Podcasts about richard thanks

Welcome to another episode of the Sales Leadership Show! Today, we have a special guest, Richard Weylman, who will be sharing his insights on how to keep customers for life. Richard is the author of "100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life," released on March 12th. Join us as Richard discusses his proven path for permanent business success and shares invaluable advice from his extensive experience in consulting, coaching, and speaking.You can listen above, or read the show notes that follow.Who is Richard Weylman?Phil: Richard, welcome to the show! Let's start with a bit about you and your latest book. What's the best advice you've received in your career?Richard: Thanks, Phil. My book, 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life, is designed to put businesses on a proven path to success. The best advice I ever got was from someone who said, "Richard, you see things from the consumer's point of view, you should market that." This advice has shaped my 30-year career in consulting and coaching. Conversely, the worst advice I received was that I could speak to anyone, anytime, anywhere, about anything. That experience taught me to focus on my strengths – understanding the consumer and turning insights into prescriptive tactics.The Importance of Consumer Perspective:Phil: Congratulations on your book, Richard! It's fantastic. Tell me, who gave you that pivotal advice 30 years ago?Richard: It was Howard Van Bortle, the dealer principal when I was the general sales manager at a Rolls-Royce dealership. He recognized my ability to see things from the consumer's perspective, which has been a cornerstone of my career.Building a Customer-Centric Business:Phil: How do you get in front of customers to ask the right questions?Richard: Through our consulting, speaking, and coaching engagements, I've had the privilege to talk to consumers across various industries. The key is to ask what turns them into delighted advocates and what merely satisfies them. It became clear that satisfaction isn't enough; we need to elevate the experience and build emotional engagement.Elevating the Customer Experience:Phil: What does it mean to "elevate the experience"?Richard: Elevating the experience means consistently demonstrating thoughtfulness, kindness, caring, and empathy. It's about humanizing and personalizing every interaction. These qualities turn satisfied customers into delighted advocates and brand ambassadors.Practical Steps to Elevate the Experience:Phil: Can you break down the practical steps to elevate the experience?Richard: Absolutely. Simple changes like how you sign your emails or addressing customers by their preferred name can make a big difference. Instead of "Best," use "Warm regards." Instead of "Feel free to call," say "Feel welcome to call." These small gestures show thoughtfulness and care.Staying in Touch with Customers:Phil: How do businesses stay in touch with customers effectively?Richard: Logging customer interactions in a CRM system is crucial. Celebrate anniversaries, send personalized messages, and make customers feel valued. For example, a doughnut shop in Sarasota sends annual texts to customers celebrating their loyalty. Real estate agents can send cakes with personalized messages to clients' workplaces, making them feel appreciated and remembered.The Power of Thoughtfulness:Phil: It's not about the cake or the doughnut but the thoughtfulness behind it, right?Richard: Exactly, Phil. It's the thoughtfulness, kindness, and empathy that make customers feel valued. These actions show that you care and help build long-term relationships.Implementing Customer-Centric Strategies:Phil: How do businesses implement these strategies effectively?Richard: Start with a 90-day plan, focusing on a few key changes. Assess where you are and set specific steps for improvement. Tools and templates from my book can help guide this process. It's about adopting a mindset of giving rather than getting.Mindset Shift for Success:Phil: How do we help businesses shift their mindset to prioritize customer-centric strategies?Richard: It's about realizing that by giving – whether it's thoughtful communication or personalized gestures – you build stronger relationships. Bob Burg, who wrote "The Go-Giver," emphasizes this point: giving leads to greater opportunities and success.Conclusion:Phil: Friends, if you want to keep customers for life, focus on thoughtfulness, care, kindness, and empathy. Richard's book, 100 Proven Ways to Acquire and Keep Clients for Life, is a must-read. You can find it at any bookstore or on Richard's website, richardweylman.com. Remember, implementing these strategies will transform your customer relationships and business success. You've read the notes, now watch the video below. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit happyaf.substack.com/subscribe

@richardthomas is #cofounder of @wormlovers where he is a #wormfarmer #breedingworms and the business supplies, services and educates on everything to do with #composting #nutrientcycling #soil #worms. He also co-founded @Boogiefestival #musicfestival (after being integrally involved with another iconic festival @bigdayout ) and @treecredsRichard went to #Artschool @sydneycollegeofthearts in Sydney and evolved an #artpractice, which was around very much focused on #ecology #conservation #sustainability #environmentalism. The businesses were also built, ground up, on the same  foundational principles. It's a ripping chat with someone who does care, you'll hear it the way he speaks and see it in what has done - in the episode Richard talks about;#lovetheworklovetheworldhis self described 'accidental but sort of interesting journey'modestly exhibiting his art in 15 countriesthe profound experience of #livingofftheland in #Tasmania as a teenagerstarting new businesses with great friends on #enviromental #sustainable values  #homecompostingwhy #earthworms #soilhealthare just so fundamentally important to all of us the #Covid19 induced struggles for #smallbusinessownerstrying to find #balance between home and workwy it's time to #exit  #businesssale  @wormlovers the support he feels when talking to other #businessownersA full transcript is below.@kerrcapitalWelcome to another edition of Small Business Banter. This morning, I've got in Richard Thomas. Richard has a really diverse business background. We're going to chat to him about these businesses. He's a founder of @Wormlovers which is-- he's a worm farmer, and we'll talk about recycling, environmentalism. He's also co-founder of the @BoogieMusicFestival and a founder of another @Treecreds, which is a carbon reduction project. It's a really interesting mix, but firstly, welcome in Richard Thomas. Great to have you in our studio.Richard Thomas: Thanks, Michael. Great to be here. Michael: Perhaps you just want to expand a little bit on those three ventures that you've been involved in, and then we can pick up a couple of conversations around them.Richard: I guess, starting off with the Wormlovers, really, it's been something I've been doing for about 20 years I was a sole trader until around 8 years ago, and then we established it as a Pty Ltd business. But, nearly 20 years of #breedingworms and doing everything to do with #composting and #nutrientcycling and #soil and #worms, from that perspective. #Boogiefestival started about 15 years ago, and that came out of my experience. I worked for 20 years on the #BigDayOut festival as a kind of art coordinator and then, that evolved into running a part of the festival with a stage and various other activities, working in the core team of the Big Day Out from its inception, right through until when it finished, I think about 6 or 7 years ago. And through that... what my journey has very much been things have just come up. I don't know how much planning has gone into it. It's just sort of like being somehow an accidental but sort of interesting journey. Originally, I went to #Artschool in Sydney and then evolved an art practice, which was around very much focused on #ecology and #conservation, #sustainability, #environmentalism. So, these other projects that are being involved in have always been related to that sort of foundational, sort of vocation, I guess, as an #artist. And I had a quite long career as a practicing artist and showed in my work in probably about 15 different countries and had commercial galleries and was pretty much active in that world for 20, probably nearly 30 years. Michael: Wow.Richard: The Big Day Out was a gig that provided me with enough income to sort of subsidize my art practice. So, that was what was going on for most of those years. And then, I've always had a really strong interest in, I guess, #nature and #naturalprocesses. When I was a teenager after I left school, I went live with my uncle down in #Tasmania. This is in the late 70s, early 80s. He was #livingofftheland there, I guess you'd call him a-- he's not a sort of a hippie-ish looking guy, but I guess some of his values are very much about #backtoearth, you know, #growinghisownfood and he and his family had #drafthorses, they had their own #sheep, they're making their own clothes at a huge #veggiegarden, they would make #beehives, they were #makingtheirownbooze and generally living off the land. So that was a really influential experience for me.Michael: You lived there as a teenager, or?Richard: Yeah. I think when I was about 17, for a couple of years I lived down there. So that was a really profound experience for me. At that time, there were a lot of people, maybe similar to what's going on at the moment. It was a lot of people who were just fed up with the mainstream world, and people moving down to Tasmania, a lot of young people, people from different parts of the world. You know, the land was cheap and there were a lot of people who were building their own house, going #offgrid, and stuff, which is now sort of becoming again. It's coming back into the mainstream a bit more, but at that time, there was a real kind of sense of movement happening.Michael: Yeah.Richard: So that's the kind of background.Michael: So, you talked about-- it's not opportunistic, but you know, there were things that piqued your interest, say, you'd go after it?Richard: Yeah, that's right. And so, when I went to Art school in Sydney, I'd already had that experience, living in the country and being really connected to all these natural processes. So, that's sort of carried on into my developing art practice. Michael: What art were you producing, Richard? Richard: Well, I went to @SydneyCollegeoftheArts, which is an incredible place and an incredible time to be doing that. The '80s were a really incredible time to be an artist. So many ideas and so many different streams going on. Painting sort of returned. There were also a lot of conceptual ideas around and it gave me the opportunity to try out a whole lot of different media and different approaches, but always around sort of nature, somehow connected to nature. So, initially, I went to do photography, and then I jumped into the painting department, and then I moved on later to more installation work, even some video work. But mostly, painting and installation work, and often using natural materials or landscape paintings, photography, yeah.Michael: It really does sound like that experience living off the grid in Tazi[?] was quite formative for you because I think Wormlovers is a recycling environmental business wholly, but I think Boogie Fest was really differentiated itself based on its environmentalism credentials. Is that right?Richard: Yeah.Michael: You know, you were really looking hard to tread lightly on the earth.Richard: Yeah, absolutely. And I think... you know, I started Boogie Festival with some really great friends who are-- a lot of those relationships that evolved out of the Big Day Out, and we used to go to a lot of festivals together, and so, we just came up with this idea of doing a festival. But it's always been a passion of mine to consider the environmental impact of everything you're doing, to me, that's a sort of fundamental principle that I think everyone should adopt, really. So, it's not just a sort of sense of going. We've got this guy; he's doing a bit of green stuff on the side. And then we'll just keep doing what we're doing because we're sort of taking care of the environmental stuff. I think that sort of attitude often with some businesses, I think, with some corporations, in particular, can be a bit of a problem because it's just the sideline, the guys that are doing the sustainability stuff. But with Boogie, we tried to really embed that with things, like we introduced--- We got rid of #disposablecups, so we had plastic pots for all the beers. We brought in #onsitecomposting, we'd set up a whole sorting operation site and[?] all of that to increase our recycling. And we did a carbon offset, I think that that was through Treecreds, which is another enterprise that I'd started. And the idea of that was that when you came to the festival as a punter, you would be able to purchase a #carbonoffset for your #travelemissions to the festival.Michael: Yeah. So rather than paying not lip service, necessarily, but like as you say, the bigger groups, bigger companies might have sustainability area. Richard: Yes.Michael: Boogie Festival is ground up. The whole thing is built around a few core values, one of them which is environmentalism. So, you mentioned, people-- and as we've interviewed on this program, quite a few people involved in, I guess, activating #regionalareas and more people are moving to the regions. But do you think environmentalism is at risk at the moment? Or do you think it's the best opportunity it has ever been for people to reconsider how they treat the environment? It's strange times we're in.Richard: Yes, it's certainly strange times. And I think it's a complex question because there's so much that is going on, and there's so much that isn't going on that needs to happen, really. I feel like these certain parts of the world that-- or sectors of the economy or demographics or whatever you want to call it, people who are really moving ahead quickly with this stuff. And I feel like there's a big lag there as well. So, it's hard to put your finger on it and generalize about it because there's so much activity, but I still feel a little bit like, you know, sustainability is something that people are talking about, generally more than they're actually doing. And I think part of the problem is that we've fundamentally lived in a world, which is all of the systems were built up in the structure of the global economy. And the way that the industrialized world works is it's heading in one direction, which is unsustainable. So, it's like turning around a gigantic supertanker, you know?Michael: Yes.Richard: Yeah, it's a long process, and we have to change people's attitudes as well as their behavior.Michael: [crosstalk] And you've had a really good crack at doing that, and as a businessperson as well, right? Through Boogie Festival, which I think, sadly, that we've had the last Boogie Festival we're going to have, are we? Is-- Richard: Yeah. Well, there might be another festival but we're just not sure this time, obviously, stating the obvious. But you know, a situation with events is so uncertain. It's already become-- the game's changed a lot from the days when something like the Big Day was happening. Anyway, it's much harder to sell tickets that the costs are going up in the event industry. There are a lot more #compliance and #hurdles and complexity and cost that goes into putting on these events while, you know,-- and it's harder to sell tickets so it's a much more difficult #businessmodel to maintain. So--Michael: It seems like there's maybe a move to these micro[?] owner, it's like called micro festivals, but smaller, more niche festivals, I mean, plenty of people are getting to the regions. But, look on today's episode of Small Business Banter, we're talking right now with Richard Thomas.Richard, another way you've kind of lived out and your sort of core personal values, I think, is through Wormlovers. Do you just want to kind of give us a snapshot of what Wormlovers does right now?Richard: Yes. So, we started Wormlovers, as I was saying, about 8 years ago, and really, there were a number of reasons for setting it up. And I guess the core, the main sort of motivation was really #my passion and my #businesspartner, Gail Davidson's passion for what we were doing. And the sort of-- and also, the sense that there was a time, it felt like it was the right time to do this. I'd had this idea in the back of my mind for a long time of sort of specializing in worm farming and home composting and developing an enterprise which would kind of be part education but part commercial. So, the vision part of it is really important. We do, you know, we have to educate-- we feel like part of what we're doing in Wormlovers is kind of inspiring people to change the world with a worm farm. Michael: I think, one that your tagline or motto is "Love the worm, love the world"?Richard: Yes. And you know, I feel like there's this fascinating thing happening that maybe a lot of people are not aware of, you know, that the species like the worm, the #compostworm, or the #earthworm is so fundamental to our lives. We wouldn't be here without soil, without healthy soil because all of our food comes and all the higher creatures on earth really are dependent on the ecology of the soil. It regulates climate, it's connected to water - the water cycle, it's connected to the nutrient cycle in particular, of cycling nutrients from food and #organicwaste back into the soil, being replenished or back into a worm farm or a compost bin and turning back into healthy nutrients to create more food and more plants and more wellbeing. So, we see ourselves as a vehicle to provide the ability for individuals, both in a home, but also across the board of anyone who eats food. From schools to cafes to councils to, you know, you name it, anywhere where there's food waste produced is a potential site to engage in this process, this incredible process of setting up a worm farm and cycling your organics on the spot, so--Michael: I can hear the purpose of the connection with that core purpose and in the way you talk, but it's taking on a lot to-- You know, when you talk about having a business that is commercial and also educational, it's a big task, isn't it?Richard: Yeah.Michael: To educate through your business, a very honorable one. Wormlovers operates out of a precinct, currently where you've got. It's in... is it Werri...?Richard: Yeah, Werribee.Michael: Werribee, yeah. And so, as part of a complex of a few #environmentalbusinesses down there, but you are farming worms and you're reselling related equipment for households and for small businesses, I guess?Richard: Yeah, that's right. So just to sort of summarize that, these different aspects of the business. And I guess our core business is really our #onlineshop. The operations yard is really there to support the online sales, but also, any commercial work we're doing. We leased some land from @MelbWater out of the #Westerntreatmentplant, and that's where we actually breed our worms, and there are some byproducts from that process. We have big beds that where we breed the worms and we feed them on a mixture of different #feedstocks, #manures, and #coffeegrounds, and #organicwaste. And then, we package those worms up. We also store our inventory of composting products worm farms, such as we import a worm farm from #NewZealand in container loads, called the @hungrybin, which had been probably the best design worm farm that we've ever come across. We have a range of accessories and things that we sell as well. So that yard, basically, supports our online part of the business through online sales. And then, we also do sort of outreach work where we-- and sadly, with the lockdown, this has been one of our struggles as it is for so many small businesses. There's a lot of that work that involved us going out on site. You say got going into a restaurant or a school or a council to set up worm farms and educate people on site.Michael: You just haven't had the opportunities? Richard: No, we just did-- All of those big facilities have just been shut down or so restricted. So, what's happened there is that immediately, people are not eating food because they're not at all on-site. So, there's almost no food right on those sites. There's no--Michael: Everyone's at home. Richard: Yeah, so that's been a real struggle for us because part of what we would do is going out-- Well, particularly around, obviously around Melbourne, and help people set up and troubleshoot their worm farms. We also had a number of contracts; our biggest client was the @cityofMelbourne. With the lockdown, they had to shut down all of their sites and so we lost that contract to actually help. We had about half a dozen sites, and we do monthly or regular visits to work with the staff and just keep the worm farms in good health. We also had gardens that we're managing, so often, we'd set up really high yield #containergardens and some of these gardens are on #rooftops and in schools and in line-wise around Melbourne and community centers and things like that. So anyway, all of that work was lost with the lockdown sadly so that's been one of our struggles.Michael: