer league with his buddies, and occasionally there's these one off tragic events were someone has a heart attack and dies on the ice. Very tragic for this individual and people get scared of exercise and it's like no on the big picture level, if you look at the epidemiological studies they will tell you that single weekly bout of exercise is protective in terms of reducing your risk of dying, but again, at the individual level, you want to make sure that you're probably screened and cleared to begin with.Adam: That was a point you made in your book and I thought it was great.Dr. Gibala: We talk to some of these people who write the exercise guidelines, who deal every day — we talked to Paul Thompson, who is an expert exercise cardiologist and that's the point that he made. He said that if your choices are remaining sedentary or doing HIIT, do HIIT. If you're an older individual with some risk factors who is not time pressed, then maybe consider the moderate approach, but that message doesn't resonate with a lot of individuals so I think as an individual, get checked by your physician, but people don't need to be afraid of interval training. It comes in lots of different flavors, and there's a flavor in my mind that's suitable for just about anyone.Mike: Right. Are there any known cardiac conditions where you have to be concerned about it that we know about? Valve or something?Dr. Gibala: I'm not a cardiologist but certainly some schemas, some unstable anginas, things like this where those are really high-risk individuals that need to be carefully monitored, but I point to the fact that there's a lot of cardiac rehabilitation programs now that are incorporating interval exercise and resistance exercise on a regular basis.Mike: You spoke before about how you get a new boost. Like if you're doing intervals for the first time you get a boost, and after a while, it goes up and then there's some diminishing returns after a while. With your studies, with your experiments there, if you vary the stimulus, like say you do the beginner for a while, and then you find that you plateau. Have you shown that you just do a different interval workout and a new boost will happen?Dr. Gibala: I think a varied approach is always going to be best. I think there were take some clues from the athletes again. Periodized training over the course of a season really is just about changing up workouts, hitting the body in different ways, and it's just a common sense strategy that even average, recreational based people can incorporate. So yes, stick with a program for a bit of time, and then vary it up, or if you want, change the interval workouts every week, but the body thrives on variety. After a while, anyone is going to get a stale doing the same thing, so that's why I think that varied approach to fitness is always going to be best.Sheila: Adam actually asked the question that I was going to ask. It's the question that most girls usually want to know about is burning fat. What I have a question about is are there any apps that you know of or do you have an app? Like I love apps, like you go outside and you have your phone and your headphones, like is there an app to do these different types of interval training?Dr. Gibala: There are, a ton of them. Personally, I don't use a specific one, but even recently I've gotten this question on Twitter so I've answered it a number of times and just pointed to a few sites that have the top ten best interval training apps. I think you can find a lot of them out there and it makes it easy. You sort of short your brain off and you just go when it says to go, and you back off when it says to stop. There's lots of options out there.Sheila: Exactly, great. So I'll check that out and maybe we'll list them in the show notes here.Tim: How about rest and recovery, Dr. Gibala? Here at InForm Fitness, we go and workout once a week, we workout hard for 20-30 minutes, and then we take that week off to recover and prepare for that next workout. With this interval training, do you have any recommended rest and recovery periodsDr. Gibala: I think it comes back to the intensity interval, so the more intense the nature of the training, the longer the recovery needs to be. It depends a little bit on if you're talking about training for performance, training for health, so there's all those variables but I think as a general rule of thumb, the more intense the interval, the longer the period of recovery that you're going to need, and the more intense the interval training session, the longer the recovery days in between you might need. Again, it's really individual then in terms of what you're specifically looking for, especially if it's just general health or if it's performance.Tim: So if somebody is near an InForm Fitness or decides to do this somewhere else perhaps, they can just listen to their body if they don't have a trainer.Dr. Gibala: Again, lots of common sense stuff but it's common sense for a reason. It makes a lot of sense.Adam: That's a great way we can wrap it up I think, that says it all right there. This whole workout just makes sense, this whole idea that it's the intensity over duration. Dr. Gibala: The other moniker we've come up with is life is an interval training workout. We don't just sort of plod through life like this, you run to catch the subway or whatever, so I think this alternating pattern, alternating energy demands, interval training rewards that. Adam: Well thank you so much, I really enjoyed this talk. I appreciate your work so much. Don't retire anytime soon please, keep going, there's still a lot to find out, and I hope we can stay in touch.Dr. Gibala: Pleasure to speak with all of you, I really appreciate the opportunity to be on the show and the great, insightful questions. Thanks for this opportunity.  

