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2 episodes with nick how
2 episodes with nick how
IL – Fr. Marcel Taillon joins Patrick on preparing for Lent (3:49) What exactly is Lent? (8:05)-What Fr. Taillon is doing for Lent? (11:40)-Mike- Pray the examine from St. Ignatius each night and almsgiving. Tip more. (14:53)-Nick-How his Lenten practices became a regular practice Nick - Old Testament - angel talking to Moses. It's my understanding that was Jesus Christ. Is that correct? (20:36) Break 1 John (22:14) - I heard that choosing something to give up for Lent should be pleasing to God. Could you expand on that? (28:58)-Jennifer emailed about going to Mass more since Lent (31:28)-Dean -The main point for me is to declutter my life. I think it's a good time to examine what's not central to our mission and let that lead us. (37:20) Break 2 (38:38) Dana-Suggestions for things we could do during Lent: Put phones on grayscale during the Lenten season, eating all meals at home...no eating out. Be frugal and be together. (45:24) Emailer about offering praise (48:49)-Julianna-praying divine office in the car good way to prepare for Lent
Send us a textFor the first show of 2025, Steve and Nick are back with another guest from the world of food photography. Kris Kirkham is a London based food photographer, who has worked with many of the leading brands including Sainsbury, Waitrose, M&S, Subway and Nandos. Having trained and worked as a chef for over 15 years, Kris then combined his love of photography with his passion for food, and developed a distinctive style of food and drink photography that is colourful, beautifully lit and contrasty. With over 10 years of experience and an extensive portfolio, his work is ubiquitous and you probably have seen it in magazines, advertisements and brochures. Kris tells Steve and Nick:How his training as a chef helps him understand the best way to photography foodHis approach to an shoot, using medium format cameras in his home studioHis recommendations for aspiring food photographersHis most unusual photography projectAlso in the show; Nick is having a clear out of his studio (anyone want an 80's era Instamatic?), whilst Steve is having fun on the streets of London. The guys also discuss why a leading professional album manufacturer is now selling pro level albums direct to the public. Nick also demystifies the complex topic of using music on a video production Nick Church and Steve Vaughan are professional wedding photographers based in the UK. They both use Sony Alpha cameras and lenses. Nick's website : https://www.nickchurchphotography.co.uk/Nick's Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/nickchurchphotography/Steve's website : https://www.samandstevephotography.com/Steve's Wedding Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/samandstevephotography/Steve's personal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevevaughanphotographyAny technical information given by the presenters is based on their understanding and opinion at the time of recording
You probably interact with artificial intelligence (AI) more than you realize. So, there's never been a better time to start figuring out how it all works. Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham as they decode the fundamentals of AI so that anyone, irrespective of their technical background, can leverage the benefits of AI and tap into its infinite potential. Together with Senior Cloud Engineer Nick Commisso, they take you through key AI concepts, common AI tasks and domains, and the primary differences between AI, machine learning, and deep learning. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/become-an-oci-ai-foundations-associate-2023/127177 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Himanshu Raj, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00:00 The world of artificial intelligence is vast and everchanging. And with all the buzz around it lately, we figured it was the perfect time to revisit our AI Made Easy series. Join us over the next few weeks as we chat about all things AI, helping you to discover its endless possibilities. Ready to dive in? Let's go! 00:33 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started! 00:46 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! Welcome to a new season of the Oracle University Podcast. I'm so excited about this season because we're going to delve into the world of artificial intelligence. In upcoming episodes, we'll talk about the fundamentals of artificial intelligence and machine learning. And we'll discuss neural network architectures, generative AI and large language models, the OCI AI stack, and OCI AI services. 01:27 Nikita: So, if you're an IT professional who wants to start learning about AI and ML or even if you're a student who is familiar with OCI or similar cloud services, but have no prior exposure to this field, you'll want to tune in to these episodes. Lois: That's right, Niki. So, let's get started. Today, we'll talk about the basics of artificial intelligence with Senior Cloud Engineer Nick Commisso. Hi Nick! Thanks for joining us today. So, let's start right at the beginning. What is artificial intelligence? 01:57 Nick: Well, the ability of machines to imitate the cognitive abilities and problem solving capabilities of human intelligence can be classified as artificial intelligence or AI. 02:08 Nikita: Now, when you say capabilities and abilities, what are you referring to? Nick: Human intelligence is the intellectual capability of humans that allows us to learn new skills through observation and mental digestion, to think through and understand abstract concepts and apply reasoning, to communicate using a language and understand the nonverbal cues, such as facial recognition, tone variation, and body language. You can handle objections in real time, even in a complex setting. You can plan for short and long-term situations or projects. And, of course, you can create music and art or invent something new like an original idea. If you can replicate any of these human capabilities in machines, this is artificial general intelligence or AGI. So in other words, AGI can mimic human sensory and motor skills, performance, learning, and intelligence, and use these abilities to carry out complicated tasks without human intervention. When we apply AGI to solve problems with specific and narrow objectives, we call it artificial intelligence or AI. 03:16 Lois: It seems like AI is everywhere, Nick. Can you give us some examples of where AI is used? Nick: AI is all around us, and you've probably interacted with AI, even if you didn't realize it. Some examples of AI can be viewing an image or an object and identifying if that is an apple or an orange. It could be examining an email and classifying it spam or not. It could be writing computer language code or predicting the price of an older car. So let's get into some more specifics of AI tasks and the nature of related data. Machine learning, deep learning, and data science are all associated with AI, and it can be confusing to distinguish. 03:57 Nikita: Why do we need AI? Why's it important? Nick: AI is vital in today's world, and with the amount of data that's generated, it far exceeds the human ability to absorb, interpret, and actually make decisions based on that data. That's where AI comes in handy by enhancing the speed and effectiveness of human efforts. So here are two major reasons why we need AI. Number one, we want to eliminate or reduce the amount of routine tasks, and businesses have a lot of routine tasks that need to be done in large numbers. So things like approving a credit card or a bank loan, processing an insurance claim, recommending products to customers are just some example of routine tasks that can be handled. And second, we, as humans, need a smart friend who can create stories and poems, designs, create code and music, and have humor, just like us. 04:54 Lois: I'm onboard with getting help from a smart friend! There are different domains in AI, right, Nick? Nick: We have language for language translation; vision, like image classification; speech, like text to speech; product recommendations that can help you cross-sell products; anomaly detection, like detecting fraudulent transactions; learning by reward, like self-driven cars. You have forecasting with weather forecasting. And, of course, generating content like image from text. 05:24 Lois: There are so many applications. Nick, can you tell us more about these commonly used AI domains like language, audio, speech, and vision? Nick: Language-related AI tasks can be text related or generative AI. Text-related AI tasks use text as input, and the output can vary depending on the task. Some examples include detecting language, extracting entities in a text, or extracting key phrases and so on. Consider the example of translating text. There's many text translation tools where you simply type or paste your text into a given text box, choose your source and target language, and then click translate. Now, let's look at the generative AI tasks. They are generative, which means the output text is generated by a model. Some examples are creating text like stories or poems, summarizing a text, answering questions, and so on. Let's take the example of ChatGPT, the most well-known generative chat bot. These bots can create responses from their training on large language models, and they continuously grow through machine learning. 06:31 Nikita: What can you tell us about using text as data? Nick: Text is inherently sequential, and text consists of sentences. Sentences can have multiple words, and those words need to be converted to numbers for it to be used to train language models. This is called tokenization. Now, the length of sentences can vary, and all the sentences lengths need to be made equal. This is done through padding. Words can have similarities with other words, and sentences can also be similar to other sentences. The similarity can be measured through dot similarity or cosine similarity. We need a way to indicate that similar words or sentences may be close by. This is done through representation called embedding. 07:17 Nikita: And what about language AI models? Nick: Language AI models refer to artificial intelligence models that are specifically designed to understand, process, and generate natural language. These models have been trained on vast amounts of textual data that can perform various natural language processing or NLP tasks. The task that needs to be performed decides the type of input and output. The deep learning model architectures that are typically used to train models that perform language tasks are recurrent neural networks, which processes data sequentially and stores hidden states, long short-term memory, which processes data sequentially that can retain the context better through the use of gates, and transformers, which processes data in parallel. It uses the concept of self-attention to better understand the context. 08:09 Lois: And then there's speech-related AI, right? Nick: Speech-related AI tasks can be either audio related or generative AI. Speech-related AI tasks use audio or speech as input, and the output can vary depending on the task. For example, speech-to-text conversion or speaker recognition, voice conversion, and so on. Generative AI tasks are generative in nature, so the output audio is generated by a model. For example, you have music composition and speech synthesis. Audio or speech is digitized as snapshots taken in time. The sample rate is the number of times in a second an audio sample is taken. Most digital audio have a sampling rate of 44.1 kilohertz, which is also the sampling rate for audio CDs. Multiple samples need to be correlated to make sense of the data. For example, listening to a song for a fraction of a second, you won't be able to infer much about the song, and you'll probably need to listen to it a little bit longer. Audio and speech AI models are designed to process and understand audio data, including spoken language. These deep-learning model architectures are used to train models that perform language with tasks-- recurrent neural networks, long short-term memory, transformers, variational autoencoders, waveform models, and Siamese networks. All of the models take into consideration the sequential nature of audio. 09:42 Did you know that Oracle University offers free courses on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? You'll find training on everything from cloud computing, database, and security to artificial intelligence and machine learning, all free to subscribers. So, what are you waiting for? Pick a topic, leverage the Oracle University Learning Community to ask questions, and then sit for your certification. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 10:10 Nikita: Welcome back! Now that we've covered language and speech-related tasks, let's move on to vision-related tasks. Nick: Vision-related AI tasks could be image related or generative AI. Image-related AI tasks will use an image as an input, and the output depends on the task. Some examples are classifying images, identifying objects in an image, and so on. Facial recognition is one of the most popular image-related tasks that is often used for surveillance and tracking of people in real time, and it's used in a lot of different fields, including security, biometrics, law enforcement, and social media. For generative AI tasks, the output image is generated by a model. For example, creating an image from a contextual description, generating images of a specific style or a high resolution, and so on. It can create extremely realistic new images and videos by generating original 3D models of an object, machine components, buildings, medication, people, and even more. 11:14 Lois: So, then, here again I need to ask, how do images work as data? Nick: Images consist of pixels, and pixels can be either grayscale or color. And we can't really make out what an image is just by looking at one pixel. The task that needs to be performed decides the type of input needed and the output produced. Various architectures have evolved to handle this wide variety of tasks and data. These deep-learning model architectures are typically used to train models that perform vision tasks-- convolutional neural networks, which detects patterns in images; learning hierarchical representations of visual features; YOLO, which is You Only Look Once, processes the image and detects objects within the image; and then you have generative adversarial networks, which generates real-looking images. 12:04 Nikita: Nick, earlier you mentioned other AI tasks like anomaly detection, recommendations, and forecasting. Could you tell us more about them? Nick: Anomaly detection. This is time-series data, which is required for anomaly detection, and it can be a single or multivariate for fraud detection, machine failure, etc. Recommendations. You can recommend products using data of similar products or users. For recommendations, data of similar products or similar users is required. Forecasting. Time-series data is required for forecasting and can be used for things like weather forecasting and predicting the stock price. 12:43 Lois: Nick, help me understand the difference between artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. Let's start with AI. Nick: Imagine a self-driving car that can make decisions like a human driver, such as navigating traffic or detecting pedestrians and making safe lane changes. AI refers to the broader concept of creating machines or systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Next, we have machine learning or ML. Visualize a spam email filter that learns to identify and move spam emails to the spam folder, and that's based on the user's interaction and email content. Now, ML is a subset of AI that focuses on the development of algorithms that enable machines to learn from and make predictions or decisions based on data. To understand what an algorithm is in the context of machine learning, it refers to a specific set of rules, mathematical equations, or procedures that the machine learning model follows to learn from data and make predictions on. And finally, we have deep learning or DL. Think of an image recognition software that can identify specific objects or animals within images, such as recognizing cats in photos on the internet. DL is a subfield of ML that uses neural networks with many layers, deep neural networks, to learn and make sense of complex patterns in data. 14:12 Nikita: Are there different types of machine learning? Nick: There are several types of machine learning, including supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. Supervised learning where the algorithm learns from labeled data, making predictions or classifications. Unsupervised learning is an algorithm that discovers patterns and structures in unlabeled data, such as clustering or dimensionality reduction. And then, you have reinforcement learning, where agents learn to make predictions and decisions by interacting with an environment and receiving rewards or punishments. 14:47 Lois: Can we do a deep dive into each of these types you just mentioned? We can start with the supervised machine learning algorithm. Nick: Let's take an example of how a credit card company would approve a credit card. Once the application and documents are submitted, a verification is done, followed by a credit score check and another 10 to 15 days for approval. And how is this done? Sometimes, purely manually or by using a rules engine where you can build rules, give new data, get a decision. The drawbacks are slow. You need skilled people to build and update rules, and the rules keep changing. The good thing is that the businesses had a lot of insight as to how the decisions were made. Can we build rules by looking at the past data? We all learn by examples. Past data is nothing but a set of examples. Maybe reviewing past credit card approval history can help. Through a process of training, a model can be built that will have a specific intelligence to do a specific task. The heart of training a model is an algorithm that incrementally updates the model by looking at the data samples one by one. And once it's built, the model can be used to predict an outcome on a new data. We can train the algorithm with credit card approval history to decide whether to approve a new credit card. And this is what we call supervised machine learning. It's learning from labeled data. 16:13 Lois: Ok, I see. What about the unsupervised machine learning algorithm? Nick: Data does not have a specific outcome or a label as we know it. And sometimes, we want to discover trends that the data has for potential insights. Similar data can be grouped into clusters. For example, retail marketing and sales, a retail company may collect information like household size, income, location, and occupation so that the suitable clusters could be identified, like a small family or a high spender and so on. And that data can be used for marketing and sales purposes. Regulating streaming services. A streaming service may collect information like viewing sessions, minutes per session, number of unique shows watched, and so on. That can be used to regulate streaming services. Let's look at another example. We all know that fruits and vegetables have different nutritional elements. But do we know which of those fruits and vegetables are similar nutritionally? For that, we'll try to cluster fruits and vegetables' nutritional data and try to get some insights into it. This will help us include nutritionally different fruits and vegetables into our daily diets. Exploring patterns and data and grouping similar data into clusters drives unsupervised machine learning. 17:34 Nikita: And then finally, we come to the reinforcement learning algorithm. Nick: How do we learn to play a game, say, chess? We'll make a move or a decision, check to see if it's the right move or feedback, and we'll keep the outcomes in your memory for the next step you take, which is learning. Reinforcement learning is a machine learning approach where a computer program learns to make decisions by trying different actions and receiving feedback. It teaches agents how to solve tasks by trial and error. This approach is used in autonomous car driving and robots as well. 18:06 Lois: We keep coming across the term “deep learning.” You've spoken a bit about it a few times in this episode, but what is deep learning, really? How is it related to machine learning? Nick: Deep learning is all about extracting features and rules from data. Can we identify if an image is a cat or a dog by looking at just one pixel? Can we write rules to identify a cat or a dog in an image? Can the features and rules be extracted from the raw data, in this case, pixels? Deep learning is really useful in this situation. It's a special kind of machine learning that trains super smart computer networks with lots of layers. And these networks can learn things all by themselves from pictures, like figuring out if a picture is a cat or a dog. 18:49 Lois: I know we're going to be covering this in detail in an upcoming episode, but before we let you go, can you briefly tell us about generative AI? Nick: Generative AI, a subset of machine learning, creates diverse content like text, audio, images, and more. These models, often powered by neural networks, learn patterns from existing data to craft fresh and creative output. For instance, ChatGPT generates text-based responses by understanding patterns in text data that it's been trained on. Generative AI plays a vital role in various AI tasks requiring content creation and innovation. 19:28 Nikita: Thank you, Nick, for sharing your expertise with us. To learn more about AI, go to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Foundations course. As you complete the course, you'll find skill checks that you can attempt to solidify your learning. Lois: And remember, the AI Foundations course on MyLearn also prepares you for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2023 AI Foundations Associate certification. Both the course and the certification are free, so there's really no reason NOT to take the leap into AI, right Niki? Nikita: That's right, Lois! Lois: In our next episode, we will look at the fundamentals of machine learning. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham signing off! 20:13 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
Patrick navigates the complexities of papal infallibility, explaining how it as a guardrail ensuring that the church remains steadfast in truth. Patrick offers compassionate advice for fostering faith within the family unit, underscoring the pivotal role of baptism and sharing resources to help persuade loved ones of its significance. The episode crescendos with a robust discussion on the indispensable role of sacred tradition, challenging the idea that scripture can stand isolated from the historical depth and wisdom of church teachings. Sue - If you have done the surrender prayer for someone to come back to the church (and they starting coming back) but they are still having struggles, do you step in or Just leave it up to God? Sean – I think people confuse Mary with her sister-in-law (05:37) Mike – The role of Sacred Tradition (08:36) Nick - How do you explain papal infallibility to non-Catholics? (20:39) Jessica - What are your thoughts on dogs being present during Mass? (28:59) Elaina - Before the fall, God said that the herbs and plants were our food. Is this true? Martin – I'm a Muslim and Catholics are wrong John - How do I talk to my son about getting my grandsons baptized? When I ask him, he just gives me excuses. (41:30) Dave - What do you think James White's response would be to Jesus telling us that he would be with us until the end of the age?
