Podcasts about north star

Register here to attend the live virtual event "Why Central Florida is the Year's Most Compelling Housing Market" on Thursday, February 19th at 8pm Eastern. Keith explores how a shift in mindset can change the way you build wealth, why so many new landlords are entering the market, and what recent economic trends could mean for future rents.  You'll also hear how one Florida investor is navigating a changing housing landscape, and learn about a timely opportunity in one of the country's fastest‑growing real estate markets—all without needing to be a hands-on landlord. Resources: Register for the event at GREwebinars.com Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/593 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  1-937-795-8989 to speak with a freedom coach Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, the risk of delayed gratification is denied gratification. There's a new wave of landlords. Wages are rising faster than both inflation and home prices. Learn what that's going to mean for rents. Hear the voices of five different Federal Reserve chairs, then GRE announces our biggest event of the year, and you're invited today on get rich education.   Corey Coates  0:32   Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki, get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast or visit get rich education.com   Keith Weinhold  1:16   mid south home buyers, with over two decades is the nation's highest rated turnkey provider, their empathetic property managers use your return on investment as their North Star. It's no wonder smart investors line up to get their completely renovated income properties like it's the newest iPhone headquartered in Memphis, with their globally attractive cash flows, mid south has an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and 4000 houses renovated, there is zero markup on maintenance. Let that sink in, and they average a 98.9% occupancy rate with an industry leading three and a half year average renter term. Every home they offer you will have brand new components, a bumper to bumper, one year warranty, new 30 year roofs. And wait for it, a high quality renter in an astounding price range, 100 to 150k GET TO KNOW mid south enjoy cash flow from day one at mid southhomebuyers.com that's mid southhomebuyers.com   Corey Coates  2:19   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  2:35   Welcome to GRE from the Adriatic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean and across 188 nations worldwide, I'm Keith Weinhold, and this is get rich education. Sometimes we all need a mindset reset, and this can include me. Sometimes. James clear, the author of atomic habits, says there are four types of wealth, financial wealth, which is money, social wealth, which is status, time, wealth which is freedom, and physical wealth, which is health. Be wary of jobs that seduce you with one and two but rob you of three and four. That is to say, be careful with jobs that seduce you with financial and social wealth but rob you of time and physical wealth that is definitely going to happen to you during your life, especially early in your working career. But many people, even most people, they don't do much about this. They just go on and on, selling their soul to their employer for decades. Sometimes paychecks aren't compensation. They're a bribe from an employer to give up your dreams early in your career, delayed gratification actually makes some sense, because you need capital formation, you need down payments, you need dry powder. That is totally fair and the time in your life for delayed gratification. But there's a point that most people miss, the point where delayed gratification quietly mutates into denied gratification. This is huge. Most people miss this inflection point. When is this point in your life? That's when I'll do it later becomes, well, I guess I never did it at all. They look up at what they've got at age 65 and realize that they have a respectable title. They still wear Dockers pants. They have a 401, K that they must start paying tax on, and knees that creak louder than. The front door. Compound Interest hardly outpaces taxes and inflation. That's just going to keep you in one spot, you know, and you're never going to get that time back. There is no do over there. So you need to get to the point where you can be more frugal with your time than your money. Younger people have a harder time adopting this mindset, and that's a little natural, because they have more time and less money. Sooner than later, you must desperately get financially free so that you can simply be your self workaholics, optimize income instead of assets, and you can't let that happen, because labor does not compound and capital does compound, your quality of life will exceed your cost of living when your life is funded by what you own, not by what you do that takes a different mindset. You can either be a conformer or you can build wealth when you invest in real estate that pays five ways. It's like what you're doing is buying future Tuesdays, where you never have to work again and then later, add on future Wednesdays, where you never have to work again because you got the compound leverage instead of the impotent compound interest. I mean, just consider your two and a half million dollar portfolio that is passively doing the same work as someone who sells 40 to 50 hours a week of their life away for 100k in yearly salary. All right, maybe you're thinking, Oh, that all sounds thought provoking, but if you're not engaged on that, it can sound airy and philosophical and even risky. It's sort of like, yeah, you're cueing the acoustic guitar music and slow motion images of someone pensively gazing at a sunset.   Keith Weinhold  7:12   All right, what is the concrete plan? It's not all about mindset. It only starts with mindset. You got to make that actionable. Well, we constantly provide concrete plans for you here on this show, and I've got another concrete plan for you toward the end of the show today. This harkens back to what I discussed with you seven weeks ago, seven episodes ago on the show. That's when I discussed the world's first billionaire, John D Rockefeller and his enduring quote from about 100 years ago, he who works all day has no time to make money. Yeah, that's the quote a little review. What you learned seven episodes ago is that Rockefeller meant, if you spend your life doing tasks, you're never going to rise high enough to own things that pay you for life. The bottom line here is that earning a living is a distinctly different activity than building wealth. That's what we're talking about here.    Keith Weinhold  8:14   Well, there is a new wave of landlords entering the market, and they are reshaping what owning rentals looks like. One survey by rental platform avail of nearly 2000 users. It's really influential. It found that 53% of landlords became landlords in the last five years. So you have a lot of new landlords with the most 17% of landlords entering the market in just the last year, most purchased a property specifically to rent it out, and 1/3 sort of backed into this business by renting out their former residence. Of course, some people want to rent out their former residence today, if they got locked into that sexy owner occupied three and 4% financing from 2022 and earlier, the survey went on to tell us with some really good takeaways here, 72% of landlords manage between one and four units, and this avail survey. I mean, it's just another one that shows that the majority of landlords operate small portfolios, classic mom and pop investors. That one's not too surprising. The top three reasons that landlords gave for entering the rental market, they're pretty interesting. The number one reason for getting into this at 41% of respondents is building long term wealth. Next 33% for generating passive income, and the third most popular one, it's a distant third, it is preparing for retirement at 13% so building long term wealth is the number one reason for getting into this, and that is the right reason. Them when it comes to ownership structure, 64% said that they own the property individually, whether that's through a single member LLC or in their own name, doing it, yeah, individually, rather than with a family member or a business partner. So really, the summary of this terrific, recent avail landlord survey is that if you're just getting started, you're not alone. A lot of people are most own properties solely in their own name, and the number one reason for doing it is to build long term wealth. Now there's another pervasive set of economic trends out there in the broader economy, but it's really a benefit for real estate investors, and that is the fact that wage growth has now outpaced consumer price growth for three years. Yeah, another way to say that is that wage growth has outpaced inflation for fully three years. Yeah, most people just aren't feeling it yet. So you might be taken somewhat aback by that, and why aren't people feeling that wage growth is faster than inflation, the pandemic inflation spike that was so huge, it was like getting hit with a freight train, and then someone tells you, good news, the train has stopped. Yeah, that's nice. You are still lying on the tracks, rubbing your ribs. That's because we're all still absorbing spiked prices for everything from a lumber two by four to a York Peppermint Patty, year over year, wages are up 3.8% and consumer inflation is 3% All right, so wages above inflation, that means things are getting a little more affordable, but both wages and inflation have grown faster than home prices, which have only grown about one and a half percent, and this is all per the BLS in the FHFA, so wage growth Being more than double home price growth. Well, that trend really makes properties more affordable, but historically, they're still not that affordable. Everybody knows that home prices soared until about 2023 that was the turning point, and now wages are in their catch up phase. All right, but what really matters to real estate investors is, when will this wage growth translate to rent growth, historically, big rent growth that lags big home price growth by about two to four years. So you have the big home price growth, big rent growth hits two to four years later, historically. Now, if that holds true, we should finally see substantial rent growth this year or next year. Rent growth has still been pretty soft in the one to four unit space, and even there are rent decreases in the overbuilt apartment space. Future income growth promises to make homes more affordable. Affordability has already improved, with mortgage rates hovering near three year lows. There's one problem, though, that most people overlook, and that is this wage growth has been skewed toward the higher income deciles, renters, especially workforce renters, they don't feel it until later. So this 3.8% wage growth, it's heavier for higher income people, and it's lighter for lower income people. I swear, when there are enriching economic trends, it always hits the higher income people first, and it doesn't trickle down until later. So if you as an investor, are positioned before the rent wave hits, you are surfing, and if you wait to feel it, you're swimming behind the boat. Higher wages should translate to higher rents in the next one to two years. And as far as some other forces, as we all know, the man occupying the oval office in the White House, the President, he wants lower rates. The current Fed Chair isn't so willing to do that. The next one, the one he appointed, Kevin Warsh, who arrives in May. He seems more receptive to lower rates, but it's gonna take a while. It all moves so slow. We have had 16 fed chairs before worsh over 112 years. And look how much of an econ nerd Are you? Are you as bad as me? These voices are in chronological order, and I can name each speaker.   Corey Coates  14:47   You're going to have to live with the fact that forecasts have a range of uncertainty, irrational exuberance.   Corey Coates  14:54   In my opening remarks, I'd like to briefly first review today's policy decision, but   Corey Coates  14:58   first I'll review recent. Economic developments in the Outlook, and we are well positioned to wait to see how the economy evolves.   Keith Weinhold  15:06   If you can name each of those speakers, I would love to give you a free property from gremarketplace.com but I can't quite swing that in order. Those voices are Paul Volcker. He served from 1979 to 87 he was known for crushing double digit inflation by jacking rates to near 20% it was painful medicine, but it worked the next one. Alan Greenspan sir, from 1987 to 2006 that was a long reign, almost 20 years. He oversaw the 90s economic boom, the.com bubble and the early housing bubble. Years so far, Greenspan is the only Fed chair that I have met in person. Then Ben Bernanke, he was the Fed chair from 2006 to 2014 he took the helm right before the 2008 financial crisis. He rolled out QE and emergency lending on an historic scale. In fact, he was nicknamed helicopter Ben because it's like he would print so much money that he just dropped it out of huge sacks, dollar bills in huge sacks, dropping them from an airplane, metaphorically, not literally. Then Janet Yellen, 2014 to 2018 she kind of continued this post crisis normalization, and she was the first woman to chair the Fed and then, of course, Jerome Powell serving from 2018 to 2026 he navigated the covid stimulus, ultra low rates. And then after that, the fastest rate hiking cycle in decades to fight inflation back in 2022 being the Fed chair is the most important job in this economy, and over the decades, there's been more of a movement of the fed into the public eye. You just hear about them more in the media than you used to. But like I touched on last week, it just still doesn't mean as much to real estate investors as a lot of people think, people sometimes look for someone else to come save them, but it's more about you and the choices that you make that's what means more housing supply and demand means more real estate investors have profited during every one of those Fed Chair reigns, which go back almost 50 years from Volcker to today, I think everybody knows that fed chairs don't control property prices, and they don't even control long term interest rates. What's a little paradoxical is that Trump has been vocal about how he wants more affordable home prices, yet at the same time he wants existing homeowners to have their home prices go up, those two things seem to be in tension. They're in conflict with each other. The only way you can possibly get both are through lower mortgage rates. But is he going to see later today you as a GRE follower, you don't have to wait for lower rates income, property still feels less affordable than it did five years ago, because it is that's real but here's the key distinction in what makes real estate investors different from owner occupied homeowners. Affordability isn't about the price of the property, it's about whether the property pays for itself and grows your net worth while inflation does the heavy lifting. Higher prices don't kill investors. Inaction during inflation does you're not buying a say, $350,000 property. You're controlling it with $70,000 while your tenant and inflation do the rest. We do not rely on hope or appreciation. We start with income tax benefits and debt pay down and then leverage appreciation typically happens as well. GRE only succeeds when investors close on properties that perform long term. One bad referral costs us years of trust, so we don't do that. The best question for you really isn't whether property is affordable. The question is whether owning an investment property is better than inflation compounding against you. That's the investor lens today.    Keith Weinhold  19:24   coming up next week on the show here, we're going to discuss apartments. It's been a truly be leaguered sector, where their prices have fallen 2030, and 40% in many markets. We've discussed apartments here on the show a lot before, like with Grant Cardone on episode 264, with Ken McElroy, countless times with me monologuing about apartments. And next week, we're going to talk to a multifamily educator who is known as the apartment King. Later on, a future show, we've got the return of the financial. Firebrand, and lately, the financial comedian Garrett Gunderson, a powerful speaker. That's definitely going to be interesting. As for today, you'll hear a first person account from a Florida resident about why he's moved to Florida and why he invests there. You've heard of this guy before. That's next. I'm Keith Weinhold. You're listening to Episode 593, of get rich education.    Keith Weinhold  20:26   Flock homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem property or your whole portfolio, through a 721, exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture, it's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now Mom and Pop landlords can 721, the residential real estate request your initial valuation, see if your properties qualify@flockhomes.com slash GRE. That's f, l, O, C, K, homes.com/G. R, E,    Keith Weinhold  21:02   you know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year, I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program. Why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program. When you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products. They've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest. Start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom family investments.com/gre, or send a text. Now it's 1-937-795-8989, yep, text their freedom coach directly again. 1-937-795-8989,   Keith Weinhold  22:13   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally. While it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com   Zack Lemaster  22:47   this is rental retirement Zach Lee Masters. Listen to get rich education with Keith bleinhold, and don't quit your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  23:02   I'd like to welcome in our own in house. GRE investment coach, we haven't had you on the show since November. Welcome in Naresh.   Naresh Vissa  23:11   Kwith, It's a pleasure to be back on the show. Thanks for having me on.   Keith Weinhold  23:16   We're just playing it all casual and comfortable here in house. You were just finishing up, what ice cream or a container of something right before we got started   Naresh Vissa  23:25   here, all done with the ice cream and ready to record the podcast.   Keith Weinhold  23:29   Yeah, all right, keeping cool for our chat. Well, you know you do live in Florida, so you must have your own perspective on the Florida market. You live in the Tampa area, and the reason that that's a germane topic is that's something we've been talking about here lately as really an opportunity, and that is because most of Florida has seen some temporary property price attrition, but yet more population growth is projected. So that's why we feel like that's temporary. But why don't you tell us about what you see on the ground there?   Naresh Vissa  24:07   Keith, I've lived in Florida for 11 and a half years now. That's Tampa, Florida. I like Florida a lot. I moved here December 2014 for similar reasons that many people are moving here today. So I moved to Florida in December 2014 because of no state income tax, because of, at the time, lower cost of living. Florida was one of the states I got hit the hardest during the 2008 financial crisis, or nothing called in a real estate crisis, Florida, Arizona, those few others got hit really, really hard. So Florida at that time was still rebounding from 2008 so I moved for the affordability, the no income tax, of course, the weather better. Weather. And then most places in the Northeast I've lived so weather is a big deal when it comes to real estate and geography as well. These are all different reasons to move to Florida, and these are the reasons why I moved to Florida. I was also single in my 20s, so I was much younger at the time. I was single in my mid 20s, and Florida is very good for that too. For 20 something Gen Z folks today, Florida is definitely a place that they should consider. I moved down here and I fell in love with it. From day one. I got a place living right on the water, a beach. Got beaches everywhere. Florida's tour. And I say all this because these are all enticing features of Florida, for renters, for tenants, for snowbirds. I had never even heard of what a snowbird was until I moved down to Florida, where you have people who literally live here for seven months of the year, and then they live in their home state for five months of the year. So that's generally what it is, seven months in Florida, five months in their home state, which can be the people I know personally are from New York, Connecticut, Illinois, Ohio. The list goes on and on. Basically anywhere that's north of Florida could be considered a snowbird area. So that's another reason why Florida is a very hot market. Now, obviously, during the pandemic, in end of 2020, people started moving to Florida in droves. Part of it was politically, because you didn't have the restrictions that other states had during that crazy time that we lived through. And another part of it was work from home. So similar to me, in 2014 when I became full time work from home, I wanted to move somewhere for all those different reasons that I gave you the total package, and Florida fit that there was maybe one other state that fit the bill, based on everything that I told you, probably one other state. That's it. So Florida fit the bill, and that's why I think Florida is always going to be despite the hurricane prep, Florida is always going to be a destination that people will seriously look at whether you're older, retirement age or younger. Like I said in my mid 20s, single guy Florida is always going to be that destination for all the reasons that I laid out. So with that being said, what does that mean for real estate? What that means for real estate is that there's going to be a constant supply of people coming into Florida, and when there's a constant supply of people coming into Florida, then you can expect real estate prices to at least not decline. We passed, you know, all sorts of bills, including Dodd Frank post 2008 to prevent people from taking out mortgages that they couldn't afford. So now that that's out of the way, when you have a constant supply of people who are able to afford homes, who are able to afford rents, well, that's going to be a constant supply. So that's good for investors, that's good for appreciation. It's good for cash flow. And that's why I'm a huge fan, not just of the state of Florida, but also investing in Florida. And I own real estate in Florida, and you can say that I lucked out, but I bought a property in 2019 and it nearly doubled in value, yeah, when I say doubled in value in a matter of I want to say, like, two years, two and a half years, it nearly doubled in value. So with that being said, Florida, this was a rare cyclical trend when we just saw this huge upswing, rare cyclical trend. But I don't anticipate cycles like this, where you're going to have booms and busts. Moving forward, we haven't seen a bus since 2008 like I said, the the law has been taken care of in that sense, the regulation. I love the state. I've lived in six major cities, but maybe five different states, and Florida is hands down my favorite. That's why I've lived here for what did I say? 11 and a half or 12 and a half years? I don't even remember anymore. It's actually 11 and a half. My roots are here. I now consider myself a Florida person, even more so than the state of Texas, where, which is where I spent 18 years. I have no doubt that I'll surpass 18 or 19 years in Florida, and that this is it, right here. And a major reason is because this is just such a great state. It's free, it's real estate friendly. This is for people who are looking at buying primary residences, not for investment properties. But the governor has put on the ballot this coming election cycle to remove, to abolish the property tax in the state of Florida. So if you own, if you live full time, not a snowbird, not investors, but if you live in Florida permanently, then no more property tax if the vote passes. So that's another huge plus for owning property if you're a permanent resident in Florida,   Keith Weinhold  29:57   yeah, even if the property tax is abolished. Which seems unlikely, you could just tell what the tenor and the temperature of the tax climate and the investing climate is like in Florida, if they're even spearheading such a proposal, and they're a national leader in something like property tax abolition, like they are and Naresh about eight years after you moved there, which would be, what about 2020? 2022, somewhere in there, we had that strong pandemic migration push into Florida. What's happened is that that flow has slowed down. There's still positive net in migration in there in Florida. But the builders, they got ahead of this, and the pandemic migration wave waned, and they had a temporarily overbuilt condition, and they still do now, which is one reason why we've seen prices fall somewhat in most Florida zip codes, and this spells part of the opportunity. So you do have all these new build properties, some of which are vacant, but you have a good chance they're going to get absorbed pretty soon. And there are some obvious advantages to owning new build.   Naresh Vissa  31:11   Well, Keith, there is brand new construction in Florida, like you said. The work started in 2021 and there are homes that have not been sold. I don't want to say, since they were finished building in 2021 they recently finished building in 2025 and these homes could be a variety of reasons. It could be economic related. It could be hurricane related. In Tampa, the Central Florida, we had two horrible hurricanes back to back within a 15 day period, two really bad hurricanes towards the end of 2024 September and October 2024 and people lost their homes. Renters lost their homes. Other people just were freaked out and scared and said, You know what? I don't want to deal with. I've got PTSD from these hurricanes. I'm moving up to Alabama or Georgia or Orlando, you know, somewhere in Central Florida, that's a way. But even that area, you know, the hurricane still made it through to those areas too. People just picked up and said, You know what I'm done with Florida. It's a great state, but I don't want to deal with these hurricanes. And so regardless, whatever the reason, this is a pie, and these are all slices of the pie, I don't know what's been more of a contributing factor than which one has been more than the others. But with that being said, there are tons of properties in Florida, pretty much the entire state of Florida, where, especially new construction properties, are below at the time when they were being built, they're below what they anticipated being listed as. And So Keith, we're having a special webinar this Thursday, talking about these properties because they are discounted properties. They are properties that are selling at tremendous discounts, like I said to when Ground was broken years ago. So join that webinar. Gre, webinars.com gre webinars.com. Again, brand new construction. Many of these properties already have tenants in place. Not all of them, but many of them do already have tenants in place. There are all sorts of incentives that the builder is offering. And there are many builders in that, not just this one that's going to be on the webinar, but in Florida, there are many builders who are offering discounts, rate, buy downs, other incentives, because the home values have fallen somewhat a bit. Why have the home values falling? Because the demand has fallen as well. So again, the next question people might have is, well, if the demand is falling, if home home values are falling, why would I buy the trend is downward. And the answer is, whether it's a stock or any other security, you don't necessarily want to have the FOMO to buy at an all time high, just because everyone else is buying it. And I actually have family members who bought real estate at the peak of 2022 there was FOMO and there was, hey, you know, I need to get a flip, and they're down. They bought peak 2022, and they're down today. Because, look, you can pick any housing market in the country, especially a prime state like Florida. Look at any 30 year period, and you will see that home values are up double digits, even if you look at 2009 when the housing market crashed and we reached something like 10 year bottom in housing, if you look at the 30 year period, well, if someone who bought a house in Florida in, say, 1979 was still way up on their property in 2009 30 years later, we're not buying Bitcoin here where it can go up 30% in one day or go down 30% in one day. We're talking real estate, and real estate has been proven. It's been tested. It's been proven throughout time, not even a 30 year period. I think if you take any 20 year period, you're going to see the same trend of double digit gains, double digit growth. On real estate appreciation. So I'd say, if you're skeptical about Florida, you see these home values, all these discounts, that's the first thing I hear from followers. They say, why are they offering so many discounts? I'm a little concerned about all these discounts and incentives, and I don't know if that's a good thing. Well, I say, Well, I mean, you can buy full price in another state, if you'd like, you know, in California or so you could, you're more than free to buy full price. But we're talking Florida here. We're not talking about West Virginia or Rhode Island, or, you know, Nebraska. We're talking Florida. This is still the land of Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse, this is the land of the best beaches in the country. I mean, they there's just no arguing or debating these facts. Florida all the reasons that I stated earlier, is going to continue to be a hot, hot market. So I highly recommend people, if you want to get in on these discounted deals, G R E, webinars.com G R E, webinars.com register for our upcoming online and live special event this Thursday evening at 8pm Eastern Time, 8pm Eastern Time, gre webinars.com you won't want to miss this free, online and live special event.   Keith Weinhold  36:25   When a pound of oranges is on sale or a pound of zucchini is on sale, consumers are often attracted to that sale. Should probably be the same way with you considering adding to your real estate portfolio, and it's funny, when oranges of zucchinis are on sale, no one tries to find fault with it and think that they're rotten inside or something like that. But somehow with real estate or an investment that tends to get scrutiny from people, but these are real discounts that you're getting over buying, say, two years ago, and we're talking about a motivated seller here. And as you know, Naresh, we had the builder on the show last week, the one that's going to be co hosting the webinar with you on Thursday, and he talked to us about buying down mortgage rates to between 3.75% and 4.25% and we're here at a time where the owner occupied rate is six to six and a quarter the investor rate is seven, so you're getting about a three percentage point buy down. That's really the attraction. And Naresh, before I ask you, if you have any last thoughts, yes, again, it is our live event that you can attend from the comfort of your own home, Thursday the 19th, at 8pm eastern in just a few days, here with Naresh and the builder who you heard on last week's show, co hosting a live webinar for Central Florida so inland new build income property. It's free. You're invited, and the benefit of you attending live is that you can have any of your questions answered in real time. You're going to learn more about the Central Florida market and more about the home building process, and you are going to be able to see available new bill property, real addresses, with some of these pretty grand incentives that we've talked about again. GRE webinars.com, any last thoughts? Naresh   Naresh Vissa  38:17   I get a lot of questions about is right now the time to buy? Should I buy later? What's going to happen with real estate? And I know the number one question, or the number one caution our followers are going to have, is, is right now the time is March or April, the time. And I say, look, with real estate, I already gave you the figure that you take any 20 year time period, any 30 year time period, and that's our time horizon here at GRE again, we're not trying to buy bitcoin here and flip it, you know, two days later, we're looking to buy and hold for, I don't want to say forever, but I know my time horizon in general is the full 30 year term, at least for my properties, and some people you know, want 10 or 15 years. That's fine too, but that's the time horizon. It is not one year, two years. We're not flipping new construction properties here in Central Florida. We are looking to buy and hold over the long haul, get some very good, high quality tenants in there, in these new construction properties, so that you, the GRE follower and the investor, can collect your monthly cash flow as well as over that 20 year period, or that 30 year period take part in appreciation as well. We've also talked extensively, Keith in previous episodes about interest rate cuts that the Federal Reserve is going to be doing, and just know this, there's a reason why the builder is offering these incentives where you can get the rates so low, your mortgage rate can be so low, and it's going to take at least a year, even if the Fed goes to zero. I mean, it's going to take mortgage rates a very long time. And to reach that point of getting such low interest rates that you just laid out, so that even makes it more enticing, like, Hey, I basically have a head start on the Federal Reserve because I follow the Fed pretty closely. We don't need to get into those details, but it's looking heavily like they are going to be start cutting again later this year, this summer. So it's looking like they're going to do that, but again, now you can have a head start, because when the Fed starts doing that, and when the mortgage rates fall, then everybody's going to jump in. And what's going to happen to the home values once everybody jumps in, well, they're going to go up. You want to jump in when everybody is not jumping in, and when you can get an amazing deal on these interest rates thanks to the builder buying down your interest rate. So this is a GRE special you can't get these deals. I challenge our followers to go on the internet and try to find better incentives or deals. And what you're going to see on this webinar, on this online, live special event. So gre webinars.com you can join me as well as our special guest. He heads up the builder. His name is Jim. He's going to be on with me. And please join us at grewebinars.com sign up for this free and live online special event.   Keith Weinhold  41:20   These are some great points. There's a lot of anticipation for Thursday, Naresh. We'll see you then.   Naresh Vissa  41:25   Thanks, Keith.   Keith Weinhold  41:32   Oh yeah, a first person account on Florida life and opportunity from our own Naresh nationally, the build to rent model that has been a real success, building single family rentals with the intent that they are rentals. From day one, over 321,000 homes have been built specifically as rentals this way since 2012, and more than three quarters of those in just the last five years. So the build to rent trend is picking up steam. About 1/3 of Americans rent their home, and although the word rental for some people that still conjures up visions of high rises packed with apartments, but a growing number of today's rentals are these freestanding, single family homes and duplexes like we're talking about today, nestled in suburban communities with top notch schools, and that's why a growing number of mom and pop investors have hopped on the build to rent bandwagon. They take less maintenance. It attracts quality tenants who stay longer, and the rentals have changed, but so had the renters. 20 years ago, it felt like tenants had to rent, like they had no choice. Today, you've got more and more tenants that choose to rent. Many of them make 100k to 125k or more. Today, rentals are cheaper than owning for those people, and they're less of a headache. A lot of them don't want to fix things, and you as the owner, don't want to either. That's why new build is attractive. Then, you know, I just sent that great map to our newsletter subscribers about which states saw the most population gain from 2020 to today, the South had more population growth than every other US region combined, which is jaw dropping and within the South, the state with the most population growth since 2020 is Florida, with An 8.9% population gain in that span, narrowly beating out Texas and South Carolina. By the way, even if it weren't for the attractive builder interest rate near 4% these Sunshine State deals could still make sense. New build single family rentals from the 270s new build duplexes, 395 to 420k low insurance rates, positive cash flow, a builder warranty. And it's really even better than that. These properties are centered on Ocala, Florida, which received national recognition as the fastest growing city for this second year in a row. That's according to a U haul report, and Florida is the epitome of investor friendly. Florida is the first state to enact a law allowing law enforcement to immediately remove squatters. It distinguishes them from legal tenants. You might come to the webinar event, perhaps thinking about 80k or 500k that you want to allocate toward property or maybe nothing and you just want to learn at the event you will evaluate realistic opportunities learn how property management is handled, and understand how today's inventory fits into your disciplined, long term strategy that all takes place on. On Thursday the 19th at 8pm Eastern. It's our biggest event of the year, and it is called Why Central Florida is the year's most compelling housing market. One last time for Thursday, it is gre webinars.com, until then, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Unknown Speaker  45:20   You nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  45:52   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building get richeducation.com  

Stats drive scores, but stories stir souls." This philosophy, born in the radio booths of Singapore and driven by a transition from comfort to total disruption, has delivered over $2 billion in transformational impact for global executives.In this episode of Gratitude Through Hard Times, Chris Shambra sits down with Jay Kiew, a world-renowned keynote speaker, author, and change strategist who has navigated the halls of power at firms like Deloitte and TELUS. But this isn't a conversation about corporate efficiency or digital roadmaps. This is a deep dive into "Change Fluency"—the adaptive capacity to translate life's most difficult disruptions into our greatest opportunities.Jay shares his raw and inspiring journey as a half-blind cancer survivor who "lost it all" before finding his true calling. We explore how change isn't something that happens to you, but something that can happen through you when you move from a mindset of survival to one of co-creation and possibility10 Memorable Quotes:"Stats drive scores, but stories stir souls.""Change fluency is the individual's adaptive capacity to translate challenges into opportunities.""Our greatest innovation isn't what we create, but how we create together.""If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." "The goal isn't to control change but to sit in it with fluidity.""Transformation doesn't have to be scary or happen to you, but instead it can happen through you.""The language of change is the only language that will matter in an era of AI.""He held space for me when I couldn't hold space for myself.""Shift your focus from what is present to what is possible.""The world is going through a hard time, but you can write the playbook to get through it." 10 Key Takeaways:Defining Change Fluency: It is the "language of change" required as we head into the space of artificial intelligence.The Four Change Mindsets: Your reaction to disruption depends on whether you view change as a threat or opportunity, and whether you are proactive or stuck.Active Presence: True leadership requires leaning in to observe non-verbal cues and naming emotions rather than just being a passive observer.The Power of Co-Creation: Based on the concept of Ubuntu, the episode explores why working together yields superior, more sustainable results despite the time and emotional complexity involved.Strategic Foresight: To discover what is possible, leaders must combine scenario planning with "futurist thinking" to see threats and opportunities from different vantage points.Strategy as Sacrifice: Design thinking requires the courage to say "no" and cut off current business units or emotional attachments to focus on one North Star.The "What If?" Framework: Innovation begins with the ability to ask hypothetical questions that challenge current constraints, a skill Jay learned from his father during difficult times.Relational Gratitude: Jay highlights the importance of individuals like Brian Chang, who provide empathetic space during "dark moments" without being deflective.Sitting in the Tension: Change Fluency isn't about control, but the capacity to sit in complexity and uncertainty with fluidity.Human-Centric Innovation: Digital disruption is a people opportunity; leaders must bridge the gap by helping team members find personal attachment to their mission.About our Guest: Jay KiewFounder & CEO, Change FluentJay Kiew is a multifaceted entrepreneur, keynote speaker, author, and expert in organizational and behavioral change. With 15 years of experience in organizational transformation and innovation strategy, he has driven over $2 billion in transformational impact across hundreds of organizations and top executives. He is the author of Change Fluency: Nine Principles to Navigate Uncertainty and Drive Innovation, which serves as the framework for his global consulting and keynote engagements.Jay's perspective on resilience and change is deeply rooted in his personal journey as a half-blind cancer survivor; diagnosed with retinoblastoma as an infant, he underwent the removal of his left eye. After immigrating to Canada from Asia and growing up in Vancouver, he became the world's youngest Distinguished Toastmaster at the age of 19. Today, he is a father of two daughters and lives in Brooklyn with his Shiba Inu, Brooklyn. Jay is renowned for his ability to help leaders move from a mindset of certainty to one of curiosity, teaching them to "speak the language of change" in an increasingly complex and uncertain world.

