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On this edition of No Holds Barred, host Eddie Goldman once again spoke with Chris Baldwin AKA the Fight Goddess. We spoke with her by phone Thursday. With the coronavirus pandemic still raging and cases of Covid-19 continuing to surge in many places in the U.S., including in Southern California, she has had to change how she conducts personal training. "I had a mobile training business for the last 12 years here in Los Angeles, and that business came to a screeching halt once the lockdown order came from my Governer Newsom," she said, a lockdown, by the way, which she supports. She thus has had to shift gears and focus more on her Skullz punching bag product. "Now I've had to do more virtual training," mainly outside, she said. "It's taken a toll. It's definitely mentally, physically, emotionally, it's definitely taken a toll." While the pandemic has yet to subside, and there are still a record number of new cases in the U.S. almost every day now, the fight against racism, white supremacy, and police murders and brutality has mushroomed to all parts of the U.S. and around the world. One of the largest and most important of these marches and rallies took place on June 14 under the slogan "All Black Lives Matter," which she attended. The march focused on both the Black Lives Matter movement as well as the fight for LGBTQ rights. The "All Black Lives Matter" slogan was chosen for an "emphasis even not on LGB, but on the T. So our transgender family members are being murdered, our brothers and sisters are being murdered every single day at an astronomical rate." While some in this growing Black Lives Matter movement exclude transgender people or even are offensive to them, she opposes such a stance. "We can't have that," she said. "Your values, our values need to be aligned with unity." We also discussed the call by unified heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua for athletes to form a union to fight racism; the recent formation of the Players Alliance by over 100 Black current and former pro baseball players to fight racism and white supremacy inside and outside of baseball; how viable are sports without fans present; the controversy around a proposed Tyson Fury-Anthony Joshua fight being arranged by accused gangster Daniel Kinahan; and much, much more. (Photo by Marna Deitch.) The PodOmatic Podcast Player app is available for free, both for Android at Google Play, and for iOS on the App Store. The No Holds Barred theme song is called "The Heist", which is also available on iTunes by composer Ian Snow. No Holds Barred is sponsored by: LenneHardt.com, the home of Lenne Hardt, the legendary MMA and sports announcer, voice actor, singer, actress, and comedienne. Lenne is also known for her jazz vocals with her Lenne Hardt Jazz Cabaret Band. For more information, to book her, or to order a custom message from her, go to LenneHardt.com. Skullz Combat Sports Equipment, creator of the patented Skullz Double-End Bag, is the perfect punching bag for your combat sports training. Skullz Double-End Bags provide a realistic striking target, and help improve speed, distance, and timing skills. Hang it and hit it right out of the box! No pump required. Skullz Combat Sports Equipment - Advancing combat sports equipment for the next generation of fighters. For more information, go to https://instagram.com/skullzcombatsports and https://facebook.com/skullzcombatsports. Adolphina Studios. Original art prints and handcrafted fine jewelry. For more information, go to https://www.etsy.com/shop/AdolphinaStudios. Thanks, Eddie Goldman EddieGoldman.com

EP:22 The $45 Million Medical Debt with Victor Martinez Welcome to Debt-Proof Living with Mary Hunt. Today's episode is brought to you by Mvelopes. That's M, like Mary, v-e-l-o-p-e-s. Mvelopes uses the tried and true envelope budget system. All in one easy app. Give every dollar a purpose. Mvelopes.com.  And now, here's Mary.    Mary Hunt: [00:00:28] Hi, and welcome to another episode of Debt-Proof Living. I am so happy that you joined me again today, and guess what we're going to talk about? Debt. Yeah, that's really what we talk about a lot. How to get out of debt, how to stay out of debt and live a life where you are not bound by all of the trappings that happen so we get into debt. So, um, many of you have, have read Debt-Proof Living. You've been with me for many, many years. So I just want to do a little bit of a review talking about debt and what it does to our lives. You know, basically it takes away our options and the deeper in debt we become, the fewer options we have. That's really, really scary, but the good news is that you can get out of debt. You know, my story, you know, that I got out of an awful lot of debt. I am,  I'm just so struck by the fact that these days debt is so easy to get into, and I'm not talking about emergency kinds of debt. I'm talking about credit card debt, you know, I just don't have the money today. I'm sure I'll have it next week. So I'll just put it on a credit card. That's probably the most, most dangerous because it's so easy to get into. Society has, our culture has really put a stamp of approval on it. But then there's other kinds of debt. There's a student loans, student loan debt, which has become very, very popular. And, and then there's, you know, buying a new home and then you've got the home debt and then you've got all kinds of things. You know, I hear from people all the time who are having trouble paying their property taxes. So they put that on payment and then they put their, their, uh, federal income taxes that they owe on payments. Cause they just don't have haven't and pretty soon it just, it builds. It's crazy how debt can take over our lives. And for a lot of people, when they're in this kind of situation, there's things called medical emergencies. That's what we're going to talk about today is medical debt. How does that affect their lives? You know, statistically, I can tell you this. If you look it up, if you Google it, you're going to find out that medical debt is the leading cause of bankruptcy in our country. Well, you can kind of figure that out because if people are already in debt, boy, getting hit with a big 30, $40,000 medical debt, and really be the straw that tips over and puts you into that horrible, horrible situation of, of bankruptcy having to make those kinds of choices. Um, one estimate is that more than one in four Americans have trouble paying a recent medical bill. I can understand that. Um, And, and sometimes those medical bills get pushed because not paying them is not going to give you a consequence as great is not paying your rent or not paying your car payment. And some research says 32% of American workers have medical debt. And over half have defaulted on it. That's not good for a medical industry in this country to having people default and having to go through all of that kind of thing. So the last stats statistic I'm going to tell you is that among Americans with medical debt, 15% owed $10,000 or more. That is a huge heavy, heavy burden. I've got the most exciting news to tell you about a great, great story. I read about this in the paper. I did, and it hit the news big time and the headline was a church, a church paid off medical debt of many of their parishoners. It hit, it hit every news station and it was just fantastic. I read about it and I was so,  I was so excited because I wanted to know more, you know, all the questions. How did the church choose who got to have their paid off? How did that happen? I mean, did you have a lot of new members all of a sudden? So here's the exciting part. I don't have to wonder. And you don't either, because today my very special guest, from Cincinnati, Ohio is Victor Martinez. He is on staff and the Community Development Director for Crossroads Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. And I have a feeling you're just going to love hearing from him. Welcome, welcome Victor! So glad to have you today on my podcast.    Victor Martinez: [00:04:55] Thank you. Very excited to be here with you today.    Mary Hunt: [00:04:58] Um, I just want to set this up and then you're going to tell us all about it, but I've got a million questions. I'll, I'll try to control myself, Crossroads received some BIG media coverage in February. I just told you about that. I loved it. Crossroads Church was able to work in their community to get more than $45 million of medical debt forgiven in their area. I want you to tell me all about it. Can you just set this up for us a little bit? How this came to be, how you got involved, how you happen to be on staff there and all of that. We want to know all of it, Victor.    Victor Martinez: [00:05:40] Yeah, absolutely. Um, well, I'll, I'll start with a little bit of the background of, um, how did I come about to be in this team? So, um, I'm not a pastor, I'm not a social worker by trade. I went to school for engineering. So I graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and I worked several years in the corporate worldand as an engineer, making diapers and making also cleaning products like, like Swiffer, um, and that kind of stuff for a company called Proctor&Gamble. And about a year and a half ago, I moved to actually work on staff full time at Crossroads Church. And at that point, then my job became  looking for opportunities in which we can be part of helping our city with different things. And medical debt is something that is not only affecting our city. Like you share some of these statistics. It's actually affecting our entire nation. And it's unfortunate, because for most of the debt, and I'll say maybe all of the medical debt. We don't choose to get sick, it's just happens to us. So it's just very difficult situation. And, um, we heard of a church in Indiana. Actually, we saw it on the news. that they wiped out $4 million of medical debt. And we actually thought, well, how much debt does the people in Cincinnati do people in Cincinnati, half. And we found out that actually $65 million of medical debt and just the city of Cincinnati alone. And we felt we needed to do something about it. So we talked with our senior leaders, our Senior Pastor Brian Tome. He was super excited. He wanted to make this happen very quickly. So we got to work on it.  Alright, this    Mary Hunt: [00:07:19] brings me to a big question here. The church helped to pay off medical debt to the tune of $45 million. Does that mean that Crossroads Church has a bank account with that much extra money in it. And you just wrote out checks to all these people's debtors.    Victor Martinez: [00:07:38] Yeah, absolutely not. No. Like most churches our pockets are not super deep. There's a few things that happened here. So one is, uh, we partnered with an organization called RIP Medical Debt and they have been working with a lot of organizations on paying off medical debt for individuals that, um, many of them are not able to pay it off. And they are able to purchase , and so acquire debt for a ratio about one for every hundred dollars of debt, they, they're able to purchase it for $1. So 1:100 is, is the ratio. So that's one aspect. That we don't have to invest $46 million to get rid of $46 million of medical debt. And then the other, the other aspect is that really, um, we didn't usethe budget of the church for doing this. This was really the people in our community that stepped up to give of their money, to come alongside  folks that are, we're not able to pay their debt, to pay it off. And I think that's really the, the thing to highlight in the story is the generosity of, of people. Um, when, when we know that there are people that need help, that are hurting our community really just, just rallied around them. So it was very beautiful to see that.    Mary Hunt: [00:08:56] That's amazing. So you were able to, in essence, I suppose, just putting it simply to negotiate the debt for these people. So if they owed a thousand dollars, the hospital or the doctors were willing to accept $100 to pay that off, is that, is that what you're saying?   Victor Martinez: [00:09:19] Yeah. And that's typically how there's this industry works in terms of, um, when hospitals or places find out that people are not able to pay the debt. They will go and sell this to a collections agency. Um, so if we're in debt, we probably have seen a letter in our mail or two that say, Hey, you owe this debt. This is how much you have to pay. It affects your credit and all that kind of stuff that, you know, I'm pretty sure that, you know, a lot about. So in a similar way, this organization, RIP is able to purchase this debt, but instead of going after people to ask them to pay for it, they go after people that actually can pay it for other people. And that's what we did.  Mary Hunt: [00:10:00] I imagine it was Christians helping to with the Bible tells us where to bear one burdens. So that is a beautiful thing. Can you imagine if our whole health system was based on that, that those who are healthy, I guess technically that's how insurance works, the healthy, uh, cover the costs of those who are sick. But that's truly amazing.   Julie Emerson: [00:10:26] Let's take a quick break for just a minute. Hi, I'm Julie producer of Debt-Proof Living with Mary Hunt. You know, many of us have the experience in our lives of living paycheck to paycheck and many people. I know it well, have a difficult time following a budget. But not managing our money as a leading cause of stress in our lives.That's why Mvelopes created a simple, affordable envelope budgeting program that just works. Mvelopes helps you take control of your future by giving every dollar a purpose, every dollar, a purpose, people who use Mvelopes see monthly savings of 10% of their spending within six weeks of getting started and they report less anxiety. Now, currently Mvelopes is extending their free trial to 60 days for all of their subscriptions. So there's never been a better time to start on a new path. Just click the link in the show notes and sign up today. Risk-free .Okay. Now let's get back to our conversation.    Mary Hunt: [00:11:32] Now I've got some other questions for you. Alright. I'm sitting in a service and I know that Crossroads Church is huge. You have multiple campuses and a big organization. So here I'm just picturing myself sitting in this beautiful big auditorium. Personally way down by my debt situation. And I read in the, in the bulletin or in the program, or I hear someone from the platform say that we're going into this campaign or this event where others are, we're going to reach out and we're going to bear one another's burdens and we're going to help pay off medical debt. My ears would perk up and Whoa, that would be so amazing. So how did you decide who would be qualified or who would be eligible for this program or was it open ended and anyone who had debt? It would be paid off. I don't quite understand that part.   Victor Martinez: [00:12:40] Yeah, absolutely multiple things here. One, uh, I think to answer the bulk of the question, which is how to, how do we know who we're going to bless? Um, we, we didn't know who, who was going to receive a blessing. So this information is confidential and we didn't have access to it. We just knew that there was an amount of money that was outstanding in debt out there. This is where our partner RIP Medical Debt comes in and they handle all that portion. And. So we, we, we determine, Hey, we have different campuses in different location. We want to see what's in debt around these locations. And we're just going to see how much we fundraise and how much they were able to pay off. And that's how it was. So, um, In the case of that, there were somebody who had medical debt, for example, in our community, that said, Hey, can I, can I be a part of this? Which had happened. Which it happened. Um, We were not in a position to necessarily, like, purchase their debt just the way this program works. So what we did is we many years ago, Uh, we started a, um, place in Cincinnati called the City Link Center and it was with the intent of helping people get out of poverty, specifically, uh, fight generational poverty. Uh, so we have a lot of resources for folks that are going through different hardships to, to get some access to tools and help. So for those folks that were not able to be blessed through, through that program. We had an opportunity for, to come alongside them. And I think many times some of this debt leads to other challenges. So really the purpose of City Link there was to just partner with them, be there with them, for them to meet, uh, to help them with their needs.   Mary Hunt: [00:14:27] That is just wonderful. Part of my Debt-Proof Living program and what I've taught people and have led people out of debt. The absolute essence are these five elements of Debt-Proof Living and one of them is giving., How important it is that we all learn to give because that's what kills greed in our lives. And previous podcasts, my listeners know, if you've listened to The Seven Money Rules Series, part of everything you bring into your life, everything is handed to you. All of your income. Part of it needs to be given away. And that, that is amazing to me. That's the way one of the ways to stay out of debt is also in a way to get out of debt. And so, um, when I think of Crossroads Church teaching stewardship, that we should be givers. How important is that to your whole program at the church?    Victor Martinez: [00:15:24] Yeah, I, it's very important. Um, it's a big biblical principle. Uh, you know, the, the Bible is full of wisdom. There's just a lot of different topics that you could pick and you can, you can just get some good insights into, and for those of us that are believers, these, these wisdoms become principles of life and how we want to live. So one of them is. giving, to your point. Um, and we talk a lot about the principle of tithing, which builds discipline. You know, it's not just a faith thing, it's also a math thing. You know, it builds discipline in terms of how can, can we do this? Um, what also is you alluded to this it's this concept of us giving away the things that we have because ultimately eventually actually either we will give them more or when we kick the bucket, you know, they, they go away, you know, they go out to somebody else. So we, I say this is something that is true for. I will say that from my understanding of the Christian world. But even I see this in other faith expressions, how the importance of, of giving money out to other people and not even knowing what happens. And that was actually the context of this initiative. We were, we were talking about money. We spent six weeks talking about money in a church, which is it. We don't do often, as you can imagine, is a. It's a very interesting topic to have in the church setting. In that weekend in particular, where we announced that we were going to, to try to see how much money we could come up with. We were talking about the power of multiplication and how, when we give the blessings that we receive, when God, um, uh, from, from God specifically, When we give away, we have no expectation on what's coming back. When we do it for the, from the depths of our heart. And not because we think we're going to receive something, but just because, um, that's what we're called to do. We're called to serve the least of these. And, and I, and I think that's probably one of the things I've made this so impactful is that our folks really genuinely, from the core of their heart, they had a desire to bless other people because they know that they are blessed.    Mary Hunt: [00:17:38] My producer and I were talking before we started the show. And she told me that, um, well, first of all, I absolutely believe that it's impossible to out-give God. Giving is, is one of those things in our lives that we can't really explain how in giving we receive. But I know that proven it over and over and over again.  But she mentioned that that your pastor and the pastoral staff kind of put out there a very unusual money back guarantee.   Victor Martinez: [00:18:07] Yeah.    Mary Hunt: [00:18:07] Can you tell us about that?   Victor Martinez: [00:18:11] Yeah, absolutely. It is. Um, it is an interesting and different concept for sure. But, um, yes, we did that also within the context of that series that we were talking, actually, it was inspired from a, from a book called The Blessed Life. And, um, we were inviting people to really explore the concept of tithing. Tithing is counter-cultural and the concept of giving, giving money. And we are going to receive more blessings sounds, counter intuitive. Like we are told in our, in our American culture that we just need to accumulate money. That's, you know, that's what it's designed for. So we just put it out there for folks to say, Hey, if, if really you're afraid that, um, this is not gonna work out. Then we want to make sure that you get to experience it first hand. So what we said is that if you want to explore tithing for three months, and at the end of three months, you see that there are no changes to your life. Some of them could be financial, but others things that are a little bit harder to measure, like maybe relationships improve, or maybe other things. If you don't see any of that, there's no need for, for us keeping your money. We will return it. And I will say that I am not maybe we, we returned money to one person out of the hundreds of people that tried it. Because people were experiencing life transformation when they step into that space   Mary Hunt: [00:19:33] God keeps His promises. He says I will bless you,    Victor Martinez: [00:19:37] Absolutely!   Mary Hunt: [00:19:38] So anyway, I want to stand up and share, this is the best story ever. I just absolutely love that. So Victor, tell me, um, did you and your team at Crossroads, uh, the size of your church alone tells me that you are very influential in that city.  And how, how does Crossroads reach beyond their campus to affect, to bless the community?    Victor Martinez: [00:20:03] Yeah, absolutely. Well, this COVID situation has been really interesting in the fact that we have been blessed in being able to share our what we know of, of the, you know, of our faith through mediums like social media or TV. So, um, we almost, we might today, who knows, be at over 500,000 followers on Facebook, for example.  When this all started we're maybe at 30,000., Which is, that it's, that in itself is just crazy. And a lot of those folks are people from all over the nation. In fact, that is a lot of people, the world that are just being able to, to see that. So, um, W we, we think we are, you know, we are giving the opportunity to really, um, bring good news and really share with, um, what does really following Jesus looks like, because with the same token, there, there are other things out there that are, unfortunately, not, that are positive that are, that are going on.  But that is let us one thing that it's one way that we're communicating across multiple people. But also since very early in our, in the foundation of the Crossroads, our Crossroads Church, we have always been looking at how can we bless people in other places. So we, we started a hospice in South Africa. It was the biggest at the time, for example, many years ago. And we, you know, our community put in a lot of money to make that happen. We still today, we invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in helping fight sex trafficking in India. And we have efforts in other countries,  Nicaragua, Bolivia. Uh, and I'm pretty sure I'm missing others. Puerto Rico. Where we're, we're really trying to make our resources available for, for those people to be able to, um, solve other basic needs, but also get to hear the good news. So. Yeah, that that's something that we're, we try very intentional beyond the, the United States, but also within the city, we have this example of medical debt. During COVID. Our community again contributed over $230,000 that were used for supporting medical professionals in our city so they have access to childcare, uh, at the beginning of this pandemic, when everything was being closed. Food for people that needed that. And I could go on and on. There's different examples. And every single time it has been our people saying yes to giving for the benefit of other people that they might not even know.    Mary Hunt: [00:22:35] Wonderful. It's just fabulous. And I think that that is carrying out what Jesus told us to do. Care for each other. Share the gospel. To care for those in poverty. The  widows, especially.  I'm thinking about he people who were so blessed having this amount just removed from the shoulders. Does, does Crossroads then have a program, a plan? I suppose many, many churches do have. um, where you're helping people learn to get out of debt and to stay out. Because debt is a horrible thief. You know the Bible says that the lender becomes the master of the borrower. That's a horrible position to be in. So can you tell us, I mean, you just didn't. I hope he just didn't leave the people here. They probably still come to your church and it wasn't a wonderful opportunity. It must be to help them then learn to manage money.   Victor Martinez: [00:23:34] Yeah, we have definitely programs to talk about finances and how to help people with their finances. Um, we're also, um, talk about it through the lens of, um, our faith. Also, we, we, we bring that to that conversation, like you said, you know, um, That is, it's a form of bondage. And in fact, one of the reasons why we're so attracted to doing this is because when we gave out the money, we didn't know who this was going to, the person that received the letter in the mail, um, they didn't know who paid this debt. And in a way we feel this is exact same thing that Jesus,did for us, even before we knew who he was, he paid our debt. And so we thought what a great opportunity to have really. Share what that, what that looks like in a physical, tangible way today. And that's what we tried doing. So, yeah.    Mary Hunt: [00:24:27] Fantastic. You know, I've, I've, um, been to Cincinnati a couple of times, myself. Usually it was a speaking tour too, or something like that. I don't really know anybody who lives here,    Victor Martinez: [00:24:38] well, I was goining to say... now you know me. So when you're around, uh, now you can claim that, you know, somebody,    Mary Hunt: [00:24:44] But, I'll tell you something. I know something very, very special about  your city...chili!   Victor Martinez: [00:24:50] Well, you put me in a tough spot in terms of that chili. This is a controversial topic. Um, yes, Chili is an important part of our city. I wouldn't say it's the highlight, but again, I was born and raised in Puerto Rico. Um, my concept of chili was different. so, you know, some people love it and some people don't, um, I've got, I've grown to like it at this point. So.   Mary Hunt: [00:25:13] That's good, that's good. Well, when I was there, that the host of the in fact I spoke at a, another church. It wasn't Crossroads, but Vineyard Church. And they took me out for, for a meal after the service. And they wanted me, to show, to show me, Cincinnati's s best. And so they, they preface this by, we're going to take you someplace and we want you to try something. You may not like it. That's okay if you don't like it. We just want you to know that we're really crazy about what they call Cincinnati chili, or I guess it's really Skyline Chili, which has become known as Cincinnati chili. I, I sat there and I, it looked fabulous. You know how it, how they serve at Victor. It's just, it's amazing. And my listeners, just  Google, Cincinnati chili. You'll know what I'm talking about. So I take a bite, because it looks all the world like spaghetti with meat sauce. It's served over noodles. And so I take a bite, you know, you want to be kind with your host and all.I'm in a public place. You take a bite at this, and it was such a shock because it was nothing what I expected, ever. I thought how can I get out of it? How could I not swallow? And how can I get out of this place fast? But the most remarkable thing happened. I took a second bite. I needed a second bite and I mean, by the third or fourth bite, well, you've got, gotta try Cincinnati chili. It's just absolutely amazing. I could not finish what was for the lunch. So I actually took it in a  to-go container and took it back to my hotel room, which was kind of silly because I don't believe I've ever eaten anything  I had left over in a hotel room. I mean, just honestly, the middle of the night I woke up and my salivary glands were going crazy and I got up and I reheated that in the microwave. And to this day, I tell you what. I love that stuff and I've learned. I ended out in the way I live in Colorado. We don't have skyline chili here, but I've learned how to make it myself...yes, because people, can we come over and ask, can we come over and have Cincinnati chili?  I don't give my secrets that I buy the spice packet online. So yes. Wonderful church. Well, at least two that I know of now many.   Victor Martinez: [00:27:35] Yeah. Many wonderful people. I think more importantly. And yes, a good chili. So we'll, I'll give you that.    Mary Hunt: [00:27:42] Next time I'm there, we're going out for chili.  Okay, Victor?    Victor Martinez: [00:27:45] Yes, we are.   Mary Hunt: [00:27:46] One last question for all of us. Where does, where does Crossroads go from here? What is on your radar? Where, where are you and where are you headed?    Victor Martinez: [00:27:56] Yeah. Yeah, that, that's a great, that's a great question. You know, our, our mission is a connecting seekers to a community of Christ followers that are changing the world. And, um, and that's what we want to do. We really want to change the world and, um, There are certain areas that we know we're called to right now. But we also, there's a bunch that will be going into, that we have no idea today. Um, we are, one of the things that I, I think, uh, you know, we will see soon is we're very committed to racial reconciliation. That's, um, that's an important topic, uh, today in our country and we are. We're increasing our investment in that area of bringing more people together to have a conversation, um, that hopefully leads to some healing.So that's one area for sure that we see. I don't think we're done with medical debt. So stay tuned for that. Uh, maybe you'll come back and talk again about what part two will look like. I don't know. I can't make a commitment on behalf of Crossroads at this point, but I see that. And I say, we, we will continue to invest in some of these places that I share abroad, fighting sex trafficking in India and locally, um, and other things. So, uh, we'll see what, what we'll bring. But one thing is for sure is that we will continue going. We will continue being the church, um, and we won't stop until we're done.    Mary Hunt: [00:29:23] I just thank you so much for being with me today. This has been wonderful. And I would just like to close with this . God's word tells us, tells us, if you will just trust me and that's the problem. I think that's why we're so hesitant to give. God says, trust me. Trust me and see if I will not open up the windows of heaven. He'll pour a blessing on you is that you cannot even handle. It will be so great. I think that, that you, Victor, your team and all the people, that church, that amazing church in Cincinnati, Crossroads Community Church, I think that you are testimony to God keeping his promise. It looks like a blessing has been poured out on you. And with that blessing comes responsibility and we just can't wait to see what comes out of this. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for following the Lord and for being such a wonderful instrument of his grace and mercy. Thank you, Victor.    Victor Martinez: [00:30:26] Thank you,  Mary.  Julie Emerson: [00:30:30] Debt-Proof Living with Mary Hunt was created and hosted by, Mary Hunt. Produced by Julie Emerson, with Harold Hunt, Executive Producer. Save time. Save money. Every Day.  Make it easy on yourself! Become part of the community and subscribe for free at www.everydaycheapskate.com. That's where you will find all the ways you can follow Mary, Everyday Cheapskate, and Debt-Proof Living. Thanks for listening! 

Catherine Ingram joins Tahnee on the podcast today. Catherine Ingram is an international dharma teacher and former journalist specialising in empathy and activism. Catherine is the author of several books including; In the Footsteps of Gandhi, Passionate Presence, A Crack in Everything, and the long-form essay “Facing Extinction.” Catherine has published over 100 articles and interviews throughout the 1980s and early 1990s with leading thinkers and activists of our time. Catherine and Tahnee take a deep dive today, sharing a beautiful conversation around the philosophical landscape of activism, empathy, Buddhism, dharma practice, mindfulness and sensitivity. Tahnee and Catherine explore: The mindfulness industry and how it is often misguided. The 1970's Dharma movement. Catherine's experience of Buddhist meditation and philosophy. The nature and burden of sensitivity - "if you're not at least a little bit sad, you're not paying attention" - Catherine Ingram The relationship between grief and love. Activism, empathy and compassion. The themes of Catherine's essay; Facing Extinction. The Resilient Byron project.   Who is Catherine Ingram? Catherine Ingram is an international dharma teacher with communities in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Since 1992 Catherine has led Dharma Dialogues, which are public events that encourage the intelligent use of awareness within one’s personal life and in one’s community. Catherine leads numerous silent retreats each year in conjunction with Dharma Dialogues. Catherine is president of Living Dharma, an educational non-profit organisation founded in 1995. Catherine has been the subject of numerous print, television, and radio interviews and is included in several anthologies about teachers in the West. A former journalist specialising in issues of consciousness and activism, Catherine is the author of two books of nonfiction, which are published in numerous languages: In the Footsteps of Gandhi: Conversations with Spiritual/Social Activists (Parallax Press, 1990) and Passionate Presence: Seven Qualities of Awakened Awareness (Penguin Putnam, 2003); and one novel, A Crack in Everything (Diamond Books, 2006). In February 2019, Catherine published the long-form essay “Facing Extinction” as a free link, an essay she updates every month as new data emerges about the crises we face. Over a fifteen-year period beginning in 1982, Catherine published approximately 100 articles on empathic activism and served on the editorial staffs of New Age Journal, East West Journal, and Yoga Journal. For four years Catherine also wrote the Life Advice column for Alternatives Magazine based in Oregon. Since 1976, Catherine has helped organise and direct institutions dedicated to meditation and self-inquiry and, more recently, human and animal rights. Catherine is a co-founder of Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts (1976). Catherine also co-founded the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) in The Hague, Netherlands (1991) and is a member of the Committee of 100 for Tibet. For six years (1988-1994), Catherine served as a board director for The Burma Project, dedicated to raising international awareness about the struggle for democracy in Burma. Catherine is currently serving on the board of Global Animal Foundation, which works on behalf of the world’s animals.   Resources:Catherine's Website Catherine Facing Extinction Essay In The Deep Podcast Coronavirus: Courage and Calm PodcastCatherine's Books The Resilient Byron Project   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Tahnee: (00:01) Hi everybody and welcome to the SuperFeast podcast. Today I'm really excited to have Catherine Ingram here. She's the author of several books. Footsteps to Gandhi, Passionate Presence, A Crack in Everything and this incredible essay called Facing Extinction that you can find online. We'll link to it in the show notes. Catherine's an amazing former journalist as well so she's spoken to so many wonderful people and it seems to be this real emphasis on compassion and humanity and activism and empathy. And I know she's published over 100 articles and interviews throughout the '80s and '90s. I don't know if those are all available online, Catherine, but maybe people can have a little dig. Since '92, Catherine has been leading international retreats and public sessions known as Dharma Dialogues. I've been fortunate to go to some of those in Lennox and in Byron Bay. They're just really beautiful ways to check in and connect to this deeper meaning and purpose of life and our own inner compass toward well being. Our passions and all those kinds of things. She's also served on the board of numerous human rights organisations, as a board member of Global Animal and also is part of a newly founded organisation called Resilient Byron, which I'm excited to talk to her about today.   Tahnee: (01:19) Catherine, so busy. I know you're going to be doing some Dharma Dialogues online digitally, which is really exciting as well. Thanks so much for being here today. We're really excited.   Catherine Ingram: (01:32) Thank you for inviting me.   Tahnee: (01:33) So we've been touching on a lot of big themes lately on the podcast, which I think this time obviously takes us all deeper into ourselves for sure. I know that a lot of your work has focused on these big themes. Has that been something that you've been interested in forever or were you more drawn into these things over time? Can you give us a little sense of how Catherine becomes Catherine?   Catherine Ingram: (02:01) Well I fell into the study of Buddhist meditation from a pretty young age. I started doing retreats, attending retreats in 1974 and it became basically my world. I helped found a big centre in Massachusetts called Insight Meditation Society, which is one of the famous mindfulness centres in the world. But at the time, we were just this ragtag band of hippies. It was a very small scene in those days. Really small. We all knew each other, everywhere. I know a lot of the very famous mindfulness teachers, the older ones. They're old friends. I was in that study and in that practise and in that organisation for 17 years until about '91. Along the way, I became interested in how does a mindful life or an empathic life or a life based on loving kindness, how does it show up for anybody else? It's all well and good that we're all having a fine time but how does it matter in the world?   Catherine Ingram: (03:11) That became a focus for me in journalism. I decided to become a journalist in order to have access to what I considered the people who could be my teachers, my mentors in that new field of study, that is activism with a consciousness or empathic base. I thought to myself, why would any of those people want to talk with me or hang out with me? And I thought, well they would if I were a journalist and if I could publish their words. So I became a journalist, I kind of backed into it with a side motivation, which was, I wanted access [inaudible 00:03:50] I wanted to study with.. And that's what it gave me. So for the next 12 years, I focused entirely on that. I published, as you mentioned, many, many articles in the days... It was pre-Internet [inaudible 00:04:05] available, a few of them we did manage to scan and put online. I did that for all those years writing for print magazines and then I began having sessions myself, having meditative, initially dialogue-based meditation sessions. In other words, part of it would be silent but also it would be a dialogue format to keep people on a certain frequency, and in conjunction with silent retreats that I led all over the world. Well not in Russia. Not in Africa.   Tahnee: (04:52) Not in every single country on the planet.   Catherine Ingram: (04:56) Not every country. Not even every continent but I did that and still do, although we're in lockdown at the moment. Yeah, I've been focused on these matters, the confluence of activism and empathic action that has a dedication to the greater good. It's always been important to me. I remember long ago, I heard a Tibetan teacher talk about the two wings of the bird. One is wisdom and one is compassion and that it can fall off... I'm sorry, no, that got... That's how a bird flies. But I've heard other teachers talk about wisdom and compassion being like two different types of temperament and I've always thought, how can there be wisdom without compassion? It doesn't make sense. How can there be any kind of wisdom that doesn't include compassion? Since I was quite young in my career, I've always wanted the understanding that your awareness includes and is expansive. I'm a bit allergic to systems of thought and philosophy that are very self motivated. Self improvement, self wellbeing.   Tahnee: (06:33) You must love Instagram. Just kidding.   Catherine Ingram: (06:36) I don't use Instagram and I'm also [inaudible 00:06:38] social media in general, though I'm forced to a little tiny bit because we have to-   Tahnee: (06:44) Necessarily evil unfortunately.   Catherine Ingram: (06:46) Exactly, yeah. That's why I don't have an Instagram account.   Tahnee: (06:51) Could I just quickly... I just want to grab on that because this is honestly my biggest bugbear with how even mindfulness and all of these things have been taken and turned into almost competitions or ways of making yourself better than somebody else.   Catherine Ingram: (07:07) It's so co-opted and it's gotten corporate. I mean the Buddha would roll over in his grave if he had one. Yeah, it's really devolved over the years, I have to say. It's kind of tagged onto everything you can think of. It's very, very different than what I knew it to be back in the day. I studied with a lot of the older Asian teachers who've all since died. It was a very monastic scene back in those days but now it's a very different animal. I have to say though, there are other ways of understanding presence and how to use your attention and in those ways of understanding and of deep immersion, it would be anathema to your spirit to co-opt that understanding and use it for any kind of mercenary production. I think that there are ways to understand a dharmic life and to live a dharmic life and, as I say, use your mind and your heart in ways that in at least the original Buddhist teachings and language, it would be totally commensurate with all of that.   Tahnee: (08:53) So I mean, how do you get to Buddhism? I mean, I don't know exactly how old you are but I assume it wasn't readily available to study Buddhist practice. No.   Catherine Ingram: (09:09) Very obscure in those days. What happened though was this Tibetan teacher named Trungpa Rinpoche came along and he had been living in the UK. He was an exile from Tibet. He'd been living in the UK and he was a very hip... He was young and he was extremely hip and very interested in Western culture and in Western arts and all kinds of arts and he founded something called Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado in 1974 and he gathered there, all of the biggest named teachers of the day. Now they were still obscure and they had relatively small scenes, each one individually, like Ram Dass and all these people. Even though eventually that became a much larger scene, it wasn't at the time, and some of the big name Buddhist teachers who were unknown, totally unknown in those days, they were invited. He managed through his scene, his students, to get hold of all these people and gather them in this one spot to found this Buddhist university called Naropa Institute and I heard about it and I went. I decided to attend and I was 22 years old and I was in Europe. I was actually going to India, I thought. I was in Europe travelling around on my way to India.   Catherine Ingram: (10:38) I didn't know what I was doing exactly. I wanted to go find a teacher in India but I heard about Naropa and I thought, all these teachers are going to be right there in one place in my own country. I should go there. It's a long, long story. That story alone of being there that summer, in the midst of all of that. Like imagine, I used to-   Tahnee: (11:00) Be wild.   Catherine Ingram: (11:02) I use this way of describing it. Imagine like a Burning Man but that was only about Dharma and only about philosophy and only about these deeper arts. That's what it felt like for a whole entire summer. 10 weeks. That was a real turning point because there I met my whole community and I fell into a particular strain of the... There were so many different types of teachings there. They weren't all Buddhist. There were just a few of the Buddhists. There was [inaudible 00:11:34], the Tibetan Buddhists, the Zen Buddhist and then this tiny little scene led by Joseph Goldstein. He had a class, a tiny, little, dinky class called the essential Buddhism. Hardly anyone came but I walked into his class and I just felt at home. He was my teacher and also later on, my boyfriend. So that's how I began Buddhist practise. I became incredibly immersed in those teachings, especially I heard the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, the truth of the unsatisfactoriness of existence and I just thought, sign me up. I get it. Anyway, that was my world for a long time. I basically just went from retreat to retreat. I was one of the managers of the retreats. I helped found the centre, as I said, that we did in 1976.   Catherine Ingram: (12:44) I went to Asia. I finally did go to Asia after that first attempt. I went overland from Italy to India in a time when you could still do that and I was gone for... We were all over Southeast Asia studying in different temples with different of our teachers. I did that for a year. I went back many, many times to India. I went to India 10 times over the next 20 years. It was a whole... What to say, you could write a book on just that. Or I could, I guess.   Tahnee: (13:24) Well I think that's the dream. I know in this area. There's so many young people looking for that authentic, and I'm using air quotes but the authentic experience, which I mean really that generation of yours was, there were so many socio political and cultural reasons that those experiences were able to be had.   Catherine Ingram: (13:47) We were in a moment in history where our music was all about that. It was a whole, it was a zeitgeist that was happening among the counter culture but it wasn't as huge as people think. Certainly not the dharma slice of it but what was called the psychedelic generation, it wasn't as ubiquitous as people think but it was powerful and we all knew each other and hung out with each other. It was a really great, great time and then I fell into having my own sessions, as I said, and that's been really wonderfully rich. Just the intimacy of that and sharing a dharma life with people and having those kinds of conversations, I feel so privileged because I feel like I have of what you might call deathbed conversations but they're not on the deathbed, although sometimes. It's basically... Well the name of my podcast channel is In The Deep.   Tahnee: (14:57) You go there.   Catherine Ingram: (15:01) It just feels like you can stay on a certain channel of a shared frequency that is in the deep. I find that's, for me, the most satisfying kinds of conversation.   Tahnee: (15:19) Have you found it hard to integrate... Again, I'm using air quotes, a real life with that kind of desire for that deep connection? I've heard you speak in Dharma Dialogue that your family were not... They were quite conservative, I think, if I'm remembering correctly. Have you found it difficult to connect back to your lineage and to the real world? Because you do inhabit this space that is not... There's a dearth of this kind of communication in our culture. People don't want deep. They want instant news and 24 hour Fox.   Catherine Ingram: (15:57) That is why I always sought out the quieter places, the quieter minds, you could say. Those kinds of conversations and the power of sangha, of the dharmic community. I've always gravitated to that kind of crowd. In the work that I do, by definition, that's the kind of conversation... What I do is called Dharma Dialogues and so I have certainly my fair share of that kind of interaction and I spend a lot of time alone in quiet. I live a very retreat-like life. When I do have conversation, it tends to be about the deeper matters. It's not that we always have to be philosophical or anything. I mean, I'm happy to talk about the latest drama that we all might be watching. I enjoy that tremendously but because I don't have a lot of chit chat possibility in my life really, because I live alone, and my work is about this in the deep conversation, the conversations I do have tended to be in the nature such as the one we are having now, about what matters and what are the priorities and how does one live? What structure of life in your creative expression do you want to offer? That's been a very fortunate component.   Catherine Ingram: (17:50) Regarding my family and of course other people in our lives that we may not be on the same page with, I've learned over the many years to just find points of connection that we do connect on. They can be very ordinary things and that's fine. I love ordinary also. I frame it and I spoke about it in my book Passionate Presence, as finding the language of the heart that you can intuit, you can sense, especially if you're quiet inside, you can sense the language that someone might be able to hear and you try to stay on those topics. Just as you do instinctively, as we all do instinctively when, say, we're with a child and whether it's a five year old child or a 10 year old child, you adjust your language a bit, or someone who you sense is highly intelligent but is speaking... English is their second language and they're not super fluent in it so you adjust. Instinctively you adjust how you're speaking so that they'll understand all your words.   Catherine Ingram: (19:15) It's like that. You just have a radar that is sensing. The whole purpose of the conversation is to meet in the heart. It's not to just impose your great opinions.   Tahnee: (19:35) That really makes me think because so many people are like, they need to change, the world needs to change and so often, it's us, sadly that needs to change.   Catherine Ingram: (19:48) [inaudible 00:19:48] though, that way.   Tahnee: (19:52) I mean I think about my own family and I remember reading a Ram Dass book and he was talking about coming home from India to see his father and he had to stand side by side with his father and all he wanted to do was tell him all these truths and what he learned and his dad just needed him to stand there and help him make a pie or whatever and he said, "All I could do was just love him," and in that his dad softened and changed and they found commonality. I think so often we come to each other with our agenda.   Catherine Ingram: (20:23) Yeah, Ram Dass used to tell another story, which was that a woman wrote to him and said, "I'm about to go home for Christmas and I don't get along with my family that well and I know that they judge me about what I'm doing and they think I'm weird." Anyway, I don't know what he said to her but anyway, she went off to her family holiday and when she got back she wrote Ram Dass a letter and said, "My family hates me when I'm a Buddhist but they love me while I'm a Buddha."   Tahnee: (20:52) That's so beautiful. Isn't that the truth? I remember hearing you speak that you've almost stepped away from Buddhism and that whole scene in a way because it was that identification with... Maybe I'm misunderstanding what I-   Catherine Ingram: (21:10) No, I did step away from it completely. I'm so happy for that training and for those years and for the wonderful friendships. It was a whole evolutionary phase of my life but I wouldn't at all call myself a Buddhist. I don't have any kind of... There was a guy in the States, his name was Abbie Hoffman, he was a great activist back in my era. He died a long time ago. Kind of young when he died but he was a very famous radical activist in the '60s and he had a great line, "All of the isms are wasms," which I really related to. I don't have any isms that I'm adhering to. I have come to realise that Gandhi, the story of his... I'm sorry. His autobiography is called The Story Of My Experiments with Truth, and I feel that I've just been making my own experiments with truth and I don't claim as true with a capital T. I would say it's my experiments with truth, my experiments of what has made sense to me, what works, what has been consistently true for me in my experimentation about what is...   Catherine Ingram: (22:29) Like we've been saying, what is the way through? What is the dharmic line, thread of harmony through this rocky road called life? That's been, for me, I have been exposed to so many kinds of teachings, beautiful teachings over the years. Whether in literature, I love great literature... I mean, you can have profound experiences just by reading some of the great works of literature, and movies too. Movies have shaped my consciousness.   Tahnee: (23:09) Art, right? It's every... Humans have created that to tell stories since-   Catherine Ingram: (23:15) That's right.   Tahnee: (23:17) Yes, there's the vortex of, some of it is commercial and corporate and manipulative but I think so much of it is truth. Like you say, little 't' truths. Someone trying to capture what's true for them through their art form.   Catherine Ingram: (23:33) Yeah and what's so beautiful about all of that, and music, my goodness, music... What's so amazing about that is that's like our humanity is so... It's so sensitive and so universal in each of us. I mean it is why music translates to everybody, pretty much, that sometimes someone comes along and just in their own innocent, true expression, taps a chord that just reverberates through not only their own time but down through the ages. I'm always listening for those chords, however I can find them, whether in dharma circles and great works of philosophy and teachings from all different traditions but also in all these art forms and also just in-   Tahnee: (24:39) Life.   Catherine Ingram: (24:39) No, I mean in watching animals. You mentioned that I'm part now of a group called Global Animal, which is actually an animal rights organisation. I have been involved with human rights a lot in the past. Now I've switched over to the animals. The other animals, I should say. We are animals as well. Anyway, I'm just continually blown away by the tenderness and the emotional intelligence of animals, especially mammals, of course. It's all of these ways, all of these portals of wisdom that come across the transom of your mind that some minds just are looking for those, have incredible receptors for those, have neurological receptors for those kinds of channels and those kinds of bits of information and I think one can, in a sense, train the awareness to look for those.   Tahnee: (25:51) That was going to be my question because I mean, I feel like I... I sometimes try and nut this out in my head and I don't get very far. I remember as a child being very sensitive and open and then kind of going through a science phase and a cynical phase, I suppose, in my early 20s and I feel like I've come full circle back to this very sensitive place but I have, I think, now the capacity to handle it. In reading your essay especially, the one on facing extinction, I speak to so many people about this in my community and it's this sense of, it's too much and I can't carry it. The sensitivity I have, it's a burden instead of a gift. I've found, for me, refuge in stillness and quiet and all the things you were talking about. Aloneness. Nature for me is a huge part of it and why I choose to live here and I've heard you say the same about moving to Lennox. Is there ways you've seen people grow into their sensitivity and their perceptiveness/ because I think these people, they're so required right now. Those empaths and those people that feel it all. I don't know how to help them. It's like, you just have to keep going.   Catherine Ingram: (27:20) Yeah, it's a conundrum. It's a great question. It's not one I have a clear answer on in that the sensitivity comes with the deepening and widening awareness. It's a challenge because the more sensitive you are, the more subject to feeling the sorrows of the world and of the people you love and you as a young mother-   Tahnee: (27:49) Many feelings.   Catherine Ingram: (27:53) Yeah. The problem is, you kind of can't help it. You can't really help it if you're someone who feels very, very deeply and you notice things and you have natural empathy. Now I think people do shut down. They harden their hearts. They put blinkers on. They're essentially armoured because they're frightened and feeling too deeply is just too painful for them but I don't see any way around if you're paying attention, if the awareness is widening, which in a way it does on its own but like I said, you can sort of direct it, train it more to look for wisdom wherever you can find it and that includes ways to let go and to try to be strong. If that's how you're built then sorrow comes with it. Just as I sometimes say, if you're not at least a little bit sad, you're not paying attention. All of these happiness programs, they just make my skin crawl. Be happy and real happy and happy happy.   Tahnee: (29:23) Uhg! And they've coerced Buddhist, the dharma teachings. I mean, I'm on social media, unfortunately in some ways and I see this stuff and I just think... I mean, one of my teachers calls it the bandwidth. We want to be able to feel a spectrum of things and just to expect that it's just happy and sunshine, rainbows, lollipops all the time is-   Catherine Ingram: (29:50) Yeah, I often say, have said for 30 years that we live on a spectrum of feelings and on one end is deep suffering and sorrow and sadness and depression and all kinds of things and at the other is incredible joy. We live on that spectrum. And that to shut down one end also shuts down the other. So some people want to play it safe and go right into the middle, don't feel too much on either side. You shut down any... Like basically grief is connected to love. That's why we grieve is because we love, like I said in my essay. So if you're going to give up, if you're so afraid of grieving, then you really can't invest in your love. You're going to be at risk. So that's what we've got here as human creatures. I think in this time, where the world has stopped, even though it's starting to move about a bit more, but I think a lot of people have reset their priorities and have understood perhaps in ways they never understood. But for many of us who've been looking at these things and feeling into them, we've understood them more deeply. That this life that we are so privileged to be living, it really never had any guarantees. We kind of drifted into an illusion in our rich cultures of just, you know, kind of having a party. I mean just going along.   Catherine Ingram: (31:33) Just get what you want. Go where you want. Study what you want. Go here. Flit there. So we've just been having a grand old time and now we're confronted with our entire way of life has not only changed for now but it's changed and probably it's going to stay changed. It's going to get more and more challenging. I believe we're headed into a cascade of crises. The coronavirus crisis is going to perhaps be the kickstart. But we've got all the big ones waiting. The worse ones are waiting in the wings. They're cooking away in the background. We haven't been talking about them as much during this one. But they're going along. They're going a pace. Unlike this one, which might have some mitigation to it, I don't think those other ones do. So I think what we're facing is a lot more letting go and a lot more needing to find empathy and understanding and getting way closer to the ground in terms of how we live simply. I don't know if you've noticed this but I have... I've just not been spending money on pretty much anything except food and paying the utilities-   Tahnee: (33:05) Yeah the things you have to pay.   Catherine Ingram: (33:08) [inaudible 00:33:08] monthly charges and I'm grateful to be able to do that. I've seen, gosh, even though it's kind of stripped down, those are really essential things. Food and having the water come on when you turn it on.   Tahnee: (33:26) Basic necessities. Yeah well it's definitely... I mean again a theme I'm really witnessing is a move toward... So we've just put in a chicken coop, which we started before all this happened but it didn't get finished until the middle of all of this. I contacted a breeder for the chickens. I was looking for a heritage breeder. He said, "The pandemic hit and I've sold out." He said, "I've sold every chicken I have until October." He's like, "Everyone's gone self-sufficient." I was like, "Well wow, that's crazy." I've noticed all of these permaculture people are offering courses on sustainable backyard gardens and farming. I'm like, "That's so great that people are starting." If that's one of the, I guess, impacts of this on a micro level, that people start to think-   Catherine Ingram: (34:17) It's a great benefit because things are still kind of holding together. We're not in massive drought or fires or some [inaudible 00:34:26] war thing happening over resources. We're basically just told to stay in our homes. The skies are blue and the waters are clear. The earth is actually breathing a great sigh of relief in having us stopped. So it is a perfect time to learn those kind of basic life-   Tahnee: (34:47) Life skills.   Catherine Ingram: (34:49) [inaudible 00:34:49] yeah.   Tahnee: (34:50) That's something... I mean I copied a quote out of your essay, which was, "On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree." I nearly cried when I read that. I'm nearly crying now because I think that's something, when people feel the overwhelm and the kind of impact of what is going on on a more macro level, they just become numb. Business as usual I suppose carries on. I think it's... To think that even if the world was coming to an end, we would still make an offering that we would not live to see come to fruition I think is-   Catherine Ingram: (35:28) But just to be clear that wasn't my quote. I quoted that.   Tahnee: (35:30) No sorry. It was Merwin. But you quoted it and I mean, all the quotes you chose for that were really beautiful. But that one, I just really... Because I think I've definitely... I studied environmental science for a year and a half at university.   Catherine Ingram: (35:46) [inaudible 00:35:46].   Tahnee: (35:46) I really struggled with... You were either angry and like trying to cut off from the world and go off the grid and disappear or you were kind of apathetic and well, "It's all going to happen anyway. Humans are a virus. They should all be killed." It was like, there didn't feel like much of a middle ground but I fel like everyone was really... And even then there was the women that were like, "All the men should die. The patriarchy's the problem." Like, "None of this really resonates with me."   Catherine Ingram: (36:17) It's kind of like displaced... It's displaced grief.   Tahnee: (36:21) Yeah. When I think about the stages, right? Denial, anger, bargaining, depression... But then I also was recently reading that they've added another stage. Because it used to end at acceptance. Now they've added transformation into meaning. I thought... Into insight. I was like, that's so perfect because I feel like over two decades that's been my experience. I'm sure you've seen that.   Catherine Ingram: (36:44) Yeah definitely, yes. I know, I love that quote as well from Merwin and it's exactly that. You live, like my teacher [inaudible 00:36:57] once said, "Death is when the next breath doesn't come." So basically it's simple as that. You've living until then and how are you living here? How are you showing up? It still has meaning as long as we're here. It has meaning even after we're gone as well but while we're here we're part of the meaning of it. And so what do you do with your energy, your time, your attention? Your activity? Your service? So yeah, of course. I mean we've got so many beautiful examples through history of people who were in just terrible dire circumstances and who carried on and did it in grace, in beauty. So that's... I think that's the play on the board. In a way then that you're off the hook in terms of, you don't have to manipulate and try to change how it goes. Because it's going to go... This is a big juggernaut now. I mean, the thing I think people don't understand fully is that although we have changed the natural expressions of our world, we've changed them for the worse in that it's killing life, it doesn't follow necessarily that we can change them back.   Catherine Ingram: (38:31) I don't see the will in terms of the powerful players doing that anyway. But even if they would, I certainly am not convinced that if every single person woke up tomorrow and that was their full dedication for the rest of their lives, that it would save us, frankly. Because we have put things into play now that are on their own. That the warming is actually now on its own trajectory. So there may be some sort of technology that, I don't know, cools it or-   Tahnee: (39:06) That was something else I copied from your... Because I mean I guess, being of the age where a lot of my peers are really involved in conspiracy theories and the... Like it's so easy to be in that place of like, we're all pawns in a... But I mean you said something around Elon Musk is just like that nerdy guy who... And I've said this to my partner multiple times, like Bill Gates, they're just these people that they think that what they're doing is right because they don't have the self-reflect... You know they just don't have perspective to see. And you said something like, "Their intelligence is one dimensional." To paraphrase you.   Catherine Ingram: (39:51) [crosstalk 00:39:51] excellent. They do have amazing intelligence. It's just disconnected a lot from the Earth systems and from the natural systems. But it's not to say that they aren't well intended. I think they actually are well intended. They just get it from their own paradigm.   Tahnee: (40:09) Exactly and what they think is best is maybe not what we think is best. But I mean to call someone evil, I think it's a tricky line to walk. And I see that, that technology will save us and I've seen some eco-activists talk to that as well. I don't know, I just feel sinking in my gut when I read that sort of stuff because it doesn't-   Catherine Ingram: (40:33) It's just more manipulation with nature. It's just more of what got us into this mess actually. All these different green technologies and it all just feels so misguided. It's just more of the same. We have hubris, you know? This sort of, what Derrick Jensen calls the myth of human supremacy. Instead of understanding it, we've got to just cut back everything. We've got to stop. That's probably not going to save us either.   Tahnee: (41:02) And civilizations have fallen so many times through history through their own arrogance and their own excessive... And you look at nature and the plagues of locusts and they eat everything and they all die. That's the way it goes.   Catherine Ingram: (41:21) Locust plague going on right now. 160 million people are on the verge of starvation. Estimates that it's going to be double that in-   Tahnee: (41:28) Well I've been reading all this stuff. The ninth article on a page sometimes, or even you have to go a few pages deep but it's like, the food supply is gone for a lot of places. That's something I struggle with so much because I see it here and we do live in this place that's so rich in food and abundance and nature. I am privileged to go to the beach every day. I buy from a farmer's market. There are people in countries in the world right now that are really struggling and suffering and not even in... Like I know America's having a tough time but... I know India's going through it. I know Iran. I know parts of Africa are having a really tough time. It's like, how do we even help? What do we do?   Catherine Ingram: (42:12) I know. The chickens are coming home to roost in terms of what we've been doing here. We've got to really... We're going to need a lot more courage in ourselves. We've been so spoiled. It's not our own fault because we came into the spoils of our cultures. We've been reared up in this kind of abundance and calm and safety and all these things that we've just taken for granted. But now we're in a different phase. I think we're going to have to really get to that quiet sanctuary in ourselves a lot and find there a growing sense of courage and a growing acceptance and setting aside our own hubris about how long a life we should have and how much we should have and all of those things. It's hard. And yet that's... We can either accept or fight the reality. Those are our options.   Tahnee: (43:28) I guess I've heard you speak a lot about the... There's something I love about when you lead meditation and the animal nature of us. I think if we can... Because that's one of the things I think that has created so much of the drama is like we've separated ourselves so much from the fact that we are animals. We do have rhythms that flow with nature. We have needs like animals. We communicate with animals. I'm reading this great book called the Tao of Equus right now. She's talking about how horses, we've dominated them and used them for so long but now they're moving into this space of like, taking us back to connecting with ourselves and nature and just this idea that, especially through women and the wisdom held by, I guess that more feminine energy but I think everyone has the Yin and the Yang, that's definitely something I feel to be true, but like yeah, I can really feel that this is a time of... If you think about the elders and keeping the culture on track and present and like that's, I think, such a requirement of this time.   Tahnee: (44:36) You look at all the leadership, it's all men. It's all men of a certain kind of privilege and a certain type of personality type, thinking of some narcissistic leaders off the top of my head right now. I think it's that older wise woman thing that we need. I don't know if you know Helena, who's a local to this area, she might be involved in Resilient Byron with you?   Catherine Ingram: (44:58) No.   Tahnee: (45:01) Okay well she was one of the women that I first spoke to these things about. She's a bit older. She was one of the women to start the community farmer's markets here and everything. This idea of local features, you know, like that we have to look for leadership and strength and resilience in our own communities. And then build on that. To me, that's something I'm really craving and hoping becomes more prominent. I know you're working with Resilient Byron. Is it mostly people that are out of their childbearing years or is it a mix of people?   Catherine Ingram: (45:34) A mix. We don't have a huge steering group at the moment but it's definitely a mix of ages for sure yeah. I think I'm the oldest in fact.   Tahnee: (45:46) How do you feel like age has then, I guess, brought you... Is there like a... I read this great story the other day in a book called If Women Rose Rooted. She said it's this combination of like wrath and gentleness as you get older.   Catherine Ingram: (46:04) Yes. I definitely feel that actually inside myself. I feel what's happened for me, one of the great things is you just get a lot more authentic when you get older, women. Because I think for many women, we fell into needing to be pleasers. We kind of like to please a lot. Sometimes we compromised what we really felt and what we really thought and what we wanted to do and all of those things. Because somebody else needed us to be some other way. So that's something one grows out of, which is a happy-   Tahnee: (46:44) [crosstalk 00:46:44].   Catherine Ingram: (46:48) You just get a lot more clear about... You get more savage about your time I must say. You are less inclined to spend time on nonsense or to indulge certain mind streams that you know are just going to end up in a dark alley. It has all kind of benefits along with some great disadvantages that come along. But again, it does have some beautiful silver linings.   Tahnee: (47:23) Was it like a difficult... Because I mean when did you move? Because you've been in The States most of your life, right?   Catherine Ingram: (47:29) Yeah.   Tahnee: (47:30) And then you moved out here when?   Catherine Ingram: (47:31) About [inaudible 00:47:33] half years ago.   Tahnee: (47:35) And so, was that a big shift for you, culturally and professionally and yeah?   Catherine Ingram: (47:40) That was a big shift. Massive, massive shift. To do it at the age I was as well. But I had felt for a very long time I wanted to get out of America. And that alone wouldn't have pulled me out but it was a combination of wanting to get out of there and also falling in love with this part of the world, Australia. And also New Zealand. I love New Zealand as well.   Tahnee: (48:02) Me too. Yeah.   Catherine Ingram: (48:04) So you kind of get both when you come in as a resident of Australia. So I just have been so grateful to be living here. Just I feel so lucky. And everybody in the states, all the people I talk with so often, everybody says, "Oh God you're so lucky." Except that one isn't living... We're living always in a context of "Yes I'm here and I'm lucky but my friends, my oldest friends and my whole family are over there." So my heart is over there as well. Not entirely. But I mean I often feel like, it feels something like it must have felt in Germany if you were a Jew and you were getting out but all your family was still there. You're never really entirely free in that regard. Now I'm [inaudible 00:49:05] and I hold things in as big a space as I can as I view them, but these feelings of course arise with a great frequency. And yeah, but I am very happy to be in this particular place. This is a paradise in any context, you know? And especially now.   Tahnee: (49:31) I know we've been really, I guess not struggling with guilt but we've been really conscious of that feeling of like, "Well, our lives haven't been deeply impacted by this." It's obviously, I guess, I feel like I'm more focused now and I'm prioritising things more. I feel like my inner journey through this has been really powerful but in terms of what my outward life looks like, I don't obviously do as many external things. But I'm still at the beach every day. I'm still going to the farmer's markets at a social distance. It's like, I'm still kind of doing a lot of the things, and yeah, it's a tricky one to imagine. Like in some ways I think having the bush fires was a really good thing for Australian's to realise.   Catherine Ingram: (50:23) I do too.   Tahnee: (50:23) Yeah like that there actually is going to be an impact. Because it's so easy when it's over there to kind of forget about it or to take-   Catherine Ingram: (50:33) Yeah well it was also somehow helpful in that we were already sort of crisis ready.   Tahnee: (50:41) Orientated. Turning toward crisis.   Catherine Ingram: (50:45) We've already gotten our crisis muscles well exercised. I mean I know people could argue and say, "Yeah well we're in crisis fatigue." But I actually think there was some benefit in terms of of a way that, first of all, that whole sense of, "Okay what's important? What matters? If my house catches fire, what is it in it that I needed even? My photographs maybe or whatever. My computer possibly." But you know, and of course then you think, one of my girlfriends, this is a little bit telling a tale out of the school but, one of my girlfriends in LA owns a Picasso. And so one time, LA gets a lot of fires. And so one time she was telling me that during one of the recent fires she had actually, she had grabbed of course her dogs and the bunny rabbit and she was trying to figure out how to get the fish. She gets everything kind of ready to get loaded into the car and then it turns out they didn't need to go. And I said, "What about the Picasso?" And she said, "I didn't even think about the Picasso." I thought, "That's so cool. The bunny rabbit made it in there before the Picasso." It's like, that's really cool.   Tahnee: (52:07) It sounds like she's got her head on straight yeah.   Catherine Ingram: (52:09) Exactly. I think a lot of us would make those choices actually. The living thing. So yeah, I think we had, through the fires, come to those kinds of recognitions. What actually does one need in a life? We're so happy because we went through all that drought, we got a big lesson in water. In water rationing and we got a huge lesson in don't take any of this for granted. So yeah, these are going to be the lessons coming forth, I do believe.   Tahnee: (52:46) It's interesting what you're... Because you said something else in the essay around... It was around Auschwitz and the people that survived were the ones that had had struggles already in their lives. I think that's something... That resilience that we build through meeting life's challenges and learning from them. I think when you look at how far our civilization has to fall compared to others, it might be that there is parts of humanity that survive because of what they've been through.   Catherine Ingram: (53:21) Already existing local resilience, doing without, living on very little, helping [inaudible 00:53:27] community. Yes. I think they're in a far better circumstance to get through this than we are because we're so dependent on a very complicated system. And we're not used to a certain kind of community sharing, which is very much what we want to start focusing on with this group.   Tahnee: (53:48) So in terms of what you are looking to create, I suppose, could you just give us the elevator pitch or some kind of sense of what the ideal outcome of this organisation would be?   Catherine Ingram: (54:01) Resilient Byron, well there's one part of it is resilient and the other part is regenerative. But I'm more interested in the resilient. I actually think we're going straight into crises one after the next. So in that conversation, it's been about starting a framework of neighbourhood units of resilience basically so that people would start focusing on their own neighbourhoods. Whatever that means to you. Whether it's your street or your particular area. And start sharing resources. We've got the Facebook page, which is serving as a kind of clearing house at the moment for just information and for people to find out about things like during the coronavirus crisis. Like where to get things you need, food or help in various ways. We're going to start having more conversations about food security, community gardens, security security. Like just how to stay safe. What about housing for people who may... Either don't have housing currently or may need it at some point.   Catherine Ingram: (55:17) So there's lots of, I mean it's really in the formative stages but we're just basically looking at lots of different ways that we're going to organise to perhaps be a system in this region that is de-linked from the national sort of federal system. I don't mean that we're going to do a political coup but rather that we're going to have a lot of local resources we're relying on. Those can be also shared with nearby like [inaudible 00:55:51] and up where you are.   Tahnee: (55:54) [inaudible 00:55:54].   Catherine Ingram: (55:58) It could be an entire Northern Rivers sort of eco-community that is helping each other.   Tahnee: (56:08) That's so exciting to me because I mean I think I can see how that becomes something that can roll out. I have a friend in Melbourne and I know, on her street, she's has food and she grows things and her neighbours do and they all trade eggs and vegetables. And just that little bit of connection with the people on your street and that's such a... It has such a profound impact on your wellbeing. That was one of the solutions you offered up in the essay was community and I think-   Catherine Ingram: (56:36) It's number one yeah. It's the number one-   Tahnee: (56:38) And what we've really done is separate ourselves. I remember living in the city and if you like smiled at somebody... I was lucky to be raised in the country where you knew everybody, which had pros and cons. Because you knew everybody. I remember being really naughty as a teenager and like the local policeman was my mum's mate and I was like, "Hey." He was like, "Oh dear." Anyway. But yeah, I think it's really, this kind of getting to know the people that we live beside every day. Just getting a sense of, well, "Yeah they're the people we lean on." Our cul-de-sac through this time has been my saving grace. I have babysitters and I have friends for my children and I have people to share stories with. It's just been... Yeah it's been such a beautiful experience.   Catherine Ingram: (57:32) That's wonderful. That's really it. That's wonderful. That's what humans have relied on through all of human history until quite recently was, you lived with your tribe. And of course as civilization so called erupted, still people lived with their tribes in a different way. They lived mostly with family or rural communities or if you lived in a city it wasn't a huge city. There weren't huge cities really.   Tahnee: (58:04) Well and even people stayed in their boroughs, you know? They didn't leave their neighbourhoods. Very infrequently. Yeah.   Catherine Ingram: (58:13) You'd still live within a tribe within the city. So yeah, we've gotten far from that but we can... That is one thing I think we can bring back. Well dear I should go because-   Tahnee: (58:25) Yes I was going to say, thank you so much. It's actually nearly 11:11 so that's perfect. I just wanted to say that was such a great note to end on. And also because that's something you do with the Dharma Dialogues. I always got so much... I haven't been to them in a while because you weren't doing them and then this has happened but just being around people who are able to articulate their human experience and then just the sharing and I think that's, for me, been such a balm. And also obviously your wisdom and insight. So I know you've got two weekends per month coming up. Is it through June and July that you'll be doing that?   Catherine Ingram: (59:03) I'm actually going to do it indefinitely. I'm going to start-   Tahnee: (59:05) Oh wonderful.   Catherine Ingram: (59:07) Since we're locked down I'm just going to start doing online-   Tahnee: (59:09) Great so they'll be replacing, in a way the Lennox events?   Catherine Ingram: (59:13) Yeah.   Tahnee: (59:13) Okay. Fantastic. Okay well that's super exciting. Okay so those'll go up on your website soon so we can link to them and if anyone... Is it just through sign up to your email kind of thing and you'll be notified?   Catherine Ingram: (59:25) Yeah.   Tahnee: (59:26) Awesome. Well thank you so much for your time. I know-   Catherine Ingram: (59:29) Thank you so much for inviting me. That was lovely.   Tahnee: (59:31) Yeah it's been really beautiful to speak with you. I'll also link to your books as well because Passionate Presence is the only one I've read but I really enjoyed it. Yeah, I really just appreciate everything you're offering because it helps people like me navigate their lives. So much love. All right Catherine well I'll hopefully see you in the flesh again one day soon. Enjoy the rest of your day.   Catherine Ingram: (59:55) And you. Bye dear.   Tahnee: (59:57) Bye hun.   Catherine Ingram: (59:57) Bye.

BREAKING NEWS! Coming to you live from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Ground Zero of the first Viral Race Riots, as you know COVID-19 has transformed due to 5G into the BLM-COVID-25G. There's only one way to keep from getting sick and that is to keep constant rage in your heart. Fortunately for Tab, his constant blood boiling has kept him completely immune. Tim has fled the country to try and keep from getting sick, and Todd is still asleep but we assume when he awakens he'll probably already be infected. The constant need for rage has led to constant lootig and Rioting in Tulsa, and across the country, doctors are working on a treatment and so far they've tried...Insufficient CoolingPoorly Made in China 2: Coilover BoogalooZoomers vs MillenialsThe Ass-BlasteningEntropy is a universal constant, yet one thing can fight entropy and that is the processor of your average gaming pc or console. From the Red Rings of the XBox 360 Gen 1, to the jet engine sound of the Last of Us 2, and everything in between. Insufficient cooling is a crime against hardware, please please console and computer manufacturers. Just make things slightly larger and add more fans.Sometimes the online cheapout pricing makes you the winner, and sometimes it makes you a loser. This time I was the loser, and now, you're gonna hear about it. If Kung Flu should have taught you anything it's that China is evil and doesn't care how many of their citizens they sacrifice to collapse the western world. Now I've gotta wait another 2 weeks for a refund before I can even begin to come up with a plan to continue the suspension upgrade.The boomers are such useless trash they've mobilized Gen Z to assist in their all out war to destroy the Millennials. Little does Gen Z know, once the boomers have sucked the life out of our bone marrow to stay forever in power, just like they did Gen X, they are coming for you Gen Z. Our only hope is to team up and mandate euthanasia over the age of 65. Though I will agree with the Zoomers, Harry Potter sucks.We've reached a point in our culture where people cannot, absolutely cannot handle another person not making the same choices they do. You don't want to stay home, you're a grandma killer. You don't want to go to protest, you're a minority killer. You like Donald Trump, you're a white supremacist. Can you not just calm down and shut up? Do we all need to know what a cry baby you are? Cry at home, and out in the world act like an adult.All this and more on this week’s episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and now introducing GUILDED a Discord alternative that doesn't have a Trust and Safety Diversity Squad, and support us on PATREON, NEWPROJECT2 or by BUYING A SHIRT!

How do we confront our blind spots and tackle the ways that racism and privilege affect our relationships, our lives, our society? And...our podcasts? This week's episode is not meant to be a complete answer to those questions - just a beginning to the conversation. So today you'll hear more about the "hidden agenda" of Relationship Alive - how what you've been learning is a crucial part of taking care of yourself as we change the world. And how racism has impacted my journey - and the evolution of the Relationship Alive podcast. Yes, let's all be part of the solution. I can - and will - do better. It's that important. #blacklivesmatter As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Find a quality therapist, online, to support you and work on the places where you’re stuck. For 10% off your first month, visit Betterhelp.com/ALIVE to fill out the quick questionnaire and get paired with a therapist who’s right for you. Resources: I want to know you better! Take the quick, anonymous, Relationship Alive survey FREE Guide to Neil’s Top 3 Relationship Communication Secrets Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner’s Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) Support the podcast (or text “SUPPORT” to 33444) Amazing intro and outro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. I'm doing a little bit of a different episode this week than what I had planned. If you tuned in last week to my show with David Burns, then you know that this week was intended to be an episode that was going to be a session that David did with me around being overwhelmed. And it's an important episode if you are interested in hearing how David Burns uses his methodology, Team CBT, as a way to help me work through a problem that many of us are going through these days, which is being overwhelmed by just the sheer amount of things that are happening in our world today. Neil Sattin: So it's an important episode. And yet I couldn't sit by and not address what is literally happening in our world, in our communities along with the pandemic right now. Which is responding to systemic racism and white privilege along with police violence towards black people, toward minorities, toward protesters. I couldn't be silent, and I wanted to talk to you about it this week. Generally, I've tried to keep Relationship Alive fairly non-political. And the reason behind that is because I feel that the purpose of Relationship Alive is inherently political, even though we're talking about how to have successful relationships. It expands beyond what we do with our partners with our spouses, it expands to the world around us to how we are with our kids with our parents with our extended family with our friends, with our co-workers with the authorities in our lives. Neil Sattin: So, I've always viewed Relationship Alive as being something that is contributing to the overall betterment of society, not just in being able to experience more love with your partner, but also to experience more love, and harmony with your fellow humans. And granted that's not possible all the time. And yet in this moment, this is really the first time that I've felt called to not be silent to be explicit in my own personal support for Black Lives Matter. For the idea that our skin color doesn't determine who we are in this world, and that there should be racial equity in terms of how our society functions, and it just isn't that way. It just isn't. Neil Sattin: So, in today's episode, I'm going to give you a little bit of my own personal story, my own background here, and I'm going to talk a little bit about Relationship Alive and some obvious things that you may have noticed. I want to address them head on, because they're important in terms of recognizing just how pervasive white privilege is in our world, and in how we recognize who the experts are and who they're not. And I want to tackle that head on. So that's what today's show is going to be about, a little bit from me personally, and a little bit of a statement about what direction we're going to head in this show. But first, I just want to remind you that Relationship Alive is an offering for you to help you have an amazing relationship. And as I just said, my hidden agenda is to help the world be a better place. So if you are finding the show to be helpful, then please consider a contribution. Anything... Any little bit counts. Neil Sattin: And today I want to thank these listeners who have made a contribution to help support Relationship Alive. Their names are Sylvia, Angie, David, Margot, Drew, Lydia, and Valerie, Keerthi and Jewels. Thank you all so much for your generous and ongoing support of Relationship Alive and our mission. And if you want to make a contribution, just visit neilsattin.com/support or text the word "support" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Neil Sattin: In today's world, we could all use some help communicating with each other and I've actually put together a guide with my top three relationship communication strategies to help you connect to another person, no matter how challenging the thing is that you are trying to connect with them about. It's relevant today. Figuring out how to communicate with so much polarization in the world. To download the free guide just visit neilsattin.com/relate or text the word "relate" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Neil Sattin: We do have a Facebook group where listeners gather to create a safe space for others and for you to talk about relationship-related matter, and that's the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook. And if you have questions, you can email them to questions at relationshipalive.com, and what's super awesome is if you record yourself asking the question, then I can hear you and I can answer you here on the show. Neil Sattin: So I think that's it for the business that I need to cover. Let's dive in to this topic of racism and racial equity, and I think I just want to give you a little bit of my own just personal background, personal perspective on this. I grew up being raised Jewish in a predominantly Christian community. And for the most part, even though it was, it was weird to be othered. It was something that I was fortunate that I never really felt victimized by that I never felt any anti-Semitism growing up that I can recall. And I took it upon myself to talk to my classmates, my school mates about being Jewish and what that meant to me and what our traditions were. And part of being Jewish at least the way that I was raised was also an awareness of our history as a people, and in particular the ways that Jews have been persecuted throughout the history of the world and in terms of recent history, in terms of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. Neil Sattin: So I had a consciousness even as a young child of what that meant to come from a community that had been singled out for death. Now fortunately, I never experienced that. And growing up here in the States, I felt for the most part pretty safe and being Jewish is not something that is visible, for the most part to other people. I did have an interesting moment when I was in my 20s, and I was at a cousin's bar mitzvah at a university. They hosted the bar mitzvah at the university. And if you don't know a bar mitzvah is like a coming of age ceremony for Jewish kids at the age of 13. Neil Sattin: A Bar or a Bat Mitzvah. If you are a girl. It's about being ushered in to being a responsible adult in the eyes of the community. And so I was at a cousin's bar mitzvah and I was looking around and I noticed something that I had never noticed before which was that the people who were surrounding me, who were mostly students at this university, because there was an actual synagogue on the campus of the University - which was something I hadn't experienced. I went to predominantly Christian liberal arts school out on the West Coast. Neil Sattin: And so I was looking around and I noticed that the people that I was looking at actually looked a lot like me, and I had never really thought about myself as looking any different, from anyone else. Again, this kind of veers into this notion of white privilege because there was nothing obviously different about me, but I did notice - Oh. There is something about me and where I come from, that makes me look a little bit different than, for instance, the people in the community where I grew up, who were predominantly either French-Canadian or from Ireland, with a few English people thrown in there. Neil Sattin: So that was the community that I grew up in. And not universally true. There were exceptions to the rule, but I looked different than they did and that explains in some respects, some of the experiences that I think I had when I was a kid. That again, weren't about anyone consciously singling me out or not singling me out, but I think it plays into the ways that we perceive other people in our lives. We are used to people who look like us who act like us, who talk like us use the language we do or the languaging, if we speak the same language, but we use different kind of ways of pronouncing things or different idioms. We are geared towards looking for where we're similar, and how that makes us safe and in some respects, the way that our differences might bring us danger. Neil Sattin: And I think there's more for me to learn about this because my guess is that on some level, there are some things that are hard-wired into our system to be suspicious of something that's different than us as a means of protection. Now, that doesn't mean that we are in danger at all, at all. It's about something that we've talked about here on the show a lot, which is noticing the ways that our body responds. That physiologically, we are having a response to the world around us and being able to respond to that in choice. Neil Sattin: To not be victims to our own physiology. So, in the ways that we are carrying around our own trauma or the trauma of generations, or the trauma of things that we see around us, whatever that is, that we're carrying with us, when we are triggered, in the moment, it is worth paying attention to what's happening in our bodies so that we can respond, so that we can regulate ourselves and bring ourselves back to being in relationship with the people who are around us. Neil Sattin: So while I was "other" I was definitely privileged as well. My parents were educated. We lived in a very peaceful suburban community where things were relatively pretty safe. I wasn't worried about whether there was going to be food on the table and I definitely wasn't worried about if I rode around town, on my bike at any hour of day I wasn't worried about being accosted by police officers thinking that maybe I was up to no good. I might have had to worry the times that I was up to no good, but I definitely wasn't going to get singled out, just because of how I looked. And I wasn't in danger because of how I looked. And so I got to grow up feeling relatively safe and secure, in a world that a lot of people don't feel safe and secure in and I'm aware of that. Neil Sattin: Now. One thing that's interesting, as I think back on my own upbringing, I watched a lot of Saturday morning cartoons. There was this whole thing that maybe you've seen or was maybe was part of your life called Schoolhouse Rock that was basically propaganda and education rolled into catchy tunes, and cartoons on Saturday mornings and one of them that made this big impression on me, was the great American melting pot - this idea that America was this place where we could all learn to appreciate our differences appreciate each other that we all came together. Now, I'm aware that there is a part of the original melting pot theory was not about that at all. It was about, everyone becoming part of one culture this homogeneous culture that was based on this, the idea that kind of Anglo-European culture was the norm. That that was what we wanted for everyone and I don't agree with that at all. Neil Sattin: And that was never part of my consciousness I was much more of this idea of appreciating just how different people were. And wondering what that was like for them. I had a classmate who was Chinese, I had classmates who were refugees from Cambodia. The town that I grew up in had a black mayor, even though as a whole, there were not many black people in the town where I grew up. Hardly any as far as I know. And so I got to live in this fantasy world, where everything was okay. Even though I knew deep down that you didn't have to go far to find places where there was danger for others, based on how they looked. And honestly, I don't know a lot about the experience of people who had darker skin than me, in my community. I don't know what that was like for them. And it gets me curious. It gets me curious to know, because I can't imagine that it was always easy. Neil Sattin: And of course, on TV, there were plenty of opportunities to see darker skinned people doing bad things and lighter skinned people being the heroes and the victors and this subtext has permeated so much of our culture. Maybe we'd read one book. The Invisible Man or To Kill a Mocking Bird. And then everything else, we would read in school was centered on a white culture. Why is that? Why are the things that are considered normal considered normal? Well, it's because we're a product of our environment, right - and finally we are at a place where we're changing, we're challenging this idea of what's normal as well we should be. Neil Sattin: And we're struggling to do the things that are in many cases the most challenging which is to figure out our blind spots. Now, this is challenging on any number of levels, to figure out where you are blind to the ways that you treat other people, the ways that you show up ineffectively, because in our... And each of us has our own world within us, and in that world, everything we do makes perfect sense. So it is actually quite challenging to see the things that we do that don't make sense. And I think that there's this book that a lot of people are talking about right now, or have been for the past year or so, White Fragility which is a lot about how challenging it is for privileged people to recognize the ways that we support systems that are oppressing other people. Neil Sattin: And we have to work together, we have to call things out for how they are, and we have to work together. That's what I'm working towards here. So when I see footage of black people being murdered by police officers in the case of George Floyd in Minneapolis apparently because he maybe had a counterfeit $20 bill. I realized just how much further we need to come as a society. It's not that I think all police are bad. In fact, there have been many times where I've been grateful that police have been around. And what I think is important is that we address the ways that culturally we are perpetuating oppression and violence and profiling against people of color. I'm just going to say, clearly that it's not okay. And then on top of that, when I am watching footage of protests happening and seeing the police, the people who are theoretically there to protect and serve us citizens, they're here to protect and serve us. And yet when I see them violently swinging at protesters, pushing old people over, something has to change, it's not right. It's not okay. Neil Sattin: And there's something about it that chills me to my core, it goes all the way back to the questions that I had as a kid about how did that happen in Germany, how did that happen that a group of people is able to be singled out and murdered and people either stood by watching or participated in it. How was that okay? And I remember over and over again, thinking whatever power there was that let me grow up in this place, The United States of America where I didn't feel like I had to fear that kind of violence. In fact, I thought that there was a consensus pretty much around me that that kind of violence against humans wasn't okay. Growing up in a tiny town in Maine, it was easy to believe that that wasn't actually happening, still, just against other communities of people. Neil Sattin: And now we are in danger here of having the might of weaponry and a militarized police wheeled against the very citizens that theoretically they're supposed to be protecting. And for some reason, the President of our country thinks that it's okay to incite violence to keep bringing up the second amendment as if we don't know that that's about not so subtle call to arms, how is that helping our world? It's not, it's not. It's upsetting, it's distressing and I think it's important for us to be having this conversation. So next week's session with David Burns is going to be even more relevant, maybe because I'm stirring things up here with this week's episode, but also because we have to take care of ourselves so that we can have this larger conversation and so we can be allies for each other and allies for a world where the people who do bad things are the people that are held accountable and that the people who aren't doing bad things are left alone to just be people. Neil Sattin: And maybe there's something really wrong with potentially paying for cigarettes with a fake $20 bill. If the person even... If George Floyd even knew that that was a fake bill, who knows, right? But come on, the punishment has to fit the crime. If there's a crime going on, it definitely didn't call for being murdered. Now, I respect that being a police officer that is not any... It can't be an easy job. It can't be. It's definitely not going to be an easy job if you view the community that you're in as your adversaries as opposed to trying to build relationships in the community, and create an overall fabric of everyone, trying to hold each other accountable to civil behavior. There are places where they're getting this right, there need to be more places like that. Neil Sattin: Now I want to talk a little bit about the podcast, because here's a place where I don't want you to think for a moment that I have a blind spot. Before I do, I do need to take a moment to mention this week's sponsor, whose support I also really appreciate and they are here to support you through these times. Their name is BetterHelp. And if you are looking for extra support around the things that get in the way of happiness or achieving your goals or dealing with the stress of what's happening in our world or your own personal world from the comfort of your own home or wherever you are, you can use BetterHelp. BetterHelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. And you can chat with that therapist via text at any time and you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions, all without having to go anywhere. It is more affordable than traditional offline counseling, and they do offer financial aid if you qualify. Neil Sattin: They also offer a broad range of expertise so that you can find the person most suited to helping you with your own unique situation. So whether it's depression, stress, anxiety and dealing with racism and our place in the system, whatever it is, that's up for you, try out BetterHelp to help you move past the places where you are stuck. And because you are a listener of Relationship Alive, BetterHelp is also offering you an extra 10% off your first month. Just visit BetterHelp.com/alive and join over 800,000 other people who are taking charge of their mental and emotional health. Again, that's BetterHelp.com/alive and thank you so much BetterHelp for your support of Relationship Alive.[TK REMOVE] Neil Sattin: You can probably hear the emotion in my voice because this stuff is affecting me deeply. And I stand with Black Lives Matter and the other organizations that are dedicated to justice and racial equity and rooting out some of the obvious ways that that isn't happening in the world, and some of the less than obvious ways. So, let's talk about one of the less than obvious ways for some of you, and maybe some of you haven't noticed this because sometimes racism and racial equity in our support of a just world isn't necessarily about what we do, it's about what we don't do. And here on the show, I've wanted to have a diverse group of voices represented. And just to give you a little insight - when I started this show, it was really important to me to find the top names in the field, to have the top-most respected people on this show to talk about relationships and doing them better. Neil Sattin: And by and large, those people have been on Relationship Alive. And I'm so grateful. People have done countless hours and hours and years and years of therapy sessions and research, and who have the experience to merit, being recognized as experts and leaders in the field. And each of them has also taken me on a journey as I learn, as I read their work and talk to them. Inevitably those books and conversations lead me to another person, to another set of ideas. And many of those people have been on the show. And so this show has been curated by me and my curiosity, by the issues that I've personally been struggling with or that I've seen others struggling with, and by this observation of who the recognized world leaders are. Now, I want to tell you that when you look at who's headlining - the keynote speakers for various conferences that are happening around the country in the English-speaking world. Neil Sattin: And you're looking for those people who are the recognized world leaders in this particular field, what you might notice is that there isn't a lot of racial diversity among that group. Which isn't to say that there isn't any, there's some, a little bit, it but not much. Now, is anyone to blame for this? I mean, maybe on some level, there are things to blame, there are people to blame, but I think you can step back and extrapolate that the systems of power and education and who has made it, who has had an easy time of finding their ways to the ranks of academia and book publishing and speaking on stages and whether it's intentional or not, choosing who else gets to come alongside them, who else gets to be speaking alongside them, who else gets recognized as an expert. Neil Sattin: Well, the power structures in this country anyway, for a long time, have been white. And there are a lot of people who are trying to change that. Thankfully. I know when I look back over the guests who have been on this show, I feel really good about the balance of genders, men and women. I know that I could have more people on this show who represent different parts of the gender and sexuality spectrum, I could do a better job of that. And I could definitely do a better job of having people with different colored skin on this show. Again, there have been some, there have been some and those conversations have been amazing. And yet, there aren't enough. And it takes effort on my part, it's going to take more effort on my part. Now I've got great excuses. I have a busy life and trying to raise a family, trying to have a relationship, trying to deal with my relationship ending all that stuff. I've got all kinds of excuses. We all have great excuses, I think, for living life the way that we live it. Neil Sattin: So I'm recognizing here for you that I need to do better. And I've been looking, just so you know for more diversity in terms of who's on this show. And there may be ways that it's more challenging for me because they're not people who are necessarily recognized by the "world authorities who recognize these things" as being experts in the field. And I have to get by my own sets of biases about who I want to have on the show, the ways that I might discount someone's opinion. In general, what I'm going to do is just try to find voices on the show of people I respect, people who are researching their work. Neil Sattin: I'm not a huge fan of having people on Relationship Alive to just talk about their opinion of things, we all have opinions, right? There are some less savory phrases about that, but this isn't a show, this isn't an opinion show. At least I try to not have it be. I'm really trying to create a space for you where you can trust the information that's in front of you. And yet as I look back on it, I'm humbled to recognize that there could be definitely more black, indigenous and other persons of color represented here on the show. Neil Sattin: I'm naming it, not because I think that... Not because I don't think that we should just all love each other as people, and that the color of our skin shouldn't matter. I do believe that the color of our skin should not matter. And yet, I do not want to be part of perpetuating a system that is only recognizing some people, not others, and that some people happen to be of a particular skin color because the systems that recognize experts are generally run by people with that very same skin color. Neil Sattin: And I'm the one with the podcast and I have that same skin color, even though I have my own history of being a minority, a non-visible minority and generally thankfully, a non-endangered minority, and I hope it stays that way, not just for me, but I hope we can expand the sphere of who gets to be safe in this world - So that it does truly include everyone, no matter the color of your skin. So if you have suggestions for people whose work you admire and who you think would be a great guest for Relationship Alive, by all means do let me know, you can email me. My email is neilius at neilsattin.com. But it's not on you, this one's on me. That being said, I could use some help. So if you've got some good ideas, send them my way. And I've got a lot of queries out there with people and I'm doing some more work to find more people. Neil Sattin: And my hope is that each of us finds our way to change the system, so that we all get to be safe. We all get to experience love and connection. And so more and more we know what it's like to elevate each other. And to find pathways for doing that to elevate and amplify each other. That's what I want for you, that's what I want for the world where my kids are growing up. And hopefully my grandkids and my great grandkids and whoever else is coming down the path. Neil Sattin: Thanks for being here with me today, thanks for listening, thanks for hearing my story and I hope that it ignites something in you and if it does, I want to hear about it. So please write to me or mention something in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook. I'm not terribly active there right now, it's been honestly quite challenging for me to be on Facebook. And yet if you tag me, I will definitely see what you write. And I welcome all of our efforts to make this world and the relationships that we experience better. So sending love to you, sending love out to all the people who are in the streets taking a stand, maybe even risking their own lives and their own health with the pandemic going on. And I send love to the people who at this point maybe don't know that they actually do need to change, and I hope they find their path to change in a way that expands what's possible for them in the world 'cause living a life of violence and hate and leaning on authority instead of leaning on respect, it's not a way to live. Neil Sattin: There's a lot more that's possible when we learn how to open our hearts to each other and be humble about the ways that we've messed up and apologize and make amends and move forward together. Okay, I'll see you next week for my vulnerable session with David Burns, on overwhelm. And in the meantime, take care, stay safe, and keep in touch.

Tammi Brannan: Tammi@blueprintprocess.comTranscriptDiane Dayton  This is changing the rules, a podcast about designing the life you want to live, hosted byKC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world.KC Dempster  Good morning, everybody. Welcome to changing the rules. I'm KC Dempster. And I am, we are on Wildfire Radio. And I have Ray Loewe with me and Ray is the self proclaimed luckiest guy in the world. I know it's killing him to hear me say that. But all through our lives, people have been giving us rules. First, it was our parents and teachers and sometimes the church or employers, and I'm sure there's a list of people that could be considered the rule givers. And for the most part, these rules were meant to control us but usually in a positive way. They were meant to give us structure and guidance and to keep us safe. But over time, as we get older, these rules start to lose their relevance and they can become rejected. active. So we, we've designed this podcast to help us build our own set of rules, those that are important to us, and that work for us. We all need rules, but they need to be rules relevant to us our rules. And when we change the rules to our rules, we become free and free to be ourselves. So good morning, Ray.Ray Loewe  Okay, and I am Ray Loewe and I am the real luckiest guy in the world dad. We'll get into that more. But, you know, changing the rules is is one of several major sets of attitudes, attributes and actions. I think I got those all right in here that the luckiest people in the world had do and feel. And there's a whole list of them and changing the rules is one. Now I've been studying the luckiest people in the world for most of my adult life. Why? Because I've always wanted to be one. That's why okay. And I've got enough data now that we can start to share this with other people. And and those luckiest people in the world always kind of grabbed my attention because they always seem to have it all together. And they had this aura of luck about that. And I just wanted to be there. These are the kind of people that I want to hang out with the kind of people that I want to, you know, model and emulate. And these people aren't born lucky. I haven't met any of them that are born lucky yet. And what they have though, is that they've taken this set of attitudes, the way they think, attributes, the way they are, and the way they feel, and the action. Those are the things that they actually put into place. And they learn them and they've developed them and they apply them to their life and all of a sudden they feel lucky. And luckier and luckier and I can tell you, the luckiest guy in the world feels Lucky, lucky and lucky. Every day, because these darn things work. Alright, so as we said, changing the rules is one, there are a whole lot more. And what we're going to talk about this time is we're going to talk about the luckiest people in the world are on a mission. Now, the luckiest people in the world, again, are those people that personally have designed their own lives. They take control, they live their life, to the max. They're not living other people's lives. They're living their life. And it's going to be interesting to see today, how having a mission makes a difference here, and we have a guest with us that we're going to bring on in a couple minutes to explore this concept of having a mission and I think it's time for a quick break and then we're going to come back with our guest Tammi BrannanDiane Dayton  You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.Ray Loewe  Okay, I believe that we are right back and Tammi Sorry, I stumbled over your name before. But Tammy has been with us before. She is the developer of the blueprint process. And we're going to see what that is in a minute. And we're going to talk about how that's going to impact our ability to be the luckiest people in the world. So, Tammy, thanks for being with us today and say hi, Tammy.Tammi Brannan  Thanks for having me back. Ray.Ray Loewe  And that was quick. So So tell us a little bit more about the blueprint process. And and then let's talk about this thing about having a mission in life. I think the last time we hit you here We talked about the fact that people had to have a direction that they had to know what they want. And we kind of stumbled over that, because it's not an easy thing to do. And now we're going to add to the mix having a mission. So your work is cut out for you. And I just have to sit here and not do anything. It's wonderful.Tammi Brannan  I'm so glad that I can give you a day off, right. And so what I love about having a mission is that we all have one, we all have an inherent mission within us. And we talked last time about how the blueprint process really helps you identify what your zone is, you know, where your energy is spiking, where your energy is low. All of that really points to what your mission is. So again, this is something that you don't just sit down in 30 minutes and figure out you know, what is my mission? Why am I here on this planet? know it's something that over time you develop, you understand about yourself as you study your So you were just talking to Ray about how you've learned that your mission is to be the luckiest person in the world, and then also to help other people become the luckiest people in their world. And that is your mission. And so that really highlights for you what you need to do and what your rules are. Casey introduced the podcast talking about changing the rules and finding your own rules. Well, that's what your rules should really be built around is identifying your mission, your Why Why are you here? What value are you bringing to the world? What value do you want to bring to the world and then developing your rules around that? So now you know what to say yes, to what to say no to whenever you're at a crossroads because your eye is always focused on that mission on the horizon.Ray Loewe  Okay, so I've met a whole lot of people who get to this age that they call retirement and they say, Gee, I don't have to work anymore. I am Going to just take off, I'm going to enjoy my life. I'm going to go where I want to go and have fun. And most of them aren't very happy campus campers. But why is it such a wrong place to be?Tammi Brannan  Well, first of all, it means the up to that point, you haven't been the luckiest person in the world if you're not enjoying your life, so much so that now you have to take a break a permanent break from it, you have to retire from it. That means that up to this point, you haven't been choosing to be the luckiest person in the world. No shame, no guilt about that. But let's start doing something different now and really identify what is going to make me the luckiest person in the world going forward. And I totally get that if you've been working so hard doing something that you just don't really enjoy and so your energy takes every day. So every day you come home and you have to sit in front of the TV, just to kind to rejuvenate yourself, because your job sucks that much, then yeah, I totally get why you want to retire. However, that doesn't mean that work, any kind of work is going to do that to you. So as you're looking at the second stage in your life, consider maybe how work might actually bring you energy. What we know is that in order to stay engaged in life and to be the luckiest person in your life, you have to give of your value. You can't just totally check out I mean, you can, but trust me when I tell you, the satisfaction from that is very, very short lived. You will recognize after a very short period of time that you need to give you need to create that's what your mission is. That's why you're here. But you don't have to do it in a way that you don't enjoy. So to be the luckiest person in the world. It's learning what value do I have within me, but I love giving. It gives me energy to give it it doesn't mean You have to trade time for dollars. There's plenty of ways for you to get value without falling into that pattern. And without doing something that you hate doing that drains your energy.Ray Loewe  Yeah, you know, it's a shame. You're not passionate about this. I mean, I have the advantage of being able to see you and add the body language has just went on is incredible. I think you got that through the audio too. But a while ago, you sent me an email, and I like to read it right now. Because I think it's one of the problems that occurs when you don't have a mission in life. So you're you got this email from a friend of yours who ran and a daycare center for the elderly. Yeah. Okay. And she was talking about a resident that I guess it was kind of in the beginning stage of dementia. Okay. And she had enough memory though, to know that things were not right here. She just didn't feel right. And she was constantly talking about the fact that she didn't have anything to look for. Right? No mission. But But if her daughter had passed away, there was no husband, all the pets had died. She had just started to seek medical help to, uh, but she used to be a speech therapist, she loved the outdoors. She read a lot, you know, and all of a sudden, there's this world to live that just was lost. Absolutely. And I've seen so many older people do that. And this is not where you want to be. You don't want to have this kind of regret in life. So what do you do? All right.Tammi Brannan  And it's a great question. First of all, you got to recognize you're here for a reason. And that reason isn't done. And often when people retire, that's what they're thinking. They're thinking my use is over. I'm done with my work or I'm done done being a mom or You know a sister or brother or whatever, because that person is no longer living or you know, whatever that your use is not done. It's never done. And so if you want to be if you want to stay engaged in your life, if you don't want to end up like this lovely woman in the in the care home, then you have to recognize that within you inherent within you is value, its inherent value. And in order for you to stay engaged in life, you have to keep creating value. You have to get engaged with something that you're passionate and excited about. Ray was mentioning how he can see me gesturing and going crazy on my end of the camera, and it's because I have found my mission and whenever I talk about it, I my energy goes through the roof. Well, you listening you have a mission. When you tap into that mission, you'll tap into that energy and you will never feel tired. You will never want to retire You will never want to be done. Because just talking about that giving in that way, lights you. So, the question at this point is, do you need to make money? Or can you give without the need of making money? That's the question. Either with either answer no matter how you answered that question, then you have to ask yourself, what ways have I given value in the past whether you've traded time for dollars or not? What ways have you given value in the past whether it's to a friend, a son of a brother, whatever a client, what ways have you given value in the past that you have loved giving, that when you give in that way, it feels like you could keep on giving. You're like the Energizer Bunny. You could keep going and going and going banging that drum because you love banging that drum and that pink fluffy bunny suit, right? So whatever way in the past that you have given value that you have just gotten so How much energy from? Let's recreate that in your current existence? What can you do today? that utilizes some of those things?Ray Loewe  Okay, we have a break in the passion here.KC Dempster  Take a breath, right?Ray Loewe  Well, I'm sitting here listening to you, you know, and, and and I'm kind of kind of break ahead over here because one of the other characteristics of the luckiest people in the world is that they tend to follow what's fascinating and motivating. And it's an exact extension here of what you're talking about, you know, we all bleed other people's lives. And I think, listening to you that really hit home with me over here, when we're not doing the things that we're excited about. We're living other people's watch. Now, to some extent, you know, we may have to do that four times because we have to make a living we've got to make money for something, but living somebody else's life isn't fun. It doesn't give you the psychic benefits of anything. And what you're saying here is you pick out those things that fascinate you and motivate you. And now you figure out how to do those things for the rest of your life.Tammi Brannan  Amen. You said it.Ray Loewe  All right. So do you have a magic way of doing this?Tammi Brannan  Well, like I said, if you can study you, as far back as you can remember, both relationships and professional life volunteer experiences, start making a list of anything that you've done in the past, where someone has said back to you, Hey, you know what, you really helped me out there. Thank you so much that that just took a huge load off of my mind. When anytime that someone has given you that feedback, make a note of what it was that you were doing in that moment. And once you compile a list, give yourself a couple of weeks to kind of call your memory banks. Maybe reach out to some friends and family members and ask them What do you see that I bring to the table? Make sure though, that the only things you're writing down on your list are things that you love to do. If someone says to you, oh, man, you totally helped me when you did this. But you're thinking in your brain, oh, I'm glad I helped you. But that sucked. I hated doing that, then do not put that down on the list, right? I mean, you want the rest of you want the second stage of your life to make you the luckiest person in the world. So you only want to do things that you love to do. You, you can recreate your life today, based on these things. So once you create this list of things that you've done for others, that you also love doing, then you can start saying, Okay, what in the world would allow me to do these things? Do I create my own business? Do I go work for someone else? Do I volunteer at the pet shelter, you know, whatever. But you're basically creating a job description for yourself. That's what you're doing. By identifying all those things that you've done to create value for others over the years, that you've also loved doing yourself. You're creating a job description. And so now, ask yourself, Is this a job that exists somewhere out in the world that I could actually apply for? Is this a business that I could create? And again, checking in with yourself? What do I want to do? Do I want to have my own business? Does the thought of creating my own business really excite me? Then do that? If you'd rather just work for someone else, you know, nine to five, kind of leave the job there. Or maybe it's not nine to five, maybe it's 12 to four, then great, do that. Again, no matter what, not only with what you're doing, but also how you're doing it. It's based on you. It's based on what you want. And that's how you become the luckiest person in the world today.Ray Loewe  Okay, on there. All right, KC, any questions I have now or before, we're gonna have To break.KC Dempster  Yeah, we're getting low on time here.Ray Loewe  Yeah. So so basically what you're telling me is it all comes down to really defining who you are and what you want. That's, that's going to stage one. And then what we haven't really talked about is how you transition into doing this. You know, I've met so many people that are doomed to being unlucky for the rest of their life, because they can't seem to get out of where they are. But there's always a way to get out of where you are, isn't there?Tammi Brannan  Yes, absolutely.Ray Loewe  And I think what we need to do is we'll bring you back in a few more weeks. And we'll start to talk a little bit more about maybe how you do this. And I think a lot of these things are built into your blueprint process. And I know this is what you helped me to do you help me get a grasp on why I really feel lucky and why I'm the luckiest guy in the world. And what are these criteria and they've been floating around for years and years. And yours, and all of a sudden they're clear in my head. So thank you for that. And thank you again for being a guest on our show today. And let's do a quick break and come back and close up our show.Diane Dayton  You're listening to changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe, the luckiest guy in the world. We will be right back with more exciting information.KC Dempster  Welcome back, everybody. I'm still kind of catching my breath. From all that information. It was really exciting, actually, is thatRay Loewe  it was word for it. It was actually kind of a rope of hope was we're gonnaKC Dempster  We have to talk about that. But I wanted to say, the luckiest people in the world aren't born lucky but they do live exciting and fulfilling lives. And we believe it's because they've made the commitment to learn how to be lucky, but it's not enough just to make the one time commitment. being lucky is a continuing process. It's like a journey. And sometimes even lucky people get hit by life events that derail them. And they need was it Ray was it soap on a rope to get out of limbo?, the nature of being lucky in itself creates change. And most lucky people look to continuously expand their opportunities in their lives. This means meeting new lucky people sharing experiences, and learning from the experts and adjusting their own lives and changing their rules. So how are you going to help us learn to be lucky and stay lucky?Ray Loewe  Well, you join our luckiest people in the world community and, and you come to our website, www the luckiest guy in the world.com and you learn about our podcast and you listen to our podcast and you learn about our friends connection events, our travel connection events, our books, and take some porches. But, you know, the real place to start is right here on changing the rules. We can Have some fantastic guests like Tammy who just will wake us up and give us some insights into the kinds of things that we need to do to be the luckiest people in the world. So, join us in another week for changing the rules and we're going to introduce another of the luckiest people in the world. Thanks for being with us.Diane Dayton  Thank you for listening to changing the rules, a podcast designed to help you live your life the way you want, and give you what you need to make it happen. Join us in two weeks for our next exciting topic on changing the rules with KC Dempster and Ray Loewe the luckiest guy in the world. 

Welcome!   While we have all been locked down Cybercriminals have been hard at work developing and perfecting tools that will leach your CPU resources, bandwidth, and electricity. Google Chrome users won't be bothered by these soon when they release a new feature that neuters these abusive crypto-jacking ads that covertly leach your CPU resources, bandwidth, and electricity.  I will tell you all about it and more. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig, Peterson here. We've had a busy hour this afternoon as we've been running through some of the top stories of this last week we talked about website attacks, how they've become more persistent, more prevalent, and even quieter than they were before. What you should be doing as a business owner. [00:00:26] If you have a website, and by the way, the answer is patch, patch, patch, and use a really good credit card processing service. I tend to like Stripe. They are certainly the best out there. PayPal is pretty good. Square's pretty good. We also talked about the identity-related breaches. They are certainly hitting us as consumers, but it turns out companies are having problems with this as well. [00:00:54] And of course we were just talking about the coming disruption to college. What I think is going to happen and what the experts are saying as well. So hopefully you were able to follow along, if not. Visit me online, Craig peterson.com if you look at this, excuse me, this morning's newsletter. You'll see links to all of these segments for today, including the ones that are coming up. [00:01:21] We're going to be talking about your Chrome browser right now. Some challenges with VPNs. It's time to relaunch a remote team. What should you be doing? We've got some phishing templates. What are the bad guys doing? What are phishing templates? Britain's hard-lesson about blind trust when it comes to "science." Okay, so Chrome's going to soon block these resource-draining ads. Now, if you've attended some of my training courses, you know, I've talked many times about how to block some of these ads now. The people who run the websites that are based on ad revenue or, Hey, I get it right, these, these poor people, they need the ad revenue. [00:02:10] On the other side, there are so many ads and so many of them are heavy graphics and even worse, so many of them are videos that it's substantially slowing down our web browsing experience. And I showed in one of my pieces of training here that something as simple as Ublock origin installed on your browser can double, triple, quadruple the speed of a page load. [00:02:37] Now, that's particularly important if you're on a DSL line or maybe you're on a phone on LTE or four or five G or whatever it is you're using, it makes a big difference. It's a noticeable difference. I mean like noticeable. Your page-load goes to about a second down from about 10 to 20 seconds for all of the elements to load. [00:03:00] So many of us are turning it off because frankly, they've gone overboard. With the ads. Maybe they should be charging more for the ads and have fewer of them, I don't know. But there are too many ads. They are too intrusive and they are just chewing up way too much of our bandwidth and that gets to be a huge, huge problem. [00:03:23] Now, Google had some ad blockers available through the Google store, the Google Chrome store. They were never really happy about that cause that's how Google makes its money, is selling your information. So having ads up that they are serving from their webs on different websites makes them money. [00:03:45] So if you go to a website. And you see an ad, that ad can be coming from a whole bunch of different networks. And frankly, Google could be behind one or more of those networks as well. So, you know, you've got to understand that that's where they're coming from. Right? So for a while, Google completely blocked. [00:04:10] All of these ad blockers. Now they've decided they're going to do something a little bit different, and instead of blocking all of the ads that are out there, all of these ads that are on a webpage, Google says, okay, here's what we're going to do. There is a problem, although it's not like a huge problem, there is a problem with some ads using far too much CPU and memory and in fact what the referring to are these Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency miners. [00:04:48] So here's how this works. In the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency world, you have people who are mining. They're using these huge prime numbers in order to solve a mathematical formula, and when they can solve that mathematical formula, it results in this big number. And that big number cannot be reproduced by other people. [00:05:12] Theoretically. it can't be hacked. They can't figure out what it is, particularly once you found it and you put it into your wallet, so now you have in your wallet, you can spend it, you can spend fractions of it, et cetera, et cetera. So that takes a lot of CPU. In fact. I've heard numbers that the value of a Bitcoin is actually lower. [00:05:40] And then what it costs you and electricity and the computing power to mine that Bitcoin, and there've been companies who have been in business specifically just to mine Bitcoin. There are companies that make devices specifically to mine, Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies. And it's gotten to the point now where even those companies, as efficient as they are using specialized hardware. [00:06:08] Have found that they just can't do it. They can't mind effectively and make money. So what are the bad guys doing while the bad guys are sneaking stuff into ads? So they'll buy an ad on one of these advertisement networks, and once you've got an ad on one of those advertising networks and the ad plays on that person's computer. [00:06:33] They are actually delivering some, I guess you could call it malware, right? But they're delivering some software's part of this ad that now uses your electricity, your computing power, all of your competing resources to mind for the cryptocurrency. Because if they can use your browser. To mine for cryptocurrency. [00:06:59] That's free, right? That doesn't cost them anything. Now we're just going to cost you a lot. It's going to obviously slow down your computer. In the case of these Android phones out there, there have been cases of them not only getting hot because they're so busy trying to mine the cryptocurrencies for the bad guys, but they actually have caught fire as well, so this is a difficult thing. [00:07:26]for you as a user, cause you, how do you know this? You can't really block it. And to conceal the scam, the bad guys are obfuscating this code. They're making it look like legitimate code is legitimate ad everything's just fine. And the only thing you notice is all of a sudden all of the fans on your computer has gone to full bore. [00:07:48] Right? Or if you're on a laptop or a smartphone. Your batteries are shot, they just burn right through them. And also, if you're really paying attention, you're going to see that your network resources also get overloaded. So in a post published on Thursday. this last week of the Chrome project manager's name is Marshall Vale said that while the percentage of these abusive ads is extremely low, somewhere around a half a percent, they account. [00:08:22] For 28% of CPU usage in 27% of network data. I'm looking at a graph that's published here over on ARS Technica looking at all of these numbers and he says, we've recently discovered that a fraction of a percent of ads, consumer disproportionate share device resources such as battery network data without the user. [00:08:47] Knowing about it. So to kind of put an end to this, you can do a few things. You can do what I've suggested in my, in some of the webinars I've done, the free webinars, I'm going to try and start doing some Facebook lives as well, or we talk about this, but Chrome is limiting the resources a display ad can consume before user interacts with it. [00:09:13] So the idea is you've got an ad frame, and if it starts all-of-sudden chewing up a lot of resources, Google Chrome is going to show a thing that says the ad was removed. Because it's using a lot of resources and you haven't even clicked on it yet, so then I think that's going to be a very good thing. [00:09:36] They've tried to figure out what's the right threshold here for disabling an ad because again, some of them are downloading video, some of them are, are actually drawing. Things on your screen. A little thing of animation, like a Disney film, they're drawing this on your screen that requires a lot of CPU and they're drawing it specifically for you based on what they know about you. [00:09:59] Maybe they put your name into it or some product that you really like, but Google is saying that ads that use more CPU resources or network data, then the average of other ads. In fact, it's not just the average. It's ads that use more than 99.9% more than other ads. It's going to get shut off. So that means more than four megabytes of network data or 15 seconds of CPU usage. [00:10:30] So we'll see what happens here. Chrome developers are going to have to kind of play with the limits over the next few months. If you're developing ads that are going to be showing up on Chrome, you got to kind of be careful of this. They're doing kind of a slow delayed rollout so that ad creators and tool providers that are, that are really trying to be good guys here aren't nailed. [00:10:53] Now I've got this ad. I've got this article up on my website and you can find it there. You can find it on ARS Technica. There's an article by Dan Gooden over there, but also in Craig peterson.com, there's a flag that you can turn on if you want to start doing this immediately. So the flag is called enable dash heavy dash intervention. If you have a recent version of Chrome, it's going to work. Now, Firefox last year. Added a mechanism for blocking crypto-jacking, and it's doing it based on the known crypto-jacking domain. So it's pretty useful, but this is kind of a whack-a-mole approach. [00:11:43] They've got to know about it in order to shut it down. That's one of the reasons, by the way, I love the way Cisco does it. Security, like those systems I mentioned earlier, to help restaurants to expand. Into the parking lot and keep their patrons safe online. They gather information over a billion points a day in order to track what's going on. [00:12:07] But anyhow, so that's what's going on with Chrome. Stick around at the top of the hour a week, come back. We're going to talk about four challenges. With the existing VPNs, what you need to know, what you should do. This could be a problem for a lot of people out there, frankly, but we'll get into that when we get back. [00:12:25] Also, in the next hour, we'll be talking about launching a remote team, some themed phishing templates, how the bad guys are doing it in this day and age, and Britain's hard lesson about trust in the so-called scientific approach. You're listening to Craig Peterson.  stick around cause we'll be right back. --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

In this interview Lisa interviews Jez Morris, a clinical sleep physiologist on everything sleep apnoea and also cardiac testing. They do a deep dive into the symptoms and treatments and consequences of not picking up sleep apnoea.   Lisa has a personal interest in this as it pertains to brain function and rehabilitation and it was one of the key factors in saving her mum Isobel's life after a major aneurysm and stroke.  Jez explains the different types of sleep apnoea and co morbidities and risk factors.   You can visit Jez and his team at Fast Paced Solutions www.fastpacedsolutions.co.nz    About Fast Pace Solutions It was a common belief in the need for equitable health care – and improved accessibility for all – that led to three healthcare professionals joining forces to provide primary-based diagnostic services to GPs, specialists and concerned patients themselves. Fast Pace Solutions offers a range of cardiorespiratory diagnostic tests aimed at early and fast diagnosis of heart, lung and sleep-related complaints. Working closely with a range of health professionals and operating out of their new premises in the Strandon Professionals Centre, Michael Maxim, Jez Morris, and Alan Thomson want to encourage more people who have issues with breathing, dizziness, palpitations or sleep to get themselves checked out. Visit them at www.fastpacedsolutions.co.nz  Ambulatory Blood Pressure Monitoring Ambulatory blood pressure monitoring (ABPM) is concerned solely with detecting problems related to high blood pressure – a hugely significant health risk which is currently on the rise. Blood pressure monitoring involves wearing a cuff linked to a small device which measures your blood pressure every half hour (or hourly during the night) over a 24-hour period, while you go about your day. Many studies have confirmed this method is superior to clinic blood pressure testing in predicting future cardiovascular events and targeting organ damage. This means your doctor can provide a much more accurate diagnosis and effective management plan Holter Monitoring A Holter monitor is a small, lightweight heart rate monitor that measures the rhythm as well as the rate of your heart for a continuous period of 24 or 48 hours. The monitor has three leads which are attached to your chest via ECG electrodes. The Holter monitor's primary purpose is to correlate symptoms such as heart palpitations, rapid breathing or dizziness with the ECG (see below) and rule in or out any abnormal rhythm activity. The patient is required to document all symptoms in a diary. 24 Hour Holter Monitor Exercise Tolerance Testing An exercise tolerance test (or ETT) requires a patient to exercise on a treadmill in the clinic while being monitored by a 12-lead ECG (electrocardiogram) and blood pressure machine and is often used if we don't pick anything up on a Holter heart monitor. The ETT replicates how your body behaves under stress and can pick up issues such as angina and demonstrate how adequate your heart function is as well as your exercise tolerance. Chest pain and shortness of breath while exercising are common indicators for this test. Cardiac Event Monitoring Similar to a Holter monitor, but worn for a full week, cardiac event monitors (or cardiac event recorders) are used to correlate a patient's heart rate and rhythm to their ECG (electrocardiogram) over a period of 7 days. A cardiac event recorder is preferred when symptoms are less frequent and allows a patient to activate an "Event" button to snapshot a rhythm when they experience any abnormal symptoms. It is often used for younger patients. 7 Day Holter ECG and Oximetry An electrocardiogram (ECG) measures the electrical activity of your heart via 12 leads attached to your chest and body. It takes only a few minutes and records your heart's rhythm, checking for abnormal activity which may indicate damage to your heart or blood vessels caused by high blood pressure. An ECG can detect problems long before they become significant issues. In fact, everyone over the age of 45 should have an ECG. Oximetry measures your oxygen levels while you sleep, or for selected hours of the day. Resting ECG Sleep Studies Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety. Snoring is one of the most under-acknowledged symptoms in the management of health. Although often seen as a benign problem, it can cause disharmony in relationships as well as significant disruption to sleep. Ongoing sleep deficiency can raise your risk for some chronic health problems such as high blood pressure, heart failure, diabetes and many breathing disorders – sleep apnoea is a major cause of cardiac and respiratory issues. We offer an advanced at home sleep study to assess the severity of snoring/sleep apnoea and impact of cardiac and respiratory health. Level 3 Sleep Study Level 4a Sleep Study (Oximetry)   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show: For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com   For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni... Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body.   Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epige... measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home   For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/minds...   Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information   ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option.   Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening.   "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by LisaTamati.com. Speaker 2: (00:12) Welcome back to the show. This week I have an exciting episode with a clinical sleep physiologist. Jeez Morris, who's been a friend of the family for years and we've actually been in business together. We had a hyperbaric oxygen therapy clinic, but today we're going to be talking about sleep apnea, what it is, what the risks are involved when you have sleep apnea, how to assess it. The symptoms and sinuses are really, really important topic. It's so important that, you know, I don't believe that my mum would be alive if we hadn't picked up that she had sleep apnea. So it's a very interesting episode to learn all about sleep, what it does for your body, and it's a really fantastic interview. So I hope you enjoy the show with, jeez Morris. Um, just a reminder to I have my new book relentless out, which is available on my website. Speaker 2: (01:03) Um, it tells a story and part of that story, uh, from bringing her back, uh, from a major aneurism, a part of that rehabilitation journey was, uh, diagnosing her with sleep apnea in dealing with that. So it's really pertinent to today's topic. Um, I am currently working on a brain rehabilitation course that I'm going to be offering to people since the release of my mom's book and the story of her, um, incredible, amazing comeback journey, um, from being not much over a vegetative state to being now fully functioning again, um, fully healthy. Um, I have been inundated with requests for people wanting help with brain rehabilitation, whether it's strokes, dementia, Alzheimer's, uh, TBIs, concussions and so on. So I'm in that, in the throws of making that course because, uh, you know, I just can't deal with so many one-on-one. Um, so look out for that. It's going to be available hopefully within the next couple of months if I can get my energy. Um, and really looking forward to sharing that with the world as well on the back of this book. So right now let's go over to James Morris and learn all about sleep apnea. Speaker 2: (02:16) Well, hi everyone. Lisa Tamati here. and pushing the limits. So thank you for being with me again today. I have a friend of mine who is a sleep physiologist, a clinical sleep physiologist. Jeez Morris, how are you doing? Geez. Oh, very, very good now. Um, jeez and I have a bit of a history together. Um, I'm uh, he, when my mum had a stroke and everyone knows that she had an aneurysm and a stroke a few years ago, um, and I was doing better with the hospital because I wanted the sleep apnea test done and I couldn't get one done. Um, saved for going to my friend dues who is asleep physiologists and saying, geez, can you come and help me please? Can we do a test? Um, we did that um, slightly against the roles Speaker 3: (03:00) at the hospital at the time, wasn't that, uh, we came back with severe sleep apnea with oxygen and then was at the worst point at around 70% during the night, which is pretty disastrous. So I'm going to talk to you today with uh, jeez about, um, sleep apnea, what it is, what you need to be aware of. And we're also going to go into a new cardiac system that is, that got there. That's going to be really interesting. So jeez, firstly, thank you for helping me back then. My pleasure. I don't know if my mum would be sitting here today. I'm healthy and well, if it wasn't for you coming in and doing a stake assessment, it's that important and this is why the subject is really important to me to get out there and to let people know about this. So just can you just tell me a little bit your background, um, and then you know, what is sleep apnea? Speaker 3: (03:52) Okay. My background is actually an anesthetic technology. I used to work as an anesthetic technician here at base. Um, and as the years went by I got approached by a colleague of mine yeah. And T surgeon David Tolbert who was on a real interest in sleep, Mmm. Apnea because of the upper airway and asked me if I could help him with regards to treatment. And that the relationship developed and I got really interested in this area because it's so fascinating that eventually we set up I primary based sleep clinic that then sort of spread a bit and there's quite a few around the country. Um, because sleep is something we all take for granted in some respects, but it actually has a significant role within normal health. Hmm. So that, that's, that's how I started in this field. I'm still doing it 18 years later. Speaker 3: (04:47) Yep. And you've, so you've had a series of clinics throughout New Zealand at one stage and um, yeah, sleep apnea is what is it defined as specific place? So w w how, you know, people hear this word but they don't often know what the heck it means. Okay. So sleep apnea is a condition that has pretty sure, I realize it basically pauses in breathing during sleep, uh, for a number of reasons. Um, it affects about two to 7% of the population. However, that's with moderate to severe. Um, basically, but what we talk about now is sleep disordered breathing because we know there's a range of respiratory sleep issues affecting the patient. So sleep apnea itself is fundamentally, you can tell, cause if you've got obstructive sleep apnea, which is the main one [inaudible] it's a classic symptom. So all sleep obstructive sleep apnea, but not everybody who shores has obstructive sleep apnea. Speaker 3: (05:56) Okay. So that's key. So snoring is, is like, um, a pain in a joint. If we are a runner or sports person, if you get pain in your neck, you don't tend to ignore it. Yeah. You want to know what's happening because it's an abnormal process, right? Shoring is an app, normal process. And as a symptom of something, it could be benign, it may not. So we actually say that up to about 20% of the population will suffer from pathological or issues related to snoring. And that's the key here. So if you snore to start, you really should just get it checked out. We know that snoring gives you a higher chance of developing high blood pressure. Hmm. Um, from there, high blood pressure can lead to other cardiac and physiological issues. Absolutely. Yeah. So that's, that's where we start. Okay. The most common is obstructive sleep apnea. Speaker 3: (06:57) Then we move into things like central sleep apnea. That's what mum has. Yeah. Because basically if we see these conditions, there's lots of reasons why we'll see central sweep here. We see it in severe cardiac problems and basically it's a miscommunication where you just physically stopped breathing. So obstructive apnea is the, is the airwaves physically shutting off? Yeah. So you get this jerky movement of patients who have got it until they breathe. Central sleep apnea is a pause, just a stop in breathing. Wow. So they will be breathing quite normally. Then they stop, go silent. There's no effort to breathe nothing. Um, and you can see it for a number of reasons. In your mom's case, it was due to a stroke, uh, that caused her to stop breathing. But we see it in neurological conditions. We see it in change. Stokes breathing is a common cause of central apnea change. Speaker 3: (07:58) Stokes is a word that sort of worries me when I heard that. It's what we tend to see in the pre pre mortal issue. So just before people die, they go into this change. However, there's 31 reasons we see more, more that we can see, change, dehydration, heart conditions, all sorts of things because there's not, it's a metabolic condition. It's why we get changed up. So anything that can cause a metabolic issue can cause change steps. Yup. And this is this waxing and waning of, of the respiratory pattern. The center of a nice smooth process. This is what got a particular sound to it. Speaker 3: (08:48) It's usually, it's, it's a form of hyperventilation. She'll see the patient sort of get deeper and deeper, deeper, and then weighing off again and then flat. So people refer to it sometimes as like a death rattle. Yep. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a scary, scary way. And so that's, and so that's happens when you've got a central problem that can happen. Central sleep apnea can be caused by different Cheyne Stokes is one pot, one tile of central apnea. Some people just physiologically stop breathing. Yeah. Because of a stroke or a head injury, a neurological condition. Something in the brain that's been affected by the strokes, our blood supply to a particular gland or a particular part of, uh, of the primary. Primarily. Yeah. Neurological. Yeah. Primarily. Yeah. Okay. Um, all right, so that's two of them. Is there a, is there a third variation? There's a few other ones. Speaker 3: (09:50) We've got hyperventilation, which is, um, a reduction of breathing of at least 50% in the, in the volume of breath, but taking with a subsequent, um, reaction. So in other words, you know, your oxygen level starts to drop or you physiologically wake up. Yeah. Uh, hyperventilation in itself, I mean, everyone will stop breathing and the brief assert, so about two, about five times out, we're not going to stress too much about it from a risk perspective, but hyperventilation, we're seeing more and more because like obstructive sleep apnea, one of the main cause of that is weight. Obesity is, is, you know what I mean? Again, within healthcare, I know that people feel that we pushed away question a lot, but obesity with good is a significant health issue that we're not, we don't seem to be successfully addressing. Yep. So you've then got hyperventilation syndromes, you've got obesity hyperventilation syndrome that can be significant, uh, detrimental to long term health. Speaker 3: (11:01) Yeah. Okay. And this has seen a bit of a, um, you know, a circle because what's your, what's your obese and then you have this, then you'll get more obese because there's, there's a big, big connection between things like leptin levels and stuff that control appetite, especially in fragmentation. Yeah. So theoretically you mean the worst you sleep the hungry you are. Because at the end of the day, that's how we function as, as a survival mechanism, as a building. Yet, if we're feeling low on energy, we tend to eat to get fuel to feel energetic. Unfortunately, a lot of the foods that we might grate to when we're feeling like that tend to be the highest fat snacky type foods. So in a lot of cases, people who are, who are significantly overweight may not eat big meals, but they eat are very, but a lot of very small, high fat milk, which compounds the issue. Yeah. Speaker 2: (12:01) And that's done in Graham on as being a part of that equation. Yeah. So your satiation mechanisms aren't quite as good and of course when you, when you're not sleeping well, I mean there's, there is a whole lot of knock on effects, which I've talked about on a couple of episodes on the podcast. So it all starts to tie into to each other and has huge impacts on your, your mental health, your physical health, your brain, you know, mission, everything. Speaker 3: (12:29) Yeah. Well what we tend to see in people who to be, cause that's what we're really pushing her obstructive sleep apnea. These patients will first of all go to bed. They'll then start to sleep, start to snore. So sleep in itself. It's a very complex process. People always think you're awake, you're asleep. That's it. It's not. We talk, we talk in w we talk about sleep architecture, how your sleep is structured. So for the first seven minutes or so stage one sleep, that's the time you're getting comfortable, your eyes are closed. It's not true sleep. It's that like pre sweet sort of process. Then then we're supposed to drop into stage two, which is what we define as true sleep is when you actually go to sleep physiologically things start to settle down. You're hearing still going so you can still be erased at that stage and we spend 20 to 25 minutes there and then we move into what we call Delta wave sleep stages for him. When the brain goes into that slow wavy pattern, so you've basically got an inactive mind instill a veritable active body so you can still Twitch and stop after about 90 minutes of these processes you then stack and drop into what is REM sleep, Speaker 2: (13:44) which is that Speaker 3: (13:46) dream fell asleep. Yeah. Which is very, very important within a human, so like, and then we just cycle through that every 90 minutes or so. So you get to have about five, six, seven periods of REM during the night. What we tend to see in people with obstructive sleep apnea is that they'll start to snore at stage one too. Stages three four they'll start to obstruct. Once they stopped breathing, about six seconds later, their oxygen levels start to drop. We then get this sympathetic nerve activation that causes them to physiologically wake up to their heart, beats faster, that blood pressure goes up. Um, and it brings them back to a stage where the obstruction disappears, which may be level one, level two, but that Reiki did deep sleep. And then a lot of cases that these patients don't get true REM periods, pure sleep architecture. Speaker 3: (14:43) It's completely fragmented. And we're talking, and we, I've seen people stop breathing, I mean over a hundred times an hour, which means is that our heart rate variability is phenomenal during the night. So in effect, these people are working harder to sleep, to stay awake. So of course, but the body's a learning mechanism, it starts to say, well, I'm burning more energy doing this than I am by just staying awake. So people tend to start to develop this really bad sleep pattern where they can't get to sleep properly or they wake up frequently during the night. So you mean, you mean sleep is really important for things like growth hormone production, cortisol productions, all of these things. Your adrenals have hormones. They have very poor short term memory, their fatigue, blood pressure tends to be high and you mean eventually things are going to shut off. Speaker 3: (15:40) Yeah. And, and your health is going to seriously be a farrier, right? Absolutely. Yeah. And this is, this is so it's so important and just not, you know, all the sort of stuff needs to be taught at school. So what happens in the sleep process? Cause we all just fake. We go to bed and we go to sleep. You know, we don't know about deep sleep and REM sleep and in the life stages of sleep and how it, how it actually affects our physiology the next day and how our brain function isn't going to work. And what about the, I read a study recently on the brainwashing. Yeah. Function that happens when we're in asleep and that the brain shrinks. You're talking about, yeah. You're talking about amyloid. Cool. Yeah. Yep. Yep. Speaker 3: (16:24) Which is good when we're young because I think, I mean, this is getting into real neurophysiology. So, excuse me. So basically when you're growing or developing synopsis, it sits with that neuro logical function. Mmm. It's a, it's a byproduct of metabolism, of neurophysiological by metabolism and needs to be washed out. Um, which tends to happen during sleep while you were asleep and we beat her is dispersed ready for the next day. So it washes out the break. Yeah. Yep. It's a brainwash. That's what they're calling it. Yeah. They flush it out. Yep. And is it important a protein, but it flushes out all the and the rent. However, what we find sleep apnea patients or insomnia patients and where is that? I don't fully do they, that's why they wake up feeling groggy. Yeah. Yeah. Confused sometimes. Um, we noticed in outside of ms patients that there is a significant higher level within Sam or in place. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, that is an important function as well. And we can see that not just in sleep pattern. We can see that in insomniacs and people. Wow. Wow. That is fascinating because if we not washing out those plaques every day and getting rid of them as that cause they build up when we're awake, from what I understand, we're functioning. Yeah. It starts to up over time. And this, Speaker 2: (17:50) you know, over a period of 20 years can lead to where they're suggesting it can lead to Alzheimer's. Early onset Alzheimer's. Yeah. Yeah. It's a long side process. So if we can get it early, we can, we can stop that process happening. Um, and this is really, this is the whole point of this conversation is, is to get people to be aware of what are the signs of sleep apnea, what are the things that are going to happen when you're asleep as off. Um, and what we can do about it. Um, uh, you know, we referred, um, just a bit earlier to mum's story. Um, and mum was in the hospital, excuse me, um, for three months and she'd been in Wellington, uh, in the acute phase and the ICU and then in the neurological ward down the air and she'd been on supplemental oxygen. Speaker 2: (18:36) Um, when, when she came back through to new Poloma, she was taken off of supplemental oxygen cause she was now stabilized if you like. Um, and I noticed that she was gone from terrible to really, really terrible. Like there was hardly any higher function going on at all. Um, and that's when my brain started to tick over and you know, my history with, you know, um, training at altitude and data races at altitude and I'd seen like things like she had a bacteria in the mouth that was just doing gross, horrible things. Yeah. And that was a really a signal to me like, Hmm. Bacteria, lack of oxygen. Uh, jeez. Sleep apnea basically was the connection that I made there. Um, oxygen in the body, you know, and lack of oxygen causes bacteria to spread and, and proliferate. Um, so it's really, really important that we, we address this. This is not something we should be putting off. So you is inherit in your clinics, you would do the sleep assessment on people, which is an overnight procedure or a test. Speaker 2: (19:44) Then if someone comes back with sleep apnea, they get a C-PAP machine? Well, it depends, right? So first of all, the key to anyone as to acknowledge that they have sleep patient. So the reason we can tell people who have sleep issues is people always say, you're mean I have sleep problem, but during the day they still function. Normally people with a true sleep problem don't function so well. So that constantly fatigued. Yeah. Tired, short term memory, it's usually quite poor because they're not dreaming. And part of the process of dreaming is the burn information to a hard drive if you like. So if you're not dreaming, you're not retain that information. So short term memory tends to disappear. There's petite. Quite often they're slightly on the higher. So those are the key things. Now I definitely, yeah, if you're not snoring, it's not obstructive sleep apnea, but it could be upper airways resistance syndrome or something like that. So in other words, you're having difficulty breathing during the night. Speaker 3: (20:47) People often wake up for headaches. They often wake up during the night, Speaker 3: (20:51) um, maybe once or twice. Um, so these are the common symptoms we see meet. But 70% of most GP consults will involve the word fatigue. Tired, no energy. Yeah. So that should be your key. If you're feeling tired during the day, most people come by their GPS because the GPS are becoming more and more aware of sleep specific. Um, because we spend one third of the day doing it. Yeah. Um, we would then go through a simple questionnaire like you're tired and scale Epworth sleepiness score is that, is that common tired and scale that we use to address how try it or how it affected people. And this involves eight simple questions about the ability to fall asleep doing certain things. And I would have run this through with Uma and basically it's things like if you sat reading a book, what's your chance of falling asleep? Yeah. Not possible. Moderate be high or high or sitting at traffic lights. Um, you mean what's the chances of you falling asleep? And believe it or not, there are people who want to positively, hi. Oh God. Every question. I remember one person telling me in Oxford, he said, I said, yeah, I mean, it's not very good if you're falling asleep at traffic lights. And he said, yeah, we can, we can sit for 20 minutes to traffic lights. So maybe we need to readdress it so that we're sleeping. Speaker 3: (22:17) Then we would probably carry out for most people who complain of sleep. The first thing I think to do would be to carry out a very simple respiratory sleep study and there's a couple of types you can do at home. There's all this imagery which surely looks up to gin levels during your sleep and that's a little clip that you wear on your finger, touched with a little monitor, some of wireless, they go on the watches and that's the simplest way and it has a very good correlation to sleep apnea so we can use it as a very simple cheap test. Yeah. As an a level three sleep study, which looks at as a thoracic efforts. So we're looking for specific obstructive central events or under breathing with a nasal cannula, an oxygen saturation monitor, and they can be done at home. Yeah, every simple test I can give us really detailed information, but level two sleep studies is when you're getting into neurophysiology side of sleep. Speaker 3: (23:16) Now 96% of sleep disorders. Alright. There were spiritually, mostly the very small percentage are the neurological disorders that we see that REM behavior disorders, the narcolepsy's, all of those more complex disease States that really require much higher levels of Oh, acuity and testing. Right. But the majority, and that's a medicine what we're supposed to address, the majority of patients can be, can be looked at from a respiratory. Yep. Um, once we get a test, we can then identify the severity of any underlying respiratory problem. No. Talk about sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea, which is where we get airway physically closes during the night. Yep. We talk about mild, moderate, severe. Yeah. Mine is any and vent above five to 15 events. Then we talk about moderate, which is 15 to 30 events an hour and anything over 30 we talk about severe. Yeah. This scale is really more focused on funding of therapies. Speaker 3: (24:27) Yeah. It's on impact of disease. That's terrible. Well, we know that people with certain tend to have a higher risk morbidity, mortality, but we also know that people with moderate with other pathology, awesome have significant risks. But more and more evidence is saying that if you don't treat the mild, they will become exactly there. Related to it is at the bottom of the cleft problem that we have. It's like fun. It always comes down to funding not how healthy you're going to be, but you'll be basically that's sleep apnea. Yep. Obstructive sleep apnea, obstructive sleep apnea can't be treated. Yeah. That's the good thing. What we talk about is things like conservative measures. Conservative measures are always going weight loss. Yeah. Fitness levels. Yep. Cause obviously the fitter you are just sending you out in the majority of cases. Yes. Um, so those are, those are simple things you can do to help. Speaker 3: (25:40) However the research is not green. Yup. Yup. For ag. And then we're moving more into the surgical options. Obviously you've got the weight related surgery, which is very difficult. Very Patrick. Yeah. To get, quite often we look at the upper airway as being part of dish mechanism that's causing the issue finish things like the obvious nasal deviations that we can. But you can see the obvious ones from rugby Plains, but obviously there are also, there's also subtle deviations. Then there's things within the knees or pathway that can cause problems. Their adenoids leaving you. Now tonsils is a controversial area in the area of sleep medicine. Yep. Because tonsils or something that's roughly what disappears. We get, Oh yeah, yeah. Um, however, saying that it would be the conversations I have with GPS about this is quite interesting because being in this, but I look at tonsils and everybody, well look at the back of the throat cause I'm looking at what we call a modern putty index, which is how far back the larynx and the size of the tongue. Speaker 3: (26:54) Um, but also I'm looking at tonsils and quite frequently you'll see extremely large asymptomatic in males predominantly. Wow. So if you've got tonsils that are kissing but asymptomatic, which means you don't get tonsillitis as such, then they're going to be causing an issue. Yeah, sometimes. Yep. Yes. Well in children now for sleep disorders. Um, the first line of therapy, children who might snort snoring to all the parents out there in children is not, it's not cute. It's not cute. And noise from a child while they sleep, um, is not cute cause they're supposed to be perfect breathers. Yup. But the first line of therapy, now children, but snoring or anything like that, just taking out there, don't bother with sleep studies. They just take out the tonsils and the admins, which in a significant number of cases can improve it. And there was a study out of the States where they took, uh, patients, children diagnosed with ADHD, trying to remember the study. Speaker 3: (27:56) Yep. And what they did was, uh, they took this group of patients were all treated, remove tonsils and adenoids. And what they found was that 50% of them, I think it was 50% ended up being taken off that Ritalin medication because it was hype. Children react differently to tiredness than adults. We get, we get authentic, we get children get hyperactive when they're tired. And we've seen that because everyone who knows your kids and then they crash. Yeah, exactly. Cause what they are is tired. Yeah. So when they get tired they send them like they run around. Speaker 3: (28:33) So surgery, surgery can help in some cases with obvious deformities. Um, success rate surgery for sleep apnea in the mild to moderate, probably about 63%. Wow. And surgery like anything carries Chris from an aesthetics from the surgery itself. So it's not a guaranteed cure. Then we're moving into things like most guides, uh, mandibular splints that designed the whole, the jewel in a prominent position pulling the, pulling the tunnel way from the back of the throat because as you fall asleep, nobody can physically swallow that up. Yeah. But their tonnes can drop back and include the airway. That's why in recess we pull the jaw forward. If you pull the jaw forward, your pull the tongue away from the back of the truck making that larger space. Monday splints can work very well. Um, there's different types of over the cancer, not so successful, but one is designed by a specialist orthodontist of which there are a number now in the country, um, can have an 80 plus percent success rate. Speaker 3: (29:39) That can be very good, but I probably won't be able to do that work very well. Okay. Yeah. Um, for more mild cases and some moderates, there's a thing called microvalve, Serafin therapies, Sarah events. These are the things you stick a little plastic over your nose and what they do is you breathe in normally through lots of holes, but as you breathe through your nose, lots of the valves closed down and one valve remains open. So you get like a, what we call a valve silver effect, like blowing through your nose and that back pressure keeps the airway splinted open. Wow. So it's a physiological form of C-PAP, which is what, yeah. Yeah. What's his, what mom's got like a sticking plaster that you see some athletes or is it on the inside? The strips on the outside. I for anatomical for collapse where the AOS actually collapse. Speaker 3: (30:45) So those things pull the nose. I was slightly out. These things stick over the, there's over the holes here. Oh yeah. That there. Interesting to work with. Very interesting feeling. But they can work. Probably don't use that run ongoing costs. You've got to use them every day. If you don't use them, it comes back. Yeah. So they're quite expensive. Right. But as an alternative to seatbelt, there's also this tummy device that don't think we turn the stabilizing device, the TST, very bizarre looking device that basically works upon the fact that if your tongue falls back, you pull your tongue forward. Now in the old days, very old days of anesthesia, we used to have a thing called a tongue clip, but we could collect the tongue, pull it out to open up the airway. Um, we've moved on from there. This is a TSD is like a suction device that you squeeze, stick your tongue in and it sucks your tongue forward. Speaker 3: (31:47) Yup. They read it to be cheap. Some people swear by them. I've tried most of these things. I couldn't sleep with it. This is the, it isn't, but it is an option. It is an option to try the only thing guaranteed to reverse sleep apnea. Yeah. Or it is what we call continuous positive airway pressure. Yup. And basically in simple terms is a pneumatic splint, so it blows air into the airway via either a nasal mask or a full face mask. Yup. While you're asleep, um, you can get very little cushions now that you wear like oxygen, things that can also be used for this machine. Um, and that blows air in. So when you breathe, you're breathing out against pressure so that then hold the airway open. Yeah. It's a new magic process. So you breathe in and out again to this flow or like that if you can wear it is guaranteed to reverse obstructive sleep apnea. Speaker 3: (32:55) Yeah, it's gold standard for therapy. And interestingly enough, it's only been around since about 1982 so relatively new therapy, but is now widely used worldwide for, that's the one that mum's got. Um, and she has to wear it every night and all night. Um, and you know, it's quite an invasive thing to have on. It's not pleasant for her. Um, having the central, uh, sleep apnea is guaranteed in that case? Like with obstructive or is it a bit, a bit more, it really depends upon that the, the, the reasoning behind the central event. Yeah. Um, in most cases it can improve it to an extent that it's okay. Um, in some cases it doesn't, but we stop an obstructive component. It proves your physiology changed to make the change they him and go away. There are some machines that are specifically designed to treat certain types of breathing, like Cheyne Stokes, the ASB system. Speaker 3: (34:03) Yeah. That can only be used. There are certain, a very small group of patients who can't use ASP because there's a higher risk of problems. Right. Like with any therapy, there's always risks. CPR tends to be generally safe if used appropriately in the right patients. And there are then machines that will provide backup. Correct. So if the machine senses that you're not breathing, it doesn't ventilate you, but it reminds you to take a breath. Yep. So we can use things called by levels or bilateral S T's with, with a minimum respiratory REM required. Yeah. So it will, it will. If you stop breathing, it will cook you with air to say take a breath. Is it the machine that mum's got? You know, because it regulates when she's breathing it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then when she stops breathing or you hear the machine crank up, yeah, you might, your mom's on auto type ventilate auto sheet. We'll have backup, right? Yeah. Right. And this is similar to what I've been delayed heroes in the hospital and not flight. Speaker 3: (35:17) C-PAP is not ventilation. C-PAP. C-PAP is stopping a reverse vacuum cleaner to your nose and away you go. It's, it's, it's helping. It's not breathing for you. It's like a walking stick. It's making your breathing more effective than if you weren't using it. I know ventilator is physically breathing for you. Now there are two types of ventilator says invasive ventilation. Well there's noninvasive ventilation. Noninvasive ventilation is legacy pap, but basically that the pressures are split. So you breathe in at one pressure and you breathe out at another pressure. Yep. And there is a, that can be a backup rate added to that. So that's, that's term. There's noninvasive ventilation. Those are the ones we tend to see used on patients with hyperventilation syndrome or severely large patient who cannot tolerate time levels of C-PAP. Breathing against the pressure of 10 centimeters may not be as bad, but the minute you start to get to 60 18 prep coming sent to me is a pressure that's a hurricane blowing, you know, so then we need to look at how we change. So we have an inspiratory pressure pressure, noninvasive ventilation. So in any form of respiratory failure, which is the end game of some disease States, they work really, really well. And it's becoming more and more used as opposed to inter invasive ventilation in a lot of cases. Now I've just read some reports out covert, they're starting to look at noninvasive ventilation as an alternative, right? Probably with noninvasive ventilation. Speaker 3: (37:04) Oh yeah. So you've gotta be really tough and the other ventilator, no, see, perhaps not recommended covert patients anyway, even though it's starting to be used as an alternative, but needs to be used very carefully. And we've got, um, uh, I've been looking at the research. Of course, Jason and I had a hyperbaric oxygen clinic, which we opened up to mum's story. Um, but the hyperbaric and covert, um, it's showing promising results. Uh, I, I saw, I saw that, yeah. The issue with coach, we're in the infancy of a disease state. We don't know what the longterm benefits, risks, outcomes next 10 years, 20 years of research is going to be around the last three. But hell's happened to us. So we keep on sleep apnea. Speaker 3: (38:07) Yeah, very true. But yeah, so, so, so treatment for sleep apnea with with C-PAP is very, very common. It's effective. Um, we really started to look at muscle diseases well because what we noticed with patients with mild disease, so they can still suffer all the same as severe disease. They can still be cycling, hypertensive or control. They can still be difficult to control diabetics. They can still suffer extreme daytime tiredness, um, and things like that. So, so C-PAP can be used as a management tool from mold too severe. Yep. So we were one of the first groups that probably made it more available to the mind. Yeah. Cases because in our opinion, the benefits fired out, weighed and the risks associated with treatment and at the end of the day, every therapy of any kind should be the decision that the patient not absolutely. Speaker 3: (39:10) Depending on what that treatment is, of course, and something like that. I don't see very low risk with a high reward in medicine. That's what we're looking. Is there any difference between when you were, say I'm now reading a sleep thing study last week is sleeping on your side versus sleeping on your back and can you actually sleep, and this is a question after I read that I was on your back all the time because of the sleep app machine. Is she actually able to sleep on the side? Yeah, of course she is. The machine she has got will automatically adjust for any change impression, so it will go up or down as required. Yeah. That's the benefits of that type of machine that that algorithm look. Positional sleep. Yes. You can talk to any partner who has suffered a partner who snores after a glass of wine or beer or whatever. Speaker 3: (40:05) We always poke them to roll them onto their site. Positional treatment for snoring can work and it's one of the conservative methods we recommend you. I mean there are very fancy machines are designed to be worn around the neck. Um, tell it when you were starting to. Sure. And then it plus as you would look for the electric shops to turn you on your side. Wow. The, the, the most practical tool you've got for positional sleep apnea is what your grandmother would have said, which is show up button in the back of your pajamas or get a tennis ball with a loop of elastic. Thread it through. I'm wearing like a backpack and that physiologically keep you on your side. There's no doubt that we can see. So obviously Pat on the back because all this depression is pushing down on their side. All that is moved away from, especially on the left side. Wow. If you turn onto your left, it's easier to breathe. That's why in the recovery position we turn people to their left. Wow. Speaker 3: (41:09) Pressure on their, on their venous return helps improve blood pressure, but it also moves and everything away from, from where your track here. So, um, you know, I, I sleep on my side but when I sleep on my left I can always feel my own heartbeat and then I always get worried. I'm putting pressure on my heart on the other side. If anything, if anything, probably be more on the right cause that's why we talk about pregnant women with debt gravid uterus. If you, if you lay on your side, that weight comes on to the vena cave on the right side. So actually restricts blood flow, especially return. Yeah. So your blood pressure theoretically needs to be higher. So in medicine we tend to turn people onto their left side and especially pregnant, when will we say light his left side. Great tap. Positional sleep can work very, very well in those people who are purely shorts. Speaker 3: (42:09) Yep. Yeah. It makes slightly improved sleep apnea, but because of all the other factors involved, it's not always there. Okay. But a sleep study, you can tell us that because part of the sleep study told us which side the patient is sleeping on when is happening. Yep. And we can, we can see that so we can recommend position therapy. What about like, um, I know it was several and you probably have a, have a crack at me for talking about him on the phone. Guys. I, he, he sits on his back and he sleeps on the couch. He wants to sit. I sit him up higher with pillows, um, in behind them and then a snoring is a lot less. Yeah, if you laying flat, yeah, it's okay to raise the head of the bedside. If you get a raise, the head of the bed, it's always been to put a pillow under the mattress as opposed to empty your head because the biggest problem is it a head forward and you make this more obstructive. Oh, if you want to put it in the yourself and put it in the shoulders, your headsets slightly flat or sniffing the morning air. This is the position we used to call it an anesthesia. So their head is flushed back, straightens the airway and it's easier to temporary sleeping in a chair. It's not a cool thing because you're not going to, you're not going to sleep, you're not going to sleep as well. Especially in patients who let's say have respiratory problems COPT they've got what we call overlap syndrome, so they've got sleep apnea. Speaker 3: (43:42) They tend to sleep in chess cause they feel they can breathe each year. The problem is is it's not very good for you from a health perspective and sleeping setup because of venous return, pressure on the kidneys and the heart. Other things probably blood flow to the brain. Yeah. Yeah. So if, if people are sleeping checks because we find it easier to sleep than they really need to be assessed to find out. I've got another fatal on my hands coming up. I can say yes for a number of reasons. Sleep apnea. Interestingly enough, we talked about it being related to obesity and other disease States, but it's also predominantly higher in men than women until about the age of 50. So postmenopausal women trach it to men very fast and it tends to be the effects of, it tends to be than what we see on men. Speaker 3: (44:33) Um, is that the weight gain side of what happens is because of the loss of certain hormones in postmenopausal women, especially around respiratory issues, um, we tend to see more in Mali, men especially but also higher percentage. So there is a ethnic link, we're not sure if that's because of body habitus to that. So the shape of the body and the upper airway rather than that, it just isn't working out, whether it's the increased weight, shorter neck, things like that. So yeah, so you mean there is, there should be a definite and I think there is a definite push within modem to check sleep apnea. If you've ever been onto a Mariah, not a pilot in a positive way. So you want me to probably one of the best places to have a sleep person would be on my mind very quickly identify and this is why, you know, sharing this sort of information so that people can directly, because it's with all, you know, all the health stuff that I talk about. Speaker 3: (45:40) Um, you know, it's being informed. It's knowing that the stuff is out there. It's being aware that there is a, perhaps a problem that needs to be checked as the first line of getting people in the door. You mean if you want to look statistically around research, you know what I mean? You ask three times more likely to have a stroke. If you have sleep pap, you're three times more likely to die. If you have sleep apnea, you're significantly more likely to develop diabetes. If you have sleep or especially what we call uncontrolled diabetes, you're more likely to develop heart problems, more likely to develop respiratory problems. I mean, we're talking significant percentages. If you look at something like what we call label hypertension, so blood pressure that is difficult to control. 80% of patients with difficult to control blood pressure will have some varying levels of sleep. Speaker 3: (46:29) Disordered breathing. Yup. 55% of cardiac patients, especially at S patients will have a compending or causative sleep disordered breathing. Yep. So the numbers start to stack up more and more and more. We're looking at nighttime physiology as a D as a predictor for daytime, especially around things like blood pressure. 24 hour blood pressure now is something that's becoming standard practice because we've historically treated blood pressure on one off. Yeah. Precious. Yeah. When we're noticing that nocturnal hypertension is a better predictor of cardiovascular mortality and morbidity than daytime blood pressure. Wow. So more and more GPS now are moving towards 24 hour blood pressure. You know, you go to your GP and he asked for it. Speaker 3: (47:23) Yet there's a few GPS in town who will do 24 hours. Most of the GPS will refer into somewhere like this where we were doing quite a few 24 hour blood pressures and Holter monitoring. Because my area of special interest has always been the impact of sleep on cardiovascular disease or on on cardiac health, which was why I've sort of moved into that sideways, into more cardio-respiratory physiology than I was sleep. So tell us about, a little bit about the clinic that you're in now. Fast based solutions, which is based in your Plymouth. If anybody wants to talk to jazz and come and see you guys. What is it that you do? You showed me a machine before that you can actually wear. Yeah. So basically we moved sideways and I teamed up with two other guys. Mike Maxim is a cardiac physiologist and Alan Thompson, who's a, who's an anesthetic technologist, we looked at what we could provide to primary care as a, as a midway step between primary medical care and secondary medical care. Speaker 3: (48:26) So we sort of set out to say, wow, we can bride these tests a lot faster probably because we have less restrictive process. Yep. Um, and so we're doing things like Holter monitoring. Holter monitoring is monitoring the heart over 24, 48, seven day period depending on, on what we're looking for and basically monitors cardiac speak to the variation. So it's great for identifying an arrhythmias. This is ASA Fletcher, all of those conditions. Uh, atrial fibrillation is something we're seeing more and more, um, potentially a significantly life threatening condition if not picked up and manage because of the increased risk of stroke and things. Um, so we brought in more and also we're seeing a higher demand from people wearing wearable technology who have started to notice that happy changing, going faster, slightly out to be, yeah, because they're exerting and it causes concern. And part of medicine is to address concerns and fear. Speaker 3: (49:38) So we do, we do Holter monitoring. So we're using small halted co monitors that allow us to monitor patients in a more free fashion. The old ones used to have lots of wires that restrict things. These things you can run cycle. So they're great for people who are active because that's where they notice the problem. So we can monitor the patient in the situation in which they noticed that problem. It's a lot more effective. The older, bigger ones are cumbersome. So you can't run in them cycles when you can with these. Yep. So it allows us to monitor patients or effectively, and we can even do cardiac ones on there so we can get really tiny patches. So we do those, we do exercise tolerance testing to check for narrowing the vessels. So it's a a test that you run on a treadmill and we'd look at your ECG 12 lead ECG. So quite in depth in ECG while you're doing it. Um, would you ambulatory blood pressure, 24 hour monitoring spiral Metairie cause that forms part of the cardiac paradox. You know what I mean? You talk about cardio respiratory disease cause they both obviously work together and they affect each other. Yeah. So that's what we're doing here. We're doing more direct to patient management. Speaker 2: (50:58) Are you working with athletes? Speaker 3: (51:03) We get a lot of athletes come through because they're the ones who, who noticed a change. Yeah. And they just want to be reassured that what they're feeling is not a problem, which is fine. Yeah. Optimize performance. Yeah. Speaker 2: (51:21) Yeah. A lot of, um, uh, I've got a few colleagues, you know, I've been doing, you know, ultra marathon stuff for years and they've got Speaker 3: (51:29) over-sized carts, um, as a result. Okay. Yeah. That's exercise induced cardiomyopathy. Yeah. Um, it's not very common, but we do see it and some patients who've been exercising to an extremist for long periods, any muscle that you can overwork can become hypertrophic. You know what I mean? That's the whole point of bodybuilding damaging tear muscle to develop definition. And we see that in things like guilt, um, and insomniacs would that, but their cortisol, they're a highly stressed person who can get adrenal atrophy, atrophy, hypertrophy from that because you're constantly kicking out high levels of cortisol. Why they can't sleep and it's all at the wrong time of day. So you mean that's, yeah. Exercise-induced Caribbean cardiac conditions. They're not common, but there's some that we can check for. Yeah. Probably more common amongst people are hanging out with, Speaker 2: (52:39) you know, it's not common. I don't have it. Um, but I, yeah, my wife's husband used to have that problem. Um, been exercising for just, you know, huge amounts for many, many years. Um, and it's mostly mean isn't it? Then Speaker 3: (52:53) it is mostly men, mostly men that they're giving. It's like with rugby players in that it'd be interesting to look at their sleep at the same time. Yeah. Because that's why we've moved this way. Cause sleep hearts, lungs all work together for good or a bad reason. Speaker 2: (53:11) Yeah. I mean this is something that I've been trying to educate people on. You know, the difference between um, you know, like functional medicine and naturopathic medicine and the need for more integrated as it were, more integrated. Look at the whole person and not just, we here in lines near in the hat near you, study the brain and study the kidneys. But having people make can look at the whole sort of system or systems within the body that can really take a more holistic or overlooking approach. Speaker 3: (53:41) Yeah. Look, I think you mean one of the issues we face in any form of health care is the fragmentation of the system. And that we are so busy these days that predominantly we only look at the field in which we are so much. Whereas you, I mean you sit at the GP level, you've got to try and work out. So you're a policeman if you like, or a police person trying to work out which way you need to go. So it's very difficult when you send someone, let's say for a heart test because you think it's a cardiac issue and the test comes back, not a cardiac issue, but that doesn't help you. All it's told you is what we're trying to develop probably more so here is to look at the patient that's been referred for a heart problem and maybe just looking a bit wider and saying, well look, if it's, if it's not your heart, we should be looking at your sleep or if it's not your sleep, we should be looking at other physiology. Um, and trying to give a more packaged answer to provide the same. Well, Nope, we've done a Holter. It's fine. However they mentioned they should and we noticed that they have. Speaker 2: (54:52) Yep. Sort of overview a little bit wider. I mean obviously you can't be an expert in the mechanics of the feet at the same time as being doing what you're doing, but you know it, Speaker 3: (55:05) it's similar. It used to occur I think long time ago when we run much smaller population, people could have more time as a specialist to look at all areas healthcare, but obviously as, as the health system that was invented back then didn't take into account that would be a population of 5 million with significant ability to study more areas of healthcare. So a lot of the people who are in specialties are just overwhelmed with that specialty. And what we'll probably need to be doing more of is having a step that allows people to look more broadly house. And that may include, as you said, homeopathic or alternate providers because my treatment to just purely disease, most practitioners I think health or otherwise would agree with that, that everything should be more patient focused as opposed to outcome. Speaker 2: (56:03) It's really important to have educational programs like this one because it does take the pressure off the GP knowing everything about everything. If you're aware of what's out there, what could possibly be going on and some of the, you know, sort of just, um, you know, comorbidities that can exist. You know, like I'm doing a brain radio rehabilitation course I'm doing at the moment, um, to help people. And the, the, the interrelatedness from whether it's looking, it's not a good word, but you know what I mean. Um, from brain injury and hormones or adrenal insufficiency and hypertrophy, tourism and thyroids, um, they can all really be affected through brain injury. Um, and then, um, the knock on effects of those and the signs and symptoms and things that I always look at within the course. I'm building out what's the foundational aspects of good health, you know, some of the basics around hydration and nutrition and, um, sleep. Um, and then looking at the next layer to be introduced because there's no use me giving you or giving you, uh, telling you to go and have a hyperbaric session, Speaker 3: (57:15) which will help your brain, Speaker 2: (57:16) which we know has beneficial things for neurological problems when you're eating fish and chips every night. [inaudible] you know, got, I've got some underlying other problems and not exercising and not doing the other pieces of the puzzle. So we need to have, um, an approach that looks at how do I build some foundation with health basics for status as well as the dressing, the actual no problem Speaker 3: (57:40) that we've got on top of that. Yeah. Yeah. You mean, I think you mean if I can say that it's a key to what we've been talking about is, is, is we take what happens during the day very seriously, but health should be a wider conversation. Human sleep is important. Not every reason you can sleep is insomnia. Yeah. So tablets don't always fix sleep issues. They're a great tool and it can actually be more problematic than the issue. So that's the main thing. It's the snoring is not good. If I could get that point across. Yes. And if, if you don't think you sleep well, which is probably majority of population, just check it out. Speaker 3: (58:28) I'm sorry, I probably sounded a bit garbled. But sleep is such a few, Gerry, to try and look at sleep in its entirety is, is quite a difficult area. I mean, the simple ones are asleep, happier snoring, tiredness during the day, no matter how old you ask, snoring is not good. Yeah. As a matter whether you're male, female, adult kids, get it checked. And it's a simple case of just talking to your, your practitioner, especially if you've got chronic conditions. Um, and, and, and look at your sleep health as, as importantly as you do your daytime health. That's probably a key. Speaker 2: (59:07) That's a key takeaway. And I think, you know, go and get yourself a seat. Go and find out if you, if you think you have a problem, uh, if someone, you know, has had a stroke. Um, I mean, I, I, I think it should be standard practice for everybody who's had a injury to get some sort of sleep assessment done at some level. Um, you know, I'm, I'm absolutely convinced my mum would, wouldn't be here if we hadn't done that. And then subsequently also hyperbaric was a key factor in her success. Um, so obviously very passionate about sharing this message today. Um, jeez, just as we wrap up, um, so we've talked, we've given people a couple of takeaways, you know, and if they're snoring through something about it, if you, if you're feeling absolutely in the gutter, uh, and not get a good night's sleep, if you are waking up a number of times, uh, we've seen about sleeping on the side, it's on the left side is, is, is really ideal. Speaker 2: (59:59) Weight loss is really important. If you're obese, you need to be taking this seriously. Seriously. There's a lot of comorbidities that they come along with having sleep apnea and it can be a bit of a, what do you call it, a circle that leaves a vicious circle that leads into each other. Um, so I think that's some really, really key takeaways. And from the cardiac perspective, I'm very keen to come and check out what, what you guys are doing there. It's a new clinic. Um, and um, relay that back as well. Um, I think, uh, having these new facilities and this new technology available to us is just absolutely awesome. Um, and there's so many great things happening in so many different areas of medicine that we, you know, just sharing a bit of information about it is really key. So if anybody wants to reach out to you at the clinic, we can, they find you guys. Speaker 3: (01:00:52) Okay. So, yeah, I mean you can do the usual webpage, www fast pace solutions.co. Dot. NZ. Um, you can call it, we do have a phone number, but as you notice that, Speaker 2: (01:01:06) so I'll put that in the, in the show notes so people can reach out. Speaker 3: (01:01:10) We're available on Google. Most of the GPS in turn know where we are as do the specialists at the hospital because we're obviously working very closely with the hospital supporting us. So that's really good. Um, with regards to your mom, I just like to say, I mean from a medical perspective, I'm pretty stunned at the way your mom's recovering. I, I, I have to sort of put my hand on my heart as a medical person when I first went through with your eyes. Yeah. I wasn't positive, but it's not purely that the sleep, why does he like that? I've got to acknowledge that what you and your family put in to that was phenomenal. Yeah, it really works. Um, and I think you need to take a little bit more credit with you and your boys, your brothers. It gave you that a reason to come and do my garden, which was awesome. Excellent. I tell him to give me a call anytime. Look. Yeah. So do, do take some credit for that. It wasn't a medical outcome. It was Speaker 2: (01:02:15) faceted approach. And you know, I always look at the silver linings and things. Geez. And when I, when I went through this horrible situation with mum, there are people like you and others who came out of the woodwork and all gave me their expertise in that area that I was searching and I was hungry for help and information. And that having that open mindedness and being able to research and I continue to do it has now lead to a complete new profession. You know, um, it's interesting where you end up in a, in a book that I hope is gonna, uh, empower other people to fight like crazy. I mean there was, you know, we weren't given no hope from, from the hospital. We would tell her, put he

