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UK sanctions on Russian oil, Finland selling land to Google, a snowless winter in Lapland, the suspension of deep-sea mining in Norway, Iceland's election, and much more!Thanks for tuning in!Let us know what you think and what we can improve on by emailing us at info@rorshok.com Like what you hear? Subscribe, share, and tell your buds.How Norway Aims to Make it Right Again: https://www.nrk.no/sapmi/slik-skal-samer_-kvener-og-skogfinner-forsones-etter-fornorskinga-1.17124437 Rorshok Ocean Update: https://rorshok.com/ocean/We want to get to know you! Please fill in this mini-survey: https://forms.gle/NV3h5jN13cRDp2r66 Wanna avoid ads and help us financially? Follow the link: https://bit.ly/rorshok-donate
Gene was Right Again! Looking back at an interview Gene did on October 23. After Trump's former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, expressed disdain for Trump's management style from 4 years ago, it was clear the "11th-hour Democrats" are rolling out everything they can find to attack trump. IT'S NOT WORKING. Other national figures; Elon Musk now on board, Tulsi Gabbard now registering Republican, and others reflect a totally different 'take' for a 2024 election. After multiple assassination attempts, the corrupting of the media, the deep state funding of complicit/corrupt Democrats, cannot take Trump out this second time around. Too Big to Rig is the right phrase. With Trump back in we can repair and remedy the ills of the past.“Too Big To Rig”Gene Valentino on Newsmax NewslineORIGINAL MEDIA SOURCE(S):Originally Recorded on October 23, 2024America Beyond the Noise: Season 5, Episode 551Image courtesy of: NEWSMAX➡️ Join the Conversation: https://GeneValentino.com➡️ WMXI Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/NewsRadio981➡️ More WMXI Interviews: https://genevalentino.com/wmxi-interviews/➡️ More GrassRoots TruthCast Episodes: https://genevalentino.com/grassroots-truthcast-with-gene-valentino/➡️ More Broadcasts with Gene as the Guest: https://genevalentino.com/america-beyond-the-noise/ ➡️ More About Gene Valentino: https://genevalentino.com/about-gene-valentino/
Join us as we navigate the captivating world of character creation in voice acting with MCVO Agent Lau Lapides. The BOSSES unpack the essence of building characters across various domains—whether it's animation, commercial, corporate, or e-learning—emphasizing the crucial role of authenticity and depth. Discover how understanding a character's choices, morality, and actions can elevate your performance from mere impersonation to truly embodying the character. By thoughtfully considering the script's intent and adding your unique touch, the BOSSES aim to help you craft characters that deeply resonate with your audience. Tune in and embrace the complexities and creative challenges of character development with us, ensuring your performances are both genuine and relatable. 00:00 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Do you ever wish boss marketing was as fun as it was being behind the mic? Well, check out my VioBoss Blast. It's designed to automate and make your marketing simpler. You'll benefit from your very own target marketed list, tailored to meet your goals and your brand the ViBoss Blast. Find out more at VioBosscom. 00:24 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss a VO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza. 00:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss Podcast. I'm your host, Anne Ganguzza, and I am here for the Boss Superpower Series with my lovely guest co-host, Lala Pides. 00:55 - Lau Lapides (Host) Hey Anne, so happy to be back, as always. 00:59 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Ah Lal, I love you. You're such a character. 01:03 - Lau Lapides (Host) I love you right back, super lady. 01:07 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know, speaking of characters, I have a lot of friends who do character acting a lot of really wonderful friends and they absolutely love it, they're very passionate about it. As a matter of fact, a lot of students that I talk to that want to get into voiceover. They want to be a character, they want to be in animation and I thought it's appropriate because we're characters, no matter what we do in voice acting today, and not everybody thinks of it in those terms. So I thought maybe we could concentrate on what characters we are today. 01:36 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's an interesting topic because I think that a lot of creatives think of character in a very artificial kind of sense, as almost a caricature a caricature instead of a character, a well-drawn character with depth, and dimension. So like, yeah, what is that character? How do we define that character? It's a great question. 01:58 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) That's a good question. So, Lo, how do you define character and how you need to be a character? Or do you need to be a character, or do you need to be a character in voice acting? 02:07 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, I think the first thing I think about is from that morality standpoint of thinking about character. When we say, oh, that person has a lot of character, they build their character, they have a very strong character, they have a moral character. I always think of it as someone who is strong, someone who has a backbone, who has courage, and someone who is well-drawn, well-built, someone who has those three dimensions, who has depth, who's interesting, who has integrity. I mean thinking about all the layers that go into what character actually is. I don't necessarily think of like cartoon or animation or something that's unreal. I think of something that is actually real and dimensional. And then I go from there, I start to dive in and say, ooh, what does this building of this character from an actor's standpoint? What does that mean? How do we build a character from the ground up, taking our breakdown, taking our description and really detailing it, really adding our own unique dimension to that that becomes our character? 03:11 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And is it necessary that you are a character in voice, acting for every script? Are you a character? 03:19 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, I think that only is about how you define character. If I define character as every single solitary role that I could possibly play is a character, possesses character and has character elements to it, then I would imagine yes, you're a character, whether you are a narrator an audiobook reader or whether you're a medical tech person, you're a character. 03:44 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Absolutely, and I think that in order to really resonate, I think, with the script and resonate with the listener, you need to truly embody that character, and I think it's important that we're not trying to necessarily impersonate a character, right, it's more or less being that character in the moment, right, and I know that a lot of times when you are speaking in the moment, all the things that used to matter to you like oh, how do I sound right? Kind of flies out the window. And that's why I think it's important that we actually get ourselves in the moment, in the character, because we don't necessarily need to consider what we sound like. We need to consider who we are and what we're reacting to, what scene we're in and how we're talking to our listener. 04:34 - Lau Lapides (Host) And who we are. From an actor standpoint, whatever kind of character you're creating is determined not only by the writer's point of view, but also by the moment-to-moment experience, directorially, from your perspective, your point of view, what's your POV? So, therefore, we need to be fully present, fully engaged in the moment, to really figure out the character, build the character from the ground up and really start to ask questions about what is your character, who are they, what would they do, what would their decisions and actions be? And I like to even go and say are they like me, or is this within me to do, or do I have to create this as part of my character? I don't want to mimic, as you said, I don't want to impersonate, I don't want to be a parrot in that way, but what do I need to do to get the qualities of that character and then put it in so I can organically bring that out as part of me? 05:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) and who I am. I like how you actually brought in the fold that there's a point of view from the script writer, right, let's say, if we are voicing a commercial or, in my case, like corporate or e-learning right. In my case, like corporate or e-learning right, there's a point of view that you need to consider from the copywriter or whoever it is that is providing you with the work right, because they want you to consider their viewpoint. But then you also have to bring in your own point of view, and I think that sometimes people get confused as to the point of view. Is there just one or is there one that you're melding in with your own point of view? Is there just one or is there one that you're melding in with your own point of view in order to make your take on that a unique take that will engage the listener? 06:13 - Lau Lapides (Host) Well, you know, it's interesting, A lot of VOs who also do on-camera work hear the language of the technical crew talking about POVs when it comes to the camera shot. So I like to think of it in those terms that you know, if you're shooting one scene, it could take four hours, eight hours, 12 hours to shoot that one scene, because the crew is concerned about what are all the POVs in the shot list that we need to get. So when we think about voiceover and we think about, well, we're not on camera, but what are we doing with our voice? What are all the points of view that our voice can stylistically shift to, whether it's written in the script or not, really could take time to develop that. 06:55 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know. I love that. You said that because I think you're right and it's funny, because I'll talk to my students and I'll say it's a point of view that evolves, because if you have the same point of view throughout an entire script, it becomes almost like white noise and it becomes very predictable and consistent and it doesn't necessarily tell the story, because I'm constantly in this particular point of view and I'm going to talk to you like this for the next minute or two minutes or maybe even ten minutes, and I'm going to continue with this particular point of view and it starts to become really repetitive and it starts to become where repetitive and it starts to become where whew, that's exhausting to listen to, right? So I think a point of view is constantly evolving and changing along with the storyline and that's something that the actor makes, those choices right, those choices on how to evolve in a unique way that takes the listener on a journey. 07:43 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yes, and it is the very thing that you and I, as coaches, are always pushing home. Pushing home. It is precise, it is detailed, it is specific. We should never be making choices that are like whitewashed, or universal, or generic, or not making choices at all, which is what? 08:01 a lot of talent do because they want to just let happen what happens? Sure, but the truth is we're on a mission for choice making and we know we're going to attain the objective if we make the choice to go get that. If we don't make any choice, chances are we're not going to achieve that objective. 08:17 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, then it just becomes like a neutral, flat, kind of like where is that point of view and what makes that different than somebody reading words to me really? 08:26 - Lau Lapides (Host) So therefore we lack character? Yeah, we lack character and characterization, and characteristics, how about characteristics? So therefore, we lack character? Yeah, we lack character and characterization, right right, and characteristics, sure, how about characteristics? I like that. 08:33 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And moment to moment I love the moment to moment in between the periods throughout the scene Like the scene can evolve, and I think what's so cool about that is that it offers the actor such an amazing spectrum of creativity to just draw upon in order to make that read come to life. 08:53 And it's different for all of us. I think there's, I think, the point of view, that's the intention of the script, that makes sense for the words that are on the page, and then there's what you bring to it moment to moment. It evolves over time, it may change and shift and you may not know what those scenes are specifically Like. We don't always get the storyboard, we don't get the video, we don't know what the music or any of those things are going to be, but we have our own creativity, we have our own imagination, we have an understanding of who we're voicing this for and the context of the words that are on the page, and then it's up to us to interpret them in a logical way that would make sense to accomplish what the client wants from us. 09:35 - Lau Lapides (Host) Exactly, that's exactly it. 09:37 And I think that if you don't do that work, if you don't do the homework or the pre-work, as we call it, the pre-work if you don't do that prep, pre-work, you're really messing out a lot, because you want to be free, that when you're doing the gig whatever that gig is you want to be free to really play and enjoy the character and say, okay, I've created a framework, I have a little blueprint for myself, I can see the visual in my head, I have a sense of where they're going and make some decisions, so that when I veer off and I go outside of the box, I know that I'm breaking my own rules, which is what I want to be doing as a creative. 10:13 I want to set my rules, I want to see if that works, and then I want to break the rules and that might work even better. And so those characters are like, no matter how rule-oriented they are, they're always breaking rules in certain ways as well. And really finding out like, where's the rebel in the character? Maybe she's been saying lines just like this, she's been delivering just like this, and then maybe on this one she changes it. She changes it for a reason to show that she is awake and aware of what the problem is in the community, right. So I'm really developing a character and characterizations that then become relatable and about empathy, that an audience can listen to and go ooh, I do that. Ooh, that's just like me. 10:58 Wow, and all of a sudden they're not thinking of character. They wouldn't even use that word. 11:02 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) They'd say that's a person that's like my sister right, and you know what A lot of times I'll tell people to do. Maybe for the second take right is maybe change your character a little bit, One that still makes sense, but change your character or change the scenario. 11:16 - Intro (Announcement) Change the scene. 11:16 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Like maybe you're in a hurry or maybe you're in a different place, Maybe you're outside, or maybe you're inside in an office and maybe the person you're talking to right has a different reaction or has got different issues with what you're saying. Or maybe they've got a backstory that you're responding to and that backstory changes, and so you're responding in a slightly different way, but one that still makes sense, right for the words on the page. Right. 11:44 And that can give you a really great second take, more so than oh, that second take just has to sound different, right? So if you can push I'm going to say if you can push your creative mind to always take in the scene creating that character and moving that character through the scene, and then do a take two right, create a different scene, create a slightly different character, one that still makes sense and Law, I'm going to ask you, I'm going to have you probably reinforce what I always tell people Does it matter that we don't have the storyboard? Does it matter that our story is correct from the final version of the video or whatever it is that we're creating, or the commercial? I think? 12:25 - Lau Lapides (Host) that in every single thing we do, Anne, I think that in every single thing we do, Anne, there's blind, there's stuff behind walls that we don't see and we're not privy to and we don't know, and that's okay. That's where us, as creatives, come in and say I can create different interpretations, I can create different scenarios. And then, as they give me the feedback or direct me, or maybe they just say hey, you gave me three, they're fabulous, we like it, we're done. 12:49 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) You know what I mean. And let me ask you another question, which I know a lot of times people will complain about this. They'll say well, why do they write it this way, right? And then we don't know what it means. I have no idea what it means, but yet they want us to sound like we're talking to our friend, or they want us to what they really want. Maybe they're not telling you for a very good reason, right? Maybe they're not giving you that storyboard for a good reason because they want to hear your creative, artistic interpretation or impression of it. 13:28 - Lau Lapides (Host) Right. Typically, I would say don't waste too much time or energy wondering why it was created this way, why it was crafted this way it was. Now let's see what we can do with it. And you know a lot of directors, a lot of young and up-and-coming directors I've noticed stylistically are very different than years gone by. They're doing a lot more impromptu, a lot more improv, a lot more stuff like that. So sometimes, not all the time, but sometimes you're going to have the license and the leisure that you're working with someone who says is that natural for you or do you need to change something there? Right? And that actually happens a lot more than we think, where, in essence, we're editing the script on the spot when we're doing a job because we're coming up with something that they didn't realize works better. 14:13 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh, absolutely Absolutely, and a lot of times it can spur them into new creative avenues as well, to say, well, I didn't think about it like that, but you know what I really like your take on that, and so how wonderful is that? It's wonderful. I often think that we're given this creative challenge and we should embrace that challenge and not be so determined to get in 100 auditions a day in our studio where we're just going and I know what it should sound like. I really feel as though we don't take enough time and sometimes even I have to remind myself right in a busy day. We're always so busy that I need to really sit back and let's think and let's kind of enjoy the process, let's enjoy the creativity, let's enjoy and embrace the challenge of creating a character and really figuring out and it's not easy Law, is it easy? 15:02 - Lau Lapides (Host) No, I mean human relations. Right, human behavior is never easy because you're always dealing with true, authentic interface with another person, like we are doing a reasonable facsimile of real life. That's what we're doing. It's not real life, we're in a booth under a light, but in essence we're doing that reasonable facsimile of it and we have to understand that your character is capable of anything. When someone says, oh, I don't know why she's saying that she would never say that, I say, oh, I don't know why she's saying that she would never say that. 15:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) I said, yes, she would. Yes, she could If the situation were appropriate. Yeah, of course she could. If you want me to be conversational, you know, and I feel like that word is now got it's a dirty word now, but I just want to say Well, it's exhausted. 15:45 - Lau Lapides (Host) It is exhausted, they use it a lot and conversational. 15:47 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) there's so many different ways to be conversational. I mean law. I have conversations every day, like every single day of my life. We have conversations. 15:54 So, it's a fact of life that we have conversations. Now, when somebody gives me the direction that they want it to be, conversational, there's so many different, like 360 degrees of conversational. It could be casual, it could be authoritative, the conversation could be authoritative, the conversation could be shifting, and again along with the character, right. And so I think that conversational is just meant to be. Well, let's not make it sound announcery, right? So what's the other word for it? But honestly, I engage every day with other people and with things and with circumstances and so-. 16:25 - Lau Lapides (Host) That's your practice. That's your practice is to really do it right, and I can tell you, one of the biggest mistakes that actors make, whatever they're doing, is to say how do I sound, do I? 16:35 sound real, Do I sound? And I said, listen, if I came into this coaching session, I said with Joe. I said, coming in, I want to sound real with Joe, I want to coach Joe and I want to sound real. Wouldn't you think I'm crazy? And he'd say I think that was crazy. I'd say, well, that's what you're doing right now. You're doing that right now with a real person or a real entity, a character that's not coming in and saying I want to feel real, I want to look real, I want to sound real. They're saying no, I want to get a point across to you. I want to help you with something, I want to do something with you. 17:06 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And I'm going to say that, well, I wouldn't say that right in a normal situation. But the deal is, is that that's not you as an actor? It is your job to make the words on the page sound logical and sound like they would be something you would say. That is your job as an actor. Right? There's no excuse. What do you mean? You would never say that it doesn't matter. We're not asking if you would ever say that In this particular instance, you need to act as though that is a perfectly natural thing to say and a perfectly understandable, logical, emphatically lovely thing for you to say. 17:39 - Lau Lapides (Host) Yeah, you're an actor, act right. But I mean, how do you know that? Do you know that? For a fact Like, why limit your potential? Why put caps on your creativity? Why not say, okay, the craziest thing I could possibly do, I'll think about doing it Now. Maybe if the circumstance and context were right for that, you would do it. Oh gosh, yeah, but chances are, you may never know right. 18:04 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) And what I always am arguing with people about is saying well, yes, you absolutely could say that, as long as you understand what the story is leading up to it. Right Again, you picked that moment before. What is that conversation you're having? What's happening before? Tell me about who you're talking to and what is their pain point. What is their problem? What are they reacting to? Or why are you talking to them with the first words of the sentence? Why are you saying that to them? There has to be a reason. They said something to you, there was an action that happened and you are reacting to it. 18:35 It doesn't mean that your first words out of your mouth may be the exact first words in that, but you can lead into it and you can say well, actually, yes, here's your issue, and I want to tell you about first word coming now, right? So what happens is the first word coming now doesn't just pop out of the air, like I don't think law when we get together, I don't just go welcome to module one or, once upon a time, law. No, we've evolved into a conversation. There's been history. You know I have empathy to. Right now, you're in a hurry, right? So I want to make sure I'm not wasting your time, and so there's a backstory that you have to develop. 19:13 You have to develop it. And I don't care what script, any script, any script. Even if you're reading about a pharmaceutical medicine and the effects that it has, do you know what I mean? Like, I want you to be like telling the person that's reading the back of the label, that thinks that they might have 10 of those symptoms and making them feel better about it, right? So there's a story there. Make that story make sense, okay. 19:36 - Lau Lapides (Host) So the listener says, great, all well and good, but what if I haven't experienced any of this, I haven't gone through it, I don't have the context for it. I say, well, if you can surmise a bottom line for your character, what is happening? Say, the character is jumping out of a plane right now, that's what your characters do, but I've never jumped out of a plane. I don't know what that is. Yes, but you've taken extreme risks and you know what fear is and you know what that moment is. Even just building a business is very risky and fear-based. Call upon that moment in you. 20:06 That's real. It's a substitution method that we have to use, because there's a lot of things in scripts we haven't experienced or industries we're not in. But we have to connect it with very real reservoir of emotion so that the character doesn't become one-dimensional or plastic. It is real. You're fooling us, you're tricking us, what they call in ancient Greek theater you're a hypocrite with a why meaning. You're able to mimic a feeling, an emotion that is very, very real for you because it's coming from you, even though you didn't have the actual experience. And that's what building your character is really all about is really taking from your life, your real history, your real experiences, and matching it up with the characters in her life, the characters' experience, even though they may be different. 20:56 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah, I agree and I'll tell you what. And again I stress that, no matter what you're looking at, even if it's like a telephony script like thank you for calling Rite Aid, right, yeah, why are you saying that, right? Obviously somebody's called you on the phone and they literally need to check on their prescription. They're probably frustrated because maybe the text came through and it's not ready yet, and so they're calling Rite Aid and they're frustrated. 21:19 Right Now I'm building empathy, right. I'm building empathy for the person who's going to be on the other end of the line from my message that says thank you for calling Rite Aid, right. So I understand that they are busy. I understand that they're frustrated, so I'm going to approach that with a character that's going to make them feel at ease or feel better, and so I've developed this story, I've developed my character and maybe I'll be bright, but I'm not going to be overly bright so that they get really annoyed at that. And it's funny, because I do telephony, I have no ego. Look, I get paid to do it. I do telephony, I do corporate, I do explainers, I do e-learning, I do commercial. 21:58 I mean I do a lot more of the non-broadcast Of course, but the funny thing is is that for every single script I am talking to someone, I am a character. I have a couple of different characters that I have worked on for my telephony scripts and, depending on the on-hold messages which, by the way, lollapiedes, on-hold messages are nothing more than 15 to 20 second commercials. Did you know? 22:22 - Intro (Announcement) Right and I actually have. 22:25 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) the majority of my customers ask me to be very relatable and not like that. Hey, did you know 99.9% of people do this and for $9.95, we have today's special deal. No, they want me to be real and so I have to create that character that is engaging with someone who's super frustrated, that doesn't want to be on hold, that is going customer service customer service and you know what. 22:53 - Lau Lapides (Host) If anyone has hosted a party or hosted a dinner in their home or in their apartment, you know what it's like to host. You know what it's like to welcome people into your space and make them comfortable, and that's what they're asking you for in that situation. 23:09 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) How do you say thank you for calling and mean it right? Everybody in the world wants to go. Thank you for calling right, hello, no, I want to hear it as if you really are thankful, that you're really thankful that they called Right and so you've got to really dig deep for that. I'm just saying dig deep for that telephony because you are a character, no matter what. 23:31 - Lau Lapides (Host) We could talk about this forever. Character is in everything, it's everywhere, and everything it's all of life. 23:37 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Yeah Right, it's a wonderful conversation. I think we should have part two of the series. 23:41 - Lau Lapides (Host) I was just thinking that Part two, part two for sure. 23:43 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) So yeah, bosses, be a character. You are characters. Be a character for everything that you do in voiceover, and you can be a character and find out more about IPDTL, who is our sponsor, going to give them a great big old shout out. Find out more about IPDTL at IPDTLcom. You guys have an amazing week and we will see you, bosses, next week. Bye, see you next time. 24:06 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, Anne Ganguza, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at VOBosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL. 24:37 - Lau Lapides (Host) Absolutely. You know what I mean. 24:38 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Otherwise. 24:38 - Lau Lapides (Host) I wouldn't. I wouldn't do it so quickly. Hang on one second. Do you hear that. What is that? I don't know. Okay, maybe it was something outside. Jerry, okay, I'm podcasting, I'll be. Was something outside Jerry? 25:03 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Okay, I'm podcasting. I'll be out in a few minutes. Okay, is Jerry out there? Yes, I think that's my husband being loud. Well, jeremy's out here. 25:10 - Lau Lapides (Host) So it was one of our husbands. Oh, was it one of our husbands For. 25:12 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) God's sake. 25:14 - Lau Lapides (Host) Jerry's over there and Jeremy's over here. 25:18 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Tell Jeremy to be quiet. 25:20 - Lau Lapides (Host) Annie says be, he's over here, tell Jeremy to be quiet. And he says be quiet, shut the fuck up. What are you doing, jesus Christ? Oh my God, that's so funny. I can't even close these doors. 25:31 - Anne Ganguzza (Host) Oh my God, but that's so funny because normally I don't hear anything, but I couldn't tell if it was Jeremy, if it was outside of yours or mine. But my, my husband just opened the door and I was like, what the heck Like so well, we did, we did the show. You want to do an outro? I mean, we did this is going to be well, just FYI, uh, this is going to be good for you, james. This'll be like an outtake. So, by the way, bosses, when you're, when you've got people running, this is why studios still have signs that say shh, recording, because even though we have great studios and I've, I've got, you know, acoustic panels and everything, if somebody's right outside this door and they're screaming or they're being loud, we're gonna be able to hear it. Yep, so, anyways, back to our back to our, uh, our discussion. Okay, so pick up.
Join America’s most attractive audio engineer and her host for a review of events from above and beneath the sands of the middle east, to the public school toilets in America and even to outer space! Hear reason # 2047 … Continue reading → The post Make Life a Right Again! appeared first on Conservative Talk - The Weekly Worldview.
Thanks for listening and joining me on this special episode. This weekend we celebrate the GURU's big day on Sunday. But this past Wednesday we lost another legendary college basketball coach, Bobby Knight. Knight passed away at 83, and when he retired from the game, he was the all time leader in wins with 902. His three championships will always be remembered with his undefeated season in 1976, led by his point guard and HOF'er, Isiah Thomas. I will always remember him not for all of the antics, but for being the greatest teacher and having the undisputed knowledge of the game of basketball. RIP Coach Knight. We also talked about the way the college football playoffs are shaping up and the impact of the first CFP poll. The GURU was RIGHT AGAIN! The NBA in season tournament? Wimby fever, the top five in both the NFL and the NCAA. The Breeders Cup Champ and remembering Walter Davis all in this one. Thanks again for listening and enjoy the rest of your Sports Weekend. We will see you back here next weekend with Episode 193. Take care, the GURU will see you real soon.
On this edition of Beyond Reason Radio Yaffee is the voice of reason on the latest news! Joe Biden and the Democrats try to blame Trump for the violence is US cities. AND Where does all this racial tension lead? ALSO Why DeSantis is RIGHT AGAIN on Coronavirus!
On this edition of Beyond Reason Radio Yaffee is the voice of reason on the latest news! Joe Biden and the Democrats try to blame Trump for the violence is US cities. AND Where does all this racial tension lead? ALSO Why DeSantis is RIGHT AGAIN on Coronavirus!
