Podcasts about MM

Featuring a slide presentation and related discussion from Dr Paul G Richardson, including the following topics: Biologic rationale for targeting protein degradation pathways as a therapeutic approach in multiple myeloma (MM); mechanism of action of CELMoDs (0:00) Published efficacy and safety findings with iberdomide-containing combination regimens from the Phase I/II CC-220-MM-001 study (6:30) Emerging data with mezigdomide/dexamethasone for relapsed/refractory MM (13:22) Early results with and ongoing investigations of mezigdomide/dexamethasone in combination with a proteasome inhibitor (29:54) CME information and select publications

Featuring an interview with Dr Paul G Richardson, including the following topics: Biologic rationale for targeting protein degradation pathways as a therapeutic approach in multiple myeloma (MM); mechanism of action of CELMoDs (0:00) Similarities and differences between iberdomide, mezigdomide and standard immunomodulatory drugs (7:14) Compassionate use of melflufen and belantamab mafodotin (12:08) Current management strategies for newly diagnosed MM (16:30) DETERMINATION: Evaluation of trial findings on racial and ethnic disparities and differential outcomes (23:02) Tailoring of up-front daratumumab-based therapies; management of extramedullary disease (33:17) CME information and select publications

Remember, we welcome comments, questions, and suggested topics at thewonderpodcastQs@gmail.com. An Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values (2022): https://theapsocietyorg.files.wordpress.com/2022/03/an-atheopagan-declaration-of-policy-values-2022.final_.pdf S4E30 TRANSCRIPT:   Yucca: Welcome back to The Wonder, Science Based Paganism. I'm one of your hosts, Yucca. Mark: And I'm the other one, Mark. Yucca: And today, we're talking about religion and politics. Mark: Yes, but don't turn it off. Yucca: Yes, we were saying, what should we call this? What should we call this? But no, this is, this is important. This is what we're going to talk about. And there's a lot to say here. But today it was inspired because, Mark, you just got back from a trip, which you got to do some pretty cool politicking. Mark: Yes I went to Washington, D. C. as a part of a fly in delegation by the Conservation Alliance, and I'll tell some of those stories later advocating for protections for public lands, including the designation of some new national monuments. So, I, as I said, I'll, I'll talk about that stuff later but yeah, just got back from a lobby trip, Yucca: Yeah. So one of the things that... It is very common to hear in pagan circles, and I think probably not just pagan circles, but a lot of new age things and kind of, mini counterculture sorts of groups, is, you know, don't bring politics. into this, right? Don't, don't bring politics into my religion. Don't, you know, we, we aren't going to talk about that. We're not going to be this is separate, right? Let's be, let's be off in our realm or our magical experience and leave that other stuff out. Mark: right? And there is so much to be said about that. I mean, it has a nexus with toxic positivity. This idea that, you know, we should only talk about happy, shiny stuff, and that, you know, we're going to have this nice, warm, glowy, serotonin oxytocin experience by doing our, our spirituality, and we're just not going to engage with anything that doesn't stimulate that. It has to do with the toxicity that we see in the societies around us where the mainstream religions are engaging with public policy and they're doing it for really destructive and antisocial reasons. And so that becomes sort of the poster child for why you wouldn't want you to have politics in your spiritual space. But a lot of it, in my opinion, is simply... We don't want to think about any of those issues because they might bring us down. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. But, and there's just so much to say because there's, it's going to depend on every different kind of situation but I think that if we think about the values that We often claim to have that we value the earth, that we think the earth is sacred. You know, we may have different interpretations on, you know, whether divinity is involved with that or not, but hey, we're agreeing, we think that the earth is important, we're agreeing about believing that love and freedom and all of these things are important, then I think that... If we really believe that, then we have a responsibility to those things. Mark: Yes, yes, we it's because they won't happen by themselves. You know, there are interests which are destructive interests and are not filled with love and are not about advancing liberty and are not about supporting the biosphere in a manner which is consistent with biodiversity and with the sustaining of humanity. And they're out there advocating for their stuff every day. And if we absent ourselves from the process because we think that it is too negative or too gross or too demoralizing, then we are leaving the field to those who would do us harm. And it's just not, there is no logic to it that makes sense to me, other than at the most sort of Self indulgent, I just want to feel good for me kind of place, where it makes sense to say, I'm not going to vote, I'm not going to advocate for what I care about, I'm not going to be interested in any kind of activism. I mean, everybody's circumstances Yucca: become informed about it, Mark: right. Yucca: right? Mark: Everybody's circumstances are different, and not everybody can be a big activist, right? You know, if you're, you know, you're raising kids, or, and you're, you know, scraping by, and, you know, there's a lot of different, I mean, poverty is a social control strategy. Yucca: Yeah, Mark: So, it is, it is one way that people who have the common good at heart are kept limited in the amount of power that they have. So let's, let's not mince words about that. But even with the limitations that we have, I have always felt that it was my responsibility to do what I can to try to advance the values that matter to me. And I'm pleased to say that the community that's grown up around atheopaganism is very much the same way. We're gonna, we're gonna put a Link in the show notes to the Atheopagan Declaration of Policy Values, which came out last year and was developed by the community with tons of community input and editing and all that kind of stuff. Yucca: There was a lot of back and forth and lots and lots of people participating and, you know, wording things just for, it was quite inspiring, actually. Mm hmm, Mark: the level, level of collaboration with the minimal amount of argument was very inspiring to me. And so now we have this document, and it can be downloaded from the Atheopagan Society website. So we're going to put the link in the, in the show notes so you can download that. But that's an example of the community speaking out on issues that really matter to us, and saying, this is where we stand. This is what our activism is going to be built around. This is, you know, we... We embrace LGBTQ people. We do. And it's not just, it's not just You know, so called virtue signaling, we genuinely do, we want those folks, we want people of color, we want indigenous people in our community, you know, we want them to be safe, we want them to be seen, we want them to be heard as, as an example. And similarly, along the environmental axis, along the axis of personal liberty and autonomy, bodily autonomy, all of those you know, the importance of critical thinking and science all of those pieces are a part of what our movement is about. And so, when we talk with the public, That is, that is core to what we express. Yes, we're here for happiness. We're here for people to feel good. We're all for that. But as one of the atheopagan principles says, you know, responsibility, social responsibility is one of our principles. Yucca: right. Mark: It is an obligation that we have. Yucca: And so those values, they're not just about talking about them, they're about, those are what inform the choices that we're making. Mark: Mm hmm. Yucca: Right? And being able to reflect on what those are, right? is really important. Have conversations about that, because we're not, there's going to be nuance, right? We're not always going to see eye to eye on things, and being able to, as individuals, talk about that with each other, and as a community, be able to, to talk about that and, and, you know, have that conversation is really important. Mark: Absolutely. Absolutely. And we learn from one another, right? I mean, that's a really important piece because As strongly as I feel on a value level about supporting people of color in the LBGTQI plus community I'm not one of either of those groups. And so I have to listen a lot in order to understand, well, what is an appropriate statement to make in support, right? How do I show up as an ally and as and as an advocate? Or a supporter for their advocacy, you know. So, you know, it's not as simple as just having a laundry list of policy positions. And it has to also recognize that we live in a world of subtle differences. Right? Subtle gradations of change throughout the whole natural world, and that includes humanity. So, I get really kind of bent sideways when I hear the lesser of two evils, or I'm not going to vote for that person because of this one little position, when the alternative is so much worse on every position. The best analogy that I've heard is that voting isn't dating, it's selecting, it's selecting the best possible option off of the available menu. And the available menu only includes people that actually have a chance of getting elected. It's not just some fringe outlier who tells you what you want to hear. Yucca: mhm, Mark: that can actually get into a position to make change in a positive direction. Yucca: mhm, mhm, mhm. Mark: So, we had a bunch of stuff on the outline for this podcast. What else have you got? Yucca: Well, certainly the, the issue of privilege is definitely Mark: Oh, yeah  Yucca: and this is something that I think comes up where people will be unaware of the place of privilege that they may be coming from to be able to say, I don't want to deal with this. I don't want this coming into, you know, my religion or my, anything about that, because that, that isn't the position that most people are going to be in that situation, right? Yeah. Mm Mark: Yeah the, I think the clearest way to express that is that if you have the luxury of saying, Oh, I don't want to vote that just encourages them, or I'm not going to consider any of those issues because I just want to be on my, you know, spiritual path of lightness and joy thing. Is that people that are marginalized and endangered by the way our society operates, they don't have the luxury to do that. If you look at voting rates, for example, African American women vote astronomically in high proportions in the United States. And the reason for that is that the interests of the community that they are in are, are, are stark. The, you know, the threats that certain people like a Donald Trump and the people that he brings with him present to that community are so real. They're not, they're not theoretical. It's not just something where, where as a white person, you look at it and go, Oh, gee, that's too bad. This is life and death for them. And they turn out to vote. They're organized. They're knowledgeable. You know, these are people who are, are leveraging the power that they have absolutely as much as they can. And when I hear people say, you know, oh, well, I'm not going to vote because blah, blah, blah. What I, what I really hear is, I am so cushioned from the impacts of the policies that get made by people that I don't... Agree with in theory that I can just skate on this and ride on, on the, the, the privilege that I enjoy in the society in order to avoid having to deal with something that I might find icky. Yucca: yeah, I'm being served by the system, fundamentally. Yeah. Mark: So, you know, I'll give an example. It's like, an argument can be made that the certain proportion of people who in, in key states who supported Bernie Sanders, And then refused to vote for Hillary Clinton may have given us Donald Trump. It's not that they had to agree with everything that Hillary Clinton said because they didn't, I didn't. But the appointees that she was going to make, the appointees to the Supreme Court, the appointees to the, the cabinet positions, the appointees to federal judgeships. All of those things were going to be head and shoulders above any of the things that Trump ended up doing. And it's painful to say, but those people needed to look at the big picture and go and vote for Hillary Clinton. And they didn't. And it's that, it's that, that sense of privilege, that sense of it not mattering that much that I really think needs to be interrogated on the left. And I am on the left, right, but I'm on the left that seeks to achieve progress because I'm a progressive, and progress happens in incremental steps most of the time. Progress isn't a home run. Progress is a base hit, and electing Hillary Clinton would have been a base hit on the way towards achieving better policies. And instead, we have what we have. So, you know, and I realize that there are going to be people that are going to be fuming when they hear me say this but seriously, look at the playing board, and look at what we got, and You know, think about, well, what does this mean for the next election? Where, where should I be putting my support? Yucca: Hmm, yeah definitely was not expecting that, I was not prepared for that direction of the conversation. That's something that I would have to really think a lot on. I understand some of the sentiment behind it, but I would want to look more at some of the numbers. And some of the assumptions about who is entitled to what vote, and whether those, I think that there's a lot to that situation, and I don't feel comfortable, I mean, you certainly have the opinion that you want, but necessarily agreeing and and um humming without really looking at that particular situation. I think that there's a lot that was going on there. But I've certainly heard that argument a lot, and one of the things that I have been uncomfortable with is, and I'm not saying that you're saying this, but this is something that I have heard often, is the sense of entitlement of those people's votes. That, you know, somehow this party was entitled to people's votes. What about... So, you know, do the numbers actually work out of how many Democrats voted Republican in that situation versus how many Independents voted one direction or the other? I think that there's a lot to really look into there. Mark: Sure, sure. And I have looked into it some. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: I should be clear, I'm not saying that Hillary Clinton deserved anybody's vote, or was entitled to everybody's, to anybody's vote. I'm saying she deserved them from a strategic standpoint. Yucca: hmm. Mark: That when you look at the playing field, And what was the right next move, that that was the right next move. And in certain states like Wisconsin there were, there were enough votes that dropped off. That the argument can be made, but, but let's, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: let's make the whole thing abstract, okay? Rather than talking about that, that election in specific, let's talk about elections generally. When you have a situation where somebody who you agree with 50 percent is running against somebody who is agreeing with you 10%, And then there's somebody out there who agrees with you 100%, but they have no ability to be elected. And it's clear Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: You know, I need to go for the 50 percent because, again, I'm a progressive. So I want to see things advance, even if they're going to go a lot slower than I want them to go. Yucca: Right, well I think in some of that case it's going to depend on what are the particular changes that, and what are the things that you are placing at highest priority, right? And if one of the things that you're placing at high priority is trying to do something about the monopoly, then that the two parties have, I can see the logic of making a different choice there. But I think that the point, I think the point where we probably agree is that when you're voting, it's something to be very strategic about. It's to look at what is the situation where you are and what are the possible outcomes and thinking about You know, what are the values that you are, that you are fighting for in that case, right? What are they, right? Mark: and the key takeaway that I would, that I would leave this particular rabbit hole with is that not to vote is to vote. If you don't vote, you are Yucca: is voting, yeah. Mark: It is voting. So it is you know, you, you don't get away with your hands clean just because you don't vote, right? You, you bear a responsibility for election outcomes just like everybody else does. And that's a really important thing for people in democracies to understand. And I'll talk a little bit later on about democracy and the degree to which we have it and all that good kind of stuff. Yucca: And This is just one area, right? This is an area that we happen to be talking about because this is an area where, where this is something that there's some strong opinions on, and this is an area where people do have influence, but of course there's a lot of other things. As well, in terms of you know, commercial choices and lifestyle choices and all of that kind of stuff that we can but one thing I really want to highlight, and you touched on this a little bit before, but I think it really deserves its own section of the podcast as well, is that being able to spend large amounts of time on these issues is a form of privilege itself too, right? And this is not something that everyone has. And you don't have to be guilty and beat yourself up and you're not a bad pagan because you've got to do a 9 to 5 plus your two side jobs to even be able to Barely make rent, right? That's not, so we're not sitting here saying, oh, shame on, you're failing because you're not fighting oil rigs in the, you know, gulf and how come you're out there? Like, that's not what we're saying at all. And I think that it's really, really important to think about and balance in our lives the self care component. And, that sometimes, yes, it's, sometimes it is okay to just have your celebration and to not necessarily be talking about, you know, let's raise money for this, this particular candidate at this time, or something like that, but know that it does, that this stuff does have a place in the community, it is important, but it isn't, The, you don't have to be doing it all the time, if that's not what your, what your mental health needs. Mark: No, no, definitely not. And it's important for those of us that have the privilege to be able to engage the system in that way, either from the outside or the inside, that we recognize that privilege and use it. Right? You know, those of us that have the bandwidth, those of us who have You know, the thick enough skin and that have the energy and sometimes the money even just to travel, to go somewhere. I mean, the trip that I just took, I didn't pay for because otherwise I wouldn't have gone, right? But but it's, it's, that kind of privilege is very visible. It's like, The D. C. is a very, very African American town. It's a very Black town. Lots and lots of Black folks, and, until you get into the Congressional buildings, and there it whitens up considerably Yucca: Mm Mark: with the lobbyists and the, you know, the constituents that are going not, not universally, of course but noticeably, and it is incumbent upon those of us who have been there. The privilege to be able to engage, to do what we can to improve justice, and to speak for the things that we care about so that they can advance. Yucca: hmm. Mark: So, I could talk about my trip. Yucca: Yeah. Yeah, you were just talking about D. C., so, Mark: Okay, well. So, I got sent on a fly in with the Conservation Alliance, which is a consortium of businesses which was originally founded by REI, the North Face Peak Design, and Patagonia. And they came together to create a unified voice for speaking up for the outdoors, for for wild lands and outdoor recreation. That was a long time ago, and now they have 270 businesses from a variety of different sectors, and what they do every couple of years is they gather a bunch of the leaders of those businesses along with, and they make grants, right? They pool their money and they make grants to organizations that are doing organizing and advocacy for the issues that they care about, and the organization I work for, Cal Wild, is one of those. Yucca: mm hmm. So that's how you were able to go on this trip? Mark: Yes, CalWild was invited to send a representative, and I was selected to go, and so I went. This is not the first time that I've been to Washington to lobby, but the last time was in the 90s. So it's been a while. And everything has changed, of course. I mean, technology has changed everything, and 9 11 has changed all the security. So, it's, it's just a completely different experience. So, so I went and I was going to speak on to, as a grantee, to speak as a content expert about the positions that we're trying to advance. My organization right now is working very hard. for the creation of three new national monuments in California. My organization is limited to California, so that's why, you know, that. But we're also advocating for some policy changes at the administration level, which would affect the whole of the United States. And I should say, you know, we're talking a lot about kind of American politics in this podcast, but if you have a representative democracy of any kind, the things that we're talking about are really applicable to you too. Yucca: Right. Yeah, we're just talking about our experience with our Mark: the stuff we know about. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, the idea here is not to get everybody all plugged into American politics. It's to use that as an example of what citizen participation or resident participation looks like and why it's important. I go on this trip and I go to Washington and I meet with the team and we have a training briefing and all that kind of thing, and my take, we, on the first day, I had two meetings with administration offices with the Department of the Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality of the White House now when we're meeting with staff, we're not meeting with the people that are in charge in those agencies, we probably would have met with the Secretary of the Interior, but it's Climate Week in North Northern New York, so she was away at Climate Week, Yucca: Mm Mark: Um, so, and there was something going on with the Department of Environmental Quality such that we had the staffer that we had. But these are sharp, smart, influential people that we're talking to, and the sense that I got, and then the second day we had meetings with California delegation members both to the Senate and to the House of Representatives, including my congressman which I had a very interesting experience with talking to my congressman's office in Washington, so I'll get to that in a minute. Yucca: hmm. Mm Mark: The main takeaway that I got from, especially from meeting with the administration, was that they want to do what we want them to do. Their, their hearts are in the right place. And they are delighted that we are coming to Washington and talking to people, and organizing on the ground in local communities, because they need the political cover to be able to do what we want them to do. Yucca: hmm. Mark: And in that Yucca: like that's charging them up, right? They want to do it, but they need to be charged with the power of the people. Mark: yes, Yucca: Yeah. Mark: Exactly so. And... It gives them something to point to when opponents say, we don't want that, Yucca: Mm Mark: right, they can, you know, they can point to the organizing that my organization is doing and say, well, the people in the community who live right next door want it, you know, the elected officials of the county where the expansion of the National Monument is proposed, they want it. So, You know, those are their representatives and they elected them to office to make those decisions, so why shouldn't we do this? So it's really important to be doing that kind of community organizing and talking to other people about the things that you care about in a, you know, in a focused way. So that was really gratifying to me because, of course, American democracy has taken a beating over the last 20 years, but it's still functioning. Thank you. The elections are kind of messed up, and we could certainly do without gerrymandering and and all the dark money, and I could go on, but as well as the occasional insurrection, which I really, really think we could do without. I walked Yucca: that's not an, let's have that be a singular thing, please. Mark: yes. I walked several times, because the house office buildings and the senatorial office buildings are on opposite sides of the capitol. I walked back and forth in front of where the insurrection took place a bunch of times. And there it is, you know, large is life. And, you know, there are the windows they broke, that's how they got in, you know, there's where they hung their banners, you know, all that. So, that said it was encouraging to see that at least under this administration, There was a commitment to listening to constituents and to hearing, you know, they were very appreciative of the businesses that were represented there, you know, in, you know, speaking up on behalf of protecting public lands so that their ecological values last forever, their recreational opportunities there, all that kind of stuff. Yucca: Actually, is that something you can, I know that we're talking kind of more process here, but for a moment, you were, talking about trying to get more national monuments. Why are those important? Mark: Oh, good. Very, very good question. My organization focuses on conservation of wild lands on public lands. And a lot of Yucca: you keep going, can you define conservation? Because that is a term that has a lot of different baggage attached to it. So what do you mean when you say conservation? Mark: man protection of the land so that it will not be developed in certain ways. And management of the land for the resource, for the benefit of the resources that are there, of the ecological resources, cultural resources in some cases historical resources, and recreational opportunities for people to go camping or hiking or whatever that might be. So, one... One misapprehension that many Americans have is the idea that public land is protected land. And it is not. Most public land in the United States is owned by the Bureau of Land Management or by the U. S. Forest Service. And those have been managed primarily for extractive purposes like logging and mining and Yucca: Oil is big Mark: and oil exploration. Yucca: yeah. Mark: Yeah, very big. So we're advocating for chunks. of undeveloped land to be protected in perpetuity and managed for the benefit of those values. Yucca: Mm hmm. Mark: That's what a national monument does. Or a National Wilderness Area, which is declared by Congress. We're not asking for a National Wilderness Area in the areas we're focusing on because Congress is broken, and there's no way to get anything through it. the President can use the National Antiquities Act to declare a national monument. He can do that on his own. Yucca: So, by taking , these areas, you're setting aside, you're allowing ecosystems to stay intact, right? So that you can have the populations of these animals and plants or whatever. Particular kind of species you're looking at, they have a place to be, they can continue to play the roles that they would play in a hopefully healthy system and to help manage for that, Mark: Right, and that helps us to accomplish a couple of important things, one of which is, you know, we have a biodiversity crash problem, you know, the, the biodiversity of the earth is the, which is the number of different species and the number of individuals of those species are both on a steep decline. Having habitat is necessary in order for, you know, organization, organisms to live. And but not only that, this is a very interesting one. One of the things that we're advocating for is the expansion of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mark: And the reason for that is that because of climate change, Joshua trees are migrating out of Joshua Tree National Park. Yucca: Interesting. Mark: Over time, they're moving north because it's too hot Yucca: Because it's warm. Yeah. Okay. Mark: Yeah. So, it... Protecting these areas also enables the natural systems of the earth to do what they do in terms of adaptation, right? So, there's a place for the Joshua trees to go as the southernmost of them die because of excessive heat, and conditions become better for them outside of the park to the north. So that's just one example.  Yucca: And may I add that we of course want to protect these for simply the innate value of that being , has any right, as much right to be there as we do. But they also, the functioning system performs ecosystem functions, which is like cleaning the water and the air that we all breathe. So it's, it's not just that, oh, we like there being lots of animals and plants and fungi. It's that there needs to be. these plants and fungi and animals for life as we understand it to continue to function, Mark: right, exactly. And that requires, because everything is so fragmented now, it requires some level of active management in order to protect from invasions by invasive species, for example, which will wipe out all the biodiversity. Yucca: right? Or in my area of the world where we're missing keystone species, so we're missing whole ecological roles, there used to be these animals that aren't there anymore, and if you just take your hands off and you don't touch it, you fence that area off, that area will starve, quite literally, right? If you don't, if humans don't try, because it's kind of like the voting. No management is management. Mark: yes. Yucca: Right? It is a choice that we're making as well. And so we have to really be thoughtful about and understand the systems that we're dealing with. Mark: right. And there is so much science. I'm not saying we know everything, because we don't. There's an awful lot that we don't know, but there is a tremendous body of science about how to manage lands in order to improve biodiversity at this point. Yucca: And we're getting better at it. Mark: One of the things that we who work in the conservation sector, in the environmental sector, actually need to fight against within our own ranks is the group of people who still advocate for putting a fence around things and leaving it alone. Yucca: That's why I asked you a little bit about how you are using the term, because where I am, the term has been kind of changing a little bit, where we have kind of two different camps, which are the restorationists and the conservationists. And the conservationists are the people who, who are, you know, an anti gras, who are like, don't touch anything. Don't just fence it off. Don't know people know nothing. And then you've got the people who are going, well, let's look at the way the whole system works and maybe we do need to, you know, one, let's not keep kick the people off. 'cause you know, It's been here for 20, 000 years. But also, like, what, you know, what about the animals? What do we do for the, you know? So that's why I was kind of asking a little bit about that terminology there. Mark: here's a great example in California. There were devastating wildfires. that ran through Sequoia National Park. And in Sequoia National Park are the giant sequoia trees, these, you know, huge, vast, amazing, amazing Yucca: Amazing. Mark: awe inspiring. Well, because humans had been suppressing fire in those forests for a hundred years, when that wildfire ripped through, it burned much, much hotter than it ever would have otherwise, and killed a lot of those trees. Now, there's a big debate. The Park Service wants to replant seedlings of giant sequoias. in the burned area. And there are environmental organizations, self styled, that are saying, no, you can't do that. You just have to let nature take its course because that's the right thing. But we have been suppressing fire for a hundred years. We have been doing the most invasive, destructive thing that can be done to that ecosystem for a hundred years, and now you say we're supposed to leave it alone? That's ridiculous. You know, reseeding giant sequoias in that area is absolutely the right thing to do in order to keep the species from going extinct. And, I, I don't know, I mean, obviously this is what I believe. Yucca: I'm smiling as you're saying that because I used to work in stand management in the Jemez, and we had very, very similar, like, I can hear the two sides right now and it's, People get, have very, it's very emotional, right, and one of the things that happens, I think, is that people have very strong emotional connections without having some of the background to understand what is happening. And that goes back to what we were talking about before with some of our responsibility, I think, is that we have a responsibility to become informed about these Issues and learn about them and and be able to, if you're going to be involved in making choices about how these If this land is going to be managed, you need to understand the ecosystems that you're dealing with. Because our system, our ponderosa pine systems are very similar in terms of the fire ecology. You know, people become very, people are very concerned about thinning and controlled burns and things like that, and I think that they're coming from a good place. Their hearts in a good place in it, but are very, very misinformed about what the results of their actions will be if we do that. Mark: And there are two big pieces there that I think really are takeaways from all of this. The first one is that they are coming from a good place, but it's a romantic place. And we need to recognize in ourselves when we are romanticizing something rather than basing our decisions on facts. Yucca: Mm Mark: The second is... We have seen a terrible onslaught on the appreciation for expertise over the course of the last 40 years or so. And we need to respect the people who have letters after their names and understand deeply how things work. We need to listen to them. And they don't all agree with one another, that's fine. But in generally, in most cases, there is a scientific consensus. To some degree about what is the right course for these sorts of decisions. And we need to be listening to people that have devoted their lives to understanding these questions, rather than just thinking that because we like trees or we like nature, that we are in a position to make those kinds of decisions. Yucca: hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mark: I'm speaking to you and you're in the process of getting letters after your name. Yucca: I have plenty of letters. I'm getting some more letters, but yes. Yeah. . Well, I had cut you off when you, in your story, to ask you to explain a little bit about the monuments, of why that was such an important issue for you to go across the entire continent. to talk about. Mark: That was a really important question. And as you mentioned this, yeah, it's true. I mean, there are a few reasons that I would put myself into an airplane at this point because of the impact on the atmosphere, but this is one that feels like on balance.  Yucca: Potentially for your lungs, too. Mark: yes, yes, that's true boy, although I came back here and oh my god, the smoke, we're, we're really, we're really buried in, in wildfire smoke right now. So, Going to, and, and, you don't have to go to D. C. in order to advocate for things you care about. First of all, a lot of decisions are local, and you can go and talk with local officials, or organize a contingent to go and talk with local officials. But also, your congressional representative has an office in your area. You can go and talk with them and let them know what you feel about things. Yucca: Well, and state level as well, Mark: state level, absolutely. Yucca: right? And it, you know, it's going to depend a lot on your state. The experience in a smaller, population smaller state it may be A lot easier, like in my state in New Mexico, going down to the roundhouses is super easy you just walk in and there's everybody and you just go up and talk to them. I would imagine in a more populated state, it's a little bit trickier, but it's still possible, right? Mark: The culture contrast between, you know, California, of course, is the most populous state, almost 40 million people and the culture in Sac, yes, between Sacramento, our state capital, and D. C. is really stark. When you go to lobby in Sacramento, If you're a Democrat, you almost never wear a tie. I mean, registered lobbyists will probably wear a tie. But if you just go as a constituent or as an advocate for, you know, one of our groovy left enviro positions, You can wear an open shirt and a sport coat, a pair of slacks, I mean, and, you know, you don't have to hide your tattoos and your piercings and all that kind of stuff, it's great. You go to Washington, it's a suit for a man. You wear a suit, you wear a tie. I left my earring in, but that was my one sort of concession. And and you're right, it's very organized and very regimented in Sacramento, just because of the sheer volume of people that are, that are traipsing through there. Yucca: hmm. Mark: But I, I really, I want to come back to this idea that elected officials are there in a democracy to represent you, and they may not know what you think, Yucca: hmm. Mark: so go tell them. You know, get informed on an issue and, you know, go tell them what you think, what you, what you would like them to do. It's more powerful when you've organized more people to be a part of that voice. And that's why the Conservation Alliance exists. And that's Yucca: many other organizations too, Mark: yes, yes. That's why that's why community organizers exist. To gather the voices of... Individuals into a collective voice that's able to make change happen and that's true in any representative democracy, so it's, it's well worth, you know, you know, sticking a hand in, and the people you're talking to are just people. They don't bite. At worst, they will frown. That's, that's Yucca: wrinkle their brow at you. Mark: Yeah, that's, that's about the worst of it. I didn't have any Republican visits this time, so, we were very welcomed and just very encouraged, and I think there are going to be some declarations coming up here in the next few months that will make us very happy. So it's bringing all this back around politics is How we as a collective society make decisions about what's important, what's not, and what's going to happen. And if you care about your world, and as atheopagans and naturalistic pagans, I believe our listeners do care about their world and about their fellow humans then it's incumbent on us to say so, and do things that make things better. Yucca: I keep having the image of Mary and Pippin sitting on Treebeard's shoulder and shouting, but you're part of this world too! Mark: Yeah, yeah, there's, because there are things in this world that are worth fighting for. Right? Yucca: Yep. Well, we could certainly go on for a long time, but I think this is a little bit of a longer episode, so we should probably finish up here. And we are going into October, and we have some fun, and some spooky, and some great episodes coming up. And Stinky, and all of those great things that we love to celebrate, and recognize, and all of those things, and this great Time of year. And happy autumn, everybody. Mark: Happy autumn! Yeah, Yucca: So, thanks, Mark. Mark: yeah, thank you so much, Yucca. It's a pleasure talking with you, and I'm still obviously really kind of jazzed about this trip, so thanks for welcoming a conversation about that into the podcast. Yucca: See y'all next week. Mark: All right, take care.

