Podcasts about nick it

In this episode, Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with Nick Wagner, focus on GoldenGate's terminology and architectural evolution.   Nick defines source and target systems, which are crucial for data replication, and then moves on to explain the data extraction and replication processes.   He also talks about the new microservices architecture, which replaces the classic architecture, offering benefits like simplified management, enhanced security, and a user-friendly interface. Nick highlights how this architecture facilitates easy upgrades and provides a streamlined experience for administrators.   Oracle GoldenGate 23ai: Fundamentals: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/course/oracle-goldengate-23ai-fundamentals/145884/237273 Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/ X: https://x.com/Oracle_Edu   Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Kris-Ann Nansen, Radhika Banka, 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! 00:25 Nikita: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I'm Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston: Director of Innovation Programs. Lois: Hi there! Thanks for joining us again as we make our way through Oracle GoldenGate 23ai. Last week, we discussed all the new features introduced in 23ai and today, we'll move on to the terminology, the different processes and what they do, and the architecture of the product at a high level. 00:56 Nikita: Back with us is Nick Wagner, Senior Director of Product Management for Oracle GoldenGate. Hi Nick! Let's get into some of the terminology. What do we actually call stuff in GoldenGate? Nick: Within GoldenGate, we have our source systems and our target systems. The source is where we're going to be capturing data from, the targets, where we're going to be applying data into. And when we start talking about things like active-active or setting up GoldenGate for high availability, where your source can also be your target, it does become a little bit more complex. And so in some of those cases, we might refer to things as East and West, or America and Europe, or different versions of that. We also have a couple of different things within the product itself. We have what we call our Extract and our Replicat. The Extract is going to be the process that pulls the data out of the database, our capture technology. Our Replicat's going to be the one that applies the data into the target system, or you can also look at it as a push technology. We have what we call our Distribution Path. Our Distribution Path is going to be how we're sending the data across the network. A lot of times when customers run GoldenGate, they don't have the luxury of just having a single server of GoldenGate that can pull data from one database and push data into another one. They need to set up multiple hops of that data. And so in that case, we would use what we call a Distribution Path to send that data from one system to the next. We also have what we call a Target Initiated Path. It's kind of a subset of your Distribution Path, but it allows you to communicate from a less secure environment into a more secure environment.  02:33 Lois: Nick, what about parameter names. I've seen them in uppercase…title case…does that matter?  Nick: GoldenGate has a lot of parameters. This is something you'll see all over the place within GoldenGate itself.  These parameters are in your Extract and Replicat parameter files during your distribution path parameter files. Parameters for GoldenGate are case insensitive.  Within your own environments, you can set it up to have lowercase, mixed case, whatever you want, but just be aware that they are case insensitive. GoldenGate doesn't care, it's just for readability. And then we also have something called trail files. Trail files is where GoldenGate stores all the data before we're able to apply it into that target system. Think about it as our queuing mechanism, and we're queuing everything outside the database so that we're not overloading those database environments. And that's some of the terminology for the product itself. We also have microservices within GoldenGate. 03:31 Nikita: And at the heart of everything is the Service Manager, right? Talk to us about what it is and what it does. Nick: The service manager is responsible for making sure that everything else is up and running. If you are familiar with GoldenGate classic architecture, this is kind of similar to a GoldenGate manager where that process was there to make sure that processes were running the trail files, or excuse me, that certain error logs were getting written out. If a process went down, the manager would restart that process. The service manager is performing a lot of those same functions. Now attached to the service manager, we have our configuration service. This is new in GoldenGate 23ai. This configuration service is going to allow you to set up GoldenGate for highly available environments. So you can build HA into GoldenGate itself using the configuration service. 04:22 Lois: And what does this configuration service do? Nick: This configuration service essentially moves the checkpoint files that used to be on disk into a database so that everything can be stored inside of a database.  Also attached to the service manager, we have the performance metric service. This is a service that is going to be gathering all the performance metrics of GoldenGate. So it's going to tell you how fast things are going, what the latencies are, how many bytes per second we're reading from, the transaction logs or writing to our trail files. How quickly a distribution path is sending data across a network. If you want to know any of your lag information, you'll get it from the performance metrics server. We also have the receiver service and the distribution service. These two work hand in hand to establish network communication between two GoldenGate environments. So on what we call our source system, we have a distribution service that's going to send the data to our target system. On the target system, a receiver service is going to receive that data and then rewrite the trail files. We also have the administration service that's responsible for authentication and authorization of the users, as well as making sure that people have access to the right information. 05:33 Nikita: Ok. Moving on the deployment, how is GoldenGate actually deployed, Nick? Nick: GoldenGate is kinda nice. So the way that the product is installed is you install the GoldenGate environment and that's what we call our service manager deployment under a specific GoldenGate home. So the software binaries themselves get installed under a home, we'll say U01/OGG23AI. Now once I've installed GoldenGate once, that's my OGG home. I can now have any number of service managers and deployments tied to that same home.  06:11 Lois: Ok, let's work with an example to make this simpler. Let's say I've got a service manager that's going be responsible for three different deployments: Accounting, Finance, and Sales. Nick: Each of these deployments is going to reside in its own directory. Each of these deployments is going to have its own set of microservices. And so this also means that each of these deployments can have their own set of users. So the people that access the GoldenGate accounting deployment can be different than the ones that access the sales deployment. This means with this distribution of roles that I can have somebody come in and administer the sales database, but they wouldn't have any information or any access to accounting or finance. And this is very important, it allows you to really pull that information apart and separate it. Each of these environments also has their own set of parameter files, Extract process, Replicat process, distribution services, and everything. So it's a very nice way of splitting things up, but all having them tied to the same GoldenGate home system. And this home is very important. So I can take a deployment, let's say my finance deployment, and if I want to move it to a new GoldenGate home and that GoldenGate home is a different version, like let's say that my original home is 23.4, my new GoldenGate home is 23.7, I simply stop that GoldenGate deployment. I stopped at a finance deployment. I changed its OGG home from 23.4 to 23.7. I restart the deployment, that deployment is automatically upgraded to the new environment and attached to the new system. So it makes upgrading very, very simple, very easy, very elegant. 07:53 Nikita: Ok. So, we've spoken about the services…some of the terminology. Let's get into the architecture next. Nick: So when we talk about the architecture for GoldenGate, we used to have two different architectures. We had a classic architecture and a microservices architecture. Classic architecture was something that's been around since the very beginning of GoldenGate in the late '90s. We announced that, that architecture was deprecated in 19c. And Oracle deprecated means that feature is no longer going to be enhanced and it'll be patched selectively. And at some point in the future, it'll be entirely desupported. Well, GoldenGate 23ai is that future. And so in 23ai, the classic architecture is desupported, that means that it's no longer in the build at all. And so it's just microservices architecture. 08:41 Lois: Is there a tool to assist with this migration?  Nick: We do have a migration utility that will convert an old classic architecture into the new microservices architecture. But there is quite a bit of learning curve to the new microservices architecture. So it's important that we go through how it works in the changes. 09:04 Are you looking to optimize your implementation strategies and improve efficiency? We have a solution for you! Our new Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Foundations training and certification program. You'll learn to leverage Oracle Modern Best Practice (OMBP) to re-imagine business processes using advanced technologies in Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications such as AI, mobile, analytics, and more. Visit mylearn.oracle.com to get started today.  09:37 Nikita: Welcome back! Nick, what are the benefits of this microservices architecture?  Nick: It's got that simplified lifecycle for patching and upgrading. A lot of the GoldenGate patches that you get, especially these bundle patches, are complete installs as well. So you can go into My Oracle Support and download a complete install of a patch and that way, you don't have to use old patch to apply them. The only time you'll be using old patch is for one-off patches or smaller patches that need to be applied to your GoldenGate system. The microservices product has the same trusted Capture and Apply process that Classic did. There's almost no changes between the two except on how they communicate with their parent processes. And so the same logic that you use to pull data from Oracle or to apply data into Oracle is all the same. 10:25 Lois: And has the interface been upgraded as well? Nick: We've added a really nice, easy to use web interface for the microservices version of GoldenGate. Not only is this web interface work with all your standard browsers, but it's also mobile friendly too. So I can actually control and administer GoldenGate right through my mobile device. It also has new secure remote administration. This is something that the classic architecture was really missing. And so in the classic architecture, to use the command line interface, you had to log into the database server where GoldenGate was installed. Now, the command line interface, as well as the web interface and the REST API, all use remote administration and authentication. So that means that I can install the new command line interface or what we call admin client on my laptop locally and I can connect to any GoldenGate deployment as long as I have the username and password for that deployment. It's also more secure. GoldenGate microservices can also be deployed on premise or in OCI as a service and now also on these third-party clouds like Azure and Google Cloud. And it's also easier for developers to integrate in with the APIs themselves. Everything that GoldenGate does through the admin client as well as the web UI can all be traced. The REST API calls for GoldenGate are all fully published so you can get them right directly from the documentation, you can build your own web interface if you want to. So it makes it very easy. The REST APIs are also streamlined. With a single REST API call, I can do something like add an Extract process, create it, set up my parameter file, and set up the trail files all with a single API command. Whereas in the past, it would require multiple command line interface commands to do that same thing. So it's extremely elegant, very advanced. 12:16 Nikita: What does the microservices architecture look like? I know it's a bit complicated when we're not actually looking at a diagram of it, but just a high level, can you explain the different parts of it? Nick: It's pretty straightforward. But essentially what you've got on each system is a service manager. That service manager is then going to have a number of processes or services beneath it. It'll have the configuration service that stores the checkpoint information for GoldenGate. It'll have the administrative service for the authentication and users, the distribution service to send the data across a network, a receiver service to receive that information, performance metrics to get the performance statistics out of GoldenGate. And then of course, you also have your Extracts and Replicats that capture and apply technology. Each of those Extracts and Replicats will then connect to a database on the Extract side of things. That Extract is going to write to trail files. Those trail files are then going to be sent across the network where they're rebuilt on the target system and the Replicat's going to consume them and apply them into the target database. So the Replicat behaves almost like an end user. So it's taking that trail file data and simply converting it to DML operations, insert, update, delete, or a DDL operation in the case of Oracle, alter table, create table, et cetera, to go into that target database.   13:39 Lois: To look at a diagram of this architecture and learn about it in more detail, check out the Oracle GoldenGate 23ai Fundamentals course on mylearn.oracle.com. So, Nick, if I'm looking to deploy GoldenGate, what should I primarily keep in mind? Nick: So as you go to install GoldenGate and you look at a deployment, there's a couple of important environment variables that you want to make sure you're aware of. So one of the first ones is your OGG_Home. This environment variable is extremely important. This is the location of the GoldenGate software itself. And I want to stress how important it is to always use version numbers when you're setting up your GoldenGate home. When you go to install the software, if you're installing GoldenGate 23.5, use 23.5 within the home directory structure. If you're installing GoldenGate 23.7, use 23.7 inside that directory structure. 14:33 Nikita: Right… that way I'll always know which versions are which, and it'll make it really easy to upgrade and move from one version to the next. Ok, got it. What else, Nick? Nick: There's a couple other important directories. You have your OGG_ETC_HOME. This is where things like the configuration files are going to reside, parameter files, all your certificates for security, including the wallets where we store the credentials for not only the database accounts, but also for the GoldenGate user accounts as well. We have our GoldenGate variable home directory or VAR home. This is where all the GoldenGate log files are residing. And these are the log files that allow you to see what's going on in GoldenGate for auditing purposes. Anytime anybody makes a change to GoldenGate, you're going to see information go into the log files on what was happening and how it was working and what they did, what time they did, what command they issued. Another big important feature about these log files is it also gives you error information and troubleshooting details. So if you ever need to find out what happened in GoldenGate, what went wrong, you would look at these log files to find out that information. And then you also have your OGG_DATA_HOME. This is where those trail files are going to go. Essentially, this is kind of the queuing or overflow for GoldenGate. There's a couple of other additional components. We've got the admin client. This is our command line utility. If you don't want to use a web browser or prefer a command line utility, you can use the admin client. The admin client is also fully scriptable. So if you wanted to write scripts that would go off and automate things in GoldenGate, you can do that. A lot of customers did that with GGSCI in the classic architecture. You can do the same thing now with the admin client. The other component is the microservices security authentication and authorization services. These handle communication security, especially making sure that any passwords or usernames and everything like that is all encrypted. And instead of using an actual username and password, everything through the product is going to be done through an alias. And then it also handles all the authorization authentication, permissions, user accountability, and roles within GoldenGate. 16:39 Lois: Anything else you'd like to talk about before we wrap up for today, Nick? Nick: I also wanted to take a minute to talk about the REST API. All the microservices provide REST APIs to administer them and all of these are fully documented. They can be used by any client that can make REST API calls. So if you wanted to use Python, cURL, a web browser, you can do that as well. They're all just HTTP or HTTPS calls, get, put, patch, the standard REST API standards. And then GoldenGate does provide our admin client as well as a WebUI that use these REST APIs under the covers if you ever wanted to get a more advanced look at how it works. 17:18 Nikita: Well, that's all the time we have for today. Thanks for joining us, Nick.  Lois: Yes, thanks Nick. We look forward to having you back next week to talk with us about security strategies and data recovery. Nikita: And if you want to learn more about the topics we discussed today, head over to mylearn.oracle.com and take a look at the Oracle GoldenGate 23ai Fundamentals course. Until next time, this is Nikita Abraham… Lois: And Lois Houston, signing off!  17:43 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.

This episode is all about the emotional side of investing during market turmoil, especially the conversations (or arguments) happening at kitchen tables right now.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Speaker 1: This episode is all about the emotional side of investing during market turmoil, especially the conversations that might be happening around kitchen tables all across America right now. Let's get into it this week here on Retirement Planning Redefined.   Welcome into the podcast, where we're going to talk about talking to your spouse or loved one about market crashes and fears. If you're sitting around the dinner table and stressing out about the stuff we've been seeing over the past few weeks, it's been a volatile March and April. It's maybe worthwhile to have a chat about how do you go about that, because obviously when it comes to dealing with money and talking about money, that's sometimes where families and relationships struggle. This week, the guys are going to help us break it down from things they say from their clients, maybe their own personal perspective and mine as well, as we have this conversation.   What's going on, John? How are you doing, buddy?   John: Doing good. Just found an electric fireplace.   Speaker 1: Oh, nice, nice.   John: For my remodel. I can't wait to have it installed.   Speaker 1: There you go. Yeah, we got one of those as well when we did ours. Nice, very good. Works well. My wife's always got that thing on. I'm like, "Really?"   John: Yeah.   Speaker 1: Even when it's warm. I'm like, "You're killing me." Well, hey, there you go. Couples and spouses already over the fireplace, we haven't even got to the money yet.   What about you, Nick? How are you doing, buddy?   Nick: Good, good. Staying busy.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, let's dive into this since you're about to have this situation start to prop up because you've got some nuptials coming soon. Again, congratulations on that.   I got a few questions I just want to run through. Feel free to drop in some real life scenarios that you've seen from your own life, or clients, or whatever you guys want to share when it comes to this. It's an important question, because I so many advisors like yourselves say, "Hey, when you're building a retirement plan and a strategy, make sure both people are involved so that you understand what you've got and what you're into." Even if it's not your thing, that way everybody just feels like they're on solid ground when it comes to knowing what's happening.   How do you deal with that? As a married couple or in a relationship, how do you deal with market downturns? Because when you start seeing your accounts go down, you start to freak out a little bit. Is it a good idea to talk about that, guys? Or do you think that should be saved for talking, Nick, like in front of you guys, where you're there as a mediator kind of thing?   Nick: I think the number one most important part is that people actually start to have the conversation.   Speaker 1: Just talk, right?   Nick: Yeah, just talk. There's a reason that, I would say from the standpoint of therapy, 50% of the stress probably comes from guidance and 50% just comes from getting it out kind of thing.   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: The act of literally just talking and trying to get on the same page I think tends to be helpful. The reality is most couples with many things, the way that they approach a decision, the way that they feel about something that's happening tends to be different. It's pretty rare that they're both the same.   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: John and I talking about that quite a bit with clients, where many of our clients, we'll work as a team. In a lot of ways, we feel like it benefits us because we have similarities and differences just like couples do. Often times, we can pick up on more information because of that.   I think having the conversation to get a baseline of how they're feeling about the direction of things. Then, really, I do think it is important to reach out to their advisor and get an idea, a better idea of what's going on. Because the other part about that is that the phase of life that they're in really has a significant impact on how much they could be impacted. We've got clients that are working and just saving, they're often times feeling less concern. Those that are approaching retirement or very early on in retirement, they're probably the ones that are the most freaked out. Those that have been retired for a little bit longer have gotten a better feeling of it and I would say are a little bit more stable when it comes to this sort of thing. Just really getting on the same page is important.   Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. John, to expand on that, what's each person's natural reaction to financial stress? The two top things that couples fight about is money and in the bedroom, and love. Do you fight, do you flight, freeze, freak out? When you start seeing your accounts drop, are you thinking, "Hey, my dream is fading away?" How do you react to that can go a long way into how you deal with that financial stress.   John: Everyone's personality is different. Everything you just listed there, Nick and I have seen it across the board.   Speaker 1: Oh, sure. Yeah.   John: I definitely say if someone's reaction is to fight over something, it's definitely a good time to do a check with your advisor to avoid those unnecessary fights about it. Everyone reacts differently. It's good to have conversations. Back to what we were saying, just having the plan reflect how is this actually affecting your situation. Once you see that, that might actually take some of the stress away to help you make better decisions.   Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because to that point, Nick, number three is that no matter what you do, whether you fight, flight, freeze, or freak out, is it because you don't know the longterm plan or you're not on the same page? Typically, the panic comes in when you don't realize what's going on, especially if one person is leading the financial charge and the other one is just along for the ride because it's not their thing or they don't care about paying that much attention to it. But then, in these times of turmoil, now they want to pay attention and now they're freaking out because they don't really understand the plan or they don't know it at all. That's the importance of both people working together.   Nick: For sure. I think over time, we realized that when people are uncertain or they don't understand something, that leads to anxiety. And the anxiety builds up and then blows, and that leads to the freak-out factor or fighting between each other, or things like that. We've got clients who have told me one spouse can tell when the other spouse is really freaking out. They're not the personality to say something, but they become ornery or short.   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: It's like, "Okay, I knew it was time to reach out so that we can have a conversation about this."   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: That absolutely is something that makes a lot of sense. Having that plan to be your guide and stay on path is super important.   One of the things that we tend to tell clients over time is, and this is really playing out, where the reality is there's a lot of people, for the last 10-plus years, that have been very heavily invested in the Magnificent Seven, or heavy in tech, and all that kind of thing. It's been a safe haven and out-performed almost everything and pulled the market. Now we've got a little bit of a cycling out of that and it seems like things are shifting a little bit more to diversification is important, that sort of thing.   One of the things that we'll tend to say to clients, at all times, you should have something in your strategy that you're very happy about having and something that maybe you're not so happy about having. When markets are going really good, you hate that maybe you've got six, 12 months in cash that's not getting a ton of return. But when markets are going bad, you're really, really happy that you have that six to 12 months in cash for different things. All those things go together to try to help stay on the same page and go back to your plan.   Speaker 1: Yeah. With headlines and internet stuff, and everything like that, it's really easy to get sucked into reactionary moments, John. How do you balance facts with feelings? That's one of the biggest things that we're dealing with. Money and feelings go hand-in-hand. How do you balance the facts in? If you're a couple at home, any thoughts or advice for folks? I know we talked a couple of weeks ago about not doom-scrolling and turning the TV off.   John: Yeah.   Speaker 1: Aside from that, what's some other ways to maybe balance the facts?   John: Yeah. I think it's ultimately looking at your situation, not just what a particular stock or index is doing that day. Like I said, last week, when someone was a little nervous and when we looked at their year-to-date return it was like, "Oh, that's not bad." It's like, "No, it's not bad. This doesn't affect you whatsoever, you can go ahead and travel." It's like, "All right, good to know that."   I think it's always going back to your personal situation, and how does it affect you, and how can you adapt. And in some situations, how can you take advantage of what's happening currently? Is there something you could do that would actually be beneficial to your overall over the next two or three years, or overall throughout your whole strategy?   Speaker 1: Good point. Yeah, definitely. You've got to get some facts in this situation because again, so many people just see the headlines, they run with it. They assume that's what's happening to them, and it may not be at all.   I guess the final piece here is, Nick, does that play back to have you talked with one another about your-   Nick: Sorry to cut you off.   Speaker 1: No, that's fine.   Nick: I'll give you one example of this. This was what the news will do to people. I have one client who's very risk averse and is concerned about the markets. It was good she checked in because she was getting pretty upset over what was happening. When we checked in it was, "Hey, everything you have is in fixed income." It was, "There's really not much risk." She was like, "Oh, it's just this news, I'm watching it, and it's all this stuff." It's like, "No, you're in really good shape. Nothing is affected." But again, it's just a matter of knowing the facts for her situation. Not everyone's like, obviously.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: She's extremely risk averse. It was good that she's in the right asset allocation based on her risk tolerance, because she wouldn't be able to handle what's happening right now.   Speaker 1: Yeah, that's hilarious. I'm glad that she got that sorted out too, so that she didn't have to stress. Nick, I was getting ready to ask you that. Is it time for you and your loved one, you and your spouse, to talk about your risk tolerance? Do you assume you're on the same page, are you on the same page? Or does your advisor even know what your risk tolerance is? Have you gone through and updated that stuff and had those pulse checks?   Nick: Yeah, it's really interesting because we'll have clients, for example, clients that are still working. Depending upon their personalities, I have a lot of clients that, if it's a couple, one person picks their own 401K investments, the other person picks their own 401K investments. Sometimes they might compare or look, and they'll pick their investments based upon ... These are, often times, people that, when they come in before they become clients, pick based upon what their own set of fact that they're using and all that sort of thing. When they shift to the phase of, okay, maybe retire, and now they're making more decisions together and trying to get on the same page.   Where we'll literally have situations where it's like, okay, say it's a couple, he's got his rollover into an IRA, she's got her rollover into an IRA, and then they have a joint account. The joint account's invested completely differently than either of the IRAs because they have to come to an agreement on it. It's interesting, the dynamics of how that works and how they slowly have to get on the same page often times. But having that conversation, those I would say that are more advanced at having those conversations earlier on, definitely end up in a better position.   Speaker 1: Yeah. At the end of the day, guys, it all comes down to conversations and chatting with one another, and being honest, about what you need to do. Especially with you and your loved one, if you're thinking that your retirement or your financial dreams are dissipating, well, A, are you on the same page with each other? And B, are you on the same page with your advisor and do they know that? It's important to sit down, have a conversation, have a chat. Reach out to your advisor, especially in these times.   I saw a line the other day, I don't know if I'll remember it exactly what it is. It was like, "Advisors, you're really earning your keep in times like these. This is when discipline and consistency beats brilliance." You're not trying to time the market and things of that nature, because there's always going to be these ups and downs. It's having a good, consistent plan to help you get to and through all kinds of different environments that are going to happen if you're retired 20, 25, 30, 35 years.   Get yourself a plan, get yourself a strategy. Reach out to John and Nick today at pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com, to get started on your situation or to tweak your situation and dive into that process with the guys. You can reach out to them at 813-286-7776. Or again, find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to us on the podcast on Apple or Spotify, or whatever platform you like using. We'll see you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick.

Ever wonder what other people talk about with their financial advisors? A new survey of nearly 400 experienced advisors reveals the biggest concerns, challenges, and financial goals their clients are facing today. From retirement planning to healthcare costs to working longer than expected, we're breaking down the key takeaways and how they compare to what we see in our own client conversations.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Marc: Ever wonder what people are talking about with their financial advisors? Well this week on the show we're going to discuss a new survey of nearly 400 experienced advisors revealing the biggest concerns, challenges, and financial goals that their clients are facing. We'll see how that compares with what the guys see here on the show. Let's get into it this week on Retirement Planning - Redefined.   Welcome to the podcast, everybody. Thanks for hanging out with John and Nick and myself as we talk investing, finance and retirement. And guys, we're going to share this survey. We'll put a link into the show descriptions as well for folks that want to check it out, but want to run some of this information past you guys and see does that correlate with what you're seeing, do you think it's accurate, not accurate, and just spitball and talk a little bit about some of the stuff out here.   The survey was done of nearly 400 experienced advisors all with around 20 years or more of a business, practicing business, so interesting. They didn't really say exactly the age bracket of all the people they were talking to, so there could be some folks that are not necessarily retirement age. They could be younger as well as older, but I want to run down some of this stuff and just get your guys' take on it.   How you doing this week, John?   John: I'm doing well. Daylight savings is messing with me a little bit, but I'm adjusting pretty well. And one of my kids, actually both my kids, they're testing for an honor belt in karate.   Marc: Oh, nice.   John: So they're excited.   Marc: They're going to whoop on you. Be careful.   John: It's funny you say that. They're running around the house kicking me now. It's like I wanted to get them into some self-defense stuff, but now I'm getting kicked.   Marc: So now you got to walk around with some pads on.   John: Pretty much.   Marc: Make sure you're not getting beat up too much. Very cool. Well watch the shins, man. They'll get you in the shins.   Nick, how you doing, buddy?   Nick: Good. We're staying busy.   Marc: He's like, "Good." Well, let's break this down a little bit, guys.   John: That's the sound of a guy that's in the middle of planning a wedding.   Marc: Right? That's what I was just thinking. He's like, "I got to make another decision. I don't want to make a decision." Let's jump into this and we'll see if we can make this easy for you this week, Nick.   So seeking out a financial advisor, the first part of this survey, advisors in the survey said 52% of their clients have sought out financial advisors to help with the retirement planning. About 34% surveyed were just looking for somebody to build wealth with. And in an era where everybody can call themselves a financial advisor, does that strike you as interesting? What do you guys think about that, 52% looking for retirement planning versus 34 just looking for some sort of wealth building, whoever wants to start?   John: Yeah, those numbers seem accurate to me. Well, I guess I'm a little surprised it's not more looking for help with retirement planning.   Marc: Okay.   John: I'd say the majority of our clients are retirement planning based, "Hey, I want to make sure my plan's good. I want to make sure I don't outlive my money." As far as building wealth, that does come up quite a bit, and Nick will jump in as well, but I'd say most of our clients are looking for retirement planning and just making sure they're on track and making sure that they're making the right decisions.   Marc: And it's two different mindsets too, right, Nick? I mean, so you need to decide what it is that you're looking for. I mean, not to say that you couldn't work with a retirement planner who also can help you with some of the wealth building, but it is a different skillset as well. If you're just looking for someone only to help you build the wealth, that's a little bit easier, I would think.   Nick: Yeah, and I would almost, if I were to say maybe put that in other words, we talk with people at the three phases of money as far as their life goes are accumulation or growth, distribution, taking their money in retirement and then transfer when they leave money. And so I would say from that initial, that wealth building, that's most likely accumulation focused. And because so many people accumulate their money while working in their 401(k)s and that kind of thing, I think it tends to be a little bit of a different conversation and it's those people that as you get closer to retirement. So without having ages, it does make it, the numbers are interesting, and I agree with John, I would've thought maybe it'd be a little bit higher from the standpoint of the retirement planning side, but-   Marc: Well, I mean, if you're just trying to grow the money, again the market's been, obviously we haven't had a prolonged downturn, and it's been choppy here lately, but we haven't had a prolonged downturn since '08, '09, so there's a lot of information out there about saying it's a little bit easier to build the wealth. But the preservation stage, which retirement is a little bit more complicated. There's more things going on than just the portfolio.   But with that in mind, check this out. Over half of the survey of financial advisors said the average client asset minimum was 760,000. I found that to be good. I know different areas are going to be more or less depending on the economic state of the area, but when you often hear that people aren't doing a very good job saving for their retirement future, three quarters of a million dollars is not bad.   Nick: It's definitely interesting to see the numbers and how they've changed over the last five to seven years where, and you mentioned it earlier where we've had a long prolonged period of time with the market going up, and so there's quite a bit of people meeting with us or ending up with more money than they had thought that they would or that sort of thing. There's a little bit of concern with that that only lasts for so long and that there's some correction and all that kind of stuff to happen. But absolutely, definitely that puts most people in the wheelhouse of where they need to be to have a successful retirement.   Marc: I mean, it's not bad. John, do you guys have a minimum? I mean, I know different advisor firms do different things. You can't service everybody. There's only so many hours in a day. So you'll hear something where somebody says, "Well, we work with people with 250,000 who have saved or more in assets," or some or a million or whatever. Do you guys have a breakdown?   Nick: We don't have a set minimum that we advertise or market.   Marc: Okay.   Nick: I would say that the majority of the people that meet with us tend to have what many institutions have as their minimum. So in other words, a lot of places will tell people, like you referred to that, they're looking to work with clients that have 250,000 or more just from an efficiency standpoint of trying to make sure that they can service their clients and that sort of thing, and so we end up above that with most clients. But the reality is, is that the conversations that we have with clients are really we don't keep that rule set in stone because for us, it's more of a relationship-based.   Marc: Individually based kind of thing? Okay.   Nick: Yeah, and really it's something we're looking for people that are serious about planning. I would say if you were to draw a line between what we were talking about earlier where a growth or retirement planning in a more broadly focused strategy, so they're focused on that. They're serious about it. We reference like, "Hey, we don't want to convince you that you needed an advisor. We want you to know that you need one and we want to interview for the job," kind of concept.   Marc: No, that makes sense because I mean if you're giving suggestions and someone's not willing to take them, you're just wasting each other's time versus... Yeah.   Nick: Exactly, and we found that that'll waste more time than in theory working with somebody that maybe isn't where they're going to be yet. And also-   Marc: It needs to be a reciprocal relationship.   Nick: For sure. Communication's super important for us because we've also found that we've had people come in that maybe are under that 250, but their parents are wealthy and they ended up being a teacher or something that maybe didn't allow them to save as much money as some sorts of jobs, and they're going to inherit money and they need assistance that way. So I'd say we're pretty comfortable with our process and how we approach that sort of thing and really look for it on a relationship basis, communication basis, and how we all get along.   Marc: That makes sense. And it's got to be a two-way street. I mean, when we do the podcast, it's not designed to turn every listener into a client if they're not already a client, but it is designed to say, "Hey, if it's the right relationship field going both ways, then we're happy to help if we can." That's pretty cool. So that's a good way of looking at that.   John, check out some of these top concerns. Let me know what you think here. So no surprise, number one, outliving their assets, 38% of the people surveyed. That's pretty much always number one, right? Outliving your money.   John: Yeah.   Marc: 31%, generating reliable income streams, a pretty high number as well.   John: Yes.   Marc: Okay. Then it drops off to a pretty stark, down to 12% for a future stock market crash. Now with some context here, this survey was completed at the end of last year, so it was December of '24. Do you think that number's gone up recently?   John: I would willing to bet that number's gone up. I think we were talking about the market, the last real big downturn was '08, and I think in the last 10 years, we've only had two years of the market being down, the S&P 500. I think it was, what, '22 and 2014, I believe.   Nick: I'd almost say that's a leading indicator that there's going to be, it's one of those things. Once people get that comfortable, that's usually when it comes.   Marc: I mean, it's been a while, right? So because nobody's worried about it whenever it's riding high. We only seem to worry about it whenever we're in the middle of it falling a little bit. But the one that really surprises me is all the way down to 8% for healthcare costs. Now if you guys are focused more on helping people with retirement planning and strategies, that to me, again depending on the ages of the people that answered this survey, healthcare costs at 8% seems awfully low because it's pretty costly, and we need to be having those conversations when we're, especially as we're getting older.   John: Yeah, for sure. This one, it is very important, and I think it's same thing we're talking about the stock market where it's been doing well. And when you're healthy-   Marc: It's great.   John: ...you think you're going to be healthy for a long time.   Marc: You don't think about it. Right, exactly.   John: You don't think about it all. It's back of your mind. I'll tell you where we see a lot of people concerned about it is if they had to do some care for their parents. Then it becomes top of mind of like, "Hey, this was a lot that I just went through." And taking care of them or seeing, whatever, if they have to go into a facility, and then in turn that's where we see the most of our clients that are concerned about healthcare costs is if they had to take care of a loved one.   Marc: Nick, according to the survey on that topic, advisors that were surveyed in this, were saying that clients should be more concerned about healthcare costs at around 54% unanticipated healthcare cost. Will you agree with that as well? Because I mean, obviously it comes out of the blue, it can totally derail the whole strategy.   Nick: Yeah, I think part of that is, from an advisor perspective, the whole concept of long-term care, obviously I'd say many advisors have a good grasp on long-term care, but I think it's become increasingly difficult for advisors to help clients plan for that with insurance or certain products that are out there. If we went back 10 years and from, let's just call it 2015 back through maybe 2005, that was the golden era per se for clients to be able to secure a reasonably priced policy from a long-term care perspective. So I think maybe that ties into the concern that advisors have is that at the end of the day it's a really expensive problem that clients can have, but it's also an expensive solution that a lot of clients are reticent to spend on something that may not be an issue, especially in a state like Florida where all of the insurance, people have serious insurance fatigue here.   Marc: Oh, I'm sure.   Nick: So it's a funny thing. The one time I actually answered a soliciting call earlier this morning was from State Farm calling me to, and they asked me if they could shop my car insurance for me, and I said, "Sure, let's try it." And sure enough, it was going to be $1,400 a year more than what I'm currently paying.   Marc: Thanks for the help.   Nick: And she laughed too, and she's like, "Well, can I call you in six months?" I was like, "You can try."   Marc: You can try.   Nick: I don't think you guys are going to come down that much. And so it's just crazy with what people are paying here. And so I think, long story short, I think that really ties into it as well for advisors.   Marc: And I'll hit you with this last one, John. I'll let you start and then I'll let Nick jump in if he wants to. And again, this survey was completed at the end of last year, so you can't take the current market downturn into this conversation. But according to the survey, an average of 63% of clients age 55 or older intended to work to 65 and beyond. 63% of people wanted to continue working up to 65 or beyond, yet only 30% of those clients are actually still doing it. So I guess my question is, does this surprise you that people want to keep working longer? And if so, what are some of the main reasons why you guys are seeing people want to work into their older ages?   John: It doesn't surprise me. I think with the shift really since COVID of being able to work remote, I've seen a lot of people that sit there now thinking like, hey, I work from home. I can travel still and log in. And it's given them a comfort of just saying, yeah, I'm making good money. I can continue to do this.   Marc: Feather than nest some more, right?   John: Yeah, so it's just building up the nest egg and allows them maybe to feel comfortable doing some more travel that they otherwise maybe wouldn't have felt so comfortable doing. We talked about the fears of outliving your assets, so I've seen a lot of that. And then there's a lot of studies out there saying, just keeping sharp of mind. So I've seen that where people are like, "Hey, I don't want to retire because I want to stay active. I want to have a purpose and continue to do things." So I think I'm not surprised by that number.   Marc: Interesting.   John: Because we're having more conversations of people wanting to work longer because they enjoy what they're doing. And with Zoom, it's become very easy to continue to work longer.   Marc: Well Nick, I'll give you this last piece here. 48% of those people feel like they don't have enough saved to live on through retirement. I mean, you're talking about half. So half of the people surveyed don't think they have enough, so that sounds like it just comes back to just not truly having a plan or even really knowing what it is that you've got. They've probably never sat down and really pulled this stuff together so they don't feel confident.   Nick: Correct. I think you nailed it there. The uncertainty of not having a plan and not knowing and understanding what things look like really oftentimes causes procrastination, and then all of a sudden it's 5, 7, 10 years later and there could have been a couple of small tweaks or a couple of small adjustments. I mean, in reality, there's been so many times when within 30 minutes if John and I meeting with somebody the initial time, we can tell three to five things that they could do that wouldn't have a significant impact on their life, but would have a significant impact from a positive perspective on their overall planning. And so whether it's informing themselves and holding themselves accountable or working with an advisor, which we have found, and there's been a ton of studies that have found that having that partner to help guide them through the decision-making process, that there's significant value there and the average rates of return and all that kind of stuff show that because of the decision-making.   Marc: Well, think about what you're going through with the wedding planning stuff. So there was a thing a couple years ago we were talking about, some of the most stressful events we can do in life, one of them was planning for a wedding. One of them was planning for retirement, right?   Nick: Yeah.   Marc: There's a lot of decisions to be made. And so having somebody to lean on I think goes a long way into removing some of that stress because it does get overwhelming. And at some points you're just like, ah, screw it. I don't even know what to do anymore. So being able to talk with guys like yourselves and say, "Okay, look. Here's some thoughts we had," or, "Here's what we were afraid of," or whatever the case is, it gives you that sounding board to bounce some ideas off of and maybe get some reassurance.   Nick: Yep, fully agree.   Marc: Yeah, and so are you having that same problem from the wedding standpoint?   Nick: Right now we're interviewing planners-   Marc: There you go.   Nick: ...and the prices have gone up, so it's-   Marc: But you're looking for help, right, because it's a lot.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.   Marc: John, you don't want to be the wedding planner?   John: No, no. I did that 12 years ago-   Marc: I got you.   John: ...and I want no part of that.   Marc: I got you. Well, all right, guys, good conversation as always. Thanks so much for hanging out. So at the end of the day, I mean you find these surveys are pretty interesting. And I think a lot of this stuff comes back fairly similar each time, is that people are looking for some assurance. They're looking for some clarity in some of these situations, so that's the point of running through the planning process is finding out what do you got, where do you stand and how's it working for you, and do you need to make some changes?   Often people feel like we're going to have to do some major overhaul, and it scares them. But a lot of times when you run through the planning process, many people are in better shape than they realize. You just need some tweaks here and there. So if you want to have those conversations for yourself, reach out to John and Nick and get started today at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Get yourself onto the calendar for a consultation and a conversation.   And don't forget to subscribe to us on Apple or Spotify, whatever podcasting app you like using. Retirement Planning - Redefined is the name of the show with John and Nick, and we'll see you next time here on the program. Thanks, guys. Take care of yourself.

April Fool's Day is all about jokes and pranks, but when it comes to retirement planning, getting fooled can cost you real money. Today, we're uncovering the beliefs that fool retirees and pre-retirees into making bad financial moves.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Host: April Fool's Day is all about jokes and pranks, but when it comes to retirement planning, getting fooled can cost you some real money. So we're going to talk about that. A little early for April Fool's, maybe, but we're going to still talk about it this week here on the podcast. So let's get into it.   Hey, everybody, welcome to the show. Thanks for hanging out with us here on Retirement Planning Redefined, with John, and Nick, and myself, as we talk investing, finance, and retirement. And we're taping this a couple of weeks before April Fool's Day. It should drop right around there, but we'll have a conversation with the guys. What's going on, Nick, buddy, how are you?   Nick: Good, good. Staying busy.   Host: Yeah. Well, that's always good. Good stuff. John, I know you and I were just chatting before we got rolling, we're worn out. But you hanging in there?   John: Yeah, doing all right. And don't let Nick fool you, he's got a lot going on.   Host: He's got a lot going on.   John: You tell him the news.   Host: He did. Yeah.   Nick: John's favorite topic. Got engaged a little over a month ago.   Host: Awesome, awesome.   Nick: Yeah, in the full throws of wedding planning, which is, of course, extremely exciting.   Host: That you're doing a little of, or a lot of, or zero of?   Nick: I would say some impact. My fiance is originally from Columbia, and the way that they do things for weddings there is a lot different than here.   Host: Okay, cool.   Nick: So yeah, so there's a little bit of translation from that perspective.   Host: Nice, nice.   Nick: Yeah, that's interesting. But it'll be good.   Host: Very cool. Nice.   Nick: It'll be good.   Host: Well, congratulations. Very, very cool.   Nick: Thank you. Appreciate it.   Host: All the best to the newlyweds. Very good stuff. We won't pull any April Fool's Day pranks on you then, in that regard. We'll just take to the financial stuff here this week.   So the idea, guys, being that, look, the media is nonstop, the onslaught of social media, internet, whatever. There's always something out there. And you just want to make sure you're vetting some stuff before you... Fool's gold, right? Before you just jump into something and maybe make a mistake.   So we'll start with tax conversation. So as at this time that we're taping the podcast, we don't know if the TCJA will get extended or not. Odds are fairly good, we'll see how the year plays out. But if they don't, they expire at the end of the year, the current tax code that we're under.   So are you taking that information and maybe thinking, hey, I don't have to do any tax planning for the future, because maybe the taxes are going to stay really low like they have been historically? Or are you being proactive and saying, "Well, there's a chance that taxes could still go up, because we owe a lot of money"? So whoever wants to jump in, get started on that. But what do you think about the tax situation and not fooling yourself into just thinking everything's going to stay exactly the same?   Nick: Yeah, I can start with this one. So one of the things that we really emphasize with clients and people that we work with is, especially when it comes to taxes, that the best thing that you can do is to expect change. So whether it's something changing at the end of this year, a couple years from now, whatever it is, the goal is to allow yourself to be adaptable to whatever's happening.   So the easiest way to do that is to have different types of accounts. So to have Roth accounts, pre-tax accounts, and more of a traditional brokerage account where we can factor in capital gains instead.   But even more specific, when it comes to the whole concept of potentially underestimating taxes, there's still a lot of confusion for people on how much of their social security is going to be taxable, or include-able in their taxable income. I had a conversation with my parents about it, and I had to convince them that I was correct and knew what I was talking about after 20 years, because of a way that something that they heard on the radio or saw on TV was phrased, made it very confusing to them. So just-   Host: Sure, I mean, there's the conversation that they might get rid of it, but they haven't done it yet. So you still got to be planning for stuff.   Nick: Yeah. But even outside of that, the way... It was interesting, and I do want to bring it up now that I remember it.   Host: Sure.   Nick: The way that it was being marketed was that the concept of, "Hey, most people don't know that your social security, how much you pay in taxes on your social security will go up at age 73." And so, really, the concept of that was, "Hey, when required minimum distributions kick in, and you have more taxable income, there's a chance that more of your social security income will be include-able in your tax and how much you pay in taxes." So it was kind of a roundabout way to scare people. So it allowed us to have the conversation about, for a huge chunk of people, 85% of their social security is going to be include-able in their taxable income, at least how the law is now, and just how other types of income may impact that.   Host: Oh, and that's a great point though. That really highlights exactly the point of this conversation, is that depending on how you phrase things, it's very easy to get misled by stuff. And so that's a great illustration of that, Nick. So thank you for sharing that.   And it definitely walks that... And that's what all these are going to do. John, like the next one around Medicare misunderstandings. So my mom's forever, she's 83, she's forever going... And my brother's now, he's over 65, so she's educating him. She's schooling him on the stuff she's been doing for a while with Medicare. And it's like, it doesn't cover everything. And people still sometimes think that, "Hey, at least I've got to 65. Now I've got this Medicare thing. I'm in good shape." And it is a great program, in a lot of ways, but it doesn't cover everything.   John: Yeah, that's accurate. And a lot of people, unfortunately, don't realize that. And a big thing that, when you get Medicare age, age 65, Medicare has a lot of moving parts to it, and there's a lot of different options.   Host: Oh, yeah.   John: So depending on whether you go, let's say, on an Advantage Plan, if you're on Plan F, or G, you get the supplement, it's going to determine what is covered. And then, also, you want to look at, do your current providers even take Medicare? So you might be looking at it and think that you're going to be all set-   Host: Great point.   John: ... And then you come to find out that your provider who you like doesn't even take it. So yeah, it definitely does not cover everything. So when you're doing your planning, when we do it, we always try to make sure, "Hey, this is our set price for Medicare." Then we adjust as we determine what plan the client's going to go with or help them determine what's their best option. But also, you want to plan for some out-of-pocket medical expenses for what it doesn't cover.   Host: Yeah, I think she's changed her dentist a couple of times just because they don't take it anymore. They changed or whatever. And of course, dental being one of those things that people often don't realize is, a lot of stuff's not covered there.   John: And prescriptions.   Host: Yeah, and eye. The eye stuff is really interesting. Some of the eyeglass stuff, like going to the eye doctor for just basic optometry stuff is not covered. But then the cataract stuff, some of it was. So it's very strange. So you want to make sure you're understanding what is and what isn't taken care of there with Medicare. So that's certainly a good one as well.   Nick, what about the set it and forget it retirement plan strategy. When you're talking about things getting kind of mis-sold or kind of mislabeled out there, some people will be like, "Hey look, you got to get a plan together. You put stuff in there. You let it ride and you roll from there." Right? Well, some things can set it and forget it, but some things can't either.   Nick: Yeah. So kind of a good example of maybe the set it and forget it concept, saw come up a little bit more in the last couple of years, where had some clients that were moving towards retirement, and they had done a good job of saving and building up the nest egg, and they were somewhat familiar with, maybe take 4% a year and I can live off of 4% a year.   But with rates being in that point of time where we clicked up, where they could get four to five, five and a half percent in money market CDs, et cetera, they had kind of just said, "Hey, want to shift to the sidelines, want to avoid the market. I'm just going to take my 4-5% and live off the interest." And the conversations that we had to really have were, conceptually, that'll be good for now, for the next year or two. But most likely, there's going to be a point in time within the next three to five years that rates are going to change, and that 5% might turn into 3%, or two and a half percent.   And even on, let's just use 2 million bucks. So maybe they could do 5% on 2 million is a hundred grand a year, good to go. Now if we shift to two and a half, 50 grand a year off of the portfolio, with their intention of trying to maintain principle, that starts to rewind a little bit.   And so, it's a good example of realizing how the dynamics of a plan change, and that if you're only factoring in what's happening now, or in the next short term, next couple years, that not understanding updating and adjusting your plan to current circumstances, or maybe a broader sense of what could happen, could really put somebody in a difficult position.   Host: Yeah, that's a great point as well. So there's so much stuff you got to think about when you're factoring all these things in. And John, the market's been choppy. The time we're taping this, it's been a little choppy out there. So some of the tariff conversations-   John: Just a little bit.   Host: A little bit, or whatever is kind of making the market uneasy. But chasing and obsessing, not necessarily just over the market highs, but also high dividend stocks. So sometimes people will say, "Well, a good alternative to doing X or Y is to get high dividend stocks." What's some thoughts there?   John: There's different strategies for what you're trying to accomplish. And one of the problems with this one, especially if you're going to retirement and you're thinking of, "Hey, I'm just going to have high dividend paying stocks," is that those things can change. If all of a sudden we have a recession, or the economy's not doing well, or that particular company's not doing well, guess what they could do? They could just change your dividend.   So if you had a plan, going back to what Nick's example, they're like, "Hey, I've got this stock. It's giving me 4- 5%," and you think you're okay. And all of a sudden some news comes out and that dividend drops, and now your whole plan just slightly changed. So with dividend paying stocks, they're not guaranteed. And depending on how high of a dividend paying stock it is, the higher sometimes could be correlated with a little bit being more aggressive and more risk.   So I've seen, this actually reminds me of a meeting I just had this week, where someone was in talking to a friend of theirs, and they were trying to say, "Hey, just put all your stuff in these high dividend paying rates," and all these things. And I'm looking at it like, "Hey, this is pretty aggressive. You're getting a good yield. But if we have some type of pullback, not only will your dividend potentially go down, but the value of this stock could also drop."   Host: Sure. Yeah.   John: So it's just important to understand what you're in and what could change.   Nick: I think I'd also like to jump in on that.   Host: Sure.   Nick: Because I've had this conversation with some clients quite a bit. And one of the things that I tried to emphasize is that if we look over, because a lot of times the generation that's been drilled with dividend paying stocks is a generation now that's kind of entered into retirement, where they were really starting to invest in coming up through the period of higher interest rates, when dividend paying stocks perform better.   And frankly, if you look over the last 10, really post recession, post '09 and 2010 recession, in an environment with lower rates, if somebody was invested the last 15 years in only dividend paying stocks, then the returns that they have gotten are pennies compared to being involved in-   Host: Wow.   Nick: ... growth related investments. Think of tech, think of the Magnificent Seven now, think of all the areas of the massive growth over the last 10 or 15 years, and there was significant opportunity cost. So the environment that we're in, where those companies were really rewarded for, the cost of borrowing was low, the ability to reinvest and grow was high. Even when you factor in stock buybacks, I mean, you had companies that were making more money in stock buybacks than they were in producing their own products. So the environment of what's happening has a significant impact on that as well.   Host: That's great points, guys. So it's easy to get lulled into whatever kind of marketing, or whatever kind of news headline, or whatever the case is. So just make sure that you're not falling for it. Or at least not without vetting some things out and talking with your financial professionals.   So if you've got some questions, as always, you need some help, you should always run anything you hear by on our podcast, or really any other, even the big talking head shows, talk with someone local in your area about your unique situation so that you're getting some hands-on advice and conversation. And if you need some help, John, and Nick, and the team are available at pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com. So you can subscribe to the podcast. You can find it there. Of course, you can get some time on the calendar through the website, lots of good tools, tips, and resources. And of course, you can subscribe to us on Apple, or Spotify, or whatever podcasting app you like using.   So again, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's going to do it this week. Guys, thanks for hanging out, as always, and breaking it down. Congratulations once again, Nick, on the upcoming nuptials. And John, buddy, have a great week. We'll see you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined.  

The Golden Steer Steakhouse, established in 1958, is Las Vegas’s oldest continuously operating steakhouse. It has been a favored dining spot for numerous celebrities, including Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, and Marilyn Monroe. The restaurant is renowned for its classic ambiance, featuring red leather booths named after its famous patrons, tuxedoed servers, and tableside preparations of Caesar salads and flambéed desserts.One diner once said, “The Golden Steer feels like the soul of Las Vegas.” Nick McMillan and Amanda Signorelli are the managing partners of the Golden Steer. Nick & Amanda took over as managing partners in 2018. Amanda's father, Dr. Michael Signorelli, purchased the Golden Steer in 2001. Nick has spent his career building companies in both the technology and food industries. Amanda's background is in the tech industry.Nick and Amanda created a mail order offering called Goldbelly in 2020 as a way to offset the impact of lost sales during COVID. The online sales continue today with a variety of high end seasonings and compound butters.Customer service and hospitality is a key part of the Golden Steer brand and they live that philosophy every day. It includes simple things like answering phones with a human voice, which Golden Steer has hired staff members to do.  The Golden Steer has worked hard to build its social media presence, becoming one of the most viewed steakhouses on TikTok and using the channel to create offers that drive traffic to the restaurant.  QUOTES “I'm born and raised in Las Vegas and my father purchased the restaurant back in 2001. He did it because he loved the legacy and the story and it was something that was near and true to his heart as it is to many Vegas natives.” (Amanda) “Our longest tenured server is a gentleman named Venko who's been with us almost 40 years. We've calculated that he's made somewhere in the ballpark of 375,000 Caesar salads in his career.” (Nick)  “It's a ton of fun when Venko's making your Caesar salad. You'll definitely hear some stories about old Vegas for sure.” (Nick)  “We're one of the most – if not THE most – viral restaurants in America on TikTok.” (Amanda)  “We're in a strip mall. A lot of times folks say ‘When I first drove up I didn't think I was in the right spot.' But then you walk inside and it's like a little time capsule back to old Vegas.” (Nick)  “We look at ourselves as stewards of this brand that has survived six decades plus and we hope to celebrate another six decades.” (Nick)  “To quote Steve Wynn, ‘People make people happy.” We really try to embrace that.” (Nick)   TRANSCRIPT 00:01.94vigorbrandingHello, welcome to Fork Tales. I’m Michael Pavone, and we’re really excited about this episode. This is gonna be a fun story. There’s a list, obviously, of truly legendary restaurants right in in the United States, but the Golden Steer in Las Vegas is one of those restaurants. it’s It’s the oldest continually operating steakhouse in Las Vegas, and our guests today are Nick McMillan and Amanda Signorelli. I’m Italian, so I got that right, right? 00:29.18Nick _ AmandaNailed it. 00:29.73vigorbrandingyeah Okay. So the managing partners, the Golden Steer, the Golden Steer is a steak house that became a regular stop of Frank Sinatra Elvis and many others. There are rumors of secret doors. We’ll talk about that. And, you know, as one diner once said, the Golden Steer feels like the soul of Las Vegas. So ah Nick, Amanda, welcome to the show. 00:49.07Nick _ AmandaWell, thank you, Michael, for for having us. It’s fabulous to be here. It’s a wonderful morning ah out here in Las Vegas. And we’re certainly looking forward to chatting with you a little bit and telling you about the Golden Steer. 01:00.62Nick _ AmandaThank you. 01:00.87vigorbrandingFantastic. Fantastic. So the question is for both of you guys. Tell us a little about yourselves and how you came to be a part of the Golden Steer Steakhouse brand. And I guess there’s like a love story or something else in there too, right? 01:13.37Nick _ AmandaThere it A little bit of everything. 01:14.54vigorbrandingOkay. 01:15.92Nick _ Amandaah So I’m born and raised in Las Vegas, fabulous Vegas. And my father actually purchased the restaurant back in 2001. And he did it because he loved the legacy and the story. And it was something that was really true and dear to his heart as it is with many Vegas natives. Now I left Vegas and went out to Chicago where I met this lovely, charming gentleman. And at some point I said, hey, 01:38.76Nick _ Amandawhy don’t we jump in and since you are got a bit of a background on the culinary side and I’m on the kind of data and marketing side why don’t we put our heads together and jump back in and return to Vegas and give it a shot. 01:50.74vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. That’s awesome. Nick, you made breakfast somewhere along the line for her. Is that how you, the culinary side? 01:54.75Nick _ AmandaYou know I tried I burned some boiling water but Yeah, originally from the Chicago area, I actually spent most of my career in the technology space. 02:06.21Nick _ Amandai But the interesting wrinkle is that I studied in Rome when I was in college and really fell in love. 02:11.53vigorbrandingAwesome. 02:12.27Nick _ AmandaOf course, the Europeans have such a different relationship with food and dining. And I came back to the States. I thought I wanted to move into the culinary hospitality world. 02:24.22Nick _ AmandaSo I did culinary school. My cousin owned a restaurant in Chicago that I cooked in his kitchen for a while. But ultimately said, you know, this is crazy. Who in the right mind would ever want to own a restaurant and left? the way I went back to the software world. The margins are much better and never really anticipated coming back to it. And then, and then, yeah, we met in and Chicago and We got married in 2018 and I sold the tech offer for my last business and had some some time and her father called and said, hey, I need you guys to so either take over the restaurant or I’m going to think about selling it. 02:59.30Nick _ Amandaand So we looked at each other and said, but let’s do it for a year. Right. Let’s do it for a year. 03:04.58vigorbrandingYeah, give it a try. 03:05.72Nick _ AmandaWe’ll kick ourselves. There’s such an iconic story and and history to to the place. So that year started March 1st of 2019. And of course, a year later, the the world changed with COVID. And so now here we are. 03:21.83vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. So I mean, are obviously Vegas has a storied history, all kinds of neat and maybe some bad background stuff. And your steakhouse has kind of been in the center of it all, hasn’t it? I mean, yeah if I remember, I think it’s like almost three different, ah sort of, I’ll say, historical chapters. So you had, didn’t you have people coming from California, ah coming out through the West, maybe to hunt? And the restaurant was a part of that. Can you talk about that a little bit? 03:48.00Nick _ AmandaYeah, so we first consider ourselves, and you nailed it, we really think about it as stages and horizons of history, which is really wonderfully wonderful to see how the restaurant itself has absorbed it. So the very first one was, we called ourselves the period of the Wild Wild West, friendly for the Cowboys. We were truly a Western frontier restaurant, which was a bit more technical back then. What would happen is the Cowboys would come in from all these different places around the world. They’d come to Nevada, they’d go on the mountains, whatever they shot and killed, they’d bring in, it would be our responsibility to clean, prep, serve, and cook all those things for whoever had them. And so you have a lot of iterations of rattlesnake game, things like that on the menu, but very much Wild West cowboy lore. And so that’s what we started as. And then the second phase of that was as Vegas matured and went from being a saloon-style town to something a bit more elevated, we decided as a city to dominate the entertainment space, which led us to what we like to call the showman era. And so with the showman era, that’s where you have Sammy Davis Jr. 04:45.14Nick _ Amandaah me monroe you’ve got frank sinatra You’ve got all these iconic, amazing celebrities and talents who are coming through Las Vegas, putting their foot on the ground and saying, let’s own this, let’s create it. And during that time, while they were out and performing for everyone else, they’d come back at night and dine at the Golden Steer. And we’ve actually got stories of patrons who said, oh, I remember my father and my grandfather used to come to the Steer because Frank Sinatra would get up on a table drinking whiskey, smoking a cigar and serenading the rest of the restaurant. 05:11.08Nick _ Amandajust really amazing moments that you wish you could see. Of course, when you’ve got the showmen and you’ve got the glitz and glam, you very quickly have the seedy underbelly, which ends up being the mob style. 05:14.47vigorbrandingYeah. 05:21.27Nick _ AmandaAnd so where all the fabulous flashy people come, mob’s there. And that is not surprising, especially when it started with someone like Tony Spalato, who came from the hole in the wall gang. And he made his mark in his business in Las Vegas, as he liked to call a jewelry shop. 05:35.18Nick _ AmandaI think of him more as a pawn shop because everything he had, you stole from a celebrity. You could just buy it back. So he began in Vegas and brought the rest of his um friends, we’ll call them lovingly, to this year to have meetings. And that began the mob period where they spent a ton of time here. It led to the mob room. We had the MatriD trying to exchange and make sure that we had the right mob partners not sitting right next to each other or in different rooms if we needed to. And it created quite a different ambiance. 06:02.56vigorbrandingit’s It’s amazing. And it’s really, I mean, again, so I can say this I’m Italian. So I’m always the old mob is I mean, I, i wrote you know, I think the greatest business movie ever made was a Godfather. And I swear by that, I think that is the best business movie ever made. 06:14.88vigorbrandingAnd so and the greatest movie ever made. So I love all of that, that, that, that mystique. I’ve been to your restaurant and the food is phenomenal. 06:21.44Nick _ Amandait 06:24.74vigorbrandingI’m not pandering. It really is phenomenal. 06:26.86Nick _ Amandathank you 06:26.94vigorbrandingBut you almost get that vibe when you walk in there, like with the brown booze and you have the other people’s names owner who used to hang out there. 06:32.06Nick _ Amandaand 06:32.49vigorbrandingum It’s just, it’s amazing. So you you had obviously all the showmen, you know, the whole brat pack was there. I know that there you have the picture behind you. ah But you also had celebrities like Joe DiMaggio, right? You had, I think it was Ali there. I mean, I think you had lots and lots of sports figures. I mean, I guess anybody that popped in Vegas, how’d he go to the Golden Steer? 06:48.32Nick _ AmandaThank you. Muhammad Ali ah celebrated his birthday here. Mario Andretti, yes, Joe DiMaggio, some more local folks. So, the comedian of Entroqua is Terry Fader. And then my favorite, one of my favorite stories, of course, is Mr. William Baxter. So, William Baxter is ah is a famous, for a number of reasons, one, ah very, very successful professional poker player. 07:17.87Nick _ Amandaum but also very so very well known because he sued the United States federal ah federal government in a case that went all the way to the Supreme Court and he argued that poker is a game of skill and not a game of chance. 07:30.68vigorbrandingOkay. Hmm. 07:33.60Nick _ Amandaand so And that it should be taxed as income instead of gambling winnings. Gambling winnings are taxed higher than income is. 07:38.95vigorbrandingHigher. Yep. 07:40.44Nick _ Amandaah He ultimately won it and permanently recategorized poker winnings for for players across the country. And so just, ah I think it’s a great example of kind of the Vegas stories that you find here um that are that fly a little bit below the radar. 07:52.87vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah, it’s it’s crazy. And again, so much history, yeah you know, I think evolve. And it makes sense, right? Like we talked about like the the mob and stuff like that. Well, in every movie, I mean, you know, they got to go somewhere that’s sort of like a neutral ground, right? Where they’re, you know, they’re not going to be talking in the inside the casino or, you know, their hideout. So they’re gonna, they’re gonna go someplace where there’s ah other people and all that. And the Golden Steer was sort of like a centerpiece for that, wasn’t it? 08:23.81Nick _ AmandaIt was and actually it worked that we’re having this conversation from the mob room. So this is one of the private rooms that we have in the restaurant where they like to come in and dine and enjoy because it was it was separate and so they could have some candid conversations. 08:28.11vigorbrandingOh, there you go. ye 08:40.00Nick _ Amandaalso very close to a back hallway that we had so that they could ah sneak in and out as they needed to because one of the other booths that we have is Ralph Lamb and Ralph Lamb was very well known sheriff here in Vegas in the the at at the same time as the mob so he was kind of chasing them around and so there was certainly times that that one or both were coming in and required ah a quick getaway or a discreet exit and so that’s why they love to to kind of sit and dine in here in the mob room. 09:12.77vigorbrandingThat’s great. So we won’t talk too much about the mob, although I do love the mistake, but so this, yeah we can go to, let’s, let’s talk about like, you know, I know you don’t serve burgers anymore, but, but you said in in past interviews, I guess Elvis had had his last burger at the golden steer. 09:26.63Nick _ AmandaWell, I think he had the last burger that we served at the Golden Steer. I’m sure he had burgers after that. 09:30.40vigorbrandingOkay. 09:31.71Nick _ AmandaBut yeah, we used to do a little transition from the mob. 09:31.79vigorbrandingOkay. Oh no, we’re not saying he didn’t get poisoned there. No, no, no, no, no. You just had, yeah, I would have very clear on that. 09:39.04Nick _ AmandaWe had to make sure that we were clear about it. Um, no, he, he used to come in, he would sit at the, at the bar and and enjoy a burger. And then as you know, his, his fame continued to rise. He transitioned to sitting in, he has a beautiful, probably one of the best corner booths in the restaurant where he would sit and transition from burgers to, to steaks. And so at that point we decided, all right, no more, no more burgers on the menu. 10:05.00Nick _ Amandaand and and to this day have still not served a burger since Office of Time. 10:10.03vigorbrandingThat’s great. So, okay, you guys joined the the Golden Steer 2018, then COVID came around, obviously, and probably created a havoc for everybody, like it did everybody else. I know how it affected the restaurant industry. But you guys, i’ve been I’ve been to your website, you guys are doing mail order, things like that, too. Is that right? So we’re gonna talk a little bit about that and some of the thinking that you put behind that. 10:30.50Nick _ AmandaYeah, absolutely. So when COVID first hit, we both looked at each other and credit to Nick. He was really early on in this. We were actually planning for COVID in the December of the year prior. So we were looking out and thinking that there was going to be something that changed the restaurant dramatically. It was a question of what and how, and more importantly, how long. And so a lot of restaurants we’re looking at, do we do a to-go option? But the reality is our restaurant is on the strip. 10:53.31Nick _ Amandawith the world being shut down. We don’t have anybody here. Even if we wanted to deliver, given the radius, by the time the product got there to most of the suburbs that are going to be 20, 30 minutes away, the product and integrity and quality was going to be disastrous. So it did not make sense for us to try that. The other element, when you look at the actual nature of our business at the time, the predominant share of our customer base actually came from outside of Nevada. And so we said, all right, so most of our customers that we need to be able to get to aren’t here. Let’s ship to them. 11:19.84Nick _ AmandaFortunately, in a prior life, I had run a company and was good friends with some folks that had started a shipping company that was on Foodside and that was Home Chef. Nick also had his first company, which was Right Bites. 11:30.63Nick _ AmandaSo he also had an idea of how to do shipping. So we looked at each other and said, let’s give it a go. So we went live on Goldbelly, which was May 19th, sold out of our inventory with one email in about two weeks. 11:38.00vigorbrandingMm hmm. 11:43.08Nick _ AmandaSo there’s something there. Let’s turn it on and run with it for a bit. Fast forward to November of that same year, and we ended up taking it in-house and selling ourselves on Shopify and building that out. 11:52.01vigorbrandingThat’s great. 11:52.22Nick _ AmandaWow, we’ve been able to double that business pretty much year over year. And interestingly enough, that business is actually a seasoning company first and a state company second. 12:00.39vigorbrandingWow. Good for you. Well, I mean, there was the mail order stakes before, right? 12:02.46Nick _ Amandathere was states 12:04.20vigorbrandingPeople had that. That’s something that, you know, existed. So, uh, which that’s great. And it’s good to still have that, but the seasonings are, that’s what makes you guys special, you know? 12:12.82Nick _ AmandaIt’s a ton of, and it was, you know, something, you know, we’ve, so Sergio sees, so Sergio is our master butcher. He’s been with us for almost, almost four decades at this point. 12:23.22vigorbrandingWow. 12:23.37Nick _ AmandaAnd he, over the years has developed a seasoning blend in it. We use it on steaks in the restaurant. But it really came, we so during COVID, we did virtual private dining, which was we had all these conventions cancel, all these corporations that looked to do virtual events. 12:38.93Nick _ AmandaAnd so we we had our iteration of that, which is we would send a box of ingredients for a three-course meal. So our world-famous Caesar salad, rib eyes, the cream corn, twice baked potato, and then, of course, the bananas foster. 12:53.11Nick _ AmandaYou can’t forget, a little taste is sweet at the end. 12:54.34vigorbrandingnope yep 12:55.78Nick _ AmandaBut one of the items was Sergio seasoning. And as we did more of these events, and we did them for folks like Dell and Cisco and NASA and Second Watch, people started asking, like hey, this Sergio seasoning, can we can we buy this separately? And so a light bulb went off, and it was I think a year and a half after we first started selling steaks that we then allowed folks to to buy and and brought the Sergio seasoning to market, which then kicked off a line of seasonings, and now we have a line of compound and flavored butters that we also ship out as well. So it’s been a real like evolution of that online piece that you know I don’t think, um without COVID, I i mean, we we probably would have exported a little bit, but it was really a driver and catalyst for you know expanding into that online space. 13:43.94vigorbrandingYeah, I mean, it’s brilliant. And look, you know, necessity is the mother of invention, right? You guys, I know restaurants are hard and it can be a daily grind, you know, whether you have one or 50 or for franchisee, franchisor to then start an online, really, in a way, a CPG business, right? i mean e-commerce business, it’s a whole other world and it’s a whole other venue. So it’s really kind of cool that you were able to have the energy, the fortitude and the desire to drive that way. That’s that’s awesome and kudos to you guys for doing that. 14:14.81Nick _ AmandaAnd that is, I, you know, Amanda has really taken that by the horns and driven that um to an amazing extent. 14:14.89vigorbrandingum 14:24.40Nick _ AmandaI think it’s it’s wild. I mean, it’s been it’s been a long journey, right? we’re We’re almost four years in, but it’s been exciting to see kind of how that has evolved and changed. um Because it is. 14:35.21Nick _ AmandaIt’s an entirely different world. 14:36.55vigorbrandingSure. 14:37.18Nick _ AmandaThe digital ad space is, um is ah of course, massive. um And so it’s been it’s been fun to to kind of lean into that. And it’s to see where the two have fed off of each other, I think, is is very exciting for us. 14:53.69Nick _ AmandaAnd so as an example of that, It used to be two sister brands. So we had Golden Steer Las Vegas as one of the domains and then Golden Steer State Company. And it was only in March of this year that we kind of brought it all under one umbrella. 15:06.96vigorbrandingSure. 15:07.41Nick _ AmandaIt’s goldensteer dot.com, which really we saw a lot of benefits in and value to it, which has been it. 15:10.93vigorbrandingOf course. Yeah, I mean, it’s that’s super smart. I mean, this all came about like Fork Tales, this podcast all came about because we have we have an agency. My background is is advertising marketing and we have a holding company and in our company, we created different brands. And one is Quench, which is CPG food and beverage. When we were doing that, people would come and say, hey, 15:32.60vigorbrandingYou should you know market our restaurant or do you do restaurants and. Everyone thinks well restaurants food and beverage right so it’s the same as cpg but it’s not and you guys know that cause you’ve done both so. We created vigor or you know take on and a brand called vigor which is a restaurant. 15:49.99vigorbrandingbranding and marketing agency and they are very different. I did it because they’re different. and We have different skill sets in there and you know it’s retail and the speed of retail in the restaurant side and CPG is just a different animal. 16:02.86vigorbrandingSo I mean it’s a yeah it’s it’s ah um kudos to you guys again for doing both. 16:06.33Nick _ Amandato go. 16:08.20vigorbrandingI see that a lot because we’ll have a lot of folks on that’ll be ah they’ll they’ll start with ah a food product, a CPG and they’ll create restaurants from it. or they’ll have a restaurant and then things will emanate off of it. 16:19.82vigorbrandingYou know, we just did a thing with Guy Fieri ah with his sauces. We just did a thing with, I’m trying to think who else was, it doesn’t matter. But we’ve we’ve had a lot of these guys, a home run in is another one who’s started out as a restaurant and and now they’re, you know, yeah. 16:33.66Nick _ Amandaoh yeah ah 16:36.53vigorbrandingthey’re phenomenal pizza, right? So it’s really kind of neat to see these evolutions and how they grow. So well thank goodness that the whole industry of the conventions is back. and I’m sure that’s great for you guys. In fact, i’m i and believe it or not, I’m not just saying this, we have 15 people coming in to your restaurant. I think it’s in October. If that reservation is not made, we have ah one of our companies and our holding company is a company called Varsity, which is senior living. We have we market and brand retirement communities around the country. 17:06.78vigorbrandingAnd there is a, ah the acronym is SMASH. I’m not sure exactly what it stands for, but they’re having a convention in Vegas. And so we’re bringing a bunch of clients ah to the restaurant. 17:16.97Nick _ AmandaThank you. 17:17.92vigorbrandingYeah. Yeah. So I’ll have to make sure they get the bananas foster. 17:18.87Nick _ AmandaWe’ll see you. 17:22.79vigorbrandingSo, oh yeah. 17:22.81Nick _ Amandait’s the bottom one 17:24.05vigorbrandingBut now the stay on the let’s say when you’re Caesar Salads killer, I was at the restaurant and the gentleman at the serve, they talk about him a little bit. 17:31.84Nick _ AmandaYeah, so our longest tenured server, a gentleman named Banco who’s been with us for also almost 40 years, and we calculated that we think that he’s made somewhere in the ballpark of 375,000 Caesar salads in his career. 17:50.13Nick _ AmandaUh, so it’s, it’s, he, and he tell, he tells some wonderful stories. 17:50.59vigorbrandingyeah 17:55.52Nick _ AmandaHe’s been in Vegas for a long, long time and has met some incredible people. And, you know, one of them, most interestingly, coming back to kind of the the mob era. 18:06.14Nick _ AmandaSo Tony Spelatro. Camino talked about his his jewelry store. It was right next to the Golden Steer, which is why he would come in. And one of it the gentlemen on his henchmen team was Frank Colada. And Frank Colada, there is a ton of stories and books and podcasts about him. 18:24.98Nick _ Amandaum because he yeah actually was ah an informant and went into witness protection for a long time and then came out of it and he would still after he came out he would still come in and dine at the Golden Steer and Vanco was the only server that he would that he would really allow to to wait on him and so they had a they had a special relationship and Vanco yeah has some tremendous stories and It’s still with us. 18:48.76Nick _ AmandaWe are grateful um through through all of the ah the craziness of COVID remained with us and and is a treasured part of of the team. And we are not just him, but we have a tremendous team. 19:00.25Nick _ AmandaBut it’s a ton of fun when Van Gogh is making your season salad. You’ll definitely hear some stories about Old Vegas for sure. 19:04.81vigorbrandingYeah, ah it’s it’s super cool. Like I said, I absolutely loved ah my time there. and And you were not there, but he was so that, you know, he he was there. 19:13.26Nick _ Amandayeah 19:14.38vigorbrandingthen We got the Caesar and, you know, it was it was a phenomenal. So and the whole like the whole mistake. And what’s really cool and and you I should say for anybody who’s interested in in in checking out the the the restaurant, you know, we think about Vegas and restaurants like there’s these big casinos and all the restaurants in the casinos. 19:30.51vigorbrandingYou guys are not in a casino. I mean, you’re old Vegas, you’re on the strip, right? 19:34.33Nick _ AmandaWe are, our address is not technically on the strip. We are about a half a block or a block off the strip, but we’re in a strip mall. 19:41.22vigorbrandingYeah. 19:41.54Nick _ AmandaAnd so a lot of times we get feet, like folks drive up and they say like, when I first drove up, I don’t, I didn’t think that I was in the right spot. 19:46.04vigorbrandingYeah. 19:50.61Nick _ AmandaUm, because, you know, we talk about all this history and everyone that’s come in and you drive up and it’s a strip mall. 19:55.88vigorbrandingright 19:56.10Nick _ AmandaUh, but then you walk inside and it’s like a little time capsule back to old Vegas. We still have, you know, 20:00.15vigorbrandingyeah 20:01.01Nick _ AmandaWe still have the carpets and the dining rooms and the popcorn ceilings and a lot of the elements that make, that kind of transport people back to to that time. And so, um but yeah, and we’ve always been in this location, ah you know, 66 years. And you can think about, back to Amanda’s story about the frontier days. 20:23.72Nick _ Amandayou can kind of see it when you come here like this is not you know there was the old strip down on Fremont and then some of the kind of the new hotels were being built in the 50s and 60s but this was kind of just a little bit off the beaten path and so there were hitching posts and it’s easy to see how folks would you know go and hunt in the wilderness which was not that far from where we currently are but now of course today it’s it’s a much different story Vegas has seen some tremendous growth but 20:42.38vigorbrandingRight. 20:47.30vigorbrandingYeah. 20:48.45Nick _ Amandaah But yeah, it’s a ton of fun when folks come in for the first time and kind of look at themselves at the outside like, are we at the right spot? And then walk in and a whole different world. 20:56.76vigorbrandingyeah Well, the way you explained it was absolutely 100% my experience. Because when I went out there, I think I took an Uber, and you know how sometimes Ubers you put an address in and you’re like, well, this doesn’t look right. I did the old, well, this doesn’t look right. And then I was like, wait, wait, no, there’s, oh, yep, yep, yeah, we’re right, okay, great. And walked in and it was like, to your point, it’s like ah Oz, right? You open the door and there you are. And so I think anybody that goes to Vegas, you know, the the mystique, the history, all that stuff is so important and so cool. and You know, I just need to go to, uh, you know, anybody can go to the wind or whatever, which they’re all fine. 21:26.30vigorbrandingThey’re all great. But I mean, like to go out and see your place is like, it’s like going to a museum. and And then, but then on top of it, the food is as good as anything you’re going to get anywhere, if not better as far as a steak. So I just think you have such a cool vibe going and, uh, kudos. 21:38.08Nick _ AmandaWell, thank you. yeah you know and it’s And especially this year, it’s bittersweet, right? So the Tropicana is in the process of being torn down. 21:43.48vigorbrandingYeah. 21:45.67Nick _ AmandaAnd and it’s a remind. What’s that? The Mirage. The Mirage, of course, is you know the first hotel that Steve Wynn built from the ground up is is also in the process of being demolished. 21:49.01vigorbrandingYeah. 21:55.82Nick _ AmandaSo it’s exciting. the The town has seen tremendous growth. And I think the um the community has benefited from it greatly. But it’s also a little bittersweet because these icons of the past kind of are continuing to to transition. 22:06.50vigorbrandingYeah. 22:08.96Nick _ AmandaAnd so we we look at ourselves and we think, and we talk about it a lot with the team, that we feel like stewards of this brand that has managed to survive you know six decades plus, and that we you know hopefully would love to celebrate another six decades. 22:25.51vigorbrandingSure. 22:25.95Nick _ AmandaPast this so it’s been you know, the town is is is wild. it’s It’s been really great um But yeah, they’re it’s kind of always in that transition period 22:36.05vigorbrandingThat’s funny. I mean, it’s really ah yeah it’s ah it’s an amazing kind of thing. And just to have that history is just it’s a treasure to your point. So a lot of the restaurants will claim that, you know, they focus on hospitality, but very few do it well. What’s your secret? How do you make it real and make sure that your staff brings that, you know, to life every day? 22:54.75Nick _ AmandaIt’s a great, way it you know, I’m from, or like I said, I’m originally from the tech world. And so it’s been, um, It’s been phenomenal to see just, I think, just want to talk about for a second. I think the, the work ethic and, uh, the quality of people that are in the industry is tremendous. Um, and I think, you know, people really that are in this, like have a passion for, for it. And I think Vegas itself is unique in that. Uh, and I think it, it starts with people. Um, I think to quote Steve, when he always said that, you know, that people make people happy. Uh, and I think we really try to embrace that. 23:32.99Nick _ Amandaum And one, so Pete Wells just retired as the New York Times food critic in his final column. One of the things that he talked about was phones, that a lot of restaurants don’t answer phones anymore. And we do. We actually, ah we get a tremendous number of of inbound phone calls and we’ve hired up folks in the restaurant to be able to try and answer as many of those phone calls as possible with a human voice because we think that that is important. And we, 24:02.19Nick _ AmandaYou know, at the end of the day, we were a family business. There’s not too many family businesses on the Las Vegas Strip. And so we try to bring that warmth and the idea of, you know, folks are coming in to celebrate their most treasured moments, their birthdays, their anniversaries, graduations. 24:21.88Nick _ AmandaIt’s always fun when a local came in for prom and now they’re coming in for, you know, their kids’ graduation or or anything like that that’s multi-generational. 24:27.56vigorbrandingAwesome. 24:30.23Nick _ AmandaAnd so there’s a lot of, ah history that folks have with the restaurant and warmth I think is one of the big pieces that we try to to focus on. I mean there’s the there’s the tactical ah you know the steps of service and all of those pieces but we really try and say how do we make people feel feel good and feel happy feel welcomed if If something is wrong, if there is a miss on food, um we will you know either replace it or take it out late. We do everything that we can to ensure a great experience because we know that folks are coming in to to celebrate celebrate those special moments. so 25:08.31Nick _ AmandaWe really try and focus on the people first. ah We have a tremendous, tremendous staff um that I think enjoys the history and kind of being a part of that stewardship of ah a legacy brand. And it’s a ton of fun. And I think we are We are fortunate that we have had folks that have been with us for a long time to kind of keep that, like a, like a Vanko and a Sergio over the decades that have seen the ebb and flow of the city, that have seen the ebb and flow of the restaurant and have some, ah you know, a foot kind of in the old Vegas hospitality that folks like to to reminisce about. 25:34.68vigorbrandingwho 25:47.75Nick _ AmandaAnd so we try and and bring that and make that real, ah you know, day in and day out, which is, which is a fun, a fun and interesting challenge as a part of the restaurant industry. 25:57.16vigorbrandingYeah I mean we’ll like you know okay so and I’m not saying everyone can do it well but anyone can make a steak you know I can go home and grill a steak but if I go to your restaurant I’m gonna get it I’m gonna get a phenomenal but really it is about that whole experience right and those people become they’re part of the brand like we I said I did have the Uh, uh, your gentlemen, Benko, I guess is his name that did you make my, so my salad was phenomenal. I mean, and that was part of the whole, the whole deal and and and part of the romance of the whole place. So, uh, I think that’s, that’s phenomenal. So now talking about special moments last year, you guys purchased a thousand square foot of adjoining space. You’re expanding for the first time in 50 years. Um, now you you have a classic look architecturally, how hard is that to do? And what is the, what are what are you going to do with that space? It’s just tables. You can do more banquets. Is it, you know, talk a little bit about that. 26:43.00Nick _ AmandaYeah, so we opened it. um And it it was exciting. It was the first time in 50 years. And to Amanda’s point, in the restaurant, you could see the evolution over the six decades because the the the current bar that exists today was the last expansion that we did in the 70s. And so it was it was fun to to take on this bra of of you know this first expansion in 50 years. So we opened it last November right before F1. 27:10.62Nick _ AmandaAnd it is additional dining space, but also mainly with a focus on large parties and private dining, which is a tremendous part of ah Vegas now with with all of the social parties that come in and of course all of the conventions. 27:16.19vigorbrandingGreat. 27:20.66vigorbrandingSure. 27:25.69Nick _ Amandaand and we kept We kept everything as, you know, it was very inspired, of course, by the existing space. So ah wood paneling, which is a huge part of the existing restaurant or the the original restaurant, it was kept. The carpet is the same. We kept the popcorn ceiling. So its it was a very fun conversation with our designer and architects before we even started construction. 27:53.76Nick _ AmandaWe walked through the existing space to to kind of get some ah design ideas. And we were talking about the ceilings. And I was like, well, of course we have to keep the popcorn ceilings because we have the popcorn ceilings in the existing space. And our designer looked at us and she’s like, you know, I’ve taken a lot of popcorn ceilings out in my career, but I’ve never actually had a clock that wanted to put them in. And, you know, of course, would it be our first choice if we were just, you know, starting from scratch? Maybe not. 28:19.14Nick _ Amandaah But it’s a part of the history and kind of the rounded coving of where the walls meet the ceiling is a part of that. 28:19.44vigorbrandingThat’s it. 28:27.28vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. 28:27.44Nick _ AmandaAnd so all of those pieces that we that we could we took the, you know, we have ah this beautiful um circular soffit that is in the main dining room. And we also created a similar one in one of the the new rooms as well, just to make people continue to feel like this is this is an extension, you know, no different than what the steer has done over the six decades of, you know, continuing to um to kind of grow and do it in a way that that is in harmony with the with the rest of the space. So it’s been and we but to 29:03.30Nick _ Amandaum I guess I’ll just say we were very excited so when we opened it the first night we did a friends and family dinner and the first couple that walked in they gave us a hug and ah she was super excited she’s like oh congratulations on the opening like and we were at this time we we greeted people in the new space so she walked into the new space gave us a hug and she’s like after the hug she’s like all right this is awesome congratulations can we see the new space but she was standing in the new space and asked to see it and really made a smile. 29:32.74Nick _ AmandaAnd that was kind of the goal that folks wouldn’t have any idea that they were standing in a space. 29:34.02vigorbrandingah 29:36.59vigorbrandingYou have to pump like some old cigar smoke in the seat cushions right in the new place. 29:39.18Nick _ AmandaWe didn’t know about that. All right. 29:40.74vigorbrandingyeah 29:41.52Nick _ AmandaThe joke was the mill workers that I was going to have, you know, bring in like four and five year olds with like keys and like socks to like mark up the woodwork to make it look aged. 29:50.06vigorbrandingYeah. That’s awesome. That is awesome. All right. So now I’m going to ask you, that you know, I’ve read that the the steer has the best steaks on earth and I’ve had a phenomenal, absolutely. I concur. um Now you’re the couple that makes the best steaks. I’m going to give you something personal. man I’m going to start with you. ah What’s your favorite cut and how do you like it cooked? 30:08.78Nick _ AmandaThat’s easy, ribeye 100%, absolutely. Medium rare and always with, if I can, I really like our maturity butter. I think we did a great job with it. So I like to put that on top. 30:17.99vigorbrandingWell done. Well done, Nick. 30:22.50Nick _ AmandaWhy, i the our ribeye is our signature cut, 24 ounce bone in. If, and I won’t pick that, but I would say actually the strip loin, our New York strip, our 16 ounce New York strip is is probably my go to now. I think it’s the perfect blend between, you know filet of course is delicious if you’re looking for that, very lean, tender. A ribeye is fantastic, great marbling. 30:46.92Nick _ AmandaA good bite and I think the the strip kind of plays right in between those It’s got good fat for good flavor, but it’s still got some good tenderness. We butcher all of the meat in house. So everyone’s Steak is cut fresh that day which I think really adds to that element of freshness and we wet age everything for a minimum of 28 days to to bring a little tenderization to to the meat and It’s a ton of fun. 31:16.48Nick _ Amandaand We cook, it we we keep it old school. We cook on commercial broilers, uh, that really help us kind of measure the amount of char that we’re getting, uh, you know, based on kind of the, the distance from the heat source. 31:29.86Nick _ AmandaSo it’s a very old school. I think the broiler broiler is as old as Sergio is. 31:34.84vigorbrandingI was going to say evening, bought him a new broiler. 31:35.26Nick _ AmandaUh, 31:37.20vigorbrandingHe’s been there all these years. 31:38.45Nick _ Amandahe likes the old one. 31:38.62vigorbrandingThe guy can, he needs a new broiler. 31:40.40Nick _ AmandaHe likes, he knows how it works. yeah He likes the old one. 31:42.08vigorbrandingThat’s it. That’s awesome. Yeah. That’s great. Now, Amanda uses the butter. What do you, any, anything you’d like to add to your steak? 31:49.44Nick _ AmandaNo, I like to keep it traditional and classic. 31:51.93vigorbrandingSo I’m kind of in between both guys. I’m always a ribeye. I did Devone in at your place, phenomenal. I don’t put anything on my steak. So I just, I’m, and I love ribeyes. I, you know, there’s probably a healthier steak out there. 32:02.72vigorbrandingThey’re filet, but I figure, you know, my deathbed, I’m not going to wish I ate more filets. I’m always going to eat a ribeye. So ribeye and a big bottle of Cabernet or an amaron. 32:07.23Nick _ Amandaah great a hundred 32:10.30vigorbrandingI love amaron lines. Oh, that’s like heaven on earth. I’m hungry. um So, I mean, yeah, so so nothing on your stake. um is is If someone wants to put a catch up, is there any judgment? 32:22.36vigorbrandingHow do we feel about that? 32:22.65Nick _ AmandaThere’s not, there’s not. 32:23.52vigorbrandingNot? 32:23.88Nick _ AmandaAnd I think so for us, that comes back to the hospitality piece, right? 32:24.04vigorbrandingOkay. 32:27.63Nick _ AmandaAt the end of the day, we’re serving you your steak. So if you want ketchup or you want A1 or Heinz 57, or you want it butterflied and well done, ah no no judgment from us. 32:40.62vigorbrandingMm-hmm. 32:41.32Nick _ AmandaWe’re going to prepare it the way that you want, ah which I think is is important because you’re you know you’re coming in to celebrate and so who are we to to to say that you can’t have it that way? 32:51.78vigorbrandingsee see but that’s what we do differ a little bit because I do judge and and I love I love my wife but she’s always well done steaks well done we were we were in Italy and the steak Florentine right and they make their steak Florentine it’s just aged and it’s basically they make it one way they only make it one way and she and you know and very expensive and to your point it’s it’s your your your time your money people should be there she walked in and she asked the waiter she said 32:54.86Nick _ Amandaand Yeah. 33:18.17vigorbrandingI know I probably shouldn’t ask this because they make it well done. He’s like Sure, but I’d rather I’d like to recommend the filet for you. He would not sell her the the t-bone the steak Florentine He would I he’s like I will get you a filet That’s all you’re allowed to have and she was happy that she was okay with but that’s that’s the truth I have one other anecdote like when I started my my illustrious career Like like I and like I think a lot of people did and I think everyone should you start in a restaurant I just think that is like The greatest education anyone can have that and I think everyone should have to sell something like I don’t care if it’s like ah ah subs for your baseball team or Girl Scout. I think everyone should sell something and everyone should work in a restaurant and in my ah my illustrious career. I started out at this restaurant and it was a 34:02.41vigorbrandinga gentleman by the name of Hobart Umberger, and and he he had a restaurant he did very, very well with. He had a bunch of restaurants at one time called Um-ee’s, just a local fair. It wasn’t like, it was like all one-offs. When he was getting ready for retirement, 34:15.31vigorbrandingOr as he aged, he didn’t need money and he didn’t care about serving a million meals. He wanted to make everything by hand by himself. So he created this thing called Hobarts. It was high end, very high end. Hershey, Pennsylvania. So we would get a lot of people in from the factory, a lot of dignitaries, lots ah lots of C-sweep types of folks. He had one bottle of ketchup. One. And it was next to a knife. 34:36.89vigorbrandingin the kitchen next, behind him. And inevitably Hannah was the waitress. I can still picture it like it was a, he’d be, and he did these things, these tornadoes of beef. He would do these center cuts of the filet and he was very proud of those. And inevitably it would be this thing and Hannah would be all nervous and stuff. she open the door in the kitchen. 34:53.71vigorbrandingI was washing dishes, by the way. And she’d be like, Hobart, I don’t want to hear any shit. this I know you’re going to yell. I need to catch up. And he would be like, he’d start throwing stuff. 35:04.41vigorbrandingAnd he’s like hey do and he’d be banging stuff. And he was like, who the hell? And he knew because he made everything by hand. and He made it. He was like, that’s the guy. There’s just sort of the plays. The tornado is a beef. 35:14.76vigorbrandingAnd he’s like, there I’ll be damned if I’m going to have my cake. Anyway, so i I’m glad we had that question. here Because it’s a it’s a thing. 35:20.38Nick _ Amandaah i edit a hundred percent and and but we We like to have these conversations because a lot of folks share your perspective, um and which you know in some sense i can I can understand and empathize with. but i think we I will say to you know to the the story you told about your wife in Italy, 35:40.38Nick _ AmandaWe will recommend, so I think a good example is like the tomahawk. So we we offer a 40 ounce tomahawk and it’s a tomahawk ribeye cut. so it’s that So it has a good amount of fat in it. 35:50.13vigorbrandingOh, yeah. 35:52.39Nick _ AmandaAnd so one of the places that we will do some recommendations is if someone comes in and orders the tomahawk rare, we will maybe suggest like, hey, um, because it’s, if you want it rare, some of that fat is not going to render out. 36:07.65vigorbrandingMm hmm. 36:07.83Nick _ AmandaAnd so it’s going to be a little, it could come across as a little tougher, a little gristly. And so there will be some times that we’ll make some recommendations, but, um, at the end of the day, folks are are ordering what they would like. 36:18.37Nick _ AmandaAnd I think for us, it comes back to that hospitality piece of, you know, we want you to feel warm and welcomed, uh, and I don’t know if you can feel too welcome if you order a captive and you’re taken and you hear the shaft in the back laying in top of his pants. 36:33.46vigorbrandingAnd he did and he but he didn’t care like he was like he would actually would rather them left because him at his point in life He was just an artist and he wasn’t looking for money and it was just that was his like ah Passion project. 36:38.34Nick _ Amandaah I’m sorry. 36:43.68vigorbrandingSo it’s just yeah, it’s crazy. But sorry. So now we’ve got we’ve we have a phenomenal steak you guys make the best steak on earth What sides you have a lot of sides what which sides are we getting? I mean everyone’s got their go-to’s at a steakhouse. 36:54.91vigorbrandingWhat do we got in here? 36:57.19Nick _ AmandaOh, so I always loved the twice baked potato. I think it’s phenomenal. 37:00.35vigorbrandingI 37:00.52Nick _ AmandaI think it’s our go-to. We actually at one point were featured in, there was like a Idaho potato Gazette that came out and asked for an interview. 37:05.84vigorbrandingNice. 37:07.11Nick _ AmandaCause they’re like, Oh, we’ve heard that you’ve got the biggest potatoes. I was like, well, if it’s coming from the Idaho potato Gazette, I’m pretty honored to hear that. 37:12.47vigorbranding That’s great. 37:13.86Nick _ AmandaYeah. The twice baked is great. And then our cream corn. I love our cream corn. uh it’s got it it certainly got its sweetness from the corn and then we use cinnamon and i heard a customer described it as like it’s like taking a bite of christmas and i hadn’t heard that before and i was like that’s the perfectly summarized is kind of the cream corn and so it’s the i love to take a little cut of steak kind of 37:24.23vigorbrandingThere you go. 37:44.26Nick _ Amandadrag it through the cream corn a little bit to get some of that sweetness. And it’s ah to for me, it’s one of the most perfect bites. 37:49.86vigorbrandingFantastic. That’s awesome. And then what for dessert, I think I know the answer to this, but. 37:55.20Nick _ AmandaI mean, we i Our tableside desserts, they’re a ton of fun, right? 38:01.76vigorbrandingYep. 38:01.89Nick _ AmandaAnytime you’re going to light something on fire for a dessert, it’s awesome. 38:03.48vigorbrandingYeah, sure. 38:05.77Nick _ AmandaBut I think, you know, it’s in their classic, in their pure, in their simple, ah but executed very well. So, I mean, I’m partial. We do two tableside flambe options. 38:16.73Nick _ AmandaOur bananas foster our cherries jubilee. 38:18.43vigorbrandingMm hmm. 38:19.15Nick _ AmandaI am partial to the bananas. I think we use brown sugar with it. and A little banana liqueur, some 151, a little orange zest, and it is it is excellent. 38:27.87vigorbrandingnice 38:30.02Nick _ AmandaBut a Amanda has a separate opinion. So we ran this interesting test where a problem we were running into was, you know, when people make a reservation at the Valencia, let’s say states it’s a party of six, only one of you are probably giving us your information, whether it’s your phone or your email or what have you. 38:44.13Nick _ AmandaAnd so if you want to continue to build a relationship online with the rest of the party in there. 38:48.04vigorbrandingNice. 38:48.67Nick _ AmandaHow do you get them to go to your site or engage or have some sort of a back? 38:50.40vigorbrandingMhm. 38:52.28Nick _ AmandaAnd so we realized that what is really strong is our social media presence. We are one of the most, if not the most vile restaurant in America on TikTok. We just passed 175 million views of hashtag gold. 39:02.98vigorbrandingWow. 39:03.56Nick _ Amandayeah And so we were like, okay, what can we do to combine this in honor of our 65th? And how do we create what I call an organic trigger? So if you’re dining, you can do something else. And so I was like, okay, let’s play with the flames. What can we do? That’s going to be a flaming dessert that can be exciting, that can be different. And so we worked and created something called the Sapphire Jubilee in honor of the 65th anniversary. And of course you like throw some blue in there at the server’s head of it because they were always covered in like blue dust on their white shirts. 39:30.90Nick _ AmandaIt was a little messy, but it was fabulous. And it really did turn bright blue flames. And so the I was like, okay, let’s try it. We’re going to make it where you can only order it if you have the code word from TikTok or Instagram. 39:42.30vigorbrandingWow, I like it. 39:44.36Nick _ AmandaWe’ll look up on there or say something. Or then ah when the server says that to them, if they’ll follow us or try and find it. And sure enough, I was like, I have no idea how this is going to go. First night comes. And within like the first, I guess, hour of opening, boom, somebody ordered it with the code word. I’m like, all right, we’ve got something. And it was, to this day, it’s my favorite version of that flam bazer. 40:05.22vigorbrandingThat’s excellent. oh that’s and the The marketer in me is very proud and honored. 40:08.87Nick _ Amandaa 40:09.14vigorbrandingThat’s that’s fantastic. I mean, I love it. 40:10.55Nick _ Amandayeah 40:11.44vigorbrandingReally. i’ saids that’s ah It’s awesome. 40:11.84Nick _ Amandaand since sense that it’s 40:13.45vigorbrandingum So I had the banana foster and it was wonderful. 40:14.75Nick _ Amandaso as foster 40:17.86vigorbrandingum i So I have one last question for you guys, and and then you’re free to go. And you can’t say the golden steer, but if you have one final meal, what would you eat and why? 40:31.11Nick _ AmandaSo for me, ah it’s risotto. Risotto was probably one of the first dishes that I really started to make during culinary school and just kind of fell in love with. I am ah studied in Rome, Italian heritage, and i i love like to me, it’s like, 40:55.32Nick _ Amandasuch a pure distillation of Italian cooking. right it’s very at the At its core, it’s very simple, but there’s a lot of ways that you can that you can go wrong with it. um And it takes some work, right? You have to be standing over it with your wooden spoon, kind of slowly adding stock. 41:14.38Nick _ AmandaAnd it’s also a it’s kind of also almost a blank palate. So you can add orabela mushrooms or butternut squash or asparagus or any number of things. And so I think I would i love risotto and that would probably be my, that would be my five if I had to pick a final dish, that would be it. 41:33.19vigorbrandingNice. Amanda, you can say Nick’s risotto if you want. 41:34.49Nick _ Amandaand think 41:35.93vigorbrandingI mean, ah, nice. 41:36.61Nick _ AmandaIt’s close to that. So Nick was actually, was very kind and he he knows this well, but something that he makes for me on all of the special occasions is a beef wellington. And I’m very picky about how I like my beef wellington and all the things and he’s like really nailed it down. 41:51.40Nick _ AmandaI wasn’t before, he’s now like spoiled me and I blame him all the time. I’m like, you’ve created the monster here. So it would be the beef wellington that Nick does make for me because I do it amazing and it’s my favorite. 41:59.24vigorbrandingThat’s awesome. Guys, I want to thank you. 42:01.92Nick _ Amandai 42:02.99vigorbrandingThis was fantastic. Like I said, the first time I ever had a couple and you guys were great. There was no fighting. It was close. I thought there for a while over the desserts, but that was good. 42:07.74Nick _ Amandayeah 42:09.71vigorbrandingThat was good. You guys do great. So thank you so much. It was my honor to talk to you guys and I really appreciate your time. 42:14.97Nick _ AmandaWell, thank you so much for having us on, Michael. low was ah It was an awesome conversation. We certainly appreciate being here. 42:20.11vigorbrandingGood deal. 42:20.09Nick _ AmandaPleasure.

Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to what retirement is going to look like? If not, it's time to talk. Listen to this episode where we'll explore why it's so important for couples to have detailed conversations about their finances and retirement futures. We'll cover exactly what you need to discuss, and how to handle any disagreements.   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.     Mark: Are you and your spouse on the same page when it comes to what retirement is going to look like? If not, it's time to talk. So check into this episode where we explore why it's important for couples to have detailed conversations about not only their finance, but their retirement futures and their dreams, this week on Retirement Planning, Redefined.   What's going on? Welcome into the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with John, Nick, and myself as we talk investing, finance and retirement. And we're going to go to couples therapy this week here on the podcast a little bit, or maybe we'll make it more manly, I guess, and call it a team sport.   However you want to look at it, you want to be on the same page with your spouse, with your loved one when it comes to retirement. I wanted to talk a little bit about that this week, guys, to see how many people generally are on the same page by the time they sit down with professionals like yourselves, financial professionals, or if it's happening a lot in real time, right in front of you. So we'll get into it this week.   What's going on, John? How are you bud?   John: Hey, I'm doing good. How are you?   Mark: Doing pretty good, hanging in there. Looking forward to chatting about this a little bit.   Nick, I hope you're well.   Nick: All good.   Mark: All good as usual. Well, that's very good.   Nick: Good start to the season for the bills, so I'm happy.   Mark: All right, well there you go.   Nick: It's early. It's early, but...   Mark: My lions, my lions are all right for right now. We'll see. I don't have a lot of hope. 40 years doesn't bode well when you have one good season in 40 years, but we'll see.   Nick: I get it, [inaudible 00:01:33].   Mark: All right, so let's dive into this couple stuff here. Why is it important for couples to work together on their retirement plan? I mean, you come in, somebody sits down for the first time with you guys for a consultation, and they're just not even remotely on the same page. That's got to be a bit more problematic, yeah?   Nick: Yeah. Not being remotely on the same page is tricky. I would almost say we probably, at least for John and I, we probably don't run into it too much where they're completely on separate pages.   Mark: Well, that's good.   Nick: I would say that there tend to be different ways that they think about money and kind of communicate about money. To be honest, that's one of the reasons that I would say that John and I like working together as a team with clients is because oftentimes one of us will kind of pick up more on the vibe that one of the people in the relationship is on, and then vice versa the other way around.   And so I'd say it's pretty rare that people in a couple tend to think about finances the same way. Even though they might end up having similar goals on the backside, they kind of attack it a little bit differently. And really it's, I think we joke sometimes, I think at this point we're 80% therapist, 20% financial advisors.   Mark: Right.   Nick: And really it's just trying to get people closer to the same page, and realizing that a lot of the things that they're talking about are pretty similar and they're just going about different ways to attack that.   Mark: Well, John, to expand on that, when somebody sits down for the first time, do you guys, if they haven't really discussed some of those big issues, is it important that they maybe try to knock some of that out before they come in to see an advisor? Or does it not really matter as long as it's getting done?   John: Yeah, I don't think it really matters. I think sometimes they're not even really sure exactly what to be knocking out prior. So to delay meeting with someone just to try to figure out, "Hey, are we on the same page?", I don't think makes sense. I think what tends to happen in our meetings is we'll ask some questions that kind of get them thinking a little differently. Like, "Oh, I didn't think about that." And ultimately, I think what we do when we do our planning, they tend to have some things come out and then they tend to kind of understand where the other one's coming from and that kind of lines up.   Mark: Yeah. Well, I mean, I talk to advisors all across the country and I certainly hear stories often about people saying, one person will say something and the spouse will go, "Since when? I never heard of that."   Nick: It definitely happens sometimes for sure. I would say almost that tends to be more on the lifestyle side of things.   Mark: Okay, all right.   Nick: Versus almost purely financial.   Mark: Like "I want to go scuba diving in every major ocean or something." And the other one's like, "What?"   Nick: Yeah, when the husband pulls, "I want to drive across country in the RV" card, that's where I've seen a lot of the sideway looks where... My parents are a good example, it's like my dad doesn't like to drive to Publix, but then he said he wanted to drive-   Mark: Across the nation.   Nick: ... In an RV, because that's going to be more relaxing. And I remind him that a thousand miles is a lot worse than five. So there's things like that absolutely. How to spend that time, or even just the extra time together. I've almost seen it where it tends to be a little bit of a smoother process for couples when one person retires first, and maybe there's a year or two lag, where they kind of have a little bit of a staggering on spending an extra 50 hours a week together, which can be a little bit of a shock.   Mark: Sure, yeah, it's a totally different animal. Yeah.   Nick: Yeah, a totally different ballgame. So I would say from at least my experience with clients, it tends to be more in the lifestyle side of things. What I've seen most often with couples are it's rare that it's a 50/50 input on finances.   A lot of times I'll see it where one person might be a little bit more strategic on expenses, and then the other one might be a little bit more focused on the actual investments, things like that. But they end up being kind of having the same goal or outlook, but the lifestyle and how they're going to spend their time in retirement and how much they're willing to spend to do those sorts of things tends to be a little bit different.   Mark: All right, John, well let me throw this one your way. So my wife and I are not usually on the same page when it comes to certain different things in a relationship, like most couples. And when it comes to risk, we are completely different.   So how can couples navigate if they are in different places risk-wise? Because let's be honest, I mean the statistics are what they are. Typically, us fellas tend to want to take a little bit more risk, and a lot of times the ladies tend to want to play it a little safer. Not always, but that's kind of the average.   So how do you guys handle that and what's some advice there?   John: So we'll do risk tolerances for each client when that comes up. And we we'll find that someone, again, might be more aggressive than the other, so maybe their accounts are invested, maybe a moderate where someone else's, the spouse might be invested conservative. So that, having separate accounts makes that a little bit easier.   It becomes more difficult when it's the, a joint account. And what we'll do at that standpoint is we kind of go back to the plan. So a lot of the times it's what type of rate of return are we trying to achieve from the planning standpoint. We kind of have conversations, and we'll try to blend the two of them together.   I'd say for the most part, I don't want to speak for Nick, but he could jump in, have never really had this come up as an issue. It's kind of like, "Hey, this is how you want to do it. This is how this other person wants to do it." And for the most part, the spouses are okay with it as long as they're achieving their goals.   Mark: Interesting.   Nick: For the clients that tend to be, for the ones that have a little bit more of that risk appetite, we found through conversation that they have the risk appetite when things are good.   Mark: Sure. Everybody likes it when it's up, right?   Nick: Yeah, for sure. And not necessarily when things are bad. And so we're big fans of almost having, for lack of a better term, like a petty cash drawer or just kind of a smaller investment account that will carve out. So when there are clients that want to have that higher risk appetite, want to take opportunities to really kind of get some big upside.   Mark: So that's your speculative casino type money, right?   Nick: Yep.   Mark: If you will.   Nick: Yup, yup, exactly. And really too, because I would say the majority of our clients are pretty close to retirement or in retirement, they tend to, at least in our experience, be a little bit over that phase with any sort of larger amounts of money. Oftentimes they come to us and they're like, "All right, we had our fun and we're ready to be a little bit more in line on the risk side of things with the investment decisions that we're making." And oftentimes when we have that conversation of, "Hey, if you get an itch, let's have this off to the side and it'll help you make better decisions with the rest of the money." That tends to be kind of a winner for everybody.   John: No, I was going to say, yeah, that's kind of what we reference sometimes as a cave, this is kind of your play account where you want to buy some individual stocks and things like that, where the fluctuation won't really make a big impact overall on your plan. So as Nick mentioned, that kind of satisfies some of the very aggressive clients.   Mark: Okay. Well, so you mentioned the fact a second ago that a lot of your clients tend to be nearing or into retirement, and with a different demographic comes different feelings and mindsets about money.   So with that in mind, we tend to find that, which is really weird if you think about it this way, a lot of times you tend to find that in couples, going through the life, building of the life, raising the children, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, typically the wife tends to budget the money, handle the money, so on and so forth. She's doing all that stuff in the house. But when it comes to retirement, it tends to seem like us guys tend to take the lead there.   Is it okay for one person to handle all the financial matters? Or do you guys really prefer that both people have a good understanding, even if it's not your bag, do you still prefer them to have a general, I don't know, 10,000 foot view of what's going on?   Nick: Yes. I would say too, more and more that, again, from our experience, and maybe it's our clientele where you've got a lot of households that are both people work, both have retirement accounts, and although they may make some differences from the perspective of risk in their portfolios and stuff like that, it tends to be a collaborative effort. Again, I would say we have, anytime we do planning, we have clients fill out an expense worksheet. It's rare that they both fill it out. It's usually one of the two that are filling out the expense worksheet.   And so it does tend to get kind of broken up a little bit from who focuses on what. But it's definitely important that they're both on the same page and have a good grasp and an understanding. And I would say too is the easiest example of that, and the people that work with us kind of know this is there's one report that we go over with clients, it's like a cashflow. It's in detail, wall of numbers, lots of columns, can be kind of intense. And then there's an area called the decision center, which takes all those columns and it puts it into kind of a graph format and it's more interactive.   And I think that's kind of almost the best illustration of the different sides of the brain where one person in the couple sometimes likes the details and likes the column report and they like to, because they can go in on their client side of the portal and go through that and re-review it. And the other one is, "Hey, let's zoom out. Give me the broader picture. Are we good? Are we not good? Give me an idea of a couple of decisions that we need to make moving forward and let's go from there."   Mark: And there's no right or wrong to either one, it's just what is your personal appetite? But I think neither, like if both of you don't have a good understanding, John, that's a recipe for trouble later on too.   John: Yeah, no, I'd agree with that. It's important for both to at least have an idea of what's happening and working as a team, whether one takes a lead and one takes a backseat, we encourage everyone to have a general understanding. Because this past year has been interesting where I've had some clients have some health issues, pass away. And you got to make sure that both pistons are aware of what's happening because you don't want that situation where it's like, "Hey, I don't know where anything is. What do I do?" So [inaudible 00:11:43].   Mark: That's exactly the point, right? Yeah, that's the worst case scenario. And it often, it happens more times than people realize. So you both want to have a decent understanding, even if it's not your thing. And again, no gender roles there. It tends to be the case, but I mean, my wife is way smarter than I am, and she actually deals with, she's very analytical and deals with money and numbers all the time for work. And it's one of those things where when it comes to our retirement, she's like, "I don't want to deal with it. So you deal with it."   And it could just be as simple as, "I deal with numbers all the time, I don't want to deal with it yet another way." So no matter what it is, you find a way to make it work, but not having a decent understanding of what you have, and why you have it and who to turn to in the event of a catastrophe, is a recipe for disaster. So obviously if you're working with a financial professional and a team like the guys at PFG Private Wealth, then at least you also have that resource to turn to when something does happen like John just mentioned.   So one final question here, I'll let you both kind of jump in and chime in a little bit here. What final piece of advice would you give to couples who are maybe just beginning their retirement planning journey, when it comes to making sure that they both are feeling comfortable?   Nick: I think it depends on what phase they are in life, but in general, I think it's hard to screw it up long-term, if you're saving money. So even if you are very conservatively saving the money and you're not getting much return on your money, that kind of instills an ingrained habit of saving money and being used to living on the rest. That will lead you to better habits and better outcomes.   You can always take the next step in, whether it's working with an advisor, whether it's doing research by yourself and then making better and smarter decisions on how you invest that money that you saved. That tends to be kind of the easier part. But the behavior of saving that money first and then going from there, is the number one thing, I think that's important.   Mark: Okay. That's his advice there. What do you about you, John, what do you think?   John: Yeah, it's really similar. You can never go wrong saving. And it's really just kind of the words that just get started. Just get started saving, just get started planning, get started with any of it. Whether you have kids, you want to make sure that estate documents are in place, insurances are in place.   So depending on what phase, it's just a matter of getting started with the overall planning, and saving is definitely where you want to be the forefront. Because like Nick said, you can't go wrong. You're never going to be mad looking back saying, "Man, I saved way too much for retirement."   Mark: Right, exactly. Taking the forward steps and doing something to quote the rush song, right? If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice. So don't make that choice to do nothing. Do something for yourself and your future self and get started today. Make sure that you are planning for retirement and having conversations with your loved ones so that you guys are on the same page.   And of course, as always, if you need some help, make sure that you get onto the calendar with qualified professionals like the team at PFG Private Wealth. You can find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com to get yourself some time on the calendar to sit down with John and Nick and get started today.   This has been Retirement Planning, Redefined. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on whatever major podcasting platform app you like to use. They're on all of them. So you can just type in Retirement Planning, Redefined in the search box, or just go to pfgprivatewealth.com.   We'll sign off for this week. For John and Nick, I'm your host Mark, and we'll catch you next time.

Remember the thrill of shaking a Magic 8 Ball to get answers to your childhood questions? Would we ace that math test? Would we be famous someday? Well, today, we're bringing a bit of that magic back. But instead of asking about pop quizzes and playground crushes, we're turning to the Magic 8 Ball for advice on something much more important: your retirement planning! What would the Magic 8 Ball have to say about these common retirement questions if it had the wisdom of a financial advisor?   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com   Disclaimer: Speaker 1: PFG, Private Wealth Management LLC is an SEC registered investment advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk and unless otherwise stated are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance insurance. Products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents. Speaker 1: You all remember that thrill of shaking the Magic Eight Ball to get answers to those childhood questions we couldn't wait to find out? Would we ace that math test or be famous someday? All those crazy fun questions we had when we were kids. Well, this week on the podcast, we're going to do the Magic Eight Balls Guide to Retirement Planning with John and Nick here on Retirement Planning Redefined. What's going on everybody? Welcome into the podcast. Thanks for hanging out with John and Nick and myself as we talk investing, finance, and retirement. And we're going back to our childhood with the Magic Eight Ball. Going to have a little fun with these things and shake it up and see what kind of answers we get for retirement. Then of course, let the guys give us some proper answers just in case the Magic Eight Ball gets it wrong. But guys, what's going on this week? Good to talk with you as always. Nick, how are you buddy? Nick: Good, thanks. Just staying busy. Speaker 1: Staying busy, rocking and rolling. Very good. John, my friend, how are you? John: I'm doing all right. Getting ready for this upcoming storm we have, so. Speaker 1: Oh, big fun. Yeah. John: Getting to the grocery store quick, so all the crazies don't run me over. Speaker 1: Nice. Now you got little ones. Do they still sell the Magic Eight Balls in the store? I think they still make them. Don't they? John: They do. I think we had one at one point. Speaker 1: Nice. John: And it didn't work very well, so anytime they asked a question, it would end up on the side and they're like, what does it say? And I don't know. Speaker 1: I can't see it. You got to reshake. John: It was definitely something good that entertained them for a little bit. Speaker 1: Yeah. John: But like any little kid nowadays, it lasted all for about 20 minutes. Speaker 1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. John: Like, all right,- Speaker 1: Well I'm a wee little kid of the 70s, so I thought they were great. That and the Etch A Sketch and the Stretch Armstrong, I was a happy dude, so. But anyway, let's have a little fun with this, this week here and I'll toss you guys out a question. You kind of give us the Magic Eight Ball and your answer to it, or at least what it maybe should be, so to speak. Right. So we'll make it easy to kind of get things started. John, I'll toss this one to you. Should I start saving for retirement now? What's the Magic Eight Ball say? John: Magic Eight Ball is going to say yes, definitely. The sooner you can start the better. And that goes for anybody, whether that's you in your 20s. I have some clients that right out of college started and now they're in their late 30s, and when we do reviews occasionally, it's always like, "Hey, really appreciate you kind of getting on me for starting to save," because as life happens, expenses are going up, they have kids and stuff like that, it's harder to save. But when they didn't have too much going on in their early 20s expense wise, they were definitely built up a nest egg, so. Speaker 1: Yeah. John: If you haven't started at any point, wherever you are, 20, 30, 40, it's good idea to start. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean 50 as well, right? I mean it doesn't make a difference at this point. Waiting yet another day only causes you more problems, right? So should you start now? Definitely. And I'll give you guys kind of a little primer on the Magic Eight Ball. So we kind of looked through some of the stuff. They have, I guess what you'd call the green, kind of the positive answers, right? Stuff like the one John just got there, yes, definitely, most likely, out look good, that kind of stuff. Then they had that kind of middle of the road, nah, not so sure, right? Reply hazy, ask again later, better not tell you now, that kind of thing. And then of course they had the negatives, which was my reply is, no, very doubtful, don't count on it. So on and so forth. So we'll use those answers to kind of kick things off with each one of these episodes and then let the guys expand on it like John just did. All right Nick, so your turn, give it a go. Is a million dollars enough to retire on? What says the Magic Eight Ball? Nick: That's definitely a reply hazy, try again answer on that one. A consistent conversation that we have with people, whether it's somebody that we've worked with for a while or somebody that has come to us and we're kind of taking them through the planning process is that everybody's situation is different. Speaker 1: Sure. Nick: People love to compare things with each other, whether it's cars, houses, finances, whatever. And we try to make sure that people understand that comparing themselves even to a sibling or a neighbor or friend doesn't necessarily make sense. Some of the most common examples that we'll see are people that maybe they have pension plans because of the sort of job that they have. Speaker 1: Yeah, they saved a million, but they got a pension versus someone who saved a million and doesn't. That's a dramatically different setup, right? Nick: Correct. Speaker 1: Yeah. Nick: Correct. Yeah. And so assets are important obviously, but really the end game for assets in retirement is to generate income. So ideally people will have the combination of both, but having an arbitrary number like a million dollars is something that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And I know that recently there's been some kind of articles in the news about, I think we just hit the highest percentage of millionaires in the US. Speaker 1: Right. Nick: And even from that perspective, dependent upon the situation, again, a million dollars isn't what it used to be. So it really just all depends. We've had clients that have had five or $6 million going into retirement that when we look at their plan, they're going to burn through that in 15 years because they spend too much. And we've had clients that are retired with five or 600,000, but they have their expenses very much in check, they have no debt and they live within their means and their plan looks great. Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. I mean there's three of us here on this podcast and it might take a million for one and 500,000 for the other and two and a half million for the other. Right. It all just depends on where you live, how you live, all those sorts of things. So yeah, reply hazy, try again. And really what it comes down to is get a strategy, get a plan, and get the numbers crunched for your specific situation and then you're going to understand exactly what you need to get to. You're going to have a better outline versus just kind of a shaking the Magic Eight Ball. And I think the idea behind some of this too was fun. You know how you guys in the industry know this. There seems like there's always advisors out there that have a little crystal ball on their desk and they like to say, "Let me check the crystal ball," when somebody asks them a question and they're like, "Well it doesn't work today." And that's because it's not a sound way of doing things. So we thought we'd take that kind of analogy and apply it to this week's podcast. So back to you, John. Can I rely on social security for my retirement? John: Say out look not so good. Speaker 1: Right. John: Yeah, definitely not what you want to be banking on. It's a good source to have. Speaker 1: Sure. John: But you do not want it to be your only source. Speaker 1: It's big dollars. I mean it can be big dollars for a lot of people. And I think an interesting question, and I put it this way, is I've got a family member, a loved one who totally survives on social security only, but it's not what she wanted, right? So could you do it? Yes. But is it ideal? No. John: Yeah, no. I think on average social security covers maybe 30, 40% of someone's retirement income. So you have to look at where's the other money coming from. So just planning on social security I would say is not a very good plan. Speaker 1: Very true, very true. Well following that up there, Nick, give us the Magic Eight Ball answer here. Is it wise then to have multiple sources of retirement income? Nick: It is absolutely as imperative as you can get to try to have different sources of income. A conversation that we have with people consistently is that from the perspective of planning, the one thing that we know and that we can absolutely count on every single year, year after year, is that there's going to be change. And so anything that you can do to build in options, build in flexibility, allow yourself to adapt and pivot to what's going on is essential. And part of that is income streams, not only diversifying assets, but diversifying income streams. Speaker 1: Definitely. Right. So you definitely want to have those. Social security is a big piece of it, but it doesn't need to be the only one. You need to have multiple sources of income streams. All right, John, back to you. Can I expect to have fewer expenses in retirement compared to when I'm working? What's the Magic Eight Ball say? John: I'd say don't count on it. Again, I don't know, we've kind of preface this quite a bit and we've even said it today, everyone's different. So we've had some people where expenses have gone up during retirement because they want to vacation more, they want to do more things with the family. So I wouldn't say plan on that necessarily. And the only way to really find out is to do a comprehensive plan, but then there's going to be curveballs that come at you, whether it's health expenses. That tends to not go down as we get older. So maybe something could be dropping off. Speaker 1: Right. Right. John: But you never know what's going to get added. So do your plan as best you can and try to be as accurate as can. But I wouldn't have that be like the bulletproof, like, hey, my expenses are going to drop so I should be good. Speaker 1: Well, that's a great point because a lot of times people say, hey, here's our back of the napkin math. We think if we curtail this a little bit and this a little bit, we can make it work. Right. We can kind of squeak into retirement. But then you get there and you think, I don't want to do that, right? And there's certainly a lot of conversation around regrets that people have when they're talking once they get to retirement and they go, boy, I wish I would've spent more in those early years when my body would've let me go out and do some things that I wanted to. Right. So can I expect fewer expenses? Yeah, probably not, right? Because like you said, things are going to drop off, but other things are going to add and of course don't count on it. I think that was the answer Rhonda Thomas gave me when I asked her to the seventh grade dance, I think she said don't count on it. I think she must have got that from Magic Eight Ball as well. Nick: That's stuck with you. Speaker 1: Yeah, right. Exactly. It stuck with me. I'm still wounded Rhonda, if you're listening. All right, so let's do the next one here. Should I review my retirement plan annually? Nick, what says the Magic Eight Ball? Nick: Without a doubt on that one. Going back to what we talked about earlier, things constantly change. So updating the plan is really important. The most recent example of why that's important has been inflation over the last couple of years. So when we do a plan and we put in an inflation increase every year in expenses, the software still requires us to kind of update those baseline numbers. And so what we found and what we've tried to emphasize to people is that us capturing and updating those baseline numbers every two or three years is really important and gives us a much more accurate projection from the perspective of planning. So,- Speaker 1: Gotcha. Nick: Those annual reviews are important. Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's how you kind of keep track of the expense changes or the income source changes or added a grandchild, want to change this, whatever the case is. So all those annual things are certainly important. Your life's going to change, your plan has to change along with it. All right, John, will my retirement plan be affected by future changes in tax laws? Not to get political, but you have to talk policy and certainly when it comes to taxation, that's going to be part of the conversation. I mean, seems like everything is political these days, but if you're thinking about future changes in tax laws, you're going to have to certainly think along those lines as well. So what says the Magic Eight Ball when it comes to will your plan be affected by it? John: Signs point to yes. Speaker 1: 35 trillion? Maybe. Yeah. John: Yeah. So you definitely want to take that into account. I mean if you look at maybe people that retired in the 70s and then all of a sudden the 80s, your social security is getting taxed, you weren't really anticipating that happening and then,- Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the IRMAA tax, right? That gets a lot of people blindsided. John: Yeah. So you could count on taxes changing. Whether it's going to go up or down, again, we don't have our crystal ball, but we have the Magic Eight Ball here. Something's going to happen and you should be planning for that. One thing you could do when you're running retirement plans is you can have the ability to stress test it, to take a look at it. So definitely plan on it. Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you figure, look, regardless of where your political bent is, we've got a lot of debt and so taxes are going to have to change. And even if it's not this particular administration change, this current election, right, God willing, you live long enough in retirement. If you last 20, 25, 30 years in retirement, you're going to see multiple administrations come and go. And that's going to mean multiple tax law changes because they do that every so often. Right. So the odds of that happening are pretty great. So signs point to yes, you should consider how taxation is going to affect you because it is one of the biggest pieces of your retirement strategy. What is that old saying? It's not what you make, it's what you keep, right? So make sure you're talking with qualified professionals like John and Nick when it comes to dealing with all this stuff. Let's do one or two more and then we'll wrap it up. Nick, let's toss this over to you. Let's see here. Should I focus on paying off debt before increasing retirement contributions? Nick: So I would say depending upon the debt, most likely. Speaker 1: Okay. Nick: From the perspective of consumer debt like credit cards, all that kind of stuff,- Speaker 1: Bad debt, right? Nick: That can absolutely, it's hard to argue that that's not unimportant. One thing that can be a slippery slope for people is it kind of tends to depend on their behaviors. We've had clients that have been good income earners but have at different times had debt problems. And in certain ways, whenever they pay off the debt, the debt comes back up and then they kind of find themselves not saving at all. So it's oftentimes kind of a balance of both. One of the most common sorts of comparisons from a perspective of debt is mortgage. We found that over, we had a lot of those conversations when interest rates were really low and we kind of emphasized with people to take advantage of those low rates and that's come to be a pretty beneficial sort of decision. So I would say in order, consumer debt for sure, trying to do both consecutively, both at the same time, obviously ideal, and then just kind of working through the plan and prioritizing what makes the most sense and how to deploy the money. Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, right? I mean, debt's going to be a big component of that as well, and certainly getting rid of that, the higher interest stuff is always a good idea. So the final piece then here guys, and John, we'll let you wrap it up since you started it. Should I consider working with a financial professional as I near retirement? This is kind of a layup for you, but I'll give it to you anyway. What do you think? John: Appreciate that layup. Answer is yes. As you're getting closer to retirement, it becomes even more important to make sure you're working with someone to update the plan or start a plan and take a look at it. I would say you don't have to wait until you're near retirement. I think the answer is yes at any point. Speaker 1: Yeah. John: Even my younger clients, they always appreciate having someone they could talk to and bounce some ideas off of, whether it's not always comprehensive planning, but it's someone you could talk to discuss things. Speaker 1: Exactly. Because there's so many nuances out there and it just continues to grow and get more complex. So certainly not a bad idea at all to get qualified professionals on your side. So if you need some help, reach out to the team at Pfgprivatewealth.com. That's Pfgprivatewealth.com and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple and Spotify or whatever platform you like using. It's Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. And we'll see you next time here on the show and enjoy the Magic Eight Ball. We'll catch you later.   Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. The topics and information discussed during this podcast are not intended to provide tax or legal advice. Investments involve risk, and unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Be sure to first consult with a qualified financial advisor and/or tax professional before implementing any strategy discussed on this podcast. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Insurance products and services are offered and sold through individually licensed and appointed insurance agents.  

‍In this special episode, guest host Dr. Brian fills in for Dr. Ashley, joined by Dr. Nick to dive deep into the six-month progress of Limitless Dental. Despite facing challenges such as staffing and balancing clinical duties with business management, Dr. Nick shares the impressive growth and successes of his practice. From expanding office days to hitting remarkable production numbers, and the strategic moves in marketing and patient care, this episode offers a candid look into the realities of dental practice management and growth.‍Key Points Discussed:Introduction of Dr. Nick: Dr. Nick steps in to share his journey, offering well wishes to Dr. Ashley.Six-Month Milestone: Dr. Nick discusses hitting the six-month mark in the practice, detailing the expansion of office days, construction of new surgical suites, and the challenges and successes faced.Impressive Growth: With an average of 125k a month in production, Dr. Nick outlines the strategies leading to the practice's success, highlighting the importance of marketing and the struggle with staffing issues.Expansion and Future Plans: The conversation covers the rapid pace of expansion, including building out new operatories and planning for future growth, emphasizing the unexpected speed at which the practice is advancing.Marketing Strategies: Dr. Nick dives into the specifics of his marketing approach, including social media influence, targeted mailers, and specialized campaigns for dental implants, sharing insights on reaching different demographics.Staffing Solutions: The challenges of hiring and retaining staff in a competitive environment are discussed, alongside innovative solutions to keep the practice running smoothly.The Vision for Limitless Dental: Dr. Nick shares his ambition to avoid becoming a "drill and fill" office, focusing instead on life-changing dental services and the importance of continuous learning and improvement.Limitless Coaching Initiative: The episode introduces the upcoming coaching and mentoring initiative aimed at helping new dentists and students navigate the complexities of dental practice ownership and growth.‍Memorable Quotes:"The hardest thing has just been the staff at this point, honestly, but everything else is great." - Dr. Nick"It's not just about doing cleanings and fillings; it's about changing lives with the work we do." - Dr. Nick‍Connect with Us:Follow Dr. Nick on Instagram: @DrNickCVisit the Limitless Dental website for more information and updates.Facebook.com/groups/themakingof@themakingofdental‍Stay tuned for our next episodes where we'll continue to follow the growth of Limitless Dental!‍

Savvy property management entrepreneurs are always on the lookout for new ways to expand their services and better serve their clients and residents. In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull chat with Nick Friedman, founder of College Hunks Hauling Junk and Trash Butler. You'll Learn [02:08] Becoming an entrepreneur [09:14] Daily trash removal for multifamily communities [16:45] A butler service for trash? How does it work? [19:47] Vetting team members [27:50] Junk removal services for property managers Tweetables “Property managers are that front-line resource for all things community.” “We've got to have urgency of effort, patience for the results.” “Culture drives behavior. Behavior drives results.” “Execution is a differentiator if you can out-execute everybody else.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Nick: I have come to realize, because we're in a blue collar industry ourselves, moving furniture and picking up trash at residents' doorsteps. Execution is a differentiator if you can out execute everybody else.  [00:00:14] Jason: All right. Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrow show. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing a business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower property managers, love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges and freedom that property management brings. [00:00:39] Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:56] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. We're your hosts, property management growth experts, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow and Sarah Hull, the co owner and COO of DoorGrow. [00:01:12] Now let's get into the show. All right. And our guest today is Nick Friedman. Did I say your name right?  [00:01:20] You got it right.  [00:01:21] Cool. And Nick has two different businesses. And why don't you introduce the two businesses and then I'd love to get into your background of how you got into entrepreneurship. [00:01:30] Nick: Absolutely. So two businesses that are relevant to property management, one is a doorstep amenity for apartment complexes called Trash Butler. It helps increase revenue and net operating income for the communities while also providing an amenity for the residents and that kind of incubated out of our first company that we launched, which is a company called College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving. I'm a little more widely known for that business that I started back in college. It's a moving and bulk removal service that now has over 300 franchises across the U.S. So it's been a fun journey and a very entrepreneurial journey to say the least. [00:02:08] Jason: Awesome. So Nick, when did you first realize you were an entrepreneur that you were a little bit weird?  [00:02:13] Nick: I would have to say in retrospect, it was all the way into my early days of childhood. My sister had a lemonade stand in front of our house. She wanted to charge 25 cents for lemonade. I went out and started a competing lemonade next to hers and I wanted to charge a dollar for my lemonade because I thought my lemonade was better and I think we probably sold the same amount of cups, but I made four times the amount of money than she did because I was charging a dollar then she was charging 25 cents. So in hindsight, I think I would always do some out of the box things. My teachers would call me a little bit restless. But really our business innovation took place when we were in college. Because we had always been brought up and told to follow the more traditional career path, work hard in school, get good grades, get a job after you graduate, climb up that ladder. [00:02:56] And the summer before my senior year of college. My buddy's mom had a beat up cargo van from her furniture store and she said, "why don't you guys go do something with the van? You guys could move furniture, haul trash, you guys could be like college hunks who haul junk," and we just started laughing about it decided to put that on flyers and the phone started ringing so we were in business and realized that the name was catchy. [00:03:18] People appreciated quality service and and that was the light bulb moment for us to pursue a career of entrepreneurship and not the traditional path.  [00:03:26] Jason: There you go. So thank goodness for that truck, right? That's right. Changed your life.  [00:03:31] Nick: Totally changed our life. We credit her with the name. Yeah. [00:03:34] Jason: Competing with the sister. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think for me, it was my entrepreneurial mom who was a real estate agent. She just, she was always hustling, trying to figure out how to make money. And she would have us fold flyers for her and canvas neighborhoods.  [00:03:50] Nick: And that's really when we realized the niche for us is very much so within property management, right? [00:03:56] Because. A homeowner or business might move every couple of years, might have junk to be removed every so often, but property managers are that front line resource for all things community, whether that's residents who are moving in and out, whether that's bulk trash is being left behind and needs to get turned around for the next move in. And then that ultimately, as I mentioned, incubated our Trash Butler business, which is more of a recurring revenue model, but it produces income for the apartment complexes that we partner with. It was an evolution for us. I always tell the story when we 1st started, we were doing all the work ourselves. [00:04:29] So we went out and we bought an 800 number. And we slapped it on the back of our truck, trying to make ourselves look bigger, but it was still routed to our cell phone. And so people would call to complain about erratic driving and we'd be in the driver's seat answering the phone, pretending like we weren't, saying, "Oh yeah, we'll fire those guys when they get back on the road, yeah, they're the worst." Yeah. Yeah. "We don't condone that driving in our company." So we probably fired ourselves at least three or four times. And I'm sure, your property manager listeners can relate to that. When they first started their business, you're doing all the work yourself. [00:04:59] You're fixing the doorknobs, you're changing out the light bulbs and everything in between. And one of our mentors recommended to us that we read a book called the E Myth Revisited, it's by a guy named Michael Gerber. And in it really emphasizes the notion of working on your business, not just in your business, creating systems and processes for the business to scale, which is obviously what you're doing for folks. [00:05:20] And so I think that was the next light bulb moment for us is if we're ever going to have another truck. Let alone another location, let alone eventually a second business. We've got to start documenting how we do everything.  [00:05:31] Jason: Yeah. And is that what kind of helped it take off? [00:05:34] Nick: I describe ourselves as a 20 year overnight success because it feels like it took that long for us to get to where we are. [00:05:40] It really did. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners and leaders have a level of impatience, which is good. But I always preach to our team, we've got to have urgency of effort, patience for the results, because if we get up every day, grind it out, and then we look a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, based on that consistent grind, we're going to see long term results start to manifest. [00:06:03] And so none of it happened overnight but it was a process and it was putting systems in place, aligning ourselves with great people and just being committed to our purpose and our vision.  [00:06:14] Jason: Yeah, I love it. I think I love that. Urgency of effort, patience for the result. [00:06:18] I think as entrepreneurs, nothing's ever fast enough for us.  [00:06:22] Nick: No, and that's a good and a bad thing as a business leader and an entrepreneur is, if we weren't optimistic, we would never start the business in the first place because we believe that the business is going to be successful. [00:06:34] We may minimize how hard it's going to be. We may minimize some of the challenges that we're going to encounter along the way. And that sort of maybe, cognitive dissonance or whatever you want to call it, getting into business, I think is a good thing, but you then have to then have the grit and the resilience and the sophistication to muscle through the challenging times. [00:06:56] But I don't think I've ever met an entrepreneur that says, "I made more money faster than I expected to." It's usually longer. "I didn't make as much as I had hoped for when I first started out." And when reality sinks in, some people give up and go back to their corporate grind and other people just stick it out and keep pushing forward. [00:07:13] Jason: Yeah, I call that the fantasy stage of entrepreneurship. That's the beginning. We only see upside. It's all upside. It's going to be a success. I get property managers coming to me, potential property managers are like, I'm going to start a property management business. I'm like, "Oh yeah, how are you going to do this?" [00:07:28] And they're like, "it's going to be amazing because all the other companies in my market suck. And I'm like, "okay, what are you going to do different?" "We're going to charge less. And we're going to provide better service." I'm like, "okay, good luck with that."  [00:07:38] Nick: So yeah, that's a tough recipe. Look, I have come to realize, because we're in a blue collar industry ourselves, moving furniture and picking up trash at residents' doorsteps. And execution is a differentiator if you can out execute everybody else. It's not easy. It's not the flashy, shiny objects that entrepreneurs like to chase, but we, coming through this past year, obviously, the market has shifted its leads aren't falling from the sky like they used to, we've had to assess are we doing everything that we're supposed to with every client touch point? [00:08:09] Are we consistently delivering the service that we preach in all of our markets across all the apartment communities that we service? And that I think is something that that takes reinforcement and repetition. And sometimes it can be a little bit boring, but it matters because that does make a difference. [00:08:25] I wouldn't charge less than everybody. That's not a sustainable business strategy. But if you can consistently out execute everybody else, that is an advantage.  [00:08:34] Jason: Yeah, if you can out execute everybody else, then you can probably out price everybody else, too, the leader gets to dictate the price, I think. [00:08:41] Nick: That's right, and usually it's going to cost us more to be able to out execute everybody else, unless you've got just, these magic employees that are willing to take less money to provide a better experience for the customer so that you can charge less it becomes a difficult equation. [00:08:56] Jason: Yeah. It's not too difficult to close the deal when somebody comes to you and says, "I want the other company's price, but I want your level of service." [00:09:03] Nick: That's right. That's right. And that is hard to explain in the sales process. If they, having, don't have the relationship or don't have the trust built that, that takes time. [00:09:14] Jason: Cool. Explain how Trash Butler works for people that have multifamily communities.  [00:09:19] Nick: Yeah, so as I mentioned, it incubated out of our college hunks business. We recognize this opportunity in the apartment space, particularly in a multifamily communities where there's a long walk for the residents to take the trash out. [00:09:31] If you think about the garden style apartments, even mid rise or raps, where there's a long walk to the trash room or trash shoot. And so this industry has emerged doorstep trash service, where we've signed a contract with the apartment complex and then 5 nights a week, the resident can simply put the trash in front of their door and recyclables in some markets, and then our Butler will come by and take the trash and the recyclables to the onsite compactor, which is provided by the 3rd party hauler. So it saves the resident a trip to the dumpster or the compactor each night or every other night. There's a safety component for the residents, an amenity component for the communities and looking to try to enhance the their quality of life for the residents. [00:10:10] And then it actually becomes an income producer for the apartment complex. I know that there's some, skepticism about upcharging services in the industry right now. We're staying very close to that legislation, but let's say we charge $10 a month per door to the apartment community. [00:10:24] They have the ability to, charge anywhere from $20 to in some cases, $30, $40 a month per door to the residents. So it becomes an NOI. Producer, net operating income producer for the community, and it's an amenity for the resident, many times an expected amenity for the resident. So currently, we're the second largest provider in that industry. [00:10:41] We service about 300, 000 doors nightly. We're the national partner with Graystar, of course, the big 800 pound gorilla of property management. And we started out as a side venture has all of a sudden, blossomed into a meaningful business that we've actually brought in some private equity money to help sustain that growth. [00:10:58] Jason: Yeah, brilliant. So yeah, I've lived at a complex for a while, and I had to walk forever to go drop my trash off. I hated it. It was super annoying. So I had to have some sort of stupid cart or something just to carry all my trash and like...  [00:11:12] Nick: I used to live in an apartment complex that did not have this service, and I would put the trash either on the hood of my car or in my trunk at times to drive it to the compactor, and one day, I actually forgot that I put it in my trunk, and so I passed by the compactor and this was a hot day in Florida in the summertime. [00:11:30] So of course, when I came back to my car at the end of a long work day and realized that I had failed to take the trash bag out of the trunk, it was a direct trip to the trash compactor and then the the car dealership. Oh yeah.  [00:11:42] Sarah: And then this is a service that the tenants pay for. Yes?  [00:11:46] Nick: It is. [00:11:47] So we contract directly with the community, but the tenants pay for it through their lease. So what we do when we sign up a community is we have a what we call phase in pricing where it steps up over the 1st year of the service. And so the community is never out of pocket. It's never a cost to the community. [00:12:03] The residents are either just paying a pass through, or even an upcharge to the community so that it becomes a profit center for the community. Yes, it does become an ancillary income stream for the apartment complexes. The resident is paying for it. It's part of their lease. It's not something that's opt in, opt out, but if they haven't had it before, it'll wait till the lease renews for it to be added in. [00:12:24] And so we're not charging full rate during the first year. We're stepping it up during month one, month two, month three in order to ensure that the residents are all paying for it by the time we're fully phased.  [00:12:34] Sarah: Oh, very nice. And then is this nationwide? If someone were like, "Hey, I think that's a great idea. Can I?" [00:12:40] Nick: It is. Yeah. So we're in about 30 states right now. Usually when you have a national partnership with a company like Graystar, they point to that direction and we run in that direction. So we opened up in the Northeast, we opened up in California. Our biggest presence is in the Southeast, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Carolinas. We've got a pretty big presence in Arizona. I know that's where you guys are. We're all over. We got boots on the ground. That business is not franchised. Our college hunks business is a franchise model that we have independent operators, but our Trash Butler business is all corporately operated. [00:13:12] So we have managers and and sort of area supervisors in each market that we service.  [00:13:17] Sarah: Oh, very cool.  [00:13:18] Jason: Got it. Yeah. All right. And is there a lot of competition for Trash Butler?  [00:13:22] Nick: Trash Butler and College Hunts has a lot of competition. What I always like to say, there's low barriers to entry, but high barriers to scale. [00:13:29] So there's probably a lot of similarities with the property management business as well, right? Any mom and pop can go out, hang a sign out or get a truck and say, "I'm in business." and you can do that with one or two communities or maybe one market. But when it comes to scaling out that infrastructure and providing a consistent level of service nationwide there's only a small handful that have done it and that's because it costs a lot of money to get to that scale. You've got to have software. You've got to have great people in every market. You've got to have accountabilities in every market. And that's been good and bad. There's always the people that will come in and try to undercut what we're charging or what their competitors are charging, but they can do that on a one off community or two communities. [00:14:09] But at some point their systems are going to break because they're doing all the work themselves. Like we did when we first started.  [00:14:15] Jason: Yeah. And I'm sure occasionally you see the cheap, dumb property manager that wants to like, "Oh I'll just do this myself. And I'll just make my team members, I'll make my gal at the front office desk go haul garbage." [00:14:26] Nick: And, we all know that employee retention is one of the hardest things right now to keeping good people. And you want your good people doing high value activities. At the property management level, you don't want your good people picking up trash from, 100, 200, 300 units every single night. [00:14:42] That's a surefire way to lose your good people. We think of us as an outsourced arm of property management. We pride ourselves on being an extra set of eyes and ears because we're walking the communities in the night. Night walks and when we're doing our patrol, so we're able to report back if we see a safety hazard or we see anything, suspicious activity, we can report that back in our reporting tools. [00:15:03] And so it becomes an extension for property management, not a cost center. And that's, I think, the most important piece. And there's redundancy. We've got backup butlers if a butler misses because he's sick or, has a wedding or something, I don't know. And so we send people in their place and that redundancy is important because, the residents will let you hear it if the trash gets missed. [00:15:22] That's for sure. Yeah. And they're paying for it. So they expect it to get picked up every night that they put it out there.  [00:15:28] Jason: Yeah. If trash day gets missed, there's going to be some pretty unhappy people. It's just sitting on their porch for a week. "Do I bring this back inside? Where do I have to walk it over myself?" [00:15:37] So how small of a complex do you guys take on? Like what are your sort of limits here?  [00:15:42] Nick: To be honest with you, the sweet spot for a trash butler is really a hundred units and greater. So I know there's a lot of property managers that manage smaller facilities or single family properties. [00:15:52] Usually communities like that it's smaller communities, it's more difficult to create a scalable model for the nightly doorstep trash pickup service. But we do see a lot of partnerships with our College Hunks business and the single family rentals the smaller apartment complexes where there's tenant leave behinds, or they want to have a move in special, so they'll contract with our College Hunks location in their market to move the resident in or move the resident out because the move in and the move out are two very critical touch points of the overall living experience as it relates to a community. And so I think the property manager may, in some cases, undervalue the importance of that high touch experience, especially on the move in when they're moving out, unless they're moving to another 1 of your properties. "Have a great day. Sorry to see you go." But when they're moving in, you really want to make that a special, memorable, positive experience so that then it reinforces the positive experience they have while living there.  [00:16:45] Jason: Now, normally trash pickup by the garbage companies is weekly, but you get, you mentioned nightly that you're doing this. [00:16:52] Nick: So we're doing the butler service nightly. We're not taking the trash off property. We're taking it from the doorstep of each resident to the onsite compactor. So if you think about it, the compactor pickups are still going to be weekly but the trash can be picked up from the residents doorstep on a nightly basis, typically 5 nights a week. [00:17:09] This kind of industry standard is Sunday to Thursday night. And so that's where this is becomes a very attractive amenity because if your trash fills up, you got to take it out and you want to wait until the trash day or whatever. You can put it out five nights a week and the butler's gonna take it to the onsite compactor. [00:17:24] Jason: Nice. . Yeah, that makes it really convenient. Okay. Got it. Cool. What do property managers typically. Ask about this service that I haven't asked yet? [00:17:35] Nick: Ah, so what we like to do is we boil it down to three very simple things. What's most important in this service, the doorstep amenity is the trash going to be picked up on time? [00:17:45] Is it going to be consistent? And is it going to be clean? In other words, is the trash butler not going to leave a mess or loose trash and all those sorts of things. And so we actually have what we call A 3x guarantee of Trash Butler, where we guarantee that those 3 things are going to be 100 percent consistent. [00:18:02] If not, we're going to make it right financially by reimbursing for the night, or in some cases, the week. And so I think that's really important. Another question that we actually make sure we emphasize is that there are some companies that do this that will use independent contractors and we recommend steering away from that because there's a level of liability and also accountability that's missing if you've got independent contractors picking up the trash five nights a week on your community. And so having a W 2, uniform, background check butler that's walking the hallways, walking the breezeways, picking up the items is really critical as well. So those are usually the most consistent questions. [00:18:41] I think not a lot of not all property managers really know how to charge the residents back for the service. So we try to pride ourselves on being revenue consultants and sustainability consultants as well. Not just the doorstep vendor for picking up the trash. And so I think, creating that partnership with any of the vendors is really critical, for your listeners not just our category but anybody who they're working with is having that trust and go to relationship. [00:19:04] That they can, rely on. It's not just an invoice, it's not just a contract, but there's actually a relationship there to ensure that, stuff is getting done when it needs to get done. And again, that goes with maintenance, that goes with roofing, that goes with insurance which I know is a huge issue, with properties these days. [00:19:21] And I think that we want to be a piece of that overall equation.  [00:19:24] Jason: Yeah. One bad independent contractor story could probably destroy a property management company. It certainly could destroy a relationship with one particular multi family complex or with that particular owner, but it could destroy a business if it were serious enough. [00:19:41] So that's right. That's right. Yeah. So related to that, how do you vet your butlers?  [00:19:47] Nick: So we prided ourselves both in our college hunts hauling junk business and our trash butler business on really being a culture first team member driven organization. And what I mean by that is we want to get great people. [00:20:01] It's a blue collar industry, but we want to get people to have pride of ownership of the work that they're doing. So it starts with the recruiting, our job posting, our recruiting machine, our interview process, our background checks, our reference checks, and then our onboarding. Our onboarding and retention is all about, we say, enrolling our team members in either the Trash Butler way or the College Hunks way of doing business. [00:20:24] And so I think it's important anytime you're hiring employees that you've got a system and a process. For identifying who are the type of people you want to bring into the organization because that's going to help define the culture and we always say culture drives behavior. Behavior drives results. [00:20:38] And so if you're just picking up any body off the street to fill a hole, you might get somebody good, but chances are, they're not going to be. Aligned with the core values of the company, the purpose of the company. And so we've viewed ourselves as our secret sauce as being able to recruit a widespread labor team decentralized across the country, train them, onboard them and retain them to go out and provide a good service on a consistent basis. And so I think again, relevant to your listeners and their businesses as they think about who they're hiring or teams that they're developing having a set of core values that you would abide by having a long term vision of what you're trying to become as an organization, what you want to be recognized for as an organization. [00:21:21] And then and then work to the present, the action items that you're going to take to, to ensure that those values are upheld and that the vision is becoming a reality.  [00:21:30] Jason: Yeah, that's that's so in alignment with the stuff that we teach, you mentioned culture, behavior results. [00:21:35] And when we focus on helping clients figure out their hiring systems, we focus on what I call the three fits, which is culture first personality fit, which relates to behavior and then skill. And skill's the only one that you really can move the needle hugely on. Usually it's about finding people that match your culture, that share your values, and then finding somebody that is the right personality fit to succeed in the role, and then you can train them. [00:22:01] But most business owners do the opposite. They're like, let's just find somebody with the skill.  [00:22:05] Nick: Somebody who knows how to do it. Yeah you're 100 percent right. There's a mantra. I'm sure you've said it probably is, you hire for attitude, you train for skill. And if you can hold true to that now, look, obviously they have to be capable and competent of learning the skill. If you're providing them the tools to do the work and they still can't do it, then there's a competency gap there that's missing. And you, you have to have, we like to say results based, performance based objectives, but you also have to have good people who align with your values because, if you've got somebody who's not good at the job, but a really good person, ideally, you could train them or find a seat for them to fill. If they're a bad person, but good at their job, then you feel handcuffed and it becomes this poison seed and an apple pie that ends up making the whole thing rotten. [00:22:56] Yeah, I want a team that can perform on the field, but you've got to have a good dynamic locker room. You can't have somebody in there that's upsetting the team dynamics, and that's where leadership comes in. That's where the leader of the organization has to champion the values, has to champion the vision, has to champion the culture, has to hold people accountable, especially their fellow leaders about, what are the behaviors that we value in our organization that matter to us? [00:23:24] Jason: Yeah, love it. It's got to be pretty daunting task to run a large empire, especially in a blue collar industry of people to make sure you've got good leadership. Managing good people and a good hiring process.  [00:23:38] Nick: Yeah. It's like I said it was a 20 year overnight success for us and it never gets easier. [00:23:43] Maybe, new level kind of different devil, but it's it's a lot of fun growing a business and embracing those challenges along the way. But, you hit it on the head, having the right leadership team to help support the founder of the entrepreneur in the journey. [00:23:58] And another thing that I think your listeners probably can relate to is along the way as their business grows is sometimes you're going to outgrow your leadership team, which we've gone through, multiple layers of that. And it's not easy because somebody who helps you get from, 0 to 20 properties may not be able to take you from 20 to 100 properties or somebody who took, in our business that took us from, 0 to 50 franchises or or what have you. [00:24:22] And there's a lot of parallels between our trash Butler business and property management. And so I'm sure we're facing the same sort of things and, making sure that you've got folks that... that's probably the hardest part is when they fit the culture, but the business starts to outgrow them. [00:24:33] And so that's why leadership development is very critical and also identifying the skill sets to make sure they're built for the longterm.  [00:24:41] Jason: Yeah. It said that the number one indicator of success is actually intelligence. And if somebody has enough intelligence, they can rise to different levels of competency and improve. [00:24:53] For example, like somebody might have a good executive assistant and maybe someday they're CEO, but I've had some assistants in the past that were not capable of that. They just weren't right. And then I've had some that were able to rise to different levels of, management. [00:25:06] And I think being able to, I think it's a knack or a talent to be able to identify that light because you can't just give people intelligent tests.  [00:25:14] Nick: Although they, they do have some different tests out there. Now there's the wonder liquid, which I think is what the NFL uses. [00:25:18] We use predictive index, which has a cognitive test and then also a personality profile matching, it's not an exact science, but it definitely provides another data point. Because hiring is probably the toughest thing. Even the sports teams get it wrong half the time, they can actually see the person playing on the field and they know from the other coaches, what type of person that individual is. [00:25:40] And yet they still draft the wrong player or sign the wrong position. And we got to give us, give ourselves a little bit of a break too, because our managers and our franchise owners who view the leadership role as a blessing rather than a burden, I think are the ones that are going to see the most success because they embrace the challenges of turnover. [00:26:01] They embrace the challenge, teaching their team members or empowering their team members to tackle new obstacles. They embrace the fact that maybe certain individuals on their team might have to be layered underneath the next layer of leadership. And so I think that's I think that's something that we got to keep reminding ourselves also as entrepreneurs. [00:26:17] Jason: We've, we partnered here at DoorGrow for DoorGrow Hiring with an AI assessment company before AI was big. And it's pretty spot on and amazing at identifying people that are the right culture, personality, and intelligence level. I used to use Myers Briggs, human design, Wonderlic DISC, and I would get a pretty decent picture of a person incorporating all of these things, but I had to know all these different systems and and I can hire with pretty good accuracy. [00:26:46] And so we started testing against this AI tool and it got the right candidate every time. And it was pretty obvious in the tool. We now use it with clients and it does a really good job. So it's pretty awesome. Very cool. That's how I got my current assistant, Mar, who's awesome. And I think all of our last several team members. [00:27:03] Nick: So yeah, it's pretty cool. Are you able to share the AI tool or is that proprietary to you guys now?  [00:27:08] Jason: So we've partnered with a company called BRYQ, B R Y Q. And yeah, it's super cool. So it's usually not affordable for the small business owner.  [00:27:17] Nick: Got it. So you guys have like an enterprise platform for, because you do recruiting as well? [00:27:22] Jason: Yeah, we help property managers with the hiring and recruit recruiting piece. 'cause if you get that wrong, that's a $10,000 minimum mistake. Minimum. And plus the opportunity cost of the money that you're just not going to get because they didn't do as good of a job. And I've seen it at the multimillion dollar level, most business owners just doing Russian roulette in hiring until they finally get a good team after a decade,  [00:27:41] Nick: I've been guilty of that myself.  [00:27:42] Jason: So me too. Yeah we're the summation of our mistakes when it comes to success. Super cool to have you here on the show. What should property managers know about the College Hunks Hauling Junk? How could that benefit  [00:27:54] Nick: them? [00:27:54] Yeah. A lot of people don't realize that our college hunks business is nationwide. We have almost 300 franchise owners in that business. We're in about 40 States. And so that business is local moving as well as we call bulk trash removal. So it's not just homeowners that we're moving. [00:28:10] It's not college campuses that we're moving, but we're moving anybody that's moving from point A to point B, whether that's a business, an apartment, a resident, a homeowner. And everything in between and we also do junk removal or bulk trash removal. So we're really the only one stop solution that can do both the move and the bulk removal as one brand, one company. [00:28:30] And I think it's important for apartments and multifamily in general, because you want to know that the individuals and the companies that are coming onto your property are insured, have a reputable, accountable brand behind them. And so we've started to see a lot of traction with apartment partnerships where we've become this preferred mover for them to recommend to the residents in the moving leasing packets. So they know that, the trucks are going to be branded. The property is going to be protected. The elevators or stairways are going to be, wraps that are not damaged. The individuals are going to be properly insured, so there's no injury, no injuries, properly trained. [00:29:09] We're not going to be blocking resident cars with the moving van, which, makes everybody upset. We've got a whole national platform and local platform for partnering with property managers. To be their go to solution for moving the residents in and out as well as the tenant leave behind the bulk trash removal, clearing out, for the turns. [00:29:28] And whether that's, corporate removal or just furniture removal, we have a partnership with goodwill where we can donate anything it's reusable. So I think that's something that maybe a lot of property managers don't realize is our College Hunks Hauling Junk and moving business is a great resource for property management in general. [00:29:44] Sarah: That's awesome. That was one of the things that was so frustrating is just waiting on the junk removal. Like it's finally vacant. Go! And sometimes they're like, "yeah, I'm a week out."  [00:29:55] Nick: Yeah. And we can do same day, next day. And look, there's going to be a wide range of prices on junk removal. I know that, there's a budget consciousness and property management. [00:30:03] I get that. Anyone with the truck can come and claim to do junk removal, but he might not answer the phone the next time you call him, or he might be a week out or he might say he's coming and not come. We've got a national call center, a national booking platform, a national accounts program. [00:30:18] So we've got responsiveness and that's something else again for your listeners. Nine out of 10 service companies don't even answer the phone. And so it's something as simple as just making sure the phone gets answered when people call if you've got a property management company, making sure your phone, you have somebody, even if it's an outsourced third party, answers the phone when your residents call or answers the ticket when, the client calls. That goes a long way. It's simple and often overlooked, but it gets back to what we talked about earlier about just being able to out execute what other people aren't doing.  [00:30:48] Jason: Yeah. That's the foundation of decent customer service is accuracy and availability, according to the Gallup polls customer satisfaction pyramid that they had in one of their books. [00:30:59] And if you're perfectly accurate and perfectly available. They don't notice you like that's just default. They just assume that should be done. So it's a math that it's partnership and then advice. And so when you get to that level where you're giving advice, like you had mentioned, like helping them with their fees and helping them figure out how to make money off of this and get the NOI, that's where you're at an exceptional level is when you get to that peak of partnership and then advice. [00:31:25] Nick, this has been a really cool, appreciate you coming here on the show. How can people get connected to College Hunks Hauling Junk and a Trash Butler?  [00:31:36] Nick: So the best way for Trash Butler, really simple, TrashButler. com and for our College Hunks hauling junk and moving business, really simple, CollegeHunks. com. So TrashButler. com, CollegeHunks. com, that's for the doorstep trash and recycling amenity as well as the moving and junk removal partnership opportunity and and look, I appreciate you having me on. I think it's awesome what you're doing to help, empower and motivate and inspire and elevate the property management industry because it's a great industry. And it's one that is right for people to continue to elevate and improve upon.  [00:32:07] Jason: Awesome. Thanks, Nick. Appreciate you being here on the DoorGrow show.  [00:32:10] Nick: Thank you.  [00:32:12] Jason: Thanks for being here. All right. So if you're a property management business owner, you're wanting to grow and scale your business. [00:32:18] Reach out to us. You can check us out at DoorGrow. com or go to join our community and hang out with a bunch of property management entrepreneurs and find out if we're legit and see what everybody else is doing. Go to DoorGrow club. com, and hopefully we're talking and working together soon. Bye everyone. [00:32:36] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:33:03] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

Get ready for part two of our Retirement Cash Flow series! This time, we're diving into the income side of the equation. In our first two episodes, we tackled the ins and outs of your expenses in retirement. Now, it's all about understanding the crucial role of income analysis. We'll uncover the secrets of guaranteed income versus the uncertain stuff and shed light on the consequences of retiring without a clear income plan. Don't worry if you're feeling lost - we've got your back with practical solutions and expert guidance. Tune in and take charge of your retirement cash flow!   Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Welcome into this week's edition of the podcast. It's Retirement Planning - Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth, back with me again to talk about mastering retirement cash flow. So we're going to dive into the income side of the equation here a little bit on these things that we need to discuss, and go through this crucial role of income analysis. And we'll talk about, hopefully, some ways to highlight some points to think about when it comes to making sure you've got that cash flow taken care of. Because clearly, we've got to have income in retirement when we're no longer getting those paychecks. So that's on the docket this week on the show. Once again, guys, thanks for being here. John, what's going on buddy? John: Oh, not too much. Just starting to get this Florida heat hitting me and we're only about a month into it, but I think I'm already tired of it. Mark: Already tired of it? Yeah, you got a ways to go if that's the case. What about you, Nick? How are you doing, my friend? I know you're doing a little moving. Moving's always fun, right? You getting that all worked out? Nick: Yeah, yeah. Well, luckily the move wasn't too bad, but pretty much settled in and I got a little bit of break from the heat in July after going up north for a little bit, like I tend to do during the summer. Mark: Oh, yeah. Although it's been hot everywhere. It was probably hot up there too, wasn't it? Nick: It was, it was. But it was, for sure, cooler and the humidity less. Mark: Yeah. That's the kicker. Yeah. Nick: We definitely had some warm days for sure, but I do enjoy being able to go on the fresh water up there, because I don't do fresh water in Florida. And it's not like I go to the beach that much anyways, but the water at the beaches here right now is just insanely hot. It's not even worth going in. Mark: It's like you get in the bathtub. Nick: Yeah, yeah. It's ridiculous. Mark: You think, "The ocean! I'm going to cool off." No, you're not. But yeah, well, good. I'm glad you guys are doing all right. So let's get in and talk about this cash flow thing here a little bit. Why is understanding income, guys, in retirement critical for the stability of your financial strategy, and what could happen if you don't have that clear picture? Nick: Yeah, so I was actually having a conversation with a client earlier today and really kind of emphasizing ... We emphasize this with our clients quite a bit, that it's super important to have income. Obviously, income is king in retirement, but not completely in lieu of liquidity, of having other funds. So this one client had good direct income sources and then had a decision to make on a pension, on whether to lump sum, roll over or take it as an income. And because of the overall financial strategy, for her it made sense to take lump sum, roll it over into an IRA. And that would kind of give her the balance of having assets that she can dip into, versus just a stream of income that would limit her on other things. Creating that balance is different for every single person, but we really try to emphasize trying to make sure that you understand the different forms of income, and balancing that with making sure that you have access and accounts that are invested, but are also liquid. Mark: Yeah, okay. I mean, that makes sense, clearly. And so, when we're thinking about the stability of income streams, John, what are some examples of different sources? I mean, there's some that are pretty obvious, but we want to make sure we have more than just one, clearly. So what are some of the things to think about? John: Yeah. You definitely want to analyze where the money's coming from. I know the last podcast, we were talking about expenses, and that's really where you start, is getting to understand, "Hey, how much am I spending?" And the next step is, okay, now that I'm spending this, where's my income coming from to cover those expenses? And you want to make a clear picture of understanding what your income sources are, because the biggest risk going into retirement is making sure you do not outlive your money. And part of that is understanding, "Okay, where is my income coming from? And how do I make sure that I maintain my lifestyle without running out at age 80 years old, and now all of a sudden I'm looking to get a job at 80." Mark: Yeah, nobody wants to do that. So we're talking pensions, right? IRAs, 401(k)s, social security, annuities, so on and so forth, things like that. Is it advisable to try to rely more heavily on one versus the other? And I think for many years, John, people would kind of say, "Well, social security's going to make up half or more", but I don't know that that's the reliable source we want to go with anymore. What do you think? John: Definitely not, no. Especially with ... Not that anyone's done this yet, but a lot of talk of updating the social security program, cuts and things like that. You definitely want a good balance of retirement income sources, because if, let's say, there was an update to social security, you'd want to have something in your back pocket where you can say, "Okay, that's okay, that's not going to affect me too much. I can pull from this income source." Nick: And things like understanding ... One of the things that we walk people through as far as if they're taking distributions from their retirement accounts, as they're leading up to retirement, going over the whole concept of a safe withdrawal rate, being around 4%, maybe 4.5%. Rates are a little bit higher, but we don't know how long they'll stay that way. That helps people get a little bit of a grasp of how much money they can take from their investments safely, and look to make sure that any other sources kind of fill in the gap. Mark: Let's talk a little bit about some of those guaranteed sources versus non-guaranteed, Nick, I'll let you kick this off for a second here. What is a guaranteed income and what's the difference between that versus non-guaranteed? Nick: Sure. The way that we would look at something such as the term "guaranteed income", although there are issues with social security for the most part, we look at that as a guaranteed income source. That may be something that we toggle down as far as the percentage that they would receive, but we would look at that as a guaranteed income source. If they implemented an annuity strategy, dependent upon the type of strategy that it is, that could be considered a guaranteed income source. That would be something. It's always important to point out to them that, although the history is pretty strong for insurance companies, when it's an annuity, the guarantee is provided by the insurance company itself. So that's something that's important to know. Pension plans are usually considered pretty safe and a guaranteed source of income. Mark: Yeah. I mean, non-guaranteed is going to be ... I mean, when we think about a normal 401(k), right, where we're just pumping money away, but unfortunately, if you've got it weighted in the market or things of that nature, it's not necessarily guaranteed. If you're risking it, by having exposure to the markets, then that's where that non-guarantee comes from. Correct? Nick: Correct. Yeah. For example, the conversation I had earlier with the client as far as ... Because the question that she had was exactly that. Like, "Well, hey, if I do this lump sum rollover, is that guaranteed like the pension is?" And of course the answer is no. But I also did kind of point out to her, and this was somebody that doesn't have a spouse but has kids, that, hey, this single life option is guaranteed for your life. But if you pass away within five years, you haven't even gotten close to the lump sum balance and nothing would pass onto your children. So that's something else that can come into play, where the word "guarantee" can be tricky, because it can guarantee certain aspects, but not others. Mark: Right, yeah. And so John, listeners have probably heard of things like paycheck versus playcheck, right? So if we're talking about explaining, and as you mentioned, we did some expenses on the last show. If you can walk through some of the ways that we might do that. I would think that we would want to try to use our guaranteed income sources to cover, which would be our paychecks, to cover all the have-to-haves in life. And then we use the non-guaranteed, possibly the playcheck side, as the fun items. I guess every situation is different, but is that a simple way to break that down? John: Yeah. So your paycheck would be associated with your fixed expenses, the things you need. Your necessities, things that you really need to make sure that are covered. Taxes, groceries, things like that, that you cannot do without. Mark: Rent. Electricity. John: Yeah, exactly. Your playcheck is obviously, as you mentioned, discretionary income, your wants. Let's put it that way. And what we do when we're doing the plan, and everyone's situation's different of course, but we'll have a lot of people that, let's say they're very conservative and they just say, "Hey, I want to make sure that my paycheck items are covered on a guaranteed basis. That no matter what, I want to make sure I have this covered, so I stress a little bit less about what's going on with the markets." And we can adjust the plan to basically make sure that happens for them. And then what we end up doing is, anything that's tied to fluctuation, whether it's the market or anything else, or rents, then it'll be the playcheck scenario where, "Okay, this is going to cover it." And let's say where that comes into play is, if a year is down in the market or interest rates drop, well, all right. Maybe that specific individual might not do as much in discretionary spending in that given year. Mark: Yeah. And Nick, maybe depending on how you've saved for life or how your setup is, maybe you have a pension or not, there's a possibility that you could have your paycheck cover everything that you need in retirement, or most of it, and you're really just using those accounts that you've built up, your 401(k) or your IRA or something, as something to leave to heirs. So I mean, there's lots of options out there, lots of strategies. It just really comes back to, what have you done and what kind of a saver you been, and so on and so forth. Nick: Yeah, that's absolutely correct. And for clients that we have that did retire with maybe a substantial pension, and they've been a really good saver, and they don't really dip into those investments, we definitely put together ... And their main objective is to leave money, we can work together and put together strategies to try to do that as efficiently as possible and that sort of thing. Mark: Yeah, because a lot of people will say, with RMDs for example. I mean, I can't count on one hand or both hands how many advisors I talk to that have clients saying, "Yeah, I got to take this money out for the RMD and I don't need it. What am I supposed to do with it?" But you have to do it, right? Nick: Exactly. So it's like you got to take that hit from a tax perspective, but the money could always be reinvested, it can go into a different sort of investment vehicle. There's a way to continue to have it grow. Some people will use RMDs to fund a permanent life insurance policy, to kind of shift money from a taxable inheritance to a tax-free inheritance, that sort of thing. So it just kind of depends upon, just like anything else, the overall situation and the factors that are specific to their plan. Mark: Gotcha. Well, John, let's finish off with this. So, any strategies for maximizing, maybe some non-guaranteed income? Because we often think about, or hear, John, stuff like, "Hey, get your social security maximized, run a social security analysis, make sure that you're getting all that you can there." But how do we do something similar, I suppose, in the non-guaranteed space? John: Yeah. So this will be where, I'll give you a scenario. If we're doing a plan for somebody and all they have is social security and there's no other guaranteed income, and let's just assume this person's conservative, and they have a decent nest egg where we could look at it and say, "Okay, what we could do is, from the investment portfolio, whether that's a 401(k) or IRA or a Roth IRA, whatever it is, we could pull some money out of there, put it into one of these annuity companies that provide a guaranteed income", and of course, disclosure based on their paying ability. Mark: Sure. John: And from that we can say, "Okay, here's your social security. And based on the plan, we feel that together we come up with this number, you should have x amount of guaranteed income on top of social security." And we can basically take a chunk out of the investment portfolio and put it into one of these annuity products to give, in essence, some guaranteed income. And what that typically does, it'll provide the person with a little bit of peace of mind where they say, "Hey", back to that scenario of paycheck and playcheck, "I know that my paycheck items are now covered and I feel a little bit more secure about what's happening." Mark: You're kind of creating your own pension. John: Exactly. Mark: Yeah. Okay. And again, for some folks, Nick, that's where the strategy might play off. Because some people, obviously, especially when you think about the annuity term, some people are game to learn, some people are very hesitant because they've heard whatever it is that they hear. But it could be an option for folks who don't have a lot of other resources to tap into, especially if you're going to do something like a fixed index where you're going to tie it to an indices. And that way you're kind of experiencing some of the upside, but you're also having some of that protection on the downside, so that it's not quite as non-guaranteed as it could have been if you just left it straight in the market. Is that fair, is that accurate? Nick: Yeah, annuities are always a subject that can be ... Mark: It's a hot topic. Nick: Maybe volatile, yeah, hot topic sort of thing. And the way that we tend to approach the subject is, there are so many different options when it comes to annuities. There's kind of dividing up the decision-making process between strategy and then implementation. So what I mean by that is, oftentimes, integrating in an annuity strategy for somebody can make sense to really dovetail into what John talked about. "Hey, we've got an income gap that's needed of maybe $15,000 to $20,000 a year, and hey, we can carve out this amount of money and cover that." And then we'll see issues arise in the implementation, where the advisor that they had worked with uses a product that is maybe super expensive or the guarantees are not good, or it's been misunderstood or mis-sold, or the sales charge period's a really, really long time. So the implementation is poor, and that oftentimes sets off the red flags and that sort of thing. So just like anything else, we would look at it and we tell people upfront, "Hey, this might be a strategy that makes sense for you, it may not. We think our job is to explain to you how it works so that you understand it, so that you can say yes or no. And then we move forward with whatever you feel comfortable with." Mark: Yeah, so sometimes you may have to create some alternate sources using life insurance products or different things that are out there. But again, each situation's going to be different, so you want to identify what kind of income sources you need and then where you're going to be getting them from. So if you need some help, as always, make sure you're talking with a qualified professional, like John and Nick, before you take any action on anything you hear from our show or any other show. You always want to see how it's going to relate to your unique situation. Obviously, we're all affected by the same kind of things; we're going to have expenses in retirement, we're going to need income in retirement. But how you break that down and how you're able to utilize the things that you've done through your life, are going to be different from person to person. So, get yourself onto the calendar, have a conversation with John and Nick at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. That's where you can find them online. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, or Spotify, whichever podcasting platform app you like to use. Guys, thanks for hanging out. As always, I appreciate your time. For John and Nick, I'm your host, Mark, and we'll catch you next time here on Retirement Planning - Redefined.

