Podcast appearances and mentions of mike two

Mike evaluated the top cornerbacks in the 2024 NFL Draft, highlighting Alabama's Terrion Arnold and Toledo's Quinyon Mitchell. He also shared his thoughts on Clemson's Nate Wiggins, Iowa's Cooper DeJean, Alabama's Kool-Aid McKinstry, Missouri's Ennis Rakestraw Jr., and Iowa State's T. J. Tampa. 

Mike Garafolo of the NFL Network is back for his weekly chat talking about all things NFL, from what's going on w/ Josh Allen, to should fans be worried about the Cleveland Browns offense, and much more. We catch up w/ our very own Mike Benton to give us the latest on the Kraken! We wrap the show with Ian Furness on Cross Talk!

About MikeBeside his duties as The Duckbill Group's CEO, Mike is the author of O'Reilly's Practical Monitoring, and previously wrote the Monitoring Weekly newsletter and hosted the Real World DevOps podcast. He was previously a DevOps Engineer for companies such as Taos Consulting, Peak Hosting, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and many more. Mike is originally from Knoxville, TN (Go Vols!) and currently resides in Portland, OR.Links Referenced: @Mike_Julian: https://twitter.com/Mike_Julian mikejulian.com: https://mikejulian.com duckbillgroup.com: https://duckbillgroup.com 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: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at AWS AppConfig. Engineers love to solve, and occasionally create, problems. But not when it's an on-call fire-drill at 4 in the morning. Software problems should drive innovation and collaboration, NOT stress, and sleeplessness, and threats of violence. That's why so many developers are realizing the value of AWS AppConfig Feature Flags. Feature Flags let developers push code to production, but hide that that feature from customers so that the developers can release their feature when it's ready. This practice allows for safe, fast, and convenient software development. You can seamlessly incorporate AppConfig Feature Flags into your AWS or cloud environment and ship your Features with excitement, not trepidation and fear. To get started, go to snark.cloud/appconfig. That's snark.cloud/appconfig.Corey: Forget everything you know about SSH and try Tailscale. Imagine if you didn't need to manage PKI or rotate SSH keys every time someone leaves. That'd be pretty sweet, wouldn't it? With Tailscale SSH, you can do exactly that. Tailscale gives each server and user device a node key to connect to its VPN, and it uses the same node key to authorize and authenticate SSH.Basically you're SSHing the same way you manage access to your app. What's the benefit here? Built in key rotation, permissions is code, connectivity between any two devices, reduce latency and there's a lot more, but there's a time limit here. You can also ask users to reauthenticate for that extra bit of security. Sounds expensive?Nope, I wish it were. Tailscale is completely free for personal use on up to 20 devices. To learn more, visit snark.cloud/tailscale. Again, that's snark.cloud/tailscaleCorey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and my guest is a returning guest on this show, my business partner and CEO of The Duckbill Group, Mike Julian. Mike, thanks for making the time.Mike: Lucky number three, I believe?Corey: Something like that, but numbers are hard. I have databases for that of varying quality and appropriateness for the task, but it works out. Anything's a database. If you're brave enough.Mike: With you inviting me this many times, I'm starting to think you'd like me or something.Corey: I know, I know. So, let's talk about something that is going to put that rumor to rest.Mike: [laugh].Corey: Clearly, you have made some poor choices in the course of your career, like being my business partner being the obvious one. But what's really in a dead heat for which is the worst decision is you've written a book previously. And now you are starting the process of writing another book because, I don't know, we don't keep you busy enough or something. What are you doing?Mike: Making very bad decisions. When I finished writing Practical Monitoring—O'Reilly, and by the way, you should go buy a copy if interested in monitoring—I finished the book and said, “Wow, that was awful. I'm never doing it again.” And about a month later, I started thinking of new books to write. So, that was 2017, and Corey and I started Duckbill and kind of stopped thinking about writing books because small companies are basically small children. But now I'm going to write a book about consulting.Corey: Oh, thank God. I thought you're going to go down the observability path a second time.Mike: You know, I'm actually dreading the day that O'Reilly asks me to do a second edition because I don't really want to.Corey: Yeah. Effectively turn it into an entire story where the only monitoring tool you really need is the AWS bill. That'll go well.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. So yeah, like, basically, I've been doing consulting for such a long time, and most of my career is consulting in some form or fashion, and I head up all the consulting at Duckbill. I've learned a lot about consulting. And I've found that people have a lot of questions about consulting, particularly at the higher-end levels. Once you start getting into advisory sort of stuff, there's not a lot of great information out there aimed at engineering.Corey: There's a bunch of different views on what consulting is. You have independent contractors billing by the hour as staff replacement who call what they do consulting; you have the big consultancies, like Bain or BCG; you've got what we do in an advisory sense, and of course, you have a bunch of MBA new grads going to a lot of the big consultancies who are going to see a book on consulting and think that it's potentially for them. I don't know that you necessarily have a lot of advice for the new grad type, so who is this for? What is your target customer for this book?Mike: If you're interested in joining McKinsey out of college, I don't have a lot to add; I don't have a lot to tell you. The reason for that is kind of twofold. One is that shops like McKinsey and Deloitte and Accenture and BCG and Bain, all those, are playing very different games than what most of us think about when we think consulting. Their entire model revolves around running a process. And it's the same process for every client they work with. But, like, you're buying them because of their process.And that process is nothing new or novel. You don't go to those firms because you want the best advice possible. You go to those firms because it's the most defensible advice. It's sort of those things like, “No one gets fired for buying Cisco,” no one got fired for buying IBM, like, that sort of thing, it's a very defensible choice. But you're not going to get great results from it.But because of that, their entire model revolves around throwing dozens, in some cases, hundreds of new grads at a problem and saying, “Run this process. Have fun. Let us know if you need help.” That's not consulting I have any experience with. It's honestly not consulting that most of us want to do.Most of that is staffed by MBAs and accountants. When I think consulting, I think about specialized advice and providing that specialized advice to people. And I wager that most of us think about that in the same way, too. In some cases, it might just be, “I'm going to write code for you as a freelancer,” or I'm just going to tell you like, “Hey, put the nail in here instead of over here because it's going to be better for you.” Like, paying for advice is good.But with that, I also have a… one of the first things I say in the beginning of the book, which [laugh] I've already started writing because I'm a glutton for punishment, is I don't think junior people should be consultants. I actually think it's really bad idea because to be a consultant, you have to have expertise in some area, and junior staff don't. They haven't been in their careers long enough to develop that yet. So, they're just going to flounder. So, my advice is generally aimed at people that have been in their careers for quite some time, generally, people that are 10, 15, 20 years into their career, looking to do something.Corey: One of the problems that we see when whenever we talk about these things on Twitter is that we get an awful lot of people telling us that we're wrong, that it can't be made to work, et cetera, et cetera. But following this model, I've been independent for—well, I was independent and then we became The Duckbill Group; add them together because figuring out exactly where that divide happened is always a mental leap for me, but it's been six years at this point. We've definitely proven our ability to not go out of business every month. It's kind of amazing. Without even an exception case of, “That one time.”Mike: [laugh]. Yeah, we are living proof that it does work, but you don't really have to take just our word for it because there are a lot of other firms that exist entirely on an advisory-only, high-expertise model. And it works out really well. We've worked with several of them, so it does work; it just isn't very common inside of tech and particularly inside of engineering.Corey: So, one of the things that I find is what differentiates an expert from an enthusiastic amateur is, among other things, the number of mistakes that they've made. So, I guess a different way of asking this is what qualifies you to write this book, but instead, I'm going to frame it in a very negative way. What have you screwed up on that puts you in a position of, “Ah, I'm going to write a book so that someone else can make better choices.”Mike: One of my favorite stories to tell—and Corey, I actually think you might not have heard this story before—Corey: That seems unlikely, but give it a shot.Mike: Yeah. So, early in my career, I was working for a consulting firm that did ERP implementations. We worked with mainly large, old-school manufacturing firms. So, my job there was to do the engineering side of the implementation. So, a lot of rack-and-stack, a lot of Windows Server configuration, a lot of pulling cables, that sort of thing. So, I thought I was pretty good at this. I quickly learned that I was actually not nearly