Today's guest is Dana Cornell.   Dana Cornell is a Certified Investment Management Analyst and Certified Financial Planner, whose passion is to take the uncertainty out of investing and provide consistent returns his clients can count on.   Show summary:  In this podcast episode, Dana Cornell shares his journey from working at Morgan Stanley to starting his own firm, Cornell Capital Holdings. He discusses his focus on income replacement and tax efficiency strategies, as well as his role as a capital raiser for real estate developers. Dana explains how his licenses and certifications as a fiduciary set him apart in the financial world and emphasizes the importance of thorough due diligence in making informed investment decisions. He also discusses his involvement in development projects, particularly in the self-storage sector.    -------------------------------------------------------------- Intro [00:00:00]   Dana Cornell's Background and Starting Cornell Capital Holdings - [00:01:11]   Walking Away and Starting a New Path - [00:02:16]   Focus on Income Replacement and Tax Efficiency Strategies - [00:05:09]   The process of bringing capital to deals - [00:08:59]   The role of a capital raiser for developers - [00:09:28]   The number and types of investment opportunities available - [00:11:59]   Building a Team - [00:19:14]   Demand for Income Replacement - [00:20:09]   Contact Information - [00:21:37] -------------------------------------------------------------- Connect with Dana:   Web: https://cornellcapitalholdings.com/ Email: dana@cornellcapitalholdings.com Book: https://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Wealth-Blueprint-Create-Investing-ebook/dp/B097KMXSTY   Connect with Sam: I love helping others place money outside of traditional investments that both diversify a strategy and provide solid predictable returns.     Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowtoscaleCRE/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samwilsonhowtoscalecre/ Email me → sam@brickeninvestmentgroup.com   SUBSCRIBE and LEAVE A RATING. Listen to How To Scale Commercial Real Estate Investing with Sam Wilson Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-scale-commercial-real-estate/id1539979234 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4m0NWYzSvznEIjRBFtCgEL?si=e10d8e039b99475f -------------------------------------------------------------- Want to read the full show notes of the episode? Check it out below: Dana Cornell (00:00:00) - So by going and essentially becoming an outsourced team member for our developer, I said to them, Look, I'm going to go raise this money, but you're going to pay me the fee, not the client. So it's very efficient from the client standpoint and it's very efficient from the developer standpoint because they're paying me a few percent. The same thing I used to charge a client, basically, but they deal with me. I handle all that. I raise all the money for them. And on the flip side, the is not paying a fee. So it's very efficient for them unless we're doing some deep planning for them, that type of stuff. And I'll just charge a flat planning fee.   Sam Wilson (00:00:35) - Welcome to the How to scale commercial real estate show. Whether you are an active or passive investor, we'll teach you how to scale your real estate investing business into something big.   Sam Wilson (00:00:47) - Dana Cornell is a certified investment management analyst and certified financial planner. His passion is to take the uncertainty out of investing and provide consistent returns his clients can count on.   Sam Wilson (00:00:58) - Dana, welcome to the show.   Dana Cornell (00:00:59) - Sam Thanks for having me, my friend.   Sam Wilson (00:01:01) - Absolutely.   Sam Wilson (00:01:02) - The pleasure is mine. Dana There are three questions I ask every guest who comes on the show in 90s or less. Can you tell us where did you start? Where are you now and how did you get there?   Dana Cornell (00:01:11) - I'll give it my best shot. So I'm from south of Buffalo, New York. A little town called Olean started pretty typical, you know, middle class family. My father is excavation contractor. My mom was a kindergarten teacher. Didn't really come from money. I didn't know many people that had money. Um, so I started knocking on doors to start talking to people and let them know what I did for a living and see what they needed and how I could help them. That turned into, 17 years later, fortunate to be recognized on the Forbes under 40 list for advisors in the country, best in the state, All that good stuff managed about 1.4 billion with my team and my group at Morgan Stanley and about two years ago decided, you know, I didn't feel like I was doing the best job for my clients, which I'm sure we'll talk about why and how and decided to literally walk away from that, which, as I told you briefly before we started, they asked they asked me if I needed mental health counseling because that's not typically the move in that industry when you reach that level of success.   Dana Cornell (00:02:16) - Um, but I felt strongly about it. I knew there was a better way to build wealth. I knew my ultra wealthy clients did it a different way. And so that's how Cornell Capital Holdings was born.   Sam Wilson (00:02:26) - Wow.   Sam Wilson (00:02:26) - Okay, let's let's let's let's do dive into that a little bit. Walking away because that 1.4 billion in assets under management those are hard earned clients. I mean getting people to put their accounts with you, to trust you with their finances. I mean, that's a that's a tough row to hoe.   Dana Cornell (00:02:44) - It is. It is. Yeah.   Sam Wilson (00:02:47) - And walking and walking away. And when you leave, you leave all your clients behind, essentially.   Dana Cornell (00:02:52) - You have to.   Sam Wilson (00:02:52) - Yeah, you have to.   Sam Wilson (00:02:54) - No wonder. No wonder they asked you. Do you need I mean, you spent 17 years just I mean, beating your head against the desk, getting this done, and now you're like, okay, I got to go. Like, I'm done. Yeah. Have you, have you Let me let me see if there's a nice way to ask this, since you had that move when you when you made that move, was it just like, yes, this is it.   Sam Wilson (00:03:15) - This feels amazing. I'm so glad I did that. And you've never looked back.   Dana Cornell (00:03:19) - Are you asking if they were right, if I needed that mental health counseling?   Sam Wilson (00:03:22) - Don't know. But. No, no, I wasn't asking that.   Dana Cornell (00:03:24) - But no, I have not looked back and I'll tell you why. So, you know, being a traditional financial planner. It's funny. Everybody would always ask me, What's your number? What's the number you need to retire? And it's all relative to what you need, right, and what you spend. Right. But if you reverse that and I talk a lot to my clients now about the reverse financial plan, if you start with income first and buy your time back by buying passive income and being very efficient with it in both not paying tax as best you can and fees to eat away at your your income and your capital. You know that's a it's a much different situation. So when I experienced that for myself investing in real estate syndications and then made the decision that, hey, this is how my ultra wealthy clients have built wealth, this is something I truly you know, I had two little boys show up around the same time.   Dana Cornell (00:04:19) - You know, they're five and and soon to be four now makes it just puts a different perspective on things maybe really reflect internally, hey, am I doing the right thing? So I feel great about what I'm doing and I didn't. You know, so the answer is no. I never looked back. And that's the main reason why, you know, I truly believe in how we're doing it now. And. You got to feel good about what you're doing at the end of the day.   Sam Wilson (00:04:43) - Oh, you do? Undoubtedly. Undoubtedly. Tell me. So what when you when you launch that on your own. How did you decide and what did you decide to focus on? Because you're basically doing the same thing. You've started your own, your own, you know, financial planning firm. But now you can you can call the shots because now you can tell your clients and you can advise your clients, hey, you could invest in this multifamily syndication or whatever it is. I mean, is that the gist?   Dana Cornell (00:05:08) - Exactly.   Dana Cornell (00:05:09) - So so, you know, quite simply, to sum it up, instead of being a more of a generalist, we're just more of a specialist. I focus on your your income replacement and tax efficiency strategies or not working with all of your capital typically. Um, some we do, but most we don't. And it just allowed me to be laser focused on what we're doing and what we're offering. So to answer your question, you know, I had started researching and interviewing different developers and there was a gentleman I knew that that had a similar firm he started 20 years ago, and quite simply they would partner with best in class developers in different asset classes of real estate. And I started with self storage. It's the most I did that because historically as an asset class, it's the most consistent, right? Um, that's where I started. Found a really good team to partner with there. Convince them that they could do more projects if I added fuel to the fire and handle the investor relations on their side.   Dana Cornell (00:06:09) - You know, and I helped coach a lot of developers now to structure their raise, how to find the right investors, how to do all that stuff on one side, and then on the other side, I'm profiling high net worth individuals looking for passive income and tax deductions and matching them to the right projects and teaching them about the risks and where that fits into their portfolio. So that's how it's come together.   Sam Wilson (00:06:31) - Got it. I want to hear your state of the market and interest rates and all of those things and kind of what you're seeing on the development side, maybe as part B here of this showed here today. But maybe before we get there, you said you're only handling portions now of people's income. I think probably previously you're handling the majority of what your clients had and now you're only taking portions of it. How do you how do you structure that? I mean, I think about that just, okay, how do you how do you structure it such that obviously you get paid because you got to still feed your family and I mean, without doing fun to funds and things like that.   Sam Wilson (00:07:06) - How does that process work with you as an advisor helping your clients?   Dana Cornell (00:07:09) - Yeah, so great question. So the beauty of it is, you know, I had worked previously on managing as much of your assets as I could, doing a financial plan charging an annual management fee, very typical wealth management structure. That's fine, but I thought there was a better way to structure the whole thing. So by going and essentially becoming an outsource team member for our developer, I said to them, Look, I'm going to go raise this money, but you're going to pay me the fee, not the client. So it's very efficient from the client standpoint and it's very efficient from the developer standpoint because they're paying me a few percent. The same thing I used to charge a client, basically, but they deal with me. I handle all that. I raise all the money for them. And on the flip side, the is not paying a fee. So it's very efficient for them unless we're doing some deep planning for them, that type of stuff.   Dana Cornell (00:08:01) - And I'll just charge a flat planning fee so it makes it much more economically viable. And the reason I say we deal with typically a portion of their money. Alternative investments are not appropriate for all of your cash. Right. We have liquid alternatives, but you can do that stuff anywhere. You know, I'm not going to charge you 1% to manage your cash and and fixed income exposure. It doesn't make any sense where rates were, especially right now. We can talk a lot about rates if you'd like, but, you know, I'll tell them, look, I can do that for you, but you can do it elsewhere just as efficient and cheaper. All right. Let me add value where I really, truly add value. And that's usually for about half, 40 to 50% of people's liquid net worth.   Sam Wilson (00:08:49) - That's that's really interesting because, I mean, a lot of times what we'll see in the I mean, you're a capital raiser in its own right just with a different kind of spin on things.   Sam Wilson (00:08:59) - And you're doing this through because you have your licenses. You you know, I don't know what they all are probably at this point forgotten a lot of those. There's a lot of probably reporting. I've had too many FINRa licenses over the years and I've kind of blacked out a lot of that. Yeah, it's like I forget a lot of that, but I mean, you have some compliance things to keep up with in reporting things. Maybe they're different than what somebody who doesn't isn't licensed. So how does how does that process work and why have you chosen to go the route you have in bringing capital to deals?   Dana Cornell (00:09:28) - Yeah, you know, I'm glad you brought that up. I appreciate it because I think it's something that sets sets me apart. So from the world I came from, right? I'm a fiduciary based on my licenses and my certifications to the client. Right. A lot of people. And I saw I experienced it myself, you know, going into syndications or a real a private investment of any kind.   Dana Cornell (00:09:50) - Doesn't matter if it's a private investment. It's private meaning the information is not as accessible as buying a publicly listed stock or bond. Sure. So how do you if you don't spend all of your working hours and have 20 years of experience like we bring to do the right due diligence to make sure it's the right fit and then figure out how does that fit into your world as an investor, what percentage, how much you should invest in each project, so on and so forth. So I blend both of those worlds. You're right on one side. I'm a I'm a capital raiser for the developers. I just make it easier for them because I'm one source of capital and I handle all things investor relations and, you know, it makes it streamlined for them. They can go further faster. But I'm really I focus. More on the investor side and being that guide and that bridge to making the right decision. So you're not getting burned, you're not over concentrated. You know what the risks are. I think there's a lot of value being that guy in the middle.   Sam Wilson (00:10:48) - You know how when you're looking because I'm thinking about this and if you're looking at someone's portfolio, what you how many deals do you guys have as available deals to your clients at a time? Because maybe one type of an investment may work for me. I may want you know, I may want something, you know, my stage in life. Like I really don't want necessarily the cash flow right now. I want it to double or triple in the next five years where somebody 75th May want to just flip the coupon. Yep. So how do you have the like what what is your set number of opportunities look like at any given time?   Dana Cornell (00:11:23) - Yeah. So, you know, it's a moving target. It kind of honestly comes by by opportunity and our underwriting process of what deals come through. You're right. So I'm always looking. I spent a lot of my time profiling deals, doing my underwriting, taking it through our process to have different offerings. And we have a menu of probably right now between registered fund offerings that we have access to that you would typically have to put a million or more indirectly to have access and you can get for a much lower minimum with us and the true direct private syndicated deals.   Dana Cornell (00:11:59) - You know, we probably have a menu of ten different options at any point in time, but really of the true privates, 2 or 3 going at one time that are more growth focused cash now, cash later, have your tax advantage trying to hit the main points there. Give them enough opportunity. You know.   Sam Wilson (00:12:17) - How do you stay in front of maybe you just have an amazing team behind you, but how do you stay in front of that many different opportunities and kind of I mean, because that's a lot of communication. That's a lot of I mean, just just reporting back to investors the status of those opportunities and where they're going and what the different moving pieces are like, how do you manage that whole communication flow?   Dana Cornell (00:12:39) - It's leverage. You know, I couldn't do it myself by any means. So it's the the old who to do the whole story. You know, I lean on a lot of other professionals to help me with due diligence to give me third kind of third party non biased opinions on deals.   Dana Cornell (00:12:56) - My team here is handling an awful lot of investor relations and summarizing and synthesizing all that information. So I can then take it, you know, and efficiently kind of put my spin on it and relate it to the investors so I can disseminate that to help them make good decision and keep them updated on what's going on.   Sam Wilson (00:13:15) - Right? No, I think that's great. Tell me a little bit let's let's let's go to part B here of this of this podcast and talk about the. Kind of the state of the economy, what you guys are seeing, especially because it sound like you're doing a lot of development stuff. It's not that you mentioned the word development a couple of times, so it sounds like that's kind of one of the niches that you've picked. Yeah. What's the what's going on in that world? Give us kind of the the the breakdown of where we are and maybe where you see things going.   Dana Cornell (00:13:44) - Yeah. So big question, man. You know, I'm always contrasting in comparing what I call traditional investments, publicly traded stocks and bonds to private alternative offerings.   Dana Cornell (00:13:59) - Um, we could talk about stock market and all that stuff all day long, but I think it's no secret that that market is going to fluctuate. It's going to go up and down. We're coming into an election year. It's going to have good periods. It's going to have bad periods at the end of the day. It's consistency of returns and the predictability of those. That that truly changes the game for people. And that's what you see the ultra wealthy focus on. So when I'm looking at projects, I'm looking at what is the predictability that one of course our principal is protected to if it's an income producing project. And that's why like a lot of our self storage development that where I started. We're building in areas where they have three times the amount of demand or partnering with publicly traded companies to run, operate and eventually acquire those properties. They've checked the box that it all makes sense ahead of time from their standards. So you're borrowing some credibility from a publicly traded company and their team and their resources, right? Instead of, hey, I'm going to I'm going to go out and build my own storage facility.   Dana Cornell (00:15:12) - And I like this spot because I'm biased towards it. And, you know, I think this makes sense and I hope it works. No, there's a lot more going into the research before I'm going to put my name on an offering and put my own money in it because we're doing that, too. You know, I'm not I'm not suggesting anything that we don't have our own capital in one way or another, you know. So.   Sam Wilson (00:15:36) - Think. Go ahead. I'm sorry.   Dana Cornell (00:15:37) - Well, I was just going to say so I think that then leads you to a path of, okay, if it's private investments over public investments where. Right. Real estate. There's a bunch of different flavors of private real estate rates going up so fast. You know, one of the things we did was underwrite all of our projects to historical interest rates. Mm. Commercial real estate historical rates are about 6.5%. Give, give or take. Right. That's what we underwrote that to. Plus a cushion. A lot of projects I saw over the last two years.   Dana Cornell (00:16:13) - We're underwriting the current rates plus a cushion in their pro forma. Well, I have 20 years of experience of seeing rates fall. I know they're not going to stay low. That's the new normal for people. But that's not our reality. That's not the historical average. We haven't been there in the last 30 years. We were for the last few. But if you're not building in that cushion, you're going to see a lot of trouble in a lot of asset classes within real estate and a lot of individual projects. So those are some of the things we're looking at. That's why you've heard me mention development, because I think you can kind of pick and choose your spots there. Um, not to say there's not issues there. It comes down to the project and the developer at the end of the day.   Sam Wilson (00:16:53) - Right. No, absolutely. You've mentioned a couple of things, and I want to hear your thoughts on this. You said the two things that you're really working with people on is income replacement and tax abatement.   Sam Wilson (00:17:04) - On the income replacement side of things, how? Because of where interest rates have been climbing, like how how have you combated that in its own right because preferred returns of whatever they were 7% 6% in 2019 were pretty attractive, but 7% in 2023 is like, okay, I can get five and a half at the credit union. So exactly it and I can get it out tomorrow is not tied up for five years. So what are you doing on that front to kind of structure things creatively?   Dana Cornell (00:17:35) - Yeah. So, you know, it's I talked to developers about this a lot, so it's knowing your marketplace and knowing where you're at in this market cycle. And you're right. So now the risk free rate of money, you've got to beat five 5% to make it even worth your time to get out of bed. Correct. So how do you change your offer and how do I find offerings that are more income focused in more of a really right now, a lot of what we've been doing is not as much growth focused, right? It's cash flowing properties or soon to be cash flowing properties at enough of a of a current yield to make it worth you know it is the eight, nine, 10% income.   Dana Cornell (00:18:15) - Right. Um, and it's looking at other asset classes, you know, real estate's great, but you got to keep your eyes open for everything. We do a lot of small business acquisition as well. Um, you move to where the risk isn't as much and in turn that creates more opportunity. And right now it's higher income tax deduction and less growth type strategy That seemed to work right now.   Sam Wilson (00:18:39) - Right. Oh, man, that's really, really cool. I love I love what you've done here. Dana. This is really cool. The just the I mean, leaving big business, leaving a $1.4 billion portfolio of assets under management to go do what you really feel in your heart is the right thing to do. I think is is admirable. And you know, it's it's cool to watch. Just see what you've done that on that side of things. Let's talk let's talk staff, building teams, those sorts of things. We touched on this slightly, but when you venture out on your own and and maybe you already knew, you're like, okay, I'm going to step out and it's going to be a home run.   Sam Wilson (00:19:14) - I have no I don't think this would be a problem at all. But or maybe there was some apprehension as you went out on your own and said, we're going to launch this thing. What's it been like building a team around you to help you guys run your day to day operations?   Dana Cornell (00:19:25) - Yeah, you know, it's it's been an interesting learning curve. When I left, I thought I could be. I thought I'd be more of a and I still am, but I thought it'd be more of a lifestyle type situation, kind of a one man band, limited staff, that type of thing. What surprised me, even though I knew and it proved concept, was the demand for people looking for the two main issues I solve for, you know, income replacement, passive income by cash flow don't pay tax on it. That's our core thesis, right? So the amount of investors reaching out, wanting help with that, whether it be on the planning side or just implementation of that, was overwhelming.   Dana Cornell (00:20:09) - So Morgan Stanley taught me about I mean, that's the beauty of a corporate structure. You see. You see how that works. You see how teams are built, an organizational structure, but it's also done for you, right? So I had to spend a lot of time increasing my learning curve and finding the right people. And that took a while. You know, we went through a few people that I thought were the right spots initially, and initially they probably were. But the business evolved so quickly, you know, we kind of had to increase capacity and increase the capacity of our people to fulfill that spot. So yeah, man, it's been a it's been a learning curve and it's a continuation of that learning curve as we continue to grow, Right?   Sam Wilson (00:20:54) - No, that's cool. That's cool. Thank you for taking the time to share that with us, Dana, And thank you all for taking the time to come on the show today and just tell us what motivates you, What makes you get out of bed and why you're excited about doing what you're doing right now.   Sam Wilson (00:21:07) - I think it's awesome. And I really appreciate it, too, because me and the number of financial advisors and financial professionals I talked to that are just their hands are tied. I mean, they're like, Man, I love what you're doing. I love, you know, I love that private real estate, private syndication, private business, any of those types of investments there. Like we can't touch with a ten foot pole. We just we're just forbidden from from doing so. So thanks for stepping out and doing what you're doing. This is. Great if our listeners want to get in touch with you and learn more about you, what is the best way to do that?   Dana Cornell (00:21:37) - Our website, Cornell Capital Holdings with an you can join our investor network. There's a button on there and you can email me directly. It's just Dana at Cornell Capital Holdings within. Com. Tim Thanks for having me on, man. This has been fun. Thanks for letting me tell my story.   Sam Wilson (00:21:52) - Absolutely. Thank you for telling it again.   Sam Wilson (00:21:54) - Cornell Capital Holdings. We'll make sure we include that there in the show notes. You get the spelling on that. Exactly correct. Cornell Capital Holdings. Dana, thank you again. The pleasure was all mine. Thanks, Sam. Hey, thanks for listening to the How to Scale Commercial Real Estate podcast. If you can do me a favor and subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, whatever platform it is you use to listen. If you can do that for us, that would be a fantastic help to the show. It helps us both attract new listeners as well as rank higher on those directories. So appreciate you listening. Thanks so much and hope to catch you on the next episode.

