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Today we're getting honest about the hard parts of parenting teens. What are the struggles, what do we wish someone would have told us, and when does the roller coaster ride end? Join us as we share what we learned launching our older kids and what we're still learning raising our younger ones. Parenting teens can be lonely and we hope you're encouraged as we walk this road together.  Links from this episode Parents of teens are all lying: We're not OK I'm a fan recommendations Julie - Costco pot pie Mindy - Differin Marie - Costco sheets We'd love to hear from you! Find us here:  Instagram: Midlife Matters Podcast Facebook: Midlife Matters Podcast Website: midlifematterspodcast.com Email: midlifematterspodcast@gmail.com   *This episode contains affiliate links which help support Midlife Matters at no cost to you. Thank you! 

Where I live, it's officially been 6 weeks of being quarantine :/ In today's edition of "Lead in your life, so you can lead in your biz" we are chatting about setting up camp with a new normal. I don't know about you, but the first 6 weeks of quarantine for me have been kinda like that having a new baby feeling ... AKA drowning ;) Ok I'm joking but also kinda serious! Listen in to today's episode to see what I mean and let me know if you resonate with this! Always cheering for you girl!!!!!! Krista 

This outbreak of COVID-19 is a very difficult time for scientific research. A lot of experiments are being interrupted and put on pause, and conference travels are essentially not possible. In this episode, Ladan discusses what steps are being taken by government grant-funding agencies to assist researchers during this time. Top three takeaways: Grant-funding agencies such as the NIH and NSF are extending deadlines for grants and experiments, and late applications are being accepted without the need for pre-approval. NIH grant money can be used to cover fees incurred from interrupted travel, as well as changing any protocols as necessary. The safety and health of researchers and research participants alike is the number one priority during this time. [0:00] Ladan introduces the episode [1:30] The NIH and the NSF will extend the deadline for many grants and experiments during this time [3:45] Dr. Mike Lauer from the NIH explains the implications of this pandemic on scientific research and the way the NIH will be cooperating with researchers during this time [5:30] The NIH has put out a guide notice stating that late applications will not need pre-approval [8:00] Hotel and airline refund fees, as well as any other fees incurred due to interrupted travel, can be charged to NIH grants [9:45] There will be opportunities to apply for administrative supplements to cover costs incurred due to changing protocols and venues [11:00] This is a very difficult time, but also a time of compassion Info on how NIH is responding to the outbreak: https://www.nih.gov/health-information/coronavirus Message from Dr. Mike Lauer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLmBi5wvifk&feature=youtu.be Info on how NSF is responding to the outbreak: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/coronavirus/ Producer’s log: I wrote these notes while in quarantine. Ladan locked me up in a tiny room and I don’t know why. He said it was for my own good, and that he’ll let me out "once the storm passes". I haven’t been outside in over 2 weeks. I miss the world. I miss the laughter. I miss the sunshine. Someone please help me. Producer's log update: OK I'm just kidding, I'm not really locked in a little room. But I do miss socializing with people, I'm starting to get very lonely.

Gemma and James discuss the Coronavirus as our joint Codswallop this week. Where the heck is all the toilet paper? We talk about other stuff too and had lots of laughs as usual. If I'm honest, I'm blooming hungover and I cannot be arsed to write a description for this episode. So, just listen OK? I'm done.. going back to bed.  Follow Talking Codswallop on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram: @CodswallopPod (DO YOU KNOW WE ARE ON YOUTUBE TOO?!). 

Ok I'm being a bit dramatic (am I?), but if you're human and honest you will agree relationships are very hard, especially intimate ones, (attimes) This is my very vulnerable share on how I have learned the 'understanding' of unconditional love while in my many manyrelationships. And the secret to how you can. At the least, you will laugh I think I'm kinda funny here LOL --- 

Ok I'm being a bit dramatic (am I?), but if you're human and honest you will agree relationships are very hard, especially intimate ones, (at times) This is my very vulnerable share on how I have learned the 'understanding' of unconditional love while in my many many relationships. And the secret to how you can. At the least you will laugh I think I'm kinda funny here LOL --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/askhollyhall/message

I am so very excited about today's episode. I have the lovely Monica Miller of Monica writes here today to discuss how we can use our story to impact others. Often times we think our story isn't that interesting or no one would care about it or we forget that it's actually pretty windy with lots of ups and downs that make it really interesting and so we don't use it. But, I want you to understand that your story WILL help someone else. You may not end up famous or on the cover of TIME magazine, but I guarantee, you sharing your story will help someone else. Maybe you'll help them realize they actually do have talent. Maybe you'll help them realize that their life is a series of circumstances that they put themselves in and therefore, they can get themselves OUT. Maybe you help them realize that they truly can do and be whatever they imagine for themselves.Whatever your story is, share it with the world. We all have a story and they're all interesting! That's one major reason I do this podcast. I could literally pull the next person in off the street I see and get them to sit down and tell their story and it's going to blow you away. Why? Bc we all have crap we have to go through to push us to live up to our greatest potential. It's up to US how we use those lessons!!Ok I'm off my soap box now. Let's dive in to today's episode and hear Monica's story and how she uses it to help others tell their stories!Opt-In Link: https://www.subscribepage.com/UltimateContentCalendarDiscovery Call Link: bit.ly/MonicaWritesMonica Lynn FB Page Link: https://www.facebook.com/monika.lynn17Monica Writes: https://www.facebook.com/MonicaWrites4You/Holley Gerth's Book, You're Made for a God-Sized Dream: https://www.amazon.com/Youre-Made-God-Sized-Dream-Opening/dp/080072061XMy Book LinksWrite your Book in No Time: https://www.amazon.com/Write-Your-Book-Time-Strategies/dp/1530383927The Cave Nemesis: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01K92P2IS/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 (I don't know why it's so expensive... Since I went through a publisher, I don't control the price)30 Day Devotional for Christian Writers: https://www.amazon.com/30-Day-Devotional-Christian-Writers-ebook/dp/B01LBI8W54/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=30+day+devotional+for+christian+writers+by+Monica+Lynn&qid=1579537766&s=books&sr=1-1Support the show (https://mmstuartco.com/livewithaudacity/)

Welcome to episode 45, or episode A-Quad as I like to say (I can write what I want on here, don't judge). Today's episode is about alien life evident in ancient art. Ancient art that amazes, by artist aliens astonishing anyone (whoah, curveball). Ok I'm done. It's a podcast, we suck at planning, but it is what it is. Douglas sucks and go listen Zoo for Strays https://open.spotify.com/artist/400xhPOxNJ5Hu6xIv16bxv?si=faV2GXeYQ7qm499_c4eT2w

Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat. It's time to yank open those advent calendar doors and get a real festive treat every day in the run up to that lovely time of year that is Christmas. OK - I'm a Baha'i and not a Christian. But we believe in Jesus of course - as we do all the Messengers of God - and so we can enjoy every festival with equal excitement. And boy am I excited about Christmas!

Ok I'm back! Been a bit slack uploading these but planning to get back to doing one a week. Original House and Techno performed purely on hardware(no computer). Catch me live on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/GyuMusic/), Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3clG4w3Rhuph_vnSTTs3yA/) Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/gyubeats) and VK (https://vk.com/id38106005) Get my album for FREE here - https://gyubeats.uk/

Disruptive life events linger; they cast a long shadow. Years afterwards, you can still be surprised by sadness or fear. Magnus knows about living with pain and uncertainty; his sister died when he was just one year old and his younger brother has needed multiple heart surgeries. Magnus shares about how pain can bring us closer to people, what kids really want from their parents, and how a note or a song can be a powerful gift to those experiencing sadness.   – Magnus Mertes He was born at Methodist but he had heart troubles so they had to quickly get him over to Riley because Methodist never had the equipment. So he was taken into Riley Children's Hospital, I remember when I heard about it I felt a little shaky inside and I thought, am I going to lose another sibling?   INTRO   Today, we finish our three-week miniseries on childhood disruption.  Over the last two episodes, we have considered how disruption particularly affects children.  By extension, we are also talking about the adults that care for them. If a parent goes through disruption, whether that is a divorce or a move or a death, they are also interpreting and explaining and shepherding their child.  I know, from my own story, how important and exhausting this role can be.    I hope that these reflections help in three potential ways.   They help you better companion the children in your life that have experienced or are right now experiencing disruption.If you don’t remember, childhood can be hard.  There are scraped knees and neighborhood bullies.  Someone is always deciding when you go to bed and what you have to eat for dinner.  Now, factor in a divorce or a cancer diagnosis.  It can all feel pretty overwhelming, for both kids and adults.   These episodes help you show more empathy to friends and coworkers that are parenting children through seasons of disruption.These adults are not only managing their own sadness and exhaustion, they have little people that are looking to them for direction and guidance…and that is a really particular burden to carry.     Maybe these reflections help you to encounter your own childhood disruptions through a different light, to reflect on the ways that you were met or missed and how that empathy (or lack of empathy) might still be affecting you now.   Magnus Mertes is my guest today.  Magnus was only seventeen months old when his younger sister, Mercy Joan, was born. Mercy had a birth defect called an encephalocele, the base of her skull did not close and she only lived for eight days.  Magnus held Mercy, stroked her face, and ate bananas at her funeral.  A few years later, a younger brother, Moses, was born. Moses has had to undergo multiple open heart surgeries over the last five years.  Magnus talks about what it has been like to live under this shadow of death in today’s episode.    Magnus loves to laugh.  He is a good friend, creative, sporty, he loves to draw and tells a great story.        - Liesel Mertes So tell me a little bit about yourself.   - Magnus Mertes So I'm Magnus and I have had a little sister pass away, great Uncle pass away. Yeah I've had some kind of hard things throughout my life.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah you have. And we're going to talk about some of that today. But how about you tell me a little bit just about you as a 9 year old. What are the things that you really like?   - Magnus Mertes Well my favorite sports are football and soccer and my favorite book series is Lord Of The Rings and I really like playing outside and being with family.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah. You do. What grade are you in this year?   - Magnus Mertes I'm in fourth grade, Miss Wilson's class.   - Liesel Mertes And tell us about what's coming up this week that's really exciting for you.   - Magnus Mertes This week is my very first track meet and it is also my birthday.   - Liesel Mertes You mentioned you've had a couple of hard things happen. Tell me about your little sister, Mercy.   - Magnus Mertes So when my sister was born, and she was three and I was 1, my mom got pregnant and I felt so excited like, I was going to have a little sister. But then, when the diagnosis came in that she would have some troubles, I just felt really down because I didn't want her to die. And when she was born, I felt so happy and I thought, oh she's going to live through this. She is. And I only got a short time with her, only eight days, and then she passed away in my mother's arms at my grandma's house yeah.   - Liesel Mertes Do you remember much about how you were feeling at that stage or how you feel as you remember it now?   - Magnus Mertes I feel right now, You feel sad because I really would have liked her to have been here, no offense my little sister Jemima, but I felt like I would have liked to have another sister in the house   - Liesel Mertes Yeah I know that it affected some of how you've thought about death. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?   - Magnus Mertes Yeah I was kind of affected the, I feel like when we die when I feel like you go up to heaven and there's just this blooming city of gold. And when I was little I used to imagine that I would meet Abraham Lincoln there yeah.   - Magnus Mertes I also really. Why. The thought of how we're going to be made again made me feel really good inside and made me feel cozy.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah. What. Tell me a little bit about Moses and what has happened with him and how that has made you feel.   - Magnus Mertes Well, Moses. I always wanted a little brother, one I could play with. And when I saw him for the first time, I just, went over and just couldn't keep my eyes off him and I thought my head, This is my little brother now. But he was born at Methodist but he had heart troubles so they had to quickly get him over to Riley because Methodist never had the equipment. So he was taken into Riley Children's Hospital remember when I heard about it I felt a little shaky inside and I thought, am I going to lose another sibling?   - Magnus Mertes But I felt really great when his doctor, Ben Ross, felt really great that they were able to do they're able to take out one of his organs and replace it with a cow organ. And now we kind of joke around like he's the only person in family whose 1 percent cow.   - Liesel Mertes This is an ongoing joke in the family.  And, in the interest of accuracy, Moses’ doctor is actually the immensely talented Dr. John Brown at Riley Children’s Hospital.  He pioneered this procedure called a bovine tricuspid valve. Basically, a particular valve is harvested from the neck of a cow and is now keeping Moses alive.  Hence, he is “part cow”.   - Liesel Mertes We do joke about that. Are there things that have scared you or made you worried about getting sick or dying? What has that been like?   - Magnus Mertes So, one time I got a concussion and I felt like really, really, really scared because sometimes, concussions can be fatal. They can damage your brain in all sorts of ways and there's this famous boxer who died of concussion. And I was so scared at that time.   - Magnus Mertes Other times. On Memorial Day 2018, there's a huge log that was on the White River that just toppled over and like it was stuck there and I decided since it was making all these rapids and we were getting blown away by them in front of the log. I decided to go up around the back and float down and have a little bump fall and get pushed away. But what happened was when I got there right next to the log about a meter away I got sucked under by an undertow and I was just sucking, sucking, sucked and my life jacket that neared on a branch. Those like factor for about three seconds and my mind was, I was thinking, OK I'm going to drown, I'm going to drown, a minute I'm good I'm going to drown. But then what happened, it was like a miracle because that part snagged ripped off, that was pushed the way that my life jacket cause you know how they are, they pop you right up. Once I got out of the undertow about, 14 seconds later, I popped back up and I felt so relieved. But then I heard I saw of it. My older sister Ada and her friend, Scout's, face. They were like so worried and I went over and I said, What's wrong? They said Moses followed you. He got sucked under. And then I thought, Oh no no no no. This almost happened to him, he almost just died when he was a little boy. He almost died. I don't want him to die; I don't want my little brother to die. And he was under for about thirty two seconds after that and I felt so, so scared they drowned. Then finally, the same thing happened to him. It snared and then he popped right back up and I felt so, so overwhelmed with joy and happiness and relief that he didn't drown. And I just felt like God did the miracle for us yeah.   - Liesel Mertes That's a scary story. I'm so glad you guys were OK.   This story captures my attention for two reasons.  First, it horrifies me because I and three other grown-ups were standing right next to the river, eating oranges and chatting, and we didn’t have any idea what was happening.  That is how fast these childhood traumas can happen.  In Magnus’ story, I also hear the immediacy of his fear and anxiety…and the reality that disruptive life events don’t fit into neat, discreet boxes.  The river, the surgery, the threat of death, they all cascade into each other.       - Liesel Mertes Do you find that, like do you talk about Mercy much with your friends or with teachers at school?   - Magnus Mertes Like, with my best friends who, like Sebastian Falconi. Yeah, I'd tell them about it.   - Magnus Mertes Because I feel like I've gotten a good friendship with them and that they tell me about stuff. Like my friend, his parents got a divorce yes. So he it felt really, really hard on him. And I comforted him through that. And then later I told him that Mercy died and he, he just said, like, wow, you've been through the same stuff as I've been through this. Yeah. And that helped our relationship and now we're best buds.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah. What are things, when you tell people, what are things that are really helpful that they say to you or help you with?   - Magnus Mertes Last year, when I got my concussion, what happened was, when I was in my bed in a dark room, my mom opened the door and said I got a visitor. And it turned out to be one of my friends, Forrest, who was actually there when I passed out and he came there. He wrote an encouraging note to me and I kept that hidden in my bed. And every day I would read it and I would think, I can get through this.   - Liesel Mertes Are there other things that grownups do or that are helpful to you when you're feeling sad or scared about Mercy or about Moses or about anything?   - Magnus Mertes So when I was afraid of death, my mom would play a song that I really liked called High Noon by Andrew Peterson and it just helped me feel really good, I feel really good and think that God knows what's going to happen to me and he's taking care of me and he loves me.   - Liesel Mertes You tell me a little bit more about that being afraid of death. What was that like?   - Magnus Mertes So, being afraid of death. I can get, like, a shiver down my spine that I would have to like leave my family and my siblings my Nana and Pa. And in fact, my great grandma and June, she was put in the hospital at age 92 for pneumonia and I felt scared, really really scared, and luckily she recovered and she's in a nursing home now. She recovered but she's really weak.   - Liesel Mertes Yeah. Is there anything that you feel like grown ups don't understand about kids when they're sad?   - Magnus Mertes I feel like kids. They get like depressed and it really like breaks them up and they say like, nothing's wrong, but like, I don't think parents understand that when they say it like that, that now they just kind of like leave them alone. But what they mostly need is to engage and be comforted   - Liesel Mertes Sure. If there's somebody listening who is going through some of the hard things that you've gone through. Do any words of wisdom or encouragement that you'd give them?   - Magnus Mertes I would say that you guys can do this that you guys, and if you're going through a rough time, I'm sorry that you're going through them but just know that God is going to help you and he's going to give you the best thing that he can do possible.   MUSICAL TRANSITION   Here are three take-aways that I have after my conversation with Magnus   Magnus reflected that sometimes, kids say that nothing is wrong when bad things happen. Parents, in response, will just leave them alone.  In Magnus’ words, “what they mostly need is to engage and be comforted.”  This is a good reminder, for both kids and adults, that people crave the support of relationship and community when disruption comes.  Don’t overlook the pain and the process of young children. Magnus was only seventeen months old when Mercy died.  And he was in preschool when Moses was born.  In the midst of our overwhelming pain, it would have been all too easy to overlook Magnus, to think that he was too young to process what was going on…to just hope that he would be fine. Yet, these experiences have profoundly shaped him. Music can be a great form of comfort for adults and children. There have been times where the fears were so big and words found their limits.  During those times, we found that it was really helpful to have a playlist of meaningful songs that he could listen to that helped to ground and reassure him.    OUTRO    

Financial Freedom is the goal for every working person.  Unfortunately, most never achieve their goal.   Damion Lupo is an Insurance agent, turned real estate investor who lost it all in the 2008 crash.  Instead of making the same mistakes all over again, he sought answers to change his course.   His journey has led him to become a best selling author, podcast host and entrepreneur responsible for over 50 company start ups and created.  Additionally, he has started a Martial Arts Yokido.  Today his mission is to free 1,000,000 people from financial bondage.  The answers he found continued to provide more clarity as he started asking more specific questions.  What is wealth?   Fear of Risk Luckily for Damion, he grew up poor.  He wanted to play video games, but his parents did not have the money to buy him games.  This did not stop Damion. Instead, he figured out a way to make money trading games between his friends. His entrepreneurial spirit continued into adulthood.  He wanted to make a lot of money, and realized that insurance was not the path, but real estate was.  So, he sold his insurance book and chased his dream in real estate. On paper he was worth millions. However, when the crash happened, he lost it all.   Unfortunately, kids today are insulated from risk and making mistakes.  Their helicopter parents have prevented kids from making mistakes and learning the lessons available only from making mistakes.  Additionally, technology has made it easy to not connect. If things get awkward and you don’t like the person, swipe right, and find someone new.  The outcome is a generation of scared adults.   Success is a Terrible Teacher Success is a terrible teacher.  When you are successful, you can fall victim to the thought process that you can do no wrong.  Failure is a terrific teacher. Whether it cost you money, time, or embarrassment, there are terrific lessons in failure.   There is a formula for wealth.  You have to think, ask questions and seek answers.  If you focus on the formula instead of the feel good in the moment, you can fine tune your direction and priorities.   What is True? What is true?  After Damion’s crash, he worked to not repeat the mistakes.  He asked himself with the help of another, over and over, “What is True?”  When he came to an answer, he asked the question again to dive into the next layer.  He did this for multiple years His process lead him to one truth, he is a teacher.    What’s the difference between a mentor and a coach?  The mentor has experience and has made mistakes. The coach has studied the topic, without having risked loss.  Damion recognized all of his mistakes had value. He could teach others seeking answers.   Financial Freedom True Financial Freedom comes from having focus, and expertise that others are willing to pay for.  If you lack focus, and are all over the place, you will have no expertise and no value. Instead, focus.  Get laser focused. Develop knowledge and expertise. This expertise, will allow you to see the opportunities before others.   Mastery is subtle.  It requires long term commitment to achieve true mastery.  Most will fail to see the value in the journey to mastery.   If you are an entrepreneur, you have additional options such as EQRP.  If you have kids, you can hire them and pay them up to $12,000 each year.  The payroll expense is a deduction for your company, and the $12,000 is tax free to your kids.   BIGGEST RISK  Each week I ask my guest, “What is the Biggest Risk Real Estate Investors face?”   BIGGEST RISK: Avoiding risk is the BIGGEST RISK. I mean when you're when you're three you avoid, minimizing and transferring. And when I see avoiding risk people, in general, are taught, and we talked about helicopter parenting. People are taught to avoid risk. I have a painter who's a brilliant artist and he was avoiding risk of going out on its own and so he kept working at Costco to get health benefits at 22 years old. And I look at him and said What is wrong with you. You realize you can go buy insurance for your health. Like are you sick. I mean do you have some crazy disease. He said, No I just you know it's it's expensive. The problem is we make up these things in our brain. And so here's here's how you shift. You get educated. By with people that actually have an understanding and you learn by doing stuff. So there's there's ways you can you can learn. You can go out and just run into the street and say OK what's going to happen you're going to get run over. Or you can say OK I'm going to go look for a mentor that has a reputation maybe he's bald or Gray has been out there, and and get that person to help guide you and you take action.  For more go to: https://damionlupo.com/

Darrin: [00:00:07] And so I'd like to ask you Damon Lupo what is the BIGGEST RISK? [00:00:13][5.7] Damion: [00:00:15] Avoiding risk is the BIGGEST RISK. I mean when you're when you're three you avoid, minimizing and transferring. And when I see avoiding risk people, in general, are taught, and we talked about helicopter parenting. People are taught to avoid risk. I have a painter who's a brilliant artist and he was avoiding risk of going out on its own and so he kept working at Costco to get health benefits at 22 years old. And I look at him and said What is wrong with you. You realize you can go buy insurance for your health. Like are you sick. I mean do you have some crazy disease. He said, No I just you know it's it's expensive. The problem is we make up these things in our brain. And so here's here's how you shift. You get educated. By with people that actually have an understanding and you learn by doing stuff. So there's there's ways you can you can learn. You can go out and just run into the street and say OK what's going to happen you're going to get run over. Or you can say OK I'm going to go look for a mentor that has a reputation maybe he's bald or Gray has been out there, and and get that person to help guide you and you take action. The key consistent thing here is the action you have to take action. There is no avoiding risk and playing it safe. You play it safe. We've all seen games basketball, football, anything. When a team starts playing not to lose to me that's avoiding risk. It's avoiding making a mistake. Guess what, they lose. Every time, they freaking lose. So that's what we're doing when we're avoiding risk. Risk. To me you did great. I learned something from my friend Robert Kiyosaki, when I was teaching with him recently, and he he changed my outlook on what wealth is. He said wealth is not it's not cash, not cash flow. I go Wait? It's not Cash flow? And I've said maybe it's not even one of those it's confidence. He said here's a wealth really as wealth is your collection of mistakes that you've made where you've learned because you've done something the more you do the wealth you you get. It doesn't matter whether you get it right or wrong. The fact that you did it and stub your toe and tripped and fell in the sand or whatever. And I said oh my gosh. That's why I feel so wealthy because I'm like the biggest f up ever! I'm out there stripping and stubbing my toe constantly. Most people are afraid and why, because of judgment. They don't want people to look at them like they're an idiot. We're all an idiot. We start off basically screaming because we have no idea what's going on popping out of our mama. And then we see we go about our lives trying to prevent anybody from looking at stupid. Well how else are we going to learn. That's how you learn by going out there. So the risk is in not taking any risk. And it's because we're afraid of the judgment in general. [00:00:15][0.0] [5.7]

Give me a P! Give me an R! OK I'm just putting off writing this description hehe. PROCRASTINATION. We all do it, most of us think we shouldn't be doing it but is it always a bad thing? Let's consider it more closely in this episode. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lady-balls-daily/message

Ok I'm only going to say this once.This episode is a co-production between Pick your Poison (PYP) and Am I Making Sense (AIMS). Its PYP season 1, round 4 and since it was a long podcast it is broken into two parts.Make sense?Good.And remember it's still season one of Am I Making Sense and this is episode forty.Listen as Matthew, Rubin, BMo, Pete, Ato, Dena, Nicole, Mac, Chree, Elwood, Jeff, Jorge, Adrianna and Ben discuss comedy and other things that happen in the universe

