Podcasts about National Association

Costs are rising rapidly for child care providers. The latest driver? Liability insurance. A recent survey from the National Association of the Education of Young Children showed 62% of educators reported difficulties finding or affording this insurance. FOX Business' Lydia Hu speaks with Samantha Phillips, a Texas-based insurance agent who works with hundreds of childcare providers across the country. Phillips explains why this surging expense poses an existential threat to the entire child care industry. Photo Credit: AP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Costs are rising rapidly for child care providers. The latest driver? Liability insurance. A recent survey from the National Association of the Education of Young Children showed 62% of educators reported difficulties finding or affording this insurance. FOX Business' Lydia Hu speaks with Samantha Phillips, a Texas-based insurance agent who works with hundreds of childcare providers across the country. Phillips explains why this surging expense poses an existential threat to the entire child care industry. Photo Credit: AP Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode, I'm joined by Drew Allen, President & CEO of Grace Technologies. Grace is a family business built on innovation in electrical safety and predictive maintenance, and Drew has carried that forward—shaping the company into a leader in industrial technology and workplace safety.We cover a lot of ground in this conversation. Drew shares the story of Grace's evolution from a single-product company to a broad portfolio serving the world's most advanced manufacturers. We dig into his approach to innovation, leadership, and attracting top talent. And we explore the balance between listening to customers and pushing the boundaries of what's possible.Drew also shares candid lessons from leading a family business, building high-performance teams, and staying deeply involved as a CEO while empowering his people to deliver.This one blends product, culture, and leadership in a way that I think will resonate with anyone building and leading in manufacturing.What You'll Learn in This EpisodeHow Grace Technologies grew from a single product to five complementary product linesWhy customer-driven innovation and quick iteration often beat “pure R&D”The importance of purpose, selection bias, and A-players in building a great cultureDrew's philosophy on leadership—balancing involvement with empowermentHow to attract and retain top talent by being specific about what makes your company uniqueThe role of energy infrastructure in U.S. competitiveness and industrial growthAbout Drew AllenDrew Allen is President & CEO of Grace Technologies Inc., a pioneer in electrical safety and predictive maintenance, consistently ranked as one of Iowa's Top Workplaces. He also founded Maple Studios, the first venture studio in eastern Iowa, and serves on advisory boards for Atom Power, Proxxi, and YPO Iowa. Drew led the acquisition of Civionics Inc. (now Percēv) and received the National Association of Manufacturers' Next-Generation Leadership Award in 2020.Connect with DrewLinkedIn: Drew AllenGrace Technologies: graceport.comEmail: drewa@gracetechnologies.com

Iowa Business Report Thursday EditionAug. 28, 2025     Erin Streeter of the National Association of Manufacturers on the provisions of the reconciliation law which will have a positive impact on business. 

In this episode, we provide an exclusive sneak peek of the upcoming National Association of Royalty Owners (NARO) National Convention in Oklahoma City from September 30 to October 3, 2025. This year's event at the Omni Hotel promises to be a comprehensive educational experiences for mineral and royalty owners, featuring sessions on mineral valuation, advanced lease negotiation strategies, and emerging legal issues like pore space rights. This annual gathering offers mineral and royalty owners an unparalleled opportunity to accelerate their knowledge, network with fellow owners from across the country, and gain direct access to the industry's top legal minds and technical experts. The convention features an impressive lineup of educational sessions covering everything from basic mineral ownership fundamentals to sophisticated data-driven development techniques in major basins like the Appalachian and Permian. Beyond the classroom learning, the convention's networking receptions create lasting connections with like-minded mineral owners, industry professionals, and NARO board members who continue supporting your success long after the event ends. Many attendees report that the relationships formed at these conventions prove as valuable as the formal education. Time is running short - regular registration rates end September 16th, and the discounted hotel rate of $219 per night expires September 9th (extended). For new members looking to join the NARO community, use discount code "MRPODCAST" for $25 off an introductory membership, allowing you to register at the significantly lower member pricing and become part of this supportive nationwide network of mineral and royalty owners.  Links to become a member and register can be found in the show notes at mineralrightspodcast.com. Don't miss this opportunity to invest in your mineral management education and join hundreds of fellow owners who understand that knowledge truly is the key to maximizing the value of your mineral and royalty interests.

In this episode, we sit down with John Duncan, a former policymaker and political analyst. John provides a clear-eyed view of how federal policy, and a changing political environment, are shaping the housing market. He explains what policymakers in Washington can and cannot do to help with housing supply and affordability. We also discuss the impact of local regulations, and how you can influence change as a residential real estate professional. This conversation will give you the tools you need to understand the larger forces at work, and how they will shape your business. Watch our previous conversation with Jim Tobin and Ken Wingert from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)Jim Tobin and Ken Wingert from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXmAdxhUO9c  Connect with John on - LinkedIn. Learn more about Meridian Research Group at meridianresearchdc.com. You asked for it. We delivered. Check out our new merch! https://merch.realestateinsidersunfiltered.com/   Follow Real Estate Insiders Unfiltered Podcast on Instagram - YouTube - Facebook - TikTok. Visit us online at realestateinsidersunfiltered.com.   Link to Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/RealEstateInsidersUnfiltered Link to Instagram Page: https://www.instagram.com/realestateinsiderspod/ Link to YouTube Page: https://www.youtube.com/@RealEstateInsidersUnfiltered Link to TikTok Page: https://www.tiktok.com/@realestateinsiderspod Link to website: https://realestateinsidersunfiltered.com This podcast is produced by Two Brothers Creative. https://twobrotherscreative.com/contact/  

According to the National Association of Legal Professions, when I graduated from Law School in 1988 only 2.7% of graduating attorneys made the choice to go solo.Looking at those same numbers, it's easy to track the strength of the economy with the number of new attorneys going solo increasing during economic downturns.But now that so much of the work we do can be done virtually, what used to be one of the largest challenges for any attorney deciding to hang out their own shingle – finding physical office space – has all but been eliminated. As my guest today points out, with the ability to work remotely no longer in question, the stigma of being what was once called “post-office attorney” is fading.Nikita Lamar is an attorney specializing in Family Law, Trademarks, and Probate & Estate Planning. After graduating from Law School in the wake of the Great Recession, Nikita would found The Lamar Legal Group and, as she herself has written, her commitment to preserving what clients have worked tirelessly to build is the cornerstone of her practice. We talk about her unlikely journey to law school, practical and philosophical tips for attorneys thinking of starting their own practice, and how vulnerability and empathy can coexist with zealousness. Enjoy the show! 

Bob Bertog, president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a certified landscape professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, joins John Williams to answer all of your lawn and garden questions. Bob is loving the cooler weather and how it’s perfect for seeding right now.

Bob Bertog, president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a certified landscape professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, joins John Williams to answer all of your lawn and garden questions. Bob is loving the cooler weather and how it’s perfect for seeding right now.

Bob Bertog, president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a certified landscape professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, joins John Williams to answer all of your lawn and garden questions. Bob is loving the cooler weather and how it’s perfect for seeding right now.

Part two of this special series dives into three critical pieces of the 2025 housing market shift: home sales, inventory, and affordability. David Sidoni breaks down the numbers, explains why headlines can be misleading, and shows how today's changes open up new opportunities for first-time buyers.The 2025 housing market is in the middle of a transformation unlike anything seen in decades. In part two of this three-part series, David Sidoni unpacks the latest on home sales, shifting inventory, and affordability. He shares how existing home sales have dropped to just over 4 million in recent years, but new data and falling mortgage rates are signaling a move back toward healthier levels. Headlines might scream contradictions — sluggish sales one day, rising applications the next — but that's exactly why staying educated matters. Inventory is building, builders are offering incentives, and affordability is showing signs of life. For first-time buyers, understanding these shifts is the key to beating the rush and securing a home before competition heats back up.Quote: “If you take advantage of this shift now, you can beat the bum rush of a bazillion other buyers.”Highlights:Existing home sales data from 2019–2025 and what it means for first-time buyersWhy headlines about sales and applications seem contradictoryThe role of new construction and builder incentives in boosting supplyHow declining mortgage rates are already improving affordabilityActionable insights on how to prepare for the next market phaseReferenced Episodes:Part 1 of this 2025 Crucial Housing Market Shift series (home prices & mortgage rates)355 - Real Answers Pt 4: Should I Rent or Buy in 2025?Sources:Zillow, Redfin, Goldman Sachs, Housing Wire, Ris Media, US News, Bloomberg, The National Association of REALTORS®, Realtor.com, Homes.com, Zelman & Associates, Brian Buffini and other housing economists, The Mortgage Bankers Association, U.S. Census Bureau, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, financial Samurai, Moody's, Inman, US News, Apollo Global, Wells Fargo, and the National Association of Home Builders.Connect with me to find a trusted realtor in your area or to answer your burning questions!Subscribe to our YouTube Channel @HowToBuyaHomeInstagram @HowtoBuyAHomePodcastTik Tok @HowToBuyAHomeVisit our Resource Center to "Ask David" AND get your FREE Home Buying Starter Kit!David Sidoni, the "How to Buy a Home Guy," is a seasoned real estate professional and consumer advocate with two decades of experience helping first-time homebuyers navigate the real estate market. His podcast, "How to Buy a Home," is a trusted resource for anyone looking to buy their first home. It offers expert advice, actionable tips, and inspiring stories from real first-time homebuyers. With a focus on making the home-buying process accessible and understandable, David breaks down complex topics into easy-to-follow steps, covering everything from budgeting and financing to finding the right home and making an offer. Subscribe for regular market updates, and leave a review to help us reach more people. Ready for an honest, informed home-buying experience? Viva la Unicorn Revolution - join us! This is one part of a 3 part series highlighting the most significant housing market shift since this podcast began in 2019. Check out the podcast library for the full series for a complete update.

The landscape of legal recruiting in law school has changed significantly over the past 5-7 years. What should prospective law students know about what's changed so rapidly, and how has it impacted how admissions officers make their decisions? What caused these changes (11:04), how do they impact 1Ls (16:15), and what are admissions officers increasingly valuing in the application review process in response to these changing trends and practices (25:07)? How can incoming students best prepare themselves for this new world of recruiting (39:54)?In this episode of Status Check with Spivey, Anna Hicks-Jaco sits down with Rob Cacace, long-time Georgetown Law career services professional and Spivey Consulting Pre-L Program Director, and Kristen Mercado, former UC Davis Law admissions dean and one of Spivey's newest consultants, to discuss these questions and more.You can find two short documents from the National Association for Law Placement (NALP) that provide additional context for this discussion—plus a full transcript of this episode with timestamps—on our blog.You can listen and subscribe to Status Check with Spivey on ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠⁠, ⁠⁠Spotify⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠. You can read a full transcript of this episode with timestamps below.

Jason Miller and Dale and Juanita Ryan - The biblical story, including what we see lived out in the life and teachings of Jesus, is this: God is love, we are loved, we are capable of loving others and we are called to a life of love. Participating in this story is, however, not always easy for us. Instead of welcoming the love of God, we sometimes find ourselves afraid that God is angry, distant, displeased, uncaring, or impatient. Instead of celebrating that we are loved, we sometimes fear that we are not lovable, not enough, or not measuring up. Instead of rejoicing in our calling to love others, we sometimes see other people through the distorting lens of our fears and judgments.  This fall, we'll be hosting a workshop led by Dale and Juanita Ryan to explore these dynamics in community. Whether you're able to join us in person for the workshop or not, this episode will help you get to know Dale and Juanita, and to hear the heart behind their work.  Until his retirement, Dale Ryan was a member of the faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary where he taught pastoral care classes about addiction, abuse and trauma. Currently Dr. Ryan is the executive director of the National Association for Christian Recovery, which he founded in 1990. He has earned a PhD (UCDavis, Biochemistry) and an M.Div. (Bethel Theological Seminary, St. Paul, MN). Juanita Ryan is a mental health clinical nurse specialist. She has had a private counseling practice for over 35 years. Because she writes and speaks about spirituality and trauma, many of the people she works with are seeking help in these areas.  To learn more about her you can visit her website. Dale and Juanita have been married for 55 years. They have two sons and four grandkids. Most of what they know about distorted images of God, of self and of others comes from personal experience.

In this episode, we talk with Jessica Behmke and Trena Sailer, both members of the Richmond Chapter of NAWIC, the National Association of Women in Construction. They were working with some young ladies who are learning about the different construction trades, not just to learn about them, but to possibly make the trades a career. Sponsored by the Richmond Chapter of the National Association of Women in Construction, Camp NAWIC brings together Trades professionals and middle school girls for an empowering, hands-on, and unique week-long building experience.  https://www.nawicrichmond.org/

We're back from our summer break! In this episode, we are joined by Tyng Kam, a certified career coach with thousands of hours of coaching experience. Tyng shares insights from what she refers to as a "non-linear" career journey, which spanned multinational corporations, startups, and educational institutions across the U.S., Germany, and Malaysia. Tyng highlights her involvement with the National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP) and the value of mentorship and leadership development. Tune in to learn about the strategies she uses to help Asian professionals overcome cultural challenges and recognize potential in others.