as good as I thought I was.Corey: A common affliction among many different people.Mike: A common affliction. But I did not realize that until this one particular incident. So, me and my boss are both on site at this large manufacturing facility, and the CFO pulls my boss aside and I can hear them talking and, like, she's pretty upset. She points at me and says, “I never want this asshole in my office ever again.” So, he and I have a long drive back to our office, like an hour and a half.And we had a long chat about what that meant for me. I was not there for very long after that, as you might imagine, but the thing is, I still have no idea to this day what I did to upset her. I know that she was pissed and he knows that she was pissed. And he never told me exactly what it was, only that's you take care of your client. And the client believes that I screwed up so massively that she wanted me fired.Him not wanting to argue—he didn't; he just kind of went with it—and put me on other clients. But as a result of that, it really got me thinking that I screwed something up so badly to make this person hate me so much and I still have no idea what it was that I did. Which tells me that even at the time, I did not understand what was going on around me. I did not understand how to manage clients well, and to really take care of them. That was probably the first really massive mistake that I've made my career—or, like, the first time I came to the realization that there's a whole lot I don't know and it's really costing me.Corey: From where I sit, there have been a number of things that we have done as we've built our consultancy, and I'm curious—you know, let's get this even more personal—in the past, well, we'll call it four years that we have been The Duckbill Group—which I think is right—what have we gotten right and what have we gotten wrong? You are the expert; you're writing a book on this for God's sake.Mike: So, what I think we've gotten right is one of my core beliefs is never bill hourly. Shout out to Jonathan Stark. He wrote I really good book that is a much better explanation of that than I've ever been able to come up with. But I've always had the belief that billing hourly is just a bad idea, so we've never done that and that's worked out really well for us. We've turned down work because that's the model they wanted and it's like, “Sorry, that's not what we do. You're going to have to go work for someone else—or hire someone else.”Other things that I think we've gotten right is a focus on staying on the advisory side and not doing any implementation. That's allowed us to get really good at what we do very quickly because we don't get mired in long-term implementation detail-level projects. So, that's been great. Where we went a little wrong, I think—or what we have gotten wrong, lessons that we've learned. I had this idea that we could build out a junior and mid-level staff and have them overseen by very senior people.And, as it turns out, that didn't work for us, entirely because it didn't work for me. That was really my failure. I went from being an IC to being the leader of a company in one single step. I've never been a manager before Duckbill. So, that particular mistake was really about my lack of abilities in being a good manager and being a good leader.So, building that out, that did not work for us because it didn't work for me and I didn't know how to do it. So, I made way too many mistakes that were kind of amateur-level stuff in terms of management. So, that didn't work. And the other major mistake that I think we've made is not putting enough effort into marketing. So, we get most of our leads by inbound or referral, as is common with boutique consulting firms, but a lot of the income that we get comes through Last Week in AWS, which is really awesome.But we don't put a whole lot of effort into content or any marketing stuff related to the thing that we do, like cost management. I think a lot of that is just that we don't really know how, aside from just creating content and publishing it. We don't really understand how to market ourselves very well on that side of things. I think that's a mistake we've made.Corey: It's an effective strategy against what's a very complicated problem because unlike most things, if—let's go back to your old life—if we have an observability problem, we will talk about that very publicly on Twitter and people will come over and get—“Hey, hey, have you tried to buy my company's product?” Or they'll offer consulting services, or they'll point us in the right direction, all of which is sometimes appreciated. Whereas when you have a big AWS bill, you generally don't talk about it in public, especially if you're a serious company because that's going to, uh, I think the phrase is, “Shake investor confidence,” when you're actually live tweeting slash shitposting about your own AWS bill. And our initial thesis was therefore, since we can't wind up reaching out to these people when they're having the pain because there's no external indication of it, instead what we have to do is be loud enough and notable in this space, where they find us where it shouldn't take more than them asking one or two of their friends before they get pointed to us. What's always fun as the stories we hear is, “Okay, so I asked some other people because I wanted a second opinion, and they told us to go to you, too.” Word of mouth is where our customers come from. But how do you bootstrap that? I don't know. I'm lucky that I got it right the first time.Mike: Yeah, and as I mentioned a minute ago, that a lot of that really comes through your content, which is not really cost management-related. It's much more AWS broad. We don't put out a lot of cost management specific content. And honestly, I think that's to our detriment. We should and we absolutely can. We just haven't. I think that's one of the really big things that we've missed on doing.Corey: There's an argument that the people who come to us do not spend their entire day thinking about AWS bills. I mean, I can't imagine what that would be like, but they don't for whatever reason; they're trying to do something ridiculous, like you know, run a profitable company. So, getting in front of them when they're not thinking about the bills means, on some level, that they're going to reach out to us when the bill strikes. At least that's been my operating theory.Mike: Yeah, I mean, this really just comes down to content strategy and broader marketing strategy. Because one of the things you have to think about with marketing is how do you meet a customer at the time that they have the problem that you solve? And what most marketing people talk about here is what's called the triggering event. Something causes someone to take an action. What is that something? Who is that someone, and what is that action?And for us, one of the things that we thought early on is that well, the bill comes out the first week of the month, every month, so people are going to opened the bill freak out, and a big influx of leads are going to come our way and that's going to happen every single month. The reality is that never happened. That turns out was not a triggering event for anyone.Corey: And early on, when we didn't have that many leads coming in, it was a statistical aberration that I thought I saw, like, “Oh, out of the three leads this month, two of them showed up in the same day. Clearly, it's an AWS billing day thing.” No. It turns out that every company's internal cadence is radically different.Mike: Right. And I wish I could say that we have found what our triggering events are, but I actually don't think we have. We know who the people are and we know what they reach out for, but we haven't really uncovered that triggering event. And it could also be there, there isn't a one. Or at least, if there is one, it's not one that we could see externally, which is kind of fine.Corey: Well, for the half of our consulting that does contract negotiation for large-scale commitments with AWS, it comes up for renewal or the initial discount contract gets offered, those are very clear triggering events but the challenge is that we don't—Mike: You can't see them externally.Corey: —really see that from the outside. Yeah.Mike: Right. And this is one of those things where there are triggering events for basically everything and it's probably going to be pretty consistent once you get down to specific services. Like we provide cost optimization services and contract negotiation services. I'm willing to bet that I can predict exactly what the trigger events for both of those will be pretty well. The problem is, you can never see those externally, which is kind of fine.Ideally, you would be able to see it externally, but you can't, so we roll with it, which means our entire strategy has revolved around always being top-of-mind because at the time where it happens, we're already there. And that's a much more difficult strategy to employ, but it does work.Corey: All it takes is time and being really lucky and being really prolific, and, and, and. It's one of those things where if I were to set out to replicate it, I don't even know how I'd go about doing it.Mike: People have been asking me. They say, “I want to create The Duckbill Group for X. What do I do?” And I say, “First step, get yourself a Corey Quinn.” And they're like, “Well, I can't do that. There's only one.” I'm like, “Yep. Sucks to be you.” [laugh].Corey: Yeah, we called the Jerk Store. They're running out of him. Yeah, it's a problem. And I don't think the world needs a whole lot more of my type of humor, to be honest, because the failure mode that I have experienced brutally and firsthand is not that people don't find me funny; it's that it really hurts people's feelings. I have put significant effort into correcting those mistakes and not repeating them, but it sucks every time I get it wrong.Mike: Yeah.Corey: Another question I have for you around the book targeting, are you aiming this at individual independent consultants or are you looking to advise people who are building agencies?Mike: Explicitly not the latter. My framing around this is that there are a number of people who are doing consulting right now and they've kind of fell into it. Often, they'll leave one