Neuroscience experts, practitioners, research and methods for making brain-friendly organizations and healthy individuals. Subscribe to Mind Your Noodles!   This is the sixth episode of the Mind Your Noodles podcast. In this episode our guest is author and neuroscience practitioner Christine Comaford. We discuss her SBM (Safety, Belonging and Mattering) Model, the difficulty of revenue inflection points and two tools to help employees aspire and own their own insights.   Show Notes [00:00:06] Mind Your Noodles Episode 6 [00:01:33] Christine's Story [00:09:21] SBM and the Brain [00:15:55] How the Brain Reacts [00:20:17] Looking for Role Models [00:22:16] Why Organizations Pull for Smart Tribes [00:23:54] Revenue Inflection Points [00:27:34] Two Tools [00:34:00] smartribes.com/ERA [00:35:07] Storytelling and Reframing [00:39:51] Emotional Change Takes Time [00:40:47] Start with the Willing [00:42:42] How to Approach the Organization - Smart Tribes Style   Transcript Tripp: [00:00:06] Take care of the brains that take care of you with the Mind Your Noodles podcast or we keep you up to date on the latest neuroscience research and practices to keep your brain healthy. And strategies to help your organization be brain friendly. Hi I'm Tripp Babbitt host of mine your noodles. My guest today is Christine Comaford. Welcome Christine.   Christine: [00:00:38] Thank you. TRIPP It's awesome to be here.   Tripp: [00:00:40] Well I got to tell you Christine. I've spent the last week like inside your head somehow I've been watching videos of your book The Power your tribe book which is your latest book. I've been to YouTube I read your Web site I got your mission vision values sitting in front of me. And so just kind of introducing yourself to guests and I also know that you're into story so people of of have listened to an episode by park how talks about the importance of story. And by the way it seems to be the only thing people in the neuroscience world seem to agree on is storytelling.   Tripp: [00:01:17] So I thought that maybe you could give us your story and tell us a little bit about you and how how you wound up doing things in the neuroscience world. And I'll I'll just shut up at this point.   Christine: [00:01:33] Got it. Thank you. So you know what we do first. First let me just make sure he understands what we do. So at Smart Tribes Institute what we do is could be considered Applied Neuroscience if you will. We take the latest neuroscience research and the stuff that's useful to leadership and we then map that down to very specific very practical tools and we'll be talking about and sharing some of those tools today. So we are in executive coaching firm organizational development. We do workshops consulting coaching. So we are always looking at what in neuroscience has been discovered recently what have we learned recently that is actually relevant to optimal teams to leading on a new level to applying tools to sales and marketing. So let's just kind of a quick look at context if you will. So. So when I was 13 I started studying different religions because I wanted to understand what's the meaning of all this. And by the time I got to 15 I had studied a bunch of the different religions and I said you know what I think that it's important to start to understand human potential and then it was called human potential. So I went to a program called est Earhart seminars training and they said Come back when you're 18 and I thought you know there's gotta be a way around this. So I got my parents to take EST which is you know a very and which was a very intense personal development multiple weekend deep dive where basically you're totally ripped down so you can then build yourself up internally in a new way. And my parents when they were good sports and then they wrote a letter so I could go.   Christine: [00:03:15] And I learned that life is meaningless. You have to create meaning in your life and you can. And we have full 100 percent responsibility for whatever happens in our life. And I was absolutely fascinated by that and I thought that is so great why don't I just you know take control of my life and run away and start my you know start my career. So it's a totally delusional. So then I was 16 I had a fake I.D. I ran away in New York City.   Christine: [00:03:43] Nobody questioned Tripp. The easiest way to make my fake I.D. was to go from 1962 to 1952 right.   Christine: [00:03:52] Nobody questioned that there was a 16 year old who said she was 26. I mean like there's a huge difference in appearance but nobody bothered. So I got to I got to work in a neuroscience lab then it was called a human potential lab. And so I was totally geeking out on wow what makes people do what they do. How do they form beliefs. Where do behaviors come from you know identity come from all the stuff was super interesting to me. So I started at 16 and I was totally like burnt out with the world and I like being an adult. And at 17 I took my vows as a Buddhist monk. So then I thought you know I'm going to check out the god angle because maybe that's. It's like it's not the religion angle it's actually doing it. You know celibacy vegetarianism you know vouchers.   Christine: [00:04:43] So I did that for seven years but while I was doing that I was teaching myself how to program computers. So I thought wow well this is actually kind of programming the brain which is the coolest computer out there. But let's also learn like how to program computers because sooner or later this month thing might not work out and I'm going to need a job.   Christine: [00:05:00] So because I was like going you know I think we need to go down and they were like No let's go up and out I'm like. I think Buddhism is going the wrong direction you know and they're like Oh   Christine: [00:05:12] So I was you know you know I want to go in and down and in the in the the branch of Tibetan Buddhism I was and they wanted to transcend transcend. I'm like Oh I think we could deal with our stuff first you know. So anyway ultimately I broke my vows and went to a different type of monastery which was Microsoft. And I fit right in. You know. You know socially inept and all that stuff. And so what we what I did was I kind of brought all the the the spirituality stuff and the brain stuff and there how people form their beliefs stuff. And I kept working on it. And you know ultimately I built a bunch of companies sold them or took a public and the whole time I'd been just going Wow. Human beings. There's a there's a vast universe inside of each of us like let's understand it you know cause like that's like the great frontier the Star Trek was talking about. So. So that's how it all how it all started. OK.   Tripp: [00:06:09] So Christina I've written down a couple of things here. One is under achiever and low energy.   Christine: [00:06:18] Slacker.   Tripp: [00:06:18] Oh my God you're killing me. All right. Well this is great. No. That's a great story. I do like that story. So here we go. Go ahead.   Christine: [00:06:29] So I mean that's that so. So now what we do is what's kind of cool is I retired at 40 because I was like OK I've done it I've done business I've done money you know I've done all these other things that I'm done. You know now I'm just going to like chill out and you know hang out with nature and and then my dad got pancreatic cancer and I've been by then I had been a hospice volunteer. I've been volunteering with hospice for 20 years now. Now it's 20 years I've helped 43 people die. That's why volunteer work that I do. And and I really thought you know what all these stories start to come up. So I want to understand my life like my dad is dying. You know I want to understand my life. So I started running stories and ultimately became a book and then it became a New York Times bestseller and then suddenly everyone's calling me and I'm Unruh tired. So I became unretired at it at like 41. So I kind of failed retirement. And I'm like 56 now. And just that's what we do now we help companies help their people perform at new levels with much greater engagement fulfillment satisfaction lower burnout lower stress. And people just get to see how awesome they are and the companies get to thrive and do really well. Everybody's happy the tools work great. And it takes a lot less energy you know. So that's even better. Like why get it done in 60 hours when you could do it in 40 you know.   Tripp: [00:07:58] Yeah. Boy Lot to unpack there. I feel like I haven't lived up to my potential after listen to you tell those stories although I know people like you.   Christine: [00:08:13] Well that was my path. Let me just say that you think it might not fun and glamorous now but it was freaking hard. I'm thinking about your parents at the moment. Yeah. Yeah they were good sports. My mom just passed away in October of 2018.   Christine: [00:08:28] And yeah we use these tools. You know I use these tools with Mom and Dad as they were going through their death process. So some of the tools that we're going to learn today because it just helps us shift into you know a different mindset where there isn't suffering you know. OK.   Tripp: [00:08:43] Well in the beginning of Power Your Tribe you start to get into the brain and this whole thing on SBT and I've read enough books now you know people some people are comparing the importance of social as much as even sustenance and Maslow's hierarchy saying that those are actually equal.   Tripp: [00:09:08] You know they're going so far as to say some things like that. And and you've got to start us out a little bit with the basics of the brain and the whole concept of this SBT and what that acronym is.   Christine: [00:09:21] Yeah. And actually the acronym is SBM safety belonging mattering. Okay. No problem. So. So this is just gonna be a super high level view of the brain in the context of leadership. OK so three key parts of the brain reptilian brain a million brain and neocortex that's where the prefrontal cortex is reptilian brain. This is our brain stem. This is where we have this is basically our stimulus response machine coded for safety. This is where we have life support systems breathing temperature regulation balance the reptilian brain doesn't understand quality of life. So if you touch something hot you'll jump away just automatically right your reptilian brain because it's keeping you not dead. It doesn't think of living or dead it thinks of dead and not dead. So pretty simple really pretty simple pretty darn primal. OK. So concerned primarily with physical life you know physical not deadness. OK next mammalian brain which is more our emotional. Our emotions are our emotional brain concerned with whether somebody is a friend or foe. A little bit more evolved than dead or not definitely but still a stimulus response machine coded for emotional safety.   Christine: [00:10:42] Now the limbic system the debris always talks about the fight flight freeze response is a series of areas of the brain and in my experience the try and brain theory it kind of overlaps the reptilian mammalian so it's not quite so clean as to say it lives there. But here's what's interesting and here's what leaders need to really know. The hippocampus the hippocampus in the mammalian brain which is responsible for learning and memory. It's in the emotional brain. OK so what does this mean. Companies will have like Oh I'll walk into a company. Oh what are your values. Oh just a sec and they'll start digging through their file cabinet I'll be like Wait you don't like. No your values by heart. No. I mean you know they change and they're kind of boring and you know so they're not emotional. So if we want somebody to learn something we want somebody to retain something. We have to attach emotion to it. Why. Because humans are emotional beings emotions to a human are like wings to a bird.   Christine: [00:11:40] They are how we navigate our experience in the world. And if we look at the research from Carnegie Mellon M.I.T. Stanford Harvard NYU UCLA we will see that 90 percent 90 percent Tripp of our decisions of our behaviors are driven are dominated by our emotional brain. This stuff is important we use our intellect and we think our intellect is awesome and it is but it's 10 percent of our decision making is 10 percent of why we respond the way we do. So anyway we got them a million brain and it's saying Friend or foe. All right next we've got the neocortex. Prefrontal cortex is part think of it like a like a bike helmet. Maybe it goes it goes kind of across the top of your head a little bit goes a little bit towards the back and the prefrontal cortex is right behind your head. The prefrontal cortex is where we have decision making vision language skills tool making discrimination that doesn't quite work for me judgment. We have the ability to say I'm here but I want to be there how do I get there.   Christine: [00:12:46] So if the prefrontal cortex could speak it would say What can I create so much more interesting than friend or foe or dead or not. Right. But but what we want then as leaders is all three parts of the brain working well together. So we get innovation creativity we have the level of safety that we need and when we have all three parts working together we call this the smart state. Now what happens though when we have lots of stress changing directives random acts of violence out there in the world crazy political climate you know all sorts of challenges out there in the world we often will go into what we call critter state like a little animal like a little critter stay for not dead or not fight flight freeze. Right. That's when we are in kind of reptilian mammalian brain lockdown. And when anybody listening has been under major stress you might notice that you don't have great ability to envision things. You don't have great ability to make decisions you don't have great ability with language skills et cetera because that part of your brain is shut down. So as leaders we want to get people in and keep them in the Smart State and we'll talk about some tools to do that today. Now to answer your question about SBM if we look at why we do what we do humans don't really buy products or services. You know what we're looking for out there in the world are one of three key emotional experiences safety freedom from fear certainty knowing people have our back belonging knowing that we fit in we have equal value we are loved we are cared for and mattering knowing that we are making a difference uniquely we are not a cog in a wheel we are a unique expression of our unique accomplishments are unique gifts are being recognized and seen.   Christine: [00:14:37] Achievement is here as well. So if you look at a company culture if you look at a country right. If you look at why elections swing to this side or that it's always due to safety belonging and mattering you can look at all the different models the SCAERF model the self-determination model it doesn't matter. It all boils down to three things. Why have seven when you can have three right. It's easier to remember. Okay. All right. Yeah.   Tripp: [00:15:06] So. So I thought that kind of comes into my mind and I guess maybe I start to look at myself. You know I spent my entire career learning things around statistics and a kind of engineering types of things Lean Six Sigma and all those types of things.   Tripp: [00:15:27] And one of the things that I've found over the years is that they can be totally ineffective unless somehow you're connecting. But I didn't have a method. You know what I mean. I didn't have a I didn't have a system to go through to be able to understand that the people I'm talking to needed safety belonging and all those things. Before I could even start talk to them about data and all of that is would you say that that's true. Pretty much across the board.   Christine: [00:15:55] Yep. If somebody is craving safety and they're not feeling safe. Think about when you've had that experience. Right. You're not super open to anything else. You're just trying to be safe. Right. Belonging if you feel like you don't fit in. You've had that we've all had that weird experience of Oh man I don't feel like I fit in I don't feel like I'm part of this group. Right. That's super distracting and unsettling and then mattering if we feel invisible. Gosh that's painful. You know how we're going to perform at work if we're not seen and we're not appreciated right ow ow ow. So as leaders it's really important to notice what somebody is asking for because when they're in critter state remember their prefrontal cortex is off line. So when they're in critter state they're gonna have certain behaviors that will clue you in that they are actually asking you for safety. So when somebody's in Critter state and they want safety because they're not experiencing it they're going to spread gossip and rumors spread fear. Talk about getting the heck out of here talking about exit plans. Right. Because their tribe is back to that adage you know misery loves company company they're trying to they're trying to reconcile how they feel inside and what the world looks like outside. So if everybody else is scared right then OK I'm not nuts. If somebody wants belonging and they're feeling like they don't fit in they will isolate drop communication withhold information. Right. Because they're not feeling that they belong with the other people. So they start to kind of affect belonging in those around them. So important in leadership mattering if somebody is in Critter state makes sense.   Tripp: [00:17:40] Yeah. Oh yes. It just takes me back to when I first time I was a manager I didn't know what I was doing.   Tripp: [00:17:45] You know you know and and you know 42 years ago I mean it was just kind of I don't know Game of Thrones yet to live.   Christine: [00:17:58] Yeah.   Tripp: [00:17:59] Where were you forty two years ago. Don't answer it. You know.   Tripp: [00:18:06] So let's let's finish up with mattering so with mattering if somebody has the behavior of condescension arrogance at the extreme extreme extreme mattering absence of mattering we can see bullying. So I want us to start to have some compassion when we see these challenging behaviors and instead of judging the challenging behaviors say oh wait a sec wait a sec. This person just wants safety. Let me sit down with them. Ask them how they're doing and see how we can give them some experience of safety. This person just wants belonging they're not being a jerk and withholding information they're not feeling connected to us. Let's go bring them back into the tribe mattering this person who is saying I'm doing everything nobody appreciates me this place would fall apart without me they're just looking for some mattering let's say hey wow I really appreciate your unique accomplishments you know you're unique gifts I really see as a thought leader Hey can I run some stuff by you because I really value your opinion. See we don't have to judge each other anymore. We can as leaders as leaders if we if we signed up to be leaders we didn't sign up to be taken care of but we signed up to take care of others and to help others rise up. We signed up to cultivate and elevate others. And if you don't want to do that you know leadership isn't your gig. You know I find so many people get surprised what is the take care by people what cause you signed up to be a leader.   Tripp: [00:19:34] You know that's interesting. It's. And I've been I guess I go back. You. We didn't have back in the day when I was a young manager knowledge of these types this type of thinking. I mean even the neuroscience community really a lot of the research has been done over the last decade. I mean some of that data certainly got more people you know running with those types of things. I wonder if it's how much do you think Christine that it is that maybe people don't want to be leaders because they see the leaders that they have and they said that I want to be like that ever. You know because they don't have a method they don't have this system to be able to break things down.   Christine: [00:20:17] Ok. I think that's a really good point. Yeah. I don't it's not a role model right. Hey well I don't want to be that if that's what leadership is. Give me the heck out. Here right now. Yes. And I think the more I hate to see enlightened look let's say aware conscious the more aware the more conscious we become we can start to look because we do have some good examples of leaders in the world. We have a lot of video kind of counterexamples Well I do want to be that but we have some good examples. You know we have Warren Buffett. You know we have you know we have a handful of people that can just say oh gosh that doesn't work for me. Use discernment instead of judgment. I'm going to go ahead and do this. You know we have a handful of people that are really making a difference. So everyone needs to kind of find who is their role model. And even if your role model is a character in a movie that is fine. No seriously Abraham Lincoln JF JFK I mean you know I think Meg Whitman is a great example of leadership. And you know we've got a lot of examples and I think you know Bill Gates has definitely mellowed over his years. You know back in the 80s he was not a great example of leadership. You know now he definitely is. You know Steve Jobs had his days for sure. You know we're we're hoping that Mark Zuckerberg is going to really turn the corner and you know become a stronger example of leadership. You know the line best is a little bit of a counterexample right now. But when he went along Musk manages his emotional state and gets out a critter state where he seems to spend a lot of time you know he'll be a great example of leadership. OK.   Tripp: [00:21:54] So one of the things I wanted to talk about here. Great conversation though I think this is great foundational stuff to be able to have the rest of these this conversation. But why do organizations. You know maybe just a couple of reasons why people come to Christine or you know Smart Tribes for help. Why do they pull for you.   Christine: [00:22:16] Yes yes. People come to us and one of two scenarios they want to grow and they don't quite know how to get to that next level. I mean they could keep doing it slowly creeping along but they either don't quite know to get all the way that they want to get. And you know if you need a jungle guide if you want to navigate a jungle you've not been through before because we've built companies up to seven billion dollars. And so that's a lot. Knows all that. That covers a big enough landscape for us and we've worked with guys at 1 million. But so how to actually get your people mobilize your people so that they can navigate growth and change. That's kind of the primary reason. And then secondary is when it's a turnaround situation you know or it's a integration situation. Wow. We're changing the direction of the company entirely and people are kind of freaked out or one of our clients. I mean gosh they've been they've been acquiring anywhere between seven and 14 15 companies per year. That integration alone of bringing all those people together. So it's navigating growth and change. You know it's called the executive summary. Now anybody who's doing that needs to help their people get to the next level.   Tripp: [00:23:34] You mentioned one of the things that I caught on it and you called them I think there are inflection points for.   Christine: [00:23:40] Oh yes. Type of thing yes.   Tripp: [00:23:42] Is is this a good place to talk about. Sure. I wasn't sure I didn't get enough. I may be out of the reading of the videos or I got confused so I thought maybe you could share with us what that means.   Christine: [00:23:54] Yeah and we totally geek out on revenue inflection points in our second book which is Smart Tribes. So yeah with power your tribe you're not going to see that much of it. Yeah. Power your tribe is more about human behavior whereas Smart Tribes is more about how to create a company and the structure of it so that people get in and stay in their smart state more. So we found over the past 30 years there are certain points when a company hits this revenue number it's a whole new company. And there are three things we've got to really look at the people and how we're caring for the people and helping them grow and align in a role and engage them the money how we're working through sales and how we're financing the company and how we're structuring operations et cetera. And then model business model you know if the dessert topping is a failure maybe we can make it into a floor wax. You know like how are we actually tweaking and adapting and shifting our business model to match the industry people money and model.   Christine: [00:24:54] So we've found we map it all out in Smart Tribes that revenue inflection points occur really profound ones at 10 million 25 million 50 million one hundred million 250 million five hundred million and then it goes generally with each billion or so. Once you get up to about five billion you know a couple more billion doesn't really change thing that things that much. But I want to I want to notice that anybody listening. What happens is if we don't take care of the people. Money and model components and we have this chart that shows you what you need to do in each of those areas. If you don't take care of those you won't navigate to and through that next revenue inflection point. I cannot tell you Tripp how many companies come to us and they are stuck around 25 30 40 million. They can't get to 50 million and they swirl around below that 50 million revenue inflection point or worst case they start to slide backwards. So you have to have the tools to get to the next level or you're gonna swirl or slide backwards because again how are you going to get somewhere that you've never been before you know if you don't know that the path if you will. So we have sort of four components. There's leadership there's influence there is navigating change and growth and then there's optimal teaming. And for each of those segments if you will and there are a one day workshop in the Smart Tribes methodology there are about seven tools one has six one is nine but there's an average of seven tools per per component. And some companies you know they've got there they're navigating change okay maybe but they aren't they'd navigate a lot better if they had stronger influence with their people or if their leaders were engaging in enrolling people better or their teaming isn't totally working and people aren't coming together and connecting. So there's usually an obvious kind of sign there.   Tripp: [00:26:59] Okay. So on those. So that's why they're swirling around this 25 to 40 million because they're deficient in one of these areas one or more of these areas is is that kind of what you find.   Christine: [00:27:09] Yeah. And it reflects in the people money or model.   Tripp: [00:27:13] Okay yeah. More specifically than that or more generally the people money model piece. Okay. Yep yep yep. Okay. Is there something else you want to say about growth because you're also involved in kind of helping companies with kind of their salespeople and so forth is there.   Christine: [00:27:34] Yeah. There are two things I want to focus on and I want you guys to learn two tools. So for starters what we really need to do in the workplace is we need to help people aspire. So we're cold and hungry now but we're go to the Ritz Carlton 24/7 room service Egyptian cotton sheets. So it's it's hard now but I see how great it's gonna be okay. Aspiration second is we need to help people have their own insights not leaderships insights that are handed down their own insights. So let's talk about a couple of tools then we'll talk about a sales and marketing tool. The first tool that is fantastic to help people have their own insights is called the outcome frame the outcome frame is a series of questions and the outcome frame starts with what would you like. So maybe we're looking at the problem let's start to look at the outcome that we would like. Okay. Oh and we can we can send you these images you can put them on the website so people can have a companion visual to go with this podcast. So question number one what would you like something you can create and maintain. I you know I'd like more strategic time. Okay good. Question number two what will having that do for you. What are the benefits how will you feel. Well I'll feel more engaged more energized like I'm really making a difference to the company I feel peaceful and powerful and proud and it'll be awesome. Question number three How will you know when you have it this is going to be the proof the criteria. Well I have more strategic time when I spend two hours or more each week on strategy and planning when I cut the number of meetings I attend by 25 percent when my direct reports are at leadership level five or greater.   Christine: [00:29:11] Okay great. Number four my favorite question what a value what that you value might you risk or lose what side effects may occur. Well to get more strategic time I might initially feel less important because I'll be less involved in the minutia I'll have to let go of some control maybe resist the temptation to rescue people. I'll have to oh shoot I'll have to invest time and cultivating leadership My people won't magically rise up I'll have to actually cultivate them. So question number 4 is there is the reason you don't have the outcome that you wanted. So because this Leader isn't willing to do these things they don't have more strategic time. Makes sense. Yeah well two more questions. Okay. Question number five where when with whom would you like it what I wanted it work. I want it with my direct reports I want it in 45 days. Okay great. What are your next steps. We've got to get specific here set up recurring meetings on my calendar for one on ones to cultivate leaders leadership and offload work. Determine what you need to skip implement Smart Tribes effective meetings and delegation processes. So we've got to actually spend about 15 minutes on this outcome frame to make sure that we are brain is. Firing the visual auditory kinesthetic possibly olfactory is many of the five senses as are possible. So we are stepping into that glorious future and test driving it. We're not fantasizing about it. We're saying wow what's it like in that cool future where I have this. Oh yeah I want this it's worth it. QUESTION.   Tripp: [00:30:48] Yeah. SO. SO WHAT I SEE built you building here is exactly what you talked about early in our conversation which is you're building this emotional foundation to be able to grow. Is that.   Christine: [00:31:01] Yes. Okay. Yes yes yes. And what's happening in your brain okay neural coupling. OK we're starting to step into this future dopamine Y. Right we're releasing dopamine we're saying oh this feels really good. Yeah. That that's going to start to motivate the reward oriented behaviors. If we're listening to somebody telling us a story you know the person who is hearing the outcome frame they're actually there they're going to start to mirror the behavior of who they're hearing and then cortical activity. You know we're processing facts were we're connecting parts of our brain that are called Broca's and Wernicke's areas we don't need to get on that boat but we're we're actually experiencing those sensory cues of of actually having that outcome so powerful so often I find people just look at the problem and they complain about the problem. Our job as leaders is to help them shift and focus on the outcome so please use the Outcome Frame for that. And we have to also look at how much resistance there is out there so there are seven steps to really BOOT build emotional resilience. First is releasing resistance because that way it makes room for more choice. So start to notice what the heck are we resisting. Resisting takes a tremendous amount of energy and now start to look at use the Outcome Frame. Oh but what what I like. OK. Number two we've got to start increasing rapport with ourselves.   Christine: [00:32:35] I call it antisocial media because it's not really helping people get more connected. What helps people get more connected and we know this from Alexandria Arabians research many many years ago is when we're with people physically we're seeing them we're hearing them we can touch them you know we're connected to them more deeply so increasing report yourself increasing report the others actually getting face time. Number three making new meaning start to notice when you get stressed and when you're on critter state start to notice what stories you're telling yourself oh he's so hard to work with Oh I don't like this and then do an Outcome Frame Well what would I like. We are meaning making machines and the stories we tell ourselves create are reality reality is what you say it is Shakespeare told us this ages ago there's nothing good or bad only thinking makes it so what are you thinking about something and if it's not working shift your reality and look at what you would like and start to create that name before anchoring the outcome that's more complex you're gonna need to empower your tribe to learn how to do that five enrolling and engaging others bring your safety blanket mattering they're six build tribal agility expand and keep that good change going seven. Expanding tribal power so safety belonging mattering we can use a lot four five six and seven.   Christine: [00:34:00] So if we start to notice how often do I feel good versus how often do I feel bad that will help us understand our level of emotional resilience. Everybody write this down go to Smart Tribes Institute dot com SmartTribesInstitute.com/ERA That's an emotional resilience assessment it's going to take you gosh five minutes and here's what's so cool about it as you answer these questions and then you're gonna get your answers displayed on the screen as well as emailed to you right away you're then gonna know what tools to use from power your tribe to give you a better experience.   Christine: [00:34:46] Yeah super cool super effective.   Tripp: [00:34:48] By the way I will put those in the show notes too so that people have a link to it.   Christine: [00:34:52] Okay great. And I will give you the outcome frame image and then the emotional resilience image. OK cool.   Tripp: [00:34:59] All right so we're in growth and we're talking about the outcome frame and you've given us several things to think about there and the resistance.   Christine: [00:35:07] So those are the two things that you need for growth then well releasing resistance helps you then focus on the outcomes that you want. Okay. Okay. It's not it's not quite that simple but that's a starter. Okay. You know Navigating Growth and change You gotta look out for the emotional state right to safety belonging mattering. We want to make sure that we teach everybody to tell to tell news stories that we're telling a story that doesn't feel good. A lot of companies think about this in your experience. Tripp we've all done this. I have definitely done this myself. Think about when you have belonged with somebody around pain when you have belonged with somebody around maybe complaining about something right. That's what you have in common. So you get together and you complain about stuff. So you belong with each other. I want people to start looking at how we create belonging around things that are not actually empowering. So start to look at how do I connect with others around what topics are they expansive and positive and growth oriented or are they contracting and negative and do I feel sort of drained and discouraged afterwards because I want us to start to notice that we can shift that once again. What's the story. Basic reframing. What's the story we're telling ourselves. How does it make us feel. How would we like to feel. What's the story that we would need to change there. So in reframing I want us to start to notice daily as leaders one of our clients will give me an example.   Christine: [00:36:44] One of our clients they they had a really bad quarter who really and they're a public company. So they got smacked by the stock market really bad quarter. Everyone's all freaked out and the CEO gathers every together and says Hey everybody. What an educational quarter we just had. So it's not like gloom and doom. Layoffs are coming blah blah blah. No. Wow what an educational quarter we just had. We learned three key things. We learned that we had lost touch with our customers. They want upgrades to our product more often. We have learned that we have competition that we didn't take very seriously. They're nipping at our heels. We need to innovate faster. We need to increase our expand our product lines. And we learned actually that we have a handful of advocates that we've been ignoring. So in this next quarter we're going to tackle those three areas. We're going to get back on top. How great that we learned these lessons. And yeah it was painful but we got him we got him. Now let's take this next quarter and Rocket. Susie Q is going to own this initiative. Bob's going to own that initiative. Juan is going to own that initiative. Boom everybody knows what team they're on. Let's rocket instead of Oh my God it's a scary bad quarter. We're gonna do layoffs we suck and get.   Tripp: [00:38:08] This is actually a good segue way into kind of my next question which is kind of the purpose of this podcast is I come from a background of systems thinking which I know you're familiar with because I read where you talked about Peter Senge he and why you probably your mission vision and values just together.   Tripp: [00:38:28] And so so one of the things that that is part of actually my method which I call the 95 method is mostly about having method which can be so so in other words if I've got so far as I'm I to you talk you go for these things for growth for innovation there is this mindset that needs that you need to have but when you have that mindset you still need a method correct. I mean in order to.   Christine: [00:39:00] Oh yeah.   Tripp: [00:39:01] So. So from a method standpoint I do a podcast with a gentleman by the name of Doug Hawes worked with Disney and Procter and Gamble and Nike and and companies similar to you actually.   Tripp: [00:39:15] But he just focuses on innovation. He's the he's the big idea guy and an end-to-end system for. For doing it. And you know as I hear you talk. Lot of things I think I'm trying to get to is because I'm so method oriented and you play a method for kind of the brain is how how do we design in some of the stuff to build a brain friendly organization. How how how do y. Yeah you did so so that it's in need into the way that you've got your company designed.   Christine: [00:39:51] Ok well I have to tell you it doesn't happen overnight. And what we do when we do our leadership acceleration program is it's for one day workshops eight webinars. Thirty micro learnings which are a little short baby videos that people share with their teams and it takes about a year and a half. Mm hmm. And then the culture is absolutely transformed and I have to go forward before you know the outliers. Yeah we have had a few enormous companies where it took two and half to three years because it was enormous and we were transforming thousands and thousands of people.   Tripp: [00:40:25] But you still have the mindset began that that I heard and one of your videos I believe. Yeah. You talk about you know sometimes we just go in an organization will start with a team just a game. Yeah. So you see you're kind of breaking you're breaking down the elephant and if I get to you the whole elephant I go to it one by the time. So you're still taking the approach of let's start with an area or something like.   Christine: [00:40:47] Yeah because you've gotta it is sometimes it's too big to eat the elephant right. And so a client will come to us and they'll say OK help us with this you know group leaders and we'll start to see positive change and then everybody else would go Hey what's going on over there. How come you guys are knocking it out of the park and nobody else is you know let's figure this out let's do this. So what matters is that we we take this wherever people are receptive and we start to build a groundswell. So bottom up can often work better than top down you know because if it's top down at a huge organization. So when Procter and Gamble brought us then they had us work on their Latin American sales division. Great. I can get my arms around that. No problem you know. And we taught them a bunch of tools for connecting more deeply with our clients. We talked about safety belonging mattering for the client but we also taught them about Meta programs you know how do we step into the shoes of our client and actually feel and and understand the experience our client has having so we can message to them more effectively so we can connect with them more effectively so we can build trust much more quickly so we can actually have a profound meaningful connection instead of just you know we don't want a one off sale who wants that. You know we want a profound meaningful connection with our clients.   Tripp: [00:42:11] Ok so from your standpoint it's it's a it's kind of these classes that you have in order to to kind of build the brain friendly organization because you are in essence taking them right from where they are today. Yeah I'm trying to say OK. Because that what applies over here to Procter and Gamble isn't going to necessarily apply to Nike because they have different systems if you will. So you have to take them kind of. From that spot.   Christine: [00:42:42] Well we'd just Sec. They have but they have humans. Yeah. So we always look at what the business challenges and you know like the top three business challenges. That's where we know where to start. Okay. We're gonna start with optimal team stuff that optimal teams tools. Oh we're gonna start with the influence tools over here. So we look at what the what the greatest opportunities or challenges are at the company. And that's the tools that with that we start with you know and sometimes they just want transformation in that one area so they'll only get the tools in that area and that will be enough you know or they'll come back to us a year later hey you know we're ready for for some more tools. The way that these really get ingrained and this is why we have the workshops then the webinars in between the workshops and then the micro learnings so everybody in the company can watch a five to 10 minute video for each of the tools and learn that you know there are 30 to micro learnings you know the average bear in the company if they want to learn these tools they can't you know it's a scalable way to do it. And you know it can also be a great tribal thing where people come together in the lunch room and they watch one of the videos and they practice with the tools and then we give our clients all of the graphics and you'll walk through the halls of some of our clients and you'll see or at least in the meeting rooms you'll see our key infographics describing the Outcome Frame or myelin Asian or maneuvers of consciousness or reframing or cultural game plan or safety blocking mattering. You know you'll see our different diagrams. The emotion will you'll see better programs you'll see these these graphics so that people remember to use the tools because it's really helpful to have them in our environment.   Tripp: [00:44:22] All right very good. Let's now get a kind of interim phase here and we call it kind of the hot potato phase which is fitting. So so I am deeply embedded in the philosophy of W. Edwards Deming which we kind of emailed back and forth a little bit about and sectors I wrote some things down and it just there. There are things I'd be curious what your perspective is on. And the first one of that I want to talk about with regards to Deming philosophy is this concept of drive out fear. So one of his 14 points was drive out fear and you write about this in Power Your Tribes which is you know there's a lack of trust in in order to drive out that fear. Can you come in a little bit about how you drive fear out of organizations.   Christine: [00:45:13] Yes and fear. I find that many leaders you know are scaring their people into mediocrity. And we're scaring them and sending them into critter state. Not intentionally but we're scaring them with incomplete information with not making it safe to experiment or fail. Right. Public beheadings. We're creating fear by not having open clear communication having conflict avoidance is a great way to create fear. Having unrealistic perpetually unrealistic deadlines where people just can't do that much work in that short of time. Changing directives. Oh no we're not doing that anymore. We're doing this well nobody told me and I'd been doing that for two months. So we create fear and a lot of ways. But it primarily boils down to communication which is why that's our first corporate value. You know our company if we have if if human beings have clear explicit communication. In my experience you can get through anything. Okay.   Tripp: [00:46:26] All right. Yeah. I like that and obviously there's a ton of stuff in here about how to mitigate that fear in your book. The second one or another one because I got many but it would just get through a few of these. But there is the mindset of that we're all taught in the Deming philosophy ninety four a five percent of performance comes down to the system that you work in and one of the things I had trouble with early on is this kind of. There seems to be there's a component of neuroscience it's very individual the focus is on the individual. They're the problem they're the they're the focus of it as opposed to the system.   Tripp: [00:47:08] Now the system includes the individual. You kind of see where I'm going with this question. So. So I'm trying to reconcile. Yeah. He's from a Deming philosophy standpoint as Deming wrong because I'm open to that you know from a perspective of could have we learned enough to say it really is the individual and not the system and there are there. There's a lot more to that obviously to unpack but I'm not gonna do I just kind of want to hear what your initial reaction is to that.   Christine: [00:47:37] Yeah well but the individual is existing within a system.   Tripp: [00:47:41] True. yes.   Christine: [00:47:43] And that system is affecting the individuals. So so if we look at I mean for us we use six logical levels of change and that's sort of the environment the system that's happening in an organization. And if we look at the symptoms that are occurring we can understand where to change the system got it. So you know the environment physical emotional you know mental space I walked into a company a while ago it was an open floor plan and you just you walked in there and I was I was uncomfortable even breathing. It's like people were so uptight about being absolutely silent. And I was like This is ridiculous. Human beings aren't absolutely silent. You know and people were emailing each other and of just reaching over and talking to each other. It was e-mailing people like right next door to them. So you know there was just kind of this tense weird environment and you can have an open floor plan and do it really well. And so environment behavior what we do a person's or a company's values really define our behavior. That's why it's important up good values that people understand because it's the code of conduct or company values capability. Those are skills our tools are abilities you know how are our capabilities growing by being part of this system. Beliefs decisions you know meaning that we make about things outside of us. They are. It is you know the world is that the market is our customers our identity the decisions that we make about ourself right the meaning that we make about ourself. I am powerful I am valued I am capable I am safe I belong I matter. And then core you know the most sacred thing to the company and you know it's not profits. The most sacred thing to the company is like how that company is making a difference on this planet. Like why should we bother working there.   Tripp: [00:49:38] That's good. No I think that as I've helped organizations you know write Mission Vision Values nowadays. There are three components that I believe that it has to have. And one of them I just added in the last probably eight years which is the first one is customer some concept of customer some concept of innovation because of the rapid pace of change that we're facing in disruption that we face today. And then the third one is the one that you just talked about which is the greater good. How do we get you know how do how do how do we tap into that now. What do you think as you were talking through that kind of made a note and maybe you can help me with a a name for this. You know there's a say in in your your talk about the system I'm thinking in terms of maybe it's more because I have an engineering type of mindset brain which is the mechanical methods the Six Sigma the statistics you know those types of things versus the emotional system. And I you know that kind of you kind of added that by virtue of what I read while I was listening to you and there's probably a better name than mechanical but I'm just trying to come up with some type of label but that you're talking about that if we're going to affect 95 percent of the performance of a system we have to also account for the emotional system.   Christine: [00:51:01] Yeah. And here's the thing. I'm all for measurement yay measurement. But if we don't enroll and engage people they aren't going to use the measurement type systems.   Tripp: [00:51:14] Agreed. Yeah.   Christine: [00:51:15] They'll mock them. They'll skip them et cetera. And they will be all for naught.   Tripp: [00:51:21] So here here's another one that I wrote down that is just you know it's upsetting but is layoffs.   Tripp: [00:51:33] And you talked about in one of your videos you talked about exile and and people being exiled from there you know from organizations or from their countries. Right. That was the worst thing that could happen to you. And now I have this series of layoffs and we're creating did we have this culture now we're going to lay off this this person one of the things that Dr. Deming talked a lot about is you know there are reasons for. Companies have to lay off if you're in the financial dire straits and it's either sink or swim. I get it.   Christine: [00:52:04] You got to do it I guess.   Tripp: [00:52:05] I think where people have difficulty today is they see the dividend go up and oh I was laid off because they were able to build a new building or to raise their dividend or you know do something that a point. And Dr. Deming was a big advocate of before you do layoffs. What's first of all talk about did the leadership take a 10 percent cut in their pay.   Tripp: [00:52:28] You know sometimes where you're having an actual leadership you know what I'm saying that hey oh well we just had to do it and we just. And there seems to be this unemotional or this you know method and having been an executive and had to lay off people I can tell you it's it's very emotional. Oh yes. Not only to you. For you know why you're doing it but. And you're basically giving the marching orders right to took that you're going at the last people but the only reason to be is because you know find out that the CEO wants a new helicopter or once a week or something like that.   Tripp: [00:53:00] I think that's where we're you know as a culture or as a society we're starting to to push back on those types of things. What are your thoughts how do how do you write are you put into situations like that or do you then you get to the point where you're so in the growth and navigating growth and all those types of modes that you don't really come up against this.   Christine: [00:53:24] Oh no we come. We come up against layoffs we come up against terminations you know for non-performance you know or God forbid you know for epic cause you know I mean these are humans right. With humans you get the full spectrum of experience. If there are layoffs we have to have. We have to have. We have to have an explanation that is fair and makes sense. And you know sometimes a division is closed you know a product line is discontinued you know et cetera. But here's the thing when we lay people off we have to have a clear communication about it that actually makes sense. But then we also have to honor their contributions to the firm. You know so you know we're discounting continuing such and such product line. We haven't been able to find an internal job for Joe. So you know Joe Joe and his team you know will we'll be let go and we want to thank them for all the contributions that they made. And we're going to celebrate those contributions are going to do all that we can to outplace them to help them find their next adventure and we're gonna help them with their resumé or whatever you know. But yeah I mean just this is business. So I want to make sure that.   Christine: [00:54:37] We're balancing it's business and we have to run a a profitable healthy business that makes a difference in the world. And that does sometimes mean that people have to be let go for a variety of reasons. You're not going to have a culture with high employee retention and high employee engagement. If you're doing random layoffs that don't have stories that make sense.   Tripp: [00:55:05] Good answer. I'm going to ask one more question then I'll get to my last question. Great which is around who does and rewards one of the things that Dr. Deming railed against was the concept of quotas versus rewards. And as we've seen like with Wells Fargo and a number of other companies over the years Sears I think with their automotive repair business too. But you don't have to look far too tough to find bad behavior with regards to how those drive certain behaviors within organizations. How do you we know rewards people want rewards. Right yeah. I I've I've read in your book where you've talked about the emotional is greater than than the reward that you get. And and people are more involved with winning career path and public recognition that then rewards. But just that this this concept that you know especially in the US to be win because of Deming came back to the U.S. from Japan it's basically boy rewards are killing us here. You know there people are doing dysfunctional things to hit their quarterly goals so that their price will go up. Those types of things how do you how do you what are your thoughts on that.   Christine: [00:56:20] So I do believe in rewards and consequences and consequences just you know if you drop the ball there will be a consequence there won't be a punishment there won't be a shaming you know but there will be a hey you know Are you OK you know and walking through we have four questions that we walk people through. If somebody you know has an accountability challenge and they drop the ball. But but I find you know one of the greatest problems with quotas is that people don't provide what these sales people for example truly need in order to meet their quota or worst case scenario they actually cap it. You can only make so much commission which is insane because if you have a salesperson that wants to sell like crazy let them you know why would you ever want to mess that up. So I think we like to use needle movers that the minimum acceptable performance because you have to tell people what you expect them to perform you know where how you expect them to perform the minimum acceptable. Rawlence The target is what you want them to hit. The mind blower is wow you know if if we can hit this number that's really amazing at NYU. Emily Balcetis actually did some research at NYU where she also used three levels of goals if you will.   Christine: [00:57:34] She called it something like easy moderate and impossible. I don't like the word impossible because I don't think that it's actually Tripp. But what she found was the systolic blood pressure which is our our readiness to act was so so on. Easy OK high on moderate on the middle one that we would call target and then a little bit lower on the one that she called impossible. So what does this mean. This means that our focus and our readiness to act works is stronger when we actually have three goals three levels of a given goal barely acceptable. What we really want and will if we knock it out of the park. Because when you have this you're going to get the what we really want. One of the middle but goals are often set in a binary way achieve this you know or you're in trouble. And the brain doesn't like that the brain can actually we perceive goals as spatial as psychological as physical. The way the brain deals with goals. So when we have these three levels we can actually move. If you look at what's happening with people who use these three levels we actually move the perception of that goal closer it feels easier and we can imagine achieving it more effectively.   Tripp: [00:58:51] Okay. And just that just to come in I know Dr. Deming comment with regards to quotas what is our targets even is, "By what method?" So you know and I think that's you we're getting there. There's probably a longer conversation associated with that but that because that's guess that's a good start. So my last question to you Christine is this Is there anything that you during the course of our conversation that you'd like to make some clarification of. Or is there anything that I didn't ask that you wish I would have more.   Christine: [00:59:22] Good for now. Ok. But the executive summary is leadership is a privilege it is our great good fortune as leaders to have amazing people to work with so please invest in your people look at their emotional experience help them. The better emotional experience so they can give you the performance that you want. Everybody wins.   Tripp: [00:59:43] Fascinating stuff. Please get Christine Comaford's latest book Power Your Tribe. We appreciate you being a guest on Mind Your Noodles.   Christine: [00:59:53] Thank you. And if you guys want to get our regular tools that we send out monthly go to work with s t i. Dot com and you'll get little goodies from us every month. Work with SETI dot com.   Tripp: [01:00:08] Very good and we'll put that in the show notes also. Thank you again Christine.   Christine: [01:00:11] Thank you.   Tripp: [01:00:12] Bye bye.  

Ok, Ok I'm late again, fuck. I get it, I need a producer. Aside from THAT, boy did we have a good time this week. Kevin and I had a sleep over because his car was giving him troubles, also I talk about my Avengers: End Game experience(no spoilers, I promise).

