Podcasts about nick to

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.

#SecurityConfidential #DarkRhiinoSecurity Nick Espinosa is a cybersecurity expert with over 25 years of experience in the field. He founded Windy City Networks, later acquired in 2013, and went on to create Security Fanatics in 2015, specializing in custom cyber defense strategies for medium to enterprise-level corporations. Nick is a board member, advisor, and contributor to several cybersecurity organizations and initiatives, including Roosevelt University, the COVID-19 Cyber Threat Coalition, and the Cyber Peace Institute. He's also an award-winning co-author, TEDx speaker, and host of the nationally syndicated radio show "The Deep Dive." 00:00 snippet 01:20 Our Guest 02:07 Growing up around technology 06:42 What can't companies do right? 14:40 Nerd to English translation 21:07 The 5 laws of Cybersecurity 35:21 Innovating around Systems 49:24 More about Nick ---------------------------------------------------------- To learn more about Nick visit https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickespinosa/ Visit Nick's Youtube Channel:  @NickEspinosa  To learn more about Dark Rhiino Security visit https://www.darkrhiinosecurity.com ---------------------------------------------------------- SOCIAL MEDIA: Stay connected with us on our social media pages where we'll give you snippets, alerts for new podcasts, and even behind the scenes of our studio! Instagram: @securityconfidential and @Darkrhiinosecurity Facebook: @Dark-Rhiino-Security-Inc Twitter: @darkrhiinosec LinkedIn: @dark-rhiino-security Youtube: @DarkRhiinoSecurity ​ ----------------------------------------------------------

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.

On this episode, we will continue our conversation on what expenses may change when you enter into 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: Back here for another episode of the podcast with John and Nick from PFG Private Wealth. On Retirement Planning Redefined, we're going to get back into our conversation from the prior episode about cashflow. We went through some categories, housing, work stuff, healthcare, taxes, so on and so forth, on how those expenses will change either to the plus or the minus, depending on our setup. Well, this is the time to talk about the setup. So as we are assessing our retirement expenses, we'll break these down into a couple of categories. So we're going to talk about those with the guys. John, welcome in buddy. How you doing this week? John: Hey, I'm doing all right. How are you? Mark: Hanging in there. Doing pretty well. How about you, Nick? Nick: Pretty good. Staying busy. Mark: Staying busy and enjoying. So we're taping this before the fourth, but we're dropping this after the fourth, so hopefully you guys had a good fourth? Nick, you probably went up and saw family, yeah? Nick: Heading up north to just, yeah, extended family and friends. That fourth week makes it an easier week to get away because everyone's doing stuff anyways. Mark: Yeah, yeah. It's always funny when we have the holidays and we're kind of taping the podcast ahead of time because then drop it because we're not around, so sometimes I get confused on my dates. So yeah, again, we're talking about this before the fourth about what we'll probably will be doing on the fourth. So John, are you on grill duty? Because I know I am. I'm stuck on it. John: No, no. My brother's forcing me to have a cookout at my house, so I told him if I'm providing the house, he's the one on grill duty. Mark: Okay, that'll work.   John: He's visiting from Boston, so he's excited because my other brother's down here and my sister, cousin, and actually the best man in his wedding is married to my sister, so he decided to come down.   Mark: So Marketing 101. So the second you said Boston, all I hear is these Sam Adams commercials right now, "Your cousin from Boston." Every freaking time I hear Boston, that's the first thing I think of. Or Sam Adams beer, I go right there. All through the hockey playoffs and NBA playoffs, I kept seeing those commercials so it's embedded in my brain. But hey, that's the point of marketing, right, is to be those little earworms, so you go out and buy whatever it is that you go out and buy. And speaking of that, that's my transition into the must haves versus the nice to haves. So if we're talking about those accounts, those different categories that we went through on the prior episode, guys, how do those things now play into for our cashflow? Again, cashflow is the conversation wraparound, it's the wrapper of this whole endeavor. We need to break this down. And do you guys do this with clients? Is it something you encourage them to do, because everybody's individual needs and wants are going to be a little bit differently, but do you break things up in the must-haves versus the nice to haves? Nick: I would say to a certain extent, we do. We kind of list basic expenses and discretionary expenses. Mark: So give us some musts. What's the musts? Nick: So obviously housing, healthcare, food and groceries, some form of transportation, whether it's one vehicle, two vehicles. Getting rid of debt. Those are all things that are obviously needs. [inaudible 00:03:02] Mark: Life essentials, right? Nick: Yeah, for sure, for sure. Depending upon the people, some things are discretionary. I would say most of the people that we work for can't afford to have some sort of traveling in retirement. Mark: Yeah, so is two trips a year or is it five trips a year? That's kinds how it starts to change? Nick: Yeah, exactly. Or even a big trip every X amount of years. So like a baseline travel budget of X, and then let's add one of the things that we commonly do is, let's say the travel budget is $6,000 a year from a baseline standpoint, and then every three years they want to do an additional trip of another 6,000, that's one trip. And so we can scatter that in throughout the plan and show them what it looks like and toggle that on and off. And with how we do planning, we can show them the impact of doing something like that and what it does to their plan. So for the higher tier, nice to have. For discretionary expenses, we will use our planning software and kind of show them, Hey, here's the impact on your plan if you want to do that. Because we always preface everything, it's telling people that it's your money, we're not telling you how to spend your money or what to do with your money, our job is to show you the impact of the decisions that you make. Mark: That makes sense, yeah. Nick: So let's arm you with that information so that you understand if you do these things, then let's make an adjustment accordingly. And for sometimes it helps them put into perspective where not everything is a yes or a no. And what I mean by that is, well, let's just say that there's two lifetime trips that they wanted to really do, and so they like to have a bigger travel budget, but really when you boil it down, it's like, okay, I want to make sure I go to these two places. So we make sure that we can accomplish those and make adjustments elsewhere. [inaudible 00:04:58] Mark: Yeah, because the must ... I'm sorry to cut you off, but I was thinking about this as you were saying it. The must-haves, like the housing, the health, food, you're not going to have any kind of discretionary wiggle room. Well, you don't want to. Now you could say, okay, we'll eat less food, or something like that, but that's not the goal in retirement, you don't want to go backwards. So the place typically we do make some adjustments in the cuts are in the nice to have categories. Nick: Yeah, and usually it's almost more of a toggle where even to a certain extent of, we've had conversations where, hey, if things are going really well in the markets and we're able to take advantage and take a little extra money out in years where things have gone well, that's kind of the impetus to do this sort of thing. Mark: Kind of pad the numbers a little bit.   