Podcasts about Rancho Cucamonga

In this episode we chat with special guest Jin-Soo Huh, a partner at The Learning Accelerator, with extensive experience in education and innovation. We discuss: Jin-Soo's Jeopardy experience (3:12)Growing up in Rancho Cucamonga, his parents' influence on his cultural identity, and life at Duke (5:10)Gay and Asian intersectionality, coming out stories, and the journey telling his parents (21:31)Being hyperactive, where it all started, and how it shows up in his life (47:24)

The drilling of holes in western San Bernardino County signals another step toward the coming bullet train from Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas. A much-ballyhooed release of documents related to the Jeffrey Epstein case devolved into anger and disappointment Thursday, with conservative figures and even Attorney General Pam Bondi alleging FBI agents were hiding the full case files. The Catholic world is gripped with uncertainty as Pope Francis, 88, remains in a Rome hospital because of a complex lung infection and other serious ailments. The Vatican said on Sunday morning that after a peaceful night, Francis had drunk coffee and read newspapers. Americans have a sinking feeling that inflation will come roaring back, according to this month's update of the University of Michigan's long-running consumer sentiment index.

What skills will students need to lead the charge for events like the LA28 Olympics and the FIFA World Cup? Monique Reaves, Chief Revenue Officer of the iconic Rose Bowl stadium and the first Latina in an executive role at the Rose Bowl Operating Company, discusses the importance of aligning educational programs with industry demands to prepare future leaders. She advocates for incorporating creativity, sustainability, and diversity into workforce development while emphasizing accessible, community-centered hiring practices. Through innovative collaborations, such as the Rose Bowl's partnership with AEG Golden Voice, Reaves illustrates how blending tradition with modern strategies can drive economic growth, elevate event management standards, and empower communities to meet the challenges of global events.   You'll learn:  Why educators and institutions need to collaborate with industries for workforce needs. The role of workforce diversity in serving communities during significant events like the LA28 Olympics. What new requirements in event management educational programs should address. How the event management industry can balance tradition and innovation. Why it is crucial to emphasize diversity and inclusion in leadership roles for workforce development.   About the Guest: Monique Reaves is the Chief Revenue Officer for the Rose Bowl Operating Company and is responsible for all concert and sporting event bookings. Leading the charge on revenue management and generation for Americas Stadium, she oversees and supports stadium sponsorship, premium seating, enterprise events, and tours sales departments. Most notably, she booked the Rose Bowl Stadium's first sellout concert of two consecutive nights by a female artist of Latin-American descent, Karol G. She has been a part of the sports and entertainment industry since 2009, following a successful internship with America's Stadium, where she has since received several national accolades for her risk-taking revenue ventures. Before joining the Rose Bowl Stadium full-time, Monique held positions with American Golf and Lucky Strike Entertainment.  Monique graduated from Long Beach State and resides in Rancho Cucamonga, CA, with her family.   Engage with us: LinkedIn, Instagram & Facebook: @PasadenaCityCollegeEWD Join our newsletter for more on this topic: ewdpulse.com Visit: PCC EWD website   More from Monique Reaves & the Rose Bowl Stadium Website: https://www.rosebowlstadium.com/ LinkedIn: @moniquemreaves & @rose-bowl-operating-company Instagram, X/Twitter, & Facebook: @RoseBowlStadium   Partner with us! Contact our host Salvatrice Cummo directly: scummo@pasadena.edu Want to be a guest on the show? Click HERE to inquire about booking    Find the transcript of this episode here   Please rate us and leave us your thoughts and comments on Apple Podcasts; we'd love to hear from you!  

If you've been banging your head against the wall trying to get your team (or yourself!) to prospect consistently, these tips are for you. In this episode, I answer a question from Paul in Rancho Cucamonga, California, who's building and leading a remote sales team in the logistics industry and needs to find a way to get his salespeople to prospect consistently . Then I tackle a follow-up question from a sales leader at one of our live events on how to keep his salespeople motivated to prospect every day.   Paul's Challenge: Driving Consistent Prospecting Call Blocks Paul leads a medium-sized logistics company with reps spread out in California, Utah, and El Salvador. He's already done a great job by running a book club around my book, Fanatical Prospecting, but he needed practical tips for ensuring his team actually implements daily call blocks. Here's the advice I shared: Make Prospecting a Daily Conversation As a leader, you need to talk about prospecting every single day. Yes, you'll feel like a broken record, but that repetition is crucial for setting expectations. “Show Up” for the Call Blocks If your team was all in one building, you'd simply gather them on the sales floor and power through. Remotely, you can replicate this by scheduling a set time (e.g., 8:00 a.m. PT) and getting everyone on a video call. You can't stand next to them physically, but you can still see them, and they can see you. It's social pressure and moral support rolled into one. Run High-Intensity Sprints (HIPS) Instead of asking for hours of uninterrupted calling, break it into short bursts—10, 15, or 20-minute sprints. Let them pause to catch their breath, then go again. Keep a virtual whiteboard and track dials, contacts, and appointments in real time. Make it fun and competitive. Overcome the Complaints Reps might moan about being “micromanaged,” but if you keep it fun and energetic, they'll often appreciate the structure. Focus on results, not just the dials. Question: How Do I Motivate My Salespeople to Keep Prospecting? We also addressed a question from a leader who was attending one of our Sales Gravy Live events. Their team struggles to maintain high call numbers consistently. They might hit 100 dials a day for three days, then crash back down. The sales leader asked: “How do we keep our reps pumped for prospecting?” Here's the Reality Check Nobody Truly “Loves” Prospecting: Prospecting is hard, and most of us won't naturally get excited about it. But we do get excited about closing deals, landing appointments, and hitting our numbers. You Must Be a Teflon Sales Leader: Stay relentlessly focused on prospecting, day in and day out. The moment you relax your standards, the team will follow suit. If you don't treat prospecting as a top priority, neither will they. Be like teflon: no excuses stick. Lead by Example Get out on the “floor” (or on the Zoom call) and make calls with them. Don't hide in your office. When they see you doing the work, they'll know you mean business. Use the Power of HIPS Those high-intensity sprints work just as well here. Run “power hours” with quick breaks in between and track your team's progress publicly. Leading Prospecting Activity Is an Infinite Game Let's face it: prospecting is often the least-liked activity in sales. It's easy to push aside because it involves repeated rejection, logistical juggling, and tight discipline. Yet it's the lifeblood of any thriving pipeline—no prospecting, no leads, no deals, no revenue. And if you have a remote team, like Paul does, you're dealing with additional hurdles: time zones, limited supervision, and diminished peer pressure. It's all too easy for your reps to skip their “call block” if you're not right there to keep them accountable. As a sales leader, you can't just “fix” prospecting once and forget about it. The moment you move on, your team will start slacking. You have to show up, be present,

‍Is your dental practice ready to break free from the ordinary and embrace new marketing strategies that truly make a difference? This episode features Shane Simmons from Crimson Media Group, who walks us through unique approaches that transform how dentists connect with their local communities. By leveraging the power of local Facebook groups, Shane shares the secrets to building meaningful relationships and promoting dental services through community engagement. Whether it's through exciting collaborations like organizing yoga sessions or axe throwing events with fellow local business owners, the insights shared in this conversation will open your eyes to the potential of grassroots marketing.But it's not just about joining any group—it's about authentically positioning yourself as a part of the community. Shane shares the value of engaging with these groups using a personal profile to foster trust and connection. These small steps can lead to significant benefits, including cross-promotion with businesses boasting strong social media influence. To cap it all off, Shane extends an exclusive offer to the audience—a complimentary marketing analysis aimed at unveiling the intricacies of local advertising and helping you position your practice for maximum impact.What You'll Learn in This Episode:Innovative marketing strategies tailored for dental practices.How to effectively use local Facebook groups for community engagement.The benefits of collaborating with local businesses for mutual growth.Why personal profiles are better than business pages for building trust online.How Shane's marketing analysis can help you understand your local market.Discover new marketing insights that could reshape your dental practice—tune in now!‍(This episode originally aired on December 26th, 2022)‍‍You can reach out to Shane Simmons here:Website: crimsonmediagroup.comFacebook: facebook.com/crimsonmediamarketing‍Love the Podcast? Let Us Know How We're Doing on Apple Podcasts!‍If you want your questions answered on Monday Morning Episodes, ask me on these platforms:My Newsletter: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/newsletter/The Dental Marketer Society Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2031814726927041‍Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)‍Michael: Hey Shane. So talk to us about uncommon marketing methods. Tell me one or a couple tactics or strategies that will help bring in new patients. Shane: Yeah, so Michael, we've got one that a everybody can do. So if you've ever been in, you know, these local, like Facebook groups in your communities, you'll find that there's a Facebook group for everybody, moms, dads, but one in particular is small businesses in the area, and it's usually like shop small business or shop, you know, the community that you're living in.And one of the things that we're starting to have clients do is get into these groups and find someone who has a small business in that group that's in your community that could come to your office and do some sort of, Event or just like team building exercise at the practice. so I'll get where, how this kind of comes into getting new patients in a bit.Mm-hmm. . But the first way that you can look at this, is like as a team building opportunity. So think of people like, Yoga instructors or think of someone who maybe teaches people how to meditate. Invite that person to do a session at your office for your team one day. And one, it's gonna be a great team building exercise.It's gonna be something that's beneficial to, you know, everybody on the team. But what you can then do is say, Hey, we would love for, you know, you to post this on your Facebook and your Instagram account. You know, talking about how you had this session here. We'll share. To our audience that way in case you know, people can go check out your yoga studio or whatever the case may be, but then if they're sharing that they came to your practice, they're going to be putting your practice in front of their entire audience too.So it's obviously ideal. To find somebody who has a decent social media following, like, you probably wouldn't wanna do this with a yoga instructor, or somebody who teaches medication who's not on social media. Mm-hmm. . But, finding someone who has an audience and, and cross promoting with each other, um, through that.But then the second piece of this, which is, you know, really the cool thing is if you're in with the Facebook group where you found that individual, you can then, Pictures and videos of that day where that yoga instructor or whoever came to the practice and give them a shout out and tag them in their business in that post saying, Hey, we wanna thank, you know Michael's yoga studio for coming to our dental practice and Rancho Cucamonga and doing a full day, you know, or a half day session or whatever the case is.It's like definitely go check them out. And oh, by the way, if you guys need a dentist in the area, we would love to, be your dental home. So it's a way that you can promote yourself, but while doing so, you're promoting another business and you're not going to get kicked out of the Facebook group because it's not like you're just going in there.And dropping a promotion, it's like you used somebody's services in that group. You supported another local business. So it looks, you know, it shows that you're supporting the community while also just putting yourself out there that, hey, you know, we're also here. We would love to, to help those in the community.So that's really what we're starting to find is Almost like a ground marketing technique really, but just doing it through these Facebook groups, and again, there's so many different options that you could do with this. You could do an onsite, somewhere else where you actually go and do like, a obstacle course.You know, somebody like that owns like an obstacle course thing in the area, whatever it is. I know one thing that's like really popular right now in the Midwest, I don't know if, it's like nationally. Ax throwing is like a thing Okay. That a lot of people like go and do now. So, you know, it's, it's all about just how can you get and support other businesses in the area and then talk to that person and ask about how can we, cross promote each other to our audiences to drive more business.And the great thing about it is, it's free with the exception of whatever you may pay to get the person to come out and do the event, or if you go do. , activity at their place of business. Yeah. Okay. Michael: So then how would you recommend we go about doing this? From step one, we're going inside the Facebook group.We're looking betting, and then we're like, okay, let's see who has a good following. So would that take some time, I would assume, right. . Shane: Yeah. So, yeah, it's just a little bit of groundwork at the beginning. Mm-hmm. . So the first thing you wanna do is, you know, go to Facebook and search small business and then type in whatever, city, town you live in.That's the first thing. And join all of those groups, um, and you would join those from your personal, profile, your Facebook profile, but make sure it has. Listed on your profile, owner, dentist at such and such practice, so that that's listed in there. So first thing you wanna do is join the group.Once you've joined the groups, you can then search the group members. And the first thing that I would personally do I would scroll through the Facebook group and look at. Who's actively posting in there? You know, who are people that are regularly posting or promoting something in that group and looking at what it is that they, do.Are they real estate agents? Are they gym owners? what is it that is their profession? If you find somebody who's really active and you can. , that person could really benefit. my team, we could do something fun with them, have them come out to the office, do a day session, whatever the case is. Then that would be the person, you're trying to, reach. So I would just scroll through the group, look at, see who the active posters are, and then just make a list of, how could we use this service? Could we use this service? And, and then, you know, from there you can check out their.Page profile and see how many followers they have, and then it's from there, Michael, it's just about sending a message to them, on that group and introducing yourself as a fellow small business owner in the community who had saw one of their posts and was like, Hey, I would love to, do this or have my team do this.How can we, get set up with you guys and maybe promote each other, um, in the community. So it's really kind of three steps joining the. Researching the group and finding out, who would be a good fit to kind of partner with. Mm-hmm. and then just reaching out to that person and so far the offices that have done this that we work with, nobody's been turned down because everybody wants to partner with another local business if they can to help mutually benefit each other. Michael: Yeah. Do you think they should also kind of like once they come in, let's just say it's like the ACT's throwing, right? You go to them. We ask like, Hey, is the manager here or the owner here, kind of thing. Like that. Or, Shane: that's a great question, Michael.Usually what we're finding as of right now at least, is it's usually the owners or like the main, manager, branch manager, who is like the member of these groups. Mm-hmm. , um, because they're the actively, the ones that are trying to. Grow their, footprint in the community. So if for these smaller businesses, it's usually, you know, the owners that, that we're seeing in the groups.So it's a lot easier to, you know, be talking to the, the main person rather than going to their website and then having to see, you know, hey, who's the owner or the manager and contacting them. That way you may have a hard time getting through. that initial gatekeeper, but if you're reaching out to the owner directly on Facebook and you'll be able to find that out, you know, obviously by clicking on their profile and it should say if they're the owner slash operator or whatever the case is of mm-hmm.such and such business. Michael: I like how you mentioned join from the personal Facebook because that, I mean, I get that question.Everybody gives that question like, should we, they wanna join with their like business Facebook? Why is that Shane: not a good idea? Yeah, because I think we're the business. if you create, you know, business page and you try to join through the business group, it just doesn't have that personal connection that, you're looking for.And it can sometimes raise red flags with group admins. I mean, you know, Michael, you're group admin. It can raise red flags of us. This person just gonna come in and spam the group, nobody wants that who's running one of these Facebook groups. So when you join in from your personal profile, it's showing that you're actually there trying to. Meaningful connections. You're not afraid to hide your face right, or hide behind the business, and you're just more likely to be looked at as like a legitimate person or poster contributor to that group, rather than going in and joining through the business page where in that case there's just no personal, touch to that.Michael: Yeah, I can see that a hundred percent. Awesome. And then so when we go in there, we're talking to them, let's just say we're going in there, talking to them and then, The owner's like, Hey, yeah, yeah, come on in. Should we do something where're like, Hey, if your employees Or like, wait and then have them, you know, until you guys interact more.What? What do you Shane: think? Yeah, no, I'm glad you asked this because we would, suggest, or the way we're suggesting it right now is go in, you know, u utilize their service, whatever the case is, kind of use that the first time. And, and that's kind of it. but then follow up, a month down the road and saying something like, you know, Hey, we just wanna say how much we appreciated you guys.Maybe you drop off. to go whitening boxes, you know, crest whitening strips, something along those lines to the, business and to the group, and put some membership. If you have a membership plan, which hopefully you do in the practice, practice, put some membership plan, graphics or a QR code that goes to your membership plan in that gift box as well.And so when you give that to the, the manager there, let them know, you know, Hey, we just really enjoyed, you know, utilizing your service. Obviously, you know, we're another small business in the area. If you don't have, currently any like dental insurance that you're offering your team, because, you know, we understand small businesses, a lot of them don't have that.here's an option for the people who work here where they can come to our office and join this membership plan. And so that's a way where you can then start to. Build that, relationship a little bit more, taking it to the next level and kind of showing them how you can, you with their team and, and provide those type of benefits.But I would say wait at least a month after you've kind of really connected with that person, utilized their services already. That way it doesn't look like you're trying to get something from them. and that's it. You know, you want to look at this as, you know, how can we show them we're wanting to utilize their services as much as possible, we value them. And at that point, reciprocity just comes into play where they're gonna wanna be able to do whatever they can for you to help promote you and your business, um, because you've shown support to. . Michael: Yeah. Awesome man. Awesome. I appreciate this, Shane, and I appreciate your time and if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find 'em on the Dental Marketer Society Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?Shane: Yeah, no. So they can, uh, always find us@crimsonmediagroup.com. It's a great way to reach out to us, through that platform. And yeah, we'd be happy to answer any questions you have about your current marketing or what marketing maybe we, you wanna explore doing, you know, definitely reach out to us and we'd be happy to be a resource.Michael: Yeah. And real quick, you, y'all still do the free analysis, right? For. Shane: Yes. So we do, just for Michael's audience here, we do a free marketing analysis for, any practice owners in this group. So we'll go through, we'll look at, what people are looking for when they're, when they're searching for a dentist, who's advertising in the area, what are they advertising? That way you get a really good glimpse of the kind of landscape in your community, and it's just really great insight, if anything. So, yeah, if you wanna check out. what that's all about. You can reach out to us through, again, crimson mediagroup.com and just let us know in the comments that you'd like to request a marketing analysis and, uh, we'd be happy to to do that for you.Michael: Awesome. So guys, that's gonna be the first link in the show notes below, so go check it out, get your free analysis and shin. Thank you so much for being with me on this Monday morning marketing episode. Thanks Michael.