When Nick Gray first moved to New York City he went to a bunch of networking events, failed to make meaningful connections, and always left feeling like a loser. Eventually realising he was not the problem - it was the events, he decided to start hosting his own. This led him to writing his book ‘The Two Hour Cocktail Party', and now helps people around the world take networking into their own hands. In this episode of Tiger Therapy, we discuss how to host the ultimate networking party, how to get past feeling “cringe” when promoting your brand on social media, and Nick's entrepreneur journey - prior to The Two Hour Cocktail Party he built and sold 2 multi-million dollar companies, including Museum Hack, that was listed as one of Inc. 5000's fastest growing companies in America.Thanks Nick for coming on Tiger Therapy!_______Resources from Nick:How to Host an Event: Parties & NetworkingWhere to Throw a Party? Ideas and Venues for 2023Icebreaker Activities for Your Next Event_______Social media: Pippa Woodhead | @pippa.woodheadTigerhall Nick Gray | @nickgraynews Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Episode 404 features Nick Gray, Author of "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party"Check out some great resources from Nick:How to Introduce Two People via Email: Sample Scripts9 Career Day Speech and Presentation IdeasParty Times: Start, End, & Best TimesIcebreaker Name Tags: Examples and How to Do It RIGHTHow to Host an Event: Parties & NetworkingWhere to Throw a Party? Ideas and Venues for 2023Icebreaker Activities for Your Next EventNick Gray's Personal WebsiteFriendship Recession Website7 Small Trade Show Booth Ideas for 2023Find Nick Online:Personal Website: https://nickgray.net/Website: https://party.pro/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickgraynewsTwitter: https://www.twitter.com/nickgraynews/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nickgraynews/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@nickgraynewsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@nickgrayFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/newfriendConnect with the host, Brian OndrakoWebsite: https://brianondrako.com/Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@brianondrakoTwitter: https://twitter.com/brianondrakoInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/brianondrako/Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianondrako/Newsletter/Blog: https://brianondrako.com/subscribe Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
You probably interact with artificial intelligence (AI) more than you realize. So, there's never been a better time to start figuring out how it all works. Join Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham as they decode the fundamentals of AI so that anyone, irrespective of their technical background, can leverage the benefits of AI and tap into its infinite potential. Together with Senior Cloud Engineer Nick Commisso, they take you through key AI concepts, common AI tasks and domains, and the primary differences between AI, machine learning, and deep learning. Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Himanshu Raj, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode. -------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript 00:00 Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we'll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let's get started! 00:26 Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast. I'm Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! Welcome to a new season of the Oracle University Podcast. I'm so excited about this season because we're going to delve into the world of artificial intelligence. In upcoming episodes, we'll talk about the fundamentals of artificial intelligence and machine learning. And we'll discuss neural network architectures, generative AI and large language models, the OCI AI stack, and OCI AI services. 01:06 Nikita: So, if you're an IT professional who wants to start learning about AI and ML or even if you're a student who is familiar with OCI or similar cloud services, but have no prior exposure to this field, you'll want to tune in to these episodes. Lois: That's right, Niki. So, let's get started. Today, we'll talk about the basics of artificial intelligence with Senior Cloud Engineer Nick Commisso. Hi Nick! Thanks for joining us today. So, let's start right at the beginning. What is artificial intelligence? 01:36 Nick: Well, the ability of machines to imitate the cognitive abilities and problem solving capabilities of human intelligence can be classified as artificial intelligence or AI. 01:47 Nikita: Now, when you say capabilities and abilities, what are you referring to? Nick: Human intelligence is the intellectual capability of humans that allows us to learn new skills through observation and mental digestion, to think through and understand abstract concepts and apply reasoning, to communicate using a language and understand the nonverbal cues, such as facial recognition, tone variation, and body language. You can handle objections in real time, even in a complex setting. You can plan for short and long-term situations or projects. And, of course, you can create music and art or invent something new like an original idea. If you can replicate any of these human capabilities in machines, this is artificial general intelligence or AGI. So in other words, AGI can mimic human sensory and motor skills, performance, learning, and intelligence, and use these abilities to carry out complicated tasks without human intervention. When we apply AGI to solve problems with specific and narrow objectives, we call it artificial intelligence or AI. 02:55 Lois: It seems like AI is everywhere, Nick. Can you give us some examples of where AI is used? Nick: AI is all around us, and you've probably interacted with AI, even if you didn't realize it. Some examples of AI can be viewing an image or an object and identifying if that is an apple or an orange. It could be examining an email and classifying it spam or not. It could be writing computer language code or predicting the price of an older car. So let's get into some more specifics of AI tasks and the nature of related data. Machine learning, deep learning, and data science are all associated with AI, and it can be confusing to distinguish. 03:36 Nikita: Why do we need AI? Why's it important? Nick: AI is vital in today's world, and with the amount of data that's generated, it far exceeds the human ability to absorb, interpret, and actually make decisions based on that data. That's where AI comes in handy by enhancing the speed and effectiveness of human efforts. So here are two major reasons why we need AI. Number one, we want to eliminate or reduce the amount of routine tasks, and businesses have a lot of routine tasks that need to be done in large numbers. So things like approving a credit card or a bank loan, processing an insurance claim, recommending products to customers are just some example of routine tasks that can be handled. And second, we, as humans, need a smart friend who can create stories and poems, designs, create code and music, and have humor, just like us. 04:33 Lois: I'm onboard with getting help from a smart friend! There are different domains in AI, right, Nick? Nick: We have language for language translation; vision, like image classification; speech, like text to speech; product recommendations that can help you cross-sell products; anomaly detection, like detecting fraudulent transactions; learning by reward, like self-driven cars. You have forecasting with weather forecasting. And, of course, generating content like image from text. 05:03 Lois: There are so many applications. Nick, can you tell us more about these commonly used AI domains like language, audio, speech, and vision? Nick: Language-related AI tasks can be text related or generative AI. Text-related AI tasks use text as input, and the output can vary depending on the task. Some examples include detecting language, extracting entities in a text, or extracting key phrases and so on. Consider the example of translating text. There's many text translation tools where you simply type or paste your text into a given text box, choose your source and target language, and then click translate. Now, let's look at the generative AI tasks. They are generative, which means the output text is generated by a model. Some examples are creating text like stories or poems, summarizing a text, answering questions, and so on. Let's take the example of ChatGPT, the most well-known generative chat bot. These bots can create responses from their training on large language models, and they continuously grow through machine learning. 06:10 Nikita: What can you tell us about using text as data? Nick: Text is inherently sequential, and text consists of sentences. Sentences can have multiple words, and those words need to be converted to numbers for it to be used to train language models. This is called tokenization. Now, the length of sentences can vary, and all the sentences lengths need to be made equal. This is done through padding. Words can have similarities with other words, and sentences can also be similar to other sentences. The similarity can be measured through dot similarity or cosine similarity. We need a way to indicate that similar words or sentences may be close by. This is done through representation called embedding. 06:56 Nikita: And what about language AI models? Nick: Language AI models refer to artificial intelligence models that are specifically designed to understand, process, and generate natural language. These models have been trained on vast amounts of textual data that can perform various natural language processing or NLP tasks. The task that needs to be performed decides the type of input and output. The deep learning model architectures that are typically used to train models that perform language tasks are recurrent neural networks, which processes data sequentially and stores hidden states, long short-term memory, which processes data sequentially that can retain the context better through the use of gates, and transformers, which processes data in parallel. It uses the concept of self-attention to better understand the context. 07:48 Lois: And then there's speech-related AI, right? Nick: Speech-related AI tasks can be either audio related or generative AI. Speech-related AI tasks use audio or speech as input, and the output can vary depending on the task. For example, speech-to-text conversion or speaker recognition, voice conversion, and so on. Generative AI tasks are generative in nature, so the output audio is generated by a model. For example, you have music composition and speech synthesis. Audio or speech is digitized as snapshots taken in time. The sample rate is the number of times in a second an audio sample is taken. Most digital audio have a sampling rate of 44.1 kilohertz, which is also the sampling rate for audio CDs. Multiple samples need to be correlated to make sense of the data. For example, listening to a song for a fraction of a second, you won't be able to infer much about the song, and you'll probably need to listen to it a little bit longer. Audio and speech AI models are designed to process and understand audio data, including spoken language. These deep-learning model architectures are used to train models that perform language with tasks-- recurrent neural networks, long short-term memory, transformers, variational autoencoders, waveform models, and Siamese networks. All of the models take into consideration the sequential nature of audio. 09:21 Did you know that Oracle University offers free courses on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure? You'll find training on everything from cloud computing, database, and security to artificial intelligence and machine learning, all free to subscribers. So, what are you waiting for? Pick a topic, leverage the Oracle University Learning Community to ask questions, and then sit for your certification. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started. 09:49 Nikita: Welcome back! Now that we've covered language and speech-related tasks, let's move on to vision-related tasks. Nick: Vision-related AI tasks could be image related or generative AI. Image-related AI tasks will use an image as an input, and the output depends on the task. Some examples are classifying images, identifying objects in an image, and so on. Facial recognition is one of the most popular image-related tasks that is often used for surveillance and tracking of people in real time, and it's used in a lot of different fields, including security, biometrics, law enforcement, and social media. For generative AI tasks, the output image is generated by a model. For example, creating an image from a contextual description, generating images of a specific style or a high resolution, and so on. It can create extremely realistic new images and videos by generating original 3D models of an object, machine components, buildings, medication, people, and even more. 10:53 Lois: So, then, here again I need to ask, how do images work as data? Nick: Images consist of pixels, and pixels can be either grayscale or color. And we can't really make out what an image is just by looking at one pixel. The task that needs to be performed decides the type of input needed and the output produced. Various architectures have evolved to handle this wide variety of tasks and data. These deep-learning model architectures are typically used to train models that perform vision tasks-- convolutional neural networks, which detects patterns in images; learning hierarchical representations of visual features; YOLO, which is You Only Look Once, processes the image and detects objects within the image; and then you have generative adversarial networks, which generates real-looking images. 11:43 Nikita: Nick, earlier you mentioned other AI tasks like anomaly detection, recommendations, and forecasting. Could you tell us more about them? Nick: Anomaly detection. This is time-series data, which is required for anomaly detection, and it can be a single or multivariate for fraud detection, machine failure, etc. Recommendations. You can recommend products using data of similar products or users. For recommendations, data of similar products or similar users is required. Forecasting. Time-series data is required for forecasting and can be used for things like weather forecasting and predicting the stock price. 12:22 Lois: Nick, help me understand the difference between artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. Let's start with AI. Nick: Imagine a self-driving car that can make decisions like a human driver, such as navigating traffic or detecting pedestrians and making safe lane changes. AI refers to the broader concept of creating machines or systems that can perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. Next, we have machine learning or ML. Visualize a spam email filter that learns to identify and move spam emails to the spam folder, and that's based on the user's interaction and email content. Now, ML is a subset of AI that focuses on the development of algorithms that enable machines to learn from and make predictions or decisions based on data. To understand what an algorithm is in the context of machine learning, it refers to a specific set of rules, mathematical equations, or procedures that the machine learning model follows to learn from data and make predictions on. And finally, we have deep learning or DL. Think of an image recognition software that can identify specific objects or animals within images, such as recognizing cats in photos on the internet. DL is a subfield of ML that uses neural networks with many layers, deep neural networks, to learn and make sense of complex patterns in data. 13:51 Nikita: Are there different types of machine learning? Nick: There are several types of machine learning, including supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning. Supervised learning where the algorithm learns from labeled data, making predictions or classifications. Unsupervised learning is an algorithm that discovers patterns and structures in unlabeled data, such as clustering or dimensionality reduction. And then, you have reinforcement learning, where agents learn to make predictions and decisions by interacting with an environment and receiving rewards or punishments. 14:27 Lois: Can we do a deep dive into each of these types you just mentioned? We can start with the supervised machine learning algorithm. Nick: Let's take an example of how a credit card company would approve a credit card. Once the application and documents are submitted, a verification is done, followed by a credit score check and another 10 to 15 days for approval. And how is this done? Sometimes, purely manually or by using a rules engine where you can build rules, give new data, get a decision. The drawbacks are slow. You need skilled people to build and update rules, and the rules keep changing. The good thing is that the businesses had a lot of insight as to how the decisions were made. Can we build rules by looking at the past data? We all learn by examples. Past data is nothing but a set of examples. Maybe reviewing past credit card approval history can help. Through a process of training, a model can be built that will have a specific intelligence to do a specific task. The heart of training a model is an algorithm that incrementally updates the model by looking at the data samples one by one. And once it's built, the model can be used to predict an outcome on a new data. We can train the algorithm with credit card approval history to decide whether to approve a new credit card. And this is what we call supervised machine learning. It's learning from labeled data. 15:52 Lois: Ok, I see. What about the unsupervised machine learning algorithm? Nick: Data does not have a specific outcome or a label as we know it. And sometimes, we want to discover trends that the data has for potential insights. Similar data can be grouped into clusters. For example, retail marketing and sales, a retail company may collect information like household size, income, location, and occupation so that the suitable clusters could be identified, like a small family or a high spender and so on. And that data can be used for marketing and sales purposes. Regulating streaming services. A streaming service may collect information like viewing sessions, minutes per session, number of unique shows watched, and so on. That can be used to regulate streaming services. Let's look at another example. We all know that fruits and vegetables have different nutritional elements. But do we know which of those fruits and vegetables are similar nutritionally? For that, we'll try to cluster fruits and vegetables' nutritional data and try to get some insights into it. This will help us include nutritionally different fruits and vegetables into our daily diets. Exploring patterns and data and grouping similar data into clusters drives unsupervised machine learning. 17:13 Nikita: And then finally, we come to the reinforcement learning algorithm. Nick: How do we learn to play a game, say, chess? We'll make a move or a decision, check to see if it's the right move or feedback, and we'll keep the outcomes in your memory for the next step you take, which is learning. Reinforcement learning is a machine learning approach where a computer program learns to make decisions by trying different actions and receiving feedback. It teaches agents how to solve tasks by trial and error. This approach is used in autonomous car driving and robots as well. 17:46 Lois: We keep coming across the term “deep learning.” You've spoken a bit about it a few times in this episode, but what is deep learning, really? How is it related to machine learning? Nick: Deep learning is all about extracting features and rules from data. Can we identify if an image is a cat or a dog by looking at just one pixel? Can we write rules to identify a cat or a dog in an image? Can the features and rules be extracted from the raw data, in this case, pixels? Deep learning is really useful in this situation. It's a special kind of machine learning that trains super smart computer networks with lots of layers. And these networks can learn things all by themselves from pictures, like figuring out if a picture is a cat or a dog. 18:28 Lois: I know we're going to be covering this in detail in an upcoming episode, but before we let you go, can you briefly tell us about generative AI? Nick: Generative AI, a subset of machine learning, creates diverse content like text, audio, images, and more. These models, often powered by neural networks, learn patterns from existing data to craft fresh and creative output. For instance, ChatGPT generates text-based responses by understanding patterns in text data that it's been trained on. Generative AI plays a vital role in various AI tasks requiring content creation and innovation. 19:07 Nikita: Thank you, Nick, for sharing your expertise with us. To learn more about AI, go to mylearn.oracle.com and search for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure AI Foundations course. As you complete the course, you'll find skill checks that you can attempt to solidify your learning. Lois: And remember, the AI Foundations course on MyLearn also prepares you for the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure 2023 AI Foundations Associate certification. Both the course and the certification are free, so there's really no reason NOT to take the leap into AI, right Niki? Nikita: That's right, Lois! Lois: In our next episode, we will look at the fundamentals of machine learning. Until then, this is Lois Houston… Nikita: And Nikita Abraham signing off! 19:52 That's all for this episode of the Oracle University Podcast. If you enjoyed listening, please click Subscribe to get all the latest episodes. We'd also love it if you would take a moment to rate and review us on your podcast app. See you again on the next episode of the Oracle University Podcast.
As you know, we enjoy doing live podcasts at bars/restaurants! This one has been in the works for over a year. We visited Jennings Street Public House in Newburgh, Indiana for a Sunday Funday
We absolutely and unequivocally condemn the murder and kidnapping of innocent civilians. Casey Neistat’s video
Do you feel the pressure of having to rely almost solely on word of mouth and referrals to continue growing your agency?If so, you're not alone.Even if you have all the systems and capabilities to grow your agency, you may not be effectively marketing your firm...and it's often for a common reason: You've become an "interchangeable agency."If you're like most marketing agencies, it's difficult for you to tell clients the problem you really solve.You struggle to get clients to see (and believe) that you're different.If that's you, you've been unknowingly positioning yourself as an interchangeable agency.The answer is to stop marketing your solutions and trying to convince buyers that you're better. Instead, start marketing the problem (and become the default solution).In today's episode with Nick Bennett, Founder of Harness & Hone, he shares the 3 steps you can take to clearly define (and dominate) your niche.You'll hear from Nick:How to go beyond the typical niching by vertical marketHow to clearly define the problem you solveHow to develop your POV around that problemHow to deploy that POV out into the market and into the right discovery channels for your unique audience.Get access to the free, ungated resource Nick mentioned in this episode:The Agency Niche Design PlaybookConnect with Nick on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nichbennett/Want to get more content to support your agency life? Subscribe to the Agency Life newsletter, check out past episodes & find more content at teamwork.com/agencylife. This podcast is brought to you by Teamwork.com.
Nancy - If Hell exists why is there so much evil on earth? Do people don't believe hell exists? Mary - Any thoughts about the people that were resurrected and walking around when Jesus died on the Cross? Joseph - How would you encourage a struggling Catholic who feels that the Eucharist is too much the center of the celebration of the Church and not the fruits of the spirit or other parts our faith? Michelle - Matthew 13:55 and 56. It says that Mary had other children. What's your take? John – I estimate that there were 20 million people on the earth by the time Cane killed Abel. Do you agree with that assumption? I have been reading the Church Fathers and interested in coming back to the Church. John - Should we go to confession before Easter if we don't have any mortal sin on our soul? Nick – How do you respond to someone who asks” Did Jesus really say that?” Lupita - Is it a sin to get divorced even though you are in an abusive relationship?