job and do a little consulting while they're waiting on their next thing. And in some cases, that might be a month or two. In some cases, it might go on years, but that whole time, they're just like, “Oh, yeah, I'm doing consulting in between things.”But at some point, some of those think, “You know what? I want this to be my thing. I don't want there to be a next thing. This is my thing. So therefore, how do I get serious about doing consulting? How do I get serious about being a consultant?”And that's where I think I can add a lot of value because casually consulting of, like, taking whatever work just kind of falls your way is interesting for a while, but once you get serious about it, and you have to start thinking, well, how do I actually deliver engagements? How do I do that consistently? How do I do it repeatedly? How to do it profitably? How do I price my stuff? How do I package it? How do I attract the leads that I want? How do I work with the customers I want?And turning that whole thing from a casual, “Yeah, whatever,” into, “This is my business,” is a very different way of thinking. And most people don't think that way because they didn't really set out to build a business. They set out to just pass time and earn a little bit of money before they went off to the next job. So, the framing that I have here is that I'm aiming to help people that are wanting to get serious about doing consulting. But they generally have experience doing it already.Corey: Managing shards. Maintenance windows. Overprovisioning. ElastiCache bills. I know, I know. It's a spooky season and you're already shaking. It's time for caching to be simpler. Momento Serverless Cache lets you forget the backend to focus on good code and great user experiences. With true autoscaling and a pay-per-use pricing model, it makes caching easy. No matter your cloud provider, get going for free at gomemento.co/screaming That's GO M-O-M-E-N-T-O dot co slash screamingCorey: We went from effectively being the two of us on the consulting delivery side, two scaling up to, I believe, at one point we were six of us, and now we have scaled back down to largely the two of us, aided by very specific external folk, when it makes sense.Mike: And don't forget April.Corey: And of course. I'm talking delivery.Mike: [laugh].Corey: There's a reason I—Mike: Delivery. Yes.Corey: —prefaced it that way. There's a lot of support structure here, let's not get ourselves, and they make this entire place work. But why did we scale up? And then why did we scale down? Because I don't believe we've ever really talked about that publicly.Mike: No, not publicly. In fact, most people probably don't even notice that it happened. We got pretty big for—I mean, not big. So, we hit, I think, six full-time people at one point. And that was quite a bit.Corey: On the delivery side. Let's be clear.Mike: Yeah. No, I think actually with support structure, too. Like, if you add in everyone that we had with the sales and marketing as well, we were like 11 people. And that was a pretty sizable company. But then in July this year, it kind of hit a point where I found that I just wasn't enjoying my job anymore.And I looked around and noticed that a lot of other people was kind of feeling the same way, is just things had gotten harder. And the business wasn't suffering at all, it was just everything felt more difficult. And I finally realized that, for me personally at least, I started Duckbill because I love working with clients, I love doing consulting. And what I have found is that as the company grew larger and larger, I spent most of my time keeping the trains running and taking care of the staff. Which is exactly what I should be doing when we're that size, like, that is my job at that size, but I didn't actually enjoy it.I went into management as, like, this job going from having never done it before. So, I didn't have anything to compare it to. I didn't know if I would like it or not. And once I got here, I realized I actually don't. And I spent a lot of efforts to get better at it and I think I did. I've been working with a leadership coach for years now.But it finally came to a point where I just realized that I wasn't actually enjoying it anymore. I wasn't enjoying the job that I had created. And I think that really panned out to you as well. So, we decided, we had kind of an opportune time where one of our team decided that they were also wanting to go back to do independent consulting. I'm like, “Well, this is actually pretty good time. Why don't we just start scaling things back?” And like, maybe we'll scale it up again in the future; maybe we won't. But like, let's just buy ourselves some breathing room.Corey: One of the things that I think we didn't spend quite enough time really asking ourselves was what kind of place do we want to work at. Because we've explicitly stated that you and I both view this as the last job either of us is ever going to have, which means that we're not trying to do the get big quickly to get acquired, or we want to raise a whole bunch of other people's money to scale massively. Those aren't things either of us enjoy. And it turns out that handling the challenges of a business with as many people working here as we had wasn't what either one of us really wanted to do.Mike: Yeah. You know what—[laugh] it's funny because a lot of our advisors kept asking the same thing. Like, “So, what kind of company do you want?” And like, we had some pretty good answers for that, in that we didn't want to build a VC-backed company, we didn't ever want to be hyperscale. But there's a wide gulf of things between two-person company and hyperscale and we didn't really think too much about that.In fact, being a ten-person company is very different than being a three-person company, and we didn't really think about that either. We should have really put a lot more thought into that of what does it mean to be a ten-person company, and is that what we want? Or is three, four, or five-person more our style? But then again, I don't know that we could have predicted that as a concern had we not tried it first.Corey: Yeah, that was very much something that, for better or worse, we pay advisors for their advice—that's kind of definitionally how it works—and then we ignored it, on some level, though we thought we were doing something different at the time because there's some lessons you've just got to learn by making the mistake yourself.Mike: Yeah, we definitely made a few of those. [laugh].Corey: And it's been an interesting ride and I've got zero problem with how things have shaken out. I like what we do quite a bit. And honestly, the biggest fear I've got going forward is that my jackass business partner is about to distract the hell out of himself by writing a book, which is never as easy as even the most pessimistic estimates would be. So, that's going to be awesome and fun.Mike: Yeah, just wait until you see the dedication page.Corey: Yeah, I wasn't mentioned at all in the last book that you wrote, which I found personally offensive. So, if I'm not mentioned this time, you're fired.Mike: Oh, no, you are. It's just I'm also adding an anti-dedication page, which just has a photo of you.Corey: Oh, wonderful, wonderful. This is going to be one of those stories of the good consultant and the bad consultant, and I'm going to be the Goofus to your Gallant, aren't I?Mike: [laugh]. Yes, yes. You are.Corey: “Goofus wants to bill by the hour.”Mike: It's going to have a page of, like, “Here's this [unintelligible 00:25:05] book is dedicated to. Here's my acknowledgments. And [BLEEP] this guy.”Corey: I love it. I absolutely love it. I think that there is definitely a bright future for telling other people how to consult properly. May just suggest as a subtitle for the book is Consulting—subtitle—You Have Problems and Money. We'll Take Both.Mike: [laugh]. Yeah. My working title for this is Practical Consulting, but only because my previous book was Practical Monitoring. Pretty sure O'Reilly would have a fit if I did that. I actually have no idea what I'm going to call the book, still.Corey: Naming things is super hard. I would suggest asking people at AWS who name services and then doing the exact opposite of whatever they suggest. Like, take their list of recommendations and sort by reverse order and that'll get you started.Mike: Yeah. [laugh].Corey: I want to thank you for giving us an update on what you're working on and why you have less hair every time I see you because you're mostly ripping it out due to self-inflicted pain. If people want to follow your adventures, where's the best place to keep updated on this ridiculous, ridiculous nonsense that I cannot talk you out of?Mike: Two places. You can follow me on Twitter, @Mike_Julian, or you can sign up for the newsletter on my site at mikejulian.com where I'll be posting all the updates.Corey: Excellent. And I look forward to skewering the living hell out of them.Mike: I look forward to ignoring them.Corey: Thank you, Mike. It is always a pleasure.Mike: Thank you, Corey.Corey: Mike Julian, CEO at The Duckbill Group, and my unwilling best friend. 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 angry, annoying comment in which you tell us exactly what our problem is, and then charge us a fixed fee to fix that problem.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

EPISODE 70: A one-on-one pod with Mike and Chris! We discuss various important topics like our favorite ice cream flavors, our teen crushes, and discuss our favorite Real World seasons. Chris megadoses on vitamin C during a social media detox, I learn what “dead ass” means, and we chat about rude airport staff workers. Enjoy the episode! —————————

There are 24 men named Mike on the Hill. It’s the most popular name up there, followed closely by John. To put that into context, there are more men named Mike than there are GOP congresswomen. What does data like this tell us about congress? Heard on the Hill reporter Clyde McGrady and Data editor George Levines join the podcast to talk about their project on the most popular names in congress. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week Brandon and Brad discuss Liam Neeson, 21 Savage and updates on Jussie Smollett. They also interviewed music artist MIKE TWO.