On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Salvador Badillo Rios. Salvador is Founder and CEO of EquiTech Innovate, a strategic consulting and advisory firm aimed at helping underserved and overlooked founders bring innovative and disruptive technologies to market. He is also Senior Associate and Portfolio Manager at National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC), a component of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), aimed at accelerating early-stage dual-use deep tech startups toward commercialization At DIU and NSIC, Salvador supported 21 early-stage dual-use hardware startups across 12 states with ~$50M over three years leading to over $335M in total follow-on private capital (up to 20X funded amount at up to 11X prior to funding valuation). They speak about Sal's origin story; how despite being from a disadvantaged background, this has not deterred his purposefulness and positivity to make a difference particularly in underrepresented communities. Listen as Sal shares how he eventually settled on an engineering degree after choosing over music and English literature. What he does today as a senior portfolio manager in the DIU defense innovation unit's National security innovation capital is a long way from Rancho Cucamonga.  You can find out more about Sal at: Linked IN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvador-badillo-rios https://equitechinnovate.com/     Transcript: 00:04  Hi, I'm pleased to announce something very special to me, a new subscription-based service through Next Act Advisors that allows members exclusive access to personal industry insights and bespoke 00:32 corporate governance knowledge. This comes in the form of blogs, personal book recommendations, and early access to the founder's sandbox podcast episodes before they released to the public. If you want more white glove information on building your startup with information like what was in today's episode, sign up with the link in the show notes to enjoy being a special member of Next Act Advisors. 01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you. 01:19 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host to this monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and scalable businesses with great corporate governance. Guests to this podcast are founders themselves, professional service providers, corporate board directors and investors. 01:47 who like me want to use the power of the enterprise, be it small, medium, and large, to create change for a better world. And I do storytelling with each one of my guests that starts with their origin story. And then we'll get into the contents of the podcast with each of my guests, and we touch upon topics around resilience, scalability, and purpose-driven. 02:15 initiatives or what drives the guest. So thank you for joining me. And I am absolutely delighted this month to have Salvador Badillo Rios, Sal, as my guest. So thank you for joining me, Sal. Thank you, Brenda. I'm very excited to be here. Excellent. So we met not too long ago. I am a member of Angel Capital Association and attended their national 02:44 Summit in Columbus, Ohio. And I'm from Columbus, Ohio. So I kind of killed two birds with one stone. And I was blown away. So I've been a member for three years. And this year they had for the first time a breakout session on deep tech and dual technologies. And Sal, you were one of the panel members. And I myself 03:11 love to work with deep tech companies. So we had a lot of synchronicities. And that's when I asked you to join me eventually here in the podcast. Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, that's where we met. And I think it was an amazing opportunity to really connect with the angel community. I think oftentimes, you know, there's a lot of focus on VCs, but angels really drive that early start to these companies and to these technologies. And so 03:37 I wanted to make an effort to reach out to the angel community, educate, inform, you know, angels about deep tech and a lot of the DOD opportunities that there are for startups and potential collaborations and synergies. So yeah, I'm happy to have met you. So we're going to touch on a couple of those points because you do have a multifaceted career and background and diverse founder yourself of your own. 04:05 strategic consulting and advisory firm. So you are founder and CEO of Equitech Innovate. And it's really working towards serving underserved and overlooked founders that bring innovative and disruptive technologies to market. So kudos to you. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. And another hat you wear, and I don't know where you find the time in the day. Frankly. 04:33 And this was your speaking capacity when I met you earlier this year, your senior associate and portfolio manager at the national security innovation capital, a component of the defense innovation unit, DIU. So lots of acronyms in our department defense. So INSEC and DIU. And I was fascinated because that particular area, what you're involved in is it's accelerating early stage 05:02 dual use later on, you're going to tell us what dual use is. Yeah. Deep tech startups toward commercial commercialization. So, um, again, thank you, um, for joining me. We're going to talk about deep tech. We're going to get into also your own work that you're doing with, um, underserved founders. And I always like to have a title of our episodes. Um, and this one, I really think we're going to talk about scalable businesses. So what you're doing. 05:31 particularly with NSIC and the DIU is scaling, identifying early stage companies that truly have the promise of scaling. So scalable businesses. And you know, in a short period of time, you have scaled and then we'll get into the questions, but I was also very impressed with the focus of the work at the DIU and NSIC, you've used yourself have supported 21 early stage 06:00 dual use hardware, all right, not software, hardware startups across 12 states with over $50 million over the last three years. And that's led on to lead on it investments of 335 million of private capital and up to 20 times funded amount at up to 11 times prior to fund evaluation. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Thank you, yeah. All right. So can you... 06:30 describe for my, let's get into your origin story. Your PhD aerospace engineering, first generation Latino. LGBT, tell me what would be your tagline if anything. What I mean, this mashup of deep, tell me your origin story. How did you know what you're doing today? Yeah, thank you, yeah. 06:55 I mean, yeah, I mean, I was thinking through the tagline and I was like, well, I think maybe one could be, you know, life through punches, but I turned them into power and purpose. And so I think, you know, everyone, I'm sure has their own set of struggles, right? Everyone has dealt a different set of cards, right, in life. And it's really what you make of that, right? That really defines you. So for me, right, I grew up, 07:24 Here in Southern California. So I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, about an hour East of LA without traffic. And so yeah, I grew up, my background is Mexican. So my parents are from Mexico. They met here and I'm the oldest of three. So I have two younger siblings. One is a year younger and then the youngest, seven years younger, but he has 07:53 down syndrome pretty severely. So I grew up in a disadvantaged background in a community where really I didn't know anyone that went to a four-year college, no one that went into any STEM field, right? And so, and my parents also, right, had never gone to college. So a lot of it was just learning and figuring things out along the way. 08:20 But I was lucky to have teachers that believed in me, that saw sort of something in me in school. And they would say, oh, yeah, you need to go to college. Or they would say, oh, you're good at math and science, things like that. And so they would reaffirm those things. But even once I got to high school, I really hadn't really planned for the future. I didn't really have thought about what major I wanted to go into or what college I wanted to go. 08:49 And so it was around being around other students that had thought about that a little bit better or had parents who were engineers or doctors that when they started asking me about it, I was like, oh, I don't know, but let me start thinking about it a little bit more. And so, yeah, so in my classroom, one of my teachers said, oh, the UC applications opened up. And so that's how I found out. 09:17 you know, that I should apply to college. There were several interests that I had, write music, English literature, and then STEM, right? And so I decided to go and try engineering and initially started with civil engineering, transitioned into mechanical and then added aerospace, just as, you know, being in college and taking different courses and being involved in different projects and clubs. 09:47 That's sort of how my interest kind of evolved. But even then, right, I didn't know about what a PhD was, or venture capital, or the field that I'm in now. So a lot of it has been a bit of a learning process. And I'm lucky to have had different organizations along the way geared towards underserved communities in STEM. 10:15 you know, PhD or things like that, that help create awareness for me about the different opportunities. My thing is you can't really go after something that you don't even know exists, right? So the more you're aware about different opportunities, the more you can sort of start to pave your path based on your own interests, so yeah. So you're a lifetime learner, although you're very young still. 10:41 Thank you for the interest in that. It's interesting because yesterday I was on a webinar with the National Association of Corporate Directors. It was about AI and workers, right? And interesting enough, the current generation, the largest generation that composes the workforce in the United States are Gen Xers. No, Gen Zers. 11:11 And the average retention, so the average period of time that they're in is 2.4 years. The next generation is the alpha, right? They're like 13, 14. They will have up to 17 careers, is what they're saying. And so the young, yes. You have so many opportunities. And again, I think people in your early 11:39 childhood, your neighborhood, your school, this professors that saw the, the, the ability for you with STEM related topics, they geared you those opportunities. So yeah, it's amazing the future of workforce and opportunities. So you yourself are going to get into in this podcast. Yeah. Some of that so you get out of college and what is your first gig? What'd you do? 12:08 Yeah, well, again, I went all the way to the PhD route. So one thing that was unique and what plugged me into DOD was, you know, going into my PhD, I had the opportunity to go to UCLA, but having a unique opportunity to work with the Department of Defense. And so whereas most students conduct research on campus, in my case, I had the opportunity to, after I take 12:37 a few of my, you know, some of my course requirements go to Edwards Air Force Research Lab, which is called the Rocket Lab, and really conduct research there. And so one, you get a lot more resources, right? Just because you're within DoD. And so you're able to really run, you know, and create projects and do these things that are at a higher level, right? This research is able to conduct at a higher level, and working on also 13:07 important problems to national security, you know, to the DOD that are more applicable than simply something that's just in a lab, right, that may be cool and interesting, but maybe there's not, you know, a huge focus on the application area. And so, yeah, I got to work alongside other military members and other researchers at DOD and really start to look things from a national security perspective. 13:34 And so how is certain technologies, whether more fundamental, more applied, how is that important to DOD and national security in general? As well as, you know, I got to see a lot of also the issues within traditional DOD and obstacles and sort of inefficiencies as well. And so it gave me sort of this unique perspective that 14:03 I would say most PhD students typically don't get, so I was very fortunate to have that. And so while being there, I also got interested in an entrepreneurship program. I was like, I wanted to get myself out of my comfort zone, out of the box and really interact with people from different backgrounds, not just from the STEM background. And... 14:28 And I loved it. I didn't know that I was going to love it. And I just decided to try it one day. And I just really loved speaking with customers. I got to be part of a student led startup. And so speaking to customers and that customer discovery phase, pitching to VCs, brainstorming with people from different backgrounds. I was like, this is where I want to be at. And so I thought I wanted to go into product development. 14:57 at a startup. And so that's what I was gearing towards. And so taking business courses online. And again, this is when the pandemic started to hit. So taking business courses online, learning more about emerging technologies like quantum and AI, that just interested me. And then DoD found me. And so they were like, okay, you have this unique 15:26 you know, technical background, background with DoD and some knowledge, right, regarding DoD and then interest in this startup and business, you know, business world. And so DoD was really starting, wanted to stand up and say National Security Innovation Capital, which, you know, focuses on early stage hardware technology. So as you may know, a lot of funding tends to go. 15:54 towards VC funding tends to go towards software and not enough towards hardware. And often hardware companies will resort to getting foreign capital, which at times may be considered adversarial and may compromise national security. And so DoD wanted to sort of get a hold of this a bit. And so stand up this program. And so, yeah, a few of my team members and I, we basically were hired on board to really stand up this program. 16:24 And this really involved developing the funding thesis, establishing the processes, eventually me running operations. Then because of my background, right? I got to do a lot more and help source these startups, evaluate these startups and help fund them and then support them. So I think naturally I just like wearing a lot of hats. It was very, it's been a very startup culture. 16:52 in a way just because we're a very small but mighty team. And so it's allowed me to do a lot as well as have a seat at the table and really sort of see things from that perspective. I love the that you were in the early stage of standing up the is it pronounced in sick. We usually refer it to as an insect. So what are 17:21 you know, these will be in the show notes, the we have a kind of infographic on NSIC. What are the I think there's seven key areas of investment within the DOD? Yeah. Yeah. So again, we're a component of the Defense Innovation Unit. And so 17:50 companies that are a little bit more mature that have some VC funding, that have commercial product. And the goal there is for them to find sort of the use cases and sort of pair those gaps with and look for specific solutions to address those gaps and transition that technology into DoD. 18:17 Again, we focus on the earlier stage, pre-seat to seat stage companies. And so, however, our technology areas are aligned with DIU's portfolios. So, you know, our technology areas are autonomy. And then sensors is weaved into that now. So advanced sensing would fall into autonomy. Energy technology. So this can involve energy storage. Advanced battery chemistries is a big thing under that one. 18:47 space technology. And so this is satellite stuff, as well as satellite communications, things like that. Telecommunications, so advanced communications technologies. And again, there's a lot of synergies with these different technologies. And then we have an emerging technologies area, which under that we've we've been edge computing hardware. 19:15 electronics, photonics, as well as hypersonics platforms. 19:25 Interesting. It's fascinating. Yeah. And then within that we have sort of funded as well companies that are in the sort of advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, but they usually align with one of the technology areas that I mentioned. 19:43 So for my listeners, I would absolutely love you to define deep tech and dual technologies, all right? Yeah. Because many, you know, I have quite a large audience now and it's a concept that we don't run into. You don't go to the grocery store and buy. Right, yeah. Yeah, I even had a friend, you know, just a close personal friend that is not in this field at all. 20:11 asked me about that too. So yeah, it's constantly educating, right, the audience, just because it is a crucial part of our society nowadays. So yeah, so I would say I would describe deep tech startups as sort of being distinguished by their intensive focus on sort of cutting edge technologies and scientific achievements. So they operate at the frontier of innovation. And so 20:40 I would say they're characterized by sort of novel solutions that are rooted in scientific breakthroughs or, you know, significant technological or scientific breakthroughs. And you know, I think where a lot of technologies, a lot of conventional startups leverage existing technologies to solve market needs, deep tech startups. 21:06 can often create entirely new markets or radically transform existing ones with their disruptive innovations. And so the reason I think there's probably a name for this set of technologies is because they also face unique challenges in commercializing their innovation. So one characteristic thing and challenge is long development cycles. 21:34 So, you know, they often require years, if not even decades, right, for research and development before you even have some viable prototype, right, that may become a product. High R&D costs, right, so, you know, very capital intensive, you know, and securing funding can be challenging, especially in the early stages for these sets of technologies that 22:01 are often unproven or the market potential is not quite fully understood. And so when it comes to going to market, it may be a little bit more challenging because it's not just a matter of finding product market fit, but it's also about educating potential customers about. 22:28 you know, educating the market right about your technology. Right. And the dual purpose? Yeah, so the dual use purpose really involves having both commercial and defense applications. So defense tech, you know, is sort of a focus on these DOD critical needs for national security to enhance military capabilities. 22:55 And so the dual use aspect means really developing a product or technology that can serve both, civilian and military purposes. And so I will say there are challenges with this though, just because the DOD aspect is mission focused, right? And so you have to worry about finding product mission fit in that sense. Whereas on the commercial side, you have to worry about finding 23:25 product market fit. And so, it can be competing at times, right? Where, the startups and VCs are naturally focused on revenue and increasing sort of their investment and DOD may be focused on the mission, right? And so, it's a matter of really finding where you can overlap both of those missions, right? To really make progress in society. 23:54 And then it's also as you're developing a technology, it's a matter of balancing as well, the different requirements and applications. So, yeah. So the startups that you have been involved with, have they come like a spin out as a technology transfer from a university or not? I mean, where did you? Yeah. 24:22 Where did these companies come from? Their original ideas. Yeah. Yeah, so a lot of the companies that we fund, some of the technologies have begun in a university research lab setting. However, they're usually a little bit further along before we see them and we fund them. So we have partnerships with different programs, including National Security Innovation Network, which is a part of DIU. 24:51 that really focuses more on really helping spin out these technologies out of a research setting and finding those DOD use cases. And again, we also look at companies from all over the US. So, our meetings are usually virtual, which makes it easy for companies to reach us. But yeah, they come from all sorts of settings, right? Some of them have spin out from the lab. 25:20 others from another company. But like I mentioned, by the time we see them and we fund them, they've already had some preliminary traction on the DOD side, whether that means some funding spoken to and, you know, DOD users to really develop the requirements, as well as some commercial preliminary traction, like obtaining letters of support and things like that. Yeah. 25:47 So about the time I met you, I'd also been working in deep tech. And I have heard that perhaps private investment VC money had been crowding out the traditional investment of Nandaluda funding that was under either the DOD or SBIR. 26:16 Right. And for like the last 20 years or so. And the Department of Defense, and actually under, I think it was the Obama administration, Ash Carter kind of flipped the model and said that we can actually do dilutive as well as non-dilutive funding in order to attract again, I don't know whether you're losing the game, but to really get back into the pipeline. 26:44 of potential new businesses and new technologies. Is that, and that's kind of what I've, you know, you perceive it. I also saw that SBIR grants, VCs were no longer allowed to participate probably about eight years ago. So what have your observations been on the public versus private investment in the strategic mission-driven 27:13 sectors is, is it true? What I'm saying is that I mean, there's no probably it's not black or white, right? So what is the transition between public and private investment in these strategic sectors evolve? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So the way I would see it is, you know, a while back, there was really a lack of communication between sort of these public and private entities. 27:42 And so there wasn't much of a collaboration going on. And so, for example, with the establishment of DIU, the purpose was to really establish those public and private partnerships to really further innovation and especially deep tech innovation. And so that was just the first goal, right? Let's improve and establish these public and private partnerships and show that we can work together to fund companies. 28:11 that was a little bit rocky and figuring out, okay, how does that work and who does what? But I think over time, right, those relationships have really become established in some way and have been fortified. And now, DIU and NSIC and all these other DOD entities, we have strong relationships with different BCs and accelerators and other types of organizations. 28:41 they are aware of us and are interested in really knowing what our priorities are. And we are trying to always better communicate that to them. And we're going on funding companies together. So I would say that was sort of the first phase over time. Then, you know, I think you focused on, OK, let's let's let's see if we can if this model works, right? If we can fund companies. 29:10 using OTAs, for example, these prototype contracts, and helps to transition some of this technology into DoD. And I would say now where we're at is now we're really hyper-focused on the, you know, because we already proved we can do this, so now it's, okay, let's focus on the most impact for an urgent technologies to DoD, especially given 29:39 the current geopolitical climate. And so now we've sort of shifted into really a focus on these high impact, high, you know, at large scale and in high urgency technologies and startups. So it's a journey, right? It's an evolution. It's been a journey, yeah. And then on the hardware side, right, again, it's been a little bit different, but again, similar where, you know, there wasn't a lot of, I would say, 30:06 VC interests to really fund, especially hardware, early stage technologies. VCs were typically repelled by that, right, in some sense. And naturally so, right? But I think with standing up NSIC and these other organizations, there's been actually several VCs now in this pre-seed to seed stage, funding. 30:35 hardware companies. And so I would say now the hurdle is probably as we funded these companies, now they go on to series A, series B and now they need BCs at that stage, right? To really help them along and further their scaling, right? And so I would say more work is probably needed on that end now. Very exciting times. 31:05 Let's switch gears and let's go back to your consulting firm. Equitech innovate. Again, I don't know where you find the time, but I, you know, so can you showcase here what it is that you do in serving the underrepresented founders that are in these disruptive technologies? What was it that made you go out on your own? 31:32 Yeah, yeah, so just being in the deep tech space that I'm at, and, you know, dual use as well, you know, one thing that I started noticing, and it's something that I've noticed even from just my own background, right, in STEM, right, sort of one, a lack of diversity and representation, right, of, you know, different backgrounds, especially my backgrounds, right, whether it's 32:02 And so again, this is naturally found in a lot of the, deep tech spaces, right? Finding leadership and innovators in that space. And that, that's a whole nother conversation, right? But there's a lot of hurdles, just even for people getting to that space, right? And so naturally you find sort of a lack of talent there. 32:31 And then the other thing is, you know, once, you know, you have underserved communities in deep tech, right, then you have less of them that are aware or become deep tech founders, right? And so then once you are a deep tech founder, right, then you have these VC funding gaps, right, that you find, right, where 32:56 out of all the VC funding, 136 billion, only 1% goes to Black founders or even smaller to Latinx or Indigenous or to women. And especially being in the field that I am in, I would see very few, again, founders from understaffed communities even applying to our program. But then unfortunately, even those that did apply, sometimes the quality was just not up to par. 33:25 Okay. And so it does tear me a bit, you know, in the sense that, you know, I have compassion, but at the same time, there's a level of quality that we need to maintain and things like that. And that is because they often lack some of the resources and guidance, right? And so even to get to where they're at now has been such a huge feat. And so that's where I saw the opportunity 33:55 strategic consulting and advisory firm to really help underserved founders and give them a little bit more guidance and really help them get their technologies to market. Bringing in my DOD expertise, my deep tech expertise, and also in working with underserved communities throughout my career with different nonprofits and whatnot. All right. Yeah. 34:24 Yeah, being that person that looks like them, right? In the room, right? And you also have, you're a mentor for the Stanford Latino Business Action Network. And you're serving on the board of directors for Science is Elementary. And tell me, is that also part of kind of mission-driven? Speak to me a bit about those collaborations. Yeah, yeah, it is, yeah. So... 34:52 Again, just because I'm interested in helping underserved founders, you know, I must have gone, I think to an event at Stanford, and then that's how I got plugged in to that nonprofit organization. Okay. Yeah, so I became a mentor, that this was before starting Ecotech Innovate. And so again, that's where I also just got to focus on helping underserved founders and really guiding them, get them through that process. 35:22 And then in terms of the nonprofits that I'm a board of directors for, yeah, so one of them is Science is Elementary. And so that nonprofit, we focus on really providing inspiring, innovative, high quality science experiences to preschool and elementary school children from underserved communities. And. 35:48 you know, that involves, you know, teaching students, right, training teachers as well, to really build sustainable and quality sort of curriculum, and then engaging as well with different scientists and STEM professionals, and some of them may serve as role models and mentors and things like that. So again, I didn't have any sort of exposure to this. I wish I did when I was, you know, a young kid. But, you know, I think providing that 36:17 for the industry communities is very important because that's where it begins, right? Yes, but you get exposed to it. Yeah, you get exposed, so you learn about opportunities. And so you can dream to be a scientist or things like that. And also you get rid of those fears, right? That may intimidate you from going into STEM, right? Because now there's familiar. And then also it's important to know that 36:43 going to STEM doesn't necessarily mean you need to be a scientist, right? I've transitioned into this role, which is more business, right? But my science background, I'm able to leverage that and it's sort of a value add. So in the show notes, I would like to call out different ways by which my listeners can contact you. Can you speak to... 37:10 what you would like to have in the show notes? Is that your LinkedIn profile? Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, so yeah, people can reach me on LinkedIn. I'm on there. Also, www.ancik.mil, you can find my LinkedIn there. And also, equi You can find my, you know. 37:37 LinkedIn information there as well as my email, salvador at equi Excellent. So that will be in the show notes as well as the infographic of NSIC. Thank you. So I am gonna move into the part of the podcast that I repeat with every single guest. I have my own consulting firm, NextAct Advisors, and I really work with 38:06 growth stage companies on being purpose driven, scalable and resilient. And I'd like to ask you, I guess, what does purpose driven mean to you? Yeah, I think to me, I've actually always been drawn to purpose driven work. And so for me, it's the so what, right? So there's a lot of cool things you can do, cool technologies. But to me, it's the why, right? And the so what behind it, that really 38:35 pushes me and motivates me to really do the work that I do because I know I'm making a difference in people's lives in one way or another, in a positive way. So whether it's through the nonprofits that I've been involved with, both at a volunteering level and then now on the board leadership or through NSIC and DIU, right? Helping the war fighter and helping with national security. 39:04 or now with my consulting firm and really focusing on helping underserved founders, I think that I'm just drawn to really purpose-driven work that creates a positive impact in people at scale, right? And maybe lead on to your next question, but that does it in a meaningful way. So that moves the needle. I love it. So you've chosen really in alignment with your own 39:33 Origin story. So scalable growth. What does that mean to you? And maybe wearing your INSEC hat or what was scalable? Yeah. So I think, you know, first in terms of like, you know, deep tech startups and going that route, the focus is first on finding product market fit and really getting there. But once you do, 40:02 I think scaling is really about growing, right? Growing not only your team, but expanding your product and really doing it in an impactful way. And I think along with that comes many challenges, right? That you have to make sure your manufacturing processes are in order and that can... 40:28 really accommodate for the volume and speed at which you need to do that. And so I think before scaling needs to come preparedness, right? Being prepared to grow before you do grow because one thing I find often is, you know, sometimes people are focused on growing and then as you're growing, you're really finding all these things that you can't keep up with, right? And then unfortunately, sometimes that's where startups fail, right? 40:55 And so, and it's sad because you've gone so far right along. And so, since you've worked so hard to get there, it's important to just take a beat and really prepare for the growth because I think that will set you up for success. You know, I'm gonna divert a little bit from the third question. I mean, product market fit. Yeah. And software, right? 41:23 Deep tech technologies, it's really about around technology readiness level, TRLs, right? Scaling right to that level where you are scalable, right? Can you for my listeners again, indulge us in technology readiness levels? Yeah. So, yeah. So there are different, you know, technology readiness levels that really describe sort of. 41:52 where your technology is in its development. With NSIC, for example, we have a minimum TRL three. And so that involves at least having sort of analytical and experimental critical function and or characteristic proof of concept. So we don't fund, you know, sort of paper studies or science projects. And so, that's a TRL level that we focus on. 42:21 And as that TRL advances, then you get into the testing phase and in-field environment testing and things like that. So then you can further refine your technology until it's really ready for a proper use case. And then I would say one thing we focus on now is also 42:48 just on the level of advancement in that TRL, right? So, you know, the more you can advance with the funding, the better and so that involves really having a very strong product development plan, right, in place. So that you get more bang for your buck in a way. Right, right. So the product roadmap. Yeah. Thank you. Let's get back to the sandbox and its resilience. 43:17 What does resilience mean to you? Yeah, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, it's one thing that someone told me, you know, they said, you're very resilient. And I was like, oh, really? Thank you. And so, yeah, reflecting back in my life, right? Again, as I mentioned before, you know, you'll be dealt different cards in life, you know, punches, right? And sometimes that will be things that you have no control over. And sometimes there'll be consequences because, you know, you're human and you're young and you make mistakes. And... 43:46 you're stubborn at times or things like that. And so I think resilience is, for me it involves a few things. One is not allowing that to define you. And so it means getting back up, but it also means getting back up stronger and wiser, at least for me, right? There's, I think something you can learn about yourself. 44:11 and about the situation and about others, right? In whatever circumstance you're in. And so it's really making sure you learn the most you can about that particular situation so that when you do stand up and move forward, you're able to do so in a more intentional and successful way, hopefully. Thank you. So last question, did you have fun in the sandbox today? Oh, I had a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. 44:41 It's been a unique experience. And so, I had a great time speaking to you when we first met and so today as well. So thank you so much for inviting me. Thank you, Sal. To my listeners, if you liked this episode with Sal Badiyurios, CEO and founder of Equitech Innovate, as well as advisor with Insic of the DIU, that's the Defense Innovation Unit. Please. 45:11 sign up for the Founder's Sandbox. It's released monthly. And business owners, corporate directors, and professional service providers are my guests and they help us learn about how to build with strong governance, resilient, scalable, and purpose-driven companies to make profits for good. So signing off for this month, thank you. And again, Sal, thank you for joining me. Thank you.  

‘Peninsula Parade of Lights' in Rancho PV –Petros is Grand Marshal. Artic blast – 5 feet of snow in one week in Lake Erie / Long Lives way to maneuver. Insurance companies taking pictures of CEOs off websites / UHC CEO latest. Rancho Cucamonga burglars dressing as Gardners. Tarzana home burglarized even though they had ALL the security and owner was home. 

The victims of a racist incident on an LAX shuttle, which went viral, are speaking out. A 2-year-old from Crestline was killed in a shooting at a shopping complex in Rancho Cucamonga. And new L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman wasted no time repealing what some called soft-on-crime policies put in place by former DA George Gascon.

This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in the unique ways autism and ADHD (AuDHD) intersect with eating disorders. Our guest, Stacie Fanelli, LCSW (@edadhd_therapist), is here to shed light on this important topic with her expertise and deep compassion. Stacie dives into how neurodivergence can impact eating behaviors, the role of sensory experiences, and why tailored approaches to treatment are essential for those navigating both AuDHD and eating disorders. Whether you're a clinician, a neurodivergent individual, or just curious about the connection, this conversation is packed with practical insights and fresh perspectives. Get ready for a lively discussion that will expand your understanding and leave you with tools to better support those in recovery!