This week's show features Nick Gray, a serial entrepreneur who has been living in Austin, Texas for the past two years. After moving to New York City in his mid-20s without any friends, he quickly adapted to the hustle and bustle of the city by walking up to 10,000 steps each day. Inspired by his love of museums, Nick created Museum Hack - a business that provides renegade museum tours led by stand-up comedians and Broadway actors. Museum Hack quickly became a multimillion dollar business, offering team building activities to businesses and companies across the United States. We discuss Nick's book: "The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings." Nick shares tips for improving event attendance and hosting successful parties. He discusses the use of icebreakers, delegating duties, and communicating the end time of a party. Additionally, Nick shares his experience with starting Museum Hack and provides tips for building confidence as a new host. Tune in for great advice on turbocharging connections with guests and making hosting parties a habit.[05.07] Making friends – Starting the conversation, Nick explains why it is difficult for adults to make friends. [09.50] Cocktail party – Nick shares the reason behind choosing the title cocktail party instead of a dinner party and the difference between the two. [25.01] Start small – Start small by inviting close friends, neighbors, and work buddies for a low-stakes party.[30.37] The attendance – Nick shares the steps you have to take to boost the attendance of your party with RSVPs, reminder messages and guest bios.[37.06] Name tags – We talk about the importance of name tags at parties. [39:00] Icebreakers - How icebreakers are used to get people talking and meeting new people at parties.[48:42] How to end a party - End party 15 minutes before scheduled time, turn off music and lights, tidy up and thank guests for coming.Connect with Nick:Website - nickgray.net/ LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/nickgraynews/ Instagram - instagram.com/nickgraynews/ Twitter - twitter.com/nickgraynews Tiktok - tiktok.com/@nickgraynewsResources:Book by Nick The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings Book by James ClearAtomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad OnesBook by Priya ParkerThe Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters Articles by Nick:How to Host a Party WebsiteHappy Hour Best Practices: How to Plan, Host, and Throw a Great PartyThe Easy Way to Host or Plan a Networking EventLaunch Party Ideas: 4 Tips for SuccessHow to Host a Dinner PartyHow to Plan a PicnicHow to Host a Housewarming PartyHow to Host a Party at Home with Kids
When Nick Gray moved to New York City, he was a shy introvert with few friends. But he wanted to build up his social network. So he started throwing cocktail parties to meet people. These parties changed his life, and he thinks they can change yours, too.Nick knows what you're thinking: you don't throw parties, and hosting them is simply not for you. But, he would encourage you not to tune out. He's got a great case for why you should give this idea a try, and just as he does in his book — The 2-Hour Cocktail Party: How to Build Big Relationships with Small Gatherings — Nick is going to lay out exactly how to throw a party that's low stakes and low effort, but will be highly successful in helping you build all kinds of connections.Today on the show, Nick shares what he's learned from throwing hundreds of parties and refining his hosting technique to a T. He explains why cocktail parties are better than dinner parties (and don't have to involve actual cocktails), the best night of the week to throw a party, why the party should only be two hours long and have a firm end time, how many people to invite, and who to invite when you don't yet have any friends. And he explains why he's a big fan of two things you might be hesitant about — name tags and icebreakers — and why two of his favorite things to include in a party are grapes and a harmonica.Resources Related to the EpisodeRelated articles by Nick:How to Host a Party at Home With KidsHow to Host a Digital Nomad Happy HourMocktail Party: How to Host When You Don't Drink AlcoholHow to Do Icebreakers: The Ultimate GuideEvent Platforms: Pros, Cons, and My FavoritesRelated AoM articles and podcasts:The Manly Art of HospitalityHow to End a Conversation9 Reasons You Should Host a Party This WeekendPodcast #378: Brunch Is HellPodcast #362: The Art of MinglingConnect With Nick GrayNick's websiteNick's newsletterNick on IG
In this solo episode, Sophie answers some listener questions: 1. Talia - Nutrition and tips for upset tum during running 2. Fitzy - Running vest tricks 3. Nick - How to build tendon / muscle resilience for long endurance events 4. The Sports Medicine Project - What considerations should trail runners have with insertional achilles mx? Need some nutrition or hydration for your endurance training? Use the code TAILWINDSTRONG at www.tailwindnutrition.com.au You can also use our code STRONGERSTRIDE for 15% off Vivobarefoot shoes at www.solemechanics.com.au Thanks for all of your support! Please rate the podcast, leave a review and follow us on instagram @strongerstride to stay up to date.
Here are a few important things to think about to help start and grow your business from the ground up.✔️What to prioritize right off the bar✔️Why an email list is important✔️Past failures online by Nick✔️How to choose delivery for a programming
Space industry analyst Nicholas Borroz moved from America to New Zealand to get a PhD in International Business, and ultimately start a space consultancy. But how did he break into the field, and what has he learned about the business of space--and the approach of most space sector companies to it? Space business owners, students and inventors seeking venture capital will find important information in this discussion. Cold Star Project host Jason Kanigan asks Nick: How did you end up in NZ? Peace Corps, doctorate … Tell us about your journey in the space industry What sorts of services do you offer at Rotoiti? And also, importantly, what you don't do; What sorts of clients do you work for: segment, geography, and sector); How did you choose these areas of service focus? What are some common difficulties you notice space industry market actors facing? How can NZ/Oz companies & US companies work together on space projects? USEFUL LINKS: Rotoiti website: https://rotoiti.space/ OpEx Society: https://www.opexsociety.org Talk to Cold Star: https://coldstartech.com/talktous
Nick Lehrain, designer and creative director of Oliver Grace creative studio is focused on digital products.In this episode, Nick shares his views on brand and growth strategies, distinctive brand assets, the trend towards simplification of the unique identifying characteristics used for consumers to notice, recognize and recall a brand. What is BlandingCreating a distinctive brand — differentiation and distinctiveness to stand outHis approach to designing the visual identity for a brand Examples of timeless logos from Logo Modernism book The brand codes you need to use consistently so you are recognizable The single most important issue to focus on and not lose sight of to build the brandLinkedIn: Nick LehrainInstagram: @nicklehrain & @olivergrace.studioWebsite: www.olivergrace.com.au Article by Nick: How to create a digital-first lean brandSuggested book: Logo Modernism Valuable Resources:Brand Tuned AccreditationBrand Tuned Newsletterwww.brandtuned.com
Episode 4 Nick: How did Australia beat the world with its HIV response? We discover the electric personalities, innovation, and dumb luck behind our success with Nick Cook author of Fighting For Our Lives. How Much Do You Know? is a podcast series that looks at HIV now. It's brought to you by and produced in [...]Read More... from How Much Do You Know? S2: Episode 4
In this episode I speak with author, speaker and spiritual guide Nick Burgett. He teaches us his secrets to finding love by taking the journey within ourselves. Nick teaches us tips from his latest book, How to Find Love - A Journey Within: 7 Simple Principles to Experience Everlasting Love. He shares his own personal struggle through suffering a lack of life purpose and how that led to his spiritual awakening that has enabled him to live from a place of unconditional love for himself and others. Love is the way and Nick shows us how to start to live from this place. Come join us on this love revolution and find what is in your way of experiencing total heart opening. About Today’s Guest:Nick is an author, speaker, and spiritual guide. By going through his own crisis and spiritual awakening, he is able to show others how they can live a happier, more fulfilling life. Connect with Nick:How to Find Love - A Journey Within: 7 Simple Principles to Experience Everlasting LoveNicks Clothing line Song of the episode: Fancy Hagood - Forest About the Host:Matt Landsiedel is a transformative life coach, intuitive, podcast host, and author from Calgary, Canada.Matt specializes in teaching people how to heal shame and embody their authentic self so they can enjoy meaningful connections in their lives. His areas of expertise are working with gay men and highly sensitive people to develop a stronger sense of self-worth.Matt earned his undergraduate degree in Addiction Counselling from the University of Lethbridge and has spent the last 14 years working in the fields of Mental Health & Addiction and Transformative Life Coaching where he guides people on their psychological and spiritual journey through life. Inspired to Be Authentic is a mission Matt has purposefully created. Through his creative content and coaching, he offers you inspiration to share more of your truth with the world. He does this by teaching you life changing skills and sharing energetic transmissions that inspire you to show up courageously in your own life by practicing vulnerability. Matt's vision for this world is for us all to live with more courage so we can share our authenticity and enjoy more meaningful connections in our lives.In his spare time, you can find Matt traveling the world, writing, reading, hiking mountains, doing yoga, meditating and contemplating life, spending quality time with family and friends, playing the ukulele, taking photographs, and spending time building his coaching business.► Take my new FREE course: Embody Your Truth ► MattLandsiedel.com► Read my latest book► Facebook► Instagram
We were lucky enough to have Nick Santonastasso come to my house and wrestle with me, and give my kids a private workshop. Listen in behind the scenes and hopefully it will change your life like it did ours. Hit me up on IG! @russellbrunson Text Me! 208-231-3797 Join my newsletter at marketingsecrets.com ---Transcript--- What's up everybody. This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. And Oh boy, do I have a treat for you guys today. So the guest for the podcast is my new friend and wrestling partner, Nick Santonastasso. And he's someone who I had a chance to... I've seen him online a whole bunch of times and a whole bunch of different places. And then he reached out to me out of the blue and said, "Hey, Russell, come out and interview for my podcast." And I knew that he wrestled, and I was like, "Dude. Yes." And I was excited. I'm like, "Yeah, I love your message. Love who you are. I love what you stand for." And he's like, "If you want I'll actually fly out to Boise." And at the time I was just sitting in my wrestling room, I knew he's a wrestler. And I was like, "Dude, how about this? You come out and then you can interview me for your podcast. And then I'll actually wrestle you in my wrestling room?" And he was like, "Yeah, that'd be amazing." And so we planned this whole thing out. And the week before Thanksgiving, he flew out here to Boise and I did an interview for his podcast. And then we came back to my wrestling room and wrestled. And obviously, my entire family wanted to meet him and to see him. If you haven't met Nick before, he has no legs and he only has one arm, and his story is amazing. And the fact that he was a wrestler is even cooler. And so me and him wrestled. And after we got into wrestling, we had so much fun, then everyone, my kids and my wife and my parents were there and everybody had a million questions for him. So I said, "How about this? Let's do a little mini seminar with my kids to be willing to." And he's like, "Sure." And so we pulled up the mats and the crash pads and the box jumps, and we had everybody sit on them, and then Nick had a chance to tell us some of the story and talk to the kids at a really cool level. And it was really fun. One of my kids was really nervous asking questions. He thought I was going to get mad at him. Anyway, it's fun. You have a chance to hear from kids, you ask him questions and hear Nick's story. And I hope that you love it. It was one of the highlights of my year, super special opportunity for me and for my family to have a chance to meet someone like Nick and to hear his story. And it's just a huge blessing that I think he gave me to be able to have him talk to my kids. And so I wanted to share this with you guys, because a lot of you guys have kids, a lot of you guys are kids and a lot of you guys have different situations. And I hope that some of the things that Nick shared with me and my family, it'll mean a lot to you as well. So with that said, we're going to cue the theme song. And we come back, you have a chance to sit in, into a private discussion with my kids and Nick as they talk about life, motivation about doing your best, a whole bunch of other cool things. So with that said, we'll cue the theme song. We'll be right back. Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson. I'm here in our wrestling room right now with a bunch of my kids and cousins and friends, because we've got a special guest in town, in Boise today who I just got done wrestling, which was so much fun. And this is Nick. We had a great time. And thanks for coming and hanging out with us here in Boise and talking to all the kids. Nick Santonastasso: You got it. Russell: So kind of the game plan we want to do is I wanted my kids to get to know him and hear some of his stories and stuff for so many reasons. And so I'd love to begin with, if you want to tell them little about your story, about your life, growing up wrestling, and just some of the background. And then I got some cool questions about other stuff I want to talk about too. Nick: Yeah. Great. It's pretty open-ended when he said share your story. I got a long story. And so I'll give you a little context of why I was born like this. And yes, I was born like this. I didn't wrestle no sharks or anything. I see we got some laughs. I'm 24 years old. In 1996, my mom went in for a late ultrasound, and a ultrasound is where they see the baby inside the stomach. And they sat my parents down and said, "Something's really wrong." And they said, "From the looks of it, it doesn't look like your baby's limbs are being developed. It looks like he's missing his legs, his arm, and his face might be messed up." Clearly, my face isn't messed up. Right? And so what they did was they classified me with what they call Hanhart syndrome. And Hanhart syndrome is a super rare genetic disorder that either leaves the babies with undeveloped limbs or undeveloped organs. And so that means the babies are either born with a heart that can't beat on its own or their stomach can't process food on its own, and they later on pass away. And so they told my parents that their baby boy has about a 30% chance to live. And so I was born and the test of my organs came back 100% healthy, and the only thing that was affected were my limbs. And so I was born in this unicorn body of no legs and one arm. And all my organs are 100% healthy. Always the lesson behind that is the doctor said it had about a 30% chance to live. And my parents made a massive promise. And that promise was that they were going to focus on the 30% chance of me living rather than the what? Dallin: You dying. Nick: Exactly. You dying. Exactly. The aggressive way to say it. And so the 70% of me dying. Exactly. And so in life, that's the... Ooh, careful. I know you beat me up earlier, but stay on here. And so the little lesson is, would you agree that in your life, there's always something bad that you can focus on? Would you agree? And would you agree that there's always something good that you can focus on? And so the majority of humans, and you can agree, the majority of adults always focus on the negative stuff. And so if we can train our brain to always focus on the good things, then we always win. And so that was how I was born. And then getting into wrestling, when I got into middle school and high school, which some of you, when you get into middle school and high school, at that time, a big portion of life was boyfriends and girlfriends. Awkward phase, getting into middle school and high school. I see people getting awkward. It's awkward. And so I felt like I stood out. Well, I clearly stood out because I have no legs, one arm. And there was a specific moment where I was on the bus and there was a girl to the left of me and she was making fun of everyone on the bus. And I'm like, "Oh my God, she's going to have a field day with me." And she looked over to me and she said, "Nick, I don't even have to start with you. You're already too messed up anyway. Look at you." And I'm only a 14, 15 year old kid. And the first question that pops in my head is, why me? Have you ever asked yourself, like, "Why is this happening to me?" And so I asked myself, "Why is this happening to me?" And from that moment of one girl making fun of me, I thought things like, "Oh, I'm disgusting. I'll never have a girlfriend. I'll never go to a school dance. I'll never be able to walk my girlfriend to her locker because I can't walk. And she want to hold my finger. Is that weird?" I just started thinking about all these negative things. And so for the majority of my life, I felt my body, my no legs and one arm was the most disgusting thing, the biggest curse that life could give me. And then I was able to reframe it. And what reframing is, is say you have a bad event happen in your life. And I had the same thing happen to me. You could see all the good and I could see all the bad, it's what we focus on, yes? And so I realized a couple of years later that if a girl doesn't want to be my girlfriend, or if someone doesn't want to do business with me because of my no legs, one arm, well, wait, maybe this disability or whatever you want to call it is actually working for me and it's filtering out the type of human and womens that I don't want in my life anyway. And so when you show up authentic, when you show up transparent and you show up yourself, would you agree that the universe makes it very easy to see who's your friend and who's not your friend? I mean, have you ever had a situation in school where you thought someone was your friend and they no longer was? Has that ever happened? And that means that we don't want those people in our life. And then you also have people in your life that love on you. Anyone have good friends here? I hope. Raise your hands. That's because you show up yourself. And so I have a quote on my arm. It says, "You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same." And that's not me making fun of people with legs and arms, but what I'm saying is the best thing you could be, the most authentic thing you could be as who? Who do you think? Were you listening? You. You. You show up, Norah, and you're the greatest Norah that the world has ever seen, because you are you. And so we're going to grow up and people are going to like us and people are not going to like us. Who agrees with that? But as long as you show up yourself, the universe makes it really easy to find out who loves you for you and who doesn't love you for you. Russell: That's awesome. Nick: Facilitator, where else would you like to go? Russell: So now we're in high school, struggling with high school stuff. And you told me your older brother's a wrestler, and you wanted to do that. I'd love to hear the story about wrestling, why you got involved in that. Nick: Yeah. So my older brother was a wrestler. He's a really good wrestler and I thought wrestlers were the coolest thing on earth. And so when I got into high school, I was looking for a way to build more confidence in myself, because I didn't have much confidence. And so I wanted to do something that was going to make me feel really good about myself. And so I wanted to become an athlete after my whole life people said, "Nick, you can't be an athlete. You can't do sports. You have no legs, one arm." And so, one day I came into school, my friend said, "Nick, you should try wrestling." And I said, "I can't my arm." And this, we call it the potato. It looks like a potato now. But it used to look like a chicken wing. You believe it? Do you believe it? And the reason why it looked like a chicken wing is because this arm was five inches longer than it is now. And my bone was going faster than my skin. So it was super sensitive. And the bottom line is if I would have hit my arm hard enough, my bone would've came through my skin. Yeah, crazy. Right. And so I couldn't do any physical activities with it. And so one day I came home and I said, "Mom and dad, I want to become a wrestler." And they said, "You can't, your arm." And then I looked at my parents and I said, "Can we cut my arm off?" And they said, "What?" And I said, "Yeah, I'm not joking. Can we cut my arm off? Can we do something about it?" And they said, "Is this something that you really want to do?" And I said, "It's going to make me an athlete. I'll be able to wrestle. I'll have more confidence in myself." And so my sophomore year of high school, my parents scheduled the appointment for the doctors to amputate my arm. And so I have these scars here, but what they did was, I didn't know they could do this, but they lasered five inches of my bone off. And then they pulled extra skin. Now you're taller than me. Then they pulled extra skin from my shoulder over my bone so I could beat people up with it. I remember right before I went into surgery, I said, "Doc, if I can't beat someone over the head with my arm when I come back, we're going to have a problem. I need to be able to do some physical activities with this thing." And so I went throughout the surgery and I go back to school. I had 17 stitches in my arm and I was the happiest kid that just cut his arm off. I go back to school, smiling. And people are like, "Nick, what'd