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Play Episode Listen Later Jun 1, 2020 44:41

How can marketers use MRI data and neurolinguistics to develop strategies and campaigns that get better marketing results? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Hackstone founder and CEO Dan Hack talks about the process his team uses to incorporate lessons learned from FMRI scans in crafting impactful stories that really resonate with audiences. Dan breaks down what he calls the "three brain framework" and shares a formula for using it to create messaging, campaigns, stories and videos that help viewers convince themselves to make a purchase. Highlights from my conversation with Dan include: Hackstone is a video production company that acts as an outsourced creative team for agencies. Dan and the team at Hackstone use neuroscience research from FMRI scans to determine what taps into peoples' emotions, and they use that to develop marketing campaigns. Dan says most marketers make the mistake of leading with facts, when in reality, buyers are driven by emotion, and then look for the facts to back up their emotional decision. The three brain framework can be used to apply these principles. It segments the brain into three parts - the emotional brain, the logical brain, and the survival brain. The survival brain decides what information the brain will actually take in based on what is needed for survival. The emotional brain is where connections and associations are made, and where memories are stored and relationships are developed. It is what triggers the desire to purchase something. The logical brain is all about facts, and is used to justify the purchases that the emotional brain wants. FMRI data is used to determine what really resonates with people, and what they really want - as opposed to what they say they might want. The most important thing in developing marketing messages and campaigns is to determine what your customers want, but unfortunately most marketers start by identifying what they want to tell customers. Dan calls this selfish marketing. Resources from this episode: Visit the Hackstone website Follow Hackstone on Instagram Check out some of the sources Dan relies on for neuroscience data: CXL NMSBA Journal of Consumer Research Journal of Advertising Research Listen to the podcast to learn how to incorporate neuroscience into the development of your marketing strategies. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. And today my guest is Dan Hack who is the founder and creative director of Hackstone. Welcome Dan. Dan Hack (Guest): Thanks. Dan and Kathleen hamming it up while recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm happy to have you here and I am excited to talk about some of the things that you're working on which are really, really kind of cool and scientific. About Dan and Hackstone Kathleen: Before we get into that, for those who are listening and might not be familiar with you or Hackstone, can you talk a little bit about your story and who you are and what you do and also what Hackstone is? Dan: Yeah, sure. So Hackstone started out as a video production company. I started Hackstone like 12 years ago I think now. We've kind of developed into sort of an arm of an agency and it's been a lot of fun because we get to do the creative things we get to, we get to do different... our clients are all over the place, big and small. And we get to do a lot of kind of the creative part and work with agencies to come up with the creative, to recommend the creative to their clients and also to our clients. And then we do a lot of testing. We do a lot of like, is this going to work, you know, testing storyboards and the creative and then also doing the, you know, we call them postmortems, you know, we're afterwards you go and see why something worked and why why it didn't work. Right? So we're kind of a production company on steroids we've been called. So it's a lot of fun. We really like what we do. What does MRI data have to do with marketing? Kathleen: That's awesome. One of the things that drew me to talking with you and having this conversation is that I learned that you guys are using actually MRI data and neurolinguistics to figure out more effective ways of tapping into emotions and developing narratives. I will be the first to say, I'm a huge marketing nerd. And I think while many people think of marketing as this creative discipline, I'm always naturally drawn to the side of it that's a little bit more scientific, which is why I was like, Oh, I totally want to talk about this. So tell me, what does MRI data have to do with marketing? Dan: So nothing and everything all at the same time. So basically what we're doing, and it's funny because you develop instincts, right? About what's going to work and not work. And there's always the chase of how do we know this is going to work and why did something work and why did something not work, right? Like way back when, the reason I got into this whole thing was because I was young, I was creative. I had two projects that fell into my lap. They were really successful and creative people have a huge ego. And I had a ginormous ego, right? I became so arrogant when I first started this. I wanted to be a director, I wanted to affect the world with my product, right? And then, you get to projects that don't work at all, right? That are just flops. And the thing about a big ego is that they're incredibly fragile as well. Right? And then you become crushed and everything you thought you believed about yourself is wrong essentially. So that's when I really got into the world of like, I wanted to find out why were these two projects after I've had this success, why did these projects not work? Right? Because clients give you their money when they give you their money, they give you their trust as well. They're like, Hey, we trust that you're going to make something that's going to blow the lid off of our KPI. You know? And, and that's a lot of responsibility and that's a lot of pressure as well. So I was exposed to the world of testing pretty early on in my in my career and, and it just started with just asking people like, do you like this? Do you, how did we do? Like, do you think this is something you would buy? Is this a good product? Like, how did you resonate with it? What annoyed you? But there are a lot of problems with that and you find that, that people respond and oftentimes tell you they're really nice. People inherently are good, right? And they tell you what they think you want to hear. So the information you get back from them is not entirely accurate all the time. So you go deeper, right? You go into like, okay, well we're going to use eye tracking technology, right, to figure out like where they're looking. And then you go even deeper. You were going to use EEG to see how their brain is firing, which is, which are the like the probes you put on the head. Then you measure sweat glands and you measure pulse. And basically stop asking them questions. It's like, Hey, we're not going to ask you any more. We're just going to see how you respond to whatever stimuli we put in front of you. Kathleen: It's like a lie detector. Dan: Kind of, exactly. Only less pressure for them. You don't go to jail afterwards hopefully. But so then you get into all the way up to FMRI data, which is essentially putting somebody into an FMRI machine. And FMRI stands for functional magnetic resonance imaging. And what that does is it looks at your brain and tells you real time, with a few second delay, how your brain is firing or responding or what parts of your brain are using the most blood right? The most fuel based on what you're showing somebody. And it's like a light bulb. It's super cool. Like you can show somebody a commercial and you can tell right away based on what parts of their brains are firing, whether they like it or not. Right? Apple develops their products in FMRI machines where they show the different cases of the different screens of the different iPhones. And they can tell right away like, okay, well this part of the brain is firing and that means they like it or they don't like it or they're responding negatively or positively or whatever. And really we've taken that, so trying to kind of sum it up here, they've taken that, we've taken that and sort of put that into a framework that we call the three brain framework. That tells you certain things like we know from FMRI data that people don't respond to facts, right? But people don't buy cars because of the safety features, they don't buy cars because they have the radar you know, the radar cruise control on the highway or the leather seats or whatever. It's all about emotion, right? And that's why we always go back to how should it make you feel? Right? That's how we start every single project. We have two steps. Number one, how should it make you feel? Number two, support that with facts, right? A lot of people get that backwards. And that's what we know from FMRI data is that when you're selling facts, you're selling to a part of the brain whose only job it is to support the emotional decision that you've already made. Kathleen: Right. It's to reverse justify what we like. First we figure out what we want and then we figure out how to justify it. Dan: Right? Exactly. Exactly. But here's the thing, like we don't even know we're doing it right? Like there's, one of my favorite studies is a smoking study back from the nineties. I think it was early nineties. The biggest FMRI study ever done where it was when the surgeon general started putting the warning on the packs of cigarettes, right? And researchers wanted to find out like, well, people are still smoking, but people are saying, right, we're doing these focus groups. And people are saying like, yeah it's making me not smoke. Right? And they were like, okay, we need to put these people into FMRI machines and figure out what's going on. So first they asked them, they said, do you think the Surgeon General's warning on the pack of, you know, any tobacco product makes you less likely to smoke or makes you smoke less? And they were like, yeah, I think so. And then they put them in FMRI machines and they watched their brains as these people, number one smoked, and number two, were exposed to the Surgeon General's warning, right? And what they found is super cool. They found that when people smoke, their brains have the same reaction as, it's the reward center lights up, it just explodes, as when they see the Surgeon General's warning. It's the power of associations, right? So because when people smoke, what they usually do is they stop working, they walk down the hallway, they link up with coworkers, they have a conversation. And the last thing they see before they light a cigarette before this release of dopamine is they see the Surgeon General's warning, right? Kathleen: Pavlov's dog, right? Dan: And so they create that association, right? It really is. Yeah, exactly. So in neuromarketing, what you're doing is you're trying to figure out how the brain works and you're trying to, you don't always have the budget to test every single project, but you're trying to figure out, you're trying to make an educated guess on how people are going to respond to certain things, right? Kathleen: Sorry to interrupt you, but it's so interesting listening to you talk about this because I'm actually fascinated by the neuroscience behind all the anti-smoking campaigns. And I had done some research on this as well. And a corollary, kind of additional story to the one you just told, which I think is so interesting is you know, for many years, depending upon how old you are, if you're listening, you may or may not remember for many years, the government used these campaigns that were these very scary images of like black lungs. And, it's interesting, they're starting to do this again now. What they found, the primary focus of a lot of the antismoking campaigns was on teenagers because that's like, if you can prevent somebody from starting to smoke in the first place, it's a much better approach than trying to get somebody who's already smoking to stop. Dan: Right? Kathleen: And so they used to use those scare tactics and like, you know, just like the eggs and this is your brain on drugs kind of thing. And those did not work well. It wasn't until they had something called the Truth Campaign where they started to see some success. What the Truth Campaign did, which you may recall seeing, is it scrapped all of those fear tactics. What they did was they figured out, they really thought about like, why do people smoke? Right? Why do teenagers start to smoke in the first place? Is it because they don't understand it's bad for them? No, it's because they are rebelling against their parents. And that is a form of rebellion. And so what the Truth Campaign did was it looked at, well, if we want to tap into that feeling of rebellion, how can we leverage rebellion to get them to not smoke in the first place? So the messaging and the Truth Campaign was all around big tobacco wants to control you and has you in their pocket. So it was like rebel against big tobacco and don't fall for it essentially. And that got a much, much better outcome than all the fear tactics. And I feel like that's kind of like the same thing that you're talking about. All of these campaigns, you can pour a ton of money into them. But if you don't really understand at the very core what is that emotion that somebody is driven by, then you're not going to be successful. Dan: Right. Kathleen: So that was a long tangent, but I'm fascinated by this and there's so much interesting work being done in behavioral health that I think can inform marketing. Dan: Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know, and the problem I think is that it's still kind of expensive, right? Like there are research groups and there are subscription services and we subscribe to those where when researchers do this research to find out what campaign was the most successful in this last super bowl, right? And they do the FMRI studies and they're funded. You can subscribe to that data and get that data and then use that data to kind of inform what you do. In a perfect world, yeah, we would have, you know, when we do a car campaign, you know, put people in an FMRI machine to see like, Hey, are they most stimulated by the color? Are they, is that a red car? Is it a white car? Is that a black car? So, those are all the nitty gritty things that you get into. But I think at the heart of it is exactly like what you said. You need to figure out who your audience is. You need to figure out what they want, and then give it to them. It sounds really simple and it kind of is, right? And then all these tools, this neuromarketing is essentially, we use that to try to figure out what it is, what exactly is it that your audience wants and how do you give it to them? Because a lot of clients come to us and they say here's what we want to say. Or, when you ask them questions like what causes a campaign to not perform well? And usually it goes back to selfish marketing, right? You approach that campaign with what is it that we want to say, right? We want to tell our story. Like, the word story, I'm an oppositionist. I get that. But, the word story drives me up the wall. It drives me insane because it's become this catchall, right? And it's all like, tell your story has become this romantic replacement to messaging, right? Or information or get your message out there. What does that mean? Right? So this is really a sort of a way to figure out what is the right story. There are a million stories. Like, nobody cares who started the company, right? Nobody cares why even necessarily you started the company, right? People care about other things. And this is really trying to find out what those things are and then giving them those things essentially. Kathleen: So I have so many questions for you. Dan: I'll just go and go. What is the Three Brain Framework? Kathleen: No, no, no. I warned you, I'm a huge nerd. And so like you've already seen through the smoking stuff, you and I could go for hours on this topic. But I want to break it down a little bit. So first of all, you mentioned you have this Three brain approach. Can you define for me exactly what that, like what are the three brains? Dan: Sure. So obviously, there are more than three parts of the brain, but for our purposes, for this marketing purpose we divide the brain into three parts. We have the survival brain, you have the emotional brain, and then you have the logical brain, right? And we look at it as kind of a funnel. All three parts of those brains has its own purpose. So you look at the survival brain, sort of like a club bouncer, right? He stands in the front with his arms crossed and he decides what gets in and what gets out, right? The brain is cognitive miser, right? So the brain tries to save calories. He's the guy who decides number one, is this important to my survival? Do I need to know this information? Is this going to save my life? And then he also decides, is this new information? Do I already know this information or can we just radically summarize that? So to put it on the shelf, and a good example of that is like your lawn, right? Nobody knows how many blades of grass they have in their front yard right now. It's not looking good for my yard. I have room for a lot. I've only had four like blades of grass or nursing them and, but everybody knows that you have that you have a lawn, right? You see a lawn. That's an example of something being radically summarized and then you know, and then put on a shelf. So you have that. Then if you do get through that, you have the emotional brain, right? And the emotional brain is the, we call it the mother, right? It's the mammal brain, if you will. You know, some people call it that. And basically that's where you create associations, right? Like, Hey, last time when I touched that, it burned me and that hurt. And that's important to my survival. And it does other things like memory. That's where your relationships are built, right? Like where do you fit in, in your tribe? And how do you advance, you know, in your tribe and, and you know, again, important for your survival. And also you have some really cool things that happen in here, like synesthesia for example, which is like, which is where... Kathleen: Is that where you see colors as emotions? Dan: Yeah. Kind of. But it's like when you're watching a commercial. We use this in food commercials, right? When you're watching a commercial and you do a really good job in filming that and getting that across, the viewer will actually taste what they're seeing, right? It's essentially you have these neuro pathways for like vision and for taste and for smell and whatever. And sometimes when they're really powerful, when you have a train, there's a train outside. So that made me think of it. When you have a train like hurling down this neuro pathway, sometimes it'll jump the track onto another pathway. Right? Kathleen: I feel like I totally know what you're talking about because when I go to the movies, my chain of cinemas locally, in the intro kind of footage that leads up to every movie, they always have the sound of the can of Coke popping open. And then the pouring into the glass with the ice and the fizzy sound combined with the ice clinking and the Coke filling. And I'm like sitting there going, Oh my God, I need a Coke. And I can taste it right now. Dan: I want that. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. So that's the part of the brain where those kinds of things happen, right? And those are the kinds of things we want to do. And that's why you make food. Like your goal is to make the viewer taste the food, right? Pizza. Really close shots of the cheese pulls and those kinds of things. Right? Super important. So anyway, the emotional brain is where we do most of our decision making, right? Then you have the logical brain and the logical brain is sort of like, it's like, it reminds me of my dad, right? He's the accountant and he's the guy who basically, he's like the legal department, right? He's the guy who who ruins the fun essentially, you know, like, like you say... Kathleen: We call that "the fun sponge". Dan: Yeah, exactly. It's the higher processing. Dan: And this part of the brain either supports what your emotional brain has already decided when it comes to purchasing or it overrides that decision, right? So you can go and sit in a Ferrari and you smell that new smell of the Ferrari and you really want it and you feel that emotional connection to the car in that red and that tan leather, you know, or whatever. And then the logical brain comes in and says like, Hey, 2,500 bucks a month. Like that's more than your mortgage. There's no way. We're not doing that. And really, that's the way it works. So the emotional brain is where you should be selling, right? When you create something, you should create it for the emotional brain and then create facts to support the logical brain in helping support the emotional brain in making that decision. So that's why facts should come second. Yet most of our marketing aims directly for that logical brain, yet that's not where we make decisions. Kathleen: Yeah, that makes total sense. Cause I totally know that myself, how I buy. It's like I see something I like and I'm like, I really want that. How can I justify it? It's the old saying buy the dress and then find the party. Where to find neuroscience data Kathleen: So for somebody who's listening, I think if they understand this conceptually, you know, if it were me, my next question would be like, great, now how do I find this data to help me figure out what emotions to tap into? And you were mentioning there's ways you can subscribe to information about FMRI data. So can you get into a little bit if somebody wants to learn more about this, get tapped into to that kind of data, where can they find it? Dan: Sure. So I can send you some links afterwards if you want to put those in the show notes there on some of the places where you can subscribe to that. Publications, you can subscribe to even industry standard or industry specific data, you know, that apply directly to your industry. But a lot of this stuff is really, it's not new information, right? You have to beat it into your brain to kind of remember that. So, for example, the principle of the three brains, right? The fact that our minds look for contrast. There's this framework. Your mind looks for contrast, right? It's got to get into your mind first without being filtered out. And then you have certain principles that are kind of spread out. They're all over. And I think you have to make a decision. So that's why you have neuro marketing firms who put that together for you if you don't want to think about it. But I think it's important to become familiar with that. And then to put everything you do marketing wise, messaging wise through a framework like that. Does that make sense? How to apply neuroscience to B2B marketing Kathleen: Yeah, it does. And, in my head I'm thinking I can see so clearly how you would use this. You used the example of a Ferrari. If you're selling a Ferrari or you're selling a food product or you know, clothing or some things that are more consumer facing, maybe more optional products if you will. But my question is when it comes to, for example, like what somebody might consider to be a boring B2B purchase, like accounting software or you know, like I'm in cybersecurity. Walk me through how you think about developing an emotional tug for something that most people look at as a pretty boring thing. Dan: Yeah, absolutely. So the first thing before we even get to that emotional tug, we have to remember, get through the bouncer, right? So one of the things, and I had this super cool example, hold on, I might have it written down here, that that I pulled. Now maybe I don't. You get these emails where people use industry jargon a lot, right? You first have to think about how do you get through the bouncer. So you have to make it easy to understand. You have to, you have to understand that you're super close to your industry. The person you're talking to might not be super close to your industry. So understand that your brain immediately asks, do we even let this information in? Whether it's an email, whether it's a marketing video, whether it's a commercial, like whatever it is, whether it's a billboard even. Should we let this information in? And you have to then go to the emotional connection of how do you make that emotional connection. So when we say emotional connection, you have to emote. What we mean is you have to think about how should this messaging make you feel. So some questions to ask are, should this make the person feel like I'm an authority? Should this person feel afraid that you know, that somebody is going to hack their system or steal ransomware, viruses, those kinds of things. Should they feel funny? Or should your messaging feel funny? Should they be amused? So you go back to that. How should it make you feel? And then you take that information and that information should support that. Does that make sense at all? Examples of marketing campaigns that have been developed using MRI data Kathleen: Yeah, it does. It totally does. So let's get into some examples because you guys have done work with some really interesting companies and I feel like this is especially one of those topics where you can talk about it conceptually and still not understand it. But when you dive into actual examples, it starts to become much more clear. So can you maybe talk about how you've used these principles with some of the companies you've worked with to get really great results? Dan: Sure. Exactly. So car ads. So I'll take a local first. So we work with a local brand. It was a Ford dealership and they had done celebrity commercials in the past where they had an athlete say like, Hey, here's where I'm shopping. And when we look at data, FMRI data, even with the, with the latest COVID, there's a lot of data coming out from COVID PSAs where they're saying a lot of these pieces are falling flat, right? A lot of this messaging from COVID 19 is falling flat, even with celebrities in it. Why is that? Right? And then you get into like, it's not just a matter of getting celebrity, you have to put that celebrity in a, in a situation where it's authentic. And what's authenticity? That depends on your brand. So, a while back, we put an athlete into a set of Ford commercials. And the problem was that athletes can't act. Not only can't they act, athletes don't want to act right. And it was almost like, you know, having this athlete is working. It's okay, but we're doing it because we've done it in years past and it's sort of like people expect that from our brands. How do we ramp that up? So what we did was we came in and we said okay, the athlete can't act, he doesn't want to act. He shouldn't act if he doesn't want to, so you don't have to. What does the audience want? So we created this campaign where we took this athlete, made fun of the fact that he's in a commercial where he's being asked to act and he doesn't want to act. And it was phenomenal, right? It went all the way up the chain to like, what are you guys doing? This is awesome. This is like the best campaign ever. The athlete had a lot more fun doing the commercial. The client had a much better response from that. And that trickles down to now you have fundraisers with the athlete where now you have a better response to that. You sell more cars. People are talking about your brand more and most importantly, people remember your brand more. Because ultimately it's about attention and it's about keeping the attention. And then, how were you remembered by the people who maybe aren't ready to buy now but are ready to buy in 90 days? Wherever they are in their cycle and their buying cycle. And how do you stay top of mind for that? Pizza, same thing. You know, in the celebrity line, we work with a pizza brand every year where they have an athlete who works with them to not only sell pizzas but also to raise money for a charity. A certain amount of your sales goes to whatever the charity is. And they had typically had this green screen and put the celebrity up. The celebrity image, let that just do the work. And people didn't respond to that. So we went back and said, okay, who is the audience here? Who are we really trying to attract? And it's fans of this athlete, right? So you look at the basic framework. You don't have to FMRI study this to kind of get that framework. We look at that information and we say okay, they want to be entertained. And the best way to entertain them, and we know this from FMRI data, it's the associations, right? So if you were to put a puppy on the screen, and then put the brand at the end, if that's the emotion you want to be linked to, you are already 75% of the way there, right? When it comes to commercials then you put in your messaging and you make it even better. And we found in the past that when you take a product and you integrate it into a piece of entertainment, you maintain that audience attention. It's the sense parts of an advertisement. So when I say ad, I mean like a video, even a video on Facebook for example. And you're trying to get a lead or you're trying to sell mattresses or whatever it is you're trying to sell, it's about keeping the attention, and especially how long a viewer stays in a video matters because that's how you retarget, right? That's how you recognize how interested they are. We have a three minute video. They made it all the way to the end, they're super interested, right? So it becomes like this capturing the attention and then maintaining the attention. So what we did with the pizza brand is we created a short film and we put this character, the athlete, which was Alex Ovechkin, into this pizza commercial where he was in these absurd scenarios. Like he initially moved here from Russia where pizza was the reason he moved, not hockey. He stumbled upon hockey when he was delivering pizzas, right? And it was this absurd storyline that was just fun and entertaining. And you saw this athlete in a situation he's not normally in. When you're selling, you're always asking people for their attention. When they're seeking you out, that's when it's okay to just give them the information, like on an iPhone, right? But when you're asking them, when you're interrupting their lives and you're asking them for their attention, you're saying like, Hey, we want you to buy our pizza. Because when you buy our pizza, a portion of your proceeds go to whatever the charity is, you have to make it worth their while. And we saw a a phenomenal capture rate. Not only that, but the average, I'm trying to think of like what it is now. So the average completion rates for any video for a long form video is about 15%. We were hitting 86, 87% completion rates because when somebody starts the video, they watch all the way to the very end to the logo and to the offer. Which is phenomenal. And those are the kinds of things, more than just views, you can say Oh yeah, this got 2 million impressions, you know, which is great. You can buy impressions. Impressions don't really mean a lot. Are they meaningful impressions? Ultimately that's what you're trying to get to with FMRI, or with any neuro marketing, you're trying to get to the bottom of, is this meaningful to our audience? You're getting their attention. You're hopefully keeping their attention by creating a meaningful experience that is worth their time, which is ultimately the most valuable thing I think we have. How to get started with neurolinguistics and MRI data Kathleen: That's so interesting. Throughout this conversation, you've sprinkled in things that are a good guide for somebody if they're thinking okay, I want to do this. Can you kind of summarize, if you were meeting with somebody for the first time and you needed to tell them, here's how you're going to go ahead and use this concept for your own marketing, what are the steps they should go through? Where do they get started? Dan: Sure. So we've got a framework, I can pull it up here real quick just just as a reference. We've got a campaign worksheet that we use for these when we go in that's based on our three brains. So for example, we always ask, what's the purpose of your video? What's the primary goal of your campaign? And that's just the background information. So you say who's your customer? And then how are you going to measure success? I think it's super important to figure out how are we even going to gauge if this thing is working or if it's successful or not? You'd be amazed how many people don't know. A lot of times, especially with video, we find that a lot of people come to us and say like, Hey, the CEO wants a video. We don't really know what the purpose is, but can you just get it off my plate? We call those box checker videos and then we're like that nerdy kid in class who's like, but we still want an A, right? So we'll get the A for you. So again, we start out with contrast. So we say like, who are your competitors? And you take inventory of what your competitors are doing. And again, through this neuro research, we know that it is better to be different than it is to be better. It's very difficult to quantify better. Like, what is better to some people, right? So, for example, banks might say, and this is a common thing, when a customer comes into our bank, we know their name. We know them, we have that personal relationship. To me that's not better. I love being anonymous. When I walk into a branch and they say, good morning, Mr. Hack, I'm like, Oh cool, I need to find a new bank. They know my name. That's not good. I don't like that. So that's something that doesn't work for everybody. So then you say how many competitors, what are your competitors doing? How do you not do what your competitors are doing? Because we know through the tests we do repeatedly that when you put a series of car commercials that all say the same thing, when you watch the Today Show in the morning and you see the lawyer commercials one right after the other that say, we're fighting for you, we're here for you, we're the tough guys. You know, people don't remember that. People will watch that. We watch people watch those. It's commercials where we'll put like five or six of those in a row. We'll watch people watch them. We'll see them interact with them. Yet at the end of that run of commercials, they don't remember anything. They don't remember any of the brands. Because again, the bouncer, right? The survival brain has decided like, Hey, you don't need to know this information. Even if you're in the market for that, you don't need to know this information. It's going to use too many calories to process it. I'm going to put it all together for you, put it in a basket and put it on the shelf. You don't need to worry about it. People don't remember what they saw. They don't remember brands. They don't even remember the storylines at the end of that. So the first thing we do is try to figure out, okay, what do we do that's different? We put that into our framework. The next thing is simplicity. And this again is the survival brain. So for a long form video, you might decide what are the three points we want to make really well? Where for a commercial you may decide what's the one point we know, through testing? When you try to make three points in a 32 second commercial, people remember generally nothing. It's like 0.5 when you average it out, right? When you put one point in a commercial, when you try to make one point, people tend to remember mostly that one point that you're making. So you have to ask yourself, okay, like we want to get these 15 things across in our messaging or in our video. Is this the place for that? Where are you in the buying cycle? And right now when you're top of funnel, is this the place where you want to try to educate customers on your product? Usually, no. So because it's just too much to remember at that point, what do you need to prove to your customer to convince them to buy? So that's how you appeal to the logic part, because the logic part is going to ultimately support the emotional part. How should you deliver that information? And then we look at the reward. The final thing is the reward. Why should your viewer keep watching? And when we test a long form piece, like with the Ovechkin piece for example, it looks fun and it looks interesting and it looks entertaining, but it's very thought out. We went through and figured that in a piece like this, you have somebody's attention for maybe seven, eight seconds before their mind starts wandering. What can we put in there at the seven, eight second mark that is going to recapture their attention, draw them in? So you have to do that throughout your video. And when you watch I don't know, like the Purple Mattress for example, is a really good campaign. That was done to repeatedly bring you back in those really good long form, like Dollar Shave. Kathleen: I was just going to say that first Dollar Shave Club video that made them go viral, you couldn't stop watching because the pace was so perfect and you knew there was something more fantastic that was coming. Dan: Yeah. So, and you have to remember that what's interesting to you is likely not interesting to your customer. And that's what we talk about as selfish marketing. What do they want to hear versus what do I want to say? Yup. Kathleen: I love it. Well, okay, so any chance that I could share a link to that campaign framework in the show notes because that sounds like a super valuable document for people to have. Dan: And then it's got other things too, which is super cool. What does your customer want? What's their internal problem? Then you get into internal versus external problems and those kinds of things. What's keeping them from having what they want and how do you solve that problem? But ultimately, people remember how they felt when they watched your stuff or when they're exposed to your brand much more. And again, FMRI data or not FMRI data, it comes down to the fact that people remember how they felt. They don't remember what you said. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: This is so interesting and it's been so much fun to talk about. I want to ask you two questions and then I want to get into how somebody can follow up and learn more. So my two questions that I always ask everybody, the first one is, this podcast is all about inbound marketing. I'm curious, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really setting the standard for doing inbound marketing right now? Dan: Yeah, I do. I think there's so many of them. Most of the national long form ads that you're seeing on Facebook now are really well done. For example, Purple Mattresses, really well done. They have the bears, right? I think Geico, the Martin agency, Geico does a phenomenal job. And I also think that Dollar Shave Club really was the kind of the groundbreaking long format that changed how long form ads work. Even though you had that data, there's a disconnect between people know what the right thing to do is versus them actually doing those things. Kathleen: I love those examples. And then the other thing, most marketers I talk to say they suffer from this problem of what I call drinking through a fire hose. Digital marketing changes so quickly. It's really hard to keep up with best practices and new technology and all that. So how do you personally keep yourself educated? Dan: So you know, there's certain people, certain things I follow. Some people follow Gary V - Gary Vaynerchuk. So people like that. You take those sources. I have a ton of those sources that I use. And then in the morning I sit down and go through them to see what's happening. And then you decide what you remember and what you don't remember. I can send you some of those links. Kathleen: Who are your top three sources? How about that? Dan: Top three sources? I'd have to say, so I use a lot of the curated stuff like IAB, the newsletters. I use a lot of those. We use CXL. We use a lot of Harvard Business Review. And then just staying in touch with people. I've got a lot of colleagues in the industry where we talk about what's happening, who's doing what? What worked for your clients, what didn't work, what did you find out? Did you hear about a new study that just came out? You know, those kinds of things. How to connect with Dan Kathleen: Awesome. Well, if somebody is listening to this and they want to learn more about what we talked about or they just want to learn more about you or Hackstone, what's the best way for them to connect with you online? Dan: Hackstone.com. That's our website. We're on social as well. We try to make our social a little more entertaining than the website. The team is a lot less ADD and a lot less all over the place than I am. So they typically will do the talking. So if you're lucky, you won't have to actually talk to me. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Alright, well I think talking to you is fascinating. So if you are listening to this podcast and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, I mean, I know I did this time for sure. This was so interesting. Head to Apple Podcasts and please consider leaving the podcast a five star review because that is how we get found by new listeners. And if you know somebody else who's doing amazing inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, and I would love to have them as my next guest. That is it for this week. Thank you so much, Dan. This was a really fun conversation. Thanks.