Yeah, as you said, it's affected so many businesses and so many people and really forces you to rethink the way you do business. And, you know, we all need that inspiration when things are particularly tough, so personally, with Wormlovers, you're probably getting to the point where that's seen natural cycle, you move on...?Richard: Yeah. I think after 8 years of just eating, sleeping, as is for almost small business owners, you know, it just takes over your life.Michael: It can completely dominate, particularly, when someone like you who is so connected, enthusiastic, with the reason the businesses is there.Richard: Yeah. [crosstalk] No, you're absolutely right. And I think there are positives and negatives about that, being so connected to what you're doing because you've got to have a passion, you've got to have belief, and you've got to really get your up in the morning and believe in what you're doing. But at the same time, I think it's probably healthy to be able to maintain some kind of distance as well from what you're doing. And that's, I think, one of the struggles, I think that trying to find that balance can be difficult.Michael: I don't know in the work I do that that many people get that right. You know, that maybe you get it right for a period of time and it's certainly not to say you shouldn't be aiming to find that a bit of a boundary between the two but, you know, sometimes, you can't help yourself.Richard: That's right, yeah. And I'm sure I'm not alone. I'm sure these small business owners all over the country that have the same struggle of sort of, you know, they're still thinking about it late at night, you wake up in the morning, it's the first thing you think about, and just the ongoing, you know, it just doesn't stop, does it? So--Michael: It doesn't stop and I think there comes a time-- you know, for you, there's a time when you start to think about perhaps a #newventure, a new pathway. So, in your case, I think you're looking at a venture in Tasmania?Richard: Yeah, that's right. So, what I'm looking to do over the next couple of years is to basically work towards, maybe exiting Wormlovers or looking for a joint venture or reconfiguring it in some way or another. And obviously, putting a lot of thought into how that might manifest.Michael: Yeah.Richard: And then, looking at this project, down in Tassie, so I've had a share in a beautiful spot down on the #MerseyRiver in northern Tasmania, an old farm. And we're looking at sort of developing that as a sort of #sanctuary or #retreat. It'll be a multipurpose, sort of location for potentially-- It's got incredible #fishing there[?], so for as a fishing lodge, but also making it available for sort of events of one sort or another. We've had a couple of weddings. We've had some sort of parties down there, like 50th birthday or whatever. But also, for things like, maybe meditation, yoga, retreats, maybe somewhere for, you know, any kind of group to really go and be in this really beautiful natural environment surrounded by wilderness on this river. It's got a really incredible sort of vibe. So that's sort of what I'm looking at next, it's working on that. And that part of that will also be probably incorporating a lot of these sustainable, environmental kind of themes that I've been working on.Michael: They're not going to go away from you, right? Those--Richard: No [laughing]Michael: It sounds like, also Tazi, you spent some formative time there, and you're kind of going back there. Richard: Yeah, it's like a full cycle. Yes. Nice. Michael: Yeah. Just in closing, Richard, it's so wonderful to talk to business owners, that's what we're about on Small Business Banter, and sharing that. There's a pathway for you to move on from Wormlovers and on to something else, but I'm just keen in the last minute to kind of if you got some sort of tips or ideas or people that influenced you heavily in the way you go about running your day-to-day business that other owners could come[?] refer to.Richard: Yeah. Well, I'm probably not the-- I probably don't-- maybe I'm not having a very clear way that I look at this., but I do tend to talk to other business owners. I think that's probably my main source of sort of understanding, and I'm always intrigued by how other businesses work. So, I'm always trying to find out, "How does that thing work?" You know, you see something that you've never heard of, and you go, "That's a business? That's fascinating. How did someone get that turn into a business?" I think that's part of the-- but I'm kind of inspired by people like @David Holmglen who started the #Permaculture movement. Obviously, not from a business perspective, but I guess I'm interested in the philosophy of working with nature and how sustainability works, so I do a lot of research in that area. So yeah, I guess it's--Michael: I think the, you know, talking to other business owners-- as long as you're talking to somebody, right?Richard: Yeah.Michael: Ideally, some [inaudible] can kind of, you know, because it is a battle, and it's been hard, through the last 12, 18 months, especially. And sharing with other owners, which is kind of like this program, we often get on owners and they talk about their successes and their challenges. So, I think that's as good as any, you know, for other people listening in, talk to owners, like other owners like Richard does.Richard, we're out of time. I just wanted to say thank you very much for sharing that fascinating background, that crossing over environmentalism, music, business. It's wonderful to hear. I really appreciate your time and I wish you well as you kind of move down to that next venture in Tazi and maybe pass on Wormlovers to somebody else to take up the fight. Richard: Yeah, great. Thanks, Michael. I really appreciate it, it's great to talk to you. Michael: Alright. Thanks, Richard. Richard: Thanks. Bye-bye. See you.Michael: So that's all for today's episode of Small Business Banter. I continue to be inspired, bringing new small business experts and other small business owners and hearing their stories and their experiences. For any of the links, resources, or information we've talked about on the show today, or just to contact me, please head over to smallbusinessbanter.com or find Small Business Banter on Facebook or Instagram. It'd be really great to have you tune in at the same time next week for another episode of Small Business Banter.[End]

Richard Maxwell has created and runs one of the most unique and inspiring creative musical arts and sciences program in the nation. For me, it reminds me of the entry level sound recording program I went through in college, only Richard's students get into the creative process early because of what he had the guts to create. This program happens in an area of the school campus where they have their own section of rooms that is their facility. It's made up of a larger classroom if you will that doubles as a performance room plus they have 15 Pro Tools stations and Pro Tools running in their A and B recording studios. They learn how to be expressive without fear of judgement, they write songs, they mutually assist and critique each others work in a helpful, loving way and it's magical to see what happens on a daily basis. Richard is a loving, caring person who, by his own efforts and fortitude, has created a platform where he can give the students, his very best in regards to guidance, ideas and processes.If you love music, talking about music, the process of making music, what music looks like in today's world, interested in how music could be handled in schools or always wondered how a single person can make a huge change in our education system, these episodes split into Part 1 and Part 2, are for you! Enjoy, share and spread the musical love. ********** Richard Maxwell's Links: Richard's Website: https://sites.google.com/view/richardmaxwell CMAS Program: https://sites.google.com/view/arcadiacmas YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/RichardMaxwellMusic/videos Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.maxwell.3538 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rchrdmxwll/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/rchrdmxwll LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richard-maxwell-235ab513/ https://youtu.be/wtg_TV3j_wA ********** Podcast Music By: Andy Galore, Album: "Out and About", Song: "Chicken & Scotch" 2014 Andy's Links: http://andygalore.com/ https://www.facebook.com/andygalorebass ********** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Subscribe, Rate & Review:I would love if you could subscribe to the podcast and leave an honest rating & review. This will encourage other people to listen and allow us to grow as a community. The bigger we get as a community, the bigger the impact we can have on the world. Sign up for Joe's email newsletter at: https://joecostelloglobal.com/#signup For transcripts of episodes, go to https://joecostelloglobal.com/#thejoecostelloshow Follow Joe: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jcostelloglobal Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jcostelloglobal/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jcostelloglobal/ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUZsrJsf8-1dS6ddAa9Sr1Q?view_as=subscriber Transcript Part 1 – Richard Maxwell Interview: Richard: Basically on a whim. A weird situation develops. And I get a phone call from the then band teacher of all things at Arcadia. This is the late 90s, I'm giving away my age a little bit, I suppose, but we didn't know each other directly, but he had also gone to U of A at one point. And we've heard of each other and for a variety reasons, it just wasn't happy in Tucson. And he says, "Hey, I have a situation, would you be interested in moving up to teach here at Arcadia? [Richard] "Sure!" [He says] "You want to know what the gig is?" [Richard] "Not really" So we're three weeks into the school year at this point. So I come up and I spent a day with him at the school getting a sense for what it is and I walk away thinking, ok, this could be kind of cool. I want the orchestra too. Because that's where my love was, so, I, I meet the principal, great guy, Jim Lee. And he hires me and in the conversation I said, "Look, I'm so excited for it," it's like a first real, it's a big gig for me, it's a huge thing. And it's I'm going to, you know, bigger city, better music town, I'm thinking all these different things, but I tell him, like, "I know the orchestra teachers a couple years from retiring, I want writer first refusal." And he's, you know, whatever, but he, he agrees, thinking probably I'll forget and I can remember a long interview process, with parents and everybody else. Basically what happens is, is after my first year, a couple of things happened that kind of get things a little weird. So I'm still trying to do my own thing in the world of regular music but I don't know enough about the Phoenix music scene at the time I was trying to hold down this job, that is awesome but kind of beaten me up just because I'm new at it. So I make a whole bunch of changes, you know, he had a very, very big jazz program, which is awesome! I love jazz, but as a director, which I don't like the word director, if it makes me feel like a traffic cop, if I can still want to Greg's themes, but I didn't that wasn't where I wanted to be. So I morphed into more like wind ensembles and we ended some pretty heavy stuff. And there's a bit of a love hate with it, but you can see like the level of musicianship. And I'm like everybody who's gonna read notes, like we're not playing games with this, lot of wrote stuff, a lot of, you know, play it based on your, you know, improvising skills, which is fine and you need to do that as well. But I had a certain level standards and I was still pretty, pretty much full of my own brilliance at that point. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. Joe: And this Richard: And Joe: Was just band at this point. Richard: Was that Joe: Was this just Richard: This Joe: Band Richard: Is band Joe: At Richard: This Joe: This Richard: Is that Joe: Point? Richard: First Joe: Ok. Richard: Year. Joe: Ok. Richard: So the second year, two things happen. One is Jim, I guess, decides the principle that I must not have completely destroyed things. And he comes to me and says, "Look, we have this opportunity to expand your contract. We don't have a choir teacher anymore. Can you take over the choir?" I very foolishly said Joe: Well. Richard: "Yes!" It was bad idea, it  was a bad idea for the kids. It was bad idea for I mean, it was just bad. It was. It was. It was. It was well-intentioned... if had that opportunity now, because I do a lot of stuff with a lot of vocalists now, now I could do it and do it comfortably and make that experience significant in a way for those kids that they would be glad, I think that they had it, not then! Oh, my gosh, not even not, I mean, like, literally, I want you to imagine the worst possible experience for those students and then be grateful if they would have had even half of that level of a caliber of experience. I mean, it was, it was, it was horrible. But the other thing he asks me to do is take over the guitar class slash club. Because Joe: Interesting. Richard: He knows that I gig a little bad and I do the singer-songwriter thing a little bit and the studio stuff a little bit, he knows I have these other interests, but he doesn't really know to what extent. And you know, I'm not responsible basically anybody but myself in terms of my time at that point. I don't have any real you know, why not? And it's money and and it's a gig and I like the school and I like the people there and I like the community and da a da a da. So "Sure, why not?" So I take on this whole thing and basically what happens is, things start to build and eventually you wind up with, you know, I have two full symphony orchestras, winds, strings, percussion, all in the same rehearsal hall every day, all year round. We're still doing a marching band, while my version of marching band, which I have been justifiably criticized many times, I'm not a marching band guy, I'm a, I mean, I love the art of it. But I was I like, you know, one year we wrote our own show, the kids and you know, one year, you know, we were doing crazy, we were, it was just nuts, it was you know, they wanted to do rock shows the last two years. And I was kind of moving away from that because I you know, you just you know what you know and you know what you are Joe: Yep, Richard: Or what you're not. Joe: Yep. Richard: So I was like, okay, we'll do rock shows, but if we're going to do rock shows, you don't need a conductor, that's where literally we're wasting a ah resource, right? So, so we had a drum line, our drum line became our click track, screwed up everything in our scores because you didn't get a caption award and you didn't get points, they deducted points for not having a drum major. Joe: WOW! Richard: So it killed our scores. But musically, I think those kids benefited from that. Because that sense of internal clock and time and how you synchronize and what that does to intonation and every other musical element you can think of. I mean, all the things that you as a very seasoned studio player, let alone all your live work when you're sitting there in the control room, listening to playback on that and you're going, you know, because somebody can't...you know, Joe: Yeah, Richard: I know, you know, but Joe: Sometimes Richard: But Joe: It's me, Richard: well... Joe: So I do know. Richard: I doubt it. No, seriously. But my point is, is that, that, that was sort of where things started to change up a little bit. The guitar program is growing crazy. Some Joe: Still Richard: In Joe: To Richard: Some Joe: This Richard: Ways Joe: Day, Richard: Because it Joe: Are then. Richard: This is then Joe: Then Richard: This is Joe: Ok. Richard: Then. So we've got the orchestra building. We've got you know, there's Joe: A Richard: Now there's Joe: Wind Richard: Piano, Joe: Dancer. Richard: There's, you know, everything's building up and we've got songwriting I introduce because for me I've always been kind of a cool you play an instrument, what can you make with it. Well but it's the clarinet. I don't care, what can you make with it? You know, I don't, it doesn't matter to me. So guitar to me, you know, the first year or two was very much about just technique and then I got very much in to, I don't, I don't care about this technique. Let's write songs, let's make music. And it just so it seems kind of going and going, going and eventually it just, the circumstances are such, that there's basically too much to do for one person or even two people. My oldest son, who came in a minute ago, was born without going too far, but he was born 10 weeks early. And he's obviously, you saw he's fine. But at the time and I'm like, I need a change. I've been at Arcadia at that point for nine years. Joe: You Richard: There Joe: Basically Richard: Is a point. Joe: Have said yes to every single thing they've asked you to do. Richard: Well, Joe: Ok. Richard: But I've also enjoyed the challenge. I mean Joe: Right. Richard: I mean, the truth is, is I enjoy the challenge. I'll tell you, this is heading to something that you're probably going to go either think, WOW!, that's really cool or are you out of your mind or possibly both. But in any case, we, you know, there's an opportunity, that our principal has changed, and we have Anne-Marie Woolsey, Dr. Woolsey is there. And I start talking about this idea. And the idea is why, I'm starting to really and maybe it's just because of my own state of mind, but we're doing all these things with, you know, we have what we call the songwriters and we have the more traditional ensembles, it's not CMAS yet, but it's in its early stages of existing. And I'm actually still, I have I have a couple of now what I would say close friends that are graduates from that time who are incredibly supportive people you might even talk to, you just like, like I'm like, so I'll just, local guys like Thomas Brennaman and Alex Fry and Zach Tonkin and there's a ton of them, there's a ton, Ed Bakerman, Addie. She's still gigging all the time all over the country, she's brilliant. I mean, there's, there's, there's a ton of these people, but Joe: And Richard: They're Joe: This Richard: On one Joe: Is late, Richard: Side of. Joe: This is late. Richard: This is this is still within those nine years. Joe: Right. So this would be since you started there. Richard: This is like 08, 07, 08 kind Joe: Right. Richard: Of thing. Joe: Right. OK. Richard: And I am starting to get and it's just kind of I think it's a culmination of things. Most music teachers at a school are, you know, the average is less than five years, I'm at nine, which isn't like good or bad, it just kind of is what it is. But I'm also really struggling. I realize now in retrospect with this dual musical experience, because you know, this is at a time where these devices are starting to come of age, streaming is starting to become a thing and on and on. And you, I just, other people have phrased it so much better than I have but just this idea that the kids, it's done in their rehearsal and they explore all this music, but then as soon as the rehearsals over, they're going home and what are they listening to? Everything but what they're rehearsing. Joe: Right. Richard: And I understand the argument of well, but that's why you need to have those ensembles and do, and I don't think that's necessarily wrong. But fundamentally, there's something missing, if you are, if you, if the real world has one opportunity and the educational world has one that is completely diametrically opposed to that. And we're talking about something that ultimately comes down to a cultural element, a tell your story, if you will, element, which is what I think all art really comes down to. And that's being effectively either ignored or dismissed or in many cases, I would say, mutated into something that basically makes somebody feel, makes a student feel like somehow their musical instincts are either, I don't know, at best immature. But, you know, you talk about a terrible amount of disenfranchisement and disenfranchisement, you're talking about a terrible amount of just not, they think, they feel like it's not legit, like they're not legitimate somehow, that's their choice, you Joe: Right. Richard: Know, or we don't do that here, kid, that kind of thing. Joe: There's a misalignment. Richard: Yeah, and Joe: It's Richard: It doesn't Joe: Just weird. Richard: Mean anything if you walk the logic through, it doesn't make any sense. And yet, it is still essentially perpetrated across the world and a lot of ways, and I just was like, got to do something, now I, you could argue I went too far to the extreme and I regret but, you know, for all the things we've accomplished and all the things that we've done and, you know, the program is basically now I said, okay, look, I've got all these songwriters, we've got this, this is what I've become kind of like an industry history class. We've got the guitar players. You know, we had the pianist. We've got, we, we have this contemporary thing happening anyway. So I went to the principal and I basically said, "Can I just walk away from the band and orchestra part?" It's become, you know, "It's just not me anymore the way we'd like it