you do?" I'm like, "I cut my arm off. It's great." And they said, "Why?" And I said, "I'm going to become a wrestler." And people made fun of me. They said, "Nick, how are you going to become a wrestler? You have no legs and one arm." And so I went out and I became a wrestler. My junior year, I got my butt kicked. And then my senior year, I was able to come out as the 106 pound varsity wrestler from my high school. And would you agree that that would probably instilled confidence in me and I'd probably feel a little bit better about myself, I'm an athlete, maybe the girls would like me? That's my thought process as a 16, 17 year old kid. And then the app, Vine came out. Y'all know what Vine is? You remember Vine? You remember Vine? Vine was an app that you could post six second videos. Raise your hand if you know what Vine is. Adults, raise your hand if you know what Vine is. All right, I'm going to educate you. So Vine was an app in 2014. I was a senior in high school where you can post six second videos. You had to be as creative as you can in six seconds. And so I wanted to create a way where I could make people laugh, but inspire them at the same time. And I wanted to do something that has never been done before. And so I was with my friends like this, and we're thinking of an idea. And I said, "I got an idea." I said, "How many legless guys do you see crawling around Walmart, pretending to be a zombie?" Bowen: Propped up just like that and siting in a elevator or something? Nick: That was me. And so I said, "That's a great idea." And so I'm a senior in high school and I put fake blood on my face and I put fake blood on my clothes, and I set out to my local Walmart in New Jersey, which Nick's not allowed in that Walmart anymore. And I go down the aisles and I'm looking for my victim, and I see this guy, he's heavily invested in the paper towels. And I looked at my camera guy, I go, "Record this. I'm going to try to scare him." And so I came around the corner as fast as I could like this. And he goes, "Oh," he threw the paper towels at my face. And I looked at my camera guy. I go, "Was that six seconds?" He goes, "Yes." I'm like, "Yes, this is just what the internet needs." And so I apologized to the guy. I told him I wasn't a zombie and that I'm really alive. And, "Thanks for letting me prank you." And I told my friends, "Pick me up and carry me out of Walmart before we get kicked out." And so I posted the video and I wanted 500 kids to see the video. I wanted to get 500 views. I posted the video and I went to sleep. And when I woke up for school, the next morning, the video had over 80,000 likes and over 80,000 reposts. I go back to school, my friends were like, "Dude, you're the zombie king." And I'm like, "What did I get myself into?" And so in under a year, my senior year I gained a million followers on Vine and the owners of The Walking Dead, the TV show hired me to fly out to Tokyo, Japan, to scare the main actor of The Walking Dead as a zombie. And so, the lesson in this, don't try to crawl around Walmart. It probably won't work for you, but would you agree that we all have unique gifts, unique ways, unique ways to make people laugh, inspire them? For me it was crawling around Walmart at the time, but we all have unique gifts. As you said, God gives us unique gifts and we have to use those. And so I use my unique body to scare people and make them laugh at the same time, which led me into going out on the internet and gaining a bunch of followers. And then I realized at one point that when I have kids and grandkids, that I want them to know me for much more than crawling around a Walmart. So I did what every kid with no legs and one arm kid would do, is I tried out for bodybuilding, said, no one ever. A lot of the times in bodybuilding, they say you have to focus on your legs, but most bodybuilders skip leg day anyway. And so I fit right in. Where do you want to go from here? But that's my zombie prank story. And so some of you may have seen my zombie pranks. You've seen them? Ryker: I've seen the one where you crawl in Walmart. Nick: Yeah. So that was high school Nick. I've evolved. I've come a long way from scaring people in Walmart. Russell: That's cool. So you got into bodybuilding and then I just wonder, because one of things I think a lot of us people don't do is we dabble in things. Like, "Oh, we'll try this. I'm going to try this and try this." But when you decided, "I'm going to be a bodybuilder," it wasn't just dabbling, right? You shifted your environment, shifted everything. You want to talk about the process there and what you did to be successful? Nick: Yeah. What humans have, we all have it is shiny objects into syndrome, kind of like Norah. You like shiny objects, right? Stars and bells and whistles and all humans like that. And so we try to do one thing and we're like, "Oh, maybe I want to try this over here." And so when I wanted to become a bodybuilder, I was living in New Jersey and it's very cold in New Jersey most of the time. And so I moved to Florida because it's... Have you ever been to Florida, anyone? We got to get you to Florida. I know Boise is great, but I mean, Florida is great too. And so I moved to Florida and I wanted to become a bodybuilder. And the first thing I did was found a really big muscle dude. And I said, "Will you teach me how to body build? You look like you know what you're doing." And that's what we do in business, is if we want to do something, we find out someone who's successful and we model them. And the reason being is because we don't have to reinvent the wheel, we don't have to recreate something. We just find someone who's successful and we learn from them. And so I attempted to become a bodybuilder. And when I moved to Florida, I told everyone, over a million people that followed me that before 2017 was over, I was going to step or hop on the competitive bodybuilding stage before the year was over. And so I did a 12 week preparation and I dedicated 12 weeks of my life to training and health and fitness. And I was 10 weeks into my prep, and I went to Vegas for an expo. And one of the days I went to the gym. Do you guys know The Rock? Everyone: Yeah. Nick: So The Rock was in the gym when I was at the gym and I've been blowing him up with bodybuilding videos for years. And so he already knew who I was. And so I go in the gym and low behold, there's Dwayne, The Rock Johnson. And he's surrounded by four security guards. And he's working out. I'm like, "Oh my God, it's The Rock." And I told my friends, I said, "Let's not bother this man." I stick out like a sore thumb. If he sees me, he's going to know who Nick is. And so after about 45 minutes of lifting, his security guard comes over and taps me on my shoulder and says, "You're Nick, right?" I said, "Not many people look like this. I'm Nick." And he goes, "Can Dwayne meet you?" I was like, "Dude, bring him on. I've been waiting all this time." And so they bring me over into the corner and they bring The Rock over and The Rock gets on my level or tries his best to get on my level. And he goes, "Dude, I'm such a big fan. Can I have a picture with you?" And on the outside, I'm like, "Sure, bro." But on the inside and I'm like, "Oh my God, it's Dwayne The Rock Johnson." Fangirling. And so we took a picture and I blurted out all my goals to him. I said, "I'm going to be the first Calvin Klein model with no legs. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to speak all over the world." And he said, "Nick, you're right, because people like you and I, they put us in any industry and we adapt and overcome." And all of us, would you agree with COVID and during this weird time, we've all adapted? We do school differently. We hang out with friends differently. Would you agree, we all have adapted? And so the more that we exercise the muscle of doing things differently, the more successful we'll be when we're adults. And so after that, I went back to Florida and I competed in bodybuilding against full-bodied guys. And I took third. I beat full body guys in bodybuilding, but I was telling Russell that I competed in the category where they don't judge your legs. That was important, because I don't got legs, I don't want them to judge my legs. And so I competed and I took third and I was the first man with no legs, one arm to jump on a bodybuilding stage. And the quote that I use is, "Over the 24 years of my life, I realized it's not the physical body that holds us back. But the biggest disability you can have," what do you think it is? "Your mindset." Great job. You guys rock. Russell: Awesome. The next thing we'll talk to you about is I know in your company you have a program that goes over a year long, Victorious, right? Nick: Yep. Russell: And each month covers a different letter. So I'd love just today and then probably out of time after that, but talking about the V and what that is in victorious. Victorious, right? Nick: Yeah. Junior Victorious. Russell: Yeah. And just talk about that for these guys because I think that's the first step for a lot of these guys when they're planning goals in sports or school, or any of their things they're trying to become. Nick: Yeah. So Junior Victorious, I created it because people like me and Russell, if we have all the knowledge and we don't give it to kids, then what's the use of it? Because we're not going to be around forever. That's just reality. And so we have to teach young people like you, so you can come, go and take over the world when you grow up. And so Victorious, basically the first month is V which stands for vision. And what vision is, is getting really clear on what you want in life. I think you can agree that the majority of humans don't really know what they want in life. They go to work or they go to school and don't really know why. Their first answer is, "I have to," but there's a deeper reason why you go to school. You probably want to be something, you want to do something with your life. And so V is getting clear. Say, you're an athlete. It's like, how many wins do you want to have? How many hours a day do you want to drill? What grades do you want to get? Does anyone know what they want to be when they're older? Curious. No idea. You got something, in the pink? Dallin: I would say it, but I don't think my dad would like it though. Nick: Got it. Maybe we'll skip over that one. But a vision. Are you okay? So vision basically is just getting very clear on what you want. And the reason why... Do you like cars? Dallin: Yeah. Nick: What kind of cars do you like? What kind of car do you want? You don't know? Dallin: Just one that goes fast. Nick: Yeah, exactly. So if he says, "I want a car and the one that goes fast," he's not going to get it because he doesn't know what car he wants. so the more clear that he can get on what car he wants, who agrees that he'll get the car faster because he knows exactly what he wants? That's a perfect example of all human beings. They want things, but they don't really know what they want. Right? Dallin: Yeah. Nick: And so next time I come back to Boise, I want you to have a specific car that you want so we can go get that car. Is that cool? I'm not buying it. Russ will buy it. But so getting very clear on what you want. And so it's like, who do you want to be? What kind of job do you want to work? What kind of college do you want to go to? What kind of school do you want to be? And the more clear that you can get on things, the faster that you'll get them. That's why, for example, if you wanted a specific car, adults help me out here because kids are a little bit difficult. Have you ever wanted a specific car and you were driving down the road and it was the only car you saw? I don't wear dresses, but women, have you ever wanted a specific dress and you finally got that dress and then you saw a bunch of other women that had the same dress? It's because your brain will go to what you want. That's why people who are depressed or people who are sad, they'll always be sad because they're always focused on the bad in their life. They're not focused on the good. And so our brain is extremely powerful because say you and I were very heavily invested in real estate, and they were whispering a conversation about real estate, we would hear it because our brain would pick up on it because that's where our focus is. That's why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The poor always focus on all the bad in their life, and the rich are focused on the opportunities. And so your brain is a computer. What you focus on, you will get more of. And so if you're always focused on, why me, or why is this happening to me? Or why does my life suck? Your brain will always come up with answers of why your life sucks. Who sees that? But if you ask yourself the question of, why am I amazing? Why did I get beat by Norah during the wrestling match? Or why is my life amazing? Your brain will always find the answer. And that's the thing. Our brain is a problem solving computer. And so it always looks for problems to solve. And you know this, if you're sitting around in your house and you don't have a problem, your brain will think of a problem and you'll try to solve it just because that's the way the brain works. And so I'll give you an easy example. If I woke up every single day, a man with no legs, one arm, and I focused on the fact that I'll never become a professional soccer player, will I be happy or sad? Quick. Everyone: Sad. Nick: Sad, right? I'm never become a professional soccer player. That's reality. But if I focus on what are my unique strengths, how can I make people laugh? How can I inspire them? What does my life look like then? It's better, right? That's where my focus is. Like Tony says where focus goes... Russell: Energy flows. Nick: Energy flows. They're a tough crowd. Russell: Okay. Next one. What questions do you guys have for Nick? Ryker? Ryker: How do you drive a car? Nick: That's a great question. So I drive a car, regular wheel. He's probably laughing because he doesn't think I could drive a car. So he just got proved wrong real quick. That's like teenage years, they try to test people. And so I drive a car with a regular wheel. That's why he's getting embarrassed. That's why you drive a car with a regular wheel. And then I have a little lever and I push the lever for brake and I push the level over for gas. And actually I have videos of me drifting my race car around the parking lot. Great question. Russell: There's another question here. Nick: You got one? Dallin: No. Nick: Okay. I'm just making sure. Aiden? Aiden: What's your favorite food? Nick: Great question. You want to guess? Aiden: I don't know. Nick: I like spaghetti. I'm Italian. My parents gave me a lot of spaghetti as a kid. You like spaghetti? What to go eat spaghetti after this? We can ditch this thing, get some spaghetti. That was a great question. Russell: Any other questions you guys have? We're super lucky to have him here. Bradley: I've got a question. How do you battle the fear of when you're trying to start something new or try something? How do you overcome the fear of trying something new? Nick: That's a great question. I'll give you a little story to help paint the picture. So they'd done a study on skydivers. And basically, they hooked the heart monitor up to skydivers. And so when they fly them up in the plane, their heart is going really fast. They're getting super nervous. "Oh my God." And then the moment that they jump out of the plane, their heart goes back to the normal speed. And so how do we eliminate fear? We take action. And so a lot of the times Russell and I are probably scared to do new things. Well, you're not scared to launch new funnels. You're a master at it. But launching new things, we're very scared. But I'd much rather attempt at my dreams and my goals and be on the sideline, hoping, wishing and regretting. Because at the end of the day, we only have one life for all we know. And there's so many people that are sitting on the sideline of life, making fun of people, bashing them. "You can't do this, you can't do that." But I'd much rather be on the mat rather than on the sideline. And also, realizing that failure is just feedback. A lot of the times we get programmed as kids that failure is bad. "I don't want to fail," but actually failure's our greatest lesson, our teaching. And so I failed a lot at life. Everything was hard for me, getting my clothes on, feeding myself, you name it, it was hard. And that's why I've been so successful is because I'm not afraid of failure. And so if we learn early on that failure is amazing and failure is our best friend, we'll have a better life. And so a little quote for you to remember, if you want to remember it, is, "If failure is a foe, you will never grow. If failure is a friend, you'll learn to the end." Super easy. I had to make it super dumb proof for adults as well. Do you want to ask a question? Dallin: Yeah. It's like, I don't know. It's just like talking about dropping out. Russell: Do you want me to ask it for you? Dallin: Yeah. Russell: So Dallin wants to be successful in life, but he focuses on he wants to drop out of high school. All he ever talks about is, "I want to drop out. I want to drop out." That's his vision and his goal, which is interesting, because I think he's got the right mindset. He wants to be successful, but he focuses on that all the time. So the question he wants to ask you is about him dropping out of school. Nick: Now you can ask it. Dallin: Oh. How do I say it? Nick: How do you drop out? Dallin: Yeah. Or, I don't know. Should I do it? Nick: Let me ask you a question. Do you individually pay for your school? Dallin: Nope. Nick: So why not get the knowledge if it's free? Dallin: I didn't think of it like that. Nick: Because when you're an adult, you're going to have to pay for knowledge. So if you're getting it for free why not take an advantage? Dallin: Because it's boring. Not boring, because I'm positive. Nick: Great takeaway. But would you agree if something's free, you might as well leverage it? Dallin: Yeah. Nick: So if you're a teenager and you're stuck in school, why not learn as much as you can because it's free and you're not paying for it? You probably don't take it serious enough because you don't pay for it. So maybe you need a little bit more skin in the game. Dallin: Maybe. I don't know. Nick: So I'd say get the knowledge while it's there. Dallin: All right. Nick: Who's the O.G? He says broke and stupid. Who's that? Zig Ziglar. Is it Zig or Jim Rohn? Russell: I think it's Jim. Nick: One of them. "The worst thing you could be is broke and stupid." And on top of that broke, stupid and ugly. You can't fix ugly. You might as well get the knowledge while it's there. I'm not calling you ugly, but I'm saying is you don't want to be broke or stupid. So get the knowledge while it's there. You're not paying for it. It's free knowledge. You'd be stupid not to take the knowledge. Dude, once you get out of high school, do you want. If you can't make it through high school, you ain't going to make it through business. Good luck. Good luck. High school is easy. Real world's way harder than high school. If you want to quit and tap out in high school, good luck, brother. Dallin: Oh boy. Nick: Let's keep that in there. That's a great lesson. That's a great lesson. That's a great lesson. I'm going to post it on my Instagram. What do you think? Russell: Do you have any questions? No. All right. Anybody else? Nick: That was a good question. It takes a lot to ask a question like that. Want to know why? Because most people wouldn't ask that question. I like it. I like the question. Great. You want to drop out too? Oh, okay. Just making sure. Just making sure. Russell: The good news for all your kids is everybody wants to drop out. It doesn't mean we do. I want to drop out of business lots of times. It gets hard. I got angry, I got people suing me. I got all sorts of stuff and it's tons of times I'm like, "Oh, it's so much easier to drop out." But it's like, well, I have a vision, we talked about it earlier. What's the vision? What are you trying to accomplish in life. You got to through a lot of hard stuff to get the good stuff. If you're not willing to go through the hard stuff, you never get the good stuff. Nick: You want a family one day? Dallin: Maybe. Nick: Okay. Do you want a girlfriend one day? Dallin: Yeah. Nick: Maybe. Or a boyfriend? Dallin: No. Nick: Okay. I don't know, whatever you go. But imagine your kid coming up to you one day and said, "My dad's a dropout." Dallin: I'd be proud. Nick: Dude, I like it. As long as you're proud of your decision and you made something of it, but I'm not your dad. I'm just a coach. Russell: He tells a story you told in lunchtime about your motivations that anchors you back to keep working out hard in the hard times. Nick: Yeah. So a lot of people ask me like, "How do you say so motivated to say so healthy with no legs, one arm?" And the reality is that there's a lot of kids that are paralyzed in wheelchairs. There's a lot of adults that are paralyzed in wheelchairs that look outside every day and say, "I wish I could go outside. Or I wish I could go to the gym," and they can't. But the one little visualization that I was going in with him is whenever I feel myself falling off track, I picture me, I'm 24, so I picture myself like 30, 35 and maybe I have a kid or two and I'm in my office. And that kid walks in and says, "Dad, why'd you get so fat? Dad, why did you let yourself go? Dad, you used to be a great speaker. Why did you give up on your dreams?" It makes me feel some type of way. If I really went into it, I'd probably start crying, because I never want my kid to look at me as a disappointment. And so I may not have kids now, but it's a motivation for me to keep going, because at one point I'm not going to be building a business for myself. Who am I going to be building a business for? My family. So it's way deeper than us as we get old. But you're young, so you've got time. Don't worry about kids calling you fat or anything. But what I'm saying is I visualize my kids looking at me and I want them to look at me proud, not as a fat dad that gave up on his dreams. Who agrees? Or a fat mom that gave up on their dreams. That's a bit aggressive. It works for me. Russell: That's awesome. Very cool. Anything else you've got? Nick: You guys are full of energy. I love it. Russell: I appreciate you, man. Thanks for coming, spending time with us and the kids. Nick: You got it. Norah, thanks for beating me up today. Russell: This is awesome. All right. Let's give Nick a huge round of applause.