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Multiple myeloma (MM) is a type of blood cancer that affects plasma cells, which are responsible for producing antibodies. MM is characterized by the accumulation of abnormal plasma cells in the bone marrow, leading to bone damage, kidney failure, anemia, and increased susceptibility to infections. MM is a heterogeneous disease with different subtypes and genetic mutations that affect the prognosis and response to treatment. Therefore, there is a need for new biomarkers and therapeutic targets that can improve the outcomes of MM patients. One of the potential targets that has recently emerged is the fatty acid binding protein (FABP) family. FABPs are proteins that bind and transport fatty acids, which are essential for energy production, cell signaling and membrane synthesis. FABPs are expressed in various tissues and organs, and have different roles depending on their location and type. There are nine members of the FABP family, but FABP5 seems to be the most relevant for MM. In a recent editorial paper, researchers Heather Fairfield and Michaela R. Reagan from Maine Health Institute for Research, University of Maine and Tufts University School of Medicine summarized previous findings from their 2023 study and the current evidence on the role of FABPs in MM. On June 19, 2023, their editorial was published in Oncotarget, entitled, “The hope for targeting fatty acid binding proteins in multiple myeloma.” Full blog - https://www.oncotarget.org/2023/09/21/targeting-fatty-acid-binding-proteins-in-multiple-myeloma/ Paper DOI - https://doi.org/10.18632/oncotarget.28437 Correspondence to - Michaela R. Reagan - Michaela.Reagan@mainehealth.org Sign up for free Altmetric alerts about this article - https://oncotarget.altmetric.com/details/email_updates?id=10.18632%2Foncotarget.28437 Subscribe for free publication alerts from Oncotarget - https://www.oncotarget.com/subscribe/ Keywords - cancer, multiple myeloma, FABPs, fatty acid binding proteins, immunoncology, pre-clinical discovery About Oncotarget Oncotarget (a primarily oncology-focused, peer-reviewed, open access journal) aims to maximize research impact through insightful peer-review; eliminate borders between specialties by linking different fields of oncology, cancer research and biomedical sciences; and foster application of basic and clinical science. To learn more about Oncotarget, please visit https://www.oncotarget.com and connect with us: SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/oncotarget Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/Oncotarget/ X - https://twitter.com/oncotarget Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/oncotargetjrnl/ YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@OncotargetJournal LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/oncotarget Pinterest - https://www.pinterest.com/oncotarget/ Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/user/Oncotarget/ Media Contact MEDIA@IMPACTJOURNALS.COM 18009220957

Gamers know the longtime PlayStation racing series Gran Turismo. The story of Jann Mardenborough, who turned a passion for the game into a career racing real cars was brought to theaters this summer in the film "Gran Turismo." But how closely do these films stick to reality? There's a reason why many include a disclaimer at the start that some characters and stories have been changed or dramatized. We talk about the recently completed HBO series "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty," which has been criticized by some portrayed on the show. The there is the 1989 film "Great Balls of Fire!" starring Dennis Quaid as Jerry Lee Lewis. A lot of people were critical of the film, but co-host Bruce Miller interviewed Lewis and says the singer loved Quaid's performance.. What about movies like "Elvis" and the upcoming film "Priscilla," which both had the involvement of Priscilla Presley? Or the music biopic that largely led to the modern music biopics, Oliver Stone's "The Doors," which was criticized by the surviving members of the band? Even documentaries have been known to stray a little, such as the Oscar-winning "Searching for the Sugar Man" based on the life of Sixto Rodriguez. The film failed to mention the singer had modest success in Australia, so he wasn't a complete unknown.  We take a deep dive into true stories that have been turned into movies and even have an interview with Mardenborough, who was involved with the film. He also talks about his involvement with actor Archie Madekwe, who played Mardenborough. Where to watch "Gran Turismo" in theaters "Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty" on Max Contact us! We want to hear from you! Email questions to podcasts@lee.net and we'll answer your question on a future episode! About the show Streamed & Screened is a podcast about movies and TV hosted by Bruce Miller, a longtime entertainment reporter who is now the editor of the Sioux City Journal in Iowa and Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer for Lee Enterprises based in Madison, Wisconsin. Episode transcript Note: The following transcript was created by Adobe Premiere and may contain misspellings and other inaccuracies as it was generated automatically: Welcome everyone to another episode of Streamed & Screened an entertainment podcast about movies and TV from Lee Enterprises. I'm Terry Lipshetz, a senior producer at Lee and co-host of the program with Bruce Miller, editor of the Sioux City Journal and a longtime entertainment reporter. But first, an important disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are a fusion of professional critiques and passionate fandom. While Bruce's experience and my dedication to the couch may suggest an odd pairing, it's what makes this podcast a delightful mix of the expected and the unexpected. Listener discretion is advised and an important addendum to that. Bruce. No animals were harmed during the recording of this episode. Where did you get that? ChatGPT. Is this the future in the film? It wrote a lot more than that. First of all, we're out of jobs. That's what happens if everything's good, right? Man, I was thinking, you know, we were talking about this episode a week ago, and I said, you know, might be fun to have a disclaimer. And I'm sitting there like, What kind of disclaimer would we have for us? A We can say whatever. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And not be. Can I tell you, I always I hate this when somebody gets a bad review. And what do critics know? You know, why or who are critics? Well, a critic is somebody who probably watches a lot of what you do and has an idea about what is good and what isn't good. And so listen to them. But I've always said to them, anybody who pays money for something is a critic and is entitled to an opinion. So have at it. Absolutely. And you know what? I think it's like anything else where maybe, you know, you're a critic, you're doing it professionally, but you're still you're still a human being that needs to entertain yourself and something's good or something is bad. I mean, it is what it is. And I think you do need to be a fan to be a critic. Otherwise, if you hated the medium that you were were criticizing, you wouldn't do it, right. So there is that moment. But I you know, there are those who are like, greasy. They're a little over the top with the oh, my God, it's the greatest thing ever. I how many times have you read quotes from some movie ad that says this is the best thing since Gone with the Wind or, you know, and you got really I don't think it was or truth should be this great, You know? I mean, it's like, what are you saying? Right. But those are the things that you find. And they're quotable. Yeah. That they try to a lot of those when you look at reviews that are polled or quoted, those are written to get quoted because the critic who is saying, I can't believe movies have gotten this good wants to get his name in the ad. So then it helps boost his position as a critic and helps get the name out about the publication. So this podcast. Incredible. Four stars. I think the one nice thing though about the modern criticism in in any form, whether it's music or TV or movies or whatever you're following, the Internet has opened up all new avenues, right? Because in in the old days, you know, you might pick up your your Shoe City Journal and you would just have Bruce Miller, the one telling you or if you're in Chicago, you might have Siskel and Ebert or wherever you might be, you just have that local voice. But now you can go to Rotten Tomatoes where it's picking up the aggregate and and, you know, sure, the folks in the industry might not want to hear what a critic has to say, But when you go to like a Rotten tomatoes and you've got 300 critics saying your movie's terrible, yeah, it's probably it's probably stinky. It probably is not good. Well, that's really encouraging, isn't it? Is that. But it goes the other way, too, where if you actually want your critics to love it and it's, you know, certified Fresh by Rotten Tomatoes. Yeah, right. That's great. And then you get the weird ones where, you know, the critics will love it and then the fans dog on it or vice versa. And then you just bang your head on the wall and don't know what to do. The ultimately you are your best critic. Absolutely. Absolutely. Did we offend anybody in the process of that? And did we and or whatever our disclaimer said, I don't know. All I know is no animals have been harmed in the filming of this episode. So we're good. We're good. You know, we're we're going to talk about something that I think is just very fascinating. Do you know how many years in the Academy Awards have not had an actor nominee who is based on an actual person? Well, I'm eight years out of I think it's 90 some 95 years have not. How many? I'm just going it's like three. Eight, eight. Wow. Years. And look at last year we had Elvis. We had Marilyn Monroe. The famous ones could be considered beasts or, you know, sort of. Yeah. So there are those So that's it's a sure way to an Oscar is to play somebody who actually exists. Yeah. And there were the most the most at 12 in 2018. Isn't that unbelievable. It's crazy. We're just grabbing anything. We can throw it up on the screens. It's based in fact, you know, So that's a surprise to me. But it's it is sure content. You will know that there is some story to base it on. We saw now recently with the blindside, where Michael Oher is just kind of like now, this is not this isn't what I remember. So he's trying to speak against this as the ultimate. And it's never, never, ever, ever in the history of filmmaking is a film, an absolutely accurate depiction of what happened. Right. Because it's not a document, right? It's not a documentary. Even that with documentaries, Right. You can't trust them. No. I remember I This tells you how far back we go. Okay. I did a master's thesis on the validity of critics. It's like, do critics make a difference? Is basically the thesis that I did. And we looked back and there was like, this sliver of time when actually critics would have any kind of impact on the audience. And what it was was in those days they were showing what like people were like Eskimos were like. And people had never seen Eskimos. So they believed exactly what they saw on the screen and said that is exactly the way it is, even though it may not have been so. And it was just a very sliver of time that critics could have some kind of impact on what people saw after that don't make a difference at all. People just kind of watch something and. Yeah, and you see that even now with like Netflix where movies that bomb at the box office. But all of a sudden we'll get they'll be trending on Netflix. You'll see like, you know what's that most popular and it'll be some movie from seven years ago that nobody went to see all of a sudden gets hot because it's just people for some whatever reason now algorithm and then it catches fire. Yeah, well look at Green book. Green Book won Best picture the Red critics were, like, kind of lukewarm on it as a as a movie movie. And the people who were related to the man portrayed said it isn't his life. This isn't all at all what it was like. Right. But it played well because it kind of touched those heartstrings that we were looking to touch. And so they made do something to you emotionally, but they may not do it realistically. Yeah. And, you know, you talk about these dramatization scenes, but it's even in documentaries, the storytelling can be twisted in a way to help tell a narrative and one that I wanted to bring up because the person that was featured in it just died recently. Sixto Rodriguez, who was a musician out of Detroit, he released two albums and they didn't they didn't do very well commercially, and he got dropped by his label and he kind of fell into obscurity. And he got popular in South Africa during apartheid when when the the country was basically cut off from civilized nation. There is no Internet at the time, so there's no way of researching. And this mythology was built about the sugar man and this documentary, Searching for the Sugar Man. It won an Oscar for best Documentary. But even in that case, it's failed to mention that he had like these small pockets of international fame. It wasn't you know, he never achieved some level of glory and made tons and tons of money. But in the late seventies, early eighties, Rodriguez was actually touring in Australia. And and that was before they discovered, you know, he was alive in South Africa. So even in that case where you have a story, which is it's a documentary, it's interviewing the real person, there's no actors involved. It's supposed to be reality. They kind of fudged with reality a little bit just to tell the story of, you know, here is this person that's completely obscure, even though in Australia they knew exactly who he was because he had been there a few times there. Yeah, it's well, look at the the film that's leading the way this year for best picture. Oppenheimer Right now that looks about as clean as you can get, except for some of those scenes that are kind of done in the mind, if you will. But it's it's the artistry of the director, you know, so you're not getting the story. And we've got other ones coming this year. We we had air which was about right the Michael Jordan selling of Nike Napoleon is coming up. Ferrari is coming up. Priscilla, about Elvis Presley's wife. You know, so there are the and the killers of the flower moon, what you're waiting for, right? Right. Not all these are based, in fact, for some reason. And it's a jumping off point is what it amounts to. Reality becomes a starting point, but not necessarily an end point. Right. And we saw this also in another in a series on HBO that just wrapped this past weekend, you know, winning time. Right. Which looked at the the the rise of the Lakers dynasty in Los Angeles. And a year ago, there was a lot of controversy after season one. Jerry West, who is portrayed in it was very unhappy with his portrayal in the show and you know is basically making him look like this crazed lunatic. And he's not true and he wasn't like it. And and then season two comes along and, you know, of course, they're opening it up with this disclaimer that this is a dramatization. Some of the characters have been changed. And what I found myself doing through the that every single episode that I watched, something would happen. And I was immediately on my phone. Looking, is. It is this part, you know, because one of the things near the end was this lawsuit by, you know, a wife of Dr. Jerry Buss, who's trying to take the team from him. It's like, well, you know, who is this person? And I'm I'm kind of Googling it and person's not really a real person. It's sort of a fictional ization of another person. And so it's those little things like that that they're introducing. But on the flip side, you know, you have Jerry West, who was very unhappy with it, but I read in I think it was in Vulture, they were talking to the to the folks behind the series and they said they showed the episodes to Jeanie Buss, Jerry Buss daughter, who's portrayed in it. And she loved the series and she felt a connection to her father again, who had passed away a number of years ago. So she really enjoyed watching the show because it kind of, you know, rekindled those memories of of kind of growing up in that time. So it's I guess, you know, how you're being portrayed and in what way and and whatnot. But, you know, that that was kind of an interesting one from that perspective. We have this year weird about Weird Al Yankovic, and it's so off the beam. It's not at all what his life was like. He was participating in it. So he, if you will, signed off on it right? Elvis had Priscilla as kind of their guide or through it all, all of this, and it was nominated for best Picture last year. You know, now this year, Priscilla is probably going to be nominated and Priscilla is talking. So she's rewriting the narrative of Elvis Presley just by what she'll allow or what she won't allow in the story. So that's interesting. But there are duds. There are duds that didn't really work. You know, Can you think of movies where you thought, Oh, my God, that's just terrible, that one. That one doesn't cut it. And I think one that people always mention is John Travolta as Gotti. Oh, that was a real stinker. It was so bad. Yeah. Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs. Yeah, not much there. Michael was his John Belushi and Wired. Well, now somebody didn't like Jerry Lee Lewis portrayed by Dennis Quaid in Great Balls of Fire. But I got to tell you, I interviewed Jerry Lee Lewis about this and he loved it. He thought he captured every bit of him. So, you know, it's all perspective. If it's my life, you know, come on, Brad Pitt, I'm telling you that right now. Right. And there's no way that I am remotely in the same ballpark as Brad Pitt, But they get a chance to kind of rewrite their own history by having control over who plays them. Yeah, you have play you would you pick and you know better. You're not going to say, oh, I'm going to take you know, I don't even want to name names, but you're going to pick. So you see, George Clooney is going to play me. Of course. It would probably be Clooney. I you're right. Right? Yeah. Either yeah. These a older. Clooney were there. You know, you mentioned Brad Pitt. He was on day of the last season, the day of portraying himself. But it was it was a fictionalized version of himself. And that was so good, right? So he was so good because you even felt the kind of like tension that he had in that situation, because I don't want to spoil it, but there's this nutty person in the house or that Brad Pitt is in the house and Dave is in the house, and you've got to be How do we get out of the house? Yeah. There was that scene to where he in it. He says, Well, you can call me and I can't remember what the name was. He's like, Well, that's that's really what my name is. And again, am I Google like, is that really his name? It's like this is he fictionalized that fictional name, which is comical. And it doesn't always work. Like I say, there are situations where you go, Mm, this really laid an egg and I think we'll see it this year or two. We're going to see, yeah, films that just might not make it at all. Last year we had blond, which was about Marilyn Monroe in there. Ana de Armas played her and got an Oscar nomination and she was good, but the movie sucked. It was awful. And I defy you to say that you watched the whole thing. People didn't watch the whole thing. They got to the nude scenes and they shot it off. After that, it was not worth watching because the story didn't make any sense. You know, you have like Freddie Mercury story, Bohemian Rhapsody, right? Liked it because it plays into the the myth that I think has been created. So who? Yeah, well, I got to talk to one of those real people who's featured in Gran Turismo, which is a film about a guy who won the right to become a race car driver by playing video games. There was a competition and they, you know, whatever. And for whatever reason it clicked. Jann Mardenborough is his name and he is portrayed in this film as that naive person getting into the race car business and what it meant. He's still a race car driver. And we got a chance to talk about that whole trajectory and what it was like for him and what he thinks of the guy, Archie Madekwe, who plays him, what he thought of his performance. So we have a tape here. If you'd like to run it. We'll listen to what he has to say about portraying real people on screen. What is it like seeing yourself on a screen? I mean, we're not how many people get this story of their life told in a film? It's like 0.0001% or something? Yeah, it's it's very it's surreal, really. Being honest. It's it's even more surreal with somebody tells people tell me that the racing driver that had movies based on their lives, they no longer around single that they passed away so soon being 31 years old and have your life attractive. Your life. You told of the Big three. An audience is rare and in my industry very rare. So I feel very blessed and honored. That can actually tell. You know what shop in my life. Did you feel a connection to the character or did you see it as somebody else. Noticed me? I yeah, it really does feel like you did you have any did you have any say then in who gets to play you? Did you say, I'm going to look at these people and just see. If it's no secret you was always on the phone by the producers. They kept me in the loop, involved in all the scripts, you know, sets as well. And I was always kept informed of who they like. I see an actor to play me. Apparently the casting will be so long, even a year before Benigni was even shot. Oh, wow, Boss, she was always been number one favorite, as far as I understand, with many different levels of casting processes. But she was the one from day one. And did you like him from day one or did you go or. I don't know. He spoke on Face Time, The lowland scene with a mouth eat it plainly and pseudovirus Because I was in labor at the time that I was like, This looks like straight away. And so that was a great start. We met in person as well. Weeks later, after that phone call, and I it gave you a confidence because I was happy with the script, but meeting the person for the first face, it gave me even more confidence in things like be great, because he was absolutely casting Steely. Obviously he knew from producers as well and all time and face time and texts that meet somebody face to face difference. And he caught it really mean okay, I can focus on being studied rather and make it to focus on the acting and because we're completely allied on this. Yeah in yes he killed it. Did he ask you a lot of questions? Absolutely. And what he. What did what surprised you that he wanted to know? A lot of I'm not repeating his emotional my support is in the while it it's sports you have to be quite clinical but he was asking questions about the relationships I've had with certain people within the industry, my friends, my family. I just kind of try to be open is we all. And it became this very good at asking those questions that was so provoking and as two things which are them? He still dealt with soul so he can work on his craft when he's allowed a chance at this and he can show that and he got on set. How good was he had driving? Well, didn't have a driver's license very recently before shooting. I think for insurance, we'd really have to pass his test. And I didn't know at the time I think it was that a make or break, because if he didn't pass the test, we could have shot with Michelle McCann. But I know everybody at the meeting. But yeah, he was on a fast track course and then I'd passed and he said it interesting. But he said the favorite brand, right? I was always so, so is mine. But there you go. Yeah. He's got good taste, wrong behavior. So yeah, I think if you were bring somebody that have been involved, it looks sort of caused the fault. So it feels very nice. But I have a lot of respect to somebody. Go to another industry and be honest. If I go dancing all through dancin or being a ballerina and let me see myself in that. So I would not risk that in the business. He'd never done this before, yet no interest because now he is a face granturismo which is just racing was and he is he, he nailed it. So yeah, I will respect that. But you know, the movie makes a big deal about can you really make the transition from being a gamer to being a driver. Is it possible? I mean, yeah, was possible with you. But in the grand scheme of things, was your dad really right? And you said, you know, this is going to lead to nothing. These are not going to be career connections for anybody. Well, I will indeed. My stepfather to that question. That was the question we were always asking ourselves, kind of be done proof. But you're one you're one person and, you know, you know, kids sit around and they're doing they're playing games all day and will it lead to something? And that's where dreams and belief comes into it, because they think that easy, everybody be able to do it but makes it easy. All that accomplishment is hard, as if all and it seems like it's not possible. Well, everything is well. I believe that you can do anything. It's a little set. You can't do everything. You can sit and do anything. He's taken line to it. I never let that like the beta racing brother go out. I didn't know how I would get from A to B, but always away very much aware from a young age or very headstrong as a person you would as a kid. That's what I want to do. And I'm not going to take no for that. So I'm not really from other people. That is the gospel of you have spoken in the past with other people about things that I'd said growing up as a teen, where I would say a BMW story, my first car as a child as that when I'm 17 years old and I had my friends because boys, boys, they would rip anything to me for years about that. And I spoke to my other friends, Solid school lives and that scene in the movie, they were a bar and they told me that they could they had a few drinks them. It must not limit the conversation. And they said to me, Look, you never said to us that you wanted to be a racing driver. And I boulevard and I was like, You're right. I never I never told anybody. I never told anybody about drink because you have to protect that. You can't walk around. I don't need you should walk out. I want to do this. I wanted that because people call you out today and also it loses the energy over Did you news that that that that you know that energy. Yeah I believe so I never spoke to anybody about it. It was always my inner drew but I believe you can do anything so anybody watching I learned via high fives in the messages for people about taking an interest in looks, but also telling me I learned to pursue my dream. It would tell me what it is, which I love you shouldn't tell me. You should tell me what it is I want to pursue my dream. You inspired me to see like me. And I love that kids want to move forward too. Why me? Yeah. The rules of life. We have to follow our actions up to this. Well, when it does happen, how do you feel? I mean, is it like. Well, now I've got to find a new dream, or, you know. While in racing, it's that is this thing as the perfect guy. So it's like and it's feel old chase So perfecting your craft and it will never be perfect. So I'm still in the trenches of how can I get better at the race? And rather that's what gives me purpose. Okay, I want to race here, but when I get there, I like to race. I want to wait. I want it to be fast. I want to recent level championships level, the championship races that lie. My drive is the constant. It's a set them and then we have living. It's up and up whether that be right and whether that can being the way out or I stop what right dress or whatever I my business lines it's always a a quality that. All right Bruce thanks for that interview. You know with the race car, movies and biopics, what was your thought on this one compared to like something like a Ford versus Ferrari? Well, this is one that actually had some kind of controversy about the way they messed with time because there's a big accident that's in this film and it has been moved from where it actually happened to a different time because it helps build tension and look at the guy who is it's his story doesn't mind, I guess I can't mind. But I think also because he's an executive producer, so there might be somebody that helped say, I don't mind. Yeah, yeah, No. I enjoy the racing movies. I enjoyed Ford versus Ferrari. I thought that was a really good story to tell. Well, this year, Ferrari, so. Yeah, exactly. Helped Ford in there. Exactly. And so you have to go into every screen biography as it ain't all true. Right? You know, it's interesting, you mentioned a lot of movies based on music, you know, with like Queen and Sugar and you had Elton John. And the one that kind of gets looked at is almost a starting point. I mean, there is there's been a few others along the way, but the one that really kind of propelled, I think the modern film was The Doors from Oliver Stone. And that's one where the three surviving members of The Doors at the time, they hated it. They were and they worked with Oliver Stone for a while on it to try to help, you know, tell the story. And when that thing came out, they were not at all happy with the way. And it hurt it because Val Kilmer should have gotten a best Actor nomination. Yeah, he was that good. And boy, they buried it. Yep. And when you look at later ones, Rami Malick, you know, when you look back on that one, you were going to say, why did he win the Oscar for playing Freddie Mercury? And it all boils down to that little number he did in front of a huge crowd because they played that thing forever before you even saw the film. And that one scene is very good, but the rest of it doesn't really back it up. And I think that's when you look at it, you'll say, you probably shouldn't have got it. You know, it wasn't it wasn't all that. The Whitney Houston one I think is awful and Rocketman is good. But then when it needs to, it'll go into these kind of fantasy sequences so that then you're not really sure what's what's shaking, what's real, what's true, what's not. You know, it's been an interesting series of films and they're not they're sort of interconnected because they're connected by almost like an individual. There's a producer. His name is Mark Girardi. He was a baseball pitcher. He actually pitched professionally. He pitched for a season with the Milwaukee Brewers. I know the story a little bit more because when I was working in New Jersey, he's actually from New Jersey. And my newspaper that I was working for at the time did a story on him when some of his movies were making out. So he finished his baseball career. He went into, I think, modeling and he started making Hollywood connections and then he started telling stories through Disney. And, you know, I'm all, you know, like Miracle about the 1980 Olympic hockey team and the rookie. And I went back and looked at, you know, I was trying to find like, you know, fact versus fiction on those. And I was having a hard time finding very much fictionalized. And I think those in general were pretty well-regarded. I was looking at a story about the Rookie with Jim Morris talking about, you know, the portrayal of him because he was the pitcher who blew out his arm and became a high school baseball coach and then all of a sudden realized he could throw 98 miles per hour again and ended up working his way back into the big leagues. And he said that the film was about 90% accurate to his real life. So it's good to see that there are some films out there, and I think I've really enjoyed those films that that they've done, like Miracle, like The Rookie, because I find them, you know, they're good, they're family friendly, they're not too over-the-top, but they seem to keep fairly close to historical facts. Yeah, it's condensing time, basically. You know, everything doesn't happen within a year. I think they're better off when they do a slice of somebody's life where it's like maybe three months of their life. And that's the movie. I think that would be the interesting kind of situation. Maestro is coming up by Leonard Bernstein. And that should be, I think, a really good one in terms of how well they track a segment of his career. But I, you know, gee, I, I would hate to be the subject of a biopic because I think that you have to kind of then live that that story instead of a real story was, you know, because that's what people think of you. They want to have things condensed and into a, you know, a neat little package that you can see in 2 hours. And we're done with you and you move on. But there there's much more beyond that. And I think when you look at those those seminal moments, maybe that's all it should be. Ken Burns is a great one to do documentaries about famous people, but what he uses are voices, other people talking about that person. So, you know, it's almost like a print news story where you hear others making some kind of assessment. And it's not just necessarily the character saying something. So those I find the most accurate in terms of believing what I'm seeing. But again, it's filtered. History is filtered by those who are telling history. I think the only thing that bothers me, I mean, I always know that there's going to be some creative license, some dramatization to these films, but it just irks me when they make weird changes for the sake of making changes that don't necessarily make sense. Because I remember somebody I've never seen the Buddy Holly story with Gary Busey. Robyn No, I haven't. I just I need to go back and watch it one of these days. But I remember a friend of mine talking about it and saying that you know, he like he liked the film, but he couldn't understand why they didn't have all the crickets. Like Buddy Holly's backing band was The Crickets. And it was like they had like three of the four members in it but not. Get their rights. Right. So it's just like, Why would you make a movie and leave out one of the band members, You know, if there is a reason for it, I guess, you know, somebody would want their story told. But if it was just more because as well, it's it gets a little unruly with four people. So we're going to just narrow it down to three. To me, those are little things that to the average person may not notice. But if you're trying to also appeal to fans of the band or the musician, these are historical pieces. It's like it's like even watching Field of Dreams, where Shoeless Joe Jackson is is batting from the wrong side of the plate. You know, it's it's you know, when you make a left in the batter right handed or vice versa, that kind of thing is like little details like that. When you're when you're a fan, you're kind of going. Like, do a fancy. Fancy get maybe that right. You know, that's that's kind of irritating. You know, now Broadway is jumping on the bandwagon and they're doing all of these musicals about musical people because they're very dramatic. They've got a built in catalog of sounds that always will work because people know them. There's a Neil Diamond one out now. There was Tina Turner, there was Cher. And you're going to see more and more of those Mamma Mia, which was just the songs with a different story. Right? But they're they're easily tapped into bowl. I always say that you can easily tap into them. Right. What I want to say, because you already know something about them, which is the music, and I think that's a shorthand that they don't have to tell other parts of the story because you just assume that's their. Yeah, though, I don't know, it's weird, but if there's a story or a moral or a caution to be added to this, it's a don't believe them. When you see a screen biography, don't believe them. They're very entertaining, but they aren't necessarily the true story. Absolutely. That's a good point to to end this episode. Thank you again, Bruce, for that interview. When Brad Pitt plays me in the movie version of the podcast, you know that it's going to have a different ending. Absolutely. Yep. And again, you know, just want to point out one last time, no animals were harmed in the recording of this podcast yet. We're all yet going to have a cat wander in here in a second. No, no, no. I know. That's all right, everyone. Thank you again. Come back again next week for another episode of Stream. The screen.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join Shlomo and Zevi in conversation exploring shared themes across the world's mystical traditions, the Zohar, Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and Lag Be'omer, the dangers of mysticism, mysticism and messianism and the urgency of intimacy for the mystics. Check out Shlomo's podcast here: Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/empowered-jewish-living-with-rabbi-shlomo-buxbaum/id1537507236 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1WpjEGMISVv8Sv1tIFXQCr?si=681351231e174d04 Website: RabbiShlomo.com Instagram: @shlomobuxbaum YouTube:  @levexperience  00:00 Excerpt 00:49 What is Seekers of Unity? 05:51 What are the shared themes across mystical traditions? 11:22 Mysticism outside of Judaism? 15:32 Lag Be'omer, Rashbi, Zohar 26:16 Is there shared theology? 37:06 Dangers of Mysticism 40:38 Mysticism and Messianism 49:33 The Divine Lovers Books mentioned in this episode: Hasidism Incarnate, Shaul Magid, 2014 How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman, 2014 Messianic Mystics, Moshe Idel, 1992 Join us: https://discord.gg/EQtjK2FWsmhttps://facebook.com/seekersofunityhttps://instagram.com/seekersofunityhttps://www.twitter.com/seekersofuhttps://www.seekersofunity.com Thank you to our beloved Patrons: Frederique, Laurie, Joshua, Spacecowboy, Cliffton, Steve, Billy, Jackie, Andrew, Josh, Glenn, Zv, George, Ivana, Keenan, Gab, John, Victoria, Casey, Joseph, Brad, Benjamin, Arin, jXaviErre, Margo, Gale, Eny, Kim, Michael, Kirk, Ron, Seth, Daniel, Raphael, Daniel, Jason, Sergio, Leila, Wael, Simona, Francis, Etty, Stephen, Arash, William, Michael, Matija, Timony, Vilijami, Stoney, El techo, Stephen, Ross, Ahmed, Alexander, Diceman, Hannah, Julian, Leo, Sim, Sultan, John, Joshua, Igor, Chezi, Jorge, Andrew, Alexandra, Füsun, Lucas, Andrew, Stian, Ivana, Aédàn, Darjeeling, Astarte, Declan, Gregory, Alex, Charlie, Anonymous, Joshua, Arin, Sage, Marcel, Ahawk, Yehuda, Kevin, Evan, Shahin, Al Alami, Dale, Ethan, Gerr, Effy, Noam, Ron, Shtus, Mendel, Jared, Tim, Mystic Experiment, MM, Lenny, Justin, Joshua, Jorge, Wayne, Jason, Caroline, Yaakov, Daniel, Wodenborn, Steve, Collin, Justin, Mariana, Vic, Shaw, Carlos, Nico, Isaac, Frederick, David, Ben, Rodney, Charley, Jonathan, Chelsea, Curly Joe, Adam and Andre. Join them in supporting us: patreon: https://www.patreon.com/seekers paypal: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=RKCYGQSMJFDRU