In this episode of Mission Admissions, host Jeremy Tiers talks with Kate Speer about the art and science of saying “no”, and the importance of setting boundaries.Guest Name: Kate Speer, Vice President of Marketing and Brand Development, Grandpa Joe's Candy ShopGuest Social: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-speer/Guest Bio: Kate Speer is a people-first, results-driven connection creator with expertise in marketing, communication, engagement, counseling psychology, and positive culture building. She currently serves as the Vice President of Marketing and Brand Development for Grandpa Joe's Candy Shop, and previously held a senior role at BNY Mellon. Kate is also a Certified Social Media Strategist from the National Institute of Social Media, and she was named a 2023 Woman of the Year nominee by The National Association of the Women's Interactive Network. - - - -Connect With Our Host:Jeremy Tiershttps://www.linkedin.com/in/jeremytiers/https://twitter.com/CoachTiersAbout The Enrollify Podcast Network:Mission Admissions is a part of the Enrollify Podcast Network. If you like this podcast, chances are you'll like other Enrollify shows too!Enrollify is made possible by Element451 — The AI Workforce Platform for Higher Ed. Learn more at element451.com.

Guest Mary Smith, Smith Bonds and Surety and former VP of National Association of Bail Bonds, joins to discuss ongoing battle to protect the right of bail bonds. Discussion of Trump's latest executive order to end cashless bail. What does that mean? Discussion of state funded bonds, criminals skipping court dates, and reforming the criminal justice process.  Residence of DC admit they feel safer in community after Trump cleans up the streets with National Guard. Who else is enjoying the safer streets...but refuse to admit it?

For the first time in over a decade, real change is reshaping the housing market. Prices, inventory, and affordability are shifting in ways that could finally give first-time buyers a new opportunity.In this episode, David Sidoni delivers a data-packed breakdown of the biggest housing market change in 17 years. After years of historically low inventory, rising prices, and brutal bidding wars, 2025 is bringing something different: falling prices in many metros, improving affordability, and a rare increase in available homes.David explains why this isn't a crash, but a shift toward semi-normal conditions — and how you can use this to your advantage. With most experts predicting 2–4% appreciation in 2025, smart buyers who act early can secure homes before the public catches on.This is part one of a three-part market update series designed to help you build a winning 2025–2026 strategy.Quote“For the first time in 17 years, inventory is actually improving — and that changes everything.”HighlightsWhy home prices are actually falling in many metros.The surprising percentage of listings with price cuts this summer.How builders are slashing prices and narrowing the gap with resale homes.What most experts really predict for home values in 2025.How first-time buyers can take advantage of this rare shift.Sources: Zillow, Redfin, Goldman Sachs, Housing Wire, Ris Media, US News, Bloomberg, The National Association of REALTORS®, Realtor.com, Homes.com, Zelman & Associates, Brian Buffini and other housing economists, The Mortgage Bankers Association, U.S. Census Bureau, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, financial Samurai, Moody's, Inman, US News, Apollo Global, Wells Fargo, and the National Association of Home Builders.Connect with me to find a trusted realtor in your area or to answer your burning questions!Subscribe to our YouTube Channel @HowToBuyaHomeInstagram @HowtoBuyAHomePodcastTik Tok @HowToBuyAHomeVisit our Resource Center to "Ask David" AND get your FREE Home Buying Starter Kit!David Sidoni, the "How to Buy a Home Guy," is a seasoned real estate professional and consumer advocate with two decades of experience helping first-time homebuyers navigate the real estate market. His podcast, "How to Buy a Home," is a trusted resource for anyone looking to buy their first home. It offers expert advice, actionable tips, and inspiring stories from real first-time homebuyers. With a focus on making the home-buying process accessible and understandable, David breaks down complex topics into easy-to-follow steps, covering everything from budgeting and financing to finding the right home and making an offer. Subscribe for regular market updates, and leave a review to help us reach more people. Ready for an honest, informed home-buying experience? Viva la Unicorn Revolution - join us!This is one part of a 3 part series highlighting the most significant housing market shift since this podcast began in 2019. Check out the podcast library for the full series for a complete update.

Crit Thomas, global market strategist at Touchstone Investments says the market can move higher — though with a path that is more bumpy — and the economy can avoid recession, but he also notes that the market is particularly hard to read because current conditions are dramatically different than many past situations. He cites a lot of reasons — from index concentration to fallout from the pandemic — for why looking back at market data seldom yields accurate forecasting right now. Thomas does expect a market slowdown, as earnings have been impressive but growth has been muted, which should make for slower markets ahead. Sarah Wolfe, senior economist and strategist for thematic and macro investing at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management — the chairperson of the Economic Policy Survey for the National Association for Business Economics — discusses the NABE survey released today, which showed a record number of economists view current economic policy as too stimulative. The economists viewed tariffs as the biggest long-term obstacle to growth  rather than a stimulator for economic activity, and they also see recession coming into focus in the long-term, noting that current conditions have backed off any downturn to where economists now don't expect to see one until late in 2026 or in 2027. Kyle Guske, investment analyst at New Constructs, puts Five9 back in the Danger Zone because the company has fallen back into the territory of a "zombie stock," effectively due to run out of money in the next two years. Guske makes a case that the stock — currently valued at roughly $28 a share — is worth maybe six bucks, though he makes it clear he could make a case for it to go to zero. Plus, Dan Skubiz, chief investment officer and senior portfolio manager at F/m Investments, talks small-cap stocks in the Money Life Market Call.

Is today's housing market heading toward another 2008-style crash—or is it an entirely different story?

List of International Suicide Crisis Hotlines: https://blog.opencounseling.com/suicide-hotlines/Translifeline Suicide Hotline - 877 565 8860Translifelinehttps://translifeline.org/fundraise-for-us/Trevor Projecthttps://www.thetrevorproject.org/pflag - lgbtqa+ legal funds https://pflag.org/jointhefight/Planned Parenthoodhttps://www.plannedparenthood.org/National Association of Mental Illnesshttps://www.nami.org/get-involved/donate-to-nami/Palestine Children Relief Fundhttps://www.pcrf.net/Medical Aid for Palestinians https://www.map.org.uk/Internet Archivehttps://archive.org/donate?origin=iawww-TopNavDonateButton░MY░MEMES░IN░BIO░https://linktr.ee/memesteroftheweekFollow Kitten Marlowe on Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/kittenmarlowe.bsky.socialRam Ranch - https://youtu.be/8jZLYF7WNKs?si=gX0G6WTixLl-CDnrLow Metal Thud 2.wav by F.M.Audio -- https://freesound.org/s/620830/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

What if the place that should be your sanctuary—your home—could be transformed from a place of fear into a space where respect isn't just hoped for, but required by law? Today on Whinypaluza, host Rebecca Greene sits down with Sabrina Osso, founder and CEO of Osso Safe, a revolutionary company transforming the way we approach safety in our homes, schools, and workplaces. As a TEDx speaker, published author, and passionate advocate, Sabrina is transforming her pain into a force for good, empowering families everywhere. A proud member of the National Association of Realtors and the Women's Federation for World Peace, she was recently honored with the HerStory Award in March 2024. Through her innovative Osso Safe certification program, children's book "Home Safe Home for You and Me," and the Osso Safe Kids Video, Sabrina is reimagining what "home sweet home" can and should be—making respect a required standard in all residences. Key Takeaways ➤ Respect as a Required Standard: Osso Safe is working to make respect a mandatory requirement in all residential properties through their certification program, which includes policies, seminars, apps, and assigned therapists. ➤ The Difference Between Abuse and Discipline: Abuse instills fear while discipline instills education—this crucial distinction helps parents understand how to guide children from a place of respect rather than control. ➤ Children Need Voice and Choice: Rather than waiting until age 18, children should be empowered to speak up about unsafe situations and know they have trusted adults who will listen and protect them. ➤ Documentation is Crucial: For anyone experiencing abuse, documenting incidents helps combat gaslighting and creates a clear pattern that can be used for protection and legal purposes. ➤ Healing Happens Both Ways: When you heal yourself and then help others heal, it creates a powerful two-way street of transformation and empowerment. Powerful Quotes from Sabrina"Abuse instills fear, and discipline instills education. When you discipline your kids, it should come from a place of education, not fear and manipulation and domination and control.""We trust our children at Osso Safe. We are giving them voice and choice... You kids know who makes you feel safe and free and respected and good, so we're trusting them." How to Connect with Sabrina OssoWebsite: OssoSafe.comSocial Media: Find Osso Safe on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTokChildren's Book: "Home Safe Home for You and Me" available on Amazon and other book-selling platformsThis episode of Whinypaluza reminds us that every child deserves to feel safe in their own home. If you or someone you know needs help, remember: it's not your fault, you're not alone, and there are people ready to help. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is no escaping stress but cortisol in menopause changes. With that, your stress response to nearly everything may change.  You don't feel it at first but then there's unexplained weight gain or belly fat. There's less focus or concentration than you used to have. It shows up in different ways for each of us.    My Guest: Sara Banta is a Certified Dietary Supplement Professional and member of the National Association of Nutrition Professionals, helping people take their health into their own hands using cutting-edge natural supplements, DNA-driven nutrition, and real lifestyle solutions. She's the founder of Accelerated Health Products, the award-winning Most Innovative Supplement Company FOUR years running, a pioneer in functional wellness and with a passion for uncovering root causes and optimizing the body's innate healing systems. As host of the podcast Accelerated Health with Sara Banta—Top 10 Health Podcasts & Top 10 Supplement Podcasts—she brings science-backed insights and down-to-earth advice for natural answers. Sara's work is grounded in one simple truth: the body is designed to heal—when you give it the right tools. Sara is on a mission to make vibrant health accessible to everyone.   Questions We Answer in This Episode: [00:00:00] What is the difference between acute and chronic stress? [00:00:00] What is causing chronic stress? [00:00:00] Why is this so critical to understand what impacts cortisol in menopause? [00:00:00] How does it affect muscle gain and fat loss? [00:00:00] How is the thyroid related to the adrenals? [00:00:00] How can you maintain and build lean muscle while under stress over 50? [00:00:00] What supplements help get your adrenals back on track? [00:00:00] What lifestyle habits either kill or improve cortisol?   Why Cortisol in Menopause Makes Stress Feel Different   Acute vs Chronic Cortisol Acute stress Short-term, natural response to immediate danger. Cortisol helps survival (fight-or-flight). Immune system goes up. Chronic stress Prolonged, ongoing; body never recovers. Chronic stress keeps cortisol elevated → negative health effects.   Causes of Chronic Stress in Midlife & Menopause Perimenopause & menopause: the stressors don't change, but the response to them does. Common triggers: lack of sleep, poor diet, environmental toxins, over-exercise, emotional stress.   Cortisol's Effect on Muscle Gain & Fat Loss Elevated cortisol breaks down muscle tissue. Interferes with protein synthesis, leading to muscle loss. Promotes fat storage, especially visceral (belly) fat. Lowers metabolism → makes weight management harder.   Lifestyle Solutions for Cortisol in Menopause Diet: whole foods, protein-rich, healthy fats, avoid processed sugar. Supplements: adaptogens (ashwagandha, rhodiola), magnesium, vitamin C or Sara Banta's Cortisol Reset Detox Recovery: sleep, restorative exercise (yoga, walking, pilates), breathwork, meditation.   Connect with Sara: Website - Accelerated Health Products and Sara Banta Health Facebook - Accelerated Health Products  Instagram - @acceleratedhealthproducts  X - Sara Banta  YouTube - @AcceleratedHealthSaraBanta  TikTok - @ahpsupplements_    Other Episodes You Might Like: Previous Episode - The New Menopause Therapy: Confessions of a Femme Fatale Next Episode - Aging with Power, (Without an Outage) with Vonda Wright More Like This: To Detox and If So How to Detox: Midlife Woman to Midlife Woman Is Your Liver Preventing Muscle Growth in Menopause? How to Exercise with High or Low Cortisol in Menopause Cortisol and Exercise in Menopause   Resources: On September 1, enjoy Sara Banta's Accelerated Health Products: Cortisol Reset Detox to restore your body's natural stress response. Join the Hot, Not Bothered! Challenge to learn why timing matters and why what works for others is not working for you.  

Share your Field Stories!Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! On today's episode Nic and Laura talk behind the scenes at EPR! Help us continue to create great content! If you'd like to sponsor a future episode hit the support podcast button or visit www.environmentalprofessionalsradio.com/sponsor-formPlease be sure to ✔️subscribe, ⭐rate and ✍review.This podcast is produced by the National Association of Environmental Professionals (NAEP). Check out all the NAEP has to offer at NAEP.org.Music CreditsIntro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace MesaOutro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs MullerSupport the showThanks for listening! A new episode drops every Friday. Like, share, subscribe, and/or sponsor to help support the continuation of the show. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and all your favorite podcast players.

Kevin covered the following stories: The U.S. Labor Department released the Weekly Jobless Claims; the National Association of Realtors reported July Existing Home Sales; Walmart released their 2nd Quarter revenue, earnings and their outlook for the remainder of the year; a CNBC headline "Trump tariffs affect Walmart prices" (hint: NOT SO FAST)  . Kevin has the details, digs through the numbers, puts the information in historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions along the way. Oil reacts to stalled Russia-Ukraine peace talks and an uncertain path, U.S. data showing signs of strong demand.

With the price of newly built homes being close to the price of buying an existing home, we tackle the question of whether now is a good time to buy a new construction home. What does it take to build a house from scratch? How do you budget? How do you get homebuilder incentives? How long will it take? What is the difference between a production builder and a custom builder? We discuss with REALTOR® Jacob Smith from Burlington, Vermont, Joel Berner from realtor.com and Danushka Nanayakkara from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). We also find out if mirrored cabinets and dressers are hot or not.