[fusion_builder_container hundred_percent="no" equal_height_columns="no" menu_anchor="" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" id="" background_color="" background_image="" background_position="center center" background_repeat="no-repeat" fade="no" background_parallax="none" parallax_speed="0.3" video_mp4="" video_webm="" video_ogv="" video_url="" video_aspect_ratio="16:9" video_loop="yes" video_mute="yes" overlay_color="" video_preview_image="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" padding_top="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" padding_right=""][fusion_builder_row][fusion_builder_column type="1_1" layout="1_1" background_position="left top" background_color="" border_size="" border_color="" border_style="solid" border_position="all" spacing="yes" background_image="" background_repeat="no-repeat" padding_top="" padding_right="" padding_bottom="" padding_left="" margin_top="0px" margin_bottom="0px" class="" id="" animation_type="" animation_speed="0.3" animation_direction="left" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" center_content="no" last="no" min_height="" hover_type="none" link=""][fusion_text] Watch the live interview below   [/fusion_text][fusion_youtube id="https://youtu.be/JMgEjKUCdzQ" alignment="center" width="" height="" autoplay="false" api_params="&rel=0" hide_on_mobile="small-visibility,medium-visibility,large-visibility" class="" /][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]   Transcription (was completed by automated process. Please ignore any speech-to-text errors)  [00:00:00] I'm Beatty Carmichael on the CEO of agent dominator and I'd like to welcome you to another session of get sellers calling you. This is both aN audio podcast and a YouTube podcast and this is where we focus on how do you get more sellers. This is also just like you know this is an Internet interview. And so we may have periodic Internet issues and if you do just bear with us on that. But I'm real excited to have actually one of our clients is how I met Brandon. But Brandon Carroll and he comes to us from Virginia. So Brandon welcome to the call. Thank you Beatty. And Brandon just for kind of perspective where in Virginia are you?   [00:00:48] I’m in Culpeper County which is the southernmost outskirts of Northern Virginia. So we are if you if you ask anybody who's from Culpeper they will say that they do not understand that. But nonetheless that is how the state has decided to categorize them.   [00:01:07] I love it. The northern most right there on the edge. So just above you. Is this the best part.   [00:01:15] Yeah. OK. So. Well tell me. So we were talking a little bit before we got started here a little bit about your real estate career saw how you got into it and the type of volume and I wanted to visit with you because I thought you had a great message to share in terms of just. I'll say just a really good strong steady business but a business where as we've kind of been talking back and forth a little bit I just get the sense that you have no worries about how your business going come in or if you're going to have business. And I just thought that was such a really neat approach that I wanted to kind of visit with you on that. So can you give us just real quick background of who you are and how you've gone in business and just some. Anything that comes to mind that you might want to share. Sure absolutely.   [00:02:02] So thirty six years old I got out of college around the age of twenty three years old worked as a chemist for several years and then went to seminary to get my degree in Christian counseling and discipleship worked in that world for about six years seven years and then had flipped a couple of personal residences and was engaged with a fellow believer who was a real estate agent who sold my house at the time and she thought that I was doing honestly a better job than what she was doing in the listing. I learned a lot and she is a very gracious woman to be able to even say such a thing. And so from there I just began to inquire a little bit more took some educational classes have been in real estate now full time since the end of 2014. And so going on about four and a half years that's really neat.   [00:03:08] You know it's interesting how the Lord takes your direction because if you were to ask my story how I got here is this very securities round but when you look backwards see guys fingerprint all over it.   [00:03:19] So it sounds sort like that happened with you with your household.   [00:03:22] Absolutely. Absolutely.   [00:03:25] That's neat. And then tell me. So we're talking also about your volume so I know that you know the typical agent out there does 15 20 transactions a year. You do a little bit more than that. So talk to me about your volume in and how consistent it's been.   [00:03:41] I have done since starting full time I've done 30 transactions a year. Okay. And that has come in many ways it sounds a little unrealistic but in many ways that has come by the providence of the Lord to speak in a little more tangible sense. I do grow up in a community where I have some family. So I would say you know maybe 15 to 20 percent of my business is come from my family. But then the other aspect is just being available taking phone calls. Being willing to do what we call desk duty in our office which is a foreign concept to a lot of agents and then engaging people chasing down every lead going above and beyond. So if somebody calls in on a warm call if you will. It calls into the office. My objective is to exceed this individual's expectations. So what are they asking me for they're asking me for the price on a house located within Culpeper County. Most often that's a realistic scenario name. But I am engaging them in conversation right. We're talking about the house we're talking about their family their children their wives what are they trying to accomplish. And we're doing this in a matter of minutes.   [00:05:18] So I've got two questions for you. So I want to kind of pursue two angles real quick.   [00:05:23] You mentioned the providence of God in terms of your your volume and you're mentioning kind of what you do when you're engaging with someone. Let me go down what you do when you're engaging with some because I think this is really cool as you're picking up these calls from from servicing the floor. You're just engaging with them at a relational level. This sounds like that was what your last comment was kind of building a relationship. Can you just kind of expand you know in terms of in your mind you've kind of had this process it sounds like that when a call comes in when you're engaging some there's sort of this the step by step process of what it is that you do structurally so that you can then take it the next step. Can you enlighten me a little bit more on that.   [00:06:06] Yeah so obviously in my mind. So if you reverse the roles and you put yourself in that individual shoes how would you want to be engaged. And I think through. If I'm on if I'm on the phone and I'm calling in. I want to be provided something of value and that is essential. So if you can give the individual value. And that's not always so easy to do to determine what it is this person perceives as value but you can ask open ended questions. I think we all know that yes no questions can make conversations and rather quickly. Yep but you ask an open ended question such as what what brings you to Culpeper you can get a myriad of things that. Somebody will tell you. And so from a structural standpoint it's just aimed at getting the individual to open up to give me helpful information so that I can provide. Excellent world class client centred experience.   [00:07:18] That's interesting because what I've learned what you don't know about me is I used to teach telephone sales and an appointment setting many years back to a totally different industry.   [00:07:29] And one of the things that I found is is if you can engage that person at a relational level just talking with them then they start to trust you. And then in that conversation you can start to determine which direction they need to be guided or which direction they want to take this approach and now you built up the trust you built up enough relation you know value that you can actually start to do something with them.   [00:07:56] Does that make sense is that kind of what you're doing that hits to hit the nail right on the head.   [00:08:01] I love it. So I want to go back to something because this is this is the thing that really kind of attracted me to you and I want to interview you on this.   [00:08:12] You mentioned that your very first year you had a first year full time you had about 30 transactions and you maintain a very level business at that point. And I asked you a question I'd like you to expand on this further because I think this is really important at least in my world view on that. And I ask you the question So are you purposely maintaining your volume steady or are you trying to grow and you've hit a ceiling. And your response was Do you remember. Not the exact verbiage but   [00:08:48] So purposely purposefully grow. I think that is how we got connected. And I'd say that the business that I've had over the last five years has just simply been the providence of God in him. It's difficult to explain as are some spiritual things but him and just providing the business. So when that outlook was rather bleak you just hit your knees you pray and then God would open up the doors and people would call.   [00:09:22] So for instance let me try to put some skin on that.   [00:09:28] This February March I was strongly considering doing a couple of different things maybe picking up some kind of a part time job in granted. This sounds like ye of little faith given God's track record. But now I have five or six listings coming on the market. So six houses in the last 45 to 60 days and I can't attribute that to much more than. Praying. I know that that may seem dissatisfying for some folks but it is all the more convicting for me.   [00:10:09] Well let's pursue that because like you I've been in similar situation. Let me tell you one this is November 2002. I'm preparing to give my stewardship testimony at my church   [00:10:23] At this time. We have had three months without actually more than three months without a paycheck. I have three months remaining in my savings and then it's all out. We maximize all of our lines of credit on the business and everything is in this shambles and I'm Wednesday night about eleven o'clock. I'm up there prepping for my stewardship test my I'm going give that Tuesday at that Sunday and one of the things I believe in is you know you cannot out give God's ability to take care of you. So I was kind of prepping this and roleplaying what I would say you know someone comes to me and says Hey baby I just lost my job my car broke down my water heater display what I do now that my standard response would be well increase you're getting right because you can't give God. And and when I said that I heard God's spirit just kind of speak in my spirit speak to my spirit this as well why don't you increase your giving baby.   [00:11:23] Well you have to. Exactly. And to make a long story really short as much as I can. I said OK now what do you want me to do. And he said well you know give it all. I said OK so here's the deal. I've got three months of cash remaining I haven't had anyone ask me for money recently. I normally have a lot of people asking for donations and stuff. And I said whoever asked me tomorrow I'll give whatever they made up to everything I have in my savings account and I'll just trust entirely on you. So I go into that day all excited that God's gonna sense our number and give it all and it's going to be you know entirely cast my trust on him and and all I had was one person that needed three hundred and twenty five dollars. So I was actually dejected I got home later that night and I said Lord how do you make it. So you know I was ready to give it all. And there's image of RAM cord with his thickets is his horn in the thickets came to mind you remember that story in the Bible. Yeah sure yeah. What was Abraham and his sacrifice of Isaac and this message just kind of came to me that said I made it easy on Abraham too. But here's what happened. Within three months. We had paid off all of our lines of credit.   [00:12:47] And the third and fourth month because we give each month based on whatever our profits are. The third and fourth month were maybe his fourth and fifth. We gave more in those two months than most people earned in a year. It was just that turnaround just like what you were talking about know at that point that you're ready to give up you trust the Lord and he felt I had a rabbit out of the hat so to speak because I agree.   [00:13:12] You know I'm studying very briefly I'm studying Zachary right now. So very prophetic book. But there are some things in there. So for instance Zach Rice says when he's talking about rebuilding the temple. He says that's not not by my power. Nor by night but by my Spirit not by your power or your might but by my spirit that rings true and in many ways of course. You know the Scripture has one meaning in and of itself not reading it many meetings but applications wise a lot of times it's what we think about our strong military or our great speaking abilities. But these are all gifts things. And there are many people who have those things. You have nothing.   [00:14:03] And it is by Spirit.   [00:14:05] It is thus Zachariah Chapter Four I believe because that's one of the things he's spoken to me not by my nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord you will succeed in the work I called you to do the cause of my spirit.   [00:14:21] And he's trying to debunk their allegiance or they're their hope in their military alliances. That's what he's really trying to bring down here. And that's true. The board will do that in any of our lives right. Anything that we put trust in part from him. He will write it down.   [00:14:45] He will. So let's.   [00:14:46] I'm really interested in pursuing further just this trust in God's providence as it relates to your business because as I talked to a lot of realtors especially you know you have the realtors that are kind of in this middle area they're doing well but they're frustrated because they can't seem to break through and do great. OK. It's you know what you know. You know what I'm talking about right. Sure of course. OK. So there's obviously a lot of frustration. There's concerns just like what you mentioned. You know you're thinking about well do I get a part time job right now and then all of sudden the Lord opens up some floodgates for you and blesses you can you talk to me a little bit more about just your first off how we're on the subject just maybe bring people up to date with this reliance on the Lord. How did you get that reliance What do you you know what does that mean to you and talk to me in terms of the peace that you have in this turbulent world of trying to build a real estate business. Well that's a. That's a snippet of my testimony that would be very fragmented and I think it's it's it's worthy to mention a disclaimer that I am no spiritual   [00:16:06] Superhuman. You know I think as Paul grows in his theology he actually sees himself all the worse and thus casting himself upon the grace of God all the more. So I think it's it's notable that everybody who listens or sees this knows that there are real struggles that go on in my mind and my heart. On a day to day basis. My faith is I'm 36 years old. My faith is 18 years old so I have been saved as long as I was unsaved. It's difficult to quantify the scriptures say that each man's been given a measure of faith. Right. It's difficult to quantify how I've. Come about peace and spiritual maturity. Apart from God's grace. I have made it a pattern of behavior simply to read the scriptures and obey them in a very practical sense. What does that mean. So one of the things that you had kind of alluded to was tithing that has been a practice from day one. Just because in my mind it was never a question of why should I give 10 percent. When you come from a state of total depravity and you've been forgiving of everything that you've ever done then the question really is why not more than 10 percent.   [00:17:45] If you know that makes sense. And so in my 18 years of running from the Lord before he finally was able to pin me down I had done a lot of things in my life that one person would say they could never possibly be forgiven right. And so when you are. Forgiven. Of much it in your mind in my mind makes the thankfulness. All the more overwhelming. If that makes sense that I am grateful for what God has done for me as a result of that. I just tried to be obedient to the things that he is calling me to do. Such as taking care of my family. Building in natural spiritual disciplines such as fasting reading of scripture this sacrifice. What does it mean to to give. Jesus says to whom much is given much is required. What does that mean. Do I have a lot. Do I have a little you know. So asking those kinds of questions and then looking at it prospectively oneself.   [00:19:02] But let me ask you on that so because you know it's hard to separate your personal life from your real estate life because your real estate is you and you are your person your father your son your husband your real estate agent and this whole idea of separation of each of those compartments really does and doesn't fit. So in terms of how do you apply maybe this is a good question. How do you apply your faith within your business. And maybe if I can clarify that maybe a little bit further in terms of priorities okay. In terms of fear or peace in terms of how you interact with people let's talk first about property and then we'll talk on the other ones   [00:19:56] Yeah it's it's very difficult. I'm a single income family so there's a real struggle there to provide for your family. My wife stays home. With our two children. We have normal expenses like every other American family. Priority so obviously my priorities were set in order let's say about twelve thirteen years ago speaking with a lot of wise men men who had gone before me men who were in their 50s 60s who had raised children who have been married for 30 40 years just emphasizing to me through the study of scripture that God is first and foremost. And if you remove him out of that position then you can anticipate to have   [00:20:51] Different kinds of problems and all different kinds of areas of your life such as parenting marriage your work life your sexual life all the different kinds of things that scripture will warn you against. And so it is very difficult to be self-employed.   [00:21:11] Trying to strike a balance between OK well we need money to live day to day but yet it needs to stay in its rightful place as well. So I have missed out on business over the years going on vacations just naturally missed out on business but nonetheless. So in my mind God comes first then it's family and then it's work and then it's church.   [00:21:46] And those are you know in a very concrete way you dive into each one of those but those are the way that I have tried to keep things aligned and prioritized in my life.   [00:21:57] So in terms of God being first in your life if I were to look at the average day in the life of Brandon what does that day look like.   [00:22:05] How do you make God a priority first.   [00:22:09] Yes I'm somewhat of a nomad. I don't like structure in many ways and I think you know not to dive into that but that has a lot to do with my upbringing. But some of the non-negotiable are me spending time with the Lord by myself. Me my wife spending time with the Lord Reading the scriptures and then me and my children. Doing devotionals together. Those are non-negotiable. And so if work is stacking up for instance today negotiating two offers working on two listings that are coming this weekend it is a very busy week.   [00:22:49] But despite that those things will be put to the side at some point in time. And it is. 315 in the afternoon and the day has had its way of taking me by storm today   [00:23:06] Just because of some things that are going on in church but there will be a set of part time at some point and this happened in granite. I have the flexibility because my wife stays home to be able to do those things on a more flexible basis. I don't have a 9:00 to 5:00 am well aware of that but nonetheless no excuses or more or less are permitted. When it comes to personal awards to the side of my family.   [00:23:34] So on that. Does that mean because we were talking about this earlier today before this call.   [00:23:40] You spent time with the Lord first at the first part of your day before you get your day started. Is that correct. No not always. OK.   [00:23:49] Not always. I'd say the majority of the time morning starts out with the Lord. But that's 75 percent of the time there sometimes. For instance this morning our accountability group meets on Monday morning at 730. And if you know anything about me 730 is the crack of dawn. Oh yeah. It's not four or five o'clock. That's just not who I am. It's not how I'm wired. Some of my best devotional times with the Lord come in in the wee hours of the night when my wife and my children are asleep and I'm immersing myself in some of the songs and prayer and just find a quiet place in the house.   [00:24:30] Well let me springboard from there into the next topic on this time I was asking the three questions because I think that I think this kind of sets the stage for what I want to ask.   [00:24:39] So you put the lord of a priority in your life long before business. So then when it comes to business and you start to you know there are two ways to look at business at times. Either I'm fearful what's going on I don't have enough business how am I going to pay the bills or I'm at peace because of it I'll use your term because knowing the providence of God is going to take care of you. Talk to me in terms of that whole approach that attitude that you have as you build your business of fear or peace as you go through life. Does that make sense when I'm asking a little bit.   [00:25:17] I think if I'm reading correctly you know it is a constant ebb and flow. That's why I say this spiritual titans it's not like I wrestle with fear I had moments but in my mind the a healthy Christian. I constantly involves repentance and turning back. And so that. That is that is always happening for me in varying degrees.   [00:25:50] So could I have a couple of days strung together where I'm fearful thinking well what am I going to do tomorrow. What am I going to do today.   [00:25:59] And wrestle with that. But it is not staying in that place repenting of it and turning back to the Lord and then getting perspective right. So you had said previously looking back   [00:26:14] In your past seeing the Lord's handprint on some of the things that you had gone through and that that is looking back 18 years now I can see God's hand and that that should build on one's faith being able to see how faithful he is. And then obviously on a daily basis just constantly being reminded of his goodness in his faith and this steadfastness and. All those characteristics qualities of who God. Is   [00:26:50] And how we can draw upon that deep well it's ever sustaining. But again you know it is a struggle and it is it is a very real struggle we.   [00:27:01] And why I say that so where am I right now we are in our third house that we are flipping renovating we say and I'm about four years. This by far I'd shoot off more than I could have ever imagined with this house. It is a 5000 square foot house. It is in my mind the house had never been built because it's just so excessive. It's got five bedrooms four bathrooms a big pool out back. And I think after this one after we do this when we will downsize and build a smaller house maybe 15 her square feet something like that with the basement. And that would be more than enough. But but this house has really made me depend upon the Lord because I had about one hundred and fifty grand to spend on it and I blew through that really fast and there's still work that I get to see on a daily basis that I say well Lord obviously got myself into a big pick a bigger pickle jar that I thought I was jumping into and now I'm kind of swimming around in it and I can't get out.   [00:28:11] Talk to me. Talk to me in terms of testimonies for a moment because you know is is the Lord is leading Israel out of Egypt.   [00:28:19] He shows him his hand and his power. Time after time after time after time to create and instill in them the testimonies that you can trust me because I'd take a took care of you here and here and here and here so you can trust me to take care of you right now. You mentioned just recent you know at the first part of this call that right now in this time of your life right now and just last couple of months you were at the point of wondering if you ought to get a job and now you have like six or seven listings and everything's coming in. I am fairly confident that's probably not the only time the Lord has taking care of you can you just talk about just a couple of the times in your real estate career where you trusted on the Lord because you knew he was faithful and and he showed up. Are there some extra stories you can tell on that.   [00:29:14] Yeah there are. I'm thinking through a couple of them. One in particular was when we had moved from this house from our previous house to this house. We took somewhat of a leap of faith. We had done a a lot of work on our other house and had a lot of money equity tied up into it and we carried both houses for a while and there wasn't a lot of business on the radar either. Now granted we had some cash reserves that would never stretch myself so thin that everything would be jeopardized in one decision. But we had to dip into those cash reserves and that's obviously know again if you know anything about me that is the disavowing my allegiance to Christ. I think you may have a bank account. So so we had to do that right. And again it was a time of purifying the Lord uses those instances to refine and remove a lack of faith. To remove things that don't honor him and work by him. And that's kind of the 30000 foot view of those circumstances what I see God doing in me is purifying me in those moments because because. Of who I know him to be. He's not manipulative. He doesn't twist the truth. He's not deceptive he's he's not ill will towards me. He doesn't hold grudges. There are real consequences for sin. Of course but he is a good father and he's promised to take care of me if I put him first. So if I am doing that then there is almost an expectation on my part that God is going to step in and provide the material things that I need on a day to day basis as he does the birds in my backyard.   [00:31:28] You know I love your word. There is an expectation on my part that God is going to step in and provide.   [00:31:34] I think if we go back to I think it's Mark the story of Mark when Peter's walking on the water. OK so you kind of set it up. Jesus is walking on the waters early dawn. Everyone. All the guys get a pride in the boat and Jesus said don't be afraid it's just me. So Peter says Well I try to command me to come out now on the water to you know. Jesus says Come right. And yeah. And so he says that he stepped out of the boat and began walking on the water. As long as he trusted in the Lord. But then when he took his eyes off the Lord and put his eyes onto the wind in the waves he sunk. And Jesus says Why did you doubt your memory. I know you know that passage. Absolutely yeah.   [00:32:18] That's a very good comparison to describe. You know you can you can do miraculous things and we have to be careful too in our American Christianity to equate that to the wealth and health and prosperity gospel that is is rampant. People just in droves go into that realm. But nonetheless you worry fear God will cast all those things away and provide you.   [00:32:53] And I think put it in what it has taught me as I go through as I look back at that and look at those things in my life.   [00:33:00] And this is where I was kind of leading when you said you kind of had this expectation the Lord was going to take care of you. You had the expectation I would be willing to bet because the Lord has indicated it to you scripturally first. He's he has set a precedent. And as you follow and serve him. He takes care of you. You know he's called you to this line of work and therefore you have this expectation that he will continue to take care of you. Does that make sense.   [00:33:30] And I do. It sure does. Yeah absolutely.   [00:33:34] And that's how you and I met was God has provided and I think about. So if if we can rant if I can ram from 30 to 45 transactions each year. That would be a. Pretty significant increase but one that I see as very possible. What. What else could I do to impact God's kingdom here and Culpeper Virginia. And maybe beyond. Right. Right. You know I think it's always healthy to have a local national and international perspective on how we can play a part in what God is doing around the world nationally and here in our community. And my desire is in growing the business from 30 to 45. It's not about self consumption. There are some things that my family and I would like to do and accomplish but it's also keeping God's kingdom in mind because we are one quite quite clearly. That we are not to be about building our own kingdom here but about digging and building the Lords.   [00:34:49] So let's talk about that for a moment because you know how do we impact.   [00:34:53] Okay so years that the Lord directed me to use my distance as a platform for ministry so I internally I kind of have this description of who I am. I'm a full time minister secretly disguised as a businessman okay. And as a realtor you had the same opportunity. I remember when we bought the home that we now live in. The realtor as we were filling out the offer on the kitchen table she said Okay now let's pray about this. I thought that's a great way to do it and ask for God's blessing upon that offer. If this is his home for us and it's turned out to be far beyond every expectation we had set in a home. It's just amazing. So the third thing that we want to talk about your priorities. Fear or peace. And then how do you live your Christian faith with your clients so as we're talking about how do you make an impact. Talk to me in terms of what do you deliberately do. In working with clients. That is how you live out your faith and how you make that impact.   [00:36:02] I think the thing that comes to my mind and foremost thing that comes to my mind is again putting myself in their shoes right. And it's what is widely known amongst Christian community and the second community is the golden rule. And in doing unto them. How you would have them do unto you. And so again what does that look like. That means. So from a bear day to day to day realistic practical standpoint in the real estate world is that you listen to people you actively listen to what they want and what they need and what their desires are. And you. Aim to hit that mark for them. And I think in the real estate world. Naturally there and in any state in any business. Whether it be I.T. in the medical world there are self-serving individuals right. And so they do in many instances what is best for them. And the real estate world what does that equate to well. An agent may have very close agents to me that I can say this with. With great certainty that they will steer people away from a certain house or. Painted in a negative light because it pays less of a commission or they will do backroom deals where they will get people into houses before anybody else is privy to them. So there are there are principles and biblical principles that we live by and I'd say the main one that really is a thrust from me is doing what is best for this individual. And you could say Well Brandon how do you know what's best for that individual. And that's where I go back to listening to them and hearing what they have to say. And that's how I'm operating.   [00:38:00] Can you give me some one or two examples that come to mind of. All. Of this that you're talking about. I think that so for instance right now I have a dear friend of mine who is in the process of selling his house and he's one of the contracts or offers that we are currently negotiating and they had in their mind a price. That they wanted to give for the house and we have gotten them twelve thousand five hundred dollars more. And so they're super excited. How does that play into this situation. He's he's super anxious super nervous. A I want it now kind of guy and he's he's well aware of the temptations and when we even sat down and did the listing agreement talked through all of this he said I want you to know my my initial reaction is just going to be get to get things done as soon as possible. Now. Whatever offer comes in. Let's take it. And so we were having a conversation last night when the offer came in came in twelve five lower and he was inclined to. Don't you scare them off don't you scare em off. I don't you get greedy I don't want to get greedy and I say you know look let's let's think about this from a different vantage point and let's let's define greed. So we sat there on the phone while we're negotiating right we with. I mean this is either what we do or we don't do. And so we sat there we defined greed and we defined negotiation and what those two things look like. And then I asked him to come to a conclusion are we being greedy to which it was.   [00:39:59] No.   [00:40:00] This is this is the art of negotiation. This is this is what we are here to do. We are here to get you the best deal. Just like the other agent who put together the original offer is aiming to do with their clients. And I think that at the end of the day everybody could sit down at closing table and shake hands and say wow this is such a smooth great transaction. We got a great deal you got a great deal and and define greed in very realistic terms to him. So you know if we went back at X price and we took this this and this off the table then I think we would probably be meeting the definition of being greedy right. Well we had already in our minds decided what would be acceptable reasonable and we were operating within that Metro during. Very one you know one recent scenario I think that faith has played itself out especially with another believer.   [00:40:58] Mm hmm. So can you imagine building your real estate business without Christ   [00:41:06] Absolutely not. No. I can't. I can't imagine living today apart from Christ in our accountability group. This morning we were just talking about whether there's or I was talking about whether there's much to do whether there's little to do with those big tasks or menial tasks. I desperately need Christ so to answer your question. Not a chance. I'd look around at colleagues in our community and I see how they operate do business. And it's very alarming it's something to pray for and but for the grace of God there goes me. I would be doing the same things had not God chase me down pin me down declared me his son.   [00:41:58] You know I have a friend over in Texas who's an agent and he's a high volume producer and he's always frustrating.   [00:42:05] Frustrated and complains whenever we talk that he can't do what his competitors are doing. His competitors are hiring telemarketers calling all through the neighborhoods. He said Those people are on Do Not Call list they are violating laws and my integrity my relationship with the Lord. At least that's the way I'm interpreting what he's saying. It won't allow me to do that. I am drained. So   [00:42:30] That's absolutely right. And I was reading some 73 the other day and Issa was talking about the prosperity of the wicked and how he had become jealous. Right. You look around and you're like OK I'm selling 30 like I sell on 60 and there were all this fucking crazy stuff. And he goes in and it goes into the house of the Lord and says but I've perceived their end.   [00:42:59] Right. Mm hmm. And   [00:43:03] It's a matter of perspective. It is. There seems to be wrapping up. There seems to be just a real great contentment on your end.   [00:43:12] You want to go from thirty to forty five. You probably like to be higher but there is this I just get the sense of the great contentment with where you are. I think I know the answer but help me and help the listeners understand because I'm sure there are other listeners in that same type of boat there now who are they want to be there. How do you maintain your contentment so that you're content where you are.   [00:43:38] I don't know that I'm qualified to speak of happy I really go I just finished going to the acts of Book of Acts not too long ago and I think it was twenty twenty four policies I count my life as nothing unless I fulfill the ministry that the Lord Jesus was laid before me to do. I think in a very simple way that is and there are other scriptures to support this to that that I am not my son. And if I am in the care of someone else who is it is Zebedee.   [00:44:19] My wife more and is it my boss No I'm in the hands of the father and so if I am there what do I have to worry about. And so just from a very biblical truth simple biblical truth point of view if we are there and we are fulfilling his will for our lives there is nothing to worry about. And again I am ill qualified to speak on the topic and that's not a false humility.   [00:44:52] That's just a reality. Nobody knows me better than myself.   [00:44:56] With the exception of the Lord and He knows how weak and feeble I am. But I also have a a high and grain view of who he is and so I can   [00:45:11] I can rest securely in that.   [00:45:13] That's great. That's really good. Is there anything else you'd like to share anything on your heart. Before we wrap up this call that you just like to. Share with whoever is watching or listening.   [00:45:25] You know I operate in a pretty small town. Like I said we're on the southern most point of Northern Virginia. So we have a some of the richest counties in the entire United States that are just 30 miles drive away. And in our little Culpeper town there's probably about one hundred and fifty agents. There's a lot of competition. And I can't say that I know more than maybe one or two other agents who are Christians. And so that that makes things very difficult for me in many ways that I don't really need to expound upon now. But it's almost like. That it's good to know that there are other men and women out there who love the Lord who are doing this. This kind of business and I would just hope to provide a shred of encouragement to other agents who are out there doing things the right way that the Lord will honor them. And whether that is honored in you know you go from 15 to 30 sales maybe he does it that way. You know what. But there is a very realistic possibility and maybe this isn't. All that appropriate for the end of the year. But that glory may come and eternity as well. But stick to those things which you hold dear and those convictions which you hold dear and don't budge don't mean I'm in full agreement with that.   [00:47:12] Well Brandon thank you so much for being on this call and just sharing your heart and sharing your life. I know you got a lot of busy things right now and you still took time out for this. I do appreciate it.   [00:47:23] Thank you. Appreciate it very much.   [00:47:27] And for those of you watching or listening if you like this podcast please be sure to subscribe to it also like it. And if you want to learn more about us also how to grow your business. Lots of great free content on our Web site and get sellers calling you dot com. So thanks for watching and listening. Have a great day. We. P027  

Today's guest is Chip Conley, the founder of Modern Elder Academy. Rebel hospitality entrepreneur and New York Times bestselling author, Chip Conley disrupted his favorite industry... twice. At age 26 he founded Joie de Vivre Hospitality (JdV), transforming an inner-city motel into the second largest boutique hotel brand in America. He sold JdV after running it as CEO for 24 years, and soon the young founders of Airbnb asked him to help transform their promising start-up into the world’s leading hospitality brand. Chip served as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy for four years and today acts as the company’s Strategic Advisor for Hospitality and Leadership. His five books have made him a leading authority at the intersection of psychology and business. Chip was awarded “Most Innovative CEO” by the San Francisco Business Times, is the recipient of hospitality’s highest honor, the Pioneer Award, and holds a BA and MBA from Stanford University. In today's episode, Brian & Chip Discuss: - What it's like to have your birthday fall on Halloween - Choosing to go to a high school where Chip knew he would be in the minority - Having a very engaged, passionate father who wanted nothing more than for Chip to become a better version of his dad - Starting a hotel brand in one of the worst neighborhoods in San Francisco - How Maslow's Hierarchy has influenced Chip's Leadership & Business Philosophy - Meeting AirBNB Founders & joining the company as both a mentor & an intern - Why today's workforce must embrace the wisdom of our Modern Elders Connect with Chip: Website | LinkedIn Check out Modern Elder Academy: Website Connect with Brian Mohr: Website | LinkedIn We Help Leaders Hire on Purpose: YScouts.com   Chip Conley Podcast Interview   Brian Mohr: [00:07:43] Well ladies and gentlemen welcome to another edition of the Built on Purpose podcast.   Brian Mohr: [00:07:49] I am incredibly excited to have with me today hotelier, author, social alchemist, disruptor, student, sage, and modern Elder the one and only Chip Conley... Chip:   Chip Conley: [00:08:08] What is up man.   Chip Conley: [00:08:10] I am wearing way too many name tags... All different.   Chip Conley: [00:08:17] You know I dig it.   Brian Mohr: [00:08:19] It's a good thing. I guess you've been constantly reinventing yourself or should I say continuing to learn more about who you are and what you're capable of.   Chip Conley: [00:08:29] Thank you. Thank you very much.   Brian Mohr: [00:08:31] Absolutely great to have you. So I want to start off.   Brian Mohr: [00:08:34] You were born on Halloween and I am just so curious. As a guy born on Halloween as a youngster was having your birthday on the same day as Halloween. An exciting thing? Or did it just piss you off that Halloween was robbing you of your special day?   Chip Conley: [00:08:52] I think it meant it meant that my special day meant that I was just a weird kid, you know, everybody and you got dressed up really strangely on this, like "what was all that about" No, I - you know - I have lots and lots of photos of birthdays with people dressed funny and I still have those because every five years I do have a birthday somewhere in the world starting at age 30.   Chip Conley: [00:09:17] And now I'm 58 so I've got the sixtieth coming up soon. But it's been everywhere from Bali to Marrakech and I promise you we do have a master party one night.   Brian Mohr: [00:09:27] I love it. I love it.   Brian Mohr: [00:09:28] So as you as you think back on all of these Halloweens is there any one particular costume of yours that just really brings back me or the most vivid memories as the costume itself.   Chip Conley: [00:09:44] Interesting question.   Chip Conley: [00:09:48] No not quite. I mean I you know. I did show up at one point in what looked like a birthday suit. Like....   Chip Conley: [00:09:55] Nothing. But it wasn't I actually; it was a body double... Gave me a suit, like showed me how to actually create in essence what looks like...   Chip Conley: [00:10:06] A naked body, but it's not my naked body. And I did show up at a birthday party like that once. And the shock factor was enormous. You realize:   Chip Conley: [00:10:16] Oh! Chips wearing something!   Brian Mohr: [00:10:19] I'm sure the looks on people's faces were were pretty priceless.   Chip Conley: [00:10:24] The good times good times.   Brian Mohr: [00:10:25] Thanks for indulging me on that. I'm always curious there's you know you always meet folks who have their birthdays coincide with that with a big holiday and you were the first person I met who was born on Halloween social super curious about that.   Chip Conley: [00:10:41] You know I will say one thing that's interesting Brian is that you know, I live in Mexico for more than half the time. And I was in San Miguel de Ndadaye which is not too far from Mexico City a couple of years ago. And going to the day of the dead which is actually after Halloween. It's in early November and doing the day of the dead experience in Mexico that is how they do their Halloween. Or their post Halloween, right? I mean it's really quite an experience. And I think probably of all the places in the world, there's no place that does that - That period around Halloween day. The dead are better than men in Mexico.   Brian Mohr: [00:11:24] That's awesome. That's awesome. Well that sounds like a whole 'nother conversation we could probably hear.   Brian Mohr: [00:11:30] And I'm really curious, and I want to kind of rewind the clock here, and this may be super interesting or maybe absolutely not an interesting topic but I'm curious when you attended Long Beach Polytechnic... You're enrolled in the PACE program which stands for the program of additional curricular experiences. And having not attended Long Beach Polytechnic or having not been a part of any kind of a program like that: Is there any impact? I'm curious as you think back on the impact that program had on who you are and the experiences that you pursued after you left Long Beach Polytechnic.   Chip Conley: [00:12:12] Oh my gosh wow! Well I appreciate you doing the homework. I've rarely been asked that question or anything close to that. So Long Beach Poly is a famous high school. It's actually where Snoop Dogg went to high school. And Cameron Diaz. And it's pretty famous because it's the number one school in the country for being a feeder school for the NBA and the NFL. So it's a big inner city high school public school. But it's also the number one feeder school for the UC. System in the state of California for the public state universities system. So it's an academically relatively strong place. PACE, my program, was the first graduating class. PACE Was meant to be a way an alternative to bussing. So I'm 58 - this is back in the 1970s. There was a strong desire in us to integrate high schools. And one alternative was to create a bussing program and there are just all kinds of protests around bussing from school. So what long beach did was different. It actually took all of the best programs academically in the school district where there were five high schools and they put them all in the inner city high school. And they said if you want to do college prep programs, you can do it. And we've got great programs but they're all in inner city school. And what that was meant to do was, to sort of - Instead of forcing people to be bussed it was giving choice to say I want to go to school in a neighborhood that is generally not integrated.   Chip Conley: [00:14:00] So I was known as curious white boy is my older nickname.   Chip Conley: [00:14:06] And I would say that's the combination. To answer your question.   Chip Conley: [00:14:08] The two elements to it. Number one is going to high school in an inner city school where I was a minority as a white guy was a great experience because I think all of us in our life need to live in a place for some extended period of time...   Chip Conley: [00:14:23] Where we are the "other." And when I say the other I put that in quotes. The "other" being the person who is not in the majority because it helps students understand and have empathy for what that means. To be in the minority whether it's a woman in a boardroom or a person of color. In most companies or me at AirBNB as an old guy. So I was the "other" by being a white person in a predominately non-white school. And then the PACE program was a really intense college prep program that prepared me well for going to Stanford. And so, you know, you wouldn't expect an inner city high school to have had five or 10 grads be accepted into Stanford but that's exactly what happened because the program was strong enough that this. The Inner city public school system allowed that. So I think it really helped me also get really connected to purpose. My own sense of like... How do I give back? Because I was able to see in an inner city community how so much of society wasn't really giving back to that community. And so for me, one of my chief things I did with my foundation is to have it give money as well as project support to inner city youth programs because of my experience growing up there.   Brian Mohr: [00:15:51] That's awesome. I appreciate you sharing that.   Brian Mohr: [00:15:54] As you finished Stanford, and if my research is accurate, you spent a couple and a half years in the real estate business and from what I gathered it sounds like you realized pretty quickly that that was not where you were going to spend your career and after a couple and a half years you got out of it. Was there anything in particular about the industry or any incidents that you encountered where, you know, that sense of purpose you talk about where you just knew that that wasn't where you were going to dedicate your life's work?   Chip Conley: [00:16:42] You know, I went directly to Stanford undergrad business school so the years you're talking about are after getting an MBA and I felt that business can be very money driven. It's somewhat of a mercenary business on the brokerage side on the development side, etc. and there are some visionary developers and I really admire them and the developer I was working for was moderately visionary. But at the same time it felt like I didn't have enough creativity. What was really fueling my decision that I wanted to take my real estate background and apply it in a more purposeful but also more creative way - was the need to sort of feel I was going to. And to do something that was pioneering that haven't been done before and that's when I decided to start a boutique hotel company in the mid 1980s at a time when boutique hotels were just getting off the ground in the US. And I love the fact that the purpose of the company or the mission of the company is to "bring joy of life." That was also the name of the company in French. I also like the fact that I can use my real estate background, but apply it in a more creative way and also in a way where if I did my job well and our team did their jobs well, we would make people happy and that's really what the hotel business is about. So yeah - that's how I got started. Age 26: got my first boutique hotel and in a bad neighborhood.   Brian Mohr: [00:18:12] Yeah right. Right. Yep. Yep exactly.   Chip Conley: [00:18:16] Yeah.   Brian Mohr: [00:18:26] So at some point I would assume during the early part of you hotel career, you had - please correct me on how the interaction occurred - but you had a chance meeting or a chance connection with a legendary concert promoter Bill Graham and then I think there's somewhat of the story as Bill had impressed upon you that as musicians are coming in and out of San Francisco that there's really isn't a property that psychographs and there was a real opportunity there. I'd love to talk just a little bit about your experience with Bill: What you picked up from him and what kind of a figure he was in your life.   Chip Conley: [00:19:03] So when I was working for the real estate developer for two and half years out of business school, one of the projects that I was assigned to was a potentially joint venture with Bill Graham and his organization to build the Shoreline Amphitheater which is right down your Google headquarters.   Brian Mohr: [00:19:20] Now down near STANFORD UNIVERSITY, Yes.   Chip Conley: [00:19:23] And so the truth is that there was a joint venture that didn't really need us. And so the question was: How are we supposed to be partners with them? And over time I got to know Bill a little bit, and that's when he said listen: "You know what you guys really should do instead of trying to be our partners on this project, is you should try to create a hotel that accommodates musicians on the road." And then he told me why. And that's what led me to saying: "OK you know I'm going to get a broken down motel in the tenderloin of San Francisco which is a tough neighborhood and turn it into a rock n roll hotel called the Phoenix. And that was more than 32 years ago and it became a surprising success against all odds. And led me to creating 52 boutique hotels over the next 24 years. As my role as the founder and CEO of what became the second largest boutique hotel company in the U.S. and yes it certainly was doldrum.   Brian Mohr: [00:20:24] Yeah that's super cool and as I understand it the original name of the Phoenix was Magnolia Court, if I'm not mistaken.   Chip Conley: [00:20:34] You've done your research. Funny, I saw my mom & dad yesterday at the Phoenix. We had an annual owners meeting at the Phoenix yesterday and they're investors and I laughed at my dad and I said that you wanted to call this place Magnolia Court. And I said: "We want to make sure we're in play and that our primary customers - families from the Midwest that were coming didn't say: 'Dad, this is a motel surrounded by hookers & pimps in the neighborhood...this is not where we're going to go' "   Chip Conley: [00:21:08] And so the Phoenix is what we became because it was rising from its own ashes like the mythical bird. The Magnolia Court - My God - it sounds like a place where you go to retire for sure, at least a very nice assisted living facility or something like that.   Brian Mohr: [00:21:34] Yeah, for sure. You know, I don't want to spend too much time on it, but was it hard to have your dad one of the lead investors in the Phoenix? Did that present challenges or was it pretty easy?   Chip Conley: [00:21:46] I mean at first it was very hard because I was young and let's start with that - I was way too young to be doing what I was doing. So having my dad help.. He was a small investor but he was somebody I would bounce ideas off of. But what became clear was there are certain things like traditional business stuff -Yes he was helpful. Anything that related to theoncept of a hotel, what kinds of services were offering, the design of the hotel, the branding of the hotel. All of that... He was so much a fish out of water. And what was problematic was that he didn't really get my vision. And it was almost up to me, the way I thought it was. He didn't have confidence in me or my vision or what I was going to be doing, and it was it was a tough time.   Chip Conley: [00:22:31] You know, we had almost a wrestling match & the hotel staff was watching like "What is going on here?!"   Chip Conley: [00:22:43] But over time it was hard. And my dad you know let's also recognize, I was always in his shadow. Or he was always there right next to me and that was supportive. And yet it was also a little oppressive. And I'm even his Junior, which is another "Chip off the old block" which is part of the reason I have the name Chip.   Chip Conley: [00:23:06] And I went to the same high school as my dad and swam and played water polo there just like he did and went to the same college as my dad - Stanford - and joined the fraternity just like he did. I'm a mathematics major just like he was. I went to business school just like he did. And he was my Boy Scout leader and Eagle Scout and I became an Eagle Scout. And he was my baseball coach and I was a star pitcher. So, bottom line is my dad was ever present in my life. And I would say if he had diluted that by 20 percent it would have been perfect. Because it was a little too much. And yet from those whose fathers were not in their life at all, you know, I would rather have my dad in my life the way he was not in my life at all. But I would say it would have been probably healthier for my dad if he had been about 20 percent less active in my life, because I felt like I was very much on my dad's path.. He wanted me to be a better version of himself. And he even admitted that yesterday we were talking he says: No, I want it. I want you to be a better version of myself."   Chip Conley: [00:24:08] And it's like: "Well if you if you'd said you wanted me to be a different version of yourself that would have been helpful because I was a different version. I was just trying to be a better version of you."   Chip Conley: [00:24:20] Because that would actually have limited my path in so many ways. And as it turns out, I am a better and different version of my dad - I'm both. It didn't have to be an either-or; it could be both.   Brian Mohr: [00:24:32] Yeah, sure. Absolutely. I appreciate you sharing a little of that insight. That's really good stuff.   Brian Mohr: [00:24:40] I want to shift a little bit here and I want to make a reference so Jerry Seinfeld.   Brian Mohr: [00:25:02] I think he's an absolutely brilliant comic and I think so much of his brilliance comes from his keen awareness of paying attention to simple acts of daily life. And, you know, finding the humor in the daily things and I want to draw an analogy because I think in many ways your leadership follows a similar path - at least what I've seen and read and experiences I've had - Where you have looked to your frameworks like Maslow's hierarchy and instead of recreating the wheel you're finding what is a Truth. You adopt them and then figure out: "All right. How can I leverage this framework as the way to run a business?" And you talk about joie de vivre the joy of life and to bring a sense of joy to the people that you're serving. To me, using Maslow's hierarchy makes so much sense, but I'm curious. What might seem like common sense to some is very uncommon to many. So my question is: When did you know or how did you know to simply look for these common sense frameworks and use them as the basis from which to grow everything that you've been involved in?   Chip Conley: [00:26:20] First of all, thank you Brian - I appreciate that. For me, I am a voracious learner and reader. So I like to constantly learn new things feed and feed my head. So I'll just give a couple examples using Maslow and Viktor Frankl. So with Maslow - I took one psychology class in college. I liked it but I didn't do anything beyond that. I do rememberin one classs that the guy who had the halo around his head as a psychologist was Maslow because most that most psychologists were focusing on neuroses and deficits as I was focusing on best practices and human behavior and what we learn. From them created this hierarchy of needs theory. So when I was struggling in the dot com bust we were the largest hotelier in the SF Bay Area. At that point we had 18 hotels in San Francisco alone. That's just in the city. And the city and everything was just falling apart. That's 16-18 years ago. I went to the local bookstore looking for a book or business book saying: "OK, I went out into business school so I learned something, like You know I need a clue right now" and I only after about 10 minutes in the business section I ended up in self-help and psychology and that's when I realized my problems are more serious than just business. And that's where I ended up running into one of massive books and I sat on the floor for two hours reading Maslov. I had to learn this stuff in college and this is really interesting, and I was really applying myself here to have actualisation on the level at the top. To myself, saying like "How can I feel self actualized in a time when I feel completely deflated right now?" And so I bought the book and then reading at night I just said "Well what if if companies are full of humans in masses - here is basically a human hierarchy of needs. How could you apply the same hierarchal image for an individual and apply it to a collective like an organization?" And that's again with my desire to read and learn it's sometimes a matter of reading, learning, and then reapplying it in a new way. And we took Maslow's pyramid, five old tiers, and turned it into a three level transformation pyramid to apply that hierarchy of needs principle and sort of paradigm to employees customers and investors who are our three most important stakeholders in our company. And ultimately we tripled in size in the dot com bust which was a big surprise to everybody because everybody said we were a goner we were the biggest foothold in Bay Area. Kimpton and Schrager who are two biggest boutique competitors were losing hotels to the banks & turning some hotels going into bankruptcy. And instead we know we did really well and it was partly because of this theory which ultimately led me to reading a book called: "Peak: How Great Companies get their Mojo from Maslow." And then a few years later, you know the great recession once again it was a Jewish psychologist who actually came out of it out of the woodwork...   Chip Conley: [00:29:38] And you know on the library shelf it was like "OK I'm going to read that "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, a guy who had been in a concentration camp in World War II and apply it to myself. And that's how I sort of got reacquainted with the idea of:   Chip Conley: [00:29:53] "How do you find meaning in the darkest of times?" And for anybody who's who's having a difficult time and lamenting, you know reading Frankl's "Man's Search for Meaning" about what it was like to be in a concentration camp and you'll realize that you are you are just in your pity pot because your life is probably not bad compared to what he was going through and the people he was in the camp with. But his books are very very powerful books and it lead to me reading a book called "Emotional Equations." And led to me just sort of start looking at how do we apply emotional intelligence in a more fundamental way in leadership in organizations. And that's what I did in my company and that's ultimately what I used when I went to AirBNB.   Brian Mohr: [00:30:38] Yeah let's talk about that. It's a perfect segue.   Brian Mohr: [00:30:42] You know I'd love to hear how did you originally connect with AirBNB as a gender neutral team there and you know clearly this sense of value from all of your experience and your your building of emotional intelligence and as you talk about that exchange of Iike EQ for DQ and I'll let you explain it. You know, how did you meet the team? How did you guys decide that this was a good idea? And how did you find your way through with the maze?   [00:31:21] Yeah I mean, it was funny - when I read "Man's Search for Meaning" I read it at a time when I was struggling and it made me really realize I needed to sell my company which is a hard thing. You know when you start a company at age 26 you can run it for 50 or 60 years and 24 years into it, it's like"You know what I'm over this. I need to move on." It was a hard thing to do but I did and a couple of years later as I was in a new era, there's a great great quote from Robert De Niro in a movie where he says "Musicians don't retire, they quit when there's no more music left inside of them." And I think that really was appropriate for me I was 52 I knew there was a lot of music inside of me but. And that was when six years ago Brian Chesky Co-Founder of AirBNB and CEO approached me and said I'd love to have you be my intern and in-house mentor and help us become a hospitality company because we're a small tech company that's growing fast but we have no hospitality or travel industry people in the company. So I delved quite deeply into helping run the company with those three and a senior leadership team that helped. To work with them ws a full time job and what it taught me quickly when I was as much as I was the mentor - I was older than everybody else, twice the age the average person in the company - but I was the intern as much as I was the mentor. Yes I had a lot of wisdom around hospitality and leadership and strategy. I had a strategy for the company as well. But I didn't know a damn thing about technology. Didn't know a lot about millennial travel habits, didn't know much about the Silicon Valley tech world of investors, and so often I was learning as much as I was teaching. And so it led ultimately that coined the term in the company people started calling me "The Modern Elder" and the modern elder is different than a traditional elder in the sense that the modern elder is as much a curious learner as they are a wise teacher. And it's that combination of curiosity and wisdom that makes them relevant and elder. The past is all about you give reverence to your elders. But no one does that anymore in Western society. So it's about having relevance and relevance allows you to use your wisdom but apply it to modern day problems. And so that's what I did. And EQ for DQ that you mention is I traded my emotional intelligence for their digital intelligence. And the truth is that power is moving 10 years younger in most companies and we're all going to live ten years older and so all of a sudden create a 20 year irrelevancy gap. If powers were younger and were going to live older and that's what I've tried to do in terms of those speeches I have been giving and the book I wrote which is called "Wisdom at Work: The Making of a Modern Elder."   Chip Conley: [00:34:23] And then the Modern Elder Academy which we created in Mexico.   Brian Mohr: [00:34:27] So I want to hang on this for a minute and specifically talk about - I'm not sure if there's a better word for it so feel free to jump in here - ageism and what is happening within the workforce right now. I think we are in the most fiercely competitive labor market certainly in the last 20 years if not longer. And you know with great technology and platforms out there like LinkedIn that have certainly proliferated the resume and you can find people and learn about what they're up to at the same time. You know you've got photos on there and people are making judgment calls based upon college graduation dates or what their photo looks like or the number of years of experience and you know whether we want to believe it or not people are discriminating. I'm curious: what have you learned or what did you learn from the AirBNB experience and what are you learning from the Modern Elder Academy as you are working with individuals that have had and gained such amazing wisdom and continue to share it but maybe are running up against these invisible brick walls?   Chip Conley: [00:35:43] Yeah. Yeah great question. And yes ageism is the last form of socially acceptable bias in our society. Now the others still exist but they're less socially acceptable and we laugh about, we joke about, eccentric such a senior moments etc. And the truth is let's be honest that there are certain things as we age that don't get better with time. And other things do get better. What we've tended to do as a society is have a societal narrative that gets very fixated on what doesn't get better without focusing on what does. Let me use a specific example so it doesn't sound too abstract. As we get older our recall memory and our quickness with our mind isn't as good as it was say 25 years earlier. Fine. But what a lot of people don't know is there are a series of studies as shown in the last five to seven years. As you get older you're more adept at doing what I call the left-brain right-brain tango which means you actually have all wheel drive. You're better at being able to move from logical to artistic and back and forth and do that. Left brain right brain which what why is that valuable. It allows you to be more holistic in synthetic meaning - being able to synthesize things in your thinking. It allows you to get the gist of something faster. It allows you to actually tap into your intuition and use it in a more fundamental way. So what does that mean for a company? Well if you have somebody who's older who's got a great ability to get the gist of something, there's someone who actually doesn't get caught in the weeds. And that is exactly my role. I mean all this I've learned since joining AirBNB six years ago but it's exactly true of what happened to me. I joined and was like "Oh my gosh 30 strategic initiatives why don't we just have like four - let's get clear about what the four are what essential what's important what's good." So that's the kind of thing.   Chip Conley: [00:37:58] So the point is that we have a narrative in society that much says as people get older, the best times are behind them and in some ways that's true if you're talking about the playing field of your body that may be true. If you're talking about the playing field of how much money you make a year salary wise you top out at age 45 in the tech industry and age 50 in the general population so when it's 55 or later you're late probably making less salary.   Chip Conley: [00:38:31] But your emotional intelligence gets better with time: your ability to synthesize and have wisdom can get better with time etc. So what's my answer to the ageism society? Number one is is to go out and give lots of speeches write books like this one and try to help people see the value in intergenerational collaboration. I'm not suggesting we go back to the era where we revere our elders. That's not coming back but I'm also saying that diversity of all kinds is valuable in the workplace and we are very familiar with diversity of gender and race and sexual orientation but there's a lot less familiarity with gender of age and cognitive diversity which sometimes has nothing to do with age. Can be about neuro-diversity but often age is an element of cognitive diversity in the sense that you get somebody at the table who's going to look at things a little differently and that means you have less likelihood for group think. Finally I'll say one last thing on this subject which is I was talking with a well-known executive recruiter not long ago. And she said to me something really interesting s- she said "You're right if you just get caught up in the robots, the artificial intelligence looking at your resume you're in trouble because people perceive you as older and that could be a problem." So you have to use soft contacts -sometimes people who know people to get in the door. Or actually go to a networking event or things like that. But she says the key thing to know is this: when you do have that face to face time which will happen occasionally, the key thing to know is that when you are curious and passionately engaged your wrinkles start to evaporate and what people notice is not your face and it's wrinkles what they notice is your energy, and if you've got that kind of passionate energy that people want to sort of feel a part of it becomes a bit magnetic. You can overcome people sort of looking at you and judging you based on your age. And that's probably true of any bias we out there but the truth is I think it's more frankly for someone with age in terms of those two qualities: curiosity and passionate engagement.   Brian Mohr: [00:40:49] So as you think about the team you built at the Modern Elder Academy and having folks on board like a resident Shaman and a yoga and meditation teacher and massage therapy are the folks who are enrolling in the academy embracing with open immeditely? Is there some resistance given that some of things like - I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that some of the folks coming to the academy may know what a Shaman is in principle or in theory but having one is probably a new experience for some of these folks.   Chip Conley: [00:41:32] That's optional. No one has to work on that. That's an optional added benefit.   Brian Mohr: [00:41:42] Got it. Got it got it. So really meeting people where they're at and allowing them to pursue what they believe is going to create the most impact for them.   Chip Conley: [00:41:50] Yep yep yep. So I think that first of all, the key thing that people need to know is that they are not alone. And first of all one of the biggest surprises of the academy has been the following. That people are showing up at a much younger age than I thought. So almost 20 percent of the people who apply are are people under 45, when it was originally said there was a 45 to 65 year age range. But what we found is we've had people as young as 30 and people as old as 74 in the program. But we've had between five and 10 percent of our actual grads at this point have been in their 30s. So people are feeling a little irrelevant in their 30s or have a desire to sort of somehow start to cultivate their wisdom. The average age is about 52. So these are not people who are elderly. There are people who are at a stage where they may be an elder in a more relative term in the sense than it typically means. You are older than the people that surround you, so if you're a 35 year old surrounded by 20 year olds which is how it is many tech companies, you could be an elder. The key that we do at the academy is we help people frame their mindset, but on a personal level in terms of the actual world nd then also from the perspective of the societal narrative on Aging. The thing that's really interesting, Brian, is that there's a ton of evidence and a lot of them made this about the curve of happiness. There's even a book that we came out last year called "The Happiness Curve" that's quite good. And the happiness curve shows the following across all societies except Russia. Russia is the only one that's a little bit of an aberration. But across all societies on the planet, there is a huge curve of happiness where people start seeing a decline in their happiness that goes from about age 28 to about age 45 to 50 and then it bottoms out around 45 to 50. And then it starts getting better and people in their 50s are happier in their 40s. People in their 60s are happier than the 50s and people in their 70s are happier than in their mid-60s. There's a bunch of reasons for this but it's not actually woven into our societal narrative on aging. So that final narrative on aging is you hit midlife you have a crisis. You don't love your life as it is then you actually go out and, you know, have an affair and buy a sports car or whatever you do and then you get through the crisis. But on the other side of midlife is aging which is awful. It's for decrepitude and disease. And that's what people know and when we actually start introducing some action, some research - scientific information that helps people to understand that a new narrative that they could add a new mindset that they could actually adopt it it helps them to see I have some wisdom that I've learned along the way that it can be applicable. In a whole new industry that might be a better habitat for for me because. I am in you know I'm a I'm a computer engineer and I spent 20 years doing it but now I'm in my 40s and I feel. You know over the hill. But I've learned team collaboration skills and I've got to tell you those companies are full of really smart technology people but they're full of teams too. So maybe I start shifting my skill set to being a team leader. More than that the individual contributor is a rock star as an engineer.   Brian Mohr: [00:45:55] So as a tech entrepreneur, since so much of this modern elder philosophy came from the experiences you had with AirBNB, Is there any advice that you would want to deliver to tech entrepreneurs who are brilliant in the products or services that are creating the technology that they're building but have yet to have that realization that there's this massive massive well or reservoir of elder talent - modern older talent that they can tap into to help them with building teams, collaboration, focusing on whittling down 30 key strategic initiatives... How do you help them realize that they need this when they are so smart smart and maybe you just haven't had those laps around the track - help them realize?   Chip Conley: [00:46:43] The thing I'll say to them is the same to anybody is: do not hire people who are just like you. I mean your natural tendency is to do that because you like them, you're socially adept with them, and they agree with you a lot of the time. But actually go beyond that. Because I understand the age side of things: maybe somebody who has some experience. The thing I would also say is don't hire somebody who's just stuck in the past. If you're hiring somebody because they actually just tell you the way they always would have done it or they don't have a curiosity and an appetite for learning - that's not a modern elder, that's just sort of an older person who's trying to sort of live on the fumes of their past. So I think what's really important is to look at people, especially - let's say your technology is disrupting an industry like health care, and you know health care deserves to be disrupted because nobody likes the industry and all that's true. But that means maybe you should go out and hire a really serious modern elder. From the industry. He's got a big Rolodex and I know you don't know what that means.   Both: [00:47:57] --Laughter--   Chip Conley: [00:48:00] But they also know how the industry works - that person while they are wedded to that if they're wedded to the past and they don't really believe in their technology, then don't hire them. I believed in Bryan and in AirBNB as a disruptor in the lodging industry. Not to actually take over the hotels. The good news is I'm still here. I still own hotels. I just don't manage the company but I still own the real estate of hotels. So I didn't think that AirBNB was going to come in and just ruin the hotel industry. So you know, it was easy for me to be part of a disruptor that I knew was going to still keep me in the industry, and intact in general.   Chip Conley: [00:48:37] But the new way of doing things would actually help maybe improve innovation in an industry. So that's what you want to look for. How do you find those people? Maybe ask your parents, they may be an alma mater in common and you might need to actually go out and literally look for that person.   Chip Conley: [00:48:57] If you've got a venture capitalist or an investor involved you might sort of say to them: "You know what? I want to hire somebody as our head of strategy that I actually want them to frankly be 10 to 15 years older than me." Let's look for that and not only exclusively deals for anybody exclusively based on a demographic. That's a very dangerous path to be going on but you can say that you want some of the following experiences as well. And so. Long story short is that this is part of what a lot of younger people don't think about as a possibility. Partly because they feel like they don't want to hire their parent. Or their preacher. And a lot of times that older person is a parent or a preacher and are lecturing most of the time.   Brian Mohr: [00:49:39] You know, that's fantastic advice. So, I saved what I hope would be the best question for last. Are you ready?   Chip Conley: [00:49:51] Yeah.   Brian Mohr: [00:49:51] --Spanish words that this transcriptionist doesn't understand--   Chip Conley: [00:50:05] So actually give it to me in English.   Brian Mohr: [00:50:10] I'll give it to you in English. And this is about the extent of my Spanish.   Chip Conley: [00:50:16] It sounds like it was about listening potentially, or something.   Brian Mohr: [00:50:19] You're super close. The question is I understand you are learning Spanish - How's it going?   Chip Conley: [00:50:31] Yes - Oh, yes yes. I just answered. Still I'm learning Spanish and surfing in my late sixties and I'm enjoying it. But I mean I've only had six lessons for Spanish & my Spanish is better than my surfing.. Clearly it didn't work.   Both: [00:50:42] Laughter   Brian Mohr: [00:51:01] There ya go. It's my pleasure. What an amazing, amazing conversion - my curious white boy friend Chip. Thank you so much for joining us. And I could chat with you for hours. I really appreciate it. Take good care and good luck to you.   Chip Conley: [00:51:10] All right. Thanks. Bye bye.  