Ashok Rajan, director of the board at Lister Digital and cycling enthusiast, gives commentary on how personalization strategies are more about human connection than technology. He shares a profound customer experience that shaped him, and stresses the importance of "data for purpose." *Hosted by Dave Goldstein and PJ Bruno LIVE at LTR 2019* TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] PJ: Hello again. Welcome back to another episode of Braze for Impact, your MarTech industry discuss digest. We're back again with another episode of our humanity series. Our guest today, Ashok Rajan, president of Lister Digital. Ashok, thanks so much for being here. [0:00:33] Ashok Rajan: Hey, thanks for having me here PJ and Dave. Very excited to be in this conference. Again, longterm relationships man, it's awesome. [0:00:41] PJ: Let's build them. Let's expand them. [0:00:43] Ashok Rajan: Let's build them. Let's expand them. And it's about the human experience. I don't see, again I am just free flowing here, that even as I see them live in the conference, it's very exciting. Because you guys are ... I was here last year, felt the same vibe. And it's been more, and because this is what we do as well. Like hey, we deeply care about the customer experience. We're not just sitting in thinking, "Hey, what's the channel?" And so on. You want to treat them like humans. Hey, it's another human that I'm trying to influence to do something. And then I feel like, "Hey, that's the vibe that I sense in the conference. It's very exciting to be here. So thank you. [0:01:17] PJ: Exactly. And speaking of humans, Ashok and I are with a pretty rad human in my eyes here. And this- [0:01:23] Dave Goldstein: Here I am again. [0:01:24] PJ: Our good buddy Dave Goldstein, head of Global Solutions Alliance at Braze. Dave, love you. [0:01:29] Dave Goldstein: Love to be a part of this. [0:01:32] Ashok Rajan: [crosstalk] Dave is my cycling brother. We're from the brotherhood of cyclers. [0:01:36] Dave Goldstein: That's right, that's right. [0:01:38] Ashok Rajan: I love it man. [0:01:38] Dave Goldstein: Strong legs in this podcast booth, watch out. [0:01:40] PJ: If you guys saw the quads I was looking at right now. [0:01:44] Dave Goldstein: Thousands of miles among us. [0:01:46] Ashok Rajan: That's right. It's in my to do list to write a LinkedIn article on Zen and the art of cycling, because I think that tells you a lot of a life. Hey, you need to put a lot of effort to climb up the hill, but then no one can take me the love that you feel, the endorphins that you feel when you come downhill man. But you got to work hard. You got to work hard to go up that hill. [0:02:06] PJ: Why don't you take us back now, Ashok, about 30, 35 years where it all started? [0:02:13] Ashok Rajan: Absolutely. So now the age part comes in. So I feel young Dave, so thank you for your friendship, and you make me feel young. But now that he mentioned 35 years. I think it's interesting because the background, my background, is that I actually started before the internet. So now, or what was called is the worldwide web, and in client server technology. So client server technology which was used to, again, do a lot of interactions and how to make them easy. I feel life changed when I attended the Windows 95 release in Long Beach. I think I was about three or four years into my work life at that point. But as I was trying to share the story with you, it was a lot of ... I have this principle FSOGSD. Figure stuff out, get stuff done. So the lot of the ... I consider myself a child of the internet, and I had to figure a lot of things out. So one of the first things I would like to share is first piece of code I wrote that actually went live on the web. It was a program called [bannerad.exe 00:03:22]. That's what I called it, but hey, all it had to do was change the banner based on cookie values. So personalize the banner that was being showed. This is 1995. At that point it was Netscape, I think it's called Netscape Commerce Server or something. And then we went live on the web. So we kept building. The goal, I feel, was always how to personalize the experience. How to personalize the experience based on someone's interests. And so we were collecting information, right? So we're collecting all this information on people's interests, but then we're trying to say, "Hey, how can I change the web experience as they land on the web and they move on?" And then over time, I'll keep my background brief, but I was lucky enough to be part of two companies that were acquired. Great teams, a great group of people. First was 2000, I joined this company called Digital Impact, which was 2000 to 2005, Forrester rated top company for email and digital marketing. Then it was acquired by Axiom. And then I joined Responsys in 2010 which was acquired by Oracle. And these were great experiences for me because, again, even I heard this in the conference today, it's sort of exciting to me. "Hey, some of these things we worked on like in 2001, 2002, I was already building recommendation engines." [0:04:42] Dave Goldstein: What's old is new again. [0:04:43] Ashok Rajan: What's old is new again. Like hey, some of these concepts, sometimes I laugh. And like, "You guys are talking about stuff." Then I feel like your old guy. Then I feel like the old guy. [0:04:53] Dave Goldstein: Go back to my bannerad.exe days, right? [0:04:57] Ashok Rajan: That's right man, that's right. Or even these, some of the challenges that I heard some of the speakers talk about. And these are real companies. So hey, love your speakers in the conference because these are real experiences. They are talking about real world problems. And the challenge hasn't changed, that how do I get data, how do I move these things around? How do I make the optimal decision? And sometimes I feel that, over time as I've observed this, things have changed. Before, there was a time point in time, and I think it will come back in vogue again like bell-bottoms or something. And thankfully I didn't wear them, but I have older siblings that did. [0:05:39] PJ: It always comes back. [0:05:39] Ashok Rajan: Older siblings, I've seen them do that. I'm like, "What is that?" [0:05:41] Dave Goldstein: It's just a matter of time. [0:05:44] Ashok Rajan: But my point is that there was a phase where I felt that things moved to hyper analytics. Like hey, everything was analytics driven and I want this, but I come from a slightly different school of thought these days. But I feel like there's a sort of, I call this the Heisenberg principle of personalization. If you look at Amazon for instance, they do a lot of real time personalization. Of course the personalization is driven by a deep analytics, but it's not like the analytics are real time. And sometimes I joke with people, I say, "Hey, you're fooling people if you say you're real time analytics," because good analytics means that you have lots of data that you've chunked. Lots of data means it's been collected over a long period of time. And any good statistician will tell you the last day or the last minute's worth of data should not influence your model of things that you've collected over 30 days, one year, whatever the case is. Right? So that means analytics can be run offline, but how I'm treating the customer becomes a ... How do I influence the journey is something that happens more real time. [0:06:47] PJ: That's an interesting point too, just because we hear all the time, or I personally do, as soon as that data's captured, the value of it will start to decay over time. But that makes so much sense. You should be able to look back at behavior over the past month or even year to kind of like help dictate, or at least inform some things. [0:07:05] Dave Goldstein: I mean what I found so fascinating actually was just moments ago, Dipanjan Chaterjee from Forrester was presenting his updated research to the brand humanity index. And he was saying that, what is it, 0.5%, a half a percent of all data is actually actioned on. You're actually doing something with that data and doing something meaningful with it. So there's that fine line that you really do have to walk, right? Like you can collect just this wealth of data. But I suppose the key to that is to action on as much of it as you can, because what is data without appropriate action? [0:07:43] Ashok Rajan: No, absolutely. I think Dave, I think this is a great segue because if you start thinking about the platforms and what's the newer generation platforms versus some of the older generation platforms that you have, the thinking, and some of these ideas were regurgitated before. I sort of joke about this and I say, "Hey, you don't bring the mountain to Moses, Moses goes to the mountain." And I use this these days with big data, right? With the proliferation of big data. I feel it's actually a simple engineering problem. The more data that I collect, the more difficult it is going to be for me to move it across systems. To move everything and start duplicating it is just a mindless exercise of, it's expensive, it's too late, it takes time to action. And how quickly you respond becomes more crucial. And so what I find exciting about platforms like Braze is that foundationally it's been built to handle that issue. That it's not now anymore like the old school, "Hey, why don't you give me everything?" I just remember with [inaudible 00:08:54], one of my previous companies since I've already mentioned who they are. I was sitting Nordstrom, and this is a true story. And then the guy was like, "Hey." I'm like, "Hey, give me all your data. Give me all of it." He says, "It's fine. I'll give you all my data. How many years of data do you want?" I said, "I'll take how much you can give me." He says, "Okay, I'm going to give you 10 years worth of data." But here he says, "I'm going to warn you. What's the database that you use behind the scenes?" I said, "So we have an Oracle database." I said, "Hey, I just spent like $15 million replacing my Oracle database with [inaudible] data, so you better have some big system. And I don't think we're paying you guys that much to basically send email marketing campaigns." And they're like, "Hold on. Don't give me any data. I don't want all your data. I only want what's required for my marketing." I think that- [0:09:42] Dave Goldstein: Data for purpose. [0:09:43] Ashok Rajan: Data for purpose. And I think that's a big theme of what I like about Braze. When I look at it, okay, it actually goes back to, "Hey, I'm only bringing Moses to the mountain for salvation, or whatever." He comes to the burning bush for that particular aspect. It's not like, hey now I'm trying to move the entire mountain and say, "Hey, let me get it to your camp, and then you can figure out what you want." It's like, "Okay, it's not going to work." [0:10:07] PJ: Right right. [0:10:08] Ashok Rajan: I think that's a big point. [0:10:10] PJ: Yeah. People just assume sometimes the data equals value, so just give me all the stuff you have, but that can really put this opaque kind of lens over what your goals are. It gives you a little bit more confusion I think. [0:10:22] Dave Goldstein: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm fascinated by the paradigm shift that's happened in my own mind since starting to work in this industry almost a decade ago. I walked into a retail store recently whose mobile app I had on my phone. I had given them push notification permissions, they had my email, they had preferences about me, they had my location permissions as well. I live on Long Island so I actually go to a shopping mall. Yeah, I'm a mall walking dad, I'll admit it. And so I [inaudible] the store and of course my expectation, living in the age that we do and being in the space that I'm in, is that, "Hey, what a great opportunity for a geo targeted appropriate message based on the data that this brand understands about me." Right? Of course, nothing happened. But I entered the store nonetheless, because I'm a fan of the brand, as it were. And as I'm entering the store, there's a sales associate at the front standing with a stack of printed cards, the kind where you take your thumb nail or a coin and you scratch them off. And it's like, "Hey, it's a take a scratch off, chance to win X percent off anything in the store today only." So I grabbed the card and I scratch it off and I got 15% off. And of course I'm looking around the store and I was like, "Don't really see anything I want today. I'm not compelled to even use this." And so I kind of walk out, and as I'm walking out I throw it in the trash, right. It just occurs to me like, "Wow, what a missed opportunity. If that experience had been digital, imagine how they could have continued that. They would have known just so much, that I had redeemed and I had this 15% off coupon, and maybe it could have extended to online and other channels. [0:12:03] PJ: Yeah. [0:12:04] Dave Goldstein: How much did they spend to print those cards? And so there's this whole paradigm shift that I've had as I've kind of thought about how brands can leverage the data that they have about people. And I'm sure the brands that you work with and how you think about coaching them to best leverage the data they have and truly digitally transform, you must see this stuff all the time and have to think- [0:12:25] Ashok Rajan: No I'm like, "Hey, my brain's racing actually." I want to share something with you as well. It's interesting, Dave, that you bring this up because you're so spot on. I think there's two aspects to it. And this is where I feel again, you guys are in not ... Braze is not just using buzzwords. I think, again, hey, this is not a shameless plug for Braze, I hope it means something to the people who listen that I truly see this. When you talk about the human aspect of things, you talked about the brand humanity index. And I saw this last year, and I'm like, "Hey, I'm on board this train." I want to share something with you that Nordstrom to me has been the brand, at least personally, we would read books on the Nordstrom [inaudible 00:13:12], that you talk about true customer service. And I'm saying like hey, when you really forget all the tech part first. But you say, "Hey, what's fascinating about Nordstrom's customer service?" And so hey, [inaudible] you would read about all these business cases of, "Hey, they changed the tires for some old lady who drove 50 miles to change some clothes." And they say- [0:13:31] Dave Goldstein: Accept all returns from other stores. I remember that. Yeah. [0:13:33] Ashok Rajan: And sometimes it feels like some urban legend or something right? But I want to share my personal experience with you, which I have now used in the digital aspect. So my personal experience with Nordstrom, again, I love, hey there's something a little bit about me, is when I work with brands, I love to see what it is that they do in their store. So as soon as I started working with Nordstrom, I started shopping at Nordstrom. And man it was interesting, first time I walked around the ... This is, again, 2011. Things are different now. So I'm walking around the store and this guy is just quietly following me around, didn't speak much, but he was just paying attention to what I was doing. And then what he did is, he didn't say anything. And then he said, "Hey, can I have your number?" I didn't buy anything. This was in the men's section where they have all the good stuff. And so then I said, "Okay fine, you can have my number." He says, "I'll just give you a call if I find something that you like." And I said, "How the heck would he know?" So I was, look again, curiosity killed the cat. I'm like, "I'm curious to know how the heck you know what I like, because I didn't speak to you." So then I gave him my number. And then believe it or not, Dave, he calls me after like a couple of weeks. He says, "Hey, I think I picked like two shirts for you. I think you're really going to like this." I go, "Okay, you have me. I'm going to come to the store." And guess what? He's like, "Michael Kors, here's the two shirts I think that will fit you perfectly. Go wear them." And then suddenly what happens is, this is the relationship I had with this guy, that at one point you would laugh, my wardrobe probably had like a dozen Michael Kors shirts. [0:15:02] Dave Goldstein: Get out of here. [0:15:03] Ashok Rajan: I kept all ... He would keep calling me every two months, and he would say, "Hey, I think I have something that you would like." I would go back, the fit would be great. And then it didn't stop until Michael Kors decided to move and start selling those shirts in their own store. But then this guy didn't let me go, right? So for me, I latch onto the concept of, "Hey, personalization is the human experience. Somebody was paying attention." And then of course, again, I was working with the Nordstrom marketing team. I was like, "Hey, you guys should do this." Fast forward to then I'm consulting with Adidas. And then Adidas basically says, "Hey, we have this ..." this is the guy that was running marketing for Adidas in India. And then he goes, "Hey, I want to change the customer experience. What do you think I can do?" I said, "Hey, have you considered this? Like put iPads in all your stores." And I shared with him the Nordstrom experience, but except now this was happening four years after the Nordstrom experience. And I'm saying, Hey, maybe you should have your salespeople just follow around and see what kind of shoes they're looking at. And then see what happens, then put everything, capture this information. Don't let them know. But then, like hey, just ask them, "Hey, would you like to know that if you really liked those Adidas shoes that you were looking at, running shoes, may I call you back if I find something that you like?" And then he calls me. The next year I meet him at the Oracle conference and he's super excited. He's like, "Hey, every store has an iPad, and this thing is working like crazy. Right?" Again, we're talking about stuff that's 2015, 2016. And here what I love about what Brace and what you're doing is hey, now we're talking about location based listing. Now we're talking about hyper personalization. Still the human experience doesn't go away. [0:16:38] PJ: How did he know your size? He just was looking at you and he was like, "I got your number dude." [0:16:43] Ashok Rajan: That's right. He's got my number. And I tell you like, hey, shame that the part that they didn't do well, like Hey I get that what he wants from me is not [inaudible] on Nordstrom is when that person left, he didn't capture that information and leave it somewhere. Unfortunately, I live in the Bay Area, I shop in the Hillsdale Mall, and this guy moved to the South Bay. And I'm like, "I'm not chasing you to South Bay to buy my clothes. I'm like, "Ah, okay." But you're right. Like he was actually sizing me up. And so this is somebody who knew his craft obviously. But that's when I feel that, I'm an old school techie, the more things move digital, I still love the relationship aspect. Relationship doesn't mean it's ... I feel it's about paying attention, it's about listening to people, quietly observing them. So the first thing that you need to do is, hey, you need to listen. There's three aspects that I feel to how things should work. First thing is you need to listen. And you need to listen, but then the next thing is you need to be able to analyze. And the third thing is you need to be able to act quickly. So you guys didn't put me up to this, but hey, when I look at a platform like Brace compared to something else, now you have web services. I can quickly listen to things. The data modeling is super simple. So now I can basically capture the information I need. I can analyze this quickly, and then I can act quickly to send you a push notification. Or send you an email message, or whatever it is that is the right communication style. I think people are ... In general, I hope people realize this, I think people underestimate. That's where I think is the real power of the Braze platform, that it brings things together. [0:18:16] Dave Goldstein: Fantastic context. It's interesting, I was thinking about there's a lot of legacy technology out there. Sunk costs, if you will, whereby folks know it's just not getting the job done. It's no longer fit for purpose. They're afraid of change for a number of reasons, whether it be the money that they've sunk into it, whether it be the fear of moving to new technology and potential hiccups in business. Do you have a philosophy or a methodology that you use to help quell people's fears about, "I'm on this legacy technology that's just not ... It's clearly not working. And the whole team hates using it. We all know there's ... We all hope there's something better out there." How do you talk to those people? How do you actually help them transform and move into the new mobile first era, if you will? [0:19:12] Ashok Rajan: What we like to tell people is that, "Hey look, you have someone like Lister that basically has worked with multiple platforms. We have helped build those platforms. We have the talent and the technology to basically drive these things. And the newer platforms are actually built for absorbing things quickly." So we're here to help them, and then we have really good success stories to show clients that, "Hey, it's not as daunting as you think". As long as, "Hey, you focus on the marketing." Someone say, hey, this is one of my mentors. And I really respect him. He said this a long time back in the conference. [inaudible] I say, "Hey, who was your biggest competition?" And he says, "My IT team." [0:20:00] Dave Goldstein: Wow. [0:20:00] Ashok Rajan: I thought that was the most profound thing that I heard so far. And it's like, "Yeah, amen to that. That's right." Because then, that's why when you bring people that already know how to work with these multiple platforms, then the migration is not such a daunting task. When we have done this day in and day out and we understand the nuances. We have done this successfully in the past and we feel that ... There's two things, right? It's not just about my talent or my team. I'm also saying that platforms like Brace, you make it easy to migrate, but the daunting part is unfortunately it's marchitecture. There is a technology aspect to it, but if you're used to classic database tables and operations, now suddenly you need to learn to work with unstructured data. My advice, or Dave, or my answer is quite simple, right? First, enlist in the right platform. I think these platforms are built for purpose. And they really leapfrog you from where you are to where you need to be. And then finding a great partner I think is important that has done this before and that can easily say, "Okay, I know you liked apples before, but now you have a vitamin C deficiency." And, "Hey, I'm here from Florida to make your orange juice." [0:21:15] PJ: Amazing. [0:21:15] Dave Goldstein: I know you liked meat before, but here's some kale. [0:21:18] PJ: Exactly. [0:21:19] Ashok Rajan: Exactly. [0:21:19] PJ: That's beauty. Honestly, no better way to wrap it up than that. [0:21:22] Dave Goldstein: That was great. [0:21:22] PJ: Ashok, thanks so much for being here. And Dave, as always, thanks for joining me. [0:21:27] Dave Goldstein: It's my pleasure. And Ashok, really, I can't say it enough. It's brilliant to have you as part of our community, and we're just so happy to have you as part of this solutions partner ecosystem. You add so much value to the overall landscape. And yeah, we love working with you. So thank you. [0:21:43] Ashok Rajan: Thanks, thanks Dave. Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Really appreciate the opportunity and I look forward to working with you guys. [0:21:49] PJ: And thank you guys all for listening. Take care. [0:21:51]
Day: 005 Date: Sunday, Jan. 5, 2020 Note from Aimee J.: Get ready to have a great week! Topic: Journal Your Experiences Action: In 2020, capture your experiences in some form. Write it down in a book, type it up on your computer, vlog, etc. Do whatever feels right to you! If you can’t journal every day, try to capture the big things. And whatever you do, remember to capture both the good and bad. When you look back at your journal in whatever form it takes, you will be amazed at what has happened. Affirmations: You are Beautiful. You are Fantastic. You can do ANYTHING you set your mind to. AND You are Awesome. You are Loved. You are Needed. And most importantly, YOU ARE ENOUGH. Resources & Links: Your Personal Hype Man ; Alexa Skill: Your Personal Hype Man ; Your Personal Hype Man on iTunes Let’s Connect: Leave a Voicemail ; E-mail Aimee J. ; Aimee on Instagram ; Aimee on Facebook ; Aimee on Twitter ; Aimee on YouTube ; Aimee on LinkedIn ; Aimee on TikTok ; Aimee on Snapchat ; Aimee on Pinterest ; Transcript: Good day, my family. How you guys doing? Today is Sunday, January 5th, 2020 so glad you could make it. My name is Aimee J., thanks for tuning in to "Your Personal Hype Man." I am here for you. I am here to remind you of how awesome and loved, needed you are. And also guys, you are beautiful. You are fantastic. You can do anything you set your mind to right. And if you don't believe me, I don't know why you wouldn't. It's true because it's true that I'm just going to leave it at that. So today on this Sunday, we're going to first talk about gratitude because we're taking a week to check in with three things that we are grateful for. We're not going to do it for the whole year, but it's important that we try to establish a routine and keep track of this. So at least for this week, we'll do this together. Three things I'm grateful for today. One, my parents, because they are cheerleaders for me, even when they don't understand what I'm doing, they want the best and they support me. And I'm very lucky. I know to have that. Number two, my faith. I am a Orthodox Christian and that's very important to me and you know, it comforts me even in the tough times and celebrates with me in the good times. So I'm very thankful for that and for the blessings God has given me. I'm thankful for the Ravens and the bye-week. Yes! This is going to be awesome. Uh, at the time of this recording, I don't know the results of yesterday's games, but the Ravens, have a bye. So we'll see what happens next week. All right, so those are the three things I am grateful for. What are three things you are grateful for? Again, you don't have to share it with the world. This is important for you. Write it down. Tell yourself, even if it's just you speaking to a mirror or into the ether, but say it out loud. What are three things you are grateful for today? Try to do something different from the past few days, but if you have to then go ahead and repeat. The important part is remembering and reminding yourself you have things to be thankful for. Even in the darkest times, you can find something, right? You woke up, you have a bed, hopefully you, you have your body parts, right? Some of us aren't blessed with, with all the body parts, right? And maybe it's that you have working organs. I have injuries on my body that prevent me from doing certain things, so I know that I am limited and so forth. I'm more grateful for those other things that compensate for that. So find three things. What are you grateful for? Keep them in mind. We've talked about setting goals, we've talked about visualizing your goals, we've talked about affirmations. What could we talk about today? I want to talk about journaling your experience. So 2020 is a big year. It's the start of a new year, but it's also the start of a decade and it doesn't have to be a thing, but you know, let's, let's consider a fresh start because we're at the beginning of the year. Journaling your experience is a chance and opportunity for you to remember and reflect and look back at what has happened. You don't know what'll happen down the road. There are, you know, some people can lose their mental facilities faculties. Uh, I had an uncle who had Alzheimer's, you know, and so you may not be able to retain memories as easily or as quickly as you want. It's a fact of life that we don't remember as much. I don't remember some of the things that happened to me, my childhood. Right. And that's just a nature, a fact of nature. And so journaling gives us the ability, a record of what has happened, how we feel, and allows us to capture the moments. Right? And so last year in 2019, my parents and I and my family, whenever they were at the house, one thing in habit that we did and took care of was we bought a planner, a weekly planner that had the days and space in it. And every day we would check in with each other and we said, Hey Mummy, how was your day? Chacha, how was your day? Aimee, how was your day? And we would write it down. We would write about things that were important about that day, things that may have happened, birthdays, parties, celebrations. So we always have a record. And so we actually did it for 365 days. No one's more impressed than me that we actually did it. Now, there were some days that we caught up, we missed a day and we caught up. But it was amazing. At the end of the year, we looked back and we randomly picked a month in a day and we were like, Oh, this is what happened that time I forgot all about that. And it was wonderful. So this year we're still doing that. But one thing I've done is I have journaled my experiences, especially big ones. So in 2008 I went to London for a study abroad and I created this scrapbook for it. And it was an amazing scrapbook. I had my friends write in it, I took pictures, I pasted in ticket stubs, all of that stuff. And I put it in there. And then, you know, ironically loving years later, my sister and my good friend Beth, we went to London again and I pulled out that scrapbook and we opened it up and Jamie was like, wow, look at this. She forgot some of the things we had done and it was only 11 years ago, but we used some of that, cause I noted the places, the good places to eat, the Broadway shows we've seen. It was fantastic. So it helped us get a headstart when we went back to London this past November. So journaling allows you to recapture the experiences that you feel and it can be done in a number of ways. Some people vlog, some people write it down. And again, it's up to you guys how big and how detailed you do. But I want you to journal this year and whatever frequency you need to, even if it's just the important moments so that you have a record to remind yourself of what happens in 2020 the one way I journal, the biggest way is I do a new year's letter, not my newsletter, but to my family and friends. I write to keep in touch with everyone and every year I've been doing it for the past, I want to say 17 some years and 17 maybe 15 it's definitely more than 15 years and you know it's a way for me to look back. So when I pulled up say the 2013 year, I was like, wow, can't believe that stuff happened. Because I go through my year and I share it with my loved ones, I say, "Hey, this is the crazy stuff to happen. How was your year? How are you catch up with me? Let's see how it is." It's an amazing feeling. It's great. I highly encourage it in whatever way, shape or form you take. Journal studies have shown that journaling has helped people with their mental health. I'm a big proponent of mental health. This is a great way for you to capture. Now, let me be clear. Do not only journal the good experiences with the good comes the bad. Don't deny it. Don't ignore it. Don't put it away. Some things, you don't have to recount it in vivid detail or anything like that, but acknowledge, Hey, today was not a good day. You know this happened, right? Do that. If you have to, but don't fester, don't let it fester and don 't let it just sit there. Journal the bad stuff, just as much as the good stuff, and then let it go. You know, I, I want you to focus on the good, but we can't ignore the bad at the same time. So do that. That's, that's today's tip of the day is I want you to journal it. Try it for at least a week. Try it for a month. See what happens. Right? Again, there's no great or wrong way to do this, but when you look back and you'll realize that, Hey, I've been doing this, you're going to be amazed at the results. So go ahead and do that guys. Check it out. That's it for today. One thing I got to remind you of is, remember guys, if nobody else tells you, I am telling you as your personal hype, man, you are awesome. You are loved, you are needed. This world absolutely needs you, but most importantly, you are enough as you are. There is no qualifiers on that. There are no if this, that, none of that. You are fantastic. Okay, so until next time, if you guys want to check more out, you can find it at yourpersonalhypeman.com, hit me up on the socials. I'm @aimeej21, until next time. Guys, don't stop. Keep chasing.