The pressure to optimize every "white space" on your calendar can often become a trap of its own, leading to a state of "fake time freedom" where you remain stressed despite having control over your schedule. In this episode of Productivity MD, Dr. Ann Tsung introduces her "Time and Energy Mission Control" a decision-making framework inspired by NASA's criticality levels to help you allocate your most precious capital wisely. She breaks down the five stages of time freedom, from "Time Prisoner" to "Time Transcender," and provides a step-by-step guide on how to identify when you are descending a stage and exactly how to course-correct. You'll learn how to craft a North Star through a Life Vision and Massive Transformative Purpose (MTP), ensuring that every "yes" or "no" brings you closer to the physical and mental vitality you desire at age 95. Key Points From This Episode:The Time and Energy Mission ControlDefining Your North StarThe Five Stages of Time FreedomMassive Transformative Purpose (MTP)The Trap of the "Time Creator"Filtering by Energy, Not TimeCourse-Correcting the DescentThe 80% RulePrioritizing Health for the Long GameThe Power of "No"Listen to the previous episodes hereWelcome to Productivity MD where you can learn to master your time and achieve the 5 freedoms in life!Show Notes - Decision Systems to Prevent Expensive Time and Energy MistakesPlease subscribe and leave a review so you can help others who need the knowledge most discover this podcast. Visit https://www.productivitymd.com/ to learn more Here are 3 ways I can help you reclaim your time and be more productive:#1: Book a 15 minutes 1 Year 1-1 Peak Performance and Productivity Coaching Qualification Call now to learn more and take control of your time! #2: Join my Private Facebook Group and get full access to my 7-day Video Masterclass to 3X Your Productivity#3: Subscribe to Productivity MD Podcast (Formerly It's Not Rocket Science) on Health, Relationships, and Productivity or watch in YouTube.Follow Ann Tsung MD, MPH onAnn Tsung on FacebookAnn Tsung on YouTubeAnn Tsung on LinkedInAnn Tsung on InstagramAnn Tsung on Twitterhttps://www.productivitymd.com/2026/02/15/episode-82/

We sat down with Lisa Broderick, CEO of Marshall Goldsmith Advisors and co-author of a new book Permanence: Become the Person You Want to Be and Stay That Way, to unpack a 2-minute practice that helps high-achievers, leaders and teams start compounding wins into lasting change. We walk through the Daily Questions Method and the crucial shift from outcome obsession to effort tracking. Lisa explains why willpower collapses under stress, how comparison culture hijacks identity, and how a tight feedback loop builds lasting habits using your brain's reward system. Beyond the core ritual, we dive into other practical tools you can use immediately to grow and improve permanently.Feedforward replaces backward-looking critiques with future-focused guidance you'll actually act on. The hero exercise turns admired qualities into your personal North Star. The wheel of change helps you decide what to keep, what to let go, and what to accept—so your motivation stops leaking into unwinnable fights.For teams, we outline a simple rollout: lightweight 360s to pick 3 behaviors, a shared cadence, and leaders modeling effort scores.Expect a clear, repeatable framework for personal growth and culture change, one that takes minutes, not meetings, and scales from individual habits to organizational norms.Ready to trade resets for lasting results?Subscribe, share this with a friend who wants to grow, and tell us: which 3 behaviors will you track this week?Short BIO:Lisa Broderick is a seasoned C-suite executive, corporate board member, and nonprofit founder with three decades of leadership experience across diverse industries, blending science with personal transformation.Author of the international bestseller All the Time in the World, which was translated into dozens of languages, and a frequent contributor to Psychology Today, Lisa distills human behavior, science, and systems thinking into complex organizational and behavioral insights.Her books deliver practical, results-driven strategies that empower individuals and organizations to achieve lasting success. Learn more about Lisa and get the book: https://permanencebook.com/Text Me Your Thoughts and IdeasSupport the showBrought to you by Angela Shurina Behavior-First, Executive, Leadership and Optimal Performance Coach 360, Change Leadership & Culture Transformation Consultant

https://teachhoops.com/ A team motto is more than just a catchy phrase on a warm-up shirt; it is the foundational "Why" that binds a group of individuals into a singular, cohesive unit. To be effective, a motto must be authentic to your specific roster and the values of your community. Avoid the "cliché trap" by involving your players in the creation process. When athletes have a hand in defining their own identity—whether it's "All-In," "Brick by Brick," or "P.T.P." (Protect The Program)—they develop a deep sense of autonomy and buy-in. A motto chosen by the players will always carry more weight in the final four minutes of a game than one chosen for them by the coaching staff. Once the motto is established, it must be integrated into the daily vocabulary of your program. It should serve as a "shorthand" for your standards. If your motto is "Grind and Grow," it should be referenced during the hardest part of a conditioning circuit or when reviewing film of a defensive breakdown. Use these words to "frame" your feedback; when a player's effort slips, don't just tell them to play harder—ask them if their current effort aligns with the motto they committed to. In the heart of the January conference schedule, the motto becomes the "Common Language" that keeps the group focused on the long-term vision rather than the immediate frustration of a tough loss. Finally, a championship-level motto is one that evolves into a lifestyle. Use your TeachHoops member calls to discuss how to "market" your motto within your community, turning it into a brand that your youth players and parents recognize and respect. A great motto should be visible everywhere: on the scoreboard, in the pre-game newsletter, and even in the way your players conduct themselves in the classroom. By the time the postseason arrives, the motto should no longer feel like a slogan—it should feel like a promise. When a team truly "owns" their words, they play with a level of conviction and mental toughness that makes them nearly impossible to break, regardless of the score. Basketball team motto, team identity, coaching leadership, basketball culture, program building, team standards, high school basketball, youth basketball, coaching philosophy, player buy-in, basketball IQ, team motivation, mid-season grind, basketball strategy, player-led leadership, basketball success, athletic leadership, character development, coach development, coach unplugged, teach hoops, basketball mentorship, sports psychology, team unity, championship mindset. SEO Keywords Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 2024, the image of Jake Retzlaff—the only Jewish quarterback ever to play for Brigham Young University's football team—adorned special editions of Manischewitz matzah boxes. That brand deal, to showcase a promising Jewish pro-football prospect, was the inspiration for a company co-founded by former Montrealer Jeremy Moses. His sports-marketing company is called Tribe NIL. (NIL stands for Name, Image and Likeness, a new monetization route for college athletes to make money off their work.) The company aims to boost the careers of hundreds of talented Jewish college athletes, including more than a half-dozen Canadians playing for U.S. college football, baseball, hockey, basketball and swim teams, among others. Moses was raised in Montreal. He's the middle son of retired Montreal Rabbi Lionel Moses and Yiddish scholar and editor Joyce Rappaport. His brother, Zev Moses, is the founder and executive director of the Museum of Jewish Montreal. Jeremy Moses moved to Brooklyn where he's worked in the sports and entertainment field. He and business partner, the comedian Eitan Levine, founded Tribe NIL last spring. This year, they're doubling down on the Manischewitz campaign, looking for one male and one female Jewish athlete to reward with $10,000 in prize money each, a “L'Cheisman Trophy” and international fame as this year's faces of Manischewitz matzah. On today's episode of The CJN's flagship podcast North Star, Jeremy Moses joins host Ellin Bessner to share more about his campaign—plus they get into the myriad Jewish sporting news of the week, including Jewish Olympians and Robert Kraft's controversial Super Bowl antisemitism ad. Related links Learn more about co-founder Jeremy Moses's company, Tribe NIL and see some of the 250 Jewish NCAA college athletes they represent (including some Canadians). Follow Manischewitz's contest with TribeNIL for Jewish male and female college athlete of the year, with winners to be announced in March. Listen to The CJN's Not in Heaven podcast discuss whether parents want their kids to be professional athletes. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here ) Watch our podcasts on YouTube.

In this episode of Poised for Exit, we are joined by Karim Ghandour, Founder & CEO at Legacyline, a Dubai-based transition readiness firm serving founders across multiple jurisdictions. Karim shares how his background in estate planning and cross-border advisory work led him to a powerful realization. Most business owners do not truly understand the value of their company, even though it is often their largest asset.Karim explains why exit planning should not be treated as a one-time transaction but as an ongoing discipline focused on readiness. Whether a founder plans to sell, pass the business to family, or simply wants optionality, placing value at the center of decision-making changes everything. As Karim puts it, “If an acquirer would not buy the business, it is a crime to give it to your kids.”We also discuss how subscription-based readiness models create accountability, why emotional readiness is often more difficult than financial or operational readiness, and how founders can prepare for liquidity events long before they occur. This conversation offers a practical and global perspective on what it truly means to be prepared for transition. Connect with Karim Ghandour hereLearn more about Legacyline hereLearn about the Trusted WISP tool for today's professionals hereConnect with Julie Keyes, Keyestrategies LLCFounder, Consultant, Author, Pod-caster and Instructor

BLST Northstar, LLC v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc.

Mark Schultz, Northstar Commodity See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this powerful conversation, world-renowned astrologer Lynn Bell breaks down the major astrology of 2026 — from the rare Mars–Venus–Sun conjunction to the Saturn–Neptune era shift and the deeper, slower timeline of real transformation. We explore why this moment feels intensely personal, how the feminine (Venus) becomes the key stabilizing force, and why nervous system regulation, embodiment, and conscious choice matter more than ever. This episode is an essential guide for navigating the push–pull between the old world dissolving and the new one still forming. ARRIVE — The Free 3-Day ReWilding Challenge A rare, live global immersion held inside the Fire Horse Solar Eclipse and Zero-Degree Aries creation window — a moment that doesn't repeat. 3 days. Live. Free. Global. Open to all.. → Sign up here   The Path of the Priest/ess In-Person Retreat This is our only in-person Priestess Training offered this year — a 5-day advanced retreat in Ibiza, Spain (22–26 April 2026), limited to 24 participants and available by application only. Early Bird Pricing available through March 1st, 2026. → Details & application here Ways to work with Lynn Bell: Website The Cosmic Speed of Change. Lynn Bell & Carolyn Myss The Dark Side of Venus Webinar Omega Institute Wounds and Remedies Workshop Greece Retreat Listen to “You Can Feel It: The Era Is Changing (with Lynn Bell)“ podcast here… Topics Explored in “You Can Feel It: The Era Is Changing (with Lynn Bell)” podcast: (Times based off audio version) (0:00) Lynn Bell on 2026 Astrology: The Era Shift Is Here (But Not Overnight) (5:32) Permanent Imbalance + Nervous System Language: Why It Feels So Fast (6:55) Venus Enters Pisces + Saturn Into Aries (Valentine's Day): Sweetness Meets Reality (10:21) Mars–Venus–Sun Triple Conjunction: Personal Awakening + The New vs Old Push–Pull (13:20) Mercury Retrograde in Pisces + Mercury–Mars Encounters: Resistance to the “New World” (15:23) Where to Look in Your Birth Chart: 0° Aries + The Pisces House Behind It (17:01) Venus Starpoint (Arielle Guttman) + Mars Dominance: Why Venus “Can't Just Be Herself” (20:47) Feb 17 Aquarius Eclipse: Venus Conjunct North Node (Feminine as the North Star) (23:14) Equinox Portal: Venus Stations Direct on 8° Pisces (The “Stepping Stones” Year) (25:25) Venus Embodiment: Noticing the New & Preparing for Key Portals (30:26) Epstein Files + Saturn in Aries: Ownership, Power, and the Feminine Response (35:16) Saturn Myth + The “Second Womb”: Hestia/Vesta Swallowed & the Priestess Fire (40:04) Sedna + Eris + Chiron: Trickster Patterns, Wounding, and Warrior Truth (42:39) Saturn–Neptune in Aries: Slavery vs Autonomy + The “Collective Hypnosis” Theme (45:37) Choosing Magic in 2026: Venus as the Only Force That Can Disarm Mars (57:08) Second Half of 2026: Extreme Fire, Chiron Into Taurus (June), Node Shift (Leo/Aquarius) (1:01:05) Pluto in Aquarius Revelations + Closing Invites (Feb 24 Classes, Greece, Ibiza, Vesta)You can leave a comment or question for Sabrina on the YouTube version of this episode. Listen to after “You Can Feel It: The Era Is Changing (with Lynn Bell)”: 2026 is a Turning Point (the episode that made Sabrina sick )  Watch Part 1 — “Are You in the First Wave?”  STAY CONNECTED ReWilding Weekly (free, embodied astrology)  IG  Website  Disclaimer: Educational/spiritual perspectives; not medical/mental-health advice. #2025Shift #NewHuman #SpiritualAwakening Welcome to ReWilding with Sabrina Lynn & ReWilding for Women! A gifted facilitator of revolutionary inner work and the world's leading archetypal embodiment expert, Sabrina Lynn is the creator of the groundbreaking ReWilding Way and founder of ReWilding For Women. Sabrina has led more than 100,000 people through programs based on the ReWilding Way, a modality of healing and awakening that strips away the false, the deep wounds from early life, and the fears that hold people back, to reveal their true and unique soul light and help them build their innate capacity to shine it in the world. Her work includes in-person retreats and events, the monthly ReWilding Membership, Living Close to the Bone, Priest/ess Trainings, Mystery Schools, the ReWilding with the Archetypes, and the wildly popular 6 Faces of the Feminine workshop series. Welcome to ReWilding! The post 364 – You Can Feel It: The Era Is Changing (with Lynn Bell) appeared first on Rewilding for Women.

(Feb 11, 2026) The North Star Health Alliance is filing for bankruptcy after months of financial instability, employee layoffs, and the resignation of its CEO; Margot Ernst, a leader in the Adirondack philanthropic community and a passionate public radio supporter, died Sunday at 80 years old; and we'll check in with longtime NCPR reporter Brian Mann, who is in Italy covering the Winter Games for NPR.

France's administrative court has thrown out a lawsuit launched by Montreal's Lawee family, who allege the French embassy in Baghdad has been occupying their family's ancestral home, rent-free, for more than fifty years. The Paris-based body ruled against the Jewish family on Feb. 2. in a printed decision, after an in-person hearing last month, The court said it's denying the Canadian family's case because France has immunity for acts done on foreign soil–and because the old lease was signed in the 1960s in the city of Baghdad, so local Iraqi laws apply. The case has garnered international headlines because it involves a much wider story: the historic injustice done to nearly a million Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) who were forced to flee their regimes' growing anti-Israel sentiment after 1948. They were stripped of their citizenship and their assets were seized. The CJN's flagship podcast "North Star" has been following the story since last year, and on today's episode, host Ellin Bessner sits down with Philip Khazzam, the Montreal businessman on a mission to seek justice for what happened to his grandfather's beloved mansion. Related stories Read the French administrative court's Feb. 2 decision in The CJN. Learn why Philip Khazzam launched his $30 million legal challenge against France for unpaid rent and damages last year, in The CJN . Hear the survival stories of Canadians of Iraqi descent who survived the “Fraud” pogrom against Baghdad Jews in 1941, in The CJN. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here ) Watch our podcasts on YouTube.

Is Bitcoin about to face a deeper downturn before the next great bull market? Chart analyst Kevin Wadsworth, co-founder of Northstar & Badcharts, joins Natalie Brunell to break down the signals he sees across Bitcoin, gold, equities, and the bond market. Topics include: Could Bitcoin drop to $40K? Kevin forecasts bottom for asset in Q3 or Q4... Why Bitcoin is losing to gold this cycle What a "capital rotation event" really means - Repeating 1930, 1970, 2002 markets M2, money velocity, inflation dynamics When will the next bull run for Bitcoin start? Follow Kevin on X: https://x.com/NorthstarCharts  ---- Order Natalie's new book "Bitcoin is For Everyone," a simple introduction to Bitcoin and what's broken in our current financial system: https://amzn.to/3WzFzfU  --- Coin Stories is powered by Gemini. Invest as you spend with the Gemini Credit Card. Sign up today to earn a $200 intro Bitcoin bonus. The Gemini Credit Card is issued by WebBank. See website for rates & fees. Learn more at https://www.gemini.com/natalie  ---- Ledn is the global leader in Bitcoin-backed loans, issuing over $9 billion in loans since 2018, and they were the first to offer proof of reserves. With Ledn, you get custody loans, no credit checks, no monthly payments, and more. Get .25% off your first loan, learn more at https://www.Ledn.io/natalie  ---- Earn passive Bitcoin income with industry-leading uptime, renewable energy, ideal climate, expert support, and one month of free hosting when you join Abundant Mines at https://www.abundantmines.com/natalie  ---- Natalie's Bitcoin Product Partners: For easy, low-cost, instant Bitcoin payments, I use Speed Lightning Wallet. Play Bitcoin trivia and win up to 1 million sats! Download and use promo code COINSTORIES10 for 5,000 free sats: https://www.speed.app/coinstories  Block's Bitkey Cold Storage Wallet was named to TIME's prestigious Best Inventions of 2024 in the category of Privacy & Security. Get 20% off using code STORIES at https://bitkey.world   Master your Bitcoin self-custody with 1-on-1 help and gain peace of mind with the help of The Bitcoin Way: https://www.thebitcoinway.com/natalie  With BitcoinIRA, you can invest in bitcoin 24/7 inside a tax-advantaged IRA. Choose a Traditional IRA to defer taxes, or a Roth IRA for tax-free withdrawals later. Take control of your future with BitcoinIRA: https://www.bitcoinira.com/natalie  Natalie's Upcoming Events: Bitcoin 2026 will be here before you know it. Get 10% off Early Bird passes using the code HODL: https://tickets.b.tc/event/bitcoin-2026?promoCodeTask=apply&promoCodeInput=  Strategy World 2026 in Las Vegas on February 23-26th - Use code HODL for discounted tickets: https://www.strategysoftware.com/world26    Extra Services to Consider: Protect yourself from SIM Swaps that can hack your accounts and steal your Bitcoin. Join America's most secure mobile service, trusted by CEOs, VIPs and top corporations: https://www.efani.com/natalie   Ditch your fiat health insurance like I did four years ago! Join me at CrowdHealth: www.joincrowdhealth.com/natalie  ---- This podcast is for educational purposes and should not be construed as official investment advice. ---- VALUE FOR VALUE — SUPPORT NATALIE'S SHOWS Strike ID https://strike.me/coinstoriesnat/ Cash App $CoinStories #money #Bitcoin #investing

Ever wonder how being alone in the wilderness impacts your faith, your views on fatherhood, and how you define fear? On this episode of The Brainy Moms Podcast, Dr. Amy and Sandy upack all of that with Timber Cleghorn--humanitarian aid worker, survivalist, and cast member on Season 9 of Alone.  Timber shares lessons from a life that spans an off-grid childhood, years in conflict zones, and 83 days alone in the Arctic Circle on the show. The result is a disarmingly honest look at fear, faith, and the daily choices that turn hardship into wisdom.Timber shares how producers of Alone protect the true experiment—extreme isolation—forcing contestants to face themselves without distraction. In that silence, he used scripture to speaking both fear and gratitude out loud to steady his spirit. From missing a moose with millions watching to withstanding online backlash for expressing his faith, he explains how to loosen your shoulders, learn what you can, and take the next right step. Success may be fleeting, but satisfaction can be solid when your identity isn't riding on outcomes.We also go deep on parenting. Timber and his wife are raising three kids while dialing back overseas work, breaking cycles of fear-based decisions, and centering kindness as the family's North Star. He tells a revealing story about choosing connection over performance. We talk about giving children silence, autonomy, and wonder; modeling a beautiful life with God rather than forcing belief; and how conviction beats confidence when facing real-world challenges, including their toddler's developmental needs.If you're curious about resilience, gratitude, and practical ways to bring wildness home—without making your kids replicas of you—this conversation delivers. Expect thoughtful insights on echo chambers, empathy, failure, and why choosing kindness at any scale matters. This episode is different from any we've done in all six seasons so far. In a conversation among parents, we laugh, we cry, we share our faith, and we laugh some more. It's an hour and fifteen minutes of pure joy. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs courage today, and leave a review telling us where you're practicing conviction over confidence right now.ABOUT US:The Brainy Moms is a parenting podcast hosted by cognitive psychologist Dr. Amy Moore and Sandy Zamalis. Dr. Amy and Sandy have conversations with experts in parenting, child development, education, homeschooling, psychology, mental health, and neuroscience. Listeners leave with tips and advice for helping parents and kids thrive. If you love us, add us to your playlist and follow us on social media! CONNECT WITH US:Website: www.TheBrainyMoms.com Email: BrainyMoms@gmail.com Social Media: @TheBrainyMoms Subscribe to our free monthly newsletter Visit our sponsor's website: www.LearningRx.com

Listen now to the latest episode of JCO Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology, North Star, by Dr Manuela Spadea. As a pediatric oncologist, Spadea shares a luminous, gut-honest reflection that reminds us that beyond protocols and outcomes, the deepest medicine is presence. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: North Star, by Manuela Spadea, MD  Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I am your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I am professor of medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. What a pleasure it is to have joining us today Manuela Spadea, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Turin in Italy and consultant oncologist at the Regina Margherita Children's Hospital in Turin, Italy. We will discuss her Journal of Clinical Oncology article and second place winner in our Narrative Medicine Contest, "North Star." At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures. We have agreed to address each other by first names. Manuela, thank you for contributing to the Journal of Clinical Oncology and to our Narrative Medicine Contest, and especially for joining us to discuss your winning article today. Manuela Spadea: Hi Mikkael. Thank you for having me today. It is a pleasure and an honor being invited to speak with you. Mikkael Sekeres: No, the pleasure and honor is mine, I promise. You know, on these podcasts, I often like to ask our guests to tell us something about yourself. Where are you from, and walk us through your career and where you are right now. Manuela Spadea: Sure. I am from Italy. I work in Turin, where I work as a consultant pediatrician, a consultant oncologist, and also as an assistant professor of pediatrics. So my work is divided in these two duties: clinical duties on one hand and on the other hand, research and also teaching activities. I was drawn to choose pediatric oncology because this sits at the intersection of science and humanity, in my opinion, of course. I think that in pediatric oncology, we face different and several challenges, so we need to perform at our best in diagnosis, treatment, and whatever. But also, we are asked to not forget being human and to connect always with our children and their families. So it was basically this intersection, this connection between science, research on one hand, and humanity and heart on the other hand that led me to what I am today. Mikkael Sekeres: It is a fantastic explanation, and it is interesting how you have framed that, that there is an aspect of arts and humanities that you have found in focusing on pediatric hematology oncology. I do think that is more so than what we face in adult oncology. Manuela Spadea: I think that it is kind of different because if you think about our world and you think about a sentence, just putting the words 'child', 'cancer', and 'death' in the same sentence is very hard to think about. An adult is someone that has already had the chance and the gift to grow up. Mikkael Sekeres: Huh. It is an interesting perspective on it. Manuela Spadea: Yeah. A child is someone who is growing up and cancer stays in between his possibility to become an adult or not. Mikkael Sekeres: So the emotional burden right out of the gate of having a child with cancer and the possibility of death and the reaction to the compromise of a full life and the shortening of a full life automatically invokes that extra step of humanity and arts and how we have to approach a medical situation. I had not heard somebody put that into a concise phrase like that before, but you are absolutely right. When did you start writing narrative pieces? Manuela Spadea: I started writing when I was an adolescent, basically. And writing for me was a way to cope with whatever kind of feeling I felt during my life and during what I experienced as a human beforehand. But thereafter, when I became a clinician, writing was a way to cope with difficult shifts or hard nights in which you are asked to make very hard decisions as a clinician. Mikkael Sekeres: Often, either on this podcast or outside of it, doctors will approach me and want to get into writing and write a piece. And I think what many people do not realize is it is entirely possible later in life to start writing and to be very skilled at it. Many of our authors for JCO's Art of Oncology, though, have been writing their entire lives. It is not like they woke up one morning and decided, "Today I am going to write and I am going to write creatively." We have all been working on it for decades. Manuela Spadea: Sure. Mikkael Sekeres: I wonder who are some of your favorite authors or are there writers who have influenced your own writing? Manuela Spadea: I would go with Paulo Coelho and Alda Merini. The reasons are very different because from Paulo Coelho, I learned how to express life as a journey and how to use and exploit, of course, symbolic images to express what we want to tell to our readers. From Alda Merini, I learned that pain and suffering are worthy of being mentioned and they still deserve a place in our writings. And she taught me how to collocate, how to find the right place and the right words to express pain and suffering that are parts of our life, of course, in pediatric oncology, of course, and are worthy being expressed in a manner that can reach our readers and touch them. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, as you have beautifully in your essay, I wonder if you could give us an example of a symbolic image. Manuela Spadea: For example, referring to my essay, "North Star." I chose the North Star because it is a very important image because it recalls to us about being a fixed point in a collapsing world. Basically, it is the world of our children that is collapsing and you are the one who represents this fixed point, this anchor. Mikkael Sekeres: So in your essay, which our entire editorial staff just loved, you write about, and I am going to quote you to you, which is always a little bit awkward, but here I go. You write about "the unbearable beautiful vulnerability of being a North Star for a child with cancer." And you write, "We never call it that, of course, not in rounds, not in protocols, but that is what we become: a fixed point in a collapsing sky. When nothing else makes sense, when numbers fail and outcomes blur, they look to us, not because we promise survival, but because we promise we won't leave." Wow. I mean, that is an incredible collection of sentences. I wonder, in our relationships with our patients, when does that happen? When do we become a North Star? Manuela Spadea: I think that we become a North Star when our patients experience our humanity because they can trust us, not only for our degrees or our experience as clinicians, physicians, researcher, whatsoever. They trust us as a North Star when they feel that we are empathetic with them, when they know that we are feeling what they are experiencing. And so they leave their feelings to us, they share their feelings and they begin to connect with us. Mikkael Sekeres: When does that happen in the timeline of when we meet a patient? Is that something that can happen at our very first meeting where a patient may identify us or a member of our team as their North Star, or is that something that only happens over time as we build trust and build empathy? Manuela Spadea: It is definitely something that happens over time, day by day. Sometimes, but only occasionally, in my opinion, it can happen on the very first days, for example, the days in which we give them the diagnosis. But these are only small occasions because in the majority of cases, in my experience, the trust is built day by day. Mikkael Sekeres: There are also times that doesn't happen, though, right? What are those scenarios like when either patients do not need us to be a North Star or when that deep connection never happens? Manuela Spadea: I think that these are very challenging situations. It can happen when outcomes blur, of course, because sometimes patients are experiencing too much suffering and they cannot share with us because they are not able of sharing with us their feelings. Sometimes it is just because you are not their North Star. Sometimes it is inexplicable, basically. "I do not trust you, not because you are not what I am looking for, but because I do not feel I can trust you. And I do not know how to explain because I cannot trust you." Mikkael Sekeres: It is interesting. It is complicated to develop that relationship where you become a North Star. It sounds like what you are saying is it is a combination of trust, first and foremost, honesty, attentiveness to a patient's needs, and time. Manuela Spadea:Sure. Mikkael Sekeres: In your piece, you write about a couple of patients you have treated, Eva and Cecilia, and you write, "In both Eva's and Cecilia's journeys, I was not the most experienced doctor in the hospital. I wasn't the one who had written the protocol they were enrolled in or published the paper that dramatically shifted their chances. But I was the one who stayed, the one they chose. Incredibly, this is both a gift and a responsibility." There is a lot in those sentences, Manuela. You give patients the agency to identify us as a North Star, not us. Can you talk about that a little bit? Manuela Spadea: I think that there is a word in pediatric oncology that could be used as recurrent. And this word is 'impossible'. Why I chose this word? Because we live impossible diagnosis. Let's be honest. Impossible diagnosis, impossible suffering, impossible losses. When you face the impossible, being a North Star without being burned out by this, it is accepting that you are going to face uncertainty just being present. Because you are not the one that will change the outcome, or you can't be sure that that child will have the chance to survive. So if you give the possibility to face the uncertainty, being sure that whenever it goes, you can just be present for your patient and remember every day to your patient that you are there for them. So basically you win. And on the other hand, you also need to protect yourself because being a North Star is a responsibility, as I wrote. And a responsibility can be overwhelming for the one who is responsible for that child. So in that case, the only thing that can protect you is taking the part of being a North Star with boundaries. So you should also try to maintain your objectivity as a clinician and protect that objectivity that allows you to also serve as a good clinician. Mikkael Sekeres: So I wonder if I could follow up on that a little bit. It is a lot of work to be a North Star, isn't it? I mean, we have to choose our words and our actions so very carefully when we are in a room with a patient and that patient's family. Do you think serving as a North Star contributes to burnout or is it actually the opposite? It keeps our work vibrant and real? Manuela Spadea: Good question. I think that it is both, indeed. I think that burning out comes not by being a North Star, but by being a North Star in isolation, without caring about yourself, without finding a way to cope with your grief, with your sense of fear because we are human, so it is basically we experience these feelings. I mean, if we do not have a way to cope and to protect our feelings, we can absolutely go into burnout. On the other hand, it can be very important thing for our work because it can give our work the possibility to be vibrant and real because we are allowed to take the journey of our patient in a moment in which their journey is very unbearable. This is also not only a responsibility, but also a very important place that we have in their lives. This is very beautiful for me. This is astonishing because we are allowed to enter our patients' lives in a very difficult moment, and we can walk with them. Basically, being present and walking through what cancer journeys reserve for them. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, I think that is a lovely place to end our podcast. What a real pleasure it has been to have Manuela Spadea, who is an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Turin, Italy, and consultant oncologist at the Regina Margherita Children's Hospital in Turin, Italy, to discuss her essay, "North Star." Manuela, thank you so much for submitting your article both to JCO and to our contest, and for joining us today. Manuela Spadea: Thank you, Mikkael. It has been an honor to share these stories with you. Mikkael Sekeres: If you have enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or colleague or leave us a review. Your feedback and support helps us continue to have these important conversations. If you are looking for more episodes and context, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and explore more from ASCO at asco.org/podcasts. Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for JCO Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions. Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show Notes:Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review. Guest Bio: Dr Manuela Spadea is an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at the University of Turin, Italy, and Consultant Oncologist at the Regina Margherita Children's Hospital, in Turin, Italy.