This time, we are back at the Hollywood Show and on a couple home haunt hops!   Listen in and enjoy, as we discuss Samhain's Lot, Hellsir Haunted Creations, Straite to Hale Haunt, The Goblin of Glorywhite, The Curse of the Raven, and more!   If you would like to see the discussed home haunts, the video is available at https://youtu.be/2tcmRs0mCI4?si=Cq4--ZApqe2xo09A!   If new to the podcast, we recommend checking out episode 879.  This 10th anniversary retrospective gives a lot of context to the Parks and Cons universe. THANK YOU to all who support us on Patreon!  In particular, we want to thank our Omega Level Powerhouse, Super Soldier Powerhouse, Otherworldly Powerhouse, and Mutant Powerhouse Patreon Tier Supporters: Renee A., Brett A., Johanna A., Angela B., Jennifer B., Michael B., Steve C., Drew D., Kerry D., Rochelle D., Ted D., Mike E., Tim F., Tina F., Tori F., Yvette G., Jonathan G., Clarisa H., Hailey K., Jason M., Susan O., Tom P., Amanda R., Joshua R., Albert R., Manuel S., Hendel T., Alyssa W., Adam W., Jamie W., Mark W., and our anonymous donor Please, consider joining The Parks and Cons Crew, https://www.patreon.com/ParksAndCons! Prefer to make a one-time contribution? Click here for details on how you can donate!

Hosts Jo Firestone & Manolo Moreno play listener-created games with callers!Games played: How Funky Is Your Chicken, How Loose Is Your Goose? submitted by Amber Gomez from Rancho Cucamonga, California, Good At Poems, Bad At Apologies submitted by Tice Rust from Reston, Virginia, and Oops! All (Blank)s submitted by Tak Kelty from Lake Havasu City, ArizonaCallers: Adam from Calgary, Alberta, Canada; Joe from Broad Brook, Connecticut; Satyaki from Chicago, Illinois; Robert from Celbridge, Ireland; CJ from Stockton, California; Noelle from Milwaukee, WisconsinOutro theme by Brady Brown from Stillwater, OklahomaManolo's comic book, Supportive #1, is available at moslo.xyz 

New Show Series- Biz in the Valley provides Featured Interviews of Southern California Region of Entrepreneurs & Small Business Owners:  This weeks show is Wine Now Lounge located at 8419 Haven Ave in Rancho Cucamonga within the Inland Empire area. Wine Now is owned by Dezzarae Henderson. Wine Now is a exquiste wine tasting room, lounge and store. Host your own theme and curated events year around. Follow Wine Now at Wine Now Lounge   Listener Perks:  Get Your Sonny's LouddMouth Comedy Presents: Komedy & Karaoke Tickets Now on LouddMouthComedy.com  Wed. Oct. 16th 2024 at Shooters Bar & Grill Temecula Hosted By: Kevin " @TheMarineofComedy "Davis Featured Comics:  Thomas Mayes & Joz Sida produced by The @LouddMouth of Comedy Sonny Check out the new LouddMouth Relationship Comedy Series Dating Like A Dyke on LouddMouthTV.com Advertise Your Business with Affordable Advertising on the #1 Small Business Network:  https://LouddMouth.com          This audio has no negative impact on the original works, its use is for teaching and inspirational purposes. FAIR-USE COPYRIGHT DISCLAIMER * Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976

IBUYSTL Bobby Kough Sometimes, things will happen in life that causes us to have to pack up and move… I know…in my 12 years in the military, our family moved 13 times… between training assignments and deployments, etc. In what is now over 46 years of marriage, my wife and have moved 19 times. So we know what it is like when you need to sell a home, quickly and easily – or as easily and as quickly as possible – and move…Amen. For some others, it could be having to sell a home after their parents pass on…for others, it could be through a divorce, etc. The point being, when you need to sell, in some circumstance, it is not feasible to do repairs, set up the staging of the house – allowing strangers to come walking through (and realtors wanting you OUT of the house before they bring these strangers through), etc. But, that is the “traditional” route that a lot of people think they have to take…Not anymore…our guest today is Robert Kough, who will be offering you an alternate solution… Originally from Rancho Cucamonga, California, Robert Kough now resides in the St. Louis, MO area. He is a 2015 graduate of the US Army Military Academy at West Point and played as a defensive lineman with the Black Knights… with 79 career tackles… Praise God! He served as an Engineer Officer for five years. After military service, he moved into a passion that he had been holding onto for his last year or so he was in the Army – Real Estate. The Lord had him connect with a fellow West Point graduate, Jimmy Vreeland and together, they have built a hugely successful company, IBuySTL (or St. Louis). Together, they have grown this company to one of the major players in the St. Louis housing market. IBuySTL provides options to sellers outside of the traditional way of selling a home, where the seller completes repairs prior to selling. Working with IBuySTL, they will purchase your house “as-is” and offer creative solutions to alleviate many of the stressors that often come with selling a home. So far, they have built a turnkey portfolio of more than 800 houses! IBuySTL has been recognized as one of the top buyers of houses in St. Louis and the surrounding areas. Amen! Help me welcome to the program, Bobby Kough! Bobby, it is a blessing to have you with us today, brother! First question I always start with is this… other than that brief information I just shared, can you tell us in your own words, “Who is Bobby Kough?” Were you a believer before going to West Point? From what I understand, you lost your father while at West Point, correct?Was that in your Plebe year? What were the ramifications of that loss for you at West Point? Did they give you family leave time or did you have to withdraw… I'm just curious as to how that worked out… You returned and had a massive success on the football field. I live in the Baltimore / Annapolis area of Maryland and, naturally, everything here is “Go Navy.” I'm in the minority when I shout out “GO ARMY!” In fact, my son-in-law is a Navy Academy graduate and was a Marine Corps officer… but, I let my Cavalry Officer time shine through…I've got Cav yard signs, etc…just to rub it in… Share with us one of the most memorable moments you experienced on the football field… When did you realize you wanted to leave the military and begin your civilian career? Why real estate? What motivated you go down this path? How did you meet up with Jimmy Vreeland? Share with us how you are able to help homeowners looking to sell their homes in the St. Louis area? Your company is an “investment company” and not a real...

Performance reviews—dreaded by many, effective for few. According to Gallup, only 2% of CHROs from Fortune 500 companies strongly believe that their performance management systems inspire employees to improve. Even more concerning, just 20% of employees feel that their reviews are transparent, fair, or motivational. Despite these discouraging statistics, the annual performance review persists in many organizations. Fortunately, there are forward-thinking exceptions—like today's guest, Robert Neiuber. Robert Neiuber, Senior Human Resources Director for the City of Rancho Cucamonga, has been with the City for a decade. He led a progressive shift from traditional performance reviews to a dynamic performance development approach during his tenure. This new system prioritizes future growth over past performance, equipping employees with the tools they need for managing their careers. In this episode, Robert details the City's journey to eliminate performance reviews. He shares the motivations behind the change, the implementation process, and how they successfully rolled out the initiative, including navigating union considerations. Robert also dives into the specifics of their current performance development system, known as MAPs, and discusses their ongoing plans for improvement. As organizations continue to grapple with the limitations of traditional performance reviews, Robert's insights offer a powerful blueprint for those ready to make the shift. Tune in to learn how you can start moving towards a more dynamic and growth-focused approach to performance management in your own organization. For full show notes, visit https://growthsignals.co/ Connect with Robert on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertneiuber/

A court case could soon settle a spicy dispute: Who invented Flamin' Hot Cheetos? A former PepsiCo executive is suing the company, saying it destroyed his career after questioning his claim that he invented the popular flavor of Cheetos snacks. PepsiCo said it has no comment on the lawsuit, which was filed on July 18 in California Superior Court.  According to his lawsuit, Richard Montañez began working for PepsiCo as a janitor at its Frito-Lay plant in Rancho Cucamonga, California, in 1977. Montañez was the son of a Mexican immigrant and grew up in a migrant labor camp. One day, a machine in Montañez's plant broke down, leaving a batch of unflavored Cheetos. Montañez says he took the batch home and dusted them with chili powder, trying to replicate the flavor of “elote,” the popular grilled seasoned corn served in Mexico. In 1991, Montañez asked for a meeting with PepsiCo CEO Roger Enrico to pitch his spicy Cheetos, confident they would be a hit with the Latino community. Enrico granted the meeting, liked the presentation and directed the company to develop spicy Cheetos, according to the lawsuit. Montañez said PepsiCo sent him on speaking engagements and actively promoted his story. But in the meantime, Montañez claims the company's research and development department shut him out of its discussions and testing. PepsiCo introduced Flamin' Hot Cheetos in 1992. Montañez says he continued to develop spicy snacks, like Flamin' Hot Popcorn and Lime and Chili Fritos, and in 2000, he was promoted to a business development manager in Southern California. Montañez eventually became PepsiCo's vice president of multicultural marketing and sales. Montañez said demand for speaking engagements was so great that he retired from PepsiCo in 2019 to become a motivational speaker full-time. He published a memoir in 2021 and his life story was made into a movie, "Flamin' Hot," in 2023. But according to the lawsuit, PepsiCo turned on Montañez in 2021, cooperating with a Los Angeles Times piece that claimed others in the company were already working on spicy snacks when Montañez approached them, and that they—not Montañez—came up with the name, "Flamin' Hot." Montañez said PepsiCo's about-face has hurt his speaking career and other potential opportunities, including a documentary about his life. This article was provided by The Associated Press.

Special Guest: Diego Mesa, founding pastor of Abundant Living Family Church in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. and author of the book, "How To Dream When You Are Told You're Going To Die." In this episode, Pastor Mesa shares his testimony of restoration and hope, and how his unwavering faith carried him through in the face of devastating health prognosis. He shares his empowering story, what he has learned along the way and why it is so important for leaders to prioritize their own health. For more information about Diego Mesa's ministry and mission, visit diegomesa.org. 

In episode 262 of The Super Human Life, host Frank Rich interviews Jake Hamilton. They discuss the crisis of masculinity within the church and the root of the problem. Jake explains that the lack of rites of passage and initiation rituals in our culture and the church leads to a confusion of responsibilities between boyhood and manhood. This confusion results in an ego-driven pursuit of masculinity, where men seek to be heroes rather than warriors and prioritize their own desires above all else. Hamilton emphasizes the importance of honoring God, protecting women, and preparing children as the main responsibilities of a man. He also discusses the feminization of the church and the need for men to embrace suffering, sacrifice, and a bigger vision for their lives.    In this conversation, Jake Hamilton and Frank Rich discuss the importance of healing and integration in order to break cycles and live a whole and authentic life. They explore the concept of departing from business as usual and embarking on a journey of self-discovery and growth. They emphasize the need for men to engage with their emotions, particularly grief, in order to experience true transformation. The conversation also touches on the crisis of masculinity in the church and the importance of initiation and role models for young boys. Overall, the conversation highlights the path to biblical masculinity and the power of living a life aligned with one's values and purpose.   Takeaways The crisis of masculinity within the church is rooted in the lack of rites of passage and initiation rituals in our culture and the church.   Men need to clearly understand the responsibilities of manhood, which include honoring God, protecting women, and preparing children.   The ego-driven pursuit of masculinity leads to a self-centered approach to life and a disconnection from God and others.   The church has become feminized and focused on emotional experiences rather than the sacrificial nature of masculinity.   Men need to embrace suffering, sacrifice, and a bigger vision for their lives in order to fulfill their true purpose. Healing and integration are essential for breaking cycles and living a whole and authentic life.   Engaging with emotions, particularly grief, is necessary for true transformation.   The crisis of masculinity in the church can be addressed through initiation and the presence of positive role models.   Living a life aligned with one's values and purpose leads to fulfillment and impact.   Jake Hamilton has been in full-time active ministry for over two decades. He has been a church planter in Southern California, a creative entrepreneur since he started his first business painting murals at the age of 15, as well as a worship leader on a local level and globally as a part of Jesus Culture Music for several years. His radical style of music has been described by Relevant Magazine as “a cross between Led Zeppelin and the Foo Fighters.” He is also a dynamic preacher and communicator speaking in schools and stadiums across the globe, he has been an evangelist both on the streets and in global church movements, spent time as a local youth pastor in a thriving creative community, launched a 24-hour a house of prayer in his home city of Rancho Cucamonga, CA, and has been a songwriter whose songs have been sung and recorded around the world. He and his wife, Nicci, have also fueled a movement called OneFlesh, which has focused specifically on marriages and family—proclaiming the coming reformation in the Church and seeing hundreds of marriages restored and redeemed even years after divorce. He is currently heading a men's movement called THE FIGHT, gathering men to make agreement with their story and get acquainted with death as they learn what it means to walk in biblical manhood as modeled by Jesus Christ. As an artist he desires to push the limits of creativity, and as a father and a husband he is committed to his family first. But above any of his endorsements and accomplishments, he is a lover of Jesus Christ with the ability to lead others into the same encounter that transformed his life over 25 years ago. He has always said his goal was simple, “I want to spend my life throwing keys into prison cells.”