On this episode of the pod, my guest is Penny Travlou, a Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in Cultural Geography and Theory (Edinburgh School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art/University of Edinburgh). Her research focuses on social justice, the commons, collaborative practices, intangible cultural heritage and ethnography. She has been involved in international research projects funded by the EU and UK Research Councils. For the past eight years, she has been working with independent art organisations in Colombia and most recently in the African continent to understand the commons from a decolonial perspective and to look at commoning practices within artistic forms while understanding the specificities of the commons rooted in various socio-cultural and geographical contexts. As an activist, she has been involved in a number of grassroots and self-organised initiatives on housing and refugees' rights in Greece.Show NotesGreek Elections and the Rise of the Ultra-RightExarcheia and the Student Uprisings of 1974An Olympic Tourism Plan for AthensMass Tourism Consumption in ExarcheiaGovernment Plans to Dismantle Local Social MovementsThe Greek Golden VisaAARG and Community Action Against GentrificationFortress EuropeWhen Will the Bubble Burst?Advice for Tourists; Advice for OrganizingHomeworkPenny Travlou University of Edinburgh WebsiteAARG! AthensPenny's TwitterTranscript[00:00:00] Chris: Good morning, Penny, from Oaxaca. How are you today? [00:00:04] Penny: Very good. Good afternoon from Athens, Chris. [00:00:07] Chris: So perhaps you could share with me and our listeners a little bit more about where you find yourself today in Athens and what life looks like for you there. You mentioned that you had local elections yesterday.[00:00:19] Penny: Yes, I am located in the neighborhood of Exarcheia but towards the borders of it to a hill, Lycabettus Hill. And I am originally from Athens, from Greece, but I've been away for about 20 years, studying and then working in the UK and more specifically in Scotland.So the last eight years, since 2015, I've been coming and going between the two places, which I consider both home. And yes, yesterday we had the elections for the government. So we basically got, again, reelected the conservatives, which are called New Democracy, which is a neoliberal party, but also government also with patriotic, let's say, crescendos and anti-immigration agenda.And at the same time, we have first time, a majority in parliament of the, not even the central, but the right wing, in the Parliament. So it's 40%, this party and another three which are considered basically different forms of ultra- right. And one of them is a new conglomeration, from the previous, maybe, you know, or your audience Golden Dawn, which is a neo- Nazi party, which was basically banned and it's members went to us to prison as members of a gang, basically.But now through, I don't want to go into much detail, managed to get a new party called the Spartans, which obviously you can think what that means, plus two more parties, smaller parties, which are inclined towards very fundamentally religiously and ethnic focus, meaning, you know, anti immigration.And then it's the almost like the complete collapse of the radical left that is represented by Syriza. The Communist Party is always stable. You know, it's the fourth party. So anyway, we, it's a bit of a shock right now. I haven't spoken with comrades. Not that we are supporters of Syriza, but definitely change the picture of what we're doing as social movements and what it means to be part of a social movement right now.So there will be lots of things happening for sure in the next four years with this new not government. The government is not new cause it's the current one, just being reelected, but the new situation in the Parliament. [00:03:02] Chris: Hmm. Wow. Wow. Well, perhaps it's a moment like in so many places, to begin anew, organizing on the grassroots level.You know, there's so many instances around the world and certainly in Southern Europe where we're constantly reminded of the context in which local governments and top-down decision makings simply no longer works.And that we need to organize on a grassroots level. And so I'm really grateful that you've been willing to speak with us today and speak with us to some of these social movements that have arisen in Athens and Greece, in Exarcheia around the notions of immigration as well as tourism.And so to begin, you mentioned that you've been traveling for the last half decade or so back and forth and I'd like to ask you first of all, what have your travels taught you about the world, taught you about how you find yourself in the world?[00:04:02] Penny: Very good question. Thank so much for raising it because I won't say about my personal history, but my father was, actually passed away a couple of years ago, was a captain in the merchant Navy. So for me, the idea of travel is very much within my family. So, the idea of having a parent travel, receiving letters before emails from far away places was always kind of the almost like the imagination of the other places, but also reality.So, when myself become an adult and moved to the UK specifically, to study and then work. This became my own work and my own life reality because I had dramatically to live between two places. So, it was almost this idea of not belonging and belonging. This concept from in both places, but also the specific type of research, because, I haven't mentioned that my day job is an academic. I am currently, equivalent in the United States will be associate professor in geography, but in the school of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. But the type of research I do request me to travel a lot. I'm looking on the idea of collaborative practices in emerging networks of artists, digital artists, specifically activists and trans-local migrants.So what it means actually to connect and to collaborate and to share knowledge and co-produce knowledges. Actually knowledge travels. So everything in my life, in the last two decades is around this, let alone that my own PhD was about tourism. I was looking on tourist images and myths, myths in metaphorically speaking of representations of Athens before the Olympic Games of 2004.So the journey and the travel and tourism is very much part of what I do in my day job, but also on other things I do personally. So what I learned through this is, first of all, maybe it's very common to say that without travel, knowledge doesn't travel.So, how we basically do things and flourish and develop ideas is through the sharing and sharing travels very much. So, movement is totally important. [00:06:37] Chris: I think that, for so many of us who have taken a critical eye and, and looked to the critical eyes around tourism and over tourism in the tourism industry, that there is this sense that things can be different and things must be different.To find a way to look towards, as you said, some sense of collaboration, some sense of interculturality, some sense of working together so that our earthly movements can produce honorable connections and meetings as opposed to just this kind of flippant and flacid kind of turns style travel.And so, I've invited you on the pod, in part, today, to speak about this neighborhood that you're in Exarcheia in Athens, in Greece. And you know, I imagine that many of our listeners have never heard of this, this neighborhood before, but many in Greece and many, many in Athens have, certainly. And I'm wondering if you could offer our listeners a little bit of background in regards to why Exarcheia is such a unique place and why it attracts so much attention politically in terms of social movements and also with tourists.Mm-hmm. [00:07:53] Penny: The history of Exarcheia is quite long in the sense with where it is in the very center of Athens. So if somebody basically get the Google map, you will see that the neighborhood is in walking distance from the Greek parliament. And Syntagma Square, which is another important square with regards to movements.It became very known in later years in the 2010s due to not only riots demonstrations that happened in what we now call the square movement. It started from Spain, to put it this way, and then to Greece, as well, in Athens. So Exarcheia is very central, but also it was since, postwar, it was a bohemic neighborhood.Lots of artists related to the left or at that point to communist party, et cetera, were living here, but also there were theaters, independent theaters, the printing houses. So we have a number still of Publishing houses that they are located in various parts of the Exarcheia neighborhood. So it has put its imprint into the Athenian urban history for quite a number of decades. And when I say Communist party, the communist Party was not legal at the time, when we say postwar. But, we had people inclined towards the left, like intellectuals, et cetera.Then with the dictatorship that happened in 1967-19 74, that's when first time really it gets, it's a real place in the political side of not only of the left, but also generally speaking of the political milieu and situation in Greece and abroad, and became very known due to the uprising, the student uprising against the dictatorship or otherwise, as we call it, junta in 1974, where here in Exarcheia is also the National Technical University of Athens, which is known also as a Polytechnic, where it was basically the uprising against the dictatorship with students basically rioting, but also died. So, it became an iconic part of the student movements since then in Greece. So, since the seventies.People can Google search or YouTube. They will see various documentaries dedicated specifically to that student uprising. And through that, after the dictatorship, one thing which was added in the Constitution and now has changed with this current government is that for a number of decades, it was what we call the asylum.That the police or the army cannot enter the university premises, and that's across Greece. So, students can occupy buildings. They can have, their own strikes, et cetera, without the police and or army entering. However, the Constitution changed a year ago. During the COVID period with the current government, the conservatives were basically they're not only say the police can enter if there is antisocial behavior happens within the university premises, but also that they will basically would like to have a police dedicated to university premises. Anyway, things are changing, but if we go back to Exarcheia and to your question, so since then the seventies, it became the neighborhood hub for the left and particularly for the radical left to congregate, to meet, to have social spaces.And also that a lot of demonstrations start from this neighborhood. And also since late eighties, became also the center of the anarchist and anti authoritarian movement. Since 2015, it was also a hub for those let's say groups, initiatives dedicated to offer solidarity to the newly arrived refugees in Greece and Athens due to the Syrian conflict. Yeah. So there is lots of facts related to why Exarchia has become iconic neighborhood with regards to social movements and definitely since 2015. The year of the election of the radical left as said, Syriza government at the time were attracted also more attention from abroad, from journalists and "solidarians," comrades, from international or transnational, social movements to come to Greece to see what was happening, to take part into the local movements and initiatives.But also it was the deep time of the austerity crisis. So, we have austerity crisis and refugee crisis at the time, ...and tourism! How did that happen?I was at that point here in 2015 is when I started coming in Athens and spending more time. And it was much more obvious that, first of all, before Athens, it was a completely different story with regards to tourism and specifically even before the Olympic games of 2004. People from abroad were coming, spending one or two days, nothing, just to visit the Acropolis and the other historical sites and museums and go to the islands. Was not basically considered as a beautiful city, as an interesting city. Or even as a modern city.So if somebody wants to see, let's say, "Rough Guides" of that period, the way the city was described was, I remember very well, I think it was a rough guide, "a cacophony." That it was extremely ugly. 2004 basically is the first time that there is a definitely dedicated clear plan from the top, from the government and local authorities to think of Athens as a tourist product.And they made some major plans. One is obviously that it's not about tourists, but it relates to tourism. It's the metro and it's the unification of the archeological sites and creating pedestrian zones, which makes it easier for people to walk through the different places. So slowly, we saw tourism getting, numbers like higher and higher.Interestingly, the austerity crisis that you expected there will be a "no" for tourism became actually an attraction for tourism, first, because things were getting cheaper. And the crisis created this, actually, this opportunity in that sense. And secondly, that even the radical left government, Syriza thought that tourism is an industry that can top up the economic issues related or the economic, the financial deficiencies of the country.So it created a series of possibilities for investment from people from abroad to invest in real estate that was matched with the beginnings of the short-let accommodation businesses, Airbnb and equivalent. So all these started slowly creating a fertile land of the right conditions for the tourist economy to flourish further. And to get tourist numbers up in such an extreme that in 2019, we reach full capacity in regards to accommodation. And I don't remember now that in numbers of millions of tourists who visited the country. So there's lots of factors which brought Athens to experience.And of course, Exarcheia, specifically mass touristification, because Exarcheia is in the center of Athens. Very easy to come. Secondly, attractive because it's a vibrant neighborhood, not only because of social movements, because the tourists who come are not all interested in the political scene of the area, but mostly it's about consuming this very vibrant nightlife economy.It's the art economy, which is related with the street art and basically night economy because it has a lot of cafes which have doubled. Nowadays is one of the most populated with Airbnb accommodation. Wow. [00:16:56] Chris: Wow, what a history. It seems, from what I've read, from what I've seen, that Exarcheia was, perhaps summarize it in a single word, a kind of sanctuary for many people over the decades.And and you mentioned the Olympics too, but certainly Barcelona as well had the Olympic Games in the last 30 years, and then you tend to see this similar result or effect or consequence after the Olympic Games in which the cities themselves in some cases are either abandoned in terms of infrastructure.And so all of the billions of dollars that went into them seems to have been only for that month of the Olympic Games or in the case of Athens or, or Barcelona, perhaps, that it's created this unbelievable kind of spiraling out of, of economic growth, if you wanna call it that.But certainly of gentrification, of exile and the increase in cost of living. Mm. And so in that regard, Penny, I'm curious, what have you seen in regards to the growth of tourism in Athens? How has it affected the people, the culture, and the cost of living there?Hmm. What have you seen on that kind of street level? Cause we can talk about it on an economic level, right? Where we're kind of removed from the daily lives of the people, but what do you see in regards to your neighbors, your family, your friends that live in that neighborhood with you?[00:18:18] Penny: Okay. I mean, first of all, I mean there is a lot of things that happen in Exarcheia and now it's clear there is also a strategy to completely dismantle the social movements. It's not like extreme to say that, but it's very clear and that's what the discussions now are focusing. And it's important to say that because in order to do that, one of the ways is to basically disrupt the spaces, disrupt the space that this happens. And Exarcheia is not metaphorically the location that the social movements and initiatives are and happen,but it is the first time that we see a plan, a strategy that if there is a future here, that through not anymore tactics, but strategies from the government and the local authorities, which also are conservative, in one sense.So, to give you an example, Exarcheia neighborhood is identified by its square. The square. When we talk about Exarcheia, we talk about the Exarcheia Square, specifically, when you want to talk about movements. Not the things were happening on the square, but it's identification of the movements.So, the government with the municipality decide that the new metro station in the Exarcheia neighborhood will happen on this square. So, through this, they block completely, they fence the square, so there's no activity in the square. So, this completely changes the landscape.To put it this way, the imaginary of this landscape for the local residents, but also visitors. So, if you check the images, you will see, which is a reality, is a five meter fence. So it's definitely changes. So, I'm saying that cause somebody from the audience say, but "yes, it's for the metro. It's for the benefit of the people."Of course it's for the benefit. But there were also Plan B and Plan C that was submitted by a group of architects and some of them academics from the university here to suggest that they are better locations in the area for the metro for various reasons. "No, the metro will def will happen in the Exarcheia Square."And there is now a number of initiatives that they were dedicated to solidarity to refugees now are moving towards struggles and resistance against the metro. Mm, wow. And how tourism comes in, because you have the blocking of a central square, for a neighborhood, which is its center and then you see slowly, more and more businesses opening, pushing out or closing down all the more traditional local businesses, for opening businesses more related to tourism, like restaurants that they have a particular clientele, you know, of the food they promote, et cetera, which definitely dedicated to this particular clientele, which is basically foreigners.The second thing that happens and has to do, of course, with gentrification. In the high rank of gentrification, we're experiencing aggressive gentrification, fast and changing the look and the everydayness of the neighborhood, is that since the Syriza, they make things much easier for foreign investors through what is called golden visa.Mm-hmm. The golden visa is that in order for a non-European, non-EU national to be in Europe. And you need a specific visa, otherwise you can be only with the tourist visa for three months. In order to obtain a longer term visa of five years, 10 years, is this we call Golden Visa, where you can invest in the local economy, like in London, I don't know, in Paris. Greece has the cheapest Golden Visa, which is until recently up to 250,000 euros. So imagine it's not a lot of money if you want to invest. So, people will start getting this visa by buying property, and obviously they want to make more money by converting these places into Airbnbs.Mm-hmm. They started with individuals like, let's say me that I decide to buy a property in Paris, but now we have international real estate developers, like from China, Israel, Russia, Turkey to say a few and Germany, where they buy whole buildings, right. And they convert them to Airbnbs, not only for tourists, but also for digital nomads. So, for your audience, for example, yesterday I was at an event and I was speaking to a young artist and the discussion moved, I don't know how to, "where do you live?" I said, "I live Exarcheia." He said, "I live in Exarcheia. I asked, "Where?" And he told me, "I live there. But I have big problems, because although I own the place through inheritance, I would like to move out to sell it, because the whole building, apart from my flat and another one has been bought by an international company and now my neighbors are digital nomads, which means I dunno who these people are, because every couple of weeks it changes. It's fully dirty. Huge problem with noise. Lots of parties. It's extremely difficult."So, imagine that this changed. There are stories of this, a lot. The other thing that has happened in Exarcheia is young people, in particular, are being pushed out because the rents, as you understand, if somebody who wants to rent it for Airbnb then thinks in this mindset and something that was until recently, 300 euros. A one bedroom flat. Now it ends up in 500, 600 euros, where still the minimum sa salary is less than 700 Euros. Wow. So people are being pushed out. I have lots of examples of people, and when I say young, not young in the sense of 20s, but also people in their forties that they are being pushed out. They cannot rent anymore, let alone to buy. To buy, it's almost impossible. Yeah. [00:25:04] Chris: Yeah. Almost everyone I talk to, doesn't matter where they live these days and not just for the podcast, but in my personal life, and of course with the people who I interview on the podcast, they say the same thing. This housing crisis, if you wanna call it that, because I don't know if it's an issue of housing, as such, but an issue of regulation, an issue of the lack of regulation around these things. And it's clear that so much of the issues around tourism have to do with hyper mobility and and housing. Yes. Or at least that's what it's become in part. Mm-hmm. And so I'd like to ask you, Penny, I know you're also part of an organization named AARG! (Action Against Regeneration and Gentrification) in Athens. Mm-hmm. And so participating in the resistance against these consequences.So I'd love it if you could explain a little bit about the organization, its principles and what it does to try to combat gentrification and of course the government and police tactics that you mentioned previously. [00:26:12] Penny: Well, now we are in a turning point because obviously what are we going to do? It's like "day zero."But we started in 2019. It's not an organization. It's an activist initiative. So, we don't have any legal status as an activist group, but came out of a then source of free space called Nosotros, which was located, and I explain why I use the past tense. It was located in the very center of Exarcheia, in Exarcheia Square, basically, in a neoclassic building since 2005, if I'm right. And it was really like taking part in all the different events since then with regards to, you know, things were happening in Athens in particular, and the square movement later on during the austerity crisis years.And it is also part of the anti-authoritarian movement. So, in 2019 a number of comrades from Nosotros and other initiatives in Exarcheia Square came together through recognizing that, definitely, since 2015 started slowly seeing a change in the neighborhood. On the one hand, we were seeing higher numbers of comrades coming from abroad to be with us in different