In this episode, Stan and Mike talk with CCW Safe Accounts Manager, David Darter.  They talk about some of the most common questions from our members and prospective members, and some of the best practices for getting help with your account.   Full Transcription below! Speaker 1: Welcome to the Inside CCW Safe podcast with founders Stan Campbell and Mike Darter. If you're forced to fight the battle for your life, CCW Safe will fight the battle for your future. Mike: Okay. All right. Peter Gordon. Mike: Hi, welcome back to the Inside CCW Safe podcast. I'm Mike Darter with CCW Safe in Oklahoma City. Here, we're with Stan Campbell. Stan Campbell: Yeah, Stan Campbell holding down Los Angeles today. Mike: You're what? Stan Campbell: I said I'm holding down Los Angeles, sorry about that. Mike: Holding down Los Angeles. I hit my little mute button to turn off all ... I'm turning off all my phones and beeps and stuff, and I accidentally hit the mute button on my computer which muted you. Mike: So, Stan man, it's been freezing here. We've been like had two school days. Stan Campbell: You said two school days? Mike: Two no school days. Stan Campbell: Oh, two no school days. Yeah, you guys have ice storms out there, right? Mike: Yeah, it's been crazy. But I think today it's supposed to get up to like 40. So, it should be pretty good. What's LA like? Stan Campbell: LA is kinda overcast. It's not that pretty, but it's no ice. I haven't seen ice over there. No ice. Mike: Good deal. Anything else going on recently we need to know about? Stan Campbell: No. I mean, we're following the ... And we will get to talk about it at a later podcast, but we're following the constitutional carry that just got passed here in Oklahoma, and that's a good thing. Mike: Yeah. I think it goes in November? Stan Campbell: Yeah. November 1st is gonna be when it pushes through. So, that's a good thing. It's always good to hear some governors willing to stand up for those who support the Second Amendment and take care of concealed carriers and such. Mike: Yeah. I didn't know that was even going through until yesterday. I know it went through last year and then the governor didn't sign it. But, cool. Mike: Well, today we got on my brother. My real brother, not my first [inaudible 00:02:23]. Mike Darter: Not a brother from another mother. Stan Campbell: They're brothers from the same mother. Brothers from the same mothers. Mike: David Gardner, he's our account manager. David, thanks for coming on. David Darter: You bet. Mike: Thank you, Dave. David Darter: Good to see you around. Mike: Did you still end up in the city as well, fighting this ice? David Darter: Yeah, I already fell yesterday. I busted my butt. Stan Campbell: That's not good. Well, what, as long as it wasn't on CCW Safe property, I'm okay with it. So get back to work, Dave. Get back to work. David Darter: That's hilarious. Stan Campbell: For those who don't know, I mean, we always talk about our support staff. You guys heard about, we had just added Justin. The usual suspects, Don and Gary, but behind the scenes, who really keeps this thing moving and who coordinates all the efforts of customer service is David Darter. He is the star really of CCW Safe because if you're not involved in a critical incident and they need our support because of an arrest or use of force to defend your life, you're dealing with just simple issues of customer service and just simple questions that you just might have if you just chose to join us without really learning about us. And David is the one who really ... He holds down that position and he does an awesome job with our customers. Stan Campbell: I really love having him in that position and being over the specialist, just coordinating all the efforts and all the help with the members in our CCW Safe family. I just wanna let you guys know, David is a rockstar. David Darter: Thank you, Stan. I appreciate that. Stan Campbell: No, it's okay. David Gardner: We take a great pride in our customer service. Stan Campbell: Yeah. That's true. And what, David, I was really trying to invest. That was the opening for Michael to list. It's obvious that there's some big brother, little brother issues going on here, where he can't give you a simple account- Mike: This is what happened. I'd just plugged in my headphones at the time he said that 'cause I didn't know if my mic was picking up you coming over the deal. So, I was like, "Maybe I'll just talk to my headphones." I'm taking them off now because it's like watching a- Stan Campbell: A Chinese movie? Mike: ... a 1970s movie. So I didn't hear what you said. Stan Campbell: That's hilarious. Mike: There you are. Now you're talking in your mouth. Stan Campbell: Yeah, we're here Michael. Mike: So yeah, he is a rockstar. Stan Campbell: Yeah, he is. Mike: He does great with our customer service, and that's one of the things that ... It's hard when you're dealing with tens of thousands of members and trying to provide good customer service for a nationwide covering. It's very hard to do that. I know that some of our competitors have the same issues that we do, but I think we handle ours very well and I think that we have a very good handler of our customer support, and a lot of it is because of David. Stan Campbell: Absolutely. David, and David sorry, we're gonna talk about you first. So David, he is the accounts manager, and of course, like I said, he's over the CCW Safe specialists who get your non-emergency calls. If I had to really do an estimate, I'd say about 98% of the calls for service are non-emergency. The 2% would be emergency calls, talking about arrest and use of force issues. Stan Campbell: So it's a lot of work. What everybody needs to understand, and let's start out with backstage, stating that, we have a great system in place, and it's a layered system. Number I, we want everyone to know that if you have account issues, absolutely send them to David. Don't call the non-emergency number if it's an account issue because, by design, we don't have them ... The contracted organization who handles our non-emergency calls, we don't have them able to have access to your accounts. And that's just to protect you guys. It's all about protecting you all from police officers here. Everything that we do, even what we desire for customer service, is so to protect you, your credit card, access, and all that. Stan Campbell: So if you guys have any account issues, please send it to david@ccwsafe.com, or support@ccwsafe.com. That way, you don't waste any time, you don't get frustrated because the non-emergency agents you can't have access or can't access your account. So you don't want to put that information out there. Stan Campbell: The other thing that I want you guys to understand is that this is a very unique business and it's a very unique service. And when people call us to get answers, it's not usually a quick one-minute phone call. We spend a lot of time with our members on the phone. I wish we could do it a little bit faster but those who call can really, and please send emails supporting my statement right now for those who have enjoyed the time and effort that we have spent with you 30 minutes to an hour, to really give you an understanding of this service, your protection, because a lot of this stuff is built in legal leads. Stan Campbell: Although our agreement is pretty cut and dry, there's still some legal leads in there; it has to be because of contractual agreements. But people usually you don't understand a lot of this stuff without lawyers. So when they called David, or when I see there's an overflow and I jump on the phone, because I oversee all of it as well: If I see there's a pending call, I'll jump on it as well and take some calls. But when we spend that time with you, please understand if we don't get back with you, we have to put it in a priority and we're getting back to you as fast as we can. So, make sure that you guys just really be patient with us. Kudos to David for spending that amount of time and giving these people a real understanding of their coverage. Stan Campbell: But before we start with David, I wanna talk about a call that I just received, because Dave is going to go over today. Not the Top 10, nor the most significant, the calls that we get most often, the frequently asked questions that come across his computer most. But before he starts, I'm gonna jump ahead of him and talk about one that I received today. Stan Campbell: One of our members who has been with us for a long time, I'll just call him Jim S., it becomes [inaudible 00:10:07] listen to this, but Jim called me and he and I, we've been ... I've been trying to give him understanding and we finally kind of got through to him today 'cause I got on the phone. Sometimes it's best to get off the computer and get on the phone. Stan Campbell: I talked to Jim about his services that he's providing for his church with a volunteer security. Please understand that we absolutely support what you guys are doing when you, as concealed carriers, are getting together, teaming up with your churches, and trying to give them some extra support beyond who they hire for security, their armed security outside or if they don't have it. Putting teams together, training together, and doing all those things. That is a noble thing that you do will be a church and it's absolutely needed. Stan Campbell: Well, Jim and I discussed today because he has one of our older plans and he's moving toward the ultimate plan, which has a special coverage for volunteers security, for churches only. So, he and his wife are moving to the ultimate plan to have that coverage because I sent him some other alternatives. Because, for us, CCW Safe, what we try to do is really cover you and give you advice and recommendations that even protect you from yourself. Stan Campbell: What I mean by that is, I already stated, and you all will agree with me, it's a great thing to defend the church, and those that go there, but please understand, if you get into a use of force, you will absolutely be a hero that first day, second day, that first week. But if you overshoot and you make a mistake while all the members of the church are running around, and you accidentally shoot an innocent person, although they will thank you initially for defending their life, please understand they will be contacted by a lawyer and they will sue you and the church for damages. It's just going to happen. It's human nature, it's the process. It's unfair, but it's just what's gonna happen. Stan Campbell: And that's the reason why Mike and myself and Kyle, the partners, decided to protect you guys a little bit with the ultimate plan because it's a dedicated million dollar civil liability coverage that will cover you for that type of incident when you're in a legitimate shooting, and you're trying to protect others or yourself and you shoot an innocent bystander. It's needed. Stan Campbell: So, I went over those things with him. I made it known. He told me that he even got permission from his pastor, who created this volunteer group. But I told him. I said, "Please protect yourself and get that in writing, because at the end of the day, when the smoke clears and they start