There's a lot of takeaways from any conversation with Joe Minicozzi, or one of his many public presentations. Here's mine today: omnipotent forces didn't create our current systems, whether we are talking about zoning, traffic engineering or tax assessment. Or, in fact, just about anything in life.These were all created by fallible humans. We can, and should, change them. It's our duty, our responsibility. Your local tax system, and your local zoning code were not handed down to you by Moses from the mountain.Joe Minicozzi of Urban 3 is one of those rare people that just has a knack for communicating complex ideas. If you haven't seen one of his presentations, run out and do so. Here's a sample from Not Just Bikes, and one from Strong Towns. Today, we talk in audio form instead of video, but I suspect you'll enjoy it just the same. Since this is a blog, too, here's a few visual references for fun:Find more content on The Messy City on Kevin's Substack page.Music notes: all songs by low standards, ca. 2010. Videos here. If you'd like a CD for low standards, message me and you can have one for only $5.Intro: “Why Be Friends”Outro: “Fairweather Friend”Text Transcript:Kevin K (00:01.231) Welcome back to the Messy City podcast. You know, one of the joys that I've had in being involved with the New Urbanism Movement and the Congress for New Urbanism for many, many years is you get to meet and know people who take a lot of issues that we talk about and care about and completely reframe them and make them much more interesting and accessible and understandable, I think, to a larger audience. And there's been a number of people who who've done that or I've seen that happen in the course of my career. And one of those is joining me here today, live from Asheville, North Carolina, Joe Minicozzi. Joe, how's it going, Joe Minicozzi (00:42.018) Great, thanks for having Kevin K (00:43.771) Well, it's fun. I've been wanting to do this one for a little while and it's you're a busy guy and I'm really glad you made some time. Joe, you may know he's often had his work featured in Strong Towns. He's a regular on the speaking circuit with his firm, Urban 3, and he's really developed a unique approach to kind of explaining our built environment in graphic and financial terms I think has changed a lot of people's thinking about things. And we're going to get to some of that. Joe has, one of the cool things, Joe, is you're working all over the country. So there's always something new to talk about. But before we get there, I do think it's interesting for people to understand your background because like somebody coming upon you today and one of your presentations, they might think, he's like this kind of urban guru guy. What does that mean? Or he's like a financial guru guy, but you're actually, you're an architect. Correct? Not licensed, but educated. Yes. Where did... I don't think... One thing I never knew, Joe, like, where did you grow Joe Minicozzi (01:44.476) Well, not licensed. Can say that. Educated, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so... Go Joe Minicozzi (01:56.116) upstate New York, Rust Belt, little town called Rome, New York. Kevin K (01:57.445) Ruffio. cool, that's a cool town. Joe Minicozzi (02:05.282) Why do you say that? That it's not cool. When I was Kevin K (02:07.983) Well, I mean, there's some cool built fabric there. No? Joe Minicozzi (02:11.256) No. When I was a kid, they tore down most of downtown. It was literally one of the largest urban renewal projects per capita in the entire United States. And they blew up, I don't know, like eight to 10 blocks of downtown and built a wooden fort. There's a revolutionary wooden fort in what used to be our downtown. Google Rome, New York and go into the downtown, you'll see it. Kevin K (02:39.715) OK, I must be thinking of pictures I've seen of a different upstate New York downtown then or something. Joe Minicozzi (02:43.288) Oh no, no, it's, didn't, but I didn't realize that was abnormal because you you grew up in a town of 30 ,000 people, this is it, right? That's all you know. You just, so when you go to college, you're just like, yeah, surely like you've got a fort in your downtown, right? You know, everybody's got one. Actually Savannah has one. So, but it's not in the downtown. They didn't eliminate Savannah to rebuild a wooden fort. Yeah, but this is a magnet that I have that I in my bookcase over here. This is my grandfather. Kevin K (03:03.193) Right. That would have been rather odd. Joe Minicozzi (03:13.34) used to tie a rope to this thing. And he's an Italian carpenter, first generation American. And he's tied a rope to this and that rope was tied to my waist. And I used to just walk around job sites all day with him as a kid. I was like, you know, six years old walking around a job site with this huge magnet tied to my waist. And I was picking up nails and I would just sit there with this little anvil, like making the nails go straight so he could reuse them because you know, he's depression era. And I thought I was building buildings since I'd go home and talk to my dad and I was like, I'm building buildings with Papa. And he goes, sounds like you want to be an architect. And I was like, Bing, I want to be an architect. so that's, I wanted to be an architect since I was nine years old and I went to architecture school. Kevin K (03:53.903) You know, that's funny. That's like a weird thing we share in common. It's like, I don't know how that happened with me, because I actually didn't know anybody, you know, in architecture. And I knew a few people who built things, but for whatever reason, I just like always knew I wanted to go into architecture and city planning. it's it's just where I was. So, but anyway, so go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. I had no idea. Like why showed up to like freshman year? Joe Minicozzi (04:12.386) Yeah, like, they really cool pencils, right? I mean, it's like little clicker pencils, awesome, great tools. Kevin K (04:22.199) And here's the list of all the s**t you have to buy. And I was like, what is, what does even all this stuff do? Joe Minicozzi (04:25.162) Yeah, here's, out and buy a thousand dollars worth of stuff. Yeah, little, remember that, God, I hate saying this, it sounds old. I was explaining to somebody on staff, remember those little letter writing tools, that little plastic thing that you'd have to put on your parallel bar to make those three lines to do your lettering properly? That was insane. Anyway, sorry, sorry kids. That doesn't exist anymore because we actually type in computers now. Kevin K (04:39.745) my god, yeah. Kevin K (04:44.805) Totally, Yeah. Kevin K (04:53.349) Yeah, I know. Everyone wants to share. mean, actually learning how to do architectural lettering was a pretty cool thing. I mean, I always liked the benefit of Joe Minicozzi (04:59.628) Well, the frustrating thing for me is you go all the way through architecture school and the University of Miami is a five -year program and you never built a building. So how can you be a designer of a building and not understand how it's constructed? So in my fifth year, we petitioned the school to build a homeless shelter and we just went ahead and built it, designed it, built it, worked with homeless folks to figure out what are their needs? How do we help solve the problem architecturally? And think that's one of the beauties of Miami is that, you know, the whole time I was, know, Miami is known for its new urbanism, but I was always talking with Liz Plater -Zyberg about what was going on in my hometown, because here you have a town that was designed for walkability, designed for the things that new urbanists would proclaim, yet it was dead as a doornail and we were eliminating our downtown. And Liz would always say to me, she's like, well, that's economics. That's something different. and we're trying to deal with this flood of what's happening in South Florida. That's a different reality. So this whole being seen as an economist is mostly about chasing a question of what are the policies that shape our environment and how do I visualize those for folks, which is very in line with new urbanism. We just look at the money Kevin K (06:15.397) So talk a little bit about how you got to this point then professionally of working on your own and doing a lot of the economic analysis work that you do Joe Minicozzi (06:24.984) Well, mean, if first is working in architecture, and I think this is probably true for most people that are urban designers, is that you want to look at the context of things that's more exciting for you, or why would somebody say, I'm hiring you, the architect, to do an office building here? If you have an urban design mind, you're like, an office building? Why not a mixed use building or why not a residential building? Why is that developer choosing? That's really the design is when the developer makes a choice, right? And so why is the developer choosing office over residential or over retail? In having an urban design mindset, you're going to be more empowered to be looking for those things, those other forces. What are the financial streams? So after architecture, I went to grad school and then started doing like internships in real estate development, real estate finance. I worked at John Hancock Real Estate Investment Group in Boston. kind top of the food chain, where they had $4 billion worth of real estate across the country. And you're seeing how they're making decisions financially about what's going on in your town, right? Because they're going to be doing an asset in your town, a strip mall or a mall or whatever, right? Totally different design series. It was fascinating to watch, but it felt, if you saw the movie, The Big Short, it felt a lot like that. It was like, wow, these people are like on a different way of thinking. Like there's questions they're just not even asking. We were spending $100 million a year fixing the buildings that we owned. Now when you're making 15 bucks an hour, like that's a lot of money, right? And so you'd sit there, trained as an architect, you'd sit there with these asset managers and I would literally show them pictures of buildings that we owned, a building that we owned in Topeka and a building that we owned in Tacoma. And there are two office buildings that we owned. And I would ask the finance officers, I'm like, what's the difference between these two buildings? And they would start going through all of this gibberish of numbers and cash flows, cap rates, NOI, all of that stuff. And I'm like, no, no, no, look at the pictures. And like, what are you talking about? I'm like, it's the same damn building. We own the same building, the same office park building in Topeka and Tacoma. And you know, they fall apart differently based on the ecosystem. And this was like mind blowing to Joe Minicozzi (08:43.104) And it's just like, wow, they don't even understand what this... It's just a cashflow model for them. It's not a building, right? As an architect, you're going to... Like the windows fall apart differently. It's going to be based on the heat load of the air conditioner, all that stuff. But it's kind of mind blowing that this is the cashflow, the invisible sine curve that's moving by low cell high, that's moving through the system. And we're not even talking about it. So it's always... Yeah, go ahead. Well, it's always made me curious and got into real estate development. And then during the recession is when I started Urban 3, trying to help cities understand that they're prey to these sign curves. Kevin K (09:20.539) Yeah. I remember you used to tell a story about working at John Hancock and I think this is just instructive for people to understand the world of like big development, big finance was I think you had a story about we had they had X million dollars that they had to place within like 48 hours or something like that. What was Joe Minicozzi (09:37.56) Yeah. It was called a capital call where the CEO of the real estate arm came in and said, need to get, I think it was like $120 million into the ground in the next quarter. So that was an issuance that he was given from Topress. think of anybody that's on this podcast, if you have a 401k plan, if you're like CalPERS is the biggest one, the California teachers. pension. They have to make money on their money, right? So they take your retirement investment and they go out and make money so that you can have growth in your dollars as an investor. So if you want to see your 401k plan grow, well, somebody's got to make that money grow. So they're going around, in case of John Hancock, that's an insurance company. So somebody buys John Hancock life insurance. They want to return when they die on their money. what they do at the top level of John Hancock, they're putting some money into bonds, money into stocks, some money into real estate. So ours was the real estate arm. And whatever decision was made at the top, money came into the real estate world and was like, okay, that needs to get into the ground as fast as possible. So they were issued this $120 million in the next quarter. So the people that are finance managers call up all of their developer friends and were like, can I buy a building somewhere? That was basically how it happened. And the more expensive the building, the better because the more we can get that $120 million down to zero, the faster with less transactions. So imagine if you were the guy on the office that found a hundred million dollar building, like that's actually good, right? Now in architecture world, when we go to school, we're learning the direct opposite, like smaller, like little investments. We're not thinking about the big fish that are out there. anyway. Kevin K (11:25.583) Yeah. Sometimes it feels like you're like a language translator, Joe. It's like you have these two different worlds that you have grown to understand really well. One is like architecture and development, and the other is finance. And do you feel like you're kind of like straddling those worlds and trying to explain one to the Joe Minicozzi (11:44.652) Yeah, it's a simple sense, the tagline of our company is a data -driven storytelling, you know, that we have to communicate this stuff. And so lot of what we do is just unnerve things. I just came back from a meeting with our county assessor and their consultant, and, you know, he's going through this report that's got how many pages? I don't know, but it's all this. And it's like, how can you show me all of this text? and start talking to me about it. And I'm just like, I'm like, dude, you got to show me a picture somewhere. It's like, this is crazy. And so what we do is if you watch any of our work, we spent a ton of time breaking a city down to reveal its essence. So I don't need to get into like whether or not your spark plugs are firing at 20 beats per second or whatever. I need to just show you your car works, right? What does the audience want? They don't need to know the details. And far too many of us technically, trained folks, even architects, get down into the details and the audience doesn't necessarily understand does the car work, yes or no. So that's basically the method of our work is try to make it simple for folks. I use lot of analogies when I talk to people because that's how we relate. that's kind of, think of it having a curious mind, you want to go in and break something down, but to be able to speak it to a regular audience. It's not that the audience is stupid, it's just people just don't care about those kinds of details, they just want to know the bigger picture. Kevin K (13:19.545) Yeah, yeah. And so before we get into a couple of those stories, I am also curious, when you started your business in the recession, how did you, like who were your first clients and how did you get going in that world? Because it's definitely a different thing for an architect or urban designer to get into. Joe Minicozzi (13:39.448) You know, the funny thing was, I remember in the recession, I think I did a local lecture here in Asheville to the AIA, to the Architects Association. You know, it's a recession. Yeah, you're not building buildings. So as an architect, you're out of work, you know? But what's crazy about the architectural education, it's really an amazing education in creative thinking, but also critical thinking, right? So we're all given, you remember studio, there's like 15 of us in a studio, we're all given one problem to solve, but you're get 15 different answers, right? So that's the creative side. But the analytic side happens in all of that, that we're trying to break it down and figure it out before we can get to a design process. So that's the critical thinking side. Those skills can be applied anywhere. And then also in architecture, what do you do at the end of the semester? You have to pin up your work and you have to defend but it has to communicate to an audience visually, right? They need to understand what's going on in the design intent by what they see on the wall and how you present it. If you just look at that as a basic educational format, that can be applied anywhere. So we just applied architectural thinking to quantitative economic data for cities, right? So we get all of your data. We figure out what's its floor plan. Like why is this road here? Why is your city grown a certain way? That's all a floor plan, right? But there are decisions that are made along the way that fuel that growth. So if I add three bedrooms to my house, was it because I had four kids? know, it's like, that's the decision point for growing the house. Well, the same is true for cities. So we see when you get white flight, you're going to see that like in Kansas City. We saw that in Kansas City, Missouri, like this massive growth, southward, northward and westward or eastward, That's the whole, and that all happened really fast from 1950 forward. I think you, it's something like you doubled your population from 250 to 500, but you've 10 times your land area, which is crazy. Kevin K (15:52.475) Yeah, yeah, it's somewhere. We had a massive geographic expansion from the like 1947 city until today. I think the original 1947 city or so was probably in the ballpark of about 40 square miles. And now it's like 315 or so. Joe Minicozzi (16:15.242) I'm just drawing off the top of my head. There's an actual presentation out there somewhere, but I think it was like three times the road per person growth. So you're taking down three times the cost. So yeah, during the recession, was basically, I was showing up at conferences trying to help folks that were trying to have conversations about walkability, urban design, equity, and trying Kevin K (16:19.865) Yeah. yeah, absolutely. Joe Minicozzi (16:44.472) trying to share that the things that actually are all things that we advocate for also produce more wealth for communities. Does that make sense? So it was just like, look, we should just talk about that. Rather than say that it's good to have walkability, that can seem like a threat to an individual that you're trying to get me out of my car. That's very judgy. So rather than get involved in that emotionally, let's just talk about the fact that a Walmart actually destroys your wealth. Don't hate the player, hate the game, but you better understand the game. So when we did the models early on, it was just comparing Walmarts to Main Street, and Main Street was winning every single time. But why don't we build more Main Streets? Because the reverse is true, that we make it easier to do the Walmart, we tax it less, we charge it less, so that of course, Walmart's going to... You're going to see more Walmart -type buildings. I don't mean to be picking on Walmart so much. It's That's like a prototype, like the boxes. Those are throwaway architecture. So if you have property tax system that's based on your value of property, then there's an incentive for me to build junk in your community, right? The crappier the building I build, the lower the taxes I pay. Has nothing to do with the costs of the property. So the typical Walmart consumes two police officers per Walmart. So it actually costs you more in police services than a Walmart pays in property taxes. So if you were the owner of a Walmart, that's a good deal for you, right? So don't hate them. I hate us for not doing the math on that. It's that's shame on us. It's not hard. You just go call the police chief and say how many police officers are at Walmart every day and they'll tell you. That's data, Kevin K (18:28.015) Yeah. So let's talk about some of the recent data then. Not far from Walmart country, you've been working in Springfield, Missouri, which obviously is southwest Missouri, not far from Bentonville, Arkansas, which is the home base for Walmart. So we were talking, yeah, and Bentonville's actually an amazing, really cool town. And so you've been down in Springfield doing a bunch of work, and we were chatting about it. Joe Minicozzi (18:44.69) We've done Bentonville too, yeah. Kevin K (18:57.6) So this kind of took you in a little different direction. You started looking at trees and stormwater and everything else. I wonder if you could kind of talk through that scenario. Joe Minicozzi (19:05.888) Yeah. Springfield is really cool. it's one, it's nice about it. It's just straight smack dab in the middle of the country. It's Midwestern. There's not a lot of dynamic change to it because you don't have the coastal pressures of being next to an ocean or something like that. You don't have the rapid change of Silicon Valley where there's crazy changes in employment. It's very stable that And so in that stability, it's sort of a nice control subject of what's going on here. It's also not, it's not at the edge of some blast zone of some other city, you know? So think of like Rancho Cucamonga, California, which is outside the blast zone of Los Angeles. So whatever happens on Los Angeles is going to spread into the suburbs, suburb cities that are around it. So anyway, putting that aside. There's also this business person there, his name is Jack Stack, who wrote this game called The Great Game of Business, awesome book about business transparency. So the quote that I like of his is, I'm reading it right here, it says, a business should be run like an aquarium where everybody can see what's going on, what's going in, what's moving around, and what's coming out. So his theory of business is that everybody inside the company should know the balance sheet, they should know the P &L. that it's not him as the business owner, that he has a gold mine of money in the basement. You know, that everybody on staff should understand they've got to pay rent, they've got to pay insurance, all this stuff has costs. Well, our attitude is the same with cities. We should make the city economics so transparent that everybody understands the land use, the economic consequences of land use decisions. Don't tell me that people just want to live out in suburbia. Of course, if you're subsidizing them, why wouldn't you want to live in suburbia? So they hired us to do that modeling. Their city has run mostly off sales tax. think it's 86 % of their revenue comes from sales tax, 14 % comes from property tax, as far as geospatial, things we can put on a map. So that's kind of like the majority of their cashflow. When I did the presentation there, Joe Minicozzi (21:27.2) One of the things that we're doing the first side, showing the revenue and we're getting feedback from the staff and you're an urban designer, I'm an urban designer. One of the things that we tend to pay attention to how a city is shaped and what it looks like when we drive around. There weren't a lot of street trees in the city. And Graham Smith from Multi Studio based in Kansas City. He's the urban designer on the project. Graham said to me, goes, Kevin K (21:49.935) Yep. Joe Minicozzi (21:54.988) Do notice there's not a lot of street trees? And I was like, yeah, that's kind of crazy. It's like, it's like somehow like trees don't happen in the city. So I made a comment about it during the staff meeting and somebody in the engineering department said to me, well, I said, why don't you have trees? And he just said to me, goes, well, it's because trees attack the streets and sidewalks and use that word attack. I like my, my designer kicked in and I immediately responded. Do you not know how to design a tree pit? And then I stopped and I was like, well, that's not fair because I'm going to put them in the defensive. so, you know, this is somebody that's coming in with a mindset of maybe he came from, life safety or something, or the risk department inside city government. So he's only looking at it as a balance sheet item of one line item. Yes. A tree could screw up a sidewalk if you don't plant the proper tree species and don't build a tree pit. I got it. But it doesn't mean you should just lay waste to all trees. So just for fun. I came back to the office, I talked with Lea Hanringer, who was on the project. was like, and Lea's interested in understanding climate effects. So let's just look at the trees and what they could do financially for the city. So the whole stormwater system is, well, currently they're at a $9 million a year deficit in their stormwater system. They should be spending 15 million a year. They're only spending 6 million a year. So let that wash over you. They're not investing enough in their system that they've built. So that's only going to cause an economic collapse at some point in the future. If I don't brush my teeth every day, that's going to be a problem. One of them is going to fall out, right? So brushing my teeth every day is a maintenance issue. Same is true with any kind of infrastructure system. But to just go out and just totally replace the whole infrastructure system, if we just went out and built their stormwater system today, it'd be $600 million, $661 million worth of investment. So we considered the tree as a pipe and just said, what do trees do? And we actually made a cartoon of two sponges on a stick because there's a sponge in the air called leaves that suck water when the water hits it, keeps it from hitting the ground. And there's a root system that absorbs water from the ground. All of that keeps it out of the stormwater system. So a tree is essentially a pipe replacement, just to be crude about it, right? The average tree in Springfield, Missouri. And again, you don't have to be exact. Joe Minicozzi (24:23.192) Let's just get in the ballpark. It's like 770 gallons of water per tree gets sucked out of the air and 1500 gallons a year gets sucked out of the ground by the root system. So we can do the math on that and we kind of did an estimate based on the trees that they currently have in their city. Scaling that up, you're talking $600 ,000 of savings in the air and $1 .6 million savings in the ground. So that's $2 .2 million a year that you're not paying. in your stormwater system because of these trees. Here's an idea. Buy more trees. That sounds like a real rocket science idea. But I know, hey Joe, trees cost money, then we're gonna have to maintain them, we're have to make sure that we've got to get out and fix a sidewalk every once in while because we did something wrong. Okay, well we can do numbers on that. So we ran the math on it. The average benefit from the tree is a pipe, if you will. is about $115 a tree. The cost is 75 bucks. 'all take out your calculators at home, subtract $75 from 115. That means it's net positive 40 bucks a tree. we just, you know, just as a rough estimate, if you just go out and plant 10 ,000 trees, you're going to be net positive $400 ,000 a year. You can essentially use the tree to manufacture money to buy for police officers. That's cool. So don't just take it and look at that one side and just like, yeah, it's complicated to fix a sidewalk. What are the downstream effects of this? Now to kind of scale this up, remember I said $600 million system. Eugene, Oregon, we just happen to have the data. So Springfield's 170 ,000 people, Eugene, Oregon's 175, so it's got 5 ,000 more people in it. The stormwater system in Eugene, which actually has more rain in Eugene than in Missouri. Their stormwater system cost 400 million dollars versus Springfield is six hundred and and and 20 million dollars so so basically another way putting this Eugene, Oregon saved a hundred and eighty million dollars in their stormwater system and It comes down to the fact that they're a lot smaller. They the city shape is more compact So by doing compact design, you can actually save a hundred and eighty million Joe Minicozzi (26:46.903) Does that make sense? It's 35 square miles for Eugene. It's 83 square miles for Springfield. Kevin K (26:52.327) And to put it in context, I would imagine Eugene is still largely a city of like single -family homes. It's just maybe exactly, it's just a different layout for the city itself and how everything is configured on the ground. Joe Minicozzi (26:59.862) Yeah, yeah, it's not European. Joe Minicozzi (27:09.592) Well, our attitude is like, look, these are your choices. I live here in Asheville. So if you want to stretch out, fine. If you're a Midwestern city and you're like, hey Joe, this is the Midwest, you don't understand, we got lots of land here, we're gonna stretch out. It's like, oh cool, yeah, do it. But just make sure that you understand the cost of that stretching out and make sure that you let your decision makers know that people want to have a one acre yard, awesome, but it's gonna cost us $180 million more in a stormwater Is that the best choice for that public investment, that $180 million? Or could you have, I don't know, sent every child on a walkabout sabbatical around the world with that investment? There's lots of choices you could do with $180 million. Let's just be honest about Kevin K (27:58.117) Yeah, no doubt. Not to mention like one of the least of which could just be like lower taxes if that's your thing, you know. Joe Minicozzi (28:06.232) Well, or you could have invested that $180 million in more trees and you would have had $50 million of new revenue in your system on an annual basis, which is more than the ARPA funding that you got. ARPA was just a one year deal. Like you could actually manufacture more money than the federal government gave you. I mean, come on now, let's just talk about Kevin K (28:18.307) Right. Kevin K (28:24.123) Yeah. And I think the interesting thing is you're not even really getting into what some people might think of as like the frou frou design benefits of trees versus not trees in this. And so makes it a more pleasant place to walk or Joe Minicozzi (28:37.174) yeah. Aesthetic quality that reduces the heat island effect, reduces your air conditioning bills because you're not dealing with the outward effect of radiation. mean, there's lots of things. CO2, I mean, we didn't get an A that. We're just like a tree as a pipe replacement. Just start there. But yeah, if you did do those numbers, if you read, I don't know if you see on the bookcase up here, Happy City. and they get in the quantitative sociological effects that are actually financial as well because Canadians measure that stuff. We don't in America because we don't pay for health systems at the government level. So when the government actually does pay for the health system, they kind of want to know what the costs are. know, Charles Montgomery used all of that math in there to explain the financial consequences. I think the book is sort of a mislabeled. I think it's more of an economic than with the name Canotes. Kevin K (29:35.739) So at the stage you are now with Springfield, have you presented all this information to them and had that out in the world? Joe Minicozzi (29:45.356) Yeah. Well, one of the biases was that they wanted to continue to annex more land. And the first question I asked, which was why? And they said, well, people live out there and there's some higher wealth houses that are out there. Therefore, we're going to get higher taxes. And the reality of it is, and this is back to the original analysis that we did, which is the value per acre analysis. One of the biases people have with math is when they see like the Walmart's worth $20 million, they get really excited about it, especially compared to a building that we rehabbed on Main Street here in Asheville that's $11 million. So Walmart's twice the value, right? But that Walmart took 34 acres of our city versus our building on 0 .5 acres. And it's just a habit that humans have where they just immediately go to the big number without understanding the efficiency. Well, the same is true with suburbia. It's like, okay, yeah, they're experiencing wealth flight out of Springfield where people are just outside the city limits out in the county in their high -end neighborhoods. But when we do our tax model, you can see that they're actually not that productive. That's the first thing. Back to how I said, Springfield gets its money. They get their money off sales taxes. So why would you want to chase residential? Makes no sense. So we're gonna go and bring them into the city limits and then we're have to provide more services for them and not get any taxes out of them because we get all of our taxes out of sales. I actually told the audience when that question came up, I said, look, right now they're living outside, driving into your city and shopping, you're collecting their sales tax dollars and they're going home. You don't have to pay for their schools, you don't have to police them, you don't have to put the fire services for them, that's their problem. Why would you wanna take them in? and have more costs in your community when you're already getting the money that you need, which is the sales taxes. And as a planner, I hate saying that because it's like, everybody should be part of the community if you're involved at an economic level, but from a brass tax of how their financial system operates, there's no incentive for them to annex that land. But again, when you have the politics of everybody just there, and this is something just true to the new, as long as you've been in new urbanism and I've been involved, it's like this kind of habit. Joe Minicozzi (32:10.06) that we are America, so we must suburbanize. It's just this, it's ingrained in us. And it's really, it's a myth more than anything else. Kevin K (32:17.014) Right. So it also kind of strikes me, one of the interesting things about your work or that you get to see is the very different ways that local governments are funded all over the country. So you've talked about this example in Missouri, and it's probably really similar to how my city is. If I broke down our property tax bill, I think about 70 % of it goes to the school district. And then it's kind of apportioned up between the county and the city and some other, like the library board and a mental health. Board etc, but the lion's share is a school district and most of our city revenue is sales tax and then income tax because we Yeah, which is rare, but we have an income tax But I'm curious like what you've seen like around the country. Are there approaches that seem better worse more sustainable less sustainable or they just like they're Joe Minicozzi (32:54.4) Yeah, which is very rare. Yeah, that's Joe Minicozzi (33:08.916) They're all different. One of the jokes that I used to make is when we did this, I want to reference my former boss, Pat Whalen, in public interest projects. Pat's amazing. He's a genius. Pat had this incredible PowerPoint called the Economic and Environmental Case for Urbanism. And so he's the director of a real estate company trying to explain the value of downtown revitalization to people. That's where the value per acre analysis comes from. It was part of his show. what was interesting is it made sense in Asheville, and I just started poking around other cities in North Carolina because I was on the Downtown Association Board, and we're trying to figure out the value of our downtown versus other downtowns. you have a day job working for a district, the real Kevin Klinkenberg, you have this day job for this boundary. Well, don't you want to know how you operate versus the downtown improvement district or the Westport improvement district? Yeah, of course you do. So I was doing that for 10 cities bigger than Asheville and 10 cities smaller than Asheville. What's our taxable, non -taxable ratio? Who's got too much non -taxable? I don't know. Like until you get the data. So I made this shared website that's a Google document. And I shared it with the downtown directors for all the 10 cities and we populated it so we could all get metrics to understand how we stack up. What was your original question? Kevin K (34:43.963) It's just about the different mechanisms for a big local Joe Minicozzi (34:46.75) yeah. So, in that, we started to see that the downtowns were crushing it versus every other part of the city. Right? So, as an urban designer, we advocate for walkability, downtowns, everybody likes them, why don't we do more? And we start to find all the zoning rules that don't allow it, all the policies that don't allow it, and all the biases. And a whole Congress for urbanism is essentially discussing these things, going, who the hell put these things in place? You know, it's just, that's what we do. And we try to undo. these kind of rules that kind of get in the way. So I was doing, I think I was talking to Peter Katz and he's like, does it work this way in Florida? And I was like, I don't know. And so he hired us to do the analysis in Sarasota and sure enough, it was the same damn thing. So here's the way I see it. Florida has totally different rules than North Carolina. North Carolina has different policies than South Carolina, which is way different from Missouri. Everybody's got different state tax policy rules. But you know, and I know, when you drive around suburban Phoenix or suburban Los Angeles or suburban Boston, you see the same crap. To the radio audience, that's an architectural terminology, but it's like you see the same junk everywhere, right? And I told Peter, said, you know, it's hilarious to me. We all have different math, but it yields the same results. So in North Carolina, it's two plus two equals In South Carolina, it's three plus one equals four. In Florida, it's one plus three equals four. In California, it's 22 times 16 divided by the square root of 47 equals four. You know, it's like, we can make it complex, but at end of the day, that's all we have to do is use our eyes and go around suburbia and say, why is this happening? And you're going to see the same exact economic results in the landscape that's baked into the policy to reward it happening. So sort of shame on us for, you know, I don't have a math degree. I'm trained as an artist like you. I draw pictures, but I'm gonna go look at those policies and read them. Sometimes it gives you an aneurysm when you read some of these policies. But I think that's the beauty of the world that you and I operate in, is we're not afraid of that stuff. We'll get involved in transportation policies. Let's go read the ITE manual. It's like, of nerd does that, but we do it. Kevin K (37:07.611) I mean, if you talk to me when I was 19 years old in architecture school and said, well, hey, you're going to learn all about the intricacies of zoning codes and traffic engineering and also like, what? What are you talking about? But if you really want to understand your world and make a difference in it, you've got to dive into those things. So yeah, exactly. And actually, it is kind of fun and interesting to learn that it was fascinating to me when I first learned. Joe Minicozzi (37:25.826) and not fear Kevin K (37:35.003) much more about traffic engineering, like how engineers actually thought and what they were looking at and how they were evaluating streets and intersections and everything else to come up with their solutions. Joe Minicozzi (37:47.544) Well, you can be a better practicing professional too if you're respecting their profession and saying, I want to learn how you operate. Now I'm going to call BS on things when I see it, but at the same time, I'm going to respect that you have knowledge that I don't and I want to learn. But the thing that makes, I think that makes you and I different is that we also know that Moses didn't deliver their rules. That these are not infallible people that have designed this stuff. Kevin K (38:12.184) Right. Joe Minicozzi (38:16.056) that these are humans that are operating with their best intention, but often they make mistakes. Kevin K (38:22.331) No doubt, no doubt. I think we don't emphasize that enough that really so much of what we struggle against is just people trying to create systems and rules and then working with it and all of that can be changed. Joe Minicozzi (38:37.112) Yeah. Well, I just, this morning I sat with my county assessor and this is trouble that we started back in 2021. And here we are three years later and we're going through a reassessment in January of this year. And he's telling me that like a lot of the things that we recommended back in 2022, they're going to do, but they're not going to do it until 2029. I just about lost my mind. I was like, you know how many human beings my wife and I could produce in four years and you can't change policy? Come on now. That's bias in the system where it's like, there's nothing to stop them. It's just they've never done things this fast before. it was kind of frustrating and I told them, said, look, you just need to see me as a taxpayer now and not a consultant. I live here. My staff suffers. Kevin K (39:12.377) Yeah. Joe Minicozzi (39:32.438) with housing, everybody I know suffers with housing in this community because we're a hot market right now. And it's not fair that because you're going to be uncomfortable changing the way that you behave, there's no law that says you can't do this. This is just about your practice. And we see this, you've seen this with your career with city planners. It's like, well, we just haven't done it that way before. It's like, well, change. Kevin K (39:55.749) Yeah, yeah, it's not hard. It's not the end of the world, you know. Joe Minicozzi (39:57.622) The world's not going to stop. And guess what? Guess what? You're going to make a mistake again. Yeah, it's going to happen. It's like we're humans. Kevin K (40:05.423) I know. There's a real struggle a lot of times to just get people to take a risk to try something and try and fail and if you fail, it's not the end of the world. So what has Joe Minicozzi (40:16.376) They won't assess Airbnb's as commercial product. I'm like, dude, we've got 4 ,000 of them in my city. I've got people from Florida, cash flowing houses up here, and they're paying them off in four years. And my staff can't do that. I can't do that. Like, what the hell? And so why are you choosing to value them as houses and not commercial product? And the state, the state charges an occupancy tax on top of them, right? So the state knows that they're hotel rooms. Kevin K (40:19.532) yeah. Joe Minicozzi (40:45.368) because they're paying an occupancy tax, much like a hotel room would. So why are you choosing to value it differently and not value it on its cap rate? And I'm serious. Like I know that I'm kind of like beating this drum about here in Asheville. Nationwide, this is a problem. And the assessors are like, well, you know, it takes a while to kind of work this out. I'm like, no, Airbnb has been around since 2015. For f**k's sake. Sorry. It's like, this is, it shouldn't take 10 years. Kevin K (40:59.547) Yeah, no Joe Minicozzi (41:14.626) to realize how it affected the marketplace. You just sound stupid at that point. we don't understand. Kevin K (41:19.289) Yeah, it was crazy. It was such a big issue, as you might imagine, in Savannah, which I think for a time, Savannah was like the number one city in the world for Airbnb. Joe Minicozzi (41:29.516) Well, at least in Georgia, you have a separation between an occupant and a non -occupant. We don't have that in North Carolina. We're all treated the same, which is insane. So in Georgia, if you own a house in Savannah, but you live in Kansas City, you're taxed at a higher rate than somebody that lives in a Savannah house. Owner -occupied is totally different than non -owner -occupied. In North Carolina, we don't even have that protection. So it's even worse for us. So it's maddening. So anyway, anybody that's on this podcast that lives in a tourist town, like this is one of the things that should be the top of your agenda to talk about. It's like, I'm not saying don't do it. You we're a tourist town. Our baseball team is called the Asheville Tourists. Got it. Been the Asheville Tourists since the 1920s. This is our economy. But don't tax them less. That's crazy. Yeah. Kevin K (42:00.068) Interesting. Kevin K (42:24.443) Understand what they are, tax them, or have some policy that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, no doubt. So one of the other things that you've been able to do with your work then is kind of related to all this. You get the chance to like dive deep into the history of especially like property taxation and other things. And I know you've read a lot of stuff in this world. How has Joe Minicozzi (42:28.746) It's a commodity, right? What does that do to housing prices? Kevin K (42:51.269) kind of impacted the work that you're doing or you're thinking, or what are some notable things that you've seen and just looking back a long time ago when a lot of these rules were being formulated. Joe Minicozzi (43:01.75) Yeah, there's some. One of the things about new urbanists, it's kind of weird. I hate that term because we're sort of just urban thinkers. We're complex thinkers. Joe Minicozzi (43:19.68) It's not new. This is just, we're operating in an urban environment, we're going to be interrogating things, but we tend to lean toward, if it's broke, fix it. That's our attitude. And it shouldn't take forever. But we also swim upstream to try to figure out who put this fence in. So who put the fence out in that field? And why is that fence there? And if the fence serves a purpose, keep the fence. If the fence was there for just because some random situation, get rid of it. It's like unnecessary policy. So you'll hear within our cluster of crazy friends, a lot of us are just like, rid of parking standards. Why do you need them? Why do we have trip counts for highways? Because when you look at the base data of trip counts, it doesn't make sense. Plus, since pandemic, we've changed the way that our commute patterns operate. So we should be changing our math. And like we operate faster with a level of, with trying to stop the bleeding, if you will. We're triage people, you know, we're like the emergency room medics. But we're also going to go upstream to figure out how did this start? So just for, you know, I started to see a lot of patterns in the assessment maps of how neighborhoods were construed or different market areas that lined up with redlining. And so redlining started in 1934 and went to 1968 and was deemed unconstitutional. But if you go to Mapping Inequality website, you actually find that there's maps that predate redlining that the bankers were using that was essentially racist. That if you were an immigrant or in a black neighborhood, they deemed you high risk and they changed your ability to get cashflow. Redlining was adopted at a federal level. So it's federal policy that said this is the rule of the land now, which makes it pernicious. It was already pernicious before, but for the federal government to come in and say, we're going to be unconstitutional here is pretty bad. But to everybody's credit, everybody's hands got slapped in 1968, that changed. Well, here we are today and we're still seeing the same effects in the valuation that models very similarly to redlining. So I was just like, well, maybe there's got to be a book somewhere that this is all talked about in the Joe Minicozzi (45:41.816) I found this book from 1922. It's the ninth edition. So was actually the first edition was 1895. So think about this, a book was reprinted nine times because it was so popular. It's called The Essays and Taxation by Edwin Seligman. And I love this quote. So just for the radio audience, just turn on your mind to 1895. This is what he wrote. Practically, the general property tax is actually administered as beyond all doubt, one of the worst tax systems known to the civilized world. Because of its attempt to tax intangible as well as tangible things, it sins against the cardinal rules of uniformity, of equality, and of universality and taxation. It puts a premium on dishonesty and debauches the public's conscience. It reduces deception to a system and makes a science of navery. It presses hardest on those least able to pay and imposes double taxation on one man and grants entire immunity on the next. In short, the general property tax system is so flagrantly inequitable that its retention can only be explained through ignorance and inertia. It is the cause of such crying injustice that its alteration or its abolishment must become the battle cry of every statesman and reformer." So this is somebody who works in taxation and goes, this is a crock of junk. Let's get rid of this. And that was over a hundred years ago, right? And so now I sat in a two hour meeting. with my assessors and their consultant going through is excruciating detail, all of this crazy mathematics. I'm like, why are we doing it this way? I understand what you're doing, but let's take a big step up. Why do we finance cities this way? Why is it based on value? know, Kevin, you and I are trained as architects, right? We want to do beautiful buildings. We want to do, if I could afford it, I would build a stone house, you know, because I like stone and it lasts forever. So I create an asset that will be in the community for hundreds and hundreds of years paying taxes. Why would you penalize me for that? You should be charging me on how often I drive on that road and how many times I use a fire call. Charge me for the services you provide rather than some arbitrary, hey, you built a stone house, therefore you pay more taxes. You could be right next door to me in a tin shack and have actually more income than me. Joe Minicozzi (48:09.944) and be taxed less because you have a tin shack and I've got a stone house. I could be making $50 ,000 a year and you're making $200 How is that fair? This is where I said that the income tax is a little bit more fair, but the thing is if you're really rich, you're not making income. You've got assets, right? Those are all hidden somewhere, not being taxed. So there's no perfect systems. That's why we advocate, and you see in our models, those red -black models where you have Black is producing wealth, net positive, red is net subsidy. And we did that for Springfield. 80 % of the city is subsidized. So just show that to the citizens and just be like, this is how we're subsidizing it. Is this the best choice? But you should charge me for it. If there's, yeah, go ahead. No, Kevin K (48:52.091) So when you do this, go ahead. I was going say when you do that kind of historic research, it, I mean have to ask the Georgist question, does that, how do you think about that relative to the Henry George critique, the land value tax approach versus the standard property tax that we do in most places? Joe Minicozzi (49:11.16) I mean, I think that aligns with Henry George, the statement. It aligns with how I feel as a taxpayer and also as somebody that practices in this world. The more we get into this with the Cessars, I have all the respect in the world for what they do because we do all of our work on their data. So I'm very thankful for them as a profession. But I also see that they're trapped. in a construction of their own making, the same way that traffic engineers are. And for anybody that's on this podcast that's read Confessions of a Recovering Engineer by Chuck Marrone, I mean, he nails it. That same ethos in that book is the same ethos I see with the zoning people that are all just about zoning. This is the way the zoning is, as if some omnipotent force gave them the zoning, you know? And then there's the same as I see this with the assessors, where I always ask them, I'm like, why is that the standard? Where did this come Like today when this one assessor was telling me that legally they can't assess Airbnbs as commercial. So I immediately asked her, I'm like, can you show me the law that says that? And she just went blank. And I was like, you just told me that there was a law that this, so tell me the law. And they don't, this is their bias. This is their practice. This is their fear. They're afraid to stir up the people that are out there with Airbnbs. I'm like, that's not what the law says. So you're making a choice not to do that. There's so much... Joe Minicozzi (50:43.129) discretion that people don't talk about. You see this when you talk to old school planners that are just like, the trip counts and the parking requirement, their bias kind of comes in. They won't call it a bias. Kevin K (50:56.197) Yeah, yeah. And I think we've often talked about that. And I think Jeff Speck famously wrote about that. You can manipulate a traffic study to say whatever you want it to say. And it's really just about the choices that you're making of what you want to do or what you want the outcome to be. Joe Minicozzi (51:14.12) We did a land analysis. Back to Henry George, we did a land value analysis where we just turn off all the buildings and just look at the land value per acre. This was in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The larger parcels in the commercial strip area were half the value of the out parcels across the street. I asked, I'm like, does land magically lose half its value when you cross the street? Same zoning category. And the tax assessor told me with all confidence, she goes, well, the cheaper one is bigger. The more land you have, the lower the value. And it's like, what economic rule is that true? And she goes, there's less people that can afford large tracts of land. So therefore we have to give a discount because there's less people in the marketplace. And I was like, well, that's kind of true. But does that work this way with other limited commodities like diamonds? If I get a bigger diamond, is it cheaper? Surely there's less people that can afford a bigger And everybody in the room was laughing, but she was just totally confused by that. And the weird thing is that I don't have an economics degree. I've actually never taken an economics course. So I just asked a question because I'm curious about this stuff. Kevin K (52:23.323) Yeah. So Joe, you've also been working a little bit in Annapolis, Maryland, which is obviously a really, really different context than Springfield, Missouri, one of the oldest cities in the country. wonder if you want to talk a little bit about what you've been doing there and what you're seeing. Joe Minicozzi (52:40.376) Yeah, Annapolis is cool. We did one of those red -black models for them. And one of the things that we noticed was their annexation pattern was an interesting tell. It's kind of funny. like, I've got a picture for that, but it's kind of hard to talk about a picture in this space. I'll Kevin K (53:03.387) Well, eventually, eventually this will be a YouTube thing too at some point. So we could do Joe Minicozzi (53:08.696) Yeah. from one of the things you could see in the, again, we talked about at the start of this about Kansas City, there's tells in the annexation pattern that tell you the problems that you're having today. So it's kind of like, you and I are the same age. I'm 56. There's things that I'm dealing with today in my body that didn't happen because of what I did last week. It happened because of stuff I did when I was in high school, right? The older you get, like all of a sudden it's like, my ACL gave out. Why is that? It was because I played football in high school. So it's like, just took a while for that ligament to just finally give. I can remember the concussion that I had when that happened. You know, it's like things like that. So we look at cities the same way as what did you do in your past that you're now seeing the problems today? So. One of the rules that we all know is roads only last about 50 years. so every 50 years is when you have your heart attack based on what you did when you first built those roads. Annapolis did 71 % of its land acquisition. So if you look at it today and just say, if we make a pie chart of this, when did these areas break down? Their first hundred years is 4 % of their land. for their first 100 years. From 1920 to 1800, that's 80 years, they did 5 % growth, okay? So that was 120 years. In just the year of 1951, they annexed 71 % of their land. So let that wash over you. Just imagine the pie in your mind of 4%, 5%, and then 71 % in one year. So those developments didn't all happen in 1971. would take a while from the late 50s, early 60s when you start to fill in all of those subdivisions, you're filling in a lot of lane miles in 71 % of your city. So those roads are now being replaced now in the 2020s, 2030s. And they're looking at, let's see, kind of try to do the quick math here. They're looking Joe Minicozzi (55:34.264) close to. two thirds of their roads are coming due because of that original sin of that annexation. But the habit in the 1950s, I think about that. People come back from the war, we're like, we're going to be modern. There's all these policies in place to reward this, the federal highway system, the FHA loans. And it's not that people had ill intent, they just were naive. They're just like, well, let's try something different. Let's kind of remake cities. And this is what we're dealing with. It's like we have to kind of think back to when that happened. So we show them the And you can see their jaws drop when I was showing this to them. And it's kind of like walking in and I'm the doctor, we just got a bunch of CAT scans and I show you your broken shoulder. I'm like, is the reason why you can't pick things up. You've got your shoulders broken. And everybody can see it because you can see it on the map. 71 % is a lot of area in one year. Kevin K (56:27.023) Yeah. What is some of the examples of how some of your clients have reacted to information when you're finally at the end? I would imagine it runs the gamut from complete denial to people excited to make some change. mean, what do you see on the back end of doing these analysis? Joe Minicozzi (56:49.196) You know, the mayor actually called me yesterday. I was bicycling into work and I get this telephone call from Annapolis and it's him and he's so excited. And he goes, it's it's hard. It's indescribable. We're all singing from the same sheet of music now. And so, you know, in respect for politicians, and I don't, I don't mean this in a, in a, as, negative as this is going to sound, but think about, let's, let's just kind of make it blunt. You win a popularity contest and you become mayor. That's it. That's the American system of government right there. They don't have the master's degree in urban design. They don't have the research of 30 years of public policy analysis and parking requirements. They don't have that junk shoved in their heads the way that you and I do. So they just win this popularity contest and they're trying to figure things out. their commerce is what they hear from people, the emotions, the conversations, how people react to their day -to -day living. It's sort of on us as professionals to help demystify that. So that's basically, that's the MO of our company is we're going to try to find a way to give you a lot of quantitative data, but we're going to do it in a way that's easy to understand and give you a pie chart. You know, it's like, we're not going to make that hard. You know, it's just, it is. This is what's going on. Here's that pie chart showing you 71%. is in that one year, they've had that data since 1951. It's like, it shouldn't be magic to pull this stuff out. So it really is on the professional to do that. So usually what we get is we see a game. He's right. We do see a game change from people because we've created a graphic that people can see and they can see what's going on. You can't argue against the pie chart. There it is. 71%. It's like there's data. There's a pie chart so everybody can see how big that is. Just make it simple. We don't hand you an 85 page document explaining it all in text. Why? 65 % of the audience are visual learners. Show them a picture. So once we did that and kind of walk them through and help them understand, they could see their city with new eyes. That's actually another quote that a mayor gave me in Davis, California. He goes, it's as if I've never been to this city called Davis and I could see it with new eyes Joe Minicozzi (59:16.886) So it's respecting them and honoring that their life is hard. Their role is near impossible. They've got to learn how a multi -billion dollar corporation operates the night after the election. And there's all of these habits baked into it. how do we short circuit that and make it easy for people to move? So we've seen changes. We've seen Rancho Cucamonga, California. They adopted a one to six rule for their downtown as an area to value ratio. So now they have like a two drink minimum, if you will. And there was a steel manufacturing company that came in for a tax break. And the assistant city manager told me, goes, you know, it's fun is after we did this math with you all, he goes, they came in and asked for a tax break and they're a big employer. But then I compared them on a per acre basis to other manufacturing plants in our city, these smaller ones, and they were actually way more beneficial than this big one. So I told the big one to take a hike. And it was like, that made my month. It's like, I couldn't believe he did that. But it was like, we gave them a new language to understand themselves. And as a consultant, it's like, yeah, I wasn't there for the win, but I feel proud of that. It's not sexy to talk about, but it's like, that's cool. So there's not as much satisfaction as being an architect when somebody lives in a house that you produce, but it's a different kind of satisfaction. Kevin K (01:00:52.003) Yeah, I really like the analogy of, it's almost like you're providing an MRI or a CAT scan. You're the doctor giving them critical information about the health of their community. And then really it's up to them to decide, do they want to correct that health or not? Joe Minicozzi (01:01:11.606) Well, it's value statement of our company too, that the doctor doesn't blame the patient. And so if you're going in and you're a smoker, chronic smoker your entire life, the doctor knows you're an addict. But what can the doctor provide you to help you get past your addiction? So the doctor is going to show you an MRI of your lungs and you're going to see the black spots all over the lungs. The doctor is going to be like, guess where that's coming from? Kevin K (01:01:14.083) Okay. Joe Minicozzi (01:01:40.128) and you'll say, it's my smoking. It'll be like, yeah, you want to keep doing it? It's up on you. I'm not going to be able to pull a cigarette out of your hand, but I have to do what I can to give you information to be an educated consumer. So that's kind of our MO. Kevin K (01:01:54.821) Joe, I think that's a great place to wrap. And if people are looking to find you and your company, what's the best place to go? Joe Minicozzi (01:02:06.552) Urban3 .com, three is all spelled out. You can also, there's plenty of videos online that you can Google through YouTube. My favorite one is the one that Not Just Bikes did on our work. Not Just Bikes is just a great resource for lots of information on city planning. And also Strong Towns covers a lot of our work. And also the Congress for New Urbanism. If anybody wants to come to a conference, the Congress for New Urbanism or the Strong Towns Gatherings are great. Or if you want to go deep nerd, we're like at the Government Finance Officers Association conferences every year. That's a whole lot of fun. So yeah, we'll see you around in public and thank you for doing all of Kevin K (01:02:54.405) Yeah, so really appreciate it, Joe. I'm sure we'll do some more in the future, but this is a great introduction for anybody who doesn't know your work. And also for those who do, I really appreciate the deeper dive. So hang in there. Keep doing what you're doing. And we'll talk again. All right. Joe Minicozzi (01:03:13.25) Thanks. Get full access to The Messy City at kevinklinkenberg.substack.com/subscribe