projects with the refugees, but at the same time, as I said earlier, an attraction by tourism. And gentrification was definitely happening in the neighborhood; at that time, in slow pace. So it was easy for us to recognize it and to see it, and also to have discussions and assemblies to think how we can act against it.What kind of actions can we take, first of all, to make neighbors aware of what was happening in the neighborhood, and secondly, to act against Airbnbs, but not only, because the issue was not just the Airbnbs. So in 2019 we started, we had a series of assemblies. We had events. We invited comrades from abroad to, to share with us their own experiences of similar situation, like for instance, in Detroit, that at that time we thought that it was the extreme situation on what happened with the economic crisis in US and the collapse of the car industry, not only with the impact in Detroit and in Berlin, which again, at the time, still in 2019, we felt that Berlin was experiencing gentrification very far beyond what was happening in Athens and specifically in Exarcheia.So, that's in 2019. We had also actions that we start mapping the neighborhood to understand where Airbnbs were kind of mushrooming, where were the issues, but also in cases, because the other thing that was start becoming an issue was the eviction. At that time was still not as, for example, we were reading 2019 and before in Berlin, for example, or in Spain, like in Barcelona or Madrid...but there were cases, so we experienced the case of a elderly neighbor with her son who is a person with disabilities who were basically forced through eviction from the place they were renting, for almost two decades, by the new owners, who were real estate developer agency from abroad, who bought the whole building basically, and to convert it to Airbnb, basically. So we did this. Let's say this started in January 2019, where we just have elections and it's the first time we get this government, not first time, but it's the first time we have conservatives being elected and start saying dramatically and aggressively neighborhood with basically the eviction almost of all the housing spot for refugees in the area, apart from one, which still is here.All the others were basically evicted violently with the refugees, were taken by police vans to refugee camps. Those who had already got the papers were basically evicted and sent as homeless in the streets, not even in camps. So, we basically moved our actions towards this as well.And then Covid. So during Covid we created a new initiative were called Kropotkin-19, which was a mutual aid, offering assistance to people in need through the collection of food and things that they need, urgently, in the area, in the neighborhood, and the nearby neighborhood and refugee comes outside Athens.So, AARG! Has basically shifted their actions towards what was actually the urgency of the moment. So, and what happened in all this is that we lost the building through the exact example of gentrification, touristification. The owners took it because obviously it's next to the square where it's actually the metro and the think, they say future thinking, that they will sell it with very good money, to the millions, basically.So Nosotros and us as AARG! were basically now currently homeless. We don't have a real location because the building was basically taken back by the owners, and we were evicted right from the building. [00:32:14] Chris: Well, this context that you just provided for me, it kind of deeply roots together, these two notions of tourists and refugees of tourism and exile.In southern Europe, it's fairly common to see graffiti that says "migrants welcome, tourism go home." And in this context of that building, in that relative homelessness, it seems that, in a place that would house refugees, in a place that would house locals even, that this gentrification can produce this kind of exile that turns local people as well as, you know, the people who would be given refuge, given sanctuary also into refugees in their own places.And I'm wondering if there's anything else you'd like to unpack around this notion of the border crises in Greece and Southern Europe. I know that it's still very much in the news around this fishing vessel that collapsed with some seven to 800 people on it, off the coast of Greece.And certainly this is nothing new in that region. And I'm just wondering if there's anything more you'd like to unpack or to offer our listeners in regards to what's happening in Greece in regards to the border crises there. Mm. [00:33:36] Penny: Okay. I mean, the border crisis, is Greece and it's Europe. So when you speak about national policies or border policy, you need also to think of what we call fortress Europe, because this is it. So Greece is in the borders and it's actually policing the borders. And, there's lots of reports even recently that quite a lot of illegal pushbacks are happening from Greece back to Turkey or in the case of this current situation with a boat with more than 500 people.I think it's almost like to the 700. That's the case. So this current government it was for four years, we've seen that it has definitely an anti-immigration policy agenda, definitely backed up by European policies as well.But now being reelected is going to be harder and this is a big worry for, because still we have conflicts nearby. We need to consider environmental crisis that it creates in various parts for sure, like refugees, and we have conflicts.We have Ukraine, et cetera. Although also there is discussion of thinking of refugees in two ways: those that they come from, let's say, Ukraine, which they look like us and those who do not look like us. And this obviously brings questions of racism and discrimination as well.So borders and tourism also. It is really interesting because these two are interlinked. We cannot see them, but they're interlinked. And even we can think in the widest, let's say, metaphor of this, that at the same week, let's say 10 days that we had this major loss of lives in the Greek Sea.At the same time we have the submarine with the millionaires or billionaires, which almost is a kind of a more like upmarket tourism because also we need to think what the submarine represents symbolically to the life we are creating, worldwide.And I'm saying worldwide because I was currently, and I think I talked with you, Chris, about it, in Latin America and specifically in Medellin, which is a city known mostly abroad for not good reasons, basically for the drug trafficking. But one of the things, definitely post pandemic that the city's experiencing is massive gentrification and massive touristification due to economic policies that allow specific type of tourism to flourish through digital nomads having real opportunities there for very cheap lifestyles. Very good technology infrastructure, but other issues that bring mass tourism that in this case is also sex tourism and underage sex tourism, which is really, really problematic. But going back to Athens and Exarcheia in particular, the issue, it's very obvious. We are even now discussing that this thing is a bubble and sooner or later we will see that bursting because tourism is a product. Tourist locations are products and they have a lifespan.And it's particularly when there's no sustainable planning strategy. And an example in Greece, which is recently been heard a lot, is Mykonos Island. The Mykonos Island was known as this like hedonistic economy, up market, et cetera.But right now it is the first year that they've seen losses, economic losses, that it doesn't do well on the number of tourists coming. So, there are these things that we will see. Still, Athens is in its peak and they're expecting big numbers still because we are not even in July. I live now what most of us would say, we don't want to be in Exarcheia for going out because it doesn't anymore looks as a space we knew, for various reasons. But still there is movement. As I said the metro now is the center of the resistance. And also the other thing that I forgot to say that it's actually from the municipality coming in is that they are closing down and closed down basically green areas in the area, like Strefi Hill, and the nearby park for supposedly to regenerate it and to ensure that it's up in the level that it needs to be. But at the same time, they are leasing it into corporate private businesses to run. [00:38:43] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. And just for our listeners, whether this is the intention of local governments or not the closure or at least suspension of these places such as parks or local squares is the refusal to allow people to use public lands or to operate on what are traditionally understood as the commons, right? Mm-hmm. And these are traditionally places that people would use to organize. And so whether this is a part of the government's plans or not this is the consequence, right?And this tends to happen more and more and more as tourism and development reaches its apex in a place. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And Penny, I have a question that was actually written in by a friend of mine who lives there in Athens and his name is Alex who I had the pleasure of meeting last year there.And Alex talks about how everyone in Greece seems to be involved in tourism in some manner or another, that it's according to him "the country's biggest industry and how all of us are bound and tied to it," he said. Mm-hmm. And Alex wonders what alternatives and perhaps worthy alternatives do you think there might be to tourist economies?[00:39:59] Penny: Well, I mean, the issue is not, I mean, tourism is a type of model of tourism as well. I mean and it is also kind of percentages. So if we have more tourists than locals, then there is a question here, what exactly is happening when particular neighborhoods are turned to theme parks?Then again, it's an issue of what exactly offered locals, because okay, it could be good for businesses, but as I said, where is the sustainability in these projects and these models? Because if it's five year plan, then after the five year plan, all these people who are involved in tourism, what are they going to do?The other thing is what kinda tourism we're talking about and what kind services, because if we're all tangled or related with a tourist product, but what we do is servicing, meaning that even very few people will make money because most of us, we will be employees. And saying that is also about labor rights.So this is actually not regulated. There is no real regulation to various levels. Housing, for example, that you touched upon, earlier on in the conversation... In Greece doesn't have a dedicated law. So housing comes in various different parts of law, but it doesn't have a dedicated one.That's another reason why things are very unruly, unregulated. And the other thing is that in Greece, one thing that is unique, in comparison to all the countries, is that after the second World War, there was this idea of small ownership; that the dream is to own a small place, and to give it to your kids, et cetera.So it is very, very complex in that sense. And also as a tenant, it's very difficult to basically to have rights as well. Likewise, when we talk about labor, there's lots of things which are not regulated. So people who work in the tourist industry... it's almost like slavery.Quite a lot of people do not want to work right now in the tourism industry because they know that it's really unregulated and where that ends. So go back to what your friend asked, I'm not an economist and it's not an easy, and it's not, I'm not using it as an easy way to escape from giving a reply, but it's not about how to replace tourism, but it's actually what kind of a tourist model we bringing in because it's the same thing that I brought.So in Greece what exactly are we actually looking as a model to bring things that we saw in other places, didn't work?And they've seen the aftermaths of it. So this is something we need to be very, very serious about. Because at the moment, I think it's a five year plan with no future-thinking further because imagine a scenario that if tourism collapse, and we have all these businesses dedicated to tourism in one single neighborhood. We have urban Airbnb everywhere. What all these privately owned premises going to do? What kind of alternative you they're gonna have? [00:43:27] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. You used the word " replace," to replace tourism and I'm a big fan of etymology of the study of the roots of words and in English, the word replace in its deepest meaning could mean "to place, again." Right. And if we understood the word place as a verb, and not just as a noun, not just as a thing, but as something we do, what would it look like to place again, to consider our place not just as a thing, but as a process, as a process through time.And what would that mean to re-place ourselves. To re-place the time we're in. And it brings me to my next question, which is around solidarity and mm-hmm. I'm wondering in this regard, what kind of advice might you have both for tourists, for individuals, and also for people looking to organize their own communities in solidarity with, for example, the movements, the collectives, the residents of places like Exarcheia. What advice would you have for those people who wish to act and live in solidarity with the collectives that are undertaking these battles in places like Exarcheia?[00:44:51] Penny: Okay. If I remember well, the initiative against the Metro has created an open letter which will be for also address to tourists. So to make them aware, you know, you are here, you are welcome, but be aware that this is happening in this neighborhood, that the neighborhood is not just a product for consumption, but they are us, that we live here and we have been hugely affected by policies against us.It's not a blame to the tourists because we've been tourists and we are tourists ourselves. We go somewhere else. It's a matter to how you are respectful and understanding of what happens in local level and that there are people leaving not only the people who make money out of offering you services, but basically every people who have an everydayness in these areas and they need to be respected as well. And even understand where and what may happen to them. I mean, obviously we hear, and there are people who think, okay, we rather prefer to stay in hotels instead of AIrbnbs because this will basically support further this economy, which is platform capitalism because again, at the end, who makes more money, are the people who own those platforms.So it's about to be conscious and to be open and to see around you. And I'm saying that, and I can give you an example because for me, it definitely summarizes what I want to say. Okay, last summer, I was out with friends in Exarcheia, near Exarcheia Square to have a drink with friends who were visiting. No, no one visiting. One is from here. And in another table comes a seller, a migrant from East Asia to sell something and stop in my table. We discuss something with him and behind him, a couple of tourists with a dog passed by. The dog stops, probably afraid of something and kind of barks and bites the seller, the guy who was actually the vendor.So, the vendor gets really panicked and we say what happened to him? The two people with the dog, say, don't actually listen to him. He's lying. He's trying to get money out of us. And this is a story I mean, of understanding, of two people, you know, coming here not understanding at all and having completely this idea, but at the same time trying to consume what Exarcheia is offering. Is a story that to me can say a lot, actually. Mm, [00:47:23] Chris: yeah. Deep imposition. [00:47:25] Penny: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, as tourists, we need to be more conscious of the places we go. We need to understand and to listen and to hear.It is difficult to do otherwise because I mean, when you go back to solidarity, I mean, this is another thing because we don't expect people who come for couple of days to go to different, let's say, collectives, initiatives and take part.But at the same time, people who come and they want to spend time, in the sense of being part, again, one thing you do is not only you consume experiences, you take the experience and you look something abroad. You share the experience and we need that as well. Hmm. [00:48:16] Chris: Wow. And what would you say to people, for example, in places like Oaxaca, where there's been a tourist economy for the last 10, 20 years, steadily growing, and then after the lockdowns has become a destination like cities in Southern Europe, for digital nomads, for quote unquote expatriates, where now the consequences of the tourist economy are reaching a boiling point a kind of crisis moment, and where people are experiencing a great deal of resentment and backlash against the tourist, but who want to find some kind of way of organizing together in order to lessen or undermine or subvert the tourist economies.What advice would you have for those people maybe looking to places like Exarcheia, places like Southern Europe, where people have begun to organize for many years? What advice would you have for those people, for those collectives? [00:49:21] Penny: Well, the prosperity out of what you can get from this type of economy, it's going to be short term. So those who will make money or those who anyway will make money for those who have small businesses, it's going to be for few years. And particularly with digital nomads, is exactly what the word the term means: nomads. So this year or this couple of years, they will be in Oaxaca, they will be in Medellin.Previously they were in Lisbon. They were in Berlin. There is a product that is movable because their business, the work they do is movable. So for them, is what you offer like a package. And if it is cheap package, they will go there. If it has good weather, they will go there. And easier legislation.So it's a matter of recognizing because at the same time you cannot start pushing and throwing and beating up tourists. You're not gonna change anything. It's basically awareness.I'm not fond local authorities, but I've seen that in cases like Barcelona, the local authorities were more conscious and more aware, and obviously more on the left side. They were trying as well to create policies that has some limitation that at least this thing, it doesn't become beyond what you're able to sustain, basically, to create an equilibrium.But still, even in Barcelona, there are situations as in the neighborhood, which has became totally gentrified and people were pushed out. So they need some kind of legislation to limit the numbers of visitors for Airbnbs or things like that. But in the level of action, it's actually awareness and resistance and to continue.It's not easy because the political situation doesn't help. It has created a fruitful land for this to become even more and more and more. But the idea is not to give up and stop. I know that it's very like maybe generic and very abstract what I'm offering a solutions, because obviously here we're also trying to see what solutions we can have. Maybe you create a critical mass in an international level. Also, you make aware outside of what happens. So, so the tourists before even coming, they're aware of what's exactly happening and also with regards to solidarity between similar causes. Hmm. [00:52:00] Chris: Hmm. Thank you Penny. So we've spoken quite a bit about what's come to pass in Athens, in Greece, in Exarcheia in regards to tourism, gentrification, and the border crisis there in fortress Europe. And my final question for you is do you think there's anything about these movements of people and the way that we've come to understand them about the flight and plight of other people's, not just refugees, but also tourists as well, that can teach us about what it means to be at home in our places?[00:52:40] Penny: Oh, that's a big discussion. Cause it depends. I mean, when you talk about mobile population, like those, for instance, digital nomads, then we talk about something else, which is basically a more cosmopolitan understanding of the world, but also that the world is a product for consumption. So, it is two different layers of understanding also home.And basically when you see advertisements of houses specifically short-lets dedicated to let's say, digital nomads, the advertisements will say something like "home," that what we offer you like home. But when you go to those places and you stay in, what they mean like home, is that you have all the amenities to make your life easy as a digital normal.That you have a fast internet to make your work easy, et cetera, et cetera. So it is a very complex thing and definitely the way we live in, it's between the nomadic that has nothing to do with how we understood the nomadic in previous centuries or histories and to their, place as home, like you have a stable place.So, there are many questions and many questions about borders, that borders are easy to pass if you have the right profile, but then it is a block, and it's actually a "no" for those who leave home because they're forced to. So, it's a very unequal way of thinking of borders, home and place, worldwide.It's not just about Greece or Athens or Exarcheia, but maybe Exarcheia is a good example of giving us both sides who are welcome and who are not welcome. So yes, we say "welcome to refugees" and we see this kind of tagging and stencils and graffiti around because yes, this is what we want. We want them here to welcome them, but at the same time, we say " no to tourism," not because we have individual issues with specific people, but because of what has been the impact of this mobility into local lives.[00:54:59] Chris: Yeah. Yeah. Well, may we come to understand these complexities on a deeper level and in a way that that honors a way of being at home in which, in which all people can be rooted.Mm-hmm. So, I'd like to thank you, Penny, for joining me today, for your time, for your consideration, for your willingness to be able to speak in a language that is not your mother tongue is deeply, deeply appreciated. And finally, how might our listeners be able to read more about your work, about the social movements and collectives in Greece?How might they be able to get in touch? [00:55:41] Penny: Okay. We have on Facebook, on social media, we have AARG!. So if they, look at AARG! Action Against Regeneration & G entrification, but it's AARG! on Facebook and also Kropotkin-19, they will find their information. Now about my work specifically, they will look at my profile like Penny Travlou at the University of Edinburgh. So they will see what I do in Athens and in Latin America. So there is material, some things are in the form of academic text and other things are in videos, et cetera, which are more accessible to a wider audience.[00:56:22] Chris: Well, I'll make sure all those links and social media websites are available to our listeners when the episode launches. And once again, on behalf of our listeners, thank you so much for joining us today. [00:56:34] Penny: Thank you. Thank you very much. Have a good morning. Get full access to ⌘ Chris Christou ⌘ at chrischristou.substack.com/subscribe