to be," the politics with the parents and everything else is getting sick, I was just tired Joe: Yes. Richard: Of it. I don't do well with it anyway. That's why, I just, I'm just, I'm very confrontation adverse. It's just, just naturally. And then you get into like high school band and orchestra parent land, with all due respect and it just wasn't, it wasn't gonna be, I wasn't gonna last long without losing my mind. Plus again, Grayson, ten weeks early. So I held on for one more year and I remember very clearly that last concert we did, you know, the good, the farewell symphony, the Haydn at the, as the last piece. And I remember choreographing it and nobody knew about what I was doing, except for my very good friend, who's still my good friend, the theater teacher who was running the lights for us in the on the stage and the head of the school security who's still there, Jeri Eshelman. I told the two of them what I was gonna do, and that was it. Go through the whole concert, do the whole senior recognition thing, the whole thank you's and all of it and then we do, traditionally, we would do one last song. We do the one last song which the farewell symphony, which I'm not sure if you're familiar with, but literally the way Haydn wrote it was that as it's ending, the players get up and leave the stage until eventually Joe: Right. Richard: Not Joe: Right. Richard: Even the conductor is there and it's just I believe it's just the single first violinist if I remember right. So we did that and I added one element. I walked off the stage and very quietly walked out the stage door to my car and went home. Joe: Of course you did. Richard: I just left. It's kind of rude, I suppose. Joe: It's awesome! Richard: But, but, but it is. Joe: And you're still there Richard: Yes. Joe: And you're still employed by that school. Richard: I am, I am, but doing something very different. And it has been, I mean, you know, we could have an entire series of podcasts on the politics of what has gone on. Joe: Oh, Richard: It has Joe: I Richard: Been. Joe: Can Richard: It's Joe: Only imagine. Richard: It's been. I used to get really angry about it. I still am frustrated by it at times. But now I'm more like, I don't, I'm almost more entertained. Because there are too many people now that like yourself who are seasoned industry professionals or their education professionals, who see the concept of what what we've built there and very specifically say that concept is important and vital and necessary so that, you know, you get enough music education, professors and universities and like I said, actual, real in the industry, people saying this is what should happen. And all the arguments become a little bit silly after a while. So now Joe: Yup. Richard: I'm just kind of like, really? You want to line up, you know, your cynical view against of, forget me, you're going to tell all these other people they're wrong!? Joe: Yeah. Richard: WOW! Even in my most arrogant, I wasn't going to do that. So it is what it is. But, you know, it's, it's, it's, it has evolved a lot. I mean, you know, if you look at the setup and even now, I mean, obviously with the closure, Joe: But Richard: Things are different. Joe: Wait, Richard: But. Joe: Before you get past this, so you, you, you state you said you were gonna do one more year. Richard: This is the end of that year. Joe: Ok. Richard: So this is the end of that year. So I basically, you know, and, you know, I made several mistakes, big ones! One of them was, the then head of the district's fine arts and I've talked to Anne Marie since about this and she agrees that she should never have agreed to this. Basically said, ok, we'll support you doing this, but you have to stay away from your old program because you're still going to be on campus and the new teacher needs the opportunity, because, because that kind of community of students is it's a, it's a very family kind of thing. Well, what happened is it became very confrontational between the two programs. My new program is the new "IT." The new teacher is struggling for a lot of different reasons. Put in a situation that she cannot possibly succeed in. You know, imagine being a young teacher and they give you a class of band, a class of orchestra that they've separated now, you have a percussion ensemble, you have a piano class, I think she had a computer class, I mean, it was literally like we're giving you all of the leftovers. It was Joe: Yes. Richard: It was a terrible gig. Nobody is going to do well in that situation under any circumstances, period. It's just. Joe: Right. Richard: A nightmare scenario. But what winds up happening is it creates a lot of friction and a lot of confrontation. And I again, I am so committed to, we have to prove that this thing should exist because I like in my gut, I know it should but I don't have proof of concept yet. There's nobody doing it at a high school, the way I wanted to do it, you know, there was, there were programs that I had found it, then maybe, maybe this is more my inability at the time to search Google effectively. But, you know, you had people doing production. Absolutely! You had the technical side of it and you had people having like composition classes or songwriting classes, even rock band classes or whatever they call them. But I wasn't finding anybody that was looking at it in a more homogenous way, in a more holistic way of it needs to all be, it's all of it, you know. And so I was kind of starting from scratch. I took a lot of college curriculum. I talked to a lot of people that were in the industry and just kind of threw things against the wall to see what would stick. But in those early years, as I'm getting, you know, all these criticisms and destroying this, you know, you're killing the orig...you know, the traditional program, all these things that are provably false and everything else. But that reputation did build for quite a while and I I was like constantly biting my tongue because, again, you know, if I could avoid the confrontation and put it off for Joe: Yeah, Richard: A little while, I'd rather do that bad habit. Don't you know, Joe: Yeah. Richard: Kids don't do that if you're listening, don't do that! But I know, so I just, I really I struggle with that a lot. But we kept building things and one of the things that I saw, a couple of things that I've discovered in all of this, which is that, kind of like what I was saying earlier about the shows we did even during the COVID closure, that are very imperfect. If you, if you were to sit down and look at those shows that we did just these last several weeks, you could be arguably disappointed in a lot of there's, there's glitches and sound and some other things like but this is not what, don't you deal with audio and all this other stuff? But that wasn't really the point. And so we would have we have shows and in some shows there's people that are like, wow, you put that act onstage? Really? I'm like, yeah, is that kid now has been on stage and now we can move from there. Process has to matter more. I get in the professional world why it can't on some level but at the same time, boy, I wish it could. I'm Joe: Yeah, Richard: Sure you do too. And a Joe: Yeah. Richard: Lot of ways just knowing you, you know, I mean, you don't, you get duplication and you get repeats and you get even a certain level of perfection, but you don't get real originality unless you're willing to deal with process over product. I mean, you have to really embrace it. You know, Little Richard just died, as you know and it really, I mean, aside from I mean, is there anybody he did not influence in some way? I mean, literally, the man's legacy is endless. The other thing that kind of is horrible to say, but we're getting to a point where we are going to be out of truly original musicians, truly innovative people, there are very few people and I'm not even saying it's an age thing, it's just who's out there doing things that you go, WOW!, I've never heard that before in that context. And they're just, you know, there's a lot people perfecting it. There's a lot of people doing incredibly viable things and wonderful things musically. But to truly be innovative like that. But anyway, I'm so sorry I get Joe: No Richard: On tangents. I'm Joe: Better. Richard: So sorry Joe: It's okay. Richard: He I'm so, so, so this idea of, you know, process becomes really, really important and we're building it. And then. And what I was gonna say is, is that. Joe: But at this point, I'm trying to just make sure that both the viewers and listeners and I'm clear, though, that that you have this woman who is now responsible for these various things like band and orchestra and whatever else she was given that you have now been given the license, you know, the stamp of approval by the principal or Richard: And the district. Joe: The Richard: Yeah, Joe: District Richard: Yeah. Joe: To create this program that involves what at that time? Richard: Ok. So I you know, I'm sorry. Thank you for pulling back. So there actually is another player, analyst named Mitch Simmons, who needs to be mentioned. He is the director of the district's what's called Career and Technical Education Department at the time. And Mitch is brilliant and wonderful and will self-described himself as not having a musical bone in his body. But when I made this absurd proposal to him and I gave him like a 20 page document, like I had a curriculum and I had standards that I had adapted and which later wound up becoming basically the first draft that the state used and is still using for a lot of, a lot of things. Thankfully, they've had other people come in and perfect them and not just be stuck with my mediocrity, but. But Mitch, Mitch looked at and he goes, we so need this, this is the bridge, we've been looking for the bridge. Arts and here's the thing, everybody looks at career technical education, they get so hung up on the t the technology part. That's, in my view, as I get a lot, I get on a lot trouble with actually CTE people. I get, I get in trouble with the arts people for one thing and then I get in trouble for CTE people with the other. The "T" is, is completely to me, is nearly, it needs to be like lower case and in the smallest font possible. It's the "C" it's the career part. Joe: Right. Richard: Where's the job? Mitch saw it even better, like I understood, like it was my idea. But he saw other things in it and he's like "You", he's like, "Oh, my gosh, we can get, kids could get jobs in these industries." I'm like, "Yeah, we could!" And he gave me, I was, it was a perfect storm. He gave me the flexibility to just screw it up and rework it and reiterate it and retry and my principal did the same thing. And coming back to these shows that we had done, I told you I knew I would loop around back to my tangent. One Joe: And Richard: Of the Joe: This Richard: Things Joe: Is still Richard: That I. Joe: 2009. Richard: We're Joe: Is Richard: Still Joe: This Richard: In 2009, Joe: Ok? Richard: But Joe: Ok. Richard: It relates to something that just happened in the last few weeks. When you have students go through a process where we start with essentially nothing and they go through a self derived process or a self adapted process at the very least and then at the end there's a thing. I don't care what that thing is, that is powerful and wonderful and awesome and so that when you have like we would have shows, we still sometimes have shows that are just like, oh, you got to be kidding me. Because underneath that, there's also the, you've got to be kidding me! Joe: Yeah. Richard: Like, I mean, it works in both directions because it's derived and, and one of the things that I've learned is, teachers and educators who live exclusively and vicariously through their students are doomed to get burned out, frustrated and every other negative you can possibly think of. And I, I am committed to that completely. I don't think you can be competitive and creative at the same time. I believe that is like one of my very big mantras. I think that, you have to be your own creative, like I have struggled a lot, like, like thank God for therapy a lot, with not feeling like I've been able to do my own creative stuff. And I've sort of over the last year and it's been a struggle, it's made this year very weird and very difficult in some ways to say, like wait, I need to find a way to have my own creative outlet because it's not healthy. Like, it just isn't healthy. And whether that creative outlet is me throwing a video up on YouTube or a song up on SoundCloud that four people listened to or four million people listened to is kind of not really the issue. But that, we go from nothing through the process that a thing exists. It's all, it all ties together in this weird Zen ying yang thing. But as we grow, you know, we start doing all kinds of live events. We are, you know, we start very cobbled together. The early parts of the program in the early versions of the program, I didn't let the kids record anything in the first year. It was all learn an instrument. Keeps Joe: Did you even Richard: Them. Joe: Have the equipment Richard: Oh, yeah. Joe: That early? Richard: I mean, it was it wasn't what we have now. Don't Joe: No. Richard: Get me Joe: But Richard: Wrong. Joe: But you went Richard: Yeah. Joe: In there and you said, I need this, this, this, this and this to make this happen. Richard: So we started they got me a bunch of iMacs and we got some interfaces and we got Pro Tools early on because I know we're gonna do it for real and I was very committed to the legitimacy. Overcommitted, possibly, that I allowed other things to suffer. That battle that I know, the politics of things that I allowed myself to fall into the traps of these circular logic arguments that now I would never allow myself to do but, you know. Joe: Guy. Richard: Past is behind us and what's been has been, you know, that is what it is, but. But we just kept evolving and it's still evolves and, you know, we've we've, we've gone so far, as you know, there were years, the marching band kind of fell into a state of disarray and almost non-existence for several years. We started playing all of the home games, kind of like mini Super Bowls. Literally wheeling stages out and putting together shows for that. We still do them once a year. The marching band is back and is now for the last several years, like wins every award on the planet, literally. And God love them for it. It's amazing! Not my, you know, but that wasn't me. And that needs to be ok. I have some people that are still mad at me about that too, but whatever I don't, you know. But we, you know, we can go into studios, we go into every couple of years now we've been going to Blackbird Studios in Nashville this is like, in Nashville. This is a multi-million dollar facility. The last time we were there in February, just before all the closure happened, we were, I mean this is how far the things have evolved, this is possibly the greatest, I've gotten a lot of big compliments and they all mean a lot to me. We befriended Steve Marcantonio because he's the uncle of one of my former students. I don't know if you know, forgive the namedrop but Steve, I mean, like he got his start on John Lennon's last album. What, I mean, so you mean he's, the man knows his stuff! He's a genius and the nicest guy in the world. Like, like unbelievably giving of his time. He has come in and produced our sessions at or engineered our sessions at Blackbird and supervised them while we're there. So we're like one of the greatest recording spaces on the planet with one of the most gifted engineers to ever live and it's a bunch of high school students and me. Joe: That's amazing. Richard: Yeah. Life, Joe: How many Richard: Eight life. Joe: How many go to that trip? Richard: We took like 25 or so, this time 30. Joe: And how do you how do they get chosen? Richard: They just decide they want to go. Joe: Ok. Richard: We make it through tax credit. I have, I'm not going to do the cookie dough thing. I'm just not going to. You know, Joe: Yeah. Richard: Hey, I just I can't do it, but and it's expensive and it sucks and we try to scholarship where we can, Joe: Yeah. Richard: You know, we don't take nearly as many. But, but it's an opportunity. We do other things, we go to the conservatory recording arts and sciences. I'm looking at doing more. There's a lot of great stuff here in Phoenix for that opportunity Joe: Right. Richard: Or similar opportunities. But there is something cool about it, I mean, Nashville is Nashville. Let's not kid ourselves. It's just it's a great if Joe: Get. Richard: I could move anywhere and know I could still make a living, Joe: Yeah. Richard: I'd totally I'd totally being Nashville. I Joe: Yeah. Richard: Just. What a great place! But what you say is, is that this is this, this, this is unbelievable to me. So Steve walks in and he's giving the students an orientation and he's talking about all this gear and he gets about two minutes into it and then he looks at me and then he looks at them and he literally goes, "What? I'm wasting our time, your kids already know all this!" Because he's like talking Joe: Nice. Richard: About how, like the studios are set up and everything else. Ok, so that's not even the biggest compliment. We start getting everything set up and the boards placed and you know, Blackbird's provided interns and these are very highly skilled professionals and we've got Steve, ok? I have a couple of my more experienced students, one in particular who's she's like, I don't even think she's five feet tall, she's a graduating senior. She's just really quiet, sweet little girl, Emma. And she's up at the board and he just walks away. Like, not like I'm quitting, he walks away and he leans over to me and goes, "You don't need me." Joe: What's so funny? Richard: He goes, "She's got this!", he's like, "I'm going to just sit here and listen and I'll give some suggestions." And literally, that's how we spent an entire day recording, I don't know, 9 or 10 tracks or whatever it was of the students, some of them are great, some of them not so much, it doesn't really matter. But, you know, he, and it wasn't because he was lazy. Steve is like the least, you know, like between the two of you, it would be a really tough pick of who works harder. I mean, he wasn't just walking away because he didn't feel like helping, he was just like I'm going to give them the chance at this and this is a like it's like an 18, 20 million dollar place. This was not like, you know, these weren't inexpensive facilities with inexpensive gear. This was, you know, potentially massive, you know, liability and he's like "They have, they have this, just just do what you're doing." Joe: And I assume Emma is running a Pro Tools session? Richard: Oh, yeah, yeah, Joe: Right! Richard: A but, but mostly running the board, you know, on the side. I think it was an API. Joe: Ok, Richard: Something worth like more than my house, like Joe: Sure. Richard: 10 times over Joe: Yeah. Richard: In a room, you know, I think at one point Queen had recorded in the same room. I mean, this is not you know, Joe: Yeah. Richard: And who knows who else. I mean, this is unbelievable! I mean, Joe: Right. Richard: It was, but that to me, that was one of those moments where I was like, ok, the ups and downs of everything that may have gone on, clearly, again, at least as terms in terms of the concept, wWe're doing ok. You know, Joe: Yeah. Richard: If Steve Steve Marcantonio feels like he can let my students run a session on that equipment...ok Joe: Yeah, Richard: I'm going to take that for the win. I just Joe: Sure. Richard: I just don't think Joe: So the program Richard: I. Joe: At this point still in 2009 involves what different aspects? And how do kids get into it or not be in it? Richard: Ok, so I and I still, as much as I can have a, if you like anything at all about music in any capacity, I want you in here. Joe: Ok. Richard: If you're hard to work with, this is probably not going to go well. If you're, if you're lazy, that's going to be ok, as long as you're not blaming me for your laziness. If you own up to it, we'll find a way to make it work. I know that there's a lot of people will say, you know what? "You got to drive the kids, you got to drive the kids." And you know what? That's probably true. I just can't do it because my brain keeps going back to like I get, I get, I get hung up on the I, "You don't want to pick up that instrument and play it!?" I don't, what? what? "Why would you not want to pick up that instrument and play it!?" It literally, doesn't, I can't, I can't sort it, I wish I could, I know that maybe that's a cop out. But basically, at this point, everybody comes in and it's a year of intense, got to play instruments, got to play instruments, got to play instruments. There's a lot of benefits to that. But I start running into a philosophical problem, which maybe I needed to get over myself. But, you know, at the time, the original name of the program was not Creative Musical Arts and Sciences, it was Contemporary Music and Sound. The word contemporary has a lot of baggage, I soon found out. And I also felt like it wasn't really accurate. I wanted the word creative. Joe: Super important. Richard: It needed, it just needed to be there. So there you have the name change. And what, what starts to happen over the preceding years and you know, we get better at