trying to sue the church, it's gonna be every man for himself regardless of how long you guys have known each other. I mean, it's every man for himself. So, we're trying to get you guys to protect yourselves. If you are in church security, please protect yourself no matter what you think and upgrade to the ultimate plan so that you can cover yourself, because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about and that's what we care about. Stan Campbell: On that same note, I'll give this one more little tidbit before we add David in. Sorry for taking up all this time, but it is very important. The reason why it's important to go beyond your homeowner's insurance and any other insurance entity, we hire civil attorneys for you, not for CCW Safe, to protect you and your actions with that as the agenda. Other entities, homeowner's insurance, they're gonna hire lawyers associated with that insurance company to protect that company first, and you second. That makes a big difference, and that's why we open this thing up for you. Stan Campbell: Guys, please research. Research your own ... I'm not gonna tell you that. Research your homeowner's policies, make sure that they say that they cover, and it has to in its verbiage, "We cover intentional acts because, although you didn't force a shooting, it is an intentional act." If it does not say that in your policy, you are not covered no matter what your broker may try to slide to you in between the smiles and laughing. Please protect yourself, and that's what I had to say on that. Mike I'll let you jump in. Mike: No, that's great points. And we do have a lot of that. So, what do we want to do? Let's get right into it. Just for time, do you have some questions that we were gonna go over today or did you- Stan Campbell: Well, what we did was we had David pick up some of his top questions and, as he's going forward, I'll add some more, ask some more- Mike: Yeah, we can jump in. Stan Campbell: Yeah, we'll jump in. Mike: Okay. What we figured was that we would kinda get a list of our top questions, because we do get these spurts of questions too, that we get one question that starts coming in and then we get a bunch of those questions coming in. I don't know where ... Mike: (silence) Mike: ... have some that are more common than others. So we figured we'd kind of go through that, and somebody maybe who listens to our podcast, who's not a member, might be able to get some insight. Or if you're a member, you might not have full understanding of everything that we do. So, let's just jump right in. Stan Campbell: Okay. Who'll be your first? David Darter: Okay. Let me start just real quick by kind of talking and following up on what you said, Stan. We try to do the best job we can. We take great pride in our customer service. We are in the midst of an upgrade to make the check out much easier right now. Stan Campbell: That's right. David Darter: And then within the next probably four to six months, we are going to be updating some of our phone systems and things like that. So, we constantly try to make it better and easier for new members to get ahold of us and we wanna answer your phone just as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, you can't have an infinite number of specialists. Stan Campbell: That's right. David Darter: So, sometimes it might take us a little bit, but we try to get used as quickly as we can, and we are doing a lot of updating that's going to make your whole experience I think much easier. So, I just wanted to throw that out there. So I think- Mike: And, on that too, there are other ways that people can can find out answers to their questions. We have a new chat that we kind of rolled out maybe six months ago. Some of that is automated; kind of takes you through. So if you ask a certain question, email support at ccwsafe.com is a good one. Sometimes, if you have a pretty simple question, if you email it, you might get an e-mail back before you would if you were to try to call in. So, we have different ways that people can get ahold of us. Stan Campbell: Absolutely. Mike: The chat, I think, has been a really get additional niche right on the website. If you go to ccwsafe.com, you'll see it pop up there. Stan Campbell: Yes. Just to piggyback what Mike's saying, hey guys, this works Central time because that's where our hub is located. We also have the West Coast times, but the West Coast Times but West Coast [inaudible 00:18:27]. So, if you do have issues that you need dealt with pretty quickly, you don't try to contact David between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. in Central Time. Stan Campbell: Once again, we're trying to get ahead of any frustrations you might have or delays. David also does not work on the weekends. So, be mindful of that. If you say, "Hey, I contacted David on Friday at 10:00 p.m., you're not gonna get a response from him until Monday morning. So, please be mindful of that as well. Stan Campbell: Also, Mike did mention some of the other ways that you can gather information. A lot of people don't know that you can go to the website and you can find our frequently asked questions. Locate the frequently asked questions. I mean, there's two pages of them. So, you can get ahead of it and really study what your policy is about. Look at our terms of service. Look at the terms of service and copy that now. I mean, it too is on the website. Make sure that you go to the terms of service and have an understanding of what you actually have as coverage. Stan Campbell: But those means there, and to go along with Michael, you did mentioned the Chat function as well. We have a live chat, but a lot of the questions that you guys have can be answered on the FAQs, either in the Chat function or automated function, also has FAQs that we've seen with the live agents there. You can go there, look at the frequently asked questions on chats, look at their frequently asked questions on the website, and you actually have your answers when you put it together before having to call us. If you don't have an understanding then .... Stan Campbell: And we actually designed the chat function. It is automated initially so that it can answer simple questions. But if you ask a question a second time, please understand that the automated function is gonna state, "I'm gonna send you to a live representative." Okay? Then it sends us a message and we pick up on it. All of that's by design, like real simple stuff that it won't take us a long time to deal with. We can deal with the medium level request, and also semi-emergencies and emergencies. Stan Campbell: We're doing all this to try to keep the machine moving because at the end of the day, it's all about the emergency calls and everything else, it's not really an emergency, we can help you through. It's a non-emergency or an elevated non-emergency where you have a credit card issues, please, by all means, call David to get it taken care of. Stan Campbell: I wanted to kinda jump in and let you guys know about that so that you know those are the working hours. Don't frustrate yourself. I'll also give you a little head's up. Thursdays is the day, for some reason, that we don't have a lot of calls and e-mails. So, if you have something that can wait to Thursday, call at us Thursday. But if you try to hit us on a Monday, we're catching up on weekend stuff, non-emergencies and David is swamped on Mondays. You're probably not gonna catch him as fast on a Monday as you would on a Tuesday, and then Wednesday and Thursday. And please be mindful of that. Stan Campbell: We're trying to really assist tens of thousands of people, and just to be honest, we're still talking about hundreds a day. Let's be honest. 50 to 100 contacts a day is what we're dealing with, and these people all expect 30 minutes to an hour and it's only an eight-hour day. So, if you guys do the math, I hope you understand that. You have to just be mindful of that. Stan Campbell: Anyway, sorry. I get to talk too much, but go ahead Michael. God bless. David Darter: So, I think one of the first things that is probably one of our most frequently asked questions now, and is probably due to the political climate, the things that have been happening in some of the states. Do we cover New York? Do we cover Washington? Both of those states now have passed legislation where some of the other companies can't service members in those states. We still do. And Stan, I don't know if you wanna kind of explain the [inaudible 00:22:49] of the business. Stan Campbell: Absolutely, I will. Stan Campbell: Hey, guys. Those who are already members, kudos to you because you chose the right company. Those who are not, research, make an independent decision, and be Michael especially if you're in some of these questionable anti-gun states. Stan Campbell: David brought up New York and Washington state. We know the issues with New York. About a year ago, their governor all out, assault on, one of our competitors and also anybody associated with the Second Amendment. The reason why I say kudos to those who are members and part of our family already is the fact that we saw this coming years ago. And in 2016, 'cause we talked about it in 2015, we saw the writing on the wall. That's the importance of having people that know what they're doing and experienced in the criminal justice system, and handing handling a serious civil litigation across the nation. That's what you have in CCW Safe, and we are also leaders in the industry and forward thinkers. So we tried to get ahead of the anti-gun campaigns, and one was New York. Stan Campbell: So we saw the fact that we should not follow everyone else and attach ourselves to a traditional insurance and broker for insurance coverage backed by a foreign entity in Europe. We knew not to do that because we knew that it left you open as vulnerable to that traditional insurance industry that is regulated, while our competitors, all of our main competitors did that. They went for about a year or so, doing a really, really good job and taking their members. Stan Campbell: What I mean my good job is taking in a lot of members, but then once they got attacked, the anti-gunners, they were smart enough to attack the brokers, not the actual company. So they attacked the brokers and stated technically, 'cause this is what it comes down to, technically they are engaged in selling their illegal insurance products by teaming up with this competitor of ours. And by doing that, because they're allowing them to sell products and they're outside of the traditional regulation, it makes it illegal in that state. That's why the government sued our competitor and they exited out of New York. There's another competitor that is still not selling any additional ones but allowing its members to stay on board until their memberships expire, and then they give them a letter to say, "Now you're no longer covered in the insurance, which is a different conversation. Stan Campbell: One thing that I'm gonna fall back on again is the way that we designed our model. Our model was designed so that CCW Safe is insured through our insurance company that we own, backed by reinsurance as well. So, we have a two-layered protection