This Shine podcast interview kicks off Season 6.  The number 1 priority for HR in 2023 and 2024 is leadership and manager effectiveness.  The current and future talent are assessing companies differently than before.  People and especially high performers are looking at a company's commitment to diverse leadership, how the senior leadership is walking their talk, psychological safety, professional development, and continued growth opportunities within the company.   A company's continued relevance, success, and expansion will be based on the consciousness of the leaders it grows and retains.  In this podcast, learn how you can prioritize and design a learning and leadership strategy for long game success.  We talk about the successful learning and leadership program results I have directed and why I am your next great leadership hire. Experience a powerful awareness practice you can use to foster greater well being, inclusion and belonging in yourself, your relationships and at work. This inspiring episode will support you to advocate for learning and leadership development as a must have, rebuild the manager pipeline, and skill up the next generation of leaders to create a purposeful and healthy organization that is thriving.      Episode Links: Athena salon- Becoming a Conscious Leader: The Skills You Need to Create a healthy organization in 2024.  LinkedIn SHINE Links:  Thank you for listening. Want to build a high trust, innovative, and inclusive culture at work? Sign up for our newsletter and get the free handout and be alerted to more inspiring Shine episodes  Building Trust Free Gift Carley Links: LinkedIn Consultation Call with Carley Book Carley for Speaking Leading from Wholeness Learning & Development Carley's Book Executive Coaching with Carley  Well Being Resources: Inner Game Meditations  Inner Game Leadership Assessment   Social:  LinkedIn IG Website Shine Podcast Page   IMPERFECT SHOW NOTES Hi, my name is Carley Hauck and I am host of the shine podcast. This podcast has been flickering strong since May 2019. I began the podcast due to all the research I was conducting. In interviews with organizational leaders, lead scientists, academic researchers and spiritual teachers for my new book shine, ignite your inner game to lead consciously at work in the world. I wrote my book to inspire a new paradigm of conscious leadership and business that was in service of higher purpose to help humans flourish, and regenerate our planet. The podcast focuses on the science and application of conscious inclusive leadership, the recipe for high performing teams and awareness practices that you can cultivate to be the kind of leader our world needs now. I will be facilitating two to three episodes a month. And before I tell you about the theme of our season, please go over to Apple podcasts, hit the subscribe button on shine or go to your favorite podcast platform carrier. That way you don't miss one episode. Thank you. This season is going to be focused on what leadership skills are most needed to create a healthy organizational culture.    Leadership and manager effectiveness has been deemed the number one priority for HR in 23. And every person listening, whether you have a formal leadership title, or not, you are a leader. We all have the responsibility to lead around something that we care about whether it's at home with our family, and our communities, and or in the workplace. I believe in you. And I am so delighted to share with you such an incredible group of people and interviews that I have gathered for this season. I handpick every single guest based on their embodiment of conscious, inclusive leadership and the positive impact they're making. I am delighted you are here. And onto the podcast.   Currently, I'm really excited to be interviewing you today. I think it's fabulous for the podcaster to be the podcast it and and I know I suggested the idea that I that I interview you for your beautiful podcast, largely because I believe in you and I'm excited about you and your future and, and so much of what you do and what you're talking about is resonates tremendously with what we do at Athena and what I'm all about. So I'm just by way of introduction, I'm the I'm the founder and CEO of Athena Alliance, which is an amazing community of over 1200 senior women leaders who are building a portfolio of impact, who are lifelong learners who are invested in learning agility, who are building the next paradigm for what it means to be a leader. So so many of the things that we're doing resonate with what you do. Thank you. And I'm delighted to be a member of Athena, and so touched by your sponsorship and your own leadership.    Well, let's get started. So Carley, maybe you can tell us a little bit about who you are. Thank you. So I wear many different roles and identities like many people, but I'll start with I'm a daughter, proud, auntie, a sister, climate leader, a book mama. And I'm also a founder of a leadership and development consultancy. And I started this business which is more important for the conversation we'll have today. So I'll speak a little bit more about it, leading from wholeness. I began in 2010. And I have worked not only as the founder, but then the director of learning leadership and organizational development. And this consultancy empowers people with the skills to create flourishing and human centered organizations that are aligned with a deeper purpose about caring for people and planet. Not I just profit. And in the last decades and starting this business, I have had the great privilege to exclusively partner with internal senior stakeholders. Top companies like LinkedIn, Capital One Asana, think to the west. I've been an adjunct instructor at Stanford for over nine years. I've also served adventhealth, Pixar, Clif Bar Genentech, and so many other incredible leaders and companies, on the cutting edge of everything, I mean, these are truly transformative companies too. And here you are in the middle of transformation. Currently, you have worked with so many incredible companies over the 12 years that you've been building up your practice and your confidence and what you bring to this world of learning and development and evolution of senior leadership. Why? Why take that and move it into one company? Now? What? Why not keep experiencing all of these different companies?   Thank you so much for the question. One of the things that I've been really noticing about my, my journey, as a, as a founder and CEO of my consultancy is I have really thrived when I've been able to exclusively partner with one senior leadership team and one company. And for example, I worked in an exclusive partnership with Bank of the West for three and a half years. And the impact that I was able to make across the 9000 person company from the leaders to, you know, individual contributors was incredible. I mean, I know that I impacted 3500 people that I got to meet, you know, and had some real experience and learning and leadership with them. And that's where I felt the best. And I have been really excited for this opportunity to create even more impact, because there are certain roadblocks that you have when you're external. And I knew after that experience that I wanted to be internal. And the other pieces that I have noticed about my personality that I'm much more of a chief people person, you know, supporting the senior leadership team, the greater strategy, the business objectives, but also really making sure that the culture is thriving. And that's being part of the team versus kind of being outside of the team and influencing the team. And I think that my experience and learning and team and leadership development could translate into a director or above role. I also think once I'm inside, I would likely want to explore moving into a chief people officer or chief learning officer role. I also feel that my skill sets could translate into being a chief of staff working alongside either the CEO, the chief people officer, or the chief learning officer helping with strategy, supporting the executive leadership team, executive summits, you know, putting my coaching hat on to help with collaboration. So that's, that's the reason and that's what I'm really excited about in this next professional step.   I love that. What do you love about your work? Well, I, I love learning. And I'm always learning in this role. I've worn every single, you know, hat I can imagine around learning and leadership development. But the other thing that I've learned about myself is that I'm I'm really here for transformation. And so I love being able to inspire and ignite the potential in people, teams and culture that really supports the greatest and highest good. And so just to give a quick example, I am working in the hat of a team coach right now for a really wonderful senior leadership team. And they are in the forming so the beginning stages of a team. And like most teams, even though they've they've been working as a team for the last several months. They just jumped right into the deliverables, the business objectives, but they didn't really create the foundation for team effectiveness for you know, what are agreements for communication, how are we going to navigate conflict Are we even creating a Are we even creating a space where we feel safe to speak up to challenge one another. And so, trust was really low, and accountability was really low. And their collective well being was really low, because they're not being very effective with their time. And they haven't set up these really core foundations. But at the end of our very first session, the trust was there, you know, they were creating agreements for psychological safety, and they were starting to get really clear on how they could team best with one another. And so just within 90 minutes, I was able to see them shine, I was able to see the transformation and that is what just makes me feel alive. And and I know that I'm doing the right work.   I resonate with that so much. I have been in that leadership team. I have led that team, you know, so I, I get exactly what you're talking about. And it is, all the early days a bit lost in translation, not understanding how one part one person interprets versus another, and even probably more challenging and difficult when it's when we're less likely to be in person to have any unstructured time together. Mm hmm. Yeah,  the navigation of distributed remote teams is is a whole other challenge that leaders, I don't think have really been trained in how to navigate. Okay, use that word twice. But there it is. Yeah, what? It's a good one, what can you bring to a leadership role? And what problems can you solve?    My expertise lies in the strategy, human centered design, the direction and facilitation of employee engagement, you know, delivering dei initiatives, team and leadership development programs that really are aligned with the business objectives, but also in supporting a healthy organizational culture. And I have several years of experience designing, building, delivering scaled programs, including in person experiences, virtual learning, incorporating the diagnostics, and the metrics so that we know what outcomes are actually happening as a result of these programs. It also includes executive coaching, group coaching, community building, and then also, you know, partnering with internal stakeholders, and potentially even outside vendors to really support the overall learning and leadership development. I've also directed and managed a team of learning professionals, which might include facilitators, you know, more junior coaches, project managers, instructional designers, I love facilitation, I have over 10,000 hours of facilitating, it's just been one of the gifts I was given when I, you know, got here on this planet, and I love facilitating different courses and team development sessions, and also supporting other facilitators to really step into their strengths as facilitators. And I have also really enjoyed developing and leading efforts to help the company Hone, what kind of culture do we want to build here? And what are the values of the company that we can actually bring into leadership capabilities, so that the people that are leading are actually exemplifying those values and that culture and what they say and what they do, that's really important to me. I also feel like what I can bring to a role is to, you know, be able to share some of the metrics that we're seeing, you know, analyzing participant feedback, program evaluations, looking at the data to identify gaps and make recommendations for program enhancements.    I have been a lead consultant for three different NIH funded clinical trials. And so I'm a bit of a leadership nerd, but all So a data nerd. And I just think it's always important to be looking at the baseline of where you are, and then measuring over time, qualitatively and quantitatively, what impact these programs these initiatives are actually having. And not just, you know, saying, Oh, we just we just gave a psychological safety keynote. But how is that actually impacting people? How is that creating a sustainable part of the culture where, where people actually feel like they're equipped to have conversations that have a foundation of psychological safety, I think the other thing that I bring is I am a connector, I love people. And so it's been actually really easy for me to connect with C suite leaders, senior stakeholders, I'm always invited in by those people to help solve people problems. And I think influencing those leaders to do what's best for people in the company is something that comes naturally to me, and I've had a lot of success that that was a bit of a mouthful, but I've been doing this work for a long time. But that's what I feel confident I can bring.   Yeah, and clearly engendering a lot of trust, in part because it's illustrated in how you're talking to me now. You're just such a very thoughtful person in all of these things that you've endeavored to do. And you take it extremely seriously. Tell me about it. Tell me about the most successful or I don't know one of the most successful l&d programs that that you've run that you're really excited and proud about.   Wonderful. Well, this was a program that I delivered last year, and it's one of the many, but this one had just some incredible impact. And I was invited to develop a conscious leadership program based off my book, which has a wonderful framework on how to be a conscious, inclusive leader. And my sponsor at Capital One for this program, had met me during my book launch in 2001, and really loved my book. And then we developed this great relationship. And so this particular program was a pilot. I'm a big fan of piloting, we want to pilot to make sure that we see success. And then from there, we can refine, and reiterate and scale. But this was brought to 40 directors and senior directors amidst a really big reorg. So this, in many ways, was the first time that these directors and senior directors were working together. And they were across three different business functions. So tech, product and design, the task of this particular development program was to one kick off the program in a way that senior stakeholders were invested to really make sure that I was coordinating with the, you know, internal Chief of Staff's the program managers, and the communications team so that there was an efficient delivery of the information and also the right leaders were being picked for this program. There was also, you know, different metrics and team assessments and individual assessments. So all of those things needed to go out at the beginning, and to really, again, align with those internal folks to make sure that this program was really seamless. And then the program itself actually was delivered to cohorts of 13 to 14, I find that intimacy in groups is really what creates more impact and lasting change. So you know, less is more.    And this these cohorts of leaders were high potentials. And they, they were sponsored for the program, but they were also being given the opportunity, you know, to opt out if, it didn't work for them at that time. I think it's really important that people feel like they can say no, even if their company is investing in their learning and leadership. And so essentially what the program look like it was over six months, it included bi weekly group facilitation, coaching, asynchronous learning, with videos, audios, pure exercises, and then there were 12 different modules that included knowledge, practice feedback, or flexion. And this is all to support integration and habit formation. And the results of the program were really astounding, I was taking, you know, again, baseline, and then we had a mid assessment. And then we had the assessment at the very end to see what the impact was. All participants increased four out of nine important leadership competencies, which is incredible, because they were only asked to invest in one to two. And each person kind of knew their ranking on where they were high and where they were low in these nine leadership competencies that I've done a lot of research around to know that these are the skills that actually support leaders to be conscious, inclusive leaders and therefore create high performing teams trust, psychological safety, all these wonderful things that we all need and want. At the end of the program, there was a 47% increase in psychological safety, there was a 25% increase in effective decision making, there was a 74% increase in empathy, which is huge, because that's something that most of us need more support in, there was a 59% increase in self awareness and resilience, there was a 20 to 30% increase in employee engagement. And then at the end of the program, we were able to see 20 to 30% increase in career mobility. So that is a program I feel really proud of.   That's amazing. Tell us if so I think I missed the part. But tell us what are the skills and competencies you mentioned? There are nine, what are the skills and competencies leaders need to succeed at the intersection of people culture and strategy? Well, the the nine that I've researched, and I wrote about in my book shine, are really focusing on what we are cultivating on the inside, because what we're cultivating on the inside shows up on the outside. In other words, the inner game rules, the outer games. And not only what I found in this program, but what I feel is really relevant for what leaders need now is I'll just kind of quickly go into the nine but then I'll bring in some of the research and what I what I think companies could really benefit from investing in right now. And so self awareness is key self management, empathy, resilience, which is having that growth mindset. I'm a big believer in well, being psychological and physical well being are two of those nine conscious leadership capabilities, humility, self belonging, and some folks might not know what that means.    But self belonging was four different aspects of belonging to the self, which is self forgiveness, self love, self acceptance, self compassion, because if we're not able to give those to ourselves, and we can't give it to others, and then we tend to be more reactive, impatient, you know, aggressive leaders versus conscious and inclusive. And then lastly, mindfulness, which really allows us to pay attention to the present moment. And that supports us in having effective decisions and looking at the consequences of our actions, not for the short term, but the long game. And so those those are the nine.   Let's see incredible. What are the skills and competencies that you feel leaders need now to succeed at the intersection of people culture and strategy? This is such a great question. One of my favorite things to speak about. So before I answer in full, I'm just gonna share a little bit of research on some of the trends that I've been looking at in learning in HR. So the first one is that the number one priority for HR in 2023 is manager and leadership effectiveness. But as we know, this won't be solved in 2023, especially that we're in September of 2023. Because it's a really hard nut to crack. And I believe that it's going to be a long game solution. And additionally, LinkedIn found research that 94% of employees say that they would invest and stay at a company longer if it was prioritizing learning and leadership development. So I need both of those because I think what is so important and vital is that LMD has sometimes been kind of a niche business unit, you know, sometimes lumped in with HR sometimes standing on its own, but I believe that all companies from now until At the end of need to prioritize, and really commit to investing in learning and leadership development, so that businesses are able to succeed in creating healthy organizations. And the reason for that is that we are living in a time of increasing complexity and disruption, and the skills and aspects of leadership from the past, they really don't align with the future of work or more human centered workplace. You know, the command and control authority or authoritarian leader is not going to support what young workers want. And it's not going to support this more compassionate, empathetic workplace, that so many Chief People officers are speaking to.    I mean, I've heard everywhere from, you know, the Chief People Officer pay Powell to the Chief People Officer at Microsoft to Satya Nadella at Microsoft empathy is one of the number one people skills that we need. So therefore, we have to develop a different set of skills. And the other thing that's really important for companies to succeed in culture is that young people really want to work for a company that has purpose, in other words, where the company, and the outcome that they're making in the world is about healing, not about harming. So when we even look at a company like Patagonia, where, you know, earlier this year, the CEO said, we're giving away you know, every profit that Patagonia makes, is going to plan it now, that is showcasing a really strong consciousness at the leadership level. And I don't expect that all companies will be able to follow in those footsteps, but it is definitely a North Star. So the other thing that I would say, to answer that question of, you know, what are what are the skills needed? Well, the leaders are the custodian of culture. So again, going back to what we're cultivating on the inside is showing up on the outside. So people are going to follow the leaders example. And therefore we need to prioritize the focus of inner development of people leaders.    And I would say across the board, you know, even individual contributors need to learn a basic foundation of self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skill, so that they can listen, they can empathize with one another, they can collaborate, they can communicate. So I would say to create a really thriving culture, we need to invest in the leaders, but we also need to give a basic level of people skills to the whole company, and that's going to support a thriving culture. Managers need to have, I think, a basics in coaching foundations, you know, working as an executive and team coach, I just think it's so vital that people know and have positive experiences, having difficult conversations, you know, having healthy conflict conflict is going to happen, can we create healthy conflict is the question, hold people accountable compassionately. And lastly, instill psychological safety in their one on ones in their team culture. And if the senior leadership and manager is not able to do these basic aspects of leading, then I don't believe that the deliverables of the business are going to be solved. And at the end of the day, the organization is not going to be healthy. One of the very first things that I often will assess for is the presence or the absence of psychological safety. And if that isn't there, which in most teams and greater organizations, there are some ranges of where it's present and where it's not. It's really hard to implement change. And it's really hard to innovate.    And so I'll just kind of leave it at that early, you clearly have so much to offer and have been a deep student of your space. Nothing superficial here at all in your 12 years. Um, outside of organizations while being inside, I think is been a tremendous value to your ability to Research to not just develop your platform and your ideas and not just ideas, but your confidence in, in, in what you know, comes from insights that you have developed through working with many, many, many different teams as opposed to one or two over those years, it's clear that you will bring a ton to the internal role you're looking for. In wrapping this all up, how, how do we learn more about you?   Well, you can reach out to me on LinkedIn, I'm always open to new conversations, opportunities, if anybody, you know, would love to talk to me about a role that they're hiring for, or they're thinking of hiring for I would love to create some time, before we come to an end of this podcast episode, wanted to ratchet the energy down and in with an awareness practice that will serve you to be the best person that you can be. Every podcast episode, I like to bring in practices that we can utilize right away in our life. And only you have control over your response, your behaviors, and how you show up with yourself, then, is transmitted to every other person that you encounter in your life. As you heard, in my conversation with cocoa, I spoke about nine different inner game leadership skills. And they start with each of us. And this framework was developed because of my own deep practice. In these leadership competencies, I started a meditation practice when I was 19. And I spent 13 years with two to three weeks of silence a year. And at the end of last year on my sabbatical, I spent a month in silence. And I share this with you because it is called a practice because it's a constant practice. And I can't stop practicing and expect to continue to be the kind of person that I want to be unless I'm committed to the refining, the learning the growing the healing, because as the world becomes complex, and things keep changing, we need these practices even more. So this particular practice, is one that's going to take about six or seven minutes.    So if you can't listen to it right now, go ahead and speed up to the end so that you don't miss out on the special resources that I leave at the end. And you can always come back to this later. And if you have time to even just get a sneak peek, you can continue to listen. This is a cleansing practice for the mind and heart. It is a practice for reconciliation, healing and forgiveness. And just to share some of the research behind it. I've been part of several NIH funded clinical trials at UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine. If we want to really create a workplace where there can be healing and care and belonging, then it starts right here. Begin by taking a slow breath through your nose and a slow exhale out. Let's do that a couple times together. Breathing in, breathing out. Breathing in. Breathing out. Do any movement to help you come more and more into your body. And bring your attention to your heart. As you breathe in. Feel the heart opening as you breathe out. Feel the heart healing. Breathing in opening, breathing out healing breathing in opening Breathing out, healing, breathing in, opening, breathing out healing bring to mind any instance that occurred in the last few hours or day in which you were hard on yourself. You were critical. You were unkind to yourself and words and actions and self care. You might not have honored a boundary, you might have not honored your truth.   This is a practice I am inspired to share based on Ho oponopono which is a very old indigenous practice that has been practiced for a long time and the Hawaiian Islands. And it begins like this. saying this to yourself. I am sorry. I forgive myself. Thank you. I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I am sorry. I forgive myself. Thank you. I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Just notice what's arising in the heart in the body. Now bring this practice to someone in your life that you are having challenge or friction with. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Breathing in opening, breathing out, healing, breathing in opening, breathing out. Healing. Now let's bring our practice to Mother Earth. Sweet Mother Earth and all aspects of this planet. The mountains, water, soil, all the beings who inhabit this earth, the plants aquatic life, land life, every aspect of the earth that you have found refuge in enjoyment, sustenance, shelter, place one hand on your heart and up to the sky. And say I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. Long, deep inhale and exhale. letting that go. And lastly, bringing your hands to a part of your body that would benefit from healing touch the back of the neck, the forehead, the cheek, the belly, the heart, anywhere. Breathing in opening, breathing out healing and say these words silently to yourself. This is bringing in a sense of self belonging. I forgive myself I care for my challenges. I love and accept myself as I am. I forgive myself, I care for my challenges. I love and accept myself as I am. I forgive myself, I care for my challenges. I love and accept myself just as I am. And as we come to a close, reminding yourself that you are strong, and courageous, and resilient, and mind, body and spirit. You are strong, courageous, resilient, and mind, body and spirit. And by you prioritizing and committing to your inner growth, you will have such a tremendous positive impact on everyone in your life and the world. Be the light, and shine. And the other thing that I'm feeling very excited about is that some of what we talked about today, what are the skills needed now, to really have people succeed in culture and strategy and leadership is an upcoming workshop and salon that I'm having with you Coco at Athena, and it is called Becoming a conscious leader the skills you need to create a healthy organization in 2024. And we will be offering this for for free to Athena members, but I'll also create a link in the show notes with the discount code shine and capital letters, so that you can attend if you're available on September 28. From noon to one Pacific Standard Time. We'd love to have you join us.   Well, thank you for letting me sort of be the host of your podcasts so that I could interview you for one of your episodes. This was so much fun. Thank you so much Coco, I am delighted to have your sisterhood and your support today. Wow, that was such a treat to be interviewed by Coco Brown. A leader I respect admire so much. Coco is going to be a future guest this season. And I am so excited to share that interview with you. Plus, Don't you just love her name. I haven't told this to Coco, but she's gonna hear it now. I feel like she has this inner rock star diva that is just waiting to come out. I can't wait for that. Listening is one part of learning. But then we need to create practices to instill what we hear into powerful action. So on that note, do you want to grow your inner game so that you can be a conscious leader at work life and in the world? Here are three ways all the links will be in the show notes. One use this podcast. It is a wealth of learning and development and in fact for a lot of the learning and leadership development programs I have offered. I actually resource this podcast as part of the learning the asynchronous learning.    So there are some incredible leaders and all you have to do is go back to our previous episodes. Go get my book shine. It has been voted one of the best books the top 10 In fact by mindful magazine that you should read in 2022 it is in hard copy and audiobook and it's my voice so if you are resonating with my voice now you might love the audiobook and I would love to hear your reaction of the book. I have not received one bad review and I am grateful. Come for a deeper dive with me and cocoa on September two 28 with our salon that we are offering on becoming a conscious leader. This is through the Athena Alliance membership, but you are going to get a free admission. If you put in the discount code shine in all caps. You can join us on September 28, noon to one Pacific Standard Time and get a sneak peek of what Athena is about and actually meet some of the other incredible powerhouse women that are part of this network. And then a personal ask for me. As you heard, I am so excited and ready to step into a director above level internal role bringing my gifts and passion for culture, and for leadership. I'm currently interviewing with some great companies.    And as you know, it's all about the network. If you know of someone I should meet, please connect us with us short intro or reach out to me on LinkedIn. If you are aware of opportunities that you think would be a great fit, please send them my way and reach out on LinkedIn. And if I can support you in any of your leadership challenges, please reach out. I love to help people with resources, connections, and deep listening. If you have any questions, comments or topics that you would like me to address, please email me at support at Carly help.com I would love to hear from you. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with friends, family or colleagues. We're all in this together and sharing is caring. Thank you for tuning in being part of this community. And until we meet again, my friend, be the light and shine your light

