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2 episodes with paul now
2 episodes with paul now
2 episodes with paul now
It takes a lot to surprise the authors of the Bible. In the pages of Scripture, we find unflinchingly honest stories about every kind of failing—adultery, murder, cruelty, abuse. Nothing human is foreign to them. But they were startled—even shocked—at the undeserved and unexpected mercy of God for broken people like us. Listen to Paul: “Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:7-8). The apostle John echoes the astonishment: “See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us His children, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). The grace of God is always more—more powerful than our darkest failings; more thorough than our best attempts to put ourselves in order; more persistent than our deepest loyalties. “Love never gives up” (1 Cor 13:7). Receive the gift that never ceases to amaze. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott
It takes a lot to surprise the authors of the Bible. In the pages of Scripture, we find unflinchingly honest stories about every kind of failing—adultery, murder, cruelty, abuse. Nothing human is foreign to them. But they were startled—even shocked—at the undeserved and unexpected mercy of God for broken people like us. Listen to Paul: “Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:7-8). The apostle John echoes the astonishment: “See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us His children, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). The grace of God is always more—more powerful than our darkest failings; more thorough than our best attempts to put ourselves in order; more persistent than our deepest loyalties. “Love never gives up” (1 Cor 13:7). Receive the gift that never ceases to amaze. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott
It takes a lot to surprise the authors of the Bible. In the pages of Scripture, we find unflinchingly honest stories about every kind of failing—adultery, murder, cruelty, abuse. Nothing human is foreign to them. But they were startled—even shocked—at the undeserved and unexpected mercy of God for broken people like us. Listen to Paul: “Now, most people would not be willing to die for an upright person, though someone might perhaps be willing to die for a person who is especially good. But God showed His great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners” (Rom 5:7-8). The apostle John echoes the astonishment: “See how very much our Father loves us, for He calls us His children, and that is what we are!” (1 John 3:1). The grace of God is always more—more powerful than our darkest failings; more thorough than our best attempts to put ourselves in order; more persistent than our deepest loyalties. “Love never gives up” (1 Cor 13:7). Receive the gift that never ceases to amaze. And stay in grace. -Bill Knott
Hello and welcome to the show today! It is such a pleasure to have you with us again today as we study the Word of God together. In our study of the book of Acts, we have seen Paul arrested in Jerusalem following a riot that is started by a group of unbelieving Jews who hate him and maliciously and falsely accuse him. Paul is brought before the Sanhedrin, the Jewish high court of the land (the same governing body that had put Jesus to death), but Paul is not convicted. So the unbelieving Jews hatch a plot to murder Paul, but Paul's nephew overhears of the plot, tells the Roman Commander in charge of Paul, and the commander has Paul transferred to Roman Governor Felix in Caesarea. He is tried before Felix, but he can't convict him, and so he keeps Paul imprisoned for two years until Felix is eventually succeeded by Porcius Festus. And when Festus comes into power, those unbelieving Jews try to get Festus to transfer Paul to Jerusalem (supposedly for a trial), but really they want to ambush and kill him along the way. Now Festus denies their request (though he doesn't know that that is what they had in mind) and, when he comes to Caesarea, has Paul brought before him there to be tried. And it says here in verse 7… Acts 25:7 (ESV)— 7 When he had arrived, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood around him, bringing many and serious charges against him that they could not prove. Paul's 4th Defense— And these were no doubt the same arguments; trying to prove that Paul was an insurrectionist in the hopes that Festus might agree with them and put Paul to death (Acts 25:15-16). But once again, nothing can be substantiated. But Festus hears them out to ascertain all the facts; and then it is Paul turn to make his defense. And this is the fourth of Paul's six defenses. And in it he once again affirms that he has committed no crime against the Jewish law, against the temple, or against Rome. It says in… Acts 25:8-9 (ESV)— 8 Paul argued in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar have I committed any offense.” 9 But Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favor, said to Paul, “Do you wish to go up to Jerusalem and there be tried on these charges before me?” Not Good for Paul— Now once again, though Festus doesn't know it, this puts Paul in danger of being ambushed and killed. But even if Paul makes it to Jerusalem, the situation is probably worse for him there. And he knows that there is no just reason for him to be sent there. And [a Roman judge could not move a case to another court without the consent of the accused, and Paul refused to go!] So it says in… Acts 25:10-11 (ESV)— 10 But Paul said, “I am standing before Caesar's tribunal, where I ought to be tried. To the Jews I have done no wrong, as you yourself know very well. 11 If then I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything for which I deserve to die, I do not seek to escape death. But if there is nothing to their charges against me, no one can give me up to them. I appeal to Caesar.” Why Paul Appeals to Caesar— Now the reason Paul appeals to Caesar (which was the right of every Roman citizen) was threefold. First, he wanted justice. Secondly, he recognized that he was safest under Roman protection. Appealing to Caesar ensured that he would be guarded by the Romans en route to Caesar. But thirdly (and this may in fact be the main reason), his goal was ultimately to get where? Rome. Where is Caesar? Rome. And so he recognizes his appealing to Caesar is the fastest way to get there. So he appeals to Caesar. And it says… Acts 25:12 (ESV)— 12 Then Festus, when he had conferred with his council, answered, “To Caesar you have appealed; to Caesar you shall go.” Festus Embarrassed— And, as you can imagine, this no doubt infuriated the Jewish leaders because once again the chance to murder Paul has slipped through their fingers. Festus may have been somewhat pleased, as he no doubt felt this case was beyond him. But at the same time it did not look well for him that one of his first cases he handled so badly that the prisoner felt forced to appeal to Caesar for justice. But he has no choice. He pronounces that Paul shall indeed be sent to Caesar. Now the Caesar to whom Paul has appealed is Nero. Now this didn't meant that Nero himself would oversee the case. It simply meant that his [case would be tried by the highest courts in the empire.] And despite the fact that Paul's case would be transferred to Nero, Festus still had a problem. Yes he had avoided offending the Jews, but he had failed to determine the legal charges against Paul. And he doesn't want to be in the awkward position of sending such a notable prisoner to Caesar without have any of his crimes clearly listed. But it says in… Acts 25:13 (ESV)— 13 Now when some days had passed, Agrippa the king and Bernice arrived at Caesarea and greeted Festus. Herod Agrippa II & Bernice— Now this king who came for a state visit was Herod Agrippa II. He was [the last of the Herodians to rule, was the great-grandson of {Herod the Great,} the Herod who {ruled at the time Jesus was born and} had killed the Bethlehem babes, and {was} the son of the Herod who had killed the apostle James (Acts 12).] [His great-uncle, Herod Antipas, was the Herod of the Gospels (Mark 6:14-29; Luke 3:1; 13:31-33; 23:7-12)]. [He had power over the Temple, controlled the Temple treasury, and could appoint and remove the high priest.] He was in his early thirties at this time. And his sister Bernice had come with him to join him in paying [their respect to the new governor, Festus]. Now Bernice [had married her uncle, Herod Chalcis, had become mistress to her brother Agrippa II, and then had become mistress to the emperor Vespasian's son, Titus.] And her living with her brother Agrippa II made the Jews uneasy because of how clearly and explicitly God had forbade incest (Lev. 18:1-18; 20:11-21). But Herod Agrippa II had been given [legal jurisdiction over the temple in Jerusalem, so it was logical that Festus share Paul's case with him.] And so it says in… Acts 25:14-22 (ESV)— 14 And as they stayed there many days, Festus laid Paul's case before the king, saying, “There is a man left prisoner by Felix, 15 and when I was at Jerusalem, the chief priests and the elders of the Jews laid out their case against him, asking for a sentence of condemnation against him. 16 I answered them that it was not the custom of the Romans to give up anyone before the accused met the accusers face to face and had opportunity to make his defense concerning the charge laid against him. 17 So when they came together here, I made no delay, but on the next day took my seat on the tribunal and ordered the man to be brought. 18 When the accusers stood up, they brought no charge in his case of such evils as I supposed. 19 Rather they had certain points of dispute with him about their own religion and about a certain Jesus, who was dead, but whom Paul asserted to be alive. 20 Being at a loss how to investigate these questions, I asked whether he wanted to go to Jerusalem and be tried there regarding them. 21 But when Paul had appealed to be kept in custody for the decision of the emperor, I ordered him to be held until I could send him to Caesar.” 22 Then Agrippa said to Festus, “I would like to hear the man myself.” “Tomorrow,” said he, “you will hear him.” Festus' Game— Now we see here that Festus clearly understands that this whole issue has nothing to do with civil law, but rather was a matter of “religion” (Acts 18:14-15; 23:29); particularly the doctrine of resurrection. And verse 19 shows that Paul wasn't just defending the concept of resurrection abstractly or in a general way, but was focusing specifically on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But all this was beyond Festus' (and Rome's) expertise or interest. He was both a pagan Roman and also new in Judea, so it was natural for him not to know the theological differences between Christians and Jews. But note how Festus is deceiving Agrippa, because he is giving him the impression that the reason he had wanted to move the trial to Jerusalem was because these theological issues might be better addressed there; but that wasn't his real motivation. His [real reason was to please the Jewish leaders, most of whom King Herod knew.] And he's hoping that Agrippa will supply him with something definite that he can send to the Emperor Nero. And that's because Agrippa was [an expert in Jewish matters (Acts 26:2-3) and certainly would be keenly interested in knowing more about this man who {supposedly} caused a riot in the temple. And Agrippa is indeed interested to hear Paul. In fact [The Greek verb tense implies Herod had been wanting to hear Paul for a long time. As an expert on Jewish affairs (cf. 26:3), he relished hearing Christianity's leading spokesman in person.] And Festus promises him that he will. And next week we will see how that unfolds. God Turns Things Around— But I want to close today with a word of encouragement. As demonstrated in our passage today, we see one example among many of how unjust our world often is. But we also see how God protected Paul and even used this trial to open a door of opportunity by which Paul could immediately be escorted to Rome. By setting in motion their plot to kill Paul, the Jewish leaders in fact helped Paul to get exactly where God wanted him to go: Rome. And God does the same for us. You know, every year Jews have been celebrating the Feast of Purim, which commemorates the triumph of God's people in the book of Esther when Haman had sought to destroy all the Jews in the empire. Haman set himself against the Jews generally and Mordecai (Esther's cousin) in particular and plotted their destruction. And things got really dark for a while. But what ended up happening was that it was Haman himself who unintentionally (through his trying to exalt himself) actually became instrumental in Mordecai being honored and exalted. Haman's plot against the Jews ended up falling on his own head; and the book of Esther ends with Haman being hanged and Mordecai assuming his former job as Grand Vizier. And God's people are delivered. I think also of Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers. Then he's wrongfully accused and thrown into prison. But God lifts him up and eventually makes him Pharaoh's right hand man that helps Egypt plan for a coming famine and actually saves the empire and all the lands affected by that famine. But none of that would have happened if Joseph had not been sold or thrown into prison. And there are so many other examples like this. Trust in God— Now all this to say, when we are experiencing the injustice and persecution that go along with following Jesus Christ, we need to take heart. We need to recognize that it may be the furnace, the lion's den, the prison cell or whatever other place of affliction we might be in that will actually become the engine through which God can bring His greatest work. The hard thing is to trust in that. But if we do, God never disappoints. And so let us trust in Him like that today. Amen.
Greetings! It's good to have you with us as we continue our journey through the book of Acts together, this week continuing to look at Acts 23. If you were with us last week, you'll remember that some unbelieving Jews have just seized Paul and stirred up the crowd against him with false accusations. And that's a common theme we find regarding the unbelieving Jews Paul comes across. They're kind of like atoms. They make up everything. And here that leads to Paul being violently beaten, arrested, and taken into Roman custody in Jerusalem. He has addressed the Jewish mob (giving his first defense); and we know that they listened until he shared with them God's giving him a mission to take the message of salvation to the Gentiles. They react violently to that and he is taken back into the Roman barrack for protection. After that, he is brought before the Jewish governing body known as the Sanhedrin, during which he gives his second defense. But the Sanhedrin is not at all friendly to him. I mean, they had already killed Jesus. And that was a part of an ongoing trend. Jerusalem was one of the first non-prophet organizations, you might say; they killed all those sent to her, as Jesus pointed out. And in the midst of this trial, during which Paul is illegally struck just for saying that he has a clean conscience, he realizes he is probably not going to receive a good verdict from them; and so he, knowing that the council was one part Pharisee and the other part Sadducee (and himself being a Pharisee) emphasizes his having been a Pharisee and that all of this dissension had to do with the issue of the resurrection from the dead, which he knew the Pharisees accepted but the Sadducees rejected. And so an argument breaks out between the two parties and the Pharisees actually end up defending Paul, saying in verse 9 “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” And after this Paul is removed because of how violent things had gotten; and he's taken back to the barracks. Now all of this is incredibly discouraging for Paul, who remember has this deep desire to bring the message of the Gospel to Rome, the epicenter of the empire and a very important strategic target for Christianity. But things are not looking very promising, as he's sitting there in imprisonment. He doesn't know it this point, but he's going to remain imprisoned for the next four years. However that night Jesus comes to Paul and gives him a word of encouragement and a promise. It says… Acts 23:11 (ESV)— 11 The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.” God's Preserving Promise— Now in reflecting on that promise, it suddenly dawned on me that Jesus never promises Paul that he's gonna get through all this unscathed or anything like that. He doesn't even tell him that his endeavors will prove successful. He doesn't promise a great response after he eventually gets to Rome; only that he is going to grant the desire of Paul's heart to do the next right thing. Now that next right thing was pretty big for Paul, because it meant that God was going to keep and preserve his life for the time being. And so, in a sense, Paul was greater than all the gods of the pantheon; because while they could be killed, Paul couldn't. He was more immortal than they could ever be; because the One true God, who has authority over all things, was holding him up. No outside force (no matter how strong) could pluck him out of God's hand or this next step God had promised Paul success in. And you know, that same God holds you and me. Now He may not promise you tomorrow, but He is every bit in control of your tomorrow as He was of Paul's. And He will be just as faithful to help you fulfill His plan and purpose through your life as well. Refocusing on Paul— Now when the controversy between the Pharisees and the Sadducees of the Sanhedrin dies down, we find that they re-focus their attention on Paul. They had gotten to the point where all reverence for God and the desire to do His will and to act in way that was in accordance with His written Word took a back seat to what was really the center of their concern; politics and position. A that being the case, they perceived Paul as being a real threat and were ready to dispense with him. And we will see in our passage today that, just as they had done with Jesus, they begin making plans to murder Paul. It says in… Acts 23:12 (ESV)— 12 When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. We'll See— And so we see that hatred and vengeance is eating them up. And that's not a good place to be. Somebody recently told me they felt I have an unhealthy preoccupation with revenge. And I said “Well, we'll see about that.” Okay, kidding. But these guys certainly aren't. They bind themselves with a very serious oath. anathematized— Now the phrase bound themselves by an oath is literally translated “anathematized”, which means to curse or condemn. And so they have invoked divine judgment if they fail in their mission to kill Paul. And we see this thing a number of times in scripture… 1 Samuel 14:44 (ESV)— 44 And Saul said, “God do so to me and more also; you shall surely die, Jonathan.” 2 Samuel 3:35 (ESV)— 35 Then all the people came to persuade David to eat bread while it was yet day. But David swore, saying, “God do so to me and more also, if I taste bread or anything else till the sun goes down!” 2 Samuel 19:13 (ESV)— 13 And say to Amasa, ‘Are you not my bone and my flesh? God do so to me and more also, if you are not commander of my army from now on in place of Joab.'” 1 Kings 2:23 (ESV)— 23 Then King Solomon swore by the Lord, saying, “God do so to me and more also if this word does not cost Adonijah his life! 2 Kings 6:31 (ESV)— 31 and he said, “May God do so to me and more also, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat remains on his shoulders today.” Serious Resolve— Yikes! Those are some pretty serious threats and curses. And the last is most like the one we find here in Acts 23. These Jews who have set themselves Paul are absolutely determined, which we see in their resolve to engage in a total fast from all food and drink until their mission is complete. And it's not a small group of men either. It says in… Acts 23:13-14 (ESV)— 13 There were more than forty who made this conspiracy. 14 They went to the chief priests and elders and said, “We have strictly bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food till we have killed Paul. Going To The Sadducees— Now note that they do not go to the Pharisees. Why? Well, the Pharisees had just sided with Paul during the trial before the Sanhedrin; and so they have shown their willingness to defend Paul. And so these Jews go to those of the chief priests and elders because (remember) the chief priests and elders are of the other party, the Sadducees. These Jews knew that the chief priests and elders would be more likely to join them in this murder plot. Note also they do not go to the scribes because the scribes also were mostly Pharisees. No, they go to those of the Sadducees. And they tell them of their oath and their fast and then give their request, saying… Acts 23:15-16 (ESV)— 15 Now therefore you, along with the council, give notice to the tribune to bring him down to you, as though you were going to determine his case more exactly. And we are ready to kill him before he comes near.” 16 Now the son of Paul's sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the barracks and told Paul. Paul's Family— Now amazingly, this is the only clear reference in the Bible that we have to any of the members of Paul's family. Romans 16:7 and 11 possibly give us a few others, as he makes reference to Andronicus, Junia, and Herodion as being his kinsmen. But there are no other references. Some scholars believe that when Paul became a Christian he was disowned by his family. His father, probably a wealthy person, very likely cut him off and wanted nothing to do with him. Paul may indicate some of this in Philippians 3:8 when he describes how he had suffered the loss of everything for the sake of Jesus Christ. But, you know, that is the case for a lot of men and women who have chosen to follow Jesus. Families do not always understand, which is why Jesus said… Matthew 10:35-39 (ESV)— 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. Crucified by Family— And interestingly, that is what Jesus Himself had experienced. His own family was at odds with him. John 7:5 tells us that not even his brothers believed in him. Now that eventually changed, as His half-brother James converted and became a very important leader in the Church. Jude (another half-brother of Jesus) also was converted and wrote the book of Jude. But before that Jesus carried the weight of his siblings' scorn and that enmity against him during much of His life and ministry. And that's a hard burden to bear. And it's interesting that Jesus seems in this passage in Matthew to be equating that kind of familial pain to taking up your cross. And keep in mind, that was before He had been crucified on an actual cross, which leads me to make the assumption that before being crucified in the body on the cross, He had first been crucified in a metaphorical sense by his family. And Paul definitely seems to be bearing that same kind of cross now. Meeting The Folks— I don't know if any of you every brought your boyfriend or girlfriend home to meet your parents, but that can be pretty tense. You're wondering if they are going to like her, And if momma doesn't like her, you're in trouble. But bringing Jesus home to meet the family is often just as hard (if not worse); and especially in Paul's culture. Paul had become an outcast for the sake of Christ. I mean it must have been hard. But if that is what needs to happen for you to follow Jesus, then you have to do it. That is just part of what it means to be a Christian. And if we are faithful to suffer like that for Jesus, we will be blessed. 1 Peter 4:12-14 (NKJV)— 12 Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; 13 but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy. 14 If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. On their part He is blasphemed, but on your part He is glorified. Romans 8:16-17 (NKJV)— 16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified together. Sharing in Christs Sufferings & Glory— So let us gladly share in Christ's suffering, so that we also will share in His glory. Let's do so. Amen.
The Option Genius Podcast: Options Trading For Income and Growth
Allen: All right, passive traders, we have a treat in store for you today. Many of you know about the option continuum, which is basically, you know, our levels of breakdown of where you are as an options trader, you start with level one, you don't know anything. And then you get to level 10, maybe if you want to, which is option professional. And basically a professional means that you are so good at trading options, that you are now trading and managing other people's money and you're getting paid for it. Many of you have reached out to us in the past and said, Hey, I want more information on that. And we haven't really put it out there because I am not doing it myself. Right now, as a professional, I don't I'm not measuring anybody else's money. And so, you know, I'm not the best person to talk to about that. But we keep getting people and be like, hey, you know, I want to learn, I want to learn. So one of our members, Paul Ashcraft, has volunteered to join us today. And I want to thank you, Paul, for coming and helping out. A few a couple of months ago, I think in one of our groups, I think it was a passive group, where I had put in there like, Hey, I'm thinking about starting a hedge fund. So I'm thinking about going professional, right? And he reached out and said, hey, you know, I'm already doing it if you want to, if you want to talk and I can answer your question. So we had an amazing conversation, I learned a lot. And I was like, You know what, this would be really helpful for everybody else. So I asked Paul, hey, could you do it again? And we can record it this time? It was like, Yeah, sure, no foul. And so he's here, Paul, thank you. Thank you for being on thank you for taking the time to do this. Paul: Thank you very much. Pleasure. Allen: And you're Paul is a member of our of a lot of our programs. So passive trading formula, the blank check, and now the credit spread mastery as well. So you know, it's good to see that, hey, if you're a money manager, then you're continuously getting learning and learning new things to help out your students, or your clients, I guess. So. Well, tell me, why did you get into management? What was it that drawed you through that? Paul: Well, I sort of got tricked into it. I had a, I'm a CPA by trade, and I had a client who was becoming an NFL player agent. And he trusted me and wanted me to help him manage his people's NFL players money. So I started the licensing process at that time. And so that sort of tricked me into it. So that sort of fell apart. And then he wasn't getting more leads for what he was doing. So I basically continued since then, so Allen: Okay, so were you already trading on your own? Or before that? Or did you learn as you want to? Paul: Yeah, I've been trading, you know, for quite a while. Off and on. So yeah, I've had some experience of trading. Allen: Okay. So you are comfortable, you could do it? Paul: I knew I needed to learn, I do need to learn some more. But yeah, I feel like I could I knew enough about the world to do that. Allen: Okay. And so you are known as what is a RIA, a registered independent advisor? Paul: Right. That's correct. Allen: So that's one of the ways of managing money. What exactly is an RIA? Paul: It's basically a firm that is licensed by the FINRA basically, and you are licensed to where you can manage other people's money. Allen: And all RIAs, are fiduciaries, right? Paul: That's correct. Yeah. Allen: Right. Because a lot of people don't know the difference between a fiduciary and a non fiduciary. And so a fiduciary, if you don't know you are legally bound to do what's in the best interest of the client. A lot of these other companies that people think about when they're talking about money management, or Wealth Advisors, retirement advisors, all these words that they use, they have no license, or maybe they do have a license, but they're not a fiduciary. So they're not required to do what's best for the client. And so they can sell you a product that they get the highest commission on, even if it's not really a good thing, a good fit for you. So that's why.. Paul: Yeah one of the ways I deal with that fiduciary criteria is basically whatever I do for other people, I do for myself. Allen: Okay. Okay, interesting. So, what does it take to open an RIA? Paul: Well, if you want to legal structure and need, like, I have an LLC got a creative for that. And I have had to pass a serious 65 test, which you'd like an SEC test, and get to come up some kind of agreement you have with your clients that's approved by FINRA to sign them on as clients. Those are the basics you have to do. Allen: Okay, and like how long did it take you to go through all that? Remember? Paul: I'm gonna say, basically of six to nine months. Allen: Okay, and how long have you been? How long have you been an RIA? Paul: Since 2014, so roughly eight years. Allen: Awesome. Yep. Cool. And for those of you, you know, I'm going to repeat it later on, but Paul's business website is Businessadvisors.Pro. So if you ever or if you need a good adviser, you know, please reach out to Paul. And I'll repeat at the end, and we'll put it in the show notes. I just wanted to get that out there. Paul: And that's mainly my CPA website, just so you know. Allen: Very cool. BusinessAdvisors.Pro, there you go. Paul: And then sort has been done about creating my Wealth Advisors website, because you're so under scrutiny when you were you advertise things, so I just sort of steered away from that a little bit. Allen: Interesting. Okay. So I guess there's certain things you can say and certain things you cannot say. Paul: Basically, anything you put out there to the public, you have to like, monitor it for five years, and they can question you about it anytime. So I just figured one way to get around that is just not to do it. Allen: Okay. So then that leads me to my next question, like, how do you find clients if you're not advertising? Paul: Well, you know, I have CPA clients, probably like half the clients, I have my Wealth Advisors from CPA side. Other thing is like, from friends, and referrals from other people who use me. Allen: Okay. So it takes time to build all that up? Paul: Yes, yes. And I'm currently working on more. More advertising. Allen: Okay. All right. So the advertising is possible. It's not it's not like it's restricted. But you have to be careful of what you do and how you do it. Paul: Yes, yes, yeah. Allen: Now, what are your clients looking for? Because, you know, if somebody comes to you and says, Hey, you know, I'm looking to make more money, obviously, but they have so many, so many choices. They can do it themselves, it could go to like, like Fidelity and have them do it. They could go to they're really rich, they can have their own private like, you know, Bank of America, has their own private wealth, people. So when they come to you, what do they tell you? Like? What are they looking for in terms of an advisor? Paul: Well, I mean, I had someone recently come to me, and, you know, we're signing them up, or things that I'd say we, if we look, if we're here a year later, what do you want to what your criteria are saying, I did a good job. And he wanted a 10% return, which has been difficult in this market. But that's, that's one thing. Another thing? I you know, most advisors out there, these basically are, they're buying hold people, I mean, and they bid six things in a bucket, and don't look at it too often. So I, I basically say that I'm actively working in their account, and I'm not sure I'm going to just put it there and not be looking at it. Allen: So obviously, you probably tell them about your options experience and the different types of strategies you use. Paul: Yeah, a lot of times just the casual person warnings on the manager money that, that if I tried to tell them all that it would go way over their head. Because, you know, it took me like two years talking about options to actually start doing it myself, you know, so I'm trying to be a little bit of conscientious about what they can and cannot handle information wise. I'll be glad to talk about it, they want to, but I'm not gonna write too much about it. Allen: And I bet that would that would set you apart, right? You know, it's like, hey, you know, we can do plain vanilla stuff. Or we can do if you're a little bit more aggressive than we can do this, and this and this. And then if it goes over there, that's fine. But as long as they're like, whoa, this guy knows. Paul: Yeah, definitely. That's certainly part because like, my CPA, well, I deal with investment advisors. And like, no one, no one that I know of is actually managing costs. I mean, like, you know, every week or things like that, Allen: yeah, yeah, they just don't I mean, part of it is they have, depending on where they are some of these guys that I know, they have broker dealers, and the broker basically tells them what they can do and what they can't do. And trading is like, No, you're not doing it. They just they can't, they're not allowed. And so, you know, we get we get clients that are financial advisors, they come in, they're like, oh, yeah, I'm a financial advisor, like, oh, they shouldn't, you know, all this stuff. And they're like, oh, I don't do any of this for my son. I don't know, they don't even teach us this stuff. In financial advisors. Cool. So it's like, once I call again, I'm like, Oh, my God. Paul: Yeah, most of them are just like, call themselves people. And it is this, they don't necessarily know that much about investing. It's more about they have relationships with people, and they train their people to be accustomed to five to 7% returns. So so don't want you to do that as that's, you know, not a hallmark. Allen: Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, when I go to if I go to a dinner party, or whatever, and, you know, always comes up. So what do you do? It's like, well, I teach people how to do this. And the first they're like, really, is that, you know, what do you what do you mean? And then we tell them a little bit about it, and they go, Yeah, you know, we try to aim, you know, for 5% a month, and they're like, what a month. Really? Oh, wow, I gotta learn about that. And then, you know, you explain a little bit and then they're, like, bored and then they go talk to somebody else. Because, you know, it's cool. They want, they want it. They just want to do the work. So that's cool. Now as an advisor, how do you How do you charge? Like, what do you charge? How do you do it? Paul: So I have what's called a serious 65 license. So I'm able to charge a percentage of what assets are under management. Okay, so the basic generic, charged with as generally 1% of assets under management. Okay, that if I'm doing more as a some different strategies, things like that, I'm probably going to up the field more because it's, it is active trading. Allen: It takes more time. Yeah, yeah. Because I remember way back when I had a guy at America ice, and he was my advisor. And yeah, he would charge a minimum of 1% on assets every year. Every time you put money, you gave him money, they would take 5% off the top. And then every every mutual fund and every index fund or whatever that they put you in. And most of them were, you know, Ameriprise products. Each of those things would have a separate fee every year. So I mean, I got dealing left and right. I didn't know what I was doing. At the time, I was thinking I am going to you know, I'm smart. I got an advisor. But yeah, he was the one getting rich. And so.. Paul: They made that money, whether they go down or go up it. Allen: Yeah, I mean, they take the money right up front, 5% off the top. As soon as you make a deposit, it's like, man, you haven't done anything. Even if I turn around and ask for the money back, I just love fibers. Do you have like a lot of Is There a lot of overhead for being a advisor? You need a large staff? Paul: Right now, it's just me. And so I'm already have all my setup for my CPA business. So there's not really that much more to do. Allen: And you can run it from the same location. Yes, yes. Okay. So then who does the like the backend stuff, you know, statements, and compliance audits, all that stuff. Paul: So we use Interactive Brokers as the broker dealer. So they basically, so all my clients have their own account set up with them, and it sort of goes underneath my master account. So so they take care about the then get a statement from there anytime they want to find out what their balances. And if they need to take up money, they can contact them and get the money taken out. So they saw him. So we're doing a lot of the back office stuff. Allen: Awesome. So you really don't have to do anything. And they they opened the account themselves, the client opens the account themselves, they deposit the money themselves, they can take it out whenever they want, they can go and log in, see all the trades, see whatever is there. So you really don't have a lot of customer service issues. And so you don't have to send send out statements, because Interactive Brokers will do that. Right. Paul: And one of my strategies is if someone is, I call it high maintenance, then I probably can't handle that, you know, they probably need to find someone else because, you know, I got enough things to do is it is. Allen: Awesome, cool. And then. So you don't handle any of the money either. Because they just go straight to interactive. So you're like a hands off, okay, I'll do the trades, but I'm not touching your money. So you don't have to worry about me taking your money and running away and flying to Bermuda or something. Paul: Yeah, just like the Bernie Madoff deal where he was. He they call it having custody of the funds, and he had custody. And so they, they talked about that when you're going through your testing and things like that, about having custody and not having custody and things like that. So yeah, it's a big red flag. Allen: Yeah. Because I mean, like, I've been looking into starting my own hedge fund, you know, using the the passive trading strategies and such. And I looked at RIA first and then I looked at, you know, hedge fund as another way, and I think from what I've been able to find so far is that if you start a hedge fund, and you don't charge any management fees, you don't need the license, you can set it up in a way where you know, you get you only take a percentage of the profit. So if there's a gain, you can get a percent, but you don't get that yearly management fee. If you want the yearly management fee, then you do have to separate a separate Ria, to do the management of the fund. Okay, I didn't know that. Yeah, so I thought that was pretty cool. So we've been looking at that as well, different things. So now, what percentage of your management is active? versus, you know, index funds, mutual funds, etc? Paul: I'd say about half. Allen: Okay, and all of the clients are okay with that, or do you do client by client? Paul: I pretty much put everybody under the same model. Yeah. So Allen: And so with interactive, how does that work, you have to go into each account to put a trade on or you just put one trade on and it just trickles.. Paul: There's a master account and I can set up different classification. So I could I could buy 1000 shares of IBM and have it spread it putting all the accounts did that. So they have to watch out for is some of the accounts can trade certain things, some can't, like RIAs cannot do you know, futures and naked options and things like that as far as, at least on the credit side. Allen: Okay. All right. So can does that get confusing? If you want if you want like, Okay, I want like a say IBM, I want my IBM stock to be 5% of all of my everybody's portfolio. Paul: Yeah, that would be a different the different equation. So basically, like I did a trade today where I figured, you know, want to take a $10,000 risk. So divided by what that option was going for. And I bought that many contracts to take on