for CCW Safe to help us to deal with these catastrophic events and these critical incidents in support of our benefits for our packages. Stan Campbell: So CCW Safe is the insured, we are not an insurance company. Let me say that one more time. We are not an insurance company, and we do not sell insurance policies. Our competitors do that. We are a legal service subscription plan, and we facilitate finance and coordinate all the efforts and resources associated with defending your actions in the use of force that is critical. Therefore, we are allowed to stand strong in those states because we're not doing what these other companies are doing. We are not presenting ourselves as an insurance company, nor an associate with traditional insurance product. Therefore, we are the only one standing strong in Washington State and New York. There are no other products there, just us. Stan Campbell: And there are other there other states that are doing the same thing, like California and New Jersey. So please, if you live there, pay attention to what's going on there in your legislation because they're trying to put a stop to you guys being covered as well. And then once that happens again we're going to be the only one standing strong and only ones that's going to be able they truly state that we cover everyone in 50 states. No one else in the industry is gonna be able to state that, unless they follow suit and design themselves like CCW Safe, and it takes about a year to do that. So, in that time, in the next year, we're gonna be the only organization standing strong in certain states because of the way that we're designed. Stan Campbell: You got anything to add on that, Mike? I know I said a lot. Mike: No, no. That's good. Good point. Stan Campbell: Thank you. I did my job, thank you. Mike: You did your job, and you did it well. David Darter: You did. You did it. Stan Campbell: [inaudible 00:28:28] David Darter: No, I just wanted to bring it up. That has been a very popular question. David Darter: So, one of the other questions that we get a lot of is, what is the difference between civil defense versus civil liability? So, all of our basic packages cover unlimited civil and criminal defense stemming from a self-defense incident. That covers attorneys expert witnesses, private investigators, any fees that come along; deposition fees, filing fees, trial cost, court costs, mistrials or retrials appeals, anything that has to do with your actual defense is covered unlimited on what we pay. David Darter: Now, the civil liability is a little different animal, in that your civil defense is covered while the trial is going on. After a trial, if there was a civil monetary judgment brought against you, then that's what the civil liability covers, up to $1 million dollar civil liability. And that's after a civil trial. That comes after a civil trial, and so that's what the difference is to those two. While one covers defense costs, the other one covers after a trial for any liabilities that would be brought against you. Mike: Yeah. One good point I want to bring up is, it's a dedicated one. If you have a civil liability coverage, meaning that after the trial is over and the judge says, "Okay, you're found in judgment of $1 million, if you have the civil liability protection, then that is a dedicated $1 million. So it's not a wasting policy where, if the cost of the trial was $400,000, then you have $600,000 left over. That's a wasting policy. So that's taken out of that million. Ours is the dedicated millions. So if you have $400,000 trial costs, then you still have $1 million dedicated on that civil liability policy because it's a add-on separate policy or a separate membership. So, that's just one point I wanted to make. Stan Campbell: Absolutely. Just piggybacking both of your thoughts, I want to caution everyone who hasn't made a decision to get coverage thus far. I wanna caution you to truly be careful about how some of these companies market their product. And really, at the end of the day, anybody that's watched a used car dealerships commercial or you've been up at night and, you've got, while you are punch, drunk and tired, you end up buying something from a commercial when you know you went to purchase that thing in the morning. Be cautious of the tricks that are associated even in our industry. Because some of these companies, I mean, wow, they are masterful in their marketing attempts. Stan Campbell: Some these companies spend more money on marketing than they do on their members. No, we don't. But there's a reason for that. We keep all of our resources for you guys when you need it, and of our stuff is word of mouth as well, but I want you to be careful because they use a lot of scare tactics, videos, to scare you into submission, and buying their product so that you think that the civil liability is your first fight, and it is not. Stan Campbell: I mean, if you can do any research, because part of my job is to research the industry, and in doing so, I challenge anyone listening to my voice at this time, to locate three, more than three, incidents across the nation, in the past 20 years, in which a concealed carrier has used legitimate self-defense, and has won a criminal trial, but the system allow a civil proceeding to continue and a civil suit to go through, and in that they actually lose a civil suit because, Number I, you're not gonna find too many where someone that is not or that's acquitted of the criminal charges, are not protected by the state for the civil proceedings. But you're not going to find any, unless you find it in Philadelphia. I think I found one in Philadelphia. Philadelphia is the only place that you might find one or two, where someone has won a criminal case and they lost the civil ... The civil was allowed and they lost it, and they had damages. Stan Campbell: So, I'm saying all that to say, you being sued for your use of force, if you just hit the suspect ... If you just hit the suspect, it's so small of a chance. We only deal with, to be honest with our listeners, 0.1% of our members, there are tens of thousand of them, 0.1% get involved in the deadly use of force incident. 0.1%. Less than that, 0.1% of that, will be those involved in a civil proceeding. In the seven years that we've been doing business, and we serviced a lot of members in shooting cases, We've only had one that went to the beginnings of a civil proceeding before we were able to resource it out and to negotiate it out. We have not had anyone, and we have not had to pay out, on a civil lawsuit. Stan Campbell: And we and we do the most work out of everyone. We're the only ones with a documented use of force by one of our members that went from an allegation of murder and completed an entire murder trial with the Stephen Maddox case. We're actually sitting on two other deadly force cases that we cannot mention for confidentiality reasons. But I need you guys to know that. And challenge these companies. When they tell you, "Hey, we've got a gun for you." Or, "Hey, we've got this and that," or, "We'll give you extra two months on your service if you join us now," challenge them and say, "How much work have you done? Show me. How many members have you paid out on civil cases?" They're not gonna be able to produce anything because it just doesn't happen that often. Stan Campbell: So, you guys, be careful about that because it's really tricky in the way they bring you in. Just like Mike talked about the wasting policy. Nobody really knows what that is. They think with somebody tells them that you have $2 million of coverage, you go, "Well, my God, that's twice the amount of everybody else's coverage." Well, really it's not. They're saying, out of all of the things that you can do, all of the little elements that you can use them for and you can be resourced for, that it amounts to that. The problem is, it wastes and it takes away for every dollar that you use, and it starts off with $100,000 for a retainer if you take someone's life. That's where they turn you. Stan Campbell: You can do your own independent research on this, guys. Look at the industry, check with your local criminal defense attorneys, ask anyone that has tried cases for murder, how much do they require for a retainer. And the retainer just readily, it started working. That's not all that it cost. So, I want you guys just to be mindful of that because it's scary. Stan Campbell: This is why we're so upfront with you guys and we're so truthful. Number I, we all come from a background of servicing citizens, but we like to lead with honesty, integrity, and good character, and it stands by and it supports our core values as well. So, we give you information in support of our core values. Mike: Yes. Next up, David. David Darter: Okay. So, I think next we came out with some new plans here. It was late 2017, fourth quarter of 2017, and anybody that had plans, who'd had been a member with us longer than that, you were grandfathered in with what you had. And so, basically, pretty much what happened was they just renamed the plans and made a few changes like bond amount. David Gardner: So, if you had the military law enforcement plan, which was what it was called up until 2017, and you go to the site now, what you're gonna wanna look at is the protector plan. 'Cause the difference, one of the main differences between what you have and that protector plan is the amount of the bond. Unless you've upgraded to the $1 million bond on the old plans, you're covered for $250,000 bond and the new plans cover up to $500,000 bond on the basic plans. Mike: And David, before we go any ... Or I'm gonna let you wrap this up, then I'll talk about the bond. David Darter: Okay, all right. So, if you had the military law enforcement, you would basically wanna look at the protector plan, which is the renamed plan with some changes. If you had the annual single membership, you can look at the defender plan. And if you had the dual membership, it would be either one of the protector or defender with spouse. So, we get that a lot. You are grandfathered into those. You could keep those as long as you want. A lot of members do, but you do not have to update, upgrade, or switch to one of the new plans. Stan Campbell: Yeah, and then just to cut and jump in real quick David, hey guys, remember you're allowed the grandfather in as long as your automated payment does not stop. If you're automated payment because there's a guy that they'd have to e-mail you. But there's a guy that allowed his payment to lapse back in 2018, and back then he was on the 129 payment plan, which is our old basic. He wants to get the 129 plan again, and it's just we can't do that. I mean, if you allow your payment to continue on, then you can be grandfathered in. Stan Campbell: If it does cease and you stop it, and you try to come back later, we can't give you that. We're not selling that any longer. I mean, it doesn't even compute. We can only allow it to continue. Our computer doesn't allow us to go back to that price because it's not attached any longer. You cannot get the old plans. We know what the pricing in the old plans if you did not have it and it's not a continuous cycle. That's the