The saying goes "To the left of me, lazy. To the right of me, crazy.". It's human nature to think that we know the right way things ought to be done. This is true for us as IT folks and may even be true in our religious life. However, religion has A LOT to say about how, when, and why you might offer "correction", and that may inform the ways in which we offer advice to our wayward IT bretheren. In this episode Josh, Doug, and Leon explore the ways in which our religious sensibilities can inform the way we help our colleagues to stay on the straight and narrow. Listen or read the transcript below. Kate: 00:00 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experience we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We are not here to preach or teach you our religion or lack thereof. We're here to explore ways we make our careers as IT professionals mesh or at least not conflict with our religious life. This is Technically Religious Leon: 00:25 As the saying goes "To the left of me, lazy to the right of me, crazy" It's human nature to think that we know the right way that things ought to be done. This is true for us as IT folks and may even be true in our religious life. However, religion has a lot to say about how when and why you might offer correction and that may inform the ways in which we offer advice to our wayward IT brethren. I'm Leon Adato and the other voices you're going to hear on this episode are my partners in podcast crime, Josh Biggley, Josh: 00:55 Hi-di-ho, neighbor! Leon: 00:57 And Doug Johnson. Doug: 00:58 Hi, dee-ho? Leon: 01:02 Right! Now he's a resident Canadian. He's got to do that. It's like a thing. Josh: 01:06 It's true. I just want to point out before we jump in that we also have, um, IT Sistren? I don't know what the word is for that. Leon: 01:13 Yeah, no, that's true. IT, yeah. Folks, Doug: 01:16 Sistern! Leon: 01:18 No, we're not doing that. It folks. F. O. L. X. Yes, you're right. Um, Josh: 01:23 So F O L. X. Great. And now we're talking in l33t speak. This is fantastic. Leon: 01:28 No, it's, it's good. It's a thing. Doug: 01:29 Totally woke. Leon: 01:29 All right, before we dive into the actual topic, I'd like to give everyone a chance for some shameless self promotion. Josh, why don't you kick it off? Josh: 01:37 I'm Josh Biggley. I am a senior engineer of enterprise monitoring. You can find me on the Twitters at uh, at @jbiggley. I've also started up a new Twitter handle called, uh, uh, what's it called? Wait, uh, @DataGeekCA because I was, I was shamed for not having a Data Geek Canada, uh, tag. So now I do. Um, if you want, you can go to www.faithtransitions.ca and follow along with my faith transitions community, uh, for religious observance? Currently Post-Mormon transitioning into ex-Mormon. New Speaker: 02:12 Great. How about you Doug? Doug: 02:13 I'm the CTO of WaveRFID. We do inventory software as a service using a radio-frequency identifier tags to go ahead and track glasses and things in medical offices. I'm not on social media at all anymore. I just was spending way too much time on it and I decided to bail. But you can find out about our company at www.waveRFID.net and uh, I'm basically in evangelical Christian. Leon: 02:39 Great. And for those people who are scribbling down this stuff, you know that we're going to have show notes usually a day after the podcast drops so you can stop scribbling and keep listening. Um, I'm Leon Adato. I am a Head Geek at SolarWinds. Yes, that's actually my job title. It's the best one on earth. You can find me on Twitter or the Twitters, as we say at Leon Adato. You can also read my pontifications on all things technical and sometimes nontechnical at www.adatosystems.com and I identify as Orthodox Jewish sometimes to the chagrin of my Rabbi who often finds the things that I say challenging for him to have to answer for. Um, which is kind of where we are. We're talking about people sort of going off the rails and doing bad things and what we do about it or can do about it. And what I want to do is I want to first define it like any good IT person. I want to define what we're talking about. So we're not talking about really bad things, we're not talking about things that would get you into an orange jumpsuit or have you do hard time. But what are the things that we're talking about? Josh: 03:44 Oh, I'm going to do a really bad thing right now and I'm going to tell you that I found your next job. Leon: 03:49 Okay. Josh: 03:49 I was in New York city recently and I had a chance to talk with the lead Site Reliability Engineer for Marvel. Leon: 03:59 Josh: 04:01 Yes. Leon: 04:01 Josh: 04:01 For Marvel. Leon: 04:01 Okay. Josh: 04:05 This, this. If Leon ever gets fired... Doug: 04:10 This is not as rare as you might think. Leon: 04:13 Right!?! Josh: 04:15 I mean that's why I was looking out for him. Uh, Leon: 04:19 It's a thing, right? Josh: 04:20 It is a thing. Okay. So that's not a bad thing. I mean looking out for your, your fellow, um, your, your friends, uh, your colleagues and helping them find a role. Um, that's a good thing. I think you should do, you know, um, much to the chagrin of Charity Majors you should not test in prod. Leon: 04:39 Okay. Right. Yeah. People. Okay. So again, testing, testing in prod when there is a process for testing in prod I think is different than people who just try to sneak stuff in without a change control, without telling anybody they're just going to do it and hope that they, that nobody notices. That's the problem. Doug: 05:00 My dev team almost tried to do that a week ago. We, we release about once every couple of weeks and we were all set to release and there was, it was Thursday we were going to be releasing that weekend cause we released it on the weekend so we don't mess up any of our clients. And, um, there was just this one little thing that, that, uh, the product owner wanted and they said, Oh, well we can just go ahead and do that and get it done. I said, no, no, we'll do it in the next release. No, cause they're like a bunch of cowboys, you know, it's like, Oh yeah, we can just put it in and fix it. It's like, no! Bad! Fortunately, I'm CTO, so I can say "Bad. No." Leon: 05:37 Right. Okay. So that's a bad thing that people do. So there's other things though, but whether it's IT or religious or whatever, I, so one thing that I see in the Orthodox community, people who, uh, make religious decisions for other people when they really don't have the credibility to do it. Like they might have a position in the synagogue, maybe they lead really well or they're just always there and present and they feel like that gives them the right to, um, say "You ought to do blah, blah." Or "Here I can tell you how to do this thing." Um, and that's honestly, that's the job of the rabbi. That's why the rabbis there. Um, so I think that that's, that's another one of those bad things that that fits within the framework of what we're talking. Doug: 06:22 It happens with Bible instructors in Christianity, the guys who are teaching the classes and that kind of stuff, people look to them for guidance where really you should be going. The kinds of things that they talking about. You should be going to the elders or the, the, uh, pastors. Okay. Josh: 06:37 So the great irony, in Mormonism, at least at the local level, they practice lay ministry. That means that you are literally asking your plumber or your accountant for marriage advice because there is no training for clergy. Leon: 06:59 I can see that being problematic. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to trigger the post-Mormon here. I just, you know, Josh: 07:06 Too late. I'm already triggered. Doug: 07:08 Although I could, I could see the examples that the plumber would use for marriage counseling, ALL: 07:14 Doug: 07:14 Just saying. Leon: 07:14 Oh my God! . Josh: 07:15 This have anything to do with the melons? Leon: 07:19 Okay, wait, the melons are later. Don't spoil the melons. Doug: 07:25 I'm sorry. Leon: 07:27 So what are some other things moving along... Doug: 07:31 In IT, for instance, one of the things that is, uh, people who are architects for instance, tend to go ahead and just say, well, this is the only way we're, this is the way we're gonna do it no matter what. Whereas in Agile, it's supposed to be the team come suit decision. But if you've got somebody who is got strong opinions and is in a position of I'm going to put power in quotes, or even if they just have a strong personality, they can go ahead and cut the discussion short, um, way too soon. Leon: 08:04 Right. That's a bad thing. Okay. Josh: 08:06 Yeah. And I think that, that, that ties in nicely with the, the religious context of thinking that you are better than somebody else, that, that holier than thou thing. I mean, um, some, uh, some people that we meet in our careers really do think that they are gods and that what they say is they can't go wrong. And unfortunately we run into those people in our religious observance, hell, we run into those people in, you know, in our coaching experiences. In our, you know, when you're out talking, you know, geek stuff with just, they're everywhere. Don't, don't be that person. Doug: 08:47 All right. Right. On the flip side of that though, the more I learn about God, the worse I realize I am. Josh: 08:53 Yes. That is, that is true. No, no, no. I mean [inaudible] Doug: 08:56 I'm holier than nobody at this point! Leon: 09:00 Oh, so look who's nobody now, uh-huh. There's a joke that goes along with that. I'll post it in the show notes. Um, okay. And one thing that's worth mentioning just to wrap this up, the kinds of stuff that we're talking about, again, the kinds of things that we notice in our daily lives that cause us to want to issue a correction are just the low level office type cheating that you see people cheating on their time sheet, fudging on their expense reports, taking credit for work they didn't do. Doug: 09:27 Those are bad things? Leon: 09:27 Things those are, yeah, yeah, they're, they're bad. Um, those are things that, those are things that again, don't get me off track man, that really are, are meant. Those are the things that we can find difficult to avoid the impulse to want to just call them on the carpet and tell them that this is a problem. Meanwhile, there's a question about whether or not we should call whether or not we should avoid the impulse, whether that's in fact the the moment to do it. Um, but I, before we get there, I, I want to do a little bit of psychoanalysis, a little bit of sort of sociological, uh, digging. Why do these hah, don't people know better? I mean, come on. You know, these are not new concepts. We've all been on both the receiving, we've been on the receiving end of these people should know better. Why does this, why do you think these things keep happening? Josh: 10:21 So I had this conversation a couple of months ago with my friend and colleague, Zack Mutchler and Zack is a former Marine or is a Marine. I don't know how Marines refer to themselves once they aren't active anymore. Um, but he said this to me, he said, Josh, all Marines are soldiers. That's it. It doesn't make them good people. They're not any more trustworthy than anybody else. They're just Marines. Now, he did say that Marines are generally on the battlefield exemplary, but he said, stop, stop putting expectations of how you think people should behave just because they wear a particular label. And I thought, well, I mean that's interesting and maybe it's my expectations of people that are really falling down. And that is in both a religious context as well as the IT context. Like when I look at a fellow senior engineer, I have an expectation that they are going to function at a rather high level, but I'm a senior engineer after 20 years in the IT industry, someone else might be a senior engineer after six we might have the same technical knowledge, but certainly not the same context. Maybe not the same emotional maturity. Um, same business acumen. So, perhaps it's me who's,... my expectations are incorrect? Leon: 11:55 Interesting. Right? So, so just because people come from a particular community or ascribe to a particular philosophy or faith or whatever, doesn't mean that they naturally and automatically have all the traits that that group proclaims as being important or good. Josh: 12:16 Yes. You are not just a good engineer because you like Linux. Leon: 12:20 Um, okay, fine. All right. [Laughter] Took me a minute to swallow that one, but all right, so stipulated. I will take that one. Um, yeah, and I think that also says a lot about the nature of how we are all at our heart learners from, from the day we're born. We are learning. So you know, I am learning how to be, how to become a better engineer, Linux sysadmin, Jew, whatever it is, you don't automatically get like all the prizes. Um, so I can, I, I can see that, but I can also see how sometimes we want to, we want to give those traits because in some respects we need it. I need you to be that good. I need you to be that trustworthy right now and the, because you come from this group where you co you have this as part of your background that that's what I'm, I'm projecting on you, but now I need this and when you don't have it, I'm let down. And that's where the frustration can come. I also like the idea that, uh, you know, people, like you said, people are just people or as I put it a little bit more crassly Judaism has not in fact found the cure for the common asshole. Yeah. Josh: 13:34 Oh, well that's it, no, I'm going to, I'm not going to be Jewish anymore. Leon: 13:39 Okay. I just said we haven't found the cure we were looking for the cure. Yeah. No religion, no ethical point of view. No, uh, spin class. No CrossFit cult has found the, has found it. Doug: 13:56 No, I mean most people are just, I mean at most people are selfish, but I mean a lot of what we do, a lot of what religions about a lot of becoming an adult is burying some of that selfishness or at least disguising. And so that people can't tell that we're as selfish as we are. But I mean, a lot of this stuff just comes from trying to give myself a leg up over somebody else. I mean the, the whole, uh, "woke" thing now with everybody's saying, you know, you've got white privilege and therefore you should decry it and all that kind of stuff. And I'm going, nobody gives up their privilege. Right? If you were in a country that was predominantly African and Whites were, uh, the ones that were being beaten on you, would, nobody in that country would give up their black privilege. It's just not gonna happen. We can try and we can try and improve on that. We can be conscious of it. We can become better human beings, um, and, and try and make things more open for the whole world. But the reality is our bent is to go ahead and take care of ourselves, our kids, our family, our tribe first. And a lot of the stuff that comes to that is because of that. Leon: 15:13 Well, well that's, that's certainly part of the biological imperative. I also think that when we talk about privilege specifically, it's not so much give up your privilege as A) acknowledge it. Don't just say that, Hey, it all is mine and you can be yours too. Like, no, sometimes there are really strong societal factors that block it, but also, um, I won't say, nobody's saying give up the white privilege. What I am saying is that, um, to acknowledge and then use the privilege to create a more just and a more equal environment moving forward, which sounds like giving up privilege, but it is the same thing as saying, well if I, if I have this one candle and I light more candles, I'm not actually giving up light. Like, it doesn't diminish it. And that's the same thing. You know, when you use your privilege to open up the space for other people, you aren't in fact losing anything. Doug: 16:10 Right. But I think I, you know, it's not, I don't think it is most people's bent to do that. We have to work at that. That's why that's why we're doing this show. I mean the reality is it's stuff that we think about. It's because we are working on it as you said, cause we're learners. Um, not everybody is. Some people are just perfectly happy to just take everything that they can possibly get and just kind of crank on the lawn. There's a lot of people like that. Josh: 16:37 I think there's a lot of, a lot of people in the world too who are generally good people and for me this is, this is the hardest one where you find people that do mostly good things and then they justify doing that one bad thing. And I don't mean I do mostly good things and then one day I suddenly decide that I'm going to, I'm going a pocket a candy bar while I'm in the store. I mean, I do mostly good things and then one day I do a really despicable, awful thing. When that happens, whether by choice or circumstance, which leads you to a choice. That's a really a really challenging thing to be the person who decides to do that bad thing. And when we look from the outside and say, Oh that, I can't believe that Josh did that horrible thing. Inside I'm saying, yeah, but it was, it was just a little thing. Context. Justin Trudeau is the prime minister in Canada. We are currently in the midst of an election and it has come to light that Justin Trudeau, uh, dressed in black face a number of times, not once, not twice, not three times, but he doesn't remember how many times it occurred. And to him, he's saying, well, that was me then. This is me now. And on the outside we're saying, Oh my goodness. Now, um, I'm not going to tell you where I weigh in on that debate because I don't think it matters. It's, at least in Justin's mind it sounds like he saying, but I mostly do good things, but I did one bad thing. Leon: 18:29 So there's an interesting concept, uh, from the Jewish standpoint about free will and without going too deeply into it. And for those people who want to look it up and put in the show notes, rabbi Akiva Tatz has some interesting thoughts on this, but the, uh, the free will is you don't express your free will when you put on your socks in the morning or where you pick your cereal. That's not freewill. That's habit. Even if you pick Lucky Charms instead of frosted flakes or whatever, that's still not freewill. Freewill exists in a very particular point in our lives where we make a decision that challenges us in some way. So when you woke up in the morning you had to think really hard and make a really extended effort not to go out on the street and knock over an old lady and steal her purse. Right. Josh: 19:16 I did! Leon: 19:18 Okay. That's probably not okay. That's probably not where we're at, but there are people who wake up and that is a challenging question. Not because they're bad people, but you know because there's a circumstance because there's a context because of whatever and the decision not to go rob somebody is a very challenging one. That is the point at which their free will is operating. Saying that their free will allows them to go to their place of worship and pray about, that is light years ahead in the same that for me going to a Yeshiva like my boys do and learning all day is beyond my skills and capabilities. And to put that standard on me is, is unfair where I am at personally with my line of freewill, that's the battleground. That is that line and it moves back and forth. So what you're talking about, Josh is somebody for whom that battleground was in a particular place at a particular time and that battleground has shifted. And so that saying that's not who I am right now is in fact true, but at the same time it is who you were and there's a level of responsibility that we bear for that. Now what that is is also an interesting conversation both religiously and also, you know, in tech and things like that. You know, I am somebody who, uh, did not and purposely did not declare variables before using them. Doug: 20:47 I'm not even going to go there. Yes, I know. I've known that. I've known this about Leon for decades. Leon: 20:53 Yes, yes. It was something I proudly, I did proudly. And, uh, that is no longer the point at which I struggle. So there's, but there, yeah, Josh has a look on his face for those people listening. Josh has look, like he doesn't even know who I am anymore. He's not even sure we can be friends. Josh: 21:12 In fact, I was thinking that very thing. I don't know if we can be friends anymore, Leon. Leon: 21:16 But again, my point is, is that, um, but, but just to, to pull it back around again, you know, why do people do these bad things? So in some cases, this is the point at which their struggle is at, this happens to be their struggle point and, and they're going to go back and forth and they're going to work really hard at it and, and hopefully they make progress in the correct and the good right direction about it. That's one thing. Why else? Again, I'm going to get us back on track. Why else do people, uh, you know, fall into these traps? Doug: 21:47 Peer pressure. I mean, everybody else around you is doing it. Um, in fact, that that can even happen in religious communities. The whole, um, you can have situations where, um, in Christianity we're supposed to reach out to people regardless of their sin, because the whole point is to save people from their sin. And yet there are certain people who if they show up in the church, um, you know, they're going to be, they will be shunned by the people who are there, even though this is a person who you can, should actually be meeting where they are. Um, you know, there, I mean there's, there's, there are specific churches that reach out to people who were on drugs or to the homeless or to all these that other churches would have nothing to do with. And that should, and is that wrong? Well, it's not wrong if you look at everybody else in your church, and that's what people are doing, they're going, well, you know, yeah, we'll, we'll go down and help the homeless as long as we drive to where they are and they don't come to our church. Leon: 22:52 Right, right. Josh: 22:53 So back in 2013, uh, uh, uh, a Mormon Bishop, uh, named David Musselman, um, he dressed up as a, as a homeless man and walked into his congregation and he was, aghast at the response that he got from his congregants. Um, I mean for some people he, you know, he got, he got great responses from, you know, uh, offers, uh, food, um, offers of assistance. But he also had, he also had people who wanted him to leave because he didn't fit, um, he didn't fit that, that model. He wasn't wearing a suit and he wasn't clean. Yeah. The hub, that pressure to conform is real. Leon: 23:50 So I've seen that. I've seen that in communities where, uh, it's not even the, the individual. The thing is we don't want to become the synagogue where those people come. Where, you know, we don't want to be known as the synagogue for, for those kinds of people. And "those kinds of people" is an interesting mix. But you know, so we will do things which subtly let those people know this isn't their place, you know, and it can be everything from not calling page numbers, like just not calling page numbers. If you don't know where you are, probably not your place, you know, those kinds of things. Josh: 24:30 I would suggest that our listeners go out and I would love to see some vigorous debate on the Stanford Prison Experiment and the Milgram Experiment at Yale University. Um, the latter of which involved, uh, someone in authority telling, uh, telling a volunteer to shock an individual in another room. Uh, I mean there's, there's, there will be volumes written on these two particular experiments, but I think they tie in nicely to that pressure to conform. Leon: 25:02 Okay, great. Um, okay, so moving along, uh, now that we have a sense or we've explored a little bit why people do do that, what does religion specifically say about how we should address these kinds of things? Again, we see it happening, it bothers us, and now we have an urge to go do something about it, to address that person or to to act in some way. What does our religious, uh, framework tell us about what we ought to be doing? Josh: 25:35 I mean, Jesus went into the temple with a cat o' nine tails and turned over the tables of the money changers and kicked them all out. Isn't that how we respond? This is why I work remote. I'm just going to point that out. [Laughter] Doug: 25:48 So if you're the Messiah, I think you can get away with stuff like that. How's that? Josh: 25:52 Okay. Leon: 25:55 I got, I got nothing. Doug: 25:57 It's different rules. But uh, in Christianity, um, in Matthew 18, basically it says, if your brother sins against you, you should go to him. And if you can win him back, you know, you go to him privately and if you can win him back, then you've won your brother. If he refuses to hear you, then you go back with two or three others so that all of the facts can be, you know, in public. And if he still refuses, then you take him before the church and if he still refuses to go ahead and repent, then you basically, you treat him like a tax collector and a, Oh, I forgot what the other word is. But in any case, but you don't kick him out of the church, but he's no longer one of your brothers. You don't treat him that way. Josh: 26:42 So Christianity sounds like the Mob. Doug: 26:44 Well it is to a certain extent except that you know, it is your brother has sinned against you. So this is, yeah. Leon: 26:52 Right. Okay. So, and that was the point I was going to bring up is that this is where you're saying somebody has wronged you in some way and so you of course have, I'm going to say the right, but you, you have the, the option of saying, Hey, this really bothers me and I need you to do something about it. You know, and the person you know has to, has to face up to it. That's interesting. What's interesting about this is that, uh, in the Jewish tradition, the focus that you just described is actually the opposite, the opposite way about what repentance is. That if you have something you need to repent for, there's this process. And the first thing is first of all, acknowledge to yourself that you did something wrong. And the second thing is to apologize to tell the person that you have wronged that you know you've done this. The third thing is to compensate. And so if possible, you know, to repair the thing that was broken or to pay for a replacement, whatever it is, can compensate. But then there's a fourth step and repentance is not complete until the fourth step occurs. And that's when given the opportunity to make the same mistake, the same sin again, you don't. And that until that occurs, you have not really fully repented. And there's a whole sense of, you know, waiting for this moment to come where it's like, Oh, this is just like the last time, except now I'm going to be doing, I'm going to do it differently. And that's what proves it. So to go back, Josh, to your point about the person who was dressing up in blackface, if given the opportunity to dress up that way, again, if they chose not to, that might be again, assuming all the other stuff had been done, you know, and it was sincere and all that stuff. But it's interesting that those are two sides of the same coin, right? One is when you have been wronged, what do you ask the other person to do? And hopefully they will take the lead and go ahead and on the other side, if you've done wrong, now you've got this, this problem, this feeling and I need to do something with it. I needed to act. So how do I do that? So having said that, the, the process for rebuke, the process for giving somebody a, you know, a correction in Judaism is again, like most things pretty, uh, pretty well organized. And it says first of all that if you see someone, if you see a friend walking a bad path, so it's not about someone doing something to you, you see them walking a bad path, um, then it is a commandment. It's a mitzvah. But that means commandment to return them to the good. If you don't, you are liable for the punishment of the sins your friend committed. Basically by failing to do something, by failing to act, you are ha you have ownership of the bad stuff they do because you could have stopped him. However, there's a whole series of buts that go along this. You have to get this rebuke privately and gently, okay, not publicly, not out. You know, and you have to do it for the person's good. That means that you have to make sure that in your heart there is no ounce of glee. There's no ounce of excitement that Oh, I finally give to give him what for and whatever that you have to be able to do it for their good and their good only. That you have to do it with love and you have to know for a fact that the person you're doing this to, you're giving this rebuke is going to hear it in the spirit that you mean it. And if any of those conditions is not true, then you are commanded not to say a word. Ever. Because you are going to do more harm than good. And I find that deeply interesting that you know, it starts off by saying, Hey, if you see him doing something wrong, it is your commandment is your obligation to fix it or else it's on you. Like they go and do something bad now your libel, but you've got to have this whole relationship. And if you don't have this whole relationship back off, be quiet. And, and the reason why I like that is because the implication it has in it in our technical lives, right? And when we started putting together this, this episode, I was thinking about code review, I was thinking about when I'm picking a Doug's code and like, Hey, Hey, there's this, you know how you could do that better? Hey that active directory design. Yeah, no, we could, you know what gives you any right to butt your nose into somebody else's design or on the other hand you see bad code. If you see something, say something like, which is it? Doug: 31:27 Well it comes down to a lot of what you were talking about. Do you have, um, do you have a stake in the game? Okay. If you're on the team that's making this code and it's all our code and code reviews are part of what we do, which they should be because we're a team, please. Okay. Then the reality is it is my job. It is my commandment to go ahead and do a code review to help you to improve your code, to make our code better. However, if I'm just wandering by some other team and I look over and I see their code, I, you know, I'm just a jerk. If I jumped in, Josh: 32:14 This feels to me like the backfire effect. So I'm, I'm just going to read the quote because I think the quote to me does a better job at explaining it than, than I ever could. "The backfire effect as claim to be that when in the face of contradictory evidence established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger." And so I thought, wa what? What does that mean? Like when someone lays evidence in front of you and says, Josh, the earth is not flat and I aren't, am I going to be like, Oh, Oh yeah, you're right. Or am I just going to dig in? And all joking aside, this is fundamentally the challenge I had with Mormonism. Now remember I was a practicing Mormon for 41 years, very devout, very, I'll even use the term Orthodox in my views. And when people would present contradictory information to me, I would go through a period of cognitive dissonance and then would realign the things that I thought I knew or was presented with now, uh, with the things that I did know, and I would just dig in stronger that that backfire effect is very real. And I remember a very specific case where I was in Las Vegas, had a couple stop myself and my companion when we were missionaries and invite us over. They said, Hey, we want to share some information with you. You know, we had a great discussion and we said, do you have any questions? And then they drop some questions on me that at 19 years old I had never heard in my entire life, but my, my response was to just dig in. So I mean, how, how do we prevent this backfire effect in our careers because it, if it happens, it is downright toxic. So how do we stop this backfire effect in our career? Leon: 34:17 One point that was clarified in that definition, um, is that this the backfire effect doesn't occur when you say your right blinker is broken. You know, it doesn't occur when you say, you know, we're out of Frosted Flakes, Lucky Charms will be fine or whatever. It only occurs when you are, um, providing contradictory evidence to somebody's deepest held beliefs to the things that they feel are central or core to who they are. So, you know, to take some hot button issues, tabs versus spaces, you know, Doug is making...[laughter] Doug: 34:57 Don't go there! Leon: 35:06 You know how to pronounce the Graphics Interchange Format, abbreviation. Josh: 35:10 Um, you obviously do not know how I feel about Lucky Charms cause you brought that up at the beginning and we come to the flippant thing and I just... Leon: 35:22 Right, I've lost you. Right? Again, you're digging in like now it's like honey, buy 10 more boxes! Right? So it's, it is when we challenged somebody's deepest held beliefs, which means that we have an obligation when we are offering correction, whether it's in our religious, moral, ethical communities or in our it communities to understand other people's motivations that, you know, are you just saying, you know, I really think that a for loop is going to work better here. You know, or does this person for whatever reason, have a deeply held belief that you know, case, you know, that the switch construct is really fundamentally better in some way. Josh: 35:58 I mean, data doesn't lie. I would say run them head to head. I mean that's just me, right? I, I, I have, I've built my entire career off of being wrong or more correctly. I have built my entire career off of not knowing. My, my second job in IT was given to me because I said, I don't know. Um, I mean for, for me, it, there are a few times that this Backfire Effect has, has gripped me and made me into a monster. But by and large, I I think as IT professionals, we need to be open to being taught more often than we need to then we need to teach. Doug: 36:42 Although one should point out that a Canadian monster is like, you know, still a fluffy puppy. Leon: 36:47 It's still the stay Puft marshmallow man that is literally the, you know, the embodiment of the Canadian Monster. Josh: 36:54 Snuffaluffagus? That's the Canadian monster. Leon: 36:54 Rampaging Snuffaluffagus. Right. So, uh, yeah, but again, I think that Josh, your point is well taken that, that we as it professionals need to remember to be flexible to remember that we are lifelong learners. At the same time, what we're talking about is when we ourselves are confronting somebody else who may not have come to terms with that. And when we see that we are challenging, again, not their belief in which, you know, code editor they should use, although that can be a religious war also. Um, I'm just picking them today when they're, you know, it's, I'll just be generic when, when it's not when we're picking something trivial or minor, but rather when we're picking something that is a foundational belief that that Backfire Effect comes to being that we need to possibly use all the structures that we just talked about, about who's the person to deliver that message and how that message can be delivered so that the person can hear it in the right way that it's meant and that they can grow and improve. Doug: 38:02 As a senior dev. A lot of the work that I've had to do on teams is basically to coach junior devs. And the hardest part of that is that they're just so darn enthusiastic. Um, there they just be a little more jaded. Well, I mean the PR and the thing, I had one guy that just would not code out. It was crap code, but boy, he'd get it out fast. And so, you know, the trick then was to go ahead and help him, him to improve, to give him reasons why there are better ways to go ahead and do this. Speed is not the only thing that you worry about. And, but without breaking his little spirit, you know, and it's just, you know, it's the, it's exactly the, you know, there are steps that you go through where you're just saying, okay, how am I going to phrase this in a way that is not critical, but they can see that there's a room for improvement that they can then possibly grab hold of it. And so, you know, your goal then is as a coach to go ahead and help them become a better developer without having them hate you. In the meantime. Destiny: 39:06 Thanks for making time for us this week to hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, TechnicallyReligious.com where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect to us on social media Josh: 39:19 In the Bible, Matthew records by their fruits, you shall know them. Doug: 39:23 So ironically, we're not supposed to be judges, but we're supposed to be fruit inspectors?!? Josh: 39:29 Doug, are you looking at my melons? Leon: 39:32 [Laughter] I cannot be having this conversation.
Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast
James: Hey listeners, this is James Kandasamy. Welcome to Achieve Wealth Podcast. Achieve Wealth Podcast focuses on value at real estate investing across different commercial asset class and we focus on interviewing a lot of operators so that you know, I can learn and you can learn as well. So today I have Omar Khan who has been on many podcasts but I would like to go into a lot more details into is underwriting and market analysis that he has. So Omar is a CFA, has more than 10 years investing across real estate and commodities. He has experience in the MNA transaction worth 3.7 billion, Syndicated Lodge a multi-million deal across the U.S. and he recently closed a hundred thirty plus something units in Jacksonville, Florida. Hey Omar, welcome to the show. Omar: Hey, thank you James. I'm just trying to work hard to get to your level man. One of these days. James: That's good. That's a compliment. Thank you Omar. So why not you tell our audience anything that I would have missed out about you and your credibility. Omar: I think you did a good job. If I open my mouth my credibility might go down. James: Yes, that's good. That's good. So let's go a bit more details. So you live in Dallas, right? I think you're, I mean if I've listened to you on other podcasts and we have talked before the show you came from Canada to Dallas and you bought I think you have been looking for deals for some time right now. And you recently bought in Jacksonville. Can you tell about the whole flow in a quick summary? Omar: Oh, yes. Well the quick summary is man that you know, when you're competing against people who's operating strategy is a hope and a prayer, you have to look [inaudible01:54] Right? James: Absolutely. Omar: I mean, and hey just to give you a full disclosure yesterday there was actually a smaller deal in Dallas. It's about a hundred and twenty something units. And I mean we were coming in at 10-point some million dollars. And just to get into best and final people were paying a million dollars more than that, and I'm not talking just a million dollars more than I was trying to be cheap. The point was, at a million dollar more than that there is freaking no way you could hit your numbers, like mid teens that are already 10% cash-on-cash. Like literally, they would have to find a gold mine right underneath their apartment. So my point is it's kind of hard man. But what are you going to do about it? Right? James: Yes. Yes. Omar: Just have to keep looking. You have to keep finding. You have to keep being respectful of Brokers' times. Get back to them. You just keep doing the stuff. I mean you would do it every day pretty much. James: Yes. Yes. I just think that there's so much capital flow out there. They are a lot of people who expect less, lower less return. Like you say you are expecting mid teen IRR, there could be someone there out there expecting 10 percent IRR and they could be the one who's paying that $1,000,000. Right? And maybe the underwriting is completely wrong, right? Compared to-- I wouldn't say underwriting is wrong. I mean, I think a lot of people-- Omar: Well you can say that James you don't have to be a nice person. You can say it. James: I'm just saying that everybody thinks, I mean they absolutely they could be underwriting wrong, too or they may be going over aggressively on the rent growth assumption or property tax growth assumption compared to what you have. At the same time they could have a much lower expectation on-- Omar: Yes. I mean let's hope that's the case because if they have a higher expectation man, they're going to crash and burn. James: Absolutely. Omar: I hope, I really hope they have a low expectation. James: Yes. Yes. I did look at a chart recently from Marcus and Millichap the for Texas City where they show us how that's like a San Antonio, Austin, Dallas and Houston and if you look at Dallas, you know, the amount of acceleration in terms of growth is huge, right? And then suddenly it's coming down. I mean all markets are coming down slightly right now, but I'm just hopefully, you know, you can see that growth to continue in all this strong market. Omar: No, no, don't get me wrong, when I said somebody paid more than 1 million just to get into best and final, that has no merits on, that is not a comment on the state of the Dallas Market. I personally feel Dallas is a fantastic Market. Texas overall, all the big four cities that you mentioned are fantastic but my point is there is nothing, no asset in the world that is so great that you can pay an infinite price for it. And there's nothing so bad in the world that if it wasn't for a cheap enough price, you wouldn't want to buy it. James: Correct, correct. Omar: I mean that that's what I meant. I didn't mean it was a comment on the state of the market. James: Got it. Got it. So let's come to your search outside of the Texas market, right? So how did you choose, how did you go to Jacksonville? Omar: Well, number one the deal is I didn't want to go to a smaller city. I'm not one of those guys, you know in search of [inaudible05:11] I find everybody every time somebody tells me I'm looking for a higher cap rate, I was like, why do you like to get shot every time you go to the apartment building? You want to go to the ghetto? Do you want somebody to stab you in the stomach? Is that because that's-- James: That's a lot of deals with a higher cap rate. Omar: Yes. There's a lot because I was like man, I can find you a lot of deals with really high cap rates. James: Yes. Omar: But you might get stabbed. Right? James: And they are set class 2 which has higher cap rate. Omar: Oh, yes, yes, yes. James: So I think people just do not know what a cap rate means or how-- Omar: Yes and people you know, all these gurus tell you today, I mean let's not even get into that right. So specifically for us like I wanted to stand at least a secondary, tertiary market [inaudible 05:48] I mean like, any City over at least eight, nine hundred thousand at least a million, somewhere in that range, right? James: Okay. Omar: And specifically look, after Texas it was really Florida. Because look, you could do the whole Atlanta thing. I personally, I love Atlanta but it's a toss-up between Atlanta and say either of the three metros in Florida or Jackson. Lords in Central Florida, Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando. You know based on my [inaudible06:11] experience I was doing this stuff portfolio management anyways, I kind of ran smaller factor model for all the cities where I took in different sort of factors about 30 different factors. And then you know, you kind of just have to do all the site tours and property visits to make all those relationships. And what I see across the board was, I mean Tampa has a great Market, but for the same quality product for the same demographic of tenant, for the same say rent level, Tampa was 20 to 25% more expensive on a per pound basis. James: Okay. Omar: Let's say a Jacksonville, right? Orlando is kind of in the middle where the good deals were really expensive or rather the good areas were a bit too dear for us and the bad areas were nicely priced and everybody then tells you, "Oh it's Florida." right? James: No, no. Omar: But what they don't tell you is there's good and bad parts of Florida-- James: There's submarket. Yes Yes. Omar: Right? So you got to go submarket by submarket. And then lastly what we were basically seeing in Jacksonville was, it was very much a market which like for instance in Atlanta and seeing parts of say Orlando and Tampa, you can have to go block by block street by street. But if you're on the wrong side of the street, man you are screwed, pretty much. James: Absolutely. Omar: But Jacksonville to a certain degree, obviously not always, was very similar to Dallas in the sense that there is good areas and then there's a gradual shift into a not as a [inaudible07:29] Right? So basically what you kind of had to do was name the submarket properly and if you had a higher chance of success than for instance [inaudible07:38] right down to the street corner, right? And then like I said the deals we were seeing, the numbers just made more sense in Jacksonville for the same level of demographic, for the same type of tenant, for the same income level, for the same vintage, for the same type of construction. So Jacksonville, you know, we started making relationships in all the markets but Jacksonville is where we got the best bang for our buck and that's how we moved in. James: Okay. So I just want to give some education to the listener. So as what Omar and I were talking about, not the whole city that you are listening to is hot, right. So, for example, you have to really look at the human capital growth in certain parts of the city, right? So for example in Dallas, not everywhere Dallas is the best area to invest. You may have got a deal in Dallas but are you buying in it in a place where there's a lot of growth happening? Right? Like for example, North Dallas is a lot of growth, right? Compared to South Dallas, right? In Atlanta that's I-20 that runs in between Atlanta and there's a difference between, you cross the I-20 is much, you know a lot of price per pound or price per door. It's like a hundred over door and below Atlanta is slightly lower, right? So it's growing, but it may grow it may not grow. I mean right now the market is hot, everything grows. So you can buy anywhere and make money and you can claim that, hey I'm making money, but as I say market is-- Omar: [inaudible09:03] repeatable [inaudible09:04] By the way I look at it, is hey is this strategy repeatable? Can I just rinse and repeat this over and over and over? James: Correct. Correct. I mean it depends on sponsor's cases. While some sponsors will buy because price per dollar is cheap, right? But do they look at the back end of it when the market turns, right? Some sponsors will be very very scared to buy that kind of deal because we always think about, what happens when the market turns, right? So. Omar: Yes, James and the other thing that I've seen is that, look, obviously, we're not buying the most highest quality product. James: Correct. Omar: But what I've seen is a lot of times when people focus on price per unit, say I will go for the cheapest price per unit. Well, there's a reason why it's cheap because you know, there's a reason why Suzuki is cheaper than a Mercedes. Now, I'm not saying you have to go buy a Mercedes because sometimes you only need to buy a Suzuki. Right? I mean that's the way it is, but you got to have to be cognizant that just because something is cheap doesn't mean it's more valuable and just because something is more expensive doesn't mean it's less than. James: Correct. Correct. Correct. And price per door is one I think one of the most flawed metrics that people are talking about. Price per door and also how many doors do people own? Omar: And also cap rate, man. [inaudible 10:09] James: Cap rate, price per door and-- Omar: How many doors have you got? James: How many doors do you have? Three metrics is so popular, there is so much marketing happening based on these three metrics. I mean for me you can take it and throw it into the trash paper, right? Omar: The way I look at it is I would much rather have one or two really nice things, as opposed to 10 really crappy things. James: Correct. Correct. Correct. Like I don't mind buying a deal in Austin for a hundred a door compared to buying a same deal in a strong Market in another-- like for example, North Atlanta, right? I would rather buy it in Austin. It's just different market, right? So. Absolutely different. So price per door, number of doors and cap rate, especially entry cap rate, right? I went back and cap rate you can't really predict, right? So it's a bit hard to really predict all that. But that's-- Omar: Yes but my point is with all of these things you have, and when people tell me cap rate I'm like, look, are you buying stabilized properties? Because that's the only time you can apply this. James: Correct. Correct. Omar: Otherwise, what you really going to have to look at is how much upside do I have because at the end of the day, you know this better than I do. Regardless of what somebody says, what somebody does, everything is valued on [inaudible11:15] James: Correct. Omar: Pretty much. You can say it's a low cap rate and the broker will tell you, well yes the guy down the street bought it for a hundred and fifty thousand a unit so you got to pay me a hundred fifty, right? And then that's the end of the conversation. James: Yes. Omar: Literally, I mean that is the end of the conversation, right? What are you going to do about it? James: Yes. Correct. I mean the Brokers they have a fiduciary responsibility to market their product as much as possible, but I think it's our responsibility as Sponsor to really underwrite that deal to make sure that-- Omar: Oh yes. James: --what is the true potential. Omar: And look, to be honest with you sometimes the deal, that is say a hundred and fifty thousand dollars a unit might actually be a better deal-- James: Oh absolutely. Omar: [inaudible 11:51] fifty thousand dollars a unit. I mean, you don't know till you run the numbers. James: Correct. Absolutely. Absolutely. I've seen deals which I know a hundred sixty a door and still have much better deal than something that you know, I can buy for 50 a door, right? So. You have to underwrite all deals. There's no such thing as cap rate or no, such thing as price per door. I mean you can use price per door to a certain level. Omar: [inaudible 12:15] in this market what is the price per door? That's the extent of what you might potentially say, in the submarket. James: Correct. Omar: All the comps are trading at 75,000 a door. Why is this at 95 a door? James: Yes. Omar: That's it. James: I like to look at price per door divided by net square, rentable square footage because that would neutralize all measurements. Omar: Yes, see, you know we had a little back and forth on this, I was talking to my Analyst on this but my point is that I would understand [inaudible 12:46] at least to my mind. Okay. I'm not, because I know a lot of Brokers use it. James: Sure. Omar: In my mind that would apply to say, Commercial and Industrial properties more. But any time I've gone to buy or say rent an apartment complex, I never really go and say like, hmm the rent is $800. It's 800 square feet. Hmm on a per square foot basis. I'm getting one dollar and then I go-- James: No, no, no, I'm not talking about that measurement. I'm talking about price per door divided by square footage rentable because that would neutralize between you have like whether you have a lot of smaller units, or whether you have a larger unit and you have to look-- but you have to plot it based on location. Right? So. Omar: Yes, so you know as you get into those sort of issues right? Well, is it worth more than that corner? James: Yes. Yes. You're right. Yes. You have to still do rent comes and analyze it. Omar: Yes. James: So let's all-- Omar: I mean look, I get it, especially I think it works if you know one or two submarkets really well. Then you can really-- James: Correct. Correct. That's like my market I know price because I know the market pretty well. I just ask you this information, just tell me price per door. How much average square feet on the units and then I can tell you very quickly because I know the market pretty well. Omar: Because you know your Market, because you already know all the rents. You already know [crosstalk13:57] James: [crosstalk13:57] You have to know the rent. I said you have to build that database in your mind, on your spreadsheet to really underwrite things very quickly. So that's good. So let's go back to Jacksonville, right? So you looked-- what are the top three things that you look at when you chose Jacksonville at a high level in terms of like the macroeconomic indicators? Omar: Oh see, I wasn't necessarily just looking at Jackson. What I did is I did a relative value comparison saying what is the relative value I get in Jacksonville versus a value say I get in a Tampa, Atlanta or in Orlando and how does that relatively compare to each other? James: So, how do you measure relative-- Omar: What I did is for instance for a similar type of say vintage, right? Say a mid 80s, mid 70s vintage, and for a similar type of median income which was giving me a similar type of rent. Say a median income say 40 Grand a year or 38 to 40 Grand a year resulting in an average rate of about $800. Right? And a vintage say mid 70s, right? Board construction. Now what am I getting, again this is very basic maths, right? This is not I'm not trying to like make up. James: Yes. Absolutely. Omar: A model out of this, right? So the basic math is, okay what is the price per unit I'm getting in say, what I have a certain crime rating, I have a certain median income rating and I have a certain amount of growth rating. And by growth I mean not just some market growth, [inaudible 15:21] are Elementary Schools nearby? Are there shopping and amenities nearby? Is Transportation accessible, you know, one or two highways that sort of stuff. Right? So for those types of similar things in specific submarkets, [inaudible 15:33] Jacksonville had three, Tampa had two and Orlando had three and Atlanta had four, right? What is the average price per unit I'm facing for similar type of demographics with a similar type of rent profile? With similar type of growth profile I mean you just plot them on a spreadsheet, right? And with the similar type of basically, you know how they performed after 2008 and when I was looking at that, what I was looking at again, is this precise? No, it's not a crystal ball. But these are just to wrap your head around a certain problem. Right? You have to frame it a certain way. James: Okay. Omar: And what I was seeing across the board was that it all boils down to when you take these things because at the end of the day, all you're really concerned is what price am I getting this at, right? Once you normalize for all the other things, right? James: Correct. Correct. Omar: Right? And what I was seeing was just generally Jacksonville, the pricing was just like I said compared to Tampa which by the way is a fantastic market, right? But pricing was just 15 to 20% below Tampa. I mean Tampa pricing is just crazy. I mean right now I can look at the flyer and tell you their 60s and mid 70s vintage is going for $130,000 $120,000 a unit in an area where the median income is 38 to 40 Grand. James: Why is that? Omar: I don't know. It's not one of this is that the state Tampa is actually a very good market, okay. Let's be [inaudible 16:47] it's very good market. It's a very hot market now. People are willing to pay money for that. Right? So now maybe I'm not the one paying money for it, but there's obviously enough people out there that are taking that back. So. James: But why is that? Is it because they hope that Tampa is going to grow because-- Omar: Well, yes. Well if Tampa doesn't grow they're all screwed James. James: No, but are they assuming that growth or are they seeing something that we are not seeing? Because, if people are earning 30, 40 thousand median household income and the amount of apartment prices that much, they could be some of the metrics that they are seeing that they think-- Omar: Well, yes. Tampa's growth has been off the charts in the past few years, right? James: Okay. Okay. Omar: So what look-- first of all this is the obvious disclaimer is I don't know what I don't know. Right? So I don't know what everybody else is looking at. Our Tampa's growth has been off the charts, there is a lot of development and redevelopment and all that stuff happening in the wider metro area. So people are underwriting five, six, seven, eight percent growth. James: Okay. So the growth is being-- Omar: No, the growth is very-- look the growth has been very high so far. James: Okay. Got it. Omar: My underlying assumption is, as I go in with the assumption that the growth must be high but as soon as I get in the growth will go down. James: But why is that growth? I mean that is specific macroeconomic. Omar: Oh yes, yes. There's first of all, there's a port there, number one. The port -- James: In Tampa. Okay. You're talking about Jacksonville or Tampa right now? Omar: No, I'm talking Tampa. James: Okay. Omar: Jacksonville also has it, but Tampa also has it, okay. James: Okay. Got it. Got it. Omar: Tampa is also fast becoming, Tampa and Orlando by the way are connected with this, what is it? I to or I for whatever, it's connected by. So they're faster like, you know San Antonio and Austin how their kind of converging like this? James: Correct. Correct. Omar: Tampa and Orlando are sort of converging like this. James: Got it. Got it. Omar: Number one. Number two, they're very diversified employment base, you know all the typical Medical, Government, Finance, Healthcare all of that sort of stuff, right? Logistics this and that. And plus the deal is man, they're also repositioning themselves as a tourist destination and they've been very successful at it. James: Okay. Omar: Because there's lots to do you know you have a nice beach. So, you know that kind of helps all this, right? Have a nice beach. James: Correct. Correct. Omar: Really nice weather, you know. So they're really positioning it that way and it also helps that you've got Disneyland which is about 90 minutes away from you in Orlando. So you can kind of get some of the acts things while you come to Tampa you enjoy all the stuff here. Because Orlando relative to Tampa is not, I mean outside of Disneyland there's not a lot to do though. But a lot of like nightlife and entertainment and all that. James: But I also heard from someone saying that like Orlando because it is more of a central location of Florida and because of all the hurricane and people are less worried about hurricane in the central because it you know, it has less impact. Omar: James. James. James: Can you hear me? Omar: When people don't get a hurricane, they are not going to be the people who get the hurricane. Other people get hurricanes. Not us. James: Correct, correct. Omar: But that's not always the case but that's the assumption. James: Okay. By Tampa is the same case as well? Like, you know because of-- Omar: I don't know exactly how many hurricanes they've got but look man, they seem to be doing fine. I mean if they receive the hurricane they seem to be doing very fine after a hurricane. James: Okay. Okay. So let's go to Jacksonville, that's a market that did not exist in the map of hotness, of apartment and recently in the past three, four years or maybe more than that. Maybe you can tell me a lot more history than that. Why did it pop out as a good market to invest as an apartment? Omar: Well, because Jackson actually, we talk to the Chamber of Commerce actually about this. And the Chamber of Commerce has done a fantastic job in attracting people, number one. Because first of all Florida has no state income tax. What they've also done is a very low otherwise state a low or minimum tax environment [inaudible20:29] What they've also done is, they reconfigured their whole thing as a logistical Center as well. So they already had the military and people always used to say, oh Tampa, Jacksonville's got a lot of military, but it turns out military's only 11% of the economy now. James: Okay. Okay. Omar: So they've reposition themselves as a leading Health Care Center provider, all that sort of, Mayo Clinic has an offshoot there by the way, just to let you know. It's a number one ranked Hospital. James: Oh Mayo Clinic. Okay. Okay. We always wonder what is Mayo Clinic, but now you clarified that. Omar: Right? So Mayo Clinic is in Rochester I think. One of my wise colleagues is there actually. Think it's in Rochester Minnesota. It's one of the leading hospitals in the world. James: Okay. Got it. Omar: And now they've actually had an offshoot in basically Jacksonville, which is the number one ranked Hospital in Florida. Plus they've got a lot of good healthcare jobs. They've really repositioned themselves not only as a great Port because the port of Jacksonville is really good and they're really expanding their ports. You know Chicon, the owner of Jacksonville Jaguars, man he's going crazy. He is spending like two or three or four billion dollars redeveloping everything. James: Got it. Got it. Omar: [inaudible 21:32] what they've done is because of their location, because they're right, I mean Georgia is about 90 minutes away, Southern Georgia, right? And now you have to go into basically, Florida and basically go to the Panhandle. What they've also done is because of their poor, because of their transportation Network and then proximity to the East Coast they repositioned themselves as a Logistical Center as well. James: Got it. That's what I heard is one of the big drivers for Jacksonville. And I also heard about the opening of Panama Canal has given that option from like importing things from China. It's much, much faster to go through Panama Canal and go through Jacksonville. Omar: Oh, yes. James: Makes it a very good distribution centre. Omar: Because the other board right after Jacksonville in which by the way is also going through a big redevelopment and vitalization is Savannah, Georgia. James: Okay. Yes. Omar: [inaudible 22:17] big enough and I think Jacksonville does something like, I mean don't quote me on this but like 31% of all the cars that are imported into the U.S. come through the Jacksonville Port. So there's a lot of activity there, right? But they've really done a good job. The Government there has done a fantastic job in attracting all this talent and all these businesses. James: Okay. Okay. Got it. So let me recap on the process that you came to Jacksonville and going to the submarket. So you looked at a few big hot markets for apartments and looked at similar characteristics for that submarket that you want like for closer to school, in a good location and you look at the deal flow that you are getting from each of these markets. And then you, I mean from your assessment Jacksonville has a good value that you can go and buy right now for that specific demographic of location I guess, right? Omar: Look I love Atlanta as well. I was actually in Atlanta a few weeks ago looking at some, touring some properties. So that doesn't mean Atlanta isn't good or say Tampa or Orlando is good. We were just finding the best deals in Jacksonville. James: Okay. Okay. So the approach you're taking is like basically looking at the market and shifting it to look for deals in specific locations of submarket where you think there is a good value to be created rather than just randomly looking at deals, right? Because-- Omar: Because man it doesn't really help you, right? If you really go crazy if you try to randomly look at deals. James: Yes. Yes. I think a lot of people just look at deals. What, where is the deal? What's the deal that exist? Start underwriting the deals right? So-- Omar: Oh I don't have that much free time and I have a son who's like 18 months old man My wife is going to leave me if I start underwriting every deal that comes across my desk. James: Yes, I don't do all the deals that comes across. Omar: I'm going to kill myself trying to do all that. Yes man it's very surprising I see a lot of people especially on Facebook posting. I mean I get up in the morning and I see this, [inaudible 24:05] who loves to underwrite deals? And I'm like, dude it's 1 a.m. Go get a beer. Why are you underwriting a deal at 1 a.m., man? James: Yes. Yes. Yes I think some people think that you can open up a big funnel and make sure you know out of that funnel you get one or two good deals, right? But also if you have experience enough you can get the right funnel to make sure you only get quality data in, so that whatever comes in is more quality. Omar: My point is man, why do you want to underwrite more deals? Why don't you underwrite the right deal and spend more time on that deal or that set of deals. James: Correct. Omar: Because there's just so many transactions in the U.S. man. There's no way I can keep up man. James: Correct. Correct. Correct. So let's go to your underwriting Jacksonville because I think that's important, right? So now you already select a few submarkets in Jacksonville, right and then you start networking with Brokers, is that what you did? Omar: Yes. Yes but you know with Brokers also, you kind of have to train them, right? Because what happened is every time what are you looking at? All that after all that jazz, wine and dining and all that stuff. We had to train Brokers [inaudible25:08] here are only specific submarkets we're looking at. So for instance Jacksonville, it was San Jose, San Marcos, it's the beaches, it was Mandarin and orange [inaudible25:16] James: Okay. Omar: And Argyle Forest was certainly, right? If it's anything outside of that, unless I don't know it's like the deal of the century, right? Literally, somebody is just handing it away. We don't want to look at it. Don't waste my time. And invariably what the Brokers will do, because it's their job they have to do it. They'll send you deals from other submarkets because they want to sell. Hey, I think this is great. You will love this. James: Yes. Omar: And you have to keep telling them, hey man I really appreciative that you send me this stuff, not interested. Not interested. So, but what that does is you do this a few times and then the Broker really remembers your name when a deal in your particular submarket does show up. Because then you go to the top of the pile. James: Correct. Because they know that you asked specifically for these right now. Omar: Yes. [inaudible25:58] You know the deal. Right? So that's kind of what we get, right? James: So let's say they send a deal that matches your location. So what is the next thing we look at? Omar: So what I basically look at is what are the demographics. Median income has got to be at the minimum 38 to 40 thousand dollars minimum. James: What, at median household income? Omar: Median household income. Right? James: Got it. Got it. Why do you think median household income is important? Omar: Because look, again this is rough math I didn't do a PhD in [inaudible 26:27] James: Sure, sure, sure. Go ahead. Omar: Typically, you know, where [inaudible 26:30] everybody says BC but really everybody is doing C. Okay, you can just-- I think people just say B to sound nice. Right? It's really C. Okay, let's be honest. Right? Typically with a C if you're going to push [inaudible 26:41] within one or two years, in these submarkets at least, I don't know about other areas. Typically you want to push the rents to around a thousand dollars a month, give or take. Average rate. I'm just talking very cool terms, right? Which basically means that if you're pushing it to a thousand dollars a month and the affordability index is it should be 33%, 1000 times 12 is 12, 12 times 3 is 36. So I just added an extra 2,000 on top or 4000 on top just to give a margin of safety. James: Okay. Omar: Right? It's very simple math, right? There's nothing complex in it. Right? James: Correct. Omar: Because my point is if you're in an area where the average income is 30,000, man you can raise your rent all you like. Nobody's going to pay you. James: Yes. Yes, correct. So I think we can let me clarify to the listeners, right? So basically when you rent to an apartment, we basically look for 3x income, right? So that's how it translates to the household income, average household income and if you want to do a value-add or where deals, you have a margin of buffer