Episode 313 | Lauren Marsicano of Networking Maverick.

The Side Hustle Gal

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2020 21:15

Today Dannie and Caitlyn are talking with Lauren Marsicano of Networking Maverick. We believe in accessible content and that anyone who wants to learn from this content should be able to. In order to support this, we've had every episode of Season 4 transcribed. The transcriptions are available at the bottom of every episode blog post. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS:Building and protecting your Queendoms!!!Ways to completely thrive in a male-dominated field.Conquering self-doubt in the early days of your side hustle.Embracing your many different personal facets.GET MORE: Website | Instagram FOLLOW YOUR HOSTS: D Website | D Instagram // C Website | C Instagram Get the Side Hustle Starter Kit Episode Transcript Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:00:21] Hello and welcome back to the side hustle GAO podcast. Today's guest is from a group we haven't talked about yet, which is the create and cultivate insiders group. If you've ever been to a create and cultivate conference, you can join, create and cultivate insiders, which is basically, um, a great small group of those of us that super love, create and cultivate and want to have deeper relationships.There's monthly mentoring and all of that good stuff, but that's not what we're here to talk about. I am so excited to introduce Lauren Marsicano to you. Lauren hank you so much for being here, and please tell us a little bit about your journey. Lauren Marsicano: [00:01:02] Well, thank you so much for having me here, Dannie. I'm so excited.Create and Cultivate is an amazing organization. I love the online group, which is how we connected and and probably like you, and like many people listening. I'm just a part of so many different women's empowerment groups online. So I love the connections that we build. Which is fantastic. So my name is Laura Marsicano.I'm an attorney. I own my own law firm, but I also have a side hustle. So the side hustle actually is a networking Maverick LLC, which is a women's empowerment group. It's online. It also now has live events in Miami and South Florida. So if you're in the area, you know, you feel free to come out to any of my monthly networking events and workshops.But it all started because of my main business. So for, I don't know, since I was 14 years old, I wanted to be a lawyer. Right after I wasn't going to be an actress or a model, I decided to get, you know, lawyer sounds really good I love debating. And so my whole path, uh, until about two years ago was just being a lawyer.I did, you know, the undergrad, international business and finance. I went to university of Miami school of law. I studied law at Oxford university under a fellowship and became a lawyer. So, yay. But I was not expecting to feel unfulfilled. Like I became a lawyer pass the bar exam, and about a year and a half into it, got my quote unquote dream job.You know, the six figure lawyer working for multinational corporations, billion dollar corporations, but I still wasn't happy and I had two friends of mine that I sat down with her. They're like, Lauren, we know exactly what the problem is. You've got to start your own business. Right? And I think that happens to a lot of people when I was like, no, no, no, no.My own business, I'm not 60 years old. You know, like that's when you start a law business. But I launched my law firm and we ended up making six figures in our first year from, and I attributed it all to networking and connections, but I love being a lawyer and I love what I can do with my lawyer hat on.But there's so much I'm restricted from doing as Lauren Marsicano Esquire, right? That Esquire puts so many restrictions on how much I can help the business owners that come to me. Cause that's who I serve. I'm a business attorney. And so I was at these networking events and people were like, how did you make money your first year?How you know, most law firms fail, not, you know, not only do they not make six figures, they're gone. And people go back to their original. A hustle, whatever, you know, whatever law firm they were in, and it was a lot of women. It was a lot of women at these events telling me this, and those are the people I like serving the most anyway as a lawyer.And so I was like, you know what? I need to start another business. And it can just be online. It started just online. It's, it was YouTube videos and it was Instagram posts and it was live streams and all these different things. Just giving. Women specifically. So I always, my tagline is, no matter whether I'm with the law firm or with networking Maverick, I'm helping female entrepreneurs build and protect their queendoms.So I call it queendoms, right? Cause we all have our queendoms. Right. Um, and so networking Maverick became my side hustle because of my main hustle. And so that's where, that's where I'm at now, helping women on both sides. Now it's offline and I do live events monthly. I partnered with a group called startup sisters USA that's, um, you know, in Tampa, Atlanta, I think they've launched a couple of other cities now.And I'm the Miami president. And so networking Maverick partners with startup sister to bring these, uh, live events and bring women together locally, which I love. And that's my, that's my background. Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:04:40] No, I've loved that so much. I can relate. I first told my grandma that I was going to be a lawyer when I was three. Caitlyn also is super into politics. Caitlyn Allen: [00:04:53] I planned on being a lawyer too. Lauren Marsicano: [00:04:55] Oh, Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:04:57] Neither of us went to law school, but we both, we both have a friend. Our friend Sam. Uh, went to law school, graduated with a law degrree, became an attorney. Um, but she knew after her first year of law school that entrepreneurship was the path for her.Um, so Sam's dream one day is to start a scholarship. That's the like, Oh fuck scholarship. That would pay, like if you decide after your first, after like one owl that you don't want to be a lawyer anymore, this scholarship would like pay off your one hour loans. That's free.Yeah. Um, so all of, so all of those to say, I love your story. For those in the audience that are listening, I mean, this girl's a badass, top 40 under 40 lawyer in the nation, Oxford, who doesn't dream of studying abroad at Oxford, all the things, um. So I wanna I wanna dive in and I'm going to ask the obvious question first because I think it's also a good question to ask.Law is so male dominated. How did you carve out your niche in that space? I know classic question. I want to know. Lauren Marsicano: [00:06:13] No, but is it is, and especially so, not only am I an attorney, my, for my business, when I'm the business attorney side, I'm litigation. So litigation is even more male dominated, right? Like women come in and we're called the court reporter.Right? So that's, that was my first experience actually for, I'm this huge, I don't wanna get too technical. It's like, it's there, like motions for summary judgment or big motions they can prevent you from going to trial. And it was my first year as an attorney and I walk in, I, I've, you know, prepared so much and the opposing counsel was probably like, I dunno.I don't want to make them too old, but let's say he's like 70, let's say 70 year old white male. And uh, he, he called me a court reporter first and I was like, Oh no, I'm here. I'm your opposing counsel. And he like, he didn't slap my full butt, but you know when they do like that top of the butts lap where they like, Pat, you like the lower back.But it's a little too little while. So I've got a big badonkadonk. So I mean, it's not all of his fault. He passed my lower back and it's like, well, good luck. Little lady. Like, and I crushed him and it felt good. Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:07:21] But also that little lady, the fucking Southern likeLauren Marsicano: [00:07:29] which actually you don't find a lot in Miami because we're very like, you know, European, Hispanic, whatever. But this guy was like an old white Southern attorney from, I think Bible belt, Florida or something. I think he drove down maybe for the hearing. I've never seen him again. I'd never seen him on another case, but I crushed them and it felt amazing.And even at the end you was like. Oh, good. Good job. Little lady. And I was like, you can't even give me that. Like you can't, even after I crush you just give me some kind of respect and like just a handshake, like a normal hand shake. This was all before the me too movement, by the way. Caitlyn Allen: [00:08:04] I can't, I can't with that type of, cause I've experienced that when I was working on. Um, the different political campaigns that I've worked on. So in high school I were, I ran two counties in a big campaign here. Uh, I'm not going to say which side I was on, but it was a huge, it was a huge election. Um, I couldn't even vote. Uh, I was a female and I was underage and I was still running these counties and there were old white dudes that were like, Oh, well, good job, good job, honey.And I'm like. I just kicked ass, like my county's went the color I needed it to. Oh, I just can't. But I want to hear a little bit more about like the law firm side of things. So what specifically, you said you work with business law. Do you do, um, like business law for small businesses like Dannie or I, or do you work with the bigger. Bigger businesses and do more like the litigation. Lauren Marsicano: [00:09:03] So I do, I do everything. So I do all of that. I now, the thing is, since I own my own law firm, I can choose my clients. So that's like the biggest difference. I only work with people and on cases that I really like, which makes. Oh, so much of a difference day to day.Um, but yeah, no, I work with, I do the, you know, the high end corporate litigation. Like I have a couple of really big litigation cases right now for some bigger multinational companies, especially in the, in the shipping industry. And then, uh, my love though, those are, I, I love those clients. I love those cases cause they're very, very interesting, you know, from an intellectual perspective to, uh, but I love working with a small, medium size business owners.That's like my heart because I actually get to like. Talk with you and see you. And like, we feel like we're part of each other's businesses at the end of the day where we're helping each other grow. Um, but yeah, so I do it all, and that's why actually I started. It's not really a third business. It's kind of part of my second business networking Maverick, which are the, are the eCourses.So I provided more cost effective ways of you being able to do your contracts and learn how to form a business and register it online. Um, I did that because for small business owners spending 2 to 3000 for just registration or just a contract is not as effective. So then I put together three contracts and formation, a step by step guides for $2,000 for all four.Like the templates, the contracts, the registration, everything. So it's more affordable. Um, but so yeah, I'm always trying to figure out ways to add more value for small business owners. Cause I think you're the most underserved or you go to, I don't want to say the names of the websites, but you go to websites that I would say I litigate on.Yeah, I saw you. I saw you word it. I'm not, I'm not going to say it. I'm not going to know it says it, but yeah, so there are others and I feel like they do a disservice sometimes. You know, they're great for me to litigate on, but unfortunately that means you, you end up spending more money in the long run rather than just going to. An attorney up front or something. Caitlyn Allen: [00:10:59] Yeah. One of my, one of my clients is actually a trademark attorney. And so I, yeah, I know quite a lot about, um, thou shalt not be named. Lauren Marsicano: [00:11:09] Yes, exactly. Yeah. I don't want to, I don't know how to get to say, but yes. And that's another thing is that people see it cause you know, obviously there's the costs that come with it that I can't, I can't.Do, I can't do anything about the cost. And then I tried to keep my fees as reasonable as possible. But if you go on an hourly perspective, I'm very affordable, but still people see it and like per, per trademark, cause I do that, I do that as well. And it's like, yeah, but that's like the minimum I could possibly do it for and still like not be losing a ton of money.Do you know what I mean? Like I still need to get paid for my experience and what I'm doing as an attorney, but I do try to provide. It as much education. So that's why the networking Maverick, I always have to be careful because it's educational and I always have to put those disclaimers. This is not legal advice.It's for educational purposes. Always consult an attorney, hashtag of lawyers, all that fun stuff. But yeah, and that'll, so that became my niche. Serving women became my niche in a male dominated field. So like even my big businesses, my contacts within those groups are women. It's high powered women CEOs that I've connected with.And then they end up. You know, bringing me in as their corporate counsel. So I serve as outside corporate counsel for a lot of these businesses and I'm much more affordable than the big guys down the road, you know, and I'm also more personable and I think they like working with another female because you know, even the other firms can be a little old fashioned, old fashioned, let's say, when dealing with high powered female CEOs.So, uh, that, that became my niche and that's what I focused on. And it just more like whenever you're in any male dominated field. I think it's just having confidence in what you can do. Always being the most prepared person in the room. Always, I'm always focused on killing them with kindness, you know?Except for if I'm in a, in the courtroom, you know, then I'm very serious. But, you know, just in terms of networking or dealing with people, I always try to be, we call it PMA in my family. I don't know if you, can you see it? Is it on the board? Oh, yeah. It's on the board behind me. We call it positive mental attitude and PMA.So my family is always like PMA, PMA. So that's, you just got to have the mindset to go into it. And if you're the most prepared person in the room, you're probably going to be the most confident person in the room. That doesn't mean to be arrogant, but that's, that's kind of how you do with it. And you just be yourself.And I've learned to be the singing lawyer. So I go to events, I speak a lot public, and I, and I'll like, be like, Whoa. Like I don't, I'm not a good singer. But that's just my personality. And I've learned over time that the clients that I'll work best with, like that personality. And that's, and that's me. So, Caitlyn Allen: [00:13:39] so what have you found after starting your business that you've learned about yourself?Lauren Marsicano: [00:13:45] Oh so much. I think I always knew, I guess that I was resilient, but I guess I never knew how resilient I would have to be in that I actually am, because, you know, I think it's actually the hardest part of launching a business, in my opinion. Well, I mean. I guess for anybody it might be gaining the knowledge that you actually need to launch.That might be the hardest for, for most people. Uh, but I think the second is just starting getting, getting over the fear to just start. Right. And I thought that was going to be the hardest thing, but I was wrong. I was very wrong. Because when you're a small business, you're going to have some lean months.Right? Or you're going to have like really bad rejections or conversations, you know, and networking that don't go as well. And you start getting that self doubt that like kind of just creeps in. That's like, Hey, maybe maybe you didn't do the right thing. Maybe you didn't make the right decision. And then he's gotta be like, Nope.Shut it down. You know, like, no, you're, you're doing good. Keep going forward. But that's definitely something that I, I knew I was resilient because I had to overcome a lot when I was younger and I moved, I moved around the country 15 times, so I was always the new girl and I was always the curvy new girl.Right. Cause I've been, I mean, I've been a curvy queen. Since I was, uh, like nine or 10 years old, like I developed really, really young. And so I had to overcome a lot of that and get through like some depression when I was younger. So I knew I was resilient. But entrepreneurship is all, Oh, new level of resiliency.Honestly. I think that's the most I learned. Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:15:24] So I'm curious. Um, all three of us recording this podcast are curvy yes, yes queeen. And in social experiences you have those awkward moments where like just last night I was at a restaurant in an airport. Tables are too fucking tight. My ass is going to end up on your table. What I'm going through to get to my seat. Sorry bout it. Lauren Marsicano: [00:15:53] All the time. All the time. Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:15:56] And there's a lot of that that happens in the corporate world too, that we don't talk about. And I want to ask your opinion on this because especially in law, there's this expectation of suits and for women it's like high heels, skirts, tits out kind of perception. Yeah. What's it, what's it like being curvy in that space and having things that jiggle. Lauren Marsicano: [00:16:28] Oh, more than jiggle is like an earthquake over here when I know I know it.So I will say, because I had to deal with it so much growing up, I think that I'm much more confident now. I think that if I hadn't gone through it, like if I, if I became curvy. Like if I had been skinny my whole life and then became curvy now, I think it would be a lot harder to deal with. Then I was made fun of.I was called chubby girl. I was called, you know, I think someone called me marshmallow cause our school uniforms were white. Like there was so much, so much stuff. And I was also a white girl in Miami. So I mean it was like so many layers of that. But then I think the best decision my mom did when I was younger was put me in modeling school like those, you know, like Barbara's on.I was in Barbara's on. And it really gave me a lot of confidence. Cause I, before that I was the, I forget what the movie was where I think it's Christine Ricci. Maybe she like tapes her boobs down and like wears hoodies and wants to look like a guy. Cause I played all sports. I was an all sport athlete.So I was like so, so tomboy and then. Uh, going into modeling. So I came out, I was always wearing makeup. I was always wearing my school colors and pigtails. So that made me confident as a lawyer. The thing that's different, so Miami is much more relaxed, even in the courtroom setting. Miami is more relaxed, but it's when I go to like West Palm even, or Tampa, cause I practiced in Tampa and Jacksonville and Orlando.Those places are much, much, much more conservative. And I think it's still a rule. I have to double check. I think it's still a rule. If you go in front of the Supreme court, that you as women, you have to wear stockings in a skirt suit. I think, I don't want to swear by that, but that in law school, I remember that was the rule.I don't know if that's changed. Um, but it's definitely finding the right looks for you. And what's funny is I just had an event on this. It was called style for success. And it was all about, no matter what size you are, cause you know skinny people actually have a really, and I know it's like, Oh my God, it's skinny people.Eye problem. They do skinny, like really, really, I'm talking really skinny. People also have like clothing problems, but as a curvy girl, it's all like the materials you use if you actually get the right line. So the women that I think have the most problems are the ones that haven't invested in actually.Finding a stylist or finding a style that works for them, or a clothing line. Like I love white house, black market. I love Ann Taylor. I think that they make sizes that go up to, I think they go up to like 16 or 18 online and the material is like super, super good. You know, it's got that stretch, you know, the little bit of stretch that I need, you know, like, because my waist is a little bit smaller on my bottom is like, ba boom.It is like people pay for that and it is. This is like it when you walk into a courtroom, you know that I'm there, but it's definitely, it's a lot of self confidence because you're going up against guys that do not get judged by how they look. But when you're in front of a jury, we actually have to take a course or I voluntarily took a course on jury selection and you get to hear what they think and a lot of what they think about women is what they look like.Whether they're a witness or, or a, um, a lawyer. And I just got married actually, uh, this past week. And before that though, if I had, if I was in front of a jury, I'd wear a wedding ring because females that didn't wear wedding rings weren't trustworthy. Right? So like, if you're a female, you had, there are certain things you have to do for your client to make sure you're presenting yourself the best to the jury.And the judge. So you got to know your judge, you've got to know people, and it is a little nerve wracking because I, I, there is still that psychological bias against curvy women where people think we're, we're like, I forget what the wording is, but basically that we're like, slobs. That we just don't care and we're sloppy where.And so number one, I am a mess at home. I'm not going to lie. I'm very messy because I'm so organized and so many other asks but I'm not a slob. Like I'm not dirty. But though those that does go through the back of my head where I'm like, I need to dress to make sure that the cuts look. Uh, tailored that even though I'm curvy, I look very put together that, uh, you know, I, I thought about my appearance, like I put my hair in a bun or I put it back low and a bun.Like I don't like, I have long hair cause I paid for it. Uh, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't leave it down like that. I went Ariana Grande a in a courtroom. Do you know what I mean? So there's just things that you got to know how to present yourself. And I like to say, um. When I do a lot of speaking and with my clients, women are like diamonds where we have many facets, right?Because a lot of what I get from business clients when they're networking is, Oh, but I don't want to dress like that cause that's not me. Or when I go to this, I don't want to dress like that. Cause that's not me. Okay. But is it, is it maybe this part of you. Maybe this is how you need to present yourself in this way.Like when I go to court, I'm going to have my hair in a bun. I'm going to be wearing my glasses. I'm going to be wearing a more conservative color and a more conservative suit, maybe even a skirt suit with stockings if that's what it needs, like conservative heels. When I go to my speaking engagement. I have a gold glitter jacket with wings that says networking Maverick, like I'm just a completely different look, but all of them are still me.They're just different facets of the diamond and you have to know when to let each facet shine in different situations. Caitlyn Allen: [00:21:43] I think what's sad though in this situation is that we literally have to think about who our crowd is to dress too. And that's not something most dudes even think about or comprehend.Lauren Marsicano: [00:21:57] Not even a little bit. Not even. And actually, actually they are psychologically, uh, Oh my God, I forgot what this study was that they did on a jury. But, um, you remember to kill a Mockingbird or any on any of that kind of stuff where he was more personable because his shirt was a little uncapped and his suit wasn't super tailored.Right. But the, and so that's, those are perceptions, guys don't even, they get. Rewarded for not necessarily taking so much time for their appearance. Cause then if they take too much time, there are car salesman and they're sleazy maybe or something, but so they don't have to worry about it all. They just show up as them and they probably wear the same suit every single day.Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But it is just stuff that we think, I think as women, we already think about. A billion things a day anyway, more than men in a lot of cases. So, uh, until the day comes where we're all just wearing potato sacks and that's it. Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:22:54] I think this is so spot on though. I feel this all the time when I'm thinking through what I'm wearing to different client meetings or how I dress at work.I mean, I have the good fortune of working at Google, which means I wear a lot of leggings to work. Like, how does that read? How does that come across? Even even in situations where it shouldn't matter when there are guys that literally would just wear their bathrobe.Lauren Marsicano: [00:23:20] Nooooo.Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:23:22] Even my leggings can come across as like unkempt, even though the bathrobe is. Quirky Caitlyn Allen: [00:23:33] the opposite side where like I'm in, I don't, I don't know if you guys can see, they're like dress pants.Lauren Marsicano: [00:23:43] Yeah. Caitlyn Allen: [00:23:43] But people are like, well, why are you so dressed up? I'm like, Lauren Marsicano: [00:23:47] yes. You can't win. Sometimes you just can't win sometimes. No, for sure. Caitlyn Allen: [00:23:50] If I, yeah, if I wore leggings, I would be a slob. If I wore jeans, I'm not dressed to the occasion and now if I wear this, I'm too dressed up. So when will I ever win?Lauren Marsicano: [00:24:01] Well, so you're, you're never going to be able to be everything to everyone all the time. Right? Like that's the biggest thing I learned. You just gotta be you in what you think you should present in that situation. And then everyone can think what they think and you're going to have haters always. And you're gonna have people that love you always.And, and that's what you've got to focus on just being you. Because if you're trying to be someone else, then you're going to feel worse when people don't like you or whatever, you know, whatever happens. But if you're just being you and confident, like I think you look great. That color is amazing on you that I, I guess it's like a purple-y violet maroon is what it looks like from here.It looks great on your skin tone. And I think, I personally think everyone needs a stylist. I have a stylist now and a branding specialist. For my business and everything that really helps with like my color. I'm not wearing it now because this wasn't, I'm not wearing my colors anything now. But, um, I think that that really helps.And I've always decided that I'm always going to be. The most extra in any room really, except for maybe the courtroom. So I always show up as too much and that's kind of my thing. Like, Oh my God, Lauren. So extra. Yes, I am queen cause we're Queens. Do Queens just like sit in the corner? No, we stand out.This is our queendom. Everyone come into our queendom. You got a queen. I'm great. We can all rise up. So I've just, you're never going to satisfy all the haters. So just be yourself and be extra.Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:25:23] I think you freaking nailed it. I think this is so good. So before we wrap up, I want to ask, you've talked a lot about things that we can do to take up and hold the space that we're meant to take. And a lot of that has been an appearance focused. Is there any way in what you learned through presence and in the courtroom that we can also do that with our voices?Lauren Marsicano: [00:25:45] Definitely, definitely. So I actually think, uh, I always, I think my three pillars of networking Maverick are really like mindset, motivation, education, right? If you don't have the right mindset, you're not going to come across in any way, whether it's appearance, voice, anything. Uh, but then if you are the most prepared person in the room, I think preparation mindset.We'll give you so much confidence going in, and if you carry yourself with confidence, you project yourself with confidence. I think that comes across. I think when you talk with people, it's very important. Something I had to learn was to talk slower. A little bit. Cause sometimes when you talk too fast it can come across as like, Oh well she's a lot, she's too much and I'm already loud.So I had to pick one or the other. So I chose to really try to slow down and think about what I'm saying and what the other person is saying. I think that makes a very, very big difference. Being a listener, being someone that takes the time to really. Look at the person who you're talking to, whether it's an event or in the courtroom.I didn't get matters. I think the best thing I did was do improv. I don't know if you guys have ever taken an improv class, but if you have a local, like we have one down the street. My friend is doing it because she's going to be an MC at an upcoming event, and I was like, yes, improv. The best thing, the best decision you can make because it's going to give you, sorry.The confidence. To change on the fly, to deal with anything that comes up in conversation. Anything that could come up in court with opposing counsel. It gets you to think on your feet and so you're already so prepared that you should be able to throw in anything you need. The improv gives you the confidence to be able to pivot in all those directions.So I think that that is something practicing in the mirror, I think helps too. If you can afford an improv class, I think just practicing with a mirror or practicing, like my husband and I practice interview sometimes, or we'll practice, like if I'm going to speak in an event, I'll be like, how does this come across?How does this joke come across? Because I don't want it, you know, the translation from my mouth to your ears might not come across as I want it. So practicing in the mirror, practicing with people, improv, all those are ways to work on your . I would, I would call it all your presentation, your presentation of yourself, whether it's how you dress or how you speak.Caitlyn Allen: [00:28:00] So I have one, one last question about speaking. How do you, and how do you suggest if woman is A woman is speaking and a man starts to speak over her, How do you take charge of that situation Or do you have any suggestions for taking charge of a situation like that?Lauren Marsicano: [00:28:18] Ooh that's a good one So my typical lawyer answer it depends It always depends Uh so I would say how I would address that at like a networking event is very different than how I would address it in like a mediation or in court Because in court there's actually a rule where they're not supposed to talk over you Um so what I would do is if they start talking what I have learned to do is pause I let them finish and then I don't address them I just said judge and I say your honor it is my time to be speaking We will listen to opposing counsel when it's their turn Can you please make sure that they abide by the decorum of the courtroom And that usually gets them to Right Because then they feel like an idiot Like I let them finish You finish you want Oh you okay You think you yo go Now I'm going to make you look like an idiot Thank you Like you're not abiding by the rules How I would do it in the mediation So it's all about in my opinion you don't want to come up like a BITC H sometimes right You don't want to come off like Oh man she's so pressive Sometimes I do want to come off like that and if I do want to come off like that what I will do is I will again let them finish and then I will say sir I have let you say your piece now I would let you Say my piece and we will get out of your love and I do it in front of the clients by the way and we will get outta here a lot quicker and we will cost our clients a lot less money if we give each other the respect we deserve Dannie Lynn Fountain: [00:29:38] Oh Lauren Marsicano: [00:29:40] Oh right So those are those are like my lawyer ways At a networking event it's so much different right Because you just you're in a group maybe you don't even know that person So they interrupt me I just honestly I let them interrupt me I just let them in a Rob me and then I'm such a I'm already such a presence in my opinion that it's not gonna prevent me from still moving forward And people say Lauren why did you go back to the point you were saying I'm like well because I was speaking and this person interrupted me and what I'll say Oh my God you know I don't know Gary Let's just say Gary Oh my God Gary that's so funny Cause I was just about to say blah blah blah blah blah Or you know if it relates back to what I was saying or or you know I'll let him finish we'll have a discussion and then I'll be like Oh my God still I totally forgot what I was saying was blah blah blah blah blah So like I'll just bring it back If it's a point I really really want to make there are some times where it's just like it's not worth worth it I think it actually makes them look worse when they interrupt us more If you just stay pleasant and nice it's like wow Lauren Lauren's a cool person You she doesn't cause a scene She you know She always wants to get along with people which I do like I genuinely do just want to connect and bond That person probably isn't going to like me very much anyway Uh so I mean I'm not going to try to be rude to them Now there are times when the interruption is purposeful right And there have been very few very very tight to situations where I know the person was coming at me where they purposely were just trying to cut me out And then I have probably not reacted the best because you know that that gets me where like if they've interrupted me a couple of times and they're like they start edging you out of the circle you know That thing and and what I will just say I'll I'll look kind of at the group and I'll look at if I if I know anyone I kind of make eye contact and usually men will be the one that say Hey Lauren what was it you were saying again Or like they'll bring you back in and and that's kind of what I do Or if not I'll be like excuse me I'll make Oh I'm sorry Uh I'm still here Like sometimes be like Oh oops I think you got I think you're on my shoe Oh Oh no no no You're fine You're good Oh good Excellent Like there's little things like that but I just think it's better not to cause huge confrontation at networking events That's just me That's how I that's how I handle it But I think just being comfortable in yourself being a presence being confident I think that comes across better And people actually come back to me There'll be like Laura and what was it you were saying Maybe just just you and confident I would say so Yeah They're different Caitlyn Allen: [00:32:14] Yeah No those were such like so great to hear like how you have I don't know how you approach the situation because I don't know I feel like sometimes it's such a hard situation to address that it just feels like Oh I just want to like shrink up Um Lauren Marsicano: [00:32:33] can't do that Don't do that Right Don't do don't shrink because you're still amazing and people still like you're still valid and you're still valuable Just because someone is being like that and they might not even be doing it on purpose That is just who they are And so you just got to accept people for who they are and know Hey I'm a queen I got this I'm here And like at these people Want to still talk to me We're going to get back to what I was saying or we're still going to keep talking It's not it's not a huge deal Don't shrink though because you're a queen right You rule you got that crown Keep that crown high and think about Caitlyn Allen: [00:33:06] Well I think that our effort our crowd is going to love this episode Thank you so much Lauren And as we wrap up we want to know where can we find you on social and the interwebs. Lauren Marsicano: [00:33:20] I would love to connect with everyone on here. You can find me on Instagram at networking, Maverick dot dot com at networking Maverick. You can go to my website, which is www.networkingmaverick.com and I have a bunch of freebies on there for you. Whether you want to learn how to turn your network into net worth with my top five tips, I've got that free beyond there.It's called the networking Maverick pocket guides, so you can take it with you. And then I have an Instagram growth guide on there as well, which are my tools and tips for growing your following and your presence and your branding. And then my last one and newest one is the seven steps to start success, the queen preneurs checklist.So that's going to be on there too. It's all on networking maverick.com.