"And I say, really, we're not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK? I'm a nationalist." Recently, Trump declared himself a nationalist. Chance and Nick argue that nationalism is little more than blind loyalty, and Eli makes his case that the definition has been distorted.

A discussion of how the "challenges" presented as people with strong religious points of view working in I.T. can be supplemented by our teammates.  Transcript: Leon: [00:00:00] 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 I.T.. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as I.T. professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is technically religious. Josh: [00:00:21] All right. Hey Leon how are you today?   Leon: [00:00:23] I'm doing good. It's happy not frozen Sunday. I know that a podcast is sort of timeless but we're talking about this during the winter and the polar vortex is not in my part of town. How about you?   Josh: [00:00:34] I feel like in Canada it is always cold during the winter. So my my wife says suck it up princess.   Leon: [00:00:46] Right. Exactly. It's like “this is why you moved to Cleveland.” I'm in Cleveland so yeah. Same thing. Yeah.   Josh: [00:00:53] If I was going to pick an island to live on I probably should not have picked one with snow, I probably should have picked one with palm trees. You know lessons learned.  You know looking back at the past is always it it allows us to hopefully make better choices. Which is interesting because making choices is where we're headed today on this podcast. At least that's where I want to head if you're willing to follow along.   Leon: [00:01:16] I'm always happy to follow you if nothing else to to watch and see what happens.   Josh: [00:01:21] That's what I love. I love to hear it. So in fact just this morning Leon I was I was reading the e-mail that I sent you before I interviewed with you and the rest of the team before you hired me.  And then abandoned me but we'll get into that story later.   Leon: [00:01:38] He's not bitter.   Josh: [00:01:38] I'm not bitter at all. It's all right.  And I realized how flippant my email was to you it was like "Hey Leon you know let me introduce myself here's who I am." And I knew you by reputation and I also knew that you were Jewish. But I have a little story to share with you. Once you hired me and once I finally met you although I knew that you were Jewish I was surprised by how Jewish you were. Does that sound weird or what?   Leon: [00:02:09] It it's it's an interesting phrase it's not one that I have not heard before. But yeah you know it's. "Oh you're very Jewish. You're really..." Yeah it's so yeah I'm for those people listening I'm Orthodox Jewish. So that's the most observant. I think that's the the probably clearest way to put it. And if you've never seen a picture of me I have a nice bushy beard and I have this funny little hat on the top of my head called I kippa or yarmulke, and I have little fringy strings hanging out of my pants and all sorts of things. It's all the things.   Josh: [00:02:44] Yeah. And I think that that's what struck me. You know my idea of Judaism was probably skewed to the polar ends. And so when I first met you I thought Wow. Leon is really Jewish.   Leon: [00:02:59] He's reallly... Wow.   Josh: [00:03:00] Yeah like it should have been something that I knew but I didn't know it. And. In the same vein in context I was born and raised a Mormon. And we'll get into that a little later so I'm used to people being a little surprised when they interact with you and they're like oh you're Mormon right.   Leon: [00:03:22] Yeah yeah. So I think that that one of the underlying ideas for this entire podcast is that we've all had that experience of "Oh oh you're really... you're REALLY this thing" like whatever this thing is like.  It's not just a word that you use or dance around like you really are into it. And how do we make our career in I.T. and our interactions. So from my side you know you had mentioned that you were Mormon and I had worked with other people who are Mormon so I had an idea but it really wasn't until we had struck up this friendship and then I abandoned you. But we can't we remained friends. Let's you know got to be in that light on that and yet and possibly you know you never know maybe because of you know it could have really that could've been what saved our friendship. So that we had a chance to dive into it and I think what I want to talk about is the first time that we realized that this relationship of you know you're you know being very Jewish and very Mormon could be synergistic not just interesting in the sense of oh we have you know we're we're co religionists we are both deeply devoted to a faith and we're working in I.T. and we can have lunch conversations not just that stuff but that it actually is symbiotic. So I think what happened. So again for those people listening I live in Cleveland. Josh lives in Canada and we were both working for a company that was in neither of those two places. So every once in a while we would travel down to the Home Office and of course to be in lots of meetings and lots of after meeting events. There'll be lots of parties and hey let's all go out and let's go whatever. And we found ourselves pretty quickly I think thrust into the middle of you know beer and wings and da da da. And you know, I keep kosher.   Josh: [00:05:20] And I don't drink.   Leon: [00:05:21] And for whatever reason possibly because we were both the two out of towners we ended up like glomming on to each other more than than usual I guess. And so we were driving there and I think in the car we had this conversation about. "Yeah it's... this is interesting isn't it?" Like what are you gonna do about it. And so we walked into the venue of whatever it was and we made it... First of all walking in was you know is this a punchline to a joke? A dude a Mormon walk into a bar right. And and we immediately announced to everybody. "Okay so here's the deal. He's gonna eat my chicken wings because they weren't kosher. I'm going to drink his beer, and he's driving home." And as we said it and as we joked about it I realized no really this is how it works. You know that my limitations in this case keeping kosher and making everybody feel very uncomfortable about all of my food habits just constantly is like is mitigated by the fact of you know, there's food and you know they'd hand us plates and I would simply hand him I didn't have to say no I didn't have to refuse it. I just handed Josh my plate. There we go. You know and they'd hand coupons you know beer coupons and Josh would hand me the beer coupon or whatever it was right.   Josh: [00:06:39] Yeah. And I think that that is a really powerful first. I think it speaks to your personality and all of water with all my own personality. And that we found some differences. We found some about Mormonism and Judaism although they are similar. Up until you know you get to the New Testament they're really different religions. Yeah I have you know I have some food restrictions or had some food restrictions as a Mormon. I had some beverage restrictions and so we both had to confront those things and we also had to learn how to not only be friends but also to cohabitate in the same technical space. And it worked so wonderfully. And that to me that's a real testament Leon of how things can and should work. You know so often we walk into a situation at work and we look for the way that we can stake out claim at work the way the way that we can differentiate ourselves and be extremely different. What you and I without even practicing it or having any concept of what we were doing we made synergy where there could have been opposition. You know I could have said well you know she's why doesn't that Leon guy like bacon I love bacon.   Leon: [00:08:01] Tom we're looking at you Tom. I've got one of my co-workers as loves but he does not he does not bacon shame me. But he there's definitely moments where you know there's like "well but how come. Can you?" "No, no I can't."   Josh: [00:08:17] I feel like with Tom that it's again one of those synergistic things because he doesn't view you as competition and getting to the bacon right.   Leon: [00:08:23] No that's true. Yes. He gets to eat my bacon. It's. Yeah. And I get to save his bacon so... It's interesting you mentioned Tom. So another one of those synergy moments and that's obviously the theme of this podcast is so Tom was at work and it was the end of the year and people were trying to figure out their their time off at work. You know there's a lot of overlap but you know you can't leave the office empty, bereft of staff. So there's a lot of chess-playing where people say "oh but I need this day", "Oh but I really need this day." But my kids are off." Well my kids are off too" "But I'm going out of town who's going to cover what. And one of our co-workers looked at Tom and was saying "Well all the rest of you folks are off. How come you're all able to take off and you're not worried about it?" And Tom looked and said, "Because we have Leon"  The other person was about to argue and then she went, "oh!" Because end of year my kids are still in school. My wife is still at work. I'm generally working. Like the end of year Christmas, New Year's is not really a thing in my house. So when people were saying I need this time off I was able to say "oh I'll cover it no problem." You know like I prefer it because I need to use those days at other times. So that's where again the the strength-weakness balance is you know this wonderful you know synergy between team members.   Josh: [00:09:57] So that's interesting thing early on that worked out really well for you and for your team. How do we how do we help other people to find that same synergy? Do you have any recommendations. Was it just something that happened naturally for you or else you have to work at it?   Leon: [00:10:14] Ok so as an Orthodox Jew there's you know there's certain things that are clear like I am you know I'm going to be working for everyone you know Christmas Easter you know those kinds of holidays they're not my holidays. So why would I take those? Even though they're company holidays why would I take those holidays off? That was sort of a no brainer. Of course there are the years that you know Christmas falls on Shabbat in which case now I'm off you know. Now that's that's a whole other thing. But as far as best practices I think that the first thing is to like we do a lot in I.T., stop framing things as is a weakness or a as a gap or whatever it is. Start to look at it as it as an opening as an opportunity. I mean I hate to say that, you know, "you think of it as an opportunity!" but think of it as a problem that you can solve creatively and you know in I.T. departments as a team. Talk about it. So just again as an example you know Shabbat is is a thing for me I'm completely off line from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. In the winter as sundown can hit at 4:30 in the afternoon. So that means that my Fridays are automatically cut short because as soon as sundown hits I can't touch anything with an on or off switch. And I do need to be at synagogue. So you know around 3 o'clock, 2:30 I'm already looking at the door I'm already like "I gotta get going here. So that means that on call is really a challenge. And for a long time I looked at it as this weakness like how am I supposed to maintain a career in I.T. if you know I can't do on call if I can't take the pager? Like what are my co-workers..? And finally I just... didn't break down emotionally, but I sort of broke down my pride and I said I said to the team. "All right what do I do about this?" And it was wonderful and it was heartwarming that the rest the team said "Are you kidding? All right! I'll take your Saturday will you take my Sunday?" "Sure I'll take two of your Sundays for every one... set like that." And all of a sudden the team was really willing to cut you... like "oh I only have to take a day?" The jobs I'm thinking of you carry the pager for one or even two weeks in a row. And people were more than willing to cover for a single day if it meant that I was going to cover one of their days in a tight spot elsewhere. So I think really the first and foremost is to have a conversation with the team. I think because I know in talking to long hear that don't talk... First of all don't talk to H.R. about it not saying H.R. is bad, but H.R. isn't going to help you at all. They don't have the tools to help you and don't even talk to your manager. Again. You don't have to leave your manager out, but the first place to stop is with your team and see if your team comes up because at that point most of the managers I've worked for and and most of the companies I've worked for. They actually don't care how it gets done as long as it gets done.   Josh: [00:13:14] Yeah absolutely. And I love that. I love that that worked out well for you.  I've been on teams where things haven't always worked out well especially when you go to the manager because their job is to just fix things and move on and they see they see religious observance interfering with the execution of a job as a nuisance not that they aren't religious themselves or that they don't have respect for your religious observation. They just, that's not on the critical path for them. And I love how this how this has worked out so well for you so many times when we walk into these situations with our teams we think we have to solve all the problems and you reached out to people that were on your team and said "hey help me solve this challenge in my career." And it turned out to be a wonderful thing that that to me it goes to the importance of having diversity on our teams. You know you're Jewish. I am Mormon. But it's beyond just you know a white Jewish guy and a white Mormon guy right.  If we add in visible minorities of any flavor I love I love having women on my team and right up until I was 18 years old I only had women for four managers. It was this odd thing that happened to work out and I think it changed the way that I approach people being on my team and how I interact with folks because I learned from women what the workplace was supposed to be like instead of having to learn that from men. So I think we should explore that in a future podcast episode where we we talk about team diversity and the value that it brings.   Leon: [00:14:55] Ok. I'm doing a Trello card for that right now.   Josh: [00:15:00] We are Trello dorks. We admit it. And though I know that you talk an awful lot Leon. And you will I understand that. That's OK. Have you got any final advice on on this podcast for our listeners about how to build that synergy.   Leon: [00:15:20] Again I think I think conversation really is the is the key. Like like we both said conversation with a team thinking of things as... Here's I guess here's another thing that it it very well may be your weakness. You know it very well may be a a flaw in some way. You know there's there's periods of time during the yearly cycle that you know I'm simply off line for almost a month at a time when you add it all up and that can really mess up the flow of projects, it can mess up the flow of work. But what it also means is it's an opportunity for other team members to show their strengths. It's a chance for other team members to to flex their muscles a little bit that you know and by the way most religious things aren't a shock or a surprise right. "Oh my gosh you mean Pentecost is coming again this year?!? Wow I didn't..." I'm pretty sure Christmas, Easter, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, they're all going to roll around. You know Ramadan is a great example of that. Ramadan comes around every year. You may not exactly know when unless you're clued into the Islamic calendar. But Ramadan is going to happen every year, and every year your Muslim coworkers are gonna have an entire month where they're not eating from sunrise to sundown. Please, please do not bake you know popcorn in the in the microwave in the office. So that that person has to sit there with this permeating smell and they know that they're not gonna be able to eat for another five hours or drink or anything like that's just you know... So you're absolutely right that. That these things are from the perspective of the of the religiously observant person sort of a challenge. But at the same time it's an opportunity for the rest of the team to show their strength, you know to be able to say actually we're going to cover your last hour at work so you can get home and be ready for sundown so that when, you know, at the end of the day during Ramadan you're right there with your family able to you know break the fast and eat.   Josh: [00:17:34] And that is so powerful when we serve other people, which in both of our religious observances is an extremely powerful thing right? Serving someone extends to them an indication that you respect them, that you love them, that you care for them, and not just care for them from a distance, but that you're willing to completely engage with them and say "hey listen I recognize what's important to you because I've listened, that your family and your faith are important, and I'm willing to sacrifice something in my life so that you can be successful with your faith and your family." That, to me, that's the definition of a of an amazing team. People who are willing to make those sacrifices for each other. It's not every man every man or woman for themselves. It is literally... I'm willing to I'm willing to fall on his sword to jump on the proverbial hand grenade.   Josh: [00:18:29] Wow. Right now OK that's a little extreme. Ok I'm going to reframe this in an I.T. context. OK you are much better at data analysis and database analytics than I am. OK? You just take a bath in data and you love that stuff. So why would I if I'm struggling with something why would I not say this is just not my thing. You know I'm not really good at it. I focus in this other area. Josh can you give me a hand and you, Josh, are like "Give you a hand? Are you joking? I love this stuff. Thank you for giving me the chance to do this!" So you know you know I've worked in offices where some people are like I hate rush hour. I just hate it. And I actually you know you just gave me a reason to stay at work until five thirty whatever I'm going to cover for Leon. This is like I'm giving back to Leon to cover for for him because he needs to get home. But at the same time I'm able to justify why I'm not going to fight and now my drive home is 15 minutes instead of 40 minutes because I missed all the traffic, and I feel good about myself and what I did. So it's not exactly falling on a grenade!   Josh: [00:19:42] Have you seen some of the data sets I've had to work with? Definitely  grenade.   Leon: [00:19:46] All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. (conversation fades out)   Leon: [00:19:49] Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of technically religious. Visit our web site: TechnicallyReligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect us on social media.   Josh: [00:20:01] Until next time remember: I'll eat your wings...   Leon: [00:20:03] ...and I'll drink your beer.  

Today's episode is a follow up to last week's Disney theory. Are all the Pixar movies connected? Who is the witch in Brave? What year does Inside Out take place? Why are there so many questions? There aren't any more questions. BOOM. Game changer. Ok I'm done writing this description. Douglas doesn't know what I'm typing right now. Douglas you smell. Today's podcast is brought to you by Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida.

This week we learn that some of Auston's 50 movie might be full of bs movies. Ok I'm just picking on Auston about this but some of the movies are crap. So we talk about Walking dead like always. I bet you all cant wait for the half season break to come right about now. We also talk fantasy football and Stan Lee. Josh rubs in the fact that he went to see Hamilton last week. This week we place music from B.A.G. (Blimes & Gab) and Blimes Brixton. Links below enjoy your week. YouTube: goo.gl/SnC8Kk Instagram: www.instagram.com/itshouldntbethishardpod/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/ItShouldntBeThisHard Email us at itshouldntbethishardpodcast@gmail.com Spotify Playlist: goo.gl/EiqiVa Anchor.fm: goo.gl/XzzR5Q Google Play Music: goo.gl/pe4mnt Stitcher: goo.gl/3RpbV3 iTunes: goo.gl/Zkt9Vj

In a week that has seen Lewis Hamilton win yet another F1 world championship, we ask what is the world coming to when the president of the United States can call himself a nationalist?Last week, Trump declared himself a "nationalist" at a campaign rally in Houston. "You know, they have a word. It sort of became old-fashioned. It's called a 'nationalist.' "You know what I am? I'm a nationalist, OK? I'm a nationalist." What does that mean in 2018? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

There's something between the New York summer holiday location and the moving footpath. At time of writing this author is yet to know (for the first time!). I'm off to listen! Ok I'm back. Had a listen - great episode. And, ah yeah, here's the answer if you're wondering - untappedcities.com   Somehow Related is produced by Nearly, a podcast network. The robot's voice comes from Google Home. They're pretty good. Original theme music by Kit Warhurst. Artwork created by Stacy Gougoulis.   Find a new podcast! The Clappers - Pop culture insights with Karl Quinn and Andrew Young The Debrief with Dave O'Neil - Dave gives a comedian a lift home from a gig. 10 Questions with Adam Zwar - The same 10 questions with answers that vary wildly.

Running 1000 miles, 135 miles, 100 miles, 50 states, 50 marathons, and just loving adventure.  Ok I'm a fan. I'm not gonna lie, I had so much fun talking with Peter before, during, and after our recording. He lives life to appreciate the small things like a beautiful owl or tweety bird, but loves to go big on adventure to feel complete too. We dig into running/hiking the Iditarod on foot for 1000 miles over 26 days to not only complete, but to win it. Touch on depression, his public speaking, and way of life. Be careful listening to this one, you might have to quit your job and go for a month long race....  