in our site and you're buying it lower than what the median household income, that's basically upside. That means you can find enough renters to fill up that upside, right? Omar: Yes. James: Just to clarify to the listeners. So go ahead. So you basically look up median household income. What is the next step do you look for? Omar: Then I basically look at crime. Basically, I just-- I mean look, there's going to be a level of crime, what I'm really looking at is violent crime. Right? James: Violent crime. Okay. How do you look for which tools to use? Omar: Well, you can go to crime map, crime ratings, you can subscribe to certain databases and they can give you neighborhood Scout is one by the way. James: Okay. Okay. Omar: You can use that. And then on top of that because it's harder to do this for Texas, but you can do this in other states like Florida, Georgia and all of that. But for instance, what you can do is see what the comps in the submarket are. Right? And that kind of helps you in determining basically, look if all the properties for a certain vintage around you have traded for a certain amount of money, then if something is up or below that there's got to be a compelling reason for that. Now I'm not saying if it's above it's a bad reason and don't do it. There's got to be a compelling reason. Now they might be actually a very good reason. Right? James: Got it. Omar: So, you know that's like a rough idea and then basically I'm looking at rent upside. Basically look at co-stars and see what the average rents are for this property. What is roughly the average rent upside and you can also seek [inaudible29:04] place that I had a few contacts in Jacksonville and you can also call those up. Right? Again, rough math kind of gives you hey, do I send five hundred two hundred dollars and then basically see what is the amount of value [inaudible29:16]. Because for instance, if all the units have been renovated which by the way happened yesterday. Yesterday we came across [inaudible29:22] in Jackson where I know the Broker and I mean he sent me the email. You know, the email blast out and basically what we saw was the location was great, there's a lot of rent up, supposedly there's rent upside, but when I called the guy up, we know each other. He's like, bro, all the units have been renovated. There's maybe 50, 75, I know you so I'm going to tell you there's only 50, 75 so the price isn't going to be worth it. James: Yes, and they'll ask you to do some weird stuff, right? Like go there, washer, dryer, rent the washer dryer out. Omar: Yes. Yes. James: But charge for assigned parking, right? So very small amount in terms of upside, right? Omar: My point is if it was so easy why don't you do it? James: Yes. Correct. Omar: That's the way I look at it. James: Yes, usually I mean when I talk to the Brokers I will know within the few seconds whether it's a good deal or not. They'll be really excited if it matches what we are looking for, right? Especially-- Omar: Yes because I think the other deal is if you develop a good relationship with Brokers and they know what you're specifically looking for, good Brokers can kind of again look they have to sell but they can also give you some guidance along the way. James: Correct. Correct. Omar: Right? They can do a lot bro, it doesn't really work for you I think, but I'm just going to be honest with you, and look you still have to take it with a grain of salt but it is what it is. James: Correct, correct. Okay. So look for rent upside by looking at rent comps and you said in Texas which is a non-disclosure state it's hard to find sales comp but… Omar: Yes, but look, you know if you're in a market you're going to know who the people are doing deals. Which people are doing deals. James: Okay. Omar: And even if you don't know it, say your property manager kind of knows it, or your loan broker or lender knows kind of what deals have traded in the market. You got me. You can pick up a phone and call some people, right? Maybe you don't get all the information but you can get, I mean if you're in submarket or sometimes even in Texas, you can't know. James: Yes, exactly. Exactly. So when do you start underwriting on your Excel sheet? Omar: Oh bro after I've done the property tour because if these don't even pass this stuff why you even bothering to underwrite it. James: Oh really? So okay. So you basically look at market-- Omar: [inaudible 31:28] My point is, if it passes all these filters and then I have a conversation, I talk to my property manager, I talk to the Broker, I talk to my local contacts there and if it's all a go and these are all five-minute conversations or less. It's not like a two hour long conversation if it passes through all this they're just going to [inaudible 31:45] property door, man. James: Okay, so you basically-- but what about the price? How do you determine whether the price they asking is reasonable or not. Omar: Well, obviously because I can do a rough math and compare it against the comps, right? James: Okay. Okay. Got it. Got it. So you basically do [inaudible 31:59] Omar: Oh, yes. Yes, because my point is why waste myself? Because look, the price could make sense, all the Brokers pictures we all know look fantastic. It looks like you're in like Beverly Hills, you know. So the pictures you know are kind of misleading, right? And the location might be really good but hey, you might go there and realize you know, the approach is really weird. Or for instance we were touring this one property and then 90% of I think the residents were just hanging out at 12:00 noon. James: Correct. Omar: Outside smoking. James: At 12 o'clock. Wow. Omar: I said, well what the hell is this. Right? So my point is some things you only know when you do tour a property, there's no amount of videos and photos because the Broker isn't going to put a bad photo on. James: Yes. Yes. Their Excel spreadsheets are going to tell you that, right? Omar: Yes. James: So basically, you know, you have to go. What about what else do you look for when you do a property tour other than… Omar: So you know when they're doing a property tour, like obviously I'm taking a lot of notes, I'm taking a lot of pictures, a lot of times the Broker will say one thing and then you kind of turn back around and ask the same question a different way just to kind of see. But what I also like to do is I also like to tour the property. On the property tour I like to have the current property manager and look I'm not stupid enough to say that the Broker hasn't coached the property manager. The broker has obviously coached the property manager that's his job. But a lot of times you'll realize that they haven't been coached enough. So if you ask the right questions the right way you can get some level of information. Again you have to verify everything and another trick I also figured out is. You should also try to talk to the maintenance guy and have him on the property tour and then take these people aside and so the Broker can be with somebody else. Ideally you should tour with two people. So if one guy takes care of the Broker and you take care of the property manager or the other way around. Because then you can isolate and ask questions, right? So especially if you take like say a maintenance guy and you ask him, hey man so what kind of cap X you think we should do? What do you think about the [inaudible 33:54]? A lot of times those people haven't been coached as much or at all. James: Correct. Omar: And to be honest with you, man, we are in a high trust society. Most people aren't going to completely just lie to your face. They might lie a little bit but people aren't going to say red is blue and blue is purple. James: Correct. Omar: You know you can see that. You know when somebody says it, you can feel it. Come on. James: You can feel, yes. That's what I'm coming. You can actually see whether they are trying to hide stuff or not. But you're right, asking the maintenance guy is a better way than asking the property managers or even the other person is like leasing agent. Omar: Yes. James: Who were assigned to you. They probably will tell you a lot more information. Omar: And that's why I feel like it's better to have two people like you and a partner touring. James: Okay. Omar: Because then different people, like one because look, and there is nothing wrong. The Broker has to do this. The Broker always wants to be with you to see every question is answered the way he wants it to be answered. So then one of your partners or you can tackle the Broker and the other person can tackle somebody else. James: Got it. Got it. So let's go to, okay so now you are done with the property tour. Now you're going to an [inaudible35:01] underwriting, right? So, how do you underwrite, I mean I want to talk especially about Jacksonville because it's a new market for you and you are looking at a new, how did you underwrite taxes, insurance and payroll because this-- Omar: Taxes was very easy to do. You talk to a tax consultant and you also see what historically the rate has been for the county. Right? James: Okay. Omar: But again, just because your new doesn't mean you don't know people. James: Correct. But how do you underwrite tax post acquisition? Because I mean in taxes is always very complicated-- Omar: No but taxes is harder, right? But [inaudible 35:32] in Florida it's easier because the sale is reported. They already know what price it is. James: So do they, so how much let's say how many percent do they increase it to after-- Omar: Typically in Duval County where we bought, it's about 80 to 85% [inaudible35:46] James: Okay. Okay. That's it. Omar: But the tax rate is low, right? Just to give you an idea the tax rate is [inaudible35:51] in Texas a tax rate is higher. So you understand there's lots of things and for instance in Florida there's an early payment discount. So if you pay in November, so it's November, December, January, February, right? So if you pay in November, which is four months before you should be paying you get 4% off your tax return. James: Oh, that's really good. Omar: And if you pay in December you get 3% off, if you pay January you get well, whatever 2% off. In February you get 1% off. James: So what is the average tax rate in Florida? Omar: I don't know about Florida. I know about Douval. It was like 1.81. James: Wow, that's pretty low. Yes compared to-- Omar: Yes, but you also have to realize you have the percentage of assessed value is higher, right? Depending on which county you are in. You're in San Antonio and Austin where Bear county is just crazy. James: Bear Travis County, yes. Omar: Yes. Bear and Travis are just crazy but there are other counties in for instance Texas where the tax might be high but percentage of assessed value is really low. James: Correct. Omar: No, I mean it balances out. Right? My point is-- James: Yes. So but what about the, do you get to protest the tax and all that in the Duval County in Jacksonville? Omar: I think you can. No you were not, I think I know you can because we're going to do it. But you need to have a pretty good reason, right? James: Okay. Okay. Omar: Right? And obviously look, you can show that yea, look I bought it for this price, but my income doesn't support this tax or this or that. I mean you have to hire the right people. I'm not going to go stand and do it myself. James: So basically they do bump up the price of the acquisition, but it's very easy to determine that and 80 to 85% of whatever. Omar; Yes. Yes. Yes. James: That's-- Omar: But look man, on the flip side is that when you go in, you kind of have a better control of your taxes in Texas where taxes can just go up and you [inaudible37:29] James: Yes. Yes. You have no control in Texas. So we usually go very very conservative to a hundred percent. So which-- Omar: Look my point is it's good and bad, right? It depends where you are. So now people will say, oh the tax person knows all your numbers and like, yes but I can plan for it. James: Yes, yes, correct. But it also gives you an expectation difference between buyer and seller because the buyer is saying this is my cap rate whereas the seller is saying, this is what, I mean the seller is going to say this is one of the cap rate whereas the buyer is going to say this is my cap rate will be after acquisition because-- Omar: Yes. Of course. James: So when it's smaller [inaudible38:03] between these two, the expectation is more aligned compared to in Texas because you know, it can jump up a lot and there's a lot of mismatch of expectations. Right? Omar: Well actually a deal in Houston, it's near Sugar Land and yesterday I was talking to this guy who wanted me on the deal and the other deal isn't going anywhere because the taxes were reassessed at double last year. Now he has to go to this the next week to fight it. Man, there's no way you're going to get double taxes in Florida or Georgia where there's our disclosure state, right? James: Correct. Correct, correct. So that's a good part because the buyer would be saying that's not my, the seller would be saying that's not my problem and buyer is going to say I have to underwrite that, right? So. Omar: I mean man, you can have a good case, right? Because it's not like somebody is saying something to you like, look man this is the law. James: Yes, correct. So let's go back to Insurance. How do you underwrite Jacksonville Insurance? Because I know in Florida there is a lot of hurricane and all that-- Omar: [inaudible 38:58] just to give you an idea that is a complete myth because Jacksonville has only had one hurricane in the past eight years. James: So is it lower than other parts of Florida? Or it just-- Omar: Yes. So the first it only depends where you are in Florida. Number one, right? Number two, it depends if you're in a flood plain or not, but that's in Texas as well. Right? And number three, it also depends a lot of times, well how many other claims have happened in your area? Right? Because that kind of for the insurance people that's kind of like a you know, how risky your area is quote unquote for them. So yes, so in Jacksonville, and apparently I did not need to know this information but we were told this information. Like the coast of Florida where Jacksonville is the golf coast is really warm where Jacksonville is, not golf courses on the other side, it's the Atlantic side. These are really warm waters relatively speaking. So apparently there's like some weather system which makes it really hard for hurricanes to come into Jacksonville. So that's why it's only had one hurricane in the 80 years. James: So when you get your insurance quote, when you compare that to other parts of other markets-- Omar: Oh yes, Tampa was way higher, man. James: What about like Houston and Dallas? Omar: I don't know about Houston because I haven't really lately looked at something in Houston. Right? So I can't really say about Houston and Dallas was maybe like say $25, $50 less maybe. James: Oh really. Okay. Omar: Yes. It wasn't because that was a big question that came up for everybody. I was like look man, literally here's all the information and you don't even have to take my word for it because I'm giving you sources for all the information. Right? [crosstalk40:24] James: [crosstalk40:25] rate at different markets? Omar: Sorry? James: Are you talking about the insurance rate for-- Omar: Yes. Yes. Yes. Because a lot of guys from Chicago, I had a few investors they were like, but Florida has real hurricanes. I was like, yes but Jacksonville doesn't. James: Okay, got it. So you basically got a code from the insurance guy for the-- Omar: Oh yes man, I wasn't just going to go in and just put my own number that has no basis in reality. James: Correct, correct. So, what about payroll? How did you determine the payroll? Omar: So the payroll is pretty easy man. You know how much people get paid on per whatever hour. You know, you can have a rough idea how many people you are going to put on site and then you know what the load is, so then it gets pretty easy to calculate what your payroll is going to be. James: What was the load that you put in? Omar: So the load in this particular case was like 40% which is very high. James: Okay-- Omar: Yes it is pretty high. But the-- James: That is pretty high is very high. Omar: No. No. No. But hold on. They put our wages really low, right? James: Oh really? Okay. Omar: Then you have got to [inaudible41:16] around. I was paying roughly the same that I was paying in [inaudible41:19] James: Really? So why is that market… Omar: I have no idea man, and I tried to check I asked multiple people. We did all that song and dancing. It's all kind of the same. James: So you looked at the current financials and looked at the payroll? Omar: No. No, I was talking about my payroll would be going forward. I don't really care what the guy before me paid. Why do I care? James: So you got that from your property management? Omar: Yes. Yes. Yes. And then I verified it with other property managers and blah blah blah blah blah checked everything, you know did all the due diligence. James: Got it. Yes. It's interesting that because 40% is really high. I mean usually-- Omar: Yes but [inaudible41:52] basis was really low. Like people salaries are really lower. James: Is that a Jacksonville specific? Omar: I don't know what it is specifically. I think it's a Florida-based thing relatively speaking. But yes, that's what I mean. I thought it was kind of weird too. But then I mean I checked with other people. James: So the deal that you're doing, I presume is a value ad deal. Is that right? Omar: Oh yes, all the deals-- James: How deep is the value at? I mean roughly at high level, how much are you putting in? Omar: Man, nothing has been touched for ten years. In fact, let's put it this way. We have enough land we checked with the city that we have enough land at the back to develop 32 more units. James: That's really good because it's hard to find deals now, you know. Like ten years not touched, right? All deals are being flip right now, right? So within a couple of years. So that's good. That should be a really good deal. And what is the-- Omar: A hundred percent we could do basically. James: What was your expense ratio that you see based on income divided by your expenses? I mean first-- Omar: Hold on man, let me just take it out. I don't even have to tell you. Hold on. James: Okay. Omar: Why even bother you know? James: Because usually like 50 to 55% is common in the [inaudible 42:59] industry. Omar: Oh no in basically in Jacksonville. You can get really lower expense ratios. James: Okay. Omar: It depends if it's submarket [inaudible43:05] James: Yes, and I know like in Phoenix, I think it was like 45, or 40% which was surprising to me [crosstalk43:13] Omar: [crosstalk43:13] this right now. Hold on let me open this model I can tell you right now. I don't want to give you something [inaudible 43:21] then variably one person's going to be like, I looked at your deal your numbers--Like, yes I'm sorry. I don't like have like numbers with second decimal points. Because people always do that to try to catch you. Right? And they're like, yes it's off by like $2 man. So hold on, divided by, oh yes so it was operating at 52 and yes first year we're going to be at 56 because you know we are repositioning-- James: Yes. First year of course, it will be higher-- Omar: And then we just go down. James: Okay. Okay, okay that's interesting, that's good. So, and then as the income grows and your expenses stabilize, I think that expenses should be-- Omar: That's the only reason why the expense ratio goes down. Right? Because you're basically your top Line growth is way higher than your basically your expense growth. James: Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay, that's really good. And you look for mid teens IRR. Omar: Mid teens IRR, a 10% cash flow and stabilized, all that jazz. James: Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay, that sounds good in terms of the underwriting. So-- Omar: Am I giving you all my secrets James? James: Yes, absolutely. I will be very specific to Jacksonville. Right? I like to see you know, how each market is being underwritten and so that a business can learn and you know, it's very specific to people who do a lot of analysis on the market because I think that's important, right? You can't just go and buy any deal out of the gate right there, right? So it's good to know that. And these three things like payroll, insurance and taxes are very tricky when you-- Omar: Oh yes. James: --in different markets. So it's good to understand how does that county or that particular city or state determines their property taxes? Because we have different things in taxes here where I buy so it's good to understand. That's good. What is the most valuable value ad that you think that you're going to be doing to this deal? Omar: Oh well look man, because nothing had been touched. I think everything is valuable. James: Okay. Omar: Hold on but that we lucked out also, right? There's a part of this is work and preparation. Or part of this is luck also. I mean you can't just take that portion away, right? James: Oh yes yes. Absolutely. Omar: All my hard work. Right? James: Absolutely. Absolutely. Omar: Because there's lots of people-- James: It's really hard to find that kind of deals nowadays, right? So how much was your rehab budget? Omar: So rehab is about a million dollars. James: A million dollars. So let's say your million-dollar today become 500,000 right? I'm showing million dollar you're bringing into your exterior everything upgrade. Right? So let's say then-- Omar: Your exterior is roughly split 70/30. Interior [inaudible46:01] James: Okay. Okay. So between interior and exterior which one do you think is more important? Omar: I think if you only had a few dollars, exterior. James: Exterior, okay. Omar: Because people make a-- again this doesn't mean you should ignore the interior. Just to add a disclaimer. The point is, my point is a lot of times we as humans make decisions on first impressions. So if you come into a property and the clubhouse looks [inaudible 46:28] the approach looks [inaudible 46:29] the trees are trimmed, the parking lot is done nicely, then you go to an apartment which may, I mean I'm not saying it should be a complete disaster, but it might not be the best apartment in the world. You can overcome that. Right? But if you come in and the approach looks like you know, somebody got murdered here, right and the clubhouse looks like you know fights happen here, then no matter how good your indeed a renovation is, there's a good chance people will say well, I mean, it looks like I might get killed to just get into my apartment. James: Yes. Omar: Right? So it's the first impression thing more than anything else. It's like any other thing in life I feel. James: Absolutely. So let's say you are 300,000 for exterior. Right? Let's say that 300,000 become a 150,000, what are the important exterior renovation that you would focus on? Omar: So we did all the tree trimming because man, there's first of all living in Texas you realize how much a mystery still [inaudible 47:26] right? So first of all, tree trimming. Trees hadn't been trimmed for 10 years man. They were beautiful Spanish [inaudible 47:34] oak trees with Spanish moss on them. But they just hadn't been trimmed. James: Okay. Okay. Omar: So doing all the tree trimming, all the landscaping, then basically resealing the driveway and then making sure all the flower beds and all the approach leading up to all of that was done properly and the monument signage. James: Okay, got it. So this is what you would focus on. And what about-- Omar: But also putting a dog park by the way. [inaudible 47:57] you said if my $300,000 budget went to 150 what I do and that's-- James: Yes. Dog park is not very expensive. Omar: Yes. But I'm saying it's stuff like dog park and [inaudible 48:06] to your outdoor kitchen, you're swimming pool, put a bigger sign in. You know [inaudible48:11] James: Yes and dog park is one of the most valuable value ad because you spend less on it, but a lot of people want it, right? So for some reason, I mean people like pets and all that. So what about the interior? You have 700,000, how much per door are you planning to put for each-- Omar: So roughly say I can do the math roughly. There was six something. Right? So and James: [inaudible48:32] Omar: Yes, so we're not even-- so we're planning on doing roughly say 75% of the unit's right? So I think that's 104 units if you go 700 divided by 104, roughly we were going to be around $6500 per unit. James; Okay. That's a pretty large budget. Omar: Yes, man you should see some of these units man, I was like why God how do people even live here? James: Yes. Omar: Because it's a very affluent. I mean relatively middle class, upper middle class submarket, right? They just haven't done anything. James: So are you going to be using the property management company to do the renovations? Omar: They have a very fantastic reputation and they were highly recommended a few of our other contacts also use them so that's why. James: Okay. Omar: Because we were seeing problems with a lot of other people's property managers. Either they didn't have the right staff or didn't have the right professionals and this and that indeed these guys were properly integrated across the value chain. James: So at high level, what are you doing on the interiors? Omar: High level Interiors, it's a typical, [inaudible 49:29] back splashes, change the kitchen appliances, countertops, medicine cabinets, lighting packages. The other small little thing which we realized was a very big value add but was cost us less than two dollars and fifty cents per outlet was the [inaudible 49:45] Yes it was the biggest value add-- James: Yeah, biggest value add; that is the most valuable value add. Right? Omar: Yes. James: Like I've never done it in any of my properties but I was telling my wife, Shanti and I said, hey, you know, we should do these, you know, because it's so cheap and a lot of people, a lot of-- Omar: Yes, it was like two dollars or whatever, it was cheaper than that and people cannot get over the fact that they have so many USB out, I was like, everywhere there is a plug there's got to be a USB outlet. James: So do you put for every outlet? The USB? Omar: Not for every, I was dramatizing but I mean for the ones that are accessible say around the kitchen, living room. James: Okay interesting I should steal that idea. Omar: I didn't invent the idea go for it man. James: Yes. Omar: [inaudible 50:25] USB port so take it. James: I know a few other people who do it mentioned that too but I'm not sure for some reason we are not doing it. But that should be a very simple-- Omar: People love it man. And I don't blame them man. Like it's freaking aggravating sometimes, you know, when you got to put like a little thing on top of your USB and then you plug it in. James: Yes, imagine how much you know, this life has changed around all this electronic [crosstalk50:46] devices and all that. So interesting. So did you get a lot of advice from your property management companies on how to work and what are the things to renovate and all that? Or how-- Omar: Yes, and no because we had been developing a relationship with them six months prior to this acquisition. So we had a good relationship with not just them but with other vendors in the market. And especially luckily for us the regional we have for this property right now, actually in an earlier life and with an earlier employer had actually started working on this asset 15 years ago as a property manager. This is sheer dumb luck. This is not by design. So she really knew where all the [inaudible51:24] James: Yes. Yes, that's interesting. Sometimes you get people who have been in the industry for some time. They say yes, I've worked on that property before they, which is good for us because they know. Got it. Got it. So let's go to a more personal side of things. Right? So you have been pretty successful now and you're doing an apartment syndication now and all that, right? So why do you do what you do? Omar: James, I know a lot of people try to say they have a big "why" and they have a really philosophical reason James, my big "why" is James, I really like-- my lifestyle is very expensive James. So all these nice suits. James: Okay. Omar: All these nice vacations man, they're not cheap. Okay. Real estate is a pretty good way to make a lot of money man. James: Okay. Omar: I want to give you a philosophical reason, I know a lot of people say they have the Immigrant success story, Oh I came from India or I came from Pakistan, I ate out of a dumpster, I worked in a gas station and no I had five dollars in my pocket, and everybody tells me that and I say, okay what did you do man? I don't know did you just swim from India, you had two dollars in your pocket you need to get on a plane buddy. James: You can't be here, right? Omar: No Indian shows up to America and [inaudible 52:37] Are you kidding me? All the Indians are educated. Everybody's an engineer or doctor or lawyer. You kidding me. He shows up with five dollars, man. So no I didn't show up to this country with five dollars James. I didn't eat out of a dumpster. I didn't work at a gas station, and I'm very grateful for that. Right? I've always had a very good lifestyle and I don't need to have a philosophical reason to say I'm doing this to, I don't know, solve world hunger or poverty or whatever. I have a pretty good lifestyle. I'm very grateful and very blessed. And the biggest thing in my life is being that, look I moved to Texas man I didn't know anybody. Right? But people have been so generous, people have been so kind to me. I'm not just saying investing with us, which is very nice, which I'm very grateful but also connecting me with other people, right? Hey, hey just opening a door. They didn't have to do it, but people have been so generous and so kind, So I quite enjoy the fact man that it's a good way to make an honest living, right? I have a very expensive lifestyle that needs to get financed and that's just the way it is. And I didn't show up with two dollars in my pocket. So I'm very grateful for that. James: That sounds good. So, can you give some, do you have any daily habits that you think makes you more successful? Omar: No man, I just get up every day and I try to put one step after the other but consistently work in the same direction. So every day I'm reaching out to people and that's a lot of small little tasks. First of all, I never like getting up early but I've always known the value of getting up early. So I get up in the morning, right? 5:45, 550 ish I kind of up. Most days not always, right? I read a lot of books man. I reach out to Brokers all the time. I'm always looking at deals, coordinating with my team to do stuff and a lot of these like you do in your business there are a lot of small little tasks there's no one task that is, oh my God, you do this and [inaudible 54:33] But it's just small little tasks that you do daily, every single day in and day out. So even if you're feeling sick, even if your head is hurting you just do it. James: So can you give a few advice to people who want to start in this business? Omar: Regularly communicating. So in my particular case, I don't know like when you're starting out specifically everybody has a different pain point, right? So in my particular case for instance on a daily, I can't say about weekly I can tell you, staying in touch with my marketing people, emailing Brokers, emailing investors, following up with people I've had conversations with, especially leads, you know people who use this stuff. A lot of word of mouth and just doing the stuff over and over and over. But it's not like I have a 9:00 to 5:00 now, right? It's not like oh Friday, I'm done and Saturday, Sunday I'm relaxing. I mean I could relax on a Monday now, but Saturday and Sunday I'm working. Right? So that's a good-- but it's like the same as you were doing with your business, right? James: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Omar it has been really a pleasure to have you on this podcast. Is there anything that you have never mentioned in other podcasts that you want to mention? Omar: No James, I don't want to go down that route man. James: Is there something that you want to tell, you know people who listen to you that you think that would be a good thing to talk about? Omar: Yes, what I want to tell people is listen, I don't think you should take words of wisdom for me. But what I should tell people is guys, honestly, I don't l