Welcome to another episode of Integrated You Radio with Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick. In today's thought-provoking discussion, the hosts delve into a pressing and complex topic that many people have been witnessing and experiencing lately—sudden deaths that are seemingly inexplicable. They shed light on the connections between societal stressors, toxic environments, and the culmination of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual burdens. The hosts emphasize the interplay of stress, fear, and grief in the wake of events like the pandemic, which have led to significant physiological changes, including the overwhelming release of stress hormones. By exploring various factors such as toxicity, chronic stress, and lack of critical thinking in the modern world, they offer a perspective on the underlying causes behind these sudden and seemingly unexplained deaths, urging listeners to regain control of their health and well-being. Tune in to the full episode to learn more! Interested in working with Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole at Integrative You? Text 732.913.0009 to book a complimentary consult call OR learn more here: https://bit.ly/IWGCoaching Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us!  This is why we are dedicated to helping other practitioners uplevel their clinical + business excellence and change lives. Join Limitless Healthprenuer to start boldly disrupting this industry together. https://bit.ly/Limitlesshealthprenuer What you'll learn: Sudden Deaths Linked to Stress: Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick discuss sudden deaths, linking them to intense stress, fear, and grief from events like the pandemic. Toxicity's Impact: They highlight the wide-ranging impact of environmental and mental toxicity on health, stressing that toxicity can push the body to its limits. Holistic Health Matters: The hosts underscore the importance of community, purpose, and nature for true health, advocating for comprehensive testing and addressing underlying issues. Challenge Normalization: They urge listeners to question the normalization of symptoms, advocating critical thinking and reconnecting with nature. Preventive Focus: Dr. Nicole and Dr. Nick emphasize prevention, urging proactive steps to combat stressors and toxicities for improved well-being. Quotes:  “When you take the combination of fear, grief loss, that is the ultimate assault on our neurology and physiology. It's changing everything. It's catapulting our stress hormones to be off the charts." - Dr. Nick "It's all of the stress that's getting people to die suddenly."  - Dr. Nicole Sources & Studies: Paris Green/Arsenic: https://serc.carleton.edu/woburn/issues/pesticides.html NJ Hazardous Substances for Copper Acetoarsenite https://www.nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/0529.pdf Arsenic and Cognitive Decline: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4026128/ Pineal and Arsenic: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=909 Chlorpyrifos and 2,4-D https://medium.com/@wgarris/could-the-golf-course-green-be-poisoning-you-and-your-child-5646511965c7 NJ Hazardous of chlorpyrifos: https://www.nj.gov/health/eoh/rtkweb/documents/fs/0426.pdf Fertilizers: 2,4-d https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/06/pesticides-golf-courses-health-problems Pesticide Dangers are worse in US: https://beyondpesticides.org/dailynewsblog/2023/03/pesticide-dangers-at-golf-courses-much-higher-in-the-us-than-europe-study-finds/

In this episode, we'll explore many of the expenses in your life that might drastically change (one way or another) in retirement. We'll break those expenses down further to see which ones are the top priorities and analyze some of the other factors that impact your cash flow in retirement. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Marc: Welcome back to the podcast. It's Retirement Planning-Redefined, with John and Nick here with me to talk investing, finance, retirement, and mastering retirement cashflow, part one, is going to be the topic today. We're understanding just changing expenses. We're going to break this into really a two-parter here, obviously, by calling it part one. And we'll do a little more focus on some of the other things on the next session. But for today, I want to explore some of the expenses in life and how they just change as we're moving some things ... as we're moving from working into retirement. And things you guys see with your clients and how you work through that process for them. So that's the topic today. Let's get into it. John, first of all, how are you doing, buddy?   John: I'm doing all right. Getting ready for the summertime here.   Marc: If it happens. I don't know what's going on in the south. I'm in North Carolina, and we've had one 90 degree day, and it's almost July. Totally unusual for us, so it's very, very weird.   Nick: Oh, it's hot here.   Marc: Yeah. It's like two states seem to be in a weird spot. I don't know what's going on with the middle of the south here. It's very strange this year. But Nick, I heard you chime in. How are you, my friend?   Nick: Doing pretty good.   Marc: Yeah. So you guys are sweltering, is that what you're saying?   Nick: It's definitely hot, yeah.   Marc: Well, kick a little this way because I don't know what's going on. It should be warmer here than it has been. So, very weird.   Nick: Well, I'll trade.   Marc: Okay. All right. Yeah. Like today, it's ... well, we're getting a ton of rain. Today, taping this podcast, it's 72 for the high, and tonight's overnight low is 58. That doesn't happen usually in North Carolina in late July or late June.   Nick: Yeah. That is pretty surprising. That's cool for North Carolina.   Marc: Very, very weird. So I don't know, Mother Nature is off her meds, I guess. But what can you do? So let's get into this conversation, guys, about changing cash flow, before I keep going down that tangent. I've got a few parts here I want to run through. What are some of the expenses that might drastically change one way or the other, either to saving us money or to costing us more money? Whichever way you guys want to take this, whatever you've seen with your clients. But let's start it off with housing. I think housing is probably the number one expense in retirement. Correct me if I'm wrong there, but what do you think?   Nick: Yeah. I would say for a lot of people that maintain a mortgage past retirement, it's definitely a significant monthly expense. One thing that we are seeing here with the tick up in interest rates over the last 12 months, we had had conversations with multiple clients from 2018 through 2021 about taking advantage of low interest rates and keeping their mortgage and that sort of thing. And for a lot of people, that makes them feel uncomfortable. But to a person, everyone that we've talked to that has done that, now that rates are where they are, they've been pretty happy about that decision and being able to take advantage and lock in those low rates. But for those people that just naturally, with the schedule mortgage that they had, and ended up paying off the mortgage by the time they retired, that drop in expenses is usually a big help. I would say one thing that jumps out that's a reminder that we use for people is ... especially because the homeowner's insurance market here has now gone completely insane. Taxes and insurance don't go away. So I can't tell you how many times we've had a conversation where maybe somebody had a mortgage that was $3,000 a month, and they're like, well, once I retire, that 3,000 a month is going to go away. And we point out, well, hey, about half of that is. The rest of it's for taxes and insurance. So sometimes that drop in expense isn't quite as much as they thought it was going to be.   Marc: Gotcha. Yeah. And it's easy to do, even with downsizing, because the market's been high. So it's not always just lowering things just to go to that downsizing piece. John, what's your thoughts there?   John: Yeah, I would say the downsizing is a big part of it. Not only if you downsize, you might be able to get some equity out of your house there. So if you downsize, buy a two or $300,000 house, you get some cash that you could do something with. But then you start looking at smaller house, less homeowners insurance, less maintenance costs, things like that, it could really be a pretty significant savings. Especially, as Nick mentioned here, with homeowners insurance. I think mine went up like 60 or 70% in a year, which was ... ... I've heard a lot of people. At first, I thought it was just me. And then I talked to some clients, friends, family, and it seemed across the board that it just shot up.   Marc: That's hefty.   Nick: Yeah, there's a lot people that are falling between five and $10,000 a year now. For homeowners insurance down here, it's gone just wild.   Marc: Well, I imagine the big hurricane added a lot to that, right? That's probably part of it. From last year.   Nick: Yeah, yeah.   Marc: Yeah, for sure. Insurance companies are like, we got to recoup some money. How are we going to do that? 60% hikes. All right, no more work stuff. Category two on the changing in expenses. I think we probably assume for the most part that no more work stuff means we're going to save a little bit of money.   John: Yeah. So this is something that when we do planning, we definitely hit on. We have different categories of current expenses and then retirement expenses, and then we actually go one further and we're looking at advanced age expenses. But this is one where you're not commuting anymore, or at least to work. So depending on what your commute was, you could be saving quite a bit on gas, car maintenance expenses, things like that. And then the big one, I know when Nick and I worked in West Shore, was the lunch expense. Where it's like every time for lunch it's like, all right, where are we going? A good excuse to get out of the office and just get a change of scenery, you find you're going out to lunch every day. That does tend to add up quite a bit.   Marc: Oh, yeah. You can spend some dough that way, for sure. So I think in this category, we feel like ... and this one I think maybe drives a lot of people feeling like, oh, I'm going to spend less money in retirement. Right, Nick? I mean, this is one of those things. Well, I'm not doing all those things now, so I'm going to be saving money. But you're also doing more stuff because you don't have to go to work, so you may not save as much as you think.   Nick: Yeah. I would also say too, that this post-COVID work from home shift has prepared a lot more people to have a better idea of the expenses that have changed. We do have a fair amount of clients that used to commute, and no longer do. And so they've gotten a peek into what that looks like. And people are creatures of habit. Inevitably, they develop new things that they do, and usually there's other expenses that replace previous ones, but-   Marc: There's always something, right?   Nick: Yeah. But oftentimes, there are reasonable reductions in some of those work-related expenses.   Marc: Okay. Let's go to healthcare. This one here, this one to me seems like this is not going to be going into the positive. This is not going to be putting money back in our pocket. More than likely, this is going to cost us more.   Nick: Yeah. I mean, for a big chunk of people, especially if they work at a company that has pretty good health benefits, and maybe they haven't had their kids on their plan for a while, so it's just them and a spouse or them solo. Oftentimes, the shift to what we budget for post-age 65 Medicare-related premiums, oftentimes it goes up for people. So we typically budget about $4,000 a year, and we have a more aggressive inflation number that we use on that. Oftentimes, people come in less than that, especially with a high deductible plan, those sorts of things. I just had this conversation the other day with someone, where they were going to have a pretty substantial jump. And they had worked for the same company for a long time, didn't realize-   Marc: You mean a jump in the premiums?   Nick: Yes. Yep. They had worked for the same company for a long time. It was big company and had really good health benefits, and premiums were going to go up. So it can be a little surprising that way. If it's somebody that's shifting more from the perspective of, kids recently got off their plan and they're cutting back on ... maybe went from a regular health plan to a high deductible, those sorts of things. It can be a drop. But honestly, I see it more neutral or go up than I see it go down.   Marc: Yeah, definitely. John, taxes, let me hit you with this one. This is a big misnomer that's been around for years. That when we get to retirement, our taxes are just generally lower because we're not getting a paycheck, we're not making as much. But more times than not, eight out of 10 times people are not in a lower tax bracket.   John: No. Typically, they tend to be in the same, if not, maybe a little bit lower. Because what you're really trying to do when you do planning is you want to keep the person's income where it was while they were working.   Marc: Right. You're trying to fill in the ... you're shortening the short shortfall. You're pulling from our assets to make up the shortfall based on Social Security or if you have a pension or whatever those kinds of things are. So you're trying to keep the numbers basically the same, correct?   John: Exactly, yeah. So we are trying to keep the numbers the same. And we find a lot of people ... I would say we find the majority of people have most of their money in pre-tax accounts. So what you'll find is when you're pulling out of the pre-tax accounts, you're paying taxes on it. So this is really important when it comes to planning, where you ... and we harp on this constantly. It's a matter of setting yourself up to adjust. So maybe if you have some tax-free money, some after-tax dollars in some other accounts, you can really try to eliminate ... or not eliminate. But try to lower what your taxes are going into retirement. And I'll say one thing that happens quite often with clients, and this is only maybe a year or two that we see in retirement, is they just have a couple of years of just massive expenses where ... we just had someone that's purchasing a second home and they need to pull out of their retirement account. And all of a sudden, it's like in that given year, that's going to be a big tax hit. Or it's a health expense. Or I've had other ones where they want to do a remodel on their house and it's like, well, I got to pull money out of my account. And everything is pre-taxed, so they really get ... we see a significant increase in their taxes in those years.   Marc: Yeah. And that's why we want to get tax efficient, if we can. And maybe that's worth looking at, trying to maybe move some money so we don't have that tax time bomb sitting there waiting on us. Some different things. And speaking of actually that, Nick, let's go to the next one here because you can chime in, it fits well with that. Is one of the biggest things we're doing is pumping money, hopefully, especially the last 10 years of working, into our retirement account. Maybe that 401K that John was just talking about. And therefore we're growing those dollars. And that is an expense that goes away once we stop working, we're no longer feeding that.   Nick: Yeah. That deferral is usually the lowest hanging fruit of expenses or cash flow going down.   Marc: Money back in our pocket, kind of thing, right?   Nick: Yeah, exactly. That outflow is usually the biggest drop, especially if it's ... if you're talking a couple that is essentially, maybe they're both maxing out or pretty close to maxing out, they're saving around 25,000. That's $50,000 a year. Granted, that's the money that they're used to living on anyways.   Marc: Yeah. Because we weren't seeing that. When we're working, it's going straight to the paycheck ... or straight to the 401, for example. But now that we're not working, we also don't have the paycheck. So to me, is it truly a savings or is it a wash, because you weren't seeing it before either? You know what I mean?   Nick: Yeah. I think for a lot of people it's a wash. Realistically, in the day-to-day setting and from a lifestyle perspective, it tends to be a bit of a wash.   Marc: Okay. Yeah.   Nick: Yeah, it's more of an on-paper reduction, more than anything.   Marc: Makes sense.   Nick: And in theory, when you start ... if you want to nitpick a little bit. The money that you defer into those plans, you still pay payroll taxes on it. So there's a little bit of a savings there. So that's something that can factor in. And one of the changes that fits in with both the tax and retirement things is a lot of times at that point in time, they're no longer claiming kids. Maybe the mortgage is paid off. So from a deduction perspective, there's also a change as well from the standpoint of what they're able to deduct versus what they can deduct in retirement.   Marc: Okay. And so what we're doing is we're talking about these categories here on understanding how our expenses are going to change, whether it's to the plus or to the minus. And then we'll talk a little bit more later on about how that's going to affect us in our overall expenses and some things to cover in ways to be more efficient in that. So let's continue on with a couple more categories here and then we'll wrap it up for this podcast. So we went through housing, work stuff, healthcare, taxes, the retirement savings account when we're no longer feeding the 401 animal. John, so you mentioned earlier travel and leisure, when you were talking about there's different things we're going to spend money on. So if every Saturday is the day I spend the most money, well, guess what retirement is?   John: Every day seems like it's a Saturday.   Marc: It's a bunch of Saturdays, right?   John: Yep.   Marc: It's Groundhog Day.   John: The more time you have, you find yourself trying to fill the gap of what to do. And we see a lot of people that are, if they're like golfing, they tend to be golfing a little bit more. Or fishing or whatever it might be. I'll see-   Marc: But that's the point, right? That's the point of retirement. It's what we're striving for. But I think the scary part is, is if we haven't budgeted for how much we're ... the activity. That's when we can maybe shortfall ourselves.   John: Exactly. Yeah. That's where it's important where you're doing a cashflow analysis for retirement. Like I said, we typically look at retirement expenses. We'll look at what the person does for hobbies and try to estimate, okay, this is what we can expect. And you always want to go over the amount, you never want to go under.   Marc: I was going to ask you that. Yeah. You want to-   John: Yeah, you always want to go over, because-   Marc: ... inflate it a little bit.   John: Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you this ... and my wife doesn't listen to the podcast. When she's at home more, I start to notice my Amazon bill goes up and packages end up at the door. So when there's a lot more downtime, you tend to say, okay, what's out there? Oh, let me go run to the store. Let me go do this real quick. And all those things add up to just added expenses, which fine-   Marc: Yeah. Well, sitting on the computer or the phone, you're just like, I'm bored, I'm not doing anything. Next thing you know, you're on some sort of shopping site because you're like, I was thinking about this or that, or a new set of golf clubs. Right, it's easy to do.   John: Home projects because Pinterest is giving you all these different ideas that you should be doing with your home. So yeah, all those things are up.   Nick: All right, John. This is not a therapy session.   Marc: No, but I mean he's right, though. I mean, it totally ... and people do that.   John: So Marc, that's coming from the single guy right now.   Marc: Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. And you mentioned, you were talking about projects, DIY projects or Pinterest. We're right in the middle of rebuilding ... I'm building a billiards room here next to my office for the pool table. And it's just, scope-creep has taken over. It's like, oh, I can ... I factored in the budget. I'm like, I could do it for this amount of money. And I'm way over budget. And that's, again, if you're retired ... I'm still working. But if I was retired, that could be a real problem. If I let scope-creep get in there and I'm spending 25% more than I budgeted for this project, that could be an issue. So you want to make sure that you are inflating it, to your point. Puff those numbers up a little bit, just to be on the safe side.   Nick: Oh yeah, big time. I don't think I've seen anybody come in under budget on anything in the last three years.   Marc: Yeah. And that's with professionals, let alone doing it yourself, right?   Nick: For sure.   Marc: Okay. So that's travel and leisure. So the last one here, last category, insurance. Many people, guys, walk into retirement saying, well, I don't need insurance anymore. That's also that old standard, as far as the financial services world. Well, who needs ... why do you need insurance if your kids are grown and you don't have to replace your income because you're not worried about sending them to school. Or all that kind of stuff that you guys have heard probably a million times.   Nick: Yeah. So we'll see ... one of the most common insurances that go away, whether it's at retirement or early in retirement, is life insurance. So we obviously emphasize the fact that a death early on in retirement is the bigger risk, especially if there's outstanding debt, those sorts of things, versus later on in retirement. So sometimes we'll have people that, maybe they've got three to five years left on their term policy and the premiums aren't prohibitive. And we'll just them keep the coverage because there's still a mortgage, or just that additional money if something were to happen would be a big boost to the surviving spouse. But disability definitely goes away because disability insurance, by definition ensures your ability to work. So if you're not working, then you're not insuring anything. So that's something that drops. And then some of these supplemental policies that maybe were provided by the employer, aren't portable and you can't take them with you anyway. So some of those things will drop off. So that's definitely something that can be adjusted and adapted to reduce some of the costs.   Marc: Well, I think for every situation, insurance is one of those questions, John, that goes either way. Some people may not, when you guys are developing and looking through the plan, maybe insurance isn't needed. But then again, maybe it is. Or maybe they're using an insurance policy for the cash value policy side of things or whatever. So this one is one I think could go either direction.   John: It definitely could go either way, it really depends on the individual. And like we were just talking about here, each person, whatever is important to them will dictate whether your insurance is going to be going up or down. That's really what it comes down to is, each individual, what they value and what they want to protect with insurance and what they're ... oh, okay. I'm okay without it.   Marc: Well, and that's a good way to think about what we're going to get into for the next podcast, is really assessing must-haves, nice-to-haves, things of that nature. And then how other aspects in the financial services world could affect those categories we just ran down. So we're going to wrap it up this week. So again, these are just the expenses categories, and some major ones here to think about how they may change to the plus or to the minus with our cash flow in retirement. And we'll be back next week with the second half of this conversation. So do yourself a favor, if you haven't done so yet. Reach out to the team if you don't have a strategy or a plan in place, and get started with a consultation and a conversation for yourself. You can find the guys at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com, where you can get started today on a strategy for yourself. Reach out to John and Nick there. And guys, thanks for hanging out. I'll see you next week ... well, in two weeks on the podcast. Nick, have a good one.   Nick: See you.   Marc: All right, John. Thanks, buddy.   John: Sure.   Marc: And I'll catch you later. We'll see you guys here on retirement Planning-Redefined, with John and Nick.

Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and sci-fi producer, Ryan T. Husk, review Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 1 episode 24, "Conspiracy."Special Guest: Director James L. Conway!Producer: Ryan T. Husk.Audio Engineer: Scott Jensen.Executive Producers: Dr. Susan V. Gruner & Jason Okun.Associate Producers: Homer Frizzell, Dr. Ann Marie Segal, Eve England, Yvette Blackmon-Tom, TJ Jackson-Bey, Bill Victor Arucan, Titus Mohler, Darlena Marie Blander, Dr. Mohamed Noor, Tierney C. Dieckmann, Anna Post, Rex A. Wood, Anil O. Polat, Joe Balsarotti, Mike Gu, Dr. Stephanie Baker, Dequeue, Neal Akasaka, Justine Norton-Kertson, Carrie Schwent, Faith Howell, Edward Foltz AKA Crewman guy, Mai, Live From Tokyo, Matt Boardman, Chris McGee, Justin Weir, Jake Barrett, Jane Jorgensen, Henry Unger, Jed Thompson, Allyson Leach-Heid, Julie Manasfi & Nicki T.Special Thanks to Malissa Longo.Every week, we rewatch an episode of The Next Generation, relive and review it. Join us!Rewatch TNG every week and get in on the discussion - we'd love to have you!If you enjoy our content please leave us a five star rating and comment/review.Support and join the community here:https://www.patreon.com/The7thRuleWatch the episodes with full video here:https://www.youtube.com/c/The7thRuleSocial media:https://twitter.com/7thRulehttps://www.facebook.com/The7thRule/https://www.facebook.com/groups/The7thRuleGet cool T7R merchandise here:https://the-7th-rule.creator-spring.com/Malissa Longo creates fun and functional Star Trek art at:https://theintrovertedrepublic.com/Get radical Trek swag at Ryan's online store here: https://star-trek-and-chill.myshopify.com/We continue The 7th Rule journey without our friend, our brother, Aron Eisenberg.He is still with us in spirit, in stories, in laughter, and in memories, and the show must go on.

Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and sci-fi producer, Ryan T. Husk, review and react to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 2 episode 3, "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow."Special Guest: Star Trek Strange New Worlds Director, Amanda Row.Producer: Ryan T. Husk.Audio Engineer: Scott Jensen.Executive Producers: Dr. Susan V. Gruner & Jason Okun.Associate Producers: Homer Frizzell, Dr. Ann Marie Segal, Eve England, Yvette Blackmon-Tom, TJ Jackson-Bey, Bill Victor Arucan, Titus Mohler, Darlena Marie Blander, Dr. Mohamed Noor, Tierney C. Dieckmann, Anna Post, Rex A. Wood, Anil O. Polat, Joe Balsarotti, Mike Gu, Dr. Stephanie Baker, Dequeue, Neal Akasaka, Justine Norton-Kertson, Carrie Schwent, Faith Howell, Edward Foltz AKA Crewman guy, Mai, Live From Tokyo, Matt Boardman, Chris McGee, Justin Weir, Jake Barrett, Jane Jorgensen, Henry Unger, Jed Thompson, Allyson Leach-Heid, Julie Manasfi & Nicki T.Special Thanks to Malissa Longo!Every week, we watch an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and review it. Join us! Watch every week and get in on the discussion - we'd love to have you!If you enjoy our content please leave us a five star rating and comment/review.Support and join the community here: https://www.patreon.com/The7thRuleWatch the episodes with full video here: https://www.youtube.com/c/The7thRuleSocial media:https://twitter.com/7thRulehttps://www.facebook.com/The7thRule/https://www.facebook.com/groups/The7thRuleGet cool T7R merchandise here:https://the-7th-rule.creator-spring.com/Malissa Longo creates fun and functional Star Trek art at:https://theintrovertedrepublic.com/Get radical Trek swag at Ryan's online store here: https://star-trek-and-chill.myshopify.com/We continue The 7th Rule journey without our friend, our brother, Aron Eisenberg. He is still with us in spirit, in stories, in laughter, and in memories, and the show must go on.

Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and sci-fi producer, Ryan T. Husk, review and react to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 2 episode 2, "Ad Astra per Aspera."Special Guest: Star Trek Strange New Worlds Costume Designer Bernadette Croft.Producer: Ryan T. HuskAudio Engineer: Scott JensenExecutive Producers: Dr. Susan V. Gruner & Jason Okun.Associate Producers: Homer Frizzell, Dr. Ann Marie Segal, Eve England, Yvette Blackmon-Tom, TJ Jackson-Bey, Bill Victor Arucan, Titus Mohler, Darlena Marie Blander, Dr. Mohamed Noor, Tierney C. Dieckmann, Anna Post, Rex A. Wood, Anil O. Polat, Joe Balsarotti, Mike Gu, Dr. Stephanie Baker, Dequeue, Neal Akasaka, Justine Norton-Kertson, Carrie Schwent, Faith Howell, Edward Foltz AKA Crewman guy, Mai, Live From Tokyo, Matt Boardman, Chris McGee, Justin Weir, Jake Barrett, Jane Jorgensen, Henry Unger, Jed Thompson, Allyson Leach-Heid, Julie Manasfi & Nicki T.Special Thanks to Malissa LongoEvery week, we watch an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and review it. Join us! Watch every week and get in on the discussion - we'd love to have you!If you enjoy our content please leave us a five star rating and comment/review. Support and join the community here: https://www.patreon.com/The7thRuleWatch the episodes with full video here: https://www.youtube.com/c/The7thRuleSocial media:https://twitter.com/7thRulehttps://www.facebook.com/The7thRule/https://www.facebook.com/groups/The7thRuleGet cool T7R merchandise here:https://the-7th-rule.creator-spring.com/Malissa Longo creates fun and functional Star Trek art at:https://theintrovertedrepublic.com/Get radical Trek swag at Ryan's online store here: https://star-trek-and-chill.myshopify.com/We continue The 7th Rule journey without our friend, our brother, Aron Eisenberg. He is still with us in spirit, in stories, in laughter, and in memories, and the show must go on.

Cirroc Lofton (Jake Sisko in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) and sci-fi producer, Ryan T. Husk, review and react to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, season 2 episode 1, "The Broken Circle."Wit Special Guest: Director Chris Fisher, an executive producer of Star Trek Strange New Worlds and has directed his episode, "The Broken Circle," as well as the season one finale, "A Quality of Mercy."Producer: Ryan T. HuskAudio Engineer: Scott JensenExecutive Producers: Dr. Susan V. Gruner & Jason Okun. Associate Producers: Homer Frizzell, Dr. Ann Marie Segal, Eve England, Yvette Blackmon-Tom, TJ Jackson-Bey, Bill Victor Arucan, Titus Mohler, Darlena Marie Blander, Dr. Mohamed Noor, Tierney C. Dieckmann, Anna Post, Rex A. Wood, Anil O. Polat, Joe Balsarotti, Mike Gu, Dr. Stephanie Baker, Dequeue, Neal Akasaka, Justine Norton-Kertson, Carrie Schwent, Faith Howell, Edward Foltz AKA Crewman guy, Mai, Live From Tokyo, Matt Boardman, Chris McGee, Justin Weir, Jake Barrett, Jane Jorgensen, Henry Unger, Jed Thompson, Allyson Leach-Heid, Julie Manasfi & Nicki T.Special Thanks to Malissa Longo.Recorded 06/15/22Every week, we watch an episode of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and review it. Join us! Watch every week and get in on the discussion - we'd love to have you!If you enjoy our content please leave us a five star rating and comment/review.Support and join the community here: https://www.patreon.com/The7thRuleWatch the episodes with full video here: https://www.youtube.com/c/The7thRuleSocial media:https://twitter.com/7thRulehttps://www.facebook.com/The7thRule/https://www.facebook.com/groups/The7thRuleGet cool T7R merchandise here: https://the-7th-rule.creator-spring.com/Malissa Longo creates fun and functional Star Trek art at:https://theintrovertedrepublic.com/Get radical Trek swag at Ryan's online store here: https://star-trek-and-chill.myshopify.com/We continue The 7th Rule journey without our friend, our brother, Aron Eisenberg. He is still with us in spirit, in stories, in laughter, and in memories, and the show must go on.

  Amazon Sunsets AmazonSmile Amid Cost-Cutting  The AmazonSmile will be ending by February 20th, according to a statement from the company, as reported by NPR and others. While the program dispersed nearly $449 million to nonprofits globally, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. Amazon pointed to other efforts, such as its Housing Equity Fund, which supports affordable housing efforts near its headquarters, as an example of a social impact program receiving investment. However, smaller nonprofits that received AmazonSmile donations say that the donation were helpful and would be missed. The move comes after Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs, amid a winter defined by tech layoffs across the industry. Read more ➝   Summary Time's Up to halt operations, shift resources to legal fund | ABC News  People are only just realising what happens to the money IKEA makes - and it's blowing their minds | The US Sun Founder of Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit accused of embezzling millions | king5.com  What if school was all outside, every day? N.J. ‘nature schools' take class outdoors, rain or shine.  NJ.com The Eagles thought their Christmas album would fund a toy drive. It ended up doing much more. | https://www.inquirer.com     Rough Transcript [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed. Well, we are talking about turning that Amazon smile upside down. I was first off, really happy to be able to come up with that subject line. Um, not as happy that this program is ending. Uh, Nick, how's it going? [00:00:42] Nick: It's going good. George, this is, I think, gonna be one of those weeks where we are just focused on, on one-liners and, and puns. But alas, I'll take us into the top story, which you alluded to, which is that Amazon Smile. The program that donated a PORs, uh, portion of the proceeds from purchases on Amazon to nonprofits will be coming to a close on February 20th. [00:01:07] This comes via reporting from NPR and other outlets. And in the history of the program, it dispersed nearly 449 million to nonprofits globally. However, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. That's in quotes. Um, Amazon pointed in their statement to other efforts such as its Housing equity fund to support affordable housing. [00:01:34] Here its headquarters as an example. Of a social impact program it was investing in. However, in the articles, smaller nonprofits said that Amazon SMILE donations were helpful and would be missed. And this comes amid broader economic headwinds that the industry is facing. Amazon has announced 18,000 layoffs. [00:01:57] Tech layoffs are now commonplace across the board. Amazon Smile more like a frown these days. [00:02:06] George: I'm sad to see a CSR corporate social responsibility program of this magnitude get sunset in this way in short order. I've been looking on LinkedIn, um, the reactions, and some folks are saying, you know, good riddens, this was a distraction for nonprofits because it sort of baits an organization into becoming an affiliate marketer. [00:02:30] Meaning you get a portion of the sales based on a trackable link and you're pushing product as opposed to your purpose. , I hear that. I also see 449 million, uh, across nonprofits being something meaningful now. Yeah. You spread peanut butter too thin and it turns into nothing. Right. If I were to donate that, but like, that's still just, that's a lot of money. [00:02:55] You know, there's, um, 1.5 ish million nonprofits, so I don't, I don't know that I buy that full narrative of like, it was too small to make a difference. , it was part of, for some organizations, a balanced fiscal diet. It was a diversification of revenue streams. You know, it was something that they, they got and ideally didn't have to push too hard for. [00:03:19] So bad thing too bad. You know, I, I, I don't think that, I'm curious why, and, and I'll maybe never know the reason of like the actual, like, is this a cost cutting? Is there just a change in csr? Did they not get enough, uh, from it? Because on the same token, it actually served them as well because guess what? [00:03:42] Somebody was buying something from them. You know, it was the affiliate marketing strategy. It was actually pretty darn clever, and it worked so sad to see it. And hopefully there'll be a, another solution that arises, an opportunity that shows up for, for those organizations. [00:04:02] Nick: I agree. I. It can't have cost them that much money to run though. Like that's the thing, right. [00:04:11] George: Well, the the other thing is like you can just sign up for an affiliate link and sell things, but I think the difference also with Amazon Smile is that, You could have your supporters put Amazon Smile on their purchasing. So I had it for, for my nonprofit, and it was just, anytime I buy, I had something on Amazon. [00:04:27] A point went that way. So I, I, maybe you need to backtrack on like affiliate marketing versus actually it was adding a layer that said, for these customers, a portion of your proceeds go back to this organization. So that is uniquely different. [00:04:43] Nick: That's fair. That's fair. We'll continue to see if we hear more about this, maybe they'll roll out something different or new. Alas, we move along to our next story, and this one is from a ABC News and others that the Times Up organization, the Me Too, the organization born out of the Me Too movement, particularly the that one in Hollywood, um, has Hal. [00:05:13] Operations and is shifting remaining financial resources to the Legal Defense fund. So Times Out has had a. Go of it. Fallout from associations with Andrew Cuomo and that scandal, um, and has been something of an EM battered, uh, embattled organization rather, um, over the past couple years and is now closing doors and, and shifting that money to the legal defense fund, which does, uh, provide, uh, resources for women in, in specific industries. This is kind of a weird one because it's such a high profile organization that came up very quickly. I think there's probably some lessons to be learned here. George, what are those lessons and what is your take on this? [00:06:03] George: I wish I was smart enough to actually understand the, the full implications of of this. The different narratives that I see here, one, are the types of organizations that pop up in these. Cultural moments have a lot of headwinds. Later they start off with a disproportionate amount of attention and funding upfront, which certainly times updated and they did remarkable work, certainly around if we're looking at victims of Harvey Weinstein, and then the way that they were able to, I'd say, update the way that victims were dealt with. [00:06:44] In these cases from a legal standpoint and a lot of achievements there, but there's a certain type of what feels like immutable. What goes up must come down type of physics here, where the speed at which with which you rise to fame. also seems to all but guarantee the fall from Grace. That is kind of like the inverse Lindy effect. [00:07:15] The Lindy effect is if you have been here for this long, you'll probably continue to be here. Uh, coming from the. Run of show for Broadway, uh, productions that if a Broadway production had been on, you know, it's a, it's a wonder that cats ever stopped being on Broadway. Cause cats had been forever on Broadway. [00:07:32] And it was this, this joke of like, once you're in the line cafe, you'll sort of never be removed. Um, I've gone far from the topic, I'm gonna come back to it. So the first thought, the speed with which something rises probably dictates the speed with which it falls the next. Looking at organizations that need to sort of spin up with all of the overhead, with all of the infrastructure and hiring staffing, like to create a new organization takes a lot of, of work and wealth. [00:08:08] And the fact that now at the end of it, you know, they, they talk about, and even in this quote, very simply, the Legal defense Fund really reflects who we were, not only at our inception, but really at our core. And that's a quote from, uh, Schultzer. And that's why, you know, the, the remaining 1.7 million, which is, is quite small, uh, in the grand scheme of the size of the organization, uh, is going back to that fund. [00:08:33] And the question I guess in my mind is, you know, the fund administered by the National Women's Law Center in Washington? Which has provided and provides legal administration help to, to workers that identify as low income and 40% of people of color. I, I'm, I'm curious as to what the world would've looked like, had times Up simply been a branch of that organization, how much more could have been applied to it and the, the learnings and the staff and that ability rolled into an existing organization rather than saying, we need a new organization. [00:09:08] You know, could this have. A campaign or a program of that legal defense fund. Those are just questions in my mind, and it's, it's tough with an organization under this level of scrutiny. I, I have a hard time getting behind some of those decisions they made with, you know, Andrew, Andrew Cuomo and, and consulting, allegedly consulting with them behind closed doors that was then later revealed by reports. [00:09:33] Uh, It's tough. I think nonprofits are under, uh, a much, much greater microscope and it doesn't take much to set the, set the tide in the wrong direction because you exist at the public's. Will you rely on funding and funders and if those funders are then effectively being shown. as public donors because nine 90 s are all public. [00:09:59] We can see donors and donations. Are you then saying, oh, a large donor has to then reconsider like, wait a minute, am I supporting an organization that supported Andrew Cuomo? Not saying that that is a direct line, but all things being equal, it doesn't take much to hurt in that reputation, and it's tough for organizations that are in that frontline type of work. [00:10:17] Nick: George, I, I think that's, that's a great point. You bring up a lot of different nuances and the threads there, and it makes me think that your nonprofits have to play by different rules than businesses, right. [00:10:33] George: They do. You can't just go on an apology tour being like, Hey, sorry, we fired him. We're all back to normal. Like, nevermind that our news station. Maybe let this kind of go by the wayside. [00:10:44] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. Um. Yeah, I guess we'll, we'll continue to keep an eye on this story. It'll be interesting to see how that legal defense portion of it, which is still administered by, um, that, uh, the other organization, the, the woman's um, uh, legal organization, how that all pans out. Um, so we'll keep our listeners updated, but to that end, I will take us to our next story. [00:11:12] And this one comes. From King five.com and the founder of a Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit is accused of embezzling millions. Um, so. Uh, the, the gentleman in, in question, Issa I apologize cause I know I'm mispronouncing. That was the founder and longtime executive director of the West African Community Council or W A C C, which is based in Seattle. [00:11:44] Um, and after decade of service, um, he was ousted, uh, on December 16th. Accused of embezzling, which is, which is, you know, terrible, terrible, um, especially, you know, people who really, really need help. And then this long article kind of goes into it, it goes into, uh, in DA's started of the story, um, as well side of the story rather, and it kind of a complicated one. [00:12:11] But, uh, George, what's your takeaway on. [00:12:16] George: I look. Board members for this, and this is a reminder for the fiscal responsibilities that your board members take on. And I'm not saying send this article to your board members, but if you are on a board, if you are building a board, fiscal stewardship and hiring and firing the c e o, those the primary jobs and roles of a board. [00:12:38] And so I see this and I don't look at, you know, in the D and say, oh, what a bad actor. Like there are bad actors. One out of a thousand people, one out of 10,000 people are not the, you know, folks that you should be trusting. The job of the board is to hire and fire and make sure the right people are in there. [00:12:56] And the fact that this was an extra bank account started in 2014, like a secret bank account, and like hundreds of thousands of dollars going through there, you know, I'm looking at auditors, I'm looking at board members looking at that, and so paying attention to those things like, oh, it can't happen. . Um, it, it is just a function of odds and, uh, again, I wouldn't have put this in here actually if it had not been for the size of the, the embezzlement. [00:13:25] We have millions of dollars. It's, it's brutal. Uh, so it's a reminder to, to board members out there that, uh, while those finance meetings may be boring, and also the people preparing them, like, here's, here's what you're actually doing. Um, you're making sure money gets to the. The right places and you're avoiding, um, tragedies like. [00:13:45] Nick: Absolutely. I think that's a fantastic point and we always like to keep our listeners on their toes to protect themselves from this happening at their organization. I have our next story is an interesting one. Um, Georgia. Did you know that IKEA is owned by a nonprofit? [00:14:11] George: Here's the thing. I didn't know that Ike. Was owned by a nonprofit. Frankly, this is like a non-story story, but it's fascinating because, uh, you know, in the , the rep reputable, the US Sun , and this title says no Ikea, uh, people are only just realizing what happens to the money IKEA makes, and it's blowing their minds. [00:14:32] I mean, first off, a plus on a hook title. But it's funny because there is a nonprofit involved and owner of the main entity. So IKEA is actually a nonprofit organization. So the money made from those, uh, you know, fund to assemble wardrobes, uh, you know, beyond paying is, is put away into, um, a nonprofit. And the charity's big mission is to further the advancement of interior design. [00:15:01] Nick: Novo, Novo. [00:15:03] George: uh, They're putting it out there further, the advancement of interior design. I mean, you've gotta believe in that mission, I suppose. Um, I did. I didn't have anything else here. Just I thought it was funny. [00:15:17] Nick: it's really funny. So the detail is I e Ikea store stores are franchised by a company called, Inga Holdings, which is fully owned by a nonprofit organization called Stitching Inga Foundation. Um, yeah, I , it's kind of funny. I wanna do a deep dive on this. We need like a little mini documentary on what the hell's happening, but. [00:15:45] Uh, I am willing to bet there is some criticism in the wonderful Scandinavian world about, uh, whether this is truly because people are passionate about, um, easy to assemble interior design pieces, or whether this is some kind of, uh, super duper clever, uh, tax loophole that is being taken advantage of. [00:16:09] George: Yeah, I mean, look, there's some definitive, like this is a tax play very clearly. They pay according to online mba, 33 times less taxes than the average business. The Economist, the overall setup of IKEA minimizes taxes and disclosure handsomely, rewards the founding camra Cam Prad family, and makes IKEA immune to takeover. [00:16:32] So it's interesting. That when you're saying like, this is a strategic reason, like frankly as a business owner, now you have me thinking, should a nonprofit own whole whale and suddenly we don't have to pay taxes. We have, I'm gonna go ahead and say a loftier mission then to improve, I'm sorry, I want to get it accurately to, uh, to further advance, uh, the advancement of interior. [00:17:00] Further the advancement of interior design. So I would say ours has built a healthier, more just and sustainable world as an agency. I, uh, I don't know. One of the funnier quotes here is, uh, no wonder why you gotta put everything together yourself at Al Okaya, because they rely on a bunch of volunteers to put their stuff together. [00:17:20] So, you know, they have a lot of volun, big volun. I have volunteered for Ikea on more than one occasion, [00:17:29] Nick: Volunteering on for IKEA is a, a family pastime. Um, That's funny. Here's another one for you, another light story. We're, this is a good week. There's nothing too traumatic in [00:17:42] George: I mean, just, you know, massive embezzlement, half a billion dollars of CSR stopping at Amazon. This is a good week, [00:17:49] Nick: Yeah, this is, [00:17:50] George: on [00:17:51] Nick: this is a good week for [00:17:53] George: this. Okay, you're classifying Good week on this. Okay. [00:17:55] Nick: I, you know, maybe it's just because it's sunny out. But that is a perfect segue into our next story, where one New Jersey school asked What if school was outside all the time? Every day. So New Jersey Nature schools are taking class outdoors, rain or shine. Um, and this article talks about bundled up kindergarten students at a Star Child Nature School in Medford, New Jersey, outside collecting tree sap to make glue. [00:18:28] Four handmade ornaments. So this is an immersive, you are outside, you are learning, you are one with nature type situation at this school. And that brings us to, uh, the relevant question of making, uh, the question of nature versus nurture ever. The more salient. [00:18:46] George: Wow. It's, it's all, it's all nature school here. Uh, and I know some are nonprofits, some are for-profits, but there's a number of them, and I'll call out one quote here From the South Mountain Nature School, our programs promote social and emotional development and instill confidence and foster independence. [00:19:01] Said Mary Claire Solomon. Who also in other news happens to be my sister. And so I'm incredibly proud of my sister for starting one of these nature schools, pushing through the pandemic and growing to the size that they have, uh, in New Jersey. And, you know, I get to see the, the pictures and the approach that they take in. [00:19:23] There's, you know, that question that comes up, well, what about when it snows? And it's like, you know, there's no bad weather, just bad apparel. So they, they are out there, rain or shine. I think this is a, a really healthy way for, for young people who are inevitably going to wander into the world of screen first learning and engagement and work to realize that, you know, food comes from the ground. [00:19:52] SAP is fun and it's, uh, it's great to see. I'm very proud of my sister, though. In other news, [00:20:00] Nick: That's super. George did you know that's mine, hometown, A South Mountain Reservations with in walking distance from where I grew up. [00:20:07] George: He can go over and say hi. [00:20:09] Nick: Go over, say hi. Maybe a little too old for, uh, the Nature School thing, [00:20:14] George: you could volunteer perhaps. [00:20:17] Nick: love it. All right. How about a feel good story? [00:20:21] George: Yeah. What do we. [00:20:22] Nick: This one comes from the Philadelphia Inquirer, uh, and it's about the eagle. The team, not the group, uh, thought that their Christmas album would fund a toy drive and it ended up doing so much more. So the Philadelphia Eagles of a football and. Sports fame can tell. [00:20:44] I follow football. Uh, thought that they were just raising a mere $30,000, um, for this charity toy drive, when in fact they raised [00:20:59] George: Quarter million 250,000 I believe. [00:21:02] Nick: million. Wow. Wow. Good for. [00:21:07] George: Yeah. What it's nice is also going to be funding not just one, but two toy drives and a summer camp, uh, which. Objectively I, while I respect toy drives and I like those moments, it's great to also say, what about dealing with, uh, the summer learning gap and supporting communities when, um, when you are needing a potentially even more. [00:21:29] So, uh, congratulations. Also, full disclosure here. Nick thought that this wasn't the team, the Eagles, but the band, uh, the Eagles. And it took him a couple of reads to realize that it was a fact about the sports ball. So Nick, I think we all learned something today. [00:21:49] Nick: We've learned a lot. [00:21:51] George: Have we, well, before I give you a terrible joke, I have a bit of a sponsored post here and it. A note that we are opening up our, as far as I know, we only do it once a year and it's the ad grant cohort and we're teaching. Organizations how to run the ad grant, the Google Ad grant, the thing that you get 10 K a month in in-kind ads for placing ads that drive traffic and value to your organization. [00:22:20] We're doing a five week live cohort. This isn't pre-recorded. This is hands-on and we're sharing exactly how we run this ad grant to maximize the ROI for your organization. And so we're gonna help, uh, only I think it's limited, 25 organizations. It always sells out. Registration is now open. Uh, and you can find that link in the show notes or wander around whole whale.com/university and you'll find it there. [00:22:47] Alrighty, question Nick, for you. [00:22:52] Nick: Uh oh. [00:22:53] George: Why, why did the clown donate his salary? [00:22:57] Nick: Hmm. I don't know about the clown thing, but why did the clown donate his salary? [00:23:02] George: Uh, it was a nice gesture. [00:23:05] Nick: Ah, ah, ah. [00:23:09] George: He, he laughs sometimes he doesn't know. And then we like, go off, Nick, did you actually get this one or is this gonna be the one where you like pause and you're like, I didn't get it. Explain it to [00:23:17] Nick: I, I got this one. I'm a huge Shakespeare Stan. I, I'm very familiar with a court gesture and this was, yes, but offering to explain was as well a nice gesture. Um, cuz [00:23:30] George: I just wanted to do it cause I feel like I cut off. I'm like, this would've been much funnier if he didn't understand it. He was like, I laugh, I don't get it. Alright. Thanks for humoring me and this is what you get for staying to the end of the podcast. Leave us a review. Thank you. Bye. [00:23:46] Nick: Bye.

  Amazon Sunsets AmazonSmile Amid Cost-Cutting  The AmazonSmile will be ending by February 20th, according to a statement from the company, as reported by NPR and others. While the program dispersed nearly $449 million to nonprofits globally, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. Amazon pointed to other efforts, such as its Housing Equity Fund, which supports affordable housing efforts near its headquarters, as an example of a social impact program receiving investment. However, smaller nonprofits that received AmazonSmile donations say that the donation were helpful and would be missed. The move comes after Amazon announced 18,000 layoffs, amid a winter defined by tech layoffs across the industry. Read more ➝   Summary Time's Up to halt operations, shift resources to legal fund | ABC News  People are only just realising what happens to the money IKEA makes - and it's blowing their minds | The US Sun Founder of Seattle West African immigrant nonprofit accused of embezzling millions | king5.com  What if school was all outside, every day? N.J. ‘nature schools' take class outdoors, rain or shine.  NJ.com The Eagles thought their Christmas album would fund a toy drive. It ended up doing much more. | https://www.inquirer.com     Rough Transcript [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed. Well, we are talking about turning that Amazon smile upside down. I was first off, really happy to be able to come up with that subject line. Um, not as happy that this program is ending. Uh, Nick, how's it going? [00:00:42] Nick: It's going good. George, this is, I think, gonna be one of those weeks where we are just focused on, on one-liners and, and puns. But alas, I'll take us into the top story, which you alluded to, which is that Amazon Smile. The program that donated a PORs, uh, portion of the proceeds from purchases on Amazon to nonprofits will be coming to a close on February 20th. [00:01:07] This comes via reporting from NPR and other outlets. And in the history of the program, it dispersed nearly 449 million to nonprofits globally. However, the company says that the donations were spread too thin, minimizing impact. That's in quotes. Um, Amazon pointed in their statement to other efforts such as its Housing equity fund to support affordable housing. [00:01:34] Here its headquarters as an example. Of a social impact program it was investing in. However, in the articles, smaller nonprofits said that Amazon SMILE donations were helpful and would be missed. And this comes amid broader economic headwinds that the industry is facing. Amazon has announced 18,000 layoffs. [00:01:57] Tech layoffs are now commonplace across the board. Amazon Smile more like a frown these days. [00:02:06] George: I'm sad to see a CSR corporate social responsibility program of this magnitude get sunset in this way in short order. I've been looking on LinkedIn, um, the reactions, and some folks are saying, you know, good riddens, this was a distraction for nonprofits because it sort of baits an organization into becoming an affiliate marketer. [00:02:30] Meaning you get a portion of the sales based on a trackable link and you're pushing product as opposed to your purpose. , I hear that. I also see 449 million, uh, across nonprofits being something meaningful now. Yeah. You spread peanut butter too thin and it turns into nothing. Right. If I were to donate that, but like, that's still just, that's a lot of money. [00:02:55] You know, there's, um, 1.5 ish million nonprofits, so I don't, I don't know that I buy that full narrative of like, it was too small to make a difference. , it was part of, for some organizations, a balanced fiscal diet. It was a diversification of revenue streams. You know, it was something that they, they got and ideally didn't have to push too hard for. [00:03:19] So bad thing too bad. You know, I, I, I don't think that, I'm curious why, and,

This episode of Tech Sales Insights is the first part of our conversation with Nick Candito, Founding Investor at Flatfile and Co-Founder of Angel Collective Opportunity Fund (ACOF). He shares his professional journey in investing and operations and how he ensures the health of their portfolio today together with their fund managers. He also explains how they do not lead rounds and instead facilitate the introductions that lead to the next rounds of financing. HIGHLIGHT QUOTES Working with large family offices with an emerging manager problem - Nick: "It's been helpful right now to be more active with existing companies, especially the ones that are doing better than maybe the broader market knows because they're not out fundraising."  Making introductions to facilitate the next rounds of financing - Nick: "We're not leading rounds. We do facilitate a lot of introductions. If our managers are inception stage, we describe ourselves as inflection. So right when the business is starting to really work and doing better than people realize."Find out more about Nick in the link below: About Nick Send in a voice message to us: https://anchor.fm/salescommunity/message This episode of Tech Sales Insights is brought to you by:  Sales Community | https://www.salescommunity.com/OpenSymmetry | https://www.opensymmetry.com/

Wouldn't it be nice if you could sleep at night knowing that you don't have to worry about pests in the properties you manage? In this episode, property management growth expert, Jason Hull interviews Nick Drzayich from Cover Pests to learn about dealing with pests in property management. You'll Learn… [02:00] Cover Pest… It's like Insurance for Pest Control [03:59] Dealing with Pests as a Property Manager [07:48] Dealing with the Different Kinds of Pests [13:13] How Partnering with Something Like Cover Pest Works [16:02] Eliminating Having to Figure Out Who is Gonna Pay the Bill [17:15] Using Pest Coverage as a Selling Point for Property Management Tweetables “We want the tenants to feel good about where they live and have it clean. We also want the owners to understand that their property's being taken care of when it's needed.” “It's nice for the property manager to have someone else get some eyes on the property every once in a while.” “It's increasing the visibility. It's decreasing some of the potential costs for the owners. It's protecting the owners.” “We go out, and we take care of it.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Nick: We want the tenants to feel good about where they live and have it clean. We also want the owners to understand that their property's being taken care of when it's needed and then obviously the property management companies, they don't have to hassle with the back and forth and who's paying the bill.    [00:00:14] Jason: Welcome DoorGrow Hackers to the #DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently. Then you are a DoorGrow Hacker. DoorGrow hackers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income.   [00:00:53] At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. We want to transform the industry. Eliminate the BS, build awareness, change perception, expand the market, and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host property management growth expert Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow.    [00:01:13] Now, let's get into the show and my guest today, I am hanging out here with Nick, and Nick, you got to tell me your last name. I should have asked you before the show.    [00:01:25] Nick: No, that's okay. I tell everybody to just say "does your eye itch?" And that'll about cover it. Okay. It's pronounced (dur zye ich) Drzayich. It's a Serbian name, and it's way too many consonants in a row.    [00:01:37] Jason: Nick Drzayich. All right. From Cover Pest. Cool. And is it Cover Pest or just "Cover?" Website says "cover."    [00:01:45] Nick: Yeah. Cover Pest. Yeah.   [00:01:47] Jason: Cover Pest. Okay, cool. Well Nick, glad to have you on the show. So tell me-- give us a little bit of background. How did you-- and I'll just say for those listening, it says, "pest control solution for property managers," like on your website. So tell me a little bit about Cover Pest, and how did you get into this?    [00:02:04] Nick: Come from an insurance background actually. 13 years or so ago, I started and grew a independent life insurance agency, and so that's kind of been my background. Right. And so within insurance, you're obviously taking a big cost in life insurance. There's a death benefit with other insurances. There's big expenses that come at some point throughout the life of a policy and you're taking the cost of that and you're spreading it out among all the policy owners.    [00:02:34] Jason: Mm-hmm.   [00:02:34] Nick: So kind of with that mindset. I was chatting with my business partner who lives north of me, and he actually runs a pest control company and has for several years. We kind of got to chatting about this combination of life insurance and kind of sharing this cost, spreading the cost out and how you could potentially do that with pest control. And that's how we kind of landed on this idea of using that model to help property management companies take care of their pest control issues, which we know are just a hassle whenever they happen. Yeah. And solve that issue for them and allow them to take that off their plate and add a little bit of revenue in the meantime. Got it. And what areas do you guys cover? Is this a national business? Or is this local? How does this work? Yep. So this is a national business.   [00:03:21] We obviously have the ability to go anywhere in the country. We have, we started it here in our home state of Idaho, which is where we have the bulk of our clients. But ultimately, yeah, we we work with vendors across the country to be able to help take care of the issues that, that property managers are seeing.   [00:03:37] Jason: Cool. So help me understand how this works. Like why would a property manager decide, Hey, I should work with Cover Pest instead of just use some pest control vendors locally and connect with and have these people in as a feather in my cap. What advantages do they have with working with Cover Pest and why would a property manager choose? Or why do they choose to work with you?    [00:03:59] Nick: Yeah. Great question. So. As soon as you mention pest control to a property manager, you're probably going to get just a lot of heartache right there. Whenever an issue comes up, it's technically it's a tenant responsibility. Yeah, but ultimately it's going to come back to the maintenance manager. It's going to come back to the property management company or owner every once in a while. And so they're having to deal with finding a vendor. Vendors got to contact the tenant, get the service done, and then you got to figure out where you're sending the bill, and there's always going to be a fight there. The tenant's not going to want to pay it, the owner doesn't want to pay it, and you, as the property manager, you don't want to pay it either. And the benefit here is that, we work best with companies that have some kind of resident benefit package. So what our service does is it kind of slides right into that resident benefit package, and for a very nominal fee compared to what you would normally pay for pest control, your tenants are able to have all their pest issues covered, and when they need service, they put the request in online-- goes to call. We send a technician out and take care of it. There's no additional cost on top of what that monthly fee is.   [00:05:03] So like I mentioned, we kind of slide in the benefit packages. We also work as a standalone amenity for those that either don't want to put us in a benefit package or don't offer a benefit package.    [00:05:13] Jason: Got it. So what are what are property managers typically bundling in along with Cover Pest in, you know, in addition to Cover Pest in their resident benefits packages that you're seeing?   [00:05:26] Nick: Yeah, so oftentimes we'll see-- a big one is filter service, so furnace filters that are shipped--   [00:05:31] Jason: mm-hmm    [00:05:32] Nick: --every few months. There's a lot of times some kind of a credit building aspect to the benefit package. There's usually some kind of a maintenance, a 24 or seven maintenance benefit that's inside of that package. And then a lot of times there'll be some kind of perks. You get a free maintenance request once a year on something that would normally be charged to you, or you have late fee, late payment protection. Once per year, you can make a late payment and not have to worry about any kind of fees. So those are just some of the things that we're seeing inside of benefit packages along with our service.    [00:06:03] Jason: Got it. And what are you typically seeing property managers charge for this resident benefit package? And I would assume this is something that they're convincing the tenants to buy as a product.   [00:06:15] Nick: Yeah, so ultimately, what we've seen is that the benefit package just rolls right along with the lease agreement. There's not an option there for the tenant to either pay for or not. It just is what it is and you get it. Yep. And they range across the board, right? From, you know, 20 bucks all the way up to 75 plus dollars per month, depending on what's in the package.   [00:06:41] So when we were designing our service to be able to slide into a benefit package, we wanted to be super conscious of increasing that at all right because any increase in a benefit package cost is going to come with some kickback initially. And so there's got to be some good value there. So we had that in mind for sure, but they definitely range. They kind of run the gamut of, you know, pretty cheap all the way up to some pretty expensive packages, depending on what's offered.    [00:07:08] Jason: Got it. Now you said kickback, but I think you mean push back, right?    [00:07:13] Nick: Yeah.   [00:07:13] Jason: Okay. All right. Just making sure. People are like, "is there an affiliate thing going on here?" right. Okay. Yeah. Right. The tenants are going to be a little frustrated if it's too expensive and they're going to say, "Well, why am I being forced to do this? I don't know that I need all that stuff." Okay. So then, can you give us an idea of what this would cost? How do you price this with companies? Is this like on a per unit basis that you work out a deal with the property managers? Are there certain rates? Is this something that they just can do on certain properties that they can convince the owners to buy into? How does that typically work?    [00:07:48] Nick: Yeah. So when we onboard a company. It's pretty much an all or nothing deal. Right. We want to make sure we cover all of their properties regardless of where they're at and if they have current pest issues. We do work individually on a customized basis with each property management company to decide: "all right, what are you seeing typically pest issue wise? What package makes the most sense, and do we need to customize a package to best fit?" So, at a broad level, we have a couple of different packages. One of 'them is more of a basic package that covers the things that don't typically happen a lot, but when they do happen, it's a real hassle.   [00:08:25] So a good example of that would be bed bugs, for example. They don't happen a ton, but when they do, it's a pretty severe cost.   [00:08:32] Jason: Right.   [00:08:33] Nick: Yep. And and then going up from there, our upper package is a little bit more of the common stuff that people call on a regular basis. Your spiders, your ants, wasps, bees, that sort of thing. And so we do have a couple of packages that we work off of, but we do customize with each company and make sure that we're covering what they want and making it specific to them.    [00:08:56] Jason: Got it. I'm sure it differs. Like here in Texas, we have some big bugs and a lot of mosquitoes here in Austin, but yeah, in some markets, I would imagine you've got certain issues that are just typical to that market and then other markets you don't, and it might also have to do with sometimes-- unfortunately might have to do with the class of the property or the area of the property that it's in, how well it's maintained, stuff like that.   [00:09:21] Nick: Yeah, for sure. And I mean, ultimately we don't want the tenants to hesitate to call because that's what normally happens, right? They know that they're responsible for it.    [00:09:30] Jason: Yeah.    [00:09:30] Nick: And so, they don't call and they just kind of sweep it under the rug either literally or figuratively and the pest issue goes untreated and it can get out of hand, and so we want to eliminate that from happening. We want the tenants to feel good about where they live and have it clean. We also want the owners to understand that their property's being taken care of when it's needed and then obviously the property management companies, they don't have to hassle with the back and forth and who's paying the bill.   [00:09:57] Jason: So let's make this a little bit real. So let's say you've got a tenant. They've got some pests. I don't know what kind of pests would be a serious issue, but they decide not to call. Give me an example you've heard of, and then it's incurring additional damages that then the owner's going to have to pay for. Can you think of something like that?    [00:10:17] Nick: Well, I can tell you that, for example, like an average bed bug cost to remediate is going to be anywhere between 800 and a thousand bucks.    [00:10:25] Jason: Okay.    [00:10:25] Nick: So right there, you know, our average package is probably around 10 to 12 bucks a month. So if a tenant is paying 10 to 12 bucks a month, they have a bed bug issue, they're paying substantially less than what they would have to pay to have that remediated through just a general pest control company. Those obviously become much bigger issues when you're looking at multi-family situations where units are connected and those bugs can travel. So I've seen that stuff get pretty out of hand, but ultimately we want to get it controlled as, as quickly as we can so that doesn't happen.    [00:11:00] Jason: Yeah. I hate roaches. Really don't like those things like yeah. I remember being in some houses, like some just not really nice areas, like visiting some houses and stuff in upstate New York and high humidity, and there were some units that I went in that had some really nasty infestations with cockroaches and some of them are really freaking tiny. They're just running around all over, so. Yeah, I hate those things.    [00:11:27] Nick: It's rough. It is nice. Yeah. It's nice for the property manager to have someone else get some eyes on the property every once in a while because typically if you're seeing a lot of bugs, there's a reason. The bugs want to eat. And so there's some cleanliness issues there. So it's nice to be able for us to be able to report on what we're seeing and if we're seeing multiple calls on the same property that's a little bit of a red flag to maybe send someone out there to take a look at the property and have a chat with the tenant.   [00:11:52] Jason: Got it. Yeah. So one of the key benefits then is it's giving you greater visibility into some of the problem properties as to what's going on.    [00:12:02] Nick: Yeah, absolutely because we're going to track every time we get a service call, and you're going to see that report as well. So we can both kind of keep eyes on it.   [00:12:09] Jason: Got it. Okay, cool. So this is something they can build into, you know, along with their leases as part of their resident benefit package. It's not going to increase their costs. Does this become a profit center in any way for property managers or is this just mitigating costs?    [00:12:26] Nick: Yeah, we've had property managers use it just to kind of mitigate those costs. No additional revenue.    [00:12:32] Jason: Mm-hmm.    [00:12:32] Nick: Most of the companies we work with as with everything in their benefit package, they're going to add some kind of a mark up there or an admin fee just for them for kind of doing the work and yeah and setting up the relationship. So it makes perfect sense, so that's what most of them will do. And it's kind of up to them, how much they mark it up, but yeah, there's definitely an additional kind of profit stream there that can be created through using Cover.    [00:12:54] Jason: Got it. And certainly some advantages to taking greater care of the property. Cool. So what are the big questions besides the ones you've already touched on that when people come to you, they're really curious to know because I'm sure some of our listeners are probably thinking, "Hey, maybe this is a good idea."    [00:13:13] Nick: Yeah. Yeah. So one of the main questions I get is how do we roll it out? Yeah. And a couple different ways. Typically what we'll do is it's a kind of a slow rollout and it's upon lease renewal or a new lease creation. So as you're working with a property management company, they have new leases come up. They'll send us that batch for the month. That's renewing and we'll get them added into the service catalog. We have had companies that have gone in and asked their tenants, "Hey, do you want to opt into this right now in the middle of your lease?" and that option is there as well.    [00:13:44] Jason: Have you seen much success with that, with them doing that? What percentage do you see typically? I don't know if you have that data, but...   [00:13:52] Nick: that are opting in?   [00:13:54] Jason: Yeah. If they put it out to all of their residents for opt in, I'm just curious what the typical response rate is that people are like, "yeah. I'll go ahead and do that." Maybe 10%?   [00:14:05] Nick: Yeah. It's not high. Not high--   [00:14:07] Jason: yeah   [00:14:07] Nick: because--    [00:14:08] Jason: I would imagine it's like, "Hey spend more money. Do you want to?" And they're like, " yeah."    [00:14:11] Nick: exactly. Yep.    [00:14:13] Jason: Okay.    [00:14:13] Nick: So most frequently, most commonly, it'll be rolled out as leases are renewed and as new properties or leases are assigned, that's the most common way that it's done.    [00:14:23] Jason: Okay. Got it. So they sign up with you. You've worked out the pricing based on what sort of package they need, you implement, consult them and help them figure out how they're going to roll this out, and they're probably building this into their lease with some verbiage. You typically provide some verbiage for them to add to their lease as part of this.    [00:14:41] Nick: Yep, absolutely. We have some stuff that you can throw in.    [00:14:44] Jason: And then they get this rolled out. So then they've got this new maybe profit center, but at least it's being paid for by somebody. It's increasing the visibility. It's decreasing some of the potential costs for the owners. It's protecting the owners. If something gets really bad it could cause a lot of damage. And I'm curious, like, you've mentioned bed bugs, and I mentioned roaches, but what else are you typically seeing causes a lot of damage? I mean, termites, we hear a lot about. Is this something that is checked for or like relevant?   [00:15:13] Nick: Yeah. wood destroying bugs like termites are a completely different animal.    [00:15:18] Jason: Yeah.   [00:15:18] Nick: That's not honestly a part of what we do. It's another specialty altogether. As far as damage is concerned, mice and rats are another one that are--   [00:15:28] Jason: oh yeah.   [00:15:28] Nick: --they're out there, and we hear about them and we treat for those. Those ones will come in and cause some real issues. If nothing else, just scaring the crap out of people.   [00:15:37] Jason: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And then, you know, safely doing the cleanup because--   [00:15:42] Nick: right.    [00:15:43] Jason: --You know, some issues with some of that stuff, so yeah.    [00:15:46] Nick: Yeah.    [00:15:47] Jason: And so no on termites, but yes, on bed bugs, roaches and mice and and rats. Okay. Got it. Any other questions that property managers might ask that would be curious about your service or that you'd like them to understand or know?   [00:16:02] Nick: Yeah, maybe just to, again point out that sometimes when we go out to do a service the property management company will expect another bill from us or think that there'll be another bill coming, but it's all taken care of. Just in that monthly subscription that's paid for by the tenant. There's no additional fee, no additional cost. We go out and we take care of it. And so that's a common question, common concern. One other one that comes to mind is sometimes they'll be rehabbing a property or making some significant changes to one of their properties and they'll want to stop the service or pause the service. We're definitely open to doing that and have done that. So pausing service during a rehab or big remodel is definitely something we can do. That's one question that has come up in the past as well.    [00:16:44] Jason: Unless they potentially could uncover something in the walls during that room.   [00:16:49] Nick: Right. Right. Yeah. And that's another thing to mention. Yeah. Another thing to mention is the service kind of runs with the address, not necessarily the tenant, so--    [00:16:59] Jason: okay.   [00:16:59] Nick: --if you have a property that maybe sat vacant for a couple months, and you had a maintenance manager out there to check on something and he notice a pest issue. He can just give us a call and we'll go take care of it. Even though there's not a tenant in there, because it kind of runs with the address.    [00:17:15] Jason: Got it. And that justifies including it as part of the rent as well. So if you're saying, "Hey, this. This property, in some instances like in California, like you have to usually pay for lawn care if you want the lawn to be maintained because some people just won't do it sometimes, right? So there's certain things you would include. So this would be included. You could then-- that could be a selling point to the tenants. Like this comes with a resident benefit package where it includes this and this, you won't have to worry about pest control. You won't, and these other things.   [00:17:46] Nick: Yep, exactly.   [00:17:47] Jason: Okay. So potentially as the benefit of helping, sweeten the deal a little bit on a potential rental property for a potential resident, so.   [00:17:55] Nick: For sure. Yeah.    [00:17:57] Jason: Cool. Well, I think we've covered most of the highlights. This sounds like-- it sounds like a no brainer. It sounds like a good service. Let's tell everybody how to get in touch with you and how to find you.   [00:18:10] Nick: Yeah, super easy. Our website is CoverPest.com and you can call me anytime. My number's (208) 477-1330. That's my cell. And you can go on to CoverPest.com, submit a form, and we're happy to chat about creating kind of a custom pricing model for your property management company.    [00:18:29] Jason: Cool. So I want to ask one more question. So when they hear you say, "you'll call my cell" and "here's my number," they might be thinking, is this a scalable business? What if somebody has 10,000 doors or they're a big conglomerate, you know, or they're a small property manager. Is this a scalable model for you? Can you handle different size property management companies?   [00:18:50] Nick: Yeah, what's nice is that our portal, our backend portal that's a part of our website makes it really easy for property management companies to go in and add their properties to their list. So every time they have a backed upload of lease renewals. They go to the service portal, they put it in there and they're added and they can see exactly which properties are covered in that month. And then, yeah, we work with a network of pest control companies that we use as vendors to service accounts that we get with property management companies in different states, if that makes.    [00:19:23] Jason: Got it. So you've got this all figured out really well. I appreciate you coming the show, Nick, and it's been great hearing about Cover Pest. So thanks. Thanks for coming on.    [00:19:33] Nick: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I appreciate it.    [00:19:36] Jason: All right. Cool. So check them out at coverpest.com sounds like a good service. And as always give me your feedback. I want to hear... those of you that work with Cover Pest, let me know how it goes. And those of you that are tuning in for the first time, and you got some value from this episode, or if you're not tuning in for the first time, give us some feedback. If you find us on YouTube, The Google play store, or you find us on Spotify or iTunes, give us some feedback. We'd love to hear what you think of the show. And we may even give you a shout out on a future episode. So we appreciate that. And if you're interested in growing your business, check us out at doorgrow.com, and if you want to join our free community of property management entrepreneurs, you can go to doorgrowclub.com and that will get you to our Facebook group.    [00:20:23] Join that community. We've got some great people in there and you know, a rising tide raises all ships, as they say this will allow you to connect with some other property managers and have a resource you can go to to ask questions. And we'd love to hear from any of you inside there, so make sure you join. And until next time, to our mutual growth. Bye everyone.   [00:20:49] You just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!    [00:21:16] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

There are plenty of decisions that you'll make in the retirement planning process that can't be undone, so you want to make sure that you make the right call. On this episode, we'll explain why these decisions are so important and can't be undone. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Speaker 1: Back here for another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick once again, joining me to talk about getting things right the first time. There are some irreversible financial decisions or close to it in retirement and there's plenty of things we've got to deal with. So we want to make sure we get it right as often as possible, right out of the gate, because some of these things just cannot be undone. So you guys being in Florida, mulligans, everybody plays golf. Mulligans are a thing, for sure. You didn't see that? Some mulligan, its a give me. Let me do it again, kind of thing. But there's things in retirements that you just got to get right the first time. So that's going to be the topic this week. Nick, what's going on, buddy? How you doing?   Nick: Good. Good. Staying busy.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Keeping rocking and a rolling. John, how you feeling my friend?   John : I'm feeling good. I'm feeling good. I'm looking forward to this topic. I'm actually a couple of weeks out from finish some construction in my house and I wish that the original builds and plumbers got it right and knew how to glue some pipes that wouldn't have caused a leak down the road. But anyhow,   Speaker 1: Yes.   John : Looking forward to getting that construction done, so.   Speaker 1: Yeah, I tell you what, that's a great point. Right. So we all want people to do their job right the first time. Certainly when you hire someone, that's what you expect. But these are some decisions that many people do to themselves because so many people DIY retirement. Right. One of the benefits to turning to financial professionals like yourselves is to get these things right so that you don't have to worry about having these issues that can't be undone. So let's walk through a few of these. We're going to start with a biggie. Again, there's a little caveat here, but for the most part, once you turn on social security, it is what it is. So you have to be sure that you're, especially if you're activating it early, that this is what you want to do. There technically is a do over, but most people don't really go through it. So kind of explain if you will guys.   John : Yeah. So this is a big one because social security equates to roughly 30 to 40% of kind of average households retirement income going into retirement. So it's important. And Nick and I, everything we kind of say goes back to the planning and this can't be stressed enough because once you start taking it, let's do over for the first year out of it, that is what it is. And I'll kind of use an example of a client that we had where she was a survivor and she wasn't fully aware of her options and the strategies she could use. And just luckily she was referred to us right before she started taking social security. And I don't want to go too much into details, but basically the strategy that she was just going to take initially, I mean would've cost her a lot of money down the road. So we simply had to basically call social security, stop the payment and redo the strategy. But again, by not really having a game plan, she could have cost herself a lot of money down the road. And this doesn't happen just for survivors. It's anybody, whether it's your taking your own benefit or divorced, things like that. So there's a lot of things to evaluate when you're taking social security and when's the best time to take it.   Speaker 1: Okay. So and again I mentioned the fact that you can pull it back. Right. You have what one year. Nick is that right, correct? You have one year.   Nick: Yeah. So essentially the rule is that if you begin your social security benefits, you have 12 months to essentially reverse your decision that you started receiving benefits. You have to pay the benefits that you received back and then you can defer it again as if you never took it. So years ago, you used to be able to do that over a much longer period of time. And then the Social Security Administration caught onto that and they restricted it to a 12 month period.   Speaker 1: And let's be honest. Most people, the reason doesn't get really used very often is who wants to do it. Most people don't want to, as soon as they hear, well, you got to pay the money back. They're kind of like, eh, so I don't want to do that. Right. So,   Nick: Yeah.   Speaker 1: [inaudible 00:03:57].   Nick: Yeah, it's a tricky thing.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: It's like we've had some clients inquire about this recently and their sub full retirement age, so sub 66 or 67 or somewhere in between there and in instances where, because where the confusion lies for a lot of people is they want to continue to work maybe, but shift to part-time.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: And they don't realize that the part-time income is still in excess of the amount that they can earn without any sort of penalty, which for most people is around $20,000 for the year.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: And when you start to factor in the fact that you're permanently locking in a lower benefit plus running the risk of having a penalty on top of it for the rest of your life, it's not ideal. So,   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: That's definitely a major decision and something that we like to model out and test out for people.   Speaker 1: And again, so technically there's a caveat to undo in a very limited window, but it's just best to get this right the first time, because for all intents and purposes, it's irreversible. You just don't want to go down that path. Same with the spousal benefit situation here on a pension, should you be lucky enough to have one. Once you select this, I don't believe there is any do-overs on this. It is what it is.   Nick: Yeah, that's correct. This is definitely a topic that we go through in the classes pretty in detail. Years ago, it was a lot easier for people to mess this decision up. It still happens sometimes, but it's less common because oftentimes the spouse has to sign off on it. But the reality is that having a really good understanding of what sort of survivor benefit you're going to choose, if you are eligible for a pension through your employer is a major, major decision and something to take into consideration. And one thing to throw in here too, for those that live in the state of Florida, oftentimes the projections that they send you or that you can access easily online, I should say are options like one and two or A and B. And there are two other options that are oftentimes better options and you usually have to request those. So we've seen that be a mistake that people have made only thinking that they had two options when there's actually four.   Speaker 1: Gotcha.   Nick: So that's something and it's important to know.   Speaker 1: Okay.   John : And what Nick's referencing there is the Florida pension plan, the state pension plan.   Speaker 1: The state. Okay. Got it. Thank you. So John, what about life insurance? What is the kind of the impact here? Irreversible financial decision, somebody might say, well, can I just cancel it or whatever, right, kind of deal, but what are some important points to know when it comes to this?   John : Yeah. So when you're doing planning, one of the things we look at is we start with the need for life insurance. And that really depends on dependence and some other factors, but it's easier to get when your younger. So that's one thing we take a look at and there's different types of policies that allow you to convert. And not to get too much into the weeds, but the older you get, some health issues might come up where you can no longer get it. So that's where it becomes very important to understand, Hey, is this something I really want to have down the road and does it work in my financial plan? And if it does, the sooner you can get it the better because things come up as we all know. As you get older, health issues come up. So you want to get it right the first time.   Speaker 1: And that's where you could run into a problem, right, especially if you wait too long and then a diagnosis happens, then it could either make it impossible or certainly incredibly costly.   Nick: Yeah. Especially, we joked a little bit in the last podcast about John and I hitting 40 this year. And the reality is, is that I know, I know. Everybody I'm sure is shedding a lot of tears.   Speaker 1: A lot of our listeners are like 40. I would trade with you in a minute.   John : Let's see, 40 back surgery this year. It's a good year.   Nick: Yeah. All of a sudden I got tendonitis in my arm and my shoulders all messed up.   Speaker 1: And right now you have listeners going, I'm going to go in and slap him.   Nick: I know, I know. But the key, the point with this whole thing is that some of these things, maybe not some of the things that John and I talked about, but maybe a type two diabetes or some sort of health issue that pops up where it doesn't in reality, necessarily in most people's mind affect what your life is going to be like. It could have an impact on what life insurance is going to cost for you.   Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.   Nick: And so you pay for it out of your bank account, but you qualify with your health. And so usually the sooner you can lock in any sort of coverage, the less expensive it is and that'll pay off over time.   Speaker 1: No, you're exactly right. I mean, we're coming up, we were joking about this, but to really drive home your point, we're coming up on the 10th anniversary for me of my open heart surgery. I was 41 years old. I didn't think anything of it. And so it made it really difficult to get life insurance or get some different kinds of insurance once I had that happen. So I monkeyed around and waited too long. Right. And then I was like, well, I didn't know this was coming. Now luckily it was more lifestyle and things. So after enough of a time period, I started to eventually get some offers, but it is more expensive. So it is important to definitely have this stuff in place if you can, sooner than later, because again, it makes the financial impacts pretty great. So definitely keep that in mind as well. And then finally, choosing a retirement date. We debated on this one, about throwing this on the list because people would definitely can argue and say, well, sure you could change your decision on this. If you pencil in a date to actually retire, you can just move it around as you need to. But if you want to take it that a step further, depending on how you want to go, if you've given notice at a position, maybe not, right, it may be something you can't undo that. So just talk to me about the impacts of just either penciling in, choosing a retirement date to actually walk away just from different pros and cons.   Nick: Yeah. I can jump in on this a little bit. This is something where in reality, I think what we found is maybe a specific date is necessarily the key or the thought process, but understanding the range that you're looking at and understanding what sort of cost you might be incurring if you do retire early. So for example, if your somebody that has saved and done a good job of that and is looking to retire early, call it maybe 62, understanding the impact of how much lower your social security benefit is, understanding what sort of costs you're going to have when it comes to premiums for your health insurance. So as an example, we've got clients that are paying, some clients that are paying between eight and $10,000 a year for health insurance premiums per person, when they were used to while they were working, paying closer to three to $4,000 for the household. So that's something that can have an impact on that retirement date, where maybe you've been thinking in the back of your mind, Hey, I've got a good nest egg. I'm just going to plan to go a little bit early, but didn't quite realize the expenses associated with it. On top of that, from a planning perspective, we do have other clients that they knew that they were going to retire early. And so we put strategies together for leading up to retiring early. They were able to save some extra money into non-qualified or non-retirement accounts. And by taking their income in the first few years of retirement, out of those accounts, it allows them to qualify for certain subsidies for health insurance, which brings their costs down. So again, when we have clarity on what the goals and the objectives are in the financial world, there's usually ways that we can plan around it and try to optimize it. And so having a good idea of what that looks like and the impact of the fallout from that goal and then planning around that, it allows us to be more strategic.   Speaker 1: All right. So obviously there's lots of little things in there where again, you could make the argument that you could move some of these things around, but ideally we want to get it right the first time. And often, as I mentioned earlier, excuse me, when we're doing it ourselves, we don't know a lot of these little things, a lot of a little caveats and whatnot. So we want to get it right the first time. And that's where working with a professional really comes into play. So if you got questions, you need some help as always make sure you're checking with a qualified pro before you take any action on something here on this podcast or any other, you want to make sure that you're seeing how it reflects and affects your specific situation. So stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's the home for the team, pfgprivatewealth.com. You can subscribe to us on Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Stitcher, all that good stuff. Retirement Planning Redefined is the name of the show. You can look it up on those apps if you'd like, or just stop by the website again, pfgprivatewealth.com. We appreciate your time here on this week's podcast. We'll see you soon for another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth.