point of being grandfathered in. Just to let you guys know, that that came from Mike Darter. Stan Campbell: Mike Darter wanted to take care of those who wanted to hold their pricing, but at the same time, when he explains the reason for us changing the standard, which he will do in a minute, there's a reason why we did what we did and moved away from those plans. We're trying to give you guys more protection. If you don't mind, I might just jump in real quick and handle that, and we will let David finish. Mike: Yeah. So there's two things that went into this decision. One was the Maddox trial, and one was the fact that his bail was set at $500,000 just based on the fact that there was a man that was killed and he was the shooter. Didn't really take anything into effect about the case, about that it was a self-defense case. I mean, that was just based on the fact that, "Your honor, we have one dead, we have one deceased, and this man shot him." Boom! $500,000. Mike: Again, there's another- Stan Campbell: Hey Mike, also I think that was because he lived in another county. So he lived outside that county as well, is reason why. They made that soft justification 'cause it is really weak what they used that one. Mike: All right. Yeah, it was weak. There's another article that came out on priceonomics.com, and I'll try to put this in a show notes but it was on America's peculiar bail system. It came out kind of talking about the Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and some of the other cases. And it was really a kind of a more liberal piece talking about, why is bail for murder cases so much higher than the other cases? Mike: In the bail system, you have bail starting at $1,000 or so going up to, I think it was around $55,000 for most cases, felony cases, and then, I think it went up to $250,000 for rape and sexual cases, and then murder cases, manslaughter cases, jumped to $500,000 to a million. It was basically saying that the bail system is unfair, but it's just another key piece that made us realize that if we have, in the case of Steven Maddox, he had coverage for up to a million dollars bail. If he would have got that bail set at $500,000 and would have had the standard $250,000, we might not have been able to get him out of jail. Stan Campbell: Yeah. And the reason why Mike says that is because, we would pay 10% or up to 10%, which would be 25,000, and Stephen would have had to pay 25,000, which he did not have. Mike: One of the whole things that we have to worry about, that we have to kinda moderate with our members is, keeping them in the best physical, mental, and emotional shape to prepare them for that trial. We can only do so much. If somebody is in jail and cannot get out of jail, and some people think, "Well, if I could get a bond out." Well, you might bond out. The judge may say he's not issuing any bail. And in the case of Stephen Maddox, it was 30 days later. He's gonna miss Thanksgiving with his family. Mike: We were able to get that within, I think, eight days or seven days, something. But, we have to make sure that our members stay healthy emotionally, mentally, physically to prepare them for this time. Stephen went to a two-year trial process before he even went to trial. You can see from some of the videos of Stephen, there are many days that he woke up and he didn't really want to even stick around. As far as, he just wanted to just give up. He would call our critical response coordinator, which was John Risenhoover at that time, which did a phenomenal job on that. Stan Campbell: He did. Mike: He had dietary guidelines and workout regimens for Steven. So that's why we said, "If there's a case of a self-defense case that is gonna be a murder 1 charge, a murder 2 , manslaughter, it's going to be most likely $500,000 or more. Stan Campbell: Sure. Mike: And if we can better cover our members, that's why we took our bail up to $500,000 'cause we didn't wanna have to have one of our members get stuck in a situation where, based on our terms of service, that we couldn't help them and get them out. That's another reason why, if you look at our website, our whole site ... We do three posts a week. Last week, we didn't do a podcast. We kinda took a week off because we've been re-strategizing some things. This week we're back on and every Wednesday we're gonna have a podcast, or try to I can't say that we will for sure have one, but we're gonna try to do this weekly. Mike: We've been doing weekly for the last three, four months. We also have posts every Friday from Shawn Vincent and Don Weston, in self-defense, which looks at high profile cases and what they did right, what they did wrong. We also have posts by either us, or Steve Moses, or Bob O'Connor on Mondays, and all those, if you look at our site, all those are trying to help people to avoid these situations. So, if we can help our members avoid these situations and give them examples of what should be done, and we're doing the best we can to help them mitigate the risk, that they're not gonna be in a situation that is not gonna be defendable as self-defense. So that's the whole reason why we took that. Mike: I'll put that link in the show notes, it's priceonomics.com. If you search America's peculiar bail system, you'll probably get it in a search and you can look at it. It has all the kinda statistics on that. Based on that and the fact that we had our own experience with Steven Maddox is why we took that up. Stan Campbell: That's right. I couldn't say anything better than that, Mike. That was awesome. What Mike is saying ... Like I said, we invite you guys to grandfather your plans, but our new standard, and we're trying to make this to the industry's. The standard is a $500,000 bail coverage. I think there's only one other company that has matched that standard, but that's where actually they tap out. We tap out at a million dollar bank coverage. Stan Campbell: But the reason why we do that, like Mike said, we really need you guys out of jail. It doesn't help us at all for you to stay in jail. If Steven Maddox would have, and I know you didn't hear the numbers from Michael, right? If he couldn't get out of jail, please understand that's two years in jail waiting for trial. That's not where you wanna be. And for $50 or more, and that's the reason why we made the increase to 170 now, for the defender plan, you get the $500,000 coverage. Stan Campbell: So, even all of you who are coming up on your renewal date, please do, do so thinking about how should I be covered? Or do I have? Or really, you don't have to upgrade because it's really not about the money for us. We're just trying to help you. Put $25,000 aside in a savings account so that you can match our $25,000 so we can get you out of jail. And if you don't have that, like most Americans, please allow us to take the financial burden off of you. That's it. David Darter: All right. Let's move on to the next one. On the dual plans, we have quite a few people. Lot of members getting the ultimate plan now where it automatically covers a spouse. And the question that always comes up is, where do I put my wife's name and why is she not showing up on the account? David Darter: Most likely, she's there. If you go to your ... If you log into your account, or if you're in your account, and you go to My Memberships, you'll the primary membership card, and then right next to it, you'll be able to sign a second card. Now, that second card is therefore your spouse only. That's not for a friend that lives in another town or anything like that, that's for your spouse. David Darter: So, if you go to that, you'll be able to enter your spouse information and then she will be listed right there next to you. And you can look at her membership card if you like, by, I think there's a view button, or you can click on her account number that's there. But that's where you'll enter your spouse's name, and that's what that second card is for. It is for a spouse for one of the dual memberships. We have a lot of people that think that that's, "Hey can I put somebody else in there? Can I put my neighbor in there?" Whatever. That's not the case for that. It is for spouse only. You can do that under the My Membership selection under My Account on the top menu bar. Stan Campbell: That's right. David Gardner: Just like- Mike: Ultimate plan has a lot of ... If you haven't looked at that, it has a civil liability. I mean, it's our top-tier plan. It has everything available. So, if you do have a spouse, whether they just wanna be covered in the home or if they do have a permit, that would be a great plan to look at. Stan Campbell: That's right. And then also, that plan still does cover you guys for your spouse if you wanna cover her for provisional terms. She'll be covered on the provisional terms as well, but she will not be covered for civil liability. Only the primary is. Because we get that question as well. Unless you add civil liability, that's an additional $220 a year, you make the decision whether or not it's worth it. Weigh out the options of your wife. If she carries, she doesn't have as much as you do in public while you guys are together, weigh out the options whether or not you wanna pay that. We don't push that upon you. We leave it up to the member whether or not they wanna just be primary covered or not. Stan Campbell: But please understand, she is not covered, or he ... Your spouse is not covered unless you have that additional civil liability coverage. And David Darter explained that yes they do get civil defense. And although David said unlimited, sort of you guys are gonna use our words against us, what that really means is that, your defense funds are not capped for everything needed to prepare you for, or to get through trial. Because something might say there is no such thing as unlimited. There is a limit. When the trial's over, then that's over. Stan Campbell: We don't have a cut-step plan. That's one of the reasons why our defender plan, we can match against ... And that's our standard plan. Our defender plan, we can match against most companies' higher plans because we created the ultimate plan through the brilliance of Mike Darter to be the best in the nation [inaudible 00:53:59], and the most amount of benefits for the most reasonable amount of cost. So, for 4.99, you get all of that, that we give you, and it covers a lot. Stan Campbell: And people that don't understand, even those companies that they say, "You have over $2 million of coverage," but look at the coverage you have for your defense. Because if you'd only have $500,000 of coverage or less, to $250,000 of coverage, say this is worse, for your defense, when that money runs out, where do you think it's coming from? They're not gonna just say, "Hey you, I owe you. It comes from the member." So, when they say, "This is all you need," or, "You only need 20% because we're a reimbursement plan," please don't fall for that. Use your good judgment, please understand what happens in these cases, and how much money you would need. If you run out of money, if your plan runs out of money with these other companies, you're gonna pay. That's it. Stan Campbell: Now David. David Darter: Okay. All right. Next