Building Touch of Modern, with Co-Founder Jerry Hum

Up Next In Commerce

Play Episode Listen Later May 19, 2020 43:01

How do you build a successful eCommerce business that has attracted nearly 5 million visitors in a month? For Jerry Hum, it took a few failures and a couple of stumbles out of the gate with his cofounders before finding the winning combination of users, demand, and products all in one. Jerry is a co-founder and the Executive Chairman of Touch of Modern, a members-only e-commerce website and app focused on selling lifestyle products, fashion, and accessories to men. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jerry takes us through his early struggles and how he found the secret sauce to making his eCommerce platform one of the most popular among male shoppers. Plus he explains what metrics other eCommerce pros should be looking at, and gives some advice to other entrepreneurs. Key Takeaways: For a multi-brand company, customer retention and lifetime value is the critical metric to look at Build the primary platform where your primary customer prefers to buy Combine marketing engagement and transactional data to prevent high engagement high cost marketing yielding low sales volume --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible eCommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Hey everyone. This is Stephanie, your host of Up Next In Commerce. Today we have Jerry Hum. The co-founder and executive chairman of Touch Of Modern. Jerry, how's it going? Jerry: Pretty good. How are you? Thanks for- Stephanie: [crosstalk] good. Yeah, how's it going? So you're in a loft right now, right? In SF, living the quarantine life. Jerry: Yeah, in San Francisco. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Yep. Stephanie: How- Jerry: [crosstalk] for a little longer than most other folks. Stephanie: Yeah. So what's your day look like with being sheltered in place and... I think San Francisco is even stricter than Palo Alto where you guys [inaudible] allowed to do even more than we are. Jerry: Yeah. Well, we actually started preparing for it a little bit earlier actually, just as it was making news headlines and most companies were still up and running. We were planning kind of contingencies and all that planning and seeing how work from home would be like if we had to do it. Luckily we came up with a plan just in time. We actually went into it before even California started making statements about it. So I think we are kind of in a pretty decent groove in terms of keeping the business running smoothly and all that. In terms of a day to day, I'm actually surprised as to maybe how engaged people have remained. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Being that we have to do it all through technology. I actually started thinking about it, why is it that work from home is almost a little bit easier now than it was in the past. And I think it's because when it's the only option then you just do it. Right? Stephanie: You have to make it work. Jerry: Yeah. It's not like if half the office is doing one thing and then... Or not like half the office. If most of the office is at work and a few people are work from home then it's actually more difficult because the people in the office are like, "Oh, I'll just wait for that person to get in or something." But if this is the only way that every one is communicating then it's actually fairly smooth. Obviously everything takes a little bit more time and all that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] day is actually longer than usual. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: All things considered, I think it's working pretty well. Stephanie: Good. Yeah. Hopefully it will all come to a close soon. How have you all handled... I mean has there been any struggles, I'm imagining taking photos of your products and things like that? That's probably a very in-person type of thing that [inaudible] people have perspectives on and all want to help. How are you handling things like that with your business that seem pretty hard to do virtually? Jerry: Yeah. So luckily, some of our folks have set-ups at home. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: Yeah. Because usually, photographers, this is not just a job. It's also a passion and a hobby. Right. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we've been able to make due... Obviously at a reduced capacity. Yeah. Stephanie: Yeah. Well, good. So maybe that's a good point to dive into what is Touch of Modern. If you were to explain it to the listeners and give us some background. Jerry: Touch of Modern is the only shopping destination that men visit daily. And we offer a [inaudible] mix of remarkable products across all categories and that you can use everyday.This could be anything from a flame thrower you can strap to your wrist, or the newest exercise gadget, or anything in between. Stephanie: Are women allowed? Because I was on there and I was like, "I want to buy some of this stuff." I would buy... Maybe not a flame thrower but there was some good stuff on there that I'm like, "I want this." Jerry: Of course, women are allowed. It's just kind of more... A little bit more of our differentiator. Because most E-commerce sights out there are catered toward women. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: [inaudible] we're not the only one but one of a few that really cater to men. Stephanie: Got it. Yeah. It looks awesome. A lot of the products. I was afraid to hit buys right away. How did you come to create the idea of Touch of Modern? And I think I read it was the third... The third times a charm. That you had done three other things, or two other things before that until you got to Touch of Modern. What was that like? What was that journey like? Jerry: Yeah. I'll give you the long story here, maybe. Stephanie: Good. Jerry: [Four] founders, guys from New York. The business actually was a peer-to-peer experienced market place. And this is kind of similar to what Airbnb has now. Obviously they built that on top of their existing business but we were trying to start from scratch at the time. That was extremely difficult because you're telling folks to change their lifestyle. Right? If you need to suddenly offer a cooking class, that's not a easy thing to do if you don't have the customers for it. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or the time for it. And then we're telling customers to come on this platform and book stuff. But if you don't have the activities, what is there to book? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So it becomes this chicken and egg problem. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It came out of our own need because we were guys from New York, you're kind of looking for interesting things to do all the time, just in the city. Right? The second business was called Raven. Well, the first one was called [Scarra 00:05:24]. I don't know if I mentioned that. Second one was called Raven. That was a slight variation on the first. And that was we took out half of the equation because we realized, double sided marketplace, super hard. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: We started offering activities that already existed. This could be like hang gliding. This could be sky diving. This could also be day at the spa. Right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We also layered on a recommendation algorithm where you could like stuff. And based on your activity, we would offer you a daily feed of different activities and things that were new to discover in your area. We got a lot of engagement out of that. People found really cool things. If you look at my feed versus somebody else's, it would be really different based on what we like. When we looked at it, it was like, oh this is a pretty accurate description of things I'm interested in and my hobbies and such. Right? Jerry: And that was difficult because people would then discover stuff but they wouldn't actually book it with us. They would just call directly [crosstalk 00:06:29]. Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: What we learned from that was, well, we need reason for people to transact. Right? And we need maybe something to make us relevant for right now. So the second generation of that business was actually arranging events where we built a mobile app as the early days of... Not the iPhone but when apps started getting the more complicated... Better than just the kind of beer pouring app. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Those simple things. Right? So we used Geofencing to create this thing where if you went within a certain perimeter of something going on, we would tell you about it. We'll alert you and be like, "Hey, like... Street fair over here or something over there." And that was really cool because there wasn't another app like that. At least that we know of... That we knew of at the time that was doing that. Also at the time, a lot of folks were moving to San Francisco. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Probably even more so than they are today. A ton of messages from people saying, "Wow, you're really helping me discover the city. Every weekend we pull this out and, you know, see what's going on." Especially because San Francisco is the type of city that always has something going on. Stephanie: Yeah. Like on the side streets, you're like, "There's a whole festival going on right now." Jerry: Yeah. So that was really cool but again, a lot of these things were free. So it wasn't there wasn't a real business model there. There's just a ton of engagement. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). It seems like you guys are kind of ahead of your time with that. Because even when I'm hearing about that now, I'm like, oh, if you would have kept going with that one, Airbnb probably would have acquired you. Jerry: Yeah. Right. Stephanie: Oh, if you kept going with the Geofencing thing, Google would acquired you because I worked for Google Maps before this. Jerry: Oh, yeah. Stephanie: They're still trying to figure out how to show you where the festivals are, where the farmers markets are based on your location. So maybe you guys are just ahead of your time with everything. Jerry: Maybe. That would be the positive view of it. So I think the lesson we learned from that was... Incredibly hard to scale location based things. because you could sell out all the tickets to this one show or a certain percentage of it but there's unlimited margin and you're constricted by the location and therefore we couldn't justify the kind of business mechanics that were necessary to actually make that sustainable. I mean, it raised a ton of money. Right? And so this isn't going to get like... Where it wasn't like, hey, we're going to get to a billion people and then it's going to work. It's not like that. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So we were like, what were we good at and what were we not good at? We were really good at getting people engaged. Really good at discovery aspect of things. We just needed something more scalable to be the thing that we featured. And realized that, hey, products... You get scale with products. Right? Mass distribution and all that. There's real margin there because that's kind of built into the modal that [inaudible] already exists. Jerry: We had always kind of liked products, just as the people that we were. But we didn't want to touch it because we didn't want to deal with real world problems of moving things around, shipping, [crosstalk 00:09:46]- Stephanie: Yeah. Logistics. Jerry: Yeah. Logistics. Right? After going through the struggles of the first two business, we realized that things are not really... It's not rocket science. Right? This has been done. We started thinking about what kind of unique angle we could take at it. I remember we were in the living room and we're talking about speakers for some reason and who made the best speakers. Dennis had his idea. Jon had his idea. And then Steven, who's real audio files, was like, no, these are the best speakers. He knew all these brands that we didn't even know about. We knew the mass market brands but not the kind of stuff that he was into. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: He had all this knowledge. Okay, you win that debate. Right? And we realized that we have this thing that we geek out on. Right? Jon was really into cooking and he had these really expensive knives that he would keep in this [inaudible] that he would have to take out and show us. Dennis was really into outdoor activities and all the gear that's associated with that. I use to be an architect when I was in New York so I spent way too much money on furniture. So that was my thing. Right? And so everyone had our own thing. No one out there was catering to this desire or whatever it was that ties all these things together. Right? Jerry: So we just started sourcing things that we thought were cool. Hey, if we think it's cool, other people are going to think it's cool too. Right? It wasn't like a men thing. It wasn't even necessarily a discovery thing. It was just these were the things that we thought were cool. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Through that process, right away it kind of hit in a way that the other two businesses did not hit at all in two years. Right? Where day one we started getting real transactions and kind of buying activity. Right? Stephanie: How? How did you get buying on day one? How did people even find your website or know where to go? Jerry: We did not even have a website on the very first day. We actually... What happened was Dennis, who ran marketing, would just start running ads and would go to a landing- Stephanie: Okay. Facebook? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Or what kind of ads? Okay. Jerry: Facebook. Earlier in the days of Facebook too. I think a lot of what we did, now, can't be exactly replicated but there's probably some learnings to take from it. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So we basically just collected emails and say, "Hey, there's this thing that's coming soon." Right? I think [inaudible] probably remember years ago there was tons of these types of things that are just coming soon and you're like wow [crosstalk 00:12:39]. Stephanie: Yeah. That was the strategy back then of just like just put up a landing page and see if people want that fake product that you could create. I remember books where they would suggest that and I'm like, that's a good idea. Jerry: [crosstalk] that is more less of a pit. I mean, we were creating it. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I'm not talking about like, let's just run ads and see if people like it. We were just building it at the time, that same time we were running ads against it. And basically we had an idea of what that metrics needed to look like in order for a business to work. Right? We just made assumptions down the whole funnel. Right? If we acquire an email for this much, and if this percent of folks convert, and assume a certain order value, and certain repeat rate then this is what our business would look like. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And no data for anything outside of what it would cost to acquire an email. Basically, we knew the cost of that. Then we started sourcing products and building the website behind it. Then we just went down the funnel and firmed our assumptions. Sometimes they were better and sometimes they were just different. We kind of just proved it out from the top down. Stephanie: Got it. That's really cool. Has it always been a member's only platform? Has there ever been a time where people could just go to the website, the app, and just see the products without inputting their email? Jerry: Yeah. So, we require folks to input the email for the upfront reason that we are talking to... And this is also maybe one of our differentiators, is that we are not a clearance channel per se. We talk to vendors who have products that are new to market. Right? So they may have endeavors to go to traditional retail or something else, and they may not want their prices shown necessarily to everybody. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So that's one [inaudible] been the case. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Cool. So when I was looking at your catalog and just seeing everything that you have, how do you go about curating something like that? I mean, it sounds easy in the early days of, oh, so and so likes knives so he pulled in his favorite knives. But I saw how many products you have on that page. Maybe it's like... How many a day do you release? Jerry: It's about 300 a day. It's quite a bit. Stephanie: How do you find 300, even a month, cool products that are so unique like that and keep up the level of quality that's on there? Jerry: We have a team of about 30 or so folks on the sources and buying team and they're out just looking for what's cool and unique. And obviously we have our standards and things that we look for and they just go out and try to find things that meet those standards. And they also try to find things that are... that we've just never seen or heard of before. Right? Then we bring it back, it goes through an approval process, and then we put it up and run it. It's fairly simple. Stephanie: Does it still go through you to approve of every single product? Jerry: Not every single product. Stephanie: No. Jerry: In the early days it was and now we have a team of folks that can do it. Stephanie: Got it. And you also have an app that people can buy from. Is it the same functionality? Does the website mimic the app or how did you think about expanding to mobile? Jerry: It's mostly the same functionality. We expanded to mobile fairly early on. Like I said, our previous companies were... We were already experimenting with mobile back then. I don't think we had one on Scarra but Raven, we definitely did. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: That was a core part of it. So we went to mobile pretty early on and I don't think we knew this per se, but it was interesting because men tend to be more comfortable buying on mobile too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: And maybe that influenced part of our strategy or vice versa. It seems to actually be the more popular platform for us. Both in terms of actual use engagement and revenue as well. Stephanie: Okay. And do you see different customer profiles when it comes to the mobile user versus the website users? And do you cater to them differently based on that? Or personalize things different? Jerry: No. The experiences are pretty congruent on both sides. The mobile users tend to have a little bit of a higher value. But that could also be because you kind of have to self select into mobile. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: You go on to the website and then you're all, hey, we're really into it. And then you go on the app. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: It's kind of hard to say what's [inaudible 00:17:21]. Stephanie: Go it. Very cool. So in the early days you were doing Facebook ads. And I think I read that you were doing TV ads as well at a certain point. How has your marketing strategy evolved over... since you started? Jerry: Yeah. So in the early days of Facebook it was like a wild, wild west. Right. Big brands weren't really on it. So it was a great time for companies like us. And this is why I say a lot of it can't really be replicated today exactly the same way we did it back then. So when a lot of competition started moving in, in order to compete, we kept broadening our category just... I mean, just becoming a stronger business. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So it would be a lot harder to start with just a handful of products the same way we did. When we started, I think we launched with 12 products and that was it. It was like 12 individual products, not twelve vendors, just 12 [inaudible] things you could buy. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: That was enough to make it work. Probably impossible now to do that. As the business grew we could support more channels. We went into Google and then eventually got to the size where we can actually start experimenting with TV. I think also, TV has evolved over time as well because of visual advertising. Because so many brands see the benefits of digital advertising. You can track things and kind of go after a more specific audiences. That TV now kind of has changed to have some of those properties as well. So we use them both kind of together and they enhance each other. You can tell when, if you're spending too much on TV and not enough on digital, then TV starts to suffer. If you spend too much on digital and not enough on TV then the opposite happens. Stephanie: Got it. How do you find that ROI of the campaigns? Then decide, okay let's scale back on TV and increase mobile ads or something. What metrics are you looking for? Jerry: We actually have the exact same metrics on TV as we do on digital. Right? And this is just... cost acquired customer and lifetime value and all that. The way we track it is now you can know exactly when your spot airs and basically we have a baseline of traffic that we know that, hey, if nothing is airing, this is what are organic traffic looks like. Right. So when we air a spot, we can see that spike. We do a [inaudible] analysis to say this much of the traffic following that airing is probably through the TV. Stephanie: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So when it comes to metrics, when you think about E-commerce, what metrics do you think are most important to keep track of? Or how do you define success when it comes to E-commerce? Jerry: Yeah. There's a ton of stuff. I mean, it really depends... It depends a lot on what kind of product you're selling. Right? I'll give you two extremes. One extreme is like us, and for us we are a multi-brand retailer. Right? You can buy a number of things and also we change our selection everyday. So you can keep coming back to keep buying different things. Right? Jerry: So what's important to us is lifetime value and retention. Right? How fast do you break even on the cost to acquire a customer? At the end of the day, that's kind of like the most basic thing for any kind of company in our space. But the products that you're selling may influence how you look at it. Right? If you're selling cars or mattresses or something that you just don't buy very often, then you may think about it very differently because it's just not feasible to thing that the retention rate is going to be nearly what ours is. Right. Or at least not be frequent enough for you to be able to plan your marketing spin around. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Go it. How do you keep your customers... How do you retain them and keep them coming back? Versus acquiring new customers. How do you think about that mix? Jerry: I mean, you always have to acquire new customers. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: I think [inaudible] is just like a natural part of business. You can't deny that it's there. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: [inaudible] you can be great but there's going to be some folks that it's not for. Right? It's not like 100 percent of your folks are going to stay with you forever. Even the folks that do eventually they may change taste or things like that may happen. So in terms of splits, I think that also varies on performance for us. For us we care about kind of a payback on the spend that we're doing and pending on where we see better performances kind of where we'll weight it. And also kind of seasonally because I would say for retail there's holiday season and all that, you may want to do one thing versus another. But that's going to be really specific to the kind of company that you're running. Stephanie: Yeah. So when it comes to changes in spending pattern, what have you seen with everything from COVID-19 going on? Like what kind of differences? I saw you have a... I think a stay-at-home section or something similar like that. Shelter in place, on your website. How have you seen things change since that started? Jerry: People's priorities definitely change very quickly. Luckily for us because we can change our assortment everyday, we were actually able to adapt really quickly. We got that store up from... From when we said we were going to do it to when it was up was a matter of... Like the morning to that afternoon. Stephanie: That's impressive. How did you line up all the vendors? I mean, to me that's like a long process of picking the vendors and picking out the product and making sure they can ship enough, depending on demand. How did you get all that lined up so quickly? Jerry: The thing is... I mean, when this first started happening especially. And we need to agree now still, it seemed as if time had just sped up suddenly. Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: Things that would take an entire quarter could happen now in like a day. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. It has to. Jerry: Everyone was wondering what would be different? All of our vendors, suddenly their retail channels dried up. Right? And they had to move things around. So we just called them up and said, "Hey, this is what we're doing." Obviously most of the folks that were on there, day one, were folks we've worked with already in the past. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Or coincidentally we were talking to and hey, this fits, kind of thing. Right? It was tapping existing relationships. And parallel, the design and engineering teams were building up the store. We were using some existing infrastructure that we could repurpose and re-skin for the store. It was an amazing feeling. I didn't think we were going to do it in a day but it happened. Stephanie: Yeah. And are you changing that catalog? Like each day or week or... Jerry: [crosstalk] as well. Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Got it. Does it... How do you think now your company is going to change based on now you know how quick things can move if it has to? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Do you think that your internal policies and all that stuff could change going forward based on how quickly you can see thing go through? And maybe seeing things aren't a priority or approval for certain things might not be as high priority as you thought they were or... What's your view on that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, in terms of policies first... I think in more so than anything it was like validation of a lot of policies that we had in place. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: It was confirmation that we could move quickly. Because we always thought we could. I think that's always been our thing. One of the questions people always ask is how does a company that sells premium products, how does that respond in a recession? Right? This isn't a recession but it's a time when people's priorities are going to shift maybe away from things that were... seems more frivolous to things that are now more essential. Right? For us, we always said, well you know, we can respond quickly but it's never been proven. And now it's been proven to an extent that we can respond quickly. And we can move to things that are more essential. It's still essential with a twist. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: It's still within our brand. And it's going to bring a bit of uniqueness and delight into people's lives that are staying at home. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think it's validation that the modal can move quickly. The way we thought. And that our brand can extend to the different categories. And address people's needs as they change. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Do you think these buying behaviors are going to last for a while? And if so, are you shifting maybe your thoughts on what Touch of Modern looks like in 2025, 2030? Is it kind of having you re-think things a bit? Jerry: I think that people's buying behaviors will change because I don't think it's going to go back to exactly the way it was. You know. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I agree. Jerry: Yeah. People are going to be much more... And I hope they're going to be much more health conscience. I hope that this introduces some good habits. Right? I think people take a bit of time to reflect and think about things like self improvement. Maybe they didn't have the time to do before because I think some people staying home are going to realize like, "Hey, there's this new hobby that I've always been wanting to do that I can do now." Or, "Maybe I should drink less." Whatever it is that they discover when they change their lifestyle, that there's actually parts of this that are good, that they can take away and keep with them. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Except for the drinking lessening. I think that one's going the wrong way. Jerry: Wait. I don't know. I don't know how some people are- Stephanie: Happy hour time keeps getting earlier and earlier. I'm like, I need to set up rules around this house. Oh my gosh. It's only like two o'clock, what am I doing? Jerry: Well, I mean, another silver lining here is that I think people now have actually seen how quickly the environment can actually improve just with... And in a short period of time. Right? Because in the past I think it always seemed like this insurmountable thing to certain folks where it's like, "Yeah, you know, we can recycle and do this, but we've been doing that for a long time and nothing has really changed. It's actually been getting worse." Right? Jerry: And then suddenly you take a step back and it's like, hey, things change quickly. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. Jerry: So maybe it's not as impossible as we thought. We just have to be deliberate about habits that we have and maybe where we spend our energy. Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, I think sometimes a little shake up like that can be good for people and the economy. And good things could come from it. Even though there's a lot of bad going on as well. I think, yeah, it depends where you're looking, I guess. So when... Oh, go ahead. Jerry: Yeah, I mean, [inaudible] other wise it's just all bad. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. No, everything can't be all bad. There has to be something good out there. That's what I'm hoping for anyways. So when it comes to outside of Touch of Modern, and more of the E-commerce industry as a whole, what destructions do you see are coming? Especially with COVID-19 now. We're seeing some of that already happening. But what are you betting on in the future... Yeah, coming? Jerry: Well, I'm going to bet probably more on E-commerce. Right? I think people are going to build habits from shopping at home that are not going to go away. Right? I think certain things that maybe people use to only buy in person are like, hey, I can buy this at home. It's actually a pretty decent experience, probably going to keep that habit even after this. And I think people are going to maybe focus a little more on preparedness for things than they have in the past. I think human nature is that you never think that these kind of outlier type of situations can happen, but they do. Be that once... Once in a century, I'd never think about it. But a person lives a long time. Right? Jerry: You may see a once in a century thing in your life. That's probably going to happen for a lot of people. Right? And this is that thing for us. Stephanie: Yeah. Agree. It seems like there's going to be a lot of new people coming online who never were online before. And it brings me to a point I saw on your website that I liked a lot is kind of meeting a consumer where they're at. There's two things I saw on your website that I thought would be perfect for a new consumer who doesn't normally buy online. The first one was you have a toggle button on your homepage that says, "View as." And you're about to actually change how you view products on the page, depending on what you prefer. Stephanie: So I thought that was genius. Any insight behind that? Or any thoughts when you were creating that? Because I haven't seen many websites allow you to toggle that view to what you prefer. Jerry: Yeah. It's just like a preference thing. Right? Our experience on the landing page is we just drop you right into our offering. Right? It's not like a landing page where you then click in and search and do all this other stuff. Mostly E-commerce is catered to search. Right? You just go on the page and automatically thing is you type in what you're looking for. Right? That's not really our experience. It's there but it's kind of secondary. It's mostly a browse and kind of meander your way through our offering. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We let people maybe pick the way they want to meander. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). How do people meander through 300 hundred things? Because I was going through and I wanted to look at all of them but after a little I'm like, oh, this is too many. And I kind of wished maybe like... What did I see? There was this screen that extended your screen. So you have your MacBook or something and you plug in a little cord and you have an extension of your screen, which is awesome. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: I'm like, that should have been shown to me first because I want to buy that right now. Whereas, what was the second thing? It was showing maybe like an expensive bottle of wine, which I'm like, oh, push that down some because I'm not fancy like that. How do you think about helping people get through these products each day? Jerry: Well, I think your first time experience is going to ne a little bit different than your second and your third time. About almost half of our users, and I'm not talking about customers but just people that visit, will actually come back at least once a week. And so- Stephanie: Wow. Jerry: Yeah. And so if you're doing that and then our most frequent visitors are coming back every single day, then it's not as hard to browse through everything. Because then you can browse through it and then you'll hit a point where, okay, now I'm looking at yesterday's stuff. Right? And so, if you keep up with it everyday then it's not actually a ton of stuff. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: But for your first time, you're looking at all the days that have accumulated in the past five days. And certain events will also extend beyond that. I think the first time experience is like, wow, this is a ton of stuff. And also because you probably want to click through every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: But after awhile you're probably just looking for the things that catch your eyes. Or you're just going to scan and be like, okay, that's really cool. That's really cool. But you're not necessarily going to check out every single thing. Right? Stephanie: Yeah. [inaudible] Jerry: Also, on the mobile app, the scrolling screen is just much slicker and smoother too. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: I think you might just browse there. A lot of folks also will tell us that it's just something that they peruse through when they're waiting for something or commercial break or something like that. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). The second thing I saw that I really liked, which I also haven't seen... Maybe I'm just not on enough websites. I don't know. But I was looking through... It was an about shipping section. And it showed a visual of what does your shipping status mean. Jerry: Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie: And it just... It showed everything from like, we place our PO, and than it goes to the supplier, and here's what it means if you see... I don't know the whole... I can't remember the whole layout. But I thought that was genius showing it in a visual format. And I'm sure that probably brings down a lot of customer support emails. But tell me how you all are thinking about giving that transparency to the customer. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: And hopefully prevent a million a emails of, hey, where's my product. Jerry: This is another product of our business modal. Or kind of what differentiates us a bit. We sell across all categories. Right? Meaning that we have to be able to accommodate all the categories. So it's not like, a company that just sells furniture ships one way. A company that just sells clothing ships another way. Right? And so their customers go there expecting a certain experience. A company that sells everything needs to ship all the different ways. Right? So a customer might not know exactly what this shipping process is going to look like when you buy something because they may not realize... I mean it's obvious now when I talk about it but if your company goes on a site, you're going to expect shipping experience to be generally consistent. But for us it's like, we're going to ship furniture differently, then we're going to ship clothing differently, and then we're going to ship, you know, this cup, right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And so for us it's just more like informing the customer, this is what's going to happen. This is what it's going to look like. And this is what the different steps mean. For us, we found that more so than anything, they just want to know what's going on. That it's moving and... like internal. Yeah. Stephanie: How about when it comes to relaying the value of the product? How do you convince someone that something is really good? Because I don't think I saw reviews on the website. Unless I missed them. How do you... That's usually the first thing I look for. Is it five stars? You know, I want to see if someone has the same kind of experience that I'm looking for. How do you tell someone something's valuable without that? Jerry: Yeah. I mean, a lot of what we do is educating the customer. Right? Because a lot of these things they never heard of, they didn't know it exist. I wish we could say we do an awesome job at it and we provide all these reviewed stuff but... And we vet the product. We'll go and look at the reviews and we'll test the product and all that. But it does take a leap of faith in the first purchase and maybe you get a learned trust after some time, that like we've done the research. Jerry: Because if you go and research these products you're going to find that they're pretty highly regarded. Stephanie: Yep. Which I think actually might be the modal that it's headed is just show me one or two people at your company that I trust to review product, and I trust them. Because a lot of reviews, I mean, at least on other places... Marketplaces and things like that. They're paid reviews. And so you go through and you're like, well, I can't trust 90 percent of these anyways. So I think it is kind of shifting towards just give me the one person that I can trust. Or the one company that I can trust to curate something for me. And I know if it's coming from them, it's going to be quality and good. Stephanie: Are there any big transformations that are going to be on your plate after the environment kind calms down? Or any big projects that you plan on starting or changing within your strategy? Jerry: Yeah. We're working on shipping things a lot quicker. The reason being that a lot of our products do take a little bit longer because we have these various modals that we work with. And we found that when we can ship things more quickly people are generally way more happy and more likely to come back and purchase. Stephanie: Got it. How can you speed up the shipping for... when it's a bunch of different, I'm guessing, retailers who all their own different practices? How can you kind of know that you can speed that up and make it all pretty uniform? Jerry: Consign the product. Right? So they will house it in our warehouse and we essentially act as their distribution center. Stephanie: Oh. Okay, cool. Tell me a little bit about that. Do you have to buy warehouses in different parts of California? Or how is that modal set up? Jerry: Right now our warehouse actually has a good amount of space. And we've actually developed our distribution system to fit with our model, right, which is that we run things in these short spurts. Right? And what's cool about that is that things come in and they go out really quickly so we're not sitting on mountains of inventory. I mean, we're nearly inventory-less. We're very inventory light. We don't actually require that much space to run a lot of products. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: So right now, for the foreseeable future, it's to keep it within our distribution center. It's a long winded way of saying... Stephanie: Okay. Got it. How did you learn to do that? When I even think about shipping products to a warehouse and making sure everything goes well, how did you learn best practices around... Yeah, around all that? Jerry: Yeah. This is interesting because when we first started we were shipping our own products from day one. And so- Stephanie: From your house? Or from where? Jerry: From the house. [inaudible 00:41:45]. Stephanie: That's awesome. Jerry: ... of just tons of boxes in the living room. And then when the FedEx guy came we would... The first day we just piled it in the lobby and our neighbors got really pissed at us for doing that. Stephanie: I can imagine. Jerry: So the second day, we knew when the person was coming and we just did like bucket brigade style where we just passed packages from our living room down to the... Basically we had our four founders there. And we would just pass it down, bucket brigade style, down the stairs as quickly as the guy could load it into the truck. Stephanie: Oh my gosh. Jerry: And then the first day we finally opened the office, we set aside half of it for fulfillment. And the reason why we did that was because we realized our model is just very different than a traditional pick and pack modal, which is what most 3PLs... What's called a third party logistics provider. At least back then, they were mostly doing pick and pack type operations. And it didn't really fit our modal and we realized that at a certain scale we'd have to bring it in house. It's better to learn it now than to try to take it in when it's already at scale and have huge disruptions in customer experience. So basically, we just started doing it at a really small scale and built our operations all custom to that. So our, kind of, back office technology is all custom. Right? So everything ties together and it suits us in a way that... If you went with a just a third party provider, it probably wouldn't work as well. Stephanie: Very cool. Well, definitely have to get that picture from you so you can post it somewhere to show people because that's... Yeah, a really fun story of starting out. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: What do you see for new people starting out, building their stores and all that? What is some advise that you give them? Or best practices or things that you did that you're like, don't do that, that actually worked out really bad. Jerry: So this probably goes back to your first question about the two businesses that we had before. We made some classic mistakes. Right? Which is, I think the big one is you build the whole thing and you spend like a year building it and then you think that one day you're going to open and people are just going to come in. Right? Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: Then you start thinking, hey, maybe we just keep tweaking the product and eventually people will come. Right? Really all you're doing is staying busy. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: Because if the demand is not there, it's not going to suddenly show up, almost like the world changes, right? And you would be at the right place at the right time. So it's prove out the demand first. And then when the demand is there, you can take your time with the product. Right? It's like, you don't want to be in a place where you're convincing yourself that the reason you're not succeeding is because the product is not quite right. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: If there's a real need for it you can come out with something that's pretty minimal and just addresses the core need. And it doesn't even have to run perfectly and be totally ironed out. And that will give you enough signal that there's something there that people want. And then you can find it down the road and keep expanding your market to... [inaudible] but this is now more mass market. And so on and so forth. Right? Because the early folks, they want your service, whatever it is, so much that they're going to put up a little bit with you in the early days of like not having it all totally together. Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). [crosstalk] Jerry: And so... Yeah. Yeah. You got to prove out the demand first before you totally refine the product. Stephanie: Cool. And what about when it comes to technology? How do you think about... It sounds like you guys did a lot of just in-house... everything. In-house logistics. In-house website stuff. What would you tell someone right now? Should they try and build things in-house? Or... Yeah, what are your thoughts on that? Jerry: It's easier now to build anything in-house than it use to be. Right? Back then it was actually a little more difficult because a lot of the frameworks that are being used today were really fresh back then. Right? So people weren't learning it in school. They had to teach themselves. There weren't the coding bootcamps back then either. So engineers were still a little bit hard to come by. Now, resources are there and everything. Jerry: We were lucky because we did our own coding in the first versions of the site. It was me and Steven, our CTO. More him than me but we built the early versions of that and didn't hire engineers for a long time. Maybe longer than... we probably should have hired engineers a little bit earlier than we did. But we got by with just two folks building stuff. Right? But you also learn a lot. You are kind of like more intimate with the product, even today, just because we have that history with it. Stephanie: Yep. Jerry: And I think one of the things that's really important to us early on was the data ownership. Right? We don't want to have all these different things talking to each other and not have a clear picture of what's going on. Right? Stephanie: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Jerry: We don't want any black boxes. There's things that if we don't have access to all the data then we're just going to cut that service and we're going to build it ourselves. Stephanie: Got it. Very cool. Yeah. Great advice. So with a couple minutes left, we're going to move on to... it's called the lightning round. Brought to you by [Sales Force Commerce Cloud 00:47:37]. Sales Force Commerce Cloud. This is when I shoot a question over your way and you have a minute or less to say the first answer that comes to mind. Jerry: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Stephanie: Are you ready? Jerry: Okay. Stephanie: Dun, dun, dun, dun. We'll start with the easy ones first and then we'll end with the harder one. Sound good? Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: All right. What's up next for dinner? Jerry: Left-over Chinese food. Some more. Stephanie: Yep. What's up next that you're buying from Touch of Modern? Jerry: What am I buying next? Well, I'll have to see what comes up next. It changes everyday so I don't know yet. Stephanie: All right. Well, what did you just buy recently? Or what's your most recent purchase? Jerry: My most recent purchase was, funny enough, it is a cast-iron rice pot from [Le Creuset 00:48:22]. Stephanie: Okay. Have you tried it out yet? Jerry: No, it hasn't gotten here yet. It was very recent. This was probably... couple days ago. Stephanie: Cool. What's up next on Netflix or Hulu queue? Jerry: I actually don't have either. I don't even own [inaudible] TV. I don't watch a whole lot of stuff, actually. Stephanie: Okay. Hey, that's an answer. What's up next in your travel destinations after the environment calms down a bit? Jerry: I think an easy one from California would be Hawaii. I like to go there to relax and it's a relatively short trip. So I like to go there [inaudible 00:49:05]. Yeah. Stephanie: What's your favorite island there? Have you been? Jerry: Yeah. I go to Oahu fairly frequently. I really like Kauai, I've been there once to do a hike. Stephanie: Yeah. That's my favorite island with all the waterfalls there and the crazy hikes that- Jerry: [crosstalk] been to the weeping walls? Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. Jerry: Yeah. Stephanie: Yep. Oh, yeah. I want to go back though. We were only there for a couple days and I feel like there's so many different hikes and waterfalls and just things to see there. I mean, it's... Yeah, like a jungle. It's awesome. On to the hard question. What's up next for E-commerce pros? Jerry: E-commerce pros. Hmm. Man. What's next for the pros? I think, I mean, it's going to be adapting to the changes in customer behavior that are coming out of this. Whatever that is. I don't have a crystal ball for that one. Stephanie: Got it. Hey, that's an answer. All right, Jerry. Well, this has been a fun interview. For everyone who hasn't gone and checked out Touch of Modern, you should. It has really fun products on there. And yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Jerry: Thanks for having me.