that kind of risk. So not necessarily rebalancing everyone is usually trade by trade. So putting on a certain set of circumstances, set a step stop loss and things like that. Allen: Okay, cool. So you can do it as easy or as simple as you want. Or you can make it as complicated as you want. Yeah, up to you. Yeah. Nice. So what types of what types of trades do you do? Paul: Well, some of what you teach. So I do some swing trading. And of course, you know, credit spreads and things like that. And some, you know, some some of the dividend paying stocks and covered calls and things like that. Allen: And do you do any any oil futures options? Paul: Well, I'm not. I'm just at the point to get licensed for that. Allen: It's a separate license? Paul: That's as a separate license. Yes. So you have to you have to get licensed through the, Chicago Board of Trade, the NFA and National Futures Association. Allen: Okay. Okay. And then will you be able to do it the same as everything else through Interactive Brokers? Paul: Yes, I think so. Sometimes you don't know to actually do it. So I think it's pretty similar. Allen: Sweet. Okay. Now, as a as an RIA, do you also advise your clients on other alternative investments, you know, real estate, crypto anything else? Or is it just stocks, bonds, options? Paul: I'm always getting to ask questions, you know, because I'm in, you know, really, I'm gonna CPA world or the IRA world, I'm getting asked questions. So I will advise on that if I think I have a good opinion. You know, I'm not roll up on that rolled up on crypto Allen: Right, right. Are you still bound by the same fiduciary type rules on that or? Paul: You could come under some scrutiny. You know, you'd like an offsetting handed comment, and then someone does something crazy. And so you got to be a little careful. Allen: Yeah. All right. And okay, so him now with the interactive account, or the broker dealer, is the software any different? Like, versus if you open a regular account by yourself? Is there anything you have to learn a new platform? Or is it basically the same thing? Paul: It's pretty much the same platform, you just have to understand how to do the trading, like I was telling you about, like, allocating between all the accounts, but the platform itself is basically the same. Okay. Cool. Yeah. Allen: What do you see as the future of money management, because like, you know, they got these robo advisors now, and they got like Robin Hood, trying to get everybody to trade on their own. And so what do you see down the pike? You know, do you see like, your clients are like, yeah, rather just have you do it? Or are robots or whatever? Paul: Yeah, I can see, you know, some of the robot picking up. But on average, most people out there don't know, hardly anything about the investing world. My average client, so I think it's going to be still a good field you know, way up currently doing it. Allen: Okay, and who is like your average client? Paul: They're probably like 50 years old, that did 60. And probably, you know, got assets anywhere from, you know, 50 to 50,000 to over a million dollars, you know? Allen: And do you have any limits on who can invest with you? And how much? Paul: No, I mean, like, I'm not, I'm just gonna take on any account right now. It would need to be over a certain dollar amount for me to I just always have to keep that in mind about, you know, do I want to take on a five or $10,000 account? Because it's gonna be extra work. Taking that versus the capital issue at-- You don't have to be you don't have to comply with the day trading rules. You know, because because if you if you accidentally in and out three, three trades in a week, then your account gets shut down. You know, so you have to deal with that. So yeah, so I'm trying to gradually move up from like a minimum of 25,000 to 50,000, 200,000. Allen: Okay. And then you also have a certain criteria like a certain person that you want right? Certain somebody they can handle the options and that Intertek can handle that because I mean, it does swing a little bit. So if they have a 5,000 to $10,000 account, they freak out if they lose $1,000, obviously, that's not the right person for you anyway. Paul: Right. But on that same note, I had a client the other day that, you know, they have, you know, an excess a half million dollars with me. And they want to know how they could put in more money since this market was down so they could capture, capture that now mark? I love that kind of client. expecting them to call you and tell you, why is my account down? Actually, that question is dead. They're saying, How can we put more money in? Allen: Yeah, that's a smart, that's a Smart Client. So that's, that's got to be your email, you know, going out, like, Hey, he's trying to give me more now. double down on your investments. Okay. Now, How has being a money manager improved your own trading? Or hasn't? Paul: Well, I mean, it's made me to seek out new avenues of investing. You know, because I'm looking out for my clients. By the same token, when I do that, I find things that I can use to, you know, like, I don't know, if I would have found the old future options without that, you know, seeking out new new investment strategies, you know, so I could do a better job for my clients. Allen: Okay. Now, we've had a lot of volatility lately. And you've, you've alluded to it already. When stocks down about 20% or so right now, how do you deal with the investor concerns or expectations? Paul: I'm continually learning that. The more, the more proactive you can be with that, I find that it's better. Like, if you have a bad day or a bad trade that, you know, that affects it so much, and then maybe call and talk to them about it versus waiting for them to call you later, and they get their quarterly statements. And they call you know? Allen: Right. So do you find that a large portion of your job is just talking to people and just calming them down? Or explaining certain things to them? Or educating them? Paul: In the beginning? Yes. If someone's with you for a while, and they haven't gotten, understood your ways, and why you do what you do. And it would be generally in the first year of a client relationship, you indeed do that more, but there is sort of they get to know you, you you get to know them and sort of like a training curve there. Allen: And now, most of your clients, are they either they know you or they were referred to you. Right. So there's always there's already that trust built in from the beginning. Most of them yes, yeah. So if you, you know, advertising, somebody comes in cold, they're like, oh, yeah, I like what you're doing here. You know, here's $100,000, there's gonna be a lot more back. Paul: Yeah. Allen: Okay. So how are you handling? How are you handling the volatility? Like when somebody calls up and says, Oh, my count is down. How do you? What do you do there? Paul: Well, number one, what I did when I saw when I saw the market starting to tank, I basically, was going more into cash. So like, I the client won't know why we aren't investing. I said, Well, I'm waiting for the market to give me indication has, it's found the bottom or, you know, it is headed back up. So I don't want to, I'm not a bottom picker. But I don't want to like, write it further down. You know. So that's one way of dealing with it. And they seem to appreciate that quite a bit and understand that. So I don't think that's something you get out of a typical advisor. Allen: So yeah, but what if somebody calls you and says, Oh, my God, you know, I'm down 10%? What am I going to do? I can't handle this. How do you handle that? Have you ever had that happen? Paul: Yeah. I tried to change up their strategies a little bit to get them a little more solid, or maybe not trade as much in their account. Just being a little more cautious. Allen: Okay, so Okay, so you can actually choose, like, let's say, we talked about that IBM thing. So if you're like, Hey, I'm buying IBM, you could choose and say, okay, don't put it in this account in this account, just because in all these other ones,. Yeah. All right. So you can actually tailor it because like, if somebody goes, Yeah, I just want to be long stocks, or I just want tech stocks. And I just want you know, credit spreads. So they you can, you can do that. Yeah, okay. Yep. So, do you have any shortcuts that you can share? You know, for somebody that's thinking, hey, you know, this sounds like cool, I'm gonna I'm gonna get into this. RIA business, anything that you probably didn't know, ahead of time that you would have liked to have known? Paul: This is sort of like a unknown territory. Because, I mean, when I was doing it, I couldn't get anybody to actually figure it out what like a serious 65 license would do. And I was sort of going into blindly a little bit. So I mean, I think the number one thing is maybe you know, then contact me. Shortcuts is, you know, I don't know like I had to find a place to take the take the course for that. And then I hired a guy to tutor me some. And, you know, there's, there's these firms out there wanting you to sign up with them for them to do oh, you know, like your paperwork and so forth. And I just sort of like fumbled my way through it and plagiarized another agreement online affected us. And so another thing is to know if you're in this world, you will get audited. Personally. Well, the your investment firm, right, yeah. Yeah. Like I'm in the CPA world, and I probably will never get out a different CPA world. But the investment side, I will get audited probably time and time again. So far, it's only been once one step Florida, but yeah, Allen: okay. Yeah. I mean, that's a good thing. I guess, you know, that, that the advisors and like you said, you know, the Bernie Madoff, he keeps him at bay as much as he can a little bit. So some of that, I guess, from a consumer standpoint, and that's a good thing to hear. Paul: Yeah, but a lot of a lot of us, they don't necessarily understand the world as much as you do. And it's more like them checking a box somewhere in a city. They ask this question, or I did that, but they don't really find that don't really necessarily know exactly what they're doing, you know, Allen: Yeah. So but do you mean tax audited or audited by like the audit by Paul: the state by the financial regulatory people for the state you're in Allen: The state regulatory? Okay, so every state has their own regulatory stuff that you have so far. Paul: Yeah. So just just sort of background here. Usually, as you're managing under $100 million, you're managed by the state. But then once you hit $100 million in the SEC is basically is going to your watchdog, it's gonna look over your shoulder. Allen: Okay. All right. Cool. And you're in Florida, right? Correct. But you can take clients from anywhere? Paul: I can. But different states have different rules, most of them allow you to take five to 15 clients, and not really be registered with them. But then once you hit over that threshold, they want you to fully registered with them. But there are a few states that require you if you get one client, they want you to be registered. And Louisiana was one of those states. Allen: So I guess, depending on how much capital the guy is gonna give you whether it's worth it to register there.. Paul: Exactly, exactly, yeah. Okay. All right. Allen: So would you knowing what you know, now, are you happy that you went this route? Paul: Ask me again, in a few years. Allen: Well, you've been doing already for like, eight years. So kind of got some kind of track record here. Paul: Yeah, it's been, you know, it's been definitely a learning curve, you know, from the regulatory side. And then from the investment side, too, so? Yes, I'm glad I did it. But it' had its rough moments. Allen: Well, give me an example. Paul: Well if you if you lose on a trade, you know, it can affect your account and other people's account. So that's probably the biggest things that has happened to me, you know? And then you got to figure out how am I gonna tell this person this? Allen: Yeah. So how did you how did you deal with that? Paul: I prayed a lot. Basically, if I knew the fact that someone so much, I would, I call them and talk to him about it. But in a certain situation, like, because it was spread over so many accounts, it didn't really affect anyone that much. It wasn't that big of a deal. Like, you know, if I'm managing $5 million of money, and I lose 20,000, you know, the most Someone's probably gonna lose is maybe 2 or 3000. So the overall number is a big number. But you know, we spread between all the counts, it's not that big of a number. Allen: Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's that thing, right? There is like, the biggest thing that's kept me out of it for all these years, you know, people have been asking me from the beginning, okay, can you take my money? I'm like, nope, nope, because I don't know how I'm gonna handle the stress. I don't know if, um, we will sleep, I can lose my own money, you know, market down 20% Okay, whatever, it'll go back up, I got time, you know, but somebody else if I lose your money, and I don't know, I don't know how I'm gonna handle it. And so that's the one thing that that's really caused me to be hesitant up till now. And I agree what you said about not having that much information out there. You know, I mean, there are companies out there that will like if you want to be in RIA you type in how to be an RIA and there's a company that hey, you if you give us like 30 grand, you know, we'll do all the paperwork and we'll file everything for you. So you Okay, but what do I actually get? You know, they're like well you do the paperwork. Well what about after that? How do I get clients how do I do this how to do that they will help you at all and these two guys they had approached, they had talked that a because I'm you know Option Genius is in what's called the financial publishing space that world, so we have our own little conventions and all the Guru's come and hang out and talk marketing and stuff. And so there was there was these two guys who were speakers, and they were telling all of the financial publishers that hey, you guys need to get into the into the management business, because you guys already have all these clients? They already trust you? You know, and they probably have a lot of money because people coming to me, you know, they say, Hey, I want to learn how to trade options. Okay, cool, you know, and how large is your account? They're like, Oh, 50,000. Okay, cool. And they trading options with 50,000. But they also have like, maybe a million dollar IRA, that they're not touching, or their wife has $500,000 that is with some other financial advisor that she doesn't want her husband to touch with options. So it's like, yeah, everybody that comes in has a lot more money. So if you started an IRA or an advisor, then you know, they'll give you that money as well. And you can make all this money. And I was like, Okay, that's interesting. But, you know, what are the legalities and all that and they wanted, I don't know, obtain $1,000 plus a percentage of the company to actually teach me all this stuff. And I'm finding a there's a lot of secrecy, as you can say, you know, and Wall Street, I think puts it like that on purpose. Because they don't want everybody to know what they're doing and what they that they don't know what they're doing. Pretty much. So cool. Paul: I don't know, that's intentional, but it just got I think there's so few people who are looking to do it. And like, it's not a widespread throughout the population thing. So you don't find as much about it, you know. Allen: Maybe okay, yeah, I'll take that. Yeah. Because like, you know, even like, what is the difference between an RIA and a hedge fund? You know, I've been beating my head, like, which one? Which way? Do we go? Which way? Do we go? If we go this way? Or this? Or what are the pros? What are the cons, and there's like, no one person that can that can tell me, if you want to go to a hedge fund, they got a little hedge fund world, and, you know, you got to you got to pay the dues to get in. If you want the RA world, then it's more common, but it's, it's for the guys, you know, for people who are like, Yeah, you know, I just want to put everybody's money in an index fund, you know, so it's like, what you're doing is totally different, like, I have not met any advisors that are actually, you know, trading that actively for people. So I mean, compared to the other guy, Joe Schmo that charges 1% a year, or 2% a year, just to put their money in an index fund compared to what you're doing, you know, your value is just so much more. But it does seem like it's very similar to a hedge fund where, you know, a hedge fund is a little bit different, where all the money is pooled into one spot. And then, you know, the, the trader controls it, you're doing kind of similar, where you can look at it and be like, Okay, I got, you know, $10 million under management, how am I going to split that up into different trades? And it just happens to be in different people's accounts? So have you ever thought about increasing your rates because like a hedge fund, they can charge a percentage of the gains? An RIA can't? Can they do that? Paul: They can do that on their certains particulars criteria? I think like you have to have an investor who's has at least $2 million in investable assets. They have at least $1 million invested with you. And then you can have certain arrangements where you say, Well, if I make whatever percentage I'll make about what the s&p does, you'll split it with me, or something like that, you know? Okay, so again, it's very, it's has a lot of criteria to it can't be done, though. Okay. Yeah. Because I wouldn't say the hedge fund world is based on what you're telling me is, cuz you're basically commingling all the funds. Right? So you got to do like a statement for each person or something. Yeah. And so I think the advantage is, you can just commingle it all and then do whatever you need to do. And then at the end of the day, you somehow allocated? Allen: Right, so the thing with the hedge fund is that all the investors have to be accredited. Okay, so accredited, as you know, probably, you know, you basically you have a million dollar net worth not putting your house, or you're making upwards of 300,000 a year. So, you know, basically, so at least Paul: They have to tell you, they're accredited. Right? Allen: I think we would actually want them to be proof, you know, give me proof otherwise, we're not letting you in. Paul: That was actually in so my testing I just did is like, yeah, you want this criteria? But are you actually gonna go go check it? No. So Allen: Interesting. Okay. Because I mean, you know, the government says that the hedge funds, you know, if you're an accredited investor, you should be smarter than the average bear. And so, if you lose money, it's not that big a deal. Like you are smart enough to get into it. You know, somebody with $5,000 or $10,000. That's my life savings. No, sorry, you can't invest in this. Even though the hedge fund might be like doing 1,000,000% a year, you can't invest because you're not accredited. Ras can take basically everybody, so that was one of the things okay, somebody comes in with 50,000 as an RIA, you might just take it because it's not that much paperwork. It's not extra for you. But for a hedge fund. Yeah, no, I can't do it. Because I gotta, I gotta pay the auditing company. I gotta pay the statement company. I got to pay the customer. You know, whoever's doing customer service and answering the phone and doing all that, and salespeople and all that. So 50,000 is not going to cut it, you know, the limit is a lot higher. For sure. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that, in that sense, totally different world. But very similar from what I'm seeing is that, you know, you're doing probably what we're gonna be doing, you know, similar. Paul: So you probably can't take qualified money like IRAs and things like that. Allen: I think they can. Yeah, yeah, I think they can, as long as a person is accredited. And so there's different regulations, 5063 C, or six, C, five, or six D, they'll those tell you, you know, if you can take accredited and non accredited, and then can you advertise or not, I'm still learning all this, it's all different, because like, if you start a Real Estate Fund, different from if you're doing a hedge fund, versus a private equity fund, so some of the rules apply to everything. Some of the rules are just separate. So I'm still learning all that. But I know that the Interactive Brokers, people, they've done webinars in the past with attorneys. So if anybody wants to start a hedge fund, you can still use the Interactive Brokers platform. And they have they actually have a separate portal, I think, for hedge funds. Yeah, I've seen that. You've seen that too? Where you can actually see what other people are doing. And what are the trades that they're making? Paul: I didn't know about that. I just knew that they had some kind of hedge fund portion of what they're doing. I didn't know exactly what it meant. Allen: Yeah. So So what they said was that, you know, the attorney was like, you know, it'll take several, you know, maybe $30,000, to set up your hedge fund, you can probably do it with a smaller amount, if you want to start an incubator fund, which is like, you know, if you have your own money, and you put in and say $300,000, and you trade it as if it's a fund, and you don't maybe that that paperwork might be like 7000, and you set that up, you treat it as a fun, you build up your track record, and be like, Oh, hey, look, you know, I was trading for six months, I got this, that or not, and then you can start advertising it, and you convert it to a full fund. And then you can say, well, look at my track record, this is what I did. And then people can come in for the full fund. So that was one of the things that they were they were talking about. But so yeah, we were we were looking at an interactive, but the one thing that interacted with their software is a little bit more clunky or less user friendly than some of the most user friendly software. Yeah, it was my personal accounts. Now. So when, do you still trade on on your own on the side? Or is all of your money in the big? Paul: I have some money still in the in the huge fund? And then, you know, I have some I have an account on the side, right? Allen: So that separate account, did that change it all after you got licensed? Because they always, you know, when you open an account, they always ask you, are you licensed? And then they're I don't know why they do that. Is there to change anything on? You're not gonna recall? Paul: Yeah. So, there's, there's occasions where you can link up an account with the master fund, and you can D link the account. So I think at one time I had, it's actually my 401k account for my accounting firm attached to the IRA account, but then I detached it. One of the main reasons was for futures. Okay, because I knew I wasn't qualified to do futures for the whole fun. But I could on a mountain account. Allen: Ah, okay. So you have to keep it separate to do the futures options. Yeah. Until you get licensed by them. And is that like a lengthy process as well? The futures options? License? Yeah. Paul: I took a series three exam back a month or so ago. So I'd studied for two or three months, and again, got a tutor. Yeah. Okay. Allen: All right. How many clients do you have right now? Paul: I'd say about 20-25. Allen: Okay. All right. Cool. And so, from a financial standpoint, has it been worth it? Paul: Yeah, it's been really good. I might, my intention when I know that, you know, once I got into it, my intention was over the years, you know, retirement age, is at my incomes shift for my CPA business or to my investment business. So I could do that, say two hours a day and retirement versus, you know, doing tax seasons and all that. CPA visits. Allen: Okay. Is that still the plan? Yes. Still plan. Awesome. Cool. So yeah, I mean, handling managing millions of dollars of assets in two hours a day. That sounds pretty good to me. Paul: That might be a pipe dream. But that's what I had in mind. Allen: I think you could do it your own way. You're on your way. Cool. Awesome. So is there anything that I haven't asked you that you think like, oh, yeah, people need to know this. Paul: I could probably sit here and think about a few things. Not on every call. No, no, no, no. I mean, one thing you have to like for instance, a you have to have a like an email account that you Gotta add to retain all your emails for at least like five years. That's one thing to keep in mind. And like I have to send a like a balance sheet and income statement to the state of Florida every year and get someone to notarize it. You have to upload information to the FINRA site at least once a year. And that's where you pay your like on license Louisiana along Florida and things like that. So I pay my fees for those licensing booth vendors website. Allen: And that you had told me that the fee that you charge for management that comes out Interactive Brokers basically pays you every quarter, your fixed asset if I had to build it, right, yeah. Paul: Okay. So, so they do it automatically. But when I got audited, the state wanted me to actually create invoices. So the answer your question is, I'm not sure what the real requirement is. So far, I guess I met that criteria then. So I'm not actually grading him. What's the reporter right now? Okay. Allen: Yeah, I mean, because like, I mentioned, those two consultants that I had talked to, they had told me that I would have to bill everybody invoice, everybody, every quarter. And those people would have to pay me directly. So it wouldn't be taken out of their account, it would be sent directly to me that they would have to write a check every quarter. And I'm like, that's a pain in the butt. You know, that's pretty cumbersome. Yeah, if a customer has to pay, you know, a big check every quarter for management fees. And then especially if you have a down year, he's like, What am I paying for it? I don't pay for this anymore. And you don't get paid. So I was like, Okay, that's a big red flag. But I'm glad that that's not true. Cool. Okay. Paul: One thing I have figured out there is, like, there's an account I was going to take from someone from one advisors to me, and they had all their fees, like totally hidden with all these mutual funds and things like that. And so like, you know, that account, I was gonna charge 3.3%. But we weren't able to ever get to the bottom of what the other advisor was charging. So, even though they have a lot of disclosures and things like that, I think we could have pressed the issue if we really wanted to. But, um, but you know, I ended up losing that account. Allen: So did that customer realize that, that he's being charged all these things? Paul: No, no, no clue. No, I mean, whenever I sort of parted ways, and I said, you guys at least need to figure out what they're charging you. You'd be surprised at the amount of inept that's out there and people who are actually hiring advisors, like, yeah, most people do not keep like their annual statements. They couldn't tell me how much they made last year. You know, because really, when I'm taking on an account, I want to know, what their track record has been sort of what I would need to beat to make them happy. You know, a lot of them are not that attuned to that. Allen: That's crazy. Yeah. I mean, people, they work their entire lives to save up money and invest it so they can retire. But then they don't pay any attention to the money. Oh, boy.. Paul: I think it's because they don't know that much about it. So they wouldn't know what to do if it was not what they wanted, you know? Allen: Yeah. I mean, you gotta you gotta take a little bit of time to at least read the statements and figure out where's the money going? And it could be better disclosed, you know, the statements could be easier to read that that's definitely sure. That's, yeah. But it is what it is for now. Paul: Like, I have this account right now, I'm probably going pick up another six to nine or 1000. And I asked them to get their annual statements ready. Because I wanted to see what they have been. have been doing, you know, so, you know, so they didn't know if there'll be they'll find those. So let me guess. It's like, it's weird. Allen: Okay, they just like asked her her advisor. Paul: Oh, that might be red flag fight flight to them. And they are looking so yeah. Wow. Okay. All right. seem bizarre. Allen: So if somebody was thinking about starting their own advisory firm, what would you say? They would need in terms of like, what are the minimums, okay, you should have been in the market for, you know, five years, you know, or you got to know XYZ, is there anything that you would say that, you know, if you don't, if you can't even do this, and this is not for you? Paul: Well, they're planning on doing what I'm doing, they probably need at least three to five years, you know, their own market experience. But, you know, that being said, like, I just met with someone the other day, and I could put all my funds through their strategies, and just sit and coast. You know, really, they charge an extra 1% or whatever, so I'll back off of my fee a little bit. You know, so you can you can play the game different ways. Wow. So you could do like I can see a new person and starting that and just have these other you know, because they have what's called sub managers or something like that. I don't know the exact term. Basically, you're hiring other money managers to manage the money you have for your clients. Right, like sub advisors, maybe is what it's called. Okay. So I'm not saying it will totally preclude them that they didn't have three to five years. But, you know, hopefully they're drawing on someone's experience to help hold their handle that Allen: Right. And do you know how much it costs to get it up and running? Paul: I would say three to five grand. Wow, that's not much. I mean, the hardware, these firms are brought in to charge you five times that? Allen: Yeah. Okay. So well, the sub accounts. Yeah, actually, I do remember those consultants talking to me about that. Paul: They they call it sub advisors? Allen: Yeah, I think that's what it is. And it's like, yeah, you know, if you don't want to do it yourself, you can put your money, you can put your your clients money into different buckets, and then they just do it for you, and they charge and then you split the fees or whatever, or something like that. So, and then each broker, each broker dealer has different ones. So like Fidelity or Schwab will have different sub accounts versus what you could put your stuff in. But interesting, I just Just curious the ones that you had talked to what what strategies were they were using, Paul: They're using free cash flow to is their criteria for who they're investing in. So they have like international, they call a cash cow c-o-w. So they've international domestic, and things like that. So they have a different definition of free cash flow. So they're they're fearing that's the best value, their way of determining value out there, like sort of like a value fund, but their own definition of what value is. Allen: Okay, so they're investing in stocks. Paul: Yes, international and domestic. Allen: And they handle the ins and outs. And so you could put a portion of your client's money in there, you put it all in there. So it's like, it's like an ETF. So basically, you can say I want 20% of my money to go on this domestic one 20% International. And I might, I'm in talks with them. So I might end up doing some more money that way. But so they're coming up with different sample portfolios that I can use their funds for. Allen: Okay, interesting. And so that must be a much larger company. Paul: Yeah, I'm not sure how big they are. But they're, you know, big enough to where they had like a representative here in central Florida and some of their back office helping them out. Awesome. I'm not sure their size yet. Allen: Yeah. So I mean, this rabbit hole is pretty big. You can dive in there and spend a lot of time figuring all this stuff out. Paul: Yeah, yeah. So I can see a way I could sit and close more. But you're only doing it two hours a day anyway. Allen: Cool. All right. Paul: Well, maybe we're gonna get into my retirement years, a certain amount of years. I'll just put it there and just coast. The zero hours a day. Yep. Allen: Yeah, my, my neighbor in the office next door, he's a financial adviser. He's been doing it for, I think, 25 years now. So he's built up, you know, a sizable clientele. And so now he's at the point where he wants to retire. But he doesn't know what to do with the firm. He's like, you know, he makes probably a good 500,000 a year income from it. And he's like, I want one of my kids to take over. But the kids are not really willing, and not interested. He's like, I don't know what to do. So he's still there. So there's been periods of times or, you know, like, I sit on the CPA world deal with other investment advisors, where it's been a quite a lucrative market to get bought your practice bought out by bigger, let's say Merrill Lynch or something like that, you know, they pay some pretty big bucks to buy those books of business. Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, one of the things that the consultants told me is that once you get you get a client, that turnover, meaning the fact that they're going to leave you is not very high, they're gonna stay with you for years and years. So you can count on that money coming in, you know, that fee money coming in for a long period of time, unless you unless you totally screw it up, and then they're gonna leave. Paul: If you play the play smart. You know, if you're dealing with someone 50 years old, right now, you know, another 10 or 20 years, you're gonna pick up their kids and things like that when they need investment advice and stuff. It's, it'd be a self perpetuating thing. Allen: Yeah, yeah. And I do like the fact that there's always going to be somebody there willing to buy you, your company. You know, because a lot of times in smaller companies if you're the only person or if you got one or two employees, nobody really wants to buy the company even if it's successful. Nobody wants to buy it because they would without you there they're basically buying a job for themselves, right? It's not running on its own you're the one doing all the work in this case. Yeah, you're the one doing all the work but they don't need you. They can just, you know, have their own advisors take over. So you still get a pretty decent multiple when you sell so that's really cool too. Right? Paul: Also, I met a.. in my travels on this world. I've met the company and actually finance you if you want to buy on someone else's practice in the financial visor word world. Allen: Hmm.. So have you looked into that? Paul: I had a conversation or two with them, but I haven't really pursued it further. Yeah. Because I didn't know if I wanted to buy a larger practice. Right? Yeah. Because generally, that is a seven year payout to do that. So, you know, seven years, you'd be free and clear. Allen: That'll be interesting. Yeah. So a lot of ways to skin this cat. So you would I mean, I'm assuming that if anybody asked you, Hey, should I do this? Probably the answer is yes. Paul: Yeah, I mean, just mean, talk to people who have done it, and sort of figure out if it's a good fit for you, you know? Yeah. It's definitely can be pretty lucrative. Allen: Right? And I like the fact that it's like, for you at least it's more localized, you know, so you're not competing with somebody in California or Canada, or whatever. It's like, yeah, you guys get your clients over there. I'll have my clients over here. You know, they love me, they trust me. We hang out maybe. And sometimes. So it's not like a competitive situation. So, right. Awesome. Are you in any? Are there any, like, associations or memberships for advisors? Paul: No, I'm not. Allen: No, but obviously, they probably have them? Paul: Yeah, I'm just not familiar. Very familiar with that. I have another advisor to hang out with suddenly sort of share some ideas. That's, that's all I have right now. Allen: And they're also private. Like on their own? Paul: Now, one of the reasons I didn't cover this in the beginning, like when I started looking into this whole thing, I didn't want to get clients and then share my fees with other people. That's why I didn't latch on to a bigger firm and start building my clients from there. So that's why I started my own Ra. So they will be my clients. And I get all the fees for them. And no one else had had rights to him. So that's, that's one of the reasons I did the way I did it. Allen: Okay. Okay. So what would be the benefits of going with a larger firm just to name recognition? Paul: Well, they have, one of the biggest things is called compliance. So like, right now, I'm my own compliance officer for my firm, okay, and larger firm like that they have whole departments that take care of compliance, for you to make sure you don't get in trouble, the regulators and so forth. So, like this other advisor, I had, he joined another firm, just so you could have that compliance piece to it. But in his firm, he can't trade options. Right? Allen: Because they're very limited. Yeah, exactly. Paul: It's taught me to join his is up, like can't trade options. Allen: Because compliance says no. Paul: It was on the client's officer. Allen: Right. So that's why when you said you were thinking about advertising, it's the risk is on you because you're the compliance officer. So you got to know exactly what can be done and what can't be done. Right. Right. Interesting, cool. Is there anything else because I'm out of questions. Paul: One of the things, one of the things I tell you, I looked into going with other companies, other inactive brokers when I started, okay, and like Charles Schwab wanted you to have $7 million you're managing before you could go with them. Allen: Whoa, okay. And they're the biggest right right now, I think. Paul: I think so. Yeah. Yeah. So that's one reasons with Interactive Brokers, because they didn't have the minimums like that. I didn't really check too much rather than other people. Allen: So and how's your customer service at Interactive Brokers, because they for personal accounts, they don't have a good reputation. Paul: Yeah, they have a separate line, you can call as a professional advisor. So it's, I get pretty quick attention. Usually, you know, it's not it's not perfect, but you know, it's decent. Yeah, but you're happy. Yeah, I'm not saying that. I'm sure other companies have better customer service but you know, for right now, they, you know, I might need to call him a few times, but I get what I needed if I need need to.. Allen: And how are their margins and Commissions? Paul: Commission's are pretty low. I don't have the exact numbers I just know less than like $1 per 100 shares. Allen: And who comes out of the customers account? Obviously. Paul: Each person like when you do a trade display something all the counselee they pick up their own fees. Allen: Cool. All right. Well, thank you Paul. You know, Paul's website is again BusinessAdvisors.Pro. Paul said that he could reach out you know, you guys can reach out to him if you have any questions. And Paul is also in our other memberships are other programs as well past trading formula blank check and credit spread. So if you guys are members of those, you can reach out to him there. You'll find him in the group. And he's been very gracious with his time. So I do want to thank you and And he's very active in the group and you know you've been helping a lot of newer people as well they're so appreciate you there. Interesting place, interesting world and as I dive in I'm probably going to reach out to you more. Paul: Sounds great, I appreciate it. Allen: Thank you thank you so much and we'll talk to you soon JOIN OUR FREE PRIVATE FACEBOOK GROUP: https://optiongenius.com/alliance Like our show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps. Thank you!