Guests: Trisha Michael & Mike Russell www.tmichaelhealingarts.com mike@tmichaelhealingarts.com A Journey of Discovery Through Intuition With Help from the Angels Trisha Michael Channels Archangel Raphael through daily and monthly messages. Together with her husband Mike Russell, they have created T. Michael Healing Arts in Oregon and do healing sessions, classes, workshops and retreats.  Trisha has been inspired by Archangel Raphael to take his lessons into the community through special sessions of profound communication and thoughtful reflection. She continues to reflect to all that “Love is Enough,” and strives to bring peace and understanding to all her clients. On this show, Trisha & Mike share with Petra how the book 'A Journey of Discovery' came into being. They aloso discuss how Archangel Raphael came into Trisha and Mikes lives and Trisha's early years. A gift from Trisha and Mike: For those that want to buy a book we would like to offer a special listener price for an autographed copy for only $15.00. Go to our website or contact Mike at mike@tmichaelhealingarts.com Your Host: Transformational Story Coach, Petra Nicoll Petra's trials and tribulations in her own life have inspired her book, Petra’s Ashes: A Transcendental Journey (2016 release) and have made her who she is today – a compassionate, insightful and loving being who can help you rise like a phoenix and soar! Get Petra's FREE Meditation MP3  

Layered security refers to the practice of combining various security defenses to protect the entire system against threats. The idea is that if one layer fails, there are other functioning security components that are still in place to thwart threats. In this episode of the Inside Out Security Show, we discuss the various security layers. Human Physical Endpoint Network Application Data Cindy: Hi and welcome to another edition of The Inside Out Security Show. I’m Cindy Ng, a writer for Varonis’ Inside Out Security Blog, and as always, I’m joined by security experts, Mike Buckbee and Kilian Englert. Hi, Kilian. Kilian. Hi, Cindy. Cindy: Hey, Mike. Mike: Hey, Cindy. You call us security experts. I’m actually, where I don’t know if you can see it, “I have a fake internet job”…because I still haven’t been able to explain my job to my mom and dad. “He does something.” Human Cindy: We’ll see who’s most fake at the end, okay? So recently, Rob wrote a layered security guide and I thought it would be interesting for us to go through each of the layers and share stories that we’ve read or heard as it relates to each of the layers. The idea with layered security is that you want to make sure that you have many different layers of defense that will protect you. If there are any holes, just in case something gets in, you might have a security layer that serves as a backup that will catch it. So the first layer to start is the human layer. So that layer is all about educating people to spot scams and be cautious about the passwords that they give out, their social security numbers that they give out, their credit card information. This layer, Kilian, you talk about this a lot. I feel like, increasingly, criminals are using and exploiting services that we rely on and turning it into like an attack vector, like there is an article recently about people texting you pretending to be Google and saying, “Hey, there was this suspicious attempt to get it in.” And we talked about passwords and alternatives and using two factor and it’s kind of like, “Oh man, I have to check my text messages and make sure I’m not scammed again,” like another thing to worry about. Kilian: Oh, yeah. People, by nature, want to be trusting of other people. We kind of have been trained since day one to feel kind of bad about being suspicious … The bad guys out there know this and they exploit it. It’s so much easier to go after a person and just kind of play off of emotions because they’re far more malleable than a system, and people often are not trained or educated around security practices. And even if they are, they’re kind of trained into a certain mindset. So if they see something that looks semi-legitimate like, “Hey, a text from Google. Oh, they’re protecting me. They have my login name or my IP address or something, NIC address,” because most people are not going to investigate that closely, it’s going to look fairly legitimate like, “Oh, hey, Google’s looking out for me. This is great.” It’s very easy to, just with a little bit of a legitimacy, to get people to kind of go along with it and it’s…the con of that sort is as old as time basically and it’s only getting easier any more, too. Mike: I’ll go with something that you said Kilian, which is that it’s really about our mindset. And I think from a security practitioners’ standpoint, we’re typically very focused on exploited time and this and