Rich recapped the major IT meltdown.Cameron in Huntington Beach, CA is having issues with YouTube App on his iPhone.Amazon Prime Day 2024 was a success.John Hammond, Principal Security Researcher at Huntress, joins to talk about the major IT outage.Dawn in Tuscon, AZ has a question about connecting to the USB on her computer. Rich says she needs a USB C to A adapter.Chris in Rancho Cucamonga can't connect to WiFi Calling on his work's WiFi network.Redbox is shutting down its DVD kiosks and streaming service.Target is the latest retailer to stop accepting checks. Do you still write them?Leslie in Laguna Beach is having trouble accessing her banking app on her mobile phone.Zac Hall, 9to5Mac Editor-at-Large, joins to talk about iOS 18 Public Beta.Tim in Moorpark is running for President but has an issue with his honey jar labels.Apple has a new HomePod Mini in Midnight color.TinyPod is a way to transform an Apple Watch into a minimalist communication device.Samsung is pausing Galaxy Buds 3 Pro shipments due to a quality control issue.James in Los Angeles is looking for a way to protect his copyrighted photos that he posts online. Rich recommends watermarking with Canva or an app, or uploading to a service like SmugMug that will do it automatically. Also, follow Jefferson Graham at PhotoWalks.Microsoft Designer is a Canva alternative now available for iOS and Android.Debra wonders if she can replace her cable company “landline” with Ooma.Jared Newman of Advisorator joins to talk about his latest cord-cutting guide.College students can get 50% off an HBO Max streaming subscription.Handy website: https://www.siriuserguide.com/Google shows off new Pixel 9 devices a bit early. Get full access to Rich on Tech at richontech.tv/subscribe

DV takes your calls and talks to Jose Mota after the Dodgers lose to the Rockies, 7-6. Bobby Miller talks to the media after making his first start since April 10th. Clayton Kershaw speaks after making a rehab start in Rancho Cucamonga. Max Muncy gives an update on his oblique injury. 

Why the D.A. decided not to file charges against the USC student who stabbed a homeless man to death. The Lakers have a new head coach. A grandmother is scared to go home after her home was broken into in Rancho Cucamonga. And some new rules for workplaces that get really hot, on this first day of summer. The L.A. Local is sponsored by the L.A. Car Guy Family of dealerships. 

Buenos Dias Hope you all had a good Father's Day Weekend. Travis is here and Beto Duran is in for Sliwa today. Ok lets get to our HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT Chris Morales is in studio to tell all about it. USC is BACK on 710 ESPN! Did you watch the US OPEN? Travis has some thoughts. Something or Nothing that Rory Mcilroy did not speak to the media after he chocked on the last putt. 3 Dodgers went down this weekend due to injury. Yamamoto, Betts and Grove. And Kershaw is making a rehab start in Rancho Cucamonga. We read your questions off of X for another version of ASK BETO! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On this episode of the Upstate Golf Guys Podcast, we go out of our comfort zone from a Wednesday night recording session to a Friday night recording session... The vibe was strong with Mikey and I and I think it was personally our best recording yet! There were ton of laughs, jokes and stories. I think our fans will enjoy!!! It went so well, I am going to go edit free on this one, so beware!!!!! (Few F Bombs) Our guests of the week are two awesome guys out of Rancho Cucamonga, California. Starting a clothing line for us golfers that golf every Sunday of the 52 weeks in a year! Carlos and Hector have a master plan to launch a one-of-a-kind Golf clothing brand from golf polos, hoodies to hats, golf towels to even some dope socks!!! www.52sundays.co Come hang out with us and enjoy the podcast!!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The body of a Caucasian female was found by a worker in a vineyard in Rancho Cucamonga, California on June 7, 1979. The next day, the San Bernardino sheriff's office began circulating the details about the discovery through the media, citing her age as between 18 and 30 years. She was dubbed the Rancho Cucamonga Jane Doe. In April 2024, she was finally identified as 17-year-old Karen Heverly, a runaway from Jersey Shore, PA. How did a PA teen make it to California and what happened that ended with her death?