covid-19 tv new york netflix california founders google man marketing online san francisco sound digital co founders chinese sales brand iphone modern hawaii engagement touch airbnb commerce hulu roi respond ecommerce deliver cto shelter combine logistics key takeaways fedex google maps mm incredibly macbook palo alto executive chairman versus oahu up next kauai marketplaces right back geofencing right it 3pls le creuset right how right because right after right then right for salesforce commerce cloud scarra right where stephanie yeah stephanie how right which stephanie no stephanie oh jerry you stephanie they

EC 07: with Stephanie Blake

Entrepreneur Conundrum

Play Episode Listen Later May 11, 2020 22:14

Virginia Purnell:Welcome to entrepreneur conundrum with Virginia Purnell, where growing entrepreneurs share how they get visible online. Today I'm talking with Stephanie Blake about how she helps businesses grow and scale via funnels and Facebook ads. Stephanie is a techno geek that helps passionate and innovative entrepreneurs revolutionize their world by enabling them to get clear on their message and past the hurdles keeping them from their dreams. She enables business owners to create an implement, a plan to dominate their industry and live full out in their calling via high converting sales funnels, cutting edge Facebook ad strategy, and killer messenger bot strategy. Stephanie is a wife to red bearded hero and a mother to four extroverted blessings and a lover of all things marketing back to the future princess bride and blue bell ice cream. Welcome, Stephanie.Stephanie Blake:Hey. Oh my gosh. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to get to be here and chat with you.Virginia Purnell:I am excited for you. Ready to jump in? Oh yeah, let's go. Awesome. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?Stephanie Blake:I am the mother of four amazing children and married to a wonderful red bearded hero is who I call him. And I run a digital ads agency. So about four and a half, five years ago, my life completely and totally changed when I decided to make a career pivot. I was already pretty geeky. My background is in network engineering and management, so I love to build computers and make them talk to each other. But I got turned on to the digital marketing space by a friend who offered me a job and I fell into the world of sponsored posts, affiliates, funnels and traffic and landing pages. And I was just so in awe and just to be honest, it was almost like things clicked into place whenever I found digital marketing. And so it was, it's been quite the journey since we started. I started an agency about four and a half years ago called Social Sparrow and we're rocking along.We have an amazing team of eight and we just recently got our two comma club award for earning a million dollars in our agency, helping businesses grow and scale using Facebook ads and funnels. And so I'm just excited to be able to chat with you because it's so much fun to just share the passion that I have for what you can do with your life and your business if you are on purpose and deciding purposely to build the life that you want. Cause I just can't even believe, if you would've told me five years ago that my life would look like what it does right now, I would just not even be able to comprehend that. So it's just incredible how far you can come no matter where you start. Because we started in a rough place, things were not good. And the only reason I got the education I did and digital marketing space, I was working for someone else who paid for the courses. And so I really had no frame of reference for what was possible. And so anyway, so here I am. I'm a digital ads agency owner, and do business consulting and coaching. And I just absolutely love digital marketing.Virginia Purnell:It's so nice. Things can fall into place and then how good they feel when they do.Stephanie Blake:Yes, yes. It's almost like a fish that finally gets into water, right. Or a horse that finally gets its gallup for, you know, it's just, it's an amazing, amazing thing to really have things align and feel great as you're doing work that you love.Virginia Purnell:So what do you love most about what you're doing?Stephanie Blake:I think the thing I love the most is the impact because a lot of people have fantastic offers offline. Maybe they have a zone of genius, but they just can't seem to get it online. And with the right work, the right offer, the right messaging, the right traffic, the right audiences, it, all it takes are these little tweaks and twists and turns and someone can lock into place and it literally changes their life. So for example, one of my coaching students literally went from having around $4,000 a month income with his econ product that he was selling. And he started coaching with me about two months ago and this month was his first month to hit $27,000 in 30 days. And that's a major impact. Like his life is directly changed because of his ability to sell his product to the perfect customer and continue to do that at scale. And so that's, I think to me that's what it's all about. That's what I love the most is whenever you can have that kind of impact to help someone truly make their dreams happen as like there's nothing like it, it's the best.Virginia Purnell:Yeah. Such a great feeling that you were able to help someone achieve their dreams or definitely get one step closer to it. Yeah, absolutely. Especially from such a big jump that they were able to do.Stephanie Blake:Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't always happen that fast. But, but yes, even it's so crazy cause even small little changes and, and what some people might consider to be a small difference, if you're only making $500 online, then all of a sudden you find yourself making $4,000 online. That's, that's a huge increase. And that's a really, really big deal. It doesn't always have to be like a, we're making four and then all of a sudden you're at a hundred thousand dollars. It's just about what will make the biggest impact. And sometimes for some families the biggest impact is just simply being able to cover extracurricular activities and not have to worry about if they have to put something on a credit card or not, or they're not sure if they're going to be able to do X, Y or Z. Right. Because not sure if the money is going to be there, which is where we lived our life before I started my agency. It was really, really, really rough. Not knowing if we could afford to really put our kids in the extracurricular activities or fix the fence that was falling down or you know, all those things that come up. And then the difference being that, okay, you know what, I don't have to worry about that anymore because I can take care of that because my business has grown so much. Right.Virginia Purnell:So speaking of dreams and goals, what are some big goals that you're looking to achieve over the next one to two years?Stephanie Blake:Oh man. I think the biggest thing for me is that I've been in circles in a lot of really amazing masterminds over the past couple of years. And I also had the honor and the privilege of getting to coach inside of the Two Comma Club X program for Russell Brunson. And during that time I coached hundreds of entrepreneurs and one of the things that I loved the most was whenever you found someone who really caught their groove and they created their own ecosystem and these individuals, you know, they started off, they had this idea, they made an offer, and then from that offer they found another problem to solve that was related to the audience that they were already serving. They created another offer to solve that problem. Then another problem came up and they created another offer, solve that problem, and eventually they created their own value ladder.And there's this ecosystem and this tribe that they have. And I started my journey in the digital marketing world as an agency. And because I wanted to be able to scale, I very intentionally niched down at the very beginning. So a large majority of our clients were in our local businesses on purpose 'cause they're kind of a different beast. And so we still serve a lot of people in the online community for infopreneurs and things like that. But whenever I start that way, I am my head down to the grindstone. Like I'm working hard, I'm building a team, I'm learning what it looks like to scale. What does it mean to have employees, not contractors, like all of this stuff. Right. And I never created any info products based off of that because it didn't really fit who I was serving for, what I was doing at that time.And so because of that, whenever this, you know, this year one of my goals was to start to build my own ecosystem. So in the next year to two years, not only am I going to have my agency, but I'm creating ads for beginners.com which is training grounds for people to learn Facebook ads for beginners so that they too can start their journey. And then I really just want to serve and be able to help people have significant impact in their lives and change and go after what they want and see it realized in their lives, the learning Facebook ads and kind of going up that ladder that I'll build to serve people at different levels. So that's my biggest one. I want to look back a year or year and a half from now, and then see the evidence of an ecosystem where I have a tribe that I'm consistently serving rather than just an agency, which don't get me wrong, an agency’s a lot of work. It's not just anything, it's a magnificent, beautiful beast. And I love my agency and it's not going anywhere, but with that agency, I also want to have my own ecosystem where I am serving at a different level in the infopreneur space.Virginia Purnell:So having that ecosystem would that, how would that change your business or affect your business?Stephanie Blake:I think one thing that is really, really smart about having an ecosystem and really leaning into that is because it is, it's one pathway. And if you're like me and your creative visionary entrepreneur, then you have ideas coming at you, you know, a hundred to 200,000 times a day. Like there's always an idea. There's always something you can do. But whenever you build an ecosystem, everything inside of the ecosystem needs to fit right. You can't, you know, I guess you could go back to the ecosystems of you know, just what we're taught in school. And if you were to kill all of the spiders, then the bugs would be overwhelming and dah, dah, dah. And I think along those lines, the ecosystem that you build keeps you structured because you have one person that you're serving all along their journey at different places in their journey.And so I think that that's one of the major benefits of creating an ecosystem yourself, because you're not just serving everybody, which you don't really do with an agency either. But if you're just making these one off products, you're not streamlined, you're not focused. And so I think that's one of the main reasons why I feel like it's just so beneficial to do that because for one, it narrows your focus. And for two, it's going to create a logical way to generate revenue for you and your family. That makes sense. While serving at a really high level and solving real problems, what do you feel like the number one roadblock has been stopping me from doing that? Oh, 100% time. 100% and I think, you know, I can't use it as an excuse because what you want, you will create. Right? But I do because of the agency and what I want to do is to have a thriving agency.And I also want my team to be happy. I also want to raise children intentionally. Right? And so, I also want to be a good wife. So whenever you're really intentionally trying to make sure you're, you're plugged in with your children and that you are being a great wife and that you are taking care of yourself physically and you're thinking about the needs of your team and you're serving your clients, creating new systems and processes. And so I've found that I didn't quite understand how to truly catch a rhythm cause I felt like I was always trying to make it about what I could do every day and find the schedule that included every little bit of everything every day. But in reality, the way my brain works and what I've learned even in this past year is that, you know, batching is a real thing for me.I really kind of need to be able to settle into a, a creative thing that I need to do for a couple of hours for it to really come out of me and for it to actually work out and to be a good thing. If I'm trying to say, Oh, you're going to do that for 30 minutes, you're going to do this for 45 minutes is better. Get up cause you didn't go do this for an hour and then you got to call here and don't forget you're gonna break up that car and you're gonna go back to working on it. Then you worked on it at the beginning like forget it. Like my brain does not really work that way. I really struggle with any type of creative thing if I have that kind of calendar. So being able to literally say this whole week I am going to give my agency the first one hour of my time and then the rest of my day I am going to be working fully on this funnel and nothing else interrupts that until five o'clock whenever I stop working, check out with my team and then I'm my family's.Right? So these big time blocks I feel like are what's really, really helped me have some breakthroughs and I hope to continue to help me have breakthroughs as I'm building this ecosystem. Because time has definitely been one of the biggest roadblocks for me and not understanding how I can make time work for me as an individual. Right? Because what works for one person doesn't work for everybody. So true. So true. We're all individualistic. Right?What's working for you right now to attract more business? Oh my gosh. Okay. So I would have to say that for me it's all about networking. I don't intentionally, like, I didn't know I was doing a thing until someone called it out. They're like, gosh, you're such a networker. And I was like, I have. And it's just, I genuinely love people and I love going to live events. And so typically I meet a lot of amazing people and get to chat with them. And I really have a heart for people. So I just want to try to help. And so what has acquainted over the years is just this a mass of amazing, amazing people. Because I've paid to be in amazing masterminds. So whenever you pay to be a high end mastermind, you get to be surrounded with incredible people because they've done something to be able to afford to be in that mastermind.And so because of that, what's happened is, I have this beautiful network of visionaries who know how to make things happen and have, you know, fire in their eyes ready to go after things, right? And so, and becoming known by those individuals who, you know, have followers and they have needs and they know people who have needs. I think that's one of the biggest things that I've had going for me that was honestly unintentional. Now that I see it for what it is, I'm kind of like being a little more intentional about it. Like, Oh wow, I should go to that conference. Even if I don't need to learn the things that are at that conference, I would love to know those people. Right. And being a little bit more intentional about it without getting gross. Like, Oh, I'm going to meet these people because I have ulterior motives.But it's just so neat to look back and see something that came very naturally to me and it ended up benefiting my business and has benefited me as an individual. Just trying to make a way, you know, make my own space in this digital marketing world. So you've kind of explained what you're doing, let's say in real life, what are you doing to get visible or to stand out online? Okay. Again, one thing I learned to do unintentionally was a year, almost two years ago, I launched a course called bot boss where I was teaching how to use messenger bots. And so many people just had no idea what bots were. And so many people were curious, but very leery of bots. And so I just started talking to different people and I started volunteering to do a free training inside of people's masterclass or mastermind and, and it was just awesome.It was a total win, win. Some masterminds I would talk in, I do a one hour training for them, and some of them I would walk away with somebody who wanted me to do a belt build-out or wanting to buy my course when sometimes it was, I wouldn't walk with anything, which I wasn't really looking for. I was, I genuinely was showing up to give value inside of these, these people's inner circles and masterminds. But as a result, I was able to network and get to know people and become visible through small pockets of people. You know, this one might've had a hundred people, this one might've had 20 people, this one might've had 300 people. But they're all people who are anti-ing up to be inside of a program. Right? And so that really served me a lot. And again, unintentionally, I had no idea the value that I was bringing.Like I thought, Oh my gosh, yeah, I was bringing great value and these people were so thankful that I was willing to donate, you know, and do an hour of my time. And I was like, Hey, isn't no problem. This is fun. And then the value that in turn that came around for me, it was people started following me, checking me out or referring me. I would get tagged all over the internet anytime that bots got brought up because I was really getting out there and, and talking about what I was super passionate about. So if you yourself, you know, know people who have their own masterminds or anything like that, you know, reaching out to them and just say, Hey, I've got this really unique thing and here is what, how it could help your people. I would love to do free training and just offer not to pitch guys, you don't have to pitch.All you have to do is just be you and people are going to see you as someone who knows what they're talking about and they'll reach out if they want something or know that you're an expert in it or they'll remember you later. Great advice. Thank you. What would you like to share that I haven't asked you? Oh my gosh, let me think about this. You know, I guess just one thing I would share is just that I was talking to my group coaching group yesterday and one of the things we were talking about is this entrepreneurial journey and how there are so many highs and so many lows and sometimes whenever we're down in a low it feels like, like for instance the person I had just told you about a minute ago who is selling econ. He was talking about how, you know, just, I mean literally whenever he came into my group coaching program, he literally put the money that he paid to be in the program on a credit card cause they didn't have any money.It was literally a step of faith to jump in. And so he was saying it was so dark and it was so, you know, it was desperate times. It was really crazy. Right? Really a step of faith and we were about how we can get in the spots and we feel like, you know what? I just need to quit. I need to go find a nine to five. Someone can hire me. You know, I tried this entrepreneurial gig, this is just too hard and we just want to throw in the towel. But the crazy thing is, usually if we can get our wits about us and we can actually survey what's actually happening, what you might see a picture of in your mind is when you're climbing up a mountain, right? And you work really hard. Let's say you're climbing this mountain for a good 30 45 an hour, right?You come up, you find a ledge and you sit down and you're like, Oh my gosh, you look up and the mountain, I mean it is still like almost straight up in front of you. There's still so much more to go to get to the top, right? Let's, you sit down and you go to rest and you turn around and then you look down and you see how far you came, right? So it can, you can face one way and it can feel like you're never going to make it to the top and it's going to be so hard and like how could you keep going? But then you look back and you never would have imagined that you'd come that far in the time that it took you to come to that place. Right. So I guess the encouraging thing would be like no matter where you are in your entrepreneurial journey, just remembering how far you've come.Because whenever I look back and I think about this speedy journey, like I mean I have an 18 year old. Okay, that just blows my mind. I have an 18 year old, my youngest is seven. And I think about 18 years and I think about when he was born in 18 years. And then I think about my entrepreneurial journey and it's only been about five years. Like we're, we're just now coming around to five years where I really kind of put my foot in this industry and then I look now where I am and I know there's so much more to go. I'm like kicking myself cause I don't have an ecosystem. Right? I'm looking up that mountain and I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, I've been sitting here and I've known about these ecosystems, I've coached people to build their own ecosystems and I don't have my own ecosystem and I'm looking up at the mountain and I'm like, Oh, what am I ever going to get up there?Right. When reality, whenever I turned around and looked back down, you know, I look how far I've come at th the struggles, how we, you know, lived in this small house and how we, you know, worked through having my first team member and then having to, having one of my team members quit on me for the first time ever. It wrecked me. I was so, I was devastated. I was so upset. And then, you know, having to fire somebody for the first time, what it meant to lead, how to have my own retreat, like the Two Comma Club stage for earning a million dollars in my agency. Like, like if you want to tell me at the beginning of this journey that I was going to build an agency that would make over a million dollars. Like I just, I would've been like, what?Like that would have been inconceivable. So as, as we've, as I've come up this journey and I look back down, I can have so much more appreciation and understanding that all it's going to take is one foot in front of the other to make it up the other side and to keep going to reach the top right because that's all that was. It was one problem and then you solve the next problem, solve that and then solve the next problem and you just keep going and you don't let those Valley days make you forget about where you've come to get to that part. Right. So I think, I think that's, I guess I could share that because that's been the thing that's just been kind of ruminating with me, just appreciation because it was like two years ago I posted on my profile a picture and it was the two comparison shots, right.Of looking up the mountain and then looking how far you'd come. And I was like, Oh, that's so good. And so just remembering how far you've come, no matter where you are, if you're experiencing the Valley and celebrating, just celebrating your wins and how far you've come and knowing that you have whatever it takes inside of you in order to figure out how to solve the next problem. And then you'll figure out how to solve the problem that's after that and you'll keep going.Virginia Purnell:I like that. Thank you so much. Thank you again for such a great interview. How can people find out more about you and what you do?Stephanie Blake:Okay. Yeah. So if you just basically just find me on Facebook and connect with me there, you can actually go to the Stephanie dub Facebook page and connect with me there. I've got a bot hooked up there and just let me know. You know, what's going on in your business. I'd love to connect and meet you and see if there's a way that I can help you or just learn more about what you're doing.Virginia Purnell:Thank you again, Stephanie. Thank you so much for joining us today. Be sure to subscribe and leave some love through a review and I'll catch you on the next episode.Mentioned Links:DistinctDigitalMarketing.comMySocialSparrow.comBotBoss.io

business entrepreneur valley back to the future visibility russell brunson online visibility right what two comma club right because stephanie blake two comma club x