In This Special Episode, Curtis Give Tips on How to be Annoying!Ranging From Famous Quotes to the Harmonica, This Episode is a Masterclass on Being Annoying, Taught by the Best!Take a Listen for your Brain to be Filled with Nonsense!Listen! Listen! Listen! is a show hosted by Curtis Elton. Speaking non-stop in each episode, you'd think he'd actually say something Valuable!!!WRONG!!!The show has NO THEME...NO USEFUL INFORMATION...NO, NOT THAT EITHERWhat it does have is funny, non-stop talking lasting approximately 5 minutes per episode. Every episode is Different!Go on, you know you want to, have a listen to Listen! Listen! Listen!New episodes every Tuesday & Thursday. Stay tuned for more of Listen! Listen! Listen!TRANSCRIPT:Curtis Hello and Welcome to a special episode of Listen! Listen! Listen!. I'm your host, Curtis Elton and today I'm going to teach you my specialty. How to be annoying 101 so No time to explain! What Do you Mean “No time to Explain?!” I just told you ”No time to Explain!” So let's get right to it! Tip number 1! Start a podcast. Why do you think I started the show? To be annoying! And if you don't find the show annoying, You're Crazy! And that's a lot coming from Me! Tip Number 2! Quote annoying quotes when somebody tells you to do something that you just don't want to do. Here's an example. Hey, man, take out the trash. I will. Maybe Not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but soon. Here's another example! If somebody tells you to get something and bring it to them. You can go “I’ll be Back“ You know what I'll just getting myself? How about that? Works like a charm. Tip number 3! Be Annoyingly repetitive. Repetitive, Repetitive, Repetitive, Repetitive, Reptitive! Why do you think I call the show Listen! Listen! Listen! Listen! Listen! Listen! Listen! Listen! Listen! See how Annoying, Annoying, Annoying, Annoying, Annoying This is?! Enough said about that! Tip number 4. The final piece of advice I'm giving you today and the most Annoying Yet! So listen up! Find the most annoying instrument in your house and Play it Non-Stop. I don't care if somebody says stop doing that. You go, Nope! Now I've got a harmonica here, so I'm going to demonstrate it to you. (Plays Harmonica) I don't even know how the play it but it is annoying and I like it! Now for all of you advanced people out there, add some sound effects to it. I don't care what you're playing. Just add Some really Annoying Sound effects in between. Here's an example (Plays Harmonica and Makes Annoying Sounds) That was annoying if it wasn't...Then You're Crazy and Thank You! (Audience Applause) Now Those are my four crazy great tips to be annoying around the House. An What Better time than Now? Your Whole Family’s Stuck at Home! You have a whole audience to be annoying to! Anyway, thank you for listening to a special episode of Listen! Listen! Listen! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I hope you Learnt nothing! Bubye I'm out of here. Good evening. I am going to teach you how to play the harmonica. Firstly, place your mouth upon the Harmonica. Uh, My Tongue’s Stuck! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

There's a new superhero coming to the popular CW network lineup. Stargirl features actor Brec Bassinger, who lives with type 1 diabetes. We first spoke to Brec a couple of years ago, just after her run on Nickelodeon's "Bella and the Bulldogs." She shares what’s changed with her diabetes management since then, advice about speaking up for what she needs without feeling weird about diabetes & much more. Check out Stacey's new book: The World's Worst Diabetes Mom! It's an athletic edition of Tell Me Something Good with marathons! Hiking! And that feeling when you do something your middle school coach told you you’d never do because of diabetes. Join the Diabetes Connections Facebook Group! This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Sign up for our newsletter here ----- Use this link to get one free download and one free month of Audible, available to Diabetes Connections listeners! ----- Get the App and listen to Diabetes Connections wherever you go! Click here for iPhone      Click here for Android Episode transcript:   Stacey Simms  0:00 Diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop created for people with diabetes by people who have diabetes. By Real Good Foods real food you feel good about eating and by Dexcom take control of your diabetes and live life to the fullest with Dexcom.   Announcer  0:20 This is Diabetes Connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  0:26 This week, there's a new superhero coming to the popular CW network lineup. Stargirl features actor Brec Bassingerwho lives with type one. After they started production, she found out another person in the cast and on her superhero team also lives with T1D.   Brec Bassinger  0:44 I think it's more of having that companionship, that person who understands when we're on the 17th hour of work and they bring out another snack that just as carby but we're hungry and sleepy but we don't want to eat all these carbs and just being able to look at like okay, you get it, and talk to each other and understand that was just so nice to have.   Stacey Simms  1:02 She'll share more about what it meant to have that actor Cameron Gellman on the set with her. We first spoke to Brec a couple of years ago after her run on Nickelodeon, in Bella and the Bulldogs. She talks about what's changed with her diabetes management advice about speaking up for what she needs without feeling weird about diabetes, and a lot more and athletic addition of telling me something good this week, marathons hiking, and that feeling when you do something your middle school coach told you, you never do because of diabetes. This podcast is not intended as medical advice. If you have those kinds of questions, please contact your health care provider. Welcome to another week of the show. I'm so glad to have you along. We aim to educate and inspire about type 1 diabetes by sharing stories of connection. I have a feeling that this interview is gonna bring a lot of new people into the show. So just a quick word. I'm your host, Stacey Simms. My son was diagnosed with type one right before he turned two He is now 15 years old. He's had diabetes for more than 13 years. My husband lives with type two diabetes. I don't have diabetes, I have a background in broadcasting. I spent a lot of time in local television and radio news. And that's how you get the podcast. A reminder popped up on my phone this morning about one of the trips I was supposed to be taking, like many of you, you know, of course, we had travel plans for this spring and this summer, and I was going to a lot of diabetes conferences. And it's so sad right to see those reminders pop up. But we have been doing a lot of virtual stuff. And that's been really fun to not the same, but a wonderful way to stay connected. And I'm bringing that up because I'm going to put links in the show notes. I've got a couple of events coming up jdrf and other organizations. I did one for Project Blue November not too long ago. They've been really great about scheduling these talks, the online summits, the webinars, and I've been thrilled because my topic right now is the world's worst diabetes mom, and it's been so much fun to share the information That's my book that is just out. And I'm still so excited about that. But it's been really fun to share it to people that I wouldn't have been able to meet, right? Because if I was going to Detroit, which I should have been going to this month, then we would be meeting people just at that summit. But instead, I get to meet people from all over the country. I'm trying to look at the silver lining on it. And really, that's about all we can do right now. But thank you so much the support for the book and just the last couple of weeks has really picked up if you want to check it out. Of course, I'll put a link in the show notes. It's on Amazon, The World’s Worst Diabetes Momis a parenting advice and humor book. It's kind of part memoir, kind of part, advice column and all about our experiences, making every mistake in the book when it comes to diabetes, and watching my son grow up as a confident and responsible and healthy kid, despite my many, many errors along the way. So thanks for letting me tell you about that. And boy, I hope we get back to see each other in person. Soon, it'll be a while, but it'll get better Right to Brec in just a moment. But first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Real Good Foods, nutritious food delivered straight to your door. They have so many options. They have pizzas, I think they were first known for their pizzas and they have this great cauliflower crust pizza, chicken crust pizza, and the pizzas come in different varieties or just plain crust and then you can make your own. We also really enjoy the breakfast sandwiches. They are seven carbs per sandwich. 22 grams of protein, they always post up on their Instagram, they have these grape varieties that what they show it you could really do to jazz this stuff up and people put all sorts of things to add to their sandwiches. I like them just the way they are. You can find out more about all of their products, where to buy How To order, just go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Real Good Foods logo.   My guest this week is the star of the newest superhero show on The CW Brec Bassinger plays Stargirl aka Courtney Whitmore, and this show is getting great reviews. I will link some of that up in our Facebook group. And if you're not familiar with the CW lineup, this is the same people behind the hit shows Arrow and Flash and Supergirl. I will put this clip in the group as well. No, you can't see it. But here's a little taste. (Show Clip here)   Stacey Simms  5:38 Stargirl is set to premiere May 18. Now I first spoke with Breck three years ago, and since then she's moved out she's living on her own. And as you'll hear, that is a big reason why she now wears a CGM. I need to tell you we did this interview back in January before COVID-19 and the quarantines and all the changes we're going through right now. So I tell you that just So you're not surprised at the tone, right? It's a little bit different, a little bit lighter than we might have done right now. And she's also talking about travel and conventions and things that you know have absolutely changed. Alright, but here is my interview with Brec Bassinger Brec thanks so much for coming back on the show. It's been a while. It's great to talk to you again.   Brec Bassinger  6:18 Yeah, three years. It's good stuff.   Stacey Simms  6:21 A lot has certainly changed for you. This is so exciting. I mean, you were busy then. You're busy now. But what can you tell me about Stargirl? I mean, we'll talk about diabetes eventually. But let's talk about the show.   Brec Bassinger  6:33 The important stuff in life. All of last year 2019. I was in Atlanta filming it. I've seen a few of the episodes and I'm really proud of it. I've never been part of something that I'm so like, shamelessly proud of where like the sounds are put doesn't like bragging I'm just so proud of I want every single person to see and I feel like that has to do a lot with the show runner. His name is Geoff Johns. He worked on like wonder woman and he just so amazing and like this spirit and happiness he brought to us that I feel like really just rubbed off on everyone. That was a part of it. So I I really am shamelessly. So excited for everyone to see it.   Stacey Simms  7:10 I think that's great. And you know, we've been watching the CW, DC heroes comic book shows for a couple of years now. And you know, they're just fun. And they're for families. They're good hearted. Is this in that same spirit?   Brec Bassinger  7:23 Yeah, it totally fits in with those. I've had. My family they got to all watch the first episode of the holidays with me, and they all really enjoyed it. I feel like as a whole, this one's more comparable to a film like a movie just the way films like the way it's written, like, like Flash and Arrow. It's normally like a villain per episode. And ours is more kind of like one season story arc like you can't just sit down and watch one episode and know what's going on. You kind of have to watch the full season more like a stranger things. I'd say that's kind of the main difference, the odds of like fear and it's just like happy it's not too dark. It's not Raise you like it's definitely a family friendly show, which there's not much of those. Yeah.   Stacey Simms  8:04 a that is great to hear. All right. So I know nothing about TV process and CGI and everything else. But to watch what's out there already. It looks like not only are there a lot of special effects, there's a lot of practical effects and you're, you're doing a lot of stunts. Are you doing all of those stunts or some of those stunts? I mean, it looks like it's a very challenging role physically.   Brec Bassinger  8:23 Yeah. So Stargirl, she has her her cosmic staff. So before we started filming, they put me in training with like staff training and stunt training. And so I got to do a lot of it. It was it was so funny because like at the beginning of the series, even with a couple weeks of training behind my belt, they would hand me the staff in a scene. And I just, like forget how to act because I would be so overwhelmed with having to like fight with this six foot long, both staff, but I thought that was really special because at the beginning like Courtney or struggle, like she shouldn't be as comfortable with that staff. And then towards the end of the season, when they gave me some staff, I felt so confident wasn't even thinking that it was coming. have like an extension of my arm at that point. And that's where Courtney should have been. So it was cool to kind of have that journey with Courtney.     Stacey Simms  9:11 Yeah. All right. So let's jump in and talk about diabetes. When you're training with a six foot both staff and you are not six feet tall. What does that do to your blood sugar? I mean, I'm assuming that there was a lot of planning that had to go into that and you really had to stay on top of things.   Brec Bassinger  9:24 Fortunately, like I exercise a lot so I know how to regulate my blood sugar cuz definitely like when I'm more active, it causes my blood sugar to drop. But with the stunt training stuff, it's a lot of just staying still and moving the staff around me so bad and it actually dropped my blood sugar. It was more trying to figure out like on fat I was working like one day I work 20 hours obviously that messes with my blood sugar and I really just have to learn to accept the circumstances and some days I was gonna have highs and lows and stop beat myself up about it because I I was I was working hours that aren't humanly normal.   Unknown Speaker  9:59 Can you share your diabetes management. Do you wear a CGM? Do you use an insulin pump? That sort of thing?   Brec Bassinger  10:04 Yeah, so I've always done insulin injections. I have my pin and actually have a half unit pin, which I got this past year, which has been really helpful. And then I have a CGM, a Dexcom.   Stacey Simms  10:14 Oh, and when did you start using that, if you don't mind me asking   Brec Bassinger  10:17 two years ago,   Stacey Simms  10:18 so it's pretty recent.   Brec Bassinger  10:20 Yeah, I started living by myself. And it was either that or one of the diabetes service dogs. And I had the CGM for the very first time I was like, Okay, I can't imagine a life without this just for safety reasons. And my mom wanted me to have something where she could feel more secure.   Stacey Simms  10:36 I was gonna say who gave you that choice because as a mom of my child,   Brec Bassinger  10:40 still in high school, especially during that time, I was having so many lows during the night, actually, when I started eating really healthy and working out a lot but because of that, I was just having lows all the time. And she's like, I do not feel comfortable. You living by yourself with all these lows. This is not safe. And so   Stacey Simms  10:57 do you share with your mom like she just said does she see your number Is that not Yes,   Brec Bassinger  11:01 I share with my mom, my dad, my boyfriend and my fellow diabetics with OnStargirl with me in Cameron Galvin, we have each other's follow apps. And that's really fun.   Stacey Simms  11:12 Well, there's another person with diabetes on the show.   Brec Bassinger  11:15 Yes. And we're both superheroes on the show. I'm like, come on.   Stacey Simms  11:18 So did you know each other before the casting?   Brec Bassinger  11:20 No. Well, that's the thing we had never met. I had a film something with one of my one of my friends. And she had reached out to me, she was like, Hey, can I give this guy your number? Like, you know, type one diabetic. He's talking about when you involve with Jr. And I told him, I thought you were so can I get in your contact info. So I got this random text like saying, Hey, are you going to the walk next month, if you are about to join you and your friend, Christina. And we just like it kind of sprinkled away. We never connected again. It just never worked out. And then he booked it in like, he goes to give me my number. And we're like, oh my gosh, we talked like three years ago. And he's like, Oh, it's all coming back to me. So it was like Cuz we hadn't met, we had talked it was really funny and weird.   Stacey Simms  12:03 That's great, though. I mean, obviously not everybody who has diabetes is going to be friends. Right? I have my son accuses me of that sometimes like, Oh, you should meet this person. But it's like it worked out really well.   Brec Bassinger  12:15 But I have to say like, I, maybe this is like an optimism or not not just rose colored glasses. Definitely. Every time I need a diabetic, they're the best person to my eyes and like, Oh, I lost them. We go through the same things for soulmate best friends, at least with my experience. Yeah, like I said, first podcast is might be a part of that as   Stacey Simms  12:35 well. I think it's more, you know, a 15 year old boy doesn't want his mom making friends for him. Right. But everybody could definitely do that.   Unknown Speaker  12:44 So all kidding   Stacey Simms  12:45 aside, though, I'm sure you don't talk about it all day on the set. I don't want to imply that you do. But has it come in handy. I mean, do you both kind of help each other is there is it just a kinship and a friendship on set.   Brec Bassinger  12:58 I think it's more of having Got companionship, that person who understands when we're on the 17th hour of work and they bring out another snack that just is carbee. But we're hungry and sleepy, but we don't want to eat all these carbs and just being able to look you get like look at each other and talk to each other and understand that was just so nice to have.   Stacey Simms  13:18 And you're both Well, obviously you're playing the superhero, but the other actor is playing a superhero as well.   Brec Bassinger  13:23 Mm hmm. Yes. Okay, so that   Stacey Simms  13:24 will lead me to my one of my questions. I had a couple of listeners who wanted to know if you have any issues wearing diabetes technology under the costume.   Right back to her answer, but first diabetes Connections is brought to you by One Drop, and One Drop is diabetes management for the 21st century. One Drop was designed by people with diabetes. For people with diabetes. One Drops glucose meter looks nothing like a medical device. It's sleek, compact, and seamlessly integrates with the award winning One Drop mobile app. sync all your other health apps to One Drop to keep track of the big picture and easily see health trends. And with a One Drop subscription you get unlimited test strips and lancets delivered right to your door. Every One Drop plan includes access to your own certified diabetes coach have questions, but don't feel like waiting for your next doctor's visit. Your personal coach is always there to help go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the One Drop logo to learn more. Right back to my interview. I'm asking Breck about wearing diabetes gear under the costume.   So you don't wear an insulin pump. But you were a CGM. And the Dexcom is just a little bit of a raised bump. Do you have to do any accommodations for that? And I know it can be personal So   Brec Bassinger  14:44 no, no, I'm, I'm an open book. When I was doing the cuts to the costume. It took in about 12 to 15 sittings hours and hours upon work like dozens of people touched and worked on it. And while we were doing the city I saw the G five which was bigger than the G six. It's still small but bigger. And they're like oh, but you can take that off. And I was like I can, but I'm not going to because I just I for safety reasons. It makes them feel more comfortable. It helps me like everything in Lj the costume designer, she was super understanding. But yeah, I haven't come my super suit is super tight. So I'm sure if you watch close enough in the series comes out, you'll be able to spot it sometimes but like it is what it is.   Stacey Simms  15:30 Well, you just gave a challenge to everybody with diabetes in their family watching they're gonna be freeze frame. I know.   Brec Bassinger  15:37 You're gonna be able to see it. Fortunately, I think a lot of times they would go in and edit it out. We do have that. Oh, yeah. And editing budget, which makes it nice, but I like some of the episodes I've watched. I've spotted it. So I'm so curious to see if other people will be able to as well.   Stacey Simms  15:52 And let me ask you about Cameron, if you don't mind. And again, this is too personal. I'll take this part out. Let me ask you about Cameron, just as he were up. pump for CGM, can we be spotting for stuff on him?   Brec Bassinger  16:02 Yeah. So see, I know he's had more experience in like the pump world than I have. I've never had one. So that doesn't take much. I'm not exactly sure. I know he was more lenient to take it on and off than I was. But that would be a question for him. I'm not really sure.   Stacey Simms  16:20 All right, well, we'll just get a remote controls that will just stop it as the show goes. That's really funny. Yeah. You know, it does have to be difficult because as you said, there's crazy hours, they are feeding you, but maybe it's not exactly what everybody wants to have at those long hours. Those long days. As you mentioned, the carves, you've been in television for a long time. I mean, I'm curious, are you able to talk to people on the set and say, you know, I really would prefer this or I need that or is it just a question of you kind of finding your way through what's out there?   Brec Bassinger  16:51 I have a couple things with that. It's really interesting. As an actor, it's so easy to get this diva persona you ask for anything in someone gonna call you a diva. And so I always felt really bad or that I couldn't ask for things because I never, I never wanted that. But then at some point, you have to realize there's people there that want to help you that will help you. It's their job to help you. And so walking onto this site, I made a pact with myself that when I needed help, I wasn't gonna be afraid to ask, because of what other people were going to think just for my own health, I say health as well. And so I went into the show with that new like perspective, and it definitely was helpful like, we have like a craft service guy, who who provide all the snack foods, and I became best friends with him. And they were absolutely amazing to me, they would get any like if ever there was a time I wanted something special. They never made me feel like a diva for asking for it, which is so great of them. And then also Karen and I share something else we both actually have celiac disease as well. So our diet is extremely strict and once again, not health that's not me being like a diva like Oh, I can't eat gluten because I don't want to it's I I can't. So once again, like I think maybe having these health issues makes it easier for me to ask because I kind of have an excuse. But it still was difficult to like, get over that hump.   Stacey Simms  18:13 Well, and I know that there are going to be younger people, maybe more than usual listening to the show, because you're on it. And I'm so glad you said that, because it's very difficult to ask for things. Right? It's difficult to say, I'm different. I need nobody wants to be a bother or as you're saying, like a diva. You know, nobody wants to be perceived that way. And I'm curious, were you always like that? Or you said you made a pact on this show? Do you feel like it took you a while to build up to have the confidence to ask for those things.   Brec Bassinger  18:42 100% I have to give a lot like living by myself for the first time. I think living in LA as I was 18 my mom and dad prepared me as much as they could, but it's hard living by yourself. And I think that's the time when I really learned to not be like diabeetus I, that's the time of my life that I learned that it's okay to ask for help. But it took practice, I think asking for help. It's a skill that you have to work on. And sometimes you have to swallow your pride. And sometimes you have to feel like a diva or needy. But in the long run, if you can do that, you'll be so much happier.   Stacey Simms  19:17 That's fantastic. I know you've gone to jdrf children's congresses, and you've been very involved with jdrf What's it like for you when you meet these kids? Because they're so excited to meet you. You know, there's somebody on TV who lives with type one and goes through what I go through and take shots and has to put the CGM on and their mom worries and wants to follow just like my mom. Is it still for you talk to these kids?   Brec Bassinger  19:38 Oh, yes. Like I said, maybe it's a rose colored glasses. But every time I meet another diabetic, I have like, this instant connection with them. I'm like, Oh my gosh, do you miss drinking a regular coke without having to pay for it for the next 24 hours? Like, oh my gosh, I can't remember the last time I did like, it's so funny. It's like what I like when you can connect to someone on such a personal thing. Like it's just fun and then yeah Like, I was a kid with diabetes, and so like, being able to, like, have these things that I've learned throughout the years and kind of helping them like if they've had questions, I think, oh, I've been in your shoes. Let me tell you what helped me. Hopefully it'll help you. I mean, all bodies are different, but kind of like that older sibling. I think that's so fun.   Stacey Simms  20:19 Yo, I wanted to ask you, and this may be a really dumb question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway. I wanted to ask you, there was a movie that you were in and I couldn't see it. I'm sorry. I don't do any kind of horror movies. I don't do scary stuff. 47 meters down on K. Yeah. Right, which was water and scary and AR and was that and again, I don't know anything about how they make movies. So I don't know maybe it was in a swimming pool. But was that hard to film with somebody who has type one I did that presented a unique challenges.   Brec Bassinger  20:47 That was the best experience for me. It's because I actually never was in the water. Not once the filming process that you were in the water was insane and like in hindsight, Cuz I actually originally auditioned for one of the main girls but whatever it was maybe I wasn't right for it shooting schedule a Stargirl didn't align for whatever reason I didn't get it, but they, they offered me a smaller like, I'm like the mean girl in it. And in hindsight like it would have been a really big team to overcome having to be under what they were under water for eight hours a day, I'm sure like, my blood sugar would have I would have figured it out because I refuse to let it stop me from doing anything. But it definitely would have been a battle that I haven't had to deal with yet.   Stacey Simms  21:33 All right, sorry. For my ignorance. I find seniors I'm sure it would have known that but there's no   Brec Bassinger  21:38 okay, every like every time someone finds out, I'm like, how'd you get killed by a shark? I'm like, I don't get killed. Like, oh, you're the one that survives the shark. I was like, No, I never see the shark.   Unknown Speaker  21:51 Totally Okay, I got it. That's hilarious.   Stacey Simms  21:53 Oh my god. That's too funny. When you were diagnosed, you were eight years old. And I'm curious. Did your family meet other people with diabetes right away. Did you do the jdrf walks and things like that? Or did it take you a while to find people?   Brec Bassinger  22:06 I got involved with jdrf pretty quickly. I think I was diagnosed in January. And I think that October I did the walk. And that was actually I think the that year was the year I was most involved with jdrf not talking about like, recent years like ambassador, things like that. But we raise so much money, we had a team of like 40 people come out and all walk with like breakfast buddies shirts on pretty instantly I got involved with jdrf they've always been that sense of community for me, and I'm so grateful for them. Actually. Funny enough, I think when I was kin to be chosen for children's Congress is one of like the type of kids that goes you have to like write an essay. And I wrote an essay trying to get chosen and I didn't try it. Eight years later, or nine years later, whatever it is, I got to come as like one of the people speaking on the panel and one of like, the role models for all the kids who got Cuz I'm like, wow, that's full circle. I felt so blessed. It was such a cool like thing to look back on. That is   Stacey Simms  23:06 great. Oh my goodness yeah children's Congress really is incredible. So your schedule for the next couple of weeks months is going to be bananas I would assume How does it work? So the whole the whole series is shot.   Brec Bassinger  23:19 Yeah, so we shot for eight months last year and actually like the past few months has been pretty not busy for me because I'm just we call it the hiatus and we're waiting to hear about season two. So fingers crossed about that. But right now it's kind of like the waiting game and then I imagine I'll start doing press promoting first season I heard I can't talk too much about it. But I've heard about me getting to go to some of those conventions like similar like Comic Con or writer con things like that. And I'm just like, above the moon I think that's the coolest I'm so excited. Yeah.   Stacey Simms  23:53 Well, and you know, superhero movies of the whole genre is obviously goes without saying is so huge right now. Is this something that When you were younger, that I mean not even as an actress because it means are great roles to play. But as a consumer did, is this your thing? Did you go to these kinds of movies? Did you are you into comic book characters,   Brec Bassinger  24:10 so I never read comics growing up, but I've always been like the first one to go see the comic movies that come out. That being said, though, like, I remember one day on set in particular, I was in a harness, because I was supposed to be flying in the scene. So I was in our green screen room on set, hanging in this harness in my superhero costume with this like custom, beautifully made cosmic staff. I was like, Oh my gosh, my dreams have been made. I did not know this was my dream. But this this exact thing is my dream. He must   Stacey Simms  24:41 be wild to work in the green screen setting. So I mean, as an actress, you know, you don't know what's around you.   Brec Bassinger  24:47 It is so weird. I had never done anything like it before. And so in it, there's their strike. he's a he's a 15 1615 or 16 foot robot and while we had a practical one, any Time like we were fighting together, or a lot of times, if we were in random places just talking, it was all CGI. So I was talking to that tennis ball. Like if you've ever watched like BTS videos like, I had that as well. And I'm really I'm really hoping from many reasons that we get picked up for a second season, but particularly because like, I'll have watched the whole first season by the time we go back to phone. And so I like when I'm talking to that tennis ball. I'll know exactly what I'm talking to. For first season. It was pure imagination. I was just doing the best I could. I was like, What second season I would have more point of reference, but it was it was definitely hard, but it's really, really cool.   Stacey Simms  25:38 I'm gonna dive in. We're gonna start wrapping it up here. But so here's a question I got from a listener. It's actually from Jessica wanted to ask her her daughter's question. And this is a might be a tough one. She wants to know why you like acting. This young woman is nine years old and has typed on herself.   Brec Bassinger  25:54 Oh, why do I like acting? It's funny. So the only Everything I've ever wanted to be in my life was an astronaut because I thought the moon was made of cheap. And then when I found out the moon wasn't made of cheese, I said, Well, I don't want to be an astronaut anymore. I'm gonna be an actress. Like little six year old Breck was running around and people will be like, why do you want to grow up and I'm like, I don't want to be anything, I'm gonna be an actress. And so I feel like it really was just put in me. And I think I love it. Because the way it stimulates my creative side, and also the way it makes me, it's created this, I'm able to have empathy for other people in my work. So like, as I take on another character, I feel like while studying and becoming this character, I learned so much about the world and different people in it. Just that I'm such a people person. So it's like a job where I literally get to play other people and learn about people is such a perfect fit for me.   Stacey Simms  26:52 And before I let you go, I don't want to make too much of an issue of it. But I do think it's worth talking about that in the last few years. It's been really Nice to see a lot of the superhero shows and movies be led by women. I mean, this show is Stargirl. And I think that's just phenomenal. I'm so excited to have young women and little girls watching this show. Does it make you a little nervous though? I mean, when you're filming this Did you kind of think of the back your mind, I'm gonna be somebody's role model. Somebody is Halloween costume.   Brec Bassinger  27:22 Unfortunately, I feel like fell on the Bulldogs, which was the Nickelodeon show I was on for a couple years, like prepared me for that or prepared me for this. Like I played a female quarterback, very strong female lead. I had girls dressing up for me of Halloween. So I think that was like a good stepping stone for what the school be. I mean, I'm not sure what this will be. But I hope it's big and I hope girls are watching it and feeling inspired. I feel prepared. I'm not scared.   Stacey Simms  27:49 Yeah, that's a great point because that show was terrific. And really was it was different to which was fun. You know, it really was different light. brick. Thank you so much for talking with me. Please tell kameron that we said Hi, and we're excited to watch the both of you on this show. I really appreciate you spending some time with me. We'll be looking for the CGM outline. And I hope we get to talk again. Thank you so much.   Brec Bassinger  28:13 Thank you. Good to talk to you.   Unknown Speaker  28:21 You're listening to diabetes connections with Stacey Simms.   Stacey Simms  28:26 You can find out more about Stargirl and about Rick, just go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the episode homepage. We have transcriptions. Now I've been adding for 2020 and hoping to go back into that for many more episodes. But if you know someone who would prefer to read the show, rather than Listen, you can send them to the episode homepage. You should all be there along with the clip I was telling you about earlier and some more information about BRAC I think this is going to be a big hit. I'm so excited for her and I will follow up and see if we can talk to Cameron as well. nice thing to have support and somebody who gets it on the set. All right up next is tell me something good but first diabetes Connections is brought to you by Dexcom. And you know when you have a toddler diagnosed with type one like we did you hear rumblings for a long time about the teen years right over the treaded teen years, but it did hit us a little early. And I was really glad that we had Dexcom Benny's insulin needs started going way up around age 11. He looks like a completely different person. I was going through photos, my cousin was asking me to send some photos for an event that she's having. So I was going through photos from three to four years ago, right when he was in the swing of this right at the beginning. He looks like a completely different person. He's probably grown six or seven inches just since age 11. I don't have to spell out what else has happened. He's shaving. I mean, he looks completely different. It's so wild. But along with the hormone swings, I just can't imagine managing diabetes during this crazy time. Without the Dexcom continuous glucose monitoring system. We can react more quickly to highs loz see trends and adjust insulin doses with advice from our endocrinologist. I know using the Dexcom g six has helped improve Benny's agency and overall health. If your glucose alerts and readings from the G six do not match symptoms or expectations, use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions. To learn more, go to Diabetes connections.com and click on the Dexcom logo.   In Tell me something good This week we have some great stories from athletes. I'm going to start with Zoe cook. She was told by a coach when she was younger that she would never be an athlete because of type 1 diabetes. So he says she was diagnosed at 10 kicked off the competitive swim team because the coach said she was too high risk that in middle school when she was 13. Her test coach told her that because she went low running sprints, she would have to leave the team. That was the coach who said she would never be an athlete. So he says she's really glad that she had parents who could tell me he was ready. Wrong way to go. So we and she also says that last year she ran the New York City Marathon with her mother who also has type one way to go. So we and way to show that dumb coach. You know what things really are all about. It is amazing how I always think that that's ancient history, right that someone will say you can't do this because of diabetes, but it still happens and we still have to advocate for our kids. Or if you're living with type one I know you know, you have to advocate for yourself. And you know, we'll get there. It's just a lot of education. Julie's Tell me something good is herself. Julie Raiden has been type one for 53 years. She posted all her wonderful numbers. She has a pretty extraordinary one c 4.9. She has incredible time and range and she is 61. If you listen to the show, often you know that I don't often share numbers. We all do this on our own way. But man Julie, I wanted to share that because I can't even imagine how hard you work. Good for you. She also is a hiker and stays very active. I did ask you I sent a note back and I said, What's something you didn't think you could do when you were first diagnosed that you have been able to accomplish? And I thought she would say, you know, hiking or staying active or something like that. And she really hit it on the nose when she said, I hate to say this, but successfully living to 60. I was always told I wouldn't. So that does give you perspective. Julie, thank you so much for responding and sending that in. I appreciate it. And finally, Mike Joyce. Mike shared that last year he hiked 2200 miles from Maine to Georgia. And this year, he is going to hike the Pacific Northwest trail that's a 1200 mile trail from Glacier National Park to Olympic National Park. I think I've profiled him before or mentioned him because I remember this last year when he was on the Appalachian Trail, right Mike? He says he uses a phrase of the inhaled insulin and packs a ton of food. Remember this Mike, I'm gonna have to look you up and put up a link from from last year when we talked about this. And he sent me some pictures that I'll share on social media. And one more story for today. Something good. I got a review that I wanted to share. I sometimes share reviews, I get reviews on podcast apps like Apple podcast player or whatever, you know, there's a bajillion of them. And it's always wonderful to get a nice review. So I appreciate that if you want to do that, you know, I love it. Thank you so much. It does help the show. But you know, frankly, Apple podcasts is kind of a pain to leave reviews on. But I got one that made me really smile and I wanted to share it. T Piper writes, Stacey is a diabetic. I love it. Thank you for being so Frank and direct with the head of Dexcom. You are our voice and we are so grateful. Our family is so appreciative. You know, that refers to the Dexcom interview we did recently, I believe about the CGM in the hospital. And if you haven't heard, I did ask about assistance, financial assistance during this time because other companies are doing that with Dexcom follow suit and they said at the time while we're thinking about it, we haven't done anything. And more recently, they did announce Some help so I will link that up as well. But t Piper, that's very cool. Thank you very much for that review. I have to tell you it made my husband really laugh. I showed it to him and he thought that was amazing. A diabetic, I appreciate it so much. All right, give me your Tell me something good stories. I love to share them on the show. I post in the Facebook group all the time, or you can always email me Stacey at Diabetes connections.com.   Working on a couple of projects behind the scenes, if you have a homegrown diabetes, a company or a smaller diabetes company and you are looking for advertising, I'm going to be posting in the Facebook group and probably on the public page as well pretty soon about a new project that I'm working on. And it's an opportunity for smaller companies to get attention from the type 1 diabetes community so be on the lookout for that. I'm very excited about it. I already have a couple of partners on board and you know, we're just going to keep moving forward. Things do not look the way we thought they would look this year. But we have no choice but to keep moving. And thank you all for all of the support you show not only by listening, downloading and sharing the show, but by taking part in the zoom chats that I'm doing by just having the community in the Facebook group. It really helps me personally, I just feel better about things and I hope it's helping you as well. thank you as always to my editor john Buchanan's from audio editing solutions, who is slam packed jam busy Is that even a word phrase? Because everybody wants to do a podcast now and everybody wants to do one, you know, remote at home and doesn't know how to do it. So they're all calling john and he's really busy right now, which I guess is good. There's another silver lining. And thank you so much for listening. I'm Stacey Simms. I'll see you back here next week.   Brec Bassinger  35:48 Diabetes Connections is a production of Stacey Simms media. All rights reserved. All rounds avenged.   Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Welcome!   For being locked down do to this Pandemic there is certainly a lot of technology in the news this week.  So let's get into it.  President Trump issued an Executive Order to protect our Electric Grid from using equipment not manufactured in the US, Microsoft Teams is under attack, Phishing and Ransomware are in the News and What will Post-COVID Business look like? So sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hey everybody, welcome Craig Peterson here on WGAN. It is quite a week. I just can't believe how fast time is going. So many people are at home with nothing much to do, they're watching Netflix, et cetera, and I am busier than ever just trying to help people out and I'm going to be doing more free training and stuff over the next couple of weeks. Now I've just been so, so busy. I don't know if you've heard any of my features here on the radio station. They're supposed to have started airing, I guess we'll see if they do air, but I'm putting together these kinds of filler things that are a couple of minutes long. The whole idea behind them is to really help. People with just various technology issues. You know, me, I'm focusing on security because that is what seems to be lacking the most, and especially when we're seeing what we're seeing right [00:01:00] now, which is all kinds of people. Just getting everything stolen from them. It Is crazy what's happening.  You know, we're all working at home right now to some degree. Many of us, obviously you still have to go in and. You know, in foodservice and manufacturing, et cetera. But even with that, the bosses aren't necessarily all there. Some people are getting sick and are staying at home for very good reasons. I think we'll see more of that in the future. Someone gets sick instead of the old American worth work ethic of going in and getting everybody else sick. I think we're going to see a lot more of the, Hey, I'm going to stay home because I'm not feeling well. This is going to be interesting because so many companies have these sick policies, sick day policies that I've never liked particularly. I think some of those will change too, but what is going to happen here in our post-COVID world, right? We've got this COVID-19 of [00:02:00] course the Wuhan virus causes the disease. it's also called, what is it, C O V I D SARS-2? Remember SAR. SARS had a much, much higher death rate than COVID-19 is turning out to have. But there are many, many people that have this. And we've seen some statistics now coming out saying that even people that are staying home, this one hospital this week did some, a little bit of research and found that 60% of their patients had quarantined in themselves at home. Now that tells you something too. We, we still don't know enough about this whole WuHan virus and the diseases that it might cause. Some of the symptoms we kind of know, obviously when it comes to respiratory problems, is an acute respiratory disease, which is what SARS is. Yeah, we know the basics of that, but man, the stuff we've been hearing about people having circulation problems, having legs amputated, even people who are [00:03:00] in good shape, you know, I hate to see it, but I can understand a diabetic having problems, right. And maybe ultimately having a leg amputated because of circulatory problems that come with diabetes or circulatory problems that come with being morbidly obese or even just obese. Those all kind of make sense to me, but. I don't know there's just so much we don't know. One of the things we're trying to figure out is what does the business looks like?  What is going to happen? And there's a great article that came out in the computer world just this last week that is talking about telecommuting. I think it's really kind of an interesting thing because what we're talking about is a disease that's going to be affecting us probably for the next 18 months to two years now. I don't mean like the whole country or world is shut down for that period of time. Obviously that would be catastrophic to everyone. We would have people dying of starvation if that were to happen, but what I'm talking about is really kind of like what happened with the Spanish flu. You know, every last one of us has had that flu that happened in 1918 and unless you've been an absolute hermit that I've never had any food, you didn't grow, et cetera, right? It just sticks around. And that's going to happen with his WuHan virus. Well, it is going to be around forever, frankly, now that it's been thrust upon us, however, that came to be. Depending on whether or not we've got a vaccine. We've got some really good treatment when they're in place. That's really going to be the point where we try and get back to usual. I don't know. It's so many businesses are doing layoffs. One of my sons. His boss was just furloughed and a couple of his team members were furloughed. He's [00:05:00] kind of low end to management. He has a team that he supervises, and so the supervisor, one of the supervisors of the team supervisors got laid off. So when the business gets back going again, are they still going to have that extra layer of management in the middle? I don't think so. And some of these team members that were laid off are not necessary, you know, not, not talking about my son here, but just in general. But some of these team members that have been laid off in businesses are not necessarily the best of employees. So what does that mean? The owners and executives and businesses are going to have to find themselves running businesses in very different ways. I talked this week a little bit with Matt. Of course, I'm on the radio pretty much every morning during the week on different stations, but I was talking about what is [00:06:00] happening. What are we looking at? Where's this going? And one of the things that came up was, Hey, listen, we have these executives at the C-level. We have all of these people down, the front end, is that going to change the way most businesses work? And obviously I think the answer to that is yes, right? Absolutely. Yes. The vast majority of the burden to put together these new businesses and new operations is going to fall to the people in information technology. That's exactly what we are doing. So we've got to have it, executives, starting to talk about what does the business look like going forward? What should they be doing? How can they have an infrastructure that works for the employees and that is safe and secure because the bad guys have [00:07:00] redoubled their efforts and there are so many opportunities to them now because there are fewer eyes watching everything? Right now. Working from home is a term. That many people are using. And frankly, if you want to guarantee that the business change is going to fail, maybe you just call it working from home. Telecommuting on a corporate basis can work, but that's not everybody. That's not where we're all going to be here when we're talking about these multibillion-dollar companies. Barely any of them had true corporate work at home or telecommuting pre-COVID-19 now, some of them did in some cases, but frankly, the big distinction between work from home and corporate telecommuting is that [00:08:00] they thought work at home was an occasional thing for convenience. So, or you're not feeling well today. There's a blizzard, there's a big storm out there, or there's a power outage at the main office because they're, they're doing some construction. Some businesses also said, Hey, listen, every Friday during the summer, you know, you want to stay home once a month or whatever, just go ahead and do it and work from home. That's not corporate telecommuting. Telecommuting is where the employee or the contractor, these people who are working on a gig basis are based at the remote location full time. Now I've talked a bit about the gig economy. And gig workers before on this show, and I've talked about it many times on, on the radio and TV, but in case you don't know what that is, the gig economy is a major change. We started to see a few years ago where people, particularly businesses, were looking and saying, Hey, listen, we don't need to have all of these people on the payroll. Because in reality, this job is part-time. So why would we pay someone full time when it's a part-time job? And why would I have one person working at it when I could have three, four, or five people working at it when necessary. So all of a sudden there's an uptick in my business. Instead of having to try and find someone else, hire someone else, bring them in or, or turn down the work because I can't possibly handle it because I only have this one person who was part-time before. What we ended up doing is saying, Hey, How bout we just find people to do this one narrow thing, and the more narrowly the task can be defined, the better of the businesses because the cost goes down. [00:10:00] The more complex a task is, the more expensive it is. And you look at something like Amazon Mechanical Turk in case you're not familiar with that service. Amazon has, there are people who maybe some of you guys are doing this, who sit there and do very small, very narrow tasks for typically a fixed price. So it might be, get me the phone number and name of this doctor in this town. And you're paid a penny or whatever, 5 cents for doing that very, very narrow task. So they can go ahead and they have someone else saying, find me the name of all of the doctors that meet this criterion in this town and get me their names, their phone numbers, and their addresses. Much, much cheaper to break all of that down to the business. So they're looking at things like Mechanical Turk, but they're also looking at sites like Fiverr, which I've [00:11:00] used before as well. F I V E R R.com and if you go to fiverr.com in fact, let me go there right now while we're talking, you can find people to do almost. Anything for you. It says right on their homepage here, find the perfect freelance services for your business. And most of these are very narrow tasks. And their original idea is you, you know, five bucks, they discharged five bucks for it. And, you know, isn't that. or more reasonable thing than having to have an employee and having to have all of the expenses involved. All right, so I'll stick around. I wanted to finish this up here. A little bit of wandering and meandering as we're talking about. What does the post-WuHan virus world look like in the business space? You're listening to Craig Peterson, on W G A N and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Craig Peterson: Hi guys. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and of course online at craigpeterson.com. We were talking before the break, a little bit about the post-Covid 19 world. And I started talking about the gig economy and what it really is, what does it really mean to us? And I was just talking about a website called fiverr.com which kind of defined the whole gig economy for a while, frankly, for a number of years. And now there are more sites out there as well. But really Fiverr is the place to go online. So they have things like design a logo. Customize your WordPress website, doing voiceover whiteboard work for people. SEO, which is search engine optimization, illustration, translation, data entry. Those are kind [00:01:00] of their top categories, and you can go there. You can find what people are doing, what they're offering, what's the best thing for you, for your business? What might you want to consider? If it is really quite good and there are a lot of true experts that are making there. Their talents available to businesses now it's not just five bucks to do something. Some of these are a lot more expensive and some go on an hourly basis and, and I've used a number of other websites in the past in order to get people to hire people to do things. Upwork is one of the other big ones. U P W O R K.com. Check that one out as well. Whether you're looking for help or you want to provide help and sell some help. But upwork.com is another good one that I've used. And in both cases, I can go and post something and say, Hey, this is what I'm interested in. Having done and people will bid on it [00:02:00] for you. Now, a little inside tip here you might not be aware of in that is if you want people to bid on it, they have to be aware of it, and the only way they're going to be aware of it usually is if you reach out to them. So you have to do a bunch of studying and research and advance so that you know who looks like they might fit for you, and then you have to send them an invite directly because most of these people, especially the good ones, are not sitting there just waiting for a general. Query to come in, Hey, I need somebody to do a logo. Now they don't pay attention to that because they are in demand. So you have to find the people that you want to do. For instance, your logo, whatever the work is. So you'll go online, you'll look around, you'll look at their samples, they've posted, you'll find a few people, and I've found usually in order to find somebody that's good. I have to reach out to as many as 50 five [00:03:00] zero people on these websites to get the attention of somebody I really want. So if you are top-rated, it's phenomenal. They have ratings like at Upwork they have really great ratings and stuff for who some of the better people are. It really helps you with your decision. So when we're talking about the future, it's not just telecommuting. Or you might have lost your job. So what do you do now? I know, for instance, one of our listeners here, Linda, she reached out to me and I helped her with some, or actually one of my techs helped her out with some of the problems she was having. because she has lost her business actually, I think it was, and she's trying to start another one by doing website evaluation. You know, that's a perfect opportunity for somebody. To go to Fiverr or Upwork and see if they can't dig up a little bit of work as well. Now when you're first starting out, you're going to have to look at [00:04:00] those main feeds and you're going to have to comb through them and approach people. And you'd probably have to do stuff for really cheap until you develop a reputation. Cause you have to have people giving you those five-star reviews. But it's going to take a little bit of time. Now, one of the big questions that come up is payroll taxes. And when we're talking about the gig economy, the IRS has a set of standards that are in place that help you evaluate whether someone should be treated as a contractor or if they should be treated as an employee. And there's quite a bit of IRS case law if you want to call it that, IRS rules and regulations that have come out of the IRS courts that are paid by the IRS and judges work for the IRS and they get to decide what's right or wrong with you, right? But, there have been a lot of cases that say, Hey, listen to, here's where the line is drawn between a [00:05:00] contractor that you can pay 1099 and somebody who's W2. And that line that we're talking about is, is not just, Hey, they're working at home. Yeah. They're working from home. Well, do you supervise them? Do you give them the work that needs to be done? Are you setting deadlines? Are you telling them what equipment or software to use? You know, you need to talk to your attorneys, reach out to your accountant to figure out what all of those rules are and how they apply to you. But it, this adds yet another little twist to it. You know, it's one thing if you have just this limited task and you hire them once to do the task, like, okay, I need a logo design, or I need to have this changed on my website, or. Whatever it might be, and that's all well and good and that probably fits the contractor definition. Probably don't even have to 1099 them if you're using one of these sites like Fiverr or [00:06:00] Upwork because they're going to take care of it for you. Some of these sites will do tax withholdings for people and there's a lot of things they'll do, but where they are living also now. Will it affect your payroll taxes? So let's say that you're going to keep people on as employees and your businesses in New Hampshire, but they're living or switch it around here cause it doesn't work for New Hampshire. Right? But let's say they're living in a different state with a different tax jurisdiction. And you are your businesses in a state that has income tax provisions. I know in the Northeast we have some agreements between the States because of, of course, New Hampshire has no income tax and they're the ones that are always used for these things. But, there was an agreement between the state saying, Hey, listen, if they live in mass, you have to pay mass taxes. If you live in New Hampshire and you work in mass, you have to pay mass taxes. If you never ever stepped foot in mass, you have to pay mass. No, you don't. But did you see what happened in New York where? The governor of New York has come out and said, Oh yeah, by the way, all of you people that volunteered your time, if you stayed in New York for more than two weeks, you need to pay us income tax even though you were a volunteer. It just gets crazy. Right? So how do you keep track of all these jurisdictions? And if you're hiring people that live in some other state, they're in Illinois, they're in California, they're in one of these blue States that has crazy regulations and high taxes. Now you have to worry about all of that sort of stuff. Okay. It is really going to be difficult. The employee's home is in Atlanta. The company needs to treat that is an Atlanta office or Bureau in every way. If what's the legal [00:08:00] nexus? I've seen cases where just having a phone number from a state was enough to say, yeah, you are a resident of that state. It's really kind of crazy and not just a resident. I'm talking about businesses here. You have a business nexus there, so you have an Atlanta phone number and you don't have an office there, et cetera, but somebody answers that phone. Even if it's not in Georgia, you could get nailed you. Do you see what I'm talking about? This is absolutely going to be a huge, huge different corporate telecommuting is going to just drive us all crazy. Frankly, and in some states, you have not just the state tax, but you have a County tax, you have a city tax, all kinds of different local taxes at different percentages. I remember I had some stuff going on in Washington state, and it was different [00:09:00] tax rates, even for sales tax. You've been on the County, you were in. It, it kind of gets crazy. So, you're going to have to change their tax status if they're doing a hundred percent of their work in that other jurisdiction. And I think that's going to end up being a problem for a lot of people. So keep, keep an eye on that one is, well, ultimately this is going to lead to I think, nothing but confusion. Anyways, we'll move on to another topic when we get back enough about all of the taxes and things you're going to have to worry about with people working from home. But boy, there are a lot, no time to let your guard down because of Corona fraud. Is a huge threat. And what's we'll talk about what those real-world threats are. So stick around. We'll be right back. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN online, Craig peterson.com Craig Peterson: Hello everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here, WGAN, and of course online at craigpeterson.com. Talking a little bit, of course, it is hard to avoid this, how it got into the post-COVID world out there. What does it really mean? We're just talking. In the above telecommuting and how it's really going to cause some stresses on businesses. And you know, we've already talked in weeks past about how it's going to help businesses with a number of different things, including helping them with their ability to cut costs on, on travel and office space, et cetera. But there are a lot of other things to consider as you just went over. Oh, now we got to talk about what is happening to us at our homes and our businesses from, of course, the security side,  because it's no time to let your guard down. Coronavirus fraud is a huge threat and it's been growing. We're seeing constant warnings about it from the FBI and from. These are various security companies that are out there. Certainly, we're getting all kinds of alerts from Microsoft and from also the Cisco people, but the scammers, the bad guys out there are just constantly reusing old ways of hacking us. And they're using scams that they've used forever as well. And that's part of the reason why I always talk about making sure you stay up to date. It's more important to stay up to date right today than it ever has been before. And scammers are rehashing. Some of these campaigns, kind of like the, remember the Nigerian [00:02:00] scams way back when? Some of those are back now in a bit of a different way. So we've got countries now, and of course, our States are starting to try and get a little bit back to normal here that got some paths to recovery. And in many cases, they're trying to get rid of some of these lockdown restrictions. But meanwhile, the crisis has brought out the worst in these con artists out there. And there's a great article by Ammar over at, we live security talking about some of this thing because. Really, they're exploiting every trick in their book when it comes to trying to defraud people. They've been trying to impersonate legitimate sources of information on a pandemic. We've talked about that where they'll send out an email saying, click here to look at this map of the pandemic, and there might be ads on that or might even be worse. Various types of spyware, obviously the that they're trying to put on there, but they're trying to defraud people and they've got also these fraudulent online marketplaces set up where they're offering deals on everything from hand sanitizer through toilet paper, eh, some of the masks and things. In fact, we just saw it was like a, what was it, $250 million, or maybe it was $25 million, refund from the Chinese for some state that had ordered some of these N95 masks that, that did not meet the standards. So. The scams are everywhere, and as I said, States are getting nailed in this as well. And the most popular, by the way, COVID 19 map. If you really want to see what's going on, you should go to Johns Hopkins University and there's a professor over there by the name of Lauren Gardner at civil and systems engineering, a professor who's working with some of her graduate students. To keep this up to date. So you can go there right now. and it says it's Coronavirus dot EDU, which is, of course, John Hopkins University, which is one of these teaching universities, that is a teaching hospital, but they're showing how many deaths globally, more than a quarter-million. Oh, almost what is getting close to 80,000 deaths in the United States. I also saw some really interesting numbers that were published this week in a scientific journal about how, you know, we're, we're looking at these number of deaths and we say, okay, 80,000 deaths, which is always horrific, but a. Normal flu year would get us what, 40,000 to [00:05:00] maybe 80,000 right? We had a really bad flu year a couple of years ago, but they delved into the statistics behind it. Now, this is where it's really kind of gets interesting because when you look at those statistics behind the normal. Flu, the flu pandemic, I guess they really are. it turns out that the statistics are heavily inflated and they, it's done because we don't track flu deaths like we're tracking the COVID 19 nowhere near as much detail. People that might have died of bacterial pneumonia in years past who were to be counted as a flu death. Now that is a bit of a problem. Right? So what do you do when you have these bad statistics? They're saying that some of these years where we reported 20,000 or more flu deaths, [00:06:00] actually may have been a thousand deaths in reality. So, Right. Any, anyway, so I'm kind of rambling a little bit here, but that brought it up when I was looking at this Johns Hopkins map here in front of me, how many people have died? How many people have recovered? It turns out that at this point that this COVID 19 flu is definitely more fatal. Then the normal flu season and the article I was reading in the journal were saying it could be as much as 44 times more fatal than an average flu year. Now that's really bad, isn't it? When you get right down to it, 44 times more fatal. but we don't know yet. Right. That's kind of a bottom line on all of this. We just really don't know and we're not going to know for a while. Anyways, back to it. [00:07:00] These maps, and I'm looking at a picture of one right now that was in, we live security.com, which is a map. It looks a lot like the John Hopkins map, and it probably is actually, and on top of that, it's got an ad for, you might need disposable coveralls with a hood protective suit. Now. Is this good? Is this not a good suit? They say, click on that to see it on Amazon. And Amazon certainly could have these for, for sale, but are they really sending you to Amazon or are they sending you to some other site out there? Right. What are they doing? They've got a live chat. They've set up. It's, it's really kind of amazing what the bad guys have done. They put a lot of work into this. The world health organization. you know, I don't know, the bigger, the higher up a government or non-governmental entity is in the food chain, [00:08:00] the less I like them, but they do have their own dashboard showing you what they think is going on. With the Coronavirus, so you'll find them at who dot I N T, which is the world health organization international, and they've got a big warning right on their homepage. Beware of criminals pretending to be the world health organization. they will, they're saying they will never, they, the world health organization will never ask for your username or password to access safety information. They'll never send email attachments you didn't ask for. They'll never ask you to visit a link outside of. Who dot I. N. T. They'll never charge money to apply for a job, register for a conference, or reserve a hotel, and they'll never conduct lotteries or offer prizes, grants, certificates, or funding through email. So that gives you an idea of the scams that are being pulled [00:09:00] right now when it comes to the world health organization. So don't let your guard down everybody, these emails that are going out are a real problem. They've got fake one-stop shops for all of your pandemic needs. That's a problem as well. Just just be very careful where you go. I'm looking at some emails as well. They've got tricks and there are many of them are the same old tricks they've always been using. Don't fall for the tricks. All right. Stick around. When we get back, we're moving on again. We're going to talk about this new executive order from President Trump. Is it going to make us safer? You're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online Craig peterson.com. Craig Peterson: Hello everybody. Welcome back Craig Peterson here. You can find me on pretty much any podcast platform that's out there. One of the easiest ways is to go to Craig peterson.com/whatever your favorite podcast mechanism is. iTunes is kind of the 500-pound gorilla. They're not the 800 anymore. They're just 500 and you can get there by Craigpeterson.com/itunes. Craig peterson.com/spotify Craig peterson.com/tunein whatever your favorite might be, you'll find me right there. So let's get into our next kind of controversial topic. And this has to do with President Trump's ban. Now it went into effect on May 1st, so it's been around for a couple of weeks. It seemed to be something that was released kind of at the spur of the moment. And it has to do with cybersecurity and the critical infrastructure. Now, you probably know that I ran for a couple of years, the FBI's InfraGard webinar training programs, and we did a whole bunch of training on critical infrastructure stuff. That's really kind of the mandate for InfraGard, but critical infrastructure. Now, just look at all of the jobs with Colvid 19 that were considered critical. The critical infrastructure really encompasses most of the economy nowadays. Even law offices are considered critical infrastructure. He said with a chuckle. Now that can be a problem. It can be good. It can be bad. It really kind of all depends, right? But bottom line, when I'm talking about critical infrastructure, I'm talking about the infrastructure that literally runs the country. There's one of the most overused words in the English language, literally, but in this case, [00:02:00] it really does. We're talking about the infrastructure that controls our electric grid, the infrastructure that controls our telephones, our smart devices. Obviously the infrastructure that controls the internet, the infrastructure that controls our sewage systems, our water systems, the whole electric grid, all the way up to our houses. That is the major part of critical infrastructure. Obviously our roads are considered critical infrastructure and the bridges and, and all of the ways of maintaining them. That's all pretty darn critical because without those commerce comes to a slowdown, dramatic and maybe a grinding halt and people die. Think about what happens if a whole region loses power, which happened here, went back in Oh four, I guess, and I think that was the most recent time. It happened in a very big way in, [00:03:00] was it 86 up in Quebec? And the one in Quebec was because of a bit of solar activity and the one here, you know, I've seen attributed to a bunch of things. The most recent one was that. Our power outage was probably done because of a probe into our electric grid, looking to see if they could potentially hack it and it ended up tripping one of these sites, one of these major sites that are used for distributing electricity, and then that tripped another, tripped to another, tripped to another and before we know it, we had a major cascade failure. So all of that stuff is very, very critical. If, if you've been in a hospital, you know how much they eat electricity. Now, hospitals, of course, have generators for the most part, and that's an important thing for them to have, right? You want to be able to have power if the power [00:04:00] goes out. So, okay, I get that, and that's a very good thing. But at some point, if you don't have access to, let's say, the diesel to run the generators, or maybe they're natural gas generators and you can't run those. What ultimately can you trust if you're a hospital. Because if the whole region loses power, so let's say New England, we lost power in all of the new England states, including New York State, New York City, maybe New Jersey. So we're talking about a five-hour car ride in order to get beyond where this particular power outage occurred. That means even people that have generators are going to run out of fuel because they, the gas stations aren't going to work. Most of them don't have. Pumps. So the trucks can't really deliver it cause the gas station doesn't have electricity. They can't be on, they just don't know what's happening. So they're going to have to send trucks to New Jersey or someplace to try and pick up diesel. And if it's even broader to say we had another Carrington event, like what happened in the mid 18 hundreds where there was a major solar flare that knocked out everything in the country. Now back in the mid 18 hundreds that weren't such a big deal. Today it would be huge. So between those two, obviously having a more localized power failure is better. How about the sewage where it all backs up maybe into the streets? How about the water supply where we just can't get water. Because it shut down. So many of these devices are now part of our internet of things, and that's a real problem.  So President Trump signed this executive order that prohibits operators of the United States power grid to buy and to install any electrical equipment that has been manufactured outside of the US they're even going so far as to provide funding and finances to remove some of this equipment from our electrical infrastructure. You probably already know that we are not allowing these Chinese firms to build our new five G infrastructure or any of the equipment that's in it either. Then here's the code from the order. I further find that unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of the bulk power system, electric equipment designed, developed, manufactured, or supplied by persons owned by controlled by or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries augments the ability of the foreign adversaries to create an exploit vulnerabilities in bulk power system, electric equipment with potentially catastrophic effect.  I think he's right. We're seeing these power grids, water grids, et cetera, being attacked. And much of it's coming through the internet of things like keep warning people about, it's, it's really, it's just absolutely amazing. So let's go back. I went and checked in the news, cause I had heard about what had happened over in Israel. And this is May 7th okay, so this week, this is very, very recent. Israel is blaming the US for Iran causing a widespread cyberattack on Israeli water and sewage facilities during April. This was a report that came out from Fox News on Thursday, and according to the report, [00:08:00] Iran used American servers to hack into the facilities. A I've talked about this now for 20 years, and, this whole part of it just really bothers me. They used American servers. Most of the time when the bad guys are using American servers using American computers, what they've actually done is they have compromised a server. 20 years ago we were talking about how Al Qaeda was videotaping the beheading of Americans and distributing them worldwide using American servers. Isn't that amazing? It's shocking. It shouldn't be shocking anyways to all of us, but that's what they were doing. They were using servers that they had hijacked. Now here we are 20 years later and Iran is using these servers to attack. [00:09:00] We know that our servers here, our desktops are being used, they're being compromised and then use to do denial of service attacks. Many other types of attacks out there. So it looks like President Trump might have been a little bit ahead of the game here. I'm looking at, the article here that I'm seeing on the Jerusalem Post. Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the issue at last year's cyber tech conference in Televiv saying that Iran is attacking Israel on a daily basis. We monitor it and prevent it every day. They are threatening and other ways. What is important is that every country can be attacked and each country needs a combination of defense and attack capabilities. Israel has such an ability. So think that through a little bit. I know here in the US we have the ability to attack back, no question about that. Now, I also found [00:10:00] online over at, Analytics India magazine online, and this is from a couple of weeks back, three weeks ago, cyberattacks on the critical infrastructure of India is a worrying trend. So let's see, we've got the US that we know has had the critic, our critical infrastructure tack. We know your Iran appears to be responsible for Israeli. Critical infrastructure attacks, and according to the prime minister, they're being attacked daily. We've got India, and here's another one. This is the Czech Republic. This is just a quick search that I did online to find out who's been attacked lately. And this is from April 20th so what about three weeks ago? Attempted cyber attacks against several hospitals and an airport in the Czech Republic show. The coronavirus pandemic has not slowed down the West digital adversaries. So the leaders over in the Czech Republic are saying that they were able to stop these attacks, but they're getting more highly sophisticated attacks all of the time. Czech's top cybersecurity agency has warned, expected imminent serious cyberattacks against us healthcare sector aimed at disabling computers and destroying data. So in many cases, it's ransomware. In fact, that's the number one threat right now against our businesses in the US, it's still ransomware. Can you believe it? It is still ransomware. We are still not protecting ourselves and our business. It just drives me nuts. And that's our, we'll do some more training about this in the next few weeks here. This is particularly problematic right now because we're, we are in the middle of a pandemic. We do have hospitals trying to treat patients and they are under attack and they are getting ransomware and some of these big ransomware bad guys out there. I've said, Oh, no, no, no, we're not. Going to, Hey, if we do take control accidentally of the hospital's computers, we're just going to release it right away. We're not going to hold them ransom, and yet they have been, so be very careful. Everybody, this is, this is not going away anytime soon. They are going to continue to attack us. So when we get back, let's talk about something fun here. Let's talk about what the James Dyson Foundation is doing for our kids. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on W G A N and online CraigPeterson.com/subscribe make sure you get my weekly newsletter so you keep on top of all of these new stories for the week, and I'll be on with Matt Wednesday at seven 30. Craig Peterson: Hey everybody, welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. I'm on every Saturday from one til three and I am so grateful you guys have joined me today and all of the people that have been signing up today from my newsletter, by the way, when you sign up, I've got. Three little special surprises that only don't even mention when you sign up. So we'll be getting those over the course of the next week or so. Some really great tip sheets, some tools that you can use in order to help make sure your home and your business is properly secured. And hopefully by now. they've started running my little features and those are going to be fantastic. I'm trying to generate a couple of weeks so we can put them up and keep them fresh. But it, it kinda goes into some details of, you know what you should do. So let me, I'm going to put one in here right now. Play one of these features. This one's on passwords. Just give an idea of what these are so you can kind of keep an eye, an ear out for them. I was going to say an eye, but it's obviously an ear. Have you ever heard the term poned? While you might have been poned? Hi, this is Craig Peterson here with a security blink about something known as powning. Poned means that your account has been the victim of a data breach. Your username and password have been stolen from a third party. Now there's an easy way to find out if your account login has been stolen. Troy hunt started and still maintained a website called have I been postponed? He's collected the records of almost 10 billion user accounts from the dark web. Think about that for a minute. If you have an online user account, the odds are that your account data is online, out in the dark web, and the bad guys are using the same information they're finding on the dark web to send you phishing emails recently that's included scareware emails that are threatening to release some information about you. If you don't pay a Bitcoin ransom to prove their point, they're including your email address and password they found online. I'm contacted by listeners every week because these emails truly are scary, but are best ignored. How do you find out if you've been a victim of a data breach? Although it's safe to assume that you have been, you can just go online to have I been poned.com. Troy will let you enter your email address and he will search his database to see if your account information has been stolen. So what should you do? Get one password. It's the best password manager I've ever found. Use it to automatically generate a new password for you. For every online account, you have. One password will also automatically check to see if your account is listed on have I been pwned. To find out more about pwned accounts and password management and to find out how best to use them. Visit Craig peterson.com/compromised. So that's what we're doing, putting them out. I think that sounds pretty good. I heard it sounds really good. I'm thinking of the future ones, I'm going to do it a little bit less scripted. It just sounds too highly produced. I don't know what you guys think. Let me know. Just email me@craigpeterson.com I love to get a little bit of feedback from you. Well, let's get into our friend here, James Dyson. Now, in case you don't know who this is, James Dyson, that's spelled D. Y. S. O. N. He's a British inventor, and you probably know him best via his vacuum, the Dyson vacuum. It's really kind of a cool thing. Definitely overkill, but this thing works on the principle of cyclonic separation. And they used some of the similar technology too that Dyson did in order to make some very cool bladeless of fans that you can get. I really liked these things. They're absolutely amazing. He has designed a whole bunch of things. I'm looking right now at his Wikipedia page, and of course, they've got a picture of his bagless Dyson vacuum cleaner, which is really what got him into most homes, most people to understand, but he has been very, very big in inventing things over the years. I like his air blade hand dryer, which you will see at many bathrooms, probably more of them as you go forward. It does use ultraviolet light in order to clean the air. It doesn't spray it all around. I do not like and I have never liked the air dryers and bathrooms. It makes the spread of germs inevitable. It is a very, very bad idea and yet. So many people just think it's fantastic, right? So much easier. We don't have, to use paper towels, which are frankly much better. They spread the disease a lot less. So the Dyson air blade is a very, very cool, hand dryers, kind of like a squeegee. Air to remove water rather than trying to just blow it all away or evaporated with heat very fast drying, a lot less energy and safer too for us in this COVID-19 day. Anyways, let's get into what he's done right now. He's trying to encourage kids to do a little bit of experimentation. He has this fantastic PDF that you can download by going to the James Dyson Foundation website that you can just search for online, James Dyson, DYSON foundation. Now a few, our parent, [00:06:00] grandparent, if you're homeschooling because there's no more school for the year, or you're homeschooling because it's just a great thing to do. You're gonna want to check this out. It would have been handy when my wife and I were homeschooling all of our kids as well, but he's got these challenge cards is what he's calling them, and there are a total of 22 science challenges and 22 engineering challenges. Yeah. It's just so cool. One of these, the first one reminds me of when I was a kid, cause I remember doing this in school and this is how to get an egg to fit into a bottle without breaking it. Now, back then when I was in school, of course, it was a milk bottle, but what they're doing is they want you to get a glass bottle that has a mouth that smaller than the egg. You're going to put that egg into a glass of vinegar and make sure it's completely covered.  So within two days, that egg is going to be very rubbery. Do you remember doing this? You guys ever done this? Then you heat the bottle in hot water. Obviously make sure that you remember a taut, okay. Use a tea towel and your handle it, and then rest the egg on the neck of the bottle. You don't want to put it so the narrow end is down over the mouth of the bottle. Then as the Air inside cools down, it's going to contract. Right. Expand contract, right as you heat and cool. So. The bottle is going to contract a little bit. The air is going to contract a lot. And you're going to have a vacuum inside this bottle, so it's going to suck the egg inside. So cool. And then the card goes into some detail. How does it work? It talks about the protein and what kind of acid is in the vinegar and what ends up happening. It actually [00:08:00] changes the chemical compound of the egg, which is what makes it rubbery. They've got this underwater volcano thing, which is so cool. This is a colorful underwater volcano that you can make very simple, again, ping pong balls and making them float using a hairdryer. It talks about the Bernoulli Bernoulli effect, which is, you remember I first learned about when I was starting to work on these new hard drives that had just come out and how har, how the heads floated using. Bernoulli a fact, a balloon, kebabs. Can you put a skewer into a balloon without popping it? So they explain how that works, what to do, what not to do. Liquid densities, just a whole ton of them. A geodesic dome is their first engineering challenge. Let me see if I can pull that up on my screen because this is pretty cool to make. Make sure you grab this, send it to your kids, grandkids. Use it yourself. Measuring the speed of light weather balloon. How to make a paperclip float. Yeah. Surface tension. Right. Skipped, fire extinguisher, scared pepper, dancing raisins that so many cool things. A lava lamp. I've always thought those were the coolest things. Did you know that some of the best random number generators out there right now are actually using lava lamps? A whole bunch of them. The visible link and then the Geodesic dome is you're using these jelly sweets and cocktail sticks and putting them all together. And how is it done? Talks about Buckminster fuller. I just love this stuff. I don't know about you guys, but it's so simple. Marble runs the kids can make, and it's where marble is running down the outside of a box and how you guided spaghetti bridges. See, all of these are cheap, strong as this drinking [00:10:00] straw. Not the crappy paper ones, but a real drinking straw. Electric motors. Yeah. Anyhow, check it out online. Of course, there's a link to it as well @craigpeterson.com you can go there. You can see all of this week's articles, and if you are a subscriber to my email list. You will already have it in your mailbox, should have gone out to this morning. So double-check your email. If you did not get it, just send me an email to me@craigpeterson.com that's Peterson with an S O N.com and just ME. Right. Me, it's me and Craig peterson.com and I'll be glad to double-check as to why you didn't get it. Hopefully, I didn't get caught in a spam box somewhere cause we send out thousands of these things every week. And you never know if someone, if people don't open them, I don't know if he knew how this works, but if people don't open them, like on Gmail, Google mail, if they're not, people don't open them. They assume, Oh, nobody's interested in this. And so it gets a lower priority until all of a sudden Google thinks, Oh well. This must be spam because people aren't opening it. So make sure you open it and download any graphics that are in there. Cause that tells Google and everybody else that, Hey, you care about this email. If you turn off the remote images, which is what I normally do personally. but when I get a newsletter, I always make sure to turn it back on. so if you got the images, then Google or AOL or Hotmail or office who 65 whatever you're using will know that it is a good email. It's valid. All right. Stick around. When we get back, we're moving to be on we're going to talk a little bit about Microsoft teams and some phishing that's been going on. You're listening to Craig Peterson here on W G A N. Craig Peterson: Hello everybody. Welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN online and craigpeterson.com. We've been covering a lot of stuff this show today. We just talked about these challenge cards and if you're interested, if you didn't get that URL, I'm going to give it to you again. I love these things are great for your kids, grandkids coming over for the day, whatever it might be. Go online and go to either look for James Dyson's foundation or just go to my website craigpeterson.com. You'll find it there under the radio show, but the James Dyson Foundation is who published these things they're absolutely phenomenal. We also talked about President Trump's executive order banning foreign electrical equipment from getting into our grid. Looks like they're trying to remove equipment that's already there. After the attacks that have been mounted all around the world against different [00:01:00] countries is no time to let your guard down. We've got Corona fraud in a very, very big way still, so we talked about some of that, what that's all about, and telecommuting in a post-COVID 19 world, what does that look like? How is that going to affect our businesses, our lives, our jobs, et cetera? So if you missed any of that, you can just go online to Craig peterson.com check the podcast and you can listen to it right there. I've also been trying to put them up over on YouTube and put them up on Facebook from time to time. I'm going to get better about that. I absolutely have to because we've got to get this message out to everybody, and if you have shared my newsletter with friends or some of these webinars I did. Two dozen over the course of a couple of weeks if you shared any of them. I just want to thank you guys so much for doing that. This is such an important thing for me to get the word out. That's what I've been trying to do for. Decades now because I got nailed as a small business owner by one of these pieces of nasty where there was out circulating at the time, and I really don't want it to happen to you or anybody else. And it really upsets me when I see some of these advertisers who are deceiving people. Just this week I broke down one of these ads I was hearing for VPNs. And every word they were saying was correct. But if you get into like the legal definition, if you're sworn in, it's the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, right? It's not what it's supposed to be. What does that mean? Well, the truth, you know? Okay. So did you rob that store? No. Okay. That's the truth of the whole truth might be, no, I did not Rob that store, but I heard Jane robbed the store, or I know Jane robbed this store or that would be the whole truth. So they, they're talking about their VPN product. And they're talking about how it can keep your data away from prying eyes. Well, yeah, it's kind of true, but it also exposes you to even more prying eyes. You see what I'm talking about when I say not the whole truth. So that's why I've been doing all of these free little training and also been doing lots of stuff for some of the paid courses and training too, because we've got to help people understand, and that leads us to what we're going to talk about right now, which is Microsoft teams. And now Microsoft teams are not bad. It's software that you can get as part of your now called, [00:04:00] Microsoft three 65 subscriptions, which can be good, right? And teams are what you need in order to have collaborative work and to be able to do collaborative work. But just as a quick word of warning, the only collaboration system out there right now that has full-audibility and all of the features that are required by some of the more advanced regulations is WebEx teams. But anyways, on all of these fronts from the Microsoft teams through, you might be using Slack, which is another very popular one, and even WebEx, but we're seeing a whole lot of phishing emails, and there's a warning that just came out here this last week that. People, particularly people who are working in industries such as energy, retail, and hospitality. There are some hackers out there right now that are attacking people specifically pretending they are from Microsoft teams. So they're trying to steal the access credentials of employees who are working from home. And what we've been finding is that many of the people who are working from home right now are. You know, they're, they're not being supervised by the security people. They're using a home computer. It may or may not be up to date. It may or may not have reasonable security precautions on it. It can be a real problem. And when they are getting an email like this, if you ever get an email that looks like it's from Microsoft or looks like it from a vendor that you've been using. If you're in the office, you might lean over to somebody else and say, what do you think of this email? Do you think this is legitimate? Or you might report it to your people, your security people, et cetera. But we're finding with people working from home that they're not double-checking it. And so they're clicking on a [00:06:00] link. They think, Oh my gosh, I'm not using Microsoft teams properly, or I mess something up and there's something I have to do. I got to recover this. I got to figure this out. And in fact, what it is, is that the bad guys out there that are trying to hack you realize what it is that you're trying to do, which is get, just get my work done, right? Just get the software working. So they have been directing attacks to the people. That is a little bit more ignorant in some of these ways. All right. Now at this point, it looks like most of these attacks are not highly targeted. In other words, it's not spearphishing. So it goes right back to what I was talking about earlier. Those emails that we were getting from the Nigerian Prince, right? They are general. So they're unlikely to mention your username and Microsoft teams, even your company. They are just generic and they can be sent to anybody. And so the hackers have taken a list of different companies and what businesses they're in and have been trying to direct them to those businesses. Now, the URLs that are in these, oftentimes we're finding that they. Are using multiple levels of URL redirect, and the idea behind that is to throw off these malicious link detection tools that are out there and to hide the actual URL of the final domain that's being used to host the ultimate attack. Isn't this something. These people are doing. So I did some training here on using Cisco Umbrella, which is a product that we sell, but you can buy directly from Cisco. It is specifically designed to help prevent these types of attacks, and I think it's really important that everybody use that installs it right. Get the free version if that is what you need. If you're a business, you should talk with me because there are special business levels that are not offered on the umbrella website, but special business versions that allow a lot more tracking and a lot more granular control. But make sure you have this in place because even with the multiple redirects, the odds are high that Cisco umbrella is going to be able to attack that. All right. So one message is impersonating the notification that's received when a coworker is trying to connect with you or contact you via teams. The other one is claiming that the recipient has a file waiting for them on Microsoft teams, and the email footer even has legitimate links to. The Microsoft websites, you know, Microsoft teams, application downloads, et cetera. And in one of the attacks, these phishing emails containing a link to a document hosted on a site used by an email marketing company. So we have to be very, very careful. And especially now we're, we're working more at home. We are going to be continuing to work more at home, move most of us anyway, and we are using these collaboration tools and maybe you don't have access to your normal texts of people that you would text support people that you would have access to. So double-check all of that. Well, when we come back, we're going to talk about the biggest threat. To the small, medium enterprise space. You're a small business, your small office, your home office, what it is, what those numbers look like, and what you can do about it. And we will be back in just a couple of minutes here. This is Craig Peterson, you are listening to me on W G A N or online at Craig, Peterson.com stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here. So glad to have you guys. I really enjoy helping out and I love getting those emails you guys send to me. You're so kind. They're just on some of the compliments and some of your suggestions. It's just fantastic and you can reach me directly. By sending an email to me@craigpeterson.com now, I get a lot of emails, particularly lately, so if it takes me a little bit to get back to you, I apologize in advance, but we do try and get back to all of the people who reach out, but you know, that's not always possible. Just a matter of life, I guess, in this day and age. All right, so let's move on to our next topic for today, and that has to do with the biggest threat out there right now for the small business space. And I was looking at some numbers here during the break. I'm trying to [00:01:00] figure out, so, so what is. Going on. We, we've talked a lot about phishing. We talked about what was just happening here in some of the online space. Things you need to look out for and what, what we're really talking about here when we call talk about small business, the biggest threat is. Ransomware to realize that. How long has ransomware been along? Been around? Excuse me. How long has it been out there? How long has it been attacking us? We have some statistics out there. I'm looking at right now from health net security saying that 46% are small, medium businesses have been targeted by ransomware, and 73% have. Paid the ransom. Now, paying the ransom can be cheap. It can be expensive. It really depends. Of course, the FBI suggests you don't pay a ransom because of two reasons. One, it doesn't guarantee you'll get your data [00:02:00] back. In fact, half of the time when a Ransom's paid all of the data is not. Recovered. And the other reason is it shows the bad guys who will pay ransoms, which means, Hey, listen, guys, you guys are paying a ransom.  Maybe we should go after you again because unfortunately, many of the businesses that have been hit by this stuff don't properly update. their security and those are the companies that ended up coming to me. Right? They should have come before the ransomware hit, not after the ransomware hit and not after they had a second problem. You know, if, if you've got somebody who's providing you with its services. And you have been, you know, ransomed. Don't go back to them to try and fix the problem. It's like, well, who was it Einstein that said that the same thinking that created a problem cannot solve the problem. And we've seen that again and again and again, but paying the ransoms. Here's what it costs right now. 43% of SMBs said they've paid between 10,000 and 50,000 to ransomware attackers. 13% said they were forced to pay more than $100,000 now, I can guarantee you any SMB out there, well, if you're like 500 employees. Huh? It's going to cost you more than a hundred thousand. But, uh, you know, if you are a company that has less than a hundred employees, it's not going to cost you more than that. Not even close to it, but paying the ransom doesn't guarantee anything. If you are a bigger company, we're seeing the average cost of one of these attacks being over a million dollars, because if you're trying to recover, you're trying to do the. Great. You got to notify all of your customers, your customers, find out that you've been hacked and that you had ransomware, you had the lost business while you were down. You [00:04:00] have a lost reputation after you get back. Okay. It's just absolutely amazing. Now. Businesses that are in the B to B space like mine, right? I'm, I'm a business to business. In other words, my services, my security services, the hardware, everything. We're selling to businesses. I really don't deal with consumers, although we've certainly helped a lot of consumers out there, listen to the radio show, but the businesses that are in the B2B space are. Saying that about 80% of them, this is self-evaluation. 80% of them are prepared for an attack to some degree or another. They've at least taken some preparatory steps. People, these businesses that are selling to individuals. In other words, B to C, business to consumer, it's about 20% less. All right? It's crazy. 28% of SMBs admitted that they do not have a plan to mitigate a ransomware attack. So it's very important to get all of this stuff together because the bad guys are coming after us. You've got to have a plan. You've got to prevent the attack. So what do you do? Since ransomware. It is right now really the top threat it gets in via phishing attacks. It gets in a lot of different means, but it's really a saran somewhere. That's the bottom line. I would suggest something here because I know you guys. It is so frustrating trying to do updates. It's even more frustrating when you install an update and it breaks something. Right. And frankly, the update thing comes up in the middle of doing something. You say, Oh, I'll do this later. So you put it off. Hopefully, you're running the pro version of Microsoft Windows, not the home version that doesn't let you do much of them put off. And then they'd remind you the next day, Oh, I gotta do this. I gotta remember to do [00:06:00] this. And then you delay it. And in my training, I talk about what the best delays are to use, depending on what kind of business you are, but you gotta kind of figure that out. What are the best delays, uh, between the time Microsoft tells you that you should do it and, and when you absolutely need to do it? So you're sitting there and saying, ah, last time I did this, I had problems and took me a day to recover and I lost all of that work and I don't really know what I'm doing right. I don't know if I should legitimately install it or not. Right? Have you guys had those questions? Yeah, I bet you have. Send me an email me@craigpeterson.com if you've ever had any of those types of questions go through your mind because I think it's normal. Those are the same questions that go through my mind, my team's mind. So what we end up doing, of course, is doing a bunch of online research, at least we understand a little bit about what needs to [00:07:00] be done and how to do that sort of evaluation, right? We're kind of security professionals, so I get it, right? You're sitting there wondering, what should I do? So because of that, let me tell you the secret. Cause it really is a secret. Obviously try and stay up to date. Obviously have windows defender turned on and UpToDate, as UpToDate as you can get it, but I mentioned it in the last segment and if you want more details, go back to the last segment. You can find that online@craigpeterson.com under my radio show. But listen to what I had to say there because probably the best thing you can do. It installs and uses Umbrella. Cisco umbrella is available for free. There are home versions, there are family versions, there are paid versions. They do not sell any of the, you know, the real business versions on their website, and you can always email me@craigpeterson.com if you have some questions about which one's best for you. But what we deal with typically is the enterprise versions. I'm even using the enterprise umbrella. That my company sells at my house, right. In order to protect everything appropriately. But what happens with ransomware is it has to call home. Usually, when malware gets onto your computer and it establishes a foothold, one of the first things that do is call home. So it calls home and says, okay, I've got this computer. What do you want me to do? And the more modern ransomware will give lists of the files that you have on your computer. He liked that. And so it asks, Hey, listen, the files on your computer are this, that, and the other thing. So a bad guy, I'll look at the names of the files on your computer, and if it's interesting, they'll get on your computer. They'll poke around a little bit. And that's why there's such a variant in how much the ransom is. Sometimes they'll demand multimillion-dollar ransoms for the data if they think that you might be worth it. If you are a town, for instance, you're a city like Atlanta. Look at this. They've been ransomed what, two or three times we know of. So the first thing it tries to do is call home. The first thing some of this phishing email does is try and get you to one of these sites where you can get the ransomware. Umbrella, Cisco Umbrella is designed to stop both. It's available for free. Install it. Now I have a course on it and I may be giving that course again. An absolutely free course. We'll see soon, so I'll make sure on my email list so you get it, Craig peterson.com/subscribe. Craig Peterson: Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here. Hard to believe the time is almost up, but you know, because that's the way that

Learn more about Sweet FlowerDue to COVID-19 we are no longer asking for financial support for the show, instead you can now join free mentorship group calls with Fabian to get through this together. Join here.Full Transcript:F Geyrhalter:Welcome to the show, Tim.T. Dodd:Thanks so much. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. First off, I hope you're safe during what is being seen as the peak week of the coronavirus here in LA, I guess. Thank you for taking time-T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:Yeah. It's crazy right now. It's crazy.T. Dodd:It's frightening. It's alarming for us all. We are safe. Thank you. As an essential business, we remain open, which has been great. We've done a lot of things in the store to make sure that people... In all of our stores that people are safe, and our customers and our team. We've gone through lots of different training. We've done lots of different things in terms of providing people with safe access to supplies, and gloves, and masks, and of course we were I think the first actually in Los Angeles, or even in southern California to instigate curbside pickup and contactless delivery.T. Dodd:We've been rolling that out, and it's been going very well. There's a strong demand for people. People are at home. They're stressed out. They're scared, et cetera, and they feel the need for the products that we offer, for cannabis, and so we're really trying to provide that in the safest and most responsible way that we can here until the social distancing guidelines, et cetera as well. It's been I'd say a pretty challenging few weeks, but I look at the good side here.T. Dodd:We are still open, which is great. We're still providing jobs for our team, and we're still providing an essential service to our customers. How crazy is it that this is now an essential service?F Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. Just think about that two years ago.T. Dodd:I've always thought that, but it's pretty cool that that's now part of this. It's interesting. It's been a really fast evolution in our customer behavior and our store behavior. We've pivoted really quickly, so my hat is off to our wonderful team of Sweet Florists in all the stores.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely. How difficult was it to fully embrace the home delivery system? Was that something that you already worked on prior? Being in LA, I'm pretty sure you're pretty tech forward.T. Dodd:Yeah, luckily we had. We had started delivery several months ago. It was not a core focus of our brand. Our brand is really about providing the high-touch service in-store, but we had decided luckily to move into delivery Q3 of last year, and really to have that as an expansion of our brand footprint beyond the stores to people's homes. It's asking the ultimate permission. You're coming to someone's house to provide them a service.T. Dodd:You're coming to their front door, and they're giving you their gate code, and all that stuff. Particularly in Los Angeles, we have all that stuff. We have a lot of things that are... There's a lot of permissions involved in that, social permission that's unusual. You're basically bringing drugs to someone's home. Obviously when you think about that, you're like, "Okay, we do really want to do with our best foot forward." We started that last year, at the back part of last year.F Geyrhalter:That's very forward thinking.T. Dodd:Yeah, and we had the tech tools in place. Most of us have got some tech backgrounds, either from the business side or from actually on the dev side. We worked with [inaudible 00:03:52]. Someone actually put a company called Onfleet in the middle of all that. Onfleet allowed us to... Which is an app that's used by lots of different delivery services, but it allowed us to provide a much higher touch.T. Dodd:Customers can text the driver anonymously, "Hey, I'm here. How far away are you?" Et cetera. The driver can text back or call back, even. Or people at home base can do that. We put that all together. It's a very good system. It's worked really well. Frankly, we were, I want to say prepared, but we obviously had a leg up as this all started to unfold the way it did. We quickly took everything that we had in place, and we simply amplified it. We brought on more drivers. Investing in the human capital here is really important.T. Dodd:We brought on more drivers. We made sure that the drivers were safe, first and foremost that they felt secure in what they were doing, provided them with gloves and masks and hand sanitizer inside the car. Hand sanitizer is still a really hard thing to get, so that was difficult.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, absolutely.T. Dodd:Just give me one second. Just [inaudible 00:05:09], okay? Matthew, I'm on a call, okay? Please. Thanks. Sorry. My son was [inaudible 00:05:20].F Geyrhalter:That's okay.T. Dodd:Those things are still difficult to get, so we did all those things. Then since then, we've seen a marked increase in delivery. We've probably seen a 500% increase during the surge of coronavirus panic buying that we saw. We accommodated those orders, and then since then it's fallen back somewhat, which is understandable, and I think frankly reflects people are now staying at home a lot more, but they're not panic buying or surge buying. They're thinking, "Okay, I've got a few days or weeks of supply left, and I'll go and get some more soon."T. Dodd:We see large basket sizes for delivery, and we also see the need to expand our zone, so we've done that. We've expanded our delivery zone from... Initially it was around a five-mile radius per store, but if you think of Los Angeles, we're well spread out. We've got Studio City, Melrose, and the arts district locations working right now. We were also about to open up the Westwood location. Obviously with COVID, we're going to push that back. It's very hard to launch a store in a pandemic, and very hard to know how that looks.T. Dodd:I think optically it also has some problems. I don't think s appropriate right now to do that, so we're looking at how to do that just as soon as it's safe, and we think we can market and launch the store correctly. Even with the current footprint, the five-mile radiuses that we had worked really well. We expanded those very quickly to ten-mile radius from each of the stores, and then we're now delivering basically to all of Los Angeles, so from the Palisades on the west side all the way to Pasadena, deep into the valley, and then deep into south LA.T. Dodd:We're looking at further expansion of that, as well. If there's a silver lining on this horrible situation, it is the fact that traffic has died down so we can now reliably service all of these large areas with more staff, obviously, and more drivers quickly. We can get around the freeways pretty quickly. We're averaging about 50-minute delivery times right now, despite wherever they are. At certain peak times, we might get up to about 80 minutes if we have to do a lot of deliveries around the same time.T. Dodd:We're able to now service a very large part of, almost all of Los Angeles from the stores that are open, all the stores in that time frame. That's been I think a benefit of this horrible situation.F Geyrhalter:Right, right. If one can say it that way, but it's true. People are creatures of habit, so I'm sure people will also get used to getting delivers from Sweet Flower now, and then once-T. Dodd:[inaudible 00:08:14].F Geyrhalter:Yep. Say again?T. Dodd:Okay. All right, I dropped you for a second there. I'm sorry.F Geyrhalter:Okay, okay. What I was saying is that people are creatures of habit, so I'm sure that they get used to during the pandemic to start ordering from Sweet Flower, and then later on they might just keep it up because it's already in the system, it's easy for them to get used to it. Some positive things are coming out of this, as well.T. Dodd:Yeah. I think we're seeing, it's always as I think someone else smarter than I said, necessity is the mother of invention. We're seeing that. We're really now, we're making sure that all the staff is safe. Business continuity, which is really staff and customer safety, has got to be first and foremost right now.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely.T. Dodd:These are really challenging times.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely.T. Dodd:Secondly, just remembering who we are as a company. One of our values is community engagement. Last week, after I made sure that... We made sure as a team that all their staff and team had gloves and masks and sanitizer. We had a number of supplies left over. We approached some of the teams that we work with, particularly in Culver City, where we're based. We went out to the local charities that are in need and donated masks and gloves to them.T. Dodd:We also made some charitable donations to local food banks. That's really important, because we're also moving into a... Right after this crisis, there's going to be, or there already is an economic crisis, and we need to be reflective of that, and thinking about how we fit our company in this emerging new new. This new, not normal situation that we're going to be in.F Geyrhalter:Right. Absolutely.T. Dodd:If food banks are getting hurt, everyone is getting hurt. We're trying to help out, and we're doing that with money, and also with some time. I was driving around on Friday afternoon basically seeing some people that we know around our neighborhoods who are elderly and vulnerable, and making sure that they were safe. Then as I said, we dropped off a bunch of different supplies to some of our local charities, as well, to help them out. We're trying to do our small bit as a local business.F Geyrhalter:Right, right. I think it's everyone's responsibility as a business to just start with community. Even the community is at the heart of your brand. Let's take a step back a little bit.T. Dodd:Sure, of course. Yeah.F Geyrhalter:You have a successful track record as a VC, as well. You're investing from C to series C stages, and you had acquisitions from the $100 to $600 million range. I could have actually had you on as a VC guest, because I only have founders and VCs. Today you're wearing your founder hat.T. Dodd:I am, yes.F Geyrhalter:When I first read about Sweet Flower, I was immediately attracted to it because there is one and a million cannabis shops that actually differentiate, and that create a brand atmosphere, as I like to call it, around them that is specific, that actually stands out, and that sets them apart. For Sweet Flower, it's about being curated by and for Los Angeles. Heritage and community is really your brand story. You were quoted in Forbes saying, and I quote you here, "Souther California brands are some of the most recognized in the world."F Geyrhalter:We're talking about obviously the Googles and the Apples. "Within cannabis, I believe that we can build a best in class retail experience and brand." Tell us a little bit about how you have no background in the cannabis business. How did this came about? How did you set out and say, "We're going to create this LA-first brand?"T. Dodd:While I don't sound like it, I call LA home. I'm from New Zealand, but I moved to the States 26 years ago. Now I've spent over half my life here, and most of that has been in LA. I've been lucky enough to live here for the last couple of decades. I'm really focused in this amazing part of the world that I've grown to love and call home. Beyond that, we take a very non-mythical approach to cannabis. We think it's an industry, it's a business. It's a highly-regulated business. My cofounder and I have got a lot of experience in dealing in high-regulated business environments.T. Dodd:We're both actually recovering attorneys. I haven't practiced for many, many years, since 2003, I believe. That training is still part of it, and we take compliance very seriously. We also are both from relatively humble backgrounds, and so we do believe in giving back. That's, as I mentioned, part of what we are about in terms of the company, and that's part of that our ethos. Beyond that, in terms of California, we believe that California is still the largest legal market in the world. Potential legal market.T. Dodd:There are lots of issues in California which I'm sure everyone's familiar about with respect to illegal operations, and over-taxation, and the complexity of the regulatory environment. I won't agree or disagree on those, but they are definitely things that people talk about. We looked at this and said, "Okay, is there a space here for us to participate in this market?" We looked at that as really taking a classic, I want to say McKenzie approach, because I don't have that background, but just looking as a straightforward business approach, strategy, et cetera.T. Dodd:What is the market size? What is our potential entry point? We decided there is a huge... There is a large amount of people going after a core demographic, the stereotypical cannabis user. A young male in a certain demographic in Los Angeles. There were very few brands, and there were really no retail brands other than potentially one that was out there that was focused anywhere else. In fact, that brand was really focused in lots of places.T. Dodd:We were like, "Okay, let's see what we can do in terms of focusing a brand on a customer that is cannabis curious, has not maybe got into cannabis, but is definitely leaning into trying to understand this." My own experience with this was I ride bikes. I cycled for charity. I had a really bad bike accident cycling, broke my pelvis in many places, and my head pretty well, and walked up... I was medevaced off the top of a mountain in a chopper, woke up in hospital, was released a few days later with a big jar of Oxycontin.T. Dodd:Didn't want to do that, decided to go down to get some cannabis, went to a store. I'm on crutches hobbling around with my head wrapped up. I look like a real mess. It was like, "Well, do you know the difference between Indica and Sativa?" I was like, "Well, sure, I do, but what is the point of that question?" Then I thought about the customer journey that I was having, which is a really bad experience. I was hoping for a wellness experience. What I received was basically a transaction.T. Dodd:Sweet Flower was based on the premise that we can provide a wellness experience to all of our customers, not just a transaction. We want our customers to come to be loyal, to enjoy the experience they're having in the store, to receiving very high service component, and to receive education and engagement. I think we're getting the feedback that I was hoping for. We're receiving extraordinarily high reviews, anecdotal and data-driven reviews that are saying, "Hey, we really enjoyed the experience we had at Sweet Flower."T. Dodd:"We really enjoyed the peace, the experience we had. The products were really good. The service was great. We will come back." Really moving away from deal-driven behavior, we are saying, "Hey, we still do deals." Moving away from people who are trying to sell product cheaply, whatever, and deal-driven behavior. Transactional-driven behavior to loyalty-driven behavior and service-driven behavior. That's really what we're doing.T. Dodd:I view our product, what we're offering is not cannabis. We're offering a wellness experience. I think what we're seeing today is actually some vindication of that. People are selecting us because they want to spend time with us, either on a website, or if they come into the store even today, they're coming into the store because they want to understand the effect they can get. Not just, "I want THC, whatever component percentage flower." What I'm looking for really is, "I can't sleep, or I'm really stressed, or I'm in pain, or I'm anxious, or I want to be social with either, given the constraints of the current environment. I want to enjoy myself."T. Dodd:That's important to people, and that's what we're providing. I've always viewed Sweet Flower as providing a wellness experience. That's what I was hoping for when I hobbled into the store on crutches. That's what I didn't get, and that was a big part of me and my partner in Sweet Flower deciding that we would build this company. In terms of LA, I just believe southern California has a certain creative spirit. I've been lucky enough to work in large, creative organizations in California most of my career.T. Dodd:Warner Brothers, and then Technicolor, and at both places I found a tremendous amount of people who had incredibly engaging careers that were driven from their creative spirit, their creativity. That's a big part of Sweet Flower. We celebrate where we're from. The Sweet Flower love mark, our logo is the California state golden poppy. We have the sun in our logo. People move to LA partly because of the weather. That's part of who we are. It drives our activities and drives all of our engagements with each other, because it's such a great place to live.T. Dodd:We wanted to celebrate that. Then last, the name. We deliberately didn't call it anything too heavy, too dank, too cush, too 420. We didn't really want to have really obvious callouts to cannabis. The flower is not a flower, it's a poppy. It's a golden poppy, but the name itself is Sweet. We're not saying this is a brand for women, but certainly I think a lot of our customer base are female, and enjoy that, and certainly I do think part of marketing is to...T. Dodd:You can put out your brand, you can put out your marketing material. It's how people receive that, and then feed it back to you that's important. You know if you've missed the mark if what you intend to do, your intended audience is not actually what you get.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Yep.T. Dodd:Yeah. I think in most cases, we've been very successful in terms of defining who we think our audience is, and having our audience say, "Yeah, this fits. This fits us." I think the biggest learning experience I had so far is the cannabis curious. People I think assume that they have a lot of knowledge, and it's been interesting. We've had a lot of people coming in with knowledge about some things, and actually we've educated them. We do have some extraordinarily experienced Sweet Florists, sales associates, in the stores.T. Dodd:That's been a very good experience for us. We're trying to just engage people as they are. When they walk in, they can have a lot of experience with cannabis or not. Initially we did call out the cannabis curious notion a bit more than we do now. We're I think... It doesn't really matter. People are super experienced with cannabis or not at all. There's always something to learn, and there's always new products in the market, particularly in California. Rather than talking about cannabis curious, we're really now talking about cannabis curated.T. Dodd:We have a fantastic buyer, Michelle Mendoza, who has been involved in cannabis here in Los Angeles for I think for two decades, and has ran the original California dispensary in West Hollywood way before any of these other stores came in. She has a tremendous background and a fantastic reputation in cannabis circles here in Los Angeles in particular. With Michelle's help, and then working with Kiana [inaudible 00:21:50] joined us as our CMO. Kiana also has a long history of engagement in cannabis, and before that in fashion.T. Dodd:Kiana and Michelle have really helpful us curate I think a fantastic selection of brands in-store, and then working with those brands, we've been able to curate... Sorry, to create a number of fantastic events and activations. Obviously now in this new engagement we have where we're socially distancing, a lot of it is influencer events that are happening online and on Instagram rather than elsewhere, but we're really doing that at the moment as a reaction to COVID.T. Dodd:With Michelle and Kiana, we're really now focusing on this cannabis curated moment. That, though, is congruent with the brand. It fits the brand. The notion of calling your customers cannabis curious, we backed off that a little bit. I think that that is... I don't really want to call our customers anything. I think all of my customers are fantastic. We're honored to have them in our store. We respect where they're all coming from, whether they have a lot of knowledge of cannabis or zero. Doesn't matter. We want to provide them with that same level of engagement and service.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, you meet them where they're at, right?T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:And people come in with different backgrounds, as you nicely stated. Talking about the community again, and you talked about these events, because to me it's super interesting to think about how you actually activate a community. Do you currently, or will you in the future when things go a little back to normal, or maybe like you said virally, how do you collaborate with other brands? Do you collaborate with other brands? What's in store for your community growth?T. Dodd:Yeah, so we've actually I think been at the forefront of brand retailer partnerships. I just think it's very interesting to have walked into the cannabis industry when we did. A lot of the foundational structure of the industry was getting set up, and some of it was antagonistic. There was a lot of, "You're going to have to pay for shelf space to be on my stores," and all this kind of stuff. We never did that. We never did that. We didn't think it was the right thing to do.T. Dodd:It might have provided us with some extra revenue, but the [foreign 00:24:23] of that is that we're now just leasing shelf space to brands. Instead, I think we actually got a lot more value, realizable value, not just soft dollars, but actually revenue from customers because we decided to partner with our brands. We see our brands, our core brands are partners. Obviously COVID versus pre-COVID, it's a hard cut, almost, because we have not had any events in the store, in any of the stores since this even became a potential threat.T. Dodd:Before that, before COVID, we were working very closely with brands big and small to do activations in the store. We launched a number of products in the store, particularly on our Melrose store, which is a great location, across the street for the Improv, and there's bars and restaurants all around there. We hope that neighborhood comes back quickly once this horrible situation is over. That said, at has always been a core part of our base. Frankly, that allows us to tag our brand's customers as our customers, or as our brands tag our customers as theirs.T. Dodd:It's collaborative, and that's the key here. I don't think anyone gets ahead of this by trying to get around each other. Post-CO, or now that I guess we're in COVID, we're not post-COVID, but in the current situation we are, we launched a very strong influencer engagement campaign with our brands to push delivery just last week. The week before, we had somewhere in the range of 45 to 50 different influencers all based here in Los Angeles that we worked with. All of them got a Sweet Flower branded bag that contained products from our core brands, our core brand partners.T. Dodd:Our brands and us worked together to do that. We worked with the influencers to do that. This is not a paid campaign. This was organic and really came from a similar point of entry, which is, "Let's make sure we do something responsible for push delivery as the new way of receiving and getting cannabis products." That was great. Through that campaign, 50 influencers with a total reach of around 20 million followers-F Geyrhalter:Wow. That's impressive.T. Dodd:A lot of whom... Yeah, obviously some of them around outside of our geographic reach. They're not here in southern California, but a lot of those people are. The ones that aren't are still now seeing Sweet Flower as a brand. They're seeing Sweet Flower as something that's enabling people to be safe at home, and it's also enabling their favorite brands to work with a delivery service like Sweet Flower to drive traffic and engagement, and frankly sales, which is fantastic.T. Dodd:We're now pivoting from being a dispensary that offers delivery to being both, to being just a chain of dispensaries, a chain of retail stores, and also a very robust delivery service. That campaign we did really was all about delivering, and it was all about working with these brands. That was great. That I think will continue. We see a lot of demand for that. On our delivery service, we currently offer everything. Everything in the store is available for delivery. That's really important, so people can get the same products they could-F Geyrhalter:Totally. Yeah.T. Dodd:If they walk in and they can get that to their home, and that's super important. I think going forward, we want to expand that. We want to expand the reach of the delivery. We want to expand obviously its robustness in terms of the tech underneath it. Then if we have more brands to work with, because I worry a little bit about what's going to happen in the brand space given COVID, and given California overall, even before COVID. We want our brands, our core brand partners to have a good foundational business.T. Dodd:We believe that we remain the best channel for them to do that. We're really looking forward to working with some brands on some exclusive launches, some more exclusive promotions, et cetera, yeah, in the coming months.F Geyrhalter:We talked about expansion for a second with the potential... Well, with the Westwood location when the time is right. What are the plans, and how would a brand that is positioned so uniquely for LA ever expand outside greater Los Angeles without losing its authenticity? Would it be online? How do you see that? Or would you ever go outside of LA?T. Dodd:We've already announced we've got Westwood coming, Culver City next, and then we also were a successful applicant... We're one of the top six applicants in Pasadena. That's the current forefront. Beyond that, obviously we are looking at new opportunities outside Los Angeles, but probably staying in southern California for the moment. That's probably not a brand decision. It's more a decision around capital allocation. Where is it smart to allocate capital? I think that those are more at the moment, more about capital allocation and brand fit.T. Dodd:I think California brands play really well everywhere. I look at Vans, Levi's. I look at some of the really strong retail brands that we have here, and frankly the California lifestyle-F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Absolutely.T. Dodd:Seems somewhat universal, so I think our brand plays well in northern California. I think our brand could play well in neighboring states. I don't have an aspiration at the moment to go beyond or out of state too much. I think when we started this journey, what seems like a long time ago, it was all about being a multi-state operator. That time has changed in the industry. Investors were asking, "When are you guys going to go out of state? You need to be in different states." My pushback was always, "Why?"T. Dodd:LA county is 26% of the population of California, and by far away the most cannabis-leaning and attending population of California. Los Angeles County, if it were to be a state, is the eighth largest state in the country.F Geyrhalter:Plenty of opportunity within, yeah.T. Dodd:It's like saying, "Well, I can see that if I was starting someplace else, you'd be asking that questions, but I'm not. I'm starting here." What's the rationale for that? Is that just a canned question? Lots of people are asking these kinds of... Investors and et cetera.F Geyrhalter:It's a typical question, right?T. Dodd:Yeah, sure.F Geyrhalter:The reason why I ask it was because Sweet Flower, the entire tagline is it's curated by and for Los Angeles. It seems to me like it is so positioned to be not only an LA brand, but also only for LA, right?T. Dodd:Sure.F Geyrhalter:Which obviously you can pivot the brand whenever you start reaching outside of LA and more into southern California, but that's where I was heading with that question, because it has LA at its heart, and right now it is catering specifically to LA. Which I think a lot of people in LA love that, because quite frankly, there is not much in LA that is born in LA for LA, because everything is very global, and everyone in LA is an immigrant. You're from New Zealand, I'm from Australia.F Geyrhalter:We both lived here for half of our lives or however long. I think that there is something really special about a brand that is positioned from a brand positioning point of view just for Los Angeles.T. Dodd:Yeah. I lost you there for a second, so I apologize. I'm not sure what happened. [inaudible 00:32:54] came back on. It's an interesting challenge I think for us to think about it. I do think that there's a great New York City surf wear brand called Saturdays.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know them. Yeah.T. Dodd:It opened up in New York, and now LA, and now everywhere. Still very much a New York City brand.F Geyrhalter:True.T. Dodd:That's the kind of stuff where I think we're not a clothing brand. We're a retailer. I think New York City, where I lived for quite some time before I moved to LA, same thing. Wide acceptance of core brands from other places. I think we're a core brand. You can define a core lots of different ways, but I think we fit. I think we play well in different parts of the states. I don't know where this goes, if we're ever going to be in a shopping mall in the midwest. I don't know.T. Dodd:I think the idea, it would really be that this brand is for now, at the moment, for the next foreseeable, the near future, and frankly prognosticating about the near future is probably really silly given what's going on. The idea is we are a really strong fit for what our vision is for a cannabis retail here in California. I think we fit well elsewhere, but we'll be selective. We'll have to make decisions about... Just I've been very selective, we as a team have been very selective about our locations.T. Dodd:Where we are set up in Los Angeles. I spent a little bit of time in commercial real estate when I was at Warner Brothers, looking at at the time the Warner Brothers real estate portfolio. We looked at 100 locations for these stores. There are six stores currently, and we passed on most of them. Some of them would have been cheaper, and some of them would have been different. Obviously different. A different vibe, a different location. We weren't just going, doing it based on scarcity or density.T. Dodd:We were also doing it based on what we felt was the right building to have, the right province for the brand. Some of these buildings that we've got required a lot of TI, tenent improvement, but they're also really good branding opportunities. They're big with big locations, good locations. We can put the flower on the front of the store, and it's cool. That was really part of it. We've been very selective about these things.F Geyrhalter:Design is super important for you guys, right? The store layout, how it feels, how people enter it, entire customer journey.T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:Overall, your brand design and language, it feels very authentic, down to Earth. It's balanced. It's also gender neutral, even though you hinted at the idea that it's female forward, in a way, but it feels very neutral. You've got this highly curated custom photography, you've got these pastel colors, and that's all key to a very specific visual language for Sweet Flower. All of that is underlining your mission to set a new standard for modern cannabis retail that is inclusive, diversive, and approachable by all.F Geyrhalter:I know branding was super important for you guys from the get-go, but how early on did you invest in branding? How was that journey when you said, "Okay, we got to start thinking about the visual and verbal aspect of our brand at this point?"T. Dodd:That's a very straightforward question to answer. It was immediate. The first thing we did was, "Okay, so who are we? What do we stand for? What's our brand? What does our brand... ?" Once we decided to do this, and then decided roughly, a rough sketch of what Sweet Flower could become, and before we really had the name, and it locked in our heads, I sat down with a design team that I had worked with previously a little bit in a prior career, and came up with who is our customer?T. Dodd:We started with that. Who is our customer? Then what do we offer that customer? Then why does that customer want to come to see us? Simple, basic questions. That helped us frame the central question, who are we? I think we did that, if we started on a Sunday, we did that on a Monday. It was basically the next thing that we did. We invested in the brand, and we invested in the logo, the water marking, the brand ethos, the design, the look and feel of the stores. It's all congruent. The door has to be congruent.T. Dodd:We did not want to do anything that was going to turn off, because we're also in a really interesting situation because we were applying for different licenses in different cities. Some of those cities didn't really, like Culver City for instance, which has been fantastic. That is a forward leaning, thorough application process run by I think a very sophisticated group of people. Again, you're applying for the permission to basically sell a drug in someone's neighborhood. You have to be thinking about that.T. Dodd:You don't want to come in and say, "Okay, this is a right. California has adopted this, and you guys have to do it." That isn't the case. Anyway, it's always the local municipality gets to decide. We've always been focused on who we are, where we're from, and where we fit in that community.F Geyrhalter:That's part of your audience, right? You have to cater to all your different customers, and you wouldn't have the customers if you wouldn't get licensed within a certain city. That is important.T. Dodd:Yeah. You want to have your customers feel comfortable going to see you. If I think of the over... If I could sum up Sweet Flower in one word, it's trust. We want to grant people the right to trust us. We want to have people feel that they feel... To feel good about going to see us, that we're going to provide them with a good experience. They're not going to pay some crazy ripoff prices to staff. They're going to feel good about leaving the store, and going home, and trying these products.T. Dodd:If they don't like them, they can come back, and we can... Obviously, there's certain regs about returns, but we can always work with people about other things. We want to provide them with their trust, and extend that trust to delivery, extend that trust to our community, extend that trust to our drivers, and our delivery people, and our staff in the store, and our store managers. That's really important. I think that's where we want to come to. It's a trusted environment. Safe.T. Dodd:Beyond just being safe, it is an element of trust. That's hard to do. It's really hard to get people to trust you.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Especially in that space, yeah.T. Dodd:Yeah. You start frankly in cannabis with three or four feet back from anywhere else, right?F Geyrhalter:Yeah.T. Dodd:It's a stigmatized business still, and probably rightly so. We just to have decide that it's not a right, it's a privilege to operate a store in these communities, and you've got to build that trust. If we've messed up, we want to fix things up quickly. I'm not aware of anywhere we have, but people often... These people just stigmatized bad cannabis operators, so they all think we've got green hair and piercings, and we get high all day. That's not who we are. A lot of that is just being visible.T. Dodd:Frankly, when we went to Culver City, the first thing we did was put our corporate office in Culver City. I work out of Culver City, at least I did until just recently.F Geyrhalter:Yeah.T. Dodd:Yeah, every day. We're around. You go, "Okay, there's the... " I'd go to the Starbucks and meet the, you run into the cops. They'd say, "Oh, are you the weed guy?" I'm like, "Yeah, I'm your friendly neighborhood drug dealer," and they're all going to crack up. If you do that 100 times over the course of a few months, I guess, people are like, "Okay." It becomes a little bit more normalized, and you're approachable, and not from some... What they think of as a cannabis person is not who you reflect, and that's important, too.T. Dodd:I think it comes down to trust. That's, like I said, you don't get that overnight. You don't get that over a year. You need to just work at that all the time, and it's super easy to lose, too. We just want to make sure we're that we're always trying [inaudible 00:42:09] as best we can.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. No, and that is the number one thing that people seek for these days in cannabis stores, anyways, is trust. If you amplify it the way that you do it as a brand, it makes a whole lot of sense. Usually as an investor, when you had your investor hat on, let's switch your hat for a second, how early on did you ask startups to invest in branding? Because usually for startups, it's all product, product, product, right?T. Dodd:Yeah.F Geyrhalter:For you, because you're a knowledgeable industry veteran, you understand what it takes. You started with asking all these right questions. Most cannabis businesses never do that, they don't even know what they're about. They just want to sell product.T. Dodd:For a second there. Can you hear me?F Geyrhalter:Okay. Yeah, I can hear you. Shall I repeat this?T. Dodd:Yeah. Sorry. It just dropped for a second. Not sure why.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, yeah. No worry. Look, the Internet, there's...T. Dodd:Yeah. There's ten million more people using it.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, exactly. Exactly.T. Dodd:It's probably not built for this, yeah.F Geyrhalter:Let's put on your investor hat for a second. When you as an investor, how early on did you tell your startups to invest in branding? Because most startup founders think it's a ginormous waste of time, because for them it's all product, product, product. Most investors, for them it's a ginormous waste of money because for them it's all about speed to market, and let's keep the money for the product for later on, and for marketing. How did you advise your startups?T. Dodd:Most of the startups I was working with were tech, and so it was product oriented. There wasn't a significant amount of focus on branding. Some of the companies I was working with or looking at were creative services companies that was more of a B2B player than a B2C player like Sweet Flower. The B2B players did require branding. A lot of that was built around talent. It was their own talent, and so they did invest early in branding.T. Dodd:Particularly when you're dealing with creative services, creative people, you can't stop them. They're very focused on that. I think for us, we had to invest in branding early, because one, we wanted to differentiate ourselves from the pack, and I think we've done that very well. Secondly, we were also in the middle of... We quickly started to apply for licenses in competitive license markets. Having a branding pack, having a design pack, having the look and feel that distinguished us from everyone else is, in those markets, in those races super important.T. Dodd:Now we've gotten not just the branding. We also now have a very strong operational backbone. We feel good about that decision. I think branding is critical for a retail outlet. A lot of people say, "Why do you guys have to brand these stores at all? Why don't you just take whatever name they had originally, and when you move them, just reopen them as that?" My philosophy here was really simple. You follow what works. What works for people is a very, again, building trust.T. Dodd:You have to have a common backbone. You have to have a standard look and feel. When you go to a Starbucks, or an Alfred Coffee, or a Sephora, or a Lay Labo, those are the brands that we were looking at. Analog brands in different sectors. It's very important to say, "Those brands have a common look and feel." We felt the same way about cannabis retail. No different. That was a core part of it, so we invested in branding early. I would not change that decision. I think it was the right thing to do.F Geyrhalter:What does branding mean to you now, now that you've gone through this process yourself? What does branding mean to you, Tim? It's a big question. Big loaded question to finish things off.T. Dodd:Yeah. I'll try and give the simplest answer. I think we're all... I'm not a Jungian psychologist, but we're all kind of powered by iconography. We're all powered by things we see that basically make us reflect on who we are and the situation that we're in. Branding to me is assembling those icons, color, logos. A flower, the sun. Simple things, and assembling those in a way that makes you think, "Okay, that's reflective of something that I like, that I want to engage with." It's possibly just that simple.T. Dodd:We're all basically fairly limbic. You can take away a lot of the cerebral cortex, but really at the end of the day, we're fairly basic animals. I think we reflect and response to things that are appealing to us different ways, right? For us, it was like, "Let's have a very simple brand. Let's use a cool gray palette. Let's apply a little bit of navy for bold." Nothing too shocking. We didn't want to be some super-dynamic motif. We wanted to be very straightforward. Let's use powerful iconography, powerful typography, good fonts, big fonts, and just keep it simple.T. Dodd:That allows people to apply their own feelings to the brand, I think. The brand icons are important, and the love mark that we have with the flower and the poppy... Sorry, the sun and the poppy are really important. I love that. I like seeing it. Every time I see that in a different way, that people are thinking about it, to me, it feels good. There's just something I like about it.F Geyrhalter:Yeah, it's so simple, but yet it tells a story, right? It also tells the story of what you actually want to feel, and that relief, and that kind of a space.T. Dodd:Yeah. Just selling wellness. Yeah. We're selling wellness. We're selling something. It has to stand out a little bit because it's a commercial brand. We're obviously, as you drive down the street, we want to make sure that you see Sweet Flower's logo, and our bold icons on the side of the stores. Yeah. I think it really just comes down to that trust, and that this is about wellness. Beyond that, I think people apply whatever they want to the brand. That's the cool part.T. Dodd:It's like, having people tell you what it means to them when they come into Sweet Flower. We've had some really amazing feedback and testimonials from people. That's really nice to see.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Where can listeners get to know your brand? Mainly online, because there's a small, small, small part of our listeners from LA, but a lot of international listeners. Where can they get to know you?T. Dodd:SweetFlower.com is the website. We're constantly retooling the website. It also has a transactional component, ecommerce platform on the back of it. The website itself tells a story. I think the best way to think about us, though, for people who are outside of our community is on Sweet Flower Shops on Instagram. Sweet Flower Shops is really a nice component of that. That's non-transactional, obviously, and that really is much more about our brand story.F Geyrhalter:Totally agreed. Yeah.T. Dodd:And our partnerships and other things. That's where we see [inaudible 00:50:25]. I think Sweet Flower Shops is a really nice way for us to get our brand messaging and story out there, as well.F Geyrhalter:Awesome, Tim. Listen, I'm looking forward to following the journey. It's really-T. Dodd:Thank you, Fabian.F Geyrhalter:It's crazy times right now, but it's amazing how you guys are dealing with it, and how you're pushing forward, and how it is all about your community first, your employees, and then the people that you can currently help. Really, really appreciate you taking the time in these busy times. Stay safe out there-T. Dodd:Of course, yeah.F Geyrhalter:For most, be healthy, right?T. Dodd:Yeah, you, too. Stay safe, be well, and we'll see you soon, I'm sure. I much appreciate the time today. It's been great. Thank you so much.F Geyrhalter:Absolutely. Thanks, Tim.

In This Episode, Curtis Goes From Speaking about Star Wars Day, to Giving His Craziest Advice Yet, to Talking to Himself, to him Speaking about What to Speak About! This Episode has it All!Don’t Believe Me? Take a Listen!!!Listen! Listen! Listen! is a show hosted by Curtis Elton. Speaking non-stop in each episode, you'd think he'd actually say something Valuable!!!WRONG!!!The show has NO THEME...NO USEFUL INFORMATION...NO, NOT THAT EITHERWhat it does have is funny, non-stop talking lasting approximately 5 minutes per episode. Every episode is Different!Go on, you know you want to, have a listen to Listen! Listen! Listen!New episodes every Tuesday & Thursday. Stay tuned for more of Listen! Listen! Listen!TRANCRIPT:Curtis Hello and welcome back to another episode of Listen! Listen! Listen! I'm your host, Curtis Elton and I what are we gonna be speaking about today? I have no idea. So let's get right to it. Two days ago, it was Cinco De Mayo and that's all I have to say about that. But not one, not two, But three days ago It was Star Wars Day. So may the force speak with you! With Me? You Mean it? Ain't you a Sweetheart?! Go! Buy Yourself Something Nice! Go! STOP!!! Don't go anywhere! Before we move on, I have a quick tip for you. Yes you, You (Taps on Microphone), Right There! Yes. Not behind you. Not in front of you but you. Yeah, I'm looking at you kid See! Now here's how to annoy everybody around you. Yes, you, You, You, You, You! Ah! this is driving me Crazy! 101. So let's get to it. Hey, man, can I borrow your phone? Your a Phone! Can I get a glass of Water? Your water. Can I borrow some cash? Your Cash! Oy Vey! I cannot get through to this kid. He's crazy! There you have it. How to annoy somebody 101! Back to you Curtis! Wait. No, I am Curtis. Okay, then. Back to you, Curtis. Wait! Deja vu all over again. Somebody Help Me! I'm going crazy. Well, that's all I've got left to say, so I‘ve still got some time to Fill. I think! I'm Not a wearing a watch. Crikey!. So, uh, anybody got any ideas? What to do, What to do? There's nobody around here! Stupid! Let's see. Oh, I got it. Can I say, I said, I said, Can I get an Amen?! Thank you! Oh, by the way, you’ve got a little something right there! Ha! Made you Look! Now I've done that, that's all I've got for today. So I'll just have to end the show right there. Thank you for listening to another episode of Listen! Listen!, Listen! Happy Cinco De Mayo! Happy Star Wars Day! May the force be with you. Catch you Later Hasta la Vista Baby! I'm Outta Here! Buh-Bye! (Breathes in and Out Like Darth Vader) Luke, I am your Father. What? You?! Out of Everybody You?! Oh, Come On! Wait till everybody hears about this! They’re going to go Crazy!