In this week's special episode Time to focus on the things that will make a REAL difference in your MSP this year. As we start what could be another unusual year, Paul presents the 5 most important things you need to focus on Join Paul for this special episode in which he discusses how to conquer 2021 with the best mindset, daily actions, website, social media, digital footprint - and more Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert In this special podcast Paul mentioned the following books... The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Built To Sell by John Warrillow Atomic Habits by James Clear The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande They Ask You Answer by Marcus Sheridan Find out more about Paul Green's MSP Marketing Edge Looking ahead to February's podcasts, Paul mentioned he'll have special guests from productivity tools Timeular and Todoist Please send any questions, ideally in audio-form (or any other feedback) to hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com Episode transcription Voiceover: Fresh every Tuesday for MSPs around the world. This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special. Paul: Hello and welcome to the first of three MSP Marketing specials designed to help your business and really get the most out of 2021. I've pulled together three subjects that I think are critical for any MSP to master, and I want to focus on those throughout January's podcasts. Paul: Now in two weeks time we're going to be talking about LinkedIn, why it's the world's best prospecting database and why you should be spending more time on it every day. Next week we'll be talking about your website, because it is the most important marketing basic to get right. But this week we're going to start by looking at what your five marketing priorities should be for 2021. Voiceover: This is an MSP Marketing Podcast special. Paul: Before we start talking about your five marketing priorities this year, let's just take just a few minutes just to look back at last year, the crazy year, what actually happened. I believe we saw five to ten years of change happen in just six months. From March last year up to about September, huge amou
When you’re entering a new company or a new market, there are lessons to be learned from the past and opportunities to grab hold of to propel yourself and your company forward. Paul Lanham entered a new company and industry all at once when he became the Chief Information and E-Commerce Officer at Charlotte's Web, a CBD company. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Paul details how he used his experience at companies such as Crocs, HCL and Brookstone to help guide him as he helped grow the Ecommerce business at Charlotte’s Web to the point where it now represents 65% of the business. Paul explains the methods he has used to generate qualified traffic, conversions and a high retention rate, and he discusses the technology he thinks is going to make a huge impact on Ecommerce in the future. Main Takeaways: Respect The Work That Came Before You: As a leader coming into a new company, there can be a tendency to try to change too much too fast. Instead, acknowledge and respect the work that was happening prior to your arrival, and then try to evolve that work into something more. Let the Tools Handle the Work: Humans are excellent at many things, but we all have inherent biases and miss certain correlations or connections. Rather than trying to analyze all the data you have on your own, employ technology like A.I. that will ignore most (unprogrammed) bias and can do the deep work a human brain is incapable of. Tech is Catching Up To Personalization: For so long, there has been a promise of technology that could interact in a human way with customers in real-time. That technology is finally starting to become a reality and those that can implement it properly can take personalization of their Ecommerce experiences to the next level. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is Stephanie Postles, co-founder of Mission.org and your host. Today we have Paul Lanham on the show, the Chief Information and Ecommerce Officer at Charlotte's Web. Paul, welcome. Paul: Hi, nice to be here. Stephanie: I'm glad to have you. Yeah, I'm really excited. I've used Charlotte's Web products before. So, when I saw that you were in our queue for interviews, I was like, "Oh, this is going to be a good interview." Paul: That's good to hear you have some perspective then. Stephanie: To start, I was looking through your background and was really impressed by some of the companies that you've worked at. I'd love for you to first before talking about Charlotte's Web, kind of go through a little bit about your history and then what brought you to Charlotte's Web. Paul: Sure. As you just noted, I have a pretty diverse background mostly in the retial and CBG and technology industries. What's really colored my career is that I've been given a lot of opportunities, some of which I hadn't had a lot of experience in including Ecommerce when I started in its infancy in the mid '90s when you had to build everything. You couldn't really go to the corner shop and buy an Ecommerce server. Paul: But I basically have touched on virtually every aspect of Ecommerce over the past 20 somewhat years. I've been a C level executive for about 25 years and worked for a diverse group of companies, a variety of sizes. Some startups. Paul: I started my own tech company and now it's Charlotte's Web, which I have to say is very much different in terms of its make up versus the companies I've worked for in the past. Stephanie: Yes. And just for people to know the difference, it would be great if you could name drop a bit. I know people hate name dropping, but I'd love to hear what were some of the companies, the largest ones you've worked at? I think you can compare it to Charlotte's Web. Paul: Sure. I worked for what was a startup, Crocs. I think people will recognize the infamous shoe company that is just located down the street from where I work. Paul: I've worked for Jones Apparel Group, which is a mega apparel conglomerate that own companies like Barneys New York, Jones New York, Apollo Jeans, et cetera, in the apparel industry. Paul: I started a tech company that eventually became a subsidiary of HCL Technologies, which is a global tech firm based in India. Paul: And Brookstone, which is the gadget shop, competing with Sharper Image. Again, near its infancy as well. So, a diverse group of experiences. Stephanie: Yeah, that's amazing. With some of these companies you've worked at previously, are there a lot of lessons that you were able to bring to Charlotte's Web or is it just such a different beast that you kind of had to just start over and had a completely new hat on? Paul: Well, basically if you've been a C level executive for a number of years you have some successes and you have some failures and hopefully you learn from the failures, and I've had them too. Paul: Implemented virtually every kind of system you can imagine. Been on the business side from an Ecommerce perspective and learned a lot of different things that I've been able to bring to Charlotte's Web. Paul: Back to the diversity of my career, one thing I can note, I probably have been in just about every function that you can imagine from finance, to marketing, to sales, to Ecommerce, et cetera, et cetera. Paul: So, I think that brings somewhat of a unique perspective to a company like Charlotte's Web, where I frankly I have a lot of empathy for my peers in other departments because I've done a lot of their jobs. Stephanie: Yeah, that is so important. I've worked at previous companies where someone doesn't understand I worked in finance back in the day and people do not understand the complexity or why there are certain procedures set up and you can definitely see tension between certain groups if they've never worked in that team before. So, that's key I think. Paul: Absolutely, and financial people can be fun. Most people don't know that. Stephanie: They can be. Just like me, I'm fun. You're fun Paul. I'd love to hear or I'd love for you to explain what is Charlotte's Web and maybe even starting with the story behind it, behind the name. Paul: Sure. Charlotte's Web is CBD company that was founded by the seven Stanley Brothers and that's a wonderful story in it of itself in that they grew up in the Cannabis industry. Paul: But the company's namesake, Charlotte Figi, who many people may remember from the Sanjay Gupta CNN Specials from years back and most recently illustrating how there was this trajectory of various peoples and things to help a little child basically survive. Paul: So, our namesake Charlotte really is like our guiding star or north star in the context of our mission, which is to help people through natural products that Charlotte's Web produces. Paul: So, it's a young industry, it's a young company where we are a market leader. Obviously we are commercial, but we're always grounded by our original mission and we still do help quite a few people to where our product is very essential like the Charlottes olive oil. Stephanie: Yeah. I was looking at the I am Charlotte video on your website and it definitely gave me goosebumps. When did you guys create that campaign? Paul: Well, it's basically been the past year. The point is with her passing it really shook us all to our core because frankly it was probably one of the core reasons that most of us joined the company. I was fortunate to be able to meet Charlotte and her mother Paige a couple of times. Paul: But many people in my company, and obviously the Stanley Brothers basically grew up in this company attached to Charlotte's story. The I am Charlotte campaign is currently just obviously a testimony and our take on how beloved she is and still is. Stephanie: Yeah, I love that. The CBD industry as you mentioned, it is kind of a new-ish industry. When you're in California it seems like it's been around forever, but when you go to other states or back to my hometown, people still kind of have they either don't know what it is or yeah, are just very unclear about what it is. You have different preconceived notions, you can say. Stephanie: So, how do you all think about kind of educating the public or new buyers who come to your site for the first time? Paul: Certainly. Two points, actually about 15% of households have had some experience with CBD in the United States. And still because it's such an emerging industry, word of mouth is still very important. Typically, people first get exposed to CBD by a relative or a friend or somebody mentioning it that it helped them. Paul: When they go to search for it, we basically are actually a leader at Charlotte's Web because we rank very high on the first page, in the first third with what is CBD. To that point, we spend a good deal of time on our site through blog entries and various educational videos that we put out to educate our customer on the difference, for example, between hemp and cannabis or what is the efficacy of CBD and various in-depth, I guess, videos to illustrate the depth of what they could know about CBD. Paul: So, it very much is still an educational process as you've mentioned to evangelize the use of CBD. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. How did you all become a market leader? I know you were not first, but you definitely were some of the early leaders or even starting up in this industry. But how did you go about making sure people had your name as the household name when it came to CBD? Paul: Sure. They were among the first and the brand story between the Stanley Brothers and Charlotte really resonated. It was made for this industry and the mission that the Stanley Brothers inoculated into the company and we still have in terms of evangelizing the product and natural products to the world to help people, I think resonate with people. Paul: When you talk about, for example, our end-to-end integration from seed to shelf, our quality, et cetera, all those things kind of are confluence in terms of being perceived as a quality brand and a premium brand to a consumer. Paul: There are a lot of smart business decisions along the way, frankly, in terms of becoming that market leader. Stephanie: What kind of smart business decisions? Now you've piqued my interest. Paul: Okay. For example, going really strong in Ecommerce initially in that the nature of the industry is that there's been a slower adoption in the major retailers because hemp frankly, from a federal perspective, wasn't quite legal until a couple of years ago based on the format. Paul: There are some reticence in terms of conservative retailers to carry the product. So, they were very smart in not necessarily going the mom-and-pop route even though we have a big natural store population on the retail side. Paul: But going very strong with Ecommerce and hiring the right people right off the bat a couple few years ago to basically push the commercial side of this. Ecommerce right now represents about 65% of our business as was in the first quarter. That's somewhat of a higher percentage than many of our competitors. Stephanie: What do you think is attributed to that higher percentage? Paul: Being first out of the gate. Being very professional about it. But the primary drivers, they're a couple, back to the brand story that really resonated, was beautifully presented on the site and for media. Paul: Secondarily, the quality that we bring to the table that we try to communicate to other consumers. From that seed to shelf continuum, we test the product 20 times, we track each individual bottle or tincture or the like back to a specific lot and seeds. We could document virtually anything anyone needs to know about that particular product. Paul: So, particularly in this industry where you have an influx of competitors, some of which frankly are not quite as sophisticated in the context of testing and the branding. You can really stand out by basically taking care of those issues. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. That is how I found you guys in the early days was because quality to me is the biggest factor when it comes to CBD. Paul: Absolutely. Stephanie: And it's also something that a lot of people worried about early on because you do hear horror stories and it felt good going to a company knowing yeah, they've already got everything figured out. They've got the dosing down to its seed. They've got it's non-GMO and yeah, I think that's so important with an industry like this. Paul: Absolutely. Stephanie: The one thing I was thinking about was consumer journeys. Everyone is coming to your website maybe at a different place like we were mentioning before. Some people are brand new or they've maybe never even heard of it, where education is key. Stephanie: Some people have heard about it. You've got the people who maybe are hiding their browsers when they're looking for it or the people like me it's like, "Yeah, this is an obvious thing that can help you." Paul: Sure, sure. Stephanie: How do you personalize either your Ecommerce experience or your marketing efforts to kind of go after all those people and meet them where they are? Paul: Well that's a good question because when I mentioned sophisticated we invested in tools that enable us to personalize that journey. So, for example, back to my comment on what is CBD. Paul: If somebody enters that as a search term and they have to click on our link, we will take them initially to the education materials and will kind of guide them through the process from the Ecommerce perspective of walking them through that journey and hopefully they purchase. Paul: We do that in the context of segmenting our email channel. We have a variety of channels and we handle each one differently. Our affiliate channel, for example, is very strong in terms of the partners we deal with like a Healthline.com, which yet again is another educational component in that we're very strong with them. Paul: So, depending on the channel, depending on the entry point of our consumer, we will treat them differently in the context of where we land them on the website, what we offer to them in the context of their journey through the website, and what promotional activity we engage with them. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah that make sense. When it comes to affiliate programs, how did you all think about setting that up and is that still a big part of your strategy or did you kind of pull back on that once you started becoming more of a household name? Paul: It's still and will be a very big part of our strategy in that penetration of CBD from a search to perspective is still relatively low compared to what I've experienced in the past so that we're still in an emerging phase where we need to use and leverage every channel we can. Paul: So, as strong as our Ecommerce business is, which happens to be frankly Ecommerce alone at Charlotte's Web is a market leader in revenue compared to every other CBD company, just alone. It kind of tells you the scale of our business. Paul: But what I'm getting at, the Healthline.com affiliate is very important to us in that it is the number one rated medical advice site, I believe, if I look at the statistics recently. Paul: Every entry point is different for every consumer and we need to leverage all those different entry points. We can't, for example, rely solely on organic search as an example, not that we would. But we basically go through every venue. Stephanie: Got it. What does it look like setting up a partnership like that? Because, I think that is really important kind of finding someone who has a good reputation that a lot of people trust. But what did that look like setting that partnership up and making it so both sides feel like it's a win-win? Paul: Well to your point, it's important to vet the partner because obviously you don't want to be presented on a site that doesn't quite meet your value set or your brand image. So, we're fairly choosy in terms of the affiliate partners that we work with. Paul: Obviously, in some cases it's a longer negotiation in that obviously we want to do it on advantageous terms in terms of the share basically. So, we don't cast a wide swath in the context of the affiliate partners we deal with. We're very selective. Stephanie: Got it. So, the one thing that I was wondering earlier when you were mentioning failures and you of course have a huge backlog of experience at other companies, what did your first 90 days look like coming in to Charlotte's Web and what big things did you change from the start based on maybe past failures or successes that you've had at prior companies? Paul: Well, like entries in the most companies it's a rush. My story, this is pre-COVID times obviously, I talked on the phone with a board member and my boss, the CEO, on a Friday. I flew over the weekend, got there on Monday. I took the job sight unseen after a phone call. Stephanie: Wow. Paul: I was so enamored of it. I've never done that before. And Danny has never hired anybody like that before, it just went so well. I showed up on Monday and I didn't leave for 90 days, much to the consonation of my significant other in Boston. So, we worked it out. Paul: But it was just a rush of understanding the industry in-depth, doing triage in the context it was still a start mentality, triage in the context of building a business intelligence stack, revamping the Ecommerce organization, planning the next iterations and improvements, setting up for the holiday season for example. Paul: When I joined, literally the week after I joined we kicked off a new platform upgrade that we only had a couple of months to do prior to holidays. So, it was a lot of long days. Stephanie: Was that something that you feel like you could step into because I'm sure you've done many re-platforming experiences before? Paul: Yeah. There is some muscle memory and back to my point, you always want to learn from your failures and not do them again or at least understand the context and admit them. Basically one of those issues is that one has to listen very carefully. Paul: I parachuted into a company that was going 1,000 miles an hour and one of the lessons I've learned in the past is honor the past because there was a great deal of work and a lot of great work done that I took the attitude of evolving and adding to as opposed to turning the part which many C level executives take that as their mandate. Paul: I've never really done that. It's one of the failures I've learned from in my past that basically sometimes evolution is better than tearing things apart. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I love that and I think the quote too. Paul: Yes. Stephanie: So, I'm sure another thing that you kind of the change of thinking on would be how you track the success of a business or the Ecommerce site. What kind of metrics, did you maybe look at prior companies where you were like this is our set of metrics that always made sense versus what do you look at now at Charlotte's Web? Paul: Well, there are quite a few. You know the Ecommerce business, there are probably 20 things that you look on a daily basis. That's my routine in the morning, I get up and I look at basically all the metrics. Paul: But what's important here, more so than perhaps, it's always in the top three conversion for example, on unbalanced traffic. It's significant here because you're engagement with a new customer and maybe fleeting because of the nature of the industry, the curiosity about CBD, people not knowing about it. Paul: I actually had to look at that statistic or those statistics several times because they didn't believe them, they were so high. That's a testament to the people and the staff that were here in that whether it's educating the consumer, or the customer experience on the site, or customer care on the backend, we have a high percentage of sales that convert. Paul: So, that probably is a much more important stat that I've paid attention to in the past. It's always been in the top three or four. Paul: Retention of consumers. Again, in this sort of industry because of the fleeting interaction with your customers, we have a very strong subscription program that is very important to us, which are typically customers who deem the product to be essential to their wellbeing. Paul: So, we've put a good deal of emphasis on that as well as retaining customers, and again, without divulging the statistics, it's much higher than I've experienced in my past 20 plus years of experience in Ecommerce. Stephanie: What do you think is making it so high? How are you all retaining customers so well or encouraging people to subscribe? Paul: Well, it's high because I guess in a way our traffic is more qualified, then again I've experience in the past. When they come through the site and they've been educated, there's a slightly high degree of propensity to buy. So, that's a factor. Paul: Plus some of our tools really facilitate the conversion in that. Not that we're pushy but we don't let go in the context of okay, this isn't right for you, maybe this or how about this promotion or have you rethought this through the customer journey in the site? Stephanie: Yeah. Paul: Basically, there's a pre-decisive to buy basically once they get to our site. Stephanie: Is there any initiatives that you've implemented when it comes to, like you said, it's nice you don't let go and you make sure to make to keep reminding them or showing them new products or new ideas. Stephanie: Is there anything that you've implemented recently around those kind of initiatives that have increased conversions or increased subscription rates or anything, or anything that you've done where you're like that was a big flop, don't try that? Paul: Well yeah. Again, getting much more sophisticated, I don't think anybody else has implemented the suite of what I call campaign tools and analytical tools. Typically, people use the standard GA or Google tools and we've gone past that and utilizing tools that I've used in much bigger companies without naming the company. Paul: So, we can have a high degree of personalization in terms of how we treat our customers as they kind of navigate through our site. A much higher capability in terms of test and react and basically inoculating those scenarios and situations into our campaigns eventually down to the individual level. Paul: So, we're still learning some of those. We've implemented those over the past three or four months. The company is still, my staff is still learning some of the aspects of those tools. Paul: On top of that from an analytic standpoint, which is a little unusual in the industry, we dived in with both feet from an artificial intelligence perspective because I joke with my staff and they read too rapidly that my experience doesn't always mean anything. I think I know everything about my customer and I'm confounded constantly in terms of why I was wrong on that. Paul: It comes down to the data and what artificial intelligence does for example, is that it makes those deep correlations that none of us would have thought of, I would have never thought of with my 20 plus years of experience of how our customers actually interact with our site or what are they thinking in the context of their purchase strength. Paul: So, when you put all those things together from a capability perspective, I love it in terms of being data driven, in terms of understanding our consumer at a deeper and deeper level and being able to provide the best experience and the best service that we can on an ongoing basis. Stephanie: Got it. That makes sense. When you're implementing AI, first can I ask what platform are you using for that and what kind of surprises have you found when you implemented AI? What were the consumers doing that you would never have guessed before? Paul: Well it's a third party app. It's a bunch of data scientists who basically provide the service for us. They're conduit for the massive amount of data that we have. To your question of surprises or those correlations or what people have affinities for in terms of say, an add-on purchase that we would never think of, what prompts them to basically make that leap to make the purchase in the context of their journey through the site. Some of which are counterintuitive to some of our experience particularly for certain segment of our consumer base. Paul: It's just some of those interesting nuggets of information. The hard part of it is, there's so many correlations that we have to rank them and we basically test each correlation over a period of time to vet out the action. Paul: Our challenge at this point is basically getting into a much more test and react cycle on these correlations. Stephanie: That's really interesting. Paul: Yes. Stephanie: So, if you were to implement AI all over again or you had someone who does not have that on their site right now, what would you do maybe differently or if you were like we could go back and maybe I would change the way we did this or think about it differently when implementing it, what are some advice around that? Paul: Well what slowed us down was the notion of producing what I call hypothesis based on our prior knowledge. That tends to put you into silos of information and doesn't quite give you the breadth of correlations that AI can do for you. Paul: So again, it was all of my advice that hey, I think I really know this aspect of consumer behavior. I'm really interested in terms of their conversion activity when they do X, when they do Y. Paul: I wouldn't be so structured in those hypothesis going into it and probably a little more open minded in the context of looking at the correlations in a much different broader way. Stephanie: I love that. That's such a good reminder about the kind of biases you bring when looking at data or your consumers and why all that should be scraped from the beginning and just let the technology work for you? Paul: Absolutely, absolutely. Stephanie: In your industry I'm sure you probably get a lot of questions around this. But I'm thinking about all the regulations you have to deal with especially on a state level and when it comes to having Ecommerce be such a large part of your business, what does that look like behind the scenes when it comes to shipping or selling in certain states? Paul: Well, it's mostly an impediment from a retailer, particularly a major retailer perspective because to your point, there's a hodgepodge of regulation in the state. Even though hemp was 0.3%, THC less than 3% as federally allowed, depending on the nuisances of what is in California or Florida, et cetera, retailers may be averse to getting into ingestibles as opposed to topicals. Paul: So, back to our point, one of the reasons why we're industry leaders we've invested heavily in internal, external lobbyists that can guide different parties and factions, whether it be congress at the federal level or legislations at the state level or associations to evangelize the notion of CBD. Paul: One thing that people miss the point on, we welcome more defined regulation from the FDA because we feel that we're heads and shoulders above most of our competitors in the context of how we test, how safe our product is, how we document it and the like. Paul: So, it's an ongoing journey that hopefully more clarity will emerge at both the state and federal level whether it's with the FDA or with various state legislatures to make the retail sales of CBD more palatable. We do ship to all states in the Ecommerce perspective. Stephanie: Okay. Yeah, I like that idea around encouraging the FDA to look into it and implement regulations because you're like my product is so good, we should have the other products regulated and be held to a high standard as well because that is what can maybe hurt the industry as a whole, is having people making subpar products that aren't as high quality as Charlotte's Web. Paul: Yes. It's kind of adding to that, major business publications have basically stated and make the articles that CBD is here to stay. It's a multi-billion dollar business growing at a rapid rate and it's frankly grown so fast and it's a new industry that regulations haven't quite caught up with it. Stephanie: Yeah. I was reading a bit about demand surges especially during the pandemic right now. I think maybe it was your CEO who was mentioning like, oh we had a surge in demand for two weeks and then people kind of pulled back for a little bit. Stephanie: I was wondering how you guys are keeping up your inventory levels, how you manage that and then if you're changing anything going forward after seeing these surges of hopefully consumers that are going to stick around going forward? Paul: We've been really gratified and continuing to serve our customer because the majority of the customers consider our product to be essential for their wellbeing whether it's the type of tincture they use or the ointment or the like. So, it's been relatively stable for us. Stephanie: Okay. Paul: Now from an notary perspective, as a growing company our processes have become more sophisticated and over the past year we've implemented an NSLOP process or production planning process that I'm more familiar with in my CBG background to really dial into marrying strategic plans to budgets, to demand forecast and skew level and doing a relatively sophisticated job of planning product demand. Paul: Now the flip side of that, this industry is volatile in the context of demand in general because retailers, some are still adverse to taking the product, so it's hard to predict demand in that context. Paul: So, we place a little more emphasis on safety stock and agility in the context of the co-manufacturers we deal with and the like. Stephanie: Got it. What are some of the best practices you set up when it comes to setting up that forecasting process because I know you've had a lot, like you mentioned, a lot experience with that. What did you bring to Charlotte's Web that maybe they weren't doing before? Paul: Well, they had started it but I amplified from an Ecommerce perspective, a rigorous skew demand process that is three dimensional and that it adds up from top to bottom and extremely rigorous analytical process of continually revising those forecasts taking into account promotional cadence, taking into account day-to-day iterations of different campaigns. Paul: So, it's a fairly in-depth forecasting process in Ecommerce so that our accuracy is much higher. It's in the 90 percentile by skew in terms of our monthly demand, for example. Paul: One of the things I've learned in my past is that sometimes you have to take a leap of faith on a particular product because you don't know how high you can go. On the other hand, that's what safety stock is for. Stephanie: Got it. What does that look like when it comes to thinking of new products? How do you influence your decision behind that, like you were mentioning, behind the sales channels and the marketing channels that help you influence your ideas or thoughts behind it. What does that look like when it comes to new products? Paul: We do have outside data and with a caveat that it's such a rapidly growing industry that tends to change overtime. But I feel is obviously one of the standard firms we use in the context of a longer term view, in terms of product categories and growth and certain segments and the like and we use that as a baseline. Paul: Obviously we use our trend and my counterpart on the retail side and myself where basically experience marketers and sales people and that we have our own opinions in terms of how we correlate our thoughts on category growth versus what we're seeing in external data, for example, like Brightview. Paul: So, we listen very closely to our consumer in terms of what categories we're pushing. Stephanie: I was just going to say I'm sure you guys get a lot of customer feedback of what people want or what they're looking for. Paul: Yes we do. Stephanie: How do you grab all that and put it in a meaningful way because you probably know best. So, a lot of times consumers might ask for something and then not actually buy it or not really want it. Paul: This is true. They certainly vote with their dollars. But on the other hand, we have a pretty good customer care department that is in my peer bid where I've managed those sorts of departments in the past but this is in an interesting one, the group of individuals that the empathy, because of the nature of the product and the stories they hear and the people they try to help, the empathy they exhibit in terms of comments from customer is just outstanding. Paul: So, it's not only commercial, but to the extent that it's practical based on the information they have, they are advisors to the customers that call in and we have a high volume of calls that come in not necessarily about order standard things, but really what should I do? What about this product? Paul: The other aspect is we have a fairly rich library of customer reviews and the technology we use enables us to slice and dice some of the categories of the customer reviews and try to get to a gist of what's working versus not, whether it's from a product efficacy perspective or perhaps a defect of some sort. Paul: The dropper may not work exactly the way we wanted to and the like. So, we have multiple sources of information of customer contact. Stephanie: I think that's so key to be able to call in and actually talk to someone. That's the perfect way to develop trust is by having someone that you can actually get on a phone with and be like, "Okay, I don't know what to do now. Tell me exactly what I should be doing." Or same with reviews, being able to see someone who sounds like me reviewing the product just seems like a great way to develop trust all around. Paul: Absolutely. From a hiring perspective, I have lunch, a virtual lunch nowadays with every associate in my group at some point. Today I just, prior to this meeting, I had lunch with three of our associates just to kind of get a feeling of that. Paul: When it comes to our customer care associates, I've never met such a group of people that are truly empathetic to where they hear a story and they're crying on the phone with the consumer. They're doing everything. They have a wide latitude of actions they can take to help our customers more so than I'd had in the past in much larger companies. Paul: But they really have the right mindset, I think, as opposed to working in a call center. Stephanie: Yeah. That's so key and so important. Paul: Absolutely. Absolutely. Stephanie: So to shift a little bit into more of a marketing mindset, I wanted to hear a bit about how you guys are investing in different digital channels. What's working and what's not? Paul: Sure. Just the overview is that you may have seen our Trust The Earth campaign, which I loved, we started last fall that kind of instills what our brand messaging is. Basically, a lot of our marketing efforts go to that because again we're an emerging industry, we're maintaining our market lead, we want to convey a certain image, just a random stat based on our efforts here today. Paul: We have over 400 billion impressions from the various things we've done versus, I think our closest competitor from the stats that I've seen were about two billion and it dropped rapidly. So, marketing our digital efforts from a broad perspective are very effective and that shows in the context of where we are in organic search or educating the consumer, long ways to go. Paul: From a digital perspective obviously we're active in every social media component and we're very assertive in terms of educating our consumer through that channel, conveying our brand message. Paul: The industry is in a place right now, there are some restrictions in terms of how aggressive that you can market CBD on social media like on Facebook, for example, or Twitter. But that's not a real problem for me right now because for me we want to activate understanding and education and our brand story at this stage of our growth in the social media channels. Paul: So, a lot of our digital, aside from our paid media, which we're very good at I believe, a lot of our digital is focused on building our brand. Stephanie: How are you thinking about expanding into other markets? I think I saw that you were looking at going into a few other countries. How are you guys exploring that right now? Paul: Well, we're basically putting our markers out there. We have a staff of people who are very experienced internationally. I have a good deal of international experience as well from an Ecommerce perspective in retial. Paul: But one of the constraints still is the regulatory environment in that we won't sell in any country that obviously it's not allowed. There aren't too many countries that actually allow it. So, we're basically putting the building blocks in place if in case that would be our strategy to understand what the international market would mean to us. Paul: But it's still evolving because it's basically not allowed from a regulatory standpoint in quite a few countries. Stephanie: Got it. So now that we're kind of predicting our future a little bit, I'm wondering what kind of Ecommerce trends are you excited about or preparing for right now? Paul: Well, in general, like I have for a number of years it's the technology keeping up with my visions of personalization. In the perfect world I'm interacting real time with the individual consumer in the context of whether we're educating them or guiding their journey and the like and the technology is starting to catch up with that capability even at a company of our scale. Paul: So, that's the trend that has been there for a little while but the promise has been there, but the reality is starting to catch up. The other one I mentioned is using deep technology to a point within certain boundaries to understand our customers behavior and needs and wants and applying, point number one, the personalization with that. Stephanie: Yeah. That makes sense. Is there any new tech that you're experimenting with right now that you guys are loving? Paul: Well, I've experimented with in the past in terms of client side speed of devices. Every Ecommerce and you know all the tropes about how conversion is impacted by site speed and page loading and all those different things. Paul: But what I've been enamored of in the past couple of years is utilizing technology to tailor the experience on whatever the device our consumer has. You know there's somebody out there who's still on dial-up, if that still exists. Stephanie: You caught me Paul. Paul: With a new browser, right. It doesn't matter how efficient your site is or your servers are like, you have to tailor the experience, strip down the page load, the content, rejigger the Java script on the fly depending on that individual's device because as far as they're concerned, they may have a iPhone 5 that hasn't been updated in five years but they still like that experience. Stephanie: Yeah. I completely agree. That's really important because I think a lot of people assume that users are always on a newest and the latest and greatest. The one thing, yeah, I had, let's see, we're doing a study on I think Google maps users in India and the majority of them were on such outdated versions that they were never seeing updated streets or an update at all in maybe a year or two. Stephanie: I think it's just a good reminder that a lot of people are on older versions of things, not just in other countries but here too. Like you said, some people still use dial-up. Sowe have a quick lightning round coming up. But before that, I wanted to ask you one last question because I love your excitement towards the company and your energy behind it and I wanted to hear what is the best day in the office look like for you? Paul: The best day in the office, let me think about that for a moment. Stephanie: Yeah. Paul: As I mentioned before I'm usually willing to go every day. It's when I'm in the thick of it, I'm a great delegator I believe, and I think the people who work with and for me would say so. Paul: But I'm most happy when I'm in the thick of it, not being Mr. Executive and my people interacting with, like a peer to some degree, in terms of coming up with ideas, debating certain concepts, making things happens. Paul: It's still small enough company where many people I'll be a jack of all trades and that's where I've shined in my past of, okay, rolling the sleeves up and figuring it out and having to learn things. Paul: Many of my jobs have reflected that. So, that's when I'm happiest, when I'm learning something new. I think I've been told I'm really, really curious to a fault. I ask too many questions sometimes. Stephanie: I think that's a good thing. Paul: Yeah, I guess so. But that's what jazzes me, being in the thick of things, making things happen. Now having said that, as a C level executive you have certain programs and responsibilities to create a conducive environment for your people to work in to make them feel trusted, to stretch them to the extent of their capabilities giving them a vision. Paul: On the other hand, I've always been a believer of an executive being able to walk the talk having done something. Being able to do it, without actually doing it. That lends a certain amount of credibility in your interaction with your staff. So, I think that's very important. Back to your point, that's what makes me happy is just being in the thick of it. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I completely agree. I like that idea and I heard a ratio or it was a metric that an executive used called the say do ratio, and it was how much do you do what you're going to say you do, and that's how he gained the trust with a new company he was joining, was he actually tracked it. Paul: Well in a small company I think my first interaction with an associate at CW is riding up the elevator that Monday, they had heard of me, and they asked my name and they heard that I was a tech guy. I was really the Ecommerce business guy and tech guy and they asked me about an email problem they were having. Stephanie: A personal or a company one? Paul: A company one, yeah. Stephanie: Okay. Paul: "I can't quite get this to do this." It was a sales executive or a sales manager that we had. She asked me a question not knowing exactly what I did so I spent a half hour tracking it down and getting back to her. Paul: Later when she learned, you're in charge of Ecommerce and tech and all that stuff. To me, in a small company like ours, you have to be personal, you have to be willing to help anybody with anything and follow up on it and get it done as opposed to always delegating and there's a balance obviously in terms of the work balance. Paul: But you have to show that direct interest in everybody's issue in what they're doing. Stephanie: Yeah, I love that. That is such a good mindset to be in, like you said. Especially coming from a larger company where employees might be like, "Oh this guy is going to just delegate everything," like showing them you're willing to get your hands dirty and help them with their needs and stuff. It's also crucial. Paul: Yes. Stephanie: All right. Next we have the lightning round brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Paul: Okay, lightning round it is. Stephanie: Are you ready? Paul: I'm ready. Stephanie: Roll up your sleeves, get ready. All right. Paul: They're already rolled up. Stephanie: First, I'll start with an easy one. Paul: Yes. Stephanie: What's up next on your Netflix or Hulu queue? What are you watching these days? Paul: On my Netflix queue let's see, geez I don't watch a lot of TV so you're going to stop me. I have 30 seconds left. Mostly about historical dramas. I've always wanted to watch The Crown, which everybody has watched. So, that's probably next on my queue. Stephanie: Cool. I haven't watched that yet. You'll have to let me know how it is. Paul: There you go. Stephanie: All right. What's up next on your travel destinations when you can travel again? Paul: Wow. When I can travel again? I'd like to go back to Tokyo. I've traveled so much in my career personally. One point I spent about 50% of my time overseas. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Paul: But Tokyo because I was born in Tokyo. Stephanie: Cool. Paul: And an American descent. But when I traveled I was always able to get there and see my cousins three or four times a year. But it's been a while. That would be my first place to basically get back to my roots. Stephanie: That is a good one. I love Japan. Paul: Yeah. Stephanie: What app or piece of tech are you most enjoying right now? Paul: I'm most enjoying, this is an odd app, is a password saver. I won't say the name of it, but I've been searching for the perfect one because I'm all about convenience and security and all those things at the same time. So, it's an odd choice but I found the perfect passwords saver. Stephanie: Yeah. That is actually a very good piece of tech. We recently implemented that at the company not too long ago and I was like, "Wow, this saves a lot of time. Who knew?" Paul: Absolutely. Get rid of the sticky notes. Stephanie: Yeah. All right. If you were to create a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Paul: My first guest I'm thinking big. Stephanie: Go for it. Paul: Because I'm thinking really, really big because I'm enamored of her career. I was actually at her first rally, Elizabeth Warren. It tells you a little bit about politics and no offense. Stephanie: That's okay. Paul: But I was still in Boston, I went to her first rally and I was just enamored, I've always been enamored of her and not withstanding what happens in the near future. I would just be fascinated to talk to her about her career and how she made that mid career shift and the [inaudible] plan. Stephanie: That's cool. So, it would be politics focused or more human centric on what's important when it comes to you? Paul: More human centric with a tinge of politics because I am interested in politics. Elizabeth Warren would be it. Stephanie: We could get her on the show. I would make that happen for you. Paul: You could make that happen? Stephanie: Yeah. Paul: That would be so cool. Stephanie: I could do it. Elizabeth call us. We're ready for you. Paul: Absolutely. I remember I've actually seen her a few times, in the crowd obviously. The last time was at a protest at the Boston Common and she was quite compelling in her speech. Stephanie: Well that's great. I will have to see if I can find that online. Paul: Yeah. Stephanie: The last hard one which you've kind of already answered this, but I'll throw it anyways at your way. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Paul: I think the biggest impact is the turmoil going around the big guys whether it's Facebook, Google, to some degree Amazon. What is the regulatory landscape, what is the antitrust landscape, how will they evolve, how monolithic will it be? Paul: I think I actually think about that quite often in terms of how do we enact with them, do businesses, make the leap into Amazon as a third party do, how do the algorithms evolve from a group perspective. How does privacy work? Paul: That really weighs on me in the context of thinking through how do those outside forces that are so monolithic in the tech industry impact Ecommerce. Stephanie: Well that's a big juicy one. We'll have to have a whole nother episode just to talk about your thoughts on that. Paul: Right, right. Stephanie: Well Paul it's been such a pleasure having you on this show. Like I said, I use Charlotte's Web. I've been around it for a while and I really appreciate you coming on and taking the time. Where can people find out more about you and Charlotte's Web? Paul: Well obviously our website, Charlotte'sWeb.com and I have a pretty fulsome linked in profile that shows you how haphazard my career has been but it's been a fun ride. Stephanie: Yeah. That's where I found out all about you. Well thanks so much for coming on. We'll have to have you back for round two in the future. It's been great. Paul: Absolutely enjoyed it. Thank you very much.
Finance Alternatives with Paul Boyd-Skinner Josh: Everyone out there in podcast land, we've got a great guest for you today. We've got Paul here from NoBNK, and he is a bit of a wizard when it comes to looking at a different way that you can do finance. This is especially critical in today's financial climate. So Paul, tell me a bit about what it is that you do with NoBNK. Learn more about finance alternatives at dorksdelivered.com.au Paul: So NoBNK is predominantly a non-bank business and commercial finance solutionist. I've been involved in nonbank lending for around about 16 years. So I've done all sorts of finance. I've done everything from home loans to commercial development, construction equipment, finance, factoring, all that sort of thing. And I'm proud to say that I've never ever put anybody in a loan with the bank. Josh: High five! Paul: Look, you know, my adversity towards banks. Back in the 80s, back in the day when I got my first home, which was in late 1988, 89. You know we will be excited about getting our first home and interest rates at that time were around about 12% when we went and got our loan. The way it sort of worked back then was you go to the bank. And you're begged for a loan and they'd say, ‘Yes, yes, we'll give you a loan.’ And it was usually, you know, like about 70% or something that they give you, but they will do on a bit of a special, at the time for first home buyers where they give you 100% at interest only. We were living in a caravan when we first got married, so that was a pretty good option to get our own homes. Josh: Absolutely! And upgrading it’s pretty low friction option, I guess. Paul: The only thing was the in-laws had to go as guarantors. So I now know that today is like a parental guarantor. Really wasn't heard of back then. So it was a little bit of a product for first home buyers. So we did that. We jumped in and we got the house and everything was going along nicely. And then we had to have the recession that we had to have. And our interest rates went from 12% to a 7%, 8.5% in the space of about six months. And just to give you an idea, the loan was $105,000. My repayment was $1,560 a month. Yep. And I was on $33,000 a year. So when you take tax out, 80% of my income was going towards paying my mortgage. Josh: Yeah. Far out. Paul: And it wasn't knocking 1 cent off it. Josh: Yeah. Just sitting there as interest only. And that is a scary spot to be in, because you're not sure if it's going to go up or down or left or right, or what it's going to do. Somersaults. Paul: That happened with a lot of first home buyers over the years. Eventually, you know, it just got too heavy. I had to do up to 30 hours a week overtime to make ends meet, I was a fitter-machiner at the time,and you know, we ended up losing it. It's just the way it was. There were a lot of people losing their properties. Josh: You weren't the anomaly. I don't think so. Paul: I sort of didn't understand what happened to me. I didn't like the banks at all when I worked it out. I've done a lot of study on the banks since then, or the banking system, and, you know, my thoughts on the global financial system is, I believe it's a world's biggest Ponzi scam. I've been open and honest about this for quite a long time, about how I feel about the banking system and I'm a bit like the disruptor.. I'm all about wanting to make the change so that it's a benefit for us, not so much just for them. Josh: Yeah, well, I guess like I've done a bit of research into things such as the fractional reserve system and how that works. Paul: Does it work? Josh: Well, how it works doesn't mean it works. No, you're exactly right. It's not a very good system, which is based on, now, nothing really. It's just based on numbers in a computer. It's not weighted against any real thing of intrinsic value. Paul: Well, have a think about that. So what a lot of people don't understand is that when you deposit money into a bank, you're actually lending them that money. It's a loan. You become an unsecured creditor, yet there is no security for that loan to that bank. Josh: Yep. Paul: It's a promise that they give you. We'll promise that we'll give you your money back. Josh: After changing you bank fees or having it in there. Paul: Well, what a great deal for them, isn't it? They say, ‘Joshua, can you lend me your $100,000?’ Josh: Yeah, no problem at all. Paul: Now would you want to say, ‘Oh, I need a contract with that?’ Josh: Well, normally you would. Yeah. You hope so. Paul: No. So what's going to happen, Joshua, on the bank is you're going to lend me $100,000. You're the bank, though. Not as a contract, but I do promise that I'll give you your money back and I'll dictate the terms. Right? So you might want 10% interest, but I'm happy to give you 1 ½. And you'll say, ‘Yep, I'm happy to do that.’ That's really what you've done when you put money in the bank, and just remember that one critical part. You're an unsecured creditor. Meaning that secure creditors, in the event of the bank collapse or whatever, secured credit is paid first and then unsecured credits. Josh: Yup. So in the situation where shit hits the fan hypothetically, we can all feel the recession, we can all hear it being spoken about, we can also feel some pressures around the place. If shit hits the fan and everyone starts frantically pulling money out of the bank, they've already planned for that, and that's what's been going through at the moment. Am I right? Paul: Yeah, correct. Josh: Tell me a bit about that for our listeners. Paul: Well, long story short is that there's three generations of savers, so you've got you've got your builders, you've got your boomers, and then you've got generation X, which is me. We've all been bought up as a generation of ‘get yourself a good job, save for retirement.’ It was all about saving money. Okay. The other thing too is that we had our children quite young, so you know, I've been married 31 years and I've got married to my wife she was 19, and I was 23. And, we had our children when she was 21. So we had our kids young, and if you think about my father, he was one of 17 children, so they had big families. So they were called boomers, you know. Josh: Huge families, but small houses. Paul: Can you imagine having 17 children? And the house, there were three bedrooms, one bathroom, right? Josh: One bathroom, 17 people. 17 children! 19 people. Paul: It's 28 years from youngest to oldest. You know what I mean? Like it's just a constant flow of, you know, at least seven, eight, nine people in a 3-bedroom house. Josh: Should have bought a TV, so that there's something else to do. Paul: Didn’t have TV back in the day, so what they did was they went out into the world and started the businesses and all that sort of thing and created quite a lot of wealth. And they stored that wealth in the bank because that's what they were told to do, you know? And they'll get great returns. So when I had those interest rates of 18% of my home, you would get 16% return on money that you had sitting in the bank and you know that's a fantastic return. But look what's happened over the years. You know, that was 30 years ago. Now we're down to zero negative rates in other countries. Japan has been at negative rates for 20 years. Josh: How much money have they reprinted over there? Paul: Does anyone know why? Does anyone really know why? Or is it just like it's a bad economy and all this sort of stuff? So what makes the bad economy? When people stopped spending! If you're not buying things at the shop, then retail starts to drop off. I want to spend the money. So they're trying to force you to get your money out to spend. Banks don't make money out of people saving and make money out of people borrowing. So they don't want you having money sitting in the bank anymore. Their fractional reserve system, that doesn't matter anymore because they're reprinting money off loans. They make more money out of loans than they do early use saving. So the idea is to try to get that money out of the system and into risky investments or to just get you out there spending. But when you have the majority of the world's population over 45 years old, that's when our spending curve drops right off. We're not out there buying. We're not down to supermarkets every week, three times a week, or whatever at the big shops. I'd be lucky to go to near Robina. I'd be lucky to go there once a month. Josh: Yup. For those listeners that didn't hear you. You were saying the GFC is a light rain comparative to what could be happening. And I always say if it's been 30 years since a major recession and it doesn't hit right now, all that means is we're going to be getting a slightly bigger downfall before we're getting absolutely torrential rain in 7 or 11 years time from now. Would that be fair to say? Paul: It could be any time. When you think about in Australia, we've had 28, 29 years without a recession. What has stopped that recession from happening? So back in the 90s when it happened, like 1990, 91, we had the recession we had to have, but they didn't do anything to try to stop it. You know, and as I said, the interest rates are at 18% so what they've done to stave it off every year, you know, because the next government that comes in needs to be leaving it in a good place. They don't want to be the government that caused the recession. Right. Josh: The inevitable recession. Paul: The inevitable recession. And when you look at what the US in particular, they've had about seven or eight in that amount of time. Australia have had none. So every time that you look at the interest rate table and you look at different things that's happened, like the 9/11, the GFC, they've dropped rates 3% to 6% in order to stave off that recession. Probably the other recession that we had to have. And now we're getting down to zero. We will be at zero. We're 100% going to zero. Where do they go? Where do they go if we had some major problem, like a GFC or whatever again or a reset? How do they fix that? Josh: I don't know. How do they reset that? They can’t. Paul: They can't! There was a paper written 18 months ago by the IMF, and in that paper, they said that they are working on models to make -4% to -5% feasible. Josh: All right. Paul: So try to get your head around that. Josh: I get paid to have a house. Is that right? Paul: That's already happening overseas. Josh: I have read up about that. So that would mean that the more debt you've got. Go and buy a house now, ladies and gentlemen. Paul: Why would they want to do that? Why would they want to get down to -4% to -5%? Josh: Well, I always say if they're getting down to those numbers, it's going to mean that people are going to be more wanting to get loans and get things like that. Paul: I think it's about getting rid of cash because if they could get rid of cash and move it into a digital world, get rid of the physical cash, then they've got complete control. Josh: Well, see, the problem that I, and this is something that's come about over the last 10, 12 years. When cryptocurrency started coming around, if you're comparing apples with apples, and I'm not going to say that they're both exactly the same, obviously. But when you have a digital currency being compared to a digital currency, which is, if they're getting rid of all paper and all money becomes more frictionless to be able to move from the AUD to a Bitcoin or any of the other cryptocurrencies that are out there without it being is in the power of the banks or anyone else. How do you think they are going to overcome? Paul: Well, I believe cryptocurrency is a red herring. I believe that it's just been set up for you to play with while they build their real money system. And there's a little bit of a showing of that last week. So in this IMF paper, what they actually said is that they would introduce e-money. They call it e-money. And basically what that means is that that item there is $100. They say, ‘Joshua, you know, that's $100 if you pay cash or $95 if you use e-money.’ And you go, ‘Well, I'll use e-money.’ So that's how they destroy cash. So they make it worth less than what it is. That's how they get rid of it. There's a bank in Sweden, and the currency in Sweden is krona. The central bank in Sweden has announced the e-krona and they're in the second phase of testing e-krona. Josh: The timing of it's great. Paul: And of course, it runs on blockchain because blockchain is a great technology. But yeah, it's a decentralized system? I don't believe so. I think it'll be a very centralised system, but it'll definitely be electronic or digital. Josh: Yeah. Okay. So I guess the recession at this stage, you're saying, is inevitable. It's going to happen. Got a beautiful way to at least have people that are struggling a little bit in their business, whether that be because they need to have more finances bought into it. Or maybe you've got people on the other side of the coin that have liquid assets or liquid cash where they want to be able to use that and invest into something that's going to be giving them a bit of a better return without having to put it into the big nasty banks. How do you go about? How does NoBNK work? Paul: So the way that NoBNK came around is that many years ago, I looked at many of the managed funds and different places like that where they would collapse. There were quite a few here on the Gold Coast where a lot of those managed funds collapsed and the person who lost that was the investor every single time. And it's only because the managed funds, number one, they think like a bank. And number two, they take their fees and everything out first. I'm not saying that all managed funds are like this. I'm just saying that when you get that real control freak at the helm, that's when there's a problem. So I designed a system where there is no control freak. So it's all about putting the control, the choices, the security back in the hands of the investor. And the number one thing is the trust. You know, because I think that we put a lot of trust in these organisations, in the corporate side, the banks and a lot of these managed funds. That's what we were told. You know, this is what you do. And I think they’ve broken our trust. I think they've broken our trust big time. You know? The way that NoBNK is set up is that we make our number one product service. You know, everybody wants service. Well, the banking model can't give you service. It's impossible because of the way that their pecking order is designed. So their pecking order is profits first, shareholders second, then clients, then employees, that's the pecking order. They can't give you service. They don't make money out of service. We're not about that. We're about, if we create that service for you, where you're having a great experience and you feel that you've got the trust and you will have to trust because what I say to people is, who's the one person that you trust more than anybody else in the world? To make the right finance decision for you. It's yourself, right? You trust yourself more than anybody else. So why are we giving that away? Why are we giving that trust away to the banks? So what we've done with this platform is that we're going to make you the bank. Josh: Okay. Paul: If I want to borrow money from you, why do I have to go to a bank to do that? You put your money in the bank and then I go and borrow the money from the bank. That's your money that's in the bank. That's not theirs. So why not just borrow directly from you? So the platform is set up where we facilitate accurate information between somebody who wants to borrow money and someone who wants to lend it. So the terms are all worked out, and if the borrower is happy to go, and the lender is happy to go, we just put those two together. That's all we do. And they've paid monthly returns in events on their investment. I don't know how many other investments you get paid monthly in advance, and it's direct in the security goes into the investor's name. Josh: Okay. So let's say I'm new to the idea and I'm going, ‘Okay. Yeah. Stuff the banks. They've stuffed me over too many times.’ Without saying the bank that I'm with, I can see the interest rates that I could be getting just changing to another bank, I could be saving $11,000 a year in mortgage repayments, and I had to look and I thought, ‘Ah, it's too hard.’ How hard is it? Or how would I go about moving a lot like a house? Paul: The area that we're not going after at the moment is the consumer market. It's very regulated. There are a lot of rules around that market. We'll get to that. We'll get to that market. But the area that we want to look after, first of all, is the business and commercial arena. I think that if you look after the business side of things first and the business owner, they're gonna have to worry about their day-to-day things rather than worrying about when the next dollars, you know, how they're gonna pay their bills, if the bank's going to foreclose on them and the house is tied to that loan and all that sort of stuff. So we look at things a lot more commercially and it won't always need to be property initially. There’s a lot of lending that happens out there that a lot of people don't know about, where you might have some text it or you need to, you want to jump on an opportunity pretty quickly and all this sort of stuff. So they use private, short-term lending and that short-term lending could be a loan that's anything from 3 months to 3 years. It’s not a 30-year loan and all that sort of stuff, and it's just about jumping onto an opportunity or it could be getting out of trouble. You know, ‘We're in a bit of trouble over here. We need to pay back the bank and get some cash flow into our business as well so that we can stay afloat.’ So really, we're more targeting that area there at first, which is perfect. Yeah. Well, I think it's an area that's very under-serviced. And the other area that we're targeting, and this, as I said before, is those people all around the world, those high net worth investors all around the world that's got money sitting in the bank and it's getting them no return or very low returns. We want you to be able to negotiate the term between what sort of return you want. So really you get to choose the return you want. And the client gets to choose whether to accept it or not. The way this platform is designed is that as an investor, we don't touch your money. So we never touch your money. We're not a managed fund. It's not a pooled investment. It's not a, you know, sort of property trust. It's not a contributory fund, none of that sort of stuff. It's just one loan, one investor, one loan, one investor, one loan, one investor. So someone wants to borrow $1 million, the investor's gonna put up the whole $1 million, and we're just going to put those two directly. Josh: So it sounds like obviously it's a lot of advantages for both parties in regards to the returns that they're going to be getting, as well as the rates that they're going to be paying because you're cutting out the bank in the middle. What would be some of the, I guess, risks? Or does it take the same amount of time to process through if you wanted to get an equipment finance loan for $50,000 for a new digital printer or something like that. Paul: The process is quick, it all happens within 24 to 48 hours. You'll know how many people So as a borrower, you'll know how many people are interested in doing your loan and you'll get offered the lowest interest rate that they offer. Josh: Is this a global thing or is this just Australia? Paul: This will be a global thing. Initially, it's Australia, but we do want to take it globally because the problems that started in the world, the reason why I've talked a lot about Japan is because the reason why they've already experienced all this, what we're going through, is they’re the oldest population in the world, you know? So it all adds up to me. Their ages crossed over and over that 45-year mark, they're average age crossed over 15 or 20 years ago. So it comes in a lot sooner than what it has to us. Josh: And their workforce is diminishing because of that. Paul: That's exactly right. And the wages aren't going up. All the problems that we're starting to have here in Australia, you know, property prices are going through the roof, but wages aren't going up. So the next step is how does somebody that's on 60 grand a year buy a million dollar property in Sydney? Well, I'll have to have a 70-year mortgage just like they have in Japan. You can see it. You're watching the pattern globally. It's happening all through Europe. You know, there are 30 countries in the Eurozone now that are on zero and negative rates and the lowest is -0.75. Josh: All right. That's nuts. It's nuts when you think about it, and as you were saying, like it was only 30 years ago, we had the last recession, and so for Japan to be at the position... Paul: 20% 30 years ago. Now the -0.5. Josh: And that all comes down to the workforce and the economy, and that's where we're, as you said, we're heading towards the potential issue here. If someone wants to jump in and jump onto NoBNK or hear any more information, how do they go about sort of doing that? Paul: The good thing about us is we can look after you no matter where you are in Australia and then as I said, that eventually, New Zealand will be pretty quick, but then we'll be going into places like the UK and America and things like that as well. This is something that can go global and that's the whole idea is that we're about like, you know, if you're going to disrupt your models and make it worthwhile. Josh: Absolutely. If you’re going to kick the big in the head you may as well do it globally. Paul: They had their place and as I said, we're not going to manage, we're not going to take your money and just go and do a hope and pray thing like many do. Your money stays in the bank under your control, so nothing changes, right? The only thing that changes is you get the opportunity to be able to have a crack at one of these deals and become the bank. And your worst case scenario is you're sitting there with a security in your name and you're getting a return. Whereas what's your security in the bank? There isn't any, but if you don't win the deal, because it's going to be like an auction type system where you make a bid on what sort of return you want, then nothing's changed in your life. You still get your money sitting in the bank, you know? No one's touching it. No one's taking any fees off you or any of that sort of thing. We're all about mitigating risks. We've got to mitigate the risk for the borrower, the lender, and for ourselves. So it's about everybody having this happy equilibrium, you know? That's how we're going to structure this thing. We've got a whole website there. It’s NoBNK.com.au. And the reason why we got B N K is because ASIC won't let us use the word ‘bank’. It's a swear word. So we call ourselves NoBNK and we advertise as NoBNK does that, which has a double meaning. NoBNK does that. Josh: Perfect. As an investor and a borrower, what's the starting and ending amounts you can go for. Paul: Because we're starting with the property component of it first of all, the minimum line would probably be around the $50,000 mark. This is why we're up to sophisticated investors. So this is some for your institutional versus, or you know, like your mum and dad's and things like that. You must be a high net worth. You know, I know people out there, they have tens of millions just sitting in the bank. Josh: Yep. Paul: Globally. So you might have somebody, you might have a deal here in Australia. There might be somebody in Japan that makes a bid on the deal and all of a sudden they're getting a return of 4%, 5%, 6%, 7%, whatever it is, whatever that agreed return is, where they're getting nothing over there, but they've actually got to pay to put their money in the bank over there. So it's a really good outcome because, you know, we just let the market set itself dynamically. There is no ‘ring Paul up and say, “Mate, what interest rate can I get?”’ There's none of that anymore. It's just like, well, it's whatever anyone's prepared to bid and whatever you're prepared to pay. Josh: Yep. So it's win-win. Paul: And look, there's rules for the investors. I've got a pretty good record. We're doing this sort of thing. Josh: You've been doing it for more than 10 years? Paul: Yeah, about 10, about 12 years now. I've been doing these sorts of loans for some high net worth. And in that amount of time, we've had no foreclosures and the investors haven’t lost money in the capital. And it's just about managing it. Josh: That's a good run. Paul: Yeah. It's just about managing. You don't smash people when they're down. You help them. You don't have to be all hard about it. You know, you're a day late or two days late with your payment. It's about managing it. Nobody gets hurt. You know what I mean? Josh: So how do you guys come into it? Do they just clip the ticket on the way through? Paul: You have a gross line amount. You have a net loan amount. You got to add that first month's interest. There's lawyers involved, there's all sorts of things, which for the investors, it's great for them. It's their lawyer. So it's a lawyer of their choice. And you know, usually there's brokers involved in all the research, so there's nothing under the table. So there's no hidden fees and charges and all that sort of stuff. In our letter of offer, it's like, say for example, you want half a million dollars and it might cost $520,000 you know, like when you add everything up. So you say, okay, so your gross loan amount is 520, that's what it is. You'll see all the costs that are involved, all the rest of it, and you get the choice to say, ‘Yeah. I'm happy with that.’ ‘Well, no, thank you.’ Josh: Fair enough. Cool. Cool, cool, cool. I think there's going to be a big help for a lot of people that are feeling a bit of pressure, whether that'd be as an investor or they're looking potentially down the barrel of a gun for a business. They might not be going as well as it was. Is there anything else you'd like to add? Paul: There's lots of businesses out there that need lots of help in different ways. It's not just about, you know, finance and properties and all that sort of stuff. It's just about knowing that there are people out there that, you know, we'll have a chat about it first. I mean, whether you've been rejected by a bank, don't want to go to their bank or can't go to a bank, that's why we're here. So pretty well covers everybody. When you do those things, we tell them, you don't go to the bank, come to NoBNK. Josh: I guess back in the day, there was like no-doc loans and things like this. This is from a business owner's perspective. Paul: It's a very, very simple process. So you know, the information that we asked from you is not onerous. It's really quite simple. It's a very quick application process. This platform that we've built that we'll be releasing in the next couple of weeks, it'll be automated. It's just a quick, you know, fill in the application process type of thing and you'll get SMS and emails and all that sort of stuff, and then so will the investors and they'll be able to start bidding on your deals straight away. Josh: Sweet. Paul: It's a little bit of a game changer, come to the market. Josh: Absolutely. Yeah. Paul: That's what it's about, isn't it? It's about changing things up and seeing if we can do it better and make a change, you know, a different change for the better for once rather than just doing the same as everybody else. Josh: Really enjoyed talking to you and is there anything else you'd like to add before we jump off? Paul: No, mate, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. I'd like to wish everybody out there that, you know, there is hope. It costs you nothing to apply with us or to have a chat with us or anything like that. So, you know, your people wanting to, you know, they're welcome to have a chat anytime they like. Josh: Cool. Only advantages and as I said, a very welcome time for me to be talking to you about this sort of stuff for a lot of people out there. Paul: Appreciate it, mate. Thank you very much. Josh: If you have any questions and bits and pieces, we'll put a link down to NoBNK as well as Paul's details. If you've enjoyed this episode, jump across to iTunes, leave us a review, give us some love and stay good.