EPISODE 23 PART II How Business will Change After Covid19 Coronavirus

All Social Y'all Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 29, 2020 30:10

This is Part 2 of a 2 part series recorded in a live radio show called El Sassa, about How Businesses Will Change after Covid 19 Coronavirus. Radio and podcast host Sassa and I discuss the current impacts of Coronavirus in our business communities, the government loans and what business owners are facing waiting for that….how services like Uber and Lyft or hair and nail salons might transform. Very importantly, how to decide what to do next in your business – such as how to decide – what businesses are thriving right now, how to deal with fear and the fear of failure and finding strength from trying and finding successes when you don’t quit. I talk about digital solutions that you can try if you want to succeed in a new area of competency. Sassa: Let's talk about this loan, this government funds there, the loans that people are supposed to be receiving. Can you just tell me what do you think about these big change like route Roots Steakhouse, Del Frisco, Popbelly, I could keep going for a couple of... Getting 40,000,000 20,000,000 10,000,000. How do you feel about that? You got small businesses like yours and mine's and many other small little businesses that we actually went out of business waiting on this. I mean, what do you think about that? I mean, do you think that things are going to be different on this new second role that they're doing? Well, I think absolutely that... My full understanding, I found out first about it for my CPA, she sent an email out to me, my business and several other of her clients that are small businesses and said, "Hey, just so you know, you can apply for this loan. Which actually isn't a loan because, it doesn't have to be paid back. But it's being called... Everyone knows what it means. It is money that's given to you to help your business survive and pay your employees." So it was intended for the small businesses and the mid-sized businesses, not the huge revenue making businesses. So if that was the intention, then there should have been check boxes. I can't remember every question- They should have separated. Right? I think they should have allocated them differently. Because I mean, they get public help already probably, because of the... They trade in the public. But again, one of them gave the money back, so that was this hamburgers chain, I think fast food restaurant. Shark, I think it's called. Oh, Shake Shack. Okay. Yeah. They gave the $10,000,000 back. So that's good because they say, "You know what, I'm giving it back." Yeah. But you gave it back because you got another loan from the equity partners here. If they were not giving it, you probably would have kept it. And you know what, you have enough money. You have 100 stores in the whole United States to be able to survive. Small businesses who've saved all their lives' savings, they pretty much lost everything. They have to restart. That doesn't necessarily mean that you're going to get back in business and running 100% the first day it opens. Correct? Well, another thing about a large business with a lot of revenue and capital is preparation for emergency or I forget what the word is for this that we're in, but there were data models that showed that Bill Gates predicted this in a TED Talk a few years ago that this was the number one thing that we had to worry about. Instead, our global economy and business world was focused on cyber terror and cyber construction, obstruction rather of privacy and privacy now is taking off. I'm not saying that it's massively important, but unfortunately we overlooked that this was coming. I do believe that the larger businesses, because they have more revenue, they should be able to allocate and prepare better. Just like a lot of them haven't done a great job at customer experience satisfaction because they're not transforming in the digital world fast enough to meet consumers needs. I talk like that because I come from Forrester Research of six years and I know this is true because I sat in the meetings and heard the executives of these gigantic companies talk about it. I'm not saying it's easy, but I do believe that the larger businesses with more revenue should be able to prepare better for if something goes wrong and there is a disaster of some sort, whether it's environmental, economic, technical, war, whatever it is to have some runway with being able to stay afloat. Whereas the small businesses don't have that cashflow or they would be a large business, right? So, the small and mid-sized businesses are trying to get to levels where they can save more and invest more in things that can keep them going when there is a disaster. That's try. I'm going to tell you maybe, if there's 15 businesses that are striving during COVID-19, Coronavirus. So I'm going to share some of them for you, so you know this and you can share this with your audience as well. Cleaning services, one. Delivery services, grocery stores, liquor and wine stores. I don't know how, but liquor... I guess people are still drinking. Go open a liquor store and get happy, right? Meal prep, delivery services, [inaudible 00:36:05], good companies, things like that. Game makers and sellers like gaming, I guess kids are at home, they want to play video games more now. Fitness equipment companies. I don't know how fitness companies, maybe they're not selling to gyms anymore, maybe selling them to the home. Landscaping and Carey, you're right about that. Landscaping because I need to still cut my grass. Because even though COVID-19 is here, I can't let my house look all busted. That one is good. Bread baking company. So if you like to bake and you like to do cookies and baking and all that stuff, might be a good one to get into. Helping Americans relieve the stress by eating some cookies, it always helps. All right? Coffee subscription companies, go drink... I've been drinking more coffee this COVID-19, so that might be going. Gardening, I've been home a lot so I've been doing a lot of my garden stuff. Mask makers, there's a lot of people who are doing masks out there, maybe get into that. Tele-health. So those are some of the businesses that are striving in this industry. Yeah. So, we talk about how many businesses are going to be affected, how much my business got hit and how I'm restructuring. How I'm doing everything different. How I'm going to move my office now from a home base office until I get back in my feet, maybe by the end of the year or the beginning of next year. Hopefully by then I should be back to normal and I can probably look back into a different location and continue. But if I like that the way we said it, maybe I'll stay there. I mean, I'll save me rent and maybe I could use that money for a good vacation once airlines start traveling and start doing things back again. But this is the time for restructuring. This is the time for you to save a lot of money and cutting things that you don't need. This is the time for you to start thinking, brainstorming, how to get back, how to restart, how to just... Think about how when you started, when you first opened your business. Like man, you were a one man shop, think about it that way, man. "I'm a one man shop. I got to go fight this battle and I got to go out there and do a lot." Yes, you probably weren't used to doing it because you had help so many years. But go out there and think with that mentality because you know what? It's kind of like you knew how to do the business before, you knew how to do the product, you knew how to sell the product and you were teaching all these other people. So that way that could be your team, pretty much rebuilt your team. That's what I'm thinking. I don't know what you think about that girl. Yeah. I think it's partly personality. Because with personality, you have your interests, things that you're just plain not interested in. I'm interested in so many things, but I am not interested in learning how electronics, how to connect wires to make my lights work. Once my husband tried to explain that to me and he's like, "You love to learn. Why don't you want to learn this?" And I said, "I don't know, but I don't care. I don't like electric." Yeah. So I think people need to be honest with themselves because yeah, you got to do what you gotta do to get through this, but don't pivot into something that you cannot stand or that doesn't really interest you because few months down the road you're going to be miserable. The other thing is, I've noticed like with people with COVID and with quarantine is that some people are like, "Gosh, I feel more relaxed than ever. I feel stressed in a different way." And then other people, like my mom, she texts me the day that they came out and said that Georgia is opening up this Friday and Monday and she was ecstatic and I was like, "I'm not really going to be ecstatic yet because I kind of got to see what this is going to mean and everything." I had to see more information and she's just chomping at the bit to get out. So I think that's part of it. I don't know if I answered your question. No, no. You did. You know what? I know that the mayor over there in Atlanta doesn't want to open. Right? Because, she's still concerned about that. She's still thinking that- That's right. There's a possibility that you guys can get a big wave and coming back and getting more infections and things like that, which I am under the impression that we're doing it too fast. But I understand people are complaining that, "We need the economy, we need our jobs, we need our work, we need this, we need that." But I think we can always make money in life, but we can never make our life again. We only live once. That's right. It's a balance. Exactly. And you know what? Any government can probably redo an economy, can restructure, can do this. You can go out there and you can start a new business. You can actually start a new job. You can actually rebuild somewhere or the other. But your life is once, once you're gone, you're gone. There's no way coming back. Now, if you know a place where you can go and come back or something that makes you go and come back, let me know, because I'd love to know that. Right? But we have to take it seriously. And that's what people are not doing. Oh, yeah. What do you think about that? I think we need to be really smart and listen to the experts. Listen to the scientists and form our own decision around how our lives are. People have different situations and it's not easy. It's a lot to decide on and things are changing so fast. It's like, "Okay, what's going to happen today?" And there's a lot of uncertainty. But this is still new. But I think too, the other huge thing is mindset and attitude. I think I touched on this before about some business owners kind of freezing or not knowing what to do or people that have lost their jobs and they're like, "I'm not going to apply for anything because I just don't know what to do and I don't know where to go and I don't know when this is going to be over." But I believe in doing it scared. Someone asked me the other day, "What if I start a YouTube channel and I fail?" And I said, "Well then you..."- They're failing already because they're thinking about failure already. Right? Exactly. And I liked how he was being transparent with me and the real reason why he was hesitating. But this is really what he wanted to do. But then this fear of failure was perking up and preventing him from taking action. I said, "You know what? When you have small failures." You hear all the people that become self-made millionaires and billionaires say, "I failed too. But what I did was I kept going and I learned from my failures and I kept going." I feel like I finally am... I'm a young agency, just two years old in June. I look back just two years ago or even a year ago and I say, "Gosh, if I wouldn't have tried this and I wouldn't have put deadlines on myself." While I was doing it scared because I didn't always know everything that I was doing. I was figuring it out as I went that I wouldn't be where I am today and I have so much further to go in my goals. Unbelievably, I put so much pressure on myself but I do feel like I've finally kind of come full circle with knowing what that feels like and I can just... Any listeners out there that are hesitating because of fear with the unknown in your business, hone in on something that interests you and something that you would... If you look and you say, "If I were successful I would be so happy." And just do it scared. Lean on people that you can ask questions of and consume as much information and just start, keep going. That's my take. I'm gonna follow up with yours as well. People who say, "Man, I don't want to apply because this and that." You pay so many years of this, it's probably time now they give you something back. This is the time when you need it the most is a great opportunity for you to say, "You know what, I pay this as an American." You pay this, you get it back. Go out there and you need it. Don't come out there and try to feel like, "Oh, I'm scared or I'm embarrassed." Girl, you need it. You need to feed your kids, your family, your husband or your wife. You need to survive in this time. Two, failure... And we pay this. I mean, I paid it. You paid it. Everybody's paid this. I mean, they've taken it out of us. It's time for us to get back from the system what you put into the system. That's the way it should be in some way when this situations happen. This is a time for you to be able to... That's what it's there for. Whenever you need help, be there for me, lean on me. The other thing about failure, when you start to think failure already, like you say girl, you're already coming with that negativity. That's what you're going to attract and that's what you're going to start thinking. That's what you're going to start believing and that's what you're going to start bringing. So what you need to start thinking is a way with negativity, whether you go ahead, either be successful or not, you're going to give it your best because you're going to be the best at it as you can. You're probably not going to be an expert at the beginning because you don't know as much, but that's why God gave us something and that's why He gave us a mouth. Ask questions. That's why you have friends like you and I, you can text messages and I'm here to help anybody on podcasting or helping them how to get started on a podcast and things like that. Because remember, I am a firm believer that all the good deeds you do in this life continue and carry on with you to the afterlife. Okay. I agree. So if you do bad deed, you're going to continue and pay them over there. So let me tell you something. My life, I see this, I'm a firm believer, as a good... I'm Catholic, by the way, for a lot of folks that don't know this, as a good Catholic, a Christian believer as well, I feel I'm here to help. That's what God has sent me into this world, to help others and love others for who they are and help them in the time of need. So if you need me, I'm here. I'm a brother, I'm a friend, I'm here to help. So if we will all think this way, we can all help each other and not have envy and not have jealousy and not try to be better than you in this and that. If we all work together as a team, we will be not only a better country, but we will also be a better world a better humanity, for the whole world. So, listened to you to because I like what you say, they have to go ahead and give it their best and work at it. I think that's good. The YouTube channel, podcasting and all this stuff. A lot of people, sometimes they don't even get the support from their husband or their wife. This might be a time for you to say, "You know what, I'm going to do it and I'm going to show the world I could do it." Am I right on that? Oh yeah. Amen. I feel so bad for people that don't have support from their family. Because I'm fortunate and so thankful that I do. But I think about that. I try to be full of gratitude for that, wake up in the morning and write down the things that I have gratitude for. Everyone can have gratitude for something. I think too thinking, being conscious of your self-talk. If you find yourself saying these things in your head to yourself, being able to catch yourself and then turning it into a positive even if you don't yet believe it. I learned this because I learned how to sell. I've been a salesman most of my career and in technology and I learned from Mary Kay that old fashion company where you put- Hey, Mary Kay has made a lot of money for a lot of people. My mom started with Mary Kay and she used to make a little bit of money, believe me. But it was a lot of time consuming. I learned so much about sales. I didn't care anything about makeup. Isn't that funny? But I learned about sales and then I moved on to technology and that's what I love. Every time I think about Mary Kay girl, I think about the cream Royal jelly, I think, oh, what was it called? That one day my mom will always sell, her friends would come over and she would always sell it to them. The cleanser. Yeah. They're a great company. Really great company. Great company, yes. But they taught me to write down positive affirmations on sticky notes. Some people are opposed to sticky notes because they get lost and whatnot. But write on something, put it on your bathroom mirror, put it on your refrigerator. Just a few positive affirmation. So when you catch yourself saying these negative thoughts, that you revert right back and you say it to yourself, if you can out loud, that's even better. But speaking of giving and being Christian and everything, I am too. It reminded me of this company of... I'm very close to their family. It's called Perillo Motors out of Chicago and it's Perillo... They sell BMWs, luxury vehicles all kinds of... Six different lines of automobiles that they sell. Well, of course sales of automobiles have gone down and manufacturers have decreased production and whatnot. Well, what they decided to do was to give back to their community by... There's a suffering pizza store there that has two locations. And the pizza owner, store owner, restaurant owner was suffering saying, "I don't know what I'm going to do. I might close." So they decided to offer through their service center, the dealership, sterilizing the cars. So people come in, they pay $25 to have their car sterilized, which people need right now because they can get back in their car from wherever they are and they're worried about how long the virus might live in their car. And then they're taking that $25, buying pizzas from the pizza shop owner and then taking the pizza, actually delivering it to the frontline medical personnel at the hospitals. Awesome man. Awesome. Great. And who doesn't love pizza? Everybody loves pizza. So it's a great cause. It's just like a win-win-win, and I think people will even go in and get their car sterilized if they probably think, "Well, my car's fine, but they'll probably do it anyway if they have 25 extra dollars." Right? That's right. And Carey, the reason why I share, I'm here to help anyone in my life because that's my path. I think that's what the Lord wants me to do is help people and that's what I'm going to finish my life doing, continue. Because a lot of people who don't know how I got into radio station, how I got into podcasting. How did I get into this? When I went to school at the University of Houston for business, I own an insurance company, very successful one here in Texas. How did I change everything and went into this? Well, in the insurance industry I needed to sell more and more and more. So, I needed to promote myself. I had to go do advertisement at radio stations and this and that. It would cost me money. Univision was killing me, $800 a week. You can imagine the numbers a month, a year and every day. That was only for 30 minutes once a week, not even every day. So I started thinking saying, "Hey, you know what, I might need to go ahead and do this on my own." So finally, I met someone who would say, "Hey, I could put a studio for you. I could put a radio for you, this and that." I said, "You know what, I'm investing my money into this because it's pretty much my marketing money that I'm doing." Well, to make a long story shorter, he left me two years later by myself. Just want you guys to know this. I would come in here to the studio, sit and I would just look at the video camera and I would just talk because he would work everything. I would just pretty much sit and just talk and never learned nothing, never knew anything. I saw so many cables. I saw so many things and I never paid attention. I don't need to know this because he's here. Well, one day someone came, offered him more money, this and this and that, took him from me and then he never taught me nothing in my life. I asked him, "Can you teach me?" He said, "No, I'm gone." He left. People have bad heart. So how did I get into this? Well, I learned it on my own, everybody. I learned it on my own. I came, I was stressed. There were days I would come and say, "Man, how am I going to turn this thing on? What am I going to press? Nothing. What about if I mess up this and people are not listening to me? What about this?" And I would press the stuff and the radio will go down. So one day I went into Guitar Center and the gentleman that was selling products saw me all stressed out and I said, "I need to buy maybe this. I've been reading on and this and that." He goes, "Man, you know what Sassa? You're a good guy, man? I like you. Ever since you've been coming here, you've been showing me how to love." I said, "Man, I appreciate that. Johnny." He says, "What's wrong with you?" I said, "Man, this happened to me, this and that." He goes, "Man, you know what Sassa, if you give me till Thursday man, I'm off and I can come in and look at your studio, look at your station and I can help you and see what you... And I could teach you." Wow. I said, "You would?" He goes, "Yes man, I'm here to help man and I want to help you. I know you're stressed." He came, he put things together, he spent time, he showed me, he did everything and he taught me everything. He left this studio running like a multimillion dollar radio station. Okay? Really good. And guess what? That's how I learned everybody. So when you start thinking about fear already, fear brings to you, fear comes to you. You will have hurdles in your new venture you're going do from now on after COVID-19. You will have a street with many rocks and you have to maybe jump on more, you know this and that and curve and this, but never give up and there will always be... I mean, I get chills because the Lord is telling me to share this with you and I'm telling you, you will always have some angel that will come into your life because remember, continue practicing your good deeds. He will help you. The angel will come and help you. They will always be angels out there. They will leave you and give you a hand and say, "Man, I'm here to help." That's why you don't give up. You continue fighting. Today our radio station is listened to all over the world, Elsassa Radio. You could download the app. It's a radio E-L-S-A-S-S-A Radio. Elsassa Radio and you can also check our website. It's elsassaradio.com and I learned in that way. That's how I got into this. Never in my life, I imagined I would be doing this. Never went to school for this and now we have what? An app. We have a new website coming in, entertainment and we just continue sharing this. And just to show you the powerful... How this does. How do you and I meet? On Instagram. Correct? Yeah. And here we're doing this podcast. That's an amen. God bless that conversation. That's how I started testing. I wanted to share this and I wanted to tell you, you have a friend in me, just like your audience has a friend of me and my audience have a friend as well. So my positive feedback from me to them and to you is, you are a warrior, you are a fighter and you are the most valuable thing to you. Never give up. Remember, you can do this. You can. That's right. I love that. That's beautiful. And likewise, Sassa you have a lifetime friend in me and I do believe that we were, God made us born perfect and it's just we're the ones that don't see ourselves as perfect in God's eyes. But we are. If you really listen to what you're here for and what you are good at and what you're great at and how you're special, that can just really evolve into things in your life that open up as major blessings. Thank you girl. You know what? I know we're getting to the end of this hour. I really had a great, great time doing this podcast. We need to do this more often. Me too. Maybe have an idea of might pop out of this and we might be starting to do this, consistently and I like that because you know what, I need ATL coming out of the way H-town together, making this for people that need us right now. I love it. I want to tell you, stay safe. Uh, take care of your family. Hope one day I get a chance to see you and meet you and hug you, once everything is gone, Coronavirus is gone for good. That's right. I tell you what's going to happen to me, as soon as this COVID-19 is done, I'm actually going to take a little vacation back to my place where I'm from originally. Go to the beach and I'm going to just drink me a margarita and say, "Thank God this is over." Because it's so stressful for everybody, that everybody just needs a relief in some way or the other. But again, keep being a fighter. Keep doing what you're doing. I love your podcast. You do an amazing job. Not only are you a beautiful woman from the outside, but you are a beautiful angel, beautiful person in your heart inside. I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity to do this with you today. I loved it. I had a good time and we will continue working together. I think I just want to go ahead and say hello to everybody that was listening to us. We lost her for a minute, but you know what? We want to go ahead and say goodbye and see you, till the next one. El Sassa Radio, with you. Don't forget, follow me on Instagram Elsassa37. Chao chao Be good.

124 FIFM - You May Not Be the Bottleneck. But are You Creating More Bottlenecks in Your Business?

meaning switch jeff bezos areas gel familiarity amazon fba bottleneck bottlenecks vsa right because

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2020 11:05

Most entrepreneurs do everything themselves and they end up becoming their own bottlenecks in business. These entrepreneurs have worked long and hard to remove themselves from being the bottleneck but what happens if another staff member becomes the bottleneck instead? How do you remove bottlenecks when the business is booming because of great staff members? The solution to this problem and more, in today’s Freedom In Five Minutes. ----- Automated Transcript Below Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this: "You May not be the Bottleneck. But are You Creating More Bottlenecks in Your Business?" That and more coming up. Dean Soto 0:30 Well good morning! We are here once again with the Luna Meister. Luna is having a blast sniffing some — not other dogs. We only have Luna for now. We will get some other dogs soon. But for now, she's just enjoying her doggie day running around the acreage. Dean Soto 0:53 So, today I woke up to very Interesting happenings. So we have one customer who was absolutely amazing in what they do. They create a ton of videos. So there iss a ton of processes and it's a design company. Dean Soto 1:11 It's a design company that does design work for a lot of other big-named companies. And the emails that were flying around were basically that their VSA was bedridden in the hospital. And so, the Virtual Systems Architect — if you don't know go to FreedomInFiveMinutes.com or ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com — but he was bedridden in the hospital. Dean Soto 1:12 At first, when I saw the emails, I'm like, "Oh, man. Okay, well, he's just out." Well, the guy. The VSA. The Virtual Systems Architect did not want to stop working. So he just kept on working, working, working, working. Dean Soto 2:05 And it was actually one of my general managers who were like, "Dude, you need to stop or else you're not going to get better." Dean Soto 2:13 And so, we reached out to the client saying, "Hey, you know, I got him to stop, and he'll be back either tomorrow or the next day. But he needs to rest." Dean Soto 2:27 The client was like, "Well, we don't know who's going to do his work." Dean Soto 2:37 And then we asked — my guy actually suggested, "Hey, well, we can put somebody else in there temporarily, and just work off the process documents." Dean Soto 2:48 And the customer responded, "Well, it's not as easy as that. There's a lot of things that he's become familiar with that requires some thinking." Dean Soto 3:04 And so, as far as for today and for tomorrow, it sounds like the client is going to actually end up having to do the work. Dean Soto 3:41 All right. So what happened is, originally, this client was the bottleneck. And now, he has made a bottleneck out of somebody else. Dean Soto 3:52 This is a habit that a lot of people have. It's normal, right? It's normal to not want to do the hard-easy things before they become the easy-hard things. Meaning the hard-easy things means creating very, very detailed process documents that anybody, anybody can follow. Anybody can follow. Right? Because you can even have a process document that says, if somebody is out, the first thing you're gonna do if you're taking their place, is you're going to introduce yourself to the customer and say, "Hey, just letting you know, I'm going to be handling some things while so and so is out. And bear with me..." It could be something as simple as that. Right? But we tend not to do that. We tend to allow our business to get stuck in other people's heads. Right. So now they become the bottleneck. Dean Soto 4:53 We can't live without Kevin. We can't live without Jana. We can't live without James. We can't live without any of these people because they know how to work with this guy, and they know how to work with that guy, right? Dean Soto 5:08 We recently had another customer who didn't have a process of bringing a new person totally on board. Like, getting all their accounts set up and everything like that. So, they got a new person and guess who was doing all the work? It was the owner of the business, right? Dean Soto 5:31 That should not happen. Jeff Bezos does not say "Oh, we got a new client. We have a new customer in the Amazon FBA warehouse. Okay, well, I'll stop everything. And I'll go train that guy up." Dean Soto 5:43 In Plus he, you know, people they know, they know what needs to be this. Dean Soto 5:49 "There are some people who know what needs to be done. So I'll need their help." No. Dean Soto 5:54 They have managers and the managers handle the whole entire process. Dean Soto 6:02 That is something very hard to do for a lot of people at the very beginning of the business. However, once you get out of that habit of feeling like you have to do everything— that you just have to do everything but then you bring somebody in who they're the only ones who know how to do anything. That's where the problem becomes very apparent. It becomes very apparent. Dean Soto 6:44 So, all that being said, I want to stress that the more that you can create processes in documentation and systems that are so detailed that anyone can do them. And yes, they could do it, even if it means talking with clients, you can make things so detailed that you very rarely get put in that situation where it's, "Oh, well, this person knows this thing or that thing. Right?" Dean Soto 7:28 "This person knows this or that, and I can't live without them." That is putting yourself in a very vulnerable situation. Dean Soto 7:36 You know, this guy, the owner had plans for today, right? He had plans and all those plans went to crap because the process documents were not as detailed as they possibly could be. Right? And so because he could not quickly put someone else in that situation as a temporary, he had to change all of his plans. And that's what we want to avoid. Dean Soto 8:08 When we are in business, we want to avoid that type of stuff. We want it to be where it is a no brainer, no brainer. No brainer. That when somebody can pop in and take over, at least on a certain percentage of things, right. Dean Soto 8:37 So, all that being said, Why is this important? We tend to do that. I even do that with my kids sometimes. Well, Allison knows how to do this. So I'm just gonna have her be the person who does it. Or any of my other kids know how to do it. Oh, and they could be the kind of lead person. Well, there should be a process. Even in my house. I have process documents for all of our time. Areas. All of our zones. And everybody knows what to do because we all have our zones, right? Dean Soto 9:08 So my challenge to you this week is to figure out where you are the bottleneck or where you've put somebody else as a bottleneck, and switch it up. Switch it up and make it make something that allows nobody to be the bottleneck. Anybody can go in there, anybody can do it. Anyone can make all of this, make whatever it is happen, despite knowing in their head and being familiar with it. Right. Dean Soto 9:45 Familiarity breeds contempt, right? We don't want familiarity, we want processes. So all that being said, this is Dean Soto with Freedom In Five Minutes. Well, today was a rough one. I'm kind of feeling a little run down Actually, I might go to the hospital and tell Gel to force me not to work. But anyway, I'll catch you later in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Guest Connie Wyatt Coleman

Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2020 103:37

Hello and welcome to warrior divas real talk for real women. This is your host Angie Lehman ro and in the studio with me today I have Connie Wyatt Coleman. She is a dear friend of mine. She has a long lineage of, of expertise that she brings to the table but more importantly she is a woman that's after Christ's heart and ferociously runs after him every day of her life. So I cannot wait to see we we talked a little bit about how this show may go. And then we said, You know what, we just need to have one of our talks on the air. So that's what we're doing today. Welcome, Connie. Good to be here. Good to be here. Rules of Engagement. No throw punches today. No throw punches. But that's what we do when we get together, right? Yes. And you know what i have treasured it. Very few friends will take friendship and allow accountability with it. And we've had a long history of being able to love each other and hold each other accountable at the same time. We have and you know, it's one of those things that we have laughed together. We have cried together. We have been mad together. We have watched our children grow together. When we met I didn't have grandchildren and now I do. That is crazy. And they're big. They're six getting to see him too. Yeah, they're beautiful. So, you know it's it's crazy. All the all the things that have happened your girls have grown up gone through high school ones about to get married, you know and, and praise the Lord she has not been a bridezilla. Oh, goodness. That is a Praise the Lord. Yes, I will take it in this day and age with everything going on in the world to kind of put some things in perspective. Yeah, puts things in perspective for us. So I'm glad to hear all that's going good and all of our lives but you know, we also know that not everybody's doing good with things going on in their world. It doesn't have to do with if you're hearing this and listening to this in the middle of the Coronavirus thing. It doesn't even have to do with that. Some people just have a hard time getting by day by day. life on this earth is just hard, right? It just is. I I watched a video. Last night somebody had a lady and a pantry. She was singing the song Jolene. But instead of singing it, please don't take my man it says please come and take my man. And she says, and if you don't answer I'll have to call Irene. And so I know this affects people in a humorous way it affects people in an angry way and a pic affects people in a lonely way. And one of the things we like to do on warrior divas is just shine a light into that darkness in so you can see a way out and we were talking last night and one of our studies in john, where you know, that where there was a challenge to the to the apostles to be that light and to continue to live that light out. Not To expose, but that that fear and evil cannot reside in the light. And truth is the way truth is the light. And so, you know, I started thinking, what are some of the ways that I could poke and prod Connie to open up the truth of Christ to to the audience today, you know, because she didn't take a whole lot doesn't take a whole lot. If you get to follow her on Facebook, she shares some little morning devotionals on there quite often that are very good, packed, powerful, very easy to read. And that's not an easy task for someone who is as educated as she is to speak the commoners language that I can read and understand. I love it. All these people getting on and sharing their messages on Facebook and all that stuff in there using all these big words and I'm like, okay, I didn't know I was gonna have to break a dictionary and a thesaurus to figure out what this person saying, I just want it to be relevant. And that's something that Connie does. Every time she shares in this season, haven't you? There's been a lot of ugly and we'll address some of that later. But there's been such an influx of creativity and letting their light shine like you're throwing them out and, and even people that maybe didn't before coming on and just time and time again, using all different ways of creativity to make it through this season to encourage other people to love on others, with social distancing in place, but right, you know, just some real creative ways to intentionally reach out to each other. Well, you know, and it's the what it was at the Dallas orchestra performed yesterday. For the first time together since the beginning of March and they did it all from their own living rooms and did it online together. Yeah. Wonderful. What a wonderful way of you know, right now one of the things that this is teaching us is how to push through limitations. What a great thing. You're telling me I can't do this, but I'm gonna find a way to still be relevant in the world I live in. Yes. And what a great thing for all of us. Wow. Yes, personally and professionally. I know. My staff up CEO at wise choices Resource Center in pregnancy Resource Center indicator and just getting together with the staff on zoom and going okay. We know what the box is. We know what our limitations are. We know what we can do safely and what we can't within the guidelines and protocol, but Okay, now, step outside the box. How can we continue to reach our clients To reach our partners in ways we haven't thought of before, right? That would be sustainable, really, even after this season is over, because there's the good news this season will eventually be over. Well, and while we're recording this today in the studio, we're actually recording this on Good Friday. We are. And the reason I kind of wanted to do that is it's a part of the time that we're in our darkest hour where it's actually between the 12 and 3pm. Our time I know that's not the time it is and in Jerusalem, but our time, this would be the time that was the darkest of the dark days going into Easter weekend. It's Friday, it's Friday, but you know what Sunday's coming. And we have the benefit of hindsight to see that. Yeah. But you know what Jesus had the full sight to prepare his disciples before that, so that they wouldn't have to live in fear so they wouldn't have to. They could see hope at the end. You know, I think the thing that gets me is how quickly we judge them. Mm hmm. Because I he tried to tell you, he tried like multiple times, yeah. But then I look at myself, right? And how many times has he fully told me and we have full revelation of Scripture, right? How many times has he shown me the plan and that he will not leave us he will not forsake us. He, he is coming again. And he is victorious. And we have the whole counsel of Scripture and yet we still back up and fear and we still wonder and doubt in the middle of the season if if what he said is true, and if it will hold true. So it's Real easy to look at Peter and go walk. How could you deny him? Right? Well, Connie, how can you live in fear and deny the power he has in your life? Well, we were talking about we read the, the gospel of john, in our group Bible study yesterday. And one of the things that we read about was right after that were Peter, you know, had denied him three times. But when Jesus made it so important to go and see his apostles multiple times after he, after he had risen, and there's the one occasion where he's talking with Peter. And he's telling asking Peter over and over Do you love me? And Peter saying, yes. And do you love me? Yes. And do you love me? Yes. Excuse me. And I think the reason gee This is asking him that is to get Peter to say yes to Him. But also for Peter to hear Jesus say that I love you get it sunken into Peter said, Peter is kinda like my six year old grandson. You got to repeat it a few times for it to sink in. And sometimes you might have to inflect your voice a little more than you really need to you know, it's that Moonstruck snap out of it moment. Oh, God has to do that to me. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Walking through a situation just this last week. And just like, Lord, I could really use the cliff notes at this point. Right. Right. One other chapter just who, let's, let's get some cliff notes here. But well, one of the other things we talked about in our study this week in our warrior divas Facebook group and if you're not a part of it, you should be a part of it because we're starting to do more and more studying in there. And because We're on a mission to equip and empower. Not just our generation of women, but women that are coming back behind us, you know, we want it to be a legacy project. And so one of the things we were discussing this week in there was how the Roman soldiers and pilot inherit, they had no clue as to what the scripture said. So when those Roman soldiers are at the feet of Jesus about this time of the day, and they're casting lots for his garment, they had no idea they were fulfilling prophecy. Yeah. The one that pure steam on the side and didn't break his legs. They had no idea they were fulfilling prophecy. And yet he realized who it was right? No, I I'm like you we kind of talked about this weekend and I can't believe you know, we're sitting here right now and Think about all the things that happened on that Friday and just like today, things you never dreamed, you would see happen, right? The Son of God hung on across Really? His disciples did not deny him. I mean, Christian people would rather loose Brabus than Jesus. I mean, who are we right? But then I start thinking about Saturday. And when the sun goes down, it's it's the Sabbath, right? And somehow in the middle of the chaos, and the trauma, they go back home, and even though they don't get it, they don't understand it in the middle of the doubt. When the hope of their expectation is in the tomb, they walk by faith And they cry out to the Lord on the Sabbath. And that, that Saturday to me has always been. I mean, you know how it is when you come through a trauma and and you get back to your house and you kind of sit down and you kind of start feeling yourself and see if you have, you know, do I have flesh wounds? Did I really survive this day? Did that really happen? And then Saturday, what, what do I even do with this? What do I even really still believe? Where is my heart Really? And in that quiet Saturday, they still observe the Sabbath. Right? They still honored what the what he had been setting in motion for years. And I think, I think right now is the time to do that. You know, I think some of the trauma of this COVID thing may be kind of adjusting and now we're moving into Okay, I've survived the first part, I'm not mortally wounded. I'm not bleeding anywhere. What do I do with today? Right? And that's when we come back and we draw on everything that the Lord has sewn into us. Yesterday, the day before, the in his previous sness He called us to a season of prayer or diving into the word and if we will, but sit still in his presence. He will draw those things out and you said give us the hope. That Sunday's common Sunday is going to get here he is going to fulfill His promises. He is going to draw us out of this. But I just feel like truly rotten, right in this season. That man this a Saturday season it feels like well, you know, I think there's some some big truth to the fact of the numbness that you just brought up. You know, when all this first started happening, I know I talk to a lot of people there. They're like, I've just slept a lot and watched a lot of Netflix I'm basically Netflix didn't chilled, which I know that there's another slang for that at times but, you know, sleeping and watching TV sleeping and watching TV, it was a it was a numbness it was this shell shock. It was a What do I do now there were some people that haven't slowed down our grocery workers, our truckers, our doctors and nurses. Those people haven't slowed down, our food processing plants, farmers, they all are still showing up every day. And so, for me, my husband and I own a plumbing company and our plumbing company. While our residential calls haven't been as much. Our commercial calls are still happening because we serve a lot of restaurants, hospitals, food processing plants, right. So for us life hasn't shifted as much as it has for others. I'm still doing coaching as a matter of fact, I've had people come and hire me since this happened because now they're shifting to add online to their already brick and mortar business or whatever it is. So I'm helping them through that transition along that ways. So that I still had a day or two where I was like, Whoa, what is this gonna do? And then my sleep schedule got off and all sorts of things. And like the apostles, I had to go, Okay, it's time to get up. Yeah, yeah, you know, I'm kind of like here. When this first started, God called me to go to the square there and indicator in our small town at seven o'clock every morning, and just pray around the square. And it was, I thought, just gonna be one day. And then when we when we were there that day is like, no, this is every day until this is done. And I was like, oh, Because I don't leave the house at 645 in the morning on a normal day. So, um yeah. So it's it's kind of been that kind of thing that God did that made me stay on a schedule. So I do that and then I go to the office and I'm only one there but you know, Hey, get the work done that needs to be done and then I'm home by two or three my husband's already retired so we were kind of already that's a new normal so getting used to him being retired and home. And so yeah, it hasn't changed as much as a lot of people's lives have. Man You're right. There's there's some people really adjusting and another thing we've talked about is just the grace that you know, your two days kind of came in the beginning. Someone else's reality hit or just I don't know what you even call those two days, right? crash or shut down or process level we're hitting over the last couple of days as layoffs are starting to happen. Yes. And there will be some like my personality is kind of the kind that just gets through it and doesn't really even see things. I'm a trauma triage person. Yeah, and I'm in it and then once we get done, and it's over and everybody else is all excited about going to work then then mine will come right but as sisters we have to be able to embrace each other and and recognize that we do process all that different. And not only that, but whether one sister isn't as concerned as someone else or as sheltered in place. I guess that's shelter in place is the is more out and about or another one is more cautious. There's grace for both right? And instead of bashing each other man, we can do better. We can support each other, encourage each other and walk through different seasons in different times, right? And hopefully we're we do that better than I'm seeing some. You know, like I said earlier in a lot of ways you see a lot of amazing creativity and intentionality coming out and then sometimes, wow, you know, fear can either mask itself as overly confident or as under confident, and just what we're typically used to seeing fear look at look like and even in either one, we have to have grace to come alongside and encourage meet them where they are, right. That's what Jesus did for us. That's what he did for Peter. What you were just talking about. He met Peter right? Worry was right. The typically boisterous Peter now became the overly cautious Peter, right. And Jesus every time put that and just think I didn't even think about that that's just a number of hours between him being overly confident and slicing the soldier's ear off right. And a few hours later, he's the other way and denying haven nosing. Right? Wow, I had never even really write that. But just a number of very brief hours, that Peter goes through all of that, and yet the Lord had grace, calling back to truth, but had grace and love and mercy for both extremes. Well, you know, we were talking in our study this week about the Pharisees and the Sadducees how they, how they were manipulating pilots so much, you know, and pilot saw it. He he recognized it And as we read through each of the Gospels we read, you know, Matthew one day mark one day, Luke one day, john one day, and we've got some other verses about the resurrection and, and all that stuff coming up that we're gonna discuss later on today. And the when we're discussing that I said, you know, the Pharisees and the Sadducees were going to pilot going, you know, he's he's stirring things up and they were pointing at Jesus now all I can think of is, when you point at somebody, you got three fingers pointing back at you, right? So they're pointing at Jesus saying he stirring them up. But in reality, he was stirring their hearts and getting them to see something beyond what the Pharisees and Sadducees were teaching them. That's when they get in trouble. And therefore, oh, come out. They were like our sheep bowls. are not staying in line. Like, we love them to stay in line and they're starting to want to look behind the curtain as they say in the laws, you know. And, you know, I love the part where we read last night, that pilot when he put the plaque over Jesus's head that said, the King of Kings King of the Jews, you know, and they're like, no, it needs to say he claimed to be they were trying to spin it. I said, they're like the media today, you know, they're always trying to spin it to put the right words to get the biggest attention to get this to get the things approved. You know, and, and I'm not out here call on fake media. I'm not doing all that stuff because I have some very good friends that are part of the media that do their due diligence. So you know, I'm not going there. I'm not getting on that bandwagon. But on the other side of and with me being in radio media and podcasting, now I am the media. So, but on the other side of it It is, we need to be cautious of the people around us that are stirring things and pointing to others deflecting to others. We need to have the mindset to look exactly at what is the truth. And the difficult thing right now is in so many ways, no one knows no one knows right? The truth really is except you can always know the truth of Scripture, right and always know the truth for the direction of your life for how to treat others are how to walk through problems, even if you don't know the truth of whatever problem it is you're facing or whatever the disaster for lack of better word, right is. Because anytime you're walking through one you don't know the truth of it until you get all the way through it and see but this is is I mean, this is one that has shaken the world. Yes, rightly or wrongly, and I shake in the world. And I don't think we've seen half. And I don't say that, like pessimistically, I don't think the curtains have been pulled back to see the spiritual ramifications of this as much as anything else. Well, I think we talked a little bit too. And the reason I brought up the Pharisees and the Sadducees, we talked a little bit before we came on the air about we need to be very careful about having a religious spirit during this time. I was in a group the other day and somebody was like, Hey, we're gonna do a call Friday at four, something like that. And somebody on the west coast is like, Well, you know, I'm observing that I'm reading my Bible, because it's Good Friday and the guy goes, well, what's good Friday, you know, and somebody said, Well, for those that are religious, it's a sacred holiday. And let me just tell you, all right, for those of you that don't know me, Well, I have a sassy side. Why are you laughing? Connie? We did I learned it from Connie. No. I did. Well, you asked my husband, he would say you learn from the best, but we didn't mention no throat punches, right. I think that might have given a clue. Right? Right. So, but in that group, when the person said, for religious people, in my right part of my mind, I knew she meant no offense to it. But in my sassy part of my mind, I wanted to say, Well, I'm not religious, but as a Christian, I observe. Yeah. Because to me, there's a difference. There is a difference in being a Christ follower, and full of grace, because what we talk about About earlier with Jesus talking to Peter, he was talking to Peter after Peter had denied him three times. And he was asking Peter, do you love me? And he asked him three times do you love me? Helping Peter rehabilitate his own heart and his own guilt over the denial of Christ. He was having that intimate moment with you. You know how we, we do. We talked about my six six year old grandson, though that you grab them by the face, you put hands on either side of their face to where their cheeks are just squished up just right. And you go Do you understand me? And that I can envision in verbal picture. That's what Jesus was doing with Peter. You know, yes, you've made mistakes. Yes, you are a zealous person. But I want you to be zealous for my people. Yes, big difference. Big difference bead my sheep tend to my sheep. Love My sheep, and being religious about whether or not they're going to church and trusting God for a miracle to heal them and keep them safe and all this. Oh, it's exhausting being self righteous. And you know what's funny is we can all go there so fast because I mean, let's admit it black and white is way easier. You know? It's just easier. It is. And the Sagittarius and Pharisees were very black and white, very legalistic by had it down to a science. But Wow, how they could get it wrong. Right. They could get it wrong. And that just to me, just goes to prove how easy it is to get off track. They knew the word, right. If anybody knew the word they knew the word right? didn't have the spirit. They had the religion in the relationship. And here's the thing that really, really gets me. They knew the word they knew the prophecy. And watching those soldiers go, were to the to on either side of Jesus and breaking their legs, but not breaking Jesus's leg and piercing him in the side instead. You wonder if they're looking at that going, whoa. I think they looked at it and said, Let's fix the mess up our deal. Right? Because at the same about the same time, they're casting the lats. Yeah. to both of those were fulfillment of prophecies by people that were not prophetic people to fill. We're not people of studying of the word, you know. And one of the things I talked early on in the week about was Judas You know, we call him Judas, the trader, but he was the first domino to fall in setting the prophecy emotion. Yeah. Yes, Jesus knew it was all coming. But for it to happen those 30 pieces of silver had to be exchanged. Okay, we don't like to think of a life that includes being broken better and betrayed. Well, that works. Um, yeah, it's a betrayal. Right? You know, and and we get all bent out of shape when it happens to us and prayerfully we're not doing it to others. But yeah, we've got a live on a really, really tough planet to try to walk out and While he promised us he would lead the way and he would never forsake us, he did not promise us that it was going to be a simple walk, or a simple journey and to think that a betrayal was what kicked off. The prophecies is just kind of telling. Well, you know, a friend of mine shared something last night we talked about the, the being laid off of work. You know, there's I've had several friends over the last few days have posted that they've been laid off work and some of them are taking it very well. You know, God's got something better, but some of them are feeling like a betrayal of their employer or the government or even if they work for a friend of theirs, the friend you know, but one of the things that she was a friend of mine Catherine Clift shared was she remembers her husband when he used to do his daily live worship podcasting said that God doesn't demote he promotes and God is always faithful and I was like, What a great reminder to all of us, no matter what we're facing, some of us may be still stuck on Friday still, and and you know, now dealing with the numbness of Saturday, but Sunday is still coming. And, you know, I, one of the things I loved yesterday and reading from john, you know, I, I found something new I liked from each of the Gospels. You know, Luke really was great as well. But john, when he he, we call him the narcissist of the Gospels. Jesus loves the one who Jesus loves, but there's a reason I mean, one of the things that That I found yesterday in the scripture that not really picked up on it said, Well, let me find it. I've got it right here. And I say I've got it right here. And Jesus was looking down is is near the cross of Jesus did his mother, his mother sister marry the wife of colobus cloak, ah, whatever. Sounds good to me, and Mary Magdalene, when Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her woman, here is your son, into the disciple, here's your mother. From that time on, the disciple took her into his home. Why would why wouldn't john, thank you as the favorite. Jesus just gave him the blessing of his mother and gave john the honor of stewarding Her to the end of her days. Yeah, I would. I would think I was the favorite too, wouldn't you? Well? Yeah. But also, that comes with a price. It does. He was the only disciples still standing around the cross watching all this happened. Right and he loved, right. So, again. Yeah, I mean, look, I'm I'm Jesus's favorite. He loves me best. Right. Will I follow him? Right? On Friday? Well, john 30 right in john finished strong. Yeah, Jesus, and even better question. Survive Friday. Love Saturday. Rejoice on Sunday. What are we going to do with Monday and Tuesday, right. I mean, really, you get through the battle, you survive it. You rejoice and you see the victories and you See what the Lord has done for you? And then what are you going to do go back to how you were living on Wednesday and Thursday? I mean, what are we going to do with it come Monday and Tuesday Are we going to forget about it and just awake earlier, they thought they were at the top of the world. And now their world is totally shattered at their feet. And so good question to all of us. So we've had Coronavirus still do. And I'm not at all downplaying the suffering, whether it's health wise, financially, emotionally, that people are going through, but we will survive it. Right. What are we going to do with it? What are we going to do on Monday, that carries the victory that Jesus paid the price for and that we're going to celebrate on Sunday. What are we going to do on the Monday after Coronavirus? Right, where will our loyalty and our and our walk and our faithfulness be man? Well, and to be quite honest, if you look at the beginning of the 1900s, we had World War One, we had the Spanish flu. We had the Great Depression. We had World War Two, all before 1950. Right? That's a lot to pack into a 50 year period. That's a lot. And so we as Americans, you know, even though we're hurting other countries as well, we as Americans, are countries country has seen difficult times. We have come through difficult times. That's the time known as the greatest generation, right? can't even believe what if now is the beginning of the next greatest generation. It can be they can boo but the choice is ours. What Do we want it to be? One of the things that we talked about? In? I think it was Matthew that just struck me so solidly is when the Jews were saying crucified, Jesus crucified Jesus, and parshas pilot was wanting to wash his hands of it. They were like, his blood is on our hands in the hands of our children. You know, it's, it's apparent the things we do today are the things that our children dream, reap the benefits or the consequences of its Yes, it's just a known fact. So what is it that we what is the legacy we want to live now is blessed the other day to be able to record a message for a conference Coming up for heartbeat international and just a little seven minute kind of like a TED TED Talk. And the topics had been picked way back. I don't know last September, probably. And it's it's so funny how God worked it out because I had submitted a topic for a workshop, but they had asked me to do this talk on a different topic. And they got crossed. And so what they actually did was put in the, all the paper, all the promotional stuff that I was doing my seven minute TED Talk. And it was a different title. And, you know, in my fleshly, I was like, Well, I can make this work. I can make that title work with the message I already know I'm doing. Well, the title of the message was living out a god sized dream and I kept trying to make At work with a message on, I'm just gonna be brutally honest on walking in your authority. Right? Well, you can make the to kind of coincide except when the Lord wants a fresh word, right? And yeah, that you want the cliff notes and he doesn't do that. And so you know, you you kind of go through it. I'm like, Lord, in the middle of everything that's going on. You really want me to speak about living out a god sized dream? Really? Um, I don't really want to be virtual so they can't throw anything at me. So this is a good this is a good thing, right? Um, but he just he took me totally off where we are but took me to Solomon. Hmm. And just you know that he asked for understanding and discernment and judgment and God wrapped it up in a nice sized bow and call it wisdom hmm and said for that I will give you Also wealth and honor. And I kept studying that message him guys don't get it. I mean, a Who am I to ask for a god sized dream in the middle of all this and be? I don't even know what to ask for if I did, right. And I got to I think it's First Kings chapter three got to verse 15. And it says, then Solomon awoke. And I was like, whoa, wait a minute. You go back to verse five, and it says Solomon was in given which is a place he shouldn't have been in darkness at night, which is kind of where a lot of people feel we are right now. Right. And God came to him in a dream. Hmm. So all the things that that we remember that Solomon recounted his lineage of from David and from God's promises and everything that's been sewn into him. We aren't smart enough, right? We aren't good enough. And if we really do want to live out a god sized dream, it really can start now. Right? And it's just having the conversation with God to know what his size dream is yes, because we can't. It's not about us dreaming and dreaming a dream and saying, hey, God, will you please bless this? It's about us. Coming awake, and letting him teach us what he's already sewn into us. You know, whether it's our setup, or our hang ups or whatever it is, he's already sewn it into us. And when God speaks things into us, he sometimes speaks things into us, that you may not even know is a possibility. Yeah, just because in I was thinking about Noah. Yeah, Noah builds an ark, because it's gonna be flooded. And it's never rained on the planet Earth up into that point. I mean, no wonder people were calling him weird and crazy and all sorts of things. But it rain had never fallen on the earth before. And he's building this thing that's supposed to flow. It's supposed to do all this stuff. So God will call you to do things that other people may look at and go, why are you doing that? That's crazy. And chances are if it's a god sized dream, they're going to do that because I find it's a fusions three, three this month 20 says now to him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we can ask. think or imagine Yeah, I can dream up a lot of really cool stuff. But God can do beyond write any of that according to the power that works within us all about His power, His Spirit working through US and US following where he leads in this season, in good season, in difficult season, right. And I guess there's a question for us. It's Friday, Sunday's coming, right. We're kind of on Saturday where it's kind of a still in between. What are we going to do with that time? If we really are supposed to shelter in place and a lot of us are home more and have more time on our hands? What are we doing? I mean, now's when you want to start a god sized dream. Well, you know heard a new partner. I heard a new episode of Tiger kings coming out on Easter Sunday I'm joking. I there is one coming out on Sunday but that's not an endorsement of any twitch that's