Welcome!   For being locked down do to this Pandemic there is certainly a lot of technology in the news this week.  So lets get into it.  I will give you my take on a recent federal court ruling about the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and website terms of use policies. We will discuss the many risks that medical device manufacturers are introducing into hospitals, clinics, and patients. We have a couple of stories about Apple, first off they are ditching INTEL and designing their processors and why the fake news media is so eager to announce problems with their architecture even when it does not exist and much more. So sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson: Hi everybody. Craig Peterson here another week with the Corona virus, I guess. Well, the latest coronavirus, right? This one is it called?  Corona, SARS two. Cause it's another version of the SARS virus. Hey Craig Peterson,  here on WGAN heard every Saturday right now from one till 3:00 PM and we talked about the latest in technology. [00:00:30] The things you need to know, things you can do. We kind of have a little bit of fun too. Sometimes we'll get into the real stuff that's serious and sometimes we just talk about some of the cool things and. Well, some things that I like to with the family and all of that sort of thing. And today, of course, is not an exception. [00:00:50] We've got, of course, these SBA loans, and you might've heard me bellyache about these because, of course, they're just not working. Uh, you know, I have a very small company and at the very least, I was supposed to get this little loan that every business that applied was supposed to get, and he supposed to get it within 72 hours.  Blah, blah, blah. From the SBA and to date I've gotten absolutely nothing and it's been weeks. And to top it off, I got an email from them a couple of weeks ago that was really ambiguous and saying that maybe I needed to provide some more information. We called them up to try and find out what's up. [00:01:32] Things just don't work there either. It just gets totally, totally messed up. So  for me  and some businesses obviously, you know, like big ones have gotten millions of dollars, including schools, universities, et cetera. And the little guys that really need the money, we just aren't getting anything. [00:01:55] Welcome to the club if you're one of them. If you're not, I'd love to hear from you. How did you make it work as a small business? Yeah, you can just email me@craigpeterson.com I would absolutely love to know. And then to top it all off, what happens this week? Of course, the SBAs loan system crashes as businesses are trying to apply for this stuff. [00:02:19] Maybe about another, what was it, 310 billion in emergency funds? It was was supposedly released on Monday or made available on Monday, and the portal course crashed and kept crashing all day long. The bankers who are trying to get onto the system to apply and behalf of the desperate clients couldn't get anywhere. [00:02:40] Very frustrating to them. Of course, no integration between the banking systems and the SBA. No integration, easy way for small businesses or even these big businesses that are pretending they're small businesses. No way for them to be able to get the information out there. And many of them are venting online on social media against the SBA, the small business administration that's running the program. [00:03:06] Now I've got to give them a bit of a break because I heard a statistic this week too, that the SBA has processed the more of these loan applications in the last, what is it, a month than they have in the last 15 years, which is absolutely incredible. [00:03:26] American bankers association is on Twitter saying they're deeply frustrated at their ability to access the SBA system. America's banks can help struggling businesses, you know? When did I say at the beginning of all of this. Based on the amount of money they were talking about and assuming that there were a hundred million businesses. I mean, families, excuse me, a hundred million families in the United States. Somebody just do a little quick math here. 100, one, two, three, one, two, three that's a hundred million. Then times 60, one, two, three $60,000 dollars per family, lets see three, three, one, two, three, $6 trillion, which was the estimated cost of the actual first bailout. [00:04:14] You know, you heard 2 trillion and 3 trillion. The actual bottom line was actually 6 trillion. So what we're really, what we're really talking about here is the ability. For the federal government to have given every family in the country $60,000 can you imagine that? What would that do to the economy? [00:04:37] Giving every family in the country $60,000 dollars. Now remember too, that you are on the hook as a family for $60,000 that were given to all kinds of businesses that probably didn't need the money in the first place. And businesses that were, you know, a friend of this Congress critter, that Congress critter. You saw what Nancy Pelosi snuck into the bills. [00:05:03] The Republicans kept saying, they're trying to keep this clean. Let's just get this to small businesses. And of course, the way they set it up, the way they did it just didn't work either.  Man is this is just me. Absolutely. Is it just me? Um. Yeah, the program first went in April 3rd it, and it's supposed to help the neediest businesses, these really small businesses, hair salons, coffee shops, dry cleaners, and businesses like mine. [00:05:31] And of course, it just didn't happen. Its Beyond frustration here for me and for pretty much everybody else. So these truly tiny businesses like mine are gone. They really, most of them are gone. I've seen estimates this week saying that it was probably in the order of 25% of them will never be back. And I was talking with one of my daughters this week and a restaurant in our neighborhood that has been here for almost ever. [00:06:06] A very old business. Uh, that restaurant, the building is haunted. It has been around for a hundred plus years, maybe 200 years. I'm not sure. Very, very old buildings. It's been a Tavern, et cetera, over the years. And he said, there's no way he's reopening. He just can't reopen. You know, he's been struggling for years. [00:06:28] It's a tough business to be in any ways, in the restaurant business, and I've seen stats on restaurants saying that we could see a 50% decrease in the number of restaurants. Number of restaurants, just an entirely here, 50% I don't know what the numbers are going to be. Um, Dallas. Here I, there's an article from, uh, the Dallas eater saying that Dallas restaurants opened in our May 1st is a bad idea. [00:07:00] Market watch has a thing about this as well. My state is reopening businesses, including restaurants and movie theaters. Am I selfish if I go?Many U S restaurants say PPP loans don't meet their needs. Yeah, no kidding. Right? Even if you get the money. You're supposed to spend three quarters of it on payroll and you've already laid off your people, how are you going to get them back? [00:07:23] Because they're making more money. As laid off people on unemployment insurance, and they would be, if you hired them back. So they're not going to reopen, and then you got to consider, well, okay, payroll was this much, but they were also getting tips which subsidized it because restaurant workers, many of them of course, making just to two or three bucks an hour. [00:07:46] This is a disaster. It is an absolute disaster. I don't know how many people are going to end up dead because of the consequences of what we did to try and slow down the Corona virus. And I'm glad we're able to slow it down. I don't know. Ultimately if flattening the curve is going to help, because you remember the whole idea behind flattening the curve was we did not want to overwhelm our medical system. [00:08:17] We didn't want the hospitals to be overwhelmed. Because we wanted the hospitals to be able to treat people that had this Corona virus. And they certainly were able to, we're seeing hospitals now, especially small rural hospitals closing down. Some of them may never open their doors again and they're not closing down because they were too busy. [00:08:37] They're closing down because it didn't have enough income because they weren't doing elective surgery. A their beds weren't even close to being full with Covid patients. Some of them only had a couple of Covid patients in them. So what, what , you know, um, and we've already had people who have committed suicide. [00:08:56] I'm aware of one, personally because of losing their job and now they had to pay the mortgage. They had to pay all of their other bills. They didn't have the money. The government was dragging their feet on it. And then the money that the government's been spending that did not end up in our hands, that money now  is not only money we have to pay back, but it's going to drive up inflation. And what's that going to mean? [00:09:21] Well, It could mean, well, the antidote for inflation from a typical economic standpoint is well you raise interest rates. Do you remember raised interest rates in the eighties early eighties? I had friends who lost homes because the only loan they could get on their home was a a variable interest rate loan. And so they had one of these variable interest rate loans and the interest rate got up into the twenties. I think I remember it being like 22-23% there it there in the early eighties. And so their monthly payments. Just went up. Doubled, tripled, quadrupled some people, and they couldn't afford to keep their home, so they lost their down payments on the houses. [00:10:05] And people are complaining right now that they cannot get a loan on their home because they don't have enough of a down payment. So the banks are getting free money. From us., Ultimately, right? Or from the treasury. So the banks are getting free money and some of these banks now we're looking for 20% down, again, which is what I had to do years ago when I bought my home. [00:10:27] I never only ever bought one home. So man, things are going to be a mess. They are going to be a very, very big mess. Um. We'll see.  In the Financial times, many U S restaurant's highly likely to return the small business aid. I was kind of interested in article denied by insurance companies. LA restaurants are waging a high stakes battle in court now because they had coverage. [00:10:56] It was supposed to cover this stuff and did it? No. Okay. Um. The many privately owned restaurants are saying the Paycheck protection program fails to meet their needs. Oh my goodness gracious. Um. This is, it's very ill suited for their industry from my industry, for most industries. [00:11:19] Basically, if you're a big enough business that you have a full time HR department, an accounting department, you probably could get the paycheck protection program. If you're a small business like me. And things are probably not so good for you, so, huh, man. Anyway, stick around. We'll get into the tech. I promise you're listening to Craig Peterson here on WGAN stick around because we'll be right back. [00:11:55] It kind of sounds like the national restaurant association show here with Craig Peterson, on WGAN. And I was thinking about my, uh, my favorite local restaurant. I love Mexican food. I have ever since I lived in Californ-i-a all of those years ago, out on the left coast. My wife, in fact, the native born Californian, and it, uh, it, I'm, I'm looking at them saying, how are they surviving. [00:12:24] Cause we would go over there once a week at least, you know, taco Tuesday type thing and enjoy ourselves. Have a nice little family outing. I haven't spent a dime there in six, eight weeks. I don't know how long it's been. It's been a very, very long time, so I just don't know. Anyways, let's get in. Let's get into the, um. [00:12:45] The stories for today, and we're going to talk about something that I think is really, really important. Uh, and of course, what else should we talk about? Right? But, uh, we've got, yeah, that was a drum roll. We've got an interesting problem right now. There is a law on the books right now that are inplace and has been in place for about 30 years, and it has to do with the definition of hacking. What is hacking, and it made sense about 30 years ago. [00:13:22] Nowadays, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Because we've got these terms on websites. So for instance. We'd talked about two months ago about a company that was scraping all of the information they could find about us, including our, our pictures, our video, our voices. But primarily they were after our pictures and from every site they could get their hands on from any site whether or not they were violating the site's terms of service. And some of these sites have sued them, et cetera. They've been hacked, and I guess that's what happens when you become a big target. But where should it be going? What should we be doing? We've got a problem right now, and there's a lawsuit that's been initiated by a group of academics and journalists, and of course the ACLU is behind it. [00:14:18] And you know, most of the time I look at what the ACLU is doing and wonder what it is they're up to. In this case, I think they might actually be doing something right. Isn't that nice for a change. They're arguing. That having these investigations against racial discrimination in online job markets by creating fake accounts for fake employers and job seekers. [00:14:49] Is that something that should be done? Right? Leading job sites out there in terms of service that prohibits that, right? So users of these sites are prohibited from supplying fake information, and the researchers are worried that the research could expose them to criminal liability. Because they're posting these things on the site and then they're trying to analyze all things being equal. [00:15:14] Was this a case of racial discrimination? So in 2016, they sued the federal government, and they're asking for whether a decision based on what they're saying is the First Amendment that you could in fact do almost anything online and get away with it. Now, I, for instance, you know, I have been using fake information on websites for a very long time, so when I go to authenticate myself, you know, they'll ask, what street were you born on? What's your mother's maiden name? I always make stuff up for that and I record it. So that later on I can always dig it up because you know someone can go online, they can become your bestest to Facebook friend. They can look at LinkedIn, find out about you and your history. And the younger kids these days have all of the information online and will for their entire lives. [00:16:17] So I have always used different email addresses, different versions of my email address, completely different names made up everything. Now obviously. When it comes to an official thing, like a bank account or government stuff, I'm not lying about anything except for my authenticity to be able to log into the site. [00:16:42] So I'll give my correct social security number, et cetera, et cetera, when it is required, because obviously would be a violation of a law, but they're saying. That under this federal law that's out there, the computer fraud and abuse act, it's been around for 30 years. Would it be illegal to create these accounts where we're just trying to figure out, are these people discriminating. So there is a federal judge by the name of John Bates who ruled on Friday a week ago, that the plaintiff's proposed research would not violate the CFAA, the computer fraud and abuse act provisions at all. And he said that somebody violates it when they bypass an access restriction, like a password, but someone who logs into a website with a valid password does not become a hacker simply by doing something prohibited by a web site, terms of service. [00:17:45] So that I actually, I think was a good ruling here. Now from the ruling itself, criminal is criminalizing terms of service violations, risks, turning each website into its own criminal jurisdiction and each webmaster into its own legislature. Yay. At last. Right now, unfortunately, courts are disagreeing about how to interpret this. [00:18:12] If this law is around forever. In Oh nine the California federal judge, right? What else? Ninth circus rejected a CFAA prosecution against a woman who contributed to a, myspace hoax that led to the suicide of a 13 year old by the name of Megan Meyer. And in that, the prosecutors argued that they had violated my spaces, terms of service. [00:18:40] In 2014 the night circus, uh, rejected another prosecution based on terms of service violation. So obviously I'm in favor of this. They're kind of moving in the right direction. We've got the seventh circus, uh, ruled that an employee had violated the anti hacking law when after quitting his job, he wiped an employer owned laptop that contained information that was valuable to his employer. [00:19:08] As well as the data could have been revealed misconduct by this person. So I think most of the way we're talking about the courts coming down the right direction here, but, uh, I, I'm very glad to see this because you know, that I. Protect site against hackers and hacking, not just websites, but businesses, right. [00:19:30] Including a real enterprise is real big businesses and I've done that for years. Usually the smaller divisions, because even the public companies have their own it staff and you know, they hold it all very close to the chest. It's in tasks. I don't trust anyone else. Don't, don't go with that person. Don't do what they say. [00:19:50] Yeah. Right. Which is, or I kind of get it cause I'd probably be saying the same thing, right. Cause I know what I'm doing, but in many cases they're just trying to protect their jobs. So when I am. Doing this. One of the things we do is have a honeypot set up. So what happens is the bad guys get onto a network and they started attacking. [00:20:13] They're immediately going to get into the little honeypot and the honeypot looks like an unpatched system. Might be a Linux system. Usually it is, or it might be a windows system, and so they start hacking away at it. And that immediately just sets off a trip wire, right? Cause I know, wait a minute, wait a minute. [00:20:33] Somebody's breaking into this system. So we monitor pretty closely. We know what's happening on it. I basically, all of the time, and there were interpretations of that law that would say that what I was doing was illegal. It was part of security research, even going on to the dark web and downloading some of these databases of hacked accounts. [00:20:55] Passwords, usernames, emails, et cetera. Even going online, looking for my client's information on the dark web could be considered to be illegal, so we've got to update these laws. There's a whole lot more, obviously, that we have to update, but I'm glad to see some of the stuff coming down on the right side. [00:21:15] Hey, we've heard about companies moving back to the U S now because of the Ruan virus and other things China's been doing. To our U S corporations for years. Uh, did you know Apple is doing something completely differently to this year that will potentially get them out of China, at least for the most part, stick around. [00:21:38] We'll be right back. This is Craig Peterson here on w G a N and online@craigpeterson.com. [00:21:54] Hey, welcome back. Craig. Peter sawn here. Listen to me on w. G. A. N I'm heard every Saturday from one till 3:00 PM and on Wednesdays I'm on with Matt during the morning drive time. You can pick me up at about seven 34 or every Wednesday morning as we talk about the latest in the news of technology. Hey, you might've heard of Fox con they are a big company based in China. [00:22:26] They have offices while manufacturing plants, frankly, all over the world. They've got factories in Thailand, Malaysia, Czech Republic, South Korea, Singapore, and the Philippines. They also were talking about opening up some plants in Wisconsin. Apparently those never actually opened, but they are. Busy worldwide. [00:22:49] And Fox con is Apple's longest running partner in building I-phones and some of the other devices that China makes. I mean, that Apple makes or sells, right, because remember who makes this stuff anymore? Well, Apple hasn't been making its newest IMAX or not IMAX. I shouldn't say a Mac pros. Yeah. In the United States. [00:23:14] Again, not that itself, it's a contracted manufacturing company, but the Mac pro, the one that came on 2013 as well as the new Mac pro are entirely made in the United States. Now, when we're looking at things like the iPhone and some of these other devices, yeah, they are certainly manufactured by Foxconn in China. [00:23:38] In mostly in at Shenzhen China location, but in fact, key iPhone components, according to Tim cook, are manufactured in the United States and then shipped abroad. And then the devices are assembled by Fox con, and then there's another company called Pegatron in China. Bottom line. What they are doing and what Apple is doing is protecting its intellectual property. [00:24:08] And we've heard of this before, haven't we? Where companies are in China, China requires them to give all of their intellectual property to their Chinese quote unquote. Partner, right? And Chinese national has to have at least a 50% ownership in it. It's real problem all the way around, and when we're looking at what's happening with the iPhone in the manufacturing in China, things are going to be changing. [00:24:37] In fact, they're going to be changing for a bunch of Apple's devices, including some of their new Mac books. If you've ever gotten into some of the hardware details inside of. It's a Mac books and, and in fact, they're Mac computers. Over the years, Apple has gone through a few different CPS. They were using the power CPU while before that they were using the murderer, Motorola, the 68,000 based CPS and a very, just an amazing CPU. [00:25:07] I remember at the time doing some operant system ports to it. It was just amazing. And then they went to Intel and, um. After. I'm not Intel, I mean, power PC, which was an IBM design. Frankly, power chips are the most amazing chips there are. Uh, from a cost perspective and performance. It's just, they are absolutely amazing, but they run hot and they use a lot of electricity, which is why you don't want them in a lab. [00:25:39] Top and Apple was not, or excuse me, IBM was not able to deliver to Apple chips that would meet their power requirements and performance requirements. So Apple said, okay, well we're going to switch to Intel because Intel promised that they would be able to provide the faster chips and they run cooler, so they'd be better for laptops and things, and they started using Intel. [00:26:04] And Intel worked out okay. Right now, by the way, uh, Intel is losing the performance war to AMD advanced micro devices. So that's kind of cool to hear those, you know, those things kind of shift back and forth every once in a while. But Intel has been unable to meet Apple's delivery requirements, and Apple's have been pretty tough over the years. [00:26:25] Look at what Johnny Ives has done with some of the designs, but Apple says, Hey, listen, we need a. Perf performance increase in the processor and we want to choose less juice and give off less heat. Well, those things are all difficult to do for a microprocessor manufacturer. So what Apple decided they would do is they went to an open source CPU design and started with that base and went on from there to have some just absolutely amazing chip designs. [00:26:58] Now I, I love some of these designs and they're showing up. But in all of our I-phones, if you have an iPhone or an iPad, you're using one of Apple's chips. Uh, the age 12, I think is the latest one. I'm trying to remember, uh, the version numbers, but, but they're made by Apple quote, unquote. In the U S for the most part, certainly not in China, and they are very efficient from a performance standpoint. [00:27:27] They're very fast. So they've been doing a very good job with these. Now, I, I talked to a couple of weeks ago about how much an iPhone would cost if it was made in America, and I saw another study that came out last week, so I had to bring this one up because the other one. Wasn't that clear. They figured it would only be a hundred $200 more. [00:27:48] So Wes, what RAs? Why Lara? This is from fi.org. You'll find this article online, uh, which is the foundation for economic education. And this is an article by Mark Perry. He's saying that an iPhone that today costs about a thousand dollars if it were made entirely in the United States, if it even could be, because believe it or not, the United States has fallen behind. [00:28:21] In manufacturing technologies because we have blood, China get ahead of us. We gave them all this technology to start with. I've complained about that before too, and now they are ahead of us, so we don't even have the ability to manufacture these things here in the U S right now, we not only have to ramp pump, but we'd have to develop some new technologies and. [00:28:45] That thousand dollar iPhone that is assembled in China that has some component parts made in the United States would push the price of an iPhone components from about 190 $190 that's what it costs right now. Estimated, right? Apple doesn't release these numbers, but estimated to cost $190 right now, it would be about $600 if it were. [00:29:12] Made in the us. So if the materials alone are costing better than triple what it would cost in China, we could probably see a $2,000 iPhone. Now, do you remember that the U S is only bringing in 6% of the profits from iPhone sales? Two out of three iPhone purchasers are not based in the United States. [00:29:38] Now, that's a huge change from years ago when most of Apple's customers are in the U S but right now with the whole. A wound virus has been spreading in China. The app, the iPhone sales are way down, and that's probably also true of other countries as well. So this is going to be an interesting little battle as we go ahead. [00:30:00] But here's the really big news as far as I'm concerned, and that is. That Apple is going to start making the Mac book using their chip sets. So like these eight, 12, and other processors I've been talking about, they've got the, uh, a fourteens are the new ones that are coming out. I think I got that model number right. [00:30:27] But these are 12 core chips and they are actually. Two chip sets. There's uh, that, that are in one package. It's just amazing what they're doing, but some lower powered ones for doing things that don't need a lot of CPU power and some higher powered ones. And they're going to be coming out in the new iPhones and the new iPad, but they are also going to be coming out in the new Mac books now that. [00:31:01] Is amazing. 12 core CPU is aided by a graphics processor that is probably going to have its own collection of cores. This is amazing. If you look at the current iPad pro tablets that are using the eight 12 X and Z chips, we're talking about an Apple iPad pro outperforming. 90% of recent PC laptops, so this could be amazing. [00:31:31] Apple's moving this, some of this back to the U S and they're getting Intel out of the way, and I think that's a good thing, frankly, for Apple. But listening to Craig, Peter sauna, WGAN stick around. We'll be right back. [00:31:50] Hello everybody. Welcome back. Craig. Peter Assan here on w G a N having a good time today. Hopefully you guys are as well, whether you are kind of locked up in the home maybe or any central person like you, me and your, you're out and about and maybe taking a little time on Saturday too. Work in the yard. [00:32:12] I appreciate you all being with us today. I have just absolutely amazed here what Apple is doing and congratulations to them now once get into our hospitals cause they've been in the news a lot lately. You know, we've got people. Who will have the Woodlawn virus, right? Who have the symptoms of this coven 19, which is very bad. [00:32:39] And, uh, it's particularly bad for older people. We have seen now covert 19, the average of the average. Age of someone who died, what state was, it was like 82 I can't remember if that was a single state or if that was a Countrywide, but that is frankly, absolutely amazing. That means it is killing older people, but we're also seeing other symptoms. [00:33:07] Now we have, people are getting blood clots. You heard about that athlete that had to have a leg amputated. Again, it's absolutely amazing here. Uh,  hospitals right now, according to the New York times, this is from Wednesday this week saying that airborne coronaviruses detected and woo Han hospitals right now. [00:33:29] That is not good. Um. It's man. I'm just going through these articles. It just, it just, I shake my head, but we're starting to see some electric surgeries coming back to hospitals. Uh, most of these field hospitals that were set up or shut down. Down, they were largely unused and right here, according to the Bangor daily news on Wednesday, we've got two bankrupt main hospitals warn they could close in June if they don't receive stimulus funds and president and Trump has announced that, yes, indeed, our hospitals are going to get stimulus funds. [00:34:08] But if you heard me at the top of the hour, you heard. You heard me talk about how, uh, you know, we were promised funds too, and we just haven't gotten any. So it's, this is going to be a very, very big problem for us all. Uh, and when we're talking about hospitals, there's one other angle or that people just aren't paying attention to right now. [00:34:30] You know, w we talked about the ventilators. And there w there just weren't gonna be enough. Right. And here in Maine and all over the country, there were more ventilators than were needed. And that's true. New York as well. And come to find out, of course they sold 500 ventilators rather than maintain them. [00:34:52] And instead of ordering more ventilators, what did the government do there in New York? While they just commissioned a plan as to how they were going to ration them, who got. To die, right? That's socialized medicine for you. If I ever heard the definition of it, a total death panel, but the good news is we didn't need all of those, but we've got the internet of things and we've talked about it and I've talked about it in my tree trainings and we go into it in some depth. [00:35:21] In my courses, but the so called internet of things also extends to our hospitals. It's the internet of medical things, and these devices are going online. Hospitals and medical facilities are really starting to stare this in the phase. And I mentioned when I was on with Matt Gagnan on Wednesday morning this week, that there is a problem been around for a long time. [00:35:50] I have my first, in fact, a hospital chain as a client was 25 years ago. Maybe. And we were trying to clean things up for them, fix them, network stuff, put some security stuff in place. And what did we find? Well, those those machines, those hospitals, plus all of the clinics that were affiliated with the hospital had old hardware that they just weren't taking care of. [00:36:18] These devices that are controlling the systems in the hospitals. Everything from the air ventilation systems through. All of the medical equipment. Think about all of this stuff right from the, the drip machines, the Ivy machines, the ventilators, our the MRE machines, the x-ray machines. Some of these devices are running very outdated operating system. [00:36:46] Some of them are still running windows 95. Windows XP, windows seven none of which are currently getting patches or updates, and many of them were never intended to go on line at all. Think about that. When, when they were designed the windows 95 and XP. They weren't thinking about these things being hooked up to the internet or even other networks really. [00:37:13] They were just kind of standalone systems that sat in a corner and then the programmer said, Hey, listen, we can add, there's really cool feature. We'll tie them together. And so doctors can look at x-rays remotely. And so a system that was never designed with network security in mind all of a sudden had a network connection all of a sudden was being used online on a network. [00:37:35] In a hospital that had never set it up properly in the first place. I really wish more of these medical centers in the hospitals would call me because they need so much help, and many of them don't even realize it. They, these things have no cybersecurity protection whatsoever, and then the hospital networks are often not even segmented. [00:38:01] That's something I teach home users to do. So that's allowing attackers to enter anywhere in the hospital and move around so they can get to the billing. They can get to all of these machines there. Even being researchers that are saying they have seen hackers inside cardiac pacemaker machines. Think about that one for a little bit. [00:38:28] How about if it gets onto one of these machines that's running on an older version of windows or even a brand new one that hasn't been patched up and they get onto it to a hacker, it may just look like, Hey, this is just another windows 10 machine. I'm going to use it for Bitcoin mining. I'm going to use it for spreading ransomware around. [00:38:48] You think that might be a problem? So it is now Bitcoin mining instead of watching your cardiac rhythm. Right? And so when I was going to overheat, it's gonna use up all of the systems, resources. It's going to spread ransomware throughout the hospital. We've seen that again and again and again and again, and we've seen that again and again in , even in our state, New Hampshire has had this as well. [00:39:17] I talked to and helped a school district that had been nailed by ransomware and they decided they were just pay the ransom, which by the way. Tells the ransom Merz, Hey listen, let's hack them again and put another ransom on. Cause we know they pay the ransom right. So there's third problem the hospitals are having is with all of this vulnerable equipment. [00:39:40] They're not replacing them. They're not upgrading, and they're not patching them. And not enough of this equipment has been recalled by the manufacturers because the manufacturers have gone on to a newer model, Hey, listen, uh, no need to update that machine or buy a new one for only $50,000. So where are the manufacturers spending their time? [00:40:03] Where are they focusing their efforts? Well, obviously they're focusing their efforts on getting them to buy a new machine to design these new machines. It is a very, very big, big deal. Now, another one of the big attacks, most common, I mentioned ransomware when it comes to the intranet of medical devices, but. [00:40:26] The other big one is a distributed denial of service attack. Cause you remember these devices in the hospital are performing critical. Things, right? Very critical functions that, as I said, there might be running a cardiac machine on MRI. They might just be keeping track of doctor's notes, all of which are critical. [00:40:49] So if a nation state specifically targets an IV pump and changes the dose of medication, what do you think will happen? It certainly could happen, but the more basic thread is. These devices getting a denial of service attack. So the whole network at the hospital becomes overloaded and now nothing works at the hospital. [00:41:18] So there's, there are just the basic threats that aren't being taken care of. Ransomware, phishing emails, and these attacks are targeting the weakest and the oldest operating systems that are typically running on these devices and hospitals are top targets. Now, one of the big hacking groups out there that has ransomware all over the world said, Hey, listen, in this time of covert 19. [00:41:44] We are not going to be attacking the hospitals because it just isn't fair. And in fact, they have been attacking hospitals. They are the top targets still for ransomware because they're very vulnerable and they pay. And that's why, what was it, five years ago? Seven years ago? I designed a system just to, it's a small computer. [00:42:09] Based on a little in Intel Adam chip that sits in front of these devices for manufacturers, for controlling valves for more critical equipment. It just sits there. And it is a specialized firewall for that piece of equipment. So this is a problem. It's a very, very big problem in hospitals, frankly, are afraid to do anything because they're afraid they're going to get sued. [00:42:37] Their insurance companies are sitting there saying, Oh yeah, yeah, well, if you're going to do an upgrade, the equipment might not work. Properly and you might get sued. So we're going to increase the fees for our, for our services, for our premiums. Premiums are going to go up. Okay. So they just don't want to do anything. [00:42:58] And then you got the FDA right? Man, does this story ever end? And, uh, FDA is saying, Hey, listen guys, we're okay with you doing patches, the hospitals afraid of recertifying. And I love this quote here. Uh, it says it's a willful lie on the part of some stakeholders in the system that you can't update medical devices. [00:43:25] Why do you think that. W why do they think that? Well, bottom line is that. These device manufacturers are telling them, you can't update because your insurance premiums are going to get too high. The FDA says it'll have to be read, type accepted for use, et cetera, et cetera. But I want to let you know if you work for the medical community here at any level, the FDA. [00:43:54] Has post-market guidance that they issued in 2016 and in that, the FDA explained that while federal regulations require manufacturers to report certain actions, the majority of the actions taken by manufacturers to address cyber security vulnerabilities and exploits are generally not considered to be a type of device enhancement for which the FDA. [00:44:21] It does not require advanced notification or reporting. So some good news there, we'll let the hospitals know. If you're involved with this industry, guys, pull up your socks. Hire security specialist. Some of them have been doing it for awhile. That can really help you out because there's so much to know. [00:44:40] Hey, you've been listening to Craig Peterson and WGAN and online@craigpeterson.com stick around. [00:44:51] Hello everybody. Greg Peters song here. We of course are on every Saturday from a one until three and I'm on with Matt Gagnan as well on Wednesday mornings during drive time at about seven 34. I've been in the tech business now for many decades, and then the security business helping businesses secure their internet connections. [00:45:16] Really since 91 and I have quite a backstory, and one of these days we'll have to have to share it with you, but I'm a business guy and this whole security thing, you know, back in the day. I did not really understand security, probably like a lot of you guys and uh, but I was very, very technical. I had helped to implement a number of the protocols that are used on the internet and that was a big win for me because I was able to take what I knew, dig into it. [00:45:47] It took me a few days to figure out what had happened and then lock things down and I was kind of years behind at that time. Point because the, what I got, which was called the Morris worm, had actually been known for a few years before it hit me. And that was kind of a shame. So, you know, back then, of course you didn't have Google. [00:46:09] AltaVista wasn't around yet. None of this stuff was out there. We were using a gopher search engines, right. Or Veronica, Archie, Jughead back in the day, and trying to figure it out was really a bit of a chore. Once I figured it out, it was easy enough to fix, but I almost lost my business over that and that was a very scary occasion for me. [00:46:29] So I have really kind of dug into it, and I've been helping out a lot of businesses here over the years to help be secure, and I'm doing the same thing as well. For individuals. And that's what this show's all about, right? We're trying to help you guys out with that. Talk about some latest cool technology. [00:46:48] And, uh, I was so successful in being able to help outfit, I was even drafted by the FBI's InfraGuard program and trained, I've trained thousands of businesses literally here across the nation on what. To do in order to keep safe, and I continue to do that with free webinars, courses, memberships, all that sort of stuff. [00:47:10] Anyhow, if you miss the first hour today, I talked about a change here in the way criminal hacking is being looked at by our courts, and that's. Very good things about time. They changed that Apple is going to be selling max with its own processor starting in 2021. Say goodbye to Intel, and I would add to that. [00:47:34] Good. Riddens uh, also the internet of medical things. You've heard me, if you've been listening to me. Uh, you've heard me talk a little bit about the internet of things. Well, there's something called the internet of medical things as well, and that is frankly very, very scary. So that's how we ended up last hour. [00:47:56] And I want to invite everybody to go online. Go to Craig peterson.com you will see all of the articles I talk about today with all of the background. You can listen to my podcasts, you can watch my videos every once in a while. I even have some trainings. Up there, but if you sign up, you can get my weekly newsletter, which does contain all of that stuff. [00:48:19] Craig, Peter, sawn.com/subscribe so you can just get out your phone. It'll work on your phone. It'll work on your desktop, on your laptop. Craig Peterson. Now I saved Craig Peterson because it's an O. N it's not an E. N, it's N. O. N. Alright, so it's Craig, CRA, I G just like you'd expect Peter sohn.com/subscribe and I do not. [00:48:46] I do not pass to you. In fact, when I have something that I am launching, you know, a new, a new course, a new product, whatever it is, I will give you the option to opt out of that. If you're not interested in it, and I, I, you know, just click right there and you'll still get my weekly newsletter. But you won't hear anything more about that particular promotion that's going on at the time. [00:49:09] So I'm not like some of these marketers that just slam you every day. I don't even consider myself a marketer. Right? I'm a tech guy that happens to have something to sell, not quite the same thing. Anyhow. Um. Yeah, w and the plenty of free stuff. A lot of people just use the free stuff and that's all they need. [00:49:30] We have a report that's been in the media that I want to talk about right now, and this is a report about this so-called zero day exploit against iOS. Now, what is zero day exploit? Basically. Uh, what we're talking about when we say zero day means, uh, it's kind of like patient zero, who was the first person to get the Corona virus as an idea, right? [00:49:57] That's patient zero zero day here. When we're talking about some of these hacks means no one has seen this particular hack before, at least no one was aware of it. Now, sometimes the government agencies. Of our government and other foreign governments, we'll find something out. Of course they won't. Uh, they won't tell us about it. [00:50:20] Right. They'll just kind of use it. That has actually changed under the Trump administration. President Trump has been adamant that they share this information. I'm sure that keeping a couple of things back, but the NSA even has been sharing information about exploits that are going on. So we're funded about more and more of them, but in this case, there is supposedly an exploit that's out there in the wild. [00:50:46] And then the wild means it is being used. It has been seen out there. And this particular exploit is supposed to be used just by sending out a specially crafted, uh, email. Okay. And I'm supposedly, I saw another article that was saying, Oh, it's especially triggered SMS, a text message or message message or something. [00:51:11] So there's a San Francisco based security firm named Zach ops, and they said on Wednesday that attackers a dues the zero day exploit against at least six targets over a span of at least two years. Well. Now that's being disputed because Apple is certainly acknowledging that there is a flaw in the mail app, but it is a bug that causes the app to crash. [00:51:39] It does not give the bad guys access to anything. Basically. So the bad guys, certainly, yeah. They could crash your mail app and it's just going to restart automatically, or are you going to click it and it'll re restart right on your iOS device. But in this case, what we're talking about is something that's really a whole lot different, a whole lot worse, or is it frankly, right? [00:52:04] If it's not giving them access to your data. Is it really worse because it can't take full control of your iPhone, unlike what some of the media outlets were talking about. So Apple had declined to comment on the report, but they came out and they said that the bug posed a threat to iPhone and iPad users and there had not been any ax exploit at. [00:52:29] All in the statement they said, Apple takes all reports and security threats seriously, thoroughly investigated. Researchers report based on the information provided have concluded these issues do not pose an immediate risk to our users, and they go on to say that they found these issues in mail that. [00:52:47] Cannot bypass the iPhone and iPad security protections and no evidence that they've been used against customers. Now Apple's really good too about trying to track what is happening on phones. You might have noticed if you go in complaining about a problem with your phone and you go into the. Oh store. [00:53:04] They can look at logs on your phone to see if the app has been crashing, et cetera. So yes, indeed, they can check this out and take care of it. There have been a number of independent researchers that have also questioned the conclusion that zinc ops came to, and I think this is good. You know, you've got to be out there. [00:53:26] You've got to be talking about these things. Apple did respond. I like the fact that it was all public here. And that people were able to look at it and kind of figure out what was going on. Cause there have been exploits. We know that the WhatsApp app has been nailed a few times and I think part of the reason for that is WhatsApp is supposed to be secure. [00:53:47] Well, how secure is it. Really, and so they, the bad guys are constantly kind of going after it, trying to prove that it's just not secure at all. But really they identified a crash report. They found a way to reproduce the crashes and some circumstantial evidence. Told them that may be this was being used for malicious purpose purchase purposes. [00:54:11] Okay. Um, so, uh, anyways, that's where that stands. So what to do, obviously keep your software up to date. Apple is very good, unlike again, in this month. Microsoft's updates ended up causing serious problems. For some people. Apple's updates rarely cause those types of problems, and when we're talking about iOS, they just don't get any easier. [00:54:39] You can apply them very, very simply. In fact, they will usually, if you have automatic updates turned on on your iPhone or iPad at night, while it's sitting there on the charger, it's going to go ahead and update itself, upgrade itself, and then the next morning, Qatar, you've got the whole new operating system you had to do. [00:54:57] Absolutely nothing, which is, man, that is my idea of an easy time, and you've heard me before, I'm sure say don't use Android and people just, I ignored, I don't understand why. Right? Some of these people, like Danny, for instance, I'm thinking of, he follows. Everything I say to the T and it has saved him again and again. [00:55:22] In his small business, he has a franchise restaurant and you know, Oh, we'll see how the restaurant business does, but he's doing okay right now, but he still uses an Android phone and I don't get it. You know, I, I'm not really fond of. Any of these big companies, politics, you name the company, the politics are probably bad nowadays. [00:55:44] You know, it used to be assumed that, Oh, big corporations, they were big, they were evil, they were nasty. And if you notice the Democrats, now they're not talking about the evil millionaires. They're talking about the evil billionaires, because of course they're millionaires, right? To all of them, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, the senators out there in California, Feinstein and others. [00:56:06] But, um. You know, the these big companies, so many of them are so left-leaning. It drives me crazy, so I get it. If you don't want to use Apple stuff because you don't agree politically with Apple, I think that's an okay reason. But reality sets in. And you just can't continue to use Android. You really can't. [00:56:27] And if you can get off of windows, you should do that as soon as you possibly can. Anyhow, that's just my opinion. So stick around. When we come back, we've got more to talk about. Of course, we're going to get into a very kind of an interesting problem over at Amazon. You're listening to Craig Peters on a w G a N stick around. [00:56:50] We'll be right back. [00:56:55] Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. You can hear me, of course. Every Saturday from one til three. You also can listen to me on Wednesday morning. Yes, I'm on with Matt Gagnon. Did you know there was a morning show. Yeah. Drive time. So I'm on with Matt every Wednesday at about seven 34 for a few minutes to talk about the latest in technology news. [00:57:23] And of course we get to spend a couple hours talking about this in more detail on Saturday. Well, we just talked about this iOS zero day bug, and what does that mean to you? Doesn't look like it's totally legit. Big, big problem with our medical devices and hospitals and otherwise they are still running windows 95 X P if you can believe that 2007, none of which are supported anymore. [00:57:55] And, uh, you also went into what. Uh, what really has been put in place out there to allow them to do upgrades and updates, but there's so much obfuscation. It's crazy. And then courts violating a site's terms of service is not criminal hacking. So if you missed any of that, you can find it online. You can just go to Craig peterson.com/iheart I also post this whole show as one podcast that you can find on your favorite podcast platform, whatever that might be. [00:58:31] By just searching for Craig Peterson. Or the easy way is go to Craig peterson.com/itunes or if you're like, hi heart, you can go Craig peterson.com/iheart or Craig peterson.com/soundcloud et cetera, et cetera, okay? But it's all out there and you can get the whole show, all kinds of. Put together for you, which I think makes some sense. [00:58:57] Amazon is the 8,000 pound gorilla out there. They have been just really taking over the online retail space in a very, very big way. In fact, the Amazon counts for about one third of all. US-based internet retail sales isn't that huge? Can you imagine having that kind of market share? One third of all of it, but it didn't get there entirely on its own in case you're not aware of it. [00:59:31] Amazon has about half of their items being sold by small businesses, by third parties, and you might've noticed that on label sometimes where the third party, uh, will. Ship has something to you directly, and yeah, it looks like an Amazon box and me having an Amazon tape on it. But in reality, what we're seeing is a return address that might not be Amazons. [00:59:57] Well, these typically are smaller vendors, so think of that for a minute. We've got about a third of all retail sales going through Amazon and about half of those coming from small vendors. That's a very, very big deal. And with the businesses the way they are today, you might want to consider. Should you be selling online? [01:00:24] A lot of companies abandoned eBay because of their pricing strategies and they moved over to Amazon and it's been okay for them over there. But I want to tell you about the problem that's happening right now at Amazon. And this is something I've seen over the years that has bothered me a lot. And I had over the years, a number of friends that had started software companies and some companies that I didn't even know that were. [01:00:57] Well, you know, I knew all of them, but I didn't know the owners. Then they had database software, they had scheduling software. They had a lot of different things, and what Microsoft would do is they'd, they'd keep an eye on the market and they'd say, Oh wait, wow. Wow. That database is doing really well and it's winning. [01:01:18] A lot of DTA deals that our database software's not winning. And the allegations were that what Microsoft was doing was kind of being a predator here cause they would go to the company that had the database software and uh, chat with them and see if the company would sell out at a reasonable price. [01:01:42] And then this is so anti competitive. It's crazy. But then. If that company didn't want to play ball, like sell themselves for super cheap to Microsoft, well, Microsoft was accused of doing and what Microsoft hadn't been convicted of doing in courts now is they would announce a product that competed directly with the small guy. [01:02:11] And wait to see who asked about it. So Microsoft would say, yeah, we have a database product for small businesses. Very easy to use. Drag and drop interface. Everything's going to be great. You are going to love it. And then Microsoft would sit there and see of companies would start calling them and say, when's your product going to be available? [01:02:34] What am I going to be able to do this? Well, in some cases they waited a year or more. And they never ever came out with a product. But what do you think happened to Mr. Small guy out there, the small business that had investors where the owners, they were founders had invested thousands of hours into it, maybe their entire life savings. [01:02:58] Well, people, companies, and I experienced this personally, companies who would sit there and say, well, you know, Microsoft is going to come out with something here. I want to see what Microsoft does. And so that small company. W is now out of business because what are they supposed to do? People aren't buying, you know, their models were based on so many sales and that was based on the people liking their product and talking about it and the marketing dollars they were spending. [01:03:29] But that money was going down the drain because Microsoft was there saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll, uh, we'll, we're going to do this. Yeah. Yeah, us, us, us. And so they got sued again and again, and they lost in court, but it was still cheaper for them and then made more money. Think of the billions in cash some of these companies are sitting on and, uh, that is a bad thing to do. [01:03:52] It really does hurt commerce. It certainly is not free trade. Uh, of course, we live now, I think in a largely a crony capitalist system. And they played that game. They played it very, very well. Well, back to our friends here, Amazon. But yet, you know, those allegations are still floating by the way, about Microsoft and many other companies that appear to be doing that thing in. [01:04:18] Here's what happened to them. Amazon. What happened was Amazon started looking at the merchants that were selling third party stuff on their websites, and the wall street journal has a great report on it right now because Amazon has its own in house brands. So it's making itself a direct competitor to many of these merchants who rely on the Amazon platform to reach. [01:04:50] Consumers. So now you've got your little product. Amazon is selling something that's similar to yours, or at least competitive with yours, and that's bad enough. But the wall street journal reviewed some internal company documents that showed that Amazon executives were asking for and getting data about specific marketplace vendors despite corporate policies against doing so. [01:05:23] Despite the fact that Amazon had testified in Congress that they never did this. And according to the wall street journal, more than 20 former employees told them that this practice of flouting those rules was commonplace. We knew we shouldn't, but at the same time, we're making Amazon branded products and we want to sell them. [01:05:48] So here's what they were doing. Amazon was looking. At what was being sold out there. And this one example that was given was something that I've bought. It's a car trunk organizer, and apparently Amazon employees access documents relating to that vendor's total sales. What the vendor paid Amazon for marketing and shipping and the amount Amazon made on each sale of the organizer before the company. [01:06:20] Then unveiled. It's own similar product. They're getting around the rules here. W we'll get into this when we get back. I'll tell you about some of these Amazon brands that you might not even be aware are Amazon brands. You're listening to Craig, Peter sawn here on w G a N every Saturday from one til 3:00 PM cause stick around. [01:06:43] We'll be right back. And of course there's a whole lot more to come today. [01:06:52] Hey, welcome back everybody. Craig, Peter sawn here. We were just talking about our friends at Amazon. I remember getting really, really upset with them. I sent them a a note, uh, years ago, decade or more, certainly more a go because Amazon decided it would patent something that it called one click ordering. [01:07:17] As though one click ordering was like some major leap forward and, and, and I couldn't believe the us patent and trademark office actually gave them a patent because I knew other sites that were doing it as well. It. This whole thing is totally upside down, not just with Amazon, but now you can get patents on almost anything and not, not just, I'm not just complaining about business processes here, business process patents, which, uh, I don't like. [01:07:48] Uh, but all the whole patent world, the whole thing has been changed, turned on its head with the new patent laws. It has gotten even worse, not better. Yeah, it makes it easier for the government, but in reality, it I think is hurting a lot of businesses. So let's see what we're talking about with Amazon here, where Amazon was combing through the data of these third party vendors that make up for about 50% of the products sold on amazon.com. [01:08:20] And these employees were accessing the data about what the vendor's total sales were, and they were getting around the rules by bending the concept of what's called aggregation according to the wall street journal and well, Amazon says that it did not access individual seller data. It did create reports of aggregate. [01:08:45] Seller data. And if a pool is large enough, that wouldn't be a problem. So if you've got 200 vendors selling iPhone cases, okay, but the example that the wall street journal is using here is have a trunk organizer. So in reality, how many trunk organizers were there at the time? So this pool of vendors, very, very small. [01:09:11] And when you're talking about a group of two entities, uh, okay, it's aggregated, but what's that telling them. So what Amazon had done then is they said, Oh, wait a minute. This is a very profitable niche that people who are using our services to sell it are in. So your small business, you come up with this idea of a trunk organizer, and it's better than any trunk organizer that's ever been made, and you're going to add two extra compartments to it. [01:09:43] I don't know what you're going to do right. You're going to make it very firm, very strong, and it can fold up, fit into a corner. And so you have to make some prototypes. You have to figure out, how do I do this? You might make a trip or two to maybe heaven forbid China or Indonesia or some other country, right? [01:10:02] Other than China, please. And you go out there for a few times, you. You end up paying, you know, easily 10 $20,000 just to have a stamp made that can stamp out your little product there for the insides. And then you got to get another vendor that had ships to that, that takes the material, sows it all together, and then can ship it out. [01:10:25] And then you have to have a minimum order sitting there in Amazon's warehouses ready to go. So you're into this one a hundred grand, maybe more. Plus all of the time that you spent doing it, which now is lost opportunity costs because you weren't doing something else while you were trying to design this chunk organizer. [01:10:50] So you have spent life savings on this. You've put it together. If you ever watched shark tank, and you look at some of these people, right? Most of those businesses fail. Even the ones that make it to shark tank. So you've done all of this. You had hoped that your business would succeed. Well, you're selling it. [01:11:13] It is succeeding. It's doing well. Maybe you've made back $50,000 of that a hundred thousand you put into it and maybe you get up to a hundred thousand Amazon notices. Whoa, this guy's making a lot of money. Maybe we should get into that trunk organizer business. In fact, we know exactly which models, which colors, which fabrics of his trunk organizer are selling. [01:11:43] Hm. So Amazon then takes the idea and runs with it. Amazon now has more than 145 private label brands. This is a huge, huge number. There is a website out there called this Justin. TGI research and they have a list of these brands that Amazon has. I'm scrolling through it right now. I had no idea. Most of these were Amazon. [01:12:18] You know, you've heard, I'm sure of Amazon essentials. That sounds like an Amazon brand, right? It is. Amazon basics. Okay. Those are obvious. But there's others like kids' clothing line scout and RO women's clothing, brand, Hayden Rose or furniture line stone and beam. Those are Amazon brands and you can't tell by the name, and I'm looking at this list over on this, Justin, and they all have their own logos. [01:12:54] You just, you would have no idea. Brass tacks leathercraft makes leather belts from, guess what those are? Those are Amazon chains. Ditch charming. Dove. Um, Ken sounds like charming Charlie, doesn't it? Hm. Uh, charm. Z silver. That sounds like chirpy. Oh my gosh. Amazon exclusive. Uh, and then charming Charlie's is out of business. [01:13:20] Right. Did you ever go there? My, some of my daughters used to love it cause you can get all of these little hoopy things and necklaces and stuff, but it goes on and on. This is, this is ridiculous. There's gotta be way more than what, what Tai and what wall street journal is reporting anyways, so they're saying those private labels account for 1% of Amazon's total sales. [01:13:45] That was according to a report last September, and some former employees apparently told the wall street journal that they are operating under the directive that Amazon's private label sales should be. 10% of the company's retail sales by 2022 so there you go. You know, we talked about the contentious relationships with eBay in the sellers. [01:14:11] Contentious relationships with Amazon in the sh in the sellers, the European union's competition Bureau opened up an investigation against Amazon. This is a very, very bad thing here. Uh, antitrust subcommittee chairman, David Sicilian from Rhode Island in house judiciary committee chair. Gerald Nadler. [01:14:36] We're pretty upset about this quote. This is yet another example of sworn testimony of Amazon's witnesses being directly contradicted by investigative reporting. So yay. At least somebody is doing investigative reporting out there. So I don't know. What are you going to do? I was upset with Amazon. I told them I'd never do business with them again, and then probably about 10 years later, I started doing some business with them again because it was the only place I could buy some of the things I wanted to buy, but they've been using this merchant data not good. [01:15:10] Not good at all. Well, we have a couple more cool things. We only have a minute or so left here in this segment, but let's get into this very, very quickly. At least get started. This is from dark routine.com they have a lot of great articles, but consumers and small to medium businesses are likely to fall. [01:15:31] For Corona virus scams. It said, now, I have seen a lot of emails coming in to me from companies saying that they can get me some of these loans. Uh, I don't think so. Uh, and I have, I saved some of them. I should put those out in my membership site or in the newsletter. You can see some of them do some training

We are all facing scary and uncertain times right now and learning ways to mitigate fear and anxiety and tools to help reduce stress and help you make better decisions are really important right now. Mental toughness coach Lisa Tamati shares her insights on how to thrive in the tough times and how to keep control over your physiology.   We would like to thank our sponsors for this show: For more information on Lisa Tamati's programs, books and documentaries please visit www.lisatamati.com For Lisa's online run training coaching go to https://www.lisatamati.com/page/runni... Join hundreds of athletes from all over the world and all levels smashing their running goals while staying healthy in mind and body. Lisa's Epigenetics Testing Program https://www.lisatamati.com/page/epige... measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home For Lisa's Mental Toughness online course visit: https://www.lisatamati.com/page/minds... Lisa's third book has just been released. It's titled "Relentless - How A Mother And Daughter Defied The Odds" Visit: https://relentlessbook.lisatamati.com/ for more Information ABOUT THE BOOK: When extreme endurance athlete, Lisa Tamati, was confronted with the hardest challenge of her life, she fought with everything she had. Her beloved mother, Isobel, had suffered a huge aneurysm and stroke and was left with massive brain damage; she was like a baby in a woman's body. The prognosis was dire. There was very little hope that she would ever have any quality of life again. But Lisa is a fighter and stubborn. She absolutely refused to accept the words of the medical fraternity and instead decided that she was going to get her mother back or die trying. This book tells of the horrors, despair, hope, love, and incredible experiences and insights of that journey. It shares the difficulties of going against a medical system that has major problems and limitations. Amongst the darkest times were moments of great laughter and joy. Relentless will not only take the reader on a journey from despair to hope and joy, but it also provides information on the treatments used, expert advice and key principles to overcoming obstacles and winning in all of life's challenges. It will inspire and guide anyone who wants to achieve their goals in life, overcome massive obstacles or limiting beliefs. It's for those who are facing terrible odds, for those who can't see light at the end of the tunnel. It's about courage, self-belief, and mental toughness. And it's also about vulnerability... it's real, raw, and genuine. This is not just a story about the love and dedication between a mother and a daughter. It is about beating the odds, never giving up hope, doing whatever it takes, and what it means to go 'all in'. Isobel's miraculous recovery is a true tale of what can be accomplished when love is the motivating factor and when being relentless is the only option. Here's What NY Times Best Selling author and Nobel Prize Winner Author says of The Book: "There is nothing more powerful than overcoming physical illness when doctors don't have answers and the odds are stacked against you. This is a fiercely inspiring journey of a mother and daughter that never give up. It's a powerful example for all of us." —Dr. Bill Andrews, Nobel Prize Winner, author of Curing Aging and Telomere Lengthening. "A hero is someone that refuses to let anything stand in her way, and Lisa Tamati is such an individual. Faced with the insurmountable challenge of bringing her ailing mother back to health, Lisa harnessed a deeper strength to overcome impossible odds. Her story is gritty, genuine and raw, but ultimately uplifting and endearing. If you want to harness the power of hope and conviction to overcome the obstacles in your life, Lisa's inspiring story will show you the path." —Dean Karnazes, New York Times best selling author and Extreme Endurance Athlete.   Transcript of the Podcast: Speaker 1: (00:01) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by LisaTamati.com. Speaker 2: (00:13) Lisa Tamati here at pushing the limits. Welcome back again, I hope you guys are okay during this coronavirus crisis. That's certainly a big change for us. And today because of that, I wanted to do a session on how to not meet fear, get the better of you all my tips and tricks for helping stay focused at this tough time and how you can stay on track. Um, before I go over to the actual interview, I wanted to, um, remind you that I've just released my book relentless. It is available on my website. Um, you can, I'll put it in the show notes, but you can just hit on over to lisatamati.com and under the shop button you'll find it, the F I'd love you to check it out. And it's actually really good book for this type of crisis because it's all about mindset and it's all about how to keep focus and how to deal with, you know, going up against great odds and really difficult and uncertain times. Speaker 2: (01:02) So you want to check that out. That's relentless how a mother and daughter defied the odds. Go over to my website and check that out. Also at running hot coaching, we've got a special going on at the moment for 12 weeks during this whole lockdown time and in the whole coronavirus wanted to be able to offer extra value and to make it, you know, really affordable for people because we have a whole, not only the running programs now we have a full live workout program that you can do and it's only $49 US dollars to join for the 12 weeks. So if we'd been sitting on the fence for awhile thinking about joining us now would be a perfect time to do that. Especially if you're in lockdown and you want your running training programs and at home workouts. All of it's in there right over to the show. Speaker 2: (01:46) Hi guys, just want me to do a session on not letting fear get the better of you. So about the mix of crosses with the coronavirus, we're probably feeling a lot of fear right now. There's a lot of uncertainty there. Jobs are in dangerous and some of us are incomes and so on. So I wanted to do some practical tips that you can do to control the fear response in your body. Because number one, if you have a fear response going on right now, your immune system is going to be compromised and that's not going to be good as if you're going to be fighting this far as which we hope you won't be. But if you are, you want to make sure your immune system is, is up and running. So the first thing that I want you to look into is done for medic breathing, deep dogmatic breathing. Speaker 2: (02:30) Every time you start to feel out of control, feel triggered, feel stress is to do some deep breathing in through the nose, holding for about four seconds out for four seconds and hold for four seconds. Now that is called box breathing. Now you can do it in a different rhythm. If you've got a really good set of lungs, you might get to seven or eight holding it for that long and doing this just I do this 10, 11 times a day. It's, it's my go to as soon as I'm feeling triggered, as soon as I'm starting to feel upset. Now what does deep do? Well, it stimulates your parasympathetic nervous system. You have to submit two nervous systems, your parasympathetic and sympathetic. You want to be stimulating it this time. And there's a lot of fear around a lot of anxiety. The parasympathetic. Now when you stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, you are lowering the levels of cortisol and adrenaline that are being produced. Speaker 2: (03:23) Now these are hormones that are really for fight or flight. So back in the caveman days, which our body is still, you know, back there, we haven't evolved to being really where we are in our current world. So we still react to, uh, outside simulates some, you know, I was fear. So back in the day we might've been running away from a tiger, right? And so we needed this fight or flight response. So the amygdala, which is a part of your brain, deep in your brain, that's your limbic brain, that reptilian brain and its mediate responses to put up your heart, a heart rate, increase your breathing rate, uh, make you shit shallow breathe. It causes in your vision so that you have tunnel vision. Uh, it takes away blood from your prefrontal cortex and gives it all the blood into your muscles and so that you're ready to either fight off or run away. Speaker 2: (04:13) One of the two, the final fight syndrome, you'll know the SES. So that's all control where the medulla, now when you do this, you are taking away energy from your immune system, from your rest and recovery system. And you know, this was a great thing back in the day when we were had periodic stress was situations where we needed to run away from the line really fast. But in our day and age we are constantly bombarded with things like emails or problems with work or a phone call from your shitty boss or something that causes the same response. And it can get to the level where it's chronically your chronic amount of stress and you are constantly in this fight or flight state. So at this time when the coronavirus is here and you've got all this uncertainty, it's really, really important that we start to calm down the parasympathetic nervous system or stimulate, sorry, the parasympathetic nervous system and get things quiet and down. Speaker 2: (05:10) Stop the release of that cortisol and that adrenaline going full bore. And now you want those things at certain times but not constantly because you want your immune system to be operating well and you want to be thinking really clearly and there is a break in your decision making ability when you are in the stressed out state. So going back to the deep breathing now, this deep breathing technique will instantly, and I made really, really quickly start to calm the body down. Another great technique of course is meditation. And this doesn't have to be, you know, sitting on the floor, cross legged in an absolute silence that works for a lot of people and it's fantastic if you can quiet your brain down that way. But it also could just be going for a walk outside and we're all a little bit limited in what we're still at the moment allowed to go outside into get some fresh air. Speaker 2: (06:01) And that brings me to the next point. It's taking, you know, um, control of, of some of the things that you can and not focusing on the things that you can't control right now. Taking control of the basics, good hydration, good nutrition, good sleep habits. All of these things are going to help you to stay in control and make good decisions. Okay. And not focusing just on the negative. The next technique that I wanted to give you is visualization. Now I use this a lot with my athletes and I've certainly used it in my career as an athlete. Visualizing a positive outcome. Visualizing yourself as if it's in a, if it's an a running race, obviously envisaging the whole race and the more real you can make this visualization, the bidder in the cause that we are facing, visualize yourself being in control and being healthy. Speaker 2: (06:51) Visualize yourself and being able to adapt really quickly to this, to the situations at hand and you're getting on top of it and your business is going to be okay and your job is going to be all right. And when you visualize, your brain doesn't differentiate between what is real and what is imagined and okay, you can't control whether you're going to lose your job next week. You can't control movies outside variables, but you can stop your body going into this panic state because that isn't going to help anybody. What you want is your decision making ability on fire. So these visualization techniques can help you to start to regulate that into see a positive outcome. The next thing I want you to think about is the challenge versus threat scenario. So if we see something is a threat, and let's be honest, the crime viruses a bloody big threat right now to everything, to our health, to our loved ones, health to our society. Speaker 2: (07:50) But if we can start to really position they in their minds to see it more as an opportunity or a challenge, then that changes the way we perceive it and we are able to then coat a whole lot better. I'll give you an example from a noncurrent divorce situation, but again from my aesthetic Korea, okay, so if I'm looking at this massive race that I'm doing, it might be in death Valley, it might be in the [inaudible] and the Gobi desert or a Niger. Now, as I'm saying that as a threat and it's going to be terrifying and it's gonna be horrific, then guess what's going to happen? My body's going to shut down. I'm going to be in the fight or flight mode. I'm not going to be reacting really well. I'm not going to be coping when you, well, if I can reframe it in my mind to being an amazing opportunity to have this wonderful adventure and to have to turn it into a challenge in an a, an ability to be able to see this in a positive light. Speaker 2: (08:48) And I want you to think about this. Cisco rhino virus is going to give us some benefits. There are some good things that are going to come out of it for each and every one of us. It might be a complete pervert in your lives and you're going to end up doing another job and get out of that dead end job that you've been stuck in but too scared to leave and now you have to leave. So you're going to have to think and learn and redirect. Maybe that's going to be a good thing at the end of the day, none of us actually know. So they're good. They could be real positive things. Going back to a situation like with my mum and I've, you know, I've got my books here in the background. This the story is a really powerful one for the situation that we're going through. Speaker 2: (09:28) When I was faced with mom's aneurysm and that's the fact that she was probably not going to survive and if she did, she was going to have massive brain damage, which she did have and that she was never going to do anything again and I could've taken that prognosis. And just accepted it and taking no action and stayed on decided, no, I'm going to use this. These people telling me that there's no chance and there's no way I'm going to use that as motivation to prove them wrong and I'm going to make this the greatest comeback story and I'm going to get my mum back. And those were the thoughts that I feed into my mind so that I was able to take big, strong action and so that I was able to cope with the stresses that were come at us and it's been, you know, a four year long battle, don't get me wrong. Speaker 2: (10:12) There were times when I was on the ground balling my eyes out and not knowing which way to go forward. The thing is I did keep moving forward and I did keep looking for the next decision. I hate to make the next situation. The next opportunity and that attitude of going all in is one is lead to him miraculous recovery. This is a one in a million recovery, but it's not a one in a million because she was anything special or because I'm anything special. It was a one in a million recovery because we never even gave up and we kept fighting and we looked for the opportunities and we saw the beauty in this process, and this is why I've written the book, is because I want other people to have a blueprint for your mindset and what it takes to go all in on a challenge. Speaker 2: (10:57) And in this Corrado bar situation, we're going to have to go all in. Some of us, this is gonna be, you know, a threat to our incomes and our lifestyles and a massive of change. And we can either crawl up into a facial ball and start crying our eyes out and go, well I can't take any action or we could be warriors and we can stand up and go. Not a lot. I'm not going to take this line down. I'm going to go down sliding if I'm going to go down in going all in with this, with a situation with mum, I know that I could have done all of that and still failed and still lost here. That wasn't the point though. I had no option but to go all that because the alternative was certain days in certain loss. So I had a tiny chance and I took that tiny chance and when everybody told me it was impossible, I just kicked all moving and kept ignoring the people that told me it was bad. Speaker 2: (11:49) So right now what you also want to be doing is surrounding yourself with positive people. If you're listening to this, but you know this video, then you probably want of those people that is looking for a positive input and good messages. And that's fantastic because you are the sum total of the five people you spend the most time with. So if you are around positive people who have a direction, who are saying, right guys, this is the way we're going and this is why we're going to think this is the way forward. And you start listening to positive messages instead of the ones who are, Oh my God, the world is ending. It's apocalypse now and it's all going to be horrific. And you know, like we all have moments like there, don't get me wrong that I don't have those moments, but I keep them in check. Speaker 2: (12:34) And then I turned my mind around again and I tune it again and I tune it again. Every time those negative thoughts come up, I start to turn them around. So I wanted to now talk about, uh, exposure therapy. Now this is another therapy that can be really, really helpful if you are feeling a lot of fear. Now this is not exposure to the virus. We don't want that. But this is like when you are feeling fear for a certain situation or a certain thing that you have to do. And it might be like having to change your profession because you know someone's going to has to. Um, I want you to understand that the more you do something, the more it's going to be, the less you're going to be reacting to it. So I'll just give you a simple example of getting on phone calls. Speaker 2: (13:19) If you hate sales calls, which I used to hate doing sales calls. Now I've changed my perception of what that call is about in term repetition and doing it over and over and over again. It becomes actually a conversation with a friend if the coms nothing to be scared of and most of the things that we face in our life that we are scared of are actually not physical threats. Okay. The coronavirus could be a physical threat to you or your loved ones. I'm not mitigating them, but a lot of the fee is that we have running around in their tummy and then their minds at the moment that it's just going around and around like a hamster wheel is things that I'm never ever going to happen. I even say that the thoughts that we have in our head, the disasters scenarios that we're playing out are not going to happen, so why focus on it? Speaker 2: (14:07) Why not put your energies into focusing on how can I make this the best opportunity for me, for my business, for my profession? How can I help other people? How can I turn this into something that is good for me and my world and my business? I am using this as an opportunity to pivot, to change very quickly, to be adaptable. And I've lost my income. I'll be honest with you, at least six months, I don't have any income. Now I'm a speaker. That's what I do. I go around to conferences, well there are not conferences going on, but I'm not going to sit here and start crying about it. I'm gonna change my perception of what I can do. And then I'm going to pivot really quickly into doing other things and focusing on the positive and they don't get to be prepared also for when life comes back to normal. Speaker 2: (14:52) And we'll we go again. So it's your perception of things is controlling your thoughts. Now I want you, I'm also studying at the moment the functional genomics and this is the study of DNA and genes and how they affect the way everything in your body from methylation to mood and behavior to cardiovascular health, to um, detoxification. All of these areas. Okay. But I wanted to talk to you briefly about a couple of the genes that are in your head and I won't go on to the specifics. I'm going to be writing a couple of blog posts, uh, over the next few weeks and I'm still studying this area of science, but it's absolutely fascinating. There are a couple of genes that really, um, control or give you a predisposition to thinking a certain way and you can get yourself tested and DNA and all that sort of stuff later on when all this crosses over and you find out what you have a predisposition for, um, your edge or to being a gene for example, sample, which is y our adrenal, uh, Jane, if you like, the pains are which variation of the gene as to how long that adrenal and is going to be active on your sip as in your body. Speaker 2: (16:03) And if it's, if you've got the gene where it's going to be attached it to the recipients for a long time and active, you're going to have a harder time meeting golf things. You're going to have a harder time, you're going to have a stronger emotional and printer reaction to things. Um, then another person, another saying is that the brain derived neurotrophic neurotrophic factor, which I'm writing a blog post on now because this has to do with brain rehabilitation, but it also has to do with your mood and your behavior and the how, how susceptible you are to depression and a negative frame of mind. And if you have that, the hamster wheel brain that goes over and over and over. So what I want you to take away from this, without getting into the specifics of which Jane is to realize that every single person is different. Speaker 2: (16:49) Hey, do have a different set of genes. And so we all do experience things in a different way. So if you have someone in your most ho is very prone to panic, is very prone to having neurotic thoughts or the hamster wheel going over and over and getting stuck in a thought pattern and not being able to shift at least understanding some of the factors that are in play here and that their genes just may be predisposing them to doing that. And I'm going to share this blog post that I'm writing at the moment on BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor and what you can do to increase set, uh, in order to help elevate your mood. One of those things for example, is to uh, for the baby and is a example. This is to go and do exercise. Now if you're doing at least 30 to 45 minutes of exercise at 70 to 75% of your heart rate, you're going to increase the production of brain derived neurotrophic and that's going to elevate your mood. Speaker 2: (17:51) And this is why I run, let's get the run is high and I know all of us just enjoy running for the running site. Sometimes we don't even feel like going out there, but after half an hour out there, what happens? You mood elevates. What's that? There's some brain derived neurotrophic factor, inaction, other things that also stimulate that and what elevates your mode. Things like having a hot shower or hot bath or being in a hot warm environment or getting more sunlight to make more vitamin D, which will also help you produce more brain derived neurotrophic factor. All of these things are really important also in the brain rehab side, but I won't go into that right now, but just to understand, genetically speaking, we all have different ways of processing things in our brain and having some love and care and empathy for people who've, who don't see them. Speaker 2: (18:39) Some things the same way as you do, who react very differently and some people will have more a deeper emotional imprint. Then other people, some people will be able to get over things much easier because they have the right combination of genes and another person doesn't have that. That is not to be fatalistic and say, well, those people are babied, is to find out the what can you do? Like the saunas and the hot bows and the exercise and the right supplementation and all of that sort of stuff to help you if you are one of those people affected, increase or head of HIPAA. What resilience when it comes to your emotional wellbeing. So more about that later, but for today's podcast it just wants you to think about some of those things that I've covered off. So I want you to be stimulating your parasympathetic nervous system. Speaker 2: (19:31) That means calming your body down. That means stopping the stress and the adrenaline, the cortisol from pouring out all day, all day long. How are you going to do that? You're going to do that through meditation to that true connection to nature, which I've forgotten to mention. You know, like going outside, listening to the birds, looking at the beauty in the trees, looking at the flowers, standing and staring at the beach. If you're still allowed to do that, anything that will connect you and ground you to mother nature will calm your system down. Doing a exercise of course is also going to do there anything that's going to calm the system down. However one portion, don't go and do extremes, amounts of exercise because that will have the opposite effect. Don't overreach at this time. Firstly for your immune system and also for your, you don't want to upset your whole minds and get everything out of balance. Speaker 2: (20:23) Okay, so you want to be, um, a little bit conservative with your training at the moment. Just nice chain tool and doing things like working in and state of just working out. So not just the, you know, running and breathing and hard, hard work, but also aiding and the stretching, the, the yoga, the plankung. So things that are going to calm the body down, especially in the evening when you're wanting to get that slate. Because remember, sleep is absolute King, so doing these basics right and getting good sleep, if you can get it. I was sleep right now would be really gold. It'll help you emotionally cope with the situation and not fall off the DPN and be short tempered and doing all those crazy things. Now, just before I go, you have this thing in the, in the Brian like I said, called the amygdala, which is a very formative part of the brain that controls a lot of these trigger responses. Speaker 2: (21:16) And you know, in the past, I'll be honest with you, I've had a lot of problems with anger management. So I think I've got some warrior dreams from my, my Maori side, either that or the German or Irish sort of data. Um, and I've been triggered in the past and reacted in ways that I, you know, was not proud of afterwards. Um, and also learning to, to manage these reactions. Now a lot better. I wouldn't sound perfect, but I'm a lot bitter. The amygdala reacts before your, uh, your prefrontal cortex kicks into gear. It's very primitive. It's very lightning fast. So if you're feeling triggered right now, you know one of the things that I'm worried about in this crosses is the mystic piece going up is people doing things that they wouldn't normally do because they are stressed out and they're frightened and they're doing all these things and they were make deliver, starting to take control. Speaker 2: (22:07) So I want you to learn just a couple of trucks to keep it under control. One of them is that deep breathing, if you're feeling triggered, if you started to have fights in the family cause you're in close quarters, you've got the kid screaming, you don't know how you're going to pay the bills, your businesses going on the and you're fighting and you know this, this is all us. I think we are all feeling this type of stress right now. Then getting a controlling amygdala and not acting in a triggered state. You know, walking away, going to the other end of the house, doing some deep breathing, starting to tune your logical brain on the way I do this. And getting blood back to the logical brain. Cause the amygdala takes it away from the and helps you, makes you make bad decisions. The rang, I get a controller that as I start to do some logical problem solving things in my brain, like counting backwards from a hundred and lots of seven and I have to go, Oh, how much is that 193 and so on. Speaker 2: (23:04) And I have to actually think about it. And that makes me calm down again and gives me a chance to get on top of that adrenaline and cortisol that's come out and makes me want to have a scratch. Um, cause that's not good. And what you're doing when you get into this triggered state also in, in the anger response is you, uh, releasing the cortisol, which is, which is pumping out your blood sugars. So remember those begin angry and you're going to weight problems. You making things worse. You're going to put on more weight because you've increased your cortisol, you're going to leave the four have, have more, a whole warfare. Okay. So there's one, there's a really good reason not to get angry and to stay cool and calm. And this is one of the reasons why doing yoga and [inaudible] and all of those debriefing and all that actually helps you lose weight, which is not the topic of today's conversation, but it does say it because it's actually lowering the cortisol, the stress levels in the body. Speaker 2: (24:01) Interesting, isn't it? How we, uh, such complex characters and if we understand more about our physiology and our biology and how things actually interplay, then they can really, really help us in overcoming all these challenges that we're facing. So that's makes us very, guys, I hope this has been helpful to you or please decide that the, or if you want to reach out to me, please do. I'm, you know, this is what I, I'm begging to the mental game. I'm big into the mindset and mental toughness and leadership in, you know, um, some of the lessons that I've learned along in my now quite long nights, um, and sharing those insights with you. Not from a place of I know better because God knows I still have a hell of a lot of things to learn. But from applied, so via I've, I've experienced a few things, bring around the block a few times and wanting to share some of these insights. Speaker 2: (24:53) I do that also on my podcast, which is called pushing the limits. I would love you to go and subscribe to pushing the limits because I have some of the greatest minds. I don't know how I get some of these amazing people on the air, but I do, if you look back over the episodes that I've managed to record in the last four years, you've got Nobel prize winning scientists. You've got, you know, some of the top scientists actually in the world, some of the top doctors in the world, some of the top athletes in the world. And I'm not exaggerating, there's been some absolute legends on my show. Say, you know, I be a good way to spend a few of those nails we stuck at home. Um, uh, listening to the podcast is called pushing the limits. You can find it on iTunes, on Lipson, on Stitcher, or via my website, at least at [inaudible] dot com and while you're the gone grab one of my books, one of my friends, uh, especially running this right now is a super book for you to be reading, to strengthen your mind. And, um, really thank you for your time today. And we'll see you again soon. Speaker 1: (25:49) that's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com

For many years now I have been following from afar the exploits of Motley Fool. Founded in 1993 by brothers Tom and David Gardner, The Motley Fool helps millions of people attain financial freedom through their website, podcasts, books, newspaper column, radio show, and premium investing services. They believe that investing is empowering, enriching, and fun. As part of their service they have a section dedicated to real estate, a paid service called “Mogul” and a free service called Million Acres. We are fortunate to be joined today by Deidre Woollard, editor of MillionAcres.com.  Deidre is a writer and editor with two decades of experience covering all aspects of real estate from luxury residential real estate to the latest in proptech. She created the “Ask A Realtor” feature at Realtor.com and has led marketing and communications at top residential real estate brokerages. Real estate investing is a family tradition; she comes from a long line of landlords, renovators, and contractors currently invested from Massachusetts to California. She has an MFA in Writing from Spalding University.  We are going to talk real estate, coronavirus and whatever else comes to mind. I hope you’ll enjoy the conversation as much as I did.  How to contact us www.RogerBlankenship.com. Leave a voicemail right from the home page! Facebook.com/flippingamericamedia Twitter and Instagram @FlippingAmerica Call our National Comment Line: 877-55-ROGER (76437)   ext 1. Leave your message or your question.  Email your questions to questions@rogerblankenship.com. Please always tell us where you are from. We like to know where the show is being heard. And let us know how you found out about us if you don’t mind.  Sponsors American IRA: www.americanIRA.com Civic Financial: bit.ly/CivicFinancial FlipStarter Online! www.flipstarteronline.com Announcements: The Flipping America REIA meets every Wednesday from noon to 2 and Thursday from 7-9. You can join the REIA and learn real estate investing from the comfort of your own home, or get together with a few friends and form a chapter in your area. Learn more at flippingamericareia.com.   Flipping America App is in the app store. You can listen to the show, read the show notes, and the entire catalog of shows is now available to you. It’s a free download and there are no upsells or in-app purchases. Free to download, free to listen. Go ahead and give it a try and drop me a line and let me know what you think. FlipCalcs allows you to enter one data set about a property and consider up to six deal possibilities .  “Real Estate Investing Quick Start” Fifteen lessons to start your real estate investing career. Study from the comfort of your own home. I give you 8 action assignments in lesson 1 and show you how to complete them while holding your feet to the fire over the next 15 lessons. bit.ly/requickstart. News:  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/07/docusign-ceo-dan-springer-on-the-activity-trends-among-its-customers.html https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/04/07/mortgage-forbearance-requests-surged-1896percent-during-the-second-half-of-march.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/08/weekly-mortgage-applications-sink-as-coronavirus-sets-back-homebuyers.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/10/told-my-landlord-i-cant-pay-rent-due-to-coronavirus-how-he-responded.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/06/related-companies-ceo-those-who-can-should-pay-their-rent.html https://www.realtor.com/news/real-estate-news/home-buyer-seller-confidence/ Guest: Deidre Woolard Your Questions: Send emails to questions@rogerblankenship.com David, Atlanta, GA “Love to hear more about your move into Chattanooga.. what are the key advantages you see there besides less competition vs AtlantaI’ll keep it brief but to answer your question, our reasons for choosing Chattanooga:1. High concentration per capita of investors in Atlanta.2. Most opportunities in ATL are requiring long expensive rehabs. 3. Surveyed all cities within 2-3 hour drive of ATL.4. Factors include: Job Growth, Diversity of Employment (different industries), Vision of City Planners, population growth, market status (saturation rate, average DOM), age and types of housing inventory, 5. Greenville, Birmingham, Huntsville, Auburn and Chattanooga emerged. (Augusta didn’t impress and Macon was even worse. Columbus was so-so.)6. Two of my team live up the I-75 corridor so Chattanooga or Huntsville were the easiest to get to when we need. 7. Chattanooga is larger with more diverse inventory and industry. Our plans have been delayed somewhat by the COVID-19 situation. But for now it’s just a delay, not a cancellation. We are doing some calls - just not full saturation yet.  Brianna, Anderson, IN, “A friend just mentioned to me that one way of passively investing in real estate is through something called turn-key rentals. He didn’t know many details. But he also heard of some guys in Indianapolis Jack Gibson and Jeff something. Are you familiar with this type of investing or can you refer me to someone who can tell me about it?” Motivational Thoughts for the day Gilda Susan Radner (June 28, 1946 – May 20, 1989) was an American comedian and actress who was one of the seven original cast members for the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). In her routines, Radner specialized in parodies of television stereotypes, such as advice specialists and news anchors, and in 1977, she won an Emmy Award for her performances on the show. She also portrayed those characters in her highly successful one-woman show on Broadway in 1979. Radner's SNL work established her as an iconic figure in the history of American comedy. She died from ovarian cancer in 1989. Her autobiography dealt frankly with her life, work, and personal struggles, including those with the illness. Her widower, Gene Wilder, carried out her personal wish that information about her illness would help other cancer victims, founding and inspiring organizations that emphasize early diagnosis, hereditary factors and support for cancer victims. She was posthumously awarded a Grammy Award in 1990. Radner was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1992; and she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2003. I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity. -Gilda Radner

Welcome!   Since most of us are working at home or stuck at home without work I decided that we should go over the tools, techniques, and tactics we can use to make working from home easier.  Then for those who don't have work and want to do something, I go over companies that are hiring with remote work or work at home opportunities.  It is going to be a busy and informative show -- so sit back and listen in.  For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Hello everybody, Craig Peterson back here on WGAN. You know, by the way, I went ahead and checked out that new show on Netflix. It must be relatively new because it seems to have some footage from late last year in it. But this Tiger King show I don't know if you've seen it. People said you know you just can't stop watching it. I found it interesting and intriguing. I'm particularly interested in the fact that some of the people in this show our nuts, and this one particularly nutty woman has now come out this week and said, "No, I did not kill my husband and put him in the meat grinder and feed him to the lions." Now, the fact that she came out and said that I think tells you something. Right now, the police have opened an investigation. It is quite a fascinating show about peculiar people, frankly weird people, that own big cats. At least as they're portrayed in this show. I guess you have to take all of that with a grain of salt. Hey, for the past two weeks, I've been doing webinars twice a day pretty much. We've been talking about security what you need to do when you're working from home. I am not turning everybody into security experts, right. Most people don't want to be security experts. They just want to keep their information safe, but hundreds of you have been attending, and that's a fantastic thing. I'm so glad that you guys have, and I hope you're getting a lot out of it. I know a lot of people are trying to attend so that they understand this better. When they do get together and back to work as the office manager, whatever that role, maybe they have an understanding of what this is all about and what they need to do and how they need to do it. In many cases, a lot of business owners have been on these calls as well. I'm so happy to do it and for free. I'm not sitting there pounding you trying to sell you something. Somebody got kind of upset with me this week because they wanted me to quit with the soft sell and I said, Well, I don't have anything to sell. So unless you want to buy something and in that case ask me. It isn't a soft sell. I'm just trying to teach you guys stuff. And I think we've all become a little jaded here over the years because everything it seems is trying to sell us something. We've certainly seen that you look at like the Kylie Jenner and the whole Kardashian clan, who get paid to advertise, although it's not an advertisement as it is not marketed as such. She sent out a picture of her with something she's wearing or makeup or whatever. She sends it out to millions of people who see it, and she gets paid a million bucks. It's just astounding to me. I'm jaded. I get it, but these webinars are to help you guys out. Just like I'm here every Saturday at 1 pm to help you guys out to kind of review the news and what's going on the technology side of things, right? Alright, let's get back into all of our collaboration stuff, which we were talking about before. Now I've been going through this article a little bit while I'm actually not even going through it, I'm just looking for what they've rated as the top ones and then giving my commentary. They've also got one listed here called liquid planner. I have never used that. They're saying it's best for complex projects. Now is that regular small business, you probably don't have these complex projects, and you know, if you're the SBA calls a small business 500 people, and under you, if you're at the upper end of that, you might well have some complex projects. If you're at the lower end of that, you probably don't, so I'm not going to get into it right now. Also, because the liquid planner is expensive, it is a full-fledged project management piece of software. So we're not going to delve into that. They've got something called pod-to pod IO and they are saying that this is best for a work hub. They say it's incredibly flexible, highly customizable, for working communication. I have never used it, and maybe I should look at it. They advertise it's so user friendly and scales easily for growing business. It is an editor's choice. I'm just not familiar with it. I don't know anyone that is using it. We'll just skip that one. Slack I have used extensively. I used it for years before I switched on to the secure platform, that is, the WebEx team's platform used to be called Spark, but now it is WebEx teams. And, with the WebEx teams, you have everything integrated. So our phone systems are where teleconferencing, video conferencing collaboration is all integrated and is all secured and it is just absolutely phenomenal. And we're setting up right now with some school districts that are having they've sent their teachers and their students home. We're setting them up with some of these Cisco WebEx teams stuff for the schools to use because it meets all of the state and federal regulations. Unlike Slack, and Zoom, that so many are currently using. But Slack, you could not have a more straightforward tool to use. It is a team messaging app that works very well. It also has a lot of integrations, probably the most of anything. You can tie Slack into your website, for instance. So if somebody has a question, they can just put it in on the site, and it's going to show up in your Slack channel. You know, how, how much simpler could it get than that? It's phenomenal. And then you can respond to it in the Slack channel. There are tons of integrations for its Really among the best when you're talking about a messaging app, and it's also the most expensive and now, and that's not too bad, you're going to be spending about $35 a month per team member. So it does add up pretty fast. Leankit is something these guys like is what's called a Kanban app. Kanban is a technique that came out of Japan. I think it was Toyota if I remember right was the first came out with this. A lot of the software we've already talked about is Kanban compatible. It came from this hole just-in-time manufacturing process. You might have remembered that was all the rage in the 70s and early 80s. Yeah, it was developed by an industrialist engineer at Toyota. I just looked it up online and basically You can think of it as kind of a big board and you have sticky notes on the board. The sticky note represents a task, so you put it on the left-hand side of the board, say, Okay, here's all of the things we're going to have to accomplish. Then as you work on them, you move them to the right into different columns, so you know, it's to be done, and then you might move it into, okay, it's underway, or it is stalled is another very popular column, and Kanban means it's complete. This is all part of what's known as agile development. Remember, I mentioned earlier the rugby references while Scrum is another agile process used to help to focus on delivering real business value real goals and objectives being done by everybody in the team in the shortest time possible. So rather than using regular project managers who will say, well, this has to be done by April 10. Now, you know, if you said it has to be done by April 10. It's not going to be done a minute before April 10. What are the odds is not going to come in until April 20. The odds are pretty good that they're not going to meet that April 10 deadline, right. But when you're using this Kanban method, a scrum kind of development or business process method. The idea is you get something done a small task and narrow tasks, get it done as soon as you can. Once it's done, you just grab the next sticky note off the left side of the board. Now, I like a couple of different packages out there that you can use for Kanban. I've used JIRA before, and I have used Trello. If you're just starting, and you wish to track some projects, and it's just you, maybe you and a couple of other people, I want you to check out Trello online T-R-E-L-L-O. I have used Trello extensively over the years and have just found it to be golden. It's so easy to use; it uses this Kanban type of board methodology. So does JIRA. However, JIRA gets more complicated and ties into other packages like Confluence and things that are all part of the same thing. But have a look at that. I really do like it a lot. That's what LeanKit does. So it's pretty darn cool. So when we come back, we're going to talk about my favorite little database now use that term within air quotes. You might have heard me put little air quotes up there. We'll talk about that out and more when we get back here. I'll give you a little understanding of what is collaboration software? What can we use? Now that we're working from home? Now that we have fewer employees, people are out sick, how can we make sure things are getting done that need to be done? And with repetitive tasks? Again, I'm going to kind of recommend the Asana stuff. But you know, these can band boards can be incredible, depending on what type of repetitive task you have. Now, if you have any questions for me any comments, if you want to attend any of the upcoming free webinars, these are like an hour-long we delve deep into a security topic or collaboration topic. Make sure you check me out—Craig Peterson dot com. You're listening to WGAN, so stick around. I'll be right back. Hey, Craig Peterson here, back on WGAN. For those of you that are interesting in these webinars or what's going on, I have been holding them twice a day, at 4 pm and 7:30 pm, for about an hour. These are live webinars answering all of your questions and doing some slightly deeper dives into topics that everybody needs to know about when it comes to security, securing your data when at home securing your offices tying offices together, Tonya home in right all these different types of things that we frankly we need to do in this day and age. And we're going to be doing more and more of because honestly, working from home that the whole concept of remote workers is going to get bigger and bigger as time goes on. So kind of keep your ear to the ground. But you will get emails from me, and I've got a lot of Mainers who have been attending these and enjoying them are just nothing but great feedback. I got hundreds of positive comments on these things and hundreds attending to, so make sure you get signed up and Attend some of these. I'm not repeating the topics from day to day, every day within the day like the 4 pm, and the 730 are the same topics. So I will be answering different questions if there are different people on it, but I will be teaching the same necessary information. So you can choose either one of those webinars during the day. But, you know, one day to the next day, I will be in I am teaching different topics. Okay, so that's kind of the bottom line there. And I'd love it if you would join us. It makes me feel really good to know that I've helped people. The more people that show up, the better and by all means, invite friends and relatives to these things because we're now opening them up. I did not widely open them up before, but starting next week; they will be open to pretty much everybody, not just the listeners. Okay, so we were talking earlier about LeanKit and Kanban and the types of, you know, processes that are behind that. JIRA, Trello, J-I-R-A in case you're wondering, and T-R-E-L-L-O. I promised to talk about the database side. I have used Airtable extensively, and I love it. For the radio show, for instance, we have an AirTable setup, and there are fixed things that must happen every week, right? We might have to find topics, or we might want to locate guests to have on the show. All of that is set up in the table. So that when so and so, you know, for instance, Karen will find the guests to have on, and will reach out to the guest and get their bio, get some talking points, and then I will put it up on the website. Steve will do some reviewing of it. Then Karen's going to have to do a pre-interview with them. Then it is time to schedule them for the actual interview for the radio show. That's the normal flow when we book a guest, just to give you an idea of how much work we put into the show. It is totally a labor of love. Let me tell you, but with Airtable, all of this can be automated, you know, informing someone. Okay, we've chosen a topic. Now we got to find guests and then Okay, we found a guest. What do we do now and they can put right into the Airtable because it's kind of a database as well. Think of it as a spreadsheet, if you will, that has a database behind it. It's really phenomenal. They can put the guest's bio right into a cell on the air table. They can put the recorded interview right into a cell on the air table. It is just absolutely phenomenal. They have a free plan and they have various paid plans. It has to be one of the most straightforward database tools you've ever seen. It is just like a spreadsheet and designed to be useful and honest. You can manage information about anything you can manage the flow, the pass on, it is kind of just like We were talking about a little bit earlier. It's kind of a can man thing too with databases and integrated with spreadsheets. It's kind of hard to describe. But that's, I guess my best description of it. So check it out air table.com you might love it. I absolutely love it. I know I do. We're not using it right now because we've scaled back, but we'll be right back there with Airtable and then Monday is something else is kind of similar to that. And it is designed to be able to track the tasks and move them around called monday.com. And remember what their old name was actually, maybe a month I think Monday is their current name. Let me just look that up. Make sure it's not the old name because they had a simple name before and that now eludes me. Yeah, it is. It's Monday.com. And it is again, phenomenal here for project tracking, Process Management. And it is they call it a Work operating system and you know what I think it really is Monday.com check it out. Over 100,000 organizations are using it according to their website including Costco, wholesale club, PayPal, Uber, Hulu, eBay, Walmart, GE, it is incredible. It's very, very simple to use. And again, it's kind of setup in the same way that you would think of using a spreadsheet. So you're gonna love it like that. Monday comm I don't think it's listed at all here. No, it's not on this PC mag site, but it's something I highly recommend and used before. So they also here on monday.com while they're talking about the collaboration tools, bring up Basecamp now Basecamp is something that I have used as well. It has been, what four or five years Since I used it, and we gave up on it because it just wasn't what we wanted what we needed, but it might be something that's going to work for you, I don't know. But Basecamp is known for what's called a sandbox-style collaboration. So pretty much everything's in a box, okay? It's designed to allow you to transition your whole team to remote work quickly. Frankly, it puts everything together. That's the entire sandbox concept. So it's not all over the place. Now, that's one of the things I did not like about Asana is, even though it was for organizing, I didn't feel that it organized things the way we wanted to work and that we were used to working. So you're going to have to look at some of these yourself. But Basecamp is one of the oldest out there by far, and they developed a whole language A few programming languages called Ruby on Rails, you might have heard of Ruby on Rails is phenomenal. And that was that language was designed so the base camp could be written and ultimately could scale. And this is how they are running their company to remotely. They're using Basecamp for it, and I'll have to give it a try again, they're saying by the way that 6400 companies signed up last week alone to try out Basecamp which is something to look at it. I'm looking at their numbers here. Yep. 2004 they had 45 companies, you know, it might have been longer than five years ago. Now looking at this, that I tried it so I'll have to try that again. But check it out. And PC mag as I said, they seem to like it. It is not bad, I'm sure. A document collaboration they like glip. We have in our business. We have loved the WebEx teams, and we'll talk more about that when we get back in the next segment. But we use that for document collaboration along with the professional version, the secured version of Dropbox, not the, not the dropbox that you just use at home. Okay. But we liked that, and glip they didn't give an excellent rating on they gave it like, three and a half stars if you will. Then for fast setup, they like right Wrike, but you can check that out if you'd like. So what it boils down to my favorite of all of these by far are the WebEx teams. Then next to that is probably Monday, and then we like Trello for some things, and you know, we just talked about it. If you want to listen to any of these, check me out online, go to Craig Peterson dot com, you'll see all of my podcasts posted there or sign up. Craig Peterson dot com slash tune in. Stick around. We'll be right back here on WGAN Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peters on here on w GAN. Did you know you can hear me during drive time on Wednesday mornings? Yeah, I'm on with Matt. And of course, we talk about the latest news lately. That's kind of been working from home and working from home safely, which somehow isn't a surprise is it to any of us. I've been doing webinars, and here are some of the titles and what we've been talking discussing. We've been talking about routers and firewalls and why fi and browser efficiency plugins you can use to keep your privacy, how to do some of the backup stuff to make sure backups are working updates and patches and how to turn them on automatically. VPN security. It has It's been quite the ride. And we're going to be starting this all up again next week. So I want to make sure you guys know about it and have access to it. So I'm going to be sending out emails to let you know about it. And the only way you're going to find out is if you're on my email lists. So make sure you sign up if you're not already there. Just go to Craig Peterson comm. You will see it right there on the top of the page if you kind of slide it up. If you want a little help if you have questions about what we talked about today, any of this online collaboration software, any questions about any of this stuff, if you're having trouble working from home, or you're not working from home, and you're just having trouble? Make sure you reach out to me, and you can schedule a phone call with me just by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash help. Couldn't be much easier, could it Craig peterson.com. slash help. It is just I think it's an important time for us all to work together to help each other out because we are all in the same boat right now. Yeah. kind of reminded me of something else. Well, we won't get into that right now. So I promised that we would talk a little bit about what Cisco is doing on the collaboration front. And Cisco has something called WebEx. And it is phenomenal when it comes to collaboration. You know, I mentioned in the last segment, that we use it also for file collaboration. So we have all kinds of groups. And we have a group for each client, for instance, and we have a group for our internal tech support people. And then within each group, we have channels that are specific to you know, the various topics or various things that we're working on. For the client. So if you have a project for our client or project for ourselves, we'll have a space for that within the WebEx teams. And then you can drop files into it. You can search right from that space for on that team. You can start a little video conference call for everybody to talk, or on an audio conference call. It integrates with the app on your phone or your smartphone. I have and we all have desk phones. And those desk phones have built-in video, and it's phenomenal. The whole thing is seamless, and it meets almost every security standard out there. In fact, that's what the President has on his desk. He has a slightly upgraded version of this because he needs the highest military-grade, but as far as HIPAA compliance or PCI compliance or most of the regular compliance, including the CMC I Tara All those types of guidelines, it is fully compliant. So WebEx has decided that they are going to give a 90-day free trial to anybody that wants it, which is I think phenomenal. Now for many companies, 90 days is all you're going to need. Hopefully, the governor is going to say get back to work within what a month or two. So the three-month window should fit for you. And you can sign up for free at WebEx dot com you're going to love it. Now, if you go through my company now you know that we sell and maintain Cisco equipment, including WebEx, and we've installed some large Cisco phone systems that also tie into WebEx we've installed small phone systems for like dentists offices and construction companies and manufacturers that have the video conferencing in it and everything works. Everything is all integrated. It's, it is unbelievable how well it works plus it is secure, which is just mind-blowing. But if you go through us, we can give you an even better free deal. How's that a that, we can offer prospects, and that's what it's all about right that they have this for us so we can do prospecting. Our offer doubles the free stuff, and all of the numbers of attendees in the conferences and the sizes of the files, you can share, etc., doubles it basically from what you can get by just signing up on WebEx dot com for yourself. If you want to talk to me about it again, you can just go to Craig Peterson dot com slash help. And we can talk about these different types of conferencing systems. We can talk about the collaboration stuff we just talked about in the last segment, but check it out. You can just get it yourself. If you want, but you will not get all of the features as you'd get for me from for free as well. But check it out @webex.com. As I mentioned earlier today in the broadcast, we all have this set up now for some schools, and school districts are using it. So far, they love it because it gives very fine-grained control over everything that they need to make sure that the kids aren't messing around getting on other people's accounts. like the zoom bombing, that we talked about a little bit earlier. Now, let's get to this because I had promised this before right at the top of the show. We're getting close to the end. Here is some career advice from Forbes, that I thought I'd mentioned because I'm sure right now there are a lot of us that are at home and have lost our jobs. Hopefully, just temporarily, and that includes you know, people who are waiters, waitresses, and the small businesses they were working for. I thought you might like this. So you can check it out. It is on forbes.com. And he'll we'll kind of run through these, but I noticed it because one of the large areas that's on there is the computer and it jobs. But first of all, it's talking about accounting and finance jobs. These are support strategies. And since people are using QuickBooks nowadays, like QuickBooks Online from Intuit or some of these other online accounting systems, it has made it a breeze for bookkeepers and accountants to be able to provide some specialized on-demand accounting services. If you know this stuff, and you can do bookkeeping as a work from home job. They are hiring right now accountants and bookkeepers, so check that out in support strategies, and you can find them online as well at Flex Jobs, flex jobs.com. You might want to check that out. That's the first one. The next category that Forbes is suggesting is computer jobs. And they have three different listings here. LiveArea is a company that helps with digital commerce. They do design strategy, technology, digital marketing, best practices, and they've got jobs open right now that you can do from home. They are a company that started as a database company that's still their bread and butter for the most part. They have accounting software now, ERP systems that they downscaled for small businesses, and they're hiring right now, including database administrators that can work from home and talking about a job. That's a great work from home job, DBAs database administrators. I've hired more than one of those over the years. Red Hat, which was bought by IBM last year, is also offering some jobs right now, again, work from home jobs, including sales force, configuration engineers, architects, healthcare, all kinds of job openings there. When we get back, we'll kind of run through some more openings, some ideas for some work at home jobs, because I've had quite a few people. Sign up for my webinars, thinking it was about jobs you can get to work at home. No, no, my webinars are about the technology and security for working from home. But check them out. Sign up Craig Peterson dot com. We'll be right back on WGAN. Welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here on WGAN. We are talking about some of the technologies surrounding work at home. We've covered collaboration today. What are the top collaboration tools, file sharing tools, the top tools for having meetings, and even a little bit of bumbler conversation? It's important, right? Many of us are stuck in our apartments, or in our homes, and we don't see anybody else. It is kind of a shame. It is important for us all to get together and maybe even have a happy hour. I know a couple of companies that have done that. They get together at their WebEx conference, where they all have their own drinks and just enjoy each other's company. You got to let the hair down. I think it's a great thing. They're doing. We were talking before the break about some of the jobs listed in this forbes.com article about working at home. We ran through some accounting and finance job categories and actual jobs that they provide links to. Then we covered some computer and IT jobs. Those are the ones that already have been kind of out-sourced and or have been work from home. Think about all of the remote workers in the Philippines, India, and China that have been doing exactly that. Working from their homes now for years. I see that as true going forward for quite a while. Construction jobs are another one right now called a renovation project consultant. There are job listings for them here. They're looking for people who have experience viewing contracts. Here is a work from home part-time contract creation jobs for content creators/writers which is another one we see out-sourced for a very, very long time. If you read articles online, you will not see these on my site. But if you read articles online, there is a technology called spinning. Have you heard of that before? They'll take an existing article, and they will spin it, which means they run it through some special software that changes the words around uses different words to make it so that it is not technically stolen but when you read it doesn't make sense much of the time. So I know you've seen those types of articles because I've seen them you say, Whoa, a native English speaker, did not write this. Well, It might have been put up by a native English speaker who just uses spinning software. But there are still jobs for real writers. They've got listings here for fandom writers who can write about favorites like Star Trek or Doctor Who. However, this last season, I haven't liked Doctor Who. Supernatural, Grey's Anatomy, and more, right all these different fan shows. There are digital health content producers and other creative jobs. I know a lot of people who use video editors to put together their marketing videos. So they'll shoot them like, like I do all of it myself, right I shoot the videos, I record them, I edit them, and I put them up online, and you can tell. But there are a lot of openings for video editors to work at home animators as well. Vitamin T is a creative talent agency that connects freelance creative-work that occurs with digital marketing firms and advertising agencies. You can find that in this article too. If you want me to send it to you, just email me at Craig Peterson dot com, and I can make sure I get it to you. But you can just find it out on Forbes. Continuum global solutions have got contact center solutions and jobs to fortune 500 companies that bringing in customer service reps. LiveOps is a cloud contacting customer service Solution Center. And they've got worked from home jobs, including call center reps, call center, licensed insurance, people, education and training jobs. It goes on and on. These are jobs that are going to stay out there in the remote work category. Even the food industry which kind of surprised me. But then I said Ah, of course. They're talking about chef instructors. It is a remote opportunity where they are helping people learn, they're supervising in the kitchens. Remember now with the, with the smartphones, the guys and gals working in the kitchen can just pull it out, show you what they're doing. Media jobs, Thomson Reuters is looking for people, Vox media brands who were just reading from one of their articles well not reading it, but looking at their list. They've got film editors, community managers, TV, transcription, jobs, medical jobs. It goes on and on the categories, and I just don't want to spend all the time we only have five minutes left here in the show today, but lots of them Translation jobs, Science jobs, Sales and marketing jobs, Medical and Health jobs. Check it out. Just do some searching online. Look into your favorite career opportunities site. Or see if you can find this article here from our friend over @forbes.com. A couple of the things to get to before we go away. If you are looking at working from home and you're overwhelmed, we've got some tips here for you. Okay, you need to have a bit of a flexible routine, instead of a rigid schedule, you know, time was you were driving into work, you might take half an hour an hour or if you live in LA three hours to get to work every day. Well, you know, make sure that you're not just sitting there all day long. Use that Pomodoro technique that I talked about earlier. In the show today. Look it up. It is Italian for tomato, in case you're trying to find it online, where you're doing little 20 minute stretches, and that ties in with the Kanban and scratching methodology that we were talking about earlier. But understand that you're not going to be at your maximum productivity right now, we're all overwhelmed. Turn off that news channel, don't sit there watching it all day long, because he can drive you crazy, and is going to make you feel even more overwhelmed than you need to be. Okay, so a few tips there from our friends over at Google, working at home, and being efficient. That's why in some of these webinars that I've been giving and will give over the course the next week or so, I talk about some of the extension some of the tools you can use to make your life easier to make it faster to make it more secure. But employers can boost productivity and reduce their turnover. And of course, that means lowering your costs by giving people that flexibility even before The Coronavirus hit. The majority of workers in the United States had been working at home one day a week. And I think this is going to change it all we're going to be working more and more at home. But you need to make sure you've got all of the technology you need that you have a fast enough internet that you are secure. I separate workspaces, and I have a completely separate workspace at home. Just find a room or even just a corner of the room, that you can use and that you have the right kind of internet service, a workable schedule, etc. The top fields for remote work again, computers and IT education and training, health care, customer service reps, virtual assistants, data entry, transcription teachers, of course, a lot more if you need to find a new job. Okay, that's a great way to look at it. Right now, a majority of the top firms out there have remote work in the IT biz like Amazon and Dell. In the medical space Humana, you've got Kaplan, SalesForce, all offering remote work opportunities, and that means you can work from home and be efficient and effective. So many people now are doing a little bit of homeschooling. I think many parents are overwhelmed by it. If you have listened to me for a while, you know my wife and I homeschooled our eight kids, all the way up to college. That's a lot of years of homeschooling, my wife is going a little gray, but we haven't lost our hair over it. If you think you might want to do it, do it. Remember the mathematics from 10 to 1040. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday type schedule that they might have at school does not fit a homeschool environment. Again, that rigid environment is just isn't going to work, and there's no way it's going to work into homeschool. Be flexible. But whatever your kids are interested in at the time, turn it into a learning opportunity. If, as one of our daughters was interested in cooking, remember we had eight kids, that's a lot of food, you know, for ten people, and you're looking at a recipe designed for four, so she learned how to do mental fractions. She's gone on now she has her Master Mariners license for unlimited oceans, unlimited tonnage, unlimited vessels, she could command any US Navy vessel at sea. That's all before she's 30. And yeah, she's got an MBA, now she's working on her doctorate. That's just phenomenal. And it all started with her home school, interested in fractions, learning together. She was curious and determined to do them in her head, multiplying and dividing fractions and look at where she's at now right understanding and calculating celestial navigation and everything else. She loves it. We have other kids one has gone on to be a regional Operations Manager for an International Bank, and also has an MBA. You know, I've got two other of my kids who are working with me who are fire jumper security experts and understand networking inside out and backward like hardly anyone else I've ever met. Just amazing. I've got yet another son, a mechanical engineer now, and he is finishing up a master's program this year. You can do it, and I think it is important. If you can homeschool, it is the best thing you can do for your kids. We homeschool while working from home, for much of it, I was working here at home during parts of it while was doing contract engineering and was on the road. My wife was doing almost everything all the time. It isn't a regiment where you're sitting there, sitting there at 10 to 10:40 with mathematics, etc, etc. It is life. It is living the best thing we can teach our kids, and the best thing we can give them is a love of learning. If you can pull it off, it's a fantastic thing, and it is so rewarding. We've had success with all eight kids. It's just been phenomenal. Hey, I hope you have a great week. Any questions? If you need a little help go to Craig Peterson comm slash help and make sure you sign up anyways at Craig Peterson calm. We'll be back next week with webinars and more on Wednesday morning. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

What am I going to do now?? Now we've been hit with the corona virus. Now I've had to close our office down. Now our business has gone from generating very generous revenue to now bringing in zero income. Now I am isolated at home. Now what?!?!?! #dailymotivation #begreat #befantastic #bephenomenal #happyaslarrygroup #mentalhealthawareness #mentalhealthcoach #lifecoaching #lifecoach #isolationtoolkit #mentalhealthtoolkit #quarantinelife

In today's episode, we're going to be talking about five signs that it's time for you to branch out with your own business. Now first, I want to say before we talk about the signs that it might be time to start your own business - the motivating factor of wanting to run away from something isn't always enough. For example, a lot of people would say that if you're peeved with your job and you don't love your boss, then it's a sign that you should branch out with your own business, and I actually think that's often not enough for sustainability. Running away from something and not having something you're running towards, can be a good motivator to start you off. But it doesn't necessarily help you keep that momentum and sustain what it takes to really grow a thriving business. However, if you are peeved with your boss, you are on maternity leave, you don't want to go back to work, you've got financial issues, you don't want to be lining the pockets of someone else with your efforts… or any other reason for wanting to start your own business right now, then that's a great motivator to get you started. But we want to make sure we're also tapping into what's going to sustain you long term, so here are five signs that it might be time for you to branch out with your own business. You have an epic vision. This was definitely one of the big things for me - my epic vision.  When I first started my business, it was being able to make enough money to live an amazing life of luxury, and have a giant beach house and travel a lot. And also run a not-for-profit that I had a very specific vision about at that particular point in time. My desires and goals and what my vision is has changed a little, not a lot, but it has changed a little, and that epic vision really motivated me, even when I was first starting out in my business. And it allowed me to really tap into the bigger goals of wanting to start a business. I didn't want to just start a business and make the same salary I was making in my day job, which was a very handsome six figure salary at the time.  I didn't want to just replace that income. I wanted to have a million dollar business and a multi million dollar a year business from when I first started my business. Part of the reason was that big epic vision that I had. I had a vision of wanting to change lives, influence people, and really help those who wouldn't otherwise get help and support that they need. And I was sick of relying on the government to do the right thing, to be 100% honest with you.  Young Tash had political aspirations, and business-starting Tash had already decided politics was not the way that I was going to enact the change that I wanted to enact. I started to see entrepreneurship as a pathway for me to create that change. And so that is what really drove me to get my business off the ground. It drove me in those times when I was feeling like, “well, maybe I could just take my foot off the accelerator and just be happy with $75,000 a year,” and then I’d remember, “no, my big vision is epic."  And I want to make sure that I stay aligned with that vision. You have transferable skills and knowledge. This one is really interesting because a lot of people assume that the skills and knowledge they've developed through their career or through their job or through university or wherever, would be thrown away in order for them to start a business because it's completely different or in a completely different space. But if you actually sit down and do an assessment of the transferable skills and knowledge that you have, chances are, there's a lot more that you have to bring to the table than you're giving yourself credit for. Something that I did before I started my business was use Marcus Buckingham’s Strengths Finder. And I also did a transferable skills assessment when I worked in a consulting firm - we had a recruitment week and we actually had a transferable skills assessment that I did. I looked at some of the skills that I wanted to develop and some of the skills that I already had, and I could see that I actually did have a lot to offer already. Granted, I was working in business consulting at the time, and I was moving into business coaching and consulting, so it wasn't a big jump for me. A lot of people may think that the skills that they have actually aren't critical to what they're doing. But think about the transferable ones, like maybe you’re someone who's really good at following through on projects, or you’re really good at generating lots of different ideas, or finding creative solutions to things. Maybe you’re tenacious, great with customers, or have really strong empathy. All of these things will serve you in your business when you start it up.  If you've got a really good understanding of what your transferable skills are, and you are really looking at them through the lens of “oh my gosh, I could do all of these things. I'm really good at all of these things,” then that usually says that you are ready to branch out and have your own business. So have a look through your experiences, your personal history, your professional history, and look at all of those strengths that you bring to the table. And look at it through this lens of it not necessarily having be applied in exactly the same way. For example, customer service skills that were normally used in retail can absolutely transfer into the online space. You just need to learn the platforms and the ways that you get to have those sales conversations and those customer service conversations. And it's done quite differently, but the same principles apply. And if you already have those skills, you already have that knowledge, that's going to really hold you in good stead for starting your own business online. You have a nagging and consistent idea. This was definitely one for me - for a long time I denied the nagging, consistent idea of “you should have your own business Tash” because I had some personal, family-of-origin stories around what it means to have your own business and how unreliable the income is and how unreliable you become, and all of those sorts of things. But I did have the really nagging consistent idea of having my own business. And once I got into a coaching model working in the consulting world, and I saw what coaching brought into the consulting package, then I really did start to have this nagging idea that I should be doing this on my own. When I first started my business, I thought I'd be a career coach because I thought that's where I would have the best impact and it would be the easiest transition for me because I'd done quite a lot of career coaching in my in my corporate job, and it was something I really love doing. But thankfully I was very open to what my business was going to look like, because after working with just three career coaching clients which I did for free - I did target market research interviews with them and then I did a free session in return - I realized that I had left the corporate world for a reason. I realized I didn’t want to have these conversations about your numpty mansplaining Boss, I really didn’t.  I realized I didn’t want to help people thrive in that environment, I wanted to help them escape that environment. And so that's where I transitioned into working with entrepreneurs, because I really could see that’s what I was more passionate about - bringing people into this beautiful world, because you don't have to ask for permission from anyone and you get to be your own boss, and you get to create an environment that you will thrive in. You get to reap the rewards of your own work as well, and that's a really beautiful thing for me. So if you've got this nagging, consistent idea, even if you're not 100% clear on what the business would be, but you've had this nagging, consistent idea of “I really should start my business, oh, I really could do this myself” - pay attention to that. That's usually a good sign that it might be time for you to at least dabble, at least have a little play. People keep telling you to turn something into a business. I would have had 100 different things that people told me I should turn into a business! It was - Oh my gosh, you should make novelty cakes as a business.  And - Oh my gosh, you should do career advice as a business.  Or - Oh my gosh, you should be a coach with business.  And - Oh my gosh, you should sell crochet blankets (because I love crochet and I'm into arts and crafts). And all everyone was really saying is: You should have a business. Now, I wouldn't necessarily pay attention to what people tell you to have a business in. But if a lot of people are telling you that you should have a business in something or another, listen to that “you should have a business” part of it. Because often that just taps on the on the shoulder of, “Hey, have you thought about having your own business?” A lot of people won't understand what you actually end up doing. Not one of the people who’d initially told me I should have a business, when they heard the business I was actually launching said, “Oh that’s exactly the business I thought you should have.”  Instead they were all saying, “What do you mean? I don't understand - selling online? What? Social media? Isn’t that just when you share photos of your food?” They weren't necessarily across what it was that I was going to do. But they all thought I should start a business. They definitely saw that coming.  So if people keep telling you, you should have a business, maybe it's time. You've already taken some action. So do you hoard URL addresses? Have you already set up a faux website, but you've never sent it live? Do you own a bunch of different Facebook pages or you've got a bunch of things that you've been playing with in the background? Chances are your entrepreneurial brain is already fast at work, and if that's a sign, then you are definitely ready to start going deeper and start your own business. Now I've given you five signs that it's time to branch out with your own business. But I see a lot of people when they first start a business get all wrapped up in comparing their beginning with someone else's middle or end point, or with someone else's mature business model. It can be very easy to believe that the pathway from startup to there is not a treacherous or rocky one and that it's just simply going straight into working in this space. Yes, when you come behind people who have already gone before you and they've already paved the way, there are some things that you can leapfrog.  For example, things that I did that you would never have to do when you started a business. Back when I started my business, we didn't have prolific numbers of Facebook groups. We didn't have Zoom – it didn't exist.  We didn't have opportunities to run webinars without using $200 to $300 a month platforms. We didn't have platforms like Kartra, an all-in-one.  We had to tie a bunch of different technology platforms together.  You don't have to do all that stuff, you get to make the leap frog. But there are certain parts of the startup journey that you really want to nail effectively, so that you can get to profitability quickly and you can get to the point where you've proven this is a sustainable business model as quickly and easily as possible.  

Cynthia Marquez: "Sometimes to begin a new story, you have to let the old one go." Author unknown. I am Cynthia Marquez and I am a Tri-City influencer. Paul Casey: But really this is the core philosophy of what I teach in time management, and that is manage your time around your values and vision. This is your foundation for everything else in time management. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, it's The Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI Podcast, where local leadership and self leadership expert Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs and nonprofit executives, to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: Hey, thanks for joining me for today's episode. It's going to be a bonus episode. I'm going to do a little teaching today on work-life balance and hopefully it'll be beneficial to you if you struggle with having a hard time drawing that healthy line between your work and personal life. So we'll dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsors. Speaker 4: The C12 Group is a national organization focused on spiritual and professional development of Christian CEOs and business owners. Members participate in professionally facilitated monthly meetings during which 12 experienced Christian CEOs exchange ideas to solve business issues biblically. Additionally, members receive a 90-minute personal coaching session each month. Information is available from Tom Walther at 715-459-9611 or online at c12easternwa.com. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Nathan Margalit is a rabbi and Jewish scholar. In a recent blog he said, "Humans are unique. We can choose to ignore rhythm. We can and do keep our factories running day and night. We try to fool hens into laying more eggs by keeping the lights on 24 hours at a time. With every new pad, pod and phone, we push ourselves into 24/7 connectedness. We have created a culture that is built on the metaphor of a machine impervious to any rhythm other than the drone of production. In the name of progress, convenience and even freedom, but most of all profits, we have lost the music of life." Paul Casey: It's sort of a sad reflection that oftentimes we just keep pushing, pushing, pushing and we don't take the time to rest. We don't take the time for those other priorities in our life that we really need. So, instead of achieving balance in your life, which I sort of believe doesn't really exist. I mean, work-life balance is sort of this thing that if you really went after it, you probably would achieve it for five minutes and then you'd be out of balance again. I like the phrase work-life rhythm a lot better, or now one that's more in vogue is work-life integration. Paul Casey: So you can think to yourself, when do you feel like you are ever in a good rhythm? Can you just reflect on that for a moment? When do you feel like you're in a good rhythm? What's going on in your life? Maybe what's not going on in your life during that time? That would be a good place to connect with as we go into this podcast episode. Paul Casey: I went to a seminar years ago by a guy named Wayne Cordeiro and he was discussing a terrible time in his life where he was completely burned out. If you've ever been burned out before, you know it's a rotten time where you just barely can get out of bed, you have trouble with even remembering what your favorite color is. I mean, it's just sort of a dead time. He actually checked himself into a monastery and had to put away all of his technology, he couldn't check his cell phone or his laptop and it almost drove him insane. He said he only snuck out one night from the monastery, but it was a real healing time for him after this burnout time. And he said work-life balance is not a thing. That's where I've sort of gotten this from. Paul Casey: And so I have actually developed a tool for time management, my framework for time management as a result of this seminar by Wayne Cordeiro, because he drew a picture of a teeter totter, if you remember that playground implement, which now is probably considered illegal. It seems like all the things we grew up with on the playground are now considered unsafe, but the teeter totter, the classic thing where you put one person and one on the other side and you go up and down. Paul Casey: If you put work on one side and you put balance on the other side of that teeter totter and you're really working for that balance, you're probably not going to get to it or just for a little bit, you might get to it. But he said instead of thinking work and life and trying to balance those two instead, think of just the fulcrum part. Fulcrum is like that triangle that separates the two sides of the teeter totter. If you decide to shift the fulcrum left or right towards work or towards life, instead of thinking about balancing it, it's going to be a lot more fluid in your life. So sometimes based on the urgency or importance of what's going on in the arena, on your life, you have to move that fulcrum fluidly to direct your energy appropriately. Sometimes when you have to spend more time in your life area because you've had a parent who might have to go into assisted living or maybe your child has the flu and because of that you've got to spend more time at home dealing with the personal issues. Paul Casey: Other times you have to spend more time in the work area of your life. You've got a deadline for a key client or that your ramped up season of the year and you've got to work some overtime. Now, you just push that fulcrum left or right and that's going to help you more with that work-life rhythm, that work-life integration instead of balance. Now, if you spend too much time of course on that one area of your life for too long, then of course you know what's going to happen. It's going to dry up the other area of your life. That's going to get empty and decay would set in. If your spouse is forgotten for too long and a rift becomes evident, you're not putting enough time there, or maybe you're not putting enough time in at work, you're not following up with your customers and they start to slip away as a consequence. Paul Casey: Basically, you can't stay in overdrive mode for too long or you will burn out. So what is one of the main practical solutions to achieve work-life balance or work-life rhythm? I think one where I'd like to talk about today is the word boundaries. Boundaries allow you to move the fulcrum where you determine what needs to be moved right now, to have a hard stop at the end of a quality and a productive workday so that you can be fully present at home. So that you can give 100% at work knowing that your tank and your family's tank, your energy tank has been filled up at home. To be able to embrace this time block or this season of life that you're in without longing for the other time block or the other season of life. I want to give you some tips today on how to set up boundaries so you can move the fulcrum intentionally. Paul Casey: The first one is to figure out what's most important to you. Figure out what's most important to you. So you've got to reconnect with who you are and who you're not of course. What you have to offer and what you really want. That's the key coaching question, is, what do you want? So that you're crystal clear and you can live that out day after day. I recommend you do a personal retreat to get to solitude and reflection in order to really wrestle with this. You're like, "Well, I know who I am." Yeah, but really do you? Have you lost touch with that over time? Have you changed over time and it's like, "Now I've got to get back to grounded-ness. Who am I really? What do I really stand for?" What you could do is this time of solitude, whether it's a couple hours or a half day, or maybe go off to the mountains or the beach so you've got a whole day or two to think about this, is you can try to come up with a personal mission statement. Paul Casey: I have a personal mission statement and it's to add value to people through equipping, encouraging words, servant leader actions and a contagious passion to honor God with my life. So I've said that enough times that it's memorized and I use it as a filter for my life and how I came up with that mission statement. It's sort of a combination of some exercises that I went through. Can't remember if they were with a coach or just, I did these on my own, sort of self-life coaching here. It's a combination of the values and by the way, I can send a sheet of values to you if you'd like to go through some of these exercises, just email me at growingforward@paulcasey.org and I'd be happy to send you that value sheet. Paul Casey: What you do is you go through this whole activity where you narrow it down to the things that are totally you and then you get down to the top 10 and then you get down to the top five that you'd practically die for those. I mean, they are so important to you and everybody around you would know it from watching your life that those five things, it could be family, it could be your faith, it could be growth, it could be happiness or trust. Some people have written in other words on the chart like accountability, love and affection. These are your DNA and you must live in congruence with those values in order to be successful in life. So that's a worthwhile exercise even if you're not doing a personal mission statement. A second exercise you could do is some type of strengths assessment. Paul Casey: I recommend StrengthsFinder, which I think is now called CliftonStrengths and you can either buy the book StrengthsFinder 2.0 and there's a link in the book, a code that you put in online to take the online assessment or you can just go to the CliftonStrengths website and you can take the 20 minute strengths assessment. I think it costs about 20 bucks and it's worth doing that because it's going to spit out your top five strengths and you're just going to go, "Whoa, that's like someone's reading my mail." I mean they're usually totally you because there's 34 of them and it's not just like four. There's 34 and when they narrow it down to your top five, it usually hits right on. You don't have to spend the money on that. You could just simply think about as you go through your day. Paul Casey: Marcus Buckingham, who's sort of the father of the strengths' movement, he uses the acronym sign SIGN. S is success, what do you feel effective at most of the time? And other people around you validate that they're saying, "You're so good at that." You've probably been told that for many, many years and that would meet the first criteria of a strength. The I stands for instinct. There's just something inside of you that naturally leans toward it and you look forward to it. So, I might be good at math, so I might say I'm pretty good at math, but I don't like math. So that's not something I actually look forward to. So in this criterion it would be ruled out. So, success, then instinct is the I, G is growth. Growth means time speeds by while you're doing it. Like you're doing it for a while and you start getting engrossed in and you get in that state called flow and you look up two hours later and like, Oh my goodness, the day just slipped away from me cause I like it so much. Paul Casey: And then the N in sign is needs. That means you're tired when you're done with it but you're not drained. For instance, when I do speaking or coaching, I'm tired at the end of the day because I've given it all that I have, but I'm not drained because I love doing this. I feel like I'm put on this planet to fulfill that role. And hopefully you do too with your job. So really be mindful of what you love doing and since Buckingham, as a Brit, he says what you loathe doing. So, the things that make you feel strong throughout the day, the things that make you feel weak or drained or bored, you can just track these things. Just have a piece of paper by your desk and then you'll have a list after a couple of weeks of writing these specific things down and I encourage you to tell that, debrief that with somebody else. Paul Casey: The third thing that would go into your personal mission statement would be your vision for your life and it can be the ultimate vision for your life or it could be just like the one year vision out, like how do you want to be different than one year from now? It could be your big dream that you've always had and it just, you try to shake it off but it still sticks to you and it's like you find yourself talking about it when you're out for coffee with friends or when somebody says, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" You just keep uttering the same dream. It's something you're really passionate about and a passion actually as part of the root word of passion is you would suffer for it. So, maybe there's a degree that you would suffer for that cause if you were to pursue it. Paul Casey: So you've got, in order to put a mission statement together, you've got values, your strengths and your vision for your life. Another thing to think about when you're in solitude, maybe on a personal retreat, is the amount of margin you have to have to function optimally. We don't want you to burn out, right? That's what this whole work-life rhythm is about. And so we have to have enough margin or cushion of time in our life to keep our energy level up. So, margin is a concept that was developed by a guy named Richard Swenson. He was a doctor and he defines margin as your load minus your limits. So all the things that are on your plate versus the amount of energy and time that you have. And some of us have actually more load than limits. And so we can actually be a negative margin and that's when we really get irritated and we get close to burnout. We can have like zero sum margin where they're equal. But hopefully we have enough margin where there's some cushion time to absorb the unexpected in our life. Paul Casey: Part of boundaries is acknowledging that you have limited time, that you have limited energy and you have to determine how accessible you want to and how you actually can be. So we have to say yes, we have to say no on a daily basis to all the things that are clamoring for our time. Choose carefully who not if you will disappoint on an average day. I'll say that again. Choose carefully who, not if, you will disappoint on a given day because you're always going to disappoint someone when you're saying no, but oftentimes that no is worth it because of the other priorities you're going to be able to give time to. Paul Casey: One more thing you could do on that personal retreat is to really get clear with your priorities. Stephen Covey calls those your big rocks, those big things that you put in your schedule first. Not just what you are conditioned to do, not just what's urgent and yelling at you to do, but those things that are so core to you, so important to you and they're often not urgent, but you know that if you don't give them attention, it's going to bite you later. And you know if you do do those things, you're going to move the needle on those relationships or on those projects. So you're sort of setting what normal is for you because when you're on the verge of burnout, you've lost touch with what that is. Hey, before we head into more teaching on work-life balance, let's shout out to our sponsors. Speaker 4: If you could trade one day each month for targeted application of biblical business practices, purposeful accountability and godly pure counsel, would you consider it a wise investment? The C12 group is a national organization focused on spiritual and professional development of Christian CEOs and business owners. Members participate in professionally facilitated monthly meetings where 12 experienced Christian CEOs exchange ideas to solve business issues biblically. Information is available from Tom Walther at 715-459-9611 or online at c12easternwa.com. Paul Casey: A second tip for you in work-life balance is to watch your gauges. Watch your gauges, so, your dashboard of your car has gauges or an airplane has gauges. Gauges are really important to see if we are in trouble, if anything is running a little bit hot or needs attention. Henry Cloud and John Townsend said in their boundaries book, "God wants us to take care of ourselves so that we can help others without moving into crisis ourselves." One speaker says, "Take care of your body like you're on a space shuttle headed on a long journey." Paul Casey: So, a gauge is something that runs a little bit hot, that's not you. Like you think when you do this thing you say, "Boy, that's not even me. Why did I do that?" It's things that get triggered in your life. Like for me, a trigger for me if I'm on the edge of burnout is when I start losing creativity. I've got ideas all the time. As an entrepreneur, I just love creating, coming up with new ideas and if I slowly, slowly go dark in my brain, have no ideas, I'm thinking, Uh-oh, something's wrong. That's a gauge for me when I don't have any ideas. That means, wow, I must be fried. Or another one of my triggers is balls getting dropped. Like someone's in a coffee shop and they texted me and go like, "Hey, so Paul, are you coming? I thought we were meeting over there at Barracuda's." I'm like, "Oh no. I didn't even get that into my calendar cause I was running so fast." So that tells me that I'm on the edge of burnout. Paul Casey: Maybe for you, you have consistently high energy and all of a sudden you're in this consistently low energy weather pattern in your life. Maybe you typically are a peaceful person and now you seem to be freaking out and having panic attacks or just anxiety way more often than you used to. That could be a signal that your gauge is running hot. Maybe you're typically a peaceful person and you can roll with the punches, but you've gotten angry and irritable more often than usual. Like, how quick is your trigger versus how much grace that you give or how much laughs that you share with people? Stress is informational. So when you're experiencing these things, it's your body and your spirit telling you that, Whoa, you've got to check those gauges. Paul Casey: You've got to get back and move that fulcrum over into the life side and pour back into yourself. So think about what is your gauge. You want to be able to be response-able, sort of like that word responsible, but put a hyphen between a response and able. We need to be able to respond to things without freaking out or without just going into the tank and going dark. So if you're redlining, redlining's a term that my trainer taught me many years ago, that's when I can barely breathe. For the next exercise she said, "You're redlining, go get some air outside." So if you're red lining in life, get back into a self care program, move that fulcrum urgently over to the life side or you will burn out and then you'll be no good for anyone because then you're just going to bleed all over everybody. And that's not going to help, especially if you're in leadership because leaders, they just don't have that privilege to be able to come into work and wreck everybody else's day. Paul Casey: Prolonged stress can become chronic unless steps are taken to eliminate the source or effectively manage that stress. Let me give you two more points. The third one is to filter each request for your time and every interaction through the boundary lens. Filter each request for your time and interaction through the boundary lens. Paul Casey: In other words, if you're strong and you're feeling strong in your life, you can offer it, but if you're depleted, you don't because then it might put you over the edge and like I said, then you'll bleed all over everybody. So you think about like is this a strong place that I can say yes to it, but if I'm feeling like I haven't taken care of myself for a while, then I would say no. One way you can do that is to truly say that you will think about it. So somebody says, 'Hey, Hey Paul, can you do this for me?' And everything inside me wants to yell out "Yes!" because I'm an opportunity person and I like to say yes to things, but I have to teach myself to insert the pause. Paul Casey: So there's stimulus instead of response. You go stimulus, you insert the pause and then you respond with, "Hey, can I think about that for a while?" Or maybe you ask a little bit more about their commitment level before I say yes and if safe, you know somebody might go like, "Well why? Why do you have to think about that?" Then you're going to say, "Because I need to run that through my filter. I need to see if I have enough margin." Most decisions are not urgent so if that person won't allow me to think about, then it's definitely a no. And I've had people call like, "Oh, hey okay. Well then you just think about it for a while." Paul Casey: So separate yourself a bit. Buy yourself some space and during this break,  stop, look and listen. Here's the three parts of stop, look and listen. So stop and think, do I want to do this or am I trying to please somebody else? Because pleasers, we struggle with that. What will I receive from my participation in this? Am I going to get, is this going to build my confidence level if I do that? If I agree to do this, will it continue to be rewarding or do I think over time it's going to become oppressive and then I'm going to start getting resentful? So the stop part is to stop and think. Paul Casey: The look part is to look at your commitments, all the other things that are on your plate and count the cost for this commitment. This one that's staring you in the face right now. Ask for clarification, like what really is the time commitment to this? Ask for more information so you can answer these other questions. So you stop and think, look at your commitments and count the cost and the listen part is to listen to your feelings. So oftentimes we're running so fast that we skip this step and if you're not a big feelings person, you're like, yeah, you sort of laugh this one off. But do you find yourself hesitating or hedging when you're thinking about saying yes to this? That could be your body saying like, Nope, don't go there. Paul Casey: Do you feel cornered or trapped into making a decision? That's probably another thing that you need to say no to. Do I feel a tightness somewhere in my body because often stress, there's biofeedback in your body that you feel a tightness in your shoulders or that sick feeling in your stomach or do you feel at your temples? That's probably a sign to say no. Do you feel a nervous reaction? Like you start tapping your pencil or you got your legs crossed and it's just going a mile a minute? That could be a warning signal that's coming from inside you that says you might need to rethink this decision. Paul Casey: Remember that you must take full responsibility for the choice once you make it. So you can't play the blame game once you say yes, because as it's been said, blame is to be lame. Put a hyphen between the B and the L. so to blame is to b-lame and nobody wants to be lame and there's a shortage of people who own their own issues, you've probably noticed that. So the quote for you to remember on this one is "Don't let your mouth overload your back." In other words, by saying yes too much, don't let it overload your capacity that you have available to you. So once you've done that, then you can make the decision without regrets. See, you've run it through all these filters that you have and then you can say yes or no. Mahatma Gandhi says, "A no uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a yes merely uttered to please or what is worse just to avoid trouble." Paul Casey: One more step. The fourth step of achieving work-life balance or rhythm is to have accountability partners who keep you true to yourself and your stated work-life balance. Have accountability partners. We need to draw on a power higher than ourselves to maintain good boundaries because if we just try to have that willpower, it's usually going to become won't power after a while. So we really need accountability partners. Have them ask you specific questions, where are you are the weakest and sometimes we want to avoid those questions because it's like, Oh, I don't want to answer that, but usually that's a really great question for us to rebuild that resolve to have boundaries. Check in regularly with that person or those people, rejoice together when you succeed and fail forward when you screw up. In other words, we're going to fail but we're going to fail in the right direction by saying, 'All right, I screwed up this time but I am not going to say yes to that next time." Paul Casey: So, good points here. Remembering to figure out what's most important to you, to watch your gauges, to filter each request through the boundary lens, and to have accountability partners who keep you true to yourself. What do you get as a result of this? Hey, there's some really good work-life payoffs and benefits. One is you're going to live with joy and not anxiety and who doesn't want more joy? Second is being good stewards of your time and your money. Third is working with excellence, not sideways energy. Fourth is to experience true community with people you care about and you're not just giving them the leftovers. Paul Casey: And fifth is you get to model this work-life balance for your children, for your friends and for your followers. Whether that's on social media or people that are following you at work and I'd be happy to email you these slides or my speaker notes, if you want to reach out to me at growingforward@paulcasey.org. But, I really hope that you will, we'll wrestle this down because, work-life rhythm is huge. Don't try to achieve balance, really try to move that fulcrum back or forth into seasons where it makes the most sense. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a resource I'd like to offer you. And it is a goal setting tool. It's a pad of paper that has got 25 sheets and on the front it has you setting one very important goal for yourself and really making that both smart goal and a hard goal, which it says what those mean on there. You could even sketch the goal out on that front page. On the back page of each sheet is a storyboard tool, which breaks that big goal into six small steps. And you can put a deadline by that. You could put the resources needed by each one and it's amazing how by doing that storyboard, you're not going to get stuck along the way because you're going to know what the next step is and it's going to be in a bite size for you to tackle it and get more goals done this year than you ever had before. Paul Casey: So that goal setting tool is on my website, paulcasey.org or again, you can reach out to me through email. Again, this is Paul Casey and I have been happy to share with you about work-life rhythm today and we want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence and it is a quote by Dorothea Brande and she says, "Envisioning the end is enough to put the means in motion." Until next time, KGF, keep growing forward. Speaker 3: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Paul would also like to help you restore sanity to your crazy schedule and get your priorities done every day by offering you his free control my calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool or open a text message to seven two zero zero zero and type the word growing. Speaker 4: The Tri-Cities influencer podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

It goes without saying that COVID-19 is having an enormous (and terrible) impact on our communities and lives at every level, from the broadly inter-national to the intensely personal. We wanted to take a moment and explore how our work in tech, combined with our religious point of view, might have lessons and coping strategies for us in the days and weeks ahead. Please listen or read the transcript below. Leon (00:06):(Intro Music) Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our careers as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious.Leon (00:54):Before we begin, I want to take a moment to acknowledge that a lot of folks are truly struggling, whether it's because of impacts to their health or fear from the uncertainty around us. I want to let everyone know that our hearts and prayers are with you all and if you need to talk, or vent, or share, you should definitely reach out. This is the time when we need each other more than ever.Leon (01:15):It is March 18th, 2020 and while most of the episodes on Technically Religious are relatively timeless, this topic comes at a point in history where it might be obsolete before it even posts. That said, here at Technically Religious, we had to take a moment to recognize the impact that COVID-19 is having on our communities and the world and discuss how our work in tech and our religious point of view may have lessons or at least coping strategies to help us out in this unique time. I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my partners in podcasting crime, Ben KeenBen (01:50):Hello!Leon (01:51):and Keith Townsend.Keith (01:53):Hello.Leon (01:54):and Yechiel Kalmanson.Yechiel (01:56):Hello again.Leon (01:57):All right. Before we dive in, even though it's a weighty topic, I still want to make sure everyone has a chance to engage in some shameless self promotion. So, uh, Ben, why don't you kick it off for us?Ben (02:07):Hello, my name is Ben keen. I'm a senior systems administrator slash monitoring engineer for a large retailer known as American Eagle Outfitters, headquartered here in Pittsburgh. You can find me on the Twitters, as Leon says, at the underscore Ben underscore keen and I identify as a collective Christian.Keith (02:27):Hey, I'm Keith Townsend, principal of The CTO Advisor. You can find me on the web at The CTO advisor. Register for the conference coming up next month. CTO advisor virtual conference. Uh, I am nondenominational Christian.Leon (02:41):Okay. Yechiel,Yechiel (02:42):and I'm Yechiel Kalmenson, I'm a software engineer at VM Ware. My Twitter handle is @YechielK. Um, my blog is RabbiOnRails.io. I also have a weekly newsletter with my friend Ben Greenberg called Torah and Tech and I'm an Orthodox Jew.Leon (02:58):Okay. And just things out. I'mLeon (03:00):Leon Adato. I am a Head Geek. Yes. That's actually my job title at SolarWinds, which is neither solar nor wind. It's a software vendor, but naming things is apparently hard. And that's why my title is Head Geek in the company name is SolarWinds. You can find me on the Twitters, which I delight in saying because I know it annoys Keith's daughter so much. That's why we say it. I'm on the Twitters @LeonAdato. Uh, my, uh, website is, adatosystems.com, where I pontificate about things both technical and religious. And I also identify as an Orthodox Jew. And if you're scribbling those things down, please don't. It's all okay. There's going to be show notes posted the day after this episode drops both on the website and also on anywhere that you find the finer podcasts on the internet so you can get all of those links and more. So diving into this topic. I think the first thing is how can we keep calm and carry on as the UK like to say during world war II and it has brought that back out now. What can we do to remain focused on the fact that it is going to be generally speaking? Okay.Yechiel (04:12):Um, yeah, so I think just one thing to keep in mind is that overall, at least for those of us in tech where most of what we do is pretty easy to do remotely. Uh, most of all we're doing what we're doing just with adjustments for the new reality.Ben (04:30):Yeah. And I think tools such as WebEx, Google Meet, uh, FaceTime, uh, whatever conferencing tool you or your company leverages are keeping some of that sanity and sane alive. Uh, I think from a tech aspect, it's really important for us to maintain our collective cool. Um, you know, things are gonna be stressful. Things are stressful right now. A lot of our systems are being pushed to the upper max of what we designed them to do. So yeah things are going to break. Things are gonna run slow users are going to be overwhelmed. Um, but I think ultimately the biggest thing that we as technology professionals can do is to relay that calm by maintaining our calm. Don't get mad at the end user who has never called in via WebEx for it. Doesn't know the first thing about it, doesn't understand how VPNing works or any of that. Keep in mind, for a lot of these people, work from home has never been an option. We're blessed in the fact that for most of us in technology, we have wifi, we have laptops, we have power, we're good. A lot of other companies, a lot of other people in our own companies cannot and have not worked like that. So maintain your calm, deep breath deep breaths.Leon (05:53):Right. I think, and I also think that our religious point of view speaks to that in the sense that you want to judge others favorably. You want to be empathetic. You want to, you know, to use the phrase, walk a mile in their shoes to remember that that salesperson is used to going out and pounding the pavement, you know, eight or nine or 10 hours a day and meeting with people and suddenly they're being asked to not do that and to find an entirely different way of interacting and still make quota, and still, you know, do their job. And that can be really disorienting, forget about off putting or it's different or it's change and people don't like change. It's disorienting. Um, and I think that again, our faith gives us a chance to really exercise that muscle and, um, and, and be kind.Ben (06:47):Yeah. And the piggyback on that real quick, uh, when it comes to meeting quotas and meeting sales expectations, uh, you know, we're hitting this right at the crucial points of some people's fiscal calendars. Um, you know, so performance targets and sales targets and things like that are very critical to everybody for our businesses. Uh, you know, yeah. American Eagle sells jeans. We're not saving lives. We're not in the hospital industry, but at the same time, selling those genes is what gives me the ability to have a house.Leon (07:28):Yeah, right.Ben (07:29):You know, and so I got to maintain my calm so that my, the designers in New York city came to get these designs out. We gotta maintain our comps or our website stays up so people can still buy our jeans. Even though right now our stores are currently closed on the brick and border side,Leon (07:47):going back to the people who are used to, uh, you know, a lot, a high level of interaction. I just think that speaks to the concept of community. Um, as, as people of faith, I believe that we have a, a line on what defines a community. If you asked somebody who was more secular, what's your community? Well, it's, you know, the neighborhood where I live. Well, maybe, maybe not, you know, is your community, well, I have a, a homeowners association. That's my community. No, Nope. That's not it. So even defining what is community, it's not about tribe. It's not about your sports team. It's not about an affinity group, necessarily. There's something more to it. And I think that our religious sensibility helps us understand what that is. And it allows us to leverage the technology to build that community, to allow avenues for folks to continue to experience that sense of connectedness that we crave.Ben (08:47):Yeah. I think a lot of churches have gotten, uh, and when I say churches, I'm talking to all religious, uh, places of congregation. Uh, but churches, synagogues, mosques, whatever, have really gotten a crash course in the last 72 hours on what it means to be a hub of the community. How can, how can a church, uh, uh, find example? Uh, so my dad's a retired minister. He preached for 43 years. Um, but he was always in smaller churches. He'd never gotten to these, you know, mega churches with thousands of congregants. He would preach the 30, 40, maybe a hundred. Uh, but a lot of these small churches are having to get a crash course on FaceTime live. Uh, zoom, WebEx. What is, how can they get the message out? How can they still deliver their service, their product, much like how can American Eagle deliver our jeans? How can that religious venue still deliver its product in giving people a place to go? Now, personally, my religious view is I don't necessarily have to, I feel I don't need to go to a building to worship my God. Uh, I can go outside and I can spend time with my wife and my service dog and or my kids and we can commune like that. But for a lot of people, having that point of focus, whether it's a church or synagogue or mosque, uh, is crucial to them and how they are going to get through this. So that's where the crash course is coming in the heavy.Leon (10:23):Well, and, and it's interesting you say that because the Jewish community is really struggling because of the point of view. So just for, for context in Judaism, we are commanded, not encouraged, not you know, lauded but commanded to pray three times a day, to come together in a group and pray. And um, at this point all the synagogues are shut down. Like everything is shut down, but it's not just the prayer. There's also lectures and um, learning that goes on. There's one on one learning that goes on. And to just give a sense of the underlying aspect of that, there is a belief that this world exists purely for the purpose of learning Torah, of learning scripture. And that if that isn't happening, there is no reason for the world to exist. That if there isn't someone, somewhere in the world learning Torah, then the world will cease because the whole purpose of it no longer is there. And to be honest, as these synagogues are closing down, you can see real, almost terror in people's faces. How can this be happening?Yechiel (11:36):And just add context into what Leon has said. Um, throughout the darkest periods of Jewish history, and Jewish history have seen some real dark periods. Like even during world war II or in Soviet Russia, where going to synagogue was punishable by death, pretty much, Jews risked their lives to go to, to go to synagogue and pray. The rabbi I met in the initial rye pray, he was born in Moscow in the 70s. His dad used to walk two and a half hours every Shabbat, not to the synagogue even coz that was too dangerous. They would walk two and half hours to someone's house where people would gather together and pray. And I heard him like last Shabbat, our shul was still open and there were discussing official close and, and really paint the prospect that the shul might close really pained him. It was traumatic for him. And the fact that eventually he finally did decide to close just shows how seriously how serious and unprecedented this situation is.Ben (12:36):And that really goes back to speak to why we have empathy for our fellow human here. You know, think about this. If when you go to the store and right now as of March 18th that we're recording this toilet papers still want a hot commodity. People are literally pulling it off of the pallet before the stock person can even take it off the pallet and put it on the shelves. So there are people getting in physical altercations at the stores. But maybe we should pause and think about it, is, yes, toilet paper is necessary in life. I get it, I got it. Good. But why not pause for a second and think about what these people are going through and you know, please thank you. Excuse me. Your general manners go a long way. It's just like, you know, we keep hearing about washing your hands, 20 seconds, sing happy birthday twice, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Basic stuff. You think you would know. However, um, we need to be reminded sometimes of how far a please and a thank you can go and to empathize with other people may be going through.Leon (13:42):Yeah. Now I want to, I want to say, so, uh, I picked up my son from school, from Yeshiva on Sunday. They closed down. And, uh, when I picked him up, uh, the boys all have flip phones. That is the most technologically advanced thing that they have for, to their name. And, and the rabbis were saying, no, no, no, we're gonna, we're going to keep these classes going. We're just gonna all dial into a phone number and we're all gonna have our class together, you know, 10, 20, 30 boys in a class all on their flip phones for four or five hours a day. And I'm thinking no. That is not what is going to be happening. Yeah. So the, the thing that's amazing to me is how quickly back to Ben, to your point, how quickly, uh, communities are coming up to speed on their technological options.Leon (14:28):So again, Sunday I picked him up. Monday morning, 30 boys tried to dial in with their flip phones to make this work. And within two hours they had a Google meet channel. And this isn't just the boys, this isn't a story about, you know, wow, kids are so hip and with it technologically and everything like that. This is, that. They were, you know, the school had figured out that, okay, this isn't working - pivot. And they had pivoted over to uh, you know, using Google neat. And by the afternoon all the boys had, you know, headsets on and they had microphones and they were, you know, they were figuring it out. And uh, Tuesday, uh, my son had, you know, three different classes and he had one on one learning with a couple of friends and then today, this afternoon, the English teachers finally got the assignments out. So I mean there's a, you know, there's a relative value of what gets the most attention in a Yeshiva and English classes are not it, but okay.Leon (15:26):But again, on Sunday they had flip phones and they thought, well, we're just going to do the best we can. And here we are three days in, you know, 72 hours. And they're already, you know, light years ahead of where they expected to be and they're able to keep that learning going. They're able to keep that sense of community in class. Now, my son said something interesting. He said it was a class. It was, it was our normal, the, the word is a sheur, you know, it was a normal sheur. Now, if we hadn't done it together, we wouldn't have been able to do it this way. It's only because we knew each other and we knew how the class was going to run, that we were able to do it remote, but we were able to do it.Ben (16:10):I just hope, now as a technologist it kinda hurts me to say, but I really hope that some of this tech, the technology that we're leveraging for this whole practice, social distancing doesn't necessarily cause a rip. You know, we're on a very fine line between what we can do right now and what can be done the future. Uh, you know, a lot of companies, as Keith said at the beginning of, during his intro, he's doing a virtual conference. There's a lot of financial savings in doing those conferences virtually. But what does it take away from the experience? Uh, you know it. And with churches, what does it, yeah, a church can livestream and it's great and we can worship, but what does it take away from the experience? So my hope is that while some of this is really, really good and it's really awesome and yes, it helps pay my bills. What's the prolonged, you know, when we're sitting here on March 18th, 2021 where are we sitting?Leon (17:10):all right. And that's, that's a great pivot. So the next topic I want to talk about is what do we think the longterm effect of this is going to be? And to answer your question, Ben, my feeling is that for work, I hope it does stick. I hope a lot more companies that have simply closed the door or never opened the door on the concept of work, remote telework, work from home are going to open up and say, you know what? It really did work. There is a place for it. Maybe not for everybody, but it is work. On the other hand, for religion, I hope it won't. I hope that there's a, an absolute return. I know, especially for, you know, uh, people who are Jewish, I know that being remote doesn't work. Literally, it does not work in the structure of prayer to do it this way. So there's not going to be any desire on people's part to continue to pray in their own homes and not come together.Yechiel (18:02):Yeah. And especially for Orthodox Jews, um, like, so, okay. So during the week you can probably have study groups together over zoom or whatever. But for Shabbat, at least for Orthodox observant Jews, we, we don't use electricity. We don't use, uh, computers or anything. So we're not, Shabbat services are not going to be moving over to zoom anytime soon. Even during, even during this crisis, it's still not, we will be Shabbat, we will be praying at home alone without our communities.Leon (18:35):Right.Yechiel (18:35):And as soon as, as soon as the synagogues are able to open, they will open.Keith (18:40):So, you know, that reminds me of last week, we had tech field day, which was fully remote. And if you've ever done tech field, day, tech field days, this event where Stephen Foskett in the, uh, Gestalt IT folks get together with 12 influencers, we fly to Silicon Valley or, or some similar area and we go from vendor to vendor, and presenter to presenter, they present to us, uh, their technology stack. And it's a really great, you know, interaction with the product teams. We, we, last week we did VMware and we did it for the first time virtually last week because we had no choice. And while it worked, it was missing certain elements. You know, the, it's really interesting, someone on Twitter said, you know what, I hope companies realize that you don't have to meet in person to be productive, true, but there's a huge difference. And I think energy when you're missing touch, smell, taste, all these human senses that we have when we commune together, uh, I think the, the requirement that three people be together physically and, uh, in Christianity we have this, uh, this commandment that we shouldn't, you know, the apostle Paul talked about not getting out of the habit of meeting regularly. I think those things are there because the thing that we kind of talk about energy in the room it's all, I think it's more of a spiritual, uh, experience when humans get together and do the human thing.Ben (20:24):Yeah. And I think the one thing that this social distancing is doing for, for some, uh, is the deepening of our faith. You know, in, in a prior life I served eight and a half years in the military. Uh, I got combat deployments and lots of, I've been shot at all that fun stuff. And during that tiMe, which before the last week was some of the worst time in my life, uh, when it comes to not knowing what the, what tomorrow is going to bring, I found myself turning to religion. Uh, I think now here we are, um, again, we're finding ourselves, granted there's a huge difference between combat and a virus. I get that, but it's almost the same that we don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. Um, so a lot of people are turning to their scriptures, are turning to find this time where they can't go to their normal places. Then they're just sitting and, or find themselves either meditating, praying, reading the scriptures or having conversation with a friend, again over FaceTime, Duo, whatever. But they're having more faith-based discussions of what their religion can do to help them get through this uncertain time.Leon (21:41):So it's an interesting question. I mean, there's two sides of that coin, right? There's how, uh, social distancing maybe, um, both detracting from and adding to religious observations. So I wanna I want to start off with the negative and we'll pivot to the positive and end on the positive. So is his social distancing disturbing religious observations? We've already talked about a few things. You know that in Judaism you need to have 10 adult men together in what's called a minyan or else you're really, you know, you're just, you're just praying alone so that obviously there's some, some structural, uh, organizational things that are in there. Is there other, any other things about distancing that are making it harder to be religious in some way?Yechiel (22:27):Um, yeah, so like you said, on the face of it, it's, it would seem that way, um, and definitely feels that way. Uh, but it's also important to remember that a big tenant of definitely Judaism I'm sure Christianity as well and all other religions is preserving life. And that is also part of, you're part of a big central part of the religion. And it actually reminds me of a story I just shared on Twitter this week. Um, I told it to my son this morning when he was really disappointed to find out that he won't be going to shul Chavez. Um, there were two brothers lived in the 17 hundreds and Rabbi Elimelech and Rabbi Zusha, Rabbi Elimelech actually, just yesterday was the anniversary of his passing. Um, so yeah, so they, they were from the founders of the Hasidic movement. It's a movement within Orthodox Judaism and part of their service of God, occasionally they would, uh, dress up as simple people, uh, as peasants, and they would travel from town to town incognito. So no one recognizing them and whatnot. One night they came to town, they found it in to put their bag down. Um, and overnight some silver, some cutlery went missing. Uh, the innkeeper obviously suspected, his first suspicion fell on the two strangers. Uh, and he called the police. The police obviously took the innkeeper's word over these two strangers. Um, and they ended up in jail in a cell surrounded by criminals, thieves, murderers, the lowest elements of Ukrainian society, uh, in the morning. Rabbi Elimelech One of the two brothers wanted to start the morning prayers, but then he know, he realized there's a problem. He turned to his brother as a shy. He says, you know, there's a problem, we can't pray this morning. And those Ukrainian jails weren't really high tech. And instead of bathrooms, they, every cell had a bucket in the corner where prisoners where, the inmates would relieve themselves. And Jewish law says that you're not allowed to pray in a room with dirt, with filth, including stuff you'd find in such a bucket. So Rabbi Elimelech told his brother, you know, we're not gonna be able to pray today. I'm like, who said this? The idea that he wouldn't pray for one day was so inconceivable to him. He started crying and Rabbi Zusha turned to his brother. He says, why are you crying? He says, every day we serve God by praying to him today, God, God commanded us not to pray in this situation that we are in now. Today we can serve God by not praying. That is how we will serve God. And even more than that, when we serve God, there's a commandment to serve God with joy. So everyday we would pray joyfully, we would sing, we would dance, we would be involved in, you know, pray with, with great joy. Now we are serving God by not praying. We have to serve God with joy. We should be happy. And Rabbi Elimelech realized his brother was right. And the two brothers started reveling in this new service of God that they just discovered. And they started singing and dancing right there in the cell with surrounded by all these inmates. And these people obviously thought, you know, they never saw, you know, they were still convinced that Jews have horns. So to see two Jews just singing and dancing in a Ukrainian jail cell that was like the, you know, it seemed like it was the strangest thing they've ever seen. But uh, you know, it's a jail cell. There's only so many knock, knock jokes you can say and so many card games you can play. They figured, you know, why not break them out? Autonomy, they all join. It all just started singing and started dancing and before along the whole cell was, you know, the whole dance party going on and the commotion was so loud that the guard outside heard it and he knew that his job was to make these inmates life miserable. If they're singing and dancing, he's not doing his job right. So he runs in, he grabs one of the prisoners, says, what's going on here? Why is everyone seeing and dancing? And he says, I don't know. You see those two crazy Jews in the corner, they, they were talking to each other, they were pointing at the bucket and they started singing and dancing. So we joined them. We started singing and dancing as well. This guy said, really? That bucket's them sing and dance. I'll show those Jews.Yechiel (26:45):He runs the corner, grabs the bucket and takes it out of the room. As soon as he does that Rabbi Zusha throw him out. He says, Elimelech, my brother. Now we can pray. So I see the point of the story is that yeah, it's tough. You know, we are used to worshiping in a certain way. We're used to serving God in a certain way, but right now God wants us to serve him by protecting our health, by protecting the health of our community. And by staying home, we survived. You know, someone said on Twitter that, you know, and the, you know, and the third is in the forties you are a hero by going across the, going across the ocean and dying on some Pacific Island. Nowadays you can be a hero by sitting on your couch and being binging Netflix. So, right. Go for it. Right. So, yeah, be, be heroicLeon (27:37):in our, in our time. Oh, that's wonderful. Great story. Okay. So, so yeah, I think we've outlined the ways in which I think it's easy to see the ways in which the, the distancing is is bothering or religious observations. But Ben, you were talking about the way it's, it's deepening your faith, it's giving you an opportunity to, you know, to maybe find it a nuance or an aspect that you hadn't before.Ben (28:03):I, you know, I think it comes, it permeates at a lot of things. This whole idea of social distancing has a lot of negative connotation. But if you also look at its social slowing, you know, our lives are so go, go, go. We get up at a certain time, we'd be at work and we do our work and it's go, go, go. We get home and we gotta run the kids to softball, practice soccer, practice football, practice, dance, get home. Now I've got gotta make dinner. Now we've got to get the kids cleaned up and get them to bed and then, Oh, now I can sit for 10 minutes. Now it's midnight. Now I'm asleep with this whole idea of social distancing. You know, our kids don't have those sporting events. We can't go out to those happy hours after work. Uh, so we're back home. You know, right now American Eagle, uh, we're on a work from home basis, 100%. So I wake up, I get online, I do my work. At five o'clock, I log off and I'm home already. So I find myself being able to sit and kind of be in my thoughts and take into account the blessings that, you know, right now my parents, um, are in the high severity group of possibly contracting this COVID 19 stuff. Um, my dad's a diabetic. He's in his seventies. My mom's in her late sixties. Um, you know, and they're also in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which is one of the hardest hit areas right now in Pennsylvania. But I'm thankful that they both have their health. I'm thankful that my, myself and my wife and my kids, and yes, even our animals have our health, you know, it's so, you know, I'm not necessarily deep in the Bible. I never really have, but I'm thankful for those things. Just like in combat, you know, I was thankful to get through that day. That's how I am now. I got through Wednesday, March 18th I'm ready to get through March 19th I'm ready to get through March 20th and just keep going through. And eventually, yes, there is a light at the tunnel. It could be the train coming towards us or exit point, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel.Leon (30:12):yeah. Yeah. And I, I really do believe that it's, it's not a train coming at us that there is, you know, 14 days and then, you know, you know, pretty solidly that you're clear. One of the things that, that the social distancing has done for me, and this is something that I've talked about a number of times on this podcast, is that, um, when I'm, when I'm praying in a group, I'm sort of caught up at the speed that the group is going at and I personally feel a lot of pressure because of that. I can't take my time the way that I'd like to, and being permitted, being, uh, having the opportunity to pray at home means I can take all the time I want or don't want, you know, in any given moment, uh, for those prayers. And I also am not distracted by other people around me. I mean, you know, people are there and they have bodies and they sniff or they cough or they, whatever. And if you really focused in one moment and then somebody made a noise or you just happened to notice of the corner of your eye, either scrolling their phone or they're done in you're not or whatever it is, none of those things are, you know, intruding on my focus. Now, do I use every moment to focus with laser light clarity? No, I don't, but I have the opportunity to, and I'm recognizing that. And so, um, you know, Yechiel, to your point, you know, I'm taking that as a positive that this is an opportunity I've got for as long as I've got it to try to, to really, um, deepen my attention and also, uh, enjoy the slowness of the ride.Yechiel (31:51):Yeah, I'll definitely say that. The last few days of praying at home while they were missing the communal aspect of prayer, my prayers were definitely a lot more focused and thoughtful than they otherwise usually are. Yeah.Leon (32:05):So I want to pivot that thought or that idea over to the, the work and the technical side. I, you know, there was a song back in the 30s. How are you going to keep them mowed down on the farm once they've seen Paris? So how are you going to keep the office, you know, down in the, in the cubicle once they've seen the work from home, you know, Paris, the, the, the joy of it. Will companies be able to get their employees to come back?Yechiel (32:30):I'm not so worried about that. Um, I mean, yeah, a lot of us are introverts and we're loving it. We're loving every minute of it, or at least I loved it last week, this week with the schools closed and my kids and my wife home and we're back into an office, open office plan again.Leon (32:46):Right. And you don't even have cube walls, even half cube walls. It's just the whole office, an open office planYechiel (32:55):if your coworkers were jumping all over the place and fighting at the top of their lungs. But, um, but yeah, but okay. Obviously once schools are open and you know, the kids are out. I love to stay back at home, but I also realize that I'm not the only type of person around. And I know many of my friends who are not introverts or some of them are introverts, but they still do need that human interaction that you get at an office with other people. So I'm not so worried that physical brick and mortar offices will be going out of business anytime soon.Ben (33:31):No. And, and I think, uh, two points, one, when it comes to this whole introvert extrovert thing, at least in my experience, a lot of people in tech, uh, lean more towards the introverted side of the fence. I'm kind of more extroverted. I can walk into a room of 10 people and I co I can walk out with 20 friends. Um, but also on the flip side were, we were just talking about earlier about having virtual conferences. You know, companies might see the savings that they're having by not producing these large in-person shows and think, Oh, maybe we can do that again. But hopefully they see the power that comes from having people there. Same thing as we're for home. Yeah, it's great for a few days. Uh, but sometimes you can hash things out with a whiteboard and having all the key players, all your key stakeholders in that physical room. You know, there's no audio interference. There's no lag of webcams. There's none of that. Oh, can you see my screen now?Yechiel (34:38):Can you hear me.Ben (34:39):exactlyLeon (34:41):No, what, why, but, Oh, sorry. No, you go ahead.Ben (34:51):Having that opportunity to meet in person I think will, will stay, uh, in place now, hopefully some employees that are, you know, companies that are more butt in seat compared to allowing remote work. Hopefully they can see some of the benefit of allowing some of their employees one, two days a week from work in home. But personally, I work from home two days a week and I look forward to the office three days a week.Leon (35:16):Yeah. I think, my hope is that, uh, offices realize that work from home, telework, is a both and not an either or decision that, um, maybe instead of this, this lockdown one way or the other, there's some more flexibility that people can, can find in it. Um, and also I just wanted to comment that, that it's not necessarily been that there's a lot of people in it who are introvert in, you know, really sort of defined introverts. But I think a lot of the work that we do, and it tends to be somewhat solitary, tends to require a level of being, you know, in the zone to have that flow time. Uh, and so our work lends itself to not being in an office environment, not having the walk-by interruptions and distractions as much. But again, what we're talking about is flexibility to say, I've got some, I got to bang on some really difficult code. I'm going to go away, you know, or in my case I have to write a whole bunch of words. I have to, you know, crank out a couple of essays. I'm going to go away. I'm going to put myself in a quiet place where I can just focus on that versus I need to brainstorm. I need to bounce ideas off of people I need. Even if the people I'm talking to aren't the ones who I'm going to build something with, I just need the interaction to get the neurons firing and I want that option as well.Ben (36:47):Yeah. And I think that's interesting too. Uh, you know, I, I have a friend who sells who's a liquor sales person. They sell alcohol to clubs and stuff like that. So their job is very much out in the community making those sales again to our earlier point of supporting our sales staff. You know, they are having a much harder time right now than I am, because for me, I'm not getting pulled by the shoulder. The, Hey, come look at this real quick. Or Hey, I need you to do this real quick. Uh, IMs are a lot easier to ignore than somebody tapping on your cube wall., But for my friend, they are seriously, I mean it is not even stir crazy. They are just besides themselves, not knowing which way is up because their job is to get out in the community, sell their product, and they can't do that right now. Right?Leon (37:35):So that takes us, I think into the next and in the last major talking point that I want to hit tonight, which is what we hope for in the future. What we expect in the future. Um, you know, what we, what we wish and believe is coming. Um, and I'm gonna start this off with a thought that that sort of takes a, a sharp left turn. Last week there was a fairly large outcry in the Orthodox community, at least here in Cleveland. Why haven't the rabbis made a statement? Um, and it's more of a cultural thing, but the really great rabbis, the smart ones, the ones who are really on top of all, you know, all the information. Frequently wll come out with a statement, a direction that says, this is how we're going to approach this. And the statement can be very brief and say, do this. Or the statement could be very detailed and say, based on all these scriptural and commentaries and all these references, here's how I've come to this decision. So it can be any one or both of those. And so there's this outcry last week, why haven't the rabbis made a statement about what we should be doing? And the answer I heard was that from, from one of my rabbis, he said, I've been on the phone for a few hours this morning with several people and we talked over topics and concepts and we made some tentative plans. And by the time we hung up the phone, the situation had changed so much that nothing we decided on was valid anymore. Not a single thing that we discussed was relevant. So we can't. And what I got out of that was this absolute awareness of the power of their words that these great rabbis were very careful with their words because it wasn't just the, well, they could make a half statement that could say, well, we're still looking at it and we're thinking about it. Anything they said was going to cause a reaction of some kind. And so they were extremely stingy with their words to make sure that no one got the wrong impression and, and that left an impact. And I'm hoping, I really hope that people see this and they take it forwarded and have a, a recognition of it.Keith (39:55):Well that's definitely another podcast topic. But one of the things that I've noticed, just not in the religious world, but religious world in tech and business as well, words have power. As I'm expanding my little mini empire here at my business and I'm bringing on more people are starting to get frontline employees who, you know, their job is to do a thing. Keith, you hired me to be the DNS administrator and when I comment, And I say, man, wouldn't it be a wild idea that we, uh, be a secure DNS or some fancy new thing? They take that as gospel and start to run with it. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That was just a big idea. And once you put words out there, it's really hard to pull them back in.Ben (40:47):Yeah, absolutely. I think, uh, the one hope I have that comes out of all this is that we as people, uh, put more emphasis on the sensitivity that words can have the power of our words and the choices of our words. You know, um, I have a service dog. I have a medical alert service dog is with me 24, seven, 365. Um, we've been together since September 20th at 1:30 PM is when I got her. Um, last week I went to the grocery store. Something that has always been sort of difficult for me to do with my anxiety and own, uh, spacial issues I have. Um, but I'm walking to the grocery store, um, and this was before all the real craziness set foot here in Pennsylvania. And this woman starts yelling at me and when I say yelling, I mean straight red face screaming at me.Ben (41:42):Why are you taking your dog into the store? Why you taking your dog into the store? And we've had some negative contact before with people that don't understand that my service dog is a highly trained dog. Um, it's not a pet, it's not an emotional support animal. She is physically here to help me with some physical elements I have, but she's yelling at me that my dog can carry the coronavirus. That is false. Dogs cannot carry the virus. Yes, the virus can live on their fur, on their leash, on their collar, but you deal with that, you wipe that stuff down, you clean it. Uh, dogs themselves cannot carry it. But this woman was just so hell bent that she saw this on Twitter or Facebook or whatever social outlet she was on, that she, that it's gospel to her, you know. And so the power of our words, you know, and also here in Pennsylvania, governor Tom Wolf, uh, on Monday, asked, not mandated, asked businesses that are not essential to close. It wasn't like the governor was said, Hey, you're closing down. Here comes martial law. And people took it as that. And the next day he had to go back on the record and say, look, that's not what I said. Here's what I said. Uh, because people just are, are not grasping what these words truly mean. So hopefully in a future when, when the next big thing comes down because let's face it, there is going to be the next big thing, whether it's a virus, uh, uh, natural disaster, whatever. It's,Leon (43:17):it's always something, it's always going to be something.Ben (43:19):Hopefully when that time comes, people are a little slower to choose their words.Leon (43:25):Yeah. And I think also actions, you know, people who choose to stay open when they've been told to stay closed or people who choose to go out and congregate when they've been told to, to shelter at home. And you know, also even just our consumption. I mean, you know, we, we've talked about it, we mentioned it early on, but the the whole toilet paper thing, like what, I just, I, I just wonder like where did that even start? Like why are people worried about the toilet of all the things, toilet paper? Like, I can see water, I can see food, I can see, you know, all that. So I can see, you know, corn chips or salsa. I can see a run on those things. Yeah. You know, and uh, but, but toilet paper, what's that about?Keith (44:15):Yeah, well it's, you know, it's human nature. We want to control the things we can't control. And one of the things that I've read is that for whatever reason, people have this sense of control when they say, you know what? Uh, and I've gotten into arguments with some good friends, like, you know, we live in Chicago and we have pretty great clean me water and you never bought bottled water, but yet you have cases in cases of bottled water. And it was that, that, you know, their response was, I'm prepared. And while it was completely irrational, it was just emotionally just something that they could do because they, you feel just a lack of complete control, which is really interesting cause we were on a religious podcast and that's, you know, we're, we're, we accept the fact that we're completely not in control in theory.Leon (45:07):Right. It's like it's a, yeah, it's all, it's, it's not in our hands, but I'm going to buy this toilet paper on it. Right.Yechiel (45:15):Yeah. Very good. And regarding toilet paper in particular, actually, uh, interestingly, and don't quote me on this because I don't remember where I saw it and I remember if, I think I remember seeing that in a previous, uh, emergency, I think in Hong Kong they did run out of toilet paper. So, and sort of that got ingrained in people's lizard brains. So the first, as soon as, as soon as like, you know, the pandemic hit, so it's like people's lizard brains automatically, their first response was got to get toilet paper.Leon (45:48):Well, I also wonder if it's just that that mob mentality, that scarcity syndrome that sets in and you see somebody grabbing a whole bunch of toilet paper and you think, Oh my gosh, that's, that's what everyone needs. And you know, there's a domino effect.Yechiel (46:01):Yeah, of course. I mean, you know, even if people's rush on toilet paper is irrational, the fact is that if they're rushing on toilet paper and next week I'm going to run out of toilet paper and there's not going to be any of the stores, I'm going to have a problem.Leon (46:15):Yeah, exactly. And I think that speaks to the larger concept of, again, like we should be careful with our words. We should be careful with our consumption. You know, that, that our consumption can affect other people in ways that we're not necessarily predicting.Ben (46:30):Yeah. And putting it back on the tech side, you know, bandwidth is such a, I mean, that's almost as valuable as toilet paper is right now. And when it come to tech, I would say bandwidth is the toilet paper of tech right now.Leon (46:44):Right.Ben (46:44):When you're looking at having your entire business.Yechiel (46:48):Didn't someone say that the internet was a series of tubes?Leon (46:52):I am absolutely quoting that. That's going to be one of the quotes with the podcast: "bandwidth is the toilet paper of the internet."Ben (47:01):But think about this, um, you know, having bandwidth is so critical right now because when your business, which could be as small as a few hundred or tens of thousands are now leveraging all the VPNs and all the WebEx, all the team chat spaces that they have, your bandwidth pipe shrinks considerably. So maybe consider when you have that WebEx meeting. You know what, turn off your cameras. I mean, let's face it, we're all working home. We're not getting dressed like we normally get dressed. Heck, you may not even be dressed.Leon (47:34):Okay. If that's the case, please do not turn your camera on. Yes, this goes back to common courtesy.Ben (47:41):So you know, bandwidth is very much at a premium right now. So keep that in mind when you're, if you're, if you're new to this whole business continuity thing and you're trying to figure out what your plans are. Think bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth.Leon (47:57):Well and I'll say, um, you know, we we're in tech, we say bandwidth and we think, you know, you know, physical, you know, internet, how many packets do I have? But there's also mental bandwidth. There's emotional bandwidth. There's, you know, there's a lot of people spinning a lot of plates in our office and sometimes the place that they're spinning are not only the things that, that they have to do for work, but also that they have their whole family around them. Yechiel, to your point, again, open office plan where your coworkers are, you know, sitting right next to you saying, "Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy." You know, there's, that has an impact. And being sensitive about not chewing up other people's psychological bandwidth, emotional bandwidth, um, their, their physical meaning time, bandwidth. You know, "I just want to check in. I just want to see how you're doing." "You know what, thanks so much. I really trying to deal right now." You know, that's fine. Some people do need to check in and I think that that's important to do. Back to our comment about community is say, "Hey, just want to make sure you're okay," but don't demand their time. Don't demand that conversation. Just make sure that they know that you're available if they need it. This has been a fantastic conversation, guys. Thank you so much for joining me tonight. I know it was sort of last minute, but we all had some things that we wanted to, to share and comment on with the current situation. Um, we hope that uh, this conversation has given the folks listening, a modicum of comfort and once again, if you need something, if you just need to talk or share, uh, feel free to reach out to us on any of the social media connections that we've listed above or wherever you find us.Speaker 5 (49:41):Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, technicallyreligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions and connect to us on social media.Keith (49:54):Hey, you guys want to get together tomorrow?Ben (49:56):Sure. Let me send my WebEx link and then I gotta go wash my hands.

What if I told you there was a formula for happiness? You'd want to know it wouldn't you? What if I also told you that there was a formula for excitement, fulfillment, and love? Now I've got your attention. Uncovering this formula isn't as difficult as one would think. To do so we must first map out the experiences of our past that led to feeling the emotion we're after. Once we identify the triggers and key elements, we can then take the framework and apply it to any area of our lives to feel the same emotional response as the memory we evoked. Sound like fantasy? Listen and test it out for yourself. I was astounded by the results and I think you'll be too!