Fitting In Fitness & Healthy Eating... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have a return guest from episode 93, Dr. Slyvia Gonsahn-Bollie. She is America's Favorite Obesity Doctor and she comes back for a second time to help our busy women especially moms in the Lunch and Learn Community just how to fit health and fitness into their busy schedule. This episode should serve as the busy mom's guide to get over the hump of losing weight and staying on their fitness journey. The conversation follows the trend of our initial one where we focus on many of the obstacles that these busy women face when dealing with trying to juggle working, taking care of families and having little time to actually take care of themselves. Remember to subscribe to the podcast and share the episode with a friend or family member. Listen on Apple Podcast, Google Play, Stitcher, Soundcloud, iHeartRadio, Spotify Sponsors: Lunch and Learn Community Online Store (code Empower10) Pierre Medical Consulting (If you are looking to expand your social reach and make your process automated then Pierre Medical Consulting is for you) Dr. Pierre's Resources - These are some of the tools I use to become successful using social media Links/Resources: Official website – www.drsylviagbollie.com Twitter – www.twitter.com/fittmd Facebook – www.facebook.com/fittmd Instagram – www.instagram.com/fittmd Social Links: Join the lunch and learn community – https://www.drberrypierre.com/joinlunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/lunchlearnpod Follow the podcast on twitter – http://www.twitter.com/lunchlearnpod – use the hashtag #LunchLearnPod if you have any questions, comments or requests for the podcast For More Episodes of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry Podcasts https://www.drberrypierre.com/lunchlearnpodcast/ If you are looking to help the show out Leave a Five Star Review on Apple Podcast because your ratings and reviews are what is going to make this show so much better Share a screenshot of the podcast episode on all of your favorite social media outlets & tag me or add the hashtag.#lunchlearnpod Download Episode 111 Transcript Episode 111 Transcript.. Introduction Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I’m your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the host of Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Bring you another amazing episode with Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie who is, if you remember that name is actually a repeat guest of ours. I was very fortunate enough to get her back on a second time because I know she's crazy busy, but I was able to get it back because I had a lot of feedback from her previous episode, which was episode 93. If you're unfamiliar or if you just a new subscriber since the last time she was on. And she talked about obesity, obesity-related medicine, and gave us a lot of tips on how to kind of get us and keep us on our new year's resolutions, especially because a lot of them tend to fall under the wanting to lose weight category. So we got her back and again, I got a question from Lunch and Learn community. Well, Dr. Berry, I'm a busy mom. I work, I take care of the kids, I take care of my family. I really don't have the time to be healthy. Like what can I do? And that's where, you know what I said, I could've given her some tips, right? I could have given her some tips. They probably wouldn't have been the best. But I say good. If I'm going to talk about weight loss tips and especially for my busy moms out there, why not bring America's obesity specialist to talk to us, to educate us, to really get us on the right path. So this episode is going to be for the busy moms out there who have way too many responsibilities, way too many things to do and unfortunately that happens, right? And we all know is that the health tends to fall by the wayside, right? Like usually you have to take care of everyone's personal wellbeing and housing and work and everything else tend to happen. And unfortunately our health usually suffers, right? Usually is the case in this standpoint here. So we have Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie to really educate our busy moms and gives tips on how to stay on our weight journey. Right? And we're going to talk about weight journey a lot because I think, and I loved it because a lot of times we think about weight loss at this point A to point B type of thing. But really what she talks about, she says, no, this is a lifestyle change that you have to like go for the rest of your life, right? So even when you get to that goal weight, you have to understand like you have to keep on going. That’s just the second part, right? We broke it down in parts. Just a second part, just getting to the weight. So quick little bio again, if you had not checked out episode 93 please go back and check out episode 93, so drberrypierre.com/llp093 because it was an amazing guest, especially it was an amazing topic. And again, we're hitting home today with the busy moms. So Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie to just to kind of give a little quick bio from her. She's a board-certified internal medicine physician. She's an obesity medicine specialist who helps inspire optimal health through honesty and hope. She lost 40 pounds, overcoming emotional eating and physical inactivity. Now she has both personal as well as professional expertise in weight loss as well as weight maintenance. As a working mom herself, a wife and self-professed foodie. She keenly understands the limitations that prevent busy people from achieving their health goals. Dr. Bollie is passionate about helping busy people, especially working women, obtain and maintain a happy and healthy weight. At the end we're going to give you her links to follow her cause she's pretty much on all social media is just like I am. Even in the show notes, you'll have a chance to find where she's at because again, this is a person that you need to follow. She does actually weekly teachings on health and weight loss and again absolutely amazing person. Like I said, I was very fortunate enough to get here a second time around. So again, if you have not had a chance, remember, subscribe to the podcast, leave a five-star review and let her know how great she did on the podcast. Because I tell you, she blew it out of the water. You guys have a great day. Episode Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community, we have a repeat guest on today's episode and definitely one that was, you know, really requested that you guys love for an episode. You know, Dr. Bollie and you know, she's come back, right. You know, I was able to get her to come back for at least one more time. We haven't annoyed it too much and she really going to be talking about the busy mom. Right? And I know I have a lot of Lunch and Learn community listeners who ran into that issue of having to balance their health, their kids' well-being, they spouse well-being and everything, job, everything else. And unfortunately, that health tends to fall at the wayside. So ladies and gentlemen, please again a quick little introduction again and thank you for Dr. Bollie for coming back to the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Oh, thank you so much, Dr. Berry. You know, I love being here. You're so wonderful. So thank you for having the back and forth. And I love the lunch and learn community and just the fact that you're spreading this information because it's so important and the diversity and the topics that you're sharing also. So thank you for having me back. Dr. Berry: So for those who, maybe, someone, you know, got a lot of listeners since the last time we talked, right? So just give them a little bit of introduction of who you are. You know, why you're so important and you know why, you know, I was again, fortunate enough to kind of get you for a second time around? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Oh, awesome. Okay. Well, so I am Dr. Sylvia Gonsahn-Bollie. I'm board certified in internal medicine and obesity medicine, but I probably should back because you know, we all have this program spill that we do. But I am a wife. I'm a mom, I'm a doctor, I'm a runner, I'm a foodie. So I have many hats and, and, but I'm passionate about helping busy people, especially work for women, obtain and maintain our happy, healthy weight through practical lifestyle interventions. And this for me all kind of started with my own weight loss journey, which began in 2014 late 2014 but I count 2015 as my actual start. That was when I did my first 10 K at trained up to and did it. So I've just sold it five years on my fitness and weight loss journey and I don't even like calling it a weight loss journey and we'll talk about that my weight journey. So I have personal and professional experience with it. I am. When I started this journey, it was about a year and a half after having my first child, my son. For those of you who don't follow me on Facebook or on social media, I have a second child now. I'm five months postpartum. But with my first child, that was when this, what I'm going to talk about today, really hit home for me. You know, I was getting used to being a new mom. I was just finishing up my residency. I was a chief resident of transitioning. So chief resident, which for us is an extra fourth year. And also I'm an attending, so becoming like stepping into my new, into my career. And then I was also just getting used to everything. And so I put everything ahead of me and my health and my weight, even though I was preaching health to other people. Right? So I was 40 pounds overweight at the time my son was one and I kind of held onto that for about a year and a half. So finally it started to impact the way I was counseling patients. I would be like what did you eat for lunch? And then I would hear in my own head, what did you eat for lunch? So exercise, like I would ask the patient, did you exercise it here? I hear the voice, did you exercise? And so I started to feel very convicted about what I was doing. So this, for that reason I started to focus on my own health and prioritize in it. And I started by training for that race of which is the monument, 10k, a popular race here in Richmond, Virginia where I live. And then from then just kept building and building and growing. But it's not easy, you know. So because of that, I know, as I said, it's hard to fit in fitness. It's challenging to make those healthy food choices, especially when you're stress, especially when you're busy. So I know that the journey has to be individualized in some ways. Like we can share in a community in terms of encouraging each other. And there are some general things that theme to it that we can do, but you really have to address your own individual journey to try to be able to fit this in. Dr. Berry: Interesting. We should definitely touch on a few parts. One, I want to highlight that she said this, this is one of her first 10 k's which means she's run multiple, which is absolutely amazing. And you talk about the weight journey. I take care of a lot of patients and now I do inpatient medicine. So I tend to see a lot of the end state stuff when I did inpatient medicine, outpatient medicine, you know. It was always that start right where I used to see a lot of at the beginning. And I think they were mentally at the point where they're saying doc like I'm ready to lose some weight, but I didn't necessarily know how. And I think a lot of times it was that population of those moms, those women who were busy lifting. Like again, it is not like they weren't doing anything. Life was just happening all around them and whether it be work, whether it be school or whether taking care of kids, whether be taken care of their family. Unfortunately, the health guy left on the back burner. So when you talk about your personal weight journey, was it like, were those patients the big like kind of step that's a, you know what I gotta do something because I like how can I keep looking at my patients over and over and over again and tell them exactly what they need to do to lose weight, but I'm not personally following it myself. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Definitely. I mean, because, you know, as I've mentioned, I think in the last podcast. There’s a study out there that shows that physicians who are overweight or have obesity are less likely to counsel their patients on it. And I think for me personally, I started to feel that I understand that because I almost felt like a hypocrite, you know, talking to people about what they were doing and I was not doing it and live in it. So once I noticed that it was starting to, it had gotten to the point that I felt it was starting to impact the way I was able to deliver care, especially to a set population of patients that really needed the care. Then I said, okay, it's time for me to reevaluate it. And I think for me personally, how and why it was helpful, it really improved by empathy, right? Because there's something different. And we all know this, we were both parents. So you know, there's different from book learning. Like there's these we would say by the book, but as a parent, but once you have your own child, you're like, and you see the nuances, oh, maybe I can't do that. Maybe an extra 30 minutes of screen time is okay today. Yeah, that's it. That's just what it boils down to. So that's what I think happened. And so what I realized that I had to do was to number one, stop just telling people what to do and think about why and so, and think about what I was doing in that let me be able to help to empathize and to better help people. So the first step really was as stop beating myself up and being very negative because you know, I was sending these lots of the goals that weren't really attainable for a person who had eight then a 16-month-old child and also had a busy professional husband and had a lot and was working full time. So maybe really saying that I need to work out 30 minutes every day, wasn't going to happen initially in the beginning or saying that I should eat, you know, go from drinking soda to drink and water every day. That was going to be challenging because you've got to get acclimated to that decrease in and that's on many levels, not just psychologically, but also physiologically. Your body just used to a certain level of sweetness and you got to tone it down so you're able to tolerate the regular water - clean water. I get used to drinking water. Dr. Berry: I get used to, sometimes I look at juice now and it looks so good. Get Back. (Yeah.) Now the goals were, were there goals that you know we're kind of placed upon you? Like people thought like, well, you should be able to do 30 minutes every day. You should just cold turkey drink juice. Was those like just kind of like outside goals, kind of waited upon you? Where those kinds of like internalized in yourself and then you kind of realize this is not a successful route if I continue to try to go this way? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah, well I think, you know, we have guidelines right? As, as physicians and a dietician’s health community, so their guidelines set, right? So the American Heart Association recommends that we get 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week. So that's two and a half hours of exercise per week and moderate being that you can move without sinking. So like while you're jogging, while you're walking, you're moving fast enough that you're not sinking or an hour and a half of vigorous exercise, which is moving fast and if we can't talk while you exercise. So that's the American heart association guidelines. So that, of course, is what I would strive for because that's when I'm counseling my patients on it. Now the dietary guidelines are controversial for people. There are people you know who don't believe in me, don't believe in dairy, things like that. Personally, I feel like the literature really supports more of a Mediterranean diet and as close to the plant-based as you can be, which is hard because I do love my chicken. I love chicken. So unapologetically I'll try it. So, but you know, so my goal was to really minimize, I don't eat red meat or pork since I was since age 15 so that wasn't hard for me. But kind of back on like chicken, fried foods, things like that, and trying to eat as clean as possible, which is minimizing process foods. So those were my goals based on all the data and all the things that I've seen about eating a healthy diet. So that, and for me, the big one was sugar like and is still cutting down on sugar because when I'm stressed I tend to eat a lot of sugar. And that's again very physiological thing because those high levels of cortisol make you want to eat more sugar. Dr. Berry: No stress like a mom. No, no, no. No stress. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So that's where I feel a lot of pressure came from because I knew the guidelines, I know what I'm supposed to do, but you know, there's a gap between what I'm doing and what I need to do. Dr. Berry: So when you were making the mental transition even before you made the leap, like physically as far as stopping doing things and you know, working out more, what was the support system like? Because I feel when I talked to the moms out there, a lot of times they feel like it's on their own. And they feel because it's on their own, that's what makes it more difficult than not to even start and if they do start to continue. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. Well, I'm glad you talked about it. So let me characterize this. What would I call the person then? Then we'll get the "not answer that question because I do want to talk about what I called this busy woman syndrome". That's what I call it syndrome. Or for those people who are in the church also known as Martha Syndrome. So people who are familiar with the Bible and things like that. So if you are not familiar with the Bible, I'll tell you real quick. So it's a story about two sisters, Mary and Martha and Jesus comes to visit and this is paraphrased of course. Jesus comes to visit their house and you know, Martha is all busy. She's in the kitchen, she's cooking, she's cleaning up their house, she's just all over the place busy. Really what I would be doing. Mary meanwhile is the chill sister. She's chilling, seat by the Jesus at his feet, just like enjoying the moment. And Martha comes out. It just like I could see myself doing it. It's like, Hey Jesus, like tell Mary to get some business about herself. Tell her to come and help me. Let's get ready. Do something. And instead of reprimanding Mary as you would expect, Jesus actually says, Martha, you are concerned about many things. Meaning you got way too much going on. Mary has chosen the most important thing, which is to just be present at the moment, to enjoy the moment and to spend time meaningfully with people she loves. So I think this is a perfect picture of kind of how we are. We put a lot on ourselves and some of it, yes it's true, we must do it. I mean we have to work, have to cook, like all these things. But there's a time and a place where we can actually, where we feel like we need to be doing something where we can take a break and sit down and be present in the moment. And I think when it comes to health, we have to carve out those moments where we can sit and be present and say, I'm going to prioritize my health. Whether that moment is eating something healthy or making a healthier choice or is actually going out and exercising and doing something for a few minutes for ourselves. Dr. Berry: More than Mary, less than Martha. I love it. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So now, you asked the question on what was the support system like? So that's why I kind of bring out too. For me, I'm a person of faith. So I think a lot of times when we think about like our health journey or weight journey in general, and again getting back to this concept of weight be, and we can talk about Dr. Berry at the end, may be about, it'll be in a weight journey and not just a weight loss journey because too often we focus on that weight loss. And once we get to that weight loss is like, Oh, I lost the weight and let me go back to eat and what I eat and you know, and you regain all the weight and you're back on another weight loss journey. So I really want to shift our mindset to it being a weight journey where that includes the weight loss, the weight maintenance and everything where we're doing it. So for the weight journey, it's so important not to do it in a vacuum. For me, I followed the philosophy of faith, family, friends, fitness, and food. So I like alliteration. So all those F's. So, but faith is the basis of thinking about it. You know, really for me Biblically, what does the Bible say about health and taking care of our bodies and being able to stay healthy and using that as a support in that some people who are a part of a faith community, maybe your church or synagogue or your mosque, it has some resources that you can use to build into that. So if faith is important to you, don't exclude that from the journey of your fitness journey. So that's one of the things. So it's creating support with what we already have versus looking at it. Now, and that's, you know, probably more of the touchy-feely time. For me on my fitness journey, I would say friends were important. I have a very good friend and she to me was the key to unlocking my weight loss journey. And to be perfectly honest, because I am such a perfectionist, I can be very hard on myself. So you know, I'm like, oh, I didn't make that 30 minutes. I didn't get two and a half hours, this and this and that. And so one day I was talking to her about how frustrated I was about losing weight and my fitness journey and she just stopped me and she was like, be nice to Sylvia. I like her about her saying that just like it hit me. I'm like, yeah be nice. Because when you're kind to yourself, you're not holding or nice to yourself or to anyone. Be nice. Because most women were very caring and will help people. We're not going to be, you know, a kid comes to you and like, you know, mom, I didn't, I wasn't able to get a hundred on my test this week. You're going to be like, that's okay. You got an 89 and it's all right. You'll try harder next time. Let's figure out what we can do to get those grades up or to see why you miss those points. So that same kind of kindness that we would extend to other people, we have to extend to ourselves. So, okay, this week I wasn't able to make it in two and a half hours, but let me look back and realistically think why that was, oh my goodness. You know, it was close to the month. I had to get all those charts and I had to submit on my work at work. There was a lot going on, that was an obstacle. It's not an excuse. It's an obstacle to me getting this work done. So it took me getting that workout in, all right, but now that identified the obstacles, what could I have possibly done to do and instead to get that workout in instead, or what? How could I have set myself up to make better food choices? Okay. I know that it was a week that was filled with PTA meetings, soccer practices, football practices, dance practice, whatever. And so realistically me thinking that I was going to cook dinner every night, didn't it make sense? But maybe instead of us rolling up to a fast food place, I could've just like meal prep and make like chicken. It used some big chicken or some enough food for a day or it could have gone to a healthy place and gotten a family meal pack that we could have actually had two days of leftovers from. So those are the kinds of choices when you're being kind to yourself. So I talked about faith, I talked about family, talked about friends first and then family. So the family is a tricky one, right? (Let’s talk about, yes.) Because sometimes family can actually, it can help or hinder on the weight loss, on the weight journey. Because let's say, and especially for moms, they're like, I hear this all the time, my kids don't like eating that or my husband does not like eating that. And then, and that's true, there's data to support that, right? Actually, for married couples, that data was an in married couples and I'm probably could work for common law couples too, but for married couples that you're more likely to adhere to your diet plan or your healthy eating plan if your spouse is involved with you. And also in the first year, an interesting fact in the first year of marriage, you more likely to gain 50 pounds. So there's a newlywed 50 too for women. Because we start heated up to that. So you know, so having that your partner, your spouse involved with you is so key because it will help. But what do you do if they're not involved? Like for me, I love my husband. He supports me as much as he can, but he has been blessed with a great metabolism. He got a six pack from drinking a six pack of coke. Like he just gets, it just comes naturally. He doesn't have to work out. So he can't really be on this journey with me because he can't get it. So he just eats what he wants to be. Right. I'll ask him, I'm like, can you go get me some fruit bars and then wanting, the one time I asked him for that and then he came back with like a box of Gelato and I'm like, ah, the nutritional content of this is very different like you're not helping me at all. He was like, oh, it's just ice cream. Yeah. Dr. Berry: That's usually what I get. I usually get like, well, my kids don't eat that way. My family members don’t eat that way. Maybe I don't have time to cook two different meals for two different groups of people. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. Well, what I'll say is don't make it hard for yourself. And that's what I did. So number one, I shifted my mindset rather than say, you know, oh, I don't have them and he's not helping me, or my kids don't want this. I said, okay, well this is another form of mommy me time. I get to eat, mommy gets to eat what she wants to eat, they can eat whatever they want, but this is my me time. This is something I'm doing just for me. I'm going to eat this salad for me. I'm going to eat this kale for me. And that's how it's for me. You know, I'm buying my own personal grocery. Actually, now that are kind of territorial. They're like actually had guests recently and they were eating me, I'm special low carb bread and I was. (The guest bread is over there.) Why are you eating my bread? So yes it does. But that's how I changed my mindset about it. To make it easy on myself, I keep the protein the same, but I kept the carb so we can eat the same protein. So be it chicken, be it turkey, be it fish, I eating it. That's me. You know what I mean? They're not even that. But I keep the protein the same for the most part. And then I keep the vegetables the same. I'm lucky to do, especially my son loves all vegetables, so I keep the vegetables same, but I cut the carb or switch to the carb about. So I’m in a family of big rice eaters, they like a lot of rice. Try to get them to eat brown rice is hard. They like white rice. Dr. Berry: The brown rice talk over here. It doesn't even, I know exactly what that white rice. Family is life. I know that life is life. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So they're not trying to have that. Sometimes if I get the right brand, like Uncle Ben's friend of brown rice. I can interchange it out, but it has to be the first day, you know, its very thing. So anyway, that being said, I've changed the carb about, so I just do a half a plate of vegetables for myself or I might do cauliflower rice for myself and then they can eat that. And that makes it very easy because then I, or I've put a salad, you know, then that way I'm not fixing to different meals. We're sharing the same protein. We're sharing the same vegetable is only a quick, simple thing that I have to do for myself. Dr. Berry: I love how you talked about having to make them the mindset shift first before the action occurred. Whatever that action is. Cause I think that you know, really slows a lot of moms down. They may know, they may read all that they needed to read and they see all the videos needed to do. And they have that first step really doesn't happen and nothing subsequently is successful. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Well, I have been, you know, practicing now in the past five years. I've seen, I've had what, 15,000 plus patient encounters and I started obesity. Yeah, I know, right? They check this data and I'm a nerd, y'all know, I know this data. So, and then I, you know, and then I started weight loss doing, you know, 40% weight loss exclusively in 2017 and late 2016. So I've seen lots of patients, right. And one of them, and so I can, but I will say when it comes to weight loss, weight management, 90% of it is the mind. It's the mind. Because when you, you know, the old song says free your mind and the rest will follow. Once you make that mind shift, then these things that seemed hard, that seems like it's that were quote-unquote excuses your obstacles, you find a way around them. You find a solution for them but it, so I really, I’m a big proponent, a big advocate of the mind. I recently was working with someone and they wanted me to just like, give them formula. Just give me some exercises, just give me some things and it realistically you don't need me to do that. There are billions of exercises you just go on YouTube. I love to search for it and find new people to do that. There are billions of diets and the data supports the best diet for you is the one that works right? The one that you can stick to. So it really comes down to me helping you change your mindset. And I don't do it alone. So when we talk about the team, the other part of your team is figuring out what those mindsets are. For a lot of my patients that they will end up going to see a therapist or a psychologist because there is deeper than the weight. I always say weight is not just a number, it's a story. There's a story behind what got that person to that weight. And once you unlock that story and figure it out, then both as the physician, both as the clinician but also as them for themselves, then we can figure it out. So sometimes we, they end up needing a psychologist on the team and not just the provider, a physician on their team to help because there's a lot of comorbidities like depression, anxiety, trauma, PTSD. A lot of that is tied into weight as well. Dr. Berry: I know you said you were taking out they were comorbidities that are there. (I know.) Obesity-related. Because I remember the bill. Nope, that was it. So now that you have a team, right? You have your mindset has shifted, right? I'm a busy mom. Right? Like I have mentally made that leap. Right. Then I'm ready. Right. What do I do next? How do I start? And I guess is that, would you say that's the start of their weight journey? Like when does that actually begin? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah, I would say your weight journey starts, once you decide and you make that change that you're ready to do it. No one can force you. No one can talk to you about it. You know, it's almost, I think last time we talked about I make it analogous for those who are in medicine or in healthcare to smoking cessation. Like when you stop smoking, quitting smoking, right? If you've ever been with this smoke grip, to get them to actually quit smoking as a matter what you put on the cigarette pet, where you put on the team, it doesn't matter. So we rate it. We say you're either pre contemplated, meaning you're not even thinking about it. So don't even talk to you, contemplating, you're thinking about it. Got some idea, but you're not ready for action yet. Grant action based and then you're in maintenance and then relapse. And so I treat obesity just like that, which is model for change. That's the formal name of it. So, so when you now are conscious that you've really wanted to change and you're ready to, so you're in the contemplation stage, that's step two. So now you're ready for action and to make the change. So I think yes, the mind shift changes number one, and then ready for action. So I think number one, I tell people to identify, and I can send this to you, the link, I put it on my website, I made a little graph or sheet that kind of follows my weight loss journey. So you'll be able to go directly to her site. Download that. Yes. Dr. Berry: This will be on the show note for Lunch and Learn community so you'll be able to go directly to her site. Download that, mentally. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So now that you're ready for it and you can write down, you need to write down like acknowledge what are your barriers, what are the obstacles that you face, be it time, be it an unsupportive family. So yeah. So getting started, what I tell you to do is, so address your obstacles and create opportunities. So what I recommend that you do is write down everything that you identify as the obstacle. The common term for it is excuses. People say it's just an excuse. But again, that mindset shift, right? Excuses is a very defeating term. It makes, it puts blame on you. Like I'm not doing something, I'm supposed to do it, but I could be doing it. So I shift it from saying it's not an excuse, it's your life. It's a barrier to what you're trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish it. So instead it's an obstacle. And once you recognize as the obstacle, but that obstacles as opportunities. So now you have an opportunity to change what you're doing. So what I'll do, so like lack of time, for instance, what opportunities can you create for a time in your schedule and give yourself some options. Give yourself A, B, C, even D, E, F. So like for me, when I started back in late 2014, my obstacle time was a huge obstacle because at that time my husband was commuting about two hours a day back and forth. So that when I got home I had to take care of the baby, my little toddler. And that made it hard for me to go to the gym and exercise. Right. So what opportunities can I do? All right, well let me exercise in the morning instead. And how much time, I'm more of a morning person anyway. Let me try to get up earlier and exercise in the morning. Maybe I can get a baby stroller, like a jogging stroller. So I actually got one of those offline. Maybe I can find a gym that has childcare in with it. So I would join the gym with childcare in it. Okay, well sometimes I can't get to the gym. What can I do? Let me do some. I started actually with a rockin' body, so I started with that because actually one of my first obstacles was I didn't like exercising. At least I thought I did exercising. Dr. Berry: Very telling because I think a lot of people don't realize like that's actually alike. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: You have to like it. And that's why when you don't like doing something, you'll find any reason not to do it. So, of course, I don't have time because I don't like it. And what I realized in that, so that's actually a huge, not just a mindset shift, but also a barrier or obstacle. So what I realized is I was trying to force myself to do things I didn't like to do. So when I started with rocky and body, which was just like dancing and I am not a good dancer, but it made me feel like I was so things like do it that way. So I like doing that. It made me feel good, you know, and it has short workouts so it has some as short as 10 minutes and some as long as 45 minutes. Then I started the running, which one of my colleagues that I work with, he's like, oh he actually just turned 60 yeah, we celebrate the 60 but he's 60 years old, but he's been running for years. And he said, yeah, so 30 plus years he's done a Boston marathon, lots of things. So seeing him and just his consistency with it really inspired me. And so that's how it started. A trend for the first 10K that then I did. And because he was doing it and you know, he really motivated me to do it. And then I found I liked running, you know? And so I kept going, kept adding it, have added distance at a distance, did a marathon in 2016 and it kept doing the 10K and did my fifth monuments 10K. This year was my fifth one, four months postpartum. (Congratulation.) Thank you. So, but you don't know what you like to do until you try, you know? Whereas then I have other friends, I have colleagues, they like doing CrossFit, they like doing Hit, they liked doing weightlifting. I don't like doing that stuff. I recognize the value of it. But I know for myself I don't like it. I have to do it because it's good for the strength and aspect of it. So I say figure out what you like cause you may say I hate exercise, I don't like exercise. But really you just haven't found what you like to do. So challenge yourself to find the activity and think about activities you don't consider exercise that you do enjoy doing. Like do you enjoy dancing? Do you enjoy being outdoors? Do you enjoy, because then maybe you can find, uh, some form of exercise, quote-unquote that you enjoy doing too. Dr. Berry: What I love about what you just said, especially cause it's kind of eye-opening, is that a lot of us when we'd say, well, I don't have the time to exercise. Where we're really saying is I don't like that exercise that y'all want me to find time for us. So I'm not going to find time to do it. But once you find something you like, whatever that something is from an exercise standpoint, all of a sudden you'll wake up early in the morning and you'll stay up late at night, you'll squeeze it in during lunch. You'll do things for stuff you like which makes sense. Right? Again, when we got to the food we like, we'll do whatever we got to do for that food. We like, right, when you have an activity we like, we'll do it. We ever have to do. And I think once we hold up that same appraise with an exercise, whatever that exercise is for you, you'll find the time, right? Yeah. Some kids got to go to sleep, right. You know, family guy, you're taking it, you do that time to kind of be by yourself. And I liked that you said maybe you don't have time to go somewhere. Right. Maybe there's some stuff you can do even in your own house to kind of maximize the free time that you do have. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. And that was another, you brought up a good one. Another barrier, right? Healthy food doesn't taste good to me. Like that was probably, you know, is it, like I said, it's been five years. I forget where I started. Right. We want to front and act as we've been there. I've always been healthy. I've always been on this witness. No, I did not like healthy food when I first started. So that was my first month to set shift for me. It was just like, okay, well how I actually worked around this because I'm a foodie? Both of my parents owned a restaurant when I was a kid. I grew up like just immersed in food. Culture food is a big part of my life, but what I challenged myself with was how can it, rather than saying I don't like, maybe again, I'm not liking the healthy food I'm choosing. Or I'm choosing tasteless food. I'm not applying the same principles of Buddhism to my food, my healthy food. So what I will do is challenged myself to make my healthy food as delicious as possible, but still healthy and to find healthy options when I go out to eat. Because you know, again, being busy, I do have to eat out a lot. I do sometimes some weeks of his very busy. I may not have the time to cook the way I want to, but let me challenge myself to find those restaurants that have healthy options and let me challenge myself when I cooked to make it delicious, healthy, and delicious. Not just something dry or blend because I say I'd want to eat healthy. Don't punish yourself, enjoy what you're eating, but just try to stay within the parameters of making it healthy. Because to me, if you're a good cook, if you're a true foodie, then you can find deliciousness and make deliciousness with anything. Anyone can make it delicious. If you get to put a whole stick of butter in it and half a cup of sugar, but it takes real skill to make, you know, some quinoa delicious or it seemed to make this tofu delicious. So that's what I've been, what I challenged myself to do. And that's kind of how I worked around the barrier of not really finding healthy food at that time appealing. Dr. Berry: When we talk about healthy food, right? Because this is personally, I always run into the issue right? I'm a very visual person with the food and some of the foods that they called healthy I got to ask that question, it's not even a secondary question. Some of the food that they called healthy really don't look good. Like Hey, I haven't even like tasted it yet. But sometimes that mental barrier, they even taste food that's healthier for me it's difficult because I'm, "oh that food doesn't even my...what is that?" And I that's, that's sometimes I get, what am I looking at right here at the hospital and they do this, they always have like a vegetarian section. This thing that it looks like meatballs, but I know for a fact is not a meatball. And then it's almost like hard like a rock. Like it's just like, okay. And that's what always gets me like, and I know that's probably going to get a lot of moms out there, right? Like the food don't look good to us. It's difficult for us to even put it in our mouth to eat. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Exactly. So what I would challenge you to, what I would say to that is you're right then don't eat what does it look good to you? Like personally for me and, and that's again about knowing yourself and that mindset shift. I don't like big food and I shouldn't call it big, but I don't like to look for light foods. Big chicken. I told you I like chicken. Finally, I found one brand that actually does taste like chicken and it's made from, but when I read the ingredients like you when I know what do I really want to eat this, like wheat, soy and some kind of fungus, but it really tastes like chicken. But before that, I don't like those like big meatballs. I don't like big things like that because you're right, psychologically I'm expecting the taste, the texture of a meatball that I'm used to. And then when I get this and my brain is like automatically going to think it tastes gross because you know, it's not the meatball that I'm used to. So I would say focus on what you do like. So if you like vegetables, so initially within, you know, I know that I like vegetables so a lot of my things is stir fry. If he even looks on my Instagram page and stuff like that. There are a lot of stir fries because I can eat vegetables. There's a lot of eggplants. I like, eggplant is hardy. There is a Portobello mushroom, it's hardy. So more of the more vegetables which you know the plant-based community or argued that it's healthier for you anyway and cleaner for you than eating something that's processed to look like me in the first place. And so I would say if you identify that, then don't eat it because already if you don't think it looks good and you're right, most of the food is person visual and not only visual but also smelled too. So if you have that perception before you even put it in your mouth, it is not going to taste it. Once it hits the cognitive part of your brain, you know, it's missing all those functions. It’s missing the texture, it’s missing the taste that you're expecting and no one would like that. So don't eat it, don't eat it. Find something else that is appealing to you. Like maybe make the list of it. Now it is more challenging for those people who say, I don't like vegetables, which I do run into people like that or I only buy fruit. That again adds into your team, which is the second part. So you asked how do you get started? So address your obstacles and create opportunities to is assemble your team. Like we talked about your support system and your structure. I use the principle of fitness inspire through teamwork. That's my handle or whatever, FITT. So we need a team, right? So who's on your team? So maybe you need a Dietitian on your team professionally because you don't like a lot of foods. Or you have health conditions like diabetes, hypertension, prediabetes, insulin resistance. You have conditions that do require special attention to come up with a specialized or individualized food plan. And I'd tell people all the time, why haven't a physician? So if you can find an obesity medicine physician in your area, you can go on the OMA website, which would come put in the show notes also. They can help you get started. But when it comes to nutrition counseling, I'm the type of person, I like to acknowledge my limitations and my training and it helped my patients get to where they need to go. So I said doctors, we do drive-thru nutrition counseling. That's for many reasons like you know what I mean? Like you go drive-thru, we tell you a couple of days. Don’t eat carbs, don't eat sugar. But when you go to a nutritionist, they give you like a full four course meal and nutrition counseling because they can go through in detail, they have the time, go through detail and to see what it works for you, what doesn't work, and look at everything like that and come up with a very detailed plan. So I always recommend if you have a lot of barriers to things you like, dislike health condition. He should see, it starts with your physician. But definitely seeing nutritionists to help you on your team. And the team that I use, you know, as I said, I use my F so you know, faith, family, friends, if a physician or primary care provider, psychologist, dietician, you know, so a comprehensive team is important to help you with your weight journey. Dr. Berry: That's beautiful. Okay, I'm a busy mom. Right? I made the mental switch, I got my team together. I’m starting to identify what things, I will make time for it, right? Because we know the time is there, right? We've already, the mentorship has already said, but you know, time is there. So we already know what the time is there and now we're starting to identify this is, I like this exercise. I don't like this exercise. I'm going to lean towards this way over here and now we're even starting to like even say, you know what? Maybe I can eat healthy right now and I'm asking it as a little bit later as far as, especially when we talk about eating out because I always get that excuse, I am eating healthy and I'm doing everything like well how come I haven't lost my 20 pounds yet? I think that's the part of the journey that I feel like people would hit the stop sign and breaks and that's when they kind of get off. Right? Because, they, for some and again, and maybe kind of going back to having more realistic goals. Right? But they don't, right? But they don't, right? They say I haven't lost my 20 pounds and now they're back to see you because they say, Hey I did all these things and the weight's not coming off. Right? Like what do I do? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Alright. So going back to the steps, let me just reiterate one more time. So getting started. So I address obstacles and create opportunities, assemble your support team. And then the third thing is to act daily. Do something daily towards those goals that you have set. So even if you can't get your 30 minutes in one day, okay, do one minute. Because I find when it comes to mindset comes to momentum. You just got to keep going. I don't allow myself to go more than 48 hours without exercise. And because I find that that third day that's when the inertia or the laziness, that's it. And it gets harder for me to get back on my routine. I mean, unless of course, I'm sick or something like that. There've been times when I've been sick and I had to go for a week. But since it started, so that third day come hill come high water, I'm going to do some. And where there's just one minute of a plank. I view my time bank of fitness as a bank account, right. Rather than viewing it like I have to do 30 minutes each day. No, I have to get in two and a half hours this weekend. However, I get that two and a half hours is fine. So if I just do 10 minutes today, but over the weekend I can do an hour, then it's all working towards the same goal rather than see a very rigid that you have to do 30 minutes every day or something like that. So break it up how it works for you. So just something every day, maybe today I'm going to, instead of having that chocolate chip cookie at 3:00 PM, I'm going to have, make a choice and choose to just have an apple at 3:00 PM instead. So that's what it means to do it by acting daily. Now when you talk about it, and I wanted to make sure we clarify that before we shift into the weight because the weight loss part of it, because you're right, the struggle is real. So this is the way that I talked about this, which I mentioned in the first podcast, was just that, number one, we've got to think about a couple of things from evolution or hysterical, whatever you believe in and point of view. We were not made to lose weight, right? Weight has an advantage, excess weight. The reason why we have this adipose or this fat tissue is to protect this and to serve as storage for energy, to serve as the storage for food, for times of scarcity. Right? And so I always tell my patients who have obesity and they left. I hope you will too, that if we were in like caveman times or they would be queen and the king of the jungle and I would be eating like this is real, right? You have a protective advantage of where you are. But unfortunately, as we have now moved into food positive times where we don't need this extra adipose or this extra tissue to hang out as we did before, now the body is not used to getting rid of it and certainly not used to getting rid of it as quickly as possible. So we know from a lot of studies that have been done like this showed the biggest loser study came out and it showed that most of those people who lost all that weight so quickly to a very intensive process with a lot of team of people. For those people, they gain most of the weight back. And part of that, when they looked at the biology of it, their body set into motion a whole process for them to regain their weight. Like their metabolic rate slowed down. There was a release of hormones that made them hungrier, that made them not process the fat in sugar as well. So there was a lot going on for it because of the fact that they lost the weight so rapidly and how much of the weight was lost. So we know that you know, we have physiology fighting against this in many ways. And then also psychologically as you're alluding to, is just the fact that, oh, I'm not losing weight, how I feel or would the as quickly as I feel. And so then we do other things and we'd go back into old habits as well that too. So when we talk about weight loss is they're complicated, but then from a more practical perspective, so that was how the nerdy science kind of stuff and the psychological stuff. But let's be real. It took you 50 years to gain that weight. Why do you think you should lose it all on 50 days? Common guys, give us some time. (I love it.) That rapid weight loss is very traumatic for the body. It is. It is. So the body's going to say, pola, pola, pola, pola. We starving. Why are we losing so much weight? Let me slow down this process a little bit. Let me give myself time to get used to all these changes. And so you may experience what is called a weight loss plateau. Now there's controversy. Some people don't believe in it, this and that. I believe in it. I've seen it and I think the science does support it and it makes sense like your body needs time to get used to the changes that are being made. So I think during those times when you feel like the weight is not coming off as quickly as it should, that is definitely the time if you don't already have a good support system to seek it out. And again, I mean no shade to any of their specialty or profession, but I know the training that I got as I transitioned from internal medicine, so obesity medicine, I learned a lot about what to do during those times and to really about treating obesity as a disease. So that would be a great time if you are, do have access to an obesity specialist or clinician in your area to try to seek one out, to see if they can help you lose weight. Now in terms of what you should look for in one, I think that probably should be a whole another set very, because I could go on for a long time. But you do need to seek help to help you through the weight loss plateau. So that help, just in short may include dietary changes. It may include behavioral changes and it actually should include a lot of those. And then sometimes if you already optimized on all those things, especially, I'm sorry, a key one for working moms, I should say sleep. You need seven to nine hours of sleep at night to lose weight. That is because all of our natural weight burnings, that burning hormones are weight loss hormones. They are reset when we sleep and when we get into the right circadian rhythm, and that takes about seven to nine hours at night. And then also stress, you need your stress level to below. So stress management is a key part of it because people who rate their stress levels as moderate to high, on average, we weigh about 11% more than people who rate their stress levels as low. So you need to really make sure that those are in place. And then if all those things are in place, then this is when a physician or clinician may say, maybe we should do weight loss medication and there are several on the market that had been approved to help treat the disease of obesity and to help with weight loss. So that's when, and that's what we may need to almost quote unquote trick the body out of this kind of Plateau state or non-weight burning state. Dr. Berry: I love it. So after an action, what's our next of a plan or action? So we've got action, we're doing it at least a minute. I love that at least a minute because I think sometimes the moms do feel guilty. They do feel guilty, (We do.) Just couldn't get it, I wanted to and so and so happened. I know I'd be working out like I tried to work out in the mornings, but usually, my twins usually toward that, right? They wake up early, someone's got to be with the other along the way. And it's usually me. Right? So I know there are always obstacles that are in a way. So I do love that we give them an opportunity to say no, you know, it's okay. Just put it in the bank. It's not a race. We just need you to get there. We just need you to get there. Had to be the first. We just got to get you to that point every single week. And I love when I stay up. When they get to point in there the action and they're losing weight and now they're feeling good about themselves. Right? Like what? Like what do you do? How do you counsel them to stay on it, right? Because again, I love the fact that we really call it a journey, right? Because this is something that as a lifelong thing that they need to like handle it. What are some of the things that you've seen that's caused people to maybe backslide a little bit? And what are some of the tips that you have to say like to keep on going? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: So the next stage in the stages of changes is maintenance, right? So you guys what, we're in action, now we just need to maintain it. You've already addressed some things. So lack of results is a key thing like you mentioned. So people who may lose that initial five to 10 pounds and get it off very quickly because it's more water weight and people in the body was ready to give that. But then you get to a place where maybe raw now five to 10% of your body weight and then your body kinda plateau or as not losing as quickly. So people get discouraged and the negativity sets in. I think it's very important then to again, tap into your team and figure out what's going on. That's the time to make their appointment with someone that's to talk to your friends who are on the journey with you. Those people who are going to support you, your family, your faith, those things to keep you on the journey. And that's the glue that's kind of keeping you going during those times when you may feel discouraged on your own. Because everybody will feel that way. I think number one, again, a mindset shift is just knowing that this plateau or this lack of results as part of the journey. Number two, knowing that it's a constant journey. So you mentioned something very common, like yeah, I have the five months old now. She often wakes up, but if you follow my Instagram stories, you'll see her in that video with me. Right? So that means maybe I have plans to go out for a run that morning, but she woke up. So now we may be doing a carry fit or like a baby carrier exercise instead. And I'm just lifting weights with her or, you know if she won't let me put her down or I'll put her in a thing and exercise in the swinger or something. So you know, knowing that it's going to be constantly something. Something will always be there. That's the other mindset struggles. Not just because, okay, I've declared this thing and I'm going to do it. That is going to be quote-unquote easy. It's not going to be easy. There were always been some barrier there, but you get better at figuring out how can I navigate around that? So that's why I say mindset is so important because that's what's going to help you to maintain and continue the weight journey. So now that you've lost the weight or a year in the process of losing the weight continuance to go, and so that's how I know in the office and in the clinical setting how I support my patients. So number one, showing up, right? Sometimes you have a tendency to hide when you haven't reached the goal or the goal is not going the way you want. Don't hide, still, show up. Come to your appointment. Call your friend, call your trainer and I'm so sorry my fitness trainer friends are going to be so mad at me. Yes, fitness trainers, they're been important. You know, I'm more like individual because my exercise is more of my me time. But definitely if you struggle with being alone or working out alone, get a trainer, get someone to help you. And I'm actually going to get a trainer later on this year too because they can help you get to that next level of fitness that you want to get to or you need to get to. So yes tapping into the resources you need, show up using your team and still continually reevaluating what is working, what isn't working and knowing that you needed, you're going to need to change. Like I can't tell you how many times I would come to feel like I was finally in a group with especially fitness and I focused on fitness. But the food, of course, is the number one thing for weight loss. But fitness helps them so much. So I would get my fitness schedule down and then my husband's work schedule would change and I'd be like dad, waking up baby. And so, you know, it's always going to be something. I think that's what I've learned and that's life, right? There's always going to be something. But your ability to adapt, which probably it could still see as we talk. It helps out so much. Right. I just added a fourth A so I had a sense and assemble. I had act now I have, did I just already forget it? This is the sleep deprivation can get but no, but yeah, I just added a fourth A to it though. So you have assessed, you have, so you acknowledging those barriers. You had to assemble your team, you have acting daily and then assess. So constantly reassessing what needs to change, what you need help with that so important. Dr. Berry: I love it. Before we get you out of here, again amazing teaching education and I know obviously we talked about the moms, of course, busy dads. I know y'all out there clearly, but we got to talk about the moms because you know, we know how hard they work. Before we let you get out of here. Right? Like what I need you to tell everyone, like again, we've talked about before, how can they get in touch with you, teach you, learn from you. What is out there that they can kind of consume cause I think, uh, you know, they're going to listen to this and then go back and listen to episode 93 and then be like, wow, this is the person that I need to follow. How can they follow and learn and continue to kind of even follow your journey that you're still on as we speak. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Yeah. Well definitely through social media. I have a website that is drsylviagbollie.com. I also am very active on Facebook. I do weekly live postings where I teach on different topics and I'm committed to trying to do those weekly now. I also post regularly on Twitter, on Instagram, just to keep us all motivated on our fitness journey. And that's my main goal, just showing real-life examples of trying to fit into in fitness and fit in healthy eating and so busy lifestyles, especially as a working mom. So there's social media is the best way. Dr. Berry: Okay. So I ask all my guests on the podcast, how is what you do helping to empower busy moms across the world empowered themselves for better health? Dr. Slyvia Bollie: I think what I'm doing is helping busy moms across the world because I'm empowering us to just be ourselves and work within those confines would be in ourselves. Work within that rather than trying to fit any mold, fit any model and putting yourself on there. Like you mentioned a lot of guilt, a lot of pressure. Like I, my goal and how I hope to help all of us is to just help us realize that number one, it's possible to fit in fitness. It’s possible to fit in healthy eating. And it doesn't have to be the way that anyone else does it, but in a way that works best for you. Dr. Berry: Love it, love it. Again, Lunch and Learn community, I want to thank that Dr. Bollie for coming on the second time and dropping even more gems. And she did the first time and you know, blessing us, educating us, and really getting this right and together, especially for the busy moms out there. I know a lot of them are. I know a lot of them in the Lunch and Learn community who are starving freedom. So I like this. So again, thank you for joining the show today. Dr. Slyvia Bollie: Thanks. Bye. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.