In which we provide some inroads to resisting fascism in your community; pacifism has amazing abs; Cyclops and Wolverine play revolutionary chicken; Amelia Voght fails to live up to her narrative potential; Jean Grey continues to make spectacularly bad choices; Polaris deserves better; and Wolverine finally gets to stab Magneto. X-PLAINED: Community action and aid X-Men #112-113 Uncanny X-Men #393 Genosha (more) (again) Northstar (more) (again) Dazzler (more) (again) Sunpyre (more) (again) Hector Rendoza (more) (again) Paulie Provenzano (more) (again) Frenzy (more) (again) Amelia Voght (more) (again) St. Sebastian thirst traps Sewer adventures Post-Apocalypse Cyclops (more) (again) Awkward conversations about feelings Implausible knitting The Age of Apocalypse X-Babies A protracted confrontation Bad strategy A confusing ruse Some stabbing What happens to the unlikeliest X-Men Jean Grey as Charles Xavier's heir Best potential uses of Hector Rendoza NEXT EPISODE: The secret (retconned) origin of Wolverine! Check out the visual companion to this episode on our blog. Find us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! Jay and Miles X-Plain the X-Men is 100% ad-free and listener supported. If you want to help support the podcast–and unlock more cool stuff–you can do that right here! Buy rad swag at our Dashery shop!

Register here to attend the live virtual event "Why Central Florida is the Year's Most Compelling Housing Market" on Thursday, February 19th at 8pm Eastern. Keith looks at how a changing Federal Reserve leadership might shape the interest rate environment, then zooms in on what's really happening with homebuilders versus remodelers across the country.  You'll hear about a lesser-known strategy some investors are using to step back from day-to-day landlording while keeping their income, and then we head to Central Florida to explore why one fast-growing market is quietly becoming a hotspot for new-build rental properties.  Along the way, a longtime Florida builder joins the show to explain how they're creating affordable, investment-friendly homes and what kinds of rents and tenant demand they're seeing on the ground—plus a way you can learn more live if this opportunity fits your own portfolio plans. Resources: Register for the event at GREwebinars.com Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/592 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  1-937-795-8989 to speak with a freedom coach Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, the naming of a new Federal Reserve Chair. Then are homebuilders in trouble today? There are a dwindling number of them, and their profits are down. I'll talk to a homebuilder. Listen to what amenities tenants want today, and it's interesting. We'll learn how low of a mortgage rate builders will give you. Now there's an opportunity here today on get rich education.   Corey Coates  0:30   Since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors, and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads of 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast or visit get rich education.com   Keith Weinhold  1:14   mid south home buyers with over two decades as the nation's highest rated turnkey provider, their empathetic property managers use your return on investment as their North Star. It's no wonder smart investors line up to get their completely renovated income properties like it's the newest iPhone headquartered in Memphis, with their globally attractive cash flows, mid south has an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and 4000 houses renovated, there is zero markup on maintenance. Let that sink in, and they average a 98.9% occupancy rate with an industry leading three and a half year average renter term. Every home they offer you will have brand new components, a bumper to bumper, one year warranty, new 30 year roofs. And wait for it, a high quality renter in an astounding price range, 100 to 150k GET TO KNOW mid south enjoy cash flow from day one at mid southhomebuyers.com that's mid southhomebuyers.com   Speaker 1  2:17   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  2:33   Welcome to GRE from countersport Pennsylvania to Davenport Iowa and across 488 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get rich education now more than ever, where you learn about personal finance and real estate investing matters. There's more AI generated content out there. This show is all flesh and blood me. There's also more clickbait content out there that says something like the housing market is about to have a price crash. No, it's not. They're just there to get short term attention. So your information source really matters today. New incoming Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, was recently named. He will replace the outgoing Jerome Powell on May 15. I want to tell you more about that in a moment. But first, just imagine if this scenario were to occur, say that we get a Fed chair that has to deal with really high inflation. And so what this Fed chair does is that he successfully brings inflation down, and he does that without triggering a recession that's called a soft landing. Well, you know what? That's exactly what Jerome Powell did the past three years. Yeah, that's what he's accomplished, and he doesn't get credit for it. He only gets a lot of criticism. Now this doesn't mean that I love Powell. I don't even know that the Fed should exist at all, but Powell got a lot of criticism for calling 2022, wave of inflation transitory, and being too late to respond to it. So he gets some credit here as his term of more than eight years winds down. Let's listen in to some of Jay Powell's recent comments about succession,    Speaker 2  4:23   you've obviously experienced a lot during your time as Fed chair, served under multiple presidents. I'm wondering what advice you have for whoever your successor might be.   Speaker 3  4:34   Honestly, I'd say a couple of things. One is, you know, stay out of elected politics. Don't get pulled into elected politics don't do it. And that's another thing. Another is that you know, our window into democratic accountability is Congress, and it's not a passive burden for us to go. To Congress and talk to people. It's an affirmative, regular obligation. If you want democratic legitimacy, you earn it by your interactions with the our elected overseers. And so it's something you need to work hard at, and I have worked hard at it so and the last thing is, you know, it's easy to it's easy to criticize government institutions so many ways. I will tell whoever it is you're about to meet the most qualified group of people you not only have ever worked with, you will ever work with and when you meet fed staff. And not everybody's perfect, but, but there isn't a better cadre of professionals more dedicated to the public well being than work at the Fed.    Keith Weinhold  5:43   Yeah. So to Powell's point, the next Fed chair, worsh, does champion fed independence, much like Powell has. That is a good thing that keeps America from turning into a banana republic that maintains a strong dollar. Warsh was actually a Fed Governor back during the 2008 global financial crisis, so he's got that experience when he comes in as Fed Chair in three months, he's widely expected to lower interest rates more than Powell did, much like the president wants. Kevin Warsh looks a lot like Michael Scott from the office. He has got to be less bumbling than him, though, overall, the effect on real estate and mortgage rates by shifting from PAL to worsh, I mean, that should be pretty mild. Maybe you'll see rates go a little lower than if pal had stayed and speaking of rates, wait till you see how low the mortgage rate is that our homebuilder guest is offering today. What's really happening with homebuilders now? How much trouble are they in? Homebuilders have largely been maligned. Overall. There are fewer homebuilders today in America than there were 20 years ago, and there are more remodelers than there were 20 years ago, fewer home builders, more remodelers, and that's for a few different reasons. Over the past couple decades, we just have substantially higher labor and material costs, stricter building and energy codes, higher interest rates, and that disproportionately hurts long duration construction projects. We've got zoning constraints and land constraints that make ground up development slow and uncertain and risky. So while the number of Home Builders in America is down, the number of remodelers are up, because America's housing stock is getting older. Its median age is over 40 years, and that creates constant demand for upgrades. Capital prefers faster, lower risk cycles. That's what remodels offer, and homeowners with locked in low mortgage rates choose to stay in place. And what does that make them do? That makes them renovate and remodel, not move. So this is why, compared to 20 years ago, you have fewer home builders and more remodelers. Today, that's per the NAHB and the Census Bureau and all these forces, they've resulted in a lower profit margin for homebuilders. Yes, homebuilder margin compression for a lot of the bigger builders, including DR Horton, just as you might guess in this cycle, their profits were greatest in 2022 and they have fallen since then. Higher mortgage rates came in, and builders had to lose profits by offering more incentives to entice buyers. You're going to learn more about that today and how it really spells quite an opportunity for you and I. When the final change in national home prices was tallied for the end of last year, they had risen in 16,500 zip codes. All right, that's 63% of America's zip codes, and prices were lower from a year earlier in the other 37% home price gains were concentrated in the Northeast and Midwest, and the story there continues to be too many buyers and not enough homes. In fact, over 85% of zip codes saw price growth in Illinois, Connecticut, Wisconsin and Indiana, slow, steady, stubborn, kind of like winter refusing to leave. Losses were predominant in the Sun Belt. Prices caught their breath there. There was price attrition in Florida, with 96% of zip codes, so nearly all of Florida, then California, 78% of zip codes had a price loss. Texas, 75% of them and Arizona, 73% the biggest pocket of opportunity appears to be in Florida. Florida property is on sale. And because real estate is local. A lot of times we talk here nationally, but to get to that local level, sometimes you have to dig in to a local market to really find out what's going on. We're going to do that today. Now, central Miami, Orlando and Tampa, they're not generally the spot for obtaining cash flow from long term rentals. I've identified an opportunity. We'll get into that with this Florida homebuilder shortly. It's kind of funny. You'll run into people that say they want opportunity, but what they really want is certainty. How it plays out, though, is that once the certainty arrives, the opportunity is gone, and that's how to think about Florida and maybe Texas and some of these other markets today that have had price attrition.    Keith Weinhold  10:48   Now, three weeks ago, here on the show, I discussed the 721 exchange for the first time. So I won't get into all those details again when it comes time for you to sell your investment property, the 721 can be the best way for you to cash out. Perhaps you've been investing in real estate for a while and you have turned get rich education into got rich education. How the 721 exchange works is they basically say you have a case where you're a rental property owner and you realize that you don't want the hassles of landlording anymore. Oftentimes, this can mean you're older and real estate investing already took you where you wanted it to take you in life's journey, but you still like the financial benefit that ownership gives you. What you can do is exchange your properties into a partnership and receive shares in that partnership. Now that's different than a 1031, exchange. That's where you trade up some of your property that you directly own for what's usually more and larger property that you directly own. Well, instead, here's the big deal with exchanging your properties into a 721, partnership. The rules stipulate that this is not a taxable event, and therefore you don't have to pay any capital gains tax or depreciation recapture. Now that you're an owner in the partnership, you still get some of the benefits of owning the property, like appreciation and cash flow and such, yet no management or landlording at all like you would have with a 1031 and with a 721 you get all these benefits across a greater number of properties and markets diversification because you're a fractional owner in the other properties that are in the partnership, not only your own, and when you eventually pass away, your shares are stepped up in basis and can be distributed equally to heirs and C It's surely easier for you to divide shares among, say, your three children, than it is to divide your 18 rental houses among three children Who are going to have different goals and varying degrees of financial savvy. So the 721, exchange is a great estate planning tool too. You will have this partnership that makes an offer to buy your property. You're exchanging them for partnership shares. There's a firm that does this called flock homes, and they have a certain Buy Box to be clear with the 721, exchange, you can basically trade your rentals for shares in a diversified, professionally managed Real Estate Fund. This means that you keep your hard earned equity defer capital gains and other taxes, and you still get access to steady income and long term appreciation without the hassle of landlord duties, and you can visit flockhomes.com/gre, and get a free valuation. Get an offer for your property, see if it fits their buy box and see how much they'll pay you. There's often no need to pay to fix up or stage the property for sale or pay agent commissions for a certain investor type. This really can be a rather life changing experience for you to liquidate some or all of your property have zero tax obligation and still enjoy income and appreciation. So again, what you can do is stop by flock homes.com/gre, that's F, l, O, C, K, homes.com/g, R, E, let's discuss the home building climate today.   Keith Weinhold  14:38   I'd like to bring in a premium Florida homebuilder guest to the show, Jim, because there has been more homebuilding in Florida such that some areas of the state have excess supply. And when you add that onto the fact that the hot pandemic migration to Florida has slowed such that home prices have made a rare dip in the state, that is why it. A timely topic. Jim, you're on GRE Welcome to the show. Keith, great to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, and we did the IRL thing in Colorado there a few weeks ago. That was great hanging out in person. You provide entry level new build homes, mostly in Central Florida. And these are properties that are conducive to real estate pays five ways. These are properties that investors chiefly buy as rentals. So just bigger picture, tell us about that overall experience over, say, the last five years, as the pandemic wound down,    Jim Sheils  15:35   yeah, as the pandemic wound down, obviously Florida had a lot of attention. Some of it, rightly so, some of it, I think a little more inflated and commercial attention getting thrown at it. And you know, the type of deals that you and I have always stayed away from were very popular in Florida. You know, we're talking really nice houses. Keith, beautiful, nice HOAs people got in in 2021 let's say, with those very low interest rates on a six or $700,000 home, but now they're realizing that it's not going up $100,000 a year as they thought. And when they try to sell it, well, people trying to buy in $700,000 home, they're not getting that low interest rate. And if these people try to hold it and rent it, well, it doesn't cash flow, so it breaks one of those rules. It's not putting money in people's pockets, taking it out. And so we're seeing there was a large distribution of those types of houses around Florida. And then there were some builders like us that really focused on what was the most needed, and that was workforce housing. Now workforce housing, though, Keith, as you know, a lot of the builders don't want to build it. Why? Let's be straight. It's because the margins are lower right. But as you know, with me and my partner Chris, it was always let's make less margin and do more volume. That was always our model, and that was the area of the market where we felt we could build it right, we could get it financed right, and we could manage it right to hit the five things. And so we're seeing today, post pandemic, there are still key markets where the population growth is still the highest, coming into Florida, the prices are still the lowest, and there is a shortage of this type of workforce housing.   Keith Weinhold  17:11   Yes, you've identified a geography within Florida that have some of these characteristics like you're talking about. Tell us more about that region.   Jim Sheils  17:20   Yeah, we call it the Ocala region, so Central Florida, just west of Orlando. Right now, for example, u haul does their U haul top markets rankings every year? So where are the most U haul trucks going to now, you don't want to be on their side where they're coming from, Keith, because that's obviously the opposite. But for the second year in a row, the greater Ocala area has been the number 1u haul destination place in the country. So there's still a ton of population growth going there. Central Florida, I'm not going to say it sat out the growth during the pandemic that a lot of areas of Florida did, but it was starting at such a low basis with such a small amount of attention that today, even when people say, oh gosh, like I just said, house is 600 700 800,000 we're building new construction single family homes for under 300,000 the 270s a lot of the time. And we're building duplexes sometimes for under 400,000 and a lot of our you know, investors coming from the west coast. Say, are these fully built? Are they? But again, Central Florida has had a great affordability. Remain intact. It has a large population going in. There is a ton of job resource just blowing up in the area. And as you know, these are the things we look for. So we bought a lot of lots there. I'm gonna give credit to my partner, Chris. He saw calla more than I did, and we bought a lot of lots there in 2020 so before all the rises. So we got into the land basis, right? So that means we can build them at a great price. Our land basis is low, and that obviously passes along to our clients. And again, Central Florida is a perfect match for our goal. Because, you know, our goal is workforce housing, that cash flows on day one. But also nothing wrong with fixer uppers. I own a lot. I used to do a lot, but the new construction seems to have a little bit more of a less involvement, which it seems like a lot of our clients want.   Keith Weinhold  19:15   That was really prescient, as it turned out, for your business partner, Chris there to gobble up a lot of that land in 2020 before prices went soaring. And this is one reason why you can do things like offer a duplex for less than 400k That's a new build, which has some people saying like, does that thing include a roof even? But it surely does. These are very good quality livable properties. And the reason I have you here, Jim is because you are rare. There are fewer builders today than there were in decades past, and also those that build to your point earlier. They only want to build higher end properties, not the more affordable ones that you offer. We'll get more details on your price points and what properties. Products you offer later. But yeah, we have more remodelers today and fewer builders. And though it's a few years old, I found it interesting that census statistics show us that between 2007 and 2022 there are 73% more remodelers and 21% fewer builders today.    Jim Sheils  20:22   Interesting. You know, Keith, I didn't know that, and that makes me scratch my head on like when you and I were in Colorado, we were talking about future needs, even with growth that occurred during the pandemic going all the way back to oh eight when a real shortage started to start, we are still at an estimated three to 5 million homes short in the US. It really perplexes me that the amount of builders like us will be going down and not actually entering the market.   Keith Weinhold  20:47   Now, among those that are building, though, much of that is concentrated in the South, as I think we know, there's a recent resi club compilation show that 59% of current single family home building is in the south, and 41% is everywhere else. And how do you define the South? That's basically Maryland down to Florida, all the way out to Texas and Oklahoma. So you are pretty rare in some ways. However, where you're building regionally, that's not a rarity there, but yeah, having more remodelers today and fewer home builders, that's probably the result of a lot of things. You know, for one thing, just land and construction costs becoming that much more expensive over the past five years.   Jim Sheils  21:05    Yeah, we've been lucky, too, as you know, Keith, you've been with us for a decade now. But yeah, and we transitioned a piece of our company where Sumitomo forestry, large Japanese group stepped in and acquired a piece of our property. That was a very exciting thing for all of us together, because we had done well, and, you know, started small and built up to a decent sized builder for Northeast Florida and then the rest of Florida. But now, with Sumitomo coming in again, they build 17,000 homes worldwide every year, between all of their builders. Now being a part of them, we get to use their national material accounts, so they get pricing just as good, if not better, than national home builders, and they let us do our thing, stick to our build to rent, working with investor clients. We're not retail buyer guys, really. We like working with our investors, but just getting those great discounts on materials, again, we're always looking to pass on savings to our clients. Of course, we got to make margins as well, but if we're getting in with deals like that, getting into the land right, and knowing the pinpointed areas to get into, we can get the best deal for everyone. And that's been a major part having such a big, successful partner like Sumitomo keep us healthy, viable and able to do things we could have not even dreamed of five years ago.   Keith Weinhold  22:47   Yes, that gives you more capital and more options. Another unusual aberration in the market that really centers on a lot of what you do is that this fact that and this was mentioned on the show last year for the first time in my life, existing homes cost more than new build homes. Existing homes at about 420k nationally, and new build homes about 392k part of the divergence there is probably builder price cuts. So tell us more about that.    Jim Sheils  23:14   I think the issue Heath is builders built for largest spreads, and people bought very emotionally. I think you're to give you a compliment a very unemotional real estate buyer. You're not looking at, oh, this is a very nice, you know, extra his and hers porcelain sink. And we're looking at fundamental numbers a good, solid property. And I think what's caused a lot of that is people did the opposite. Builders were looking for the largest margin they could get, which was on those types of properties. And then buyers were looking very emotionally, and they were told, Hey, this is going to go up 50 to $100,000 a year. So just sit there and hold on, sure you'll lose $1,500 a month, but don't worry about it. You'll make up for that every year. And obviously we're not seeing that's true. They could have really used your class about the five ways to get paid in real estate. And I think that that's what's doing it. And this is what builders do. I mean, everyone's in a business, and a lot of builders just focus on the largest margin. Now that's eating them up now, because those types of properties are not in demand. To build them on spec would be very dangerous, but you can see that that worked for a short term. We're very glad we went to the low margin workforce housing model, because I see that falling out of favor almost never even in Oh 809, Keith, when I was in the remodel game, a lot of the properties that were new construction coming out that time they were affordable, still did very well.   Keith Weinhold  24:42   We're talking with a premium Florida homebuilder today, because they offer affordable properties that make sense for investors. But what about the demand? Where is that going to come from? Where is that going to be? And that's what's happening with the renter segment. We'll talk more about that when we. Come back. You're listening to get rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold,   Keith Weinhold  25:03   flock homes helps you retire from real estate and landlording, whether it's one problem, property or your whole portfolio through a 721, exchange, deferring your capital gains tax and depreciation recapture, it's a strategy long used by the ultra wealthy. Now Mom and Pop landlords can 721, the residential real estate request your initial valuation, see if your properties qualify@flockhomes.com slash GRE, that's F, l, O, C, K, homes.com/gre.    Keith Weinhold  25:39   You know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year, I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program. Why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program when you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products, they've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest. Start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom, family investments.com/gre, or send a text now it's 1-937-795-8989, yep, text their freedom coach directly. Again, 1-937-795-8989,   Keith Weinhold  26:51   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage. Start your prequel and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally, while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com   Ken McElroy  27:26   this is Rich Dad advisor, Ken McElroy. Listen to get rich education with Keith whitehold, and don't twitch your Daydream.   Keith Weinhold  27:40   Welcome back to get rich Education. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, we're talking with Jim a premium Florida homebuilder here at such an interesting time in the cycle, since supply is up in some parts of Florida, Jim and his team has strategically chosen a place that is still fueling a lot of net in migration in Central Florida, and that's where the rental demand needs to come from as well. Now nationally, we've seen the homeownership rate fall over about the past year, from near 66% to near 65% that does not sound like much, but a 1% shift means there are 1.3 million new renters in just the past year. So with that in mind, and the fact that this low affordability for home buying means that people need to rent or stay renters longer, provides some of the Sustainable demand. So tell us more about the rental demand in Central Florida.   Jim Sheils  28:39   Yeah, you know, when we first went out there about a decade ago, Keith, I think it was 82 or 83% of all properties out there were owner occupied, which means it was a very lopsided amount of existing rental property available. And this is before the curve of population growth really took off. But when Chris and I went out there and we were assessing that small percentage of rental property that was out there. Gosh, it was old and kind of beat up. There was not a lot like the new construction that was available. So when we brought in new construction, we saw just the competition. Was hard to compete with us. You know, when it was an older, not so nice taking care of we came in and we saw a jump from, you know, doing older houses ourselves, you know, a person would stay about 13 months. But for the new construction in Central Florida, we've seen a jump to about three years. So that's really positive. People get into a new construction property they don't want to leave, whether that's half of a duplex or a single family. The duplexes are interesting because we're able to build those on infill lots and existing single family home neighborhoods, so a person who doesn't want to live in an apartment can live there, have their own yard, and they couldn't afford the whole single family, but to have half of a single family basically what a duplex is. It makes a big difference, and the people are in great demand of rental in Central Florida there because of exactly why. I said, Keith, the job. Course, continues to grow in Central Florida, extremely strong. The business incentives to come into the area by the local municipality is very, very good. So here's something interesting, Keith, the average salary in Ocala is about 72,000 and the average home price is about 298,000 that is a very healthy affordability one. Yeah, very, very good. And so that job source continues to pay very well. And we've talked about just the logistics centers and the Equestrian Center. That's the largest in the world. Now the villages are just 25 miles south. So Ocala becomes a bedroom community, and that is the second largest retirement community and growing in the US. So there's a lot of job source that allows people to live there at a good affordability. And so that combination of affordability with this extending job source has been really, really good for the Ocala region.   Keith Weinhold  30:59   It's been said that the only place you get money is from other people, and we're talking about your renters in this case. So oftentimes these renters, they had their sense of privacy there, like, for example, do the duplexes even have fenced backyards for each individual side,   Jim Sheils  31:17   depending on where they are? We will. Other times it hasn't been a requirement. We've done lots of surveys to see is it worth the price point to put in full fencing in certain areas. It can be in a lot of areas. Keith, they're just so excited with the price point not having to move into an apartment building that it hasn't even been warranted or necessary.   Keith Weinhold  31:38   Yeah. So we're talking about livability characteristics here, because oftentimes new build rental property results in a higher tenant stay that longer duration, because they're the first person that have ever lived there, and it's also difficult for them to go out and improve their living situation unless they become a home buyer, and that's difficult to do today. Tell us more about the incentives and the property types and so on, because there really are some pretty exciting ones.    Jim Sheils  32:09   One of the best things about Central Florida, Keith, combined with new construction, is insurance costs. Now you and I have laughed about the blanketed statement where you said, oh my goodness, you cannot get insurance in Florida. You can't get property insurance in Florida, or it's doubled, tripled, gone up 7x that is a true statement on certain properties. If you're buying older properties from the 1950s that are within a half mile of the beach on low lying ground, but new construction properties far away from the beach, that is a totally different things. So again, being in Central Florida, where we are, a lot of people think, oh, to insure a single family home there, that's going to be several $100 a month, when actually, you know, and you've seen a lot of our performer quotes, our insurance companies are getting a single family home done for about $65 a month on average, full coverage. And that's the advantage of new construction. Insurance companies are all about risk. They analyze risk. When you're on a new construction property built on higher ground away from the beach, they like that, and they do that a duplex. You're looking at about $100 a month. So incentive wise, we've really searched to team up with great insurance companies that get the best rates full coverage. And again, we surprise people when they say, Oh man, I thought there would be a whole nother zero at that monthly cost. And these are actual quotes, as you know, with working with a lot of GRE people. So that's one great thing, another great thing, Keith, that happened when we joined forces with Sumitomo. And again, Sumitomo 320, years old, one of the biggest powerhouses out of Asia, Warren Buffett, is very heavily invested in another one of the conglomerates, not the housing one we do, but he's very involved in one of their other companies. And when they came aboard, you know, we have no bank debt for a builder, which is rare. And since we have such a healthy balance sheet, we're actually able to work deals with mortgage companies where we'll do what's called builder forward commitments, Keith, and that means we will pre buy mortgages for our clients, for the homes we're building, and we will pass that savings along. So right now, you know, if an investment property in a duplex might be an average of 7% for anyone who walks in off the street to a bank. Right now, our most popular rate program for our investors, for single family or duplexes, is 3.75 Gosh. So as you know, for your five ways, if we want to get cash flow, there's a big difference. Yeah, we're getting affordable housing. But if the rate is over 7% compared to 375 that could eat up the cash flow with us being able to have this power to buy large tranches of money and pass it along and lock our people in again, an average right now at 3.75 is our most popular program, and that's long term money, then we're able to get that cash flow right off the bat. And you and I know how important that is   Keith Weinhold  34:50    for this super attractive 3.75% long term mortgage rate on single family homes and duplexes. How? Much does the buyer have to come out of pocket at the closing table to buy that down themselves? And how much do you the builder participate in that buy down?   Jim Sheils  35:07   You know, it depends Keith at different times, because there is a little bit of a fluctuation. Sometimes it can be as low as zero points or just one origination point to bring it in. It does vary. And also, if people say, hey, I really don't want to bring in any points. Well, that's fine. You know, if you don't want to walk in zero to 2% points for that, you can also just raise your rate up to four and a quarter and probably walk in nothing. So there's different things that we can do, but the goal of it is to have us have the brunt of it. And what I can tell you is, if the average person walked into a bank, and a bank wouldn't do this anyway. It's only for, again, builders with a certain size, but if you went into a bank right now and said, I'd like to buy my rate down to 3.75 the average Keith that this would cost a person off the street going into a bank would be 12 to 15% banks wouldn't even do it for an individual. But that's about the estimates when you look at it. So again, volume has privileged. The fact we're able to buy it down. It does cost us a good amount of money, but we're all able to save since we're kind of working together to buy these larger tranches. And again, the need of any investment for buying down the rate from the clients is very minimal.   Keith Weinhold  36:18   Tell us more about the property types, new build single family homes, new build duplexes.   Jim Sheils  36:23   You know, single family and duplexes are our main focus in 2026 for Central Florida, we've done the research. They're very high in demand. They rent quickly, and they rent long term to produce cash flow. Our average single family home under 300,000 we're aiming to after expense, make about $300 cash flow. Our duplexes should be about twice that amount, about just under $600 a month, or just over in cash flow. And then again, the prices are ranging from about 395, to 420, for a duplex. Again, these are in workforce areas where we're doing great, scattered lots. Scattered lot means there's already existing homes around. We like to go to an area where there's good a fundamental balance of homeowners and renters. So there's retail buyers that have bought their first home, and we will place our rentals in between them, whether it's a single family or a duplex.   Keith Weinhold  37:13   We sure don't need to do a complete audio pro forma here, but those cash flow amounts something near $300 for a single family home, and about double that for a duplex. Is that using, you know, a bought down rate to about 4% and some of these other inputs you're talking about, like low insurance costs and a certain property tax rate, can you tell us about that?    Jim Sheils  37:35   Yeah, property tax rate is property tax rate. We can get pretty dang close on property taxes, you know, based on millage and get that down. But when we do our performers, we absolutely go off of, you know, our average rate to be the 375, to four and a quarter. And then when GRE clients look at our performer, and they look at the insurance cost, that's an actual quote from one of our insurance companies that has insured hundreds and hundreds of these properties. Not a guess, yeah, so they know what they're doing. So yeah, those would be the assumptions made in there, and that's what we're basically getting on a week in, week out basis.    Keith Weinhold  38:09   That is really attractive as we're talking about new build. I imagine there is some sort of builder warranty as well.    Jim Sheils  38:16   There's a state mandated 210 warranty. 210 warranty is something we could talk probably a whole episode on Keith. But for what's good for people to know, basically what that means, you get two years coverage on the small stuff and 10 years coverage on the big structural stuff. And so that's why I like new construction. You know what? I used to personally just buy my own fixer up Return key properties from other people. I could get a one year warranty, and that's the best that really can be done. Now with new construction, we've gone from, you know, with our fixer upper homes, able to do a one year warranty, which is good at something. But now with new construction, we can do a 210 warranty, big difference, and also really helps the safety score of issues if they came up.    Keith Weinhold  38:59   We were talking about new build property, and we tend to project relatively low maintenance and repair costs for an obvious reason, maybe your long term vacancy rate could very well be lower as well, due to my earlier point about a tenant wanting to stay there for a long time, because it's hard for them to improve their living situation unless they went out and bought their own place. And you have the low insurance rates, and you have the low mortgage rates, all contributing to positive cash flow on a new build property. And we think about that tenant and what gets the tenant excited? We start to think about some of those amenities. So tell us about what amenities are offered, including inside, in the kitchen and so on.   Jim Sheils  39:38   Jim, yeah, great question, Keith. We've really gotten a great recipe for success for that. You know, we've been doing this a little over a decade now, and so you're always tweaking your build model. What do people like? What do they not like? What's good for durability? Let's look at maintenance and repairs. Let's look at turn costs. So our goal is always the dual focus. That's what looks good. And what lasts really well, yeah, because you want durability. When you have tenants, you want it to look good, so you sell it down the road, 510, years to a first time homebuyer, it looks great. You can sell it. But durability wise, you don't want a lot of extra expenses or maintenance and repairs. So we go durability. So what we found a couple of things. I always joke about this. I do not like the word carpet, Keith, that is a terrible swear word in real estate investing, I can tell you right now, if I could go back and this is not, you know, owning hundreds of rentals, if I could not have done carpet and just reversed it to like vinyl plank flooring, like we do now, or even tile, which was more, I probably would have been able to buy three or four of our duplexes cash with the amount of money, and that is not an exaggeration. So we do not do carpet. First of all, it seems like trends are changing. It's not in favor right now. So we do vinyl plank flooring, which looks really nice, almost like wood floors, super durable, though, for a young family that's going to be tenant occupied in your property and running around on it. That's great. Kitchen wise, again, we don't sell retail really. We like to work with investors, but down the road, our investor might want to sell to a retail buyer. So we know, you know, from our old fix and flip days of the FHA buyers, the kitchen's got a pop. So we always do, you know, we don't do the white appliances, which you know would save you quite a bit of money, and save us quite a bit of money. We do stainless steel appliances. We do all new cabinetry, you know, kind of the latest, nicer cabinetry, a little bit of an upgrade. And then, you know, butcher block countertops, those are going to wear in about a year or two. Keith, it feels really good to spend that smaller amount, you know. But we, we like to do the more durable, nice looking countertops, you know, that are, you know, just so much more esthetically pleasing and actually durable as well. Same thing in the bathrooms. A lot of new builders will do shower kit, which not a problem if you're saving money on a rehab, you know, but we would rather do tile, bring in the extra subcontractors to give tile, and then in the master we do the dual sinks, which this might sound like little stuff, Keith, but these are the micro movements that help get a tenant in quicker, stay longer and more rent. So we're always trying to do these extra things in the granite countertops, both in the kitchens and in the bathrooms. Those cost more upfront, but we see for long term of tenant we see, for the amount of rent we get, and for resale ability, because a lot of people don't think about that. You know what? In seven years you want to sell one of these properties? Well, it's a seven year old roof, it's seven year old plumbing, you're still in a great spot for an FHA buyer. And that esthetically pleasing flooring, bathrooms, kitchens. That allows an easier sale for them, because we want to look all the way around, not just a rental. I like to hold long term, but if you want to sell in five to 10 years, that's a very valid strategy.    Keith Weinhold  42:48   I like carpet in my own home, but not rentals. But what you're sharing with us, Jim, this is absolute gold that's been brought to you through experience. This over improvement versus under improvement line in rentals, and it really has a lot of balance between durability and price. These are the sort of things that really matter, but you are selling predominantly to individual investors, a lot of mom and pop investors. Why don't you make more sales to the retail, owner occupied market, or to institutional investors, even though that might be cracked down upon now. But why don't you sell to those parties?   Jim Sheils  43:26   Yeah, you know Keith, I did a lot of fix and flip to FHA buyers, and I'm an investor. I really like working with investors. So when this all really went back to is 2009 I had a lot of investors. I was in Northeast Florida. The deal flow was incredible. And I just had a lot of investors, you know, through my different networks and Masterminds, like, where you and I have met, and said, Hey, you're getting great deals in Northeast Florida. Could you help put some together for me? And so I had done quite a few fix and flips to retail buyers, and it just kind of hot on me, you know, way back then, like, Wow. I like working with investors. I like building portfolios. I also like the fact that when I'm normally building a portfolio for an investor, well, they hang out with other investors, and they're not looking to buy one property over the next five years. They're looking to buy five to eight properties over the next five years. great point. And so we just saw it as you gotta like who you work with, right? And nothing against first time homebuyers. But when I was rehabbing houses and selling them, golly, that was a lot of work. And then could be persnickety. Yeah, very persnickety. And so when Chris and I teamed up about 10 years ago, we had both gone through the same kind of aha, like going, Yeah, it seems great, but you could sell for more to a retail buyer. But again, like I go back to even the type of property we build, we'd rather do a volume with investors. Be a builder, buy investors for investors, and work that way. And I think it suits me. I think I would have probably hung up my shoes a long time ago if I was. Working with the amount of properties we've done with retail buyers compared to investors, honestly, and so I think it was just kind of, it was a preference, really, that made sense   Keith Weinhold  45:09   to your point. Investors buy multiple properties, and that way there are fewer parties to deal with. And investors tend to be less emotional than those more persnickety, owner occupied buyers. Well, Jim, you make it easy for investors. Besides all these incentives, you also offer an in house management solution for these investors, often that tend to be out of state. Well, Jim, before I ask you, if you have any closing thoughts, would you the listener like to ask Jim any question directly? Well, you can, because I have a great event to tell you about next Thursday, the 19th, at 8pm eastern Jim here and GRE investment coach, Naresh will co host a live webinar for Central Florida new build income property. In fact, Jim, I think you know Naresh longer than I have, as it turns out, but this event is free, and you the listener are invited. We've had between 250 and 550 registrants for our past webinars. Not all of them attend live. So the benefit of you attending live is that you can have any of your questions answered by either Naresh or Jim in real time, and besides learning about the Central Florida market and more about home building, you are going to see available new build income property, real addresses with some of these rather grand incentives that we've talked about here, you might end up with a long term rate of about 4% again, it is Thursday, the 19th at 8pm Eastern. Sign up is open now at grewebinars.com that's grewebinars.com Any final thoughts here, Jim, for this great event coming up next week?   Jim Sheils  46:52   I think we're going to dig a little deeper. Obviously, this is a conversation that was great, but moves pretty quickly when we talk next week, we're going to be able to dig into more of the fundamentals, some of the stats, and just get underneath the hood of why Central Florida is making so much sense, and just some of the rising stars that we're seeing there that we're very excited to be a part of.   Keith Weinhold  47:13   You've helped our listeners for close to 10 years now. It's been an informative chat as always. Thanks so much for coming back onto the show.    Jim Sheils  47:21   Thanks for having me, Keith.   Keith Weinhold  47:27   Yeah, like our guest touched on Ocala, Florida now has national recognition as the fastest growing city in America, and that's for the second year in a row. According to a new U haul report, Florida is, of course, a rather landlord friendly state. In fact, Florida is the first state to enact a law that allows law enforcement to immediately remove squatters, distinguishing them from legal tenants. Now here's what's interesting and why I've identified this opportunity if Florida prices dipped because people were leaving now, that could be a red flag, because population loss is like gravity. Once it starts falling, it is hard to escape. But that's not what's happening. Instead, what we're seeing is a temporary overbuild hangover. Builders got ambitious. We're in a brief period where supply outran demand and prices softened. That's not decay. That's a sale rack. Any vacant homes are not stranded. They're being absorbed by Florida's still growing population, which has now increased every single decade since its first census count, back in the year 1830 back in 1830 there were about 35,000 residents in the whole state. Isn't that amazing today? North of 24 million, that is 700x population growth in almost 200 years, and it's still growing. That kind of trend doesn't reverse because a few builders over ordered inventory here at GRE this made us target and find in opportunity. This isn't an accident. Central Florida is this year's most compelling. Housing market in that region, Central Florida, is growing faster than the rest of the state at large, and it really sits in the sweet spot of this temporary imbalance. One long established builder overbuilt and now they're motivated. They know what investors want. So, for example, they don't build swimming pools with their homes. They also offer property tours, and over 90% of their tour attendees buy property. They're willing to offer terrific incentives at our upcoming GRE live webinar, like we touched on new build single family rentals, 270k and up duplexes, three. 95 to 420, long term mortgage rates as low as 3.75% you get low insurance rates since they're inland and new build positive cash flow and a builder warranty at the event. You're going to learn all about the growth drivers in Central Florida, why so many renters are moving there and see available properties. This benefits anyone looking for a clear, practical view of current real estate conditions. Joining live does matter, since you can have those questions answered in real time, not after the opportunity has moved on, you are invited for next Thursday, the 19th, at 8p m Eastern. This one is worth circling, not because it's flashy, because it's timed right. Sign up is open now @grewebinars.com that's gre webinars.com. Until next week. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 5  51:00   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively.   Keith Weinhold  51:29   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth, building, get richeducation.com  