In this week's episode, our experts review the now-stale minutes from July's Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's new dovishness from the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium, and what to look out for in the coming weeks as we near the end of a notable summer. Speakers:Brian Pietrangelo, Managing Director of Investment StrategyGeorge Mateyo, Chief Investment OfficerRajeev Sharma, Managing Director of Fixed IncomeStephen Hoedt, Head of Equities 02:30 – We highlight this week's economic releases: the Labor Department reports that weekly unemployment claims rose slightly but remained stable over the past 18 months, and the National Association of Realtors reports that existing home sales rose by 2% in July.03:43 – The July FOMC minutes were hawkish, and show Committee member concerns over tariff-driven inflation, elevated asset valuations, and that the current fed funds rate may not be far above neutral. The meeting pre-dated the weaker July employment report and subsequent shift in focus from inflation to the cooling jobs market.04:52 – Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell appears to pivot towards a dovish stance and emphasizing the downside risks to the labor market at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium; expectations of a rate-cutting cycle beginning in September shot up and Treasury yields dropped sharply in response.07:47 – Political turmoil continues to put pressure on the Federal Reserve on allegations of mortgage fraud against Fed Governor Lisa Cook, who has been pressured to resign or face removal by President Trump. 12:45 – We discuss the apparent bifurcation in the economy, with weakness in consumer spending offset by strength in business investment, particularly in data centers and artificial intelligence.16:46 – We anticipate how the market might react to an upcoming earnings report from Nvidia and news that the federal government is considering taking ownership positions in tech stocks. Additional ResourcesRead: Key Questions: How Does Key Wealth Define Quality Within Our Internally Managed Equity Strategies?Watch: Planning Implications of the One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) ActKey Questions | Key Private BankSubscribe to our Key Wealth Insights newsletterWeekly Investment BriefFollow us on LinkedIn

This week's Overdrive Radio podcast is a re-air for owner-operators and other truckers on the occasion of the 2025 Commercial Vehicle Safety Alliance Brake Safety Week inspection blitz. Get over to OverdriveOnline.com for an updated list of our Top 10 toughest states for brakes violations, to get a bit of a clue into where you might expect inspectors' scrutiny of braking systems to be most intense this coming week: https://www.overdriveonline.com/csas-data-trail/article/15753592/10-toughest-states-for-truck-brake-inspections-as-blitz-arrives Brake Safety Week runs August 24-31, and along with reporting around brake-system inspections there for this episode we revisit a talk with Fleet Safety Services' Jeff Davis delivered at the 2023 annual conference of the National Association of Small Trucking Companies. Davis offered time-honored ways fleets and owner-operators can avoid the inspection to start with. Even in an inspection-blitz week like this one, fundamentals still apply. And keeping on top of maintenance -- particularly with regard to lights -- is a big part of it, but there's more to it than that. So we'll just let the tape roll on the past episode this week. Keep in mind it was released ahead of the Spring 2024 Roadcheck event, initially. There are plenty references to that now-bygone inspection blitz event throughout, but nonetheless plenty to chew on from Davis. More brakes-related resources at OverdriveOnline.com/15753592

Kevin covered the following stories: The U.S. Labor Department released the Weekly Jobless Claims; the National Association of Realtors reported July Existing Home Sales; Walmart released their 2nd Quarter revenue, earnings and their outlook for the remainder of the year; a CNBC headline "Trump tariffs affect Walmart prices" (hint: NOT SO FAST)  . Kevin has the details, digs through the numbers, puts the information in historical perspective, offers his insights and opinions along the way. Oil reacts to stalled Russia-Ukraine peace talks and an uncertain path, U.S. data showing signs of strong demand.

*Content Warning: Institutional child abuse ‘troubled teen industry' (TTI), childhood abuse, upsetting topics, suicidal ideation, crime. *Free + Confidential Resources + Safety Tips: somethingwaswrong.com/resources    *Learn more about Dr. Stephanie Hartselle, MD: Website - hartselleandassociates.com/ LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/stephanie-hartselle-md-79215419/ Instagram - instagram.com/stephaniehartsellemd/ Facebook - facebook.com/stephaniehartsellemd/ *SWW S23 Theme Song & Artwork: The S24 cover art is by the Amazing Sara Stewart Follow Something Was Wrong: Website: somethingwaswrong.com IG: instagram.com/somethingwaswrongpodcast TikTok: tiktok.com/@somethingwaswrongpodcast Follow Tiffany Reese: Website: tiffanyreese.me IG: instagram.com/lookieboo *Sources: Aacap. Facts for Families. www.aacap.org/AACAP/Families_and_Youth/Facts_for_Families Accessing Essentials. www.cerealfordinner.org/access/mental-health-care. Hartselle, M.D., Stephanie, et al. “Media Representation of Boys.” Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, July 2025, www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1056499325000525. “NATSAP Outcomes &Amp; Evaluation Report - National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs.” National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs, 13 Mar. 2025, natsap.org/natsap-outcomes-evaluation-report. Stop Abuse in Residential Treatment for Troubled Teens  | ASTART for Teens. astartforteens.org/home. Robert Friedman, Ph.D. “A START: Warnings for Parents Considering a Residential Placement for Their Child or Adolescent.” A START, 2005, astartforteens.org/assets/files/ASTART-Facts-and-Warning-Signs.pdf. The Alliance for the Safe, Therapeutic and Appropriate use of Residential Treatment (ASTART) “Stop Abuse in Residential Treatment for Troubled Teens” | ASTART for Teens, astartforteens.org/

This week we're joined by Ryan Russo, Executive Director of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO). Ryan shares with us more wisdom from the revised Urban Bikeway Design Guide and discusses the transformation of street systems and managing space for people and deliveries. NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide Online | Physical Book Urban Delivery by Bike Practitioner Paper +++ Get the show ad free on Patreon! Follow us on Bluesky, Threads, Instagram, YouTube, Flickr, Substack ... @theoverheadwire Follow us on Mastadon theoverheadwire@sfba.social Support the show on Patreon http://patreon.com/theoverheadwire Buy books on our Bookshop.org Affiliate site!  And get our Cars are Cholesterol shirt at Tee-Public! And everything else at http://theoverheadwire.com