We’re living through an unprecedented time in American history. Businesses are closed, schools are shuttered, and gatherings are canceled, all because of an invisible, infectious agent that our modern world hasn’t been able to match — not yet, anyway.Marking the unique circumstances, we spent the most recent episode of the P100 Podcast discussing the effects of COVID-19 on daily life (including our own), how people and businesses can help their communities, and how they can communicate during a crisis.If you’re hitting the download button or streaming from your “office away from the office,” thank you for listening and stay safe. Full Transcript:Paul:Welcome back to a special edition of the P100 podcast, the audio companion to the Pittsburgh 100 e-zine. This episode, solely focused on COVID-19, the coronavirus. I'm Paul Furiga, your cohost along with my colleagues, Dan Stefano…Dan:Hey Paul.Paul:And Logan Armstrong.Logan:Hi Paul.Paul:And I want you all to know at home we are practicing safe social distancing. In fact, we are so far away from you while you're listening to us right now ... well, that's another story. Seriously though, given the times that we're in, we thought that we would devote this entire episode of the podcast to understanding how we, as a community can deal with this. I've never seen a situation like this in my lifetime and as Dan and Logan frequently remind me, I'm old.Dan:I think you got a point there. I mean, I've tried to think of this in context of my own life. I'm 33 and I would say the most impactful thing that has ever occurred in my lifetime was 9/11.Paul:Right.Dan:And I was in high school whenever that happened. That was a time whenever the stock market cratered. The next day all air traffic was suspended. It was severely drastic. It took a long time for American life to get back to normal then. Whatever the new normal was, I should say. But this seems like it could be something different. There's a lot of uncertainty in the air, which there was at that time in 2001 for sure, but when we're talking about a virus here, we're talking about something that we don't have a vaccine for, it's a little bit scary right now. And I feel like the streets are even ... it's weird to be walking downtown. At the WordWrite offices here, we're getting ready to practice social distancing and work from home.Paul:Work from home, yeah.Dan:I could say in some ways it feels similar to those days after 9/11 but it's very different too.Paul:Absolutely. Logan.Logan:Yeah. And I'm a little younger. So I'm only 22.Dan:Little.Logan:I was a young kid when 9/11 happened. But also especially with what we're seeing in the market right now, very reminiscent of the 2008 era, which of course this has a few different causes than in 2008. But we've seen people are going crazy at supermarkets…Paul:That's right.Logan:... and really trying to stockpile, which is good because they're themselves trying to self-quarantine but it's going to be interesting to see how the markets react and how local businesses and business owners will wade through the waters during this time. Dan:AbsolutelyPaul:So a couple of things we wanted to do, number one, we wanted to share some helpful resources, which certainly there are probably, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a consumer of a lot of things online and you may already have some favorites, but we are at WordWrite in the business of working with reliable news organizations. So we'll share a few of our favorite go-to sources for local information here in western Pennsylvania.Paul:And then we're going to shift gears a bit and we're going to talk about our own experience because it's a crazy situation, but a lot of our clients rely on us for our crisis expertise. In any given year, we handle about 12 major crises, 10 of which you never read about because they're effectively handled. And then two of them, sadly, for whatever reason, they're all over the news. So we actually have a lot of experience in this arena and we are currently working with several of our clients on crises related to the COVID-19 outbreak.Paul:So first let's talk about some go-to sources here in western Pennsylvania. Dan and I, we share this other disease called being former journalists. Dan, some of your favorite go-tos for reliable and accurate information on what's happening.Dan:Still trying to get over that. The journalism disease. No, it's no disease. I mean, some of my good friends are journalists. So, I appreciate them.Paul:Yes, likewise.Dan:As you said, I do respect just journalism and what they put in. So I mean, your two major newspaper news sources in the area would be Post-Gazette and then triblive.com, the former Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. And now just the regular Tribune-Review set in Greensburg. That's a great place to go for it. But I'd recommend, if you're talking locally, the Allegheny County Health Department. That's got pretty consistent and good updates.Paul:They have an entire page, Allegheny County-Dan:Yes, they do.Paul:... .PA.US devoted to COVID-19.Dan:Right. Everybody's got their own page on it now. I mean it's incredible. I think everybody has been a victim of getting all these emails now. And I mean fortunately I have an email from the CEO of Banana Republic to tell me that all their stores are safe, but that's also just ... that's best practice right now. And businesses are doing their due diligence to just show everyone that they're trying to do their best.Dan:But for right now, I mean, that gets a little bit away from our question and I'm kind of drifting here, but I would follow the PG and TribLIVE. But a lot of them, they're getting their information from the government sources here. But I would really trust the County Health Department and that's some of your most current information.Paul:Absolutely.Dan:Make sure you're following their Twitter accounts and everything you can.Paul:Logan anything you'd add?Logan:I'd also say that The Incline, they're usually a little more lighthearted, but they've been doing a really good job of grouping up various articles from multiple local publications.Paul:Yes, aggregating content.Dan:Yeah.Logan:Exactly. Yeah. Aggregating that and that's getting delivered to inboxes at 6:00 a.m. every day. If you need to be up to date on the latest news in the area, I would also say check out The Incline for that.Paul:I'm going to add a few more. So in the last few years, pretty much every television station in Pittsburgh has debuted some flavor of an online presence, sometimes up to and including live streaming of events. So one of the things we've been doing at WordWrite is we've been watching live streams of Governor Wolf, the Pennsylvania governor, and his press conferences, Rich Fitzgerald, the Allegheny County executive, the County Health Department. I believe the new director's name is Dr. Bogen, so that's available.Paul:I would also add, and this has not really gotten much attention because the debut occurred during this whole crisis, but Channel 2 KDKA, which is owned by a CBS Network, has debuted essentially I believe a local version of on-air all the time local news. So CBSN is the national network and there's some local connection. I'll be honest with our listeners, I haven't had time to fully understand all of that because we've been so busy with other things. Personally, I look at all of those. I also look at WESA-FM. One of the reasons for that is with everything that's happened in newspapers in recent years, the major foundations in Pittsburgh have poured a fairly substantial amount of money into building the newsroom at WESA and they have all of the same kinds of resources in terms of online delivery of news that we've just talked about.Paul:So those for me are all good services. Most of us, I'm of a certain age, I'm 61. I hate to say that in a room with somebody in their twenties and thirties but it's the truth, I can't lie, it's on my driver's license, anyway, even somebody like me can make use of the phone and I am getting a lot of alerts. So I rely on the alerts as well to remind me. Before we shift gears here and talk about some advice for our listeners, even in our own planning for WordWrite, as Dan mentioned, on Friday we were ready, Friday the 13th of March, we were ready to implement a phased work from home process where some people would be in the office. And by the time we got to Sunday of the weekend where mandatory, non-essential businesses are asked to close or it is voluntary but strongly encouraged.Paul:So things are just moving so fast now it's worthwhile not to scare yourself, and I think that's, Logan, why it's good that you mentioned The Incline. Really good journalists can have the right touch to put an uplifting spirit into their round up of things. Right? But you don't want to be consumed by the news, but you also want to be informed and up to date. You don't want to be headed out to go to an event or something like that when it's not going to happen. And it was just cancelled. I don't know. Anything you guys would add to that?Dan:Well I think if you're talking about cancelled events, just try to look up to see what one is actually on now. Pretty much the assumption should be that it's closed. But-Logan:Yeah. And one thing I'd add is that it is a little hectic with all of these things happening so fast. But one of the hopeful benefits of that is this quick action now is really going to be the precursor to slowing it down in the long run.Paul:Absolutely. And this is something that, for our listeners, that we've been talking about here at the company in terms of working with our clients and that is that we are at this inflection point where the number of people who might be contagious in our community is at its highest point at the same time that we have the least ability to test.Paul:So if we self-isolate for the next two weeks, what we'll be able to do is keep those who might be infected from spreading the disease. National news media is saying that the United States might be 11 days behind Italy, meaning that what's happened there could happen roughly two weeks later here in the United States. God forbid, we don't want that. Other folks I've seen on the national news talk about we want to be like South Korea where there was a lot of testing, the self-isolation and they seem to have, as the medical experts call it, flattened the curve, which is to say slow the growth of the virus so that the number of people who are sick doesn't exceed the capacity of the region's healthcare providers to treat those who are sick.Dan:One thing, Paul, I'd like to bring up, open the conversation to you and Logan is what's fascinating about this is similar, like we said, I mean I hate to keep making the comparisons to 9/11 because that was a very much different type of crisis, but that was a tragedy that affected almost everyone in the U.S. at some level. Corona possibly even more. Just in terms of even if you aren't getting the disease, I mean it's probably going to disrupt your life, whether how you're working or somebody that you know. Maybe your children are off of school right now. There's quite a bit going on. And Paul, yourself, I know you've had some, personal events that are affecting you, right?Paul:Oh absolutely. So I'll give you a few. Number one, one of our two daughters is getting married, we hope, on May 31st. There's been a lot of conversations with the venue and the providers. The baker and the flowers and everything else. And we'll see how things play out. May 31st might be okay, but let's just say that we're a little concerned.Paul:Our other daughter is getting her MBA at the University of Chicago and they have extended spring break, which has pushed their, they're on a quarter system, their third quarter deeper into the year. She's supposed to have an internship this summer. It was going to start June 1st. She won't be done with school on June 1st and we don't even know if she'll have the internship.Dan:Yeah, certainly, it's amazing how this is just disrupting lives. I mean it's putting almost everything on pause. It's amazing. Myself, my wife and I, we were planning on taking a vacation to Japan, it was going to be the first week of April and we were looking forward to this trip for an entire year. It was just something we'd planned. It's kind of a bucket list type thing and just a week ago we had to cancel it. Right now as we record here, there are no travel restrictions over there, but there's just no guarantee whenever you see the massive lines that are coming for people that are coming back into the country, at least from Europe. But just something we had to be take care of.Dan:And we were even planning on maybe having a backup trip to California. And now we're really seriously kind of rethinking that one. It feels selfish to say, well hey, this thing that was just a wonderful little pleasure trip for us here we're disrupting it. How horrible is that? But we don't know when we're going to be able to take that trip again. We planned for specific dates in our lives. We mapped around that. So it's just another area that it does affect things. But Logan, I know you've even had some ...Logan:Yes. Yeah. It's a similar situation. I had a trip planned to Italy. I guess I would've left last week. Yeah. But it is unfortunate that this is such a disruptive virus. But thinking on the bigger picture of things, I mean, it's much better to have these disruptions now and really put these policies in place, especially because not only on an individual level, but on a business level, as we touched on earlier, there's really a lot of things that business owners are going to have to prepare for. And there may be some crisis communications that business owners have to take into account and that's something that we've experienced here. Yeah, Paul?Paul:Oh absolutely. Absolutely. And we want to dig into that for the remainder of our time here on the podcast, this episode. And before I do that, I just want to give a quick shout out to your point, Logan, the retail and restaurant sectors are going to be particularly hard hit and in the local economy as well as the American economy, the percentage of workers who are hourly who have, let's just say less robust benefits packages, whatever we can do as a community to keep them in mind and help to keep them employed I think is really important.Paul:One of the other sources of information that I didn't mention earlier were members of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, the Partnership has articles in the Pittsburgh 100 frequently. Their weekly… they do a weekly sort of what's going on downtown email. And the one that I received just before we came in to record the podcast is all about this subject. So you can't dine in during the time that businesses are closed but you can still do take out. So there's things that we can do as a community to help our friends and our neighbors through. And I think it's something we should do.Dan:Yeah, I think before we take a deeper dive into talking about crises and crises management, what you said there kind of touches on an important point and one thing, one of the huge crises or huge problems that are coming out of this is whenever schools are closed there are a lot of students out there who might be on free or reduced lunch and these are kids who might rely on these school lunches to help themselves eat. It might be their biggest meal of the day.Dan:But one thing that you've seen is restaurants are coming out and offering free lunches to some of these kids. I believe some districts have, including I believe Pittsburgh Public, they have programs in place to help these kids to make sure that they have food, that they have resources.Dan:And that touches on your point there, Paul, about the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership in that…do something. If you're a business owner and you feel like maybe it's a helpless time right now, maybe you have to put pause on a lot of things, you can think of something to do and that's one way I think if you make yourself a goal and you have a mission, you can help yourself get through this, right?Paul:Oh, absolutely. We're going to shift gears now folks and talk about crisis. To Dan's point, this is one of the things when we sat down and we looked at this episode of the podcast, there were other segments and other things that we had planned to do perhaps, but we agreed that one of the ways that we could be helpful was to share with people what we know about this.Paul:So I'm going to kick off this portion of the episode here and Dan and Logan will jump in. So historically, one of the things that we've done a lot of at WordWrite is crisis communication. And one of the things we've learned is that there are only really four basic kinds of crises.Paul:So there are acts of God, there are acts of man, there are acts of God made worse by man, and there are acts of man made worse by God. That's it. You can think about pretty much anything bad that's ever happened in the history of the world. And there's going to be some element of one of those four categories. So certainly-Dan:If you asked my wife I think she would say that there are also acts of God made worse by Dan. But we'll leave it to four right now.Paul:Well Dan, the last time I looked, you are a human being, so we'll put you in one of the four categories.Dan:Got you.Paul:Anyway, certainly the viruses, if you want to call it that, an act of God, it's an act of nature. What we don't know yet is whether what's happened, our acts of man, let's call it, that it made it worse. When you go back to China we're not here to judge. We don't really know exactly where the virus spread began. But certainly there's humankind and there's nature mixed together in this crisis.Paul:So one of the things that's interesting in doing so much crisis communications at our firm that is both a positive and a cause for pause, is that most crises are predictable. This is not the first time that the world's been through an epidemic, a pandemic, a virus, and perhaps it's the 21st century technology-driven, I don't know if we've become a little bit lazy or we're just lulled into a sense of complacency, but what this epidemic is demonstrating to us that this can still happen in the 21st century.Logan:Yes. Even with all the technological advances, and medical advancements, and medical capabilities, something that moves this fast is very hard to control no matter-Paul:Absolutely.Logan:... how many technological capabilities we have. And it's something that we're probably not going to have a vaccine for, for a little bit. This vaccine isn't going to be coming in the next week or the next month.Dan:Testing's an issue too right now.Logan:Exactly.Paul:18 to 24 months is what people are saying.Logan:Right. So we're really going to have to figure out what the best course of action is. And I think that's going to be something that is going to be on the fly. Because, as you've said, we've seen these kinds of crises before, but there's no real way to account for all the variants in it and it's going to be on people and on the media to portray information in as close to real time as possible and as accurately as possible to try to help mitigate that.Paul:So one of the things that I think is true about this, 1918 the Spanish flu epidemic was just a terrible worldwide crisis. So that fits into what I just said about most crises are predictable. So we can learn from that. And to your point, Logan, this is fast moving, but we can learn from what's happened in Italy. We can learn from what's happened in China, within the more restrictive immediate window. So that's critically important.Paul:One of the other things that's important, and there are going to be people who are going to be picking over this for years, I'm sure, what we tell our clients is if crises are predictable, then you need to plan for them. So theoretically the world, especially the largest economies and countries in the world should have been planning for this sort of a thing. And there had been some, let's just say missteps, fits and starts.Dan:Yeah.Paul:Now for our listeners, even though this thing is underway, you can look at history and you can look at recent events to do your own planning for the crisis. So we're already in it. So to your point Logan, there's an element of every day is different and you can't predict for sure, but one of the things we do when we work with clients is scenario planning. What's the worst case scenario? What's the best case scenario, what's the likely scenario? And then you start to develop your communications around each one of those outcomes. And that guides you on a day to day basis in terms of what you need to be doing.Dan:Right in this situation, and I would just kind of play interviewer here with you Paul, with so many different businesses it's hard to gauge, exactly what are likely outcomes. Businesses right now we might think of they might have to do some layoffs, they might have to temporarily furlough some employees and whether certain bills pass out of our Congress here they may have wages, they may not. It depends on how large a company is. One thing here though, whenever we've had this discussion is we talk about, you start from a place of truth when you're communicating these outcomes. Can you elaborate a little more on that?Paul:Sure. So in a crisis like this, obviously if you're standing in front of the forest and the forest is burning behind you, you can't tell people that that smell in the air is a candle. You have to acknowledge even the hard truths.Paul:One of the things that we see time and again is that if you're straightforward with people up front and there's tons of university research on this that validates this point, they're going to give you the benefit of the doubt. If I own a restaurant in Pittsburgh that opened two months ago – I'm in a place that's not the same as a restaurant that's been around for 25 years. Right? And I need to say to people, look guys, we just opened. I can't guarantee you that we're going to ride through this unscathed.Paul:And then what you need to do is you need to communicate process. And that's where that scenario planning comes in handy. It's like, look, we don't know where this is going to end, but here's what we're going to do today. Here's what we're going to do next week. Here's our thought process and our plan, and there's a lot of university research on this too, that when you can't communicate content, if you can communicate process it calms people's fears and gets people organized around the common goal of moving forward.Dan:I guess that speaks to control. It might be the wrong word to say controlling, but trying to manage people's emotions here. I think we have to understand how everyone is feeling because we're feeling the same way on a lot of these things. I mean we can tell a business, a B2B business, okay, hey, this is how you want to talk when you're talking to your clients or something like that. But we have the same feelings whenever we're trying to listen to the government here. Are they going to tell us the process? Are they going to describe that?Dan:So can you talk a little bit about how to be a good effective communicator to work with the community and make sure that you're delivering this information not maybe necessarily in a doom and gloom way and just being an effective storyteller essentially?Paul:Right. So one of the things that we're big on obviously at our company is the process of storytelling. We have our own process that we help companies uncover what we call their Capital S story. And I do a lot of speaking around this. In a crisis there's no more important time for you to be thinking about your Capital S story and that story is this, it answers these questions. Why would somebody work for you, buy from you, invest in you, partner with you? If you're a nonprofit, why would they donate or volunteer with your organization? And that is the story above all stories for your company, your organization. That's why we call it the Capital S story.Paul:And you think about that in times of stress, a crisis like this, which is an enormous stressor. It doesn't matter so much what you say on a daily basis. It matters what people believe you to be as an organization. And I think Dan, that's kind of what you're getting at there.Paul:And in a crisis, what we find is whatever audience you're trying to reach, employees, partners, vendors, customers, that's where they go in their minds in terms of assessing whether or not to believe you when you say don't worry about this, or I need your help to do X, Y and Z so that we can pull through this crisis.Paul:Right now, all of us are being flooded with information and this story is like cast in concrete. It's bedrock. It's the granite of who your organization is and they're going back to that hard place that they can knock on, that they can sit on, that they can lean on, and that's the truth that they're looking for. To assess whether or not your organization in this time of crisis is an organization that can be believed.Dan:Now, not every business, well whenever we think of Corona individually, I mean I'm just thinking of the restaurant that's across the street from us right now but people aren't looking necessarily for Bruegger's Bagels to answer the crisis or come up with a vaccine or explain people how to feel. But how, if you're a business that isn't necessarily adjacent to the current crisis or if you're just you have nothing to do with it, but your business maybe is closed or something like that, how do you kind of manage these crises that you're not necessarily related to but it does affect you?Paul:So I think one of the things that we're seeing, and we started the episode today by talking about the news media and some other resources who are trying to be helpful. So you want to be helpful. And there's also an element of business as usual. A lot of the companies that aren't directly affected by the crisis, and of course I'm sure many of our listeners are saying, well everybody's affected by it, and certainly when we all need to be self-isolating, we all are affected by it, but if you're not directly affected by it in the sense that you don't run a restaurant or you're not a retail store or you're not an event space where hundreds of people would be expected to gather, this is a time to be helpful.Paul:One of the reasons why we're doing this specific episode of the podcast, we see many, many institutions in the community, there is an element of what they're doing, to your point, Dan, where it is on some level still business as usual. However they have the opportunity because of things being pulled in to reduce the spread of the virus, to have some time, to have some resources to be helpful in whatever way that they can be.Dan:Paul, all that stuff is really helpful here. And so I appreciate you especially sharing your expertise here in crisis communications and we encourage anybody who's listening at home to feel free to check out wordwritepr.com. We've got some really good information. There's some good stuff on crisis communications and certainly even one of our VPs here, Jeremy Church, just wrote a really interesting blog about effective crisis communication during outbreaks.Paul:Yeah. And Dan, we'll be putting up in the show notes, I wrote one in July of last year, Storytelling in a Crisis: Why You Need Your Capital S Story. And again, we're going to be sharing a lot more of the resources that we can. This is a time when we all need to pull together as a community. And certainly we have clients whom we work for and we have a lot of experience that we've developed over the years, and we want to be able to share that with the community in the spirit of helping everybody recover from this as quickly as possible. And to your point, Dan, if there's anything that we can do as people who believe in good, strong, authentic communications, we want to do that for the community.Dan:Absolutely, 100%. And as we wrap up here just the message from us here is hopefully everybody at home can weather this as well as they can. Every business can as well. It sounds cheery and optimistic to say, but we will get through this and we'll survive.Paul:Absolutely.Dan:Yeah.