producing more material. We are proving ourselves more and more so we can get a hold of more equipment and things of that nature. And all the while, in the back of my head, is this creative name thing happens. You start referring to like what I wanted to be, which is a truly open, creative platform. And so what happens is I start to look at that first year and I go, well, wait a minute, I'm setting up roadblocks for these kids, well-intentioned roadblocks. And I think from a pedagogy standpoint, the idea of you have to rock or a rock...you to walk before you can run. I get it! I understand it! You know, you got to start with, you know, plan like, you know, your 50's kind of surf beats before you're gonna go play Tom Sawyer kind of stuff or whatever, you know, you're not you know, you're not playing a Purdie shuffle right out of the gate. You know, it's I mean, there's you know, and I understand that. But, and maybe this is a, a nod to the reality of the world that students currently live in and maybe maybe it's wrong of me to to say, well, it's ok but there is a, if you're going to be truly open and creative, then you need to be open and creative. Richard: And I started to develop this process where I would look at the program and anything we would want to do or anything the kid would propose and I would say, "Does this move their process forward or not?" And I started to look at the first year and that massive intensity on learning to play an instrument. And I looked at the well, ok, it could be argued that the long term benefits outweigh the short term frustrations but I'm loosing kids. And I'm also, I realize the thing that made me stop having just a year long exploration, if you will, of how to play an instrument, was I realized that the very thing that I was railing against in the traditional music world that, you know, you got to stop telling kids that just because they want to, like the turntables thing, is somehow illegitimate musically. I realize that in my own way I was doing that. And there are so many graduates now that I have been so tempted to try to find on social media and be like, hey, you probably don't remember me, that jerk music teacher you had for a year or two in high school but I wanted to tell you, I was wrong about this part of the approach. And I'm constantly looking like, to me, this is cathartic, like I will confess that in a heartbeat. Whereas other people what are you doing? What do you know? But I'm I can't, I can't, I have a hard... Richard: I look at the program right now. I look at the program in terms of this closure and I even thought, we were doing a workshop yesterday with a bunch of students on some stuff and we got on the topic of it and just their frustrations and the whole thing and I said, honestly, I'm not looking for false compliments here, I said "I would give myself a C plus for how I've executed things as the instructor, as the facilitator." And I'm pretty good at this stuff, I actually have been consulting for years with other people on how to move their game forward and you know, weird situations or whatever. And I'd only give myself a C plus. And, you know, that's really made me think. But in any case, it all comes back to this open creative platform idea. And so what I realized is that when I tell a kid, look, you're going to spend a year really getting good at guitar so that in year two we can start writing and recording. What I've actually said to them is your ideas aren't worthy yet. And the more I thought about it, the more I got really upset with myself. And I just basically decided that whatever happens, happens but I'm not going to do that anymore. And if a kid comes in and all they can do is grab a single drumstick and whack a snare drum in time with their friend. Go back to that Marcus Mumford kick drum idea Joe: Yeah, Richard: A little Joe: Yeah. Richard: Bit, if that's all they can do? We're going to legitimize that because and here's what I found. It's like a slingshot a little bit. Yeah, they seem like they're almost moving backwards in their musical skill set because you're not pushing that but what seems to happen is when you legitimize it a couple of things happened, including they get self-motivated. Because that kid that starts just on that snare drum hitting out time, if they stick with that in the context of I'm making music with my friend, they will get it in time, and then once that's in time, they're going to go, "What happens if I pick up another drumstick and now I've got one in each hand?" And now we have, you know, doubled the rhythmic possibilities. But they're looking at it through the perspective of what can I do with it musically, not all about technique. Technique can't be the "T" for technique can't be important, just like the "T" for technology can't be important. It just can't! The creativity, the career, the career part has to be the over shouting or over overarching thing and it has to be overshadowing everything else on, as far as I'm concerned, a multi expo, an exponential level. It just has to be! So I've continued to move into that. So now the technique is covered differently. I have what I call the, I just, I call it the GAC should be the GEC. It's G, E minor and C and the premise is you're going to learn G, E minor and C or you're going to learn how to keep a very basic beat to somebody else who's learning G, E, minor and C and we're going to have you make a piece of music with those three really basic chords that are all white keys on a piano, that you can play with one finger on a couple of strings on a uke or a bass or a guitar, or you're gonna you know, you're gonna sing unison tones if you're a vocalist or match it with that clarinet or I don't care, it's not about that. It's about seeing the musical connections with somebody else. You are going to collab, that's the other thing, the collaboration part. I can keep bringing on all these "C" words, but it really. They'll become, the self motivation will make up for it. The other thing, too, is, you know, if I want to play Beethoven, I need a certain amount of technique or I'm not getting Beethoven, I acknowledge that, that's important. There is an art to that, that cannot be overstated. But I don't require Beethoven to express myself. And I think a lot of people get confused about that. And I think a lot of people don't understand the importance of it. I think. well, heck, Beethoven himself changed things so radically because he himself believed that he should express himself the way he felt he should express. I mean, I mean like literally by ironically moving away from Beethoven, where if we do it, I think in this context, we're actually paying an odd sort of homage to him Joe: All right. What he believed Richard: Philosophically Joe: In. Richard: in terms of music. And it's just evolved from there. I would rather see a kid get up and play something that's theirs, that is imperfect. But that is them. Then have a kid get up there and feel like, well, it doesn't sound like it's supposed to because that's not what the recording sounded like. Who cares? That's not what it's for. I found over the course, you know, as it's as this is as grown. It was interesting over that, we're finished out. The school year ends next week. But I've been having weekly scheduled workshops that I have kids come into when they can. I should have probably and this is part of my C plus or C minus that I'd give myself. I made them essentially optional as long as they kept up with the asynchronous assignments and stuff. But what I found happened was, is a lot of kids are showing up to these things, just for the sense of showing up to something. You know, we're having conversations that are Joe: To Richard: Rooted Joe: See their Richard: In Joe: Friends Richard: Music. Joe: And. Richard: Yeah, but, but, but, but that's, that's OK. Like, like that's turning into good things. Or I'll go out and frequently what happens is we'll have our session, we'll be talking, we'll come to the end of it, I'll have to go on to something else with another group or whatever and they'll be saying, "Hey, can you hit me up real quick? You know, open up another Zoom?" Or they'll do it on Dischord or whatever and, you know, let's play around some ideas or stuff. So it's, they're still making connections and if they use the workshops for that, do I really have to care that they didn't present the project, you know, in the same circumstance? They submitted the project, will take a look at it or we'll do it in a different workshop. It's ok. I think things like that have to matter more. What I was gonna say and I know, oh, my gosh, I'm gonna hit your two and a half hour mark. I'm so sorry! Joe: So Richard: I mean, I'm, I'm embarrassed. Joe: It's okay...No not at all Richard: I do have to, but I do have to share one other part of the program that has evolved since just last year. And I'm glad you're sitting down for this, because when I describe it to you, it's almost comically funny, but I mean to preface it by telling you that I am now so committed to this because I see the open creative platform element, in such a different way now, that I am, I'm well into my career as an educator. I'm not that old, but I'm old enough. This has given me so much of an interest in what could the next phase of this CMAS program be that I can't even begin to tell you. I would love to bring back the more traditional ensembles. I know, I actually have derived a plan. I know it would work. Politics won't let me do that.  Someday I still have hope but this is different. Out of the blue last spring, I get asked and I still don't fully understand why I got asked. I got asked to, of all things, pilot, no, not pilot. I got us the first started with teach at Arcadia, an engineering design class. Why are you giving me an engineering design class? Well, because you're technically qualified because of the CTE, the way the rules are written for CTE. And you like having the extra contract and this way you can keep the extra contract, because every I look at everything through the lens of my two little boys. That I will literally do I will braid your hair, Joe, for a six fig, for an extra contract. Richard: That's literally where my, that's I mean, I will totally do it. So but so I'm like, ok, sure, why? why not. Right? And I'm, I don't want to throw anybody under the bus, but to put it nicely, I'm promised a whole lot of resources and none of them, none of them come through. On a whim, I threw a thing like, the one thing that they said they were setting up for me, the people organizing were like, "Yeah, you don't have the engineering background to come to this conference for us to work with you, really sorry." The woman who was basically organizing it for this conference, not in my district, not at my school, actually still have yet to meet her. I would like to meet her. Jill was really kind. She's like, but I know of this other thing going on. I'm going to call you back in half an hour. She calls me back with these phone numbers. I went up on the phone with these people that are going to pilot for this previous school year, for the first time, they have a multi-million dollar grant through the National Science Foundation to revamp the entire concept of engineering in schools. Richard: It's headed up by and now I am flexing on their behalf. ASU, which is one of the large...I think it's the largest engineering school in the world, believe it or not, Vanderbilt, University of Maryland, Virginia Tech and I forget the fifth major university that is supervising this. And they, because the woman, Jill, from this other thing, this small little training session that they won't let me go to because I don't have the degree in engineering. Got all this experience in audio engineering but none of that, and that's fine. They are all excited and I think they may all be drunk. I don't know what's going on. So literally, they're like, no, no, no, no, we, I'm like, I'm like, what are you talking about? They're like, okay, here's your, [Them]"Can you come to Maryland for a week over the summer?" [Richard] "I guess" [Then] "We'll pay for it, don't worry, we'll pay for everything. Just can you come to the University of Maryland, we're gonna do a training session." [Richard] "Yeah, OK." [Them] "It starts Sunday." This is like a Tuesday. They're like [Them] "If you can get on a plane, we want you here for a week to do this thing. We just got to make sure we, we just got dot some "i's" and cross some "t's" or whatever. Richard: So we get to Friday night and I get this call from, you know, one of their head lead, lead investigators on this whole thing and he goes, [Them]"Ok, yeah, yeah, we need you here!" I'm like, [Richard] "Are you sure? [Them] "No, no, no, we've been looking at your website and we've been looking at you, you're the perfect person for this!" And I'm like [Richard] "I'm a musician, maybe, I sure as hell I'm not an engineer, and they're like, [Them] "No, you don't understand." OK, they're like [Them] "Just come to Maryland." So I literally, I booked a flight on a Friday, I get on a plane Sunday morning and Sunday night I'm at a dinner where I am so not the smartest person in the room, it's not even funny, Joe. I mean, it's, and by the end of dinner, I realized what they're trying to do and what they've basically decide, what they've basically come up with and they've done all this research prior to it over the last several years, that the concept of what people think engineering is, is completely off. I say the word engineering not to be funny and flip the script here a little bit on you, what are the first three words when I say engineering that you think of? Joe: Well, I always think when you and I are talking and you say engineering, I'm thinking just sound engineering. That's like so when you keep, you keep talk, you keep talking about engineering, I'm like, what does he know about engineer, like Richard: Ok, Joe: Sound engineering? Richard: Ok, Joe: But Richard: So remove Joe: There's electrical Richard: The sound. Joe: Engineering, there's, I don't know, mechanical engineer, I don't know. There's whatever. Richard: Right. But are you going to minus the sound engineering part, you're not going to time much of any of that to music in any fashion right? And the thing of it is, where they did all this research is that apparently most people don't tie it to creativity either. And they don't tie it to solving problems for people. And they don't tie it to something that I've latched on to that, there's a story behind every single thing that has to get designed or built or created or engineered, because otherwise, how would you come up with the need? And some of these stories are incredibly impactful. So their whole premise is that they wanted to pilot this year, there were nine of us across the country, most of them on the East Coast and the Midwest. I was the only, one part of the reason they got excited, I think was also because I was from Arizona and Arizona didn't have anybody in it. And the University of Arizona was one of the biggest contributors to this whole thing excuse me, not University of Arizona, Arizona state. But in any case, but what started to happen, we start having these conversations. And by the end of dinner, we are talking about what they call the engineering design process and what I have for years been calling and have gotten, I guess you could say, known for of the creative process. And what we start to realize are, well, they're, they're kind of like halfway laughing at me, halfway laughing with me because they understood this already. This is why they got so excited for me, I know and they've told me this since. Because when you take the two processes, engineering, design and creative process and you put them next to each other when you keep the definitions the same, but change the jargon on a few terms, they're not just similar, they're actually identical in a really freaky way. So all of a sudden, last fall, I'm in the summer and fall, I'm like, oh my gosh! Well, now and you have to remember all these years of building this thing, then that whole epiphany about open creative platform and what that needs to mean. And now I just feel like I'm on a mission with this. So I go through this whole year and it's, it's very much kind of an engineering design process, although interestingly, I'm still getting and I still am every year getting the music education interns from ASU, nearly every music I get, I don't know I don't get every one of their music education majors, but I get almost all of them. At some point they spend a semester with me, for better or worse. They're coming in and they're watching this class, too and it's getting really interesting to see. And we're talking about parallels and process and parallels and possibilities everything else. And as we're going through this and I'm having meetings with these engineering folks from all over the country and we're talking about all the connections. And I'm like, I have an idea for year two. And I'm like, so I've built this industry based music program that has proven itself, I'm not saying we've got it perfected, but you know, I have a, I do at least have a reasonable track record for flying a plane while it's being built. Richard: And for upping the possibilities of where we can push things in terms of opportunities for kids. And I've been successful,I mean, it's not like, you know, I think that, you know, on balance, the risk of sounding a little egotistical, it's not unreasonable to say at least "Give me a shot to explore the idea." Right? So I started looking some like I'm looking at the standards for this new program I've been piloting for a year and looking at the state education standards. I'm looking at my music standards and my own program standards. And I'm going, oh, my gosh, we could take all of this stuff, you know, speaking of mixers, could have a kid build a mixer. Why not? They're going to have to, I mean, there's electrical engineering in that, we're getting into mechanical engineering because of what a mixture does in terms of its functions, in terms of controlling the sound of space in a room. There's all kinds of engineering already that and I was starring in little projects throughout the year. You know, had them designing windows. We'd need a window between our control room and our life studio space. These are the champagne first world problems that we have in CMAS. But I had the engineering students designing how that would look. We were talking, you know, the lighting on the soundstage and how can we build a different mechanism, door thresholds. I mean, we were already starting to do some of these stuff, at least as concepts and on all these different things. And I'm like, there's so many things. So I called the head of the State Joe: Wait, Richard: Department. Joe: Wait. Please Richard: I'm sorry. Joe: Tell me please tell me you're addressing the the buzz that can potentially come through the console from the lights Richard: Oh, absolutely. No, Joe: And Richard: We're talking about the electrical Joe: Please, Richard: Interference. Joe: Please tell me you're you're talking about the the awful sound of the air conditioner when it comes on while you're in the middle of Richard: Absolutely, Joe: All those all those Richard: All Joe: Things Richard: Those Joe: We Richard: Different Joe: Struggle. Richard: Things. Joe: That's right. Richard: You know, right now above my head, there's a fan because we live in Arizona and this is a house that I've been very lucky enough to be not to convert to a nice home studio, but it's still a house not built as a studio from scratch, you know. And we're talking about things of that nature, you know, how do you deal with isolation when you don't have isolation? I mean, you name it, we're, we're dealing with all this kinds and it's endless and this is my point. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I have this idea my, my district, God love them, doesn't quite see it. But the people who run the pilot with the National Science Foundation, they're looking at, they're going, "You're basically just talking about changing up the projects, not really changing up the standards of the curriculum goals." And I'm like, "Exactly!" Because it's the same thing, the prob...I mean, it's just the same thing. So I call the state, the head of the State Dept. of Ed, who I get along with to be fair. And I'm just like, "I just want to run this by you so that if anybody comes back and says you can't or shouldn't." And she hears that and she's like, "That's just I said, I already wanted to take your classes and now I now, I think I'm going to like, I'm going to come take your class!" Like she's all over it, but she's giving me ideas. So now, just to give you a sense of where this is headed, she goes, "OK, what about this?" I looked like she was even worse than I was. She's like, "What if you had the kids simulate like they're touring, like they're, they're a production company for a tour and they have to get the band from, let's say, LaGuardia Joe: That's awesome. Richard: Airport Joe: Yeah. Richard: Over to London and they got a design like, how are they going to put the gear on the plane? And they've got to calculate now, like, how much tonnage can they actually take and what are they gonna have to buy or rent over there versus what can they take it? How are they gonna get all these other things calculating like the air velocity and how long it will? Well, I'm like, we are so open like that, I mean, like the creative options are there, the industry options are there. And if you had told look, if you had told me years ago that, first of all, I'd be making, you know, my day job would be an education and I would enjoy that, I would think you were nuts! If you told me that I would be developing a pilot for an engineering program that somehow tied in the music industry legitimately and I'm not just like phoning it in and I'm like passionately committed to it. I would have had you locked up somewhere for being certifiable. But, but, you know, back to the original thing and I know that sounds funny, but this all still comes back to those key concepts to me, and that's why I'm excited about it. To me, what is the, what does the art need? Well, the art needs engineers. The art needs musicians. The art needs producers. The art needs...and I'm not just talking about sound engineers. They are important too. The art needs marketing. We've actually had and you've mentioned we've brought in a marketing track a little bit into, you know, what we do with the program. Anything that's industry based, the career part, you know, if it's career based, if it's creative, if it's collaborative. We should be able to do it, and if we can't, what I have learned is that's not because we can't do it, it's because we haven't figured out how to do it yet. And so I'm really big on any silos or any walls that block creative process. I'm knocking them down, you know, and I'm going to try piss off some people doing it. This engineering thing, there are some people that aren't thrilled about it and I'm gonna have to work through that at some point with them, just like there are people who aren't happy that the program exists. You know, on the music education side of it. Joe: That, to me, is just, blows my mind because and Richard: Because Joe: I Richard: Your career, Joe: Don't get it. Richard: But that's because you're career oriented. To you, you love the art but you also know what's necessary to pay the bills. Joe: Yeah, but it's just, it's a tool set that is invaluable because you're, you're going to run into situations where you're gonna be like, I'm so glad I was a part of that, because I can take even that one little piece of it and it's going to help me get through this moment. I mean, to be able to be a musician but at the same time, understand the process of recording, of acoustics, of, you know, so many other things. It's, I don't know. I'm blown away to even hear that. But that's. Richard: I, I, I hate to say it, but it's true. I mean. But like I said, part of me now looks at that and thinks it's just kind of funny almost. And not to, I don't I'm not wish, I'd like, I don't want the confrontation. But I mean, like the people that are going to say no to this, are going to go on record and saying those five major engineering institutions. You know, the National Science Foundation is wrong, Joe: Yeah. Richard: That that's not a real engineer. The state, the Department of Ed for the state, which is funny enough, almost like the smallest bat to swing in all of this, and that's a huge bat to swing. So I'm just kind of like, I'm just going to keep moving forward. It's good for the kids, the good you know, my site administration think they've, they don't get it, but they like it and they're kind of like, we're just going to stay out of your way. I'm not really worried, you know. I mean, it'll be what it'll be. If I'm wrong, I'll go find some, I mean, I guess I'd go find somewhere else, but I just don't I know I'm not wrong, I hate to say it that way. That's such a horribly arrogant thing to say after I talk all of that about not being arrogant. But these people have convinced me people like you have convinced me, you know, like I said, the industry part of it. Why? You know, of course, we all want to be A Listers with valets and somebody plugs in all our gear for us and everything else. But at the same time, the best musicians know how their gear works. Joe: Yeah. Richard: They just do. And to some extent, want to go and make sure it's, like even if they have somebody who plugs it in for them, can you honestly tell me? Look, I know you've had gigs where some but, you know, you've got a drum tech or whatever. You don't go and check that kit before before you perform on it? Just Joe: Yeah, it just Richard: I mean, it's Joe: It's part of your being. Yeah. Richard: Exactly Joe: Yes. Yeah. Richard: It's absurd not to. So I think all of that put together. This is fascinating to me. Joe: And you've already proven the concept. So you would think that, I guess that would be the most frustrating part for me is that you've already proof of concept been done. It's how many years is the program now been in running. Richard: It's officially 12, I guess. Joe: Because of the CMAS program is 12 years, is it, is it, you're in the program from what? What year of high school. To. Richard: So well, and this is becoming an issue, too, it's always been open from freshmen through senior. Joe: Ok. And is it you're either in it or you're not? Or is there tracks that you can say, I'm interested in the sound recording track. But I'm not Richard: Ok, Joe: Interested Richard: So, Joe: In the songwriting Richard: Yeah. Joe: Tracks. Richard: As he was saying, so I'm going to take the this new engineering, in the traditional word of the word engineering, I'm going to set that aside, because that's where that's going to take some years to develop. Richard: So I'm going Joe: Right. Richard: To set that aside. But as far as the rest goes. Basically, it's what's your interest? I want to be in it, I want to I want to do sound engineering. I want to be a producer. I want to be on the stage as the performer. I want to be a beat maker. You name it and again, I, I, I want to promote the shows. I want to make the music videos, whatever. OK. Everybody's gonna go, there's like some core things, I need everybody to understand the basics of how this microphone works that I'm talking. I need the basics of why your headphones need to go into an interface and what that interface does. I need you to understand the stuff on the walls here, why it does what it does and why it's actually not gonna soundproof the roomm, it's only treating the roo

Summary: Family offices are firms that serve the ultra-high net worth investors such as centimillionaires and billionaires. While many people would be over the moon after receiving a 1 million dollar check after hours of negotiations and meetings, those same individuals from family offices wouldn't even show up for such a low amount. In fact, a similar meeting for a family office would leave them in control of an additional 500 million in equity or more.Richard Wilson gives his insight on how he assists these individuals manage their wealth.https://simplepassivecashflow.com/hui3/https://simplepassivecashflow.com/coaching/https://simplepassivecashflow.com/ohana/ Youtube link: https://youtu.be/Pf1gwL4fqJ0?sub_confirmation=1Website link: SimplePassiveCashflow.com/familyofficeStart learning about real estate investing - SimplePassiveCashflow.com/startSubscribe to the Top-50 Investing Free Podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/simple-passive-cashflow/id1118795347_________________________Top SimplePassiveCashflow Posts:This website has been going through daily improvements everyday since 2016. I admit things are a bit all over the place as I learn about these investments and wealth tactics.Events – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/eventsPast Projects - crowdfundaloha.com/past-projects/Simple Passive Cashflow’s Investor Friend Finder!!! –SimplePassiveCashflow.com/friendsMenu of Investing Options – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/menuLaneHack – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/lanehackPassive Investor Accelerator eCourse - SimplePassiveCashflow.com/ecoursePassive Investor Accelerator eCourse & Mastermind - SimplePassiveCashflow.com/journeyCoaching – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/coachingJoin our Private Investor Club – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/clubJoin our Team – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/jointeamOur Mission – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/missionPartner Opportunity – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/partnerProducts I support – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/productsAbout Lane Kawaoka – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/about-meQuarterly Investor Updates – http://simplepassivecashflow.com/investorletterSPC YouTube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3cIIsGKx3osVU5rt2P0HfQReal Estate Book Recommendations – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/booksBackwards Engineering Happiness – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/happyRental Property Analyser – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/analyserVisit Lane in Hawaii – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/retreatStart Here – http://simplepassivecashflow.com/startUltimate Simple Passive Cashflow Guide to…1031 Exchanges – Simplepassivecashflow.com/1031guideNewbies – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/noobInfinite Banking – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/bankingYour Opportunity fund – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/ofundTaxes – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/taxTradelines – Simplepassivecashflow.com/tradelinesTurnkey Rental Guide: simplepassivecashflow.com/turnkeySyndication Guide – simplepassivecashflow.com/syndicationCrowdfunding – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/crowdfundingNetworking – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/peoplePrivate Money Lending – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/lendInvesting in Coffee/Cocoa – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/coffeeInvesting in Non-Preforming Notes – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/ahpRent don’t buy – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/homeInvestor Fallacy: Return of Equity – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/roeHow to Calculate Investment Returns – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/returnsWhy you should break up with your Financial Planner – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/fpQuitting your job – SimplePassiveCashflow.com/quitTranscription:0:00Richard Wilson is a guy who works with deca millionaires and you guys haven't heard of the term family office is the term for families that have gotten well beyond that four and a half million dollar mark. They're more in the 5100 $200 million range. So think of it like Bruce Wayne in the Batman he had Alfred Alfred did a little bit more than your average family office in terms of keeping them out of trouble when they came up and all these gadgets but essentially, you get what a family office does. They're a consultant that is brought on board basically the kids don't mess it up and the family wealth keeps moving on. I'm trying to sort of do the same thing here in Hawaii and across my simple passive cash flow nation you guys want to check out my family office offering go to simple passive cash flow calm slash coaching, or go to Rei aloha comm slash ohana to read about my services where I can help out your higher net worth family definitely probably on applies to accredited investors there but accredited investors and above do things very different than your average half a million dollar net worth below you know the infinite banking is just a start but you know now you're starting to talk about oversee trusts and tricky things like that that are I'd probably say unfair. So if you want to learn more about that you can email Lane at simple passive cash flow and here's the show.1:22What's up simple passive cash flow listeners once1:24in nounce, the first multi day we mastermind in Hawaii will be holding it on1:31my island of Oahu,1:33Honolulu is on President's Day 2020 and that's February 14 and 17. And a reminder, Valentine's Day is the 14th. But we'll keep that evening for you. families and couples want to come on down for that we're actually encouraging spouses and families that come down because that's part of the whole experience, getting to know other families and getting to know other committee members. gonna be a big part of this. So what to expect structured networking and masterminding with existing CWI investors and other affluent investors, we're going to create the time and the environment to build real relationships that you can take forward forever. And for you, a students out there will do even be doing a full day of networking and mastermind and education. So once again, bring your families we're going to have optional excursions such as a luau, happy hours, dinners and some other activities to be able to have fun in the sun. And, you know, space is extremely limited because my vision is to kind of create this as a more intimate environment where we're all one big little ohana here. So come in and combined business and pleasure in a little tax write off hopefully you can get that right off in before the 2019 ends. Those signing up now we'll be able to get your free one on one strategy session that if you want to stick around till Tuesday, we can knock that out or if you're leaving early we can try and get that done throughout the weekend but hope to see you out in Hawaii go to simple passive cash3:15flow calm slash week three and we'll see you guys here how's it3:22going Richard? Thanks for coming on. Good Yeah, thanks for having me here lane.3:25Yeah, so give us a little background you know how you got started and advising these sensimilla in their family Sure,3:31Dad no at the start it was educated myself. I started writing online when I was learning while meeting with them realize many of them are not meeting with each other too often. That got me on the front page of the Boston Globe many different media mentions which got me speaking invites so I ended up speaking a couple hundred times in 14 countries got a book deal with Wiley bought family offices calm to start sharing that leadership and then the additional books written and all the hundred and 14 conferences with hosted now just kind of built on top of that progress. I mean, less The industry has expanded greatly since I got started 12 years ago. So I got a little fortunate being in the right spot at the right time, you know, thought leadership and just providing value as I'm learning has been the main way that things have grown. Yes, it's just so people4:12kind of left at the bus stop there. What is a family office? What are we talking about? Sure,4:17yeah, it's basically a solution for those who have a lot more money than the average person who are much more wealthy. And the way I like to explain is that if you're only worth $100,000, and you make a mistake, that's equal to 5% of your net worth, that's just $5,000 mistake, maybe you could have hired a consultant to help you avoid that and spend, they could spend a couple hours helping you prevent making that mistake again. But if you're worth 100 million dollars, or even just $10 million, and you make a 5% mistake, it's much more painful. And you could have a part time person, a secretary, an investment analyst, an attorney or project manager that would just help you avoid making those mistakes. And so as families become more wealthy, they're gonna be more likely to make mistakes because they're very busy. everybody's asking for their checkbook, their time, to get On their calendar, etc, they've got many different business entities, different investments going on deals going down all the time, they might be overseeing a 400, person, team, etc. So they're more likely to make mistakes and every mistake could cost them $500,000 here, 200,000 there, etc. So a family office solution gets you family office quality solution providers, it gives you less chaos, less stress, better deal flow, and it allows you to really be more effective at what probably created your wealth in the first place, which is typically not coordinating with your CPA or insurance advisor and filling out paperwork for 50 different LLCs and overseeing all that.5:35So it's a lot more than your basic financial planner gets Commission's off something. It's more of a holistic advisor right away.5:43Yeah, for sure. In fact, many times like one client where onboarding now is worth around 300 million, and we'll probably be doing six to eight months of heavy estate planning, organizational accounting, legal structure work before we even focus on the investments very much will try to slow him down on Making allocations until we develop a direct investment program with him. And I think it's not all about the investing. In fact, the best investment many of the ultra wealthy can make is in getting great tax and estate planning in place, because almost nothing else is going to provide a multiplied return in the same year where you're really just saving so much more than you're spending on that advice being employed. That's usually one of the first items to look at.6:22So based on clients coming to you guys, are you seeing that they are continually growing wealth? Or is their wealth accelerating in that respect? Or is it sort of decaying? And you definitely see it sputtering out with the next generation with where kind of the spreads that you see.6:38Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of statistics about families losing their wealth over two or three generations. But you know, it just depends on what the family's goals are. Some families have goals of giving away a lot of their wealth during their life. other families have a real goal of passing along entrepreneurial traits to the next generation. Others say Well, next generation decides what they want to do with their life. We're going to have enough so they have education and they can buy their first home. Maybe for a medical emergency, there's some access to capital, but they don't want the generation to have control the capital. So it really depends on the family. But if you're an entrepreneur listening to this, and you want to, you know, make sure you're passing on those traits of hard work ethic and being resourceful, etc, then having something like a family bank that has it's an informal bank, but with formal rules about how maybe the next generation only gets money for school, first house medical emergency, or a business idea that gets approved by the older generation and the family and then that way, they could buy the chain of three jompa juices or they could buy the chain of 10 carwashes or start that business. They want to start on Amazon etc. But it has to be approved by the family and then you get the money for the business and profits off the business you're able to keep but you're not just given a check to go buy Ferrari isn't a condo in Monaco or Hawaii.7:49Right. I think it's something that as I build my podcasts over the last few years, I'm kind of more getting into the more the advising side and definitely helping people get from zero To a million dollars network that seems to be my sort of claim to fame and that individual, they start working through their 20s and 30s. They're hustling and they have some kids and they get to about the 50s and 60s, what are some of the planning essentials for someone that have hit that pedestal? $3.5 million shelf as total network? Is it enough to start to bring in a family office? Or what are the best options for that? Somebody?8:22Yeah, it's interesting. It's good question. I mean, you can definitely take some lessons from the family office world, most multi family offices, the ones who take on 1020 or 50, clients, etc, will want you to have at least seven to 8 million net worth before they're going to take you on as a client. But if your net worth is growing by a million dollars a year you can probably convince them to take you on because I know that you're going to be a long term valuable client the serve but some lessons you could take. I think the most important one is to separate your thinking in your wealth management and you're investing into three compartments and it helps you focus your energy where you can maximize your return. So traditional wealth management is all about defense that stocks and bonds and commodities and fund managers and every is to find things that are uncorrelated. And that's what the whole wealth management industry talks about. But that's just one of the three compartments. And so typically, unless you created your wealth and and space, you shouldn't be managing that yourself doing a whole bunch of research and thinking you're going to buy Amazon at the perfect time or buy Tesla the best time or short this or that unless that's your background, you just love that stuff. And that's your whole life, I would just find the best in class provider and a wealth advisor. they'll manage that first compartment, which is your defensive compartment of your wealth. And the goal there is not to grow your wealth is to make it so that it doesn't get lost in great amounts and economy goes down and then it slowly kind of just tracks the market on the way up, hopefully, but no one gives money to a wealth advisor, typically nobody and they're worth 2 million