not an endorsement by any means. I'm just saying you know how many people are more excited about that than the fact that the tomb is empty on Sunday night? Spoiler Yeah, I'm just spoiled it. I've read the book. I've read the ending. Truly, you know if we have a little extra time and you know, I know a lot of your listeners are, love the Lord and are living some amazing, amazing lives and dreams and ways of tuned on enough to to see the different ways they help. their communities and each other. And I mean, just some amazing women on here, just say, what are we doing with this time? What if we really did, let's just call it Saturday. And we spent the season of Saturday letting him awaken us to what he wants to do next. You know, I'm gonna throw my husband under the bus for a minute, just because he's not in here and I can do that. But early on in our marriage, you know, we would say some things like a lot of married couples do. We may say some things that maybe some of us that have been married a while do too, but the ratio Yeah, that's a whole different topic. We need a different expert that we say stuff to each other that we say in the heat of the moment that we wish we could have taken back, because it does cause hurt. It does cause pain. It does cause strife. But there was this phrase that my husband said to me one time early on in our marriage, we're having marital difficulties. And he said, I love you. But I'm not sure I'm in love with you. And that was rough. Don't get me wrong. We've gone to counseling. We've been married 27 years now almost 28 years now. We got over it. He and he is still alive. It's I'm still married to the same husband. You know, but the other part of it was me asking myself on a regular basis. Do I love the Lord or am I in love with the Lord? Because when you love somebody, you're like, Hi, bye. I love you. I mean, I've told the cashier Love you. Bye bye. But when you're in love with somebody, you want to spend time with them. You want to know what makes them happy. You want to do things for them that make them happy. You want to find a way for y'all to live your lives completely together. And that's a huge difference. And where I took offense to Mike saying that to me so many years ago, I'm thankful now that he said that to me, because I've had to dig deep and I've had to ask myself that question, as am I living my life as if I'm in love with Christ? Or am I living it as if I'ma Love you, bye. Oh, sorry, I thought we weren't gonna do any throw punches today. Huge, huge difference, you know, yeah, it's it's a difference in looking for his hand and looking at us face. Just that simple. You sit down to study your word to see what he can do for you. Or you sit down to study His Word to hear his heart, right? And see him face to face it it'll change your life forever. Well, there's there's been times the more and more I get into the word, you know, used to I'd read the word, and I'd write my little journal and put it have a whole lot of my thoughts in that journal. And I was super smart. Yeah, I was good at what I was doing right. But then, the other part of it is what I started realizing was when I was starting to write things in my journal questioning things. Normally it was questioning motives of my heart. It was questioning how willing I was to walk with God how big I was. Willing to dream with him? How if I could discipline myself in this area? Whoo, I hate that word. Discipline myself in this area that he would open up this area for me. You know, and the more disciplined I became, the more the doors were opening. And I'm not talking about religion and law. I'm talking about being disciplined to be more in tune with him in his calling. walking the street in the neighborhood, not as a hooker. Okay, walking the street in my neighborhood. She had died laughing at me right now. Hey, Jesus, loved tokers. Anyway. Oh, yeah, that walk in my neighborhood Street. Even if we're not able to be within the six feet with each other I can still share a smile. I can still share a Hello. I can touch bases with people in my in our Facebook group the other day. We have a neighborhood Facebook group, right? And here's my thing. There is a church song we used to sing. Back in the olden days they don't sing it so much because we think so much contemporary now, you know, in my church, but back I don't even think I've ever sung this in the church I go to now Whoo, that was a rabbit trail anyway. The song you they will know we are Christians by our love. Yep. All right. Well, if you're having intelligence, not by your intelligence, not by me telling you I'm a Christian. Because if you're having to tell me, then I probably wouldn't have never known it from your actions. Not by all the oh they won't know it by all The things we don't do, right? The somebody in our Facebook group post the other day was in our Facebook group for our neighborhood was posting about their next door neighbor. Right? Not one of the neighbors in the almost 300 homes in our neighborhood. Their next door neighbor was mad because their next door neighbor had called city out on them because their trash cans had been in front of their yard and was mad that they had called the police instead of coming over and having the decency to knock on their door and have the conversation and all this stuff on Facebook. So they put it on Facebook and then said in there several times and I'm a Christian and data and all this stuff. I'm like you're making it worse. No, you're a religious person. Please don't. Please, please don't tell anyone that you're a Christian. Just please don't. And then the other part is is we wanted to tell them to will. Couldn't you have gone next door and had the conference They're Christian. They're Christian they they everybody should cater to them. You know, my favorite along those lines, if you talk to any waitress, oh, you're about to push a button here. The the time they hate to wait on tables the most is when the rude people come in after church on Sunday because they're very rude. They're very demanding and they do not tip. No, they leave little pamphlets and little business cards with Jesus loves you on it and they don't tip their server. They're also probably the ones that don't tie the well at church either. I'm just I'm not judging. I'm not judging. I'm just putting it out there. We can do better. We can do better. Because here's the thing. Once the Sunday came, you know, I love it. I keep going back to john because not because it's the freshest But because he was just more in tune with the behind the scenes the things that most people don't talk about his favorite well I relate to him really well because I'm everybody's favorite but but john whenever he runs the team he stops and looks in but in true Peter fashion john notes that Peter grunts straight in all right. So Peters in there John's in there they go back. Mary's telling the other disciples all this stuff by now she seen Jesus she's had a conversation. But you know when she went and talked to Peter and john, she was trembling. She was wondering she was she was upset. It didn't really say she was fearful, but she was upset. But by the time she broke the news to the rest of the disciples, she was elated. She had seen Jesus. I mean, look When you are in a terrifying situation and even now if it's in your spirit, hers was audibly. You hear the Savior call out your name didn't get any better. It calms you instantly. It fires you up instantly. it verifies everything you've ever thought he sewn into you before told you before. And that's all it took was for the man she was in love with the teacher, the Savior she was in love with not just love distance, distant link to just in the craziness of the moment. Call out Mary. Well, I think I think it for me, you know, people like oh, you just like that it was a woman and you're into women empowerment and all that stuff. I said, There is so much more to this than that. I said, here's the thing. Mary had seven demons cast out of her. She had already seen what she thought was impossible become possible. Yes. Who better for Jesus to show himself to somebody who was already primed and ready to see what they believed was once impossible. I mean, how cool is that? I love it. You know, I feel like I'm that person. My husband thinks I'm that person. Which demon am I talking the hangry one. derailed that has lived less than a chosen daughter of the king. has heard his voice call me to himself and has forgiven and redeemed and restored and allowed my place of deepest wounding to become his place to show off what he can do, right? I totally identify with what you just said. Well, we have to take a quick break because you know, they like for the commercials to run here to pay for our radio time slot and all of that. So we're gonna take a quick break and when we come back, we're gonna dive into what happened from Sunday and beyond. Hey, this is Angie Monroe of the warrior Davis show broadcasting live each Tuesday 11am Central from globe life park in Arlington, Texas, login to hear real talk with real women that will empower and equip you to make a more powerful impact in the world each Tuesday 11am Central unfishable Radio Network joke Hey, this is Angie Lehman row of a leading moment show broadcasting live each Thursday 10am Central from the globe life park in Arlington, Texas login to hear amazing people share their stories of resiliency in business and life here how their leading moment can inspire your leading moment login each Thursday 10am Central on fishbowl radio network. All right, and we are back with Connie Wyatt Coleman. And we are having some great conversation. We've talked a little bit about Friday and Saturday and leading up to that, and we've talked a little bit about Sunday. But you know, one of the things that as we were talking about Jesus appearing to marry and then to his decision dipoles a lot of times it would have made more sense if you look at it if he would have gone from today's standard of people gone back and shown himself to the Pharisees the Pharisees the pilot and gone okay keep me coming I don't know we're coming out Oh, we have jumped the shark now. But you know he in my mind that's who I would have shown myself to you thought you could keep me down boom. And a lot of tastes today we see that people in today's society. I was down this is my comeback. I'm you know, you know someone's So said this about me and I defeated that and I have made myself this because of that you had made yourself squat. No self made nothing. I'm a self made man say, I make those all the time. There's a doctor of theology. That friend of mine that had a post up yesterday, and he says, Some of y'all aren't gonna like this. It's Dr. Mike Brown. And I really don't care. He says before I say what needs to be said I acknowledge the sacrifice and work of American people attempting to do all we can do to mitigate the virus. There has been cooperation, sacrifice, adaptation and behavior monitoring. Which are commendable and noteworthy and exemplary. I love my country and its people. Having acknowledged all that, well, here we go again, claiming all our hard work and sacrifices beginning to turn this virus around. just heard on TV how impressive we have been in lowing the projective death tolls. Meanwhile, men and women of God who are battling in the spirit against this calling millions to prayer and sounding trumpet for repentance, a return to the Lord and a humble petition for his deliverance are mocked and castigated. See I can learn big words and lampooned as antiquated, flat earth fools, believers who are praying, fasting and calling out to God or patted on the head like little ignorant trolls that must be tolerated until their kind will eventually be absorbed by the globalist monolith with all of this sublime And superior wisdom say that he's one of my people that writes some big words that I have a hard time with. And so, you know, he's, he says, quit claiming God's glory for ourselves less through our arrogance, we inform him we can handle these problems on our own. Romans 121 through 22, because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. Neither were thankful but became vain in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkened. professing themselves to be wise they became fools. God forgive us remember us in Deliver us. You are refuge in our strong tower forever and ever. Wow. So my, I thought that was I thought that was a good deep word for us. To sit with because, you know, even the disciples could have gone. Have you seen my Jesus? Looky there, he did this and then he was boom, then he was back as well and leave it to Peter he kind of did. Right. Not in those terms, not in his own strength, right. But after Jesus was on earth and after he showed himself to the people and after he transcended that's when that's when Peter walked in and the power and an anointing fell. And I mean, yeah, he was. He might not have done it with the mic drop. Right. But I mean, he did he was like, just an airdrop. Yeah. Jesus Whoo, y'all killed. This is the Jesus who offers you salvation. Right? This is the Jesus who offers you eternal life. And Spirit had opened up and people could hear truth and understand truth and the huge movement of people coming to understand who Jesus was, and what he was here to do. Just exploded. Well, you know, so what are we going to do after Sunday? Well, first off, we we need to not be like Thomas. Poor Thomas. You know, he was the one that because he hadn't been there and seen Jesus when everybody else did. He he had to touching him and poke his hand into his side and all that stuff. Believe. It doesn't say any of the other disciples did that. So Thomas was a bit morbid we know that. But when when we did this, you know, I love that Jesus without saying he was omnipresent, showed he was omnipresent in this because if Jesus had come back and said, john called me and told me that you were doubting me and who I am, then Jesus would have said it there because john would have written it down. But Jesus didn't say that. Jesus came in and said, Peace be with you then said to Thomas, Put your finger here. He was laying Thomas that he already knew what Thomas needed to believe. We did. He didn't have to articulate that to Jesus. Jesus already knew. And guess what? He knows what each one of us need. Well, okay, so we're going to talk about Christian versus religious again. If I put out on Facebook or in a group that I have an unspoken prayer requests then if somebody it then I somebody comes to me and tells me that they can't pray for me because they don't know what what I need prayer for because it's unspoken. Why are you trying not to lab that that that they need to know what I need prayer for so they can specifically proof to God for me. She's got this look on her face to people like she's trying to choke back. Tears of laughter I'm waiting for how you responded. I'm sure I'm sure that wasn't one of those that I held back on the keyboard once. But basically, somebody had shared in one of our groups that someone so needed prayer, no, I shared that someone so needed prayer, please pray for her. And they came back and, and it was like three comments of you need to tell us what's wrong so we can pray the right way and ask the Holy Spirit to intervene, intervene the right way, and dah, dah, dah. It was just like boom, boom, boom, boom. And mine was very short and to the point, when more through better, we can do better. She keeps a weekend. I mean, let's be honest, spiritual abuse takes all forms. It can be sassy or ferrocene. smacking somebody over the head with a Bible verse instead of meeting them where they are, and loving them and loving them to a new level. And ladies, let's just say it, it can be women who mask prayer, as gossip beauty shop for your circles. Yeah. God does not need you to know the details in order to sit down and say, Dear Heavenly Father, Jesus help my friend. They need you. They're crying out to you, you know what they need? And I know you're able. Right? Amen. Right. I don't need another detail. There is nothing about my prayers that can really do it. It's just us petitioning together. Let's take it a step further. So obedience, if you need to know the details, the Holy Spirit is able to quicken your heart on what to pray for, right? You don't have to, you just don't have to write I can't tell you how many times that I have heard prayer meetings, turned into gossip sessions because we cannot just simply say hey, so and so nice. Prayer. In order for people to really truly pray fervently, we think they need to know the detail that you know, because her husband this and her daughter that and her son did the other end, right. That's a failure on Christians, brothers and sisters, to take prayer requests to the Lord seriously. And it's a failure on our part to abuse each other. With gossip when there's no need for it if we're truly relying on the spirit to pray. Sorry, you just hit a nerve. I cannot stand it. Well, you know, last year it's interesting. We're coming up on a year since my friend Kim passed away, and on the wee morning hours of a April 18. I woke up in the middle of the night, my husband and son were up in Arkansas with my parents and woke up in the wee mornings of the night and I wrote a letter to her in in Facebook Messenger, just letting her know how much I loved her how much I cared for how much you know, I didn't. I didn't know where she was in her medical crisis at that time to if she was even reading things or not. And I went back to sleep. After I wrote that letter. It took me a while to go back to sleep, but I basically cried myself to sleep that night after writing that letter. And I woke up the next morning, and there was a post on her page. That said, Please pray for my family. I had not verbally talked with my friend in weeks But I knew that day from that post on her and what God had started my spirit overnight that my friend was soon to answer death's door. I knew it. I didn't have to have her pick up the phone and call me. I didn't have to have her daughter pick up the phone and call me. I didn't have to get a text. I didn't have to get a detail about how the body had ravaged her system. The chemo had ravaged her system so much and done it. I didn't mean any of that. You didn't have to comment on the Facebook post inside tell us what's going on? No, no, no, you know, I didn't have to do that either. All I had to do basically about the time I saw that post, my husband called from Arkansas to tell me that we had lost another loved one in Ohio. That was our third death then since January and on his side of the family. He's trying to talk to me. As he's talking to me, he can notice that my voice ain't right. And I could just go, I said, I have this sense that Kim is dying. And he's like, Well, what do you know? I'm like, that she's dying. And he goes out of you know, that. I'm like, it's just a sense, you know? And it was just and she was the one that pushed me and challenged me and never wanted me to hang back to what she was called to, but she wanted to be involved into what we were doing. Yes. Right. And so, being in tune with her brought me in tune with God. being in tune with God brought me in tune with her. Last week. God I post, from a cousin in Georgia saw posts from a cousin in Georgia. Just saw one of the kids posted, please pray for my family. Instantly I knew what had happened. Before my husband even got confirmation of what had happened. I instantly knew because I'm connected with that mom. And we have shared our hearts with each other. And were to share each other's hearts. The Holy Spirit intervenes to communicate in ways between us that when we don't have the strength or the energy to pick up the phone and make the call, the Holy Spirit can say, hey, you need to text them. You need to call them you need to check on them. When you find that true, yeah. Some of us are better at doing it. I mean, I just yesterday I mean, I considering my older brother, right? And he posts to Facebook almost every morning. And I saw it yesterday morning. He had posted it Wednesday. But I just saw it. And I mean in the first three or four words, I could hear in his voice that something wasn't right. Right. And he was he was absolutely transparent on the post just that it had been a rough day and he's, you know, walking through this and a pastor friend had passed away, but there was just something deeper, it felt like, again, to your point, I know his heart, right. And so I just text shot him a text real quick. And I'm like, Look, I know, I know you're trying to navigate all of this and blah, blah, blah, and just know in this moment, right now. I'm praying strength for you. And I almost he texted me back He said, You know, when I posted that yesterday I had this, just this feeling just this over, was overcome with it. He's a little did I know, by 10 o'clock last night, or the night that he posted that deal, but 10 o'clock that mind. His father passed away. Oh my goodness, he got the call. He was able to get there and he had about an hour with his father. But that he didn't he didn't have to ask outside of that post. Say Anything else was going on? I had no clue his dad had been sick again. Right. But I just knew after hearing his voice that he needed encouragement Hmm, I had no clue anything else that had transpired. Didn't need to know right. The need to know just needed to know that I was reaching out for him. So can do what do we do after Sunday? Yeah. We live life with people. And when God put somebody on your heart, follow up with it, right or no follow up. I, I can't tell you personally, how many times you know, I've told you 100 times I thought before I took this job that I knew what spiritual warfare was, I thought I was prepared. I had no No, no, no clue, no clue. And there have been many times, just online that it's not something that people ask for prayer for necessarily, it's not something that you would ever put on Facebook, but just the, the battles that come and God has quickened to other people's spirits, right to to call or just to send it, send a text or, hey, you want to go have coffee, you know, just any little thing but somewhere along the way, the Holy Spirit put me on other people's hearts. When I needed it, and they didn't need details, probably didn't even share details when we went to coffee. Right? Not with a lot of them. But some of them just Hey, you just crossed my mind. I want you to know, you know, I love you keep going strong. Well, and, and here's the other thing that you have to realize even Jesus had tears to His disciples. He took his disciples within places. He taught lessons that they were all able to hear and do. But even when he went to have certain moments with disciples, there are some that were closer to him than others, that he confided in more so than others. And that's okay, too. Yeah. You don't have to tell everybody everything that's going on. You know, you shouldn't and Connie's one of those people that knows a lot of what goes on with If she doesn't know it right away, she'll know it at some point when we have a discussion. And, and I'm hoping that I always hope that I'm that friend to my friends whenever I'm doing that as well, that they feel that they can speak and open their hearts to me and tell me anything. And it will not shock me it will not hurt me it will not push me away. And that I will not think that they are less than a Christian. I will just love them as Christ loved them. You know, and, and we need to be that friend to others. I know. One of the ways the Lord has done that, for me is just for several. I don't even remember when he really put it on my heart but somebody was going through a trial and you know, just letting them know I'm there letting them know I'm there. I don't you know what, I'm available to you whenever you need me. You don't have to tell me a thing. You don't have to tell me what's going on. just text me the word Jesus, and I will know immediately, right? That you need prayer that you need me to intercede in your behalf and you need me to stand in the gap or stand strong with you. Hmm. And that's all I need to know. That's it text me the name Jesus. Right. And I have some friends that that take me up on. Right. And I'm thankful because I have friends that man, I can just sit and pray, please pray. And that's where the power is. Because, look, here's the truth when when we're in the middle of a battle, right? We may think we know what our prayer need is. Chances are just like right now, we don't know truth. We don't know truth of situation that we're in right now. And when we're in the middle of a battle, a lot of times we can see pieces and parts but we can't pull ourselves out. Have it far enough to see the big picture, right? And if I'm telling someone what to pray, instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to tell them what to pray, hmm, if they're praying for what I want them to pray for, that may or may not be what I need, it may or may not be what the Lord has for me. So if I truly want people to pray where the need is, I'll leave that up to the Holy Spirit as much as possible. You know, as you're talking about that, I started thinking about the movie, tornado, you know, cuz, and there's a reason for it when you're in the middle of the tornado. When they were they were driving into the storm to get the data from the storm twister. twister. That's what's called twister. Yeah, Helen Hunt. Yeah, she dropped, they dropped their driving in there to get all that data out of it. But to drive in there, they had to have the other one stay back to be able to tell where the tornado was going and where Their exit route was too close because they were too close and, and you know, even being in the truck, she's like cow, another cow. He says, I think that's the same cow. Because at that point, they just didn't know what direction was the right direction out and, and there's been times where I've been in the thick of it and I'm like, I don't even know how to pray for me, right? I just don't even know what I need right now. Sleep, sleep would be nice. When when Ali had the twins and we were all here. It was like Sleep, sleep would be nice, but you know. But then there have been unexpected blessings that have happened because what happens when you just say I just need you to pray and you don't give guidance to what you need prayer for. The Holy Spirit supernaturally opens. have so much more than you could ever imagine because you've opened your receiver up to receive more than you ever hoped was possible. Just kind of who he is. Isn't that awesome? Our God is a great God. My dad, he's kind of cool. Yo, I'm also loved that. After Sunday, the apostles went fishing. Yeah, they went right back to living their lives. I did. Not the same. They were forever changed and, and yes, Jesus showed up and did the miracles of the fish. And then like they said he in that I love me. Do you love me, Peter, do you love me? He was reinstating Jesus. Jesus was reinstating Peter at that point he was he was getting Peter to realize his role and his purpose in being the rock the foundation that the church was going to be built on. That Yes, you may stumble and Ball. But there's still grace. You're still love your there's still like place for you. And how many of us have stumbled and fallen in life? I know I have many times more than three. More than more than more than three. But you know, I love that too because he Do you love me? Yes, Lord, right Feed my sheep. Right? Feed my sheep. It's not about you, right? It's about others. But the whole scenario is, well, Jesus, cook them breakfast, hmm. And then told Peter to feed his sheep. We can't give what we don't have. Right. The Lord feeds us so that we can feed others. It's not about us. It's not about promoting us. It's not about a platform for us. It's about the Lord sowing into us what he has for us To live in us and through us, and then us beating others with that. Because if you're not spending time with the Lord and you're not in His Word, then I can say, hey, Angie, you know I'm rooting for you, all day long. I can share my great intellect, intellect with you. Be slim pickins more than one. What do I have that really offers you any hope? one thing and one thing only the love of Jesus Christ, right? He says it into me so that I can sell it into others into story. And that's just what did he win over death hell in the grave to do to feed us? Right so that we can feed others. But that's what the whole that's what living on a god sized dream is about. Right. It's it's not about us. It's never about us. It's always, always about sowing life into others. Always. Well, and, you know, when he's telling them wait, we joked all week there's so quit hoarding the toilet paper. It's all about it's not God, toilet paper. Sorry. But, you know everybody talking about spraying and praying but are they really pray in the Lysol spray and pray, spray and pray that you know, we make fun of the disciples being told so many times we talked about that earlier. But we've already talked about how we've been told multiple times, but when he goes in, he talks to the disciples and He presents himself to the disciples. And then he presents himself to Thomas he goes in there because you have seen me you have believed Blessed are those who have not seen any Yeah, believe me, and believe, you know, here's the thing. They had something a gift, john 316, you have a gift that I'm giving you, you know, my only beloved son. This is a big love gift I'm giving you It's better than a diamond ring girls. And I'm giving you this gift. Enjoy your time with him. feed off of your time with him absorb from him as much as you possibly can. Because you have no idea the legacy that your involvement in these three years with my son is going to have. I mean, they couldn't even grasp the fact that he was going to come back from the dead. Could you think they would be able to grasp that 2000 years later we would be sitting here talking about him. And then the most favorite one of all Yeah. And the Doubting Thomas. I mean, no, who would have thought it? No. And we're in a microwave society. Now we don't think about that either. No, we don't think that the decisions that I make today affect my children. We might think that far. But we don't even can't even fathom what the Lord has passed us because of us. Right, if we will surrender to what he's calling us to do. All right. You know, Kim Slater had her surgery and beginning of January, and she has had an opportunity to look internally both physically and spiritually During this journey, and I saw her on that podcast the other day, yeah, she is. With God's help she is slaying it. Oh yeah, she is she's doing amazing she, she has God gave her the word of the year this year as restart. And that was before January one came around in January 2 she had her open heart surgery right. And when I went and saw her The day after she came home from the hospital, she has a heart shaped pillow. And on there, the doctor drew it has the it's a heart like a Valentine heart shape. heart but it has a picture of a heart medical wise on there. It's what she could use to hold up against the wrists incision when she went to cough because it was going to be painful, right. But on there, the doctor drew and showed her what he had done internally on her So she could see scientifically what was done physically inside of her to open up her, her get blood flowing better. And it was amazing. The day after her surgery days after her surgery, just the color that was back in her that hadn't been there in years he didn't know. And just not knowing how bad she was until it happened. But with that change, it's had overflow effect. She has lost weight. She has started eating healthier, making healthier choices, learning about how to fuel her body the right way, learning that she actually likes to exercise. She doesn't like getting started. But once she started she actually likes it. You know, so she can just get past that little bump of starting. It's like me riding the bike with a stun the other A Day in the neighborhood. We go to one driveway, and he'd stopped so I'd have to stop my bike. And he was taking arrest like a six yea