Tara Kenning: "Teamwork makes the dream work," John C. Maxwell. I'm Tara Jaraysi Kenning and I'm a Tri-Cities Influencer. Paul: Most people fail because of broken focus. Broken focus is one of those things that actually hurt us, so complete your tasks before you move on to another one. The ancient proverb is if you chase two rabbits, you'll catch neither Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership and the Tri-Cities at Eastern Washington. It's a Tri-Cities Influencer podcast. Welcome to the Tri-Cities Influencer podcast where Paul Casey interviews the local leaders like CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so that we can all benefit from their experiences. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul: Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Renee Adams. She is the executive director of the arts center task force, and she's the director of programs and outreach for the Mid-Columbia Ballet. And a fun fact about Renee is she said she has this coffee cup with a picture of a cactus on it that says, "Can't touch this." Tell me about that. Renee: Hey Paul. It's really great to be here. Okay, so the story of the coffee mug. On good mornings when I wake up and open the cupboard and pull out the coffee cup, it sometimes says, "Can't touch this," and I get out my little MC Hammer moves and I do my little dance in the kitchen before getting my coffee and you know that's going to be a good day. Paul: Before we begin, let's check in with our Tri-City Influencers sponsors. Neal Taylor: Hello, my name is Neil Taylor. I am the managing attorney for Gravis Law's commercial transactions team. The CTT team helps business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs accelerate and protect their business value. Today we're talking about employment law and alcohol and cannabis licensing. Josh Bam and Derek Johnson are both here with me now to describe those practice areas. Take it Derrick. Derrick: Thanks Neal. I'm Derek Johnson, partner at Gravis Law. We find that many employers in Washington state simply don't have handbooks, employee policies or any other written materials to protect themselves and their employees. Without having these types of policies in place, an employer can run into trouble by firing employees even if the employee isn't properly performing or causing issues at work. Even if an employer fires someone for performance issues, for example, but fails to take the proper steps, they may run into trouble by inadvertently exposing themselves to a wrongful termination suit. We build strong, predictable and protective employee policies to protect our client's business. Josh: That's true. Thanks Derek. And having employment policies in place when you're dealing with cannabis or alcohol licensing is especially important. We know that clean employment policy, clean corporate structure, and having an attorney that can work with the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board is critically important to protecting your business through licensing. The attorneys at Gravis Law have this experience. Visit us today, www.gravislaw.com. Paul: Thank you for your supportive leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Well, welcome Renee. I was privileged to meet you last year. Leadership Tri-Cities Class of '24 at the retreat. Renee: I think I'm supposed to say the best class ever here, yeah best class ever. Paul: All right, you can get away with that here. And you came strutting in with a smile on your face. And I'm like, I like this gal already. And you ended up getting elected president of your class. Renee: I did. Paul: So way to go for that. Renee: Thank you, it was a great experience. Paul: So our Tri-City Influencers can get to know you. Take us through your past positions that led up to what you're doing now. Renee: Yeah, well I've had a lot of different experiences in my career. I grew up as a ballet dancer and so I spent the majority of my teen years training in pre-professional ballet and I got my first job as a dancer right out of high school in Seattle with a company called Spectrum Dance Theater. And I was one of their apprentice dancers. And so I spent 12 years as a professional dancer. Primarily, I performed with contemporary dance companies in Seattle, Portland, and Chicago. And some time while I was in Portland, I realized I had an interest not just in teaching, but also in the administrative component of building outreach programs that go out into schools, community centers, and bring dance to people, one-on-one. And so those were the types of programs that I did when I wasn't on stage or in the studio. Renee: And by the time I left Chicago, which was in about 2013, I had amassed a good experience as education specialist, education director, outreach coordinator type positions for dance companies. I made the connection with the ballet company here in Tri-Cities, Mid-Columbia Ballet actually through a friend in Chicago. And they said, "We have this company in Washington that is looking for help, and so give them a call." So I did, I called up Deborah and Joel Rogo and they hired me as their assistant artistic director. Renee: And there was some moving around, but I eventually landed here in that position of director of programs and outreach. And then through that position, I realized I really had an interest and skill in the administrative component of arts organizations. And not just dance, but looking at how the arts as a whole benefits our community and thinking about how as an administrator of the arts, I can have a really great impact on individuals in the community through the arts, Paul: Which not everyone in the arts or in ballet has that same wiring like you do. Renee: Right. No, actually it's true that it's a special ... I think it's a special thing to have that. Paul: Who are some influencers along the way in that journey that maybe were mentors to you or you picked up leadership tidbits from? Renee: Yeah, so I think that in the beginning of my artistic journey was my ballet teacher, as most dancers would tell you, and her name was Phyllis Sear. By the time I met Phyllis, she was in her mid-80s. She was still a young-hearted woman even as she aged. And she really taught me a lot about life skills and the value of humility, the value of having grit and tenacity and following through and being patient and compassionate. And those were things that we talked about a lot in the context of performing and teaching, but they turned out to be very relevant as an administrator and as a leader. Renee: So I've really valued those lessons. And then, as I danced through my career, I was always enamored by the company managers that I worked with. And watching them run all of the behind the scenes thing and calling the production manager and getting the tech crew there and making sure that we had funding for all of the employees to get their paycheck in time and just really watching them and listening to the tidbits of gold that they dropped. Paul: Fantastic. So when you got into these two positions, what was your original vision and then how has that morphed along your leadership journey? Renee: That's a great question. And it's a little bit complicated because they are two different organizations that each have their own type of vision. But I think if I could summarize in both positions, my vision was sort of small. It was, what can I do with the resources I have right now to make a difference today? And maybe that was by taking an outreach program out to a senior living facility or by attending a board meeting, but over time, and I've been with Art Center Task Force as their executive director for a year, and over the course of that year, I've realized the vision is much broader and it's actually in the arts, it's about how do we bring people into our shared vision? How do we get them on the boat and show them that their vision aligns with ours? And I think the vision is more of, how do we show our community the value of the arts in their everyday lives? Paul: Love that. So inspire a shared vision, one of the five principles- Renee: That's right. Paul: That we learned in leadership Tri-Cities. Renee: I learned something, Paul. Paul: You did, you did. Why is it so important to share that vision? Because you could just keep that vision, it could bubble you up every day and it's fantastic to keep you motivated, but why does it have to be a shared vision? Renee: Well, I think that especially in the arts, nothing happens without collaboration. I think that's probably true in many industries. But as artists, we are very, very passionate and we tend to believe that our way is usually the right way. And without that element of collaboration and being able to see how our way can align with those next to us, that we all have the same kind of goals, then we really just fall into fighting and chaos. And that's something that I noticed about the Tri-Cities arts community as soon as I got here. That is not the case. This is the Tri-Cities arts community is one that its core value is collaboration, and so it was really easy to slide into that. Paul: Are you the only staff in those roles? Is it all volunteer-based? Tell us a little bit about how you evangelize arts? Renee: Yeah. At Mid-Columbia Ballet, there are a variety of staff members. There are three key staff members, the artistic director, the company manager and myself, director of programs and outreach. And so we coordinate a lot of the day-to-day activities, each in our own sort of departments I guess. And then there are some other staff members that come on and do project-type activities. So one staff member runs our include program, which serves people with special needs and so on and so forth. So there's a lot of staff support at Mid-Columbia Ballet. There's also a lot of volunteer support there for things like the Nutcracker, which most people in the community have probably been to. What they might not realize is the Nutcracker takes about 100 volunteers every night to run the backstage components. And so certainly we can't have a staff of 100 volunteers, that would break the budget and we would not be able to share the art at art. Renee: At Art Center Task Force, it's a much different situation with a lot different mission. And so I am the only staff member. I am the first staff member of the organization. And this is an organization that was incorporated in the mid-90s, and since then it has been run on the passion and tenacity of volunteers in the community. So it is so inspiring to go to work and see that there's all these volunteers who've put in all these hours before me and be able to follow in those footsteps. Paul: Well, what are you most passionate about? You've used the word inspire a few times already, so what are you most passionate about in these organizations right now and why? Rene: I'm really excited and passionate about the idea of finding connections between people. And a friend of mine actually at the ballet the company administrator said when I first started working on coordinating events and thinking about these bigger visions that my job was kind of like putting together the pieces of a puzzle. You me throw the puzzle out and all the pieces are there. And to be able to find the connection between two or three or four puzzle pieces that makes the whole picture, that's really exciting. That's the thing that makes me do my MC Hammer dance a little more actively in the morning. I love to see those connections. And not just with people in the arts community, I love to see how people in the sports community, in our city government, in business leadership positions throughout the community have those connections to the arts, those personal emotional connections. Paul: So you must have some type of networking strategy to make those connections. How do you prioritize your time or these people and influencers in town? Renee: I wish I could tell you I had a perfect template for my networking strategy, but I don't. But one of the things that I realized early on is how important it is to keep on my calendar time to do my work, whether that is administrative work or phone calls or networking opportunities. And so, I just try to look at my calendar each week as a balanced meal and then each month as a balanced meal to make sure that I'm talking to the right people, to go through my database or my email list and see who is it that I haven't touched base within a while? And try to spread it out that way. Paul: Awesome. So talk to me about building a team and creating a culture. So you've got some staff in the ballet, you also have lots of volunteers and whether our listeners are a nonprofit or for-profit organizations, what do you look for when you're trying to bring someone on board, make sure they're on the right seat on the bus, the values you're trying to instill, all that? Renee: The single biggest quality that we look for in volunteers or staff members is are you a team player? Because we really appreciate people who offer opposite views or who offer different views. And so we're not necessarily looking for somebody who just agrees with all of our pragmatic choices, but we're looking for people who can sit around the table and also be that team. The other thing we're generally looking for is people who have follow-through. And so whether that's a staff or a volunteer member, especially for volunteers, it's hard to not over commit yourself. And so- Paul: What? Renee: What I've realized as a leader in this position that I am starting to get a sense of volunteers who really have so much passion, but maybe they're a little over-committed and how can I get them involved and how can I keep them in the family, so to speak, of the arts community and help them feel successful as well as get what we need from the project? Paul: I really liked that. I read a book last year called The New Breed of Volunteers, and it's talking about both the eldest generation and also the youngest generation that want to volunteer and how it's really a new breed nowadays that they want to do it on their time, they want to do it in nuggets, they don't want long-term commitments. And we have to, as leaders, maybe meld our volunteer opportunities to fit. So like you said, they can all be included. And I think that's a great way to do so. I love that team player is number one. And you mentioned about diversity of thought, so sometimes diversity of thought can be divisive, other times it can be a real asset. How do you see the difference when it becomes an asset? Renee: Yeah, I think that the diversity of thought that's an asset is the one that can listen and not just hear what you're saying and respond, but really slow down and listen and absorb the other point of view. Because they still may have a dissenting view or a disagreeing view, but a lot of times we find that those individuals who maybe aren't ready to be a team player in our setting, they're just not quite ready to listen to whatever the opportunity is. Paul: Yeah. They might have a little personal agenda that they are ... Or they're entrenched there and they're not doing the old Stephen Covey-ism, "Seek first to understand then be understood," which I still love that one. Let's stay on that topic of personnel, how do you keep them inspired and affirmed? Because volunteers could walk away tomorrow, so how do you keep them pumped up? Renee: Paul, I have to say that I learned a lot from you in our leadership sessions during Leadership Tri-Cities. And one of the things that I really took from me in those sessions was this idea of small wins. And I've been trying it out in small doses throughout the year. And this is something that in our industry, in the arts, things rarely move quickly. Nonprofits rarely move quickly. And so there's a lot of waiting around, even when you're in the middle of the production and the show has to happen, there's still a lot of waiting around. Things just don't move quickly sometimes. And so, it's easy for people to get frustrated and to feel that pull of impatience. And I've been doing my best to find these moments of small wins and celebrate, whether it's send an email to the board and say, "We have this great connection. Please give me any feedback or let me know if you have a connection to this connection." Renee: And the other way we try to celebrate small wins is through a lot of gratitude. Thank you so much to this person for this activity, et cetera. And yeah, that small wins thing is really valuable for us. Paul: I was listening to another podcast the other day that says, "Make sure that it's clear what a win actually is in your organization because what you might as the leader think a win is and what your people think is win might be totally different things. So give them this view of what a win actually is or what done looks like when you delegate something to people so that they really get it." So let's turn to you a little bit. No one wants to get stale in leadership, so how do you stay relevant and on the cutting edge yourself? And then how does that build innovation for your organization? Renee: I thought a lot about this question and I realized the reason it was hard for me to process and answer was that it's changed a lot for me personally. As my career has changed from specific arts programming in the field of dance to a broader perspective of arts administration, that thing of not being stale has changed. And what I realize it is now is looking more globally and maybe that is for example here the state of Washington, at leaders who are doing similar things as us in this community and literally calling them up and saying, "Hi, my name is Renee and I'm from the Tri-Cities and we're working on this idea here," whether it's a joint fundraiser or an art center or a unique program, "I'd like to pick your brain a little bit." And that is very inspiring for me, because there are not a lot of other arts staff leaders in this community. The ones that there are, are amazing and we have a great network with each other, but it's so wonderful to be able to reach out to other people in other communities and find parallels. Paul: Yeah, I just got back from the National Speakers Association conference and it's sort the same thing. If you don't have a lot of people doing exactly what you do around you, you've got to go find them and strike up those conversations and it just pumps you up because they really get what you do and they've got also some ideas, because they're a little further down the road than you in some ways and who knows? Maybe you've got some wisdom to share with them. Renee: Right. Paul: Well, before we get to our next question to ask Renee what makes a good day for her, let's give a shout out to our sponsors. Paul: Jason Hoke, American Family Insurance. Jason, what is the biggest pushback you get about life insurance? Jason Hoke: Hey Paul. One of the biggest push backs I get from life insurance is from folks that are single. They usually ask me, "Why do I even need this? I don't have kids, I don't have any dependents or a spouse, why do I need this?" Ultimately, whenever you pass on, there's going to be somebody there to pick up the pieces, there's going to be somebody to deal with your affairs and I would say it's your responsibility to make sure that there are funds, that there's money there so that person can take the time needed to go through it properly and not make it their responsibility. Paul: Awesome, Jason, so tell us how can our listeners get in touch with you? Jason Hoke: You can swing by our office on Road 68 in Pasco, or give us a call at (509) 547-0540. Paul: So Renee, what makes it a good day for you personally? You look back at the end of the day and you go, "Man, that was a really good day," both personally and as you just look at your workday? Renee: I wish there was a simple way to answer this question because every day in my world looks absolutely different. I'm not sure if one day has ever looked the same. So I think I have to be a little more abstract here. For me, when I leave the 'office' which is rarely an actual office and it's rarely five o'clock, it's that feeling of yes, I communicated with all the people I needed to communicate with today. Yes, everyone feels like they got to speak their mind and share their perspective and they felt heard and I felt heard. And so it's those kind of more abstract communication-focused things that make it a good day because our journey is a long one and we have a lot of work to do to enrich our community with the arts. And so we look for that type of feeling. Paul: So you probably use different communication methods. What are the most effective for you that you use? Renee: Oddly enough, the most effective communication method for us is written. And we spend a lot of time writing down our ideas and writing down our thoughts, whether in emails or, for example, reports, the board that we can save in our Dropbox files. And the reason for that is because people change, board members change, volunteers change. And so to have that written communication in place of the work we've already done helps us create an archive of all of our progress. And that's really valuable. And the other thing is it's so valuable for us to be able to get in front of the community and actually talk about what we're doing, whether that's on a news clip or in podcasts or at the farmer's market or whatever it is, just getting out there and talking to people is so very important for us. And then of course the obvious one is the arts are very visual. Whether you're looking at them on a sculpture, a painting or on a stage, they are a visual thing. Paul: So it sounds like if there are people looking for speakers for their organizations in town, you guys are game. Renee: Absolutely. Paul: Listen for that contact information in just a few minutes. So take us behind the scenes of your life. What's your best habit, what's your worst habit? Renee: Oh dear. Well, I have to say that my best habit is something that's a carryover from my dance career, which is just to really start every day with some physical activity. Whether that's going to the yoga studio around the corner from my house or walking my dog or maybe getting a quick jaunt weeding my garden in the morning. But what I find when I don't do those things, I get to the point where I can't focus on my day. One of my worst habits is that I tend to be a workhorse, and so sometimes that means I get stuck in the weeds. Sometimes that means even though I can see the big picture, I drill down on something too specific and I go down that windy path that's not helpful. And without a lot of other staff support around on a daily basis, sometimes it's easy to do that. And so that can be one of my worst habits, is not slowing down enough to look at the big picture consistently. Paul: So if our listeners had that same malady and they got stuck down in the weeds and realize, we're in the bottom of a hole, what advice would you give them to pull out of that once they're self-aware enough to realize, wow, I'm way down deep? Renee: Yeah, I'm at the bottom of the hole. My recommendation is to surround yourself with people who are not necessarily better than you, but have different skills and characteristics than you. And I really rely on the supportive committees in our organizations to bounce ideas off and, "Hey, don't let me get too far on this idea if it's a bad one." Paul: A favorite quote that you have. Renee: Paul, I wrote this quote for you because it is my very favorite quote. It's actually a mission statement of a theater company in Chicago. It's called The Looking Glass Theater. And the quote says, "Fire the imagination with love. Celebrate the human capacity to taste and smell, weep and laugh, create and destroy. And wake up where we first fell, changed, charged and empowered". Paul: Well it's pretty obvious why you would choose that, but what does that mean to you? Renee: To me that means that each day is an opportunity to be creative and to welcome the day with this fiery energy that I find is really important in my work. It helps people connect to me, it helps me connect to them. And this quote reminds me that it's okay to cry and it's okay to destroy and it's okay to have these moments that aren't always beautiful, that it's about the journey. Paul: Let me follow up on that. So if someone says, "I'm not really creative," I mean you are naturally, and what would you say? How can they stoke their creativity? Is there a habit that people can do to do that better? Renee: I love the idea of thinking about our daily lives as creativity, and how is it that we ... What are the things we find joy in that are sort of mundane, like cleaning the counter and putting away the dishes. And it's not necessarily that we do those things artistically, so to speak, but creativity is often something that's born out of routine. And so finding the joy in those routines I think often allows us to be creative. Paul: I love that. Finding the joy in the routine. How about your favorite book that you think all of our listeners should read? Renee: So I recently read a book by Brené Brown called Daring Greatly, and I'm sure many people have read that book. And I love the idea of thinking about vulnerability and thinking about ourselves as whole people, not just as people that go to work and then people who go home to our families and then people who go to the grocery store, but that all of our experiences summarize us at each moment in each day. Paul: Daring Greatly, Brené Brown. And she wrote one recently, Dare to Lead as well that I read. How about an influencer in town that every Tri-Citian should meet? Renee: Now, I may be biased from my arts perspective, but if you have not met Deborah and Joel Rogo who own the Tri-Cities Academy of Ballet, and Debra is the artistic director of Mid-Columbia Ballet, then you are missing out. These are really influential people, their history and their past is rich and they bring so much experience and professionalism to the community here in Tri-Cities. And we're just so grateful to have them here. Paul: Sound like cool people. Renee: They are very cool people. Paul: Now let's talk your legacy. If you left a letter on your desk for the leader who came after you, what would it say? Renee: So I think today that I've spent a lot of time talking about the connections and who are the people, as you said, on the bus or in the room. And for me, that letter or that legacy for future leaders is really think about who you have surrounding you. And for me, that's always about finding people to surround me that I want to look up to, that I want to emulate. They have qualities that are ... Have more experience than me, they have different experience than me. And so, to me, that's really important in any position in our life, but also as a leader, that we're looking for people who are better than us so that we can continue to grow. Paul: Fantastic. I got to hear John Maxwell live at this conference I went to recently and he got the Influencer of the Year award from the National Speakers Association, and he has the law of the inner circle, which says, "Your success is determined by those you surround yourself with." So that really backs up what you just said. Renee: Yes. Paul: Finally, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Renee: Yeah, I wrote down the word gems in my notes, as in sparkly stones. And I don't think that the path is always obvious as we go on in our career and our lives and search for leadership opportunities. I think that we walk a path and we have a choice, the right path or the left path, and neither is wrong and we just take one and then we look for the gems along the way. And when we look at it that way, we don't get stunted by fear. We don't stop because we can't be perfect, and it's more about the journey and the exploration and the experience than it is about the perfection. Paul: Tri-City listeners, look for the gyms along the way. So Renee, how can our listeners best connect with you? Renee: Probably the best way to connect with me is over email at artscentertaskforce@gmail.com or through a phone call at (509) 6019-98546. Paul: Well, thanks again for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Renee: Thanks for having me, Paul. Paul: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. It is the emotional index quiz. You go over to lifecoach.com and you go into the free quizzes section and this emotional index quiz is 100 questions, takes about 20 to 30 minutes to do and it's to figure out the underlying needs that drive your behavior. This is essential for each of us to identify because there might be some changes that need to be made to get a little bit more emotionally healthy. Again, lifecoach.com, free quizzes. Paul: And don't forget to consider patronizing our sponsors of Tri-City Influencer Gravis Law And Jason Hogue, American Family Insurance. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence, it's a quote by former Dallas Cowboys coach, Tom Landry, "A winner never stops trying." Keep growing forward. Speaker 3: If you enjoy this podcast or it piqued your interest in learning more about leadership and self-leadership, you can continue to glean from Paul and his growing forward services. Check out Paul's blog and the products, tips and tools on his website at www.paulcasey.org and opt into his target practice inspirational E-newsletter. You'll get his 33 top tips for becoming a time management rock star when you subscribe and consider buying one of his three books. The most recent one being Leading the Team You've Always Wanted. Paul: This podcast has been produced by Bonsai Audio at Fuse Coworking Space.
We’re past the “I can’t believe holiday decorations are already up” portion of the season. It’s time to celebrate the holidays, and Pittsburgh has two big events coming up that we’ll discuss in this week’s episode.For starters, we talk with some representatives from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership about Comcast Light Up Night on Nov. 22. Then we bring in the race director of the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh’s Turkey Trot.After that, Paul and Dan take a deep dive into a potential change to the U.S. immigration system, and we close out with a special guest for our Pittsburgh Polyphony series. ----more----This Episode is sponsored by WordWriteCenturies before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story.WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own Capital S Story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your Capital S Story.Here's the full transcript for this episode:Speaker 1: You're listening to the P100 podcasts, the biweekly companion piece to The Pittsburgh 100 bringing you Pittsburgh news, culture, and more because sometimes 100 words just isn't enough for a great story.Dan: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the P100 podcast. I'm your host Dan Stefano with my cohost here, Logan Armstrong. Our other co-host Paul Furiga will be joining us shortly.Logan: Ho ho, ho. Dan.Dan: I can't believe you just said that.Dan: Well, the ho, ho, ho, and all of the holiday celebration nonsense here fits in with our first couple of segments that we're going to have today. We're going to be discussing Light Up Night with a couple of people from the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership. They're the group that puts on the event every year and does such an awesome job, and then following that, we're going to have another discussion with another big holiday event. Logan.Logan: Yeah. We're going to be talking about the YMCA of Greater Pittsburgh's Turkey Trot Race, one of the biggest races in the city. We're going to be sitting down with Catlyn Brooke, race director, and she's going to give us a lowdown on that.Dan: It's an important race too because it goes to a very... The funds from it go to a very big cause and a lot of important donations there. So following that, we're going to take a left turn there and go into a deeper dive into a recent story we had on immigration, and we have an attorney from a local Pittsburgh law firm here to discuss that. And it's a really interesting talk that affects not only people in our region but nationally. We're excited to have him in for that.Dan: Following that Logan, we've got a special Pittsburgh polyphony. It's not just us talking about an artist here. We have somebody pretty interesting coming in.Logan: Yeah, that's right, Dan. We're going to have Connor Murray here, a label manager of Crafted Sounds, a local Pittsburgh record label that's doing a lot of cool things in the region. And one of the coolest, he's trying to bring back cassette tapes.Dan: Cassette tapes. That's great. Yeah, I think there might be some at my mom's house here I could dig up. I don't know. We'll have to find out, but all right everybody, let's get to it.Dan: All right everybody, we're happy to have two members of the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership here with us. We have Colten Gill, manager of marketing communications and Roya Kousari, another member of the marketing team there. Thanks for being with us.Roya: Thank you for having us.Colten: Thank you guys.Dan: Guys, it's a busy time of year for you here and can you tell us why that is?Colten: Yeah, for sure. So coming up in just a few days, it's going to be the 59th Annual Comcast Light Up Night. It's kind of the kickoff to the holiday season in Downtown Pittsburgh. It's a celebration that's been going on in Pittsburgh for almost 60 years now. It's what a lot of families around the region use to kickstart their holiday celebration. And we're just about ready to kick things off. Coming up Friday, November 22nd.Dan: Right. And what's interesting too about Light Up Night is it is not a night. It's a full day of just all the great holiday stuff and multiple tree lightings. What's it like for you? This brings in hundreds of thousands of people every year, and I got to believe it's kind of go, go, go.Roya: It is very much organized chaos in a lot of ways. As you said, it's a full day of events. So the first activity of the day is the Dedication of The Creche at noon, and then we keep going strong until 10:00 PM. So there are a lot of moving pieces. We have an amazing team put together to help things run as smoothly as possible. There are seven official tree lightings and ceremonies.Dan: Geez.Roya: Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, we end with the true Pittsburgh element of everything, which is Zambelli fireworks. The BNY Mellon fireworks finale is at 9:30 and that's sort of the culmination of the event.Dan: You guys as members of the downtown partnership, you're probably a big part of witnessing this, but the downtown neighborhood itself is vastly different than whenever I was a kid. Can you talk about maybe the Renaissance that we're seeing downtown? A lot of new buildings, a lot of new shops and how they just work with the Light Up Night's celebration too.Colten: Yeah, for sure. So, like you said, it has changed a lot, and it's a really good energy that's around downtown right now. We have 140 small businesses and retailers in the downtown community. So while you don't have that big keystone department store, you have these really great opportunities that you aren't going to find anywhere else in the city to visit these smaller shops that have these really unique gifts, items, apparel, and a really strong sense of community.Colten: One of my favorite things about all the shops in Downtown Pittsburgh today, if you go to one store and say, "Hey, I'm really looking for this very specific item," they're going to be like, "Oh. Hey, I might not have it, but go down the street to our neighbor store because you'll be able to find it there." So there's a really strong sense of community in the business community that's here in downtown right now.Dan: That's great. Kind of speaks to that Pittsburgh being a small-town feel with big-city amenities.Colten: For sure.Dan: We love that stuff. Looking at this year's though on the 22nd here, what are some of the big highlights that you guys see for right now? I know they've got a pretty big name on the main stage too at the end of the night here.Colten: Yeah, for sure. So on the Comcast main stage, we're bringing Adam Lambert to the city of Pittsburgh, which we're very excited about. He was here earlier this summer actually touring with Queen out at PPG Paints Arena. So we're happy to welcome him back to the city for this holiday tradition. In addition to him, on the EQT Jazzmaster stage, we have a really exciting new piece. The MCG Jazz Group is going to be presenting the music of Fred Rogers. There's going to be a really great legacy there in that jazz music that's being presented with special appearances by Daniel Tiger. So he's a character from Daniel Tiger's neighborhood. So a really great mesh of the old and the new Fred Rogers community there on that stage.Dan: Perfect timing too because I think the movie comes out too, the Tom Hanks movie. So yeah, a lot of just like perfect synergy with Fred Rogers.Colten: For sure.Dan: But looking beyond Light Up Night then here downtown will remain a hub for holiday activity too. Can you talk about just certain, some of the things going on there? And I've spent some time in downtown in the holidays, the season last year and there's just so much fun stuff going on.Colten: Oh, for sure. So returning is the Peoples Gas Holiday Market. So Market Square is going to be that big destination market where you're going to be able to stroll through an illuminated marketplace. You're going to be able to buy some really unique gifts and enjoy some time in this really, really traditional setting with the decor and everything going on there. Returning are some favorites like the Holly Trolley. So you're going to be able to stop at Fifth Avenue Place, get on the Holly Trolley and enjoy free transport around all the holiday hotspots, including the Heinz History Center, our home good shop, PG&H right here on Smithfield Street and to the Holiday Kids Play, which is going to be taking place holiday weekends. So a lot of really fun family activities going on as well all season.Roya: We also want people to know that with the Peoples Gas Holiday Market there's a lot of activities happening within that space. Even beyond just the shopping. We have a karaoke contest ... Oh yeah, Oh yeah. Come down, sing holiday best. There are also photos with Santa. So you can visit Santa's house and if you bring a donation for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, then you get a complimentary photo with Santa. So it's a way for us to engage the community and give back as well.Dan: Yeah, that stuff's hugely important. Even if you don't want a picture with Santa, I would suggest that everybody out there, if you get down there, try to bring a donation because that stuff's just so important. Guys, thanks so much for being here. We really appreciate you visiting, and is there anything else you'd like to mention? Happy holidays message for anybody or?Roya: We just look forward to seeing everybody coming downtown to enjoy both Light Up Night and the rest of the holiday season here in downtown.Dan: Right. And we'd be remiss to not mention this too. Where can people find you online?Colten: Yeah, for sure. So you can go to downtownpittsburgh.com for all the holiday activities but also everything happening year-round in downtown, including a list of restaurants, shops and things like that. We're also on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at Downtown Pitt. So connect with us there and find out what's going on.Dan: All right. Be sure to go visit those channels, everybody. And thanks so much and let's hope that organized chaos of Light Up Night turns into just an organization and a fun night for you.Colten: For sure. Thanks so much.Roya: Thank you.Logan: Hey everybody, we're back here with Catlyn Brooke, race director of the YMCAs Turkey Trots. Of course a race almost everybody in Pittsburgh knows. Catlyn, thanks for being with us.Catlyn: Hi. Thanks guys.Logan: Yeah, sure. So we have the Turkey Trot coming up here in the next week or so. Can you just give us a little bit of a background on the race and kind of what you do as race director?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. So this is our 29th year doing the Turkey Trot here in Pittsburgh. This year our sponsor’s UPMC Health Plan, they are 5k sponsor and our overall race sponsor. So we're super excited to have them on board.Catlyn: Being race director, we can put it into a nutshell is I get people to sign up, and I handle race logistics. But I mean a little bit more than that. It's getting the word out to why we're doing the race. Obviously getting people to register, getting folks to participate in our food drive for the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, and just doing race things like ordering thousands of shirts that you end up seeing around the city for the rest of the year. Making sure that we have enough food and water for our folks when they're done the race, so that we can have them refreshed after the fact. It's not too glamorous, but it's really rewarding knowing how many people come together on Thanksgiving Day to give back to their community and to try to end hunger here in Pittsburgh.Dan: Yeah, and in particular, this goes to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, right? And you guys have a set goal that you want to get for some donations this year, right?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. So my loft goal, my reach goal for this year, is to collect 10,000 pounds of food. Last year, unofficially, we reached that goal. I probably had around 8,000 pounds of food come into PNC Park just during our packet pickup days. And we do have donation locations as well at all of our YMCA branches. So unofficially last year we hit our goal, but this year I officially want to hit 10,000 pounds of food.Dan: That's great. And then unofficially we can try to like shoot for like 20,000 or something, right?Catlyn: Yes.Dan: It's all for the best. It's a great cause.Logan: Yeah. And I saw last year, according to you guys that you raised over $280,000 for the organization last year in last year's race, which is just incredible. But I was looking and it sounds like there's a few different things to do. You guys have the Fun Run, the Turkey Trot, and then the Double Gobble, which is the five mile plus a 5k run. So it sounds like there's kind of everything for somebody in the family, something for everybody to do, whether you want to bring your kids or just bring your spouse or things like that. It sounds like there's something for everybody to do. Is that correct?