Andy talks about new media, deer running in front of his car, red M&M's, the Korean War vet at the gym, and SAD. Also, Jade Suede is out!: mybook.to/suede. On Rachels' Chart Chat, Rachel from Des Moines finds gems in charts from 1978 and 1984. You can find a playlist for Rachel's Chart Chat here. Follow Rachel on Last.fm here.

‍(If you DO want to work with Golden Proportions, they are actually giving all our listeners 2 EXCLUSIVE DEALS)Reach out to Golden Proportions here: https://go.goldenproportions.com/dental-marketer-deal‍‍In this week's Monday Morning Marketing episode, join us as we dive deeper into the world of Google Ads with our special guest, Xana Winans, from Golden Proportions. Get ready to supercharge your marketing strategies as we uncover tips and warnings for a successful Ads campaign. We'll unveil the secrets of setting the perfect Google Ads runtimes that sync with your office hours, discuss what a sensible ad-spend budget entails, and break down click-through rates in relation to your service offerings. Plus, we'll show you how to address potential patient objections effectively and gain a competitive edge over rival offices through savvy keyword usage. Jump into this episode with Xana to hone in on your best Google Ads strategy in this forever-evolving ads landscape!‍You can reach out to Xana Winans here:Website: https://www.goldenproportions.com/‍Other Mentions and Links:Google AdsGoogle Local Service Ads‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Marketing, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey Xana, so talk to us about Google Ads. How can we utilize this or what advice, suggestions, or methods can you give us that will actually attract new patients through our Google Xana: Ads efforts? Oh, there's so much good information in that question you just asked. That's loaded. so there's a lot of things that make Google Ads successful.And let me hit on just like a couple of really important tips. One of the first ones is, be very wary about using Google's own artificial intelligence that they're trying to make it look really easy so anybody can do their own Google Ads. Because if you are using Google's own artificial intelligence platform, you are potentially wasting a lot of money on clicks that are not valuable for you.and, you don't have as much control over reaching the proper target audience. And besides that, Google's gonna actually, you're gonna spend a lot more of your money and get a lot less for it. So, when we do Google Ads for people, there's a couple of things that we do to make sure that they are hitting that success versus what they've been trying to do on their own.One is, and this seems so obvious, you gotta make sure that you are setting your times for your ads. Only when your business is open. Some people just run those ads 24 7. But let's think about the patient experience. When patients call, we know that they want to get in immediately, they've got about 3 days to get scheduled.they do not want to get into a practice that scheduling, They to be able to get in pretty quickly. So they want to be able to. Get in, they want to be able to get a hold of you because you're an errand they're checking off their list. So if you're running, you're at it nine o'clock at night and there's nobody there answering the phone, it's a complete waste of your time and of their time.one way to overcome that is to use online scheduling. Which I think is critical for absolutely any Google Ads campaign because you want to capture people while they are in the moment and they are ready to make their decision. So ideally using online scheduling, but at the very least, people sometimes have questions, so make sure those ads are only running when you're open.As a matter of fact, I usually stop them about an hour before the practice hours are over. Because we don't always make our phone call immediately when we're doing our research. It might take us a little time and we want to make sure that that phone call actually becomes an appointment.another thing that I think is important to think about is the topic that you are using in your Google ads. So there's a lot of things that you can advertise for. You can advertise for just general dentistry patients, emergency patients, peds patients. Those three are great. Those are the winners almost every time.But a lot of doctors want to use Google ads to go after things like dental implants, all on for cosmetic dentistry, sleep apnea, TMD treatment. And here's what we've learned. The click through rates. Those higher level campaigns can be insane. Our click through rates are usually honest to be 27 to 35 percent on those campaigns.So literally like 35 percent of the people that see your ad when we're running it, we'll click on it. Go to a landing page. The difference is these types of leads are doing a lot of research. They're what I would call their higher up in the funnel. So they're exploring all of their options. And these are not the leads that are going to just click to schedule an appointment or just call you and immediately make your appointment.There's a lot of contact follow up contact that they need. So, you know, When they call you or if even if they submit a form, for example, it often takes 7 to 9 additional touches before they are ready to commit to an appointment. So if you're just sitting there and waiting for them to like, make that decision on the spot, you're going to end up really frustrated because you'll get a lot of clicks and a lot of people who seem to be interested.But a lot of them won't convert into appointments. So you got to be ready with an outbound, text messaging campaign, outbound phone calls, outbound emails to keep in contact with that lead until they are ready to schedule with you. another thing to think about, and this one's so frustrating for people in the beginning.Have you ever heard of the term fat finger? Where they Michael: accidentally click it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Me all the time, yeah. Xana: Yeah, so we're all on our cell phones, and you type in, Dentist in Lewisburg, I'll give you from my community. And there's a couple of listings that come up, so you can have a combination of like, somebody just accidentally clicks on the wrong listing with their fat finger on a small cell phone, and then it's a wrong number phone call.And the teams kind of can say, oh, I'm getting a lot of wrong number phone calls. Well, there's still people who are looking for a dentist. So it's still an opportunity to convert them into an appointment. but 1 way to help overcome that is to actually. Upload a list of all the competitors in your area.As negative keywords before you launch your campaign. And here's why. So if I typed in Dennis and Lewisburg, the area that I'm in Google is gonna be doing, we've got exact match and then kind of some broad match keywords in there. So it would bring up anybody for an ad that had the words dentist and Lewisburg in it.If I'm a dental practice named Lewisburg Dentistry. The odds are very, very good that my Google ad is going to appear at the top and people are going to think that's what they're clicking on. and it's basically just going to be a waste of their money. So we want to eliminate as many fat finger phone calls as possible.So uploading that list of competition helps maximize your budget right out of the gate. you had mentioned before we started talking about budget, like what's the right budget for people to put for this? The budget is, I generally say it's a minimum of 1, to be able to do it properly. And if your 1, 000 only gets you one mile or 1, 000 gets you 10 miles, depending on the area that you're living in, real key is about your impression share.So do you know what impression share is? No. Okay, so anytime somebody would be searching Dennis in it's the percentage of time that your Google ad is going to show up in their search results based on, how many dollars you have available. So if your budget is, say, 500 a month and you're averaging 15 a click. You might miss out on an awful lot of traffic simply because your budget has already been spent for the day. And you might have a very small impression share. So there might be 100 searches for it in a day, but you might only be getting 5 percent impression share because the cost per click is so high or your market area is so wide.It's a lot better. Instead of necessarily just going with budget, it's more about setting up the parameters of the campaign to make sure that you are maximizing your impression share. You want to be able to make sure that your Google ad is showing up a minimum of 80%, 90 percent of the time when somebody is doing a search.Otherwise, they're clicking on your competitor's ads. Michael: Okay. Okay. Interesting. So more budget better, but if we don't have the more budget, what do we do? We just hone in or what are you thinking? Xana: so yes, you can, limit the hours when your campaign is running. For example, uh, I've seen practices where we'll only run it, say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.And we'll front load that at the beginning of the week because we know those people want to get in quickly. So we want to make sure that we're not running an ad on a Friday where they're not going to be able to get in until Tuesday or Wednesday of the next week. so you can kind of compress your budget that way.You can limit the size of the market area that you're in instead of that 10 mile radius. You can say, I'm, I'm just going to make sure I'm capturing everybody in a 1 mile radius, or I'm going to pick a. Particular zip code that's important to me. Maybe everybody in your immediate area knows you. So we want to go outside of that area and just target a certain zip code.so there's a couple of different things that you can do to really maximize that budget. The thing that I always keep in mind with budget and I tell everybody this right out of the gate is that. It's always going to go up. This is a bidding situation, teasingly say Google clearly does not have enough money.this trillion dollar organization. so they're going to make it harder and harder for your ads to appear until you spend more money per time that somebody clicks on your ad, which means. That you will not get as many clicks for the same amount of money over time. So what might start out as a thousand dollar budget might have to be 1, 500 the next year or 2, 000 the year after that.It's not growing quite that quickly, but just know that sometimes you're, you're going to probably have to end up spending more money to get the same amount of traffic over time, just because those ad costs are going to go up. There's kind of a trend lately. Have people been talking to you about these sponsored listings up at the top?Michael: Yeah, yeah, it's a is there a green check mark I want to say or something like Xana: that or yes So these listings the thing that's really different about these listings before Anybody could buy a google ad and set up a campaign. I I mean I could be the guy down the street I could be somebody in china. It doesn't matter anyone could set up a campaign These sponsored listings google is making you go through this deep verification process.You have to give them Uh, not just prove that you're in your physical location, they need to see your actual credentials, like they need to get your, forget exactly what it is, if they need your diploma or your license number or something, but they need actual proof that you are a licensed practitioner and they're not doing it in every market, the area that we're in is rural enough, they aren't doing those sponsored listings yet, they're still just kind of testing it in some of the more major markets.But the thing with these sponsored listings that's really kind of interesting is Instead of saying, I have, you know, a budget of 1, 000 and I'm trying to get as many clicks as I can at an average cost of 5 a click, you're paying for performance, so they're charging you per phone call.It is their call tracking line that is used. And so when someone clicks on that ad and calls, it's running roughly around 100 per phone call. For an appointment, which cost per lead, that's actually not terrible, but you got to have a team who's ready to take the phone calls and are able to convert those leads into good appointments.So, I still kind of see those in like the, testing phase where people are figuring out if they're worth it or not are the. The searcher is actually going to respond to those or not. in my humble opinion, my favorite one, mean, obviously we all love Google Ads and just in general, but I love the ones that are in the Google Maps listings.That you can do a sponsored listing right in all of the Google Maps so that your name appears at the top. If you are in a market that's so competitive, you can't get into, one, two or three position in your market area, just buy your way into that list. Michael: Okay. Interesting. Real quick. If you could kind of guide us throughout the part where you were discussing the topic on Google ads, how to keep in contact with the outbound, this. So they click, they don't sign up. You said it takes several touch points. How can we build something there? Xana: So, uh, great question. It's actually something we're working on is, is trying to close that loop for the doctors. but the idea is when somebody calls they have questions, they're not ready to make a decision yet.So the team first off needs to be ready with a list of very common objections that the caller is going to have about that particular product. So let's say it's cosmetic dentistry. People are going to ask, what does it cost? Is it covered by insurance? How long does it take? Is this painful? can you fix this particular problem?What do you charge per tooth? They have all these questions. First step is for the team to have all of those objections written down and your answers for them figured out. It just makes for a better experience. People are not going to make their decision in the moment. You'll get a couple. That you might be able to bring in for a consult, but most of them are like, okay, let me think about it.That's where it's important to get a follow up phone number, a follow up email and then set a regular outbound set of touch points. So, over the next couple of days, email, phone call, text message, and kind of repeating that process until you get that person to make a commitment because they're doing a lot of homework.they're, um, talking to a lot of different options to see who's going to be the best one for them. And honestly, the person who makes the sale is usually the person who's just more active and showing more interest in that prospective patient. Mm. Michael: Gotcha. So, stay active. Basically, Xana: right. You got to stay really active.You can't just take that one phone call and let it die with, leave it up to the patient. If they're going to call me back, the team has to be the outbound salesperson who is actually calling and following up with that patient to see if they can move them forward. honestly, it takes some, some good sales training for teams who know how to do that.So I see this a little more successfully in some DSO practices, where they're, they're able to invest in like a call center and people who do some of that outbound follow up. Do you have any practices you've seen that are really successful with that outbound follow up? A couple, Michael: it's more front office skills training that I've seen where that works.You know what I mean? Where they have like the. Confidence to know what to say and do when they follow up and they send a text or they have a software that does all that, right, that sends a text and things like that. Um, but I can see how the bar drops a ton right there, you know what I mean? And then they go and say, well these ads aren't working, who's clicking them, you know, kind of thing.And it just falls apart. So I can definitely see that in that scenario. Xana: In my opinion, one thing that I found to be a little more successful if you don't have a team in place who either has like the time or the experience to do all that outbound follow up. I'm a big believer in bring these patients in under a general dentistry campaign.People who are just looking for I need a new dentist, they're going to come in, they're going to go through their hygiene experience, they're gonna have a comprehensive exam with you that is better than anyone they've ever had in their entire lives. And They build a relationship with you, and you can start asking them questions about, so what do you think about the appearance of your teeth?Is there anything that you're unhappy with that you've ever wished you could fix? Would you like to know what your options are? you've already got their attention because they're in the office. I find it is much easier to move those types of patients forward to things like implants and all on four and cosmetics and sleep apnea.Once they know who you are as a doctor, And why you're qualified and they like you as a person and they like your office. So, I find it is a far better spend of your money to actually go for the general to kind of get those big procedures in a roundabout way. Michael: Gotcha. Awesome, Zonya. I appreciate your time and if anyone has any further questions, you can definitely find her on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group or where can they reach out to you directly?Xana: I'd say best way is go to our website, golden proportions. com. There's a chat button in the lower, right? There's usually somebody on there monitoring at all times. I tend to take the after hours ones and happy to have a conversation, answer any questions that your listeners might have about ads.Michael: Awesome. Thank you so much, Zonya, for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. My Xana: pleasure. Thanks, Michael.

American Foreign Policy, Book 3 and Part 3Are you ready to be profoundly shaken? Brace yourself as we rip open the concealed layers of the harrowing Abbey Gate incident in Kabul, Afghanistan in August 2021 with our guides, the authors of this remarkable and hard hitting book, Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End by  Jerry Dunleavy & James HassonThis episode goes beyond just the gruesome incident, we're also going to unravel the effects of Biden's foreign policy on the devastating fallout of the US Forces' withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. Key Points from the Episode:We're taking a hard look at the very fibers of this catastrophe, including the improper planning going all the way to the President.The valorous Marines who remained at the gate due to British lobbying, and the sighting of an individual who mirrored the bomber's description. Yet, the alarming question remains: Why was there no permission to engage, despite the US military's prior knowledge about the bomber?We discuss talk presidential leadership, media's role in camouflaging administration blunders, and Biden's seemingly shallow understanding of the region. From closing the Bagram Air Force Base to entrusting the Taliban with airport security, we're critiquing it all. And let's not forget the heart-rending fact that Biden failed to even say "he was sorry" to the grieving families of the fallen US service members. Join us for this riveting discussion.Other resources: American Foreign Policy,  part 1 and book 1, MM#266--The Four Ages of American Foreign Policy Great Power, Superpower, Hyperpower by Michael Mandelbaum. show link hereAmerican Foreign Policy, part 2 and book 2MM#267--Sergei Polkiy's eye-opening book 'The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History.' show link hereMore goodnessGet your FREE Academy Review here!Get our top book recommendations list Get new podcast episodes dropped into your email box easilyWant to leave a review? Click here, and if we earned a five-star review from you **high five and knuckle bumps**, we appreciate it greatly, thank you so much!

In this episode, the M&M team reveals the difference of "working hard" vs. "working heart". Which is more appealing? It's a subtle difference, yet it makes all the difference. Society would have you think "hard work" is the requirement. It's NOT. If you work joyously, hard work is no longer a chore.   ©2023 FINANCIALLY ALERT LLC & SUCCESS BY CHOICE INC. All Rights Reserved. The information contained in this podcast is for general education purposes only. In no event will we be liable for any loss or damage derived from the information provided.

Today marks the beginning of Hispanic Heritage Month, and to celebrate, we are doing something fun: sharing the interview from when Nely Galán was on Money Rehab... years before she would have her own show on Nicole's network! This conversation is packed with tips from Nely around how to make your money work harder for you. You're welcome! Subscribe to Nely's podcast Money Maker | Mi Mundo Rico here: https://link.chtbl.com/_9U0OQh1?sid=MM