Good morning everybody! I was on with Ken and Matt and we had a good discussion about how Coronaviruses were affecting businesses and Cisco's WebEx offer for collaborating securely.  We also talked about how Apple is tightening up the types of Apps that will be in their AppStore. Here we go with Ken and Matt. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig But particularly those that are in regulated or sensitive industries. Of course, we have those right down in the south of Maine, think of those in the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where a lot of people work. Apple, because they are trying to be sensitive to all of these security needs are even tightening them up more for businesses that deal with this. The new standard for military contracts is the CMMC, and it is coming out in June. Craig Good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson, here. They have this "Eggs and Issues" thing over in Portland, which is kind of cool. In New Hampshire, we call it "Politics and Eggs" that happens every once in a while, but Eggs and Issues, seems to be I don't know monthly. Anyhow, Ken and Matt, were over there this morning and we had an excellent chance to chat about a couple of things. I wanted to cover in better detail, and I think I did a better job with Ken and Matt than I did yesterday on WTAG talking about Coronavirus, work from home issues, and also the Mandalorian. I took a little bit of a different angle on it, which is kind of ironic because we're talking about how they shot the video for the TV show. Matt Craig Peterson, our tech guru, joins us as he always does on Wednesdays at this time to go over the world of technology. Craig, welcome to the program. Craig Hey, good morning, gentlemen. Ken You know, it's rare where I see a topic from you that just excites me as much as talking about The Mandalorian. I mean, because we never talk about lifestyle issues here. So this is so exciting. How does the Mandalorian deal with tech issues, pray-tell? Craig That almost sounds sarcastic. Ken No No, no, we love the Mandalorian Craig Okay, okay. For those who don't know, the Mandalorian is a new science fiction series that's in the Star Wars universe released recently here by Industrial Light and Magic. It is a significant change in how movies they make movies. You've seen over the years, variations, of course, I was watching Hogan's Heroes the other day, and upfront, it said CBS in color. Ken and I both remember our first color televisions and things. And then moviemaking TV making moved into the world, of course, where we have greenscreens, and they use greenscreens when an actor is trying to talk to something that isn't there. Think of the Lord of the Rings movies for that one. It had Golem who was this character that was a guy, and they put these little like golf ball things on him so that computers could track his movement and the That was neat because they put this character in that was kind of there the actor could interact with this character. But the computers put in the actual figure ultimately. And then the complete green screens that we've seen more and more of where the only thing that the actor seizes, the table, the actor, city mat, or the chair that they're in, perhaps a couple of items scattered around the room, the whole rest of the room is green. And after all of the filming is done, and it's in production, they add in all the scenery, they said the room, they said everything else. Well, what they did was the Mandalorian is entirely different. They built this room, if you will, in a stage that was 21 by 75 feet, and it was entirely screens, digital screens all around them. The actors now saw everything going on around them. The cameras were shooting on the stage exactly what would end up being in the film, if you will, at the end? It's amazing. So the actors can see these virtual objects, the directors can see the objects. One of the things that were cool about this and I watched some video of it as the Mandalorian was filmed on this stage, is that the director could say, Hey, I don't like that building's placement, and change it right there almost instantly, and move things around. Everything on the screens is dependent on the camera angles. Think about all the incredible mathematics involved in this type of production. If you look at this stage, with the naked eye, you'd see all kinds of mess and distortions in some cases. Still, the camera was seeing everything perfect. They also use these LED panels that were displaying everything to provide excellent lighting. And they had an iPad that was there, and they were able to move the lights around, brighten this up dim that up. It usually would take out a whole bunch of time. The specific names for these people are gaffers, and they are responsible for moving and setting up lights. No need for any of those people. Amazing. The crews, the director, all of the creative people, all of these subdirectories could be more flexible in production, try different approaches, and do it almost instantly. And they did all of this using video game technology. It is absolutely the future. It's going to cut production costs a lot and increase the quality of production. It's just amazing, mainly if you saw the Mandalorian. It's just a whole new thing that came right out of Industrial Light and Magic. Matt We are talking to Craig Peterson, our tech guru, who joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over what's happening in the world of technology. Craig, I don't think we can get around asking you a coronavirus question, and I did notice that Cisco is telling you to use WebEx stay at home. Don't go to those meetings. Use WebEx. Craig Yeah. Now I've got to say Cisco is something that I sell and use, but it is the only, believe me, conferencing teamwork application available, but is secure. Zoom is a very, very popular one. I'm sure a lot of people use it. I've even used it. Continue to use it off and on with people that only have the availability of zoom. But the zoom has had some major security problems. And I don't mean like a breach. I mean, what ad is designed this because it allowed direct access into your networks at the office for hackers and viruses and everything else. So all those who may be one of the easier ones to use, it is not one of the safer ones. Also, with something like WebEx, you get the advantage of the team collaboration. So obviously, I'm a proponent. You can tell by the way I'm talking about it. It just works, and it's now free due to the Coronavirus as many businesses are having people work at home. It's free for companies to use. So seriously, consider using something like this. I've used slack before, which is pretty good. But again, it's not a secure end to end platform. WebEx, I think, is the hands-down winner. A lot of businesses are going to be looking at VPN. two factor authentication tokens are something that we've talked about on the show before. Now's the time you should be using them. I've got to say, if you want to know more, I do webinars where I cover these things all the time. They are 100% completely free, not trying to sell you anything, and I've got some coming up. I'm going to try and do webinars on Thursday, Friday, and Sunday, on how to work safely from home. We're probably going to have them not just for an end-user, but also for small businesses. I teach people how they can use self-service portals to make their life a little bit easier so that the people who are trying to work from home can kind of set things up themselves and what are the pros and cons. We're putting together a little playbook, all of this stuff. I hope to get you to the point where you can work from home relatively safely. Still, I do like WebEx. I have used zoom, and it's a reasonable alternative if you're not worried about some of the significant security errors that have been made by the designers of zoom. Ken We're talking with Craig Peterson, our tech guru. You can always go to Craig Peterson dot com by the way if you want to get all of this information also you can hear him on Saturdays at one o'clock on WGAN. Yeah. Um, so I'm a big user of Apple's App Store because I like apps. I understand they have a new policy to fight spam and abuse. But there some negatives to that? Craig Yeah, there, there always are some negatives. I think the pros outweigh them, however. We talked about how Google just got rid of basically millions of apps if you will. The Google Chrome Store, they just got rid of apps that people downloaded millions of times because they were spying on people and uploading the information. They got rid of those in the Google Play Store, which by the way, again, is a reason only to use the official app stores from Android. Of course, it's the Google Play Store, and for iOS, it's the Apple App Store. What Apple's done now is they've tightened up the review guidelines, because Apple reviews every app that's on the store, to help make sure that they're safe. They, of course, require apps to meet the guidelines, right. But there, they've expanded the definition of a BAM app. In other words, apps that are using the push notifications to serve ads to users, and they're limiting this the submissions of these types of apps, to trusted organizations, etc. but particularly those that are in regulated or sensitive industries. Of course, we have those right down types of industries right here in southern Maine. Think of Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where a lot of people work. Apple, because they are trying to be sensitive to all of these security needs, is even tightening them up more for businesses that deal with this. It's now called CMMC. It's the new standard coming out in June for military-affiliated companies. Anyways, there's a little bit of controversy here. But I think, ultimately, Ken, things are going to be good. It is an excellent thing. And I'll be talking more about this and VPN stuff, working from home as well. This weekend. If you want to sign up for the courses. Go to Craig Peterson dot com you can sign up right there on the homepage or any page, just sign up for my mailing list, and I'll make sure you know about them, and I'll talk more about this on Saturday. At 1 pm right here. Matt Indeed that is Craig Peterson. Ladies gentlemen. He is our tech guru, and he joins us at this time every Wednesday to go over the world of technology. Craig, thank you as always, and we will talk to you again next week, sir. Craig Gentlemen, thank you very much. Bye Bye. Thanks. All right. Ken All right, we will take a quick break here. We will go into the newsroom. Transcribed by https://otter.ai --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Many of us have heard of A. Smith Bowman, which is owned by Sazerac, but we really don’t know much about them. We sit down with their Master Distiller, Brian Prewitt, to learn about the inner-workings of their operation and how the relationship with Sazerac works, as it pertains to the bourbon. With more than 20 years of brewing and distilling expertise, he tells us how he dialed in their stills to create a unique product and what the future entails for growth. We may or may not talk about gin for a few minutes as well. If you're a fan of A. Smith Bowman, let us know your favorite bottling in the comments. Show Partners: The University of Louisville has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/bourbonpursuit. At Barrell Craft Spirits, they explore whiskey in an entirely new way. The team selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of its parts. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about Texas. How did you get into bourbon? What has been your favorite spirit to work with? Did your parents influence you to get into the alcohol industry? Tell us the history of A. Smith Bowman. Does it ever make you mad that Kentucky gets all the glory for bourbon? What year did the operation start? Tell us the history of Master Distillers there. Is it hard to dial in flavor profiles? Are you able to make your own imprint on the product? What did you tweak during the process? When did it become part of the Sazerac portfolio? What resources did you gain from Sazerac? Do you distill or does Buffalo Trace contract distill? Is it aged in VA? Are higher age releases sourced or made in house? What is your capacity? How many states are you available in? Is there a flavor profile difference from Kentucky bourbon? Tell us about your products. What makes your gin unique? Tell us about your single barrel program. Where do you see the market in the future? How has Virginia embraced you? Do you have a lot of competition visit? Has bourbon tourism grown in VA? What are your plans for growth? 0:00 I love bourbon. But I'm not ready to restart my career and be distiller. I have a bachelor's degree, and I want to continue to use those skills in the whiskey industry. So check this out. The University of Louisville has an online distilled spirits business certificate. And this focuses on the business side of the spirits industry like finance, marketing and operations. This is perfect for anyone looking for a more professional development. And if you ever want to get your MBA, there certificate credits transfer into u of s online MBA program as elective hours. Learn more about this online six course certificate at U of l.me. Slash bourbon pursuit. 0:37 You know you have a whole line of beers and a whole line of wines and then of course I'll bring a lot of different whiskies and we have a good time on on the on the holidays. Yeah, those families have like a chili cook off, you'll have like a days off, like it's mine's way better than what you're making. 1:05 Hey everyone, it is Episode 244 of bourbon pursuit. I'm getting one of the hosts. And last week somebody asked me, Why didn't I talk about the announcement of Blanton's gold coming to the US on the podcast opening there, right? I totally Shut up. It was a huge missed because it was massive news. So yes, that is happening. And this will also be one of the major talking points for next week's bourbon Community Roundtable. So make sure you tune in for that, because it's likely going to be 100%. All About blends. All right onto the news. The audio is raising a glass to the women behind some of the most famous labels with the introduction of their crafts women project. The two new whiskies are going to be one as bullet Blender select crafted by bullet Blender Ebony major and Jane Walker created by johnnie Walker's master blender, Emma Walker. Both will be hitting the shelves this spring bullet blenders select number 001 will be a blend of 2:00 Three of the distilleries 10 high rye bourbon recipes bottled at 100 proof. Dr. Joe also announced a release of Jane Walker scotch, a 10 year blend featuring whiskey from Speyside. Jane Walker is crafted by Emma Walker who has the lion's share in most run of inventory. With over 10 million casks of aging and maturing whiskey and distilleries across Scotland. Bullet Blender select and Jane Walker will be hitting shelves in the coming months for a suggested retail price around $50 and $38 respectively. Pin hook bourbon has announced the arrival of their 2020 bohemian bourbon, the first bourbon release in almost 40 years. That was the stilt at historic castle and key pin contract is still the new bourbon at Castle and key, which is also what's known as old Taylor to craft their own custom mash bill of 75% corn, 10% rye and 15% malted barley, they blended just 100 barrels of this 34 month bourbon to create their high proof release, which clocks in at 114.5. It will share some of the 3:00 Same magenta wax color as last year's cash drink bourbon expression. The high proof bohemian bourbon will be arriving on shelves at April of 2020 per suggested retail price of around $50. In bourbon pursuit news since the beginning of 2020. We have already selected seven barrels from places like Buffalo Trace 79, and four roses. While they have eight more barrel selections to go in just the first half of this calendar year alone. We've got places like New riff, jack daniels bullet heaven Hill, and more. So if you want to be a part of this, head on over to patreon.com slash bourbon pursuit, and not only can you help support the show, but you get some damn good bourbon in the process. And in more bourbon pursuit news, you know that you can find us on every podcast platform out there such as Apple podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Google, and even places like YouTube, but now we're hitting the airwaves. Yes, airing on Wednesdays from nine to 10am. We will be in Bardstown, Kentucky, his radio station w 4:00 Artie with frequencies of 1320 am 97.1 Fm 94.9 fm and online at wb rt country.com. The first show is set to launch next week on March 18, of 2020. Now today on the podcast, we dig into a brand that we know about but don't really know about, and that's a Smith Bowman, which is owned by SAS rock and based out of Fredericksburg, Virginia, we sit down with their master distiller Brian Pruitt to learn more about the inner workings of their operations, and how the relationship with SAS rock and Buffalo Trace works as it pertains to the bourbon with more than 20 years of brewing and distilling expertise. He tells us how they dialed in their stills and is pushing out a unique product. We also talk about their capacity and what the future entails for growth as well. Plus, we may or may not talk about gin for a few minutes. All right. Also as a small apology, this podcast audio for this week was recorded over zoom and is the 5:00 Final podcasts at AIR using this platform all shows going forward or using new platforms that will enhance your listener experience. So thanks for sticking with us. It's time for the show. Here's Joe from barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 5:17 I'm Joe Beatrice, founder of barrel craft spirits, we explore whiskey in an entirely new way. My team at barrel craft spirits, selects and blends barrels of whiskey into something greater than the sum of their parts. Use the store locator a barrel bourbon calm. 5:33 I'm Fred MiniK, and this is above the char. As I put the whiskey to my lips, I felt a tingle just throughout my palate. It started on the front and moved its way toward the back just dripping down the jaw line tickling the top and it's gonna surprise you where this whiskey came from. It was not from Kentucky, Tennessee or Indiana. This barrel proof bourbon was distilled 6:00 aged and bottled in Texas. That's right, Texas. Texas is on the move and they have been for some time. And I do believe that Texas bourbon will soon begin to rival Kentucky and competitions and with consumers from California to New York and from Alaska to Hawaii. Now this bourbon that I tasted that kind of wowed me was t x, Texas straight bourbon whiskey. It was 127.4 proof four years old barrel proof is on the label, obviously. And it's from Firestone and Robertson. I tasted this on my YouTube channel if you haven't go check that out. It's for my what's in the box segment where I open a box and taste whatever is in the box. But this this bourbon really was one that kind of made me think rethink my position on where Texas is. Now I've always thought Texas is a growing state and very powerful. 7:00 When it comes to whiskey, and I think the rise of Texas has been has been happening for some time, but in the last couple of years we have seen Texas distillers like iron root win major awards, we've seen balconies kind of like, you know, get on shelves all over all over the country and when pallets, especially those in the American single malt category, while garrison brothers has kind of dominated like this, like this landscape and built a cult following for itself. I think right now, Texas is primed to do things in American whiskey that we've not seen any other state be able to do. And there's a good chance as I go off to San Francisco to judge the world spirits awards, that we could see a Texas whiskey win a lot of gold. I'll say this. Texas has the formula. They have the formula to be able to compete with all the great distillers around the world. They have a consumer base that really is passionate 8:00 about anything from Texas I mean how you could you could slap Made in Texas on anything and I would sell out in Texas those people love their state and they have a lot of talent and they have the education there like people from that state who are in the distilling business have taken the time to go get the education that it requires to be good distillers they're also humble you don't see them slapping master distiller on there, or for the most part, you don't see them calling themselves master distillers without in their opinion earning it and I also don't think that you see a lot of like terribly bad products coming out of Texas. The one thing that's going to hold Texas back is its water, water. It has a it's it's it's not a resource in abundance in Texas. And this is something that I think that every whiskey state needs to be able to rely on. You need to rely on a lot of water, obviously, but keep your eye on Texas. Something's going on there. And if you if you haven't tasted this 9:00 yet make sure you go pick up a bottle that TX barrel proof bourbon. And if you followed me for a while you know how hard it is for me to give a compliment from Tech to Texas. After all, I was born and raised in Oklahoma, where we kind of rival Texas and a lot of ways. And that's this week's above the char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, just search for a name Fred medic. Again, that's Fred MiniK Am I in an IC k? We're going to my website Fred medic calm until next week. Cheers 9:36 Welcome back to a another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon Kinney and Ryan here today talking to one another master distiller we have never had on the show today but it is coming from a distillery. I've got one or two bottles downstairs. Love what they're doing really good things over there. But it is it's not Kentucky's backyard which is a little bit different for us from time to time. 10:00 Yeah typically well I'm surprised this is like one of the master stories we haven't had one so I'm excited like we haven't had him on yet I don't know what's taking so long it's probably my fault we just got it but you have to knock on the right door sometime but they do have a great product I don't know a ton about it so I'm really excited to kind of get their story and info by had some great single barrel picks from them from liquor barn around here so I know they're doing some good stuff and excited to see what the future and past present all the above for this distiller Yeah, absolutely, it's kind of gonna be a culmination of all those things because what we've seen at least around here in Kentucky is being able to finally get your hands on some of these bottles and now that it's got a unique bottle shape to it's kind of like this, this oval looking heart shaped kind of thing and it's it's really cool. It really stands out on the shelf and I think it's going to be good for our listeners to kind of learn more about the brand more about the people that are behind the brand as well because I think that's a good 11:00 What our audience really cares about, they want to know more about the stories of the people behind it. So yep, so let's stop talking and let's start asking. 11:07 So today on the show, we have Brian Pruitt. Brian is the master distiller at a Smith Bowman out of Virginia. So Brian, welcome to the show. Kenny Ryan, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it. Guys, so before we kind of dive into the history of Bowman and more about you know, you we always like to kick off the show and kind of think of like, what is it that got you into bourbon whiskey was there? Was there an early like, I mean, it's okay, because we talked to a lot of people and they're like, well, it started back when I was 12. And Grandpa said, you know, taking it but this so kind of talk about your first run and experience. Absolutely. So for me, it was a little bit different. I I started actually in school, I had no intentions of going into the alcohol beverage industry. I was in actually pre pre med and I had no 12:00 You know, I was in a class, literally looking for nerves or whatever it was on a cadaver. And I thought, this sucks. I hate this. I don't want to do this anymore. On a cadaver. Yeah, it was not fun. And I decided, Hey, you know what I really liked. I really like beer. Why don't I try and make beer. So I actually called up the local brewery which happened to be a large Anheuser Busch. And I was able to talk to the the master Brewer. You know, here I am this college kid. And he said, Yeah, come on down. I'll talk to you. I'll tell you how I got to where I was. And I went in and talked to him and, and he said, yeah, this is what I did. And this is the path I took. And so I next day went in and changed my major to food science, and did the whole food science thing Colorado State and then eventually went on to do the master brewers at UC Davis. 12:56 Started in the brewing industry. So I was working a lot of small craft breweries. 13:00 across Colorado and California. And you know after several years in the brewing industry, I decided I wanted to learn what beer became when it grew up. Now when it comes to see that's that's the fun part though you always get to start with beer before you make to the get to the spirits anyway Absolutely. A lot of people don't realize you know, basically what we do here is you know, for whiskies as you as you as you make a beer and then you're going to distill it after ferment, so I kind of really wanted to learn about that. So I I found that at the time I found a weaseled my way into the the wine industry, which had a very large distillery with it and was able to learn about, you know, under a master distiller and a master blender. They had probably a combined about 80 years worth of knowledge and I worked for them for well over a decade. And, you know, got to make all sorts of things got to make brandies and vodkas and gins and spend time in Mexico making tequila and Caribbean rooms. 14:00 And then of course whiskies and, but eventually I really wanted to get back to kind of my roots, which was small craft, you know, high quality spirits and that's what brought me to a Smith bone. So it's kind of a maybe a different route than some have taken versus, you know, just like am I, my father worked in the industry and I got in the industry and, you know, it's, I will say that all of my family is involved with the alcoholic beverage industry. I brother worked for breweries, my dad owns a winery, and I'm in booze. My sister is the only one that hasn't made it. She's a doctor. So you got it. She liked the nerves on the cadaver. It's a trail. Yeah, exactly. So it sounds like you've worked with a lot of spirits. 14:44 I know you're gonna say you want to work or whiskey is your favorite thing to work with the what's been one of your favorite spirits to work with. I absolutely love whiskey and I mean it came from, you know, the the brewing side and just seeing what you can do with 15:00 The grain the grain bill different yeasts and then taking that on and the maturation side 15:07 I think that's I think that's great now I don't discriminate against the spirits though I love them all. I love all sorts of spirits you know in the summer, sometimes it's nice to have a nice gin and tonic. Sometimes, you know, you need a nice brandy or rum drink when you know you're out. You have to have a boat drink, you know, out on the boat. You gotta have that rum drink. But of course, you know, nothing, nothing beats a nice nice single barrel bourbon. So absolutely see when I go in the boat, it's like it's the only time I let it slide is like you get the Bud Light limes. Or you have one of those kind of like the very fruity kind of forward kind of beers it's the only time it works is when you're on a boat. Well, it takes plenty of beer to make to make good bourbon so 15:49 absolutely well let slot 15:51 well cool. So that's good to see like it was there it kinda want to talk about your family life here a little bit. So you talked about your family all kind of being in the Alcohol Beverage 16:00 industry. Was there a, 16:03 you know, at least from your your parents side of it? Was there an influence that said like, hey, like this is this is a good route for you to go was that a an opportunity that you said you already kind of have experience in this? Yeah. Because my family was a part of it. Like was that an influential factor into it? No, I think it was more, you know, actually my father he kind of started the winery that he runs. He started in that in retirement. So that's kind of like he was retirement type thing. So it was all of us were kind of getting into the industry at all at the same time and we all just kind of I think we love the science aspect of it. We love the art aspect of it. You know, we just kind of all went different ways. And it was just one of those things that Yeah, we get we get together and we have some pretty crazy Christmases and things like that where you can, you know, you really get to bring out the full spread different I'll call it Tipples, you know you have a whole line of beers and a whole line of wines and then of course I'll bring a lot of different whiskeys in 17:00 We have a good time on on the on holidays. Yeah, those families have like a chili cook off, you'll have like a days off. Like, it's man's way there and what you're making. 17:11 So, it was kind of interesting. But yeah, we I mean, we definitely help each other out. And, you know, I'll get calls from guys all the time they'll say, Hey, I talked to your brother the other day and don't don't believe a word he said. Or hey, I was at your dad's place. I don't believe a word. He said. He doesn't know what he's talking about. So you give each other a hard time. And that's okay. I mean, it's family you have to give each other a hard time. Especially in the holidays. It's kind of kinda like the booze off we should probably we should make a bourbon pursuit booze off for our Christmas holiday party. It wouldn't last long my family that like every time I bring straight bourbon or Nate they're like, I can't believe you drink this. This is awful. 17:50 So let's you know before we start talking more about your job and everything like that, that you've gone with let's let's give a our listeners kind of a an understanding and background of really 18:00 What's the history at a Smith Bowman? Because I just realized before we were coming on here that is it is not Abraham It is actually a from Smith. 18:09 Yep, we're the experts. 18:11 School is so so a Smith Bowman is actually one of the oldest distilleries on the east coast. It was the oldest distiller in Virginia, started by Abraham Smith Bowman, and a lot of his family actually kind of has roots to the, you know, the pioneers of basically, during the Revolutionary War, discovering what is now current day Kentucky. So if you're in Louisville, and you go out to Bowman field, 18:38 that is actually part of the bone was discovered and named after one of the Bowman family, really, tours of Cedar Creek is as they were known and all of our current day products are all named after the bone like historical Bowman figures. But kind of getting to modern history of how Abraham started it. He was actually the great grandson. 19:00 of 19:02 Abraham Bowman or sorry, George Bowman. And he was actually in the distilling industry prior to prohibition. He ran a distillery in in New Orleans prior to prohibition and one of the largest ramen bourbon distilleries, Algiers point. And and then after, you know, prohibition, he happened to buy about 7400 acres. And he opened up a granary and, and, and cattle. And then he no of course, prohibition ends and 3334 is when an ended here in Virginia, and he decided, hey, you know, I already know this business quite well. I have all my own corn. I have all my own rye. Let's start making bourbon. And, you know, that's what he started doing. So, right in 3435, he started making bourbon. And His goal was basically straight, you know, granted glass we did everything from, like I said, growing the grain. we harvested our own trees and made our own barrels. 20:00 I mean, we did it all. And the whole point was to make, you know, high quality spirits. And, you know, we kind of continue on with that. That kind of mantra today. We're known for making Bourbons, of course, but we do other spirits as well. So that's this kind of a little bit of the history of it. We give it we give the complete history. If you ever make it down to Virginia, we'll give you the complete history. There we go. We'll do the 30 minute tutorial one of these days. That sounds good. Does it ever make you all mad that like Kentucky gets all the glory for bourbon when Virginia was like, the state before Kentucky? You're like, yeah, we have a lot. There's I will say a lot of people come in and they're very proud of their their Kentucky bourbon heritage and and, and we're proud of it as well, but we always like to remind them that Kentucky used to be part of Virginia, we say Well, we've been making bourbon here for a long time too. So it's kind of just curious about like the current operation like kind of like the year that really it started or is it still like been all running since 18, whatever. Well, so we started 21:00 Like I said, and 33 in Fairfax County, which is about just outside of Washington, DC area, and we moved it to their current location here in 1988. So we've been running here in this location since 88. And the reason we moved is because basically we sold off the family sold off the farm. And the the city of Reston, or that Fairfax County, which is well over a million people now just kind of grew around the distillery and they're, you know, having this distillery where literally, they were walking the cows in from the farm to feed off the slop down the middle of the road. They just didn't, they kind of didn't like that so much. So move to the distillery where we're at now, which is about 45 miles south of Washington DC. We're in this small town in Fredericksburg. 21:49 And it's you know, it's been it's been a great location for us. So we're right along the Rappahannock river and, and, you know, it's a great area for aging Bourbons, and when 22:00 Enjoy it here so far. Talk a little bit about like the the history of the master distiller title there as well. Are you the fourth the first of the new one? And do they don't have master distillers back now and to talk about that? Yeah, actually so there's been six master distillers here in the history of the company since the 30s. The first one was for about five years and then we had kind of one or two that only lasted about, you know, five to 10 years. And the previous master distiller was actually earth to master distillers ago was actually here for about 30 years he kind of took it from basically took over as master distiller in the 80s until almost 2011. And then the previous master distiller to me was Truman Cox, who came from Buffalo Trace actually, and he was here. I think he worked here for probably about three years, but he's only master distiller for a little over a year and a half. He sat down 23:00 Passed away very you know, very unexpectedly and I took over from him he had been hidden and gone for probably about six months when I took over so I came into you know into a building with you know, there hadn't been a master distiller for six months. So it was one of those things where you you hope that the previous master distillers and taking notes and you go in and you learn the skill and you find out what's going on and taste through the stock I know that's that's rough to do. Got a taste you're all the stock to find everything out somebody in Thank you for taking that sacrifice for us. We proud. I'll stop. That's okay. I'll do it again. I get it. I have to so but it was you know, it was just trying to come in and find out what the house flavors were, how the stills ran and and just taking it from there. So I've been in this role for six years now. So how long do how long do you think it takes to become comfortable with the existing setup and accounting? 24:00 Get those, you know, like basic flavor profiles you're looking for dialed in, it takes a little while it takes a you know, I think you have a good couple of months that you know, just tasting through all the stock, you know, just going through and seeing where everything is. So, you know, you're literally going out into the warehouse and you're saying, okay, you know, what's this one? We're okay, this is a year old, what's it tastes like? Okay, this is two years old, what's it tastes like? And then all the way up, you know, 1516 years, and you're trying to find out, hey, what are the flavor profiles that are out there in the different parts of the warehouse because you know, you, you don't have anybody to tell you that, you know, that historic. This is where I did this. And this is where I did this. And if I want this flavor I pulled out of this area of the warehouse, you just don't have that. So you know that that took a little while but you know, once once you get there, I think then it's tweaking it to make a little little changes right off the bat just to just to kind of make it your own style and and then kind of improve the product and 25:00 That's one of the things that we always want to do is, you know, that's, that's our logo or our motto here is pioneering spirit. So we're embracing our history, and just pushing the future. We're just wanting to improve our products every day. So we don't want to just sit back and go, yeah, that's okay. It could be better. 25:17 So, that's amazing, free rein to make your own imprint on it. So it's not just like, plug and play, like, this is the way we do it. Don't screw it up. No, absolutely. I mean, there there is, obviously you have an established brand and you don't want to if you have historic, you know, customers of that brand, you don't want to just change it willy nilly. You know, yeah, if you're gonna make changes, you want to make sure that for the better and, you know, you want to keep improving them, but, you know, if it's a change that does make it better, makes it taste better. You know, improves its, its overall appeal, then yeah, absolutely free rein. No one's good because, you know, one thing that we always talk about is how the 26:00 Entry just loves to hear about change, right? Yeah. Not really like it's always like, you know, let's, let's keep Let's stay the course Let's not really not shake things up too much or anything like that. So I guess the question that I kind of want to pose about, you know, when you started coming in, you're figuring out like, how do we dial or how do we tweak things? Can you recall like one of those things that you kind of had to tweak to kind of figure out what it is to kind of make Pruitt's own signature bourbon? Right. Well, I mean, one of the things that I, you know, I'm looking for, as the heads were coming off the still and I walked in, and I'm like, Alright, well, wait, what are you doing? Oh, we're making the cut. Like, not yet. Not yet. You got it. Wait, wait, wait, wait just a minute. And then you know, we do our heads cuts a little bit different and then eventually, you know, we're saying, okay, where's our ideal proof? Because, you know, we had some periods of time that I will say that, you know, the proof really kind of varied 26:56 quite a bit off the still and we tried to dial that in 27:00 And tried to really get consistency off the off the distillation process versus, you know, you know, just, hey, this is the way that we run it every single time. 27:09 We wanted to go in and say, Hey, each, each tank each fermenter each batch is different. So we're going to adjust our still to make sure that our flavor profile is consistent from distillation to distillation, so that you don't have this huge variation from batch to batch. You know, we wanted it, you know, there was there was just processes that you have to go in and say, Okay, this is how we want to run it. And just a little tweak here, a little tweak there. And, you know, a lot of these guys have been working in the industry for 30 years. And they kind of go Oh, yeah, okay, that makes sense. You know, these are these are good things to do. So 27:46 I think we've been successful in that. So absolutely. And so I guess one of the things that maybe most people will know about is that it is all part of the the SAS rack portfolio. So, Buffalo Trace, all that sort 28:00 stuff as part you know, Smith Bowman as part of that kind of when did when that started happening when it became part of that portfolio. So it actually it's kind of interesting story because in the move for a Smith Bowman from Fairfax to the current location, 28:19 they had to take down all of the basically the entire distilleries shut it down for it, it took about two years to move the entire distillery. So they started partnering with what was at that time before it was called Buffalo Trace was ancient age. So they started partnering with them and doing the initial mash, even the the yeast and the mash bill and things like that, so that we can continue on producing and, and then basically, when you know, we kind of kept going in that direction, and in 2003 was actually one of the first distilleries that Sam's rack purchased from the Bowman family they purchased the distillery 29:00 2003 and it's now it's even, it's an even better situation. Because Yeah, we're able to, you know, we're all part of one, one company, and we can do all sorts of things work together. It's a great network. And we're all about, you know, making the absolute best products that we can, which is wonderful. What are some of the resources that I guess he gained from being with SAS direct versus just trying to do stuff on your own? Or is it like a big collaboration? I guess he's got Harland cellphone on the dial. He's got that. Well, yeah, we do have that, obviously. But, you know, things. Some of the benefits are, as you know, for example, barrels were really hard to come by a couple years ago, right? Well, luckily, we buy enough barrels, that we're able to say, Hey, you know, we're part of this bigger network, you know, can we can we get barrels whereas if you're a small guy, and you're only buying, you know, a couple thousand barrels a year, you may not necessarily make the list for some of the biggest 30:00 barrel producers, they say, Well, you know, our big barrel producer or big customers already have it, we don't have barrels for you. So Tough luck, which has been a benefit, you know, getting getting the distribution and sales and marketing side of a larger company. I mean, those just really work well. And it's a benefit, or for us, obviously, you know, because we, we do run ourselves as a kind of a separate entity, a small a small distillery. But we do have that, that lifeline. So to say, you know, that to help us out, we have a problem. You know, hey, we don't have analysis for this kind of stuff. And can we send it to your lab? And can you run it for us and, and they'll say, Yeah, absolutely, we can do that. You know, or, hey, I have trouble getting this kind of grain or this kind of wood. You know, Can Can somebody find it or and, you know, and the good the guys will help you out. So which is which is a great, great thing to have. It so I think you 31:00 You kind of sparked an idea in my head too, because one thing that I think the bourbon community really thought of for the longest time is like, Oh, well, Smith home and like all it is is just sourcing from Buffalo Trace. And it's not that at all. You just said like, Oh, we gave them the mash bill so they can start contract basically contract distilling for us at the time. So kind of talk about really is, is that still part of the current operation? Are they still distilling for you? Or is everything shifted back over to your place? We do, we do a combination of a couple of things. So we do use a 31:36 Nashville that is made for us. And actually, it's not it's not one two or a week, right. 31:44 Come on, you guys. You guys know that. We were a little bit we wouldn't be prodding for information. We're a little tight lipped about some of our recipes sometimes. No, it's all good. So it is a what we do is we actually have them 32:00 Do the fermentation for us do a primary distillation for us and we'll get the high wines here. And then we'll finish up the distillation on a lot of our bourbon products. So distillation, aging processing bottling but we also I mean we have full mash and cook capabilities here. So we'll do you know, just yesterday we were using a local bloody butcher corn, 32:25 you know, local rye and doing stuff on our our pilot still or our 500 gallon experimental still. So we have full capabilities here. We do a combination of both 32:39 is everything Ah, they're in Virginia or some aged in Frankfort. Okay, we have all this stuff that we're putting out has been aged in our facilities. 32:50 And so I mean, it's a I think there was it had to been a few years ago now there had been there have been some pretty high h2 releases that had come there limited edition sort of stuff that came 33:00 From the distillery I think like, in the rounds like 14 or 17 years old and stuff like that, was that still your all's product as well or kind of kind of get a little bit? Well, sometimes sometimes we'll go out there and depends on the product. Most of the really old stuff has been aging in our, in our, our sellers for quite some time or our warehouses for quite some time. Sometimes we'll find, I'll call them unique barrels that we use for certain products, and we'll bring them in an agent and blend them we're big on on blending a lot of product here. So we like a little small batch. And sometimes when we do Abraham's, we'll do some, we'll find some very neat stuff that doesn't work. But the majority of them have been almost primarily 100%. aged and produced here. Great. I mean, I'm already learning something right? Because like I said, from from a real whiskey geek background, most people kind of assume that oh, you know, part of the 34:00 Right portfolio, it's some of the stuff that's just could be the Buffalo Trace, basically mash bill coming in. But no, it's good to understand that there is there is this unique factor that is driving into it. And we had kind of touched about, you know, talked a little about the operation kind of talk about more along the lines of the size of what you're all able to do there on your own. And maybe even with combination of what's happening inside of Frankfort with in regards of how many barrels you filling per day, and so on and so forth. 34:33 There are more craft distilleries popping up around the country now more than ever before. So how do you find the best stories and the best flavors? Well, rack house whiskey club is a whiskey of the Month Club, and they're on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rack houses box shipped out every two months to 39 states across the US and rack houses April box. They're featuring a distillery that mixes Seattle craft, Texas heritage and Scottish 35:00 Know how rack house whiskey club is shipping out to whiskies from two bar spirits located near downtown Seattle, including their straight bourbon, go to rack house whiskey club.com to check it out and try some for yourself, use code pursuit for $25 off your first box 35:20 how many barrels you filling per day and so on and so forth? Well, and that's, that's unfortunately one of the few things that the they they asked me not to speak about too much. Okay. Production or production size, but I will say what we do in a day is or even a year is what some of our sister distilleries can do in a day. Right? You know, we, we were find ourselves very, very efficient, you know, are still able to distill it almost 10 barrels an hour on our 2000 gallon pot still. So we're moving pretty quick on that. But 36:00 We can we can barrel really quickly, you know, we can we can empty a cistern tank in a matter of you know, two to three hours. So we feel we're up there and in terms of all of our infrastructure is made for a large large distillery. But in terms of our production, we're what we would consider a micro distillery were very small. No promise no more, no more poking and prodding. 36:24 You talked about sastra helping you all get distribution in the States. How many states are you currently available in? Well, currently, we're I think we're around 40 states. 36:34 And we have distributed in the past to the UK, we do send some products to Japan as well. So it's I mean, we're out and about most of what we concentrate on though is of course, Virginia, the East Coast. Kentucky is a big market for us. Indiana is also a good market for us. So I mean, it's kind of if you think if you look at the map and you look at the you know, kind of the south or southeast states and 37:00 Mid Central States, it's really where we focus. But we do. I mean, of course, we have distribution in California, and we have some in Oregon and things like that. But for the most part, it's, it's mostly in the east. So I kind of want to like shift a little bit and kind of talk about back to kind of like the distillation really like the flavor profile that you all are really trying to dial in on, you know, most people. I think Ryan brought it up at the very beginning. You know, Kentucky's very proud, very, very proud of their bourbon. Absolutely. And they should. And so kind of talk about really, what is is I mean, is there a an overall flavor profile difference that is, you know, coming from you all because, you know, there's, there's, we always try to talk about limestone, filtered water. It's so great here in Kentucky, but most people if you listen to the show enough, we're like, okay, it's reverse osmosis everywhere. We can kind of sit there and like put a checkbox like that's really nothing important nowadays. So kind of talk about a different kind of flavor aspect that really, you're trying to get 38:00 With inside of your your bourbon versus what you can get off the shelf of any other Joe Schmo Kentucky bourbon out there. Well what we look for is we look for a lot of like baked apple and cherry notes in the distillate are easterly kind of produces that that kind of note. So we and we want that to be emphasized in the raw spirit. The white dog coming off is still 38:22 and we want it really clean. We want that nice corn, you know, we want that sweet corn a little bit of a hint of that rye coming through. But we don't want it to be spicy, we want it to be really super smooth. And then when we aged out, of course for the Bowman brothers, I want a little more of the spirits come through a little less of the barrel. So a little bit of the vanilla, a little bit of the kind of the, the oak tannins to come through with the emphasis on on the fruitiness and then we would go the like, say the john J. Because it's the single barrel we wanted to we want the barrel to stand out a little bit more. So we want a little more of that coconut and 39:00 Heavy Carnival notes we want you know that really toasty Oh, and then in the background, we want that nice smooth, you know, kind of baked Apple note. 39:12 I think I sound like a john j person because you said you said coconut he said like oh, like that's oh man you just pulled on my heartstrings right there whereas I like the fruity and softer notes though and you know people ask me which one is the best and I say well I you know I don't decide between the two and then we kind of do one in the middle which is you know, our our port finish so if you like a little bit sweeter notes we got a little bit more open to that one in terms of it gets kind of a 39:43 basically we're doing a finish on on port barrels, Ruby port barrels that we import from Portugal and we also use Virginia port barrels. And then we agent we finish it in a solera process. So we always blend all the barrels together at the end. French oak American oak 40:00 And it's all in one big huge oak tank at the end that we bought a lot of to get that kind of extra character. It gets some really nice fruit notes and some really nice oak notes. So kind of a combination of the two. So if I'm taking my notes correctly, we got we got a Smith Bowman we got john J. Bowman, we've got the port finish. Is there any other products that that I'm not that we haven't talked about yet? Yeah. So so we have we have as far as our Bourbons. We have our Bowman brothers bourbon, which is a small batch bourbon, we have the Isaac Bowman, which is a port finish. We have our john j, which is a single barrel. And then we have our Abraham, which is our experiments. So those can vary in Nashville or finish or anything like that. Then we of course do rum, gin, and vodka, and you have to do a cream record, of course a bourbon bourbon caramel Perea Hmm. Now, do those have the Bowman named to him as well with the gin and the vodkas? Yeah, the gin is actually called sunset Hey, 41:00 So it's named after our original farm. And the vodka is called Deep run, which is the name of the lake, which is right in front of the distillery. And George Bowman is our rum. And it's a Caribbean rum. And then Mary Hite who is the matriarch of the Bowman family. That's our that's our bourbon caramel cream. You didn't pull Harlan Wheatley and name it. Brian Pruitt. We I don't have that kind of pull, I guess. You know, I don't think they would look at it and they'd probably pronounce it wrong or they go I don't I don't want that stuff. 41:35 You're just humble. 41:37 I try to be that we have we have a you know, we really appreciate that people enjoy our brands and and we hope that they enjoy what we're putting out that's I mean, that's the whole goal is that I go in day in and day out and but you know, I I put my passion into what I'm doing and and i hope they enjoy it. So I want to talk about Kenny omega man. I want to talk about Jim 42:00 For a second just cuz a budget gym gym pursuit just because we've been going to a couple distilleries and they happen to be producing gin that day and so kind of you know putting in their different blends and their own botanical botanicals in it and stuff so talk about your gin and what kind of makes it unique and what do you like about it? Well we in and I kind of I didn't even mention the fact that we actually have five gyms out there right now so we do a lot of gyms Yeah, we didn't curious now. Yeah, we have our Sunset Hills which is kind of a call it a straight London dry style fairly, fairly simple in flavor profile, only about four different botanicals. But then we we actually do a line called the Tinker men's line 42:46 on the Tinker band, I guess. And we're tinkering with different styles, different display methods. We have a citrus Supreme, we have a spice which we're doing more of the brown spice characters and we have a balanced was called brighten 43:00 And then we actually made with local rye. 43:04 You know, we just not more than a half an hour from the distillery we did 100% rye base, rye gin. We called it rye expectations, we used rise of botanical too. So, you know, we we like to use that and you know, that's one of the ways when, when we we don't have we have some extra time on the still, it's really fun to get in there and you know, you can unlike bourbon where it takes you 710 1215 years to really see your product, turn around and and come up with a recipe and the next day and taste it you're like oh, yeah, okay, that was fun. So how do you incorporate these botanicals? Do you like throw them in like a tea bag and throw them in there? Or like how to how to or do you just throw them straight in there? How do you extract these different flavors? It kind of depends on the recipe, but we'll do a lot of times we'll do kind of the maturation in the pot. So we'll throw all the botanicals in the pot, but certain botanicals like for example if we're putting elderflower in there or you know 44:00 You know, some of the more floral aspects that we put into, into some of our gins, we'll actually put it in a gin basket, which is actually in the scheme, the vapor line of our still, and so it's vapor extracted. So we'll put certain things in like vanilla bean, or elderflower, or things like that, you know that we don't want to just sit there and boil and cook them. We want just the really nice top notes to come out. And so, and depending on the on the method we'll use, we'll use you know, sometimes a combination of the two. And we can even sometimes do extractions and then distill it. So it's just kind of depends on the gin. Could you do that with bourbon or whiskey and any type like, I guess not well 51% corn and then say you want to get certain fruity flavors or certain vanilla mandolins could you technically extract them from? 44:54 Well, technically, yes. Whether or not it could be legally called whiskey is a different different 45:00 story but 45:02 yeah, you could probably do that. I wouldn't put it past that. Maybe something like that has happened. So there's the prett 45:10 that's the Brit product. Then he's then he's fighting a battle with the TTB of like, what do we even classify this thing? Yes, everything gets killed then now becomes a DSS. Mm hmm. All right off the Jin tan. Let's say you got any more Jin Jin things going on? I just find it interesting because like you said, you can just go there and get the flavors right then and there versus having to wait. So I was always curious about it. Got it. You gotta have your vitamin D and vitamin t in the summer. So that's 45:36 exactly. So, uh, you know, one thing that we kind of talked about at the very top of the show, you know, Ryan said that, you know, the products that he tried were all single barrels. So kind of talk a little bit about the single barrel program that you do have there. You know, I've, I've made been made aware of it. At some point. We probably need to do our own single barrel there, too. And we'll get invited. Yeah, well, if we get invited, let's come out there. We'll we'll choose. Well, and we have we we 46:00 We kind of for a while because the john j is really what we do is single barrels and it's and it's a it's a well aged product. 46:08 It's anywhere from nine to 14 years typically is what will age that product in a single barrel. What we like to do there is you know, I've anything that really kind of goes out in our normal production runs, I want a specific flavor profile, I want that like I mentioned earlier, you know, that vanilla coconut and, and the high toasty notes. But sometimes you get some barrels that are really, really good. But don't meet the flavor profile of what you would expect on the shelf. So if you were to buy a j&j today, and then a couple weeks later go out and buy another one, and they didn't taste the same or similar. You might be a little bit upset and you may have loved it before and you didn't love the next one. So what we do is, you know, barrels that are slightly different barrels that maybe have a little more spice or maybe a little more fruit 47:00 Or maybe a little more vanilla. They're wonderful in their own right. We put those into, into a lot of our private URL selections is when we do those. So that's why, you know, some people have specific tastes that they're looking for, they're looking for more of an earthy, spicy, some have more of a, you know, like I said, a sweeter profile. And those are the ones that we we've done in the past and we've we've been pretty, pretty tight on barrels just because of the mean, just purely on the amount of we I don't think any of us expected the growth of single barrel Bourbons to take off like it has. And so we've been playing catch up, but hopefully we'll we'll have more and more of those barrels available in the future but there's there has been some absolutely spectacular ones that have come out recently. You know, some ones that you know, I put in my I call my spice rack, you know, if I if I have something that is really amazing doesn't fit the profile, john Jay, but maybe potentially, you know, 48:00 If I can use it for blending, like I mentioned blending into a neighbor Abraham down the road, you know, hey, I need a little more spice or I need a little more fruit and then I'll take these out of the spice rack. And occasionally they just sit up in the spice rack and I can't find a home for them. I'll let people taste them and if they like them they can take them home. See there's the sticker idea for the Bowman take despise Dr. Spice, right. So are you familiar with single barrel stickers out people are putting these gaudy you know, stickers on the back? Oh, yeah, absolutely. We do those for people. Absolutely. Well, what would you do for single barrel pick it up your choice? Oh, well, I have a couple of barrels up there that are really amazing. been sitting for a while. And 48:47 yeah, they're getting up there and proof I should probably pull them pretty soon. But you know, that kind of depends on the day, some days I like a little more, a little more spice in my my bourbon and other times. I like a really soft, open 49:00 Almost a weeded profile, so it just kind of depends on the day. Yeah. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and put in a request now. Because if you go through and you find one that is like super coconut, it tastes like an Almond Joy. Just go ahead and earmark that one and be like, hold on, let me mark this down right now. Yes. As you're going through your sampling, yeah, sampling, put it on a post it note and be like, Alright, this is for the bourbon pursuit, guys. We'll send you some stickers you can throw on there. Absolutely. 49:28 Sure, they're really big and round and cover the whole back. What jerk edge cover we have. We'll do it. That sounds great. Well, we'll even we'll send you our handwriting too. So you can just like trace it on the on the barrelhead. So we just claim it. So the, you know, one of the things that we always like to kind of talk about is you know, you kind of talked about extra still time and kind of like what can we do create some experimentations do some crazy gins and stuff like that but we look at really what's happening into the the bourbon market and the bourbon world and one thing that you as a master distiller have to do get to 50:00 kind of look at the spreadsheet and start calculating like, what is what is this bourbon market? What is this boom going to look like in the next few years? What's is there going to be a bust? What's it going to look like? Where do you kind of see the market trending here? In the next three years, five years, decade, decade, two years, five years, I think it's gonna start slowing down a little bit. You know, it's just been growing. It's such fast pace. I think it will slow down just a little bit. But by that, I mean, instead of double digit growth, we're gonna have high single digit growth and type things and, and I don't see it stopping. You know, I don't I don't see a fall of whiskey and bourbon in particular, in the near future. I think it'll just kind of flatten out for a while, you know, it's we've had this huge spike. I think you're going to see you know, people, you know, ride for a long time. No one wanted to drink a rye and now all of a sudden rise popular again. So I think I'll see we'll see a little bit of that come up. I think 51:00 Gonna be healthy for the next few years? And probably the next 510 years, I think it'll be pretty healthy. At least we're counting on it. We're putting down the stock for that. So I hope I hope it continues that way. And I hope I'm right. So otherwise, you got a lot of stock. I'm gonna have to figure out what? 51:17 Well, we're in the market. Yeah. Well, as we'd like to drink whiskey, too, we'll be more than happy to help you just, you know, go through and sample every barrel that's out there. Yeah, talk about a Virginia and how they've kind of embraced you guys, you know, and hung their hat on you as like this is our distillery to kind of have that with the state or? Well, we do there's, you know, it's interesting in the last, you know, up until the 50s, were they really the only distillery in Virginia. And now, you know, over the past five years, just the distilling industry in Virginia has really taken off. We've gone from, you know, being 20 small distilleries in the state. Now, I think there's 70 in the state 52:00 But I think a lot of people still embrace the fact that you know, bourbon is one of the products and whiskey is one of the products that is made and has been made in Virginia for a long time. And there's a lot of people that really, really are putting out some great products and you know, and I think it's it's great that a lot of people look to a Smith Bowman and they go oh, yeah, okay, that's, you know, that's that's the model that we should follow for making a great bourbon or great whiskey in the state of Virginia. And I think a lot of people you know, a lot of people who have lived in this area for a long time they know us, and they know our products and you know of course they go to their football games and they they have their bottle a Smith Bowman and and you know that's that's our tradition. You know, we have guys a little semi, you know, I am 80 something years old and I've been drinking a Smith Bowman bourbon since you know, I was 20. So which is great to hear, you know, that 53:00 It's one of those legacy products that, 53:03 you know, you just don't find the history and a lot of the smaller distilleries, and I think that's a wonderful thing to be a part of that history. Absolutely. And I think, you know, you kind of you kind of struck something in my head when you started talking about olders. It went from, you know, 20 now to 70. Do you see a lot of like competition coming through your doors and saying, oh, let's go see what let's go see what Brian's up to over here. Let's see if we can take down a few few notes in our, in our Yeah, absolutely. I we had a lot of people that do that will have, you know, the local distiller will say, Hey, can I come up and walk through the distillery and spend some time with you? And I say, absolutely. Come walk through the distillery. We do tours every hour on the hour. 53:46 And we don't hide anything. And you can you can see exactly what we're doing. Now. We may not tell you exactly what we're doing. We may not tell you, you know, hey, this is the mash bill. This is that we're doing this. You can see what we're doing. And, you know, we're we're very 54:00 You know, we're supportive, we want to we really think that the industry has room to grow, and we want to support them. But we also, you know, I don't want the industry to go in such a way that people look out and they see the smaller distillers and go, Oh, they don't make anything good. You know, so that's why we really want to support and say, yeah, you know, you got to put out a good product. And if you can see, you want to come in and see how we're doing things. That's fine. I may not tell you a whole lot, but you're welcome to come in and walk around. So how's a bourbon tourism been in Virginia? Because like here, it's exploded. Have you guys seen that as well in Virginia? Well, for us, tourism is a little bit harder than it is, you know, a lot of people go to Kentucky and they go to Kentucky to go visit distilleries. For us. It's a little bit different. And we have you know, we're right in the middle of I'll call it historic, you know, where people are coming to see you know, civil war you know, we're the distillery site is actually is a site of a civil war about 55:00 battle. You know, there's a lot of historic sites as far as the Civil War love Revolutionary War. You know, George Washington was actually lived, you know, his boyhood home is literally across the river from the distillery. So a lot of people come for the history. And it's our our challenge is to get them to come in and visit the distillery. Now, I think the Virginia wine industry has done a great job of getting people to realize that there's wine in the state. And then of course, breweries have been doing pretty well as well. 55:32 So it's been a struggle for us as far as getting the visitors here. But we still you know, this last year was almost 30,000 people come through the distillery you know, obviously not hundreds of thousands of people that people will go to larger distilleries, but we're hoping that we can grow that and let people know that Yeah, we're a distillery that's been here for a long time. And we plan to be here for another 8590 years at least. So you got to figure out a way to get yourself on the hip. 56:00 trail over there. Yeah. Taking a break from the capitals and all the Yeah, Norton come down and yeah you go to the Capitol you go across the river you go see George Washington's house he grew up in then oh, there's this old distiller over here. Oh, and we get to drink. Absolutely and count me. Absolutely, absolutely that's that's our whole goal is how to get them getting you know, you're like, hey, yeah, that's that's a really nice monument there but come see a distillery Have a drink. Yeah, it's, I mean, that's an easy sell point for me to come in. Just say yeah, let's let's go, let's go do that. You can you can go see a mime and every single day if you wanted to, but so I guess, you know, we're coming to come down here to the end of this and I kind of want to get a little bit more information about really, where do you kind of see is is there expansion? is there is there ideas of like how, how much more bigger can is going to get in regards of like what you all are trying to do in regards to growth or anything like that? Yeah, well, right now we're actually in the in the midst of an expansion. You know, we're 57:00 We're adding tanks. We've added just in the past probably going to say about a month, we've added about 11 tanks to our production. We're hoping to add to our bottling line here pretty soon to be able to pick up production. Because we really want to you know, we're we're coming up some of the moves that we made a couple of years ago when I came in five, six years ago was to increase some of our small batch production and increase some of our j&j and things like that. And those those are kind of coming into fruition now and we're hoping to expand and make more that bourbon available. And but I don't think we ever really have any ideas. We don't want to become this huge, multi million case distillery. We want to be focused on making the absolute best products that we can you know, the best bourbon that we can find our best bourbon that we can produce. And, you know, the best, the best Jan's best vodkas, best rums, we want to absolutely make great products. And if we grow to be, you know, a large 58:00 Larger regional size. Great. But that's not really our focus. Our focus is to make a great product. And Sazerac supports that vision. They're not like, they're not like, yeah, that sounds great. We want to crank out as much juice as possible, I'm sure. Yeah, no, absolutely. They absolutely under present sport, making the best product that we can make. Very cool. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, and shout out to Matthew, who is here on the chat. He just said thanks for joining in Brian. It was so so great to actually learn about a brand that's flying under the radar for a lot of the bourbon geeks out there because like I said, For myself, you know, learning more about the mash bill and really how the operation kind of functions and you know, knowing that you're single girls are nine to 14 years old, like that's, that's got some age on it for evil. I mean, for even most of the NASDAQ portfolio when you're looking at the the Weller antiques, you're looking at six years old, maybe seven, something like that. So seeing of of what's coming out. 59:00 Virginia I can't wait to get my hands on some more of those bottles that's for sure. Yeah, yeah we'll be sending them your way 59:08 you got it you're marking those barrels yeah go your mouth go your mark that barrel I got my credit card we're ready to start swiping. Okay. But Brian thank you again for coming on the show today you know giving us some more information about a Smith Bowman the history sort of your history and how you kind of cut your teeth in the industry and kind of your family life to think it'd be fun to get your get your whole family on here one day and kind of see you all kind of like go back and forth if there's any of that 59:35 would definitely be interesting. 59:39 So, last way to kind of give a shout out so if people want to know more about you or they want to visit the distillery, where do they go and do that 59:48 know more about us or visit the distillery go ahead and go to a Smith Bowman calm that's the best way to find us and any information about us. We're on Twitter and Instagram as well but you can get all that from the 1:00:00 From the website there you go and ride the coattails on their Virginia history trail and stop over there and yeah and then go and get yourself a nice bottle of basement Bowman to take over john j Bowman i think i think the john Jay Lee's fit my flavor profile Absolutely. You never know you can come in and try them all next time you're in the area. Okay, so so yeah 1:00:24 so make sure everybody that you are you know you check out their website make sure you go to bourbon pursuit calm. We've got links on there for all the episodes that we've had. If you want to know more about any of the the the sass rack portfolio, you can kind of check out some of our past episodes we've done there too. If you want to follow us, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, we're all over the place there. 1:00:45 Yeah, and then also thank you to everybody that is a Patreon supporter that was joining us watching this show live as it happened on YouTube. Just again, one of those Perks of Being able to watch this live before it actually goes out on air. So frankly, close it out. Yep. 1:01:00 Sure, Brian, thanks, man, that was a very interesting, great, you know, like you said the bourbon has been crazy growth. And we're kind of have blinders on, you know, we have these Kentucky brands, you know, things that we're used to and like, we focus on those, but then you forget that there's these guys like you all doing such great things. And like it's flying under the radar and 1:01:22 with the flavors you were talking about, like, I think, Kenny and I might run out and go get some bottles after this. I just want to find some more coconut. Yeah, the coconut and oak and all that. Yeah, but uh, no. Appreciate your time, man is a cool story. And I want to come to your holiday party. 1:01:37 booze wars. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'll put the invitation out next time. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. So yeah, if anyone has any show suggestions, comments, feedback, let us know. We're always here to serve you guys. You know, bring the audio to you. So we'll see y'all next time. Cheers. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Inspired by the month of February, so often associated with love, join in an episode that examines the love of flow! Compiled from all the interviews since the creation of the Art of Flow in 2018, jump into hearing individuals flow stories, what keeps folks spinning, why fire-dancing and flow arts is important in their lives. Ask yourself, what creative outlets do you have and what do they bring to your life? Photo Credits for cover art Top Right: Photo of Dresden Blue by Juan Davila Top Middle: Photo of Duncan Greenwood Top Left: Photo of Troy Grisa Bottom Left: Photo of Aileen Lawlor by Jerimiah Johnston Bottom Middle: Photo of Xander Paris  Bottom Right: Photo of Dyami Kaplan  For the Love of Flow Ronan McLoughlin: [00:00:00] Depending on how I'm feeling on a particular day, I'm either going to be more predisposed to stress or can be more resilient. And that goes down to the basis of how my system operates, I feel. So whether that's how my physical body is working. Have I been, have I been using that well, have I've been doing good things for that so that things are running smoothly with that basis. Then also for all the different aspects of my mind as well. So have I been using my mind well. What if I could consuming. With my body and my brain. What are you putting into this? This mix that makes that makes me up and if I keep putting in good wholesome stuff and leads to more wholesome results. If I've been putting in less wholesome stuff, I get less wholesome result. So I think does a lot of stuff, Can we kind of invest in that? Can we try to take care or ourselves, I guess?   Morgan Dolginow: [00:00:56] Ronan is an innovative poi spinner that travels the world teaching and performing? He is the originator of Contact Poi and has spoken on Ted X about learning to learn. That was an excerpt from Ronan McLoughlin's episode on Awareness in which he discusses self-care. Keeping that in mind, how have we been taking care of ourselves? How can we make sure that we are consuming something that fulfills us? What about what we are listening to? In honor of the month of February, so often focused on love, whether it be relationships, self-love, appreciating friends and family are loving to observe the hallmark industrial capitalistic takeover of holidays present and marketing around us, you know, whenever floats your boat,   Morgan Dolginow: [00:01:41] I wanted to take a moment to examine our love of flow. So many wonderful individuals have spoken about flow and their lives, flow arts, dancing, creativity and what inspires them since the Art of Flow began in 2018. What do they share that reminds us why we love flow? Let's listen, and as an extra challenge, can you pick out what episode each person was in? If you can figure it out, post your answer on the Art of Flow group on Facebook, where you can connect with other listeners and maybe you'll earn a prize. Tani Olhanski: [00:02:17] My name's Tani. Poi was kind of like I have to spin this to be able to spin fire. It was never like that love at first sight, I held these things in my hand and was like, "Ahhh, this is it" and one day one of my friends calls me up and he's like, "Hey, I found this group of people in Dolores Park" and I was like, "what?" She was like, "they are like spinning poi and stuff, they're like, doing your thing that you do and you should go hang out with them. Practice with them." It's like, yeah. Where are they? And so I went down and it was DoloFlow. And so I started going and I think it was either my first or second day there, Tani Olhanski: [00:02:54] someone I don't remember who was had a dragonstaff and I picked up and was like, oooo I like this. And I spent the whole day spinning it and I was hooked from then. Every time I was around dragonstaff, I grab one. And then that opened the floodgates where everything else that came after. [00:03:15] Aileen discovered an enthusiasm towards the flow arts after moving to San Francisco in 2004 and delving into the practice of Poi, contact staff, and flow wand.   Aileen Lawlor: [00:03:24] We drove to the Rainbow Gathering, it happened in a random national park throughout the country. And this time we were lucky because it was pretty close by. So this must have been in '98, 1998. You know, it's just like this total hippie fest where everyday's camping out, and I remember seeing this girl spend fire poi right as the sun was going down and it just it clicked for me. There's something about the fire, there was something about the movement that felt like, "OK, this is the type of movement that my body can do." And I had a feeling that I was gonna be able to do it well. So I knew that, that was the thing that I wanted to do in the future. When I moved to San Francisco in 2004, I went with the specific goal of learning fire poi to enhance my resumé as an actor. So studying acting in New York and I thought, okay, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna learn fire poi. That'll be a cool thing to put on my resumé. It'll give me an edge and then I'll go back to New York and keep studying theater. Little did I know it was gonna take a little bit longer than a month to learn poi. And so I start taking classes in San Francisco and I ended up staying in San Francisco, clued into the fire community that was meeting up and connecting with all these different people that were really part of a very early fire scene before the word flow was even in the picture. Morgan Dolginow: [00:04:45] What is flow? Why do you love it? Lane Lilliquist: [00:04:48] Why do I spin? It's a practice. It has taught me more about my body than I could have ever imagined. It has brought more amazing people into my life than I could have ever imagined. And then in other aspects, like, what's it like when you live life in your healthy, and you're capable of doing all the things you want to do. It's awesome! You know I just can't describe it too much differently. Like when you go when you have energy for what seems like a marathon of running around the city all day on top of that it's like an amazing art form to witness. And I like that pur suit of perfection, the practice, the refinement, the honing skills, getting lines straight, you know, getting stalls in the point that I mean them to be catching and tosses in all the different variations that exist. That aspect really gives me a sense that I'm pursuing mastery. And I think that that's an important aspect kind of in anybody's life. Morgan Dolginow: [00:05:50] Kevin has pioneered various techniques and fire and flow photography for over 10 years. Kevin LeVezu: [00:05:55] Actually, one of the things I love about working with fellow artists and photographing them is they're looking at the world in a different way than I am, and they're looking at things that I don't even see. And so I love being around flow artists because they see an ideal world that I don't see. I'm older, and so in my world, you get a lot more practical, and the hope and the dreams that you see in flow artists are so much fun and one of the main reasons I love collaborating and working with them. Morgan Dolginow: [00:06:24] Britney has traveled to Austria for the World Body Championships, taught body painting at Burning Man, and has painted faces of hundreds of kids and adults alike. She is also an accomplished world travelling, hooping fire dancer.   Brittany Isphording: [00:06:38] Flow arts has really helped me heal a lot of deep seated wounds and I really enjoy sharing that with other people. Morgan Dolginow: [00:06:45] Dresden in an artist exploring the expressive potential of combining martial arts, circus and fine arts. Dresden Blue: [00:06:51] The early years it was, it was finding a way to express a lot of things that had been bottled up for a really long time in my life and building like a vocabulary that let me see those things in a way that I couldn't really with words. You know, with various romantic partnerships I had sometimes it's like had a . . . it's been a way to really deeply connect with another body as well as with the prop where you're able to get that kind of that that amazing sense of proprioception, not just for the prop, but with another person and able to really transfer like a really deep level of like somatic information back and forth to each other while you have this amazing fiery thing spinning around you at the same time. At other points, it's been a way for me to help other people heal, too, especially in doing private lessons in one at ones. You know, you can kind of start to delve into why people are wanting to learn these things and oftentimes it's it's because they want to feel empowered. They want to find a way to feel seen. And that's really powerful. Morgan Dolginow: [00:07:52] Veronica was introduced to then entrancing world of hooping seven years ago following the sudden loss of her best friend. Using flow arts as a means to transcend her earthly frustrations and sorrows, the art form has not only allowed a new avenue of creativity, but a positive outlet to be a role model and use for inspiring artist and dancers. Veronica Stein: [00:08:13] I tend to get lost in the details, I really love realism. I like doing spaces and animals and things like that. And so when I can really get in those details in that shading, I completely forget that I'm on a canvas sometimes until they move or speak. And it it's it's pretty fun because I do do flow arts. I actually started flow arts before I started body painting. And I do get that same we get sucked into the moment and you're just swept up in what you're doing, what you're creating. And it's really cool when you come out of it and you're like, oh, wow, that's what I just created. Rion Fish: [00:08:53] I'm Rion Fish, and I am a movement artist, variety entertainer and you know fish about time. Flow state kind of feels like very connected to things, we know what's going to happen, before it happens, I always think of the flow state like the spidey sense, of being slightly aware of what we're going to do before you do it, in operating at your peak condition. It's a little bit like being high on life. Morgan Dolginow: [00:09:17] Xander's life passion is martial, flow, and performance arts. He grew up involved in martial arts at a Muay Thai gym, years of dance classes, and theater which sparked his interest and movement, rhythm, and performance. Xander Paris: [00:09:30] Mentally, it really helped me by learning I can tackle challenges and really cementing my my determination, like putting things together new ways. And it really is like a big confidence boost to really see yourself improve. And it's a noticeable improvement, too, unlike, you know, your height, right? You grow a fraction of a fraction of an inch every day and you never notice when you're tall. But with flow arts, you get a move and all of sudden, you know that you can do that and you can see the progress. Morgan Dolginow: [00:09:58] I'm talking to Ty Roachford, the founder of Pop Dance Culture, an online resource hub and social media platform for fellow artist and those interested in learning prop dance fusion. He is also a student of neuroscience and an avid poi spinner. Ty Roachford: [00:10:13] Sometimes I will reward myself with just going like, okay, I'm going to work on this all day and then when I'm done, I'm going to go and do like flow arts stuff or just like spin, you know, like get into my own head and zone and just move around. Yeah, the feeling. It is my way to think about things that are not even related to flow. It is a meditative practice. So even if I'm not feeling like spinning, I'm feeling like meditating and getting into the zone and feeling like creative in some totally other different thing. I will go to that place that prop spinning, meditative place. Morgan Dolginow: [00:10:52] Richard is among the most distinguished American contact jugglers. He both teaches and performs along the West Coast and overseas at Indie stages to huge festivals. Richard Hartnell: [00:11:04] But I realized that in the same way that I need to eat from different food groups to keep my body from falling apart. And I need to run different social scenes to keep myself from falling apart. That music wasn't going to be enough. They could just play music every month let that be my only escape. And then I started wondering what the food groups of the creative experience, what are the food groups of flow states, right? And I thought, gosh, well I got music, and I have writing and I have cooking. What else have I got? Richard Hartnell: [00:11:32] Now I've got this pharmacopoeia medicine or something, like psychedelics or something is like a part of like inducing these mystical ego-less states. Then I realize, movement. I don't have a movement art that I do well. Well, I'm not a martial artist. Not a dancer, like I used to play sports as a kid but I didn't really care about them. So I quit. Richard Hartnell: [00:11:50] So I came home having meeting some circus people, and then I went to see a circus show that had happened here at RenFaire show that fall. And I went to see their show And during their show I realized, just like me as a DJ, they are also encoding psychedelic messages in their art, but they're also using art to spread a message of harmony, mysticism and inspiration and progress and beauty and joy. And I'm like, god we are on the same team. They don't even know! And I ran up about the show was done. Completely starry eyed. Found my friend Jocelyn and I was like "Jocelyn how do I get involved in this?" She's like, go talk to that juggler over there. And I went to that juggler over there, and I was like "Hey, man, Jocelyn says I should talk with you about how to  get involved in this thing?" and he's like "through juggling club." Morgan Dolginow: [00:12:38] Troy picked up a spinning poi in college that has been going ever since. A flow arts fanatic currently living in Portland, Oregon, learning water to move props each year. Troy Grisa: [00:12:47] I went with a friend to a World Beat's night, just at a local bar in Milwaukee, and you know the bass was thumping and the drinks were flowing. And I'm standing at the bar just kind of standing awkwardly, like too cool for school, just observing, and across the room, flies an object and wraps perfectly around my leg like a tentacle. With a sharp reaction, I bent over to pick it up. I didn't know what it was at the time. I was a podpoi and I picked it up, but I couldn't believe what I was holding in my hands. Incredible, glowing, pulsing, like I said, tentacle. Troy Grisa: [00:13:20] And I held it out at arm's length, studying it. When a dreadlocked wook came up to me, and said, "Hey, man," flicked back his dreads, "that's mine." With a huge grin I handed it back to him, and he, for lack of a better word, slithered back into the crowd while spinning it and keeping his eyes locked time. Obviously he was playing a part of being goofy with it, but I proceeded to watch him flow, and within 10 seconds of that happening, I took out my phone, typed in poi beginner set. . . Morgan Dolginow: [00:13:51] Meet Duncan Roy Greenwood, a flow artist from Cape Town, South Africa. He has spent much of his life trying to promote the flow arts, sharing it and getting others involved in the flow community. He created the flow arts commune Africa Burn, similar to Burning Man conclave in the US. Duncan Greenwood: [00:14:09] And now, I realize that you can make art using dance and math and juggling at the same time and photography to do it.So that is like a technical sort of equipment kind of aspects to learning how how light is captured. So this to me now is all of a sudden seemed like the ultimate form. Duncan Greenwood: [00:14:38] And I specifically then went and learnt how to spin poi, so that I could learn antispin, so that I could transfer antispin to my flower stick repertoire of techniques and I developed buzzsaw antispin fountain with flower sticks. By that time I started getting kind of good, or at least more comfortable with poi, and that become more comfortable to me than sticks. Morgan Dolginow: [00:15:07] Isa founded Temple of Point in 2002, a school community supporting artists, cultivating flow practices designed to empower them to better understand themselves, the world around them and how to interrelate through the use of poi dancing and other flow tools. Isa Isaacs: [00:15:24] I just had this transcendent moment where I was dancing and the poi just happened to be swinging around me as a part of the dance and it just something happened where for the whole flow on the Playa, and I just transcended me, and I was expressing the music. Morgan Dolginow: [00:15:42] Dyami Kaplan is a performer, flow arts teacher, a massage therapist from Santa Cruz, California. Dyami Kaplan: [00:15:49] The most effective ways that I've ever seen for this firm to grow is for us to continue to offer knowledge around it and offer learning around it as freely as possible. And there's definitely been a few ways that we do that. We've always tried to have an emphasis at the spin jam gatherings of not only sharing very freely with each other what we are excited about, but also welcoming in and having a very strong emphasis on inclusion with anyone who shows the interest in those shows up and like, "hey, what is this? What are you doing this? This looks interesting." And I think a lot of us recognize that it's really important if anyone ever comes to us like time to be, this is what it is. Here, try it and let me put this in your hands. Try it for yourself. Here's some things that you can do with it. And that's kind of the really important initial layer of it. And then beyond just offering classes as much as possible, whether that's classes, if anyone's inspired to teach in any format in the towns that they live in or if they have information that they're feeling inspired to share at the gatherings, the flow arts festivals and the firedancing gatherings. Morgan Dolginow: [00:17:05] Jilly Bee first picked up poi in the form of glow sticks and string's when she was 16, volunteering in a youth organization. She now spends much of her time cultivating community through interacting, connecting with its people. Much of her time in our circle is focused on organizing, leading, designing and facilitating community discussions on the future of our art. Jilly Bee: [00:17:24] When you're engaging in an activity that is bringing you present, the moment is very much an exercise. So you're exercising this big massive muscle and is able to move and work together when you're stimulating the creative side of your minds. The more you do that. That's a muscle. So the more you tap into that creative part of yourself, that part of yourself that can play, that does play, that does explore, and that is able to create a stronger it gets. It's really sad. I dare to say there's some people that go through their whole lives without stimulating that part of them. To them, creativity is characteristic of people who make art. And art is something you have to be really good at and you get paid to do. It's like this weird stigma. No, every single human being on this planet is inherently creating. Morgan Dolginow: [00:18:11] But what about me? Why am I creating this podcast. How did I get into the flow arts?  I broke up with my first love and I realized that I did not really know what love was. I had somewhere along the line had stopped loving myself. And through spinning, all those hours spent alone, exploring space and through self-expression, Morgan Dolginow: [00:18:37] I remembered what it was, reached out and found community. Thanks to everyone who shared in this podcast episode why they love flow, how they first encountered it, what it means in their lives, and what it's bringing to the table. I challenge you to ask yourself, what does it mean to you? How are you providing yourself outlets for creativity? Morgan Dolginow: [00:19:04] Thank you for listening to the Art of Flow. You can find more episodes on i-Tunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play or by visiting TheArtofFlowpodcasts.com. We love to hear from you, so feel free to send questions and podcast suggestions to TheArtofFlowpodcast@gmail.com. Also, running a podcast takes money to distribute it and ensure quality storytelling. The Art of Flow remains free thanks to the support of patrons, listeners like you who support the podcast monthly on Patreon. There are different types of support, all have varying members only benefits, such as access to full, unedited interviews, a chance to have your name included at the end of an undisclosed episode as part of a poll. Opportunity to submit your burning questions to be asked to specific individuals in their interviews and much more. So please click on the picture and link in the showed us below to find out more. Like the show? With YOUR support I can keep the podcast going, and incorporate your feedback, suggestions, and questions, to make the show even better. Together, we can make a flow arts podcast not only happen, but a continuing REALITY. Please consider sponsoring it here on Patreon!   The Art of Flow, a podcast all about fire artists, flow arts, fostering community, and optimizing learning is now available on iTunes, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play, and at www.ArtOfFlowPodcast.com You can follow The Art of Flow on Facebook or the  Art of Flow Podcast on Instagram for sneak peaks on what episodes are coming next, and for insider opportunities such as community events, videos of guests, and more.    Alternative of links and for social media posts: How do I listen to the episode? iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/art-of-flow/id1441666847 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/4heSAjGlrqCbxt0PiOgkD3 Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/810810810 Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen The Art of Flow Website: http://www.artofflowpodcast.com          

This weeks guest is Steve Sims. Do you know anyone that’s worked with Sir Elton John or Elon Musk? Sent people down to see the wreck of the Titanic on the sea bed or closed museums in Florence for a private dinner party and then had Andre Bocelli serenade them while they eat their pasta? Well, you do now. Quoted as “The Real Life Wizard of Oz" by Forbes and Entrepreneur Magazine, Steve Sims is a best selling Author with "BLUEFISHING - the art of making things happen”, sought-after consultant and a speaker at a variety of networks, groups and associations as well as the Pentagon and Harvard – twice!Links: website: https://www.stevedsims.com/ FB Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/stevedsims/ IG: https://www.instagram.com/stevedsims/Welcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon if you will, your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on kindle amazon and as always on my website, Sam Knickerbocker. comWelcome back to fuel your legacy and today we have an incredible guest. It's cool the more people that I've had on the more notable people that I've been able to have on which is always exciting. So today, we have Steve Sims And he was here in Utah a few months ago speaking at a conference for, for some people who are looking to, to understand what he does, I'm excited to bring it on. Because understanding the ROI of relationships is, I think key and everything and there is so many of the most successful people that I know that I listened to that I associate with, say relationships are the new economy, right? That's the new currency is how well do you know somebody? So, Steve, he's a speaker and author. He's the founder of bluefish, direct founder of boot camp marketing, and it's your coach and real and he's been called so this is the best thing is when people title you as things because the titles other people give you end up being some of the most wonderful ways to market yourself because you just, it's just raw. So he's been called the real-life Wizard of Oz according to Forbes, and Entrepreneur Magazine so that I mean That's a that's quite a glowing compliment to be called The Wizard of Oz. What? What pen brought that on? Where'd you get your start? And what was your childhood like? And why are you doing what you're doing today?Wow. Um, first of all being called the villain like Wizard of Oz is a double-edged sword because let's be blunt, the Wizard of Oz was a fake.You kind of go, Oh, that's very nice. And then you go, Oh crap, and they called me a fake.So I like to take it on its face value that I am the guy that can less little get you through the journey. So I class myself as an educated man. But I don't believe the school had anything to do with that. I left. I left school at the age of 15 and ended up working on my father's construction site. And I didn't have any future didn't have any hopes didn't have any goals. We didn't live in a world of the internet where we were bombarded with what the other half was living with or what they had. So I grew up ignorant. And immune to all of the luxury and stuff like that. But as an entrepreneur, you don't become an entrepreneur, you are an entrepreneur. It's either your left-handed or your right hand is just, it's just one of those things. And I remember growing up, conflicted, disgruntled, dissatisfied, and all of those things that have everyone going, Oh, you've got a DD and oh, you can't focus and you can't concentrate. It wasn't the fact that I couldn't focus I couldn't concentrate. I wasn't being engaged. And nothing was excited me. Nothing was challenging me. And entrepreneurs, we need to be challenged. We come alive. When we're challenged. And as a bricklayer, I was being told this is what you do, and then you grow old and then you die. That was my life. And it didn't make sense to me. I left the building site, and not knowing what I wanted to do, but just know Do it but just knowing firmly that wasn't what it was. I ended up selling cakes on the back of lorries. I ended up being an insurance door to door salesman. And if anyone's ever seen me, can you imagine me knocking on your door an o'clock at night trying to sell you life insurance. It didn't go well. I ended up getting a job in Hong Kong by completely lying on a resume. I lasted 24 hours and I was fired.Now I was just trying anything to get to something that would challenge and excite me. And I found it in the funniest place. I ended up working on the door of a nightclub. And it was a great position. It was a great pedestal for me to watch the world I was able to watch humanity and to see how they handled themselves how they spoke to others how they interacted, you know, like bar staff is some of the best communicators in the world. You know, they'll talk to someone in a business suit, and then I talked to a group of girls are Guys completely differently within a split second you know they are very good at altering the way they communicate with the different people based on a split second assumption of your attitude, the way you dress how which you look out for you, all those kind of things as a doorman no one wants to talk to a doorman because they're there to punch you in the head. You know, no one wants to talk to him. But I was able to watch them and I would stand on the door of nightclubs and go, I want to be that person. I want to be that group. I want to have them as friends. And so then what I started doing was trying to find a way that they would talk to me as a person and not as a dormant and because I knew where all the parties were and all the best events where I started getting extra tickets and going up to my regulars going Hey guys, I know you like a good night. Did you notice a premiere going on on Friday? Are you going? Now we're not we don't know how to get in. Well, let me make a phone call. Maybe it again for viewing I started becoming this fixer. This, this guy that knew. And the only reason I did it was not that I was a social butterfly far from it was because I wanted to give the people I wanted to talk to a reason to talk to me. It was a Trojan horse. If I can talk to you about getting you into a private body, I can talk to you about what makes you successful, how you had things, why you change, and they always say you are the combination of the five people you hang around with. Well, it was fine. I was hanging around with five bikers. So that wasn't going to get me very far in life. So I had to change my circle when I did. It just started is that before you knew it, I went from getting people in the parties to throw in the parties myself to suddenly being associated with some of the biggest events in the world. From fashion weeks to Grammys to Kentucky Derby. Ferrari's Cavalier no classic Elton John's Oscar party, I became associated with the grandest most often Skylab fluent event on a planet, and therefore my clients were those people, all those people should I say? And then I started marketing them and branding their products you know, I know people coming to me going hey, I've got a company that sells lipsticks, you know, how would you do an advert? And I will I don't like your advert because you're marketing to the wrong people. And I suddenly start became a brand and so on for these companies. Two years ago, I got asked, Hey, would you release a book on the rich and famous people you deal with? And I said, Now I'd bet I'd be dead by cocktail hour. So then they came back to me this will okay. Would you buy a book on how fabric Live from London can now be working with Elon Musk and the Pope? And that made sense to me. So we released a book, not thinking it would be successful not put any marketing behind it. It didn't do well in the first couple of months and then it took off in the third and since then, I've been doing podcasts and speaking engagements all over the world. I consult for Entrepreneurs of all levels. I have an online course called Sims distillery that helps people learn how to communicate. And it's just grown and I've become my brand. So, from bricklayer to dealing with the meanest, most affluent people in the world to now being an author, speaker, and coach, it's a very interesting journey.Yeah, I love it. And so funny how different and different people come into their passion, different ways. And some people I had a guest on a little while ago who she found her passion, really through, it was something that it was her passion as at a young age, then she lost sight of it or she was dissuaded from it. And then she circled back to her passion. And I love one of the things you said, Well, actually, it's kind of a kind of both in hand in hand, you don't become an entrepreneur. You either are one of them or not ones, as a movie, and it's okay not to be an audience. corner, sometimes because I work in the entrepreneur world where I'm actively seeking out entrepreneurs. And, and so the assumption is by a lot of people that I just think everybody's an entrepreneur and everybody can do it. And I just want to work with everybody. And the reality is, I don't know what the percentage of entrepreneurs are, but it's not a high percentage of people who are entrepreneurs, there's a high percentage of them. There's a high percentage of people who are not entrepreneurs who liked the security, as the certainty, as the safety of working for an entrepreneur,and that's fine. That's fine. There's you know, we got three grades at the moment. And it's like me moaning at you because of your height. You know, you have no control over your height. Okay. So you either are an entrepreneur or you're not. There's a lot of one trip owners out there, they look at it and think, Oh, it's a sexy life. Yeah, I'm an entrepreneur, but they can't handle the two o'clock in the morning not being able to pay your bills on Friday or the fact that you all out on the front line, an entrepreneur is a guy that jumps off the cliff, and then builds a parachute on the way down. And there are phenomenal intrapreneurs I think every entre, we had a quick discussion on this before we went live. A good entrepreneur needs to surround himself with phenomenal intrapreneurs These are the people the love that life until the last bit where you're your next on the line, and that's fine. I'm surrounded by phenomenal intrapreneurs that are creative, driven, push it and help support me be on the front line. So I believe there are great entrepreneurs, but the one tripping is not too flaky and they fall by the wayside very quickly. And so how would you help somebody if they're sitting there listening to this and they're not sure who they are, what where they fall in that maybe just because of lack of experience, lack of Discovery a lot of people who listen to this they're their stay at home moms are people who have been basically sacrificed their life for for the love of their children or for other people. And so they've never really gained the experience or tried out the different positions, you could say. How would you help them kind of look at their life and say, Well, what about me? Where would I fit in these categories? Well, first of all, as an entrepreneur, you are mich broke, rich, broke, broke, rich, rich, rich, broke rich. It's a Helter Skelter over life. I don't think any entrepreneur, given the vision chart of how they're going to be over the next few years, whatever, optionally go, Oh, yeah, I like that. Because entrepreneurs will get laughed at spat at ridiculed Elon Musk musk. He said it to me ages ago. He said they laugh at you before they applaud. Now, if you're not the person that can stand being hated, ridiculed and laughed at the maybe you should be an on an entrepreneur. If you don't care, and you want to be challenged, maybe you're an entrepreneur. But it does come down to that final line of are you willing to take it on the shoulders, finances, because a lot of the times we've lost, we've lost as entrepreneurs money, and we've got it, we're up against it. And then all of a sudden, at like five o'clock on Friday, we're going to pay payroll, and we're running all of our credit cards to do that. We've all been through it. The life of an entrepreneur is not sexy. It's not something we chose is something we are.I love that I think that's so beautifully put. And if you go back and listen to it, and just ask yourself, hey, where do I fit, you know, it's okay. You might be as creative as, as eager to create in your life, different things, but maybe you don't have the wherewithal to have people ridicule us. That's something that I, I think I always had inside of me. But it for me, it took a while to expose that because of the social programming, that you should care about what other people think it took me a while to ultimately say no, I like in my heart. I don't care what you think about me. I'm going to do, what I feel confident doing and what I want to do, regardless of whether you think it's a good idea, anybody, right?Yeah, it gets really, it's very hard to run when you got someone sitting on your shoulders. And so careful about what you do, care about what you solve, care about what you do, but don't care about someone's naysaying opinion. you'll usually find that the person sitting in the corner going, Oh, look at Oh, he can't all watch it. That person's never going to be your client and let's be blunt, never amount to anything. Because people like to sit in the corner and tell you you can't do something because they don't want you proven the diamond Quit to do it themselves.Yeah, that is something that I completely agree with. And I tell people that I work with often had one, one woman a few months back who had asked me, and well, because she was thinking about working with me, she said, Well, I don't want to waste your time. And I saw her Look, I don't let people waste my time. Yeah,yeah, not exactly.twice on me. And if you rescheduled twice, you go in the hopper of people I might call once every six months. It's just not committed to their future yet, but you may be in the future like I don't allow people to waste my time. That's not how this game works. So I love that. So moving forward, something else that you said that I think people needs to understand. And I want to add some specificity here because this is I believe, key in this phrase, especially if you're listening to Gary Vaynerchuk. Or there's a lot of people I think Gary Vee is probably the highest one that says as often it's just you have to add value, you have to add value, you have to add value to others. People before you ask for value in return. And I think that that's true. to a point, right, just adding value, there's a lot of ways to add value in people's lives, right toilet papers valuable. Somebody guiding you a Walmarts valuable like there's a lot of value that you could add. But what love what you did, you added value with the intention that the value add was intentional too, as you said, a Trojan horse to get something out of it not that you expected or that you are going to do a tit for tat type expectation of something out of it. But you are very intentional with how you are adding value to whom you are adding value so that you could get around certain individuals. And please speak to that as to why that's so important that the intentional adding value rather than just random value addingyou got to be laser focus today because we're in a world of mass distraction. So you've got to be Short and sharp to the point while creating something that benefits you as well. Now, I agree with you about you've got to add value. I also agree with you that there are multiple different levels of value. But you've got to go to the value that gets as close as it possibly can to the core of the individual. So, you know, I've worked with very affluent people, very powerful people. Not always very famous people. So you can go to these people and you can say, Hey, I know you don't know me. Get that out of the way. That's always a good one to get out of the room straight away. I know we haven't met I know we haven't been introduced, but there's something that I would like to do with you. But before we get into that, I'm aware that you support this charity. I'm aware that you have got a new book coming out. I am aware that you're promoting your media brand. I'm aware that I've got an idea after looking over this, how I can help you get more reach, get more input, get more donations to get better. Marketing getting better, and show that you've paid attention to? Okay? You may well turn around and go all this and they may turn around and go, Well, actually, we've got a marketing team that just actually said that to me. And I've said about what and they've come back to me and they've gone, hey, we've done now I've gone right. That's, that's brilliant. But it shows that you focus and As the old saying goes, they won't care until you show you care. Now, in that conversation, if you dissect what I've just said, I've got out of the room that you don't know me. And when I say you don't know me, you may know my name. You don't know my credibility. You don't know my reputation and your right. reputation and credibility in today's counts. Okay, so I've got that you don't know me. You don't know me, you know my name, but you don't know me. I've also made it clear that I want something from you. If I say to you, I need a tip. 10 bucks. But before we discuss that I want to talk to you about you're going to know straight off the bat I need 10 bucks. So I like to get it out of the way that hey, I need something from you. I've got something I want us to do. But before we get into that, and then you go into the reason why you need to keep me in the conversation because I'm here to benefit you. If you go in with that, they know you need something. Why do they know that? Because you told him quite bluntly, I need something. So there's no, there's no sitting there going, what is this guy after? I've just told you I want something. And she allows the person and relaxes easy-going, Oh, well, he wants somebody to bang on a minute. He's bringing something to me first. And that is a good one to get out of it. So that's how I enter into every conversation, whether it be dealing with the Vatican, whether it be dealing with Richard Branson, I always say hey, I need something but before we get into that, I know you're doing XYZ and go into that route. I love that I love this to me. It's a simple four-step process.Making every conversation intro sample where you're building rapport credibility, and you're building that now. Don't fall on yours. And don't, don't be scared to fall on your face say get as big of the nose as possible. But on the other hand, do your research, right everythingis important.Yeah, every client that I meet with, I have them send out a fill out a form where I get all their social media links so that when I'm sitting down with them, before I meet with them, then I know what things we have in common, what things I can support them with and what things I can't, the things that I can't support them with, I'm probably not going to bring up in our conversation, because that would be like shooting yourself in the foot. To understand who you're talking to understand where you can add value. Don't take on somebody that you can't add value to just because you want to be around them. Be clear and make connections where possible. And too many people want to be the everyman everything guy It's just not. You're not supposed to be the everything guy. You're supposed to be good at what you do. Oh for me, you know, I've got a brilliant gardener that I speak to absolutely every single week about my garden, but I'm not going to have him do my taxes. It's not a problem to turn around and think this person is good for that, but not good for that. Yeah, exactly. I love it. So what would you say? When did you because I know it's a journey. And we kind of talked about this, but what was there an exact moment where the light bulb clicked. You're like, Man, this is what I want my legacy to be.Oh, I don't know if I even know what my legacy to be. And I have heard I've heard that question come up a few times before but I'm kind of in the fight and on the journey and enjoying the view. And I haven't. I have some very basic principles. I want to be crystal clear. I want to be in possible to be misunderstood. And I don't want people to be confused. Now, if that ends up being my legacy or ends up being sketched on my tombstone, I'm happy about that. But there's a lot of people that plan for things. And for a lot of people, they need to plan. But I plan to seconds after I've jumped off the step, and I find that I only become good when I get going. And everything that I have ever started a shit. I know the first time I do anything, the first time I do an interview, the first time I did a podcast, the first time I wrote a pushbike The first time I tried to do a business meeting, every single one of them was rubbish. But you need that rubbish to be yet golden. And I have learned that so if I wake up one morning and go, I'm going to do a podcast I'll do a podcast. It'll have a crappy already. We do have a bad signal, it has a terrible microphone. Everything I try I try differently. And so legacy wise, I don't know if I found my thing yet. I just know what I found is an elf. And I'm going to promote a good friend of mine called Joe polish. He openly talks about elf businesses easy, lucrative and fun. And if what you do can be those three things, those three things, keep doing it. I have had lucrative businesses. I've had lucrative projects, but they've been stressful and they ain't been fun. They made me a lot of money and I bought a new motorbike and I've had great fun doing about great finances doing them, but they ain't been fun. So I now try to find elf projects and elf businesses. And I would say now for the past three or four years with my brand coming out of bluefish did I'm in an elf momentum at the moment and I'm enjoying it. Where is it going? I don't know. But as long as itself I'm stayingwith it. Awesome. I love that I never heard that acronym but I think I will start asking myself what in my life is falls in that category? And what is health? Yeah, that stuff that doesn't for sure.Absolutely. Joe polish. You said some very intelligent things. He's also said some very stupid things because he's a weird individual. But yeah, he's given me some incredible nuggets which have helped my life.That's awesome. So now if you were to say there was like one story or one point in time where you decided to stop caring about naysayers? What was that one, that one moment where you're like, Okay, I just, I just don't care? Or I'm doing my thing.I listened to the worst person in the world and that was myself. And I went through a very, very dark month. My life I had been I was about eight years into being the man that can about eight years, I had some of the richest clients royalty caps in the industry, you know real power players around the world as clients send me hundreds of thousands of dollars so I just a night out or weekend away. And I woke up one day and I thought to myself, Oh my god, you know, I've got to change. I don't know why, but I just thought I had to. So I took all my earrings out and I covered my tattoos by wearing long shirts and you know, I thought to myself, Oh, I have to be a bit more pronounced. Now. I have to be a little bit more British. You know, just everything about me changed. I started wearing suits now anyone that knows me knows I'm on two wheels forever. And I bought a car. I bought a vintage Ferrari to try and impress you. I bought a $50,000 odham up watch. I went to Donna Monaco, and I throw a kickoff party in my suit with my Ferrari with my watch. And I came home, and I got the photographs of that event. And I realized this was the first event in my life that I hadn't shown up to this avatar of who I wanted to be had this pretend Steve Sims. And it depressed me and I got drunk and I was drunk for about three days. I didn't know what had happened and I realized that I had listened to all my subconscious all my inadequacies, all of my self-doubt. And I had become this shield, this persona, this alters ego. And luckily it was my wife that said, Look, people don't buy the suit and the car they've been buying this you for years, they've been sending you money as this quirky guy, the comm spell and anyone that's ever got an email from me knows I can't spell but it didn't stop me write a book. Don't focus on your inadequacies. Don't focus on your weaknesses. Because you end up with incredibly focused, targeted weaknesses. They don't get any better focus on your unicorn. So I realized that I sold the car immediately. I got rid of the suits. Funnily enough, this was in the late 90s. I wanted to keep the suits because they were nice suits. I put them in my cupboard. And it was about three years ago in Los Angeles, I gave them away to goodwill, and I'd never worn them. never worn them since that day, because I felt they were toxic. No, I like putting on a nice suit. But it was never those suits. He ended up going and buying different suits. So that was my dark time when I listened to my doubt, and my inadequacies, and since then it's a case of Hey, this is me. Now I've got an I know you're in Utah, but as far as La is concerned, it's a bit chilly and I've got off No shirt on, but there's a black t-shirt underneath and that's where I'm showing up as me every single day. If you don't like it, we can part ways and we'll all be fine but I am never going to use a single second of effort to be somebody I'm notso that was my tongue fineyeah i think that's often the hardest person to get hundred silence right you can get to the point where you tell everybody else to go screw themselves but being able to tell yourself to go screw yourself as you talk and lean into your uncertainties lean into your your your fears and you say look, I'm going for it regardless that sometimes it's the hardest thing to master as far as like financially going from the different areas. I mean, going from a bar bouncer having lost your job in different areas. How did you spend, how did you make that transition from from employment into employer or entrepreneur financially because I mean, you alluded to this to at the beginning where you're rich, you're broke, you're rich, you're broke, you're rich, broke, broke, broke, broke, broke rich. Like I understand that happens. And I think that's one of the bigger fears of people who are thinking about making the jump. And so how did you level that? How do you handle it with your wife? I don't know if you have kids, but like, how did you make that? an okay thing for them.I have to stop my bank account from becoming my barometer to react. And it took many years, but the thing that would happen was I would have a ton of cash in the bank, and I'd be like, oh, I don't need a try. I got loads of money. And the money goes quickly, especially when you've got a nice house and you know, you got payments and I do have kids, I have private schooling and before you know it that starts whittling down fast. And then you go crap, I got no money, and then you go and get into stressful deals and projects that you shouldn't have got into but you have done now because of the checkbook. So you're going from candlelight, you know, fire to beach fire to the beach. And it's, it's bad. And as I say, I was using my bank account to dictate me. And it was the tail that wags the dog. The smartest thing that happened to me was when I suddenly started realizing that I was pathetic at certain things, and an entrepreneur wants to be great at everything. The Smart entrepreneur realizes, you know, we're not, we're great at one or two things, but the rest of it, we may be adequate, or maybe really bad at, okay. So as an entrepreneur, I realized that my wife was detail-oriented, she would come to me and she'd be like, Well, look, I've looked at the spreadsheet, and I'm like, Well, I don't want to look at spreadsheets was the bottom line. Because that's how I vision things. So then we realized that I can steer the car, you know, I can be the big powerful engine that can make it go fast. But I need other people to help me. I need a good set of tires, I need a good set of brakes. I need a good steamer, you know, and I suddenly started finding those people. And I can go, Hey, we need to send this person a great brochure. Get someone to design the brochure, hey, record what you think will be great. And then get someone to write the copy to translate your vision into what someone else can meet. So, Claire, my wife became good at managing and handling me. And she was like, what, okay, and so what we came up with, we came up with the 10 grand credit card. Okay, which started in my late 30s, maybe 39. Oh, yeah, realtor. I hadn't quite hit 40 at the time. But she said, okay, you're gonna have three credit cards, because no matter where you travel in the world, Sometimes, you know, something can happen to a credit card, and it screws and or, you know, they try to send you a verification code. But of course, you're in a foreign country, so you're not getting it, you know. So we have three credit cards. And she said each one of those credit cards has got 10 grand because no matter where you are on a planet, if you've got 10 grand, you can get a couple of hotel nights and you can get a flight out of it. Or you can pay a hospital bill, you know, 10 grand is a great instant support number. Okay, so she said you got three credit cards for 10 grand,you add a bank account, and she kicked me out of the bank account, I could not go and see how much money I had in there. Now, this is what happens. You stop reacting to your tail. You start looking at someone and going okay, is this a project I want to accept? Is this a client I want to be doing and in focusing on the client and not focusing on the checkbook. You get to accept deals that make sense and don't motivate your bottom line. You start we at you reacting with your stomach in your head and not with your with the fear of how much money's in the bank. You take better deals. And when you take those better deals, you start solving the problems that the client has. And then he starts reaffirming the knock-on effect by stop looking at the bank account was monumental to me. And my wife would just say to me, oh, how's it going? What's your pipeline? Like? And she would talk to me in my language, you know, are you busy at the moment? Well, things are starting to get you to get a bit quiet. Oh, well, maybe there are some opportunities for you to use that time, which was code for the bank account that needs replenishing. But she wouldn't tell me that because then I don't get the wrong kind of deals. So a good entrepreneur needs good support around them. If you are good at designing things but crapper doing invoices and the first time I realized how bad I was at doing an invoice was when I undercharged someone by 10 grand. And I had to pay 10 grand for that trip. Okay, now, do I go to the client and go, Oh, I made a mistake? No, I just paid 10 grand to learn the course, that I should never do invoicing again. And that was the last time I ever did an invoice. I've never done an invoice soon. I have no idea how to get into QuickBooks. I still don't know the potent passcode to get into my bank account. I don't need to it's not what I specialize that it's not my unicorn.Oh, that's so cool. I've talked to one other person who was very similar. He did door to door sales. And he just said Look, when when I decided that I want to stop looking at my bank account and just as long as I'm making more transactions or whatever, I'm helping more people than everybody else. I know I'm making more than anybody else. And that's got to be enough. So Yeah, there's value in that for sure. So how could we if we wanted to get connected with you, or if we had a business that we want to do to help us with? How would we get in touch with you? How do we get in touch with your, your, your book? Your Sam, sorry, your sim distillery, how do we get in touch with some of these tools to help usgrow? What we did an online course that should give you the basics called Simmons distillery.com. There's one aim in Sims. Sims distillery.com is my 16 part course that hopefully will help you get the first steps if you don't want to jump into their bluefish in the art of making things happen, should give you permission to fail and dream bigger. If you want to get hold of me. I'm not hard. I'm at Steve de sims.com. But you can also find me on Instagram, Facebook, all of these places. We've even got a free Facebook community called an entrepreneur's advantage with Steve Sims. So there are loads of ways you can reach out to me if you feel as though you want me to answer help with your company. That's nice. But I would suggest you go through those other ways. First you look at the book, do that do your homework first, you may find by doing that, you actually discover other questions that you would have come up with other you come up with, you wouldn't come up with a view to jumped into me straight away, and I want you to be as productive, productive and as powerful as possible. So it's usually best to get the book, get the seems to Sylvie? And then can I get used to my mentality, you may find, I'm not your best choice, I may not be the best person and only you are going to decide that but you're not going to know they should go through the first steps.That is so true. I'm redoing a training system for a lot of my business partners and our leaders. We're talking about what should be in there. It's like it's all in there. If they come and ask me a question before they've done their research or something and I don't even know what they don't know. But I do know what I've already put out there so they haven't taken it down. of the free content that's already there. I like there's not a lot we can do for them. And so I love that you said it that way. Agree, go do those, those things that he's already prepared for you and if you like him, then reach out and get and get to know him a little bit better. So we're at the pretty much at the end here, but I have two more sections here. So the last one is a legacy on rap. Sorry, the first one is a legacy on rapid-fire. So I'm gonna ask you five questions, looking for one sentence answers to go through these and just kind of fast, fast fast. Are you ready for this?I'm ready.Okay. So what do you believe is holding you back from reaching the next level of your legacy today?dream bigger, but I never want to stop dreaming people hold themselves by not dreaming big enough. And as far as I'm concerned, the bigger the dream, the bigger the achievement.Agree. Awesome. So what next one is what is the hardest thing you've ever accomplished?What the story I told you getting over me You can be your biggest advocate you can be your biggest success your biggest asset but sometimes you can be your, your largest devil and your biggest delta. So try and kick that little monkey off your shoulder.Awesome. And then what do you think your greatest success to this point in your life has been?No carry? I have no care about you laughing at me when I fall over. Just stick around to see me get up again.Amen to that. And what would you say is one secret the wave has contributed most to your success.My dad is probably one of the biggest on educated men on the planet. big thick Irish bricklayer fella. And I remember as a kid, he put his hand on my shoulder one day, for no reason wasn't even looking at me. We were just walking down the street. And he said to me, son, no one ever drowned by falling in the water. They drowned by staying there. Now at the age of 14, I thought I'd swallow the fortune cookie or something I couldn't understand where the bloody hell this came from. But you know that is often stuck with me and now and then I fall over quite often and I go, right. It's my decision whether when I stay here and drown, or I get up so I would give him that credit.Awesome. And what are two or three books that you'd recommend to the fuel your legacy audienceblue fishing, the art of making things happen by me Steve Sims obvious one, Dr. Zeus because I find that they got a lot of stuff in there that people don't realize how powerful anything by Jay Abraham because all of his methodology and style, critique sales techniques from the 80s are actually more powerful and impactful today. And if I can give you the fourth one, anything that allows you to dream, anything that's kind of like science fiction, espionage, spy novels, john Grisham, anything that makes you kind of dream in your head That's good because the difference between us an AI is AI can't dream, create an action act, it can only deliver what you asked for. So start meeting things that make you dream and take you to a world beyond your imagination.That's so interesting. I've never heard anybody put it that way, the difference between us and AI because that's a, if you don't follow the technology that's coming up quick, big difference, like AI is going to be able to replace a large percentage of what humans are currently doing. And the question is, but what do we do with all that free time as you're right asked you an It looks like you have a little bit of free time. What are you going to do with that? And that's a real question to be asked. Millions of people are being put out of jobs daily, across the world because of artificial intelligence or some form of robotics. And if you're not thinking how can I then go create more value for the world and give back then you're going to be sitting there doing nothing? pretty quick.A great, greatyeah. So here's the last one. Question. It's my favorite question. I excited to hear your answer. I don't know what it's going to be. But we're going to pretend that you've died that you're dead. Okay. 210 But okay, no, no, it's 200 years from now, six generations from now. So your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren are sitting around a table, and you have the opportunity to kind of listen in to the conversation that they're having about you, your life and your legacy. What would you want your great great great, great-grandchildren to be saying about you? 200 years from now.He lived by his standards and not others.Simple as that simple as that.And it doesn't need to be any more complicated. I love it. Thank you so much for your time, Steve. I'm just grateful and honored to have you here on the show. And if there's ever anything I can return the favor to you. I'd love to do so. Thanks. And love to if you ever back in Utah. I love to meet up with you.Hold to a panel. Thank you.Yep, no problem. We'll catch you guys next time on fuel your legacy.Thanks for joining us. What you heard today resonates with you please like, comment and share on social media tag me and if you do give me a shout out I'll give you a shout out on the next episode. Thanks to all those who've left a review. It helps spread the message of what it takes to build a legacy that lasts and we'll catch you next time on fuel your legacy.Connect more with your host Samuel Knickerbocker at:https://www.facebook.com/ssknickerbocker/?ref=profile_intro_cardhttps://www.instagram.com/ssknickerbocker/https://howmoneyworks.com/samuelknickerbockerIf this resonates with you and you would like to learn more please LIKE, COMMENT, & SHARE————————————————————————————————————Click The Link Bellow To Join My Legacy Builders Mastermindhttps://www.facebook.com/groups/254031831967014/Click here to check out my webinar as well!————————————————————————————————————Want to regain your financial confidence and begin building your legacy?In this ebook you will learn:- The 9 Pillars To Build A Legacy- Clarify you “why”- Create Daily Action Steps To Launch ForwardWant Sam’s FREE E-BOOK?Claim your access here! >>> Fuel Your Legacy: The 9 Pillars To Build A Legacy————————————————————————————————————

Stewart Fleming Interview Josh: All right. Everyone out there in podcast world I've got a very special guest for you today, I've got Stewart. He is from Logan, and actually know what, I'm going to let you tell me about what it is that you do in the voodoo that you do. Learn more about the interview with Stewart Fleming at dorksdelivered.com.au Stewart: What do I do in Logan? I do a lot of stuff. I'm involved in about four or five different, organisations as a volunteer. I run multiple businesses. I'm on the board of a number of different organisations in the city and currently running for mayor. So I keep myself pretty busy, man. Josh: Do you have time to sleep? Stewart: I get probably three to four hours sleep a night. Now, I'm pretty controlled to be very consistent about making sure I get at least five hours when, when possible. but look, you know, you do what you can with the time that you got. Josh: I know I've gone through periods of time where I'm going, okay, I'm going to get something down and just working. And you, you're getting no sleep, no sleep, no. So you can get used to having no sleep, and then you have that one opportunity to have an eight hour night. And you feel like you've slipped the four days. Sometimes you have to be in the candle at both ends. Stewart: I think there's also that, if you are used to running at that speed, sometimes if you have too much sleep, you get crazy tired at that point. It's like, well, you've had that now I want that four days in a row. Like, yeah, I dunno. Let's just keep running. Josh: The way the body works. So, we've been talking a lot of different business owners through this channel and, which is something that's on people's minds, whether they're saying it or not. And that is around the recession is the recession coming isn't coming. And we want to talk about how to recession-proof your business. Today we're going to be talking a bit about specifically keeping things local. So I've been running a business for 13 years throughout Logan and been in business in one way or another for, for around 20 in Logan. I've only more recently found out about a whole bunch of advantages to making sure that you are staying local, running your business within the local area that you are running a business. So what have you seen out and about around the traps in regards to a business, the overall health of the economy. What are your thoughts on that? Stewart: Logan is uniquely positioned at the moment to grow. So obviously, we're halfway between Brisbane Gold Coast. We have a very large amount of land available to us. We've got some very good infrastructure. The M1, as much as we hate being stuck in the traffic, it brings millions of cars passed. We've got train lines coming through, and access to some pretty good infrastructure at the moment. Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Can get better for sure. But from a business point of view where uniquely positioned, Brisbane and Gold Coast have come from our sort of higher socioeconomic background and are starting to shrink in, as you say, this recession, the economy is shrinking and I think it's changing. And we had someone talking to the most recent chamber of commerce about going from a materialism environment to a postmaterialism environment. And what he was talking about was the idea that we start to share resources. So rather than own a thousand shirts, you might only own 30 shirts and you switch them around more rather than own a car you use over rather than own a holiday house, use Airbnb. And I know those are two right there. Two very specific examples. But the examples sit behind our mindset and the mindset is that we don't need to own everything anymore. What you're talking about doing business locally is one of the things that we were talking about at a fairly high economic level. When I started to put my hand up to run for mayor, I wanted to reach out to those that had some fairly significant influence in the economy of Logan. So some of the more significant business owners, some of the more significant landowners, some of the property developers now. Yeah, property developers. Ooh, terrible. You can't take money from them. You shouldn't be listening to them because what they understand is some really cool stuff about how things are developing now and the changing way that we're looking at. We should be looking at economies. Sure. We should be making sure we get great roads, but if we had fantastic internet, I'm not talking good internet. I'm talking fantastic internet. Would you need to leave your house to run a business? Do you need to go to an office? If you are fully automated running from home, what does that do? Can you spend more time with your kids? Can you spend more times in the local parks? This is the kind of economy that we're moving towards and Logan is set to take advantage of that because we haven't overcapitalised yet on the infrastructure that Brisbane and Gold Coast have. We're still growing. And so the reason I put my hand up from there is because, the opportunity for a there I saw for Logan needed someone that had some innovation ideas in their head. I'm on the board of Innovate Logan. It's a little group that represents manufacturers, state government, local government, chambers of commerce, and it looks at how do we get more innovation happening in the city. There's some very, very cool stuff going on, but I think the idea of more people working locally we'll reduce the load, and it also helps us start to recession-proof our businesses. Josh: Well, I couldn't agree more. You said it perfectly at the start. From a geography standpoint, we've got the Gold Coast, they've got the beaches and bits and pieces. You've got Brisbane. It's, it's, I guess the, the original, Mecca hub for working Logan is positioned in a perfect environment where it's growing from either edges. You've got all of the manufacturing and an industry coming up from the gold coast, edging into Logan, and then you've got a lot of the other industry coming from Eight Mile Plains and so on and so forth. Building up as it's coming more and more within Logan and from an investment standpoint, it's the best place, in my opinion, to buy any, house, anything like that. Because if you do have a business that is shrinking because of the recession and you need to be tighter with your dollars. The dollars go further in Logan, the dollars allow for you to achieve more things in a localised area. With investment properties, there's a hell of a lot of people that are moving to Logan because instead of buying a place in Brisbane that's gonna set you up for $1 million or more, and then you have to, you have to walk around with traffic everywhere. In Logan, you still have beautiful parks. You can still get something that's more than living on top of each other. It's at an affordable price with, as you said, that the end one there where, and at an intersection as well, where you're able to go out to Ipswich if you need to go and go wherever you need to. It's perfect, from a location and drivability standpoint. I think innovate is fantastic. Some of the other cool stuff that I've seen around the place, Substation 33, that's something that they're using to, I haven't seen anywhere else where they're up-cycling old laptops, old gear. You think you're going to throw at that record player because no one's going to use it. There is someone down there, brainy ethics going to turn that into something cool and then they're going to upcycle and start utilising that to bring more money to Logan. You probably know more about it., some of the signs that they've made out of old, old gear and they look professional, schmick as for looking at the water levels and turning on flood signs along with, they made a bucket for giving power to third world countries. These are super innovative things. I've only just started to dip my toe into some of the cool stuff that's happening around Logan that I wasn't even aware it was happening. I've been recruiting people. Okay. So I've got a friend that was in Tenerife and I was talking to him about some of the cool stuff. Substation was doing, Substation 33. And he thought, oh, that sounds really awesome. Let me check that out. And came down and was talking to them about making PCBs and all this other electronic stuff that he's building together with them. He was so interested, he moved two streets away from them so he could be spending more time building stuff. So you've got your coffee shops in bits and pieces, in Tenerife. And he's like, no let's go to something that's making a difference and actually changing around the way people's minds are working. Stephen: Yeah, we have this, and you're,100% right. Things are changing here in Logan, and I think we're on the, on the tipping edge of an absolute explosion in business in Logan. Now, we've already been growing in incredible, rate, without population, but the business opportunities that we have here, you know, in real estate, you say, buy the worst house and the best street. Well, we're on the best street. And realistically, Logan is probably the worst house in the best street. If you look at Brisbane, Gold Coast, Logan. Josh: On a 10 year plan, If you look at where Logan was 10 years ago versus where it is now versus where it was 10 years prior to that versus where it is going to be in 10 years it's all on the up and up. The worst house in the best street, so to speak. You can find a lot of bad houses and you could find a lot more before, but so many people are moving in. There's young blood moving in and it's similar to a lot of areas, I guess that did have a bit of a stigma or had had a couple of things that happen. Like we had that fence fight thing that happened years ago that was just a small thing that got blown out of proportion and overall bad things happen everywhere. One of the things that I always say, and I stand up for Logan pretty heavily off of friends who, hell, why do you live in Logan? I said, well, because if I lived in a nice house down, in the areas that you're living in, two, $3 million houses, it'd be too, too much of a reason for people to come in and break in and steal all my stuff. No one's going to come up here to do that. Obviously being facetious, but the reason why I love Logan is it takes good people in bad areas to make a change and to make an area, a good area. And you can have good people in good areas and they do nothing. But if you had these, these people that are actually the movers and the shakers, the people like Tony from Substation 33, and that the systems like Innovate where they are helping businesses locally and they are giving people the step up it really makes a difference. And, that is what it's all about. Just putting your name out there, listening to what, to what is available to help you out if you are struggling. Stewart: Yeah. We also have here one of the most giving communities I'm sure in Australia, the amount of volunteers, people that volunteer to help other people in this city is higher than anywhere else. We've got the social enterprise global forum coming to Logan. Why? Because this is where people give. It's such a given community. It's such a sense of that there is this sense of community here, but it's not integrated. And one of the things that I have done as part of this campaign is going out and talking to these various groups, finding out what their problems are. Because as a coach, that's what you do. What do you want? What do you want? What do you want as the constant question. Okay. Finding out what they want, and then talking to the next group and realising that all of these groups and whether it's a seniors group, whether it's mental health, whether it's a domestic violence, whether it's the homeless people working with the homeless, they are all working towards the same thing. Most of them have the same problems. They're not working together to solve those problems. And I think this is sort of the cornerstone of what I want to do as mayor of Logan is to create these, groups that champion and bring together the group guys that are already doing it. Like we should not be putting our hand up and saying, we're going to try and solve mental health as a council. What are we doing? What we can connect the groups that are already doing it. There are at least 13 different groups in the city, work with men's health, but then don't talk to each other. Hmm. Now if we counseled and put someone on as a men's health coordinator, and it doesn't have to be, you know, there aren't any jobs but someone has to do the administration. Because if one group tries to do that, it falls over. And this is actually what Logan together is based on, is a model called Collective Impact. 3.0 came out of California. And it talks about how you heard the cats, all of the organisations are doing fantastic things. But if you asked any one of them to coordinate with the others, it's too much. The straw has broken the camel's back. But if you have a central backbone organisation called like Logan Together, they can coordinate. They can actually do the coordination, but also they can collect the statistics. The moment we don't know how many homeless that are on the city. Now, if I talk to every organisation, I might be able to get some idea, but even then there's going to be crossovers, so we don't know how big the problem is. And as you know, you can't solve the problem unless you actually know how big it. Josh: Data in or data out If you don't have any data to work on, you can't really make a decision. Stewart: If you think the problem is 100,000 people that are homeless, you apply a solution for that amount of people. When the problem was a hundred people, if you think it's a hundred. And it was actually a thousand you've applied the wrong solution, and you're never going to get anywhere, and then you'll say, we shouldn't have even tried. You've got to find out what the size of the problem is, whether it's seniors, whether it's the sporting clubs. We don't have a peak sporting body for Logan. It’s not a hard thing to organise. Council could do that very simply because they're great organisers. The sporting club then gets representation as a peak body. I've spoken to a bunch of these sports, whether it's squash or rugby or soccer about this idea, and they're like, yeah, yeah, that'd be fantastic. We could say, would you be part of it all? We can see how it would work. Yes. The seniors groups, national centers are structuring, how do we do this? Now I've moved away from business, but the business side of it is the same sort of thing. If you've got some vertical businesses that are doing business automation or they're looking after finance for foreign companies. I know we spoke before we went on air talking about the multicultural aspect of Logan. We have access to get into 200 and over 217 different cultures. I'm pretty sure if we've got some really good to sell, we have it really big market to sell. This is the strength, man. This is, this is where I get really excited because we're doing some stuff in the schools at the moment. Mosman High has piloted a program where they're recycling all of their waste. Okay. So there was a $7,000 a month bill, now, they're making either a zero or making a small profit, or sometimes they pay $100 for it. So to outsource to ups to send that, that amount of waste to landfill 100 bucks, or they make a small profit because they're recycling the green waste, they're recycling, all the plastics are recycling the white paper. Josh: That's not just beer money we're talking about that's some serious money. Stewart: There are 17 high schools. It's now been gonna push into Mabel park. They're looking to roll it. It won't be rolling out into every school. I think, and I honestly believe this hand on heart, we could be zero waste for all our schools now. That's pretty exciting in and of itself. We're saving the planet a little bit. Yeah, but hang on, it gets cooler. The kids coming out of high school have a cert three. We could upgrade that to a cert four so they're coming out as recognized recycle experts, right. We have 217 nationalities, and I'm pretty sure that the nationalities, they are the cultures that represent all have a problem with recycling and green waste and all that sort of stuff. If we can teach our kids to do it. Then we can teach other countries kids to do it. We could be exporting recyclers. You're talking about what are the jobs are going to be, Oh no, I'm going to go big on you, man. I'm going to go big, go big or go home. If we're exporting recyclers, we are the center of recycling. If I can get the schools to be zero waste, guess what business is next. Yeah. If you get the kids that end currently in school to be lifelong recyclers, assuming they're going to live for another 60 probably 60 years, once they leave school. There are 55,000 kids in school in Logan at the moment. It works out to be about 3.3 million years worth of recycling. It's huge. 3.3 million years. If I only got the kids that are in school right now, I'm not, the ones coming in next year are the ones that left last year. Just the ones that are in there. 3.3 million years of recycling. Someone said to me, how are you going to change global warming and the certificate four at a time and seriously, no, no, and the guy that was moderating said he's running for mayor. He can't do that. I'm like, let me try. Maybe try. I honestly believe we can be the center for recycling. But that's just one of the innovations we've got in the city. As you mentioned, some safe station 33 and the upcycling and stuff that's going on there. Josh: They're replacing back to the TVs to create filaments to 3D print stuff. How sick is that? Stewart: Cool. You know there's a manufacturer in Logan that creates the nuts for nuclear reactors. If you want to build a nuclear reactor anywhere in the world, you will buy the nuts. For those nuclear reactors from Logan, how cool that is, and that is something that should Josh: There's been over the years, obviously some, some stigma around Logan and some of the different names that happen to rhyme with the word Logan. Stewart: It should be a new slogan for Logan. Is that what you're trying to say? Josh: Sounds much better Stewart: Anew slogan for Logan. Josh: I did exactly that. That is where we have these cool stories, like these nuclear nuts and the flow hive. It's been a huge, huge success or being manufactured within the Logan and that, that's something that was developed within Australia. That's been a fantastic new way of harvesting honey. There are all these really, really cool bits and things that people are doing that needs to be really pulled together to have people go, Oh wow, this is what they're doing. And we sang on recycling 200, so 217 different pods, Watts of life's ways, backgrounds and belief systems that have all been bought together underneath one roof. The spans, I don't know what the radius is of Logan off the top of my head. But it spans the theory that Logan does and, and all these different people will be eating different things and have a different idea on the foods that they're buying and the different plastics, and they're all be able to take that back to their Homeland to talk to them about how they would be able to do this. Maybe there's a, a certain enzyme within Rogan Josh, for instance, that gets broken down differently to what it would if you'd be having a kebob. And so that is what is awesome. Being able to have those many minds work to that. And that's an advantage that you, you don't have it anywhere else in Australia. We are the most multicultural area within Australia. Stewart: I don't think we've taken advantage of it though. And look, there's some, some things that I've done. I'm a businessman, but on the community focus, business matters. How are we going to do five different things? But one of the things I looked at was one of the questions I got asked was, where is the CBD? Where's the CBD? Logan, what's the center? Josh: If I had to pick a spot, it wouldn't be the bit that I would say would really represent Logan as much as I'd wanted to, but I guess it'd just be with it. The council building is, I guess. Stewart: Logan central. Yep. Okay. Right. What about Springwood? What about Beenleigh? What about Jimboomba? We have opportunities. We are, uniquely placed to have three, possibly four, possibly five different hubs within our city. Now you've got Chermside for Brisbane, which is sort of the Northern hub, and you've got Mount Gravatt, sort of the Southern hub. We had the opportunity to do the same sort of thing, and so what I did was I actually went and found a guy that's created. I managed to meet Joe Versey who set up a park road, several fair, the coffee culture. He created the coffee culture for Brisbane. Late-night coffee was not a thing until Joe came along and created it. Now Joe drives Ferrari's and he still does that sort of stuff. He was instrumental in getting James straight off the ground. He has bar spritz on Kangaroo Point cliffs and was talking recently to council about putting a zip line between the top of Kangaroo Point cliffs and the botanical gardens because he is a visionary that sees things before they exist. Yeah. I brought him down and drove him around Logan Central. We went to Springwood, Logan Central and Beenleigh and I've got his take on what do you do to create a scene? Yeah. What do you do to create a precinct and it was interesting because I've taken the ideas that he gave me and then I've taken them to the businesses in those areas and the property guys that own the land in those areas and the residents around those areas to see does this actually make any sense to you guys in front of Springwood? The Springwood hotel. The very large copper, which you can see from the highway. Yup. If there was a function there every Friday night with a live band and laser lights and spotlights and food, you've got to have food. You've got to have beverage. We would get people coming off M1 on a Friday night. I may meet my mates at the Gold Coast or Brisbane, let's meet in the middle. Let's meet at Springwood. Make it easy to get off, easy to get back on, great food, great entertainment and know it's there. Yup. You've now got a precinct. Now that precinct will grow because corporations will want to have their office workers where they can let off steam on a Friday, Saturday night if it's open longer. There's an opportunity being lean, different perspective. Logan central. The global food market at Logan central should be the entire area of Logan central. But what it was saying was you don't let just any old person come in and start stumping up. You have to foster culture. You have to get, if you want to have a food present, you get a restaurant that's already really good somewhere else. They know how to run a business and know how to market. They, they've got that bit sorted. Bring them in. Entice them in, bring a few in, and then make the local businesses come in around them and learn from them. Yep. So you're fostering local business based on the models that actually currently work. People will come for the big, big ones, and then they will also visit one of the local ones. And so what you do is you start to build this presenter and everyone wins. Everybody wins. Logan is so uniquely placed to do this sort of thing. But you've got to have someone with a vision that can drive that vision forward, and that's why I ran for mayor, not for one of the divisional seats, because the mayor is the person that sets that big vision and then brings everyone along for the ride. For the last eight years, I've been doing executive coaching, working with the leaders of TAFE or Queensland government or Domino's. Big organizations to work out how they fix their culture, and that's what I teach them how to do the culture in the council. It needs some work, right? So again, applying my skills to my schools then better serve me. Representing the people as a divisional counselor, what do my skills better serve me at the top? Trying to set the culture from the top down. Because when you try and set the culture from a mid-level, it really is hard if you've got toxic people at the top. Then what tends to happen is that they learn really good lessons about managing up, but there's a struggle and you're never going to get there until you've got the right person at the top. Josh: Richard Branson and the more close to home Dick Smith. Had the idea of the culture of a business and how it should run and that that is. Dick Smith said one day, a month, no matter what level of business you're in, you need to be in one of the stores looking and servicing the people to make sure you're making the right decisions for the right people and see the impacts and the effects of a decision that you've made. You know, just pushing paper and ticking boxes. You're actually able to see the flow-on effects and how that has affected that business with the council and with the people that, that sits within that council. There is a, I don't know if the right terms or hierarchy, but there is definitely, if you've got a, a toxic environment that will flow down and if you have a great environment, the people within the environment will promote and back up that that council or business or boss or whatever the case till the cows come home. And that's where there definitely needs to be a bit of a shift in the mindset of, of the people that are making these big decisions that are impacting the smaller guys. And definitely the smaller guys will, we'll carry that through and have a lot more respect for the location that they're in. And as I said, I love Logan. I see no issues with Logan. I'd love to see more people have the same approach and the same thought on it. And anyone that has lived in Logan, they got, you know, it's not that bad. It was Stewart: It’s not bad, it's awesome. One of the things I think we're missing though, and I'll finish up here, is that the Logan has to be the easiest place to do business. We want our economy to grow. We've got to be the easiest place to do business at the moment. Brisbane is giving a wave waivers to business. They are waiving application fees. They're doing all sorts of stuff to attract more business. We're not. Yeah. We have to not only match them, we have to get smarter at that than them. Then we have to use things like your business automation skills and get that. How do we get that into 100,000 businesses? We've got 15,000 businesses in the city, but let's say I went big, well, let's say there's 15,000 businesses. How do we get 15,000 businesses? And this is one of the things that I've learned very early on work the solution to the size of the problems we spoke before. If the solution is 15,000 businesses, and you said, I'm gonna run a workshop and you can put 15 people in it. Yeah. You've completely messed them up. What are you doing? You know, you've turned on the light. I want you to get hit the sun. How do we do that sort of stuff. And I think that's the big vision thing that I'm trying to bring into council. The guys that I'm running at currently they're all set in the past. They're talking about the 80s. They're talking about the 90s that they're, they don't realize things like, Josh: I'm investing in the yellow pages. Stewart: Drone buses are coming, you know, two years away. We'll be able to get in a little pod, a drone. We'll pick it up and we'll take you somewhere. So, uh, we were doing, uh, measuring distances. It's so crazy. Yeah. You're planning by big league, big arose and the, the. Academia will tell you that smarter roads, if you manage the roads with a different way, like you think about how to make the roads, who's carrying what lanes they're in, all this sort of stuff, you get a 30% return on your investment versus a 3% return building a bigger road. Josh: Yup. Man of my own heart. I was going to say, you've touched on a topic that, I think if we actually had smarter control of the way that the lighting for traffic flats worked without, throughout the area, along with not throughout the area being pretty, well, Queensland, probably Australia, but then also took advantage of paint. It sounds like such a weird thing to do, but that made the lanes a little bit narrow, except for, as you're saying like a heavy haul vehicles that might need the left lane. It's a wider lane. If we did things like that, you'd be able to squeeze, if you look at the road from here to Brisbane and extra lane, the entire distance along. Now, I think if you look and you said 15,000 businesses throughout Logan, if you are running events fantastic, absolutely jaw, jaw-dropping, amazing business in Logan. People would come from Brisbane to Logan, and the beautiful thing is they'd be coming to work at a time. You'd be burning those greenhouse gases. You wouldn't be burning the brakes. You wouldn't be burning in either of the, the other resources around your car and run consumables there. You'd be running a more efficient lifestyle and be able to spend more time with your family and friends. So that's, that's, that's my sort of 2 cents on that. Stewart: Look, I think if we can, if, if we can hit the goal of making Logan the easiest place to do business, the economy will look after itself and we've got to set those big priorities zero way schools. Let's try and do that. The upside is all acute, or a lot of our kids will come out with some, a little bit of an extra certificate and maybe we can export that. Like it's big, I get, it's a big dream. Josh: It carries onto their mentality and mindset at home. And that then carries through the parents and see what their children like doing and why they like doing it. And that then affects the whole community. The home is located close enough to the school. So you know that. The impact of changing around the, their mindset within the schooling system will change around the mindsets within the homes, which are change around the amount of landfill that's going to change around the amount of rubbish, It's just a carry on effect, butterfly effect, domino effect. Stewart: If we do it really, really well. We become the center that others copy. I don't want to do this just for Logan. If we do this really, really well, we can show Townsville how to do it with all your schools. We can be the template for how, who changed the planet. There's this idea of life one recycling. You're absolutely right, the parents start picking it up. But we're also starting to talk to the schools about how to get more entrepreneurship into the schools. So we've got Logan cha junior chamber of commerce kicking off. So it's how to get the kids, and not only just get them to think about it now, but provide a pathway for them to move into the adult world of business. Josh: That's perfect. And that, that's going to get it, set them up for success. As someone who went to school in Logan. Stewart: What school did you go to? Josh: I went to winder high school. While I was there, I had my ups and downs, but overall it's set me up with information, technology, and it put me into an environment or I started doing the IT work for the school. I was very, very happy to be able to automate and better a lot of the processes there and have people come underneath me and learn, learn what I had to do and, and what I was doing. And it's, it's something that is a great opportunity. Things, as I said again, that are just there that you, your kids can start doing now. It was much better for mum and dad, to be honest. I was doing the training ship instead of a friend's going off to McDonald's and having to do the backwards and forwards driving. Then you get traineeships, upskill them and all the good stuff. Is there anything else, any finishing notes, final thoughts? Stewart: No. Look lower than amazing. I really hope that whoever wins. Hopefully, it's me, but whoever went actually has the vision and that brings innovation in. If we can bet the innovation and tie that to the multicultural tie, that's the precincts, tie that to the schools. It's kind of the same thing. It's not like I'm not trying to invent seven different things just to solve seven different problems. It's the same sort of problem. Staring at the same, yeah. Rinse and repeat. Let's keep going here. I think in, you know, in three to four years, Logan will be. The place that people travel to for work. Logan will be the place that, sorry, you should've invested four years ago. We're not the worst house in the best street anymore. We're not a drive through. We're a destination. Josh: I could not have said it better. Well, it has been great talking with you and I'm really happy to have had you here. Anyone else that's listening, if you'd like this, jump across to iTunes. Leave us some love. Give us some feedback. Leave us a review. Let us know what your thoughts are. Other than that, Stay good.

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Please ignore any speech-to-text errors) [00:00:04] Well, hello, everyone. We're so glad you joined us again today. My name is Kenny Thomas. For those of you who haven't heard my voice yet. And welcome to this next session. I was calling you Beatty Carmichael. Beatty is the CEO of Master Grabber, the creator of Agent Dominator and one of the top marketing experts in the real estate field. Beatty, I'm excited. What are we going to be discussing today? [00:00:29] Well, today we're going to talk about how to increase referrals. That sounds like a interesting topic for real estate agents. [00:00:37] Yes, I would say a very important one also. [00:00:40] Absolutely, very important. In fact, I was at a convention. It was a a weekend convention, hundreds of real estate agents. And they had a bunch of breakout sessions on the Saturday event that agents could go and choose what topic they want to learn. And one breakout session, Drew, I think it was like two thirds or three fourths of all of the attendees and all the other breakout sessions. Some of them actually had no one attending because this other one drama. Can you. Can you think what that one topic might have been when they get referral? [00:01:24] That's right. How to increase referrals. Exactly. I was talking to another client of ours, and he's a top producer down in Florida. He's been coaching with a coach for a number of years. And the coach got all of his coaching clients together. It's like 18 or 20 different, really strong top producing agents. And they went around the room actually as a conference call. So they went around the call and they were asking every single one last year, where did most of your business come from? Would you like to guess where all but one, my client, all the others who are the bulk of their business came from? [00:02:09] Any idea? [00:02:12] Referral, referrals and repeat from past clients. So this, if you do it right, can really sustain a business. And especially think about this, Penny, the real estate world is going into through some pretty dramatic shifts right now. Are you aware of some of those shifts taking place? [00:02:36] I've been hearing a little bit, but I'd love for you to expand on that if you can. [00:02:40] Well, there are shifts with what's called a buyer's Zillow's moving more into an aggressive competitor. Amazon's looking to get in. [00:02:49] There's this large class-action court case dealing with buyer commissions. And the bottom line is all these things are putting immense pressure on what's going to happen in the real estate world as a profession. What do you think would be one the best thing someone could do to protect to get all these market shifts that could eat away at their business? Any idea? [00:03:17] Obviously, increase increased their amount of sales to increase sales, but increase referrals and repeat sales from past clients. And so this is a huge topic because it really can help someone take their business and solidify it and be less susceptible to a range of market forces that they have no control over. And this is one thing that's real interesting is I've worked with our clients. Penny, you have complete control over getting referrals and getting people to do business with you again. You don't have much control over what the market does. So this is one area that you can really start to control your business. So let me ask you a question as we get into this. [00:03:59] Let's assume that you're a home owner and a friend comes to you and says, hey, Penny, I'm thinking about selling a house or thinking about buying a house. Do you have anyone that you would recommend I talk to? So you're going to make a referral, refer a friend to an agent. Here's the question I have for you. Which agent are you most likely to refer? One, that you would choose yourself or one that you would not choose yourself? [00:04:34] One that I would choose myself for sure. [00:04:37] So then the question if we move into this topic. Why would you choose one agent over someone else? Okay, so now let me turn the tables just a little bit. Imagine for a moment that your real estate agent, what causes someone to choose you over another agent? If you were to try to figure that out, do you have any idea of what that might be? [00:05:04] Well, off the top of my head, I would have to say my level of service and commitment to my client, how available I am and how relational I am. There needs first. [00:05:17] Okay. Now, let me ask you a question. That person who has never done business with you before. How do you articulate these things that you're talking about? How do you express to them what you just mentioned? [00:05:36] Customer service being available for the client. Just getting to know them. Engaging with them. Phone calls, meetings, that kind of thing. [00:05:48] Okay, so here's the problem I want to pose. I, um, I actually sat down with three agents when we're thinking about selling our home. And from top producing agents like the number two sales agent in our suburban city all the way down to good producers. And I asked him the question, why should I choose you over one of these other agents that's really qualified? You know what they said? [00:06:14] What? I don't know. [00:06:18] They could not give me a reason why I should choose them over someone else. So think about that. Now think about your answer to because what you shared with me is what most agents would say. Customer service, I'm available. I'm engaging with them. But how do you really quantify or measure that? But more importantly, how do you. What do you do to get someone to choose you? I'd like to suggest there's a different reason people choose you than what you just gave. And here's the point. Here's the thing. What you gave is the reason all agents think people choose them. [00:06:55] But when you really boil it down, the reason a homeowner chooses an agent either personally or to refer them is for something completely different. It ties in to what you mentioned, but it's completely different. Until you know why they choose you. Does it make sense? It's hard to get them to choose you. [00:07:15] Yes. [00:07:16] So if you want them to choose you, we got to go a little bit deeper. Peel back the onion a little bit more and say what the fundamental reasons they choose an agent. And once we know what that is. Then you've got a competitive advantage, because now you can start doing things that cause them to charge you more. So this is what working with clients. One of the things that has happened over the years is I'll follow up I follow up with our clients and they just get started with us with Agent Dominator. Once they've been with us for a month or two and they're starting to get their feet on the ground with us. And I cover this very same topic because this is the most important thing. My goal when I call them, is to ensure their success with us. And success is simple because success is a pattern. If you fail to do the pattern, you will fail the success. So here's what I tell them. People two for three reasons. And all three of these reasons have to be present. It's like a stool with three legs. If you take one leg off that stool. What happens to the stool? Okay. So unbeknownst to most agents, these are actually the three reasons people do business with you. [00:08:38] And once you can clarify and quantify these, then you can start to act on improving them in the experience. Number one is they like you, right? Do you know a person that would choose you as an agent if they did not like you? [00:08:54] Absolutely not. [00:08:55] Okay. The more they like you. Is it likely the more they're going to choose you? Yes. Okay. So liking you. By the way, I just want to. Does that have anything to do with customer service being available that been engaging? Or does it? Are all those different than simply disliking you? [00:09:17] I think it all. I think they all tied together. [00:09:19] They all tied together. But as a person, as a friend, I want to suggest that those qualities of what you do as a professional are separate from the qualities of why someone chooses to like you as a friend. [00:09:38] Does that make sense? Yeah. This liking you starts initially at the very top level. Most powerful is that they really like you as a friend. If you have five real estate agents that you know and one of them is your best friend. Which of those five agents are you most likely to choose? [00:09:57] My best friend. There you go. Relationship trumps everything else. So that's number one. Number two, the third. First, they like you. Second, they trust your expertise. As a real estate agent, this is where your customer service. This is where you're always available. This is where you are constantly staying on top of things. This is where you understand the contracts. You understand the process and negotiation. You understand what buyers want. You understand what sellers want. It is this professional level of expertise within your craft. [00:10:37] The third reason they choose you is you happen to be top of mind at the time that they're thinking about choosing an agent. If you're not top of mind, then you're never going to be chosen, right? [00:10:54] Okay, so all of these kind of tie into each other to put them like circles on a page. They all kind of overlap to a degree, but they all have different functions. And I want to walk through. How do you do that? So let me ask you if I were to ask you, Penny. How do you get someone to like you? [00:11:16] What would you tell me? [00:11:22] Oh, gosh, that's a really that's a broad question. I think it depends on the person. I would have to get to know their needs and the things that make them feel white. Some people feel white when you buy them a gift. Some people feel liked when you spend time with them. [00:11:41] Some people feel like when you do a service for them, some sort of act of service. You have to get to know the person first and kind of figure out what it is that makes them feel like, okay. I would probably from a business standpoint, I'd probably try to like them in that way. [00:11:58] Okay, good, good, good. Now you're married to Brian, right? Yes. When Brian was dating you, how did you. [00:12:11] Grow to like him. Spending time with him. Lots of time. [00:12:18] That's just the simple answer, you just spend time with people, right? Yeah. Okay. If you wanted to get someone to trust your expertise. [00:12:30] How do you do that? [00:12:34] Let's hear yes. Yes. No, no. Okay. Simple answer. But I think integrity has a lot to do with it. [00:12:44] Okay. All right. How do you get someone to always remember you? Keep well, you top of mind with them. [00:12:56] I would need to stay in contact with them in multiple ways, whether it's a phone call or text message, email, planning to take them to coffee or something like that. I'm always on their mind. [00:13:09] So here's where I'm going with all of these simple questions. For someone to want to choose you or refer you, they have to like you, trust your expertise and you have to be top of mind. [00:13:21] All you have to really do is ask your ask yourself this question is how do I get someone to like me? How do I get someone to trust me, not trust me as an individual? That's important, but trust me as a professional in my trade of selling real estate, how do I get someone to always remember me? I'd like to go through just a real short synopsis of how to do all these things, because this is the key to getting referrals. If they like you a lot, if they trust your expertise a lot. And if you happen to be top of mind, does it does it make. Does it make sense that you're absolutely going to be getting that referral? When when someone asked them, who should I use as a real estate agent? [00:14:06] So it's really not a mystery. It's just stopping slowing down and saying. What's really at play and how do we do it? So let me talk about liking you first. Okay. Okay. So ultimately everything you said about liking is absolutely correct. But I like to try to simplify a little bit more. Ultimately a relationship. Is all about. Do you truly value me as a person when you are spending time with Brian, did it. Was it clear that he valued you as a person? And the more he valued you, did that kind of make you value him more? [00:14:48] Yes. [00:14:51] So the question then is how do you go about just making people know that you value them? Let me let me suggest if I call you up, I'm a I'm a real estate agent, your friend. Hey, Penny, how's it going? What do you say? All right. Oh, we're doing fine. It's a beautiful day. The kids are great. Are your kids home from college or high school? [00:15:16] Yeah, I'm from high school, from high school. [00:15:19] I know how that works. Hey, by the way, do you know anyone who's thinking about buying or selling a home anytime soon? [00:15:27] I do, actually, my neighbor. [00:15:29] Okay. Pull out. Do I value you as an individual or as a sales prospect from that call? [00:15:38] Both. [00:15:41] Which way do you. When I finished hanging up the call and you were to ask yourself what was Betty's motivation in calling me? What comes top of mind of my motivation? Personal or business? Business. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's here's the interesting thing about relationships. Relationships are fragile. All it takes is one inclusion. That is not an authentic relationship. And it turns the table on the entire experience. And takes away. From the authentic portion of that relationship, does that make sense to use the wording? [00:16:23] No. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. [00:16:25] So what happens in a relationship? It's a sensitive situation. And if you want to get people to like you, your contact with them needs to be purely relational. Not business. Business will come if they like you. But if you ask for a business immediately, that engagement you had with them is perceived as entirely self-centered, self-motivated simply to get business. And it really had nothing to do with you as a person. Let's role play that scenario one more time. Hey, Penny, it's Brady. How's it going? [00:17:09] Hey, great. How are you guys? [00:17:11] Oh, we're doing super. [00:17:12] The kids home from high school now they are getting ready for the holidays. [00:17:17] Oh, I know. That's wonderful. Tell me about them. You don't have to go any further. But now the whole conversation is just about you, the kids. Husband, how life is. We share something. And then I say, hey, hey, I've got to run. I've got an appointment coming up. But I just want to give you a quick call. Hensala hadn't spoken with you in awhile. Have a great day. Talk soon. Click hang up now a moment. You ask yourself, what was his motivation of that phone call? What comes to mind? [00:17:46] Just checking on me, just saying hi and friendly. [00:17:49] Does that make you feel good? [00:17:51] Yes, absolutely. [00:17:53] Does that make you feel that I value you as a person and as a friend? [00:17:58] Yes. Is that tough to do? [00:18:03] No, no, it's not. Do most agents do that? No, no. So here is the key. The easiest thing you can do in the world. Most agents don't do because they get too busy. Right. I feel led to ask this question. If your husband gets too busy. To value you as his wife. What does that do to your marriage? [00:18:38] Not good things. [00:18:39] Not good thing. You could actually lose a marriage by being too busy, by not focusing on the little things that are most important, because you get. See, that is the big things that are really the important things in life. [00:18:52] And we lose out on the relationship. And I would like to suggest that what you do in building your real estate business is very much the same. It's the little things you do. Just touching people. That's the most important thing. So now let's go a step further. Let's take that same scenario. I call you up. We just have a little fun chat. It doesn't last long, but I leave the phone call and you're thinking, I really like Baity. He saw me. Now imagine the next day or two you get a note from me, Penny. It was so good talking and catching up with you. So excited about the kids. Hope you guys have a wonderful holiday season. And I sign it. What does that do to you, your feeling of my value to you at that point? Does it increase it? [00:19:50] Do you start to start to want to reciprocate that relationship? Does it make you like me more? [00:20:04] And the more you like me, more likely you're going to choose me as an agent. More likely you're going to refer me. Okay. So what I would like to suggest is to get someone to like you and to keep them like you even more. It's just a periodic reach out. You could even do it by text. Hey, Penny, how's it going? Just thinking about you. What's up? Now a text is bad. The default to a phone call. But it's a nice little touch. It has no ulterior motive behind it. But the phone call is the best because now you can interact, you can ask questions, you can share about you. They get to know you more. They get to you get to know them more is just catching up. And then if you'll follow up with that with a handwritten note, I suggest that handwritten notice on your real estate stationery. In fact, if I were a real estate agent, I'd get a bunch of note cards printed with my name and my real estate brand and my real estate information. And I would hand write you a note on my real estate card if my note if my personal note comes to you on my real estate card. Does that detract, in your opinion, from the authentic ness of my note? In other words, plenty of so great talking with you. Love catching hope. You guys have a great holiday and I sign it. Does it detract at all if it's coming from my personal stationery versus my business stationery? [00:21:41] Actually, I would feel like it was more heartfelt if you actually read it, right. [00:21:47] Okay. So I handwrite it, but I handwrite write it and it just happens to be on my work stationery. Does that cause any consternation on your end? If you were to get that. [00:21:56] No, it doesn't. Okay. [00:21:59] Okay. Okay. So it may be imperceptible. It may be more. But here's what I found when talking with one of our one of my friends who has been selling real estate for, gosh, 30 years now. He may actually made it, he said. I've never advertised for business. I've never spent any money to get business. I've always had as much business as I want, in fact, so much that I actually turned business down. And, you know, his number one thing that he does. [00:22:35] Call people. [00:22:36] That's right. He just makes these simple phone calls and he writes them a short note on his business stationery. That's it. Wow. [00:22:44] And here's what happens. They like him. And they remember that he is a real estate agent. [00:22:54] Top of mind, they like him. Bye bye. Curiously, the fact that he's in business so long, they trust that he probably has expertise. Unless he's actually done business with them and then they know that he has expertise. So this is really, really, really powerful. And by putting that little thank you note on a personal on your business, stationery, real estate, it might have a slight detrimental effect. Slightly degrade the touch, the value that touch. I don't think you'd be much, but what it does is it reinforces two things. I like you as a friend, but then you see me as a real estate agent as well. So that keeps that top of mind. Something else you can do. You mentioned this. Some people love gifts. If I were to drop by your house, even if you're not there and I leave some cookies and brownies, hey, I was in the area. Normally night out this way. I was in the area. Drop by. I got some brownies for you guys. Hope you enjoy it. [00:23:59] Does that make you feel good? [00:24:01] Oh, gosh, yes. [00:24:03] Does that increase my no pun intended? Does that increase my brownie points in your mind in terms of our relationship? Sure. Okay. Okay. So this is something else you can do, just a little drop by and just say even if you don't have a gift. Hey, I was in the area showing a house over here to another client. I remember you were here. I just want to drop by and say hello. Does that make you feel good? Yeah. So these are the little things that go a long way. Now, let's talk about being a little bit more strategic. Okay. So we got the relationship thing. Make sure people like you. They like you because you value their relationship and you demonstrate it because you reach out to them. And when you reach out to them, you mentioned nothing about real estate. Okay. Now it's okay if you ask me. Hey, Beatty, how's the house real estate going? Oh, man, it's going really great. I share a little bit. That's okay, because I did not volunteer it until you asked it. So it's still a personal call, but it's something you can do is take your list of friends, past clients, people you know, and identify those people who are a what I'll call a connector role. Do you have any idea what a connector role might be? [00:25:28] I guess I'm assuming it's just people that like if I'm my neighbor, I have a connection with her and then she knows somebody else. That chain. [00:25:39] Yep. So people who know other people. So let me give you an idea. Let me let me see if I can kind of lead this discussion just a little bit. You've got two people on your list. One person is a local Little League coach. And another person. Is a computer programmer who works from home. Which of those two people do you think would probably be more likely to be a connector to other people for you? [00:26:14] The first one. Why is that? [00:26:18] Outside the home, outside the home, I'd like to. There's one more element. Can you figure out what that element is? Why is the first one the little the Little League coach more likely to become a good connector for you than to work at home? Programmer. [00:26:35] He knows so many other people. [00:26:38] That's it. That's exactly it. So if you go through your list and ask yourself who is likely to know a lot more people, a lot of times simply by nature of their job, you can determine that a hairdresser, a bank teller, a little league coach, the choir director, a pastor, a youth minister. I mean, I could kind of go down the list, but they all have one thing in common. Their job, their occupation involves working with a lot of people on an ongoing basis. Repeat people in the local area. Does that make sense? Yes. If you were to be friend. The programmer and friend, the literary coach. Which one do you think you would likely get more referrals from? Yeah, for sure. So that's what I call a connector. And I suggest that you go through your list of people and you start to mark. Okay. First off, let's make sure you have a list, right. You create a written list. Okay. And then you identify those people who are connectors by virtue of the fact of how many people they probably know locally. Okay. So this would be those people who would just lie for the party. They love people and they know everyone. They may not have a job that is a or type job, but that's their personality. That's who they are. My brother, by the way, is that one. He knows everyone in town. And then you, those who have the other jobs that constantly have a flow of people coming through, those people who are connectors, you want to be a lot more strategic with this relationship building. [00:28:30] You want to pop by. You want to actually put it on sort of a schedule maybe every four to six weeks. Drop by. So let's say that you work at the bank. You're a bank teller. Okay. I'm going to swing by. Hey, Penny, I was in the area again, brought you some doughnuts. How are things now? I looked at all the tellers. Now y'all can eat any of these doughnuts without Penny's permission. These are hers. Okay. All right. Okay. So you feel special, right? Well, now I've made you feel really special. The more I do that, when you hear someone coming through, they're a little old lady or that or that someone coming through the tell tale teller slot and you're engaging with them because they're one of your normal clients types things and they're starting to talk about they're thinking about selling their home. Who's the first person you're likely going to think of referring them to you? Yeah. And when I swing by that date, bring you doughnuts, are you likely going to remember to say, oh, what did so-and-so call you? Because I was talking to so-and-so and they're thinking about selling their house. You think you might actually. Yeah. So the connectors are going to have their ear to the ground. Because they were involved with all kinds of people all the time. And the stronger the relationship, the more you pursue that relationship, the more likely two things are going to happen. They're going to refer you. [00:30:02] And when you happen to pop by, then they're going to bring back to remember it. Oh, you know what? You're the real estate agent. This person was saying just a week ago they're thinking about selling. And it's going to remind you to tell me because I'm actually there. I can't. In fact, I can't tell you how many people have told me. So when they start using our services, we guarantee results. But one of the things that we require is one that we guarantee it is that you have to at least call your prospects. Couple of times a year. I can't tell you how many times people have told me when I'm just on the phone and I'm talking to them, I'll pick up a deal because I've been getting the postcards, they're getting the emails, they're being reminded of me. And now when I call them, it's like, oh, you know what? A friend of mine is thinking about selling. You ought to call them engagement, interaction that prompts them to remember about the referral. So really, really powerful. So that's getting them to like you. Back to the question, how do you get someone to like you? You like them back? That's the easy answer. You do those things that let them know that you liked them. Second thing. So we go back to the store. Three reasons people choose you. They like you. They trust your expertise. And you happen to be top of mind when they're thinking. So let's talk about trusting your expertise. Here is the challenge in marketing, there's a concept known as outside perception versus inside reality. [00:31:39] Here's what it means in real estate. Let's say, Penny, that you are a real estate agent. And you want to market to a group of homeowners. That group could be people that, you know, there's your personal list or that group could be people that are just in a neighborhood. By the way, let me ask you a question. Is there fundamentally any real difference between someone, you know, who lives in a home and someone you don't know who lives in a home? In other words, no, there's no difference, only differences. You have a relationship with one, but not with the other, but they generally have the same like same desires, same feelings. And what we find is this the typical homeowner believes that all real estate agents are the same, that all they do is take a sign in the yard, list a home in the MLS and wait for someone else to bring a buyer. Would you agree that that's probably what most home owners believe to be true? So let's say that you are a top notch. Dedicated real estate agent, you serve your clients better, far better than the typical real estate agent. But as long as those homeowners believe that you're just like anyone else, are they more likely to choose you over someone else? They believe you're just like everyone else. Are they going to choose you or are they going to choose someone else just as easily, just as easily they would pick someone else for sure. [00:33:16] Yeah. [00:33:17] So the implication, real simple, if all agents are the same, it doesn't matter who I choose to sell my house, I won't get the same result. Same price and the same amount of time with one agent over another. But let me ask a different question. Let's assume that those people on that list, your personal list or that neighborhood, if they understood your skill and your expertise. And they understood it to the same degree that you understand it about yourself. Would they realistically choose any other agent besides you? No. [00:33:50] Okay, so that's what we call your inside reality there. Outside perception is you're like everyone else. So there's no reason to you, but you're inside. Reality is there's lots of reasons to choose you. If you could transfer your inside reality to them so they know as much about you as you know about yourself. Would that drive a lot more business? Do you think? [00:34:18] Yes, absolutely. And fundamentally, why? [00:34:27] Because there is a connection established. [00:34:30] There's a kind of a connection. They know more about you. Right. Let me go back to reason number two. If they understood you're inside reality, then does that mean that now they are trusting your expertise? [00:34:47] Yes. [00:34:48] Because you're inside, reality is your expertise. And if they don't know your expertise, they can't trust it, and therefore, on that stool with three legs, you're missing one leg. So what do you think would be a simple way to help them trust your expertise? [00:35:12] Guys, tell me. [00:35:15] Guys say anything most. Most real estate agents say, oh, gosh, I have no idea. Okay. Because I've never thought about this. Let me tell you the easiest thing. Okay. So let me pose it as a question to you. You're thinking five real estate agents. You're going to be selling your home, you know, five real estate agents. And one of them you see all the time making another sale, listing another house, closing another sale all the time. Boom, boom, boom. Sold again and sold again and sold again. Just listed. Just listed. Sold again. Sold again. And the other four agents don't say anything about them all. [00:35:57] They're real estate agents out of those five agents. Which one are you going to choose? [00:36:01] The one that's always selling for? [00:36:05] Do you think you trust that they probably have greater expertise than the other four? [00:36:11] Yes. [00:36:13] And what was your reasoning behind that? [00:36:20] The proof is in the pudding. All those things sold, sold, sold by the same person that I know, they're actually selling houses. [00:36:28] There you go. It isn't that easy, isn't it? That's the first step. Is simply showing off your successes all the time. [00:36:38] The way you transfer expertise as you get them to start to trust you more than someone else. And the first level of trust is, are you actually doing what you're supposed to be doing? Are you selling homes? That's the first level. But then there's some things you can do to increase that level of trust. And they're really simple. Any idea what you might be able to do to increase the trust? Just beyond showing off yourself. [00:37:02] Probably you would need to offer something, some sort of guarantee. [00:37:06] Maybe you could. That definitely helps. But before we get to that more complicated thing, let me ask you a question. You have you have those five real estate agents. Two of them you see are constantly selling. Three of them you don't see anything. So now it's a choice between those two. One of them, you see. So the other one you see sold for full price, sold in three days, sold for two thousand over asking price. Now, which one do you choose? [00:37:38] That one. Because I'm getting more thinks about not only are they selling that, they're selling for more and they're selling faster. [00:37:47] Bingo. Okay. So now we add a little bit more information that causes them to trust you more because you're now telling a little bit more about why they should I sell this home in three days. That's impressive. I sell this home for full price. That's impressive. So the more you get to share the inside reality of that sale, the more they start to trust you that maybe you can do the same for them. Makes sense. Yes. OK. Now let's take it a step further. What do you think? Before we get to a guarantee before you. What do you think? There's something else I could do. To get someone to trust me even more than simply saying sold in three days or so for full price or something like that. Tell me I can share what I did to cause it to sell that fast. For example, before I put this home on the market. We pre marketed it for an entire week. Mailing to the neighborhood door-knocking, letting people know the home is about to come on the market, and if they have any friends that want to be in this area, let them know. [00:39:12] We started to we went through the house and we made sure everything was absolutely perfect in order. No, no does. No, no burned-out light bulbs. If there is a room, there was a room that was kind of an awkward color. We had the owner change it back to a neutral color, took away everything that could have been a detriment that would cause someone to go. That's just not quite a good feel. In other words, the level of preparation and the level of pre marketing I did. So this home faster. Now, if I were to tell you that, does that give you greater confidence in my expertise? [00:39:47] Absolutely. [00:39:48] Okay. Yes. And then I could even guarantee to sell it in next days or I pay you or I could do all kinds of things. But trusting your expertise starts with just showing them that you're always selling. Then showing them what's going on with those sales. Explaining some more information behind that shows what you did. What you did may be what every agent does, but the homeowner doesn't know that because no way to tell them. So that's the second leg. Okay, so back to why did someone why does someone chooses an agent? They like you, they trust you, your expertise. And then you happen to be top of mind. So on top of mind. [00:40:34] Have you ever heard in selling the ABC of selling? Always be closing. Okay. Well, there's an ABC in real estate. It's always been contacting. Right. If you want to stay top of mind, you're just always there. And this is where the automated remote touch systems are in place come into play. So if you think about this. [00:41:02] Only you individually can get someone to like you. Your touches need to be personal. Hey, how's it going? Just thinking about you. Hey, I was thinking about you last week. Hadn't spoken with you in a while. Just want to call and say, hey. Only you can do those. Your assistant can't do but everything else in terms of trusting your expertise and staying top of mind. You can now automate that. You can send those out in postcards. You can do an email campaign. You can do social media and constantly be posting, posting just lists at another home to Facebook. And so all your friends are seeing that they're seeing that activity. You can share write a little explanation of what you did to sell this home in five days. All that can be done in an automated fashion, but you need to be consistent in doing that. But part of that is going to be your personal touches, because that's another contact part of that's going to be writing those will hand written notes or doing a pop by. But it's more on top of mind is more than that. It's doing all these other things. So now with that as a backdrop, I want to talk the last couple steps about how this realistically put this together. But before I go there, do you have any questions on any of this or how to do it or anything that's cropped up as we've been talking on it? [00:42:29] I don't actually I'm interested here. Just this last little part and this thing top of mind and strategies for because I can I can see a lot of agents and I think the best way to stay of mind. [00:42:44] Let me ask you a question before we get there. What do you think is the number one reason people agents aren't consistently touching their personal contacts? [00:42:54] I think for sure they're too busy. [00:42:58] Too busy, we don't have time for that. [00:43:03] They're too busy. Don't have time. And they're not prepared. Are you? Are you a busy mom? Busy employee? [00:43:12] Yes. [00:43:13] Busy wife? Yes. Have you gotten more accomplished in all your roles by bringing structure and knowing what you need to do and having things prepared to do it? Absolutely. [00:43:27] So here's a simple thing. If most agents would just create a little bit of structure, then they can easily fit this in their day. The reason they don't do it is they don't have the structure in place and it doesn't take that much effort. Let's go through the action. [00:43:48] So let's put a little bit of structure in place that takes very little time. Number one, make a list. The easiest way to start making a list of who all your friends are. [00:44:02] Just going through your phone contact, go through your phone contacts and go through your Facebook friends. [00:44:09] Yeah, I mean, there's a list right there. So write it down in one spot and then you go through it strategically, add contact in their phone number and what's their mailing address. Okay. And if you don't know their phone number or their mailing address or an email address, you probably don't want Facebook to send a quick message updating my records. Can you give me your mailing address? You know, how many people would give you your mailing address? Their mailing address, if you ask for it? All of them ask for it. Okay. So you put your list together and then this is real important to you. Want to categorize your list by A, B and C.. Okay, everyone, you know. Okay, A, B and C, here's a simple way of what I understand for this to be most effective as a real estate agent. Aides are going to be those people that you have the closest relationship with. The easy way to understand if you have a close relationship is if you know their spouses name and you know their children's names and they know your spouse and your children's name. In other words, the more you know about them, it's going to be an A. [00:45:26] Then the bees are going to be the people that you have a relationship with with them individually, but it doesn't go much further. So this would be like your work relationships. You know, John, down down on the second floor, you see him a lot, but you really you've never met his wife. You don't really know much about the kids. That's a relationship. A C relationship would be someone that is you. No pun intended. You see them only once in a blue moon. Okay. But you don't know much about them. So they bfc. Okay. So you start with your A's and B's and you then go through and list everyone that is going to be a connector. And if I have a, B or C, that is a connector, I want to move them to an A because that is the priority. And I want to build a relationship with them strategically because I I want that relationship now. So you're gonna make the A's B's. And then depending on how big the list is, you narrowed only to the A's or the B's or you include some C's. [00:46:34] But generally speaking, like if we're targeting when we work with real estate agents to help them market to their clients for 500 people is fine because so much of the marketing can be automated. But those that maybe they're personally touching may only be like two hundred. Okay. So it depends on what you're doing. But then the next step is once you make the list be strategic. An easy way to be strategic. If you don't have a fancy system, you put it all on an Excel spreadsheet and you just get loaded to Google Docs. On Google Docs, you can access it from your phone and you can access it from your computer. Does that make sense? [00:47:14] It does. [00:47:15] Okay. And then all you do is you put a column on and Google Docs says Date last touched and you scroll through your list. I've got five minutes before an appointment. I'm out on the roads. I'm gonna pull up my phone. Go to Google Docs and find the next person on my list that I haven't touched recently. Their phone number is going to be there and I want to reach out. Hey, pettiest Beatty. How you doing? Hadn't thought spoken to you in a while. Just wanted to visit a couple minutes. Oh, my appointments here. Gotta run. Okay. So it's a natural end of the conversation. But you like it. I've touched you. I'm gonna write you a handwritten note. Now I've got a system in place and it doesn't really take much time. So structure that approach and working from the list means that now you can go through that list and touch everyone. So let's go back. And I just want to review a couple of key things. Okay. That, too. Why did people choose you? They like you. They trust your expertise. You happen to be top of mind. [00:48:16] Your personal touch 100 percent needs to be authentic. Relationship only mentioned nothing about your business unless they ask you don't ask for a sale. Don't ask for a referral unless they volunteer it or the conversation just naturally goes that way, but may give them no reason to believe that the motivation of that call was for business purposes. Okay. Now, let me put this back in perspective. So I'm reaching out. I'm touching you. We say hello and checking on the kids. I'll write you a handwritten note. Couple of weeks later, I may say say hello again. A couple weeks later, I may call. Hey. Question Do you know anyone who's thinking of buying or selling a home? Does that spoil the relationship that you and I built simply by asking that as a friend? [00:49:13] Oh, God. That's a great question. [00:49:16] I don't think it was shit. It shouldn't be a trick question. You and I are friends. And I've demonstrated that over time and then I ask and say, hey, you know, anyone who's thinking of buying or selling home the relationship? [00:49:32] No. As long as you like. He said you have made that connection and stayed in contact with me on a regular basis. And it's not like you're just calling me out of the blue. That's right. [00:49:44] That's right. So here's the here's the key. It's okay to ask for business. But make sure you've established and nurture the friendship first and make sure you do it on a call that is strictly business related. Don't try to make it a personal call and then throw business into it. So keep the personal calls completely separate. And then as a separate event, you can ask for business on another call. And it's not going to spoil the relationship as long as the momentum of what you're touches or as long as your touches are really focused. Generally speaking, on the relationship. But that's your personal touch. Then your automated touches are rarely personal. This is where you get post-card set up. And by the way, as we're putting the structure in place. Okay, so let's talk about automation. Let me ask let me ask you, what do you think is more important content or technology? [00:50:52] Content. [00:50:53] Content. Exactly. Content is what you say, technology is how you deliver what you say. So don't get caught up with, oh, I've got this real fancy super duper e-mail auto responder system with artificial intelligence in it. That doesn't. That's great. But it's the content that's most important. Don't get caught up with. Well, I've got this automated postcard marketing system already. I just buy it off the shelf from this company. It's the content, not the technology. So make sure you focus on the content. On the content. Couple things you really think you really want focus on the core message. You want them to always remember about you. What is that? That makes it unique, that makes you special. That gives them a reason to want to choose you. And you want to make sure that that content is always there. You also want to be on the receiving end of that content. Make sure. Is this something they really want to get for me? Like an email? [00:51:59] Okay, if your if your email campaign is sending out an e-mail during springtime that says it's springtime, it's time to plant flowers. And that's the whole focus of the e-mail that's going to take your people off, because that's just wasting my time to tell me the obvious. Okay. So make sure that what you're putting out is good. And then the last thing and this is for a lot of agents, also fail. Years back when we started working with real estate agents and we were asking why are you doing business with us? And a lot of these are top producing agents that are doing business with us. And they gave me two answers. One is I need help. In making this happen, because I don't know what to do the other in about 50 50. The other half says, I know what to do, but I keep starting it. And then something comes up and I stop it. And it's a year or two before I remembered that I stopped it. Now I need to get back into it. And I'm just not consistent. Okay. So the way that you build that consistency is you create everything up front and then you have what I call lock and load and then you do put on autopilot. So you don't have to do it if you have to touch it every single week to get another e-mail out, every single month to get another postcard out, you will fail because you will get busy. You're going to it's like a diet. You break the diet, you cheat on your diet one meal and it's three or four months before you realize I'm off my diet because you just totally lost it. Does that make sense? [00:53:38] Yes, it does. You got to create everything up front and lock and load and then put it on autopilot so you don't have to touch it again. If you don't do that, then you're most likely going to be the yo yo person, you start it. You stop that, you start it. You stop in and it's never really worked for you. [00:54:00] So that can I put an unabashed plug for what we do with Agent Dominator? Absolutely. Okay. I know you would say that since your paycheck. Right. So everything we're talking about here is what we built in to Agent Dominator. The reason it works is not because Agent Dominators Fest is a fabulous system. It is the reason it works is not because Agent Dominator does what most agents don't do. It does. The reason it works is not because we have some fancy technology that no one else has. We do. But the reason it works is because it's right down the middle of the best practices of what you ought to be doing anyway. If you can constantly personally touch, constantly educate them on what creates your true why they should trust you and constantly say top of mind, you don't need any other system out there. Just like my friend I was sharing about earlier has more business and he can than he can handle. He turns it away and he's never spent a dime in marketing because he stays on top of it. But most people don't stay on top of it. Most people don't really know how to do it. And what we do with Agent Dominator is we do it all for you. [00:55:19] Okay. And as long as you're willing to pick up the phone and call or write a handwritten note to your personal contacts, we actually guarantee your results. So I would just encourage you to check that out. Here's something also were real cool because a lot of agents don't know if you realize this, but especially the long term producers sell both residential and commercial. So if that's actually one of you guys listening to this call, we do agent dominated with commercial as well on the investment properties because the folks who own investment properties are very similar to those who own houses. Right. If I own a little apartment building or a gas station also in my home, I'm not in an institutional investor. I just happen to have some real estate investment. And so finding listings there, getting them to choose you in the investment world is very similar to what you do in the residential world. So anyway, that's our plug before we wrap this call completely up. Is there anything that comes to mind that you'd like to ask or comments that you'd like to share? [00:56:38] I think I would just. And this is probably just me speaking from a personal standpoint, but I would encourage agents to offer above and beyond what other agents around them are offering. And I think that would be a great way for them to capitalize on referrals. It goes back to the trust buying and getting their name out there and really attracting business. I feel like they need to make themselves stand apart. That's something that help us choose our agent offering something that other agents we're not in addition to the fact that we always saw sold. So, you know, makes a difference. [00:57:19] You bring up one thing. I I'm a myth because I totally forgot it. So let me add it now at the end. This is this is bonus material. Great. If you're if you're one material. If you're one of my friends and you refer me a client and I send you a really special gift as a thank you note. What does that do to you? How do you respond? Does that make you feel special? Yes. Are you are you more likely to refer me again? Yes. Yes. So don't go cheap on that referral gift and don't give it only if that person that has been referred actually does business with you. The simple fact that, Penny, you referred someone to me, I'm going to woo you because I want more of that. Okay. That's a bonus for today's call. [00:58:14] Great. All right. This is a great call. Thank you so much for your time and expertise today. [00:58:21] Before we close out, do you have any last minute things that you want to share with our listeners? [00:58:26] I really don't. Unless you want more information about Agent Dominator, you can go to Agent Dominator dot com. There is a little forum there you can fill out. And if you love this type of teaching. Visit our website. Get sellers calling you dot com and you can find all kinds of other content there as well. [00:58:45] Yes, absolutely. I wish everyone a great week and a successful time in their business, whatever they're doing. Thanks for joining us, everybody. And we'll see you guys on the next one. Thank you, Beatty. [00:58:58] Thanks. Have a blessed day. All alrighty. p058 [/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]