Greetings!You're likely in the thick of it with back-to-school activities. But back-to-school isn't just about packing lunches and adjusting to new schedules. It's also a time when kids begin to hear harmful messages about food and bodies. In this episode of Sunny Side Up Nutrition Podcast, we're joined by Denise Hamburger, JD, founder and executive director of BE REAL USA, and Selena Salfen, MPH, RD, a public health dietitian working to shift systems toward size-inclusive, weight-neutral models of care. Together, they share insights on BE REAL's Let's Eat curriculum, a nutrition program for middle and high school students that focuses on tuned-in eating teaching students to consider their body cues, nutritional needs, food preferences, and past eating experiences. The lessons are designed to be inclusive across cultures, neurodiverse learners, and varying economic backgrounds.Click here to visit BE REAL USA, Let's EatKey Takeaways * Let's Eat is a new curriculum aimed at teaching nutrition without the influence of diet culture.* The curriculum is free and accessible to all students and educators. * Let's Eat encourages students to trust their bodies and make informed food choices.* The curriculum includes cultural sensitivity and celebrates diverse food practices.* A panel of 42 experts contributed to the development of Let's Eat.* Educators can access Let's Eat through professional development training.* BE REAL USA has ambassadors who are trained to deliver th.e curriculum* Denise and Selena chat about their favorite foods.Links to Resources Mentioned:* BE REAL's Let's Eat Middle and High School Nutrition Curriculum* BE REAL's Body Kind High School Body Image Curriculum* BE REAL's Ambassador Program* BE REAL's Body Kind Peer-Led College Body Confidence Seminar* National Alliance for Eating Disorders* Lutz, Alexander & Associates Nutrition Therapy* Pinney Davenport Nutrition, PLLCMore about Denise and SelenaDenise Hamburger, JDDenise Hamburger, JD, is the founder and executive director of BE REAL USA, a nonprofit that imagines a world where every child can grow up with a healthy relationship to food and their body. In 2016, Denise created a professional development workshop for teachers called Body Confident Schools and has delivered this training to over 10,000 educators around the world. With over 250 conference, keynote, and school presentations, Denise has presented at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health to the National Association of School Psychologists; at the Center for Disease Control to their Healthy Schools Division; at the United States Department of Agriculture to their Food and Nutrition Services Group; and to Amazon's Body Positive Peers Employee Resource Group.Denise co-developed Be Real's BodyKind high school, body image curriculum with a team of international body image academics, psychologists and teachers. BodyKind is the first body image curriculum developed for all students. It includes the body image experiences of people of different races, ethnicities, sexualities, gender identities, physical and mental abilities, and body sizes. BodyKind was tested in an 1150-student Randomized Control Trial in Ireland in 2024, and the program has proven to increase to student Body Appreciation, Self-Compassion and Body Appreciation. These aspects are associated with better self-esteem and better mental health.In 2025, Denise--with Ramsey County, MN Public Health--co-developed and launched a weight-neutral nutrition curriculum called Be Real's Let's Eat for middle school and high school students. Let's Eat focuses on Tuned-in Eating, which teaches students to integrate their own body cues, day's nutritional needs, food preferences and eating experiences into their eating patterns. Let's Eat lessons are relevant across cultures, neurodiversity, and economic status.Denise has a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Michigan Law School and was an environmental attorney in her first career. She co-wrote the legal treatise Pollution in the United Kingdom. Denise is an Anti-Bias, Antiracist Certified curriculum writer. She has spent the last 25 years involved in education nonprofits, including Chicago's After School Matters.Instagram: @berealusaWebsite: www.berealusa.orgSelena Salfen, MPH, RDSelena Salfen, MPH, RD (she/her) works on chronic disease prevention in local public health, focusing on sustainable policy, systems and environmental change. Much of her work involves transitioning public health and healthcare systems from weight-focused to size inclusive, weight neutral models of practice. She also presents to educators and school-based health clinics on why weight neutral, eating disorder-aware education is vital to improving and protecting student health.TranscriptElizabeth: Welcome to Sunny Side Up Nutrition, a podcast created by three moms striving to bring you evidence-based information to help support you and the children in your life.Your hosts are Anna Lutz and me, Elizabeth Davenport, both registered dietitians, and Anna McKay, a dietitian-to-be and certified personal trainer.Anna Lutz co-owns Lutz Alexander and Associates Nutrition Therapy in Raleigh, North Carolina, and I co-own Pinney Davenport Nutrition in the D.C. metro area. And Anna McKay is in the process of completing her dietetic internship.Just a note that this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only. Thanks for being here.In this episode, we're joined by two of the co-creators of the Be Real Let's Eat curriculum: Denise Hamburger and Selena Salfen.Elizabeth: Denise Hamburger, JD, is the founder and executive director of Be Real USA, a nonprofit that imagines a world where every child can grow up with a healthy relationship to food and their body.In 2025, Denise—with Ramsey County, Minnesota Public Health—co-developed and launched a weight-neutral curriculum called Be Real's Let's Eat for middle school and high school students.Elizabeth: Selena Salfen, MPH, RD (she/her), is a registered dietitian in public health. Much of her work involves transitioning public health and healthcare systems from weight-focused to size-inclusive, weight-neutral models of practice.Denise and Selena are two of the many experts who came together to create the curriculum. It focuses on Tuned-in Eating, which teaches students to integrate their own body cues, nutritional needs, food preferences, and eating experiences into their eating patterns. Lessons are relevant across cultures, neurodiversity, and economic status.Anna: Denise and Selena, we are so happy you're here. Welcome.Multiple speakers: Great to be here. Thank you, thank you.Anna: Let's jump in. To start us off, can you each tell us a bit about yourself and the work you do?Denise: Thank you. I guess I'll start. I'm Denise Hamburger. I'm the founder and executive director of Be Real USA, a nonprofit that focuses on providing the highest quality resources on body image and eating disorder prevention for schools.I've been talking to educators and parents for almost ten years now about how to create body-confident environments in schools and in homes. We have a presentation I've been giving for ten years called Body Confident Schools, which helps the adults in young people's lives develop language and understanding that supports raising kids with body confidence.This language and understanding is very different from what we get in diet culture. In the last five years, Be Real added a new piece to its mission: curriculum development. Teachers had been asking us for better resources on body image and nutrition, and we felt compelled to develop them ourselves.Our high school body image curriculum, BodyKind, was developed by a team of academics and tested in schools. We've tested it three times, and we've had four published papers on its feasibility, accessibility, and effectiveness.We're starting that same kind of testing now with our new curriculum, Let's Eat. We also have 150 ambassadors across the country who present our workshops and share our curriculum.Anna: Wow. We certainly need new curricula, so we're so glad you're doing this work and that you're in this space.Elizabeth: I want to hear more about the ambassadors, but we'll leave that for later.Selena: I'm Selena Salfen. I'm a registered dietitian, but I work in public health, so I don't see clients one-on-one. I focus more on macro-level policy, systems, and environmental change.I work on a chronic disease prevention grant, where we support schools in areas like food access, nutrition, and mental health. That's how I ended up working on Let's Eat.I'm also very committed to bringing size-inclusive, weight-neutral work into public health and undoing some of the harm done since the 1990s, when public health began to hyper-focus on weight, weight control, and BMI.I've done a lot of work with WIC, integrating weight-inclusive practices, and expanded that work into other community-based health programs.I'm also a parent to a child with sensory needs around food, which shapes my perspective. And I'm a Be Real ambassador—that's how Denise and I met.Anna: That's wonderful. I really appreciate the work you're doing. I imagine it sometimes feels like swimming upstream in public health.Selena: You know what? It's been better than I expected—and actually really exciting.Elizabeth: That's great to hear.Anna: We're recording this episode just as school is starting across the country, and we're excited to talk about this new curriculum. Denise, can you tell us more about Let's Eat and what inspired you to create it?Denise: Sure. I mentioned earlier that I've been speaking with teachers for the last ten years. They'd often ask me what curriculum they should be using—specifically one that doesn't harm students' body image.We know from research that what's typically being taught reflects diet culture and can be harmful. For example, a few studies have asked eating disorder patients what triggered their eating disorder, and 14% in both studies mentioned their “healthy eating curriculum” in school.So at Be Real, we decided to develop a curriculum that focuses on body cues and interoceptive awareness—helping students learn to eat based on what their bodies are telling them.Selena was reviewing our BodyKind curriculum when we started talking, and she mentioned she was looking for a weight-neutral curriculum for Minneapolis. A lightbulb went off, and we decided to create one together.It's been an amazing collaboration. I come from one angle, Selena comes from another, and we always land in the same place. I focus on making sure lessons are engaging and accessible, while Selena makes sure they reflect the needs of neurodiverse kids, immigrant kids, and food-insecure kids.The result is a free, two-day curriculum for both middle and high school students. It aligns with the HECAT standards, comes in a 42-page toolkit with lesson plans, slides, and worksheets, and includes required professional development for teachers so they can shift away from diet culture before teaching it.We were able to create this thanks to funders like the National Alliance for Eating Disorders, Ramsey County Public Health, and the Minnesota Department of Health.Anna: Wow. That's fabulous. We're so excited that Let's Eat exists. And I love that it's a two-day lesson plan—not something overwhelming. Teachers often worry about how curricula fit with state standards, but as you said, this aligns well.Elizabeth: Selena, what concerns do you have about how nutrition is typically taught to children?Selena: First, I want to acknowledge that educators who teach “good and bad” foods mean well. They've been enlisted in what's been called the “war on obesity” since the 2000s.Good people want children to avoid chronic disease, but they've been told the way to do this is through weight control, calorie tracking, and restrictive eating. We now know this approach is harmful, not evidence-based, and doesn't actually make kids physically or mentally healthier—or smaller.Many existing nutrition education tools encourage weight or body fat measurements, food logs, calorie counting, or labeling foods as good/bad. This can trigger disordered eating, poor body image, and food obsession.With Let's Eat, we focus instead on helping students learn about food in a way that builds trust in their bodies and avoids shame, guilt, or fear.Elizabeth: Denise, how does Let's Eat differ from other nutrition curricula?Denise: Great question. First, we don't use body size as a proxy for health. Instead, we empower students to be the experts on their own eating.We avoid shame-based language, rules, or fear around food. Instead, we use guidelines that leave room for nuance. We also encourage reflection on past eating experiences—like noticing how your body felt after eating—and using that information for the future.Another big difference is the diversity of input. Thanks to Selena, we had 42 experts review the curriculum, including dietitians, doctors, teachers, researchers, body image experts, and students.We're proud of how inclusive it is, and how it focuses on empowerment, curiosity, and calmness around food.Anna: I really enjoyed lending a little part to the project. What I love most is how you've taken weight out of it. Weight is woven through so much of nutrition curricula, but kids are supposed to be gaining weight. Their bodies are supposed to be changing. Let's Eat acknowledges this and empowers students to tune in and trust that they are the experts of their own bodies.Denise: Exactly. What we teach is Tuned-in Eating. It's about helping students feel capable and confident when it comes to food. We encourage them to be curious about past eating experiences—what worked and what didn't—and use that to guide future choices.Instead of rules, we provide guidelines. Rules can encourage black-and-white thinking, but guidelines leave room for flexibility.Selena: One big difference is how we approach foods that students are often taught to fear. For example, ultra-processed foods or sugar. Educators often feel pressure to talk about these, but fear-based teaching isn't helpful.Instead, we explain concepts like whole vs. refined grains in a way that avoids shame. If you prefer white rice, you can pair it with protein, fat, and fiber to balance the meal. We also celebrate cultural foods like rice and tortillas, which are often unfairly stigmatized.We're also committed to making Let's Eat neurodivergent-friendly and trauma-informed. Not every student can rely on hunger cues, and that's okay. Instead of insisting on “no distractions at meals,” we encourage students to experiment with what works for them—whether that includes a tablet or not.We also acknowledge food access and insecurity. Not all students have choices, so we avoid presenting nutrition in a way that assumes unlimited access.I'm also proud that we brought in such diverse perspectives. Reviewers included Dr. Whitney Trotter and Angela Goens, co-founders of the BIPOC Eating Disorder Conference, as well as Anna (you!) and many others.Anna: It really shows. The diversity of expertise and voices makes Let's Eat so much stronger.Creating a curriculum like this must have been a challenge. It's so much easier to be black and white—this is good, this is bad. But you've created something inclusive and nuanced.Denise: Yes, that was one of the challenges. We had to decide how much detail was actually helpful. Thanks to Selena, we avoided going too far down rabbit holes and instead kept lessons high-level and practical.We focus on the basics—carbohydrates, fats, protein—with a nod to vitamins, minerals, and fiber. Just enough to help students fuel their day without overwhelming them.Selena: And credit goes to Allie Latvala, who did a beautiful job writing for the age range. It's a big responsibility to protect young people, and while no curriculum will be perfect, we've done our best to make it safe and inclusive.Selena: Yes, and we'll continue to make adjustments as we receive feedback. We listened to students and teachers during evaluation, and we'll keep listening if improvements are needed.Anna: That's so important. What did students and teachers say during the pilot?Denise: We tested it with 250 students. Their feedback was invaluable—everything from whether the images felt too young or too old, to what activities were engaging.One teacher, Sarah, had her students list reasons we eat, beyond hunger. They filled the board with 100 reasons—celebrations, traditions, comfort, fun. We added that activity to the curriculum, because it gets students thinking about eating as a multi-dimensional experience, not just fuel.Anna: I love that. So many nutrition classes reduce eating to just nutrients or body size. Asking students to reflect on the many reasons we eat helps them appreciate the full picture.Elizabeth: Denise, for parents and educators who want to bring Let's Eat into schools, how can they access it?Denise: There are two main ways. First, it's free. At conferences, we hand out postcards with QR codes. Scanning the code takes you to our professional development training. After completing the training and a short test, teachers gain access to the full toolkit, slides, and worksheets.Second, educators can become Be Real Ambassadors. Ambassadors get access to our presentations and resources, and they bring them into their communities. Right now, we have about 150 ambassadors around the world—teachers, dietitians, public health educators, and more.We provide them with templates, letters, agendas, slides, and other materials so they can succeed in sharing this work locally.Anna: That's incredible. You're not only creating a curriculum—you're creating a movement.Anna: What challenges did you face in creating a curriculum that's both helpful and impactful without causing harm?Selena: It was definitely tricky. We could have created a “masterpiece” that said exactly what we wanted, but it might not have been usable in schools. Teachers often have to align with CDC HECAT standards.We worked hard to meet most of the knowledge expectations, but we were intentional about skipping some. For example, one standard asks students to “analyze healthy and risky approaches to weight management.” We didn't include that, because it would reinforce harmful weight-focused thinking.Another standard says to “avoid sugary drinks.” Instead, we reframed it around hydration—water, milk, and other options—while acknowledging that sugary drinks exist without making them forbidden.Denise: Teachers don't expect every curriculum to meet every single standard, but we wanted to cover most. And it was important that Let's Eat still teach the core of nutrition—like macronutrients and hydration—just in a less fear-based way.Selena: Exactly. We frame carbohydrates as “short energy” and protein and fat as “long energy.” It helps students contextualize food in ways that feel supportive, not restrictive.Anna: That's such a refreshing approach. All right, let's move into our last question. We love to ask our guests: what's one of your favorite foods right now? It doesn't have to be forever, just what you're enjoying at the moment and why.Denise: I just made a summer fruit buttermilk cake with Michigan cherries, blackberries, peaches, and blueberries. We had four cups of fruit in it. My kids were visiting, and we finished the whole cake in under an hour. It was so good I've been waking up thinking about when I can make it again.Anna: That sounds amazing. And you may not know this, but Elizabeth used to be a professional baker.Denise: Oh, then I'll have to send you the recipe!Elizabeth: Please do. Selena, what about you?Selena: I had to think about this. I love all foods, so nothing stood out at first. But then I realized I've been cooking a lot from the cookbook Curry Every Day by Atul Kochhar. It's full of curries from around the world. I know it's summer, but I still love making them.Elizabeth: That sounds wonderful. I'm going to have to check that out.Anna: Thank you both so much for joining us and for sharing your work. Let's Eat is such an important resource, and we'll link everything in the show notes so parents and teachers can access the training and curriculum.Denise: Thank you—it was a pleasure.Selena: Thank you so much.Anna: And thank you to our listeners. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a moment to rate and review us in your podcast app. Just scroll down to the stars in Sunny Side Up Nutrition Podcast and leave a review.We'd also love for you to join our 12-module membership, Take the Frenzy Out of Feeding. Visit our website and look for the Membership tab to join today. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit snutrition.substack.com

NPR, Mayor Frm Legislator, Councilman, U.S. Presidential Appointee, AmbassadorFord got his start in politics working for U.S. Sen. Robert Kennedy's presidential campaign, and he later worked for the U.S. Department of Justice Community Relations Service.A native of the great State of Alabama, Johnny Lawrence Ford grew up in Tuskegee, the home of Tuskegee University, “the Pride of the Swift-Growing South,” also the home of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. He graduated from Tuskegee Institute High School and received his B.A. degree in history and sociology from Knoxville College, Knoxville, Tennessee, and a Masters of Public Administration from Auburn University at Montgomery. He also received 5 honorary degrees including The Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Alabama A & M University in 2004.Elected as the 1st African-American Mayor of the City of Tuskegee in 1972, Mayor Ford served six consecutive terms from 1972 – 1996 and was again elected to that office in September, 2004 and 2012. In 1998, he was elected Representative from District 82 to the State Legislature, where he served on the County and Municipal Government Committee, the Lee County Legislation Committee, the Health Committee, and the Tourism and Travel Committee. The Honorable Ford retained his legislative position until his return to office as mayor of Tuskegee.As Founder of the World Conference of Mayors, Inc., The Honorable Ford also serves as Secretary General. He is a Founder and President-Emeritus of the National Conference of Black Mayors, Inc., and a former member of the Alabama Foreign Trade Commission and the Alabama Municipal Electric Authority. While Mayor, Banjul, The Gambia was designated as the Tuskegee Sister City; therefore, he has worked closely with the country, The Gambia, for many years. Furthermore, he has served as Co-Chairman of the National Policy Alliance, which is an arm of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies. The National Policy Alliance Center for Political and Economic Studies is comprised of The National Bar Association, The Congressional Black Caucus, The World Conference of Mayors, The National Conference of Black Mayors, The National Association of Black County Officials, The National Black Caucus of School Board Members, Blacks in Government, The National Black Caucus of Local Elected Officials, as well as the Joint Center For Political and Economic Development.The Honorable Ford has served as a former U.S. Presidential Appointee to the National Advisory Committee on Federalism, and the Intergovernmental Policy Advisory Committee on Trade. He is a past President of the Alabama League of Municipalities, and the first African-American in Alabama History to be elected to this statewide position.He is married to the Honorable Judge Joyce London Alexander, Retired, Former Chief U. S. Magistrate Judge, of the District of Massachusetts. She was the First Female Chief United States Magistrate Judge in the USA. She is Past Chair of the Judicial Council of the National Bar Association, and of the Board of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.He is also the proud father of three adult children…John, Christopher, and Tiffany…The Honorable Ford has four grandchildren. The Fords have a second home on Garden Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.© 2025 Building Abundant Success!!2025 All Rights ReservedJoin Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBASSpot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23baAmazon Music ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBASAudacy:  https://tinyurl.com/BASAud

This week on Power House, Diego Sanchez chats with Colin Allen, Executive Director of the American Property Owners Alliance (APOA), about their housing advocacy efforts in Congress through digital and grassroots efforts.  Before his role at APOA, Colin spent over a decade working on housing legislative efforts at the National Association of Realtors. He discusses the impact of the recent boost in the state and local tax deduction (SALT) cap and shares how initiatives like the More Homes on the Market Act and the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act tackle the housing crisis by boosting supply and making homeownership more accessible. Here's what you'll learn: How the APOA is tackling housing supply issues with innovative solutions like the More Homes on the Market Act and the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act. The role of federal and local partnerships in driving meaningful change for homeowners. How grassroots advocacy is reshaping the legislative landscape for property rights. The impact of recent tax reforms on homeownership and the broader housing market. Strategies to support first-time homebuyers through financial education and awareness initiatives. Related to this episode:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Colin Allen | LinkedIn American Property Owners Alliance Announces Executive Director Appointment American Property Owners Alliance ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠HousingWire | YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enjoy the episode! The Power House podcast brings the biggest names in housing to answer hard-hitting questions about industry trends, operational and growth strategy, and leadership. Join HousingWire president Diego Sanchez every Thursday morning for candid conversations with industry leaders to learn how they're differentiating themselves from the competition. Hosted and produced by the HousingWire Content Studio. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Highlights from this episode: Go to Jail Shopping Problems Turtle Season Hospital Lighting Intro and outro music by Doctor Turtle Sponsored by The National Association of Innovative Lighting Distributors visit https://naild.org/Headlines and Sources can be found at https://restoringdarkness.com/

Public trust in government is near historic lows—but a new coalition of federal, state, and local communicators is working to change that. The Bonfire Collective, launched by the National Association of Government Communicators and George Washington University, is rethinking how agencies engage with the public. Their goal: to make government communication more strategic, more human, and more effective at restoring credibility. The group's latest research shows a direct link between how agencies communicate and how much citizens trust them. Here to explain how the Bonfire Collective plans to turn that insight into action is the co-founder of the initiative and Director of Public Affairs for Baytown, Texas, Thomas Reeves.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