Nick: Yeah. Mark: John, let me get you on here for, besides the expenses we covered, some of the things we went through, what are some contributing factors that will affect cashflow problems that you guys see in retirement? So all these different things, whether it's healthcare, housing, whether it's whatever, give me some bullet points here for folks to think about on things that can, not in a category per se, but like outside effectors, outside influencers, that can really cause us cashflow problems in retirement. John: The number one I'd say, concern for most people going through retirement is longevity. How long does my money need to last? Mark: And that's the great multiplier, right? Because if you live longer, it makes everything else go up. John: Correct. Yeah. So that's one thing we look at, and we do plans. We're planning for age 100, and we'll always get people like, well, I'm not living that long. But the thing is, that's always ... Mark: What if you do? John: Exactly. So it's like, Hey, listen, if you live to 100, guess what? Mark: You're covered. John: Your plan looks good. You could live to 90 and the plan looks good. So we always plan for, we again, overestimate the expenses, overestimate the life expectancy, Mark: And then you don't have to live with your cousin in Boston, right? John: Exactly. That's right. Mark: All right. What else besides longevity? John: Another big one we're seeing right now is inflation. Because with retirement, you're not getting a paycheck anymore, so your ability to earn is now gone. So your nest egg is providing that income for you and social security. And keeping up with inflation, especially the last few years has been a challenge for quite a few people. And mostly I would say for me, I've noticed my food bill has gone up drastically in the last couple of years, more than anything else is really. Because we talked about musts and nice to have, if trips go up, you could say, all right, I'm going to go on a little bit lesser trip, or not go as much, but you know, you got to eat and you got to have healthcare. So those things there are big ones to really consider going into retirement and to be aware of, is the plan [inaudible 00:07:42] Mark: Yeah, a friend of mine, for Memorial Day, we were talking about cookouts earlier, so we got July 4th, you're probably hearing this after July 4th, but how much did it cost you to buy this stuff? So a friend of mine posted a picture around Memorial Day that he bought three steaks, and he lived in the New York area, Nick, actually. And the tag on the thing was like 60 bucks for three steaks. It was like, holy moly. And I know different parts of the country are more expensive than others, but it was just where I'm at, it was like, wow. And they weren't like that impressive of a steak. So to your point, you got to eat. Nick: To be honest with you, I think there's a little bit of ... Mark: Price gouging. Nick: ... ridiculousness and price gouging going on right now from the perspective of a lot of different areas. I just got my six months notice on my car insurance, I've been complaining to everybody about it. One vehicle, no accidents [inaudible 00:08:34] John: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Nick, this isn't a therapy session, right? Mark: Well remembered, well remembered, John, from the prior episode. Very good. Nick: Yes. I drive probably 7,000 miles a year at the most and paying almost $2,500 a year for car insurance. But the crazy part is that, so okay, if it's always been high, that's one thing, but two years ago when I had switched companies, it was about 1,700. So again, we take ... Mark: Inflation. Nick: Do the math on that. I'm sorry, but 50% is not inflation, there's some 50% in two years and it's kind of wild. And then even just going, the area that we're in has been massive growth in this area, but even what the restaurants are charging, and it's just inflation impacts different areas differently. Mark: It's an excuse. I mean, just like anything, we've turned it into excuse, just like the supply chain problem issue. A friend of mine was trying to get his RV worked on and they were like, well, we're still having supply chain issues for a valve. And it's like, really, a valve on an RV, it's been three years. I don't know if supply chain issue really holds in that argument, but if companies are dragging their feet or employers, somebody's just taking long, that's just an excuse. And I think that's the same thing with the inflation. Is it real? Yes. But to your point, are some of these numbers really truly justified? But they can use that, well, inflation's bad. That's the excuse they use in order to hit you with a 50% increase. Nick: Yeah, and I'd say from a planning perspective, because people get concerned about that from a planning perspective, and saying, well, hey, we had much higher inflation last year than we did in our plan moving forward, and [inaudible 00:10:27] Mark: Are we going to be okay to survive it, yeah. Nick: Yeah, and the easiest way that we mitigate that from a planning perspective is we reprice current expenses. So in other words, repricing the current expenses allows us to take that into consideration, the increases that we've had, and then use more normal rates moving forward, which is how you more accurately display that from a planning side of things. Mark: Gotcha. All right, John, so you hit us with longevity and inflation as a couple of areas that can contribute to cashflow problems. Give me a couple more before we wrap up this week. John: Investment returns is another spot, depending on what type of plan you do or type of planning, if some people will really have their income depend on what their portfolio is returning for them. Mark: So we're talking about sequence of return risk, kind of thing? John: Yeah. So if you having a down year and there's not as much income coming in from your portfolio, well that could ultimately affect your cashflow. Or if it's a down year, and we go back to longevity of, Hey, how long is my portfolio going to last, just have a 20% dip in the market, you're going to be a little concerned about pulling out in that period of time, because once you pull out, you know, you realize those losses, and there's no more recovering [inaudible 00:11:41] Mark: Yeah, it's a double way, it's the market's down and you're pulling money out. So the truth that makes the longevity factor interesting. Okay. John: So one more thing on this. This is really important, and especially what we're seeing in the last couple of years where you have some type of plan where if you are dependent on that, you have almost like a different bucket to pull from in a time like this. So you really want to position yourself to be able to adapt to downturns in the market which could affect your income. Nick: One of the things, and I've been having this conversation quite a bit lately, is that previous to last year, for the dozen years leading up to that, rates in return on fixed or cash and cash equivalence was so low, you couldn't get any return on that money, that really people shifted predominantly, or at least in a large way, to take more risks, meaning more upside, so more heavily on the [inaudible 00:12:39] Mark: Well, because the market was going up too. We get addicted to that, so it's very easy to go, well, it does nothing but climb, it's done it for 12 years in a row, so let's keep going, right? Nick: Yeah. And a little bit of that's a circle where it's part of the reason it kept climbing, is because people were saying, well, and not just, but it's just a contributing factor where it's like, well, hey, I'm literally getting zero return here. So inflation's eating away at my money anyways, I might as well take a little bit more risk. And so earlier this year in the majority of our client portfolios, we took some money off the table because now we can get four to 5% in something that has no risk, and that lets us kind of at least take a deep breath, see what's going on, get some sort of return, where most of our plans, we use five to 6% in retirement anyways. Mark: Yeah, that's a good point. You just got to be careful, right? Because we don't know how long those rates will last either, so you don't want to lock yourself into anything too hefty either, without making sure it's the correct move for you. Especially, I'm thinking more like CDs for example. Nick: Yeah. We still target things that are short term, that sort of thing. But for