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. And we like to think about the day as more than just your exercise. You're coming out, you're supporting the 1.2 million people in Allegheny County, which nearly one in seven of them are facing food insecurity. So that's the point of the day. Our hashtag is #EndHungerPGH and that's really our goal. So while we do raise money for the Y and the programs such as summer camp, before school, after school, senior programs, men's housing, et cetera, we do also collect all that food. But like you said, there is something for everyone. So we start off our day with the Med Express One Mile Family Fun Run, and you can walk or jog or sprint that if you like. It's really excellent to see the little kids come through the finish line who are like just huffing and puffing. They gave it their all, and it's really cute to see that. And all of our kid competitors for that get a medal, which they're excited about as well.Dan: Logan, maybe you can try this out. You can do one mile. You can get yourself a medal.Logan: I could probably do a mile, yeah.Dan: I don't know if I could do one mile.Catlyn: You can walk. It's all good.Dan: Oh, perfect. Fun Walk. Oh, that's correct. It's a Fun Walk. I could just have fun by walking.Catlyn: Exactly. The most fun. After our one mile, we have the UPMC Health Plan 5K, that's our main event. We have the most people who run that. It's usually about 5,000 people who run the 5k event. And then after that we have our five mile event and that is sponsored this year by The Pirates who are also our gracious venue hosts. And like you said, the Double Gobble.Logan: Yeah, I would not be doing that one.Catlyn: The double gobble, you run the 5k first and then you just keep on running tack on the five mile after that. And our sponsor for that is a GH&A. So we're super excited.Dan: Yeah, well it's getting close to December. Obviously it is a Thanksgiving day on November 28th, nice and early in the morning at 7:00 AM. But that's one thing that I think is important about these days is people think about Thanksgiving and they get there and it's an entire day. It's not just the meal. It's having a big breakfast with your family, starting to cook early in the morning. So I think it says a lot whenever you can see families coming out taking a significant portion of their day, a big part of the morning there to come out and support a cause like this. And it says a lot about Pittsburgh. I think you'd agree with that.Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. We see people, the majority from Pittsburgh, but we have participants from almost every state in the country, which is really awesome to see. I'll get letters or emails from people like from California and they're coming in. And they're asking about packet pickup and things like that. So yeah, it's cool. We've even had participants from other countries, so it's a special race. And it's really awesome to see how many people come together.Dan: That's great. In 29 years, 30 next year. Have you already started thinking about that one?Catlyn: The big 30 is next year. Yes. We have started thinking. I'm not going to give anything away, but there'll be some surprises.Dan: Triple Gobble maybe?Logan: You'd be in a lot on Thanksgiving.Dan: Exactly right. Yeah.Logan: And so what kind of food items are you guys accepting for the Greater Food Bank? Is it just nonperishable or what kind of things should people bring to donate?Catlyn: Yeah, so actually you can bring more than just nonperishable food items. So they also collect household items, toilet paper, toiletries, baby products, things for seniors. Basically that is anything that's not in a glass container and that is nonperishable. If you do go on our website, our Facebook page, YMCA Turkey Trot, we have a nice little graphic showing everything that they collect. You think of nonperishable items and it's like, "Okay I'm going to go get chicken noodle soup and a can of green beans." But we like for people to think outside the box with that as well. Macaroni and cheese is great for the kids. Granola bars, pasta, pasta sauce that is in a plastic container. So just thinking more about, would you want to eat out of a can for every meal. There's so many more nonperishable things in the supermarkets that we can provide.Dan: Importantly too, you don't have to just register today. I mean if you want to, you can go to Pittsburghymca.org, and the link is very nice and right in your face for the Turkey Trot. But also you can register on race day, right?Catlyn: Yeah, absolutely. You can come up if you decide early morning, "Okay. I'm ready to run this thing." Just come on down to PNC Park. Our set up is on Mazeroski Way right past home plate. And just say hey.Logan: So where can we find the YMCA more than just a Turkey Trot on social media and give us that URL to sign up one more time.Catlyn: Yeah, so the URL to sign up is YMCApgh.org/turkeytrot. Also if you just do a quick Google search for YMCA Pittsburgh Turkey Trot, it should be one of the first things that pops up. And again, it's the 29th year, so that's the one you want to look for on active.com. We are on social media, Facebook, Twitter. It's just YMCAPGH, and we also have a Turkey Trot Facebook page, which is YMCA PGH Turkey Trot.Logan: All right. Well, Catlyn Brooke, race director of the YMCA's Turkey Trot here in Pittsburgh. Thanks so much for coming on and we appreciate you being here.Catlyn: Thanks so much, guys.Dan: Bye.Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections were made around fires as we shared the stories that shaped our world. Today stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At WordWrite, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency, we understand that before you had a brand, before you sold any product or service, you had a story. WordWrite helps clients to uncover their own capital S story. The reason someone would want to buy, work, invest or partner with you through our patented story crafting process. Visit wordwritepr.com to uncover your capital S story.Dan: Hey everybody, we're back and we're going to be taking a little sharp turn here into a conversation about immigration. And we have here an attorney from Meyer, Unkovic, and Scott. They're a Pittsburgh based law firm here. Joel Pfeffer, he's one of the focuses is immigration in his practice. And thank you for being here.Joel: My pleasure.Dan: What we want to discuss is lead in to this with a talk about the Public Charge Rule. It's a new rule that we discussed very briefly in The Pittsburgh 100, and these legal issues, they need a lot more than 100 words to breakdown.Joel: Dan, you need a lawyer to explain it.Dan: A lawyer and more than 100 words, correct.Joel: Thank goodness we have one.Dan: Right. Precisely.Joel: Who's an expert.Dan: Yes. Okay. Joel, can you take us ... I mean again just on a brief overview of what the Public Charge Rule is.Joel: So going back 100 years when immigrants came to the United States to Ellis Island, they were in essence judged at that point by “are you going to be able to make a living in the United States without securing or being dependent on government benefits.” And in every family there is a legend about how that answer was given to the immigration officer. A strong handshake, a description of what the person's skill level was, his history in the country he came from, a smile. All of those things are part of everybody's family history.Joel: For the last 25 years or so, immigration has focused on what I'll call an objective standard. That if you can show that you have income or you've had income or your employer is going to pay you more than 125% of the poverty level, then there's no need for a handshake or a smile. There's no discussion. It was just you knew that that case was going to go through. There was a consistent standard depending on what your history of earning or what your projection of earning is, or if you did not have that, a relative could file an affidavit of support saying that they would support you. Or if you ever tried to get on government benefits, their assets would be deemed your assets, and you couldn't get the government benefit. And that process has worked for the last 20 or 25, perhaps 30 years. It was all on paper, and it was all objective. Didn't matter really what, anything about you, what your education was, what your level of English was, what's your job prospect was.Joel: Now immigration is divided between family immigration and business immigration or employment immigration. So if you are on the employment immigration side and you were coming because you had a job that no American could fill. So obviously you had some projection of income. You had some security of income. Those cases are still going to be pretty much the same, but family based cases will be impacted by this new rule, which essentially says we're going to view this on a subjective basis. We're going to look at you and we're going to see what is your education, what is your age, your health, your family status, your assets, your resources, your skill level. And we're going to take a complete picture of you and we're going to decide whether or not you are going to become dependent on government benefits to survive in the United States.Joel: It's moving from somebody looking at paperwork and giving you the opportunity in a letter to respond by saying, "Well, if that's not good enough, I'll get uncle so-and-so to give me another affidavit." To a situation where that's only going to be part of it. Whether someone's given you an affidavit, it's only going to be part of the total subjective picture of who you are and whether you're going to become dependent on public benefits.Paul: Seems like Joel, you're going to need an interview now, right? There's got to be some interaction in order to answer some of that.Joel: Well, it just so happens that one of the other initiatives of the Trump administration is called... It requires a total review of your situation, and almost every case today is interviewed. So in the past, the only cases that were interviewed were marriage cases, other cases. So for example, if you wanted to bring a parent to the United States, if you wanted to bring a child to the United States, there was no reason to interview you. In a marriage case, they interviewed you to see if you were really married.Paul: Subject of many popular films and literature, et cetera, et cetera. The sham marriage, right?Joel: Yes. But everything else was judged on the basis of a petition. Is the relationship true? Is there a birth certificate? But the Trump administration issued an executive order that said, "No, we want everybody to be vetted." That vetting process includes pretty much an interview for every single case, which is why there's become a serious backlog at the US Citizenship and Immigration Services because they weren't geared up for that.Paul: Wow. So, Joel, what's the impact? What are you seeing? I mean, obviously it's slowing things down, but how bad?Joel: It's slowing things down to a point that it's unpredictable when you're going to be seen by the US CIS and how long your case is going to take to be completed, especially if you are an employment-based case where historically they have not interviewed these cases. So it's taking, I would say probably an additional three to six months for them to get to you. I expect that it'll go to six to nine months pretty soon if it hasn't already. In a marriage case, married to a US citizen, I'm not seeing a serious slow down. Maybe two or three months backlog greater than before. But they officially like to get their cases completed in six months. I don't know that they can meet that target anymore.Paul: Now a lot of your clients are businesses with employment cases, correct?Joel: Yes. Many of our clients are employers who are either established or in the process of establishing that a particular employee from abroad is not going to impact the US labor market, that there is a shortage of this skill set.Paul: They're a specialist of some kind.Joel: Or they are a distinguished professor, researcher or a person of extraordinary ability. Somebody who is at the very top of their field and they've established to the satisfaction of the Department of Homeland Security that they are at the very top of their field and deserving to come to the United States as an extraordinary ability alien. So those are the kinds of cases, that the kinds of employment cases we handle.Dan: One thing that's important to point out with the Public Charge Rule here is that it was some federal courts pumped the brakes on it. They blocked the rule here, but that probably won't be the last time we hear of it. Correct?Joel: No, I would think it's fair to predict that eventually the rule becomes law and that this is a temporary setback for the Trump administration. In fact, there are two government agencies that apply the Public Charge Rule, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State. The Department of State processes cases that are where the alien is outside the United States and there is the Department of State is applying this rule and has been applying this rule since it was originally introduced even in the first stage of promulgation of the rule. Department of State picked up on it and there's been an uptick in denials because of public charge at consular offices, consular posts abroad.Joel: So not only is the Department of Homeland Security going to deal with these injunctions and eventually likely to overcome the objections but the Department of State is going to, to some degree or other, enforce this rule that sort of converts this from an objective to a subjective test.Dan: Right. Well, it's certainly a complicated process here, complicated law, but Joel, we appreciate you coming on and speaking with us and helping us break it down here. Definitely more than in 100 words.Joel: Yes.Dan: Hey, thanks again and hope to have you back on.Joel: Thank you for having me. Thank you.Dan: Thanks a lot. Bye.Logan: For our Pittsburgh Polyphony segment this week, we're taking a little bit of a different approach and instead of highlighting a specific artist, we're going to be talking to Connor Murray, the label manager of Crafted Sounds, a local Pittsburgh record label that has about six active bands on their roster right now. Connor, thanks for being with us.Connor: Yeah, thanks for having me, Logan.Logan: Sure. Yes. So if you could of just give us a little rundown of what Crafted Sounds is, kind of how you got into it, and maybe a little background on yourself, that'd be great.Connor: Yeah. So I started the label when I was 18, on my 18th birthday in high school. I tried to play music, try to make music or whatever, just like too stubborn. Didn't put enough time into it. It was also kind of, I don't know, getting frustrated of what I was missing out on as far as new music is concerned because I always like sharing new music with my friends and whatnot. Going to shows, et cetera.Connor: Once I kind of realized that like I personally didn't want to be a musician, I was like, "Okay, how can I be involved?" So there was a couple smaller labels but also like bigger labels that I was very aware of on like independent level. And I was like, "Oh, I'll just do that," without like knowing what goes into that. I mean, I think taking like engineering approach, it's just like once you have your problem statement, that's when you start to figure out what it is, you know how you're going to do that.Connor: So without knowing how I was going to do it, I was like, "All right, I'm just going to run this label." And I don't know. I guess running a label for me was just providing physical format copies to artists that were underappreciated that I really liked, that I felt could be recognized on a more grand scale. And that concept has changed and molded and adapted into other formats, other artists, other sounds, other communities because I'm not from Pittsburgh. So it's been really cool just to be like the, I don't know, number one fan in the back.Dan: Not from here. You're a senior at Pitt, correct?Connor: Yes. Yeah. I'm going to stay here though. As long as I graduate and get my things set straight, I'll be working downtown for a couple of years. So I accepted an offer and I don't know. I like it here. I'm trying to stay here. So yeah.Logan: Pittsburgh tends to pull people in once they get here. I love it. It's a great city.Dan: Steal off Godfather Three, "Once I get out, they pull me back.Logan: Just when I thought I was out, they pulled me back.Dan: The only good part of Godfather Three is that line I think. Andy Garcia.Logan: That's something I can really appreciate though that you're saying that you're trying to take these underappreciated artists and kind of what you think is cool. And like you said, be that number one fan and not really worry how much clout they have at the time or how much presence they have at that time. But something that you could take and really mold and them to do. But so it sounded like you kind of just took a hands-on like dive-in approach. Like you said, you didn't really know exactly what you were doing. Kind of what were some of the first things and the first steps that you took that to develop some of your artists you look back on now.Connor: I guess far as like the label's concern, I mean the first thing I was... It's like the name of the label and the imaging. It has to be cool I guess. At least to me, it has to be something other people could stand behind. I made the logo a house because I was just sitting in my house, scratching on papers, little sketches here and there. And I was like, "Oh, I should just like make it a house because I'm going to be doing this inside my house anyway." We're not going to make money. So I just made a very simple geometric house, like very, very simple and put letters out of the chimney. I didn't do anything crazy. So that was kind of where I started with that, the imaging.Connor: I guess as far as artists and where to start with that. I guess at first, the first record was through a friend of a friend. She was in New Mexico and she was like, "Hey, this guy is making cool music." And it's like, "Yeah, I like it." I mean, at that point I had no standard. I mean the music... I mean, I still love that record, but I didn't really look at who's this artist; what are their goals; where do they want to be; what have they done in the past; how long are they going to be continuing this.Connor: I was just like, "Wow, I like this music. Let's do it." That project fizzled out real quick. And I was just like, "Oh, maybe there's other things I should consider when I work with people. Maybe like communication should be clearer. Maybe I should be asking more questions. Maybe I should be setting things... Being more transparent on both ends and kind of make it bit by bit." It took me at least a year to figure out ballpark estimate how to do PR in house. By now I'm very jaded but a lot of people have been through a lot of crap. They dealt with a lot of characters. And I guess kind of conveying a message or pitching something you believe in over email. You have to be very considerate and very persistent at the same time. So it's like there was that. I guess show booking was the thing that took like a year and a half after that. Little steps. What's another thing I can put on my utility belt.Dan: Something interesting about your business, we were talking about this a little bit before we got going here. But everybody's really into vinyl these days. It's gotten really popular. You are into cassettes, which Logan, cassettes were on their way out whenever you were born. I mean, I remember using them as a kid. I remember my parents had a ton of them and stuff. But why cassettes? Why are they back?Connor: So essentially there was the resurgence of vinyl and that was cool. It started with indie labels getting back into it and supporting the format. And those real music nerds, shout out. But eventually the major labels caught on and there's only so many plants. So the cost of manufacturing the vinyl is just skyrocketed. Minimums have gotten higher obviously, and it's hard for an independent artist or an independent label to bite that initial investment and keep doing it even if it is cool. There's a point where you got to kind of make money unfortunately.Connor: I mean, if you don't really make money, we break even on everything and happy trails. But because it got so expensive, tapes kind of slowly kind of became more feasible, especially because people were just adopting the format. They were like, "Hey, I don't really want a CD." Whether it's because you could just download the music or stream it or whatever, but tape kind of sits right in between a CD and a record. And sometimes if not more often than not, it's less costly than a CD I guess when you're buying it as a consumer. I don't know. There's a lot you can do as far as customizing it. It doesn't sound good. Tapes don't sound good. I'm not here to tell-Dan: That's what I was thinking, yeah.Connor: I'm not here to defend tapes. Tapes are literally built to like deteriorate, like the acid that is required to make the tape literally destroys it.Connor: But I have older tapes from like the '80s and stuff and they sound terrible. But-Dan: Do you find people buy them? You can find people that-Connor: Yeah, I mean, we've, I don't know. I keep mostly everything that I have as far as like paper receipts and electronic receipts. I have binders full of just notes, and I've duplicated over 1000 tapes.Dan: Wow.Connor: Over 2000 tapes. Yeah. And to think like, "Wow, I've sold over 1000 tapes." It's like pretty hilarious. Cool.Dan: Some cassette holders are actually perfect cases for your cell phone too, so you can just keep all your music on your phone and put the phone inside the cassette tape holder, and it's perfect. Yeah.Logan: That's funny. I appreciate you being here, Connor. And I believe there's a track that you wanted to end us off with today from one of your bands. Is that correct?Connor: Yeah, yeah. Last month we put a track out. We put an EP out with this band called the Zells, local band we mentioned earlier. This is one of their songs. Graze.Dan: Awesome. Can't wait.Logan: Appreciate you being here, Connor.
In this week's episode It may sound drastic, but getting rid of one of your worst clients could be transformational for your business. Paul's done it and the results were ASTONISHING How are your sales team selling? Special guest Scott Tyson of Auvik talks about how to increase revenue by adopting a simple sales process, how to trust your team and when it's time to walk away from a potential customer Also in this episode, there's a brilliant question answered about how to reach business owners on Facebook... details of a video service for MSP websites... and Paul explains how you can link personal goals to your business goals Show notes Out every Tuesday on your favourite podcast platform Presented by Paul Green, an MSP marketing expert Here's the website for the service MSP Videos, that produces excellent video content for websites The special guest talking about how to run a world-class sales operation is Scott Tyson of Auvik who also mentioned Sandler sales training and the Frankly MSP podcast Thanks to Murray Thorpe from network and AV solutions specialist Cablers Ltd for the question about reaching business owners on Facebook Here's the link to Paul's Facebook group for MSP Marketing Find out more about the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 Rule) Paul mentioned Next week's guest will be Louise Towler of IndigoTree, who will be explain the essential ingredients for a great website The email address for show feedback or any questions is hello@paulgreensmspmarketing.com Episode transcription Voiceover: Made in the UK, for MSPs around the world. This is Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Paul: Here's a look at what's coming up on this week's show. Scott Tyson: There's no good going into a Mercedes dealership looking for a sports car and the guy comes out and says, "I've got this great station wagon for you to buy." Paul: We're also going to look at how the actions that you take or don't take every single day directly affect the lifestyle that you have. And I've got a question from an MSP owner about how to reach business decision makers on Facebook. Voiceover: Paul Green's MSP Marketing podcast. Paul: Now some will see this as controversial. You should fire more clients. And my reasoning for that is the 80/20 rule. Basically, input and output aren't equal. And it was Alfredo Pareto who was an Italian economist and I think in the 19th century, and he one day standing on his balcony, probably having an ice cream or
In this episode, we discuss: The importance of a Wealth Coordination Account Understanding long-term planning for your long-term future Resources and tips related to understanding your knowledge gap Rhonda: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for another episode. And I am so excited to be able to introduce to you my friend, Paul Adams. And he and I met via LinkedIn. All good things start there. And there was something about your profile that just captured my attention and I actually didn't even really know what you did when I said, "Hey, let's connect." And so, you are the Founder and CEO of an organization called Sound Financial Group. And you're also a fellow podcaster and entrepreneur. Paul: Indeed. Rhonda: And so, I just want to thank you for taking time to join us today. Paul: I got to tell you, I'm so happy to be here. Just our phone conversations we've had leading up to this, and you mentioned about creating a friendship. And I even was talking to my wife this morning and saying, "Yeah, I'm going to be on a friend's podcast this morning." And it was just like, "Oh, yeah, that's kind of nice." Versus somebody has a show somewhere that asked me to be on it. It just felt wonderful and warm and just getting a chance to reconnect this morning. Rhonda: Yeah, absolutely. Well, and I have certainly been in the financial industry and you are with an organization that happens to be in their headquarters in Milwaukee. Paul: Yeah, at the very beginning of my career. Rhonda: Right. Right, at the very beginning of your career. So, I just want to take some time and share, what are some of the trends that you're seeing? Obviously, our focus is women. Paul: And I think that if, for any of us, it's where is my knowledge gap? And when I say knowledge, I mean the capacity to act, not just understand it. If we were thinking of it like parachuting, understanding would be like, "I know the plane goes up to 13,000 feet, somebody jumps, they count to 10, they pull this thing here, and then they steer themselves with two cables they hold in their right and left hand, and it pulled them both down near the ground and they land." That's understanding. Paul: Knowledge is hurling yourself into the abyss and landing and not dying. That is the difference. And I think people tend to collapse the understanding and knowledge. And especially when we're divorced, prior to that, it may have been, at least we see this often, I don't know about you, but we'll see oftentimes that the wife will handle a ton of the bills, and then the husband tends to handle a lot of the long-term strategy and investments. And they both have an understanding of the other one. Paul: Now, it's a lot easier for the divorced husband to get a handle on the bills because it's a fast iteration cycle. They got to deal with the bills every 30 days. So, I don't know, after doing it for four or five months, you're back on plane and you know what you're doing. But when there is this... And it really is one of the longest feedback loops we deal with in our entire life. It's a 40-year feedback loop from 22 to 65. You have one time that you get feedback, and filling a glass of water, we're all used to it. We've all gotten our hands wet as kids when we overfill the glass, that we're listening and feeling the weight of the glass, and we turn off the spigot at the right time. Paul: If you perform really badly at work, somebody's going to let you know in a few weeks. You eat too much, over 7 to 10 days, you'll actually start gaining weight, and the feedback is in the scale. Bad behavior in all those areas equals bad short-term outcome. Paul: Here's the problem. With money, the feedback loop is like a negative feedback loop in that you can make bad decisions with money. And know how they feel in the short run? Awesome. It feels so good. You can get the brightness on your kids' eyes because you got them a cool new toy. Or all the Instagram likes because of the killer vacation you went on. All those things feel wonderful. The new car smell. Nice, so wonderful. And those are all things that, in the long run, the one-time feedback loop is you spend the rest of your life in some version of poverty below what you would have chosen. Paul: And so, one of the things we have to do is get those shorter iterations occurring through these coaching conversations around money so that everyone, and I think divorced women are particularly susceptible to having somebody that looks trustworthy, somebody who's super friendly, who's a friend of a friend, who may just be selling product. And one of the things we encourage people to think about is, is the advisor's revenue model only you acquiring product from them? Paul: And if that is their primary revenue model and they're not charging you a fee upfront so that they can support their business and themselves without needing to sell you a product, then that should give you at least a moment of pause, to stop and reflect and say, "Is there a chance that products could be recommended to me because of the advisor's revenue model, not because of what's right for me?" And not that the advisors are unethical or making bad decisions, any of that. It's just that, clearly, they can't work with 100 clients and not have any of them acquire product. Paul: But we and some other advisors out there, will do something similar to that, where we charge a fee upfront. It retains us for that first year, which is that timeline of a divorce. It never occurred to me how those line up that way. And then we coach them throughout the year, and we may meet them as many as 15 times over the first year, but that primary coaching to get spooled up and get all the things corrected in their financial life, et cetera, not counting ushering them through the divorce is about 6 to 10 meetings over about 10 to 14 weeks. Rhonda: Yeah. And I think that's spot on. Prudential did a longitudinal study. And what they found was that it was the knowledge plus experience that really helps the women build the confidence. Because if you have the knowledge without the experience, that's theory. If you have the experience without the knowledge, then you're just going through things hoping that you're not making too many mistakes. Paul: I was going that was a terrible idea, I shouldn't do that again. Rhonda: But it's those two things when they can work in tandem that really helps women build the confidence. And when I think that is one thing that, as we look at some of these studies, women have a great opportunity to step into power as it relates to their financial lives. It's just that they may not have had the experience because, statistically speaking, and you alluded to this, women are doing the day to day stuff, but they aren't necessarily as involved in the big picture things. And so, when they're thrust into that environment, it's uncomfortable and overwhelming and intimidating and all of those kinds of things all at once. Right? Paul: And I think there's probably a lot of domains that are that way. The trouble about the long-term planning for your long-term future is that's the one thing out of all the things that are coming at women going through divorce, it's the one thing that they really can, in the short run, put their head in the sand and avoid all the negative consequences. They are coming, but they're not here yet. And so, they can deal with all the things that are urgent and forget the things that are necessary. Rhonda: Yeah. Well, and I think too, it's history. Like you said, the feedback loop is so long, and even from the time that they got married until potentially the time that they're getting divorced, there's all of those habits and behaviors that they're now dealing with. Plus, let's face it, everything's always goes back to our childhood. There's always some connection between, "Hey, this is my attitude and belief about money as a kid. Here was how it was modeled. I brought that into the marriage. Now somebody always has to take the lead, and now I'm thrust into having to take the lead myself." You know? Paul: Yes. Yeah. And, you're right, it's so tough for them to make that gear shift. And we recommend people do something that's super subtle, easy, anybody can start it. Anyone of your listeners can do this right after the call. And we talk about the importance of somebody really understanding their own freedom and agency and choice. And we need to take that back immediately in people's lives around their money. Rhonda: Yep. Paul: Financial institutions ideally would like you to take your regular household checking and start choosing a financial product that you can automatically deposit via bank draft to. And we teach our clients to set up a separate checking account whose only purpose is to purchase assets. That's it. It shouldn't be buying anything else. It only buys assets. And we define an asset. An asset is anything that puts money in your pocket now or has the ability to put money in your pocket later. Paul: And it doesn't matter if it's just $25 a month. To shorten that feedback loop, we're simply saying we're going to put in $25 here and that is for my long-term wealth building. And then I'm going to put in $25 next month here. Now, for some people in some amounts of wealth, it might be 1000, it might be 2000, we have clients it's $30,000 a month they're doing. The key, and for the women that we've helped journey through getting their financial knowledge up to where they are financially during the divorce, is simply having a wealth coordination account means that when those payments start coming in, they realize, "Well, my bills are only 10,000 but I just got a $20,000 support payment during the trial period." Great. Let's just put that 10,000 aside. Paul: If the divorce attorneys are not saying that you need to keep your monthly spending up for a period of time while we finish the divorce. And then when they're complete and the divorce element goes in, where do most people put that first check? It's like there is a million dollars of liquidation. I guess I just go put it in my checking account if they haven't been working with a coach. Rhonda: Right. Paul: And whenever money goes in the household checking account, whether it's for a couple or a single individual, some of it is bound to get lost in the sauce of life. And by just putting it in the wealth coordination account, now you're sitting there and you're like, "Well heck, I don't know what assets I'm going to buy." But if you're resolved it's going to buy assets. At least it's not buying liabilities. Little steps here. We're not talking about big complicated things. Let's just make sure we don't buy stuff that costs us more in the future. Rhonda: And I love that. And you have a podcast episode that you focus specifically on that concept. As I was listening to some of your podcasts, that was one that really resonated with me because it's simple and it's not requiring women to make a big decision right now. Paul: Yes, that's right. Yes. The cognitive load of somebody saying, "Let's budget for this financial tool, and this is the financial tool you should use," being collapsed. The cognitive load is so high in making that decision versus simply being able to say, "Oh, all I need to do is set the money aside. I'll figure out what it purchases later." You make a good point. I was going to see if I could quickly find the name of that episode. So give me just a second, because I'm sure your audience right now is thinking to themselves, "Don't say that's a great episode of Paul's, not tell us." Rhonda: That's right. Yes. Paul: So, my podcast is Your Business Your Wealth. That's episode 131, Wealth Coordination Account. Rhonda: Perfect. And that reminded me too, this was a woman that I had met with a couple of years ago, and I was actually still in the financial industry at that point. And I remember, she had lost her husband. It was actually she was a widow, not a divorcee. But the concept is still similar. And I was so frustrated because there were two companies, two advisors from two separate companies, that were literally swarming her like vultures. And there was the one guy who called her probably every single day, literally called her every day. And I was like, "Okay, timeout. I'm going to encourage you to do nothing." And anybody who knows our personalities, would we ever tell somebody to do nothing? Paul: Nope. Rhonda: But in this case it made sense, just hang tight. Okay? You do not have to make a decision today, and you don't even have to make a decision tomorrow. Give yourself some space and permission, space and permission to just be. Paul: We are raised as kids with that, don't just stand there, do something. But sometimes we need to be, don't just do something, stand there. And that one's a lot harder. It's always easy to make a move. It's real tough to just sit with it and go, "Okay, I'm going to think about it for a while. I'm going to plan." And I think that example of those two advisors, I'm going to go out on a crazy limb here and say probably neither of those advisers had gotten an upfront annual engagement, some kind of retainer, to then be able to coach her throughout the year. They were calling, they had pitched a product, and they were calling to say, "Are you ready to execute on the product yet? Are you ready to execute on the product yet? How are things going? Do you want to meet for lunch? Because at some point during lunch I'll just bring up the product again." Paul: That is how that normally goes. And I know because that's how I was trained originally. That's exactly the process I went through as an advisor. And it took a lot to escape the gravitational pull of all those practices to have a different way to be able to serve and engage clients. Rhonda: Yeah, absolutely. And so that's why I think, yeah, that wealth coordination account, it's simple, it's easy. Again, they can go to whatever bank or credit union they're currently using and say, "Hey, I just need to set up." And finding, to that point, finding a bank that gives you the opportunity to go into one dashboard, see what you have going on, and set up those really simple automatic contributions to their wealth accumulation account. Paul: And the one thing that we do say a little different, if people want to put some amount that's regular and automatic going into the wealth coordination account, we're a fan of that. We also say, by the way, this is going to sound a little bit heretical to people who are more steeped in finance. We say it ought to be a checking account, we don't care what the interest is, because when you buy an asset you've got to write a check, so you better have a checking account you're writing it from, otherwise it has a chance to flow through another account that could be a consumption account. Once it's in there, you want it to be sacrosanct, it's an asset purchasing tool. And then, ultimately, we'll have enough assets to have enough passive income to not reach retirement. Paul: We don't talk with our clients about retirement, in fact our first conversation with clients that we currently call our philosophy conversation. We're thinking about changing it to the unretirement talk, and why we should not be pursuing a retirement, because most people who have done something with their lives and added value to the marketplace don't plan on doing that for 40 years so they can just stop doing any of it. In fact, you wanted just maybe change the mode of doing it. You might want to do it for a charitable cause, you might want to just do it differently. But people want to continue to add value to their world and their overall community. So why would we say retire? Because that word means something's put up on the shelf and is no longer of use. I don't want to feel that way one day. And nor do most of our clients. And when they relate to it that way, no wonder they don't want to plan for it. Paul: So, we just talk about planning for what we call DFI or definite financial independence. When we can get passive income to exceed existing bills, then if you choose to work, you just keep working. We're just going to save 100% of your income. You don't have to be dependent on it anymore because you're living off your passive income. Total paradigm shift. And the financial institutions would rather you just build up a huge pool of money and be really insecure that it's not enough so that they can get all the asset management fees on it, all that. And they're not like black helicopter conspiracy about it, they're just being normal players in the free market. And we just need to equip our clients with knowledge and hopefully some of your listeners with this knowledge to say just set up a wealth coordination account, add money every month, and the last thing I was going to mention, do some of it every month that is you moving it intentionally. Because if you move it intentionally, then every month you have to pause and at least consider your long-term financial wellbeing. And if you do that once a month, you are now doing that, I forget what the stats are, but it's something like for many people, they're only really looking at their planning sometimes once every two years to once every five years. Paul: There's the old saying, "People spend more time planning a family vacation than their long-term financial wellbeing." Well now you're having to at least consider, or have it hit your radar once a month, which right there we find changes people's financial lives if they do nothing else, just saying, "This is going to go into my assets." And then when somebody comes up and says, "Hey, we got some financial products you should buy," you just look to your wealth coordination account, it's like, "Well this is how much I have to put in that thing." You don't have that second part of cognitive load of how do I afford it, and should I do it or not? Now you can actually think much more