Welcome!   We are going to hit a number of topics today from the world of Technology and I have a special guest today who will discuss a subject close that I feel is important for my listeners as well. We are going to talk about some of the dangers of using the cloud and why you need to be careful. Passphrases beat Passwords, Malware on Macs, Ransomware, Cloud Liability and How Big Tech is taking advantage of our kids.   For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Businesses in Danger: Data Transfer between Cloud Apps Passwords: Length trumps Complexity Businesses Must Understand The Intricacies of Cloud Security Malware on Macs: Not as Bad as the Headlines Might Lead You to Believe Businesses Beware: Ransomware is on the rise, again Liability belongs to You: Misconfigured Clouds and Security All Businesses are Tech Businesses - Like it or Not Big Tech taking Advantage of Our Kids --- Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig Hey, good morning, everybody, Craig Peterson here. I am not doing the Facebook Live this week. If you watched it last week, I'd love to know what you think. Of course, it's something I am more than glad to do. We're busy, so I don't want to do something that people aren't going to like. We're thinking about trying to do something a little bit different, where we go ahead and instead of just the radio show when we do these Lives. We're going to use those for deep dive so you can ask questions and all of that sort of stuff. I think that's going to work out pretty darn well. We'll see how that goes. We're, you know, we're just trying a few different things here as time goes on. Hey, I got a great interview coming up with a friend of mine. He has been sugar-free now for years, you know, is a tech show right then, and there's no particular tech behind this. You know, if you listen to me for a while that I have had a weight problem, okay. Ever since I was a kid, I had a belly on me. The bottom of my rib cage there in the center kind of points out as I get a ski jump from my belly over the years. I've had this constant battle with my weight, and I lost 80 pounds, I put 40 back on throughout about 15, almost 20 years. I guess that's not too bad. Now I've taken it off again. I've talked about what I did to do that. I want you to hear what Barry has to say. I invited him on. He's an incredible guy and done so many interesting things over his life. He has a book out there, and he had a membership site. He was helping people for a while to get rid of their sugar addictions, but he's going to give us some tips and tricks and some points as well coming up a little bit later on today. I want to discuss a fair amount today about "The Cloud" because so many people think it's a panacea. They think by using the cloud somehow relieves them from the regulatory liability of these regulations that are out there and some of the things that you're supposed to comply with, right? In some cases, if you are a subcontractor selling stuff to a military contractor, there's now a ten-year prison sentence plus all of these fines and things that can nail you. So people are thinking, well, we'll just move to the cloud, right? It's going to make it easier. It's going to make it cheaper. And you know, the first pass on those numbers might be the case it might be cheaper. But what I have found in doing a little bit more digging is that many companies are now abandoning the cloud. And when I found they were abandoning the cloud, that's when I started getting interested trying to figure out why what's going on here. Here. And so I dug into it, and I'm going to share that with you today. I think that's an essential thing for businesses. I've got a new report out from the FBI this week that's backing me up from five years ago. I think that's kind of cool. So we'll talk about what the FBI is warning and telling us to do. From our security standpoint. We're going to also talk about some of the intricacies of cloud security. Still, Mac malware on Max, this is kind of interesting, isn't it because we all been kind of conditioned to think the Macs are malware-free, due to their secure design. They use software designed in the university environment for networking, unlike windows. You know, so when you think about the Mac and you think that you are completely free of malware, that is not the case. We'll talk about what kinds of malware you are likely to be exposed to that could kind of nail you. We're going to talk about business ransomware, you do not hear much about it, because you know, there was such a big deal a year to two years ago, but it is on the rise again. So we'll talk about that and how that's affecting business. We're also going to talk about the fact that if you are in business, face it, and you're a tech business. There are no two ways about it, right? As a business person, now you have to use technology. So how do you do it? How do you take care of your security and your technology, when the Calvary is incoming, they're not there? You're just like every other business out there. That means you have to develop some technical prowess and expertise. You have to be also the guys that take care of your security. Maybe you'll bring in professional services firms to help you out. Companies like mine can come in and design your network or redesign your network. Or maybe have accountants come in and look over your bookkeeping. Maybe help to improve some efficiencies in the business. Maybe you bring a legal team in to make sure that you're not going to get nailed by some of these regulations out there. The bottom line is that we are all tech businesses in this day and age. That's something that I don't think most people consider. We'll get into that a little bit later on today. We're also going to be talking about big tech, taking advantage of our kids some new lawsuits filed under the children's online privacy protection act or COPPA, against some of the biggest companies out there in the online world. These are all big deals, I think. That's what we're going to be talking about today. If you want to two, you can get all of these different segments from my weekly radio shows my appearances on TV and radio at my website at Craig Peterson dot com, and you can listen to them individually. You can also subscribe to the podcast. What we've been doing with the radio show since the whole radio show from soup to nuts is an hour and a half long every week is to put it out as one long show. Thanks to a suggestion from a few listeners and one guy that kind of pushed me over the edge in making it that way. If you subscribe to the podcast on any of the major podcasting services, you are going to get a one hour and a half, a 90-minute podcast that covers all the latest news of the week. I appreciate everybody that's doing that. Of course, our numbers have gone down a little bit in the podcast downloads because there are fewer downloads instead of the show being a different podcast is now one podcast, but I think it is better. There was an event that was held by the FBI infragard program in New Hampshire here last week. I didn't go as I was just tied up. They hold it the morning, every couple of months, and most of the time, I just can't go. But the event was called "The Calvary is not coming." They weren't talking about Covid-19 The coronavirus. They were talking about our infrastructure, our businesses when we get attacked. I work with the FBI on cases and help them understand what's going on with attacks against our customers like when Iran or China, Russia, or even others are trying to attack our customers by doing some nasty stuff with our customers, right? Our customer's data that we just don't want to have happened. We just didn't want that information to get out. While preparing these tutorials, the pop-up-trainings, and coursework, it brought to mind this idea of the Calvary, and whether or not they're coming. You and I, we are the people who are responsible for the security in the businesses we work in, right? And that can end up meaning that it's all on our shoulders. So this whole Calvary thing got me to thinking that I think there's a great analogy here. We are the Calvary, I'm the Calvary, and that is the director Action I've been going anyways, not with that specific wording, that particular name, okay. But that's the direction I've always been going. But now I think I'm going to get way more specific about that. Because you are the Calvary, you are the people that your family goes to when there's a problem. You are the people who are relied on by the business owner. Maybe you are the business owner, and the buck stops with you when it comes to technology when it comes to security when it comes to making everything work, right. That's the way it is with me, right? I'm the business owner, and yet the tech buck, the security buck stops with me. And so that's the approach I'm going to be taking here. We are the Calvary. I am the Calvary. You are the Calvary every one of you, right? You listen to this tech show to understand technology a little bit better because you're the person that others go to who is going to answer their questions. Who's going to fix their problems. I think it's great, but I also feel a huge responsibility to help you with that. I kind of woke up in more than one time over the last few months with nightmares, that's the wrong word, but how do I help you? How do I help you guys best? What are the things you need to know that is going to be easy? It is a question that we need to work on need to understand. We need to make work for us and our families, our business families as well as our families. That's my theme. I have already got five tutorials in the can where I'm doing screenshots, and I am showing you what to do while you're watching my desktop as I am doing things. I'm installing an extension, or I'm locking down a Windows computer, or I'm configuring a firewall. I am doing all of these things you have to do for everybody or that you have to understand. That's where we're going. I am committed to this. I think I have a message that that works that people can understand, right? The Calvary isn't coming. You are the Calvary. We are the Calvary, each one of us, and that's what we will be covering. So keep an eye on that. Make sure you're on my email list because these tutorials, although free, you can only get them if you subscribe. Craig Peterson dot com is where you're going to find it online. Craig Peterson dot com. Make sure you also use subscribe to the podcast, I'd appreciate it if you enjoy these. A subscription always helps us out and helps get the word out even further. We'll be right back listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and, of course, online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hi guys, welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. In online, of course, Craig Peterson dot com. We're going to talk about the cloud and what stuff you need to worry about and what you don't. I was at my chiropractor's just this week and talking with him, and he has moved his practice in with another chiropractor. It's a little bit bigger, they've got massage therapists, and now there are four chiropractors in practice there. He was asking because he was concerned, they have a system there that is cloud-based, and you know, time was they would have a server there in the office, maybe in the basement, and they would have their little firewall, they try and keep things safe. Now that it's out in the cloud, their worried. We're going to be getting into that in a few minutes. And then also coming up here at the top of the hour. I've got my friend Barry who's going to be joining us, and we're going to be discussing sugar, which is, yeah, I guess there's kind of a tech angle to the sugar side, right? Like the high fructose corn syrup and the problems coming from that, of course, we're not going to talk about that part of it, but what he's done and the book he has as well as what you can do. First off, let's talk about our first cloud topic of the day. And this is about businesses in danger, and how they're in danger now from the cloud. The cloud, as I mentioned in the last segment, is not a panacea; it does not relieve you of any responsibility for the data that is in the cloud. So, for instance, if you have patient data, if you have data that is privileged or personally identifiable, putting it into a cloud vendor's hand does not relieve you of that responsibility. If you want to check it out with most of the major vendors out there like Google, for instance, you can find their statements online of what it is that they will accept responsibility for, which is nothing. And that's particularly true if you're not using the business type services. For instance, with Office 365, if you are using their email service, for example, and you're on their lower tier of the platform, you're not going to get security. You're not going to get the ability to block some of the most malicious types of emails that might be coming in. It's not backed up. They are not going to have some of the multi-factor-authentication that you really should have tied in with things, maybe like DUO or others, alright. Just because there is a cloud-service does not mean it's safe. Just because a company like Microsoft with its Office 365 does have some pretty darn secure services. Don't assume that the lower end service is they have are going to be safe for you either. And there's a great article I have up on my website right now. And it's from Health Net security. And it's talking about this subject and saying that 44% of malicious threats are cloud-enabled nowadays. Think about that. It's huge. Time was when the risks were what viruses and we know anti-virus software now is pretty much good for nothing, right? Because the anti-virus software is not going to protect you from modern threats. But that's what it was. It was all this virus stuff that might spread and worms that might cover the basics. But now we're seeing that cybercriminals are using the cloud because it's been an effective method for them to hide their attacks. Because the cloud vendor again, it's you know, friendly. Glee, this is you know, saying, you see a lot, aren't I? Frankly, when you get right down to it, if you are in a big cloud vendor like Microsoft or Google or an Amazon. Or even some of these smaller guys that are still pretty big, you're not even noticeable. Would they notice if you moved to another cloud provider? You will not change their bottom line or their top line. You're not even a rounding error. How much do you think that they care about you individually? What can you do when you get hacked, and you're in the cloud? What can you do when their cloud network goes down? What can you do when their software isn't working when a rollout of their latest release doesn't work? Or maybe it just doesn't work for you and 10,000 other people, which is nothing, right? Because Yeah, well, we got millions of subscribers 10,000 Some people Yeah, well, we'll get right on that for you, sir. Right, because you're not even in the 1%. Lots of problems here. And when we're talking about the security side, yeah, in some ways, it's going to be more secure. But in many ways, it's not. Here's a quote here from a threat company that they do a lot of research is called net scope and scale P. and Ray can Aziz is the threat research director over there. And he's saying, and we are seeing increasingly complex thread techniques being used across cloud applications, spanning from Cloud phishing and malware delivery, to cloud absolute control and ultimately, cloud data exfiltration. Of course, data exfiltration is where the bad guys are stealing your bank account information, stealing nutritional property, stealing your customer's information, etc. Or research Research shows the sophistication and scale of the cloud-enabled Kill Chain to increase, requiring security defenses that understand thousands of cloud apps to keep pace with attackers and block cloud threats. For these reasons, any enterprise using the cloud needs to modernize and extend its security architecture. In other words, what he's saying is any business because we know when he's an enterprise, I want to bring up a critical point. I was doing some work and doing some training with a bunch of accountants in Ireland. The largest group of accountants in Ireland, and I was explaining some of the security problems that we see here and around the world and that they see there, and they started talking about enterprises. Now I note in enterprises, right, and enterprise is big business. You think of enterprises here in the United States, and you're thinking about you know, the multi-billion dollar profit that some of these vast enterprises get. An enterprise means any business, right? It's an enterprise for a kid to set up a lemonade stand at the side of the road and sell lemonade to passers-by. That's an enterprise. So they're saying here, and I agree that every business, no matter how small, needs to understand the threat and understand that cloud apps aren't the answer and you have to take care of it yourself. The Calvary isn't coming. Your end Nat not even in that you're not a rounding error when it comes to the amount of money these companies made and make every year. So you have to be your own Calvary. Now, when we're stuck talking about businesses here, they're saying that 89% of companies are In the cloud Now, that doesn't mean they're hundred percent in the cloud, it just means you're using the cloud service. I bet you when you got right down to it, that those numbers are probably really 100%. People are using some of the services that maybe you shouldn't be using, right. They're using Google Docs and Sheets and all of those types of things. I use Grammarly all of the time, and some of those things can leak data. So we're trying to be careful not to use some of the cloud services when it comes to more confidential data. But really, it's 100%. Think about everything you're doing, all of the collaboration tools, and people are using Slack, which is not secure. And they're using that to share information within the team. You know, it's a great productivity application, sweb mail apps, those are probably the most popular and used today, people using Gmail or I mentioned office 365. I have a friend who still uses Yahoo, who knew that they were still in business doing email, right? There, the average company is using 142 different cloud applications. And I'm what I'm just trying to do here. Now, I'm not trying to scare you away from using the cloud. It isn't just a scare tactic. I'm not trying to sell you a listen. You need to have multiple layers, and you have to buy them for me, right? What I want you to do here, my whole goal of talking about this today is to get you to pay attention to what you're doing, and the data that you have up there. We're going to talk about this more when we get back. We'll finish this up. We're talking about the new FBI, released this week, what they're saying about security and what you can do to help. So stick around. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back, everybody, Craig Peterson here, WGAN online at Craig Peterson dot com. We're going to talk here about the FBI his latest recommendation from their press release this week. We've got more coming up about cloud security. Ransomware is on the rise again, what type is it? What's it doing? And at the top of the hour, I've got Barry Friedman joining us. We're going to talk about sugar, and the impact of sugar. Now, this isn't an entirely tech-related topic, but I know you're going to appreciate this. He is a great guy. He's got an excellent little book out. It's been up for quite a few years now. It is this concept that he has about sugar and what to do with it, and about it has helped to change my life. I figured I would share it with you. It's one of the things I find essential. Let's finish up our first cloud topic of the day because I want you guys to think about your use of the cloud. When you get into the larger businesses, it's looking like the average of these Fortune 500 companies. The real big ones, but not like the, you know, absolutely massive ones. Those guys are using over 2400 distinct cloud services and apps. Think about what you're using what you're doing. And let's help you think about it for a minute here. Here's a top of five cloud app categories. Which of these are you using Cloud Storage? So we're thinking about things like Dropbox here or box, we're thinking about things like Google Drive, which again, all of these guys Microsoft has one drive, all of them have tiers that are safe. However, most people are not buying their secure tier. So keep that in mind. Next, collaboration tools, which collaboration tools are you using? Right? I am talking about Slack here, and about the Microsoft Teams program. And there are many other types of collaboration as well. We use some for putting together diagrams to use some for some of our graphics arts. We use some cloud apps for grabbing videos and doing some video production. Webmail, what are you using for webmail? Consumer stuff? What do you do? Are you going on to amazon.com to order things? How about some of these other sites, social media, many of us my business included, we have social media accounts that we use to keep in touch with our prospects and with our clients. Which are these are you using Google Drive, YouTube, office 365. Hopefully, you're at least using one of the business versions of office 365. How about Facebook? How about Google? Gmail, Microsoft Office SharePoint, that's a pretty common one. Outlook. How about Twitter, Amazon services like s3 or Amazon Web Services. It was the list goes on and on. LinkedIn, many of them are using them. When and when we're talking about 44% of the threats being cloud-based. It gets to be a big deal. The five top targeted cloud apps are Microsoft Office 365. Now we're seeing this right now with one of our clients who is using Office 365. Now we have them on one of the enterprise levels that they need. They have multiple times a day people trying to break into their Microsoft Office 365 for business accounts from Iran. Now numerous times a day, but also from China and Russia. The next top one box. Very good. Again, outstanding software, but you have to have the right kind. And make sure you're using at least two-factor authentication with some sort of a random one-time password (OTP) type generator. Google Drive Microsoft as your GitHub. Man, it goes on and on lots of great information here. I'm not planning on doing a full course on the cloud anytime soon. But we are going to talk about it more a little bit today coming up later on. But I want to get to this FBI thing right now. About five years ago, there was some academic research that was published, and I remember reading it back then I was really, really into it came out of Cornell, and they looked at the strength of passwords. And we went into the whole history of behind passwords how they started I remember the very first passwords, you know, we remember using systems didn't have passwords. But it has evolved to the point today where these recommendations that came out five years ago are starting to take root with people. There have been so many discussions, so many arguments, if you will, about what should or should not happen when it comes to security. Some are arguing that we need more complexity in our passwords. Many businesses require you to have uppercase lowercase digits, special characters in the password used to be used to have control characters and your passwords. I haven't seen that requirement in a long time. It was back in the days of terminals. Others say, Hey, listen, all you need to do is make your passwords longer. Because part of the problem we have with passwords is the more Like some password, the more likely somebody is going to write it down. And if they write it down, the cleaning crew or somebody else is going to come across it, right? That's a bit of a problem. Well, the FBI is Portland office this week, came out on the side of longer passwords and not this whole complexity mess. So in the FBI statement, they said, quote, instead of using the short, complex password, it's hard to remember, consider using a longer passphrase. It involves combining multiple words into a long string of at least 15 characters. The extra length of the password makes it harder to crack while also making it easier for you to remember. It falls right in line with the research out of Cornell. It is what I've been recommending for a long time. You're best off using some sort of a phrase such as a four-word phrase for a password. Remember, I use password managers, and you should be. You should be using one password or using Lastpass to make sure that you are safe right. So using one of those have it choose the words for you randomly. Both of them have the ability to generate passwords. Occasionally I will use these very complex ones with upper lowercase special characters and numbers. But I only do that when the site requires you to do that. Okay. But this is a very, very big deal. And you might have seen stuff about this before there is a famous now-infamous XKCD webcomic that is online, I should say. It is kind of cool. A lot of sarcasm, math, and language, but it's looking at password strength and through 20 years of effort and said We've successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess. And that is the problem, the harder it is for the computer to guess. The longer it'll take to break-in to, and the less likely they can get into your account, right? So they break it down, look for common substitutions, look at the order numerals punctuations and basically, they come out and say, Hey, listen for your average password, using troubadour ampersand three as the example. That's 1-234-567-8910 11 characters, which is a pretty good length, right? Most sites only require eight characters. That breaks down to 28 bits of entropy. That's two to the 28th power, and at 1000 guesses a second, it would take a computer above three days to break that particular password. You know, possible attack if it's a weak remote web service, it can be a lot faster, there are hash tables that are news. Those hash tables make it so that the bad guys can crack a password in just minutes. When you start using these big ones, and the example is like course, correct battery staple, that's 44 bits, takes 550 years to guess versus three days. Think about that for a few minutes. I think it's vital that we use these passphrases from once again, I agree with the FBI on this one. All right, when we come back, we have one more segment before we get into our little sugar interview. And we're going to talk a bit of malware on Mac. So stick around. We'll be right back. Hey, welcome back, everybody. Craig Peterson here on WGAN and online, Craig Peterson dot com. We're going to talk right now about malware on max. Right, our max hack-proof is not kind of the bottom line. But we're going to talk about that we also have more coming up on some of the cloud risks and things you can do, where you should keep an eye out when it comes to the cloud services that you're using. And I want you to think about what services you're using. And we did talk about that a little bit earlier. Okay, so let's get into the max right now. When we get back to the top of the hour, we're going to be joined by my good friend. We're going to be talking a little about what's going on when it comes to sugar, guys, so he's coming up here in about what 1015 minutes, so make sure you stick around you're going to enjoy it. He has a book out there by You'll find it over on Amazon almost anywhere online. And I think you'll get a lot out of it. It's called I love me more than sugar, the why and how of 30 days sugar-free. So it's, it's absolutely a great idea and is something must pay attention to, we have such an obesity epidemic in addition to all the illnesses, so many of them traced back to that one ingredient. Why and how and what's going on. All of that is coming up with my friend Barry Friedman coming up at the top of the hour. So our Macs you know if you've watched me for a while that I am a huge Apple fan, right? And I'm a big Apple fan mainly because when Apple first came out with iOS 10, not iOS but with a Mac os 10. They had switched from using what was a complete and total toy operating system to a real one using Unix and a refined version of Unix. They ended up having a mock OS underneath it. I had worked on both platforms before helping to develop the kernels in both of those, so I thought, well, this is great, maybe now's the time because I was frustrated, right. I had been using Unix for years. I had, at that point, used Linux as well. And so many of the apps that I wanted to use just weren't available for Linux or any version of Unix. That was a big BSD guy. He still used BSD for some of the things we're doing. I just said, this Is it, right? Because you could drop into a terminal, you had a real terminal, a real operating system sitting under underneath you. And I thought that was pretty darn cool. And I have stuck with Max ever since. But Macs are not foolproof. They do come under attack. Apple has tightened things up. If you've got Catalina, which is the latest release of the Mac operating system, you know that some of the old apps that you might have had no longer work on Catalina, because Apple now has put some requirements in place. The biggest one is, you guys need to be 64 bits instead of 32 bits. That makes the operating system writing a little bit easier because you no longer have to handle two sets of libraries and worry about linking the man or the addressing space for the application. After all, you want to randomize it. And so now I'm going down a rat hole, you're getting kind of geeky, but that's one of the things the other big thing is now you might have noticed that Apple has a lot of controls in place about where an application can go on your Mac, what it has access to and will pop up and ask you about it. There is a lot more stuff coming up. In fact, in the next minor release of Catalina, there's going to be more restrictions in place. But even with all of those things, there are still some vulnerabilities, nothing like Windows. But Windows is getting better. But there are still some significant flaws in the way windows works with its file-sharing services, services turned on, even though it has a firewall. It's a crappy one, and that's part of what we're going to take care of with some of the courses and tutorials I am offering. You're going to be able to lock down any Windows or Mac computer all by yourself. You're going to be able to lock down your small business network, and I am teaching you how to do that, absolutely free. No upsells. Depending on how far you want to be able to lock it down, I will have some courses and things too. As I've said so many times, you're the Calvary the hackers are coming you have to be prepared. When we're talking about Macs, what must we pay attention to? Malwarebytes has some outstanding software that you can use on a Mac and also on Windows. It's one of the few pieces of software one of the packages that I recommend, frankly, but they've got a new report out, and they're saying that Mac malware is now growing faster than malware for Windows, for the first time. It is a quote right out of malware bytes. For the first time, Macs outpaced Windows PC in the number of threats detected per endpoint. I want you to remember, that is threats, not actual successful attacks. In total, we saw approximately 24 million Windows, adware detections, and 30 million Mac detections. We're talking about adware here. These aren't the viruses that have plagued windows forever. It isn't the ransomware that continues to plague windows and will for years to come. We're talking about adware detections. Frankly, what this boils down to so that you don't get too worried about it with your Mac. It is that most of the Mac malware is much more of a nuisance, and it is a real danger. Because Macs are generally not vulnerable to what we would normally classify as malware. They do have some pop-ups that can happen because of the browsers. That's why I've got my training coming up. You guys that are the frontline defenses in your homes and your families and your businesses, you are the Calvary. I've got some great Calvary training coming up for all of you. Keep an eye out for that here in a couple of weeks. But Macs are mostly only vulnerable to this so-called adware frankly and add whereas I said it's more of a nuisance than a danger. Here's something else that Malwarebytes acknowledges it says max differed drastically from windows in terms of the types of threats seen. Between us. It's because they design Macs drastically different than Windows machines. Mac's operating system is designed right. Back to Malwarebytes, where we found several different categories and families in our top detections and Windows threats that classify as traditional malware, especially those aimed at businesses. Most Mac threats and certainly the most common ones are families of adware and potentially unwanted wanted programs (PUPs). Among the top 10 Mac threats for consumers and businesses or it is a mix of these PUPs, these potentially unwanted programs, and adware. The PUPs are a variety of mostly cleaning apps termed as unwanted not just by Malwarebytes but by the Mac user community at large. Two of the best-known examples mean Mac keeper and Mac booth. And I had to add to that, that I have a good friend and he was in the insurance business for years, had his practice and they had several people working for him as he was handling insurance, and then he went into investment type stuff. And it was interesting to me that he fell for that whole pop thing multiple times. He just kept downloading and paying for Mac keeper, which just doesn't do anything, and is malware itself. It is adware. Mac boosters are the same sort of problem. Don't install those things. By the way, when it comes to a Mac, this is very crucial. You have to install the software yourself, right. So until last year, the two top Mac adware apps had detected installations. Number one Hundred of thousands in 2019. However, one new piece of adware was detected 30 million times. It's called New Tab. It appeared on the scene in December 2018. It's an adware family that attempts to redirect searches in the web browser to earn illicit affiliate revenue. I've talked about that before it clicks on ads using your browser. And it is usually delivered in the form of apps with embedded Safari, Safari extension Safari is Apple's number one browser, Apple's browser itself, right. So don't use a new tab. Most crucially of all, Mac malware is not a virus, and it can't spread by itself. It isn't a worm that kind of crawls around. Mac OS does not allow unsigned apps to be installed without user permission at all. The mission these apps cannot spread from machine to machine. You have to fix them. No drive-by, right? None of that happens on a Mac. So the way Mac malware gets installed is by entirely new users like you and me into installing it ourselves. And when we're talking about these potentially unwanted programs, when I call it a scam, where, frankly, but these types of scams advertising junk apps, pretend they're doing something useful. And this is part of what chrome google just got rid of over 500 Chrome extensions because they were doing the same thing. They had scareware built into them. They weren't clicking on all kinds of ads out there to try and drive up revenues. Naive users like my buddy that get tricked into installing them and sometimes even paying for them, which is what he did with Mac keeper. Okay. And then they're hijacking your browser. It's just crazy. So protect yourself. It is simple. Only ever install apps from the Mac App Store or a trusted developer. Only install browser extensions that are recommended by me or by trustworthy sources, because they are not signed and not reviewed. You can always delete them, and you can always remove them, you know, and that's been my advice for people for a long time. Go through your inventory of apps, including on your iPhones, your iPads, etc. The thing that you see that you haven't used in a while delete them. I just went through earlier this week on my iPhone, I sat there and said, Okay, I haven't used that for a while, but I really could use it soon. No, I haven't used it for a while, and I deleted it, which is what I recommend everybody do here. Be very careful that great article from nine to five Mac by Ben Lovejoy that I was commenting on here this segment, and you'll find it online and, of course, at Craig Peterson dot com. And this is part of what I do if you are on my email list, you will get these emails. We have a high open-rate like 40% of you guys open these emails, and I think that's just phenomenal. It's a very, very high rate because they are so useful. So make sure you subscribe, Craig Peterson, calm, slash subscribe, get on my email list, and articles like this and others, including that FBI warning that just came out, will show up in your mailbox. Usually, Saturday morning depends on how far a week's been going. Stick around when we come back. I got my friend joining us, Barry Friedman. You're listening to Craig Peterson on w GAN online Craig Peterson dot com. Hello, everybody, welcome back. Craig Peterson here on WGAN. A little earlier this week, I sat down and recorded an interview with a friend of mine. I've known him for quite a while now. His name is Barry Friedman. He's written a book that you'll find online. It is one of the Amazon number one bestsellers titled I love me, more than sugar. You know that I have been very conscious about my health, particularly recently, right? As I get a little bit older, you realize I'd better be healthy, or I'm going to have all kinds of problems. I have been doing all sorts of diets over the years over the last 40 years. A lot, okay. I kind of stuck with the Atkins diet for a while lost quite a bit of weight. I also have tried a couple of other things. Over the last couple of years, year and a half, anyway, my wife and I have been doing Intermittent fasting. We found it to be just absolutely incredible for us. Now, Barry has a different way of approaching it that's been very successful for him and many other people. So I asked him if he'd sit down with us and talk a little bit about it, and he did. So here we go with the interview with Barry Friedman. Again, check it out online, you'll find this book. It's called I love me more than sugar, the why and how of 30 days sugar-free. We're joined right now by Barry Friedman. He is an author. He has been quite busy over the years, even on Johnny Carson, back in the day. He is a gentleman that I know and appreciate. He's helped me out with a few things over the years. I want to talk a little bit about this book here. I love me more than sugar. What he has found. What he's doing. To help not just me out a little bit, but he's going to talk about sugar and how it impacts all So let's get started. Barry, welcome. Barry Hey, Craig. Craig 2:06 Now there is a whole bunch of controversy out there right now, I've heard people say there are a million diet plans. If you do a Google search, you'll find one that'll work for you because they all work. You know, and it's varying degrees, right? And I've done this over the years, I lost 80 pounds doing the diet, which is really something and then I put about half of that on over the next 20 years. I've taken it off now by doing intermittent fasting and being a little more cautious about what I eat. Looking at all of these changes over the years, one of the significant changes I see right now, Barry, has to do with this food pyramid, which tells us we have to eat grains that were the basis of it. Why don't you tell us a little bit about why that is? What's the problem with the grains and sugars in them. Barry It is funny, you know, all that stuff. See, you would talk to a nutritionist and do well to dig into that, Craig. But what I can tell you is, you know, since childhood of our culture, our parents often use sugar as a reward, punishment, and bribe. It works its way into our lives so fast, so pervasively, and it's kind of a miracle. We eat a lot of wheat. We eat a lot of grains, and those turn into sugar. We eat a lot of sugar. We're up to about 150 to 180 pounds a year average for Americans. It's about eight pounds every three weeks. I know that because I used to go on TV talking about my book and a juggle an eight-pound bowling ball. I would hand that to the host and say, here's how much sugar an average person eats in three weeks, and they hit the table with it. Yeah, it's funny, you know, I think in 2020 or within this decade, we are going to unequivocably look at sugar the same way we now look at tobacco. It snuck in. Back in the old days, go back 150 years, rich people would eat four pounds of the stuff a year. Our systems have not developed fast enough to handle the massive increase, and it shows up in all kinds of ways, overweight, and obesity. A lot of people will tell you it has a lot to do with the number of cancers we have. If you were to look at those two curves, cancer, and sugar consumption, those curves look pretty similar. Now, I'm not a doctor. I'm a four-time world champion who doesn't eat sugar. Craig 4:28 Sugar over the years, we know it has caused problems. I saw some studies looking at some of the Egyptian mummies thousands of years ago now a couple of thousand years ago, and they had all kinds of problems with their teeth and many other diseases that they had. Now they're attributing that to sugar. You mentioned that when we were younger, we would get a little bit of sugar as kind of a treat or reward. Now we see these hangry commercials, but you need to eat this Chocolate Bar because it's going. It has gotten out of hand Unknown Speaker 5:04 Yeah, it's hilarious. I mean, that's how we get up to 150 180 pounds a year, it's added to everything. Crackers and salt have dextrose in it to keep it from caking, salt has sugar, which is fantastic. You know, a lot of savory foods will have it, and it just shows up everywhere. The truth is, after eight years of coming up, Leap Day 2020 will be my eighth anniversary. My first day sugar-free was leap-day 2012. I love these every four years I get an actual anniversary. What happens, you know, what happens when it stopped eating is the taste for the desire for the need. The addiction goes away. Food starts to taste differently. I've often said to people, Craig, that you can't speak for the version of yourself who lives on the other side of 30-day sugar-free. Right now, the person I am is influenced by everything I've done in the last whatever, 30 days or 30 years. That person on the other side of a 30-day sugar-free detox is an entirely different person as far as skin or anxieties. Usually, the feelings they have, their skin, the amount of sleep they need, the way their teeth feel. My teeth feel so good all the time right now used to be able to take my pulse in my teeth after eating a four-pack of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. I could feel my pulse. Yeah, I may have been feeling my finger, but it felt like my tooth was banging. Anyway, if somebody is interested in doing that, you know jumping, find little tricks you can do for yourself like tell yourself you're not getting any sugar for 10 AM or noon. Little tiny tricks will turn around the habits. Craig 6:35 It is the habit that is the problem. In so many ways for so many people. Going back to what I've been doing with intermittent fasting. You know I had it in my mind that I had to eat. We look at our kids nowadays. They have breakfast, and they have a mid-morning snack in school, they have lunch at school and then an afternoon snack after school and another bite before they go to practice. The score it's getting bigger, just listening to it and drink during sports practice Barry Yeah, exactly. It is sugar, and it's compounding. Craig When I decided, Hey, I'm going to skip a meal, you know, just a very moderate light-fast. Yeah, my brain was just going, Oh, you've got to eat. I found that really what it was for me was kind of always an addict, right? I was addicted to it. Is sugar that way too? You are describing it as you know, try not to have sugar before 10 AM. Is this something an addiction, frankly? Barry Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? I mean, the sugar beats up four organs pretty severely, the brain, the liver, the heart, and the skin. As far as the brain and when you're talking about like, even before we take that bite, you know, it starts firing up, you know, it fires up the same receptors that are fired up by gambling or sex or drugs. No chance of addiction. They're right certainly no chance of addiction. But yeah, it plays, and you know, it's funny going off sugar and I did it for 30 days. Well, I did for one day at first felt so good on March 1, 2012. I was like, I have to do this for 30 days and see what happens about 20 days into that. I was like, Oh my gosh, I'm going to do this for a year just because I feel so alive right now I have to see how I feel. But what happens is it throws a monkey wrench into well-choreographed habits that you have in your life, right the way you live and yours and other people's. That's another thing that happens, you know, it's like I live in a family with a wife and a son. We mean, you don't do sugar. It's a personal decision. You know, you get this little dance of confusion that you get to run around, but it's also within that is bliss, and there's resentment, and there's a renewal, and there's hope the emotions so much is involved. When we eat sugar, you know, it's not supposed to be a portal for squelching fear and sadness and loneliness, anger. It's supposed to be for food, and so few of the 650,000 items that are on a market shelf, serve that exact purpose. The food you know, we can walk around and collect what's food, in a pretty small basket, and other stuff are usually just connectors for that hundred and 150-180 pounds of sugar a year. Craig 9:10 Let's talk about this bloating, right? We were discussing a little bit about what happens when we eat a lot of sugar. The insulin response, for ten years, I was a volunteer paramedic, and I certainly had diabetic patients. You'd find them just unconscious, and what do you do with them? I know a lot of people who have diabetes, as well. A lot of this has to do not just with the insulin response, which I'd love to chat about briefly. It has to do with inflammation at the cellular level. Our bodies are blocking themselves because of what we're doing with some of the sugars that we're eating. We put on weight, and that increases our inflammatory response. It results in some of these other problems with the brain and the heart and the liver. Barry Yeah. There are very few things that surprise me when I walk around an airport, and I still travel a fair amount. When walking around an airport, I see a lot of large people. We're big people nowadays, and it's not surprising. You know, when you talked about the molecules, sugar is composed of two molecules, I'll keep this as technical as possible, Glucose, and fructose. Glucose gets metabolized by every cell in the body, you know, and if we don't get it from the diet, our diet our bodies make it. Fructose, so very different. The only organized organ that can metabolize that is the liver. The liver is the single transporter for it. It's overworked. I mean, it's it probably did pretty well back in the days when people ate four pounds of sugar, wealthy people ate four pounds of sugar, not average peasants, the likes of me. I've gotten a few they called it the delicate spice back in the day, and that's what our livers could healthfully handle you don't see a lot of large people when we look back in old pictures. I just got all these pictures of my grandma, and her family send through the legacy box is such a beautiful thing to get these 14 Films back. No one is fat, Craig. There's nothing personal in the video. Yeah, going back to probably the 1880s the earliest people on here, but that's just people running around. They've not filled themselves. It's a challenge, man, you know, and it becomes a very personal decision, no one's going to make us quit sugar. We've been talking about it. Craig Hey, stick around. When we get back, we're going to finish up our interview with Barry. He has some more interesting points, including how he got to the point he's at right now. So we'll be talking about that. And we're also going to talk a little bit about intermittent fasting, what I've been doing, and what you might want to do and then we're going to get back into technology. Listen to Craig Peterson WGAN. Craig Hey, welcome back everybody Craig Peterson here WGAN online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hey, let's pick up our interview with Barry Friedman. In case you were wondering what the name of his book is, it's "I love me more than sugar." I quite enjoyed it. This guy is a great guy and has been involved with so many things over the years, from being on the Johnny Carson show doing juggling through today where I met him because he's one of the coaches in one of the programs in which I participate. Very, very great guy, and we're going to talk more with him about the whole sugar thing. Barry I wasn't famous for a long time when I first tried this and then then it started, like, wow, he's still doing that, you know, the Curiosity started then I wrote a book about it and got on TV shows as fast as I wanted to dial-up and call-in or fly-in and be on Morning News. There's a call for it. It's a curiosity, but soon, it will be something that we must study. Craig Yeah, I think it's going to be common sense a few years from now. We're speaking with Barry Friedman. He has written a book, and I want to get into that. Now. I'm glad you brought it up. It is part of the 30-day exercise that you discussed. There's a plan in there. Why don't you tell us a bit about the book? I found it over on Amazon. Easy enough to find, and what's it doing? How's it going to help people? Barry Yeah, you know, this book is it's very non-scientific, and I, my buddy, Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller, the taller, bigger-half of Penn and Teller, He lost over 100 pounds on it. He wrote a great book called presto, how I lost 100 pounds. He's got an excellent subtitle for it, but his first line in the book, and I'm one of the few people in the world that can jump on to his tagline. If you take diet advice from a juggler, you're an idiot, because that's what he wrote in the book. I wrote the book really from just a perspective of a guy who did it. A guy who, you know, I traveled around a lot. I did shows for 34 years. Ted conferences, TV shows, I was around a lot of delicious sugar, and I used to love it all. From 2012 on, no added sugar, anything. I tell stories about that journey. Some substitutions we can do, where it starts, what it does to us. Some challenges you may come across, and then the 30 days is walked through very scientifically. I ran an online program for five and a half years and helped thousands of people do a 30-day challenge. What that gave me Craig was a massive database of where people are on day one, day two, day three. It is a traceable spike. I mean, you can see some of the most dramatic days of my life. And you know, it's, I call it in the book ground zero-day for ground zero it was crashing. I remember lying on a massage table. Tears are running down my face. Not because of not having sugar, but I knew that moment was a turning point. My wife as she was like holding me down deep massage as hard as she could just get stuff moving in my body, but I was I felt like it was the door of the threshold into a new life. I think if I would have folded at that point, just grab something I wouldn't have just gone back to going past that day. That was when everything changed. So we in the community, we often talk about what's your day for, and sometimes it's a day for other people, but there is a time when we need to. That's the hero's journey part. That's where you grab the mystical apprentice who goes with you and the mentor who goes with you and walk you through dope. If that helps, I would love to walk you through that. Visa v the book and we have a Facebook page with the how 50-60,000 people on it who have all dabbled in some realm of it, and it's a movement. As I said at the beginning, we will soon look at this the same way we now look at tobacco, no doubt about it. Craig 3:55 The book is called "I love me more than sugar." Barry Friedman is the Author, anything else you'd like to add here? Barry, before we go? Barry Oh, I would just love to tell everybody that if something in this conversation spoke to you, I trust it. Don't question it. There's a fight or flight reflex in the brain that a little gland, that small almond-shaped gland whose job it is to take us away from scary things. If something touched you before, it has a chance to go through that part of the brain, a chance to tell yourself that there is a time for doing this. Know that sugars not for satisfaction or completion. It has never put through that kind of test. It's always about getting more. Like, I said, we will look at this as a real downfall for society. It got added to everything, and it became routine. As Craig said, we began hearing commercials about how we owe it to ourselves how we deserve this. So I trust the gut influences the gut instinct. If you heard something and take a chance, Craig 4:53 I put a link on my website as well obviously to this interview, and you mentioned a Facebook page. What's the name of that group? Or that page? Barry Thirty days sugar-free, but the last 30 days sugar-free Facebook group. We post some stuff in there from time to time. Craig 5:10 All right, and it's a community, and I think that's something that can help. Barry Yeah. Boy does it ever. It is easy to feel alone in this stuff. Craig 5:16 Yeah, exactly. Especially in this day and age again, Barry Friedman. I love me more than sugar and 30 days sugar-free. Look it up on Facebook. I appreciate you being with us today. Unknown Speaker 5:28 Thanks so much, Craig. Thanks for what you're doing. Bye-Bye. Craig 5:31 Hey, as I said, I hope you enjoyed it. Barry's just a great guy. It's a lot of fun chatting with him about what is going on out there. What he's been doing, and he's done a lot, right. I think the most exciting people, frankly, are the people who have done a lot of different diverse experiences in it, and it helps us help you helps me just overall. All right, so we got a couple more things we want. To cover here today, one of them is the liability here on cloud services. We'll get to that in a little bit of business. Ransomware, I think, is an important thing. We'll be talking about that and big tech taking advantage of our kids. But I want to kind of continue with this theme. Barry was talking about sugar, and I know that you know, some diets w for some people, they're not great for others. If you have diabetes, of course, getting to getting rid of some of the sugar can be problematic, right? You know, I was a volunteer in the ambulance service for ten years, and I quite a bit of advanced training and everything else. When called to the scene of a diabetic emergency, we would administer d-50, which is 50% dextrose to diabetics who were out of it, then take the blood samples and stuff so they can spin them up in the lab quickly when we got into the hospital. You know, probably if someone has a diabetic emergency that you got to get some sugar into them right away. So getting rid of sugar is a difficult thing for a person with diabetes. I have, as I mentioned before, on the show, I have been focused on intermittent fasting. It is effortless to do. I've been following a doctor up at the University of Toronto, Dr. Fung, who has several books out on the subject. Before I started this, I read at least a half a dozen books on intermittent fasting. There are so many ways to do intermittent fasting nowadays. You want to go 12 hours a day, at least without eating. And that's not hard when you get right down to it. You know, think about going to finishing dinner at six o'clock or seven o'clock at night. And then not having any snacks, not eating until six or 7 AM. The next day, there's your 12 hours. And then the other thing to do with intermittent fasting is never, ever, ever snack. Now you can have dessert if you want, you're going to have ice cream, cake, pie, you can have any of that stuff that you might want to have, but have it with your meal. Don't wait an hour before you have dessert or two hours or more, have it right away. What you're trying to do is control the insulin levels. Now a better way to do it is what's called 16-eight. That is instead of 12 hours of no food at all. You can have water, you can have clear liquids, obviously no sugar, and you go for the 16 hours. That means if you stop at 6 PM by 6 AM, your 12 hours and you want another four hours left, so let me know You could eat at 10 AM. Or if you finish your meal at 7 PM, which is the latest, you should finish eating. That means you could eat at 11 AM The next morning. You might have a skip breakfast again, no snacks, just black coffee, or tea with no milk. And then you, you have your lunch at noon, and then you have your dinner at four or five or six o'clock. Whatever works for you. You will lose weight, and you will get healthier. If you have diabetes or have other medical issues. You want to talk to your doctor about it. But this can cure type two diabetes, just intermittent fasting. But the whole sugar thing I think is something any of us can do. Even if you can't fast. Hey, Craig Peterson here, WGAN stick around. We got a lot coming up. Yeah, we're back into tech in the next segment. Hello, everybody, welcome back, Craig Peterson here. I hope you're on my email list. I want to keep everybody up to date. We've got some training for you guys. You're the Calvary, right? You're the people who come in to help fix the problems with small business computers. Maybe you're responsible for them. Perhaps you're the owner of the business, right? You're responsible for making sure that everything's running right and for choosing the right technology and stuff. I appreciate you all being with me. I have some specialized training coming up for you as well. But you need to be on my email list if you are going to find out about those pieces of training. The way to do that is just going to Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. Of course. Peterson P-E-T-E-R-S-O-N. Just like it sounds, Craig Peterson dot slash subscribe, and you'll get my weekly email outlining the most significant threats that are out there right now. All of the articles that we talked about in the show, and more. Plus a few more that I just don't get to that are essential. People love it. We get an excellent open rate, some of the best in the industry. That's how good this newsletter is. And I provide it for free. And I give a lot of these pieces of training, absolutely free. All of my tutorials are available on my website as well at Craig Peterson dot com. I built the technology behind some of the biggest organizations websites in the world. And yet mine is very sad. Okay, I have to get my act together. Oh, well, there's always something else to do. Right, just the cobblers kids. Well, let's get into ransomware because it is on the rise again. But let's start with a little history because I think this is cool when you get right into it. There is an article that I started reading over at CSO online that reminded me of it, and you'll see a link to it as well on my website at Craig Peterson dot com and in this morning's newsletter. Hopefully, you got that. But it started this ransomware thing back in 1991. There is a biologist who was doing AIDS research, and he was kind of upset that other people who were also researching AIDS, were getting more notice, and he wanted more credit than he was getting. He started sending out quote, AIDS research quote, on floppy disks via US mail back in 91, to other aids researchers. It had a piece of malware on there called PC Cyborg Cyborg. It was the first ransomware that we know of. Isn't that something, right? It was these researchers who were competing with this one researcher. The next big one used encryption was back in the aughts. Back in the mid-aughts, Bob 2005, it was called an Archie vs. It used encryption and was defeated. You can find its password over in Wikipedia even nowadays. Now, in 2010, we started seeing the series of what are called police ransomware packages. And they were warnings from law enforcement about victims of illicit activities and demanded payment of fines. So this was a new generation of anonymous payment services that they started to use to be able to better hard payments without getting caught. Of course, this was some of the Bitcoin and some of these other types of services. that allows you to send money, semi-anonymously. Remember that right it is not anonymous, the FBI and the Secret Service have worked together to arrest people who have been using Bitcoin illegally for, you know, these types of anonymous transactions. There was a new trend that started to emerge, and that was cryptocurrencies. Other than the legal activities that occurred that drove up the price of cryptocurrencies. Which were artificially high begin with, the other big drive for cryptocurrencies, has been ransomware. People need to pay ransoms, at least they want to pay ransoms. How do they do it? Well, that's what the criminal started to use. Extortionists just absolutely love them. Why? They are designed to be relatively untraceable, and relatively anonymous, right? So they started shooting their demands to other currencies. It's also nice because then they don't have to worry about, well, what's the value? In France, it's a euro, or In Britain, it's pound sterling, the US dollar, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, know the value. cryptocurrency is pretty much flat, no matter what currency you're using. These attacks started shooting up about that point in time. But as of a couple of years ago, in 2018, the ransomware boom seemed to be on its way out. The hackers had found other illicit ways that people were using to snag Bitcoin. One of them is still in use today, and that is to have something on your browser that starts to use your browser to do Bitcoin mining for them. Okay. They were also looking for bitcoin wallets, Cryptojacking became very popular. It is something denial of service attackers have been using for years. They gain control of computers without their users or owners of the computers knowing. Cryptojacking ransomware decline, but cryptojacking SHOT UP 14-15%, so they're using your electricity, they're using your computer to have this whole, you know, the whole thing of having a new mind for Bitcoin. And of course today and it's not just Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. But today, many of these cryptocurrencies, it is costly to do mining, because most of the coins are gone. That's part of the reason they want to use your computer, but even then, the payback isn't as big as it used to be. So now we're starting to see two big drivers behind this massive surge recently in ransomware. So the First has to do with the vague guarantees of the cryptocurrency pricing. Many of the crypto-jackers. We're using the victim's computers to mine this open-source Monero currency. However, Monero prices have been dropping, and Bitcoin prices have dropped dramatically as well. Although now with some of the real viruses, like the Covid-19. Some of them are going up because people are moving their money into gold and some cryptocurrencies. Monero prices have started dropping, and the bad guys are starting to realize that mining cryptocurrency is not going to be as rewarding as ransomware. Attackers had already compromised the victim's computer with Trojan downloaders making it easy to launch a ransomware attack when the time was right. It took them only about a year 18 months to make a U-turn. It is just fascinating when you get right into it. We've seen a lot of them over the years, and now they are attacking businesses. They've always used this kind of spray and pray tactic of trying to send out this ransomware to as many computers as possible and as many people as possible, hoping that we are going to be successful without a significant return on investment. They've been going more and more against or against us by going directly right using phishing, spearfishing techniques, and other types of targeted attacks. So let's take a brief look here at some of the most significant attack methods that are out there. Sam Sam is number one right now is started appearing about f

Welcome! Good morning, everybody. I was on with Mr. Jim Polito this morning and as you know today is Primary Day in New Hampshire it is the Big Day for our State Sport - Politics.  That means it is the day to address voter manipulation, voter fraud, low tech solutions and why apps are not the answer. So, here we go with Mr. Polito. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Generated Transcript: Craig You've got this free little cute little game, isn't this fun to play? Well, that game is tracking you everywhere you're going. They sell that information to Marketers. Now the Department of Homeland Security is even buying that data of where you are which apps you're using. Just because you have these apps installed on your phone. Craig Good morning, Craig Peterson, here. That's me with Danny, and it was pretty much all about voting technologies, the new stuff that's coming out the problems we have right now. And my predictions for not just this election, but frankly for the next two or three presidential cycles. Danny Yes, it is Tuesday. 840 You know what time that is? It is time for tech talk guru Craig Peterson. Hi Craig. Craig Hey, good morning, Danny. Craig I've got a little clarification about info from one of your former guests this morning. An earlier guest, I should say this morning. He was talking quite rightly by the about all of these apps and what's been in the news, in fact, just this week about apps and how dangerous they can be how they've been tracking, Google just removed a whole bunch of extensions from the Google Chrome Store. I want to go into slightly more detail if you want it to be secure. Don't download an app you don't need. Another thing I've said forever, Danny, is that you should go through your phone, at least every month, and delete apps you're not using. You know, most of us have a lot of apps. I think the last stat I SAW said that about 95% of the apps that we've downloaded only get used once. It's like we're never using them. Delete them off of your phone, off of your tablet, whatever it is you have. I want to add one more thing from a safety standpoint. Even if you are using an app fairly regularly, go ahead and delete it anyway, and then reinstall it. When you reinstall it now, it's going to ask for permission. You're going to be able to have a closer look at that app that again. It may be one you use every day like Google Maps. Believe that when you reinstall it and pay close attention to the permissions that it wants to access. By the way, just because it doesn't ask for permission to share some of your information doesn't mean it's not going to, all right. But as a general rule, those permissions are correct. It's more confusing on Android than it is iOS. Android kind of pushes you on to you the decision about whether or not you should be installing that app. On the iOS side, it's a lot more straightforward than Apple's a little bit better about it. He had some super points. But I go one step further. Just delete the silly things, mainly if you're not using them, as you mentioned, bringing up the app and permitting it. Danny So what kind of permission should people be looking for Craig to allow it not to? Craig Yeah, there you go. Well, let's have a look at the most costly divorce in history, which we talked about a couple of weeks ago. Right. So you have Bezos. Yeah, exactly. Billions of dollars in a divorce settlement. How did that all start? Well, that started because he was using WhatsApp, which is an app that is now part of Facebook's family. What WhatsApp had done here is accepted a video, and Jeff Bezos had allowed WhatsApp access to his photos and his videos. Even though you might think, oh, what's the harm and giving it access to my pictures or videos, maybe you're not going to get the virus the Jeff Besos got, but the app has access to your photos, your videos or other things. If there's a bug in the app, if there's something malicious going on, you're going to lose that data. What should you give an app permission to do? That? I think one of the worse things you can do is to permit access to know your location. That data is used and sold. You know, you've got this free little cute little game. Isn't this fun to play? And that game is tracking you everywhere you're going it's been sold to Marketers. Now the Department of Homeland Security is even buying that data of where you are which apps you're using, just because you have these apps installed on your phone. In answer directly to your question, do not give them access to your location unless you absolutely want to. I'm even reluctant to give Google Maps access to my location. Right? But slightly paranoid on that front. As far as photos and videos and things, again, just don't give them access. I think we're at the point now, where the bottom line is, you should only have a half a dozen apps on your phone on your tablet. And they should be apps from the big guys. You know Apple's apps, Microsoft apps, Google's apps, they are moderately trustworthy. And pretty much everything else. I think you shouldn't say bye-bye to them. ya know, Danny Ya know, that's kind of it sounds like a good plan. We are talking with Tech Talk Guru Craig Peterson, all about apps, and the security behind apps and then allowing permissions and them using your data to sell, and basically, you become the client. Correct. So these free apps not necessarily free, buddy. Craig No, they're not. And here's another trick, right? If you want to use something, and the app is available, most of the time, there's a website you can go to instead. So, for instance, you might download The let's use Iheart as an example. All right, so IHeart Radio has an app. I use it all the time, right? I'm, I listened to it to listen to my favorite radio shows listen to the gym in the morning. Iheart also has a website that you can visit. Okay, so rather than having the app, just use the browser that comes with your phone, use Safari, which is a good browser on iOS, use one of the Firefox browsers from Mozilla, those are all very good. If someone's twisting your arm with a gun to your head, use Google Chrome. Use the browser to get the data you want to you can stream music from your browser, you can listen to it hard from your browser, you can do all of the reading of news that you might want to do from your browser and avoid the cute apps. Aren't they wonderful? Aren't they fun? But you know what? There are so many Very few apps that can be classified as safe, that it's just not worth it. Danny Speaking of Google Chrome, speaking of extensions, speaking of people, basically using your uploading your private information, the Google Chrome extension, Craig. There were some issues there aren't there. Craig Yeah, absolutely. Now I've got some tutorials coming out starting next week, and about some extensions that you might want to use, and they will improve your browsing experience will improve your security, etc. What I think they're talking about here is a problem, Danny, where 500 Chrome extensions, Google Chrome extensions, were identified as secretly uploading people's data, millions of times. These things get downloaded. It's incredible what's happened, more than 1.7 million installations. So again, I still know people who are downloading browser bar extensions for Google Chrome for all of their different browsers, right. And it's a little browser bar extension that gives you a feature to search quickly or watch the stock market, etc. Those are the evilest things and prone to guys. Don't install, never install these little browser extensions that are just going to show you one or two things, because so many of them are sketchy. Many are fraudulent. Some of them are advertising as a service. Some of them will automatically, just from your browser, be clicking on ads on other websites you are not even visiting. Yes, they can click on an advertisement on a site you're not visiting just to increase their revenue. The estimate is that 40 to 60% of all paid advertising Non the internet pay per click advertising 20 60% of that is fraudulent. It's these. Yeah, these extensions, Danny, that we're installing that is supposedly giving us some sort of advantage or some neat little thing. Don't install those. Make sure if you're on my email list, you'll find out about this next week. But make sure you are on that list, which is just a Craig Peterson dot com. You can attend these tutorials for free. I'm not selling anything, right. It's all about the extensions that are going to make you safe. Not these 500 identified as making you less safe. You know what, Danny, some of them are even doing Bitcoin mining using your computer and slowing down your computer. They're making your browsing experience horrible because it's so slow. Things are happening in the background that you don't know are being done. They're using your electricity. We have some of the highest electric rates in the nation here in the northeast. And it's all for their benefit and gain and nothing for you. I'm glad you brought it up. Danny, don't install an extension unless you have to. It's kind of like the app thing. Danny Yeah, we try to keep yourself as safe as possible. But something you have to do is make sure it's something that isn't going to come and backfire on you ultimately. Because we are talking with our tech expert Craig Peterson. Craig, we only have a few minutes left. But the one story I did want to get into here, the mobile voting app. Who would have thought this is ever a good idea? Craig heard off and on about what's going to happen Saturday in Nevada with their caucuses. They paid I think it was $60,000 to the same company that completely messed up the Iowa caucuses and they're saying yeah, we're going to do it. No, we're not going to do it. You're going to do it with the latest I heard yesterday was there not going to do it again. But there is an app called a vote to VOA t z. And this is something that supposedly allows you to vote from home vote from overseas. They've been trying to sell this to the military, for our military personnel stationed overseas. And this is crazy. The election is promoting its use of blockchain technology, which is like a vast buzzword nowadays. And people associate blockchain technology with absolutely safe, nothing could go wrong. They ignore the man behind the curtain. It is not secure. There are four states right now that are still planning on using this votes app that is being used in West Virginia. And it has some of the most basic security flaws in it. It allows other people to Steve votes intercept votes change votes, as they're being transmitted from the mobile phones to the company's voting server. If you can This is absolutely crazy. MIT put together a research paper that was released last Thursday. We're not there yet. Don't use these things. You know, the only thing that's really safe is a pencil or maybe a felt tip pen. Because you can't hack, a felt tip pen and a piece of paper. Right, much harder to do, obviously, this imbalance studying before, but you can do it on a wholesale basis like you can with some of these voting apps. Danny Yeah, what's this one right here? Just say someone to be able just to change votes like that. It seems as though the security and some of the features and noted have a voting type app. They have far away from Craig. Craig Oh, yeah, end up partner of Homeland Security's warning against it New York Times, even covered on it. They were the first ones to report this research out of MIT. We're going to see a lot of problems of voting over the next few cycles, maybe ten plus years, frankly, as you know, You know, the idiocy tends to tie down in the money, right? Who owns the company, for instance, with the backhoe debacle that happened overnight Iowa, the disaster that was going to happen this weekend in Nevada and still may have been that company that made that software to tally the votes was owned and operated by Hillary Clinton staffers. Okay. So, yeah, accurately. And now the democratic Democratic Party says, Oh, it's great. We know you, Hey, buddy. Yeah, we're going to do it for you, right? Until we can get rid of this phony crony capitalism stuff, which exists all over the place, and we make real decisions. This voting stuff just isn't going to work. Right. And you know, Danny, I hold a zero trust. The government's going to be able to get this right. But you know, another five to 10 years, I think, maybe we will have a reasonably smooth roll road ahead of us. There's a $10 million funding project that came out of the Department of Defense to make an unhackable voting system. So I got my fingers crossed because I know these guys are on the right track. Danny Well, I'm sure when they come up with something, you'll have a forest Craig Craig is always some great stuff, unfortunately, to get to everything. If somebody wants to hear more, how do they do so? Craig Well, you can go to Craig Peterson, dot com or they can text Danny, to me at 855-385-5553. That's 855-385-5553. Danny As always, data rates do apply. Craig, thank you so much for the time. We'll talk to you next week. Craig Take care, Danny, bye-bye. Danny It's Craig, always with some great stuff can be scary. But Craig gets us through it. As he said, watch out for your extensions. Watch out for the app to clean up the apps, and yeah, what's the make you think that Hillary Clinton can get a voting app? Right? But yeah, our servers were secured in New York. Yeah, okay. Everyone believes that one. Anyways, I'll take one last time out. Well. Craig  We've been working on this now for six weeks, eight weeks, we've got some fantastic free tutorials coming up. Frankly, these are going to improve your security posture. By what at least 90%. I'm serious about that when you are online, so it's going to help with security transformation plus a course and everything else. So free stuff, and some paid material, but you are going to love it all. I guarantee it. I've never been so excited about something before. Anyhow, keep an eye out. Make sure you're signed up. Craig Peterson, dot com slash subscribe. We'll be back tomorrow. Bye-bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Affiliate marketing is not as easy as the FAKE GURUS try to sell you... Does affiliate marketing work? Yes! Does it have challenges? Yes! Learn about the top 5 challenges facing affiliate marketers in this brand new video, here. If you are new to this world and want to learn more about affiliate marketing for beginners, go here: www.youtube.com/redirect?event=video_description&v=ZcMDGRcDv7Y&q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.milesbeckler.com%2Faffiliate-marketing-for-beginners%2F&redir_token=BGswSVrjchnzPrsldPwyseDYHxp8MTU4MDM4ODg1M0AxNTgwMzAyNDUz here are my other videos on affiliate marketing for you: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tD97-K5TeE&list=PL0sOKzn__yK1N9QS91pLZA-OCIc8d56xZ In this video you're going to learn the five things that I hate about affiliate marketing. Now I've been affiliate marketing since 2003 and I currently earn hundreds of thousands of dollars per year as an affiliate. So I've got some love for affiliate marketing, but it sure isn't without its challenges. And you're going to learn the five biggest challenges here in this video. And in the end you're going to learn the right way to do affiliate marketing so you can kind of overcome and bypass and side skirt a lot of these challenges you won't have to experience. Let me just deal with them because I've already been through it. So number one is getting stiffed on payouts. Now you as an affiliate marketer, by definition don't have all that much control. When you're working with an affiliate vendor through an affiliate network, you do have a third party in between, right? So if you're on ClickBank or you're using something on share a sale, you have that kind of third party company in between you and the vendor. But what's been going on recently is a lot of companies are running in house programs, whether they are on Infusionsoft or SamCart or Thrivecart or whatever it might be. Even some word press based ones on MemberMouse and these individuals are within full control and they can choose not to pay you. If they so deem they can disappear, they can fall off the face of the earth. I have one vendor who has withheld $8,000 in payments from me and I'll be honest with you, that sucks. I sent $16,000 worth of sales and I didn't get my $8,000 in commission jokes on me. Lesson learned, and this is one of the challenges, big challenges of kind of relinquishing control of being an affiliate marketer and again, stay to the end and give me a thumbs up if you like this content because I'm going to teach you how to bypass these kinds of challenges at the end. Number two is vendors changing your links on you. This is such a big problem. It's crazy. It even happens all the way up to the Amazon affiliate program. This has happened on a bunch of different networks. It's happened on some individual programs and yet again, you're not in control and oftentimes they won't let you know that they made a change to their URL structure. Number three is they stopped supporting products. Now this one really irks me because I look at especially any sort of affiliate product or any sort of product that has a monthly or annual recurring bill. I kind of look at that recurring bill as a contract, right? So when I buy something and the company says, Hey, it costs $100 or $200 a year to keep updated, I think that's them saying that they're going to actually update the product. And what happens is sometimes they abandon their products, they make their millions, they go on to do other things. They want to be cool kid digital nomads. I don't know what that is. There's some that I'm extremely frustrated right now that I may be going public with soon. But they've literally abandoned their projects. And here's what happened. So when they launched years ago, it was a great product. It was one of the best on the markets. So I not only used it, I taught how to use it, I integrated it into my business. And I recommended others did as well. Now they really aren't updating it. They're not holding, they being the vendor aren't upholding their end of the bargain, which means it kind of looks poorly on me because I now have all this evergreen content that I built and now that it's going to this tool that's getting a little bit sluggish and it's not really upholding its original promise like it wants did, looks bad on me and it's outside of my control. So that was number three. Number four is scammy affiliate course creators selling dead methods. This is the cesspool of affiliate marketing. Number five is the culture of individuals who give it a half attempt, who dabbles in the world of affiliate marketing and they go on to say, this stuff doesn't work, or affiliate marketing is a scam, and that's completely untrue, right? I've built a very successful career leveraging affiliate marketing as one of the monetization channels that I use. It's just harder than most people realize. It just takes a lot more work than most people realize. It absolutely does work when we get the game right

Welcome!   Today there is a ton of stuff going on in the world of Technology and we are going to hit a number of topics today. How will Iran Retaliate - Kinetic or Cyber retaliation, Automotive Automation and LIDAR Sensors, CCPA Takes Full Effect, Updating Legacy Technology, Cloud Migration Considerations, Cybercrime Metrics, Industrial Control Systems under Fire from Hackers, Ramping up Insider Threat Intelligence, Budget and Security Decision Surrounding Cloud Adoption and more on Tech Talk With Craig Peterson today on WGAN and even more.  It is a busy show -- so stay tuned. For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Bombs will not be Iran's retaliation - Technological hacks are more likely Soon Most New Cars May feature Light Detecting, and Ranging (LIDAR) Sensors Businesses In For Rude Awakening as CCPA Takes Full Effect Hackers Preying on Old and Decrepit Technology Cloud Migration Considerations to Take into Account Metrics Can Not Adequately Describe The Pain of Cybercrime Zeroing In On our Industrial Control Systems  How Mature is Your Insider Threat Intelligence? Nebulous Budget and Security Concerns Affecting Cloudy Decisions --- Machine Automated Transcript: Hello, Everybody, Welcome. Welcome. Of course, this is Craig Peterson. I'm live on the radio and WGAN and also heard on the Internet at Craig Peterson dot com. I'm on Facebook and YouTube. I did a couple of lives this week that hopefully, you were able to watch. If you didn't see them live, they're essential to know because I was talking specifically about attacks that were underway from Iran this week. And I'm going to be getting into that a little bit as well today. So continue to pay attention to today's show. Now, if you are a Facebook fan, I love it. If you would go ahead and like my page over on Facebook, Follow me just go to Craig Peterson dot com slash Facebook, Craig Peterson dot com slash Facebook now. You know that I'm continually warning people about Facebook and some of the things Facebook is doing some of the things that are well, perfectly legal, but maybe things you don't want to have done to you, like all of the tracking Facebook does. But that means you might want to use something else. So what else you're going to use? Well, Google YouTube, right? Oh, wait a minute. There are problems with YouTube too. Thus, the lesser of two evils for now, and that's where we're at for the time being. I'm thinking about trying to use WhatsApp for this as well. So we'll see how that goes. Let me know if you'd like to watch this on WhatsApp. But if you go to Craig Peterson comm slash YouTube, you will be able to watch those videos right there because I did them lives on in fact, and I can do simultaneously now on YouTube and Facebook. So make sure you check them out and learn a little bit about what you can do. I went through this article from this week here from the US Department of Homeland Security. And I, you know, I didn't go through all of the details because this is restricted distribution. And so there are some things in here that they don't want generally shared. But I am going to go into more detail and to do that, what I'm going to be doing is some specialized pieces of training now these have always 100% free. I give you great information, you should see all of the compliments I have from people, but it's coming up in a probably about a week from now. So you have to be on my email list if you are going to be able to be informed about this stuff. Okay. So on my email list, what does that mean? Go to Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe. Now when you do that, it's going to ask for your name and your email address. Make sure After you submit that Go to that email box, verify that you got the email the confirmation email, and click okay. What I don't want to have happen is for someone to go in and sign up 100,000 people who don't want to be on my email list. And so I send it out to all these people who don't want to be on my email list. And then I get a bad reputation right as a spammer because people say, why don't you send me this email. So what I've done to help protect my reputation online, is I make you do what's called a double opt-in. So you're going to fill out that form at Craig Peterson com slash subscribe. And then, once you fill out that form, it's going to send you an email to that email address, and you have to click that confirmation. So make sure you do that because if you don't click the confirmation, and I noticed there's like 100 people who have not clicked the confirmation. I want to make sure that you do click it so that you get the information that you need, including these pop-up training webinars that I'm going to be doing coming up here in another week. So Craig Peterson calm slash subscribe right now. You can do it on your mobile phone you can do it on your laptop on your computer. And man, I hate to say this, but I'm not sure if it's working right now, but I have a texting thing as well. Where you can text me directly at 855-385-5553, but as I said, I'm not sure it's working. So you know emails easiest way and sign up right there glad to have you on board, and I believe me I don't spam you. I'm not sitting there trying to sell you stuff all of the time my webinars on one of these Hey, hammer, hammer, hammer, bye, bye-bye, hammer, you know, that's not what I do. I want to get the information out. And you know, I do have things for sale, right? I have to keep the lights on. And so for that You know, I'll ask permission from you. Before I ever offer anything, I don't offer things very often. So I guess, I guess that's a good thing to consider. Alright, so let's get into our first article here. We've got a lot today. We're going to be covering your networks and why they need to be updated today. Many businesses are now doing something called unclouding. They're leaving the cloud. So we're going to talk about why they are leaving me why you might want to leave as well. Of course, we're going to get into Iran. It turns out that they are hacking us, and the hacks this week are up over 50%. And so we'll tell you a little bit about what you can do about that. They're also targeting the Trump campaign for 2020. Like that's a surprise, right. We're going to talk about what Iran is doing to our industrial control systems right now. And how that can affect all of us. Right, you don't have to have the kinetic war, you don't have to be sending bombs back and forth. To have an impact on us a little bit more about the cloud, we're going to talk about the decision to move to the cloud, not use the cloud, some of the things involved in that today. And I'm probably going to put together a course on cloud migration a little bit later on this year, and we'll see how that goes. major changes to our automobiles. But this is kind of cool. Because these LIDAR sensors, I did a scan online, I did a little search and now I'm able to find them for under 100 bucks. That's going to change the automobile industry. So we'll talk about what LIDAR is and why it's going to change. California man, if you are a business, you got to pay attention to this. We're going to talk about the new California Consumer Privacy Act, which is in full force now. And we're going to talk about these insider threat programs that businesses have been Frankly, how they need to grow up. So a lot to cover today. And if you miss anything, you're going to find it in the newsletter I send out every week. And again, where are you going to find that? How are you going to sign up? Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe, so make sure you sign up and sign up right there. Okay, so let's get into our first article of the day. This one's from dark reading. And it's talking about cybersecurity misery index. Now, you know a little bit about this whole misery index thing you hear about it when it's a hot, humid day outside. Oh, my gosh, what should I be doing? It's just too hot. I don't want to do anything. Right. And so you've got the wind chill effect. You've got the humidity effect, all of these things that can affect you. So what does this mean? cybersecurity misery. Well, we already know that about 10 to 20% of businesses. bump 20% will file for bankruptcy almost the next day if they get ransomware. Or if they get this wiper software that we'll talk about later from Iran. 20% of businesses Think about that. If you are responsible for the security for your business, how long is your job going to last when the business has filed for bankruptcy the very next day? Not long. How about you as a business owner, where is your retirement, all your money's tied up in your business? How long is that going to last again? pretty much never. So there is a lot of pain when it comes to cybersecurity breaches. that people don't think about it. It's not just dollars lost, like, you know, we get calls from businesses that say, Hey, listen, we just had our operating account emptied. In cases we have been involved with the amounts varied from about $80,000 up through almost a million dollars. One company had money stolen right out of their main operating bank account. Well, that's miserable because you can't make payroll, right? You can't pay your vendors back vendor payments as part of the way they get some of this information. But there is another side to this. You know, no records loss doesn't mean that there is not going to be any sort of a cost to your business. There are other metrics that matter, as well. So this is from Deloitte and Touche married Galligan. She says you would have to take into account the cost of whether there's going to be an increase in insurance premiums, a loss of customer relationships because right now, most businesses could lose 30 to 50% of their customers. If word of a breach got out, is it going to be last contract revenue is my company's name going to be of less value in the marketplace? I guess it goes back to retirement, right? Are you going to be able to retire by selling that business? What's your exit strategy? So there's a whole lot you have to consider here. They go into some stories here, but a small bank, their web-facing patient portal, was hit by a bot swarm. And they did the credential stuffing. And man, there's just so many things that that you have to consider. This week, we found one of our clients had been under attack, and we're trying to figure it out. It kind of looks like it spread in from someone else in an adjacent business. Their Bluetooth was compromised, and Bluetooth on a laptop and then tried to break into and compromise my client systems. So we caught it. We noticed it because we've got this more advanced threat protection, and that's what you have to have this ATP nowadays, Advanced Threat Protection, which is not Norton. Okay? Currently, there's only one product on the market that meets the requirements at Homeland Security for businesses. It turns out that it is the product that we've been selling for quite a while. I'm not trying to sell anything right now. But pain is inevitable, even if you don't get hacked. Because what ends up happening is your personnel have to track it all down. It's 24 seven, that pager goes off, the phone call comes in. They have to review thousands of log entries, and hopefully not make a mistake. So pull up your socks, and we'll be talking about that a little bit more when we get into Iran. All right, everybody, you listening to me on w GAN? You're watching me on YouTube on Facebook and Craig Peterson. com. Stick around because we'll be right back.   Hi, Craig Peterson back here WGAN and online and Craig Peterson dot com. Hey, if you're a Facebook fan, you'll find me on Facebook. One of the easiest ways to get there is Craig Peterson com slash Facebook. And if your YouTube fan Craig Peterson com slash YouTube. Now this week, I did a couple of pieces of training that I hope you're were able to attend these live! The first one was rather short. It was like three, four minutes. The second one was in my book short, it was about 15 minutes, and I went through some of the things you should be doing. When it comes to the Iranian hacks, then I do those fairly frequently, and really, I should be sending out emails. I did send out some text alerts to people about them, and I may do that tomorrow as well. If you want to be on my text alert system, make sure you just email me Me at Craig Peterson calm, let me know you want to be on the text alerts, and I'll be more than glad to add you. I'll need your phone number, and I'll get you all set up for that. Many of us, I think, are a lot like me. Where I am just, you know, hunky-dory happy to have a computer that's ten years old. Because man has, it paid for itself over those ten years. I keep the hardware until it fails. My last laptop was probably the most short-lived I have ever had. It was about three-four years old. And it was an Apple MacBook Pro. And it ended up having like three problems in one year. Apple refunded me 100% of my original purchase price. If you can believe that. Can you believe that? They a three-year-old computer 100% the original purchase price now I had to Apple care on it, and It had been in the shop three times in the last 12 months. So they just gave me my money back. And then, of course, I use that turned around and bought another MacBook Pro. Right. So that's kind of cool. I guess this one will have the same problem in three years. But typically they last us seven to 10 years. Honestly, they do. They're just fantastic computers. I think my wife's Macbook Air is almost 11 years old. They work well while you're using them, plus you have the advantage of their longevity. But the problem is that not everything in that computer is patchable. You take a look at the hardware that's in its like your Bluetooth hardware. What we have found is that while Bluetooth is getting hacked and particularly the old stuff because the chipsets that are in the devices are running a full operating system. It's not like the old days where they only did one little thing. They have a full operating system because they have to handle the interrupt, they have to handle multiple different types of Bluetooth, you know, the new low power extreme low power. Bluetooth is used to control the amount of power that's being output as you walk away from your device, right? That 30-foot range that nowadays can be as far as a quarter-mile. All of that requires some real smart inside this little teeny tiny chip. That's the Bluetooth control chip for your computer. So what happens is like what happened, as I mentioned earlier this week to one of my clients, which is somebody else's Bluetooth, went ahead and kept it to their computer and tried to infect it. Now all of this was caught because of the Advanced Threat Protection that we have in place. That's what we're going to talk about right now. We are All have this old equipment, our operational technology as Derek command key puts it here. And it's not just our laptops, and it's not just the Bluetooth, it's all the devices we have. And those devices, when they become old, have a real drawback. Now it might be that the drawback is, hey, listen, it kind of kinds of a bummer. But you know, this Bluetooth chip has been deprecated and is known to be vulnerable. Okay, well, okay, I get that one. That's a bit of a problem, right? What happens to those computers in the vast majority of businesses? They don't do upgrades. They don't try and fix any problems with the software and the vulnerability in the computer. So what's happening here? what he's talking about is that the cybercriminals, instead of innovating, you know, don't get me wrong, they do innovate. But instead of innovating, they look at these older computers and say, Hey, why are we innovating? I can take you right now on to the dark web on to these websites that sell hacker tools. It includes ransomware, and you can buy some of the old tools for as little as 20 bucks online. That's cheap. Now 20 bucks, is cheap. But to that guy's selling it to are in Eastern Europe or somewhere else in the world, where 20 bucks is a lot of money. Well, to them. Well, as I just said, it's a lot of money, right? So why would hackers spend weeks hours months or a million dollars, which is what it costs for some of these newer zero-day attacks? Why would they try and do any of that when they can just spend 20 bucks? So what they do is they say, Well, I'm going to spend 20 bucks and go out, and they are going to scan systems for different vulnerabilities. We see them every day with our clients and, and our people have to get involved and look into the systems and trying to understand, you know, what's going on here. Is this legit? Is this an attack already protected against it is the system upgraded, right? But most businesses aren't doing any of this stuff. It's usually just the big guys, and we do it for small guys, as well as for ourselves. So we're seeing this all the time. So if your systems are older and not patched, what do you think is going to happen? The bad guys, rather than spending a lot of money or a lot of time, are just going to use old tools. So even though they can innovate, they just don't bother. So for doing that has a stat out right now. And saying that cybercriminals target vulnerabilities ten or more years old, more often than they focus on new attacks. Look at some of these significant breaches that have occurred? They involved vulnerabilities for which patches (fixes) have been available for months or sometimes years. But the organization's never bothered applying the patches, right. They target vulnerabilities from every year between 2007 and now at the same rate as they do vulnerabilities discovered in 2018 and 2019. So that's just huge. They're maximizing their opportunity. It is low hanging fruit to them. And we've got this convergence of operational technology environment with it with our information technology. So I want to make this even a little bit bigger. We're going to talk about this a little bit later on when we get into these control systems we have in our businesses. But when was the last time you patched your photocopier? I got two of them sitting right there. Printers. Okay, well, obviously, it's one in the same scanners. When was the last time you updated the software in your smart light bulbs in cameras? I've got a camera sitting right in front of me, right. Have you been updating all of the software in this operational technology side of things? As well as all of our computers to see, that's where we are falling short, because we got to be thinking about if you're a manufacturing customer, customer, and we have manufacturing customers, right? But if you're in the manufacturing business, how well protected are the valves that control systems, the automated systems that are running your lives, or the robots on the floor? Are those up to date? Think about that are operational technology. We got to learn new tricks. You've got to protect them, right? We got to make sure it all works. Alright, that's it. For right now. We're going to be back. So make sure you stick around. We're going to talk about unclouding. You've heard about cloud services. Have you heard about unclouding services? Right here on WGAN and Craig Peterson dot com.   Hello, everybody, Craig Peter song here on WGAN radio and of course online at Craig Peterson dot com. We're going to talk right now about something you may have never heard about before. If you are using anything basically on the internet, you're using what's generically called "the cloud.". Now "the cloud" is used for email. It is for, and well come to think of it, everything, right, Facebook, etc. But in general, terms, when we're talking about the cloud, we're talking about a business process that is online that you have moved from your business, like the server room in the back, the computer closet, etc. You've taken that function, and you've moved it somewhere like to the Amazon Web Services or Maybe Microsoft Azure, or maybe IBM, all of these places have something that's generically known as the cloud. And frankly, the cloud is just another word for somebody else's computer. Now, why have businesses moved to the cloud? What is this whole unclouding thing, all about? There's a great article over on dark reading by Matt Middleton that got me thinking about this. What is "the cloud"? What is "unclouding"? What does this all mean? Well, I have been involved with cloud services and helping businesses migrate for quite a few years. And as a general rule, I still am on the side of don't move to the cloud. Hey, if it's a core function of your business, do you want it to be on the other end of that internet connection, right? What happens when the internet connection goes down in the data center somewhere? You have no control over the data center. You don't know what kind of security the data center has. Or even what type of system is storing your data. Do you want it to be in the cloud and a data center where you don't know if they're backing up? And you don't know even if they are backing up? Have they tried to do a restore of your data? You don't know if they are handling your data in a way that meets all of these federal and state data handling regulations. And we're going to get into California's new laws here in just a little bit. Do you want all of that? So that's one of the reasons businesses are moving away from the car. In other words, they were on the cloud to bring it back home. That's called uncloudy. Security is a very, very big reason they're doing this. Another big reason that they're doing this is cost. One of the significant promised benefits to the cloud is it is going to save us a lot of money. We will have fewer headaches because we're not going to have to have the equipment, we're not going to have to pay for people to run it, right? We're not going to have to do any of that stuff. It's just going to be cheaper. And yeah, in some cases, it is more affordable. But where the cloud makes sense is in kind of a mixed environment. And we've set this up for many customers in the past quite a number, where we have a cluster of computers at their facility, so they have for, you know, anywhere between 50 really and 100 2200 employees, so 50 to a couple hundred employees, and from time to time, they need more resources. So what we do is we have a cluster that is sitting there on site. That cluster allows us to grow that machine as it needs to because of a more massive load, maybe the end of the month, end of the quarter, perhaps when new shipments come in, etc., and also allows us, so that's just within their walls. But it also allows us to ship their machines up to another data center. Now, frankly, that's pretty cool. We can use the cloud then to extend our current processing capability. So we need some more CPU some more horsepower. Maybe they've brought in some temporary workers that are coming in for some seasonal work, and we throw their stuff up in the cloud. But again, being very cautious of security. So what has happened here is kind of something people weren't expecting and goes right back to businesses unclouding because, frankly, the cloud is not what it was all cracked up to be. Gartner group, you probably know those guys, they're forecasting the cloud revenues going to hit almost $400 billion within the next few years. So Cloud revenue is going to be massive. It's not as though everybody's moving away from the cloud, because they're not. And Microsoft has now shown how, frankly, the cloud has become a core element in their business. Amazon makes a good chunk of the profit. I've seen numbers that show it's more than half of the money that they pulled to the bottom line comes from their cloud services. And Microsoft is now moving salesforce.com over to the Azure cloud. So really, the cloud momentum looks unstoppable. But cloud customers are bumping up against the hard reality. So 48% of organizations, the store sensitive data in the cloud, are considering moving that data back on-premise. Now, that's a very costly and very time-consuming proposition. But businesses are thinking about doing it. The question is, why are half of the companies that are already in the cloud, are thinking about moving off the cloud moving services back in-house? So I want to get right into that right now. Excuse me here, a couple of coughs. So this is according to a recent cloud data security report. And as shown in most cases, organizations are unclouded Because they faced unexpected issues. These moves take a lot of planning, and that's why we're going to talk about cloud migration a little bit later here. But initially, 31% of organizations migrated to the cloud to cut costs. 26% migrated to ensure availability for remote workers, which you don't need the cloud to have remote workers. But the survey results show that organizations are ready to unclouded due to their inability to ensure the desired level of protection one-quarter of the businesses. Due to all of these regulations that have come into play for DFARS, HIPAA, FINRA, the FRCP, the new California protection rules, the GDPR out of Europe, companies are facing some real problems. Now among those who moved data to the cloud to cut costs, 29% are ready to uncloud due to unexpectedly high price, though, among those who move data to the cloud for security reasons, 27% would uncloud due to considerable security concerns. All of this is very legitimate. There are secure clouds that meet these requirements. The federal government has a cloud. The military, and you might have just heard the whole back and forth because it came down to Microsoft Azure and Amazon's web services to run this high-security top-secret cloud for information for the military. And Amazon lost it, and Microsoft picked it up and sold them there's a whole lot of people that are very upset. But that is critically acclaimed. And I don't know that the military is going to have a win by moving to the cloud. And mainly when we're talking about these types of expensive secured clouds. The biggest problem with moving to the cloud is most companies weren't able to figure out correctly, what is migrating? What data is moving? How much data got transferred? You get charged for everything in the cloud. Okay. So it is a huge deal and understanding what your data is understanding what data you have. Doing that inventory of your data assets is something critical, no matter what, because you have to know what to protect, how much you protect it if you need to be able to recover it. How do I have an incident response? You got to figure that out, and that's something we'll be covering later. Listening to Craig Peterson, we'll be right back.   Hello, everybody, welcome. Welcome, Craig Peterson, here. We are going to talk a little bit about retaliation here right now. Of course, you're joining me on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Hopefully, you'll see everything up there. We've been trying to, you know, keep everything up to date. There's just so much going on. And frankly, it's my wife and me. So, you know, keeps us crazy, crazy busy trying to get this information out to everybody. Hey, if you have a kind word to say to word of encouragement for us for doing all of this, because this takes days every week, out of my time out of my wife's time, and that's time that we can't spend trying to make some money, and it's time we can't spend with our family. So words of encouragement are always appreciated. Let us know what Do you get out of the show? What is it you appreciate? What is it you like about the show? And you can send that to just me at Craig Peterson calm and he at Craig Peterson. com. I'd love to hear from you, as would my wife and just words of encouragement, I will pass them along to her. And then we have a couple of other people that help as well. So, you know, thanks to them to Well, let's get into this now. Because this I think it is kind of fascinating for a lot of people. And that is Iran retaliation, and I talked about this week on my FacebookLive, and you can see those videos by going to Craig Peterson dot com slash Facebook. Make sure you hit the Follow button on the Facebook page. So you get notified when I have another one of these little pop-up pieces of training. The same thing On YouTube, if you follow me on youtube at Craig Peterson comm slash YouTube, you hit the subscribe button, it will ding you it'll ding in your browser when I go live. And I'm always there to answer your questions. There's a chat channel, and you can add chats to as well. So make sure you check it out online again, Craig Peterson dot com slash Facebook or Craig Peterson dot com slash YouTube. Now coming up in about a week, we're going to be starting some more training so that you know what to do and exactly how to do it. We've got some free training, and we're going to be doing a few of these things on webinars so you can join us online. And for those of you who don't attend webinars, and that's about 70% of you. I'm going to be sending out some written information. There will be some videos afterward as well If you sign up that you'll be able to watch, okay? Just to do that training, you get that information out. Now, if you've been to webinars before, you might think that I'm going to be beating you to death. But if you've ever attended any of mine, you know that really, I'm trying to get good information out to you and make sure it's in your hands. And that's what I'm doing. That's my primary goal. They usually last about 45 minutes to an hour, an hour and a half, depending on what we're covering. And I try and answer every one of your questions from everybody that Sarah on the webinar, because, again, they're LIVE, it's to answer questions to get you going down the right path. So we're going to be talking about all of these things. Most of them came out for Homeland Security this week, with their alert, and there's some of the software. We cannot cover that is lightly classified as though they tell me anything that was classified, right? So we'll be covering those things. What is it that Homeland Security is saying that we should be doing so that this guy can take over our computers, our systems, and I want to put a plug out there for the FBI Infragard program. If you are involved with security and you are at a business, and particularly if it's critical infrastructure, which nowadays means almost anybody that is manufacturing that's providing services. I don't get this, but you know, they even consider lawyers to be critical. Sorry, sorry about that. Glenn and Ken, but and all of you other lawyers who are out there, but if you are the security person, you will do Well to join these because the FBI does give us information not going to get anywhere else period. Okay? So infragard.org is where you're going to find out more. I volunteered, and talk did webinars for the whole National Infragard community for about two years. And it was even more work. You know, we're doing all of this stuff for you guys. But this was kind of in the national interest. So it's about to give back and help out. And that's, that's what I'm t. But so if you're a security person, make sure you check that out. I'm also thinking later on this year, probably in Septemberish, to have a summit on security, a whole SMB summit, and we're trying to figure that out. If you think that might be interesting. I love to hear from you. What is it that you'd like to get from a cybersecurity summit? Or maybe a more General Security Summit. Is that something that might interest you if you're a small business, a medium business owner? If you have one employee or if you have 200 employees or maybe even bigger organizations, we should be covering as well. Like we did, you know, when I was teaching stuff for the FBI Infragard program, so let me know just me at Craig Peterson calm. So make sure you spend a couple of minutes go to Craig Peterson dot com slash Facebook or slash YouTube. Look at the live training I did this week, where I reviewed some of the alerts from Homeland Security and talked a little bit more about this guy over my shoulder. He kind of kicked off our worries and legitimate worries, legitimate concerns, frankly because they are attacking a solid. Let's get into this right now. Iran has to do something about all of these criminal activities with which they are involved. If you're as old as me, you remember the Shah of Iran, and Iran used to be very Western very, very pro-United States. You know, it was kind of a cool place very, very progressive. Women could have real jobs and didn't have to walk multiple steps behind their men. They could be out without having a male escort, which I just don't understand these people that think that Iran has been a beautiful place and that Islam is is the way it's absolutely the way it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I'm all for everybody having rights, right, everybody having equal rights, not some people having more rights than others, but that's my libertarian band coming out. Widely considered to be one of the world's most malicious online actors. So you've got Iran, you've got China, you've got Russia. You've got North Korea right there. We have defined the four worst actors when it comes to cybersecurity in the world, okay? It's a very, very big deal. There were charges brought up here in the US back in 2016. Again, seven Iranians, apparently they had infiltrated computers, a dozen American dozens of American banks tend to take control of a small dam and a New York suburb. We're going to be talking about that in the next segment about what they're doing there. They these defendants regularly work for is Ron's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps quarter the Justice Justice Department, a tax disabled some of the bank's computers. They're doing what's called a DD are distributed denial of service attack, which brings websites and other types of communications down. Sheldon Adelson, a big supporter of the President they attacked a Las Vegas Sands corporation that he owns runs okay. A cripple the casino and replace the company's websites with a photograph of Adelson with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Can you believe that? Yeah, So going on and on, we've got to be very careful because this is a real problem. We must stop Iran from doing this. Now how is it discontinued? Well, that's why I want you to watch them live from this week either on Facebook or on YouTube that I put up there because I explain the basics of what you should do. I'm going to be going into more detail in about a week is going to take us that long to put all of this training together for you guys. But the Allies here are considered fair game. Iran has been hacking this for years as I just mentioned, they have defaced a state site. It was a state treasurer Department website. They are attacking according to the statistics I've seen this week. They are also b attacking federal government sites. State sites trying to find vulnerabilities, throwing every username and password they can at the site to see if they can log in, which is why you should not ever reuse passwords and usernames. However, Nowadays, most of these sites are requiring you to use your email as your username, which is frankly a security problem. I don't like that sort of stuff. But the Saudis are very nervous because Saudi Aramco, which is their biggest oil producer, there, it's state-owned in Saudi Arabia. They were hit and had 30,000 computers destroyed effectively. So what Iran is doing is something called a wiper attack. And that is where they get onto your computer. They erase the data on it. Now they're coming after you. They want small-medium businesses in the United States to suffer these attacks. You might wonder why, well, I explain all of that in the live training this week. So if you watch those, you're going to get all of the detail. But really, we're concerned. Mike Pompeo came out this week. He's the Secretary of State. He's acknowledging some of the dangers of an Iranian response. said the Iranians have a deep and complex cyber capability to sure know that we've certainly considered that risk. So our federal government is I would say about 70 to 80% protected if I don't think that's insider information. And our businesses are about 20%, protected 20%. So that server, we're going to get in about a week into advanced threat protection help you guys understand, on a small business front what you should be doing, and how you should be doing that. Alright, stick around. When we get back, we're going to be talking more about some of the security stuff and things you need to know. We're going to be talking about these industrial control systems, and what the bad guys are doing to them. So stick around, because we'll be right back. You're listening to Craig Peterson. On  WGAN and online Craig Peterson calm.   Hello, everybody, here we go. Welcome back. Craig Peterson, here. Hopefully, you are enjoying the show today, as we go through some of the things in the tech world. We're going to talk about some non-security stuff a little bit from now. But, because of what's been happening in Iran, the show is heavier than usual. I am trying to go through all of this security stuff because you have to understand this. You know, one of the articles I did not get to in the last segment that I wanted to make sure that I brought up is that Iranian hackers have targeted the Trump campaign. You know, I mentioned it in passing, frankly, but this is a huge thing because the 2020 elections are What now it's a November so ten months away from now. And this is back in October as a statistic that Microsoft reported, saying that they had seen 2700 plus attempt to identify the email accounts of current and former United States government officials, journalists covering political campaigns and accounts associated with a presidential campaign. That is my friend, a huge thing. Because frankly, when those bad guys start getting involved and start going after all of these accounts, they've got a door into politics, and this door into politics, maybe a lot more than you realize. Because what we're talking about here is the Potential ability to track people. I don't think I got to this, what about two weeks ago? I think it was. The New York Times was able to locate and follow President Trump based on information. It was able to glean from open sources, in other words, from public information, and also found out the name of some of the Secret Service detail people where they lived their family information. So this is critical. You ask yourself, Well, why would anyone care 2700 plus attempt to identify these people back in October? Well, once identified, you can figure out a lot more because now you can get into the email accounts using social engineering. You might be able to get more information. Remember President Obama, when he first became president, was using the His blackberry that was not secured, because that's what he's used to using. And President Trump had his phone that he was using. I can't remember I think it was, was it an iPhone? I can't remember anyways, and he had his phone that he was using. And we tend to carry multiple phones. And that's a bit of an issue to you know if you got the president, okay. He's got his highly secured phone that he's using for his important emails and messages, etc. I am not sure if he is carrying around his iPhone that he uses to tweet with, but if he is, what information does that give out? So Iran, this is back in October, we know, was going after the Trump campaign. And today, it's, of course, gotten a little bit worse. Well, let's talk about another area of Iran's hacking, and this is about industrial control systems. Now, if you're not sure Or what these things are industrial control systems, are the computers used to control things like valves in industrial facilities, they control numerical machines that do the lathing and other types of things in an industrial area. Nowadays, everything is computer-controlled. Now, some of these machines, I have a client, we had to put in special networks to protect them, a client who has Windows XP down on the manufacturing floor, and it's Windows XP because again, it's what we talked about a couple of segments ago. It's older operational technology that is not up to date. If it's not broken, don't fix it. And the manufacturers aren't going to update the control systems from Windows XP to Windows 10. They don't even provide patches for when Those XP systems. So what are you going to do if you're a manufacturer? Do you want to spend another 200 grand or more on a new piece of equipment? Are you going to stick with what you have? So we've got all of this critical infrastructure manufacturing, but we also have a critical infrastructure. For instance, in our hospitals. You probably know for ten years, I was a volunteer in EMS, emergency medical services. And in the back of our ambulance, I was using all kinds of equipment to monitor cardiac rhythms to do defibrillation, to draw blood to, to give d-50 to help people with diabetes who are in a diabetic coma, if you will. So, all of that equipment When was the last time that was updated? When was the last time they did an update in the hospital? We know about problems with pacemakers and people's chests because there are security vulnerabilities All these pacemakers now, Oh, isn't this cool, we got Bluetooth we can control the pacemaker, when you see your doctor, he makes a couple of changes. You can make some minor changes, as well, as and I'm about to exercise, I need to up my heart rate, or my heart rates going to get high, so don't shock me right with an auto defib unit. How about our water processing plants? We've got gates that go up and down to move water between one area and another. Same thing with fresh water as with black water, where we have our waste from our sewage systems that treated and being run through different channels and into ponds. There are electric systems. Hydro Systems, with all of those gates, move up and down, and they go through different turbines. It's moved around inside, depending on power requirements at that time of day. We have coal and our electrical grid, there are thousands of controls across our electrical grid. One of the things I did when I was running the FBI is Infragard program is made sure we did training on these types of industrial control systems because they are so critical to our businesses. We have to understand these we have to take care of them. We can no longer just say, well, it's working, we're not going to touch it anymore. So, there was a cyberwar conference in Arlington, Virginia, just about two months ago, and Microsoft security researcher by the name of Ted Morin said that he found a shift in the activity in the Iranian hacker group is called ABT33. In this case, all known by a few other names, but Microsoft just watch the group carry out so-called past Word sprain attacks. Over the past year, the try few common passwords across user account at 10s of thousands of organizations. And they're saying that the Iranians have narrowed its password sprain to about 2000 organizations per month. More targets, different targets, and what are they trying to get at? They're trying to get at these industrial control systems. We do know how we were able to nail the Iranians with their nuclear ambitions. It came out that it was the Israelis and us. We had come up with a virus, a particular virus that attacked their industrial control systems inside the nuclear refineries where the refining the yellowcake Basically, and we were able to destroy those. So they learn something from that. And they the Iranians are destructive or in their cyber world here, right? We talked about the wiper attacks, or they're doing during my Facebook Lives this week and YouTube lives, how they're trying to destroy equipment. That's what they want. So this represents, according to Microsoft, a disconcerting move as they moved on here. They haven't named any specific control systems. We know some of them. In December of 2016, Russia used a piece of malware that briefly caused a blackout in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. Some hackers deployed a piece of malware in Saudi Arabia and an oil refinery in 2017, designed to disable the safety systems, which is what we did to the Iranians. So Those attacks had the potential to inflict physical harm as well as mayhem. So we've got to be very, very careful. If you are a business and you have control systems, make sure they are up to date. I can't say that enough. And make sure the manufacturer the networks are providing you with patches demand the patches, tell them Homeland Security says that they have to deliver updates because they can't expect you to replace all of these control systems. Part of the problem many businesses have is even finding all of these control systems that are out there. It gets to be tough, frankly. What are what do we have? Are they up to date? What are they running? You know, I mentioned already, the Windows XP control systems that some of my clients are still running, and they're slowly but surely upgrading some of their systems. So it's a problem. Make sure you watch this week's Facebook Lives that I recorded this past week. They were alive when they were alive. But you'll find them at Craig Peterson comm slash Facebook I go into this Iranian problem a little bit more. I give you some solution, some actionable steps that you can take, and if you don't like Facebook, you'll find them at Craig Peterson comm slash YouTube as well. And I hope you do check them out. I think it's essential. We got to understand this stuff, and we've got to make sure that we are taking care of the problem as we go forward. We got more training coming up, But anyways, you'll find all of that make sure you're on my email list. So you find out about all of these pop-up training, free training I'm doing Craig Peterson dot com slash subscribe. You're listening on WGAN and online.   Hello, everybody welcomes welcome. Of course, this is Craig Peterson. Here we are on WGAN the also find us online at Craig Peterson dot com. We've been covering a lot about what's going on with Iran and security. There have been updates this week from our friends at Homeland Security. The FBI, CIA, NSA, I guess not the CIA so much, but the NSA even are warning us about these types of attacks. So we've been talking a lot about that today. You'll find out more online at Craig Peterson comm slash Facebook. Make sure you follow my page there so that you'll get informed when I have these Facebook Lives. So I've got about 20 minutes, 25 minutes worth of content there. I think you'll appreciate it tonight. include some graphics things getting fancy here. And then, of course, this show is up on my website you'll see it there I podcast pretty much anywhere tune in radio, of course where you'll find ga n and many other great stations and shows. And I also have a YouTube channel and everything out. So you know, trying to do it all be everywhere all at once. So, man, it's just the way it goes sometimes, isn't it? So we are going to talk right now about this particular problem, which is how do we as business people know if we should be moving to the cloud should not be moving to the cloud, what should we be doing and how we should be doing it? Right. Does that make sense to you guys? And so that's what we're going to talk about right now. There is a great little article from insights for professionals. They have a lot of details on it. I'm also going to be having some specialized training coming up probably in a couple of months here on cloud migration. Now, if you've been listening to the whole show, you know how several companies are unclouding, about half of the companies that are in the cloud right now are thinking about leaving the cloud. And, and it's because of two big problems that I can't tell you how many people I know how many businesses I know, are thinking about going to the cloud for these reasons, which are number one security, because they look at the cloud as being more secure. They don't have to worry about hiring security people or about having the right hardware. Go to the cloud and have no worries about any of that. And then number two cost savings, they think they're going to have cost savings. So about half of the companies in the cloud are looking at it, saying it's not as secure as I wanted it to be. It's not as cures I needed to be. It doesn't comply with the regulations that I must comply with, which, by the way, is almost every business out there. If you have a single employee, you probably have some HIPAA requirements, medical requirements, because you're providing health insurance. You've probably got their social security number, their name, the home address, any one of which is considered personally identifiable information. So are you just going to throw that up on the cloud, randomly? And then you've heard about, of course, all of the cloud hacks that have happened and it's scary. So, security is kind of the number one reason, and the second reason is they have not seen the savings promised by the cloud. They haven't seen the savings and personnel in overall expenditures, etc. So about half of the companies that have moved are saying, we want to move back. One of the first things you have to do if you're considering moving to the cloud is how a good data inventory. Now your data inventory is something you should be doing anyway, frankly, with data inventory, you know what data you have, where it is how much there is. And you have to do that now. And we'll be talking about the new California regulations here in a few minutes. But you have to do that right now. And if you have any European customers, you already had to do this. If you haven't re, yet, count yourself lucky. The fines have started coming all the way down to small companies. With California starting to fine companies as of the first of this year. It's kind of a Greenfield for these scam artists that like to sue companies. And all they have to do is say, yeah, I'm a California resident, and I went to this website, and I asked the company for all the information they have on me, and I have a right to be forgotten under this category. law. And they didn't do that they didn't do any of it. So now they get to sue you because you didn't comply with the crazy California law. So know where your assets are, know where your data is knowing which data needs the most protection, you should do that no matter what. When we're talking about this cloud migration and a cloud decision framework for moving your data to the cloud. We're also talking about taking all of that data, including the security required for that data, and transferring it to the cloud, and it is essential that we fully understand what that is. But don't forget, half of the companies are now thinking about getting out of the cloud. Getting out of the cloud means how do I migrate my data out of the cloud? Because in many, many cases, you got vendor locked in you, you can't do anything about it. It's a big deal. So how are you? You're going to deal with that. So migrating to the cloud and the decision around the migration is one of the most important and consequential decisions that any IT director can ever make for their firm. Absolutely. It's a highly complex process, especially for larger businesses. And it is something that really could mean the end to your business. I say that, but it's true. I also want to point out another discouraging fact about cloud migrations. About a third of them are considered failures. That's a huge number. Now we already know things if you're a business person, you know things like ERP systems, these systems designed to help your business run and it kind of covers everything from the customers and the sales process through the ordering the manufacturing the show. Shipping, right? The just in time inventory, these big era p systems, you already know that more than half of those are considered failures. So just talking about cloud migrations, third of them are considered failures. So how do you do this? How do you take care of this? And how do you make sure the unclouded migrations going to go well, a little bit later on. That's what a cloud decision framework is all about. That's why you have to spend some time here. You have to assess the benefits of moving an application to the cloud, whether it is to office 365. Online, whether it is an application that's integral to your business. I know a lot of businesses now that are moving their era p systems like car dealers and others to the cloud. But is that the right decision, particularly considering half of the businesses Want to move back out of the cloud? Okay, what impact is that going to have on your wider business? What's going to happen when the cloud server crashes? When your network doesn't work? When there's too much bandwidth on your network because transfers are going on? Or maybe as we've seen many, many times, people are streaming YouTube and other videos in their offices that are showing up all your bandwidth, and you don't have any way to throttle that type of access. Okay, the most common myths of cloud computing can hinder you. So here we go. Some executives MV worry of the cloud is I believe the cloud is inherently less secure than on-premise alternatives. Alternatively, they may have gone and bought into the idea that the cloud is good for everything. Neither one of those is true, the cloud is not more secure than the premise, and on-premise is not necessarily more secure than the cloud. It depends, right? And that's what all this research is about, you know, you got to do planning and evaluation, you've got to select the right solution. There are a lot of cloud vendors out there right now. Are you going for software as a service platform as a service? I access all of those things, right? How are they going to handle your data? How are they going to manage your data? How are they going to back it up? How are they going to test the backups? validation and management, anyways, if you are interested in finding out more if your business is thinking about moving to the cloud, let me know. In case I'm thinking about putting together a little bit of training on that as well. Again, me and Craig Peterson Congress drop me a quick note. I'd love to hear from you. And let's see. I think that's it for now. We're going to come back with a LIDAR. It is kind of cool because we're talking about Kaz, who doesn't love that.   Hello everybody, Craig Peterson, here WGAN and, of course online, you'll find me at Craig Peterson dot com. Of course, that's Peterson with an O. Hope you have enjoyed this week, and you're able to attend some of my FacebookLives. There is a lot of training. We've got a lot more coming up. If you want to find out about the training, the best bet is to subscribe to my email list. That's Craig Peterson comm slash subscribe. All free training. I give away hours every year, you know, hundreds literally of hours of different types of training. So make sure that you're on that list Craig Peterson, calm, slash subscribe. Well, I want to talk about something cool right now. And this is something that you're going to be seeing in your life in the fairly near future. It's something called LIDAR. Now I've had the makers and designers of LIDAR on my radio show before. And we talked about what the technology was about how it's going to improve things. But a LIDAR was very, very expensive. It's some of the LIDAR equipment that they use on these test vehicles. Those you see driving around from our friends at Waymo and many others. Even Uber is in the game and, and apples in the game, some others in the game. Still, these cars are driving around with a quarter-million dollars worth of LIDAR on the cars. Now, if you have seen any of these LIDAR pictures in, in the news, it's kind of cool. Let me see if I can pull off up for you. I think I've got Yeah, I do. Okay, so I'm going to pull this up here on the screen. If you're watching and you can see this again at Craig Peterson dot com slash YouTube. Here is a LIDAR picture. Here is showing what looks to be New York Central Park and some of the buildings around, and I'm quite sure that's what it is. And it's a kind of laser radar. And the idea with the laser radar, is I keep wanting to do laser-like our friend. Austin Powers did, right. But this is a kind of laser radar, and you can see it showing the trees and showing buildings and streets and the tops of the buildings. It's very cool stuff. And the idea behind putting this on cars is it gives the car a truly three-dimensional view. What's around it down to the millimeter down to we're just fractions of an inch. It is very cool and beneficial. Now we've got people like Ilan musk out there, who, with his Tesla cars, is exclusively using cameras. And he says LIDAR is useless. We're not going to use LIDAR, and no one's going to use LIDAR forget about LIDAR, why bother with LIDAR? And I can kind of understand why he might want to go that way. When you're talking about a quarter-million dollars worth of equipment in a car. That's a whole different beast. However, I went online today, and I did some searching, and I found those hockey pucks sized LIDAR units wholesale for 100 bucks apiece. That makes it extremely affordable. But you might not want to use those you might want to if you're a car manufacturer have a much better what's word I'm looking for, but a much better provider of the LIDAR. And so this is where everything changes. Bosh, who is a company that makes all kinds of fantastic equipment for cars already, including fuel injection systems, and many other things. Bosh is now entering this crowded LIDAR market. Now what's important about this is Bosh is considered a tier-one provider. They are one of the top providers for automobile equipment in the world. They do some amazing things, things and this Thursday, this last Thursday, Bosh announced that they are going to be providing LIDAR units. Now Bosh can scale this. They've got the infrastructure to do it. unlike so many These smaller companies like the one I found for $99 for a LIDAR unit, okay. Right now, we don't know much about the Bosch LIDAR system. There are several companies. As I said, I interviewed the first one, the guys that came up with the patent. Now, this picture that I have here, this is outing. Here is an Audi. And they have already started shipping some cars with a LIDAR. A Bosch rival makes it by the name of Valeo, and we can expect more carmakers to follow their lead. So the LIDAR doesn't have to be solely in an autonomous vehicle. It can be used for functions like Cadillac uses and many others now. These uses quite a literal radar to track the car in front of you knows it stopped quickly, it'll automatically apply the brakes, that you're getting too close to the jersey barrier in the middle of the road. And so it kind of steers you away from that. There's a lot of things LIDAR in use right now. That's what some of these manufacturers are starting to use it. In the future. The beauty of LIDAR is that it can see everything in 3d. Remember that lady in Phoenix that darted out in front of that autonomous car and was struck. and she probably would have been struck by any driver, whether or not it was autonomous. But she was struck, because the cameras can't see everything, particularly in the dark. And even if you have a camera on each side of the car, looking forward, which gives the car some stereoscopic vision, it is nowhere near as accurate as LIDAR is so this is just a, frankly a huge, huge thing. Another major advantage of LIDAR is the distance involved. LIDAR can see, again, with millimeter precision, over 200 meters in front of the car. So that's the high-end stuff. Audi putting into their cars, they're not going to put a $200,000 LIDAR unit in it, like Google uses when it's driving around neighborhoods, okay? But rumors are suggesting that the LIDAR from Vallejo costs hundreds of dollars in quantity, and it's probably pretty good. So they have a lower range, they have a lower resolution, but they can add a lot of value expect over time. Radar sensors have some real limitations. They have a flat horizontal, vertical resolution like, unlike the LIDAR you saw in that picture. I'll bring it up again here. Let me pull it up. OK, that's up, and behind me, it's put it up big on the screen for those people watching. But you can see the resolution on that this is an expensive LIDAR that took this picture of New York City wall of part of Central Park and part of the buildings. But you can see how good the detail is. And it's plenty of detail for a vehicle to kind of figure out where it is and where it's going. So this is going to improve frankly, everything. Radar can't necessarily distinguish between things like a fire truck and a small car that might be in traveling. Still, it is going to help, and the next generation of this advanced collision avoidance and detection systems are going to be using this used massively. So I think this is very, very cool. So congratulations to Bosch, and Audi for coming up with some of this stuff. And we're seeing More this over at CES this year the Consumer Electronics Show. There are taxis while there's at least one Russian taxi that is over in Vegas right now driving the street with no one behind the wheel at all. And reports are that it hasn't had one accident. Now, if you've driven in Vegas lately, you know how bad the traffic is in Vegas? It has gotten terrible. I was just out there at a wedding just about a month ago and I couldn't believe how bad it now is. Stick around. When we come back. We're going to talk about the new privacy laws. What does that mean to us a consumer? What does it mean to businesses as well? Stick around us into Craig Peterson on WGAN and online.   Hey, hello everybody, Craig Peterson here, man, I can't believe it's been an hour. It just goes so, so fast. Hey, welcome back. Of course, you'll find me here every Saturday on WGAN from one till 3 pm. I also have this recorded in the video. And you can see the video by going to YouTube. But also you'll see it over on my website at Craig Peterson dot com. I do a lot of training. I do a lot of FacebookLives, and YouTube lives, you know, pop-up training like I did this week, where we're talking about what you need to do right now, to help protect yourself from the Iranian attacks that are already underway. They've been underway for many years now, but they've gone up over 50% this year. That is a dramatic number. And I'm just I'm sad to see that sort of thing happening, but you know, it's going to happen. You know, guess what, right? So anyhow, be that as it may. It is a pleasure to be here. We have covered a lot today. And I want to get now into just the last couple of things. We've got a big deal now. Hey, if you're a business and you have any medical records, you are covered by HIPAA, you have to comply. There are fines and all kinds of things. If if you are a manufacturer, who sells things to government bodies, and particularly military, where on the military side they have multiple vendors that are selling components and you're selling these components to the military. Well, now you've probably got DFARS. requirements and door ITAR requirements if you are involved in the financial business at all. You also have requirements that are that fall under FINRA. And it just goes on and on, right that the courts all put every business under FRCP, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and where you have to keep emails, you have to keep documents. You have to do all of this stuff. Are you doing it? How about GDPR that came out a couple of years ago now it's been a few years and then last year, got teeth, and they started finding companies, even small companies huge amounts of money. Well, now we've got our friends in California. They have passed what they call the California consumer Privacy Act (CCPA.) This act is starting to cause some problems and some questions here as companies are trying to figure out organizations, including volunteer organizations, including insurance companies, banking companies, they have to comply. This law went into effect on January 1, 2019. And then January 1 of 2020. This year, it got teeth; you had to comply. And one of the provisions of this law is that if someone requests their information, what is it that you have on me? What is it that you're maintaining about me? If they request that you have 45 days to give them all of their information because they have to know what you know about them. That doesn't seem too bad, and 45 days you should be able to handle that, right? Well, consider California has got 30 million people in it. And what happens if a small percentage of them decide they want that information from you? Maybe they think that, hey, listen, it's going to be cool because I'll be able to make some money because, under this California law, I can sue them. And I can get a whole bunch of

The end of 2019 has arrived. Let's recap Path of Exile through 2019 and end with a bang! Giveaway information:Twitter Tweet to RetweetReddit Post for Episode 6Join the party! Check out our website for more episodes and be sure to follow us on Twitter.www.foreverexiled.comTwitter @ForeverExiled82Path of Exile WebsiteWrecker of Days Builds ListFull Transcript of Episode:Justin: Welcome to forever Exiled. The Path of Exile podcast. This is technically Episode six, but it's going to be our bonus. New Year's Eve and Day episode. I am one of your host, Justin a k a. TagzTyler: and I'm Tyler Wrecker of Days.Justin: Make sure you check out the rest of this episode right up until the end because we may have a sexy giveaway coming up anyway. Ty, how are you doing? Well, how are you? Good. So this is gonna be our our extra bonus for fun. Super awesome. Episode six I agree. So, uh, path of exile G just released today their best of 2019 video, which was awesome. If you haven't checked it out, make sure you watch it. Maybe we'll put a link in the show notes just so you can find it. I think they're coming up with some more information on there. Accomplishments and bragging tomorrow, which is New Year's Eve will be tomorrow. So hopefully will be out there and live with everybody at the same time. So, yeah, let's let's ah, let's jump into it. So we figured it'd be kind of fun to look back a year at what grinding gear games development plan for 2019 was and assuming like we will continue this for the next 15 or 16 years, we'll be able to do this. We'll be able to do this at the end of each year and kind of see what was announced the previous year and sort of where things went from there. So we've got the development plan for 2019 from grinding gear games last year. 2019. Here's what they say. 2019 will see the release of four significant Path of Exile updates in the form of 3.6 and March 3.7 in June, 3.8 in September and 3.9 in December. These releases will follow the formula we have been using over the last few years, introducing a challenge league, various expansion features, new character, skill, archetypes to play, and masses of other fixes and quality of life improvementsTyler: while working on the 2019 updates. We also hope to make significant progress on the four point Omega expansion, which we now know as path of exile, too likely coming sometime in 2020. For those unfamiliar with our version numbering system, Once we've released Update 3.9, we are forced to number the next 14 point. Oh, for example, the version after 3.9 and March is 3.10 as we do not expect to release 4.0 in the first part of next year. Development of 4.0 is a massive task that is absolutely affected by our desire to continue to release sizable leagues at our usual pace. So we're taking our time and making sure it's ready before we decide on a release date. 20Justin: nine. Teen culminates in the Exile Con Fan convention in November, where we can announce and demonstrate December's 3.9 expansion, as well as a small preview of 4.0, this convention takes place approximately 2 to 3 weeks before the 3.9 release, so you should be able to play a near final build at the show. We expect to put Tickets are for sale in the next couple of weeks.Tyler: We're also putting the finishing touches on the PlayStation four version of Path of Exelon should be able to announce a release date in the near future. It's going to be a busy year.Justin: So that was the development plan for 2019 Fergie and I will say I think they hit all of them. They nailed it. Yeah, I think they did. And they were very good at their ah, super chilled idea of what four point I was going to be in comparison to what we found out November. So we're going to get to that part sort of Indian. Let's let's break down the league's because we've had now a year we've had were in the fourth league for this this year. So it's obviously three have been completed. Ones very, very new. So let's let's jump through each of them. So we'll go 3.63 point six was the synthesis leak.Tyler: Mmm. Do you rember what you bladeJustin: synthesis for me Now? I I don't entirely know. I do remember playing arc totems. Ah, for quite a bit of it, just because so synthesis was a huge cast early there were that was the league of ah, huge changes to spells and just casting in general, mainly kind of got kicked a little bit and just was left alone. But casting was a big one So for me, my main one was, uh, was arc totems and it actually carried me. I think I played it quite a bit. Brill League. And I think that one took me to 97 or so. I think ITyler: lied Well, and I laughed and I laughed. That was the one league where you are. Totems was just storing everything. You could have done it with your eyes closed. You're having a great time. And you bailed on it to make something else because you felt like it was too slow. And you're flying. I mean, it was like a split second. I couldn't even hit like the start stop button fast enough to to say how fast you were laying your total's. But it was too slow for you. And so you respect?Justin: Yeah, I don't remember. I don't remember too much what I did after that. Only because that that was a big league for me. Just in currency. I had the I can't remember the name of it, but the Mir dhe shield that I ended up selling for I remember selling all of my ark totem gear for I don't know, 60 or 70 exults and just playing around and going crazy and then not carrying after that point. What did you play them? You remember?Tyler: Uh, I don't remember playing it, but I had it written down. It was how I do my lists of characters. My 3.6 build was an R f character. Okay, remember playing it, but I'm sure it did. Great.Justin: Nice. So, synthesis. It was not a great release. So it wasn't. Ah, it wasn't my favorite. While we can talk about favorite ones later. But the system wasTyler: confusing. Yeah, and they're confusing.Justin: And there's not a whole lot of it left in theTyler: game. No, no, it definitely went by the wayside in terms of how it could fit into the current court game. Um, you barely ever see. It really only exists for as I've seen it. Um, it only exists in Zana maps. When you see her in a map, you could have a synthesis map as one of your options. And that's really the only way that I've come across it. Naturally. I don't remember any other way that they've tried to infuse it, but that's that's it. I remember. Sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I was just gonna say I remember it being a league. That was as as much effort as they put into it. I remember it being a leak, that I was completely happy to just skip the content, just go right past whoever was that was doing all the since this stuff and I just play the map and do the atlas. Normally,Justin: the idea behind it when it was first announced seemed really cool to me. The way it actually played out, I found overwhelmingly confusing. It was really difficult to plan out the I don't even know what you would call it. The map type thing that they had. I didn't find it. There were so many issues where ah ah, block the memory segments. Yeah, an area would, like, clear out for some reason, Or you couldn't. I just didn't like how that function work. There was way too much extra added to the game. And can you even go there? Can you see? What was it called? The nexus, I think. Yeah. I think that's what it was called. Can you still together? IsTyler: every Texas not that I know of? No, I don't think you can get the pieces of memory anymore, but you can still get synthesized items. That cannon all within a synthesized map.Justin: Yeah, it was It was It was a I don't know what the word is that it was ah, valiant attempt to try and make something new to the game. But to me, it was way, way, way, way too much. It was like, what was the one in the previous year with the the boards and all the lines and everything that would, uh, go between all of the bosses? It was the one with the change of the craft.Tyler: Um oh, syndicate. No, no, it's not called syndicate. I was calling in to getJustin: the mail. It was to me, it was like that. It was adding way too much of the game, and I just wanted to kill stuff, but so that actually kind of leads into legion. So that was synthesis. It was a fun league, but I did not touch the league mechanics almost atTyler: all. It's It's one of its unique, I think since I've started playing, which was in the early two's, um, it was unique in the sense that there's a lot of the times where they have to make a lot of changes. Right? Remember with synthesis, they had that blue stuff that would be coming in, and it would really start to cave in on us what it was speed game, right? So they had to modify it a lot. And even though this was now 2018 but you mentioned betrayal, they modified betrayal a lot to try and balance it for people that were leveling cleared two people that like Game and so that happens in a lot of leagues, and that's just how it goes. But it was one of those leagues where this bite all the changes that they made to try and balance it properly so that it could be playable. It was the mechanic itself that held a lot of people. That, and just matching the memory fragments, being able to store the fragments, figuring out how they work to the best ability was from what I found from what I read. From what I remember, that was the hardest part about the league.Justin: I had a blast in the league, but I did not enjoy the league mechanic. I loved the castor changes. I love the you know the skill reworks. I really, really liked a lot of the changes that they made for game play, but I did not like the guy just didn't enjoy the synthesis side of of the league. But are we good with 3.6? Yeah, let's move on. So 3.6 goes through, 3.7 comes out in. That's legion. And now legion. I think one of my favorite things about legion the Legion, was it was dummy proof. It was relatively simple. It was very much breach ish. Not obviously the same exactly is breach. But the idea that you would just come across them while you play it. You could do them while you were in a map or in his own, and it didn't require you to really have to do much else. You got to fight additional mobs, and there was obviously other stuff that could happen within that you know how the league was set up. But the overall way that it worked was super simple. Super simple.Tyler: Yeah, You see it in the map, you hit the button, you just kill as much as you can. Yeah. Maybe they'll kill you if you unlock too much there. Too tough. Or maybe you killed them all. And then you move on, you pick up your loot, you keep going. And I loved it. Absolutely loved it.Justin: Yeah. And then so with that league, they also came up with a huge Malay rework, which wasTyler: awesome, especially because the amount of crying melee fans did in 3.6 for the castor league. It was really nice toe. Have those wines dissipate in 3.7? Yeah, andJustin: and while it was a really, really cool mainly rework, which has really a lot of that stuff even now it's still very useful to Malay builds. A lot of the changes that they made are still super appreciated. It also became literally the cyclone leak. It did. It did. And because of the way that legion worked, I loved the legion part where you would just you'd find it in a map, click it, you'd break a bunch of stuff. You kill a bunch of guys and you keep moving on. I wasn't a huge fan of the endgame side of it where you would go to that that I can't remember what it was called the other area. And you could, you know, based on how many you wanted to do, was the domain of the timeless conflict. Look at you. Ah, that part to me was not my favorite. Only because I had seen what people could do in there with insane gear. And it just made you feel like, very weak. Didn't like. Yeah, yeah. What did you play? Do you remember what you played in that in that leak?Tyler: Yeah, that was my blocking build my trigger Happy build that I do. And ah, it was perfect for it. Um, I was using Cyclone with it. Now I've recently changed it. The last leaguer to To what's it called Laid Storm. But I did Cyclone for that league with Max block build. And it would have worked really well except trigger skills had almost 100% reproduction crash associate ID for the first month. So I really tried to play, but because I had all three trigger skills on my on my build, I didn't know and they didn't really know they did. It wasn't fixed for about the first month, so Unfortunately, I didn't get a lot of playing time andJustin: didn't actually last that long. Was it aTyler: month? It was a month before the trigger skills Scott fixed. It takes time to figure out like that for long was the longest time because it was a cyclone build. They were really focused on trying to fix the mechanics and cycle behind the scenes because they thought cycling is causing a lot of crashes. It ended up causing very few, but it was a focus and it's just how it works, so not as a criticism. It's just what was impacting my specific build took quite a while to fix. And so by then, two people that I play with were kind of Douglas Aly.Justin: Maybe. I definitely don't think it was specific to the type of build you play, though, because that was the league where Cyclone became channeling and that made a huge difference to what you could do with it. And so you saw so many of the on effect skills now in used with cyclone, which was cool. Now I played flicker strike on Lee becauseTyler: I don't know why I actually don't remember what made me think A flicker strike. You're trying to make me throw up.Justin: Maybe. Maybe it was my goal. Just 100%. Be sure I wouldn't play with you. I'm not sure, but, uh, I will say it was the first league in I have played since was April 2012 in the in the beta. This was my very first headhunter drop where it actually draw, right? And so that was in one of the Legion things that was actually glacier farming, which was a big thing for me in that league. And I remember it dropped as a unique leather belt. And I was laughing because Ethan, who was who was in my office at the time, and I, you know, kind of just said to him, Of course, it's a tease. I'm not gonna pick it up. What a waste. I know it's gonna be garbage worms, Moulter. Whatever it is, um and so I most over top of it in both of us, just like crap their pants. Because it was it was actually centered, so that that was probably my favorite part of it.Tyler: That's if you were to have a highlight reel. That's that'd be rightJustin: at the top. Yeah, it was cool to have. I've had ahead 100 before, but they've always been through currency, so this is kind of cool to actually have one draw.Tyler: That's awesome.Justin: Yeah. And then So this was also the change. This latte league changed to the five sockets, which obviously allowed you forgetting to That owe me and you were talking aboutTyler: Oh, you mean the map device was able to have five sockets? Yeah, you could find that. I was pretty cool, right? Still in the game, they say still in the game. Is it if this didn't remove it, but I I haven't come across it, YouJustin: know, myself, either. Yeah, it and then timeless jewels were and they were in that the guy didn't play much with, um, they confused the hell out of me. I don't want to see a jewel with just a bunch of numbers, and you have to just put it in to find out what it was just just wasn't for me, But it was fun, Lee. I liked I liked legion. So, Jenny, we're good with legion.Tyler: I believe so.Justin: Legion then leads into blight, So blight comes out. I found it, actually, at little shocking that it was tower defense. It made me laugh when they announced it. And this was the league of monster minion buffs, which I knew you were in love with, obviously, since I readTyler: it. I am a minion. Pet lover, depending. What game you come from. I am hollow vote minions. My league. It was fantastic.Justin: So what did you play that league?Tyler: Zombies. What? Well, I did. They made a lot of I wasn't originally gonna plays office. I was. There's 11 or two of my guides. I've only played on Collins. Wanna have a plate on PC? And so I really wanted to play one of the other ones. But there were so many changes to minions and not just minions like the core gem like zombies was modified substantially from 3.73 point eight. But then they added an insane amount of very different but also powerful. Um, support gems like feeding, frenzy and meat shield and death Mark. And then they changed the values of the corresponding like minion damage and minion speed to accommodate those new additions and how minions leveled and then the whole necromancer ascendancy. It was so different that I had to play it just to see what it was like for the sake of replying to guide responses. But it was really good. ObviouslyJustin: it was the first league for me since again. I want to say it was backing closed Beta. Uh, when I was playing, I think one of my very first builds I ever played was minions. And I remember one of the very first things I ever message the developers to say was there needs to be a counter like the idea that I can't see how many zombies I have out is really difficult to play, how a minion build. And so this was, I think, my first time touching minions. Besides, I played with us rs a little bit, but I don't think I touch onions for years, years and years. Of course, with this league, you really there wasn't I mean, I could have played other stuff, but it just said it made so much sense to play around with with millions, and it was fun. It was the easiest league start I've ever had ever in the history of path of exile. I remember going, but this is something's wrong. This is.Tyler: Well, you didn't zombies for your league start, right? You didn't do any different. Yeah,Justin: No, I went zombies and it was just It was better. It was so smooth. And I remember laughing to you. Maybe a month in just jokingly saying that. Oh, boy, you're zombies are going to take a hit. I think it was actually right after celestial zombies came out. I was like, All you're screwed. That's it. That's the curse. Once you could stay with celestial. You're done. Yeah, So that that actually, for me, blight didn't last a super long time. But I do remember ending it with celestial everything. Of course, I got every single celestial, empty X had a bunch of the minions in the celestial on. Did you? Did you like the blighted leak? Did you like the towerTyler: defense again? I really liked it. I'm I was apathetic to the tower defense part, but I am a huge fan. My favorite leagues are the ones that just let me kill stuff right away. And so I love things like blight. You know, I love it when I have an insane amount of rogue exiles on the map. I just love it. What is it? Reach where they come out of the ground. Just love it. So this one was similar to that? I didn't have to go anywhere else to find my to do the lead content. And they were just comes rushing at you, which is great. Um, I I was apathetic to the tower stuff, so I basically just looked for the closest checkpoint. Her choke point or two made them slow and then let my minions deal with the rest. And Natalie, because zombies were so overpowered, that strategy did work. It was their intense to make towers almost required, unless you had an insanely over powerful built. So, um, I did like it. I love that the minions just came rushing at you, or I guess not passing pod, whatever that was called, but yeah, no, I really liked it. If if it worked, if it worked.Justin: Sure. I think my favorite part about Blight was sister Cassius. Oh, here singing and was listening in. And she just didn't give a damn about you either. Was almost irritated that you were there.Tyler: Yeah, Yeah, she needed you. And that pissed her off. Yeah, it was pretty funny. I do the one thing about blight. It would have been It was very difficult. I primarily play console and it people had to really, really do specific builds that weren't busy for a Minion League. Blight was too busy, right? I mean, everybody's has a lot of minions out, and then there's an insane amount of monsters out with a lot of hit points. And there was It was just a slide show on normal consoles, not just the original P s foreign Xbox one, but the the second version of thumb. Even some people with the Higher and PS four and Xbox one X they they'd run into some pretty big slide. So slideshow stuff, too, depending on it. So for ah, Minion League blight kind of counteracted itself with with what would be overpowered and successful. So a lot of the streams that you would see we're primarily PC, especially as you got later into the league, because only a higher NPC could actually handle a full blight map. The full board of minions. But I really liked it. I just wish it I just wishJustin: it worked, right? I do remember hearing people struggling with the blighted maps in later in game, just with the amount of stuff that would happen on your own screen. And then you multiply that by a 1,000,000,000 with the amount of mobs that were coming outTyler: and they didn't even implement it into console immediately. It was so challenging because of the frame rate issues and such on PC. They implemented it into 3.9 right away. But they didn't don't console and they're fixed on console was to just make less paths less minions. And it's just so easy. Mmm, It's so easy. It's Ah, I mean, I'm glad it's in it. I'm glad it's in it, butJustin: I've actually done them more while I run into them. Yeah, me, too. It's kind of nice It I guess it's nice because they're not so often. I never I never had a problem with the the Tower defense, but I also never cared to do much else Besides the reason ones. I would hit the ice ones and then just sit back in the middle and let my let the minions just do their thing in the middle. Yeah, I rememberTyler: doing. I like I like it. I don't mind. Some people have an issue when they have to stay in a spot and fight enemies. I don't care as long as there's enemies and I really like blight and breach. What's the abyss for those types of ones? I really like them. Overall, I thought it was a great legal.Justin: And then we went into the current league, which there's not a whole lot to talk about, just cause it's so new.Tyler: Well, they nerved one minion from 3.8. Do you know which one mother, actually, too. That's true. It was, in vectors, passions on these songs andJustin: then the support James. Now that being said, we've talked about this in the in the patch notes, ones necessary changes, maybe a little heavy handed. Hopefully, it's adjusted a little bit, but, uh,Tyler: yeah, because I think it was fair. I was pretty broken hearted, and I wasn't overly kind with, uh, my opinion of it, But I do think it wasJustin: after the human stuff. Yeah, it was kind of necessary. Now they did a huge Bo Ri work with 3.9Tyler: 3.9. That was the bowl leak or is the bulletJustin: is in the bowl league? So what now? It's funny that we say it's the bowl EQ. What are you playing?Tyler: Playing about build and I'm playing a build every every boat skill got buffed or modified to be relevant is this league. But there were two to Bo won support and one primary scale active skill that got Ah, I guess nerved would be appropriate. I played elemental hit. I lost a lot of damage compared to 3.8, and I'm playing with its link to the ballistic totem support, which is brand new. Um, they changed that from the attack, told him support which originally you could only lay one at a time unless you invested further in the tree with items. Now it can lay three so and blisters are brand new to the league. This league, too. It's a new type of attack totem that you have to lay within Malay Range as opposed to being able to swell. So But yeah, uh, my my specific build got hit hard, but this is a bow league, and people are going both crazy and they're lovingJustin: it. I skipped Bo's entirely for this league so far. I decided to go a spectral throw. I'm having a really good time, actually. Meta morph. I have struggled a little bit with some stuff. First time with S S f for quite a long time. But it's I like it. The Metamor stuff again. I have found this league more challenging, I think, for in a positive way, Not just like Okay, dump chaos, damage on me, like in syndicate or right, uh, make a stupid area that closes on me within, like, three seconds. As soon as I move like synthesis. This is This is legit. Like, if it's difficult, it's my fault. I made it harder. I love that. I absolutely love that.Tyler: Yeah, me too. I love that you can take You could make it. I mean, it's still gonna be a boss fight if you took all white items. But you can take the easiest body parts and make the easiest boss you can. And if you have a really weak build, you'll you'll do. Okay, right. But if you have ah, pretty good. Not the best billed as you're leveling and you do all the hardest ones, it's gonna be a hard fight, and it's I thought it was really well balanced right off the bat. A lot of the changes they've made weren't to these new bosses. That was really cool. One thing that I love that meta morph added just into the core game was completely was much harder enemies, they added. Armor and elemental increase. Resistance is in chaos. Resistance is they increased the life off bosses and enemies and rare Sze everywhere. And they just made the game. They didn't increase their damage, but they increased their survivability, and it has made the game itself a lot harder. Meta morph is a great league and the changes they made to the core game that they introduced with meta morph and perfect timing. Of course, because you're making a boss league and then you're adding all these extra boss survivability things into the game as well. I was perfect cohesion, and I think they did a really good job. They haven't changed any of it. It's awesome.Justin: Yeah, I don't even remember. Are the changes for that tied to the metamorphosis? Igor, This conquers of the atlas. It's kind of hard to tell which was for what.Tyler: It's well, it's all the same, right? I mean, it's tied two unique enemies. It's tied to this of the very specific map. Bosses were individually tweaked. Yeah, I mean, some of them boss fights were completely rebound anyway. But for those existing ones there, they were specifically tweet so that they were an appropriate level. It wasn't just flat, you know, This this tear all got the same percentage of health increase. From what I remember them saying anyway, so it's all intertwined.Justin: So then tied in with 3.9 and metamorphoses this the big end game change to the atlas of Now we're into the conquers of the atlas. We've got new new endgame. Bosses knew endgame story, and I mean, we're both relatively new into it. I think you're a bit further than I am, but again, I've had a blast. It's made. It's made mapping much more challenging at a lower tier, and that's fun. I like that.Tyler: Yeah, definitely. I'm I think it's it's done a very good job. So far, I've heard that higher up that there's some some issues with people that were David Cook to complete certain quests or boss fights, or that certain items weren't falling within a proper area. But for the most part, this has been this league tied with the new endgame that they've created. To me, it's it path of excels always tried to be a very difficult game. And trying to incorporate what people want in the game and what they want in the game is obviously a very tricky thing. I well, I would assume for them say so in their interviews. And it's, I think this has done just a fantastic job of making the game difficult while keeping the game powerful.Justin: Yep, Yeah, I agree. And it's again. It's a little hard to judge because we're three weeks, two weeks into it, into the league, so it's still got a bit of legs behind it before we see how it all plays out. But so far it's been a positive experience.Tyler: Yeah, the one thing I really like about this new endgame for Metamor are not for many more, but the conquers of the atlas is that you are going to see the same bosses that you're gonna fight it. The end throughout the atlas. Not just that. Yeah, and I think that is so good. G has tried to make this game more accessible to new people over and over without making the game easier. And the huge problem that a lot of new people, if they made it to t fifteens and sixteen's, which they would be able to clear a T 15. No problem. They'd crush the Boston problem than they'd meet a guardian and they get crushed. And this new method that they have of fighting the same boss but then in multiple tears as you get further and further into the atlas. It's nice because you're now familiar with the boss as it's getting harder, and I think it's a lot more accessible to new people. And I think they did a really good job considering that, too.Justin: I think it'll be curious to see how that plays out as we get further into the Alice, because for me, I it's hard for me to say I definitely agree with you. It's cool that you're already hitting endgame bosses in like tear fours and fives, and that's just gonna you know, you're gonna only able to expand on that as you get further along. But I haven't gotten there yet, so it's hard to say, Yeah, I'm loving it It just as much when I'm into your 15th and 16th yet So that's cool. Yeah, it has been good so far. All right, so here's a question for you. We'll start. We'll start with the negative side first just because I know you're a positive positive guy. So, yeah, what was your least favorite league? And why of those four? And it's kind of hard because I know madam, or so new, but I highly doubt it. It will be the one. But which of those we've got 3.6 a synthesis. 3.7. His legion 3.8 is blight. And then the current 3.9 metamorphose, which was your least favorite league. And whyTyler: synthesis was easy to ignore if you didn't like it. Legion. I really liked the mechanics, but my specific build didn't get fixed for a month. I think my least favourite was blight. Now I really liked blight, but there's the common sense of making your meta being capable of doing your mechanic, and they didn't coincide at all and because I'm a console player and G knows about their console games, and they need to be able to make their game for the least efficient platform that they release it on. I think blight was my least favorite because I couldn't play it on my favorite platform.Justin: Yeah, okay, so for me, my least favorite would be It's probably synthesis. But it's kind of unfortunate for me to say that because I played synthesis much, much longer than blamed much longer, I would say almost twice as long as Blake. I played synthesis, and that was because I loved the changes to spells. It made the milk fund to play. But I absolutely hated the league mechanic. I just could not. I didn't like it. It wasn't fun at all. Where is Blight it? Ah, it almost seemed a little bit too easy. And I didn't have any interest in the the the Blight mechanic. So and that literally was the endgame. Yeah. You know, as you leveled, there wasn't anything new that you were introducing towards the end game. And so I found a burnt out real fast, but synthesis for me. If I'm looking at it, from a league perspective, I hated. Synthesis is engaged. I did not like any of the the nexus stuff. I felt completely lost all the time on that one, like figuring it out. So for me, that that was me I loved, absolutely loved the actual plane of that league and the skills and the reworks and stuff. One of my favorites. But the actual lead mechanic to me was the blight wasn't poorly done. It wasn't that the league mechanic was poorly done. It just I didn't interest me, was great. But the synthesis league mechanic, to me was a little bit shortsighted and definitely wasn't one of my least favorite ones. But now let'sTyler: move away from the brightest guys so I could see how synthesis confuses you.Justin: I know I like simple, simple. So let's move awayTyler: from you go. You go first on this one, you go first.Justin: Okay, So this is gonna be our favorite, which was our favorite league. And why you go legion for sure. I'm really liking meta morph. I can't say for sure until the end of this league where they'll line up Legion introduced so many Malay where he works that I've been working for. Well, we're looking forward to forever. And so I tend to lean more towards the mainly type skills. It's just more fun for me, and I loved a lot of the changes that they did and Legion League Mechanic was was dummy proof. It was It was so simple to play. I wasn't a really big fan of that hole. Put the five things and I did it, you know, I played it. I did beat the one with all five, and but I felt like it was so forced to go that the cyclone route, if you really want, especially once the headhunter had dropped it. It made it really easy to go, and I just have a couple swords and put on the belt in the hallway. But the the lead mechanic to me, was a lot of fun. It was within the map. Side is what I'm referring to like. It made it very, very easy to just play the atlas to just play my build. Maley was strong, and so for me, as a Finnish league, it's the only one I can compare it to, because anymore so far has actually been a lot of fun, but we're like 23 weeks in, so I can't really give it the top for me. So what about you?Tyler: Catch for me was it's meta morph. Really, I know we're only that into it, but it's ah, it's harder right now. I know. Adding all the resists in defense for enemies is isn't necessarily for the league itself, right? That's just core. Game change is kind of like the endgame. But coupling that with adding bosses that you can choose how difficult they are you could specifically choose rewards like I want more rare items are away. Should I do, ah, unique item or should I do more currency drops and you're actually guaranteed at least something of what you've chosen. Now you don't know what the body parts are gonna offer you money from all of your options. You you're picking your rewards, which is so great in a game like this, you're picking the difficulty based on the reward, which is so great you can pick the location in the map where you're gonna fight. Um, it's just it's awesome. And I love one thing that, like I mentioned before about G one in this game. Hard, but people wanting to clear it in the blink of an eye. This slows the game down, right? Like we've we've talked who will get to excel con in a bit. But one thing that they really wanted to do with Pee wee, too, was really slow. The game down. And this is a huge step in that direction, even a year before Pee Wee to comes out is you're slowing down these enemies air rough. You need a really good build to destroy the really hard metamorphose and a moderately leveled build. Or one that's still trying to find its gear, still trying to find that right to weapon full of mods that they would boost their DPS quite a lot. It's gonna be a challenge, and you're and you're making tough choices. I love Metamor for that, and it's and it's metamorphose itself is stable, rock solid, stable, right? A lot of the issues that have come out with 3.9 have actually been with a new endgame, not with metamorphosis thing. It's been bug free, but I just think it's been the most stable. It's been the most exciting. It's the most. I'm spending time looking at my screen, choosing what I want to do. It's not just blind. I love it. I absolutely love it.Justin: Who are the 3.9 for you? That's nice. Yeah, alright, it's a legion. I do like metamorphic. We'll see how it plays out. Okay, so you actually brought it up. But let's one of the final things that they talked about in their development plan for 2019 was Excel Con. So x o Khan was obviously a huge deal for people who like Path of Excel. Ah, whether you went or not, just the idea that they were doing it was awesome. The fact that this indie development game was going to be, you know, has grown to the size of holding its own conference or a game. And then not only are they doing it, but they're gonna hold it in literally the for this place, every other country on Earth, that that's awesome. The fact thatTyler: a good turnout they had to increase what they had to upgrade their venue.Justin: I think I heard when we were so we I got to go, which was awesome. I went with my son, who's Ethan and and we I mean, we had a blast. He definitely had a huge, really, really good time when he was there. And I know me and you had talked about possibly going and it just didn't work out. But, ah, the I can't remember the number I want to say It was around 1313 100 people, is what we were told out was there, which is insane, especially given a huge percentage of those were not local. And when I was looking it up just out of curiosity, the closest besides Australia, the closest place that you could fly from was 12 hours away, which is just It just made me laugh because it's yeah, it literally is the furthest place away from everywhere else on Earth. Besides, you know, the people in Australia. But when we were in a cool when we were down there, I'll just quickly throw this in there when we were down there, actually made a reddit post because I was floored at the way that the people that were there were acting towards each other and the community sort of just in general. It really took me back to beta days of P o E. It just was Everybody was friendly. Everybody was hanging out, you know, like they're just was It was a really cool vibe there. And that's coming from, Uh, no, I'm not old, but an older guy. I mean, I think probably the average age I would have guessed was probably 27 28 there. But it was just cool. Like people were Tibor Super friendly. I mean, Ethan, he's 18. He had a blast, so it was a really cool experience. And then, uh, well, I mean, we should get to really the 22 major announcements, I guess maybe three. So we had 3.9, which was obviously this expansion in the whole change to the conquerors of the atlas. A cool, cool announcement that came out mobile announcement. Saving the big one for the mobile announcement was hilarious, because I remember sitting in the theater and watching people figure, you know, are they out of their minds, like, is this is this really is Are they lying? Everybody kind of thought, you know, until you saw how much you know they had the fall guy, which was hilarious. in their video and ah, and then Christmas, becauseTyler: that's his job to raid.Justin: Oh, it was so well done, though. It was so well done. I hope it was his idea, because I think that that it was one of the funniest titles for anybody in theTyler: whole in anyJustin: of the videos. TheTyler: mobile fall guy, Global fallJustin: guy. But it was a good view. And then Chris kind of talking afterwards about how it was hard to announce this last year made me crack up.Tyler: Oh, that he was so nervous. What? Cono Not sure what they were going to do.Justin: Yeah. And then, of course, the huge p o e. To which was, you know, the pre announced four point. Oh, but is actually gonna be path of exile, too. So I'm curious. What? What did you think? I mean, the ex con was so big, we can't cover obviously all of it. But now what? What was sort of yourTyler: overall? So for those listening, Justin, Nathan got to go. I, of course, did not get to, but we were messaging quite a lot throughout the entire conference, and it was really cool to get their perspective of to what was happening when what I could see. And so I was watching on Twitch and YouTube, and I got to see a lot of the interviews that Justin you think you can get to see while they were there because you could just can't see everything live. But they only had one channel that was streaming some of the interviews. And so I think obviously my favorite part of ex Sal Khan was the path of exile to announcement. But the best part of that was when I think it was Chris that came out after when Chris he was almost crying and he was having such a hard time controlling his emotions and his love for his game, his passion for the community that plays. He was so overwhelmed with people's excitement over what they were doing and their excitement to play even more and get more. I just can't imagine what it would be like. They were saying that they, for the longest time there was like four people. Only the people that were allowed in his office without knocking knew that 4.0 was actually gonna be p o. B two and it was only hey was saying that it was just nobody knew and for that to just get off their chests for them to be able to talk about everything. It was one of my other favorite moments along with Chris. Almost crying in a good way was when Jonathan maybe maybe this quick maybe was both. But I think it was Jonathan. He sat down for one of his, um, interviews, twitch interviews, and he was so calm. He was just so exciting, was so relaxed and he just said, Ask me anything. There's no more secrets And he was just so happy to just talk about anything. And I thought that was really cool because there's so much that's still going to come. And I mean, when you compare this to the Deauville for announcement, it just blows it out of the water. And the things that these are even comparable G was thinking about for even longer, It seems. It's just It was It was so exciting. I can't wait for another 19 ascendancy classes while we're on the subject.Justin: Yeah, it's gonna be cool. So I haven't I mean, you know this story and there's There's obviously a few of our friends that we know locally and that our family, friends and stuff no, this story and very few people outside of that would obviously know about this. Besides, there was a picture, but one of my one of my favorite sort of experiences when we were there because there were a lot, I mean, just that being in New Zealand on its own was amazing. That that country is beautiful. Yeah, but we were the day before the exile con event we had run into about, I don't know, we had met just because Ethan wanted to go out and do all of the meet ups and stuff, and I was following along with him. We met quite a few people on Dhe, some really, really cool people while we were out there that we hung around with and, you know, would go for lunch and go exploring with. And so we were. We were walking with three other guys to other guys. I don't remember. There were I think there were four or five of us, but we were walking down one of the main streets right by where X Sal Khan was gonna be taken taking place. And as we're walking down the street, this guy's walking towards us and he's wearing a path of exile shirt and right off the battles I cooled. My God, that's Chris And he's just by himself. He's just walking up. But the funniest part is he kind of looks at our group and he sees that. I think four of the people in our group are wearing path of XL shirts and at this, or jackets or something. And at this point path of exile like or a story? The ex con event hasn't started yet. There's not likeTyler: the next day or something. It'sJustin: gonna be the next day. There's not a ton of people down, like in that area yet that are, you know, path of exile people. And so he looks over at us and he smiles and he's like, Hey, guys! And so you know, will you stop? We're like, Oh, hey, how's it going? And he he pulls his phone out. He's like, Do you guys mind if I take a picture with you and in my head I'm thinking, What the hell? And it didn't seem like everybody else was grasping that it was him. And the thing is, he had shaved like he was freshly shaved, which is not his normal look at all. And so we're kind of like, Yeah, sure for sure. And so he takes his phone, puts it into the selfie and holds it up high and takes a picture of himself with, like the 45 of us standing behind him, smiling and he turns around. He laughs, and he's like he mentioned the fact that, you know, a bunch of us were wearing path of exile stuff and he hit. The comment was, I need to take a picture so I can show people that people give a shit about my stuff. And of course it made his life. And so then he kind of looks at us for a second awkwardly is like, Do you guys want a picture? And in my and I'm like I grabbed Ethan. I pushed him. I'm like, Yeah, of course we want a picture like get in there. And so we take this picture of the four of them standing with Chris Wilson just in the middle of the street, and he's like, Thanks, guys, have a great you know, conference and was so great seeing you. He takes off and even kind of looks a measly and he's familiar. LikeTyler: what? Who is that like, Oh, my God, that's Chris Wilson.Justin: And he freaks out. Like what? It was a lot of fun, and he was So he was so nice. He actually recognized us when he was when Ethan was in line to go and get his signature, he wouldn't. God is like map signed by a bunch of the developers and stuff. And so he took pictures with him again. But, yeah, it was It was fun. It was It was a lot of fun. It was really cool to watch. You know, stuff happened through him as well. So yeah, it was cool. But so your favorite announcement would have been purely toTyler: announcement there was. I mean, there was so much interesting stuff that we've talked about in other episodes and that we have lined up for the future episodes. But my favorite announcement was most definitely peewee to her entire. Do that.Justin: Yeah, it was very cool. It was a fun to sort of hear the reaction, which I'm sure people experienced it anywhere they were if they were listening and cared about path of excel, just the idea that they were coming up with two and that it was gonna coincide with one andTyler: yeah. Oh, just so I have three very specific things that excite me. Ah, lot of appeal. We too. But what is it that you are looking? I mean, we have I know we have, Ah, an episode coming up about this. But what is short, Quickly. What are a couple of things that really excite you about beauty too? Well,Justin: I feel like a lot of it'll safer. Probably a future episode. But I would say right off the top of my head, I just love the idea of a new story line. Okay, you know, just that whole new I've been playing path of exile for a long time. So and as of you and it's it's kind of cool to think that there's gonna be an entirely new storyline to follow. There is way too much for me to say what like my actual favorite stuff is, and we'll talk about that obviously coming up, But yeah, I think just the idea that there's a whole new storyline that's gonna be coming along isn't is very cool. What about you?Tyler: Slower paced game play? New gym system. 19 newest sentences. The fact that they're going to have what was a 38? It was 19. That's currently 19 right yet 631 Yet Okay, so 38 sentences that are going to be different and all have the ability to have multiple place 1000 builds within each. That's mind going.Justin: It'll be cool to see if there's 38 different ones. That's aTyler: lot. Oh my goodness, I e My brain's exploding thinking of voting.Justin: So yeah, so I mean, overall, though with the information that they gave on exile con and and sort of, their announcements back in 20 the beginning of 2019 for it, I would say it was a hit. Think they kind of nailed it? It really seemed to go Well, they seem to be really happy with how it went. And everyone that I ran into and spoke to their just loved it like every single person had a blast. Sweet. Oh, yeah. It was really good.Tyler: What about mobile? You gonna play?Justin: I have played it. You played it while I was there is true. It was It's cool. You know what? They've done a really good job with it. It's It's It's very simple to play very simple to just, you know, play with you with your thumbs. I'm not a mobile game person. I don't tend to play very many games on the mobile. If I was made me, I can't think of maybe flying. I tend to do work that when I'm flying. So I don't know, Maybe if I was maybe if I was just looking for something to do, it's simple enough to pick up and it will be free. So I'm sure I will install it. Uh, hopefully, hopefully by the time that they come out with it, it doesn't try to set your phone on fire because it runs very, very hot. They gave phones that you could test with, so I don't know what what models of these phones they were, but your hands were like, Yeah, it's like you took something out of the oven by the time you had played it for about 2025 minutes. Yeah. Would you playTyler: it mobile I'll download it if my phone can handle it. Um, but I'm I'm just it really impressed. Yeah, I'm excited for it. I'll give it a shot. I'll try and make time for you, But I'm I'm not gonna go out of my way because I play on call. It's a land PC as well, but I'm excited to try it. I hope my phone complaint, and if it does, I'll definitely forced myself. Thio, give us some time and I'm sure it'll be great. One of my favorite lines from Path of exile to, though, was when I think it was, Chris said. We don't care if it's successful, but if it's not, we don't care. If we make money like they don't even have micro transactions lined up for it, they might not. Even I don't think we're going to. It's just a game. It's just free and it's We wanted to be a really good mobile game if it makes money, fine. But they don't even see how it's going to make money. And if it doesn't okay like it's a mobile game for mobile people, that's all it is and I thought that was really cool because it solidifies. I remember the rage when Xbox came out with as the first console, the first non PC platform for Pee Wee, too, and a lot of PC land exploded in rage. And so PlayStation had a much friendlier release, of course. And so it's it's nice for PC players or just console only players to know that that they're not going to be overlooked because of a new focus of income. So if the false really cool,Justin: especially because there could have been that's right now like there is a there's a lot of money that can be made a mobile. So the fact that they're not putting the focus on it is really nice. Well, so yeah, I would say, I would say with their development notes from 2019 I'm really excited to see what the 2020 ones will come out with it in the next few days because they stayed true to damn near everythingTyler: they were spot on. Yeah, I think the only thing that it will be a little bit off and by no criticism at all is just their timeline for Pee Wee, too. I think it's 21. You were reading it. It was like some time in 2020. Maybe early. Maybe not Now they're thinking, but absolute earliest is the very end of 2020 Likely 2021. But peewee to always any time of year. I'm just too excited.Justin: Yeah, I feel like I heard it going all the way up to 3.12. So I'm you know, that gives at least three more leagues. Nine more months. Eso maybe the very, veryTyler: end. Well, we'll see. I don't really care. I'll release it over Christmas Tree. Oh, man,Justin: I hope they do so bad. That's the December release. Oh, merry Christmas. Be a means fixing only p o e one will continue to work on. That would be the best Christmas gift. Oh, we could talk about so much. Yeah, All right. So let's let's end this one off. I think this was this was cool that it was fun to look back. It's sort of what they did in 2019 and and now, and sort of give us an idea of what to look forward to for 2020. So we wanted to do a giveaway. I think it's gonna be fun. We're gonna make it super simple. There's gonna be two ways to enter in a post a reddit post on the show notes. All you got to do is post on that. Tell us what league was your favorite and why we don't care. Which was the your least favorite. Let's keep positive, that's what Red it's four positivity. That's right, you know, show some love as well, if you have you been enjoying the podcast or give us some constructive criticism. But all we need to see is a post showing us which league was your favorite and why, maybe what build you played. So that's one way to enter. Be on Reddit. Yeah, we'll post the link to it in the show notes for for this podcast, so you'll be able to find it anywhere. You're listening to this podcast. The link will be in the description or notes for it. Ah, and then the other way is to Retweet. We're gonna have a tweet coming out as soon as this episode goes live. If you're not following us, check us out on Twitter at forever exiled 82 we will have a tweet specifically for Episode six and Our Giveaway, So make sure you re tweet that if you've got Twitter. So those are the two ways to get entered and which playing for is you get to pick. We've got three options. It's either the bass Lisk core supporter Pack, the grand Sanctum Supporter Pack or the Eternal Damnation supporter pack. If it turns out you, for some odd reason, have all three or don't like them, then we'll just get you the equivalent value in points. Ah, to your account. So yeah, that's it. So we've got Red a Twitter win some goodies, and we're going to announce the winner Jury in Episode eight. So we have Episode seven still coming out at its regular time. This was sort of our bonus, one coming out for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. So happy, Happy New Year's and, ah, we're gonna have Episode seven coming out of its regular scheduled thing on Sunday night. And with regards to supporter packs, if we can make it work, we'll make it work for whatever account you have. So if you're ah, you're an Xbox player, a PC player, a PlayStation player, we can work with support with G to make sure that those supporter packs are sent to you on your whatever platform you're using. That's right. So that's where it is. Read it. Tweet us sick. What you wanna win will announce the jury in Episode eight, which is two more episodes ofTyler: waste. I'm gonna win. It's permanent. Win.Justin: Yeah, you're kicked out anyway, guys, Thanks so much for listening to Episode six of Forever Exiled A Path of Exile podcast. This has been a really good time. And I hope you guys all have a super safe New Year's Eve and a good New Year's Day following. After that, I am one of your host, Justin a K Tagz.Tyler: I'm Tyler. Wrecker of Days. Oh, was I supposed to finish? Okay, well, it added at something in, um, hang on. Okay, then. I'm Tyler. Wrecker of days. Be safe this holiday week. No, no, no.Justin: What are you talking? You know what, everyone.Tyler: No, no, no. What? I was going to say somethingJustin: about your name again. I'm just gonna cut it anyway. But give me No, don't say that part again. Just give me half a second before you start speaking, but don't make it so.Tyler: No, no, no, no. This isJustin: actually now gonna be our troll. That'd beTyler: awesome. No, I wanted people to be safe on New Year's Eve. Get stupid. And for some reason, people seemed Forget that at New Year's Eve. But anyway, trying to anyone better would you, um, we appreciate all the listen. Some thanks for your time. Have a happy New Year's. Eve was safely safe. You want todo sure record and I know I'm going to say it, but you have all these notes that are distracting me about my filters. All I want to talk aboutJustin: is what is what happens when I throw on our troll on you that you have to doTyler: what you have just playing as I'm still talking about how I'm gonna do a note. True. What? What way would you say?Justin: Listen, I think the intro every damn time you have do you do do it? Yeah, because otherwise, but this is what our ingenuityTyler: I'll do the next time I'll do Episode sevenJustin: you can't recognize or six in You started with five because the intro change in Episode five you started with Rokko, remember? Thanks.Tyler: No, I don't. Yes, it's the widow. I don't remember. Thanks. Yeah, thanks. Uh, well, um, all right, Well, what can I say? Thank you very much for the listens, everybody. We greatly appreciate it. And again, if you have any encouragement or criticisms for us, please let us know on Twitter or on Reddit after one of our posts and we'll see you on episode seven.Justin: Make sure to check out the show notes below. If you've got any questions or concerns, nobody has concerned. I don't care if they have concerns. Heather clarified. Give make sure to check outTyler: Larkin and put this all owed on the same day that you were ready. I was ready. You weren't ready.Justin: I'm not gonna cut any of this is gonna be the longest. Whatever. You just you build like a needy and I'm previously on yourself. I forgot I was loved. Make sure to check out the show notes. For more information about today's episode, you confined us online at www dot forever exiled dot com as well as on Twitter at forever exiled 82Don't forget to find us at www.foreverexiled.com and @ForeverExiled82 on Twitter