Bob Goodson was the first employee at Yelp, founder of social media analytics company Quid, co-inventor of the Like button, and co-author of the new book Like: The Button That Changed the World. On Oct 1, 2025, Bob spent a day with our MBA students at the University of Kansas, and he shared so much great content that I asked him if we could put together some of the highlights as a podcast, which I've now put together in three chapters: First is Careers, second is Building Companies, and third is AI and Social Media. As a reminder, any views and perspectives expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individual, and not those of the organizations they represent. Hope you enjoy the episode. - [Transcript] Nate:  My name is Nate Meikle. You're listening to Meikles and Dimes, where every episode is dedicated to the simple, practical, and under-appreciated. Bob Goodson was the first employee at Yelp, founder of social media analytics company Quid, co-inventor of the like button, and co-author of the new book Like: The Button That Changed the World. On Oct 1, 2025, Bob spent a day with our MBA students at the University of Kansas, and he shared so much great content that I asked him if we could put together some of the highlights as a podcast, which I've now put together in three chapters: First is Careers, second is Building Companies, and third is AI and Social Media. As a reminder, any views and perspectives expressed on the podcast are solely those of the individual and not those of the organizations they represent. Hope you enjoy the episode. Let's jump into Chapter 1 on Careers. For the first question, a student asked Bob who he has become and how his experiences have shaped him as a person and leader.   Bob:  Oh, thanks, Darrell. That's a thoughtful question. It's thoughtful because it's often not asked, and it's generally not discussed. But I will say, and hopefully you'll feel like this about your work if you don't already, that you will over time, which is I'm 45 now, so I have some sort of vantage point to look back over. Like, I mean, I started working when I was about 9 or 10 years old, so I have been working for money for about 35 years. So I'm like a bit further into my career than perhaps I look. I've been starting companies and things since I was about 10. So, in terms of like my professional career, which I guess started, you know, just over 20 years ago, 20 years into that kind of work, the thing I'm most grateful for is what it's allowed me to learn and how it's evolved me as a person. And I'm also most grateful on the business front for how the businesses that I've helped create and the projects and client deployments and whatever have helped evolve the people that have worked on them. Like I genuinely feel that is the most lasting thing that anything in business does is evolve people. It's so gratifying when you have a team member that joins and three years later you see them, just their confidence has developed or their personality has developed in some way. And it's the test of the work that has evolved them as people. I mean, I actually just on Monday night, I caught up for the first time in 10 years with an intern we had 10 years ago called Max Hofer. You can look him up. He was an intern at Quid. He was from Europe, was studying in London, came to do an internship with us in San Francisco for the summer. And, he was probably like 18, 19 years old. And a few weeks ago, he launched his AI company, Parsewise, with funding from Y Combinator. And, he cites his experience at Quid as being fundamental in choosing his career path, in choosing what field he worked in and so on. So that was, yeah, that was, when you see these things happening, right, 10 years on, we caught up at an event we did in London on Monday. And it's just it's really rewarding. So I suppose, yeah, like I suppose it's it's brought me a lot of perspective, brought me a lot of inner peace, actually, you know, the and and when you're when I was in the thick of it at times, I had no sense of that whatsoever. Right. Like in tough years. And there were some - there have been some very tough years in my working career that you don't feel like it's developing you in any way. It just feels brutal. I liken starting a company, sometimes it's like someone's put you in a room with a massive monster and the monster pins you down and just bats you across the face, right, for like a while. And you're like just trying to get away from the monster and you're like, finally you get the monster off your back and then like the monster's just on you again. And it just, it's just like you get a little bit of space and freedom and then the monster's back and it's just like pummeling you. And it's just honestly some years, like for those of you, some of you are running companies now, right? And starting your own companies as well. And I suppose it's not just starting companies. There are just phases in your career and work where it's like you look back and you're like, man, that year was just like, that was brutal. You just get up and fight every day, and you just get knocked down every day. So I think, I don't wish that on anybody, but it does build resilience that then transfers into other aspects of your life.    Nate:  Next, a student made a reference to the first podcast episode I recorded with Bob and asked him if he felt like he was still working on the most important problem in his field.    Bob:  Yeah, thank you. Thanks for listening to the podcast, as this gives us… thanks for the chance to plug the podcast. So the way I met Nate is that he interviewed me for his podcast. And for those of you who haven't listened to it, it's a 30 minute interview. And he asked this question about what advice would you share with others? And we honed in on this question of like, what is the most important problem in your field? And are you working on it? Which I love as a guide to like choosing what to work on. And so we had a great conversation. I enjoyed it so much and really enjoyed meeting Nate. So we sort of said, hey, let's do more fun stuff together in the future. So that's what brought us to this conversation. And thanks to Nate for, you know, bringing us all together today. I'm always working on what I think is the most important problem in front of me. And I always will be. I can't help it. I don't have to think about it. I just can't think about anything else. So yes, I do feel like right now I'm working on the most important problem in my field. And I feel like I've been doing that for about 20 years. And it's not for everybody, I suppose. But I just think, like, let's talk about that idea a little bit. And then I'll say what I think is the most important problem in my field that I'm working on. Like, just to translate it for each of you. Systems are always evolving. The systems we live in are evolving. We all know that. People talk about the pace of change and like life's changing, technology's changing and so on. Well, it is, right? Like humans developed agriculture 5,000 years ago. That wasn't very long ago. Agriculture, right? Just the idea that you could grow crops in one area and live in that area without walking around, without moving around settlements and different living in different places. And that concept is only 5,000 years old, right? I mean, people debate exactly how old, like 7, 8,000. But anyway, it's not that long ago, considering Homo sapiens have been walking around for in one form or another for several hundred thousand years and humans in general for a couple million years. So 5,000 years is not long. Look at what's happened in 5,000 years, right? Like houses, the first settlements where you would actually just live at sleep in the same place every night is only 5,000 years old. And now we've got on a - you can access all the world's knowledge - on your phone for free through ChatGPT and ask it sophisticated questions and all right answers. Or you can get on a plane and fly all over the world. You have, you know, sophisticated digital currency systems. We have sophisticated laws. And like, we've got to be aware, I think, that we are living in a time of great change. And that has been true for 5,000 years, right? That's not new. So I think about this concept of the forefront. I imagine, human development is, you can just simply imagine it like a sphere or balloon that someone's like blowing up, right? And so every time they breathe into it, like something shifts and it just gets bigger. And so there's stuff happening on the forefront where it's occupying more space, different space, right? There's stuff in the middle that's like a bit more stable and a bit more, less prone to rapid change, right? The education system, some parts of the healthcare system, like certain professions, certain things that are like a bit more stable, but there's stuff happening all the time on the periphery, right? Like on the boundary. And that stuff is affecting every field in one way or another. And I just think if you get a chance to work on that stuff, that's a really interesting place to live and a really interesting place to work. And I feel like you can make a contribution to that, right, if you put yourself on the edge. And it's true for every field. So whatever field you're in, we had people here today, you know, in everything from, yeah, like the military to fitness to, you know, your product, product design and management and, you know, lots of different, you know, people, different backgrounds. But if you ask yourself, what is the most important thing happening in my area of work today, and then try to find some way to work on it, then I think that sort of is a nice sort of North Star and keeps things interesting. Because the sort of breakthroughs and discoveries and important contributions are actually not complicated once you put yourself in that position. They're obvious once you put yourself in that position, right? It's just that there aren't many people there hanging out in that place. If you're one of them, if you put yourself there, not everyone's there, suddenly you're kind of in a room where like lots of cool stuff can happen, but there aren't many people around to compete with you. So you're more likely to find those breakthroughs, whether it's for your company or for, you know, the people you work with or, you know, maybe it's inventions and, but it just, anyway, so I really like doing that. And in my space right now, I call it the concept of being the bridge. And this could apply to all of you too. It's a simple idea that the world's value, right, is locked up in companies, essentially. Companies create value. We can debate all the other vehicles that do it, but basically most of the world's value is tied up in companies and their processes. And that's been true for a long time. There's a new ball of power in the world, which is been created by large language models. And I think of that just like a new ball of power. So you've got a ball of value and a ball of power. And the funny thing about this new ball of power is this actually has no value. That's a funny thing to say, right? The large language models have no value. They don't. They don't have any value and they don't create value. Think about it. It's just a massive bag of words. That has no value, right? I can send you a poem now in the chat. Does that have any value? You might like it, you might not, but it's just a set of words, right? So you've got this massive bag of words that with like a trillion connections, no value whatsoever. That is different from previous tech trends like e-commerce, for example, which had inherent value because it was a new way to reach consumers. So some tech trends do have inherent value because they're new processes, but large language models don't. They're just a new technology. They're very powerful. So I call it a ball of power. but they don't have any value. So why is there a multi-trillion dollar opportunity in front of all of us right now in terms of value creation? It's being the bridge. It's how to make use of this ball of power to improve businesses. And businesses only have two ways you improve them. You save money or you grow revenue. That's it. So being the bridge, like taking this new ball of power and finding ways to save money, be more efficient, taking this new ball of power and finding ways to access new consumers, create new offerings and so on, right? Solve new problems. That is where all the value is. So while you may think that the new value, this multi-trillion dollar opportunity with AI is really for the people that work on the AI companies, sure, there's a lot of, you know, there's some money to be made there. And if you can go work for OpenAI, you probably should. Everyone should be knocking the door down. Everyone should be applying for positions because it's the most important company, you know, in our generation. But if you're not in OpenAI or Meta or Microsoft or whoever, you know, three or four companies in the US that are doing this, for everybody else, it's about being the bridge, finding ways that in your organizations, you can unlock the power of AI by bringing it into the organizations and finding ways to either save money or grow the business. And that's fascinating to me because anybody can be the bridge. You don't have to be good with large language models. You have to understand business processes and you have to be creative and willing to even think like this. And suddenly you can be on the forefront of like creating massive value at your companies because you were the, you know, you're the one that brings brings in the new tools. And I think that skill set, there are certain skills involved in being the bridge, but that skill set of being the bridge is going to be so valuable in the next 5 to 10 years. So I encourage people, and that's what I'm doing. Like, I see my role - I serve clients at Quid. I love working with clients. You know, I'm not someone that really like thrives for management and like day-to-day operations and administration of a business. I learned that about myself. And so I just spend my time serving clients. I have done for several years now. And I love just meeting clients and figuring out how they can use Quid's AI, Quid's data, and any other form of AI that we want to bring to the table to improve their businesses. And that's just what I do with my time full-time. And I'll probably be doing that for at least the next 5 or 10 years. I think the outlook for that area of work is really huge.    Nate:  Building on the podcast episode where Bob talked about working on the most important problem in his field, I asked if he could give us some more details on how he took that advice and ended up at Yelp.    Bob:  So I was in grad school in the UK studying, well, I was actually on a program for medieval literature and philosophy, but looking into like language theory. So it was not the most commercial course that one could be doing. But I was a hobbyist programmer, played around with the web when it first came up and was making, you know, various new types of websites for students. while in my free time. I didn't think of that as commercial at all. I didn't see any commercial potential in that. But I did meet the founders of PayPal that way, who would come to give a talk. And I guess they saw the potential in me as a product manager. You know, there's lots of new apps they wanted to build. This is in 2003. And so they invited me to the US to work for them. And I joined the incubator when there were just five people in it. Max Levchin was one of them, the PayPal co-founder. Yelp, Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons were in those first five people. They turned out to be the Yelp co-founders. And Yelp came out of the incubator. So we were actually prototyping 4 companies each in a different industry. There was a chat application that we called Chatango that was five years before Twitter or something, but it was a way of helping people to chat online more easily. There were, which is still around today, but didn't make it as a hit. There was an ad network called AdRoll, which ended up getting renamed and is still around today. That wasn't a huge hit, but it's still around. Then there was Slide, which is photo sharing application, photo and video sharing, which was Max's company. That was acquired by Google. And that did reasonably well. I think it was acquired for about $150 million. And then there was Yelp, which you'll probably know if you're in the US and went public on the New York Stock Exchange and now has a billion dollars in revenue. So those are the four things that we were trying to prototype, each very different, as you can see. But I suppose that's the like tactical story, right? Like the steps that took me there. But there was an idea that took me there that started this journey of working on the most, the most important problems that are happening in the time. So if I rewind, when I was studying medieval literature, I got to the point where I was studying the invention of the print press. And I'd been studying manuscript culture and seeing what happened when the print press was invented and how it changed education, politics, society. You know, when you took this technology that made it cheaper to print, to make books, books were so expensive in the Middle Ages. They were the domain of only the wealthiest people. And only 5% of people could read before the print process was invented, right? So 95% of people couldn't read anything or write anything. And that was because the books themselves were just so expensive, they had to be handwritten, right? And so when the print press made the cost of a book drop dramatically, the literacy rates in Europe shot up and it completely transformed society. So I was studying that period and at the same time, like dabbling with websites in the early internet and sort of going, oh, like there was this moment where I was like, the web is our equivalent of the print press. And it's happening right now. I'm talking like maybe 2002, or so when I had this realization. It's happening right now. It's going to change everything during our lifetimes. And I just had a fork in my life where it's like I could be a professor in medieval history, which was the path I was on professionally. I had a scholarship. There were only 5 scholarships in my year, in the whole UK. I was on a scholarship track to be a professor and study things like the emergence of the print press, or I could contribute to the print press of our era, which is the internet, and find some way to contribute, some way, right? It didn't matter to me if it was big or small, it was irrelevant. It was just be in the mix with people that are pushing the boundaries. Whatever I did, I'd take the most junior role available, no problem, but like just be in the mix with the people that are doing that. So yeah, that was the decision, right? Like, and that's what led me down to sort of leave my course, leave my scholarship. And, my salary was $40,000 when I moved to the US. All right. And that's pretty much all I earned for a while. I'd spent everything I had starting a group called Oxford Entrepreneurs. So I had absolutely no money. The last few months actually living in Oxford, I had one meal a day because I didn't have enough money to buy three meals a day. And then I packed up my stuff in a suitcase - one bag - wasn't even a suitcase, it was a rucksack and moved to the US and, you know, and landed there basically on a student visa and friends and family was just thought I was, you know, not making a good decision, right? Like, I'm not earning much money. It's with a bunch of people in a like a dorm room style incubator, right? Where the tables and chairs we pulled off the street because we didn't want to spend money on tables and chairs. And where I get to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day. And I've just walked away from a scholarship and a PhD track at Oxford to go into that. And it didn't look like a good decision. But to me, the chance to work on the forefront of what's happening in our era is just too important and too interesting to not make those decisions. So I've done that a number of times, even when it's gone against commercial interest or career interest. I haven't made the best career decisions, you know, not from a commercial standpoint, but from a like getting to work on the new stuff. Like that's what I've prioritized.    Nate:  Next, I asked Bob about his first meeting with the PayPal founders and how he made an impression on them.    Bob:  Good question, because I think... So I have a high level thought on that, like a rubric to use. And then I have the details. I'll start with the details. So I had started the entrepreneurship club at Oxford. And believe it or not, in 800 years of the University's history, there was no entrepreneurship club. And they know that because when you want to start a new society, you go to university and they go through the archive, which is kept underground in the library, and someone goes down to the library archives and they go through all these pages for 800 years and look for the society that's called that. And if there is one, they pull it out and then they have the charter and you have to continue the charter. Even if it was started 300 years ago, they pull out the charter and they're like, no, you have to modify that one. You can't start with a new charter. So anyway, it's because it's technically a part of the university, right? So they have a way of administrating it. So they went through the records and were like, there's never been a club for entrepreneurs at the university. So we started the first, I was one of the co-founders of this club. And, again, there's absolutely no pay. It was just a charity as part of the university. But I love the idea of getting students who were scientists together with students that were business minded, and kind of bringing technical and creative people together. That was the theme of the club. So we'd host drinks, events and talks and all sorts. And I love building communities, at least at that stage of my life. I loved building communities. I'd been doing it. I started several charities and clubs, you know, throughout my life. So it came quite naturally to me. But what I didn't, I mean, I kind of thought this could happen, but it really changed my life as it put me at the center of this super interesting community that we've built. And I think that when you're in a university environment, like starting clubs, running clubs, even if they're small, like, we, I ran another club that we called BEAR. It was an acronym. And it was just a weekly meetup in a pub where we talked about politics and society and stuff. And like, it didn't go anywhere. It fizzled out after a year or two, but it was really like an interesting thing to work on. So I think when you're in a university environment, even if you guys are virtual, finding ways to get together, it's so powerful. It's like, it's who you're meeting in courses like this that is so powerful. So I put myself in the middle of this community, and I was running it, I was president of it. So when these people came to speak at the business school, I was asked to bring the students along, and I was given 200 slots in the lecture theatre. So I filled them, I got 200 students along. We had 3,000 members, by the way, after like 2 years running this club. It became the biggest club at the university, and the biggest entrepreneurship student community in Europe. It got written up in The Economist actually as like, because it was so popular. But yeah, it meant that I was in the middle of it. And when the business school said, you can come to the dinner with the speakers afterwards, that was my ticket to sit down next to the founder of PayPal, you know. And so, then I sat down at dinner with him, and I had my portfolio with me, which back then I used to carry around in a little folder, like a black paper folder. And every project I'd worked on, every, because I used to do graphic design for money as a student. So I had my graphic design projects. I had my yoga publishing business and projects in there. I had printouts about the websites I'd created. So when I sat down next to him, and he's like, what do you work on? I just put this thing on the table over dinner and was like, he picked it up and he started going through it. And he was like, what's this? What's this? And I think just having my projects readily available allowed him to sort of get interested in what I was working on. Nowadays, you can have a website, right? Like I didn't have a website for a long time. Now I have one. It's at bobgoodson.com where I put my projects on there. You can check it out if you like. But I think I've always had a portfolio in one way or another. And I think carrying around the stuff that you've done in an interactive way is a really good way to connect with people. But one more thing I'll say on this concept, because it connects more broadly to like life in general, is that I think that I have this theory that in your lifetime, you get around five opportunities put in front of you that you didn't yet fully deserve, right? Someone believes in you, someone opens a door, someone's like, hey, Nate, how about you do this? Or like, we think you might be capable of this. And it doesn't happen very often, but those moments do happen. And when they happen, a massive differentiator for your life is do you notice that it's happening and do you grab it with both hands? And in that moment, do everything you can to make it work, right? Like they don't come along very often. And to me, those moments have been so precious. I knew I wouldn't get many of them. And so every time they happened, I've just been all in. I don't care what's going on in my life at that time. When the door opens, I drop everything, and I do everything I can to make it work. And you're stretched in those situations. So it's not easy, right? Like someone's given you an opportunity to do something you're not ready for, essentially. So you're literally not ready for it. Like you're not good enough, you don't know enough, you don't have the knowledge, you don't have the skills. So you only have to do the job, but you have to cultivate your own skills and develop your skills. And that's a lot of work. You know, when I landed in, I mean, working for Max was one of those opportunities where I did not, I'd not done enough to earn that opportunity when I got that opportunity. I landed with five people who had all done PayPal. They were all like incredible experts in their fields, right? Like Russ Simmons, the Yelp co-founder, had been the chief architect of PayPal. He architected PayPal, right? Like I was with very skilled technical people. I was the only Brit. They were all Americans. So I stood out culturally. Most of them couldn't understand what I was saying when I arrived. I've since changed how I speak. So you can understand me, the Americans in the room. But I just mumbled. I wasn't very articulate. So it was really hard to get my ideas across. And I had programmed as a hobbyist, but I didn't know enough to be able to program production code alongside people that had worked at PayPal. I mean, their security levels and their accuracy and everything was just off the, I was in another league, right? So there I was, I felt totally out of my depth, and I had to fight to stay in that job for a year. Like I fought every day for a year to like not get kicked out of that job and essentially out of the country. Because without their sponsorship, I couldn't have stayed in the country. I was on a student visa with them, right? And I worked seven days a week for 365 days in a row. I basically almost lived in the office. I got an apartment a few blocks from the office and I had to. No one else was working those kind of hours, but I had to do the job, and I had to learn 3 new programming languages and all this technical stuff, how to write specs, how to write product specs like I had to research the history of various websites in parts of the internet. So I'm just, I guess I'm just giving some color to like when these doors open in your career and in your life, sometimes they're relationship doors that open, right? You meet somebody who's going to change your life, and it's like, are you going to fight to make that work? And, you know, like, so not all, it's not always career events, but when they happen, I think like trusting your instinct that this is one of those moments and knowing this is one of the, you can't do this throughout your whole life. You burn out and you die young. Like you're just not sustainable. But when they happen, are you going to put the burners on and be like, I'm in. And sometimes it only takes a few weeks. Like the most it's ever taken for me is a year to walk through a door. But like, anyway, like just saying that in case anyone here has one of these moments and like maybe this will resonate with one of you, and you'll be like, that's one of the moments I need to walk through the door.    Nate:  That concludes chapter one. In chapter 2, Bob talks about building companies. First, I asked Bob if he gained much leadership experience at Yelp.    Bob:  I gained some. I suppose my first year or two in the US was in a technical role. So I didn't have anyone reporting to me. I was just working on the user interface and front end stuff. So really no leadership there. But then, there was a day when we still had five people. Jeremy started to go pitch investors for our second round because we had really good traffic growth, right? In San Francisco, we had really nice charts showing traffic growth. We'd started to get traction in New York and started to get traction in LA. So we've had the start of a nice story, right? Like this works in other cities. We've got a model we can get traffic. And Jeremy went to his first VC pitch for the second round. And the VC said, you need to show that you can monetize the traffic before you raise this round. The growth story is fine, but you also need to say, we've signed 3 customers and they're paying this much, right, monthly. So Jeremy came back from that pitch, and I remember very clearly, he sat down, kind of slumped in his chair and he's like, oh man, we're going to have to do some sales before we can raise this next round. Like we need someone on the team to go close a few new clients. And it's so funny because it's like, me and four people and everyone went like this and faced me at the same time. And I was like, why are you looking at me? Like, I'm not, I didn't know how to start selling to local businesses. And they're like, they all looked at each other and went, no, we think you're probably the best for this, Bob. And they were all engineers, like all four of them were like, background in engineering. Even the CEO was VP engineering at PayPal before he did Yelp. So basically, we were all geeks. And for some reason, they thought I would be the best choice to sell to businesses. And I didn't really have a choice in it, honestly. I didn't want to do it. They were just like, you're like, that's what needs to happen next. And you're the most suitable candidate for it. So I I just started picking up the phone and calling dentists, chiropractors, restaurants. We didn't know if Yelp would resonate with bars or restaurants or healthcare. We thought healthcare was going to be big, which is reasonably big for Yelp now, but it's not the focus. But anyway, I just started calling these random businesses with great reviews. I just started with the best reviewed businesses. And the funny thing is some of those people, my first ever calls are still friends today, right? Like my chiropractor that I called is the second person I ever called and he signed up, ended up being my chiropractor for like 15 years living in San Francisco. And now we're still in touch, and we're great friends. So it's funny, like I dreaded those first calls, but they actually turned out to be really interesting people that I met. But yeah, we didn't have a model. We didn't know what to charge for. So we started out charging for calls. We changed the business's phone number. So if you're, you had a 415 number and you're a chiropractor on Yelp, we would change your number to like a number that Yelp owned, but it went straight through to their phone. So it was a transfer, but it meant our system could track that they got the call through Yelp, right? Yeah. And then we tracked the duration of the call. We couldn't hear the call, but we tracked the duration of the call. And then we could report back to them at the end of the month. You got 10 calls from Yelp this month and we're going to charge you $50 a call or whatever. So I sold that to 5 or 10 customers and people hated it. They hated that model because they're like, they'd get a call, it'd be like a wrong number or they just wanted to ask, they're already a current customer and they're asking about parking or something, right? So then we'd get back to and be like, you got a call and we charged you 50 bucks. So like, no, I can't pay you for that. Like, that was one of my current customers. So now the reality is they were getting loads of advertising and that was really driving the growth for their business, but they didn't want to pay for the call. So then I was like, that's not working. We have to do something else. Then we paid pay for click, which was we put ads on your page and when someone clicks it, they see you. And then people hated that too, because they're like, my mum just told me she's been like clicking on the link, right? Because she's like looking at my business. And my mum probably just cost me 5 bucks because she said she clicked it 10 times. And like, can you take that off my bill? So people hated the clicks. And then one day we just brought in a head of operations, Geoff Donaker. And by this point, by the way, I had like 2 salespeople working for me that I'd hired. And so it was me and two other people. We were calling these companies, signing these contracts. And one day I just had this epiphany. I was like, we should just pay for the ads that are viewed, not the ads that are clicked. In other words, pay for impressions to the ads. So if I tell you, I've put your ad in front of 500 people when they were looking for sushi this month, right? That you don't mind paying for because there's no action involved, but you're like, whoa, it's a big number. You put me in front of 500 people. I'll pay you 200 bucks for that. No problem. Essentially impression-based advertising. And I went to our COO and I was like, I think we should try this. He was like, if you want to give it a go. And I wrote up a contract and started selling it that day. And that is that format, that model now has a billion dollars revenue running through Yelp. So basically they took that model, like I switched it to impression-based advertising. And that was what was right for local. And our metrics were amazing. We're actually able to charge a lot more than we could in the previous two models. And I built out the sales team to about 20 people. Through that process, I got hooked, basically. Like I realized I love selling during that role. I would never have walked into sales, I think, unless everyone had gone, you have to do it. And I dreaded it, but I got really hooked on it. I love the adrenaline of it. I love hunting down these deals and I love like what you can learn from customers when you're selling. You can learn what they need and you can evolve your business model. So I love that flywheel and that's kind of what I've been doing ever since. But I built out a team of 20 people, so I got to learn management, essentially by just doing it at Yelp and building out that team.    Nate:  Next, I asked Bob how he developed his theory of leadership.    Bob:  I actually developed it really early on. You know, I mentioned earlier I'd been starting things since I was about 10 years old. And what's fascinated me between the age of like 10 and maybe, you know, my early 20s, I love the idea of creating stuff with people where no one gets paid. And here's why. These are charities and nonprofits and stuff, right? But I realized really early, if I can lead and motivate in a way where people want to contribute, even though they're not getting paid, and we can create stuff together, if I can learn that aspect, like management in that sense, then if I'm one day paying people, I'm going to get like, I'm going to, we're all going to be so much more effective, essentially, right? Like the organization is going to be so much more effective. And that is a concept I still work with today. Yes, we pay everyone quite well at Quid who works at Quid, right? Like we pay at or above market rate. But I never think about that. I never, ever ask for anything or work with people in a way that I feel they need to do it because that's their job ever. I just erased that from my mindset. I've never had that in my mindset. I always work with people with like, with gratitude and and in a way where I'm like, well, I'll try and make it fun and like help them see the meaning in the work, right? Like help them understand why it's an exciting thing to work on or a, why it's right for them, how it connects to their goals and their interests and why it's, you know, fun to contribute, whether it's to a client or to an area of technology or whatever we're working on. It's like, so yeah, I haven't really, I haven't, I mean, you guys might have read books on this, but I haven't really seen that idea articulated in quite the way that I think about it. And because I didn't read it in a book, I just kind of like stumbled across it as a kid. But that's, but I learned because I practiced it for 10 years before I even ended up in the US, when I started managing teams at Yelp, I found that I was very effective as a manager and a leader because I didn't take for granted that, you know, people had to do it because it was their job. I thought of ways to make the environment fun and make the connections between the different team members fun and teach them things and have there be like a culture of success and winning and sharing in the results of the wins together. And I suppose this did play out a little bit financially in my career because, although we pay people well at Yelp, we're kind of a somewhat mature business now. But in the early days of Yelp and in the early days of Quid, I never competed on pay. You know, when you're starting a company, it's a really bad idea to try and compete on pay. You have to, I went into every hiring conversation all the way through my early days at Yelp, as well as through the early days at Quid, like probably the first nearly 10 years at Quid. And every time I interviewed people, I would say early on, this isn't going to be where you earn the most money. I'm not going to be able to pay you market rate. You're going to earn less here than you could elsewhere. However, this is what I can offer you, right? Like whether then I make a culture that's about like helping learning. Like we always had a book like quota at Quid. If you want to buy books to read in your free time, I don't care what the title is, we'll give you money to buy books. And the reality is a book's like 10 bucks or 20 bucks, right? No one spends much on books, but that was one of the perks. I put together these perks so that we were paying often like half of what you could get in the market for the same role, but you're printing like reasons to be there that aren't about the money. Now, it doesn't work for everybody, you know, that's as in every company doesn't, but that's just what played out. And that's really important in the early days. You've got to be so efficient. And then once you start bringing in the money, then you can start moving up your rates and obviously pay people market rate. But early on, you've got to find ways to be really, really, really efficient and really lean. And you can't pay people market rate in the early days. I mean, people kind of expect that going into early stage companies, but I was particularly aggressive on that front. But that was just because I suppose it was in my DNA that like, I will try and give you other reasons to work here, but it's not going to be, it's not going to be for the money.    Nate:  Next, I asked Bob how he got from Yelp to Quid and how he knew it was time to launch his own company.    Bob:  Yeah, like looking back, if I'd made sort of the smart decision from a financial standpoint and from a, you know, career standpoint, I suppose you'd say, I would have just stayed put. if you're in a rocket ship and it's growing and you've got a senior role and you get to, you've got, you've earned the license to work on whatever you want. Like Yelp wanted me to move to Phoenix and create their first remote sales team. They wanted, I was running customer success at the time and I'd set up all those systems. Like there was so much to do. Yelp was only like three or four years old at the time, and it was clearly a rocket ship. And you know, I could have learned a lot more like from Yelp in that, like I could have seen it all the way through to IPO and, setting up remote teams and hiring hundreds of people, thousands of people eventually. So I, but I made the choice to leave relatively early and start my own thing. Just coming back to this idea we talked about in the session earlier today, I I always want to work on the forefront of whatever's going on, like the most important thing happening in our time. And I felt I knew what was next. I could kind of see what was next, which was applying AI to analyze the world's text, which was clear to me by about 2008, like that was going to be as big as the internet. That's kind of how I felt about it. And I told people that, and I put that in articles, and I put it in talks that are online that you can go watch. You know, there's one on my website from 10 years ago where I'd already been in the space for five or six years. You can go watch it and see what I was saying in 2015. So fortunately, I documented this because it sounds a bit, you know, unbelievable given what's just happened with large language models and open AI. But it was clear to me where things were going around 2008. And I just wanted to work on what was next, basically. I wanted to apply neural networks and natural language processing to massive text sets like all the world's media, all the world's social media. And yeah, I suppose whenever I've seen what's going to happen next, like with social network, going to Yelp, like seeing what was going to happen with social networking, going to building Yelp, and then seeing this observation about AI and going and doing Quid, it's not, it doesn't feel like a choice to me. It's felt like, well, just what I have to do. And regardless of whether that's going to be more work, harder work, less money, et cetera, it's just how I'm wired, I guess. And I'm kind of, I see it now. Like I see what's next now. And I'll probably just keep doing this. But I was really too early or very, very early, as you can probably see, to be trying to do that at like 2008, 2009, seven or eight years before OpenAI was founded, I was just banging my head against the wall for nearly a decade with no one that would listen. So even the best companies in the world and the biggest investors in the world, again, I won't name them, But it was so hard to raise money. It was so hard to get anyone to watch it that, after a time, I actually started to think I was wrong. Like after doing it for like 10 years and it hadn't taken off, I just started to think like, I was so wrong. I spent a year or two before ChatGPT took off. I'd got to a point where I'd spent like a year or two just thinking, how could my instinct be so wrong about what was going to play out here? How could we not have unlocked the world's written information at this point? And I started to think maybe it'll never happen, you know, and like I was simply wrong, which of course you could be wrong on these things. And then, you know, ChatGPT and OpenAI like totally blew up, and it's been bigger than even I imagined. And I couldn't have told you exactly which technical breakthrough was going to result in it. Like no one knew that large language models were going to be the unlock. But I played with everything available to try and unlock that value. And as soon as large language models became promising in 2016, we were on it, like literally the month that the Google BERT paper came out, because we were like knocking on that door for many years beforehand. And we were one of the teams that were like, trying to unlock that value. That's why many of the early Quid people are very senior at OpenAI and went on to take what they learned from Quid and then apply it in an OpenAI environment, which I'm very proud of. I'm very proud of those people, and it's amazing to see what they've done.    Nate:  That concludes Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, we discuss AI and social media. The first question was about anxiety and AI.    Bob:  Maybe I'll just focus on the anxiety and the issues first of all. A lot's been said on it. I suppose what would be my headlines? I think that one big area of concern is how it changes the job market. And I think the practical thing on that is if you can learn to be the bridge, then you're putting yourself in a really valuable position, right? Because if you can bridge this technology into businesses in a way that makes change and improvements, then you are moving yourself to a skill set that's going to continue to be really valuable. So that's just a practical matter. One of the executives I work with in a major US company likes to say will doctors become redundant because of AI? And he says, no, doctors won't be redundant, but doctors that don't use AI will be redundant. And that's kind of where we are, right? It's like, we're still going to need a person, but if you refuse, if you're not using it, you're going to fall behind and like that is going to put you at risk. So I think there is some truth to that little kind of illustrative story. There will be massive numbers of jobs that are no longer necessary. And the history of technology is full of these examples. Coming back to like 5,000 years ago, think of all the times that people invented stuff that made the prior roles redundant, right? In London, before electricity was discovered and harnessed, one of the biggest areas of employment was for the people that walked the streets at night, lighting the candles and gas lights that lit London. That was a huge breakthrough, right? You could put fire in the street, you put gas in the street and you lit London. Without that, you couldn't go out at night in London and like it would have been an absolute nightmare. The city wouldn't be what it is. But that meant there were like thousands of people whose job it was to light those candles and then go round in the morning when the sun came up and blow them out. So when the light bulb was invented, can you imagine the uproar in London where all these jobs were going to be lost, thousands of jobs were going to be lost. by people that no longer are needed to put out these lights. There were riots, right? There was massive social upheaval. The light bulb threatened and wiped out those jobs. How many people in London now work lighting gas lamps and lighting candles to light the streets, right? Nobody. That was unthinkable. How could you possibly take away those jobs? You know, people actually smashed these light bulbs when the first electric light bulbs were put into streets. People just went and smashed them because they're like, we are not going to let this technology take our jobs. And I can give you 20 more examples like that throughout history, right? Like you could probably think of loads yourselves. Even the motor car, you know, so many people were employed to look after horses, right? Think of all the people that were employed in major cities around the world, looking after horses and caring for them and building the carts and everything. And suddenly you don't need horses anymore. Like that wiped out an entire industry. But what did it do? It created the automobile industry, which has been employing massive numbers of people ever since. And the same is true for, you know, like what have light bulbs done for the quality of our lives? You know, we don't look at them now and think that's an evil technology that wiped out loads of jobs. We go, thank goodness we've got light bulbs. So the nature of technology is that it wipes out roles, and it creates roles. And I just don't see AI being any different. Humans have no limit to like, seem to have no limit to the comfort they want to live with and the things that we want in our lives. And those things are still really expensive and we don't, we're nowhere near satisfied. So like, we're going to keep driving forward. We're going to go, oh, now we can do that. Great. I can use AI, I can make movies and I can, you know, I don't know, like there's just loads of stuff that people are going to want to do with AI. Like, I mean, using the internet, how much time do we spend on these damn web forms, just clicking links and buttons and stuff? Is that fun? Do we even want to do that? No. Like we're just wasting hours of our lives every week, like clicking buttons. Like if we have agents, they can do that for us. So we have, I think we're a long way from like an optimal state where work is optional and we can just do the things that humans want to do with their time. And so, but that's the journey that I see us all along, you know. So anyway, that's just my take on AI and employment, both practically, what can you do about it? Be the bridge, embrace it, learn it, jump in. And also just like in a long arc, I'm not saying in the short term, there won't be riots and there won't be lots of people out of work. And I mean, there will be. But when we look back again, like I often think about what time period are we talking about? Right? People often like, well, what will it do to jobs? Next year, like there'll certain categories that will become redundant. But are we thinking about this in a one year period or 100 year period? Like it's worth asking yourself, what timeframe am I talking about? Right? And I always try and come back to the 100 year view at a minimum when talking about technology change. If it's better for humanity in 100 years, then we should probably work on it and make it happen, right? If we didn't do that, we wouldn't have any light bulbs in our house. Still be lighting candles?    Nate:  Next was a question about social media, fragmented attention, and how it drives isolation.    Bob:  Well, it's obviously been very problematic, particularly in the last five or six years. So TikTok gained success in the United States and around the world around five or six years ago with a completely new model for how to put content in front of people. And what powered it? AI. So TikTok is really an AI company. And the first touch point that most of us had with AI was actually through TikTok. It got so good at knowing the network of all possible content and knowing if you watch this, is the next thing we should show you to keep you engaged. And they didn't care if you were friends with someone or not. Your network didn't matter. Think about Facebook. Like for those of you that were using Facebook, maybe say 2010, right? Like 15 years ago. What did social media look like? You had a profile page, you uploaded photos of yourself and photos of your friends, you linked between them. And when you logged into Facebook, you basically just browsing people's profiles and seeing what they got up to at the weekend. That was social media 15 years ago. Now imagine, now think what you do when you're on Instagram and you're swiping, right? Or you go to TikTok and you're swiping. First of all, let's move to videos, which is a lot more compelling, short videos. And most of the content has nothing to do with your friends. So there was a massive evolution in social media that happened five or six years ago, driven by TikTok. And all the other companies had to basically adopt the same approach or they would have fallen too far behind. So it forced Meta to evolve Instagram and Facebook to be more about attention. Like there's always about attention, that's the nature of media. But these like AI powered ways to keep you there, regardless of what they're showing you. And that turned out to be a bit of a nightmare because it unleashed loads of content without any sense of like what's good for the people who are watching it, right? That's not the game they're playing. They're playing attention and then they're not making decisions about what might be good for you or not. So we went through like a real dip, I think, in social media, went through a real dip and we're still kind of in it, right, trying to find ways out of it. So regulation will ultimately be the savior, which it is in any new field of tech. Regulation is necessary to keep tech to have positive impact for the people that it's meant to be serving. And that's taken a long time to successfully put in place for social media, but we are getting there. I mean, Australia just banned social media for everyone under 16. You may have seen that. Happened, I think, earlier this year. France is putting controls around it. The UK is starting to put more controls around it. So, you know, gradually countries are voters are making it a requirement to put regulation around social media use. In terms of just practical things for you all, as you think about your own social media use, I think it's very healthy to think about how long you spend on it and find ways to just make it a little harder to access, right? Like none of us feel good when we spend a lot of time on our screens. None of us feel good when we spend a lot of time on social media. It feels good at the time because it's given us those quick dopamine hits. But then afterwards, we're like, man, I spent an hour, and I just like, I lost an hour down like the Instagram wormhole. And then we don't feel good afterwards. It affects us sleep negatively. And yeah, come to the question that was, posted, can create a sense of isolation or negative feelings of self due to comparison to centrally like models and actors and all these people that are like putting out content, right? Kind of super humans. So I think just finding ways to limit it and asking yourself what's right for you and then just sticking to that. And if that means coming off it for a month or coming off it for a couple of months, then, give that a try. Personally, I don't use it much at all. I'll use it mostly because friends will share like a funny meme or something and you just still want to watch it because it's like it's sent to you by a friend. It's a way of interacting. Like my dad sends me funny stuff from the internet, and I want to watch it because it's a way of connecting with him. But then I set a timer. I like to use this timer. It's like just a little physical device. I know we've all got one on our phones, but I like to have one on my desk. And so if I'm going into something, whether it's like I'm going to do an hour on my inbox, my e-mail inbox, or I'm going to, you know, open up Instagram and just swipe for a bit, I'll just set a timer, you know, and just keep me honest, like, okay, I'm going to give myself 8 minutes. I'm not going to give myself any more time on there. So there's limited it. And then I put all these apps in a folder on the second screen of my phone. So I can't easily access them. I don't even see them because they're on the second screen of my phone in a folder called social. So to access any of the apps, I have to swipe, open the folder, and then open the app. And just moving them to a place where I can't see them has been really helpful. I only put the healthy apps on my front page of my phone.    Nate:  Next was a question about where Bob expects AI to be in 20 years and whether there are new levels to be unlocked.    Bob:  No one knows. Right? Like what happens when you take a large language model from a trillion nodes to like 5 trillion nodes? No one knows. It's, this is where the question comes in around like consciousness, for example. Will it be, will it get to a point where we have to consider this entity conscious? Fiercely debated, not obvious at all. Will it become, it's already smarter than, well, it already knows more than any human on the planet. So in terms of its knowledge access, it knows more. In terms of most capabilities, most, you know, cognitive capabilities, it's already more capable than any single human on the planet. But there are certain aspects of consciousness, well, certain cognitive functions that humans currently are capable of that AI is not currently capable of, but we might expect some of those to be eaten into as these large language models get better. And it might be that these large language models have cognitive capabilities that humans don't have and never could have, right? Like levels of strategic thinking, for example, that we just can't possibly mirror. And that's one of the things that's kind of, you know, a concern to nations and to people is that, you know, we could end up with something on the planet that is a lot smarter than any one of us or even all of us combined. So in general, when something becomes more intelligent, it seeks to dominate everything else. That is a pattern. You can see that throughout all life. Nothing's ever got smarter and not sought to dominate. And so that's concerning, especially because it's trained on everything we've ever said and done. So I don't know why that pattern would be different. So that, you know, that's interesting. And and I think in terms of, so the part of that question, which is whole new areas of capability to be unlocked, really fascinating area to look at is not so much the text now, because everything I've written is already in these models, right? So the only way they can get more information is by the fact that like, loads of social networks are creating more information and so on. It's probably pretty duplicitous at this point. That's why Elon bought Twitter, for example, because he wanted the data in Twitter, and he wants that constant access to that data. But how much smarter can they get when they've already got everything ever written? However, large language models, of course, don't just apply to text. They apply to any information, genetics, photography, film, every form of information can be harnessed by these large language models and are being harnessed. And one area that's super interesting is robotics. So the robot is going to be as nimble and as capable as the training data that goes into it. And there isn't much robotic training data yet. But companies are now collecting robotic training data. So in the coming years, robots are going to get way more capable, thanks to large language models, but only as this data gets collected. So in other words, like language is kind of reaching its limits in terms of new capabilities, but think of all the other sensor types that could feed into large language models and you can start to see all kinds of future capabilities, which is why everyone suddenly got so interested in personal transportation vehicles and personal robotics, which is why like Tesla share price is up for example, right? Because Elon's committed now to kind of moving more into robotics with Tesla as a company. And there are going to be loads of amazing robotics companies that come out over the next like 10 or 20 years.    Nate:  And that brings us to the end of this episode with Bob Goodson. Like I mentioned in the intro, there were so many great nuggets from Bob. Such great insight on managing our careers, building companies, and the evolving impact of AI and social media. In summary, try to be at the intersection of new power and real problems. Seek to inspire rather than just transact, and be thoughtful about how to use social media and AI. All simple ideas, please, take them seriously.   