clearly because your money's already set aside to do assets or not. And now you're just turning to say, "Is this right for me?" Rhonda: Right. And I remember back, this was in the early 2000s, that was when the book Cashflow Quadrant came out, by Robert Kiyosaki. Super classic book that I recommend to everybody because I think it's an easy read. And I think it's something that really helps people get their mind around, okay, well there are two different types of income. There's going to be the active income, job, self-employed, and there's going to be passive income as a business that's generating passive income, and investments. Rhonda: And so, if the listeners have not checked that out, we'll include that in the show notes as well. But it's just a great book to reprogram our mind about passive income. Paul: Yes. I remember reading it, it's kind of funny, I was actually temporarily disabled when I first got exposed to Robert Kiyosaki's stuff. I'd fallen off a horse and shattered an internal organ, and a lot of internal bleeding. So, you're in a massive amount of pain while organs heal, and bleeding is absorbed. So, I guess graphic warning for this podcast, I don't know. But I was on a pretty significant amount of painkillers for about a month after this accident. And I remember reading Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad, Poor Dad and Cashflow Quadrant during that window. And I would read, and I'd go, "I don't remember anything I just read the last five pages." And I have to read them again. And I think I read the books first time through, three times each. Paul: But instilled me this idea that there are things we buy that are assets and there are things that we buy that are liabilities. And by simply understanding the difference between the two, we end up, here's one, we teach our clients that their primary residence is not an asset, never is. Now, it can be if it goes up a lot in value and you decide to move. But we said something that puts money in your pocket now or in the future without changing your lifestyle. Paul: So, you can move from Seattle, say, to Gilbert, Arizona. If you have any listeners in Gilbert, Arizona, I mean no offense. But in Gilbert, Arizona you can buy the same size house for a lot less money than Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, but it's definitely a different lifestyle. So, your primary residence, if you think it's an asset, even if it's paid off, just stop paying your property taxes and the real owner of that asset will eventually knock on your door and politely demand you pay your taxes. That is an example of why we don't consider it an asset. Paul: Now, it probably is a good idea to have a paid off house at some point in the future, lowest possible cost of just providing shelter for yourself and your family. But I've watched women during a divorce hurt themselves financially significantly because they had this, they got a spouse, they've got this concern, that concern, and then what will sometimes happen is they really have a demand of, "I need to stay in this house." And it's like, between the two of you, you were making $800,000 a year, you're going to have some kind of settlement, but you're making 200 of the 800. You should not stay in a home that you afforded at $800,000 a year. You stay in the same neighborhood, we could do all kinds of stuff, but let's not trick ourselves into thinking it's an asset. That's something that, no offense to the realtors that are listeners, but the real estate overall complex has made us want to think it's our biggest investment, when in fact, for most people, their home is actually their biggest liability. Maybe one you should have. I'm not saying you shouldn't own a home ever, that would be crazy. But people just automatically slip into these habits that have been part of society. Paul: Have you heard the story of the little girl who asked her mom about the Christmas ham? Have I told you that before? Rhonda: No. Paul: I hope this is fun and interesting for your audience. Sometimes we have financial practices, things you grew up with. You talked earlier, Rhonda, about children and the way we picked up habits and how our parents talked about money, et cetera. Well, there's this little girl and her mom is baking the Christmas ham. And she's prepping it and putting all the rubs on it and all that, and then right before she puts it in the pan, she cuts off the ends, both ends of the ham. And then plops it in the pan and puts it in the oven. She says, "Mom, I understand why you did all the rest of the stuff. Why did you cut off the ends of the ham?" She says, "You know, I don't know. You should ask Grandma." Paul: So, Grandma comes over for dinner that night, and she says, "Grandma, why is it mom cuts off the ends of the ham right before she puts it? I understood everything else. Why does she cut off the ends of the ham?" She says, "You know, I don't remember why. I just know my mom always did it." So, a little bit later, Great-Grandma comes from the nursing home, comes over for dinner that night. And she goes, "Great-Grandma, I watched mom and she cut off the ends of the ham. Then I talked to Grandma and why she cuts off the end of the ham, and neither one of them remembered why they do it. Why did you do it?" She says, "Oh, honey, we were poor. I didn't have a pan big enough to hold a ham, so I had to cut off the ends to make it fit." Paul: And yet, how many people are still making financial relationship decisions or decisions about their own personal confidence about navigating the world by themselves because of an inherited mindset that is just as unimportant as cutting off the ends of that ham? And these mindsets go unexamined for people all the time. And that's what I love about what you do, frankly, is helping women engage and think through that mindset. That is something and the thing that attracted me to you is that idea of nobody else is teaching this that I could find. And I looked. Rhonda: Yeah, it's awesome. And just to wrap up the ham thing, I love the ends, don't cut off the ends. Paul: I'm the same way. I love the burnt ends of a brownie in a pan, the ends of a ham for sure. Rhonda: I mean, don't cut those off. Right? And yet, though, I think there's... Gosh, that story even goes deeper. Right? It's like, yeah, you know what? We do things because of perhaps the way that we have been taught to do them and we don't know why we do them. And, yeah, what are those things in our life where we are shortchanging ourselves or we're cutting off the best parts? Because we're not taking the time to really evaluate what it is that we bring to the table and why we do it. So, I love that analogy because I think it makes a really great point related to the financial aspect. Paul: Yeah. I think your point is good. That it almost wears on you a little more. What could have been in the ends, mindset-wise, for that entire family. Rhonda: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Paul: That does remind me of something that we put together for your audience, is we have a white paper that we give folks sometimes called The Three Money Mistakes No One Talks About and Six Things You Can Do About Them. And we actually have that set up on our website. Rhonda: Awesome. Paul: It'd be super easy for your audience to get to. You can get it at SFGWA, that's Sound Financial Group, WA, like Whiskey Alpha, dot com/rhonda. And right there, there's just going to be a page where you can drop in your email address and it will just shoot you this white paper. And, for anybody that just thinks they would also get benefit from it, you get a copy of my last book via PDF if they just check that box also, then we'll email them a copy of my last book, Sound Financial Advice. Rhonda: Awesome. Thank you so much. I'm part of an organization called eWomenNetwork and one of their principles, so their focus is helping one million women achieve one million dollars in annual reoccurring revenue. But one of their main principles is give first. And I have to be honest, when we first met, you embraced that principle. And I'm used to being the one who gives first. It was actually like, okay, I love that. Right? I don't think there are enough people who say, "I'm going to give first," not asking for anything in return. Paul: Yes. Rhonda: And I really appreciate that. Paul: Yeah, you're welcome. And maybe for folks in the audience, if any of you are thinking about making that shift in life about the give first piece, I'd never really thought about this before, Rhonda, but something you said there just hit me like a ton of bricks, is that for us to be able to give first we had to have created probably a lot of value for others beforehand because then we're just... For instance, great example is if I hadn't been writing books for years, I wouldn't have a book I could give away now. We sell it, people can find it on Amazon, it's called Sound Financial Advice. But we have another one releasing later this year. So, if I wasn't writing books or if I only wrote one book ever, we would never have the ability to do the giveaway. Paul: And so, we have to create value in the marketplace and in the world first before we can help people first. Because we've all had those people say, "I think I'd really like to help you here," but they have no skill set in that domain. And then you find yourself being offered help and then you're like, "Gosh, I got to look at this knucklehead and figure out what they're good at and what I could do with them. And now you've just created more costs for me in trying to help you." As opposed to somebody being able to listen well enough and say, "I think you might need help in one or two of these areas and I can specifically make a difference for you there." It's a totally different way to help people. And thank you for the acknowledgement around that. Rhonda: Yeah, absolutely. Well, this has been super fun. I always like to wrap up our time together with two things. One is favorite client success story, and then finally your favorite quote. Paul: Ooh, okay. Rhonda: I know, you only can pick one. Paul: I know. Is it okay if I use one for myself? Rhonda: Sure. Absolutely. Paul: I got to do one fun one and then I'll answer your question seriously. So, my fun one is actually a quote that our social media team put out, which is, "I really don't like complimenting myself, but I don't not like it so much that I won't do it in this space." And they put that out on Twitter and Instagram. I was like, "I believe I said it, but gosh, it looked weird in print." Paul: So favorite client success story is actually a woman that was introduced to me who was getting divorced, married to someone who is a very domineering relationship, from what I could take away. And I don't envy anybody on either side of a divorce at all. It's just hard. No way about it. This is somebody you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with and now you're not going to. And all the hurt and shame or doubting yourself, "Did I make a terrible decision?" All this stuff that comes in. It's just terrible. Paul: And I watched her over the course of a year, as we engaged, go through one conversation after the next and coaching her, letting her know she's doing great. She's handling herself well. She let the husband say all the crazy things he wanted to say, which included things to the children that were not. And what people may not know who are listeners, is we work with clients all over the country. So, this woman is on the other side of the country from me. We're connecting via Zoom meeting, and we're just walking her through step by step this entire process. Paul: Okay, when's the next trigger date where something's going to happen? Great. Do you want to talk to me right before that or right after that? Emails coming through, et cetera. And I had a chance to see her the other day. She has now chosen to set up her own business. She was an employee before. Stepping into the world of entrepreneurship. Next introduction is actually to get engaged with the Women's Center for Financial Wellness, just to get some of that additional coaching and confidence around her business. And she has done such an amazing job to actually fully understand what she's doing, where the money is, from being so timid and scared, to now being confident and growing more confident every time I speak to her. And now the things she complains about are the busyness of life with family visiting in town. And no longer the, "Am I going to be okay or what's going to happen?" And that's my favorite story right now. Paul: And then my favorite quote actually is a quote from John Maxwell, if you're familiar with him, kind of general leadership guru. And my favorite quote from him is, "If you're curious what your future is going to look like, look at your habits and practices today. If you're going to change your future, change your habits." Rhonda: I love that. I love that, because that's exactly it. Right? Their future's going to look different and so, yeah, how can we be positioning our thoughts and attitudes and beliefs right now that are going to impact the future? And of course, anything by John Maxwell is always awesome. Paul: Yeah, that guy. And I know it to be right. I've had a chance to see him speak several times in person, and, gosh, he just such a great way about him. One of my favorite things about the way he speaks is he just looks like he's sort of making it up at the time. But when you've seen him multiple times, you realize he has laid everything out from dropping the note cards, to all of it. He has taken it on as a real performance he's doing. Not for his own sake to look good, but rather everything is crafted around impacting the people he gets a chance to interface with. I also think it's a lot of what you do, Rhonda, in that in our time together you've always taken super seriously, and you know it's kind of like life or death with the women that you work with that you have a chance to help them set themselves in a new direction and make a difference for them forever based upon just being coached by you and your organization for a year, and their whole lives could be different. Rhonda: Yeah, for sure. Paul: That doesn't exist out there the same way for these women that you deliver. And I love it. So, I'm so glad I could be here with you today. Rhonda: Yeah, thank you so much. Hey, this has been awesome. Certainly, if folks want to connect with you, they can reach out, grab that white paper. We'll include all your contact info in the show notes. But I just want to thank you for taking time out of your also busy, crazy schedule to chat with us today. Paul: You're so welcome, and it's a pleasure to be here. QUOTE: "I really don't like complimenting myself, but I don't not like it so much that I won't do it in this space." – Paul Adams "If you're curious what your future is going to look like, look at your habits and practices today. If you're going to change your future, change your habits." – John Maxwell RESOURCES: The Three Money Mistakes No One Talks About and Six Things You Can Do About Them Cashflow Quadrant by Robert T. Kiyosaki Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki Sound Financial Advice by Paul Adams Podcast: Your Business Your Wealth Episode 131: Wealth Coordination Account: Big Wealth, Small Business with Paul Adams and Cory Sheperd CONTACT INFORMATION: Paul Adams CEO & Founder Sound Financial Group info@sfgwa.com (855) 578-8724 LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram Visit the Women’s Financial Wellness Center for a full directory listing of experts. Be sure to reach out if you would like to connect personally with the Women’s Financial Wellness Center. 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The Story of Boniface Like to ask that you take your Bibles and turn in them to 2 Timothy 4. I was going to say, for the last time, but I hope it isn't the last time, at least for you personally, but this is our last sermon in 2 Timothy chapter 4. And our series has been entitled Boldness and Faithfulness in the Gospel. I'd like to begin this morning by telling you a story of boldness from 13 centuries ago. I'm going to bring you to a small clearing, in a forest in Germany, in Hesse. The people who came from that area were called Hessians. They came to be known as some of the most powerful and courageous soldiers in the world. The year is 723 AD and their ancestors were pagan worshippers of the thunder god, Thor. And they believe that the thunder God had with his power inhabited a special sacred oak. And they used to gather around this oak to worship and so that day there was a gathering of pagan oak worshippers. And in the midst of these pagan oak worshippers strode a man with an ax. His name was Boniface. He came from England and he was a missionary for the Lord Jesus Christ. He pushed his way through the crowd, took that ax. And what do you think he did with the ax? He started chop down that sacred oak tree. Now, I don't know what the pagans did while they watched him begin this chopping, I think they were just stunned that somebody would do something like this. They were amazed at his boldness and his courage, and he continued to chop. Now, recently I bought an ax to do firewood, chop firewood, I can't even imagine how long it would take to chop down a whole oak tree when it takes me so long just to split a log in half. But he was chopping and chopping at that oak tree while the crowd probably yelled in derision, or was shocked into paralysis. Just when he reached the point of exhaustion, now and this is the amazing thing. A wind blew through the woods at just the right angle and knocked the tree down. Isn't that incredible? The power of God knocked that oak tree to the ground and all of a sudden the people's attitude changed from anger and outrage to one of shocked silence at the power of God. Boniface put that ax down, turned and preached the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to those people. And the demonstration of power which they understood was so effective that many of them came to believe in Jesus Christ. And the next thing they did was they took the oak wood that was laying there on the ground and built a church out of it. Some of those people that were there that day, are up in heaven today praising our Lord Jesus Christ and worshipping Him because of the boldness and the faithfulness of one man, Boniface who took an ax to that sacred oak. Proverbs 28:1 says, "The wicked flee when no one is pursuing, but the righteous are bold as a lion." Are you bold as a lion, in your witness for Jesus Christ? By the power of the Holy Spirit, you can be. The problem is, there's another lion prowling around in this world, isn't there? It's not just us, there is Satan. 1 Peter 5:8 says, "The devil is like a roaring lion who prowls around seeking someone to devour." So there's a contest going on in this world, lion versus lion. Psalm 91:13 says, "You will tread on the lion and the cobra. You will trample the great lion and the serpent." Look that one up. Psalm 91:13 gives us a promise of victory over the lion, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Boldness of Paul Now, the Apostle Paul, he knew of this kind of boldness. He lived it every day. Here in the last 14 verses of this chapter, as Paul goes through discussing various people in his ministry, the network of his friends. We're going to see the human side of the Apostle Paul. You remember last week we talked about that powerful epitaph that he gives to his life and his ministry. "I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in-store for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord himself, the righteous judge will award to me on that day. And not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing." So here's the apostle Paul so bold, so confident in his reward as he is filled with a longing for the second coming of Jesus Christ. And then suddenly we get a little bit of a change and we see perhaps the weaker side of Paul, the human side. The side that's lonely, that's cold, that's needy, perhaps even fearful. And the amazing power of this, is that it brings Paul and his example right home to us. You see Paul's example can slip away from us like a balloon that slips out of our hands. Have you ever seen that? A string or a ribbon slips out of a child's hand, and it goes higher and higher. And we think we can't attain to Paul boldness. Well, yes you can. And as we're going to read through these 14 verses, we're going to see just how human Paul was. And thus bring that example and that power back to where it belongs, in the power of the Lord Jesus Christ in a simple believer. Starting at verse 9, chapter 4. "Do your best to come to me quickly. For Demas, because he loved this world has deserted me and is gone to Thessalonica. Crescens has gone to Galatia and Titus to Dalmatia. Only Luke is with me. Get Mark and bring him with you because he is helpful in my ministry. I send Tychicus to Ephesus. When you come, bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas, and my scrolls especially the parchments. Alexander the metal worker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. You too should be on your guard against him because he strongly opposed our message. At my first defense no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them. But the Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was delivered from the lion's mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and will bring me safely to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet Priscilla and Aquila and the household of Onesiphorus. Erastus stayed in Corinth, and I left Trophimus sick in Miletus. Do your best to get here before winter. Eubulus greets you and so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brothers. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you. The Lord be with you." The Human Side of Paul As we look at these final 14 verses and we see Paul running through the list of the people that he knew, we see the human side of this great apostle. We see just how needy he was and it begins right there at verse 9, he says to Timothy, "Do your best to come quickly." Now, we saw in chapter 1 how much Paul loved Timothy and how he longed to see him. How they had separated with tears, how they loved one another and their separation came with tears. And now he says, "Do your best to come to me quickly." But do you realize how impossible this would have been? You see the Apostle Paul was about to die. He says, "I'm already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time has come for my departure." He knows that he's in between two trials and that Roman justice once it started to move, moved quickly. And so he probably would not survive very long. And yet he's writing a letter which he will hand probably to Luke and Luke will take it out. And it could take weeks or even months to reach Timothy. And even if Timothy were to drop everything and come immediately on the next ship toward Rome, it could take weeks or even months for him to arrive at Rome. Timothy was at least four or six months away. Do you see the loneliness, the humanness of Paul? He knows he's about to die, and yet he's asking Timothy to come as soon as he can. And why was it? And he says the same thing in verse 21, "Do your best to get here before winter." He wants Timothy to come. At winter the navigation would be difficult, it would be hard for him to reach him. And so he says, "Please come." Why this sad, almost pathetic appeal for someone to come and he knows he's not going to make it in time. Some have Defected I think it's because of the situation with Demas. In verse 10 he says that, Demas because he loved this world has deserted me and has gone to Thessalonica. Now, I thought a lot about Demas this week. Because God throughout this letter has been challenging the church to boldness and faithfulness, in preaching the Gospel. But I think that the American church today is full of people like Demas. People who have come to love this present world, age, that's a better way to translate it. Demas loved this present world system, the way it's set up. It's the very thing that the Apostle John said that we should never love. When he said, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life, comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires will pass away. But the man who does the will of God lives forever." John said, Don't love the world. But Demas did love the world. And he turned his back on the Apostle Paul and all the more he turned his back on Jesus. And why? Because he loved this world. He was afraid of losing his life, or he was afraid of losing his possessions or something precious to him in this world. Jesus said, What good would it be for a man if he gains the whole world and he had forfeits his soul. But what did Demas trade it all for? For Thessalonica. What was there in Thessalonica that attracted Demas so much that he turned his back on Jesus Christ. I guess we'll never know. I hope today that I'm not speaking to anyone like Demas. I hope I'm speaking to people who have not turned their back on their responsibility to be bold and faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ. Who have not so fallen in love with this present world system that you haven't opened your mouth to say anything about Jesus in the last year or two or five. Some Have Moved on For Fruitful Gospel Ministry I hope I'm not talking to people like that. But Demas, his example was so discouraging to Paul that he said, "Timothy please come because Demas has left me." Well, he also says Crescens has left, and so has Titus and Tychicus and a various groups of other people. These are various co-workers of Paul. There's no sense of their defection. They're just doing their ministry. They're gone to various places. Do you ever wonder where Dalmatia is? You ever heard of the 101 Dalmatians? Well Dalamatia is the ancient word for what we call now Yugoslavia or Bosnia. And so Crescens got sent there or Titus got sent there, and Crescens to continue the work in Galatia. And then in verse 12 he says, "I send Tychicus to Ephesus." Paul with his apostolic authority is orchestrating this whole thing, he's sending these people out to continue the preaching of the Gospel. But he's leaving himself lonely. Do you see his selflessness? He's sending all of these people who could have stood by his side out so that they could continue to do the work. He said only Luke is with me. Now, Luke of course, was the one who wrote the Book of Acts who knew Paul so well that he was able to travel with him and there he was in the prison cell. God had not left Paul completely alone. But Luke stayed with him. And as I said, it was probably Luke that carried this letter for the first out, maybe he was the first one who ever copied it. Praise be to God for Luke. And so therefore, we can go through this and study it. But then we look at verse 11 at someone else, and this is the flip side of Demas. The Restoration of Mark In verse 11, it says, "Get Mark and bring him with you because he is helpful to me in my ministry." Now, that's just one line, isn't it? But there's a world behind it. Mark whose full name is John Mark, was Barnabas' cousin, and he and Barnabas joined Saul of Tarsus, or Paul on their first missionary journey. The three of them were a team. The problem was that the persecution got a little too difficult for Mark. And he cut out in the middle of the ministry. He abandoned Paul, turned his back on him and went back to Jerusalem. He failed, he deserted his post. And when the time came for the second missionary journey, Barnabas whose name means son of encouragement, put his arm around Mark and said, "I think you're ready. I think that you've realized your mistake, you've come back to Jesus and you're ready now to continue serving Jesus. Let's go back and talk to Paul. So they went back and talked to Paul and said, 'Okay, we're ready for our second missionary journey, here's John Mark, let's take him along again.'" What do you think Paul said? "Oh, great, I'm so glad to see you've been fully restored to the ministry." No, that's not what he said at all. He said, "No way. You take him and you get him out of my sight. He failed us once he's not going to fail us again." And he was stubborn and he would not listen to Barnabas. Barnabas said, "Paul, I understand your attitude, but he has repented, he wants to come back. He wants to be part of an evangelistic ministry, he wants to share his faith again. Yes, he failed in the past. But he's ready to be restored, won't you accept him?" But he wouldn't do it. Turned his back. Now, the apostle Paul was a human being. And he made mistakes, and this was one of his mistakes, he was wrong. And he admits he was wrong, not in so many words, but here he says, "Get Mark and bring him with you because he is helpful in my ministry." He can help me here. That's an admission of a mistake on his part. Now, it's one thing to be a bold zealous leader for God, but you can often trample people. And in that case, that's what happened. Now. I may be talking, not to some Demas's today, but to some Marks. Some people who know that they need to be witnesses for Jesus Christ but just have not been able to do it through various reasons, just through habit, through a lack of training, through fear. You have not shared your faith in the last year or two or five. You've not invited anyone to church, but you want to. Then Mark is your guiding star. He's the one you look to. And you say, if Mark can do it, I can be restored too. Jesus is ready, willing, and able to accept someone back like me. Oh, we read the second gospel, the Gospel of Mark as the fruit of that restoration, don't we? There's so much fruit that comes from that, and God is ready and willing to accept people back who are not or have not been up to this point, bold and faithful witnesses for Jesus Christ. Maybe you're not ready to take an ax and walk into the midst of a bunch of tree worshippers and chop it down. But you may be ready to speak to your waitress and invite her to church or to bring some food over to a neighbor and share the gospel with them. You may be ready to take the next step of boldness. I challenge you to do so. Mark is a good example for you. In verse 13, it says, "When you come bring the cloak that I left with Carpus at Troas." Now, what is this cloak and why does he make this request? Again, the human side of Paul. He was cold, he was cold. And he wanted the cloak to keep him warm. Winter was coming. And I can assure you that Roman prison was not heated. But what's sad about this, is that there is a group of Christians right there in the Rome... Area of Rome who could have fulfilled this request, but who didn't. At the end of the letter, look what he says in verse 21, "Do your best to get here before winter. Eubulus greets you. And so do Pudens, Linus, Claudia and all the brothers." Who are these? These are Roman Christians. Didn't one of them have a cloak to spare? Probably they did. But why didn't they bring them to Paul? Because they were afraid. If they brought a cloak to Paul, maybe they'd get arrested and they'd be in prison too. The human side. And so he says, "Bring me a cloak, because I'm cold." Do you think he ever saw that cloak? Probably not. He continued being cold and he also tells him to bring the scrolls and parchments. Reading material in ancient language, they had scrolls and parchments. That's what they read. Probably this is Paul's copy of the Old Testament. He wanted to keep his mind fresh. Can you imagine the mind-numbing hours in a dark roman prison with nothing to do? He prayed and he worshipped God in his mind and brought to his memory, a scripture memory verses as best he could, but he wanted something to read. The human side of Paul. And then we see in verse 14-15, "Alexander, the metal worker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done. You too should be on your guard against him because he strongly opposed our message." Here's Alexander not the metal worker, but the persecutor. Now, a metal worker was somebody that took a cup or some kind of metal, and pounded it around an anvil with a hammer until it was in the shape that the person wanted. But how much worse was the hammer of persecution in the hand of this man Alexander, as he pounded the Lord's disciples. Now, Paul understands that he himself was hurt by this. He was damaged by it. It could be, we don't know, but it could be that it was Alexander that betrayed Paul to the Roman authorities and got him into this final difficulty that he was in. We don't really know. But he commits that whole situation to God. He says, "The Lord will repay him for what he has done." This is in line with what Paul taught in Romans 12, He says, "Do not take revenge my friends, but leave room for the wrath of God. For it is written, "It is mine to avenge. I will repay" says God. And God has a special repayment for anyone who rejecting the Gospel instead stands firm against it, and fights against it. Like Alexander the persecutor did. The Lord remembers it all, and He will defend his people. Just not yet. But secondly, he warns Timothy to be careful of him. The real issue is not that he attacked me, but that he opposes the Gospel. And Timothy when you bring that same gospel, you're going to come under the same persecution. Stay away from Alexander and be careful. So in all of these things, we see the human side of Paul. Don't we? Loneliness at the End We see his loneliness where he says, "Come before winter" to Timothy. We see his physical coldness, he needs a cloak. His isolation, nobody will even bring him the cloak. His boredom and that he needs some books. All of this sets the stage for what I think is his greatest triumph, his greatest triumph. In verses 16-18, it's described. "At my first defense no one came to my support, but everyone deserted me. May it not be held against them." Again, we see Paul's openness as he's standing alone. Now, what is he talking about here? The first defense in a Roman trial work this way. The accused was brought before the judge. In this case who was the judge? It was the Emperor Nero. He had appealed to Caesar, to the emperor, and to Caesar he went. And now he's got an audience in front of the Emperor. And at the first defense the charges are read, and then witnesses for the defense are called to see if the case can be thrown out of court. Why waste the court's time? Right? So if there's some reason to dismiss the case the witnesses are heard. So the case was called against Paul, the charges were read and Paul stood there and waited for his defenders humanly speaking, to come up and defend Paul. And no one came, he stood alone. Can you imagine how embarrassing that was, and how scary? Because they would go on with the next part of the trial and once you got into the next part of that trial, you're a dead man. So Paul stood there alone. But that wasn't really what was on Paul's mind. Paul had something else on his mind. And that was the completion of his ministry. You see Paul's greatest concern was finishing the ministry that God had given him. Turn in your Bibles, put your finger in 2 Timothy 4, and turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter 9. Fascinating verse in Acts chapter 9, in which Paul's entire ministry is prophesied to Ananias. In Acts 9:15 The Lord says to Ananias, "Go, this man is my chosen instrument to carry my name before the Gentiles and their kings." Can underline that. "And their kings and before the people of Israel", verse 16, "I will show him how much he must suffer for my name." Proclamation Before Caesar Now, Paul was prophesied, it was prophesied about Paul that he would carry the Gospel to the Gentiles and their kings. Who was the most powerful king of all the Gentiles? Without question it was Caesar. It was the Emperor, who in this case was Nero. It was prophesied that Paul would carry the gospel right into Nero's ears, into his mind. That he would stand before Nero and give a defense for Christianity. Now, why did God want this done? I don't know. Do you think that Nero converted? No. But it was a witness, the first clear witness of Jesus right to the emperor of Rome, and God wanted it done. In verse 16, of chapter 9, there he says, "I'll show him how much he must suffer for my name." It's not going to be a triumphant proclamation in which Nero takes off his robes and becomes a Christian. It's going to be a proclamation of suffering, but the proclamation is going to be made. So Paul had a ministry, and the ministry had a finish line. And what was that finish line? That he would stand before the emperor and preach the gospel to him. And that was his desire, but he had an obstacle. What was his greatest obstacle? It was his own weakness. You think that Paul's not weak? You think he's some kind of powerful apostolic superman who can do anything all the time without fear? Well read 1 Corinthians 2:3. He says there, "I came to you in weakness, and fear and in much trembling." Doesn't that sound human? Have you ever been in weakness, in fear and in much trembling to share the Gospel with someone. I know I have. You see boldness is not an absence of those things. It's the power to press through those things to do what you should do anyway. God is not going to take away those butterfly feelings you get in your stomach when you go to witness to your neighbor. He's just going to give you the power to do what's right anyway. So his greatest obstacle was his own weakness. And in Ephesians 6, listen to this. He says, "Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me, so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly as I should." Why did Paul ask the Ephesians to pray for his own boldness? Because he knew that he needed that prayer. That he could give in to weakness and fear and trembling. Paul was human just like you. So what was it that gave him the strength and the courage and the power to stand firm? It was Jesus Christ and He would need Christ' strength and his power. He said, "The Lord stood at my side and gave me strength, so that through me the gospel might be fully proclaimed and all the Gentiles might hear it." Who is all the Gentiles? He's including the insane Emperor, Nero. He heard the Gospel through my mouth, and I was delivered from the lion's mouth. You see the deliverance from the lion's mouth is not that he doesn't get executed, he knows he's going to be executed. In verse 18, he said, "The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom." That's called death my friends. The attack is not a matter of physical death. It's that he would, in the common way of speaking, wimp out at that key moment and not preach the gospel to the emperor. You can imagine the Emperor had the Roman soldiers around there with their swords out. He wanted Paul's renunciation of Christianity, he wanted Paul to turn his back on Christ. And say, "Well I had been saying something about Jesus, but I don't really have anything to say anymore. I'm not a Christian. What a triumph that would have been for the lion, Satan. "But I was delivered from the lion's mouth," says Paul. I preached the Gospel boldly and "the Lord will rescue me from every evil attack." Do you see what a triumph this was over weakness? Do you see brothers and sisters how the same power at work in Jesus Christ is at work in you too if you're truly a Christian? To free you from weakness and trembling, and to be bold and faithful in the preaching of the gospel for Jesus Christ. In this series, we've seen a consistent call, an appeal to Christians, not just to Timothy, but to all Christians, to be bold and faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ. I know it's all Christians. Verse 22 says, "The Lord be with your spirit." The "your" in Greek is singular. And then it says, "Grace be with you" or as you would say, "Grace be with you all", how's that? That means with everybody, all of you. It's too bad the English can't differentiate between singular and plural. Paul had in mind the whole church when he wrote this. He wants us all to have the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ standing with us so that we can be bold and faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ. Recently one of you, I don't know who it is, gave me a book by Hugh Hewitt entitled "The Embarrassed Believer." Powerful book. Hugh Hewitt is a PBS announcer in the Los Angeles Syndicate. And he has written this book about the embarrassed believer. To challenge Christians to not be ashamed of Jesus Christ, but to testify boldly that they are Christians. Do you know what he put on the cover? I feel like Oprah. I never watched Oprah, but I've heard that she's always plugging books. I plug this book today. The embarrassed believer. What's on the cover? Can you see it? It's a bushel, upside down. Why do you think that he puts a bushel upside down on the cover? No one lights a lamp and puts it under a bushel. Instead he puts it up on a stand and it gives light to everyone in the house. You, says Jesus, are the light of the world. I didn't light you to hide you under a bushel. Is there a bushel over you today? If there's a bushel over you, what put it there? Is it your own lack of Bible knowledge? Did you not study the Bible carefully, so you could give a good defense for your faith? Is it some sin pattern that Satan's trapped you into? Is it fear? Is it that you're focused too much on this world and you've forgotten the world to come. Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit can rip off that bushel and make you a bold and faithful witness to Jesus Christ. Maybe someday there'll be a number of ax-bearing First Baptist church members dragging that ax and finding whatever sacred oak there is in our popular culture today. Oh, I pray for that day. Be bold and faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ. We have a gospel to preach to the nations. We have a gospel to preach here in Durham and we're going to preach it here in this church and outside the walls of this church. May it never be that these four walls become a bushel and the light gets hid inside this building, however beautiful it may be. It is my desire that anyone who comes into this building hears the Gospel preached. And I hope that I'm speaking to someone today who's never given their life to Jesus Christ. If so, today could be the day of salvation. At Christmas time, we celebrate that Jesus came to the earth as a human baby. But do you know why he had that body? So that it could get nailed to the cross as a sacrifice for your sin.
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