do this things and so we forget a lot about on the human layer which is education and like how to educate your users and to help make them part of your line of defense. I think a fun activity for that is actually to do phishing, and there is a couple of companies that do this, that do like fake phishing attacks, and then basically, so I go, “You clicked on this so we are reporting you to IT.” And it’s kind of almost like in hospitals where they like shame the doctors into making sure they wash their hands all the time. You’re kind of like trying to enforce this IT hygiene aspects on all of your users, and either hire a company or you have some free time, you can just try to phish your users individually to mess with them. Kilian: Sure. Physical Cindy: Our next layer is the physical layer , and you know, I would be like the worst security person to hire because I wanted to skip talking about this layer. There are so many layers and Mike’s like, “Why aren’t we talking about it? It’s the most important one.” And Kilian is like, “It’s often overlooked.” And I said, “It’s just the physical layer, like everybody gets that.” Tell us a little bit more about the physical layer. Kilian: I guess I’ll jump in. It is so often overlooked. We worry about firewalling the data off to protect from external attacks and stuffs that come in over the wire. But how many times in businesses do people check badges? You can walk into a corporation. If the guy sitting at the desk is distracted for a minute, and then you’re inside and nobody looks twice at you. If the doors aren’t locked in the server room, you walk in, plug in a USB device. Basically, once you have physical access to something, it’s game over. There’s no other layer of security that they probably can’t get around at that point. And we rely so much on just kind of observing people and we put a lot of faith in locks, too, like physical key locks. They’re such a terrible false layer of security. Most front door locks or bike locks or anything else are easily defeated within seconds. The physical layer is often overlooked but it’s such a false layer of security, too, that we know we have somebody watching the door. Because again, we are relying on people and people want to be trusting. Mike: What I was going to mention with respect of the physical layer was I think a lot of things are changing. So businesses are much more just personnel, lots more different, just physical branches, places, people working from all sorts of different remote situations, as well as it used to be everything was hard wired, and now, most every place has WiFi. And so you have this very different situation of like everyone in the office walking in with the WiFi radio that’s connected to the internet. But we don’t think about that. We just like, oh, we are on our cellphones, but if there’s malware on there that potentially perform an attack or some form of disruption. There are some real interesting exploit tools that basically do things like DHCP exhaustion on a network and so you have to do things like MAC filtering. I worked on a high security environment on the military. They have things like if you unplug a computer from the wall from the CAT5 and plug it back in, it won’t let it back on the network as it lost the MAC connection. You can’t just bring a laptop in and plug it into the Ethernet port in the waiting room. Things like that, like very good sensible suggestions. Cindy: I just had a paranoid thought that when I go home, I want to like install 10 locks, put on a password, and I need somehow to after-authenticate myself to get in. So in terms of a business security, like can you go overboard in terms of putting like a trillion locks on something? And then what’s kind of a good balance for an extreme paranoia or paranoid person like me? Kilian: I’ll get dogs with bees in their mouth so when they bark, they shoot bees at you. Mike: From a business standpoint, I think the biggest thing is actually more procedures, procedures around access to servers, access to changes, that kind of thing. And then from there, the procedures are implemented that helps with the recognition of what’s a threat and what isn’t. On a personal level, something that I’ve been seeing a lot more in terms of physical stuff is skimmers on ATMs. That’s probably like we were talking like a personal sort of physical attack. That’s probably the big one, that every ATM you go to, you sort of want to tap at the card holder to see if it falls off because it’s so easy to put a skimmer on. Kilian: That kind of distilled… it’s situational awareness, kind of being observant of the people and things around you, what you’re interacting with. Endpoint Cindy: Another thing we need to be alert and aware of are endpoints –  protecting devices, PCs, laptops, mobile devices, from malicious softwares. People