Interview – Gene Frederick In today’s episode we have Gene Frederick, a current member of eXp Realty’s Board of Directors. After getting into real estate in 1984, Gene worked for a small independent and then transitioned to RE/MAX for a number of years before purchasing his first franchise. Additionally, Gene spent over 21 years with Keller Williams as a manager, team leader and regional owner of six offices across the nation until discovery eXp Realty. In this episode, Gene discusses how he found himself at eXp Realty, a revolutionary real estate brokerage model, why agents love this model, how eXp sustains 8,000 agents and why he compares eXp to Netflix. Learn More about eXp Realty - Click here to watch a quick 7 Minute Intro Video. Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content discussed within this podcast are the opinions of Kevin Cottrell and/or the guests interviewed.  This information is intended as general information only for listeners of the podcast. Listeners should conduct their own due diligence and research before making any business decisions. This podcast is produced completely independently of eXp Realty and is not endorsed, funded or otherwise supported by eXp Realty directly or indirectly.   In this episode Gene’s background in realty and why he transitioned to eXp Why independent brokers are taking a closer look at eXp Realty Why transitioning away from brick and mortar is sustainable The benefits of utilizing a Cloud Office What is a disruptive technology and why it is important The future of real estate from a broker’s point of view Why top agents are joining EXP Resources To contact Gene Frederick, text 703-338-1515 Gene Frederick on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/gene.frederick.750 Tweetables “If you are constantly having to think outside the box, maybe the box needs fixing.”   PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION   KEVIN: Welcome to the show, Gene. GENE: Oh Hi Kevin. How are you? KEVIN: I'm fantastic. So you know before we dive in on eXp Realty and I'm going to ask you some questions specifically about eXp. Why don't you give listeners that maybe don't know your whole story your story leading up to before eXp and then we'll talk a little bit about what made you decide to do what you did before you joined eXp. GENE: Thanks Kevin for having me on today. I really loved telling this story because I've been in real estate since 1984, here in Texas. Most of my career has been in the Dallas- Fort Worth area. So when I got into real estate in 1984 I worked for a small independent and then went to Remax and I was at Remax for quite a few years and then in 1989 I bought my first franchise which was a realty executives franchise owned that for five years in DFW and I sold that in 1994 and in 1994 - Boy these years go fast let me tell you - 1994 my wife and I Susan I were two of the first ten agents to launch Keller Williams in the Dallas area and the first Dallas office. And I spent 21 years almost almost 22 years a little over 21 years with KW until I found out about eXp and that's what I want to talk to you about today. In other words I learned about this three years ago and my story is I was basically... I was basically retired as being a manager and team leader my wife and I both are and the team leader Hall of Fame at KW. We were team leaders for quite a long time, regional directors and we also owned at that time we thought we were retiring Kevin. We owned 6 Keller Williams offices across the nation; 3 in California, two in Texas and one on the East Coast and also a region. We owned the Keller Williams region for Northern California and Hawaii and we were basically retired here. We had moved to Austin, Texas 2010 and a couple of my past agents came up to me one day and said "Could you check out this new model?" And I said sure, I don't have anything to do with you. This will be fun. And a gentleman named Glen Sanford flew into Austin, met with me for a couple of days and it was just awesome to meet Glenn and the new model that he showed me and treat me so much. I spent five months researching it. I flew up to Boston to meet the CEO at the time still our CEO and been our CEO for right now eight years Jason Guessing. He lives in the Boston area and those two gentlemen showed me this new model. And after five months of researching it which is exciting. Not even looking I came back to Susan in the spring of 2015, not quite three years, and I told her I said Susan guess what. She goes "What?" And I said, "Well honey if you knew Netflix existed would you own a blockbuster?" She said, "Of course not." And I said "Well honey, we owned six of them." And she said, "Excuse me." And I said "I just found Netflix and that was the eXp Realty." And it was really funny at that time, it had about 400 agents and with the way Glenn's vision laid out in a way Jason was so convicted and Glenn is such a visionary. Seeing something that could go very very big and revolutionizing the way real estate brokerage was going to be run with agents as owners, not the brokers and owners, and I said Honey I think we got to sell all the blockbusters. And she says oh OK and just see you know Kevin try that out for size after 20 years of marriage and look at that and we're thinking we're just about ready to retire. And I said honey this is going to work. This is really going to work. So in the spring of 2015 we sold our six offices and our region and we join the eXp Realty right around May 1, 2015 and we've been with the company two years and 10 months and I can't tell you why I joined. I mean this is revolutionary to me because if you ever read Malcolm Gladwell's books, you know Tipping Point Blank and one of his books I remember one of the headings was and one of the chapters was if you are constantly having to think outside the box, maybe the box needs fixing. And as the real estate brokerage you know I've owned so many franchises I've been through so much of the franchise world I knew that the franchise world was it didn't just need fixing. It really needed a whole new broker box. And when Glen Sanford showed me this model and said Gene the agents, the agents are going to drive this model, not owners. Actually when I first met him, Kevin it was funny, he said and I looked at it and about a month later I called him up and I said "Glenn, I'm curious how much does Texas cost?" and he goes "Well Jean it's not for sale." So what do you mean it's not for sale. He goes well we're not selling franchises we're going to build through the agents and that's when I knew we had a new box and that excited me to grow through the agents with agents as owners rather than owners having to sign leases having to buy furniture having a certain territory which was to me always very very restricted from the owner's point of view, especially on the money side. So it's been two years and 10 months and I got to tell you it's it's like birthing a baby. It's my same for the last almost three years. Let's make real estate fun again. And I'm just having fun being attracted and what I found out Kevin which is funny. I've got to tell you in May of 2015 I started interviewing people in Austin, Texas. This is where I live. I had 20 interviews. Let me ask you this guess how many people of the 20 people and by the way are twenty one on one interviews 18 signed up. Guess how many of those 20 people asked me where the physical office was going to be. None of them. Not one not one. And that's when I went. Why are we building blockbusters. You know there was a reason in the 80s in the 70s that we went to a physical office right. There was a reason before the internet that we had phone numbers attached to the sign that we all funneled into one area and had phone time where agents we went into the back room and answered phone calls from people that drove by signs. And since the invention of course the Internet and the smartphone you know we have agents putting their smartphone number or whatever number they want to have called and straight into that. And there is no longer a reason for that physical office. By the way I had to 18 for 20 the first month. Of the two that did not join, one joined a month later and the other one joined like nine months later and that's when I came back to Susan I said Susan "This is it. This is the next real estate brokerage model that's going to work because I've never been 20 for 20 ever in my real estate career". By the way those were all all productive agents not news agencies are productive agents. KEVIN: You know the interesting thing about that is when you look at coming out of a franchise system you know you were doing that when the company had realistically about four or five hundred agents when you started right. GENE: Yes exactly. KEVIN: And so people like you and Mitch Riback and others have done a lot of heavy lifting. Right. The company is only you know was founded in 2009. At this point it's a whole different world isn't it. GENE: It's so funny because I look back on it. In fact I've got to tell you a story even today it's just makes so much sense to me. I texted, didn't text I actually did a workplace message to our founder our visionary Glenn Sanford today. I said glad you remember two years ago I said I got to tell you. February 29th which was a leap year two years ago. That was 2016. We're talking right now February 28 2018. I said Glen can you remember we were at a restaurant with Debbie and Susan and myself. We were in Austin,Texas at the Oasis Restaurant and Glen had his smartphone out, Kevin. And he was looking at it and I said "What are you looking at,Glenn". He goes "1996 1997 1998." I said "What's that?" He goes It's our agent count and I said we're going to go over 1000 and he goes thousand thousand?. We had a toast and we went crazy. This is just two years ago. So let's fast forward. I said Glenn that night was... To me the hardest thing is getting to 1000 agents just so you know this is 2018 in the first month of January of 2018. We added 1000 agents net every 30 days we're adding over a thousand agents right now. So at the end of 2000 yes, to give you updated numbers, at the end of 2017 we ended up with 6505 agents. Just a little bit over 6500 agents. That was the heavy lifting and now all of a sudden we did a press release just two weeks ago in the middle of February we hit 8000 agents. Kevin that is... and by the way again not with new agents experienced agents. If I had a nickel for every time an experienced agent I talked to says "Where have you all been?" You know when we go to a new town I've never heard of you but where have you been. And I said I don't know I just found them two years and ten months ago. I mean I just found them three years ago. I mean I said I'm like you. I didn't know it existed. But once I saw it I went new model new Model. It's going to work in the book Blink. You know Malcolm Gladwell talks about that there's a blink basically an emotional side of our thinking process. I'm very analytical because Kevin I used to be a financial analyst before I got in real estate. So I have more spreadsheets than anybody on earth. I love thinking analytically but when I saw this model my blink my emotional output was I went this is going to work and it has. And it's just exciting to me to have the Amazon of real estate in fact Stefan Swann Poole, the famous writer consultant that talks about real estate all throughout our industry in 2013. He did an article about us 2013. What a visionary he was. He says these guys are the Amazon of real estate and I don't think the bricks and mortar franchise owners understood what he was talking about. Well, I'm living. KEVIN: What's interesting about that is you talk about the momentum adding 1000 agents a month. It really I want to talk about a couple of different demographics and let you give me your opinion on why you think it's occuring you know Mitch Ryback and Florida was one of the first larger independent brokers that converted into eXp and at this point you myself and a number of other people at eXp are having conversations every week with independent brokers. Why do you think independent brokers have suddenly woken up and go I need to look at eXp realty. GENE: Well there's two things to me. Number one the Bricks and Mortar models the Bricks and Mortar model is dead Kevin. And when I say that if you are running a real estate brokerage especially independents it's hard to get over that 50 75 100 agents, right. You can't hit a level where you just stay there. I see so many of the firms and they think they're going to get to 500 agents or 400. They don't want to do franchises because they understand how hard that is and also pain that franchise fee off the top doesn't make sense to them and really 55% of our industry according to NAR I think at least 55 percent, over 50 percent is independent brokers. So they've struggled, they struggled they went through this last downturn you know 2006 to 2012. That was not fun. Now we've come out of it since 2012. But guess what? It still isn't where they are doubling or tripling in size. You know I met Mitch a year ago in Austin. He flew to see me in Austin. We spent some time together and you know he didn't own his company for 12 years. You know you own something for 12 years and it's you know you don't want to tell the agents that you're not making very much money. But it's a struggle. You know let's just think about it. Leases, furniture, phone systems and you know the independents. Kevin you and I have talked about this. Now they have to compete against the big franchises right. So the franchise rollout some big tech thing and they can't compete. They can't rule that out for all their agents. They don't have the money to do that. So it's very very restricted. We already got in January we got two small independents in Texas one with 40 agents in San Antonio just join us and one with 56 agents in McAllen in south south Texas near the border. That gentleman rolled his company in with 54 agents and we instantly became number two in the market boom! And I really think they're looking at 40 or 50 agents. Kevin you and I have talked about this. Now they can take those 40 or 50 agents and turn them into 100, 150 in their own little team through rev share, through revenue share. KEVIN: Well and one of the things that you and I have talked about and I want to make the point for anybody listening to this is even if you're an independent broker and you have some amount of expenses that can't just be x. In other words it costs you 30 40 50 60 thousand, a hundred thousand dollars a month. Do the due diligence people like Mitch and all these brokers don't necessarily make the expenses go away immediately but get with the right resources and gene you're certainly one of them that can help you do the due diligence because it's not a go no go. I have to make my expenses to zero to make it worth at eXp realty. There is a due diligence process and these independent brokers are figuring out that they can leave some amount of infrastructure in place and make the transition with their agents and then come out of it in 12, 18, 24 months. And like Mitch they've got a much bigger revenue share stream that exceeded what they were making as it had been a broker. GENE: Yes. And with that that was a perfect point to make. Kevin you and I've talked about it let's say that I think the one and MacCallum He had three offices he reduced the three offices down to one because he still had leases he was obligated to. But he got rid of a whole bunch of expenses and then you just gradually work into making sure that the agents get used to the cloud office. They're no longer going to come into the office they're going to go into our cloud office which by the way is the difference maker. The cloud office, we call it our cloud campus I call it a cloud office because that's where everybody is. That's where our accountants are. That's where our tech people are. That's where our onboarding people are. That's where our marketing people are. We have over 180 people right now in that cloud office, Kevin as avatars. And they speak to you just like I'm you know you just walk in and talk to them just like a video game. The cool part about it is when I saw that and when Glenn rolled that out to me I said Glenn I've always wanted to get rid of Bricks and Mortar as an owner. I mean there's not one owner in the nation that would love to get rid of that expense. Love to get rid of all that copiers everything. You name it. I ran it. I ran a couple of the largest offices for Keller Williams ever and those expenses just it's hard to cover those expenses and it just weighs on you even if you're making a little bit of money. Kevin you and I talked about it even if you make it a little bit of money. You're not making a lot of money and it just wears on you after a while. KEVIN: Yes. The message here if you're an independent broker is don't just discount conversion into eXp realty because maybe you've tried to talk to one of the big franchise systems and you couldn't make the numbers work. The independent brokers if they're running through due diligence with Mitch or with Gene Frederick or anybody else in the leadership are figuring out how to do this and understanding rev share and I want to talk about rev share for a minute before we talk about why mega agents and teams are joining. Rev share is something from my opinion. I want to get your concurrence on this Gene. When you were a regional owner you mentioned you owned Northern California and Hawaii. You got paid basically based on the agents in the region. Right it came off the top and you got paid out of the royalties and a franchise system but there was a stream of income that was very predictable. You knew if you had producing agents that would stay with the company. And every year you had x number of them you could predict pretty accurately how much revenue you'd have. Right? GENE: Correct and even in the downturn since the franchises they take money off the top we took money off the top. I was in two franchises. We knew the money off the top. We got that even in 2007 2008 2009 when we knew our owners of the offices were struggling. It was sad they weren't making money but as a region we got our money right off the top. KEVIN: And that for anybody out there you may have heard sort of the noise and information and sort of misdirection that revenue sharing is not sustainable from my opinion. I look at revenue share as exactly the way the franchises pay the regional owners. Do you agree? GENE: Exactly. When I talk to agents because they've never been owners of franchises Kevin like you and I have a ram franchises or ran offices they're just selling real estate. I said Let me explain to you this model would you rather have in your commissions money taken off the top and given to the owners are money coming off the top and given back to you the agents for helping us grow the company and they said was like the one where it comes back to me and I go. That's our system. We're just giving it to somebody different. I was really into this as somebody a couple of years ago and they said Gene you didn't change a sister you didn't change that part of it. You're just giving it back to someone else. Very very sustainable. We were sustainable at five hundred agents. You know now we just did a press release in the middle of February where over eight thousand agents just imagine Kevin could you imagine if you were running an office nationally with eight thousand agents with no bricks and mortar no cost. KEVIN: And that's why it's sustainable and profitable and for anybody listening to this. If you are under the misimpression that revenue sharing is sustainable there's a precedent for this and the franchise system don't let anybody confuse you that taking money off the top out of the revenue stream of the company dollar is not sustainable because the franchise systems take money off the top and they pay the original owners. eXp realty is doing the same thing. And so to tie down the independent broker conversation this is a big way that these independent brokers are figuring out as Gene said earlier to converting the eXp realty they can keep a lot of their systems in place. They can get all of the tools and technology of the eXp realty. They can provide a better environment from a technology standpoint for their agents and at the tail end of it you know if you listen to the interview with Mitch Riback he's making so much more money now than he was as an independent broker. If you're interested in the eXp. Get with the right members of the team do due diligence and understand why it is. Because as compared to things like profit share or other systems, the predictability of revenue share because it does come off of the top can be modeled. You can figure out exactly what your PNL is going to look like, what it looks like later. And as the revenue share grows it's predictable based on the number of agents and if you listen to Mitch's interview you'll see him say my spreadsheet was a big understatement for what I thought it was going to be. I'm actually making more money than I even model that I would do it. And that is why if you're scratching your head as an independent broker how would I ever do this. The piece that you're missing and you yourself if you're considering it to get in and dig in and understand how it works because it may not be apparent from the outside. GENE: And the two things brokers are concerned about Kevin we've talked about forever and I've been a broker of numerous franchises. You have to have a model that attracts people. First of all if they don't sell more real estate at your place than the other place they don't come. We've talked about this. Our technology is phenomenal. I mean Glen and Jason are just bonafide. We're going to have some of the best technology tools for people to get leads to the Internet. So everybody gets conversion for free, right? Sometimes I even get to the conversion part and they said wait it's free here because some of the small independents I talk to say well we do provide conversion for our agents but they have to pay for it. Are we you know 400 a month or 500 a month and I said what if all your agents came in got it free here and they go oh my gosh I can attract a lot more agents in my market and I go yeah we have that and also the second thing for brokers that they don't understand is once you let the agents in the game to help attract other agents they grow. Because most independents go I don't want my agents attracting people I want to track them make sure I do all the interviews and I go wow. Once you let the agents attract people the way they can their salespeople. Oh my gosh. And that's what Mitch told me Mitch didn't realize that his people could attract agents better faster quicker than he ever could because he's letting them into the ownership game. Kevin, like you and I talk about in the royalty game you know they're getting royalties off the top. Wait that's never been done that's never been done. That's why we're getting number one agent Louisiana. Darren James number one agent Tucson, Arizona. You know number one agent Richmond, Virginia I could name the town's number one agent Nashville. I won't name everybody's names I'm sorry but it's just like why are the top people why are they looking at us. And joining us in a week. 10 days from start to finish. Because it's a brand new model. You and I have talked about a lot of people come to me and they go well can you compare it to this company or the company that got started in the 70s the company that got started in the 80s and I go well they're franchise models and we just don't compare. I can't even compare it's a brand new. It is Netflix right. Just like Netflix and Blockbuster. You know I love using that example because blockbuster both watching movies right. We're both watching movies. But let me ask you a question Kevin. What was the technology that did away with Blockbuster? Streaming video. So when that technology, it's called a disruptive technology, you hear it all the time on Shark Tank. When you hear somebody go I've got a disruptive technology which means it's going to change the way we do something right. And your first to market with it the fact that you have a disruptive technology plus your first to market with it boom right. Wow! And that's why I compare it does everybody gets confused because a they said well you guys don't have any offices. See we do. We have offices. In fact you can go to any Regis we have a national arrangement. Kevin with Regis across the United States. So in every town there's always a five or 10 Regis's if you want to meet a customer in an office, meet him right there. But I think everybody gets confused with the fact that we have a game changer and when Glen Sanford saw he caught it early late 2009 is when he started the company says Gene. I just went to everybody and said no more bricks and mortar. He had three offices. He says I'm shutting everything down. I mean man, that takes a lot of gumption to do that in 2009. But he says I believe in this model that agents will go to our office. I can get to the office with my iPhone now. I can go in just straight to my iPhone. Of course I can get it on my computer and boom don't have to get dressed, don't have to drive to the office. It is the way real estate is going to be run from the broker's point of view. I think the next 10 years. KEVIN: It's certainly as you described earlier a disruptive model and I agree with you. I think if you get to 21 22 in terms of 20 21 22 most of the bricks and mortar operations will have to go away. Same way the blockbusters went away. So let's tie down the agents obviously productive agents are joining eXp realty. There is no take away from the standpoint of the economic model right in other words people aren't joining hoping to do better. We talked a little bit a minute ago about tools and technology but from an economic model it's not a take away for an agent to join eXp is it. GENE: Oh my gosh no. We have the same cap for every single agent in the company. I love it. Everybody's on an 80 20 with no royalty, no royalties a biggie. So once they pay 20% and an equal sixteen thousand dollars. Kevin That's our cap. And then they go to 100%. So it's kind of neat. We're getting people that do over a hundred million a year, 100 million in production with big teams and they said what's the structure and I said well it's one camp 16000. You can go to as many cities as you want in your state. You can go across state lines and have agents in other states and they go what you mean I don't have to pay another cap in those cities are in that state. I go no because we don't have franchises. We haven't sold franchises in those cities like the other ones. So a lot of the other models we compare for the large large teams love the fact number one that they can expand their team only pay one cap for the lead agent and the other agents are a half cap. All right. And then here's the second thing that we're noticing Le Page and Johnson from Charlotte, North Carolina. They joined us last spring and she said Jane they brought over 16 agents with them they do over 100 million a year. And she said Gene what I realize now after being with the eXp for three or four months is I knew it would be beneficial for my team because I care about my team members but they love it more than I do. And I said What do you mean? They go. She goes oh my gosh they get all the benefits I do. So they can take for example on the stock they can take 5% of their commissions every month. The team members can as well as anybody and purchase stock every single month at a 20% discount. I mean they're creating equity in their lives. So they're team members are being able to create equity. They're team members are being able to help attract. We call referrer agents as they're doing transactions and now they're team members are getting revenue share stock and she told me she was I've never had a happier team members in my life because their teams just like brokers because the big teams Kevin are like small brokers right. They're concerned with how to attract agents to my team and how do I retain them. It's all about retention. And they said we're not losing anybody now because they're aquiring stock. They're acquiring revenue share and they're happy again. I can't believe I've got Brett Gove. I talked to a year ago year and three or four months ago I think is one of the top agents in Northern California. I talked to him on Thursday. He came and talked to Glen and Jason at our national convention. It just happened to be at that time he signed up the next Friday. Kevin I'm talking. One of the top agents in the nation joins in eight days. It's a compelling value proposition for sure. And he came to the convention I love it because all these top people come to the convention by the way we have two conventions a year, one in April which is our stockholders meeting every year. We believe in getting together and networking. And then of course we have one in October which is our national convention. Same thing. Great networking and learning things. But what's funny is when they came to these he brought two people with him. I love telling Brent's story because Gene I brought two people with me and I told him OK talk me out of this. Talk to everybody and find out what's wrong with this model. Of course he comes back and on Friday He's about ready to leave and he talks to those two gentlemen they were standing right next to me he said what did you find out in he. Man this model is real. This is working and he goes OK I'm in. KEVIN: What's interesting about that is you and I were both team leaders and we recruited a lot of agents in our day and the franchise system. It's unheard of to have teams and mega agents convert in that quick period of time and I think it's a testament to the value proposition and the fact that between revenue share and the ability to buy stock and earn stock based on the way EXP lays it out. What are your thoughts on the noise in the market about revenue sharing. Obviously we've got enough experience with it now and I interviewed Mitch a number of other people and as you mentioned people that are teams it's a huge retention item for mega agents and especially mega agents with teams because unless they're going to set up some sort of profit share and 401 K for their team members they don't have the ability to do anything close to this in terms of creating wealth. GENE: Well the same with small brokers. When I say small brokers any broker that has 50 agents or 100 agents or 200 agents, as big as a broker can get there really running their team. They don't want people to leave right. So I was talking to a broker just the other day and he says Gene the hardest thing is I train them, coach them. They stay with me for a couple of years and then they leave. Right when they're getting ready to be really really productive. And I said well you want to solve that. And he goes what. And I said get him into our system. It will retain them when they get stock. They want to see that stock go up. They have ownership in it because you've never give them ownership. So the same thing with the teams the small brokers what they're beginning to realize that I knew it would happen Kevin. I knew it three years ago. But now it's starting to happen. Even though they're doing OK. Right. We haven't had another shift yet in our market really nationally. But the brokers are going. You mean I can turn 50 agents into a hundred. I said Let me show you what Mitch Ribak did. Let me show you the small you know they're just getting it. They're getting it. And all of a sudden they're going Wow!!. And of course as a broker if you're tired of running that doggone office you're not the broker anymore. Right? That's a big thing. Our states are all run by a broker. We have supervisory brokers because in big states like Texas where we have close to 2000 agents we have a head broker and four supervisory brokers. So we have a lot of brokers to take care of that and they go, oh you mean I don't have to answer the broker questions. I said No I'll go to the broker. Just bring the agents let them run and let them produce. KEVIN: Absolutely. So if you're listening to this it doesn't matter if you're an independent broker or a mega agent or a team in a team lead you can go to the show notes and there's an intro video it's like seven minutes long you can get all the sort of facts and information that Gene and I are talking about. And then you really want to dig in and get due diligence. You know whoever introduced you to eXp realty can introduce you to whomever you know whether it's Gene or me or any of the other leaders around the country that can help you get the right information to make a good decision. Doesn't matter if you're a broker a mega agent or otherwise. If you're scratching your head as to why people are joining. That's the first step. Watch that intro video that's in the show notes and then go back to whomever introduced you to eXp Realty and say all right I'm intrigued enough. I want to dig into it and then they'll get you pointed in the right direction to get connected. Gene any final thoughts on that I want to get your contact info in case anybody wants to reach you. GENE: The only final thought I would say is I want to say something to everybody out there especially where we are not. First the market is everything. When you look at all the marketing books and I'm a, you know I graduated with a business degree and all the marketing books I've got an old marketing book and the number one thing in marketing is being first to market. That's why I have an iPhone. That's why a lot of us love Pandora. This is why you know what I look at first to market with anything, Netflix, Air BnB. When I see first to market even Uber right. When I see first the market, people don't really understand how huge that is to be first in your market to bring eXp to your area. You know we have the tools to show you how to explain the model. Kevin and I want to share them with everybody. And the fact is if are first to market I don't want you to wait two years, three years and say I'm just going to wait to see if it's going to work. It is working. It's working nationally right now. So get on board. I can't wait to work with everybody. I just don't want people to go well you know I'll just wait and see if they make it. Come on now. Just don't wait. KEVIN: Absolutely. I've had that same conversation with people were there like well I see a few agents in my market. I'm a mega agent and I've got a team I do 20 30 million dollars a year and you know I don't see the people that I mastermind with are my peers. That's not typical when Gene joined eXp in Texas he just mentioned there's 2000 agents are very close to him right now. I think there were five agents in the state and a few major decision like a mega agent would if they made a mistake they wouldn't even recognize what happened in Texas. GENE: Yes correct. And so that's what I always say to folks get rid of that fear. It's not really a fear at all. We're selling real estate just like you would anywhere else. If it doesn't work out you can always go back to your other company right. But but I can tell you once you come into our system and see the tools and the people because we're all made of people and the people just like you that you can mastermind with nationwide through the cloud collaborate so easily because I'm telling you right now. Kevin you know as well as I do there's a few people in my world that I talk to two and a half years ago. They are just now joining now. I said well it was available to you two and a half years ago and they go well I'm starting now. I'm going now and I go good. But if you're in a town where we're not even in yet, guys we can open immediately. We do not need bricks and mortar. We just need good quality agents. We talk about it all the time in our attraction. It's quality not quantity. We want quality agents so come join the explosion as we call it the eXp explosion. And it really is happening and I can't wait to work with everybody. KEVIN: Fantastic. Gene if somebody is listening to this and they want to reach you how do they get in touch with you. GENE: The best way to reach me guys if you want to is texting. Please do not e-mail me. You can. Really pretty much find me. I'm in Austin Texas. My name is Gene Frederick but my cell number and I'll give it to you so you can text me or private message me on Facebook you can private message me on Facebook of course just Gene Frederick is on my Facebook account but 703 3381 515 is my cell number 703 3381 515. Just text me. I really respond fast. I can't wait to work with all of you. KEVIN: Fantastic. Thanks for coming on the show. GENE: Thanks Kev. Take care.

In The Cloud Realty Explained Podcast - Introduction Episode In this first episode Real Estate industry veteran and host Kevin Cottrell and co-host Gene Frederick introduce us to the In The Cloud Realty Explained Podcast and talk about why they are getting the word about EXP out there through this podcast. The EXP model is a breakthrough model offering agents real company revenue share and increasing sales and income. Popular and highly successful Real Estate Agents are more and more joining EXP and will be interviewed in the following episodes of the In The Cloud Realty Explained Podcast debunking all rumors and misinformation by sharing their personal experiences and talking about how and why they moved to EXP.  Learn More about eXp Realty - Click here to watch a quick 7 Minute Intro Video. Remember our disclaimer: The materials and content discussed within this podcast are the opinions of Kevin Cottrell and/or the guests interviewed.  This information is intended as general information only for listeners of the podcast. Listeners should conduct their own due diligence and research before making any business decisions. This podcast is produced completely independently of eXp Realty and is not endorsed, funded or otherwise supported by eXp Realty directly or indirectly.   EXP offers agents: Company Revenue Share Quick and easy collaboration between agents through the cloud based system Frequent detailed online training A community of Agents helping each other Benefits and growth   Take away EXP is agent driven, agent focused and is the fastest growing Real Estate company.   PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION KEVIN: Welcome to the first episode of In The Cloud. The EXP Explained Podcast I am host Kevin Cottrell and I'm pleased to have my co host Gene Frederick here with me welcome Gene. GENE: Hey Kevin how are you. KEVIN:  I am well so this is our first episode where we get to let people know about this disruptive podcast that we're launching. So when you and I were brainstorming about how to get the word out about EXP in other words there's so much misinformation. What was it that you thought was so important about us getting the word out and why we should do this in this podcast. GENE: Well I think the agents that are joining us. Kevin you and I have talked about it. The quality of real estate agents that are joining us across the nation is just phenomenal. I don't think I've ever ever seen it in the industry before. And so the level the quality of professionals that are joining us from all other types of companies and independents. We felt you and I talked about it to hear prominently why they made the decision so quick and they're joining us so fast and again you and I have been attracting agents all our lives and we've never seen agents at this caliber make the decision in such a short amount of time in a week in ten days in two weeks. And they've been at other companies for oh my gosh 10 years 15 years 20 years. So there's no better way to do it than do podcasts and actually hear it from their own words as to why they made their decisions. Because it's going to vary from agent to agent. KEVIN: Well I think it's also important and we talked about this with the fact that as the number of agents per week or per month has ramped up there's been a lot of noise and misinformation in the industry and there's no better way to get things out than to hear directly from agents. In other words it doesn't matter if they came from a franchise system or they came somewhere else. There's a lot of that back channel chatter about oh you know John left for this reason are oh she or he left for this reason. And the agents in their own words. It's pretty incredible not only for the reason you just mentioned with them joining quickly but the level of due diligence. I mean these are people that are running big businesses. I mean we've got interviews lined up with people that you know maybe as a 5 or 6 million dollar producer maybe it's a brokerage that had 50 75 agents 100 agents. Maybe it's a 250 million dollar a year team that was the top team for their franchise. Across the board everyone looked at the value proposition and their own words they're going to share with you things like they they're blown away. "I can't believe it". "I've never seen anything like this". "I can create wealth for my team". And as you mentioned both of us were team leaders never in my career. Never in your career did we have a 250 million dollar producer go OK I'm in. I'm going even after you know as we know as team leaders they get wowed by their franchise don't they right? They get flown into the headquarters and they get the real dog and pony and we're still seeing them coming aren't we. GENE: Well what's excited about Kevin is our system our model is the same for everyone. It's just the opposite of what most companies do. Like you mentioned wine and dine them and offer them money and offer them freebies here and freebies there. What we're doing is exactly the opposite. This model is the same for a person that's doing three million a year that somebody is doing 300 million a year. It's the same exact model. And I really think that attracts every agent from a brand new agent all the way up to a mega mega agent and that's exciting to me is that they're looking at the model they're researching it. Some of them for months I have a lot of the top agents. They've taken a month out of their lives to research us and they've come back and go well it's real. It's working. And I said Yeah. And now again on the other flipside I've had agents go you know I've been at the same company for 20 25 years. I've seen every model out there. This is the first one that's intrigued me. Well it's because it's the first different model and you and I've talked about it and that's what's with these podcasts are going to show it's a brand new real estate brokerage model that Glen Sanford invented back in late 2009. It's just his brilliance and the fact that him and Jason guessing who's been our CEO now for you know since we started in late 2009. Those two gentlemen have brought this model to life and we're just here just can't wait to hear different agents describe what hit them. Boom agent ownership what hit them revenue share and like you said with big teams they really really care about their team members and they want their team members to have a better life and have equity in their lives and have a cash flow that maybe will continue in their later years so it's very very exciting I can't wait to the people we've got tap that you guys are going to hear are just the who's who of the industry and it's going to be exciting exciting podcasts that we're doing. KEVIN: I want to echo that because I can tell you in a lot of the interviews I did the whole team aspect people caring about their team members the normal cycle right? You know some of the franchises really focus on teams like those rainmakers will be going to a multi market, attract talent right they're focused on that laser focused. And then there's a built in conflict right. You get your talented person that's on the listening side of the buy side. They grow up they mature in the business and then the built in conflict is they want to go do their own thing. And when you hear these EXP agents that have been around for a little bit what they're doing is they're trying to nurture these people now to go do exactly that because the revenue share and the equity and everything is such a win for everybody. They want them to succeed. In other words you don't have that normal strife that occurs if somebody has a team and then the lead listings special's wants to go form their own team and then there's now strife between the original rainmaker and them. I've got interviews where people are telling me that's not what happened I'm encouraging my people to do that. The second thing they're talking about in many of these interviews is revenue share. They are working diligently with their team members to build them basically residual income and they're having success with that that helps with retention and helps with growth that helps with attraction for them as their value proposition as a team. It's as you said Gene it's a breakthrough model that eliminates so many of the problems right? There's franchise systems and you and I work for a great one right? They claim they were agent focused and if you look at this compared to that are not aged in focused. In other words all of the agents are pulling the same direction every agent that we interview on here gives their contact information and makes the statement I don't care how you learn about EXP. If you have questions and you feel I can help you make a great decision text me call me. Let's have a conversation about it. Other than being a shareholder and an advocate an evangelist for EXP those agents have no direct benefit. And you and I both know as team leaders in a franchise system. We didn't have that kind of culture and dynamic and that's one of the biggest ahas I've seen in the interviews that I've done where people are just blown away as they get inside the EXP with the culture. The fact that all of the agent owners are pointed in the same direction and willing to help and that's something that I know Gene you and I talk about a lot. It's a pretty incredible thing to witness isn't it. GENE: Oh yeah. It's so fun when when I first met Glenn three years ago Glenn Sanford's our founder and visionary. He said Gene we're going to create a collaborative model. And I heard that word collaborative and I said well it's collaborative mean? What does that really mean? Well when you get into our 3D dimensional world which is our cloud office it just comes to life. And the fact that you could meet someone in that model as a 3D dimensional person as an avatar and meet someone all the way across the United States in a span of minutes the collaboration that you feel. And then when you it's funny Kevin you and I've talked about it when you meet that person in person because we still believe in personal contact. Of course we have two big events a year that we get all the agents together. We do live training in our markets almost every single month in every single city. But when you meet that person and you've like maybe from Boston and you live in California and then you meet him in that event and you've only met them as an avatar and then you meet them in person you go Oh man I could feel that was you. And the connection and the collaboration that we're having so fast is just what's going on in the Internet age and it's what's going on in the retail industry with everything shutting down with Amazon. We've never had a disruptive technology like our 3D dimensional world in the real estate field and that's what I'm excited to share with everybody. I want you to hear the enthusiasm from these people that are your partners because we're true partners as we all owned stock together in this company and that's the biggest difference I can see. KEVIN: Well absolutely and I had an interview with a rainmaker from a team she does about 40 million a year and 200 transactions in the Dallas Fort Worth area and she made the comment coming from a franchise system she said I can't believe how much closer I'm working with the rainmaker from the number one team we were in the same market center. We never collaborated in a mastermind. We're now working together because we're both shareholders in the same company and we're focused she said. I see that across my marketplace and across the country and it blows me away. I mean she was on leadership committees she was fully bought in but she said the dynamic. I had no idea. I mean she's only been with the EXP for a couple of months but she said I am blown away by how much collaboration there is and she made the comment as well and I just want to tie down with this and get some final thoughts from you Gene is she said the cycle time of masterminding versus going to events only a couple of times a year right? All the big franchises and companies normally will get people together. There's not that online collaboration right in the cloud. She said "I'm able to collaborate with peers and others that I respect daily in the cloud" right the icon collaboration the masterminding and all of that occurs much more regularly than most people observe from the outside. So I think it's important for people listening to this to realize that if you look at the people were interviewing and the people in your market are across the they're joining EXP. Those are people you're going to mastermind with. And if you want to be part of that crowd that should be a big reason along with the words of these agents for why you want to take a good look at EXP. GENE: That's exactly right. Kevin I had a conversation just the other day with the gentleman that's been in the business 37 years and he's only been with EXP for a year. He says Gene you're going to think this is crazy but I've been masterminding with the different icons. We have an Eicon meeting once a week for the Eicon agents. He goes once a week I get in there for a half an hour and I mastermind with these other Eikon agents. He says I have learned more in the last year masterminding with these people than I have in the 37 years before I got to EXP. I said that's that's just phenomenal. And he goes I just can't believe it. It's just so much fun. Now again who would think that real estate can be fun again. You know it's your you and ours model, is making real estate fun again. Well being able to collaborate in a world like ours with our 3D dimensional world as we call it our office our campus our EXP world campus you're going to be able to mastermind with everybody all over the United States all over the world. And we're going to sell real estate quicker faster and better for our clients than anybody else. This is really really agent driven. Agent driven and agent focused. I'm excited. Can't wait to hear all the podcasts. KEVIN: Absolutely. It's going to be pretty exciting. I will leave this with this final thought unless Gene has something to add. If you and there'll be plenty of people that are the agents that will be listened to these episodes. If you have someone that you know in your market or across the country that's joined to that's got a great story get in touch with us there's contact information on the podcast page in terms of me interviewing them or Gene talking with them on the podcast. We're happy to were not doing just the initial interviews. This is going to be a regular podcast with three new episodes every week. Look forward to it. Thanks for coming on the GENE: Thank you Kevin. Looking forward to it.    

Thoughts and rants on today's society... from the use of cars, robots, suburbs and love. There's even a section of me playing the bango. Ok I'm lying i don't play the bango. Wait it's the ukelele, ok let me stop its neither just check it out. Give it a listen. WARING: PLEASE DO NOT LISTEN TO THIS WHILE FEEDING A LION, WHILE SKYDIVING, PLAYING AIR GUITAR TO AMERICAN WOMAN. A MAN DIED

This arc is totally quackers... duck joke, I'm running out of puns. The ones I have left are really fowl. OK I'm done now. @critfailurecast on twitter facebook.com/groups/critfailurecast Want to be a part of the show? Help me make magic items? Reach out to us! Leave a rating on iTunes, or you favorite podcasting app, feedback always welcome. @glitchxcity : Music credits