There are a lot of strong opinions on annuities. Some people heavily advocate for them, while others claim they are a bad investment. Today John and Nick will break down the basics for us by discussing what an annuity is and some important terms to know.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comFor a transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/Transcript of Today's Show:----more----Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome into the podcast. Thanks for tuning into Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. We appreciate your time as we're going to get into understanding annuities, we're going to do a series on annuities, several podcasts coming up but we're going to start out with the basics, annuity basics. So, stick around for that, we're going to get into that in just a second. But first, let me say hi to the guys. What's going on, Nick? How are you? Nick: Staying pretty good, just waiting for the weather to cool down a little bit here in Florida. We are ready for, I guess what we would consider our winter or fall one. Speaker 1: Do you get fall? Isn't it just summer, winter? Nick: I feel like when I first moved here, there was some fall back in '03, '04, '05. But the last few years, it feels like it's just kind of jumped from one to the other. But whatever it is, where it's not 90 plus and sticky out, I'm ready for it. Speaker 1: Right. Yeah. John, how you doing my friend? John: I'm good, I'm good. I'm with you. I was thinking we're just chatting about the weather and it's still 87 here and it feels like 92 and I'm ready for a low 80s and no more humidity. Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, the humidity can be the bear, that's for sure. Well, good. I'm glad you guys are doing well since our last time chatting here on the podcast. So, we've got a lot to cover, we're going to try to keep this into our timeframe. We're trying to keep this into a digestible amount of time for folks here. So, let's jump in and start talking about annuities, understanding them and again, as I mentioned, we'll start with the basics. Speaker 1: It's just really important to understand them because they can offer some things to people, it can be a vehicle that some may find useful. There's risk reduction, retirement income, tax deferral, death benefits, so let's just get into some of this stuff. What is an annuity to kind of start off with guys? John: When you break it down, it's a contract with an insurance company. So, that's kind of the premise of it all and what that contract, typically, you're getting some type of guarantee and we'll dive into that a little later but it could be some type of a principal protection guarantee, income guarantee, death benefit guarantee. So, that's what you're looking for. And it's really important again, kind of going back to understanding it because it is a contract with an insurance company, so you need to understand all the details of it, just because it could come back to bite you. And we've seen that happen quite a few times as we're doing some reviews with clients. They just don't truly understand how it works because these are pretty complex vehicles and there's a lot of moving parts. John: So, it's just important to understand how, going back to the overall plan, how does the tool work with everything else? And then one thing that we, again, being a contract, the guarantees are based on the paying ability of the company that you're with. So, one of the things that we always kind of look at is what's the rating of the company you're going with because if you want to set the contract for some type of guarantee, you want to make sure that they're going to be around to actually give you that guarantee. Speaker 1: Right, yeah. Yeah. So, Bob's insurance is not necessarily the best idea, right? Nick: Yeah. And I will say one other thing that we like to preface this sort of conversation with and part of the reason that it is so confusing for people is that there are many different subsets or different types of annuities. And so, oftentimes people have heard the term annuity but they don't realize all of the different types and that their experience may pertain to one of 10 different types. So, as we get into the differences and kind of the nuances, we'll kind of joke sometimes in our classes that we almost wish that they were called different things. It's like saying, "Hey, should I buy a vehicle? Well, do you want a car? Do you want a truck? What are you trying to do? Is gas mileage important to you? Is off-roading important? What is it?" And that same sort of mentality is important when you are talking about it. Speaker 1: Well, you could think about that analogy Nick with and just leave it at cars because many people would just say, "I need to get a new car." Even when they're looking at like an SUV or something like that, they don't really refer to it that way. So yeah, that's a great way of thinking about that. And we will cover, we we'll get into, like I said, we're starting with the basics today but we'll get into some of the different types, their names, what they are, so on and so forth. So, John gave us kind of what the gist of it is. There's a couple of phases to think about, what are the phases? Nick: As we get into it and when we're talking about deferred annuities, there's essentially what's called an accumulation phase and a withdrawal phase. So for the accumulation phase, what that is referring to is, between the time that you initiate or deposit money into the annuity and between that starting point and then the period in time in which you start withdrawing money, it's called the accumulation phase. And that's important to know because there's different rules, which we'll sort of get into but that accumulation phase is important to understand because by itself, an annuity does provide tax-deferred accumulation or tax-deferred growth during that phase. Nick: So, if somebody says an example of that is the easiest way to compare it is, client has $100,000 in a money market account at the bank and they get to collect, when they get interest on that account, they get a 1099 at the end of the year, they pay taxes on the interest in the year that the interest is incurred. In the annuity, in its own chassis, it's going to provide tax-deferred growth, which means that that growth just compounds without having to pay any taxes on it until the point that you start taking it out. That's a pretty big deal and could be a really useful tool for higher income earners that are looking to put money in places that are more tax beneficial especially if we do enter into a higher tax bracket, phase, which we may in the next four to eight years. Nick: And then for the withdrawal phase, it is that money starts to come out. So, the first thing that people need to understand is that when you take that money out, if it's non-qualified or non-IRA money, there is going to be some form of taxation. It's going to be ordinary income, which means whatever tax bracket they're in, those withdrawals, as long as they're part of the gains that have happened in the contract, those earnings are going to come out first and they're going to be taxed at ordinary income. Nick: So, understanding how that works is kind of an initial importance. There is a term and a methodology of taking out money inside of an annuity via what's called annuitization. Again, this is one of those things where you wish that they would just come up with words that aren't confusing, annuity, annuitization, et cetera. So, annuity is basically like a noun, it's a type of account. Annuitization is an action essentially. Annuitization is when the company liquidates your lump sum of money and starts paying you in it whether it's a monthly or an annual payment. And one of the benefits of annuitization is that they can actually spread out your gains over a longer period of time and it can be a more tax-efficient way and can guarantee you payments over a certain period of time. Nick: And so, in one of the other future series, we're going to get into that process a little bit more. But the easiest way for people to think about it is kind of like a pension payment, a fixed amount of money that's going to be paid out over a certain period of time. And then, there are guaranteed withdrawals and we'll talk about that a little bit where you can kind of structure how you want to take out withdrawals. So, it is confusing, there's a lot of moving parts and it's a good example of why we're going to have in-depth series on this. Speaker 1: Yeah. That's a good example of why to work with an advisor as well to help you go through some of these things. And John, there's definitely caveats that go with it. There's things you'll want to know, some big bullet points if you will. Give us a few of those in the basics of an annuity. John: Yeah. Important again, any contract you go into important to understand what the rules are and these are things you want to consider. So, similar to an IRA where there's that 10% penalty if you withdraw before 15 and a half, annuity has the same scenario. So actually, this just came up with some advisors I was working with and we were doing some planning and the client needed money in a four-year period and really needed to, they wanted to make sure there was some guarantees to it. So, it was discussed of kind of an annuity to provide some type of principal guarantee. But by the time they would need the money, they would have only been 58. So, it was decided, "Hey, this isn't a good vehicle for you because you can't touch it 'til 59 and a half due to do that 10% penalty." John: So again, important when you're going into anything, just understand the rules because had they put that money into it and then in four years when they needed it, they wouldn't be able to access it penalty-free. So, just important to understand that one. Another one that we see a lot of people mistake or not understand how it works is the surrender period. Some of these contracts basically, when you give the money to the insurance company, there's a period of time where you actually can't get access to all your money full and clear. And this is separate from the 59 and a half but the surrender periods can be as short as three years. So, let's say you give your money to XYZ insurance company, they give you these guarantees and they tell you, "Okay, for a three-year period though, you can't get full access to your money. We're basically keeping it." John: So, it can be three years and we've seen as high as 16. And that's one of the things you really want to understand what you're getting into because unfortunately, we've seen some people where they've gotten to the 16-year period, is that they had no idea they we're getting into it and they have limited access to their funds. And we'll go through ... There is a piece of money you can get at but you just want to make sure how long has this contract going to be before you can get out of it. And with that is what we call the surrender charge. So, let's say your surrender period is seven years and in year five, you want to pull out money. Well, there's actually a descending surrender charge. So in year five, if you decide, "Hey, I can't do this anymore. I need to get access to my money," the insurance company might charge 4% of your principal for you to actually get out of the contract. John: So, an example of that would be seven-year contract. First year surrender charge could be 8%, second year would be 7% and so on. So, that's where you really want to understand exactly, "What's my surrender period? And if for whatever reason, I need to pull out of this contract early before the surrender period's up, how much am I going to get charged to do so?" Again, it's all about reading the fine details in the contract. Nick: And within that, many contracts have a 10% free withdrawal amount that will avoid you having to pay a penalty even that surrender charged during that surrender period but that can be confusing as well. And sometimes, that's used to oversell or kind of force people into not necessarily force, but convince people to put more money than they feel comfortable with into something like that. But many of them do allow for a 10% withdrawal each year. John: Yeah. So an example of that, so I'm glad you brought that up, Nick is, let's say you had $100,000 in an annuity and you're in year three. And you don't necessarily need to cancel the whole contract but you do need access to some funds, you could pull out. Typically we see a max, they allow up to 10%. We've seen some as low as 5%. But in a 10% scenario, you could pull out 10 grand in that year free and clear of any charges. So, that's important to understand exactly what's your free withdrawal amount. And then, one thing to understand is once the surrender period is up, so if you're in a seven-year contract, once that seven years is over, you can move your money wherever you want or you can keep it in the current contract. So, once a surrender period's up, it's 100% liquid at that point in time. Nick: And just one other thing on that surrender period, if somebody out there is evaluating them, a good question to ask is whether or not the surrender period is what's called rolling or not on rolling. So, what that means is that if it is a non-rolling surrender period and it's a seven-year contract like John explained or kind of detailed, the seven-year period starts when you first deposit the money and it never extends. So, you can make an additional deposit down the road, say in year five and that new deposit does not have its own seven-year surrender period, it only has two years left just like the rest of the money. Nick: So, that can be a really useful tool for somebody that's trying to sock away some money, make ongoing contributions to it but still maintain access to their money. Whereas a rolling surrender charge period, each deposit has its own seven-year surrender period which can get really squirly and hard to keep track of. So, that's an important thing to look out for. Speaker 1: And so, you mentioned some of those bullet points there, John, to think about, you mentioned guarantees and the insurance company and so on and so forth. Are there protections in there? A lot of times people wonder what kind of creditor protections are there? Nick: So, creditor protection tends to vary from state to state, which is actually a good kind of segue. So, one thing that people may notice, especially we're in Florida and we have a lot of people that live in different states, et cetera, or at least part of the time. Insurance companies are regulated state by state. So, even though XYZ insurance company may have contracts in 50 different states, the rules and benefits that they provide in each state can be different. So in Florida, and this is always something where you want to, before you make any major decisions, you want to check in with an attorney, especially in estate planning or asset protection attorney, somebody that really works in that space. Nick: But in the state of Florida, annuities fall into one of the categories that have a level of asset protection via loss, kind of joke that it's the OJ Simpson rule, why he became a resident here many years back after he was found liable in court for the murders back in the '90s were because the State of Florida provides asset protection on annuities for their residents. So, that is an area where we'll have people that are high income earners, maybe physicians, specialists in medicine, things like that, where they're very worried about asset protection, they may use annuities as a place to put money for growth but also provide them with a level of protection. Speaker 1: Okay. And does that apply to a probate things of that nature in some protections, wills, so on and so forth? Is that caveat also? Nick: So, probate typically is the process of essentially the court system, implementing the direction of a will or your estate and there's a fee for probate. So, because an annuity is considered an insurance contract, you can actually list the beneficiary in the insurance contract, which will allow that process after a death of the funds to transfer directly to your beneficiaries and avoid them having to go through probate to get those assets, which can be a savings of somewhere from three to 5% of the assets in there. And not only that, it keeps it private instead of a public process, which probate is, but it just is a much cleaner way to be able to leave assets by listing the beneficiaries in the insurance contract, which is the annuity in this case. Speaker 1: Okay. So, let's talk about some more basics here. We often hear the term riders, make sure you get something with a rider and this has that so on and so forth, different options. John, what's a rider? John: So, a rider's basically an additional piece to the contract that you can add, some type of guarantee or some type of benefit. And let me preface it by saying, most riders will have some type of cost associated to it. So, an example of a rider would be like a death benefit. You could put a death benefit rider on the contract where your initial principal payment, that's your guaranteed death benefit. So, if you were in a, we're talking about variable annuities, but if you're in a variable annuity and the market dropped, you put in 100,000 and the market dropped to 80 due to market fluctuation, your death benefit stays at 100 or there could be a rider where the death benefit could potentially increase each year by a guaranteed rate. John: Some other riders could be like a principal guarantee where you can't lose any of your initial purchase payment amount. And then, the most popular one that we see is a guaranteed income rider, where it will guarantee income throughout the life of the contract similar to, when Nick was talking about what the pension and we'll dive into this a little bit deeper on how this works in some of our future sessions, but when people are asking questions like, "Hey, what is this rider?" It's typically some type of benefit or guarantee within the contract. And there is more often than not some type of fee associated with it and it's important to understand how that fee works and then how the rider works on your contract if you like that type of benefit. Speaker 1: It kind of goes into the factor of, is it worth it or not for that purchase that you're making for what it is you're trying to accomplish, right? What you want that vehicle to do for you. John: Yeah and with the annuities, it really all comes down to the guarantees and if that's what you're looking for. Are you going to be guaranteed against some type of loss, guaranteed some type of income and is the cost of that guarantee worth it in the annuity contract? And for some people it's great, it really gives them peace of mind and for other people, they don't want to pay that extra fee or any type of cost on their money. Anything I missed there, Nick? Nick: No, I would just say the way that you want to view any sort of, really any sort of investment vehicle itself, but especially annuities are through the realm of yourself, your specific situation, your plan. Because there are so many different variations of annuities and there are lots of bad ones and there are a bunch of good ones. Oftentimes, where we see the biggest mistakes made are when people implement a strategy that was good for their friend, their neighbor, their brother, their sister, but not good for them. And so because of that, and because of that decision it's like, okay, these are bad," where instead it should have been, well hey, you used the wrong strategy, you used the wrong type, this wasn't something that made sense for you because X, Y and Z. Nick: So, when you kind of evaluate these sort of things and as you kind of listen through the upcoming sessions and we talk about the positives, the negatives, some of the features and the benefits, et cetera, you really want to look at it through the realm of yourself and your specific situation because your brother, your sister, your neighbor, your friend, they may have different tolerances for risks, for expenses, their income levels may be different, they may have a pension where you don't. So, every situation is different and I think that gets amplified by a significant amount when it comes to annuities and it's part of the reason why they're so often misunderstood. Speaker 1: Well, and like any financial vehicle you already said that you want to make sure what's the right fit for you. There's so many vehicles out there, so many different financial products, there's pros and cons to everything. And so, it's finding the right balance, the right fit for you. Well, we're going to wrap this up here in just a second. So, you mentioned, actually John mentioned variables, there's basically three types. So, what are the three types we will be covering on the future conversations? John: Yeah. So, we're going to jump into fixed annuities and breaking down those and the pros and cons of variable annuities and then also fixed index annuities. We're really going to try to do a good job of giving people details so they have the education and the knowledge to have good conversations, whether with their advisor or for themselves to really figure out if it's the best decision for them. Speaker 1: Makes sense. And so, we'll finish it off by saying, make sure you subscribe to the podcast if you haven't done so yet, they'll also send this out for those folks if you're getting that already. You can do a couple of things. You can either just go to the website, pfgprivatewealth.com, that is pfgprivatewealth.com or you can type in retirement planning redefined on whatever app you're using like Apple or Google or Spotify. You can find it on all the most popular apps as well, just type in retirement planning redefined in the search box and you should have that pop up and you can subscribe to it that way. Speaker 1: If you've got questions or before you take action, you should always call a qualified professional like John or Nick at PFG Private Wealth. They are financial advisors here in the Tampa Bay area. So, give them a call at (813) 286-7776, it's (813) 286-7776. And we'll also address guys that we'll find a little bit here, it's just a bias. You kind of alluded to it. People, they hear things and it's like, "Oh, I don't even want to talk about them because I know they're all bad." So, we'll also discuss a bit of the biases for them and against them. John: Yeah. So, with the biases, we find a lot of people based on stuff they read and articles and things they've listened to, they really come in with a bias, whether for them or against them. And one of the things that we like to just say is say, "You have an open mind and just learn about it and figure out if it works for your plan because if you're reading an article and it's telling you that annuities are bad, all the stuff," and I'll say like, "Fisher Investments, they're really dog annuities," but when you look at it, what they do is asset management. So, their primary focus is getting money, going into stocks, bonds, mutual funds, things like that. So, they're not really offering annuity so they're basically, they're going to be against them. John: And vice versa, we've seen some advisors that aren't actually licensed but they have an insurance license and all they can offer is an annuity. And guess what's the greatest thing out there? It's an annuity for you because they can't do anything else. So, whatever you're reading, you got to kind of look at it from a perspective of, "Is this person open-minded to it?" And that's where Nick said it's really important to look at the tool, the annuity, the pros and cons to it and does that fit with your plan and what your goals are? Speaker 1: Well, that's a great way to end the podcast this week. Thanks so much for your time here with John and Nick as we were talking about understanding annuities on the podcast. This has been Retirement Planning Redefined. We appreciate your time. Make sure you hit that subscribe button on whatever app you use or reach out to John and Nick at pfgprivatewealth.com and we'll see you next time.
This week, Marty, Tim, and Nick return 1610 to discuss Ultimate Spider-man! What makes this series so important to Marty and Nick? How did Nick react to Marty's reading of USM at GenCon? Join us to find out!Ultimate Spider Man Writer: Bendis Artist: Bagely
Thanks to Johnnie Jackson for coming on to talk to us about Charlton. Below you will find all the weird and wacky and brilliant topics we got our teeth into on this week's pod, thanks to questions sent in on Twitter & Insta. This podcast is sponsored by The Athletic. For a free trial, and 50% off, use the link: theathletic.co.uk/ntt20 Fun Football: Ross: Which team was the best that didn’t manage to get promoted? Jack: If these promotion sides had a play-off battle - who would come out as winner? Sheff Utd 18/19 vs Fulham 17/18 Cardiff 17/18 vs Norwich 18/19 David: Best Scottish player to play in championship/EFL? Andrew: If you could play for any club (other than the ones you support) who and why? BJ Peat: Which current League 2 team has the best chance of making the Premier League? Serious Football: Blades: What changes would you implement to the EFL system if you had power to change the way the EFL is currently operated? Freddie: Do you think we will come out of the Coronavirus crisis with 71 EFL clubs still in business? SpainAddict: What is your view on the current situation at Charlton Athletic Football Club? Serious non-football: George AND Dan are after football book recommendations… Nick: How do you guys know each other? + Meal deal selection and from where? Blades: Where do you both see yourselves in 5 years from now in terms of career? What's the main goal/target? Fun non-football: Phil” Are ali and George in lockdown together? I can’t imagine a time when you are separated by such a small thing as a worldwide pandemic. Sadly not - in a lot of whatsapp groups together tho. Not unusual to be having three diff conversations in different platforms. If there was one current EFL player you could choose to spend lockdown with under the same roof, who would it be and why? Mr Hill: Most underrated snack to consume during lock down? Freddie: Is there going to be a NTT20 Tik-Tok account starting up soon? Jordan - Football snoods - should they be brought back?
Who are Jeff, Jesse, and Nick? How did we end up doing what we do? Listen to find out!