We've assembled a list of priorities to keep in mind as you count down the days to retirement. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey everybody. Welcome to the podcast. It's retirement planning, redefined with John and Nick and myself talking about the countdown to retirement. What to do on those days, as we're getting closer, working our way towards it. We've assembled a list of priorities to keep in mind, as you are counting down those days to retirement. And we were getting ready to get this podcast started and we were kind of laughing at some of the things that we seem to run out of in this whole supply chain issue, had ourselves a good giggle along the way. So hopefully we'll have a good podcast for you to tune into as we talk about these things, because there's some good stuff on here. And guys at the time we're dropping this, I think we're going to drop this right after Memorial Day if I'm not mistaken. Anyway, it's right around it.   Mark: And Memorial Day is kind of the unofficial kickoff to summer. It's not technically summer yet, right? I think it's what June 20th or something like that. But when we get to 50 and a lot of times, if you want to think about this countdown 50 plus, it's kind of the unofficial kickoff to retirement. We're not actually retired yet, but we start thinking about it, paying more attention to it. So on and so forth. So John, the first one on my list is getting healthy and staying healthy. Many of us develop chronic issues in our 50s. So it's a good time to put some thought onto this so that you can actually enjoy those golden years.   John: Yeah, 100%. I would even because I'm sure, I don't know in the previous podcast I talk about my health issues, but I think it's important for everyone at any age, especially though I will say 50.   Mark: True.   John: Focusing on health and getting to the gym and just do whatever makes you feel good. But when you have an health issue and you can't do the things you were doing, I'll tell you it's quite a, it's a challenge. It's quite upsetting. And I'll say from the clients that we work with, we see a big difference in those that actively in retirement are working out, maybe seeing a trainer a couple of days a week to those that are not. And as you age, I think it's more, it's very important just to stay active because you're not recovering like you were in your 20s.   Mark: No, I think that's a great point. I like that too. Yeah, we should start sooner. Right. But if you kind of want to put a, some sort of a time table or something to it when we get, and it kind of works with our conversation for retirement, just get there, start making some of these changes. So you can really enjoy what we call the go go years. Right. So when we first get to that early days of retirement. And then this is a really big one, we could kind of merge two and three together, but we'll do them a little bit separately, but two Nick, is the free time. Now there's a lot of it. And maybe silver lining in the pandemic has been the fact that many couples got to realize life together, 24/7 working from home, being at home.   Mark: Because that's what retirement is. That's a big shift that we don't often talk about. We put a lot of focus on saying, yeah, we want a big travel and we want to go out and play a ton of golf or whatever. But like there's a lot of free time and you're spending it with that significant other that maybe you guys didn't see each other for eight, 10, 12 hours a day. Now you're together all the time. I don't know how many advisors I talk to where they're like, they have funny stories about one spouse or the other saying get them out of my house. They're driving me nuts.   Nick: Yeah. The time challenge can be significant. I can tell you two things that I would recommend against. And those things would be watching a lot more news and,   Mark: Right.   Nick: Deciding that social media is going to be your new hobby.   Mark: It's not your friend. Right.   Nick: If anything, there's a pretty good documentary on Netflix. I forget what it's called, but it's about social media and really kind of the big data side of things and how the algorithms work and really kind of feed into things. And in general, there's been a lot to handle for people over the last few years with the pandemic and everything else going on. So can not underestimate the importance of having constructive hobbies, doing things that kind of keep you sharp or engaged. And even from the standpoint of being social, things that you can do both alone and with others. The relief that people get from a psychological standpoint of being engaged with others and doing different things, kind of being out and about is really, really important and it's going to help keep you fresh. It's going to help you be able to focus on the things that are important versus the things that aren't, and that you don't have control over. And so, making sure that you're developing hobbies, and we would say that that's even separate from things like travel and that type of thing where,   Mark: Right, right.   Nick: Being inquisitive, doing things that have your brain still working are really important.   Mark: That's a great point. And John, I mentioned blending two and three together. So two was determining what you want to do with your free time. Three, we put post retirement career, maybe career is too heavy of a term, but a post retirement something. Right. Retire away, like if you hate your job, let's just say you despise it and you can't wait to retire and you're leaving with nothing else to go to. Like, I get that frustration, but I think people tend to be happier if they're retiring to something. And maybe that's not necessarily another career, but something like, even if you took a year off and literally did nothing, I'm sure you guys have story upon story of retirees who first enjoy doing nothing. But as humans, I think we crave some sort of structure, something to help us kind of fill the time and fill the days.   John: That's 100%. It's important to really start thinking about that. And I can't tell you how many times we've been in meetings and it's when do you want to retire? And the response is, well, I don't know if I'm ever going to retire, but I want to leave this job at this age.   Mark: Right. Right.   John: So it turns into what am I going to do next? And I think kind of what you said there. My mother watches my kids and that's kind of a level of importance to her and she watches them two or three days a week, and there's actually a study where grandparents that kind of are helping out their children, watch their grandchildren actually live a little bit longer. And I think it's all about that level, feeling important.   Mark: Yeah.   John: So whether that's watching grandkids, my clients had started to be a realtor and they actually end up making more money than they were at their previous job. So whatever it is, it's just making some type of level of importance. Whether it's making money, helping out family, volunteering is just feeling like you got to get up and do something in the morning.   Nick: And a good way to kind of sum that up as purpose.   Mark: Purpose. There you go.   Nick: Purpose. When people feel like they have a purpose for both themselves and those around them, they tend to do a lot better.   Mark: Yeah. No I'm with you there. And we used to retire at let's say 65 and you probably were passing away at 67, right? So sitting on the porch for a year or two and doing nothing felt great because we were tired. We were worn out. The concept of retirement is a little less than a 100 years old. So a lot of stuff is actually changed quite a bit. So a post retirement, something or another post retirement purpose instead of career. I like that. Thanks, Nick. We'll use that. And going forward is a great way to think about that on this countdown days to retirement list. Let's go to number four, Nick. So why don't you throw us some things to think about in the opportunity to save more. Again, I mentioned 50, right? So at 50 plus, some stuff starts to change and there's actually some good time to catch up a little bit or just cycle a bit more away if you need to.   Nick: Yeah. Oftentimes whether it's in their 50s or early 60s, people have, maybe they have children coming off the payroll and they don't necessarily plan to figure out how are they going to be able to recapture some of those dollars that they're used to spending on the kids and kind of help them really build up their retirement and maybe catch up from all those years of taking care of the kids. That can be something that's a big deal. One thing that's come up multiple times in the last, I'd say three to four weeks with what's been going on in the market is, we have clients emailing or calling us asking, Hey, the market's down, should we stop saving? And, the way that we try to kind of explain to people is that markets are cyclical.   Nick: We have had this period of time, 10, 12 years, where the markets have generally gone up and people's conception of what, or I should say, perception of what, typically happens in normal cycles, one to three to four year cycles is a little bit thrown off, but an easy way to think about this is that this is why we have a plan in place. You want to continue to save. And if anything the thought process is that you're buying at a discount from what things were previously. So in a lot of ways, the market's on sale. And so continuing to average in and chipping away and taking advantage of the benefits of being able to save money pre-tax, or those sorts of things is an important thing.   Mark: Yeah. It can make a huge dent, right? We're hopefully making the most money we've ever made and all that good kind of stuff. So 50 plus there's should be some good opportunities to sock a bit more away. And that might help John with number five, which is reducing down the debt. So even if you're not necessarily putting more away into a retirement account, because you've done a good job or whatever, maybe the focus is take some of that extra money with the kids being off the payroll and get rid of some of that, especially bad debt.   John: Yeah. 100%. I mean, with rates being as low as they have been, we have seen a lot of people go into retirement with mortgages, but you're at 2.6%, that's nothing crazy, but let's take mortgage out of it. Other debt definitely recommend trying to get that down and off completely, but get it off your books because when you go to retire, it's a big cash flow, where's your income coming from? Social security, pension, investments. The last thing you want at that point where there's no longer a paycheck coming in is debt. What that's doing at that point, it's really eating into kind of things you want to do, which we talked about for hobbies or enjoyment. And then on top of it, it actually adds some stress level to Hey, I need more income coming in to pay out all these bills and all this debt. So definitely before you hit retirement, it's good to be debt free. It's easier to pay off the debt in your working years than when you're not working.   Mark: Yeah. And on the concept of the house, right, there's always the arguments back and forth there, the different things. So certainly, that can also still be on the get debt free list if you'd like. I don't think it's a bad idea to necessarily get rid of it, but just make sure that you're doing that smartly and not being house rich cash poor as the saying goes or whatever the case is. So just kind of bear that in mind.   Mark: But yeah eliminating, if bought an RV or the big plans where the RV in retirement, maybe getting that paid down, if you bought it a little early or whatever, or boat, or I don't know, muscle car, whatever it might be. Right. Just get rid of the stuff that you've got some debt on. And then Nick, the final one here, number six on the list on just counting down stuff is the risk conversation. So if we're reducing our debt, maybe we ought to also think about reducing our risk. Now last year, people would've said, I'm not reducing my risk, the market's on fire, but right now they're like, okay, well let's maybe reduce the risk. Point being at 58 should we be investing like we're 38?   Nick: Yeah. So risk is an interesting word. And we wanted to take a little bit of time to kind of chat about this because there are different types of risk, and depending upon who you talk to, how they rank the different types of risk via priority is different. So for example, inflationary risk, which is something that we're dealing with right now, that's a risk. So in other words, losing the spending power of our money via inflation is something that we need to keep and take into consideration. However, we're in this kind of perfect storm where taking too much risk, if you're shifting money out of cash per se and moving substantial amounts of money into the market, you're dealing with a significant amount of market risk. And then we have interest rate risk from the perspective of, as they've increased interest rates, that's really pushed down the prices of bonds and bond funds.   Nick: And one conversation that we've been having with people is them not necessarily realizing that the bond market and even if you look at the most general bond index is down almost 10% year to date. And so we've been trying to take a lot of time in one-on-one meetings with people to try to explain how this has an impact and really this is a, with what we're dealing with right now is probably the best case in the last 15 years or so to show people why it's important to be diversified and understand that trying to fully time the market, whether it's from the stock side to the bond side, to the cash side, real estate, et cetera, it can be really tricky. And when things are going great, it's hard to remember that, but right now it's showing us that it's really important to make sure that when we think about our risk, that we're taking into consideration poor times, not just great times and understanding that just because maybe throughout the majority of your investing career, taking less risk has meant, Hey, let's reduce our stock exposure and increase our bond exposure.   Nick: It doesn't mean that that's always going to stay flat or go up, there's risks along with that too. So, diversification, understanding that sometimes we do run across periods of time where we just kind of have to take our medicine where all markets have been up for the most part over the last 12 years. There's going to be times where we run into corrections, which is kind of what we're dealing with now. And we have to be patient and try not to go overboard with overreacting to the short period of time. Sometimes looking at the lens through the last, even one year, two year, three year period of time and realizing that in the scheme of things we need to just kind of stay steady.   Nick: But yeah, in general, I would say that making sure that you kind of do an update on what you feel comfortable with from a risk parameter. Now is a good time to reevaluate that. Because what we have seen is that people have been comfortable with a certain amount of risk over the last 10 years, because things have just been going up. And so now that things aren't just going up, what they thought of risk and how they feel comfortable managing it is substantially different than it has been.   Mark: Yeah. Oh definitely. Our risk tolerance level's been like, yeah, I'm fine. I'm fine with the risk. I'm fine. Whoa, wait a minute. I'm not so fine now, right?   Nick: Yeah. The risk over the last 10 years has been okay. I'm okay getting 8% instead of 15%,   Mark: Right.   Nick: Not oh, I'm okay being down negative 11 versus negative 20.   Mark: Yeah. Yeah.   Nick: Everything's been more on the positive side of things and even with COVID, we had the fastest bear market in history where it boomeranged right back up. And so even though that only happened a couple years ago, people have already forgotten about that.   Mark: Oh yeah. Yeah.   Nick: So, yeah. And I can't emphasize enough the importance that this sheds on having a plan and thinking longer term.   Mark: Well, there you go. So that's some countdown items to think about for the days towards retirement, sixth list, list of six things there, excuse me, that you can think about and address towards your retirement strategy. And those are the things that you'll go through when you have a plan put in place when you're working with a team like the team at PFG Private Wealth. So if you're not, then reach out to them and have a conversation, set up some time to get that started, pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com. That's got all the tools, tips, and resources there. You can schedule some time. You can reach out to John and Nick and the team and get started that way. Of course, you can also find the podcast, subscribe to us on whatever platform you like to use there. So you can catch future episodes as well as check out past episodes. Again, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's going to do it this week for the podcast for John and Nick. I'm your host Mark. We'll see you next time on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth.

Nonprofit news for June.  Independent Sector Releases Survey On Nonprofit Trust  Independent Sector has released its third annual survey on trust within the nonprofit and civil society sector. The findings show that nonprofits still benefit from strong public trust (56% of respondents say they trust nonprofits), making NPOs among the few social institutions that the majority of the public trust, along with small businesses and community members. However, the sector saw a statistically significant decrease of 3% in trust compared to 2020. The survey also found that education and financial wellbeing drive nonprofit trust, that purpose-driven integrity is essential, and that Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of the nonprofit sector. The survey fielded answers from 3,015 Americans and had a margin of error of +/- 2%. Read more ➝   Summary   233 mass shootings have happened so far in 2022: nonprofit | The Hill  Rising gas prices affect delivery operations for nonprofits | KSHB 41 Kansas City News Inflation impacts nonprofit's ability to feed thousands of kids over the summer | CBS 46 News  Small Nonprofits Shouldn't Be Subjected to the Same Payroll Tax as Amazon and ExxonMobil | The Chronicle of Philanthropy  Nonprofit helps formerly incarcerated firefighters get jobs | WesternSlopeNow           Rought Transcript [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed for gosh, June 6th, June 6th, the week of June 6th, we were talking about some of the information coming out of the independent sector on a survey, a non-profit trust, as well as some other headlines related to themes that we've been covering Nick. How's it going? [00:00:18] Nick: It's gone. Good, George. [00:00:20] George: Doing all right. Just, I had a wedding last weekend of an in-law's fun. Hadn't been to a wedding for awhile. So good time to celebrate. Hopefully nobody got COVID. [00:00:31] Nick: That's good. TIS the site TIS the season for weddings. [00:00:36] George: Yeah. weddings. weddings, and funerals. They go on, no matter what I'll say that. [00:00:41] Nick: That is true. But bring us back to the nonprofit news. We'll start off with our first story, which comes from independent sector. Independent sector has released its third annual survey on trust within the non-profit and civil society sector. And the findings show that while nonprofits still benefit from strong. [00:01:02] Trust where 56% of respondents say they still trust non-profits. This is actually a decrease of 3% in overall trust in nonprofits compared to 2020, there are a couple other really interesting findings within the report. One is that nonprofits were the strongest institution when it comes to public trust, beating. [00:01:27] Legacy institutions like government, the media substantially that being said, there's a couple of interests. Nuances and the data and the survey found that education and financial wellbeing drove non-profit trust. In fact, education level was the prime determinant more than any other demographic determinant of trust in non-profit organizations. [00:01:53] They also found that gen Z is increasingly skeptical of the nonprofit sector, not having a negative. uh, perspective per se. But not having a positive one either. So the jury is still out on them when it comes to building that trust in non-profits as a social institution. But George, what were your takeaways from these really interesting and important survivors? [00:02:19] George: yeah, just to start, I always try to find and understand the sample size. In this case, it is a U S general population of 3000 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2%. So any number you hear it's like give or take a couple points. So that's just important to put in mind. I think the differences based on age range, And rising generation being a touch more skeptical is in line, uh, overall positive in terms of this report that I look for is just look, we're talking about people's trust across businesses, government, media, and nonprofits, these four major pillars of information in our society and nonprofits continue to be at the top of it. [00:03:05] Overall trust erosion, just seemingly undercutting everybody. However, nonprofits just play this incredible role with regard to communicating valuable information at a time of mistrust. And so I, you know, I always like seeing that in terms of nonprofits being up there, but the overall number, I believe slipped 3% for nonprofits, right. [00:03:28] Nick: It did. Yeah. The overall number. Crease 3%. However, it was still high at 56%. And the only other social institution that was rated that high in the survey were small businesses and just local communities and community of members. So in terms of our social institutions, nonprofits are still the highest, but yes did slip 3%. [00:03:55] George: I'd say the other piece that I pulled out here is the biggest differentiating demographics. Characteristic is college non-college so more highly educated individuals in this particular survey, uh, were, uh, at a higher likelihood to be trusting the social impact sector, nonprofits and philanthropy. [00:04:17] Nick: That's an interesting one to me. And I think it goes. I think it's interesting because a lot of nonprofits, particularly those that focus on social welfare, uh, might be helping folks in poverty or who may not have had the ratty opportunity to go to higher education. So maybe an interesting dichotomy between. [00:04:44] The folks who might be funding contributing, running, and building non-profits versus beneficiaries uh, potential beneficiaries of those services. And of course that's a broad oversimplification, but to me that was, that was somewhat. George, what do you make of gen Z being more skeptical of nonprofits as an institution? [00:05:07] The, the actual data show that they were more trusting of, uh, crowdfunding, uh, type campaigns and a little bit more enthusiastic about, uh, about donating, for example, to those games. [00:05:22] George: Part of me is not surprised. Ultimately, rising generations tend to have higher levels of skepticism of institutions that pre-existed, that are run disproportionately sometimes by the other generation. And just, it's like a natural curve of what goes. The rise in, in crowdfunding and crowdfunding philanthropy is it's a personal frustration of mine because I don't believe it is the most intelligent way to distribute funds for a public. [00:05:49] Good. I think it's the most popular, I think it's the most social, I think it is near term, gratifying, longterm, even potentially destabilize. To say here's how philanthropy should be done. Where as a massive crowd, smarter than an individual who studies a topic, there are times when the crowd is far smarter, but there are other times when, you know, maybe an organization that has got 10 employees doesn't need $45 million in the span of four days. [00:06:20] Maybe that's a thing that you have to sort of balance. And I think, you know, it's a pendulum, it's a pendulum of a philanthropy that all, uh, Obviously, uh, come and go. And maybe the rising generation pro you know, like coming up, we'll be like, wait a minute. We've seen this show too many times. And the only person who wins in crowdfunding consistently as a crowdfunding platform. [00:06:41] Okay. [00:06:42] Nick: That's fair. I guess in turn, gen Z's are, are skeptical. You are, and we are skeptical of gen Z, uh, over simplification again, but. [00:06:53] George: Yeah, I mean, you also saw this in a macro around crypto, and obviously I've not shied away from being a fan of crypto philanthropy. However, it does also make that crowdfunding a lot easier. I cannot go understated the fact that millions and millions of dollars were sent to the Ukraine without the permission of the guiding powers that be to do so. [00:07:16] And that's, it feels very gratifying in the most. And you know, who who's to say how, you know, 80 plus million is, is being, being used. And it was something that when you take away the middle people, institutions and controlling bodies in place, like you just get money to where you think it needs to go, and it will have different types of second order effects both positive and negative. [00:07:46] Nick: Yeah, I think that's, I think that's that's fair. Agree. All right, we'll move on to our next story. And this comes from the hill and is a little bit more sobering. And the hill reports that data from the gun violence archive, which is a nonprofit has supported 233 mass shootings that have taken place so far this year in the United States. [00:08:11] And this data comes amid the fallout. Several devastating shootings in New York, Texas, Oklahoma. And just with seems like, uh, increasing temperature in the country when it comes to, uh, gun violence. But what struck me about this? Wasn't so much the gun violence as. As terrible as it is not something I'm surprised about sadly, but that the most definitive source on this is actually coming from a nonprofit and the gun violence archive is the go-to source for news organizations and researchers, uh, trying to assess. [00:08:53] Gun violence and mass shootings in particular in the United States. So really interesting that a nonprofit is stepping up here and filling that void, uh, to provide the public with really vital information that for a long time, The government, for example, was barred from studying you know, government agencies were barred from studying the health effects of gun violence. [00:09:15] So there was very, oh yeah, this is famously. That rule was lifted only within the past couple of years. But the CDC, I think it's, the CDC wanted to do a research on gun violence and Congress specifically for beta in the allocation of. So there's kind of a dearth of national data on gun violence and mass shootings. [00:09:43] And the data is all over the place. But it seems that this nonprofit is really kind of DFR Tate of a source of truth on this. [00:09:51] George: Yeah. I think getting back to definitely check this out. Gun violence, archive.org. I'm embarrassed. I had never seen this nonprofit, but it's a great model for showing how you can use data, information and honesty to hold up the mirror to society and say, this is what the numbers tell us about what's going on. [00:10:14] This isn't. I mean, as much as you can say, it's like, it's not an agenda here. It's just your, your numbers. You're not doing well by any measure of what's going on here. And the question is, is this, this, you know, what is, what is tolerant? You know, there's twenty twenty one, six hundred and ninety two mass shootings. [00:10:34] Is that tolerant of a society. I mean, it was tolerant then it was tolerant in 2020 with 610. Mass shootings. It was tolerant by our society in 2019, with 417 mass shootings. At what point, I wonder because the amount of mass shootings per year, it's some sort of threshold. And this organization seems to be asking that direct question by holding the numbers up, uh, as well as other total incidents of guns and other pieces, but the mass shootings. [00:11:10] Uh, particularly of importance because we made assault rifles legal in this country after having them be illegal throughout the nineties. And we simply let the clock expire on that permission. And now I know they're debating slowly, whether or not that might change, but I think one take a look at gun violence, archive.org, to take a look at how your organization responds to your own cause and your backyard, not just gun violence, but how might data be used in this. [00:11:37] way? [00:11:38] To effect change and to hold up that social mirror. [00:11:41] Nick: Absolutely George, that's a great analysis and I have a little bit more. And formation on the law. I was talking about there's a 19 66, 19 96 rule that passed through Congress, uh, called the Dickey amendment, which barred the CDC and other government research organizations from using funds to quote, to advocate or promote gun control, which was widely seen as essentially prohibiting any study of gun violence. [00:12:08] Or gun sales, what have you at the federal level, uh, but, uh, here's to have been repealed in 2019. But, uh, the article goes on to quote that there is a decade gap of, uh, data there that needs to be filled in. So like you said, this, this nonprofits doing tremendous, tremendous public service. [00:12:32] All right, I'll take us into our next story. And this comes from at KSHB 41, Kansas city news, and I'm going to package it with, uh, the next story from CBS 46 news. And these two articles about rising gas prices affecting delivery operations for nonprofits and similarly. Inflation impacting nonprofits ability to feed thousands of kids over the summer. [00:13:01] So we have two local stories here. One is a nonprofit, uh, you know, the price of gasoline is affecting their ability, uh, to, to move, uh, goods around and their operations. And uh, this other story. Inflation, uh, which we've talked about on this podcast, really impacting food banks and other, uh, services providing nonprofits. [00:13:23] But, uh, George, do we see this abating anytime soon? Is this going to be a problem for the long-term? Do we think how, how should we think about this kind of a macro economic, or even just a macro level? [00:13:39] George: So one of the reasons I brought up the articles that I did, I mean, there's so many of these articles about inflation. We talked about it on here, but the shift in the summer is that the school food programs that disproportionately feed a tremendous amount of food, insecure young people in this country through public schools. [00:13:57] Goes away during the summer. And so there's going to be a different level of food insecurity, hitting families across the country. This summer, while gas continues to rise and food prices continue to clearly hit new inflation highs and the cost of, uh, and the cost of food to feed, uh, is going, you know, that that need, that has to be met and it's disproportionate during the summer. [00:14:21] So these ones should program. Uh, or something that I was just looking at. And so if your organization is in and around it, I think messaging the urgency associated with a shift that, that could maybe help with fundraising or improving the narrative. [00:14:36] Nick: Absolutely. I agree. Those programs serve such a vital importance for our school students. And. The summer is hard for a lot of families that don't have not only the those food programs, but even then have to consider things like childcare or paying for camp or whatever it may be. Puts a lot of, a lot of burden on, on folks. [00:15:00] So that's a great thing to flag. All right, our next article, George, I know this is one, uh, that you're a topic you're passionate about and you're passionate about it because you, in fact wrote this article and the title is small. Non-profits, shouldn't be subjected to the same payroll's hacks as Amazon and Exxon mobile written by you in the Chronicle of philanthropy. [00:15:26] Do you want to tell us a little bit about what you. [00:15:30] George: I'm just going to admit, I know this is just shameless. It's shameless for me to bring my own article into our own newsfeed. However, this has been on my mind for probably a couple of years of how effectively the same payroll tax, right? When you pay an employee. That sort of percentage of payroll tax that goes to state and federal, which, you. [00:15:50] know, 10 to 14% give or take is the same rate that a Facebook exec, sorry, Mehta, exac, or somebody at Exxon or somebody at any other size organization is paying the same percentage rate instead of something like, and maybe you're like, oh, that makes sense. [00:16:06] It's a flat thing. Except if you look at our income tax, it's a progressive tax. The percent that a billionaire has to pay is more. On paper, at least than somebody making minimum wage yet at the point of sale at the point of the moment where the nonprofit or the fortune 100 company is paying the person, that's the same percentage rate. [00:16:31] And so I'm suggesting here a policy where in nonprofits that. Our smaller frankly, uh, that are smaller for effectively. I'm calling about a quarter million charities that are operating with less than a hundred employees and less than 5 million in annual revenue. Basically for, you know, a few billion dollars could essentially we could remove the payroll tax. [00:16:56] They're giving them an extra 10%, uh, operating to either raise wages, to hire people, to serve the communities that they already do. And, and by the way, they are, you know, 5 0 1 C3. So they are doing public good. Uh, and I put the cap on that in terms of the Cypress medical thing is because I don't think a nonprofit with like 10,000 employees is the same. [00:17:18] Type of situation that a smaller under 100 person nonprofit is. And yeah, it's a, it's a it's part thought experiment, but also part super freaking practical that literally for a cost of 3.7 billion I'd calculated, which could easily be made up with a progressive tax that we're in up a touch more for organizations like Amazon. [00:17:44] To pay cause they can't get around those taxes the same way they can on income tax on, on their, on their corporate taxes. They can't get away from the fact that they need to pay humans to do work. And that's where a percent is taken out. It'd be pretty easy to move up half a point for organizations that are operating over a billion dollars because they're dodging their freaking taxes. [00:18:05] Anyway. Anyway, this is a window into how. I get with social impact. [00:18:12] Nick: We love geekiness onto this podcast. And George I'd hesitate to guess that listeners who've made it this far into the podcast are just as geeky. So I think we are in good company, but I wish I had, I wish I had a room. I [00:18:27] Uh, we'll look at the data. We'll see many people make it this far. I wish I had a room to, to get you in someone to talk to someone in a suit in a, in a nice office in DC, because I think they need to hear. [00:18:41] George: Well, I'm not going to give up on this idea. I don't know where to go next. I did get a quote from the independent sector, uh, that, you know, they, they do think it's you know, potentially plausible and they, they said there is, uh, some type of, you know, precedent for this type of tax. But. We'll say, I don't know where to go with it next, but I tend not to let things drop, so I'll keep pushing this. [00:19:04] And if anybody listening just wants to take this and run with it, please go, go do it. I'll give you the research. Cause I should be doing my real job instead of trying to push something like this, [00:19:18] Nick: It's for the public. Good. And speaking of public. Good. How about a feel, good story from our favorite. [00:19:26] George: please. [00:19:28] Nick: All right. This story comes from a Western slope now.com not entirely sure, but it is about a nonprofit that's helping, helping formerly incarcerated firefighters get jobs. So it's, well-known that, especially out west, including in California, Oregon, and Washington states have relied on incarcerated men and women. [00:19:52] Wildfires. And that's all, that's a whole other conversation. But they are often trained to perform here at grueling work while earning just a few dollars, sometimes as little as $2 a day. However, there is a nonprofit group with some foundation backing. That's trying to help those firefighters turn their in carceral rated job into a real job. [00:20:19] Upon, uh, their release. So it's helping folks get the, uh, the certifications they need. Cause they already have the real-world training. I've already been doing it. They basically already are firefighters. But helping incarcerated folks, uh, turn what they learned during, during prison into a career. [00:20:38] And I think that's really tremendous. It helps, uh, reintegrate firefighters into, or formerly incarcerated folks. Newly firefighters into our communities. It helps them, uh, serve a public good and public benefit. And we interview when the individuals who participated. And he was saying that he felt that he had something to give back to society and was really proud to be able to serve in that capacity. [00:21:02] So this is a really innovation, innovative program, I think. And I'm for any kind of program that helps formerly incarcerated folks reintegrate into society, uh, because. It reduces recidivism and it has a whole host of other social benefits, but cool to see. [00:21:20] George: That's a really great quote in here from a a person. Uh, incarcerated and Brandon Smith says when you're incarcerated, you have this stigma of being a public nuisance. Being a firefighter, provided an opportunity for me to give back to community and give myself a sense of pride. It was something I wanted to continue as a way of giving back to the community once I came home. [00:21:44] But they noted that after his sentence was completed in 2014, it really wasn't clear how to essentially become a firefighter, even though he was. Already trained in that. And so the certificate cations that he received while incarcerated didn't count and he, uh, and he couldn't even apply for some positions do the criminal records. [00:22:05] So this is a great nonprofit. And by the way, you know, speaking to somebody who's in California, like we need firefighters very, very much so also across the Midwest, because it's going to be a very tough fire season. So hats off to these folks. All right, Nick. Thank you. [00:22:22] Nick: Thanks, arch.

Nonprofit news for June.  Independent Sector Releases Survey On Nonprofit Trust  Independent Sector has released its third annual survey on trust within the nonprofit and civil society sector. The findings show that nonprofits still benefit from strong public trust (56% of respondents say they trust nonprofits), making NPOs among the few social institutions that the majority of the public trust, along with small businesses and community members. However, the sector saw a statistically significant decrease of 3% in trust compared to 2020. The survey also found that education and financial wellbeing drive nonprofit trust, that purpose-driven integrity is essential, and that Gen Z is increasingly skeptical of the nonprofit sector. The survey fielded answers from 3,015 Americans and had a margin of error of +/- 2%. Read more ➝   Summary   233 mass shootings have happened so far in 2022: nonprofit | The Hill  Rising gas prices affect delivery operations for nonprofits | KSHB 41 Kansas City News Inflation impacts nonprofit's ability to feed thousands of kids over the summer | CBS 46 News  Small Nonprofits Shouldn't Be Subjected to the Same Payroll Tax as Amazon and ExxonMobil | The Chronicle of Philanthropy  Nonprofit helps formerly incarcerated firefighters get jobs | WesternSlopeNow           Rought Transcript [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed for gosh, June 6th, June 6th, the week of June 6th, we were talking about some of the information coming out of the independent sector on a survey, a non-profit trust, as well as some other headlines related to themes that we've been covering Nick. How's it going? [00:00:18] Nick: It's gone. Good, George. [00:00:20] George: Doing all right. Just, I had a wedding last weekend of an in-law's fun. Hadn't been to a wedding for awhile. So good time to celebrate. Hopefully nobody got COVID. [00:00:31] Nick: That's good. TIS the site TIS the season for weddings. [00:00:36] George: Yeah. weddings. weddings, and funerals. They go on, no matter what I'll say that. [00:00:41] Nick: That is true. But bring us back to the nonprofit news. We'll start off with our first story, which comes from independent sector. Independent sector has released its third annual survey on trust within the non-profit and civil society sector. And the findings show that while nonprofits still benefit from strong. [00:01:02] Trust where 56% of respondents say they still trust non-profits. This is actually a decrease of 3% in overall trust in nonprofits compared to 2020, there are a couple other really interesting findings within the report. One is that nonprofits were the strongest institution when it comes to public trust, beating. [00:01:27] Legacy institutions like government, the media substantially that being said, there's a couple of interests. Nuances and the data and the survey found that education and financial wellbeing drove non-profit trust. In fact, education level was the prime determinant more than any other demographic determinant of trust in non-profit organizations. [00:01:53] They also found that gen Z is increasingly skeptical of the nonprofit sector, not having a negative. uh, perspective per se. But not having a positive one either. So the jury is still out on them when it comes to building that trust in non-profits as a social institution. But George, what were your takeaways from these really interesting and important survivors? [00:02:19] George: yeah, just to start, I always try to find and understand the sample size. In this case, it is a U S general population of 3000 with a margin of error of plus or minus 2%. So any number you hear it's like give or take a couple points. So that's just important to put in mind. I think the differences based on age range, And rising generation being a touch more skeptical is in line, uh, overall positive in terms of this report that I look for is just look, we're talking about people's trust across businesses, government, media,

Nonprofit news: In Wake Of Uvalde School Shooting, Gun Rights Advocacy Groups Fill Void Left By NRA   On May 24 a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas killing 19 students, two teachers, and wounding 17 others. The horrific shooting has rekindled the decades-long debate in the United States between gun control and gun rights advocates. Within economically developed countries, the United States by far outnumbers other countries in terms of both gun ownership and gun deaths per capita. Among gun rights advocacy groups, however, the infighting and reputationally-damaged NRA has provided an opportunity for other organizations (many tax-exempt) to fill the void, according to reporting from The Washington Post. The National Association for Gun Rights, a 501(c)4 group that often criticizes the NRA for being too compromising, saw revenue increase to $15 million, up from $6 million in 2019. Other gun rights groups have seen similar increases in revenue and capacity. Read more ➝ Summary Nonprofit Begins Tracking Anti-Asian Hate Crimes in the Midwest | NBC Chicago Nonprofits Fighting Gender Violence Have Struggled Since Losing Buffetts' Funding. They Urgently Need More Support. | The Chronicle of Philanthropy Coloradans asked to take water conservation pledge | 9News.com KUSA Tax breaks aren't prime reason for high-net-worth philanthropy, study finds | CNBC  Nonprofit keeps taps Memorial Day tradition alive | Military | kdhnews.com | The Killeen Daily Herald   Rough Transcript:   [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed we have got in the wake of the Uvalde, the school shooting information about how gun rights advocacy is actually increasing for some nonprofits and a number of other summary articles. Following coming after, uh, this Memorial day weekend, NEC. [00:00:21] Nick: It's going good, George. We have a lot to cover this week. Of course, the first story we're going to talk about is. Uh, around what happened in your Uvalde and better conversations about gun rights and gun control advocacy groups. So last week on May 24th government opened fire the Robb elementary school in , Texas killing 19 students to teachers. [00:00:46] And wounding 17 others. And this terrific shooting has rekindled a decades long debate in the United States between gun control and gun rights advocates. Uh, now within economically developed countries, the United States by far outnumbers others in terms of both gun ownership and gun deaths per capita. [00:01:06] Um, but along the debate about how to solve. You have gun rights, advocacy groups on one side and gun control advocacy groups on the other. Uh, we wanted to highlight an article from the Washington post, which is talking about a little bit of the landscape change on the side of the gun rights advocacy groups. [00:01:30] We've talked about those on this podcast before how the NRA has suffered from lots of infighting and legal challenges. As a whole has seen its reputation damage quite significantly over the past couple of years. Um, but as the Washington post points out, a lot of other tax exempt organizations now seem to be filling the void, um, and potentially taking the lead on the gun rights. [00:01:59] Side of the issue here. The national association for gun rights is a 5 0 1 C4 group that often criticizes the NRA for being too compromising saw revenue increase to 15 million up from just 6 million in 2019 on the article sites that lots of other gun rights groups have seen similar increases in revenue and capacity. [00:02:25] So the takeaway here is that what was. Very consolidated. Uh, landscape in terms of advocacy with one go-to group is now splintering and other groups are taking the place, uh, and serving the role once filled by the NRA. But George, this comes as the NRA held its annual conference in Texas, just three days after the shooting. [00:02:51] Um, this conference was on last Friday and it's a fraught moment in the United States. And, um, You know, personally, I think that that gun control and gun safety needs to be acted upon and legislative upon. And unfortunately that were happened, but interesting, nonetheless, to see the landscape on the gun rights side, change in pretty significant. [00:03:12] George: Yeah, it's sort of inevitable the thought that tamping down the NRAS ability to sort of fundraise and operate effectively to assume that that would stop. The progress of guns in this country. And it's unbelievable power in terms of putting money into politics is, is errand, right? It is. It's sort of targeting your energy at the, the wrong enemy because like a hydro, when you cut off its head to more show up in its place, inevitably the source of the money is not going away. [00:03:51] The amount of guns purchased after an event like this inevitably increases, and that simply puts more money in the hands of manufacturers, which then finds its way inevitably into any functioning non-profit willing to carry the flag of, of gun rights over human. And so, you know, in a moment like this, there's a, you know, a rare opportunity to get the country's attention and to focus on something. [00:04:18] I am having a hard time finding faith in Congress that immediately chose the bold action of going on vacation and leadership that has just polar polar views. Interesting narratives that I've seen coming out here are, is around the fact that we actually had a ban on assault. Right. Had a band. And if you look at the number of mass shootings prior to 2004, when it went out of the fact where he was put into place in 1994, by president than bill Clinton, the number of mass shootings go up. [00:04:52] The question that is just hard to reconcile is why, you know, 18 year olds or frankly anyone needs access to high capacity, uh, firearms, if not to kill it. It makes zero sense other than to line the pockets of [00:05:08] these manufacturers under this like misconceived notion of the right to bear arms and it's absurd extent, you know, why, why draw the line of dissolves? Shouldn't we all have, uh, you know, explosives, why am I put on Dara's watchlist? If I buy a extreme amounts of. It's because you have intent to do harm to large amounts of people. [00:05:32] There are potential solutions being talked about that that could work. And you mentioned the sort of larger fact of how America has more guns than other countries. You said, uh, a lot more though, you know, and I think it's important to note that our, our guns, our guns per a hundred people are 120 guns per people. [00:05:52] The next closest is Candace at 34 guns for people. You know that there are more guns than there are people here. Um, and somehow we continue to purchase more. And then that inevitably leads to gun murders per a hundred thousand, which is 30 times worse than Australia's. And a number of times worse than Canada's we're at 3.4 deaths per and Canada is at 0.6. [00:06:14] So, you know, I think what needs to happen differently this time than the last time we had a tragedy. This magnitude, which was Sally and, you know, Sandy hook, December of 2012 is a reasonable step forward. It's easy to respond extreme to extreme, but I think you, what I'm saying, you, I think. Progressive legislators advocates. [00:06:43] Non-profits people speaking to this need to couch, the anger and rage and focus on small wins, which feels just painful to say, but small wins and steps toward reasonable controls on. Anywhere that you can gain this, and I'm not going to list the number of policies out there, but there are areas where Americans all can agree and should agree. [00:07:08] So I think I'm, I'm being a sort of moderate in my expectation, uh, and also analyzing some Google trends and seeing. That so far, we actually haven't hit the overall searches search volume that we saw about a decade ago. Um, in 2013, far from it, in terms of Google trends, searches for gun control as a topic. [00:07:30] So I haven't seen it take off as high as it probably needs to, to actually move the needle. And again, Congress going on a brave vacation. During this time, uh, is going to slow any potential policy. So the question is for, for how long can the state in the media narrative and hopefully not get taken over also by a counter narrative, which is going to be incredibly attractive to take, which is why the sheriff overseeing this, uh, this, this tragedy chose to wait for. [00:08:06] Over 15 minutes to take action. And that's, that's not the point. The point is there's an 18 year old who needed medical help and instead he got help from a local gun store. [00:08:17] Nick: I definitely agree with you. I think to your point for too long folks on the side of the policy debate about wanting stricter gun control have propped up the NRA as this kind of buggy man. But the truth of the matter is. Is ideological divide in this country. And there are a lot of people who repeatedly vote in candidates who are. [00:08:45] Pro gun. And that, that ideological messaging on the right is, is extreme. And I think it's beyond just money and lobbyist. It's a genuine ideological, perhaps demagogues, but it's an ideological difference. And I think that for folks who are looking for solutions need to understand that it's not just countering dark money and politics, it's actually. [00:09:09] Changing minds and having those debates and meeting people where they're at to your point about small wins. Um, but something, something we'll continue to watch. And unfortunately I'm not super hopeful as well, but that being said, um, you have to try and, and we'll keep trying. And this year we have a chance to try again. [00:09:33] So, uh, something, a story and a narrative will continue to be. [00:09:37] All right, shifting gears a little bit. I can take us into the summary. This one comes from NBC in Chicago, and it's about a nonprofit beginning to track anti Asian hate crimes in the Midwest. So over the course of the pandemic, uh, organizations that track statistics of, um, Uh, hate crimes against Asian Americans have seen in over 300% increase. [00:10:03] And this particular organization that Asian American foundation is setting up a program to track hate crimes and AAPI violence while providing legal and other support to victims. Um, To build trust, um, and break down barriers with communities, particularly immigrant communities or non native English speaking communities, um, to, to help these folks feel supported in a time where unfortunately, they're seeing a surge in violence against them. [00:10:33] And I live in New York and there's been really tragically high profile, um, hate crimes against. Asian folks in the New York city area. So there's just something that's, that's very close to us. And I know a lot of here, all of us here at Holwell. So, um, just awesome. Worked from a nonprofit, stepping up to fill that dough, that void when it comes to data and reporting, and that is hugely important when it comes to creating policy decisions and other sorts of interventions to address such violence. [00:11:05] George: Yeah, I think it's important that. Sir, not the qualitative, but the quantitative on this one, trying to document and get the data of what's going on. So you can really understand the scope of the problem. There's one thing to say, one-off events and like it's easy then for the public to say, oh yeah, but that's just like one lone actor as opposed to the larger incidents going up. [00:11:28] So yeah, I like this. [00:11:30] Nick: Okay. All right. Our next story is interesting one, and this comes from the Chronicle of falling anthropy and it talks about how the buffets, um, have stopped funding programs that support women and girls, particularly in the United States. So this article talks about, um, the foundation, um, the, the Novo foundation. [00:11:55] Uh, quote unquote stunned the nonprofit world by announced thing at the height of the pandemic, that it was halting funding for critical programs, focused on women and girls. And the article goes on to talk with some of the, uh, uh, grant recipient organizations that have been on the receipt had been on the receiving end of such funding, seeing it suddenly dry off. [00:12:17] And, uh, the, the, the TLDR of this article is. When it comes to corporate philanthropy, single similarly split second decisions can have really lasting and unfortunate ramifications. And, uh, the article kind of goes on to talk about the need for organizations to diversify funding, which is of course easier said than done. [00:12:40] Um, but George, what's your take on this? [00:12:42] George: No, we covered the Nova foundation out and shift, and this is just the second order or logical next order effect of that, where, you know, the Nova foundation accounted for or reported 96% of funding for that type of work. And it's. It's it's unfortunate because it does then a cliff and raises questions about, you know, was this? [00:13:04] you know, especially if they're trying to turn long-term impact, it's hard to do when your funding can drive overnight. [00:13:09] So, you know, we'll call for much more responsible philanthropy and just, just a warning for anyone who's funding relies heavily 70%, 50% more on one story. [00:13:19] Nick: All right. Our next story comes from nine news.com K USA. And it's about Coloradans being asked to take a water conservation pledge. This is kind of a cool one. It's called the water 22 pledge, and it includes 22 ways for every Coloradan to save 22 gallons of water every day. And according to this nifty infographic, um, Each Colorado and saves 22 gallons per day. [00:13:49] That's 8,000 gallons per year, or approximately 48 billion gallons per year for the statewide. So, uh, this of course addressing the, some, uh, climate concerns around, uh, drought and lack of, uh, clean water, um, and, and really, really dangerously low water levels out there. Um, so, uh, I love it. I love this, this kind of educational approach to addressing environmental impacts. [00:14:19] And of course it takes much more than that, but the fact that this is just one kind of component of that I think is really cool and something we're going to need a hell of a lot more of as we start and continue to tackle the climate crisis. [00:14:33] George: Yeah. I like stories like these sort of, non-profits stepping up for water crises, which are absolutely going to happen across the west Midwest. This. Based on what they're reporting. I think those, those points are incredibly important, but the practical environmental scientist. That I once potentially wanted to be in, in college, uh, has to also point to the fact that in terms of water consumption, agricultural water use is 89% of Colorado state wide usage. [00:15:07] So, you know, the, the individuals, you know, cutting back certainly helps, but I think there's also a lot of room for improved farming practices and, uh, smart irrigation systems that can save quite a bit more if we're just being. Logical about it. So, you know, I, I see stories like this. I'm excited about citizens getting in there, but I hope it doesn't stop there. [00:15:28] And also, you know, allocates for more intelligent, more intelligent ways to save. [00:15:33] Nick: Absolutely. Our next story is from CNBC and it says the tax breaks. Aren't the prime reason for high net worth philanthropy or. So the study conducted by BNI, BNY Mellon wealth management asserts that in fact, tax benefits are not the primary reason that people donate to charity, um, including, um, hyper wealthy people. [00:16:03] Um, and the top reasons for charitable giving include they're donated to a special cause they wanted to see impact they, or they want to give back or increase their legacy. Um, so. Maybe the folks who are a little bit too cynical about, uh, charitable giving. So take a look at this and, and of course, you know, there's exceptions well, um, but it restores your faith a little bit, and it talks about interestingly and perhaps more importantly trends amongst younger people, millennials and gen Z while still building up. [00:16:37] For, as you talk a lot about the greatest wealth transfer in history is about to come our way, um, increasing trends in terms of young people, uh, donating and caring about, uh, social. [00:16:49] George: Yeah, quoting here. The younger generations are more charitably inclined and they care more about impact and nearly three quarters of high net worth millennials and eight and 10. Gen X-ers investors have a charitable giving strategy according to this report. And I think it's important to note that the, the rising generation and the rising generation of frankly, a million multi-millionaires seem to have that type of lens and probably parked under the effective philanthropy, uh, effective philanthropy, effective altruist type of mantra, where they, you know, the care of where the dollars go in terms of trackable impact into causes and issues that serve a greater. [00:17:28] Systemic solution. I would say, uh, also, you know, notably people like, um, one of the youngest, uh, new billionaires out there in crypto sandbank, then freed is also said to be making money so that he can spend money aggressively, uh, in, um, in his work. And it's a good trend to be aware of as some, you know, one large donor can, can make a, quite, quite a difference, especially as how. [00:17:57] Craft your, your narratives and communications to your general audience, because inevitably there are probably a power law dynamic of 1% of that audience has 99% of the wealth. [00:18:08] Nick: Definitely that's a great analysis and something, I guess we'll see, play out over time, but toward time out, I feel good story to finish. [00:18:18] George: Um, [00:18:19] Nick: All right. This comes from KTH news.com, Kilian daily Herald, and it's about a nonprofit keeping them Memorial day, traditional Latifah playing taps. The Mecca Ts multi educational cross-cultural arts of central Texas is a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating and spreading the awareness of cultural music and dance gathered to play taps. [00:18:46] Veterans grades and honor of their service and sacrifice this Memorial day. And it talks about Mecca Tech's leader and retired us army criminal, Daniel , who was 90, who began this year's remembrance at the grave of his friend. Um, another former board member of this nonprofit retired Sergeant first class Jose land does. [00:19:07] So, uh, music can be an important and valuable way to serve. That part of our life journey and, uh, recognizing, um, friends fallen and war celebrating life morning life and just overall expression. Um, he's like, it's really important to me and I know to a lot of other people, and this is great to see a nonprofit, uh, using it to pay their respects this Memorial day. [00:19:38] George: Beautiful way to remember people that have given the ultimate sacrifice for the freedoms that we enjoy. And so yes, to, to the veterans and to the people that are remembering Memorial day, uh, it's much appreciated and like to see non-profits involved in, in keeping these types of traditions alive. Thanks, Nick. [00:19:59] Nick: Thanks, George.  

Nonprofit news: In Wake Of Uvalde School Shooting, Gun Rights Advocacy Groups Fill Void Left By NRA   On May 24 a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas killing 19 students, two teachers, and wounding 17 others. The horrific shooting has rekindled the decades-long debate in the United States between gun control and gun rights advocates. Within economically developed countries, the United States by far outnumbers other countries in terms of both gun ownership and gun deaths per capita. Among gun rights advocacy groups, however, the infighting and reputationally-damaged NRA has provided an opportunity for other organizations (many tax-exempt) to fill the void, according to reporting from The Washington Post. The National Association for Gun Rights, a 501(c)4 group that often criticizes the NRA for being too compromising, saw revenue increase to $15 million, up from $6 million in 2019. Other gun rights groups have seen similar increases in revenue and capacity. Read more ➝ Summary Nonprofit Begins Tracking Anti-Asian Hate Crimes in the Midwest | NBC Chicago Nonprofits Fighting Gender Violence Have Struggled Since Losing Buffetts' Funding. They Urgently Need More Support. | The Chronicle of Philanthropy Coloradans asked to take water conservation pledge | 9News.com KUSA Tax breaks aren't prime reason for high-net-worth philanthropy, study finds | CNBC  Nonprofit keeps taps Memorial Day tradition alive | Military | kdhnews.com | The Killeen Daily Herald   Rough Transcript:   [00:00:00] George: This week on the nonprofit news feed we have got in the wake of the Uvalde, the school shooting information about how gun rights advocacy is actually increasing for some nonprofits and a number of other summary articles. Following coming after, uh, this Memorial day weekend, NEC. [00:00:21] Nick: It's going good, George. We have a lot to cover this week. Of course, the first story we're going to talk about is. Uh, around what happened in your Uvalde and better conversations about gun rights and gun control advocacy groups. So last week on May 24th government opened fire the Robb elementary school in , Texas killing 19 students to teachers. [00:00:46] And wounding 17 others. And this terrific shooting has rekindled a decades long debate in the United States between gun control and gun rights advocates. Uh, now within economically developed countries, the United States by far outnumbers others in terms of both gun ownership and gun deaths per capita. [00:01:06] Um, but along the debate about how to solve. You have gun rights, advocacy groups on one side and gun control advocacy groups on the other. Uh, we wanted to highlight an article from the Washington post, which is talking about a little bit of the landscape change on the side of the gun rights advocacy groups. [00:01:30] We've talked about those on this podcast before how the NRA has suffered from lots of infighting and legal challenges. As a whole has seen its reputation damage quite significantly over the past couple of years. Um, but as the Washington post points out, a lot of other tax exempt organizations now seem to be filling the void, um, and potentially taking the lead on the gun rights. [00:01:59] Side of the issue here. The national association for gun rights is a 5 0 1 C4 group that often criticizes the NRA for being too compromising saw revenue increase to 15 million up from just 6 million in 2019 on the article sites that lots of other gun rights groups have seen similar increases in revenue and capacity. [00:02:25] So the takeaway here is that what was. Very consolidated. Uh, landscape in terms of advocacy with one go-to group is now splintering and other groups are taking the place, uh, and serving the role once filled by the NRA. But George, this comes as the NRA held its annual conference in Texas, just three days after the shooting. [00:02:51] Um, this conference was on last Friday and it's a fraught moment in the United States. And, um,

This week Randall Jacobs sits down with Fort Bragg, CA Sculptor and trail builder Nick Taylor to discuss the intersection of cycling and art.  Episode Sponsor: The Feed Support the Podcast Join The Ridership  Automated Transcription, please excuse the typos: Nick Taylor [00:00:00] Craig Dalton: Hello, and welcome to the gravel ride podcast, where we go deep on the sport of gravel cycling through in-depth interviews with product designers, event organizers and athletes. Who are pioneering the sport I'm your host, Craig Dalton, a lifelong cyclist who discovered gravel cycling back in 2016 and made all the mistakes you don't need to make. I approach each episode as a beginner down, unlock all the knowledge you need to become a great gravel cyclist. This week, I'm going to kick it back over to my co-host Randall Jacobs for a little something different for ya. Randall's interviewing sculptor trail builder and Mendocino cycling stalwart, Nick Taylor in an exploration on how the bike became interwoven in one artist's life Before I pass the mic over to Randall. I need to thank this. Week's sponsor the feed. The feed is the largest online marketplace for sports nutrition. They've got all your favorite sports, nutrition brands in one place. If you've developed an affinity like I have for certain brands. You can hop on over to the feed and mix and match. So you get everything you need in one delivery. I was just visiting the feed.com before recording this intro and I remembered in addition to all the nutritional brands that they carry, they also carry a wide variety of training gear. You might remember a couple episodes back when we were focusing on recovery. We talked about foam rollers. We talked about Sarah guns. We talked about pneumatic leg compression tools. I think we talked about the power dot, actually all these things are available@thefeed.com. So in addition to getting your nutrition handled, You can work on your recovery. Like I've been doing. And finally I wanted to mention again, the feed formulas. The feed formulas are the world's first daily supplement pouch for athletes created in conjunction with Dr. Kevin Sprouse from the ETF pro cycling team. They feature best in class, branded supplements, never generics. You get personalized recommendation based on your needs as an athlete, and they're all delivered in a convenient daily pouch. We've got a limited time special offer of 50% off on your first order of the feed formula by simply going to the feed.com/the gravel ride. Remember that's the feed.com/the gravel ride With that said, I'm going to hand it over to my co-host Randall Jacobs and his interview with Nick Taylor. [00:02:26] Randall: Nick, I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time welcome to the podcast. [00:02:31] Nick: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me on Randall. [00:02:34] Randall: So before we dive in, let's give listeners a bit of background. Who are you, where are you from? What matters to you? [00:02:40] Nick: My name's Nick Taylor. I'm up here in Fort Bragg, California. That's about 180 miles north of San Francisco along the coast, fairly remote area. I'm a sculptor and a big bike bicycle advocate, as well as running a trail crew building trails out here in the Mendocino coast. [00:03:00] Randall: Yeah. And as somebody who has been to your workshop, I can say well, one, the area is quite beautiful and to the space in which you create some of the things that we'll be talking about and linking to in the notes. So it's a pretty special place. So tell us a bit about your, relationship to the bicycle. How did it get started? How has it evolved over time? [00:03:20] Nick: Well, you know, I think we all probably started riding Pikes when we were kids. And I certainly did that on a gravel road and in rural Ohio. So I had some experience as a kid and there was a big lapse and it wasn't until I was in my early twenties that I picked the bicycle back up and started to use it again. And that was a. I had, I don't know what really, what the impetus was for getting back on a bike, but I wanted to do some exploring and I guess that just seemed like a good way to go about it. And I bought myself a an old Schwinn Latour for 80 bucks and a. I was staying with my grandmother at that point up in Ohio. And I started doing some riding in the rides, you know, slowly became longer and longer. And I, I decided, well, you know what, I want to go do some tour. And so that led to a bit, a little, a little bit of touring on that the tour prior to graduate school, back in the early eighties. [00:04:15] Randall: So tell us about some of the early tours. What was that like? [00:04:18] Nick: Well, it was prepping to go to graduate school and really wanted to get out in between visiting one school and another, and I bought a gray ham pass. It was good for 30 days and pulled the map of the U S out and closed my eyes. And. Put my finger down on wherever it game. And, and the first place was I got out in south Kadoka, South Dakota at a midnight at a gas station and you know, road the next day through, you know, from Kadoka through the Badlands and into a rapid city. And I didn't have a particularly good experience in rapid city. So I pulled the map out again, close my eyes and finger another place on the map. Got out and Shelby Montana and had a great time from there. So, you know, a ride from Shelby across the Rocky mountains and through glacier national park, which was just extraordinary. And then down to Spokane Washington, at which point I had to create my bike up and had had to Davis, California to go look at the school there. [00:05:23] Randall: Oh, wow. So that was essentially coming off after a month of kind of dirt bagging camping out, or what were your, what were your accommodations along the route? [00:05:33] Nick: I mean, everything. Everything I needed was on the bike, [00:05:37] Randall: so, you found a shower before you had your interview. [00:05:40] Nick: Yup. Knock some of the stink off. [00:05:43] Randall: So now you're in Davis and this is a program in what area? [00:05:48] Nick: So it was a MFA program, for a master of fine arts graduate school. It was back in the early eighties and I don't know where it is now, but, it was a leading school for the arts. It rivaled Dal our graduate department. And so it was, I got there and they had a very open format, which I much enjoyed everything I was looking at on the east coast was a very structured format. And I was done with that. I'd had five years of that at the university of Tennessee. And I was mostly just looking for studio. And that's what I got in Davis. And I also got to be around people that were pretty well renowned, you know, which was a new experience for me. I mean, I had people like manual Neary and Robert artisan and Wayne Tebow and Roy deforest were all teaching there. So I got exposure to all these professional artists that I had experienced before. [00:06:43] Randall: And was the writing community as developed then as it is now, right now, Davis is very much known as having great bike infrastructure. And UC Davis has a top cycling team and so on. [00:06:54] Nick: It was definitely a big thing there. Vibe culture was big and Davis and. And that was a new thing too. I mean, most people, certainly all the students. And I think back then there were 16,000 students, they were getting around and bikes. And that was very cool. And there was a lot of road biking going on out there too, which I participated in, you know, I got myself a Miata. I forget what model it was. It was there a touring bike, which is a pretty nice bike though. When I was buying it, it was the first new bike I'd ever had. And the guys kept telling me it was too big. A frame is too big, a frame it's like, I, I didn't listen to them. Should have, but you know, I wrote it for a number, number of years Anthony. Okay. But I realized in hindsight it was, it was too big. From there. I moved to the east bay and lived in Oakland and point Richmond primarily. I mean, there were the little stints in San Francisco and Berkeley, but primary residents were in point Richmond and Oakland. [00:07:52] Randall: what was it like back then versus what it's like at this time, [00:07:56] Nick: Well, there weren't as many people and it was a little cheaper to live, you know, and as an artist, you're always trying to live on the cheap, right. So, I mean, your goal is to, to be in your studio as much as you can and work as you have to, to cover your bills. So it was cheaper, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't as a fluid as it is now. You know, riding, riding, you know, it was entirely different than it was. And in Davis, everything out in Davis is flat land. The only thing you really had to contend with there was the wind which could be quite daunting at times though. Anytime you had the wind at your back If the conditions were just right, you'd be in this little envelope, this little bubble with the windier bath, where there was absolutely no resistance. And it was a remarkable thing to experience because the only thing you would hear is the pedaling, the chain moving through the cracks and across the cassette. And, and other than that, and there was no, no resistance. It just like you just flew across the landscape. And that was pretty extreme. didn't get to experience that when you were in Oakland, I mean, you had the Hills contend with and climbing up to, to a skyline drive and running her, riding the Ridge along through there, and certainly more traffic. [00:09:05] Randall: So, I recall you mentioning like over a decade in the bay area, [00:09:10] Nick: 20 years. Yeah. Was in the, in the, in the bay area for 20 years, it was a good experience. We had, when I was in point Richmond, we had a wonderful studio out there that was a live works situation. It was a, it was an illegal live in, you know, it. We're it was, it was such a stunning location. I mean, you were a seven acre parcel, surrounded by park on the San Francisco bay. That it was pretty extraordinary. It's just the kind of place you don't typically see in this day and age, you know, everything's been developed now, [00:09:44] Randall: Yeah. Hi, high end condos and lofts, [00:09:47] Nick: Yup. And so, you know, we, we lived there. It was one of my last places to stay. And the property was sold. The park system bought the property that we were living in and they wanted to incorporate it to the rest of the park. So we all got the boot and I didn't want it to be a renter anymore. I wanted to buy something. So threw a bit of searching. We found this place up here in Fort Bragg and made the move, even though we didn't know anybody. Yeah. [00:10:12] Randall: And that was just a parcel of land at the time, right? [00:10:15] Nick: That's true. It's it was small parcel, just over two and a half acres, fully wooded, which is what I really wanted to avoid. I really wanted to buy something I could remodel and at least have utilities in, you know, water and power, but we had nothing. It was a fully wooded property lot. And so amy, my wife and I, we spent a year of weekends coming up to the property from the bay area and logging the property ourself cleared about 200 trees. And some of these are pretty good sized trees. And we did that with an old forklift that I bought in an old international harvester that I had with a big PTO winch on the front. So we spent a year clearing clearing the land Then it's then it went idle for a little bit of the work. What idle for a little bit, as I was involved in a project down in the bay area that kept me, kept me tied up for a number of years. [00:11:05] Randall: Well, and that that's not just any project. So maybe give listeners a little bit of a background on that, on what that project was and your involvement with it. [00:11:13] Nick: This was this was a cloud gate. It's more commonly known as the bean. It's a big piece of sculpture in the city of Chicago. Which is now part of, part of their landscape icon to the city. It's a, it's a 60 foot long, roughly 35 foot high, 45 foot wide, perfectly smooth mirror finish sculpture that's in the shape of a bean or something like a beam. And that's, it's a pretty remarkable thing. So. I was involved with that for four and a half years first working on that on equipment we had to build for fabricating it and then doing some of the prototyping and then a lot of the fabrication of it. And then eventually back in Chicago for almost a year to see its installation and finish. [00:11:59] Randall: And for anyone who hasn't seen it, I strongly recommend that you use. Look it up. For me, it's just this really surreal thing, just plopped in this park in Chicago, reflecting the skyline. It almost looks like CGI because it's too perfect. Given the scale of the thing. And you and I have talked about the tolerances involved and so on and like, think about just the weight of it and how that dis wants to distort the structure and the material. What was your role specifically? You were the crew lead or the project lead? [00:12:27] Nick: Onsite, I would have been the supervisor overseeing all of its installation and it was working in Chicago with the local iron workers ironworker 63, local 63, which is great group of fellows. I very much enjoyed working with them. And you know, this, the bean was, was a prototype. It was like nobody had ever had ever built anything like that. And it was a combination of old world in hands-on kind of technology and computer generated. Imagery, you know, it's just like, you couldn't do it without being able to work with the hands, but you couldn't have done it without a computer because of all the tolerances that were involved. I mean, we had to have a computer set up a piece of equipment that would scan each piece and make sure it was. tolerance of what the computer model was and the tolerance for each piece is like a 32nd vintage. So, you know, and then you have 168 of those to put together and, the tolerances are, are no less stringent. [00:13:24] Randall: Well, and you have this thing that's mirror polished. So It doesn't just have to look good on its own. This mirror Polish is going to reveal any sort of imperfection in the surface whatsoever and distort the image. [00:13:35] Nick: It absolutely does, and reflecting the skyline the city scape, you know, with all the structures that are running plumbing, horizontal that grid work shows up shows any sort of mistake in the reflection on the piece. [00:13:50] Randall: I hope to make it out there in person at some point before, too long to, to check it out, but just seeing the imagery in some videos of it, it's it's quite an achievement, I mean, it's one thing to design such a thing and imagine such a thing, but, this So. much about the execution of that, that is really a wonder, so well done there. And that's not the only large scale sculpture you've been involved with. That is a, probably a pretty well-known there's, there's another one that was outside the mountain bike hall of fame for some time. You know, I talk about that and how that came about. [00:14:20] Nick: Sure. So that's still there and that's, that's something that's sort of. You know, back in 2011, up here on the coast, we were trying to have a little put together a little fat tire festival to sort of open up the area to people from surrounding areas. Let them know that we have some trail riding up here. There was some stuff happening in the way of mountain biking and. Someone asked me to build some signage for this, for, you know, to put out there to advertise this. And you know, I'm a sculptor, right. I don't do flat stuff. So I've sort of scratched my head for a few days and wandered around the property. And, you know, I realized I had these two big tractor tires sitting here off of a John Deere tractor. And I thought, you know what? I'll just make a big bike. I mean, that, that works is advertising as well as anything. And at that point, I was riding, riding, riding Ibis mojo when their carbon full suspension bikes. And I thought I just modeled well model the big one after that. So, you know, I, I I took a photo of the bike and put it on an opaque projector. Proper scale on the walls here and to lay out of the frame and transferred that to a piece of plywood and cut that out and started building to that frame. And slowly went at it. So, and it was through working on this thing, you know, and I got to know many of the people over at Ibis and my wife, again, Amy, my wife, she contacted Scott nickel. And send him some photos, which I knew he was like, great. I got some bone heads out here in the woods that think they're making sort of an Ibis bike. Right. And because a photo shows two big tractor tires will apply with cutout out the frame and it's like, okay, what are these knuckle heads up to? And but she continued to communicate with them and, you know, send them photos as updates and, and you know, as I. Nearing completion in this thing, he thought, okay, maybe this is actually going to turn out to be something kind of cool and tail end of me working on. And it's called Ibis Maximus tail end of working on IVIS Maximus. Scott asked me one day, it's like, so Nick, what's your day job that, you know, you're able to do this. And at that point I just sent him a photo of the bean and he's like, oh, Okay, carry on. So anyhow, it was through making this big bike that I got to know Scott, and then then many of the other partners down there in Ibis, in Santa Cruz. So all of which are a great bunch of people. So I've been very fortunate to get to know them. [00:17:03] Randall: And how did it end up at the mountain bike hall of fame in fairfax, California. [00:17:07] Nick: were trying to figure out where to put it. It must've been Scott cause IVIS eventually bought it, cause it was sitting up here, not really doing anything. It was sort of lawn art and I believe it was probably Scott that was looking to place it. And, of course he knows all the old guard down there and, and Fairfax and. Joe breeze who runs the place is, you know, he, I believe he mentored Scott for a little while, early on, so they, they know one another. And so I think Scott set this up and, then segwayed over to Joe breeze. [00:17:41] Randall: So, as somebody who runs a small bicycle brand, I can just say like what a cool, that must be to actually have one of your bikes, especially something very iconic. Like that's a very distinctive looking frame. If some bozo in the woods, up in Mendocino county ever wants to make a, make a giant version of one of our bikes. I'd be happy to oblige, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, [00:18:04] Nick: Okay. I'll keep that mind. [00:18:06] Randall: So, all right, so now you're, you're in Mendocino. You've come back from doing the bean. You've cleared your lands. What'd you end up doing from there? [00:18:14] Nick: So back from Chicago foundations in, from the house by then, I mean, it'd been in maybe a couple of years by that point, came back and, and started building our house and studio and earnest. And our house and studio are actually two old temper frame barns that we dismantled back in Ohio. There were a hundred plus years old. They're all Morrison, tenon, wooden pegs, holding them together. Something we had. Going back in 2000 and dismantled in Ohio. [00:18:43] Randall: And when you say we, you mean like you and your family? Yeah. [00:18:46] Nick: yeah, Amy and my kids who were 12 and 14 at that point. And, and then Amy's parents and her brother came out for a week and I had a good friend of mine. That came out with his new girlfriend from Manhattan to kind a hand for a week. And then I had a buddy that, that we paid to come out there for the three weeks that it actually took us to dismantle this. So that was a great project. I had a lot of fun and for my kids, it was the first time for them being back in the Midwest and it's sort of familiar stomping grounds to me, you know, I'm not from that particular. We, where we dismantled the Barnes, but I am from Northeast Ohio and the lightening bugs were all off familiar. My kids got to see that sort of stuff and they got to play with fireworks for the first time. [00:19:29] Randall: And again you know, the space up there is one of the more special spaces I've ever visited. You have me up there, I think three, four years ago. And. The home is beautiful and that's one of the bonds. Right. And then the back section of the workshop it makes me think of Craig Cathy's. South of Santa Cruz or in the Santa Cruz area it's another one of these places where you just have tools and projects everywhere and it has a certain degree of organization, but a sufficient amount of, of, of chaos. And you can tell it's, it's like a place where a lot of experimentation happens. A lot of creativity happens. And just the number of specialized tools that you have many of which you've made, it's really, really cool to see. And you occasionally hold exhibits up there too, right? [00:20:10] Nick: Open studio from time to time. And I'm hoping to do that again this year. If COVID actually is settling down, you're going to open the place back up again. So got lots of new work going on and it's good to invite people in, let them see the work that I'm working on, but also let them see the space that it's actually created in too, because I think that that puts a different spin on things and it gives people a little more insight to what's going on. [00:20:34] Randall: Yeah. And in fact, there's a, you have a video on. your website now, remind me the URL for your. [00:20:40] Nick: So website is jnicktaylor.com. Instagram is a good place to see what's what's current and it's the same, same J Nick Taylor. [00:20:49] Randall: Well, the website does have this really nice video that shows you and your studio working on some of your pieces. And then there's a number of your pieces. Put on a. Pan so that you can get a 3d view of it and you work in different various materials, metal, and wood. You work on things that can fit. What are your smaller pieces and what are your bigger pieces and talk actually, lets you do that. Talk a bit about like the type of work that you do and the inspiration for it. [00:21:17] Nick: So I'm working in metal or wood. I rarely combined the two materials. So my studio is kind of divided up in half. One, ended up doing metalwork on the other end. I'm doing woodwork in all the pieces. These days are pretty much inspired by nature. You know, my act or environment, they don't necessarily make reference to any one, given any one given thing. But probably a lot of different elements of what one might experience if they were out in nature. So the work is pretty organic. The metal work I'm, I'm doing a lot of welding forging grinding to get the shapes. Their scale can range anywhere from about two feet in height to I'm working on something right now it's about seven feet. So some, you know, some stuff's tabletop and size. So other pieces are certainly floor standing pieces. Larger, you know, largest wood pieces. I mean, what pieces. I'll tend to be a little larger. You know, they stand for, you know, maybe four feet up to about nine feet. They also are very organic, but some of them are carved from single pieces of wood. And other pieces are a composite of pieces that are glued up and then carved back into. So all of them are very in a hands-on very labor intensive. I'm getting three to four pieces done a year, a larger piece, whether it be metal or wood can take me 10 months to a year alone to work on so that a lot of hand work. And I've just, haven't figured out a way to expedite that. You know, I keep looking, keep trying to figure out ways to move faster, but it always seems to come back to hand work. [00:22:56] Randall: Well, And just looking on some of the imagery, I've seen a few of these pieces in person, and there are pieces that are very clearly flowing with the contours of the wood that you're working with, but then there's also some vision that's imposed on it to some degree as well. Some of your metalwork, there's pieces that for me, looked like, contorted musical instruments and every angle tells a different story and evokes a different set of feelings and images . It's very abstract. And very interesting. Looking at your work, it really draws one in to explore it from different angles. [00:23:30] Nick: And that's really important. You know, when I was a kid and in school art school, one of the things that was hammered into me was, any given piece of sculpture should invite you to walk all the way around it and explore it. You shouldn't be able to stand on one side of it and know what's happening on the other side. So it should shift and change and draw you in and draw you around the given piece. [00:23:53] Randall: So let's bring the bike back into the conversation. How does the bike fit into your process or your day to day or week to week routine? [00:24:04] Nick: So, these days unfortunate enough to be in the studio four days a week, full time on interrupted. But I can only be in the studio for those four days. And then I'm like maxed out, I can't put any more time in, I've got to put my head in a different space. And so I spent two days on the bike, out in the woods. So here in Fort Bragg Mendocino area, we've got, we've got really nice trail system. And then we also have unlimited number of gravel roads. I mean, much of our mountain biking is in Jackson demonstration, state forest. If I'm not mistaken, they have a minimum of 300 miles of gravel road in there. Right. And then there are all these entities that bought up against Jackson's demonstration state forest. You have big river state park, you've got conservation fund. And then north of Jackson, you have lime timber now, lime timber and conservation fund land. You have to have permission to be on their property. But I think, conservation fund certainly gives that pretty readily and I've never heard of anybody having an issue on online timber and lime timber is 150,000 acres. Right? Jackson demonstrations state forest is, is just under 50,000 acres, big river state park is like 7,500 acres and conservation fund. Maybe I'm mistaken, but I think there are 30 to 40,000 acres. In all of these places have gravel roads running around on them. Right. I'm sure you could chain this stuff all together and, and get up into use hall, which is about an hour north of here. And, and, you've got unlimited resource up there for variety and gravel roads as well. [00:25:43] Randall: And you're involved in a lot of the trail building up there as well. [00:25:46] Nick: That's my, the form of sculpting. Sculpting the landscape since I've been a little kid was a little kid and working out doors it's part of my core as part of what I really love doing. So I it's like I run a trail crew up here work in, and we're building, maintaining and building trails and Jackson demonstration, state forest. And we're doing that in conjunction with Cal fire and Cal fire are the Stewart's the managers of the forest. So we've got a 10 year relationship that we've developed with them and And it's going strong. You know, we've currently got some projects going. Everything these days is being hand dug though. Two years ago we had had a new experience with getting some trails machine belt and we got to two and a quarter mile trail machine built that we were able to lay out and, and. Through a sponsor, a one track mind, better known as OTM who funded it. We were able to build this new trail that connected a bunch of other stuff together and made for a better trail system. [00:26:46] Randall: So, for listeners, you want to explore this area, want to learn more about it and get a toe in the water, what resources are available, what clubs are available to get a handle on what you're describing, which is this massive amount of space that you could very easily get lost in and not necessarily find the best trails [00:27:05] Nick: So the trail work that I'm doing is, is under or with Mendocino coast, cyclists, where the local cycle group. I could be contacted through them or the club president, Dan sweet could be contacted and we can set you up, we can be found on Facebook under Mendocino coast, cyclists. That's probably the easiest way. I'm sort of thinking this through. I'm thinking out loud. And we have group rides, so that have been closed during COVID, but I think they're beginning to open those back up and people can join these group rides and they typically are happening three times a week, Tuesdays, Fridays, and Sundays. But we also, there's a list serve if you're a club member, this is probably the best way to get any sort of information is if you join the club you can get on a listserv and you can get all the chatter that's going on and you get notifications of rides. You can ask questions if you're trying to find, find your way around for the first time. [00:27:58] Randall: Very cool. so before we finish up, you've mentioned your wife, Amy and, you know, sounds like a pretty extraordinary woman to have supported, everything from buying a plot of land in the middle of nowhere, well, not the middle of nowhere in a very beautiful area, but, a good distance from the city to going out with you and the kids and, tearing down some barns and so on. Tell us about that dynamic. [00:28:21] Nick: Well, Amy's a pretty extraordinary person and she's been game to go on a lot of adventures, and are adventures that we've developed together. She's a brilliant person. She's very capable. She tolerates me. She has her own business, a land use permit agent up here on the coast. She's the go-to person. If you wanted to develop anything in the coastal zone [00:28:43] Randall: Clearly cares about the work that you do in doing things like, reaching out to people like Scott Nichols over at IBUs to get attention on your projects and so on. [00:28:51] Nick: Yep. [00:28:52] Randall: Well, is there anything else that you'd like to discuss while we're on the pod today? [00:28:55] Nick: I think that pretty well, does it, I mean, please, please visit the website and Instagram and let me know what you think. And if you happen to be up this way and Mendocino Fort Bragg area, give a shout out. So we love showing people around and the riding up here is pretty extraordinary. And if you want to, you know, if you like being out in the woods, doing mountain biking, you can, you can go for all day rides and not see anybody up here at all. You know, if you're riding during the week, which is pretty extraordinary to have the woods to yourself. [00:29:25] Randall: Yeah, I can definitely relate to that. Well, we will be sure to get some links in the show notes for this episode, for anyone looking to connect with you or to learn more about the Mendocino trail network. Nick, it's been great catching up with you. It's been some time and as I mentioned, I had been looking forward to it for quite a while and really appreciate you joining us. [00:29:45] Nick: Well, thank you very much for having me on Randall. And it says really nice and it's good to spend a little time with you as well. Don't see you often enough these days. [00:29:54] Randall: we'll try to rectify that later on this year, make a trip up the coast. [00:29:58] Nick: Alrighty you take care of man. [00:30:00] Randall: Be well be well [00:30:01] Craig Dalton: That's going to do it for this week's edition of the gravel ride podcast. Thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed that interview. Between Randall and Nick Taylor. Be sure to check out Nick's extraordinary work@jnicktaylor.com. Or on Instagram at Jane, Nick Taylor. We'll have links for these as well as the IVIS Maximus and cloud gate in the show notes. If you're interested in connecting with myself or Randall, please visit us@theridership.com. That's www.theridership.com. Join our global cycling community. Everything's free. And I'm sure you'll get a lot out of the interactions with your fellow gravel athletes and also your hosts here at the gravel ride podcast. If you're interested in supporting the podcast, you can visit us@buymeacoffee.com slash the gravel ride. Additionally ratings and reviews are hugely helpful. And with that until next time here's to finding some dirt onto your wheels