Welcome!   The Holidays are almost here -- Hannakah begins tonight and the middle of next week is Christmas - Boy this year has flown by.  There is a lot of Tech in the News so let's get going! For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Related Articles: Signature Anti-Virus does not adequately protect you from today's Malware Lessons We Failed To Learn and Therefore Are Doomed To Repeat Business Computers Should Only Be Used For Business 5G - Not Ready For PrimeTime...Yet! Are You At Risk from Your Outsourced Software Provider Security - Knowing What You Have Is Essential Chrome 79 will continuously scan your passwords against public data breaches Getting the Perfect Tech Gift for Your Special "Techie" --- Automated Machine-Generated Transcript: Craig Peterson   Hey, hello everybody, Craig Peters on here on w GAM and online at Craig peterson.com. Hopefully, you're able to join me on Wednesday mornings as well as I am on live with Ken and Matt, we always talk about the latest in technology and news and of course in security since that's primarily what I've been doing for the last 20 plus years here in the online world, man, just thinking back, it's, you know, I first got on the internet. Of course, it wasn't called that. But way back in the early 1980s. And I remember in fact when I first started doing networking professionally back in 75, and there was no worry about anything with you know, yeah, okay, we didn't want people to hack into so you'd have leased lines for your business and I was doing a bunch of work. from banks way back when right, one of my first jobs, and I was really enjoying it, I just learned a whole lot up to today. And we're going to cover this here because my gosh, it's it has changed. The Internet used to be very libertarian, everybody on it was very libertarian or conservative. Of course, that's because there were a whole ton of government contractors on the ARPANET as well as some colleges and universities. And you look at it today, and you think that really it's changed dramatically which it has. But I think the ratio is probably still about the same. You've got the silent majority that just doesn't say much about anything, right. And then you've got this hugely vocal minority who's just yelling and screaming all of the time. And then some of these tech companies that are trying to straddle somehow in the middle and not get everybody all upset with them. It's really a Much different world. But when we're talking about security, it is nothing at all like it used to be. You used to go online, and you'd have some fun you, you know, exchange emails with people, you'd share some files and some fun things. I remember this one whole thread on chases. That was just absolutely amazing. I think I came up this time of years while it was all these puns about different cheeses. It was a lot of fun. Now today, we've got a whole different internet out there and a great article by Robert Limos and he is looking at WatchGuard Technologies' latest quarterly report that was published just last week. And this network security firm found that the percentage of malware that successfully bypassed anti-virus scanners IT companies network gateways has increased Significantly, watch guard technology is saying that the amount of malware that signature-based antivirus software catches, has plummeted to about 50%. Now, I think their numbers are high because I think it's more like 20%. But they're getting specific here. They're talking about the amount of malware that comes into a network via an external source. In other words, people are accidentally pulling it from a website they visit, or perhaps it's been injected into their systems through someone who's visiting their network and using another vulnerability. But they're saying that antivirus software This is signature-based stuff, that's what you get from Norton Antivirus. That's what you get from, you know, the Symantec people from McAfee from all of these different antivirus companies out there. It is just horrific what's happening because of what's known as zero-day now you might have heard of this before you might not have but basically what zero-day malware is, is malware is nasty software and malware includes things like viruses, worms, Trojans, etc. It is this type of malicious software that has not been seen in the wild before. And what it used to me is they would, you know, some brilliant person who as my mother would say, Why don't they do something useful with their time, some brilliant PR person would come up with a piece of software, no one had ever seen a way of attacking that no one had ever seen before. And they would attack us and they would get through because there was no signature for it or the engines in the antivirus software just could not manage to handle. You know malware like this new piece of malware that just came out the problem we're having today is that the majority of malware act just like zero-day. So here's what happens with a signature-based attack. You can think of it just like your body's anti-virus system night than what you have in your body. And your body looks at something that it sees and says, Have I seen this before. And if it has seen it before, it knows to attack it before. It grows really big and kind of starts to get out of control, and then the body has to attack it after it's already really, you know, it's taken the beachhead if you will use a military term. I've been watching a lot of world war two movies lately, but it's taken that beachhead and now has control of the beach and is starting to get in further and it's very difficult to get out versus it recognizes it almost right away as a nasty virus. And goes ahead and end the Jackson You know you have more cells in inside your body inside your skin there are more cells that are foreign to your body then there are body cells when you start counting all the bacteria and everything that's in your system and on your skin. It's just incredible. So our body relies on a lot of these things. In order to keep us healthy, if we had no bacteria, you be in trouble. It's like you know if you go on antibiotics, which is an anti-bacterial, what does the doctor tell you to do? Well, you know, start eating yogurt and, and other things. Maybe take some Kombucha or various other things in order to try and stay healthy. Get that good bacteria going in your gut again. Well, when your body is attacked by something that hasn't seen before. That's what we would call in the computer world as a zero-day virus has never been seen by Your body or in the case of a computer's never been seen by this signature-based antivirus software. So what the bad guys have been doing is they figured out how Yes, indeed we are trying to block them. And they figured out that the majority of us are using these signature-based antivirus software packages. So they've designed the viruses and the malware to change itself every time. So no longer can the antivirus software, just look for certain signatures. So for instance, if you were always attacked by blonde-haired blue-eyed Norwegians, you might be cautious next time you see a blonde-haired blue-eyed Norwegian approaching towards you maybe with a baseball bat or whatever it is, they might have in their hands, right? So you get worried about it. What's the old expression? Once burn shame on me. You twice burn shame on me. Right? So we learn we respond based on how we've been attacked before. And so does the antivirus software now it can take them days or weeks, even months to get a signature out and get it all dispersed. You know, I'm talking about the old software, not the newest stuff, not the enterprise stuff we use for our business client. But the stuff that you use as a consumer and Heaven forbid if your business and you're using stuff like Norton Symantec, or McAfee or any of these other a VG antivirus software packages that are based on signatures because they just don't work. So what happens is they change themselves constantly. So it might be a Norwegian, but they dyed their hair they put on colored contact lenses, and they change their clothing. That's effectively what's happening with our computers nowadays. It may be that Viking that's approaching you but you Don't know it because it just doesn't look like they change everything about themselves at least most everything except the malicious intent and what they end up doing once they've got control of you. So watch guard is saying that this is a major change here. Now I'm going to quote directly from them. The big change is that more and more malware is becoming evasive. So the signature-based protection is no longer sufficient. There's nothing wrong with having it because it will catch 50% to two-thirds of the traffic but you definitely need something more. And that's why I've been recommending you guys do a few things you can do the free stuff. If you are not a business, you can go to my favorite right now. Open DNS and sign up for an account. They have some paid stuff. I think it's $20 a month per computer, for business to get the basic business service. It's free. For a regular home user, but it does not allow you to do any customization. And then there are a few packages in between open DNS. Now we use a commercial version of is an enterprise version called brawler. That's where the calling it now, but it's the highest level where we can, you know, watch it and maintain it. So that's step number one of what you need to do get open DNS so that if you do get one of these pieces of nastiness like ransomware, and it tries to call home, it can't get the phone number, right. He can't call home because there's another phone number. And I think that's a very important thing to do. It's free if you're home user, you might want to pay for the family plan would block certain scary sites and certain things you probably don't want your kids to see pornography and other things open dns.com and then the other thing to do, I had it in my big course this last year and that was how to harden Windows machine. It's rather involved. And I'll probably do a course early next year on this. But make sure you harden your machine, you're going to want to turn off stuff you don't need, you're going to want to make sure your firewall is set up properly to do the types of blocks that you need. You're going to want to make sure that you've got Microsoft's new malware software installed properly and running properly. So I'll have a course on this early next year that you can get. Because when you're talking about 50%, and I've seen numbers as low as 20% effectiveness with anti-virus software, you have to do something. Hey, if you're looking to buy some gifts, I'm going to be talking about some of them in today's show, including five g should you get that phone, you're listening to Craig Peterson on w GAN and online. Greg peterson.com. Stick around. We'll be right back.   Craig Peterson   Hey, are you thinking about buying a mobile phone? We're going to talk about that right now. You're listening to Craig Peterson on WGN and online at Craig Peterson calm. Now you've heard about 5g. You're probably using 4g LTE right now, on your phone and maybe mobile devices you may be your iPad or a tablet that you might have. Amazon has its Kindles. They do not, by the way, have 4g LTE on them, at least, for the most part, they're using some of the much older technology because frankly, all they're doing is sending books right? Which are pretty small. But it is that time of year that we're buying presents and there are only a few days left here for that holiday season, purchasing time. And we've got a lot of competition in the 5g world. So let's talk about what this is. And I'll give you some tips. But what is going on? 5g holds a lot of promise. Now I don't know if you remember I remember how shocked I was at how fast 4g was. I bought a phone. And it had 4g LTE in on it. It was an Android phone. And I vowed never again for so many reasons. And you've heard them on the show here before, but I had bought an Android phone, and I didn't have 4g up where I lived. And I drove down. We were heading down. I think it was till Pennsylvania take one of the kids to camp. And I was going through Valley and I noticed Wait a minute. There's a big city right there. I got 4g so I immediately went to speed test.net and I ran the test to see just how fast is for G. And I was just shocked. I was getting like 20 megabits a second, which was absolutely amazing. Because I've been using cell phones since they first came out. And you know, back in the day it was 14 for right? Oh, cell phone so fast. And now just to see 20 megabits was absolutely mind-blowing. But there are some major limitations to the 4g LTE network that we are using today. And those limitations are speed for one. And then the other thing is the number of devices that can be supported. And then the cost of the data and the data transfers. So 5g has been under development for quite a while. And this is not we're not going to get into Huawei and how they stole all their technology. It really appears to be from our friends up at Nortel and put the whole company out of business because of the spine that they did. And thank goodness finally, we've got a president who's trying to do something about it. But five G's real promise for us right now is that we will get two things will get a gigabit worth of data bandwidth, which means by the way, that we may not even bother with Wi-Fi in our homes if you live in an area that has full 4g or 5g coverage because it's just going to be just as fast as your cable is right now. Now the cable companies are probably going to try and compensate by lowering their prices and giving you faster and faster and faster internet. But for a lot of people, it's going to make economic sense because the cost isn't going to be high. And then the second thing that 5g is going to give us is the ability to have billions of devices connected to the 5g network. That means that everything from our cars Which really the next generation of cars self-driving cars really do need 5g so they can talk to each other. So they can continually upload data to the cloud to let all of the routing computers know about local weather conditions and, and road and where the potholes are and everything is just, it's going to be amazing, right? On the one hand, on the other hand, well, there might be some data leakage that we might not want. So the cars are going to have it but so is pretty much every device that you have. A couple of years ago, I talked about the new jacket, the new trucker jacket that Levi's hat out. And that trucker jacket was designed specifically to connect your phone to your phone and allow you to control your phone. So it had Bluetooth in it. You could touch these little wires that were embedded into the sleeve with your hand and use that to control your cell phone. You know, listen to music and Suddenly things are just kind of cool. So our clothes are going to have the internet in them. Our computers, of course, everything you buy a laptop, it's going to have 5g built-in, you're not going to need to have an external device anymore. Just list goes on and on and on. I've everything that's going to happen is going to be phenomenal. But it is not there yet. And Apple did not include 5g with the iPhone 11 this year, it will include it with the iPhone 12. That's coming out next year. And I saw a very, very good summary of what's probably going to be coming out of Apple in September next year. The guy that published it has been spot on with most everything that Apple was coming up with. And they are he's saying that they are going to be having 5G on the phone and it would make a lot of sense. But right now you can put in orders for the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 plus the one plus 70 that's There are other phones that are claimed to have 5g. But listen, everybody, it is still too early to buy a 5g phone. That is really my big tip when it comes to 5g right now, these networks have not fully standardized, they are not running, none of them are running full 5g anywhere except in a couple of major cities. The biggest problem with building out the 5g networks is that they need to have basically what we've come to know as cell towers everywhere. I mean, everywhere. These are little micro things that are not big towers like we have right now. You know, those fake trees that you see that are actually cell towers. Now, these are going to be small boxes and they're going to be on pretty much every street corner in the big cities. They'll be on the sides of buildings. They'll be on the sides of people's houses. Cell companies are going to pay us to put these on our homes so that we can now provide 5g to us and to our neighbors. And then there's going to be people who will be upset because of the radiation, even though it's non-ionizing, and it's not known to cause any harm, people will be upset about it. But these things are going to be everywhere. And that's because remember, I'm talking about one gigabit worth of bandwidth coming down to your device. Well, you cannot do gigabit service on lower frequency so they have moved to higher frequencies. The old UHF TV channels are pretty much I think they're all gone now throughout the country. And the FCC has bought back the bandwidth and has auctioned it off to all of these different companies that wanted to buy it. And it's just everything is going to change and with the high frequencies that they need in order to deliver these beads, they now have a problem and that is these higher frequencies do not penetrate glass. They don't penetrate walls very well at all. And they just don't penetrate metal at all basically, it's really bad. So it T Mobile has announced nationwide 5g available as of last Friday. That is pretty darn cool. It's got a 600 megahertz 5g network which is going to cover most of the country. That is pretty impressive. But the trade-off is it's using low band 5g which means it is good at providing slightly boosted speeds inside buildings and is available in a lot more places than what competitors offer 18 T and Verizon are offering the opposite. They have ultra-wideband networks right now superfast speeds, but very, very small footprints very small pocket, and you got to be standing near one of these towns This is kinda cool T Mobile is expecting with theirs. That actually is p mag is PC Magazine, you can expect a boost of about 15 megabits with their new 5g nationwide. And you might see 150 megabits if you have a new 5g phone or 700 megabits if you have 4g LTE. So not a huge right now, but just wait. Okay, wait until next summer next fall, when things are really going to start happening. All right, stick around. We got a lot to cover still we're going to be talking about some guests who will talk about some of the big hacks of the year. What does it mean to us? What can we do? I'm going to give you some tips and some tricks, what not to do on your work computer third party security risks and some lessons from the National Security Agency. You're getting it right here from Craig Peterson on WGA and Craig Peterson Hello, welcome back. Greg Peterson here on w GAN will be enjoying the show today. We got a lot to cover here. Awesome. Good news, some gift ideas. I've got a very cool article from Ars Technica, about nine gift ideas for the tech enthusiasts in your life. And frankly, I am totally into this. It gave me a couple of ideas in fact of things that I'm going to be getting for people. So you might want to stick around and listen to that for the enthusiast in your life. And we're going to start right now with something that I think pretty much everyone's can be interested in. If you are, you know an employee, if you work at a company, and you use computers, there is a couple of words of caution here. In this segment, Now, first of all, the business computers are owned by the business. And that's kind of where this Bring Your Own Device thing has gotten everything a little bit fuzzy, you know, so if you are using your phone, for instance, your smartphone, and you're using it for work purposes, it's not the businesses phone. So there's not a whole lot that they can say about your phone and how you use your phone. However, the business has an absolute right to its data, and kinking troll, frankly, how you use your phone for the business data, right? Well, how about the computers that are actually owned by the computer? What can you do legally? And what can't you do? What can the business tell you that you should do with it and what can they not tell you what to do? Well, the bottom line is it depends. It depends on the business and what their policies are. So overall, that's kind of the first place you should check your employee handbook. Now we've provided a lot of businesses with employee handbook sections on this and you can certainly get them from your attorney from your corporate attorney, or from HR if you're an employee there. But if you're using a work-issued computer, now that includes a desktop computer includes a laptop, it's going to include things like iPads, even phones, you've probably checked your personal email on that device, you might have stored some files on there. You, you might have used it for a number of different things. Now in many cases, it's not a big deal as far as the company is concerned. You know, if you've got kids right to have a life outside the office, so for you to be able to send an email to the BBC. Or to make a few phone calls because babysitting didn't show up or a kid is sick or whatever. Most employers say that's absolutely fine if I died personally would not work for an employer. That said, That's not fine. I think that's a very, very big deal a very bad thing, the right companies that are like that. But when you start to store your private files on the company's computer, or maybe the company's Dropbox or Google Drive, or you are maybe going down a rabbit hole, as you started with something on Cora or you started with something somewhere else, and all of a sudden before you know it, it's an hour two hours later, or heaven for Ben, you are going to Facebook or some of these other sites to poke around. Then things change. Now many of us use messenger on Facebook in order to keep in contact with family and friends. So is it legit to have a messenger window open? Is it legit to do that, right? Well, the bottom line is you probably shouldn't do any of this on a computer provided by your employer. You're not necessarily breaking the law, but you could get fired if it's against your company's policies. And also, you need to remember that employers can install software to monitor what you do on your work-issued laptop or desktop. Now we do not monitor employees and what they're doing on a computer, except to watch for things that the employees might be doing that might harm the business directly. In other words, if an employee's bringing in a file from home, we're going to check that file. If they're downloading something from the internet. We're going to check that download. We're going to check their emails are going to clean them up, we're going to stop the ransomware we're going to stop the zero-day attacks that I talked about earlier. As well as all of the known types of vulnerabilities. But remember that not everybody is like us, right? We are not interested in getting involved in the businesses Workplace Relations, a lawsuit that a business might want to bring to against an employee, right? That's not what we do. Although we've certainly been pulled into those before in the past. And you need to keep that in mind as an employee because they can monitor what you do, they might put keyloggers on there to see what you're typing, they might have a software that takes a random screenshot. We've done that before with these workers that are doing a specific project. So we outsource something, there might be a graphic or might be writing an article or something, and we're paying by the hour for that contractor to do the work. So as part of the agreement, we have software that sits on the computer and randomly takes screenshots So we have an idea that yes, indeed, they are actually working on our stuff. And it took them five hours and we spent it to take one hour. And it's because they're slow, not because they were out wandering the internet and doing research on the party that's going to be coming up next week at the office or at their home, right. So be very careful about it. And the type of surveillance and security software that's installed on the company computer is usually based on two things, one, how large the company is, and what kind of resources they have to dedicate to watching you, and what type of information you deal within your role. Now, almost all of our clients in fact, now I think of it I think all of our clients are in what are called regulated industries. So if you're a car dealer, you're in a regulated industry, because you have payment card information, you have financing information on all kinds of personal information. So that has to be monitored, right? We have doctors' offices that have HIPAA requirements personal again, personally identifiable information, healthcare information. So security numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and under the new regulations that are coming out right now, January one in California and Massachusetts in the European Union right now, and they are working on similar regulations on the federal level, even an email address is considered to be personally identifiable information. Until the list goes on and on if you have government contracts, we have clients that have DFARs or Defense Department requirements or FINRA, which is for financial organizations, right? That's what we do. So all of these heavily regulated businesses need to have software that is going to detect that someone is trying to exfiltrate data, shut it down immediately. We need to know that employees are trying to steal information. And in many of these cases, we will work with the company if there are lawsuits and ensue because of the regulation or because of other reasons out there. So if you're working with a company like this, which is frankly, in this day and age, every company, right, what, what employer does not have security numbers of employees? How do you pay them if you don't have the social security numbers, those are all falling under the regulations nowadays. And unfortunately, a lot of businesses don't pay attention to that. So a very small company, they're probably not doing this. But larger companies are definitely going to be doing this. And there's a great little quote here from Jesse crims. He's an Information Security Analyst over the New York Times and he said Without supporting evidence at this scale, at scale, it's pretty rare that people are not doing heavy surveillance and tends to generate a lot of useless data, roped employee into liability issues and generally make the team that monitors the surveillance systems miserable. In other words, you probably don't want to know. And that's the standard we take. We make sure that all of the regulations are complied with, but whether or not someone's sending an email to the babysitter or whatever, it's just not worth it. We're worried about espionage. Okay, so there you go. There are some tips for you. And using business security or using a business computer at work. Stick around. We'll be right back. We got some more stuff to talk about, including some major updates to the Google Chrome browser. Should you be using it anymore. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back. We're listening Of course on WGAN or online at Craig Peterson dot com, you'll find me on pretty much every podcasting platform out there. And if you really enjoy the show, you know one of the best ways to let me know is to share it. I love to see all of the people who are listening and getting feedback from everybody so send me a note as well. But here's where you can go if you would like to give me a five-star review, just go to Craig Peterson comm slash iTunes. And right there, you can give me a five-star review. on Apple, they're still kind of the 800-pound gorilla in this space. Rumor has it that the next release of iOS is going to have some major improvement to this whole podcasting stuff. Apple really kind of started it with the iPod, which is where it got the name from. I still have one of my original iPods kicking around. It was frankly, it was my favorite device for listening to music. Anyhow, let's talk a little bit about some of the browser issues that are out there right now. Many people are concerned about the web browsers you're using. We know we're being monitored. We know we're being watched right now, by these big companies. Google makes its money by what? By selling our information. Facebook's the same way. Now Google is going to sell us advertising, and so is Facebook. And frankly, I would rather know about cars and see advertisements for cars. When it is the time I'm looking to buy a car right? And I'm never going to buy a lot of from Russia, right? So why would I want to see ads for that? So I am Pro, the monitoring in that space. Right. I, you know, you kind of go back and forth about that. You look at what President Obama's team did back when he was running for election the first time where they grabbed all of Facebook's data about everyone. And then they used highly targeted advertising. And then you saw what happened eight years later with President Trump and while the Cambridge Analytica scandal that was Child's Play compared to what President Obama's team did, but somehow President Obama's team didn't get in trouble for it. But President Trump's team certainly did even though Trump's don't get into that right now. But the browsers that we're using are tracking us. And remember, again, this old adage, it's old now, right? It's relatively new frankly. But if you do not pay for service, the odds are you are the product. And Google certainly considers that. And so does Facebook, that you are the product. So when you're looking at browsers, what should you be using the biggest browser out there right now the one that any software developers going to aim at is the Google Chrome browser. Because that's what most people use. It is really a great browser. From a functionality standpoint, people are using Google's Of course search engine, which has been very, very good here over the years. They, they've just done some wonderful things. And Google has added more and more features to their browser. Now, people ask me constantly, what is it that I use? What is it that I recommend? Well, I can tell you that Craig recommends that you don't use the Chrome browser when you can avoid it. Now I do use Chrome. When I am on a website, and I'm trying to do something and one of these other browsers doesn't work quite right. I go over to Chrome because it's not the worst thing in the world. It's not as though it has a direct backdoor into Russia, at least not that we're aware of, or into the CIA or the NSA. We know that Google doesn't like to cooperate with the US military, in some of its research projects, but Google also loves to cooperate with China and has three artificial intelligence labs in China. So it's giving China our next generation of computing technology for free but won't share it with our government. Yeah. Well, anyway, I guess I do get kind of political sometimes on the show. Google's Chrome version 79 just came up with a new feature. Now you know, when it comes to password, That I highly recommend you use some software called one password. They have some free stuff, they have some paid offerings. And what one password does is it keeps all of your passwords keeps them secure. You only have to remember one password, which is, frankly a huge win. And it was great in the business environment where you can set up vaults of passwords so that you know HR can have their own vault and this software development teams can all have their own vaults, and you can have your own personal vault, and it'll create passwords for you that are highly secure, that conform to the requirements for different websites and, and you can share them within vaults. There are just all kinds of wonderful things that you can do using one password. And then if you've been around a while, a couple of years ago, you know I offered a service that we were doing internally. We did this for free for over 1000 People, but we double-checked their password to see if not passwords but email address to see if their email addresses and passwords are out on the dark web. And you know, we checked it at least a month and generated reports for people. And that might be something we decided to do in the future. Well, there is a huge database out there that we've talked about on the show before. Google has now adopted in its Chrome browser. So Chrome 79 has what they're calling as a password checkup extension. So that was what how it all started. It was for desktop versions of Chrome, and it audited your passwords when you entered them, and took a look at them to see if those passwords were known to have been breached. Now, it's not necessarily that your account was breached, although it might have been it the password in the Heres why. Here's why they looked at the password itself. What the bad guys are doing nowadays is they are comparing your password against millions, hundreds of millions, in fact, billions of known passwords that people have used. And they start with the most common passwords and then work their way out from there. So if you're using a password that has been known to been breached in the past, it isn't something you should use. So I thought that was great. They had this password checkout extension. So now what they've done is they've integrated into every Google account and on-demand audit that you can run on all of your saved passwords. And in version 79. Google has a password checkout integrated into both the desktop and mobile versions of Chrome. So what will happen now is that if you are using Chrome to save your passwords, which I do not do as a rule, except for a few accounts I don't really care about because again, I'm using one password to keep my passwords and can keep them all straight? So it is built-in now. And anytime you enter in a password, it's going to check to see if that password has been breached anywhere online. Google is calling this private set intersection, which means you don't get to see Google's list of bad credentials. And Google doesn't get to learn your credentials. But the two can be compared four matches and basically what it's doing is it's doing mild encryption on your password and comparing it against this known setup password. So it's very, very good to do. One password has this feature already built-in password will warn you if I website that you're going to has been known to have been compromised. And Google's figuring here, that since it has a big encrypted database of all your passwords, I might as well compare against, compare them against this 4 billion strong public list of compromised usernames and passwords. They've been exposed in all kinds of security breaches over the years. And little on little later on today, we're going to talk about the top half dozen or so big security breaches, what caused them and then you might want to pay attention to to see if your information was exposed. But the main reason I like to talk about this stuff is so that you can look at your position, you know, at home or at work and ask yourself, hey, listen, there is this breach something that would have worked against us, right? I think it's very, very good. So Here we go. I'm not going to get any details here on what exactly what Google is doing and how they're doing it. If you are a chrome fan, you might want to use it. So let's talk about what the alternatives to Chrome or opera is a big one. And I have heard rumors that the Opera browser, which is kind of my primary browser, I have another one will tell you about in just a second, but opera very fast. It's designed to be secure. It also blocks a lot of spyware out there. Very good. But the rumors are that it is now in the hands of the Chinese government apparently owns it. I'm not sure that's entirely true. But, you know, it's up to you whether you want to take any risks. I'll tell you also about an extension I use in all of my browsers, which makes it much more secure much safer for me. We'll probably have to wait until after the top of the hour to get into that, but I'll tell about that. So what do I use the most? And what do I trust the most? Well, Netscape, the Netscape browser. Mozilla is the next one that I use opera is number one, at least for the time being. I use Firefox as well. Both of them do a lot of blocking, oh, I have a lot of privacy enhancements. Those are the two I use the most. And then I also use Apple Safari. Apple, again, is not selling your information as Google does. So it's considered to be a little bit safer. So far, we haven't known Apple to really leak information. They've been relatively safe, they certainly aren't selling it to anyone. And that's what I use. And then if I have to all fall back to Google Now, if I wanted to be extra safe online, there is another browser out there that I do like, and it's called epic EP, I see the epic browser. And it is actually based on Google's Chrome browser underneath the hood, just as Microsoft's browser is based on Google's Chrome browser. And Google is actually using a base form from Apple's Safari browser, which is kind of interesting. They all share code nowadays. But the epic browser is the browser if you absolutely want to keep your data safe. It even has a built-in privacy VPN. So check it out as well. When we come back, I'll give you a little clue here. A couple of tips on what you can do to keep every browser just a little bit safer. We'll get into some gift ideas and more. So stick around you're listening to Craig Peterson on WGAN and online at Craig Peterson dot com. Stick around. We'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here. Welcome back and listening to me on WG A in an online, Craig peterson.com. Hey, if you are a new listener, I just want to let you know a little bit about my background I've been helping to develop the internet, they in fact, just called a pie in the air you the other day, which is kind of interesting to think about. But yes, indeed, I designed and made some of the very first routers and some of the very first firewalls and load balancers and stuff back in the day. Let me tell you back in the day, we had to write these things from scratch because they just didn't exist as commercial products. And, you know, there's a lot of products I could have sold over the years but I'm just wasn't that kind of guy. Anyhow, so now I do a lot of cybersecurity for businesses, government agencies, most particularly really, for anybody in a regulated business, which today in this day and age means any business because we are all regulators I talked about in the last segment. Well, we have some gift ideas. And let me just start with one here. And then we'll get into some more articles from this week. We've we're going to be talking about the NSA here and what their top recommendation is for businesses. But you know, I am a techie guy, and I love tech and tech gifts and it's all just a pretty darn cool thing. When you get right down to it, just like, you know, I just love playing with this stuff. I guess that's the way to put it. And using it and making my life a little easier and faster, more efficient, effective, etc. But I want to talk about the high-end tech gifts that you might want to give, and you might want to give for yourself. In fact, that's exactly what I'm doing with one of these this year. Well, if you have somebody who's a gaming enthusiast, there are so many things out there that you can get for them. There's this one particular mouse that is very highly rated for gamers. It's called the razor Viper. It has some very, very fast, maneuverability stuff built in. Because of course, when you're playing some of these video games interactive, you need to be able to move very quickly so anyhow, we'll leave it at that because I am not a game type person. I used to play some, some games way back when you're in a dungeon with twisty mages, mazes, remember right how things started. But let's get into this. Now. This is one of the things I think would be a great gift for almost anyone, it's great for a computer that has the USBC which is the newest version of the USB cable. It is what the new Mac books come with the new max do as well. It's the next generation of the high-speed stuff that the last generation max had. But it also works with regular USB cable has a little adapter that you can use with it. It's called SanDisk extreme portable SSD. This thing is very, very nice. It's a good option for data you need to have with you wherever you go. It's surprisingly small. It is rated for the extremely high shock it's like 500 G's or something crazy like that. And it will withstand water and dust as well as vibration. You can drop it from six feet in the air without suffering any damage at all. This thing is amazing. And right now it is half price. Over on Amazon. Just look it up there. SanDisk is the name of the company S-A-N-D-I-S-K, it's their extreme portable SSD fits in the palm of your hand that you're going to love this. It's available in 250 gig 500 gig one terabyte and two terabytes now, I would not get the 250 gig, not that it's too small. But for an extra $10 you double your space up to 500 gig. Now when you go up to the one terabyte, which again is twice the space, it's twice the cost. So the one terabyte you're gonna have to ask yourself what makes sense and two terabyte options. But this thing is so fast, or what I love this for is to have different virtual machines on it. It's the one I use when I am doing a demo or for when I need to do a client-side install.  I can have every version of Windows on my need to use Mac OS all the different versions of that a few versions of Linux all right there on the drive. It's very very convenient. And very, very fast you're going to love this thing. In fact, that's one of the fastest portable storage solutions that has ever been tested. It's kind of similar you know you can get Samsung T five SSD, they have very good SSDs. Okay, don't get me wrong here.  The Samsung t five is more affordable but the SanDisk extreme SSD is better. Now I got to tell you that the cost right now on Amazon for this portable drive, there's no moving parts in it. As I said it fits in the palm of your hand. The cost on that is lower on Amazon right now. It's half price is lower than I can buy it from my distributors at So just to give you an idea of what a great value that is, coming up, we're going to talk about, I think the coolest gift you can give to somebody that is truly a hobbyist in the computer world, you're going to love it. And then if you are that person when you go to someone's house for Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Christmas birthdays, whatever it is, and they say, hey, Craig, come over here for a second. my computer's not working right can you have a look at it will will tell you about the best gift for somebody like that and maybe some need to get get for yourself as well. So I'm going to talk right now about some of the biggest security breaches we'll go over one and then we'll get to some others little later on in this our last hour. And by the way, if you want to listen to the whole show, my podcast and everything. You can just go to Craig Peterson comm slash iTunes or slash tune in if you'd like to listen to it. On tune in or slash pretty much anything well actually if you type in slash pretty much everything you need an error page right? But you'll find me Craig Peters on on most of the major podcast sites that are out there by just going to Craig Peterson comm slash, whatever it is like Sasha Hart or slash SoundCloud or slash tune in, etc, etc. Well, data aggregators are big targets that are out there and who is a data aggregator? Well, let me tell you about what happened when I was at a wedding last week I was staying with my sister in law my wife and I, and there we got home and there was a card in the door and there's from an insurance company members like all state or something and, and it asked for one of my sisters in law, who had been living in that house to call so we thought okay, well, it's just a hoax thing. You know, they're they're trying to sell some insurance or something. So we just ignore that fact, I think we just threw the card in the trash. Well, the next night, we were sitting there at home and there's a knock at the door. And it's the same insurance agent. And she wants to talk to my deceased sister in law. And we get into this a little bit more and talking and talking to her trying to figure out what, what, what, why, what's going on. It turns out that someone was involved in a fatal car accident. And that person gave my deceased sister in-law's identity as her own. Yes, indeed, the dead are, quite frequently in fact, a victim of identity theft. Now we know about the dead voting right particularly in Chicago, and but in other places around the country. Well, in this case, apparently according to the report - she had been involved in a fatal car wreck about six months after she had died, and someone was dead. Obviously, this was a case of mistaken identity, but the insurance lady who's at the door, and she's obviously, some sort of an investigator used one of these skip trace databases in case you're not familiar with those. These are databases that are put together by data aggregators and data aggregators are these companies that suck up data from every public source they possibly can. And even some paid sources. And it includes records from credit card companies, and you name it, they pull it all together, they try and make heads or tails of it. So she had this report from a data aggregator and listed my long-deceased father in law's name is part of this and, and my kids, couple of my kids that had at one point staying for a visit with their grandmother, for a few months, while going to school, etc. and include my wife's name, my name just kind of went on and on. They got a lot of data wrong. And that's what I found to typically 25 to 50%, sometimes even more the data they have is incorrect. But enough of it was correct that she could kind of start piecing things together. And she was able to figure out that this was insurance fraud. Well, these data aggregators have massive databases as frankly, you might imagine. And they have these databases online. Yeah, you know where I'm going. This was a Mongo DB Mongo database, which is used, it's kind of it's called NO SEQUEL. It's an unformatted database. It's perfect for these data aggregators, and a company called verifications.io. That provided email verification services, had a Mongo database Continued over 800 million records publicly accessible to anyone in the world with an internet connection. And they had four sets of data. They'd had email addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, physical addresses, employer information, IP addresses, business leads and other information. Not everything was sensitive. So when we get back we'll talk about what lessons should be learned what you can pick up from this a couple of tips for you. If you are a business person of any sort, or if you have data that might be in one of these databases, so we'll talk about these big verifications Mongo DB breach from this year and some more gift ideas right area listening to Craig Peters on online and here on WGAN terrestrial radio. Craig Peterson Hello everybody Greg Peterson back here on WG and online at Craig peterson.com. If you enjoy my show, by all means, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Pretty much everything that I do goes up there my Wednesday mornings with Matt and can during their drive time show Wednesday morning that goes up there Other appearances go up there the whole radio show goes up there as well. Craig Peters on comm slash iTunes and do leave me a review if you wouldn't mind. You know those five-star reviews help get the message out. And we just passed another hundred thousand downloads, which is kind of cool. I appreciate it. Every one of you guys for listening. We try and get as much information as we can. So let's get back to our Well actually, you know There's something I forgot to button up from the last hour. Let's get to that. And then we'll get to some, some gifts and some more risks and what the NSA is saying right now, I had been talking earlier in the show about web browsers, and which browsers you should be using, which ones I recommend, then, you know, if you missed all of that, again, you will find it at Craig peterson.com, slash iTunes, you can listen to the whole thing right there. But I was talking a little bit about a plugin that I use. This is a plugin that works with pretty much any browser out there and works differently than any plugin that you might have been familiar with before. This is from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Now I've had my disagreements with them in the past. Overall, I agree with a lot of what they're doing. But this is a plugin that goes into Chrome Opera or Firefox or pretty much anything that is called Privacy Badger Privacy Badger. So think about badgers if you know these things, they you'll find them a lot over in England, but they're over here too. They burrow underneath hedges and they like to live in the ground. And they are mean they will fight anything way bigger than they are. They don't care. They're going to win because they go all in. Well, that's what this is all about Privacy Badger. So I am on a website. Right now I'm looking at my browser and the Privacy Badger plugin, and it's got a nine on it right now. So what that means is that Privacy Badger detected nine potential trackers on this web page that I'm on right now. And it has sliders for them up there and it says you shouldn't need to adjust the sliders unless something is broken. So what Privacy Badger does is it watches you As you go to different websites, it looks at the cookies that are placed on your browser from these websites and determines, Hey, wait a minute. Now, this is a cross-site tracker. This is another type of tracker that we probably don't want to have. So it's showing them all to me. So here we go. Here's what I have right now on this website that I'm on. And the website is otter in case you don't use otter it is phenomenal transcription service, very inexpensive. 600 minutes for free every month. otter.ai but it turns out otter is using some tracker. So the first tracker showing me that Privacy Badger blocked is graph.facebook.com. So this is Facebook gathering data about me what I do where I go, the next one that's marked yellow, which is it has three different indications here on the slider. One is a blocks it entire The next one is that it could block cookies and then the far right one is to allow a domain to do it. So graph.facebook.com was blocked automatically static.facebook.com was allowed the regular facebook.com was allowed Google Analytics completely blocked API's Google com was allowed stripe checkout was allowed stripe as a payment service. JavaScript on stripe com was allowed and stripe network usually m dot means it's a mobile site. So that was blocked and Q dot stripe com was allowed but those are tagged the one these all of the ones I mentioned that were tagged, are considered to caution level. So by adding Privacy Badger as a plugin to any of your browsers Basically is going to stop sites from tracking you and it does a very good job. It learns as you go. It is not something that is prefixed with I'm going to block this site or that site. It is absolutely dynamic. I really, really like it. So check that out. This is kind of a flashback, as I said to an earlier segment where I was talking about which browser to use, what the considerations are. And this will work with any of them out there. So just do a search for Privacy Badger, it should come up near the top of your DuckDuckGo search. And it's five the Electronic Frontier Foundation e FF, check it out online. Okay, so now let's get into gifts again. I mentioned my top gift recommendation in the last segment. This one is for total geeks. Now we are using this for actually keeping timing tracking It's called raspberry pi. So we have a special card that goes along with this that has a GPS antenna attached to it and GPS readers so that we can track the satellites in the sky. We use the timing that they provide us with, we do some advertising. So that one of the things we do for our clients is we have to track their logs and keep real detailed records on their logs. We need to know exactly when Did something happen? So that if after the fact heaven forbid, someone gets in, some piece of malware gets in when did it come in? Where did it go? What did it do, right? Because you want to be able to know after the fact Well, what does it get access to? unlike so many of these companies that have no idea what they lost? In fact, most businesses don't even know until six months later that they were even the hack versus what the best in the biz are doing right now is about six hours, not just to detected but to remediation, which is where we sit well, usually within that six-hour time frame. Well, this is called a Raspberry Pi. And they've got the newest version of Raspberry Pi four. This is a small Linux computer. So if anybody that you know likes to hack together science projects or you know, do a little bit of experimenting, this is phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. You can turn it into a retro game console, it'll play a lot of these old video games. A smart speaker that's a DIY thing. You can build it into your Legos to make a real fancy remote-controlled car. Anything your hobbyist mind comes into mind. This is phenomenal. You can for 100 less than 100 bucks, you can get a complete kit. Okay? The Raspberry Pi fours a lot faster and the older Raspberry Pi three Model B plus faster CPU you can put up to four gigs of ram in this thing. It is a phenomenal USB 3.0 port. So if you are or you know somebody that's really into DIY hobbies, this is the way to go. Okay? The Raspberry Pi four does get closer to your general and genuine desktop PC performance. But it's not really there yet. It's not one running Windows, it does run Linux, as I mentioned. And you can write basic programs for it, which is a programming language Python. If you have a kid that wants to learn Python, this might be a nice way for them to learn because they can kind of hack it together but it's just it's basically just a motherboard, you're gonna have to put it in a case by a case forward, you're gonna have to put a keyboard on it. A mouse, you have to put a display on it, okay, all kinds of stuff, but you can get just the basic Raspberry Pi four For someone that that really, really is a total hacker here, for like 4050 bucks, it's absolutely amazing. Okay, plenty of power for your money. Very versatile. In fact, it's more versatile in many ways than your Windows PC is. And for the budding engineer in your life, they will love you for it. So stick around, we're going to come back, I've got some more ideas for tech gifts that you might like. And we're going to talk about a couple more big hacks this year, and what it means to you. We've got third party security risks, the NSA has some advice for business and we'll tell you about that too. When we get back, you're listening to Craig Peterson right here on w GAN and online at Craig Peter song.com. That's Peterson with an O. Stick around because we'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello, everybody, welcome back, Craig Peters on here on WGAN. And we're talking about stuff we usually talk about, you know, some of the security things, some of the latest technology that's out there. We're also doing a bit of a recap here some great gift ideas for the techie people in your life, even frankly, some of the non-techie people. And the security side, which is, I think, very important, can't talk enough about that. Because it could destroy your company, it could ruin that, frankly, the rest of your life could be a bit of misery, depending on what the bad guys do to you. Oh, it's absolutely crazy. told the story a little earlier of what happened with my deceased sister in law's identity, and how it was used in a fatal car accident and it's just it's amazing what some of these people are. Doing nowadays. And by the way, one of the most valuable segments of our population. We are know already about the retired people, the older people, right, who might be a little confused, hopefully, have some assets. But one of the most valuable identities out there online is that they have a child because their social security number and their identity are going to be very useful for at least a decade, if not longer because those kids probably not going to use it until they get their first job. So keep that in mind as well. Well, I want to get into these two things before the last half hour, so we'll cover these fairly quickly. But the big one, and that is waking up to third party security risks. Now one of the big attacks this year was Capital One and that's on my list of the ones I wanted to talk about today. They had personal information blog into overall hundred million US individuals and 6 million Canadian residents. Now, this was exposed. And when a former employee at Amazon Web Services inappropriately accessed the data, we could get into all of the real details behind this but the compromised information included names addresses, dates of birth, credit scores, payment history, contact information, and other information on people who had applied for Capital One credit card dating back to 2005. also exposed where the social security numbers of 140,000 individuals and bank account data blogging belonging to 80,000 secured credit card customers. So think about this for a little minute here. How many of us are using a service like Amazon Web Services, how many of us are relying on cloud services to keep our information safe? Right? Frankly, that's most of us, isn't it? And when you're talking about somebody like Amazon Web Services, or now there's Microsoft Azure, those are kind of the two really big players. IBM also has its cloud online that they sell access to. Most businesses look at it as a way to save money. Most businesses consider, hey, I don't need to keep track of the security, because my vendor is keeping track of it for me. And what we found out is, that's not true. So the lessons learned here. We'll start with that here from Capital One is that cloud service may be attractive because it's cheaper than doing it yourself. And that's particularly true, frankly, throughout the whole range, but it's particularly true for large businesses, but even for small business. businesses, can you really afford the right kind of server? Now I know a lot of small businesses go to the local staples store and buy a computer and call it a server, right? And maybe $800,000 later, they're out of there. Whereas a real server that's going to be really reliable is going to last years, you should be looking at more like 15 to $20,000 for. So businesses say, well, I'll just do it in the cloud. I'll use Amazon Web Services for this and we'll hire a consultant who's going to help us set it up. And we're going to use maybe Dropbox for that and maybe office 365 for this and now all of a sudden, I'm safe. Well, you're not. And companies, you guys are putting your data at risk, because you haven't adopted a security infrastructure, with the vigor that you need to apply. It should be at least as good as what You're using for your on-premise stuff. But you know what so many SMEs aren't even doing it right for on-premise stuff. Okay? So you're ending up with all of the financial cost of the penalties that you rack up, and the lawsuit and the cost of those lawsuits, which will vastly outweigh any it savings that you might have down the road. So keep that in mind. And that's what Capital One just learned this year. The Why? Because we're not taking third party security risk to heart Ponemon Institute did a study here 2018 founded 60% of customers surveyed, had suffered a data breach caused by third parties or vendors in the last 12 months. So what's causing it? Well, these applications are being built very different than they were a decade ago. They are online. They're using APIs. And they are not considering the security risks. So all services are connecting internally and externally via these APIs, popular finance websites load on your browser mobile apps, you can see the results. Dozens of third party services, okay, web apps, middleware, other code. This is a real problem. So, protect your own infrastructure, Step number one. Step number two demanded the others protect their infrastructure, okay. And trust yet verify. What we do is we wrap special security software around all of these third party infrastructure Software-as-a-Service sites that are out there, okay. So be very, very careful and you have to test even more for third party sites and you know, businesses just aren't testing as much as they should. So there you go. There's a couple of tips here three tips on what to do. When you are talking about third party security risk, and that is with all of these guys, Okay, number one, make sure your infrastructure is protected that you have the right kinds of firewalls and you have the right kind of malware treatment that's in place. All the other security controls, make sure they're configured right? If you're using something like Amazon Web Services, or Sure, or office 365, make sure you have the right settings. You know, it's difficult I get it, Microsoft has over 10,000 skews 10,000 products that are available in they're all software and services. There are dozens and dozens just for office 365 based systems. So make sure you have the right stuff. Make sure that they have proper compliance and certifications. And remember too that the certifications they have just represented a point in time. Do they still have the right kind of security? And because we are running our technology in this new type of infrastructure, make sure, frankly, that we keep track of everything because a breach can happen quickly do millions of dollars of damages right away. And 20% of businesses will file for bankruptcy the very next day. All right, well, let's talk about another gift here real quick before we go to a quick break. And this is for those of us that we go to a family event, and we go anywhere, and it's a Craig come over here for a minute, I need some help and you go over there and of course, it's questions and problems about their computers. So here's what I recommend. Get that person in your life if they're fixing the computer for that for you. I fix it. Great site painting Go online to find out how to fix physical problems. But they have something called the I fix it pro tech tool kit. I have one of these my kids have one of these. My technicians in my business have one of these. It's a 64-bit driver set that has all these weird types of sockets and everything on them. Because these parts and the computers that have the special locking screws and everything else, you need this Okay, the I fix it pro tech tool kit. Stick around. We'll be back with a wrap up for today's show. And we'll talk a little bit more about some gifts right here. You're listening to Craig Peterson on w GN. And the course online Craig Peterson calm. Stick around because we'll be right back. Craig Peterson Hello everybody Craig Peterson here WGAN and online at, of course, Craig Peterson dot com. Hope you've enjoyed the show today we have covered a lot of different things we talked about third party security risks for businesses which web browser you should be using. If you want to keep safe and some of the updates that Chrome has from Google, they'll keep you safer online. What not to do on your work computer. Why it's still too early to buy a 5g phone and signature antivirus and how it is at best catching 50% of the malware out there. It's getting really, really bad. And we've talked a little bit about some of the top breaches this year and there are some pretty scary Ones out there. But how does it apply to you? And how does it apply to your business as well? And we got one more that was brought up on the website at Craig Peterson calm, you can see all of these up there, a little bit of mind commentary and links to other articles online. But this is about the NSA and what the NSA, the National Security Agency is saying that we should be doing as businesses, but this applies 100% as well, to you as an individual. And the basics are to focus on your assets. And this is a very, very big deal. W

All right. Welcome back to mindset radio. I'm your host Jeff Banman. Today I'm sitting in route force training headquarters across from a man, this good looking dude, Colby. Now, uh, I've gotten to know Colby now, whatever, like last six months on and off and then really a whole lot more since we've relocated here to the Denver area and you know, so this month what we're dealing with and what we're really focusing on is emotional stability and then the gateways to that and then kind of the features and functions, if you will, around that right from leadership to personal stuff. And I stopped by and asked Colby day, I said, listen, I know like Colby is super into breathwork super and a lot of stuff. Absolutely radical human being, but I know he's working on this whole breathwork package right this second. And I had this thought of thinking, wow, okay, this is breathwork to me.And you've heard me talk about this several times. It's really the gateway to recovery and the recovery is the gateway to stability and to emotional stability in a lot of ways. I'm not just kind of clearing the mind, but really regulating the system. And if you'll listen to last Thursday's episode when we went through all the traits and trends of emotional intelligence, you know, right. Self-regulation is a big component to that. And so Colby dude, thanks for hanging out with me today. My pleasure. Thank you so much. Um, I tuned in and listened to Phillip's episode. That was like I were talking before the show here. Um, for you guys tuning in, if you haven't touched on that, um, I think probably the best episode you've done, um, of the five or six I've listened to, but absolute pleasure, man. And having you here at brute-force HQ in Denver, seeing you relocate the family, grow this business, and still be a fantastic leader.I'm just humbled to be on the podcast, man. Dude, I'm trying, man. It's a, um, you know, I need some breath work. Yeah, well it is. I mean, and I think that's the list. And those were the comments we get. I think the, the, that, that thing I wanted to create in this podcast was that this was a real no-bullshit conversation, not about selling things or this or that, but bringing people to this community that they may not be exposed to kind of an informal course of their lives. And then techniques and aspects and learnings and the things that go into one, why do I do what I do? But then primarily how do I stay operational and in my world, operational is the ability to deal with everything I deal with and come home and actually have a complete life. Right? And you know, we talk about it for our worlds, it's a 24, seven gig.It's an all the time deal. It's not go to the office, punch a clock, go to the gym, go home, have dinner. I mean, it's, if I'm a firefighter, I'm, I'm on 24, seven mentally, physically, emotionally. I'm kind of on police officers. Same thing that service members clearly, right? This is kind of a, uh, a no stop environment. And so, you know, I know from my own work and the things I've done, you know, the gateway to regulation internally, right? Central nervous system, regulation, all those things. That's breath work. And then it's the chain of events. If I can regulate my, my central nervous system, now I'm starting to actually, then I can deal with my emotional state. And once I deal with my emotions, then I can deal with my, yeah. A,you know, a high negative energy, anxiety, stress, fear, uh, fear is probably a big one, especially in this community. Oh yeah. Um, if you're in that state and you're in that place of mind, your emotion is like, you know, running the show, right? You're not thinking logically, you're not thinking logically. And so breathwork, at least what I've found, and there's, there's, you know, when you think of breath work, first of all, let me just preface this entire conversation. Um, in doing my research, I uncovered, I mean, literally dozens of definitions of math work. So here's mine. Breathwork is a structured daily practice with the, uh, intention of influencing mechanics. So talking about actual anatomy, how we breathe physiology, how our body exchanges OTU and CO2 and state, our frame of mind. And so breath work is simply, at least in my context for the context of what I teach a structured daily practice with the intention of influencing those three areas.I love that. And so you can go down like the spiritual rabbit hole and then phase two, you know, there's some different styles out there. Well then we know some people that this is like the non woo woo stuff. It's the fucking works like hands down, especially in populations with a chronic stress, chronic ongoing, never ending and seeing some of the shit that you guys see. I've got a good buddy. Um, I do jujitsu with Dave. He's a Westminster PD and um, you know, he was my, probably one of my best friends in high school. Happy go lucky dude. I'm always the life of the party. And uh, we lost touch for a few years and recently caught up with him and we're talking about like, what's it like being a cop? I can't relate. I'm a personal trainer. I'm a coach. I help people in the gym.And he's like, man, it's cool. You know, it's, you know, you ever watch cops. It's kind of like that. I'm like, okay, but really what's it like? Like what's some of the hard shit? And he shared some stories that, um, that were heavy, you know, and it's like, and he realized pretty quickly the importance of like managing his emotional state, not just numbing blocking out, but also like processing and working through some of those things. And so breath work really is a fantastic way to be able to regulate your state. I mean, in a matter of seconds. Totally potent thing. Yep.Yeah. I mean, I think it's been interesting, you know, out of the, when you look at, you know, tomorrow primary courses that I've taught forever and then, you know, some of flowed out of there, but it's the operation mindset side. And then the, of course, the art of recovery and what I discovered years ago was understanding that being existing in a state of being recoverable was the gateway to really performing in any situation, any circumstance. Right. My ability to inaction, settle and move, opens up, my cognitive aperture opens up, my awareness, opens up my decision making capability. Right. So, you know, to me, recovery isn't like end of the day. Now I got to check out, sit back and recover from this 12 hour, 24 hour, 48 hour shift I just did through recovery is like an all the time constant deal. And the cool thing I love about breathwork is it's always available and always with you once you learn a couple of simple strategy yep.And have the awareness that you're like, Oh shit. I'm like having that thing again. Totally. I feel the anxiety. Some people have the feeling like a physical sensation in the throat, in the stomach, heaviness in the chest and shortness of breath. Yep. Totally. Like the one, um, having the awareness that you're actually having, you know, you need, uh, you need to shift, need to shift, right. Upregulate downregulate whatever it looks like. Man, it's just so potent and so powerful. And it's funny, I was on, um, um, social media that, or Dana saw a good friend of mine and he was doing a, some silly CrossFit workouts, a thousand step-ups for time. He's a firefighter because he had his full fire gear on oxygen tank, everything. And he's not actually, oxygen is not normal. They're just normal. Like, Oh, what's the difference? Well, I mean you wouldn't let a breeze straight.Okay. All right. So it is the same. It's the same. It just gone through compressed fucking, sorry. Good to make that correction. What's it called? It's just air and air tank. Air pack. Right. So he's wearing his air pack one day or, and he's got his heart rate, you know, jacked up through the roof. Just doing this for awhile. And I'm like, his name's Matt, Matt Chan. I'm like, man, what's like, what's up with this? You know, what are you doing? And he's just getting ready specificity for, I mean, do this, what firefighters do, you guys are carrying around a bunch of heavy shit. It's like hot as fuck. Right? And one of the things that he has been implementing is um, a strategy just called nasal breathing. Super simple, just breathing in and out through the nose. And so what we're finding is when you can shift out of, um, mouth breathing, that should be a gear reserve for extremely high output.So I'm talking like full on sprint assault bike, you know, last 30 seconds of effort when your body really, you just need to open up the Vince so to speak and flooded with oxygen. You can only sustain that 30 seconds a minute. Interesting. So talking about breath work, one of the, I guess unintended benefits without really think about it is learning this gear system and your output, you can regulate your energy expenditure through your breathing. The point I share the story of Matt doing this is he's like, you know, I was just experimenting doing nasal breathing only this entire time. He had to pull his pace back considerably. However, the rate of perceived exertion is much lower, the recovery is much quicker and we can dive into nasal breathing and stuff like that later. But it's a very simple strategy right on the fly. If you ever find yourself in a stressful interaction[inaudible]just take a breath in and out through the nose. Um, the longer the exhale, the exhale rather should be twice the length of an inhale. Okay.[inaudible]that slow pause not only gives your brain a minute to like catch up, right? Cause you're bringing your focus internally. But what you're actually doing with that extended exhale is you are switching on your parasympathetic nervous system, which you are. It's this, it's this constant balance. It's this constant game. You, you're looking at it on a graph. It's like I'm a concept oscillation of up and down, up and down, up and down. Stressor comes in. The recovery that needs to happen is just as equal. And so when we can take that nasal breath real slow, two, three seconds in, um, for six seconds out, that just kind of puts us back to our baseline. You know, it's interesting because I did a interview with Andy Clark. She's out of Canada. Um, she's got an actual, uh, genetic disorder that triggers her central nervous system that dysregulates her and puts her in a high stress state.Her son has it. Yeah. So she had to figure out, I mean, she was a shit show basically a lot of her life. She still admits it and you know, and uh, and one of the things she said in her research is you understood especially like even doing nasal breathing and triggering and just focusing effort on the left nostril. Like it's the closest point to the bagel nerve. Yeah. Right. So it actually then stimulates the vagal nerve, which then begins to, you know, start to help regulate heart rate variability, opens up the fashion around the heart. You know what I mean? It starts to run that chain. So I, I'm sitting here going, yeah, duh. Oh, totally man. Like nasal breathing, man. It's just like, it's easy. It's easily accessible, right? It's just something that if we can just have the awareness, like I'm not talking about a 1% improvement, I'm not talking about like a little tweak.Like, I don't know. What's a small thing that guys can do better in their day to day life? Like a tiny little fix. I don't know. Now he put me on the spot. Now I've got to think of, so nasal breathing is like a 25 50% improvement. We're talking like in rates of perceived exertion or magnitude. Yeah. It's like, and it's such a simple thing, like it's mind blowing that more people are aware of this. And so that's one of the reasons I'm able to come in and teach this stuff here at the gym and teach with my clients. And the benefits are immediate, immediate, immediate. And so having this gear system where you can learn your pacing in your training, in live situations, you, what this means is you can, instead of going from zero to a hundred in a split second, like, sure, the thing can happen, whatever, but your reaction could be like zero to 50.You're calm, you're logical, you're precise as opposed to what the fuck is happening. Right? And so I'll watch, um, uh, active self protection. Have you ever heard of this YouTube channel? This guy breaks down. Um, uh, shooting engagements from closer to cameras. Um, and it's just so wild. It happens so fast, so fast. Right. I've never had happen. I've never experienced, I hope I never do and I'm grateful for those of you who, um, you know, are serving and helping. Um, but, and I like to think, man, if I was in this situation, what would I do? I don't know. I'd probably fucking run away. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not the one who has to go bust in the door and get the bad guy. Right. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so just breathwork as a whole, as a way to control your state. Right. Big picture. Like, I can't relate to this, but like getting geared up for a fucking squat call these guys do it. Yeah.Dozens and dozens. I mean, if you think about it, right? I mean, we exist in this world where we're, we're hanging out, right where we are generally, there's two conditions. Yeah. There's duly Joan, are you like, yeah, I mean, I think so. While you're, you know, so let's talk about it from the fire service or from the law enforcement perspective. You know, our day you show up, you're doing your shift, you do your checks, you do whatever. Maybe you're doing training, maybe you're doing PT, you're doing whatever. You might be having lunch. I mean, you might be having breakfast, you might be sitting around smoking and joking. You might just be chilling out and you're laughing at something. And then out of nowhere, eh, man, you know, everybody responded for a house fire, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so you have an instant rise, right? You have an instant chemical dump reaction body begins to move into action. You move towards the firetruck quickly. You know what I mean? You used to run and haul ass and knock each other down and beat the shit out of each other. But now I think there it's still may happen, you know? And then you get an a, you got to get your gear on. You're getting set up. You got to go through everything. But knowing that it's live. Yeah. Versus a drill. Well, yeah. And then you're in it and then it's real deal. And then you know, you've got streams of communication coming in. Like you an officer going from grabbing a cup of coffee in the morning cause he finally had a break between all the kind of mundane, you know, go check the welfare somebody or go settle somebody down.Call to you know, armed robbery, suspect with a gun, active shooting in a school, shots fired officer down. Like all the like man, life change on a dime. And you know what I've always tried to say is I need the tools to put myself into condition. I need to be and for this moment and the next right. And to me this is one of these key things, but I want to drill a point before we kind of get into a technique and a few other things. The gateway to the gateway is recognition, right? It is a level of awareness that says my body, I'm going for the ride. So tightening the chest, difficulty breathing, you know, fitness, stomach, right? Headache, flushing, you know there's, you have to find what your indicator is. And what I found over life is, man, it's different for you as it is for me is everybody else.You can't say this is the indicator. You have to be aware and not to see that I'm dysregulated, that I'm coming out of pocket. He used to tell people all the time, you know, if you go to the engine getting a firetruck, get your gear on and your struggle, like buckle your seatbelt or put your air pack on. Like if you're fumbling with that. Yeah, exactly. You're fumbling with that. You're out of the zone. You're creeping out of that zone because that is something you do regularly without thinking. So autonomic response. Now you've done it a million at times in your life, you should not have any difficulty doing that. And if you do that should be at like something, a glaring indicator that your, something's in there that you're dysregulated, that you need to regulate. And so that's why I want to, I want to make sure that we're, we're attacking that as step one. It's like self regulation and you know, you know it, whoever you are, you know when you're dysregulated. And like, listen, there's no judgment. No, don't judge yourself. No.That turns into this downward spiral. Literally just there it is, but it's like, here's the thing, man. Society at large, we do a really good job of making heroes out of the service, out of firefighters, out of police and for good reason. What they do are heroic acts. I listened to your episode where you talked about, please don't call me here. No, yeah, but here's the deal. You're human. You have these same psychological things, the same physiological response, same emotional traits and no matter how much training, like you cannot beat the stress response out of a person. You can inoculate a person to handle more and more and more. However, the, you know that's going to come on the tail end too. Like there's a equal and opposite reaction. I had somebody tell me once out of a class they, they pulled me aside and they're like, you know, I don't, I don't have a fight or flight response. I justsaid point gun to his head right away. Okay, all right, let's talk. And you know what I mean? Like, but some people, you know, they, they get numb to things over time or they don't think they have sick, but it's there, it is always there. Yeah, totally. So I didn't mean to interrupt you. I don't want to just like know, have the awareness. Yeah. Right. No. That like, Oh shit. Okay. Like I, this is a moment, this is like one of those pivot points inside of me to be on a peak now action, right. Awareness and now that's got to lead to it. Of course. Ultimately having that awareness is going to allow you to instantly shift into like go mode. Like okay, yeah, cool. I know how to do this. Confident. It's called a high positive. Right. As opposed to like a high negative anxiety, fear, anger.It's like flow, focus, energy, boom. Yeah, totally man. So all right, so let's, let's kind of talk through then some of the like the immediate techniques, you know, um, I'm going to an incident or you know, I'm walking into a village, right. I'm trying to like, like there's a moment where I have an opportunity even in you know, pre incident, pre action, pre, you know, fireground pre call, you know, pre communication, pre, you know, most times hopefully, you know, maybe pre gunfight unless I walked into an ambush and then I'm just kinda fucked. Um, you know, but then it's on. Uh, but there's, there's, there's these subtle moments that give me an opportunity to regulate, right? So if I'm responding to an incident, that response is an opportunity to regulate before I show up. So what are, you know, so nasal breathing, I, I like, I like it and you know, what you basically said was, you know, two, three seconds in and then basically double out just a long extended exhale, long extended exhale.Yeah. It's going to be very beneficial to downshift to downregulate it to like bring you back to base. Right. Um, something important to note too, that like with mechanics and breathing, it's a skill. It sounds so silly. I know every time I say this I'm like, ah, breathing. It's a scale. I sounds so fucking potential, dude. It's like, it's like seeing your front side post. You have to train the system to do that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You don't have to, there, there is not a, that has to be, you have to be disciplined. You have to be on it, you have to be a little more, you know, over focused at first before it becomes a natural course of action. So yeah. So the reason this is important is, so we've got our, our autonomic nervous system, which by and large is unconscious. It's our respiration, our heartbreak, our digestion, all these different things. And we really can't control however. So a stressor comes in, something happens, we see it or we hear it or we feel it through our senses. Right. And that's our brain it.So depending on the intensity of the trigger and our perception of it. Yeah. There's some really cool research that shows not only cause what might stress you out might make me twice as freaked out. Totally. Right. I ain't walked into a part of building. Sorry. That's, that's my jam, bro. So how you perceive this stressor. And I actually think that's where most of the adaptation happens in this, these fields is like they are, they are learning to perceive these in a way that kind of down-regulates the stress response. So there's that psychological component. So then what happens is, uh, the sympathetic nervous system just goes, boom, activates and we need it. That's what keeps us alive. That's what gives us energy to fight, to survive, to run away, to do whatever. Breathwork allows us to shift between those two on demand. We can upregulate like, and that's what one of the thing that's really important.Um, I'll use with some of my clients who suffer from anxiety. Um, bear with me here on this analogy, but for their entire life, they're like, man, this whole like this whole breathing thing isn't really working. I try to calm down and I just can't calm down. I'm like, have you ever tried to like ramp up? Have you ever tried to like just embrace it and go with the feeling? And they're like, no, sure shit. We try it. They're like, dude, this is fucking life changing. My anxiety gone. So what they were doing was fighting this response and trying to like downplay it when really it's just like, nah, just let it go. And then it was trying to tell them other things. So in this context, if I'm riding in that fire truck or in the police car, whatever, I'm trying to remain calm.I'm trying to read. Cool. But I'm also like, I could start upregulating a little bit like, all right, I need to be alert, I need to be ready to go. So when we're talking about breathing, we're talking about mechanics. Number one, it's a skill. It's something that you should practice daily. I would suggest part of your morning routine. Um, you know, when you can, and honestly, honestly, it doesn't matter when I've just had the best results with my clients, having them do it in the morning, higher adherence, a better energy for the day. It's usually a calm time where you're not interrupted by kids, sculptors, family, whatever. So morning seems to be the best. Uh, the morning protocol that I like to take people through, um, is a, uh, I'll explain the, the setup. It's a one, one to one cadence, right? Which each of those numbers refers to the inhale hold.Exhale, hold one, one to one. Now in order to individualize those numbers, you're going to want to do something called the CO2 tolerance test. There's some really cool research that's showing that our level of CO2 tolerance, the more tolerant we are to CO2, the less emotionally reactive we are. So bear with me for a like this is really fucking cool. I'm dr Andrew Huberman, university of Stanford is doing some studies on this right now. What he's showing is the less sensitive you are, um, to CO2. So you have to build up is what happens when we're our metabolism's running and we're our breath. Um, the less sensitive we are to that, the, sorry, the more sensitive we are to that, the more reactive we are emotionally interesting. So anxiety. Yeah, a very strong stress response. Um, uh, getting emotionally triggered by other people. All of this is actually tied to that.You should heard a conversation before this. Exactly. Um, all of this is actually tied to our level of CO2 tolerance breath. We're, here's where this gets really fucking cool, especially for this industry. So when you invited me on and I was like, fuck yeah, this is so cool. When you can expand your tolerance to CO2, your perception of stressors, your reaction, and your, and this is actually measurable data. The HRV, it goes down, your reactivity goes lower, you become an inoculated distress. Interesting. Through breath work, it's out. It's very potent. So I shared that to say like, this shit is very, very valuable and it's not some hippy dippy new world thing like [inaudible]not necessarily the extreme when Wim Hoff, you know, go dump yourself in one, one, one method. Yeah. I mean I, you know, breathwork, that's all I, you know, in a generic way. Cause I get questions all the time, so I'm glad we're doing this. Uh, cause I always look at somebody like one, it's very individualized. The, your, the way you regulate in your breath work, how long you breathe, how far, you know, all that stuff can be trained, but you've got to find your individual flow with it. You know? And breathwork is kinda like, you know, assholes. Everybody's got one. And you know, some of them suck. Uh, you know, but it's, you know, there's a lot out there, so, okay. So when we're talking about like, let's do a morning setup, let's talk two things real quick too, you know, so let's talk about a morning set up and what that looks like. And I wanna reiterate some of what you just said and then like what, what are the tools I could use, you know, cause right now somebody could be listening to this and literally as soon as we're done,go to be going putting it in action. Yeah. Right. And being like, okay, those guys are full of shit. Or Holy cow, that really work. I try this. Yeah, totally. Yeah. So that's what I love about this show because these are things, I mean, seriously, somebody who's going to use this in the next, it's 10 hours. Yeah, absolutely. And listen, if you do, I want to hear about this. You can find me on my website. [inaudible] dot com Jeff will have a LinkedIn and it, he's not going to lean on that. Colby neff.com in case you don't always get it. But so morning, morning, morning set up. Real simple. I would suggest you start with at least five minutes. Okay? Right? Five minutes. Find a comfortable, safe environment, a place where you can close your eyes and not feel like somebody's watching you. There's like this psychological emotional thing where you don't want to be judged first time you do it right.Find a safe space, okay, hate that word. But find a safe space, right where you can be comfortable. You can do it sitting down, you can do it lying down. Um, I don't suggest doing a standing up. You can't if you want to, but find a comfortable spot. And so the first thing we're going to do is actually test your CO2 tolerance. There's for breaths in the CO2 tolerance test. Um, so we're going to do is go ahead and close the mouth and you can do this right now as we're doing this, you're driving, maybe stop cause you hit a timer, but it's real simple. You're going to take a kind of two or three nasal breaths in, in and out at your normal pace. On the fourth breath, you're going to inhale fully through the nose. So maximum inhale through the nose, fill the lungs as full as you can.You're going to start your stopwatch and you are going to exhale as slowly as you can. Cool. That's your CO2 tolerance test. If you score a 20 seconds or lower, you really need this very bad. That's a very low score. It indicates poor pulmonary capacity and indicates poor aerobic fitness and it indicates high emotional reactivity. Um, about 20 to 30 seconds is average for most if you can score upwards of like a 50 to 62nd that indicates like advanced or um, above average levels of aerobic fitness, pulmonary capacity and reactivity to stress. Some guys can get upwards to 90 seconds, but those guys, when we're talking about elite level free divers who literally train this hours a day, every day. So in this context, I would say a really good benchmark is to shoot for 60 seconds, right? 62nd test. And um, it sounds silly. It's like, yeah, I could, I can do that until you try it and you're like, Oh fuck, I have 15 cents.What's around? Let me tell you, there's a lot of shit in this community that's like, Oh, I could do that. And then we try it and then we're like, yeah, okay, maybe I can't do that. Totally. And so with the morning routine, you're just gonna want to do, you're going to want to find some protocol. It doesn't matter what it is. I'll give you a couple today. It doesn't matter what it is, but something that's going to leave you feeling what you want it to feel, which is if you want to feel awake, you want to feel focused. There's, you can find a protocol that will do that for you. Okay. What usually works most times in my experience is a one one to one. So we're going to extend this out. It'd be like a five second inhale, five second hold ten second exhale, five second hold.Okay. And you do that for 10 to 15 cycles? Minimum. Okay. Have to really start to drive some of the adaptation. So that would be like a typical morning breathing session. Um, one of my personal favorites is, um, when you're switching tasks, this is what I did before coming in. It's just something when you want to like put some closure to this previous thing and also kind of perk up and get ready for your next activity, whatever that is. Um, excuse me. That would be transitions. Transition moments of recovery you talked about. Oh yeah. Good times will transitions, man. This is my personal favorite task switching and transitions. Nope, this is my personal favorite is where we fail miserably. Really? Oh yeah, yeah. Transitions are huge man. And if you have the awareness, they're everywhere, everywhere, all day, all the time. That protocol is real simple.It's a one to one and there is no exhale hold. So it's like three rounds of like seven in the 14. Hold seven out. You do that three times and then you're going to go 15 really deep aggressive breaths in through the mouth or through the nose. If you want to get a really upregulating effect all through the mouth, like you'll feel the Aussie, it will feel very different. If you just go through the notes, it's going to be a pretty mild effect. Okay. Everybody's different. Everybody's, this is what I feel. But, and then after those 15 it's called super ventilation[inaudible]big, deep breaths like that. After those 15 you're going to exhale, hold as long as you can. Hmm. 30 45 seconds. So do that two times. Do that. Two times. Your brain is just like fucking on fire. You feel great, interesting task switch. So that's how you kind of work in the morning routine. Um, that transition, man, it takes, it takes five minutes, right? We're talking about 10 minutes of your day with like unlimited upset. Yeah. So what is the, what's a good,you know, what's a good kind of like, I like to call inaction or in flow technique, right? So if I'm driving a fire truck or I'm the engine officer and firing it back or on the law enforcement officer, you know, screaming down the road and you know, I'm managing a lot, right? Managing traffic, I'm receiving information, I'm trying to decipher stuff I'm having to communicate out. Do not sound like an ass on the radio. And when I do that, um, how could I leverage some of this stuff kind of in those moments. You know, I like the, I really can see kind of some of the nasal breathwork. Does it, should I just start that?Yeah. Just man, it's going to come from awareness and training. Yeah. Right. Speaking of transitions, the way that I teach my clients to make breath work or like better mechanics, part of their day is to when you, when you transition from office to office, car to, um, headquarters, whatever, home to work, use that time to nasal breathe and just be aware of it. Like, okay, I'm going to, I'm transitioning and walking from the parking lot into the store. I'm leaving the restaurant and going back to my car. Take that time. And just nasal breathe. Yeah. That's like layer one, layer two. Once you feel comfortable with that would be like, okay, as you're warming up for your workout, nasal breathe. Yeah. Try that and then tell me it's not hard. I'd try that. Doing like a nasal breathing only conditioning session would be like the next level full on nasal breathing. Right? And then you're really gonna find your gears. You're going to have these moments of panic where you're like, I actually don't have enough oxygen right now. And then you got to slow down your respiration and you're taking control of your physiology in that moment. So the lowest hanging fruit man is like, just like make nasal breathing kind of. You don't have to do it all day, every day, but make it your norm. Especially in stressful situations.Yeah. You know, I started to do that and when we talked about, uh, with Andy, I'm going to reference back because this is relevant, right? So a different side of it when she talked about, you know, the fact that we don't, you know, we exercise our sympathetic response constantly in this world, right? We're constantly heightened and you know, in that place and we're not exercising the rest and digest or not exercising. We're not teaching the body to regulate. We're teaching the body stressed to be stressed. So it's no wonder when we go home, we can't regulate when we walk through switch. Can't go there to the door or no, are you kidding me? That's a perfect opportunity. They're totally,we're what we're talking about. That really hit home for me because I'll have days like where I get inside and I'm just like still at work and like, I'm like not being a good dad. I'm not being a good husband when that way man breathing. Like if you could like park around the house or like somewhere you can park in your garage. Right. Just to chill out for a few minutes. Open up an app. I recommend. It's called breathe plus. Um, another one is called state S. T. a. T E breech plus is customizable. You can put in your own state is like their own defined protocols. They're both fantastic. Yep. You could just fire that up, right? Real simple. Three or four minutes. Do a little task, switch, transition, boom, leave work at home or sorry, just don't leave work at home, leave work at work, leave work at work and then come home and be engaged. And what you'll notice over a few exposures of doing this is like people are gonna notice other people are going to be like, something's changed. And here's the thing about it,right? It actually gives you an opportunity. I don't, I mean I have a hard time sometimes, you know, leave, leave, work at the office or leave work at the station or leave work where air or you know, cause cause we really can't, you know, but here's the difference. You're walking in with if you can regulate, you know, we just talked Thursday about emotional intelligence and I, you know, and I shared how, you know, my own, my own state, my own emotional state has such an impact on everyone around me. Like a vibe, shitty or I'm heavy. You're on whatever dude. You know, I mean, and it jacks Morgan up through the roof, you know what I mean? And then it [inaudible] to start. And then it just triggers this huge downfall. Whereas if I've had a tough day and I can transition and regulate, do the breath work, I come in in a different way and then I know she's willing to hear whatever is going. Like she'll know maybe I'm, I didn't have the best day or it was a tough incident or a tough call. It was something, she'll know that. But by me being regulated and not caring, all, you know, all of it in there and being dysregulated, she's actually willing then to be like, Hey, what's going on? How are you? You know, what's up?And then you're in a Headspace to where you're not feeling judged, not feeling like I'm doing something wrong or I'm all fucked up. Or you're like, you're in a head space where it's like, Hey, listen to me, it was shit today was today was bad. Yeah.You know, and I don't want to talk about it or I want to share it with you, but I'm at least able to communicate in a whole different context. Then, you know, stumbling through the door, upset, irritated, frustrated and carrying all this extra stuff. So man, I,I don't tell you man, I just had my second son, he's three months old and it's, I forgot the newborn stage. Like how this goes. I'm getting like you were just thinking I want 13 years. Yeah, you just did it again. I should have shot myself in the leg. Like all right. And I was like, so I still had like it's, it's fantastic and it's great. It's dude, there's momentsor like,like these things are triggered from my son crying and screaming that I don't know how to fix. I'm like contracture, I do diaper. I tried feeding you. I don't know what the fuck you want. There are these moments where like I have to regulate like yeah you have no I don't, I have a very angry response, which is like punch things and Declan has taught me so much about cause they're all thing, ours is a bundle of energy. Yeah. That's it. And that's all they feel is whatever your total and then it gets even worse. Right. They feel that energy. Oh yeah. Right. It's like then you're, and then you're spun out of the awareness of like, Whoa, I need a better solution. Like I can't just get pissed. This can't be my strategy because this is going to end up not good. Yeah. Everybody in my family. Yeah. Yeah. Cause then you're not any violate kind of the [inaudible]idea of creating safety for those around you. Right. And uh, you know, that's where I, I hate that, that over time emotions have been labeled the way they have been labeled. You know, especially in our world is like this negative pH. You can't have emotions. Oh man. Yeah. I always say, and I said it on Thursday, the only, you only accept a little emotion in our communities. Anger, anger. Really? Oh yeah, you can, you can't be happy too long. You can be a little cut up, but then, but then you're fucking like, I'm an outsider asking them, why can't be sad? You know? Because sadness is assigned as a sign of weakness. You can't be too happy because then you're not being serious, you know? But dude, you can be as pissed off as you want to be pissed off. You can be as angry as you want to be because that's what the, that's what the collective emotion is, is because everybody feels that because everybody's pissed off everybody's cause that's the expression of this sensation.They're experienced. They have an identify what that's, yeah, that's just the expression of it. Right. And, and it's gnarly. And so, you know, this is a, this is a different model of how we exist and um, and begin to see, Hey wait a minute. You know, I can be sad that that was actually sadness. Like how like that would be so hard to separate, like, I don't know man, like walking in and seeing a family murdered or like just seeing some heinous shits. Like how can you, like, I guess I understand why the reaction is the numbness. I get that. Yeah. It's just, it's fucked up that that's how the standard is, I guess. Yeah. And then, and then you got to go be pissed, you know, cause anger. And I will, I will ask you this as a trainer, because in my world, you know, even in the physicality of our world, even in the physical training of our world, the answer was always get angry at it.You all lift heavier, get angry, draw that anger. So hit it harder, go faster. You know? So you're embedded with anger. Stressful is the, is the emotional connection to a higher level of performance, which is fucked up. You know what I mean? This, those are backwards relationship dude. Yeah. But that's the way it's been. Like have you, you've, you felt like rage, you felt rage was like, I'm talking, seeing red, like just fucking mad. Yes. You cannot tell me that's the best way to show up. Right? But it is, that's what the thinking is. Well, and then the problem is then, then we're launched into shame and were launched into sadness and were launched into judgement. And then we're launched. And, uh, I'm not who I want to be. Uh, uh, am I even making a difference? And then, and then the question is, am I even worthy?Should I even be on this earth? You know, I mean it gets, dude, that's, that's what, that's what I want. That's the conversation. It's like this is where we are. And to me the problem is the communities want to want to pill it. You know, wanna want to go treat it through Medicaid, Medicaid, it, don't worry about it. We'll just medicate it or go drink more, you know, or whatever. And, and, and what we've missed is listen, know, what don't we need to teach you to do is regulate your systems. What I need to do is encourage you to be aware of what's happening in that moment and then give you the, the biological tools breathwork. It's a biological tool that then enhances your natural, listen, we're smart people. We can kind of find the answer. You notice as a coach, you don't have the answer.They do. You have to just unlock it. And so, you know, everybody gets it and is a technique to me. This is why I wanted you to come on this month because this is a gateway to this pillar of emotional stability, of emotional regulation of, you know what I like to call it, bringing calm to chaos. I can't stop the chaos and I can't control the chaos, but I sure as hell can be the one to show up to bring calm to the environment. Right. And, and then use that capacity. But I can't do that unless I have a tool that, that, that biologically regulates me. You know, the mind and body are,yeah. Cause I mean like people are gonna pick that up. Like if you have high anxious energy. Sure, yeah, yeah. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good. No, everything's good. No you're not. People can just look at your body language and know, you can see a leader who's calm, who's confident, who's collected. Hopefully you guys just thought of that person. Yeah, that's a great example, a great role model to have in your mind. But on the flip side, we can read body language very well. We can know when a person actually isn't calm and isn't regulated despite them saying, so dude, we're energetic beings. Absolutely. So that's where this conscious control of your autonomic nervous system comes into play. It's this really weird thing. It's, did I have this crazy thought, like we're born into these bodies and it, to me, it's like the greatest mystery in universe.It's like, okay, so how do we really do this stuff? How do I regulate all these parts and pieces and joints and thoughts, right? It's this unknown mystery that we're still fucking learning about. And it's crazy and I love it, man. I mean, this has been such a journey of such a discovery of things. So, uh, so breathwork man, like you're talking about, you're talking about using it to access, um, emotional stability. So one thing that makes me think of like, breathwork has been used for thousands and thousands of years. It's used in shamonic rituals. It's used in Indian tribes, like all these different things. But here in 2019, 2020, what does that mean? If someone were to be using that to get too emotional to get to an emotionally stable place, how do you see breathwork fitting in and allowing that? Is it changing state to get to a place where you can like, reflect and think on some hard stuff? Is it like being able to regulate your state and your emotions? I, you know, my personal opinion is there is, there's a whole, the whole,you know, breadth is the only biological function, physiological function we can control. It's the gateway, right? And, um, for years we spent a lot of world in any, on the aspects of psychology and thought that was the answer. And I'm a big believer that the answer really lies in our biological makeup, you know, in balancing the internal systems that then create access to what we need to see, uncover, unpack, deal with, talk about or whatever it is. And so, you know, to me, breathwork and there, you know, like there's a ton of options out there, but I watched it. I mean, I watch it on the range when we do the meditation shoots, right? The deep core. Uh, what do they tell you to do when you're shooting? What's the cue? I remember, I remember when I was learning how to shoot. I'm, and I'm a fucking rookie, but I remember something like, you're not, are you exhaling as you pull the trigger?Do you know this? Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, it definitely varies. So there's, there's the exhale, the pause, you know, the slight hold at a, at the bottom, half the breath or two thirds. But that varies depending upon weapon in style and who and everything else. Right? There's a lot of times to just make this connection. So already practicing breath work. Oh, totally. Oh yeah. If you're a shooter or a shooter, I mean most guys, most guys, no matter what, they're on the exhale. Yes. Right? And it is a release not only in breath, but of energy, right? I am settling myself because like I say, you know, shootings easy. All you ever have to do is press through that trigger without disturbing the front sites under any conditions imaginable. Right? It's that easy. That's all you have to do. Doesn't matter. Shit's blowing up or bullets are coming back at you.All you have to do is be able to press through that trigger and not disturb the front sights. That's it. That's the only thing, you know? Yeah. But that requires you to be stable and regulated in order to achieve that. And so, yeah, I mean, breathwork shows up. Listen, this community, you're not, you're not ignorant to breathwork. It's there. It's subtle. For years it's been slang or you know, an approach or this or that. And then over the last probably 10 years been inundated with all the techniques, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so that's why I asked you to come on the show, because I know if you've, if you taken on a technique, it's not bullshit, right? So I'm going to validate that I trust you and what you're giving to the audience is an actual tangible tool because there's some shit out there that like it'd be great if I'm climbing Mount Everest and cool and you know, sounds great, but it's unobtainable.Right. And that's where I look at it. You know, I, I believe that the, the breathwork, whatever it looks like for you, in order to be successful with it, you have to have a level of awareness. If I create a level of awareness in you as to your state, then I've got access to do all kinds of things, right? So if I'm aware that I need to breathe, okay, then I can be aware of what my sensation is, what emotions that triggering, what thoughts that's bringing up and then what courses of actions I'm most likely to take at this point in time. So it's a gateway, right? It's a, it's a gateway drug. I did say it's an opportunity. That's why it's important to me because we're unfortunately we're focusing on the end results of not doing breath work, of not regulating, of not being aware, which you know, then starts this downfall chain of events up.Not good, not good, not fucking good. And to know, no today. I don't know Terry, I don't know. It's 27 maybe. Yeah, it is. And it's grown across fire service and law enforcement unity. It really is. I mean it is a, it is a serious issue. This is an outsider. What a guys on the inside, people on the inside, what are they saying? Think about that. What's like the, what's like the consensus it berries. There isn't one because you've got, you still have a large community that ignores it, you know, there's that largely kind of what happens that bad. Yeah. And then you, and then you just have a, you don't have a safe space to say it. I mean, I didn't say it for years, but you were feeling it dude. I've had thoughts of suicide in my head for, since I was a kid and then enhanced by everything else I've done.I felt like I told Phil, you know, I, I have felt like a failure in one aspect or another of my life virtually every day. Yeah. I mean, and then it, then that leads to why do I even need to be here and what is my purpose and is it even worth it? Am I causing more harm by being here than not? I mean, dude, it's a, that's why I talk about, you know, intervention versus prevention. All we do is intervention. If the thought has come into your head, you, there's, there needs to be an intervention, not just the act. That's the current model. That's what you're saying. No, that's the current model is where you're going to pretend it doesn't exist and then teach you some prevention measure and have some person who has no correlation to your world. It doesn't make sense of this weird context because then, okay, so I've gone through this preventative training, which you can't, this is so crazy, dude.Hey guys, don't think it was [inaudible]. Yeah, yeah, you can't, I mean like what, that doesn't make any sense. Well and then call the person who's not going to understand what your life is about and then deal with, it's like one wife facilitated a conversation between ops, medical services, all the sites at the agency and some of the operators. And we had them all in a room and collected when we were teaching a program and they were there. And you know, the biggest thing that came out was they had the opportunity to go, we're not here to take your guns away. We're actually here to keep you doing crazy shit around the world. You know? And my response was they, it's like garbage. If you don't take your garbage out, what's going to happen? And it's going to stink and be nasty and it's gonna fuck everything up.Yeah, you have to take the garbage out. But the problem is there's a big, there's a big gap and there's a big lack of trust in that community because there's a huge pool of people that don't know. You know, cause I always said, it's like if I go see somebody and actually said what, what was going on, you know, the psych would have PTSD by the time I left the room. Right? Right. So why would I even remotely share myself with you? Right. So it's a big challenge and, but I draw back, but I look back at it and there is a course of action to dealing with that. And it, it comes in self-regulation. It comes in opening of a pathway to be able to feel what you need to feel. Say what you need to say. Experience. We shouldn't do that first sentence. Feel what you need to feel big time. Like that's gotta be it. That's the hardest thing, right? Yeah. We don't want to feel those things. They're uncomfortable. They don't feel. And then there, and then if I let that over fold den, am I being weak? Right? Am I going to be incapable of then doing it again?Right. Am I going to be, uh, unable to handle the next thing?[inaudible] andI think it makes you more capable of due to does my asity infinitely larger. It's like a few of those feelings and have those experiences and learn from them. Yeah. I mean it's like after I did my work with Elliot Roe who was on, I was on season one. I asked him on a podcast afterwards when we did the, I had no therapy session and, and got rid of anger, got rid of this, release, this anger, this whole thing. Um, my first thought was Huck, I'd been a bad ass without all that shit. Like if I could go back 20 years and start over without anger, without that aggressive child embedded point of exactly what it is. Oh yeah. Three, seven, eight years we learn. Oh yeah. Early, early like yeah. Like already, you know, one, two, three months. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, and we created in our offspring because we are that way, you know what I mean?Cause that's the energy they're used to cause they don't think, Oh, dad's angry or they're just learning the energy connection. And if the energy connection is anger, that's what they know. That's what becomes familiar in the elephant. Right. So that's what they're going to look for and that's what they're going to come off of. And that's what we grow up with. And you know, yeah. I've learned over time and everything that I've done that the more I've released tude if I really wish I could just transport myself back 25, 30 years ago. Yeah. Cause it's like in the, in the state of BIM. Cause I'd go back and be like, fuck, I wouldn't have clowns without anything. I don't give a shit. You know what I mean? And not getting up, not give a shit in the sense of like don't care, but like there's no need for an impact. I can execute, I can do this, I can do that because it's, it's in proper context and I've set myself up to do this and be successful around it. Doesn't mean it wouldn't weigh on me. I'm still human being, but I have the tools to be able to dump it fast. That's the thing is like, and how I'm understanding this, this situation is that a lot of these folks in positionsin their day to day job, the thing that they chose to do, to provide for their families and to serve, um, they might see, do or experience things that makes them feel shameful, makes them feel angry, makes them feel like the world is just totally fucked. And if you carry those feelings, like it's no wonder like, that would not be a good place to exist. You know?Yeah. I'm at and I'm gonna, I'm going to give a note like a side note. So if you do this breath work technique, understand when you regulate the system properly, you may have a release, like you may just start crying, not add anything. And you know, one of the techniques we use have on the range and doing some of the meditation work is if you start to feel that, uh, you know, I'm going up, I'm going to go relax the jaw, open the mouth, open it wide completely, just allow the breath to leave the body, don't force it. And nine times out of 10, you'll just start crying and it's okay. That's if you're in a safe space, like you said, you can ask and it's not, it's, it's not a sadness. It's, it's the body offloading, right? That's all it is. You know, guys, I've had seal team guys on the cushion on the range just dump and they're not sad.They're not crying at something. There you are finally allowing, you're walking you that. Yeah, you're, you're, you're popping that, you're popping the bow of man. You're, you're letting the freaking pressure release off and, and there's going to be, and you are, you may laugh uncontrollably. You know what I mean? There, there, there will be this emotional release. So if you do this and start feeling this, cause I was thinking about it and I'm like, shit, if we're doing, so if you're doing the work, there may come a point where your body begins to regulate to a spot where you're the English. Like, wait, what's happening is this, don't resist. Assertion yeah, don't resist it. Relax the jaw. Let the breath go and let it and just let it be what it's going to be. So man, this past,this past April, um, I did a men's retreat, um, new warrior training adventure. You heard of this one now you were telling me about it. So the mankind project is a nonprofit. Yup. Um, religion agnostic, sex orientation. Agnos, gay dude, straight dudes, black, white, Mexican, all men, all males, biological males. Um, and I don't, I'm not gonna share the full experience because if you, if this is something you want to do, I want you to experience it and have no bias from what I, from what I share. But, um, I will say that not only are we lacking a Rite of passage into manhood in America, that's like a really big thing where it's like, when do I become a man and what age is it? 18, I don't know. I can go to Warren. I kill people. Does that mean, but I can't drink.Like it's a very weird thing, right? Societies and tribes, all of our ancestors had this Rite of passage from this moment forward, you're now a man, behave like it. However, we don't have that. And so there's a lot of really weird shit, especially in like an alpha like agro culture that is police, fire, military. Um, I was able to experience levels of emotion, of sadness, of happiness and of connection with other males that I didn't know it was possible in a non-sexual way. Yeah, totally right. So let me just preface this. This is not some weird thing like that. No judgment. But, um, bro, it was life changing to go through this experience with other men who like, you know, uh, who were experiencing the same feelings of shame and self doubt and anxiety that I was feeling and they were like super successful businessmen. Millionaires, right. Uh, maybe. See, yo guys, dude, it's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And I'm just like, Holy shit.Do we get a long way to go? We've got a lot to learn. I mean, we have got a lot to learn about ourselves and about our communities and so see, I dude, well, let's do this. Let's wrap up today's conversation. We'll come back for another one because I think that'll be, we're definitely worth wild. Uh, I'm going to make sure you're linked up on the site with all the show notes. Um, will you do me a favor? Will you send me a writeup on just some simple, what we discussed, just those steps so I can drop them into the show notes. So there'll be available for you online, uh, at mindset radio.com. You'll see this episode up with, uh, with Colby. Uh, check-in, grab the show notes, we'll make some downloadable PDFs or something for you so you can grab those. You've got some actionable, uh, kind of step by step processes. Do this things. I'd love to hear your comments and make sure you hop into the Facebook group mindset radio, uh, off our Facebook page. Go ahead.You know what I'll do, man. Um, so typically my breathwork challenge is 50 bucks. I'm going to put together a coupon code where it's free only for listeners of the show. Wow. Coupon code mindset. Go to my website on the navigation, you'll see breathwork challenge. This introduces, it's four weeks of content, teaches everything that I've learned as well as helps you implement it into a daily practice. When you're checking out, just enter code mindset and I'll just wave the entire fee. Wow. That's, it's that powerful dudes like [inaudible].We literally have no excuse to not do this. That's pretty rad. So I, you better, I better see a flood. I mean there's, you know, I virtually, I'm going to watch the numbers on the show and then I'm going to check with Colby, and if you're not taking advantage of that, I'm going to boot you from ever listening to this show ever again. Don't shame them, bro. No, no. But I will shame you. So, uh, so yeah, man. Cool. Well then all of that stuff will be linked up, linked over to Kobe's website, a little bit more about him. Uh, what to do, you know, how to, how to connect with him, follow his ugly butt on, uh, on all the social media stuff. Uh, there's always value streaming out of this guy. So thanks for listening. That's going to be your show. We're going to wrap this up. We'll see again, I think Thursday. Yeah, on Thursday. 

Welcome, Good morning, everybody.  The Christmas Holiday season is underway, and it comes with a warning.  Today I discussed some great gifts you might want to consider and some advice about getting that 5G phone right now.  Here we go.   I will be doing some Facebook Lives, so keep an eye out. These and more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com ---  Automated Machine Transcript: Craig Peterson Hey, good morning, everybody. Craig Peterson here. I was on Mr. Jackie this morning. And I had some ideas I think some great ideas for gifts for the tech people in your life and a little bit of a warning although there are companies with 5g phones out there. Hey, it isn't to what you might think it is. At least not yet. So here we go with Mr. Heath. Out in a moment but on the Tech Talk side our own Craig Peterson ways in this Monday morning. Good morning, Craig. Hey, good morning, jack. What a great time of year I'm just so excited. We got all of our shopping done before December even showed its face. The first time, I'm usually one of those guys like Justin, and I was just conversing about it. But bottom line, you know, it's December 24, 3 pm is time to start the shopping. But this year, I'm all ready for it. Jack Heath Well, you have a football team to buy stuff for how many? Craig Peterson Yeah, but we only have eight kids and five, and I began to like, one little gift per and say, you're lucky you get it. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Well, I got a little bit of gift advice here, jack for people. We keep hearing about the 5g networks. Of course, you and I've talked about a little bit as well, and these are the new data networks for our smart devices are smartphones, even frankly, laptops going to be coming with 5g, and it's going to be just a whole world changer. But I want people to kind of stop just for a second. When you are looking to buy some more than upgraded phone a smartphone this year. And you're thinking about 5g. There are companies out there like, for instance, T-Mobile has its nationwide 5g that just launched on Friday. And it's going to be the most significant network at least right now. None of these 5g networks are really in place yet. They're not working well. T-mobile's is starting, and at at&t and Verizon are beginning, but it's only going to work in the real big cities. So a little quick word of caution. Don't go out buying a new smartphone that has five g in it. For instance, right now, Samsung is taking orders for two new phones and the latest Samsung Galaxy Note 10 plus and the one plus 70. Those phones Yeah, they'll be good enough. But 5g isn't going to hit until next Christmas. Apple's going to have their new 5g phone out next September. All of the major carriers will have some decent rollout by then. But frankly, I would not look at 5g quite yet. When I was getting if I was getting a phone, I still have an iPhone eight. I have not upgraded, and I don't plan on upgrading until the iPhone 12 comes out. If you've got a friend or family member who's and you're still looking for that cool toy for that tech person. Well, I got something that isn't a toy. It is kind of the replacement for those thumb drives that we've carried around for so long. The company that's made a lot of this portable storage like thumb drives is called SanDisk, S-A-N D-I-S-K. SanDisk has their new extreme portable SS D. This thing is fantastic. It can hold up to two terabytes depending on which version you get. You can clip it onto a backpack, you can put it, even in a pocket or in your purse, and it allows you to keep everything with you. So I'm the kind of guy who likes to back up my backups. So when I'm out shooting pictures at a family event, I was just at a wedding last week, a family wedding. I like to have multiple copies of them. Look at this Portable SSD. It's an excellent option for a gift. And if you have somebody that is totally into tech, really likes to make things and design things. There's something called a Raspberry Pi. Now I've been playing with these things for years, and the Raspberry Pi four is out. It is a computer that will fit in. To call it that. Exactly. It doesn't sound appetizing, and it fits in the palm of your hand jack, it is a computer, and USB-C cable powers it. And for those people in your life who are real techies who like to make and design things that are computer-controlled. It is an extraordinary gift, and you can get these starter kits for less than 100 bucks. And it comes with everything that you'd want. So those are the two big things I'd look at anything and if you got somebody wants to take things apart, jack, look at that. I fix it. That's the name of the company. I set it pro tech tool kit. I love this thing, and I use them all the time because when I go to a wedding Or I go to a family event. The first thing they do jack is they pull out the computer and say, Hey, Craig, can you fix this for me? So have a look at those gift ideas I think for the tech people in your life. Jack Heath All right. All right. Quickly to Sonic course Justin still looking for those last-minute video games, right? He's a gamer. Craig Peterson Yeah, there's some cool on, sir. Yeah. All right. The Video Game process is kind of year-round, jack. It's not. There's no last minute. Jack Heath All right, great. Thank you. Craig Peterson Thanks so much. All right. Craig Peterson Hey, everybody, hope you're having a great week and getting ready for all of the celebrations here at the end of the year. Of course, we have Christmas coming up Hanukkah and Festivus. So I'm not sure those are all on par with each other. But anyway, I just hope you have a great, great end of the year. I had a wonderful time out at my sister in law's wedding last week. It was one Wonderful, and it's kind of cool to see another culture and all of the things involved with her marriage, and we're glad to be able to participate. Everybody have a great day. I will be back on the morrow. I'm going to be doing a little traveling here over the next couple of weeks business, you know, you're in a way that stuff sometimes plays out until I might be a little spotty here with some of these podcasts. But yeah, I'll be back full force at the beginning of the year. Take care, everybody. Talk to you later. Bye-bye. Transcribed by https://otter.ai ---  More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Message Input: Message #techtalk Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

Dr Rob Bell from Indianapolis in this USA is a renown Mental Toughness Coach, Speaker and the Author of 6 and soon to be 7 Books on the subject. In this interview he shares his top insights from working with elite level athletes across a number of sports and corporate athletes as well. He discusses his approach, his philosophies around developing mental strength to optimize performance and upgrade your life and the tools and perspectives he uses with his athletes. Dr Bell says: Mental Toughness means performing your best when it matters the most AND dealing with the adversity and setbacks that we will face. If performance is important in your life, then both of these are inevitable, so it isn't a matter of "if", but "when" mental toughness is needed. The odd thing is that many people don't actually need to be mentally tough in today's society. These people are comfortable on the sidelines. I'm not sure about you, but we just survive in mediocrity, not thrive. Our goal is to be the BEST at getting BETTER." You can learn more about Dr Bell and his work, his books and courses at www.drrobbell.com. His books include No One Gets There Alone Don't Should On Your Kids No Fear Mental Toughness Training For Golf 50 Ways to Win Hinge   Mental Toughness - The Key To Success with Dr Rob Bell Timestamp:   4:20 About Rob 5:32 About the hinge  7:50 hinge moments 11:05 lisa's hinge moment 14:34 Rob's coaching stories 17:45 a new level, a new devil - being excited vs being fearful 24:02 focusing on success vs focusing on segnifficance 28:32 Mental Toughness Hacks 33:28 reprograming our subconscious & choosing our tribe 37:52 Scarcity vs Abundance mindset   We would like to thank our sponsors:   Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff   If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7-day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalized health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guesswork. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyze body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness, and potential at https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    Transcript of the Podcast:   Speaker 1: (00:00) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati, brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:11) How everyone listed. Somebody here at pushing the limits today. I have a real treat for you, but before we get underway, I'd just like to encourage you to hop on over to our website and to check out all our flagship programs. We have an online run training Academy running hot. It's called a holistic run training. Whether you are doing your first half marathon marathon or doing ultra marathons or even if you're just taking your first steps, check out our system, what we do and how we can help you achieve your goals. We also have an Eaton genetics testing program. This is absolutely my blind stuff. I've just been away actually on the weekend doing some more training. On this. And this is a personalized health approach. This is taking the last 20 years of hundreds of science work from festing different science disciplines. Bring this all together into one online tool that will enable you to get insights into you and your genes. Speaker 2: (01:12) Like [inaudible] before. You'll be able to understand exactly what foods to eat and what time of the day you should be eating, what types of exercise to you, but you're learning so much more than just food and exercise. It's all about how your brain works, what hormones are dominant in your body and what a fixed means will have and what time of the day these are these are happening. You'll get information about what types of work you'll be put at, what times of the day you should be doing different types of activities. Just insights that will absolutely change your life, blow your mind. I'm really, really excited about this genetics program because it's no longer a one size fits all approach, which it has been throughout history up until this point of time. Now we can look at who you are, how your genes are expressing and give new personalized recommendation. Speaker 2: (02:08) So that's our second bag ship program. And the third one we have is mindset here, which is all about developing mental toughness, a strong mindset so that you can achieve the things in life that you want to without all the problems getting in the way and stopping new wrench in your potential. So check those all out at Lisatamati.com. Now, today I have Dr Rob bell on the show and he is from Indianapolis in United States and dr Rob is an author, a coach, and a speaker. He's trained hundreds of executives and athletes of all levels and across all sports. He's the author of six books and soon to bring out his seventh and you're going to get so much value out of today's show. So without further ado, I'd like you to introduce you to Dr. Bell and one last thing before I go. Please, please, please give the show a rating and review if you enjoy the content that really helps the show get exposure and really helps our ratings on iTunes, et cetera. So I really, really appreciate you doing that right over to Dr. Bell, everybody, Lisa Tamati here at pushing your limits. Fantastic to have you with me again on the show. We've got a very exciting geese. We've got to the Rob bell all way from Indianapolis in the United States with me today. So welcome to the show that grew up. Speaker 3: (03:33) Awesome. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks Lisa for having me. Speaker 2: (03:37) So Rob and I have connected by LinkedIn as you do these days. And I have delved into Rob's work and what he's done and he's a meeting toughest coach and an author and a speaker. Someone who speaks my language obviously. And I just loved what he was doing in his work, so I wanted to share that with you guys and my audience and to maybe get some insights from Rob about about me to toughness and he works with a whole lot of different types of athletes and corporate to golf to, to NFL, I think, or you'll be able to share. So, dr. Rob, welcome to the show. And thanks for being here. So tell us a little bit about yourself. Speaker 3: (04:22) I mean, well, thanks so much for introduction. And I mean, again, we connect over LinkedIn and I was like, wow, like this, this lady's amazing. Like, look at all the races she's done. So anybody doing like those ultra marathons, like Badwater like yourself and you know, the salve there in the Sahara. I mean, I'm all about, I mean, not just I'm in my, my whole life is just dedicated I think just to helping people get to where they want to go. So it's just being the coach and, and you know, as well as I do, I mean, the, the greatest satisfaction I think we get as a coach is just being that small part. And that piece of, you know, I think what we're always trying to get is just that one moment that, that one point in our lives, and I call him these hinge moments where we don't know what it looks like, but if we can make that small difference in that person's life. So helping them connect with who they are, with who they're going to become. And I always preach and I know you, you're on the same vein, but you know, no matter how bad things aren't, our life only takes more. It takes that one moment, that one person, that one event to make all the difference. And that's why I just love no one. I do. So I mean I've been blessed enough to just always kind of follow that passion and just leave me here, the podcast today. So I'm excited. Speaker 2: (05:34) Absolutely. And you actually have, why you have seven bowls, six books in the seventh one on the way. Is that right? Your books is called the hinge. I know. And so this is all about hinge moments in sport does it, right? So what do you do? Speaker 3: (05:51) Well, so I say like every door has a hint. So if you hear about doors opening and closing in life, that's of the hinge you hear of a rusty door. It's not the door that's rusty at all. It's the Hinsey gets rusty. And so always say is every, you know, a, a door without a hinge hinges a wall. It just doesn't work. And so what the Hanjin is, the answer is going to be that one person that's gonna be that one moment or one event. Sometimes that one decision that makes all the difference in our lives. We just don't know when that's coming. We can't connect the dots in our life looking forward, but can only connect the dots looking backwards and seeing the impact of that one person or that one moment made in our life. And when it comes to, you know, mental toughness, like I said, it only takes one. Speaker 3: (06:34) Now we might not know the hinge connects sometimes two weeks, months, years later. The impact of one person saying you can't do it, you're not going to be good enough. Or one decision or that one person that we, that we met that connected us to somebody else. And since we can't know when that moment's coming, that's the importance of being present and not taking any day off and making sure that every moment that we do and every person that we meet matters. Because it does. Because we don't know when that moment's going to happen. And that's, that's the real point about the hitch. Speaker 2: (07:10) That's a real insight. Yeah. I hadn't even thought about this. This just opened up my mind to a new way of thinking. I hadn't thought about that at all as being, I was sort of thinking hinge moments, those, you know, crucial moments. And, and in the sporting event where, you know, either we left or it went right and you succeed, but you're saying the opportunities are going to come towards us, these opportunities, but we don't know or see them necessarily as really important pivotal points. And if we're not paying attention and if we're not out there actively looking for these hinge moments then we're gonna miss them and miss opportunities in our lives basically. Is that right? Speaker 3: (07:50) Yeah, absolutely. And I mean a lot of, a lot of these come when we're, when we're not even ready for them, you know, and one of the half iron mans I did, I mean one of the hinge moments was somebody to stop the change my tire for me. And I have no idea even what I was doing in the race, how to change a tire. And that changed my entire life. Just that one moment. And we're going to have several hinge moments throughout our lives. But I think that's the real importance. And, and that's the part that I really think is, is so crucial is no matter how bad our situation is, right. No matter how bleak and outcome looks, no matter what, it only takes one. That's what we're getting. Speaker 2: (08:29) Yeah. Actually I, I re listen to that little video on your website about the doctor. Rob was in a, in a halftime, it was one of your early first ones. I believe Tony wasn't signed up with no training at all. And then suddenly your talk gives up and then you standing on the side of the right guy. What do I don't disappoint? People that are riding past you as they doing it. Rice. Yep. Named some nice person. Decided to sacrifice basically their position in the rice to help you out, help you change a tire and get you back on the road. And prior to that, what was your way of thinking before and what was it afterwards? Speaker 3: (09:13) Well, I mean I think like people don't think people don't do things to us. They do things for themselves and it's kind of the two by four principle and no matter what, no matter what the kind of situation is, I mean it was, it wasn't like I was a bad person, but when it comes to racing, you do that suit best that you can. I asked myself in the question when this guy stopped and I would tell people about this, what I have stopped and the answer to that point, Lisa was no, I wouldn't have stopped. I wouldn't even have thought about it. But once he stopped, then I started exploring then other professional examples of why would other people stop their own race and what was it about these individuals that they got that I didn't get. And so now every race that I go into isn't focused really on how I do every race is who am I going to be able to help. Speaker 3: (10:03) And then it's one of the things I just kind of pray about, put me in a situation Mark and help somebody. And so then the whole viewpoint changes. And the reason why is cause you know, we can't help out others in life without also helping out ourselves. And that's the part that we never get. I mean, if anybody has volunteered before, it's a perfect example. We volunteered. No one leaves volunteers situations helping out kids at a hospital saying, boy, those kids are so lucky that I was here to help them. We say the opposite, right? We say, boy, those kids helped me more than I ever helped them. Yeah. Why is that? Would they give us where they gave us perspective, right? They gave us an appreciation and gratitude for our own problems. I'd gladly take that stuff and we cannot help out others. But that also helping out ourselves. That's the point about getting outside of our own head. If we can just focus on other people, that's how we get outside of our own head and that's how we help ourselves at the same time. So it's, and I think it was like Gandhi or author Ash that said it, you know, one of the most selfish things you can do is to help somebody else. Speaker 2: (11:05) Wow. That's real. It's really insightful. And I tell you what, you're getting into Oak marathons now of light and you've got a hundred model. You, you said you were hoping to play next year, a hundred mile are coming up this year. Yep. What I've, one of the things I love about ultramarathons, and this is how it's changing slowly, but it's very much not about the winners. It's, it's, it's different to say iron man's where it's really competitive and crazy. Most people are doing outwards because they have a personal challenge that they're trying to overcome themselves. It's, it's, you know, me versus me sort of situation for most of the people, the top couple of esteem going for the placings. But for most people understand that it's all about survival and getting to the finish line some which way, and the moments that I've, in my school where I've been literally people saved my lives, people have helped me. Speaker 2: (11:58) I've helped other people in medical situations where you're in dire straights. I mean, one comes to mind. I was running across Nigeria a 333 K race. I'm terribly organized, one of the most poorest, most dangerous countries on earth. Civil war going on. I got food poisoning an hour into the race, passing out and really deep trouble. And one of the other girls comes past me in the race. You know, I'm alone, unconscious in the same, she gets me, you know, wakes me up, gets me out, warms me up, stays with me, keeps me on my feet, drags my ass until the next checkpoint. You know, it took a good couple of hours that she lost out of that in a, in a race that's, you know, on the edge of crazy. And that, that's sort of a sacrifice for someone that she didn't even know, you know, she'd meet two days before and was just phenomenal, you know? Speaker 2: (12:54) And it's those sorts of moments that you think, wow, this is more than just about, did I get to the finish line or not? This is about humanity and this is about, and you know, you, when you, when you go outside of yourself and you, you might be suffering in an ultra somewhere, right? And you're just like, Oh my God, I don't know how I'm going to get there. And then you come across someone who's in worse shape tell you what you like, focus fully on them and you'll forget that you're suffering and they're not an arrow to go buy a new guy. Like, where did my pain go? It's absolutely amazing how when you focus on someone else, your own suffering disappears or diminishes. That's the point. Like when we're stuck in center head, that's when we're behind enemy lines. The only way to get out by an enemy lines is turn your thoughts towards helping somebody else. Speaker 2: (13:48) I mean, think about it, right? When we started encouraging others in those races, we're encouraging ourselves at the same time. So church is, so that's the, so if anybody wants to get actually any of your books, where do they go? They just go to www.drrobbell.com or have they always said that's the best way. Yeah, www.drrobbell.com and and the book on so no one gets there, gets there alone is also sort of a story that was the story of the half iron man and the guy's not going to change my tire. Absolutely. Yeah. And nobody does get there alone in life in general. We all need a team of people and we all need to stand on each other's shoulders, so to speak, to, to reach the top. Tell us a little bit about now your, your work with the athletes that you worked with and some examples perhaps of, of amazing experiences that you've had and things that you've seen in your time as a coach. Yeah, I mean, Speaker 3: (14:53) Yeah, I was saying, I mean I was, I was blessed enough to know early on in my life, this is what I wanted to do. And I got into the field because I was the athlete that would always think too much and no one can, no one could ever help me out, at least never go in, would always say, Hey, those butterflies go away and playing baseball then everyone away for me. And you know, I had a really, I had a hinge moment when I got to college and that was because I was partying way too much. I thought I can play baseball and party in college and be the best, no accountability, what could go wrong. And I, and I fell off a 80 foot cliff in college and you know, fraction my back broke my arm and that was the end of sport. Speaker 3: (15:31) And yeah, that was a hinge most of my life because from that moment on now, everything was different. If that didn't happen, I don't know if I would have taken that psychology class. I don't know if I would've had that one professor who had just spoke right to my soul and I knew I want to do with my life. And you know, always, always be in the ultimate sports honk. And it didn't matter what it was, but if we're trying to do something to the best that we can I just discovered early on that everyone needs a coach. Speaker 4: (16:06) Okay. Speaker 3: (16:06) There's all these demons that I think get in the way of us trying to reach greatness and what we're doing and really as a coach and, and you know, as well as I do, I mean, it, it does take a team and there are no shortcuts. There are no shortcuts to it. And our job is to point out the blind spots in people's lives. I think there's many ways, many routes up to that mountain. There's not one route. And which is going along the journey with athletes and helping them get to where they want to go as just been absolute blessing. I mean, you know, with any coach, I mean there's two types of coaches, those that have been fired and those that will be fired. I've been fired before, you know, so I've been at the lowest of lows. And then when in in the highest of highs you know, our job as coaches sometimes to work ourselves out of a job that's not, that's not the best business model. Speaker 3: (17:02) I don't know. Somebody, I don't know, somebody selling insurance that wants to come in there and be like, boy, I don't really think you need me anymore as insurance sales. So if we're trying to work ourselves out of a job because you know, we're trying to build them up in their capacity, you're gonna get fired. So, I mean, that's, there's just so many examples. I mean, it's just I really just focus on the office that we have and what's the office? So my office is a swimming pool. My offices, you know, is there going to be that golf course sometimes? Is that executive board, but other times, I mean, it's a you know, it's the race track. It's, it's going to be you know, on a, you know, at the tennis match. And then that's, that's the best part. It's just what the office looks like. So you, you, you try and cut Chinese leaps, end Speaker 2: (17:50) Corporate executives. So in all types of sports, what are the, some of the biggest things that in general now people are struggling with? Like is there a couple of central themes that people just keep coming back to that you see again and again as being a major Speaker 3: (18:09) Problem for people on their bridge? Sure. So I think when whenever we hit a new level, there's going to be a new devil. And so a lot of the difficulties when we get like that success and how do we deal with that if, if I've got to boil it down in what I think like the essential mental skills come. I mean obviously the building block of all mental toughness is, is going to be that motivation, right? It's going to be that persistence is, gets back to our why. You know, your goals, your, how are we willing to do the things that we don't want to do? Yeah. After that, then it comes into confidence and I mean confidence that, that trust, that belief in ourselves. And what we're trying to do. There has to be that belief. I believe that everyone has that, but it just gets really muted throughout our lives. Speaker 3: (18:59) A lot of times when we listen and then to that wrong voice, we're not, I think it comes to confidence. What I believe is that we have to adapt the philosophy that it all works out in the end. If it hasn't, then you know what? It's just not the ENT. And that's, that's a big part of what people suffer with. I think another one then it comes back to then focus like how do we build our confidence to what we're focused on? Are we focused on the excitement? Are we focused on being nervous? If we focus on being excited physiologically? I said same exact thing, right? Like we are palms get sweaty. Like we get real anxious, you know, it gets rolling. Our thoughts are a lot, but boy is that nervous or is that excited? Because I think it's excited. It means I want to be in this situation something good can happen. Speaker 3: (19:45) Being nervous means I don't want to be in the situation. This is a threat. And then being able to train our mind to focus on everything is an opportunity. That's how we build a confidence in ourselves. And then that, and then I think that last field, so we got the, the motivation, the confidence, the focus. And then I think that last mental skill, which I suck at is how do we let go? Mistakes. If you show me, if you show me an athlete that can let go mistakes, I will show you somebody that's mentally tough. So I like to say this, our confidence focus is how we build our confidence. How we refocus just reveals the level of confidence. Wow. What I mean by that, if you show me an athlete that makes mistakes and still stay school calm and collected, well what they're really saying is I don't need everything to go my way in order to be successful. And we know bad stuff's going to happen, right? But it's all about how we adjust from that. If you show me an athlete that his or her cool when stuff starts going bad, I'm going to show you somebody that never had any confidence to begin with and then they got to play the mental gymnastics and not as well as competing against themselves. That's where it gets really tough. Speaker 2: (21:00) See, this is a journey for you as I'm making toughness coach, it's not like it's, it's an easy thing we've got at once and we've, we're away laughing and we're never ever going to have a problem again. That doesn't quite work like that. Speaker 3: (21:11) No man, people were, people make more fun of me when I get upset because it's like, wait a minute, I thought you're supposed to be good at this stuff. Speaker 2: (21:16) Yeah. You know, I have moments, Tobin, I'm thinking, you know, you just watch your own behavior sometimes and you're going, hang on a minute. This isn't cool and I'm glad I was watching. Speaker 3: (21:29) Right. It is. I don't think we were really made to coach ourselves. Speaker 2: (21:32) I think we need others to coach us. Very, very good point. It's hard to get out of your own forest and see the trees when you're in the middle of it and someone who has that seed perspective on you can give you a lot of more insight into your behaviors that you're not actually even seeing. And I really love that challenge versus, and I have been in mind, you know, things that I talk about, the challenge versus the threat and changing your cause. It actually changes your physiology when you're standing at the start of a massive race and you start to feel fear and step B, feel nervous and Oh my God, am I trying enough? And all of those things that are going to be absolutely no good to you, they're not. They're not going to help you and your performance then by changing the narrative and your story, like you said, exciting opportunity. Speaker 2: (22:19) This is amazing what you know, what a chance to have that releases actual hormones in your body. The more testosterone you get, more bold feeling rather than the nerves. And that can just change your perspective. And it's a subtle change. Sometimes it's not, you know, like a massive thing. But it'd be enough just to get you over the line and get you going. And we all know like that waiting around for rice can be the worst time once you're actually on the way and you're five Kaizen. It's like right, I got this. But those nerves at the beginning can be pretty bloody horrible, can't they? And that's I can imagine with someone like golfers, I don't play golf, but the mental toughness, a completely different type of mental toughness, but the ability when all eyes are on you and on the, you know, one sick and when you hit the ball, they must have some special challenges as its own. Speaker 3: (23:10) Yeah. And that's it. Cause there's so much time in between shots, you know, but that's why we need people like you to the poor my life and to coach me up cause I can't push myself. Speaker 2: (23:19) Well I had, I loved me to help me get to that a hundred miler that would like, and we can swap some, I need some coaching on, on the mental toughness. How do you do this? How do you bring it across? Be, you know, cause you've obviously been doing this a long time seeming books as let's say in lots and lots of athletes who are Olympic athletes and corporate people and you know, Ben have really had massive success working with you. That's always exciting to connect with and you know, amazing people. And this is, this is one of the selfish reasons I have this podcast. So I get to meet cool people like you. So this is not all selfless. Once again now you see it on your website, there was a quote there that I really resonated with. If you only focus on success, then you'll never reach significance. But if you're living in a life of significance, then success will follow. Yeah. Quote. so if you're focused on Jess winning all the time, just on the money, just on the whatever it is, it's all gold. It's not going to bring you the joy in life. Actual the legacy, if you like. Is that right? Speaker 3: (24:31) Well, that's absolutely true. And the, and the reason why is because well let's use Mount Everest as an example, right? I mean the, the year it takes in terms of preparation, the four to 30 to 40 days of actual hiking, they spend what, 10 15 minutes at the top and when did most of the deaths occur on the way down from Mount Evers? And so I mean, if it's all about the journey, it's all about the process and it's all about who we can help along the way. That's how I think that we get real significance in our life. The fact of you know, even those that hold up the trophy, even those that fly back with a gold medal from the Olympics, there are people that had that feeling lease of, boy is that it? Or okay, okay, now what? Now I've spent my whole life for this and I got it. Speaker 3: (25:25) What now? And, and, and that's the part, right? The new level, new devil. If we focus on other people and making that impact along the way of our journey them, that's how we just focus on, you know, success is going to happen from us. And that's the part of just being able to focus on that process. And be able to make that impact. Those with elite athletes, I mean there, there has to be selfishness there because of how much time it takes. But at the same time, how can we help others along that journey and, and using our skill and our craft and our God given talent to help others. That's how we get that. That's how we get that significance. Speaker 2: (26:11) Yeah. And so it's not just about that gold medal and most people who have, who have a gold medal or something massive success will also understand that it wasn't them alone that got them there. Unless, you know egomaniacs but most of them will understand that this was a team effort. You know, and this was and like you say, we're not all going to be on the gold medalists. We're not all going to be world champions. So it's defining success, insignificance as well. Like the significance for me, like I want to have an, I knew obviously the same, want to have an impact on, on many, many lives and change lives with the knowledge that we have and help people through the journey and help them avoid the problems and the, you know, fast track them to, to success and help them reach their full potential. Speaker 2: (27:06) And therein lies the significance more than the couple of finish lines that are, you know, reached or the podiums that I've managed to reach in the middle that's hanging on the wall. That's all great stuff. But at the end of the day, I think you and I at least when we get to the end of our days, want to look back and go, wow, that all right. I helped a lot of people and I made a big impact in the world and I left the legacy. And these are, these are words that I think you know really, really important for us to have in our vocabulary and to be thinking about, it's not just the individual moment, it's not the selfish endeavor. And I mean, as an athlete I was, when I look back over my younger career and stuff, I was selfish to the point of, you know, I didn't understand I was selfish, but I expected everyone else. Speaker 2: (27:58) But there were doubts around my mission. You know, I was very mission oriented and very focused and that was the only thing in the world that was important. And I understand now that we added a lot of sacrifice on the behalf of other people, had to sit price for me to get there. And you know, you do lead that single-mindedness to, to achieve those sorts of things. But understanding now it's a bit more older person that you there isn't the only macro of success in the, yeah. So Dr Rob what book are you working on at the moment and what are some of the other sort of mental toughness tricks that you can help people gives people, you know, there are a lot of people suffering out there. There are a lot of people with lacking massive self confidence and self belief. They've been told perhaps their whole lives, they're not good enough, that they're not the right shape and not the right height. They're not the right one either to be good at something. Have you got any words of wisdom for them? Speaker 3: (29:03) Sure. I mean the, or the next book that I'm working on, it's called puke and rally. How, how champions adjust. And I know you get this one cause you thrown up and racist too as well. And it's not, yeah, it's not about the puke, it's about the rally and the fact of, you know what? Everyone in our life, everyone has puked. So no matter what, everyone has had setbacks, everyone has had failures. They are inevitable. That is going to happen. The only way to do it is to sit on the sidelines of life. And then you just live a completely different life. You know, if you want to be in the game, there's going to be, there's going to setbacks. And I believe, and if anybody listening that that resonates with this, that it's not about the setback, it's about to come back. Yeah. That's, that's what matters. Speaker 3: (29:51) So it's about the rally. It's about how we rally on your point. I believe this is everyone that has reached high levels of success was told you can't do it. That's a dumb idea. Don't try it. Why is that? Cause I haven't come across anybody that's achieved anything that has, you know, you especially with your mom were told by doctors, there's no way that that person's going to come back. And what does it do? Well, it Galvin not yes it has proved people wrong and I'm going to prove them wrong and that motivation, but it also has like in order to do something, you better believe in yourself. And so if we listen, I mean we got to really thank the people that say you can't do it because they're the ones that are given us a diner, are going to galvanize our own spirit, our own soul and our own confidence towards achieving that goal. Speaker 3: (30:45) And no matter what it's going to be there. Now I think it's really difficult to like coach that way. You know, you can't coach that way. I mean, but I do it all the time. Sometimes I can in short situations tell my pro golfers, boy, there's no way you get this ball up and down and say par and you know what it does, I'll watch me. Right. I'll show, I'll show you. Yeah. And that's the point is who is it that tells you you can't do it? And then what's the other voice say? What's that true voice? Cause like I said, I believe everybody has that confidence muscle. It's there, you know, it just sometimes getting muted so much in our life. But what is that voice really saying and allow that voice instead to be able to come out. You know, a lot of times what I think is we as individuals, I mean we, we hear that voice that we were as a nine year old kid, you know, from our dads saying, you know, how could you strike out? How could you miss up? And then that's the voice that we got in her head. Well, if that's the voice in our head, then what's the real voice that want? And that's, that's the key is just allowing that real voice then and be able to come out and, and sometimes, you know, we've gotta be able to tell ourselves and yell at ourselves rather than just listen to it. Speaker 2: (31:57) Yeah. And, and, and this is, and we've all had those naysayers in their life. And I know in my life I wouldn't have got there inanely of the things I did if I didn't have those people. And if I wasn't trying to prove something, and some people might say that that's a negative motivation, but I actually think that this is a really powerful tool that we can use to really fire the furnaces, to push through those hard times, those obstacles, those times when you want to give up and you think about those people who said you couldn't do it, and you're like, nah, I want to keep going, even though it's painful. When I want to quit, I'm gonna keep on going. And I think that that's a really powerful, and what you see at about the nine year old child, we all have this inner child. Speaker 2: (32:41) I believe this, this kid who took on staff without sautering it, which has landed in our subconscious and then become a part of our thinking mechanisms. You know, when we were paid ugly, told as kids, and often these were teachers, appearance or whatever, we're just having a bad day, you know? But they were telling you things and that they weren't perfect. But when you hear this repeatedly becomes a part of your subconscious programming, and when that becomes the, the voice that sees you useless at sport, you were too dumb to go to university. You're to this, whatever that was that was programmed into your brain. And as an adult, you've got a heck of a job to override that in a subconscious thinking. Is there some ways that you've found to get around that, that programming that we had as kids when Speaker 3: (33:36) Just Speaker 2: (33:37) Put into our subconscious without us even thinking about it? Speaker 3: (33:40) Yeah. The best thing we can do is tell ourselves rather than listen to ourselves. You know what I mean by that is you got to tell yourself what it is that you're going to do here. When you tell yourself then commit to it. When you commit to it, it gets done too often. If we listened to it, then we hear that, well, that voice in the back of my head, you've got to tell that voice sometimes where to go and that it doesn't have a vote in this kind of situation here by confidence. Yeah. Confidence in doubt. Like they live in the same house, but it's confidence. His house now it is a squatter, like it just lives there. Rent free. Well, if there's somebody that overstays their welcome, I'm going to, I'm going to tell them where to go. Right. At least I'm gonna say like, look, it's been a little bit too long. Why don't you just hit the road? But we think you know that doubt that that has a right to live there. And that's the part is tell yourself what you're going to do. Don't listen to yourself. Speaker 2: (34:31) Yeah. And program the stuff that you want in there. So then whether that's through affirmations and outfit gnosis and being around people who are positive, giving the support, the coaching, the mentors, the tribe of people that tell you you can or these things will happen slowly. Speaker 3: (34:51) We assist who you are and what you're capable of. Speaker 2: (34:56) That brings me to the point, you know, the five you have it on your website too. The five people that you hang around with the most. I think it was something, something around there. And so w who you will become. And I think this is also a very important point that we need to bring up. Speaker 3: (35:13) Well, I mean, we, we are, we're a, you show me your friends. I'll show you your future. So true. I mean, if we want a higher net worth, you've got to hang out with people that have a higher net worth. It's just, it's so important because the mindset's different. You know, they, the conversations are different. You know, if you look at any kind of any kind of sport team, I mean, I'll take baseball for instance, but I mean, well, I mean, let's just look at the all blacks, right? The starters are hanging out with the starters all the time. Those are sitting on the bench and not playing. They're hanging out with one another because the conversations are different. And you know, I love the all blacks when it comes to the culture because man, they're focused on the team and boy and I don't know how many little kids are there that aren't thinking, boy, I want to be one. Speaker 2: (35:58) Oh yeah. Everything. Speaker 3: (36:01) And that's the part, I mean, we've gotta be able to hang around successful people and winners, not people that were better than just so we can feel good about ourselves. Yeah. Harrison game. And that doesn't work. Speaker 2: (36:14) Yeah. So when you're hanging around people that you are actually at the top of the class, and if you like, then you don't really, but when you're hanging around people who challenge you and stretch you scare the hell out of you sometimes. Those are the ones that are going to help them change and develop and grow. So pick your tribe carefully is a, is a, is a hugely important message to take away from that one and get the coaching you need and get the support that you need around you so that those naysayers, when they come calling and they will come calling, don't have the control in your mind. And when you do have those naysayers or then you use it as fuel to overcome. Absolutely. Man. Yeah. You find ways to get there. So not people Speaker 3: (36:57) And this, and this is the point, Lisa, and I need you to, I need somebody, show me somebody that that reached success that did not have, somebody said you can't do it. Yeah, maybe there is, but I haven't seen it yet. Speaker 2: (37:10) We've all had those people want, I mean, yeah, I've had them all less through my life and in there can be your family, be your best friends. And it's not to say they're not good people. There may be reasons why they are saying this to you. I know, you know, parts of my family. It was like fear for you because they're scared that you're going to get hurt, you know, or going to fail. And what happens then? And so that can be well-meaning naysayers, but they can still be nice. I as, and we have to get ourselves away from that and listen to the people who've done it and listen to the people who tell you you can do it and that you're going to get there and give you a pass to get on your way. And that's why it's really, really important. I want us to just talk a little bit about scarcity mindset versus the abundance mindset and why it was competitive world that we live in. Speaker 2: (38:03) You know, we don't have to be, well, if I help that person, I mean, classic example, so mental toughness coaches, right? We could be going, well, I'm not talking to him because he's competition, you know? Or I can go, wow, he's got insights that I don't have and perhaps I haven't sliced the, you don't have. And we can. Yeah, we can. We can learn from each other and we can grow. And that's a, that's a classic example of the mindset we both have, which is an abundance mindset and not a scarcity mindset. Do you see a lot of the other, you see a lot of the scarcity mindset and how do you. Speaker 3: (38:37) I mean, you know, I think we all possess, I still possess it. You know what I mean? I, I think true success, true success is when we can root for everybody. Because then what that means is, is, you know, and I, I grew up sometimes I would go to my wife's you know, Thanksgiving and they'd have these meals, but it's a big Italian family. And if you don't get in there, that's going to be gone. Speaker 2: (39:01) Well, right? Speaker 3: (39:04) Yeah. I mean, so if we approach life that way, then what we're saying is, is that there's one piece of pie for me. If I don't get that piece of pie, then it's gone. Look, there's the, being able to root for everybody means that I can still have my slice and you can be successful too. Being able to root for everybody is true success because it means just because that person's successful doesn't mean I can't be successful too. And then we're not playing a zero sum game, then we're playing a game of abundance and then just the game changes, you know, we're playing on a different one. That's the part where I kind of look at like how often am I room for other people and if not, then I'm coming from the point of scarcity. The real part about that and the scary part is then that's what I start projecting. Know the people only when I can get that abundance mindset in here, then, then I'm able to give that away. Speaker 2: (40:01) Yeah. Without being, these are my little pressure steams when no one else is giving them and having that mindset of I have to hold everything in and my knowledge or my, whatever it is, skills or whatever is a scarce thing. It isn't just about one, one point. There's only one slice for you. It's actually lots of highs when you start walking in. And I think just adopting that attitude in life makes you a more generous and caring human being for other people. So doctor, I'm thinking very much for all of these insights today. I really appreciate your time and I hope we will get to have a few more sessions like gruesomely I'd love to swap notes and maybe work on an idea or two with you. And dr Rob also has his own podcast. Can you tell us where people can, can listen to your show wants? Speaker 3: (40:49) Oh well yeah, it's a, it's 15 minutes of mental toughness either on my website, www.drrobbell.com or or Apple. I am and I look forward to having you as a guest on their tool. I can collect is, yeah, cause your book will be coming out. Thanks. Fantastic. And that would be great. Speaker 2: (41:06) No, it'd be absolutely fantastic to do that and I can't wait to do, to do a few things with you, Dr. Rob, I'm very glad that I found you on LinkedIn. It's been fantastic and I'm sure that my listeners would have gotten a lot out of today, so I really appreciate that. Dr Rob bell.com six books Siemens on the way. Go and check those books out. There's also a 30 day challenge on, on Dr Rob's website. Make sure you check that one out as well. And if you've got any questions, I'm sure Dr Rob will help you. If you've got, if you've got anything that you want to know from him, so please reach out to them. Have you got a Instagram handle or a Facebook or anything? I do. It's you know, with Twitter and Instagram says D R or B B E L L. Easy. So doc, Rob, thank you very much for your time today and we'll be in touch again soon. Speaker 1: (41:55) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com.  