and now because of that Wealth Advisors, great work on diversification. Now they're worth 20 million and none of my clients got wealthy because they had a good wealth advisor. So I think that's important to keep in mind. That's the first compartment is a defensive wealth management and that should be a certain percentage of your portfolio depending on who you are. The second compartment is cash flowing commercial real estate. Which is area you know very well and I always encourage clients to look at things are already cash flowing that are not too much developments unless for some reason they really like that slant or have an angle on that and is in an area they understand. And usually in this area, they're finding an independent sponsor or a fund manager, or they're using a property manager for property they buy directly. So they're kind of at arm's length. And most of them don't like to go into the funds. They don't know what property they're getting like to choose the properties one off and work with independent sponsors and that way, but it's a good medium because they're not saying Okay, Mr. banker manage my defensive portfolio, they're saying, okay, sponsor show me four deals a year and I'm going to say yes to one or two of them, and they're keeping some control of where an investment goes, it could be in one suburb of Indianapolis versus another one or one part of Honolulu versus another part of their more high conviction on that's not overheated or it's going to grow more. So that's the second compartment and usually focusing on two to three types of commercial real estate for it most is a good idea and not going too broad. And then the third compartment is direct investments in Operating businesses, which should probably be in the area where you created your wealth, if it's manufacturing autoparts should probably narrow your focus just investing in that area or in some area that you really for the next 1025 years you want to be investing in to be an expert in like stem cells or cannabis or something where you're just going to go all in on that read everything about it only look at deals there and be a real master of investing in that niche. And those are the three compartments that if you break down your decision making then you can see whereas it makes sense for me to have complete control, partial control and who can I trust to help guide me on each of those three areas?11:33And you know, kind of piggybacking on that last category there something I'm kind of learning after making this whole podcast simple, passive cash flow, I thought the secret to life is just passive cash flow me You can passive cash flow your way from zero to a million, but you're not going to passive cash flow your way from a million to 4 million, there's going to be up to some kind of thing that you enjoy or some special skill that you're gonna have to create a business in some industry that Richards kind of talking about in that third category,11:59right? Yeah, I think it I think otherwise could take a long time. I think that the trick is that all the ultra wealthy clients ICER to get up to really the 30 $50 million level if someone has an ambition to really jump there Well the truth is that I don't know anyone who's done that by placing a lot of passive bets you can get sometimes better returns with hard assets behind it by going into commercial real estate sometimes that is possible for sure. But if you are not focusing your creation of value into the world into something very specific, they can really magnify your returns your equity stake in it, then it can be hard to get to that ultra wealthy level. But you know, some people are very risk adverse some people have needs for high incomes. Obviously, there is no recommendation for all investors out there should take a lot of risk in a very specific area for sure that's not good advice. But if if someone is coming to you lane and saying like how do I grow my wealth more rapidly, I would say to think in those three compartments and think where it makes sense to apply the most of their control and then find the best in class for the other areas. So every hour you're spending on a project, it's an area where you have an advantage over everybody else in the marketplace or you have a unique focus. So you're making progress over competitors or over the market with every day of energy you invest. I think13:11people generally intuitively understand that. But now they're like, well, I gotta get in general partnership. And so these deals, how do I do that? I'm like, dude, you gotta find the deal. You gotta run it, or she could have you had to add some value, right? People just don't get that. I think some of these, right?13:26Yeah, yeah. Now that's true. I've heard that similar conversation. I mean, I think otherwise, you have to be putting up 50% of the deal or you know, some big amount of the LP base, yeah, systematically or something. Just click and delete the contact.13:42Other than the 27 weeks of curated content for the passive investor, the new mastermind will offer bi weekly power calls with the following format. first week of every month, we will dial in on being a direct investor for simple passive cash flow 1.0 I call it which is getting your first rental Nicole shading sourcing operation etc. second week of every month, we will discuss holistic wealth building topics or what I call simple passive cash flow two point O plus, which is holistic Wealth Management syndications private placements, tax legal lifestyle design, etc.14:19Get a sense of this forum by14:20checking out the guide the taxes video at simple passive cash flow calm backslash tax, I'll be honest, some things I can't see the general public because it's too personal. And it's not to say bad things about others. Unless you're in the mastermind. One rule we have is what happens in the mastermind stays in the mastermind. To get in go to simple passive cash flow calm, backslash journey. Don't be left out and join the day. If you've been waiting on the sidelines. This is your moment and not to be taken by an institutionalized education program. about this idea of like integration, right synergies, profession and interest. What are some things that you've kind of tied people together? Like, Hey, have you tried this idea of this type of business?15:03Yeah, yeah, I'm glad you brought that up usually in the podcast with that, because nobody ever asked me about it. And they asked me if I have any last things I want to add. And it's that idea of integrity or integration. And I think it's very important for someone who is investing because if your background is a computer programmer or an engineer, then you could add value potentially in that area and look for companies in that space. So a good example is an investor friend that lives here. I live on the island of Key Biscayne, one of my neighbors made his money in debt investing or reading a debt platform for consumers. And he wanted to start investing in multifamily properties. And I said, Well, one way to look at it is how can you invest in the debt side of the multifamily space, that's where your expertise is, you might come in as a normal LP investor on some deals, but if a sponsor ever wants to structure it as a debt note, or if you can find real estate investment structured as debt notes or come up with a creative structure, it might be a way for you to help people get deals closed and you get an X percent return with the collateral of an apartment building. behind that, that's an example of playing a unique game in the marketplace. I've got another friend who helps sponsors by waiting until they close the deal. Maybe the sponsor put up 10%. And then three to six months after closing, they will go to the sponsor and say, Hey, I know you're looking to do your next deal, I'll buy out 8% of the 10% that you just put down on your last deal. Now you've got eight out of the 10% that you need on your next one, but they get to then see three to six months of operating history, are the rents coming in as planned, the person that sell you the property lie about the condition of the units, you know, did everything settle fine at closing and etc? Or are there problems that are coming up, etc, and allows them to get superior due diligence done because of that unique model they have? And I think it's just important to look at yourself what others are doing and try to create a unique game for yourself as an investor. You know, if you're just using someone else's template that's not unique to your DNA and your background, then I think that you're not going to excel like your background, for example is in engineering, right, link. That's right,16:57but I don't like to do with operations and stuff like that. Right, right17:01but have you might have a unique attention to detail on the due diligence approach and setting up this podcast. I've never seen someone more organized and doing so it's like the links and stuff you had in there and made it very easy to work together on getting this podcast done. And so those unique aspects of who you are could allow you to find the things and due diligence that others Miss might allow you to walk through a property or look at construction or cost of things have a much better estimate and intelligent assessment and the average real estate investor or because of your unique background, maybe you're able to identify a group of engineering company owners or an insider industry group where the cost of join is very high. So the only people who are joining are very successful making 300 500,000 a year or they run a big team of engineering services or an engineering company and because of that, you're just naturally meeting investors left and right who appreciate that special skill set that you bring to your deals.17:55I think I'll add that you're not going to find this at the W two day job. You've got to kind of take that leap of faith, kind of like how I did. And I haven't really found that what I'm personally want to do with my time. But the same here it is a passive cash flow simple part, what you do after is it's really the hard thing.18:10Right? Right. Well, hopefully it's combination of something that uses your DNA background where you can make a lot of money and what you're really passionate about. And hopefully those combinations can be something very unique in the marketplace. So with your geographical focus, you only have one or two competitors, or no competitors. And I think that you can use those screens to narrow it down. I found that you know, you did, a lot of energy goes into creating a podcast like this, but I found that most people won't ever start a podcast, I won't ever write a book, it will never go to public talks. And much of the time is because they're not sure on what they want to stand for what they want to get done. And if you're unsure about something, then it feels risky to invest your energy into it. But if you can make a decision based on those three areas, and you know, it's a unique game that you're playing, then you can invest far more energy into it than others are investing in their projects. And then the marketplace will recognize you because of your certainty. You're able to I run circles around a competition with what you're putting out what you're getting done and just the amount of energy that you're infusing into your projects19:06right so they will switch gears a little bit the person listen to the podcast, they get it, they're they're kind of actively building portfolio that may or may not be taking that next step to building their business but at some point, the guys are listening to this podcast get it and they're going to be a net worth of a million to $5 million in the next decade or two. You know it's scary right? Because you've created all this wealth you can give it to your kid he's just gonna may likely be a trust fund kid you know, I went to private school so I know how it works right? I see all these right the girl up and how kind of new components they become prices. How do you what is the best mindset for that kind of parent who means well and wants to pass off? Well, the right way has some skills and traits.19:48Sure, I mean, as much as you can, I think encouraging them starting their own business when they're in grade school or high school like I had started five businesses before I got out of high school and I had a business in college. I got out of college started in Another business. So I think encouraging that, you know, we have our daughters to lemonade stands, and they're only two, four and six years old, but they do lemonade stands maybe twice a month and they'll think they made $56 last time and our goal this time is to make $100. And you know, that is their allowance and they make them count the money they will cash register. One of them is the salesperson one of them's the money handler one of them's pouring a lemonade and you know, just infusing that into the family DNA. So they're excited about it. And they they get that like, we bought the lemonade for $10. That's how much the supplies cost. And then we brought in $56. So we made $46. So that's the profits from doing that. It's something as simple as that. And my father took me to business meetings growing up when he was running his business. And I think that helped me He also read ink magazine a lot growing up. So I always reading about these great stories of people's high growth companies. And that got my brain early on. And I talked to my girls a lot about what I'm doing in the business and what's going on, even if they don't seem to be listening sometimes. And I think that kind of rubs off on the kids. getting them involved early, putting them in charge of something, maybe buying them a small business or getting them to run something and letting them fail if they need to fail to learn. So do you think that not all kids have that entrepreneurial bug? Or are all people in general, do high net worth families? They sort of trying to infuse that small business mindset. But are they okay with them becoming a dentist or doctor or some more traditional academic, I mean, only a percentage even want their kids to be entrepreneurial? For sure. I found that a percentage are okay with whatever path they want to take. And it don't even have a preference for them to be an entrepreneur, even though they were21:36entrepreneurs themselves.21:38Yeah, many of them are open to them doing whatever path makes them happy. And then no matter what their intention, many of them fail to direct the kids where they want them to. Just like with my girls, I have no idea. God forbid something. They make horrible decisions. I hope not but they could be anything when they grow up. I'm not sure obviously, they're so young, but it's a big challenge for many families just because they have a lot of money and even if they have been highly intentional about where they want to Right there kids, you can't control all the different variables and they've got a mind of their own. So I think that is a big challenge for many families and communicating with the monies for and expectations around who's going to get what money and why very difficult and the tears a lot of families apart. So I think it's something that's good to be talking about as kids grow up and manage those expectations and manage what are the family values? What are the goals, you know, what are the expectations that people don't think they're going to be inheriting $10 million, so they just drink at their frat for seven years at college and don't worry about their own career versus really encouraging them to go out and get their own career I think also as possible having it be so that the kid has money for school food, etc, but not a lot of money to go on crazy trips and have a Mercedes on their 16th birthday and etc. You know, and may if they want money, then they need to go earn the money. It's not free. You have to go create value in the world.22:54I mean, you guys help the family on the money side but raising productive adults that's up to them then yeah, we22:59know couples, therapist types that can work through family issues if there's a big problem going on within the family. And we can help put in into place governance policies and rules and ethical policy for the family office and help them avoid some major pitfalls. But some families don't have it as a high priority, or it's so messed up already, when they come to us that they really need the help of a therapist to address the one son who's a drug addict or something of that nature.23:26All right, so what would you suggest for somebody who has aging parents that has a pretty decent sized estate yet? They just saved their way to getting that? What would be the suggestion there to take over that estate? Right?23:39Well, I think as early as possible, it's good to meet with an estate attorney, a tax attorney and start structuring things. There are things you can do annually that if you just wait until they're on their deathbed, you'll have missed out on a lot of opportunities to structure things right and you will end up giving up more to the IRS and you'll pay more taxes than you needed to if you wait Tell somebody who's terminally ill I mean, if somebody is 60 already or 6570 any wait too long, then by the time decisions start to be made, there can be questions within the family if the person was mentally coherent enough, or whether there should have been a power of attorney enacting chaos, fighting within the family, maybe the uncle or the cousin or another sibling thinks that because maybe you're local, and like, I don't know you well enough later to know if you have a sister or brother or 10 of them. But let's just give an example of if it was your parents, and let's say you had a sibling in San Diego, but your parents were local to you there in Hawaii. And let's say you are local, and then you help your parents work through these decisions. And somehow, even though you think it's totally fair and equal, and that was the whole intent, you think that was the whole settling of the issue. If the sister thinks because you're local, you got a better shake out of it because you got to keep the house or you got to do something extra with the assets and you benefit more than she does. She might be very upset about such a thing. I've seen it happen many times with families At the same time, the brother can feel like hey, I help the parents, instead of going into the senior living. I helped them manage their care for seven years because they didn't want to go into senior living. I helped meet with the attorneys 22 times. I didn't take compensation for any of that. So yeah, I'm living in the house because I was taking care of them in the house, you know, so you can see how easily this stuff can turn into like nobody talking to each other for 20 years. You know, so that's the sad part about it. Yeah, to be really careful about it and kind of predict and just like over communicate when these types of things are going to be inevitably happening. Right. The one of the biggest things I see that screw people up the parents, they're very sentimental about this physical house. It's just always easier if you just would liquidate everything and just do a simple math exercise and divided by the amount of people and right or rent it out and then split it equally by the amount of people. Many times properties haven't been refinanced and ages could be refinanced, a little distribution and then a rental drip but it totally depends on the family obviously, and what their needs are and their ages, etc. Right. It's just the insight I think a lot of people just sort of blindly being blind is the tough part in between this one the 10 $5 million zone, it's not quite enough to get somebody on board and like a family office level. But yeah, it's true. I would, you know, that you bring up a really good point is that until you're at the eight or 10 million level, it's hard to get family office quality solution providers, but because I've seen so many families get such an ROI out of their estate planning tax advice area is one area where you shouldn't look at it as a cost. It really should be seen as an investment in interviewing the five to seven trust in the state planners, tax advisors, maybe someone who can do both things within one team and get to know them over one or two meetings or interviews and get the best one that you can get as the best one is used to dealing with deca millionaires, even if you are at 5 million is going to know the more advanced planning that could be an option where if you go to the guy who seems really nice and is really local to you, but his average client is one minute Net Worth and you're at five, he might miss some major things that could have saved save you a lot on taxes and would have paid the bill five times over. So it's not smart to choose an advisor in that area based on the cost. It's really an investment, right? You wouldn't buy an apartment building because it costs 1 million versus the other one costs 2 million like, oh, let's get the cheaper one. It's better to always go cheap. You know, it's about the ROI.27:23What What is the typical compensation structure for a $10 million family office or 100 million dollar family office?27:30Yeah, so usually, usually it's percentage and usually be anywhere from 30 to 50 basis points on the low end up to 1% of assets under management. But for estate planners are usually charging a