50:02- Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis – Retired U.S. Army officer and military analyst with experience in Russia and Ukraine; author of Preparing for World War III Topic: Trump pushing for a meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy 58:37- Michelle Esquenazi – President of the National Association of Bail Agents (NABA) & CEO of Empire Bail Bonds in NY Topic: “Politicians want you to pay for ‘cashless bail.’ It’s dangerous and expensive” (Fox News op-ed) 1:09:33- Stephen Moore – Resident Scholar of Economics on the Joe Piscopo Show, Chairman of FreedomWorks Task Force on Economic Revival, former Trump economic adviser, and author of The Trump Economic Miracle: And the Plan to Unleash Prosperity Again Topic: Federal Reserve and other economic news of the day 1:31:58- Call from Rich Kimball, Donald Trump's helicopter pilot 2:00:03- Gianno Caldwell – Fox News Political Analyst, founder of the Caldwell Institute for Public Safety, and host of the Outloud with Gianno Caldwell podcast Topic: Shootings and bomb scares in New York, Trump’s crime crackdown 2:11:41- Pastor Corey Brooks – Founder and Senior Pastor of New Beginnings Church of Chicago, and CEO of Project H.O.O.D. Communities Development Corporation Topic: “Do you trust a system that's failing at education to handle your child's mental health?” (Fox News op-ed)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ever check all the boxes of success…and still feel like something's missing? You're not alone. In this episode, I sit down with empowerment coach and author Gia Lacqua to unpack why so many high-achieving women feel disconnected after “doing it all.” We talk about hidden wounds, why identity is the root of behavior, and how to stop performing for everyone else so you can finally show up for yourself. This one will hit home if you've ever wondered, “Is this really it?”Join our exclusive email list and unlock even more valuable insights, expert advice, and bonus content to enhance your relationship superpowers. —sign up HERE today!Connect with Barb BettsInstagram: @barbbettsFacebook: @barbarambettsYouTube: youtube/@barbbettsWebsite: www.barbbetts.comLet's Stay in Touch!https://www.liinks.co/barbbettsBarb Betts is a sought-after keynote speaker, seasoned real estate expert, passionate educator, and the CEO of The RECollective, a thriving boutique brokerage in Southern California. Barb has delighted countless stages including, Inman Connect, WomanUP!, and at the National Association of REALTORS® Annual Conference. Whether she's teaching on referrals, authenticity or leveraging relationships, Barb brings an honest, compassionate, and transparent approach to every single stage. As a real estate professional, with over 20 years experience, Barb has mastered the ever changing real estate landscape and the balance of running a vibrant brokerage. Through her signature course, Real Estate By Relationship®, Barb educates business builders on the exact systems, proc...

Bob Bertog, president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a certified landscape professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, joins John Williams to answer all of your lawn and garden questions. Bob says our water levels are now above average for the month with all the rain and that late August is a good […]

Bob Bertog, president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a certified landscape professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, joins John Williams to answer all of your lawn and garden questions. Bob says our water levels are now above average for the month with all the rain and that late August is a good […]

North Dakota Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread says North Dakota -- and America, really, since our state is hardly an independent nation -- is on an unsustainable trajectory when it comes to the cost of insurance and health care. On this Plain Talk, Godfread, who is also the current president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, argued that Congress, with its much-ballyhooed One Big Beautiful Bill Act, has made things worse. "With what happened in the budget reconciliation bill, I'm really worried about this upcoming open enrollment period." Godread, who is a Republican, argued that some of the provisions in the bill are "really going to harm consumers" and predicts "pretty significant rate increases across the board across the country." He said there is talk of Congress coming back and fixing some of these issues, but that will be too little too late.  "If they look at doing something, changing it in December, well, at that point, I've already gone on, shopped as a consumer, and realized the price is too high. I'm not going back in the last two weeks of the year to say, 'Oh, well, maybe this time they promise it's going to be better.'" Pricing healthy people out of the insurance market would narrow the pool and drive up costs, creating what Godfread described as a "death spiral." "We're on a track right now that is not sustainable, right? I mean, there is no more more to give when you get to health insurance premiums." On an unrelated topic, earlier this year, the state legislature passed a law merging the state's previously independent Securities Department under Godfread's office after controversial Securities Commissioner Karen Tyler went to work for the state's Industrial Commission. That Godfread's office is now in charge of the inquiry into the high-profile dissolution of Epic Companies. Godfread said he couldn't comment on that matter, specifically, but said he was surprised to learn that a restitution fund created by lawmakers to help mitigate those financially harmed by fraud was sitting empty. "Another piece that we found is back in 2019, there was a restitution fund that was created by the legislature for the Securities Department," he said. Under Tyler's leadership, "that fund has never had money put into it. That to me is a big problem." If you want to participate in Plain Talk, just give us a call or text at 701-587-3141. It's super easy — leave your message, tell us your name and where you're from, and we might feature it on an upcoming episode. To subscribe to Plain Talk, search for the show wherever you get your podcasts or use one of the links below. Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Pocket Casts | Episode Archive  

Bob Bertog, president of Bertog Landscape Co. in Wheeling and a certified landscape professional with the National Association of Landscape Professionals, joins John Williams to answer all of your lawn and garden questions. Bob says our water levels are now above average for the month with all the rain and that late August is a good […]

AI therapy? Not if you're in Illinois. The state has banned the use of artificial intelligence for mental health therapy. It is just the third state to put restrictions on the use of AI in the field, joining Nevada and Utah. While some therapists support the ban, others are opposed, arguing that AI allows them to be more present in their client meetings. Others also vouch for AI therapy as a cheaper mental health care option for those who cannot afford professional care. Reset hears more about what the ban could mean for mental health care patients and providers in Illinois. Today's panel: Aaron Weiner, PhD, licensed clinical psychologist and addiction specialist; Blase Ur, assistant professor of computer science, University of Chicago; Joel Rubin, executive director, National Association of Social Workers, Illinois chapter; Mario Treto Jr., Secretary of Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. For a full archive of Reset interviews, head over to wbez.org/reset.

What if the real reason high-achieving leaders plateau has nothing to do with drive, strategy, or mindset—but something deeper, hardwired into the brain's survival instincts? In this episode, our host Denise Cagan is joined by a fascinating guest, and together they uncover the invisible ceiling that holds leaders back, even when they're doing everything right. Mitch Weisburgh, creator of the Mind Shifting Method, joins the show to discuss his innovative approach to revealing how unconscious survival patterns sabotage success. He explains how leaders can rewire their internal operating system to lead, decide, and scale without burning out. Drawing from neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and leadership strategy, Mitch shares the journey that led him from Education Technology to brain-based transformation, and the three essential elements every leader must master.   Welcome to a conversation that could shift the way you think, lead, and grow. About Your Host DCA Virtual Business Support President, Denise Cagan, has been working with small businesses for over 20 years. She has served on the boards of professional organizations such as Business Leaders of Charlotte (BLOC) and the National Association of Women Business Owners Charlotte (NAWBO). Denise is also a graduate of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Business Program, which is a program for small businesses that links learning to action for growth-oriented entrepreneurs. Recognized as a facilitator, problem solver, and builder, Denise enjoys speaking to business groups about social media for small businesses and motivating remote and work-from-home (WFH) teams. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Quality Systems Management from James Madison University. With extensive experience in outsourcing solutions that provide administrative, creative, marketing, and website support, she is able to help other small businesses grow and thrive. Connect with Denise DCA Virtual Business Support website. View and listen to Podcasts with Denise Cagan. LinkedIn

Is the government holding YOUR money right now without you knowing it?Across the U.S., states are holding over $70 billion in unclaimed money—and much of it belongs to everyday people just like you. This could be old paychecks, closed bank accounts, insurance payouts, utility deposits, tax refunds, or even forgotten savings bonds.The shocking truth: 1 in 7 Americans has unclaimed property, and the average claim is over $2,000. Most people never check—leaving their money to sit untouched for years.In this video, I'll show you: ✅ How to check MissingMoney.com and state databases for your unclaimed money ✅ Which federal databases to search (IRS refunds, VA, PBGC pensions, HUD refunds, FDIC, TreasuryHunt) ✅ The exact steps to file a claim for free ✅ How to avoid scams and fake “money finders” ✅ A personal story of how my wife claimed her forgotten final paycheckDon't leave money on the table. Take action today—you could be sitting on a surprise financial windfall that's already yours.