really like using endpoint protections to guard against a ransomware, and people’s found out it’s not really effective. But if it’s not ransomware, malware can really sit on your system for like six months before it’s even identified. But people also really want to protect their endpoints. What are your response and thoughts on this? Mike: I’ll go. I guess my first thought is we’re talking about layered security, and so no solution is going to be a homerun 100% of the time. And so what we are really trying to work on is percentages, reducing the surface area we can be attacked on, reducing the opportunities for an exploit. An endpoint security can certainly be part of that but it’s not a complete solution. But by limiting the types of apps that can be run, the type of traffic that can come in, it’s a way of helping to manage that risk. And that’s what we’re talking about with all layers, is how can we manage risk at all this different layers? And hopefully by doing that simultaneously at all the layers, we really improve our security much more than if we thought, “Okay, it’s just endpoint security or it’s just doing training of the users.” Kilian: The way I would think about it, too, is if you ever see the machines for like looking for gold or sifting rocks, like you have the different size of screens. Endpoint protection antivirus, I would think, is like the biggest size of screen. It’s gonna get like the bigger rocks out, so the kind of most obvious, most basic vulnerabilities. And kind of, as you go through and sift out the different pieces, that’s exactly what it is. You can just, multiple layers, sift out different things that one might not catch until you get it. And then just good patch management, too, on endpoints and servers, things like that. If you leave vulnerabilities that have been patched for 10 years on your system, that’s kind of inviting trouble in a lot of ways. But then people often overlook it. Mike: Those are the big holes in your screens as your trying to through all the data and everything is falling through these unpatched systems. Cindy: But there are a whole bunch of alerts. People get thousands of them, like daily and weekly. That’s another annoyance. You can’t actually check thousands of alerts every day. Mike: And for all this sort of systems that monitor the things, all the vendors, us included, are trying to…people talk about alert fatigue. If you get an alert every 10 minutes, like, “Oh, something’s happening, something’s happening,” like you just cease to care about. It’s not something that actually needs responded to or thought about. So there’s a lot of work with like machine learning, better filtering, and better tracking on how to handle that to reduce that amount of alert fatigue. But you’re absolutely right, Cindy. Cindy: And also make alerts that are really worth alerting on so that you’re not like, “Oh my God, my blood pressure is increasing,” and then you end up in the hospital or something. Mike: What kinds of alerts are you getting? Network Cindy: No, listen, it’s not me. I’m just hearing all these stories when I go to conferences and I go, “If I had that many alerts, I will just be like…ahhhhh! Watch out for the crazy woman.” So another layer we should talk about is network security. I’m thinking firewalls, intrusion prevention, detection system, VPNs. And I was kind of tricked to read an article that says “Utility board hears about network security.” And I was like, “Oh, they’re really serious about network security.” Like, “What about the other stuff?” So I went through and I read it. I clicked on it and I read it and they take security seriously. Like in the article, the IT director talked about network security. He made references to all those different layers that we’re talking about so far. And he made the analogy of a Swiss cheese as security and you put layers upon layers of them and said, “That even then with all the layers of cheese, a small hole, so a small hole in your security can be catastrophic.” And I thought it was just really great that they’re talking about it. And further on in that article, it mentioned that a board member requested that presentation because he had heard about a utility at a utilities conference that there was a hacking of an electrical system in Colorado. So we hear a lot about things that go wrong in companies and they’re not doing anything about it. But I really liked that they’re saying, “Hey, I’m protecting our utilities network.” And it’s a great way to get more of like security funding, too, because security systems are expensive, like whether it’s network. Even if it’s like a $200 thing, you still have to be like, why do you need this, and explain. So back to network security, the talk that they had, presentation they had, it’s a great way to just get money like, say, there