a retiree, even from the perspective of, let's just use the million dollar number, there's a huge difference between five years ago, where if you wanted to do a one year CD and you could get 0.8%, that's $8,000 on a million bucks versus 5%, even just for a year, now it's 50,000 of income. I mean, one is you can't pay your bills, another one is going to be much more comfortable. So for a retiree, one of the sunny side or glass half full part of what we've been dealing with from an inflation perspective, is that at least there's a little bit more return on safer money as we try to re-plan and readjust. Mark: Yeah. No, that makes sense. So one more category here that I want to hit for just cashflow problems in retirement, John, you did longevity inflation and investment returns. I'm going to assume the fourth one's probably just the emergencies, the things that life throws at you in retirement years? John: Yeah, a hundred percent. Emergency funds, it's [inaudible 00:14:44] Mark: Got to have one. John: ... for that, because you just don't know what's going to happen. Mark: Murphy's Law's going to happen, right? John: Murphy's Law's been happening for the last three years. So basically a big one is healthcare expenses, which we touched on as a must have. So big health event could really dip into your emergency funds. Or again, especially here in Florida with the roofs, have talked to some clients and friends who basically were having homeowners insurance issues here, and then carriers are basically saying, Hey, for you to get renewed, you need a new roof. And all of a sudden it's like, what? I just go, my roof's fine. It's like, well, it's outdated, you know, you need a new one, or else [inaudible 00:15:24] Mark: And so they're not covering maybe the full cost or some of the cost, I guess, but they won't insure you. John: I had some friends actually get notices saying, your roof's too old. If you don't replace it, we're dropping coverage. Mark: Oh geez. Okay, yeah. John: So that's an emergency expense. Mark: Definitely. John: Roofs aren't necessarily cheap, so important to have an emergency fund because like you said, Murphy's Law, you have no idea what's going to come up and you want to be prepared for that. Mark: Yeah. No, that's a good point. Nick: The roof thing is pretty wild here too, because a lot of people have tile roofs down here. And depending upon the size of the house, a tile roof is going to cost you, what John? Between 50 and a hundred thousand dollars? John: Yeah, 50 to a hundred grand. Mark: Really? Holy moly. Nick: And so, yeah, and then if you're in a neighborhood that has association rules and all these other things, it can get a little squirrely. So just understanding even little basic things like that, where especially people that came maybe from up north where it's just shingle roofs and 10, 12 grand, 15 maybe, and then [inaudible 00:16:25] Mark: Yeah, I was going to say, my metal roof was like 20, and that was like eight years ago. Nick: Yeah. So there's just things like that where we always very much emphasize having an emergency fund. Mark: Yeah, definitely. All right, good stuff. Talking just cashflow issues, things to consider here on the podcast the last couple of weeks. So if you're worried about the cashflow or you're just worried about making sure your plan is accurate for the time of life you're in, especially if you're one of these folks that maybe got a plan, you're like, ah, I got a plan put together like a decade ago, or whatever. Well, it's not a set it and forget it, it shouldn't be a set it and forget it, anyway. Even insurance policies, sometimes it's very easy to get one and throw it in the drawer for 20 years and forget about it, but all those things can be looked at and reviewed and see if there's a better way to put a strategy together. So if you need a first opinion or second opinion, reach out to John and Nick and the team at PFG Private Wealth. Find them online at pfgprivatewealth.com. That's pfgprivatewealth.com. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple, Google, Spotify, whatever the case might be. Whichever podcasting platform app you like, just type in retirement planning redefine in the search box. Or again, find it all online, pfgprivatewealth.com. For John, Nick, I'm your host, Mark. We'll catch you next time here on the podcast. This has been Retirement Planning Redefined.

In this episode we discuss How To Be Extraordinary. 00:02:00 - Perception Perception is everything. Yeah.  KISMA Those can be the days that you look back on two and you're like, dang, you know, I really handled that.  NICK I handled it. It was cool. Which leads us to the topic of extraordinary. I think it is someone who faces each and every day and makes it the best day. I think being extraordinary doesn't mean that you're, you know, it is extraordinary to climb Mount Everest. It is extraordinary to make a billion dollars or a hundred million or 10 million or whatever. Like there's so many things that we think are extraordinary.  But in actuality, when we were talking about this episode, I think the realization came for us that when a person is their authentic, clean and clear self, that is extraordinary. KISMA 00:04:00 Out Shine And I honestly think, I honestly think that there's, there's beliefs built around that that say, well, it's not okay for you to out shine. You're not worthy of doing that. Who are you to, to really, you know, to shine that? Well, you're not, you know, you're nothing special, you know, like extra anything from whatever got programmed in there. I think those things kind of cover that up, but deep down, I really do think that people have a natural, a natural draw or a natural desire to really express themselves in an extraordinary way, extra express their nature, you know, their nature.  NICK To be true to their selves. KISMA 00:07:00 - Following Your Own Path So just to kind of make sure we're anchoring this in, because I think it, our version of extraordinary is yeah, you can move a mountain. Yeah. You can make millions of dollars. You can run a marathon every single day. It's when you really tap into your true self-expression and creativity, that extraordinary it's like that it's going to light up inside you, that you feel extraordinary because you're stepping out of every perceived box and limitation and you're taking your life and deciding for yourself, like we talked about in the last episode, there's an element of trust and you're living it. And when you look at that, someone who does that up against all the odds of what the world is telling us to do, or trying to get us to, you know, comply to, or be a, like following your own path outside of any box outside of anybody else's opinions, beliefs. That's extraordinary. KISMA 00:11:30 - Just Drop It Because then whatever you do, whoever you're being is way more authentic. You're just like the fierce guy to me, that's always the freedom point, right. Because I see when people don't make, you know, their big leaps or decisions or whatever, because they're, they're hedging their bets around what people are going to think or what if they fail or this or that. So just drop it. And that will allow you to not only feel, but really be extraordinarily authentic.  KISMA I agree.  NICK I sleep so much better at night.  KISMA Maybe not at first.  NICK Maybe not at first, but once it's dropped, man. Yeah, for sure.  KISMA Because there's a, there's a process to that. People ask me, well, how do you do that? How do you do you know, like, how do you do it is the wrong question to begin with. NICK 00:16:00 - Be Impeccable With Your Word What's one more that you would add in?  KISMA Well, as long as we're on the four agreements there, um, be impeccable with your word is always a really good one, but be impeccable with your word with yourself.  NICK I love that. I love that. That means that when you promise yourself, you're going to geek out, you're going to have fun. When you say I'm not going to care what anybody thinks or, you know, when you choose to do something like you're impeccable with your word, you, you do it for you. You stick with your word.  KISMA Yeah.  NICK That's amazing. KISMA

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!