SEASON 2: EPISODE 5 Poet Nick Flynn talks about the ways in which he won't die. ABOUT THE GUEST Nick Flynn has worked as a ship’s captain, an electrician, and a caseworker for homeless adults. Some of the venues his poems, essays, and nonfiction have appeared in include the New Yorker, the Nation, the Paris Review, the New York Times Book Review, and NPR’s This American Life. His writing has won awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Library of Congress, PEN, and the Fine Arts Work Center, among other organizations. His film credits include artistic collaborator and “field poet” on Darwin’s Nightmare (nominated for an Academy Award for Best Feature Documentary in 2006), as well as executive producer and artistic collaborator on Being Flynn, the film version of his memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. His most recent collection of poetry, I Will Destroy You, appeared from Graywolf Press in 2019. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Lili Taylor, and his daughter, Maeve. http://www.nickflynn.org/ ABOUT THE HOST Neil Goldberg is an artist in NYC who makes work that The New York Times has described as “tender, moving and sad but also deeply funny.” His work is in the permanent collection of MoMA, he’s a Guggenheim Fellow, and teaches at the Yale School of Art. More information at neilgoldberg.com. ABOUT THE TITLE SHE'S A TALKER was the name of Neil’s first video project. “One night in the early 90s I was combing my roommate’s cat and found myself saying the words ‘She’s a talker.’ I wondered how many other other gay men in NYC might be doing the exact same thing at that very moment. With that, I set out on a project in which I videotaped over 80 gay men in their living room all over NYC, combing their cats and saying ‘She’s a talker.’” A similar spirit of NYC-centric curiosity and absurdity animates the podcast. CREDITS This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Producer: Devon Guinn Creative Consultants: Aaron Dalton, Molly Donahue Mixer: Andrew Litton Visuals and Sounds: Joshua Graver Theme Song: Jeff Hiller Website: Itai Almor Media: Justine Lee Interns: Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho Thanks: Jennifer Callahan, Nick Rymer, Sue Simon, Maddy Sinnock TRANSCRIPTION NICK FLYNN: I was driving my daughter to soccer. And she had a bike and I had a bike and we'd ride, even though it was a little cold. NEIL GOLDBERG: Yeah. NICK: But a guy went by on a bike and he had like a boombox, one of those boombox that plays, he's playing like a podcast, like really loud, and it was so odd. We both just laughed. It was like, what is that? You're just blasting a podcast going down the street, blasting. NEIL: This is fresh air. Hello, I'm Neil Goldberg and this is SHE'S A TALKER. I'm a visual artist and this podcast is my thinly veiled excuse to get some of my favorite New York writers, artists, performers, and beyond into the studio to chat. For prompts, I use a collection of thousands of index cards on which I've been writing thoughts and observations for the past two decades, kind of like one of those party games, but hopefully not as cheesy. These days, the cards often start as recordings I make into my phone. Here are some recent ones: I really love how Beverly pronounces 'Meow'. It's never appropriate to share scrap paper from home with students. I'm never sure what a simmer is. I'm so happy to have as my guest, poet Nick Flynn. I have been a hardcore fan of Nick's writing since his first book, Some Ether, came out in 2000 and was blown away by his memoirs, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, and The Ticking is the Bomb. In the fall, he released a new book of poetry, I Will Destroy You, and in the next few months he has two more books coming out: Stay, and This is the Night Our House Will Catch on Fire. I met Nick briefly in, I think, the late eighties in Provincetown, and we reconnected recently via our mutual friend, Jacques Servin, who is on an earlier episode. Nick and I spoke in January at a recording studio at The New School near Union Square in New York City. NEIL: Are you comfortable? NICK: Like on a scale of one to ten? NEIL: Like, you know those smiley faces, like if you're in the hospital. NICK: How much pain I have? Uh, I hadn't even thought about it till you just said that. Now I'm wondering if I am, so. NEIL: I feel like I'm, I'm totally not, I'm not feeling any pain at the moment. NICK: No, I'm not feeling any pain. No, I'm feeling no pain. NEIL: That's different from, feeling no pain is different from not feeling any pain. NICK: That means if you're kind of fucked up, I think. NEIL: Exactly. NICK: You're feeling no pain. NEIL: Um, I'm so happy to have you, Nick Flynn, on the show, SHE'S A TALKER. NICK: I'm happy to be here, Neil Goldberg - NEIL: I, you know - NICK: on the show SHE'S A TALKER. Is the 'She' the cat? NEIL: Yeah. NICK: That's, that's who the 'she' is. NEIL: It is, yeah. I, you know - NICK: I guess I got that. Yeah. NEIL: Well, you know, in 1993 when everyone was dying... Everyone is still dying, but just differently. NICK: I remember that. Yeah. NEIL: Yeah. Uh, you know, I did a video project where I interviewed, it turned out to be, like about 80 gay men all over New York City in all five boroughs who had female cats, combing their cats and saying "She's a Talker." NICK: They were combing the cats? NEIL: Combing the cat. It was just almost like, it was like a stealthy way to like, not stealthy, but it was a way to document a lot of gay men who felt like really imperiled, and it was my first video project. And, I don't know, when I decided to name this, that came up for me. But subsequently I get a lot of like, what does the word 'she' mean at this point? NICK: Right, right, right. Yeah. NEIL: Maybe I should rebrand it. What should I call it? NICK: Uh, you should stick with it, I think. Hmm. NEIL: Uh, when, when you're looking for like a short hand, like you encounter someone on the proverbial elevator and are looking for like a pithy way to describe who it is you are and what it is you do, what do you, what do you reach for? NICK: I say I'm a poet. NEIL: Period. NICK: Period. Yeah. Yeah. Cause that usually gets a pretty dead-eyed stare like the one you just gave me. Like that's it? That's it. NEIL: When someone is confronted with poet, silence, do you ever feel like helping someone out? NICK: Well, it depends on like, often, that'll pretty much be the conversation-ender. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: So it does nothing to help cause they're gone right at that point. NEIL: If your folks were around, how might they describe who it is you've become? NICK: Wow, that's a, that's an interesting one. Would they, would they still be, are they like idealized, my, like my parents on their best day or on their worst day? NEIL: Oh, I wouldn't mind hearing both if you don't mind. Like the... NICK: Ah, like, you know, there's the idealized version of your parents. Then there's the, not the reality, but the, you know, but recognizing at a certain point that they had some rough days, you know. In my mind, it's hard to deny they had some rough days. So, um, it's a little, it's a little harder to pretend. Yeah. Uh, my father, he knew that I'd published books and he was sort of, you know, strangely proud of that. Uh, but proud just in the way he knew I'd be a good writer because he was such a great writer, so I got it all from him. So he took all credit for any of it. So I imagined he would still take credit for any accomplishments I've had or that he perceives I've had. I've, I'm trying to think if he had like on a good day, that's sort of like a not so good day. Yeah. On a good day, he did have a couple moments where he was able to just recognize the struggle it had been, uh, between the two of us, uh, to actually acknowledge that. And I think that would be like, he'd say like, yeah, this was, this must have been hard, you know? So I think that would be. That'd be a good day for him. My mother's a little more enigmatic, like it's actually, when I think about it, like, cause I mean, she died before he did. I was younger. I didn't know her as well, probably. So, although I grew up with her, but, um, I sort of studied my father more, and my mother's more of a, uh, a construct of the imagination in some ways. Although, I mean, we spent so much time together too. It's strange to say that actually, I don't know if that's true. You know, I, there's always the question like, what would my mother be like now? So I'm, I look at women that are my mother's age, that would be my mother's age now. Like I don't know how, how she would be. So either way, I think she's, since she, from her backhouse sort of WASP-y Irish background, she probably wouldn't say directly anything. I'd have to decipher what she said. NEIL: So it would be cryptic in terms of her estimation of you, or? NICK: I mean, she, I think she'd say, "Oh, I'm, I'm proud of you." But the deeper levels of that I think would be harder to get to. NEIL: Yeah. I see you came in, you were, you had a bike helmet, which I connect to. Um, on your bike ride over, did you have any thoughts? NICK: Wow. Thoughts as I was coming here - the sort of meta thing is I was listening on my headphones to SHE'S A TALKER. And you're talking to someone about riding a bike over the bridge. NEIL: Right, yeah. NICK: So like, yeah. I mean, at the moment I was riding over the bridge. I was listening to you talk to someone else about riding over the bridge and then thinking that I would soon be here talking to you, and I brought my helmet it, I didn't - usually I lock it on my bike but maybe I brought it in so you would ask me about it. It's possible, but I think I just brought it in cause it was cold, it was so cold outside. I wanted a warm helmet when I went back out. So. NEIL: Aha, you didn't want to put on a cold helmet. I never thought about that. NICK: What I thought about on the bridge was that it was way colder than I thought it was. It was the wind, it was like howling and I had a hat in my bag and I kept thinking, I'll just stop and put my hat on under my helmet and I didn't stop. I kept thinking, I'll warm up at some point, but I just kept getting colder and colder the further I went. I just never stopped, I just kept going. NEIL: Well, let's, um, go to some cards that I curated for you. NICK: You curate these for this conversation? NEIL: Yes. Yeah. (Card flip) So the first card is: the specific, tentative, hyper-attentive way one tastes something to see if it's gone bad. NICK: Um, what I usually do is I'll, I'll, I'll cook it and then give it to my brother. NEIL: Mikey likes it? NICK: Yeah. And then if he can get through it then it probably hasn't gone so far bad. Cause he's pretty sensitive actually. I mean, while I'm presenting, it sounds like he'd just eat anything. No. He's quite sensitive. So he's like sort of the. He's, he, he, he's a Canary. Ah ha. Yeah. So I'll just fix it up and give it to him and then, cause he'll, usually, he's quite happy if I make him something, give him some food, then if it's no good, then, then I throw it away. Yeah. If he eats it, I'll eat it. NEIL: He's your taster. Um, where, where does your brother live? NICK: He lives upstate, New York. NEIL: Oh, okay. Yeah, but he's your older brother, right, if I'm remembering? NICK: But why did you say, "but." Because he lives upstate? NEIL: No, because of the scenario of like, your brother, the implication. He's an implied younger brother in the story. NICK: Gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. He's an implied younger brother in life too. (Card Flip) NEIL: Next card. When a toddler falls, that space before they start to cry. NICK: Well. My daughter was, uh, three. And for us, like three was really like, spectacular meltdowns and just like, you know, tantrums and just like wildness, just like absolutely wild, like wild animal, just screaming and frustrated and like, you know, furious. And one day she, uh, she was in a tantrum, she fell and she hit her cheek on the corner of a staircase and it split open and like bled. It sort of woke her up. Like it was right at the end of her being three, she was going to turn four. It was a Sunday night. And my wife and I were like, Oh, what do we do? Like, I'm like, I guess, do we take her to her doctor or do we like, you know, just like, like leave her with a scar for the rest of her life? And so I butterfly-stitched it, you know, like made a little butterfly thing, to hold it together to squish the skin together, you know? And, uh. That's what we did. We sort of looked up t see like how big and deep it had to be to go to a doctor and stuff and to need a stitch, and it was sort of right on the edge. So I butterfly-stitched it, and then. Yeah so now she just has this pretty little scar on her face and she's perfect. NEIL: Wow. And does she know the story of the scar? NICK: Oh yeah. I would say it's a part of her myth, part of her origin myth. The wildest, the wildness poured out of her cheek. Yeah. Yeah. NEIL: Uh, can, can you share - NICK: Did that answer your question? NEIL: Yes and no. That's always the, um, I think it's beautiful. I have the idea, I'm not a parent, but when I see a kid having a tantrum - NICK: I wasn't either before that. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: It comes on kind of suddenly. NEIL: But how did you deal with tantrums? NICK: I, I've been sort of attentive and amused by the whole process. Like I feel like we're really lucky. She's a really good kid and just a really interesting kid and like, so I just sort of like see it, like, I admire the tantrums in a certain way. Like, I think everyone should be like, just screaming, running down the streets, you know, most of the time. Like this sucks. Um, so there was something very, uh, wild about it. Like just to see like, wow, like you can just do this. You can just go and like, you can go to a store and just pull a whole rack down. If you don't get your Popsicle, you don't fucking. She, she used to fire me like every day as a father. She said, if you do not give me that Popsicle, you will not be able to kiss me. You will not be able to hug me. You will not be my father. NEIL: What did you say to that? NICK: I'm like, Oh, that's really hard. I'd be sad not to be your father. She was like, you will not be able to, you will have to go to Texas and never come back. NEIL: Crafty. NICK: Yeah, she was good. Yeah, but I, you know, I was onto her though. Yeah. I'd be her father like in half an hour later. NEIL: Did you ever say - NICK: She'd rehire me like half hour later. Yeah. NEIL: Was there a re-intake process? NICK: No. No. We just pretended it didn't happen. Yeah, it was all moving forward. It was all the continuous present. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: You just kept this present moment. This present moment had no connection to the other moments whatsoever. NEIL: Did you ever join your daughter in a tantrum? NICK: Did I ever join her in a tantrum? Oh, wow. Yeah, I did. Yeah. I remember one night, like early on when she was like six months old and that. The beautiful hallucination of early parenthood where you just, you just don't sleep. You just like, you're just awake for like months. Like just not sleeping. And you just fall asleep in the middle of things. Just like, you know, you can just barely do anything. Everything's filthy and like, you know, you just wash all the clothes and immediately they're filthy again, the food is just taken and thrown to the floor. I think the dogs eat it. You just give up in a certain way. There's one night I was up with her at like three in the morning and she was just screaming. And I was just like, I think I filmed her screaming with my phone. I'm just like, okay, just scream. Just scream. I'm going to make a movie of you screaming. I was like, I don't know what to do. So I just made a little movie of her. NEIL: Wow. But you didn't, but, but it didn't call on you the feeling of like, now I am going to lose it myself and cry? NICK: Um, well, I think I viewed, it's like, you know, I'm from like a sort of WASP-y Irish background, and so we don't really show that stuff. And I'm sort of always like that, but it don't, I don't, I try. I think no one can see it, but I think everyone actually sees it. NEIL: So always you're, you're crying always. NICK: Melting down, yeah. (Card Flips) NEIL: Okay. Kids with artist parents. Because both you and your wife are artists. Like to me, the idea of like, two artists come together and they have a kid, well that's going to be a super kid. And then that kid maybe, will - NICK: Be with another artist, yeah. NEIL: It's almost like an artistic eugenics kind of vision or something. NICK: Um, yeah. I always think it for our daughter, like Lord help her. Really. I don't think like, Oh, you've been, you've won the lottery. Like, like, this is the card, this is the hand you've been dealt. Good luck with it. You know, we're both like, yeah, we're both a little. I, I don't know, I don't know if neurotic is the right word, but like, you know. You know, we're, we're sensitive. We're like, you know, in some ways not made for this world, we're, we're awkward where other people are comfortable, we're, uh, you know, we found our place to, to survive, which is really lucky, you know? And also, you know, in a culture, like I'm a poet too, I'm not, like, it's not that like, this is like some hugely respected artistic position in our culture at the moment. You know, like, that's why I say that I, I say it perversely if someone asks me, with the elevator pitches, like if they ask me what I do, I say I'm a poet. And just because it's perverse, it's like it's so perverse, you know? You know when, if you go to a doctor's office, I write it on a form. I write 'poet', just, you might as well ride hobo or something. Right? That's not right. I'm a wizard. So it's not like, it doesn't feel like that she's suddenly being dealt like this, like, like a superhuman. Like, what are you talking about? NEIL: Right. NICK: It's just unfortunate. Like, you know. Artists get attracted to artists because we can vaguely understand each other, maybe. You know, we're not like, you know, I've tried to be with civilians before and it's like, not easy, you know? I really, I feel less understood, you know? I barely feel like I fit in now. To this world. So you know, you find someone who you feel like, yeah, you also don't feel like you fit in. So that's a kind of connection. NEIL: How does your, how does your daughter describe what, what you both do? Does she unabashedly say - NICK: Well, it's a little easier for Lily, for my wife. I mean, cause she's like, you know, people actually will sometimes recognize her on the streets and stuff, so she's a little prouder. NEIL: But him, the hobo. NICK: And my dad's a poet. (Card Flip) NEIL: Okay. Next card: the fetishization of storytelling. NICK: Yeah. Right now there's a, there's a whole storytelling thing going on, right? Yeah. There's a whole sense of revival and stuff, and I don't exactly get it. I mean, I, I admire it, like I've gone to The Moth, I've participated in a couple of storytelling things. It's a, it's a strange form for me. It's a strange art form for me, and I admire it when it's done really well. I admire it. The ones I've gone to, that I've been part of, they were, kind of felt a little closer to stand-up, which is another art form too. But I'm like, the line is a little blurry and a little like strange and, and it makes sense that stand-up would be part of it. Cause they are sort of like, like jokes in a way. They're sort of packaged. I mean it's a packaged form. It's like improv is more interesting to me. Like where you don't know where it's going to go. But where, if you know where, I mean, like I say, people that do it well, it's really beautiful. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: It's just not what I do. It's like memoir is not storytelling. Uh, it's another form. And storytelling is like one part of it. You sort of tell the story, but then you sort of have to turn over the story and say like, why am I telling this story? Like what am I trying to present in telling this story, ignores all these other realities that are happening or all these other things I don't want you to know. People will come up and say like, you know, how's it feel to like, have that people know so much about you now? Like, well, you only know what I want you to know. You're gonna get some glimpse from a book. NEIL: Right. Yeah. NICK: From storytelling, I don't know even what glimpse you get, you get a glimpse of how they tell a story I guess. I want to know about other people. I want to know like what their, the interior life is of other people, what the landscape is. Which is why I like read... Or, why I, why I do anything. Like go see art. Or just to sort of like have that, so you're not so, so you recognize it's not all, all ego, you know? It's not all, like everything isn't sort of springing forth from within me. You know? NEIL: Right. I'm not interested in other people's stories generally. NICK: Yeah. NEIL: Specifically too. I'm not interested in other people's stories, but I'm interested in hearing people think, which is what this podcast is about. So like the way their thought processes reveal themselves. That interests me. I don't know, but I'm, I'm, I'm not interested in the content. NICK: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I understand. Yeah. I teach creative writing and often it's like, I'm much more interested in like, the stuff around the content. It's not about the content, like it's more about the stuff around like how you're like, like, you know, how this one thing transformed something else or how you chose to make this weird sentence, or how like these things that have sort of moments of excitement. The story itself can be rather deadening. NEIL: Right. NICK: Yeah. Because, I think because it's somewhat packaged too, it is a lot of times, yeah. NEIL: But I also, the thing I really resist is this, like: "We're about stories." You know, like the, this fetishization of storytelling has creeped into like how, how stories are talked about. It's like, we bring you stories da da da, stories. It's like, it feels infantilizing too. NICK: Well, you know, I was just talking about this with one of my, some of my students, uh. You know, the, what's the most famous Joan Didion line? "We tell ourselves stories in order to live." NEIL: Right, right. NICK: And, yet, The White Album goes on. That's the first line of The White Album. That'll probably be on her tombstone. Uh, you know, they make bookmarks of it in bookstores, and yet if you actually read The White Album, that essay, she totally just doesn't believe it and contradicts it and says like, why? Like this makes no sense at all. And like that this is, I thought I could do this. Like I was, I was desperately trying to create a story that would protect me from something and it, none of it worked. And it just dissolves, the whole thing just all is like, so to take that one line out of context and say, this is actually a truism is so strange. It doesn't make any sense at all. And there's a thing, my therapist came up with this thing of the, I don't know if he came up with it, but we talk about my, one of my disorders, uh, one of my many disorders is a narrative affect disorder where I'll create like stories like, but you know, it's not stories like you're talking about, it's creating books and creating like versions of what happened, um, in order to contain it and to be able to hold onto it in a way that seems safe, so I don't have to feel the actual emotional intensity of it. NEIL: Right. NICK: Um, and I think it's, it is a type of illness. I think storytelling is a type of illness, uh, that keeps you from actually feeling. (Card Flips) NEIL: Next card: often when I leave the apartment, I think, is this how I'd like it to be found if I die today? NICK: I think that one's more about you than me. I think. Um. NEIL: You don't think that when you leave? NICK: Well, I don't think I'm ever going to die. I'm pretty sure. NEIL: Do you really believe that? NICK: Yeah. Like I, yeah, no. I have a thing where like, I'm, I'm, there's, well, I just know the ways I'm not going to die. NEIL: Okay. Let's hear it. NICK: I'm not going to die in an airplane crash. I'm not going to die by getting eaten by a shark. Might die by getting hit by a car on a bicycle. I mean I might, so I have to be careful. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: But I can swim for miles in the ocean filled with sharks. I'm fine. Yesterday I was on a plane coming from Houston and, uh, it was just like, like being on a ship in the middle of a, of a nor'easter. Like it was just wild, you know, like it really, like it was almost spinning. Yeah. I was fine. I'm like, Oh, this is cool cause I'm not gonna die in a plane. Like, you know, so I just have these sorts of things. They might be, you know, just delusional. You know, I mean, how could I possibly know? But I'm almost positive I'm not going to get eaten by a shark. NEIL: Uh huh. NICK: Which really, which really helps in Provincetown. Cause there's a lot of sharks there now and a lot of people don't swim in the water. And I'm like, ask yourself, are you going to get eaten by a shark? Do you really think that's the way you're gonna die? And most people would say no. I mean, wouldn't you say no? Like no. If you know, on a rational day, like that'd be really, and if you did, that'd be so cool. Like how many people, how many poets get eaten by a shark? That'd be so excellent, right? Like it's a win-win. I have a poet, there's a poet, Craig Arnold, a really great poet that died a couple of years ago. He was writing a whole series of poems on volcanoes. Traveling the world, like got a grant to travel the world and look at volcanoes. He's just gone. He just vanished one day. He vanished. We think he fell into a volcano and died. Like, that's like an amazing story. Like it's terrible, terrible, awful. But I mean, there are a lot worse ways to die than falling into a volcano. NEIL: Oh my God. How would you feel about being bitten by a shark and surviving it? NICK: That's cool. That woman, that, that surfer that only has one arm, she's cool. NEIL: You'd be okay with that? NICK: If I could surf like her. (Card Flips) NEIL: Um. NICK: I really killed this bottle of Perrier. NEIL: Oh, awesome. I love it. Um, good job. Uh: the ambiguity of "It's downhill from here." NICK: Oh. The whole idea of like, you know. There's a few things. Yeah. The opposite is all uphill from here, right. It's all, so downhill sounds pretty good, right? But it suggests like we're sliding into the grave, I think. NEIL: Yes. NICK: Like it's all like we've reached the peak. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: That was the peak. It was really hard to get to the peak. And as soon as you get to the peak, you start going downhill. Yeah. You know? Uh, and, uh. Yeah, I often joke, yeah, I'm on the other side of the, on the other side, now, you know, that you somehow that the, the, the greatest work and the greatest, uh, notoriety so that was a while ago. Um, and. NEIL: But also maybe the greatest struggle, no? NICK: Was a while ago. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: Yeah. Oh, I dunno. But I, I joke about it. I just, I don't really believe that. The most recent project I'm doing just feels completely, uh, uh, fulfills me. You know, I'd have this other book coming out, this book, Stay, coming out, which I'm, I worked on a lot last year and I'm happy with that. And another book coming out after that. So there's like, you know, I don't really worry about it, but it's, it's almost a thing. It might be sort of Irish too, like just so you don't want to sort of, uh, be too full of yourself. You know, you want to like sort of be somewhat, you don't want to show how many fish you caught that day cause then you have to give half away. So you sort of downplay it. You downplay it. So the downhill side is where we sort of live. We live on the downhill side. I don't know, it's a strange metaphor. NEIL: It's, it's ambiguous. NICK: Yeah, it's a strange metaphor. NEIL: But I'm also thinking it's a paradox, too, and, as you talked, because take the downhill part. Um, it does get easier. NICK: Yeah. NEIL: I think, I mean, my life, I will say, and anything could change at any moment, has gotten so much easier, you know, now that I'm clearly on the other side. NICK: Psychic. NEIL: Yeah. NICK: Psychically. Yeah. NEIL: For sure. NICK: Yeah. Yeah. NEIL: Um, yeah. It's also, I am sliding into the grave. Yeah. I mean, hopefully it's a long slide, but... NICK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Mortality. The cold wind of mortality does start to, you start to feel it. At a certain point. NEIL: In your back. NICK: Yeah. You started, you know, it's blown in your face. Yeah. It's like, it's like you feel it, which I, you sort of thought you felt it in your 20's but you really, you could have, I mean, we know a lot of people that died in their 20's, sure. It was not like this. This is like the real thing. Yeah. This is like, yeah. There's no, like, there's no choice in the matter. So like, yeah, maybe I'll just overdose or something, you know, or, or, you know, or I'll just be reckless and didn't die. Now it's like, yeah, no matter what I do, doesn't matter what I do, I can, I can eat kale, I can eat kale the rest of my life. NEIL: Yeah. I don't have to coax the process and it's still going to happen. NICK: Yeah. (Card Flips) NEIL: The existential space of the clipboard. NICK: Well, I mean, clipboard, I think when you say clipboard, I was thinking of just like first of a blank clipboard, but then I was also thinking of the thing you put clippings on, that you put other things on, combine things together. NEIL: I'm thinking of the clipboard, the computer clipboard. Like when you cut something. That space. NICK: Well, what do, what is it? What is that on the computer? NEIL: The clipboard. NICK: Yeah. What is that? I'm not sure what it, what do you mean? You cut and paste stuff? Or... NEIL: Anytime you, surely you do Command X and Command C, right? NICK: You mean like copy things and then cut things? Yeah. Yeah. Cut. Yeah. NEIL: So when you copy something - NICK: And Command V. NEIL: Oh yeah. NICK: Yeah, yeah. Can't forget Command V. NEIL: Absolutely. When you do Command C - NICK: Yeah. That copies it. NEIL: Into the clipboard. And then that command, do Command V - NICK: It takes it off the clipboard. NEIL: Yeah. Well, it stays in the clipboard, but it also pastes the inside. NICK: See I don't think, I never knew that. Yeah. I never would've thought of that. NEIL: I'm acutely aware of the clipboard. NICK: I never thought where it went. Oh. Oh. Well, this is a tough question cause I've never really thought of this before. So, uh, existential, I mean, that's kind of heavy to suggest it has to do with life or death. Um, uh. NEIL: You don't think about your text in that kind of liminal state between when you cut it and when you've pasted it? NICK: I figured it just, it goes away. Like it doesn't, like if I, if I cut something else, then that replaces the thing I cut before, or if I copy something else, replaces the thing. So I just assume there's not a clipboard holding all of them. NEIL: No, it isn't. That's part of the existential condition. NICK: Cause it just vanishes once you put something else on top, once you copy something else. NEIL: Yeah. It's fragile. NICK: Yeah. I make a lot of copies. I try to, I try to like, save things as much as possible and like, yeah, like I'm, and print things up. I, I prefer to write by hand first. Uh, really. Um, and then to print it and then to write by hand on the thing I've printed and then to keep going back and forth like that. I like writing by hand. There's a, there's a young poet, um, who created an app called 'Midst.' It's hard to say midst, like in, you're in the midst of something. Yeah. I don't know how to - midst. M. I. D. S. T. It's very hard to say for me. NEIL: Yeah. Me too. NICK: Can you say it? NEIL: Uh, yeah. I feel like it's going to intersect with my sibilant A-S. Let's try it. Midst. NICK: Yeah. Oh, you do feel very well. NEIL: But a little gay, right? NICK: I didn't, I didn't say that. I raised one eyebrow, but I did not say it. NEIL: When straight men raise one eyebrow, it somehow doesn't look gay. Midst. Midst. What's Midst? NICK: Well, it's a, it's a program that she did where you can, where you write a poem, I guess you write anything, but it sort of keeps track of all the cutting and pasting you do and the, the process of making it. So you ended up, you send her like a final poem, but then she can press a button and can see all the stuff you did to make it. Um, so I have to try it though, but I usually, I really usually write by hand first and she's like, no, you have to write it on the, you have to compose the whole thing on the thing. I'm like, okay, so I just haven't quite done it yet, but I'm, yeah, I'm planning on it though. NEIL: But this is basically, this isn't a useful tool. This is a tool to create a kind of - NICK: To create a thing. She'll publish like a magazine that shows, like you look at a poem and then you press a button and it all sort of like, maybe it goes in reverse and dissolves back to the first word or something. NEIL: Yeah. I just am not into those kinds of things. I feel like there's a lot of that peripheral to the art world. These things that kind of like perform a process or reveal a process. I'm just not into that. You know what I'm saying? NICK: No, but that's okay. I mean, I try, I believe that you are not into it. I'm just like, process is nice. Like I love, I love, I love seeing the process. I love seeing, don't you love like, like thinking like Michelangelo's slaves, you know, on the way to the David, right? NEIL: Oh yeah. NICK: We get to see the slaves like coming out of the block of marble and everyone says that they were like incomplete. NEIL: Yes. NICK: Yeah. We just said, which is such bullshit. Like if you think about it, like what, he did twelve incomplete at the same stage, like they're half out of the block just, Oh, I'm just gonna stop them all here. NEIL: Right? NICK: Like, it makes no sense at all. Like you couldn't finish one of them? NEIL: Right. NICK: Like he clearly saw that it looked cool for slaves who were pulling themselves out of what they're stuck in. And that, I find it so much more interesting than David, which is complete and perfect. I think, I think that's the meta thing where it's like all about process. That's like the process right there. NEIL: Huh. NICK: Yeah. So I try to think about that. That was just sort of a highfalutin way to counter your anti-process. NEIL: Doesn't feel highfalutin. I think my thing was like faux highfalutin. (Card Flips) What keeps you going? NICK: Um. Uh, just wondering what's gonna happen next. Yeah. Yeah. NEIL: Poet. On that note, thank you, Nick Flynn, for being on SHE'S A TALKER. NICK: Thank you, Neil. NEIL: That was my conversation with Nick Flynn. Thank you for listening. Before we get to the credits, there were some listener responses to cards that I'd love to share. In my conversation with artist Tony Bluestone, we talked about the card: That moment when you forget what you should be worrying about and try to reclaim it. In response to that card, Jamie Wolf wrote, "A single brussel sprout rolled under the stove, and I wasn't gonna let Shavasana get in the way of my at least remembering to retrieve it." John Kensal responded with what I think is a haiku: Please sit or flee, my wee and quiet executive function disorder. Another card Tony and I talked about was: Fog is queer weather, to which Jonathan Taylor wrote, "To me, fog is transgressive because it's like a cloud. So it's either you or it is not where it's supposed to be." Thanks to everyone who wrote in. If you have something you'd like to share about a card on the podcast, email us or send us a voice memo at shesatalker@gmail.com or message us on Instagram at shesatalker. And also, as always, we'd love it if you'd rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or share this episode with a friend. This series is made possible with generous support from Stillpoint Fund. Devin Guinn produced this episode. Molly Donahue and Aaron Dalton are our consulting producers. Justine Lee handles social media. Our interns are Alara Degirmenci, Jonathan Jalbert, Jesse Kimotho, and Rachel Wang. Our card flip beats come from Josh Graver. And my husband, Jeff Hiller, sings the theme song you're about to hear. Thanks to all of them, and to my guest, Nick Flynn, and to you for listening. JEFF HILLER: She's a talker with Neil Goldberg. She's a talker with fabulous guests. She's a talker, it's better than it sounds, yeah!
In this episode, we ask: Who is Chris Prefontaine? Who works with Chris? How does Chris work with his son Nick? How might one buy real estate on terms? What is a lease purchase? How does a lease purchase affect the homeowner? What is owner financing? About how many homes are free and clear in...
*increase team volume, secret mlm hacks, teach your downlines, the power of the internet Listen to a recent Secret MLM Hacks course member, Nick Bradshaw, as he tells us how is team volume nearly 20X'd after using these modern MLM recruiting principles... INSIDE SECRET MLM HACKS This is an interview that I've done with one of my good, Nick Bradshaw. He's got his own show but he wouldn't tell me what it is. You should track him down and ask him. We have about 500 people in the Secret MLM Hacks program. For the next few episodes, I'm actually going to share with you guys some of the interviews I've been doing with people who are in the program and share what's been happening. Nick has almost 20X-ed his team volume since using the Secret MLM Hacks methods, which is crazy. I didn't know it was that much! I thought it was just doubling, not 20X! He's going to walk through and talk about how he's been using this stuff and teaching the same strategies to his downline, which is ultimately what's been my goal in creating this stuff. It's not so that everybody has to join Steve Larsen. It's so that you can learn how to do this stuff on your own and then teach your downlines and explode stuff. A lot of MLMs are refusing to be influenced from the top down on the strategies that I'm teaching. I'm just telling you… This is the landscape of the atmosphere that we're in around here. A lot of big MLMs are not wanting to take on some of the strategies like the internet, which is ridiculous. It's because they don't know it themselves. They don't know how to train or teach on it. The strategy I've been teaching is actually to go from the bottom up. It's for the little guy. HOW TO TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES Secret MLM Hacks has been focused on training from the ground up. I don't care what MLM in you're in. That's why I'm not here pitching you guys all the time. I'll drop every once in a while what I'm in if you guys are interested, but that's not the purpose of it. The purpose of it is for me to go and influence MLM from the bottom up. To hand tools to people inside of MLMs from the bottom up who can go reteach it to their people and explode past their uplines. That's been the point and it's been working. We've had a lot more MLMs reaching out, asking things like, "Would you come build funnels for us?" I'm like, "Where were you when I was talking about it earlier?" It's flipped the whole table on its head. I have a very special guest today. Somebody I have been watching and seeing everything that has been going on... And I've been impressed. There’s not many people in MLM who use the power of the internet. I've got a very special guest for you today. It's very easy to see who is in MLM online because there aren't that many. When I first saw other people doing it I was like, “Oh my gosh I'm not alone!” I was so excited about it. I want to introduce you to and welcome Nick Bradshaw. SECRET MLM HACKS INTERVIEW WITH NICK BRADSHAW Steve: Hey man. Thank you so much for being on here. Nick: Dude it's been absolutely my pleasure. It really really is. Steve: It's gonna be awesome I'm pumped for it. Just so people understand more about what you do, tell me when you first got into MLM? Nick: I've been in the MLM game myself about two and a half years. Funny enough, my wife is actually the one who started all of this and I jumped in halfway through. It's really skyrocketed and taken off from there. My wife's been doing this for about five years. And during that time I was actually a car salesman. I was working 60 - 80 hour workweeks, every single week. When I started in car sales I had one kid and then next thing I know, I had two kids. I blinked three times and next thing you know I'm sitting next to a six and four year old kid. I'm like, “Where did all the time go?” I was burnt out on it. I had set all these goals and I had reached the goals. I had worked my way up the corporate ladder so I could provide for my family and let my wife be a stay at home wife. I got to that roadblock that said, “Where do I draw the line of how much time I'm spending at work versus how much time I'm spending at home?” From there it was like, “Alright, well what do I do? How do I remedy this, how do I fix it?” Steve: Something's gotta change, right? We've gotta shake it up a bit. WHAT IS INSIDE SECRET MLM HACKS? Nick: How do I be a better father to my kids? How do I be the father that I want to be rather than just the provider and someone that my kids don't even know? I was literally leaving for work before they woke up and I was coming home two hours after they'd already been in bed. That's where my journey started with MLM. My answer to all of that was, “I'm gonna jump on board and help my wife build this business”. And so that's what I started doing. I've got all these sales skills. I've been doing this hardcore sales stuff for five years now. My wife was relatively well. She was a silver rank in her company which equated to $2,500 a month. So I said, “Okay, if I'm gonna quit my job and I'm gonna do all of this, I’m gonna quit cold turkey”. Steve: You just up and left? Nick: Yeah, just up and left. I said, “I'm done”. Here's the crazy part… We moved from Indianapolis to Austin, Texas two months afterwards. We completely restarted. Hit the reset button. I've got all these sales skills and one of the things that I see really lacking inside of the MLM world was people knowing how to sell. So that was the problem that I said I can fix. I jumped into our team trainings and I started doing all of these things. I started teaching them menu selling (which is a car world term) but it's just narrowing down the options. Instead of giving them this huge, 16 page spreadsheet of all of these things that they can buy, you're gonna narrow it down and say, “Okay you have this option, this option or this option.” HOW TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH SECRET MLM HACKS I started doing that and in four months, our team volume jumped from $30,000 a month to $80,000 a month. Steve: Wow, big jump. Nick: Yeah big jump. Just within a couple of months of just getting people to understand how the sales process actually works and implementing those skills. But then we really came to a plateau. You can only do so much to the customer base that you already have. Steve: Right. You need some more people eventually. Nick: Eventually you need more people. That was the brick wall that I ran into at that point. I was like “Okay, so how do I do this?” Marketing, duh. If sales pushes and marketing pulls, I need to pull more people into this business. But I had no idea how to do it because I'm not a marketer. I've been doing sales my entire life. And honestly, that's when I found Steve Larsen. I started listening to Secret MLM Hacks and I signed up to ClickFunnels. From there… I failed. Miserably. On my face. Steve: Sure. We pretty much all do the first few rounds. Nick: I jumped in and I'm like, “Oh this is gonna be awesome! I'm listening to you but I'm not really hearing you”, you know what I mean? Steve: I always laugh when people are like, “I've heard this training before”, and I'm like, “No it takes a few rounds, go again.” Nick: I jumped in and started building these funnels and I'm like, “This is going to be awesome” and then I hit launch... And I launch that first funnel and nothing. It was just crickets and I'm like, “Alright, back to the drawing board”. INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH CLICKFUNNELS I paused my ClickFunnels account because I realized that I didn’t have the skills that I need to be successful doing what I'm doing. Steve: Right. Nick: That's when I really jumped into it and I remember the time specifically. I was at a leadership retreat which is an invite only retreat for a company. I had just gotten Expert Secrets and Dot Com Secrets. I bought the black book with the funnel hacker's cookbook and all of that. And I brought it with me. I'm sitting in our hotel room and I started reading Expert Secrets and I didn't put it down. I went all through the night and the next morning. When it was time to get up and go to the retreat I was still sitting there with my book on page 240 or something like that. All of these things just started hitting me and it was like the fire was lit. I started really consuming and I even started hacking Secret MLM Hacks. Steve: I noticed that's what you were doing. I watch a lot