Rancho Cucamonga broadcaster Mike Lindskog talks about the club's BBQs alternate identity. Also, Ben shares three more new looks coming to Minor League teams soon, the podcast hosts asks for creative Minor League team names from listeners and Josh extracts the latest edition of Ghosts of the Minors To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alex and Bobby discuss the latest AI innovation (quoting fake stats with its chest), break down the Perfect Game/Fanatics partnership and what it means for the future of youth baseball, and ponder the prospect of "nationalized" TV rights in the wake of Rob Manfred's comments, then unleash top sunflower seed power rankings in a new segment.Links:Perfect Game, Fanatics deal has agents raising concerns F.C. Rancho Cucamonga (feat. Ryan O'Hanlon) Could MLB nationalize its media rights? Join the Tipping Pitches Patreon Tipping Pitches merchandise Songs featured in this episode:Booker T & the M.G.'s — “Green Onions” --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tipping-pitches/message

Kip writes "I guess I'll get right to it. Back in the late 90's I had 3 separate terrifying encounters with some type of large black creature over 3 years. The first two encounters were roughly in 1997 & 1998. I was in high school at the time and 16-17 years old. And the 3rd was in late 1999 so I was just about 18. I can honestly say that they were so disturbing that I have thought about them often ever since. Two of the encounters I had multiple buddies with me and the most disturbing encounter I was alone exploring the mountain behind our home on our 4 wheeler. I grew up in a Southern California city called Corona. Its roughly 1.5 hours north of San Diego and next to Riverside. At this time the upper portion of the city had miles of orchards extending from the edge of the housing developments all the way to the base of the mountains that separated us from the coast and Orange County. As a kid myself and my family spent a significant amount of time on this mountain range hiking, mountain biking, exploring the various canyons, and a few of the abandoned tin mines. Although there were known predators such as mountain lions and coyotes that we would see from time to time, I never felt scared being in this area but always knew to be cautious. At the time of what I would consider my first encounter our town was changing a lot. Hundreds of acres, if not thousands, of the orchards were being leveled to build more homes. At this time being of high school age this was a total bummer. All of the cool places we would explore or hang out were going away every week and being replaced with massive housing developments. Because of the size of one of the housing developments, there was a large storm drain project that the army core of engineers was in charge of. This project was situated near the mouth of one of the larger canyons and was intended to divert stormwater underground to who knows where? This area was completely fenced off with barbed wire fences and they even had an on-site security guard at night. This entire area was surrounded by thick orange groves and also avocado groves. Knowing that there was a massive underground tunnel being built and also being obsessed with exploring abandoned mines, there was no choice but to explore this. I did some recon during the daytime hours and figured out the best way to sneak in at night hopefully without being detected by their on-site security guard. Late on a Friday evening my buddies and I drove my truck on a dirt road deep into the orange groves and parked it behind a large pile of dead orange trees that they had ripped out of the ground. This was an area that I was very familiar with. In this area, they also had bulldozers, graders, and loaders parked near a water tank. We snuck through the trees, scaled a barbed wire fence, and at this point the Avocado Grove began. We easily made it in and explored these tunnels which were kind of a disappointment because there was really nothing to them other than concrete and scaffolding. Feeling somewhat underwhelmed we decided to head back to the truck which was roughly a half mile from the tunnel. Upon exiting the range groves we saw headlights coming our way so we quickly jumped behind some of the heavy equipment thinking the security was coming to bust us. To our surprise, it was a two-door Honda Civic with two chicks. Being curious teenage boys we were immediately wondering if they were hot. Lol. After spending some time checking out all of the cool heavy equipment we made it back to my truck. Knowing that the road they were driving on was eventually a dead end we were surprised to see that they still had not come back out. We decided to investigate to make sure they were ok. We assumed the girls were probably drinking or smoking weed because this was not a well known place and was quite creepy especially at night due to how secluded it was. The three of us piled back into my single-cab Chevy truck and started heading in their direction. As we rounded a sharp turn on the dirt road we could see their car parked at the dead end off in the distance. As we got within 100 yards of their car we could see something black crouched down behind the car. The first we thought we had was that maybe one of them was behind the car but as we got closer we could see that it was definitely not a girl and appeared to be completely black and hunched over as if it was hiding and watching them. I had one of those Walmart special 12 million candle spotlight that plugged into the cigarette lighter in my truck. My buddy Aaron turned that on and hung out the window shining it down the road. We then thought that it must be a bear of some other creature but it was not looking like anything that we were familiar with which was kind of a weird sensation seeing something that we were not even sure what it was. As we were now within 50 yards or less, to our horror, this creature slightly turned to look towards us and stood up. This was nothing that we recognized. We immediately began freaking out yelling at one another "what the hell is that thing?!!" I hit the gas and we accelerated towards their car while keeping the light on it! To the south of where the girls were parked was another barbed wire. (To clarify, all of these fences were roughly 7' tall chain link fences topped with like 18" of 3 strands of barbed wire. A sizeable fence). The fence was within 15 feet of the edge of the road only separated by a small ditch that may have been 2' deep. Beyond the fence was a wide open field that had already been scraped of all vegetation. The base of the mountain was probably 400-500 yards away from this location. This creature which I would estimate was between eight and 9 feet tall took two steps towards the edge of the road and literally vanished before our eyes. We saw this happen from maybe 50 feet away. I slammed on the brakes and we slid on the gravel road stopping about 10 feet behind the girl's car. We jumped out paying no attention to them and immediately started shining the spotlight into the field. When the creature vanished we could not understand what we really just saw. Our minds were thinking of rational explanations like maybe it dove into the small ditch just out of sight and squeezed under the fence somehow. Or, maybe it climbed over the fence really fast and somehow we didn't see that which makes no sense. We were grasping for any explanation besides it literally vanishing into thin air. In reality, we should have seen the creature maybe 20 feet away on the other side of this fence running across the wide open field if it had somehow jumped this fence but like I said it had vanished. We had all become very animated at this point yelling and freaking out at what we had just seen. Probably thinking we were absolute psychopaths, the girls in the car immediately started the engine lipped around and just took off. I did hear one of them yell "what's your F-ing problem???" Rightfully so. We calmed down after a few minutes and started to collect ourselves. There was no sign of the creature at all, and because it was a gravel road there were no visible footprints. We stayed shining spotlight for probably a half hour, absolutely shaken by what we had seen. We saw nothing, absolutely nothing. It was now close to 1 am and we rushed back to my house and immediately woke my dad up from a dead sleep and told him what we had witnessed. A little back story on my Dad, he grew up in Starvalley Wyoming. He spent most of his years as a youth as a youth and teens in the mountains hunting. In his late teens and into his 20's he was a hunting guide. He guided hunters from all over the world into the backcountry on horseback. My Dad was tough and fearless, and if anyone would have encountered something like this before it was him. He immediately got out of bed and once we settled down a bit he wanted to entire story, every detail. After listening to our story he became very quiet and serious. He sat down at the table and said "Boys, I have no doubt that what you saw tonight was real. I do not think this was any type of animal but rather a being. Sometimes we are allowed to see things from the other side of the veil or maybe even another dimension. I don't know why we do but I think this is what you experienced tonight. I do not want you going up to that area anymore." after that he told us this was nothing to mess with and not to ever pursue it. It was so unsettling and still to this day I could call either one of my two buddies and have them recount the exact same story word for word. This creature was not how I pictured the typical sasquatch. it did appear to have a shorter sleek jet black fur. Its fur almost absorbed our light and was almost difficult to distinguish any facial features at all. It was almost like a 3 dimensional shadow if that makes sense somehow? It was very tall and athletic-looking. It did not have a massive hulking build but rather a very sleek, powerful, and fast type of build if that makes any sense. Think fairly jacked sprinter instead of a giant bodybuilder. That experience has bothered me ever since. Monday came around and we thought we had the craziest story that we could ever tell at school. To my dismay, people thought we were so full of crap and honestly did not believe us. That really pissed me off but also disappointed me. We didn't really tell anyone else after that reaction from a few people in fear of being seen as weird or just lying. Second Incident This encounter still scares me to this day and I still have so many unanswered questions. This took place maybe 8-9 months later. maybe a year. My parents had sold our boat and bought some 4 wheelers instead. I loved this option! I spent everyday after school enjoying this amazing new found sense of freedom and exploring the mountain behind our neighborhood which was about 1/2 mile away. There were fire roads, old trails, and riverbeds leading up to the canyons. If you would ride to the top of the mountain on a clear day you could see the ocean and Catalina Island off in the distance. A girl that I was friends with who had very wealthy parents just bought a brand new 4 wheeler. She tracked me down at school and asked if I would every want to meet up after school and take her exploring. They literally lived at the base of the mountain but about 3 miles from my house. I was stoked! A few days later I loaded up the 4 wheeler into the back of my truck and met her at her house. I did not know this area very well so this was extra exciting to go explore a new area. We went down the road a ways and decided to cut up through some orange groves on a slightly overgrown road. We climbed a few windmills to get a good view of what was further ahead. After weaving in and out of the labrynth of trees and small dirt roads we ended up at a gate. On the other side of the gate were some avocado trees, bee boxes, and an overgrown trail that turned into switch backs leading up the mountain. This looked awesome and I was so intrigued by it for some reason. A few minutes later an old man pulled up in an old fafrm truck and was PISSED that we were in there. He yelled at us and he said "and don't you ever think about ever going up that road, never go up there!" At the time I though he was just being a grouchy old dick but now looking back I think he knew something and was actually trying to run us off to keep us safe. My defiant teenage brain now had absolute tunnel vision on returning a few days later, finding a way around the gate and exploring whatever that road led to. I had to know where those steel switchbacks led to. Sure enough, a few days later I went back...alone. I had a pocket knife, camelback full of water, and was getting in no matter what. I found a way to cut down into the river bed and up a very steel embankment which put me on the other side of the gate. I showed that old man! After cruising around atg the bottom of the hill for a few minutes I was disappointed only seeing old abandoned farming equipment in the weeds. Now it was time to follow the narrow trail up the steep mountain. Just as I was starting up the trail there was a really sketchy narrow section where it had washed out around a culvert. I carefully made my way around it trying to keep from sliding down into a washed out ditch. As I made my way up the vegetation began changing. There were tons of massive oak trees growing in a large ravine and and along the edge of the trail. By this time I was WAAY up the mountain and could easily see across the whole valley looking out at Ontario and Rancho Cucamonga way off in the distance. Then I found the most bizarre things ever. Huge, old, single wide trailers probably from the late 60's or 70's just sitting on the side of the mountain. There were 3-4 of them one above me on the trail and a few out on this point on the other side of the ravine filled with the massive oak trees. Areas had been dug into the mountainside for the trailers to sit on. I still don't even understand how they could have ever placed those up there unless by a massive helicopter or something. A trailer would literally be impossible. I thought "Well this is super weird but I'm totally exploring these. The first one was really beat up and had no windows or doors. I hiked down off of the trail and began cutting through the ravine to get to the others. The oak forest I was cutting through was thick. even though it was still very light outside, it was very dim under the shade of these massive thick trees. The ground was covered in probable 6' of leaves and was very noisy when walking through. I checked out the other trailers for probably another 45 minutes. Nothing amazing but still interesting. At this point the sun would be setting by the time I got down the mountain and I did not want to try to find my way back out in the dark so I started heading back toward the trail that my 4 wheeler was parked on. I was walking through the bottom of the oak filled ravine when all of a sudden something just stopped me in my tracks. Everything had become so quiet. I'm talking impossibly quiet and I immediately noticed it. I have never experienced anything like this. I was if I just walked into a soundproof room but in the middle of a ravine. I immediately had the feeling that I was not alone and that something dangerous was watching me. I slowly started scanning my surroundings and had such a strange claustrophobic feeling. All I could hear was ringing in my ears. No birds, no breeze, not even the sound of the trees moving slightly. I had never experienced anything like this. I began feeling a very distinct dark and creepy feeling. As I looked at the hillside in front of me, maybe 15 feet in front of me I experience the most intense fear I have ever felt to this day. A quick glint caught my eye and as I looked at where the glint came from the weirdest thing happened. The only thing I can compare it to is when you are staring at one of those weird stereogram pictures. You are straining your eyes and then all of a sudden the 3-D image comes into focus. I was staring at the hillside right in front of me which was covered in leaves. There was a large gray rock to the right and slightly above the rock but 3 feet to the left was the trunk of an oak tree. I was staring at the leaves and in the space between the tree and the rock I saw it. It was like all of a sudden my eyes came into focus and I could see it. I hated what I saw. It literally paralyzed me with fear. I was a sprinter on our schools track team so running was always my best option. I literally could not move. I was looking at what I believe was that exact same creature we spotted that night close to a year prior. It truly was probably 8-1/2 to 9' tall. The hillside in that spot was very steep so it was kind of laid back against the hill perfectly camouflaged between the rock and tree but its body was in full view. It did not move but its shiny black eyes just intensely stared at me. I stared right back. I do not remember seeing any whites to its eyes but could tell when its eyes moved because of the glint they created. The eyes looked like tow shiny pieces of obsidian or glass. This is the part that scares me the most. This was not a friendly encounter by any stretch of the imagination. This was not a goofy and happy harry and the hemdersons experience. This thing felt so mean and evil. As it stared into my eyes in that intense quietness I literally could feel that it hated me and did not want me there. I did not hear any type of voice but I could feel the most wicked and intense hate from it. I could literally feeling in my soul that I don't think I was even breathing for an unknown amount of time. I know that sounds weird. I don't know how long I stood there in that trance or whatever this experience was, but I distinctly remember feeling my lips beginning to tingle and feeling dizzy. It was enough to snap me out of it. I stumbled backwards and weakly scampered up the opposite side of the ravine. I was so slow and felt like all of my strength was just absolutely gone. I was pretty much in tears and felt like I may have just almost been attacked or killed. I got on my 4 wheeler and started backing down the trail as fast as could because it was too narrow and the hillside too steel to actually turn the machine around. I got to a switchback area and did probable the most frantic 20 point turn every performed. I was so certain that at any second this creature was going to come sprinting from the edge other oak trees and kill me. I raced down the trail and could not believe my eyes. The narrow area where the trail had mostly washed out around the culvert had large branches and brush literally piled up with other brush. It was probably 3 feet high and was no doubt there to block me or make me stop. I basically said F it and crashed right through the edge of it and made it right through. Getting back to the truck was a blur. That was probably the hardest that 4 wheeler would ever have been ridden. For quite awhile after that experience I really thought that creature could come back and find me somehow. I don't know what it did to me but it absolutely got in my head and I have never felt that much hate and disdain from anything like that in my life. After finding your podcast I have been thinking about that experience so often and recounting so many of the details. I can remember that experience like it was yesterday. I can tell you exactly what the temperature was like outside, what the air smelled like, the smell of the exhaust from the 4 wheeler, and the smell of the leaves and dirt in that ravine. I think that day is pretty much burned into my soul. That creature was the most terrifying thing I have ever laid eyes on. I honestly don't even know what exactly to classify it as. It shares some similarities to a sasquatch but it was so long and slender while still appearing very strong and fast. This might sound crazy but it really felt like it was from some other place or realm. I have had a few very close encounters with bears while camping and while that was scary, especially being in a tent, it wasn't even in the same universe as how terrifying encountering that thing was. I never ever considered going anywhere near that spot ever again and still would not even today. I felt beyond helpless against that thing and am just grateful nothing actually bad happened. I did feel like that experience was a strong warning from that thing. I have often wondered if it was extremely angry at the massive changes taking place in the area with the destruction of all of the orange, lemon, grapefruit and avocado groves. It could have been the perfect environment to remain unseen and an endless food supply. I honestly just don't know. Third Incident   So this encounter I still don't understand. My buddies and Had just graduated from high school. It was the typical time in life when everyone start going their separate ways. One of my good friends Derek was getting ready to move to New Zealand for a few years and another immediately off to College in Utah. I was working with my Dad who was a general contractor and was working as a superintendent helping build our commercial construction projects. As a last fun hoorah 4 of us got together and went off-roading and exploring south of our town down the I-15 a little ways. This was an area somewhat new to us but as the housing developments continued to boom we knew in a few years most of those areas would be gone. I remember driving down a paved road and the area was heavily wooded with oak trees. I was driving and we came around a bend in the road. Now today as an adult, this would have been such an awesome place to have a home on a few acres. It was beautiful and secluded. All of the homes had a significant amount of land and were really spaced far apart. I noticed a long gravel driveway leading up to some large pepper trees. The front lawn of the home looked like it was dying and we could just make out the house back in the trees. The garage door was open and so was the front door. Out of curiosity we backed u and drove up the driveway towards the house. Sure enough it was completely vacant. I suspect that one of the large developers had purchased all of the land to later build one of the current golf course communities. We could not believe our eyes. The people must have moved out no longer than the week before. We yelled hello a few times before walking into this vacant home. It was immaculate! Literally clean and well kept. It was a decent size single level home with a 3 car garage. All of the furniture was gone but there were a few random odds and ends left behind in a few of the rooms and garage. We were not the kind of guys that would vandalize a place like this. We thought it was so cool and decided to come back later that night and camp out inside. I think we all told our parents the classic type of story that each of us would be at another house but in reality we were staying the night in this abandoned house. We grabbed sleeping bags, pillows, and my friend stole this massive red candle from his mom's Christmas decoration shelf in his garage. That was going to be our source of light since we didn't have a lantern that we could take without it looking too suspicious. We arrived back at the house just as it was almost all the way dark and boy this place looked creepy now. Especially with the way it was tucked back into the trees. And the house was a good size house which I would estimate between 2300-2500 sf. Backed my truck into the garage and glossed the old style wood garage door that had the big springs on the sides. The power had been shut off to the home so we had to open and close the garage door manually by pulling the disconnect on the opener. We set up shop in the center of the living room and had the angle sitting in a paint can lid with all of our sleeping beds spread out around it. We got settled in and were just talking about future plans, good times we had together throughout the years and just typical conversations. It was a really fun night. Just as we were all getting tired and winding down we thought we heard a weird sounding strange whistle outside. We all shut up and listened but didn't hear again. We blew out the candle. No more than 15 minutes later we heard something hit the large living room window really hard which immediately woke us up and scared the crap out of us! All of the blinds and curtains were gone so I felt like we were in a big fish bowl as soon as we relit the candle. As we were discussing what that loud noise was we heard the strange whistle again. It was a longer whistle and a lower tone than what you would normally whistle. We were so far from the town or really any real road. Nobody even know we were at this house. Then another really loud bang on the kitchen window and another on the dining room sliding glass door. Then another weird long whistle. We were absolutely crapping bricks. There would be a few minutes of complete silence followed by another loud bang on the windows or side of the home. Whatever was out there was seemingly walking in circles just pounding in the windows and would intermittently do a long weird sounding whistle. We were beyond terrified and knew whoever was out there could see us inside perfectly while we could not see it. I ran to the nearest bedroom and pulled off the bi-fold closet doors. My friends did the same and we started putting them up against the windows to block the view into the home. These loud pounds on the windows and sides of the home got more and more intense and began happening all around the home which really made us believe there were multiple people outside tormenting us. We yelled out some obsentities and threats telling them to get the hell out of there. This went on literally all night. We were so scared that we didn't even try to leave. it was pitch black outside. With my truck being parked in the garage that meant that someone would have to manually open the garage door and hold it open long enough for us to drive out and then be exposed for a minute outside of the truck. We were so freaked out that was absolutely not an option. We removed hanger rods as weapons or whatever we could find. We ended up with a shower curtain rod as a weapon too although it was really light weight and cheap. After hours and hours of this nonstop horrifying ordeal the sun began coming up and it stopped. We waited until it was fully light outside and tore out of there as fast as we could. Later that afternoon I got up from taking a an since I hadn't slept at all that night. It was Saturday. The more I thought about that experience the more it pissed me off. I wanted to go back with my Remington 870 shotgun and sneak in on foot and see who is there during the day. Maybe it was some rogue homeless people that were pissed that we took their spot? I called up my buddies Zach and Derek. They were down to go back and spy on the property to see the bastards that did that to us. Zach snuck out his dads 12 gauge shotgun so now we had two. We had no intentions on using them but wanted some sort of protection in case it was some creepy Charles mansion type people. By the time we made it back out there it was basically dusk which would give us cover with it getting darker. We went back to the house after parking 1/4 mile down the road and sneaking in on foot. We could not believe our eyes. The entire house had been absolutely destroyed. Every window broken out, every door kicked in and laying on the ground. The garage door we had opened to pak inside laid broken on the floor of the garage. we peaked inside the house and the amount of destruction inside looked like it would have taken a group if grown men hours to do. This house was 100% destroyed. Destroyed to the point that nobody would even think about trying to stay there. Broken glass was everywhere. All of the bedroom doors were broken right off the hinges and laying on the ground. The drywall had so many holes smashed through it. The ceiling fan in the dining room was ripped down. It was so insane we could not even believe what we were looking at. how could this be the same immaculate place we had stayed the previous night. At that point we were really pissed off. The gravel driveway continued up through the trees and towards the hillside which was basically the base of the mountain. We decided to go see what was up there. We walked a little ways further being as stealthy as possible and I immediately hated what I saw. There were two old mobile homes, very similar to what I had seen a few years before on the mountainside where I had that horrifying encounter with the black creature. The moon wasn't full but was providing a decent amount of light. We decided to check out the two trailers to see if it looked like someone had been squatting in them. Feeling brave being armed we checked them out, They were in terrible condition and disgusting inside. Leaking roofs and water damaged everything along with tons of sharp glass from all of the broken windows. They no longer had the wood steps to the front door so he had to hop down about 3' back into the ground. No sooner had we jumped down and walked out away from the trailer I heard that weird whistle again. Just as I looked up towards the hillside in front of us I caught a glimpse for just a split second of something that appeared to be tall and black. Just as I started realizing that someone, or something was like 30' in front of us a large boulder/rock about the size of a medium watermelon sailed right past my head in between my two friends. The strength it must have taken to throw a rock that large and heavy was unimaginable. Had it struck any of us it would have most likely been fatal. I didn't even think twice and started unloading my shotgun at where briefly saw this figure. I unloaded all 5 rounds and immediately started pulling more from my front pocket. My friends were completely shocked and began yelling at me saying just to run. We did, we ran away as fast as we could and didn't stop until we reached my truck a ways down the road. We never told our parents or anyone else. My friends were kind of mad at me for shooting at the figure even though that rock would have probably killed one of us had it hit us in the head. I didn't regret shooting at it, he, whatever it was. I really hoped I got a piece of him in return. We NEVER went back to that property or even the area in general. Nothing about that mountain felt safe anymore. 28 years later, as I have been replaying these experiences over and over since listening to your podcast I have started to research that area. i pulled up google earth and went as far back with the dates as I could which was the late 90's. I did this one night with my two oldest kids after telling them the story. It was actually very shocking to see how close each of these encounters happened from one another. As the crow fly's, the first two encounters happened only within 1/2 mile or even slightly less from one another. The last encounter/incident has only 1.5 miles away but also right at the base of the mountain where there were thick orchards and oak trees. Very interesting to say the least. Anyway, If you made it this far reading all of this I appreciate you hearing this experience. I have honestly been so reserved for so long in sharing these stories with anyone because I don't want to seem crazy or weird. But after listening to your countless episodes I realize that there are so many others that have had strange experiences that cannot be explained. We ditched California and moved to East Idaho 11 years ago. I spend a significant amount of time riding dirt bikes exploring our local mountains on remote singletrack. I ride with a cool group of buddies. We have seen wolves, black and brown bears, and mountain lions, but nothing even remotely as scary as what I encountered in our little local mountain range in southern California. Go figure."     Link to Sasquatch and the missing man  

0:00 - Intro  0:50 - the guys have 9s, glocks and 38s on them  1:24 - Adam says a certain area does body shot DPs, says he learned that from YBN Nahmir, says he may have been talking about put ons  2:43 - Adam says Bricc is dressed like he's going to do a magic show, Bricc says he's styled by Xan  4:17 - Bricc says he went to Ralfy's show and performed, Adam and Lush say Bricc is like Kramer  5:10 - Adam says he was excited to walk past 55th street in Manhattan 6:02 - Adam says he talked to C Mac on the phone and C Mac introduced him to so many gang members locked up with him  8:30 - Bricc ask if Adam holds his breath when people talk in his face, Adam says he learned that when your talking to a girl it's best to keep your distance look at her and let her talk 11:40 - Guys talk about how cool MTV was back in the day, Lush says it was the worlds window into pop culture  13:00 - Lush says No Jumper is the equivalent of what MTV was to the kids back in the day, Adam remembers MTV the grind being like watching an orgy  15:40 - Adam says he used to go to his uncles house and make excuses to stay inside to watch BET because of the videos they played  17:13 - Bricc says Big tigga messed up “The basement” by being exposed as gay  18:25 - RIP Mr Cee, who had a few Gracie Janes under his belt, Adam says he seen her at the corn awards  19:40 - Bricc says he seen a gay guy fight a real demon on his Influence reality show, says he wanted to fight the gay guy after seeing him fight  21:25 - Adam tells Bricc the feds are watching, Bricc says he's not taking accountability for no gun, Adam says the people are massively mislead that say he doesn't take accountability  23:31 - Adam on going to Starlets for the first time, 25:16 - Adam says a bunch of chicks were lined up next to the section staring at them, says the girl groping him didn't even know who he was  27:00 - Adam messes up and says he kept taking “Naps” while in NY, Bricc gets up and walks off  28:00 - Bricc says Lena told Adam he had a pass while he was in NY, Adam says Lena is lying says she went through his phone multiple times since he's been back, Adam says he can't f*ck without a condom  30:10 - Bricc ask Adam if he eats the p*ssy every time he f*cks, Bricc & Lush say they can smell a STD on the p*ssy, Bricc says there's a difference between cum stink and stink stink  33:25 - Lush says he smells his own cum, guys talk about washing up after sex, wet wipes  35:25 - Lush brings up Adam's 3 wipe method after pooping, Adam explains how he wipes his a**  38:24 - The 5 grand toilet thats programmable and sprays fragrances, says Lena experienced them in Japan  42:06 - Adam says Long live Emily Willis whose in a coma, talks about legendary video of him her and Lena, talks about how it's not proper to repost scenes when a cornstar passes away  44:10 - Ms.Parker, Lush says Friday meant even more on the westcoast  46:50 - Bullet Train from Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga is expected to cost $400, Adam says it's more expensive than driving and almost as expensive as taking a jet to Vegas  50:30 - Little girl Jelly beans who dances on top of Cyber truck and smashes it with bat, Adam says her niche is destroying cars  51:51 - Bricc says he's thinking about smashing him and Adam's midget friend  54:10 - Adam says a industry person hit him up with the Kanye Like that remix, Bricc and Lush say Kendrick needs to hurry and respond  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the latest episode of the Coffee Sprudgecast, Zachary Carlsen brews BlendIn Coffee Club's Colombia Los Nogales, the winning 2024 US Brewers Cup Championship coffee (which also happens to be their house decaf coffee!) Weihong Zhang of BlendIn Coffee Club in Houston, Texas, your 2024 United States Brewers Cup champion, took top honors in Rancho Cucamonga using a decaf Typica variety from Colombia, with a coffee he serves on bar every day. Pick up a bag of it online or in their cafe year-round. This is exactly what host Jordan Michelman did the evening Zhang was announced the 2024 champion! The decaf underwent a decaffeination process developed by Oscar Hernandez of Finca Los Nogales in Huila, Colombia. After de-pulping, the green coffee is then decaffeinated using, in part, its mucilage, which helps “[avoid] off flavors and [enhance] complexity with floral and fruity notes,” Zhang told Sprudge in an interview with Zac Cadwalader. Sprudge's coverage of the 2024 US Barista Championship in Rancho Cucamonga is presented in partnership with Third Wave Water.  Zachary Carlsen replicates the brew process deployed on the Brewers Cup stage as accurately as possible (with a slightly different hand grinder and variety of Hario V60—listen in to find out more). The process is especially interesting due to its use of two water temperatures and a touch of water bypass at the end.