Conor O'Driscoll is beginning to make a name for himself. After spending part of his career at Brown Forman and Angel's Envy, he was recruited to fulfill the role left behind by Denny Potter. Conor is now the seventh Master Distiller in Heaven Hill's 84-year history. We spend some time getting to know Conor's past, what the recruitment process is like to find a master distiller, what his role is going to be with the operation side of things, and how at the end of the day he just doesn't want to screw anything up. Show Partners: Barrell Craft Spirits enjoys finding and identifying barrels that contain distinctive traits and characteristics. They then bottle them at cask strength to retain their authentic qualities for the whiskey enthusiast. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Distillery 291 is an award winning, small batch whiskey distillery located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Learn more at Distillery291.com. Show Notes: This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about dry January. Where are you from? How did you end up in Terre Haute, Indiana? How did you get into bourbon? Tell us about your time at Woodford. What was difficult to learn about the distilling process? Talk about working at Angel's Envy. Is distilling rum the same process as bourbon? Are distillers in charge of blending? How did you end up at Heaven Hill? Did you have to give up anything to move into this role? Are you looking for ways to improve the legacy brands? Was there a learning curve coming to Heaven Hill? Who determines the increase in production? Were you involved in forecasting at your other roles? How did you learn the Heaven Hill portfolio? Do you have a favorite brand? What was it like to sign your first bottle? 0:00 Perfect timing. Luck of the Irish again, right? 0:03 Yeah. I get to say that one every day. 0:19 What's up everybody? It is Episode 231 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny and we've got just a little bit of news to go through. Four roses, like every other distillery out there is trying to figure out what do you do with old barrels and there are all kinds of breweries across the nation just want to gobble them up. And four roses is collaborating with Brooklyn Brewery for a new limited release beer called Black Ops. Now I've seen it before, but this one's a little bit different because this vintage of Brooklyn Black Ops was aged for four months in four rows of small batch barrels that were then selected by master distiller Brent Elliott and re fermented with champagne yeast. This Russian Imperial stout comes at 12.4 ABV. raises a fluffy dark brown head combines big chocolate and coffee notes with a rich underpinning of vanilla like oak. Brooklyn Black Ops will be available in limited quantities wherever Brooklyn Brewery is available. A new development is happening in downtown local with a new website that offers an interactive map. a whole list of attractions featuring downtown distilleries like old forester angels envy Victor's plus a whole gallery of pictures. It's called the bourbon district. There are flagpoles and Information Science going up around downtown around the city that gives information history and directions to all the bourbon related happenings in downtown Louisville. You can check it out online at bourbon ism.com that's like tourism, but bourbon ism.com Ryan and myself we traveled down to Lynchburg, Tennessee this week to go and pick our first ever single barrel of jack daniels. We've heard so much about these single barrels being stag killers that we just had to go out and try it. ourselves, we're really looking forward to bringing this barrel selection along with many others to our Patreon community in 2020. And right now our goal is set at 20 barrel selected for the Patreon community in the next calendar year. With the holidays approaching, it's a good time to think about how fortunate we are that we get to enjoy this great hobby of bourbon. With the help of the bourbon pursuit Patreon community and the fellows on the round table. We've kicked off our first ever Christmas charity raffle, go to bourbon pursuit.com slash Christmas to see all the packages that we have lined up. There's bottles of pursuit series, Episode 17, which was our collaboration with willet distillery of Maker's Mark 46 private selection that we did a Russell's reserve from rare bird one to one a victors barrel strength right Elijah Craig barrel proof the old label, Traverse City collaboration from bourbon or as well as breaking bourbon and even more bottles. There's also apparel glassware tasting sheets, a complete signed copies Of all the books that have come from Fred MiniK, as well as a signed copy from sip and corner, Brian Harris as well. Every dollar raised is going to the USO in pets for vets. Both of these organizations do incredible things for our veterans and their families. Every entry gives you a chance to win any of the prize packages that we have. And of course you must be 21 year old or older to enter entries are accepted until midnight of December 22 2019. So please go visit bourbon pursuit.com slash Christmas to get in on the action and help out veterans in this holiday season. Now for today's podcast, Conor Driscoll he's beginning to make a name for himself in this bourbon world. After spending his career at Brown Forman and angels envy, he was recruited to fulfill the role left behind by Denny Potter. Connor is now the seventh master distiller in heaven hills 84 year history. We spend some time getting to know Conors past, what the recruitment looks like. Even like that whole process. Even Find a new master distiller and what his role is going to be with the operation side of things and how the end of the day, he just doesn't want to screw anything up. Alright, let's kick off the podcast. Here's Joe from barrel craft spirits, and then you've got Fred minich with above the char. 4:17 I'm Joe Beatrice, 4:18 founder of barrell craft spirits, we enjoy finding and identifying barrels that contain distinctive traits and characteristics. We then bottle them a cash rank to retain their authentic qualities for the whiskey enthusiastic next time. Ask your bartender for barrell bourbon. 4:34 I'm Fred MiniK. And this is above the char I as a journalist, I get pitched a lot of stories and over the past 15 years, you know in covering the booze business in one shape or another, I have received about every pitch you can possibly imagine from celebrities, to new nightclubs, you know to the fads like white club and every kind of Vodka flavor you can imagine, and yada and on and on and on and on. One of the latest trends in the booze industry is is one of the more fascinating trends that I have ever seen. And that is dry January and this entire belief that the alcohol industry needs to start preaching and talking about not drinking. And what's interesting about this is that you would say, you could take a step back and say, Well, if you encourage people to not consume alcohol, wouldn't that hurt the industry, but the counter to that is take a look at what happens when you drink too much. People die, people die of liver poisoning. There's certain types of cancers that are linked to drinking too much alcohol. There's all kinds of problems that can be linked to over consumption. And by overconsumption I'm talking five to seven drinks a day. You know, getting drunk. Every day, binge drinking to the point of where you have to get your stomach pumped on a regular basis. I mean, these are real issues that people face and to counter that the alcohol industry has been promoting mocktails and dry January. Now, I'm torn, because I'm a firm believer in drinking moderation. And I'm a firm believer in just being responsible. And it's something in our there's something in our country's DNA that we don't allow ourselves to really have a conversation about what is responsibility, even the brand's they're all saying yada, yada, yada, drink responsibly, don't drink and drive all this but what is drinking responsibly? Well, they'll say, well, it's having two drinks, but but again, what is it? Is it you know, drinking, not drinking when you're emotionally, you know, inspired or connected to something? Is it not drinking on anniversary? Is it just having one drink? And, you know, maybe you just got married or you're celebrating something? Can you have five drinks, then? I mean, no one really talks about what drinking responsibly is. They just have their taglines. And now this whole effort about, you know, mocktails and dry January, it makes me question if we truly know what we're trying to do in this business when it comes to encouraging moderation, because if you ask me, getting people to not drink during January has the opposite effect. That's teaching abstinence. That's not moderation. And that's this week's above the char Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram at Fred MiniK and check out my new YouTube series on YouTube. Just search my name Fred MiniK. Until next week, cheers 7:58 Welcome back to that episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon, Kinney and Ryan here and this is the this is the first time I think Ryan might have been to this office in this conference room, because no 8:09 you haven't. You've been here. I've been here Barney lovers. We were We were not in this conference room. Yeah, I remember when this read 8:14 Yeah. Cuz I was like we had we had Larry on last time. And, you know, so we're at the the, I don't call it the marketing offices. It's the business offices of heaven hill that are located here in Louisville, Kentucky. It's catty corner to the Maker's Mark offices, so they're always spying on each other to kind of figure out what's happening over there and stuff like that. I guess 8:34 bar sounds just not good enough for him. 8:37 I don't know. I mean, I totally get it. There's way more lunch spots and place to take people. Yeah, 8:42 there's more than maybes. But you know, the other thing is, you know, I also feel bad for a lot of the people that that do have to work in these multiple locations because you are, you're driving a lot back and forth to whether it's distillery whether it's the offices because, you know, we're not going to Bardstown. We all happen to be here and global. So it It made sense to come here but I know that you know our guest today he's got to go. He's got to go to the Bernheim distillery. He's got to come here. He's got to go to the Heritage Center. He's He's all he's making the trifecta of all the places he has to hit up. I guess we'll find out if that's one of the perks you know, your mileage, your mileage gas reimbursement, 9:19 or company car when your masters dollars. Absolutely. Yeah. 9:23 So with that, let's go ahead and introduce our guests. today. We have Connor O'Driscoll. Connor is the newest minted master distiller at heaven Hill. He is also the fifth master distiller that's been crowned at heaven Hill. So congratulations. 9:36 Thank you very much. I think I'm seventh seventh. Is that what it was? Okay, then the era era 9:41 fifth and superior than the heaven Hill. 9:43 See what happens? We get Wikipedia information. Yeah, they're right 9:46 in Google food just wasn't on my side this morning. Yep. So Connor, welcome to the show. It's great to be here. honored to be here. Yeah, I mean, we've we've met before we talked and and 9:57 yeah, we did is we didn't wanna Whiskey and dine with getting Daya 10:01 What was that? Was it was that raw? 10:03 Yeah it was what was it a long time it was that was my debutante get to get to know Connor Connor night is what it was so yep. 10:10 And and you know estimate impression and vice 10:14 vice versa yes yeah 10:16 and I could understand like it's got to be difficult coming into a situation like this and and seeing a product portfolio that's the breath in front of you and saying like okay, now I've got to be 10:27 the face of this Yeah, don't screw it up. I mean, that literally was the the guiding mantra the the first one still is don't screw it up. But you mentioned the portfolio. You know, the other place I've worked or you know, great whiskeys, but it was like one whiskey maybe two or three. And now you come to heaven Hill, and there's a lot and honestly I'm I'm still learning the portfolio. But what a fun facet of the job to learn the portfolio. 10:52 Yeah, well, not only bourbon you have like in I'm not sure if you know that all the different brands are 10:58 wearing well. We're making I'm on the I'm still learning the whiskey anything so yeah, we got our five mash bills that go into multiple different skews. And you know everything from the mellah, corn, corn whiskey all the way up to heaven hell 27 with all the fantastic products in between there. Sure. 11:17 So before we get sorry, not the products that we want to kind of get know more about you because I can't pin it down exactly what region from Texas are you from? 11:26 Very, very far eastern Texas. So Far East across the Atlantic, I grew up in Dublin and Ireland. So the joke is they put an Irishman charged with whiskey. Am I living the dream or I live in the stereotype to be determined. So yeah, I grew up in Dublin, went to school there, got my degree in chemical engineering there and actually started my career with Pfizer pharmaceuticals, in Cork on the south coast of Ireland. 11:52 I've been with them for forgetting quite a year and they asked me to go to Terre Haute, Indiana. I have a 12:03 word for john deere. Yeah. 12:05 They had a actually was kind of cool. You know, for a guy straight out of college the we were using a genetically engineered and our genetic genetically engineered bacteria to make the enzyme to make cheese. And it started was a fermentation based process. So you know again for a kid straight out of college This was bleeding edge technology. And it's amazing that you're like this was exciting like 12:28 these were excited on time product 12:29 was exciting. The process is exciting. Yeah. And it was 12:35 it was supposed to be a six month assignment four months and they asked me to stay and six years later I quit. So it wasn't so awful that I couldn't stay there for six years now the people I worked with the fantastic still friends with some of them. You know, the, the, I guess the real thing that kept me there was I reconnected with some friends from Louisville. I started coming down here on the weekends and probably had enough Been for that the the lore of Terre Haute would not have been strong enough to keep me there but you know gotten older level very well got to know the road from Taro to local really really well. And you know like i said i for six years and Taro and I quit 13:15 and spent that summer riding my motorcycle across the country. Oh, it's interesting. Yeah, still still have it's a 93 CEO Harley guy and I haven't heard they said 93 superlight 13:26 spent seven weeks that summer writing 11,098 miles. As I was heading back towards Indiana, I realized it was gonna be very close to 11,000 miles. I said if I don't make 11,000 miles I'm riding around the block. I do make 11,000 13:42 ended up being 11,000. That's like me with my Fitbit every day. I'm like, all right. Yeah. 13:48 Yeah, it's kind of same thing. But I was in Mexico, Canada and 23 states in between. Wow, the week so it's pretty cool. It's quite an epic road trip. It was epic. It was really cool. 13:57 So So kind of talk a little bit more about the road. Trippler were it was there any like other sites that you're like amazed to see, I know for me personally, people always thought about going and seeing like the Grand Canyon. And for me, I remember going to see in the Grand Canyon and you look, you get there and you're like, Alright, let's get out of here like we've seen it. 14:14 Well, so the the genesis of the trip was 1996 was the 75th anniversary of Route 66. So Harley organized is rolling rally, they call it start in Milwaukee for hardware parties are built, came into Chicago picked up route 66 and then followed it west to Santa Monica. There's not much left to route 66 but they had a historian with us who every evening would talk about, you know what we'd seen today what we're going to see tomorrow and it was 400 and some bikes did it and and I was one of them and it was thousands you could join anywhere along the way. So remember riding into like touken Karina Mexico, and just as far as you could see in front as far as you could see it behind double line of Harley's. So that was Very cool, but you know, got to see, you know, all kinds of the US and especially you mentioned the Grand Canyon. I mean, I've been to the Grand Canyon three times twice on my Harley and one the first time was was on this ride. And yeah, it's it's pretty stunning to see it. 15:17 What did you learn about the US on that trip that like that, you know, before I get to our country, you know, you probably have preconceived notions about 15:26 it and like, I know, I'd been in the, in the, in the states for six years and have taken multiple road trips, you know, West and wherever, but to see it from the back of a Harley and to see it for that long. You know, I wrote every inch of highway one Pacific Coast Highway, you know, from the Mexican border, the Canadian border. I wrote over independence pass road across the desert in Texas, you know, there's one stretch of highway there were, you know, it's 100 miles between gas stations. And Mike's got him out of 30 moderating yeah yeah. So I just I mean the vastness the variety you know to go from you know sea level to 14,000 feet that's not four to 12,000 feet anything's past go from the Pacific Northwest Texas desert yeah just stunning 16:20 was a little bit different than than Ireland to because at least in Ireland if you do that kind of driving least you see castles 16:27 across the US like, not really Oh Harris castle is a Hearst Castle just holiday. 16:31 Just holiday. 16:34 Yeah. 16:35 So kind of talk about what's that that next evolution of your journey? How did you get into I mean, you were doing the cheese thing you stopped. 16:42 What I wasn't, I was a pre chorus. I was doing the the enzyme thing the enzyme is I know it sounds really bad. I'm like, I'm gonna do that cheese thing. Yeah, we were we were. We were in the cheese supply chain. But yeah. You know, the process I worked on in Ireland was fermentation based. This one in Terre Haute was fermentation. And after I Well, after the motorcycle trip, I ended up in Colorado, skied all winter, and then got my career going again. And it's an awesome severance package. I had to save smart I know Sarah respects bed safe, smart. And I learned to live cheeping. And so when I got my career go and again, I said, well, I've tried this production thing, I'll try engineering. And I put the design and things and did that for another six years and that was that was less fulfilling. Let's say it was very deal. bertina is that a word? It is 17:35 already me. I will take the take the new terminology, what it was, you know, sit in a cubicle, that type of thing. 17:43 By this point, I was married and I'd always said that, you know, I was going to stay in the US as long as it was fun. And yet once it was no longer fun, I leave but of course, you know, you're still here. It's still here. It's still fun transcontinental motor motorcycle trip. Pretty fun winter skiing. Pretty fun, you know, I've still fun 18:04 20 years later 18:06 21 years later So, you know, I said it quit being fun, I would go back to Dublin and try and get a job making Guinness because that would be fun. And once I realized that wasn't leaving, and like I said it was getting tired of this, the engineering end of things. So I gotta go What's next? You know, where where should I? Where should I take my career and like I said, the biggest thing was in the back of my mind was that it's not the closest thing but you know, kind of along that arc, this bourbon thing seems kind of cool. So that was in 2002 when I really started thinking about it but you know long before any boom long before you know any any even hint of the boom you know, Woodford had been in existence for what six years at that point. That's That's how long ago it was. So I started knocking on doors and it literally Two years before Geico Leo reading or who had run, what's now the brand form of his salary he retired and ever read ratcheted up one and opened position. And I was lucky enough to get hired into that. And the previous person hired into that. That job was my boss who had been hired 26 years prior to that. That's how slow the industry was that but brown Forman hired me and it was like whew, dream job. And I spent five years in Shively, you know, learning how to learn how to run into Syria how to make whiskey and in 2008, nine runner up then they sent me out to Woodford and again Woodford was tiny then but the boom was probably that's, you know, it was probably starting that our had started and was starting to pick up some momentum. 19:50 Yeah, that's when you kind of start seeing a lot of the uptick and rise of people just visiting, distilleries and stuff like that. Not so much the the craze we see today of bye Just flying off the shelf, but definitely a more of an interest from the average consumer. And probably nearing the time to when a lot of distilleries are thinking like, Oh, we probably need a visitor center. 20:12 So when for did have a visitor center, which is kind of cool, but you mentioned the uptick and visitors that literally was the first thing we saw. You know, Hank, at that point, the visitor center had been designed for maybe 30,000 visitors a year and the bourbon trail came on right around then and really kick things up and you know, there weren't that many visitor centers and Woodford had the newest nicest one. And you know, so to that wasn't quite the ground for the Woodford but it was pretty close to it. So to be there at that point in in the industry's growth and in Woodford growth was just well, perfect timing. Look at the Irish again right. 20:50 Yeah. album to get to say that one had bed every day. 20:56 So the I said from 2009 till What was it say? Two years ago 17 was at Woodford did. Most of that was, you know, running the distillery Did you know Did a lot of cool things were worked with a lot of cool people learned a ton. Kind of was part of it was you know, it's just it was gratifying, Exciting, thrilling to be part of the growth of that brand. Like said when I went out there, it was tiny. By the time I left, we were shipping over a million cases a year. And you know, it had become what it is now. Or, 21:29 you know, yeah, you still had a hand and a lot of the product that's still coming out today, anything like 21:34 that. When I left there are people who said, you know, are you going to do it all the person you've told them what fruit you have? And I was like, what a drink it 21:42 and it's good for at least seven years. Yeah, I have confidence. It'll be good for a long time. It's still a good team out there. So 21:47 yes, what to say speaking of the team, I mean, talk about a relationship or time with Chris Morris or anything like that, because I know that you you probably had some sort of interaction with him and we 21:57 worked very closely together and what a cool guy to work with. I mean His his knowledge of the industry and, you know, he he was clearly the tip of the spear in the in the in the growth of Woodford and in the guidance of its growth you know the Masters collections you know I was lucky enough to have a hand on those and you know make several of those but they are all his brain children and you know to work closely with him and the rest of the team as well. And you know the you know, Elizabeth Nicole who's now the system master sitter, she worked with me for a while Woodford and that was that was a lot of fun. She's She's cool. Yeah. 22:36 A little tight knit family. You guys yeah, Christmas cards. I go back. 22:40 We just exchanged bottles. Yeah. So I'm curious when you get into you know, distilling, like you said you you know you came from the end zone fermentation like, Is there like that when you show up as like art? Here's the training manual. And let's 22:52 go No, no, no, their age or there really isn't. And especially back then because you know, when you haven't hired someone for 26 years, there's no onboarding manual, y'all know new guy manual. So it was you know, kind of seat of the pants stuff, you know, I followed my Glen Glaser was my boss learned a ton from him followed him around every day, like a lost puppy, you know, work with the operator is kind of sadness them quite another, those are the guys who turned the vows and, you know, run the show, so, you know, sit with them and learn from them and just kind of be a sponge, soak it up. 23:27 So it was a kind of like station. So like, this month, I'm going to be focusing on how to turn these valves next 23:33 month. It's guys, it's, it's, it's all inclusive, it's kind of in depth. And I remember, you know, by time I joined bra form, you know, I worked in production for six, seven years, I've done design engineering, you know, across multiple different interest industries for another six years. So, you know, hired in and, you know, Glenn said it's gonna take good two years to really understand this process. And I was like, has 24:01 And literally two years to the day, I was like, I think 24:04 I'm starting to get this. Yeah. But it's just you know, it's, you know, you think about making whiskey you know, you get granny mellet mash it from Anna distill it put in the barrel, five easy steps, but you get a distillery and everything's scheduled on top of itself. And there's you got to do this first, but you got to wait for that. And then you got to worry about byproducts and is your East up to speed and blah, blah, blah, blah. So getting the integration of all those parts and the timing of all those parts and just getting everything to work in concert and understanding all the multiple nuances of flash. That's where the, those are the details and that's what the devil is. 24:41 So it's like Malcolm Gladwell, his role of 10,000 hours. So you gotta do yeah, is 24:47 when I read that book, a lot of it. A lot of it rang true. Yeah, for sure. 24:51 I don't I'm not familiar with the book. 24:53 Oh, it's just had that to be an expert. Really, they've, if you have 10,000 hours, like that's where your achievement mastery in any subject, but so, well, that's good to know. So if you do 40 hours a week, there's, you know, 2000 working hours in a year. So if you're just doing the bare minimum, you know, take you five years. Yes. So, I'm sure you're working more in that accelerated. 25:19 So we got a while until we figure out this podcast. Yeah, 25:23 we're only like 500 hours. 25:26 Well, I mean, that's, it's, it's, it's, it's a good way to kind of see how you grew up in and you learn the industry from the inside with inside of brown Forman because a lot of people we take tours and you go through and they really dumb it down. And exactly as you said, they take the five steps and like this is the process. However, there's so many intricacies with inside of that process that that you that you had just talked about, you know, during your time there what was what was one of those intricacies that you said like, Okay, this is this is going to take more time to figure out Like this is where this is where the variables tend to change a lot, that sort of thing. 26:04 So the, the easiest example of that is, you know, the optimizing the easting mashing fermentation at Woodford, you know, when I got there. They were running for mentors that we were making whiskey, everything was trotting along just fine. And like we talked earlier, this is kind of as the boom was starting up, and I was looking at ways to increase productivity and the and the distillery so one of the easiest ways to increase productivity is to put more grain in the fermenters and still doing everything exactly the same way. There's just more grain in there, therefore, there's more food for the east, therefore, they can make more alcohol therefore, you can fill more barrels. So talking with my colleague, Kevin Smith, down at jack daniels, who for every five minutes that I could talk about Eastern he could talk for five hours and and just he's a fascinating guy and just Fanta knowledge, but remember having a casual conversation with him about you know, increasing The beer gallonage and the amount of grain in the fermenters. And he says, Well, before you do that, thanks very polite about before you die, you're going to have to fix your easting was like nothing wrong or easting that's embarrassing. I spent a lot of my early curriculum. And as I, you know, we, we set it from enter and hours later at bubbles and then days later, we get whiskey out of it. And, you know, he very politely disabuse me of that. And that was step one in a two year process to get from where it was a very crude way of managing East that was actually doing more to hamper the East than it was to optimize it. But I said two years into it, and the fermenter productivity was up for you know, 25% the whiskey quality was off the charts the rates of ferment for metric content. We've had zero, you'd walk in the distillery and just smell how good it was. And from a initial notion of, let's put some more grain on the from Enter to two years later, again, I think we're finally turning the corner here. Yeah. And then of course, there were, there was some short term gains that are immediate gains, like, All right, we're on the right path, but to really, you know, get it from a system that might have been that's got 85% efficient to 90% efficient and 95% efficient, the 98% efficient, you know, to really start tweaking into details there. 28:33 Yeah, so East I mean, I guess you probably have a good idea what it's going to do based on experience, but it's a living thing. So are there times that you're just like, what the hell is going on? Like I did everything right. And it's just like, on the ship. 28:46 If you do everything right, it won't. So if it goes to shit, then something's gone wrong. Okay. Yeah, is the bottom line. You know, the the easiest way to think about it, I mean, the East makes all the alcohol and a good chunk of the flavor. So if you treat the strike, she'll treat you right back. And best quote on that. I was doing a camp run amok group at Watford and I had to give a 15 minute masterclass and easting mashing fermentation three times a day, one of the groups the young lady on it after I gave my East HBS as she said, so Randhir East is queen. I was like, Yes, that's exactly it. That's a perfect way to put it. So again, you treat the stride and she'll treat you right. Right back. And, you know, that's, that's, that's kind of the goal. 29:36 So let's move to the next stage in your journey here. So brown Forman, your time there was done in 2017. And you had a little bit of stint at angel's envy as well. You did talk about that. 29:45 Yeah. So I was kind of plugging along doing my do my thing at Woodford and you know, by this stage, I was running the warehousing and processing so another chunk of the industry learning something new. We were building the new warehouses Woodford So, you know, kind of overseeing that and understanding how to operate these giant warehouses. But once we got that system down, it kind of became road and I was like, all right, you know what else? What else is out there? You know, I've had 14 really fantastic years at Brown Forman. You know, is there anything within brown form? Is there anything without and right as I was thinking these things a former brown former former Woodford colleague who's now an age as me, she called me and said, Hey, we may have a position Are you interested? So I went down there on a Saturday morning, various repetitiously and kind of looked around and they heard they were, you know, less than a year out of startup and the brand new facility but in an older building, you've been to them? 30:44 Yeah, yes. Going to say ran into a lot of issues getting that thing up and running, and they got through them all. 30:50 But just everything about it kind of resonated with me. You're like yes, 30:55 I don't want to drive for sales since I was a 30:57 significant part of it because by this point, we had warehouses in midway so my commute was from level two midway check in with the gang there then come back to sales and generally spend the rest of my day ever sales but occasionally we bump between the two of them and then come home so getting close to three hours a day in the car wow yeah audio book time 31:21 have to say I was like I know people in like LA and they do all those commutes every day in San Francisco I'm like, how do you sit in the car for an hour one way every single day like 31:30 I mean, I was doing highway speed so it was it was relatively benign and for most of that time I was driving to Woodford to make whiskey you know it's not that bad. Yeah. But the you know, the the first several months that I was at angel's envy and I would drive home in 10 minutes, I'd literally sit in the garage and I What do I do? 31:50 How did I get 31:50 here? Like 31:52 What Did you take a walk to listen to? That podcast 31:55 way that are better? It's like I better go to the bar home or go to the bar real quick is my wife's can make me do a lot Georgia 32:02 dinner ready so 32:05 that was that was a big one there but you know love being part of a party. It's interesting that the three companies I've worked for in this industry are all different facets of family owned. But 32:17 was angels me family and when you started I was like I'm a car dealer car. I got, of course the Hendersons to 32:21 ride. But it's you know, it was it was fully owned by Bacardi. Gotcha. And Bacardi bring a ton to the table. I mean, they've been there, truly a global company. I mean, we reported up through Geneva, accounts payable were in Costa Rica and sap support was in the Philippines and stuff like that. So, you know, some timezone juggling, but that global perspective was was pretty cool. And just the cultural diversity within the I was at a meeting in Puerto Rico and I was the closest thing to a Yankee in the room and that way any yo You don't get that very often. Yeah. And those like, they're all speaking English for me, because I'm the only one here who doesn't speak Spanish. Yeah, that's kind of embarrassing. But anyway, that was, you know, lots of lots of positive things. Yeah. And again, just a different way of running running the same industry. But Bacardi have a lot of cool things they do, you know, worked with a lot of really smart, hardworking, fun people there. And of course, you know, see an angel, you know, I think the, when I came in, they were just coming out of that startup mode. And, you know, I was tasked with kind of taken out of that wild west, just run headlong at the prop problem till you fix it. All right, let's slow down. Let's think about it. Let's get a process in place. Let's think about where we want to go and how we're going to get there. And just start, you know, like slapping a process on stuff. 33:53 This is an amateur question, but a is distilling around the same process as Barban, but just different ingredients. Different agree it's basically the same. You ferment molasses Sure, Ryan. But then of course it's it's a shorter faster you don't have to mail anything you don't have to necessarily mash anything. 34:12 And then the aguar DNA 34:16 the letter that I guardia day, what is that? It's funny 34:21 to say it's it's the the new make sense. Gotcha. And then you know it's aged in general use barrels for shorter period and of course it's the heat of the Caribbean versus, you know, the seasonal cycles here. Sure. But I know it's I kind of left before I really could deep deep dive into that process. But you heard the word Bacardi and you're like, 34:44 I got a question, but 34:46 let me throw a curveball over the other. I mean, the fermentation and distillation are 34:50 very, very slowly never talked around distilling. 34:54 I've never been around the city. I saw it on TV. 34:58 But no the gang There are there. The Joe Gomez the master Blender down there is just he is one of those icons of the industry. The nicest guy you'll ever meet will talk all day long about it and just he, he wants to be your friend. You want to be his friend. And to spend time with people that can was cool. But then, like the biggest difference, I guess, is the aging. 35:23 Gotcha. So you talked about how he's the master Blender did do distillers here are they in charge of blending as well. 35:32 With the careers of master distiller spanning almost 50 years, as well as Kentucky bourbon Hall of Famer and having over 100 million people taste his products. Steve nalli is a legend of bourbon who for years made Maker's Mark with expertise and precision. 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Live fast and drink responsibly. 37:32 So you talked about how he's the master Blender did do distillers here are they in charge of blending as well or generally speaking, so that's you know, it's interesting. You know, in Rome, it's all about the blending. 37:45 And that's why the the focus is on master blenders and you know, if you look at the history of Bacardi, the Bacardi founding members have generally come up through that. That that that supply chain, I guess what do you want to call it? Through that right? beams, you know, yeah, exactly. I mean, so the the people running the business know the business. 38:07 But then on our side of it and the bourbon 38:12 you know, blended bourbon is kind of it's still got that post prohibition nasty connotation. So we're not set we don't focus so much on the on the blending side of things. Although, you know, there that is that is, you know, one stave to our barrel as it were. 38:30 Absolutely. So, I think we're going to see a common theme here because I think this is a, probably an inhibitor to a lot of people that that work in your type of scenario in this type of industry. It's hard to maybe make upward progression, because there's people within these roles that are there for 38:50 10 2030 and there's only a handful of them. 38:54 That or you're in a situation where is it as a family legacy? You Got the nose, you've got the Russell's odds are they're not going to let some outsider come in. Cecil come in. And so you have this sort of like this cap on upward mobility. And so you had your your time at angel's envy. So kind of talk about how this process came to be of interviewing at heaven Hill and making some connections and kind of making your way into this role. 39:28 So I known Alan through the industry on lattes or co I known him for several years, just through the industry, like I said, and you know, I was I was happy at angel's envy. I was planning on going nowhere. I was not planning on going anywhere, whatever. And then the news broke that Danny had left and I mean, I was stunned as everybody else but I never I didn't even think like hot there's an opportunity for me. was like, wow, Danny left. So many Alright, so you were all your agent 40:03 start negotiations, 40:04 maybe I should. But actually, it wasn't long after that. That was Danny reached out to me. And because again, I'd known Danny as long as I've been in this business. And he said, he'd been asked to find some suitable candidates and you know, thought me and I was like, wow, I'm so flattered. You know, I hadn't even thought about that. But 40:26 Wow. 40:28 I thought about it. I was like, You know what, I've got a really good job here. I just made a big move and 18 months ago. I'm gonna stay here. And we chatted some more. Thanks very much. That was really flattering. And it's kind of one of the things as soon as I hung up, I was like, 40:43 Damn, it probably wasn't the right 40:45 answer. And then went home told my wife about it and she goes, Yeah, that wasn't the right answer. So 40:53 I forget if Alan call me next or if Danny call me back or what it was, but either way we got back in touch again. I was like, yeah, let's let's see. Let's talk. And the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. What were the hesitations? The fact that I just made a big move and I liked what I was doing that changes me. I liked being part of a party. 41:15 Yeah, it's it's always tough to be put in a situation like that you feel like you're going to burn a bridge by coming in. It's like 41:21 coaching in basketball. You know, somebody had a mid major, they're happy. They're doing well. And then you're like, but the big leagues you're feeling Exactly. 41:27 And it's funny. You said the big leagues. You know, that was kind of the the catchphrase we will but I bought it down by my office at angel's envy overlooked slugger field. So as I'm thinking through this, it's like I'm, I'm pitching AAA and doing fine pitching AAA and the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees just called I just said no to the New York Yankees Don't say no to the New York Yankees. Yeah. So luckily, the New York Yankees were upset that I had said no the first time and you know, we talked back to the forwards and the more 41:58 you played hard to get Wherever you go, you go by 42:03 the throat whatever cliches you want that the more I thought about it, just the more it made sense. So this is a you know, the the legacy of heaven Hill the career progression, the whole thing just kind of came together at that point I was like this is this is a once in a career opportunity. If I turn this down, I'll never get this again. And you know if this if I'm truly going to take my career to where I think it should go, this is the opportunity and so far so good. 42:34 It's kind of like it's kinda like you're also in a position like you're a Supreme Court Judge like you've been placed in a position where like, unless you really screw up like you're pretty like there's unless this this whole thing like tanks and there's a nuclear like breakout like you're going to be pretty well set when it Are you having a good there was a nuclear war. We got bigger things to worry 42:58 Yeah. I'm sure yeast will survive right now it's it's it's not quite I haven't kind of docked the ship and I'm done you know there's there's a lot of work to be done a lot of cool work to be done and I'm not gonna I haven't reached a point where I can you know glide into retirement or even I want to rest on my laurels or anything I don't know just sit on the shoulders of those who came before me there's there's a lot left to be done. 43:24 What are some of the like sacrifices or I guess parts of the job that you know you're I guess when you're working at Brown for and you're kind of behind the scenes you're not having to deal with a lot of stuff 43:34 that hard was 43:37 showing up with these idiots taking up an hour Monday 43:42 samples right now yeah, 43:43 I guess talk about that. Like, you know, cuz when you're you like you said when you go to the big leagues, you're giving up a lot. What what are some of those things? 43:51 I'm so 43:54 much giving up i think but you know there. 43:57 I think in any career as you as you Move up the food chain you've gotta gotta learn to delegate and either hope that you've got a good team behind you are engineered a good team in this case, I don't have to hope I do have a great team. I mean, this is Tara has been running for a long time before I got here making award winning whiskey for a long time. So my job is to kind of slide in pick up the reins and keep that going and on that upward arc. 44:27 Yeah, there was a time period between you and and Danny so seems like York it was still running I mean, that doesn't stop Yeah, 44:36 and nothing good stop and as I say the you know, the supervisors that are there on every shift the the team members on on the shift the maintenance guys the the whole crew, I mean, you know, we're we're lucky enough to have, you know, a painter and a janitor, they're young, they work hard to keep the place look and clean and the air is as important to the operation. him probably more important than I am. But yeah, you know, it's it's they're, they're a good team. They work hard they care and I was I was, you know, when Alan took me in to show me around the salary on a Saturday morning everything was done Saturday mornings, very surreptitious. You know, it could pick up I mean, the crew members who were there that day, we're happy to see him. And, you know, they, they clearly were into what they were doing about me. I went, we run seven days a week, and they they work seven days a week. And they were happy to do that. You know, like I said, so they're, they care, they're passionate. They want to make continue to make award winning whiskeys. 45:40 Yeah. When you when you have said, distiller like heaven Hill, he said, it's such a legacy, great brands, incredible products. And like you're like, All right, here's my baby. And they've been doing it so great. But do you look for ways to like, improve the process or look for ways like to put your own fingerprint on it, or at least two years before it changes 45:58 to do the 10,000 hours Again, hopefully it doesn't reset zero. Now Hey guys, like I said it's pick up the reins and keep things going. There's always opportunities for improvement. You know, go back to what I was talking about Woodford I mean Woodford is making good whiskey before I came along. And I had the opportunity to, you know, start optimizing. 46:22 You know, where the Bernheim distillery now is obviously, further ahead than where Woodford was in those days. But there are still opportunities to, you know, just to continuously improve. And speaking of opportunities, talk about what was that that learning opportunity and learning curve of coming in because Ryan and I, we've we've been to the Bernheim distillery, we've we've toured it and we know like the massive scale of what it's what happens there. And so kind of talk about was that sort of like a bow. This is this is pretty big, because I know it's it. It basically makes angels me look like a dwarf at that point. Compare that to word for that. 46:58 Yeah. So it's actually Talk about that. 47:00 So I mean, the the scale of the Burnham disorder is stunning. I mean, we have 17 fermenters that are 124,000 gallons each. We fill four of those a day. And obviously we empty four of those today. So that's the bones of a million gallons of liquid. We're pumping around every day. We're mashing over 16,000 bushels a day, which is over 900,000 pounds of grain a day. That's about 20 ish loads of grain to unload every day. No, no others like 650 thousand barrel warehouses eggs. Yeah, we have 58. Whereas with over 1.6 million barrels, you know, at the Burnham side, we have 480,000 barrels, and we're building a new 50,000 55,000 Bioware has about every six months. You know, we're we're laying down 1300 barrels a day, and we're probably dumping we I know we're dumping less than that. We're probably dumping the order 1000 maybe a little more than that per day so we're continuing to grow our inventory who determines that the numbers I guess of how like how to increase who determines to increase or decrease numbers very finely calibrated crystal ball so it's a it's a dark art you know as you see the sales are this today they look to be that six months 12 months whatever from now we have this much an inventory of things continue this way we should have that much. So we look at we look at that big picture probably, you know, indeed now we're looking at continuously but in detail for twice a year and make adjustments as necessary. 48:42 Was this this role your first time of actually looking at forecasting Did you do that previously in other roles, um, I would, I was involved another role that the other sites as well. 48:53 Brown Forman, have a have a guy called bill Dietrich and he runs the model and And he would bring out the serie production plan, but I worked fairly closely with him and you know, it changes MV was you know, we were so small, so new, there was no existing data to build on. So I built this very complex spreadsheet that was, you know, I ended up calling it the Wonder file. Okay, they kind of got that nickname but, so yeah, I've been involved but it's it's, you make guesses. You make projections. You know, you hope you got it. 49:32 Right. And it's not just a general longer. Yeah. 49:36 Yeah, hopefully you don't have to age a little less. Right? We plan for x, but you know what, it was actually 1.5 x so like, Oh shit, what are we doing now? 49:45 So to also talk about coming into heaven Hill, and we talked about the, you know, the breadth of portfolio of just the Bourbons and whiskies that are in front of it. And I'm sure that as as the master distiller like that as your that is your front, front line of things. That you, you talk about and you're the face for. So where is there like, like a week long boot camp where somebody sat you down and said, All right, so we're going to go through everything you've got to remember every little nuance and the history of them. Like how did that process go? It was a little bit of that. So I spent a fair bit of time with the brand teams and they gave me the PowerPoint decks and the swag and whatever else been 50:23 flashcards. 50:26 In here, the real learning though, gotta get 10 in a row. 50:29 We mentioned Bernie lovers are here. Yeah, you know, I've traveled a fair bit together already. And, you know, go to the whiskey fest and stuff. And, you know, we've gone and done, you know, trainings at restaurants and bars, and, you know, learning it from him and seeing some of his his presentations. That's that's probably where I did most of the learning. 50:51 Oh, he is Yeah, he's the whiskey professor. Any 50:53 fun to learn. 50:54 He already does. Yeah. 50:56 Well, he was up he was playing stump the chump with us. 51:00 I know he made us look like gentle Yeah, no, he 51:02 is asking us questions we were like we weren't paying attention 51:06 he's he's really good at what he does and but of course tasting the portfolio matter way to learn it. Yeah. Anyway, the the funniest one is Pikeville rye. My neighborhood liquor store on Frankfort Avenue. I'd walk by and see Pikeville rye and I read it as Pikeville Ryan I was like who's making rye whiskey and Pikeville Kentucky and then a month later on the master distiller for that brand and I go 51:30 Yeah, I 51:32 know that and I tasted that I was like holy crap This is good. Yeah, and I known Rittenhouse for a long time I love written as but pikesville kind of takes it that takes the next level the next level. 51:44 Yeah, absolutely. I mean it is so you talked about Pikeville is like is there any other like bourbon line that you kind of look at as like yeah, this is this is gonna be like my staple like this mean you gotta kind of give everyone their level. Like is there one that is there a favorite child out of the group? Well, I mean, the main And she left older children. 52:03 So you know you think about we got five Nashville's, you know I think we're the only ones making those five Nashville so the five American whiskey styles and they go into all the different brands so when we make the our bread and butter is hh reg or rye bourbon and that goes into Evan Williams, Greg Hunter mccanna whatever it might be. So learning that progression, you know, Evan Williams is you know, it's a 2.7 million case brand is the second largest selling barber in the world. And it's a you know, if you look at it, if you compare it to the competition, you know, it's age longer, it's higher proof. I think it tastes better. You know, and I that kind of to see how that, you know, ages out and becomes either mccanna are Elijah Craig and how good they are and either on the rocks or I've had some fantastic cocktails lately with our portfolio. It's It's It's It's been a fun journey but even like the I hadn't had much weeded bourbon in recent decades. When I started when I started drinking bourbon by the first one of the very first ones I had was old fits. So find out the way on offense and then we've got larceny and you know been so used to ride a Suburbans and to realize that you know, these leaders are actually they're pretty good on in their own right they're just not just like a light whiskey they are a really good you know, subset or you know, that different side of the same coin type of thing. And so to and of course the the old fits the the specializations that we bring out that are, you know, 1213 years old are just spectacular. Yeah, 53:47 and that's what I think is probably, you know, everybody always always get there's, there's so many brands inside heaven. Hell, we've been in a label room before. I mean, there's there's hundreds if not, maybe they're 53:57 they're literally dead. 53:58 So I mean, it's, it's it's mind blowing but then you know the as you'd mentioned there's an old Fitz relates there's the heaven Hill 27 year releases and people go crazy for the William 54:07 heaven Hill 54:08 and the partners but you're in a unique position because you get to try and sample and taste all these at barrel proof and you get to choose which ones that coming from so I 54:17 get to be part of the 54:18 Yeah, so it's it's that's always a fun experience because like I said, you get to do like the real unicorn part of it right you know, you don't get might not get to see the empty or the the final packaging of it but you get to see the process from really like where it started up until that point to now it's really good like we were doing a barrel selection for hotels liquors yesterday and to you know, we were tasting some the 12 year old at 151 proof now, 54:47 you gotta change the barrel pics two barrel proof pan. We gotta do. Yeah, it kills me. Let's see, we'll start there. And every time I go to a lot of the correct there's three right like it's always the hardest barrel pick because there's three like yeah, stoners from dedes Phil or whatever. You know, and you're like, gosh, I don't want to water this down. But you know, 55:04 I understand you, you, you, you take it to 94 proof and you're comparing apples to apples, right? You know that it's not just like the proof for the color, right? So you're kind of changing your mind. It's like, all right, I know that. I'm comparing the same thing, the same thing for the same thing. So you're getting, you're getting honest whiskey. 55:21 Yep. And so one of the last things I kind of want to wrap it up with is kind of a fun question. Because I want to understand like what your thought process was when this first happened, so you're going to be in front of a lot of people and I'm sure you've you've gone and you've made your rounds at the whiskey fest. And there's always it's a it's a responsibility of a master distiller or brand ambassador, whoever's the face of the brand to sign the bottles. 55:44 Yeah. So, 55:45 so kind of talk about what it was to like, sign your first bottle and go, okay, I've been here for like two weeks. So yeah, like what was that? Like? 55:54 So? It was it's kind of mind blowing to be honest with you. 56:00 Whiskey fest Chicago, I think it was, you know, we have that partnership with Goose Island. So me and Bernie and Mike Smith from Goose Island were doing a presentation on basically barrel aging and better that and afterwards somebody came up and asked me to sign their their ticket or their program or something. And you know, my first reaction was like, seriously, by the cross, I was in my head. But you know, you play the role and that's this person has spent their hard earned money to come and listen to me yap about whiskey. So like, thank you so much. I'm honored to sign it, but it's it's pretty cool. 56:38 You know, our Evan Williams 56:42 HERO program where we recognize veterans, you know, we were down with Chris cruise at cruise customs flags last weekend, he asked me to sign a bottle and he's put a ton of pictures of it on Instagram. And I'm like, anyway, you're the coolest guy. Stop making me look, I just I just scrolled on the bottle, you know, but so it's It's honestly it's gratifying. But at the same time it's it's a little shocking that right? This year Really? 57:07 Yeah. Because I remember it was, it was at the heaven Hill select stock 18 year release, and I'd saw you there. Yeah. And people were aligning, aligning to get your signature. And it was it was just kind of dawned on me. I was just like, he wasn't here 18 years ago, but it's so funny that like people, they gravitate towards you and they want that as sort of like a recognition of it. Yeah. 57:28 And that's that's the role and it's you know, and I kind of enjoy playing it Yeah, it's pretty fun but like the your celebrity 10 years ago, the What do you call it the two weeks after I start Henry McKenna wins best whiskey in the world. And you know, all these people are interviewing me and say watch it liked him. I was like, I had nothing to do with whiskey. But it's very cool that I'm writer and of course, the original mechanic was Irish and I'm Irish, so maybe, maybe maybe smiling down and look at the Irish there. It is. 58:00 always come back to it. Absolutely. 58:02 It's a great way to kind of wrap that up there. So Connor, I want to say thank you so much for coming on the show today. It was a pleasure like I said just to get to know you i think i think it's it's an opportunity for people to really see the the real personal side of you. You know, we just talked before we start recording we all live in like the same neighborhood. Yeah, we all we all drink the same whiskey now too. So it's, it's always fun. And let's 58:24 go to Red Rock and have a cocktail. Yeah. 58:27 Seriously, once again, thank you for coming on and doing this and you know, Ryan, I think this is a great opportunity for us to a get to know Connor and understand really his background and you know what, he brings the table here? heaven. Hell, too. 58:39 Yeah, it's a cool story. I mean, like, from Dublin to Bardstown. You know, who would have thought? Who would have thunk But no, I mean, it I'm, I'm heaven Hill is like, in my heart, because I'm from Bardstown. My fam ton of family members work there and like just that for me and Todd with the I know, it's in good hands. And, you know, that's, that's it reassuring and so I'm glad that they chose you and you decide to call him back and appreciate you taking the time to spend with us. And yeah, if anyone has show suggestions, comments, feedback, we love hearing from our listeners. So just let us know and we'll see you next time. Awesome. Thanks, guys. Transcribed by https://otter.ai

We welcome Daniel Vitalis onto the pod today and might I just say stoke level is pretty high! Daniel is a forager, registered Maine Guide, writer, public speaker, interviewer, and lifestyle pioneer who is deeply passionate about helping others reconnect with wildness, both inside and outside of themselves. After learning to hunt, fish, and forage as an adult, Daniel created WildFed; a show, podcast, and lifestyle brand that integrates hunting, fishing, foraging, and ecology with nutrition, cooking, community, and outdoor adventure.    "WildFed on its face is about food, but beneath the surface of that, it's about a lot more. It's about how we are in relationship with wild species and wild places." -  Daniel Vitalis   Daniel and Mason discuss: Daniel's WildFed food philosophy. The importance of becoming enmeshed into your ecosystem and utilising your local food shed. The hunting, gathering, collecting and foraging of wild foods. Staying grounded and undogmatic in your approach to living consciously, sustainably and in harmony with the earth. Applying traditional hunter gather philosophy and practice to modern day life. The significance of developing a relationship to the earth and to the species that inhabit it, especially in our modern era of artificial intelligence and disconnect.   Who is Daniel Vitalis? Daniel Vitalis is the host of WildFed. WildFed is a show, podcast, and lifestyle brand that integrates hunting, fishing, foraging, and ecology with nutrition, cooking, community, and outdoor adventure. For ten years Daniel lectured around North America and abroad, offering workshops that helped others lead healthier, more nature-integrated lives. A successful entrepreneur, Daniel founded the nutrition company SurThrival.com in 2008. Most recently, Daniel has hosted the popular podcast ReWild Yourself.  Daniel is a Registered Maine Guide, writer, public speaker, interviewer, and lifestyle pioneer who’s especially interested in helping people reconnect with wildness, both inside and outside of themselves.  After learning to hunt, fish, and forage as an adult, Daniel created WildFed to inspire others to start a wild-food journey of their own. Headquartered in the Lakes Region of Maine, he lives with his beautiful wife Avani and their Plott Hound Ellie.   Resources: Daniel Vitalis Instagram Daniel Vitalis Facebook WildFed Website WildFed Podcast WildFed Interactive Program WildFed on Facebook   Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast?   A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or  check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus  we're on Spotify!   Check Out The Transcript Here:   Mason: (00:00) Daniel, thanks so much for coming on the pod, man.   Daniel: (00:04) Yeah, man, I'm really happy to be here. Thanks for sharing my voice with your platform here.   Mason: (00:09) I know that there's going to be a bunch of SuperFeasters that are like super stoked to see... Already I've hinted that you are coming on and they're all just like, "Yes." Then I'm really excited about like a bunch of people who maybe... A little bit early on their onset into the health scene. I'm really excited about introducing them to your work, and then this new project. Are you at home in Maine at the moment?   Daniel: (00:35) Yeah, I am. Yep right at my house. I don't get out too much anymore. I travel a little bit, but as I get older it's like I really want to be based out of my home. I spend a lot of the time, a lot of the last 10 years on the road, but now I've got so much, I'm so integrated into this place with what I'm doing now that it's like, you got to really talk me out.   Mason: (01:00) WildFed, which we'll jump right into. That seems to be like this pinnacle declaration for your public work as well. That that's what you're doing. You're throwing your roots down, and then through that I've realised that on the stealth you've become a guide to me anyway. You've become like a guide in Maine. That's an interesting mindset already that I think is entwined into what's now culminating in WildFed from being someone who's traveling all over the world, all over America, doing the LA conferences. All that stuff to now being, really living and breathing… That was a long-term like little deviation. What was in that process psychologically and emotionally to really throw down your roots?   Daniel:  (01:46) Yeah, well, I mean you look back on 10 years and it makes sense. The journey makes sense. But if I tell you about point A and then point B, they don't seem to almost like line up. But my journey has been that I started off speaking in those conferences. I have all these raw food vegan folks because I came out of that scene. They would let me speak at their conferences. I was not a vegan and I was not a raw foodist. I had been in the past, but I wasn't by the time I started my public journey. Those are early days of YouTube before podcasting. That was before social media man, it's so strange to think about that. Because it's so recently really. Now we're really talking like 12 years ago probably. I'd get up on these stages and my message would just be like starting to contradict the whole purpose of the event.   Daniel: (02:36) It'd be this thing to push veganism, to push raw foodism. I would have stuff that touched in with that, but I was into this idea of, well, what are like natural humans? What do they do on the landscape? What do they do without superfoods? What do they do without the health food stores and internet suppliers and stuff? What's natural for people? I always wanted to talk about that and explore that idea. I would get up and I'd give my talk. Because I was popular with audiences, I kept being invited back. My message grew further and further away from that idea. I started there, but I kept on the journey following the path. Even though a lot of people are like, "I don't like this direction, Daniel, you're starting to get away from our ideals."   Mason: (03:21) Well, what was interesting, and I really I'm aware. We don't want to go too far into this thing to the history. We're here to talk about WildFed. That's what I want to talk to you about. I was someone in that audience, really loving the fact that you were up there talking about like booze. There was this subconscious awareness in one pocket that we appreciate that we're going through a change, and we liked originally what the health scene was about. We were opposing what was deteriorating us. Then there was that split of people falling in love with that push back against society into whatever.   Mason: (04:00) It happens with anything. It happens with diet. You more than anyone have led the charge in terms of making that distinction around veganism. But of course it happens with the carnivore diet and TCM diets and everything. Everyone's just a fanatic. But I really liked that anarchist energy, and I think everyone secretly did as well. That's why you kept on getting invited back and it was such a-   Daniel: (04:25) I was amazed they would have me back year after year, but eventually obviously, we parted ways and I started my podcast ReWild Yourself, which I ran for three years as a fluke. I was really writing an online magazine and I wanted multimedia. I started doing interviews and pretty quick those interviews were just so much more… People liked my writing, a small group like 6,000, 7,000 people reading what I'm writing. 100,000 people are listening to the podcast and it's like, "Okay, this is really what people want. Less of me just writing these long articles. More of me interviewing." Before I knew it, there was this podcast. It was early days of podcasts, I hadn't set out to start one. That podcast ReWild Yourself was exploring like what's natural for human beings if they step outside of our industrial system?   Daniel: (05:11) What would we be like if we lived on the landscape, and what do we know about the health outcomes of people who live that naturally? Hunter-gatherer peoples. I just got fascinated by it. I was talking to so many different characters, psychologists and doctors and nutritionists and death experts and birth experts. Just it kept coming clear and clearer to me that being divorced from nature was the root cause of our problem. That led me deeper into foraging, eventually led me to hunting and fishing and this idea of like, how do I apply this stuff? Because I didn't want to end up like the Biohackers, walking around with big orange sunglasses on and a bunch of electrodes tuned to me, and breathing some weird modulated air. Just gets so outrageous that you're like this is the opposite of what I want.   Mason: (05:56) I remember you actually because I followed along what was really interesting is you shared your inner journey in terms of your away from a superfood packet towards maybe more of a subsistence on nature. That's what I've always read in everyone's comments for you. Because people come across your work and they're like, "Oh, cool. He's hunting and gathering. He's from Maine. That's what he does. He's a hunter." In WildFed you say, "I didn't grow up this way. I've had to learn this shit." That's what has been… The people along the way. I read your comments and everyone goes, "I appreciate so much you sharing this inner journey with everyone." I remember a pivotal episode when I think you had like a sleep expert, but like a Biohacking sleep expert on the podcast.   Mason: (06:41) In reflection after that podcast, I could hear you going, “You know what, I don't want to be taping up my curtain. I don't want to be putting tape all over little electrical things all over my house.” You want to leave the window open. That was a pivotal one for me as well because there's all these crossroads as we go along in this journey. It's something I've learned from you, is how to be aware of the upcoming crossroads. That last night when we were watching WildFed, Tahnee, my fiancé, she was saying, and she's been following you before we got together as well at, a long time. She's like, "I really love that, once again you're not presenting yourself as an expert. You're very confident in what you know, you're just very adamant about your ongoing journey once again."   Daniel: (07:32) Go ahead.   Mason: (07:33) I was just going to say that allows you to be aware of crossroads coming. Then you get to go deeper rather than getting over identified with a stage persona.   Daniel: (07:43) That's a huge danger, a pitfall. I talk about it a lot that I see happen where people get so pigeonholed into something they had been into in the past, and then they feel like they can't break free. The longer you go doing that, the harder it is once you… I remember just like I cut my hair at one point. I don't know if you remember back in the day I had long hair. It's just like even that was like, people have you so, they want you to be this one character. I feel bad for like when an actor has an iconic role, it's like you're Jason Bourne in a movie, and then you want to do something radically different. People are like, "No, you're Jason Bourne." It's like, "Oh, come on." We're dynamic people. Another thing though I'll say is that I've had many opportunities along the way to root in and become the expert on the thing that I've been spending time on. I always like to push forward.   Daniel: (08:36) The challenge with that is that I'm always the beginner in a scene. I'm always the new guy everywhere I go, because I'm constantly trying to learn new stuff. It can be you have to get comfortable with that, like the discomfort of that. You have to be able to relax into the discomfort of being the new guy everywhere if you're going to constantly learn new stuff, and you surround yourself [inaudible 00:08:59]. Back to it my podcasts led me to realizing that I would be a prisoner to all of these life hacks, and all of these diet hacks and eventually the encumbrance of it. When I started off, I remember before I started speaking, I was like 19 years old, walking around in Hawaii in nothing but a pair of shorts, barefoot on the beach. That's where I felt the most real and alive. Then before you know it, you're encumbered with just all of these things to be healthy.   Daniel: (09:27) You're like, wait a second, this is the opposite of where… I noticed that anything taken too far becomes the opposite of what it starts off as. That's usually what ends up happening. You can see this in a lot of people's career trajectory, which is why I don't want to get too stuck in any one thing. What happened with ReWild Yourself is I kept learning more about wild food and I kept resonating to that. Because food was really my first passion. I realised like of all this stuff that I've learned about, the one thing that I really I'm most drawn to doing, where I want to take it next is into the wild food arena. Rather than making the mistake I made in the past, which is like, "Can I be 100% this or can I do this all the way?" That's like that vegan thing or that carnivore thing where it's like, "Well no, I'm going to make a commitment for life to only do this one thing."   Daniel: (10:12) It was just like, "Man, can I keep pursuing this idea of wild food in a more moderate..." what I think of as moderate, most people think of as still pretty extreme. Can I hunt fish and forage for calories and can I make it a real thing? Can I bring it into my house? Just to tie it back to your show theme too, that started for me with medicinal herbs. That's how I got first excited about, it was foraging chaga, foraging, reishi. Because as somebody who was into superfoods, the cost of those things is high, and the connection to the thing is less than when you go get it yourself, and that was more exciting.   Daniel: (10:45) That was my first inroad, and then eventually it was like, "Wait, can I do this to fill my refrigerator and my freezer with food?" That led me to where I'm at today, which is making this show WildFed and doing the podcast WildFed and just exploring what a modern hunter-gatherer looks like, who lives in a super developed industrial society.   Mason: (11:06) I really appreciate you saying like someone looking in, they're going to be like, "This is full on man. He's foraging for like everything." But I know you can take it way further. The fact that you're taking your ingredients to a gastropub, and allowing him to have his little injection of his other ingredients. Some of it's like a sustainable agricultural crop or even him using his own chicken stock or something.   Daniel: (11:31) I'm sure it's like mayonnaise and mustard and ketchup. I don't care anymore. My thing of like food exclusivity, because once you start to get the very best food in the world, it starts to, for me, it started to make me relax about other foods a little bit more. You know what I'm saying? It's like when you have venison to eat, if somebody wants to put it on a piece toast, you're like, okay cool man. Because I know I got this thing so I don't care as much as I used to when I was like always fretting about what I had for food.   Daniel: (12:03) So it's created a relaxation in me, which has been really healing. The relaxation comes from several different components of the hunter-gatherer lifestyle that I've been promoting. But yeah, you got to see the show man. I'm curious how it landed for you and what you thought about it. Because here's the thing, I've been incubating this project for two years and I've gotten very little feedback because I've been really secretive about it.   Mason: (12:24) We know you're [inaudible 00:12:25]   Daniel: (12:25) You're one of like 20 people that's seen in it, man.   Mason: (12:28) I feel so special. I do.   Daniel: (12:30) Seriously, you're one of like 20 people that's seen it. I'm really curious how you felt about it.   Mason: (12:36) We loved it. I think especially coming from like Tahnee and myself watching it. This is off the bat. Watching the first episode. Okay, two things off the bat. I love that there's like three or four people involved in the production, and the quality is very high. I noticed that straight away because that's something that again, that is in alignment with the simplicity of this whole lifestyle. I appreciated that, and appreciated the fact that the production was really high as well because let's face it, it matters. Second of all, straight off the bat, I liked that I know you and I know that watching one episode is gonna be very good, and it was put together very well in one episode. It had a story in the beginning and middle and end. It almost has its own catalyst in there for like the emotional ride.   Mason: (13:27) However, I know that there is a plan over the entire series to take you on a journey, and you didn't shy away from that. That's what I would definitely, anyone listening, I would recommend staying in that little journey, in that path. Because off the bat, the first episode is the slowness. That was like where you got to you're like it's something about the how slow, the speed of food. There's something slow about this lifestyle. That was after you were going after, I think it was the fiddleheads and it was just like, "Fuck, we're too early. Fuck, we're too late." Then the turkey hunting. It wasn't just this, "We're going to give them a little insight into how frustrating it can be. We'll quickly go, missed it, the turkey's going away." We were there and you took us on the journey. That was something I think you were maybe consciously doing.   Mason: (14:24) It was like I want to make sure that I don't glorify this lifestyle, or just show peak experiences. I really want everyone to be involved, and then see the underlying principle, which what came out in that first episode anyway was, there's just something about the speed of food. The speedier it is, the more it tastes bland and I think you said like cardboard. That straight away there's principles. You don't deliver rules. That's what I've got out of the three episodes I've seen, there's principles that you keep slippery and non-dogmatic so that it can be integrated into wherever someone is at. That's genuinely where they're at because that's something that doesn't happen. It's like, "Wherever you're at, it's okay, you do this," but, wink, wink, you really do need to get to my point in order to like [crosstalk 00:15:15].   Mason: (15:16) There was a real, it is that softness, and that first principle anyway got me really thinking about how that pace of food even going to farmers markets, I don't feel anything is bad or wrong. It's just made me really think about the fact that it's like a king tide when you're out in the surf. The more and more you get that quick speedy food, the more you get sucked out really quick. It's hard to get back into really feeling the essence in that romance, in the slowness of food and really earning it in one sense. Then just obviously showing the respect in the currency of time that you're giving. That was my initial takeaway, man.   Daniel: (15:57) The pace of food thing is really important to me, because I like that there's tension sometimes. Even with plants as you saw, it's not just like, "Oh, they can't run away, so I'll just walk out and get them." You've got this very, as you saw with the fiddleheads, it's very delicate time window, where loading up the canoe and you and your partner going out and paddling out to the spot, it's not something you're going to do every single day. You've got to like, "Okay, when do I think they're going to be ready?" Then you paddle out and you're like, "Oh, no, we're too early, so now I've got to go back." Then you go back and it's like, "Oh man, are we too late?" Because even they can slip away from you because they got this little window where they're edible. Then as you see with hunting, I think hunting has one of the biggest PR problems.   Daniel: (16:41) People have such a mistaken idea about it because of what they see. You see people who've hunted their whole life, they got 40 years of experience. In hunter-gatherer societies, it's pretty understood that as a hunter you reach peak efficiency in your 40s. Because you've got all of those decades of experience that have built up. When you start and you're 40, I was 35 or so when I started, it's like maybe a little older than that. You don't know anything. It's like trying to get going. You make mistakes. I want to put all that in there. I mean everybody makes mistakes. I want to put that in there so people could see the pitfalls and the challenges. Another thing that happens is people will think, "Well yeah, it's real easy to hunt when you have a gun, oh it's cheating." Actually it's not really that simple. It's pretty complex.   Daniel: (17:31) You got to really understand animals, and in order to understand those animals, you've got to understand those animals' foods. You got to understand their natural life histories, and before you know it, you're becoming so enmeshed into your ecosystem, that this idea of you're an alien on earth who is like can't touch anything because humans just destroy everything they come in contact with. Instead of that you start to like reorient yourself to like, "Oh, I'm part of this ecosystem." It's not just ecological literacy, which a lot of people are lacking, but it's like integration into your landscape. You become this animal on your landscape. Sometimes predatory, sometimes herbivorous. That's one of the things that's neat about being a human is we're like a bear or a pig in that we eat both plants and animals.   Daniel: (18:14) Sometimes I'm out there foraging and I'm clearly not a predator on the landscape. Other times I'm out there as a predatory animal. We have these two different, and I want to, if you've noticed the way the show is put together I like to leapfrog scenes back and forth, where sometimes I'm a predator and sometimes I'm the forager. Sometimes I'm a squirrel and sometimes I'm a hawk. Both are legitimate ways we interact with our landscape. But what I really hope that show does, because obviously, where you live, you're seeing a different suite of plants and animals that are familiar to you. But I'm hoping that what it does is inspires people wherever they are to get involved in their food shed. Because wherever you live there's lots to hunt, gather, collect, forage, whatever it is.   Daniel: (18:58) I want people to go, "I might not have fiddleheads, but what do I have in the spring?" Then lastly, I just want to say to your point about a seasonal arc. One of the things I've noticed from this lifestyle that really excites me is, the very first thing I'm doing in the beginning of the year, a couple months from now, is I'm tapping my maple trees and I'm making maple syrup so I get all my sugar for the year. Then it goes into the, what you saw, the fiddleheads, leaks and turkeys. Then over the course of the season, I have these activities that I'm doing every year, and every year I get a little better and I learn a little bit more and it begins in the snow and then it ends in the snow. In the middle is that summer, like that beautiful peak summer growth that happens here in the temperate regions of the United States.   Daniel: (19:41) I wanted people to see a seasonal arc, because this world we're living in now is becoming so homogenous, especially with the way our tech climate control is, and the way our built environment is. Even though the weather is one way outside, inside's just always the same flat line thing. I wanted people to see these beautiful seasons. Each episode has a show arc to it and its own tensions and wins and losses and all of that. But then there's this arc of the season, and that's one of the most powerful things about this lifestyle for me is that every part of the year, I have something I'm excited about, like really excited about. It's snow on the ground right now. I can't get at the acorns, the hunting is all winding down, but I know ice fishing is coming. I'm so excited about that. When that ends, it's maple syrup time, it's just goes, goes and goes forever.   Mason: (20:34) That's the simplicity you were talking about like a calming effect on your body I think, of anything that's made in the West, it's that calming effect so that we can explore the nuances of our parasympathetic nervous system. Whenever I've had those longer periods in nature, there's a foraging friend that I haven't been out with him for a while. He's just North of Sydney though. He was always telling me he'd go out for weeks at a time, and he just watched his senses coming back online. He'd watch his hearing become acute, and he'd watch his eyes... I didn't even realise my eyesight was getting a little blurry at particular distances when he was out. It always reminded me that consistency of time in nature, that's going to be my ultimate health practice, no matter what.   Mason: (21:20) Then what you're talking about, just being on the terrain. Barefoot at times if appropriate. But even just watching the seasonality outside of a Gregorian calendar, that's something I've always really watched and considered. It's interesting because I had such a mental need, a high pace of learning the expertise of this healthy lifestyle. When you get into what you're talking about, that needs to be a slow journey. Understanding our own seasonal arc. Here, there's a beautiful Instagram here in Byron Bay in this region, koori country. It's a local mob sharing. All right. Now the winds of change, now we're getting the westerlies, now we're in this season. Right now you'll start seeing the pippies. You've got pippies over there, the little mollusc on the beach. You dig your feet in and you can go and like harvest your... It's beautiful. It's one of the easy accesses.   Daniel: (22:16) Collecting.   Mason: (22:18) Collecting, which brings me to my next point. The slowness I feel you'd probably coming from knowing the lifestyle that I come from having that raw food like 'raji baji'. For me there was a little bit of like the rules don't apply. I'm always ahead of the curve. Even if I enter into like this foraging landscape, it takes me a while sometimes to really slow down and up and think, "I will listen to this person who has that 30 years experience." Even though they don't share that baseline spring water, not bringing preservatives into their life. That's something I think I learned from you heavily as well.   Mason: (23:04) That ability to actually slow down and then what I think is important into your message you are actually willing to not just become a guide, but really understand this new terrain of foraging in terms of what are the regulations in order they are. We're new to this world. Remember these regulations are in there for a reason. There are quotas on what you can be harvesting. See for me, that would seem limiting coming from where I was coming from in the beginning.   Daniel: (23:38) Infinite consciousness, man.   Mason: (23:40) Infinite consciousness, yeah. I'm like the goose man. I can just cross borders. I don't need.. Yeah That kind of [inaudible 00:23:47]. That is something that was really like, it's really helping me go like, "Right this is community." It's already in existence and we can be bridges between those communities to an extent. This is the term that I hear in opposition to the foraging lifestyle. I just wanted that to be the context. Well, not everyone can do this. It's not sustainable. That's an interesting comment and it's like a cliché kind of thing and you go and then the cliché answer is like, "Well everyone doesn't have to do it. I'm doing it." But I feel like we can have more interesting conversations and I feel like you're important to that.   Daniel: (24:28) I'd like to explore that a little bit because it comes up so much.   Mason: (24:32) I'd love to hand it over to you, yeah please.   Daniel: (24:33) Well I just think that one's really interesting because it's like not everyone on the planet can play golf. That's not sustainable. But nobody's yelling that at people playing golf. Not everybody can do anything. There's like almost nothing that everyone can do sustainably. Why is it that I must defend against that? Also, why is the burden of planetary sustainability on my shoulders all of a sudden? I have to only do the things that everyone can do. Why? There are people more intelligent than me, and I'm not banging on their door like, "Why are you doing math problems I can't do? Not everyone can do that, so stop it." That doesn't make any sense. There's all this talk these days about privilege. It's like, I don't know, this is just what I'm doing. I'm not trying to exert a privilege. I'm not trying to say that everybody on the planet needs to do this.   Daniel: (25:23) Now I will say this, everybody on the planet used to do this. Everybody on the planet used to do this. You're only here, if you're on earth today, is because of the hunters and foragers of the past whose genetic lineage you are the current incarnation of. You do come from foragers. Now, I think of it like this, and this is an important aspect of why I created WildFed, because WildFed, I hope is a brand that goes on past me. I'm currently like a focal point in it, but that's not the long-term goal for me. I want to create a project that carries the torch of, I'll say foraging in a general sense. Because anthropologists will refer to foraging peoples as a shorthand for hunter-gatherers. I don't just mean plants here. I mean plants, animals, fungi, algae, everything. Some people need to carry the torch in this generation, especially in this generation more now than ever.   Daniel: (26:20) Although every generation for it to last, there needs to be people who carry it forward. We live in the era where the last hunting and gathering peoples are blinking out into extinction, extra patient or being assimilated into the modern lifestyle. They are probably not going to be able to carry that torch, the way that some of us are going to be able to. Secondary to that, is that they live in very remote pockets of the planet like Indonesia and parts of Africa and places in South America. But what about where we all live in the, you were saying the West earlier, in the developed parts of the world, and the industrialized parts of the world. Somebody needs to maintain that relationship. Here in the United States we have, like you there where you are, museums that are there, where there are people whose lives are dedicated to keeping aspects of the past alive.   Daniel: (27:11) Why is there nobody keeping our hunting and gathering tradition alive? Is that not more important to keep alive than memories of past wars or who invented light bulbs, or all of these things that we're keeping all that alive in museums. Or there's like museum martial arts, let's say. There's people who are practicing obscure martial arts from the past that have very little relevance to today, but they keep them alive as a museum art. You know what I'm talking about? So many things like that that we do, yet this fundamental thing that binds all humans together, which is how we got to be here, our fundamental relationship to the natural world, we need people keeping that alive, I think more fundamentally than anything. Partially what I'm doing with WildFed is just trying to pick up that torch and carry it forward. I'm most certainly not the only one.   Daniel: (28:02) I share this responsibility with a lot of my colleagues who are doing the same thing. Many of which are going to be featured in the video show, and many of which are featured on my podcast. People that I meet who are either doing it in a general, I'm doing it in a very generalist sense. Then there's people who are doing it in a much more specialized sense. My thing is a generalized hunting and gathering approach. But I really get excited when I meet somebody who's really specific on one thing, like they hunt bear, or they hunt only mushrooms or whatever it is because I throw a very wide but shallow net as a generalist. I get excited when somebody throws a very narrow but deep net, because I can learn so much from them. I'm trying to also create a platform that brings those people together.   Daniel: (28:47) Because you'll notice, I'm sure you've noticed this in the tonic herbalism thing, you'll get people who are all about foraging medicinal mushrooms. Tonic herbal mushrooms, but they don't hunt. Then the person who hunts would never even think about foraging those mushrooms. Then the person who is a dedicated plant forager might never hunt or fish. Or the fishermen might never... I'm trying to create a platform that will start to be a hub for all of those different people and those voices and those lifestyles to say, “Hey look, we're all sharing this one commonality here, which is wild foods.” It's so much more than nutrition. It's relationship to species. Because every plant, every mushroom, every animal, every algae is a living entity. It's about how we relate to that entity.   Daniel: (29:35) To me, there's a really deep thing going on here. Then how we relate to all of those identities together, those entities together is like how we relate to the ecosystem, and how we find relationship to it. It's just sad that we're at this point where we have to forge relationships with ecosystems as if we are from another planet. That really has bothered me over the years, this sense of alienness that we have to our own earth. Now where if you read headlines, you will see a lot more about people going to Mars than you will see about people making relationships with nature. You'll see stories about the Amazon burning, you'll see stories about the pollution of rivers and the extinction of species. Then you'll see stories about going to Mars. It's like, really, we're not going to stop first and fix this, we're just going to leave?   Daniel: (30:24) Isn't that like somebody in a relationship who has a bad relationship and so they split, and they get in another relationship, and the same thing happens, and they split. They never stop and face it, and face themselves and learn how to have a good relationship. It's like you just run away, run away, run away. Aren't we doing that right now? We trashed the planet and then we run to Mars and then what? Like trash Mars? Do we have a plan for Mars? What are we going to do with the garbage there? We're going to put in the ground like we did here. Where are we going with this? WildFed on its face is about food, but beneath the surface of that, it's about a lot more. It's about how we are in relationship with wild species and wild places.   Mason: (31:06) Yes, mike drop. I want to say that I definitely have got that sense over the years of creating that web weaving between all these specialised fields, and the sharing of knowledge, someone who's foraging for [inaudible 00:31:21] culinary mushrooms starting to open up into say like that medicinal mushroom world and vice versa. Creating this somewhat like beautiful fascial tensegrity between all these beautiful elements of the subsistence, on which I want to talk to you about. You were just talking about that seems like a very classic pattern of you get into a relationship, you screw it up, you bounce it, you get over to the next relationship and that's a pattern. Possibly developed genetically, who knows where it came from, maybe from parents patterns.   Daniel: (31:53) All kinds of things.   Mason: (31:57) Now what I see as you were talking about martial arts say Kendo in a dojo, what's the relevance of that? I see the relevance is that you get to do it in a very contained system that even though it's got this very certain element of making you mentally hone yourself. It's a very contained system where you can get into uncomfortable states in order to refine yourself. It's not this open ended, for lack of a better word, getting uncomfortable. Which is what I see is the difference between like a museum art and actually getting into the wild and foraging, and as you said, becoming a new beginner.   Mason: (32:35) That's uncomfortable in a beautiful, beautiful way. Now getting uncomfortable for me it seems like it's going to be the only access for us to, you know, getting out of our comfort zone to an extent, in order to deal with these patterns that we have as a species that is destroying where we came from. Can you talk about that connection through foraging, through the fishing, through the hunting? How does that actually help us in our inner world basically evolve and deal with this shit that's making us run away from the most important relationships of our lives?   Daniel: (33:14) There's a lot there, so lets unpack it. First I'll say you brought up Kendo like with full respect to practitioners of Kendo, you would be mistaken to think that that was a contemporary art that you were going to step into the octagon and fight an MMA specialist. You'd just get your ass handed to you right away. You'd be beat down. We know it because we created a forum to test people, and everybody brought their arts and pretty quick, everything went away except ground game grappling and standup game basically boxing type stuff. That survived and everything else was obliterated very quickly. Stylistic elements remain, but we see that those things are good. Kendo is good against Kendo in a controlled setting, but it doesn't work in the real world. I want to say that partially, with WildFed, one of the things I'm trying to do is show people real meals of food.   Daniel: (34:09) This isn't, "Oh, did you know dandelion is edible?" It's like, that's just some mental masturbation. Let's see you make a meal out of this stuff. Because that's where what's the saying? Like the rubber meets the road. It's like I wanted to show people the real thing because we're actually, this isn't just trail nibbling stuff where we're showing real meals coming out of these wild foods. That was important to me. Now to the meat of what you were asking about. I think that if you had lived your whole life in a small town and you knew everybody, everybody knew everybody. Maybe it's a little uncomfortable sometimes because everybody knows all your dirt, but also they all know who you are, and you have these interconnections and familial connections. You grew up with people. Everywhere you go you're just waving hi to everybody because everybody knows everybody.   Daniel: (34:59) Then I transplant you to a new place, big city let's say, and you don't know anybody. You would have a low level anxiety taking place because you would be alien to that place, and all of your connections that gave you stability and strength, they're gone. You're now in this fragile position because of the vulnerability of that. Now extrapolate that metaphor out and it's like here you are on planet earth, but you only know other humans. You don't know plants, you don't know fungi, you don't know animals. You don't know how to survive in your environment. You don't know how to source your own food, and you're totally reliant on these systems that provide you with your sustenance. Then you keep learning about, wow, not only are these systems really delicate and prone to failure and wow, that's kinda weird.   Daniel: (35:47) But also like, wait, they're also super toxic in the sense that we're poisoning this food and we're poisoning the landscape in which the food comes from and we're poisoning the watersheds. Wait a second, like this wheat was genetically modified with gamma radiation. Wait, what? This isn't just like healthy natural food? You start realizing, "Wow, I'm dependent on systems that are really fragile, super destructive to the earth and on top of it, are not good for me, and I don't even know how to solve that except through tons of money spent on really expensive products that start to encumber me." It starts to get a little bit, I think what happens is we have this low level anxiety. I think you see that anxiety projected out into the world in the form of apocalypse media, which is like a whole genre of media that most of us are kinda drawn a little bit to.   Daniel: (36:36) Whether it's Mad Max or it's The Walking Dead or it's like prepper stuff or it's whatever it is, or survival stuff. Shows about people living on the frontier of Alaska. Why are there so many dramatic reality shows where people are sent into nature naked and afraid, or they're sent into nature to survive on an island with each other and then they dramatically compete to see who's the survivor? We have so much of this media being pumped out because it speaks to the part of us that feels vulnerable on our own planet, because we don't actually know. It's not really about, "Can Joe survive the next episode?" It's not really about that. It's about can I survive and we're using him as a surrogate. We know that we can't survive and that freaks us out a little bit. The answer is not a whole bunch of cool Bear Grills survival skills where you have like some big bowie knife and you can pee in a snakeskin instead of a canteen.   Daniel: (37:32) It's not about those things. It's about for me, how many species am I familiar with that I know that are food for me? So that when I walk down my street or I drive down the road, I look out the window and go food, food, food, food, food. The difference for me of a maple tree to somebody who doesn't produce maple syrup, it's just night and day. When I look at a maple tree, I know that I can pull a gallon of sugar out of that tree next year. It's like one little step less afraid that I am internally and then it's like, the Oak trees. Like I can pull acorns off of those. That's food for me. Okay it's a little bit more confidence. Squirrels, that's food for me and I love that animal and that animal and I have a relationship. Then you start adding in all this stuff. I know where the clams are, I know where the Periwinkles are. Okay, I know how to catch fish out of that river.   Daniel: (38:26) Before you know it, you start having all these interconnections. It's like being back in that small town where you knew everybody. Earth starts to be this safe place for you because you're anti-fragile. You have this network that makes you robust. You're like, "You know what? It wouldn't matter to me if it did go Mad Max. I know where everything is. I don't care if there's a problem in the banking system. I don't care if there's a problem with the computer systems. I don't care if there's a three week shutdown because of a tsunami that takes out the grid." All those things that people talk about, it's like I'd just be good. I don't mean there'd be no hardship, but I'm saying like all those fears start to like go away and you have this sense of relaxation into your home, which is the earth.   Daniel: (39:12) I think people lack that so much and they fear that nature is so hostile. It's interesting with Australia to me because it's like this place from which all these shows come that we see here in the West about how dangerous the land, the 10 deadliest snakes. We got this whole croc hunter image of Australia of like this dangerous place. But then I'm sure people over there see shows about us about Alaska and it's like, "Oh my God, Grizzly Bears and Polar Bears," and all this stuff. It's like we just have this obsession with how dangerous nature is. It's like, man, it is, if you don't know how to coexist with it, but we know.   Mason: (39:48) That's interesting. Even just here in Byron, it's like even city slickers, I grew up in the city, always coming to the beach. Most times I'd be coming and visit here, which is now in my home. You're going to see a brown snake go across the path on your way to the beach in one way or another. You're going to find these red back spiders, and you're going to have huntsmen in your house. People go, "Holy shit, that's a huntsman" and even a city slicker, you're like, "Yeah, that's fine. They're okay as long as they're on the wall, his name's Pete, he's a friend." That's something I do appreciate about Australia. There's certain pockets through Maine and Connecticut that you can see especially seeing New Zealand, there's this ensconced connection to the natural world. As we know if you leave even the tiniest gap, nature's going to start creeping in, and then it's going to be easy to repopulate your in a world with those connections. That low level anxiety is insane.   Mason: (40:51) I mean just here, the amount of like distinction we need to make around people going like, "Right, I read that reishi is really good for anxiety, so I take reishi." It's like, well, let's take a couple of steps back. We're completely stepping out of this, "I've got a problem give me a pill," mentality, and we need to create this fabric of a personal culture and a family culture. That can, as you said, it's like, it might be this seemingly like rough, wild world, but when you do step into it, it's this inner cushioning, and this inner easing that you have because you've gained a genuine connection.   Mason: (41:30) When you were just talking about like, I assume is survivor just then, and having our experience of being able to survive through Bear Grills or through Tom surviving the next day. That's virtual reality. We're talking about the goggles coming on and us tapping out. It's on. It's a pivotal point not to get sensationalist about it, but most of us as we will be in most times of our lives, life is on and then we're at pivotal points most of the time. We do have really big choices and opportunities to take with our personal culture right now.   Daniel: (42:03) Bigger and bigger choices coming very soon. I'd like to talk about that a second. I want to add one more piece, which is in the raw food culture, which I think a lot of people don't understand how interwoven the raw food culture kinda got what psychedelic drugs too. Because those two things became very interwoven.   Mason: (42:22) Massively.   Daniel: (42:23) Massively. That culture started to get a little... those medicines are so powerful. Abused you can get pretty far out on a limb with them in your thinking. Things will feel extremely real to you that have basis and truth, but maybe aren't actually functional out in the world always. Pieces of truth. Sometimes things are true implicitly but not explicitly. It's true that we're all one internally, implicitly. Explicitly there are people who will kick your door down and hold you at gunpoint, and kill your family sometimes. Hate to say it, but that happens it's happening right now somewhere. Yet we're also all one.   Daniel: (43:08) What's happening in the explicit world and what's happening in the implicit world, they're not always the same. It's like that with the medicines you can get far out in your thinking like that the implicit reality you're experiencing that those medicines open you to is the explicit world, so you can get a little bit confused. I was thinking of just now as we were talking about a book series that some of the friends of mine in that culture were reading. I just know the name of the first book was Anastasia. Do you know these books?   Mason: (43:37) Absolutely. There's Anastasia and the other channeling texts.   Daniel: (43:44) These books people who aren't aware it's like they come out of Russia I believe, or at least they claim to and their stories about this culture in Russia where maybe in Siberia or something, where these people are living in like pure harmony with animals and with nature. All these really interesting stories. Well people I knew were taking those as anthropological reports. They were believing that those were true stories, and that this was anthropology. I would try to stop and say, “Hey listen, there are actual people scientists called anthropologists who study indigenous peoples on their landscape and this stuff is bullshit that you're reading. It's fairy tales. It's not real.” That's not real. People would be aggressively angry with me. They wanted that to be real. They wanted to know that squirrels were bringing Anastasia her nuts.   Daniel: (44:32) They wanted that stuff to be real. On one end, you have people who think nature is this ultra-dangerous place where around every corner something's about to gobble you up and you need to hide in your home. On the other side you have people who are like... I've been studying bear attacks lately because I'm around a lot of bears and I'm just curious like, what happens? Why does it happen? It's interesting that you sometimes have people who are so on the other end that they'll actually provoke an animal attack on themselves because they believe like, "No, me and this bear are friends." It's like, man you can get confused on that side too. It's like the brown snake is not your enemy, but he's also not necessarily your friend. You coexist on the planet. You have different agendas and you try not to meet in a negative way, but you also don't try to unnecessarily hug him either.   Daniel: (45:24) Now, some people get away with it, right for a while. Like who is your homeboy out of Australia, Steve Erwin. Got away with it for a while and then he gets a sting ray stinger through his heart. It's like you also learn a respect for nature too when you're part of the food chain. Because you start to understand every time you kill an animal, you take an animal's life and you open that animal up and you see its insides you are met face to face with mortality. You're met very quickly face to face with what your organs look like, and how you're a made of meat too. That there are things that'll be just as happy to consume you whether they're microbiotic or macrobiotic. You're like, both things are true. Nature is a lot safer than a lot of people think, and nature can be also a lot colder than a lot of people think. There's some Buddhist thing going on here. It's like some middle path   Mason: (46:22) Even like with TCM and that's what we talk a lot about these theories, these Taoists theories and it seems very poetic and romantic and clinical as well. It's a Yin transforms Yang. Yin Yang Wuxing, Yin Yang and the five phases of energy, it doesn't go beyond this that we're fucking talking about right now. It's very basic. We can get out of our head with it and experience it, but how far do we go down that rabbit hole of the magical thinking when it comes to far out.   Mason: (46:58) That definitely was a bit of a... I could have kept on going down that world and stayed functional in my personal egoic inner knowing. That I know the reality of what's going on in this world and despite the fact that I know that it's not appropriate for me to talk about it, these people just are not tapped in. One day they'll wake up and realise what I know internally. You can go really far with it. I didn't go so far down with the psychedelics. I definitely had a few dieter's, and will continue to when I can find I can have some grounding in terms of the appropriateness of-   Daniel: (47:28) Has its place like any medicine has its place.   Mason: (47:31) Absolutely, and the calling. I feel like we all, some of us dive into it and then step back and mature in our approach and appropriateness.   Daniel: (47:42) Or accept the healing of the medicine and don't just go to the medicine all the time. Because sometimes you just hit it and hit it, and it's like, "Hey man, how about you take 20 years and integrate some of that?"   Mason: (47:53) I love that you went two decades with that as well. That's it. Because that's an appropriate amount of time to integrate it. Well and what's giving you the medicine? Is it your chop wood, carry water, meek, mundane, day to day. That's what Buddhism is anyway. You can keep chopping wood, keep carrying water, get a little pop, get enlightened for a second. Let it go. Keep fucking going.   Daniel: (48:14) We have this happening on an experiential level too. I want to tie that in there. You were talking before like about how far out you can get with something. Sometimes we need a litmus test, like a reality test to check. Have I gotten too far out? For me what that became was like, well can I actually feed myself? Let me try to explain. I was at Burning Man, the big party right in Nevada. It's pretty far out. This is over a decade ago, maybe about a decade ago. I'm there and everybody's vibe is like, "Oh, this is the new model of humanity. This is how we can live in harmony together." I'm looking around like, "No, you're on a lunar plateau right now. There's no food here." Like you're going to live this way you brought all your food. Here's a test, are we really a tribe? Okay, let's feed ourselves, can you?   Daniel: (49:14) Or are you super reliant on these external systems that you say you're destroying, but you're actually still completely like nursing off of it? I find like this is really fake. The same thing happens in the medicine circles to a degree too. "No we can just live like this forever." It's like, "Yeah, you're going to get up tomorrow and you're going to go to the supermarket." You say you're stepping away from the system with this stuff, but you're only doing it up here. But who's chopping the wood and who's carrying the water? That's what it's really about. Your enlightenment, if you're not chopping wood and carrying water, your enlightenment isn't integrated. That I think is what I love about hunting and gathering. It's my chopping wood, carrying water. It's how I make sure that it keeps my feet on the ground.   Daniel: (50:00) Because I have one of those brains that wants to take me up into the clouds all the time. That real airy sense of exploring ideas is what I get most excited about. It's that earthy groundedness of, "Okay, I'm going to go out today and get food, and it's going to be challenging, and it's going to take time, and I'm going to have to utilise. I'm going to get into that discomfort you were talking about. I'm going to come face to face with what I don't know." Sometimes it's hard because I don't know what somebody who's done this their whole life would know. I am forced back to the ground.   Daniel: (50:33) That is I think really important for some people because it's like they've cut loose all the ballasts and they've rocketed up to 70,000 feet, and from up there, they're not really contributing very much. They think they are by just being, man like, "I'm contributing my vibe." It's like, "Yeah why don't you come down here and carry some of this wood with us?"   Mason: (50:54) My absolute favorite conversation. For people that don't know what we're talking about, I've been there going like reading the Pleiadian channeling texts getting to this. It gets confusing when you go and hang out with some of the local mob, the indigenous mob, and they will point to the Pleiades and say, where do you come from? That's where we're from. We're from the Pleiades. Then you get these modern interpretations of some of the rock art and you see the Biami, creator Biami standing on what is possibly a rocket ship until you go fuck.   Mason: (51:30) There's some like hieroglyphs here and you go, "Right, these hieroglyphs show DNA, did the Pleiadians come down and seed our DNA here?" Then there's like a little depiction and a modern interpretation of a spaceship coming down and falling into those waters between like Gosford and Sydney. This exists, and you start going into this inner world and going, "This storytelling's got something to it. I'm going to make that my exact reality on the outside world, and that completely skyrockets you."   Daniel: (52:03) The people who are telling you that will also chase like a giant porcupine down and pull it out of the ground and butcher it and share it in the tribe. It's like they will chop wood and carry water. I'm way more open to hearing that stuff from somebody who can demonstrate that they have integrated it. That's one of the things about indigenous peoples around the world, is that they have creation stories, creation myths, or sometimes what they say are their histories too, that are pretty far out to us, but they can demonstrate the viability of their worldview through their ability to live sustainably on the earth.   Daniel: (52:37) But when people who are trying to demonstrate the validity of their worldview but can't do that, it's like, "Well, I'm pretty suspect. Go back, integrate so that you can actually live here in some sustainable way, then I'm more open to your ideas." What like an Aboriginal person from Australia has to say has a lot more merit to me because they've got 60, 70,000 years of proving it. They've proved it probably longer than just about anybody who left Africa. I'm all ears. Show us how. But when somebody comes from Burning Man like that and they're telling me that stuff. I'm like, "Man, you don't even know how to like do your own laundry, your mom's still doing it."   Mason: (53:18) I think we're talking about the difference between someone that's just like, it's that same escapism. I'm going to get these beliefs and I feel superior and I'm going to become a missionary to these-   Daniel: (53:31) That's super dangerous man. That's super dangerous when you start thinking like… That was one of the things that I had to face when I started to hunt and fish. Foraging a little less so that world's a little different. But learning to hunt and fish man, I had to go speak to men who had fathers a lot of the times. Because I grew up without a father so I'm part of that culture, which is so common now in the developed world, especially as we see the breakdown of the family structure. Now, with such an emphasis on personal freedom, we'll see more and more of that probably, unfortunately, right. A lot of hunting and fishing least here in North America is passed on patrilineally. You learn it from your dad or your uncles or something. If you have a break in that like I did, you don't learn it at all. That's not to say that women don't hunt and fish, but they tend to not be the ones who pass that knowledge on at least in the past.   Daniel: (54:29) I would have to go in front of men who I did not understand and they didn't understand me. It's like I'm showing up with my man bun and my five toed shoes, and I want to do everything alternative to how they do it, because I know my ways are better. They're like, "Yeah, well, we actually get this done." Again, it's that same thing I was talking about before. They would have these political ideas, they would have religious ideas, they would have social ideas that were like, I thought I was superior to. And over time, I realised, that's like a really interesting type of armor that I was wearing. I was using health practices and ideas of consciousness as a shield, so as not to have to interface with some of the pricklier parts of reality that I didn't like. The parts of me that wanted the Anastasia reality. These guys were like, "Well get the fuck out of here acting like that."   Daniel: (55:18) Slowly, I had to learn how to humble myself to people I had thought I was superior to. Then realise like, these are the people who can teach me. This has really, really turned me around in a big way. I needed this bad. I was pretty far out there, because getting on stages and talking to thousands of people and having a podcast and all that stuff where you get this little bit of internet celebrity and you think you're sort of a big deal. Then you realise like, well in your small town nobody knows what a podcast is, and they don't care. If you want to hunt with them, this is the conditions and this is the way they're going to let it happen. You're like, have to be meek and humble.   Daniel: (55:55) I mean that was hard, and it was so good. My bullshit meter has I don't know has moved several steps back towards center because it was way out there. My bullshit meter was more like, "Well if you don't know about like green juice and you don't know about coffee enemas, and you don't know about six day meditation retreats in silence, then you don't know anything." It's like, dude, here I was way off the mark.   Mason: (56:23) You're not paranoid about parasites all the time.   Daniel: (56:25) You're not worried about what they're doing [inaudible 00:56:27]. Now it's cool though, as I feel it's that third eye idea. It's like I've got a left eye and a right eye, and they are connected to different hemispheres and those brain hemisphere see the world in kind of opposite ways. One sees the world pretty analytically, and one sees the world pretty artistically. There's a merging in the center where you take those two worldviews and you bring them together. Well, I was spending all my time with just those right-brained people, and I was avoiding all those left brain people like they were wrong. Now I got a lot of those people in my life and they've brought balance to the other side, so that I feel now like I can walk a middle path. If you lose that, you might think you're on a middle path not realising you're all the way to one side or the other because you've lost the contrast.   Daniel: (57:17) Now I've got these people who are some of my very best and closest allies and friends, who are not people I would have necessarily connected with before, but they have opened my world up to things that I didn't know what I was missing in my life. I haven't jettisoned all the other stuff I've just for every far out idea you need some earthy idea to balance it and counter oppose it. That's really important. What we're seeing right now, it's probably a very different political landscape in Australia than it is here in the States right now. But I'm sure from the outside you can see what's happening here, which is like this soft civil war, this cold civil war that's happening here with these oppositional ideas. I get frustrated because we call one left wing and call one right wing. I'm always like, "Man, every plane I see has like both wings."   Daniel: (58:02) That's how it flies. You cut one off, like, "No, we're just going to be the left wing plane." It's like we'll crash and vice versa we're just the right wing. It's like you need both. They're supposed to keep each other in balance. What's happening now is they're saying, no, only this or only this. So similarly, this is a holistic, and what's cool about that is just every mystery teaching ever is always this. Whatever place you look where there's a mystery teaching, it talks about these two oppositional forces that bring each other into, and finding that balance point in the center. I think when you have this hunting gathering component, it gives a platform for exploring consciousness in a way that you never get too far off balance.   Mason: (58:47) Dude, and that's why I love your work so much. I mean, when someone would go like, "Hey, so what does Vitalis do?" It's like, "Well, I'm going to tell you all the things." It's at some point it's experiential. What you're talking about is holding that consistent ground of integration and sharing, for lack of a better word, principles in and around these hardcore ideas that can be applied actually to your life. But that's why, if you are going to the supermarket, if you're going to farmer's markets, if you're doing a little bit of foraging, it doesn't really matter if you listen to the podcast. The WildFed podcast I've dug into a little bit, I'm really enjoying it so far. But the show's relevant wherever you're at, and you'll really get that. It's like, yes, it is absolutely about the hunting and foraging and the fishing.   Mason: (59:34) But no matter where you're at, it's not just this bullshit idea of like, "Yeah but it can work for anybody. "It is because underlying are principles that you can… Everything you've just talked about nailed it. For someone like myself that is fanatical and does shoot off into the heavens quite often as well, that's been a nice stable ground. It helps, kind of, me feel comfortable in the direction that I'm at. I always have people coming towards me who have cracked out in one particular identity and they're trying to integrate. It's interesting trying to explain what that is. I really, really appreciate that. I'm sure it gets sung a lot, but being there and sharing authentically to help us continue to integrate and not go into the excesses that can cause pathology when we are having these beautiful intention to become healthy, that's really appreciated.   Daniel: (01:00:31) We are in that time where people, like, pathology around every corner right now. We have to be really careful. There's never been a more confusing time in history. I feel like the fundamental thing that's going to be, I mentioned it earlier, I feel like big choices are coming. Because pretty soon the distinction between reality and augmented reality and virtual reality are going to get so gray, it's going to be so difficult to sort out, not for us, man, we grew up in reality. But the next generation of kids are going to grow up in augmented reality and the next generation of kids are going to grow up in a virtual world.   Daniel: (01:01:08

"Now I've got this little friendly Eagle by my side and he is really beautiful. And you know, sometimes this thing almost looks like he's alive. You can just look at his face and you can just see the handy work of God in this Eagle. Every feather created perfectly, beautifully." Family Discussions: Why do people continue to demand signs from God when they're all over creation? What signs have you seen lately that have awed you like it awed me? What is the sign of God's creative amazement that mean the most to you? Transcription: 00:13          Every time my eyes go into the Word of God, I just get fascinated all over again. And I'm fascinated today. Jesus' Words always just penetrate your heart. They penetrate your life, your intentions, your motives. Listen to this one today he is shooting it straight again. It's in Mark chapter eight and we're in verse 11 through 13. And here's what it says. "The Pharisees came out and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him. And Jesus says, why does this generation seek for a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation. Leaving them, He again embarked and went away to the other side." You know what? He's given enough signs. The greatest sign of all is thatthey're all over the world. They're around people's necks. They're on Bibles. They're on church, steeple sides. You know, the cross is the greatest sign of all time, but there's also signs everywhere.   01:21          Now I've got this little friendly Eagle by my side and he is really beautiful. And you know, sometimes this thing almost looks like he's alive. You can just look at his face and you can just see the handy work of God in this Eagle. Every feather created perfectly, beautifully. A young man came to my office one time. He said, I don't believe in God when I had this Eagle by my side, which by the way is not a real Eagle. A taxidermist took feathers from chickens and dyed them to make them look like an Eagle. Although sometimes he does look a little bit alive if you just look at him just right and he almost looks you in the eye. And I just showed this young man the Eagle. And I said, Hey, either this Eagle happened by chance, by accident or somebody designed, somebody thought up that Eagle, and he said, well, it's obvious somebody designed that Eagle. It happened just like that. He became a creationist as I am rather than an evolutionist.   02:18          When you look up in the sky at night. Talk about a sign. You're looking at one galaxy, the Milky Way, 544 quadrillion miles wide with 4 billion stars, and then there's 99,999 other galaxies up there in the sky, all declaring the wonder if God. Do you know what? That this entire cosmos that you and I live under the whole cosmos is a sign from heaven. The anthropic principle, which is now traveling through the hallways of science, says that the whole cosmos was designed perfectly so that you and I could live on planet earth. As Dr. Francis Collins, the scientists who designed the genome declared just three or four years ago. If the gravitational constant was off one part in a hundred million millionth, it would be impossible for life to exist today. What he's saying is there's an orchestra leader, there's a conductor of the cosmos who turns everything perfectly intricately for you and now to be able to live on planet earth.   03:20          There are signs everywhere, right Eagle? But the greatest sign of all is the sign of the cross. So here's the questions today. Why do people continue to demand signs from God when they're all over creation? And the second one is a great question. What signs have you seen lately that have awed you like it awed me? And then the third question is this. What is the sign of God's creative amazement that mean the most to you? For me, the greatest sign is when this happens in the life of a lost friend, and that friend is born to eternal life. Well, here's the lifeline today. When you wonder where God is, Hey, look all around you and thank him for the miracles that fill your heart and fill your home.

Every time winter comes around, the number of traffic accidents increases. MEMIC Loss Control Director Randy Klatt shares how you can drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others. Since his experiences in emergency medicine and as an active duty Navy pilot and aircraft crash investigator, Klatt has been on a mission to prevent the tragic consequences of unsafe attitudes and behavior. “As a 20-year-old paramedic responding to calls for help, I quickly realized that human failure is behind the majority of injuries,” says Klatt. “As a safety professional I know there are no accidents, only predictable outcomes. No one wants to be hurt, but many do not understand how preventable injuries really are. Peter Koch:  Hello listeners, and welcome to the Safety Experts podcast. Winter driving can be a big challenge and we see an increase in the number of traffic accidents every winter. So today we're going to dig deep into what it takes to be a safe driver this winter. For today's episode, Winter Driving Safety. I'm speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control at MEMIC to be a better driver this winter. Randy has over 40 years of experience working in industries where safety is critical to success. His career spans emergency medicine, active duty Navy pilot, commercial airline pilot and an aviation safety instructor at the university level. Randy has worked with MEMIC since 2003 and is the current director of Region II at Loss Control, leading a team of consultants serving the Central and Southern Maine area. Randy, welcome to the podcast today. Randy Klatt: Thank you, Peter. It's a pleasure to be here. Peter Koch: Fantastic. So, we're gonna jump right into it. So, I appreciate you being here, but we're gonna throw a question at you right off the bat. Randy Klatt: Okay. Peter Koch: Does the environment actually cause traffic accidents, driving accidents? Randy Klatt: No. Peter Koch: Thank you very much. Randy, I appreciate you coming today. Randy Klatt: That's all I have to say for today. Peter Koch: Why not? Cause you see it all there all the time like people talk about, well, it was the snow, or it was the fog, or it was the rain. I hydroplaned. I skidded. I did this and the car flipped over. I hit the car in front of me. Whatever happened there, there's always a this before that. Randy Klatt: Yeah, there always is. And I see claims injuries like that all the time. Often there's verbiage in the claims description that says something like the car left the roadway, the car flipped over, the car skidded on the ice. And of course, my immediate thought is I don't think the car does those things without the driver putting it in that position. So, some people would say that, oh, this is an unreasonable expectation that I'm being way too hard on people. Well, from my perspective, no, weather does not cause accidents. In fact, we don't call them accidents. Some people do. I prefer to call them predictable outcomes if you are not driving for the conditions, it's almost inevitable that we're going to have some problems. So, I grant you that we are human beings. Humans make mistakes. I could make a mistake. I could end up in a fender bender this winter because I made a mistake. And so, I'm not looking for blame.  I'm not saying that people who are in traffic accidents in the wintertime are, are less than capable of driving, or that I blame them for all the problems. That's not really the point. The point is that it is preventable if we do the right things and that driving, especially in the winter, is very hazardous. There's, there's no doubt about that. The weather does make road conditions more challenging. It does present a hazard that isn't there in the summertime. But if we address it and if we do something about it, we're much, much more likely to get to where we're going and get home safely without any incidents. So, my answer is, and this is the way I would like people to look at it overall, really for any injury, any accident, any incident that occurs, it's preventable.  And if I look at it that way, it's a preventable situation. That means that I have to take responsibility to do the prevention piece. And if I do that, I'm much more likely to be safe throughout all my activities.  If I look at it as "Awe gee, it is raining or it's snowing today, the roads icy, I'm probably going to get in an accident today. It's inevitable."  Then I'm much more likely to do just that. So, let's look at it as all preventable and that will go a long way towards actually driving safely. So that's my very long answer to a very short question, but it's a very fundamental question to our topic today. Weather doesn't cause it. People do. Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that's a really good point and a great start. So, would you say, and if we think about driving overall, and we're talking about environment now as a contributor, not as the cause, but a potential contributor to an accident.  And in that light, could you say that driving is a series of conscious and unconscious decisions that we make to get from point A to point B? Randy Klatt: I would say that's an accurate description. I would hope that most things are conscious. But yes, we get into a mindset of we've done this a million times. We know how to drive. If you're an experienced driver that's certainly true. So, some of our behaviors are, I think you could say they are subconscious or almost autonomous. We don't really think so much about what we're doing. So, if you've ever missed your exit, you've driven there 100 times, but suddenly you drive by and you go, oh gee whiz, I suppose to get off there. That's should tell you that you're driving autonomously there. You were you weren't really driving, actually, Sir Isaac Newton was in the driver's seat at that moment, and you were just along for the ride. So, we do a good portion of that. And if you happen to be doing that when the road conditions aren't very good. Now we've given up our responsibility as the driver. We've succumbed to the conditions and basically said, "Well, if it happens, it happens." And that's certainly not a philosophy that I would like any driver to adopt because I don't want him hitting me either. So, we really have to engage more carefully in driving overall. Just look at the numbers. 40,000 people a year dying in traffic accidents in this country, 13 million crashes each year, about half of those resulting in police reporting and about almost 2 million people who are injured in traffic accidents every year. So, this is something that costs society over $250 billion dollars every year. It's ridiculous that in today's day and age, we haven't gotten a handle on this. And when you add weather into it, the tendency is just to say, well, it was weather. That's what caused it. And you usurp your own responsibility. And that's not right. Peter Koch: No, not at all. Not at all. So, if weather isn't the problem but the person's the problem is the answer just autonomous vehicles should we just take the driver right out of it?  Or what are the responsibilities that a driver would have in order to keep that vehicle going forward? Randy Klatt: Now, very good point. I think remember Randy said this in 2000, whatever this is now, that yes, autonomous vehicles are probably going to be the predominant vehicle on the road and in the future, I don't know when that's going to be, I don't know how many years it'll be, but that's the way we are going, clearly. And if an autonomous vehicle takes the person out of the out of the formula, out of the equation, we are going to have safer roadways. There's no doubt about that. If everybody is in an autonomous vehicle. So, the way I usually do that analogy is I come from aviation. That was my background. I flew in the military for a long time. I flew commercial airlines. And knowing aviation safety like I do, I know that, oh take World War II for example, we lost almost as many pilots in crashes as we did in combat. Aviation had not developed into a very sophisticated science even at that point. We're only talking 60, 70 years ago. Look at aviation today. We have almost no crashes. I would challenge anyone listening here to tell me when the last airline crash was in the United States from a U.S. carrier. And you're going to find, hmmmm I don't really remember. We've lost three people in 10 years in major airline crashes in the United States, and one was a freight carrier. Both pilots perished and the other was Asiana Airlines in San Francisco. So, we've made and that was a fatality, unfortunately, on the ground. A person was hit by the fire truck as they evacuated the aircraft. So, when we look at those numbers you know, the millions and millions of people that fly every year, and we've made that industry extremely safe.  We've, we've done that through for the most part through automation, through technology. And I can see the same thing happening in driving that we have now developed adaptive cruise control and blind spot monitoring systems and an automatic emergency braking system and all these things that are in theory making our driving safer. And I think they are to a point. But what I don't want to see happen is that the driver starts to give up their responsibility as a driver because they know the technology will take care of them. And so, when we do see airplane crashes today, it's because that's exactly what's happened. I flew 737s. I didn't fly the Max 8, but I flew the 500 model. And I can tell you that a pilot who knows what he's doing, is well trained, would not fly that thing into the ground no matter what the system was doing. So today, when we have drivers who are relying on technology in the same way, we're gonna have problems. Fatality numbers are actually going up. The last three or four years, they've gone up every year. Yet technology is getting better. So, there's something else going on there and it has to do with the driver. And we still have to focus on the driver. So, until we can get to a completely autonomous vehicles almost to the point like what we have in autonomous airplanes. There's still a pilot in the seat. But you can, if you can pull back on the yoke and get the airplane off the ground and push a button, you can be an airline pilot. I shouldn't say that, that'll probably offend some of our audience and maybe alarm others who are on airplanes right now.  But we've become computer monitors more than we have than we are pilots. And it makes it very safe because they're very dependable airplanes. But until we get to that point with cars, we have to depend on that driver. And of course, this day and age, we are very dependent. And so that driver has to take that all very seriously. And if you put on your adaptive cruise control and just sit back and relax. But the weather isn't very good. The car doesn't know what the road conditions are. It'll turn itself off if visibility is and isn't high enough.  But if the road is, you know, it's thirty-four degrees outside and there are places where it's just at freezing and there's a little fog or mist and the roads a little icy. The car does not know that. That's a perfect condition for setting you up to crash. And because you took yourself out of the equation and you're going to say that it was the ice that caused it. And that's just not right. Peter Koch: So, a lot of it comes down to the awareness of the driver of the surroundings and that adaptive cruise control example that you brought up, I think is fascinating.  I have it in one of the vehicles that I drive, and you could be on the highway travelling at highway speeds right within the speed limit, set the cruise control. And before you know it, you're behind someone who is going 10 miles an hour below the speed limit. And you never even knew that the car slowed down. You're just maintaining the distance. But people in the passing lane are zipping past you, and then all of a sudden you go, he's going too slow. So, what do you do? You pull out. You go around them, and you override that regardless sometimes of the conditions. Because if you're focused on a conversation that made you not pay attention to what the vehicle is doing and how it's engaging with the road, you probably haven't paid enough attention to your environmental surroundings to know that how fast you're pulling out is actually good for the environmental conditions that you're there. So that technology is super helpful, but it can lull us into that sense of safety that we still have responsibility for, ultimate responsibility for still lies within the driver, which is a great point that you made before. Absolutely right.  So, it always comes down to, as we've said many times in history, it's the nut behind the wheel. It's the driver of the vehicle. You are responsible. And it's an awesome responsibility. Now, in this country in particular, we take it for granted. Everybody does everything in their cars and most families have multiple cars. And we see generally one person in every car on the highway. And we it's just the society that we have. We're big on cars. And that's what is convenient. And that's I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that, except that we do take it for granted the responsibility of actually operating the vehicle. So, I think about your average adult is 30 years old. How much driver training has he actually gotten? Probably went through driver's ed training at 16 to get his permit. And once he got that license, the training stopped with the exception of the OJT that we get every day. And you just hope that the mistakes you make don't result in something horrible. And that's probably not a very good way to run a system. I was actually talking to another consultant just yesterday who lived in Germany for 16 years. You got the Autobahn, right? We have no speed limits.  Their fatality rate is actually fairly high on the Autobahn. But overall, better than United States. And we figured, well, gee, what's the deal there? And he explained very carefully, said it's the driver training. It's the training they have to go through to get a license. You have to be 18 before you can even apply for a license. And it's very rigorous and it costs a lot of money. So, people are very appreciative of the license once they get it. And they're very well-trained as opposed to the United States, where we see it more as an innate right. And of course, you're gonna drive. And if you're 18 in the United States and all we have to do is pass that written test and convince that, inspector, for that 10-minute drive that you're not going to kill anybody. You got a license. You don't really need any training. You know, what's a yellow light do? That's about all you need to know.  And that's just not right. And now we put him out there in a snowstorm and expect them to drive well. I think the realistic expectation is that we're going to have some problems with that unless we really focus on it. Peter Koch: So let's talk a little bit about how that how the road conditions, the winter road conditions specifically will affect the driver and the choices that they'll have to make in order to keep the vehicle going at a steady rate and making it happen safely. Randy Klatt: Well, we can always look to the hierarchy of safety controls, which might be another podcast topic of in and of themselves. But the first thing in the hierarchy is always to eliminate the hazard. So why would I go out in a snowstorm if I don't have to? That's the number one. I can best control my car if it's in the garage. I don't I don't have to worry about those conditions. Now, I understand that's not always a possibility. And that people do have to be places at times. And so, I don't mean to make a joke out of that by saying we can all stay home. But at least in the northeast where we live, where snow is expected and it's common and it often comes heavy, we have darn good snow clearance systems out there.  And that if you wait an hour or an hour and a half, you'll have a much better environment to drive in than you would have if you just went out your normal time.  So maybe you need to need to delay your trip for a little while. Maybe it's work from home for a few for an hour and then head in later, you know, something like that. So, look to eliminate that hazard in the first place. Inevitably, we'll find ourselves out in the bad weather. So, then what are you going to do? Well, speed is the number one cause of all accidents, and it's certainly going to be magnified when you have poor road conditions. When you think about tires and road surface contact, the tire on the road is the only thing that's touching the road, we hope, of your vehicle. So, if the road is contaminated, so we have ice, we have snow, standing water, whatever it is, we're gonna have less control of that vehicle.  That's just inevitable. And if that's the case, then I darn well better slow down because if I'm driving 60 in a normal day, dry pavement, I better be backing that down somewhat in winter conditions because I know that I'm not going to be able to control my vehicle either in maneuvering, cornering, turning or accelerating or stopping. All those are affected adversely by adverse road conditions. So, number one avoid the hazard.  Number two slow down. Why are we all in such a hurry? Number three would be increase that following distance, increase that safety cushion that you have around you. Because inevitably you will take longer to stop. Other drivers are not going to be so attentive. They are going to take longer to stop. Let's just give ourselves a little bit more room so that we have more time and the car's gonna be able to react a little bit better, have more time to, more space around to react. So those are my three top things. Avoid it. Slow down. Increase your following. Peter Koch: That's fantastic. How does, let's talk a little bit about the sort of the dynamics of that only part, the only part of the road, at least we hope. The only part of the vehicle, at least we hope that is touching the ground are the tires. And how do the winter road conditions affect the tires and maybe a little bit about the different types of tires that are out there? Randy Klatt: Sure. So, I think it's pretty clear to everyone that that road surface contact with the rubber of your tire is what is going to control the vehicle. That's the coefficient of friction that we need to accelerate and to stop and to control it in a turn. And all those things. So as that changes, if you add even something as little as a twenty fifth of an inch of water to the surface of a roadway. Now we don't have nearly the tire contact with the road that we do on a dry surface. So, if you make that little bit of water ice, well, now of course, we have even a lower coefficient of friction. We have less control over what's gonna happen between those two surfaces. So, contamination on the road is a critical element in being able to control my vehicle. And so, then we can, since we can't necessarily control the conditions of the roadway. Now, I did say earlier that if we just wait a little while, the road will probably be better. I always think that if you find yourself out on the road following a snowplow or right behind it or right in front of it, you're probably out there at the wrong time. Let them do their job first and then go out there. That's probably a better way to go. All right, so given that limitation, we can't really control the roadway. So, the only thing I can control then from a contact standpoint, from tire road topic, which is what we're on right now, is the tire itself. So vast majority of vehicles these days we're using all season radial tires.  An all-season tire, just as it implies, is designed for all seasons. It has some performance in hot weather. It has some performance in wet and has some performance in cold or freezing snow conditions. It's not ideal for any one of those. By definition, it's an all-season tire. So, for those climates where we see minimal snow a couple times a year, you might get a little bit of this or that. All season tires is probably appropriate. But for those areas of the country where we see a lot of snow or we see a winter, that can be severe. You might see ice. Now we're probably talking a winter tire, a snow tire, something that's designed for those conditions. And they are vastly different. And we can talk about those differences, if you'd like. Peter Koch: Yeah, I think that would be good. Touch it a little bit about the difference in construction and design of that all-season tire versus the winter tire. And what makes the winter tire a better choice when you know that you're going to encounter these environments more frequently? Randy Klatt: Sure. So, there are innate differences in tread design, but also in material choice and in the rubber compounds that are used. So again, that all season tire is designed to last a long time. It's fairly harder compound. It is designed also though, for comfort because we want our car, you know, we're selling a new car and I want it to be quiet. If I'm riding in a car, if I buy a new car, I want it to be ride comfortably and quiet. And a lot of that depends on your tires. So, they are designed to last quite a while, to be OK in performance in all conditions and to provide comfort and quiet. Whereas a winter tire is really designed for just that. It's designed for worse conditions. So, it's going to have different tread block design. It will have more, more tread blocks that are separated by more space so that we can help avoid hydroplaning so that there's more clearance for snow and water to be dissipated. So, we have tread contact with the surface. There's going to be more siping on the tires all the way around to almost not to the sidewalls, but to the outer portion of the tires and siping. Are those small cuts in the tread blocks that you see? They look like cuts. There are little slits, so that they, they as the tire rolls around and contacts the surface, those Sipes allow the tread block to actually separate slightly and almost grip the road a little bit more. It's ah, imagine an animal that separates its toes and grips in a more efficient way. That's really what that siping does for a tire and a snow tire. And that's going to help increase that contact with the roadway. And then, so we got wider blocks, more tread depth, probably as typical winter tire will come with 10 to 13 thirty-seconds of tread depth to start with. So that's a significant amount of tread. And then lastly, it's a different metal or a different, excuse me, rubber compound. Like I said earlier, it's a softer compound. It's designed to be more supple in cold weather. Your all-season tire is going to harden up when it becomes really cold outside, becomes less flexible. So, less ability to actually stay supple when it contacts the roadway. So, a winter tire will do that for you, which is a great advantage. The reason we don't use those all year, of course, is for those things converse of what I said earlier about they all season tire. A winter tire is not going to last as long, it's a softer compound. So, it's going to wear out faster. You put a rubber tire, or a winter tire on your car in the summertime, it'll wear out very quickly. It's also louder, less comfortable. It's more like driving an all-terrain vehicle or something where you, you don't have nearly the comfort or the ride. So, the compromises that are made with the all-season tire are fine until you get to bad weather. Then I would definitely recommend going to a winter tire that is designed for just that. Peter Koch: And keeping on that line of technology and we have the tires that are the contact between the vehicle on the road and keeps us there. How does vehicle technology and all-wheel drive, smart technology for vehicles like that? How does that help keep that car on the road? Peter Koch: Well, certainly all, I think we all know all wheel drive, or four wheel drive is certainly an advantage in poor weather, but really only an acceleration in gripping the roadway as you're trying to accelerate or to move out to gain traction because you're separating the amount of friction that you need to develop. You're gaining from all four tires now so you can do the math by the square inches of tire contact and divide that by four instead of by two. So, we can really accelerate better you so you can get your car moving better, gets out of parking spots or up little hills or things like that in a more efficient fashion. So, all wheel drive's certainly an advantage in the wintertime. What it doesn't do is help you stop any quicker. So, what vehicle do you typically see in the median or, you know, down the hillside driving down the highway in the wintertime? It's generally a four-wheel drive of some kind.  Because some driver just thought I've got a four-wheel drive, I'm going. And yeah, they go, they just don't stop. So that's an overconfidence feature that sometimes comes with all-wheel drive. It will get going better, but we're not going to stop any better. The other feature we could talk about is antilock brakes. So, ABS systems are standard now and do a fantastic job of stopping a vehicle.  They're very efficient, especially on dry pavement. They'll stop you darn quick. But what they really do. Of course, the real design feature, the purpose of them is to keep those front wheels or steering wheels rolling. So, if I stand on that brake pedal for a panic stop, I'm going to feel the vibration of the pedal. I'm probably going to hear some awful sounding noise. And that's the computer system modulating the flow of brake fluid and preventing those front tires from locking up. They will come to a point where they almost stop and then they'll continue to roll. And then they'll almost stop, and they'll continue. So, they, the modulation of that is really important. That allows those front wheels to continue to turn so that I continue to have steering control. What it doesn't do is help you break any quicker. So, if I'm on a little downhill slope with snow and I step on the brake pedal, I'm going to feel like I'm not stopping because I'm gonna feel that vibration. The car is going to continue to roll and I feel like, oh, my gosh, the speed brakes don't work. I'm not stopping it. Well, you're not stopping any quicker. But what you do have is control of your steering. So, you're remaining in control of your vehicle rather than having it skid into a spin of some kind. So, control is the real advantage to the anti-lock brakes systems, but it will not necessarily help you stop quicker. So that's really important to know. The days when, when I was trained how to drive back a few years ago in driver's training, they would tell us to pump the brake pedal. That's what we used to do. You don't do that anymore. Do not do that when it comes down to anti-lock brakes.  You can stand on the brake pedal and that, those front tires will continue to turn. So, you continue to have steering control. Peter Koch: So, I think it's really interesting as we talk about tire technology, tread and construction, all-wheel drive, four-wheel drive, anti-lock brakes, the different systems and the newer vehicles that are designed to help us be safer in any environment. They are really there to help us maintain control of the vehicle. But in order to really do that, you have to understand the vehicle's limitations in the environment that you're trying to apply them. So, a winter tire versus an all-terrain tire, anti-lock brakes versus computer-assisted or all-wheel drive versus front wheel drive versus rear wheel drive versus four-wheel drive. And how do those things all interact? So, knowledge of the tool that you're using, as well as knowledge of the environment that you're using it in. And then the piece that we typically miss is the understanding our own limitations and how to apply those.  And how fast we react and all those different things. So, it comes right back to the person, the driver, the understanding, and the knowledge, the responsibility of the driver to be able to maintain control of that car. And essentially, those are you know, that is what is going to make us better drivers ultimately in the wintertime. So, let's talk again or a little bit more about those personal things that the driver needs to take into consideration when they are making choices out there on the road. So, what are some things, that are a disadvantage to the driver and maybe an advantage to the driver? Randy Klatt: Well, I would start with this... I was thinking of this as you were speaking just a minute ago here, Peter, about I would ask the question, when was the last time you as a driver actually read your owner's manual? And I can I can see your listeners right now rolling their eyes and saying, what owner's manual? And I ask that question because these cars are not, they're not my '57 Chevy where you just get in and go, because it really isn't a whole lot to it. We do have all this technology, which is fabulous. But you do have to know how to use it and what it will do and what it won't do. Ummm, I actually had a person tell me recently they turned off all of this because it was bugging them. And I said, well, what was going on? And the person said, it just continued to beep at me. And I couldn't, I didn't know what it was, so I turned it off. I thought, OK well, perhaps the answer might have been, why don't you look it up in your manual and actually figure out why it's doing what it's doing. And if you want to turn it off, that's certainly a choice you make as a driver. But understand what it's going to do for you and why you might want to leave it on. Peter Koch: It's funny you mentioned that. If I could just interject for a moment. Randy Klatt: Please. Peter Koch: So, my parents are getting on in age. They're in their 80s. My mom's not quite 80 yet, so she won't be happy when I say that, but yet she's still doing great. She still drives. And a couple of years ago, she got a brand-new car. Well, a leased car. First time ever and it had all the bells and whistles. So, you know, it had the adaptive cruise control and it had the lane avoidance. And so, we got in the car for the first time with her. And she, she kept saying, why is that beeping? Why is it beeping? Why? How do you shut it off? Same thing. She had no idea. And I was like, well, Mom, that's the indicator that you're crossing over the line. So, she was constantly with a tire on or over the white line, or then she would drift over to the center line and she wouldn't notice that because she'd be moving back and forth within the lane. So, once she figured that out, that that was an indicator, now it's she actually does a much better job staying within the lane and concentrating on that. But it took her a little while to get there. And I think we find that we have many older drivers these days. You have many of our parents, in order to stay to stay independent, want to maintain their license and they get a new car. And the last new car that they had and even that could be a used car. The last new car they had was made in the 80s or the 90s, and it had none of that. So, they don't know. And they'll just push the button to turn it off or they'll call, they'll call the dealership and ask him to turn off all those annoying buzzers. And of course, the dealership won't train them. They might just turn it off because that's the request from the customer. Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. Peter Koch: Before I move on from the story with my mom, let's take a quick break and then we'll come back and talk more about how those, those items of technology in the car can assist us maintaining control in the wintertime.   **********************   Peter Koch: Welcome back to the Safety Experts podcast. Today, we're talking with Randy Klatt, Director of Region 2 Loss Control at MEMIC. So, let's jump right back in with more questions. Before the break, we're talking about winter driving and vehicle technology. And we're just going through a story about how vehicle technology could be misunderstood, sometimes shut off because it's misunderstood, or it can actually be a benefit to those who can pay attention to it and understand what it's saying. So, let's talk a little bit more about the vehicle technology and how some of that adaptive technology can help us. Randy Klatt: You made a really good point there, Peter, referring to your mom. I'm afraid that's what sometimes the typical driver will do if you don't understand it. Turn it off and then it won't bother you, me anymore. And of course, then we're just defeating the advanced technology that we have. So, if cars are getting safer, we have to use what makes them safer. So, this is actually a user interface kind of discussion. Cars are safer with crumple zones and anti-lock brakes and, you know, and all those other technologies that are keeping us safer in a crash. But what can I really affect every day? What can I actually do to make my driving safer? And that might be include technology that's available to me as a user, as a driver. And for example, my car that I drive frequently has two levels of lane control assist. The first one will do just as you describe with your mother. It will beep at me and it will show an indicator on the dash that tells me I'm getting too close to the either side stripe of the road or to the centerline. And so that's the first step. That should tell me enough that should tell me all I need to know. That things should never go off. But if it does. Oh, my goodness. I got to get back to the center of the lane. The second thing that it would do if I continued to drift is it would actually control, control my car. It would actually turn my steering wheel back to the center of the lane. So, if you do really become distracted for an extended period of time, the car should be smarter than you are and should turn you back into the lane. And it will actually do that twice. It will control it once. And then if you don't touch the wheel and you start to drift away again, it'll control it a second time. And then if it becomes a third time, it will actually turn itself off and say, I'm sorry, I give up. You're beyond help. So, I like parts of that. I really enjoy, I appreciate the alert when it occurs. Ninety nine percent of time it's because I know that's where I am. I've moved over for some reason or I'm starting to change lanes on the highway, and I neglected to turn on my turn signal. Turn on your turn signal that it's not going to correct you, of course.  What I have actually turned off is the auto control back into the lane, though. I've done it for a purposeful reason. What I found was if I am approaching, for instance, a pedestrian or a cyclist on the shoulder, I want to move over for that person and I'm not going to jerk the wheel over and zip into a lane. I'm going to let the car drift slightly wider and I'm going to let them have more room as I think is appropriate. And assuming there's no car coming the other direction, I might actually approach that center line or even cross it slightly to give room for this pedestrian. Well, when I was doing that and I had the control system on, it steered me back into the lane because it didn't know there was a pedestrian there or trash cans on the side of the road, or whatever it is. So, I found it hard. It was taking me places I didn't really want it to go.  So, I turned that teacher off. But I did it knowingly and consciously and for a reason and not because it just annoyed me. So, use your technology.  Again, read that owner's manual, understand what it is trying to do for you and use it to your advantage. And if you don't like it for a specific reason, a logical reason, not just because I don't like that thing. I don't like being beeped at. Well, then certainly consider adjusting it. Something like adaptive cruise control can be a change. There are settings for how far behind the vehicle in front of you are. So set your following distance.  Course, what we always recommend is the standard three-second rule.  You see the car in front of you pass a sign or a pothole or stripe on the road or something. Count to yourself. One. One thousand. Two one thousand. Three one thousand. You shouldn't be to that same point, that hole in the road or whatever before three seconds. That means you've got that three seconds of following distance behind that car in front of you, and that's really that cushion that you need. When we talk about the reaction times of the human being, it typically to perceive a hazard, understand what it is and then react to it. In other words, move your foot from the accelerator, the brake. Those two actions about a second to a second and a half for most people. If you're at highway speed that's 100, 150 feet you've just traveled, and you haven't done anything to stop your car yet. And if you're in winter conditions where the roadway surface might not be perfect, you've traveled that same distance, but now you're breaking, efficiency is gonna be reduced. So, you're stopping distance is far longer. So, we have to give extra room. So, in the wintertime, I might set that cruise control. Actually, let me take that back. If the road conditions are not very good. Shouldn't use cruise control because again, the car doesn't know that the road conditions aren't very good so it can get you into trouble. But what I will do is back off from that car in front of me and allow that extra following distance because I know I'm not going to be able to stop as quickly. So use the technology to help you if you choose to turn off some of it, you can do so, but don't ever give up your responsibility as a driver to understand what's in front of you, what's behind you and control your car despite the conditions around you. If we look at the definition of defensive driving from the National Safety Council, it's to drive to save lives, time and money despite the conditions and the actions of others. I can't control the drivers. I can't control the weather, but I can control my car. Peter Koch: Those are great points and really thinking about it. If you do drive defensively and not aggressively and there's been tons of studies out there, Mythbusters have done studies out there. The NTSB has done studies out there. Individual car companies have done studies out there about distracted driving, about aggressive driving. How it doesn't actually save time. It doesn't save money. It doesn't save productivity. And it certainly doesn't put you in a safe position to react to a mistake that another driver might make. And if we all reacted defensively or drove defensively, then there would be less mistakes to react to, which would be pretty amazing how efficient the system might actually work. And considering that for a second. Have you ever had the experience driving down the highway where all of a sudden you're driving at the speed limit 65, 70 miles an hour, wherever you are, whatever it is, and you go from there to 30 or 25 and you crawl around for 10 minutes, 15 minutes and you're still moving and you're expecting at some point time to see the reason why there has been a slowdown and all of a sudden traffic opens up and you're back to speed limits. And there's been no accident. There's been no road change. There's been no nothing else. And what's happened are people aren't driving defensively. They're reacting to the problems around you. And if you see brake lights in front of you and you're going really fast, you don't have a good cushion in front of you. You're applying your brake lights, which means the person behind you are applying their brake lights. And it just keeps backing up. And all of a sudden, there's a mile worth of slow down. Randy Klatt: Yes, a mile worth of hurry up and wait. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I see it all the time. When I'm in the right-hand lane, I'm looking down the roadway as everyone should. I'm trying to not just focus on that car in front of me, which is important for following distance, but I'm also looking well down the roadway, so I know what to expect. So, I see brake lights in the distance. I'm, of course, going to back off a little bit. I'm just going to start to slow down. And then there's the driver in the left-hand lane that zips by me going faster than the speed limit was in the first place. And there, you know, here we are a couple hundred yards later and he's jamming on his brakes because now he realizes that he's almost going to hit the car in front of him. I worked with a truck driving company that the owner of the company had 2 million accident free miles in his logbook, very experienced.  And he would like he told me that with his new drivers, what he'd like to do is he would drive from Maine down through New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Connecticut, down to New York, where they went for a lot of their stops. And he told that student driver and the new driver that he thought he bet that he could drive right through that whole area and never touch his brakes. And of course, none of the guys believed him that that could be possible. And he said he did it all the time because he understood flow. He understands traffic in front of them. He understands speed. He's not going to get there any quicker any way. So why accelerate brake, accelerate brake, if you can just very carefully maneuver through the through the roadway. Keep your following distances. You get there the same time you're beating up your car or your vehicle a lot less. You're using less gas. It just makes good sense. It's also less stressful because when everybody's in a hurry and they're all angry about delays and what might go on ahead of them, then they're angry at each other. And then we have road rage and just, just relax. It's OK. I'll get there about the same time you are anyway. And if you beat me by 30 seconds. Peter Koch: So be it. Randy Klatt: OK. You won the race. That's OK.  I'm going to get there, and I will have saved some money and I'll be a lot better mood when I get where I'm going. So, and when it comes to winter driving. Oh, my gosh. Now, now, let's add that road, those road conditions. So, all of that that I just described, you know, let's multiply that several times for winter driving because we're going to take longer to stop because we might have less visibility. It just makes sense that I'm going to back off a little bit more. Peter Koch: And that that behavior of accelerate brake, accelerate brake, accelerate brake, which happens often whether it's highway driving, primary road driving, secondary road driving really increases your chances of coming unstuck from the roadway.  When I step on the gas, there's a higher demand in order to keep the tires in place or to keep the tire's grip. There's a higher demand for a coefficient of friction when I brake and I have to brake hard, it's the same thing. So, road conditions have, could have road conditions could significantly affect the behavior of the car when the driver behaves in that accelerate brake accelerate brake pattern. Randy Klatt: Exactly right. If you think back to February of 2015, we had a collision on I-95 in the Bangor area in Maine. We ended up with almost 100 cars in that pileup. Peter Koch: I remember that. Randy Klatt: Inconceivable. Not really. There it was. So why did that occur? Well, you read all the reports and take a look at what the state police had to say. And clearly, they would say, all right well, weather was probably a contributing factor. And we know it was because it was poor weather. It was February. It was snowing. But had the people driving through that area been driving for the conditions, the flashing lights on the interstate. We know when those say 45 miles an hour. Now, that's advisory only. Well, had people slowed down some and increased their following distance, we never would have had that occur and we might have had a collision. So whatever caused that in the very beginning or the first vehicle was to lose control, hit somebody else, that might have been it because everyone else behind, had they been driving appropriately for the conditions, they should have been able to avoid that pileup. But then you get two and three and then you get four and you get five. And then before you know it, you're stuck in the middle because you actually driving well, you had plenty of following distance. You could stop, but the driver behind you couldn't. So now you end up in the middle of this, too. So again, we can't influence the driver behind other than increase my following distance in front of me so that if I have to stop, I can do it more gradually. I don't have to jam on my brakes in a panic. Therefore, the driver behind me will have more time to be able to stop. So even if they're tailgating me, I'm hopeful that my actions can help prevent him from hitting me. So, it just fundamental driving safely, driving defensively, especially in winter conditions. Peter Koch: But you might say, Randy. But, Randy, if I increase my following distance, what's going to happen? Someone will pull right in front of me. So, I might just as well keep my speed so that I don't give enough room for someone else to make it more challenging for me. So, what do you say to that? Randy Klatt: Sure. Yeah, I've had people tell me ahhh, if I did that, I'd be driving backwards because everybody would be pulling in front of me. The truth of the matter is that doesn't happen. It does happen that people will pull in front of you and fill that space throughout your driving time. At sometimes they will. So, at sometimes, if you are providing 3 minute, 3 seconds of following distance and someone pulls in front of you, you've lost your three seconds. But I'd be willing to bet that if you're following the speed limits or even less if the conditions are worse, that that space will open right back up in front of you again pretty quickly, because the person that passed you is probably one of those people that's in a hurry. They're going to get by no matter what. They'll pull in front of you. They'll accelerate. And you'll have your three seconds back in a matter of seconds. There are times when it might be two. There might be one. And as long as you're aware, you go Oh my gosh. Okay. I got to slow down a little bit more now. I gotta increase it. OK. Now I've got it back to two. There's two and a, there's three. Now I can continue on my way. It'll be it'll be fine. And I've done this for years and I drive all through the Northeast. So that includes Connecticut and New York and Massachusetts and down to Washington, D.C. and all the traffic areas that you can imagine where everyone is in a hurry. And I've never found it to be a hindrance to me. I've never found that I'm causing any real problems. If I was driving 55 on the interstate when everyone else wants, should be driving 70 or is driving 70 now, I'm a hazard that I would not recommend. But simply maintain speed limit. I'll give you a couple miles over if you really feel important. That's OK. But I'm going to maintain that following distance no matter what. And everybody else will be driving faster anyway. So, my time will get back. Peter Koch: I've had that same experience and having a conversation with you about that a number of years ago. Testing that out actually coming out of Washington, D.C. to go see one of one of my accounts down there. So, coming out of the airport, driving through heavy traffic and staying at the speed limit for the conditions. And it was summertime. So, the road conditions were great. Heavy traffic. And if I stayed at the speed limit and drove defensively, kept that cushion, people would pull in front of me. And within a few seconds, I'd have that cushion back and people would just keep falling and in front of me. And you would essentially catch up with someone later on down the road, because there was going to be a traffic congestion that caused a slowdown. And you could see him up 10, 15, 20, 30 cars up ahead. But they weren't miles and miles and miles and miles ahead of you. Randy Klatt: No, they weren't. And especially in the northeast where, you know, there's tollbooth every couple of miles. So, you know what the heck you know that you're gonna be right behind that person that just passed you in such a hurry and disappears down the hill in a mile, you know, because you're if you're from the area particularly, you think, OK, well, there's a tollbooth in about three miles. I know who's gonna be right in front of me. It just it doesn't make any sense to try to fight it. Another consultant that taught driving overseas, talking about doing that with his students. And, you know, when you drive to work tomorrow and drive the way you always do and write down your time and then the next day, drive following every rule, follow the speed limit, give your distance, blah, blah, blah and then write down the time and then tell me what the difference is.  For him and that experience over the years, it was only a couple of minutes, even by the math the difference between fifty-five miles an hour and seventy-five miles an hour on a ten-mile trip is only four minutes difference. And that assumes constant speed, which you'll never be able to do anyway. So, in the winter, this becomes even more important. We should not have ninety-five or one hundred cars piled up in a collision like that. If people are driving the way, they should be driving. Peter Koch: And a lot of that is preparation. You talk about that the individual who wants to gain a little bit of time is going to get a little bit of a little bit faster. Chances are they made that decision when they left the house that morning. And grant that it might not have been their decision, but they made the decision to try to make up for that time, whether it because they got up late, because they had a problem at home, because there was something else going on, they chose to make up that time in the most dangerous thing that we're gonna do any day, which is getting a car drive. And if we think about all of the decisions that have to keep us on the road. Right. So that the tools that the car gives us are tires and technology, we still have to have a pilot. And that pilot in there is that essential piece that has to make thousands upon thousands of decisions every minute in order to keep that vehicle on the road safely. The more distractions that we have, the more challenges that we have to our ability to pay attention and those decisions that we make will inevitably cause us to have issues.  Cause the tools that we have within the car to exceed their limitations. And then we're gonna have an accident. Randy Klatt: Absolutely right. We would be remiss if we didn't mention distracted driving in any topic around driving.  Certainly, most important, when the weather conditions are poor. Just remember, the human brain can only make so many decisions in so many times, in so much time. And really, we're only doing one thing at a time. So that distraction that takes your eyes or your brain off the roadway, off the conditions, off the traffic simply allows again, Sir Isaac Newton to be in the driver's seat, taking you where he will and not where you necessarily want to go. So, you're just gonna set yourself up for those problems that you find yourself in a position where you can't do anything about it. You can no longer stop in time based on this amount of space that you have. And if road conditions are bad, you're going to need more space. So, the collision is almost inevitable based on where you found yourself. So, let's back that chain of events up, back to where we now have control and we'll leave that extra space in front of us so that we can avoid those situations completely. Peter Koch: Sure. Just consider back to that initial example that you gave, having the experience of missing your exit on the highway. So, I'm distracted to some point and I didn't pay attention to where I was on the road. I see the exit in the corner of my eye as I blow past it. My initial reaction is, oh, no. And I have a choice in that particular moment to take my foot off the accelerator and hit the brake or just keep going to the next exit and maintaining that speed and that driving distance. But that initial reaction is to be able to slow down. And if the weather conditions are challenging, if the road is wet, if it's raining, if it's snowing, if it's that there's ice or even if there's a buildup of winter sand on the side of the road, again, you don't have the traction. Randy Klatt: No, you don't. And keep in mind, the legal tread depth for a tire for almost every state, for most states is two thirty-seconds of an inch. Why the government can't reduce fractions?  I don't, I don't know.  It's a sixteenth of an inch. But, you know, two thirty-seconds of an inch of tread depth is legal. That's for D.O.T. as well. Steering tires four thirty-seconds of an inch. So, if we've got winter tires on our vehicle that are designed for snow that have the snowflake symbol with the Twin Peaks on it tells us that that tires supposed to perform 10 percent better than your other tires. That's a great safety feature.  But if the tread depth is worn down to six thirty-seconds, we have lost a huge percentage of our performance, more than 50 percent of our performance. So, it's a tire that is legal. It's six thirty-seconds tread depth as compared to the legal limit of two. But it's not nearly as well-performing as it was when it was newer. So, I see so many people that they go to their state inspection. The tires are close. Well, OK it passed, but you really should get new ones and they say, OK. And then they say, well, now I've got another year. WooHoo! Well, no, you don't. Those tires are not going to perform nearly as well. And true too of snow tires. So do the rotation like you should put the winter tires on at the time of season when you need them, but take them off when you don't, especially studded tires. Those really aren't doing you much good except on really hard packed snow and ice.  But for a lot of states, well, I think every state there are time limits where you have to have those off your vehicle. So be careful of those times and understand what the wear on those tires really are. And you may have to replace winter tires quicker than you might otherwise. Otherwise, you're losing the performance that you paid for. Peter Koch: Excellent. Randy. Those are that's a really good thought about having the proper really the proper shoes on your vehicle for the season. That's the type of thing you're not going to hike up a mountain someplace in sandals or you're not going to go to the opera in steel-toed boots. So, it's having the right tool for the job, for the right the right conditions. So, let's recap here and just kind of put together sort of those list of tips and things that folks can do to be better or safer drivers in the winter. And I'm going to start with the first one was going to be make sure your vehicle is properly maintained and understand its limitations. We've talked about a bunch of those things. So, understanding what has or how your vehicle will operate in the adverse conditions, what technology is in place for it to alert you to different challenges and how it's limited and make sure it's properly maintained. What else would you suggest for tips for our listeners to keep safe while winter driving? Randy Klatt: Well, again, fall back to the fundamental. If I don't have to go somewhere, I'm not going to go. So, let's wait an hour. Let's wait till later this afternoon, maybe even tomorrow if it's something I'm doing for pleasure or just a grocery store trip that I can I can get by. Let's do that. Let's let the snowplows get out there, do their job, clear the roads is certainly in states that see snow frequently within hours after the snow has stopped falling, you're gonna have pretty clear roads to use. So, let's do that first. Secondly, give yourself a little extra time. Slow down on the roadway. Let everybody else be in a hurry and risk themselves if that's gonna be the case, because you can't control that, but you are in control of your vehicle. Give yourself that extra space in front of you so that you have extra time to react and extra time for that vehicle to stop if that has to occur.  And overall, always understand your vehicle, the technology, what's going to help you, what's not. Make sure those tires are in good condition as they are the only thing that touches the road. Know how to use all the whiz bang features that you might have and understand ultimately that you are responsible. It's so easy to say the weather caused it. When I did crash investigation in the Navy for aircraft crashes, we could not use weather as a causal factor. It was prohibited by this, by the rules. Imagine that.  Pilot flies into a thunderstorm and a thunderstorm brings him down. Certainly, that's the weather's probably fault. And no, the answer is it was the pilot's fault for flying into it. So, use that overall guiding philosophy. You're in charge of that vehicle. You're responsible for your life. Anyone in your vehicle and all those people around you. Drive to save lives, time and money, despite the conditions around you and the actions of others.  Peter Koch: I think that's fantastic. Randy, those are all excellent points and I think our listeners will be able to take that with them as we come into this winter season.  So that about wraps up this week safety podcast. I appreciate everything that you've provided for us today, Randy, and all of our listeners out there who have followed us through this podcast. So today we've been speaking with Randy Klatt, director of Region II Loss Control with MEMIC about winter driving safety. And if you have any questions for our guest or like to hear more about a particular topic or from a certain person on our podcast. Email us at podcast@MEMIC.com Resources/Articles/People Mentioned in Podcast MEMIC - https://www.memic.com/ Peter Koch - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/peter-koch Randy Klatt - https://www.memic.com/workplace-safety/safety-consultants/randy-klatt Sir Isaac Newton - https://www.biography.com/scientist/isaac-newton Hierarchy of Safety Controls - https://www.creativesafetysupply.com/glossary/hierarchy-of-controls/ ABS Systems - https://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/brakes/brake-types/anti-lock-brake1.htm National Safety Council - https://www.nsc.org/ Mythbusters - https://go.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) - https://www.ntsb.gov/Pages/default.aspx 2015 Bangor, ME: I-95 Pile-Up - https://bangordailynews.com/2015/03/11/news/bangor/police-i-95-pileup-involved-more-than-100-vehicles-no-charges-expected/ Department of Transportation (DOT) - https://www.transportation.gov/

In this episode, I collaborate with Hillary Melchiors from the Birth Geeks podcast, as we discuss three guiding principles for positive language during pregnancy and birth. Transcript: Hillary   Hi, Sara!   Sara    Hi Hillary! How are you? I'm just fabulous. I'm so excited to be talking to you.   Hillary   Ditto, I'm a big fan. I totally fangirled when I met you, by the way. Do you remember that?   Sara   Oh, I totally remember. It made my evening. I was so nervous. And then I was like, people know me and appreciate me! It was very awesome. I really appreciate it.    Hillary   Oh, anytime.    Sara   Okay, good. Let's set up another meeting time so you can fangirl again. Okay, so yeah, this is Hillary Melchiors, right?    Hillary   Yeah!   Sara   I actually just listened to your podcast so that I would say it right. But just the little intro part, like how does she say it? Okay, and Hillary is a podcast host too, over at the Birth Geeks. I'm going to see if I can remember your slogan... I know it's something about...oh: "Upping the--" but up is not the verb you use-- "Something, the professional something, getting the conversation, upgrading the conversation and something your professional mox--"   Hillary   --helping you renew your professional moxy   Sara   There we go, ok! "Upgrading the conversation, helping you renew your professional moxy."   Hillary   Do you know, one of my daughters, actually, we had our kids record the tagline. And she kept saying "PROfessional" and we were laughing so hard. It's really cute. And this is Sara Pixton. Sara is a doula in Utah, but she's also a podcast host of Birth Words. So she's also a linguist, which I love, as a language nerd myself.   Sara   One of my very favorite things that happened on social media was on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, somebody tagged me and was like, "There is literally a podcast for everything. If you're a word nerd and a birth geek, I just found your thing!" And I was like, I'm so glad I fill that niche for you!   Hillary   Right? And now we are here.   Sara   Yes, the word nerds, the birthy, wordy, nerdy geeks. That was a really, really good introduction.   Hillary    Yes.    Sara   I just have to comment one other thing, that your pin from the EBB conference, that "I'm a Birth Geek" pin that was like in the swag bags or whatever, my daughter found it the other day and was like, "What does a  birth geek mean?" And I was like, "It just means you just know and love every single thing about it." And she was like, "Great, can I wear the pin?" And then she had this kind of like identity crisis throughout the rest of the next few hours that she was wearing it where she was trying to defend her right to wear the pin, but like not totally sure that she wanted to commit to everything that it represented. She was like, "I'm a birth geek, because that means I love everything...well, I don't know if I love everything about birth, but like, I really like the pin."   Hillary   Yeah, so we're recording this on Halloween it's going to be a little bit before we publish, but I wanted to tell you that my Birth Geek friends always have the best costumes. So one of my Birth Geek friends in Texas, she actually is dressed up as the IUD today.    Sara   Oh, wow! Can you put a picture of that in the show notes?   Hillary   I should. Well, I have to ask her...   Sara    If it's with consent.    Hillary   I mean she's, she's technically, like, the reproductive system, because her hands have the ovaries on them, but very much the middle of her sweatshirt is a big IUD. Fantastic.   Sara   Alright.   Hillary   So hi! So today we're going to be talking about... what are we talking about Sara?   Sara   We're talking about your top three tools to improve communication during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. Yeah.   Hillary   Well, and as a doula, I really do try to get my my clients to communicate with their care providers more effectively. I think that's really important. Especially,because you have such a limited amount of time with them before the big day. So, you have to really be careful.   Sara   Yeah. And you're probably one of many, many clients that they have, right. I mean, depending on circumstance, but especially if you're at a ob clinic, right? Right. Um, so yeah, knowing how to have that effective communication, really important.    Hillary   Absolutely. Well, and also, you know, as a doula, making sure that I'm communicating well with my clients and in a way that they want me to, I think that that's also good.   Sara   Yeah. And then I think from your clients perspective, obviously, they're communicating with you, they're communicating with their care provider provider, they're communicating with nurses in the hospital, they're communicating with friends and family members who have maybe just different opinions, or thoughts, or stories about pregnancy and birth that might be thrown at them at any moment, with or without warning.    Hillary   That sounds like you have personal experience there.   Sara   I have just, you know, like, maybe not even, I mean, some personal experience, certainly, but also just experience of listening to others stories, and experiences. So, I think that the things the tips that we're going to touch on will help you navigate all of those situations, because I think that the way that we talk and interact with other people makes a big difference in our experiences.    Hillary   Absolutely.    Sara   We're going to first talk about being intentional.   Hillary   What does that mean to you, Sara? To be intentional, with their language?   Sara   That's a really good question. Um, to me, it means a few things. One, is being aware, like we've been talking about, of the effect of the words that you produce, and also the discourse that you've been bathed in throughout your life, whichever ones they are. Just being--and now I'm kind of branching over into reflective, you can't really separate all of them, but we're trying--So intentional, just being aware that the way that I speak, and the words that I choose to incorporate in my belief system, and my feelings, and my experiences, make a big difference. So, I'm going to make sure that the ones that I'm using are positive and confidence building, right?    Hillary   Absolutely. Well, and as a doula, I feel like I'm combating a lot of the messages that my clients are getting from elsewhere. And so, when I'm more intentional about my language with clients, I think that that's very helpful for them. At least I, maybe I'm fooling myself that I'm not.   Sara   I don't think so at all. I'm totally going to jump on board with that and say, yeah, because I think sometimes we're not intentional, but we're just, like, using the lingo that is used without pausing to consider, like in my Birth Words Community Facebook group yesterday, we just had this big discussion about the word deliver or delivery, which some people have strong feelings about, some people not as much. Some people feel like "I don't mind it if the mom is saying 'I delivered my baby,' but really mind it if the doctors are saying 'I'm going to deliver you, or deliver your baby,'" right? So we just had this big conversation about it, and one thing that just was brought to light is that some really, often not intentional, or, again, reflective is the next thing we're going to talk about, but we just choose words because, well, that's the one that was in What to Expect When You're Expecting or whatever. And so, I figured that's the word that we use.   Hillary   Right. Well, I think also being intentional about even something really minor, like pronouns, for example.  You know, making sure that you're intentionally using inclusive language. That's very important to me. It's not for everybody, and that's okay. I don't know if it's okay. But it's a thing.  And I think that that's important as well.    Sara   Yeah, and, in addition, like, okay, we talked about pronouns, and nouns, and this can be from a gender neutral perspective, or just from a perspective of being empowering, which we'll talk about as our third prong. Now I've revealed all of them, there's no more dramatic tension except that Hillary's going to apparently surprise me with something down the road. So, don't tune out now, just because I've spilled all three beans. But yeah, I've been talking about just the words like client versus patient. What am I saying when I'm calling somebody a patient? What am I implying about their position and their abilities to make decisions and to, you know, just be an empowered participant?   Hillary   Yes, you're making my medical anthropologist heart very happy right now.    Sara   Oh, good! Tell me why.   Hillary   Well, that, that distinction, actually, between client and patient, I think, it's a powerful one, because of power distinctions. Right? Because a midwife, they intentionally say client most of the time, at least the ones I work with, and that's intentional because they work with people, right? They don't work on people, working on people. It's a little different. It's just a different perspective.    Sara   Oh, I was just getting excited about like we've talked about pronouns, nouns. Now we're talking about prepositions. Like it's all so important! We're working with people not on them. I love that distinction. And, yeah, I love it. Okay. And my other, back to nouns, my preferred noun is birthgiver because it's empowering and inclusive.   Hillary   No, it's great. I think that's fantastic. I think it's important.   Sara   Oh, I wanted before we move on from intentional, I also wanted to talk, just from the birthgiver's side of things, being intentional in the way that you and interact with your care provider, like we talked about the importance of, you know, making sure that you're having those conversations, but also being intentional about what you let in too, you know what I'm saying?   Hillary   Yes. Have your earmuffs they filter everything, right?   Sara   Yeah. Or I mean, or maybe there are things that have already been led in decades ago that are just like part of your identity as a birthgiver that are not helpful. Like, what do you do with that? Well, maybe you need to intentionally work through them and figure out, and again, we're going into the reflective portion... You can't really separate it out. But saying like, "Where did this come from? Do I place value in that? Can I separate myself from it?" And just like working through until you're left with an identity that is intentionally chosen and not just, kind of, what was thrust upon you.   Hillary   I love it. It's almost a bridge from like being intentionally reflective.     Sara   There we go. Let's bridge Let's go there.    Hillary   Yeah no, I think we should reflect more on our own language, before we open, as we sit here and talk.  No, I think that a lot of there's a lot of unconscious bias and things that we say and we don't realize it. And I think, so, reflecting on the reasons for your word choices, I think that's also important.   Sara   Yeah. Again, like just pausing and saying, "Oh, what just came out of my mouth?" or "What am I about to open my mouth and say?" would be the best place to pause. But sometimes, like a random example that comes to mind, I, for a while, was a volunteer doula at a local hospital that has a volunteer doula program. And so, I had a couple of women that I talked to that were maybe interested in my sport but they were, kind of, not quite ready for it yet. And I was going to go take a lunch break, and I was just telling the charge nurse, or, I don't remember who I was, the care coordinator that I was going to go down to lunch, but there were these people that were maybe interested in my sport so here's my phone number if they get to a point where they're like "Yeah, have her come," call me back up. Um, but I remember having this conversation with her and saying like, Oh yeah, I have these two or three patients in rooms blah blah, blah, blah blah. And then being like, wait, okay, A) I'm not even a care provider. Like I'm a volunteer doula. B) I had purposely avoided using that word, I wasn't quite as mindful about it at this point, but from that point where I was like, "What just came out of my mouth?" I've been really reflective about like, why did I say that? Where was it coming from? And part of it, I think, was like wanting to be savvy with the nurses, and use their lingo and whatever but if we're really reflecting ...Wow, yeah, yeah.   Hillary   No, I was just gonna say like, it sounds to me like you were mirroring, right? Like, no matter if she said one word to you at all, you know that she's a nurse. So you're almost, you know, like, "Okay, now I'm talking to the nurse. So we're going to talk about patient."   Sara   Yeah. So from the other side of it, when I was pregnant with my first two babies, because they're twins, I was on hospital bed rest for four weeks.  And that was totally something that I did during my time there, is that I started to mirror the nurses lingo.  Because I wanted to, you know, show them that I was smart and could like play their game and whatever.  Not that they were trying to play games. They were taking good care of me, I was in early labor at 30 weeks and we didn't want that to happen.  And they came at 35, so we hung on for a while. But yeah, I kind of wanted to use their lingo and very much became, I don't know, it was kind of this tricky place between, I was trying to empower myself as a patient, right? I was trying to be like, "See, I'm the savvy patient!" But I was very much assigning myself in the role of patient by just using all of this terminology that was very much placing me in that position. And a lot of ways, I was, there were a lot of medical needs that were needing to be cared for. But then I think it really affected my birth experience, when I was in labor that I had been in this position as a patient, using all the patient lingo and wasn't as intentional or thoughtful about the choices that I made during my labor.   Hillary   That is interesting. Well, I was just thinking, as a doula I tried very hard not to, like overly use the medical language.  So, I feel like sometimes I'm like this cultural broker, not to be too anthropological.  But, you know, I can speak the medical language, I can give you the two minute rundown of everything that's happened, with all the abbreviations. Like, I know how to do that. But I intentionally try not to do that with my clients.   Sara   Right. Because what position does that put them back in?  Like they're part of a medical system, and if they're trying to birth in a natural physiological system, whether that's at the hospital or not,   Hillary   I was going to tell you, I did have a client who made me much more reflective on my language than I ever really thought about before. I got the opportunity to serve surrogate clients. And that really made me much more reflective about how I spoke to her. And, you know, she was excited, but for much different reasons than a lot of other people that I had the opportunity to serve. And it was a very interesting, it was very interesting, it made me so reflective, it just made me think, "Oh, wait, no, no, you're not, that's not your baby." And I took a really great training online actually, that made me think more about, you know, how I was going to speak to this person.   Sara   Yeah, I think that's a really good example. Because like, because then I bet going forward, you were more reflective about the language that used with all your other clients, even if they weren't surrogate parents because you realized that they are unique individuals, right? That should be spoken to in unique ways based on their--   Hillary   I may or may not have revised my entire website. Because I really enjoyed that process. And, I mean, that person in particular, is really lovely. And I was like, "Man I would love to do that again, I should make sure that, you know, my website and everything that I publish, you know, reflects that I want to be a part of that." So, and I know how to serve those people in a way that they would like to be.  So that that was a really, it was I felt like it was on the job training. But really, really rewarding.   Hillary   So the last one is empowering. How do you make sure that your language is empowering?   Sara   Well, we've talked about a couple of things and obviously, they're all intertwined and it comes a lot from being reflective saying: "What am I doing when I refer to my client as a patient? What is that implying about our relationship and her abilities to make decisions to birth without assistance?" etc, etc. And so we've talked about that, we've talked about using intentionally empowering terminology like birthgiver, like, giving birth versus being delivered, right? I also think, as we're talking about reflection and the unique experiences and needs of each client that you serve, or if you are the one giving birth, as you're reflective, as you're considering, something that I do with my clients is have them just sit down and think about "Okay, what are my feelings and beliefs about birth as a process?" Okay, next step, "What are my feelings and beliefs about myself as a birth giver?" And then if a partner is there doing it, "What are my partner's feelings?" Well, the partner fills out: "What are my feelings about my partner's abilities or role as a birthgiver?" Okay, what about the roles of authority figures? Because that comes up.  And different people are positioning themselves in different ways, and you're accepting or rejecting different authority figures throughout the whole process.   Hillary   I am a big rule follower and Robin makes fun of me for that. There's a story, I'll tell you later.  Yeah, no, no, it's just, we were driving and I was like, "Oh, I can't do that. That's against the rules." And she was like, "It's okay. Going somewhere..." It's silly.    Sara   Yeah! Okay. But like, that's, okay so, but let's go with that. Because, we're talking about being reflective about various things that are going to come up in birth. And then, I was gonna say for the empowering part, then you work through, like we've talked about, the reflection: where's this coming from? And you choose, intentionally, again, looping back to being intentional, those things that are empowering. So, if Hillary's giving birth, and is a total rule follower, it really matters who you see as an authority figure, and what role you're going to let that authority figure play.  Like, if you see, if your care provider is, like, I don't want to do a negative stereotype, whatever, but if it's an obstetrician with a 50% cesarean rate, and you are induced for some medical reason, and you see your care provider is an ultimate authority figure--who has proven through their practice that, you know, they often choose those choices that lead towards the path of a cesarean--and you're just saying, "Okay, yes, yep, you're in charge," then you have a 50% chance of having a cesarean birth, which, obviously, is not in alignment with, like, the actual physiological medical needs for necessary birth.    Hillary   Yeah, and sometimes I feel like, well, so again, to put on my anthropologist hat, a little bit, I think that, you know, we're taught in our culture very much to respect the medical profession. And I think that that's a, it's a good thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but respect versus, like, doing literally everything you're told and never questioning anything is a very, very different thing. And so, respecting authority versus, like, bowing down to it, I think that you need to make that fine distinction.   Sara   Yeah, like you're saying that we are absolutely, I'm not and I don't think Hillary is, advocating for, of course you're not being disrespectful to care providers, or like we are not saying like, go be a belligerent like, "No I won't _____!" That's not going to be a helpful way to communicate with your care provider, A).  B) It's not the respect that a human being deserves, especially one who is in a service oriented profession and serving you. C) I don't know... all the things!   Hillary   I feel like you should be empowered to be as respectful, like to be mirroring respect, right? So if someone is being completely disrespectful and talking down to you, that's different than someone coming to have a conversation with you, like, "This is my opinion. These are the reasons why I'm recommending this." You know, that's a different story than, walking in and saying, "Hey, you're going to have a cesarean because it's 4pm and I have a tee time."  I literally never heard that phrase uttered by a physician before. Never.   Sara   Mutual respect, and I think that that goes along with being intentional about who you place in authority as an authority figure. No matter how you position yourself. In some ways, whoever you choose as your care provider is going to have some level of authority at some point during your birth experience. And so, you want there to be that level of mutual respect that, "Wow, my care provider respects and honors my authority as the one with the baby in my body, with the intuition to know the best choices for this circumstance, and with the power to and the ability to birth this baby." And not choosing somebody who doesn't respect your position as somebody bringing life into the world, somebody, you know, a care provider that sees you more as a patient who's a passive recipient of care, that's not going to be able to have that mutual level of respect. And really not going to be an empowering position for either person.   Hillary   I really loved how you incorporated all three resources into that.   Sara   Oh, well, there you go! That was my concluding.    Hillary   I think that was fantastic! Uh, Sara?    Sara   Yes, Hillary?   Hillary   Are you ready for my silly question?    Sara   I'm ready for your silly question.    Hillary   Have you seen the BFG or read the BFG?   Sara   I have read it. I have not seen it.   Hillary   This has inspired the question that I chose, so that's your warning.    Sara   I'm a little scared.   Hillary   Would you rather burp bubbles or fart green fumes?   Sara   Burp bubbles!! Bubbles are magical.   Hillary   Agreed. How fun would it be to just be drinking soda all day and have little kids follow you around the zoo while you burped bubbles?   Sara   I mean, like, I hope that I could do it kind of politely    Hillary   Oh see and I was imagining you, like, leading a parade while you're burping out bubbles!   Sara   Well, either way, I still would prefer the bubbles.    Hillary   I would be so proud if I could burp bubbles. Green fumes not so much.  It would be a little more embarrassing.   Hillary   I really appreciate you taking the time, Sara, I know that we're in different time zones, and you only let me fangirl once so far when we met in person.  I really, really appreciate you taking the time. Especially because I know that your podcast is typically much shorter than ours, because we are chatty. Not that you're not chatty, but   Sara   I like to be chatty. I just restrict sometimes.   Hillary   I love it. I think that's fantastic.   Sara   Well, thank you. Thanks for chatting with me. I appreciate your perspective. And, what are you laughing about?   Hillary   I was like, "Oh, I have a perspective!"   Sara   Yeah! Your medical anthropology perspective, you pulled that hat out two or three times.   Hillary   I honestly I never take it off. I got to interview one of my grad school professors for the podcast and I think it was after we were finished. She was like, "You're doing such a great job using your PhD!" And I was like, "Aw, that was maybe the best compliment I ever got." So, I just, it never turns off. That's all right. Robin did get upset. Robin got upset because I, we were in Las Vegas together and she said, "Do you ever turn the anthropologist off?" Like, no, not really. Sorry   Sara   I like it. Keep it coming.    Hillary   Thanks Sara!   Sara   Thank you, Hillary.