Datavest CEO & Founder Rob Nicholas Stone discusses the monetization of private data through his blockchain based application DATAVEST, a cooperative that monetizes user data and pays back individuals in the form of datanotes.Transcript:INTROMethod to the Madness is next.You're listening to Method to the Madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley celebrating innovators. Last time on Method to the Madness we talked with Block chain at Berkeley about block chain technology and what that means. Today we're going to be talking with Rob Nicholas Stone, the founder and CEO of DATAVEST, an application that sits on top of this block chain technology.LISA: Thanks for coming in Rob. ROB: Yeah, absolutely!LISA: What is DATAVEST?ROB: DATAVEST is a way for individuals to monetize the value of their personal data. LISA: How is that different from what's going on right now? Rob: Data right now is being monetized. It's being capitalized by some of the largest corporations. And they're able to do that because they have the ability to kind of aggregate all of this data from multiple sources from millions of users. What we're saying is that it's an unfair exchange and the value of your data, the data that you're providing to these companies is greater than the value that is returned to you and it's driving up the largest market capitalizations of the largest kind of Internet platforms.LISA: So it sounds like you're creating a meta transaction in which the intrinsic value of my data is more than just what I'm giving to Facebook or whatever.ROB: Individually we don't have much leverage negotiating a fair price for our data. There's a value premium when that data is aggregated. It's been difficult to find a mechanism for allowing individuals to share that data and benefit from the aggregate value that's generated by a platform like Facebook. One of the challenges we had initially was trying to figure out how do we value data is it a pro-rata share of current revenue that that's generated from that data. Is it the kind of commodity price wanted sold by maybe a data broker? or in the context of Facebook and Instagram and Google and Amazon, they're able to capitalize the value because this data, even if they don't know what the application is going to be in the future they're able to price that into the current value of the company. One way that you could look at it is looking at the market capitalization of say Facebook and dividing by the number of users of Facebook. And that's going to be a much larger number than the current revenue of Facebook divided by the number of users.LISA: I'm curious why you wanted to do this because reading about block chain technology the history of it, originally it was of culturally and socially revolutionary idea. Since that time about 10 years ago, I feel like it's lost a little bit of that sheen but what you're doing is sort of a throwback to that original idea which is that it belongs to the people. ROB: Right. I knew that everybody had this form of capital that was extremely extremely valuable. And I also knew that in order to appropriately monetize this data, individuals had to have ownership over the application of the data. And so the first two months was basically me trying to figure out how to provide individuals with how to give them a vested interest in the applications that are built atop the aggregate data that's provided. The first idea was we would basically issue individual stock in our company and that company would use this data and monetize it and capitalize it and they would have this vested interest not just in the current value of their data but also the future value. Obviously that for millions of people would be extremely difficult to do. It would be almost a logistical nightmare to pull off in. And so that's where cryptocurrency came into the equation through block chain, through smart contracts. There's a way to design a platform and issue this currency that is similar to equity in a sense, in that it provides individuals with a vested interest in the platform in the application. And so that that's kind of how I arrived at the block chain space.LISA: What is the problem DATAVEST is trying to solve?ROB:A lot of the inequality or injustice right now occurs around this asymmetry of information. Whenever a corporation or a company or organization has more information about you than you have about them, it creates an inbalance. The reason why we decided to issue a digital currency in exchange for data is that I see currency as a form of language and it's a means, a tool of communicating and exchanging value. And what's interesting about data information knowledge is when it's exchanged there's no less of it in the hands of the one transacting it. If I explain an idea to you, I still have the idea and now you have it too. There's a greater supply. There was a book called Unjust Deserts written by Gar Alperovitz and he lays out the idea of this technological residual and it's kind of the gains in productivity not attributed to say capital or labor but is a product of technological advance generally speaking, where it's difficult almost impossible to attribute individual credit for this social phenomenon, but what capitalism tells us to do is is ascribe individual credit for the product of a social phenomenon. Similar to language, a piece of data or a word has very little meaning without the alphabet, without the multiple arrangements of those words and concepts and so similar to this our data doesn't have much value alone when it's siloed. This has been the challenge is that that individuals don't have a way to benefit. It's almost as if language has been co-opted or or taken, monopolized by a lot of these companies and corporations. The reason why we created DATAVEST was to create a platform, a cooperative platform, that basically co-ops back this data and information that's been taken from us and allows us to benefit in this common language through this digital currency.LISA:That's revolutionary. It reminds me of Marx and Veblen. Where did you begin to start thinking about these kinds of ideas?ROB: Maybe Veblen, actually. It's funny that you bring that up. He wrote about this idea of absentee ownership when capital is invested by those not vested in the in the company that that capital goes towards. It creates a kind of perverse incentive. If individuals had ownership and they were also the consumers within a company, the incentives are not really to to maximize profit at the expense of higher prices for consumers. I guess another way to put it is if consumers were the owners what would that look like? Right now there's a there's kind of a movement applying the concepts and ideas of cooperatives to Internet platforms. It's called Platform co-operative-ism and it's a guy named Trevor Schultz. He's a professor at the New School in New York and he's written a lot about this. If you look at maybe Uber and what that would look like as a platform co-operative, you'd have the situation where the drivers and the riders are the owners of the ride share company or YouTube platform where the content creators and users benefit from the value created in a business sense by that platform or AirBNB owned by those running out their houses and those using it. It's just, it's an alignment of incentives that I think is more rational. If the economy is unequal for rational reasons that's one thing. But when it's completely irrational and I couldn't ignore it any longer, if if you look back at kind of the progression of capitalism from laissez faire in the 19th century John Maynard Keynes basically kind of saving capitalism in a sense by figuring out a monetary policy that could or fiscal spending that could increase employment. But in finance everyone always talks about inflation, as well, we need a healthy level of inflation. But when you think about it its inflation is really just a decrease in purchasing power and Keynes, his kind of insight was that it's difficult to lower nominal wages. But if you print more money you devalue the currency, you can lower real wages without kind of workers knowing about it. So it almost seemed like a trick. It's like you're tricking labor into thinking that they're getting paid the same amount, that excess profit from real wages going down, you know goes towards the owners of the company. And so the stock market benefits from that. Seeing the irrationality there, this plays into kind of how we've created our currency. It's not like the Federal Reserve where a couple banks have access to the discount window. It's every single individual has direct access to the analog of the Federal Reserve. You have a direct line into creating new money and it goes to you, not to some large institution.LISA: What are some of the challenges that you're facing right now?ROB: I think the principal challenge is explaining a new idea and trying to communicate something really that hasn't been done successfully before.LISA: Why did you choose the co-op structure?ROB: I don't know if you've ever used Apple Itunes. It's basically data as a service or software as a service where you subscribe to a service and pay a fee. We're kind of turning that on its head. The future revenue that could be generated by this data needs to stay in the hands of those who produced it. If you were structuring this as a C corporation where the data was owned by conventional corporate structure. What happens when Amazon or some platform wants to buy all of the data and then what happens to the value of the currency when all of a sudden you know whoever is acquiring the information the data decides to use that monetize that more for their existing shareholders? We've created a co-operative where the data is always owned by the individuals who are producing the data. We own this data.Companies can only subscribe to it and they never own.ID/BREAKIf you're just tuning in you're listening to method to the madness, a bi-weekly public affairs show on K-A-L-X Berkeley. I'm your host Lisa Kiefer. Today I'm speaking with the CEO and founder of DATAVEST, Rob Nicholas Stone. As we continue our de-mystification of block chain technology and the token economies.LISA: A member of your board recently told me that you were the most dangerous man in America. What do you think he said that?ROB: So I think the reason why he said that was when I first met with him I laid out a plan for disrupting not only Silicon Valley but also Wall Street and fiat currency and how to go about creating a new non-sovereign alternative to national fiat.LISA: What's your background your history how you came to this idea?ROB: It came about in kind of a strange way. I'd done a lot of work in microfinance in Argentina. I worked at Morgan Stanley working kind of closely with their Institute of Sustainable Investing, so socially responsible investing and it was always about how do we direct capital to where it's most productive. The insight or the 3:00 a.m. epiphany for me was that everybody already has a form of extremely valuable capital. They're just they just don't have the framework to monetize it and receive the full value of that data.LISA: How long is that when that light bulb went off?ROB: That's about eight months ago. LISA: Well people are talking about universal basic income now. And to me this is sort of a workaround to that. I could get money from my data every month instead of trying to figure out a universal basic income through the federal government.ROB: Right. And we framed it sometimes this way. It seems strident to kind of imagine this could actually provide consistent guaranteed level of income to individuals but it really is, it is a private sector mechanism for UBI that requires no subsidies no welfare just receiving kind of the value that you're already creating. Back in 1965 Lewis Kelso, he is kind of the founder the creator of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan, and he said that the challenge of our age is figuring out a way that workers or individuals can take ownership in the technology that's essentially replacing them. Thinking currently about that, what's driving the technological advances that we're seeing right now? A lot of it is this networked data and so you could achieve two things at once, you allow individuals to have access to a form of capital and at the same time that capital happens to be the core ingredients, the fuel that's driving the technological advances that we're seeing currently. So it's a way to gain ownership over this technology for anyone essentially with a with a smartphone and internet connection is able to accrue value.LISA: Where do I find out about this?ROB: It will be on a mobile app so you download the app and you're presented with, we're calling them data funds, that it could be a specific sector or a company innovative new technology and you're able to invest your data into that company and receive an asset that's derived from that data. We're calling them data notes. Users will receive this immediately upon the investment of their data.LISA: Give me an example of a company that I would say OK I'm going to open my data to you.ROB: An example that I think really drives this point home is, I don't know if you've ever used Twenty-Three and Me? There's nothing more personal than our genetic information or genetic data and in companies like this are able to aggregate millions of potential volunteers who are or are willing to provide this and sell that off to pharmaceutical companies to create some of the most profitable new drugs or treatments or therapies and the individual is not compensated.LISA: In fact, we have to pay to actually do it.ROB: Right. What we're trying to do is create a way for individuals providing data such as this to drive some of the most innovative kind of medical breakthroughs but also be vested in the value that's created from its application and the application is great. It's just the fact that those who are creating this information, this data, are forgotten about. One example is that hedge funds are basically purchasing your data there. They're going to companies such as Yodaly that are transaction aggregators and they're looking at kind of trends in our spending and they're trading on that information. Hedge funds are really some of the biggest buyers of this type of data. They call it alternative data. Hedge Fund wants access to some alternative data, some transaction data that they're already collecting from us. What we would require is that they subscribe to access this information that's totally anonymized. They don't really care who you are. They just want the data and they want to pick up trends in consumer preferences and what people are buying and they're able to trade on that. So data in that revenue that they pay will be rerouted through smart contracts and this gets back to the value of the block chain to repurchasing the currency on the secondary market and compensating individuals who actually provided that data. This is a form of ownership.LISA: So if I'm a member of this, will I have like a little token bank on my computer and every now and then I see some monetary value?ROB: That's right. You'll have a wallet. LISA: So I don't need a bank for this. ROB: You don't need a bank. The idea getting back to kind of the idea of universal basic income is that we wanted anyone in the world to be able to gain access to this. Anyone with a smartphone and internet connection is able to start accruing this capital that they already have. When you kind of sit back and think about it, they're making billions of dollars based on data that we've provided them with. What we're thinking about is how to use our own information, share it, cooperatively own it, and monetize it kind of directly. The future revenue that we create at DATAVEST through aggregating this information is directly driven back into the value of the currency. As revenue comes in, that revenue is redirected into supporting the value of the currency.LISA: So let's say I have two hundred of your one of your tokens called?ROB: Data notes. LISA: OK. Data notes. Where can I spend those?ROB: Initially you're able to convert those into U.S. dollars. They're completely liquid. So you're able to exchange them for other digital currencies or you're able to just cash them out and we're using Ethereum. And it's done through Etherium. LISA: You're letting Etherium do your mining?ROB: Right. LISA: So you don't have to worry about massive computers. ROB: Right. LISA: Why did you choose Etherium?ROB: We chose Etherium, a technology that allows us to design a platform that works for us, because of the ability to design smart contracts that achieve the purpose of our intention.LISA: What is a smart contract? What does that mean?ROB: The reason why DATAVEST is using smart contracts is a lot of crypto currencies right now, they haven't figured out a way to have the off chain organization or company benefit the currency directly. So what we've done is we've created a protocol or smart contract that as DATAVEST as a platform generates revenue, we have that revenue going directly into supporting the value of the currency and that's done through our currency repurchase protocol. Which, it's basically like a stock buyback by a company where the company wants to return value directly to shareholders by buying stock on the market and taking it back as treasury stock. You increase demand, you reduce supply, and that benefits our end users and they have a vested kind of interest in almost a form of ownership in the platform. You can put anything, you could almost put anything in into it, any kind of contract. It triggers an event based on something happening off chain. So as revenue comes in, that triggers the repurchase of currency without any intermediary. So it's rules-based governance of monetary policy essentially. What we've done by creating kind of a cooperative structure with smart contracts is that there's kind of two extremes right now. You have the kind of purist crypto currency folks that they don't want anything off chain. They don't want to leave any kind of room for active governance. And then you have on the other side permission block chain, which basically means you know it's a corporation is calling all the shots and determining everything. We tried to find a middle ground where there's a democratic processes in place through the co-operative and there is a level of governance that can kind of manage the supply of this currency in a rational way.LISA: Where does the U.S. government come in or any government come into play here? If I'm a user and I start getting money from my data, my private data, say I'm starting to accumulate some tokens. Is that money taxed?ROB: It should be. It should absolutely be taxed. And the question, the outstanding question still for us, since this is really new territory, is how is it going to be treated? If you're being compensated for your investment of data, is that being treated as income? Or is that data considered an asset that you're exchanging for an equivalent amount of value? My opinion is that it should be considered an asset, a form of capital, and that capital exchange for data notes represents an equivalent exchange that you would be…your cost basis would be the market value of data notes at that time.LISA: Right. And so if they go up them I'm taxed on the gain. ROB; That's right. LISA: When do you expect to go live with DATAVEST as an application?ROB: Right now we're planning within the next six to eight months a private beta or a closed beta to recruit the pioneer users of this application. We're planning our full launch to be shortly after that ,hopefully within nine to 12 months we'll have this, you'll be able to start making money from your data.LISA: An idea like this seems very disruptive to say Facebook. Why do you think of Facebook or Google or one of the other overlords wouldn't enter into this marketplace? What are their constraints doing something like this or do they have constraints?ROB: They do and I get this question a lot. It's well OK. You're doing this you're a small startup. You have these billion dollar platforms that you're potentially disrupting. What prevents them from doing the same thing. And their challenge is that they were started in a way that the incentives between their users and the shareholders of those companies aren't aligned. And so the more that a shareholder makes, the less money there is available to users to monetize. So if one of these platforms, all of a sudden Zuckerberg decided to kind of monetize data for his users rather than shareholders, what would happen is, well, he'd get sued I think.LISA: By the shareholders?ROB: Right. They've created a zero sum game where –a situation where one wins at the other's expense. And so we design DATAVEST to align the incentives between those who are funding our startup our platform that we're building and the users that are going to be creating the preponderance of value of the platform. When I bring up the idea of capitalized value of data, just meaning that this data is being priced based on its its future revenue that it potentially could generate, the mechanism that DATAVEST is using is, we're issuing a form of digital currency directly for the investment of data. Data is an asset. It's a strange asset but it's an investable asset. When you invest it, you want to be entitled to kind of the future revenue generating potential that it creates. So we're not tying it to how much capital you already have, how wealthy you are. Anyone can gain access to this and actually the only way to gain access to this is through providing this asset that doesn't cost you any money. It's just utilizing and benefiting you for the capital that you already have.LISA: So do you know who your target beta is going to be? Is it going to be a city? Is it going to be a certain demographic of people? Do you know that yet? ROB: Yes. So we're based out of Pasadena, California. And so we're actually working at my house in Altadena. We converted are barn into an office and we kind of have an urban ranch and horses and donkeys and chickens and it's kind of a fun corporate headquarters but we’ll probaby have to move soon. But you know it's been good while it lasted but so we're thinking Pasadena just maybe an interesting place. There was research done that Pasadena will be kind of representative of the demographics within the U.S. as a whole and I think it was like 15 to 20 years. So we think it's a would be a good kind of case study or a good place to do this. LISA: And you have a child, a two year old son?ROB: Yep yep turns two March 26.LISA: Well I have to ask you..you're pretty deep into this new technology, block chain and the token economies. Do you have any particular fears for your child as we move forward or are you optimistic?ROB: I guess if you kind of imagine all potential futures right now where we are, it's difficult. I don't wanna be negative but it's difficult to see one that is going to make sense or I'm going to be happy with for him and that's part of why I'm doing this is, you have four, really four companies that are as Jaron Lanier calls it the siren servers that are collecting all this information on all of us. And you know one worry and it's not it's not an irrational concern is that what happens when one of these companies develops a technology through using this data our data, big data is our data, and using that to develop A.I. They're using machine learning and when they get to a point where they're so far ahead of everyone else it's going to be very difficult to catch up. So I guess my concern is that they do kind of have a breakthrough in this area. It's going to be tough to kind of catch up with that technology for anyone else. And that's going to only be benefiting the same or tiny kind of small number of people.LISA: So it sounds like your approach at DATAVEST is very democratic and an opportunity to bridge the you know, we talk about the 1 percent. It sounds like that big divide could possibly be bridged if everyone gets compensated for their private data.ROB: That's exactly right. And and we get rid of this asymmetric information that’s of companies whether it's financial institutions or these Internet platforms that are kind of using our information against us that we think we have to take ownership over it and be entitled to kind of the value that it creates and have that be shared.LISA: What's coming up for DATAVEST in the future?ROB: If we imagine that enough of us sign up and decide to take ownership back of this information, this data, there's an opportunity that once you get to a critical mass, we're hoping we can sign up a million users within the first year, that at some point you don't want to be selling or brokering this data to third parties who are then benefiting making all the money essentially. So asset management firms, hedge funds, they’re they're big buyers of this type of data, that would be transaction data, geo-location data.They're kind of buying this up wherever they can get it. And it would make too much sense not to take that in-house. So we've come up with the idea, this is kind of our Second Stage part of this, that we could create a cooperatively owned hedge fund. And the interesting thing about a hedge fund is most people can never invest in one. But the ironic part I guess is that everyone can actually own a hedge fund company. And so there's an opportunity that we can cooperatively own this investment firm that is directly trading based on our information and we're directly benefiting from it. We would have all of that revenue driven back into the hands of the users. And it's almost the portfolio managers dream come true to have direct access and intel from individuals all across the world be able to look at the trends, of the change in demand, consumer purchases, even pose questions. And the interesting thing from an investment application is that the data value of some of the poorest people in the world is actually greater than the data value of individuals in the U.S. And so if we're only monetizing this data based on this advertising model, that would only benefit wealthier individuals. But what this does is anywhere there's anywhere there's asymmetric information a profit can be made and that profit, and there's less information and a lot of these frontier and emerging markets that we have the opportunity that any intel or any information they provide on prices that they're facing is essentially tradable information, that can that can return value to those individuals and put them on the map and give them a form of capital that they've never had.LISA: I know there's going to be a lot of interest in this. So is there a way that listeners can reach you or DATAVEST? Is there a website? ROB: Absolutely! Our website is DATAVEST.org and my email is Rob at DATAVEST dot org. There is a place where you can put your e-mail to kind of sign up to be one of the first users of this.LISA: Wow! thank you for being on Method to the Madness and once you launch, I'd love to have you back on. ROB: You'll be investing your data soon.LISA: I will be investing my data. Thank you.ROB: Thank you.OUTRO:You've been listening to Method to the

We wanted to talk about how you could get NO cost Construction leads and we will go into that kind of heavily, today. The best way to go about getting them and how to have others help you get those leads. At absolutely no cost. So listen up and take notes. Jonah Canter from Canter construction and Charelston, South Carolina. Really fun time. Last time we had him on the show and if you don't know who he is, he's a contractor in Charelston, South Carolina. He's been in the construction business and he's actually started at an early age and running other companies and moved up and actually ended up starting his own construction business and took all the stuff he learned in running other companies at such a young age and put him into his construction company. But, mostly, honestly, it's in the service area of it. I mean, he does a great job in what he does but he gets called back and back and back because of his relationships that he built with his clients and his customers. So, I want to bring him back because we wanted to talk about how you could get new cost Construction leads and we will go into that kind of heavily, today. And, you know, we just had such a great response that I want to bring Jonah. So here's Jonah.   Jonah, I'm glad that you could come back today. Because the last time, we get such a great response to what you talk about and I know you've got some really awesome stuff about marketing that you want to talk to today.   Yeah, Dave I appreciate you having me back. It was, it was fun doing the last one. I got a lot of responses from some of the viewers which was really helpful and made me feel good that people are actually taking some of what we're talking about and actually putting it to good use. And that was great.   So, yeah, I appreciate you have me back. One of the things I thought that would be helpful for the listeners today is if we can talk a little bit about how contractors can get leads or without spending money. I consider them "The no cost construction lead process".   And I'll dive right in. So, when I was first getting my business going, I didn't have a clue. Like, how I was going to get literally the first phone call. And, I had got friends and family to have us do some small stuff but that's not sustainable. So, I was sitting on my couch one night and I ended up e-mailing a real estate friend of mine and I said "Hey do you have a contractor you use for, you know, fence's decks or whatever?" and he responded back hey actually I need somebody to take care of a bunch of like loose end kind of stuff.   But yeah, we will. And I thought about it I was like wow. If he needs that kind of stuff, I bet you there's other realtors. So, I went on this journey and the Charleston area and finding how many realtor groups and you know people there were out there and I found out, which I know now and everybody knows, that there's a lot of realtors and whatever geography that you are and thousands of them. They're like fan staying on the beach kind of thing. So, what I realized there is I sad "man, this is kind of a potentially untapped market of people" who, on a regular basis, are dealing in real estate transactions--buying and selling-- that may mean some type of construction service. So, I went and I bought a six pack of beer and I got on my laptop and I started to go feverishly buy each reality and started copying pasting into a spreadsheet by the realty the person's name, their email. And this is a bunch, again sweat equity and viscid Alge it's mindless stuff. I've probably paid somebody to do it.   Sure. But to me it's like I don't want to spend money for stuff like that. So, I ended up doing it myself. And, at the end of it I ended up getting about 300 e-mails. And each company is a little different. For the most part, most really companies have their e-mails publicly available. You can click on the person space there because they want to have their e-mail. In other cases, if you're smart and you want to get crafty, sometimes the realty company will hide or have like, almost like a contact wall and front before you can get to the reeler. It's a dumb idea. In my opinion, it's a terrible way of aggravating people but they do it sometimes. Well, me being the never satisfied Jonah, I didn't like that. I thought there was a whole reality of people that I couldn't get their e-mail address for. So, what I ended up doing was I tried to find out like how exactly do you get a particular, you know, email and what I found was I ended up finding a press release that ended up coming from somebody within the company. And I realized that it said jane dot go at such and such realty. And I went "Oh, well that's the naming convention for their e-mails”.   I already have all the names of the people, I bet you are pretty close to figuring out John Maybank is John Bébé at name realty. So, for those that were a little tricky and I didn't get the e-mails, just using common sense I kind of put that together and I harvested those as well. Now I've got you know some middle names that, you know, that I didn't put in writing or whatever they got kickback but in general I was able to harvest a lot of those e-mails that that you know for the average person would be hidden behind that and were valid e-mails. But to get to the core numbers, I ended up about I think it was around 300 e-mails. And what I ended up doing was I did not do this kind of mail chimp or whatever process. There's a thousand different reasons but one of the biggest and most important ones is that a lot of these Web sites are red flags from e-mail accounts already.   They know where they're coming from and they say that's junk so we'll put it there. And those companies are always paying a lot of money to try to get that red flag lifted. So, I said I don't want that to happen. So, what I did was I focused on the individual realtors’ realty companies and what I did was I literally opened 15 different Gmail email windows and I would copy and paste.   And so, what I would do is I would have the same subject line and then the message would be the same I would say hey buddy with Jonah Canter. I'm currently working with Ryan X over here at Carolina One. Doing some projects. I'd love to be the person that can help you with your inspection reports. Your seal 100 sign offs or any kind of general construction that you need. Feel free to contact us whatever. And I would copy and paste that message into every single one of those messages. Go back to my spreadsheet. Pop in all the e-mails for a lot of listeners. They're like "Holy cow! that's a lot of work for it". Well, the whole reason I was spending a lot of that work is: I wanted that to get to that person. I've wanted to go around the junk mail thing.   So, that's the best way at the time that I knew how to do it. So, after a lot of time and sending those e-mails, I mean a lot of time as in like, I think it took me about three solid hours to do it properly and methodically and make sure it was nice. And I curtailed it to each reality, right? So, I made sure it's like "I work with your friend. So, and so at Carolina one" or "I've done business dealings with your colleagues in your office". It's such a familiar tone. E-mail? --more likely to open. So, out of the 300, I had about 32 people actually reply.   It was. Just having people reply, at 32 people was amazing and then when you get into the fact that out of those 32 people I ended up picking up 15 realtors who wanted me to start looking at jobs for. And right away.   So, for four years.   Jeez! That's Sweet!   So, yes the are people out there. If you don't know marketing and everything it seems like an immensely small number. But as far as industry standards go for marketing and marketing campaigns that's a seriously successful situation to find yourself and with your leads, right?   And so, break it down. I mean think about that. I know you probably will but when you break it down per hour the time you spent generating that lead and the dollar. It's a high percentage rate. Not only is it just a high percentage rate, but man, that's a high dollar amount rate for the amount of work you got.   Absolutely.   You know one of the things is that the immediate impact of this was really apparent to me to me until I realized how my network had expanded. So, agents who were on the buying side and had no knowledge of my company. We're now hearing that my company was doing the repairs right. So, I not only gained the selling agent but also the work from the buying agent. Right. And in the middle of all that were the customers both buying or selling who potentially would provide me with more work.   And it was a wonderful situation to find myself in because in a lot of cases, the clients buying the house, had ideas for what they wanted to add or update after the closing. And, I was the first person they came to their mind because I did the repairs on the-- on the real estate repair side.   So, yeah. Okay, let me stop because I just don't think that everyone is comprehending and if you are, I just want to make this another aha! moment by sending out those e-mails that actually put you in front of four potential customers. It does. Well, it's actually six potential customers. Well, it is a bigger deal with real estate teams. You're correct.   Two-- two bookends of your agents and (then the buyer and seller) buyer and the seller. And then, if you have couples, I mean the numbers, you get the point-- it's a lot of people-- it's a lot! Yeah. It's-- it's not one. (It's multiples.)   Yeah. And so, with the example of the the 15 realtors. Let's just say give me one job each. That's forty-five new jobs, right? I can tell you that if you impress a realtor, they will always use you for their own clients. And, they will absolutely refer you to future clients. Or, thirdly, they'll refer you internally to the network of agents because they're always having this problem.   So, the benefits of Hardisty real estate leads are honestly exponential. Now, I will say to people this process does lend itself specifically to general contractors. And, the reason behind this is because general contractors are capable of doing a wide range of trade work for customers-- especially contractors. They may find results that vary from what I've mentioned, so mostly because they are limited in the amount of work they can do. So, a contractor can pull permits and this and that. So, just know that when you're going into this, if you're a specialty guy who just does dry wall, well I'm sure you can get drywall work. But a general contractor, who comes to that same realtor and says I can do it all, is going to trump you every time because realtors do not like having 15 different subs on an inspection report. They want one time, get it done, get it out.   Well, at least that they have to have that license-- that license contractor just to show for the receipts and stuff.   That's correct. In fact, it says on inspection reports at least it's here in South Carolina and other places. I'm sure there's reciprocity in the thought process. But idea as it says-- MUST BE INSPECTED. Or not say it's a must. It says "have a license contractor review the work" or whatever And that's another kind of side business if you will-- with potential with real estate agents is. In South Carolina-- in Charleston specifically, we have a report. It's called SEAL 100. And this report is independent of a regular inspection report. So a regular inspection report tells you about door latches, sinkers are not working in light bulb, and all that kind of stuff.   The seal 100 is specific to structural and relates to termite damage, water damage, mold build, do that kind of stuff. Well, everybody, in fact that the mortgage companies require SEAL 100 to close on houses and Charleston. So, this report, and we're in the low country, right? It's called the Low Country for a reason, it's like that. So, a lot of times, we see stuff like surface mold or we'll find serious issues like the seals under the house or Roded or there's other things.   Well, you cannot close on a house without that seal 100 being cleared by a licensed contractor. That means that Joe Schmooze out there, who doesn't have a contractor's license, cannot clear that. It will not go through. You have to have your license. There's a separate one sheet you have. But, what's beautiful about it, is outside of the inspection reports, you have another potential avenue of doing work and-- a lot of cases, I'm extremely fair to my customers.    I never want to screw somebody over because I think karma will come back and bite you. So, a lot of contractors will be like "ha ha they got popped for mold mildew". They're already scared. I'm going to tell them it's a thousand dollars and try to squeeze--NO! Because a lot of times you can remediate it very simply, quickly. Or the things that are noted on the SEAL 100 they'll say things like past bore holes in the silt. Well, we look at it, it's structurally sound. Well, guess what? We're not going to charge you five thousand dollars to do that. But we will-- we charge every time for a SEAL 100 sign off letter, we charge 150 dollars to the customer.   So whether we do the work or we just go out there look at it and sign off, we have another potential money out of there.   That's just another way to get some money to pay for investment.   Yeah. It really is. It is a sweet way of getting us to-- with our time, effort to go out there and then put our contractor license on it.   It's worth the time. We don't really make money. But again, back to the point, and I think the other podcast that I mentioned is, you know, you're going to wow people if they get doom and gloom from a report and you go look it's not as bad. We're not-- you don't have to do all this. It's just a simple sign if you can see the stress come off that was sold again. Building trust this got to be straight. Yeah, you charge three hundred and fifty dollars, but I get it. Source less time effort and all that. So you know, it is a nice way of getting that.   So, one thing I want to caution people, the contractors and people that are listening right now, is to you know do not be duped by real estate agents and are real estate agents nefarious?-- No they're not. Are there a lot of bad ones? -- Absolutely. And there's a lot of lazy ones and there's a lot of young ones. There's a lot of part time ones there's a lot of people that aren't good.   So, when you're going through this, you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff and you've got to find the real estate agents that have, you have their best interest in mind and their client's best interests in mind. But they reciprocate that back to you.    If a real estate agent is always throwing you under the bus or last minute or whatever, I don't want to work with you-- you're a problem. And that's what a successful company gets to pick and choose who they work for. So, maybe not initially but that was a growing pain with some of these I jokingly told people: you're fired. Like the Trump I'm like "no I'm done". I can't deal with you. You're too hard to work with and I don't like the way you do business so I don't have to work with you. So I now have, to this current day, I have about out of that number of 15.   Like an accordion way out. And then I brought it until about 10 that I work with on a regular basis. And four that I do work with every month. You know that you're just weird.   I mean, well I know I know that it can be and its but it's like any, you know, you've got-- you've got a niche and you got to find the ones that are-- that are worth it to you. That you can build a relationship with, that you trust them, they trust you and it's you. Because good real estate agents are looking for team members. To help make their life easier, to make their business successful. And then you've got other real estate agents are just looking for people to get for thirty-five dollars an hour to get in and get it down. It doesn't matter what it looks like or to just say that it's fixed and knows enough people you want to do business with.   Yeah, it's absolutely true. And one thing that another-- I don't call it a cautionary tale, but something that you should know and this specific-- specific vein of leads that you get is, I do not charge when somebody comes to me and they're a homeowner they call and say "Hey Jonah I want you to give me a price on redoing my kitchen when I come out". I do not charge them any fee for estimates. I think it's a joke for a homeowner to get a fee for an estimate.   That's what we're here to do it's a cost of doing business right. However, there is a very deep caveat when it comes to buying and selling property. And I learned this the hard way and I'm a pretty quick learner and I cut it off really fast. But I was going out for a couple of these bad realtors and they said "Oh can you tell us how this is the inspection report. We'd like to have X Y and Z X can you give us a price?" And I'd have to go out, look at it, take my time, give it to them, crickets, crickets, and then I'd say "Hey just tell him what happened", "Oh we just we negotiated that off of the sales price". "Oh, OK I'm sorry I spent my day took my time out of my job to come help you negotiate". So, in real estate transactions, for those listening, do not be afraid to charge a estimating fee.   I say: hey look if you want me to come out here you don't own the house. You're looking to buy it. I'm going to charge you and I can-- this price at where I sit now, I can charge. You may want to charge less and I'm totally fine but I charge people 200 dollars. Because I know if you're serious or not. Right? Right. So, I say: hey I charge 200 dollars. I will come out. I will give you a static binding estimate on whatever you want. I'll shake hands with you know, whatever. But you'll get it for me a binding estimate. But you're going to give me 200 dollars when you meet with me and I'm going to turn that estimate over to you. Now, at the end of the day you can use that however you want. You can choose to negotiate the price, you can say oh I spent 200 dollars to learn something I don't care. Or, if you say Jonah we want you to fix this work.   I'll knock the 200 dollars off of the price and I'll do the work for you. Right. And that's a way of keeping honest people honest. And say: hey look this is my time effort. I'm in Charleston right now. As I stand here now, we are slammed, right? So, I don't have time for this. This kind of stuff in my business and I've grown up to the point where I don't need to go to things that aren't going to have results from them and it sounds kind of pompous but I don't know where I'm at now.   You move from one-- one spectrum to another spectrum and along the way you've learned the lessons. Like many of us have. That you would do what you can do, what you want to and what you should do and you don't mind doing stuff like that as long as you're going to get paid for your time. And you know what, it does. You always have to learn like what you say has reactions, right? You've got to look at-- empathy is the thing that's lost in today's youth because you can sit on a phone and call somebody fat and then you're like them I feel good about myself . I'm going to go make a sandwich and you don't know what the other person is like--you know, feeling. But when you have to look at somebody or interact with them and see when you say something like I'm going to charge you two hundred dollars. And the reason I'm doing this is because I wanted to be fair to you and to me.   But I'm going to I'm going to pay it back to you. If you react in a good way you know you'd say yes to the estimate or what I noticed in watching people is they said: OK not a problem or some people would go $200-- That's a joke. There's other people doing it for free and I'd go. You're right. And you should use them and I'd walk because I don't want to-- if that's how you're going to be about this, and not be thinking clearly-- you're not the client for me. You're going to be a pain in my butt from all from start to finish (because there's no value in your time). Exactly, exactly. You already treat me a certain way.   So, it's a great way to just, you know, kill a conversation quickly or to gauge if a person is interested. And I will tell you, I'm not kidding. Eight out of ten times that I charge 200 dollars for an estimate. They got some skin in the game, right? So, they want to they end up coming back. So, it's kind of like you know, it's a little bit of a sticky wicket but it keeps them coming back and saying "well you know we can use our 200 dollars off ". When you're doing this guys and ladies contractors out there who are listening, just keep in mind to build an extra 200 dollars somewhere in your in your estimate. If you really want to be honest. You can do that. There's nothing wrong with that. Which can be-- because you did spend your time. Let's be honest.   You spent your time, your effort to do it. So, I would never tell anybody not to do that. Or you can say, "you know what Jonah, the way I look at this, I'm just going to take it off because my best estimate. I don't think anybody would think bad of you on either side of that because this is the business that we're in. That's something that's totally acceptable in my opinion.   Well, yeah and I think that like the other day I’ve, you know, the other day I got a call and everyone said I'll get a call. And you know, can you come give me an estimate? Sure. Do I have to be there? Yes. Why?   You know I would really like to know what you need done. "Well, I want my house painted" And I can go "Is there any repairs?" Well I don't know. So, they just really-- they want a price they don't want you, your value or what you can bring to the table. So, I said you know most people, I'm going to I'm going to start saying, you know, mine was going to be 150. We're going to do, you know, it's going to cost you 150 dollars for us to come out and do an estimate. We'll give you a 10 or 15-page report line item everything. But if you're going to be there, we would be happy to do it for nothing. Yeah, you're exactly right. People who do not want to be at a job, now, if they're in Boston and they're buying a house down here in Charles, I get it.   Yeah that's a different time, I do that a lot of times, too.   Yeah, but if they're like: No no no just go. Just go figure it out. It's like no no no that's not how this works. I want to-- I want to look at you, I want to talk to you or Schumann’s. I want to hear what you want. Because guess what? I can give you that estimate and you weren't here. And then all of a sudden, you'll come back and go "Oh that's not what I wanted". Well, that's funny because you weren't here. Yeah.     So. So and you know, one thing I've come across when it comes to estimates, and this is getting outside of the no cost construction process, but I think when you do give these estimates, contractors please be aware of this. The devil is in the details. You cannot be over descriptive in your estimate and a lot of times, it's going to cover your butt big time. Some contractors think, well some contractors think if they're vague, they can hide numbers. No no no. You should never do that. You shouldn't be line item by line item. Like an inspection report. I've written up an estimate that is a 102-line item estimate before. And it killed me to do it. But guess what? The client was able to chew every bit of that off and it said replace fan, customer supplies the fan. There was never a question if they said oh I didn't know I had to supply the fan that estimate you accepted and said it it's on paper. It's cost. Sorry. So yeah. And then and that's in reality. I know we're you know off the subject, but it goes to the value, is that you're creating your value by making those line items. Because, you know, just like last time I was in a post the other day so I'm going to do a thing and you know how come. How do you charge-- I can't charge fifty dollars an hour to paint? And I'm like why are you charging by the hour? First of all. I said it's not in the painting-- it's in the details.   Tell them what you're going to do? What are you going to print? What are you going to do? Are you going to move? What are you going to clean? What are you going to cover? You know what are you going to-- How many coats of paint? What are you going to put back? Are you going to vacuum up after? See, because it's not about to paint, anybody can paint.   Yeah. It's about getting through the process from the beginning-- of moving the furniture and you make it as labor intensive as possible in your wording. So, they are going to say "Damn! I don't want to do that. I had a guy come in and do it. "   Yeah it's funny, it's like you never. One of the best examples of my own business that I had happened one time, and it never happened again was back to the painting thing. You know, I always tell clients look if you're going to say money anywhere sure you can pay. Are you going to be good at it? Probably not, but if you're if you painted it you're going to be satisfied with your paint job, right? Because you pay somebody.   But the thing that I did, I remember one time the customer came to me and said we were building a affricate. It was like doing some moldings or something and they said "we'll paint we'll paint the molding will do the walls everything."   I said No problem. Took that paint line item off, got done. Get done with the job I'm coming to get a final payment. And they're like "Uhh, yes so it says--or not it says-- they said there's nail holes and it needs to get caught in all this other stuff and I got out. That's the painter’s problem. That was my line item said paint included. Call me a hole feel everything. You're on that. They're like "No, my dad told me Bubba". And I don't care what your dad said. You're being lazy and trying to save money. I'm not coming back to do that if I'm not going to be painting, right? So that was an example of when, and I still to this day have clients who want to paint them alone, And I'm very specific. I have a thing that says client understands they will call Phil Nail hole bla bla.   So, well I ended up-- usually nobody likes to do that. So, I ended up usually I paint. You know, quote was just for simplicity you know six hundred dollars. I'm like "oh yeah". Three hundred of profit. You get that work back and its good money maker. You don't lose all of them just doing all that. But that's we're getting back to the estimates. That saves me a lot of the times. It saves me in being able to go back and reference and say I don't remember that. Well, that's fair or you might not have remembered that, but do you remember reading the estimate into my contract? Because that's gospel. And that's what we're going by. And it says. You're filling the nail holes. And so, you may get somebody wants to debate to the Kalkbrenner tone about that, but they can't debate what's on paper what they sign. So, it's like whatever at the end of the day. So that's where estimate. It can be helpful in that and in the sense of having it line item down like that. Cooley. So, let's go back to let's go back to the Realtors for a moment.   Now, when you picked out your realtor, because you were just starting out in business you just went and you just picked out the realtors in your area. And the ones that you-- that got the just the ones in your area that you felt that it would be out. Because you're just looking for business. But now, how would you do it?   Yeah I think when I was first doing it, I didn't really care. To be honest. I think I looked up realtors and Charleston and I didn't-- I wasn't looking like reviews, right? Because reviews on a realty agency doesn't tell about the individuals that you just said somebody to a good experience. So, you can't use that.   But, for one thing-- I mean different realty companies are predominant in certain areas. Carolina, one is big here. As an example--excuse me-- but you may have Century 21 or provincial or somewhere in your area. So just be cognizant when you're driving around. Who do you see a lot of the signs for? That means they probably have a lot of agents that's a good place. But, even more simple than that. I just zoned in through a Google search and started plugging away. I just went to the Web sites and started going into it. If I was doing it nowadays, I would still probably take the same approach because you will find the gems inside of the gems being the real estate agents inside of different agencies.   So, I've had bad experiences with agents at one Realty and also great ones at the same ones. Your kind of, you know, weave your path and there's a lot of good agents at bad Realty. So, don't forget also to don't overlook the more boutique firms that aren't with these national brands. They may be more centralized to local-- the local area. Those sometimes are good because they are Neish or a specialty boutique agency that deals sometimes in a lot more high-quality contracts for you. So, you know you may be going from five hundred thousand-dollar houses to the one point five million dollar range or what not.   So, they're all valid.   Yeah, I'm looking up for upscale realtors. So, you know, five hundred-- I don't know, what's your average house is sold for up there. I know you are premises historic places it is kind of pricey. Well, it's funny because it does. That's such a loaded question. Like everybody else. In what area of town, you live in?   Well, it is. But I mean, Charleston is an expensive town as a whole. We have Kiawah Island but Oprah and a bunch of people live 30 minutes from here. So, there's 22 million-dollar houses there, right? That's kind of skewed that a little bit. But, we also have downtown where the houses are in anywhere between 11 to 15-million-dollar range. But to answer your question, on average, you're probably looking at 450 to five hundred thousand dollars. About the average sale price for a home here and then as you get to barrier islands or isn't on the water. And that could skew greatly. But yeah in general that's about the price.   So really, so let's talk to you guys out there you can niche it to any anywhere you want. You want five hundred thousand, you come from working with five hundred thousand homeowners, come from working with million-dollar homeowners. And those are realtors you want to target. Yeah. And keep in mind that if you're looking for inspection reports and little knickknacky stuff to do to start with. But you-- that is a different-- when you deal with a client who owns the one point five-million-dollar house, there is a whole different kind of line of thinking and business that you just can't, you can't do it half butt. How about that?   Yeah, if you're sorted out, don't go there.   Yeah, don't go there built into that. And then you know, and then you'll be successful.   Right. So that's been cool. It's really been awesome. Yeah, I know some of the things that we used to do, because there's a painting company we would do a lot. We would do a little bit of repairs that didn't need permits stuff like that. And what we would do is, when we went back, you know, when the homeowner comes back to do other things like other painting jobs after they bought the house, what we would do is we would just write a note to the realtor. Say "Hey just so you can put it in your file. You know, Bob and Susie just had their house painted and such and such a date so they can put in their files". So there.   So, because I'm becoming a team member for that realtor. Let them know what's going on so that when they-- if they're playing their cards right, realtor, and keeping in touch with their clients. They're going to sell their house again but they'll have a portfolio. We know you get this done in this town and this done. So, we're in good shape. We know you don't have to do that.   Exactly. Exactly.   This has been awesome!   Yeah appreciate it. Thanks for letting me do round.    No, it's really cool because it's nice to talk to somebody who's in the trenches, has done the things, made the mistakes and bounced back from to actually turn those mistakes into successes. So that's really what makes us successful. It's just bouncing back from our mistakes or things-- tweaking things as we go along because there's-- I mean it's come on, to say that you can become successful by doing the one thing is a phenomenon. Let's put it that way. Yeah it's the one thing that I'm most proud about is that when I got into this, I didn't act like I knew everything. And you know, just like the listeners, you can you can read, you can listen, get advice from other people, ask questions, learn along the way, learn from your mistakes, but continue to evolve. And I promise you, if you keep your head down and your nose clean and you do it the right way, you will find success in the end. So, to everybody listening, keep your heads up and keep a positive attitude about it you'll be successful.   Absolutely. So, Jonah how does--give us your e-mail so if anyone want to e-mail, ask some questions or connect with you. So, we can do that. Yeah fee free for anybody listening. If you want to reach out to me with questions or comments about the show today or anything you can always reach me directly at jonahcanter@gmail.com. That's J O N A H CANTER at gmail.com. Or for more fun side of me, I'm a big instagrammer. So, you can check me out on my personal account which is @chucktown or you can find me on the Canter construction Instagram. Give me a follow. Give me a like some of the pictures. Feel free to reach out to me any way you want to. Awesome thanks so much for being with us. It has been a blast.  Thanks Dave. Until next time.   For inquiries about the CANTER CONSTRUCTION, you can reach them at: To connect with Jonah Canter Gmail: jonahcanter@gmail.com http://www.canterconstructionsc.com http://www.oceansidesc.com Instagram: @canterconstruction @chucktown (personal account…me being goofy)     There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download.  4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers  If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com   and she will send you our guest sheet.     Our sponsors    Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information.       http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money    How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb    Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/ 