In this episode of the By Any Means Coaches Podcast, Coleman Ayers dives into one of the most common, and most mishandled, questions in basketball: how do you develop players during the season without sacrificing team performance? With limited time, energy, and gym access, Coleman breaks down why generic “vitamin” work and feel-good reps often fail to transfer, and how intentional player development can actually solve team problems rather than distract from winning.Coleman outlines a practical, system-aligned approach to in-season player development, centered around individualized player development plans, rate limiters, and superpowers. He explains how to use small-sided games, constraints, and representative environments to build better decision-makers, improve confidence, and directly impact team success. This episode is a deep dive into aligning player growth with tactical performance—without turning athletes into system robots.00:00 – Why in-season player development is one of the hardest problems in coaching 02:13 – Why player development often disappears once the season starts 03:12 – The importance of a true player development plan and a “North Star” 03:37 – Rate limiters vs. superpowers and why both matter 05:12 – Breaking development into situations, decisions, and skills 06:48 – Using film and observational learning during the season 07:43 – Connecting player development directly to your system and actions 09:11 – Why on-air, scripted reps don't build real confidence or transfer 10:43 – Avoiding “system robots” while still defining roles 13:44 – Rethinking daily vitamins and maximizing the first 15–20 minutes of practice 14:28 – Using staple small-sided games with individualized constraints 16:10 – A detailed 2v1 shooting example for individualized development 18:44 – Why constraints unlock more value than new drills 20:15 – Aligning individual improvement with team performance 22:36 – Identifying individual rate limiters that hold back the entire offense 24:43 – Why yelling at players doesn't fix development problems 26:44 – The underrated defensive benefits of small-sided games 29:03 – Improving communication between head coaches, assistants, and players 31:19 – Making pre- and post-practice work more efficient and game-relevant 33:19 – Using film and other players to accelerate learning 34:43 – Final thoughts on efficiency, creativity, and in-season constraintsResources & Links:Coaching Resources: https://byanymeansbasketball.comBAM Blueprint Book: https://byanymeansbasketball.com/bam-blueprintIf this episode sparked ideas or challenged how you approach in-season development, share it with another coach in your circle. And if you want more tools, frameworks, and real-world applications for modern coaching, make sure to check out the BAM resources linked above.