*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.

Justin is back this time without Tank, so they bring in their friend Nick To help out! They debate what the best gaming snack food is, and talk about how Red Dead Redemption is coming out! They also jump into Nerf Guns releasing the Fortnite SCAR next year and how Drake Bought into Nadeshot's 100 Thieves E-sports team.

The TTA90s guys interview the the great actor, Phil LaMarr! They talk about everything from Mr. T, The Dodgers, Pulp Fiction, MadTV, Futurama & Samurai Jack! They also talk about Phil's new animation show, Goblins. Will there be more Futurama or Samurai Jack?!? Listen to the interview to find out! Official Podcast Website: http://tta90spodcast.buzzsprout.com Contact Us! Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TTA90sPodcast/ Gmail: TTA90spodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @TTA90spodcast Rate us & Review us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/that-totally-awesome-90s-podcast/id1117188877?mt=2 Please Donate to our Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund: https://www.facebook.com/donate/337869826639410

Green Meadows Beef is an unique family business providing grass feed beef direct to the consumer. This is the story how the Carey family have built their business of providing raw materials to the end user and the way they have used social media to take it to market     Today’s guest is Nick Carey, Director and General Manager of Green Meadows Beef based in Taranaki.  Green Meadows Beef is a unique family business who have built their business primarily using online and social media platforms.  The business has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years.  Craig and Nick talk about what started as an offbeat idea that has become big business for his family.   In 2012, his family decided they wanted to add value to their products.  This propelled them to launch a paddock to plate system.  This involved shipping products from their farm through their own processing and distribution channels.  Their direct-to-market through online sales has formed a big growth part of their business.   Nick’s father, suggested for them to try and market their beef product directly to the consumer.  They sat together as a family and formed a new way to get their products to the market, and soon, they recognized the opportunity of selling online. This propelled them to launch a paddock to plate system.  This involved shipping products from their farm through their own processing and distribution channels.  Their direct-to-market through online sales has formed a big growth part of their business.   Nick started his career as a commercial lawyer in Wellington and New Plymouth His role in this new family business was in the development, branding, and logistics.  Soon enough this was taking most of his time and he eventually decided he needed to quit his job as a lawyer.    That was a leap of faith for Nick, who has had to adjust to being an entrepreneur.  There were four key problems Green Meadows Beef was solving for the consumer.  These were (1) Time saving (2) Ease of purchase (3) Quality assurance, (4) Provenance.   Nick and Craig also talk about how wildly successful My Food Bag has become.  It is a website that allows it’s customers to order a food bag for a varied number of people.  It is also customized for them in terms of the number of people and their diet.  My Food Bag has revolutionized the industry.  Countdown eventually came up with a similar concept of online selling.  There was a big shift in the market of people being more open to purchasing food products online.  That assured Green Meadows Beef of its market.    In terms of marketing research, they were lucky that Green Meadows Beef was nimble enough to adapt their offering as well.  This included having to tweak their operations on the way.  They started out selling bulk-frozen packs and delivering them through chilled or frozen trucks.  However, it has now evolved to a point where they can customize their own products and deliver them the next day, chilled, through a courier.   Nick’s journey has not been without challenges.  One day, his company’s freight company informed him that they were no longer going to deliver Nick’s frozen meat packs.  As a result, he was forced to change his business model, which led to better results because they are now selling fresh produce instead of frozen produce.   Another challenge Nick has had to face was the price of raw materials.  Over the last three to four years, the price of raw materials has almost doubled.  At the same time. One of the things that has raised the price of the raw product is the price that it can otherwise be sold elsewhere.  Export of demand has been high.   They now run their farm as a separate business from their meat processing.  Each company has different governance, advisers, and processes.  Ensuring that the two businesses were independent of each other will help with succession planning and will force each one to be profitable on its own.  .  However, with the easing off of demand in the United States, the farm gate prices have been affected.    Nick learned to focus on the role of governance and the value of the right independent advice.  Another crucial area that Nick has focused on is being able to get accurate and timely business information, dealing with changes in technology and how scalable that is, and finally, achieving a profitable core business before evolving into other paths.   Another thing that Nick has focused on is learning how to work with his people.  Getting the right staff onboard has been a good learning experience for him.  He makes sure his employees have clearly defined roles, responsibilities, and reporting lines so that he could focus on working on the business and growing it.  Nick has been able to retain his staff for 4 years now.  He hardly needed to do cold hires because he utilized the benefits of his networks.   As for online selling, Nick uses mostly social media such as Facebook and Twitter to connect with people and to build an audience.  They do mostly paid advertising now.  He initially did everything in-house but has started outsourcing it already using a marketing consultant who works remotely for them.   In terms of content, Nick suggests that you keep it personal, relevant, and fun to keep his customers engaged.  With competition sprouting up more, there is a need to ensure that you get heard.  Nick’s friend once said that content is king but engagement is queen and she rules the house.  You need to be able to engage your followers.    Currently, they are on Pinterest and Instagram but it has been a challenge to maintain everything.  They use third party tools to help with the marketing side.  They also use cloud based systems that help cut costs and get things done.   What Nick enjoys about being in business is building something from the ground up, seeing the evolution of that business, and having a chance to enjoy its success.    As a lawyer, Nick had a structured and disciplined career.  At the moment, he says he has very little structure in his life now.  Working with creative types, for example, causes him to work longer hours and deadlines extended.  He deals with it by communicating well with his people.  He says that if you spend a good portion of your day through communicating, it makes the day go so much better. This goes back to having structures in place so the rest of the team can function harmoniously while you’re communication with them.    Nick’s challenge working with his family is ensuring that there is regular communication in terms of what’s happening in the business as well as asking for feedback.  He suggests that there has to be a clear distinction of business and family time.  It is important that everyone gets their chance to have a say but at the end of it, they are able to sit down and have dinner together.   In terms of having external professionals and mentors for his business, Nick says that one of the critical things is finding the right independent advice.  His solution has been to persevere until you find exactly what you need at a particular time.  As your business continues to change, so does the levels of advise.  Nick has found that having an independent director has helped him fill the skills gap.  Engaging the services of experts can be beneficial to his business as well.    Nick does not dwell on the past.  