Trigger Warning: We're talking about sibling sexual abuse in this episode. The links for sexual abuse hotlines are below. I've had so many guest interviews on SelfWork – really wonderful researchers and authors, therapists and thinkers. But there's something very special about someone coming forth to share their message when they've learned something the hard way – and they want to help others either through what they went through or to avoid it in the first place. Jane Epstein is this kind of person. She tells her story in this episode about how her life was dramatically impacted by her brother sexually abusing her. It took her years to put the pieces of the puzzle together, making connections between past and present that were difficult and painful to make – but also were freeing. Many of you who are listening may have experienced something similar – and have tried, as Jane did for many years – to sweep it under the rug. A stepsister or stepbrother, an older sibling – and you've blamed yourself. Or felt a shameful heaviness. Please know, you are far, far from alone. Advertiser's Links: We welcome back BiOptimizers and Magnesium Breakthrough as a returning sponsor to SelfWork and they have a new offer! Just click here! Make sure you use the code “selfwork10” to check out free product! Vital Links: Jane Epsteins TEDxBocaRaton Talk: Great sexual abuse website for sibling abuse: The 501-3-C non-profit 5WAVES.org - Jane's (and others) website for support International Sexual Abuse Hotline thru RAINN I want to thank Jane and all other survivors of abuse who've come forward. It takes tremendous courage. You can hear more about this and many other topics by listening to my podcast, The Selfwork Podcast.  Subscribe to my website and receive my weekly newsletter including a blog post and podcast! If you'd like to join my FaceBook closed group, then click here and answer the membership questions! Welcome! My book entitled Perfectly Hidden Depression is available here! Its message is specifically for those with a struggle with strong perfectionism which acts to mask underlying emotional pain. But the many self-help techniques described can be used by everyone who chooses to begin to address emotions long hidden away that are clouding and sabotaging your current life. And it's available in paperback, eBook or as an audiobook! And there's another way to send me a message! You can record by clicking below and ask your question or make a comment. You'll have 90 seconds to do so and that time goes quickly. By recording, you're giving SelfWork (and me) permission to use your voice on the podcast. I'll look forward to hearing from you! Episode Transcript: Speaker 1: Dr. Margaret This is SelfWork. And I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford. At SelfWork, we'll discuss psychological and emotional issues common in today's world and what to do about them. I'm Dr. Margaret and SelfWork is a podcast dedicated to you taking just a few minutes today for your own selfwork. Welcome or welcome back to SelfWork. I'm Dr. Margaret Rutherford, and we have a wonderful guest for you today. I wanna make sure you hear however, that this episode does discuss sexual abuse, sibling sexual abuse. So please heed a trigger warning and we'll have sexual abuse hotline suggestions in the show notes. You know, I've had so many guest interviews here on Selfwork, really wonderful researchers and authors, therapists and thinkers. But there's something very special about someone coming forth to share their message when they've learned something the hard way, and they want to help others, either through what they went through or to avoid the experience in the first place. Jane Epstein is this kind of person. She tells her story in this episode about how her life was dramatically impacted by her brother sexually abusing her for a six year period of time. It took her years to put the pieces of the puzzle together, making connections between past and present that were difficult and painful to make, but also were very freeing. And I want to quickly say, many of you who are listening may have experienced something similar and have tried, as Jane did for many years, to sweep the memories under the rug. Maybe it was a stepsister or stepbrother, an older sibling, and you've blamed yourself or felt a shameful heaviness. So that's what we're talking about today on SelfWork. But before we continue, let's hear a brief message from Magnesium Breakthrough. You wanna give their product a try if you have too many sleepless nights, maybe from your own troubling memories. Magnesium Breakthrough Ad: I hope you truly enjoyed some time with family and friends this summer and got to take a break from the daily grind and enjoy your life. Perhaps you've indulged a bit on ice cream to beat the heat, or a margarita or two. Gosh, lots of indulgence may become the norm, but now kids are back in school and it's time to get back on track. If you struggle to return to your health routine, there are three major things to prioritize healthy eating, exercise, and above all, quality sleep. 'cause sleep is the key to your body's rejuvenation and repair process. It actually controls hunger and weight loss hormones, boosts energy levels, and it impacts countless other functions. That's why I take Magnesium daily, but not any supplement. I got Magnesium Breakthrough because it's just better. It's made by BIOptimizers and I, I highly recommend it. It has seven forms of magnesium designed help you fall asleep, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed. And guess what? If you get more sleep, you're gonna find out that your healthy eating and exercise may be a little easier to do. So visit magbreakthrough.com/selfwork. Don't forget to enter Code SelfWork10 for 10% off any order. Once again, it's magbreakthrough.com/selfwork. Speaker 1: Dr. Margaret I should tell you before we begin, how I met Jane Epstein. She actually did a TEDx talk for Boca Ratone and I watched it and we had the same coach. That's sort of a neat bond for us to share, but we talk about our TEDx experience a little bit here too. So please listen to this episode. Please click the link to Jane's TEDx talk, which will be in the show notes, or go to my website, drmargaretrutherford.com, and you can find it there. Another website that Jane has told me about, which is really wonderful is www.siblingsexualtrauma.com. But just know you are far, far from alone. Speaker 1: Dr. Margaret I couldn't be happier to have you on SelfWork Jane, because I have listened to your TEDx many, many times. And we shared a coach, which was kind of fun. And so I, I looked at yours as to say, well, what would it be like to to work with Brian Miller? But I personally today wanna hear more about your story. About one of my questions as I looked at it is, how did you talk to your family about it? Or, or did you say, "No, it's my story to tell."  Just what and what made you, what brought you to TEDx in the first place? Speaker 2: Jane Epstein First of all, thank you for having me on your show. Of course, I, I have listened to a couple of your podcasts and I, I've listened to you and I've listened to your TEDx and you are very trauma informed, and you are very kind and compassionate and lots of wisdom. So I appreciate being on your puck. Thank you. First thing, what brought me to TEDx and how did I tell my family? Me, I don't remember the exact timeline, but I started Googling sibling sexual abuse and trauma, and I couldn't find anything on it. And I, I had this feeling that I wasn't the only one. I thought, I can't be the only person. 'cause I found two outdated articles that stated that it's a silent epidemic, right? I was, okay, well, if it's an epidemic, I'm clearly not the only six year old little girl. My my sibling who was 12 at the time, is not the only 12 year old child who, who an abused a sibling. So I just was called to start talking about it, and I reached out to my sibling. It was very awkward. And I expressed to him, I said, "I feel called to start talking about this and sharing my story because no one's talking about it. And it's a silent epidemic." And he said he understood and that he would support me in whatever way he can. Speaker 1: I get chill bumps when I hear that. Speaker 2: Yes. He, I'm, I have a very unique situation. I've been able to forgive him. I can call him and ask him questions. I'll say, I had this memory, is this true? And he's very careful to not give me more information. Mm-hmm. , because he knows I have enough to work with. I don't need any more triggers. I don't need any more memories. Mm-hmm. . And I also think that because of what happened between us, that he's hypervigilant and that he's got his eyes on other families, and that he sees that there could potentially be problems and sexual abuse occurring. And because sibling sexual abuse is so prevalent and not talked about, I think we are seeing things and not always able to put our finger on it. In Speaker 1: Your talk, you quote in your talk, you quote statistics like it's three to five times - It happens three to five times more than father daughter abuse, which is incredible. It starts earlier. It lasts for years often. So you're right. And it, it is something I, I remember I wrote a post on sex, uh, sibling sexual abuse. I got all kinds of comments. So yes, you're exactly right. Speaker 2: Yes. I listened to your podcast on the sibling sexual abuse, and it was very well done. Thank you. You're, you're very informed, . Thank you. So I started talking to my brother and I said, I need, we need to talk about this. We need to, we need to do this. Um, or I need to do this. And I had these great grand visions because there's so much work that needs to be done. Well, it's a marathon on its front . So I started pitching the media, it, my emails were either not opened or not responded to. One response was, "Well, we haven't ever talked about that, but if we do, we'll reach out". And I'm thinking, you're not gonna talk about it. So I come across a video with Brian Kenneth Miller, our joint TEDx coach. And he had gone through, what is a TEDx? What is a TEDx? Speaker 2: What is not a TEDx? Because I thought, "Well, I'll go on TEDx and I'll share my story and I'll raise the alarm bell." Well, TEDx is not sharing your story, but I thought, well, I'll book a call with him anyways. So I booked a call with him and he said, "A tough topic, but I think we could come up with something." So we started talking about it, and it is, it's a tough topic, it's a dark topic. And Brian was never told me this, but he was concerned, how am I gonna get on the TEDx stage? Mm-hmm. . So we started going down the path of how to support someone who's been through a traumatic event. And I was gonna slide sibling sexual abuse and trauma through the back door. Okay. Which would not have been a great talk because there's lots of how to support people who've gone through trauma. It would not have been Speaker 1: Not unique, Speaker 2: Impactful, not unique, not impactful. It might have gotten on stage, but not likely. So then I heard from TEDx Boca Raton, and I sat down with Eric and Eric said, look, you know, we like your idea, but we really wanna know more about the sibling sexual abuse and trauma. Can you talk just about that? And I said, yes, I can. And I pointed to all my research books and I started spouting off all these statistics. And he said, "Great, that's what we want you to talk about". And I said, excellent. And that's how it all started. And I didn't mean to be on the TEDx, it's just that's kind of where I landed. And I, you know, once I was approved and started practicing my TEDx talk, I started having all the anxieties of speaking in front of a large crowd, but practiced and practiced and practiced. And the day I got on that stage, I just, they basically, there's something magical about that red dot. Maybe it's true. I got on that red dot and all was okay. But I was shaking.. Speaker 1: Oh, I was perfectly calm. . Speaker 2: It's amazing what you can make, even though the camera, you know, the camera shows all, oh, it was done. Well, you did aYou did a really wonderful job. Speaker 1: And, and one of the things that I thought was so powerful about it, again, you've already mentioned it, was that your, your brother had, he had apologized, but then he had, you had written to him years later and he said, "Oh gosh, I didn't know this was still a thing for you." So I'm sure this solidified for him, again, the seriousness of the trauma, the impact that that had had on you, uh, and that it had, it had, uh, impacted your choices as an adult. And when you left home and it was, it was a elegant story. Well, it's, call it elegant is missing the point of that. It was very painfully uh, impactful. So, um, yeah, I mean, you made, you made some career choices that were obviously you trying to get back in control, but it didn't work. Speaker 2: Right. Right. And I'm not sure he understands the full impact. We've never sat down and, and talked about it. It's, it's like, it's a, it's a strained relationship. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: Um, but it, it's friendly enough in that I can reach out to him. I haven't reached out to him for a while, but I would can reach out to him and say, "I had this memory, is this a false memory? Is this true? Is this what happened?" And he is very careful the way he answers it, because he does, doesn't wanna trigger me and give me more memories. 'cause I have plenty to work with. Sure. He understands why I'm so public. He's not exactly thrilled about it. But, you know, I was in the People magazine and I had to run that by him. And, and the pictures, I ran the pictures by him. And that, it's hard. Uh, it's hard because it's putting him in a, in a, in a tough situation. But in my situation, in my story, my sibling is not a monster. My sibling is not a pedophile. My sibling caused a lot of harm, caused a lot of damage, caused a lot of trauma. And I, I have forgiven him. Um, and I'm not telling every survivor, you have to forgive to heal. That is not my, that's not my thing. It's just that's what worked for me. And it started by forgiving the little girl first, my little girl myself. And then I was able to forgive him. Speaker 1: Well, an aspect of this that I wanted to talk to you about a little bit more was you opened the talk by saying that you were in marital work with your husband, and your therapist turned to you and said, "I, I just don't get where all this anger is coming from. It doesn't seem to fit the situation." And, and then ask the very astute question of, "Is there something that might be, is triggered by what's going on with your husband? And that's what's, that's what we're seeing". And you, did you, did you connect the dots right then? Or did it take you a while? It took a while. It was your sexual abuse that was getting somehow, maybe you can talk about that a little bit. What was getting triggered with your husband? Speaker 2: Right. Many years before, before we were in counseling, something happened in the bedroom that, that triggered a memory. And that memory would not go away. Usually memories would come and go and I could put them away. And I thought it was just two kids being curious. That's not my problem. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 2: I thought because I'd lost, I lost my first husband to cancer and I got remarried to my, my husband. Now I try not to use current husband 'cause he doesn't like to be the current husband. . Speaker 1: Well, my husband calls Speaker 2: Himself Speaker 1: ) . We've been married 33 years, and he calls himself my current husband. So , Speaker 2: He's a good sport then. Yeah. . Yeah. So I had thought, I knew we had two small children. He had a stressful job. I had, I was still dealing with grief. And I thought, that's why I'm angry. That's why I am upset. That's why I was not depressed in my brain. I was not depressed because no, I had survived burying my first husband, and I survived that. So there's no way I could be depressed. Speaker 1: I have a, I have a book for you to read, . I know Speaker 2: You do. I am in that category. So we eventually went to marriage counseling and I went into the marriage counseling thinking, okay, he's gonna fix my husband, gonna fix him. Well, I had work to do too, fix too, when it comes to that. So we were in counseling for five years and we really had made a lot of progress. But I was still very, very angry. And I had asked myself, I had dug down and I thought, maybe it's something inside of me. I've tried to turn over every stone that maybe there's something inside of me that needs work. Mm-hmm. . So when the marriage counselor asked that question, I thought, well, there is this. My brother sexually abused me. There's that. And I approached it as, it can't be that because I participated. Right. So who am I to be messed up over that? Speaker 2: And the counselor, I kind of describe it as the deer in the headlights look. He's kinda like trying to sit still and kind of leaning in and trying to be very calm, realizing, okay, this is a big deal. No, what happened is a big deal. Right. And that it went on and off for six years. And that No, that was a big deal. And he said, "You're gonna need to tell Steve". And I said, huh. Steve's my husband. Mm-hmm. Current husband mm-hmm. . I said, oh, no, because then he'll be able to blame all our marriage problems on me. And he said, you need to be able to tell him to protect yourself in order and to, to be able to heal. So that's how that all started. And then I started a whole new healing process. Speaker 1: It's amazing. I've told a story on, on SelfWork about a woman. Um, and I already put a cautionary warning before we started. So great. Uh, a woman came in to see me who, um, it was the local community center. I literally had just gotten to Arkansas where I live now. And, and she said, you know, she told me about sexually abu abuse that her father had, um, had done to her. And then she, and there was this huge sense of relief. And then she came in the next week and she said, I've got something worse to tell you. So I sat back and said, all right. And she said, my dad made me do things to my brother . And she, she was a tough cowboy kind of woman. She had boots and, you know, she was farm girl. I mean, she was tough as nails. Speaker 1: And she teared up and, and we talked about it. And then she, she canceled her next appointment. And I called her and said, I'm, you've, you've shared so much with me, I'm a little concerned that you're not coming back in. Yeah. She said, well, okay, I'll come back in one more time. And she looked at me, Jane, and she said, I thought I would, I knew the look that would be on your face when I told you that I had done something to my brother. Because from her perspective, she had participated rather than being coerced herself. You know, it was, it was her doing something to her brother. And I said, you know, so, and she said, but the look on your face was not condemnation. It was, well, of course you did what your dad told you to do. Right. Um, and then there are other instances I I, uh, I mentioned before when we were just talking about a, a little girl who wore a red nightgown for her brother. Um, because she, she said, I enjoyed the attention. I knew something was wrong, but I, I didn't get any attention from anybody except from him. And so it was very complex and very complicated. But that whole idea of participation is so, um, is, is so confounding for any victim of sexual abuse, but especially with sibling sexual abuse, I think. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I, I wanna share with you that I've actually had some people who, when I, when I speak about the child who caused harm, there are situations where the child causes a lot more than harm. And I try and, and, and lower it a little bit so that parents hear me. Mm-hmm. , because if I scream your child, the pedophile or your child, the monster, your child, the perpetrator, they're not going to hear me. Right. 'cause if I talk about it in a more gentle as your child who caused harm, they're more likely to hear me. So that's why I approach it that way. But I understand that there are survivors out there where it was a lot more than harm. Yes, I understand that. Yes. But I have heard from people who have caused harm and they are suicidal. You're right. And so that's why we talk about this, because we don't want our children to be on any side of it. Speaker 2: Or I feel like if we raise awareness, if we educate our children, maybe we can lessen the numbers. You know, if we talk to our teenagers when they're 10, 12 and explore with them, say, Hey, you're experiencing a lot of changes. You've got a lot of questions. And I understand you may not be able to come to me as your parent, but you are at risk of harming another child, either a younger sibling or a cousin. And so we need to talk about this. What do you know when you have these feelings? And, and we need to talk about pornography. So that's why I I I am, it's an all encompassing, it's a whole family trauma. And, and I work very closely with the women of Five Wave, I dunno if you know anything about the Five Ways, but there's three parents and two survivors. Speaker 2: We've come together. And so the parents have shared their stories when they discover sibling sexual abuse and trauma in their homes and what the parents go through. Yes. What the survivor goes through, what the person who cause harm goes through. If we just talk about it and raise awareness and, and educate people and quit shoving it under the rug, maybe we can lift the numbers. Maybe we can get people help. Because you are a very, you're an informed therapist. You, you are very informed. A lot of therapists I've heard from survivors, they'll, they'll tell a survivor, well, you know, kids are curious. You are very informed. We need more of you . We really do. Speaker 1: Let me ask you something. Are there statistics? 'cause I'm not aware of them. If there are, and I'd love to know, um, about how many of the siblings be they girls or boys, we might point out it's not necessarily, um, and of course, or, or any gender identification. Um, absolutely. And how, what are the statistics on whether they have been abused themselves and then turn around and abused? Speaker 2: Unfortunately, we don't really have those statistics. We need more research. And the women of five Waves, we've actually had people, researchers are reaching out to us, asking us to share their surveys. So there is progress. Again, it's the marathon, not the sprint. So we are trying to gain more, more insight into that. And that's another thing is that I, I hear from survivors a lot. They reach out to me and they say, well, you know, my sibling did this to me, or my cousin did this to me, and then I did it to another child. And that there's shame on top of shame. Yes, indeed. And that happens a lot. Happens a lot. Mm-hmm. . But we don't have those statistics. Again, we need more research and we need more awareness and we need to be talking about it. And that, that's why I'm very loud. Speaker 1: What, what is the name of the organization that you Women of five. Speaker 2: (20:58) Okay. So it's called Five Waves Worldwide Awareness Speaker 1: (21:02) Wave. W A V E Ss. Correct. Speaker 2: (21:04) Worldwide Awareness, Voice, Education and Support. Okay. The way we came together, I've just been out there being very loud. And I am a moderator of a Facebook group for all types of survivors. And we kept having parents keep trying to join. And we're like, well, this is for survivors. So I went to find a parent support group, and through that I found a parent who had started a Facebook group for parents experiencing sibling sexual abuse and trauma in their homes. In their homes. So I reached out to her and I tried to join her group and she politely declined . And then I had a person reach out to me, Brandy Black, which is a pen name, to protect her family. Mm-hmm. . She said, look, it's been during Covid this happened in my home. I couldn't find any research, I couldn't find any resources on it. So I developed a website. Will you look at it? I promised my children to have a survivor look at it. And I said, whoa, this is amazing. Great. That's something I don't have to do. Was on my list. And I started looking at her website, Brandy Black. Speaker 1: (22:03) Oh, black. Okay. Speaker 2: (22:04) Black. I said, I can't get through this. I'm writing my TEDx. So I pulled in another survivor that I knew who was public, Maria Awa. And then I reached out to the woman who ran the Facebook group. And we all came together as 5WAVES. Oh, see. And the parents shared their stories. We shared their stories. So what we have through this organization, it's now 5 0 1 C three, is we are becoming thought leaders in this arena, or it's all out of a matter of, of, of caring. But we all have unique perspectives and we just wanna raise awareness. We want families to have support. We want families to have resources. We, you know, obviously one day we'd love to have this go away, but we aren't, you know, we aren't that optimistic. It, it's been going on forever. Speaker 1: Two cases come to mind that are the opposite. Um, both of them were difficult. One case, um, a case, one woman's story, um, was, uh, I was seeing the mother actually in therapy, and her daughter told her that her brother had sexually abused her. Um, the mother went to another state and confronted the, the brother. And he said, yes, he had, it took them probably it would took them years. I'm not sure how many, because the mother had to do her own work. The, the daughter, um, started working on herself. Um, 'cause she was definitely making choices that were very, um, tied to that, uh, that kind of abuse. So was the perpetrator the, or you go the person who did harm? He got his therapy finally. They got together and did therapy. But it was a long time before this family got together for Thanksgiving or, you know, anything like that, because the, the, the pain was just too real. Speaker 1: And, and yet I, they gradually worked toward that. It was marvelous to see the kind of healing that could actually take place when everybody was, and the mother, you know, had to take some responsibility for saying was I checked out. I mean, you know, maybe I was, maybe I wasn't. Um, and so they did great work. You know, I also have an example of a patient who I was seeing the daughter who was abused. The sister who was abused, uh, when she was a toddler, she had a twin. And she didn't remember it until the twin did. And then they confronted the family together. Actually, before she saw me. The family kind of nodded. It was an older brother. The older brother said, it wasn't me. I think it was a neighbor. Um, that wasn't true. And not a word was said about it again. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's very common. Speaker 1: And she was, she had the kind of family where they expected her to be there at every birthday, at every anniversary, at every holiday, at every religious event. I mean, and it was every time she was, she had anorexia still does. She would just not eat for days, um, after a home visit. So it, you know, those two situations are so contrasting and, and, and one of there can, there can be healing. Yes. It's hard, but there can be healing. Speaker 2: Yeah. And I, I think that the second scenario that you talked about, if you're a parent, I mean, parents experience a lot too when they discover this mm-hmm. . And if they go to Google and they can't find anything, if they aren't understanding, they may think, well, my, my child's the only person in the world who's harmed a sibling, or is my child gonna grow up to be a pedophile? And it's probably terrifying and probably easier to say, okay, let's just pretend status quo, and let's just, let's just go forward. Let's just shove it under the rug. That's what we're hoping to raise awareness. So if the parent, they, they got, I mean, wouldn't it be amazing if like, the Today Show covered this? Speaker 1: Sure. Wouldn't Speaker 2: It be, you know, sibling sexual abuse? Then a mom might think, oh, that's ho that's horrible. I can't believe that's happening. But then if, if she hears about it in her home or friend, she'll say, oh, but I heard this was a thing. You know, it's, it's at least in their subconscious, because if we don't get it out there, it's really hard for a parent to wrap their heads around. Of course. I mean, I can't imagine. I am a parent and I try to educate my children to the point where they run away from me. , . But, um, I, I can't, it's really hard for parents to wrap their head around. And that's, we're just trying to raise that awareness. But I hear from a lot of survivors that they're expected to just go on is normal, and, and you're asking a survivor to, to sit in the room with someone who abused them and possibly in the same home where they were abused. And that's very triggering. That's very difficult. Speaker 1: Yes, it is. And, and it doesn't get any easier. Another woman comes to mind who said, you know, that she sits by her brother every day or every Sunday at church, and she's always crying and people believe she's crying because she's moved by the service. And actually she's just, she's overwhelmed with feelings about the abuse that he has denied and continues to deny. So it's, it's, gosh, it's so painful. But there, there can be healing. Um, what, what did your mother, how did your mother handle it? Speaker 2: Well, I told her, I wanna say I was around age 24 when I was still pushing it off. It was just two kids. It just, it ha it happened. Uh, um, and I kind of said it in passing, and she cried. She said, I believe you, but where was I? Where was I? And then she started questioning. She said, but he's a good kid. He, he always knew right from wrong. There was a lot of confusion. And then I pushed it back. I put it back in its box, and we didn't talk about it for years. And then when it reared its ugly head in my current marriage mm-hmm. , um, she didn't understand. I said, I need to come forward. I need, I need to talk about this. I need to come forward. And she, she said, you need to forgive him. You need to forgive him. Speaker 2: And I said, I don't need to do anything. I will forgive him when I'm ready on my own terms. And she gave me the books on forgiveness, and I rolled my eyes. You can't, you can't force that. And she said, what about his family? And I screamed at her. I said, his family. Yeah, yeah. Because unfortunately, I took him, I was angry at him. I was angry at my husband. I was angry at my, my siblings wife. I was angry at my siblings children, and I pushed them all aside mm-hmm. . And they didn't understand why I was pushing them away. They didn't know mm-hmm. . So I did come to terms with it, and I did forgive my brother on my terms when I was ready. And then I reached out to my mom and I said, I forgave him. And there was relief in her voice mm-hmm. Speaker 2: . And then she realized, oh, now I've got my own journey of forgiveness. And she had to follow her own journey. And she was at the TEDx, she was in the audience. She didn't know what I was going to say. And, but by the time she was at the TEDx, I think she was in a good place. Um, she loves both of her children. It's, it's a very tough position to be in. And there were times when I said, I don't wanna be in the same room with him. And that was really hard for her. Mm-hmm. . So she seems to be on her own journey, and I think she's into the point where she's been able to accept it and, and sees why I'm being so public and understands why I am so public. Speaker 1: So what's been the changes in your life? I mentioned in the intro that you have over half a million views. What, how has your life changed since the TEDx and, and what are your plans for the future as this, as you, as you run this marathon? Speaker 2: Yes. It, it, I'm still running the marathon. Expect I, the finish line keeps moving. I, I actually heard from another survivor yesterday via email because it came across the TEDx. And so people are finding me through the TEDx and, and when they find me through the TEDx, I'm able to get them into Facebook support groups. I'm able to get them resources. So I know that they're in a community of people that's been, you know, I think when we can help others that help heal us mm-hmm. , um, I am, I'm still writing my memoir. It's so, so close. I have a children's book that I've, I've submitted. I'm waiting to hear back if they will publish it or not. That's what's on my radar right now. I am slowing down a little bit. I try and be supportive within the Facebook groups. I, I'm trying to, um, answer all my social media messages because I get a lot of social media messages. A lot of people on TikTok, unfortunately, a lot of my people are on TikTok. They're a younger age. Speaker 2: I'm slowing down a little bit. One, I'm tired. Two, I have two teenage boys who are in 10th grade, and they will be leaving me in three years. So I'm trying to be very, very present with them and enjoy them. Sure. And I just kind of show up wherever I'm needed and trying to, to support Five waves and, and keep that momentum going and, and just raising more awareness through five. Nobody's selling anything. We're not trying to, you know, obviously we're looking for donations, but, you know, we're not selling anything. We're not making any money. We're just trying to raise awareness and, and collaborate. We're having more and more people reach out wanting to volunteer with us, which is great. 'cause we're five people mm-hmm. . And yeah. I'm just looking forward to a day when there's more survivors who feel comfortable coming forward. And, and honestly, I I welcome hearing from those who caused harm too. Um, I feel we've received a couple emails. If, Speaker 1: If someone wanted to donate or volunteer or just, I mean, can you give the names of the Facebook groups or do they reach out to you? How, how is that, how do you want them to do that? Right. Speaker 2: (32:14) The 5WAVES.org website. Okay. You can email us there. You can contact us if you're, if you're, if you're a parent, if you're a survivor, if you're someone who's caused harm, you can email us there. And then also on that website, we have Facebook groups and, and we, we try and respond to every email that we can. Yeah. So that's where I'm headed right now. I kind of show up where I am needed . Speaker 1: And so I'm a great admirer of yours. And I, because I think you did this TEDx for a really good reason. Um, and I mean, and, and a very honorable reason. And so, uh, that I, I admire greatly. Speaker 2: Well, thank you. And I admire you as much. I I think that we, I I was looking forward to this interview and I told my husband this morning, I said, this'll be a great interview because she, she's informed and she knows what she's talking about. She's done the research, she's done the homework. So I really appreciate it. Speaker 1: Oh, well, thank you. Take very good care. Thank you. Speaker 1: I know you could tell from Jane's interview just how sincere and how passionate she is about getting this message out. And we at SelfWork wanted to help her do just that. The organization Jane refers to in the interview is the worldwide awareness, voice, education, and support. Better known as 5WAVES.org. And the five is not spelled out, is a numeral. So 5WAVES.org give if you can. It's a 5 0 1 3 C. So it's a nonprofit. And I wanna thank Jane and all other survivors of abuse who come forward. It takes tremendous courage to do so. Thank you for being here at SelfWork today. Please take care of yourself, your loved ones, and your community. I'm Dr. Margaret, and this has been SelfWork.

Joseph Svendsen is the Director of Choral Studies and Associate Professor of Music at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he conducts the UNLV Singers and Collegium and teaches graduate coursework in conducting and choral literature, working with students seeking the MM in Choral Conducting. During his tenure at UNLV the choirs have toured internationally and regionally and performed at professional conferences and festivals in the southwestern United States. The choirs host the Desert Rose Choral Festival, a one-day festival chorus of high school students drawn from across the southwest.Svendsen is the artistic director of the Las Vegas Master Singers, a 90-voice volunteer ensemble that serves as the symphony chorus for the Las Vegas Philharmonic and provides the choruses for Opera Las Vegas's main stage productions. The chorus regularly collaborates with Las Vegas and regional orchestras, choirs, and solo artists and commissions works about life in Nevada through its New Voices outreach program. Svendsen is also music minister at Faith Lutheran Church in Summerlin, Nevada, where the church's choral scholars recently completed a residency at St Albans Cathedral in Hertfordshire, England. An active clinician, he has served as an invited conductor in eight countries and seven states, with choirs ranging from middle school through adulthood.Svendsen is an advocate of critical pedagogy and agency building in the choral rehearsal, developing student musicianship, independence, and engagement through the teaching of diverse repertoire. He has presented on this subject for conferences of the American Choral Directors Association and the National Association for Music Education, as well as several university and school district guest lectures and residencies. He is the 2023 recipient of the UNLV College of Fine Arts Outstanding Teaching Award.Svendsen is a proud alumnus of Luther College, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Texas Tech University, from which he earned his DMA in Choral Conducting. From 2007-2013 he taught high school vocal music in Fort Dodge, Iowa. His choral mentors and teachers include Richard Bjella, Chester Alwes, Craig Arnold, and Timothy Peter.To get in touch with Joe, you can email him at joseph.svendsen@unlv.edu or find him on Instagram (@joseph.svendsen) or Twitter (@josephsvendsen).Choir Fam wants to hear from you! Check out the Minisode Intro Part 2 episode from May 22, 2023, to hear how to share your story with us. Email choirfampodcast@gmail.com to contact our hosts.Podcast music from Podcast.coPhoto in episode artwork by Trace Hudson