Discover how Andy Novins turns business challenges into big wins! Andy shares with host Andrew Stotz how he uses Deming strategies to outsmart competitors, watch for market shifts, and win loyal clients in one of the toughest industries around. TRANSCRIPT Andrew Stotz: My name is Andrew Stotz and I'll be your host as we continue our journey into the teachings of Dr. W. Edwards Deming. Today, I'm here with featured guest Andy Novins. Andy, are you ready to join and share your Deming journey?   Andy Novins: I sure am. Yep.   Andrew Stotz: We've done a lot of prep for this, had some good conversations, and I'm looking forward to it. Let me introduce you to the audience. Andy first got introduced to the teachings of Dr. Deming more than 30 years ago and has been hooked ever since. He attended Dr. Deming's four-day seminar in August of 1993, only four months before the passing of Dr. Deming on December 20th of 1993 at the age of 93. Andy was a co-owner of a women's athletic apparel company, which was eventually purchased by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. For the past 23 years, he's been applying Dr. Deming's philosophy to his work in real estate, which traditionally has operated in what could be described as in opposition to the teachings of Dr. Deming. Andy, why don't you tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now and maybe a little bit about how you got into what you're doing now, and then later we're going to talk a little bit about your experience with Dr. Deming and all that. But just let us know, where are you at? What are you doing?   Andy Novins: Okay. Well, I am in Northern Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., and after my partners and I sold the company that Andrew just referred to, I had to decide what I was going to do. And I had about six months to do that because part of the contract required me to help the purchaser, which originally was Russell Corporation, a big athletic, they made all the Major League Baseball uniforms and everything. We had to transfer my company's systems to their systems, and that was one of the worst six months of my career, watching everything we had done, which was really all Deming-based, being sort of dismantled and worked into another Fortune 500 company at the time. It was, somewhat, actually it was a few years later that Berkshire Hathaway bought it, and it was because Russell was not doing very well. It was a rescue-type purchase by Berkshire Hathaway, which sort of had some satisfaction in mind that their systems weren't all that good. So that's where I got into Deming, and I've taken a lot of what I learned from the apparel company into real estate, which, as Andrew just mentioned, is very volume-centric, volume-focused, and focusing on processes as opposed to systems.   Andrew Stotz: And in the real estate world, for those people that don't know, let's say real estate, what position are you in? For instance, my sister is a mortgage broker in Maine, and that's a different place within the whole sphere of it, but maybe you can explain exactly where you are in the value chain.   Andy Novins: Okay. We focus on residential real estate. What we call in real estate farm, okay? I send out 5,000 newsletters a month that show to eight different areas, really, but they're all within, believe it or not, two miles of my house. And those news, I've been doing that for over 20 years. I've never made a cold call. I will never call anybody and say, are you thinking of selling or anything like that. Yet, using this process, which is all really Deming-based, I've done about 10 times the volume of any other realtor in the 5,000 homes that I service. It's the process... I don't want to use process. The system we used is based on Michael Porter, his concept of competitive advantage. And it's a system that's focused on a value chain, things that we do that other people can't do. For example, there are close to 300 sales a year in my 5,000 home market. I see every one of them. And when you see a house that's on the market, you know a lot more than anybody else does by looking at pictures. If you've ever been to an open house and after seeing it on the internet, it's a lot different than what you saw in the pictures. No other agent can do that because most agents in my area focus on Northern Virginia, which would be about 20,000 transactions a year, not 300. So they can't even try to compete with me in my area. So that's the whole concept of it is doing things. As Michael Porter would say, you have a value proposition. That's my expertise in my local area.   Andrew Stotz: Porter talks about different strategies. One, he says, is the low-cost leader. Another is the differentiation. And the third one he talks about is focus and where you're focused on a niche in the market. And then I guess I always kind of think that really he's talking about two, because with focus, you're picking a niche, but then you're going to either be a low-cost leader or probably a differentiator in that focused area. But when you talk about Porter and what he's teaching, can you explain a little bit more for those people that don't know what he talked about?   Andy Novins: Sure. Yes. Basically, yes. I mean, I'll never forget. My partner and I were at a breakfast, realtor breakfast at one point, and there was an agent sitting across the table from us and he said, I just got this listing. And he said, but I had to go down to 1%. And he's, you know, for commission. And at that time, commissions were pretty much 3%. And he kind of looked at us and said, that's better than nothing, right? And that's the low-cost. Low-cost producers will never win. It'll always be somebody else. And Porter says, you can't be the best either. Okay. There's no such thing as the best realtor. There's always going to be somebody else. So the concept for real estate is picking a niche, that for me, it was farming. I'm a pretty good writer. So I write a newsletter, and people call me when they're ready to sell their house. And it's worked beautifully for... I started that in 2003. Okay. But there's people that focus on luxury, the luxury market or people that focus on first time buyers, or people that focus on... There's all kinds of different niches downsizing or upsizing. And so you can become an expert in anything. And that's how you differentiate yourself in real estate.   Andrew Stotz: And that concept of not competing to be best that Porter talks about is great because it also forces you to think. You're focused on the wrong thing if you're focusing on how to beat the competitor. And I always enjoyed the fact that Deming was so focused on the customer.   Andy Novins: Yes.   Andrew Stotz: And that, I think with Porter, I like that. But with Deming, I just really love the idea that he saw quality in the eyes of the customer. He saw innovation and continuous improvement in relation to the customer as primary over trying to benchmark off of some competitor.   Andy Novins: Exactly. And if I go back to my apparel business, the name of our company was Moving Comfort, and we just made women's apparel. Nobody else ever stuck to just that. We were the only company. Just, everybody broadened out to try to get more. So again, it's the same concept of a niche. Okay. But one of the policies, I guess, we've developed, it was a Deming related policy, which was fun, okay, was when we made a mistake, which we often did, whether we shipped somebody the wrong thing or we did other things, our objective was to make the, delight the customer, as he would say, make them happy we made the mistake. And that didn't matter what that cost to do that, sending them free stuff, doing whatever. And I think that's a Deming concept that we used in the apparel business aside from many, many others. Back to real estate, that's, I don't know anybody else in the Washington area that does what we do, because nobody's willing, that's the so-called trade-offs. Nobody's willing to say, I'm just going to focus on 5,000 houses.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. It's scary.   Andy Novins: They can pick whatever they get.   Andrew Stotz: Yep. Yep. And maybe why don't we now go back to August of 1993. How did you find yourself in a four-day seminar? And I'm kind of jealous because what... My seminars I went to in '90 and '92 were two-day seminars.   Andy Novins: Really? Okay.   Andrew Stotz: And I had thought that he... I had thought by that time, maybe he was only doing two days, but then I learned that he was still doing four days. But what got you to that seminar? Where was it, and what got you there?   Andy Novins: Okay, I was going on vacation. Okay, this was in 1990. We were going to go to Cancun. And there's this, I guess they're still around, but there was a bookstore in DC on K Street called Reiter's. And it was all business and science. And I used to go there because pre-Amazon or anything like that. I think it was even pre-Borders. But I used to go there and spend an afternoon looking at books. And I found Out of the Crisis. And I brought it home and I said to my wife, by perusing through it, I didn't know anything about Deming at that point. But perusing through it, it just struck me as something I really wanted to read. And I went home and I said, I'm taking this book to Cancun, and I'm going to sit on the beach and read it. Well, I actually didn't read it till got home. But I got completely enthralled with it.   Andy Novins: And being in suburban DC, we're like eight miles from the White House. The Deming Study Group was very active in DC. Dr. Deming lived in DC. And there were just a lot of very well-known, famous speakers that would be part of our group, including Deming at one point, but I wasn't. But I think it was before I joined the group. So I read the book, joined the group, and after about three years, I had heard enough about the seminar that I wanted to go. And I went to that in Chicago. It was the first or second week of August of '93. And one of the things that I never really understood that Dr. Deming would say a lot was talking about being transformed, or the transformation that you get when you're studying his philosophies. And I always kind of said, well, that's not going to happen to me. It just was foreign to me. That third day of the seminar, I was transformed. I don't know how to describe it, but ever since then, I look at the world through his eyes and see things and think in systems and variability. And you get all that when you first get exposed to them, but you're not transformed. Somehow it all comes together. I couldn't describe it, I never thought it was, but that happened during that seminar.   Andrew Stotz: And what Dr. Deming talked about was the idea is that the person who's leading the organization has got to go through a transformation in order to truly implement this.   Andy Novins: Exactly.   Andrew Stotz: What was it like there? How many people were in the room? And what was your... You walked in knowing a bit. I walked in knowing nothing, basically. And it was just like, whoa. But I'm just curious, what were your first impressions? For those people that have never and never will have a chance to go in, give us a feeling about how it went.   Andy Novins: I don't know if I mentioned it was in Chicago.   Andrew Stotz: Yep.   Andy Novins: Okay. Which is a great city, and it was in the summer, which is often hot. But I was amazed because at that point, and I may be wrong, but I think it cost $1,000 to go. Okay. And he had 500, and I'm pretty sure that's about what it cost. And do you remember what yours was?   Andrew Stotz: Mine was about 500 people, for sure. I didn't pay for it, so Pepsi paid for it but I would think it was even more than that. But who knows? But maybe mine was a two-day, so it was less, I don't know.   Andy Novins: But it was 500 people. That's what I remember, because being a numbers person, I translate that to 500,000 for the four days. And so that kind of stuck in my mind. And he did a lot of them. And one of the things, too, that he did a lot of them, and I think, geez, he's making a lot of money doing this. He lived in a little tiny house on a street in Washington, and he worked in the basement. One of the things that happened to me after that, again, with the Deming Study Group, was his son-in-law, Bill Ratcliff, okay? Somewhere shortly after the four-day seminar, he called me and he said, I'm getting a lot of feedback, you guys at Moving Comfort are doing a lot of using Deming's theories and everything. Could I come and visit the company and you show me what you're doing? And I said, sure. I mean, any more exposure to any of the people interested in Deming at that point was fascinating to me. And so he came and he spent a good part of the day at the company. And then I'm not even sure if at the time I knew that he was Deming's son-in-law, but then we went out, his wife was Linda Deming Ratcliff, okay? And so he and Linda and my wife went out to dinner a couple of times after that. And it was fascinating to hear both of their stories about Dr. Deming. What I remember is Bill would say, we used to go over there on Sunday mornings and read the newspaper, and Dr. Deming would be down in the basement working. And he'd come up periodically and say, how are you doing, Bill? In his voice, and then go back down and work. And he constantly was focused on his work. And so those relationships just tied me into Deming forever, especially after the four-day seminar.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. I think it was a discussion with Bill Scherkenbach when I asked him about what it was like in the basement. And Bill was telling me, I don't think we got this recorded, but Bill was telling me that somebody asked him why you have all of this stuff around you and in your office. And he said, I'm desperate. I'm absolutely desperate. And with the idea that he was on such a mission. And I just feel like when I went to the seminar, the first one was in Washington, and then the second one was in Los Angeles. I didn't know how significant he would be in my life at the time, and I didn't understand the transformation I was going through. But what I did later really come to understand is that he inspired me to have a mission. And like, why am I doing what I'm doing? It's one thing for all of us to be busy, working really hard, doing all kinds of stuff and bringing value to our clients. But for what? What's the mission? And was a huge, that's a much bigger takeaway for me now than it was then. But what I witnessed was this man who is very old, just conveying an incredible message. So, yeah.   Andy Novins: Yeah, it was, and he was... Well, DemingNEXT, if anybody is involved in that and can see a lot of the videos with Dr. Deming, especially during the years that I was interested in watching and everything else, he just had a unique way of presentation, but he did have a sense of humor. And it was a dry sense of humor, I guess, maybe going with his dry martinis.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah, tell us that story about Deming Martini.   Andy Novins: Yes. As one of the sessions at the four-day seminar ended, apparently this Deming Martini is famous or was pretty well-known at that point. So he described how he loved martinis and he acted out the process of making one. And again, he's 93 and just you could tell this is just part of his life he loved. And he, so he kept his vermouth in the freezer, okay? And it was, and so he demonstrated how he poured the gin, and then he acted out like he went into the refrigerator freezer and took out the vermouth. And then he would not open the bottle, but he would wave the bottle around the glass and then he'd put it back in the freezer, and he'd say, this is the best martini you can make. And he had a lot of stories that added a lot of spice to it.   Andrew Stotz: So when you left that seminar, what changed in the way that you were operating? And obviously you had already had awareness of the teachings, but did that inspire you to go to a different level or what did it cause?   Andy Novins: Yes, and I'm not sure at what point the so-called transformation took place in the four-day seminar. You knew that that's how you were going to think for the rest of your life. That wasn't, you were going to think in systems and variation and predicting from the system and all those things. But so I can't really remember what years we did it, but as an apparel, our company basically, we designed, manufactured through separate factories and sold women's athletic apparel to specially sporting goods stores around the country. Nordstrom's was a client, one of the bigger ones, L.L. Bean and those kinds of things. And so one of the things we implemented that was really a Deming concept was improving our shipping, the picking process, which is filling an order. And we automated that with a carousel, which brought the product right to the picker, the warehouse person, and barcodes and scanned the order, and it brought the thing right to them. It incredibly reduced our error rate in shipping. And at the time, this would have been like 19, this was '91 or somewhere early on that. And at the time, we were way ahead of other companies.   Andy Novins: Even Nike, they would get an order, they'd walk around and pick their orders. And so that was a Deming-inspired process or way of improving our system. With apparel and you're designing 100 different styles or sizes and styles and everything else, the design development group, the functional silos that, I don't know if Dr. Deming used that term, but the system that every department has to hand off is working for the next department. In apparel, it's really complicated. And that was the biggest Deming issue we would focus on. It never went away. You really had to always, because our designers would put bells and whistles into a garment. We were very high-end and it either wasn't practical price-wise or it wasn't practical in the factory or we didn't have a good source for where we were going to put it, where, what factory we were going to put it in, that type of thing. So that's where really the Caribbean Basin Trade Initiative at that point came out. That's where we had factory, up until about 1990, all our production was in the United States.   Andy Novins: After that, it got too expensive, labor, sewing labor in the United States. That's when most companies started going offshore. We did a lot in the Caribbean. And when you're manufacturing apparel, back at the beginning, you would ship, we would buy the fabric and we would ship it to the Caribbean factory that we were using and they would sew it, and put it together. And then trade agreements came out where the factories could buy the material. And essentially, instead of they being just a sewer, they would be making a finished product for us. That had huge implications on simplifying the system and transferring responsibility to the people that really needed it. But now maybe I'm getting too much into apparel, but...they haven't been doing it for 23 years.   Andrew Stotz: So let's talk about what you're doing about your application of Dr. Deming's teaching in real estate. And I know you've also brought something along to share and go through, but maybe you can just talk a little bit about how you're applying that in the real estate business.   Andy Novins: Yeah, and that's the control chart concept. And all real estate statistics are lagging indicators, whether we're talking median prices or active listings, or I guess active listings are the only one that's not a lagging indicator, but almost virtually every month's supply of inventory, all those things are lagging indicators. So they tell us as realtors what happened. And in my market here, it bottomed out after the 2008 recession in March of 2009. And until this year, it's gone straight up for 16 years. So most realtors, virtually no realtors... Well, most realtors haven't experienced a shift in the market, which is what we're going through now, where the market goes from being a buyer's or seller's market for all those years. And I'm talking about a strong seller's market. A seller's market is defined by the National Association of Realtors as any market where the months' supply is less than six months. And our supply was hovering around two to three weeks. And it's now almost two months, but the market has shifted and it's incredible how many people don't realize that.   Andy Novins: Everybody knows there's something going on, but the media takes care of that. But all the statistics we get are, again, median prices are still very high, okay? But using control charts, you can plot, for example, a couple of months of live inventory. That started going down in April, okay? I mean, that went out of the control limits in April, okay? That's telling us that something's happened. It tells us directly that the market shifted, okay? The other thing that I watch is price drops, okay? How many price drops? That went out of the control limits in, I think, June, they started out, okay? And we're looking at that weekly, and that's showing us every week, the number of price, it's so far out of the control limit right now, it's amazing. There's no... You can't... You can look at price drops, and you can look at months' supply on a graph, okay? But it doesn't tell you that the system's now out of control. But control charts do tell you that, so...   Andrew Stotz: Should we look at your control chart? Maybe that's a good time to do that.   Andy Novins: Sure, yeah. And before we do that, one of the things in real estate is seasonality, okay? And that hides a lot of problems because prices go up in the spring, down in the summer, down in the fall, up a little bit, then down. But let me bring those up and talk about them. Okay, you can see this?   Andrew Stotz: Yep, and for the listeners out there, I'll just describe. You've got a line chart up here, and a line that's going up and down, and then recently is going up a lot. And it starts in July of 2023, and it goes to June of 2025. And so why don't you take that away and help us understand what you've got here?   Andy Novins: Okay. So the control limits, the upper and lower control limit are the red lines on this. And going back to July of '23, everything was stable. And if we went back long before that, it would also have been stable.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah, and by the way, just to make it clear, it's monthly supply, or month supply, sorry, of housing.   Andy Novins: I'm sorry.   Andrew Stotz: Can you explain what it means, month supply?   Andy Novins: Yeah, month supply is the number of active listings at the end of a month divided by the average monthly sales for 12 months, the 12-month average. So it's basically saying if you've got 10 active listings and the average is two a month, that you've got a five-month supply of listings. Okay?   Andrew Stotz: And the average on this is one month supply.   Andy Novins: The average, right. And you can see where during the pandemic, we've had times where it went down to just a number of weeks, which is pretty incredible, but that's our market. So again, this chart is telling us that... Well, there's another thing, other ways that Dr. Deming would look at this. We've got several months where it's going, the month supply is just going up. So starting in December '24, you can see that the supply keeps going up. And then it went out and broke the upper control limit. So what he would say in this, looking at this chart is that up until really of March 2025, the system was in control, it was predictable, okay? And then starting in March or April 2025, it was out of control, it was not a stable market, and the market is a system.   Andrew Stotz: And it went up above the upper control limit of 1.6 roughly or 1.55. And now the highest it went up in May was about one point, almost, yeah, 1.8.   Andy Novins: 1.8, okay. And so Dr. Deming would say that number one, it's a shift in the market, number two, the market is no longer predictable. Okay? Clients don't like to hear that, but using these charts and explaining it to them, they do understand it. And in real estate, one of the most important things when markets are changing, or always actually for that matter, is managing client expectations, okay? And using Deming's theories and control charts, it makes it... And I'll get into that a little bit more in a minute, but managing their expectations becomes more of a science than scripts, which is what...   Andrew Stotz: One of the things I learned from Dr. Deming was be skeptical of data,  and I know I've spent my career as a financial analyst manipulating tons of data. And every time I see something out of control like we see here, the first question I ask is, is there an error in the data? And then the next question is, okay, so what's going on out there that the chart is one thing, but can you just talk briefly about what's going on? What do you think is behind this? What's causing it? What is that shift that you're seeing?   Andy Novins: Well, if you were asking me this in 2008, I could have told you. The irresponsible lending and all kinds of other things. Today, the market is in our market more than others is impacted by uncertainty. Okay. Uncertainty surrounding the impact of tariffs. Okay. But especially in our area, the impact on federal workers job security. Okay. In our area, which is an expensive area, almost any couple that is buying a house is buying it on two incomes. And if one of those, one of the members of the couple is, works for the federal government or is a government or works for a government contractor or is affected by any, in any company that may be impacted by government cutbacks, they're not buying a house right now. They're waiting. So they don't want to buy on one income. And so they pulled out of the market. And that's, that's the biggest reason for the increase in the supply. The other is,  people do want to move. People want to downsize and upsize. Well, most people have a 3% interest rate or better or slightly around there. So with the impact of low, you know, of rising interest rates and everything else, there's people that want to downsize. And if they move, they'd be paying more for their smaller house than they were for their house they're staying in. So they stay.   Andrew Stotz: What are, what are mortgage rates right now? Roughly.   Andy Novins: That's  675, 6.75. 30 year. But what's interesting on that, and I haven't done it, but it would be an interesting exercise is when I began my career as a CPA in New York, I moved down here in 1982 to be part of the company that I talked about before, the apparel company. I, when I said to her, when I had that opportunity, I said to my wife, what do you think about moving down to Washington? We lived in Westchester County, New York, and she said, well, sure, but, and at that point, I was treasurer of a bank in the New York metropolitan area, and she was willing to take the risk. It was a risky move, but she said not, but not, we can't sell our house. We have an eight and a half percent mortgage. We'll rent it, and if it doesn't work in Washington, we can always come back to it. So that eight and a half percent mortgage back in '82 was not something you got rid of, and people don't realize that the average mortgage rate in the past 50 years is eight percent. So at 6.75, it's not that bad, but it's relative to the three percent interest rates we had. It's making it tough for people to move.   