His company has a year end review where they identify what worked and what didn’t so that in the future, they can learn from these experiences. Nick says that in hindsight, he would have focused on margin analysis in his business and having a better handle on his cash flow and budget.  This has become one of their strengths and has allowed them to diversify the business for a more consistent cash inflow.   Being content in terms of business and the industry that you’re in is a mistake that business owners make.  As an example, the evolution of online selling has had an effect on traditional purchasing.  Nick suggests that you need to stay on top of things and not rest on your laurels because you don’t know what’s around the corner.   Strengthen your core business and ensure that it is profitable and sustainable before you venture out into other business opportunities.  At the moment, there is a need to develop relationships with consumers because people want to know where there food comes from, how it’s produced, and what’s going on.    Visit www.GreenMeadowsBeef.co.nz for more information.   TRANSCRIPT NICK CAREY    Craig: Hi guys!  Craig here from The Project Guys. Today in our podcast, really happy to introduce Nick Carey.  Nick is a Director and General Manager of Green Meadows Beef based here in Taranaki.  Green Meadows Beef is a unique family business who built the business primarily using online and social media platforms.  They specialise in suppling New Zealand consumers’ grass fed premium beef, where you online, and delivered to your door in twenty four hours.  And their business has experienced tremendous growth over the last five years.  What started as an offbeat idea and working from home office is now having their own dedicated butchery and retail premises and offices.  So, welcome Nick.   Nick: Thanks Craig.  Thanks for giving me the opportunity to tell a little bit about our story.    Craig: No drama at all! . Tell us a little bit about your background and why you decided to go into business.   Nick: Well, my background was as a commercial lawyer for a few years both in Wellington and New Plymouth.  We as a family, I guess, back in 2012, decided that we wanted to add value to the products we were producing which was mainly meat or beef and as a way to, I guess, cement the family farm and those plans through a formal succession plan, we decided to launch an integrated pallet to plate business which is shipping products from our farm through our own channels and processing channels, as Craig mentioned, direct consumers New Zealand wide through the different channels we utilise it at supermarkets, restaurants, and caterers and of course, direct-to-market through online sales, which is our biggest growth part of the business.   Craig: So, you’ve mentioned that you were a lawyer and then from a lawyer to an entrepreneur, it’s not a traditional path, was it your idea to do businesses with family?  How did it all sort of evolve?   Nick: Yeah.  Evolve is probably the right thing to say.  It was my father’s idea to try and market the products.  Obviously, we soon recognised online was a much easier path than let’s say the traditional paths of standing at farmer’s markets or carport sales or whatever it may be where other people are maybe trying to sell similar products.  So it’s at that time, all of us, I’ve got two siblings.   We all became involved to help form a plan to get the products to market and I helped here on the side with development and branding and things and arranging all of that and then once we launched the business, it became pretty evident that I wouldn’t be able to continue in my day job and helping out with the business.  So it was about, I guess, 3 months in that I gave up…   Craig: Oh, that quick! Yeah.  Yeah.   Nick: Yeah.  Yeah.…full-time paid employment to jump into the business.   Craig: To be poor for a couple of years.    Nick: Yes!  Yes!    Craig: [laughs]   Nick: Forever.    Craig: Forever.  [laughs] Yes!  Yes!  So, when you started, obviously, it was just quite a bit different and there’s a new concept.  Get away from the farmer’s markets or selling to a wholesaler, direct….did you guys do any market research and that actually work out where you had a legitimate market and business…   Nick: Uhm…   Craig: And what are the problems you’re solving which are and I suppose were time saving and ease for the purchaser, wasn’t it?   Nick: That and also quality and provenance.  So those are I guess the 4 key messages or key problems we’re solving for the consumer.   Craig: Yeah.  Yeah.   Nick: In New Zealand, at that time, there was a limited range of producers doing what we were doing.  Certainly that landscape has changed now and more and more are coming on board to be…whether it’s in meat or other ___ farm products or whatever.  The launch of things like MyFoodBag and you know and the whole…   Craig: Which is wildly successful.   Nick: Exactly.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: And a great example of success in this market.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: So I guess in…when the business was in its infancy, there was only a couple of competitors in New Zealand.  I don’t even think Countdown had really launched their…   Craig: Right.   Nick: Online sales at that time so obviously, we’ve noticed a big shift in the market and people being far more open to purchasing food products online.  So, with our research, it was really based on looking at producers in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, seeing what they were doing, what offerings they had.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: And obviously, because we…we were selling online, just online only at the start, it did allow us some chance to scale as time went on so there was no pressure of having products ready to go with no markets.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: So I guess, we…we are currently on to building website number three.   Craig: Right.   Nick: So there has been multiple chances to refine the offering based on our own learnings…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: Rather than…than doing too much…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: market research at the beginning, I guess, which  potentially a pitfall…   Craig: Yeah.  But…   Nick: that were fallen into but we’ve been lucky that we’ve been nimble enough to be able to adapt that offering to…   Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah…   Nick: to see that…what does that mean?   Craig: Yeah.  Oh, it’s a case sometimes of getting that ___ to market and then work out having to… and having to tweak everything on the way, isn’t it…   Nick: Exactly.  We’ve started out in our industry selling bulk frozen packs and delivering it via the chilled or frozen trucks…   Craig: Yes.   Nick: all over the country where it could take anything from a week to two weeks.   Craig: Right.   Nick: To be delivered to the model that we have now and it’s evolving as you can customise and pick and choose your own products…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: …and it’s delivered the next day, chilled via courier, so…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: You know, there’s different challenges that come at you and one of that for example was the freight company telling us, “No, we’re no longer gonna deliver your frozen meat packs.”  So…   Craig: Oh, is that right?   Nick: So your business if often forced to change…   Craig: Yes.   Nick: …which can obviously lead to better results…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: …because the consumer appreciates…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: fresh produce versus…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: frozen produce.    Craig: So there.  So tell us a bit more about the challenges and the learnings you had in those early years and maybe also the challenges you’re facing now and how that evolved?   Nick: Definitely.  I guess the critical challenge for us been the price of our raw materials.   Craig: Alright.   Nick: Just to put them in a little bit of context and background, we run the farm as a totally separate business from the meat processing…   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: Different governance, different advisers, everything and we thought that was a critical distinction from a…   Craig: Uhm…   Nick: …a governance point of view particularly in the family situation so that we had two separate business which were hopefully, hopefully independent of each other, both supporting…   Craig: Uhm…   Nick: …themselves.  