The 2020 version of On1 Photo Raw has some surprising features but hasn't entirely eliminated performance problems that I found last year. In Short Circuits: Windows 10 has a silly annoyance that I've been trying to fix for far too long. Now I've found a partial solution that at least reduces the frustration. • Development continues on the Chromium-based version of Microsoft's Edge browser and a beta version that's sufficiently stable for those who want to see how it works is available. • In Spare Parts (only on the website): Too many companies are still transferring files that often contain proprietary information insecurely. • If you find that you're locked out of your smart phone, PhoneRescue might be what you need to get back to normal. • Twenty years ago: I wrote about disk drives that were "so small you might misplace them." Compared to today's disk drives, they were physically larger, far more expensive, and able to store only a tiny fraction of what today's drives hold.

In this interview Lisa Tamati speaks with Lisa Whiteman - Lisa's background is in biological health science, with a specialty in the biomechanics of human motion, and she worked in private practice sports and rehabilitation for over 20yrs. Lisa also is at the cutting edge of research related to human function and performance and is working on a new running tech device call "Run Vibe" which is set to help runners improve their performance through this biofeedback device. Both Lisa's discuss the shortcomings in the health sector, the future of health and fitness, running biomechanics and much more. Lisa is also an experienced entrepreneur who has grown start-ups, turned around failing businesses, bought and sold businesses, mentored business owners, employed staff, and worked from the coal face of health care to the boardroom of private-sector education. Developing dynamic leaders through instilling continued learning, self-awareness and self-improvement form a large part of Lisa's current role and she believes strongly in the power of communication, the power of connection; and the power of relationships, in business and in life. Lisa works with organisations and individuals to improve wellbeing and performance by distilling the science and research in ways that are meaningful and achieve positive outcomes.   You can learn more about Lisa's Podiatry Group which has 8 branches throughout NZ at www.respod.co.nz and  follow Lisa's blog at  https://thebeingproject.nz/ where Lisa discusses everything health, wellness, science and whatever is taking her interest at the moment.   We would like to thank our sponsors Running Hot - By Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff If you want to run faster, longer and be stronger without burnout and injuries then check out and TRY our Running Club for FREE on a 7 day FREE TRIAL Complete holistic running programmes for distances from 5km to ultramarathon and for beginners to advanced runners.   All include Run training sessions, mobility workouts daily, strength workouts specific for runners, nutrition guidance and mindset help Plus injury prevention series, foundational plans, running drill series and a huge library of videos, articles, podcasts, clean eating recipes and more.   www.runninghotcoaching.com/info and don't forget to subscribe to our youtube channel at Lisa's Youtube channel  www.yotube.com/user/lisatamat and come visit us on our facebook group   www.facebook.com/groups/lisatamati Epigenetics Testing Program by Lisa Tamati & Neil Wagstaff. Wouldn’t it be great if your body came with a user manual? Which foods should you eat, and which ones should you avoid? When, and how often should you be eating? What type of exercise does your body respond best to, and when is it best to exercise? These are just some of the questions you’ll uncover the answers to in the Epigenetics Testing Program along with many others. There’s a good reason why epigenetics is being hailed as the “future of personalised health”, as it unlocks the user manual you’ll wish you’d been born with! No more guess work. The program, developed by an international team of independent doctors, researchers, and technology programmers for over 15 years, uses a powerful epigenetics analysis platform informed by 100% evidenced-based medical research. The platform uses over 500 algorithms and 10,000 data points per user, to analyse body measurement and lifestyle stress data, that can all be captured from the comfort of your own home Find out more about our  Epigenetics Program and how it can change your life and help you reach optimal health, happiness and potential at: https://runninghotcoaching.com/epigenetics You can find all our programs, courses, live seminars and more at www.lisatamati.com    Transcript of interview     Speaker 1: (00:00) Welcome to pushing the limits, the show that helps you reach your full potential with your host, Lisa Tamati brought to you by Lisatamati.com Speaker 2: (00:10) Well how everybody to tell somebody here at pushing the limits. It's fantastic to have you back again with me this week. I have another fantastic guest that I've managed to meet this week. I was at a woman's conference in Wellington and I met some fantastic ladies down the, a shout out to everyone who was at the woman's leadership conference. It was an absolute awesome to be down there and to be amongst amazing ladies in one of the ladies that I got talking to afterwards is Lisa Whiteman. So welcome to the show Lisa. Thanks Lisa licensee today. Now Lisa is, I'm not even going to say what she is cause she actually got such a broad, so I'm going to hear to her a broad area of interest. And, and so many projects that she's working on that I thought would be really beneficial for my audience today to hear from these tourniquet who type on us on a few different things. So at least you're in Wellington now by trade or by profession or whatever you wanna call it. You're a podiatrist. You started your journey, but you've also gone into a number of other areas. And Lisa said, can you just give us a brief overview of what the does that you do? Speaker 3: (01:19) Sure. it's a really difficult question to answer, Lisa and I always struggle, I need a better elevator pitch around this. So, so my day to day work, my day to day role I look after an umbrella organization to support podiatry business owners, to have both successful businesses but also to drive clinical excellence in shitty expertise. So we at nationwide the group is called resonance. It's reasonably podiatry group and there's a reason why resonance comes up a lot. And and a number of my, my brands, CF, so I manage businesses and I manage clinical outcomes. And that's my day to day. Okay. As a segue from that, I also do quite a bit of work in leadership and development in other sectors. Areas is diverse as the music industry. So I've worked with musician and purposeness. And another business I work with and the Bay of plenty is around positive reinforcement training for horses. Speaker 3: (02:30) Well, it's a different way. So this is another, another business and quite a unique and a unique skill set. So I work on businesses, I work in leadership and I have a passion for noticing life and I like to notice with intent. Yeah. I don't want to live life just going through the motions. So noticing has brought me to have a blog and it's called the being project. And my blog there is just a talk about stuff. It is the versus, you know, pressure or stress or pain or relationships or communication. The only areas, I mean, I guess, yeah, it is. It's about, I'm challenging myself to intentfully live my life every single day. Does that make sense? Speaker 2: (03:26) Yeah, absolutely. And in whatever area you're interested in, that's where you go down the rabbit hole on that area. Speaker 3: (03:32) And generally, Lisa, it's the things that pop out of a conversation. So you can guarantee you watch my blog over the next week or two. Yep. Our conversation. Well yeah, because you will spark a need for me to write something Speaker 2: (03:47) That's, that's been fantastic. And in laser and I both, we've, we've just been talking before we got on this recording, we're internal students and we're always looking for what is the latest and, and newest in the app with the science. And Lisa has also a biomechanic she's got some other stuff that she's going to add in too. You just got a charity as well. But let's talk a little bit about your bio mechanics side of things because obviously a lot of the people that listen to my show runners so tell us a little bit about, you buy a mechanic background and what you do there. Speaker 3: (04:20) So as a, as a podiatrist, obviously we're interested in gate, so can gate running gate. And I found I had a, I've always off physics, so the physics of motion and leavers. And so it was a natural place for me to specialize in, gravitate through my clinical Korea. So rehabbing runners from injury on one side and then more recently looking at how we can improve performance in runners. So esteemed the so that they can achieve the goals that they want without them being broken. Cause you know, the running statistics are huge. We're going to have 80% of our run as in any 12 months I'd go into heaven running injury. Yeah. So how do we navigate through those things? So I spend a lot of talks being too, a lot of time learning both bio mechanics function can emetics kinetics, you know, how we run, how we move and then the science of injury. So but looking at the fact that not only are we addictable from a neurology perspective or neuroplastic, we're also bioplastic out tissues have the ability to read, generate, and to get stronger. It's how we find they, for an athlete, that sweet spot, we are getting stronger, but before they're going to break. Yeah. So I'm fascinated and that area of potential Speaker 2: (05:46) It's, and that's for us to, as coaches is a really fine line between over training and your athletes breaking down and optimal performance. Exactly. Speaker 3: (05:58) And it's a really, so you've got a can we talk about the, the, the, the tone if you like, of that you were working on the running bribe. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Just this is something that's cutting edge and new people. So it's coming, it's not yet on the market, but this is what's coming. I've been, I've been working for the last five years, becoming up five years on a project review, research and development about looking at whether we can pick out markers in someone's running gait. So specific metrics in the running gate that put together can give us a really accurate indication of the performance. So that's the power that producing and the efficiency at boundary shifts in body forward. So that's what I've been working on. And we've gone through pilots. Speaker 3: (06:51) We've done pilot done trials and pilots studies and we have a patient we've done a patient and our next step is to go to commercialization. So it's something the goal was, is a lot of complicated metrics out in the Elisa. And the really had to understand, and I really hot right as it is, is great. It's nice and simple. We can understand that you start adding layers and layers and layers to that. It can be overwhelming for the athlete. So every girl was something really, some people that looked at the ability for you to take your body and efficiently move it forward. Yep. And not so, so we're talking about your gait and your, so your, your Tommy, your feet on the ground, your ground resistance, your cadence, not when, what we're not talking about is those specific pieces of form. Speaker 3: (07:47) So what we know is that the metrics that we put weight that we gained from the sensor, we can alter those by things like increasing Hep extinction or increasing the affliction. So what we wanted, and I guess I often call it, we want the best, the most bang for our buck. Meaning we want one number that to alter it or to improve it, he'll base in three simple changes that you'll need to make. So it could be increased cadence. It could be a little bit more high steeper purge. It could be a little bit more hip extinction. It could be a little bit of a tweak to the position of the pelvis. But rather than having to measure those things, measuring the output of those things, one metric which is life a lot easier and simpler. So you know, as running coaches, we're obviously very interested in this because it's very hard to, we have a set of rules that we all take, you know, in regards to bio mechanics, mechanics and what what constitutes and this changes obviously, because don't getting your research Speaker 2: (08:56) All the time, as you will know. So we can generally say that, you know high cadence as a, as a beta wide run and we don't want to be planting our legs in the ground. And we want to keep our hips stable and things like this. But this is going beyond that, the mechanics of that and looking at this one metric which will tell you whether you're approving the force forward or not. Speaker 3: (09:19) Yup. Exactly that. So rather than the, so for you, you'd probably still do that stuff. Yeah. But you do it exactly that we know these things. We know that cadence is important. We know ground contact time is important. What we want to achieve is that runners out there practicing this new technique that you may have guided them through and they want immediate instant feedback that they are achieving that step-by-step-by-step and that's our goal. We know that gait and this is on the science. We know that gait retraining is definitely doable. Yeah. We know that gate retraining takes a minimum of 12 weeks and then it has to be continuously churned until it becomes muscle memory. So I would team decide to my X lights. It's going to take you a year to be able to confidently say you've altered your gait in a month. That, imagine if you had feedback that you were on task and your training runs, you knew that you could hold it for five K but you can't hold it for team. What do we need to do in the gym to improve your, you capacitate to that, that load. Yeah. He know how you're going. So that's what we're, we're that's what we're working on. That's very exciting. And talking about it. I get re invigorated. Speaker 2: (10:41) Yeah. I hate [inaudible] and it's a long process to get something like this to market. So then ultra-marathon in itself. But this is coming in. So people watch out for this in the, in the, in the hopefully near future. What is now you've got podiatrists all through the country in some of those do video gait analysis or do they do all, do live gait analysis in the businesses? Can we, so Speaker 3: (11:12) With so with the reason it's group, we have, everyone does video, gait analysis analysis the ones that specialize more in that running a running analysis or it could even be running for other sport. So we see, you know, a lot of the footballers love rugby. Or the netball is, we use three different forms of gait analysis. One we do mobile motion capture, so that's using a mobile, a HD camera and it can be on the field, on the court. So you're looking at, you might be looking at landing skills or you might be looking at type of skills or it may be a particular thing you want to assist, not just running. And then we do dual camera today. Video capture using treadmill. So we've got two cameras, one at the back when it's side. So we're doing that and there's a really good Bella to tape between or correlation between running on the road and running on a treadmill. So the difference in kinematics is very, very minor. We know the science of that, so things that works well and the food that we do, which is unique for new Zealanders. We do three D, I'm both running and walking Gates. So we use a three D capture camera yup. That plots all the points, creates an avatar and looks at what's loading correctly, what's not loading correctly. So that's really unique and we're the only clinics in the country to be using three D motion capture. Speaker 2: (12:41) I will be able to [inaudible] we can talk afterwards about hooking us up with it so that we can talk to, I mean we do, we just about to which video analysis, like online, but the analysis, but head's got its limitations. You know, we can look at the big areas of change that we can improve upon, but it's not looking three D it's not, you know, doing the stuff that you were doing. So perhaps we can workout something after this conversation or I at least the ones in New Zealand. Now let's change tech a bit, a little bit. So you've got a, obviously a very big science background and by mechanics you've also got a charity that you're involved in that is, tell us a little bit about that one. Speaker 3: (13:24) So today's future is the name of the charity and today's future is an education based charity to support and facilitate a pathway a learning pathway through gifted in neuro diverse young people. So we've particularly focusing on young people between the ages of 14 and 24. And we know that those are critical. If you don't fit, if you don't fit into society or you feel you don't fit into school, which is a big thing. And you might struggle with relationships. This is the time we have, we see a rise in anxiety and depression and really concerning and often these young people, these young adults are functioning, are really high level academically. Yeah. Don't have a peer group to relate to. They often don't relate well to be a thorough in their own peer group. And we find a lot of them will shut down. Speaker 3: (14:23) So we lose this potential for the future. And I have a strong belief that it's our kids have now that hold the case to LC mutual survival. So what today's future wants to do is to nurture these kids through into adult hood. So we have openly lifelong learners who have the courage and it's mental fortitude, laser, the stuff you work on day in and day. I mean to fortitude, to be able to face whatever the future is to throw at us in this planet. It's small, it's growing. And we have resource issues like every other small business organization. We just want to try and make a difference. Speaker 2: (15:09) Trauma can definitely lead to individual kids' lives. So, you know, so these are some of the gifted kids but who have maybe a certain learning difficulties or difficulties fitting in with the groups in your peer groups than in some sort of social difficulties. So that's a really good thing. So you've got a very, very diverse background and I know we were talking earlier about your life as well and you've got a very diverse background. You've had a brain injury, so we can make that. I have a brain injury and talking about rehabilitation, you know, we obviously I used to hit my story with mum. Do you want to share like your insights on, on your journey with them? Speaker 3: (15:50) Yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm happy to and I'm reasonably new as well in, in, in this journey. So I three years ago I unfortunately fell off my horse, which wasn't ideal and broke my back. So I broke 'em T 12, L one and L two. And I did what's called a retropulsion burst fracture of T 12, which is where the part of the, the fracture ends up in the spinal cavity, in the spinal column. Wow. You don't need the spinal nerves. And it was really unfortunate in amongst all of that, I hit the Dick with my head and it's team relay. People recover really well from a single episode head injury. So I was unconscious for a very short period of time. I was a really low risk patient. The thing that no one asked is, have you had a head injury before? This was my food. He didn't drink. Now you would know from probably your research that that puts me in a completely different camp. I should've been looked after quite differently than I was. So I was sent home from hospital after a week and a spinal brace from my chin to my butt and I was a net for 16 weeks. I didn't have surgery because I chose not to. Yup. And my Beck's pretty damn good. As long as I say strong and my cool Lisa. Speaker 2: (17:15) Exactly. Yes. Thanks. So did you hear that everybody, if you've got a bad back, you need to have a strong core that's at the end. Don't necessarily yet jump into the operation side of it so quickly. Speaker 3: (17:30) Well, it's interesting because again, coming from, I'm just a little secret here. Coming from the sports medicine, the Australasian sports medicine and science conference, he was significant. Talk about don't operate. Yeah. Avoid and not just a spinal arthritis, knee arthritis foot. The pain that we are experiencing. I have a passion for pain science. The pain that we experience is not due to tissue damage. The pain we experience is due to the perception of our central nervous system around how safe we are or not. So pain is our response to a feeling of not being safe. And it can be heightened by fear. Fear heightens pain. The longer you've had pain, the least it is linked to tissue. Speaker 2: (18:26) Wow. So the chronic pain is actually it's a more of a a side. Yup. Yup, Speaker 3: (18:34) Yep. It's more, and I'm in around belief systems. So if somebody takes the pain to the body part, like I broke my back, I have back pain. If I believe that I'll continue to have pain. Yup. I understand that actually my back's fine and I'm strong. Then my pain will reduce and I have to tell you this way story. So what they did, and this is on the research, what they did is they used VR. So part of the hip seat on and head. Somebody look at themselves with this really strong back to broad shot, beautifully muscles. So it was their bag that was their body, but it was, it was strong Apple. And they asked them to do stuff and they did what they were asked to do with the strong back. Then they gave them this really weeding Bodie week hunch, looking back in, ask them to repeat the same tasks. They couldn't, they couldn't lift the weight. They didn't have the mobility, they were stiffer. This is how much the mind, the crux of everything we do, Speaker 2: (19:41) Of everything we do. And when we, when we diagnose and when we get a label and we have a back injury and we think with powerless to do anything. Have you heard of the work of dr Joe Dispenza? How? Okay, so he's amazing. I mean, he healed his own back through visualization. I'm talking about, I don't know how many weeks was that? 16 weeks or something. And now he teaches about the belief. Have you also heard about Dr. Bruce Lipton? Really everything of his biology of belief. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I'm all over there and you're by phone and say why I tips. So people basically what, what these two doctors, dr Joe Dispenza, who I highly recommend you go and search out, Dr. Bruce Lipton, who I've mentioned a couple of times on this podcast, and looking at the biology of belief. So what did you believe in? You put in your mind carries through into your body in a fix your actual physical body. And this is why it's so important that we're not telling ourselves we're going to be sick. We are weak. We have this repeatedly and over and over again. Because you are creating a self fulfilling prophecy basically. Speaker 3: (20:46) Exactly. And when we're talking Speaker 2: (20:48) About that it does, it hit and the mind filters through the body. It changes not just the, that, the structure that we think of like our bones and our muscles. It changes the structure of every single cell. No, it's down to the, it's down to more Kyla. And I think that that's the most mind blowing thing with Joe's work. The whole thing around VI visualization gain and the, this is wonderful. It's coming in through the science. The reels, the idea that's coming into college, they talk about the visualization is priming the brain for success. Yup. It's critical. It's a critical way of reducing the pain. People are in this critical for performance. Totally. I mean, I've, I've preached this for a long time as an athlete preparing for big races. That visualization is one of the biggest pieces of the puzzle. I had a, a guy actually was on my podcast last week, met script and who, who a few weeks before the event had an injury and he was training for a hundred K and it was in a very bad space mentally at any, you know, Sydney walls reached out for help. Speaker 2: (21:58) And I didn't spend time working on his injury, his fault. You know, Neil dealt with it for business. We could, but he wasn't going to be able to train much up until we had been. And he was going to have to go in blind and, and the train to say. So we spent the time concentrating on his mentality and the way he approached it and strengthening his mind and the, the just, you know, within 48 hours, the shift that his mindset was huge. And suffice to say he went on and even though he hadn't been able to try and hit a fantastic race, not that out of the ballpark because he went in with a strong mindset because you went in with the belief that he could do it rather than going in, which is what we all tend to do. I've had an injury, things haven't gone to plan, therefore I'm not going to be able to do it and leave it home standing on the start line. I don't believe I can actually do it. And of course you're right. You believe as Henry Ford saying, I believe you can or you can't, then you're right. Speaker 3: (22:54) Okay. And this is why we put so much. And you know, my husband's a does iron man and triathlon and if you look at that lead up, they do the lead up, they do the big, big, big training days and then weeks and then they have the rest week. And then what does everyone do? I miss drop into nutrition stuff here, Lisa. They all go out and have pasta party. It's terrible. I just don't know how in this day and age, when we know so much about nutrition, is it that it's almost like it's so instilled in a bit in our culture, even if it makes no sense in the science, Speaker 2: (23:33) But used to make seeds so that yeah, we used to think load up with carbs. You know, you blockage on the spot cause up to the top, but you loading it with shit, carbs and probably stuff that you wouldn't normally, so then you'd double distressing your body. And then you're overloading it. So we don't get out our athletes at all to carb low. We, we want them to be on good, healthy nutrition and it depends and we work on the epigenetic side of it. If they do that, that program, if we can fit knowledge available and then we get them just to eat a little bit more and hydrate a little bit more in dry sleeper. That'll get more in the preparation and focus on the meditation. Focus on the breathing techniques, lowering the stress levels low, which CLIA, Speaker 3: (24:17) And that all lowers the inflammation, right? Speaker 2: (24:20) No, only the, the this, this whole mind, body connection, the home, you know, it's not just nutrition, it's not just meditation, it's not just training, it's this combined multipronged approach that really leads to ultimate success and long longevity in the sport as well. Speaker 3: (24:37) And even if we take that out of the sport, and I guess where I started that my, my big goal, my, my, my daily approach to life is, is I'm noticing stuff, noticing everything with intent and if we stop going through life half asleep, as most of us do, you know, statistics or die or we've got 85% of people hate their job based on a 2018 Gallup Gallup poll on average. It's, what is it, a 5.2 hours per day watching telly and four hours on social media as the average. Wow. You go to work for eight hours hating what you do, you traveled there and back. You spend the next nine hours either on social or watching television, you have to eat and sleep. That's a lot. That becomes a life. Yeah. And I think that our approach to our, I'm hoping repo if we can approach how we're running our life and the same way with the same intent fullness as we approach our running isn't going to get better. Speaker 2: (25:41) Yes. Yeah. And, and this is again going back to dr Joan in the leptin, they talk about the power of the subconscious mind that it's, you know, runs 95% of our day up to 99%. In other words, we're running on autopilot. You know, when you're driving home and you're listening to music and singing, you actually doing the singing, maybe consciously, but you're driving it subconsciously and you know, it's great because it means we can do things automatic and it's easier. We don't have to overthink it. And when we're training in developing a ritual, that's why it's hard at the beginning to develop a habit because we haven't got those groups in their brain where it's all subconsciously run. By the same token, they, that subconscious controls our behavior to a degree that we not aware of where their behaviors come from. So we've got this programming that we've had since childhood usually, or something that's happened traumatically and it's got into our programming. Speaker 2: (26:38) You're useless. You're not able to run your, to, you're always fed you or whatever it is. You can't speak, you're, you know, you're not, you're not going to be good at this. Whatever that programming was at that time, that's now sitting in your subconscious and you can read all the personal development books you want and you can consciously try and work on this. But if the subconscious program is running its own ship, you're fighting against David versus Goliath. It's such a powerful force. And this is why going in doing the meditation, doing self hypnosis, doing the co, you know, definitely doing the conscious exercises as well, the affirmations and the visualization and all that sort of stuff. But trying to go in and not let it subconscious just run, ride on its own without any, I'm doing that thought again that I don't want to do. You know, and I'm, I'm constantly working on my own sets of behavior. You know, I get very I've got a team Pat and I get really angry and frustrated at the computer mostly. And now I'm trying and a lot saying I'm perfect and [inaudible] straight to the main donation. When I feel that frustration and they want to Chuck it out the window, I'm damaging myself. When I'm feeling that stress, I'm damaging myself. So I try and get up and like try and leave it for five. Yup. Speaker 3: (27:57) And I think one of the really important things via, and we know it's critical and again, it's in the science we had designed, we must move on. I'm reading a fascinating book. The name is escaping me, but we can talk about it another time. Which looks at the connection between us becoming bipedal is never walking on two legs as organisms as opposed to being on four. And the connection between that and our consciousness developing and our cognitive development and the talking about how it's in so much science. If you, if you go and Google movement movement as medicine, we have to move. So when you get frustrated with your computer, nothing to do with the computer. But I beat show at least some of it as a smidgen that listen, Speaker 2: (28:47) Yes, a deadly. And I don't think it's just me, although I'm probably an extreme case of counselors though. But I, we know, and this is when I, something I miss now that I'm not doing the long distance running for example. And my, my business partner and coach Neil wakes up, pointed out this to me one day. He said, I see I'm really frustrated at the moment. I'm feeling really down and you know, and I've got all these tools to deal with it. The, where's it coming from? He said, we used to have hours running and that was time for your brain to sort stuff out and meditate it away and you are in motion all the time. And it gave you just your, your brain time to process everything. You don't have that now you're going from one, you know, computer job to another computer job to another computer job to working with mum to, you know, and it's just don't have that it's face in that time. Speaker 3: (29:42) It does. So it's, so movement is, it's, it's great for mental health. It's also exceptionally good for creativity. So we are creative brain finding novel solutions, novel outcomes, problem solving in our life happens far better when we're moving than when we're still, the book is called perfect motion [inaudible] motion. It's, it's very good. And it comes from a very strong science and you know, historical and scientific basis. It's very, very good. So movement is key. Movement is medicine movement and when we're injured, can I just jump back to X some and whether it's escalates or, yup, my injuries, whatever. Movement is the only way to rehabilitate. In the old days. If you sprained your ankle, you tweaked to knee. What did they do? Mobilized. You stop being active and mobilizing does not do anything to heal tissues, tissues here with movement. Now, sometimes we might put a patient in a moon boat, but we're putting them in the moment so they can keep emulating, keep moving, keep walking. And they will give them some limited exercises to start that strengthening happening or rehabilitation happening. But to risk something that cause it sore is the worst thing you could possibly do. Speaker 2: (31:12) Yeah. Now this is a really know this is an interesting and dangerous piece of knock off. Got the opposite problem. Like selfishly I'll ask you a question. I've got an injury with plantar fasciitis and I keep running and I do all the foam rolling and the foot release and the sayings and the what's the waivers and you know, then they help. But I keep running cause they can't stop run it cause I'm addicted to them up to, to training. Is that bad in which zone? Like, or is this a good thing and I'm, it's okay to keep, I mean, pushing, in other words, pushing through injuries, running, it's Speaker 3: (31:52) Through injuries. Well, it depends, doesn't it? It depends on is this, this, this safe, that safety buffer between your self protecting. So therefore you're not, you, you don't, you could actually do a little bit more. You're not going to break these, that safety barrier. And then at the top is the point that you're going to break. Now if you it decide to keep on going to the point of breaking, it's not gonna turn out well for you. Yeah. So that's knowing where you are in the middle of that. So I'd be asking you a few questions now. Plantar heel pain, we call it chronic plantar heel pain these days or chronic plantar heel pain syndrome. We don't use plantar fasciitis anymore because firstly itis means and there was no inflammation to be found of the plantar fascia. Right? So we've changed the same with like Achilles tendinitis gone. Speaker 3: (32:50) It's, it's Achilles tendinopathy cause there is no inflammation. So anyway, those just changes in our medical world. So it's the most caught heel pain. Chronic plantar heel pain is the most common injury that we see at any one time with 15% of the adult population suffering from it. At any one time. So the things, the questions that I would be asking you with these things, like have you got first stick pain in the morning when you first get out of bed, how many steps does it take for that pain to reduce or probably four minutes and five minutes of walking around the Hills. Yup. And then it reduces right down again. That's right. And then it's, if you sit at your computer and get up, does it feel erupt again? Yes, it does. It does. And if you go for a run, does it get worse? No, I can cope with it. That's the dangerous thing. Of course, when I'm warmed up Speaker 2: (33:45) I can, I don't feel it as bad. And so I think I'm lots of add. So I keep training and then again, the next morning I wake up again. I'm a negative. Speaker 3: (33:53) Okay. What do you wear on your feet during the day at home? I'm just at home. Right usually. Yup. So the first thing, listening to your story, and I haven't examined, you know, because I'm not sitting with you. First thing I would do would be to suggest we changed that one sector that you have. And I probably suggest something, I don't want to do a brand push here, but something like a also heel gender or something like that that has a contoured sole and a slightly flicker field to forefoot and that you don't do anything, be a foot. Okay. So it's a bit like Speaker 2: (34:30) Kelly's really we shouldn't if you've got an Achilles' don't run around before. Speaker 3: (34:34) Yeah cause the Kellys the interesting thing is there was the Achilles in the plant, that plant of first year runs from the heel to your toes underneath your foot and the Achilles that runs from your calf to your heel to function together. Yes. It's like a cradling. Yup. Right. So you should be doing your calf work. Yeah. Heel pain. So that's good. Yup. So all I want to do is change the forces on that bitch. That fascia. Yup. Alter those forces at the points that you normally in pain. Let's see what it does to your pain. Remembering that pain and tissue damage and not always exactly correlated. So I'd start with that one thing only and changing. Now I've got a free tip. Thanks for that. Yeah. And like you said, you posted was the science is changing all Speaker 2: (35:24) The time. Like we've been teaching, you know certain things play into the shadows and we all know that that does take a while to heal. It does take its time. But it's a pain in the ass, you know, and there's so many. We try and avoid injury obviously as much as we can. So and it's one of the most common things that we see coming up and he began to gain. So I'll try that. I will not go around bare feet anymore or actually at least put some shoes on when I'm at just walking around the house even. No, no, no. That works for the Achilles cause you know, when you in, when people are going from a cushioned shoe to a zero drop show, that's when we often see athletes get problems as well. Speaker 3: (36:08) Again, they can adapt. It's balancing out in that comfort and that little safety zone. Yes, we're, we're, how am I going to build the tolerance to new load without breaking them? And that is the challenge of every trainer out there. Speaker 2: (36:23) Yup. This is under training. We did talk briefly, we'll have to wrap up in a minute, but the buyer plasticity thing, we were talking before we got on this call recording about the fact that different people have abilities to withstand different amounts of pain in regards to whether the body with the dead individual thinks hurting themselves or not. And I said to you, I know that in my life, in through lots and lots and lots of training, I could get to a point where I nearly killed myself a few times because I would ignore my body's signs and signals to the point of, of stupidness looking bag. But, and, and I seek you by the same token, now that I'm haven't been doing super long stuff for a couple of years, that horizon of variability to go and push out to that level is also gone. But you reconnect via plasticity. Once you've got it, you have it will come back quicker. Speaker 3: (37:20) It w and, and the science is telling us, and this is recent, this is from last week's conference. The science is telling us that if we get young people active and moving and resilient and building tissues when they're younger, even if they spend, you know, 10 years sedentary and don't do anything, their ability to return to that is fun. It's easier and faster than someone who's never done that when, when they were younger. So we're starting from scratch. So Bioplast as a T is around the fact that our tissues are strong, we have huge ability. And one of the things I found fascinating we were talking about the league bone, the tibia. This was at the conference, the tibia, all the a runner. This is a hockey player and this is the thing that your guys may find really interesting. So bones, a deck with load. Speaker 3: (38:16) We all know that, right? So the more you load, and we know that people who run have higher bone density than people that are seen in tree. Okay. What I didn't know and I learned last week is that if we look at the shape, if we do a cross section of a tibia of a runner, the tibia will be from to back elongated. So it'll be long front to back and quite narrow. Yup. If you do the same thing with a hockey player, so cross section of a hockey players tibia, it will be the bone. This is the bone. The bone will be wider. Wow. As well as long. So what that suggests that the, and this is what they were talking about is that multidirectional exercise, stop, stop, push forward site. Yup. That is dynamic and high frequency is the best protection from, from bone injuries and bone injuries. Speaker 3: (39:17) Decreases the risk of stress fractures is one of them. Now you've talked about having heel pain. The other biggie in our runners is what we call medial tibial stress syndrome. Shin splints. Yup. Okay. Part of that is quite possibly because we're not doing enough multi directional work to build that within the bone would be going in one direction. So that was brand new to me. Thanks to sports medicine Australasia conference. So movement variability the question they asked of us to ask about our patients or about in your case, the people that you're training, can you do the same thing in different ways? So I try and avoid that. This is where we talk about mix up your shows. I talk about in my work with different shows and run on different terrains. Wow. It's awesome as well as cross training. So this is a model that is much more than this. Speaker 2: (40:13) There's some real deems eye for us to take away and I'll, what I'll do is I'll get you back on laser and we will go but more of a deep dive and the next time that we do this all those chips and injury prevention side of it if you wouldn't mind you're gonna yeah, we're going to have to wrap it up for the day, Lisa. But you have been absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much. Now I'm going to link in the show notes to your group, your website. I'm also your charity. And where can people find you on like Facebook or Instagram and that type of thing lists. Speaker 3: (40:45) If it's around the bio mechanical side. So just find me through business but I a tree, that's that, that's the easiest way to find me there. And otherwise probably the links that you gotta use the being project as well, there is ways to hook up with me through that as well. Speaker 2: (41:03) Awesome. No, you're fantastic when they said thank you very much for being on the show today. We really appreciate all your insights and your enthusiasm for this topic and I'm cheering the latest and science and watch out for that. What does it running vibe, run vibe, run vibe, run vibe. Watch out for that in the future guys. And I'm checking it out when it comes on the market. Speaker 3: (41:23) Thanks Lisa. Speaker 1: (41:25) That's it this week for pushing the limits. Be sure to write, review and share with your friends and head over and visit Lisa and her team at lisatamati.com

I welcome Cemal Ezel, Founder and Ceo of Change Please to episode #179 of Screw It, Just Do It: UK Social Entrepreneur Of The Year, 2017, $1 Million Chivas Venture Winner, and Richard Branson's Startup of the Year 2018 - and the man responsible for the coffee you're drinking onboard a Virgin Train or Virgin Atlantic Airways aircraft. I had the pleasure of catching up with Cemal twice in one week in October, as he very kindly spoke at my Entrepreneur Summit 2019 and at the SME forum I host for British American Business every quarter for UK businesses looking to scale in the US. Now I've known Cemal for 4 or 5 years now and the growth of his business has been nothing short of phenomenal. I last interviewed him two years ago in 2017 and other than Piers Linney, this is the only repeat guest I've had on this show. Why: Because my 2017 interview with him was, and still is, my personal favourite of every episode ever recorded for this show. I wanted to highlight what's possible - anything - if you're super-focused, persevere and are very clear on your why. It's just one hell of a story. Change Please trains people who are homeless as barista's and provides each person with a London living wage job, housing, bank account and mental health support. Today's episode comes in two parts, first my chat with Cemal in front of our live audience, complete with paper rustling form yours truly, secondly, an up to date talk from Cemal on Change Please's expansion into the US and the challenges that they have faced. We talk about: The perceptions that need changing around social businesses Distribution being the biggest challenge The currency of the future StartUp!

How (and when) should you use public relations in tandem with your inbound marketing strategy?  This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ruby Media Group Founder Kristin Ruby breaks down the myths surrounding PR and inbound marketing. In this conversation, she gets into detail about who should consider using PR, when to use it, how much you should expect to pay, and what kinds of results you should expect.  In addition, Kristin covers the difference between PR for brand building and PR for SEO, as well as the difference between reactive and proactive PR. There's lots of practical information here for any marketers who has ever considered using PR as part of their strategy. Highlights from my conversation with Kristin include: Kris is a PR specialist, which is different than a media relations specialist. PR can encompass anything in the communications plan and marketing plan whereas media relations is specifically about interaction with the media.  PR is a good strategy for any business that is looking to build a long term, sustainable funnel of leads, as well as to build their brand.  One of the big benefits of PR is that it can contribute to building your domain authority, which is great for SEO. In terms of setting expectations for a PR engagement, Kristin says that the results you can get are very dependent upon the news cycle and what journalists are interested in covering.  Kristin says you should expect to commit to working with your PR firm at least one hour each day. There's a difference between reactive and proactive PR. Kristin specializes in reactive PR, which entails responding to reporters' requests for sources, as opposed to proactive PR, which she characterizes as going out to the media and spamming them with unsolicited pitches. When it comes to PR, its important to build up on line authority and get others talking about you so that the media sees you as a credible source. For clients looking to get started with PR, Kristin recommends that they begin by publishing content that is aligned with what they are hoping to get coverage about. This can be published on their website, LinkedIn profile, etc. The cost of a PR engagement can vary widely depending upon the scope of services and the type of media coverage that you're looking for and then the size of the firm you want to work with. A reasonable range that PR services start at would be anywhere from $3,500 or $5,000 a month, but some of the larger firms could be charging $35,000 or $40,000 a month.  If you plan to be on TV at all as part of your PR plan, it could be worth investing in media training as part of your PR package, as it will prepare you to be on camera. Resources from this episode: Visit the Ruby Media Group website Check out Kristin's person site Visit medicalpracticepr.com for information about PR for doctors Get Kristin's Ultimate Media Relations Guide Listen to the podcast to learn more about public relations and how you can use it as part of your larger inbound marketing strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. Today, my guest is Kristin Ruby who is the founder and CEO of Ruby Media Group. Welcome Kristin. Kristin Ruby (Guest): Hi, thank you so much for having me. Kristin and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm so happy to have you here. You are in the field of PR and we don't get to talk about PR a lot on the podcast so I'm really excited to dig into it with you, but before we do can you just tell my listeners a little bit more about yourself, and about your company, and what you do? About Kristin and Ruby Media Group Kristin: Sure. My company is called Ruby Media Group. I have been a practicing public relations practitioner for over a decade now. I work with clients and businesses of all sizes from small to midsize companies to even Fortune 500 companies, and particularly with a lot of medical practices and doctors as well. We assist with brand building, content creation, social media, public relations, and really help people get found online. What we're really best at is taking people of thought leadership offline and translating that online. Kathleen: Great. It's interesting. When you and I first spoke what I really liked was... My question to you was obviously this podcast is all about inbound marketing, and people have mixed opinions about where PR, public relations, fits within that mix as an inbound marketer. I think there's also a lot of misconceptions about what public relations is, especially today, like as it's evolved over time. You had some really interesting viewpoints on that, and I wanted to just actually start by having you explain what you see as what PR is, and the different uses of it, because there's obviously PR for SEO, and then there's other types of PR. Kristin: I mean, so it's a really interesting question. To start with I think there's a difference between PR and media relations, so I want to also explain that to your listeners. PR can encompass anything in the communications plan and marketing plan whereas media relations is specifically about interaction with the media. To clarify, I do a lot of media relations work whereas some public relations practitioners will sort of do community outreach, and sponsorship, and a larger umbrella of what PR is. So in terms of public relations basically a publicist will help you in terms of all your interactions with the media, getting you out there, handling media inquiries, anything of that nature. When should you invest in PR? Kathleen: Okay, great. What do you see as the value of PR for the companies that invest in it? Who is it right for? When should you do it? That sort of thing. Kristin: That's a great question. PR, it really depends with what stage you're at in your business. For example, let's say you're a medical practice, and a doctor, and you've been around for 10 years, you already have a waiting list of patients, but at this point you have other goals. Maybe you want to become a paid speaker. Maybe you want to write a book, and you want a publisher, and you need a social media following for that, or maybe you're at a different level in your career where now you just want to focus on putting out educational content to reach the masses because your time is limited, and you can only see a certain amount of patients a day. For that type of practitioner I think PR is ideal, because it fits in the brand building bucket. I think if you're someone that is saying, "I need more patients in the door tomorrow, and I've just launched a practice," I would still say more traditional inbound marketing would make sense for that, including some direct marketing and advertising as well. I really think you have to evaluate are you looking for sales and leads tomorrow out of this or can you have a longer sort of sales funnel in terms of what you're doing with all of this? Kathleen: Yeah, that's a good point. I often hear about PR a lot from startups, especially B2B technology startups. There seems to be this assumption that in the beginning PR is something that you should invest in almost before marketing. I think part of it is this desire as a startup to plant your flag in the ground, in the marketplace, and get your name out there. But then, the other part of it is also, from my perspective as a marketer, it's building domain authority. That goes back to the PR for SEO thing, so I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that. PR for brand building v. PR for SEO Kristin: Sure. I have a great case study in terms of PR for SEOs. We worked with a client, and we started everything from scratch for them with a new website, and we had not done any direct marketing, and we've only done PR for them. Their ranking right now is a 32, Domain Authority, and that's only from public relations. So all of that authority they have not done any paid advertising. It's all back links from PR articles that I've gotten them. Now, again, that was never even a primary goal of why we did PR for this person, but I think one of the amazing things about that campaign is that it just sort of compliments, and comes out, when you're not even trying for it, right? I think public relations practitioners there's often this sort of disconnect with SEO, and with PR, because they're so focused on getting the hits, and working with producers and journalists that they don't actually realize they really are building someone's back link, and Domain Authority while they're doing ... Now, of course you can never guarantee any placements, and we could talk about that as well, but if you get them it can be great, especially if you are securing it for a client in that third-party national media outlet, and that outlet has very high Domain Authority, well then, you're benefiting from that. Kathleen: Yeah. It is tremendous potential if you have a well known media entity. Those back links can be worth a lot. Kristin: Yes. What should you expect from a PR engagement? Kathleen: I want to talk about expectation setting because that can seem very alluring, and I'm sure you have clients who come to you and say, "Get me mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, or on TV, et cetera," so can you talk me through when you first start working with a new client how do you, A, determine what's possible, and B, how do you set expectations around that? Kristin: Sure. The first thing that we ask a prospect that's interested in working with us for public relations is what does PR success look like to you? So how are you going to evaluate the engagement here, and what do those metrics and KPIs look like? For example, if they're saying, "We want to be on the today show, within a month." Obviously that's going to be an unrealistic expectation. If they're saying, "We're looking for around three or four press placements, and digital mentions a month." That's a realistic expectation with my firm. I'm not sure if it is with every firm, but for us I know that I can deliver that. If they're saying, "I want you to guarantee a set amount of bookings whether that's on radio, or television, or any outlet." That's something that's not realistic, because no PR firm that's worth their salt is going to be able to give those guarantees, and the reason for that is because we are working with the media. The media dictates what they want to use and what they don't want to use. I think the problem is that people hire publicist and think that the publicist have much more power than they do. I don't know if that's because PR just misrepresents what they can do to try and close a deal, or what it is, but it's just not realistic, right? We are working with the media at any given time. For example, if you look at any week on the news cycle there's a lot of political stuff happening, whether it's Trump, and whether he should be impeached or not. What if you had a client that's booked on TV this week? All that's going to be canceled, because of the news cycle. Kathleen: And if it wasn't canceled no one would probably pay attention anyway because everyone's attention is diverted somewhere else I would think. Kristin: Exactly. But this is why it's so important if you're doing PR right now, especially in this news cycle, people need to understand that the news cycle, and breaking news, dictates what's being covered. It's not your client that dictates it, right? So if you can come up with some great tie-in to the news, or if your client's a political expert and they can comment on what's happening, then great that adds value to whatever story's happening. That lends itself back to your original question, which is how do you sort of determine if someone's going to be a good client? In this heavily political climate that we're in right now a lot of PR people will definitely gravitate towards clients, or prospective clients, that can comment on those things, because they know that they can get them booked, and get hits for them. So you have to think about that as well. So we sort of go through an internal checklist about who's going to be good. It has to do with expectations, are they realistic? The next is, do you have at least one hour daily to work with your PR firm if you hire them? People make the mistake of hiring a firm and then they don't give them what they need to do their job. You have to supply content to your firm so that they can get you out there. You have to let them know if something's going on that you can comment on, tell them. If there's a link that you think is interesting share it with them, but this notion that you're going to hire a PR firm, and then you're not going to talk to them, and they can get you hits is just very unrealistic. What makes for a newsworthy story? Kathleen: Yeah. Now, someone comes to you, and their expectations are realistic in the sense that thy say "Hey, I would love to get four press mentions this month." I'm assuming that as you say there's some kind of content that's needed, like you can't just call up a reporter and say, "Hey cover this company," full stop, period. There needs to be some kind of a story. So how do you work with clients to determine what that right story is, and kind of cultivate something that's newsworthy? Kristin: Sure. There's two different types of PR. There's proactive PR and there's reactive PR. I'm a specialist in what I call reactive PR. So reactive PR is when you're using different databases, whether it's a HARO or a Profnet, or Cision. There's a lot of new ones coming out right now where those journalists are saying, "We're writing this story, do you have an expert to speak on X?" That's when I plug my clients in to be able to comment on those stories, reactive. Proactive PR is I think a more traditional old school approach where you're sort of just going out to journalists and I would call it spamming them, which is saying, "I have this great idea, why don't you cover it?" But the problem is they may or may not be writing that. So I think just the success rates are significantly higher when you practice reactive PR, which is what I call it. Because you're giving them what they want, want they're already working on and it makes their life easier. Kathleen: Okay, so you really, in that case then, don't have to necessarily have a breaking news item or a piece of content. It's really just authority and expertise that you're pitching? Kristin: So it's authority and expertise, but it's also answering a lot of questions, and usually those questions tie into something. So if someone is working on a vaping story. Right? You could have authority and expertise, but you also need to have expertise in that new's component that's happening with vaping in the country right now. So I think it's a combination of all of those factors together. But to answer your other question about, how do you sort of package that? I have a motto. My motto is, "Package, pitch, promote." Phase one when working with someone is how can we package this story. Who are they? What do they look like? What does their brand look like? The first thing I'll do is do a deep dive on Google. I want to look at their website. Do they have a usable working site? If not, that needs to go up before we even work with them because journalists are going to look for that. Next, what has been written about them online? Do they have a critical mass of authority online? If they don't, again, that needs to sort of be created. Third, who are they? What do they want to be known for? What is their area of expertise? If there is going to be a lower third for their title tag on television, what would it say? Expert in what? Right? So we need to sort of figure all that out. Finally, do they have a higher res headshot for the media and do they have an executive bio? All of that sort of has to be done in the first two months of us working with someone. Even though it sounds sort of simple, most people don't have all of that ready to go. So we definitely get that lined up for someone before we start with them, and then next we start putting together an FAQ document in Microsoft Word. I actually just put together a helpful media 101 pitching checklist that I can definitely share. Kathleen: That would be great. Kristin: With your listeners. Kathleen: Yeah. Kristin: That would be great. As well as a media guide too, with a lot of answered questions that for them that are helpful. Building online authority Kathleen: Now, I think it was the second thing you mentioned there, was they need to have... After the website, they need to have some sort of critical mass of online authority established. What does that mean? What are you looking for there? Kristin: I'm looking to see that other people have talked about them and have quoted them. Right? I think that sorts of lends itself very nicely to the new Google... I recently put up an article on this since we last spoke about the Google's authority and what they're looking for in this term called Eat. It's very important. It's all about having authority online. That's where PR can really help if you're trying to increase your Eat on Google, you need authority. So Google, one of their quality raters what they look for is, it's not... I'm going to actually say this. It's not about just you saying that you're great. When we look online we need to see that other people are saying you are great and that you are an expert in what you're saying you are. So I think this is a very interesting time, and this is sort of changing the game in general for PR. So you can't just pivot. You can't just say that you're an expert in everything anymore. You have to say you're expert in one thing and it doesn't matter how many times you say it. If no one else does it, you're not an expert. So this is going to be a major game changer for PR. How to get started with PR Kathleen: So if somebody comes to you and they don't have a lot of mentions online, can you work with them? Can you get them coverage? How do you start? What's that first step? Kristin: So the first step is that I feel like for them we have to do more of a brand audit and it's sort of different campaign where we're building that out for a longer period of time before we ever pitch anything to the media, and I think how you start with that is definitely content marketing. So if they want to show their expertise, they have to put out content that aligns with that expertise. So the best place to start if they don't have other people mentioning them is to start putting out their content on their own site or on LinkedIn where they're showing what they know, or doing an Ebook, or any sort of other inbound campaign, which I think is just very important. Having people link back to that to start to build up the authority even if they have no other outside media coverage. Right? That's where I would start for something like that. Why inbound marketing is necessary for PR Kathleen: That's helpful because when you think about how inbound marketing and PR go together, like I've said, I've talked to lots of companies that think you start with PR, then you do inbound and then maybe you do PR again. But if what I'm hearing what you're saying is correct, it sounds like it does make sense to begin with some inbound marking first so that you have that content already created. You have potentially gotten mentioned, you're starting to establish some authority. Is that accurate? Kristin: Yeah, it is accurate because here's the thing. You can say that you're an expert and have no content to back that up and expect people to write about you. Kathleen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kristin: Because you're only... At that point, you're just a self-proclaimed expert. If a PR person is going to pitch you and that journalist looks you up, and they don't even see content written by you, how are you an expert? It doesn't make any sense. So I think that's a major mistake that a lot of people make. So there are some PR people who obviously skip this whole content marketing part and that's not really practicing the new method of PR. I would say that content marketing and inbound is critical to work in silo with public relations. I don't think it should be separate. What does PR cost? Kathleen: Yeah. Now one of the questions I'm sure that anybody has if they haven't worked with a PR firm before is, this sounds great but what does it cost? I'm not asking what do you charge, but can you give me a sense of if somebody's considering beginning to do some PR and they're going to work with somebody outside of their company to do it, what sort of budget should they have just to get started? Kristin: Sure. It really depends on, for example, are you willing to work with a public relations freelancer? Are you looking to work with a larger size firm? So the scope of services and the type of media coverage that you're looking for and then the size of the firm all dictate the answer to that question. Typically, I would say a reasonable range that PR services start at, you can see them anywhere from $3,500 or $5,000 a month and then up. For some of the larger firms, they could be charging $35,000 or $40,000 a month. So it really, again, depends on the size of the firm. It also depends on the other ancillary services. So for example, do you nee media training? That's typically going to be a cost. If you need a press kit, that's going to be an outside cost. If you need a personal branding website, that's going to be another cost. If you need photography and head shots, another cost. So a lot of times those costs are not actually built in to the ongoing campaign. I think that managing scope creep is also very important in PR to understanding what the role of a publicist is, and if not, it definitely matters too. What is media training? Kathleen: Let's talk about media training for a minute because this actually came up in a conversation that I recently had. Can you explain what happens in a media training and what are you being trained about? Kristin: So media training is really supposed to prepare you, a lot of the times for on camera interviews, and how can you be prepared, particularly in television in a breaking news environment. How can you answer questions? How can you not say things like um while you're doing interviews. Anything like that. So typically when I do media training with executives, I will record them and we'll go play back what they sound like. If they do a segment, we will sort of rigorously critic that segment, and say, "This is great, but here are all the things you need to do to improve that." So for example, can they maintain eye contact. That's what we look for or are they sort of looking all over the place? Are there a lot of transition words? Can they cut back on that? Are they using modifiers like in my opinion. That can be cut and that don't add to the interview. Are they talking for way too long and have they not been trained in speaking in sound bytes. So all of those things are components in media training. Kathleen: It's so funny because listening to you describe it, it makes me think of podcasting because I've been doing this now... I'm on episode 110, and when I podcast, I always send my audio off to be transcribed and then I have to edit the transcription for the show notes. Reading the written version of what I say is the most horrifying thing in the world. I have discovered that I start just about every sentence with yeah. My guest says something and I'm like, "Yeah, let's talk about that," or, "Yeah, and I have a question." It's just so funny and I imagine it's the same thing with media training when you play back a recording. All of a sudden you're like, "Wait, I say that, that much? I had no idea." Kristin: Yes, exactly. That's why it can be scary and that's why it's really important though. For example, in addition to running a PR firm, I'm also a television commentator. So I've personally been on TV more than a hundred times on Fox News or other outlets, and still even if it's segment 101, I'm still rigorously assessing what I sound like because if I'm not doing that I'm not learning and I'm not getting better. So I think that people don't realize that people that are on air all the time are still doing this very same thing. It's not just something that you start when you hire a PR firm. You have to keep doing it. How to handle the tough questions Kathleen: Yeah, and one other... See there I did it. I said yeah. One of the other questions I had is... Because this is part of what came up in the conversation I was having, how do you advise people to handle it when they don't want to answer a question? Is it, "I don't comment on that"? Is there a certain way to gracefully avoid answering. Kristin: So I think there's two things. One, I'd call bridging. So if you don't necessarily want to answer something or if you're not sure how, I would bridge it and transition it into something else. So you can say, "This is a really interesting question, however I think this is the larger question." So that would be bridging. That's one option. Two is always be honest. So if someone asks you something and you are not qualified to speak on it, literally just tell someone that. Say, "That's a really interesting question, however I'm not sure I'm the best one to answer this, but if I had to take a stab, here's what I would say." You can say something like that as a modifier or you can say, "I'll get back to you on that one" I don't have time to Google it right now but you could do what Mark Zuckerberg did at the congressional hearing, which every single question he said, "I'll have my team get back to you on that." That's a perfect question of answering your question. Which PR opportunities are worth responding to? Kathleen: Okay, that makes sense. So circling back to PR for SEO and in tandem for inbound marketing back links. When you're pitching and you mentioned that you do reactive PR, how do you screen through which opportunities are worth responding to and which ones are not? Kristin: Sure. The first thing I will do is I will look at the outlet. Is it a well-known outlet, or is it a random blog? I'm not actually the... The back linking part I don't really like look at until the very end until something comes out because you don't really know if they're going to include a link or not. For me, if I'm going to send something to a client, I'm looking at it to think, is this an anonymous query? If it is, we're not replying. Is it a large national media outlet that we've heard of, which would be great to get a mention in regardless of the back link? Then yes, I'll send it to them. Is it worth their time to answer this? How many questions are on there that they want answered, and do I realistically think the client can answer it by the deadline that's given. So all of those things factor into whether or not I think that they should look at that. Again, I look at back links as great added bonus of doing PR, but if people come to me and say, "You need to guarantee back links." I tell them, "There's no way any public relations professional can guarantee back links. Reporters don't even know." So there's a lot of scams out there right now where people will... I'm sure you've received them too. Where they send you this nice long sheet and go, "Oh for X thousand dollars, for this one off I'll get you informed for this mention." Well Google's changing the game right now, rather, with how all of that's handled and if you look at the quality rater's guidelines, they also clearly mention that they can tell and that those links, they're very aware of that and they don't count for much. So I would say that's a waste of time and a waste of money. Spend your time and resources doing PR the right way, and if you get links out of it then that's an added bonus. Kathleen: Now you mentioned anonymous queries, and this is something that I've always wondered about. So I look at HARO all the time and like you said, some of the calls for sources they say, "I'm with this particular news outlet," and then others are just anonymous. I've always wondered about that because sometimes I think, "Oh, well if they're anonymous they're some podunk place." But then other times I think, "If they're anonymous maybe they're someplace big, but they don't want to let people know that." I don't know. What has your experience been with that? Kristin: It's a gamble. It's 50-50. It can go either way. So sometimes it could be like a major outlet, but they have an internal editorial policy, which may state we don't want someone else scooping up this story or we can't use HARO. So that reporter may put it in as anonymous. So technically they're not using HARO. That's one option. Another thing is that it really is a much smaller site and they know that no one is going to answer their query if they say, "This is for my hole in the wall blog that no one has ever heard of." So, it can go either way. How to identify PR opportunities Kathleen: So for somebody who's listening and thinking, "Gosh, I'm not ready to hire a PR firm yet, but I might want to dabble in to trying this out for myself." Are there... There's obviously HARO, which is Help A Reporter Out, which is a great free source that you can read and respond to. Are there any other really helpful places that somebody can go to on their own to see what kinds of stories other reporters are working on and potentially respond? Kristin: I think the best thing that they can do is really just read the news. I know that sounds so simple. So many people don't do it. Everyone is looking for this cheap quick fix on how they can do something, which is why I'm not really a fan of do it yourself PR for a number of reasons, but the main one is that people really... Do it yourself PR can actually be quite dangerous. I've seen people make major mistakes because they're not media trained. They say all sorts of things. They don't really know what on the record versus off the record even means, and then they want someone else to fix it. And that part... And they can't. Right? Because they read some advice somewhere and told them to try it and then it hurt them, and then their CO is not happy. I would say you have to be kind of careful. However, if you're interested in sort of figuring out, "What is the media really writing about?" So maybe you're a digital marketer and you want to get quoted in the news. Go into Google and then click news. Then put in digital marketing. That's the first step I would take. If you don't want to hire a PR firm, that's what I would do and I would set up Google Alerts for that and set up Google Alerts for your name. I would use a site like Mention because a lot of times Google Alerts doesn't pick up everything it needs to now. Then I would start seeing... For example, let's say I comment on Instagram. I have Google Alerts set up for Instagram. Or for Trump's tweets or anything relevant to what I talked about, and then I get... that's just becomes part of my day. So maybe you're a cardiologist and you're speaking on artificial intelligence and cardiology. I'd set up an alert for AI Cardiology. So you start having... That's more of an inbound approach to PR really because it all comes to you. Then you start formulating an opinion on that. I would then take that opinion, write content around it, put it on your own site, and then I think what you're going to start to see is that if its good content and you optimize that content, you can be found for that content by a member of the media. I will say this, people always say, "How did you get started in television?" I got started in television because of content. I wrote a really cool article on how social media was impacting the world of dating and it was for Jdate.com, and this was like 10 years ago. I tweeted that article. I did not have a PR firm at that time and I was still more so in social media. A producer found my article on Twitter. Again, no PR firm. They found the content, they liked the content, and they said, "This would make for an interesting segment, would you like to come on the show?" That's literally how I got started in my career in TV was because of content. I would urge your listeners here to consider that when you're thinking how to get there. That's sort of a do it yourself PR approach, but it's not dangerous because you're not necessarily reaching out to the media directly. It's a content first approach. Why Twitter is key for your PR strategy Kathleen: Now do you find that there are certain channels in which you can publish your content that make it more likely that you will be found by a reporter? Kristin: Twitter. Kathleen: Really? Kristin: Yeah, Twitter and LinkedIn. I mean, just 100% because journalists are the biggest users of Twitter. We have clients that say to us, "I don't want to be on Twitter," and I say, "You don't have a choice. You have to be on twitter because if I'm getting you hits, I need to tweet those hits because reporters want traffic to their articles." So that's my end... Like, I have to do that. Right? That's the other thing. This old school notion that PR is just take, take, take and not give is so antiquated. You can't expect that someone's going to write about you and then you're not going to help push traffic to those articles. Which is why whether it's a podcast, or it's a reporter at a different outlet, they want to see that you're pushing it out too. Social media's an integral part to that process. Kathleen: Twitter is so incredibly misunderstood. I find that with every client I've ever worked with... I was in the agency world for, oh my gosh, 13 years and almost everyone, including the heads of many agencies would say, "Twitter is a waste of time. I don't want to be on Twitter." It always blew my mind because not only is that where all the reporters are, but it's the only platform where you can directly reach out to anybody regardless of where you're connected with them. So the access on Twitter is unbelievable. Kristin: I mean, if you want to get on the radar of journalists, they're on Twitter. The other thing you could do is create a favorite list and look up some reporters and then add them to a favorite list and start favorite them for what they're doing, or replying to them and get on their radar in that way. It's a great way to use Twitter, and obviously, it's strategically hashtag. If you really want to learn how to use PR, go on Twitter and use #PRfail. They will actually grill different publicists or do it yourself PR people, and you can learn from that. You learn a lot. It's just amazing. They'll put out bad pictures on there. I think there used to be a blog called Bad Pitch Blog. I don't know if it's still around, but I mean, you learn how to do PR the right way by looking at it the wrong way. Kathleen: Yeah. See I still say yeah. Even though I try to get myself not to. Now I've also heard that YouTube is really valuable. Especially for getting picked up for television because that allows people to see your on camera persona. Have you found that? Kristin: I think that definitely makes sense more so in the entertainment space. I think it adds to credibility and I think anytime you do a TV segment you should put it on there. Do I think that like, for example, would I have gotten discovered from YouTube if I was just doing something on my own? I don't necessarily think so, no. But entertainment, yes. If you're a singer, if... So that's just a whole other area of PR. You don't as much as I think is valuable for that, and sort of the corporate world, I think it's a little bit different. Kathleen: Interesting. And you mentioned LinkedIn. How do you see LinkedIn playing into this? Kristin: I think publishing articles on LinkedIn is very valuable and using hashtags on LinkedIn can also be very helpful to get found for your content. LinkedIn is at this amazing point right now where they are really almost giving away views in organic traffic, more so than Facebook is at this point because they want to become more of a social network. So there's this massive opportunity, especially with video on LinkedIn right now, if you want people to find what you're doing. So from what we've learned with clients, video definitely does the best. And you could put the same video on Facebook, or Twitter, and Instagram, and you're just going to see the views are so much higher on LinkedIn. Kathleen: Absolutely. I have been testing out LinkedIn Video now for several months, and I did a LinkedIn video recently about it because I looked back at all of my posts and the posts that had video in them, almost in every single case got 10x the number of comments and views as a post without video. It was so starkly obvious what a difference it made. So I completely agree with you on that. Kristin: Yeah, but I mean, they want to incentivize users to be doing more videos. So that's why you can see it. If you look at the analytics, you'll see that that's what they're trying to do. Kathleen: And it won't last forever, I'm sure but right now it's a great opportunity. I want to talk a little bit about results. Obviously, you can't divulge client names and things like that, but can you just, in an anonymized sense, can you give me a sense of what kind of results companies that you've worked with have seen from PR? Kristin: Sure. For example, one company that we work with, they have received over 35,000 visitors in search alone over the past year. Again, we're not doing any paid marketing, any paid advertising. That's just because of content marketing and PR. That's all inbound traffic. Another company is actually ranking in search engine results on page one for specific... In the snippets, which everyone is trying to get in right now. There is content that we created for them years ago that's ranking now. That content hasn't even been historically optimized yet, and it's still ranking. Why? Because we answered questions. That has to do with our approach that we started on Facebook where we grew that audience from zero to over 5,000 fans right now, and basically used their business fan page as a community and group page. Because of that and because we took the time to answer their questions and sort of ask the expert type of format, that has just skyrocketed their search engine results. So I would definitely say that that's something people should be doing. Answering questions is so underrated. People spend so much time on SEO but don't actually answer questions. If you want to appear in snippets you have to do that. I would also say podcasting as been, for that client, a big part of their growth strategy, in terms of being a guest. They've probably recorded over... I don't know. Over 900 minutes of time on podcasts and I can see the analytics for that and I can see the conversion rates. I see people's like, "I heard you on this podcast. I'm interested in coming to you now." I see on their social media page where they say, "I read about you in this article." Well, I know what those articles were because I placed them. So that's PR. I read about you. Are you taking on new clients or new patients? I can actually literally track it from the PR hit to them then going to the social media pages to saying, "Are you taking on new patients?" Or direct messaging that, and then to a new lead going through the contact form, and becoming a patient or a client. So I would say, again, that's not any sort of... that's happened across the board for several clients. Kathleen: It is interesting how it snowballs too, right? You get your name out there and that is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because you're building that Domain Authority, which helps you get found more. As you said, the content that you create that lives in the snippets can live forever. Kristin: Yes. PR is an investment Kathleen: So it is sort of an investment as opposed to, you think about paid advertising and it's like a drug. You can't ever stop. But this is more like an investment. Kristin: It is, and I would say... I mean, you're right. It does snowball. Media snowballs in other media. That's what people have to understand, and I think people that have the short-term approach to PR, then they shouldn't hire a PR firm. If you're going to hire a firm and you're thinking, "You know what, I need you to do X, Y, Z by this date, and I need it now to do X." It's just not going to happen, and even if it doesn't happen, it's the wrong approach because you're not building a community. You're not building anything that has intrinsic value to others. So you just getting hits is good for you, but how is that good for others. So the clients that I've had great success with are... The one thing that they all have in common is they are other-centric, they're not me-centric. So when you're other-centric it allows us to do the best job we can for them because they're building out something larger than themselves and all of it is around education. So I always say, "Egocentric PR is not a PR strategy." It's very important for people to understand that. The PR strategies that we deploy are education focused, and I think clients get the best results, and again, even if it's education focused sound very similar to inbound marketing. Kathleen: I was just going to say, that's basically the premise of inbound. It's a give before you get kind of mentality. Kristin: Exactly. What's so funny is that these people that work with me and hire me, they just really wanted to get great educational content out there into the world and build up their brand. When they're working with me they're not necessarily saying, "I need more clients or patients or people in the door," because they've achieved a certain level of success and they want to do other things. The most amazing things that happens is all of this happens as a result of it. But it's not because they were even trying to achieve that goal. It's because they put their users and their audience first, in terms of just giving, and giving, and giving great advice and content. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Right, well that's so interesting and thank you for explaining all of that. I want to shift gears now and I have two questions I always ask all of my guests and I'm curious to hear what your responses will be. The first one is when it comes to inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it and doing it well. Kristin: I thought a lot about this, and it's hard for me to say that any one person is doing inbound well is because the way I look at this is I look at different attributes of how someone is doing something well. So I can't necessarily point to one person. I can give you all the answers that I think everyone else points to all the time. I could say Gary V, and Gary's great, right? Of course Gary V is doing it. I'm sure every single guest in your show says that, so I want to give you a more unique answer. I think that doctors that are taking the time to answer patients questions are doing it well. Again, I don't want to name any specific ones, but I think that in general if you take the approach where you look at the most frequently asked questions that you're asked all the time and you write them down, and you write content around it, I think it helps you and it helps your patients and it helps your clients. Kristin: So anyone that's doing that gets a gold star in my book. Kathleen: I've always really admired Mayo Clinic for that. They are like the Wikipedia of medicine. It almost doesn't matter what you Google, they pop up with an educational article on that thing. Causes, symptoms, treatments, yada, yada, yada. Though we can not name specific doctors, I would say the Mayo Clinic, in general, is an institution has really done a great job and committed heavily to inbound. Kristin: I think if people wanted... just a tip for inbound is use the notepad in your phone, and when people ask you questions or if a prospect emails you a question, literally save that question. That can be a great part, a foundation of your content marketing strategy. People spend so much time trying to figure out, what do I write about? Well, just write about what you're already answering. Kathleen: Yes. Yeah. It's staring all of us in the face, right? Kristin: Exactly. Also, when you write that, write how people are... The language that they are using to type into Google when they ask you those questions. But I think something that most people are not doing today is that they're just missing the boat on optimizing their content for questions. I think that's something that... The term is called historical optimization, which I think is critical of any sort of PR SEO campaign right now where everyone has to do it. Refresh older stuff that you've written. And also, I would say, use PR to amplify the content that you've written. So if you've written a great blog post and maybe you've done a podcast, you should include that podcast link into whatever relevant content that you've already written around that. So you're constantly just adding value to your audience. Kathleen: Yes. It's so funny because I 100% agree with everything you just said, and it's so interesting to me that it's like, somebody from the PR world who so intuitively gets what it is to do inbound marketing correctly because that's really what it is all about. Kristin: Well, I just want to say one thing about that. What really amazes me is I don't understand how people can practice PR today and not have an understanding of inbound because if you don't, you're not helping your clients. Those clients are setting their money on fire. You can not be doing all of this stuff and have SEO in a different area and content and inbound in a different area. It doesn't work. It doesn't help your clients. So you need someone when you're interviewing a firm, you need to make sure that they have an understanding of all of this because what I see is, you could hire a firm and they could get you all these hits, but if you do nothing with the hits then it's all a waste. It's not just about getting press covered. It's about what you do with the press coverage. If you do a podcast and no one hears the podcast, was there any point to doing the podcast? No, there was not. You have to mark it the coverage that you get. Kathleen: Yes, yes. Totally agree. Second question because you are a PR person who clearly understands marketing. The world of digital marketing is changing so quickly. You talked about Google updating its quality rater guidelines. How do you personally stay up to date and current on all of these things? Kristin: Sure. So I read a lot of different search engine blogs currently. So I think one thing is Search Engine Land. I have a lot that sort of come in that I've subscribed for that are kind of helpful. I know even just a PR... I think there's PR Daily that I get. I get so many of these different newsletters. The other thing, again, is that I truly go to Google News and I look for the terms. I will actually go. I will click Google, I will click news, and then I'll put in SEO or I'll put in Google or I'll put in rankings. I mean, that's my own approach because I want to see things that are happening by the hour and not everyone is necessarily searching that way. For me, I think it's important. Same thing with PR, with everything else that I'm researching. I think the reason I got into that habit is from doing news segments. I could literally be booked to talk about something and then two hours later that story has changed. So I constantly... It's one thing to sign up for newsletters, but it's another when you're in a breaking news environment and the story could have changed. Kathleen: That's a really good point for anybody who's preparing to be interviewed to just do a quick Google news search right before your interview to make sure that nothing has changed. Kristin: Yes. Because a lot of the time everything changes. And then you could be- Kathleen: So true. Kristin: ... watching a teaser and they go, "Coming up, so and so is talking about this." And you don't want to be caught off guard by saying, "Who is so and so," and they go, "That's you, and you're live and go." Kathleen: Right. Kristin: You want to avoid that from happening, which again, goes back to the importance of media training and being prepared. I'd also say try not to check your email, especially from clients right before you go on air. Kathleen: Yes. Kristin: Because that can really throw you. A really important media training tip. How to connect with Kristin Kathleen: That's a great piece of advice. Well, so many good nuggets here Kristin. I really appreciate you sharing all of this with us. If somebody is interested in connecting with you or learning more, what's the best way for them to reach out? Kristin: Sure, so if you want to reach out my website is rubymediagroup.com and my other site is krisruby.com. And then I have a third site for PR for doctors at medicalpracticepr.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know you heard me on this podcast or email me at kruby@rubymediagroup.com.  Kathleen: Fantastic. I will include links for all of that in the show notes so head there if you want to reach out to Kris. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you're listening and you learned something new, or you liked what you heard, of course, please leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That's how we get found. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Kristin: Thank you for having me.  

Now I've known Christine since the 6th grade, and we've seen each other through the good and bad (sometimes a lot of bad). She's definitely grown over time, but I've always seen her as someone who knows what she's doing. This week we go over her time at Cornell, and how she has grown as a person/what Cornell has given to her.

On the twelfth installment of The Link Up with Latesha, our incredible host Latesha Byrd, founder of Byrd Career Consulting, throws out some tips, tricks, and strategies for making your side hustle your full-time hustle. She also talks a bit about some of the tools and programs she utilizes that help maximize her efficiency at work.Check out the book Latesha mentioned, The E-Myth Revisited, on Amazon!Below is a list of programs and services that Latesha herself uses to run her business:Scheduling: CalendlyCRM: DubsadoTask Management: TrelloClient Storage: G SuiteMarketing: Canva, CreativeMarketAccounting: PayPal, Bench AccountingFind out more about Latesha on the BCC website or connect with her through her socials! LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBCheck out Latesha's YouTube channel!BCC's socials: LinkedIn, IG, Twitter, FBVisit our website!TRANSCRIPTLatesha: Today we are talking about making your side hustle your full-time hustle. I know so many entrepreneurs who are hustling on the side and working a full-time job but their goal is to be their own boss. Now, there are some that like doing both the side hustle and the full-time hustle, and to be honest that's what I thought I was going to do. It didn't happen like that. A part of me being able to take my side hustle and make it a full-time hustle was a lot of crying [laughs] and praying and strategizing and believing. I would say that believing, for me, was the hardest thing, and then once I actually really started to believe in myself, in my business and what I was doing, and I was starting to operate at a higher level, that really changed the mold for me. So I thought this would be a cool topic to talk about. A lot of my coaching clients actually have side businesses or are looking to transition from a side hustle to a full-time hustle. I also coach entrepreneurs, and so, you know, I know that I speak mostly on career development and I'm big on career empowerment, career ownership, but I love talking about entrepreneurship, and I thought "Why not start to talk a little bit about business, building a business?" I know some of you all are listening to this podcast where, yes, you are working a corporate job, but you also have your business on the side. I've been there, and I know how that felt, and I just thought I would come on here and share with you all my story of how I was able to turn my side hustle into a full-time hustle, and then just kind of throw out some tips and tricks and strategies that you can start to implement if you do have that side hustle and your goal is to turn it into a full-time hustle. So just to tell you all a little bit about my story - I honestly started my business as a hobby as a career coach. It was something that I was passionate about doing, and the reason or how it came about was that when I was in college I had five internships. I grew up in a single-parent household, so we didn't have a lot of money, so I came to college with a goal in mind that I was going to work my butt off and I was going to take advantage of every single opportunity because I didn't really feel that I had that safety net. There was--for me at least there was no going back home, and so I got really involved on campus [and] had a lot of internships. I went straight into grad school and had a job offer waiting for me post-grad school, so, you know, from I guess the outside looking in, a lot of folks kind of looked at me and said, "Okay, this chick kind of knows what she's doing. She has this internship. She has a job offer, school, everything." Then I would start to get questions. [laughs] Once people kind of caught on to just what I had started to--the brand, I guess... I didn't even know I was building a brand, but the brand that I was building, the reputation I was building for myself, and people started coming to me for career advice. They started coming to me for assistance with getting into graduate school, with help with getting a job, so I started looking at resumes, giving advice, and I realized that this was something that I could monetize, and I said, "All right, the next person to ask me for help, boom, charging them." [laughs] So that's how my business started. It started as a hobby, a passion. I realized I could monetize it, and so I did. Now I've learned so much along the way in terms of getting the skills and the trainings and the experience, the lessons, and just expanding my own skill set or diversifying my own skill set to be able to run a business. You know, those were thing that I of course had to be extremely intentional about as I was building my business. If I could recommend one book to anyone that is really thinking about entrepreneurship and taking that thing all the way, The E-Myth Revisited. For me, it was such a game-changing read, such a game-changing book, because it talks about how a lot of us may start businesses based on a hobby, based on a passion, based on just doing something, and we realize "Oh, this is something that I could monetize," but you don't really learn the fundamentals of actually growing a business, of running a business, and so that book really breaks it down on how to actually do that, how to scale your business, how to really run your business as the CEO that you are. Now, I mean, there are many people as well that don't just start businesses based off of a passion or a hobby. You know, some folks are extremely intentional about solving a business need or solving a business problem, but The E-Myth, such a really great read, you know? We don't learn a lot about entrepreneurship, really nothing at all about entrepreneurship in college, so it is important to think about all of the different skills that are needed to run a business. So kind of going back to, you know, my story, that's how I started my business. Over the last 4.5 years, we've worked with close to 900 professionals in a variety of industries. Business has grown from just a team of one, me, [laughs] to a team of five. Everyone on my team are resume writers, career coaches. I have an assistant. I have someone that helps with business development as well, and, you know, I have so many clients that I've coached over--not just domestically, but also overseas, in Paris, in France--or Paris, France, [laughs] and in Ghana, in Canada, and all over, you know, the U.S. And so in terms of my revenue goals, you know, I have been able to--huge accomplishment on my end, but to exceed six figures last month and, you know, still the goal for my business--I'm being extremely transparent at this moment--the goal for my business is to hit 150K. You know, could I do more? Yeah, but I think that's pretty good, you know? Fourth, fifth year, you know, getting into it. My goal next year is to focus on profit and then cutting as many expenses as possible. Anyways, going back to the first thing that I really had to adjust as I was really thinking about taking this thing all the way in terms of my business. First thing was mindset. It was--you have to think about it in terms of "Is this something I really want to commit to? Am I ready to be fully committed to doing this?" You have to be sure. You know, this really isn't a trial-and-error thing, meaning going from just side hustle to full time is--you know, you want to be pretty sure about it if you are anything like me. Now, I've had friends that have just taken the leap. They've taken the jump. [laughs] But I was really strategic, and I had a plan in place. I am a planner. I've always liked to kind of be in control of my future and, you know, I don't like surprises. [laughs] So I had a plan in place. For me, I knew this was something I had to be fully committed to, and understand that, you know, going from--I think the biggest change for me going from a side hustler to a full-time hustler is that, you know, your lifestyle fundamentally changes. Everything about your lifestyle changes. When you are in charge of yourself, you are in charge of your schedule. You have to decide when you work, where you work, who you want to work with and who you meet with. There's also a lot of decision fatigue that goes into entrepreneurship, so that's something to think about. It takes a lot of energy to run a business, not just from, you know--let's say you are someone that is in, you know, marketing, right? You know, you are developing marketing materials. You may be even doing marketing strategy or SEO strategy for a company, you know? They are likely--maybe you're doing it in-house for a company, or maybe you are working with a company that serves different clients. You know, either way, the company has those processes, systems, tools in place for you to get the work done, or even if you are, you know, managing communication with different teams and groups and clients, you know, these things are being managed by your company. When you are out on your own, there is no middleman, you know? You have to think through those processes and getting all of that in order in terms of dealing with clients, you know? Dealing with, you know, your team. And as an entrepreneur, you're not just doing that work anymore that you were doing with said company. I mean, you are doing--you are the operations person. You are HR. [laughs] You are legal. You are finance. You are customer service, you know? You are the communications person. I mean, of course you will most definitely want to for sure get a lawyer or an attorney, and also make sure you get an accountant, for sure, but there are times where you will need to--you have to know all of the things that are going on with your business until you get to a point where you are starting to hire talent to take on some of that work for you. So what I'm saying there is it takes a lot of energy, maybe a different level of energy, a different level of discipline and motivation, and also self-accountability that goes into entrepreneurship. Now, when you get to a point where you have decided--maybe you started your business on the side [and] you're getting it to a place where you have steady income coming in and you're really thinking about leaving your current workplace. One thing that I want, you know, you all to think about if this is you is what more can you milk from your current job? [laughs] What I mean by that is what are those relationships that you need to nurture, clients maybe you need to make sure you are connecting with again? What are those skills that you want to develop? What about the networking? Who's in your network, or who can you get closer to in your network based on where you are or the access that you have? Just what are those different opportunities? What more do you need from your job? I really was--so when I left corporate, I was actually in a recruiting role, and I managed recruiting for five offices for a public accounting firm up and down the East Coast, and I absolutely loved that job. I thought recruiting was a wonderful field to be in. It was fast-paced. There was a lot of travel, which I loved. I was able to work with a lot of young professionals and give career advice, and I really learned how--how 1. a company actually hires and develops and recruits and trains talent. I had a say so in it, and I was able to help drive strategy in terms of not only how they got talent but how the organization was able to get diverse talent. So I loved that job because I was able to add a lot of value and be a thought leader there, but I was also thinking about "What do I need to get out of my company? What do I need to get out of this job that will make me a better entrepreneur?" You know, more of an expert for my clients? And so I started, you know, asking to attend more conferences, one for networking, but also to develop more skills just in terms of the different sessions that were being offered at the conferences I was going to. Like, one conference I went to in Chicago was a women's conference, and there was a session on public speaking, which was great, because I wanted to do more public speaking. My goal was to become--to brand myself as a speaker. And with that being said, another opportunity for me was to do as many speaking engagements as possible. And so, you know, before I left, whenever a team member needed a speaker for a recruiting event, I always raised my hand to go. So I was able to go to different universities and, you know, do speaking engagements on, you know, any type of career development topic that they wanted the firm to offer, but I also kind of used that under my speaking toolkit and said "Hey, I was in front of this audience," right? And I was kind of building up my speaking brand as much as I could. So that's something to think about. What more can you milk from your current job or just from your current situation? And then I have three things to think about in terms of getting very serious about being more efficient in your business. I'll go ahead and name those three. The three areas are time management, fiscal management, and process management. So starting with time management. You will want to determine how much time you want to spend working in your business versus working in your day job, so keep in mind that you have family responsibilities, and just think about the way your schedule is now, whether it's family obligations, you know, work obligations, volunteer obligations, you really have to get tight with your schedule and know how much time you want to be working in your business, working your day job, and also working on your business, 'cause working in your business and on your business is different. So then in terms of--another piece under time management would be service, products, and offerings. How much time is it taking you to actually do or to put out the offer or to provide that service, you know, that you are monetizing your business off of? You know, for example, you know, thinking about building a course. I did a salary negotiation course last month on--well, I already said it - salary negotiation. But even though that webinar itself was only two hours long--it was about an hour and 45 minutes--whoo, y'all, when I tell you - there's so many steps that go into actually building out a course, and that I learned. So not only did I have to, you know, create the course, I had to create the outline, you know, figure out what the goals were. What did I want? And thinking about what I wanted my audience to walk away with. With all of that being said, you know, building out the outline, thinking about--doing the research, you know? Making sure I'm pulling in industry and relevant data to back my support, to back my findings, you know? Putting it into a PowerPoint or--I didn't use PowerPoint, I used Canva, but--putting it into a presentation template, putting together a workbook. You know, you have the copy that has to go out, and you have to send that out to your audience. So there's so many different steps, and sometimes we don't take into account every single step and, you know, every single moment we're spending to get these things done. So time management. Next is fiscal management, and this is the process that I kind of--that I do actually walk my coaching clients through for those that are looking to launch businesses or thinking about--or looking to scale their business. So fiscal management is the second one. You have to have revenue goals. You have to have revenue goals for your business. It's so key, especially if you're thinking about taking it from a side hustle to a full-time hustle. You know, that's nothing to play with. You want to make sure that you are continuing to bring in money and revenue for your business, so it is important to set some revenue goals, okay? And don't sell yourself short, you know? Also take into account the lifestyle that you want, that you are living, and, you know, one thing that I did is I actually wrote out a budget. I really thought about--or not thought about, but I outlined, you know, my expenses, how much money I am spending on bills, but not only fixed expenses but also variable expenses - food, shopping, entertainment, nails, hair. You know, as a woman, those things matter. We want to look cute. We can't be, you know, taking a discount on [laughs] on that, and so I've really had to think through "How much money do I need to be bringing in each month to keep the lifestyle that I want to live?" I was fully prepared to, you know, be okay with living less, you know, or spending less if I had to--maybe not getting my nails done for a bit, which I actually did stop doing for quite some time. But, you know, other things like that. You may have to make sacrifices, but either way you have to know those numbers. Know how much does it cost for you to live the lifestyle that will make you happy. Happiness is important. And then based on that, you will need to have revenue goals so you can bring in enough to support your lifestyle, right? Especially if you have, you know, a family and children, you will need more money than someone that is single. So you have your revenue goals. You will want to also break those down by services or the products that you are offering, so if your revenue goal is $10,000 and you have something that is--a product that is, you know, $100, you need to make sure that quantity that you're selling is 100, you know? So it's important to think about your revenue goals, break it down by service or products that you are offering, you know? Or maybe you have a multitude of different service offerings or different products, but break your revenue goals by each thing that you are offering. How many customers do you need to be bringing in for that said service or product? That way you also know how you need to be spending your effort in terms of marketing, where you should be marketing or who you should be marketing to. So the first was time management, second was fiscal management, and the third brings us to process management. You have to have systems and tools in order to scale your business. So I know I've mentioned that a couple of times, scaling your business, scaling your business, and some may say, "Well, what does that mean?" So scaling your business--I'm just going to read a definition that I found online, but it means setting the stage to enable and support growth in your company. It means having the ability to grow without being hampered. It requires planning, some funding, and the right system, staff, processes, technology, and partners. When companies scale, they add revenue at a faster rate than they take on new costs. A company that is scaling may gain 50,000 in new revenue, from which they spent only 5,000 on marketing automation tools, versus hiring someone and paying them a $50,000 salary to actually come in and do the work. So it basically means making sure you are operating at your most efficient capacity and capabilities. Scaling is something that is extremely important, especially if you are a company of one, you know? And maybe you don't have a large team in place. So it's important to think through how can you scale or grow your business, because if you are a company of one, you can't do it all. You may need to automate, put those systems in place and tools in place so that way you can get your time back and be able to spend it a little bit more efficiently. So anyways, when it comes to process management, you have to have systems and tools in order from start to finish. I recommend my clients actually write out the steps, write out the steps of an initial contact. So when a client is initially interested in working with you and they want to work with you, where do they go? What do they fill out? What do they complete? How do they get in touch with you? And having a process from the initial contact all the way to, you know, closing the deal or making that sale, providing the service, and then, you know, if there's any follow-up or things of that nature that need to happen post-providing that service, you want to make sure that you have all of those steps in order and think about what are the things that you may be doing over and over and over again that are a little bit recurring that maybe you can--that's something you can automate? What are some canned emails that you are--what are those emails that you are sending over and over again to your clients? So creating some canned emails. I think about, you know, the processes and how can I be more efficient in my business all of the time, and with process management, or for the systems I used, I have a task management tool I use called Trello. It's great. It helps me and my team really stay organized. Sometimes we work with up to 15 clients for, you know, the resume work that we do, and then from, you know, my agency, but then for the one-on-one coaching that I do where I take on about 15 clients, no more than 15 clients at a time, I have to stay organized with that. So Trello [for] task management. I use Dubsado for my CRM. Love, love, love my CRM. And then Google Drive. I am in Gmail. You know, [laughs] Google anything. Google Forms. I--listen... Google. Hey, Google, [laughs] put me on the team. But no, seriously, I use Google for everything. Those are the main systems that I use. The last thing I will say is that once you do make the leap, don't jump right into it. Take a break if you can. You know, take some time off from being in that corporate setting so you can just sit back and--I don't want to say sit back and relax, but just so you can take a breather, you know? We have the rest of our lives to work. You may feel like you want to jump right into it, but you definitely will want to take a break just to kind of get your mind in order and get it clear so that you can be more creative. The last thing that I'll say is make sure you also set some goals. 30-day, 60-day, 90-day goals at the minimum for your business. Be very intentional with that. How many? How much money do you want to work? Of course those revenue goals. How many clients do you want to bring in? Who do you want to--you know, where do you want to spend your money? You know, just being intentional about that and setting some goals. So I hope this was helpful. Like I said, this was all about just entrepreneurship, pursuing your full-time hustle or making your side hustle your full-time hustle. Hopefully you found this helpful. If you want to be your own boss, let me know. If you have questions about entrepreneurship, let me know. I'm happy to really just start exploring more and talking more about entrepreneurship as well as we continue to talk about career development. So that is all I have today for you all on The Link Up with Latesha. You can find me on social media, @Latesha_Byrd, and I will talk to you guys next time. Bye.

In this episode, I get to speak with Philip Morgan. Now I've been following Philip's story for over a year and I've been reading his PMC daily emails, and we had a chat last year. I was introduced to him by my good friend Fuad Kamal, who was also a guest on this podcast. On the PMC emails, I've been getting so much value. I like the way he thinks, and that's one of the reasons why I brought him on the podcast. Philip can be reached via his website here: https://philipmorganconsulting.com ——Sponsorship—— This podcast brought to you by our generous sponsors. It is hosted by Anchor and distributed to the many platforms available for you to listen on. If you’re interested in sponsoring this podcast please connect on the networks below. ——Connect Here!—— You can find Hacks & Hobbies on these popular social media networks: Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, or our Website hacksandhobbies.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/hacksandhobbies/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/hacksandhobbies/support

There are certain performance indicators you should measure and optimize when evaluating your sales funnel/process. The five I'm watching closely are, traffic, leads, open rate, click through rate, and conversion rate. Traffic and leads are no longer a challenge. Now I've got to focus on and optimize the other 3. That's what this episode of Follow-Up Fuel is all about.   

If you’re a bourbon die hard, you’ve probably asked yourself this question, “Do bourbon brands care about me?”. You know what I’m talking about because you join in on the conversation when distilleries increase prices or you get angry because your barrel picking group has been snubbed out for allocation reasons. The Bourbon Pursuit team takes a hard look at many of the larger whiskey producers by looking at some of their past actions. But if you’re the whiskey producer, what would you do in the same situation? Show Partners: Hotel Distil on historic Whiskey Row is set to open October 29th in Downtown Louisville. Book now to experience it for yourself at HotelDistil.com. The University of Louisville now has an online Distilled Spirits Business Certificate that focuses on the business side of the spirits industry. Learn more at uofl.me/pursuespirits. Barrell Craft Spirits enjoys finding and identifying barrels that contain distinctive traits and characteristics. They then bottle them at cask strength to retain their authentic qualities for the whiskey enthusiast. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Distillery 291 is an award winning, small batch whiskey distillery located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Learn more at Distillery291.com. Show Notes: Wilderness Trail Expansion: https://amnews.com/2019/10/03/wilderness-trail-distillery-expanding-planning-huge-announcement/ Toddy’s: https://www.liquor.com/articles/best-bourbon-store-toddys-liquors/#gs.7u244v Glenlivet Scotch Pods: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/05/world/glenlivet-scotch-whisky-capsule-glassless-trnd/index.html Scotch Tariffs: https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/03/business/us-tariffs-whisky-wine/index.html This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about line etiquette. What are your thoughts on the Heaven Hill Bottled-in-Bond relaunch? What do you think Heaven Hill did wrong in that situation? Are we moving away from a $15 price point? What about the Booker's price increase? Let's discuss Maker's attempt to lower the proof. What about Sazerac's strategy? What about Brown-Forman? What's happening with the allocation of barrel picks? Are people or groups getting cut off? 0:00 Hey everybody. If you have a bachelor's degree and live anywhere in the United States, there's now a way for you to take your bourbon education to the next level. The distilled spirits business certificate from the University of Louisville is an online program that can be completed in as little as 15 weeks and will prepare you for the business side of the spirits industry. It's offered by the ACS be accredited college of business, and this certificate was developed in partnership with industry experts to be one of a kind and it's going to prepare you for your next adventure. Learn more about this online program at U of l.me slash 0:35 pursue spirits All right, 0:37 let me see if I can't get everybody to just like Quiet on the set here. 0:41 All right, Quiet on the set. 0:56 Hey everybody, what is going on? It is Episode 220. of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny, and we've got a ton of news to run through. Let's not wait let's dive into it. Eagle rare bourbon is announcing the 10th annual Eagle rare life award. Now Eagle rare has partnered with garden and gun to seek nominations for the 10th annual Eagle rare life award. The award celebrates those who lead a rare life as defined by showing courage, leadership survival, devotion, character and heroism. Past recipients have included Brian Anderson representing USA cares in Jake Clark of save a warrior to nominate a remarkable individual for the annual Eagle where life award submit an application by November 3 2019. The finalists and their stories will be featured on garden and gun calm from November 15 to December 6, and they allows you to go and cast your votes. The winner of this award will be announced in early 2020. We talk all the time about how big players in the industry are always expanding but now we get to see one sort of on the mid size wilderness trail. Now you've heard from Pat heist and Shane Baker back on episodes 121 at 130. They are playing to add three new additional buildings to their site, including a 13,000 square foot addition. This is going to be an expansion of their bottling and administration buildings plus two new brick houses each totaling around 16,624 square feet. They will store 20,520 barrels each and they will be next in line for construction. The distilleries bottling operation is undergoing a $1.5 million dollar expansion right now with a new automated bottling line and warehouse space as they are going to be adding also more headcount in operations and administration. The distillery is currently wrapping up around a $6 million in capital projects for 2019 and as $8 million in projects underway for 2020. But now that you're doing close to 215 barrels of whiskey per day, you can read more about this in our show notes with the link to AM news.com. Back on episode 152. We featured Guthrie McKay of Tommy's liquors. Now this topic is polarizing to some folks. Today Guthrie charges more than secondary prices for his advocated bourbon and with this small shop that has a lot of listeners and shoppers going through, it puts them in a mixed and almost kind of gets you're frustrated and mad. But Guthrie has seen the highs and lows and he was a kind of a key and secret ingredient to helping the whiskey boom. And you can hear some of those stories that we were counted back on that episode 152 but you know Guthrie was also this week featured in a liquor.com article titled The best bourbon store on earth. And that might be a little bit of clickbait, but we've provided a few quotes to give context the story, and you can read that article with the link in our show notes as well. Jim beam's knob Creek is announcing a new limited edition bottling called quarter oak. The new release finishes knob Creek bourbon and quarter oak casks for four years. Now quarter casts are as the name suggests, one quarter the size of traditional 53 gallon barrels. And as we've seen this before, this means that there's an increase in the surface area with the charred oak relative the volume of whiskey inside. You can call it accelerated aging but it could just mean different types of taste profiles that are coming out of it. But when this finished product is going to be dumped from the Quarter Cask. It is then blended with knob Creek and bottled at 100 proof to create the knob Creek quarter oak, this is going to have a suggested retail price of $50. And with more release news heaven Hill is announcing that they are doing their first line extension of larceny, Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey larceny barrel proof released on an allocated basis three times per year. The first release of this weekend bourbon will ship in January of 2020. larceny barrel proof offers whiskey fans the opportunity to taste larceny just as heaven hills master distiller does Connor straight from the barrel. Each release will have varying proofs and consists of barrels aged of six to eight years old with releases in January may in September. This is also going to have the same naming convention that we've seen with Elijah Craig barrel proof. So the first release will be a 120 a representing the first batch of the year one representing the month with this January and 20 representing the year 2020. Each release will be bottled at barrel proof non chill filtered and available at a suggested retail price of 4999. we first saw it with black and which is metallic is new whiskey, followed by collaboration Slipknot with an Iowa whiskey company and now few spirits and Warner Music artists services are announcing a new release called all secrets know which is a new limited edition bourbon distilled by few spirits master distiller Paul help go in collaboration with Grammy nominated and multi Platinum selling Seattle grunge pioneers. Allison chains now whose music has also stood the test of time and pollutes a generation as well as a lot of whiskey lovers out there two bottles will feature a custom design label by artists Justin Helton. For this release few bourbon is finished for six months in tequila barrels bottled at 101 proof and will have an MSRP or suggested retail price of $75. This game this is how bourbon pursuit we hardly ever really talked about scotch, but the Glenlivet has the internet up in arms because they have released something that was new. It was a video and the Internet has coined it scotch pots. They are clear seaweed wraps that are completely edible and have a cocktail in a clear capsule, Glenlivet partnered with a sustainable startup on this new idea, and it has everyone talking about it. Some folks thought it was April Fool's in October, but we'll see who has the last laugh on this one. If they catch on, they will be served during London celebration of college tail innovation through October 13. And you can read about that with more in our show notes. We've talked about terrorists on the podcast before and terrorists, the retaliation are coming back harder and harder. The US is now going to be imposing a 25% tariff on scotch whiskey being imported into the US. This is going to increase the price of scotch for Americans. The US is the largest market with over $1 billion of scotch whiskey being exported in 2018. Well, perhaps this might get more people drinking bourbon in the end, but who knows what the outfall of this could be. You can read more about it with the link in our show notes as well. Now speaking of what things that we have going on, our community took one for the team and selected a barrel at Traverse City which ended up being a seven year in GP, or incredibly fortunate that we get to bring these experiences to our Patreon community and happy that all these whiskey geeks get to be a part of them. We have a new barrel pic to announce which is in addition to our last one week that we announced which is our Eagle wearable are also adding in to 2019 k jack daniels barrel proof that will be taking place in December. This is going to bring our 2019 tally to 19 barrels selected. And we've already got our first barrel lineup for 2020 as well. Thanks once again to our retail partner, keg and bottle out of the San Diego area for making this all happen. You can go check out their website and get whiskey shipped straight to your door at keg the letter in bottle.com. today's podcast it's one for the diehards, you know who you are because you join in the conversation when distilleries are increasing their prices are you get angry because your barrel picking group got snubbed because of allocation reasons. Now the trio of bourbon pursuit we're here to talk about some of the actions that we've seen over the past year and contemplate. Do bourbon companies actually care about their consumers? Or is this just a part of a bigger game that we all have to play? We mentioned it towards the end of the show. But if 9:00 You're a producer and you're listening to us. Just know that we love you. And we do our best to play devil's advocate. But there's some things that we saw that we really feel like we should take the bourbon communities view and kind of really talk about it put out there in the open and see what happens. So hope you're going to enjoy this one. Alright, so let's get down to it. Here's Joe from barrell bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick. What's up the char? It's Joe from barrell bourbon. We enjoy finding and identifying barrels that contain distinctive traits and characteristics. We then bottle them a cash rank to retain their authentic qualities for the whiskey enthusiast. Keep up to date with our newsletter at barrell bourbon.com. 9:37 I'm Fred Minnick. And this is above the char, I reached out to my followers on Twitter for this idea, and bourbon West came up with a good one. He wanted to know how we could improve the etiquette of standing in lines for bourbon. And he's speaking in particular of the etiquette towards the distillery, the store owner, the proprietary, he's saying that he sees some disgusting behavior out there when it comes to standing in line for these were bottles. So thanks, bourbon west for this idea. And here's the thing, if we want bourbon so badly, that we're willing to camp out overnight stand in a long line, I bring my kids to these things. So I have to it's it's the only way I can get there because my wife will be out of town or she'll be running. And the only way I can go to a lot of these events is if I bring my kids and so right then and there. I'm kind of like an odd man out people look at me funny because I've got my kids. And I'm standing in line for bourbon. So they're like, there's there's your dad of the year. But you do see people like get very angry toward the store owner, if they are the last in line and they don't get a bottle. Or they're at the front and they can't get what they want. Or they see a bottle in the store and the store owner wants sell it to them. I've seen people yell, I've seen people throw tantrums. And then you see people on social media afterwards, just absolutely tearing apart a business for them not selling him a bottle. And is that right? Well, you know, it's free speech. And people have the they can do whatever they want. But when you're inside someone's property, and you are there as a customer, there are some things that you should do first, you should never really raise your voice to the store owner. That could be you know, considered threatening, and, you know, if somebody wanted to, they could kick you out, and you should be just a good decent human being. You got to remember this whole bourbon thing. It's, it's just a hobby. It isn't something it's not life and death. We're not curing cancer. We're trying to get a nice bottle of bourbon. So treat people with respect. And so there are three rules that I recommend that everyone carry when it goes into the stores. dress nice it This may sound very weird, but people do not act like assholes when they dress nice. Now what is nice now you know I wear an ascot I'm not saying you have to do that, for God's sake. I'm the only person left on the planet still wearing the damn things. But you know, maybe like a like a polo shirt and khakis and a pair of nice shoes. And you'll find that you don't want to be a dickhead when your dress pretty nicely. Number to say thank you. Even if you do not get the bottle you want the store manager, the store clerk anybody you interact with the distillery whoever, just say thanks. And number three, the people who you're around with start talking to them. Where are they from? Some of the best friends I've made in bourbon have been from standing in line at these places. You really do meet some cool people. They'll be from all over the state or country and sometimes even out of the country because it's their only opportunity to get a rare bottle. So just practice those three things. And it seems like little but hopefully it will diffuse someone else from being a dickhead when they're shopping bourbon. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea like bourbon West did hit me up on Twitter or Instagram at Fred Minnick. That's at Fred Minnick. Until next week. Cheers. 13:15 welcome back to this episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon, the whole trio here today. Wow, hoping we don't burn some bridges. Right? I mean, we're going to be bringing the heat putting some people under some fire. But also, I think speaking for the broader bourbon community that's out there, because we're going to be talking and the subject is, you know, do distilleries actually care about their customers? And this is we thought about this idea. Because, gosh, what was it probably six months ago, we had this this concept of like, everything The news was changing. There's people that are taking off products, there's allocations of barrels that are just getting axed across the board from Yeah, as Fred always said, people that took you to the dance. So today, we're going to, 13:57 you know, barrel programs not kind of going he usually just made it him. 14:02 And so that's exactly what today we're really gonna be focusing on is, is looking at and hopefully, you know, I think we're going to take some, put some fire, put some heat and do some people, we all got to play a little devils advocate, right? Kind of will, one of us one of us will kind of take the role of, well, if the distillers that if I'm the distiller here, like, what's my response? Male? Fuck 14:21 it, let's just, whatever, whatever I mean, it this is this is a conversation that we need to have. Yeah, they need to know, we need to have this conversation because they're, you know, I feel like sometimes distilleries live in a bubble. They live in a bubble of their bottom line, and, you know, help benefiting their shareholders. And the informations out there. It's not like they can't go to a social media forum and find the data find, find people conveying their feelings about what consumers want and what they need. You know, their two years ago, they'd spent $150,000, to get the kind of feedback that is free now. Yeah, on social media. And what I have found consistently, is that they continue to ignore a lot of what people want, or what at least what they're saying they want on social media. 15:20 Absolutely. Well, they got short memories. They forget that like, just 10 or 15 years ago, nobody gave a shit about them. 15:27 So before we also kick it off and dive even further, you know, if you're watching on video, you might be hearing some background noise and people shuffling through because we are recording an episode of this podcast from the barrel room at Hotel distil, which is going to be on historic whiskey row here in Louisville, and it's set to open on November 1. And hotel distill is a place that is exciting. It's got a rich history that's happening here. It's now being transformed into this great space. It's designed to really, you know, what they say is ignite your passion for discovery and we'll do this 16:00 Social anchor for Louisville's revitalization and refinement of bourbon culture and you can book your experience now and stay at this authentic little destination at Hotel distil com. Yeah, I think this JTS Browns office they said at one point there Yeah, this is the actual building his office I had no idea Fred you got any insight into Yeah, this is this is the this is one of the I actually have an old photo of of like the 16:28 an old photo of like the outside and said JTS Brown, it was actually out there. 16:31 Yeah. facade. 16:33 Yeah. And, you know, a lot of cool things happened in here. 16:37 It just amazes like 1015 years ago, all this was like a dump. And yeah, I mean, it was it was like a Renaissance. I mean, 16:43 it was I saw what whiskey row was. I mean, I remember one of our first podcast we did was actually saving whiskey row and what it was, and all the effort that went in for historical and preservation societies of what it went to actually save a lot of the buildings and the facades that you do see out here, 16:57 guys, I want you to think about this. You know, in the 1800s, early 1900s, there were fellows walking around and their suits, go into meetings, and they were brokering deals about bulk whiskey. And they were talking about, like, you know, exporting it to Japan or Germany or wherever. I mean, this is where all the action happened. for American whiskey, where it's like, we're right here at the wall street of whiskey. I really don't like using that term, but it is it really is. And it just kind of went away. And level. You know, I and I give a lot of this credit to our mayor, Mayor Fischer. Greg Fischer. I really don't think, you know, any of this Renaissance happens without, you know, kind of like his, his vision to like, improve, improve this part of our culture. 17:46 Well, and I know and it might be a slider, Ryan, you know, he always has this famous line that you know Bardstown as the capital of bourbon, but it still is global is the epicenter of bourbon. Well, maybe now. 17:58 10 years ago, not so much. Nobody cared about down there, down here. They saw how cool it was in barge towns, they're like, Oh, we gotta do we gotta go do it now. 18:05 Absolutely. 18:06 So I'll play a Bardstown can put up some hotels like this, I think 18:10 they missing it. They need this, put a distill and bars down the awesome. Here we go. 18:15 So let's go ahead. And let's dive back into the subjects here. And let's go ahead and we'll take we'll take an easy one, right. I mean, this is one that is a recent news because as people in ourselves live in little boy live in Kentucky, we had access to the white label have six year Heaven and Hell bottle and bond. And it was a, you know, it kind of made. It was pretty big news, right? I mean, when they said they were gonna take it off the market. However, there was no announcement to say that there was going to be a relaunch, there's no anything like that. It was just something that I think it usually kind of started through the grapevine where the distributors found out about it distributors told the retailers, the retailers then told the consumers and then from there, everything went kind of Bismarck, and people just started clearing the shelves left and right. And Kentucky is actually finding this, this white label. And fast forward two to three months afterwards, then a press release comes out that says they're gonna be relaunching with an additional year, and, you know, three x the actual price of what it was before, before you can get it around, what 1215 bucks. And then it was coming back with an SRP of $40. But not only this is also be going out a little bit further outside of Kentucky hitting I think, what 678 states something like that during its first launch. So let's kind of talk about that. What do you think heaven hell did wrong in this situation? 19:41 Well, they, we kind of talked about this on the round table, but you know, that they think we're like stupid or something like they just totally like think, as consumers, like, we'll put out this press release. And just believe what we say. And it happened with the logic, Craig 12. You know, for years, we were like, we're like, oh, we're gonna move the 12 from the front to the back. And you're like, is it going away, no, never, never gone away. And then it goes from the back. It's not no longer and a number, they write the letter 12 or the word 12 on the back. And then after that, and it's like, you think we're stupid, then they do the same thing with heaven Hill, like six year they'd say, Oh, it's going away and never coming back. And then, you know, home to hold. Three months later, get a press release. And so it's like, I get what they're doing, they're going to try to make it a more premium product to the mainstream audience. But like 10 to 15 years ago, nobody cared about you. 20:40 I mean, let's let's also, I'll take their side, little bit here, you know, not even told that that was really happening. Not a ton of people really cared about the white label. I mean, it was always available. It's always there. It was something that was kind of our whiskey geek. Like it was like the thing you knew about like, you're like, that's the bottle that you go, that's 99 or 1099, that you could always count on as a 21:04 great poor at a great value. And like you said, it was kind of you had to be in the know to know about it. 21:10 To answer your question, Kenny, I think the one thing that the mistake they made was transparency. And I I'm very, very close with with heaven Hill, I think their whiskies fantastic. Some of the best I mean, I they do a great job. But I think in this growth of American whiskey, there has been a, there still has been a little bit of this kind of like old school protectionism, of holding on to their ideas and what they're going to be doing, you know, to kind of protect it from, you know, their competitors finding out. Well, really what has happened is that consumers, we feel like we have a right to know, of like, what's happening, 22:00 But what are they hiding? Like? It's whiskey. Like they act like they got like 22:06 you would if they said, We are pulling heaven hills, six year old off the market, to rebrand it, and bring it back as a seven year old bottle and bond at an additional price to more consumers? Would you be? See that's just I think most people would be fine with that. And the last thing I would have been fine with, hey, we really want this to stay available on shelves, we don't want to be like, well, they're 12. So that's why we're going to drop the age statement, kind of do a blend of eight to 12 which, by the way, they 12. So I mean, I was to use Preston van winkles term, I was bought hurt for probably about two years. 22:45 You still don't let it go. 22:47 But it was Elijah Craig 12 years is like so 22:50 tricky. Just like, like we're in it, but the age statement, you know, write it on the back and like had it and then eventually just phase it out and then change it. 22:58 I also so so that that's to me is the only thing the business decision to do it. I don't have a problem with and I don't think it's them not caring about their consumers? I think it's I think it's simply a I think they make a decision and they try to think about the best way to release it. And they're not thinking about necessarily the backlash and the whiskey geek state, we are still very much a very small portion. We are the one percenters 23:23 right, that's that's the one one thing I think, if I keep taking the distillery side of this, and I keep thinking, well, if I'm heaven Hill, I, my goal is to look at the broader market, right? My goal is to focus on that. And when I even put out these press releases, who cares? Except, you know, the 10,000 people that are like really hardcore into this, right. And 23:47 I'm still just flabbergasted by like, they think they have this secret stuff. Do you think like Buffalo Trace gives a shit that they're taking heaven Hill six off year and bringing it and relaunching it like, what do they? What do they think they're hiding? Like, I didn't mean from a competitive stamp, right? Like, yeah, I mean, this, whiskey takes years to develop to what it becomes. And so like, when you announce something, you've thought about it for a very long time, like, somebody just can't replicate it, like a month later, you know, 24:14 let's remember to 14 years ago, when there was like, there were like, two or three of us out there, kind of writing about this sort of thing. Now, I mean, you have a sea of social media, people, you know, finding a bottle, you know, analyzing every single thing, and it's very knowledgeable base. And so we can, you know, people can find out things really quickly. And also heaven hills got a you know, they have a few people in their organization that, you know, will get on social media and or under anonymous handles and say things. So there's that some moles they have, 24:52 they have some leaders. And so does that mean, they all do? 24:55 Nailed it? So I'll take the other side of this. And we had Larry cast on the show, right? You know, before he retired, and Larry is still being even in his retirement. He's actually been very outspoken on this even on social media and Hall 25:07 of Famer, by the way, yes, yes. 25:08 Recent inductee to it. Yeah. And, you know, he goes against the saying is insane. Like, the brand has been undervalued for far too long. True. And it's and it's very true. I think, I think bourbon in itself has been undervalued for this is very true. I agree with all that. But I guess, you know, when we look at it from another standpoint of, you know, if we're going to, is there a market to keep bringing $15 bottles of whiskey or where are we past that because it had been that way for so long is it do we just need to move on. And 25:37 so I've done some research and the studies show that when you raise prices, you actually get more customers. And I've witnessed many people go into liquor stores and my various, you know, book signings and stuff and you know, they're new to bourbon, they don't know anything about it. And the the store rap will try to get someone to buy four roses yellow label, and they'll look at the price. And they say, No, it's too cheap. I want that one. And they'll point to like Jefferson's reserve. And I'm picking I'm picking four roses yellow label every day of the week, over Jefferson's reserve. We still love Trey about Yeah, still. Yes, but but that from a value perspective, you know, I'm saying it's like, that's like, it's, you know, I'm saving pennies, or I'm saving, you know, 1015 bucks. Absolutely. But the the everyday consumer looks at this as a luxury good. And $15 isn't luxury. And that's that's kind of where they're, that's where these these distillers you're coming from? 26:38 Yeah, and understand that from like, if you're buying a gift or wanting to try something special, but if you're wanting like, quality everyday drinkers, you know that you gotta have an affordable option like 30 $30 for heaven Hill balled and bond, I think, or whatever, it's gonna be $40. I think it's overpriced for what it is. I'm, it's me, it's good. But I can drink some great, didn't you? 27:04 Me it was that great. He kept he kept 27:05 himself from 27:08 Above Average? 27:11 Well, I mean, from an everyday drinker to like, Am I going to go buy it at 40. Whereas if I would have it, you know, constantly on my bar, but they don't care about me, they care about the mass audience. And so, 27:22 all right, so here's the here's the sad, hard truth of it. The only line against this is the bartender, the bartender, has to have it at a surf a certain price in order for them to make money. And you can't make a $40 cocktail, right? You gotta it's got to be 10 to 15. So that's why that's why like in scotch, you know, they have like monkey shoulder and Glenlivet, 12 year old, you know, it's very affordable, you know, well, scotches, and the bartender community will always make sure that we have a 15 to $25 bird, because they have to make money on it. And you know, Larry rice is not going to be making cocktails with you know, $55 bourbon. 28:09 Absolutely. So I guess that's the kind of like, makes me think of another question. Like, if one of the main strategies behind bullet and how bullet became so big was because they were able to get behind the bar. Yeah. So in bullet is not a 15 $20 bottle, right. I mean, last time I checked, it's still in the 35 to $50 category. I don't 28:29 know I actually I've seen it for I saw like $18 Cosmo, is it? 28:33 Yeah, well, nevermind. Yeah. bullets in the sub $25 range, we found out what Kenny doesn't buy. 28:41 Just don't pay that much attention, apparently. 28:45 So I think we beat up on heaven Hill a little bit. So I think, 28:48 well not beat up on them. It's just they know, the criticism. And they, they they see it. And it's also stuff that I wouldn't tell them to their face. You know, like, I guess we'll do it on the podcast. back. No one's gonna hear the end day always push back of like, we are. We're a business and we're trying to make money. What I really the thing about it is I also feel bad for heaven Hill, because they get they do get a lot of blowback, and poor Bernie lovers. That guy's doing his job. 29:21 Yeah, but they do it themselves. They do it 29:22 themselves. But Bernie's like, sometimes just kind of left on an island. He's got to be the punching bag, you know? And it's like, I hope they're paying him well, and if not, they need to give him a raise, because that he takes a lot of a 29:34 lot of abuse. And it feels he gotta have a little bit of empathy for him too, because he ends up being like the spokesperson for the brand. I mean, yeah, right. Ryan, do you remember when we interviewed him? We had a two part interview. And we actually asked him, we asked him about Elijah Craig, and the 12 year age statement. And he looked, I mean, he came and he said, and he has no, it's not going away. You know, we're just moved to the back and little blah. And then, like, two months later, 29:57 again, whoops. Yeah, you know, we had to do this because make it available. And it's like, well, two minutes later, it was available and what changed it to 30:05 remember to like, automation, he had, oh, it's not his fault. It's and that's the and that's also the information that the someone gave him had, you know, so, you know, the decision was made that I have no doubt that, you know, they're looking at stocks and they're looking at where the future is and everything, and they make they make decisions in a moment and, and then everyone else is is forced to, like kind of 30:31 catch up to it. I guess. I just don't understand. I understand. Yes, Bourbons undervalued. I totally agree with that. But that's what your logic Craig's your inner McKenna's your Evan Williams single barrels your William heaven hills that's what they're those are brands are for heaven Hill has been a everyday affordable drinker. I don't understand why pivot takeaway from those brands to position this one when it's been like a bomb on the shelf all for all i also 30:58 think so you're thinking one particular thing get to realize when you go to Heaven Heaven hell we've all been in the label room there's hundreds of thousands of labels that they have maybe not hundreds but the definitely thousands Yeah, and I'm pretty sure like a bought every abandoned trademark of Oh, I just don't know that. So let me keep going here because I know when you think about the heaven hell bottom Yvonne that's one thing but you still got Evan lanes bottle and bond. You've got virgin you've got all these things but don't get me wrong I know people are starting to hate on the virgin thing now because they're dropping the age statement off that one as well. So you know it's just a continual progression of what are they going to be able to do 31:32 be honest that was the best marketing that virgin ever had no one knew about that fucking perfect. I mean, we can hear me there's like we knew about it sounded but like i was i was cracking up with like all these people like, like you didn't know about that bourbon. It was a very like I mean, heaven Hill bottle the mom people knew about it, but it's like out of the woodwork they're all a virgin fan. Like Come on. 31:54 Yeah, that was where it was mostly in like North Carolina Yeah. 31:58 There was like a Washington's like, I can't get any worse. Like you couldn't get it anyway. 32:02 Yeah, you know, so not even be tried. But 32:04 it's like I don't know what you're saying they 32:06 still came out. I mean, they rebranded it and came out of quality house right. So it's still still the same box he you know, 32:14 let's mean heaven hills seven years old and bond thousand barrel dump is not a $40 bottle like it 32:24 I get it, it's a rebranding. It's a way to do this. I mean, you can also see this as a way that you know, they they wanted to remove the name heaven Hill, from lower in tears, like, okay, green labels not 32:35 gone away the 90 proof one, you know why? Because someone in the Shapiro family, that's what they buy. Oh, well, so it's on their it's on their bar inside. And so it'll it'll always be there because they that's what they drink. You know, I think it's probably important that we also look at some of the some of the brands that have reacted to consumers pushing back pricing. Like when Booker's announced that they were going to be $100 bottle, you know, they went, they they reverted pretty quickly, because they were like, they were getting a murder. Remember that? 33:13 Oh, yeah, just it was 33:14 11 years ago, they changed it, but yeah, 33:16 they changed it back. And, you know, they didn't have to change any branding or anything. But, you know, they still have a little bit of residual 33:25 in I mean, to be fair Booker's, probably, I mean, it's a barrel proof six year like, really good bourbon. I mean, 33:32 I used to get it for 55 bucks. Yeah. And it was it was 33:37 the most incredible values out there. 33:38 That is a that is to me, that was a more palatable, you know, price increase. You know, they decided change, I think it's 75 or something like that. CSRP now it's about it's probably right where it needs to be and I think people are happy with 33:54 that you were still happy with that. And I mean, I still recommend it to people who haven't tried something and you want to you know, start elevating and trying to go barrel proof and you know, to kind of just take a note off your above the char from weeks ago, you know, being able to experience the different flavors you can get with barrel proof by starting at barrel proof, adding some water adding some ice letting the ice melt, you know, you get you get to experience bourbon five different ways. In a in a barrel proof whiskey like that. So 34:20 some you can always find to, but you know, 34:22 Becker, Booker's isn't the only one remember makers, even what had been five years ago about the 2013? The proof? 34:29 Yeah, the proof debacle, they still won't, they still won't talk about it. So for our listeners out there, this is what happened in 2013, Maker's Mark decided to lower their proof from 90 proof to 84. And they announced it to their brand ambassadors, which is their program that they have for their sir customer loyalty program. So they sent an email to it and people in batch it crazy. It was it was it ended up being front page news, Jay Leno, or one of the you know, the talk shows were talking about it. He was on CNN, it was everywhere. And I got like this. I was I was covering it very, very intensely. And I got these interviews with Bill Samuels and Rob Samuels. And I remember bill saying like, oh, son of a bitch, I guess people really care about our wisdom, you know. And it's like, they say, Bill always has this way of like, making everything sound funny and putting things in perspective. But they changed it back. But to this day, people think people think it's a, it was a marketing ploy, because it was only eight days that they had it out there. But think about it, they had to change their labels, you know, they had to pull. Well, they had they already had products out there had 35:42 a product out there. I mean, and that's kind of I think, I wouldn't say it's a unicorn by any means. But it's definitely a unique bottle that people could have how many 84 proof? maker's marks do you have? I don't 35:52 even think I've ever had it or tried it. 35:55 Not to have you had it, lady? I know. I bet it I they actually I tasted it on the air for a TV station. I was like, yeah, this is it's more watered down. It was like very light. There you go. I mean, really, it's makers is not the I mean, it's nice, but it's not the most complex whiskey. You know, it's it's fine for what it is. But I really did think it was a bad move from a whiskey perspective, because you could taste the difference. You really could. 36:18 Yeah, but I think they've they've been able to rebound and with flying colors. So I haven't really had a problem. 36:26 These companies need like somebody on their team, like they have like bean counters, like making these decisions. You 36:31 know, like, I mean, let's not like in the in the government, they just don't have, like, the government has like someone from like, so the VA has like veterans on committees, to, like have like a veteran oversight committee to make sure that the veterans are getting treated like they should be instead of like the, you know, the doctors want, maybe you want to treat them. And I think you're right, I think that might not be a bad idea. But you know what, they're never going to go for it. And you know, and here's an example I can think of like Sazerac in a lot of people's eyes. They're their public enemy number one. And that's that's because their stuff is highly allocated hard to get. But it's so damn good. Yeah, so I mean, it's same with heaven Hill, their whiskey so damn good. It's kind of like you know, it's kind of like the it's a love hate relationship. Exactly. It's like the the girlfriend you had in high school who couldn't stand but she was so hot, ready? 37:26 Like, I can't help myself, like crap, but yeah, I can't stop 37:31 it. So I guess, you know, will kind of shift the gears a little let's talk about Sazerac. 37:38 As the saying goes, Portland is weird. Perhaps it's something in the water. It turns out that there might be some truth to that. The Oregon capitals primary water source is supplied by the bowl run watershed. It's also the key ingredient and one of the city's most popular watering holes, Bull Run distillery, the boulder and watershed is a very unique water source. It's protected by an act of Congress back in the 1870s. And the city's 38:00 Others got their hands on a beautiful lake up in the Cascade Mountains. And it's been that way since the 1870s. It used to flow through wooden pipes by gravity to Portland. 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Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. distillery 291 Colorado whiskey aims to create a one of a kind bold and beautiful Colorado whiskey, rugged, refined, rebellious owner and founding distiller Michael Myers built the original still from copper photocopier plates, which he used to create in during photographic scenes from Western landscapes to the Chrysler Building. 39:00 on sep tember 11th 2011 10 years after 911 changed his life and the lives of so many others. He pulled the first whiskey off that's still building a future in whiskey office passion for photography. What defines to 91 Colorado whiskey is it spirit passion permeates every sip, find a bottle near you at 291 Colorado whiskey calm, right like you stole it, drink it like you own it, live fast and drink responsibly. Let's will kind of shift the gears a little let's talk about Sazerac. You know, I I will say that the one thing I will I will stand behind size rock. And what they do very well is that they are not pulling the strings of saying like okay, well, we're going to pull something off the market or we're going to just say like, Hey, we see what this stuff trades for we're not dumb, we're going to go ahead and we're going to MSRP our products at x, y, z value, right? They I believe that they are in it for the long game. Like Yeah, I'm they see this is not this is just a quick market blip, where it's going to be something that you know, if you chase after the short money in the short dollar, then that's all you're going to wait, that's that's all it's going to happen. Like you're not going to be able to sustain this for the next 1015 years. So you brought up a good point, because a lot of people distilleries do look at the secondary market, even though say they don't but to especially for limited releases, they really have kind of fell on the secondary market to price things. For me, it's gone up up up and up every single year. And where it says right, it's kind of kind of stay true to like, I mean, I don't me wrong, there's been there's been gradual increases. I mean, if you take it back to 2010 days, you know, antique collection was probably $65, whatever, but going up to 100. Like that's not a that's not a good, that's not a huge ship. 40:48 Parker's was 5575 bucks. And now it's like 400, depending on you know, that 24 years, like 400 bucks or 300 bucks 40:57 retail, and then you take a birthday bourbon, for example, back in 2003, that was a $45 bottle. Now, it's 161 60 out the door at the distillery. So I mean, it's, it's, that's definitely 41:11 something way that the way that says rack operates is basically through the brain of Mark Brown. And Mark is a very conservative, you know, thinker when it comes to business and how they do things. But he's also a long term planner, they have planned out their whiskey projections through 2043. So they are they are that planned out. And they have made the appropriate, you know, business decisions that, you know, to get them where they need to be, I think that the biggest concern that consumers have with the way that company operates is through distribution. Now a lot of it is not anything that they can control. You go into a retailer or an on premise facility. And they will tell you, the only way that they can get Pappy or Buffalo Trace antique collection is if they carry Wheatley, vodka or some of the others as rack brands in large quantities now, that is that is a decision that is made at the distributor level is not. 42:18 That's because I always I always kind of thought like, somehow there's something working in the back the back room over here. And there's greasy palms to be able to say like, you 42:26 know, I'm saying like, if you want this, you gotta that is a very good conspiracy theory to have. But as of right now, it is illegal, you know, to have those conversations for it is illegal for a, a supplier to dictate who gets what, that is an actual law. That is under the federal alcohol administration act. Now, what is happening? I don't know. But I do know that everybody wants that whiskey. And, you know, how does how does the distributor make the decision of who to give it to? Now I've had conversations with people like Joe Beatrice, who's like, the only way you can do this is, you know, top, top level now, you know, customer loyalty. And so it's like, you know, how do they How does the distributor make the decision of who gets the five bottles of Pappy? Is it a? Is it a favoritism thing? Because if that's the case, that's also you know, is that is that fair? Is it you give it to the one who's like doing you're doing your bulk purchases, I've also heard of them like, like the distributors making decisions of like giving using Pappy to get rid of non Sazerac product. So like being would be in their portfolio or, you know, another big brand like that and say like, take up, take all this off of her hand, and you get you get a case of happy. So that stuff happens. And that is not, you know, to my knowledge, you know, I don't know how that you know how those conversations are going. Well, you don't know that's 43:59 the necessarily sighs rags. Yeah. Problem. It's, it comes back to them. But do you think they falsely manipulate their supply? Like to create this allocation? Like myth or because every time I go to Buffalo Trace, there's, they're always bottling blends, and it's always piled up cases? Because it's like what they have done. They got as many warehouses as all these 44:25 other big boys. Yeah, but you gotta realize they're also filling in the hand doing every single one with six people on the line. That's not that's not heaven. Hill level automation. 44:33 Yeah. What a lot of warehouses a lot age juice in there. I mean, this is true. 44:38 What what they do, they do put out, they used to put out an annual press release, about that, and it got picked up everywhere. You know, a smart marketing will say that. But what what Buffalo Trace has done is that they have spread the markets out so much like so let's say, you know, they're trying to penetrate every market in the country. My best friend lives in northern Wisconsin. He's building a Buffalo Trace, really now he can only have one bottle a month, because, you know, because now that northern allocations is moving on over to North Dakota. And so what they have done is they have they're trying to saturate the domestic markets so much that they've spread themselves out of being able to get into the hands of a lot of people so so that allocation that supply is because they're trying to open up bars in Montana, and places like Montana and Wyoming North Dakota. You know, I dare say you walk into a random liquor store there and you might you might find like a gold mine of like Sazerac products. 45:42 Well, where are they? Who are they using their, you know, everyday products like Buffalo Trace or Willer will or 12? To kind of fuel the more premium products like v tak and Pappy, do you think that you know, I mean, most of the most of what they do is they come out with a a lower version of everything that you get stack Junior, you gotta go rare, and then you get the big boys on top. But I know it seems like there's more like 12 year, it's I think it's sometimes easier to get a van Winkle 12 than it is a well or 12 zalando 46:12 you know, well, I think that's this is also just the the rise and the rise of bourbon and the amount of people that are looking forward to I mean, that's we say it's it's hard. It's it's not because yes, I still think there's I would honestly, probably guess that there's probably they're pushing out more product now than they ever have. But it seems still scares to us, because there's still more people now that are looking for it. 46:36 It's I'll put on their hat for a second. They have everybody in the world wants them. How do you how do you decide? What market gets what? 46:47 Yeah, I mean, that's that's it's definitely a tough call. Because you've gotta you gotta take one out of your your your playbook here is is who's been with us for the longest time who are the most loyal customers? Who are the ones with the biggest pockets right now that are really want us? I mean, Money Talks, like let's not be Bernie lovers always said it the best. This is not the bourbon charities the bourbon business. Yeah. And so who's got who's got money? money's gonna talk. And if, if by some chance and Ryan, we know, we've looked at this when we were opening up distribution for pursuit series, and we're like, oh, what state should we go for? And he did a trip down to Texas. And really, I 47:23 always forget that you to like on a brand. Like we're having this conversation. I'm like, wait, you guys hate your customers. 47:30 We listened to our customer feedback. We listened and we go, we go to a snail's pace. But I mean, but but the part was, you know, he said, like, let's look at Texas. And you look at Texas, and he came back from a trip. He was like, Kenny, this is this is so smart. Like why not? There's like, there are more people in the city of Dallas than there are in the state of Kentucky three times as many people in the city of Dallas as there is in the whole state of Kentucky. And then you got states or cities like Houston, San Antonio Austin, and you're like, why would you know, any liquor company would be smart to in they're thirsty. They're thirsty for it, right? And it's like, Okay, well, that's that's an easy target. So you go after the larger markets. 48:12 Dallas bourbon club, shout out to you boys. Yeah. 48:15 Peach MIT. Mm hmm. And so I mean, like, those are the those are the kind of three ways that I look at it. If I'm a if I'm a, you know, brand owner, and I want to figure out if I've got an allocated whiskey, how do I get into the hands of the people? That's the that's the way I'm going to go. Right. Do you have any kind of other thoughts on 48:32 I mean, just going back to what Fred said, like they're trying to get into these new markets, and I think they're trying to position themselves because they're, they're all pumping out a ton of juice. So when the product finally becomes of age, they don't they have us as customers already. So it's like, we need to go promoted other places. So when we do have this stock available, we can spread it out everywhere, not in whereas if they just focused on us bourbon, consumers are going to have a whiskey glut. 48:59 Well, they want to find new consumers too. Yeah. I mean, that's what I mean. Yeah, absolutely. We can't keep selling it to the same three guys here that have more bottles, and they can drink for the rest of their life. Right? They want to find new customers. And that's Yeah, that's really helpful. 49:11 Guys, that's what it comes down to. And you know, what, I saw that in the magazine business, you know, like, one of the big reasons why I decided to go out on my own for with the magazine is because the magazines I was writing for, were pursuing new audiences that would require me to be writing about cocktails, and you know, and not the stories that I wanted to tell. And so anytime you anytime you, ESPN did this to ESPN is inserted VH one and MTV. Anytime you water down, like what was the essence of what you were trying to do. And you're trying to reach a new audience, you're always going to like, appear, like you don't care about your original customer. It's just how it is you can grow 50:00 well, you cannot lose it. Well, to make it appeal to the mass market, you always have to like dumb it down to where like, because you have to make it appeal to everyone versus like a very small niche. And so that small niche that you appeal to at first, you kind of have to break away from them. Because the everyday consumer is not gonna be as passionate as that very small niches. Yeah, we're fairly early adopters. 50:24 Yeah. But you know, people they got a pivot to right now just think of MTV, like, I remember the last time I watched a music video on TV, but if I watch a music video, it's usually on YouTube, right? There's a new platform that takes over and takes care of that. But YouTube's a multi dimensional platform for all that kind of stuff. But you know, I kind of want to 50:40 talk about bourbon pursuit. Absolutely. 50:42 Absolutely. We will never done down 50:46 in Minnick media while we keep doing the shout outs here. Yeah. So let's, let's talk about two more brands. While we kind of wrap this up a little bit. You know, there's there's one brand that comes to mind. You know, we talked about old forester birthday bourbon, but brown Forman, I think they do an aggressive audible job of really not pissing off the consumer base, you know, they've got products that are continually coming out at aggressive price points. And, and really, they've only got it. Should I say, besides all four, it's a birthday bourbon, and they get king in Kentucky, they don't have a whole lot of stuff. That is the super premium, highly allocated stuff. And so they are continually trying to just make everyday solid products. 51:23 Yeah, I mean, the the old forester extensions, like great, everyday like, drinker. I mean, the bottom bond, the 86. I mean, those are like, I could drink the right, yes, they just came out well, but I mean, like these prohibition series, I mean, like the 1910, like, in 1920, just always, consistently blow my socks off. Every time I drink. I'm like, this is really good at 50 to 60. Buck. And one thing, one thing that 51:50 Chris Morris did with the prohibition series, is when they when they are know, when they did the wheat whiskey release with Woodford, you know, they it wasn't prohibition series was with Woodford, they sent the release out and said, We have now released every single type of whiskey that was allotted in the 1935 federal alcohol administration act, and I was just like, oh my god. And I'm like, there's probably not another person in the world who gave that we should talk about that. But I was like, I was like, the fact that you know, and they're released, they're dropping, like, one of the greatest, like legal documents I've ever read. And I was like, I was like, I can't kid in the candy store with that press release. I didn't publish it, but I was, you know, it was very well done. And that the thing about brown Forman is that they overly think, you know, so while they while they are doing a lot of this stuff, I also think they've been kind of left behind in a lot of these conversations of like, you know, you just mentioned you don't have a lot of allocated stuff. You know, so in like, if you are if you're if you're thinking about it, like is that not a good thing? I mean, because now you know, heaven hills got a lot of highly allocated stuff for roses highly Alec a lot of highly allocated stuff, and so does Buffalo Trace. And I don't see why, you know, brown Forman doesn't because their whiskey out of the barrel is incredible. 53:18 And we think it's because they promoted like Woodford so hard out the gate versus and kind of left old fo just a winner and then now it's kind of regain popularity. I think old foresters coming back hard. 53:30 Yeah, I birthday bourbon is highly allocated, by the way. It's very, very much is it but I look at 53:35 at what the resurgence of old forester as the same resurgence we see with 1792, right? Like, how many people were really like gung ho talk about 1792. and still they started coming off with all these extensions of their bottle and bond. Yeah, foolproof. Sweet. Hi, Robert. It's a 53:52 very interesting comparison because they have they both have a very unique note in there that I detect in both of them. No, bananas. Yeah, banana. No. You have to also remember that the beast of brown Forman is the world's number one whiskey and jack daniels. And I tell you what, some of the barrel proof stuff coming out of jack daniels right now. It's fantastic. It's some of the best whiskey you can find. And so, you know, I think what they what brown Forman does really, really well, is that 30 to $50 product, they do a great job with that. And I know a lot of people don't are not Woodford fans. But that's a lot of people's favorite bourbon. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've been I've been on airplanes where I've seen ladies yell at someone sitting next to them for pouring coke with Woodford like How dare you pour Coke? bourbon 54:46 airport. A lot of bourbon consumers that aren't whiskey geeks like Woodford is their premium go to you know, it's like I'm always amazed, not amazed because it is great juice. But it's like you forget that that it is like yeah, the common marketplace that sir like premium go to. 55:00 Alright, so one last gripe before we kind of close this out. And that's one thing that I've talked about at the top of the show. And that's the allocations of barrel pics that used to go to bourbon societies and used to go to people, charities, charities, bodies, everybody that was doing them early on. And now it's like that, sorry, you're not selling enough. And this is we're seeing this at four roses. We're seeing this at wild turkey. And so kind of talk about really, what is the effect of, kind of, from a if you're the manufacturer? Or if you're the the end consumer? Like, do you hate the brand more now? Like do you start to look at other places? I mean, because we're good friends with read an emerald from 1789 be, you know, they they said that their allocations are gone from wild turkey and other places like that, where they used to go and just go in and do barrel pics all the time. And now they're looking at other places. They're looking at wilderness trail they're looking at 55:52 Yeah, just it's opened up an opportunity for these like new players in the game to like, kind of like we've gone barrel pics so many places, but like you're not, you're treated more like royalty, when you go to like new roof or wilderness trails, or Willits, or somewhere, whereas the other ones are like, how can we get them in and out of here as fast as possible? It's clockwork to them. Yeah, it's like, we're going to roll out three barrels, and you have 15 minutes to taste each and then we're gonna go through this and this and get out now. So 56:22 Well, I mean, I still enjoy roses experience and stuff like that I still enjoy the experiences. I mean, when you go to wild turkey, you're there with Eddie and and, you know, you know, it's not Eddie making these decisions, right. You know, this this is definitely higher 56:35 up and then I also I also think that Eddie would make those decisions if he had to, you know, that's something we have to always remember that they're kind of protected like that we always want to give like the distillers a break, but they are you know, they have people there kind of around them to protect them and make them continue to look like the good guy, but don't think for a second that they're not in those rooms having conversations and saying like given their input. Yeah, well, we're about to lose our stock, you know, for 2025 if we keep doing these barrel pics, so they're looking out for the long term and healthiness of their brands and that and that's what I'm like a cop when they're around us, 57:11 then that's exactly 57:12 right. I do not be fooled by that. The niceties from the distillers leave me like someone like Bo Backman. It's as direct. Everybody hates that guy because he's the keeper of the barrels. But he's he's going off of what someone else tells him, you know, and he's got the allocation. 57:30 Yeah. And I'm sure if they if they had unlimited barrel supply, they'd love to keep doing it. Right. I mean, I think I think that's one thing that people don't understand. I don't know if they would they probably 57:40 it's like thing is is a inefficient process. And it's a low margin. Feeling personally, 57:43 are you feeling cut off? 57:45 No, I don't think I'm feeling personally cut off. I think it's Oh, let's let's try harder than us. 57:50 It's harder for us to go to So you mentioned 1789 be Let's mention I I'm a part of a charity that got cut off. what's what's another group that you know of that got cut off? I know about two retailers that got cut out of Wild Turkey? Well, yeah, 58:08 there's there's it's all around, right. I mean, it's there's definitely 58:12 we don't cross the board. We don't see a 58:16 you know, a commonality other than that. They're small. This place isn't getting cut off. MGM and Las Vegas isn't getting cut off. And total wine, liquor barn, they're not getting cut off. So it goes back to this this conversation of like, Who's spending the most money? And, you know, I think it's short sighted to cut out 1789 and you know, people like that, that have incredible connections within the bourbon world. 58:46 And we're the one of the pioneers of actually doing some of this 58:49 stuff. I don't I don't think they cut out some of 58:51 these gaps in a lot of money to charities, like a lot of good comes out of these. 58:55 But there's also been some charities that have been debunked. Right, you know, so you got to remember that to to just like we've seen with the counterfeit, they're always fuck wads that are going to take advantage of the the scenario the situation sounds like that. 59:07 Yes, absolutely. So I think we're going to go ahead and wrap that one up. Because you know, we've, we put some people under fire here, we make sure everybody knows that. If you're brand new, listen to this. We still love every single one of you. We still love the product you're putting out 59:20 we went talk about you if we didn't care. Exactly. I'm 59:23 on the show and join us. 59:24 Yeah, we're looking out for you. We want 59:26 what's best for you actually, they're not looking out for you. And not 59:29 well, we're looking at right 59:32 now they got a brand they're trying to knock you down. So their brand goes up. You don't have 59:35 to worry about 59:37 our toy 24 barrels a year, I think is like we don't we're 59:40 not gonna we're not gonna be stepping on any toes anytime soon. That's for sure. 59:44 Well, you know what I would, you know, I'll talk to you about this off the air. I'll bring this up. Sorry. 59:47 It's okay. So, you know, it was like I said, just make sure that you do have a pretty thick skin if you're listening this from brand, because we do We love you. We love having all the personalities and people behind the brands on the show. You know, we do 1:00:00 kind of look at this from, you know, we see what happens in the Facebook groups and Reddit and everything like that when people are writing blog posts of saying like, oh, like we don't like you anymore. So we're just trying to look at this from the consumer perspective. Don't shoot the messenger. Yeah, exactly. So I will. I will say, though, that I've said this for more than a decade. Don't forget the customers who brought you to the dance. That's it. Absolutely. So thank you everybody, for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode we recorded at Hotel distil hotel is still is located in downtown Louisville here on whiskey row. And for those of thirst new experiences, you should come check it out. It's a home for the connoisseurs of the finest comforts and gracious service. It's a space where you're going to pass through historic risk row facade and joy, a true and authentic global destination. You can book your experience for it yourself at Hoteldistil.com and it's set to open here on November 1 of 2019. So fellows, thank you once again for joining us. 1:01:00 show. Yeah, and we'll have e