Dr. Lara Lengel is a professor of communication at BGSU whose research focuses on international communication and gender in communication. She discusses her research on “Community Organizations’ Role in combating Sex Trafficking,” which she developed in Fall 2018 while an ICS Faculty Fellow. Specifically, Dr. Lengel focused on how Costa Rica has changed its laws around sex work, and the effects of that change on women, religious organizations, and human trafficking in the Americas. Transcript: Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, an associate professor of English and American culture studies and the director of ICS. Today I'm talking to Dr. Lara Martin Lengel, professor of communication here at BGSU. Dr. Lengel received her PhD in mass communication from Ohio University, and her research focuses on international communication and how communication can advance social, economic, and environmental justice, especially pertaining to gender and identity in a transnational context. Jolie Sheffer: Some of her published work includes a study on memory around wartime sexual violence, and the use of social media for social change in the Middle East and North Africa. Dr. Lengel is an ICS faculty fellow in fall 2018. The ICS fellowship program allows full time faculty to take a full semester off from their research and service obligations to dedicate their attention to an interdisciplinary humanities topic of their choosing. At the end of the semester, fellows present their work publicly and hold a community engagement event that brings their knowledge to the wider community and in turn reinvigorates their academic research. Jolie Sheffer: Dr. Lengel is here today to discuss the work she's performed during her semester long fellowship. While taking part in the fellowship, she studied the fraught relationship in Costa Rica between faith based organizations, FBOs, their efforts to abolish sex work and human trafficking and the government of Costa Rica's efforts to decriminalize sex work. I'm very pleased to welcome Dr. Lengel to the program as the second ICS faculty fellow speaking in our 2018-2019 speaker series. Thank you for joining me, Lara. Dr. Lara Lengel: Thank you Jolie. Jolie Sheffer: It's so great to have you here, and I wonder if you could just start us off by talking about how you first began working on the subject of sex work and human trafficking in Costa Rica in particular. Dr. Lara Lengel: Thank you. It goes way back actually to my PhD research in North Africa. I had a Fulbright grant to spend a year in Tunisia, which is a small North African country on the Mediterranean, to look at the role of women in professional contexts, most notably music, in the country. I was very surprised to learn from numerous respondents that there is still a mythical connection between public performers of music, even serious music, classically trained in the Western music tradition and so forth, to prostitution. Because of that, many of the respondents who I came to know during that year, their parents, their brothers, their sisters, or their husbands, did not want them to be in a really respected organization, which is called El Azifet, which is the first all women's orchestra in the Arab world. This tremendous organization actually was missing key voices and instrumentations from women who were just not allowed to be in the organization. Dr. Lara Lengel: I found this really perplexing, because there was absolutely no evidence that there was any contemporary connection between any woman getting on a public stage to sing or play the oud or the violin or piano would have any connection to sex trades at all. I learned through historical research that there may have been a connection with colonial infiltration from the French establishing pubs where women would do belly dancing and so forth, but that was completely different, and literally that doesn't exist today anyways. That was 1993-1994, so this idea of women in the public sphere more broadly as problematic bodies in space was something that has been essentially on, you know, in the backstage, if you will. But, it wasn't until first traveling to Costa Rica first in 2011 and then subsequently thereafter that I learned a very different context of women's bodies in public spaces in a very unique decriminalized sex work model in that country. Jolie Sheffer: When did Costa Rica decriminalize sex work? Dr. Lara Lengel: The law is based on Roman law, which is something I know very little about, I'm trying to learn more about it, that there is no codified law that says sex work is either legal or illegal, and thus it's not illegal, meaning it's not necessarily legal. However, what is illegal is what's commonly known as pimping, procuring people to work for the pimps, the controllers, financial gain, and also prostitution gangs are illegal and brothels are illegal. What I appreciate about this decriminalized, not illegal, model of sex work is that sex workers can choose to do this work in a relatively regulated and relatively safe environment. There was an important piece of legislation turned into law in 2013 at the Costa Rica national level where sex tourism promotion and other nuances of the broader sex trade was established as illegal under a human trafficking law of 2013. Jolie Sheffer: How do you see this project, and perhaps your work more broadly using interdisciplinary methods? Dr. Lara Lengel: It's interdisciplinary to an almost overwhelming standpoint because I started out this project as a feminist scholar, primarily in cultural studies and media studies, but have realized that I need so much more knowledge from legal studies, from political science, from the whole broad domain of human trafficking is very new to me. Urban planning, I mean, all of these nuances of disciplinary studies that are entirely new to me. My work has primarily focused on women in the Arab Islamic world, in the Middle East and North Africa, most notably North Africa, and also identity construction and safety and security and wellbeing of Muslim Americans and Arab Americans and issues of Islamophobia in the media and in interpersonal interactions and so forth. Dr. Lara Lengel: So, taking on human trafficking in an entirely different national and arguably transnational context, because what I focus on is men primarily coming from North America to Costa Rica, so there is a transnational component. The tourism industry, which is a whole other discipline, critical tourism studies touches upon this and so forth. The short answer is yes, very much so. It's been fantastic for me to learn about all of these different disciplines and the research strategies inherent in them, and the ways that different modes of thought, different experiences and different academic disciplines can come together in a really profound way. Jolie Sheffer: One of the issues that your work explorers are the overlapping but distinct terrain between consensual sex work and human trafficking. Could you sort of define those terms and explain their similarities and differences? Dr. Lara Lengel: Absolutely. Human trafficking has several official legal definitions. The United Nations first put forth a definition of human trafficking in the year 2000. The United States government established the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, also in the year 2000, amended in 2015 with the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. So for instance, and the definitions are quite similar, but I'll give you the one from the US Department of Justice. They define specifically sex trafficking as, "Recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of an individual through the means of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of commercial sex." Human trafficking is the same definition, but instead of for specifically the purpose of commercial sex, for the purpose of any labor that benefits financially the trafficker. Then, the question about ... Jolie Sheffer: Consensual sex work. Dr. Lara Lengel: Consensual sex. Certainly, it involves the age of consent in the given jurisdiction. In a place like Costa Rica that's 18, elsewhere that might be slightly different, might be slightly younger. I tend to, you know, go with the age 18 as the age of consent. It would involve two or more adults age 18 and over engaging in an act that they choose to do that may or may not involve some transactional exchange, either money or its equivalent. Jolie Sheffer: What are the conditions in Costa Rica in particular that drive that country's industry for sex work and/or trafficking? Dr. Lara Lengel: With the rise of not only the opening of borders and the increase of attention to the tourism industry, just the general neoliberal capitalist push the past 20, 30 years have added to this as well. It is very much a balance, and I think the authorities understand that decriminalized sex work is what brings a lot of people and a lot of money into that country. Being a Catholic nation, they just don't want to talk about it. Jolie Sheffer: That's a really fascinating way of thinking about this research site for you, as perhaps offering indicators for countries like the US and what paths might be possible in the future. In touching on religion, another element of your research is the study of faith based organizations. Can you first explain what an FBO is, and what their goals looked like in Costa Rica for addressing both human trafficking and this increase in sex tourism? Dr. Lara Lengel: Under the Bush administration, I believe it was the year 2000, there was a specific move to support financially nonprofit organizations that have faith as a mission or they're emerging from a particular religious organization, and so forth. It's been very problematic and contested because, for all kinds of reasons that I can go into further if you wish, but the fact that churches are not taxed, that adds to the contentiousness of this particular move to support faith based organizations. Dr. Lara Lengel: In in the US context, a faith based organization more often than not is constituted officially as an organization under IRS code 501C3, which is the broader code to designate a nonprofit organization. They are a subset of nonprofits, essentially. As I said, they may be directly affiliated with a church, they may not be, and because of that legislation or that recodification under tax code in the year 2000 under the Bush administration, they've had more leeway to get funding at the federal level as well as from individual and group donations and so forth. There's been quite a growth of FBOs since that year, so now we're going on about 20 years, nearly 20 years of a different funding structure for these organizations. Jolie Sheffer: How are they approaching the subject of sex work in Costa Rica? What are those organizations that you're looking at, how do they tend to respond to the decriminalization that's happening there? Dr. Lara Lengel: It's challenging for me to respond to this question because, in many ways, the FBOs that I've come to know and have interacted with are doing really important work. One in particular that I've written about and talked about has set up afterschool programs for at risk youth, in particularly impoverished areas in Puntarenas Province, which is fantastic. What I would invite them to consider doing is being a little more open to the fact that they could support women who continue to work in the sex trade. There seems to be a very clear, perhaps unstated, but a very clear effort to convert people from sex workers to post sex workers, rather than support people who are continuing to engage in sex work. Dr. Lara Lengel: This is even more the case, there's a fantastic scholar by the name of Megan Rivers-Moore, an anthropologist who has done amazing work, particularly in San Jose, the capital city of Costa Rica. One very recent article that she had published in Signs, the feminist journal, focused on her ethnographic work with a particular FBO in San Jose that would just not help current sex workers at all. Her research in San Jose confirms that that's pretty much the case across these faith based organizations in San Jose. I don't yet have definitive evidence because I haven't met with every single FBO in Puntarenas Province which is my particular site, but from the field work I've done thus far, that seems to be consistent. Dr. Lara Lengel: Another thing that I find interesting is that most of these organizations, even though they are operating in a predominantly Catholic country, are not Catholic organizations. They tend to be, although they're quiet about their organizational affiliations, they would be commonly constituted as evangelical, and that, I would assume when you were mentioning the fraught relationships with FBOs, the national government, local government, and sex workers themselves, that that is part of the fraught relationship. Dr. Lara Lengel: There's a lot of God talk in their mission, and as a person raised Roman Catholic, I don't reject that entirely, but I can see why the one FBO that I've had most interaction with, they actually say publicly on their site that they tend to not have as much interaction with sex workers as they would like. Well, they're probably turned off to the way that they're stating their mission and going about their work. Again it's fraught, it's sensitive, and as a researcher I don't feel it's my place to go in and give some advice. If it's asked for it, I will certainly give it. But, I think their way of communicating their religious identity hurts their purpose. Jolie Sheffer: Well, and that really also speaks to what you're talking about with tourism as well as the FBOs are also kind of North American organizations coming into another nation with ideas about how things ought to be done. Then, for the most part going back, many of them sort of there for short times to do volunteer work of some kind and then go back home to North America. I imagine that creates certain tensions between local people, whether it's local elected officials or local women engaged in this kind of sex work that that may feel like outside interference. Dr. Lara Lengel: Absolutely, and that's not just the case in a place in what's known broadly as the global South like Costa Rica. But, it's also the case here in the US. There are numerous sex workers who are highly critical of what they call the kind of do-gooders. Right? People who have very good intentions, but do not have a fundamental understanding of the socioeconomic and cultural context in which sex workers operate, the marginalization that they have experienced that has either occurred since they've chosen this work or what led them to this type of work and so forth. That's absolutely the case. Dr. Lara Lengel: It's hard for me to be a white, essentially middle class feminist and critique white middle class feminists. I do have, I would humbly suggest, more lived experience understanding financial insecurity than perhaps many middle class feminists and activists and advocates who are doing this type of work. But, that certainly, as you said, increases the tensions between sex workers, those persons who can be most helped by support, and the people who have a vision for how they want the world to be. Right? The vision is not bad. Right? Much of the goal of faith-based advocates in trying to mitigate trafficking, either sex trafficking, human trafficking more broadly, or sex work even in a decriminalized consensual domain is that they're upset about demand. Right? Dr. Lara Lengel: The one FBO that I've touched upon during this discussion, the founder was inspired to create the organization after overhearing a conversation with two men talking about who they were going to do, right, once they got to Jaco, this particular beach town, and she was unsettled by that. I understand that. I'm unsettled by these conversations as well, but I don't think trying to end demand is feasible. Whereas, someone like that person thinks it's possible. It's a wonderful goal, but I don't see that as possible. Jolie Sheffer: One of the issues clearly is about differing attitudes about what the effect of decriminalization of sex work is. Right? On one side, you have those who argue that all sex work is in some way non-consensual and therefore is part and parcel of human trafficking. Could you sort of explain a little more about that position, and you know, what are its potential merits, and then the ways in which you might or might not agree with that? Dr. Lara Lengel: I would like to quote, not directly because I don't remember it word for word, but a very profound response to a similar question posed to a sex worker in London. The question also focused on, how can you participate in an industry that is notoriously patriarchal and capitalist. Her response was, what work is not a part of patriarchal capitalism? I thought that was really actually quite brilliant, because there are so many professions, careers, jobs, labor that are socially and culturally sanctioned. Sex work is absolutely not, but we're all operating in problematic systems. Maybe there are some careers that fall on the outskirts of that, and I honor those people who have found those careers, and even a fantastic life as is the case of what we do as professors, there's still constraints. I think that's the best way that I can respond to that question, is to actually, you know, amplify the voices of current sex workers on that topic. Jolie Sheffer: You quoted the statistic that 70% of the world's poor are women. Part of what you're talking about are throughout much of the world, women are impoverished, they lack education and resources. And so, sex work is often one of the few areas to earn money without resources, training, things like that. That seems to be part of what your argument and what those who seek decriminalization believe is, make it safer rather than driving this stuff further underground. Dr. Lara Lengel: One small aspect but one fundamentally important aspect is the flexibility of deciding when you work. Right? As a former single mother, I can tell you, you know, how challenging that can be. I was very, very fortunate to have a profession that would allow me to take my child to a pediatrician or to stay home with an extended case of mono or strep. Think about the number of women in this country and elsewhere that would quickly be fired from their job for caring for a child. It's absolutely awful, and especially in a place like the United States. I had my children in the United Kingdom where there's far more support overall for parents to care for their children in a time of need than there is here in these right to work states and employment at will context. Dr. Lara Lengel: That's one way that perhaps white middle class women can look at sex work in a new perspective. It would be important for them, I would argue, to think about their own histories. If they were ever under threat of losing not only their job but their home, their livelihood because they had a sick child. I would guess most have not. I don't want to apologize for being critical of some of the people who are at the forefront of this type of work. As I said, it's good work, but I think having a much more nuanced perspective of financial insecurity would be really welcome for the people doing this type of work. Jolie Sheffer: Again, that speaks to your ongoing commitment to listening to the voices of marginalized peoples; economically, socially, and other ways rather than presuming to speak for them. Dr. Lara Lengel: There's a very profound statement that I hear more and more frequently in peaceful public protests, etc, and policy debates, "Nothing about us without us." Put the people most effected at the table to help forge new debates, new dialogues, new perspectives, and ideally, policy and law that can help people who are most disenfranchised. Jolie Sheffer: Right. We've talked a lot about consensual sex work. I want to shift gears now and talk about, what are the issues that drive human trafficking both locally here in Toledo and internationally? Dr. Lara Lengel: Okay, thanks. At the heart is economic injustice and patriarchal capitalism. If a person who chooses, who makes this horrible choice to be a trafficker can acquire, can coerce, can fraud a person into their domain to the tune of on average globally $90 and we can talk about how that money is spent, et cetera. You don't necessarily buy a slave in the 21st century as one dude in the 19th, which actually costs quite a bit more, if you correct for the inflation, cost inflation over the past 200-some years. Whatever the case, 90 bucks to own an enslaved human being. Profits vary greatly depending on national, local, regional context. But in the US, for instance, a sex trafficker can make on average between $10-15,000 per month per enslaved person. The factor is money. Right? Dr. Lara Lengel: Human trafficking, and in particular sex trafficking, is the most profitable industry, be it an illicit industry, it is the most profitable industry in the world next to drug trafficking. That's the factor. It's money. What's interesting about human trafficking, trafficking in persons currently being the second most profitable industry, I would unfortunately predict that that will easily transcend and take the number one spot, primarily because drugs are a finite commodity. You sell a drug, it's used. You sell more, right, but you still have to get more product. Whereas, a person can be sold many times a day, and hundreds of times a month, and thousands of times a year. It's awful, but it's profit, and that's what fuels this. Jolie Sheffer: What are some of the things that ordinary citizens can do to be more aware of who might be at risk of being trafficked in our own neighborhoods? Dr. Lara Lengel: There are strategies that I'm hoping to continue to develop and share in workshops with middle school and high school, even elementary school teachers. I have some planned in January in honor of human trafficking awareness month. Health practitioners are starting to be trained and starting to gain awareness about how to identify a person at risk. The estimations are as high as 80% of people who are trafficked have visited a health practitioner, either in an emergency room, urgent care, a nurse practitioner, et cetera. What kind of questions can those health practitioners ask to help identify someone at risk? Dr. Lara Lengel: It's very difficult because traffickers are experts in psychology and experts in threats, both explicit and veiled. Someone who's being trafficked will likely not admit to that on the first interaction with someone, say a teacher or a health practitioner. It takes time to develop trust and it takes the effort to understand how to communicate with someone who is experiencing trauma and whose lives and whose family's lives are under threat if they disclose that they are a trafficked, enslaved person. The understanding of how to communicate with others is important, but that takes some time. Dr. Lara Lengel: More doable at the outset strategies are to understand how to identify the victims from, you know, if one sees signs of bruises, which again that might be difficult in this winter when everyone's covered up. Eye contact, lack of eye contact may be evident. If a person, usually a young person is uncomfortable saying where they're from, where they live, where they might be going. If they seem to have very few possessions. If they have no identification on their person, no money on their person. I think it's important to connect this question with studies of traumatology. Right? How can we identify a person who's currently or surviving post-trauma and try to understand what that looks like. They may be malnourished. They may just have a look of fear on their face and so forth. There are various ways, but it's very subtle. Dr. Lara Lengel: One of the things that I think is really important and I hope to be developing this in the upcoming year, is some type of peer to peer mentoring and identification of young people at risk. Because I'm 54, I'm old, I don't know who's talking to who on social media, et cetera. Even teachers will not necessarily be privy to that. However, if I'm a 12 year old girl and I sense that my friend or an acquaintance is expressing something of concern via social media, how can I report that to someone who can help that person? Jolie Sheffer: Well, that leads me to another question. I mean, I think we tend to have ideas in our minds about who the victims of trafficking are and it tends to often be someone from another country who might look different than us. But, really, thinking about trafficking being a worldwide phenomenon, it's happening here in our own community. Who are the typical victims of trafficking, if there is such a thing? Dr. Lara Lengel: I think one of the things from this entire project that has disturbed me the most is the notion of what is called boyfriending. Like, to boyfriend as a verb. I had never heard this even, you know, just before a few months ago. Traffickers will put specific types of recruiters in the field, and those fields may in fact be our backyard. They might be high school football games. They're certainly at malls at, at shopping malls, and that's very much the case in a place like Lucas County. Dr. Lara Lengel: I do want to take a moment to commend the Lucas County Human Trafficking Coalition and police officers, both Toledo police and also the FBI, who've actually done a really good job at identifying and convicting traffickers in the Toledo area. That primarily emerges because Toledo has ranked as high as third in the nation for a hub of human trafficking. Now, that was some time ago. These statistics are difficult to assess. It may be contentious, but the first time that there was a full study of recruitment and trafficking of human beings in the Toledo area, which was I believe 2006, it was ranked as third after places like Los Angeles, New York, et cetera. So, it raised a lot of attention, which is great. Dr. Lara Lengel: Back to this recruitment idea of boyfriending. It would be, presumably, an attractive, most likely attractive young man in the age range of the targeted population, young girls, young women. They actually pretend to be their boyfriend and tell them beautiful things and make them feel good. Jolie Sheffer: To those young women, they believe it is their boyfriend. Dr. Lara Lengel: Yeah, absolutely. Jolie Sheffer: They don't see it as pretense. Dr. Lara Lengel: Right, because it happens over time, and it's not until that girl or that young woman or that woman is kind of snared into what they think is a proper relationship that the violence, either verbal, physical occurs, followed usually with immediate effect by putting them out into the sex trade against their will. What disturbs me the most about this is that, when I was saying a few moments ago that traffickers are really good at psychology, they prey on vulnerability. They can sense when a young person is not feeling great about themselves and that doesn't necessarily have to be in a face to face context. I mean, if somebody puts out on social media, "Oh, I'm not feeling very pretty today," or something, that's sending out messages for recruitment. Dr. Lara Lengel: I'm a person who has suffered with very severe depression since that age range, since around eight 12, 13. I think back to, you know, could I have been a victim? Could I have believed one of these boyfrienders? It's really horrifying. If anything, in a local context, that's what I'm most committed to trying to help raise awareness and do whatever I can to mitigate this. Jolie Sheffer: Because, basically what you're saying is, and in your work with local middle schools and high schools, is that really anyone could be a victim of human trafficking. Anyone who is young and feeling vulnerable, insecure. Right? Who isn't at that age? We all have a responsibility to sort of be on the alert and to try and intervene. Dr. Lara Lengel: Absolutely, absolutely. It goes hand in hand with cyber bullying. It arguably goes very hand in hand with the opioid epidemic. There are so many intersecting phenomena that exacerbate this crisis. Jolie Sheffer: What kinds of advocacy are you seeing either locally or internationally in regard to human trafficking that seems promising to you? Dr. Lara Lengel: Well, just the example of Lily's Wings. The play co-written by Roxanne Schroeder-Arce, Dr. Jo Beth Gonzales, and in collaboration with their high school students. Using drama, theatrical, filmic, televisual drama to help raise awareness about something like human trafficking as well as all kinds of potential ills; climate change, et cetera, is a way to really reach out to people. Young people are not going to read the trafficking and persons report of the US Department of Justice, they're just not. But, they're going to pay attention to this play that they see of the case of one of the scenes of which is a boyfriending scene of a boyfriend who looks lovely and is saying all the right things, and then that one little moment changes where you see him grab the woman's arm and you get a sense, it's a very visceral sense of how this type of process works. Dr. Lara Lengel: Certainly, creative practice; art, visual design, performance, art, theatrical performance, et cetera, is a fantastic way to enter people into a dialog who may not be a part of this dialogue. Certainly, efforts at middle school and high school levels across this country, and arguably across Western Europe as well and elsewhere, will help raise awareness for not only young people but their parents, their teachers. As I mentioned, these new efforts to help raise awareness with health care practitioners are great. Dr. Lara Lengel: And, to continue to have open discussions of with people who are at the forefront. Right? Again, not nothing about us without us. People who are survivors of trafficking as well as people who are currently engaged in the consensual sex trade. Because, one of the key problems is a conflation between human trafficking and consensual sex work. I think there are moral issues that problematize and create these mythical blurred boundaries between forced labor and consensual labor. I think, you know, and all of this is relatively new and most people hadn't even heard of the concept of contemporary or modern slavery as it is often called until a few years ago. So, great things are happening, much more needs to happen, and I'm honored to be a part of these efforts in any way. Jolie Sheffer: Thank you so much Lara. It's been a pleasure talking with you. Dr. Lara Lengel: Thank you so much, Jolie.
Can you believe Bill Hader agreed to sit (and hit it and quit it) with Drew to talk about all his favorite '80s films? We couldn't either. But he did, and if you thought "I bet Bill Hader likes some pretty weird and obscure '80s flicks," guess what - YOU'RE RIGHT! If you were also thinking "I bet this bonus is full of joyful Bill Hader-y goodness..." RIGHT AGAIN. Get listening already!
0:00:32 - 0:30:18 Opening Segment & What We've Been Up To, featuring Kevin Ondarza 0:30:55 - 3:07:33 (!) Main Topic: DC Universe Animated Movies, featuring Kevin Ondarza 3:08:10 - 3:13:31 Audible Recommendations & Internet Whoring. No Mailbag or Voicemails. Music Used "Boing Zoom DAKOTA!" by Shadow, from Rock Candy 1 “Toy Computer” by Jim Guthrie, from Morning Noon Night “Right and Right Again” by Jim Guthrie, from Morning Noon Night
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