hourly fee, but then they'll usually have sort of a base retainer and the hourly fees can be 300 $800 an hour and then associates on their team will be lower. That's definitely not inexpensive. But there's some wealth management firms out there that have performance fee based arrangements so they're not charging you Failure is charging a performance fee on how your portfolio does while working with them. And that's kind of a newer trend. And are these28:05guys do they also pick up some compensation via selling certain securities? Or is that no goal28:12it could be if it's disclosed, it's always about being transparent, disclosing everything disclosing conflicts of interest or even potential conflicts of interest and just kind of over communicating that with clients and but most Wealth Advisors just have their wealth advisory firm although probably about 10% of the marketplace. I have a real expertise in an area like stem cells or self storage or something and then that might be a reason why clients want to work with them. They were really strong on this everything else we do traditional wealth management, everything else we we find the best in class, but here's why we're best in class in self storage, etc.28:47So typical clients, they'll pay by the hour, let's just say then they'll come in how often for28:52tune ups and oil changes. I mean, estate planners in tax attorneys will typically charge by the hour but they might have a base rate teeners, they might charge you 1500 a month or 5000 a month, and then have a per hour charge as well. And that retainer gets you a certain number of hours. For the wealth management firm, or a multi family office type solution, it's going to be more about, hey, we're going to charge say, 70 basis points on your 7 million and assets that we're going to be managing. And then as that grows, you might get a break in fee once you hit 10 million and assets being managed, etc.29:26That's typically much call Richard whenever you want.29:30I mean, I'm glad you said that, because here's what happens a lot of the time is that the dynamic needs that you might have could be related to direct investments you want to do, right? So the calling for extra advice on investment decisions that usually occurs because somebody offered you an investment in a multifamily property or an operating business or some new investment opportunity came up and you brought up a sore point for the whole wealth management industry is they're pretty good at diversifying your assets, fund managers quality stuff. stocks bonds. And there's 40,000 people that can do that probably in Hawaii alone on some base level, but many multifamily offices and wealth management firms fail to advise that all on cash flow in commercial real estate, hard assets, direct investments and operating businesses is a huge blind spot for the industry. To the extent where with our advisory solution is simply the millionaire advisors, we are only helping with the direct investment portion, if somebody wants to full balance sheets solution and the defensive Wealth Management portion. We have a $6 billion family office partner and we can do that together in conjunction with them, but we're just providing the piece that we feel like everyone else is not providing to these families. And that's the type of stuff that requires more intra month of conversations back and forth. So it's not just plug and play like I'll take your 7 million will diversify it across, you know, one of our normal portfolio breakdowns based on your investment policy statement and you know, we're good and we'll adjust to each quarter and tell you how we're doing that's more of a efficient thing that you can scale that people like yourself, people that wants to get the Five 710 million they want to do direct investments I found very commonly, from based on what you see guy listen to the31:05podcasts, they're about $5 million net worth, they're getting up to retirement ages and you know, definitely a lot of this stuff passing down the baton, and then they just don't know where to start. I mean, how many hours do you think someone like an advisor would be able to get them up to speed and something that they would be looking for?31:23Right, right. I think that it can be pretty intensive work. depending on the complexity of the client, they might need to do four to five half day meetings to make sense and come up with a game plan of what needs to be done. And then based on the complexity of that game plan, you'll need to engage one or two other solution providers, you might need a higher quality CPA might need a great estate planner or a tax attorney. And then the carrying out of the actual investment management plan could take four to nine months or even a year to get things allocated in the right areas. When it comes to direct investments. It's not a good thing to get allocated all at once you know, some are it fluctuates, you want to be at different entry points, you want to make sure you're investing in the best deals possible, not just rushing in and allocating all $7 million to what's in front of you right now, you always want to have some liquid for a great opportunity. And the real estate markets been going up so long, a lot of families want to stay, you know, 1020 25%, fully liquid. So when the market goes down, they can be fully allocated and not before that point. Right. So the reason we brought Richard on32:26the podcast is just to tell you guys a little bit about the sort of industry as you're building your network, so you don't get stuck at the all these deals, but I don't know what to do with it after. So do you think we miss Richard though, kind of help the folks as a journey through the one and then the three and then the $5 million net worth levels?32:45Yeah, I think that just bringing it back to plan a unique game, making sure everything is integrated and aligned and what you're spending your time on, who you're working with, where you're based, where your investments are, what industry they're in, and then making sure you're playing the long term game over. lot of families position their portfolio. So inevitably, whether it's 1015 or 20 years, they have a great wealth accumulation. So just setting things up. So you're doing well long term because it's not like the stock market and what's happening with Tesla stock. It's not like you're managing Tesla. And after I do quarterly earnings reporting, most people listening to this have a 1020 year time horizon for retiring for, you know, building up to that $10 million goal, which I know a lot of people at one to five, eventually their goals be worth 10 million. So I think that making sure you're playing a game, that long term is very sound and your high conviction on will make you more energized to take action on it and and really put energy into making that game work.33:41All right. Well, thanks for coming on and talking to us poor people a little bit. We'll get there eventually. Yeah, Google, Richard Wilson found me offices. He's all over there. So that'd be the way to get ahold of him.33:53Great. Yeah, thanks for having hairlines appreciate it. All right. Thanks. Take care.34:01This website offers very general information concerning real estate for investment purposes every investor situation is unique. Always seek the services of licensed third party appraisers and inspectors to verify the valuing condition of any property you intend to purchase. Use the services of professional title and escrow companies and license tax investment and our legal advisor before relying on any information contained herein information is not guaranteed as an every investment there is risk. The content found here is just my opinion and things change and I reserve the right to change my mind. Above all else, do your own analysis and think for yourself because in the end, you're the only person who is going to look out for your best34:37interests. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Panelists Justin Dorfman | Pia Mancini | Richard Littauer | Eric Berry Guest Ewa Jodlowska Executive Director at Python Software Foundation Show Notes 01:20 (/18?t=80) How Ewa Got Started in Open Source 02:38 (/18?t=158) Keeping the Python Culture Going Concentrating on Diversity 03:32 (/18?t=212) Challenges the PSF is Dealing With 04:10 (/18?t=250) PyCon Revenue Location 07:58 (/18?t=478) PSF Sponsorship Program Impact Report PSF Grants Program 12:05 (/18?t=725) BDFL Steps Down Evolution of Python Since 15:25 (/18?t=935) Where Developers are Going with Python Web Development and the Scientific Community Workgroup Giving out Funding for Scientific Python Groups 21:38 (/18?t=1268) Starting Workgroups Funding Requests 24:10 (/18?t=1443) Challenges Python Developers Face 26:03 (/18?t=1569) Questions Other Languages Ask 28:25 (/18?t=1712) Addressing Diversity at PSF Code of Conduct 31:05 (/18?t=1872) PSF Membership Levels Psfmember.org 33:00 (/18?t=1980) Updates in the Python Governance from PyCon 2019 Spotlights Pia - npm Funding (https://blog.opencollective.com/beyond-post-install/) Justin - pythoncheatsheet.org (https://pythoncheatsheet.org) Richard - Thanks by Feross (https://github.com/feross/thanks) Eric - Back Your Stack (http://backyourstack.com/) Ewa - Thanks (https://pypi.org/project/thanks/) Special Guest: Ewa Jodlowska.

In this episode, Zach and Ade discuss the role of education and building wealth with Accenture senior strategy consultant, Richard Odior.Length: 00:33:33Hosts: Ade | ZachTRANSCRIPTAde: “Research and public policy have traditionally focused on education and income as drivers of upward mobility. There is compelling evidence, however, that education alone does little to explain the source of different levels of economic well-being, especially across race. Observing an association between higher levels of educational attainment and higher levels of net wealth and concluding that education produces wealth is tantamount to observing an association between the presence of umbrellas during rainfalls and concluding that umbrellas cause the rain. It's more likely that the relative wealth of different races explains the educational attainment differences across race groups.” This excerpt is from “Umbrellas Don’t Make it Rain: Why Studying and Working Hard Isn’t Enough for Black Americans” a joint report between The New School, Duke Center for Social Equality, and Insight, a non-profit research entity. What does this mean for people of color trying to secure the bag? What role, if any, does education play in affecting our income? And if education alone won’t secure the bag, what will? Hi, my name is Ade. And this is Living Corporate.Ade: So today, we’re talking about greenery. Cheese. To be more specific, we're talking about paper, stacks, racks, looseleaf, guap, benjamins, all that. Zach: So we're talking about money? Ade: Mhmm, getting to the bag. More specifically and more to the point of this show, what role, if any, does education plays a role in securing said bag. Zach: You know, this is a great topic, I'm really excited that we're talking about it. Because I know for me growing up, education was a big deal. It was a big deal for its own sake because my mom is a principal now and before that, she was an English teacher. Butt off top she told me, look, the expectation is for you to get a Masters. We didn’t even talk about me going to college because we knew that we were going to college, no joke. I didn’t even walk for my undergrad degree. Not because I don’t believe college matters, but because it was so much the expectation. Ade: Same here - it wasn’t even a spoken thing, my family just expected me to go to college. You need to go to college to get a job and you need a job to get money so it was an automatic thought process there. Zach: Right, and to be honest I just figured the more education you got, the more money you’d make. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized that isn’t always the case. Ade: Well, to keep it real for a second, how many people do we know who, at the barest minimum, have a bachelor's degree, but have not secured the bag?And before we go any further, this is certainly not to disparage anybody with a bachelor's degree under their belt, or who have terminal degrees. This is just a process of trying to understand what the secret sauce is. Listen, if there's a formula, somebody needs to put me on. I was on Fishbowl, which is, for those who don't know, it's an anonymous posting app for consultants and there were just so many different stories and conversations going on around compensation that I've never been exposed to before. And it’s even more unbelievable because that study I referenced at the top of the show, again it's called “Umbrellas Don’t Make it Rain: Why Studying and Working Hard Isn’t Enough for Black Americans”, it calls out median wealth by education level, and it shows a disparity between black and white families- where Black families with a post baccalaureate have a combined wealth of 84k white families at the same level have a combined wealth of almost 300k. The numbers get even more bleak with fewer years of education. Zach: Right, and I appreciate you sharing this data. It's a great report "Umbrellas don't make it rain", we'll make sure to have it in the actual show description but I look at those numbers myself like “HOW SWAY? HOW!!” How is that possible?! The thing about it is, though, neither one of us has finished grad school, so most of our talking points are gonna be second hand, right? It would be great if we could talk to a 1st generation Corporate professional who, maybe they graduated from a top 3 grad school in the nation. You know, someone who could share their story about their experiences Ade: Right, right Zach: What the job hunting was like and maybe how they used their degree to get to the next level, perhaps? Ade: Like our guest, Richard Odior? Ade + Zach : whaaaaaaa? Zach: Sound man - I need you to go ahead and drop them thangs in here for me! [air horns] Ade: [Laughs] alright, so next, we’re going to get into our interview with our guest Richard Odior. I hope you guys enjoy-------Zach: Hey y’all, we’re back! Annnnd as Ade said, we have Richard Odior on the show! Richard, welcome to Living Corporate man!Richard: Thanks for having me, guys, I'm glad to come to the show, I guess. This is exciting, man.Zach: So, for those of us who don’t know you, would you mind sharing your story a bit? Specifically of how you (1) got into Corp America and (2) what led you to pursue an MBA?Richard: Yeah, so I went to the University of Houston and majored in Finance, and like anybody else in Houston, there's one option - oil and gas. So I quickly hopped into a career in finance in oil and gas for a couple of years, worked in commodity trading, then like financial performance analysis, pretty much all the board for a while. And then luckily I was able to gather with a group of friends who were trying to do some entrepreneurial things, and we opened up a chain of gourmet donut cafes in Houston. Shout out to Glazed. And so one of the things that the experience let me know is that I loved building things. I love growing things. But it also let me know I liked growing things fast. And what I learned about through that experience is that brick and mortar is a bit slower and so I went back to school in a sense to move back to a faster paced growth, and so for me that was tech, right? Tech enabled businesses. So, I went back to business school with two things in mind- either going to Venture Capital, or going to Consulting. Because I wanted to see a faster paced growth, that's kind of how my mission to go back to school started.Zach: So talk to me a bit more about growing things and growing things fast. When did you realize that the pace that you worked at was perhaps a little bit faster than that of your surroundings?Richard: Oh man, it was as soon as week three of work. I think at the time, oil and gas was moving slow, companies were paying people crazy amounts of dollars to do little work, and so I joined my new group, and I was probably the only other person under 30 in my group of like thirty five people. And primarily because companies were paying people to do work that could have been automated and people were not motivated to move up because they were getting annual promotions, annual raises, and it was outlandish. And I just realized this was very slow. In the first 6 month of being there, I had already surpassed a lot of people of the floor because everybody was coasting, and it wasn’t because I was doing anything amazing, I was just putting in more effort than the average individual, right?Zach: Right, right.Richard: And for me, that just kinda wasn't what I wanted to do. I figured 'while you're young, do as much as you can as fast as you can, and learn as much as you can.' So I just kept on pushing and pushing and pushing, and through the experiences I was able, and great mentors at the company, I was able to build really fast, get into new roles, get new opportunities that a lot of people probably wouldn't get into until several years into their career. And so that was pretty amazing, but then I realized I didn’t have ownership of anything. I didn't have anything that I could call my staple item. When you're working in oil and gas, you don't own an oil rig, you don't build an oil rig, you don't make any of that, so I was like 'what is my impact?' and I didn't feel it. And I felt like there was a way to feel it, that I wanted to tangibly know that I had changed something. So, I looked at somewhere else. And luckily I had some friends who were into the same thing, into building, into cultivating, into doing some really cool things. And we just started chatting and we said 'hey, what can we do?'Zach: Were there any preconceived notions about grad school that were proven right when you got there? And were there any preconceived notions about grad school that were proven wrong?Richard: One preconceived notion, at least for business school, and I'll speak to business school, the hardest part was getting in. Once you're in, it's busy, it's difficult, it's kind of like a ride. You're growing yourself and learning and meeting new people all the time, and sometimes a lot of the work gets masked, if that makes sense. You don't realize how much work you're doing because it's masked in so many other experiences. The opportunities really feel global. Like, I traveled almost thirty countries in two years, it was ridiculous.Zach: thirty countries in two years?Richard: Yeah I think the final number was like twenty-eight. And I can speak for myself, I don't want to speak for all minorities, but it's just one of the things that a friend of mine told me - speak up, raise your hand, and don't be afraid. Minorities tend to feel like our voice is not going to be on par with the rest of everybody. We think about what we're going to say so carefully because we want to seem a certain way, and what I realized, and what my buddy told me, he was like 'you're here because you earned it. Don't ever feel like you didn't earn it, and don't ever feel like you can't compete.' Those were really really big words for me because I think often times I went to a public school, I went to the University of Houston, right? And a lot of b school classes have students coming out of Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and so sometimes you get this mindset like 'yoo what am I going to do, I'm not on the same level.' And then you get in there and you pull something out of yourself that you don't understand that you have. And you understand that you're here because you're valuable, you're here because you bring something to the table, and I think that was one of the things that I had to shake off when I first got there.Zach: It's funny that you bring that up, talking about 'you look around the room and you see all these people that got really big collegiate names next to them' and how you question yourself like 'do you really belong there.' it's funny because a couple shows ago we had- we were talking about imposter syndrome and how you battle that. And it's funny that you kind of bring that up when you say 'not feeling like you should have to prove your seat at the table.' But that if you're here, you earned it, and you're here for a reason.I hope that people take that away and that they're encouraged by it. That's a really good message. And I think it's actually applicable in and outside of Academia, right?Richard: I always tell people like 'Let someone else turn you away,' right?Zach: Straight up, yeahRichard: The amount of times we (and I talk about we as the minority population), We self-doubt ourselves, right? We say oh-- I remember in undergrad, there was a career fair and there were several companies recruiting. And my buddies, we walked in and they veered off left and I veered off to the right and I was like 'yo guys, why don't you come in here?' and they were like 'well my GPA's not this and my grades aren't that' and I said 'let them tell you no'. I'm not going to tell myself no, you know? Someone needs to pat me on the back and say 'Hey Richard, what you're doing is not good enough', 'Hey Richard, your product is not good enough', 'Hey Richard, your grades aren't good enough', because I'm not going to tell myself I'm not good enough.Zach: Man, amenRichard: I'm going to walk in there, I'm going to hand in my resume to whoever's there, and we're going to have this conversation, and