of people do that which is great and I think they should model it. Nick: When I was hacking Secret MLM Hacks somehow, someway I ended up in the membership site and I hadn't paid for it. I messaged you and I'm like, “Dude, I have no idea how this happened but I'm here.” Steve: We were in the middle of tweaking some stuff. Yeah, I remember that. It's not that way anymore. Nick: It's not that way anymore. A whole new revamped course and everything. I got there and I started watching your videos, consuming and I implemented. For my relaunch basically modeled exactly what you were doing. This was probably seven months ago, eight months ago? HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME? Steve: A while ago now, yeah. Nick: Since then we went from$80,000 a month in volume to averaging about $150,000 a month in volume. Steve: WHAT? I didn't know it was that big dude… Are you serious? Nick: Yeah. In the past 12 months, we've done a little over $1.5 Million. Steve: So you're saying it works? Nick: I'm saying it works dude. That's probably about the time that you really started noticing me singing your praises. I'm sitting here inside of my own business and I'm watching these things grow and accumulate exponentially. And I'm trying to teach this stuff to my team and get it through their heads… There's no other way! Steve: I don't know another way either. I'm not making fun of you who are like, “I love talking to friends and family. I love going to home and hotel meetings”. Good on you. But you can only do that for so long. It's so much better to have something automated. Nick: Yeah, absolutely. I start learning more about marketing and it's a constant learning curve obviously. But you know that? It’s so true that MLM is a personal growth opportunity with an income opportunity attached to it. Steve: Right. Nick: That's what it is. It's a great way to start for the traditional person who doesn't know anything about marketing or sales. You can start talking to family members and friends and doing all of that. But the reason that 99% of us out there are failing is because we don't ever move past that portion of it. The growth never happens and where we get into real marketing or real sales. PERSONAL GROWTH WITH SECRET MLM HACKS Steve: Reaching out to your network only gets you so far. After a while you have to learn how to attract more people, market to them, change beliefs, sell and close. It's funny when people are like, “I'm just gonna treat this like a hobby.” You're not going anywhere then, sorry. It's a business not a hobby. Nick: That’s the way that I see this. We talked about this the other day. The way that I see MLM moving, the way that I see this momentum going... It's having a rebirth, almost. If you've lived in our world, it's changing the way that it's happening. We're slowly moving out of those 1960's origins and moving to 2020. You're seeing a lot more sales and marketing professionals get into the game. I'm trying to teach everybody that, I'm trying to show everybody that. If you're not moving in the direction that things are going, you're going to become extinct. You're going to have real professionals in this game, doing things, exploding and leaving everybody else in the dust. Steve: There are social media platforms that were never around until 10 years ago. The distribution channels that exist now are massive and you can tap into them for near nothing. Most MLMs are mad when you go do that kind of stuff. What is wrong with you? You could be selling so much more if you just use them! It doesn't mean you have to be on Facebook saying “MLM”. What are you guys are doing right now that's working best for you? I'm just interested in that, because the course is big. Secret MLM Hacks is not a small course. What is it in there that has been most helpful so far? TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES WITH SECRET MLM HACKS STRATEGIES Nick: The thing that I think that's been most helpful… It's just gotta be the confidence to go out and PUBLISH. Steve: Oh yes. Nick: The confidence to go out and publish and talk about what you're doing. It's one thing to sit there and learn it for yourself. It's another to go out and actually teach people what you're doing. Steve: Sure. Nick: Not only because, in my personal opinion, I think that you learn it better and but you learn how to communicate it better. The more that we've been publishing, the more that we've been putting it out there, the more that it attracts people. Steve: Sure. What's being published right now? Is it a podcast right now? Nick: I've started a small little podcast at the moment. Steve: What is it called? Feel free to shout it out. Nick: I don't know if I want to at this point... Steve: That's okay then, never mind. Nick: I'm still trying to find my voice. My wife's Instagram account has been blowing up. She's got 42,000 followers right now. Steve: That's big. Nick: We do a lot of not direct marketing there. More like back page marketing. Steve: Sure, that's one of my favorite kinds. Especially in MLM. Nick: I modeled you and I set up my own little course. I started targeting people who want to make money online. The people who actually want to own a business. Not people who want to do a hobby. Sending people through that mini-course has yielded great results. THE POWER OF THE INTERNET AND MLM Steve: That's awesome. What does your funnel look like right now? I talk so much about funnels, and most of the MLM world is still very new to the funnel term and concept. But what is it that you guys are doing right now? Nick: The big thing we're doing right now is the little mini course which basically teaches marketing for MLM. Steve: Sure, that's awesome. Nick: The big idea behind that is, if you want to recruit more people into MLM and you don't want to talk to your friends and family, then: You have to target people who actually want to own a business but people who aren't necessarily getting the results that they want out of the current business that they're in. Setting up this little mini course that teaches people how to market. People who actually want to learn how to market their MLM. Then we invite them to join the downline. At the end of this course I affiliate for you and I say, “Hey, there's two ways that you can learn this…” Steve: Which I see by the way, thank you. Nick: “... You can either go join Steve's Secret MLM Hacks and learn it from the master. Or you can join my downline and I'm gonna teach you exactly what I'm doing to grow my downline to do $1.5 Million per year.” You can say in your current business and learn from Steve or you can join me and learn from me. Catching that low hanging fruit, I suppose. Taking advantage of the way that the current MLM system is. You have so many people that are unsatisfied with the business that they have because they're not learning the things they need to run their business. TAKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO INCREASE TEAM VOLUME Steve: Which reeks of opportunity for the rest of us who actually know what the heck's up. Nick: Exactly. That's exactly what it is. It's kind of like a smorgasbord of low hanging fruit. Steve: It is, yeah. Nick: As far as extra recruiting goes and getting new people, it's great when people actually want to use the product, they believe in the product, they love the product and all of those things. That's an amplifier but it's not a requirement. Steve: So you guys have a course, you're selling, you're driving traffic to the course and then on the back you’re saying, “Hey, if you want to come join, this is what we've got”. Nick: Exactly. Steve: That's awesome. I was filming some training for my own team three weeks ago now. And I just wrote RECRUITING. That is what most MLMs teach you and the method for it is just walk around. Think about the power of what we're doing with this stuff. We're taking the recruiting model and replacing something in front of it so that we're not actually promoting the MLM. How long did it take you to create your course? Nick: I created the course in about seven days. Steve: RIGHT? It's not crazy, man. You create this course so then you're no longer promoting an MLM. So Facebook is okay with you suddenly. You drive traffic to that and take the money to dump it right back into ads. It's amazing and it changes the whole model. It's literally INFO PRODUCT + MLM. Mashing together two different industries. Are you doing phones sales as well? Closing them on the phone? TEACH YOUR DOWNLINES THE POWER OF THE INTERNET Nick: To a degree yes. I will offer that to people and I have an application process (modeled after you). Nine times out of 10 when someone goes through the application process, I set up my auto-responder. My email service will kickback a set of emails that walk them through the process of setting up their account. Then I've done an automated overview. A business overview that teaches them about the company. During this entire time, I never even mention my company's name. Steve: This is the craziest part! Same thing! Nick: I've literally modeled what you've done. Steve: I LOVE IT! Nick: For months my entire office was covered with print out after print out of exactly what you did. Once I finally mapped it out in my head, it was more about the concepts at hand. Another thing that I think a lot of people struggle with inside of the funnel world is that they think it's about pages. Steve: Right yeah, it's not. Nick: It about the framework. What is the state of mind that he's putting every single person in? Once I finally understood the framework behind it, I knew that's why I failed the very first time that I tried ClickFunnels. Because I thought that it was just all about pages. But once I understood the core framework and moving somebody through the funnel and how that's done, then all of a sudden it made sense. Steve: Right. INCREASE TEAM VOLUME WITH SELF-LIQUIDATING OFFERS Nick: One of the coolest things that happened out of all of this and how I feed this recruiting machine is by putting self-liquidating offers throughout the course. The course is dripped out over five days and on each day there's a small self-liquidating offer. Whatever I talk about that day, I then give them an offer to say, “Hey, if you want to learn this more in depth right now, click this”. Then it goes to a new page with a little sales video for an offer for $7. Right now it's $1.50 per opt in on the front end and on the back end it's churning out $38. Steve: You're speaking louder than whole MLMs even know how to! Nick: Exactly and it pays for itself 17 times over. I'm paying myself to recruit people. Steve: Last week on Secret MLM Hacks we put $1400 in and we got $20,000 back out (not including how many people got recruited and then they get handed the same recruiting systems). I don't know how it fails. The biggest issue is the education. Most MLMs don't know how to do this which is understandable. It's a newish thing. What would you tell to somebody who is on the fence about trying this? ON THE FENCE ABOUT SECRET MLM HACKS? Nick: The biggest thing that I would tell people is fail and fail fast. Just do it. When we over think it, nothing ever gets done. I'm a perfectionist myself which is why I listened to Secret MLM Hacks 18 months ago and I just started doing this six to eight months ago. It wasn't really until the last three months that it really took off. I’m still constantly tweaking and doing things to it but the fact is that I just did it. I finally put down the pen, I finally put down the book and I went out there and I did it. Then I hit publish and I wasn't scared to feed the machine up front and put a little bit of money into it. Nothing is ever gonna get done if I just sit here and read books. The knowledge is great... Steve: But nothing happens. Nick: You just gotta do it. Be active in your pursuit of what you want. Steve: Be clear about the fact that this is not a hobby. We've treated this like an actual business. We've got phone closers, we're talking to people and training. I hate when someone joins because they're trying to do you a favor. Then they're wondering why they don't go build. You recruited the wrong who! We gotta change your who altogether! Nick: Every bum on the side of the street needs an opportunity. Steve: Right! Nick: I live in Austin and if you walk down downtown Austin you're guaranteed to see about 10 every 100 yards. They might NEED an opportunity, but they don't' want it. You gotta find those people that actually WANT to succeed in whatever it is that you're doing. DO YOU WANT THE SECRET MLM HACKS OPPORTUNITY? Steve: Dude I am so thankful that you got on here. Thank you so much for sharing. I did want to ask one last question. How many people have you been recruiting since you turned it on six months ago? Nick: I would say we're probably getting five to seven a month. Steve: That's awesome! On autopilot? Nick: Yeah, on autopilot. Steve: And the quality of person is really high which is awesome. Nick: Five to seven a month is what we're recruiting into our organization and we get paid for a lot of people that say no to us as well. Steve: Yeah, they bought the thing up front which is the beauty of it. Nick: And I say five to seven, that's five to seven that we ACCEPT. Steve: We get three to four applicants a day but I immediately cut out at least half off them because I can just tell… Nick: Once you get to a certain point, you have to be able to say no. You have to self-select and be able to weed out people because otherwise it just becomes too overwhelming. Steve: Then you turn into a life coach rather than a “Here’s what we're doing in our company this week” coach. Nick: Exactly. Steve: With love, I'll say that as tenderly as I can. Nick, thank you so much for being on here, I really appreciate it. This was awesome, man. Really means a lot that you jumped on. HEAD OVER TO SECRET MLM HACKS NOW I know it's tough to find people to pitch after your warm market dries up, right? That moment when you finally run out of family and friends to pitch. I don't see many up lines teaching legitimate lead strategies today. After years of being a lead funnel builder online I got sick of the garbage strategies most MLMs have been teaching their recruits for decades. Whether you simply want more leads to pitch or an automated MLM funnel, head over to secretmlmhacks.com and join the next free training. There you're gonna learn the hidden revenue model that only the top MLMers have been using to get paid regardless if you join them. Learn the 3-step system I use to auto recruit my downline of big producers without friends or family even knowing that I'm in MLM. If you want to do the same for yourself, head over to secretmlmhacks.com. Again that’s secretmlmhacks.com.
In This Episode You Will Learn About: How Nick has run over a thousand days in a row and why What running has taught him in business How we started working together How people are searching for a “Nick” Looking for who to hire and how Working through unrealistic goals Nick’s reaction when a launch doesn’t go as planned The best and worst parts about working with Lori and Chris Business patterns that Nick notices Digital marketing tips Where Nick gets his generosity from Charity Water Resources: Learn more: nickharder.com Instagram: @nickharder1 VIP Day: chris@fortheloveofmoney.com Read: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom ; Thirst by Scott Harrison Show Notes Today I am welcoming my brother, Nick Harder, to the show! Nick is the C.O.O. for my company, as well as my wife’s company. Nick is a certified partner with Digital Marketer, and has certifications in marketing, building funnels, customer value, and more. Today, Nick and I are talking about how to hire for your business, what it’s like working with family, and what you can do better to boost your own business. This is one you’re not going to want to miss! Question Highlights: Why are you running everyday, and what are you learning from it? Where do I find a Nick? How do you feel when you hear unrealistic goals? What goes through your head when a launch doesn’t go as planned? What is the best part and the worst part about working with Lori and I? What patterns do you see most in entrepreneurs’ businesses that you would correct? Where did your heart for generosity come from? Nick Harder is the C.O.O for both Chris and Lori Harder’s companies. He’s a Certified Partner with Digital Marketer and carries multiple marketing, funnel, and customer value certifications. Follow me on social media @ChrisWHarder on Instagram and check out www.ForTheLoveOfMoney.com
A long one, but well worth the listen as Nick Littlehales drops some profound knowledge bombs about sleep and recovery! Nick Littlehales is a sleep coach to world-class athletes, is an author, runs a successful sleep coaching service to the masses and is a crusader of Sleep, with 22 yers under his belt. Though my journey of self-optimisation, I stumbled across just how much I was being let down by being chronically sleep deprived. Running on fumes and adrenaline, wearing myself out, making myself sick, and being a shadow of my true self. Fast forward to today, sleep and recovery is sacred to me, and I am more capable and giving that I have ever been. It’s embracing the lessons from Nick where things really started to change. I encourage you to intently listen in and hang off of Nick's guidance - to be a healthier more capable you, but most importantly…. to help our kids and the younger generations navigate an increasingly demanding, wired and 24x7 culture they are growing up in. They soon will be our leaders, and hopefully will bring a movement where sleep and recovery is embraced for maximal performance and enjoyment. Here’s what we talk about: 1️⃣ Getting to know Nick- How he became a Sleep Expert to Alex Ferguson’s Man United and Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal in the '90’s 2️⃣ Every year has been presenting new problems - The changes in social and corporate norms in the last 20 years 3️⃣ The Forgotten Pillar to Health - In a world where we have gyms, supplements, diets, gadgets etc… why is it not working? 4️⃣ The enormous evolutionary impact of the Circadian Rhythm - What is it? Why does it matter? How to align and manage? 5️⃣ Understand Your and your Kids Chronotypes - The reality that there Larks and Owls, and that cannot be ignored 6️⃣Indicators and consequences of being Sleep Deprived - Learn about the mental, physical, wellness and emotional impacts 7️⃣ The power of Naps and finding your ‘mowing the lawn’ moments - Understanding why and how to get mental & physical recovery during the day 8️⃣Throwing away the 8h nighttime sleep rule away- and how to think about sleep and recovery in a refreshing way 9️⃣ Your Pre-Bed routing starts the moment you wake up- Listen to Nick’s tips on how to deliberately plan for great sleep and recovery
Player Development Project Podcast - Learning Tools for Soccer Coaching
The question this week comes from Nick: “How do I watch live games as a coach, and what should I be looking for?” Exclusive offer for Podcast listeners: 30 Days Free Active Membership. Visit www.playerdevelopmentproject.com/podcast
It's podcast time! On our final Audience Appreciation April episode, we discuss the 2016 Disney smash hit "Zootopia". In the news, we discuss the future of "Star Wars Rebels". We also announce the winner of our Audience Appreciation April Giveaway and announce our schedule for AniMay! We also rank our favorite animated cities in a special Top 10. Did you win our giveaway? Does Josh ship Judy and Nick? How did Gavin and Josh meet? Tune in to find out! Thanks again to everyone who participated in Audience Appreciation April. Be sure and listen to see what giveaway we have in store for AniMay. Be sure to head over to our website www.AnimationStationPodcast.com and check out some of the other awesome shows in our podcast family by going to www.SecretSuperheroClub.com Please leave us a comment and subscribe. Follow the show on Instagram @AnimationStationPodcast Follow Josh @JoshLCain Follow Gavin @GavinOttesonArt Tags: animation, anime, cartoons, disney, podcast, zootopia, giveaway, starwars, starwarsrebels, animay, top10
There are few things more beneficial to having successful relationships than learning good communication skills. Effective communication is a learned skill. My professional life was changed twenty-eight years ago in part because I was told by my mentor to read How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I have quoted Mr. Carnegie's principles over the years to anyone who would listen, including my two sons. I am sure they appreciated the information, but that is all it is, information, until it has a practical use in someone's life. My older son, Nick, is the Road Manager and Director of Merchandising and Digital Media for Matt Mason. Matt won the televised competition, CMT's next Superstar and his career is taking off. Nick has a long list of responsibilities and most of these include direct communication and coordination with a number of people at each concert venue. I gave Nick How to Win Friends and Influence People a while ago as a gift. He read it, saw the benefits of adopting these principles and they are serving him well in his current position. While my wife, Lesa, was complimenting Nick on how he handled a recent situation with a fan, he quoted a principle from the book. Lesa could not wait to tell me. Here are some excellent excerpts that you can use today: Smile Remember that a man's name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in the English language. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves Make people feel important, and do it sincerely. Begin in a friendly way Begin with praise and honest appreciation. How would learning effective communication skills at a young age change the course of a child's life? I believe it is as important as learning proper morals, character, humility and manners. Question: What principle did you learn as a child that has served you well in your life? You can comment by clicking here. If you would like to learn more about Matt Mason including his upcoming tour dates, go to mattmasonmusic.com Have a great week! Pierce
Alright guys, this is it, this is the last episode of our MTI Discovers series of the top 99 songs of 2007! Hear huge hits from Daughtry, Fergie and much more! Hosts: Producer Jack & Nick How did you guys like our series? Or perhaps not? Whatever your opinoin is, make sure to let yourself be heard by visiting our website at http://mymti.org/ to send us your feedback! Plus check out our schedule for future release dates til the end of June 2015!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/past-mti-countdowns/donations
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