Winter can be heavy — physically, emotionally, politically, spiritually. And for many of us, January in particular can feel destabilizing, tender, and overwhelming. In this opening episode of Season 6, Erin shares honestly about where she's been this winter: a painful injury, heightened fear and grief, and the emotional toll of witnessing human suffering in the world. She names what it feels like to be sad, scared, and grieving — while still feeling like herself. This episode introduces the guiding idea for the season: happiness is not forced optimism or denial — it's orientation. It's about where we allow our attention to return, even when things are not fine. Rather than chasing positivity, Erin invites listeners into a gentle, non-judgmental practice: choosing a word for the winter — not as a goal or personality test, but as a lens to widen perspective and soften the edges of a difficult season. This episode is for anyone who: feels emotionally porous or overwhelmed this winter is tired of performative positivity wants language for being distressed without being lost is looking for steadiness, beauty, and connection in small, human ways You don't need to feel happy all the time. You don't need to fix the winter. You're allowed to move through it — one day at a time — with a little more capacity than yesterday. Mentioned in this episode: The concept of orientation vs. optimism Seasonal emotional patterns and January destabilization Choosing a word for the winter (Erin's word: cinematic) Happiness as a North Star, not a destination Listener Invitation: Choose a word for your winter. Let it guide what you notice (light, movement, connection, meaning) without judgment or pressure to share.   Connect with Erin: Instagram: @medium.lady Email: vandeven.erin@gmail.com  Website: www.mediumladycommunity.com Explore more book-related content on "Medium Lady Reads." - link to Spotify Instagram: @mediumladyreads

What if the rarest bond in your life is the one you treat like an afterthought? We open with Genesis and a clear call to guard marriage as a one‑flesh covenant, not an accessory that gets leftovers after screens and noise. It's a simple test with huge stakes: where your time goes, your heart follows. That theme threads into a vivid reading of Matthew 26, where betrayal comes with a kiss, the sword flashes, and Christ chooses obedience over force. The scene reframes strength and reminds us that fidelity is quieter than bravado and stronger than impulse.From there we turn to Psalm 32, a song that traces the ache of concealed guilt and the breakthrough of confession. Joy returns when we stop hiding and accept real forgiveness through Christ. We talk about honest repentance as a daily habit that restores trust in marriages, families, and communities. The conversation widens to public life with a sober look at violence and ideology, not to score points but to insist that ideas have human costs. We remember a Medal of Honor sailor, Patrick Francis Bresnahan, as a model of duty and ordinary courage that often goes unseen yet sets a standard worth following.Noah Webster's charge that nothing can be honorable if it is morally wrong gives us a North Star in a culture that confuses popularity with virtue. We apply that lens to personal choices, civic responsibility, and how we treat those closest to us. Along the way, we share practical ways to reorder attention, protect the covenant of marriage, and live with integrity at home and in public. If this conversation moves you, share it with someone who needs a lift, subscribe for more, and leave a review so others can find the show. What one priority will you change this week to give your best to what's most rare?Support the showThe American Soul Podcasthttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1791934/subscribe Countryside Book Series https://www.amazon.com/Countryside-Book-J-T-Cope-IV-ebook/dp/B00MPIXOB2

The first Jewish aid mission from Canada since 2019 arrived in Havana, Cuba on Feb. 3, loaded with seven extra suitcases full of batteries, pills, and hundreds of pieces of donated baseball equipment. The delegation from Toronto's Beth Sholom synagogue spent the past week delivering pharmacy supplies and other necessities–which they donated to Jewish seniors, Cuban synagogues, and even to a pharmacy housed inside the Jewish community centre in Havana, which supplies Jewish Cubans and also nearby hospitals. Local Jewish leaders say this group is the first Canadian Jewish mission to come to Cuba in nearly seven years, since before the pandemic in 2019. And officials worry there might be fewer going forward. The Canadian government raised its travel warnings for Cuba on Feb. 4, citing widespread economic problems impacting tourists, including more frequent power outages, lack of food and fresh water, and fuel shortages. The island, a popular destination for Canadians, was hit in October 2025 by a damaging monster hurricane. But the country's difficulties worsened noticeably in the last month, after the U.S. president ordered all shipments of Venezuelan oil to Cuba be halted, as part of the capture of Venezuela's former dictator Nicolas Maduro on Jan. 3. On today's episode of The CJN's flagship podcast “North Star”, host Ellin Bessner speaks with Beth Sholom's Cantor Eric Moses, who organized the trip, and with William Miller, a Jewish community leader in Havana; plus we hear from Benji Tock of Toronto. The teenager didn't make the trip, but his bar mitzvah project–collecting eight duffle bags full of donated baseball bats, cleats, gloves and other gear–arrived safely in Cuba, too, destined for local Jewish players bound for this coming summer's Maccabiah Games in Israel. Related stories To donate to the Cuban Jewish community, contact Toronto-based Cantor Eric Moses cantor@bethsholom.net Donate to the Global Seder initiative of UJA Federation of Greater Toronto. https://www.jewishtoronto.com/donate Learn more about Canadian efforts over the decades to help the small Jewish community of Cuba with kosher food and basic daily supplies, in The CJN archives. In 2014, four Toronto bar mitzvah boys raised thousands to help Cuba's Jewish community purchase medical supplies, in The CJN. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here ) Watch our podcasts on YouTube.

The pod is in the midst of planning and recording some really interesting episodes, so to focus on those we thought we would re-release one of our fav's... it is also a little teaser for the upcoming ones... So enjoy, and go learn some science from the stars...This episode was recorded on an early Spring morning back in 2024, here on the Lands of the Blackfoot Confederacy, Tsuut'ina Nation, and Îethka Nakoda First Nation, and more recently the Otipemisiwak Métis . As we patiently waited for the First Thunder of the season , we got to learn from Wilfred "The Star Guy" Buck, from Opaskwayak Cree Nation and Siksika Astrophysicist Rob Cardinal about the science and stories of the recent Solar Eclipse, the reverence and silence within the darkness of totality, the connection between the alignment, states of matter, and ceremonies, protocols of NOT LOOKING at these significant cosmic events, the Creation of "Tipis and Telescopes," the three-body problem, the North Star and moon cycles, and the origin of the Thunderbirds.SHOWNOTES: For all you curious humans and educators, here is a link for the shownotes, which as always, has a plethora of videos, links, resources, to learn more and support. There are soooo many for this episode, have fun!Thanks to Emil Starlight, the pod's talented multimedia podcast producer. As well, Walter White Bear, Sharon Foster, and Emil for that opening tune!Take a moment to like, share, follow, and rate, it is much appreciated.And if you want to support the pod, check out some unique Indigenous Science MERCH at www.relationalsciencecircle.com/shop Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Discover the inspiring story of Captain Jim Smith, a family-oriented fisherman who transitioned from Alaska's icy waters to bringing fresh seafood to Arizona. In this episode, Jim shares his journey, values, and how COVID-19 reshaped his business and perspective on life and legacy.Connect with North Star Halibut:Website: https://northstarhalibut.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/northstarhalibut/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NorthStarHalibut/Connect with the Finding Arizona Podcast:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@findingarizonapodcastInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/findingarizonapodcast/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/findingarizonapodcastWebsite: https://www.findingarizonapodcast.com/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/finding-arizona-podcast/Twitter / X: https://twitter.com/findingarizonaPRODUCTION:Ready to start your own podcast? Found-House powered by The Finding Arizona Podcast is your best find!Want to be a guest or a sponsor of the show? Send us a message on the https://www.findingarizonapodcast.com/contactSPONSORS:SeatGeek: Get a $20 discount on your tickets with code FINDINGARIZONA at seatgeek.com.

This is the North Star Pre-Show — recorded live as a Tech Poutine podcast session — where founders, investors, and ecosystem builders warm up the room before the main event with unscripted startup talk, real operator stories, and behind-the-scenes insights. This pre-show segment sets the stage for an exciting day filled with inspiration and insight from a dynamic lineup of entrepreneurs. Reflecting on last year's success, the hosts discuss the unique value of gathering experienced founders and ambitious young entrepreneurs, all while growing the event to new heights. Hear about keynote speakers Dax and Fred, as well as engaging panels with industry leaders like Adrian and LP. This episode captures the essence of Montreal's tech scene and the vibrant community driving it forward. About North Star North Star brings together hundreds of founders, students, and investors for high-signal conversations and practical startup insight. About Tech Poutine Tech Poutine is a live startup podcast focused on founders, venture, and the Canadian tech ecosystem.

Two of Montreal's most iconic tech founders — Dax Dasilva (Lightspeed) and Fred Lalonde (Hopper & Deep Sky) — sit down for a rare and candid fireside conversation on building global companies from Canada, surviving the founder rollercoaster, and using technology and capitalism to tackle world-scale problems. From bootstrapping and product-market fit, to IPOs, hypergrowth, culture, leadership, and climate action — this keynote goes deep into what it really takes to build enduring companies. This is not a highlight reel. It's an unfiltered operator conversation. In this keynote, they discuss: Bootstrapping vs venture capital journeys The hardest leadership transitions founders face How company culture is actually built (not what's written on the wall) Product-market fit stories from Lightspeed and Hopper Scaling teams from 10 → 1,000+ people Founder psychology, resilience, and decision-making under pressure Why trust is the ultimate currency with teams and boards Capitalism as a lever for large-scale positive change Climate, carbon removal, and building Deep Sk Conservation, Age of Union, and purpose beyond exits Speakers: Dax Dasilva — Founder & CEO, Lightspeed Fred Lalonde — Co-founder, Hopper; Founder, Deep Sky Recorded live in front of founders and students at North Star in Montreal. If you're a founder, operator, investor, or student thinking about building — this conversation is a masterclass in real-world company building.

At North Star, we brought together top founders and emerging entrepreneurs for a candid panel on what it really takes to build in today's tech ecosystem — from first traction to scale, hard lessons, and unfair advantages. In this session, the panel shares practical insights on: How to get your first real customers Mistakes founders make early (and how to avoid them) Fundraising vs. bootstrapping decisions Building momentum with limited resources What great investors actually look for Tactical growth and execution tips If you're a founder, operator, investor, or student exploring startups, this conversation is packed with field-tested perspective and actionable advice. About North Star North Star is a founder-first gathering that brings together startup builders, investors, and students to share real stories, practical lessons, and ecosystem insights.

What does it really take to build a unicorn-scale company from Canada? At North Star, the Unicorn Panel brings together founders behind global tech leaders to talk candidly about ambition, scaling, capital, leadership, near-death moments, and the realities behind the highlight reel. Moderated by Sophie Boulanger, this conversation goes beyond success stories and digs into the hard decisions: when not to sell, how to think about control and cap tables, scaling teams, surviving crises, and building companies with long-term impact. You'll hear firsthand lessons from founders who have built and scaled category-defining businesses across gaming, mobility, and healthcare technology Topics covered include: Early exit offers vs long-term ambition Scaling from startup to global platform Fundraising strategy and cap table discipline Hiring executives and leadership evolution Crisis moments and near failures Building and keeping tech champions in Canada AI, moats, and the future of company building Recorded live at North Star — Inspiring Entrepreneurs in Montréal.

Kevin Wadsworth of Northstar & Badcharts, is a military meteorologist, applying scientific, predictive principles to forecast market movements. He talks drop in bitcoin, gold, silver, breakdown of the World Order, and much more. PLEASE SUBSCRIBE LIKE AND SHARE THIS PODCAST!!!   Watch Show Rumble- https://rumble.com/v75fg9k-crypto-failed-vs.-gold-why-that-matters-kevin-wadsworth-of-northstar-and-ba.html YouTube- https://youtu.be/4QDRQRT-uYw   Follow Me X- https://x.com/CoffeeandaMike IG- https://www.instagram.com/coffeeandamike/ Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/CoffeeandaMike/ YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/@Coffeeandamike Rumble- https://rumble.com/search/all?q=coffee%20and%20a%20mike Substack- https://coffeeandamike.substack.com/ Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-and-a-mike/id1436799008 Gab- https://gab.com/CoffeeandaMike Locals- https://coffeeandamike.locals.com/ Website- www.coffeeandamike.com Email- info@coffeeandamike.com   Support My Work Venmo- https://www.venmo.com/u/coffeeandamike Paypal- https://www.paypal.com/biz/profile/Coffeeandamike Substack- https://coffeeandamike.substack.com/ Patreon- http://patreon.com/coffeeandamike Locals- https://coffeeandamike.locals.com/ Cash App- https://cash.app/$coffeeandamike Buy Me a Coffee- https://buymeacoffee.com/coffeeandamike Bitcoin- coffeeandamike@strike.me   Mail Check or Money Order- Coffee and a Mike LLC P.O. Box 25383 Scottsdale, AZ 85255-9998   Follow Kevin X- https://x.com/NorthstarCharts?s=20 Website- https://northstarbadcharts.com/   Sponsors Vaulted/Precious Metals- https://vaulted.blbvux.net/coffeeandamike McAlvany Precious Metals- https://mcalvany.com/coffeeandamike/ Independence Ark Natural Farming- https://www.independenceark.com/

In this interview, Dr.SHIVA Ayyadurai, MIT PhD, Inventor of Email, Scientist, Engineer and Candidate for President, Talks about Truth Freedom Health®. Your North Star. No Need to Compromise!

In this energetic episode of Business Coaching Secrets, Karl Bryan and Rode Dog dig deep into the mindsets, frameworks, and daily practices that separate the world's best coaches and entrepreneurs from the rest. Through rapid-fire "word association," Karl reveals actionable insights for productivity, building a powerful personal brand, becoming an ideal mentor, and thinking like legends such as Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerburg. Whether you're wondering why most coaches fail or how to stop making unforced errors, this episode is stacked with real-world advice for coaches ready to upgrade their business and impact. Key Topics Covered The To-Do List Trap and Productivity Hacks Karl explains why most people never complete their to-do list and how focusing on just three critical tasks each day—especially before 10 AM—can 10x productivity and happiness. He urges coaches to build "done lists," embrace the 80/20 rule, and set high-leverage priorities. Amateur vs. Pro: The Mindset Shift Karl breaks down how professionals obsess over what could go wrong, practice to improve (not just to practice), and invest in personal development as the ultimate asset—channeling wisdom from Warren Buffett to Tom Brady. Rules of Business and Coaching From Warren Buffett's investing rules to Karl's "two rules of business" (get clients, keep clients), the hosts link real-world examples to a simple guiding framework. Coaches are reminded that keeping clients is even more vital than getting them. The Ideal Mentor Karl introduces three coach archetypes—Hider, Winger, and Installer. The most successful mentors don't just pile on tasks but help clients cut through noise and focus on what not to do, providing systems, accountability, and transformation over mere motivation. Learning from the Great Entrepreneurs Insights from Bezos, Musk, and others show that solving bigger problems, operating as if you're always 30 days from going out of business, and having a compelling North Star all lead to outsized success. Avoiding Unforced Errors Business is a game of minimizing mistakes, from "stupid taxes" to client audits using the 80/20 rule. Whether in the Super Bowl or business, those who avoid unforced errors typically win. Why Most Coaches Fail Instead of acting with conviction and serving business owners directly, many coaches waste productivity hanging out with other coaches, lack clarity, or never truly commit. The Power of a North Star and Personal Brand From Elon Musk's Mars mission to Gary Vee's obsession with attention, a powerful vision attracts results. Karl discusses practical personal branding in the social media era and why "who knows you" outweighs "who you know." Notable Quotes "Remember, a real mentor can tell you what NOT to do." "Amateurs talk, pros listen. Amateurs want to make it, pros want to keep it." "If you really want to feel productive… create a 'done list' versus a to-do list and get your top three done by 10am." "If you can't make fast buying decisions, you won't attract people who make fast buying decisions." "You don't need more motivation. What you need is less options." Actionable Takeaways Network where your clients are: Spend 80% of your outreach time in the spaces business owners frequent, not just talking shop with other coaches. Prioritize and narrow your focus: Each day, pick your top three high-leverage actions before adding anything else. Success compounds through focus and execution. Think in mental models: Apply the 80/20 rule, "what could go wrong?", and profit-driven frameworks to decision-making and client strategy. Build your personal brand deliberately: It's not just what you know or who you know, it's who knows you. Be visible, use social media strategically, and craft a clear message. Become an Installer, not a Winger: Develop systems your clients can implement and show them where to look, not what to see. Hold yourself and others accountable for action. Imitate the greats with your North Star: State your dream and mission boldly. Big claims lead to big impact, clarity, and opportunities. Minimize unforced errors: Audit your client list for profitability, avoid busywork, and learn from athletes: controlling mistakes wins championships (and businesses). Resources Mentioned Profit Acceleration Software™ by Karl Bryan: Enables coaches to demonstrate real ROI to clients and boost profitability. Networking Opportunities: BNI, Chamber of Commerce, industry groups, higher-level events (golf clubs, yacht clubs). Book Recommendations: Money: Master the Game by Tony Robbins The Psychology of Money by Morgan Housel Mindset Tools: 80/20 Rule, Marginal Gains, Matthew Principle, Mental Models Social Media & Branding: Study the strategies of Gary Vee, Alex Hormozi, and Patrick Mahomes for rapid audience and brand building. If you enjoyed the episode: Please subscribe, share with a fellow coach, and leave a review. Check out Focused.com for more strategies, daily emails, and information on Profit Acceleration Software™. Ready to transform your coaching business? Don't wait. Listen now and join Karl Bryan's community at Focused.com. Demo Profit Acceleration Software™ at https://go.focused.com/profit-acceleration

This week on Out Wide, Stef and Resh sprint (and occasionally rage-walk) through the 2026 Australian Open, an event that somehow managed to be thrilling, exhausting, political, inspiring, and completely sabotaged by ESPN at the same time.We start with the real final boss of the tournament: sports streaming capitalism. ESPN Plus? ESPN Unlimited? ESPN Select? Cable? VPNs? Mexico?? Watching tennis in 2026 apparently requires a CPA, an IT degree, and a teenage LimeWire mindset. ESPN, respectfully: jail.Before we get into forehands and finals, the hosts pause to acknowledge the world being… on fire. From ICE terrorizing communities to athletes being asked political questions they'd rather moonwalk away from, this episode grounds itself in the belief that tennis does not exist in a bubble, no matter how badly some press rooms want it to. Coco Gauff emerges as the moral North Star of the tournament—21 years old, emotionally fluent, politically aware, and still somehow finding time to hype a gay hockey romance show.On court, Elena Rybakina wins the Australian Open in stoic legend fashion, celebrates with a whisper of a fist pump, and gets criticized for not doing enough cartwheels. Meanwhile, Stef and Resh firmly defend the right to win a Grand Slam quietly and go home. Let introverts live.Then came Naomi Osaka's jellyfish fit, the moment tennis fashion officially entered its couture era. Inspired by marine biology and designed with Beyoncé's designer (casual!), Naomi floated onto Rod Laver Arena like an aquatic deity and said, “Even if I lose, I'll trend.” She was right. The outfit ate. The internet screamed. Traditionalists clutched pearls. Naomi posted six photos and logged off. Icon behavior.We also get:ESPN booth shakeups (women rising, Mac bros still yapping)Venus Williams returning at 45 and reminding everyone she is eternalSerena Williams definitely maybe returning (she's in the drug testing pool, babes)Jelena Djokovic inserting herself where nobody askedCarlos Alcaraz winning everything, breaking records, cramping, thrivingQueer history made on the ATPRising stars, comeback queens, GI distress, political statements via T-shirts, and one extremely icy handshakeAnd just when you think it's over, we pivot to the Grammys, Bad Bunny, dip-based Super Bowl planning, and a light call to mass-stream Michelle Obama's Becoming out of pure spite.Final verdict: The Australian Open 2026 was messy, moving, glamorous, infuriating, and extremely Out Wide. Tennis was played. Statements were made. Jellyfish were served. And ESPN still owes us emotional damages.

What happens when your "inside" doesn't match your "outside"? This week on the 12th Step Podcast, we're exploring congruency, the essential practice of aligning your daily actions with your recovery values. Living out of sync with yourself creates the secret stress and shame that often fuel addiction, damaging your relationships and making sobriety feel like a heavy mask. Join us as we discuss how to close the gap between who you are and what you do, proving that true integrity is your strongest defense against relapse.

In this episode, Jennifer McFarlane shares the story behind Romeo High School's academy model and how it has evolved to create more personalized, student-centered learning experiences. She walks listeners through how the model began in 2015–16, expanded across grade levels, and now uses intentional structures like card sorts, small learning communities, and teacher teams to support students in exploring and committing to CTE pathways. The conversation highlights measurable outcomes such as improved graduation rates and reduced math failures, while also surfacing key lessons around teacher collaboration, stakeholder involvement, and the importance of a clear "North Star" when redesigning the high school experience.

One day before Prime Minister Mark Carney's government announced it will scrap the role of the Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, a group of senior Canadian bureaucrats and policing experts attended a roundtable in Ottawa where they heard advice from some of the world's top antisemitism experts. The guest list of the four-hour meeting included government advisors and scholars on antisemitism and the Holocaust from France, Germany, the U.K. and Israel. The closed-door discussions strove to understand what tactics to tackle anti-Jewish hatred are working worldwide, which Canada might try; Norway, for example, has found success bringing young Jewish “pathfinders” into schools to meet their peers. The international experts also told the government what Canada doesn't need: more laws. On today's episode of The CJN's flagship North Star podcast, host Ellin Bessner sits down with two of those experts. Sally Sealey runs the U.K. envoy's office for post-Holocaust issues and chairs the Holocaust memorial foundation, which is building the country's new education centre in London; Carl Yonker, meanwhile, is the senior researcher at the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University, which also publishes an annual global antisemitism monitoring report. Related stories: Read Irwin Cotler's column about Canada scrapping its special envoy office, a role which he first held from 2020-2023, in The CJN . Reaction was swift to Canada's surprise announcement Wednesday that the government is ending its Special Envoy position for Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, (and the other one for Islamophobia) in favour of a single advisory council on rights, equity, inclusion, in The CJN. Read the latest global antisemitism report from Tel Aviv University published in April 2025 , and the Israeli Diaspora ministry's newest interim report on international antisemitism, from January 2026. Credits Host and writer: Ellin Bessner ( @ebessner ) info@thecjn.ca Production team: Zachary Kauffman (senior producer), Michael Fraiman (executive producer), Alicia Richler (editorial director) Music: Bret Higgins Support our show Subscribe to The CJN newsletter Donate to The CJN (+ get a charitable tax receipt) Subscribe to North Star (Not sure how? Click here) Watch our interviews on our YouTube Channel

What would your life look like if you finally learned to say no? In this episode, I break down why saying no isn't a time-management problem—it's a boundary, identity, and purpose problem. I'll show you how people-pleasing starts, why it keeps you stuck, and how finding your North Star makes saying no simple, clear, and freeing. Feeling stuck? It's time to take back control. If you're ready to master your mind and create real, lasting change, click the link below and start transforming your life today.

In this episode, recorded live at the Becker's 13th Annual CEO + CFO Roundtable, Abha Agrawal discusses how NorthStar Hospitals is reshaping rural healthcare by advancing the technology agenda and elevating the patient experience. She shares insights into building sustainable, tech-forward systems that improve access and outcomes for communities often left behind.In collaboration with R1.

In this episode of The Steward Chair, Maria Thacker Goethe, President and CEO of Georgia Life Sciences, shares her journey of transitioning from a dedicated "number two" to leading a massive ecosystem through a global pandemic. We explore how a commitment to mission and the guidance of mentors drives meaningful, long-term success even when the original plan is upended. We discuss the critical role of a connector in the life sciences sector, the importance of "work-life harmony" over balance, and why true stewardship means preparing the next generation to lead. This conversation provides actionable takeaways for leaders committed to stewardship, integrity, and impact. Key Takeaways Purpose Over Tactics: In times of crisis, your "North Star" must be your organizational purpose, allowing your tactics to remain nimble and adaptive. The Responsibility of Mentorship: Leadership is a societal responsibility; investing time in the next generation is essential because no leader is "here forever". Embracing "Ready Enough": You don’t have to feel fully ready to step into a leadership seat; surrounding yourself with a community that believes in you is the key to moving forward through fear. Resources Mentioned Visit https://www.galifesciences.org/ Follow Maria on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariathacker/ Join the Georgia Life Sciences mailing list at: https://www.galifesciences.org/join-the-mailing-list Join the ConversationThe Steward Chair is about equipping and inspiring business leaders to build organizations that stand the test of time. If this episode resonated with you, share your biggest takeaway and tag us on LinkedIn @ChatWithLeaders. Elevate your podcast, company meeting, or industry event strategies to better engage stakeholders and drive meaningful growth! Visit ChatWithLeaders.com to learn more about how we can help.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The way organizations think about artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace has shifted dramatically over the past few years. While early conversations centered on isolated experiments and technological hype, organizations now face the much harder task of integrating AI into the fabric of how work gets done. We welcome Melissa Reeve, author of “Hyper Adaptive: Rewiring the Enterprise to Become AI Native,” to discuss what AI adoption really means for people, processes, and culture.Melissa tackles some tough questions about organizational complexity, shifting operating models, and the critical role of culture and systems thinking in successful AI integration. Listeners will get candid advice on starting small, experimenting with purpose, and preparing for the rewiring ahead. You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in...03:38 Integrating AI into organizations12:47 AI Native enterprise structure15:51 Dynamic AI governance framework18:58 AI implementation foundations23:56 Process mapping for AI integration29:44 Balancing efficiency and leadership focus37:02 Start small with value streams40:59 Innovative organizational funding models42:14 Starting a skills-focused organization47:03 Digital Twins in Product TestingNavigating the AI Revolution at WorkMelissa Reeve's journey began on the factory floors of Toyota, learning firsthand how small process shifts can drive system-wide change. Building on years of research and influence from Lean, Agile, and DevOps practitioners, Reeve authored a five-stage maturity model she calls hyperadaptive, designed to guide organizations through the incremental steps needed to become truly AI-native.The five stages of Melissa's model:Foundation – Build organizational understanding of AI; create dynamic governance structures and clarify guardrails. Optimization – Identify and optimize business processes for AI interactions; move beyond basic experimentation. Agents & Automation – Develop and manage AI agents that execute tasks and processes autonomously. Rewiring – Shift organizational architecture from rigid hierarchies to flexible, value-stream teams funded and incentivized differently. Hyperadaptive – Fully sense-and-respond organizations capable of real-time adaptation.Melissa splits these into two main categories: Basecamp (the first three stages, where most companies currently operate) and the Emerging Frontier (rewiring and hyper adaptivity).Why Organizations Struggle with AI IntegrationAccording to Melissa, most organizations are stuck because they underestimate the support structures required for successful AI adoption. It's not just about updating technology, in fact, 70-80% of AI success depends on people, culture, and processes, not algorithms. Companies often rush to deploy AI agents or experiment without a clear North Star, leading to pilot fatigue and an 80% failure rate. Many organizations haven't even finished laying the foundational groundwork, such as establishing unified governance or mapping work processes.Another common pitfall is the tendency to try everything at once. Pressure for fast results drives teams to bite off too much, resulting in burnout and costly errors.Moving from Experimentation to Purposeful TransformationPlaying with AI is not a strategy. While experimentation is necessary, organizations must put bounds on these efforts, know why they're experimenting, what hypothesis they're testing, and what success will look like.One necessary precursor is getting to grips with how your organization actually works. Many leaders lack visibility into workflows, decisions, and skillsets, making process optimization difficult. Reeve suggests collaborative process mapping—sometimes supported by AI tools—to unlock tacit knowledge and identify where AI can augment or reinvent workflows.Organizing Around Value StreamsOne of the most transformative elements is the shift from function-based silos to cross-functional value stream teams. Melissa draws on examples from Toyota, Zappos, and Unilever—organizations that reimagine workflows, funding mechanisms, and team incentives to deliver value rather than preserve hierarchy. Dynamic budgeting, focused experimentation, and flexible team structures help organizations scale AI success without tearing up everything at once.Culture, Upskilling, and Durable SuccessAI's impact will be decided by how well organizations invest in people. Unilever's Future Fit program exemplifies this approach, aligning reskilling efforts to individual purpose and business needs. It's not algorithms that set successful organizations apart, but their ability to create cultures and support systems that empower people to adapt, reinvent themselves, and thrive amidst change.Start small, experiment with purpose, invest in support structures, and prepare to rewire not just technology, but how your organization thinks about work itself. AI may be the catalyst, but people, empowered and organized around value, are the key to lasting transformation. Resources & People MentionedHyperadaptive: Rewiring the Enterprise to Become AI-Native Connect with Melissa ReeveMelissa M. Reeve on LinkedIn Connect With Red Thread ResearchWebsite: Red Thread ResearchOn LinkedInOn FacebookOn TwitterSubscribe to WORKPLACE STORIES

The 2025 Dietary Guidelines are here… and they've flipped the food pyramid on its head—literally.In part one of this three-part series, Amy unpacks the new dietary guidelines, sharing the wins (finally real clarity around ultra-processed foods!) and why the emphasis on protein may be misleading and a major misstep that could have long-term consequences, especially for women concerned about brain health and Alzheimer's prevention.What to Listen For[00:56] The flipped food pyramid: steak, butter, and milk at the top?[03:24] Why dietary guidelines should act like a "North Star" for your eating habits[05:20] Two major wins in the new guidelines: eat real food and avoid ultra-processed foods[07:18] What it means to warn against 60–70% of the U.S. food supply[08:00] Where the new guidelines go off course: the “prioritize protein” message[09:45] America's fiber crisis—95% of us aren't getting enough[11:15] Alarming stats on vitamin and micronutrient deficiencies[13:05] Why most Americans already get more than enough protein[15:40] How fiber supports brain health via the gut-brain connection[17:35] The incomplete advice of “more protein” without strength trainingIn part one of this three-part deep dive into the new Dietary Guidelines for Americans, we celebrated some much-needed progress—like the shift away from ultra-processed foods. But we also explored a big missed opportunity around fiber and plant-based nutrients that could have profound impacts on your health.Stay tuned for part two where we dig into the culture wars, healthy fats, and what the guidelines don't say about alcohol.