There are certain things in life we just can't predict. If we knew the answers to some of these questions, planning for retirement would sure be a lot easier. So let's see how you go about constructing a plan that addresses the kinds of questions to which you can't possibly know the answers. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome into another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. Find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's p-f-g-private wealth.com, where you can check out a lot of good tools, tips, and resources, schedule some time with the team or subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you like to use. And on the podcast us this week, we're going to talk about planning for things that we cannot predict. There's many things in life that are just out of our control, and we can't predict. Yet, we somehow have to figure out a way to bring these things into the fold when it comes to our retirement strategies. And if we knew the answers, these things would be a lot easier to do, right? Just like saying, if we knew when we were going to pass away, you guys could build the greatest plan anybody's ever seen, but we don't come with a timestamp on us. So we have to figure out a way around some of these complicated questions and construct a plan that handles these, but also works with the unknown. So we'll get into that in just a second, but what's going on, Nick? How are you doing?   Nick: Doing pretty good. Thanks.   Speaker 1: Yeah, how's the old puppy doing? I've got mine next to me right now while we're taping.   Nick: Unfortunately she passed like a month ago.   Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sorry, buddy. I didn't mean to do that.   Nick: It's all right. Oh yeah, no, I don't take it like that. I was going to say something earlier and then I just kinda left it, but yeah, it's been a bit of a crazy month.   Speaker 1: I gotcha. I'm sorry to hear about that. It's always rough when we lose our little furry friends there as well, but hopefully things will get better for you. And we'll talk about something, you can't predict that kind of stuff. Right? We'll get into that kind of conversation here in a second. John, what's going on with you?   John: Today's topic is pretty fitting. I couldn't predict that the house I bought had a loose AC drain and currently all the floors in my master bedroom and hallway ripped up. It's going well, as well as can be. So we're adapting to the renovations in our house currently. I just send Nick some pictures of it and he's like, whoa.   Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Well, I put my foot in my mouth already to start the show, so we'll get into it. But I guess that fits really well though with the over conversation is, because there's a lot of things. I mean, life is unpredictable, right? Murphy's law, whatever you want to subscribe to. And so we still have to somehow plan for some things, look at the state of the world, right? Who would've predicted 7.9% inflation rate, who would've predicted. What we're seeing in the Ukraine and so on and so forth. So it all affects the financial side. So we'll turn our attention there as we typically do. And a lot of times guys with what you do for a living, I imagine, and I talk to advisors all across the country when they meet people that do what you guys do for the first time, almost inevitably somebody goes, Hey, so when's the next market crash, right? They kind of like you guys, somehow some know this magical information that when the next it crash is going to be, well, you can't predict for that, John, but you still got to plan for being able to retire in any economy regardless of what the market's doing.   John: Yeah. And this point I'm going to say, probably goes for all of these things we're discussing today. Is you really want the flexibility to adapt for any, I don't say any, a lot of situations that come up in retirement and one of those are, a market pullback or a crash, so things to put yourself in a pretty good position is, we kind of stress this, is having a decent cash savings. So if the market is crashing, you can rely on your cash savings for income during that period of time. So you don't sell any of your losers and realize those losses. So there's a lot of things you can, you can't predict it, but you could definitely set yourself up in a situation where you can adapt to it, to put yourself in a good situation moving forward.   Speaker 1: Yeah. And as I mentioned on the last podcast, we were talking about the fact that we were dealing with overconfidence as one of the money biases. And the last several years, it's been easy to get confident in the market, but when we start to see these downturns or corrections, like we're going through right now, people get nervous and they tend to do the wrong thing. So you can't predict when it's going to happen, but you want to make sure that you're setting yourself up in a way to work through that. And Nick, similarly, we could talk about healthcare costs, right? I mean, who knows what they're going to look like in 20 years? Now a good bet is probably that they're going up more than likely, right? Unlike the market crash, where there is some historical data, I mean, healthcare costs, the reality is we're living longer. So more than likely these costs are going up, but how can you plan for that? If you don't really know, you just have to start, kind of chipping away at this. Maybe.   Nick: Yeah. It's interesting because this is one thing that we can probably lock in that it will go up and will continue to go up. But from a practical sense, in a practical standpoint, the things that we can do are from a planning perspective, make sure that when we're planning for them, for these healthcare related expenses that we understand what's involved. So as an example, a lot of people think about, well, Hey, I know that my healthcare expenses are going to get higher later on down the road, but many times they don't understand. And when we see this all the time that even their cost for Medicare, when they switch to Medicare in retirement, there's a decent chance it's going to cost more than what they're currently paying for their health benefits through their work.   Nick: And because a lot of people have that concept that it goes down versus most likely going up from a premium perspective for a lot of people. Using a higher inflation number for those healthcare premiums and healthcare related expenses, which is something that we make sure that we do with clients where we'll use a three and a half to 4% inflation number on healthcare related expenses in the plan, which tends to be, one to two points higher than the rest of the categories in for inflation.   Nick: So, things like that where we can't predict it, but at least from a modeling standpoint, we can kind of, use a prudent person rule of, making sure that we at least model those things to be a little bit higher and faster, increasing costs, especially when we look at how those plans are being financed by the government, which is not great.   Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's a great point because even in normal inflationary times, right? What is it the two industries that outpace even regular inflation on the regular is college tuition, right? And healthcare. So while college tuition may not be affecting as many of retirees or as maybe pre-retirees the healthcare certainly is going to affect them. So you got to take that into account and definitely start strategizing for those healthcare costs. Putting your head in the sand is not going to help you out 20 years later when you need it. And John, you could kind of make that same argument really about the tax rates. Right? The Smart bet, the money is probably on the fact that yeah, they're going up, but God willing, you're going to live through multiple administrations in retirement. So, to say, well, what are tax rates going to look like three presidents from now who knows, right? Administrations are going to do what they got to do.   John: Yeah. And that's where, again, it's important to flexibility to adapt to the situation and how you get flexible is diversifying your assets from a tax standpoint. So, and you might want to look at, increasing your Roth contributions, if you have a Roth 401k at work or eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA. So that could be a really good strategy. So that way, if tax rates are up, when you're taking your income, you could say, Hey, you know what, I'm going to take some of my tax free income this year or for these next couple of years. And you can really adjust to that situation. And not just only with Roths, but you could go outside of retirement accounts and kind of deal with capital gains. But then you got the same issue there with what are the rates going to be?   John: What Nick and I have been seeing quite a bit lately is clients really over funding their HSAs and not using them, just letting them build up for retirement. Cause that would be a nice tax free distribution, if qualified for healthcare costs, which also piggybacks what Nick was talking about. About healthcare costs, not knowing what they're going to be. So there are definitely different things you can do to allow yourself some flexibility. And one thing that we typically do when we're doing planning is we do stress test these things for certain clients. Where we'll look at some kind of market pull backs. How does your plan look like if there's a 20% pull back? What if healthcare costs go up? What if inflation goes up? So there's definitely things you can do to prepare.   Speaker 1: Now. Those are some great points right there because we, again, we don't know what's going to happen. The smart money is taxes are probably going up, we've got 30 trillion dollars in debt. There's almost 40 plus trillion dollars in retirement money sitting out there, the taxes haven't been collected on. So if that doesn't have a bullseye on it, you're probably kidding yourself. So trying to be as tax efficient as we can today could be beneficial. Because again, we have no idea what it would look like three presidencies from now.   Speaker 1: So these are, again, things we cannot predict, but we certainly got to still plan for some of the options that are out there. And Nick, I joked earlier that if we had an expiration date stamped on us, like a gallon of milk, you guys could build the greatest, retirement plan for each individual that they've ever seen, but we have no idea how long we're going to live. And I could use my own self as an example for the listeners. My brother died at 50, I'm 50. My brother died at 57, my father at 63, my grandfather at 60, be easy for me to say, Hey, I'm going to spend all my money between now and the age of 65, because I'm not going to be here. So I'm going to party. But yet that's not responsible, because what if I'm wrong? Technology has changed. And of course, what am I doing to my spouse?   Nick: Yeah, this is always an interesting one. It's probably the source of the most quote unquote jokes from people. Whether it's clients or people that attend our classes, that sort of thing. And really from a practical sense where this comes in is, how long do we plan for? So when we're building a plan 99% of the time, we plan to age 100. And when we plan to age 100 for clients, we can see what, how much money's there at age 85 and age 90 and all those sorts of things. And the thought process is that if the plan works until age 100, then the probability of it being successful up into, 80, 85, etcetera, is much higher. And the plan, what it will also help us do is for those people that do want to make sure that they spend their time early on in retirement, really doing the things that they want to do, no matter how much bluster there can be about, because again, usually it's some sort of internal insecurity or internal bias that has them talking about passing away early.   Nick: But sometimes what we found is that, really they're just saying that because they don't want to deal with the concern of running out of money. It's almost in a weird sense, comforting that, Hey, if I pass away early, then I don't have to worry about money. This planning thing isn't important. I don't have to stress about it. No big deal. So in actuality, when you go through the planning process and you do see where you sit and you do see, Hey, maybe I can do the things that I want to do and I can still, make sure that there's money down the road for a spouse, all these sorts of things. It actually really kind of tick up the confidence and they will enjoy those things much more than having that uncertainty because, and I've seen it across the board because what ends up happening. I mean, and again, just seeing it being in this business, people that had that thought process 60 today, used to feel like 50 70 today feels like it. when people were 60, 15 years ago, nobody realizes how old they are, or they have this perception of that they're going to feel a certain way. And usually that's not the case. So, planning for all scenarios is really important.   Speaker 1: No, definitely. I mean, my mom's always joking. She's 80 and she's forever saying, I don't feel it. when I, if I'm not moving or if I'm not doing anything, I don't feel like I'm 80. She's like in my mind I still feel like I'm 30 or 40. She's like until I look in the mirror or I try to move a certain way.   Nick: Yeah. And unfortunately I had to go up to New York for a funeral this past month and my dad and I flew up and we walked into the room with some family members and stuff like that. And after the initial reminder that we're no longer in the south due to how loud it was and all of the swearing. Somebody said something about because that side of the family, I was always one of the younger and I'm like, how old are you going to be? And I was like, I'm going to be 40 this year. And everyone looked and they're like, and I was like, you know what? That means you guys are really old now. So, again, it's that whole concept of people just don't realize it. And the concept when you're younger of what you're going to feel like or what it's going to feel like when you're older, it never tends to be that way. So it's important to really plan.   Speaker 1: Yeah. It definitely. So you got to plan for these things, even though we can't predict them, how long we're going to be around tax rates, healthcare costs, market crashes, whatever the case is, these things are again, probably going to happen throughout your retirement. And if you have a nice long retirement, which you certainly hope that you do, you might be retired 20, 25, 30 years. You're going to experience multiple things with some of this stuff that you can't necessarily predict for, but you still have to strategize to hopefully have the retirement that you want in any economy and any circumstance. So that's where planning comes into place. And that's what you got to reach out to the guys for here on Retirement Planning, Redefined with John and Nick at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's where you can find them online, pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to us on whatever platform you like to use. Apple, Google, Spotify, so on and so forth. And we'll be back with more episodes coming up in a couple of weeks. Nick, thanks for hanging out as always. John Good luck with those floors, man.   John: Thanks. I definitely need and appreciate it.   Speaker 1: Absolutely. Nick, we'll see you next time here on the podcast. This has been Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth.

Droves of workers are retiring early or taking a break from work as they change career paths. It's become known as The Great Resignation. On this episode, we'll highlight some of the key takeaways of a recent Forbes article and explore a lot of the impacts on retirement planning from across different age groups in the wake of this massive workplace shift that's underway. Forbes Article: https://bit.ly/3JtbbeQ Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Mark: Hey everybody, welcome in to the podcast. Thanks for tuning in to another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick, as we talk investing, finance, and retirement. And we are going to discuss the Great Resignation on this podcast. And if you're not familiar with that, well, that's been all the mass exodus of people leaving work over the last three to four to five months. And we've got some interesting key takeaways here to talk a little bit about this. Droves of workers retiring early, or taking a break as they consider this career path, that's been called now the Great Resignation, and there's a Forbes article, we'll probably take a link and put that in the show notes as well. But guys, what's going on? How you doing Nick?   Nick: Good, good. Staying busy, kind of getting rocking and rolling to start off the new year. So, you know, I think a month or two ago we had hoped that maybe it'd be a little less chaotic from the standpoint of the whole pandemic thing, but I think everybody's just kind of plugging away and recovering from the holidays.   Mark: Yeah, definitely. John, how you doing my friend?   John: I'm good. I'm good. Doing good.   Mark: Yeah. Nothing, nothing too crazy going on. Into the new year all right?   John: Yeah. Yeah, it was quiet. So just hung out with family locally here and in Tampa area. So it was just a nice little break and like Nick said kind of excited to be back to doing some work here and the holidays it's always nice, but at the same time, I'm kind of ready to get back at it.   Mark: Yeah, exactly. So have you guys heard this term, the Great Resignation, are you guys a little bit aware of this and what's your thoughts? We'll get into it here, some data here in just a second, but just have curious if you've heard it or not.   Nick: Yeah, I definitely have. I think it's interesting. I think depending upon who you talk to, their interpretation of it is a little bit different, but in my mind it's really, it's kind of, to kind of think about it from the perspective as almost like a real estate market, there's a buyer's market and there's a seller's market. And I think that really what's happened is not all, but many companies have been slow to kind of improve wages and pay and benefits and things like that and so this has kind of put things into kind of the worker's hands a little bit more and given them a little bit of leverage from the perspective of competitiveness from a company standpoint. And that obviously, that doesn't deal with the people that are in between or are waiting to kind of figure out what they want to do with their whole life, that sort of thing, but more specifically, the people changing jobs and how difficult it's been for employers to keep employees.   Mark: Yeah. I mean, it's definitely all over the map and John, we're going to talk a little bit about it from the different age groups, but for the most part, we're going to look at it as it affects retirees and pre-retirees, but have you seen some of this stuff? Are you familiar with it?   John: Not necessarily the term itself, but yeah, we've seen a lot of this with our own clients that are basically doing some job changes or just outright, just retiring early which I know we're going to get into. But yeah, we're seeing quite a bit of this. And then we see it when we're trying to personally and work wise trying to get service work done. It feels like-   Mark: Big time.   John: Feels like no one's working anymore. My local Dunkin' Donuts here, I can't go in to get a coffee because they don't have enough workers, so everything's drive through. But it just [crosstalk 00:03:23] seen across the board.   Mark: And that's part of it. Yeah. And that's part of it. So a lot of times, I think, when we think about this what's happened in the pandemic, we automatically go to the lower paying scale jobs, the fast food type jobs, and that's definitely a big piece, but for an example, 4.2 million people quit their job in October of 2021. So just a couple of months ago and there's been a lot of other people quitting. So there's been, I think somewhere now around six, six and a half million, I think over the last four to four and a half months. And it's not just the lower end stuff. And of course it's also unknown how long these people will stay out of work. Some of it could be retirees or pre-retirees that are just like, you know what, I'm not going back.   Mark: I'll use my brother as an example, he's 63 and he's like, as long as they keep me working from home, I'm going to stay. But the minute they tell me, I have to go back to the office. I think I'm going to pull the trigger and retire early, even though his plan calls for him to wait till 60, his full retirement age, which I think is 66 and seven months or something like that. So let's talk about it from that's kind of standpoint, guys.   Mark: I've got three takeaway categories here, or actually four. I'm going to kind of give you guys the headline and let you guys roll from there a little bit on this. Okay. So we'll dive into it, hit it however you'd like, not just the lower income scale, but also the upper end, or people just closer to retirement things that you might be seeing or hearing. So number one, if you are going to step away early, taking a break from Social Security, whether it's short term, long term or whatever, don't sell short that, the impact that, that can have to your long term benefits.   Nick: So, depending upon how long you are out of work, it's important to keep into consideration that when you're not earning an income, you're not building up your Social Security credits and so that's something that can impact you down the line. And I've actually had this come up a little bit lately where people don't quite grasp the impact, the positive impact of Social Security, or how much, or how important it is to their overall plan. So it is a big deal and you want to make sure you still have your 10 year minimum work history. It's important to remember that, really the benefit that you receive is a cumulative kind of record of your highest 35 years of income.   Mark: Right.   Nick: So every year that you have a higher year than a previous year, adjusted for inflation, that's going to knock out the other years and you really kind of help bump that benefit up.   Mark: Right. And if you're stepping away in your fifties because of this Great Resignation type of thing here, that's some prime earning years. So that's where I say you could be putting a big dent in that.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely. And realistically it always does kind of go back to the whole plan concept of that we really try to harp on people about, is we have had some people retire early because we have had a bull market for the last 10 years and they've done a good job with saving and those sorts of things, but we kind of verified it through the planning, the whole retire really early on a whim or not really looking at it from an analytical standpoint can definitely be pretty, pretty dangerous.   Mark: Yeah, for sure. So you definitely want to make sure that if you are stepping away from Social Security, you're looking at what it could do to your long term strategy, six months, a year, retiring early, whatever the case might be. Just make sure you're strategizing that with your advisor.   Mark: John, talk to me a little bit about takeaway number two, the 401k isn't a rainy day fund, is kind of the category I had. Because over the last two years, and even the last six months, there's some pretty interesting stats about what people are doing with their 401ks.   John: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, during COVID 2020, there was some ability to actually access for 401k funds or retirement funds without any penalty.   Mark: Right.   John: And not even have to do a loan and that's gone away. So now, not that... Fortunately for our clients, and I think we do a great job educating them, we haven't really seen too much of this where clients are taking out 401k loans. But I have had conversations with some individuals that have done that. And it's just kind of like, "Hey, how much can I pull from my fund? I did this, what are the impacts of it?" So it's just important to fall back to the plan. And we do a... One of our biggest recommendation's to make sure that people have an emergency fund and whether it's three to six months or a year of emergency savings, because, as you know the pandemic hit in 2020 and no one saw that coming and you just don't know what's going to happen in the future. So it's important to have an emergency fund to help out in certain situations like this, so you avoid pulling from the 401k loan because you really want to let those assets grow for your retirement and not access it for rainy day funds- [crosstalk 00:08:10].   Mark: Kind of a stop gap.   John: .... on things like that.   Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's some negative impacts of doing that though, John? I think one of the things people get lost on is just the compounding of it over time, right?   John: Yeah. So you take out 40 grand out of it, basically, especially, let's say you did that in 2020, let's say you took out $40,000 there, you just lost the compounding over the next year and a half, two years of which has been really excellent in reality [crosstalk 00:08:33] with what the market's done. So not... You're just not losing that $40,000, you're losing what that $40,000 could have grown to, which is the importance of having, again, the rainy day fund, so you can let that money in there, let that money grow for you and earn and work for you.   Mark: Yeah.   John: And then nevermind then you're paying money back into it that are after tax dollar. So there's a lot that goes into it that you really need to evaluate it. Sometimes it's you have to because you have nothing else to pull from.   Mark: Right.   John: But it's always important to plan and make sure that you... This is the last resort.   Mark: I hear a lot of advisors say taking that loan against it is usually the later, like if it's kind of like the last in the line, if you really need it, okay, here's where we can go. But let's try not to. Just simply from a multitude of reasons, especially with the resignation, right? If you take a loan against your 401k and you leave the job, you have to pay that back. Correct?   John: Yeah. That's a great point that you bring up. Most companies will give you 30 days to pay it back. So example, you take out that $40,000 and all of a sudden it's, "Hey, we're downsizing," and you get a pink slip, and not only you got, now you all of a sudden you got to pay 40 grand back to your 401k within, a 30 day period, maybe 60 day period. And if you do not pay it back, you're going to be paying taxes and penalty on that, on those dollars.   Mark: Pretty stiff. Yeah.   John: Yeah.   Mark: Yeah. So that's another takeaway for that. And Nick, let's stick with the 401k for a minute for the next one. If you are in this kind of nomad thing where you're jumping out of one job, you're waiting a bit, maybe going into another, looking for a better option for yourself, seeing who's hiring, whatever the scenario is, take that 401k with you, right? Don't just leave it back behind at the old place.   Nick: Yeah. It can be, realistically the more accounts people have, the more places, the more often things are overlooked, not checked up on, not taken care of, so we definitely are fans of consolidating. Whether it's rolling it into the plan at your new employer or rolling it into an IRA where you can control the assets yourself or work with an advisor to manage them for you. Just like so many other things, it's one of the things that former or past employer 401k plans are oftentimes one of the most overlooked and non-adjusted things that we've seen people kind of not take care of.   Mark: Yeah.   Nick: And then they lose a lot of long term money on it because of that.   Mark: Well, you got to think about the vested portion too. Right? So if it's, let's say you're 50 or something like that, and you're pondering this, make sure you under... that you're getting the fully vested part before you jump on. There are some people that could say, well, all right, maybe I'd better stick this out a little longer or whatever the case is.   Nick: Yeah, absolutely. There are some people that... It's much more common for people to move from one employer to the next these days. Especially in certain industries where they can be almost more of a tech role or consultant role, things like that. And sometimes, because of that, their employer has put in a decent amount of money, so an employee's contributions are always vested, it's always their money, but they could have substantial employer matching that vests over three to five years. Or some other sorts of benefits, even if it's not exactly the 401k, but maybe there's a stock plan that has vesting. It's important to take those things into consideration because we've seen people leave tens of thousands of dollars on the table.   Mark: Right.   Nick: Not realizing that it was a factor they should have taken into consideration before they switched employers.   Mark: Yeah. Don't leave that behind. Right? So definitely take it with you, whether you're rolling it from the old one into the new one. And if you do it properly, it's not going to, it's not an issue, right, Nick? So if you've got it in the old one and you roll it to the new one, you just go through the proper channels and there's no taxable event and so on and so forth. Same thing if you move it to an IRA, correct?   Nick: Correct. Yeah. The goal is always to make sure that it's rollover, it's not taken as a lump sum distribution-   Mark: To yourself.   Nick: Yeah. So you always want to make sure that when the rollover happens, it gets paid directly to the new custodian. So it's not written out to you. It's written to the new custodian, whether that's a Fidelity or a Vanguard or whoever it may be, it's paid directly to them, the funds go over and that avoids there being any sort of tax liability or penalty if somebody's under the age of 59 and a half.   Mark: All right. So let's go to the fourth takeaway here, guys. I'll let you both kind of jump in and out on this. John, I'll start with you. It seems like this whole resignation thing is kind of tailor made for those early retirement dreamers. Kind of go back to my brother's conversation there about, Well, if they... I'll retire a couple years early, if they make me go back to the office kind of thing, but I'll work from home." So it's enticing for sure, but point out some challenges to just ponder if you are retiring early, ahead of what you originally planned, you guys kind of divide up a few of these, if you would, but John go ahead and start with a couple of bullet points to think about.   John: Yeah. One of the things that I think about is qualifying for Social Security. The earliest you can draw Social Security is age 62. So, if you're retiring at let's just call 57, you got a decent gap of where you can't take any Social Security. So you really have to evaluate are there any other income sources coming in like a pension or maybe some real estate income or whatever it might be. And then if there isn't, is your nest egg able to sustain your plans. [crosstalk 00:14:06].   Mark: Five years, yeah.   John: Yeah. Is it able to work if you're using your nest egg to basically live off of for that period of time. So those are one of the things. And then you always want to of look at as one, we've had situations where one spouse might retire early and the other one's still work and they say, "Hey, we could live off of just one income for the time being. And if we need any extra money, we have the nest egg that we can pull from as needed." So that would be a big one to really look at.   John: Another one that we come across quite often is healthcare coverage. I'd say one of the main reasons that people don't retire. From our standpoint, what we see is really healthcare. So they wait till they're 65, so they can draw on Medicare. And prior to that, they just kind of look at the cost of going to the Marketplace and say, you know what, this is probably a little too rich for my blood, so [crosstalk 00:14:55] kind of hold off.   Mark: And if you use your example of 57, I mean, you're talking eight years, what are you doing in that gap? Right.   John: Yeah. And we've seen everyone's situations different in what their premium is, but I've seen some premiums for individual at that age at $10-11,000 per year. Nevermind, the coverage isn't as good. So that's [crosstalk 00:15:12]-   Mark: And that's not per person too. Right. So if you and the spouse.   John: Yeah, yeah. Yep. That's per person.   Mark: Can your retirement accounts handle that for that setup that we just talked about or whatever the case might be and then realizing that that's also, that your retirement is now going to be longer, right, because you've retired early, so it's the kind of great multiplier. So those things just kind of compound and go up from there. Nick, do you agree with that and what's some things you see?   Nick: Yeah. For sure. It's definitely a slippery slope when you start to factor in. We've got some clients who work for large employers, their total health premiums for the households can run $2-3,000 a year for both of them. So when you go and you take... You go from $2-3000 for both of you while you're working to somewhere between $8-20,000 a year before Medicare age, it can be pretty substantial. And oftentimes, for many people, there's going to be a price increase, even when they're on Medicare from if you were working for a company that was a larger employer and had pretty inexpensive health benefits. So that makes a huge, huge difference.   Nick: And one way that some people have managed things from that perspective are with some of the Marketplace options out there will kind of connect people with specialists that can help on the medical insurance side of things. And you may be able to take money from taxable accounts that don't have large gains to put your income lower so that you don't pay as much, but in reality, to be frank, usually the only people that can do that are ones that have saved substantial amount of money into a non-qualified account, which usually means they have a lot of money. So, it's less of an issue. So really looking at that, looking at the different types of accounts, when you create your withdrawal rate, and figuring out, hey, how can we keep your income taxes low, not a only for a short period of time when you're in retirement, but kind of building flexibility throughout your retirement, where you're not just letting this tax bomb grow, or you're not using all of your Roth money first or leaving it all for the end.   Nick: It's usually kind of a bit of a balance. So we harp on it a lot, but this is really where there's so many factors and things like this. That this is where kind of software and the tech tools that we have today really help us tailor make a plan, come up with a really good income and liquidation strategy, help us figure out what kind of gaps are we going to have between the time that you retire and when things like Social Security are going to kick in to help supplement the income, and then when Medicare's going to kick in to help reduce expenses. So, it's definitely a puzzle and fortunately we enjoy putting the pieces together.   Mark: Right. Well, look, if you're on the fence, well, if you already did the resigned and walked away, hopefully you had a plan in place, but if you're not, if you're among some of those folks that are still considering, I've heard some interesting stats that they think that's going to happen. Again, early on the first half of 2022, make sure you're talking with an advisor about all the different things that could happen if you do step away early. Most people, hopefully do, but sometimes you just get frustrated or whatever the case is. And a lot of it does have to do with this kind of going back to work, staying working from home, it got good to us, we really kind of, in some ways, very much so enjoy being able to work from home, in other ways we kind of missed the camaraderie. So there's a lot of different things to just kind of take into account before you pull the Great Resignation.   Mark: And with that, we're going to wrap it up this week. We're going to knock out an email question here real fast. Whichever one of you guys want to tackle this, but we've got one from Rebecca who said, "Guys, every six months or so I tell myself, I need to start saving more for retirement and I pretend like I'm going to get serious and actually do it. But then I can't stay motivated to increase my savings. I'm putting a decent amount in the 401k and I have a pretty nice balance there, but it feels like I could be doing more. It's the beginning of the year, I want to be more motivated. How do I do it?"   John: This comes up quite a bit. And I'd say the easiest way to save is probably the 401k, because it's done through payroll and you really, once you start saving in to it, you really don't miss the money coming out into it and you can always adjust it. And we've had some people where they say, "Hey, I'm putting enough into my 401k, what else should I do?" And the first step is just really just setting up an account and you can start with as little as $25 a month, or $50 a month, but once that account's open, it's much easier just to say, hey, let me up this. So I would say the first step is look at the 401k and if you don't want to continue contributing to that, just open up an account somewhere with your advisor or on your own and just set it up monthly, and then you can always adjust it as needed.   Mark: Yeah. Or maybe a Roth, right? If she wants to look at a tax, something more tax efficient. So...   John: Yep.   Mark: That's another way to look at it. But yeah, I think if you automate it and you just put it in play, Rebecca, that should hopefully get you... You just, if you don't see it and you don't think about it and it's just happening in the background, then that's the beauty of it, so then you don't have to worry about necessarily getting motivated. But another way might be to sit down with a professional and start getting some advice. It doesn't matter really on your age, the sooner, the better. So if you got questions, need some help, reach out to John and Nick, go to the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com.   Mark: Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on whatever platform you like to use, Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Stitcher, just type in Retirement Planning Redefined, or again, just find it all at their website, pfgprivatewealth.com. If you got questions, need some help, John and Nick are here for you.   Mark: Guys, thanks for hanging out. I appreciate it. Talking to me about the Great Resignation and we'll talk about it in a couple of weeks here, we'll see what's going on.   Nick: Thanks, Mark   John: Thanks.   Mark: I appreciate your time as always. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me. We'll see you next time here on the podcast, with John and Nick, this is Retirement Planning Redefined.

Let's talk about digital identity with Nick Mothershaw, Chief Identity Strategist at the Open Identity Exchange. In episode 61, Oscar speaks to Nick about the Open Identity Exchange (OIX)'s role in the Global Assured Identity Network (GAIN), plus the OIX Trust Framework 2022. Nick discusses what makes a trust framework work for its intended users, and how to make it interoperable with other frameworks. [Transcript below] "When things work for users, they get adopted." Nick is Chief Identity Strategist at the Open Identity Exchange, a community for all those involved in the ID sector to connect and collaborate. Together they develop the guidance needed for interoperable, trusted identities on a global basis. Through OIX's definition of, and education on, Trust Frameworks it creates the rules, tools, and confidence to allow every individual a trusted, universally accepted, identity. Find out more about the Open Identity Exchange at openidentityexchange.org. Nick has expert knowledge of Identity and Fraud techniques, solutions, and standards across a wide variety of different sectors and jurisdictions. He was previously Director of ID and Fraud at Experian where he was responsible for the development of Experian's fraud and identity solutions for both the public and private sectors. Nick led Experian's development, launch and operation of a full “Identity as a Service” solution which was the first live example of a Digital ID being seamlessly interoperable across public and private sector. Find Nick on Twitter @OIX_Nick and on LinkedIn. Follow OIX on Twitter @OpenIDExchange. We'll be continuing this conversation on Twitter using #LTADI – join us @ubisecure!     Podcast transcript Let's Talk About Digital Identity, the podcast connecting identity and business. I am your host, Oscar Santolalla. Oscar Santolalla: Hello, and welcome to a new episode of Let's Talk About Digital Identity in this new year, 2022. And we have, after some time, again, our friends of the Open Identity Exchange. And today, our guest is Nick Mothershaw. He is the Chief Identity Strategist at the Open Identity Exchange, a community for all those involved in the identity sector to connect and collaborate. Nick has expert knowledge of Identity and Fraud techniques, solutions and standards across a wide variety of different sectors and jurisdictions. Nick was previously Director of Identity and Fraud at Experian, where he was responsible for the development of Experian's fraud and identity solutions for both the public and private sectors. Nick led Experian's development, launch and operation of a full "Identity as a Service" solution, which was the first live example of a digital identity being seamlessly interoperable across public and private sector. Hello, Nick. Nick Mothershaw: Hello, Oscar. Hello. Oscar: Welcome. It's great having you, Nick. Nick: It's a pleasure to be here. And yeah, Happy New Year to you and all your listeners, very exciting to be at the start of 2022, which I think it's going to be an amazing and transformational year for digital identity. So this is a really timely conversation. Oscar: Yeah. And I know you have new things to tell us. So yeah, Nick, let's talk about digital identity. But I'd like to start hearing a bit more about yourself, so please tell us about your journey to the world of digital identity. Nick: Yeah, it's been a long journey now. So I was originally involved in, I guess, in identity when I worked with law enforcement, providing crime management and intelligence management systems. And after that, we started looking at biometrics. So around the year 2000, we were using biometrics to help identify criminals from group photographs and also using facial mapping to look at, where we used to use these E-FITs, these faces that were being drawn by computer that were put out on things like crime watch programmes, so we're using facial biometrics to match those two datab...

Nick deWilde is a Product Marketing Principal at Guild Education. Guild is a fast-growing startup that partners with Fortune 500 employers. Guild unlocks opportunities for America's workforce via education and upskilling.Nick also runs his newsletter, The Jungle Gym. The Jungle Gym helps readers build a more fulfilling career that integrates work and life. Before working at Guild, Nick earned his MBA from Stanford Business School, and was a Managing Partner at Tradecraft.Nick and I talk about his relationship with Twitter, and how social media can both serve you, and be a challenge. We talk about individual brands and growing a platform. Nick also shares his thoughts about marketing yourself as an individual, and we discuss how growing an audience plays into your career.In this episode, you'll learn: Building an audience while working full-time Three reasons people start newsletters What to do when your follower count hits a plateau Links & Resources Morning Brew Fastly Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success Julian Shapiro Sahil Bloom Dickie Bush Medium Tiago Forte Building a Second Brain David Perell Write of Passage Tradecraft Guild Hacker news John Lee Dumas Packy McCormick Mario Gabriele Seth Godin Rachel Carlson On Deck Gong Matt Ragland Charli Prangley The Nathan Barry Show, featuring Kimberly Brooks Harry Stebbings The Twenty Minute VC Isa Adney Liz Fosslien, No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotions at Work Discord Reddit Pallet Craft + Commerce ConvertKit Enough Ryan Holiday James Clear Marie Forleo Ramit Sethi Nick deWilde's Links Follow Nick on Twitter Nick's newsletter, The Jungle Gym To tweet, or not to tweet Episode Transcript[00:00:00] Nick:I've tried to do things in my writing where my employer benefits from them. I talk about work a lot, and whenever I talk about hiring, I mention Gild is hiring. There are things I do to just try to make sure that it still feels worth the company's while.[00:00:25] Nathan:In this episode, I talk to Nick deWilde, who writes a popular newsletter called The Jungle Gym. He's got a background in product and growth, and all these things from the startup world. I just love the approach that he's taken to writing these days.We talk about growing as newsletter. We talk about his interesting relationship with Twitter and social media. How it can really serve you and be this great thing, and then it can also be challenging. Maybe you're spending too much time on it, or time on it in a way that's not actually serving you or benefiting you.We talk about the rise of individual brands being used to grow a platform. It's something I've been thinking a lot about, watching Morning Brew and Fastly, and some of these other companies do it. It's just interesting whether you're marketing as a company or an individual. It's just a good conversation. We also talk about audience, and just how that plays into your career.He recently made the switch from a full-time role, to doing more audience-based business stuff. He was just in the middle of that journey. So, it's a fun place and time to catch up in the conversation.Nick, welcome to the show.[00:01:33] Nick:Hey, thanks for having me, Nathan.[00:01:35] Nathan:I want to start on this article you have, that I like a lot, called, “To tweet, or not to tweet,” That got you ahead. I also happened to go to the Shakespeare festival recently, and watched them do “The Complete Works of Shakespeare, Abridged.”So, you know, I could probably pull off a good, to[00:01:50] Nick:Nice.[00:01:51] Nathan:Be or not to be speech right now. It's in my head because I think about all the wonderful things that Twitter and an audience beyond that does for me. Then also the negative sides of it. So maybe we dive into that, but I'd also love to hear what sparked you diving in and building an audience.[00:02:11] Nick:Yeah, I'm so conflicted on Twitter, and audience building in general. Like anything, I imagine there's a fair number of people who you talked to, who are in the writing community, who feel that way. On the one hand, Twitter does so many things for me. Especially over the past couple of years.As we've been in lockdown, lives have moved online. I have met and made friends with so many amazing people through Twitter that I wouldn't have met otherwise. Same with the newsletter, but Twitter is a little bit easier to build those relationships.Twitter has definitely helped grow my bank account. So, there are clearly things that being online and participating in the online world really does for you that are valuable.I think, building an audience is super valuable.When I think about the future of work, and what will be automated and what won't be, I really think that human beings, our greatest strength that is the hardest to copy is our ability to influence other people. This really comes from some of the thinking of author Joseph Heinrich, who looked at what is the secret of human success.It's cultural learning. It's our ability to essentially watch what other people do, and mimic them. We're really good at detecting what is a real human and what's not, and who's someone prestigious that we should learn from, and who isn't.I think that audience building is super valuable. So, even though I don't love the activity of building an audience, I have gotten a lot of value out of it, and I see the value in it. So, I very much come from a conflicted spot in this. I'm very impressed by people like Julian, and Sahil, and Dickie Bush, who have grown amazing audiences.Some days I aspire to 10X my audience, and some days I'm just like, please let me be a monk and live in seclusion.[00:04:20] Nathan:Well? Okay. So I had a Twitter thread last week that I did It was on company culture for remote teams, and I've had some that like take off and do well before, but this was like 1300 retweets, like almost a million impressions, a level of taking off. And on one hand I was like, this is amazing.And the other, I like checked the notifications and the replies so many times, and it was fascinating watching it go from like my circle to the next circle, out to the next circle out. And like, we're still in like positive replies, happy. Oh, build on it, refine it. And then like the one circle past that, which it took about, let's say 12 to 18 hours to get to[00:05:06] Nick:Yeah[00:05:06] Nathan:And that was the. This guy's an idiot. I'd never want to work at that company. you know, like all like the, the haters and the non from there, and then it like dies out and this is weird arc of his, we should graph it, but it just made me think of, is this something that I want to do and want, had I added thousands of Twitter followers?I think I could recreate it. Like maybe one in five attempts would like hit that big. Who knows. but I wrestle with the exact question of like, do I want this?[00:05:36] Nick:You and you're, you're just, you're like jacked up on dopamine. You're like, you're, you're sort of you're you, you, you start just imagining all the good things that will come from this. I should be doing this all the time. Like, you know, I, I mean, I think it's, it's sort of pre progressive problems, right?Like, like there's, there's the problem of like having a smaller audience and like putting something out into the ether and then, this, this kind of, getting no response, right. That, that, that's the first thing that, that actually like most people kind of deal with. Right. And, and, and that's, that's a weird thing because it's like, it's like, you're, you're then judging the quality of your ideas based on the ability of, based on basically your, your audience's response and, and realizing like, you're not actually talking to your audience, you're talking to.Subsection that Twitter has decided that you can talk to at that specific point in time. And so, and then you're basically judging your own ideas based off that. And if, if your idea is like, I think, I think when you hit a certain bar of audience, like you can, you can share ideas that are, pretty complex and nuanced and like you'll, you'll find some, some sort of interest for it and it has a potential to take off, but like there there's stuff where if it's kind of interesting and nuanced there, isn't really kind of a built in audience for it.And people don't really have the time to like always dig in and kind of engage and try to like, find what's at the kernel of, it's why I like newsletters a lot more than I like tweeting. But, but, but, but I think, I think what you're, you know, then there's, there's, there's the problem where once you get big enough, like you're now being your ideas are being put in front of a bunch of people who like you didn't intend them for.And those people for some reason have decided to invite into their lives, like conflict with strangers on the internet, because[00:07:19] Nathan:That's like a primary goal,[00:07:21] Nick:Right, right. It's like, it's it. It's what gives them a great day. Right. And, and, and so, so yeah, it's, it's such a weird thing. And so I, like, I mean, I, I think about this with like, I equate Twitter, often to, to kind of, like refined sugar, right.With refined sugar, right. It's it's, it's what we call supernormal stimuli. Right. It, it, it, or super, super normal stimulus. and, and what that is, is basically something that like replaces some natural, like evolutionary desire you have with something kind of artificial that just sends your brain on like overdrive seeking that thing, seeking that thing over and over.And, and that is. That's what Twitter is. It's, it's, it's refined status instead of refined sugar. And that refined status is like, it just, it takes this thing that you normally do, which is like seek, prestige from your, your tribal group, which was a really good thing to do to make sure that you, you know, ate a good meal.And it, and it puts that into, into this crazy overdrive and it like, it centers your brain around it, and it's, it's such a, it's a really powerful thing. And so I, you know, again, right, it's like, there's all these great gifts that come from Twitter and then there's, then there are all these drawbacks and it's, it's almost like perfect equilibrium of, should you do it or should you not?And I don't begrudge anyone either way for their decision.[00:08:46] Nathan:What I always wonder is if I could only have the benefits, like, is there a way let's say that you don't doom scroll Twitter with the latest news and whatever's going wrong, or whatever, latest Twitter fight there is. Maybe you do in a separate app publish these like smart tweets or brilliant threads that are going to get all this attention.And you do one of those every day, but then like you jump in an hour later and respond to a bunch of comments and then like the next day you do it again for 30 minutes and then like, that's it. And you just bat, like, there is this world where you could own Twitter rather than Twitter owning you, but like, are you capable of it?Do you have the self-discipline to pull that off?[00:09:33] Nick:Totally. And, and I, and I think, I think like, you know, I I've talked, I think Julian about this and I think he uses like tweet deck for it. And I think, I think there are ways you can do it. Right. I like for awhile, I was good at like, I would tweet in the morning and then I would like uninstalled the app off my phone.So I wouldn't look at it. and like, there are things that you can do. it's just, it's just really hard because I think to some degree what Twitter, rewards, especially when, when you're on the audience building path. Right. I think when you're like, tens of thousand or hundreds of thousands of followers, you, you actually have a lot more leeway to do what you want.Because, because like, you're just, it's likely that your tweets will work, but like when you're building your ions, there's, there's something that like, it's sort of like, there's a Turing test that's happening, right. People are sort of looking, are you an engaged human being? Cause I I've I've I knew some people who sort of, they, they schedule and preplan all their tweets and like, and to some degree they, they just, they don't hit, they don't work because it doesn't feel real time.They're responding in real time. So like[00:10:35] Nathan:Out of pace. You're out of touch with what's happening with.[00:10:38] Nick:Exactly And so, and so it's, it's sort of, Twitter's kind of like looking for these weird signs of life. So I think it's, I think it's doable. There, there must be some way to do this, but, it's tough. I think the, the other, the other thing that Twitter did to me, that I, disliked is, it makes me feel like my relationships are very transactional because you have these likes retweets, and like these, these, Very clear, like signals of engagement.You, you start to like, or I start to like, to like keep score. Right. And, and I, and I don't, I like, I don't do that anywhere else in life. I think a good, like obviously good relationships tend to start out transactional and then like, they, you kind of forget what the transactions are and like that, that's what creates a close friendship where like, look like you may have paid from the last time I paid for you this time.It doesn't really matter anymore because we transacted so many times, but, but Twitter, for some reason, the score always feels out there. And, and so that was, that's really been like a little bit of a red flag to me. And I, I I try to keep a generous mindset and a generous spirit on Twitter, but I find it harder than in real life.[00:11:52] Nathan:That makes sense to me. So maybe taking a step back, and maybe we'll wrestle with some of these, like to grow an audience or not to grow an audience questions[00:12:00] Nick:Sure[00:12:02] Nathan:What was the thing that, sparked for you? I'm like, I'm going to go start a sub stack. I'm going to actively work to build an audience.[00:12:10] Nick:Yeah, I, so I was writing on, on medium starting in like 2013, maybe. Um and and really got a lot out of it. I, I started my career out as a, as a screenwriter, so I was planning to go into the TV industry and like, and, and for, you know, for, for many reasons, found that to be, a path where like, you didn't really control your destiny.I saw I met lots of, you know, mid thirties, you know, production assistants who were slightly bitter. And then, so I just kind of realized like, this, this wasn't exactly a good path, for me. And so, but I, I wanted to kind of keep that like, that creativity, that like interaction with an audience, I think, you know, it, it was.And found that in writing. And so And so started publishing on medium. Um we was a great experience in terms of how quick it was to publish, but like the distribution of publishing a medium sucks, right? Like, you're you you, you publish ones and then like you spam all your friends and like, you're, you're just, you're working super hard to like push this thing and promote it.And I was like, there's gotta be some way that's a little bit easier. and so I actually ended up in, I think I took, I took Tiago Forte is building a second brain course that kind of like, magically grandfathered me in somehow to like David Pearl's first um uh cohort or Write of Passage, which was awesome And like, I would say, like, I took a lot out of that, but like the biggest thing was, was like start a newsletter. and so basically I started out, I think I started out with a review even. but but anyway like started publishing. Opted in when I knew onto the email list, which I'm sure they, they may or may not appreciate it, but this is before there were tons of sales tax out.And so I felt like it wasn't, it wasn't that crazy. I probably wouldn't have done that in like 20, 20, but, but w really wanted like a way to like, continually kind of interact with my audience without having to worry about like, you know, just, just kind of constantly doing the heavy promotion work.Um now that's because I now you know posts just as a part of medium but but at least there's those sort of a built in audience that kind of grows over time that you kind of keep with you. and, and so. doing that, it was kind of it's kind of a mix of for work and for life.I, I was, at the time, the managing partner of a, of a, uh immersive education program called Tradecraft. And like we, we would help people make sort of complex career transitions into the startup world. And and so a lot of what I was writing was kind of about that. It was about careers. but it also tied in with, with kind of deep interests.It was sort of why I took the role in the first place. and, and what I found when I, when I moved from Tradecraft over to Guild was like that kind of nicely traveled with me. and, and I think there's, there's something, something really nice about a newsletter, being a kind of an appendage to your career, where, like it expands your professional identity to a certain degree.You, you can become a little bit more than just your job, especially working for, like, like a single individual company, especially if you're, if, if the company is larger you, have to deal with a lot of like coordination challenges. there there's a lot of bureaucracy that happens at a company And one of the nice things about having a newsletter is you are in charge of it. It's like you're the CEO of it. the product ships, when you choose to ship it and you have complete editorial say over it, and the distribution that you put into it is what you get out of it. And and there's something really nice about that.It helped me kind of identify as a person who who, ships a lot, even when, sometimes, you know, you know, you you have to work on something at at work that takes a long time.[00:16:12] Nathan:Have you found a dress core even a strong correlation between the effort that you put in to your newsletter and your audience growth and the results that you get out, or does it feel like a more tenuous connection?[00:16:24] Nick:I think, I think there is a pretty good, like w w when I think a post is going to really hit it usually does and so I would say like, like when I put effort into, into writing something really good, I think usually it meets it meets or exceeds my expectations. And when, and when I feel like something is, I'm kind of honing in on, on a, on a post, like usually I get that too.So I think what, what can also happen. You know, sometimes you post something to hacker news and it turns out it's somehow on the front page and like that your audience growth spikes, or like you get featured in someone else's newsletter and your audience grows spikes. And like, there there's a lot of activities that like, you know, I'm not doing directly to promote it, but but it just sort of, um you know, happens in a nice way.And so that's happened, you know, more than a few times and like, that's a pretty neat thing, but like, I think to some degree that comes from just trying a lot of different things and then like, there's sort of like a, a second order effect of some of those things really, you know, hitting it off.[00:17:28] Nathan:Yeah, I think that's that's right. I knew in the early days of starting my newsletter, I felt a strong correlation between what I was working on and like the effort that I put in and the results that I got out, been been interested well at the time I do like a really epic blog post where I put of effort, you know, we're kind of the, for, you know, off and on for weeks or months and like really a hundred and get friends to read it, all of that.Those pretty much always do really well. But what I'm surprised by is sometimes the throwaway posts really, throwing it. Like, it's a simple idea that you flushed out into a post and you were. Hey, it's Tuesday. I got to get something out. Like it's sort of in that[00:18:09] Nick:Totally[00:18:09] Nathan:Sometimes those really hit.Sometimes they actually resonate. Have you had some of those that were like easy easy ones ones that hit?[00:18:18] Nick:So the, publishing cadence is I do, I do two, two posts a month and one a and it used to be, it used to be one post a month. And then I basically separated out into two. Cause I realized like it was too much to kind of condense into, into one post. And like, I wasn't getting the. The, as many eyeballs on like the second half, so decide to pull them apart.One is kind of one big essay. And the second is a, is is of like a, a But I think of it as like, as like I do pretty deep them. So it's actually of like a, here's what this is about. And a little bit more like, here's what this made me think about.And And, the, the essay is, I always spend a good amount of time on them. or at least this year I've spent a good amount time[00:19:05] Nathan:On all of them two hours, 20 hours, 200 hours?[00:19:11] Nick:2020 is probably probably closest. a really slow writer. And so, and so, like, I, I do, I mean, I like like write and like re-edit the first paragraph, 20 onto the next And likeI don't either Yeah The the the the the, the, top of the like, it's like a then like the last paragraph gets like one glance and I'm like, God, get this thing from Um don't and I I that is the wrong thing to do, yet, somehow I do that anyway. but, but, so, so those, those posts, they tend to get, of. You know, time and care. and then what'll happen is sometimes the, the ones that are like the link roundups, like will, will be very spiky.And I I'll spend, you know, that's, that's a little bit more like a three hour thing, um or four hours or something like that. and yeah, so, and then, and then I had, I had a, a, something that I was doing when I was interviewing folks, I call it the key ring where it was like a pretty structured interview that I would do where I asked the same questions over and over again.That was, that was fun. It, it, it started taking a long time to like do the back and forth. And so I'm putting that on pause for the moment. I may pick it back up again. those are fun just cause you can, you can feature someone that, that you like and get a chance to just and hang out It's kinda like[00:20:40] Nathan:Yeah. Those are always interesting to me. Cause I, I think about that on this podcast of asking the same questions, which I know New, I riff on the questions too or elementBut if you did, in theory, if you're like, did you grow from a hundred subscribers to a thousand subscribers in your newsletter?And you asked that to every single person, then you could compile that over 40 episodes or 40 newsletters or whatever. like, Hey, here's a guide on how to do it. And like, I pulled it from a whole bunch of sources. So that part of like standardized questions intrigues me. don't love it the live, know, version of a or newsletter where it's like, okay, it's too formulaic.People have done super well with us formulaic, like, John Lee Dumas, who did the Podcast entrepreneur on fire. Like he went all out. He was like, this will be 20 minute episodes, we're going to of release one a day, seven days a week and like works for him. I have no desire to do that, you[00:21:36] Nick:Totally[00:21:38] Nathan:Yeah, I don't know. you think about the repurposing side of content like that, or is it more just about the, the upfront.[00:21:45] Nick:I'm at repurposing and, and I, it's something that I, have like a psychological hangup about it. Like I always kind of feel like I need to be just like moving on to the next thing. The next thing, like I've, I've tried like going back and like, be like, oh, I should mind this thing for some, some tweets.And it always feels weird to do. And like, I want to write my Roundup, but I think, I think what I've just recognized as. Another reason why I write the newsletter is like, I want an excuse to have interesting new thoughts each month. I want essentially a performance, right. Where like, we're like, there is a moment where like, if I, if I hadn't been like reading and thinking each month, like, there is a moment that it will, that I will be embarrassed if I don't do that.And like that, that's the way I think about the newsletter. And so, and so repurposing content would be something it's almost like an admission of defeat. which, which I don't is is other people should think but that's an area of my head. And so, and so I think it just like, I need to be onto doing the next thing.There's a bunch of stuff where like, I would love to, I love ways to use the archives, my newsletter better. I think actually like stuff like this is a fun way to do it. Like through a articles and I was like, oh, there's there's stuff I can, I can reference from those. Um but it's it's, it's tough.[00:23:05] Nathan:That makes sense. Okay. So let's talk cadence for a second because this is one of the most popular, common, I don't know, questions that I get from people starting newsletters. Is there, like it should be daily right now, weekly, monthly, twice a month. Can I just do quarterly? Can I grow an audience for the quarterly newsletter?You've settled on twice a month? What was the thought that went into that? And, and what's your present cons on, on that particular.[00:23:33] Nick:I think. I mean, one of the weird things, which I'm like, I don't think it's just me, but like, like, it was like, when you, when you release a newsletter issue, like you naturally lose subscribers, but like, like, like people are reminded that like, they're like, know you have yeah You have keys to their inbox and they're like, like, why why did I let this And so and so like and so ideally like that, you know what I mean, then that's gonna have a rude awakening for, I think, I think people who are like, oh, this, this thing just goes on autopilot. but, but you need something that like is going to generate more new subscribers than it will lose subscribers because I'm a slow writer, like my, my ability to write something that I think is going to generate new subscribers is like twice a month. And like, and, and, if, and if I was, you know, Paki and Mario there, I don't know how fast they are, but like they are, they're dedicated.They can crank out some ungodly number of words, you know, once a week, twice a week, which is super impressive. And I think if I was them, I would do that. And like, you know, I, I love still like Seth Godin writes, like, you know, I feel like he writes every day. And I think so I think if you're, if you're capable of doing that, like, and, and, and doesn't lose subscribers, then like do it and set an appointment.And I think all those things are really nice, but for me, it's like, how do I make sure that like, one it's kinda, it's kinda manageable with a, with like a full-time job, which is the way I've been doing it for a long time. Right. and need to, I think, um you know, there, there are, there are weirdnesses of having a newsletter, any full-time job at the same time.And one of those is like, You are publishing, like if your hobby was sea kayaking, right? Like, like you could do that with no one knowing that you were doing it. Right. And like, and, and there's, there's nothing weird about that. Or like running a marathon or something like that. like it's clearly the thing you're doing on the side, writing a newsletter is like, it's it's knowledge work that is like akin to, to, type of work that you might do in an office Right Coding[00:25:41] Nathan:Marketing copywriting, whatever your your day job[00:25:44] Nick:A hundred percent. And like, and like, if you're putting that out on LinkedIn, like, you know, your managers managers are seeing it and like, and so there's, there's just like, like doing that every day would be, a weird would feel weird to me even if, even if no one else felt weird about and so, and so I feel like twice a month it feels, feels good to me.It's also, it also just like keeps me excited to keep, to keep at it versus making feel like it's like a daily or weekly chore. And I have like a day off, I have a week off in between so that I can like, you know, spend the weekend, not writing if I want to, which is nice.[00:26:23] Nathan:Yeah. I like the idea of timing it to your, like your cadence as a writer. What advice would you have to someone who's in that position of, building audience on the side there, maybe they're doing it secretly at first where they're like awkward about it's this may maybe self promotional, but, but at some point, if you get to any scale right. will either you'll tell people at work about it or they'll find out about it in some way, hopefully be supportive, but I don't know. What advice do you give to someone who's in that[00:26:54] Nick:First, acknowledge that there is weirdness to it. Like there, are, like there are inherent trade-offs to everything and like, and like there is there's weirdness and if, and if you're your, like the, the company I've been working for Guild, like they, like everyone has been more than supportive at it, but, of the, the work and like, but I still have a weird complex about it.You know, I think part of the reason I ended up getting the job was because of, because of the newsletter, some of the stuff I publish of like, you know, shaped our marketing strategy. So there were things where like, I've tried to do things in my writing where my employer benefits from them.Like, you know, whenever I talk about work a lot and whenever I talk about hiring, I mentioned Guild's hiring, Like there, there are, there are things that I do to just try to like, make sure that it still feels worth the company's Weill. And also, like, I think, I think I try to bring in ID.Like I try to have ideas that are useful to what I do at work. so I I wrote this, this piece on, platform branding, which was all about, companies that essentially used their employees to build audiences that, also benefit the companyAnd like, you know, we, ended up using that strategy at Guild which, which was, which was cool.And like that ended up being the strategy doc to some degree, around it, which was cool. And so so so, there's there, there's like ways that you can. think um you bring that in that that are, that valuable. And so I try to sort of look for those things. I, but I think, you know, acknowledged right.That there's, good writing is vulnerable and sometimes it's weird to be vulnerable in front of your colleagues. and, and like it's naturally an attention seeking activity. And if like, if like there's someone at work feels weird about you, like, will be, you know, something that they can talk about, the proverbial water cooler about like, you know, why, why you're not doing your job and you're, you're off writing these letters So so there's there there's weirdness, but like, I think if you can make, if you can allow your company to benefit from the audience you are growing, I think that tends to be a pretty good fit[00:29:12] Nathan:What that made me think of is basically it's going to accelerate or, magnify, whatever someone already thinks of you. So for example, if someone already thinks, like, I don't know, next kind of. he just doesn't contribute that much. Like is he even working half the time then if they publishing once a week, then they're like, see proof of what I already thought. if like the executive at the company is like, Nick is one of the best hires we've ever made. Oh. And look now he's like publishing and rhinos. Like he's a thought leader as well. Like whatever they think is just going to accelerate more. And so maybe it's looking what reputation you already have.[00:29:51] Nick:A hundred percent and it's like, it's like, I mean, the way I see it, and this is kind of what I wrote about in the platform, branding thing is like, I actually think that, having a bunch of employees who are, in a creator type role, um it's like underdeveloped marketing channel. Like you essentially, you have these people who have.Hey, like, I'm going to, going to take my scarcest asset my time give it to this company. and and and now I'm going to build relationships with, with all of these thousands of people who, who listen to these ideas and like, and like that sort of just gives positive energy to the company. So, so actually, like when you compare it, even to like a, a side project that you're coding nights and weekends, I actually think, I think companies should be really supportive of, of, of kind of audience building on the side because it really can benefit them but, but people naturally have a, there's there's a weird feeling about it. And so, and so you have to like, especially as a company, You know, like our, our CEO is, is, is really good at building her own audience on LinkedIn. And I think that gives everyone else some permission to like, you know write vulnerable and things like that.So I think, but I think it, it is, it is a really important thing to be able to have this kind of a group of people who are increasing the company's sort of surface area in Serendip.[00:31:23] Nathan:Yep. I like that. I've wondered about doing something like that for ConvertKit. We have a handful of people on the team who are very prolific creators, for the two myself and then, our creative director, Charlie, frankly, she has like followers on YouTube and a popular channel and all of that.There's a handful of other people who have podcasts and are, are active on Twitter. Our product managers are quite active when you talk to them about things related to ConvertKit, you know, they're like active with customers, but I haven't, or we haven't taken this approach like fast or on deck, or I'm trying to think who else does it, but, but these companies where they're like, okay, there's 15 of us and we're all going to.Become Twitter famous, you know, or start our thing and we'll all drive back. Is it a strategy that you think works well?[00:32:17] Nick:The, the best example of this actually think is, I think on-deck did it, did it really has done it really well on Twitter Um I think gong is actually probably my favorite example. Um especially from a B2B what they do is like is all of their salespeople are out there, like posting content on LinkedIn, but it's not like how great gong is.Almost has nothing to do with gum. It's like you know, an a I'm I'm I'm grinding today. Can't wait to get off for the weekend. It's like, it's like, it, it, it sort of, embodying kind of this, this, like this, the sales lifestyle. Right. And, and, and the, the engagement they get is, is crazy.Right. And like, and that, the thing is, if, so, so there's sort of like, there's kind of like, you can build lifestyle influencers among your employees Right But you can also. Like this idea of building up someone who is, who is a, I know this is kind of a gross word, but thought leader in the, in the, space you're, you're excited about.People kind of come to them, they build affinity with them. And I think you, you can build individuals as marketing channels where like starts out where like someone's reading your posts on LinkedIn. maybe that person hosts a, a kind of invite only webinar for, for the people who engage most of them on LinkedIn.So, so then you're building sort of deeper affinity towards that person. And, and as, as you go down the sales funnel um like marketing and sales, you actually transfer that affinity over to the company as, as like they get into the sale process. from kind of a B2B side, but like, I think you can do it also from a B to C.[00:33:49] Nathan:Do you think that a company like gone. Hired people are good at that and encouraged it, or do you think they like had the people that they hired and said like, okay everyone, this is now what we're doing. a playbook, here's best practices. Here's a slack channel where you can talk about what's working.What's not, but like we're this now. Get on board.[00:34:11] Nick:This is, would be a hundred percent pure speculation. What is, is someone at gong started doing this one of their salespeople and started crushing it. And they're, you know, director of marketing was smart enough to. Hey could be doing a lot like, and B, because it's their salespeople who do it, right.A natural incentive to do it. And so, you know, I would imagine they probably brought on a copywriter and said, Hey, if you need help, you know, crafting these posts, like you can do that It's just, it's such a, it's such a virtuous right? It's like, it's like, because of the affinity you build with these individuals it translates to the company.And like it just sends it a bat signal out to other people who are like that, who want to build audiences, that like the company will help you do that. And they will be supportive. And like, and again, if we imagine that like, they're like audience is this long-term career mode, it's just like, it's such a great gift.You can give to your employees for them to leave with like you know, like you leave ConvertKit and you have, you know, a hundred thousand subscribers or 10,000 it's like, or whatever. Right. It's, it's, it's as much of a gift as like the salary you're giving them. It's just, we don't think of it that way.Cause it's, it's a weird thing to think about getting. From your company[00:35:27] Nathan:Yeah. I mean, that's how we've handled it in that we're very in favor of side projects. We want everyone who wants to, like, we're not gonna force it on. But to have a way to be a, a creator on the, on the side and to have some actual reason to use ConvertKit as a customer. Because it's so different when you're the product and like clicking through the happy path to test something and you're like, Hey guys, it works.Then some customers like this is really frustrating. and so that, like, it's a very different, different, I think that it's just interesting. You're absolutely right about people with that. Like, Matt Reglan, who's been on this show before he was at ConvertKit for years. joined when we were like 20,000 a month in revenues like that. when he eventually moved on to his nets, next thing, you know, he built an, a YouTube audience to like 10,000 subscribers at that point. And that was a whole thing that he'd done a lot with skills he learned at ConvertKit a lot with, you know, our creative director, Charlie, like promoting him and just, all right. But like, it still happens even we've got 70 people on the team and we're talking like six are active in this way. I just wonder how much to encourage it versus how much to just say like, Hey, this is an option if you want it, but like you don't push it any more than that[00:36:51] Nick:I mean, I think one of the interesting things, when you think about like the creator economy is like, I think the creator economy can support a lot of people, but the the challenge is like when you're deciding, should I follow this person? there aren't very good moats in the creator economy. And so and so one of the.Few moats you can have is like companies that you've worked for giving you this brand halo. Right And so, and, and, brand from your company sort of, it says this person might be a little more worth following because someone chose them now, does that true You know, don't think so, but like, it at least sends this signal.And so I think, one, like your brand can do that for, for, for your employees, but also like I think there's a. I think just showing that the company will pour fuel on whatever fire you're starting, I think is like, it's, it's one of the best like employee value props. I think a company can have, It's like, it's like, look the life you want to have. Like, we, want to get you there. like, and like, and I think the kind of people who would come work for ConvertKit it should be that they want to do something in the creator space, because you're serving creators that makes a ton That makes a ton of of sense[00:38:10] Nathan:Yeah. And we've definitely had people that we've hired, who are already creators, and that's grown. So it, an interesting world in all the things that you could do to grow. Like a company or growing audience. I'm not sure that that's the one would pick, but you, you see Morning Brew and, and gong in so many of others doing it and it seems to work, know? So[00:38:33] Nick:Yeah Like, I think it works for like, like select companies in select Right. And like, and there's, and there's probably a channel that works under and like the. way you do it for, you know, for Guild where, like we, you know, we really target, um you know, companies with huge employee populations at the very level Like like we wouldn't do that on, on Twitter. Right. Just doesn't make any sense, but like, would we do it on LinkedIn where like, where, you know, C-suite spends an increasing amount of time and we can directly with those individuals and maybe influence that the five to 10 people that, that matter at those companies with like, you know, one post a week.Totally. so, so it just, it kind of depends on like, um I think companies can, can kind of do it at different levels.[00:39:21] Nathan:So that's interesting of the LinkedIn approach, which I think a lot of creators are either all in, on LinkedIn and loving You know, people have built massive lists over there, or they're like, what's that like, I'll hang out in the Instagram, YouTube, Twitters of the world, you know? but if you imagine that B2B world where let's say I'm, I'm working in sales, either as an executive, trying to get big deals done, or, you know, or as a team member, I have a meeting, we have a great conversation.We connect on LinkedIn, you know, we're now an official connection. And now, even though you're not going to buy my thing now, you're like seeing my content every. Week or every few weeks. And then it's like, oh yeah, you're going to buy that thing from Nathan, you know, whatever B2B tool, like starts to come up.And then when I reach out again and you're like, it's not like, oh yeah, it's that one sales rep that I wasted 20 minutes off on with, you know, six months ago. It's like, oh yeah. I feel like we're friends there. I've learned so much, even though it's just been one to many communication.[00:40:25] Nick:I mean, I think the really powerful thing it's like obviously a sales rep is incentivized to promote the product at company they work for So it's like it's product whether it's in a sales call or on LinkedIn like it will not it will not move the needle for any customer.Because it's sort of priced in that That's what they're expecting. But showing that you are an intellectually interesting person who has deep thoughts about the world, who is, who's a smart person. And then the customer making the connection, man, this smart person out of all the places where they could go work has chosen to work here.[00:41:04] Nathan:Right[00:41:05] Nick:Of something, right. There must be something kind of interesting and special there. And so they built of this affinity and comfort and excitement about you and like, and, and then getting on a sales call with you, you're at this just like this nice advantage, right? You're, you're, you're now slightly a celebrity to them.Right Like and, and there's something, you know, like when your, your email or even your company's email then pops up in their inbox, like it's just that much more likely to open that much more interesting. And sometimes it's, it's those, it's those little things on the margin that can make all the difference.And so I think, especially when you're talking like a, like really big enterprise sales, I actually think it's still, a kind of, underrated strategy.[00:41:48] Nathan:Yeah, sense. talk about a, more from the creator side. Cause that was, know, we went more on the platform company side of the which, you know, someone running a company, I am intrigued in that direction, but I'm curious on the, on the creative side, how do you think about that audience as being for your career and that thing that goes with you as you between roles and giving you a future opportunities and all.[00:42:14] Nick:I think it comes to like writing a newsletter.There's basically three reasons. You'd write a personal newsletter and earliest the way I think about it. Like it's either passion, like, you know, I love cooking and like, this is a way I can express that side of me It's it's profit. I want to actually just make some side income or make this into my full income Or it's General advancement.And maybe the relationship building kind of tithing relationship building probably ties into that. but, but in general, like the, I sort of see one things being being like the reason, like for me, at least for a long time, it's probably been advancement. but, certainly the other two are mixed.Like I'm, you know I'm curious about, you know, turning on the profit spigot out of it And like, it certainly like I wouldn't keep doing it if it didn't hit the passion bucket. and so, and so I think that, that, you have to sort of figure out which of those you're doing. I think, I think like if, if what you want to do, I think most people actually are doing it because they do want new opportunities and relationships.I think actually advancement to me is it's actually, the best reason to do it. Um uh over the other two. And, in that world, like, you kind of want to imagine like, okay, Who is, what kind of job do I want, who is the person that I want to be at some point down the road? Who's the gatekeeper that stands in the way of that.Whether it's like, maybe it's I want to publish a book at some point, right. a publisher stands in the way of that. and so what, what gets this publisher excited? Well, either, maybe I'm writing a newsletter for book publishers and this is the industry standard, but like more likely it's like, it's like, Hey, I built this audience that is then really exciting to a publisher.So-so I or, you know, it's, I want to become a senior engineering manager. and so what's going to be exciting to the VP of engineering who is going to interview me. You know, it, it could be that I have an audience full of engineers, who who like are easy to hire, maybe it's that I just like think in a really deep level about this really complicated problem that is really important to them, but it's, it's sort of like, I think having that, kind of magic gatekeeper mind as as not the person you're necessarily writing for all the time, but the, thing you're trying to build up to, that can be a good north star in that direction.If you're doing this, advancement thing, I still don't think you should pick something that doesn't light you up because it's really, you know, it's really hard to keep doing this, week after week when you're grinding it out for some future version of yourself that you know, may may change.I, I think that, that that tends to be a pretty good path.[00:45:10] Nathan:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me and like networking connection and advancement side of things, I think is one of the best reasons to do. A lot of that. I remember like the first conference that I went to after having a blog and it being such a night and day difference. I wasn't even a speaker at this conference, any of that, but people were like wanting to come up and talk to me because of the articles that I've written you.Whereas like months earlier, you know, pre blog, you go to a conference and I was shy and introverted. Like I didn't talk to anybody. And so I was like, wow, because I published words on the internet. People will now do all the work. Like interesting people will come meet me instead of me having to like put out all the work.This is the best leverage ever on the same way, like podcasts and everything else Write being able to, everyone says the Podcast in there for the audience. It is right. You know, thousands of people will listen to this episode. I am more doing it because I get to meet people like you and Kimberly, who we just had on last week.And right. It's just about meeting people. that's so[00:46:09] Nick:It's like it's like you know, like I think with Podcast, it's crazy because you like appear in somebody's ears. Right. You're like, literally like you're right next to their head, you know And like and it's it's, just like, it's this, it's this wild, like intimate relationship, usually, like I'm listening, you know, on, on two X.So everyone sounds smarter than you than they would were listening to them on one X like it's, it's, it's I think publishing and creating content, especially in a world where like we just live more online where like more of our interactions are, are remote. I think it's, it's a, it's a pretty, it's still sort of an underrated hack, especially in, in your career, right?Like you can, you can do. You know, you, you become inter like instantly, someone who someone wants to take a meeting with and like it's those little, like, sort of marginal decisions, right To like chart the course of your career, right? Like, like, did, did this person meet with you or not? Were they predisposed to like you, before you came in and like, you don't actually know which article is going to hit to make them feel that way, or which Podcast is going to, you know, which Podcast you're going to meet, the person who, you know, might be an ex customer or investor or something like that.But like, there's just such a powerful, you know, with that[00:47:26] Nathan:I think one of my favorite examples a people using an interview show or, you know, interviews in general to break into an industry Harry Stebbings, who does 20 minute VC, because I don't know how old he was when he started it, but like 17, maybe I'm not[00:47:42] Nick:Totally[00:47:43] Nathan:nd he's like, I want to break into the world of venture capital and, you know, interviewing all the biggest names at first people were saying yes to him, probably because of his hustle, because he was young.They're just like, sure. I'll take a chance on this kid on, your 20 minute.And[00:47:59] Nick:Now love I love people who have like, a, a 10 step plan for their career. Maybe you just, you just wanted to create a podcast. It was sort of like,[00:48:11] Nathan:Right[00:48:12] Nick:Doing this for fun, but like, not a ton of people have, have a plan. Right. like, like most people are just sort of doing stuff, but like, if you like sit down and just kind of think about it for like, like 20 minutes and you're like, who might, I want to be like, who does that person like, like what would make me credible in that person's eyes?Like, like how could I, you know, do that thing now. So that in two or three years, like, like Harry's, I've been such a good example. Like, I, I think there, there are so many people who, who like, if they, they sat and gave that like 10 minutes and turn Twitter off, like you can just, like, you can do a lot of, you know, good, good strategy there.[00:48:52] Nathan:Well, I think can do it as a method to break into any business. So if we were like, know if you and I were 18 years old and we're like, wouldn't be in the music business or even right. You wanted to go into screenwriting. you with what you know now, and you and I were brainstorming how to get 18 year old you into like screenwriting, we would probably suggest starting a podcast and you interview all the screenings. In some format and it wouldn't result in work, but then you'd imagine we have this network and this work would come from the network and you're like, no direct connection, but then there's a ton of indirect connections that wouldn't have happened without it.[00:49:31] Nick:You know, it's kind of a similar thing. We talked we've dragged them at Twitter at the beginning. Right. Twitter does this service for people that gives them like a feeling of prestige. Right. And like, and, and what you're basically doing is like, it's like, you're giving an audience to people who don't have time to build one for themselves.And like, you know, most of the people who are listening to this podcast are people who are building audiences in, in some way shape or form, but like most people don't do that. Right And and so, and so you can find all sorts of people who are who are just like all the time, who like, would love to sort of rent someone else's audience to build themselves up.And so like, and so you can be then 18 and it's a total hack to be able to sort of bring on this screenwriter, this music industry, executive, this, you know, a VC. Right. And it's just, it's[00:50:23] Nathan:Right It made me realize another person on the ConvertKit team who does this really well is ISA Adney. Who's our storyteller. she used to teach all of our webinars and workshops and, and, is branched into working on like brand development sides as he writes a lot of and else, but her personal audience, let me take a step back.If you talk to her, she's like, know this person, or whoever at Disney or that kind of thing who worked on, you know, and just like the amount of people that she knows in the world of storytelling and film and everything else, you're like, how do you know all these people? like, oh, I interviewed them for my newsletter, you know?And you're just like, wait, what? And it's like, I was going to say cartoonists, but like illustrators from, from will like draw her a birthday card. can tell us just for her, you know? And you're like, how, and, and it just comes from this exact thing of like, oh, I just interviewed them on my newsletter, which is a fantastic newsletter, but it's not like they came on it because she's wildly famous.It's that[00:51:26] Nick:It's incredible. And I like there, there's a couple other people I've seen who have like, who, who sort of, they have their, their, their full-time job, but like, on the side, right? Like, Liz Bostonian, someone I've known for awhile and interviewed, and she, she wrote a book called no hard feelings about emotions at work.She's about to publish her second one and like the way she's just like, she's known by, by all of these people at all these different companies that like her company would be the perfect company to sell in, to sell into. you know, it's just, it's just there. There's. There's so many good things that can come a bit.I think one thing I'd advise to like, w going back to like this, how do you balance a, like a, like a newsletter and a full-time career is like don't work for any company that doesn't value it because because like you know, clearly there are places like Guild, like ConvertKit like there there's so many different companies where like you can go where like, they will appreciate what you're doing.And if you can, if you can, like, ideally, like, let's say you love to write about cooking, right. If you can find a company where like, that is like, like, especially like building an audience around cooking, like it's, you know, a dishware company or whatever it is, like finding that right place for not just you, but your publication, a really underrated thing, because it just makes everything so much smoother to find that right.Manager find that. Right. you know,[00:52:52] Nathan:Yeah. That makes sense. If it's an uphill battle, like find another, another place where that's actually a asset.[00:52:59] Nick:Someone will like it.[00:53:00] Nathan:Yeah, exactly. So maybe before we wrap up, let's talk about the growth side. Cause everyone's thinking about, okay, I have my newsletter and it has 100 subscribers or 500. How do I grow it to that next tier So I'm curious, what are some of the things that have worked for you on, adding 100 or 500 or a thousand subscribers at a time?[00:53:19] Nick:Twitter Twitter. You, you, you can use Twitter.[00:53:22] Nathan:Yeah[00:53:22] Nick:It's It's frought in many ways you can also use LinkedIn. I actually think LinkedIn is, an underrated place to do it. Like it's to me, it's not as stressful to write a LinkedIn post as it is to write. A tweet, it's a little stressful, cause it's like, it's like, definitely definitely to your company And it's a place where you're in professional domain, but especially if your newsletter is somewhat professional, then I think, I think LinkedIn can be a really good place for it. and a little bit less of a pressure-filled way to do it. I probably one of the underrated things now is like, you know, I look at how many discord servers I'm suddenly in, like in in you know, months and like, I think those are probably good places to like promote.I don't think it's, I don't think you can in communities, it's harder to just be promotional. You need to sort of have earned it by, by building relationships. And so, but I think like, you know, I'm, I'm in a writing group called foster, right? Where, where like where, you know that they help with editing and like, and like everyone's sort of publishes their stuff in there, but like that's a great place to like, to, to sort of build a following, especially sort of early on.Obviously you can do things like hit Reddit, hit hacker news, you know, Reddit, I think I've been banned from like, you know, 20 different subreddits for, you know a just posting a blog post, which seemed to me. But, um and then hacker news, right? You, you, you never know. And, and, you know, getting to the top means you're going to get barraged with terrible comments, but, I think ultimately though you kind of want something you can build, right.And this is, this is the, this is the challenge with Twitter, right? It's like, it's like, there is a weirdness about Twitter, but. Building an audience on Twitter Like it's a great top of funnel for a newsletter, and same way with LinkedIn. And so it's hard to totally steer away from those things. I think one thing I'd to try and toy with once I figure out the monetization piece, of my newsletter is I'd like to try paid ads.And there's this weird discomfort with it with it. if what you value is value is, having an audience and people to write to and you want to grow that audience, I actually think it doesn't need to be that literally every person you painstakingly gathered with your blood, sweat, and tears, right.It's it's I think there's, there's other stuff that you can try, but you obviously don't want to be throwing a lot of money down the drain on, building an audience[00:55:53] Nathan:YeahI've, I've done paid ads with good results of four. I have a local newsletter called from Boise, is just for the Boise area. And in the last month we actually went to a thousand subscribers and we doubled to a little over 2000 subscribers, almost entirely with ads. So like no ads to a thousand and, ads worked well, you know, and it helps to have the hyper-local targeting.So I was in the same boat of like, hadn't played with it before. And, you know, at, I think we paid between $2 and two 50 a subscriber,[00:56:25] Nick:Facebook.[00:56:26] Nathan:Yeah, Facebook and Instagram. So we'll play with it more. What are you thinking maybe we'll end on this question. What do you thinking for on the newsletter?What are you paid? Is it a A A book? What other things are coming up?[00:56:39] Nick:It took me a while to find something I was comfortable with on modernization paid, never, appealed that much to me. just because there, there are some people who I like I will pay for their ideas, but like, overwhelmed with Content. that like, usually when I'm paying for, for, for, for a newsletter, it's because I really liked the person, like their, their, just their style of analysis.I can't get anywhere else. but, but, but the competitive dynamics of newsletter sort of, to me, like they'll, they'll kind of always be someone who something close to what you do for free. And so, and so that, that always kinda, didn't appeal to me as much. Like I think of it as like, This audience, that you're kind of building affinity with over time and like, and can you, ideally sort of find, build something or find something that's going to be really valuable to them.So I actually, literally just this morning, teamed up with this, this company called palette, to, I swear, this, this, this time it was not planned. It just, it just happened nicely, to a team at this company called pallet in pallets, been sort job boards with a bunch of and I actually worked with them on this, this kind of beta product that they're working on, which is this idea of talent collectives. And so what we're doing is like, it's like basically job searching really sucks. Like you're filling out tons of applications. You are, waiting for a long time to hear back from companies.If you are highly desirable, you're getting a lot of recruiter spam and they're just like barraging you. so we're going to do, is, is put basically just an air table form where you can say, Hey, like, this is who I am. This is the kind of role I'm looking for. pallet has this, this, all these companies that they are so, so they're going to basically, send people and you can be anonymous if you want to all sorts of stuff, but they're to their partner companies and then and then they'll send you sort of the intro request, like, Hey, you know, do you want to, do you want to chat with ConvertKit right.And, and, and if you do right, we'll, we'll make the intro, but like, you don't have to worry about our recruiter reaching out to you because they've, they've said they won't do that. so yeah, I think it's cool. you know, if, if, if any of the folks listening to this are like, exploring new job opportunity.We'd love you to come check it out. I think it'll be really neat. I think it'll solve a challenge that a lot of people are facing. For me it felt really native. It felt like I didn't want to do a job board because I don't know these companies. I'm doing a newsletter about careers, and it felt really important that I'm sending people to the right place.I said, “Hey, if you sign up for this, and you take one call from a company, I'll do a 30 minute career coaching session with you.” Even though, I'll get paid some commission, if the person goes to one of these companies, I will really try to give them the best advice for them, because that's what I promised to readers.When you're thinking about monetization, it's like find something that feels native, and not weird to your audience. I think sometimes that can be a pure paid subscription, but you can be creative in different stuff.[00:59:51] Nathan:Yeah, I think that's good. Let's leave it there. I'm super excited to see what comes on the monetization side. It's probably the coolest thing about newsletters and audiences that you can monetize different ways.So, where should people go to follow you and follow your writing, and see more about what you're up to?[01:00:07] Nick:You can follow where I have a conflicted relationship, where there are days I will post a tweet, tweet threads, and the next day I'll feel very ashamed of it, but that's @Nick_deWilde. Then the better place to get my thoughts, I would say, is JungleGym.Substack.com.At some point I should probably switch that to ConvertKit, but yeah, that's another time. We'd love that, and thank you so much for having me. This has been so fun.[01:00:42] Nathan:Yeah, It's been a great conversation and, thanks for coming on, and we'll talk soon.[01:00:47] Nick:Awesome, Nathan.