one I just wanted to touch on was credit cards. With credit cards, we have a lot of people that will have a change of address. And they change their address in their mailing address, in their profile, but because billing addresses can be different than mailing addresses, if you change your address in your profile, you'll also need to go into your billing information, which is under My Subscriptions. You can go in there. There's a Change Payment Method, you can go in and change that, and make sure you get that changed there as well. Because if you change your profile address, it does not automatically change your billing address. Stan Campbell: That's correct. David Darter: Absolutely. Stan Campbell: Yeah. The reason why they've told you guys that is because your plan is gonna fail. It is gonna fall. You went in and changed your profile, but you didn't go in and change what you need. And he's giving you that information now that let's you know, go in there and edit your credit card. Don't get mad at us because you get a failure and it has a mismatch. It's just part of the system. You need to upgrade it, just like you would at your bank. All of these need to be upgraded. And it's the same thing for us, you gotta update that information so that it doesn't fail. David Darter: And the failure is the security. Stan Campbell: Yeah, is is. David Darter: It's therefore your security. So yeah, that's just something that we don't wanna change a lot for people because they don't realize that but they can do that right there on their own account. So, I think the last thing I wanted to just touch on was our membership cards. At the end of 2017, I did a digital membership card, which is a membership card that you can download to a phone, iPhone or Android, and have it with you always on your phone. It just gives you another place to have our emergency information. David Darter: The wallet card is is not automatically sent out any longer. However, if you have to have a wallet card, then you can always request that by just sending me an email at david@ccwsafe.com, and we will send you one. But it's not an automatic thing. The digital card is a card of choice, currently. Stan Campbell: That's correct. And then, in saying that too, David, guys please remember, 'cause I know that there's some folks that either don't have a ... There's a small number of you don't have a smartphone, or you're just old school, because this is what I say all time, "I'm old school. I need something in my pocket." Even if you request one from Dave and he sends it out to you, I just wanna caution you guys again. Although we used to back when we first started ... We used to say, "Show them your CCW Safe membership card and say that you're having a lawyer on the way, we no longer do that. I mean, we put that word out a couple of years ago, that we don't want to sway a decision of a responding officer, investigator, or anyone, that you planned for this to happen. So, we don't wanna give that to them. All we need you to do is say that, "Hey, I will give you the details of this incident in the presence of my attorney, and I've already called my attorney." Stan Campbell: So, to just add another quick one before Michael closes this down, but that's also why we want you guys, don't stay on the phone with 911. Do it long enough to give them your description, that you've been attacked and you had to defend your life. You need medical and police. Get off the phone and call us. Because we do that, we tell you that for a reason. We don't want you to have to say, "Here's my card." You don't have to try to make a phone call in a police car, in front of a police car, because of the videotapes, the car cams, and anything you say in the police department as well, you don't have any expectation of privacy initially. When you make a phone call there, everything's recorded. And they wanna take you to a recorded interview room for your statement. Stan Campbell: So, please know that if you want your phone call with the lawyers to be privilege, do it prior to the officers getting there, from a safe place. Make sure that you're not in high shot of the suspect, get behind cover, and make the call. Even if there's a car or something like that. Stan Campbell: I had to add that. Sorry Mike. Mike: No, you're good. You're good. It is going on rather than an hour, so we're gonna have to turn off. Shut it down. Mike: Do we have any other questions that we wanna address today? David Gardner: I don't have any. We are constantly trying to keep questions updated on our FAQ page. So, it's always good to go look there first. I think most of our main questions that we get asked over and over are on that Frequently Asked Questions page. Stan Campbell: Hey, Mike. Can I ask? I have one more and I'll get off of it. Mike: Yeah. Stan Campbell: Just because it comes up so much. This is for those guys who really concentrate on the forums and the information they're getting about zones that say no guns. I'm gonna talk about this real quick before I have to bring it back later, 'cause I'm gonna David back. Although Dave is saying he doesn't have anything, we doesn't have time for you, he went to come back and assess for Part II. But no gun zones, if it is a felony or a misdemeanor in itself to possess a firearm at a location like a federal building et cetera, you're not covered. You're outside the scope of coverage because it's illegal to do so. You know that. Stan Campbell: If you are in a state in which it is not a misdemeanor crime to walk on to private property of someone else's, and it only becomes a crime after they tell you to leave and you refuse to do so, the crime of trespassing, if you accept that charge of trespassing you refuse to leave, you're outside of the scope of your coverage. If you agree to leave, or if they don't know that you have it and you accidentally ... Stop trying to challenge these, don't use us to challenge people. If you accidentally walk on to property and you didn't see their sign, and something happens you defend others and then they come back with a charge, and they didn't tell you to leave, we will cover you. Stan Campbell: If you will on your way out after they tell you to leave, and Al-Qaeda or ISIS comes in the front door and you handle the threat, we will cover you. So, I just want you guys to know, this is not a game for us. This is really not a Second Amendment issue. This is about using deadly force, which is not a Second Amendment issue. We're trying to protect you from yourself as well. So, please, stop trying to challenge these things and know how you're covered. Stan Campbell: Go Michael. Mike: Well, I'm just gonna say, a lot of the examples we get from people, the only answer is, "Well, that would be a challenge case and that's not what we're here for." Like Stan said, that's why we put all these case studies and stuff online, so you can see what other people have done, and what life sentences other people have gotten for what they've done, and it's just not worth it. Mike: (silence) Mike: (music)  

This week we get all caught up on our busy lives and what is coming next!  As always we welcome your thoughts, comments and show ideas on our FB page "A Cigar Hustlers Podcast". You can follow the show on IG @cigarhustlerspodcast, Mikey @cigarhustler and Mike Two @fcc_mike. Don't forget to check out our new YouTube Page for Videos and Show content specials!

The Oakland A Featuring HOTSEAThaas On this weeks episode, Eastside Que calls in to discuss his new show and creative ideas, trap money vs 9 to 5 money and the pros and cons associated with both. He also discusses shopping for his kids and a lot more. Other featured topics involve Mike Two’s recent debut with Breakfast In Santa Monica, Mike aka M.Dobbs new bartending gig, Halloween fun with Hahmaen, Rondo vs Chris Paul, Hip Hop Evolution, Voting, HOTSEAThaas Top IDK’s and so much more. A must listen so make sure you tune in! Hit the website www.leopoldjacobs1983.com & SHOP LEOPOLD --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hotseat-haas/support

In this weeks episode, Creative Content Podcast sit down with Mike Two @rmgmiketwo The fellas talk Eastside Que & Drakes Birthday, turning him into a child star. Mike Two reintroduces himself to the podcast audience and listeners. He talks his recent trip to the South and whats going on in his current world. He also goes into further detail on his current creative space, If he's signed to Roc Nation, What makes a great song and Does he have the code for dating white women. They discuss the best burgers in Atlanta, comparing Freds, Shake Shack, YEAH Burger and Littles Food Store, Baby Mama Drama, HOTSEAThaas introduces a weird scenario and asks for some feedback. They talk Starbucks, Eastside Que questions Haas's spirituality, Ralo's recent indictment, Drake and J-Cole comparisons to Michael Jackson and Prince, a great Trap Music debate and in closing they pay homage to Outkast. So many great topics and perspectives. So tune in and enjoy your audio experience. Check for MIKE TWO "Thoughts Of A Beautiful Dream" Rapper/Songwriter/Producer ROBOT MUSIC GROUP www.robotmusicgroup.com Follow Us On Instagram @est1359 @hahson_ @hahmaen @haastagram @leopoldjacobs1983 @creativecontentpodcast @nobdythateverbodynows @beaurakes @rmgmiketwo Shoutout to Hahmaen & Brandon for their continuous help with the show and to all of our listeners! Make sure you check out www.leopoldjacobs1983.com for all your fashion needs! Sponsors Leopold Jacobs 1983 EST. 1359 Westside Wednesdays Dope Pedalers *The views expressed on this site are my own & do not reflect those of my employer or its clients. Views & opinions expressed by all contributors belong to them & not the blog owner. *For Mature Audience Only! --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hotseat-haas/support

HOTSEAThaas, Eastside Que & The Rant Ninja bring their unique style of podcasting, this episode features Mike Two. Follow Us on Instagram @haastagram @est1359 @hahmaen @leopoldjacobs1983 @therantninja Shoutout to our sponsors Leopold Jacobs 1983, EST 1359 & Notoriously Fly Views expressed here are my own & do not reflect those of any employer or its clients. Creative ideas expressed by all contributors belong to them and not the Blog owner. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hotseat-haas/support

We discuss two simple things you can do, now, to increase the likelihood that you will survive and get more from your coaching. The post 23. Mike And Mike Two Tips On Surviving Coaching appeared first on CoachingSportsToday.

Full show: http://itsourshow.net/3-5-16-show/ Blame Trump Artists Played: Word Chemist, Shinobi Stalin, M-80, conshus, Jayce Cantor, Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, Rapsody, Seanh, Sade, DOOM, REKS, Streetrunner, Bodega Brovas, Mean Joe Scheme, Mike Two, J57, Optiks, MAKA , Little Scream, Vice Souletric, Skyzoo, Illum Sphere, Beet Unique, Blahzay Blahzay, Darkman, Smoothe Da Hustler, Trigger Tha Gambler, PF Cuttin, ScienZe, TzariZM, Kanye West, Karriem Riggins, TOKiMONSTA, Kiya Lacey, Aesop Rock, Homeboy Sandman, Still Weavens, OutKast, GOODie MOb, Monica, IMAKEMADBEATS

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