So…   Craig: Also that.  I guess it also helps with succession planning too.  Exit strategy is one [incomprehensible]…   Nick: Exactly.  And obviously that’s what we’re focusing…   Craig: Uhm…   Nick: The meat processing business now is taking on a life of its own with contract manufacturing…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: …and things like that so…obviously anytime, I mentioned it at the start that the farm is very much part of the succession plan but if there were something that caused the farm to go, well, we’ve got another business…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: And vice versa, we could always onsell the meat processing side of things.   Craig: Uhm…uhm…uhm…   Nick: …and keep the farm…   Craig: That’s right.   Nick: But so…part of it is that the farm must obviously make a profit…   Craig: Yes…   Nick: So we have to purchase the animals that we’re using through the Green Meadows Business from the farm at the prevailing market rate…   Craig: Yes…   Nick: Over the last three to four years, that price of raw materials has almost doubled…   Craig: Oh sh….   Nick: Without a corresponding rise in meat prices at the consumer end…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: There’s still a certain barrier at the consumer end as to what a sausage or whatever may cost so I guess that’s been the critical challenge that we’ve face and we’ve had to really adapt and change our product offering.  So…   Craig: So what’s driven the price of the raw product up?  Is it the price on the farm to produce that product?   Nick: No, it’s the price that it can otherwise be sold elsewhere...   Craig: Oh, okay.   Nick: So, export demand, primarily out of the U_S where ground beef, easier ground beef is exported…   Craig: Okay…   Nick: …to the U_S and it’s been in quite high demand in particularly out of China as well…   Craig: Right.   Nick: So, depending on what’s happening in those markets, I’m assuming we’re seeing an easing off in the United States at the moment on demand which, of course, is then having a…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: …a correlation back to farm gate prices here.   Craig: Cool…   Nick: So I guess with that challenge, we learned quite a lot and kind of like it’s focused a lot on what’s happened in the business so there are a couple of points off the top of my head…   Craig: Yes…Yeah…   Nick: I guess the role of governance and the value of the right independent advice has been a critical things that we’ve taken from it, I guess the information we’re pulling out of the business in terms or accurate and timely…   Craig: Yup…   Nick: …business information, technology and how scalable that is, what machines can really make our day better…   Craig: Right.   Nick: Versus culling out some of those manual processes, cause obviously, bearing in mind making food can sometimes be a relatively manual process…   Craig: Yup!  Yeah…   Nick: And then it all comes back to achieving a profitable core business before evolving into other paths.  So, we’ve really focused over the last year or two on what is our core business, how to make it profitable before launching into some other opportunities as well.    Craig: So how do you take yourself out of the business to work on the business around those things you just…   Nick: Yeah, well, as the businesses continue to grow, we’ve been able to put staff into roles that I was otherwise doing, so for example, we’ve just taken on an operations manager who is handling most of the day-to-day production and supply side of the business whereas I’m just handling the demand side and obviously everything else.  So the finances and working on the business so, I guess that’s been a good learning is getting the right staff on board, making sure that they have clearly defined roles and responsibilities and reporting lines so that that then frees you up to do as you say, “working on the business,” and growing it.  So we have that clearly…clear definition of okay, operations manager was gonna focus on the supply side and production, I was gonna handle the demand, so that’s where my focus is now…is on the demand side and when you’ve got the right people and the right positions, everything is fine and it works well.    Craig: So, you’ve gotta run on a fierce podcast business and about staffing.  How’d you go and find the right staffing?  How’d you know?  Do you know?  [laughs]   Nick: I guess, that’s a good question, “Do you know?”   Craig: Cause that’s critical, isn’t it?   Nick: It is and we are fortunate that in nearly 4 years, we’ve retained all our staff which I guess, obviously speaks of our environment also.  The direction that we’re pushing the company.  It…it’s…I guess it comes down to clear jobs…just clear job descriptions when you’re going so you know exactly who you’re looking for so when you find them, you know, they tick all the boxes and utilising the benefit of networks because all of our staff have been knowing to….   Craig: Someone…someone…   Nick: Yeah.    Craig: Someone who knows somebody…Yeah…   Nick: Exactly, so now I’m doing that thing with cold hires but I can see that the next thing we’re already looking for our next staff member, which is scary…   Craig: Yeah…   Nick: But I can see that that will be a cold…a cold hire so I guess that will come down to getting clear…clear pre-employment checks and questions and also making sure they’re the right fit for the…   Craig: thing…   Nick: Exactly.   Craig: Cool.  Awesome.  So, you have used a lot of online tools and platforms that you’ve touched on before to build the business to where it is.  Tell us about the strategy and has that changed over the years and if so, how or….yeah…   Nick: Yeah…It’s a different __part obviously with online selling.  You wanna connect with customers in real time and I guess social media in particular is great for that.  We’ve primarily used Facebook and Twitter for the connecting with people and building an audience at the beginning.  I guess how that’s changed is we’ve now moved from just connecting with customers and building that brand and that relationship through the more paid advertising now.  So we do a lot of online marketing in terms of ECO and pre marketing and also direct marketing through the likes of Facebook.  So, I guess it’s building a network and a platform, which would then turn into an opportunity to market, so…   Craig: Did you do all that in-house, or do you outsource it?   Nick: We did start all that in-house but now I’ve outsourced it.  We have a marketing consultant who works remotely for us, who handles all that ECO and ECM marketing.   Craig: And what about all your Facebook engagement?  Cause I know when you first start your business, you’re massive on engaging with your audience, you do a lot of that at the start.  Is that still done in-house?  Or…   Nick: It’s still done in-house and obviously that’s been one of the challenges I found is that I handle that role as the businesses grow, keep it…personal, and keep it relevant and keep it fun which is how we engage with our customers and perhaps that’s something I could be doing better.    Craig: [incomprehensible]   Nick: I think as we came and set the so high with using that as a focus, it’s kind of…you can easily fall by the way, so…   Craig: That’s so much of a big challenge, isn’t it because that’s how you built the brand and showing you some of the loyalty stats.   Nick: And I’m definitely seeing that with other influences that I follow that they came out with a good solid two years of social media engagement and then now it’s sort of dropped back…   Craig: Yes…   Nick: And I don’t know whether that’s just the maturing of the market and there are a lot of these platforms now and monetising, they’re successors, so it now makes it difficult to instigate…seen whereas in the beginning it was relatively easy but I think you raise a good point about engagement because a lot of the focus on social media a few years ago was all about content and posting the right sort of content but now, I know a person who writes and used to podcast a lot of Facebook.  She said that content is king but engagement is queen and she rules the house.   Craig: Yes…   Nick: And it’s sort of something that’s always always stuck with me because you can have great content but if you’re not getting anything back from the people you’re publishing it to, what’s the point?   Craig: Yeah, you could have 100,000 followers but if you’re not engaging them, what’s the point?   Nick: Yes.  