About NickNick Heudecker leads market strategy and competitive intelligence at Cribl, the observability pipeline company. Prior to Cribl, Nick spent eight years as an industry analyst at Gartner, covering data and analytics. Before that, he led engineering and product teams at multiple startups, with a bias towards open source software and adoption, and served as a cryptologist in the US Navy. Join Corey and Nick as they discuss the differences between observability and monitoring, why organizations struggle to get value from observability data, why observability requires new data management approaches, how observability pipelines are creating opportunities for SRE and SecOps teams, the balance between budgets and insight, why goats are the world's best mammal, and more.Links: Cribl: https://cribl.io/ Cribl Community: https://cribl.io/community Twitter: https://twitter.com/nheudecker Try Cribl hosted solution: https://cribl.cloud TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It's an awesome approach. I've used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there's more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It's awesome. If you don't do something like this, you're likely to find out that you've gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It's one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That's canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I'm a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Jellyfish. So, you're sitting in front of your office chair, bleary eyed, parked in front of a powerpoint and—oh my sweet feathery Jesus its the night before the board meeting, because of course it is! As you slot that crappy screenshot of traffic light colored excel tables into your deck, or sift through endless spreadsheets looking for just the right data set, have you ever wondered, why is it that sales and marketing get all this shiny, awesome analytics and inside tools? Whereas, engineering basically gets left with the dregs. Well, the founders of Jellyfish certainly did. That's why they created the Jellyfish Engineering Management Platform, but don't you dare call it JEMP! Designed to make it simple to analyze your engineering organization, Jellyfish ingests signals from your tech stack. Including JIRA, Git, and collaborative tools. Yes, depressing to think of those things as your tech stack but this is 2021. They use that to create a model that accurately reflects just how the breakdown of engineering work aligns with your wider business objectives. In other words, it translates from code into spreadsheet. When you have to explain what you're doing from an engineering perspective to people whose primary IDE is Microsoft Powerpoint, consider Jellyfish. Thats Jellyfish.co and tell them Corey sent you! Watch for the wince, thats my favorite part.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. This promoted episode is a bit fun because I'm joined by someone that I have a fair bit in common with. Sure, I moonlight sometimes as an analyst because I don't really seem to know what that means, and he spent significant amounts of time as a VP analyst at Gartner. But more importantly than that, a lot of the reason that I am the way that I am is that I spent almost a decade growing up in Maine, and in Maine, there's not a lot to do other than sit inside for the nine months of winter every year and develop personality problems.You've already seen what that looks like with me. Please welcome Nick Heudecker, who presumably will disprove that, but maybe not. He is currently a senior director of market strategy and competitive intelligence at Cribl. Nick, thanks for joining me.Nick: Thanks for having me. Excited to be here.Corey: So, let's start at the very beginning. I like playing with people's titles, and you certainly have a lofty one. ‘competitive intelligence' feels an awful lot like jeopardy. What am I missing?Nick: Well, I'm basically an internal analyst at the company. So, I spend a lot of time looking at the broader market, seeing what trends are happening out there; looking at what kind of thought leadership content that I can create to help people discover Cribl, get interested in the products and services that we offer. So, I'm mostly—you mentioned my time in Maine. I was a cryptologist in the Navy and I spent almost all of my time focused on what the bad guys do. And in this job, I focus on what our potential competitors do in the market. So, I'm very externally focused. Does that help? Does that explain it?Corey: No, it absolutely does. I mean, you folks have been sponsoring our nonsense for which we thank you, but the biggest problem that I have with telling the story of Cribl was that originally—initially it was, from my perspective, “What is this hokey nonsense?” And then I learned and got an answer and then finish the sentence with, “And where can I buy it?” Because it seems that the big competitive threat that you have is something crappy that some rando sysadmin has cobbled together. And I say that as the rando sysadmin, who has cobbled a lot of things like that together. And it's awful. I wasn't aware you folks had direct competitors.Nick: Today we don't. There's a couple that it might be emerging a little bit, but in general, no, it's mostly us, and that's what I analyze every day. Are there other emerging companies in the space? Are there open-source projects? But you're right, most of the things that we compete against are DIY today. Absolutely.Corey: In your previous role, which you were at for a very long time in tech terms—which in a lot of other cases is, “Okay, that doesn't seem that long,” but seven and a half years is a respectable stint at a company. And you were at Gartner doing a number of analyst-like activities. Let's start at the beginning because I assure you, I'm asking this purely for the audience and not because I don't know the answer myself, but what exactly is the purpose of an analyst firm, of which Gartner is the most broadly known and, follow up, why do companies care what Gartner thinks?Nick: Yeah. It's a good question, one that I answer a lot. So, what is the purpose of an analyst firm? The purpose of an analyst firm is to get impartial information about something, whether that is supply chain technology, big data tech, human resource management technologies. And it's often difficult if you're an end-user and you're interested in say, acquiring a new piece of technology, what really works well, what doesn't.And so the analyst firm because in the course of a given year, I would talk to nearly a thousand companies and both end-users and vendors as well as investors about what they're doing, what challenges they're having, and I would distill that down into 30-minute conversations with everyone else. And so we provided impartial information in aggregate to people who just wanted to help. And that's the purpose of an analyst firm. Your second question, why do people care? Well, I didn't get paid by vendors.I got paid by the company that I worked for, and so I got to be Tron; I fought for the users. And because I talk to so many different companies in different geographies, in different industries, and I share that information with my colleagues, they shared with me, we had a very robust understanding of what's actually happening in any technology market. And that's uncommon kind of insight to really have in any kind of industry. So, that's the purpose and that's why people care.Corey: It's easy from the engineering perspective that I used to inhabit to make fun of it. It's oh, it's purely justification when you're making a big decision, so if it goes sideways—because find me a technology project that doesn't eventually go sideways—I want to be able to make sure that I'm not the one that catches heat for it because Gartner said it was good. They have an amazing credibility story going on there, and I used to have that very dismissive perspective. But the more I started talking to folks who are Gartner customers themselves and some of the analyst-style things that I do with a variety of different companies, it's turned into, “No, no. They're after insight.”Because it turns out, from my perspective at least, the more that you are focused on building a product that solves a problem, you sort of lose touch with the broader market because the only people you're really talking to are either in your space or have already acknowledged and been right there and become your customer and have been jaded to see things from your point of view. Getting a more objective viewpoint from an impartial third party does have value.Nick: Absolutely. And I want you to succeed, I want you to be successful, I want to carry on a relationship with all the clients that I would speak with, and so one of the fun things I would always ask is, “Why are you asking me this question now?” Sometimes it would come in, they'd be very innocuous;, “Compare these databases,” or, “Compare these cloud services.” “Well, why are you asking?” And that's when you get to, kind of like, the psychology of it.“Oh, we just hired a new CIO and he or she hates vendor X, so we have to get rid of it.” “Well, all right. Let's figure out how we solve this problem for you.” And so it wasn't always just technology comparisons. Technology is easy, you write a check and you hope for the best.But when you're dealing with large teams and maybe a globally distributed company, it really comes down to culture, and personality, and all the harder factors. And so it was always—those were always the most fun and certainly the most challenging conversations to have.Corey: One challenge that I find in this space is—in my narrow niche of the world where I focus on AWS bills, where things are extraordinarily yes or no, black or white, binary choices—that I talked to companies, like during the pandemic, and they were super happy that, “Oh, yeah. Our infrastructure has auto-scaling and it works super well.” And I look at the bill and the spend graph over time is so flat you could basically play a game of pool on top of it. And I don't believe that I'm talking to people who are lying to me. I truly don't believe that people make that decision, but what they believe versus what is evidenced in reality are not necessarily congruent. How do you disambiguate from the stories that people want to tell about themselves? And what they're actually doing?Nick: You have to unpack it. I think you have to ask a series of questions to figure out what their motivation is. Who else is on the call, as well? I would sometimes drop into a phone call and there would be a dozen people on the line. Those inquiry calls would go the worst because everyone wants to stake a claim, everyone wants to be heard, no one's going to be honest with you or with anyone else on the call.So, you typically need to have a pretty personal conversation about what does this person want to accomplish, what does the company want to accomplish, and what are the factors that are pushing against what those things are? It's like a novel, right? You have a character, the character wants to achieve something, and there are multiple obstacles in that person's way. And so by act five, ideally everything wraps up and it's perfect. And so my job is to get the character out of the tree that is on fire and onto the beach where the person can relax.So, you have to unpack a lot of different questions and answers to figure out, well, are they telling me what their boss wants to hear or are they really looking for help? Sometimes you're successful, sometimes you're not. Not everyone does want to be open and honest. In other cases, you would have a team show up to a call with maybe a junior engineer and they really just want you to tell them that the junior engineer's architecture is not a good idea. And so you do a lot of couples therapy as well. I don't know if this is really answering the question for you, but there are no easy answers. And people are defensive, they have biases, companies overall are risk-averse. I think you know this.Corey: Oh, yeah.Nick: And so it can be difficult to get to the bottom of what their real motivation is.Corey: My approach has always been that if you want serious data, you go talk to Gartner. If you want [anec-data 00:09:48] and some understanding, well, maybe we can have that conversation, but they're empowering different decisions at different levels, and that's fine. To be clear, I do not consider Gartner to be a competitor to what I do in any respect. It turns out that I am not very good at drawing charts in varying shades of blue and positioning things just so with repeatable methodology, and they're not particularly good at having cartoon animals as their mascot that they put into ridiculous situations. We each have our portion of the universe, and that's working out reasonably well.Nick: Well, and there's also something to unpack there as well because I would say that people look at Gartner and they think they have a lot of data. To a certain degree they do, but a lot of it is not quantifiable data. If you look at a firm like IDC, they specialize in—like, they are a data house; that is what they do. And so their view of the world and how they advise their clients is different. So, even within analyst firms, there is differentiation in what approach they take, how consultative they might be with their clients, one versus another. So, there certainly are differences that you could find the more exposure you get into the industry.Corey: For a while, I've been making a recurring joke that Route 53—Amazon's managed DNS service—is in fact a database. And then at some point, I saw a post on Reddit where someone said, “Yeah, I see the joke and it's great, but why should I actually not do this?” At which point I had to jump in and say, “Okay, look. Jokes are all well and good, but as soon as people start taking me seriously, it's very much time to come clean.” Because I think that's the only ethical and responsible thing to do in this ecosystem.Similarly, there was another great joke once upon a time. It was an April Fool's Day prank, and Google put out a paper about this thing they called MapReduce. Hilarious prank that Yahoo fell for hook, line, and sinker, and wound up building Hadoop out of it and we're still paying the price for that, years later. You have a bit of a reputation from your time at Gartner as being—and I quote—“The man who killed Hadoop.” What happened there? What's the story? And I appreciate your finally making clear to the rest of us that it was, in fact, a joke. What happened there?Nick: Well, one of the pieces of research that Gartner puts out every year is this thing called a Hype Cycle. And we've all seen it, it looks like a roller coaster in profile; big mountain goes up really high and then comes down steeply, drops into a valley, and then—Corey: ‘the trough of disillusionment,' as I recall.Nick: Yes, my favorite. And then plateaus out. And one of the profiles on that curve was Hadoop distributions. And after years of taking inquiry calls, and writing documents, and speaking with everybody about what they were doing, we realized that this really isn't taking off like everyone thinks it is. Cluster sizes weren't getting bigger, people were having a lot of challenges with the complexity, people couldn't find skills to run it themselves if they wanted to.And then the cloud providers came in and said, “Well, we'll make a lot of this really simple for you, and we'll get rid of HDFS,” which is—was a good idea, but it didn't really scale well. I think that the challenge of having to acquire computers with compute storage and memory again, and again, and again, and again, just was not sustainable for the majority of enterprises. And so we flagged it as this will be obsolete before plateau. And at that point, we got a lot of hate mail, but it just seemed like the right decision to make, right? Once again, we're Tron; we fight for the users.And that seemed like the right advice and direction to provide to the end-users. And so didn't make a lot of friends, but I think I was long-term right about what happened in the Hadoop space. Certainly, some fragments of it are left over and we're still seeing—you know, Spark is going strong, there's a lot of Hive still around, but Hadoop as this amalgamation of open-source projects, I think is effectively dead.Corey: I sure hope you're right. I think it has a long tail like most things that are there. Legacy is the condescending engineering term for ‘it makes money.' You were at Gartner for almost eight years and then you left to go work at Cribl. What triggered that? What was it that made you decide, “This is great. I've been here a long time. I've obviously made it work for me. I'm going to go work at a startup that apparently, even though it recently raised a $200 million funding round”—congratulations on that, by the way—“It still apparently can't afford to buy a vowel in its name.” That's C-R-I-B-L because, of course, it is. Maybe another consonant, while you're shopping. But okay, great. It's oddly spelled, it is hard to explain in some cases, to folks who are not already feeling pain in that space. What was it that made you decide to sit up and, “All right, this is where I want to be?”Nick: Well, I met the co-founders when I was an analyst. They were working at Splunk and oddly enough—this is going to be an interesting transition compared to the previous thing we talked about—they were working on Hunk, which was, let's use HDFS to store Splunk data. Made a lot of sense, right? It could be much more cost-effective than high-cost infrastructure for Splunk. And so they told me about this; I was interested.And so I met the co-founders and then I reconnected with them after they left and formed Cribl. And I thought the story was really cool because where they're sitting is between sources and destinations of observability data. And they were solving a problem that all of my customers had, but they couldn't resolve. They would try and build it themselves. They would look at—Kafka was a popular choice, but that had some challenges for observability data—works fantastically well for application data.And they were just—had a very pragmatic view of the world that they were inhabiting and the problem that they were looking to solve. And it looked kind of like a no-brainer of a problem to solve. But when you double-click on it, when you really look down and say, “All right, what are the challenges with doing this?” They're really insurmountable for a lot of organizations. So, even though they may try and take a DIY approach, they often run into trouble after just a few weeks because of all the protocols you have to support, all the different data formats, and all the destinations, and role-based access control, and everything else that goes along with it.And so I really liked the team. I thought the product inhabited a unique space in the market—we've already talked about the lack of competitors in the space—and I just felt like the company was on a rocket ship—or is a rocket ship—that basically had unbounded success potential. And so when the opportunity arose to join the team and do a lot of the things I like doing as an analyst—examining the market, talking to people looking at competitive aspects—I jumped at it.Corey: It's nice when you see those opportunities that show up in front of you, and the stars sort of align. It's like, this is not just something that I'm excited about and enthused about, but hey, they can use me. I can add something to where they're going and help them get there better, faster, sooner, et cetera, et cetera.Nick: When you're an analyst, you look at dozens of companies a month and I'd never seen an opportunity that looked like that. Everything kind of looked the same. There's a bunch of data integration companies, there's a bunch of companies with Spark and things like that, but this company was unique; the product was unique, and no one was really recognizing the opportunity. So, it was just a great set of things that all happen at the same time.Corey: It's always fun to see stars align like that. So—Nick: Yeah.Corey: —help me understand in a way that can be articulated to folks who don't have 15 years of grumpy sysadmin experience under their belts, what does Cribl do?Nick: So, Cribl does a couple of things. Our flagship product is called LogStream, and the easiest way to describe that is as an abstraction between sources and destinations of data. And that doesn't sound very interesting, but if you, from your sysadmin background, you're always dealing with events, logs, now there's traces, metrics are also hanging around—Corey: Oh, and of course, the time is never synchronized with anything either, so it's sort of a giant whodunit, mystery, where half the eyewitnesses lie.Nick: Well, there's that. There's a lot of data silos. If you got an agent deployed on a system, it's only going to talk to one destination platform. And you repeat this, maybe a dozen times per server, and you might have 100,000 or 200,000 servers, with all of these different agents running on it, each one locked into one destination. So, you might want to be able to mix and match that data; you can't. You're locked in.One of the things LogStream does is it lets you do that exact mixing and matching. Another thing that this product does, that LogStream does, is it gives you ability to manage that data. And then what I mean by that is, you may want to reduce how much stuff you're sending into a given platform because maybe that platform charges you by your daily ingest rates or some other kind of event-based charges. And so not all that data is valuable, so why pay to store it if it's not going to be valuable? Just dump it or reduce the amount of volume that you've got in that payload, like a Windows XML log.And so that's another aspect that it allows you to do, better management of that stuff. You can redact sensitive fields, you can enrich the data with maybe, say, GeoIPs so you know what kind of data privacy laws you fall under and so on. And so, the story has always been, land the data in your destination platform first, then do all those things. Well, of course, because that's how they charge you; they charge you based on daily ingest. And so now the story is, make those decisions upfront in one place without having to spread this logic all over, and then send the data where you want it to go.So, that's really, that's the core product today, LogStream. We call ourselves an observability pipeline for observability data. The other thing we've got going on is this project called AppScope, and I think this is pretty cool. AppScope is a black box instrumentation tool that basically resides between the application runtime and the kernel and any shared libraries. And so it provides—without you having to go back and instrument code—it instruments the application for you based on every call that it makes and then can send that data through something like LogStream or to another destination.So, you don't have to go back and say, “Well, I'm going to try and find the source code for this 30-year old c++ application.” I can simply run AppScope against the process, and find out exactly what that application is doing for me, and then relay that information to some other destination.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Liquibase. If you're anything like me, you've screwed up the database part of a deployment so severely that you've been banned from touching every anything that remotely sounds like SQL, at at least three different companies. We've mostly got code deployments solved for, but when it comes to databases we basically rely on desperate hope, with a roll back plan of keeping our resumes up to date. It doesn't have to be that way. Meet Liquibase. It is both an open source project and a commercial offering. Liquibase lets you track, modify, and automate database schema changes across almost any database, with guardrails to ensure you'll still have a company left after you deploy the change. No matter where your database lives, Liquibase can help you solve your database deployment issues. Check them out today at liquibase.com. Offer does not apply to Route 53.Corey: I have to ask because I love what you're doing, don't get me wrong. The counterargument that always comes up in this type of conversation is, “Who in their right mind looks at the state of the industry today and says, ‘You know what we need? That's right; another observability tool.'” what differentiates what you folks are building from a lot of the existing names in the space? And to be clear, a lot of the existing names in the space are treating observability simply as hipster monitoring. I'm not entirely sure they're wrong, but that's a different fight for a different time.Nick: Yeah. I'm happy to come back and talk about that aspect of it, too. What's different about what we're doing is we don't care where the data goes. We don't have a dog in that fight. We want you to have better control over where it goes and what kind of shape it's in when it gets there.And so I'll give an example. One of our customers wanted to deploy a new SIEM—Security Information Event Management—tool. But they didn't want to have to deploy a couple hundred-thousand new agents to go along with it. They already had the data coming in from another agent, they just couldn't get the data to it. So, they use LogStream to send that data to their new desired platform.Worked great. They were able to go from zero to a brand new platform in just a couple days, versus fighting with rolling out agents and having to update them. Did they conflict with existing agents? How much performance did it impact on the servers, and so on? So, we don't care about the destination. We like everybody. We're agnostic when it comes to where that data goes. And—Corey: Oh, it's not about the destination. It's about the journey. Everyone's been saying it, but you've turned it into a product.Nick: It's very spiritual. So, we [laugh] send, we send your observability data on a spiritual [laugh] journey to its destination, and we can do quite a bit with it on the way.Corey: So, you said you offered to go back as well and visit the, “Oh, it's monitoring, but we're going to call it observability because otherwise we get yelled out on Twitter by Charity Majors.” How do you view that?Nick: Monitoring is the things you already know. Right? You know what questions you want to ask, you get an alert if something goes out of bounds or something goes from green to red. Think about monitoring as a data warehouse. You shape your data, you get it all in just the right condition so you can ask the same question over and over again, over different time domains.That's how I think about monitoring. It's prepackaged, you know exactly what you want to do with it. Observability is more like a data lake. I have no idea what I'm going to do with this stuff. I think there's going to be some signals in here that I can use, and I'm going to go explore that data.So, if monitoring is your known knowns, observability is your unknown unknowns. So, an ideal observability solution gives you an opportunity to discover what those are. Once you discover them. Great. Now, you can talk about how to get them into your monitoring system. So, for me, it's kind of a process of discovery.Corey: Which makes an awful lot of sense. The problem I've always had with the monitoring approach is it falls into this terrible pattern of enumerate the badness. In other words, “Imagine all the ways that this system can fail,” and then build an alerting that lets you know when any of those things happen. And what happens next is inevitable to anyone who's ever dealt with the tricksy devils known as computers, and what happens, of course, is that they find new ways to fail and you generally get to add to the list of things to check for, usually at two o'clock in the morning.Nick: On a Sunday.Corey: Oh, absolutely. It almost doesn't matter when. The real problem is when these things happen, it's, “What day, actually, is it?” And you have to check the calendar to figure out because your third time that week being woken up in the dead of night. It's like an infant but less than endearing.So, that has been the old school approach, and there's unfortunately still an awful lot of, we'll just call it nonsense, in the industry that still does exactly the same thing, except now they call it observability because—hearkening back to earlier in our conversation—there's a certain point in the Gartner Hype Cycle that we are all existing within. What's the deal with that?Nick: Well, I think that there are a lot of entrenched interests in the monitoring space. And so I think you always see this when a new term comes around. Vendors will say, “All right, well, there's a lot of confusion about this. Let me back-fit my product into this term so that I can continue to look like I'm on the leading edge and I'm not going to put any of my revenues in jeopardy.” I know, that's a cynical view, but I've seen it over and over again.And I think that's unfortunate because there's a real opportunity to have a better understanding of your systems, to better understand what's happening in all the containers you're deploying and not tearing down the way that you should, to better understand what's happening in distributed systems. And it's going to be a real missed opportunity if that is what happens. If we just call this ‘Monitoring 2.0' it's going to leave a lot of unrealized potential in the market.Corey: The big problem that I've seen in a lot of different areas is—I'll be direct—consolidation where you have a company that starts to do a thing—and that's great—and then they start doing other things that are tied to it. And in turn, they start, I guess, gathering everything in the ecosystem. If you break down observability into various constituent parts, I—know, I know, the pillars thing is going to upset people; ignore that for now—and if you have an offering that's weak in a particular area, okay, instead of building it organically into the product, or saying, “Yeah, that's not what we do,” there's an instinct to acquire a company or build that functionality out. And it turns out that we're building what feels the lot to me like the SaaS equivalent of multifunction printers: they can print, they can scan, they can fax, and none of those three very well, so it winds up with something that dissatisfies everyone, rather than a best-of-breed solution that has a very clear and narrow starting and stopping point. How do you view that?Nick: Well, what you've described is a compromise, right? A compromise is everyone can work and no one's happy. And I think that's the advantage of where LogStream comes in. The reality is best-of-breed. Most enterprises today have 30 or more different monitoring tools—call them observability tools if you want to—and you will never pry those tools from the dead hands of those sysadmins, DevOps engineers, SREs, et cetera.They all integrate those tools into how they work and their processes. So, we're living in a best-of-breed world. It's like that in data and analytics—my former beat—and it's like that in monitoring and observability. People really gravitate towards the tools they like, they gravitate towards the tools their friends are using. And so you need a way to be able to mix and match that stuff.And just because I want to stay [laugh] on message, that's really where the LogStream story kind of blends in because we do that; we allow you to mix and match all those different pieces.Corey: Joke's on you. I use Nagios and I have no friends. I'm not convinced those two things are entirely unrelated, but here we are. So here's, I guess, the big burning question that a lot of folks—certainly not me, but other undefined folks, ‘lots of people are saying'—so you built something interesting that actually works. I want to be clear on this.I have spoken to customers of yours. They swear by it instead of swearing at it, which happens with other companies. Awesome. You have traction, you're moving forward, things are going great. Here's $200 million is the next part of that story, and on some level, my immediate reaction—which does need updating, let's be clear here—is like, all right.I'm trying to build a product. I can see how I could spend a few million bucks. “Well, what can you do with I don't know, 100 times that?” My easy answer is, “Something monstrous.” I don't believe that is the case here. What is the growth plan? What are you doing that makes having that kind of a war chest a useful and valuable thing to have?Nick: Well, if you speak with the co-founders—and they've been open about this—we view ourselves as a generational company. We're not just building one product. We've been thinking about, how do we deliver on observability as this idea of discovery? What does that take? And it doesn't mean that we're going to be less agnostic to other destinations, we still think there's an incredible amount of value there and that's not going away, but we think there's maybe an interim step that we build out, potentially this idea of an observability data lake where you can explore these environments.Certainly, there's other types of options in the space today. Most of them are SQL-based, which is interesting because the audience that uses monitoring and observability tools couldn't care less about SQL right? They want search, they want regex, and so you've got to have the right tool for that audience. And so we're thinking about what that looks like going forward. We're doubling down on people.Surprisingly, this is a very—like anything else in software, it is people-intensive. And so certainly those are other aspects that we're exploring with the recent investment, but definitely, multiproduct company is our future and continued expansion.Corey: Expansion is always a fun one. It's the idea of, great, are you looking at going deeper into the areas you're already active within, or is it more of a, “Ah, so we've solved the, effectively, log routing problem. That's great. Let's solve other problems, too.” Or is it more of a, I guess, a doubling down and focusing on what's working? And again, that probably sounds judgmental in a way I don't intend it to at all. I just have a hard time contextualizing that level of scale coming from a small company perspective the way that I do.Nick: Yeah. Our plan is to focus more intently on the areas that we're in. We have a huge basis of experience there. We don't want to be all things to all people; that dilutes the message down to nothing, so we want to be very specific in the audiences we talk to, the problems we're trying to solve, and how we try to solve them.Corey: The problem I've always found with a lot of the acquisition, growth thrashing of—let me call it what I think it is: companies in decline trying to strain relevancy, it feels almost like a, “We don't see a growth strategy. So, we're going to try and acquire everything that hold still long enough, at some level, trying to add more revenue to the pile, but also thrashing in the sense of, okay. They're going to teach us how to do things in creative, awesome ways,” but it never works out that way. When you have a 50,000 person company acquiring a 200 person company, invariably the bigger culture is going to dominate. And I don't understand why that mistake seems to continually happen again, and again, and again.And people think I'm effectively alluding to—or whenever the spoken word version of subtweeting is—a particular company or a particular acquisition. I'm absolutely not, there are probably 50 different companies listening right now who thinks, “Oh, God. He's talking about us.” It's the common repeating trend. What is that?Nick: It's hard to say. In some cases, these acquisitions might just be talent. “We need to know how to do X. They know how to do X. Let's do it.” They may have very unique niche technology or software that another company thinks they can more broadly apply.Also, some of these big companies, these may not be board-level or CEO-level decisions. A business unit might decide, “Oh, I like what that company is doing. I'm going to go acquire it.” And so it looks like MegaCorp bought TinyCorp, but it's really, this tiny business unit within MegaCorp bought tiny company. The reality is often different from what it looks like on the outside.So, that's one way. Another is, you know, if they're going to teach us to be more effective with tech or something like that, you're never going to beat culture. You're never going to be the existing culture. If it's 50,000, against 200, obviously we know who wins there. And so I don't know if that's realistic.I don't know if the big companies are genuine when they say that, but it could just be the messaging that they use to make people happy and hopefully retain as many of those new employees for as long as they can. Does that make sense?Corey: No, it makes perfect sense. It's the right answer. It does articulate what is happening there, and I think I keep falling prey to the same failure. And it's hard. It's pernicious, but companies are not monolithic entities.There's no one person at all of these companies each who is making these giant unilateral decisions. It's always some product manager or some particular person who has a vision and a strategy in the department. It is not something that the company board is agreeing on every little decision that gets made. They're distributed entities in many respects.Nick: Absolutely. And that's only getting more pervasive as companies get larger [laugh] through acquisition. So, you're going to see more and more of that, and so it's going to look like we're going to put one label on it, one brand. Often, I think internally, that's the exact opposite of what actually happened, how that decision got made.Corey: Nick, I want to thank you for taking so much time to speak with me about what you're up to over there, how your path has shaped, how you view the world, and also what Cribl does these days. If people want to learn more about what you're up to, how you think about the world, or even possibly going to work at Cribl which, having spoken to a number of people over there, I would endorse it. How do they find you?Nick: Best place to find us is by joining our community: cribl.io/community, and Cribl is spelled C-R-I-B-L. You can certainly reach out there, we've got about 2300 people in our community Slack, so it's a great group. You can also reach out to me on Twitter, I'm @nheudecker, N-H-E-U-D-E-C-K-E-R. Tell me what you thought of the episode; love to hear it. And then beyond that, you can also sign up for our free cloud tier at cribl.cloud. It's a pretty generous one terabyte a day processing, so you can start to send data in and send it wherever you'd like to be.Corey: To be clear, this free as in beer, not free as an AWS free tier?Nick: This is free as in beer.Corey: Excellent. Excellent.Nick: I think I'm getting that right. I think it's free as in beer. And the other thing you can try is our hosted solution on AWS, fully managed cloud at cribl.cloud, we offer a free one terabyte per day processing, so you can start to send data into that environment and send it wherever you'd like to go, in whatever shape that data needs to be in when it gets there.Corey: And we will, of course, put links to that in the [show notes 00:35:21]. Thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.Nick: No, thank you for having me. This was a lot of fun.Corey: Nick Heudecker, senior director, market strategy and competitive intelligence at Cribl. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a comment explaining that the only real reason a startup should raise a $200 million funding round is to pay that month's AWS bill.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

About NickNick Frichette is a Penetration Tester and Team Lead for State Farm. Outside of work he does vulnerability research. His current primary focus is developing techniques for AWS exploitation. Additionally he is the founder of hackingthe.cloud which is an open source encyclopedia of the attacks and techniques you can perform in cloud environments.Links: Hacking the Cloud: https://hackingthe.cloud/ Determine the account ID that owned an S3 bucket vulnerability: https://hackingthe.cloud/aws/enumeration/account_id_from_s3_bucket/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/frichette_n Personal website:https://frichetten.com TranscriptAnnouncer: Hello, and welcome to Screaming in the Cloud with your host, Chief Cloud Economist at The Duckbill Group, Corey Quinn. This weekly show features conversations with people doing interesting work in the world of cloud, thoughtful commentary on the state of the technical world, and ridiculous titles for which Corey refuses to apologize. This is Screaming in the Cloud.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by Thinkst. This is going to take a minute to explain, so bear with me. I linked against an early version of their tool, canarytokens.org in the very early days of my newsletter, and what it does is relatively simple and straightforward. It winds up embedding credentials, files, that sort of thing in various parts of your environment, wherever you want to; it gives you fake AWS API credentials, for example. And the only thing that these things do is alert you whenever someone attempts to use those things. It's an awesome approach. I've used something similar for years. Check them out. But wait, there's more. They also have an enterprise option that you should be very much aware of canary.tools. You can take a look at this, but what it does is it provides an enterprise approach to drive these things throughout your entire environment. You can get a physical device that hangs out on your network and impersonates whatever you want to. When it gets Nmap scanned, or someone attempts to log into it, or access files on it, you get instant alerts. It's awesome. If you don't do something like this, you're likely to find out that you've gotten breached, the hard way. Take a look at this. It's one of those few things that I look at and say, “Wow, that is an amazing idea. I love it.” That's canarytokens.org and canary.tools. The first one is free. The second one is enterprise-y. Take a look. I'm a big fan of this. More from them in the coming weeks.Corey: This episode is sponsored in part by our friends at Lumigo. If you've built anything from serverless, you know that if there's one thing that can be said universally about these applications, it's that it turns every outage into a murder mystery. Lumigo helps make sense of all of the various functions that wind up tying together to build applications. It offers one-click distributed tracing so you can effortlessly find and fix issues in your serverless and microservices environment. You've created more problems for yourself; make one of them go away. To learn more, visit lumigo.io.Corey: Welcome to Screaming in the Cloud. I'm Corey Quinn. I spend a lot of time throwing things at AWS in varying capacities. One area I don't spend a lot of time giving them grief is in the InfoSec world because as it turns out, they—and almost everyone else—doesn't have much of a sense of humor around things like security. My guest today is Nick Frechette, who's a penetration tester and team lead for State Farm. Nick, thanks for joining me.Nick: Hey, thank you for inviting me on.Corey: So, like most folks in InfoSec, you tend to have a bunch of different, I guess, titles or roles that hang on signs around someone's neck. And it all sort of distills down, on some level—in your case, at least, and please correct me if I'm wrong—to ‘cloud security researcher.' Is that roughly correct? Or am I missing something fundamental?Nick: Yeah. So, for my day job, I do penetration testing, and that kind of puts me up against a variety of things, from web applications, to client-side applications, to sometimes the cloud. In my free time, though, I like to spend a lot of time on security research, and most recently been focusing pretty heavily on AWS.Corey: So, let's start at the very beginning. What is a cloud security researcher? “What is it you'd say it is you do here?” For lack of a better phrasing?Nick: Well, to be honest, the phrase ‘security researcher' or ‘cloud security researcher' has been, kind of… I guess watered down in recent years; everybody likes to call themselves a researcher in some way or another. You have some folks who participate in the bug bounty programs. So, for example, GCP, and Azure have their own bug bounties. AWS does not, and too sure why. And so they want to find vulnerabilities with the intention of getting cash compensation for it.You have other folks who are interested in doing security research to try and better improve defenses and alerting and monitoring so that when the next major breach happens, they're prepared or they'll be able to stop it ahead of time. From what I do, I'm very interested in offensive security research. So, how can I as, a penetration tester, or red teamer or, I guess, an actual criminal, [laugh] how can I take advantage of AWS, or try to avoid detection from services like GuardDuty and CloudTrail?Corey: So, let's break that down a little bit further. I've heard the term of ‘red team versus blue team' used before. Red team—presumably—is the offensive security folks—and yes, some of those people are, in fact, quite offensive—and blue team is the defense side. In other words, keeping folks out. Is that a reasonable summation of the state of the world?Nick: It can be, yeah, especially when it comes to security. One of the nice parts about the whole InfoSec field—I know a lot of folks tend to kind of just say, “Oh, they're there to prevent the next breach,” but in reality, InfoSec has a ton of different niches and different job specialties. “Blue teamers,” quote-unquote, tend to be the defense side working on ensuring that we can alert and monitor potential attacks, whereas red teamers—or penetration testers—tend to be the folks who are trying to do the actual exploitation or develop techniques to do that in the future.Corey: So, you talk a bit about what you do for work, obviously, but what really drew my notice was stuff you do that isn't part of your core job, as best I understand it. You're focused on vulnerability research, specifically with a strong emphasis on cloud exploitation, as you said—AWS in particular—and you're the founder of Hacking the Cloud, which is an open-source encyclopedia of various attacks and techniques you can perform in cloud environments. Tell me about that.Nick: Yeah, so Hacking the Cloud came out of a frustration I had when I was first getting into AWS, that there didn't seem to be a ton of good resources for offensive security professionals to get engaged in the cloud. By comparison, if you wanted to learn about web application hacking, or attacking Active Directory, or reverse engineering, if you have a credit card, I can point you in the right direction. But there just didn't seem to be a good course or introduction to how you, as a penetration tester, should attack AWS. There's things like, you know, open S3 buckets are a nightmare, or that server-side request forgery on an EC2 instance can result in your organization being fined very, very heavily. I kind of wanted to go deeper with that.And with Hacking the Cloud, I've tried to gather a bunch of offensive security research from various blog posts and conference talks into a single location, so that both the offense side and the defense side can kind of learn from it and leverage that to either improve defenses or look for things that they can attack.Corey: It seems to me that doing things like that is not likely to wind up making a whole heck of a lot of friends over on the cloud provider side. Can you talk a little bit about how what you do is perceived by the companies you're focusing on?Nick: Yeah. So, in terms of relationship, I don't really have too much of an idea of what they think. I have done some research and written on my blog, as well as published to Hacking the Cloud, some techniques for doing things like abusing the SSM agent, as well as abusing the AWS API to enumerate permissions without logging into CloudTrail. And ironically, through the power of IP addresses, I can see when folks from the Amazon corporate IP address space look at my blog, and that's always fun, especially when there's, like, four in the course of a couple of minutes, or five or six. But I don't really know too much about what they—or how they view it, or if they think it's valuable at all. I hope they do, but really not too sure.Corey: I would imagine that they do, on some level, but I guess the big question is, you know that someone doesn't like what you're doing when they send, you know, cease and desist notices, or have the police knock on your door. I feel like at most levels, we're past that in an InfoSec level, at least I'd like to believe we are. We don't hear about that happening all too often anymore. But what's your take on it?Nick: Yeah, I definitely agree. I definitely think we are beyond that. Most companies these days know that vulnerabilities are going to happen, no matter how hard you try and how much money you spend, and so it's better to be accepting of that and open to it. And especially because the InfoSec community can be so, say, noisy at times, it's definitely worth it to pay attention, definitely be appreciative of the information that may come out. AWS is pretty awesome to work with, having disclosed to them a couple times, now.They have a safe harbor provision, which essentially says that so long as you're operating in good faith, you are allowed to do security testing. They do have some rules around that, but they are pretty clear in terms of if you were operating in good faith, you wouldn't be doing anything like that. It tends to be pretty obviously malicious things that they'll ask you to stop.Corey: So, talk to me a little bit about what you've found lately, and been public about. There have been a number of examples that have come up whenever people start googling your name or looking at things you've done. But what's happening lately? What have you found that's interesting?Nick: Yeah. So, I think most recently, the thing that's kind of gotten the most attention has been a really interesting bug I found in the AWS API. Essentially, kind of the core of it is that when you are interacting with the API, obviously that gets logged to CloudTrail, so long as it's compatible. So, if you are successful, say you want to do, like, Secrets Manager, ListSecrets, that shows up in CloudTrail. And similarly, if you do not have that permission on a role or user and you try to do it, that access denied also gets logged to CloudTrail.Something kind of interesting that I found is that by manually modifying a request, or mal-forming them, what we can do is we can modify the content-type header, and as a result when you do that—and you can provide literally gibberish. I think I have VS Code window here somewhere with a content-type of ‘meow'—when you do that, the AWS API knows the action that you're trying to call because of that messed up content type, it doesn't know exactly what you're trying to do and as a result, it doesn't get logged to CloudTrail. Now, while that may seem kind of weirdly specific and not really, like, a concern, the nice part of it though is that for some API actions—somewhere in the neighborhood of 600. I say ‘in the neighborhood of' just because it fluctuates over time—as a result of that, you can tell if you have that permission, or if you don't without that being logged to CloudTrail. And so we can do this enumeration of permissions without somebody in the defense side seeing us do it. Which is pretty awesome from a offensive security perspective.Corey: On some level, it would be easy to say, “Well, just not showing up in the logs isn't really a security problem at all.” I guess that you disagree?Nick: I do, yeah. So, let's sort of look at it from a real-world perspective. Let's say, Corey, you're tired of saving people money on their AWS bill, you'd instead maybe want to make a little money on the side and you're okay with perhaps, you know, committing some crimes to do it. Through some means you get access to a company's AWS credentials for some particular role, whether that's through remote code execution on an EC2 instance, or maybe find them in an open location like an S3 bucket or a Git repository, or maybe you phish a developer, through some means, you have an access key and a secret access key. The new problem that you have is that you don't know what those credentials are associated with, or what permissions they have.They could be the root account keys, or they could be literally locked down to a single S3 bucket to read from. It all just kind of depends. Now, historically, your options for figuring that out are kind of limited. Your best bet would be to brute-force the AWS API using a tool like Pacu, or my personal favorite, which is enumerate-iam by Andres Riancho. And what that does is it just tries a bunch of API calls and sees which one works and which one doesn't.And if it works, you clearly know that you have that permission. Now, the problem with that, though, is that if you were to do that, that's going to light up CloudTrail like a Christmas tree. It's going to start showing all these access denieds for these various API calls that you've tried. And obviously, any defender who's paying attention is going to look at that and go, “Okay. That's, uh, that's suspicious,” and you're going to get shut down pretty quickly.What's nice about this bug that I found is that instead of having to litter CloudTrail with all these logs, we can just do this enumeration for roughly 600-ish API actions across roughly 40 AWS services, and nobody is the wiser. You can enumerate those permissions, and if they work fantastic, and you can then use them, and if you come to find you don't have any of those 600 permissions, okay, then you can decide on where to go from there, or maybe try to risk things showing up in CloudTrail.Corey: CloudTrail is one of those services that I find incredibly useful, or at least I do in theory. In practice, it seems that things don't show up there, and you don't realize that those types of activities are not being recorded until one day there's an announcement of, “Hey, that type of activity is now recorded.” As of the time of this recording, the most recent example that in memory is data plane requests to DynamoDB. It's, “Wait a minute. You mean that wasn't being recorded previously? Huh. I guess it makes sense, but oh, dear.”And that causes a reevaluation of what's happening in the—from a security policy and posture perspective for some clients. There's also, of course, the challenge of CloudTrail logs take a significant amount of time to show up. It used to be over 20 minutes, I believe now it's closer to 15—but don't quote me on that, obviously. Run your own tests—which seems awfully slow for anything that's going to be looking at those in an automated fashion and taking a reactive or remediation approach to things that show up there. Am I missing something key?Nick: No, I think that is pretty spot on. And believe me, [laugh] I am fully aware at how long CloudTrail takes to populate, especially with doing a bunch of research on what is and what is not logged to CloudTrail. I know that there are some operations that can be logged more quickly than the 15-minute average. Off the top of my head, though, I actually don't quite remember what those are. But you're right, in general, the majority at least do take quite a while.And that's definitely time in which an adversary or someone like me, could maybe take advantage of that 15-minute window to try and brute force those permissions, see what we have access to, and then try to operate and get out with whatever goodies we've managed to steal.Corey: Let's say that you're doing the thing that you do, however that comes to be—and I am curious—actually, we'll start there. I am curious; how do you discover these things? Is it looking at what is presented and then figuring out, “Huh, how can I wind up subverting the system it's based on?” And, similar to the way that I take a look at any random AWS services and try and figure out how to use it as a database? How do you find these things?Nick: Yeah, so to be honest, it all kind of depends. Sometimes it's completely by accident. So, for example, the API bug I described about not logging to CloudTrail, I actually found that due to [laugh] copy and pasting code from AWS's website, and I didn't change the content-type header. And as a result, I happened to notice this weird behavior, and kind of took advantage of it. Other times, it's thinking a little bit about how something is implemented and the security ramifications of it.So, for example, the SSM agent—which is a phenomenal tool in order to do remote access on your EC2 instances—I was sitting there one day and just kind of thought, “Hey, how does that authenticate exactly? And what can I do with it?” Sure enough, it authenticates the exact same way that the AWS API does, that being the metadata service on the EC2 instance. And so what I figured out pretty quickly is if you can get access to an EC2 instance, even as a low-privilege user or you can do server-side request forgery to get the keys, or if you just have sufficient permissions within the account, you can potentially intercept SSM messages from, like, a session and provide your own results. And so in effect, if you've compromised an EC2 instance, and the only way, say, incident response has into that box is SSM, you can effectively lock them out of it and, kind of, do whatever you want in the meantime.Corey: That seems like it's something of a problem.Nick: It definitely can be. But it is a lot of fun to play keep-away with incident response. [laugh].Corey: I'd like to reiterate that this is all in environments you control and have permissions to be operating within. It is not recommended that people pursue things like this in other people's cloud environments without permissions. I don't want to find us sued for giving crap advice, and I don't want to find listeners getting arrested because they didn't understand the nuances of what we're talking about.Nick: Yes, absolutely. Getting legal approval is really important for any kind of penetration testing or red teaming. I know some folks sometimes might get carried away, but definitely be sure to get approval before you do any kind of testing.Corey: So, how does someone report a vulnerability to a company like AWS?Nick: So AWS, at least publicly, doesn't have any kind of bug bounty program. But what they do have is a vulnerability disclosure program. And that is essentially an email address that you can contact and send information to, and that'll act as your point of contact with AWS while they investigate the issue. And at the end of their investigation, they can report back with their findings, whether they agree with you and they are working to get that patched or fixed immediately, or if they disagree with you and think that everything is hunky-dory, or if you may be mistaken.Corey: I saw a tweet the other day that I would love to get your thoughts on, which said effectively, that if you don't have a public bug bounty program, then any way that a researcher chooses to disclose the vulnerability is definitionally responsible on their part because they don't owe you any particular duty of care. Responsible disclosure, of course, is also referred to as, “Coordinated vulnerability disclosure” because we're always trying to reinvent terminology in this space. What do you think about that? Is there a duty of care from security researchers to responsibly disclose the vulnerabilities they find, or coordinate those vulnerabilities with vendors in the absence of a public bounty program on turning those things in?Nick: Yeah, you know, I think that's a really difficult question to answer. From my own personal perspective, I always think it's best to contact the developers, or the company, or whoever maintains whatever you found a vulnerability in, give them the best shot to have it fixed or repaired. Obviously, sometimes that works great, and the company is super receptive, and they're willing to patch it immediately. And other times, they just don't respond, or sometimes they respond harshly, and so depending on the situation, it may be better for you to release it publicly with the intention that you're informing folks that this particular company or this particular project may have an issue. On the flip side, I can kind of understand—although I don't necessarily condone it—why folks pursue things like exploit brokers, for example.So, if a company doesn't have a bug bounty program, and the researcher isn't expecting any kind of, like, cash compensation, I can understand why they may spend tens of hours, maybe hundreds of hours chasing down a particularly impactful vulnerability, only to maybe write a blog post about it or get a little head pat and say, “Thanks, nice work.” And so I can see why they may pursue things like selling to an exploit broker who may pay them hefty sum, if it is a—Corey: Orders of magnitude more. It's, “Oh, good. You found a way to remotely execute code across all of EC2 in every region”—that is a hypothetical; don't email me—have a t-shirt. It seems like you could basically buy all the t-shirts for [laugh] what that is worth on the export market.Nick: Yes, absolutely. And I do know from some experience that folks will reach out to you and are interested in, particularly, some cloud exploits. Nothing, like, minor, like some of the things that I've found, but more thinking more of, like, accessing resources without anybody knowing or accessing resources cross-account; that could go for quite a hefty sum.Corey: This episode is sponsored by ExtraHop. ExtraHop provides threat detection and response for the Enterprise (not the starship). On-prem security doesn't translate well to cloud or multi-cloud environments, and that's not even counting IoT. ExtraHop automatically discovers everything inside the perimeter, including your cloud workloads and IoT devices, detects these threats up to 35 percent faster, and helps you act immediately. Ask for a free trial of detection and response for AWS today at extrahop.com/trial.Corey: It always feels squicky, on some level, to discover something like this that's kind of neat, and wind up selling it to basically some arguably terrible people. Maybe. We don't know who's buying these things from the exploit broker. Counterpoint, having reported a few security problems myself to various providers, you get an autoresponder, then you get a thank you email that goes into a bit more detail—for the well-run programs, at least—and invariably, the company's position is, is whatever you found is not as big of a deal as you think it is, and therefore they see no reason to publish it or go loud with it. Wouldn't you agree?Because, on some level, their entire position is, please don't talk about any security shortcomings that you may have discovered in our system. And I get why they don't want that going loud, but by the same token, security researchers need a reputation to continue operating on some level in the market as security researchers, especially independents, especially people who are trying to make names for themselves in the first place.Nick: Yeah.Corey: How do you resolve that dichotomy yourself?Nick: Yeah, so, from my perspective, I totally understand why a company or project wouldn't want you to publicly disclose an issue. Everybody wants to look good, and nobody wants to be called out for any kind of issue that may have been unintentionally introduced. I think the thing at the end of the day, though, from my perspective, if I, as some random guy in the middle of nowhere Illinois finds a bug, or to be frank, if anybody out there finds a vulnerability in something, then a much more sophisticated adversary is equally capable of finding such a thing. And so it's better to have these things out in the open and discussed, rather than hidden away, so that we have the best chance of anybody being able to defend against it or develop detections for it, rather than just kind of being like, “Okay, the vendor didn't like what I had to say, I guess I'll go back to doing whatever [laugh] things I normally do.”Corey: You've obviously been doing this for a while. And I'm going to guess that your entire security researcher career has not been focused on cloud environments in general and AWS in particular.Nick: Yes, I've done some other stuff in relation to abusing GitLab Runners. I also happen to find a pretty neat RCE and privilege escalation in the very popular open-source project. Pi-hole. Not sure if you have any experience with that.Corey: Oh, I run it myself all the time for various DNS blocking purposes and other sundry bits of nonsense. Oh, yes, good. But what I'm trying to establish here is that this is not just one or two companies that you've worked with. You've done this across the board, which means I can ask a question without naming and shaming anyone, even implicitly. What differentiates good vulnerability disclosure programs from terrible ones?Nick: Yeah, I think the major differentiator is the reactivity of the project, as in how quickly they respond to you. There are some programs I've worked with where you disclose something, maybe even that might be of a high severity, and you might not hear back four weeks at a time, whereas there are other programs, particularly the MSRC—which is a part of Microsoft—or with AWS's disclosure program, where within the hour, I had a receipt of, “Hey, we received this, we're looking into it.” And then within a couple hours after that, “Yep, we verified it. We see what you're seeing, and we're going to look at it right away.” I think that's definitely one of the major differentiators for programs.Corey: Are there any companies you'd like to call out in either direction—and, “No,” is a perfectly valid [laugh] answer to this one—for having excellent disclosure programs versus terrible ones?Nick: I don't know if I'd like to call anybody out negatively. But in support, I have definitely appreciated working with both AWS's and the MSRC—Microsoft's—I think both of them have done a pretty fantastic job. And they definitely know what they're doing at this point.Corey: Yeah, I must say that I primarily focus on AWS and have for a while, which should be blindingly obvious to anyone who's listened to me talk about computers for more than three and a half minutes. But my experiences with the security folks at AWS have been uniformly positive, even when I find things that they don't want me talking about, that I will be talking about regardless, they've always been extremely respectful, and I have never walked away from the conversation thinking that I was somehow cheated by the experience. In fact, a couple of years ago at the last in-person re:Invent, I got to give a talk around something I reported specifically about how AWS runs its vulnerability disclosure program with one of their security engineers, Zach Glick, and he was phenomenally transparent around how a lot of these things work, and what they care about, and how they view these things, and what their incentives are. And obviously being empathetic to people reporting things in with the understanding that there is no duty of care that when security researchers discover something, they then must immediately go and report it in return for a pat on the head and a thank you. It was really neat being able to see both sides simultaneously around a particular issue. I'd recommend it to other folks, except I don't know how you make that lightning strike twice.Nick: It's very, very wise. Yes.Corey: Thank you. I do my best. So, what's next for you? You've obviously found a number of interesting vulnerabilities around information disclosure. One of the more recent things that I found that was sort of neat as I trolled the internet—I don't believe it was yours, but there was a ability to determine the account ID that owned an S3 bucket by enumerating by a binary search. Did you catch that at all?Nick: I did. That was by Ben Bridts, which is—it's pretty awesome technique, and that's been something I've been kind of interested in for a while. There is an ability to enumerate users' roles and service-linked roles inside an account, so long as the account ID. The problem, of course, is getting the account ID. So, when Ben put that out there I was super stoked about being able to leverage that now for enumeration and maybe some fun phishing tricks with that.Corey: I love the idea. I love seeing that sort of thing being conducted. And AWS's official policy as best I remember when I looked at this once, account IDs are not considered confidential. Do you agree with that?Nick: Yep. That is my understanding of how AWS views it. From my perspective, having an account ID can be beneficial. I mentioned that you can enumerate users' roles and service-linked roles with it, and that can be super useful from a phishing perspective. The average phishing email looks like, “Oh, you won an iPad,” or, “Oh, you're the 100th visitor of some website,” or something like that.But imagine getting an email that looks like it's from something like AWS developer support, or from some research program that they're doing, and they can say to you, like, “Hey, we see that you have these roles in your account with account ID such-and-such, and we know that you're using EKS, and you're using ECS,” that phishing email becomes a lot more believable when suddenly this outside party seemingly knows so much about your account. And that might be something that you would think, “Oh, well only a real AWS employee or AWS would know that.” So, from my perspective, I think it's best to try and keep your account ID secret. I actually redact it from every screenshot that I publish, or at the very least, I try to. At the same time, though, it's not the kind of thing that's going to get somebody in your account in a single step, so I can totally see why some folks aren't too concerned about it.Corey: I feel like we also got a bit of a red herring coming from AWS blog posts themselves, where they always will give screenshots explaining what they do, and redact the account ID in every case. And the reason that I was told at one point was, “Oh, we have an internal provisioning system that's different. It looks different, and I don't want to confuse people whenever I wind up doing a screenshot.” And that's great, and I appreciate that. And part of me wonders on one level how accurate is that?Because sure, I understand that you don't necessarily want to distract people with something that looks different, but then I found out that the system is called Isengard and, yeah, it's great. They've mentioned it periodically in blog posts, and talks, and the rest. And part of me now wonders, oh, wait a minute. Is it actually because they don't want to disclose the differences between those systems, or is it because they don't have license rights publicly to use the word Isengard and don't want to get sued by whoever owns the rights to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. So, one wonders what the real incentives are in different cases. But I've always viewed account IDs as being the sort of thing that eh, you probably want to share them around all the time, but it also doesn't necessarily hurt.Nick: Exactly, yeah. It's not the kind of thing you want to share with the world immediately, but it doesn't really hurt in the end.Corey: There was an early time when the partner network was effectively determining tiers of partner by how much spend they influenced, and the way that you've demonstrated that was by giving account IDs for your client accounts. The only verification at the time, to my understanding was that, “Yep, that mapped to the client you said it did.” And that was it. So, I can understand back in those days not wanting to muddy those waters. But those days are also long passed.So, I get it. I'm not going to be the first person to advertise mine, but if you can discover my account ID by looking at a bucket, it doesn't really keep me up at night.So, all of those things considered, we've had a pretty wide-ranging conversation here about a variety of things. What's next? What interests you as far as where you're going to start looking and exploring—and exploiting as the case may be—various cloud services? hackthe.cloud—which there is the dot in there, which also turns it into a domain; excellent choice—is absolutely going to be a great collection for a lot of what you find and for other people to contribute and learn from one another. But where are you aimed at? What's next?Nick: Yeah, so one thing I've been really interested in has been fuzzing the AWS API. As anyone who's ever used AWS before knows, there are hundreds of services with thousands of potential API endpoints. And so from a fuzzing perspective, there is a wide variety of things for us to potentially affect or potentially find vulnerabilities in. I'm currently working on a library that will allow me to make that fuzzing a lot easier. You could use things like botocore, Boto3, like, some of the AWS SDKs.The problem though, is that those are designed for, sort of like, the happy path where you can format your request the way Amazon wants. As a security researcher or as someone doing fuzzing, I kind of want to send random gibberish sometimes, or I want to malform my requests. And so that library is still in production, but it has already resulted in a bug. While I was fuzzing part of the AWS API, I happened to notice that I broke Elastic Beanstalk—quite literally—when [laugh] when I was going through the AWS console, I got the big red error message of, “[unintelligible 00:29:35] that request parameter is null.” And I was like, “Huh. Well, why is it null?”And come to find out as a result of that, there is a HTML injection vulnerability in the Elastic—well, there was a HTML injection vulnerability in the Elastic Beanstalk, for the AWS console. Pivoting from there, the Elastic Beanstalk uses Angular 1.8.1, or at least it did when I found it. As a result of that, we can modify that HTML injection to do template injection. And for the AngularJS crowd, template injection is basically cross-site scripting [laugh] because there is no sandbox anymore, at least in that version. And so as a result of that, I was able to get cross-site scripting in the AWS console, which is pretty exciting. That doesn't tend to happen too frequently.Corey: No that is not a typical issue that winds up getting disclosed very often.Nick: Definitely, yeah. And so I was excited about it, and considering the fact that my library for fuzzing is literally, like, not even halfway done, or is barely halfway done, I'm looking forward to what other things I can find with it.Corey: I look forward to reading more. And at the time of this recording, I should point out that this has not been finalized or made public, so I'll be keeping my eyes open to see what happens with this. And hopefully, this will be old news by the time this episode drops. If not, well, [laugh] this might be an interesting episode once it goes out.Nick: Yeah. I hope they'd have it fixed by then. They haven't responded to it yet other than the, “Hi, we've received your email. Thanks for checking in.” But we'll see how that goes.Corey: Watching news as it breaks is always exciting. If people want to learn more about what you're up to, and how you go about things, where can they find you?Nick: Yeah, so you can find me at a couple different places. On Twitter I'm @frichette_n. I also write a blog where I contribute a lot of my research at frechetten.com as well as Hacking the Cloud. I contribute a lot of the AWS stuff that gets thrown on there. And it's also open-source, so if anyone else would like to contribute or share their knowledge, you're absolutely welcome to do so. Pull requests are open and excited for anyone to contribute.Corey: Excellent. And we will of course include links to that in the [show notes 00:31:42]. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I really appreciate it.Nick: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting me on. I had a great time.Corey: Nick Frechette, penetration tester and team lead for State Farm. I'm Cloud Economist Corey Quinn, and this is Screaming in the Cloud. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, whereas if you've hated this podcast, please leave a five-star review on your podcast platform of choice, along with a comment telling me why none of these things are actually vulnerabilities, but simultaneously should not be discussed in public, ever.Corey: If your AWS bill keeps rising and your blood pressure is doing the same, then you need The Duckbill Group. We help companies fix their AWS bill by making it smaller and less horrifying. The Duckbill Group works for you, not AWS. We tailor recommendations to your business and we get to the point. Visit duckbillgroup.com to get started.Announcer: This has been a HumblePod production. Stay humble.

If you're of the age that your mom and dad retired 20 or 30 years ago, the world was a much different place when they walked away from their paychecks. Let's talk about how things are different now. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome into the podcast. It's Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. Hanging out with me to talk about this being not our father's retirement now. That's our podcast topic this week, not your father's not our fathers, whatever you want to say, we're going to go into this conversation about how things are so much different even just 20 years ago when it comes to retirement. And some things to think about before we walk away from that paycheck. And there's a lot that's obviously changed and obviously we're seeing a lot of turmoil coming off of COVID and things of that nature. So there's a lot of good topical stuff in here for us to discuss, but let's jump in and say hi to the guys first, Nick, what's going on, buddy? How are you doing?   Nick: Pretty well, staying busy.   Speaker 1: Staying busy. Well, that's always good. John, how are you, my friend? Last time we talked you were having some troubles with the kids. Everybody not sleeping and things like that. Doing better?   John: Yeah, for the most part, actually, I don't know if I've mentioned it. We got them to share a room which has helped their sleeping habits a bit. So we've been sleeping through the night. So it's been a few years, my friend, of consistent nights of sleeping.   Speaker 1: There you go.   John: Starting to feel pretty good again.   Speaker 1: Yeah, I like that. Well, very good. So you never know what's going to make the trigger there. So I'm glad to hear that. Do you guys remember these commercials? I'm a little bit older than you, but I know a lot of our listeners might remember these as well, if you guys don't. But back, maybe late '70s, early '80s, Oldsmobile was trying to rebrand and make the Oldsmobile a little bit cooler. And so they had these commercials and it would always say things like, "It's not your father's Oldsmobile." You guys remember those at all?   Nick: I do actually.   Speaker 1: Yeah. And so they would try to rebrand it that way. So that's kind of the idea I had for today's conversation. It's not our father's retirement. My dad retired in '93. He passed away in '96. So he didn't have a very long retirement, but even just the principles and some of the things are completely different here 30 years later.   Speaker 1: So let's talk about a couple of these things and how the world's changed and how really planning has also changed and what you guys do and what folks need to consider when they get closer to retirement. First of all, the concept of retirement is not actually that old, a hundred years ago you didn't retire. You worked until you dropped. Right? So really retirement's only been around since, the idea of it really since the late '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s, so on and so forth. And it was this thing where you got to 65, you retired, you were done. Maybe you sat on the front porch and did little, but nowadays more and more people work beyond 65. They want to, not just have to, they want to, and that's okay. Right? There's nothing wrong with that.   John: Yeah. I would definitely, we see that in our office here, Bob Perry's 76, 77, he's still working. We joke that his wife won't let him retire, but he really enjoys coming in and the environment here and just being with everyone, it gives him stuff to do and he provides a lot of insight for us as well. So it's great to have him around so I could see where in his situation or other people's, if they're somewhere they enjoy, what's the point of retiring if you enjoy it?   Speaker 1: Right. Exactly. And not only that, Nick, but a lot of times people, again, they just want to do some other things and maybe you don't need the full job income, like you used to have, the big career, but maybe you do need a little extra money to help with the plan or something, but it's just a way to kind of have some fun and maybe make a little extra scratch on the side.   Nick: Yeah. I think ultimately what happens is that almost one analogy to think about, you see things like football players, baseball players, et cetera. Here you have people that retire early, they maybe have a career 5 to 10, maybe 15 years. And obviously their situation is a little bit different from a perspective of the money that they're retiring with and the bandwidth they have to route the time between retirement and their life expectancy. However, there's probably a little bit more similarities than people realize where ultimately when you see interviews with people like that, the things that you hear them talk about are missing the structure, missing the comradery, coworkers slash teammates, those sorts of things.   Nick: So, there's actually a lot of similarities and it's almost keeping that sort of structure and help keep my mind sharp, keep people engaged. We definitely see patterns from the perspective of, there are some people that they do a great job of having hobbies and they know that when they retire, they've got a list of things that they want to do, whether it's travel, whether it's hobbies, whether it's a small sort of business. And then you have people that really struggle. And I was having this conversation actually with my parents this weekend. My dad is a retired fireman, but he's been working, he had his own small business for the last maybe 15 years. So he retired as a fireman really early.   Nick: My mom's a nurse. She works a couple days a week now, but she's looking to slow down. And my dad was talking about a friend of his, maybe like 10 years older, that still does some work because he can't just sit around, he's got to stay busy. And my dad was like, "Well, he needs hobbies." And I said, "No, you need some hobbies. You don't have any hobbies." And he looked at me like, "I had never really thought about that before." And we've had different conversations, but the point that I'm trying to make is a lot of times, we look at other people, we look at other situations and we perceive ourselves in a different way. And sometimes just taking that self inventory and asking ourselves these sorts of questions, it really is important because there's many more similarities that we realize. So...   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: So we've tasked my nieces who are younger to help, start coming up with some hobbies for my father, their grandfather, to keep him sharp and engaged. So...   Speaker 1: Well, I think we went through this cycle. Like I mentioned earlier, a hundred years ago you just worked until you dropped. And then we said, "Oh, we can do this thing called retirement." And then people started retiring and sitting around and doing nothing. And then you wither away that way too. So I think we've now started to learn over this past a hundred years that, okay, it's got to be a bit of both. You, you work really hard, you get to retirement, you hit retirement, but you still need to be active. You still need to do things and have things that interest you, if you want to just sit on the front porch and make wicker baskets, then that's great, do that, if that's what you want, but more and more people are-   John: Real quick, Nick loves making wicker baskets.   Speaker 1: Does he really? I got to get one now, I need a custom wicker basket.   Nick: No wicker baskets.   Speaker 1: Oh man, just crushed my dreams right there. But anyway, I think that's a really great point is having something to retire to. Now, the next point on this guys, is being retired, it can be more expensive nowadays than working. So, we used to see that 20% less is what you need in retirement. Well, that might not be the case now. And we've just been having conversations as well about inflation and stuff. So it can be quite expensive to retire if you're not careful.   Nick: It absolutely can. Especially depending on where you live from the perspective of the things that you may be looking to get into or do. I live in a downtown area in St. Pete and I absolutely see how, anybody that lives in this space, all you have to do is walk down the street to grab a coffee, to grab a lunch and depending upon your lifestyle, you've just got more time on your hands to do the things that you want to do. So, so why wouldn't it be more expensive if we're just doing these things more often, more frequently, so it can definitely be the case. And that's even from a discretionary standpoint, let alone the health care costs and all the things that people do to stay healthier, stay more engaged, live longer, all those sorts of things.   Nick: And ultimately, one of the things that we'll have conversations with people, sometimes people come in with an open mind thinking like, "Hey, this might be happening. I may spend more money." Other times we have people that they're absolutely convinced, " No I'm going to spend 50%, 60% of what I spent before." And that's sometimes the question to them is, "Why would you? Is that what you want to do? Or is this just something that you read?" Because I would guess ultimately you want to enjoy what you've saved up for and worked hard for. So, at what point in life or maybe even in the last 30 years, one of the questions, at one point in the last 30 years, have you lived only for needs and realistically here in the U.S That's for most people that's not too common, ultimately we live in the things that we bought. We enjoy the times that we want to spend with others, all those sorts of things. So, that's an important conversation to have.   Speaker 1: No, I definitely agree with you there. John, retirees are facing more problems than ever too. Well society, we're all facing more problems than ever before, social media, so on and so forth. Just the inundation of information, but longevity, I think maybe longevity guys might be a key to this whole conversation today because it magnifies all of these things. And that's certainly going to be the case when juggling more problems because we're living longer, so much longer, the body's able, we're figuring out lots of great ways to keep the body going, but sometimes we're having some difficulties when it comes to the mental side, dementia is on the rise, things of that nature. And that gets pretty costly.   John: Yeah. Yeah. Previously we talked about retirement changing, people had pensions which lasted for their life. And the shift has been away from pensions to putting the responsibility on the individual where now they have just basically savings, whether it's cash or investments or whatever, but now you need to be very cautious, we have to be very careful that that's going to last you 30 plus years. And that's why it's important to have the plan to make sure that your money is going to last throughout retirement, which is really the biggest concern for retirees. Some other things we've seen popping up more recently and we've just dealt with this with a client where their they're aging parents, they were providing financial assistance for their parents in assisted living facilities and things like that, or having helpers.   John: So I have one client where they're were assisting their parents with that. So they weren't really going on vacation and enjoying their time. And then the parent passed away and then with everything that's happened recently, their son lost a job and then they were not helping out their son with expenses. So it was a double whammy for them is that they can't truly enjoy retirement because they're helping family members out, which again, no one plans for this, you just happen in this situation, but it's something that you always want to keep track of.   Nick: Yeah. That's kind of that sandwich generation that they talk about a little bit and it really started coming to the forefront back during the recession, '08, '09, '10, where there was a lot of kids coming out of college, couldn't get jobs, parents aging, all these sorts of things. So I would say baby boomers definitely have their hands full with all the different things that they have to juggle. And so having peace of mind of having that plan in place and understanding how their money is going to work in retirement is more important than ever.   Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and like I said, longevity is probably the key to this whole conversation. So we have to sell fun. Right? We don't have pensions now. Well, not many do. Right? So I think something like 15% or less of the population has pensions. It's an interesting statistic, but we're talking 30, 40 years. I was just chatting with somebody yesterday, guys who they're 72 and their mom and dad both are still alive. They're in their 90s and they're also dealing with helping their 40 year old children. So there's a lot in this to unpack.   Nick: Yeah. Yeah. We see it all the time. We see it all the time and it can be pretty stressful. And a lot of times what we'll try to do and go through with people and this even ties into some other previous podcasts, that we'll have from the perspective of, "Hey, my kids are looking to buy a house. I want to give them money for a down payment." And we'll talk about things like, "All right, well, where does that money have to come from? How does it impact your overall plan?"   Nick: So we try to walk it through and we try, we joke where we try not to be the money police and tell people what they can and can't do, but we just help them understand the impact of their decisions and trying to make sure that they do it from a perspective of viewing their retirement first and making sure that they're okay because they also don't want to be a burden down the line for their kids. So it can be a really slippery slope and making sure that the decisions that are made along the way position them to be able to help, but it can be difficult, especially like you said, planning for that 30, 40 year retirement.   Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. And it's a situation where we're just going to continue to see more of it. So having a good strategy, having a good plan is going to be paramount to getting through all these hurdles and things that we've got going on. Because I imagine at the end of the day, nobody comes in and says, "Hey, I'd like to have less of a lifestyle than I have now in retirement." No one wants to go backwards. So you want to make sure that you are having those conversations to move yourself forward or at least maintain into retirement. So that's our topic this week. So we all know things are different than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But when you really start dissecting it, especially from a financial standpoint, there's just a lot to unpack.   Speaker 1: So sit down and have a conversation. If you're not already with a team that can help you like the team at PFG Private Wealth, John and Nick, and the whole team there to get on the counter, reach out to them. (813) 286-7776. If you've got some questions or concerns, reach out on the website if you'd like to as well pfgprivatewealth.com, that's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the show. Retirement Planning Redefined on your smartphone there. If you've got an Apple phone, for example, Apple Podcasts is already on your phone. You can just open up that app and type in Retirement, Planning Redefined, and subscribe that way or Google or whatever platform you use. Most of that stuff's already pre-installed on your phones anyway, but you can find it all at pfgprivatewealth.com. Guys, thanks for hanging out with me this week. I appreciate it. John. I'm bummed that he's not going to make me a wicker basket.   John: I've been trying to get one, he won't do it.   Nick: I'm not the creative type.   Speaker 1: Not the creative type. All right, guys. Well, thanks for hanging out again. I appreciate it. I'll see you next time. John, take care, buddy.   John: Have a good one.   Speaker 1: We'll see you later. Nick, take care. Have yourself a good week.   Nick: All right. You too. Take care.   Speaker 1: We'll talk to you next time here on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth.

At first glance, each of these statements seem like basic common sense that everyone agrees with. But when we look at the way people actually behave with their money, it seems that common sense is actually a bit uncommon. Helpful Information: PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/ Contact: 813-286-7776 Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.com Disclaimer: PFG Private Wealth Management, LLC is a registered investment adviser. All statements and opinions expressed are based upon information considered reliable although it should not be relied upon as such. Any statements or opinions are subject to change without notice. Information presented is for educational purposes only and does not intend to make an offer or solicitation for the sale or purchase of any specific securities, investments, or investment strategies. Investment involve risk and, unless otherwise stated, are not guaranteed. Information expressed does not take into account your specific situation or objectives and is not intended as recommendations appropriate for any individual. Listeners are encouraged to seek advice from a qualified tax, legal, or investment adviser to determine whether any information presented may be suitable for their specific situation. Past performance is not indicative of future performance. Transcript of Today's Show: For a full transcript of today's show, visit the blog related to this episode at https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/podcast/ ----more---- Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Welcome in to the podcast. This is Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick. Hanging out with me talking investing, finance, and retirement. Uncommon Sense is going to be our theme on this podcast. I've got some statements here that I think all of us agree are basic common sense. But yet when we go to do these things, we tend to do the opposite. We act a bit uncommon. So that's going to be good. We're going to have a fun conversation with this and stick around. We're going to jump into that. But first let's welcome the guys in and see what's going on. John, how are you, buddy?   John: Good. How are you doing?   Speaker 1: Hanging in there pretty good. We were just chatting before we rolled the tape here on the podcast. A little sleepy. The kids did not want to cooperate last night. But other than that, things are going good for you?   John: Yeah, yeah. Things are going well.   Speaker 1: Very good. Very good. And Nick, how are you, my friend?   Nick: Doing pretty well. We're staying busy. The heat is starting to settle in, in Florida here. So although I'd say we had a pretty awesome spring weather wise.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: The humidity is starting to kick in. So kind of a realization that John and I were talking about the other day, that we can't believe it's already between COVID, chaos of everything going on, that it's already almost halfway through the year, so.   Speaker 1: Well, 2020 was like the longest decade ever, even though it was only a year.   Nick: Yeah.   Speaker 1: And then this year seems to be hauling pretty fast. So it's going pretty quickly. Hey, speaking of the weather, actually, how did the event go? Last time, we did the podcast, the prior one, we chatted a little bit about the golf tourney you guys were working on. How'd that go?   John: It went really well. We ended up having about 108 golfers total, which we were told for a first event would be excellent.   Speaker 1: That's awesome.   John: We hit that goal. And we're just finalizing the numbers. But it looks like we're going to be doing some pretty, a good size donations to Pepin Academies and then Southeastern Guide Dogs. So we're excited about that. And we actually, the winning team's going to get a nice invitational jacket, so we're getting them sized up. So they're excited about that. That was kind of a surprise to them. So at the end we had a tailor there, and getting their sizes and showed them the jacket and they were pretty excited about it.   Speaker 1: Very cool. So are you guys hustling and bustling all through that? Did you enjoy the process of putting an event together like that? And would you definitely do it again?   John: Nick, do you want to take that one?   Nick: Yeah. It was an interesting sort of a learning process. It's always, just like anything else, there's a lot of collaboration. And so, a lot of people, a lot of bodies required. And it's a first-time event, having to get everybody on the same page and organized. It was a little chaotic. But ultimately we chatted about this in our meeting afterwards. Ultimately, I think the experience for the people that participated was smooth. And if you ask them, they wouldn't have even noticed the things that we did as putting it on.   Speaker 1: Right.   Nick: The feedback that we received was good. A lot of money went to charity. So all's well that ends well.   Speaker 1: The hallmark of a good event then if the participants think it's great and it runs smoothly, they don't need not know about the chaos. Right. That's the way you know you've done a good job. So very cool. Well, kudos guys. Glad to hear that. I'll be looking forward to some final numbers later.   John: Yeah, yeah. We had a very good team all around. So it was a truly team effort to get it done, so.   Speaker 1: That's great.   John: It was good to work with everybody.   Speaker 1: That's awesome. That's great. I'm glad to hear that. And definitely look forward to hearing more about that in the future. But for now, let's go ahead and jump into our topic this week. Again, like I said, guys, I've got some statements here, some basic axioms that we all hold to be accurate. I think we all would say that that's common sense. We all agree with it. But yet what you guys see and what advisors see all across the country, a lot of times with these is people tend to do the opposite.   Speaker 1: So talk through that a little bit, what you see and maybe some ways to counteract that. And we'll start with a classic, which is the buy low and sell high. You're not going to find a single person that disagrees with that theory. We do that. I don't know, gas shopping, right? Gas has been going up. So you're like, oh, hey, I heard it's 5 cents cheaper over at this station, and you'll go over there. But when it comes to investing, it's almost always the opposite: If you are undisciplined or don't have a plan type investor where you panic and you do the wrong thing.   John: Yeah. And I think the reason why is really emotion. Investing becomes very emotional because it's your money, it's your nest egg. You're going to see it there. So when that dives into it just, it's very hard to make easy decisions. And a perfect example is the pandemic in 2020 when it started in March. Stocks dropped very fast. I think over like a two or three week period, there was an almost 30 to 40% drop of the S&P, and which is a great opportunity to buy stocks cheap. But what we're hearing from some people it's, hey, should I sell? And then really it should have been, should I be buying more into it? But against the uncertainty, the emotions of not knowing what's going to happen. A similar thing happened in 2008. With the bank and liquidity concerns, same thing here. Stocks were dropping. Good time to buy. But the thought process and emotion made people do the reverse.   Nick: Yeah. And it's tricky because intuitively sometimes you look at what's happening and oftentimes by the time that most people in general, kind of in the general public, notice what's happening, a lot of the volatility's already happened. So in other words, once they notice it's really going down, it's already gone down a bunch and once they notice it's going up, it's already gone up a bunch. And so tend to be late on both sides, which is not good.   Nick: And John and I will kind of joke with each other where I'm definitely the more emotional one out of both of us and he's less so. And so, we absolutely understand the emotions of things, and even being in day-to-day, it's important to understand how it is. It really just kind of goes back to having a plan. And that's what we try to do even back in, when everything went down with the pandemic is bring everybody back to the plan. Make them realize that, hey, we've got a plan for these sorts of things. These are unfortunate times. But we have these things baked in for happening, and so we're just going to hold the line.   Speaker 1: Well, I think with emotion being the culprit there, that's why working with an advisor in a good team is helpful. I'm not going to say you guys are disinterested. You obviously clearly care about your clients and what you do for them because it's very important work. But at the same time, you can't approach it with a little bit less passion, I suppose, or panic than the person might. Because to your point, John, it's their money, right? And you guys are going to do the very best that you can for it. But it helps you make, it helps you look at things a little bit more objectively, I guess that's where I'm trying to go with that. So.   John: Yeah.   Speaker 1: That's a good way to do it. So, that's one. Let's go with a second one here. Not paying any more in taxes than we have to. Well, that's like a duh, right? Nobody volunteers to sign up to ... I don't think anybody's standing out on the street corner with a sign saying, Let me pay more taxes, please. Yet, when you guys start to look at things and you work with an advisor and a CPA and they start digging into people's financial and retirement situations, often we are paying more than we need to be. We're not being as efficient as we could be, I suppose.   Nick: Yeah. And some of the areas that we'll see these sorts of things are, and again, this will tie into the emotional decisions, which we definitely understand money's emotional. But as an example, somebody's retiring or getting close to retiring, maybe they've got 80 to $100,000 left on their mortgage and they want to cash out a bunch of money from retirement accounts, and just pay it off quicker in one fell swoop. And they may not realize from a timing standpoint, number one, the impact that a large distribution like that could have on their taxes. And then the snowball effect that it might have on costs of Medicare or different things like that. So, having a strategy and always going back to the idea of planning long-term and having different types of accounts that have different types of taxation in retirement, it's really important.   Speaker 1: Yeah. I would agree with you on that because taxes, there's all those little things like, it's not what we make, it's what we keep, so on and so forth. But there is a lot more ways to be efficient when it comes to, especially for retirees and pre-retirees, when it comes to taxes. And of course, everything we're seeing right now with increased spending and inflation and so on and so forth, taxes is going to continue to be a really integral part of our retirement plan. So it's important to make sure that you're working with somebody who is taking that into account.   Speaker 1: And another important part of this is keeping costs low, guys. Like I said earlier about the gas situation or bargain shopping, pretty much everybody's looking at buy one, get one free, or 50% off things. We look for these kinds of things in all aspects of life. But then again, when it comes to investing, sometimes we're not thinking about that. You'll have the person say, I want to keep costs low. And my guy or gal only charges me 1%, and they're really not taking into account everything else, as well, right?   John: Yeah. That's absolutely correct. Again, it can be taking into consideration from a common sense standpoint. But sometimes there are better times to buckle down on certain things than others. And ultimately you're just trying to make solid decisions with the information that you have available to you. So, it's anybody. You mentioned inflation. It's always interesting with things like that because anybody that has gone to the grocery store in the last two years, they know that things cost more. And so it doesn't when it's not talked about in the media as much or whatever. They might talk about it with their friends or complain about it with their spouse or something like that.   John: But then when it starts being talked about in the media, it catches up. So ultimately, I think people know that these sorts of things have been happening. But now that it's being talked about more, in general, and there are other assets that are tracked more from a consumer price index and those sorts of things, to actually show inflation is a legitimate thing. Especially with all of the money that's been being printed for the last decade, really. Now it's a good time to reassess and make some smart decisions to keep costs down.   Speaker 1: Yeah. No, definitely. There's hidden fees in all those little things, and that's actually going to lead into my next one here. For example, I'm going to pull a grandma-ism, guys. Another one of these axioms we hear is "don't put all your eggs in one basket". And I'm going to take this from the standpoint of people who have a lot of the same thing, they'll say, John or Nick, I've got 10 mutual funds that I got from 10 different companies, right. So I'm "clearly diversified" and I'm not getting charged very much. And they're completely wrong in both of those counts.   John: Yeah. We see that a lot in the 401k space because a lot of that is the people are picking their own funds and they'll do stuff like that where they'll pick six, seven mutual funds or whatever. And they say, hey, "I'm diversified." But in reality, they're all similar type funds. So for example, they all could be large cap funds. So what that means is when the market goes up, they're all going to do relatively the same thing. Give or take some percentage points on which one's performing a little bit better. When the market goes down, they're going to do the same thing.   John: The whole point of diversifying is so that the portfolio has some zig and zag. So kind of sounds weird to say this, but in reality, when something's going up, you want something else going down or not doing what the other investment are doing. And that actually comes down to proper asset allocation where you have maybe some large cap funds, and then you also have some fixed income funds and some real estate. So everything's not the same type of asset class. And that's really what you want to focus on. On really diversifying is not just having multiple funds, but having the right mix of multiple funds.   Nick: And even in addition to that, diversify from the perspective of taxes. You don't necessarily, we feel, end up in retirement with only having pre-tax money that's going to be fully taxed at whatever bracket that you're in, in retirement.   Speaker 1: Mm-hmm (affirmative).   Nick: These good examples currently, there's a decent chance and we've been talking about it for years, but there's a decent chance that taxes will go up. There's a price for printing money for a long time. Whether it's cutting taxes and more spending, et cetera, eventually there is going to be a price for that. So having options from the perspective of pre-tax money, broth money, a taxable brokerage account, what that utilizes capital gains, all these sorts of things end up really paying off down the road.   Speaker 1: A lot of times that whole diversification conversation comes back into play with people. And often what you guys find, John, to your point, you were talking about that a little bit is that somebody who's got a lot of the same thing. There's just a ton of overlap. And typically, it's almost always large cap or something. And if you think about this year, right, small cap was outperforming large cap in the first quarter. And maybe you don't have enough here and there. And that's that point of that having a little bit. That's when something's going up, something is going down. Most people just don't truly realize that. They think, oh, I've got a target date fund; I'm groovy. Or whatever that looks like. And then what ends up happening for the last one is that you have people then turn around and say, ooh, I want to jump in on dogecoin, or whatever, because Elon Musk made a tweet. And then the next week he makes another tweet and the thing tanks. And so market timing is virtually impossible.   John: Yeah, correct. Ultimately, you can't do it. It comes back to what we talked about earlier. When people are trying to time the market, it's really emotional of saying, hey, when's a good time to get in or get out. And this was something that we saw a little bit about, not necessarily so much with the pandemic, a lot of people stayed the course and maybe because it happened so fast. But with the election at the end of last year, either way we saw people that were trying to pull out and time it depending on who won the election on when to get back in.   John: And unfortunately it didn't work out. And it doesn't work ... Either way it doesn't work out because it's always so hard to say, hey, now is the right time because as we saw, the market went up. And then it's like, well, do I go in now or do I wait until it goes down? And you can find over the last five or six, seven years, if you've been waiting, you've been waiting a long time to get back in. So it's always best to have a plan and stick to your plan and make sure that you're invested correctly so you can just stay the course of what you're trying to do.   Nick: And even further with that, ultimately, if you decide that you're going to exit and try to time it, the time that you have to then get back in, is usually the most basically, disgusting time to have to do it.   Speaker 1: When it hurts.   Nick: It's the most painful time. It's the time of the most chaos because that's usually where the bottom is. And so it's really difficult to try to time that.   Speaker 1: Yeah.   Nick: In fact, we've had conversations with clients before where we say, hey, our objective is to hold the line. If you want to exit, we'll exit for you, but you got to tell us when to get back in. We're not going to exit at your request and then move in at our determination.   Nick: If we're going to exit, then you also have to let us know when to enter back in. And so sometimes we've found that, putting it in that, in those terms, ultimately ends up helping people just decide to hold the line. Once they realize like, oh, well, I've got to tell you when to get back in? Then that helps them realize, oh, okay, I get it. Like, I'm probably not going to be able to do that. Or by the time that I feel comfortable enough to tell you, it's too late.   Speaker 1: Yeah. You're right back at that emotional sticking point, right? To your point of it's typically it's painful or it's the worst time, or it's just really uncomfortable to do it. And of course, you're trying to be right twice in something that is super, super fickle. So again, these are all some basic common sense things we can all agree on. And yet we tend to do the opposite. And that's where it comes into play to really work with a team who does this day in and day out to help us through those things so that we don't trip ourselves up. As the saying goes, "We're often our own worst enemy." So do yourself a favor if you haven't done so. Have a conversation about your retirement journey and some of the things that we've covered today on the podcast.   Speaker 1: Reach out to John and Nick. As always, you should check with a qualified professional before you take any action on anything you hear anyway on our show or any others financially-related. So reach out to John and Nick at (813) 286-7776. That's (813) 286-7776. Or stop by the website, pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast, Retirement Planning Redefined. You can find all the information right there at the website. Again to subscribe on Apple, Google, Spotify, whatever platform you like. I'm going to sign off this week for John and Nick and myself. So thanks for hanging out with us here on the show, and we'll catch you next time on Retirement Planning Redefined with John and Nick.