Andrew Stotz: So just talking now, I just want to wrap up on the chart by saying, so once you use, you're demonstrating using a control chart in the industry of real estate, and you're discussing the fact that right now, you've got three points that have breaking out of the upper control limit, which now tells us, as you said, it's unpredictable at this point. What else, what do you take from that, and how does that drive your actions when you see this chart? How does that impact you, and in other words, how are you applying Deming's teachings once you've now done this?   Andy Novins: Great question. When you price a house to sell it, you use what we call comparable sales. When a market is going up or stable, comparable sales are a good indication of what you're probably going to price it at if it's going to go on the market soon. What realtors do is what we call a comparative market analysis, and that's comparing at least three homes to their home. There's all different ways of doing that, which is part of a Deming system too. But when you go to somebody and say, well, we got these three homes and they sold it at 800, but if you're going to put your house on the market next month, we're probably looking more like at 750. And most people would say, well, I'm not going to use that guy. This other realtor says 800 is the way to go. And using the control chart showing that the market has shifted and that those comps are no longer valid is one of the most valuable uses of control charts in real estate because, again, it's evidence that the comps aren't valid anymore.   Andy Novins: The other thing is comps represent, even if it closed yesterday, it went under contract a month ago. So the comps are just not necessarily good if the market is shifting, and this is pretty powerful evidence to a potential client that pricing is really important and you can't just use past comps. I'll go to the next chart, which is price drops. And this is something, again, our market really just shifted recently, so this is something I'm actually doing actively right now looking at. But you can see that this is weekly price drops. Okay, it started off monthly because I can't go back and get that data. But if I go back to a stable year, last year is the base. You can see that price drops were pretty stable process in the pricing system. They were...   Andrew Stotz: So what does that mean? Just so we understand, let's say the average is 25% projected monthly price drop. What does that actually mean?   Andy Novins: That's saying that every month that of the active listings on the market, 25% of them are reducing their price. That month.   Andrew Stotz: So in other words, 75% are either keeping it the same or raising it.   Andy Novins: Say that. Yes, right.   Andrew Stotz: The opposite of that. Okay.   Andy Novins: Right. And that's each month. That doesn't mean somebody didn't lower their price on that same house the month before. But it's registering the number of drops that homes on the market are doing.   Andrew Stotz: And that would mean it's like a pretty good seller's market again when only a quarter of listings need to drop their price in order to get the sale.   Andy Novins: Yes, exactly. Yep. Exactly. And you can see this...   Andrew Stotz: And let's just talk about the January 2024 to December of 2024. So for the year of 2024, what's your observation of the data?   Andy Novins: It was stable. It's not a change in the market.   Andrew Stotz: Yep. Okay. Normal variation.   Andy Novins: Yeah, normal variation. Okay. But when it starts to go up like it has, and it's even worse because what I'm using is an average for these weeks. The next week starting tomorrow will have the four-week average. They're actually quite a bit higher, the last two, than what they show here because they were averaged down. But when you see rampant price dropping, that's out of control, so to speak.   Andrew Stotz: Right. So it's gone from a mean of 25 up to 60-plus percent of monthly price drop. I'm just curious. It says on your y-axis, it says projected monthly price drop. Does that mean somebody's making some estimate on that, or what does that mean?   Andy Novins: That's because right now I'm doing it by the week.   Andrew Stotz: Okay. Ah, okay.   Andy Novins: Okay. And I'm averaging the week. And then when I get the month, it'll be like the earlier ones.   Andrew Stotz: So the most recent ones are the projected, and the other ones are the actual month.   Andy Novins: Yeah.   Andrew Stotz: Okay.   Andy Novins: And right, I'm using, I'm multiplying them times four the week. So it's right now I'm projecting what July will be, basically, the total, but it'll be up around 60%.   Andrew Stotz: And this chart corroborates the conclusions that you made in the prior chart, or are there any other additional...   Andy Novins: Yeah. And the month supply chart is more of a leading indicator of a market shift, because this is the reaction of sellers and realtors to a market they didn't anticipate properly. And so this is a much more now type of thing. And again, if I go back to a client and say, you know, all the comps are 800, but we're going to recommend 750, this is pretty convincing evidence that basically almost everybody in the market is reducing their prices.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah.   Andy Novins: And in a falling market, the worst thing you can do is chase the prices, chase it down.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And what this doesn't show, it shows that 60% are dropping their price. It doesn't show what the remaining 40% are. And that composition of that could just be, there could be no price increases. We don't know from this data whether that's holding the price the same or increasing it.   Andy Novins: Right. But it doesn't mean that there aren't homes in those active listings that didn't reduce their price, that reduced their price. They may have reduced their price last month. Okay. So it's really just showing the panic that's out there.   Andrew Stotz: Okay. Got it.   Andy Novins: But it's a great leading indicator from that standpoint.   Andrew Stotz: Okay. So two charts that show us the application of control charts and Deming's teachings there in real estate and making a note of the fact that these are now out of control. Interesting.   Andy Novins: Yes. And again, the most important thing you can do, I think, in real estate is accurately manage your client's expectations. Yeah. Because, and I'm going to back up for a second, that's another real benefit of having a niche practice. And again, like the competitive advantage Michael Porter concept. And for me, writing a newsletter, which gives them what we hope to be useful information for the 5,000 homes that get it. When they're ready to sell, again, I don't call them, they call me. And they call me because they trust me. They believe I know what I'm doing. And so part of a system that would be outside of what Dr. Deming talked about, but part of the system is your clients, the quality of your system is going to depend on the quality of your clients. And so having a niche, again, what I'm doing in terms of that so-called farming and the newsletter is I'm attracting clients that will trust me. Okay. That's so much a Deming concept in terms of the overall system and how it affects it. We see all the time when buyers that are buying one of our listings and they have all these problems and the other real estate agents, their buyer's agent says, I know they're crazy. I can't wait till this is over because their buyer clients aren't listening to them and they're asking for unreasonable things or whatever. So a critical part of the system in real estate is getting clients that will listen to you because theoretically we know what we're doing.   Andrew Stotz: And if we look at this chart, one of the things that some people may ask is what about forecasts? And I know I spent my career as a financial analyst in the stock market forecasting earnings. And then when I worked on my PhD for my dissertation, I decided to calculate the accuracy of analysts in earnings forecasts. And as I said, the title of my dissertation was analysts were only 25% wrong. And in other words, here is the highest qualified people to forecast the earnings of these companies and they get it wrong by 25% on average. And so for those people that say, well, what about your forecast and all that? I always say, I live on the cutting edge of history. Don't try to go too far out in the future. Just make sure you understand. And that's where this chart shows July 19th to July 25th that you could say that's pretty much, and if you get the data out the next day, that's the cutting edge of history.   Andy Novins: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And in the past, people say, well, should I wait?  At this time of the year, they might say, should I wait and put the house on the market next spring? Or should we do it after Labor Day? And in the past, I would have said, wait till next spring because things were going to be better. You could... Everything was stable and rising. What these charts show, and they do require some explanation, is that the market is out of control right now. You can't predict it. And then if so,  then it becomes a decision that a client makes based on what they really need. Do they want to move yet? Do they want to wait? Do they... But these control charts are showing that you can't predict. Whereas in the past, you could be pretty safe.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. And the point of that, too, is that a control chart can't solve every problem. It tells you where things are, so you understand things a lot better. But then, how you're going to actually use that information, well, somebody may use it to say, I need to sell my house now. Somebody else may say, I'm going to wait because I think this is bad and it's going to get better later. And somebody's going to say, I'm going to sell now desperately because I think this is going to get much worse, right? That's the hard part.   Andy Novins: Yeah.   Andrew Stotz: But if you don't know what's actually happening, which the control chart gives you that information, then there's none of that.  It's just, there's no basis in fact of what you're doing.   Andy Novins: Exactly. Right. They provide a window into the market that I have never seen anybody use this or talk about it.   Andrew Stotz: And do you have any more charts? Was that it?   Andy Novins: No. Yeah, I got more.   Andy Novins: Okay. Whoops. Oh, but before we get to that, okay, so this is a concept, and if I'm going too long, cut me off.   Andrew Stotz: No, no. Go ahead.   Andy Novins: So in a falling or stable market like we're in, okay, in a rising market, you pick a price, and if you're good, you're going to do well. If you do it right, they're going to bid it up. That's the way it's been for five years since COVID. Okay. Now the market is not rising. It's falling or even in a stable market. So the PDSA cycle that Deming talked about is absolutely so on target for what we're going through right now. So I'll just briefly go through this. The plan part is you price using comps or adjusted comps based on what the control charts are showing where the market is going rather than where it was. Okay. And then you put the listing on the market in the MLS. And then what we do, okay, is we study what's happening, okay? And again, the market is not in control. It's not a stable system. So we monitor and we subscribe to special services that most agents don't get. They cost money, but they give us a lot of information. We can see the number of views all over the internet that a house is getting that's on the market. And we can subscribe to another service that shows all the showings that are comparable houses in our zip code or any way we want to do it are getting. And then we use the control charts and we look at feedback and everything else.   Andrew Stotz: So do you have more charts, Andy?   Andy : I sure do. This isn't actually a chart. It's one of the core tools that Dr. Deming used. And it's what he called the PDSA cycle. And that is the most important tool that we use with the data we get from the control charts. So I'm going through an example here of pricing. And so the PDSA is plan, do, study, act. And the planning section of this process is we price using comps, like I've described. But we also use the control charts to let us adjust the comps for what's happening in the market right up to today, basically. And the do is just in real estate is just simply putting the listing in the real estate market, MLS, and listing it so people can see it. The study, though, is what's really important. And that's where a lot more data comes in. We subscribe to services where we can monitor all the views all over the Internet of our listings. And we can monitor showings that our listings are getting, which we know, but other listings. We can monitor what they're getting in terms of competitive listings, similar prices, and that type of thing.   Andy : And we also monitor what houses, if any, are going under contract since our property went on the market. And that provides what we talk. So we have to act on that data. And that's the A of the PDSA cycle. And so we use feedback loops. So just as an example, I won't necessarily go through all these. If we have a lot of views, high views, and high showings, we know the price is right. We're going to get offers. On the other hand, if we have high views and low showings, we know buyers are interested in it, they like it, but they're not ready to come and look at it. They're waiting for that price to go down, which in this market, it probably will. So we advise our clients based on the data we're getting, and then we either reprice or we don't. There's also some other things we use to monitor, but I won't go into those at this point.   Andrew Stotz: What's interesting about that is it's like every single listing is a test.   Andy : Exactly.   Andrew Stotz: That's cool.   Andy : Yeah. And that data is so important. And when you tell a client, you're getting all kinds of... You're getting... And we compare it to the other listings. We give them charts, which shows the other houses. And we say, look, you're getting twice the views of these other houses, but nobody's coming to your house, or very few are coming. And the other listings are getting less views and more showings. People think you're overpriced. And it's very convincing to a client.   Andrew Stotz: Is there one of these that you're aiming for? And if you are close to that in your listings, you're hitting the right spot? Or what are you aiming for?   Andy : High views and high showings. That's the best. Everybody's looking at it. People are coming. Okay. There's other tests down the road because traditionally if you get 16 to 18 showings and nobody makes an offer, you're still probably overpriced, but that's very unlikely. Okay.   Andrew Stotz: And is price the only factor that you can adjust here, let's say high views, high showings could be just the type of house, the location, but you don't necessarily control those things?   Andy : No, the one down near the bottom. Low views, high showings. It's ikely a niche piece of property. Not many people are looking at it, but the people that want that niche, whatever may be different, it's a unique piece of property, they'll get a lot of showings relative to their views, because most people aren't interested. But there isn't much else we can do because we spend... We pay for staging. We don't pay for it. We do it. We have our own inventory and staging. We have contractors that we've used for years to help get a house ready. So the product itself, the house, and the presentation, there's never much more we can do to make that better.   Andrew Stotz: And quality in the eyes of the customer is the best price sold quickly, I guess.   Andy : Yes. Yeah. That's right. There's a saying which not everybody agrees with in the real estate industry, but you want to make the most amount of money in the least amount of time with the least amount of hassle.   Andrew Stotz: I think that's everywhere.   Andy : That's true.   Andrew Stotz: Yes. I want that. Great.   Andy : That's what everybody wants, but some people say, well, if it's too fast, you didn't... But that's usually not true. Fast is usually good as long as it's priced right. The next chart I have is a whole other way we use control charts, and that's to evaluate our own performance, which is what this is doing. And it's using sales-to-list price ratios. In other words, what percentage of the list price was the sales? And here we're using a long base period, and I'm just going to back up for a second. In some of the two recent, the ones I did on price drops and supply of inventory, we only had a year worth of, for the base line. And normally it's better to use more than that, but those two years I used were stable, and we didn't go back further because the Fed had been raising interest rates, and that created a... That was not a stable market when they did that, so we didn't want to use that as a history.   Andy : So this is showing our performance, and you can see starting with the pandemic, we went way above the control limits a lot of times. But what you do when you're looking at or using a chart like this for your own improvement is you want to narrow the upper and lower control limits, the two red lines. The closer they get together, the less variation you have, the smaller your standard deviation. And for us, it's 0.2. And our range between what... That's normal is between 95% and 107% of the sales price. And just to how we use it and how we get better at it is we focus on pricing. We focus on improving negotiation, which is a big deal, especially in the last few years. We are always looking to improve our client base. We're always looking to improve our preparation and presentation. We think we got that pretty well down pat. And the other thing is to stay within your area of expertise, because when you go out of that, okay, if I was to work on a house out of my market, okay, I wouldn't get this kind of performance. So that's going to lead me to the next and really the final chart. And that's another group, okay? And I'm using this group because... Just to...   Andrew Stotz: Sorry, when you say another group, what do you mean?   Andy : It's not my team, no offense industry...   Andrew Stotz: So it's a competitor or it's...   Andy : This is a well-known group. It's led by two Ivy League graduates. And it's a much bigger team than ours. Their standard... And it's the same base period, 2017 to '19. Their standard deviation is three times what ours is. Their range of what they do within the control limits is 78% to 114%. And that... Why do we do this? Why do we care? It's always nice to benchmark yourself. But most of all, with groups or agents that we compete with, if these guys put a house on the market, okay, and we thought it was overpriced, or let's say we thought it was underpriced, okay, and it was competing with one of ours, we wouldn't tell our client to reduce their price to match their price, okay, because we know they probably are underpricing. In this case, we'd say let it go. Likewise, if we're working with a buyer who's buying one of their houses and we think it's overpriced, what their listing is overpriced, then we will probably make a lower offer knowing that they also know that their pricing can be way off. So understanding your clients and where they fit on these control charts is useful information.   Andrew Stotz: And I can imagine that some people, let's say, at another firm, as an example, may say, oh, I don't care about this variability because one side of the mean is more favorable than the other, so I'm just trying to get to that other side. Whereas what you're saying is I'm trying to reduce variation around the mean.   Andy : Yes, and that'll take me to this last section I have here. If we compare the two groups, what are the major differences? Number one, if it was a million-dollar listing, okay, we would probably get $43,000 more than they would based on these control charts. Most of all, the biggest difference...   Andrew Stotz: The selling price of your customer would be $43,500 more?   Andy : Well, our average selling price is a little over 100%. Their average selling price is 96%. So on average, they're getting $43,000 less on $1 million house than we are. But the most important thing in this is the consistency and the predictability of when you lower those control chart limits, you're making your performance much more predictable, and it's an important part to all of our clients. I mean, Deming had a... One of the things he used to say is quality is in the customer's eyes, not your eyes. So I can say we do all this great stuff and all that. It all boils down to what does the customer think. And when a group's working on volume, which is pretty typical in our industry, that's what we're taught, how to get more volume, how to get more volume, that's... The customer doesn't care. The client doesn't care about what kind of volume they do. What the customer cares about is service. And you can see some of the other things, consistency over time, process control and all that. I'll get out of here now and say that that's really what control charts and Deming's philosophy and the PDSA, it all focuses on quality in the customer's eyes, consistent performance, better service, and not a lot of guesswork. We're using data that other agents don't even know exists. And that's unfortunately not an exaggeration, really. I've never talked to anybody that knew about this.   Andrew Stotz: When Deming talked about quality, he often referenced the idea that you could have a quality system in place and still go out of business if you weren't looking at quality in the eyes of the customer and being completely connected to the customer. And I have a little story on this from my coffee business. Many years ago, we had a restaurant chain in Thailand that's a global chain come to us and we won the bid. And they said, we chose you over all these other suppliers for coffee and we're going to come to your factory and when we do, we're going to do an audit, we're going to ask 600 questions and if you get below 75% or whatever, you're fired. But, hey, I knew Deming and I knew all of this stuff and we cared about quality and we never had quality problems, so we thought we're in good shape. And they came out and they said, your score was 68, you're fired. You have six weeks to fix it or you won't be our supplier. Well, we learned something very quickly there, which was to them, paperwork was quality.   Andrew Stotz: And that was a quality system to them that meant that we had quality. And so we had a passion for quality, but we didn't have the paperwork system that they wanted. So luckily, when you have passion for quality, it's pretty easy to overlay a paperwork system on it, if that's what the customer required. I would hate to be in the opposite situation where you go and do like many people when they go and get certified or ISO or whatever and they build a paperwork system without that commitment to quality. Now, that's a disaster. But the point is that we had to realize that in order for us to satisfy that customer's needs, we had to appeal to quality as they saw it. And so we've got to always keep the customer in mind as we're working on our quality.   Andy : I got another story. My wife reminded me today that sometimes in probably early '80s, maybe mid '80s at the latest, I looked up in the... I wanted to find a statistician and I looked him up in the yellow pages, which a lot of the listeners may not know what that is. And I wanted to... What I wanted to do was find a way to improve, optimize our inventory and try to approach just-in-time inventory because we had factories all over the place and we were getting stuff in. And we never did it. And I imagine with Dr. Deming, we could have done it, but we never did it because exactly the quality's in the customer's eyes. We were shipping to specialty restock stores primarily, and if we couldn't stock their shelves, okay, they went somewhere else. Didn't matter how much they liked us, they had to have those shelves full. So we decided it wasn't worth the risk of just-in-time and optimizing our inventory at the expense of having maybe too much inventory, but satisfying our customers. And it's just so true.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah. Yeah. In the story that I told, that particular chain never ran out of product and certainly never ran out of coffee. And I know myself, being a customer of that chain, never in my life did I walk in there and they ran out of a particular product. And they made that very clear. That's quality to us is that our supply chains are never broken. And for 16 years, we never broke their supply chains. It was never the case. So in the eyes of the customer, well, on behalf of everyone at the Deming Institute, I want to thank you again for this discussions and for listeners, remember to go to Deming.org to continue your journey. But I thought I would leave the closing comments to you to maybe wrap up and give the audience what you think should be their main takeaway from this discussion.   Andy : I think probably the main takeaway would be that Dr. Deming's philosophy, the Profound Knowledge, everything he taught is as relevant to real estate, okay, pricing, probably most markets as it is to a factory or production or anything like that. I think that it took me a while, after I became a realtor, it took me a while to realize, wow, all these things we can use. And we have more data to play with than anybody. So that's a good takeaway for anybody, especially realtors.   Andrew Stotz: Yeah, I think, and I'll just add on, I enjoyed the conversation because I love Michael Porter's stuff and talking about figuring out where's your niche and trying to bring a differentiated offering to the market. And that differentiated offering could be based on what I like to say from my study and teaching of corporate strategy is there's kind of two main corporate strategies. One I would say is the type that engineers build, which is an operational corporate strategy. And another one is a differentiating strategy that a sales type of person would build, which is about the interaction with sales, with the product and all of that. And so with Dr. Deming, one of the benefits we get is the process part of our business can just be improved forever. And then we can overlay that with whatever we want from what we bring to the market. And I think you've given us an example of how you can apply Deming's principles to the process of your business and do that in a niche area or an area that you've defined and dominate. And so I love that.   Andy : Yeah, and one of the things, just a last thought, is something you and I had talked about, is you don't have to have a PhD in physics or you don't have to get a doctorate in something to understand Deming. And he even says it in his book. You don't have to be an expert in any of it. You just have to understand it. And that's the beauty of it. Anybody can do what I'm doing with just nowhere near the effort you'd have to do if you were going to be a physicist or something else like that. And that's something people can take away.   Andrew Stotz: And on that hopeful note, this is your host, Andrew Stotz, and I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Dr. Deming. I always repeat it because it's such a great quote, and that is, "people are entitled to joy in work."      