So I think, you know, that’s a key thing to keep it at the back of your mind because it’s not a question of numbers because it’s like you said, it’s how they’re engaging.    Craig: You said when you sell your products you use Facebook and Twitter, yet have you tried the other platforms at all?   Nick: We do have a little bit on Pinterest, obviously we’re in a food business and Instagram, but it’s again, it’s the challenge of maintaining everything.  We do use a lot of third party tools to push the marketing side of things which we find works well and we obviously into the day to day side of things prefer to use online tools for managing the business, whether it be accounting software, our website is all run on a third party CMS which is obviously cloud based and what else do we use in the cloud?  Design tools and everything like that that’s all accessible now which really help (a) cut costs and (b) get things done.   Craig: So what do you enjoy most about being in business?  What strokes your ties?   Nick: Tough question, but I guess it’s with building something from the ground up and seeing the evolution it’s having the chancing to leap at success.  There are days obviously that I don’t enjoy leading.    Craig: You wish you were a follower there mate? [laughs]   Nick: Yeah.  Exactly.  When you bring in HR and customer issues and things like that.  Obviously, you want to do a good job, whether it be your staff or your customers but I guess that’s the critical thing is having that chance and opportunity which I do feel fortunate for that you know, we’re in a position that I was able to leave my fulltime employment to follow something which I could see working and it…with just a few challenges and refinements.  We’re now well on a path to making a success.    Craig: Yeah.   Nick: So that’s pretty special and something that I hold dear and try not to abuse really but it is a bit of a privilege to do this so if I can keep looking at it like that, then it’ll keep me focused and also keep me grounded.   Craig: Grounded, which is what New Zealand ___ is all about.  Cool, you hear that?   Nick: Yeah, I guess we at the start to kinda pushed the business and I do believe in it is we did a lot of PR work which is obviously the opposite to the grounded because you’re having to put yourself out there and tell your story and that can be difficult at times especially when you get…things like TV involved, so yeah, I think that’s a good balance to have.    Craig: So, ____ what have you learned from you know, five or six years ago, when you left the safe little confines of a lawyer’s office…   Nick: To me, just by one and a half years…whatever it was…   Craig: You were very structured and disciplined to doing this.  What have you learned as a leader?  Here, professionally and personally?   Nick: Yeah, I guess a couple of things, you do mean structure, I have very little structure in my life now.    Craig: [laughs]   Nick: Just by trying to plan things, you know, obviously things never really go to plan.  So that’s been difficult in terms of deadlines and things like that as I’m understanding how things work in the real world versus a lawyer’s world where 5 o’clock Friday was your excellent deadline and you wouldn’t dare go past 5 o’clock Friday whereas when you start involving perhaps creative types into the mix and deadlines can often extend.    Craig: Yes.   Nick: So that’s been one challenge for me personally and also from a managing or leadership type of thing.  Communication and understanding the importance of communication internally and externally and you can never really over communicate particularly with staff and things of concerns.    Craig: Yeah.   Nick: I guess that’s another that I’ve really learned is you spend a good portion of your day through communicating and it makes the day go so much better.   Craig: Yes.   Nick: But then it comes back to what I mentioned earlier about having the structures in place so that the rest of the team can function harmoniously while you’re communicating with them…the team…   Craig: Yeah.  And what about the family dynamic, isn’t that communications is key?  Sometimes, the family businesses, they can either go really well which is good or goes real bad because one of the first rules of business is don’t ever do business with family members, isn’t it?   Nick: It is.    Craig: Yes, back to the question.  Sorry about the rain everybody!  So I asked Nick about the dynamic of working with some family members.  One of the first rules of business is don’t go into business with family.  So I guess it has worked here.  From a leadership point of view, the communications point of view, have you managed that?   Nick: Yeah, it has been both a benefit and a challenge to go into business with family.  On a daily basis, I work with both of my peer, so on a day to day to basis, I mean, both of my brothers work externally from the business so two problems obviously, or challenges working with family day in day out but also having family interested in the business but not having the experience or benefit of seeing what’s happening day to day so we have pretty regular communications between in terms of what’s happening in the business, asking for feedback that they’re both very helpful and useful, these are my brothers who don’t work in the business.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: But balancing that you also have a clear distinction of what’s business time and what’s family time because there’s always that tendency to make family time always business time and I think that’s critical particularly in terms of my own domestic situation as well, I’ve got a partner who doesn’t work and the person that’s end to end in terms of say my parents with their grandchildren and things like that.  It’s still got to operate in a normal situation and we are very open with each other so there’s never any issues in terms of overstepping lines or boundaries.   Craig: Yeah.   Nick: And I think it’s really important that everyone gets their chance to have a say but at the end of it, we still sit down for dinner.   Craig: Yeah, yeah, yeah.  Cool.  Cool.  So you’ve always had external professionals and mentors for your business and I believe now you’ve got a Board of Directors and an independent director tell us about what made you decide that you needed this and the benefits of using these strategies and advise that is out there around using mentors or Board of Directors, etc.    Nick: I guess one of the critical thing is finding the right advice, independent advice and it can be a struggle at times, so I guess what I sort of found is keep persevering until you find exactly what you need at that particular time and your levels of advice and who can advise you changes as the business continues to change…and…   Craig: Evolves.  As the business evolves…   Nick: Exactly, so I think the best thing you can do is get out there and take advice as step one but then if you’re not getting the right sort of advice is going out and looking for some different advice.   Craig: Yeah.  Yeah.   Nick: So, we’ve had, as you mentioned, a range from formal strategic planning with our accountants through the business mentors through to now an independent director who I work with closely on a daily basis and they’ve all had their uses and purpose but having an independent voice daily looks like some of the skill gaps that we have or that I have as well is really important and I guess that’s what I see the benefit…the main benefit of the independent board is to plug the skill gaps and I mean we are looking now at maybe bringing another independent onto the board who has some different skill set that none of us have secure around dealing with marketing to the end consumer…   Craig: Right.   Nick: And events cg and things like that so it’s…   Craig: So it’s skill gaps or experience gaps?   Nick: I guess both are incredibly relevant because you get the skills from experience so I think yeah.  I think both are intertwined.   Craig: And you said before that when you first started out your sort of a range of advisers, I mean, it’s the right advice.  When you start out were you ever nervous and scared about what’s going on.  So how do you know if you get some right advice?  If you’re speaking to for example an accountant and they say you should be doing this strategy, how do you know, is that the gut instinct or it is…how do you know if it’s the right one or the wrong one?   Nick: Yeah, it’s a good question because I guess when you go into business you’re always confident and pigheaded and you don’t really wanna take advice.   