A haunted bathroom/Are furries the only way humanity will survive?   Patreon https://www.patreon.com/user?u=18482113 PayPal Donation Link https://tinyurl.com/mrxe36ph MERCH STORE!!! https://tinyurl.com/y8zam4o2 Vote For Your Favorite Paranormal Podcast: Dead Rabbit Radio! https://paranormalitymag.com/vote25/ Amazon Wish List https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/28CIOGSFRUXAD?ref_=wl_share Help Promote Dead Rabbit! Dual Flyer https://i.imgur.com/OhuoI2v.jpg "As Above" Flyer https://i.imgur.com/yobMtUp.jpg “Alien Flyer” By TVP VT U https://imgur.com/gallery/aPN1Fnw “QR Code Flyer” by Finn https://imgur.com/a/aYYUMAh Links: EP 416 - Fart Demons! (The Golgothan Bathroom Toilet Demon episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-416-fart-demons EP 147 - The Perils Of Ghost Hunting (Burger King Bathroom Ghost episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-147-the-perils-of-ghost-hunting EP 411 - Mysteries Of The Public Restroom! (Bathroom Ghosts episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-411-mysteries-of-the-public-restroom EP 917 - The Bloody Boy Behind The Bathroom Door (Bathroom Ghost episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-917-the-bloody-boy-behind-the-bathroom-door EP 970 - Is Millie Bobbie Brown Cloning Hookah Bar Patrons? (Haunted Bathroom episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-970-is-millie-bobbie-brown-cloning-hookah-bar-patrons EP 1013 - The Bathroom Of Blood (Bathroom Paranormal episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-1013-the-bathroom-of-blood EP 1056 - The Blood Soaked Boy (Bathroom Ghost episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-1056-the-blood-soaked-boy EP 1222 - The Pot Pie Prophecy (Bathroom Ghost Bites Girl episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-1222-the-pot-pie-prophecy EP 1258 - Beyond The Darkness (Missing Your Chance To Cross Over episode) https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-1258-beyond-the-darkness EP 1121 - The Gas Station On The Edge Of Forever https://deadrabbitradio.libsyn.com/ep-1121-the-gas-station-on-the-edge-of-forever The Shadowlands California Page 2 (Rancho Cucamonga Red Hill Park Ghost Dead Dog Ghost Boy Scraping Knees story) http://theshadowlands.net/places/california2.htm Archive https://archive.ph/9EJ3 Rancho Cucamonga - Red Hill Park https://hauntedplacesofusa.blogspot.com/2009/10/red-hill-park-rancho-cucamonga.html Haunted Parks in California https://www.unexplainable.net/ghost-paranormal/haunted-parks-in-california.php Red Hill Park https://www.tiktok.com/@vero293/video/7295338674173168942 Rancho Cucamonga, California Ghost Sightings https://www.ghostsofamerica.com/9/California_Rancho_Cucamonga_ghost_sightings14.html Think About It Docs 1996 Unknown Date (Theoraba Alien Hybrids Murwillumbah Highway, near Lismore, NSW, Australia story) https://www.thinkaboutitdocs.com/1996-unknown-date-ufo-alien-sightings/   ------------------------------------------------ Logo Art By Ash Black Opening Song: "Atlantis Attacks" Closing Song: "Bella Royale" Music By Simple Rabbitron 3000 created by Eerbud Thanks to Chris K, Founder Of The Golden Rabbit Brigade Dead Rabbit Archivist Some Weirdo On Twitter AKA Jack YouTube Champ Stewart Meatball The Haunted Mic Arm provided by Chyme Chili The Golden Rabbit Army: Fabio N, Chyme Chili, Greg Gourley, Vixen, Lula F., Medusa-Buzzcut http://www.DeadRabbit.com Email: DeadRabbitRadio@gmail.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/DeadRabbitRadio Facebook: www.Facebook.com/DeadRabbitRadio TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@deadrabbitradio Dead Rabbit Radio Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadRabbitRadio/ Paranormal News Subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/ParanormalNews/ Mailing Address Jason Carpenter PO Box 1363 Hood River, OR 97031 Paranormal, Conspiracy, and True Crime news as it happens! Jason Carpenter breaks the stories they'll be talking about tomorrow, assuming the world doesn't end today. All Contents Of This Podcast Copyright Jason Carpenter 2018 - 2024  

What's Happening. ABC's Alex Stone joins the show to talk about construction beginning of a high speed rail line from Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas. ABC's Jason Nathanson comes on the show to discuss Taylor Swift breaking records with her latest album.

Erick Elliott's (a.k.a. Erick the Architect) first solo album, “I've Never Been Here Before,” features big-name collaborators like James Blake and George Clinton.  The Supreme Court appeared divided after oral arguments over a Grants Pass, an Oregon law that bans camping in public areas. Lower courts say it amounts to “cruel and unusual punishment.” Private companies are buying farmland in rural Arizona. The goal isn't to farm crops but to access water from the Colorado River. In Las Vegas today, construction began on a train that would get travelers from Rancho Cucamonga in San Bernardino County to the Las Vegas strip in about two hours. 

Last week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures. If you're a longtime listener, you may think you've heard this before, and you're right, you have. But this time it's different. I'll get to why in a minute, but first I need to back up. In 2008, I was teaching Photoshop at Tri-Community Photo in Covina, California. One of the other instructors and I started doing photo walks with some of the students on the weekends. As they got more popular, we put up a simple web page called Faded & Blurred that had details about the upcoming walks. It pretty quickly evolved into a full-blown site, complete with a blog, spotlights on some of our favorite photographers, and a podcast called Q&A@F&B, which was a series of long-form conversations with photographers who were willing to sit down with me for an hour and talk about their work. In addition to getting to talk with photographers like John Keatley, David duChemin, and Ibarionex Perello, I also spoke with Bill Wadman for the first time. Bill and I hit it off straight away, and in 2012, when he was thinking about doing a weekly photography podcast, he started auditioning potential co-hosts. He reached out to me and asked if I'd be interested. I said sure, and my audition ended up being the first episode of OTP. For the next 6 years and 325 episodes, my Tuesday mornings were spent recording the show, with me in Rancho Cucamonga, California—at least to start—and Bill in Brooklyn, New York.If you enjoyed this Iteration, I would love it if you would share it with a friend or two. And if it resonated with you on some level, I'd love to know why. Email me at talkback@jefferysaddoris.com.CONNECT WITH MEWebsite: https://jefferysaddoris.com  Instagram: @jefferysaddorisEmail: talkback@jefferysaddoris.comSUBSCRIBESubscribe to Almost Everything with Jeffery Saddoris in your favorite podcast app. You can also subscribe to my newsletter on Substack.MUSICMusic For Workplaces by Jeffery Saddoris

In today's episode, I'm joined by Nestor Gutierrez, CEO of Rancho Express Lube Inc. and founder of the Infinite Growth Expo. Nestor shares his journey from a small town dreamer to becoming the owner of the leading shop for preventative auto maintenance in Rancho Cucamonga. His story is a testament to the power of self-belief, overcoming the fear of failure, and the significance of mentorship. Nestor's insight into the value of time, personal development, and his commitment to making a difference in the lives of others through his work and the Infinite Growth Expo are truly inspiring. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone looking to elevate their personal and professional life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today, we're joined by Tano Kapedani. Tano is the Founder, CEO, and Senior Mortgage Broker of EZ Fundings Home Loans from Rancho Cucamonga, California, who started in mortgages in 2003 after immigrating from Albania in 1998. A fluent speaker of 5 languages, he has personally assisted over 3,000 families in achieving homeownership, and has built his business being dedicated to providing exceptional service, ensuring clients are fully informed and satisfied.    Tano is here to discuss: → The mentality you need to have for getting business and how he worked his way up in the mortgage industry. → The importance of creating systems for scalability, building a great team, and the delegating tasks. → And how you need to master your craft as a Loan Officer by learning foundational skills, how you can add value, and solve problems.   EZ Fundings Website: www.ezfundings.com EZ Fundings Instagram: @ezfundings EZ Fundings Facebook: @EZFundingsHomeLoans Tano Kapedani's Instagram: @tanoezfundings   Loans On Demand Website: www.loansondemand.io Loans On Demand YouTube: @LoansOnDemand Loans On Demand Instagram: @loansondemand   Luke Shankula's Facebook: @LukeShankula Luke Shankula's LinkedIn: @LukeShankula Luke Shankula's Instagram: @lukeshankula

Our coffee podcast program The Coffee Sprudgecast returns with an episode fresh off the US Coffee Champs première partie at Klatch Coffee in Rancho Cucamonga. Over a sun-soaked Southern California weekend, the 2024 United States Barista Champion, Brewers Cup Champion, and Cup Tasters Champion were crowned. Sprudge co-founders and hosts Zachary Carlsen and Jordan Michelman talk through it with the delicious assist of Klatch Coffee's seasonal Songbird Blend. Host Zachary Carlsen had a conversation with a coffee enthusiast who held a strong belief that coffee blends were inherently bad. On the show, we discuss how blends like Songbird from Klatch Coffee (among several others!) are testaments to the delicious possibilities and flavor complexities specialty coffee blends can offer. How do you feel about coffee blends? Are your feelings about coffee blends true? Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without that thought? Remember, there are no right answers—these questions will hopefully lead you toward deeper inquiry.  (h/t Byron Katie) A big thanks… This year's USBC/USBrC/CTC highlights the power of the coffee community. Competitors, judges, volunteers, and sponsors all worked together to showcase both the nation's top competitors and finest coffees, demonstrating extraordinary talent, dedication, and passion. We're grateful to Klatch Coffee for hosting this incredible event and making us feel so welcome. We're deeply humbled by the kind words from y'all for our US Coffee Championships coverage. All credit goes to the Sprudge Rancho team: Sprudge Managing Editor Zac Cadwalader kept everyone at home in the loop with exceptionally detailed real-time updates as photographer Charlie Burt captured every moment in vivid detail. A huge thank you to our event coverage partners at Third Wave Water! Their support champions the specialty coffee community, our independent coffee competition coverage, and their products help make coffee even more vibrant. Thank you! This episode of the Coffee Sprudgecast is sponsored by Baratza, Pacific Barista Series, Ghirardelli, and DONA.

Timmy Time yay or nay??? Madonna calls out fan in audience // Disneyland expanding?? // HB oil sheen made progress in clean-up // Tar stations. // What is the oldest picture you have on your phone right now? // Sibilings killed in Rancho Cucamonga. // Covid 4th anniversary of WHO calling a pandemic.

Join Christine and Michelle as they recap the eighth episode of the 28th season of "The Bachelor" on ABC. Joey visits the ladies in their hometowns and first travels to New Orleans to meet Kelsey A.  It's an emotional visit as Kelsey A. is reminded that her mother is missing this very important chapter of her life.  We meet Keley A.'s family, and her Mark the DILF.Joey travels to Rancho Cucamonga to meet Rachel's family who flew in from Hawaii to celebrate with a Luau to welcome the couple.  Rachel's parents have reservations about the process and advise Rachel to protect her heart.The next visit is to Daisy is Minnesota where they visit her family Christmas tree farm and spend the day meeting her friends and family.  Daisy has reservations about her feelings for Joey but her family reassures her to be vulnerable with Joey.Last but not least, Joey travels to Canada to meet Maria's family.  They explore Niagara falls before venturing off to the dinner to meet Maria's dad.  Despite his advice to open up to Joey, Maria still finds herself holding back.The final rose ceremony ends with Joey giving out 3 roses and sending one lady home.Grab a glass of wine and join the extraordinary  fun that is Recapaholics!

Death Valley is normally known for its extreme heat. But this winter, rain and winds pushed tons of water into the area, creating a lake locals grew to call "Lake Manly." People could kayak and wade out. But the lake has begun to dry up and boating is now suspended there. Reporter: Saul Gonzalez, The California Report One of the most expensive state races has been waged in state Senate District 25 which spans from Glendale to Rancho Cucamonga east of L.A.  More than $5 million has flowed into the race – much of it coming from one of the candidates. Reporter: Josie Huang, LAist

 Platonic Life Partner and The Pod Captain Erin Foley and Doug Benson join Arden and the Production Team to break down Joey's HOMETOWNS!!  Nice Dads! Nip Slips! Rancho Cucamonga! - Arden AND Erin AND Jim all think Kelsey's dad should be the Golden Bachelor! - Erin wants to see Arden on Wellbutrin! - Doug thinks ALL of the families are Kelsey's family! All that plus........TWEET OF THE WEEK!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We travel to NOLA, a Christmas tree farm, Rancho Cucamonga and Canada for this season's hometowns. Who will say "I'm falling"? Who will say, "I'm falling in love"? And who will freeze and say nothing? Listen and find out!Also support our sponsors at: Microdose.com/Rosepricks code Rosepricks for 30% offVegamour.com/Rosepricks code Rosepricks for 20% off your first order

Join Nick Lamagna on The A Game Podcast with his guest Javier "Showtime" Vazquez, a business owner, UFC Veteran, cancer survivor and high level black belt who is reshaping the way Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is being taught and practiced.  Javier has an incredible story being the 1st American Black Belt of Cuban ancestry accomplishing the rank in under five and a half years.  He competed in the UFC, King of the Kage, WEC and even the ADCC Trials. Being no stranger to a good scrap he found himself in the fight of his life and changing his mind and body to get a victory of Cancer.  His new found understanding of clean living and nutrition were applied to all aspects of his life and he now runs Javier Vazquez Jiu Jitsu in Rancho Cucamonga, California and is taking over the internet with his mindset and technical concepts he is now sharing through his online systems JVOS and JVTV among many other amazing lessons coming soon.  Javier is reinventing the way we train, think and teach Jiu Jitsu and you will hear many lessons you can take and apply to your life and business whether you train Jiu Jitsu or not.  This is an inspiring story from a true disruptor! Topics for this episode include: ✅ How to  train your mind to find solutions not problems ✅ Beating cancer with lessons learned from fighting ✅ Do you have a fear of winning and don't realize it? ✅ Improve your Jiu Jitsu faster by changing the way we train and teach   ✅ Lessons In learning to stay calm in discomfort from Ryron Gracie + More! See the show notes to connect with all things Javier!  Connect with Javier: Javier Vazquez on Facebook Javier Vazquez on Twitter Javier Vazquez on TikTok Javier Vazquez on Instagram   Javier Vazquez Jiu Jitsu www.jvjiujitsuonline.com Jiujitsuranchocucamonga.com Javier Vazquez Jiu Jitsu on Facebook Javier Vazquez Jiu Jitsu on Instagram Javier Vazquez Jiu Jitsu On Youtube JV Jiu Jitsu Shorts on Youtube Javier Vazquez Jiu Jitsu on TikTok --- Connect with Nick Lamagna www.nicknicknick.com Text Nick (516)540-5733 Connect on ALL Social Media and Podcast Platforms Here FREE Checklist on how to bring more value to your buyers

Redlands is one of our favorite areas to visit. Especially on a sunny crisp Southern California day. Redlands, California is one of those charming downtown areas that take you back to the early days of California. The town is full of charming historic Victorian Houses, Brick and Mortar buildings and is known to be full of HAUNTINGS.This episode we're talking all things REDLANDS and what we did in one afternoon.Inland Empress *inspired by a Sunrise Gin & Juice by foodtalkdaily.com2 oz Empress 1908 gin4-6 oz FRESH Orange Juice (we stock up at the Etiwanda Historical Society during their orange sale)1 oz Grenadine ( HOMEMADE preferred reduce equal parts pomegranate juice and sugar)Depending on your cocktail glass use less or more orange juice. Over ice pour gin, orange juice and grenadine to create a layer effect. Garnish with an orange slice or maraschino cherry. Stir before drinking if desired.We decided on this cocktail for an interview we did with I.E. Alive but put a San Bernardino twist on it. The purple gin is in ode to our hometown Rancho Cucamonga's grape logo and the orange juice from fresh oranges because the I. E. was once known as the ORANGE EMPIRE.Redlands Historic SocietyIE Community NewsThe Hill Satanic Temple ArticleRedlands YouTube Playlistflickr Burton Mansion StorySupport the showwww.FrolickingChronicles.comPatreon for exclusive contentYouTube Subscribe to our ChannelInstagram @FrolickingChronicles for updates & current eventsTikTok @ParanormalCocktails for FUN

What's it mean to be in a family these days? Are blood relations what decide family ties? How does Jesus shake up our understanding of family and broaden its definition? How does baptismal water bring people closer together than genetics or bloodline? Listen in as Dr. Dave Rueter leads us in the fundamentals of family. Bio: Dr. Dave Rueter is a rostered DCE and the author of Teaching the Faith at Home and Called to Serve (both CPH) as well as a contributor to Relationships Count and Connected for Life (also both CPH). Dave is married to Andrea and has two sons, James and Wesley. Since 1998 he has served as DCE for congregations in Huntington Beach, Rancho Cucamonga, and now Livermore, CA as well as on faculty at Concordia University Irvine and the staff of the Pacific Southwest District. Dr. Rueter is certified by the Fuller Youth Institute as the official LCMS Growing Young speaker. Learn more at teachingthefaithathome.org. Resources in this episode: Email us at friendsforlife@lcms.org LCMS Life, Health and Family Ministries: lcmslife.org For resources on the family: lcmslife.org/family Not all the views expressed are necessarily those of the LCMS; please discuss any questions with your pastor.