is an article in Rob’s layered security guide about “ What’s the difference between a $1000 one and a $200 one?” Mike: For a firewall, you’re talking about? Cindy: For a fire…yeah. I went on a tangent. I think someone… Kilian: I mean, you brought up an interesting point. That article, I thought, was really kind of fascinating because the one thing that kind of really, if I can pick one thing a security thing that scare me on a daily basis, it’s a lot of this, like command and control type, or not command and control but the SCADA systems or the industrial control systems that run a lot of our infrastructure. And back to the unpatched systems, these things are from the whatever, ’80s, ’90s, that they said, “Oh, well, hey, we can monitor whatever, our damn controls online, stick it on a network with an IP address,” and then it controls kind of a vital piece of infrastructure, like something in the physical world that can cause a lot of damage. Or the controls at the electrical system, you can wipe out power and that will cause a lot of problems in the physical world. Network security is, again, one of the critical layers. Again, if you have to connect it to a network, at least run it through something. You still need the defense and depth across the whole board, but that’s kind of the first line of defense for a kind of network connected systems. Mike: The only other thing I was going to mention is that I think a lot of times, people think of network, especially with from a lot of employees, it’s like, “We need VPNs for very everyone. We have VPNs for everyone. We’ll be protected.” But you have to remember that also, it’s sort of like punching a hole in your firewall because VPN, it’s like making a home computer as if it was on your network, and all the ensuing issues that that can cause. Kilian: And then we can tie it right back to physical security then. On your VPN at Starbucks, you walk away for a few minutes, someone walks up, plugs something in, or you don’t lock your laptop, then the internal network’s compromised. Mike: I know for sure there has been multiple reports on people getting ransomware on their networks from, like someone at home and they get like an infection, they bring it to the IT group. Like, “Oh, Bill in IT, he’ll help me out. He’s always such a nice guy.” They bring it in. Like, “You look at this real quick? It’s real weird.” “All right, let’s plug it in the network.” And, boom, the network is now infected with ransomware. Good intentions gone awry. Application Cindy: Oh my God, I’m so scared that whenever you guys just share stories and I get like extra, extra scared. Okay, the next two on application security , that, there’s a lot to talk about in that one. I wrote a blog post about it, that our IT people won’t let me install anything on my computer. When we talk about application security, it refers to the testing and doing the work to make sure apps work as they should. But there are some drawbacks to that, which is why IT won’t let me install anything, and I have to get permission. I have to tell them why. That, I understand it’s a dangerous world out there. What are some things about application security that we need to be worried about or concerned about? Mike: Most companies, they have a mix of things. They have a mix of applications they built in-house, third party systems that they bought off-commercial, off-the-shelves of, or cut software, and then now, sort of cloud systems. We joke about cloud doesn’t exist, It’s just other people’s computers. It’s just other people…our software are running other people’s computers or software as a service type application. There’s different considerations for each of those. I think, across the board, one of the things to really think about for all of this is single sign-on, that the procedures for provisioning access to this and then removing it as people’s role change or as they come into or leave the company is incredibly important. And if it is one place where that’s most often missed, it’s in those kind of things where…I use to work at a company. I won’t say the name of it. But there phone system was separate from everything else and so that a salesperson that left, removed all their computer access, left them with their phone access, and they changed their outgoing voicemail, which for months, was just a harangue against the company, and like what blood-sucking horrible people they were and how unprofessional and incompetent. And it stayed that way for months as people called in to talk to this salesperson he was known over there. But that can happen anywhere, with timesheets software, that can happen with reporting software, the project management software. All of these things can exist somewhere on the spectrum. And without that single sign-on and really strict procedures, it’s very difficult