In this episode, Adam Roach and Jess Webber explore the transition from success to authentic significance. They discuss the importance of authenticity in leadership, the journey of self-discovery, and the impact of personal development on collective growth. They emphasize the need for individuals to find their North Star and moonshot moments, encouraging listeners to focus on making a meaningful impact rather than merely achieving personal success.TakeawaysThe conversation shifts from success to authentic significance.Authenticity is crucial in leadership and personal branding.Transformation begins with humility and sharing one's mess.Finding your North Star is essential for personal growth.You can take baby steps towards your moonshot goals.Personal development should focus on how you impact others.It's okay to grow yourself while helping others.The more you help others, the more success will come back to you.The journey from self-development to collective significance is vital.Chapters00:00 Reuniting and Reflecting on Success02:54 From Success to Authentic Significance05:44 The Importance of Authenticity in Leadership08:32 Finding Your North Star and Moonshot Moments11:24 The Journey from Self-Development to Impact14:16 The Shift from Personal Success to Collective Significance

(Feb 4, 2026)

SummaryIn this episode of the Elevate Care podcast, host Nishan Sivathasan sits down with Paola Buitrago, Vice President of Workforce Optimization at Emory Healthcare, to explore the future of clinical workforce management. Emory Healthcare is taking a bold approach to retention and operations by placing culture and staff well-being at the center of their strategy.Paola discusses the shift from recruitment to retention, highlighting Emory's “North Star” of culture and leadership development. She shares insights on co-creating solutions with frontline staff, implementing technology that brings the “human closer to the human,” and the importance of diversifying staffing models to offer clinicians a menu of career options.About Paola BuitragoPaola Buitrago serves as the Vice President of Workforce Optimization at Emory Healthcare, where she oversees workforce contingency strategy, float teams, staffing, and nursing analytics. Her career journey began with unique roles in sickle cell research and global health at the Carter Center while in nursing school, providing her with a broad perspective on healthcare operations. With over 20 years of leadership experience and a PhD in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Paola is passionate about designing systems that support frontline personnel and improve patient outcomes through operational excellence.Chapters00:00 – Introduction01:07 – Paola's Journey: Research to Leadership05:07 – Prioritizing Retention and Culture07:54 – Redesigning Work with Technology10:34 – Co-Creating with the Frontline11:50 – Navigating Change through Leadership17:50 – Workforce Diversification & Upskilling25:20 – A Human-Centric Approach to AI  Sponsors: We're proudly sponsored by AMN Healthcare, the leader in healthcare staffing and workforce solutions. Explore their services at AMN Healthcare. Learn how AMN Healthcare's workforce flexibility technology helps health systems cut costs and improve efficiency. Click here to explore the case study and discover smarter ways to manage your resources!Discover how WorkWise is redefining workforce management for healthcare. Visit workwise.amnhealthcare.com to learn more.About The Show: Elevate Care delves into the latest trends, thinking, and best practices shaping the landscape of healthcare. From total talent management to solutions and strategies to expand the reach of care, we discuss methods to enable high quality, flexible workforce and care delivery. We will discuss the latest advancements in technology, the impact of emerging models and settings, physical and virtual, and address strategies to identify and obtain an optimal workforce mix. Tune in to gain valuable insights from thought leaders focused on improving healthcare quality, workforce well-being, and patient outcomes. Learn more about the show here. Connect with Our Hosts:Kerry on LinkedInNishan on LinkedInLiz on LinkedIn Find Us On:WebsiteYouTubeSpotifyAppleInstagramLinkedInXFacebook Powered by AMN Healthcare Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Organizational consultant Jacqueline Robinson joins me for a powerful conversation on authenticity, leadership, and what it truly means to lead from within. We explore my proprietary framework, Authentic Imprint™ the alignment of strengths, core values, mission, and emotional recognition and how these elements shift depending on the season of life you're in. Jacqueline shares how her mission of elevating people and celebrating culture has served as a North Star throughout her career, even during seasons of caretaking, entrepreneurship, and personal disruption. Her reflections reinforce that authenticity isn't static it's a daily practice of self-management. We also went deep into emotional recognition and energy management, especially in a world filled with distraction, pressure, and constant task switching. Jacqueline highlightes how awareness naming emotions before they shape behavior allows leaders to respond instead of react. From leveraging CliftonStrengths intentionally, to dialing strengths up or down when needed, to redefining productivity as managing energy instead of time, this conversation is a reminder that leadership starts internally. When we lead ourselves well, alignment follows and so does impact, whether locally or globally. Top 3 Takeaways: 1. Authentic leadership starts with alignment: When strengths, values, mission, and emotional awareness work together, leadership feels more natural and sustainable. 2. Emotional recognition is a leadership skill: Pausing to notice and name emotions helps leaders stay grounded, focused, and intentional especially during stressful seasons. 3. Manage energy, not just time: True productivity comes from protecting attention, prioritizing what matters most, and honoring what fuels your well-being. Episode Minutes: Minute 3: Exploring the Authentic Imprint Assessment Minute 9: Understanding Strengths and Emotional Recognition Minute 15: Aligning Actions with Values Minute 29: Managing Energy vs. Time Links + Resources from This Episode: Learn more about Jaclynn's work at www.jaclynnrobinson.com Explore purpose-driven products at www.jaclynnrobinson.com/shop Follow Jaclynn on Instagram  Take the free 3-minute Authentic Imprint Assessment Get a copy of Dana's book, The Internal Revolution: Lead Authentically and Build Your Personal Brand from Within Learn more about The Strengths Journal

Keith shares how a recent trip to Colorado Springs and a changing commission landscape reveal what really matters for real estate investors now From there, the show dives into the three levers investors truly control—leverage, operations, and relationships—before welcoming lender Caeli Ridge to break down the major mortgage options for investors. You'll hear how different loan types fit different strategies: from your first conventional "golden ticket" loans, to DSCR loans based on property income, to short-term fix-and-flip and bridge loans that prioritize speed and flexibility.  The episode then moves into how more advanced investors can scale beyond 10 doors, navigate debt-to-income and tax strategy, and even approach financing for short-term rentals—all while highlighting why having the right lending partner and long-term plan can make a big difference to your results. Episode Page: GetRichEducation.com/591 For access to properties or free help with a GRE Investment Coach, start here: GREmarketplace.com GRE Free Investment Coaching: GREinvestmentcoach.com Get mortgage loans for investment property: RidgeLendingGroup.com or call 855-74-RIDGE  or e-mail: info@RidgeLendingGroup.com Invest with Freedom Family Investments.  For predictable 10-12% quarterly returns, visit FreedomFamilyInvestments.com/GRE or text  1-937-795-8989 to speak with a freedom coach Will you please leave a review for the show? I'd be grateful. Search "how to leave an Apple Podcasts review"  For advertising inquiries, visit: GetRichEducation.com/ad Best Financial Education: GetRichEducation.com Get our wealth-building newsletter free— GREletter.com  Our YouTube Channel: www.youtube.com/c/GetRichEducation Follow us on Instagram: @getricheducation Complete episode transcript:   Keith Weinhold  0:01   Welcome to GRE. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold with new ways to think about your life through goals momentum in the real estate market. Then learn about various mortgage loan types, conventional DSCR, fix and flip, bridge loans, short term rental loans and more. Knowing which loans to use can save you millions and learn the fatal mortgage mistakes you must avoid today on get rich education.   Corey Coates  0:29   since 2014 the powerful get rich education podcast has created more passive income for people than nearly any other show in the world. This show teaches you how to earn strong returns from passive real estate investing in the best markets without losing your time being a flipper or landlord. Show Host Keith Weinhold writes for both Forbes and Rich Dad advisors and delivers a new show every week since 2014 there's been millions of listener downloads and 188 world nations. He has a list show guests include top selling personal finance author Robert Kiyosaki. Get rich education can be heard on every podcast platform, plus it has its own dedicated Apple and Android listener phone apps build wealth on the go with the get rich education podcast. Sign up now for the get rich education podcast or visit get rich education.com   Speaker 1  1:14   You're listening to the show that has created more financial freedom than nearly any show in the world. This is get rich education.   Keith Weinhold  1:30   Welcome to GRE from Winnebago, Minnesota to Winnipeg, Manitoba, and across 188 nations worldwide. I'm Keith Weinhold, and you're listening to get rich education, the voice of real estate investing since 2014 before we get into the mortgage discussion, where we'll discuss five or 10 different investor loan types and their various pros and cons, which could save you millions over the course of your life. I shared with you that I traveled to Colorado A couple weeks ago, for a goals retreat hosted by the real estate guys, top notch event, I spent extra time there in Colorado Springs, because I find it really livable, and I spent five hours with a local realtor there, one day out and about visiting properties in the area I'm potentially looking for a home or a second home. And by the way, how is this for a price range? The realtor wanted to know what my Buy Box is, and since I'm just learning the Colorado Springs market, I told him I'm willing to spend between 400k and 1.2 million on the property, yeah, pretty wide range, a mile wide. Fortunately, my other Buy Box criteria are more narrow and specific, and I have got to say, I'm surprised at how low the area's home prices are. I thought they'd be higher. Interestingly, before touring homes, my buyer agent wanted me to sign a six month exclusive representation agreement. Fair enough, that's standard stuff. It was on the agreement, though, that I as the buyer pay a 3% commission up on the purchase, and the seller would presumably pay the other 3% to make up that total 6% commission for the agent compensation. Well, historically, the seller paid the entire 6% and this, of course, goes back to the NAR settlement, and that ruling that became effective in August of 2024 you probably remember this, and I talked about it on the show back then, and how it's not really that big of a deal, especially to investors like us, because at GRE marketplace and with our GRE investment coaching, it's a direct model. There's zero commission on either side, and then you, in turn, get some of those savings, but out in the larger world and in the owner occupant world. Well, that rule change that started a year and a half ago. It means that sellers are no longer required to pay the buyer's agent. Instead, the fee is now negotiable between buyers and their agent. The other change is that property listings no longer display the buyer agent's commission offer. But here's what's interesting in practice, and what really ends up happening in the end, in most cases, is that the seller still pays the full commission and compensates both agents that full 6% sometimes it's 5% instead of six buyers and buyer agents, they still operate under the seller pays. And that's largely because that has just been the norm. It's what's seemingly always been done. It's what buyers are used to. And the reason that that often persists. Is because the seller is the party in the transaction that has that thick equity in the property, deep equity, and buyers are the ones often just trying to scrape together whatever they can for a down payment and closing costs. Buyers are not going to be able to come up with another 15k for an agent commission when they're buying a 500k property, that's 3% especially today, this is true because American homeowners the seller then still have record equity positions of about 300k an all time high. Nearly half of mortgaged homes are considered equity rich. What does equity rich mean? It means that the loan balance is less than half of the home's value, yeah, the seller has the means to pay the full commission. So the point is, in practice, the seller, yeah, still pays that full five to 6% commission in the overwhelming majority of cases, and the buyer pays nothing. And if that does change, it's going to take a long time. You know, a lot of these evanescent real estate stories that people think are going to have some seismic impact. It rarely does, like this erstwhile NAR ruling or the 50 year mortgage proposal or banning big institutions for buying more single family rentals. You know, this stuff is like one little baseball sized asteroid striking an entire planet. I mean, it's like a barely discernible impact. Real estate is anchored in one place like Jabba the Hut. It is solid. These stories are interesting, but they're not impactful.   Keith Weinhold  6:52   Instead, I've mentioned it before. What are three things you control in real estate that really matter. And these are evergreen things. First, it's, how many dollars are you leveraging? That's where your wealth is going to come from. In fact, we're going to discuss that today with mortgage loan types. Second, what's the efficiency of operations on your existing properties? And thirdly, what is the quality of your relationships? And actually, we're addressing the third one today too, talking to a lender that you could make part of your team. You can control these three things. They're unyielding, they're evergreen, they're long term, and they all have gratitas and impact those three things, leverage operations and relationships. Now my agent drops me off and picks me up from my hotel here at the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs. This was also the event hotel for the goals retreat. I just extended my stay to hang out in the area. Look at real estate, do some climbing on Pikes Peak. Pro tip for you on hotel room rates, talk to a human being before I booked my stay, I called the front desk and asked them if they could extend the attractive event room rate to more nights on my extended stay. And they agreed. You might have heard of the Broadmoor. It is well known. It's been here for more than 100 years, and it is such a fine place to stay. Let me tell you about this special piece of real estate. In fact, I've thought it through, and I will now hereby proclaim that it is the finest us hotel experience that I've ever had in my life. I say us because I stayed at an amazing place in Dubai. But what makes the Broadmoor stand alone? It's the details and the service. A lot of hotels are nice, but this is on a different level. And I don't say this to brag, and this is because you probably can afford to stay here, yeah, like I have. You might have paid more elsewhere in your life for a lesser hotel, although I am here in the low seasons. Okay, now, sure, you've got views of the Rockies and a man made lake and waterfall and even a beautiful chandelier in my hotel room. The thing that sets it apart, though, is you have this service that feels old world and not corporate. That's what makes the difference. The Broadmoor is horse themed, since horses are a symbol of the American West. There are about 800 rooms here. It's kind of like a self contained adult Disneyland championship golf courses, a world class spa, even an outdoor lap swimming pool like that has lanes that I swam in one morning for. Fine dining, casual dining, access to hiking, fly fishing, even falconry, zip lines, tennis, pickleball pools. Take the cog railway to the Pikes Peak, Summit. Okay. Now, other nice hotels have attractions that are sort of like that, but when I rave about the service, it's the little things they are knocking on my door before 10am to come in and clean the room. And you know how so commonly, when you first check into your hotel room and you look in the closet, there are not enough clothing hangers, and they're all like stupidly mismatched. These all match. They're all nice wood, and there are plenty of them. So I'm talking about these details. I'm telling you. I had dinner at one of the broadmoor's restaurants the other night. I just happened to take a close look at the tag on the napkin. Sure enough, it is made in Italy. I mean, jeez, no detail is overlooked at this stellar place. In fact, here's what I'll do. You know, I'll just completely stop my Colorado Springs home search right now. Instead, I'm going to stop down by the Broadmoor front desk, tell him to give me some moving boxes, because I'm moving into the Broadmoor and I'll be here for the next decade. Start forwarding my mail here and everything. And hey, at least I was courteous enough to give them notice. I can't stay here too long, or my standards will be rising faster than my net worth. Yeah, yeah. Can't go to sleep with a mint on your pillow every night, I suppose.    Keith Weinhold  11:38   Now, the reason I came here now is to attend that aforementioned goals retreat, and let me take all the time and all the resources that I put into being here and distill them into just a few of the most salient takeaways for you. Goals should be smart, strategic, measurable, actionable, relevant and time based, they must be written down. Now, how would you describe yourself to somebody else that didn't know who you were? Write that down next. What do you think your reputation is? How would others describe you? Write that down now that you can see how you describe yourself and how others describe you, you can see that there's a gap there. That gap is what you need to work on. I learned that goal should be written in the present tense, not the future tense. I did not know that before. For example, say it is January 1, 2035, and I own $5 million in rental property. That's an example of how you would do that. So take future events and write them in the present tense. Other questions at the goals retreat that got really introspective are, what are you really going to do with your life? And write down that answer. Sheesh, that is tough. And if you think that's a hard question for you to ask of yourself, the next one is even harder. It's simply why? Why is that where you're going with your life? And then write that down? I mean, would you answer questions like this for yourself? And you really think about it, that can occupy a new segment of your entire headspace. It is a big cognitive load, and a last one to leave you with is to dream not just big, but gigantic. Get it out there, write down a dream that interests you, but it's so grandiose that you're actually embarrassed to tell someone about this stretch dream, for example, for me, it's the first person to walk on another planet. No human has ever done that, and this would most likely happen on Mars. See, this is so grand that is sort of embarrassing for me to even share that with you. It almost makes you sound Loony, like I would have to learn so many new skills to travel to and walk on Mars. But you should write down a bunch of other goals too. You're sort of brainstorming on goals, attainable goals. Recall that is the A in the SMART goals acronym, you want to write down a bunch of attainable ones, not just that stretch one. So for attainable ones, one of them is for me to become the highest man on earth. To give you an example. And I attempted that goal two years ago, and I failed. I told you about that at that time. But see now, compared to my embarrassing stretch goal of walking on Mars, the highest man on earth feels attainable, I know what it takes to achieve it, and it's worth doing, ah, but it's a grind to get there, yet it would be worth it. Those are some quick take. Ways from the real estate guys goals retreat while on stage the event host Robert helms he took a minute respite from the goals material, and he recognized the fact that, as he calls it, the four OG real estate podcasters are all in the same room. One of them is helms himself, and now I feel like the other three are all older and doing it longer than me. I was one of the four that he mentioned. But you know, there is only one podcast that was mentioned from stage, and that is that Robert helms told the audience that they should be listening to the get rich education podcast. That was a nice thing to say, and he is always a gracious giver.   Keith Weinhold  15:45   Next, we're talking about four major loan types, conventional DSCR, fix and flip and then bridge loans. When we discuss the first two parts of it could sound repetitive, but you'll see why we do this, because then you'll be able to compare it to nichey loan types that we discuss, for example, the speed of a bridge loan, where you can get funded in just one week, compared to a slower conventional loan. The mortgage landscape changes. I still remember how in 2012 we had still somewhat freshly emerged from the global financial crisis, and back then, you could only get four conventional loans, four rental properties, not 10 like you can today, 20 married. So get your loans while you can, you probably won't always be able to get 10 loans. We'll start with loan types that are more for beginners, and then we'll get to advanced material. Let's welcome back one of our favorite recurring guests.   Keith Weinhold  16:54   You can make millions more throughout your life by understanding mortgage loans. This is key, and today it's the return of the woman that's created more financial freedom through real estate than any other lender in the entire nation, because she's the president of ridge lender group. Hey, it's time for a big welcome back to the incomparable, yet somehow still so approachable Chaley Ridge   Caeli Ridge  17:16   my Keith, thank you for having me. I love being here. I love what you're doing. It's my pleasure, sir.   Keith Weinhold  17:23   And our followers, our listeners, have been approaching you since 2015 you're one of the longest running guests, truly one of the OGS around here at GRE and now Caeli, before we discuss loan types. You know, we don't really talk politics on this show rather policies, and we're in the midst of a presidential administration that often, in the name of the word affordability, is trying to supremely shake things up in the housing market. Help us dissect what matters and what won't.   Caeli Ridge  17:58   I have found that at least as it relates to current administration, whoever that might be, I wait for the buzzwords or the taglines to become the actual policy. Like you said, That's a good point in this case. You know, you've got things floating around, like the 50 year mortgage cutting off the hedge fund guys and that kind of thing. Whether or not, those things come to fruition. I'm happy to give my opinion on them. I do not think that it's going to move the needle much for the people that you and I serve with regard to I mean, just taking them one at a time, I don't think that the 50 year is going to come to fruition. Just first and foremost, if it did do, I think it would be a good idea for a homeowner, probably not, but for an investor, maybe if there's some way that we can keep our payment lower, given the maturity date of a mortgage for an investment property is usually about five years. I mean, I know that this is a 30 year fixed mortgage, but statistically speaking, the average shelf life of a non owner occupied mortgage is about five years. So getting a 50 year amortization, if that were going to reduce the payment, I don't think is a bad thing for an investor, however, and this may get a little bit technical for the listeners, so I apologize in advance if we were to go to a 50 Year am the adjustments, something called, and you and I have talked about this before, something called an llpa, that stands for loan level price adjustment, I think would be such that it could end up defeating the purpose of having the longer term amortization, because I think the interest rates would be higher and I think they may offset so that was a long way to say. One, I don't think it's going to happen. I don't think it's actually going to get to its final resting place. And two, would it be a good idea for investors, yeah, I think it would be worth considering if it kept the payment lower. Okay, that's that as the other piece to cutting off the hedge funds, the big, you know, BlackRock, some of the big players, and giving them access to the residential housing and first right of infusion or etc, because they've got such deep pockets. You. It's such a small amount to what our individual investors are going to have access to that I don't think that that moves the needle either. So I don't know if I'm answering the question, except to say anything that they're going to tout, I would wait for it to actually become written in stone and pass by the rest of the powers that be before I would get excited about or concerned about any of it.   Keith Weinhold  20:21   This is pretty parallel with what I've been telling our listeners. All these things seem to make splashy news, but I haven't seen anything that's going to make a deep impact yet, whether it's the 50 year mortgage, which probably won't even come to fruition, or if it's doing these mortgage bond buy downs in order to bring more liquidity into the market and bring rates down, or if it sees any of these other things being discussed with these institutional investors, since they already own such a smaller proportion of the housing market than a lot of people think, we'll discuss seasoned real estate investors and their loans shortly, but first for newer real estate investors, you Know, chili, I kind of think of four or more loan types that a beginner should be familiar with. I think of conventional loans, dscrs, fix and flips and then bridge loans, the first one with conventional loans. What are the basics that someone should know?   Caeli Ridge  21:17   So first of all, you should know that there are 10 of these. We call them the golden tickets. I'm pretty sure I coined this, okay, 100 years ago, the golden ticket. We call the conventional aka Fannie Freddie, aka agency. They go by different names, but they all mean the same thing. We call them the golden tickets because it's the highest leverage and typically at the lowest interest rate you can find. Now I do have a hook in our conversation today about that. I'll get we'll get to it. There are 10 of these per qualified individual. So one of the first things that I would tell somebody is, is that if they are a partnership or a husband and wife team, you want to make sure to keep the debt obligation separate, because if you want to maximize these golden tickets, let's just say it's a husband and wife team. You each have, per qualification access to 10, and that includes a primary residence. In fact, let me just take a quick second and define what counts in the 10, because some people get this wrong. So the 10 golden tickets are counted by any residential property, single family, up to four Plex that has a loan on it, where the loan is in the individual name or personally guaranteed by the individual. That's where people get tied up. So if they went out and got a kind of more of a commercial type loan, that was in an LLC name, for example, but they signed a personal guarantee, per Fannie Freddie guidelines, that particular mortgage is going to count against the 10. So those would be some of the first pieces of news or detail I would give them about conventional    Keith Weinhold  22:40   for married couples, don't take ownership in both the husband and wife's name, either the husband or the wife. That way, you can get to 20 rather than 10. And yes, you do have to be mindful that your primary residence does count in that 10 or 20, whatever it might be. Anything else quickly with conventional loans, LTVs so on,    Caeli Ridge  23:01   yeah, LTV can go to 85% loan to value. So you get a little bit extra than you're going to get in some of the other loan product types. It will have PMI, private mortgage insurance, anything over 80% LTV will always have PMI on a more conforming, conventional basis. So keep that in mind. But the factor is pretty low. I would encourage people that are looking to stretch the almighty dollar. Do the math. Look at the 85 with PMI against, say, an 80% and see what are you giving up versus what you're getting. And then qualification stuff, you guys, my dumb joke, it's Keith's favorite. I'm sure vials of blood and DNA samples are sort of required for the Fannie Freddie loans. So just be prepared to supply or submit us the tax returns and pay stubs and bank statements and and all that stuff,   Keith Weinhold  23:44   you'll feel like you're getting fingerprinted almost for a conventional loan qualification. And the second one that I brought up DSCR loans, that's short for debt service coverage ratio. And these mortgages are pretty standard for rental properties. They're underwritten based on a property's income potential. So you know, the way I think of dscrs Chaley from the lender's perspective, is that sustainable cash flow is what matters. The rent has got to support the property's monthly mortgage payments. So we talked to us more about dscrs.    Caeli Ridge  24:15   Yeah, I love this product, and this is for somebody that either can't fit into the conventional Fannie Freddie box, or maybe they've exhausted their golden tickets and they're graduating and moving on. This is a great option that will reduce the amount of vials of blood and DNA samples that you're going to have to submit. It still provides for a 30 year fixed mortgage. The leverage is roughly the same, 80% in most cases, on a purchase. And to your point, the gross income divided by the principal, interest, taxes, insurance and Hoa, if it's applicable, is the simple formula, the easy method I'll give people, just to kind of solidify that math, is that if the gross rents were $1,000 a month, and if the PI TI was $1,000 a month, when you divide that, your debt service is 1.0 Now you can go as low, believe it or not, as low as a point seven, five, DSCR, they have those available be ready for the interest rate to get a little hair on it. Okay, it's going to be higher than what the 1.0 and above is going to be. But you can go as low as point seven, five, those are going to be for the investors that have found a property, maybe in distress, and they cannot show the current market value rent, perhaps, and it's on the low end. So you can still get that done at point seven, five, just be ready for a higher interest rate.   Keith Weinhold  25:30   So the DSCR loan an alternative for you, which might be especially useful, like Chaley touched on, if you've already exhausted your 10 golden ticket. Fannie Freddie loans, a DSCR of 1.2 for example, means that your rent income needs to exceed your principal, interest, taxes and insurance payment by 20% or more. That's what we're talking about here. And then Chile, those were more of loans for the buy and hold type of investor. Tell us about fix and flip loans.    Caeli Ridge  26:03   Yeah. So these are shorter term loan that will allow you to include not just the purchase of the property, but also some renovation or rehab money if you need that. And we're going to be looking at an ARV after repair value. So you've got a purchase price, you've got your renovation or scope of work budget. And then we're looking for an ARV with the ARV to be somewhere around 75% so what that means, if you've not heard of this before, you're going to take, let's say, $100,000 value. And if we want the ARV to be at 75% we're going to lend 75,000 is kind of the mix there. Those are quicker loans. You're going to be paying much higher rates on those. You know, between nine and 13% depending on the deal. The points are also going to be a little bit higher, but a great option for that quick turn and burn where you know your deal has enough skin in it and you can recapture all your capital and make a good tidy profit on it.   Keith Weinhold  26:53   We're talking about basically fixer upper loans here with Chaley Ridge, the president of ridge lending group, yes, these are jalopies that rarely qualify for traditional bank financing. And oftentimes, when I think about these fix and flip loans, I'm thinking that often there is interest only flexibility with regard to those higher interest rates that you need to pay. And I think of it as, you know, a shorter term loan that you've got during your renovation period, oftentimes 12 to 18 months. Does that sound about right?   Caeli Ridge  27:24   Yeah, 6,18, even 24 months. And to your point, yes, all of these are going to be interest only. And one of the cool things is about these loans is, is that, if there's enough room in the deal, right, based on what you need to borrow and what we think the ARV is expected to be, you don't even actually have to be making those interest payments. You can build it into the final payout when we go to refinance you out of this short term loan, or you simply sell the property and pay off that loan. So for example, let's say that your interest only payment is $1,000 a month, okay? And the value of the property is going to be $200,000 and you only took 120 okay, we're going to be well within that 75% ARV. You can build in that $1,000 say, for 12 months, there's $12,000 and just add it to the outstanding balance that you started by owing, and not have to be making those payments on an ongoing basis. It's not rented, right? So it might be nice to be able to factor that in to the actual payoff when you go to refinance that if it's a fix and hold versus go to sell it on a fix and flip.   Keith Weinhold  28:31   Now, long term, we know that the big gains for real estate investors really come from that leveraged appreciation getting that loan. But sometimes there are situations where we might want to act as a cash buyer. And that brings up this fourth of four loan types that I brought up, the bridge loan, short term loans that can temporarily finance a property purchase while you're waiting for a longer term loan to come through. The bridge loan, so I think of it as a pretty speedy loan, if you sort of want to act like you're an all cash buyer.   Caeli Ridge  29:04   Yeah, I like this, and in many ways it's similar to a fix and flip interest only. Obviously the term is going to be shorter, six months, 12 months, up to 24 months, and based on largely relationship, the bridge loan for the purpose that you described, really comes into play for an investor that we know and we're comfortable with, we can fund those inside a week, for somebody that we've done several of these loans for. So for those that need that really quick turn, once you've established yourself as a seasoned, experienced investor in that space, those are pretty slick and easy to get through.   Keith Weinhold  29:39   Why would someone use a bridge loan, rather than a fix and flip loan.   Caeli Ridge  29:43   So if they're in a very competitive market, that might be another option, because those are going to be faster. The bridge loan is going to be faster where they need to say that they're an all cash buyer and they only need seven days to close, or whatever it is. It depends on the municipality in the state. But what if you're at the courthouse steps? And you need cash quickly. Sometimes it needs to be immediate. So that might not be applicable in this case, but if you put the bid in, and you win the bid, and you've got, you know, three days to perform, usually we can get those done. So it's circumstantial. Those would be two variables or two scenarios that that would apply to   Keith Weinhold  30:17   the bridge loan gives you the advantage of speed, but that speed can come at a cost.   Caeli Ridge  30:22   Oh yeah, yeah, you're going to be paying probably three points, maybe four points, and it's short term interest, 13, 14%   Keith Weinhold  30:30   so with these four loan types that we've discussed, conventional DSCR, fix and flip and bridge loans, you can kind of see that there is a loan for most every investment scenario, and there's no reason to rely on only one type, a flipper. Might start with a short term fix and flip loan or a bridge loan and then later refinance to a DSCR or a conventional loan. So consider mixing and matching based on your needs. You're listening to get rich education. We're talking with Ridge leninger, President Taylor Ridge, more when we come back, including steps for more advanced investors, I'm your host. Keith Weinhold   Keith Weinhold  31:06   mid south homebuyers with over two decades as the nation's highest rated turnkey provider, their empathetic property managers use your return on investment as their North Star. It's no wonder smart investors line up to get their completely renovated income properties like it's the newest iPhone, headquartered in Memphis, with their globally attractive cash flows, mid south has an A plus rating with a better business bureau and 4000 houses renovated. There is zero markup on maintenance. Let that sink in, and they average a 98.9% occupancy rate with an industry leading three and a half year average renter term. Every home they offer you will have brand new components, a bumper to bumper, one year warranty, new 30 year roofs. And wait for it, a high quality renter in an astounding price range, 100 to 150k GET TO KNOW Mid South. Enjoy cash flow from day one at mid southhomebuyers.com that's mid southhomebuyers.com    Keith Weinhold  32:08   you know, most people think they're playing it safe with their liquid money, but they're actually losing savings accounts and bonds. Don't keep up when true inflation eats six or 7% of your wealth. Every single year I invest my liquidity with FFI freedom family investments in their flagship program. Why fixed 10 to 12% returns have been predictable and paid quarterly. There's real world security backed by needs based real estate like affordable housing, Senior Living and health care. Ask about the freedom flagship program when you speak to a freedom coach there, and that's just one part of their family of products, they've got workshops, webinars and seminars designed to educate you before you invest, start with as little as 25k and finally, get your money working as hard as you do. Get started at Freedom family investments.com/gre or GRE, or send a text now it's 1-937-795-8989, yep, text their freedom coach, directly again. 1-937-795-8989,   Keith Weinhold  33:19   the same place where I get my own mortgage loans is where you can get yours. Ridge lending group and MLS, 42056, they provided our listeners with more loans than anyone because they specialize in income properties. They help you build a long term plan for growing your real estate empire with leverage, start your pre qual and even chat with President chailey Ridge personally, while it's on your mind, start at Ridge lending group.com that's Ridge lending group.com   Blair Singer  33:53   this is Rich Dad, sales advisor, Blair singer. Listen to get rich education with Keith Weinhold. And above all, don't quit your Daydream.    Keith Weinhold  34:09   Welcome back to get rich education chili when we go beyond this beginner stage that we've been discussing, how about for an investor just trying to scale to 10 doors worth of one to four unit properties. Now, are there any strategies there or more of a loan order that you would recommend in getting up to your first 10 you know   Caeli Ridge  34:29   I think the strategy starts with calling your lender, ideally Ridge lending group, and having that deep strategy call that, that discovery call, so that we can really understand and plant some seeds that say, Okay, Mr. Jones, these are your qualifications today. This is where you want to be in a year or 10 years. These are the steps that are going to be important that we are mindful of and we take to accomplish and reach those milestones. It's really important to have that baseline understanding of what is your debt to income ratio on day one, what are your assets? Sets. What is your credit? Where do you want to be in a year or 10 years? Right? Do you want 10 properties in a year's time? It's going to be a very different conversation than if you're going to slow roll this and want to establish 10 purchases or 10 investment properties over 10 years. So identifying those details is going to be part one, and then next, in terms of order, I would say, largely the higher price point properties, typically, I would say, put those in one through six. And the reason that I'm saying that is is that the underwriting guidelines under conventional financing, they will change based on how many finance properties you have. So of all of the inner working guidelines and things that go into securing a conventional mortgage loan, the three top most heavily weighted are going to be debt to income ratio, credit score and assets. Okay? And within each one of those, the marker or the qualification guideline changes as you evolve and acquire more property. So the higher up the ring you go, or the rung that you go to 10, the more restrictive the guidelines are going to be. So I would typically say, get the higher price point properties go into maybe one to four, one to six, if that's part of your strategy and your diversification of portfolio ownership. Then after you've established having two or three or four properties and that higher price point it as it gets harder to qualify, potentially, if your debt to income ratio is a little bit tight, you've got the smaller loan sizes that might be less impactful in debt to income ratio. All of this is very subjective to the individual's qualifications and needs, of course, but that might be one rule of thumb that I would take   Keith Weinhold  36:39   gosh, this This is absolute gold in helping you structure the architecture of a growing income property portfolio. And we're coming up on this Super Bowl, and whatever mortgage lender advertises for the Super Bowl or has some big, splashy campaign nationally, you know they are not the ones that are going to have conversations like this for you, they might be fine for buying a primary residence, but this is why you want to have a long term strategy and work with a lender that's aligned with you on exactly that sort of thing. And Chaley, is there a specific way in which one can avoid hitting the Fannie Freddie loan ceilings too early if you haven't already touched on it.    Caeli Ridge  37:22   Yeah, very good question. You know, I think that this is going to come down to a debt to income ratio conversation. It's easy enough to ensure that we contain assets and credit. Those are easier conversations. The debt to income ratio is the piece that's more complicated and can get away from an investor without them even knowing it. You don't know what you don't know, right? So I would say that debt to income ratio and making sure that your lender again, hopefully Ridge lending, because we know this like we know our own faces, making sure they know how to structure and provide feedback and consult on that schedule E, part of the beauty of real estate investing is the tax deductions. Right? Many people get into real estate investing, not for the cash flow, not even for the appreciation, but for that tax strategy, because they're high wage earners, or whatever it may be, and they're sick of paying x in taxes. So the debt to income ratio is key in scaling and making sure you can continue to qualify for those loans. The conversations that we have with our clients really go deep about where we can maximize our deductions to ensure that we get the tax benefit without precluding our qualification on a conventional underwriting basis in the DTI category.   Keith Weinhold  38:35   Now, during my growth as an investor, when I got above 10 doors, one gets above 20 doors. When one gets to 216 doors, I began where I needed to qualify more on a DSCR basis, where the lender is looking at the properties qualification, more so than me. So are there any other thoughts with regard to how one can set themselves up for success in really going big and well beyond 10 doors   Caeli Ridge  39:03   absolutely so once we've exhausted the Fannie Freddie, and I think one of the real value adds about Ridge is that we are not a one size fits all, and we are extremely holistic versus transactional. So having that first conversation and understanding what those goals are, so that we can pivot as we need to maximize the golden tickets, whether that be 10 to 20, right? If you're in a marriage or a partnership or whatever, and then setting up for the DSCR loans when the time comes, and taking advantage of those, there is no limit to how many DSCR loans we can get for one individual. We have yet to file an individual that we've had to say no, and we've done quite a few of the high, high acquisition investors, so I don't expect that to be an issue, but yeah, I think it's about planning, planting those seeds, creating roadmaps together and have those smart discovery conversations.   Keith Weinhold  39:50   Now, as you grow, one way you might diversify is to have perhaps at least a part of your portfolio in short term rentals. So what I. Comes to getting loans for sort of Airbnb or VRBO type properties. What does one look for there? How much does the landscape change versus the longer term rentals that we've mostly been talking about here?    Caeli Ridge  40:10   Yeah, I think that the differences are going to be about purchase versus refinance. If we're just talking about purchases, let's kind of try to keep it in one lane. If we're talking about purchasing a short term rental, you may be limited on leverage. You might lose a little bit of leverage, 5% let's say you could get to 75% and maybe on a short term they're going to back it off to 70% LTV, so there may be reduction in that loan to value. And the way in which we're going to quantify the income is absolutely important to share with your listeners on a purchase transaction, we have access to things like an appraisal. An appraisal is going to give us some median rental income, whether it be long term or short term, that we will use to offset a new mortgage payment if that's needed for the individual's debt to income ratio qualification. Now, if they don't need the rental income to qualify, then it's a non issue. But if they do, like most of us, need that rental income to absorb this new mortgage payment that we are securing for them, how that's going to quantify is important. So if it's not in a short term rental area, let's just say it's kind of off the beaten path, and there may not be enough data points to support the income that you need. It's important to know that up front versus way down the rabbit hole, when you paid for appraisals and you're all the way through the transaction and earnest money might be off the table if you had to cancel that kind of thing. So really important to understand the numbers in advance, I would say, when we talk about short term rentals and how the income is going to be quantified from an underwriting perspective,   Keith Weinhold  41:43   why does a borrower often need to make a higher down payment on a short term rental than they do a long term rental?   Caeli Ridge  41:49    You know, I think that in secondary markets, as we talk about mortgage backed securities and things like that, it's looked at as a higher risk. A short term rental is going to be a higher risk than just the stable long term, long burn tenant is going to be there and they've got their lease for a year, two years or whatever, at a time, the short term rental is more volatile and it's seasonal. It can be I mean, there's all those different factors, so higher risk means more skin in the game for the investor.   Keith Weinhold  42:13   That makes a lot of sense. Does that higher risk also translate into a higher mortgage rate for short term rentals than long term rentals?   Caeli Ridge  42:18    Fannie Freddie versus DSCR The answer is no. On the Fannie Freddie side, the interest rate's not going to change on a DSCR loan. Yes, it can be slightly higher, usually about about a quarter of a percentage point on a short term versus a long term.   Keith Weinhold  42:33   Now, are there any particular markets that lenders want to avoid with short term rental loans?   Caeli Ridge  42:39   No, as long as the property is habitable, and all the other metrics fit Qualifications and Credit and assets and all that stuff. No, there isn't a market that we're going to have any issues with now. We do get the notifications for natural disaster areas, and as that relates to the appraisal and things like that, if it's in a natural disaster area or zone, we may have to hold funding until after the disaster is over, and then we can go and take more pictures and make sure it's still standing and there's no major issues. But otherwise, aside from that, as long as it's habitable, no, there is no market restriction.   Keith Weinhold  43:12   Yes, with that variability of income for short term rentals, you can understand how a lender would be more careful in making a loan, and would want you, the borrower, to put more skin in the game for a short term rental. Well, Caeli, overall, what should an investor do in the next 24 hours to make themselves more lendable before contacting someone like you?   Caeli Ridge  43:36   I would say the answer is sticky, but call rich lending group. That's how you're going to make yourself more lendable. And the reason that I can say that is is that everybody's qualifications and needs and goals are inherently different. So calling someone that understands this landscape and can navigate the battleship in the creek like I like to say, that's the visual aid for those of you that need the visual is the first key. And with that conversation, we're going to be able to identify for you specifically what you would need to do to become more lendable. And it may be nothing   Keith Weinhold  44:07   well over there, Chaley, you're growing. You do loans in almost all 50 states. The GRE podcast has more than 5.8 million listener downloads, and you have helped countless GRE listeners acquire smart investor loans for fully a decade now. Just amazing. So talk to us about all of the loan types that you offer investors there at ridge.   Caeli Ridge  44:30   My gosh. Okay, so I think one of the real value adds for us is that we have such a diverse menu of loan products. We touched on a few of them already. So we've got the conventional Fannie Mae Freddie, Mac stuff. We've got our DSCR loans. We have bank statement loans, asset depletion loans. I can touch on those if you want. Keith, we have our short term bridge fix and flip. We have our All In One my favorite, first lien, HELOC we have second lien HELOCs. We have commercial loan products, and commercial can apply to residential and commercial property. A cross collateralization, commercial for residential properties. That just means, if you're putting 10 single families into one blanket loan, that would be cross collateralization, or if you're buying a storage unit that's straight commercial, and probably even more than that, ground up construction, there's really not a limit to the loan products that we offer, specifically for investors. The only thing we don't have, I would say in our arsenal is bare land loans. Those are hard to come by   Keith Weinhold  45:24   It sounds like you recommend a call in order to get some of that back and forth, to learn how you can best help that investor. But tell us about all the ways that someone   Caeli Ridge  45:32   can get a hold of you. Yes, there's a few ways. Of course, our website, ridgeline group.com, you can call us toll free at 855-747434385, 747-434-3855, 74, Ridge. Or feel free to email us info at Ridge lending group.com   Keith Weinhold  45:49   and you might get lucky. Hey, spin the wheel. Chaele does get on the phone and talk to individual investors herself too. So Chaley, it's been valuable as always to cover all these different loan types for beginners, and then what one does when they advance beyond that. It's been great having you back on the show.    Caeli Ridge  46:09   Thank you, Keith. I appreciate you.   Keith Weinhold  46:16   Oh yeah, a lot to learn from Chaley today. You've got mortgage rates three quarters to 1% lower than they were a year ago. At this time, in fact, last month, they ticked below 6% for the first time in years, and their lowest level in over three years. But when you introduce geopolitical uncertainty, well, that tends to make rates tick up again. Now, just what does happen when you have a lower overall rate trend like we have? Well, in this cycle, it's already spurred an increase in housing sales volume. It surged to 4.3 5 million in the latest reporting month, and that is the hottest annualized pace in nearly three years. Some of the same people who said, wait until rates fall, they're about to realize that prices didn't wait. Demand comes back fast. Inventory doesn't if mortgage rates take another leg lower, we could see quite a refinance wave in balanced markets or in supply constrained markets, bidding wars could follow. Now I've shared with you before that I totally do not predict interest rates. I don't know if anyone should. It is a great way to be fantastically wrong and supremely waste a lot of people's time. Instead, I think it's more efficacious for you to be able to interpret the signs that can trigger a further rate drop. Those signs are a weak jobs report that tends to bring lower rates because the labor market needs the help. So does softening wage growth, GDP below expectations, inflation continuing to cool, or a pickup in US Treasury demand. These are all signs that can lead to even lower rates. In fact, right now, with already lower rates and higher wages, real estate is more affordable than it's been in about three years, but overall, longer term, yeah, income properties still feel somewhat less affordable. It's less affordable than it was in pre pandemic times. That's for real for US investors, though, affordability is less about the price of the property, it's about whether the property pays for itself and grows your net worth while inflation does the heavy lifting for you, that's why it still works for us as investors. Higher prices don't kill investors inaction during inflation does you're not so much buying a say, 350k property. You're controlling it with 70k while your tenant and inflation do the rest. We don't rely on hope or appreciation. We start with inflation, tax benefits and debt pay down, and then appreciation typically happens too. A lot of times, the question for us goes beyond whether or not a property is affordable. The question is whether owning an investment property is better than inflation compounding against us, which is an investor mindset for this era, Ridge landing gear. President Chaley Ridge is a regular guest here because the mortgage space is so dynamic and things change a lot. For that reason, we expect to have her with us every few months this year, I'll see you next week. I'm your host. Keith Weinhold, don't quit your Daydream.   Speaker 2  50:01   Nothing on this show should be considered specific, personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, financial or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own. Information is not guaranteed. All investment strategies have the potential for profit or loss. The host is operating on behalf of get rich Education LLC, exclusively   Keith Weinhold  50:30   The preceding program was brought to you by your home for wealth building, getricheducation.com   