Dr. Joseph Kanter, ASTHO CEO, and Kate McEvoy, Executive Director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, discuss a new partnership between the two organizations; Dr. Joseph Kanter, ASTHO CEO, Dr. Susan Kansagra, ASTHO Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Scott Harris, ASTHO President and State Health Officer for the Alabama Department of Public Health, Dr. Ayanna Bennett, Director of the District of Columbia Department of Health, and Dr. Manisha Juthani, ASTHO President-Elect and Commissioner for the Connecticut Department of Public Health, held a deskside briefing discussing ACIP recommendations amid preparations for the upcoming respiratory virus season; a new ASTHO report analyzes recent Medicaid data to determine causes of commercial tobacco use in Washington State; and ASTHO will host a webinar with the PHIG National Partners to introduce Wave 2 of the Public Health Data Modernization Implementation Center Program on August 26. NAMD Web Page: National Committee for Sustainable Medicaid and Public Health Partnerships ASTHO YouTube: ASTHO Respiratory Virus Season Deskside Media Briefing ASTHO Report: Tobacco Use in King County Washington: A Medicaid Data Analysis Report ASTHO Webinar: Public Health Data Modernization Implementation Center Program  

Join Kosta and his guest: James Mills, City Manager for the City of Cookeville. In this episode: The City of Cookeville recently launched a new segment on social media called Cookeville Q&A: where residents can write in with their questions to city representatives. Most of the questions understandably are about roads and traffic. Do you think the general public doesn't fully understand the scope of projects like these or are we indeed entitled to have a total meltdown on South Jefferson Avenue? From what I can tell, there's no sign of Cookeville slowing down. Whether it's economic development, infrastructure or new neighbors from California, we're all gas and no brakes. As our current City Manager and former Planning Director, are you ever afraid this could all be too much of a good thing? The median sold home price for July 2025 in Cookeville was $362,000 according to the National Association of Realtors. On Zillow, in Cookeville there's exactly 10 listings for homes under 200,000. Our median household income is $48,501. That's a really long way of saying it's mathematically impossible for the majority of Cookeville residents to buy a home without support. What can the city do to change this? Find out more about The City of Cookeville:https://www.cookeville-tn.gov/Better Together with Kosta Yepifantsev is a product of Morgan Franklin Media and recorded in Cookeville, TN.This episode of Better Together with Kosta Yepifantsev is made possible by our partners at Miss Sallie's Market.Find out more about Miss Sallie's Market:https://www.misssallies.com

Today I am tackling one of the most underrated secrets to a better workday: getting (and staying) organized! Whether your calendar is already color-coded or your desk is currently buried under three coffee mugs and a pile of sticky notes, this episode is for you!  Did you know that according to a study by The National Association of Professional Organizers, over 80% of people feel more productive in an organized workspace—yet most professionals lose nearly one hour a day to disorganization. That's five hours a week people!  Still need convincing?  Then let talk about Oprah - if you've been listening for a while then you know we believe everything Oprah on this podcast.  Did you know that she credits organization and routines as 2 of her secrets to success?  Enough said!Also consider the fact that we drop our episodes on Monday because we believe that if you Monday a great one, it can set the tone for the entire workweek.  So be sure to tune in to today's episode where I am going to give you even more info about how to stay organized, along with these 3 tips: 1. Clear Space = Clear Mind If your space is a wreck, it will affect your stress, your energy and your focus.  We will talk about ways to help you out of this mess! 2. Make a “Must-Do” List—Not a “To-Do” List I love a To-Do list and will even share what my customized list has on it, but for me and my coaching clients, we see these as "must-do's" and I'll explain why.3. Time Block with Boundaries Boundaries are important - when it comes to time, it includes buffering your time before and after tasks - a very powerful strategy to getting things done.Remember that one small change you make today could lead to big results tomorrow.  For more support, check out these "must-do's" below: NEW HERE? Here are your “Must-Do's:” 1.  Check out the Videos: o    The Career Woman's Secret Playbook Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fR_clXjZ-4&list=PLdguFjdYMwqWXnvIeSAIhDrtPdHdsLGde o    Clutter May be Affecting You More than You Think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMeSCrmyS3s&t=174s o    Time Management Secrets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hThB5rseaWU&list=PLdguFjdYMwqWxPZL2zYJh-dGW6jt4GsQx o    You Teach People How to Treat You (Bloopers Included): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkrOfDu3qo8&t=332s o    Healthy Boundaries Keep You from Getting Arrested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjxUIH2M9Wk&t=1s 2.  Get your copy of The Career Woman's Secret Playbook! o    Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Career-Womans-Secret-Playbook 3.   GRAB YOUR FREEBIES! https://www.drdawnshoptalk.com CONTACT ME: drdawn@drdawnshoptalk.comTop https://www.youtube.com/@drdawnshoptalk/podcasts