Craig: No.   Nick: And then to sit over the table with someone and, no offence when you’re listening to maybe to sit over the table with someone, no offence to any listeners who may be in the accounting profession or something.   Craig: Someone’s profession…   Nick: Who’s telling you you’re doing this wrong, you’re doing that wrong.  You know, it can be difficult so I think it’s not a case of knowing or choosing what that right advice is at the start but getting a lot of advice and really going out there and getting as much in as you can and taking bits and pieces from different sources to kind of form that plan because you and only you, I guess will know exactly how the business is going internally or what your dreams and goals and things are but it does help to get as much advice from them.   Craig: So that could be what we’ve talked about accountant, but there could be other business owners that could be lawyers, other professionals, and that’s where networking comes in, isn’t it?  You realize that when you network, you understand that same…your peers to having the same issues you have even if they might be in a different industry.   Nick: Exactly and as many people you can speak to as possible.  You know, whether it’s just a friendly ear or someone that you admire, in your industry or a different industry.  It can be really beneficial to have that engagement.    Craig: Awesome, so the benefit of hindsight, we all do this.  What would you do differently?   Nick: Hindsight, oh yeah, it’s a great thing.   Craig: No, it’s not.  It’s a terrible thing!   Nick: I guess that’s one thing our plan is not to dwell too much on the past.  We do a year review the end of each year and pick out the points of what went good and bad and then put it together and then don’t really dwell on it too much because again, it’s what you’re looking into the future that really controls things.  So I guess with hindsight, what I would do it has been more of a focus on margin analysis in our business, so which products work well, where we can extract the most value and also a better handle on cash flow and budget so that financial side of the business from the get-go.  I spend a lot of focus now on cash flow and planning cash flow a couple of months in advance and…   Craig: So you turned into an accountant?   Nick: Yeah, well, I…   Craig: [laughs]   Nick: I think maybe I’m turning into an accountant but that was a chance to really tighten the skill gaps that I had.   Craig: Right.   Nick: In the financial management side of things and now that’s one of our strengths where a lot of similar sized businesses I see don’t have a handle on cash flow, which in my business, can actually be quite difficult with online selling because we don’t know when people are gonna bulk buy meat packs and what’s gonna happen which is why we’ve diversified the business from just straight online sales to other traditional sales so that we’ve got consistent cash flow coming in.   Craig: A little bit of advice to people.  Look after your cash flow and mind your  budget, sounds like you’re good at. A couple of hours a week takes to analyse what else has happened that week which is critical.    Nick: I guess that’s one thing that having an independent director allows me to do because we have a phone call every Friday afternoon, which…   Craig: Hi guys, so from your experiences, what are some of the mistakes that you see business owners are making.  So, we talked a little bit about cash flow.  Anything else that…   Nick: Yeah.  I guess, something a little different and that I can see out there I see is that they are content both in terms of their businesses and their industries and not pushing their boundaries and or doing the… trying alternative ways to do things and obviously in the retail side of things.  I guess something else I am saying is people being content in terms of their…inside their businesses and in terms of marketing their businesses as well so obviously, the example is that the evolution of online selling and the effect it has on traditional purchasing, and brick and mortar stores and it kinda seems like…to some of them that it’s come out of nowhere whereas the evolution of online selling has been happening in time over the last ten years or so.  So I think, I see that both as established businesses and the traditional business being content can often come back to hurt them later on.  So, i mean, that’s something else we noticed and why we’re doing things differently as well.   Craig: So, the moral of the story is don’t be scared of pushing the boundaries and thinking outside the square box, just give it a go.   Nick: And also staying on top of things and not just resting on your laurels because you don’t really know what’s around the corner.   Craig: Don’t be scared of what’s around the corner.    Nick: Yeah.  That’s just saying a little bit no matter how established you are.   Craig: So is that the sort of advice you’d give to…if you were to mentor for a better general word, either both established or a startup…what other things would you…   Nick: Yeah, it’s different keeping on top of thinss, looking overseas, seeing what’s happening whether you’re selling shoes or cats, or whatever.  It’s…there’s a lot to…we’re fortunate in this part of the world that we’re a little behind as well.   Craig: Yes, yes…I was gonna ask that.   Nick: So, it’s kind of a good thing I think for us because we can have a look and see what’s happening overseas.   Craig: You think sometimes, people fall into the trap of going overseas either to Europe or America, seeing something, trying to do it New Zealand but they’re too soon   Nick: And obviously given our market size as well as the other key issue here, and also how spread out the market is.  It’s a long way from the top of the North Island to Steward Island.  Yes, I know, I definitely think that’s true and that’s where the difficulty, I guess comes in with what I just see is…do you become an adopter or do you follow…   Craig: Become second tier.   Nick: Yeah and there’s lot of risk, in obviously going out and being an early adopter and it falling in your face which…   Craig: But then fortune favours the brave and…   Nick: But again coming back to what I mentioned earlier on in the podcast is that’s where you’ve got a profitable and sustainable core being you’ve got those opportunities to go out and expand and you’ve still got that core business to I say loosely, to fall back on but you know…   Craig: Yeah.  To pay the bills…   Nick: Yeah.  Yeah.   Craig: Yeah.  Cool.  Awesome.  And so where do you see your industry going in the next five to ten years?   Nick: Yeah, well in the markets, the direct food market, there’s differently more choice for quality and more relationships with…between consumers and producers so I definitely see that as an important step in what we’re trying to stay ahead of because people increasingly do want to know where their food comes from and how it’s produced and what’s going on so I think it’s only gonna get more and we’re gonna see return as one kind of crystal ball return to a lot traditional ways of doing things because the end user or consumer’s putting a price on all those so in our case, it’s manufactured products and more real products and people are prepared to pay more even though it costs more to produce but that’s where I see it headed.   Craig: Alright.  Cool.  Awesome!   Nick: And you’ll be more disrupters, I’ve already talked about MyFoodBank and seeing markets online so we find those disrupters coming into the market so I guess, listening to my own advice that’s where I need to stay ahead of and say exactly what’s happening in the market and what trends are coming up.   Craig: Awesome.  Awesome.  Hey Nick, we’ll wrap it up.  Thanks very much for your time.  .  How do we find you?   Nick: Yeah so we are an online business.  Our website, so you can check out our products at greenmeadowsbeef.co.nz and find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram with our page will get you there.   Craig: Awesome!  Right.  Thank Nick!  Good stuff!   Nick: Sure!    

Our extras episode for this week contains a lot of hit music variety, including those from 2Pac, Sum 41 and much more! Hosts: Sam & Nick To find out more information about the changes to our podcast and song requests for future episodes, make sure to check out our website at http://mymti.org/!Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/past-mti-countdowns/donations