This week's episode has a special guest: Gay Hendricks. Gay Hendricks has been a leader in the fields of relationship transformation and bodymind transformation for more than 45 years. After earning his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1974, Gay served as Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Colorado for 21 years. He has written more than 40 books, including bestsellers such as Five Wishes, The Big Leap, Conscious Loving and Conscious Loving Ever After, (the last two co-authored with his co-author and mate for more than 35 years, Dr. Kathlyn Hendricks). He is also a mystery novelist, with a series of five books featuring the Tibetan-Buddhist private detective, Tenzing Norbu, as well as a new mystery series featuring a Victorian-era London detective, Sir Errol Hyde. His latest book, Conscious Luck, reveals eight ways to change your fortunes through the power of intention. Gay has appeared on more than 500 radio and television shows, including Oprah, CNN, CNBC, 48 HOURS and others.  Hosts: Nick and Kisma Special Guest: Gay Hendricks 1:44 Welcome Dr. Gay Hendricks to Illumination Podcast I'm so excited to have Gay Hendricks as a guest today. We've studied and talked about his work. We covered his work in a four-part series at the beginning of last year, and we are just so incredibly excited to have him join us in this episode. Nick Welcome Dr. Gay Hendricks to Illumination Podcast. We're so happy you're here. KISMA Thank you very much. It's a pleasure and an honor to meet both of you. Dr. Gay Hendricks 2:16 Initial Awakening We've been watching some of your interviews and there was one where you had shared something about your initial awakening, and I was wondering if you would share that event with our listeners because it was so compelling and gave me so much hope. KISMA Absolutely. I wouldn't be here without that event having happened.  When I was 24, I had managed to create a pretty painful life, because I not only weighed 320 pounds, but I wore big thick glasses. I was in a relationship that was really toxic and I couldn't figure out how to get out of it. I was also in a job that wasn't going real well, and I didn't feel like I was using any of my potential.  So one day everything came to a head. I went out for a walk to try to get my head cleared after I'd had an argument with Linda, the woman I referred to. And by golly, I got it cleared big time. What happened was I stepped on a place where the snow had covered the ice and my feet shot out from under me. And I went down on my back and I didn't knock myself out, but I call it an out of Hendrix experience because I had this experience that knocked me out of my senses for about two or three minutes. It knocked me out of my usual way of looking at the world. I laid there and I had this amazing thing happen for about two minutes where I got a look at who I really was. It was like I could see all the way down through the different levels of myself. Dr. Gay Hendricks 5:36 Pure Consciousness In that moment I suddenly became aware of this whole different set of levels of myself. But then the really magical thing that happened was that I realized that down underneath everything was this part of myself that I call pure consciousness. I'd never touched into it before, but it's the part that we all have of ourselves. And it gave me a new place to come home to.  So I had this one moment before I got back up where I said “I'm going to do whatever it takes to feel that pure consciousness all the time”, because it was the first time I felt like I'd really come home in myself. Dr. Gay Hendricks That's an amazing story.  Do you think everyone has this opportunity for that? The sense of feeling and seeing and being aware of that pure consciousness within us? KISMA  I actually do.  The way I put it to my students now is the Universe is totally willing to tickle us with a feather to teach us, but if we're not paying attention, it'll then hit us over the head with a sledgehammer.  Dr. Gay Hendricks 15:19 Essence I wanted to circle back about this idea that I’ve heard you talk about a little bit. It's the essence, like the purest pure consciousness, and I'm curious to hear your perspective on that. Nick What I call essence is that pure part of ourselves that expresses who we really are. If you took that away, you wouldn't be you. I think that it's a gift that everybody has that kind of pure consciousness.  The value of it that I've come to really appreciate is that it does give me a place to come home to that's underneath all the phenomena of my life. It's underneath the thoughts, it's underneath all my feelings. All of those things are very important, but for example, you have sad feelings or angry feelings or scared feelings, but underneath that is that vast ocean of pure consciousness. And I think that in life, our kind of our spiritual job is to find that aspect of ourselves and open up to it and let ourselves be grounded and centered in it.  Dr. Gay Hendricks I love the word essence for it. The essence of that very unique, purest expression of yourself. And I love the way that you talk about it's like that place to come home to because it's not a feeling. It's a state of being that we drop into and it just changes everything. Nick 36:21 The Big Leap and The Genius Zone So in your book , you mention the genius zone and I understand that you have a new book coming out where you're going to expand on this. Can you tell us a little bit more about this book?  Nick  Basically it takes what's in and gives you a way of diving right down into your genius zone. So it's kind of like instead of flying the plane to your genius zone, it gives you a very nice parachute, a way to just go straight down and capture it. There are some processes in the book that give you a real quick way of getting into that space and how to stay there once you're there.  Dr. Gay Hendricks Would you consider The Big Leap a prerequisite for it, or can people just dive right into The Genius Zone? Nick It would be great if they read The Big Leap first because it's kind of a sequel.  Dr. Gay Hendricks 47:55 Five Wishes Well we don't have guests a lot and when we do they're so special such as yourself. A question that I always like to ask is is there anything that's in your heart that you want to do before you leave the planet that you've not told anybody? KIMSA I can't really think of anything. I figured out early on what I wanted.  In my book , I talk about the five things that I wanted to create in my life and I've created them more beyond my wildest dreams. So I have to say if the Universe needs me in the collective anytime soon I'm ready and willing to go. I'm having a great time while I'm here, but I've accomplished all my major goals and I'm just enjoying living more and more of them every day. Dr. Gay Hendricks I love that. That's the best.  Nick Well thank you so much for being here Dr. Gay Hendricks. KISMA

In this episode we are talking about Why Bad Things happen in 3s. 3:14 Does This Really Happen? We are diving into why bad things happen in threes. “As far as I know, bad things happen in threes.”  We hear this all the time and I think it's interesting to look at. Does this really happen? Do we create it or is it the force of nature? KISMA Personally, I do believe bad things happen in threes, but I also believe that we create that circumstance. Nick So in other words, they don't have to happen in threes. KISMA They don't have to. Nick 4:06 It Starts with Perception It's important to really understand why bad things can happen in threes. Like why is this even a thing that happens for some people? Nick It starts with perception. The moment that we perceive something as bad, our thoughts flow towards it in a stronger method creating what we call thought flow.  You then start to almost train yourself to see the next bad thing.  KISMA 10:12 Your Attitude is Key So what do we do? What can somebody do when something happens that they don't want to experience?  KISMA Your attitude towards the circumstance is the real master key to it. The best attitude that's going to keep you on an upward trajectory and keep you more in a flow is actually a mindset of, “Oh, well I guess this is exactly what I needed.” Nick Even if you don't know why you needed it. KISMA 16:46 Self Inquiry When you say “This must be what needed to happen”, maybe you have to lift your head out of the water a little bit higher, maybe you have to look out in front, or also take a look at yourself and ask, “Why am I causing this? Why did I attract it?”.   You’re not making it wrong, but just be willing to have a further self inquiry. KISMA 21:15 A Miracle Right in Front of You So here's to you having amazing events. Know that you're a divine operating system and there might be a miracle right in front of you. KISMA

This episode is part three of The Getting Unstuck Series and today we are discussing the energy stuck. 1:13 Energy Stuff This is The Getting Unstuck Series.  We have talked about the in-between stuck and the mental stuck. This week is the energy stuck.  Now of course, Nick is an expert on energy healing, energy work, energy clearing, energy coaching, so he is going to tell us what it feels like to be in energy stuck. KISMA Energy stuck shows up in more subtle ways, but also really obvious ways.  People just don't think it's energy stuck. It'll show up as feeling tired. Like no matter how much you sleep, you feel tired. You get kind of stuck in that mode or not sleeping. So you're tired, but you lay down to sleep and then your mind is going. That’s energy stuff. But the biggest way that it really shows up is illness in the body. Nick 4:28 Breaking up the Energy I think when we talk about energetic stuckness that like the idea is to immediately go to some kind of energetic thing, but there is a little bit more of a process to that. So if you've got things showing up physically like fatigue, maybe it's headache patterns, weight gain, things like that, and you're like, why is this holding? You actually need to have physical movement in your life. Nick It breaks up the energy. KISMA That's right.  When it's stuck in the body, you really need to just move the body. Just move yourself around because it will shake that up and get you moving.  Nick 9:57 Connected with the Physical Body The other thing I see that happens when someone's energetically stuck is they stop breathing. I mean, not literally, but the breath becomes very shallow. It's just not present. KISMA It gets back to the physiology of it. That's a link that a lot of people miss with energy. They think that the energy is all out there or all in the chakras, but actually it needs to be connected with the physical body. And that's exactly what the breath does.  So we use that 6-3 pattern that is taught in And that breathing technique is incredibly beneficial because it gets the subtle energy channels moving as well.  So you move your body to get the body systems moving. You start to shake off and break up the energy in and around the body a little bit. And then the breathing helps to get those subtle energy channels moving.  Nick 14:41 Change the Energy Sometimes we have to change our surroundings to change the energy that we're in. Like you got to take yourself out of where you are, change the energy and go somewhere. And it kind of ignites your intuition and brings in more.  KISMA I'm glad you mentioned that because environmental stuff matters. Nick 17:42 Steps to See a Shift I mean these are the energetic things that most people don't just really don't think about, but are really important. The energy is actually what's controlling everything else. So use these tips to keep your environment clean, to keep your body moving and to keep your breath moving.  If you just do these things, you will definitely see a shift and then you can get more resources and take some other steps. Nick

A promo of a new podcast coming December 9, Hosted by Nicki T and Crystal. Frank's Little Beauties, a Paddy's Pub PodcastDiscussing episodes and topics!

This episode is the first episode in our series called The Getting Unstuck Series. In this episode we're going to be talking about the in-between stuck. 2:28 Stuck Stuck: unable to move or set in a particular position, place or way of thinking. It's a frustrating feeling, a frustrating energy, and a frustrating mindset. KISMA It’s a frustrating circumstance all the way around. Nick It does not go well with creating success or prosperity. KISMA 6:28 The In-Between Being specific about where you're stuck is the number one step for getting unstuck. If you have an idea of what you want to have happen and an idea around where you're getting hung up, then you can have a much better conversation with yourself about getting unstuck. Which is what we want to talk about now and just kicking it off really with the dreaded in-between. Nick The in-between means you’re not in the past and you're also not creating or manifesting what you really want.  KISMA It’s an in-between dimension and essentially what the in-between is, is indecision.  Nick 14:47 Signs You are Stuck in the Middle I want to talk about a couple of signs that will show that you are stuck in the middle.  Number one is going to be energy fatigue and then with that will come a neglect of how you manage your life. You'll start doing things to exit your life and not pay attention because it's so uncomfortable being stuck in between. KISMA Also look for the areas where your decision-making in general gets kind of lazy. You want to look for where habitual patterns of not supporting yourself are starting to show up. Nick 17:31 Start with Changing One Thing So Nick, how do you coach people out of this? KISMA Well, it's actually more simple than you think. The first thing that I like to do with people is just get them out of their heads, like stop thinking so much about all this so that we can make a clearer path forward. And what is really effective is actually just choosing one area, even if it's a small thing that you really want to see movement around and just focus on that. Let that be the one thing that you're really diligent with. Nick So basically we're talking about changing something, starting with one thing and really dedicating yourself.  Once you get through a 48 hour period, things start to shift and you've got to focus on those things that do shift to give you the confidence to keep going.  KISMA

In this week’s episode we're continuing the series, Moving from Chaos to Calm. And today we’re focusing on what's going on inside you. 2:17 The World Is A Mirror If you want to create calm, we have to look at what's going on inside of you. You've probably heard the teaching of the world is a mirror of what's going on inside. You work on your internal and the external does recreate. When we're willing to examine, to be present, and ask “Okay, what the heck is happening inside of me that I can alter, that I can change, that I can amplify or not amplify to change. What's going on around me?”, you're in control. KISMA 4:09 Choosing For Yourself We're going to talk about what are often referred to as the three R’s; how you receive something, how you react and then how you respond.  There's so much information around you all the time. There's a lot coming at us. It's  all not bad. It's just stuff.  So when we look at how we are receiving things- how do we receive things from the news? How do we receive something from our partner or a client or our children? In what ways is it coming in? KISMA It's coming in through all of your senses. It's what you see. It's what you hear. It's the energy that you experience, and all of these different things.  So there is a decision of what and who we surround ourselves with. What is the quality of the people? Are they bright, shiny, sparkling people who are really motivated to go do amazing things in the world? Or are they people who are very committed to being stuck in problems? What do you choose to surround yourself with?  Nick 7:00 Internal Reaction It’s important that to the best of your ability, you're choosing the highest for yourself. It makes a world of difference. Nick It really does because there's an internal reaction that happens after you receive the information. And that internal reaction is going to be part of what you take on and how thick, heavy, joyful, or wonderful it is. KISMA 9:10 Continues To Create Calm The whole point of noticing what the reaction going on internally is when you receive and how to guide those emotions that might be lower vibe to a higher emotional state is so that when you reach the third R, which is respond, you're responding in a way that continues to create calm, or at least isn't triggered and doesn't blow things up.  The key is that when information comes in, and the reaction internally is like, “Oh, this doesn't feel good.”, you take a moment. You notice it. Then you use your intellect, so that your response is on par with what you want to have happen down the road.  KISMA 13:09 There Is A Point To Let Go I want to talk about a really important aspect of each one of these. There is a point to let go, and this is key.  In the receiving part, there's a let go about what you can influence in your environment at that given moment. Let go of trying to make it any different and let go of the manipulation or whatever it is that you're trying to do to control or change the situation.  Letting go allows you to react and respond more cleanly and clearly, and more in line with what you actually want to experience in your life.  Nick 17:15  So this series is brought to you by my audio series that is now available called .  Until next week, much love and namaste. KISMA

Episode Notes [“Don’t Tell Me Your Major Theme” By Malena Ramnath] Malena: Hey, guys, my name is Malena Ramnath. Hannah: And I'm Hannah Fredly. Malena: And we are your hosts and freshmen here at Northwestern. This is Don't Tell Me Your Major an interview podcast where we avoid getting to know people on the surface level with questions like what their major is, where they're from, and how old they are, but try to get to know them on a more profound level. That's how you really know the kind of person someone is rather than judging them based on pre–established stereotypes. So we're here today in the thick of the Coronavirus quarantine, currently hosting this podcast over zoom, which is definitely weird but we're all very excited to be able to continue this despite the distance. And unfortunately, Alison couldn't join us today because she's in Seoul, Korea, and those time zones are insane. So today we're here with Hannah. Also on today's podcast is the one and only Nick, please say your last name for me, Nick. Nick: Schoenbrodt. Malena: Okay. And he is another Northwestern student with an impossible last name. And he just said hi. So we're super– Nick: Yeah, you're doing great. Malena: We're super excited to have you as today's guest. So where is everyone currently? I'm in DC. Hannah, where are you? Hannah: I'm currently in France. Nick: Oh, I am in New Jersey, the opposite of France. Malena: Um great. And so I figured since we're all stuck inside our questions today will be themed around being stuck. So without further ado, I figured we’d get started. Um, so Nick, what is your favorite stuck inside hobby now that we're in quarantine? Nick: Um, God, that's a good question. I have been doing almost nothing. But I got a new laptop. So I'm trying to get into music production a little bit which is fun, but also difficult when it's like the only thing there is to do and I don't have anything to like take a break from it with I guess, but that's what I've been doing. Mostly it's happening slowly. Malena: Damn, music production. Hannah, what are you doing now that you're stuck in bed? What are your hobbies that you've picked up to stay productive? Hannah: Um, well technically we're out of quarantine. So, ha. Malena: I hate you. Hannah: But, um, otherwise, something really fun to do is those like, workout videos that are like dance and workout at the same time. That's really fun. Nick: And that's on jazzercise. Malena: Well yeah, I mean, those two are like, generally more productive than me. I mean, I've been, I guess one of my hobbies– Oh, I'm learning Italian on Duolingo! You guys ready? Io no sono un ragazzo. Which means “I'm not a boy”. You know, and that's pretty much all I know how to say. Nick: That’s good. That’s gonna really come in handy I feel like. Malena: You know if anyone mistakes, you know, me for a little boy. You never know. Italians these days. Nick: That’s true. Hannah: Have you been keeping up with Duolingo? Malena: Yeah, the owl is really aggressive dude. It's always like: “You have one hour to save your streak! You're so lazy, it takes five minutes!” Nick: He, he yelled at me for not knowing my Greek alphabet and I think I, all I had done is like put Greek in a language I was like kind of interested in, in the app and he was like, like learn your alphabet, learn your alphabet! Hannah: He, as in the owl. Nick: Yeah, yes, he as in the owl, my, my good friend, the Duolingo owl. Malena: Evil demon that haunts my dreams, alright. Um, but okay, so moving on to our next question. What is the one movie you would watch if you were stuck with one for the rest of your life? Nick, your thoughts? Nick: Oh, no. These, I can't answer these questions without pulling up my like, letterbox like and looking at the movies I've seen. The Princess Bride is great. Just because it's fun, but like, I don't know, maybe like Whiplash if I want to like be stressed for the rest of my life. I don’t know. Malena: I mean, that would also push you to be ridiculously productive. Just like watching Whiplash and like, you know, striving– Nick: Cause watching, cause watching a two hour movie is the most productive thing you can do. Malena: This is, this is fact. Hannah, what about you? What are you thinking for your stuck-on-an-island with the rest of your like that for the rest of your life movie? Hannah: Um, how about Shutter Island? On the island? Nick: That's not good. That's not gonna stress you out. Malena: Shutter Island– brooooo. I watched that, we watched that on a really big like movie screen that we found and that it really freaked me out just like on the big screen. Leo DiCaprio killing you know, oh, spoilers. Sorry. You know, terrifying. Nick: Bleep it out in post you know. Malena: Yeah. For me, I think my desert island– I mean Princess Bride is a big classic. I love Call Me By Your Name. It's so calming. Just watching like handsome people run around northern Italy. We love to see it. We love to see it. Um, okay. And then my third question is, if you could be stuck anywhere in the world for quarantine, where would it be, like besides where you are right now? I'm sure you're very happy in New Jersey, Nick. So not to hate on New Jersey. Nick: Yeah, of course – it's it's great here. Malena: If you could be stuck anywhere else for quarantine where would you be stuck? Nick: So I am if my if we are remote fall quarter which, don’t talk to me about it cause it's not gonna happen and I won't let it happen. I think I'm planning to go – which is where I would go – to my cousin's beach house in California. And just like, it's like on a mountainside overlooking the ocean and just like sit in the backyard and take zoom classes outside for the entire quarter. That's the plan. Malena: That sounds like heaven. I'm jealous. Do you go there often? Nick: No, like, once every two years – Malena: And how old is your cousin that he has his own beach house? Nick: It's like my family like my, I guess it's my aunt’s and uncle’s. But I mean, he's like 22, 21, I don’t know. He's graduating this year, which is awful. But yeah. Malena: Hannah, what about you? I mean, France is a pretty great place to be stuck. So if you could be stuck elsewhere… Hannah: I'd be in Asia, dude in Asia. They are out of quarantine, people are just out, out and about. They’re partying, they've confined it more or less pretty well. They're just having the time of their lives. Anywhere in Asia. Malena: That's fair. That's fair. I do miss Singapore. Is still under circuit breaker. But our friends definitely out in Korea – shout out to Allison – are having the time of their lives as compared to the good old US of A. I'm quite jealous. Hannah: Florida’s having a good time. They don't give a fuck! Malena: No, it's okay. Hannah: You’re gonna have to bleep that. You’re gonna have to bleep it. Malena: No, you can swear– Hannah: I’m sorry, I'm giving you much more work than it had to be. Woops Malena: No, we can swear on this podcast– Nick: Malena is a dutiful editor. Malena: All right, and then I think that for me, I don't know, I'm definitely going through a very Greek phase. I'm reading Zorba the Greek, I was making Greek food, I have way too many Greek friends. And they're all sending me like videos from Athens of like the sunsets around their house. And I'm very jealous. So I think, probably Greece– just literally anywhere in Europe – because I feel like it's just stunning views. You know, like for me, I mean, I do get to see the Washington Monument from my apartment, but otherwise, Nick: Okay, flex. Malena: Not many, like you know, seaside views, in comparison, so I think anywhere in Europe with a seaside view would be my answer. All right, guys. And so for our final question for the day, this is you know, a little bit more personal, a little bit more difficult to answer. But if you could be stuck with anyone who you are not currently with right now in quarantine, who would you be stuck with and why? Nick: Like a someone that that listens to the podcast would not know who they are? Malena: I mean, it doesn't matter, you could give a shoutout to anyone. Nick: I mean, I mean, this is, you guys know who this is but other people wouldn't. It would be probably be Asteris or Artie. Malena: And for what reason would these two mystery men, who our listeners have no idea who they are? Nick: Well, because they they brighten up my day with their with their beautiful faces but also because, I don’t know, it'll just be fun to chill with them. I guess. Like it's a boring answer, but it's true. Like they're, they're people I just hang out with and I'm not getting that right now, not getting my fix right now. So, you know, getting, getting that fix. Malena: Yeah, I think the two of them have a very good sarcastic sense of humor that I think is generally lacking in most other people. Nick: Yeah. Malena: So. Nick: Yeah, and especially lacking in no social interaction at all, so. Hannah: Very true. Malena: Hannah, what about you? Hannah: I'd be stuck with you. Malena. I just blew you a kiss. I love you. Nick: That's a mistake. Malena: I know you miss me. Hannah: That was my declaration of love. Malena: I know you, Nick, we could be reading together. Fun fact. Nick is a major book nerd. Nick: Yeah but I haven’t read all quarantine. I’m – it’s a shame. Malena: I know. But– Nick: I have some things in the mail. It's coming. I'm going to force you to read it. Malena: I like that's, I mean, I'm always down to read more. That's definitely one hobby that I've picked up more is I've been reading a lot since I've been back. But, um, for me, who would I be stuck with? I mean, besides you, Hannah. Obviously, love of my whole life. Um, my heart is warmed by that answer. I don’t know, that's a tough one. I think– Hannah: It's fine. Go ahead, choose someone else but me. That's fine. Malena: No no it’s because I'm trying to think– Hannah: It’s fine. Malena: –of someone else but Hannah: I see how it is. Malena: –you but unfortunately, you're the only person I spend my time with. Nick: Ah, thanks, thanks, Malena I thought we were friends. I thought we were friends. Hannah: You’re digging yourself a hole right now. Malena: Oh, you know what, I really can't think of anyone else cuz then I would say like Asteris, but Nick already said it. Nick: We could all spend our time with Asteris. Malena: I know, but we're like just trying to – fun fact: Asteris lives in Athens, not to expose him, but you know, if I could be stuck with him right now – big life goals. Nick: Also I think he's still in quarantine though. Malena: Soon, soon they'll be out though. Europe's on its way as Hannah mentioned. You know if I could go out on a limb here, I’d probably say Timothee Chalamet. I've been having a major– Hannah: Okay here's another thing, I feel like Timothee Chalamet became so much more famous over quarantine. Malena: Yeah, it’s because everybody’s stuck inside and they have nothing to do but stare at celebrities. So yeah. Well, alright guys, thank you so much. Actually, that's perfect. We've just hit 13 minutes. And so we're going to end our podcast here. Thank you so much, Nick for being our guest, keeping us entertained during quarantine. Nick: Yeah, of course. Malena: Giving your opinions on things. It was so nice to get to know you. And this has been another successful podcast from NBN audio. Hannah say bye! Hannah: Bye-bye! Malena: Bye, gang. Nick: Peace. Malena: See you later, on our next podcast, which will hopefully be out soon. Bye! [“Don’t Tell Me Your Major Theme” By Malena Ramnath]

In today’s episode we are talking about anger, specifically How to Deal With Anger. 1:07 Important to Discuss This is a really interesting topic and oddly one of my favorite topics to talk about. Nick I'm just gonna launch right into why I think it's an important thing to discuss. There's a lot of anger right now. We're recording this, hopefully towards the end of a pandemic, yet we are seeing the results of the stress and the struggle and misinformation and just all sorts of things. There's a lot of anger and anger is a powerful emotion. I think that anger can really fuel a cause and fuel the action. However, when anger is misused and it's held on to, it becomes detrimental to one's health and it is the opposite of healing energy that will really get us to the other side of this and any challenge quickly. KISMA2:25 It’s a Natural Human Emotion Yeah, I totally agree. It is a natural human emotion. Nick It is a natural human emotion and we're not here to make anger wrong.  And I'm certainly not here to say, if someone has hurt you or abused you or whatever, to not be angry. No. Be angry. It's an emotion. KISMA It's really important to be clear that we're not saying don't have the emotion or stuff it, but what we're saying is let’s talk about it because it's important.  Nick And manage it and direct. KISMA And if you are angry, it's really about learning how to resolve it, and do what you need to do with it. Put it to good use. Nick 4:13 Anger is an Indicator So anger is an indicator that you want something and that desire is being obstructed. You want something and you're not having it. So right off the bat, that will first become frustration. You'll get frustrated about things. Now, the more that the frustration builds, you'll either start lashing out, like anger is that energy that really lashes out. And then when it lashes out over a longer period in a more ferocious way, it becomes rage. But it starts with frustration and usually what happens is the frustrations get ignored and then it gets stuffed and then it blows. So I think a lot of times anger starts just by not listening to ourselves and what we really want. Nick 7:49 Suggestions to Move into a Solution So to help our listeners, if someone is feeling anger from an energetic perspective, what are suggestions in order to move from anger into a solution? KISMA Everybody has their own way. But one of the best things that you can do is just move your body.  Any kind of movement, go for a run, do some yoga.  Nick One thing that I recommend is, you know, psychologists have done great studies. And I never used to journal. But now I'll take pen to paper and just start writing. It’s a great way to just start to release and undo. You don't even have to read it. It's just from head to your pen to your paper and write. KISMA 12:02 The Ultimate Healing State So then another piece that's extremely helpful is forgiveness. I mean the ultimate healing state is to forgive. If you need help with that has a pod of meditations and there is one there on letting go and then there's a healing one. KISMA 21:53 Life is Short The final piece for me is that we know life is short, let's not waste it on blowing up ourselves or other people.  Instead let's use and direct the emotions with wisdom and intellect because they're way more powerful that way. KISMA So, that's my illuminated thought for the day is that every little bit of your life is precious. Don’t waste it. Nick

Today's episode is called The Chaos Buster. We're going to bust through and resolve chaos in our lives. 1:01 It is 2020 We're recording this and I don't know what month or day it is. KISMA We know it's 2020 and it's weird. Nick It's 2020. The year that was supposed to be so great, and we're still opting for great. Just the chaos got thrown out, and it is super weird.  KISMA 1:14 What You Can Do I do want to give a shout out. It's very important to give a shout out to all of our frontline people. Our medical workers, our healers, our police officers, our firefighters. Anybody out there doing what you're doing. Thank you. And I pray and meditate for this planet every single day. I think it's important to send that loving energy their way whenever we can. KISMA Super deep appreciation, really profound. Nick It is profound. And I know we're trying to keep things focused and light and prosperous here. And I also want sensitivity. I know my students are out there praying and meditating for the planet, but if you're ever wondering if there's something you can do, the prayer meditation works. KISMA 2:38 Chaos In Your Life Well speaking of prosperity, I don't know of too many bigger prosperity killers than chaos. Nick It is a big one. It goes against divine order. KISMA Chaos is in the inside and it's just like all of a sudden that's when in prosperity and money it's like your money just disappears, and you’re wondering what happened to all of it. That's when you know you've got some chaos in your life. Nick 3:06 We Often Create Chaos Believe it or not everyone, we often choose to create chaos because we're in fear, and if we're in fear we'll go into doubt and into confusion. And confusion is a quick zip-up to chaos. And some people will create chaos in order to create order again. And when the chaos is happening, it's like it throws spaghetti all over the walls, it throws your energy all over the walls, it throws your energy everywhere and you get lost in it. And whatever vision, whatever focus is deterred, is diminished because everything is in a swirl. KISMA That's right. So I'm just going to dive right in with tip number one. Be open to the idea that you have created chaos. Nick Well, here's the really cool thing about it. If you created it, guess what else you can do. You can solve it.  KISMA 12:03 We Can Exist In Order What tips do you have for when you're in chaos that appears to be not directly created by yourself? KISMA So we're living within a context of chaos, of a chaotic situation. That doesn't necessarily mean that we have to live in chaos. We're living in the context of that.  But you don't have to live in a chaotic way in your life, and that's where a lot of people get turned upside down because they're like, “well this is just going on all around me.” So they get swept into that collective and it's like, no, no, that can be happening there and you can be existing within order in that. It's understanding that we can exist in order and have that in our lives no matter what's going on around us. Nick 17:53 Creating Order Internally is really where it starts. What's happening inside is happening outside. Nick  Absolutely. I think it starts inside. I do, but also as we create order externally, it creates some order internally because we're in the act of creating order.  KISMA 28:10 Seek The Order So my illuminated thought for today is where there is chaos, there is order. So seek the order. KISMA

In this week’s episode, Our Life in Lockdown, Nick and I talk about our life during quarantine. 1:08 Quarantined I want to start this episode by saying we are not making light of the situation of COVID-19. But, maybe we're going to make a little bit of light about being quarantined. KISMA Yeah, it's freaking weird. I mean let's just call it what it is. This is a really weird time. Nick I'll just share, my life hasn't changed that much because I work from home or the office anyways. So it's been a full on schedule for me at work and even more so because I've really wanted to make sure all of my clients and students are doing okay and they're just amazing. They're just showing up so beautifully.  KISMA 2:47 Things aren’t the same But I think it was this week that I started to notice the things that aren't the same. Like, “Hey, I want to take a drive and get a cup of coffee at Phil's.” Oh, that's not going to happen.  And it's not like we're feeling sorry for ourselves. It's just noticing all the times where I want the pattern interrupt and it isn't there to take. KISMA I went for a drive last week. Oh, it was the best. I don't even know if I'm supposed to do that. Nick It was needed for mental health. KISMA I think it really was. Nick 06:29 Being More Present The cool things are being more present to really simple things that are so easy to brush off like our balconies, just opening the door and walking out, and noticing the moon or the morning or the fresh air, and that makes a difference for me. Of course you've been cooking so I'm super lucky. Nick is cooking like a mad man. Mostly vegan. But, where are some of the recipes coming from? KISMA A lot of them are coming from They're really good. They have two books. I highly recommend them. Their recipes themselves are hilarious to read, and the recipes are really good, so highly recommended.They're all very simple too, very easy.  Nick 10:11 Intense Energy  And you know, when you walk in the store, everybody's really focused, they're doing their thing, they're trying to keep their distance. I've noticed that people are trying to honor that. And there’s a kind of intense energy. Nick Yeah, it's intense. We like to do our weekly run together and everyone is being so great. Well, well-behaved. Everyone really is, but you can feel the sort of anxiety of, “I gotta get in and get out. Is there going to be enough?” The worry, the fear, it's so strong. You've heard us all talk about cutting cords, and it's really important to cut cords. When you leave the store, cut cords. On your day of shopping, have a salt bath later. No one's trying to put stuff on you. It's just happening. KISMA Yeah, it's just humans being humans. Nick 12:05 The Way We Approach It I've said this before and I'll continue to say it, the way that we approach it through prayer, through meditation, through our own light, I just refuse to believe that we won't make a difference. So it's really important to do whatever work you do. Say a prayer for the planet. Say a prayer for our leaders. Say a prayer. Meditate on so much love and light and power going to yourself, your family, your loved ones, medical professionals. Just take time every day to really send that kind of energy because even when one of us does it, it makes a difference, so we can imagine what happens when everyone does it. KISMA That's been a big part for me is making sure I'm very diligent with my time for meditations. There's an energetic process behind it that supports it to make it effective and productive. Nick 17:01 This Too Shall Pass Well I have an illuminated thought for today. This one we have probably said before, but this too shall pass. It really will. And one of the things I keep checking in with me is don't miss it. As rough as this is for some people, there's a golden nugget. There's something to take hold of and make your own. Maybe some space you've been craving, whatever it is, like grab it, you deserve it. KISMA 17:39 Part of a Historical Time Yeah, I don't want to say that I'm enjoying this necessarily. It's very strange, but also, there's a part of me that recognizes it's a very unique point in our history and this is something that not everybody will experience in a lifetime, and I don't want to miss it. I don't want to just get in and do all the same stuff I always do. I want to be a part of it. Like I want to be really present. Nick So we'll leave everyone with this. What can you do to really remind yourself you are part of a historical time?  KISMA

Nicki T. from the Strictly Homicide podcast joins Jeff, Micheal, Jesse, Dan, and Chef Bagels as they discuss the 2013 retelling of the West Memphis Three story, "Devil's Knot"!

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 week’s episode, Real Men Know Healing, we have a special guest. Well sort of. We're bringing in the Mystic Next Door to discuss the topic of what healing really is. 1:46 K.N.O.W. Healing This is something I know Nick, you've been working with men in your business as a healer coach and you know the topic is real men know healing, like K.N.O.W. They know healing. And  this is an interesting topic so I want to start it because it's really me asking you questions to share with our listeners. What is healing really? KISMA 2:09 Real Men Well before we address that, I want to talk about the real men part because it's sort of a play. I want everybody to know who's listening to this, I'm not the real man kinda guy. I'm just not. There’s always the idea that real men do this and real men do that. And that’s actually where a lot of really limiting kind of ideas about what it is to be a man come from. Real men don't cry. Men don't show their emotions. Men do this. Men don't do that. And it's limiting. The real men thing, real men know healing. Healing plays an integral role in everybody's life. Men tend to relate to that a little bit differently than women do. And it's not something that I've seen that's talked about a ton. So when we say real men know healing, it's a little bit of a play on words to kind of come into the conversation. Nick 3:19 Path of Mastery Any man who calls himself a real man, and this is something I really do believe, is on his path of mastery. Nick That's great. I love that. Just as a real woman is on her path to mastery. KISMA Absolutely. And healing is absolutely an integral part of that path of mastery in so many ways. Nick 3:51 Why Healing So back to your question, why healing or what is this all about? I think there's a lot of different reasons for healing. The obvious reasons are definitely, I'm in pain, I own physical pain or emotional pain or mental, certainly physical pain, or you're having illness or something like that. Your body needs to heal, your mind and your emotions. Nick I want to just insert here. I think it is important that healing, emotional pain and mental pain is so important because it's the pain that we tend to stuff down or suppress or override or kind of, I have to get through my day even though I'm really hurting about something and then that hurt gets pushed down and there's just ways to work through that and heal that. KISMA 4:33 Unseen Scars That's right. It's that set thing. It's like so many things that just aren't seen in our world with the naked eye. It's just really easy to ignore. But those unseen scars are actually incredibly powerful in the ways that they inform and guide our lives.Somebody with trauma relates to the world in a very, very different way. Then as a result of that, they make different choices, which may or may not help them on their journey. It can be very limiting. It can also really push a person to do different things, but healing it regardless and being free from that, is the path of mastery, freedom. So those are some of the obvious ways. The not so obvious ways are those hidden limiting beliefs, and those hidden patterns that maybe we grew up with. Nick 5:49 Indicators for Healing  Those are all more subtle indicators that some sort of healing is necessary. If you're having a repeating pattern, like we just finished a series on the big leap, which is dealing so much with self sabotage. Well when you're seeing patterns like that in your life, that's an indicator that something in you needs to be healed, really healed and resolved. Resolved is the best word to really think about that. Nick 6:15 Resolution and Completion The true healing is a resolution. It's a completion of that limiting belief. It's a completion of that self criticism or hatred or doubt or all of that that is not in line with being a divine human being. So I think at this stage, and we can talk about that healing, it's like let's get back to our alignment with being a divine perfect being. And I know you talk about that a lot. Where we are, we start perfect, and somewhere along the way we've convinced ourselves that we're not perfect. KISMA 6:44 Healing allows us to be Human Yeah. Either the world has told us that and we bought into it, or we've decided that for ourselves in some way. It's this constant striving to be perfect, to do better, be better, to improve ourselves or something. And there's very little space to just let ourselves be human. Healing is something that allows for that. Nick It really does. It cleanses away and removes the webs that are not true, that congestion, that isn't true. The lenses that aren't true, but over time, we humans do a great job of accessing them and they get stickier. And before we know it, we're seeing through a filter that distorts our reality, and how we see ourselves. It's an interesting filter. We'll see out through it and we'll see ourselves through that filter. KISMA 7:35 Men will dig in Typically men are not encouraged to talk about those sorts of things. It's too woo. It's kind of like you wouldn't talk. Guys will razz each other about it and things like that. You know, it's a different kind of a thing. The guys, they'll give each other a hard time. They might tease each other about things like this. But when the chips are down and you've got a brother by your side, that person will be there for you. Men will dig in in a way that is really, really powerful. Nick 9:11 Deal with your Emotions I think we have this idea that we're supposed to be able to not be emotional about it, you know, don't get emotional about it, which I think there's value to that teaching, but at the same time you're having emotions, man. You have to deal with your emotions. Nick 12:14 Dealing with human stuff When we're working with people and really dealing with those things, I think there's something to be said for just having a really strong space being held for you that is absolutely unshakable. People have told me some wild, wild things about their lives and what they've been through. And that's my commitment is nothing that anybody says is going to shake me. We're dealing with you as a human being and all the human stuff that you bring with it and we're going to solve it. Nick 12:44 Going Through the work What are some of the beautiful after effects of going through work with you? What have you noticed with people in terms of either their relationships or their health or their money? KISMA Health-wise, I have worked with some pretty unique cases across the board. You know, people just feel so much better. Other people have been dealing with a lot of mental and emotional things, but that manifest in the form of severe fatigue and headaches and just really all those kinds of things. And on the other side of that, you know, if you think about what it's like to live in that, on the other side of that is a very, very different experience from life. So, you take the pain out of your life and what's possible for you now. Nick 17:07 It’s Different for Everyone It looks different for each man. The defining characteristic is somebody who's willing to take a look at themselves and change something within themselves when there is a problem. Somebody who's willing to say, yeah, I'll work on that, you know, not just to make you happy necessarily. Although that's nice. It's nice to have harmony in a relationship but really to do it just because it's showing up for a reason and there's something there to be healed, to be looked at, to be examined and changed. Nick I think it's fair to say for each and every human, it's so important for us to not put our stuff on someone else and be like, if you're doing the work, it's going to look like this because this is how it looked on me. We're all unique and we're all going to be going through something in our own way, and to be able to respect that and welcome it, I think is really divine. KISMA 25:53 Healing is a part of The Path of Mastery The illuminated thought for the day is if you're on your path of mastery, then healing is absolutely 100% a part of that path. Nick

In this week’s episode, The Big Leap, Part 3 we are continuing the journey with by Gay Hendricks and we are talking about the methods of self sabotage.  01:31 The Ultimate Life Tool I've been thinking a little bit about that zone of genius (as we have been discussing in this current series) and just how instructive can be for that. I was thinking about it for myself actually, and I was like, wow, you know, it really shows you so much of how you're built and what your natural styles are. And what I've noticed about that is everybody will have access to several different styles. But what's unique about it is you won't ever be in two styles at once. Nick 02:58 Upper Limiting So we're going to roll through these and just talk about them. It’s not an exhaustive list, but this is going to give some really good indicators of where to look when they start showing up. First one, worry. Worrying is usually a sign that we're upper limiting. It is usually not a sign that we're thinking about something useful. The crucial sign that we're worrying unnecessarily is when we're worrying about something that we have no control over. Nick  03:53 Worry is an Active State There are times you are gonna have a little worry about life. But also the thing I want everyone to get is that worry is such an active state. KISMA 06:14 There is Something You Can Do Well that is something to be said. Is there something that you can do when you're worried about people or worried about what's going to happen to them? Nick You can pray, you can meditate, you can do and then you have to get out of your worry. KISMA 08:33 Criticism and Blame The next one we've talked about a lot on this show, criticism and blame. Nick Get off the blame train. KISMA 10:50 A Receiving Problem The next one he talks about here is deflecting. This is an interesting one. Most of us crimp the flow of positive energy by avoiding it all together. The mechanism we use is what I call deflection. It's so common. We almost take it for granted in human life. Nick It’s a receiving problem. KISMA 14:23 A Cry for More Sometimes I think the deflecting is a cry for more compliments. It's like “Oh no, it wasn't that good” because we actually want to be fed more. KISMA You know that's an interesting thing that you pointed out, like you want more, but the whole reason you want more is because you're not letting it in. Nick 14:47 Genius Takes a backseat Oh, the next one. You're going to love this one. Squabbling. Arguments are one of the most common ways of bringing yourself down. When you've hit your upper limit, when things are going well, you can crimp the flow of positive energy quickly by starting a conflict, then the conflict develops a life of its own.The net effect, you drop back down into your zone of competence or zone of excellence. Genius takes a backseat. Nick 15:28 All of these are Distractions I feel like all of these are distractions because right in front of you is a big leap. And that big leap can be scary. It can be the first unknown. It can be the place where people start judging you or talking or raving about you. But somewhere it's like, ah, I'm not sure, so I'm going to get distracted and start doing these weird things. KISMA 25:26 Receiving We have so many tools Nick mentioned such as and   KISMA Which leads me to my illuminated thought, which I said it earlier, release to receive, but we have to be aware in order to release. And then there's room for receptivity. And in this point, this is receiving your zone of genius. KISMA 27:09 Tune in Next Week Next week we will be bringing a number four in the series, which is going to be a mind bender. KISMA Yeah, it's one that we felt was really important because it's a conversation that people are always having around time and it's a very interesting take on how to work with time. Nick

Today is part 5 of our social security series and we will focus on the survivor benefit option. We will talk about a few situations that can arise and share a couple of client stories that have revolved around this topic.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comTranscript of Today's Show:----more----Speaker 1: Back here with us for another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined, the podcast with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. Gentlemen, how's it going? Nick, how are you today, my friend?Nick: Doing pretty well. How about yourself?Speaker 1: I'm hanging in there. Not doing too bad. We are into December. Moving along nicely on this. John, how are you doing? You doing all right?John: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. No complaints. It's a getting a little cooler here in Florida, which is nice. It's been been hot, so it's nice to get a little a cool, no more humidity.Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Now, as planners, you guys plan a lot of things, but are you the same way when it comes to holiday shopping? Have you kind of gotten some of this knocked out? We're at about the middle of the month here now in December. So you guys ready to roll for Christmas or are you last minute?John: I'll take that one first. No, I do a lot of Amazon shopping [crosstalk 00:00:49].Speaker 1: Me and you both. But how about you, Nick?Nick: Anything I can do to avoid going to a store, I do, so the majority of my shopping [crosstalk 00:00:59].Speaker 1: I think so many of us are that way, right, which obviously we can see in the death of brick and mortar, for sure. But yeah, absolutely. I agree with you there. Well, hopefully, folks, you're out there getting your shopping done. Maybe you're checking out this podcast while you're driving around doing some shopping or walking around in the malls or whatever the case might be. That is kind of the beauty of podcasting. It's not like traditional radio obviously, so you have more options, and hopefully you're subscribed to the podcast Retirement Planning Redefined. Do it at Apple, Google or Spotify, and a couple others as well, and you can find the links if you want, and podcast episodes on their website at PFGPrivateWealth.com. That's PFGPrivateWealth.com.Speaker 1: All right, part five. I think this is going to probably wrap it up, too, for our series on social security. We're going to talk about survivor benefits. Guys, give us some things to think about here. Survivor benefits are available to children and surviving spouses, correct?John: Yeah, so it is available to children and surviving spouses. For today's session, we're going to focus more on surviving spouses because that comes into play more when we're doing retirement planning.Speaker 1: Okay.John: So we always like to actually joke around with the survivor benefit. Not many people are aware, but they get a nice $255 lump sum death benefit if the spouse were to pass away.Nick: Obviously has not been adjusted for inflation.Speaker 1: Yeah, no, that doesn't cover much of anything, does it?John: No, no it doesn't. But they do get a monthly benefit as survivor and when it comes to planning, that does help out quite a bit when we're talking about strategies and trying to figure out a plan for a survivor. Kind of some rules that go with that. A survivor can actually start drawing social security at age 60 versus 62, which is kind of the normal first spouse, which we discussed last week.Nick: It is important to note that as a reminder, even though they're eligible to draw at 60, there are still the income tests from the standpoint of reductions. So if that person is working, then it may not make a whole lot of sense to get that early.John: Yeah. What Nick's referencing, we talked about the earnings penalty if you start taking social security before your full retirement age. That does still apply age 60, so if you're still working, most likely that will wipe out any social security benefit you're going to get as a survivor.John: Some other things to consider, and I'll kind of give some examples of this. Survivor benefit is not available if someone remarries before age 60, okay, unless of course that marriage ends. So we've had situations where we were planning for clients and we were talking about doing some survivor strategies and they actually ... Let's just give an example. They were 57 and were considering getting married and actually deferred their marriage until age 61 to be safe, which I don't think the spouse is too happy with us on that because it deferred the marriage, but it made sense because we actually get some pretty easy strategies, which we'll talk about later, to maximize the social security.Nick: For the widow to the eligible for those survivor benefits, they had to have been married for at least nine months. There's a caveat to that where the death was an accident, that could come into play. So essentially, that's pretty lenient, but it is important to understand the nine month rule as well.John: Yeah. And we stress a lot on just understanding what your situation is. Just kind of give you an example of that, I had a client that thought she's eligible for social security because she was married, but he passed away when they were within eight months of marriage. And she was shocked [inaudible 00:04:23] the whole time, let's say the last seven years, she was planning on it and then didn't qualify for it. So it was shocking, and unfortunately for her, she was hitting 62 so it made a big difference to her overall plan.Speaker 1: Gotcha. Okay. So good information there. Surviving spouse's benefit is based on what?Nick: So essentially kind of the caveat to this is whether or not people have been collecting. So if both spouses are receiving their benefits and there is death, then the surviving spouse receives the higher of the two.John: Not both.Nick: Correct. Not both, which some people will be surprised about how that works. But it's important to understand that they receive the higher of the two, not both. And one of the big factors that gets calculated into the firm calculation of the amount of money that the widow will receive takes into account when the deceased spouse originally claimed their benefit. And it gets a little bit confusing, quite frankly, for most people, but it factors in essentially whether or not they took it before or after their full retirement age. So John will walk us through an example on that. But it is important to understand how this works.John: Yeah. Again, we like to do everything in the realm of planning. So this is where doing the social security maximization strategy is very important. Social security is a big part of someone's retirement income. So you want to make sure that you're making the best decisions available to you, because the last thing you is to look back 10 years ago, it's like, "Oh, I wish I did this. I could have had X amount of dollars or really been enjoying my [inaudible 00:06:05] a little bit more."John: So just going to touch on an example of that. We'll call them Jack and Jill. We talked about some survivor strategies last week, but let's say Jack's up for retirement benefits, 2,400. Doesn't take it [inaudible 00:06:20] 70. Basically, Jill can jump on and actually take ... Let's increase it to 2,976 increases. That will be her new basically benefit for social security, so she gets a nice increase and that's where we talked about really trying to protect the spouse and giving them more income for life. And if she tries to draw early, let's say she takes it at 62, which anytime you draw early, you get reduction of benefit or a reduction based off of now the higher amount that he deferred, which is a nice little caveat. We have to really do some planning for a spouse.Nick: And one of the things too from a comparison standpoint is when we discuss the spousal benefits and how the spousal benefits do not grow past full retirement age, the death benefits does, or the widow benefit, survivor benefit does grow past [inaudible 00:07:15] age, so another reason why that's really a big factor.John: Yeah. And one thing that we'll always do, if we're incorporating strategies, you always typically want to delay the higher benefit. So if you're looking at an opportunity to take a widow's benefit or my own, rule of thumb, and everyone's different, but rule of thumb is defer the higher ones. I'll give my family as an example. My father-in-law, his wife passed away young and basically age 60, he was able to actually draw her social security benefit at 60, which a reduced amount. Most of his income is from real estate and investment income, so an earnings penalty didn't apply to him. So the plan is he's taking the widow benefit at 60 and he's deferring his, and then at full retirement age, he's going to switch over to his and get his full retirement benefit. So from 60 to 66, he was actually able to get some type of benefit and then at 66, will jump to his own and he gets the full amount.Speaker 1: Yeah. So there's some good strategies, some good things to think about, good information here when we're talking about these survivor benefits. So a couple of final key points or key takeaways, guys, just to think about?John: Things to consider is a reminder that basically when the person passes away, their social security benefits stop. And if the surviving spouse is going to take one, they'll take either their own or the deceased spouse, whatever one's higher, just making sure that it's important to plan and make sure the strategy is best for you based on your situation. Social security ... This is everything, not just survivors ... it's very confusing, and there's a lot of different things you can do, so if you're working with an advisor, just make sure that they have the capabilities to stress test your decisions, to make sure you're making the correct decision based on your situation and not your neighbors or as Nick likes to say, up north, his clients, they've talked to their plumber.Nick: Yeah. Everybody likes to get an opinion from somebody else. We will talk about opinions. But so anyways, I think the biggest kind of overlying thing, and we talk about it a lot, but we can't emphasize it enough, and even when we do overemphasize it, people still ask, but this is not a decision to be made in a vacuum. So many other factors tie into this decision.Nick: And even when we plan ... As an example, I was walking somebody through a plan this week, and they are three or four years out from retirement, and even though we have a strategy set up for social security in the plan on what we plan to do from a baseline standpoint, they asked and I really had to emphasize that realistically this decision doesn't really get made until maybe three, six months before their retirement.Nick: So we may plan for a certain strategy for four or five years, but the importance of planning and updating your plan every single year cannot be understated, because especially with social security, if we're in the midst of a recession, if we're in the midst of a 2008, we're not going to have somebody take a bunch of money out of their nest egg even though over the last five years we planned to do that. We're probably going to have at least one of them take social security, protect the value of the nest egg, give it time to bounce back and then adjust accordingly. The planning is via kind of a living, breathing thing and we always have to adapt and adjust.Speaker 1: Nope, I think that's a great point. We've said that many times here on the podcast that you've got to have a plan and then you have to realize that that plan needs to evolve much like your life's going to. A lot of times we kind of get a collection of things. We have some investments, we have some insurance vehicles, we think about social security. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a pension and you say, "Okay. Well, I've got this collection of things. I'm good to go. I have a retirement plan." No, you have a collection of things. So pulling them all together in a full retirement plan is really important.Speaker 1: That's what John and Nick do every day at PFG Private Wealth, so give them a call if you've got questions or concerns. Get on the calendar at 813-286-7776. That's 813-286-7776. Don't forget to go to the website, PFGPrivateWealth.com. You can always subscribe to the podcast and get new episodes, check out past episodes, things of that nature on Apple or Google or Spotify. So check them out online as well@pfgprivatewealth.com and also share the podcast with folks that you think might benefit from it as well.Speaker 1: This has been Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks so much for staying tuned into the show. John. Nick, thanks for your time, as always. I hope you have a happy and safe holiday and we'll talk actually I think in 2020.Nick: Sounds good.John: All right.Speaker 1: You guys-Nick: Thank you.Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Take care and enjoy the holidays, everybody, and we'll see you next time right here on Retirement Planning Redefined.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Cheryl: So, who are some of the people who are fighting to protect these trees besides you as an environmental scientist?Nick: Well, in Tasmania, the first green political party was developed, so yeah, they obviously want to protect the forests a lot, and have big protests, tie themselves to trees. Sit up in trees to protect the trees.Cheryl: People actually still do that? Tie themselves to trees?Nick: Oh, everyday in Tasmania.Cheryl: Oh, really?Nick: It's a big issue. A very big issue.Cheryl: That's interesting. I once heard of a girl who lived in a tree for a month because she wanted to stop the deforestation company or people from taking down that tree, so she lived up there and she had people bring her supplies but she never came down.Nick: That happens in Tasmania as well. There's people today which are up in trees, maybe up to fifty which permanently live up in trees.Cheryl: Wow!Nick: Yeah, so. I don't know how they do it.Cheryl: That's kind of crazy ... So Nick, from the companies point of view, playing the devil's advocate here, I think they provide jobs for all the people who are working to make trees into paper. What do you think they have to say about that?Nick: Well, it's true, they do provide jobs, and some cities, some small towns do rely on logging industry to provide jobs and support the shops in the place, but ...Cheryl: But!Nick: But! Yeah. So tourism is a very big industry in Tasmania, and maybe the logging industry takes away tourists jobs as well, because it makes certain areas not useful for tourism anymore, not very pretty.Cheryl: Yeah, your right. If the whole forest is missing, I guess nobody would really want to go and look at anything.Nick: Yeah, there're some really beautiful spots in Tasmania which have been many tarnished a little by the logging industry.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Cheryl: So, who are some of the people who are fighting to protect these trees besides you as an environmental scientist?Nick: Well, in Tasmania, the first green political party was developed, so yeah, they obviously want to protect the forests a lot, and have big protests, tie themselves to trees. Sit up in trees to protect the trees.Cheryl: People actually still do that? Tie themselves to trees?Nick: Oh, everyday in Tasmania.Cheryl: Oh, really?Nick: It's a big issue. A very big issue.Cheryl: That's interesting. I once heard of a girl who lived in a tree for a month because she wanted to stop the deforestation company or people from taking down that tree, so she lived up there and she had people bring her supplies but she never came down.Nick: That happens in Tasmania as well. There's people today which are up in trees, maybe up to fifty which permanently live up in trees.Cheryl: Wow!Nick: Yeah, so. I don't know how they do it.Cheryl: That's kind of crazy ... So Nick, from the companies point of view, playing the devil's advocate here, I think they provide jobs for all the people who are working to make trees into paper. What do you think they have to say about that?Nick: Well, it's true, they do provide jobs, and some cities, some small towns do rely on logging industry to provide jobs and support the shops in the place, but ...Cheryl: But!Nick: But! Yeah. So tourism is a very big industry in Tasmania, and maybe the logging industry takes away tourists jobs as well, because it makes certain areas not useful for tourism anymore, not very pretty.Cheryl: Yeah, your right. If the whole forest is missing, I guess nobody would really want to go and look at anything.Nick: Yeah, there're some really beautiful spots in Tasmania which have been many tarnished a little by the logging industry.

更多英语知识，请关注微信公众号:VOA英语每日一听Cheryl: So, who are some of the people who are fighting to protect these trees besides you as an environmental scientist?Nick: Well, in Tasmania, the first green political party was developed, so yeah, they obviously want to protect the forests a lot, and have big protests, tie themselves to trees. Sit up in trees to protect the trees.Cheryl: People actually still do that? Tie themselves to trees?Nick: Oh, everyday in Tasmania.Cheryl: Oh, really?Nick: It's a big issue. A very big issue.Cheryl: That's interesting. I once heard of a girl who lived in a tree for a month because she wanted to stop the deforestation company or people from taking down that tree, so she lived up there and she had people bring her supplies but she never came down.Nick: That happens in Tasmania as well. There's people today which are up in trees, maybe up to fifty which permanently live up in trees.Cheryl: Wow!Nick: Yeah, so. I don't know how they do it.Cheryl: That's kind of crazy ... So Nick, from the companies point of view, playing the devil's advocate here, I think they provide jobs for all the people who are working to make trees into paper. What do you think they have to say about that?Nick: Well, it's true, they do provide jobs, and some cities, some small towns do rely on logging industry to provide jobs and support the shops in the place, but ...Cheryl: But!Nick: But! Yeah. So tourism is a very big industry in Tasmania, and maybe the logging industry takes away tourists jobs as well, because it makes certain areas not useful for tourism anymore, not very pretty.Cheryl: Yeah, your right. If the whole forest is missing, I guess nobody would really want to go and look at anything.Nick: Yeah, there're some really beautiful spots in Tasmania which have been many tarnished a little by the logging industry.

Today's show is part 4 of our social security discussion. Our topic today is spousal benefit options. John and Nick will walk us through the ins and outs of this facet of social security and offer their advice.Helpful Information:PFG Website: https://www.pfgprivatewealth.com/Contact: 813-286-7776Email: info@pfgprivatewealth.comTranscript of Today's Show:----more----Mark: Hey everybody, welcome into another edition of Retirement Planning Redefined. Thanks as always for checking out and tuning into the podcast with John and Nick, financial advisors at PFG Private wealth. Gents, what's going on? John, I'll start with you. How are you buddy?John: I'm doing good. I'm doing good. How are you doing Mark?Mark: I'm hanging in there. How's the little one's doing? I know they, you had some cold running through the house. Everybody getting better?John: They're getting much better, which is good. No more getting coughed in my face a lot less this week, so yeah, that's a good thing.Mark: And Nick, how are you my friend?Nick: Good, good. Looking forward to the holidays coming up here and all kinds of good food.Mark: Oh yeah, yeah. Are you a Thanksgiving kind of guy?Nick: I have become more so after my brother started deep frying turkeys a couple of years ago.Mark: Okay, good. So no YouTube videos of that now, so just be careful. We don't want to see any flying turkeys.Nick: He's got it all under control.Mark: Fantastic. Awesome. Yeah. At the time of this podcast taping it is just about Thanksgiving. It's just about here on us. And so we're going to continue on with our a multi-part series we've been doing about Social Security. So hopefully you've been checking these out and if you have, great, if you have not, make sure you go to the podcast page, you can find it on their website at pfgprivatewealth.com that's P F G private wealth.com and you'll find the podcast page. You can subscribe to it on Apple or Google or Spotify. I think there's other couple of choices there as well.Mark: So make sure you do, a lot of good content that we're discussing. This is a multi-part series all around Social Security and part four here is going to be on Social Security, spousal benefits, not deep frying turkeys that'll come another day, but a Social Security spousal benefits. So guys, let's get into this and just kind of break down some information for us on, I guess, what we're entitled to or how this whole thing kind of works.Nick: Sure. So just kind of a recap on, you know, how eligibility wears for Social Security. Essentially somebody needs to work, you know, for 40 quarters, pay payroll taxes for those 40 quarters and they become eligible for their own benefit. However, you know, one of the common questions that we may get is one spouse stayed at home, one spouse worked. The spouse that stayed at home didn't get their 40 quarters. And they want to know are they eligible for any sort of benefit.Nick: So it's important to understand that, you know, as long as the couple is married, the person that has not qualified for the benefit is eligible for a spousal benefit. And that spousal benefit is essentially calculated by looking at the full retirement amount benefit for the spouse that was working and multiplying by 50%. So, that's the starting line. That's kind of how you understand how they calculate that. And the reason that they did create that was understanding that households, you know, it's not always cut and dry from the standpoint of one spouse is working. There's obviously value to the other spouse staying home, helping to raise a family and they want to protect that spouse in situations like divorce or other sorts of scenarios by providing them with this kind of caveat for how the benefits work.Mark: Okay. And yeah, so the simple way to break it down. So give us some more, John, give us some more things to think about here when we're talking about the eligibility of spouses, maybe some rules, things of that nature.John: Yeah. So basically, some of the rules before you can collect a spousal benefit, the primary worker must have filed. So wait until the spouse actually draws and then you can go ahead and take your spousal benefit. Spouses can actually start taking it at age 62, that's the soonest that you can start taking.Nick: So a kind of a good example of that is, so let's say, Mr. Smith has been the worker and Mrs. Smith stayed at home with the family and raised a family. And a couple of years ago, two years ago, she started working, you know, so she's not eligible for her own benefit. So Mr. Smith is going to continue to work and Mrs. Smith is trying to figure out, "Hey, I'm also 62, can I file for benefits?" So the answer is not until Mr. Smith essentially retires and fights for his benefit. So that's where the restrictions on the ages kind of come to play.Nick: And when John referred to that primary worker must filed for their benefits, there used to be some other rules in play where you can kind of navigate around, but they really cut down and things are a lot more restricted than they used to be.John: Yeah. And just to kind of give some numbers to that, let's say Mr Smith's full retirement benefit was 2,400, Mrs Smith's spousal benefit would be, as Nick mentioned, 50% of that sort of 1200. And again, so her spousal benefit is based off of his full retirement amount benefit and not what he actually gets. So example of that would be, you know, when she goes to draw, let's say if he'd started taking early and he get his full 2,400, she's not penalize by that. Her 50% is still the 1200, assuming she draws at her full retirement age.John: If she decides to take early at 62 she will actually have a reduction of her spousal benefit.Nick: It is important for people to understand that, you know, there's the dates on when people start to receive the benefits are calculated, or factored in I should say, for each person. Though it factored in potentially when Mr. Smith files and starts collecting and it's also factored in when Mrs. Smith files and starts collecting. And so there's a lot of different variations on how that works. And because there are some different variations, we typically recommend to people that, you know, I was helping you kind of walk through the different, let's test out different scenarios and figure which one makes the most sense because there are so many factors that go into the decision.Nick: We understand a lot of people like to just, you know, they want a cut and dry answer and unfortunately or fortunately, the positive to there not being a cut and dry answer is that, you know, oftentimes they can be strategic and find something that works better for them and if it were cut and dry. But it does take a factoring in a lot of other things to make the right decision.John: Yeah. At first the answers to certain questions are, it depends.Mark: Yeah, that's the case a lot of times I think.John: One question we actually get a lot and we talked about in the last sessions was, you know, if you draw Social Security after full retirement age, you actually get a percent increase in your benefit. That does not work for spousal benefits. So if the spouse didn't want to take or they want to defer their spousal benefit, they do not get the 8% increase on it.Nick: Yeah. So, we have seen that mistake happen, you know, the primary person has decided, "Hey, let's wait to collect the benefit" because they are under the assumption that not only will their benefit grow by 8%, but the spousal benefit that their spouse will take will grow, but that's not the case. Only their benefit grows, the spousal benefit does not. So when we run kind of break even calculations, it can often makes sense to just have them start collecting so that they can get both of them.John: Yeah. And then, you know, it's important understand also for to be eligible for spousal benefits, you have to be married at least one year. So can't be a just getting married and after six months started drawing on Social Security for a spouse.Mark: They're not going to just make it too easy for you anyway. All right, so that's some good rules. That's some good basic information there. What are some strategies? Give us a few things to think about when it comes to the spousal benefit options.John: Yeah. And like we said, everyone's situation is different. It really depends and it's important to customize what works for you. And I think we offered in the last session, but if anyone wants it, we actually are working on a Social Security machination strategy, which we're happy to do so. But one thing that we'll do with some spousal strategies, depending on the situation, we might have one spouse claim early and the other spouse, depending on the situation, you know example of that would be, let's say we have a high earner and they want to protect the spouse in case of a premature death. So we might go ahead and have the high earner, who's Social Security benefit is higher, actually delay theirs. So, if they were to pass away prematurely, that spouse can actually jump onto a higher amount, high Social Security benefit, which is nice strategy to protect the surviving spouse.John: I've used that a couple of times when there's an age gap on the spouses or if I'm there, you know, sometimes clients will come in and they're just concerned saying, "Hey, I'm really concerned something could happen to me. Is my spouse going to be okay?" We'll go ahead and implement some strategies like that.Nick: Another time where that can be used is if the primary earner has worked at in an occupation where they're eligible for a pension and they're going to receive a pension and they, you know, kind of through planning or whatever it may be. Or like the example of John mentioned where on of the spouses is maybe quite a bit younger, so when the other spouse is quite a bit younger, it pulls down the pension amount that the primary person would receive. So to offset that a little bit, we might recommend, "Well, hey, instead of doing a hundred percent survivor benefit on the pension, let's do a 50% so that you can have a higher pay out. But to offset that, what we'll do is we'll have you wait to take Social Security until 70." So the pension amount that the spouse would receive would be less, but we can offset that waiting on Social Security a little bit and still have more income coming in the household.Mark: Gotcha. Okay. All right. So a couple of different strategies there to consider and I think a lot of times people sometimes don't plan ahead for that part. It's like we're sitting there talking about different, when you're getting your retirement plan done, I think sometimes we look at it overall and say, "Well, we want to turn Social Security on as soon as we can and yada, yada yada." Instead of saying, "Okay, how can we most maximize our Social Security for both of us in an overall inclusive retirement plan?"Mark: So it's certainly important to do. And as John mentioned, you know, they can run that Social Security maximization if you have some questions on that. If you want to get that done or have a chat with them, give them a call at (813) 286-7776 that's (813) 286-7776 and you can also check them out online at pfgprivatewealth.com.Mark: As I mentioned before, there are financial advisors here in the Tampa Bay area, so if you have some questions about that, again, as always when you're listening to this show or any other show before you take any action, always check with a qualified professional about your specific situation because everybody's, it can be so different, so make sure you have that chat.Mark: All right guys, I think in the interest of time we can probably squeeze in a couple more things. Can you give us a few things to think about on divorced spousal situations?John: Yeah, so it is important for people to understand that they are still eligible for a spousal benefit if they were married for 10 years and they are not remarried. So a scenario that we may see with that is they were previously married to a high earner, maybe they worked a lower paying job, they were married for 25 years, became divorced, they went back to work to cover expenses, et cetera. They may be in a relationship currently, but they're not officially married and we kind of go through calculations and we determined that, "Hey, the spousal benefit that you could receive from you former spouse would be higher than the benefit that you would receive on your own and or higher than the benefit that you would receive if you were to marry your current partner." And obviously a lot of other factors go into that.John: But, from a purely financial decision, that could work out really well because again, you cannot collect that spousal benefit from a former spouse if you are remarried. We have had questions along the lines of, you know, "Hey, I was married twice. Both were over 10 years. Am I restricted to choose just the most recent one?" And the answer is no, you can pick the higher. We had a nice young lady one time that had four different ten year marriages and she asked if she could add them all up together and unfortunately you can't, it's just the higher.Nick: But she had a lot of options.John: Yeah. It's good to have options.Mark: Like window shopping apparently.John: So, yeah. So those are a couple of things to keep in mind.Nick: Yeah. And one question we get a lot with divorced clients, they say, "How soon can I draw on the ex-spouse's Social Security?" And really you can draw on an ex-spouse once that ex-spouse hits age 62. Unlike a kind of a normal situation, when we wait until the spouse draws Social Security. They put this rule in really to protect the ex spouse because we've seen scenarios where certain people might delay drawing to intentionally hurt the other spouse and so they can't draw on them. So basically the rule is once the ex-spouse hits over 62, you can actually start drawing on the spousal benefits for divorcees.John: Yeah. It does not matter whether or not they're collecting. And also some people are happy about this, some people are not. But when you do get that benefit from a former spouse, again it does not affect their own benefit. There is no negative impact to doing that to them.Mark: They don't even know about it.Nick: They would have no idea. And it actually wouldn't affect any new spouse for somebody. So we get that question quite a bit where it says, "Hey, an ex-spouse draws on my Social Security. Does that affect my new wife or husband?" The answer is no.Mark: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's interesting on the time period on that, it's funny that you kind of brought that up. My mother, who's 78, actually was given that information and did a refile with the Social Security for her first husband. She was married twice as well. And so yes, she was able to do that and they hadn't been married in like 40 years, but they were married over 10 years. So they were like, "Yep, that's something you can do." So I was like, "Okay, well knock yourself out."Mark: So yeah, it's interesting. There's definitely some few things to consider in there. Different kinds of a spousal benefit options, divorce spousal benefit options. So again, a lot of it comes down to having a conversation about your specific situation with your advisor when it comes to Social Security, because there are a lot of things in Social Security obviously, which is why we're on a four part series, going to be a five part series actually around this.Mark: So with that said, I think we're going to depart this week on the program. I'll say John and Nick, thanks for your time. As always, we appreciate it. Folks, make sure you reach out to them, give them a call if you've got some questions at (813) 286-7776. (813) 286-7776, again, that number to call. And as always, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Retirement Planning Redefined. You can find it on Apple, Google or Spotify.Mark: You can also just find it on their website at pfgprivatewealth.com and as I said at the beginning of this, that it was prior to Thanksgiving when we were taping this. Now we'll actually air it after Thanksgiving. So we certainly hope that everybody had a great holiday season. And we'll see you for more of our conversation around Social Security through the month of December, right here on Retirement Planning Redefined. For John, for Nick, we'll see you next time.