Google pay per click instant gratification with your marketing. One Click Lindsey is a Web strategy expert with small businesses and helps owners to utilize the web to produce more traffic and traffic leads. Today we talk about What’s a landing page What does a landing page do? About getting Better and faster results. Is google pay per click better than face book marketing. Can you use google and face book as a double whammy. Why you need to be on Google local And a surprising though about Bing pay per click Check out the show notes below I'm really excited for you to be here today. I have a truly and energetic guests with me today. Her name is Lindsay Anderson. Actually, we also know her as one click. Lindsay as you you'll see a little bit in a few minutes. She is a Web strategy expert with small businesses and helps owners to utilize the web to produce more traffic and traffic leads . That's one of them for Web sites or Web company name is Web impact. And I hadn't met Lindsay for real in person and back in September at a seminar we were both at. And I just wanted to have her on the show because we had brought her on our team and she built our new website. Her and her team and I am thrilled. And you'll hear that our conversation. But I just want you to welcome one click Lindsay today and we're just going to have a blast. So hey today I have got the one click Lindsay in the house or we got Lindsay Anderson and they're both synonymous they're the same person and I'm just Lindsay I'm just excited to have you here with us. speaker:              I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for letting me be. speaker:              I know I'm excited. Well let’s just so you know when we talk in September it was kind of cool to just get to meet you because you had become a part of our team and developing our new Web site. And that was exciting. So that's a shameless plug for Lindsay that she created our  Web site so you guys have a tour of, so you need to go there. You can see what kind of work she does. speaker:              Its really awesome but you mostly want to go there for the awesome content that Dave is dishing out over there on his daily podcast. speaker:              Great. I love it. So, give everyone a little bit of background story about you and how you got to be called one click Lindsey. speaker:              Yeah. So, my specialty Dave is to get people to make that one click on your Web site which typically means you get some contact information from them because quite often people are not ready to call you and they're just kind of looking around at a contract like if they're looking for a plumber or a painter they're kind of looking around see what their options are and quite frequently they're not ready to call you and sign up. So, the best thing you can do is try to get that come that contact information at a minimum get their email address at a maximum you can get. Trying to get their phone number their name and their email would be super awesome. Obviously the more you ask for the harder it is to get. But back to my story I have a specialty in driving people to these pages. speaker:              Getting them to hit that button and getting their contact information. Why am I called one click Lindsey because I had a chiropractor client that we were working with and he actually shared an office building with me and we both ended up showing up for work on the. At the same time every single day. But he wanted me to run a traffic in Leeds campaign for him and I gave him the Build-A-Bear approach, I was like you know online marketing it's kind of a long-term game you have to do some AB testing. speaker:              I just can't go out there and make ads and bring in the leads like it just it's a process. And throughout the whole time we would walk in every single day and I'd be like duck because you kind of gave me a hard time as I got my money where's my leads you know. speaker:              Awkward. speaker:              And I was like Doc, Doc you just gotta give me time once if I can get them to make that clear because you are operating on some Facebook ads and some paper click ads and the landing page. I just got to get them to make that click. And once I do then you'll have like this never-ending funnel of traffic and leads for our practice business. And finally, one day I made some changes to the landing page one evening and I came in the next day and we had about 20 e-mails for him on the list. Things started working. Yes. And I must say he was mocking me so because I must have said the word one click ,one click to him a hundred times and he said well if it isn't one click Lindsay finally made magic happen. And there you are. And I was like Oh I like that and so being the marketer that I am Dave I picked it up and I was like my name now is one quick one because it's so much easier to remember than Lindsay Anderson or your business name right. speaker:              Yeah although www.trafficandleads.com  is a pretty sweet business name. It speaker:              is. It is. But if you notice today it was kind of. Now here's an interesting thing. speaker:              And it's kind of funny because I went to google images and I put in Lindsay and Lindsay Anderson. Yeah. OK. And I think it was like two pictures of you there. OK. Well when I put it in one click Lindsay. speaker:              You DOMINATED. Yeah. speaker:              Maybe I should name a couple of my images Lindsay Anderson, so I can do a little better on google image search but honestly a lot more people call me one Click Lindsey to be quite frank with you. speaker:              I know that's pretty cool. And it's really easy just one click your name comes up your address comes up and bingo you're there and you've got the whole story. speaker:              I do. There you go. speaker:              So that's an awesome name. So not though. This is kind of interesting. And I didn't plan on going there with this but I'm not going to throw you under  the bus or anything but. speaker:              No, I wouldn't do that. speaker:              But you know how just you found out what were for you it's like the one frequency. How important is it for contractors and every other business owner to find that one thing that would work for them? Give them the name recognition that they need. speaker:              And I think this actually I think this actually wraps perfectly into the topic we were going to cover today so I'm glad you brought it up because in the world of contractors a lot of you can be really in that situation that you know they're all the same. And people are just comparing by price. I as a web developer and an online marketer I run into that all the time. And so, it's so important to figure out that one thing that will get people to remember you or recognize you so you can be different from the rest of your competitors and I don't care if it's cheesy because you know what One Click Lindsey is cheesy. Definitely my husband totally thinks it's cheesy but whatever it is like you can't just be Joe Bob's painting and like you know without any anything distinct. Like maybe you specialize in X Y Z that's something distinct or your name is distinct. It's so important. Otherwise you're just grouped in with the rest of them and you'll just get those people who are price shopping, and nobody wants to run a business based on lowest bids.   speaker:              But yeah. So, I know one of the things that we talked about in September and now is that I've never really been a huge fan of Google Pay per click. But I'm becoming more interested and more interested and I think that's why I want to talk about today because with Google pay per click mobile it really changes the game for contractors. speaker:              Yes, it does. Pay per click. I mean it is especially for contractors. I feel like it's so important and I know this is not an interview about you Dave but why do you not like paper click. speaker:              Why were you turned off on it originally because we had done other a lot of it has to do with and experience in knowing you know yeah. speaker:              And another challenge I had with pay per click they didn't do it right. And not to say so of a small fortune to navigate. But there again that wasn't my fault. Pay per Click is more as direct result marketing. It's just a different form. If you do it correctly right. speaker:              Yeah I mean and if I may explain why pay per click might be even a better option than Facebook ads and I would also like to talk about how you can use those in conjunction for a superstar type of campaign. So, when you think about it when people are looking for contractors they're like quite typically literally in the market in ads. And so they're going on Google and they're typing in roofing contractors Idaho or Portland or wherever you're at in this whole list comes up. speaker:              Now the very best place to be Dave is in the google maps or the organic listings like those are clicked on. Eighty percent of the time. And that's where you want to be. So I always recommend to contractors to always be running and SBO campaign in the background because if you can get up there to the top seven of the Google Maps and also inorganic you're going to get all of the leads. And so, it's so worth it to run a campaign. But if you are not up there and even if you are I still recommend running a P.P.C. campaign because people are actively searching for these on Google versus when we're running a Facebook ad campaign you like what are the chances you're going to be able to get in front of somebody who's literally looking for a roofing contractor that's going to be a little bit more difficult versus someone actively searching and you coming up on a page and that's why you'd want to run a PPC campaign. speaker:              And I also want to mention to folks when we talk about Google ad words it's an amazing platform and you should totally do it. But don't forget about being you can get less expensive clicks and you can run campaigns over there to see which one does better. I've literally had people that have killed it on being and we've spent as Dave said a small fortune on our words and we shut all the outwards off and we're just running everything on being. speaker:              Wow. That's pretty amazing. speaker:              Yeah. Just because it's a little less competitive over there. Yeah but that's kind of interesting and you have to remember Internet Explorer is installed on everyone's PC laptop that's the default. That's the default browser and everything so people who aren't even that technically like interested in downloading Chrome or who even care about what browser you use they're going to use Internet Explorer and that will default to being.   speaker:              So, here's the other thing about Google Ad Words. Let me yet. So, here's the thing. This is kind of what else we're doing. So, the other thing we're doing on Google outwards is we're going to we're going to run a really awesome Google AdWords campaign. We're going to be driving people to a website. And maybe it's an opt in or maybe it's just a landing page whatever it is that you're driving people to. There's a hundred different ways to do this but you drive people through clicks through longtail keywords on Google PPC and then you got to make sure your Facebook Pixel is there or on your landing page. OK. speaker:              And your Facebook Pixel everybody who came from a PPC campaign and then you turn around and you start running ads to them on Facebook. speaker:              And so you're basically getting, like you're getting a really active audience because obviously they were on google searching for roofing contractors and then you can retarget them there on Facebook. So that is a really great way to get even more value out of your PPC campaign. speaker:              Wow. Not yet. Double Exposure. speaker:              Exactly, exactly where as I mentioned before sometimes on Facebook it can be a little bit difficult to find that audience of people who are actively searching for a contractor since it is a very like immediate need you know. speaker:              Yeah, I mean I've found some groups where guys are just you know some guys are doing are doing Facebook advertising further their services and stuff like that and then are complaining that they're not getting any business. A lot of money and I'm going well you know you can't go out and upsetting the flow of things for the most part when you're on Facebook and you're advertising because people are there to just interact socially and you know they're not it's not a go to place to find yeah I mean and like you just put yourself put yourself in just a regular Facebook type of person situation you're looking at you're looking at these ads and like an ad for some you know roofing contractor flows through like you're just going to skip right over that because you're not in the business for a roof if you were you've already gone to Google and kind of tried to figure out who you were going to go with at that point. speaker:              Like it's gonna be really hard to target that audience and part of Facebook like the wonderful part of Facebook that you can create these wonderful lookalike audiences and stuff like that. And that may or may not work for you but it's still going to be really difficult. speaker:              Yeah ,yeah. Because they're not they're not actively buying. I mean I would think that if you were going for as a contractor let's say if you're going to try to run an active campaign on Facebook then you'd have to make it look like a social thing. speaker:              Yes like homeowners saves thousands by blah, blah ,  yes like an  info ad. speaker:              Yes. Or of course on Facebook. You can always play the long game which is have your Facebook page you keep you know you update your Facebook page three or four times a week with whatever it may be. And so you are always you know kind of top of mind for folks when it comes time for them to select a contractor. speaker:              The long game it's a long shot of real long, long  game and it's kind of funny because it's in the society now people go everywhere to look to see if you're even a viable company. speaker:              Yes, so you see what you do after you do that too. speaker:              I know it's one of those necessities, before you know years and years ago when doing Web sites came out it was and there was no real necessity for stuff like that per se. People would do it as a trying to think as we were just certification in the sense that yeah you're you're a viable business. Yeah. And now it's like I've actually I've been to places for my pain because have gone and done painting estimates and it's kind of funny because some of them that they already picked me to do it. speaker:              Yes. So I go there and I go through the whole thing and they go OK give us a color chart. Now I know you know from all the years that people don't ask for a color chart until they're ready to buy and I didn't even give them a price yeah but yeah, they checked me out and checked everything out. speaker:              So that’s when you know  its’seally important to have your presence on the web. speaker:              It is. And this is a whole other episode Dave, but having those reviews on your Facebook page getting clients to review you on Facebook and Google really important and I know it's super annoying for small businesses but you gotta do it. You got to do it. speaker:              Just one of those things that you know it's one thing I've got to do. Well no it's not. You need to take that vocabulary. Not one more thing I've got to do is one more thing that has to be done. speaker:              Yes. You have to you have to ask those customers to review you. Yeah. speaker:              Yeah. Not only that but you don't have to do. You're going to have somebody else do it. speaker:              Yeah that's true. You know there's a system for almost everything.  Yup. speaker:              I want to add one more thing  My good buddy  Dave and I are recording this December 1st of 2017. So, Facebook is getting so like this may not even applicable in a year right because Facebook is getting super smart. I don't know if you've heard these rumors or tested it yourself Dave but pretty much your phone is listening to you. So let me give you an example my brother in law and I were talking we were my phone was sitting on the kitchen counter and we were talking about this new insta pot and it's basically like a pressure cooking crockpot. OK. I've never heard of it never talked about it. He was literally the first person that was telling me about it. I kid you not. speaker:              I go to Facebook and there is literally an ad there for it. I'm not kidding. And so Facebook is listening to us. They're getting smarter. And like in theory they'll be able to serve ads because you're going to be sitting there talking about pink color and painting your walls and then then an ad like that would be applicable to you. And Facebook is listening to you like this is happening right now. speaker:              Kind of freeky isnt it? speaker:              Yeah but I'm like you know what. On one hand it's like that's creepy but then on the other hand it's like yeah. Because my brother also that the spots I totally clicked on the and went and bought it. So, it was extremely effective. speaker:              Oh, wow that was pretty cool. speaker:              There you go. Yeah because it was actually ended up being like an Amazon deal of the day thing. So, I had to pick it up. speaker:              Wow. Awesome true story. speaker:              That is cool. speaker:              So, know I heard about a little bit about pay per click mobile as opposed to just you know basically it's simply different animal or does it get use from you and with your paperclip it get it gets used in conjunction. speaker:              And I mean it is really important because like 85 percent of the people now 85 I'm sorry 70 percent of the people that are doing searches on Google are definitely coming in from a mobile device. And so you definitely want to make sure that you have all of that set up and add words correctly. And when you send people to a landing page that you're not just sending them to your home page but you're sending them to a mobile friendly landing page like that's one part that people really mess up with on Google Ad Words is they kind of just send people to their home page for you. Yeah like that you're just going to waste and spend at that point. Now here's a helpful little hint for those just getting started either on mobile AdWords or regular AdWords. You can go in. speaker:              This is what I recommend you go in and you set up an account for ad words you put your credit card and you do all that you give afterwards your very best shot at creating an ad and your keywords your locations and everything like that. And you  basically pause that campaign at that point and then either see a phone number on Google they change every day you'll either support phone number or shortly after you do that Google actually sends you a coupon for 50 dollars free AdWords credit and they will ask you to meet up with a representative to talk about your campaign. So I highly highly recommend that you take them up on this because what will happen is that lovely person in Google on the other side of the phone will offer to basically set up your campaign for you which you want to do because AdWords is so complex with negative keywords and match types and budgets and links and all of these things like it's a monster. speaker:              So, let her set up the ad for you. Put in your 50-dollar ad words credit and run it and see what happens. So that's a free way that you guys can try and see if you can get any phone calls or clicks for free on ad words. I highly recommend it. Speaker 21:        Cool that’s great way to get started. speaker:              Yeah. And why does Google do that because Google wants you to be successful on outwards because then you'll continue to put money into the system. If they can help, you'll be successful and it works for you. You'll continue putting hundreds of dollars into the system. speaker:              Yeah. So, do it. All right. speaker:              I'm going to for the fun of it. Yes. Yes. Have something else someone want to form. speaker:              Yeah there you go. There you go. Do you talk a little bit more about issues with outward campaigns? speaker:              I would like OK I'm going to get everything I came out of you know within an amount of time. speaker:              OK. So we can do another one someday. Yeah, we came to. Yeah totally. Because there's so many things to talk about but now I mention one of the biggest things that happens with AdWord mistakes is people send people to a website that's never a good idea. speaker:              They send people to a non-Facebook pics old website. That's not a good idea because you could be retargeting them on Facebook. The third is you just go out and you write a super generic ad and hope for the best outcome. speaker:              What's that again is that I call home flyers. Yeah. speaker:              And like that like you got to be. We talked about at the top of the show. You've got to like to give them a reason to click on that ad make it unique. Put something in there and see if it's going to work. So, don't just do a super duper generic ad. speaker:              And finally, as I mentioned before Google is Google AdWords is a really complex monster and there's things like negative keywords which mean like for example, like let's say you're running ads for your painting business you can go in and say OK Google this is what's called a broad type keyword. Anyone who types in house painting you don't like. speaker:              Have me show up unless they type in the words house painting jobs because then all of a sudden, you're just going to have all of these people who are looking who are painters looking for a job. And so you have what's called a negative keyword list where you can basically exclude like a whole lot of key words to make sure you can get rid of certain searches like that. Now there are lists out there you can go to Google and you can type in Google Ad Words negative keyword list and they'll give you a lot of ideas like people who are doing research or taking a class or want it for free or all of these negative keywords so before you do any keyword Google AdWords make sure you have your negative keywords set up there. Speaker 21:        Because. Yeah. Because and you know you put into your painting and yet to be a host of different things like painting colors. speaker:              Yes. You don't want painting color. speaker:              You don't want paintings or how to do well maybe they're just looking for how to video. speaker:              You don't want to how to. speaker:              Then daily you can go into the AdWords you can look at this report and it will actually tell you the keywords that your ad came up for that was clicked on. So, you're going to go want to interview those reports and if like some like maybe you didn't include a specific negative key word and someone with entering painting jobs showed up and you forgot to put jobs in there. You can go and continually add to your negative keyword list. Speaker 21:        So it's like any other campaign or any other Marketing campaigns going you tweak it so you get it,So, everything you want to do in that space. speaker:              Yes. And I all I'll tell you what. Like I'm literally six weeks in on a outwards campaign for a client of mine and we are finally getting it down to the cost per lead that we need. Like this is and we've gone through hundreds of revisions. We've had hundreds of keywords you know yeah like it's just it's a process and I cannot stress enough that words he can't just go in like put a thousand dollars in there and hope for the best because it won't work out. It just works. It's too competitive. speaker:              Yeah that's kind of funny. I had somebody once who are kind of what do Facebook ads. And I know it's a little different but it's just funny. We said you know you need to do a couple ads. They said OK, so they win they go. We put 100 dollars into the ad and I go OK. speaker:              And it was on like that and I go yeah, I know this is what I mean I don't know a whole lot of off Facebook ads but where did you did you tell them to just spend it all at once or five dollars a day. Oh, we didn't know you could do that. Did you tell them to go somewhere what do you mean tell them to go somewhere?  I said them you could give me 100 bucks I would always take me out to dinner. speaker:              Right. That's right. speaker:              Oh, hey this is cool. Really awesome. All of us need information is all these little tidbits these gold nuggets that they will help people with their Google ad words. But let's say that they don't want to they want you to do it for them. How do they get in touch with you? speaker:              Yes. Thank you for allowing me to say such a thing so you can check me out at all my blogging is at One Click Lindsey.com. You can spell that however you want. With or without a wand or spell it out I don't care. It's www.oneclicklindsey.com  or my name of my company is www.TrafficandLeads.com  So you can reach out either way and we can set up a time for a consult and then we can get you over a price quote because we can set up funnels where we set up your landing page and your email sequence and we nurture that email list or we are or we also can do all ala cart where we just run add words campaign or we have a monthly program where over 6 months we just improve all of your online marketing system. So, by the end of the six months you have a well-oiled machine of dependable traffic and leads for your small business. speaker:              Wow that's pretty awesome. Now yeah. Yeah. That is really cool. speaker:              The whole program I like because most people don't. They're thinking I'm going to spend a fortune but if you put them on a program and say we're going to do this this this and this and this which you expect then that makes it more fun. speaker:              Yes, well and I think a lot of people I guess the reason why I came up with that last program Dave is because people get really overwhelmed. I mean we've talked about 100 options here just about SEO and PPC and Facebook ads. I mean just online marketing there's just so many options so that monthly program we pretty much planned it out and because I know what I'm doing I'm able to say this is where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. We're running Seo campaign in the background. We're running you know Facebook ads in month one or maybe Facebook lead ads or whatever it is and kind of just plan it out. speaker:              That's really cool. Thank you. Yes. So, do it again tell us how do we get to you again. speaker:              Yeah. ww.oneclicklindsey.com Yeah. or www.traffic and leads.com or of course you can reach out to Dave because him and I are pretty good friends anyway. speaker:              And really got to go to my Web site and take a look. But it got all her stuff. I mean she's got a ton of stuff and it's good day. Thank you. speaker:              It's so neat to you know to be able to get to share you with our audience and see you at our Web site. And I'm really excited. speaker:              Thank you. It has been so much fun to be on your show today. Cool speaker:              . I'm excited. Thank you so much for being with us. speaker:              It is my pleasure.   Connect with One Click Lindsey www.oneclicklindsey.com www.trafficandleads.com https://www.facebook.com/moretrafficandleads    https://www.linkedin.com/in/oneclicklindsey/   There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com   and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information.       http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/

Chris Lee has always had a natural ability to help others shift their perspectives and let go of what is not working. He is someone that I have wanted to interview since the day I met him and he is one of the biggest reasons I still have my marriage. On today's episode, Chris walks us through the 10 principals of abundance and prosperity. Listen to learn how to make space for abundance and attract what you want in life. Find Chris Lee here: http://www.chrisleemotivator.com/ Buy the book here: Transform Your Life: 10 Principals of Abundance and Prosperity Take a Course with Chris Lee: Choice Leadership   Show Notes:  [1:02] First of all, before I get started I actually just wanted to acknowledge you because you've made such an impact in my life. You've known my story I have shared on this podcast so much about it but. You were one of the biggest reasons I still have my marriage. [2:19] But first I really want to introduce you to my audience who doesn't know you as well as I do. So could you give us a little bit about your backstory and how come this park is so important to you. [2:30] Well I'm from San Juan, Puerto Rico. I grew up there I moved there from New York when I was one and my family spent the first five years in the Old City in Old San Juan. So it's such a rich place with so much culture. And it was a very happy time. And when I was 6 my father decided to leave our family and he left and never came back. [2:56] And so that was a very traumatic moment for me in my life. I felt abandoned and I felt unworthy and being the youngest as well of five kids. I was like always left behind. And so that was that was pretty much the foundation of my mission to really not only develop my self-worth and develop my emotional intelligence but to also see how these tools could support other people. [3:56] And then there was this one workshop that a friend of mine did that changed her life. She was a good friend of mine from school and for some reason, I resisted it the most. And so it took her a year and a half to get me to go. And after finally, I said OK I'm going to go do this. It completely created a massive revolution in my thinking. And so that's when I realized that who we are as who we choose to be and that we have the power to create what we want. [6:36] And that led to my own principles and that led to my own work in my own workshop and developing it into the point where now we have transformed your life. Ten Principles of Abundance and Prosperity and through of course the work of transformation I do workshops all over the world specifically the United States at a place called Choice Center which is absolutely incredible which is where we met and Choice Center is a place a university a leadership University. Emotional intelligence is one of the most powerful tools you can ever implement in your life. And I also work with celebrities I coached celebrities I coach heads of companies and you know people in different arenas to really bring out their authentic selves and bring out the most effective part of them to make a massive difference. [10:11] Most people are always looking at what they are not what they don't have what they haven't accomplished what's wrong with them. And guys I do this work every week and there's and of course it's critical to do that to see OK this is what I need to fix. [10:32] And so by me acknowledging my worth and acknowledging all the gifts and blessings I had in my life and those of you listening think about what are you worth. What are the blessings in your life? What are the priceless things that you wouldn't trade for any amount of money? And so it's about gratitude and gratitude is me highlighting every gift I have from the fact that I'm breathing to the fact that I could see I could listen I could hear I could walk I could talk. There's so many you know in the book I say we're already billionaires we just don't know. [12:07] So one of my quotes in the book is when I live in gratitude. Life will give me more to be grateful for when I live in gratitude. Life will give me more to be grateful for. So that's a bug that's an attitude of gratitude. Prosperity is a byproduct. [15:17] Yeah. It's such an important exercise I think. I challenge you guys to do that right now or after we just just write down the things that you're great at the things that you can give the world the things that you have accomplished and really take time. [18:56] And so one of the key principles are or ways or strategies of letting go through forgiveness, forgiveness of your forgiveness of others as long as you're mad at somebody they have your power. As long as you're mad at yourself then you are powerless to move forward. So letting go is it really it encompasses a lot of things. [21:06] and that's what I'm in now you are able to create that space to attract in my life somebody who's been a partner a soul mate who respects me. We share the same vision we share values principles. We don't disrespect. We don't talk bad to each other. We don't scream. We don't say bad words we are just very loving and honorable with each other the way relationships were meant to be. [23:44] I mean look what's happening now with all these incredibly talented actors and producers and screenwriters that are just being outed for being predators someone is completely out of integrity. It's out of integrity for me to solicit you to have sex. And you say no to me insist on it anyway. It's out of integrity for me to drug you or for me to rip you off or steal from you or lie to you. I mean that just out of integrity and integrity is also about being whole and complete with yourself. You know you're you're acting inconsistently with what you say matters to you-you're out of integrity. So you say your health matters but you smoke. You say your family matters but you don't spend time with them. You say your wife matters but you never spend time with her. You say that your children matter but you don't listen to them. [26:28] I write principle for visualization. This is fun because you know everything was once a vision and then like one of my favorite quotes like Disney said if you have the power of your dream it is the power to achieve it. And think of all the things we can create when we use our imagination. Another quote imagination is more important than knowledge. [28:54] And my message to everyone listening is if you have the power to imagine it you have the power to create it in the current moment. So visualization is beautiful. [30:08] For example if you feel that you're not worth anything you create an affirmation. Like I am a valuable worthy man. So basically you're creating an affirmation. Let's say you want confident speaking in public because you're terrified of public speaking. So you create an affirmation where the words that represent what you want. So I am a powerful influential motivational speaker you know. [34:15] Like your marriage you get to choose it every day. It's not you chose it when you chose it. It's I choose it now and I choose it now and I choose it now it's something that's a work in progress so that persistence is really about choosing the goal over and over and turning any breakdowns that could happen into an opportunity. And in the book once again I teach you how to do that. [38:37] If it's to be it's up to me and when I lived these previous principles I start not only creating big things I attract I attract people in my life opportunities investments jobs relationships. I stopped having to look for work twenty years ago I stopped having to work for a paycheck. Twenty years ago 30 years ago sorry I stopped having to have what I want 30 years ago because I shifted into this energy and I could tell you hands down the avalanche of love and support and work and health and just it all comes back to you when you're sourcing but there's no place like being responsible and there's no apparent victim. [42:23] The big thing for me is humility because when you're in this work for so long and people all over the world are admiring you and loving you and you know it to be the big thing that's coming up for me is it's not about me. It's about the information or the message of the vehicle.  

With going on and this is Steve Larson and you are listening to secret Eble impacts radio. Speaker 2 00:04 Oh yeah. So here's the real mystery. How do real embalmers like us. Creedon sheets and only bug family members and friends I want to grow a profitable home business. How do we recruit players enjoy our downline and create extra incomes yet still have plenty of time for the rest of our lives. That's the glaring question in this podcast will give you the answer. My name is Steve Larson and welcome to seegar MLM hack's radio. Speaker 1 00:33 Hey guys glad that you're here. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. I appreciate it. He has no podcast is about 8000 downloads and it's only been around for a few months which is awesome. Thanks to all the leaders out there. Thanks to all listeners out there thanks all the people who are out there hustling. You guys are awesome. Really appreciate the support this podcast. The whole purpose of this podcast is to show you more about how we actually market in our MLM and how we're using different principles from different industries to be successful with it. So I have been creating more of my product which helps you oughter recruit people into your downline now. It's a system that I've been using on my own for the last almost year and a half and it's been working. It's been a lot of fun. Speaker 1 01:19 I really really enjoyed it and got another message today some saying that they join which is great. And what's cool about it is that I've never met them. Now I'm not trying to say to take the human out of your business but how cool is it that the whole system is taking care of it and continue to bring more more people in. Which is awesome by the way shout out to those you guys who went over to the join my downline dot.com funnel something that talks about last episode. Now again just you guys know and so the elephants out of the you know what we call the elephant out of the room. I will never ever ever ever ever pitch anybody into joining. Joining my downline ever I dont do that. Thats not my thing. Rule number one is that they come to me right and get talked about that episode or two ago those guys went over and did check it out and did apply. Speaker 1 02:07 Thats really cool. I really thought that was awesome of you. And if you dont want to I dont care. Thats the whole point. Thats why this works OK. I will never even tell you what I am. I'm a part of this thing and for a lot of reasons and so I just don't. This is such a low pressure thing because Anyway I just what I've been doing is working really well and I've honestly felt a little bit of an obligation to share what it is that I've been doing and taking a lot of the principles and things that I do and teach. Inside the internet marketing industry which is very different but then I go and I plug them into the MLM world and not many people have ever seen it actually do you actually do this. Speaker 1 02:48 Which frankly blows my mind. And because of that I've had at least five MLM owners reach out. I've had several I've had a lot of people reach out about the systems that are using it really means a lot of fun. It does. I think what's so much fun about it is that it requires the individual to grow. You have to learn how to market in order for these things to work which is very exciting and that's honestly what the purpose of the podcast is and why do we have coming product called secret MLM hacks. If you want to follow the whole launch of it go to secret MLM hacks dot com. And anyway halo Chauvet of the content today. So what I thought I would be cool to show with you guys today is what's called a prolific index. Speaker 3 03:29 OK the prolific index is a good example. This Speaker 4 03:37 year I've been talking to somebody who's trying to pitch you on a product and it sounds exactly like another product you've heard before. Right. Or you or Again someone else is pitching a product or let's say someone talking about you about their opportunity typically if you've been in an MLM you've been in another one also you know what I mean. Let's say someone is actually pitching you to join their MLM and it is boring. I mean it's just so it's so boring. Everything you're saying is mainstream everything they're saying is so. Like you've heard it before there even is some lines even before you know what I mean. I mean I know you guys know those people I know that you've heard those people before you know exactly what it is it's like to get pitched that way. You know exactly what it's like to meet those kinds of people. Speaker 4 04:22 It's boring. It's not that it's this is mainstream it's that they are literally being boring and you're like man this person doesn't even like their own thing or they're not excited or whatever it is you know what I mean. That's painful. That's not a fun experience to be a part of that. And obviously and you say well does even of course. Now let's take it on the flip side. Let's take it to another area let's get to another spot where someone has pitched a product to you or you can walk down the street and someone came up and they were overbearing. They were way too intense. They were way too strong. And in fact even what they were pitching you sound so far fetched so many promises there's no way it could be true there's no way they could actually fulfill what it is they're actually doing. Speaker 4 05:01 Right. That's another that's another end of the spectrum. That's like the complete opposite. Right. Well we're you want to be in the prolific index is in between those two where you're not the crazy zone you're not in the nutcase zone. And the you know hey you know rub this coconut oil on your on your elbows and suddenly to be rich area you know to be like this super super nuts area where people go into and they say hey this is going to change you know solve all your problems and you'll be wealthy beyond your wildest imaginations. You know what to do. You don't have to do anything your entire life you know that that's crazy. That's nuts. That's not true. That's total nuts. Right. Speaker 4 05:37 And then back to the whole boring zone where everything is so mainstream everything sucks and everything's like you want to be in the middle. OK. And one of the reasons why people struggle inside the Emelin space so much is because they sell on the mainstream they sell right in the boring zone. And the way they are delivered is boring. And you know it's funny if I speak normally on this podcast it comes across as boring as well for whatever reason. When I speak into the microphone right now and it pops out the other side it actually tones my message tones my tone down it actually turns down my tone it turns down my excitement level takes it down a notch takes down low and that's what ends up happening as well when you're speaking to people face to face or or over some message or even if it's in writing. Speaker 4 06:23 They can still hear your voice through the words right. And you want to be in between those two zones. This is the you know the super mainstream's zone. And then there's like the nutcase crazy zone where it's super super super out in La-La land. Right. You can't sell really on either spots the way sales work is. It's all curiosity based. Kay whenever you have a curiosity on your side you have to sell logically which socks it success because you got to go in and you got to start saying you know you are competing on price. You got to start competing on the comp plan you got to start competing and it's like oh you know what's so funny is that if we all increase our excitement level about what we actually do we actually get to get more people in. Speaker 4 07:09 OK. That's true for for selling a product as it is true for selling your actual opportunity as well. OK. This is a great sentence here. I'm sure you've heard of it and maybe maybe you haven't but it's called a one sentence persuasion course and the one thing is frustration course is. Who's this by again I can't even remember Blair Warren OK Blair Warren said this is awesome. Now if you've never heard the once in a persuasion course it is literally one sentence but this could change everything you're doing inside your MLM so please just pay attention to what it is that you're doing and how you actually deliver your message. OK listen to this. And think of this in context with the prolific index. Are you or your boring. Or are you mainstream or are you in the nutcase zone like you get to be in the middle. Speaker 4 08:02 OK that's where curiosity lies. That's where your ability to actually close sales with urgency and scarcity lie right. If you're not if you're in that kind of the mainstream zone you can't really have scarcity and urgency. Is the only two tools a marketer actually has. All right start thinking through your MLM. Think it through your pitch or think of you how does you actually talking with people and listen to the sentence the one since the one sentence persuasion course gave. This is what he says people will do anything for those who encourage their dreams justify their failures allay their fears confirmed their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies. That's the whole sentence. It's a whole course. OK let me say I need more time. People will do anything for those who will encourage their dreams justify their failures allay their fears confirm their suspicions and help them throw rocks at their enemies. Speaker 3 08:59 Interesting. OK. Speaker 1 09:00 Now here's where the challenge is here's where the challenge is with your MLM. The challenge with your MLM is to go take the scrip. Speaker 4 09:08 That you're applying is giving you to sell with and we're going to start drizzling on some glaze. We're going to start or start taking some glaze from this one Senate's persuasion course so we're going to start dropping it all over the top of the script that you've given. How can you encourage the dreams of those you're going to be pitching right now. That's pretty simple I think a lot of Emblem's actually get that one right. Right. Which is which is you know hey you're going to make extra money. Hey what's it going to be like when you can retire at a young age hey what's it going to be like when your kids are going to be set for life. Hey what's it going to be like when you're getting at least 10 grand a month. You don't I mean I think you do a great job at encouraging their fears. Speaker 4 09:44 Let's talk about justifying failures though. All right. Just the five failures justify failures. How can you justify failures for those that you're pitching in your MLM whether joining your MLM or the product yourself. Right. Oh it's not your fault you didn't do well. It's not your fault that it didn't work out. It's actually this things. You know what. It didn't even exist before. It's not even to this this option that I'm giving you right now. It did not even exist beforehand it did not exist when you were trying it. It's not even your fault you didn't try before because the option wasn't even there to truly be successful yet. All right. That's kind of. That's kind of the vernacular you'd say of something like that to justify other fellers allay their fears now allay their fears means to reduce. Speaker 4 10:33 Yeah I mean it always means a reduced means the drop means to diminish. How do you diminish the fears of the other person. OK now to do that first of all you understand what those fears are. And some people are going have a hard time opening up their fears to you especially if they don't trust you yet. Right if you're not friends if you're cold pitching if you're cold prospecting whatever it is. So they're laying the fears one like anyway. Typically you can go with time money and resources. Hey you know ahead of time he'd own money hate and of resources right time money and resources that's the big one internal fears. I'm not good enough. I don't know how to talk to people. I don't know how to approach others. Speaker 4 11:09 I don't know what to say right. Those are internal fears as well. And then there's like fears that have to do with the opportunity itself. I don't know if this is good. Are you going to take my money. Am I going to have to talk to all my friends and family where will I lose them. Well you know those are all the different fears that can pop up when someone you know especially when you're talking to you about joining your MLM another one is confirming suspicions. OK I'm going to teach you the ethical way to grow your downline. What ethical way. You mean there's an unethical way. Right. Anyway that's a fun one I like that one law and that helped throw rocks at their enemies. Now that doesn't need to be a person they're throwing rocks at. Speaker 4 11:46 But it can be a concept right. Very very popularly in the MLM world is to throw rocks at the to concept. Right. All I'm working for myself right. Nine to five right. You know and I'm running out of Sprint and I'm getting all my people in place but I'm through. And so anyway it's very very common in the MLM world especially to throw rocks at the 9 to 5 which is great. It works you know. But how can you do that. The thing that you've got to remember with all of this is that you're helping the prospect throw rocks at their enemies not your enemies. Right. You're helping to justify the failures of the prospect not your own failures. Right. You're helping to confirm the suspicions of the prospect not your own suspicions. Put yourself in the shoes of the other person that you're getting into. Speaker 4 12:38 That's why it's such a cool business so it's MLM is such a relationship business it has to be relationship business. How can you know what the dreams of the other person are without getting to know them. How do you know what the failures are like getting to know them. How can you know what really the enemies are of that person without getting to know them. You know what I mean. And when you look at those things are these are these are elements of persuasion This is the one sentence persuasion course. And if you can start to learn with this one sentence persuasion of course is kind of combine that with with the prolific index which is to not be mainstream and not to be you know in La-La crazy land. You're going to be the we speak to people the actual way you speak to people is going to be far more persuasive than than in any way. Speaker 4 13:23 Well it's like you know the most people inside the Emelin space in general Ziv make sense. So start doing it through your MLM. How can I justify and you might actually have let's say you have people who are already inside your downline which is great. That's awesome. If you have people who've already inside your downline right now how can you justify the failures of those who were in your downline. Can you allay their fears. Can you confirm their suspicions. OK. How can you throw rocks at their enemies and and and encourage their dreams. How can he do those things. And that helps them move along helps them push them along. Every single entrepreneur I've ever heard of in my life incurred you know encounters failure if they're not means and are trying right. Speaker 4 14:01 You better be failing your face off with great speed. I mean how can you be doing that with people who are inciter down. And how can we do that with people you're trying to prospect to and start combining that with the prolific index. All right if you're selling just the main stream stuff in a mainstream way and knows you're going to be boring you give me where you're going. So boring no one buys boring. All right. Only ambitious people by boring. Right. Most people aren't ambitious. So you just cut your market way down. OK. So too ambitious people. So to the rest of humanity. Anyway that's another lesson as well. But anyway. Hey guys I hope this has been helpful. Speaker 4 14:44 Episode is a little bit more technobabble I kind of dove dove deep into some more concepts but thinking through what these things are. In hindsight when it really comes down to it went and when all is said and done the only real tools that a market are has is scarcity and urgency. That's it. How can you make your Emblem's scarce. How can you make your product scarce. How can you increase your urgency. Well this once in a persuasion course and the prolific index kind of combining those things together with those really easy ways to boost your your MLM you know boost the status of a boost boost the desirability of what it is actually selling anyway. A lot of technobabble this round I'm so sorry for all that but I hope that it helps you start to think through and start to see like look you just can't be selling the same thing as everyone else. Speaker 4 15:38 You're mainstream you're boring. Can't go to this site either and wacko landie get to be in the middle right. Got to be in. Got to be in the exciting zone where you're kind of on living on the edge but not off the edge you know jumping over the edge. Anyway guys will be doing great. And please go apply this stuff. I would love to know those are guys who are and I love to see your comments. He has been commenting on stuff lately it's been a lot of fun. If you would that would be awesome too if you want to go on an iTunes and just leave a review for this podcast that helps like crazy helps me but also helps all the people who are trying to find this kind of information find it easier in little iTunes algorithm and it just means a lot to me too honestly. Speaker 4 16:19 Honestly it actually takes me a solid hour to an hour and a half per episode to put these things out so it actually does get me super excited when I see things coming back so knowing you guys are awesome. Appreciate you. Talk to you later. Speaker 5 16:35 Hey thanks. Please please remember to subscribe and feedback for me. Have a question you want answered live on the show. Go to seegar MLM hack's radio dot com to submit your question and download your free MLM masters at.