Several property managers find themselves feeling alone in their difficult market. It might feel impossible to grow after being stagnant for so long. In this episode, property management growth experts Jason and Sarah Hull sit down with DoorGrow client Brian Bean to talk about how he grew his property management business despite the challenges he faced. You'll Learn [01:55] Getting started in property management [06:20] Making business partnerships work [09:47] Shifting from real estate to property management [18:21] What's next for your property management business? Tweetables “It's really difficult for partnerships to be successful because for most people, the ego is getting in the way.” “What you focus on is what you get.” “Until we learn how to get and find people that we feel safe with, I don't think we're supposed to trust.” “When you get really great people, it's not hard to trust them.” Resources DoorGrow and Scale Mastermind DoorGrow Academy DoorGrow on YouTube DoorGrowClub DoorGrowLive TalkRoute Referral Link Transcript [00:00:00] Brian: After 10 years of just being flat from 30 to 35 units. And then now literally doubled it last week. And that's been from following your instruction, your philosophies and you know, focusing on building this business.  [00:00:15] Jason: Welcome DoorGrowers to the DoorGrowShow. If you are a property management entrepreneur that wants to add doors, make a difference, increase revenue, help others, impact lives, and you are interested in growing in business and life, and you're open to doing things a bit differently then you are a DoorGrower. DoorGrower, property managers love the opportunities, daily variety, unique challenges, and freedom that property management brings. Many in real estate think you're crazy for doing it. You think they're crazy for not, because you realize that property management is the ultimate, high trust gateway to real estate deals, relationships, and residual income. At DoorGrow, we are on a mission to transform property management business owners and their businesses. [00:00:58] We want to transform the industry, eliminate the BS, Build awareness, change perception, expand the market and help the best property management entrepreneurs win. I'm your host, property management growth expert, Jason Hull, the founder and CEO of DoorGrow, along with Sarah Hull, co owner and COO of DoorGrow. Now let's get into the show.  [00:01:18] So our guest today we're hanging out with Brian Bean, who is one of our clients and Brian your company is Dream Big Property Management.  [00:01:28] Brian: That's right. We're in Merced, California.  [00:01:30] Jason: All right. In Merced, California. So Brian welcome to the show. Oh, Riverside. You said Riverside. [00:01:37] Okay. Got it. I know this area. So yeah, I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga. So just a little bit near there. So Brian tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got into property management and then eventually how you stumbled across DoorGrow, I guess.  [00:01:55] Brian: Right, so, I was a newspaper editor and reporter and I got a job, grew up in the Pacific Northwest, got a journalism degree, got a job in Palm Springs on the Daily Newspaper, and moved to California in the 80s. [00:02:11] And so I did that for 13 or 14 years toward the end I, you know, coming from an entrepreneurial background, my uncle gave me my first, second, third job when I was a kid he owned a, like, old style service station. So I grew up in that small business atmosphere. And when I went to work in newspapers, you know, I had these lofty aspirations, these utopian ideas, you know, you're getting your twenties about doing something to change the world or, you know, to have an impact. And I found out after about 10 years, that was just, it's just another corporate job. And so I was looking around for something else and I looked at a lot of different businesses. [00:02:55] And I ended up coming upon real estate and I was able to, while I was a newspaper editor, I was able to buy five, two five unit apartment buildings in Palm Spring. Nice. And that was my introduction to property management. I was pretty much doing that during the day. We were putting out newspapers in a, from like three in the afternoon to midnight, you know, the press would roll at midnight and and I did it all, you know, I, from everything from dealing with the tenants face to, you know, patch and drywall to whatever collecting rents, chasing rents, made all the mistakes. [00:03:33] And I was, it was self education trial by fire. And then a few years later, I went into real estate full time and sales. I had a partner in the apartments who was actually the listing agent on those apartments at the time, but he invited me into real estate full time in 2001. [00:03:49] And then we were off on a, and it was a run. And so I, I did property management for a while from on our own properties. And then I've just morphed into sales and we were pretty successful and very busy and then the market crashed, and you know, we just kind of moved with the market.  [00:04:08] Jason: And when was that? [00:04:09] Like 2006,  [00:04:11] Brian: maybe, or?  [00:04:11] Yeah. So 2006 at least in our area, it was August, 2006 when we peaked sales wise. And in 2007, we had, I don't know, a dozen listings and nobody, you couldn't buy a showing, you know? And so 2007, it was the real estate market was, you know, dead man walking. It was, there was nobody really knew what was happening? Well, the masses, right? Some people knew, right? There was stuff going on obviously on wall street, but, the masses didn't know what was happening. Prices stayed up for awhile and they were, it was just like that, that hovering just before the, you know, you throw a ball in the air and it just kind of floats at the apex for a moment right before 2008 and then wow. [00:04:54] Right. Who knew? Yeah. So, You we just kind of morphed with it. I've worked, I did a lot of, I helped a lot of people with short sales, we worked in foreclosures and. And then I met my current business partner in sales working in an REO house as a buyer's agent. And we started our own company, Dream Big Real Estate, and that was 2008, 2009. [00:05:15] So from there, a couple of years later I just happened to say to my partner, you know, even though we were very busy, I said, "I really think we should launch a property management division" because at that time, my mentality was, it's a place where we can create sales listings, right? [00:05:35] And so we did that for a few years. And, you know, the interesting thing about it was that we didn't do any marketing. It was just really word of mouth, but. The day that I mentioned that to my partner, Tim, he just said, "yeah, cool, whatever." Right. he knew I was going to probably be working on it because I had the background in it, but I didn't tell anybody. [00:05:55] And the next day the phone rang and our first property management client just was calling out of the blue. Still have them, still work with them. [00:06:03] And then a week later, somebody else called. And it was the same thing, and that was our second client. Still working with them as well. And the, you know, I'm not into rubbing crystals or sleeping under pyramids, but you know, you ask the universe and the universe will provide. [00:06:19] Jason: One of the things that you mentioned, Brian, that I think's really interest is, it sounds like part of your journey, like there's this importance you've probably realized in partnerships. [00:06:28] because you've mentioned multiple times, you know, you partner with the listing agent and then eventually you partner with Tim. And so how is finding the right partners been instrumental in your growth and your progress? [00:06:41] Brian: Well, I will say this is that later on more recently, this year, they have broken out the property management business that was running as part of our real estate sales business. I've broken that out separately, and I'm now solo doing that. Right. Have had partners in the past, and I have found working with partners to be that there's advantages and disadvantages. Totally. It's hard to find, it's really difficult for partnerships to be successful because most people, the ego is getting in the way or, you know, there becomes a battle about, you know, who's doing what, who deserves this, who deserves that. [00:07:24] Yeah. Personality wise, I'm kind of roll with it person, you know? I'm more of a solution oriented person. Just what we need to get from point A to point B, what's the best way to do that? What for the good of the company, not necessarily for what's best for me personally. Yeah. So I've gone through a couple of partnerships with different people, I have been able to make that work from my point of view, because. [00:07:49] Because of my personality type, I think, but it is not for the the weak hearted, you know, I mean, it is some days are a lot harder than others.  [00:07:58] Jason: I've seen some of the most successful I've seen have really healthy partnerships in some of the worst situations I've seen where they couldn't grow because one was like an anchor, not willing to move and they had just as much decision making power and until they were able to get that partner out of the business, they weren't able to progress. So it can be a boost in the positive, but it's really difficult to find a really good match. [00:08:24] Brian: Yeah, and that's the thing is like, I'm more of a behind the scenes person, just in general, I'm more like I can implement. I generally will have the ideas as well, but I'm the one that I'm kind of a control freak, quite frankly, and so one of my character flaws is right now that I'm trying to work on is feeling like I need to touch everything, you know, because that's that is a throttle in the business. [00:08:48] Jason: Well, I think we all start there. Every entrepreneur starts there, so everybody listening should be able to empathize with that because you know we want to do a good job because we care. We want to look good. We care about how we look right like whatever it is. The challenge with being a control freak is trust and until we learn how to get and find people that we feel safe with, I don't think we're supposed to trust, you know. We're not supposed to just trust blindly. We need to find people that deserve to be trusted and know how to build that team. And that's probably kind of the next level, right? Is for you maybe is to build that team of people that you trust because when you get really great people, it's not hard to trust them. [00:09:30] Yeah. But they need to match you. Like they need to be a good coach. And then it's a lot easier to trust them. And so in this journey, you split out your business and then you have a property management business. It's all yours. You're still doing real estate stuff also? You still connected to that? [00:09:47] Brian: I am, but my mentality has shifted. It's probably been more than two years since the first time I talked to someone from your company and yet we didn't start with your company until, when was it, March this year? It was a two year lag of wrapping my mind around the philosophy of, Just making the shift, right? [00:10:06] Because property management always for us was a, just a holding place for future sales listings. And now, it's the business. Property management's the business and sales is ancillary benefit.  [00:10:21] Jason: So what prompted that shift? How did your brain work that out eventually?  [00:10:25] Brian: I think it's a combination of a variety of things. Having now 20 plus years in the business, I've been through an up and a down and an up and a flat, right? Who knows what the next one looks like. Is it eighties, nineties, or is it two thousands downturn? Yeah. And where I am in life, right. And I mean, do I want to work forever? Just slinging, right? Do I want to be out there, you know, showing, opening doors at, you know, 68 years old? [00:10:57] Jason: And chasing deals? Yeah.  [00:10:59] Brian: So mailbox money, right. Building a business that's sellable. Right now, or up until this point, I should say, it has been 100 percent every dollar that comes into our house is product of my labor, and that is a train coming down the track. [00:11:19] Right. So I needed to make some changes now that would have dramatic impacts on my future. If I wanted to change what I was doing, you know. [00:11:27] Jason: Yeah. Got it. Yeah. That switch from kind of recognizing you're kind of trading time for dollars to realizing, "Hey maybe I want to build something." [00:11:36] I mean, it's really tempting because you close one real estate deal, that can be a lot of money, but eventually I think there's a lot of real estate agents that wake up to this, that they're like, "Hey, if real estate kind of takes a nosedive or do I want to do this forever?" Maybe not. [00:11:52] Property management might be a really great business model.  [00:11:55] Brian: Like I said, we did our sales under under Better Homes and Gardens now, and I don't know, did I say that? Maybe in my own head. So the property management is under my own brokerage. The sales that we do, we work under Better Homes and Gardens. [00:12:10] I, you know, Tim and I as sales agents here until this year, we've been the number one agent, like since we came here. So seven, eight years, however long it's been. I do see the changes. I have seen the changes come in and perhaps it's a little bit of you just mental scar tissue from the crash of, you know, '8, '9, '10, ' 11. Yeah. It's just, you know, because the cracks have been forming in the foundation of this real estate sales market for a few years. Right. And it's been propped up artificially by government policies. Yeah. For three, four years. Right. And so, I've been waiting for a shoe to drop quite frankly. [00:12:51] And so two years ago a guy used to work for you, Jon. I called Jon back in like February this year. "Hey, Jon, you still working over at DoorGrow?" Jon was actually the one who said to me two years ago, two and a half years ago now, " if you do this, our expectation is that you're going to change your philosophy. You're going to be a property manager who doesn't do sales." What? That took me a while to embrace.  [00:13:17] Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Jon's a good friend of mine. We just went out to lunch recently. He's really sharp, dude. So, you know, I'm really curious, Brian, this journey from being a reporter for a while to real estate, to now shifting your identity into being a property manager, and that's the focus. How do you feel the reporter in you helps the property manager?  [00:13:44] Brian: Yeah, perfect proving ground. It's who I am is based on education, information gathering, being an advocate for consumers, right? [00:13:56] That's what I was trained to be as a reporter and editor, as a journalist, and that just morphs perfectly into what I do now, which is to look after my client's financial well being, right? And it doesn't hurt that I tend to over explain things, right? Because that's what I do, right? Is my job is to go out and gather information and then provide it in an objective way so that people can then make the best decisions for them and their family, right? So that's being a reporter, right? It is to shine a light on the facts so that people can decide. I mean, sometimes you got to take them by the hand and lead them down the path, right, educating them along the way. Yeah, for sure.  [00:14:37] Sarah: So what was the thing that made you go, "all right, I'm finally going to do this. Like I'm going to jump on board, get involved with DoorGrow and start really focusing on this property management thing? [00:14:49] Brian: Yeah. So earlier this year I had been kicking around, you know, you're looking at numbers, right? Kicking around the idea of "how much more time do I want to do this?" [00:14:59] And there were some personal things that got into it too, because you start looking at relationships and your family and looking at the things that are most important in your life. And priority wise, where have they been on your list? And so I decided I wanted to make some changes and then I lost some friends and family members just in the past year. [00:15:25] And so, one of the things that I picked up in the newspaper was Spending too much time in the office and and spending the less time seeing family and, you know, coming out of COVID and just, it's just like a combination of a lot of things all crashing together at one time.  [00:15:41] Sarah: We are under attack in our house right now. [00:15:43] We have groceries being delivered.  [00:15:45] Jason: Dogs are going nuts. [00:15:49] Our professional podcast, everybody, so.  [00:15:53] Brian: Anyway, so that was you know, some personal stuff came up and I decided to reevaluate. Now, in the past 10 plus years, I've been doing property management. [00:16:04] providing a supply of say two to six listings a year and making that shift. I don't know, it was a conversation with my wife and you know, running numbers and trying to figure out like, is it even possible? And there's a transition period because what you focus on is what you get. Right. So if I start focusing a hundred percent on property management, and how is that going to affect my income for people? You know, because what I do today in sales, that's not income for 90 days. Right. So at some point you have to be able to make that transition. And so, you know, it was a bit of a leap of faith. [00:16:42] And so, like I said, when I called Jon to ask if he was still working with you guys, then he said, no. He called me back though, but he said no, but he then referred me over to somebody. So, but making that switch, it wasn't an overnight decision by any means. [00:16:58] I agonized over it. It was sleepless nights, some nights. But I knew that I had to do something.  [00:17:04] Jason: So, well, you took a big risk then this leap of faith and then jumped on board with DoorGrow, decided to focus on property management. You feel like you made a good choice? [00:17:14] Brian: Yes. You don't know what you don't know. And so, I've been on a journey of learning what other people are doing, best practices, ancillary services to go along, you know, support type pieces of everything from other streams of income that are related that are, you know, not just management fees and placement fees, right? [00:17:37] I mean, there's a variety, but it's crazy what I've implemented just in the past six months, it's just been an insane pace and now I'm like eight days away from moving to a new, property management portal, and that will be the cherry on top, really. Most of the footwork of putting the foundation together will be mostly done, and then it's digging into processes. [00:18:02] Jason: Awesome. Yeah. So. Yeah. So you've made a lot of changes to your business and you said you've been learning it at an insane pace. So hopefully we're not making you bored with all this stuff. We've got plenty of stuff, right? It can be a bit overwhelming. We give the feedback on. So Brian, well, what's what's next for you in the future? [00:18:25] Brian: Right now I'm just trying to continue to learn from you and I'm just focusing on growing the number of doors that we manage and creating a business that will have sustainable and continuous growth and then part of the process has been, yes, putting the tools in place and doing the things that you know, I've been advised to do to create this and grow this business. [00:18:53] But when you start, you don't necessarily believe it, right? It truly is that leap of faith. And over time, my belief is starting to catch up with my activity. And so, you know, to go like when last week we literally hit the doubling point of when we started with you and after 10 years of just being flat from 30 to 35 units. And then now literally doubled it last week. And that's been from following your instruction, your philosophies and you know, focusing on building this business.  [00:19:30] Jason: Yeah. Well, I'm glad that the next 30 doors didn't take 10 years. That's awesome. Doubling in four months and I think things will speed up from here. So, well, I think that's a good place to end on. I think that's really awesome. So we appreciate you as a client. It's been great seeing your progress. You know, I think there's a lot of property managers out there that are like you, they come from the real estate industry. They want to get out of the hunt and the chase. Maybe they've been doing property management for even a decade, but you know, they haven't really made progress in their growth significantly in the last year or two or three or 10, you know, and and now maybe it's time, maybe it's time. [00:20:10] So maybe some parting words, Brian, what would you say to those that like they've been watching DoorGrow for a while? What would you say to them?  [00:20:17] Brian: Don't wait. You know, where would I be if I'd started two years ago? . I think about that occasionally, and then I have to stop myself because that just takes me off track. [00:20:26] And you get into that regret, you know, loop in your head. Like, no, I don't have time for that. I am where I'm now. And everybody is where they are now, right? And so you can either take action today or not, your results will reflect that. Yeah.  [00:20:42] Sarah: And you're exactly where you're supposed to be in that moment. I can do that to myself too. I can go back and go, "Oh, what if I did this sooner? It could be so much farther." Right. But I think that things just tend to work out the way that they're supposed to work out and things kind of line up. And I think you were prepped, right? [00:20:59] You knew about DoorGrow. You were kind of checking it out. You weren't sure if you were going to make that jump and you did when you were ready and it paid off.  [00:21:06] Jason: Yeah. So, there's a cool book called the gap and the gain. And the idea is that it's so easy for us as entrepreneurs to focus on the gap between where we should be by now. Where our dream or what we could have done. And that's not really an effective comparison psychologically. Like that, like doesn't make us feel super great about ourselves. But what is effective though, is to look at the gain. How far have we come? And I mean, four months. You've come a long way. [00:21:34] And so the next year, I think it's going to be really awesome for you. So I'm excited to see what you do, Brian. So thank you. All right. Thanks for coming on the DoorGrow show.  [00:21:44] Brian: Glad to be here. Thanks.  [00:21:46] Jason: Thanks again. All right. If you are a property management entrepreneur, you're wanting to grow your business. [00:21:51] Maybe you've been sitting stagnant for a while. You haven't had significant progress in the last year, maybe the year before that you might even be a really large company and you're not making progress. I've talked to several with thousands of doors in just the last week. We just got one of them on as a client and they've been struggling to figure out how to grow and they cannot even spend any more money on ads to get any more clients.  [00:22:13] It's not working. If you want to figure out how to start moving your business forward significantly, we can easily help you add 100, 200, maybe even 300 doors in a year. And it's without wasting money or spending money on advertising. And that might sound ridiculous, but Brian's going to do it. [00:22:29] Like we're seeing people do it all the time. So reach out, you can check us out at doorgrow. com. We would love to help you grow your business. Talk to you soon. Bye everyone. [00:22:39] you just listened to the #DoorGrowShow. We are building a community of the savviest property management entrepreneurs on the planet in the DoorGrowClub. Join your fellow DoorGrow Hackers at doorgrowclub.com. Listen, everyone is doing the same stuff. SEO, PPC, pay-per-lead content, social direct mail, and they still struggle to grow!  [00:23:06] At DoorGrow, we solve your biggest challenge: getting deals and growing your business. Find out more at doorgrow.com. Find any show notes or links from today's episode on our blog doorgrow.com, and to get notified of future events and news subscribe to our newsletter at doorgrow.com/subscribe. Until next time, take what you learn and start DoorGrow Hacking your business and your life.

2024 Prophetic Almanac Bill JenkinsWell, 2023 has come and gone. It's been an “interesting year” to say the least. We've seen Christianity attacked in this nation like never before. We've seen politicians just, basically, surrendering the sovereignty of this nation. We've seen natural disasters on a scale that, some say, has not happened for hundreds, if not a thousand years.We have Israel at war – and the mounting pressures from nations around the world are continuing to condemn Israel for defending themselves rather than condemning the attackers and the nations supporting the terrorists. Can I add – just like the Bible says will happen? Amen?But, for believers though, this is not a time of doom and gloom! Far from it. We are told by Jesus in Luke 21:28 that “When these things begin to take place, look up, for your redemption is drawing near!” Amen!With all that is happening, wouldn't it be nice to have a peek at what is going to happen in the Spirit this year? It takes someone with a special gift from God to be able to do that without sounding like a soothsayer or a nut job, right! It takes someone anointed by God with this gift to lay things out - in a logical format. And that is what my guest will do today!Our guest today is Pastor Bill Jenkins of the Destinyland Christian Center in Rancho Cucamonga, California. Every year, he releases a new book titled, “The Prophetic Almanac.”If you have ever heard of the “The Farmer's Almanac,” well the “Prophetic Almanac” is the Spiritual equivalent that will release a spiritual vision for your personal life and - it gives a prophetic forecast for our nation as well. Amen!Pastor Bill Jenkins is a 1991 graduate from Christ for the Nations in Dallas, Texas, my old stomping grounds for a few years... He has been in ministry for over 30 years. He also had his own Television Program on the Trinity Broadcasting Network - and has hosted the “Praise the Lord” program a few times as well. Praise God!He has written numerous books and has become known as a modern day Apostle of God with a prophetic voice. He and his wife, Britain, work extremely hard to release the message of HOPE into our world (and very needful, for such a time as this, I might add). Pastor Jenkins takes some of the toughest passages of scripture and explains them in a practical and interesting way. He is quickly becoming the “Go To” guy when it comes to Biblical interpretation. He also has had a radio program on “Evangelism Radio” for several years. His program runs Monday through Friday from 10-1030am Eastern Time.Every year, about this time, I ask Pastor Bill to come back on and share with us his insights from the Word of God as he talks about the new issue of “The Prophetic Almanac” as it relates to the coming year. And that is what we will be talking about today as we leave a very hectic and chaotic 2023 behind and are moving forward into 2024.Help me welcome back to the program, Pastor Bill Jenkins. Pastor, thank you for taking the time to visit with us today!I want to jump right into this…You have gone through all of the Bible and researched all the Chapter 24's. What is the Lord showing you that this year is going to be like… I guess a “theme for 2024” – so to speak?What does 2024 mean for God's church this year?Let's talk a bit about some of the 24's in your book…

Fearless Agent Coaching Client Hans from Rancho Cucamonga CA & Founder Bob Loeffler share their insights on topics and how it's making his Fearless Agent Coaching Students rich! Fearless Agent Coaching is the Highest Results Producing Real Estate Sales Training and Coaching Program in the Industry and we can prove it will work for you if it's a good fit! Call us today at 480-385-8810 to see if it may be  good fit for you! Telephone Prospecting for Realtors means Cold Calling, Door knocking, Calling for Sale By Owners, Calling Expired Listings, Calling your Sphere of Influence, Farming, Holding Open Houses, but Fearless Agent Coaching Students di all of these completely differently and get massively better results! Find out how! Listen in each week as Bob gives an overview and explains the big ideas behind making big money as a Fearless Agent! If you are earning less selling real estate than you wish you were, and you're open to the idea of having some help, We are here for you! You will never again be in a money making situation with a Buyer, Seller or Investor and not have the right words! You will be very confident! You will be a Fearless Agent! Call Bob anytime for more information about Fearless Agent Coaching for Agents, Fearless Agent Recruiting Training for Broker/Owners, or hiring Bob as a Speaker for your next Event! Call today 480-385-8810 - or go to https://fearlessagent.com  Telephone Prospecting for Realtors means Cold Calling, Door knocking, Calling for Sale By Owners, Calling Expired Listings, Calling your Sphere of Influence, Farming, Holding Open Houses, Spin Selling, but Fearless Agent Coaching Students do all of these completely differently and get massively better results! Find out how! Are You an Owner of a Real Estate Company - need help Recruiting Producing Agents - Call today! 480-385-8810 and go to FearlessAgentRecruiting.com and watch our Recruiting Video Real Estate coaching  training  Real estate training real estate coaching real estate speaker real estate coach real estate sales sales training realtor realtor training realtor coach realtor coaching realtor sales coaching realtor recruiting real estate agent real estate broker realtor prospecting real estate prospecting prospecting for listings calling expired listings calling for sale by owners realtor success Best Realtor Coach Best Real Estate CoachSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Guest: Dr. Ray Casciari with St. Joseph in Orange, Calif., on new antibiotics target deadly drug-resistant bacteria/Covid, RSV, Flu and lingering coughs // Guest: Dr. Ray Casciari continued...// Bullet train from Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas/ Elton John achieves EGOT status after Emmy win // Sports Cancelled due to Artic blast hitting 80% of country/ Lindsay Lohan is upset over “fire crotch” comment. / Six F**** lighting is out!

In the quaint suburb of Rancho Cucamonga in Southern California, an ordinary American family found themselves at the center of an extraordinary and chilling mystery. What started as an idyllic tale of long distance love, soon spiraled into a harrowing saga of supernatural events and unexplained occurrences in their home, thrusting the family into the spotlight of paranormal investigators and skeptics alike.1Whispers of objects moving on their own, eerie shadows lurking in corners, and inexplicable sounds echoing through the halls turned their everyday life into a living nightmare. The family's claims, both compelling and disturbing, prompt questions about the existence of malevolent entities and the vulnerability of the human spirit to unseen forces.This case file, join the Theorists as they delve into the heart of this unsettling enigma, exploring the fine line between the natural and the supernatural in... The Moffitt Family DemonThis show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/5984944/advertisement

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE* A new book claims J. Edgar Hoover went through life passing for white!Two people a universe apart, yet linked by a secret that would change both their lives - and the course of a nation-forever!Rancho Cucamonga, CA - Imagine being a 10-year old, and told that if you repeat a family secret to anyone, your entire family would be killed as they slept? Now imagine being born and raised a white man, then told as a young adult that you are black, in a society where the color of your skin can make the difference between unbounded sucess and complete obscurity...This show is part of the Spreaker Prime Network, if you are interested in advertising on this podcast, contact us at https://www.spreaker.com/show/1198501/advertisement