then you're gonna tell me I'm not good enough.Zach: No, straight up, I'm cheering you on when you're talking because man, that's my philosophy. Like, look man, there's plenty of people out there who will tell me I'm not whatever. I'm either too academic or not academic enough, I'm either too strategic or too tactical, or I'm too this or not enough that. Listen, man. There's enough out there already of all of that. So I'm not gonna be an additional voice for that, I'm going to tell myself I am enoughRichard: You are enough, yeah!Zach: You know, like what's the point? So you gonna sit back and join every other voice that's out there? Not to be super pessimistic and say that the world's against you, that's not what I'm saying. But there's more than enough voices and perspectives and opinions, be that for whatever reason, that are gonna discount you, so don't discount yourself! Let them tell you, Let them push you out the room, let them tell you that you shouldn't sit at the table. Then you fight, but don't kick yourself before you even get started.Richard: 100% you gotta walk in like you already have a seat at the table every time you walk in the room.Zach: RightRichard: Every time. Every time you walk in the room. Now, I'm gonna let you pull my chair out, but I'm not pulling my own chair out of underneath myself.Zach: I'm saying! [Laughs]Richard: I have a seat!Zach: That's rightRichard: I don't care what room it is. I walk in, I have a seat. That's how you have to operate.Zach: No absolutely. Well look, man, today as you know, we're talking about getting to the bag, right? And so the context was all around, like, we looked at a study called Umbrellas Don't Make It Rain and it's essentially dispelling certain myths about wealth inequality and income inequality. And one of the things for me and Ade that we were talking about on the show, growing up, I just thought that if you got a grad degree, that they were just going to hand you money, right? That you're just gonna walk out of that thing with a thick six-figure salary, and so my question to you - what would you say to people who just make that assumption? Like look, I went to grad school, I got my MBA, and now it's time for me to get that 160,000, 180,000, 220,000 dollar bag. Like, what would you say to people who make that assumption?Richard: Whew, uh, I think a couple things to get the bag, you gotta be ready, first what are you bringing to the table? What industry are you looking to go into? What were you doing before? And how are you going to change the organization that you're going to now? So, for example, even me going to business school was interesting. I remember when I was making the decision, I was basically a finance guy, so I had to put it in a spreadsheet, right? And so, I had to say 'okay, if I go to business school and pay X and come out and get paid this, then it's valuable.' And I hate to sound like a snob, in a sense, but I think a lot of times people don't understand what they're investing in when they go to grad school. And I say this to say - not to knock any program - all programs are not created equal, all opportunities are not created equal, so going to any grad school is not the same as going to certain grad schools, if that makes senseZach: YeahRichard: And it all depends on where you are in life, right? At a certain point, I usually say it's a premium spot is maybe 4 to 6, anywhere from 4 to 6 years is a premium spot because you've probably made good enough money at the place you're in, but still have enough value from the MBA to get the post-MBA salary and still be worth it. Let me give an example - if you work 8 years and you've made your salary is now at X dollars, it's harder to leverage the MBA because the jump that you can make is smaller, right? But if you go at prime time, which is usually, for most people about 4-6 years, a jump is still very sizeable. So for example, I was blessed with a really good job before, like I said, it was great, I was making really good money. But post MBA, I was still able to increase my overall salary by more than 50%. At that point, the numbers still made sense. But if I had stayed in my current company for maybe another year or two, the jump would not have been as large.Zach: RightRichard: Also, I think some of the big things - it's not just about the bag now, it's about the bag later. And I say that in the sense that if you go to the right program with the right resources and the right network, the beauty of it is, it's not just about you getting the bag today, but your network will also be getting the bag. And so your network is your bag as well. Because whenever they're looking to hire a consultant down the line? It's you. Whenever they're looking to hire someone for an acquisition? It's you. They're gonna operate in the network of other people that they believe are competent. One of the things I noticed - I work in consulting- one of the things I noticed was some of the best managing directors, what they leverage is their MBA network. What they utilize is their other classmates working in industry, at whatever company it may be, and they reach out to them and they sell these huge million dollar projects back and forth. And because that bag is not just a today bag, it's a future bag, right? And so I won't say that knowledge isn't something that you can always google. There's a lot of aspects you can Google about the knowledge you can get, the documentation, but a large part of business school is the in-person interaction. I used to sit with my classmates from Colombia, India, Indonesia, all over the world, and we would talk about different concepts and I'd learn directly from them. And two things that I got - I got unique knowledge, but I also got to know them better. So, when I tell you I went to 28 countries, I was going with these people from those countries and I was learning business through them and with them and now in the future, they know that if an opportunity comes, I can knock on their door, they can knock on mine.Zach: When we talk about wealth or the bag, I know for me that my default is "how much money am I going to make off of this job?' Individually, me, right now. As opposed to, to your point, pulling from your network, right? And thinking about, you said, the bag in the future. I would say even if your bag is only, you know, in the context of a yearly salary, your bag isn't big enough, right? Like I would say you need to be thinking about really what encompasses the bag. And to your point, it's that network. When you think about MDs and Partners and Principals, especially cats who have been selling work for 5, 10, 15 years, they typically are selling work back and forth to like the same what like 7 or 8 people?Richard: 7 or 8 people!Zach: Like it's not like they're like 'oh I found this brand new guy that just popped out of nowhere' No, they have a network there.Richard: That's part of the bag. The relationships are part of the bag because ideally, one of the things I realized, and if you go to the right program, if you do it the right way, you don't have to get to the bag immediately. And I've seen it multiple times where someone went to grad school, they might have not gotten the exact job they wanted, but they take another job, they did well, they got promoted, then two jobs down the line, when a great opportunity comes with that company, well their friend works at that company and is high in that company, and they pull them over. You see a gravitation of 'oh that company's run by a bunch of X people that go to that school, that company is run by a lot of people that go to that program.' It's because there's a relationship that's being built, that's being carried over in so many ways. There's a reason why certain companies recruit at certain schools, because those relationships, someone high in that company is from that school and has that relationship, so there's definitely value. And if you're changing industries, there's definitely a value there. And that was one of the factors that if you're putting it into a spreadsheet, you won't be able to put that part in the spreadsheet. Your bag might not be actual cash, it might be your happiness and your enjoyment of getting into something you wanna do. I have a lot of friends from school who might have been doing things like banking, investment banking previously, making north of 200 [thousand] a year, and took jobs that make maybe half of that post because their ideal goal was to get to something that was different, and that was the bag for them. And so identifying what your bag is is a big thing. If you identify what your bag is, then you can identify how to get to the bagZach: That's a really good point, man. I like that a lot. So to your point, I think perspective matters. What you're thinking about what your goals are. Which actually is a good segue to my next question, so as a follow up to that, what was your strategy for you on leveraging an MBA for where you want to go? So when you think about - man did you even plug the school? Did you plug the school that you went to?Richard: Oh I gotta plug my school, I was waiting for the end, but I went to Kellogg, man. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, man. That's my home, man. They took care of me for a good two years, man.Zach: There we go. So my question is when you think about Kellogg and the degree that you earned, what was your strategy on leveraging your MBA for where you wanted to go? Like how did it fit into your master plan?Richard: I'm still leveraging it now. I mean, in multiple ways. I think for me, the school, ideally chose the school for one a few reasons, right? One was the programs that had the learning that I like to learn. It had a lot of hands-on learning, but mixed with class work. And they promised that you would work in over 400 groups before you left. And I was like wow, 400? I was like alright. And the importance of that was that I work best when I get to know people. Like I'm not the best, but I've always been good at managing relationships and I wanted to go to a school where I'd get to interact with people, manage and harvest relationships, and be able to develop with these people. So when I chose the school, that was definitely in mind, and then on top of that, since I've been in school, the network is amazing. I've been able to reach out to so many people and I've made mentors and connections through our network that have been beyond anything I could have dreamed about. And I'm still making networks and connections, I'm still making calls, and I'm still giving back in the same way. And so I'm always in this realm of gratefulness to the program, but it's leveraged me to be able to have conversations with individuals who probably would never, if I had just tried to make a certain transition, would answer my call. In my phone, to this day, I have the numbers saved of at least 5 millionaires. Easily. And that's a minimum. And those came through the experience of when I got to Kellogg, connecting with certain people, being continuously connected to my goals. For me, I had several short term and long term goals. I was able to utilize my network very early on. I remember the first week of school, we did an exercise, and it was in your sections, sections were usually around 60 people, and so our professor said I want you to tell me something that is one of your largest goals and I want you to put it on the board. And we're one by one putting it on the board. And anybody who could help you get to your goal would come write their name on your sheet.Zach: oh wow, that's powerful.Richard: and it was interesting because he said 'you don't realize what you have alone in this room. Not even the whole school, but what you have alone in this room.' And from that first week of school alone, from the people who wrote their name on my list, I've been able to go so far. It's been crazy, I've met some of the millionaires I was said I connected to was through one exercise. And they leveraged me to introduce me to other people and it's been amazing and so, because of that, I naturally have been given experiences where I don't even have to leverage the MBA, the MBA gave to me directly, if that makes sense.Zach: No it does, that makes a lot of sense, man. So look, I have a last question for you - do you have any other plugs, other shoutouts?Richard: Whew, um, I got a lot of shout outs, a lot og plugsZach: Do your thing man, do your thingRichard: I gotta do a Glazed Donut Café - if you’re in Houston, for sure, check this out. They're my family. Love you. Kellogg's School of Management, Bauer was my undergrad, go Coug's, I learned everything I know from them. I also wanna plug Impact America Fund. One of the firms I used to work at, and I got connected to them during business school. It's a double bottom line venture capital fund which focuses on investing in minority entrepreneurs and underrepresented minorities. I learned a lot from the people at that firm and I've grown a lot through them. I want to shout out to Living Corporate for doing what they're doing. You guys don't know how major this is right here. Honestly, as someone who has constantly worked in corporate america, this is something we used to talk about in business school is - we often have to cover and hover and hide who we are constantly, and what you guys are giving people is the opportunity to really be open, and also an opportunity to see that you're not alone in the workplace. Which is often times when you're the 'other,' you always feel alone. This podcast alone has excited me so much because it lets me know I'm not alone, and lets me hear the stories of people who are doing great things that are also considered an 'other' at work.Zach: Aw man, that's amazing, well first of all Richard, bro thank you for the kind words. The thing about it is, what excites me is your energy is - and spoiler alert for those who don't know, Richard and I are friendly, and we've known each other for about a decade now-Richard: yeah man, a decade!Zach: But what's crazy, and what excites me is the fact that when you say something, especially when you give praise, and also when you constructive criticism, but when you speak all that energy, it comes from a really authentic place. And so, we wanna thank you for joining us today, and definitely all the shout outs- I want to endorse. Eat Glazed. Glazed is a great donut spot, good donuts, great flavors, if you're in Houston, check it out. You'll probably see us shout them out on our IG stories, so stay tuned for that, but anyway, Richard man, thank you for joining us todayRichard: Yeah, and any minorities who are listening and you're thinking about grad school or business school, I can speak specifically to business school, if you're thinking about business school, feel free to hit me up. Honestly, I'm an open book, I like talking, I'll have a conversation with you, anyone who needs anything honestly. My goal is to see more of us in those spaces, because honestly something I will say is it's a leveling ground. It evens out the field and I've seen it multiple times, for people who were not given a silver spoon to start off with. So if you want to have a conversation, if you just have questions in general, these guys have my contact info, feel free to reach out and we can chop it upZach: We'll definitely put the contact info in the podcast description. Drop your stuff, man, what's your twitter, your IG-Richard: yeah so my email is richard.odior@gmail.com, my IG is r.odior. That's it, you can find me on facebook, find me on LinkedIn, feel free to touch base any time. Let me know that you came from Living Corporate first so I can show these guys some love.Zach: [laughs] yeah man, that's what's up. Richard, again brother, thank you. We look forward to talking to you again soon, brother. Alright, Peace.--Ade: And we’re back. Yo, that was a great interview and Richard was a fun guest. He had some great insights on how you can leverage a degree for your goals, but I think I’m more certain now than I was before that that degree isn’t a cheat code. Zach: Yeah, like I said from the beginning, I was raised to think that having a graduate degree would give me one two three four five six seven eight Ms in my bank account. Ade: Right, but at the same time I do believe the degrees have their time and place. They just need to be part of your plan. Which is it’s own thing. Zach: Real talk. I know for me I genuinely want to get a grad degree, right? First it was an MBA, but now I’m thinking an I/O Psych PHD but -- Ade: Oh, ok you fancy huh? Zach: I am very fancy, for sure. The point is, I’m trying to think it through, like the why of the degree, because school isn't free. Definitely not even cheap Ade: Sure isn't, sure is not. And, listen, we started off the show talking about wealth inequality and how it isn’t fixed purely by education. I don’t think this should discourage people from pursuing a degree. I do hope that this conversation helps us think critically and analyze fairly common assumptions many of us were raised to believe about how wealth is generated and distributed. Like Richard alluded to, we’re going to have to re-think what “the bag” is for us and what our strategy to secure it, it has to be more than an annual salary. Zach: Right! That’s a soundbite for sure. This is a huge, complex, and yes, frustrating topic, but I believe the starting point is awareness, then thoughtful dialogue, then planning and then action. Ade: Agreed! Anyway - let’s get into our next segment - my favorite things, where we talk about what our favorite things are these days. Zach : Yes! My favorite thing right now has to be this book I’m reading called Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race, by Reni Eddo-Lodge. It’s so frank and honest. I also have a bias towards aggressive book titles. Book titles that let you know exactly what it's about when you pick it up. I just, I really enjoy that. Also, shout out to Glazed Donuts. Glazed Donuts is a gourmet donut restaurant based in Houston TX. I can tell you they have a great product - donuts, sandwiches, kalaches, juice, allat. Shout out to Richard, Bobby, Edose, TJ and all the members of the Glazed Donut team. Ade: So currently, I have at the absolute top of my list of one true loves, I have this book called Children of Blood and Bone. It is by Tomi Adeyemi who wrote just an amazing, amazing work. And I'm looking forward to reading more from her. I'm Nigerian, I'm Yoruba, and it's really beautiful to see the Yoruba pantheon of gods incorporated into a literary work. So go check that out if you are interested at all in, well, reading. But also if you're interested at all in any fantasy novels, really really good book. My other favorite thing- I don't know if you've seen I just got a new dog. His name is Benji. Well, technically his name is Maximillian Benjamin Gold the third. There is no first or second, but yeah. We are extra over here around these parts. I call him Benji because I'm the more sane mama. I'm well grounded and down to earth and all of those things. So my beautiful beautiful baby husky is just my newest ray of sunlight and I just, I cannot get enough of him. I've taken 262 pictures and I've posted maybe 3 of them, so like I'm not being obsessive and I'm not being 'that guy' but. He's a gorgeous pup, and I do say so myself. Zach: Dope! Well, thank you for joining us on the Living Corporate Podcast. Make sure to follow us on instagram at @livingcorporate, twitter at @LivingCorp_Pod and subscribe to our newsletter through www.living-corporate.com. If you have a question you’d like us to answer and read on the show, make sure you email us at livingcorporatepodcast@gmail.com. Aaaaaand that does it for us on this show. This is has been Zach. Ade: and I’m Ade Both : peace!9:19 -> 10:18

What are the best Linux certifications to get? Software replacement for a multi-button mouse -- gestures. Linux compatible printers. Follow-ups from previous show topics. A new Linux distro. And much, much more... Episode 302 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux #302 · Listener Feedback 00:15 Introduction 00:51 No voice mail lately 01:12 Cliff: Certifications 05:07 Martyn: Backups on Linux 08:01 Frank: Software pick - Easystroke 09:09 Scott: Can't send a fax 12:24 Gus: Has suggestion for window previews 12:48 Tony: Topic suggestion? 14:59 Richard returns! 16:22 Richard: Thanks 22:38 Sam: Please review Gecko Linux 29:11 Scott: ThinkPads and converts 33:05 Michael: Compatibility 34:27 Gone Linux: Nathan older computers 36:44 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 38:37 End

What are the best Linux certifications to get? Software replacement for a multi-button mouse -- gestures. Linux compatible printers. Follow-ups from previous show topics. A new Linux distro. And much, much more... Episode 302 Time Stamps 00:00 Going Linux #302 · Listener Feedback 00:15 Introduction 00:51 No voice mail lately 01:12 Cliff: Certifications 05:07 Martyn: Backups on Linux 08:01 Frank: Software pick - Easystroke 09:09 Scott: Can't send a fax 12:24 Gus: Has suggestion for window previews 12:48 Tony: Topic suggestion? 14:59 Richard returns! 16:22 Richard: Thanks 22:38 Sam: Please review Gecko Linux 29:11 Scott: ThinkPads and converts 33:05 Michael: Compatibility 34:27 Gone Linux: Nathan older computers 36:44 goinglinux.com, goinglinux@gmail.com, +1-904-468-7889, @goinglinux, feedback, listen, subscribe 38:37 End