Description: Heather Craik shares with us some pitfalls of dating as a single mom, with some pretty crazy results. Plus a food that fills you up from the inside outHi everybody, I'm Barbara Fernandez, the Rocking Raw Chef, here with my Clean Food, Dirty Stories: one to entertain, the other to inspire.I help people stamp out stress, depression and fatigue over at RockingRawChef.com, and today's title is:How Not To Date As A Single Mom (And Still Find Love Anyway)In addition to this story, at the end of this episode I'll share with you the best food to feel full, in other words, to fill you up from the inside out.OK enough hints from me, let's get on with the story.Our guest, Heather CraikI am super excited to be joined here today for our story by Heather Craik. Heather's going to share with us what it can be like to start out life as a single mom, explore dating on Tinder (which like I've never done) and have long distance relationships (which I haven't done either). So all that sounds super interesting to me! She now helps people solve a completely different kind of problem which we'll mention later.For now though, Heather, welcome to the Clean Food, Dirty Stories podcast! I've been looking forward to having you ever since you told me about your incredible, roller-coaster story!Heather: Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.Me: You're so welcome. So I think if I understood it correctly that your story starts where you were with somebody and you got pregnant? And then you wound up being a single mom? Can you talk about how that came about, maybe?Heather's storyHeather: Yeah, sure. I mean I'd been with this guy for about nine years or so and that's an entirely different story in and of itself. But what happened was I was in Canada when I fell pregnant. And because I wasn't expecting to fall pregnant in Canada, I didn't actually have medical coverage for that. So I came back home to the UK which is where I'm from. And you know a couple of months after that I realized that it was really not working out with this other guy.Me: The nine year guy.Heather: So that was just a bit entertaining for a while. I broke it off with him and went through the rest of my pregnancy, it was just me. My parents were there which was really helpful. But I was about 5 months pregnant I reckon when it ended.Me: That is so, I have to say that is just so, so brave! Oh my goodness. Like how did you...how did you feel like when you... I mean, yeah, how did you feel? I can imagine – I can't imagine, I mean I've been pregnant, I have two kids. But how did you feel when you just like made that, made that decision, you know? To...Heather: Well I think leading up to it was quite stressful. And I noticed that before the decision was actually made, I felt stressed for a lot of days, but once it was done and it was over I actually felt relieved. Which I think was really telling.Me: Wow. That's really telling. Especially like the situation you were in, right? Cause I know that for me, when I was pregnant in some ways I felt kind of vulnerable, you know? Because you're carrying this childHeather: Oh yeah, entirely. I was back staying with my parents even. So yeah. But they were great, by the way. My parents were fantastic from the word go.Me: Oh wow, that's really good. Well I'm sure that at the end of the day they just really want you to be happy, right?Heather: Yeah, they're really good that way.Rebuilding a businessMe: So then you started out as a single mom, so was your son born when you were still living with your parents? I mean, were you working at all?Heather: Yeah, I was still with my parents for about 10 months after he was born, actually. So I was working, I had started work on my business at that point but it hadn't really fully taken off. I had my business before I fell pregnant, let's just clear that up. But then it sort of, you know, the whole moving country and then being very pregnant and then having a very small child, it had fallen by the wayside. So I had to kind of build that back up again.Me: Yeah. Wow. I can't even imagine, like, I don't know, I started...I started my business when my kids were like 10 and 12 or something like that. But I think I was so traumatized when my son was born, my first child, that I don't think I could have had any head for business at all. It was like...Heather: Oh I tell you what, pregnancy brain is such a real thing though. You don't realize it, but probably the last couple of months of my pregnancy and for three months after I couldn't focus on my work at all. I would try, I would sit down in this dazed fog and try to code and it just did not work.Me: Wow, I guess because...that would be an interesting topic in and of itself, right? Pregnancy brain and why it happens and everything. I mean you've got another being with you, right? That's, that could be...that's the first thing that comes to my mind. That must have been really hard. But at least your parents were there to help out, right? I imagine when your son was born, then...Heather: Yeah, I didn't have to cook for the longest time! That was hugely helpful!Me: Oh! Heaven! (laughs)Heather: I know! I do miss that!Time to start dating againMe: Yeah! So then how old was...cause I know that at some point you did...you did want to start dating again. How old was your son when you were like, 'OK, I'm gonna just, you know...'Heather: I think just over a year, actually.Me: And was there anything that happened? Any specific, I don't know, moment or incident that caused you to think, 'OK I'm ready to date now'? I mean, it's a pretty big decision, right?Heather: Honestly, it had been a very long time for me since I'd had any...you know, any of that wonderful sex stuff. Me: Any action. Yeah, of course!Heather: And it was getting to that point...I had moved out which was, you know, helpful. So I'd moved out and had my own place and my son was more settled, he started to sleep better at night which was a real help. Yeah, that was pretty much what led up to it.Me: Wow. And then so you said that you started finding people...How did you start finding people? I'll let you talk about it!Trials of TinderHeather: Well since I pretty much live online anyway, I automatically gravitated over to dating sites. You know, I'd been hearing a lot about Tinder because I'm of that age group that they obviously target for that kind of thing. So I thought 'OK whatever, I'll have a look'. I wasn't expecting to find anybody but I thought whatever, it would be worth a laugh at least.Me: So then like sorry, for people who don't know what Tinder is, can you say a little bit about like how it works?Heather: OK well basically, what Tinder is, it's an app first and foremost. It links into your Facebook but it doesn't post to your Facebook. It just pulls information from there. And you know, you get these photos that come up and you either swipe right if you'd like to talk to them or swipe left if you don't want anything to do with them. Me: Yup (laughs).Heather: So what happens is if you swipe right and someone else, like the one you just swiped right on also swipes right, then you can start a conversation.Me: Right. Kind of like shopping, I guess.Heather: Kinda sorta. You already have that 'OK well we both agreed we like something about you'. You get that. By its nature it can be quite shallow, but there actually are descriptions and bios as well. People don't actually read them...Me: That was my other question as well. Cause if you swipe...So do you have the description under the picture that you can read before you swipe? Or do you only swipe based on...Heather: Yeah, you can see it under the picture. You just have to click and you can read it. Not everyone does.Me: Of course, yeah I can imagine. Interesting people...or notSo you met some pretty interesting people on Tinder, right? I believe there's a little story there...Heather: Oh, yes, did I ever!There were a few interesting ones I will grant you, but the one that still sticks in my head was this one guy. And I don't remember his name, I don't even really remember what he looks like, but I remember he was quite reasonable at first. So obviously we'd both swiped to the right to talk, whatever. We'd exchanged a couple of messages and then pretty much off the bat he was like, “Well I like Lego”. As one of his interests. And I was like “OK, well Lego's pretty cool, fine.” And then he comes back with, “No, no, I really like Lego”. Before I had a chance to respond to that, he follows up with this other message saying that he likes to put it in certain places and I'm afraid that I was out. All done. No way!Me: Oh no, that's too weird (laughs). Did you actually like meet live with anybody on Tinder?Heather: I did actually meet live with one of them and honestly it was probably one of the more shallow ones. It was just one of those 'hey he looked good I looked good'. Fine. We'll meet up. And he was a nice guy, still is a nice guy. Not the brightest tool in the shed, but yeah, we did meet up and we did engage in some activites and that was fine. But not particulary fulfilling, I would say.Is Tinder worth it?Me: Yeah. So is your conclusion that it's probably good for the shallow stuff but not much more? Is that what you would say?Heather: I reckon it probably could work for people that had a bit more time. There were certainly some interesting people there that I reckon if you'd gone out and spoken to them in a coffee type setting that might have been OK. But a lot of people do just go on and use it for shallow whatevers.Me: Yeah. So then, how long did you kind of like play around with Tinder before you went on to somebody else that...yeah? (laughs)Heather: Probably around a month and a half or two months, I was just bored by that point. And you're having to keep up all these other conversations too. It seems sort of mean to be like 'OK I'm not that interested' but at the same time...not that interested.Me: Yeah, and it's time and everything that you're taking up, right?Enter the former loverSo then how did the former lover come into the picture?Heather: Ah, well you see he was one of those people that we never went particularly far emotionally. That was just never our thing. But we had been lovers obviously on and off. And he...I'm not sure how that started again actually, I think what happened was we started talking again cause we were phasing in and out of each other's lives anyway. We started talking again and it was just one of those 'hey OK, so do you just want to come over' type things. I think I actually started out telling him that nothing was gonna happen, and that was obviously not what actually happened.Me: I had somebody like that too. It was actually quite handy, it was because I used to be a singing waitress and a singing coat check girl in this like fancy French restaurant place. Very, totally random and there were lots of different bands that came through and there was a guy like that. You know, we had a kind of understanding that if, you know, if we were in the mood for just something superficial, we'd just, you know, it's fine.Heather: Yeah, and it's not like you don't care, it's just never ever gonna be anything else.Me: And then I feel like, you know, well I think there's a place for that right? If that's what you want and that's what they want, I mean why not, right?Heather: Yeah, I mean it worked out pretty well for that.A long distance relationshipMe: And then you said that after that you somehow then found yourself in a long distance relationship, I mean how did that happen?Heather: Yes, I kinda did. So this guy was somebody that I'd met in Canada about 6 years prior, nothing ever happened there. He was friends to us both but we'd sort of lost contact for a while. We hadn't really seen each other for a while. We started talking again, it must have been a couple months after Gabriel turned one, so it must have been September probably that we started talking again. I was minding my own business, not looking for anything in particular. And he just admits that he likes me, and I'm like “Oh, OK” because I'd always sort of had a thing for him too. So we did that and then it just went boom. Right time. We gave it a go.Me: And then how did you...but you said it was long distance, so like how did that work? Did you like Skype each other?Heather: What we used to do was we would talk a lot on Facebook messenger because that was the quickest and easiest way. But he would also video call. Like after a few months we realized that worked a bit better. He would hop on video and we'd talk. Which, you know, it was fine when my kid was asleep.If he isn't a kid kind of guy...But for whatever reason my sweet, darling toddler that loves everybody hated when I was on video with this guy. He was fine with video with other people even. Hated it. Tantrum after about 10 minutes, did not like it.Me: I wonder why.Heather: Yeah, I mean to be fair, this guy didn't particularly like him either. He tried, but he wasn't ever a kids type person and you know he really didn't like my ex either which didn't help matters because honestly...they're related, so...Me: Oh, your son and your ex, yeah.Heather: Yeah. So, yeah, that didn't go very well. He did make an honest effort but that's not really something you can make an honest effort on. Which is kind of why we ended up splitting actually. It was that and the distance. Because I realized that I didn't want to move back to Canada and he had realized that he didn't want to move either.Me: So how long were you in that kind of situation with him before you were like 'oh well this isn't really gonna go anywhere'.Heather: Well I think probably that entire relationship lasted about 5 months. It was about a month or two of 'OK what are we gonna do about this' so that wasn't particularly fun. And then it became really obvious at the end that it was just never gonna change really. I did entertain the thought of moving for a little while. And I know that he tried thinking about moving too for a little while, and we just wouldn't have been happy moving, either of us, so.Trying out BumbleMe: You said that once you moved on from the long distance relationship, you mentioned something called Bumble. What's that?Heather: Oh, Bumble, right. So it's kind of like Tinder, but with a very noticeable difference. Only the women can do the first message and you only get 24 hours after you've matched to make that message. And then they get 24 hours to message back, and if no-one does within their time frame, that's it. Unless you pay. Some people pay.Me: And how did you find that compared to Tinder?Heather: Honestly it was very similar, but the people seemed to be looking for deeper connections in general. In general. But there were obviously still plenty of the 'oh hey, I just want a casual something'. That's fine, if that's what you're looking for.Me: And then did you meet a lot of people on Bumble?Heather: There were a few people I spoke to actually, and some of them were quite lovely. And there was one I actually met up with. He was fine, we sort of met up during the day at one point first of all. You know, we got on great, it was OK. I think we went to the park actually, so Gabriel was actually there. He was running about at the park. This other guy was there and it was fine, there was nothing going on. We would up meeting up the next evening. And basically we did the kissing thing and then the other stuff, but oh my God no!Kissing a black holeHow would I describe this delicately? Probably not very well, but I'll describe it anyway. Imagine a black hole and imagine chicken pecks and combine the two. And that was his kissing.Me: Oh, that's horrible!Heather: And the sex itself was not much better.Me: Oh, OK that's actually, that's a really good image. That's a bit scary, it's kind of a bit freaky.Heather: Yeah, you sort of wonder how they get to that age without knowing how to kiss. But anyway.Me: I guess some people do, right? I guess that didn't go anywhere! Heather: That did not!Me: (laughs) And then you said you found yourself in another long distance relationship? Or not a relationship?Heather: Ah, completely accidentally, I had in fact sworn off boys at this point. I was like 'you know what, I don't even care anymore. I'm not doing this dating thing anymore, I'm happy on my own'. Because it had come to that point, right? My business was going well by this point. I was perfectly happy just not looking for somebody. That was me at this point.Me: I mean then did you think...sorry, did you think that...when you say you were perfectly happy not looking for somebody, was it because you thought 'oh there's no point, they're all gonna be a bit crap' or was it because...Heather: There was a bit of that but it was more that I wasn't that fussed about it anymore.When you're perfectly happy on your ownMe: Oh! What happened for you to like be not fussed?Heather: I think it was a combination of the ending of that long distance relationship. Because I had cared quite a bit and then obviously it didn't work for practical reasons. Combined with...I'm gonna call it a sex experience, but it's not...you know the one. And then also combined with I'd reached a point where I really wasn't lacking anything.I think probably the reason I started looking in the first place was that I felt this longing for a connection, right? But by that point I was actually OK on my own. I didn't need that to validate me anymore.Me: So the interesting thing I find about that is that there are so many people who try to get to that point through conscious effort, right? For example they think to themselves, 'oh I keep reaching out to others for connection and I'm kind of just fed up because nothing's working. I'm just gonna be by myself and do a lot of introspection'. And stuff like that. Whereas with you...Like in other words, they try to get to that point by working on themselves in a very conscious way. Whereas with you it sounds like it was a very kind of like organic process.Heather: It was completely accidental! I was just doing my own thing.Me: Did it have anything to do with your business doing well? Because I know you did say at one point that it was quite hard with your business, right? There was a bit of a tough period.Heather: Well yeah, because obviously I had a young child. It's not that easy to juggle with business, especially since I was used to just running it by myself.Being your own personI think that took some getting used to. But no, what happened was over the course of that long distance relationship that lasted about 5 months, my business started to take off and have more traction. My child, very helpfully, started sleeping through the night. I wasn't a sleep-deprived zombie anymore. That was a lot more fun! I started to take better care of myself again and you know what? He was actually quite good for me in that regard because I started to explore being my own person again which was really quite helpful too.Me: Oh I know what you mean.Heather: All that combined so that I found who I was again.Me: I know what you mean, it's kind of...cause I can remember that stage with my own kids. It's kind of like, yeah, you do get your own life back in a sense. I think you put it well to me in an email when you said like a mombie, right? You're walking around with no sleep.Heather: Yeah, up until that point I don't think I had slept more than two hours in a row since he was born. Because his longest period of sleep...And that only happened when he was about a year old maybe, was four hours and then two hours and then two hours and then one. But obviously I was still up. So I got two, two, one and a half if I was lucky...Self-affirmationMe: Oh wow. So then...I was gonna ask you something about that. And then your business started to take off, right? You got more clients and everything? Do you think...cause I don't know about you, but for me I know that when the business stuff starts to go really well, that's a big, a big kind of self-affirmation, in a way.Heather: Yeah, it's like this realization 'oh hey I can make it work. It's doing well, I can do this'. That point that you get to. I'd had it before, but I think with being pregnant and having my kid...There was a part of me that was initially worried that 'oh my gosh, what if I don't ever get this back?' You know? So obviously that had been appeased by that point because I started to see it come back again.Me: So then now where are you at now with that? I mean I know that your business is going well. But do you also like, are you at the point where you have somebody in your life? Or are you at the point where...Heather: Oh yeah, it's actually really funny. It was probably about a week after I got to this realization that I was totally fine. I could just have a business and have my son and maybe go travelling and all this fun stuff....Along comes the right guyAlong comes this guy that I'd been speaking to probably since October. He was a friend of a friend, we'd started talking on Facebook. I think we met once some years ago for like 5 minutes. So we'd been talking and we get along really well. We'd video chat just as friends, whatever. And so somewhere in there he decided to profess his undying love for me which was helpful.Me: Oh, wow.Heather: I'll be fair, I do love him too. We are not together. I am still single because I'm incredibly stubborn and I'm not doing the long distance thing again. But he's actually looking at moving here at some point.Me: Wait, so is he in Canada at the moment?Heather: Yup, he's in Canada as well.Me: Oh! Yeah, you've gotta get those guys out of Canada, right?Heather: Yeah, I'm just gonna need to import somebody.Me: Exactly. Well, just the good one, right? The other guys can stay over there.Heather: Yeah, they can stay as far away as they need too.Me: Just get the good one. Being clear about what you wantMe: So are you...how can I put this? Have you basically just said to him, you know, “I'm not moving, if you want us to be together then this is how it's gonna work. And I need you to come here” kind of thing?Heather: Pretty much, yes. What happened was that I was quite open with the fact that I'm not leaving here. Or that if I did leave from here, it would just be to Europe maybe. You know, fairly local because I don't want to leave my family behind again.Me: Especially with your son and everything, right?Heather: Yeah, and a ten hour flight each way is not ideal.Me: Oh I know, I've done that, yeah!Heather: That's where I came into it. And he was all like, well he was initially all 'No I don't want to move either'. Which was fine because, you know, we weren't dating. But he sort of came round to the idea. I think what happened for him basically is he looked at it and decided, 'Actually I don't have much to keep me really. And I want to be over there with her, so...' That's where he came to it.Me: Wow, so yeah, you'll soon have somebody flying halfway across the world to be with you, which is pretty cool, right? Heather: Yes, it makes a change.Me: Exactly! Rather than you doing all the flying, that's really good.What Heather does nowSo what about...so now I know that with your business and everything, well. I'd love to ask you about what you're doing now because I know for a fact that what you're doing now is super helpful to people like me!Heather: Yeah, OK. So what I do is, I run Designmancy. And basically what I do there is I will take your WordPress site and I can build it, I can repair it, I can train you how to use it. I can fix it...Anything you could possibly need for WordPress, that is what I do. I'm your coder fixer gal, basically.Me: Wow that is really cool. And you take on all different kinds of projects, everything from like building sites to fixing existing sites...Heather: Oh yeah, I mean I am honestly at my happiest when I'm getting to fix bits and pieces of code or getting to build something new. Really I get kind of twitchy if I've not fixed anything for a couple of weeks, so just give me something to do!Me: Oh just give me a call, I've got plenty to fix!Heather: Basically that's how I work.Me: That's really cool. And of course you can do it from anywhere, right?Heather: Well yeah, that's a big help too.Me: That's fantastic! Brilliant! What's your...Oh I'll put the link to your website in the show notes. But for the benefit of people listening, where's the best place for them to find you?Where to find HeatherHeather: OK, probably the best place to find me is designmancy.com. I'll spell it cause it's a bit of a weird word. It's design, I think we all know that bit! And then it's mancy dot com. That's the best place to reach me. Depending on when you get there my site may still just be a 'coming soon' page. Because cobbler's shoes and all that stuff. But it does have this really nice early bird discount, so hop on over!Me: Super! So then I have another question for you. Is that the new design of your website? Because your business is already, you know, going well and making money and stuff, I assume you got your previous clients from a previous website? Is that right?Heather: Well I had had a website there for a while but it was never really that good. I've actually been getting a lot of my clients from Facebook groups and referrals and word of mouth. I've not been using my site as much but it has gotten to the point where I really need it to work. I'm really excited by this actually, I've hired a copywriter to help me. So she's doing all my written content. Obviously I'm doing my website bit but I've got a photographer and all that fun stuff as well. It's coming together really quite nicely and it's exciting!Me: Super! And I do know that it's very cobbler's shoes, right? That, you know, the WordPress site designer whose WordPress site isn't designed yet because you're doing everybody else's, right?Super! Oh thank you so much Heather for being here to share your story with us. I love that, so...Heather: Thank you Barbara, I'm so glad I got to be here and thanks for having me!An ideal food to feel fullMe: You're so welcome! So, I mentioned at the beginning of this episode that I'd share with you one of the best foods to fill you up. It's a great comfort food that's actually good for you. And that food is...oats!Now oats are a very powerful yet often underestimated food. They really do help fill you up and give you energy over long periods. As do chia seeds, which I've spoken about in a previous episode.And the reason I'm mentioning food to feel full is because a lot of us could reach for fulfilment in the arms of someone. Man, woman, whatever. But this food can actually fill you up without reaching for anybody's arms. And then you can still reach for the arms of somebody if you want to!In terms of food to feel full, in one study done in Australia, oats actually ranked at number 3 for a 'satiety index'. Which basically is a number allocated to how good particular foods are at satisfying hunger and contributing to a feeling of fullness. Some researchers have found that eating oats can help reduce appetite as well. So if you make yourself some oatmeal with apples, you'd be giving yourself a double whammy of food to feel full, as it were, because apples are good appetite-reducers too.I'm sure that if you've eaten oats, well you may not be very surprised at that because you've probably experienced feeling pretty full after a bowl of, say, oatmeal or porridge as they say in the UK.Other benefits of oatsDid you know that oats do have a lot of benefits, and one of the benefits is that they're great for your gut? They're high in fiber so they're very helpful for digestion, and some researchers believe that they may even help boost some of the beneficial bacteria in our gut.The other cool thing about oats is that they can be very helpful for lowering cholesterol. The oats bind with cholesterol and therefore help remove excess from your body. I've got personal experience with this because my ex-husband used to be on medication for high cholesterol, until he did two things. The first one was he started eating my food, but also he added in oats at breakfast. Within a year he was off the medication and that was about 10 years ago now. And if anyone comes near him and says the word 'oats', they will get an earful about how oats bind with cholesterol and you know, blah blah blah. He goes on about it(!)But the benefits of oats don't stop there. You don't have to eat them, you can bathe in them! For help with inflamed skin conditions such as eczema, chickenpox or even sunburn, you can add one cup of finely ground oats to your bathwater and let your skin soak up all that goodness.What oats containAs to what oats contain, they have many minerals, such as selenium, magnesium, phosphorus, manganese and zinc. So the phosphorus helps if for example you've got students in your house for example and they're studying for exams and things, phosphorus can help there too.Many people ask if oats contain gluten. It's important to note here that oats of themselves don't actually contain gluten. However, if you are celiac or extremely sensitive to even traces of gluten, you'll want to check the provenance of your oats. Because sometimes they can pick up traces of gluten if they are grown next to a field of gluten-containing grains such as wheat or barley. You can buy packages of oats that are marked gluten-free, they're just a bit more expensive. But you can get them.How to eat oatsAs to how to eat oats, when you're faced with buying oats in the supermarket, you may get a bit confused. There are steel-cut oats, oat groats, rolled oats, Scottish oats... all kinds of oats! I'll link to an article below that spells out the different kinds so that you'll know what to buy without tearing your hair out.Personally I use two kinds. I use oat groats, which are the whole grains. They're great for soaking overnight and making into oat milk, and they're also really good for grinding for making oat flour. I also use rolled oats which are basically hearty flakes. They're oat groats that have been pressed flat and they're great for making energy bites.I've got some recipes that use oats in my 5-Minute Chocolate Heaven ebook, so if you'd like to take a look, I'll post the link below in the show notes. Have YOU got a story to share?Which brings us to the end of this week's story – and if you've got a true story to share (and you'd like to know what food could have saved the day or enhanced your situation), I'd love to hear from you! Got a question, or a comment?Got a question, or a comment? Pop a note below in the comments, that would be awesome. You can also subscribe to the podcast to listen 'on the go' in iTunes, Stitcher or TuneIn.I hope you have an amazing day. Thank you so much for being here with me to share in my Clean Food, Dirty Stories. Bye for now!RESOURCESLink to 5-Minute Chocolate Heaven and other recipe ebooks: https://rockingrawchef.com/5-minute-recipes/Article on health benefits of oats: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270680.phpAn easy explanation of the different types of oats: http://www.webmd.com/diet/oatmeal-benefits#1Heather's bio: Heather runs Designmancy, your place for WordPress design, repairs and training, while raising a 2 year old son and generally plotting to take over the world.Heather's website: http://designmancy.comFind Heather on Facebook and Instagram​

On this super exciting episode of The Holy Nerdy Podcast, we have joining us in our digital studio, our first guest, Thomas Clemmons. Thomas is the amazing artist of the web comic Robot Friday. Come listen as Thomas shares his stories with us about life as an indusrty artist who truly loves what he does. We would like to thank him again for joining us on our shitty little podcast. Speaking of shitty, after the break Caleb gives us the "down and dirty" scoop of how he almost missed the "A Mediocre Time with Tom and Dan Live Show". He was really hyped up for it and his excitment was almost EXPOLSIVE!!! Did he make it to the show or was he a real party POOPER? Did he make it to his chair on time or did he miss out and LOSE HIS STOOL to someone else? This certainly gives my awful stories a RUN for their money. Some times he just thinks he is too hot to TROT. Ok I'm done.       TOPICS Thomas Clemmons & Robot Friday Caleb's CRAPPY Comedy Show experience     Visit Thomas' website and read his funny web comic at http://www.robotfriday.com/   Or on social media Facebook Twitter Instagram  

Ladies and gentlemen, Adele! ...Hello... Ok I'm not going to use that joke. This is Adele Yoshikawa. The first thing that I'm sure everyone notices about her is the flower in her hair, her joyous smile, and especially her happy beingness... her overwhelming happy and spectacularly positive beingness. To Adele, this is all part of the plan to spread that joy, love, and positivity into the universe. As we'll learn from her story, this is definitely intentional. She is your friendly neighborhood mail carrier, but she is so much more, from helping with the food bank, to being a shining example to her kids, to the amazing ways she takes to promotion and business, she has big plans for the impact she wants to create. I definitely had a most fantastic time with this conversation, and I know you all will as well. Show notes. - The food drive that is mentioned in the show is the Letter Carrier's "Stamp Out Hunger" Food Drive, scheduled for May 13, 2017. They are in their early planning stages for Hawaii, so we'll update everyone as the date comes closer. - Frequently mentioned, PSI Seminars' Honolulu December Basic Seminar is coming up (December 2-4). We've talked a lot about this class and I can totally vouch for the amazing experience and lessons that I continually get from taking it. Contact the show at email button below (hygyst@gmail.com) or give me a call 808-391-3452 if you have any questions and want to sign up for the class, you'll be glad you did.

A story of a really bad travel experience in 2012.... that ended up with me being alive. Thanks (or no thanks?) to my procrastination. / / / / / ------------- / / Transcript: / / There was a time when I was VERY MUCH into crossfit. It's this exercise cult thing- and they have their own games- like the olympic games, but with weight lifting and way less attention to personal safety. / / / / In 2012, the crossfit games were being held in LAX in July- and I was gonna go. / / / / First problem: I procrastinated too long and didn't have a ticket AND they were sold out.. No scalpers online, either. Hmm. No worries. I called up my local paper and asked if they could give me a press pass. They did, weirdly? And I was off. / / / / The trip was scheduled to go something like this: / / DAYTON- DENVER - LAX. Arrive on Friday morning in time for the opening ceramonies. Stay in LA for the games that weekend? Visit some friends in Ventura. Travel back to Dayton on Wednesday--- plenty of time before my next trip: Family vacation in Montreal- on Friday. / / All in all- it was supposed to be 6 flights in less than a week. Pfft. Whatever. I can do that. / / / / So- I'm off to catch my first flight. / / ?.and?.I accidentally slept a little longer than I should have and?.. I miss the flight?. But 4 minutes?.. / / Which means that I would have missed my connecting flight in Denver, too. Which means that my whole schedule was now screwed up as it was delayed a day. / / / / Ok? I'm gonna miss the opening ceremony? Whatever. I'm not being paid for this- it's just for fun, right??? RIGHT??? / / / / Sigh. Ok. So I'm on the next flight. That one goes?. Kinda?. We arrive in Denver and then get delayed in denver due to lack of planes. Something about a huge storm somewhere else- which means that I'm stuck in Denver for 9 hours. / / / / ?? Ok. Fine?. I try to tackle some writing assignments I had, but I'm in an airport!!! There is SO MUCH PEOPLE watching!!!! / / I put off my assignment until I land. / / / / And?.. By the time I DO get to LAX it's Sunday morning. I totally give up trying to get to the stadium for the last 4 hours of the competition and just go to Ventura to meet with my friends and wash the gross off me. / / / / I have a good time there. And we discuss all the hiccups of traveling?. / / / / Missing flights. / / Getting on wrong flights. (That happened a lot in the 70s, apparently). / / We missed our dinner reservation entirely because we were chatting so much. (Opps!) / / / / Wednesday comes- my friends take me to the airport. My flight is delayed due to lots of reasons, but it's also WAY over booked. I offer to take a later flight- but insisting I need to get to Dayton before FRIDAY MORNING? / / / / They say "yea yea. No problem." And book me on the next flight and give me a 200$ voucher. / / / / Btw- if you heard a previous podcast where I talked about having a voucher- this is how you get it. Except! PRO TIP: You wait (or ask nicely) if they can bump it up to the full value? which is somewhere between 350-400$? ask for cash. Never vouchers. Also get a hotel room and all that jazz? I was a n00b and didn't do any of this. So I just got 200$ cash voucher with Delta. / / / / Ah. Delta? it stands for "Doesn't Ever. Leave. The. Airport?? and it's not talking about the plane? it's talking about it's passengers?. / / / / I was in the airport all day on Wednesday. The "next available flight" they promised? Was Thursday morning. / / / / I "slept" in the airport- thank god for tetnus vaccinations, and woke up ready for all sorts of chaos but DETERMINED to get to Dayton that evening for my 6am flight to Montreal the following morning. / / / / My flight had changed slightly. I was now scheduled to go LAX to SFO to DEN to DAY? ok. No big deal. An additional flight, right? What could go wrong? / / / / ?? Why did I have to ask that? / / / / Our flight was delayed getting INTO sfo? and then delayed getting OUT of SFO. And by the time I arrived in Denver, it was Thursday evening of July 19th and I knew I wasn't going to make it to Montreal. / / / / I?. Make the really sad call to my parents. / / / / I then stand in the never-ending line for a hotel pass- figuring I procrastinated on life enough and I should actually do something? While standing in line, I mentally decide that if I don't get a hotel, I'll go to see Batman in the closest theater- which probably won't have tickets, but whatever, I'll give it a go. I have hours to kill, so why not try, right? / / / / Well? You're smart, audience. You know exactly what happened in Aurora on July 20th?. During a batman screening. / / / / My mom tells me this. / / It doesn't quite process? / / I hang up, shower and get breakfast. I watch the horror that all of America watched that morning?.. / / / / I make my way to the airport. EARLY. I check into my flight. EARLY. The TSA agent was polite and really attentitive- which is, oddly, what I expected him to be after a mass shooting 17 miles from this location. / / / / My flight was delayed, of course. Eff-you, Delta. But I finally made it to Dayton by noon. / / / / Alive. / / / / The only thing this whole experience taught me- was that I CAN control some things?.. Like my procrastination. And there are other things that I can?t control?.. Like weather?. Tornados, hurricanes, and? wildfires. Oh- Right. This just in: I?m a wild land firefighter. Contract right now- but I?ve already fought a few! And it?s exhilarating! It?s probably the coolest adrenaline rush since I was in the Philippines. / / / / But? what that means is that I?m probably not going to get my podcasts out on time?.So- I?m taking a break. Until the season here in Minnesota dies down- which is June, apparently. / / / / But stay tuned! I have a mini-series about packing coming up! I also had this cool podcast about Sarajevo- but that?s just gonna have to wait until I get it perfect. It deserves that. / / / / In the meantime, if you?re aching for more stories?. You can go to my blog at LNLurie.com, reach me at LN.Lurie@yahoo.com or my Facebook - which will have heaps of pictures uploaded kinda daily? www.facebook.com/whereisLN

Ok I'm back with some goodies for you, I was very busy with my son travel baseball and it's been a blast...so thanks for being patient with me, I know I've been M.I.A with my mixed sets, so I'm dropping a few new episodes on you... "Friday Night Special" is a "Live" set from the Sushi lounge in Morristown Nj, it's a 3 set episode that really nice...there is no track listing, I just plug and play!! Enjoy...

Click above to Play VideoIf you are interested in learning more about an ad feel free to click on the ad at the end of the episode! Chalutz Productions is not responsible nor endorses any ad that may be displayed at the end of any video. Click on advertisements at your own risk.Episode Summary : Part 3 of this 3 part series that is all about chicken soup! Show Notes: To check out what happened last time on Feed Me Bubbe click here. Time for the recap. I love the recap! Yay! Ok I'm calm now no worries. The show recaps all the fun of last time along with forgetting about the soup chicken. Avrom does his usal spiel and the episode begins! Woo Hoo! Bubbe starts by placing the chicken in a pan. But why hear me try to explain it when you can check out the recipe here. Now there are all kinds of wonderful spices like the garlic and the onion. If that is not clear enough we made sure to have a closeup picture of the garlic and onion. And now you know. Moving on time for some oil as some new aged fiddler on the roof music begins playing. Do Doo Doo Doo Doo Dooooo. (Just imagine it makes sense) Of course spices get added on top of the oil and it is all FARTIK. Well what do you know that's the Yiddish Word of the Day. It means finished, done, complete. December 17th 2006 something special is going to happen so mark the calendar. Back to the chicken Bubbe likes to use a vegtable with the chicken to make it even more appetizing. The music starts going and the show is over. Yes! I mean NO! AHHH! Say it ain't so. Please say it ain't so. Well it ain't so we will be back in the future. Just stay subscribed to be the first to know when. Featured Music: Provided By Garage Band Ein Fiddler 8-13-03 BY: KLEZSKA

OK I'm in heaven.  The hottest guy on TV is gay.  Well maybe.  He denies it but I can only hope.  Of course I'm talking about Wentworth Miller the incredibly sexy star of Fox TVs Prison Break.   Finally Fox has something on I agree with.       Have you checked out our new Blog yet?  Paulie and Evan have posted there and there's more to come.  OF course this hasn't stopped them from making another action packed podcast.  We have part two of Lawrence Robert's interview with Sexcapades.  Of course we have all of the favorite segments you love.  Likes and dislikes, letters and news from around the world.   Paulie reviews something he never needs himself but some of you might want to try out Stamina Squared.  Evan reviews two more DVDs that will definitely get you hard.   The first is Big Dick Club #2 from Falcon Studios.  Which is rated a strong 3 1/2 splats.  The second is Paraiso by AMG brasil.  This gets rated a tropical 3 splats.  Wrapping things up is a new MTFT tune "What Happened" from sexy German band Peer Pressure. 

Hello All,Arthur back a day late but a with a dollar more....Yeah I know that was pretty bad. So on to the show. This week we have the Myth of Mitch. Listen to them and find out if myth can become reality. Ok I'm sorry I'm full of the bad jokes today. I'll just point you to their myspace link and show off my sponser websites now. Wrecordsbymonkey Adhocart/PMP That all for me this week you've been a great crowd,Arthur

OK I'm in hell now. We had a hard drive crash!! This is why the Pod cast is so late. But the wait is worth it this week. Paulie and Evan do not dissapoint. This week they answer a listeners question about the many uses of the Beer Bottle. The also dig into the news and chat aobut the feds and Google, Getting fired for being a porn star, and... get ready for this. Gay BRADY BUNCH!! Evan has two more DVDs to review. Tis week its Love and Lust which he rates 3 1/2 splats. He follows this up with Falcon Classic Basic Plumbing which he rates 3 1/2 splats. Not to be outdone Paulie Reviews the Robo Suck 2. Lastly Evan has another tune for your collection with Lather up by Jessy Moss.