to control. Kilian: Just kind of a little bit of side, too, as we’re developing more software and it gets more complex and we expect more out of it, that just increases the chance that there’s going to be a bug and it’s a guarantee that every piece of software you run is going to have some type of issue or bug in it. Again, especially as the citizens gets more complex and more interconnected. So it’s being cognizant of that and, again, we’ll go back to a couple of topics ago, is good patch management, making sure that the bugs are reported and then the software vendors you deal with take it seriously and patch it eventually, or soon rather than eventually. Data Cindy: And the next layer on the data layer , we talk about that a lot. I think it’s the crown jewels. We want to make sure that our health data isn’t stolen, our PCI data isn’t stolen. People are really…you hear it often in every kind of podcast or show that you hear. You kind of expect data breaches to happen. People are really hurt that that’s happening. “Oh, they’re not doing enough.” But the reality is data security is tough. What are your thoughts about this layer? Mike: We, at Varonis, we deal with structured data. Structured data, for the most part, falls under application security, so that structured data is anything that’s in the database, typically in the accesses, typically mitigated and arranged and managed through an application. I just want to make sure there isn’t direct database access somehow through the network where I exploit tools. But for the most part, that’s fairly sane. Our niche is the unstructured world which is the files and where typically, what we see is the end results of all the structured data. So the structured data is the giant Oracle database that says like, “Yes, we should actually acquire this company,” and then the unstructured is the Powerpoint that says, “We’ll do this next Monday.” And that got out, has huge implications for stock price, and Sarbanes-Oxley, and reporting, and governance, and all these things. So there’s different risks involved with those. Kilian: The thing about the unstructured data is that, there’s so much of it and it just grows so constantly. Every second of every day, at every business, somebody is putting some type of information out, sending an email, writing a document, editing a Powerpoint, any of this stuff. It’s just constant and that’s how businesses evolve and get better because they share information. They just keep producing and producing and producing it and it never seems to go anywhere. It’s like the internet never forgets.  Well, your data center never forgets either. The project might be forgotten but it’s still out there somewhere, the Sharepoint site. All this team collaboration is over but it’s still up there and contains a lot of information. There’s some life cycle information on that. But things like social security numbers, those never change. There might be or there is an age on credit card information, but it’s still fairly long, several years, depending on how long it’s out there. The life cycle of this data is often overlooked and you expose yourself to a lot of risk because it ends up…again, it’s created for some legitimate reason and it’s out there for some legitimate reason, but it’s forgotten about or it’s not dealt with or disposed or even secured properly. Cindy: So to kind of wrap up, you both shared stories that I’m just like, “Oh, it’s nerve-racking,” but the overall goal is security. So we make sure we educate the people. We make sure that they don’t have access to stuff that they don’t need. We make sure they don’t get in. We make sure we protect ourselves from malware, make sure we protect our data, make sure that apps are working properly. What are some kind of wrap-up conclusions or things that I’ve missed that you want to share your thoughts on? Mike: I think we should go back to your Swiss cheese sandwich metaphor because honestly, I think it’s actually viable because the big challenge of all this is communicating this to people who are not in our business, it’s communicating it to the executives and to the users that we need to deal with. And so we say exactly that, but it’s like stacking a lot of pieces of Swiss cheese, and the more layers we have, the fewer holes there are, the less vulnerable we are. It’s a very easy to understand metaphor. Hopefully, they are lactose intolerant. But I think that is really the case. The more layers we have and the more all these things work together, the safer we are. That’s like an old powerful thing. Cindy : Kilian, do you have any last thoughts? Kilian: No, I like the metaphor. I think it’s great. I have other metaphors I use for thinking about security, but the Swiss cheese one, I think, is very visually pleasing. I guess it’s something people can recognize. Cindy: That is from the IT director in Nebraska. Like maybe he’ll listen to our podcast or join our show. Mike: I thought we decided we’re just going to start sending packets of sliced Swiss cheese to all our customers… “Stack this together until you’re secured.” Cindy: Make sure your bad guys don’t go in. Our Parting Gift Cindy: So to wrap up, our parting gift, what are some things people should check out? For me, I’m pivoting to something else. Back to our show last week, we talked about the EU’s general data protection regulation. We just published on our blog an infographic. So if you do not want to read long texts, Andy and I, we created a really informative infographic describing consumer rights, as well as obligations companies have to the consumers. So head over to our blog and check it out. Mike, do you have any parting gifts for our listeners and viewers? Mike: I was going to recommend; I was going to say I just looked at the infographics you’re talking about. It’s at blog.varonis.com, and I think it really is great. And we’re talking about educating other people, it is the perfect thing, that if you are an IT, to send to an executive or to send to some stakeholder on your company to try to get help get their minds in the right place for dealing with the new regulations. My suggestion for a parting gift was going to be a game, actually. It’s called Hack Net. It’s probably one of the few games you could get expense by your company. It looks so much like one of those, like in the movies when they’re like hacking into a system and it has everything scrolling and doing stuff. So it’s the simulation of that but it covers actual exploits, the concepts of how they are exploited, what is done. So it’s very educational but super fun to run through and has a little scenario and you actually hack into all these different systems. It’s called Hack Net. And right now, it’s $10. But I mentioned it last week, during this…summer sale, I think we’re going $5. But it’s very cool and interesting. And if you’re interested in this as a general topic, I know we have a lot of people on the IT side and not necessarily like security pentesting side, it’s a great way to really like deeply understand all those concepts. So, cool, check it out. Cindy: Cool, thanks. Kilian, do you have a parting gift? Kilian: Actually, what Mike was saying just reminded me of something. The other week, I was in Uber. I was taking a ride to the airport or train station or somewhere, and on the screen, they popped up a little thing like, “Hey, code while you go,” or something like that. And they gave you like little snippets of code and they wanted you to find the error in the code. And I thought it was a really, you know, crowdsourcing something, information, maybe for a potential job offer. But I just thought it was really interesting they were kind of doing this little application security type of initiative within the app itself like while you’re on the trip. I don’t know if the pops are for everybody but I saw it. I thought it was interesting to look at while I was on my ride. Mike: Are you saying you got a job offer from Uber? You’re leaving Varonis? You figured it out? Kilian: The next time you’ll see me with my dash cam and my car driving around. Mike: Oh, man… Cindy: Kilian might be doing both. He might be driving and working at Varonis. You never know because you know he’s fake. Thanks so much, Mike and Kilian, and all our listeners and viewers for joining us today. If you want to follow us on twitter and see what we’re doing or tell us who’s most fake on the show, you can find us @varonis, V-A-R-O-N-I-S. And if you want to subscribe to this podcast, you can go to iTunes and search for The Inside Out Security Show. There is a video version of this on Youtube that you can subscribe to on the Varonis channel. So thanks, and we’ll see you again next week. Mike: Thanks, Cindy. Kilian: Thanks, Cindy. Cindy: Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Kilian. Subscribe Now Join us Thursdays at 1:30ET for the Live show on Youtube, or use one of the links below to add us to your favorite podcasting app. iTunes Android RSS The post Layered Security – IOSS 14 appeared first on Varonis Blog.

This week on an all new 10-minute podcast on Things That Matter With Mike And Nev:---Nev basically spends the entire podcast giving a lecture about the do's and dont's of phone sex.Mike: For the record, this wasn't the original plan. But it just kind of...Nev: Evolved?Mike: Well, I was gonna say spiraled into a dark, never-ending abyss. But, you know, whatever.It's stupid.It's pointless.It's irrelevant.It's Things That Matter With Mike And Nev.-------------------------------------------------Listen to the episode here: Download the episode by right-clicking here: The Things That Matter With Mike And Nev: Episode 70