Listen to Nick (2020) talk about his internship in accounting at Honda R&D this past summer. Transcript: Stephanie: Hi there, you're listening to Gear Up, the Duke Career Center student produced podcast showcasing real student summer internship experiences. Today we're talking to Nick who had an internship in accounting this summer. Okay, introduce yourself. Nick: Sure, my name is Nick Landis. I am a senior from Louisville, Kentucky and I am studying economics. Stephanie: So what did you do this past summer? Nick: This past summer, I was a managerial accounting student associate at Honda R and D Americas Incorporated in Raymond, Ohio. Stephanie: And how did you find that position? Nick: I thought it was very interesting. I had a lot of fun doing the work and I thought that the place I was working at was very fascinating, and I was learning new things every day. Stephanie: And what were you doing specifically day to day? Nick: Sure, so I had quite a variety of roles. One of the things that I did was that, I regularly helped track the budget of the facility that we were running. Nick: It had a budget that was in the tens of the tens of millions of dollars. And one of my main tasks was figuring out where we could streamline the budget, and figure out ways to run the company more efficiently. In that role, I would also spend a lot of time meeting with people who helps manage other departments within the facility. And I also got to look at the various products that were being developed by Honda at this location. And I also spent some time developing this project to help streamline the disposal process for some of our test vehicles. And I think that I had a lot of really good positive impact for doing that. Stephanie: That’s a lot of responsibility for an intern. Nick: Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit of it was unexpected, but I feel like I had a lot of support, and I feel like my management had a lot of faith in my ability. And I think that's really important to work for people who have faith in you and don't try to just baby you. That's that's very important to me. Stephanie: Did you find the work interesting? Nick: Mostly, I'd say, I think that you can ask anybody who works in accounting of any kind and they'll tell you that sometimes the work can get a little dry and it did. But I will say that in the grand scheme of things, I really thought that the work I was doing was interesting and important in terms of the impact that I was having on the company. And I actually felt like I had a purpose for being there. And I thought that that was the most important thing to me. Stephanie: Do you feel like your coursework or things that you do at Duke prepared you at all for it? Nick: I'd say that it helped me out a little bit. I spent a lot of time taking finance based economics electives the past couple of years and they definitely helped me to understand some of the concepts that I was working with especially classes that involved accounting and viewing financial statements. Those were really helpful. One thing I will say, though, was that no amount of coursework can prepare you for having a real job. There are just certain things that you have to pick up when you're working. And I think that that goes for any job. But I think that in terms of the academic skills that I had, I think that I was reasonably prepared. Stephanie: And where did you find this job? Like, did you find it that networking or see it on a job site? Nick: I think that I saw on a job site. I was very, very proactive in trying to find internships wherever I could, whether it be on CareerConnections or just by Googling. So I honestly don't remember where I found it. I want to say that I found it on the job site, but it does kind of escape me at the moment. Stephanie: And you just applied and and happened to get it? Nick: Yes, I sent in an application. They sent back a couple questionnaires. I did a couple of phone screens and

Nicki T returns to learn about the internment of the Japanese by the US government in the 1940s. After Pearl Harbor, anti-Asian and specifically Japanese sentiments were riled up. Do you think the US acted appropriately? How should the US deal with the complicated events of its past? Did Reagan help heal the wound with Japanese Americans? Densho: https://densho.org/ This episode contains mature subject matter & strong language, so as always, listen at your own discretion EPISODE SOURCES- http://bit.ly/2ovvhkC  EPISODE IMAGES- http://bit.ly/2JBTe0U  Podcast Corner: Strictly Homicide & Cutting Class Podcast Logo Design: By Madison Rumschik IG: @madisontriestoart Twitter: @m_rumschik Sound Effects & Intro Music: https://www.zapsplat.com FOLLOW US ON: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DomesticPodcast   Twitter: https://twitter.com/DomesticPodcast   Instagram: @thecultofdomesticity Email us at domesticpodcast@gmail.com Merch: https://www.threadless.com/@domesticpodcast  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/domesticpodcast 

Episode 27 - Maranda Goldman**I accidentally said Episode 28, but its episode 27.**A Pine Bluff cold case that many feel could have been solved by now. A beautiful 23 year old goes missing when her new “friends” think she is a snitch. Details surrounding her death are allegedly what happened according to individuals who were involved or spoke with someone involved. Maranda Goldman Facebook Page:https://www.facebook.com/groups/1652817838336154/Sources:Family membersFriendsRecordingshttps://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/white-hall-jefferson-county-910/https://www.projectcoldcase.org/cold-case-homicide-stats/https://www.fox16.com/news/unsolved-homicide-investigation-family-believes-police-cut-corners/https://www.pbcommercial.com/news/20180806/pb8217s-unsolved-murders-hot-topic-at-monday8217s-council-meetinghttps://www.jeffcoso.org/narcoticsjustice.gov/archive/ndic/pubs6/6184/overview.htmhttps://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/state_profile-arkansas.pdfhttps://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/pine-bluff-on-patrol-in-the-most-dangerous-little-town-in-america-8498769.htmlNews Clipshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlKuplMxmJM&t=7shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbF1-g7rOekhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1yXtUKjdko&t=165shttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6FPeracx-sThat Dead Body Showhttps://www.spreaker.com/show/that-dead-body-show-true-crime-podcastThe Perfect Packagehttps://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-perfect-package-podcast/id1479342160Active Shooter the Podcasthttps://www.spreaker.com/show/active-shooter-the-podcast_1Strictly Homicide is Researched, Written, Hosted and edited by Nicki T

Episode 26Timothy Wayne KempWhen jealousy, rage, alcohol, and domestic violence turns fatal. Thank you to Michael from Unresolved and Jesse from Podcast 1289 for providing additional audio! Strictly Homicide Podcast is hosted by Nicki T. Research, writing and production also by Nicki T. The original music is done by Mr T. Promos:Ghost Town PodcastUnresolved Podcast 1289BardstownActive Shooter PodcastThe Rise of king AsilasSources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabot,_Arkansashttp://www.city-data.com/city/Cabot-Arkansas.htmlhttps://www.niche.com/places-to-live/cabot-lonoke-ar/https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2019/07/31/former-cabot-high-school-students-sue-district-administrators-in-federal-courtthehotline.orgCourt Documents Police Report

Episode 25 - Rushed Execution Series Part VI - Marcel WilliamsPart VI of the Rushed Execution Series covers the cases of the sixth inmate scheduled for execution in Arkansas during the rushed executions in April 2017. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate and review! You can also become a patreon and donate as little as $1 a month. PATREON: patreon.com/StrictlyhomicideWEBPAGE: Strictlyhomicidepodcast.comDon’t forget to follow us on all social media!TWITTER: @strictlyhmicideFACEBOOK: facebook.com/StrictlyHomicidePodcastMake sure to join our FB Group to discuss the cases, true crime, ask questions or just meet folks!INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/strictlyhomicidepodcastStrictly Homicide Podcast is researched, written, hosted and produced by Nicki T.The original music is created by Mr. T, no not that one MY MR. T! Follow him on Social Media!Twitter: @franknstinemdInstagram: Instagram.com/franknstinemd This Episodes Sponsors:PodCoin App –Find PodCoin on Google Play and Apple App Store, download and start earning for listening to your favorite shows like Strictly Homicide PodcastPromos/Shout out for:Mysterious Circumstances - Go Subscribe Today!True Crime Deadline- Go Subscribe Today!Just the Tip-sters - Go Subscribe Today!Sources used for research on this series: Police Reports, Court Documents and the following public information:Arkansas Times Article written by Benjamin Hardy (2015)https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2015/08/13/udpate-arkansas-has-purchased-lethal-injection-drugs-including-midazolamTwo articles written by Liliana Segura (2017) for The Intercept Articlehttps://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/how-a-daughters-search-for-her-biological-father-led-her-to-an-execution-in-arkansas/https://theintercept.com/2017/11/12/arkansas-death-row-executions-kenneth-williams/The Marshall Project Article written by Maurice Chammahhttps://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmillArkansas Online piece written by Brandon Riddle, Emma Pettit, and Maggie McNearyhttps://www.arkansasonline.com/arkansasexecutions/

This is part 2 of a two part episode. Episode 24 - Rushed Execution Series Part V - Jack Jones Part 2Part V of the Rushed Execution Series covers the cases of the fifth inmate scheduled for execution in Arkansas during the rushed executions in April 2017. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate and review! You can also become a patreon and donate as little as $1 a month. PATREON: patreon.com/StrictlyhomicideWEBPAGE: Strictlyhomicidepodcast.comDon’t forget to follow us on all social media! TWITTER: @strictlyhmicideFACEBOOK: facebook.com/StrictlyHomicidePodcastMake sure to join our FB Group to discuss the cases, true crime, ask questions or just meet folks!INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/strictlyhomicidepodcastStrictly Homicide Podcast is researched, written, hosted and produced by Nicki T. The original music is created by Mr. T, no not that one MY MR. T! Follow him on Social Media!Twitter: @franknstinemdInstagram: Instagram.com/franknstinemd This Episodes Sponsors: PodCoin App – Find PodCoin on Google Play and Apple App Store, download and start earning for listening to your favorite shows like Strictly Homicide PodcastPromos from:Cult of Domesticity Podcast - Go Subscribe Today!True Crime Island- Go Subscribe Today!Voice of the Victim - Go Subscribe Today!Sources used for research on this series: Police Reports, Court Documents and the following public information:Arkansas Times Article written by Benjamin Hardy (2015)https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2015/08/13/udpate-arkansas-has-purchased-lethal-injection-drugs-including-midazolamTwo articles written by Liliana Segura (2017) for The Intercept Articlehttps://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/how-a-daughters-search-for-her-biological-father-led-her-to-an-execution-in-arkansas/https://theintercept.com/2017/11/12/arkansas-death-row-executions-kenneth-williams/The Marshall Project Article written by Maurice Chammahhttps://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmillArkansas Online piece written by Brandon Riddle, Emma Pettit, and Maggie McNearyhttps://www.arkansasonline.com/arkansasexecutions/

This is part 1 of a two part episode. Episode 23 – Rushed Execution Series Part V – Jack Henry Jones JrPart V of the Rushed Execution Series covers the cases of the fifth inmate scheduled for execution in Arkansas during the rushed executions in April 2017. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and rate and review! You can also become a patreon and donate as little as $1 a month. PATREON: patreon.com/StrictlyhomicideWEBPAGE: Strictlyhomicidepodcast.comDon’t forget to follow us on all social media! TWITTER: @strictlyhmicideFACEBOOK: facebook.com/StrictlyHomicidePodcastMake sure to join our FB Group to discuss the cases, true crime, ask questions or just meet folks!INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/strictlyhomicidepodcastStrictly Homicide Podcast is researched, written, hosted and produced by Nicki T. The original music is created by Mr. T, no not that one MY MR. T! Follow him on Social Media!Twitter: @franknstinemdInstagram: Instagram.com/franknstinemd This Episodes Sponsors: Geeks United PodcastFacebook Page: https://www.Facebook.com/GeeksUnitedwithAlandBobPodCoin App – Find PodCoin on Google Play and Apple App Store, download and start earning for listening to your favorite shows like Strictly Homicide PodcastPromos from:True Crime Chronicles – A new True Crime podcast hosted by Will and Jessica – Go subscribe today!Azka’s Mystery Podcast – When a 5 year old wishes to host her own podcast, the Make a Wish Foundation makes it possible! Please subscribe and give her a listen! You will brighten her day! Sources used for research on this series: Police Reports, Court Documents and the following public information:Arkansas Times Article written by Benjamin Hardy (2015)https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2015/08/13/udpate-arkansas-has-purchased-lethal-injection-drugs-including-midazolamTwo articles written by Liliana Segura (2017) for The Intercept Articlehttps://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/how-a-daughters-search-for-her-biological-father-led-her-to-an-execution-in-arkansas/https://theintercept.com/2017/11/12/arkansas-death-row-executions-kenneth-williams/The Marshall Project Article written by Maurice Chammahhttps://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmillArkansas Online piece written by Brandon Riddle, Emma Pettit, and Maggie McNearyhttps://www.arkansasonline.com/arkansasexecutions/

Coming off of the tail end of episodes and Being Prosperous series, this week’s topic of discussion is about How to NOT take on Negative Energy. What better way to maintain a prosperous vibe than keeping negative energy at bay? So, how can we do it? How can we not take on the negative energy of others? It’s important to note that energy is energy, however, labels are often apart of the conversation. At the root of it all, it comes down to truly being in our energy and making sure that it’s as clear and bright as possible. A key component of doing that is awareness; we want to remain aware of what’s going on and that can be tricky in this noisy world. When we’re unaware and unfocused, we can become easily moved and start attaching to the things that aren’t clear and bright. In this episode, we dive deeper into the importance of awareness and offer additional tips, tricks, and tools for How to NOT take on Negative Energy. Hosts: Nick and Kisma Resources: 4:30 Awareness Nick: The first piece is really about being aware of what’s going on. Kisma: This conscious awareness. Nick: It’s having a sense of self-awareness, and that is definitely easier said than done. People are busy, we’re rushing from thing to thing to thing, juggling a million different things and not a lot of people necessarily see the value of taking time out of their day to sit down for a second and be like, ‘Hey! What’s going on here?’   9:45 Taking Stuff from Others “The other piece too that I want to look at — back to that kind of awareness thing — is it’s easy to take on other people’s lower-vibe thoughts or energy: panic, lack of energy, anger. These things can be just like a wildfire, and so if we’re not in our lane and really aware of what our mission is — what we’re doing here today or tomorrow, whatever it is — we can take on their stuff.” - KISMA   18:51 Set the Intention “At the very least, when we set the intention that we will make choices for our highest and best, we really do make better choices.” - KISMA   28:48 We’re Always Working with Energy “Everything is energy and you've already been working with energy your whole life. That’s the thing that most people miss. They’re like, ‘Oh, I don’t know about this thing.’ You’ve already been doing it. You can’t not, but your way of relating to it is really unique and so you want to give yourself the time — just a moment, shouldn't take a long time. Just take a moment or two to notice.” - NICK 30:28 The Conscious and Unconscious Choices “Back up for a second to what we talked about before of those conscious and unconscious choices that we make. There’s a reason that that’s happening, and unwinding what’s going on on a deeper energetic level as well as those conscious and subconscious beliefs and programs that are running there, that’s where you really start to shift it. Cord-cutting will get you out of trouble anytime, anywhere. If you’re feeling stuck or something’s not right or you just don’t feel like yourself, start by cutting your cords. To take it a step further and to really, really get that momentum going in starting to make a bigger shift in your life, you absolutely have to address what’s going on in the mind.” - NICK

What is “green medicine”? Tune in this week as the incredible Nick Polizzi shares his knowledge on herbal remedies. Nick shares his wounded healer story and then we dive into the history of herbalism, some of Nick’s go-to herbs for calming the mind chatter and easing stress, as well as what to expect when visiting an herbalist. And you don’t want to miss his #1 tip for all of us!    * * *   About Nick Polizzi Nick Polizzi has been making documentary films for the past ten years. The titles he has been a part of include Remedy: Ancient Medicines for Modern Illness, The Sacred Science‚ Simply Raw – Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days‚ and The Tapping Solution. His work is guided by a fascination with the healing remedies of civilizations around the world and how they can be used to heal the diseases of today. Nick is driven by a calling to honor, preserve, and protect the ancient knowledge and rituals of our ancestors.   Documentary: Remedy: Ancient Medicines for Modern Illness All about herbs! The green medicines that have been used for thousands of years. And it goes into the specific diseases that they can treat. “I think that people are really surprised to hear that you don’t need to turn to conventional medicine to treat just about any illness. There are all kinds of alternatives that you don’t tend to hear about from your doctor.” ~ Nick It’s a nine-part series. Each episode goes after a specific health condition. It covers anything from autoimmune disorders, depression, stress, all the way to bacterial infections like Lyme Disease, all the way to heart disease, cancer, sexual health, reproductive health, and fertility. Each one of those areas of health, or systems of the body, are covered and then into the specific herbs that can be used to alleviate a lot of the symptoms that are commonly associated with it. You can watch it here at https://lw255.isrefer.com/go/remedy/org/20190523   What led Nick to this path? He’s a “wounded healer”. In his late 20s he began experiencing debilitating ocular migraines. Went to the number one neurologist in Connecticut tried various medications that didn’t help. The last prescription offer was one that would change his mood and emotions. He came to the realization that modern medicine wasn’t going to help. Nick tried EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), acupuncture, acupressure. Finally he determined by exploring with an elimination diet that coffee was a trigger.   Why herbs? Before this documentary he was immersed in Native medicings and Native healings. This led to a fascination of the healing potential in plants and herbs. There’s over 80,000 species of medicinal plants in the Amazon alone, less than 3 percent of them have been studied for their medicinal value. Of those 3 percent, some 15-20 percent of our cancer treatments are synthesized from compounds in those plants. For Nick, herbal medicine is one of the lowest-hanging fruits in terms of potential cures out there and he decided to shine a light on them.   History of Herbalism? Herbs will used up until the early 1900s. And was respected on par with surgery or drugs. The Flexner Report came out in 1910 and was funded by the Carnegie Foundation. This made it very hard to practice natural medicine in the United States. Natural medicine schools were closed and only those schools focusing on chemical-based medicine received funding or accredidation.   Plant Can’t Be Patented This makes it difficult to receive funding on research of natural, plant based medicines. Women have been burned at the stake for thousands of years for practicing just basic herbalism because of how effective it is.   Some of Nick’s Go-To Herbs Skullcap & Ashwagandha tincture for taming the mind chatter and easing stress. Reishi mushrooms are a powerful adaptogen. Increases creativity and reduces stress.   Herbalist Approaches They look for root cause and not just mask symptoms. They can spend up to two hours at the first visit to really pinpoint lifestyle and symptoms. Much more intimate experience and helps you get intune with your body and mind.   Nick’s Big Takeaway Be careful about book learning and learning secondhand. It’s a great starting point, but as we’ve been discussing today, experience is going to teach you more than any book could, any podcast could, any documentary could. These are great leaping-off points, let’s call them, so that you can start experiencing things yourself. You can talk about herbs all day long. Until you start ingesting that first herb and experiencing it yourself, you’re not going to fully understand the potential that your body has to heal itself, and also, what you might have been missing in terms of connecting to yourself and the world around you.     Deeper Dive Resources   The Remedy: Ancient Medicine for Modern Illness https://lw255.isrefer.com/go/remedy/org/20190523   Documentary: Sacred Science https://www.thesacredscience.com/author/nicpol3/   BOOK: Sacred Science https://amzn.to/2VD1xS9   BOOK: Sacred Science Cookbook https://amzn.to/2VYee9K   Save the Amazon https://www.savetheamazon.org/rainforeststats.htm   Susan Raven - Raven Crest Botanicals https://ravencrestbotanicals.com/   Ron Teegarden - Dragon Herbs https://www.dragonherbs.com/ron-teeguarden-s-bio

What is “green medicine”? Tune in this week as the incredible Nick Polizzi shares his knowledge on herbal remedies. Nick shares his wounded healer story and then we dive into the history of herbalism, some of Nick’s go-to herbs for calming the mind chatter and easing stress, as well as what to expect when visiting an herbalist. And you don’t want to miss his #1 tip for all of us!    * * *   About Nick Polizzi Nick Polizzi has been making documentary films for the past ten years. The titles he has been a part of include Remedy: Ancient Medicines for Modern Illness, The Sacred Science‚ Simply Raw – Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days‚ and The Tapping Solution. His work is guided by a fascination with the healing remedies of civilizations around the world and how they can be used to heal the diseases of today. Nick is driven by a calling to honor, preserve, and protect the ancient knowledge and rituals of our ancestors.   Documentary: Remedy: Ancient Medicines for Modern Illness All about herbs! The green medicines that have been used for thousands of years. And it goes into the specific diseases that they can treat. “I think that people are really surprised to hear that you don’t need to turn to conventional medicine to treat just about any illness. There are all kinds of alternatives that you don’t tend to hear about from your doctor.” ~ Nick It’s a nine-part series. Each episode goes after a specific health condition. It covers anything from autoimmune disorders, depression, stress, all the way to bacterial infections like Lyme Disease, all the way to heart disease, cancer, sexual health, reproductive health, and fertility. Each one of those areas of health, or systems of the body, are covered and then into the specific herbs that can be used to alleviate a lot of the symptoms that are commonly associated with it. You can watch it here at https://lw255.isrefer.com/go/remedy/org/20190523   What led Nick to this path? He’s a “wounded healer”. In his late 20s he began experiencing debilitating ocular migraines. Went to the number one neurologist in Connecticut tried various medications that didn’t help. The last prescription offer was one that would change his mood and emotions. He came to the realization that modern medicine wasn’t going to help. Nick tried EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), acupuncture, acupressure. Finally he determined by exploring with an elimination diet that coffee was a trigger.   Why herbs? Before this documentary he was immersed in Native medicings and Native healings. This led to a fascination of the healing potential in plants and herbs. There’s over 80,000 species of medicinal plants in the Amazon alone, less than 3 percent of them have been studied for their medicinal value. Of those 3 percent, some 15-20 percent of our cancer treatments are synthesized from compounds in those plants. For Nick, herbal medicine is one of the lowest-hanging fruits in terms of potential cures out there and he decided to shine a light on them.   History of Herbalism? Herbs will used up until the early 1900s. And was respected on par with surgery or drugs. The Flexner Report came out in 1910 and was funded by the Carnegie Foundation. This made it very hard to practice natural medicine in the United States. Natural medicine schools were closed and only those schools focusing on chemical-based medicine received funding or accredidation.   Plant Can’t Be Patented This makes it difficult to receive funding on research of natural, plant based medicines. Women have been burned at the stake for thousands of years for practicing just basic herbalism because of how effective it is.   Some of Nick’s Go-To Herbs Skullcap & Ashwagandha tincture for taming the mind chatter and easing stress. Reishi mushrooms are a powerful adaptogen. Increases creativity and reduces stress.   Herbalist Approaches They look for root cause and not just mask symptoms. They can spend up to two hours at the first visit to really pinpoint lifestyle and symptoms. Much more intimate experience and helps you get intune with your body and mind.   Nick’s Big Takeaway Be careful about book learning and learning secondhand. It’s a great starting point, but as we’ve been discussing today, experience is going to teach you more than any book could, any podcast could, any documentary could. These are great leaping-off points, let’s call them, so that you can start experiencing things yourself. You can talk about herbs all day long. Until you start ingesting that first herb and experiencing it yourself, you’re not going to fully understand the potential that your body has to heal itself, and also, what you might have been missing in terms of connecting to yourself and the world around you.     Deeper Dive Resources   The Remedy: Ancient Medicine for Modern Illness https://lw255.isrefer.com/go/remedy/org/20190523   Documentary: Sacred Science https://www.thesacredscience.com/author/nicpol3/   BOOK: Sacred Science https://amzn.to/2VD1xS9   BOOK: Sacred Science Cookbook https://amzn.to/2VYee9K   Save the Amazon https://www.savetheamazon.org/rainforeststats.htm   Susan Raven - Raven Crest Botanicals https://ravencrestbotanicals.com/   Ron Teegarden - Dragon Herbs https://www.dragonherbs.com/ron-teeguarden-s-bio

Episode 22 - Rushed Execution Series Part Four - Stacy Johnson In April 2017 Arkansas' Supply of the drug Midazolam was going to expire, to avoid wasting the drugs they had that are hard to get, The governor thought rushing eight executions in four days would be best.... Part four covers the case of the fourth inmate scheduled for execution, Stacy Johnson. Strictly Homicide is researched, written, hosted and produced by Nicki T. Original Music by Mr. TTheis episode's promos include:UnresolvedSomethings Not RightSources used for research on this series: Police Reports, Court Documents and the following public information:Arkansas Times Article written by Benjamin Hardy (2015)https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2015/08/13/udpate-arkansas-has-purchased-lethal-injection-drugs-including-midazolamTwo articles written by Liliana Segura (2017) for The Intercept Articlehttps://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/how-a-daughters-search-for-her-biological-father-led-her-to-an-execution-in-arkansas/https://theintercept.com/2017/11/12/arkansas-death-row-executions-kenneth-williams/The Marshall Project Article written by Maurice Chammahhttps://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmillArkansas Online piece written by Brandon Riddle, Emma Pettit, and Maggie McNearyhttps://www.arkansasonline.com/arkansasexecutions/

*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.

This week, Jeremy chats with Nicki T, host of Strictly Homicide! Strictly Homicide is a podcast about true crime that happens in the state of Arkansas!

Part II of the Rushed Execution Series covers the case of Don Davis, who was scheduled to be executed on the first of the four execution dates along with Bruce Ward. Promos: Mugshot PodcastGo Postal PodcastThe Hidden Staircase Its always Funny in Philly Strictly Homicide is researched, written, hosted and edit by Nicki T. I will be at the True Crime Podcast Convention in Chicago this year! Strictlyhomicidepodcast.comSources used for research on this series: Police Reports, Court Documents and the following public information:Arkansas Times Article written by Benjamin Hardy (2015)https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2015/08/13/udpate-arkansas-has-purchased-lethal-injection-drugs-including-midazolamTwo articles written by Liliana Segura (2017) for The Intercept Articlehttps://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/how-a-daughters-search-for-her-biological-father-led-her-to-an-execution-in-arkansas/https://theintercept.com/2017/11/12/arkansas-death-row-executions-kenneth-williams/The Marshall Project Article written by Maurice Chammahhttps://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmillArkansas Online piece written by Brandon Riddle, Emma Pettit, and Maggie McNearyhttps://www.arkansasonline.com/arkansasexecutions/

If you’ve been following my podcast like I know you have, then you already know that every successful real estate investor has fallen down more times than they can count. Failure is always an option. Success feels great, sure, but it’s only when we fail that we actually learn the biggest lessons. That’s why I brought Nick Aalerud onto the Real Estate Investment Profit Master Podcast. He didn’t become a profit master overnight. He had to lose $400,000 first before he learned the ins and outs of this business. And the advice he offers today will be invaluable to all of you up-and-coming investment masters listening in. Nick used to be an investment banker in Boston, and he’ll be the first to tell you that the job sounds way more glamorous than it actually is. The grind quickly turned into 80 hour work weeks, and no one can sustain that for too long. As a joke, Nick answered one of those late night real estate infomercials. And while it may not have been the most fruitful decision at first, it ultimately changed his mindset and put him on the path to becoming the real estate investment master he is today. Today, Nick talks about exactly what turned him into an investment master. We get into all the nitty gritty, the good and the bad, and you’ll never believe how a Las Vegas hypnotist and a bottle of shampoo changed Nick’s working attitude. Because you never know what will be your inspiration or your motivation, you just have to be sure to take ownership of whatever it is that inspires you. Tune in now so you don’t miss out on how you can turn your failures into your real life investment inspiration. MINUTE MARKERS 3:35 - Why can’t Nick grow a beard? 4:00 - Nick breaks down his real estate expertise 4:57 - What made Nick get involved with real estate investing? 7:01 - Who was Nick’s biggest influence in real estate? 12:21 - Nick’s big breaking point 21:20 - Nick shares his biggest and best investment strategies 24:41 - The greatest lesson Nick ever learned 29:14 - Nick’s favorite motivational quote 31:15 - Nick’s favorite books 33:10 - What apps is Nick using right now? 38:03 - Nick thrives off 5 hours of sleep 38:47 - Nick’s morning routine 43:19 - What is Nick most grateful for? 44:55 - Nick recommends finding a mentor sooner rather than later 50:22 - Nick shares how his motivation in this industry evolves with him and his business 51:40 - Get in touch with Nick on Facebook RESOURCES Shut Up and Do It Podcast AA Real Estate Group John Beck Marshall Sylver Andy Wilson Eben Pagan Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki Cashflow Quadrant by Robert Kiyosaki ClickUp Five Minute Journal Texpand/TextExpander Grammarly Ask Cory A Question Want to get in touch with Cory and ask him your most burning Real Estate Investing question?  We’ve made it super easy for you.  Just head over to our Ask Cory A Question page and start recording.  Cory will play your question live on an upcoming show and answer it personally. Who Do You Want To Hear From? Name some folks I should get on the show! Hit me up:support@realestateinvestingprofits.com and I’ll do my best to get them on. Did You Get Your FREE Investing Guide? TEXT the word PROFIT (38470) to immediately sent Your FREE Investing Quick Start Guide! JOIN The Elite Real Estate Investor’s Board of Directors http://JoinMyMastermind.com Connect Here Please check out our website, realestateinvestingprofits.com for the “Down and Dirty” Ultimate Real Estate Investing Quick Start Guide download. QUOTES I probably should have just grabbed a coach or mentor at that point and went for it. - Nick It's not even about the number of rehabs, let’s talk about cost per lead and cost per deal and drill down to really how much – what's a dollar per hour. - Nick

A special conversation I had on stage at the Traffic Secrets event with a friend and a student Nic Fitzgerald. On this episode Russell talks to his childhood friend, Nick Fitzgerald about helping him go from being in a technician position to being in an entrepreneurial position. Here are some of the inspiring thing in this episode: Find out how Russell found out his childhood friend was in desperate need of help and what he offered to do for him. How Nick was able to make to Funnel Hacking Live via credit card, and then spent $1800 on a program without telling his wife. And why being on the program helped Nick be able to ask a client for $25,000 on a project, when that was his previous yearly income. So listen here to find out how Russell was able to help Nick achieve his entrepreneurial dreams. ---Transcript--- Hey everyone, this is Russell Brunson and I want to welcome you to the Marketing Secrets podcast. The next two episodes are a really special one. For our Two Comma club X members and our inner circle members I did an event recently, some of you guys heard me talk about it. It was a traffic secrets event, where I’m getting all the material ready for the book, and start teaching this stuff. Anyway, it was really, really fun and as I was doing the presentations, the night before when I was doing all the prep work I had this thought. I was like, I want to bring up somebody on stage and it’s somebody who was a friend I grew up with in elementary school, and junior high, and high school, someone who was down on their luck, who was really, really struggling. About a year ago I saw him post something on Facebook and I reached out, and this interview is happening about a year later. During the process he tells his story about what happened and the transformation and the change that’s happened by being involved inside our Clickfunnels, Funnel Hacker community. So I wanted to share that with you as part of the event, so this first half is going to be Nick kind of telling his story and it’s going to be the story from the bottom of the barrel where they were, they literally made $25,000 a year for 3 years in a row and then the transformation to this year, they’ll do well over six figures. And that’s going to be this first podcast. And the second podcast episode is, I’m actually going to be doing, I did a live coaching session with him on stage, and I want to share that with you as well because I think there’s a lot of things for you specifically that you can get from this episode too. So the next few episodes are going to be sharing this really fun conversation that happened late night at the Traffic Secrets event with my friend Nick Fitzgerald, and if you think that name sounds familiar, I have talked about him before on this podcast. In fact, a little over a year ago I did a podcast episode called being a rainmaker that was a personalized podcast that I sent to Nick specifically to help him with what he was struggling with at the time. So anyway, I wanted to share this with you because it will take you full circle to show you kind of the progress and the momentum and things that are happening in his life, and I think it will be encouraging for you to hear the story because no matter where you are in your journey right now, if you are struggling, doing well, or if you’re somewhere in between, there are parts of this story that will resonate with you. And in the second episode where I coach Nick I think will help everybody as well. So with that said, let’s jump right in and have some fun. I want to introduce you to my friend Nick Fitzgerald. Alright so I want to set the tone for the next hour or so of what the game plan is. So I have a first initial question that I’m curious about with everyone here. I’m curious, who since they joined the Two Comma Club X program has had some kind of experience with Mr. Nick Fitzgerald? That’s powerful, I’m going to talk about why in a little bit, but very, very cool. So some of the back story behind this, and then we’re going to introduce him up, and when he comes up I want you guys to go crazy and scream and cheer and clap, because it will be good, and then I want him to sit down so we’ll be the same height, which will be good, it’ll be fun. So some of the back story, I actually met Nick the very first time in elementary school, and even in elementary school he was a foot and a half taller than me, which is amazing. He was like 6 ft 2 in like third grade, it was amazing. But we knew each other when we were dorky little kids and going up through elementary school we were both doing our things, and we didn’t have a care in the world and everything’s happening. And as we got older he kept getting taller, I stopped growing. And then we got into high school and he kept growing and he joined the basketball team. I didn’t keep growing so I went downstairs in the basement, literally, at our high school in the basement they call it the rubber room, and it’s this room that smells like, I don’t even know, but it’s under the gym. So he would go upstairs and fans would show up and people would cheer for them, and scream at their games. And all the girls would come to the games. And we’d go down in the rubber room by ourselves and cut weight and put on our sweats and lose weight and we’d jump rope and sweat like crazy. And we’d sit there, and I remember one day after working out for two hours pouring in sweat, I had my plastic gear on and my sweats on top of that, my hoodie and my hoods and we got the wrestling mats, and literally rolled ourselves up in the wrestling mats to keep the heat in, and we laid there and we were so hot. And I could hear the basketball players in the gym up above having so much fun and people cheering for them. And all the girls were there. And I was like, “Why are we not playing basketball?” It doesn’t make any sense. But during that time, obviously we were in two different kind of worlds, and we didn’t really connect that much, and then we left our separate ways. And I didn’t hear from him for years and years and years. And then do you guys remember Facebook when it first came out? The first time you got it and you log in and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, I can connect with people.” And you start searching the friends you know and then you find their friends and you spend a day and a half connecting with every person you’ve ever remembered seeing in your entire life? Do you guys remember that? So I did that one night, I connected with everybody. Everyone in high school, everyone in junior high, or elementary, everyone in every stage of my life, as many as I could think of. And then I was like, I think that’s everybody. Okay, I’ve connected with everybody. And one of those people that night was Nick. And then, but I didn’t say hi, I just friend requested and he requested back and I’m like, cool we’re connected. And then after that I got kind of bored with Facebook for like a year or so. Then a little while later I found out you can buy ads on it and I was like, what, this is amazing. So we started buying ads and everything is happening. And it’s crazy. And then what happened next, I actually want Nick onstage to tell you this story because I want you to hear it from both his perspective and my perspective, I think it’d be kind of interesting. Yeah, I want him to come up first. So let’s do this real quick. As you guys know Nick has been a super valuable part of this community since he came in. I’m going to tell the story about how he got here and some of the craziness of how he signed up when he probably shouldn’t have and what’s been happening since then, because I know that you guys have all been part of that journey and been supporting him. How many of you guys are going to his event that’s happening later this week? He just keeps giving and serving, he’s doing all the right things, he’s telling his story, he’s doing some amazing stuff. So my plan now is I want to talk about the rest of the story. I want to tell you guys what I told him a year ago and then I want to tell you guys my advice for him moving forward, because I feel like it’s almost in proxy. I wish I could do that with every one of you guys. Just sit down here and coach you. But I feel like he’s at a stage where some of you guys aren’t to where he’s at yet and some of you are past that, and some of you guys are right where he’s at, and I feel like the advice that I really want to give him, will help you guys at all different levels. So that’s kind of the game plan. So with that said, let’s stand up and point our hands together for Mr. Nick Fitzgerald. Alright, this has some good music. That was like music from high school. Look how tall I am. I feel like….okay, so I had him find this post because I wanted to actually share a little piece of it. So this, I’m going to share a piece of it, I want to step back to where you were at that time in your life. So this was July 7, 2017, so what was that a year and a half ago, ish? So July 7, 2017 there was a post that said, “Long post disclaimer. I hate posting this, blah, blah, blah.” So at the time my family was about to go on a family vacation. We’re packing up the bags and everything, and you know how it is, you do a bunch of work and then you stop for a second and your wife and kids are gone and you’re like, pull out the phone, swap through the dream 100 and see what’s happening.  And somehow this post pops up in my feed and I see it, I see Nick my buddy from 20+ years ago and I’m reading this thing and my heart sinks for him. Some of the things he says, “I hate posting things like this, but I felt like need to for a while. Being poor stinks. For those friends of mine who are ultra conservative and look down consciously or not, on people like me, I can honestly tell you that I’m not a lazy free loader who wants something for nothing. I’m not a deadbeat who wants Obama or whoever to blame now, to buy me a phone. I’m not a lowlife trying to get the government to pay for my liposuction. I’m not a druggie who eats steak and lobster for dinner with my food stamps. I’m a father of four, a husband, someone who lost everything financially, including our home when the time came to have your healthcare in place or to get fined, I went through the process. “Based on my family size and income, we were referred to the state to apply for those programs. We couldn’t get coverage for ourselves to the exchange in other places, we qualified for Medicaid. After the process was complete, the state worker suggested we try to get some other help, some food stamps.” It kind of goes on and on and on and he says, “In 2016 I made $25000. $25,000 plus our tax returns for the previous year. So a family of 6 living on $25,000 a year is being audited for receiving too much help, too much assistance.” And it kind of goes on and on and on with that. He says, “I’ve never abused drugs or alcohol, I’ve never even tried them. I’m just a guy trying to live the American dream and provide for his family. It’s unfortunate that we look down on those who are trying to better our lives, even if it leaves them from receiving help from assistance in place to help them. Look down on me if you want, I don’t care. I know the truth. My family is healthy and sheltered and that’s all that matters. I don’t wish these trials on anyone else…” and it kind of goes on from there. So I want to take you back to that moment, what was, talk about what you were experiencing and what you were going through during that time. Nick: I didn’t expect this. I’m a friendly giant, but I’m a big boob too. Back at that time, I had started what I thought was, I started my entrepreneurial journey. I was working in film full time, working 12, 14, 16 hour days making $200 a day, just killing myself for my family. Going through the process of, I’d lost my job because I wasn’t going to hit my sales, I was a financial advisor, and I wasn’t going to hit my sales numbers. So you know, my ticket was stamped. So I said okay, I’m going to do my own thing. And in the course of all that, it was time to get your health insurance and those things, and I went through the proper channels, like I felt like I should. And I was referred to the government for the programs, based on the numbers. And as a provider, a father, an athlete competitor, I felt like a failure. We’ve all, when you have to rely on somebody else , or somebody else tells you, “Hey, we don’t think you can do this on your own, come over here and we’ll take care of you.” That’s basically what I was told. So it was hard to accept that and to live with that reality. So we did, and I worked hard and it was a blessing really, to not have to worry about how much health care costs or have some of the things to supplement to feed our family and stuff. So it was great and it was wonderful. But then I got the email from the state saying, “Hey, you’re being audited. We’re just looking at things and we’re not sure. You’ve been getting too much help.” So at that point I’m just sitting there frustrated because I’m working my butt off, just trying to make things happen, become someone involved in the film community in Utah. And I was, and everyone knew me, and I had a reputation, but I still was a nobody in the eyes of the government. So I went to Facebook to whine, looking for what I wanted, which was a pat on the back, “There, there Nick, you’re doing…we know you’re a good dude and you’re working hard.” That kind of thing, and I did… Russell: I was reading the comments last night. “Oh you’re doing a good job man. Good luck.” Everyone like babying him about how tough life can be. Nick: So I got what I wanted, but it still didn’t change anything. I still had to submit my last two years of tax returns and all of the pay that I’d got and everything like that, so they could look at our case number, not Nick, Leisle, Cloe,Ewen, Alek, William. So it was just one of those things. I got what I wanted, then comes Russell to give me what I needed, which was…. Russell: I saw that and I’m like packing the kids bags and everything and I was like, “ah, do I say something?” I don’t want to be that guy like, “Hey, 20 years ago…” and I was like, ah, I kept feeling this. Finally I was like, “hey man, I know we haven’t talked in over 20 years…” This was on Facebook messenger, “we hadn’t talked in like 20 years. I saw your post today and it sucks. And I know what’s wrong, and I can help. But at the same time, I don’t want to be that guy and I don’t want to step on any toes. I know we haven’t talked in 20 years, I have no idea if this is even appropriate. But I know what’s wrong, I can help you. And no, this is not some cheesy MLM I’m trying to pitch you on. But if you’re interested in some coaching, I know what’s wrong.” And I kind of waited and then I started packing the bags again and stuff like that. I’m curious of your thoughts initially as you saw that. Nick: It’s funny because my phone was kind of blowing up with the comments. So I would hear the little ding and I would check. And then I saw that it was a message from Russell, and we had said like, “Hey, what’s up.” And had a few tiny little small talk conversations, but nothing in depth personal. So I saw that he sent a message, so I’m like, “Sweet.” So I look at it, and I was half expecting, because I knew he was successful, I didn’t know about Clickfunnels per se. I knew he had something going on that was awesome, but I didn’t know what it was. So I was wondering, “I wonder what he’s going to say, what he has to say about things?” But I read it and it was funny because when you said, “I don’t want to overstep my bounds. It’s been a long time, I don’t want to step on toes.” Kind of thing, Russell, we all know his athletic accolades and stuff. I was a great basketball player too, I was in the top 200 players in the country my senior year and stuff like that. So I’ve been coachable and played at high levels and been coached by high level guys. So when I read it and he said, “I know what’s wrong and I can help you.” I was just like, “Yes.” That was my reaction. I just did the little, um, fist pump, let’s do this. So I replied back and I thanked him for reaching out and stuff, and I just said, I think I even said, “I’m coachable. I will accept any guidance.” And things like that. Because up until that point in my life, especially in sports, if a coach showed me something, I would do it the way he did, and I would kick the other dude’s butt. I didn’t care. I played against guys who made millions of dollars in the NBA. I dunked, I posterized on Shawn Marion when he was at UNLV my freshman year of college. I started as a freshman in a division one school in college. So I would take, I’ve always been that kind of, I would get that guidance, that direction, I can put it to work. So I was just like, “Dude, Mr. Miyagi me.” I’m 8 days older than him, so I’m like, “young grasshopper, yes you can teach me.” That kind of thing. So I welcomed it and I was excited. I had no idea, because again I didn’t know what he did. I just knew he had a level of success that I didn’t have. And if he was willing to give me some ideas, I was going to hear him out for sure. Russell: It was fun, because then I messaged him back. I’m packing the car and Collette’s like, “We gotta go, we gotta go.” I was like, ah, so I get the thing out and I was like, “This is the deal. I’m driving to Bear Lake, it’s like a six hour drive. I’m going to give you an assignment and if you do it, then I’ll give you the next piece. But most people never do it, so if you don’t that’s cool and I’ll just know it’s not worth your time. But if it’s really worth your time, do this thing. I need you to go back and listen to my podcast from episode one and listen to as many episodes as possible, and if you do that I’ll make you a customized episode just for you telling you exactly what’s wrong and how to fix it. But you have to do that first. “And I’m not telling you this because I’m on some ego trip, but just trust me. The problem is not your skill set, you  have mad skills, you’re good at everything. It’s all a problem between your ears. If we can shift that, we can shift everything else.” Then I jumped in my car and took off and started driving for six hours. And then the next day, or a day later you’re like, “I’m 14 episodes in.” he was still listening to the crappy one’s, according to Steven Larsen. The Marketing In Your Car, he was probably thinking, “This is the worst thing I’ve ever heard, ever.” But he did it. I said do it, he did it. And he kept doing it and doing it, and so two days into my family vacation I had Norah, you guys all know Norah right. She’s the coolest. But she won’t go to bed at night, she’s a nightmare. Don’t let that cute face trick you, she’s evil. So I’m like, I can’t go to sleep, so finally I was like, I’m going to plug her in the car and drive around the lake until she falls asleep. So I plug her in the car, strap her in and I start driving. And I’m like, this could be a long, long thing. She’s just smiling back here. I was like ugh. I’m like you know what, I’m going to do my episode for Nick. So I got my phone out, I clicked record and for probably almost an hour, it was an hour. I’m driving around the lake and I explain to him what I see. Did anyone here listen to that episode? I’m curious. I’m going to map out really quick, the core concept. Because some of you guys may be stuck in this, and the goal of this, what I want to do is I want to map this out, and then what’s funny is last year at Bear Lake, so a year later we had this thing where I was like, we should do a second round where I do a year later, this is the advice now. And I wrote a whole outline for it and I totally never did it. So I’m going to go through that outline now, and kind of show him the next phase. So you cool if I show kind of what I talked about? Nick: For sure. Russell: Alright, so those who missed the podcast episode, who haven’t been binge listening, you’ve all failed the test, now you must go back to episode number one, listen to the cheesy jingle and get to episode, I don’t know what it was. Okay, I’ve said this before, if you look at any business, any organization, there’s three core people. The first one is the person at the top who is the entrepreneur. The cool thing about the entrepreneur is the entrepreneur is the person who makes the most amount of money. They’re the head and they get the most amount of money. The problem with the entrepreneur is they also have the most risk, so they’re most likely to lose everything. I’ve lost everything multiple times because I’m the guy risking everything. But the nice thing is entrepreneurs that write their own paychecks, there’s no ceilings. So they can make as much as they want. They can make a million, ten million, a hundred million, they can do whatever they want because there’s no ceiling. So that’s the first personality type. The second personality type over here is what we call the technicians. The technicians are the people who actually do the work. And what’s funny, if you look at this, people who go to college are the technicians. What do they do, they look down on entrepreneurs, they look down on sales people. “Oh you’re in sales. What are you a doctor?” For crying out loud in the night. But they look down on people like us. Because “I’m a doctor. I went to 45 years of school.” What’s interesting, there’s technicians in all sorts of different spots right. I actually feel bad, I shouldn’t say this out loud, but at the airport here I saw one of my friends who is an amazing doctor and him and his wife were leaving on a trip and we were talking and he said, “This is the first trip my wife and I have been on in 25 years, together by ourselves.” I’m like, “What?” and he’s like, ‘Well, we had medical school and then we had kids and then we had to pay off medical school and all these things. Now the kids are gone and now we finally have a chance to leave.” I was like, wow. Our whole lives we’ve heard that medical school, becoming a doctor is the…..anyway that’s a rant for another day. But I was like, there’s technicians. And what’s interesting about technicians, they don’t have any risk. So there’s no risk whatsoever, but they do have, there’s a price ceiling on every single person that’s a technician, right. And depending on what job you have your price ceiling is different. So doctors, the price ceiling is, I have no idea what doctor’s make, $500 grand a year is like the price ceiling, that’s amazing but they can’t go above that. And different tasks, different roles, different position all have different price ceilings. But there’s like, this role as a technician makes this much, and this one makes this much and you’re all kind of these things. I said the problem with you right now, you have these amazing skill sets, but you are stuck as a technician in a role where they’re capping you out, where the only thing you can make is $25k a year. Remember I asked you, “What have you been doing?” and you’re like, “Oh, I’ve been networking, I’ve been learning, I’ve been getting my skills up, getting amazing.” I’m like, “That’s amazing, you’re skills are awesome, but your ceiling is $25k a year. No matter how good you get you are stuck because you’re in a technician role right now.” I said, “you’ve got a couple of options. One is go become an entrepreneur, which is scary because you’ve got four kids at home and you don’t have money anyway.” I am so eternally grateful that when I started this game, my wife, first off, we didn’t have kids yet, my wife was working, we didn’t have any money but I didn’t have to have any money at that time, and I’m so grateful I was able to sometimes, I was able to risk things that nowadays is hard. For you to come jump out on your own initially and just be like, “Boom, I’m an entrepreneur and I’m selling this stuff.” That’s scary right, because you’ve got all this risk. So I was like, that’s the thing, but it’s going to be really, really hard. I said, “there’s good news, there’s one more spot in this ecosystem. And the cool thing about that spot it’s that it’s just like the entrepreneur, there’s no ceiling, now the third spot over here is what we call the rainmakers. The rainmakers are the people who come into a business and they know how to make it rain. This is the people who know how to bring people into a company. Leads, they bring leads in. They know all this traffic stuff they’re talking about. These are the people who know how to sell to leads and actually get money out of peoples wallets and put it into the hands of the entrepreneurs. These people right here, the rainmakers don’t  have ceilings. In fact, companies who give the rainmaker the ceiling are the stupidest people in the world, because the rainmaker will hit the ceiling and then they’ll stop. If you’re smart and you have a company, and you have rainmakers, people driving traffic, people doing sales, if you have a ceiling they will hit and they will stop. If you get rid of the ceiling and then all the sudden they have as much as they want, they have less risk than the entrepreneur, but they have the ability to make unlimited amount of money. I said, “Your skill set over here as a technician is worth 25k a year, but if you take your skill set and shift it over here and say, “I come into a company and I’m a rainmaker. I create videos, I create stories, they’ll sell more products, more things.” Suddenly you’re not worth 25,000, now you’re worth $100,000, you’re worth $500,000. You’re worth whatever you’re able to do, because there’s no ceiling anymore. And that was the point of the podcast. I got done sending it, then I sent it to him and I sent it to my brother to edit it. And I have no idea what you thought about it at that point, because we didn’t talk for a while after that. But I’m curious where you went from there. Nick: So the first thing, you know, being told I was really only worth $25,000 in the eyes of the people who were hiring me, that was a punch in the gut. That sucked to hear. Thanks man. It was just like, I literally was working 12, 14, 16 hour days, lifting heavy stuff, I did a lot with lighting and camera work, not necessarily the story writing stuff, but you know, for him to put it so perfectly, that I was a technician. I thought going in, when I failed as an advisor and I started my own company, or started doing videos for people, and being so scared to charge somebody $250 for a video, being like, “they’re going to say no.” That kind of thing, and now I wouldn’t blink my eyes for that. But you know, it’s one of those things for him to tell it to me that way, just straight forward being like, “You are, you’re learning great skills and you’re meeting amazing people.” I worked with Oscar winners and Emmy winners and stuff in the movies and shows that I worked on, but again, I was only worth that much, they had a finite amount of money, and I was a small part of it, so I got a small piece. So listening to all of that, and then hearing the entrepreneur, the risk and stuff. I’m really tall, I’m 6’9” if you didn’t know. I’m a sink or swim guy, but because I’m tall I can reach the bottom of the pool a lot easier. When I jumped in, we had lost, as a financial advisor we had lost our home and we lost all these things. So I was like, I have nothing left to lose. Worst case scenario, and I had never heard that mindset before. We were renting a basement from a family members, our cars were paid off. Worst case scenario is we stayed there and get food stamps and that kind of thing. There was nowhere to go but up from there. So for me, I was just so excited. I’m like, I want to be a rainmaker, I want to be an entrepreneur, but I didn’t know where to find the people that I could do that for. So I was in this thing where I was still getting lots of calls to work as a technician, but I didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t want to put myself, my body, my family through me being gone and then when I’m home I’m just a bump on a log because I’m so wiped out, all that kind of stuff. So that was my biggest first thing, the action point for me. I started thinking, okay how do I transition out of this? How do I get myself out and start meeting the right people, the right kinds of clients who do have budgets and things like that, and how do I make it rain for them. That’s when I made that shift from working as a technician. I told myself I’m not going to do it anymore. The last time I technically worked as a technician was about 9 months ago. It was for a friend. So I made that shift and it was just amazing. Like Russell was talking about earlier, when you start to track it or when it’s part of your mindset, things start to show up and happen. You meet the right people and stuff. So those things just started, just by listening to that one hour long thing, I started changing and then the black box I got, Expert Secrets and Dotcom Secrets and started going through that as well. And it was just like, you see in the Funnel Hacker TV, that moment where the guy goes, “RAAAAA” that’s what happened with me. It was like a whole new world, Aladdin was singing. He was Aladdin and I was Jasmine, with a beard. Russell: I can show you the world. Nick: Exactly. But that’s what really, literally happened with me. Russell: That’s cool. Alright this is like summertime, he’s going through this process now, figuring things, changing things, shifting things, he’s changing his mindset. We go through the summer, we go through Christmas and then last year’s Funnel Hacking Live, were we in February or March last year? March, and so before Funnel Hacking Live we kind of just touched base every once in a while, seeing how things are going. He’s like, “Things are going good. I’m figuring things out.”  And then Funnel Hacking Live was coming, and I remember because we’re sitting there, and I think he messaged me or something, “Funnel Hacking looks awesome I wish I could make it.” I was like, “Why don’t you come?” And you’re like, “I just can’t make it yet.” I was like, “How about this man, I guarantee you if you show up it’ll change your life forever. I’m not going to pay for your flights or your hotel, but if you can figure out how to get there, I’ll give you a free ticket.” And that’s I said, “if you can come let Melanie know, and that’s it.” And I didn’t really know much, because you guys know in the middle of Funnel Hacking Live my life is chaos trying to figure out and how to juggle and all that stuff. So the next thing I know at Funnel Hacking Live, we’re sitting there and during the session I’m looking out and I see Nick standing there in the audience. And I was like, ‘I have no idea how he got there, but he’s there. Freaking good for him.” And I have no idea, how did you get there? That wasn’t probably an easy process for you was it? Nick: No. Credit cards. It was one of those things, I looked at flights. As soon as we had that conversation, it was funny because I was, I can’t remember what was going on, but it was a day or two before I responded back to his invitation. And I was like, I’d be stupid to say no. I have no idea how I’m going to get there. I think I even said, “I’ll hitch hike if I have to, to get there.” Can you imagine this giant sasquatch on route 66 trying to get to Florida. But I told my wife about it, and this is where Russell might have this in common. My wife is incredible and super supportive and she let me go. And we didn’t have the money in the bank so I said, “I’m going to put this on the credit card, and as soon as I get back I’m going to go to work and I’ll pay it off. I’ll get a couple clients and it will be fine.” So I booked the hotel, luckily I was able to get somebody who wasn’t able to go at the last minute and I got their hotel room, and I got the lfight and I came in and I was in the tornado warnings, like circling the airport for 5 hours, like the rest of you were. So I got there and I just remember I was just so excited. Walking in the room the very first day, the doors open and you all know what it’s like. I don’t have to relive this story. I remember I walked in and the hair on my arms, it was just like {whistling}. It was incredible, just the energy and the feeling. And I was like, t his is so cool. And then the very first speech, I was like that was worth every penny to get here. If I left right now it would have all been worth it. And you all know because you’re sitting here, you’ve felt that too. So that was my, getting there was like, “Honey, I know we don’t have the money, we have space on the credit card, and when I get home I swear I will work hard and it will be okay.” And she’s like, “Okay, go.” So I did. Russell: So now I want to talk about, not day one, or day two, but on day three at Funnel Hacking Live. How many of you guys remember what happened on day three? Russell sneak attacked all you guys. I was like, if I start going “Secret one, Secret two, Secret three” you guys will be like, “Here it is.” Sitting back. I was like, how do I do the Perfect webinar without people knowing it’s the perfect webinar? And I’m figuring this whole thing out, trying to figure that out. And we built a nice presentation, create an amazing offer for this program you guys are all in. And as you know, all you guys got excited and ran to the back to sign up and now you’re here. But you told me this personally, I hope you’re willing to share. But I thought it was amazing because you didn’t sign up that night. And I would love to hear what happened from then to the next day, and kind of go through that process. Nick: So this is my first Clickfunnels, I was all new to this whole thing. I was so excited when the 12 month millionaire presentation came up and I was like, “This is awesome.” Then I see it in the stack and I’m like, “I’m seeing the wizard,  I can see the wizard doing his thing.” And I was just so excited, and then the price. And it was a punch in a gut to me, because I was so, listening to it I was like, ‘This is what I need. This is what I want, this is what I need. It’s going to be amazing.” And then the price came and seriously, the rest of the night I was just like…. The rest of the presentation and everything after that I was just kind of zoned out. I just didn’t know what to do. Because I knew I needed it so badly and I’m like, that’s almost twice what we’re paying in rent right now. You know, it was just like, how am I going to justify this when I’m on food stamps and Medicaid and all this kind of stuff. You know, “yes, I’m on that but I dropped this money on a coaching program.” Russell: “From this internet coach.” Nick: Right. And so I’m having this mental battle and get back home to my room that night and I didn’t go hang out with people. I just was not feeling it. And I remember texting my wife on the walk back to the room. And I took the long way around the pond, just slowly depressedly meandering back to my room. And I’m texting her and I’m telling her how amazing it was and what the program would do and all that kind of stuff, and she’s like, “That sounds great.” And I’m purposely not saying how much it’s going to cost, just to get her excited about it, so I can maybe do a stack with her right. “For this and this….” See if I could try it. I didn’t, I failed when it came to doing that. I told her the price and she’s like, “That’s a lot of money. How are you going to pay for it.” And I’m like, “I don’t know.” And I’m like, “The only thing I can do, because I have to sign up while I’m here, and pay for it while I’m here. I can put it on the credit card and then we will figure it out.” So we talked a lot and I talked to my dad and it was the same thing. He was like, “Man, that’s a lot.” Just the scarcity mindset that a lot of us have with our family members and support system who aren’t, don’t think, who aren’t the crazy ones. So I went to bed and I got emotional, and I slept so so bad. Just didn’t sleep well that whole night. And again, I talked to my wife again the next morning, and I just, we just said, “It would be awesome. But I can’t do it, so I’m just going to work hard and figure something out and then if it ever opens up again, then I’ll be in a position to do it.” So I left my room that morning with that in my mind. I made the mistake of keeping my wallet in my pocket though, because I’m here. I again made the long walk back and kind of gave myself a pep talk like, “Don’t worry about that kind of stuff. Just more value out of it, meet more people.” So that’s when I left my room that morning, that’s where my mind was. Russell: What happened next? Nick: I walked into the room and Kevin Hansen, who I had, it’s funny, he does a lot of editing for Clickfunnels, and he and I had actually met independent of Clickfunnels before. It was one of those things like, “Oh you do, oh my gosh.” and it was like 2 months after we’d met. So I was talking to him, just chitchatting, and I just had right then in my mind, it was like, “Walk over to the table and sign up. If you don’t do it now, you’re never going to do it.” And it was just one of those things, because I’d given myself that speech, that whole five minute walk across the property. So I finished up talking with him and I just said, “I’ll be right back.” And I walked straight over to the table, got out the credit card, wrote it all down, and I’m like, I don’t even know what my limit is, so I hope whenever they run this that it goes through. I don’t know what’s going to happen. So I did and I got that little silver ribbon that we all got. And again, {whistling} chills. Like I was like, holy crap, this is amazing. I put it on my little lanyard thing and I was just like, I couldn’t believe it. The adrenaline and all that stuff of, “I’m doing it. And my wife is going to kill me when I get back home.” So that’s, then I went and got my seat and I was just floating, you know. I was so amped, I could have “Steven Larsened” it and screamed over the noise of everybody else and it would have been very, you would have heard it. So that’s what I did that morning. I was like, ‘Not going to do it, not going to do it, not going to do it.” I walked in, 60 seconds done. You have my money. Russell: So I’m curious, when did you tell your wife? This is like a marriage counseling session, huh? Nick: yeah, do you have a couch I can lay down on? Russell: A big couch. Nick: yeah, really. So I got home and I didn’t tell her, at all. I didn’t. I said, the clock is ticking. I have 30 days until that hits, or 20 days until the credit card statement comes and she’s like, “Wait, why is there an extra $2000 bucks on here?” So I just, I said, I’ve got some time because my wife, she’s 5’3”, she’s dainty, little petite lady, but she’s not scary I guess. But this is the first time I was really scared to tell her something in our marriage. So I just said, I’m just going to hit the road hard and see what I can come up with to cover at least the $1800 and the hotel, for what I racked up at Funnel Hacking Live, and then that will get me another 30 days to figure something out. So I went and I never told her until the credit card statement came and she saw it. She’s like, “What’s this?” But what happened before that, I don’t know, do you have something after that or do you want me to go to the next part? Okay, so me going to work and being like, “I gotta find it.” and it’s funny that night at Funnel Hacking Live, I went on Facebook and I created some half thought through offer where it was like, “Hey if I can get like 5 people locally where I’m at to do a monthly low number where I create a couple of videos for a monthly retainer, that will cover it and I can figure it. But nobody nibbled on it. So I got home and I started just trying to figure stuff out. And I had met another lady who had a company and she uses Clickfunnels for her course. And it was funny, I talked to her before I went to Funnel Hacking Live, and we were talking and she was like, “Do you know Clickfunnels?” And I was like, “That’s so crazy. I do.” Because I’d never met anybody else that had. So I got home and I shot a little video with her, it was a test to do some modules for her course and she loved it and it was great. So we were talking about, she had like 20 videos she wanted to do and we were talking about budget, and I just said, “you know what, for that much, for that many videos and all this kind of stuff, it’s going to be $25,000.” And she didn’t even blink. She’s like, “Perfect, that’s great.” Thank you, you guys. You’re going to make me cry. Thank you.  And that was like maybe two weeks after I got home that that happened. And I left her house and I tried my hardest not to do a jump heel click going down her driveway, out to my car, and I got around the corner and I messaged Russell like, “dude, you’ll never guess. I just closed my first 5 figure deal and this is what it was…” and he was like, “That’s so cool.” You know. But it was the whole plata o plomo thing, I would never have the guts to ask for something like that, I know that I should and that my skills and what I can do are worth that and more, and it’s been proven to me again and again since then, but to ask the first time, that first time you have a big ask and you’re just throwing yourself out there, and if she would have said no…Now what am I going to do? Because I had actually done another pitch where I did like a webinar pitch where I  had a stack and slides and stuff because it was for a Chamber of Commerce, and I wanted to charge them 2500 a month to do like 4 videos a year. And I did the whole thing like, “If you do it, it’s $2500 a month, or if you do it all right now it’s this…” that whole you know, and they passed on it. I was like, ugh. So it was just one of those things where being around y’all, that was my first experience being around entrepreneurs, really. I have friends who have had businesses, but I felt weird for wanting to create my own thing or being selfish because I have four kids. Like why don’t you go get a real job? All those conversations that you hear and have with yourself, especially when things aren’t going great. But it was like okay, I have to get it done or I have to drop out. And I just, even in that short amount of time I received so much value from the people I was beginning to meet, and then as the content started coming out I was like, “There’s no way I could live without this after having a taste of it.” So that was my, I had to get it done and it worked out. Russell: Amazing, I love that story. So coo. Alright, so since then, how many of you guys have watched his….are you daily or almost daily Facebook Lives? Nick: Pretty much, almost daily. I’ll miss some… Russell: How many of you guys have watched his daily Facebook lives, he’s doing what we’re saying right. He’s doing it. He’s doing it. I see it, I see it coming in my feed. It pops in my feed over and over. He’s doing what we’re talking about. He’s attracting people, he’s telling stories. All the stuff we’re talking about, he’s been doing it. But part of it, he had to have that emotion, that plata o plomo moment and then he hit it and it’s just like, he’s been running and running and running and running. And it’s been so insanely fun to watch the progress and the growth. Some of you guys know he put out an event that’s coming up this weekend and sold out in 5 seconds. He’s like, “I sold out, should I make it bigger?” and I’m like, “No people should have responded to you faster, it’s their fault. Sell it out because next time it will be easier to sell it out again and easier to sell out again.” But he did it by giving tons of value. Telling stories, telling stories, telling stories, providing more value to you guys, to other entrepreneurs, other people in the community and people are noticing. All the stuff we talked about today, he’s doing it. Consistently, consistently, consistently doing it. That was so cool. I don’t even know where to go from here. Alright I know where to go from here. Before I move into this, was it scary? Nick: All of it scary? Well, this is what, back to my competitive days, I don’t care who, I’d played against the best players in the country at high levels. And I didn’t care if you were going to the NBA, being recruited by Duke, once we got into the lines I didn’t care who you were, I was going to make you look silly. I would hold, you wouldn’t score a point on me, or I would just like out work you and if you wanted to get anywhere I was in your face the whole time. And so this was a whole different game for me. I remember Myron talking about in his speech at Funnel Hacking Live, you have to stay in the game long enough to learn the game, and I was new to this game. Like brand new, less than 12 months when I went to Funnel Hacking Live. And it was terrifying because, not necessarily because I didn’t think I could do it, I was just worried when, how long it would take. Like am I going to go and just spin my wheels and it’s going to be 15 years, 2099 and I’m wheeling up across to get my reward from him in his wheelchair, just like, “Hey buddy.” You know, that kind of thing. I just didn’t know how to make it happen quick. That kind of stuff. So I was definitely scared, not necessarily of failing, because I had failed before, I was just scared how long it was going to take. Russell: one of the best moments for me was this summer, him and his family were driving home from, I can’t remember where, they were driving through Boise, and he’s like, “Can we swing by and say hi? My kids want to meet you, my wife wants to meet you.” That’s always scary when you haven’t met someone’s wife or kids and you’re like, what if they hate me. And I remember I started thinking, oh my gosh. He spent all his money coming out here, and then he bought the thing, she might legitimately want to kill me. I have no idea. I was a little bit nervous. And I came and met them and the kids, it was super cool. I remember the coolest thing, your wife just looked at me and she said, “Thank you.” And I was like, how cool is that? Just the coolest thing. Thank you for convincing, persuading, whatever the things are to do this thing. I think sometimes as entrepreneurs we feel the guilt or the nervousness of, “Should I sell somebody something? Is it right, is it wrong?” You have to understand when you’re doing it, it’s not a selfish thing for you. It’s like, how do I get this person to take the action they need to do. Because most people won’t do it until they make an investment. It’s just human nature. They’ll keep dinking around and dinking around, whatever it is until they have a commitment, until they make that covenant, like Myron talked about earlier, people don’t change. So in any aspect of life, you want someone to make a change, there’s got to be something that causes enough pain to cause the change, which is why we have the program. We could have priced the program really, really cheap but I was like, “No we won’t.” We legitimately wanted to make a plata o plomo moment for everybody. You’ll notice, when the program signup, not everybody who signed up is here today. Some people fell away, some of them left, things happen and I totally understand, but I wanted to make it painful enough that we get people to move. And there are people in this room, I’ve joked about, Nick probably shouldn’t have bought that. If he would have asked I would’ve been like, “No dude, don’t. What are you thinking? Why would you do that?” as a friend this is weird, but I’m so grateful. Are you grateful you did? Nick: Absolutely. Russell: Where’s Marie Larsen, is she still in here? I talked about this in the podcast. She was in the same situation, she should not have signed up for it, it’s insane. I saw this text she sent Steven, she’s like, how much did you have in your bank account when you signed up for it? $70 in the bank account, $1800 a month bill she signed up for. And then it started happening and she was freaking out how it’s going, if you guys haven’t listened to the podcast, Lean In, yet I told the whole story. But it got nervous month one, then month two happened and she’s like, “Oh my gosh, I need to leave. I can’t afford this.” And she’s talking with Steven and Steven’s like, “Well, you could leave and walk away, or you could lean in.” so she decided, “Okay, I’m going to lean in.” So she leaned in, and I’ve watched as her business over the last 3, 4, 5, 6 months is growing and it’s growing and it’s growing because she leaned in. Tough times will come, every single time it comes, but those who lean in are the ones who make it through that, and who grow and who build huge businesses.

Episode 18Rushed Executions SeriesPart One - Bruce Earl Ward In April 2017 Arkansas' supply of the drugs used for lethal injection were about to expire, to avoid wasting the drugs that are hard to get, the state decided to rush the execution of eight inmates...  This series will cover each of their cases... Starting with Bruce Earl Ward.Research, Writing, Hosting, Recording and Production done by Nicki T. Original Music by Mr T. Promos in this episode: Dumb and Busted PodcastTargeted PodcastStatus Pending PodcastSources used for research on this series: Police Reports, Court Documents and the following public information:Arkansas Times Article written by Benjamin Hardy (2015)https://arktimes.com/arkansas-blog/2015/08/13/udpate-arkansas-has-purchased-lethal-injection-drugs-including-midazolamTwo articles written by Liliana Segura (2017) for The Intercept Articlehttps://theintercept.com/2017/04/26/how-a-daughters-search-for-her-biological-father-led-her-to-an-execution-in-arkansas/https://theintercept.com/2017/11/12/arkansas-death-row-executions-kenneth-williams/The Marshall Project Article written by Maurice Chammahhttps://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/04/12/how-the-drug-shortage-has-slowed-the-death-penalty-treadmillArkansas Online piece written by Brandon Riddle, Emma Pettit, and Maggie McNearyhttps://www.arkansasonline.com/arkansasexecutions/

We sit down and talk about Black Texas Magazine with Founder, Editor & Chief Nickholas Bailey.Learn about Black Texas Magazine here:https://www.blacktexasmag.com/TRANSCRIPTZach: What's up, y'all? It's Zach with Living Corporate, and yes, you're listening to a B-Side. Now, yes, we've introduced the purpose of a B-Side before, but remember, every episode is what? That's right, somebody's first episode. So for our new folks, B-Sides are essentially random shows that we have in-between our larger shows. These are much less structured and somehow--that's right, you even guessed it--it's more lit. That's right. So there's lit. This is more lit than our regularly scheduled shows. Sometimes they're discussions that the hosts have. Sometimes they're extended monologues from just one particular host like myself or Ola or Latricia or Ade, or sometimes, yes, maybe even sometimes, maybe even most times, they're a special chat with a special guest. Today, we have a special guest - Nickholas Bailey. Nick Bailey is the editor-in-chief of Black Texas Magazine, a media outlet that is dedicated to enriching the lives of people of color across the state and beyond by connecting on a personal level through a passion for leading fulfilling lives. Welcome to the show, man. How you doin'?Nick: I'm doing well, how are you?Zach: I'm doing good, man. Look, let's talk about Black Texas Magazine. Where did it start, why the name, and what are y'all trying to achieve?Nick: Well, Black Texas started kind of as a jumping point for me because prior to this, or about--oh, I guess about a year prior to this I was the online editor for a publication called Texas Lifestyle Magazine. Great publication. They've done a lot of great stuff, but as I--as I got further into it, I started to recognize that there was a disconnect between my perspective and the perspective that they were--that they were creating. You know, like, I live a very different lifestyle than the people that they target, you know? I'm not accustomed to paying $300 for a charcuterie board or paying, you know, $1,000 for, you know, a grill set. It just wasn't really my--it wasn't really my thing, and I was pushing for some more relatable content for the average Texan, and it just wasn't--there was a disconnect there, and so after a lot of thinking and a lot of planning I decided to make the jump and create a publication for black people that was essentially the same thing in some ways. Like, I don't want to say that we just copied and pasted the formula because, you know, unfortunately I created a lot of the formula for Texas Lifestyle once I came on, but I would say that our goal is to enrich the life of black Texans and really Texans of all colors by exposing them to new brands, new opportunities, and new experiences that they may not have previously known about or they may not have previously felt like were open to them, you know? So I know for a lot of--for a lot of black people in the community, we--we almost self-segregate with a lot of things, you know? We look at things as, "Oh, that's white people stuff. We don't really--we don't really mess with that," whether it be, you know, simple stuff or the wild stuff like bungee jumping or skydiving, which I'm still kind of on the fence on. Like, they might be able to keep those. [laughs] But even things like, you know, eating at different restaurants or trying different festivals and experiences. Just really making it more palatable for--you know, for the black community, because there are plenty of people in the black community that say, "Hey, I want to live life. I've only got one life. I want to enjoy it while I'm here," and finding the opportunities for them that will enhance their lives is really the big overarching goal for us, but also highlighting the black businesses that are trying that as well along the way.Zach: So it's interesting, right? So I looked at the platform, and, you know, I think what I was taken most aback by was the amount of content, right? Like, you guys--it seems like you guys are publishing something every single day, and so talk to me a little bit about y'all’s challenges in getting this started up and, you know, what goes into managing a digital magazine. How do you juggle--it seems that there's a lot of hats to juggle. It seems that there's a lot of things to do, and I understand that you're also working full-time still.Nick: Yes.Zach: So how do you manage all of that?Nick: I manage that with a lot of stress--a lot of stress, not a lot of sleep, and an overdose of patience, because we do have a small team. We're always looking--like, we're always looking for new writers to bring on-board, but right now we do have a small team, and it's really just a matter of balancing everyone's talents and abilities. Like, for the time being I take on the burden--I take on the bulk of the burden by handling a lot of the administrative tasks. So, like, making sure that content is up on the website, proofreading the content, gathering all of the materials. So that might be, like, getting the photos in order, sorting it--like, sorting our files and documents online. So I do a lot of that stuff, and so I have the writers, and I say, "Hey, I want you to focus on writing," and the plan that I have right now is really to kind of spread that load across--across the team so no one person is having to do all of the writing. 'Cause everybody--like, to my knowledge, everybody else is working full-time somewhere as well. So what I would rather them do is each person write, you know, one or two things a month, and we could be able to keep a steady flow than expecting one person to churn out, you know, a new article every week, you know? And with balancing it with working--like, I work full-time, and for me it's kind of difficult 'cause I work 12-hour shifts. So a lot of my work is done--I guess done at night, so I'm usually up until about 1:00 in the morning making sure that content is looking good, there's no errors and we're gonna be good to go.Zach: So I have another question as a follow-up, right, really to the title of Black Texas Magazine. Has anyone run up on you with, "If we had a White Texas Magazine, that would be racist?"Nick: Not that directly, but it's been one of those side--like, side-swiped questions. Like, "Hm, why is it just for black people?" And kind of insinuating that, and to that I would say, to be honest, most of the public--like, most of the Texas-based publications we have are catered to a white audience. And, you know, I'm not opposed to--I'm not opposed to acknowledging that it may seem--it may come off as a bit contentious to say, "This is a publication for black people," you know, but at the same time it's never been a situation of, you know, "No whites allowed," you know? We've had--we've had white contributors to our publication. We have a lot of white readers. We have readers all over the world, and most of those aren't, you know, nations of color. And so I would say if they want--if they asked the question or they posed the question or the statement "If we had a White Texas Magazine, that'd be racist," I would tell them, "Well, let's go read Texas Highways. Let's go read Texas Monthly. Let's go read Texas Lifestyle." The list could go on. Most publications are catering to a white audience. Like, they may not be as blatant as to say it, but it's one of those--I would say it's one of those underlying things of once you see the subject matter you--there are ways of siphoning out certain groups by the content.Zach: Right. And, you know, it's funny because I think it's easy to forget that white is the default, right? Like, it's--like, you don't have to call something for it to be--the majority of the country is white, so most of the content out there in any type of media is largely going to be white, right? So you don't have to call--I don't have to call something white, something anything, but you do call things--you know, if there is other underrepresented groups, black, XYZ, or Asian-this or Latin-X or Hispanic-this because we're trying to highlight the fact that this is not the default, right? It's not what you immediately consider when you think about whatever audience or population that you're gonna be engaging. Okay, so let me ask you this. You know, you guys landed J Prince recently, [inaudible] J Prince, but how did that happen for you guys? Like, how did it work, and what was that experience like?Nick: For me, honestly, it was an amazing experience. I lucked into it because I got--I got an email from the city of Austin about an event that they were co-hosting. It was just an evening with J Prince where he was just hearing Austin talking about his life, and I went, and I was like--I didn't know what to expect, and I was just like, "Man, I just want to see this guy in person, see, you know, really what he's about and just kind of, you know, measure him up instead of just looking through a screen," and it was a cool event. The event went off really well, and at the end there was a line to, like, you know, take a picture with him and stuff, and I was like, "Okay, cool." You know, "I don't mind getting a picture with J Prince. That'd be kinda cool," and so I get in line, and as always they're trying to sell the book or sell merchandise and stuff like that, and just out of, you know, the spur of the moment I'm like, "I'll buy the book," and so I get the book, and when it's my turn he autographs the book and everything, and I ask him a question, and the question I asked him is, you know, "Hey--" Like, he talks about--he talked a lot about, you know, replacing IGs with OGs in terms of, you know, getting off of social media and really linking up with people that have done what we do before us and really gaining some knowledge from them, especially, like, in different entertainment avenues. A lot of the OGs that we came up with came up through nefarious ways, you know? They sold drugs, they robbed people. They committed crimes to get the assets that they needed, and so I asked him, you know, "How can we look up to these OGs and get advice from them when we're at a age where we don't want to take those penitentiary chances to make it into the industry?" And I think it kind of--it kind of put him on the spot, and he stopped and he said, "You know what? Talk to me after the show."Zach: You asked him--you asked him that in front of a bunch of people?Nick: No, it was--like, it was a one-on-one thing. I asked him, like, face-to-face, maybe two feet away from him.Zach: Oh, my gosh. Well, shout out to you for asking J Prince such a very pointed question to his face.Nick: You can't get the answers you don't ask for.Zach: [laughs] That's a good point.Nick: You know? 'Cause I would love to be in different indust--like, involved in different industries, but I don't wanna have to go sell coke to get the money for it.Zach: Straight up, yeah.Nick: But at the same time, trying to save money from a regular 9-to-5 is a very slow process.Zach: And this is the thing I think people forget, like, man, the blessing of an--you cannot, you cannot undervalue initial capital, man. Like--so you know, like, even when you talk about Jay-Z's album, the last album he dropped right, and he was talking about how I flipped this, and it's like, "Well, Jay-Z, man, you started off with, like, 400 racks. You had $400,000 from the coke game, so you say." So it's like, "Okay, yeah." If you--if you gave a very ambitious, you know, entrepreneurial person of color $400,000, man, that's gonna--yeah, they could flip that into something too. I'm not saying--they might not flip it into a billion, but they can flip it into something because they have the initial capital. So to your point, like, how--that just was such a good question because, like, okay, I'ma talk--if I talked to Jay-Z for an hour, people would say, "I'd love to talk to Jay-Z for an hour 'cause then I would learn how to be a billionaire." It's like, "Well, Jay-Z's gonna be like, "Well, I had initial capital of $400,000 because I sold drugs, and it was tax free. So I basically started with a 400--" Like, most black people don't have seed money, hundred thousand dollar seed money. They have a little bit of change here and there that they scrounge up, like you said. Like, that they hold over from their full-time job after paying off this and paying off that and whatever debt they have, and they have, you know, a little bit of change, not enough money to build an empire. You know what I'm saying?Nick: Absolutely, and that was--and after listening to Jay-Z's album, that was one of the things that I kind of left with. I was like, you know, "He talks a lot about, you know, these amazing ways to do better," and it's one of those things of "If you knew better, you'd do better." And that's cool. Like, I would love to buy a piece of art that's worth, you know, 1 million, hold it until it's worth 2 million, sell it when it's worth 10 million. That's cool. I would love to be able to give that to my children, but I gotta get that first million.Zach: Right. [laughs]Nick: It's easy--it's easy to compound wealth once you have it, and a lot of rappers talk about that part, but they don't really tell us how we can get the money, how we can get started without selling drugs, without robbing people. That's--like, that's the link they never give us, and I think that unfortunately that's because a lot of them don't have the answer for that, aside from "Sell drugs. Rob people." And that's an unfortunate truth. Like, I get it, that's the environment they came up in, but if we're trying to do better now we need new lessons.Zach: Right, right. So let me ask--let me ask you this. What advice would you have for black and brown folks trying to get, you know, multi-effort ventures off of the ground? So you have a full-time job. You've launched a magazine. It takes multiple hands, driving it and grinding it. It clearly--like you said earlier, it's stress. It's late nights. What are you--what advice would you have for folks who look like us trying to do similar things?Nick: The strongest advice I would give is work together. In college I ran a midterm program, and one of the things I taught was the idea of collective development. You know, especially if you're starting off with little to no capital. You're--like, you're working at a point where you're not getting paid. You need to find a team of people who are willing to work with you to build something up that benefits everybody, you know? Like, Black Texas isn't just me. It's not the Nick Bailey show, you know? My byline comes up very little. For me, I look at it as a plat--as I'm creating a platform to advance the careers of other people, you know? Because as we gain our audience and as we, you know, get that brand retention, that brand recognition, people start coming to the website looking for other people. They're not looking for me, you know? They're looking to see, "Oh, let's see what's up with these movie reviews. Let's see what's up with these fashion tips. Let's see what's up with these house-keeping tips." You know, "What events are coming up?" I want--I want people looking for the thoughts and ideas of other people, and for me in my particular situation I can say, "Hey, I can't pay you to write right now, but what I can give you is an opportunity to grow your name," because not everybody has the money to start up a website, you know? Even the cheapest websites that aren't free aren't cheap. Once you get past the, you know, this is BrandXYZ.WordPress.com and you get to just Brand.com, it becomes a different--a different financial burden, and not everybody--not everybody is willing to take that risk, and I've gotten to a point where I took that risk to--ideally to make it easier for other people. So I would say, you know, one, be willing to work together. Understand the vision. Don't just work for anybody, but understand the vision. Understand what it means for you personally and how it's going to benefit you personally, and then you give it your all, you know? Like, that's the truest thing that I can tell anyone, and also set ego aside, you know? Not everybody's going to be #1, and not everybody needs to be #1. You can easily do amazing as a strong #2, and what I mean by that is not everybody has to be a CEO. Not everybody has to be the founder, the president. You know? Like, I don't introduce myself as the founder or CEO of Black Texas because that's not important to me, you know? I want this to be something much bigger than myself. I'm the editor-in-chief, which is just to say I'm the guy steering the ship right now, you know? Like, I don't look at the--I don't look at the Dallas Cowboys and think of who the owner is, I look at the Cowboys and think of who are their star players, you know? Who are the people who made the team breathe? And that's how I look at--that's how I look at Black Texas and really any business, you know? We know--we know who Mark Zuckerberg is. That's cool. He made it that way. He's not the one looking at all this Russia info. He's not the one making sure that you wind up in Facebook jail for some post, [laughs] and those people may not have the fame, but they're getting us all a paycheck.Zach: Right. Right, right. Man, this has been dope, man. Do you have any shout outs for us?Nick: I did not think of shout outs. Let's see. If there are people I'd shout out, honestly I would just give shout outs to my team. It's been--like, we launched this year mid-January, and it's been a wild ride along the way. I've taken risks. I've asked them to follow me, and they have, and we really--we really made a lot of strides this year, and I'm proud to see the work they're putting in and what we're able to accomplish when we work together, you know? This is the first time that I've really steered a team like this, and to see them, you know, putting up the hard work is honestly amazing. I would want to give a shout out to my family, you know? Like, I love my daughters, but most importantly, like, my parents. They have been a well of support for me. They've encouraged me to, you know, chase my dreams. They've helped me when I--like, when I wasn't sure about myself, and, you know, my grandma's been my day one, and she's helped me in life as well, but I don't know. I would say--if I had to give a specific shout out it would be to my father, and that's because he gave me the capital to get this magazine started, you know? 'Cause, like, every year he'll give--like, he'll give a gift for Christmas, which really isn't a gift to me, it's more of a "Hey, here's some money from me. Get gifts for the girls," because he doesn't really--he doesn't really celebrate Christmas. Different religion. That's not really his thing, and so I get it, but this last year he gave me a little more than usual, and he said, you know, "Take this and do what, you know, you feel you need to do with it," and I was just at a loss, and I thought and I thought about it. I strategized, and I prayed over it, and I said, "You know, I have to be willing to take that jump," you know? It called me back to a quote from Steve Harvey talking about getting to success, and he said, you know, "You have to be willing to jump. You can't be successful on the ledge," and so I went for it. And so, you know, I've got to give it my all because I can't--I can't let folks down. That's not my thing.Zach: Awesome, man. Well, look, that does it for us, guys. Thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate podcast. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at LivingCorporate, Twitter at LivingCorp_Pod, and subscribe to our newsletter through living-corporate.com. If you have a question you'd like for us to answer on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You have been listening to Nick Bailey, editor-in-chief of Black Texas Magazine. Peace.Kiara: Living Corporate is a podcast by Living Corporate, LLC. Our logo was designed by David Dawkins. Our theme music was produced by Ken Brown. Additional music production by Antoine Franklin from Musical Elevation. Post-production is handled by Jeremy Jackson. Got a topic suggestion? Email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. You can find us online on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and living-corporate.com. Thanks for listening. Stay tuned.

Hey Y'all! I re-recorded Episode one, one of my favorite cases, The Markle Family. Originally Episode 1 - A real life Hollywood horror story that shook the Quapaw Quarters of Little Rock Arkansas in 1987.   The Markle Family consisted of John Lawrence Markle, Christine Markle, Suzanne Markle and Amy Markle. Johns mother is Oscar winning Actress Mercedes McCambridge. Check out our Social Media for images about the episode.Promos from:Minds of MadnessPretend RadioMoms and MurderStrictly HomicideStrictly Homicide Patreon Page All research, writing, hosting and producing by Nicki T. Original Music by Mr. T (Lucy's Temper) @lucystemper on twitterSources used for research on this episode:Police reports, Court documents and the following publications – Arkansas Online - https://www.arkansasonline.com/murdersonmain/Written by Brandon Riddlehttps://www.arkansasbusiness.com/article/89023/today-marks-30th-anniversary-of-markle-murdershttps://www.onlyinyourstate.com/arkansas/ar-markle-murders/Written by Carol Ann Carsonhttps://www.aymag.com/murder-mystery-a-nightmare-on-main-street/Written by Rhonda Owen

Episode 16 - Carmeletta GreenA missing persons case handled horribly. Promos from:Pretend RadioStrictly HomicideStrictly Homicide Patreon Page All research, writing, hosting and producing by Nicki T. 

So you've found yourself on death row. You're guilty, both factually so and legally convicted. You're just waiting on your date, and you'll be done. But wait, there's one last step...Nicki T, from Strictly Homicide, joined me to talk through a case as disturbing for its lack of information as for its legal process. And, as we have all come to expect, some serious meandering from topic, because why not?? Disclaimer: MariticidePromos: Crime in Movies and Nordic True CrimeSponsor: Bath By Bex

Episode 15 - Charles Singleton Featuring Kate Host of Ignorance Was BlissCharles Singleton sat on Arkansas' Death Row longer than anyone else...Joined by Kate from Ignorance Was Bliss Podcast.Promos from:The Minds of MadnessMens ReaStrictly HomicideStrictly Homicide Patreon Page Ignorance Was Bliss  All research, writing, hosting and producing by Nicki T.