What happens when activist investors call your multi-billion dollar acquisition the "single worst deal of the decade"? Most leadership teams would panic, but NRG Energy did the opposite: they doubled down on their people. While most large-scale acquisitions look great on a spreadsheet, they often fail because leadership loses sight of the human energy behind the numbers. In this episode, Peter Johnson, SVP and Head of Talent and Culture at NRG, reveals how his team navigated the acquisition of Vivint—a deal that tripled their workforce to 16,000 employees and was publicly condemned by activist investors as the "single worst deal" in the sector. While the announcement triggered a 25% stock crash, their leadership's commitment to a strategic "North Star" and a "don't crush the butterfly" cultural philosophy eventually drove a staggering 420% stock recovery. Peter explores the raw challenges of an 18-month integration, from the technical hurdles of migrating 16,000 employees between competing HR systems to the deeply emotional task of harmonizing job titles across disparate industries. By prioritizing the "why" behind the change and fostering a unified "One NRG" identity, the company successfully blended traditional corporate discipline with tech-forward innovation, nearly doubling employee engagement and proving that human-centric leadership is a massive financial win. If you're a CHRO, this episode shows what real value creation looks like when people come first.   ---------- Start your day with the world's top leaders by joining thousands of others at Great Leadership on Substack. Just enter your email: ⁠⁠https://greatleadership.substack.com/ Quick heads-up: my new book, The 8 Laws of Employee Experience, is a practical playbook for building an environment where people do their best work—preorder a copy here: 8EXlaws.com

Join Tommy Shaughnessy as he speaks with Logan, Managing Partner of Frictionless Capital, about the high-stakes race to build a global blockchain-based financial system. Logan shares his updated thesis on why monolithic, high-throughput architectures like Solana are winning the battle for real revenue and trading dominance over modular designs.They dive deep into the "Global Exchange" vision, the physics of time-to-inclusion, and how innovations like Proprietary AMMs (PropAMMs) are redefining market making. Logan also explores the broader implications of AI, from the compounding power of Grok to the societal impact of a robot-led workforce.

EPISODE 235 In our age of constant comparison, endless opinions, and relentless noise, one of the greatest challenges we face is not deciding what to do, but deciding who to listen to. Trends change. External validation is fleeting. Yet, beneath the surface of all this motion, there exists something far more stable: your North Star. Your North Star is not a goal, a job title, or a destination. Your North Star is an internal compass, a deeply held sense of purpose, values, and direction that remains constant even when circumstances change. Your North Star, is your Intuition. Stephen Lesavich, PhD Your North Star, your Intuition, is your First Sense, what you use before using your other five senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. Believing in your North Star, your Intuition, is the act of trusting that inner guidance, especially when the path forward feels uncertain. A life guided by your North Star, your Intuition, is be linear, but it is coherent. Over time, seemingly disconnected choices begin to form a pattern. Effort feels purposeful. Resilience deepens. Confidence becomes quieter but more stable. What are practical steps to connect with your own North Star, your Intuition? When you trust that internal compass, your North Star, your Intuition, you move through uncertainty with dignity. You make fewer decisions driven by fear and more driven by meaning. Believing in your North Star, your Intuition, is not about having all the answers. It is about committing to live in relationship with your inner truth, even as it evolves to create a positive impact in your life. That is your real north, your North Star, its your Intuition. Out There on the Edge of Everything®… Stephen Lesavich, PhD Copyright © 2026 by Stephen Lesavich, PhD.  All rights reserved. Certified solution-focused life coach and experienced business coach. #intuition #northstar #navigation #guidance #selfhelp #motivation #life #lifecoach #lesavich

From unforgettable meals to memory-making moments, we're breaking down the must-do dining experiences at Walt Disney World in 2026 with one of the most trusted voices in Disney travel. Episode Description Dining at Walt Disney World isn't just about what's on the plate — it's about the memories made around the table. In this episode of Rope Drop Radio, Doug and Lauren are joined by a true Disney podcasting legend and travel expert, Annette Jackson, owner of Touring and Cruises, to share the must-do dining locations for 2026. Annette has been part of the Disney podcast world since the earliest days of WDW Today, and today she leads one of the most respected travel agencies in the industry. Together, we work our way around Walt Disney World — from Animal Kingdom to Hollywood Studios, resort dining, EPCOT, and Magic Kingdom — highlighting dining experiences that go beyond food and create lasting family memories. If you're planning a Disney trip in 2026 and want to book dining that truly matters, this episode is for you. Welcome & Housekeeping Patreon shoutout Apple Podcast review: yo to yo toto Stuffy of the Week

In this episode of The Art of Living Big, Betsy discusses the concept of relationship deflation, where connections gradually lose emotional engagement without any overt conflict or drama. Do you feel expanded or deflated after your relationship interactions? Betsy also touches on how to handle the end of relationships gracefully while staying true to one’s own path and growth. Last but not least – Betsy has collected your questions so stay tuned for an upcoming Q & A and continue to ask more on the socials. Transcript  Welcome to The Art of Living Big, where we explore how to live intentionally and with more joy. I’m Betsy Pake, your host, master, coach, and creator of the Navigate Method. Here to help you listen in to your true desires, elevate your standards, and live life to the fullest. Now, let’s go live big. Hi everyone. Welcome to the Art of Living Big. If you’re new here, welcome. I haven’t posted in the last couple weeks. It’s been really, really busy here, and , I had to prioritize self-care, I think in all of this. You know right now if you live in the United States, you might be feeling what I’m feeling, which is just a lot of heaviness and I think confusion and grief and overwhelm, and , it feels like, how could this be real? What’s happening? Ugh. It’s really heavy. And so if that’s where you are, that’s where I’ve been to. And so I decided certain things were just gonna. Go on hold. And I think that’s okay as we get our bearings. And I needed to put the things that were most important. You know, our clients put them first and have space and energy for them, and I think I’ve been really successful in doing that, but it made me not overhear on the podcast. So I’m excited to be back today and to have some space to be able to talk with you. , Over on Instagram, I’ve been getting just so many messages about the videos that we’ve been doing over there, and I think that sometimes it can be really helpful to have words to understand. What we are feeling in our body. , I don’t think I’m saying anything over there that people haven’t felt, but they just didn’t know how to dissect it or how to translate it maybe into language. And so , I’m pleased that I’m able to do that over there. And so today I wanted to talk about something and I think it’s something that happens inside relationships. , Typically when they’re ending, and this doesn’t just have to mean a romantic relationship, I think it can mean a lot of relationships. , I’m noticing it right now in several of my relationships, and it’s not a bad thing. It just is a thing. And I think that if we are feeling it, likely the other person is feeling it, to some , extent too. So it’s not like when you’re fighting, I’m thinking about the relationships I have that are ., I call it like closing the loop. It’s just, there’s no big disagreement or marker that says like, this is no longer working. It’s just sort of deflation. That’s how it feels to me. I was thinking the other day, I had an interaction with somebody and I was like, you know what?, I’m done showing up when the other person isn’t showing up. . It’s like they reach out ’cause they want connection, but , they’re not actually available to show up and do the work of being in relationship. You know, whether it’s a friendship or a romantic relationship or anything. I don’t think it matters. But I noticed this the other day and I was like, you know what? No hard feelings. I’m not mad., I just don’t feel anything. It feels like a deflated balloon. And in some aspects I think this can be a. , Relieving feeling. , It’s this feeling of like, why am I even here? , , why am I putting any energy into this at all? What’s the point of the interaction? And so I wanna talk about that moment a little bit today because it is information, , and as we move forward and make decisions about our life and what’s right for us and what’s not right for us. Every piece of interaction or feeling or acknowledgement is information, and that helps us to have discernment so that we know how we want to move forward. A couple years ago. I was at an Abraham Hicks event, a live event, if you are familiar with Abraham Hicks. If you’re not, you can go just search through my podcasts. And I did a couple episodes describing what this is, but I went and saw Abraham Hicks. I think this is where I heard this it, or it was right around that time that I heard this on one of the many recordings of Abraham Hicks that you can find on YouTube. And what they said was, when you’re in a relationship. You are not, and of course Abraham Hicks said this much more eloquently than I’m going to. But it’s not just a relationship with the two of you. Like you think you’re in a room with the person you’re in a relationship with, and it’s you and them, but really it’s about you and your higher self, your inner knower. , That’s who you have to have the relationship with. You have to be so clear on who you are and what you want and what you stand for and all of those things. And they do too. And when you do that, it becomes clear if there is a relationship here at all. Otherwise you just become disinterested. And I remember that component of it is like, it’s not that you’re mad or sad or glad or whatever. There’s like a disinterested. The other night when I experienced this, I was like, this is what this is. It’s a deflation. It is. I’m so aligned with my inner knower that , being even in the room with the other, , it’s like you don’t want anything bad for them. You just are done putting any energy there at all. And I think that many times when we are frustrated. With somebody and we’re in a relationship. And when I say relationship, I’m gonna keep saying this. It could be friendship. So it could be friendship, it could be, , romantic relationship, right? But when there is frustration, right? When you’re like, oh my God, will you just listen to me? Or why don’t they see it the way I see it? All of that, when you’re frustrated, frustration, I think still has hope, like frustration carries an element. Of activation, right? Where you’re explaining or hoping or trying to be understood. , Frustration says , maybe if I say this differently or if I try one more time, or if I show up a little bit differently, like they’ll finally get it. They’ll finally get my perspective. And honestly, I may be wrong, but I know for myself, I don’t need somebody to agree with me. I really don’t, but I need them to step forward to try to understand my perspective. And if I don’t get, that’s where the disconnect is. It’s not when they’re just trying to convince me that I’m wrong. There’s frustration in that for me because there is still hope that they will step forward , and meet me where I’m at. Deflation I think is totally different. , I think happens when our nervous system just says, you know what, there is nothing left here to work with. , There’s nothing, there’s no charge. There’s no activation, there’s no fighting. There’s just a, like a disinterest. Going back to what Abraham Hicks says, you’ll just be like, I’m just not interested. , I just don’t care. And that is when your body says, oh, like this is totally empty. And I think that deflation happens a lot in relationships where there isn’t a lot of harm. And I’m gonna explain what I mean. I think that deflation can’t happen when there’s a lot of activation, when there’s a lot of harm, when there’s a lot of feeling of , I need you to see me and you’re not seeing me. I don’t think deflation can happen in that environment. I don’t think it happens when there’s yelling or, , obvious emotional abuse or anything like that. I think it is really subtle, and this is how come, I think sometimes we see this a lot in friendships because they’re less charged. So like when things just kind of fizzle out. And so I think , the shift here is when one person is speaking from something that is, I’m gonna say like important or meaningful to them, like it has meaning and the other person responds with. Really surfacey or a subject change or logistics, , it’s nothing hostile. , It’s not that person like shaming or blaming or fighting. None of it is loud, but nothing actually meets what was said and over time. This takes a lot of time, I think, but over time our nervous system starts to track this pattern. Like I speak, I, share something, right? Which that is relationship I share and I am met. So I share something and it’s just , goes nowhere, right? Like it just gets overstepped or bypassed or whatever, and eventually your nervous system stops. Reaching, it stops reaching for connection with that person because what you’re getting, your nervous system registers is not okay or not really holding any kind of attention. I think that is when deflation happens and when that happens, I think it can be really confusing. And again, I see this a lot with friendships because there’s not the same. I’m gonna say it this way. , There is an opportunity for that there to not have the same emotional charge. Sometimes there is, especially if you’ve had a friend for a long, long time. But most people have been taught that relationships end because of a conflict, like somebody did something wrong or there was a line that was crossed or something really dramatic happened. But I think deflation happens. When your nervous system is just so tired of not being met, that it just disengages and loses interest, and then the person starts thinking like, why am I even here? It’s not anger or contempt or any of those things. I think it’s a level of clarity. It’s really a realization, right, that this person is seeking. Connection without meeting me in a relationship. So the good news about all of , this is really a moment, I think, where boundaries become possible. And it doesn’t have to be some dramatic boundary. It doesn’t even have to be verbalized if you don’t want. It’s not a big confrontation. It is just a line in the sand that says, I’m done explaining. I’m done stepping up to meet you in a fault. Pretense of relationship and bonding. I am gonna make a decision to stop responding. It’s not that I want anything bad for you, it is just a level of alignment. And , I talked about discernment, it being a level of discernment, but going back to what? Abraham Hicks was saying, I think this really applies. It is this moment where you’re so aligned with who you are and what you want and what you stand for, and how you wanna be treated. That when someone can’t meet you there, you’re not mad. You just don’t care anymore. So this is the part that I want you to hear. If you feel like you’re getting to that place with somebody, it doesn’t mean that you’re cruel. You decide to disengage if you leave, because you no longer want to have to disappear to some extent in order to stay connected to that person. That is your nervous system taking really good care of you. Is your nervous system noticing when there’s a misalignment, and that is your nervous system actually becoming regulated around. Being without that presence. And so, , in my Instagram videos, I always do a north star, like something to ask yourself. So here’s a North Star in this. Or , just some thoughts to mull over it is if you’re thinking about somebody that you’re like, am I at that place? And honestly, if you’re thinking, am I at that place? You probably are. But when, here’s the question is, when was the last time. You felt deflated instead of frustrated. And I hear this all the time from women too, where they’re like, I’m in this marriage and , I just am at the place where I just don’t care. Like I don’t even wanna fight. I’ve just checked out. Very similar. I think true deflation comes when your nervous system’s totally regulated by being alone, , without that in your system. And then. That comes injected back into your system and you go, oh, this feels really unaligned. I think you’re right on the cusp of being like, what? I’m categorizing as deflated when you’re still in relationship, like deep in relationship. , Okay, here’s another question is after you interact with this person, do you feel expanded? , Do you feel seen and happy and engaged, or do you feel like, why does something feel off or empty? And here’s the tricky one. If you still feel hope that they’re going to meet you, you’re likely not in deflation yet. If they do not meet you and you’re not surprised at all, and you just feel like, eh, I didn’t even really expect it there, there’s your signal in deflation. So there’s no right answer in this, and I think. Relationships. When we think about, , from the womb to the tomb of relationships, you can be in any place, in any type of relationship. And when you get towards the end of that place where you feel like you’ve truly moved on, I think that’s when you feel the deflation. I think that’s when you’re like, you know what? I hope the best for you. I really do. And. My attention and energy is gonna go somewhere else. So I don’t think of deflation as failure. , I should do a whole show on this ’cause people comment sometimes on my posts on Instagram and ask about your vows. Don’t you care about your vows? And I have so many thoughts about this because. If you decide to leave a marriage because you’re being ignored, for example, your vows were broken long ago, like nobody signed up, nobody took vows to stay even while being completely ignored and, you know, avoided for weeks like the vows were broken. So I could do a whole show on that. But I think when we look about, think about this. It is sometimes the closure of relationships. , I will say all the time, this is how I feel. You can determine how you feel. The closure of relationships isn’t failure, it’s a completion. I think we come in contact with people for really short periods of time or long periods of time to help us get to the next level, to help us each grow in different ways and. Part of that growth continues on as the relationship ends or disintegrates or deflates. I think it is a marker, but I also think you know that anytime you’re in a relationship, there’s more than one of you. And so sometimes having things come to a close for you is the beginning of someone else’s journey of reflection and really. Moving through things, and if we can stop trying to be responsible for other people’s reactions and instead stay really true and honest to our path and what’s most aligned for us, then we can show up or choose to withdraw our attention and energy in the places where it’s really right and likely right for both parties. And sometimes I think the most self-respecting thing you can do is to just quietly stop participating in something that no longer meets you where you are. You know, we are all growing and changing in different ways, and I know sometimes we think, well, our partner hasn’t grown at all. And it may not seem like you’re growing in the same way, but they’re likely evolving in some ways, evolving away from you, perhaps, , instead of evolving towards you, which is what we all want when we have healthy, good relationships. So when you’re ready. The relationship will slowly deflate, whether it’s a friendship or a romantic partnership or anything in between. And when that happens, it is likely your nervous system acclimating to you. And when you no longer feel the pull to be heard or to be understood, it can actually be a huge relief. And that is how you, I think you live a really big life. Thanks so much for being here this week. I will see you next week if you have suggestions for podcasts. I know a lot of times people will leave me messages over on Instagram asking me questions. , I have such a hard time, it’s really difficult to answer. As you could imagine, , dozens of questions every day that are complex and nuanced, and so if you do have a podcast suggestion or a question that you want me to answer in a q and a, I am gonna try and do one of those too. We have. I think hundreds of questions right now that I have screenshotted so that we can anonymously answer those things, so hopefully we can find , a flow that works to be able to help everybody in the best way. All right, have a great week. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for joining me on The Art of Living Big. I hope today’s episode sparked something within you, maybe pushed you to dream a little bit bigger and live a little larger. Don’t forget to subscribe. Leave us a review and share this podcast with someone you know who might need a little inspiration today. You can find me over on Instagram at betsy pake and on my YouTube channel. Remember, the world is vast. Your potential is endless and your life. It’s yours to shape. Until next time, keep reaching, keep exploring and keep living big.