Ep#47 Looking past Cash Flow and creating unique passive investor deal structure with Reed Goossens

Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 24, 2020 44:30

James: Hi audience and listeners, this is James Kandasamy from Achieve Wealth Through Value-add Real Estate Investing. Last week, we had Ivan Barratt, who owns almost 3000 units, almost $300 million assets and he's doing a lot of deals in the Midwest cities and the States. So today we have Reed Goossens from Wildhorn Capital. Reed owns with his partner Andrew Campbell, who's also a friend. They own like almost 1800 units valued at $250 million and they've been it doing almost four and a half years. Hey Reed, welcome to the show. Reed: Good day, James, thanks for having me, man. James: Thanks for coming. I mean I was on your show like a few years back. And you know, it's great to have you back here and I know you guys are doing a lot of deals in central Texas, like where my backyard is. I also do Austin and San Antonio, so it's going to be a good discussion on what do we see in the market, right? Reed: Exactly, exactly. James: So did I miss out on something in your introduction? Reed: No, not at all. You've hit the nail on the head. I'm sure a lot of people have heard my story. An Australian guy, moved to the United States back in 2012. My background is in instructional engineering. I moved here to be an expat and just to live in New York City and you know, all these years, seven, eight years later, I have found financial freedom through investing in US real estate and I moved here with little funds, no established network. And my whole shtick is that if I can move here halfway across the world and make it happen, then so can the average American sitting, you know, get off the fence and start investing in real estate because it truly is the, you know, in terms of the Western countries, it's the premium in terms of Western countries for yield and commercial real estate. And we can get into that in a minute. But yeah, that's really my background. James: Yeah, it's very interesting. I think sometimes people who have never lived outside of the US knows how much you can achieve in the US. Your own sweat equity, right? You can really work hard and come up and live and they have to really go outside and see how difficult is it to come up. And you can work day in, day out and you can work 24/7 you know, for seven days. There's always a limit your progress. Right? Reed: Exactly. Exactly. No, 100%. James: So let's go back to the market that you guys are focusing, right? Austin and San Antonio, right? So why did you choose these two markets? Reed: Yeah, so historically, originally back in four and a half years ago, we chose central Texas. I chose central Texas, it had moderate cap rates compared to, I live in Los Angeles, California. I live on the coast, very compressed cap rates, looking for something with a little bit more moderate cap rates. At the time, I was, you know, Koji paid a couple of deals with some preexisting partners. I had my systems from underwriting to deal sourcing. I sort of had that down pat. But what I didn't have down pat was a business partner, boots on the ground and that's where I met Andrew Campbell and we formed a partnership. I was getting involved in underwriting deals in Dallas and San Antonio, not in Austin as yet, you know, that will morph into that in a little bit, but in the beginning, it was just like underwriting small deals, you know, between 50 and 100 units. But what I was missing was the boots on the ground, the broker relationships. And so, what I needed was a partner like Andrew who was there, who was in the thick of it, who could go and you know, hang around the hoop and bug brokers while I sort of underwrote deals and did sort of the more the back end operational stuff. And we found a partnership back in 2007-15 I think it is. And yeah, the rest is sort of history. We underwrote a lot of deals in the beginning, people took a bet on us in terms of, you know, brokers taking a bet on us and then we got their first deal done. And that morphed too quickly in the second deal and now going on nine deals. So it really came, it stemmed from the fact that I was needing to get a business partner who could take some of the workload off me and do something that I had a skill set that I didn't have, which was boots on the ground, access to brokers, access to deals and walking assets and I really focused on the operational side on the backend. So yeah. James: So can you give some advice to our listeners on, I mean, I know you say you needed boots on the ground, so you looked at the market and, I mean, I'm trying to help some of our listeners who are trying to do like what you're trying to do, right? You are in California, you have a partner here in Austin, Texas. And how did the discovery of that partners and boots on the ground, because it's not like I find a guy in Austin and I'm good with it. There must be some qualities in him. Reed: Yes. James: And how did you assess that? Reed: Let's just rewind the clock. I'd been doing deals prior to meeting Andrew when I was living in New York City, when I first moved to LA, when I first moved to the United States. I flipped a few houses in Philadelphia and I had a business partner on that and it was sort of a JV more than a business partnership. I had people tell me that that particular person not to be named, wasn't the best partner to work with. You know, he was unorganized and blah, blah, blah. And looking back on it, he kind of was and it didn't go that great. Well, I'm no longer in business with that gentleman, but it was, I tell you that story because it's a learning curve, right? My first flip deal in Philadelphia didn't go very well. But between him and I, the old business partner, we were able to get the deal over the line. We didn't lose any investors money. And you know, we then parted ways after that because we just realized we wanted different things in life. But I say that because when you're looking for a partner, you need to understand that there's going to be some times you're going to get into partnerships that may not necessarily jive because you're hungry to get deals done and you're hungry to get the business off the ground. But when you first get started, the thing that attracted me to Andrew and what he attracted to me was we had skill sets that complemented each other. And I think that's the most important thing is the skill sets to complement each other. Because if you don't have those skill sets, then what's the point? And actually, you don't wanna be working on the same thing. So, I saw in him that he had a skill set that I didn't have and he saw in me a skillset that he didn't have; complementary skill sets are really, really important. Also, just the fact that both of us wanted to grind. We were not afraid to roll up the sleeves and work hard. At the time when I met Andrew, he was working a full-time job, I was working a full-time job and we were hustling on the weekends. He had kids, I don't have kids as yet, but you know, he had all these other external factors and so did I, in terms of, my mom was sick in Australia. All this stuff was happening and really, but we still knew that our North star was to get financially free and create a business. And years later, we've achieved that, which is awesome. But when it boils down to it is we are business partners first and friends second. I view Andrew's one of my better friends now, but that's because we came through business partnership, right? Andrew also runs a different crowd than I do. He's very much in the, you know, play golf and all this stuff where I'm more of the go surfing. If you're watching this video, go surfboard in the background. You know, I'm very, very different. Ying to his yang and we did a presentation last week at the best ever conference in Denver, my sorry, in Keystone, Colorado. And what we were talking about where was that real estate is the art and science, right? Real estate form is an art and there's a science of it. Andrew is very much the art and I'm the science behind it. So it's the marriage of two different polar opposites that can really make a successful business and partnership work. So all that type of stuff is like you have to assess what you're good at, right? You have to assess your pros and what you're bad at and do what you don't want to do. But you have to also realize that being in this game of real estate investment, you know, whatever size you do, whether it be from flipping houses all the way through to doing large commercial multi-families like what we do, James, you and I, you have to realize that you need a team. And having someone, a copilot, a co-captain sitting right next to you, bearing taking some of the responsibilities and taking some of the pressure off you as an entrepreneur and business owner, it's so vital. It's paramount to the growth because you will grow by bringing on a partner that works and is harmonious with. Then, you know, looking back, I wouldn't be sitting here today talking about 1800 units and a quarter billion dollars worth of assets under management if I didn't go out and find Andrew, vice versa. He wouldn't also be sitting in the same position if he didn't find me. So it's a combination of seeing what you're good at, what you lack at and seeing if you can find someone that can meet you halfway in the middle and that you can get on and you have those similar goals and visions, but you also can work hard to achieve a goal. James: Got it, got it. So I mean when you guys, I mean, I'm trying to go into this partnership because I think a lot of people are trying to get a partner to partner with them and they just need to know how does a successful partner look like when you were like, cause you guys are very successful in partnering up. So how was that discussion? I mean somebody brought up, okay, let's find out, we partner up. Right? So, and what was the other person saying? Because sometimes people say, Oh, well, I'm not sure yet. Right? So there's not going to be like, let's partner up and everybody's going to be partnering. Reed: Look, let's not beat around the bush here, it is like dating. If anyone's been out in the dating world, same fricking thing. [09:46crosstalk] a few times. I guess Reed: Exactly. [09:48crosstalk] a few people before you get into bed with someone and skews the crass. But you know, it's an interpersonal relationship. It's a feeling you get from the other person that, Hey, this person could work. Now, it could've gone badly, but it's the same, you know, when you do go out on a date, you get an energy from that person, you can feel that they want the same thing that you want. You have conversations, you get to know one another. It wasn't just like, Hey, let's partner. It was over a period of, you know, three to six months that Andrew flew out to LA with his wife. He got to meet my wife. I flew out to Austin, I met his kids. It was a courtship, you know, similar to how you would date someone. And through that, we were able to have candid conversations about where we're headed, the goals and really align with, you know, he'd lost his mom through cancer, I'd lost my mum through cancer. So we had some very much some things that aligned. Plus also the fact that we could hustle and we could grind and graft hard. You know, that was a plus. And we had complementary skill sets. It sort of was ticking a lot of boxes. But at the end of the day, the first couple of deals, we were very much Reed and Andrew. It was RSN, which was my old company and Wildhorn and we took down this first couple of deals, really as individuals but you know, using our entities to partner in case something did go wrong and we can just, okay, look, we'll sell the deals and we'll go our separate ways. Over time, that morphs into one banner, one marketing arm and that's where RSN falls away and we went with Wildhorn because he was based in Texas and we became more of a partnership. And look, I'll tell you here today James is that partnerships also don't last forever. You know, Andrew and I have had conversations. I'm from Australia originally. I know that in 10 years' time when I'm 43 years of age, I want to have some investments back in Australia. Andrew might not be involved in those deals but for right now, we're looking to double the portfolio in the next three to five years and we're looking to make some successful exits. And that's all I can promise, right? I don't know what's going to happen in 10 years. The biggest thing for me, James, is that I picked up the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad back in 2009 and, you know, we just finished 2019. So a decade later, I'm sitting on a podcast with you telling you about my assets under management. I had no fricking idea that I would be doing that 10 years later. And so what the message is, don't plan your 10 years ahead, work right now. What's in front of you. See what doors open, which is, you know, Andrew and I are having a really successful partnership and relationship and we're going to double our portfolio next three to five years and just be okay with that. And don't worry, the future will figure itself out from there. You know what I mean? Because you can overestimate what you can achieve in a year, but you can underestimate what you can achieve in a decade. And so my whole story, my main message to people out there is when you do look at partnerships, understand that they morph over time. They may come together for five, 10 years and they might go apart and that's okay. That's how businesses evolve. That's how entrepreneurs evolve as human beings. And you have to also, not sacrifice but surrender to that and understand that that might change in the future and that's okay. Right? Because as you know, multifamily isn't very hot right now. It's everyone, every man and their dog is in there so you might have to pivot and change different business structures. James: I mean, absolutely. That's really good conversation there. But some of the key nuggets I want to recap, right? I mean, a lot of people talk about a partnership is always complementary skills, but it's not that, right? I mean, that's one thing, that's just one part of it but there's a lot of core values. I mean, you and your partner have a lot of core values similarity and take time to discover that, right? I mean, based on your family stories and based on your goal because you can find a partner with complementary skills, but who may not want to hustle. He may not have the goal that you want. I mean, there are certain aspirations that anyone who's hungry for achievement want and you know, he expected the same on this partner and I'm sure you guys found that. So let's go back to the market that you have chosen in central Texas and I'm sure people have learned it's not only a compromise, it's a lot more than that and you guys have to discover it. And one more thing I want to recap on the partnership is the way that you guys set up your company, right? Two of you guys, I remember the RSN Capital Group, if I'm not mistaken and Andrew has his own and you guys kept it separate, which is really good. That's how I would recommend to anybody who wants to do a partnership. Keep the entity separate, put it into one LLC and buy a deal and in case something doesn't work out, you can always fade it out. Right. So yeah, I've seen a lot of people where on day one itself, create one LLC and hold partners on one LLC and they can never split up when something happens. Right. So, awesome. So let's go to the market. You chose central Texas, you found your first deal. Did you find the deal first or did you analyze the submarket first? Reed: All of the above. I was looking in Dallas, I was looking in San Antonio. I was just really seeing what... I was underwriting a lot of deals. Before that first deal came to me back in 2000...sorry, leading up to that point was when Andrew and I met then we went and underwrite like a hundred deals before we go that first deal under contract. But if I look at the why behind central Texas, you also gotta understand where I come from and I made this speech last Thursday night at the best ever conference, I come from a country in Australia and you have to put it in context, right? Because part of my special power, part of my superhero, part of my special sauce that I bring to Wildhorn Capital is my international perspective. And the reason that is so special is though I can look at things through a different lens. So what do I mean by that? Well, I compare just to Australia and America, right? Australia and America, the land of mass, I'm talking about excluding, let's ignore Alaska for a second, but just those two landmasses, they're roughly the same size, give or take. However, in Australia, we can only inhabit about 18 to 19% of our land because the rest is a desert. And so everything is full. Everyone is forced into major cities. Everyone's forced to the coast. And so we have a small population, we only have 24 million people. Unlike here in America where you can inhabit North to South, East to West and you have 300 million people so we don't even have 1/10th. The reason I'm bringing all this up is because I grew up in an area where we have a high demand but low supply environment, right? What does that mean when you have high demand, low supply environment? You have low cap rates. In major markets in Australia, in major markets in other Western countries, commercial real estate cap rates are sub 3%. I'm going to spout off some big names, but you look at London, you look at Sydney, you look at Hong Kong, you look at Singapore, office space and then there's probably the only thing that is a common thread between all of them. Office space in those markets are sub 3% maybe even 2%; where you can buy office space in New York City or LA or now even Austin for full cap. And so when you've got these international perspectives of like, wow, I've come from a market where historically there's been low cap rates for decades because of supply and demand and I see the same thing happening in central Texas where the GDP of all of Texas is greater than that of all of Australia. I'm doubling down on that and that market, because a place like Austin, Texas has now transitioned from a boom-bust town into a tier-one market like Los Angeles, like Sydney, like Singapore, like London. Where dirt is trading for as much or even more as the coastal market. So when you have high demand like you do in Austin, low supply coupled with a very high barrier to entry for new product, which means buying dirt, getting an approved construction, doubling down on existing assets in a market like Austin means that coming to the recession in the next couple of years, you'll be able to ride that out because you have a high demand and a low supply. I also come from a country where we have not had a recession in over 27 years because of, obviously physical policy, the way in which we invest our pension funds is a lot deeper than that. But again, I say this all to give you the lens that I look through when I'm looking at different assets. One other thing that not many people know, multifamily does not exist in Australia because of the lack of financing vehicles. We only have 25 million people. We have four or five major banks. Those four or five major banks do not lend money on a new apartment construction unless you've pre-sold X amount of units, which is a combo market. So they lend on a build to sell, not a build to own. Right? And so when you don't have those sophisticated financing vehicles as you do here in these States, you know, Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae interest only for 10 years, Ameritrade over 30 years, the fact that multifamily doesn't even exist in Australia when I first moved here coupled with population GDP growth, seeing markets transition from a boom-bust into a high demand, low supply environment, seeing markets transition into, it's a high barrier to entry for new product, all those things add to why I would double down in a market like that into help me ride out the next 10 years. Because remember James, the last 10 years that we've had just had, since 2009, has been the best 10 years for multifamily, probably in history, right? We're not going to see the next 10 years are not going to be the same. And so as an investor, as an operator, you need to look for markets where there's true growth. Now, you compare Austin to New York and San Francisco and LA, money is still being invested in those markets because of the demand. So people still invest in these coastal markets because of the longterm gains that they are going to make. And a lot of people have made a lot of money in a short term period over the last 10 years and I think that's going to be the same trend moving forward. And that isn't completely incorrect. And if you think that's going to happen, you need to go invest in something else, in my opinion, James: It's crazy on how much the tide has gone up or the past 10 years and everybody thinks multifamily is the same, right? It's a commodity now, but it's not. I mean, at some point the wage growth is going to hit some limitation and you're going to have a problem, right? So you have to be really ready as when you say; that's really awesome. And the other thing about Austin though, other than coastal cities, a lot of coastal cities are getting rent control, whereas Austin, I don't think that we'll ever get a rent control. Even those20:30unclear] city, but it's in there. Reed: Yeah. Even if that was to happen, people still make a lot of money in places like LA, New York, San Francisco, they're making a lot of money and it's because of the value of the dirt. And everyone's got to realize you buy real estate for the value and now that is what is intrinsically is going to grow over time. The fact that when I first moved to this country, I noticed that land, at least in LA, in New York and San Francisco, land is key. You're right, it's what holds the value that, the asset depreciates over time, but in central Texas, the asset is more valuable than the land, that's slowly starting to change, right? As demographics changes, people move as population grows, as GDP grows, all that sort of stuff in terms of supply and demand; that then means that dirt is worth more, right? Dirt is where the value is. And if you hold it for a long period of time, I'm talking seven to 10 years, you're going to do just fine. James: I was happy to know that. You know, I'm not sure whether you'd known, Tim Ferris moved to Austin like a few months ago, a few years ago. I need to find out why. I mean, I listen to his podcast and his podcast is awesome, right? So, let's go to underwriting. So let's say you get a deal today, right? What are the things, what are the sniff test that you do before you look into the second level details? Reed: Yeah, look, stiff test, it's a hard thing for a sniff test these days because there's so much more to this story. It goes back to the art and the science of underwriting. Back in the day, five, six years ago, yeah, you can do back of the napkin and does it make sense? Yes. Does it not make sense? No, because you had so much, you had a cap rate that was moderate and you had an interest rate that, you know, was a Delta of maybe 200 basis points you could get cash flow. Today, it's not like that; that spread between interest rates and cap rates have compressed, right? Its cash flow becomes harder to achieve, thus you need to understand the story and that's where the art comes into it, not necessarily the science. So I still look for a spread between going in cap rate or a stabilized cap rate and interest rates. I want to make sure there's at least a hundred basis points in there and that's growing over time and when I model it out over five or seven years, that continues to grow. But I also want to see now, I'm looking at deals where there's other opportunities. So, we are about to buy a deal south of the river in Austin, Texas. It's the lowest cash flowing deal we've ever put out. And we're oversubscribed to that deal because of the location. Now what you don't know, if you looked at just at the numbers on that thing, you think, Oh God, it's a really low cap rate, but you don't realize that if you don't know the story behind what's happening in that area, 600 units are going to be completely demolished and taken offline in the next 24 months. So do you think that's going to have an impact on our rents and the occupancy? Of course, it is. But how do you underwrite to that? You can't, you've got to underwrite it if it's a value add multifamily. This is where the story comes in and where you need to go bigger than the sniff test because this is what market we're in. Also, we know that this land that we're buying, we're buying 12 acres where the density could be doubled on this plot of land. It can go from 294 units, we could go and put 500 units on it. Now whether you go and execute on that as a different thing, but that could be an exit option for someone in the future for a developer to buy if all these investments in the South of the river there near the Oracle is to come to fruition. Then again, I'm seeing very similar trends as if I'm looking at an ally or a New York market. So these are all the things that I look at now and you have to go deeper. You have to do more than just a sniff test because we're not in those days anymore. We're in a different market and we have to spend time. I have four analysts that work for me and they spend a minimum of three to four hours on any one deal. Andrew is the guy that makes sure he feels out the deals that we see but if he thinks that there's a bit of a something a little bit more to sniff out and he's got a little bit more an art to it, than the science, then we will dive deep into it and we'll spend three or four hours underwriting it. And it still might not work at that point, but we've gone and exhausted all avenues to make sure that it isn't a deal that works for us. James: So, what you're saying is you have stopped looking for the normal cash flowing value-add deal. You're looking more for the path of progress and you know the story behind the deal as the future appreciation I would say, future potential in that deal., I guess. Reed: Future potential because your whole podcast name is called increasing your wealth through adding value, right? You may add value by entitling the land to have a bigger a density on it. That is adding value. James: Absolutely. Absolutely. Reed: Any way you add value but historically it's been all, we'll put lipstick on a pig and hopefully it looks good. So that's gone, right? There are still those markets out there. There's still these deals out there. You can still find them and don't get me wrong, but when you become more sophisticated when you become more advanced in your underwriting when you become more experienced, you start seeing different trends and why the big guys, and let's not beat around the bush here, I've worked for big developers in LA, in New York, and they don't have podcasts, they don't have books, but they own half of Beverly Hills. The reason the way the big dogs are, they're still buying these pieces of dirt, they're still buying these trophy assets and putting it in. They're still selling to rates, they're still selling to insurance companies and making a lot of money and you've never heard of their names. So I've come from that background and that is where exactly how my mindset has now shifted to start understanding the pennies dropped, ah, and now I know why those guys do what they do is because of the value which the supply and demand curve, we go back to that a lot, that demand is high and supply is low. James: I mean it's very interesting, look at things differently. And I met someone the other day who was buying land on a, it's called a submerge land, land under the Lake. And she was saying, Oh, I sell that. I say, how do you sell that? So it's a very interesting story on when a boat comes, you know, you need to dock on your land, even though it's under the water, but they can still sell it. Mixed with different kinds of people, go out of this, the normal value add, I would . To see those kinds of things. So yeah, it's absolutely, you know, it makes sense to do creative stuff as long as you're doing it in the right market. Reed: It does all come down to market and it does all come down to just reacting to the market. Right? You got to react and you go to, as entrepreneurs, we're riding the wave, the wave of change is ever-evolving. And so we have to be ready to look at things through a different lens to not be ignorant of other options that you can do to your property. Because you know, it's about being creative, just be creative with the piece of land and you can figure out many different ways in which you can make money from it. So it's just understanding that rather than just plugging, implying and you know, buying at a six cap and getting interest rates at a full cap and having all this cashflow and yada, yada, yada. There are still those deals out there, they're a lot harder to find and thus you need to be a little bit more educated in terms of the value that you bring to your asset now coming into, you know, a new economy that we're in. James: So do you see some of the investors who are used to getting cashflow and doing value add on the rent and all that, do you see some of the investors dropped out? I mean they don't buy into the idea or you think a lot more people buy into the idea or you just finding different people buying into the ideas? Reed: Last year we rolled out and we were the first ones in the industry to do it in the multifamily industry, at least in our little circle, the AB structure, we brought that to market first. We closed on a deal first. The way we do that is by offering 25% of the equity has 10% preferred return paid current. And that means that you can satisfy those cashflow customers or investors with that class A bucket. Class B bucket that they have an accruing pref but they get all the back end. They get 70% of the backend so they're looking for the equity multiple and we then divide it out the investor group into two pots. We can now see who wants what but what it does mean is that if we buy a deal that cashflow is 2% out of the gate, which is pretty much a lot of deals only cash flow very little out of the gate, you can pay that 10% pref straight up to 25% of the equity. If you have 25% of the equity not participating in the backend, then that juices the IRR to the class B. All these things we are doing in terms of structure because we are reacting to the market and because we're not just blindly going along and not getting any deals done because, oh, it doesn't work like it used to work. Well, we're changing the way in which we structure ideas. We're changing the way in which we underwrite ideals to back into making sure we're appeasing our investors that have some cashflow, a bucket but we've also got the equity appreciation bucket and having honest, candid conversations with our investors that, hi, if you give me 100,000 bucks, does it really matter if I give you seven grand every year? Is that going to change your life or does it more matter that you give me $100,000 and in five or six years' time, I'll give you back $250,000? Is that more valuable to you? When you have those conversations with those investors, they start thinking differently. And people that they think, Oh, the pref isn't being met, oh, that means it's a bad deal. No, it just means that the deal is getting out of the gate into different velocities where another deal is. And so looking at the longterm play, real estate, James, is a longterm play, not a get rich quick. And that's why I say a lot of people have done so well with their money in the last 10 years. They've doubled, triple their money in three to five years and I think that's still the norm. Well it's not and that's where you have to readjust your expectations. And that's where, again, my international perspective where I've come from a country where if you double your money in 10 years, you're doing just fine. The longterm play is what real estate is and people sometimes lose that vision of what longterm means and they think long term is three years. James: Yeah, that's true. Sometimes people are just so used to what they make in the past 2012 to 2017/18, keep on looking for the same yield and you know, that kind of deal is no more existing. Reed: And investors appreciate being candid. Investors appreciate having those open and honest conversations. And why would you take a lower return? You're taking a lower turn because it's risk-adjusted. You're not investing in a tertiary market or a secondary market where it may get really rattled if they have another recession, you're investing in lower risk, and thus you have to adjust your expectations when you go and invest in a market like Austin with lower risk, low margins. James: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Risk-adjusted return is something that a lot of people don't understand. I mean if you're making 6% in an awesome market compared to you're making a projected 8% I would think is projection in the beginning, maybe before you invest, everything's projection, right? Someone tells you they're going to give you a 20% IRR in a tertiary market compared to someone's going to give you a 10% IRR in a solid market. That 10% is actually much better than the 20% because the risk is lower. Reed: The risk is lower. But also you look at like if you want no risk, go put your money in a treasury, the 10 year treasury and that's what 1.32% if you want zero risk, go do that. And if I'm offering you six or 7% return, I think I'd rather place my money. So backed by physical real estate where you can have all the tax depreciation, no other investment holds up. So obviously the stock market is doing very, very well, but you have to also combat apples to apples and that is, you know, one is risk, two is volatility, three is tax depreciation and four is access to capital. And so all those things play into effect when you think about real estate versus other ways in which you can make money in this world. So yeah. James: Yeah. I think I saw the way you guys structure the class A and B, where you have one person class A is like flat 10% or in a certain percentage, I can't remember the number. Reed: It's flat 10% but the class side does not participate in the back end and then you've got class B that has an accruing 7% pref and you catch up upon sale but they get 70% of the back end. And those investors are more focused on the equity multiple rather than the cash flow. And thus, you're splitting the bucket but you still offer them both. The investors can still have some in A and some in B, but you limit the cost A to 25% of the equity. So it helps, you know, juice the IRR. James: And does the class A, the 10%, get paid from day one itself? Reed: Correct. James: Okay. Okay. Reed: You can do the math, right? So if you have $1 million of equity, 25% of $1 million of equity is $250,000. 10% of $250,000 is 25 grand, a year. Now, $1 million in equity, that's probably going to buy a $4 million property. You think a $4 million property could cashflow in any one year, 25 grand? I think it could. Yeah. So that's where the special souls comes in because you're paying 10% on 25% of the equity. So thus your cashflow out of the gate can be lower and you can still hit that 10% preferable. James: Yeah. So do you see...we trying to get filled up fast. I know one has a smaller pool, the other one's bigger, right? Reed: So, we also have a higher barrier to entry on the class A so we have $100,000 minimum. And we have a lot of people wanting class A. The thing is we tend to see costs, on the first deal, it got filled up really quickly. On the second deal, it was a little bit more equal, you know? So, but here's the other thing, class A investor is if my deal, I'm not hiding anyone from it and it's the truth, they get paid first, right? So if I go and refi and I hold it for five years and I decided I'm not going to sell, I'm actually going to refi, well, I can refi it and pay all my investors costs I owe their money and they're out of the deal. And I can replace class A with cheaper, cheaper debt, right? Cause if I'm paying them 10% of their money and I can get debt at full percent, then I've just essentially, you know, taking them out of the deal. Now there's a risk there that they're out, right? And I have investors saying, well you could just come along and do that. It's like yes I can. That's part of, you know, real estate and debt stacks. Right. I can just replace as the value of the asset grows, I can replace the debt and I could potentially have a debt number that could take you all out of the deal. They've gotta be okay with that. But they sit in a safer position, they sit just behind the debt. They don't sit in class B, they sit in class A side. James: Got it. Got it. So it looks like if you look at class A and you are saying is much more attractive. A lot of people compared it to class B [inaudible] right. Can you hold on, let me just fix my staff cause I didn't want this to be half. Okay, good. So forget about it. So let's start again. So class A has a lot more attractiveness to it and compared to class B because class A people get 10% flat, I guess, right? Reed: Well, yes and no, there's pros and cons for both. I just explained the class A that yes, I sit at and I have a 10% pref, but their cap did it at a certain return. They cannot earn any more than 10%. James: And you can buy them out at a refi? Reed: I can buy them out at any stage and if we smack the deal out of the park and 20% IRRs, they share none of that because they want to sit in a safer position. And that's where class B, yes, you're sitting behind class A, but you get all the profits, you know, we split all the profits, profit sharing at the end. And so again, you have to understand capital stacks and you have to understand risk in relationship, just capital stacks in order to really grasp your mind around the AB structure. It's pretty simple once explained. And I can show you a diagram if for any investors who might be interested in it, but again, it's just a different way of looking at it and I come from the ground up construction world. I've built a lot of ground up multi-family. This is exactly how multi-families constructed a finance. Your debt, you have a mez equity piece, you have equity, and then you have the GP and it's just capital stack and math. So it's very basic, once you get your head wrapped around it. And probably a lot of people scratching their heads thinking, Oh my God, what's he talking about? James: No, no, for me, it's pretty simple. I mean, I think it makes sense. I mean there's risk in both classes and you take that risk. I mean, even in my book about, you know, different investors want different things. Some people just want cashflow, 10% flat cash flow. Some people really want the equity. I mean, it depends on their life cycle, where they are in your life cycle. Reed: And so as an operator, I've got to continue offering that. And the way I've offered it in terms of how deals and now underwriting is, that's how I've split the baby from the bathwater as they say. You know, I've split it and made sure that I can serve as both the type of investors who one wants cash flow, the other one wants longterm appreciation. James: Got it. Got it, got it. So, Reed, let's go to more personal stuff. I mean, can you name like top three things that you think is your secret sauce to success? Reed: That's a hard one. Look, there are no secrets. Hard work is...let's talk about secrets. Hard work is so underestimated. I moved to this country. I didn't have a job. I was an engineer. I literally dawned on a suit and I knocked on 50 different engineering joints and engineering companies until I found a person to say yes. I'm not afraid of hard work. Am I lucky? Have I got a bit of luck in this? Sure. I'm lucky that I was born into a really awesome family that, you know, I come from a blue-collar working background, I've got blue-collar work ethic. I'm not afraid to roll up the sleeves and get my hands dirty. I'm also not afraid to back myself. I think that's another key to success is like you've got to learn and you've got to be okay with betting on yourself. And I remember when I first took that plane from Australia, I quit my job, my well paying job in Australia and I moved to the United States to give it a crack. As I say, you know, I was betting on myself. I was betting that I can figure this out. I might not have had the answers at that point, but I knew that I was resourceful enough to figure it out and I have. And so those two things, there's a little bit of luck in there, but it's also hard work and learning to back yourself; are really too important skill sets, life skill sets that that people need to learn. And I've developed that through going and backpacking around the world with, you know, $2,000 in my pocket, you know, understanding the value of a dollar and stretching a dollar. You know, people ask me all the time, well, what advice could you give to a 20-year-old? Go backpacking, go to a third world country, go backpacking for two years, come back and then you go find yourself, you go in the university of life, figure it out, go understand a little bit of the street ways and then come back and you'll get started. I think going out and widening your horizon, taking off the blinkers and experiencing other cultures, otherwise how people live their lives is all parts of learning and why I that I've been very lucky that I was able to travel and I paid for my own travel. I've saved my own money. I was able to go out and do it and experience different cultures, take on their advice, take on the wisdom and internalize it and spit it out and say this is what I want to do with my life. So a couple of pieces of advice of success there. James: Yeah, absolutely. Now I realize why people go backpacking and never really understand, but you made it very clear, right? Cause you really like on the street with a shoestring budget and you're talking to different people, you're talking to normal people. Reed: You get a skill. I'll tell you a story. I was in South America, this is 10 years ago and I had a rule. I was backpacking by myself. The most invigorating thing I've ever done in my entire life, James i,s to backpack by myself. I had no one to answer to, I would meet someone at a hostel or a group of people and say, this is awesome, let's go. But you get really bloody good at determining if you're going to be, you know, you only have 30 seconds to make an impression and I'm going to either have to have a beer with you or I'm not gonna have a beer with you. And it was very quick, that skill became very, very quick. I had a rule that when I was backpacking by myself, you know, if I go into a bar and I hadn't met someone within three drinks, I'll move to another bar. I never left that first bar because it was always about putting yourself out there, being vulnerable, talking to other backpackers and getting that interpersonal skills really sharpened and really honed in. And that's part of what you learned from backpacking. James: That's very interesting. That's the perspective that you get when you go backpacking. Let's go to another one more aspect of your life. Is there a proud moment in your life that you can never forget until the end? One proud moment that you're really, really proud that you think, I'm really proud of myself. Reed: I think getting that first job in New York City, getting that first job, getting that visa, I was proud that that was, I did it. Like that was the coming to America story. In order to stay, I needed a visa, I needed a job. And so that proud mate, if I got that job, it meant that that was, you know, talk about doors opening. That was the first door that I could unlock. And that then meant that there's a bunch of other doors behind it. But that meant I could stay and I could figure it out. And that was the first proud moment that I think, it was, you know, again, I was literally walking the pavements, knocking on doors because in 2012 you know, putting your resume out into the indeed.com or whatever just was useless. I needed to go knock on doors and say, Hey, here's my resume. I'm more looking for a job. And a lot of people said no, but it takes that one, yes. And that one yes can change your life. So that one yes for the job that meant that I could stay in the United States. It meant I can continue the journey. James: Got it. Got it. So one other question from one of the passive investors is like, is there any advice that you would give to passive investors that are investing in a syndicated commercial real estate? Reed: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is you have to have an alignment of interest, trust, and transparency but do you get on with the operator? Because the number one thing that passive investors want to invest in is they don't actually invest in the deal, the deal is sort of second secondary, right? The first thing is the person. Who re you investing with, who is your partner that you're going to go into this deal with, who is the operator who's going to take control of this asset? And if you don't like them or you don't have that energy that I spoke about earlier, then don't invest with them. And it's very easy to figure out who you like and who you don't like. And again, this is a world, of life is short and you want to do business with people who you like and you want to be with, right? That's the whole point of why we do this business. And it goes both ways, both from the operation point of view, my point of view, and also from the passive investor point of view, we're all in this business to make money. Let's do it with people that we like. So I think that's the short of it. James: So Reed, why don't you tell our audience and listeners how to get hold of you and how to Reed: Yeah, sure. So I've got for those listeners who like to read, I've got two books. I've got the Investing in the US which is on Amazon. It was a bestseller last year. You can find that and I've also got 10,000 Miles to the American Dream, a story of financial freedom. So those two books are on my website or on Amazon. You can go to reedgoossens.com, that's www.reedgoossens.com. Everything's up there. My podcasts are up there, my blogs are up there. If you have any questions, you can click on little links and stuff. And I always offer people or listeners, if they're coming through LA and they want to meet up for a beer or lunch, I'm always interested to meet up and talk shop. You just got to email me at info@reedgoossens.com and just give me enough heads up and let me know when you come through town. James: Awesome. Great. Welcome. And thanks for coming into the show and I'm sure you added tons of value. Reed: Thank you very much, mate. James: Alright, bye.

480: Dr. Mark Milligan: Implementing Telehealth in Your Practice

Healthy Wealthy & Smart

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 23, 2020 59:24

Live from my personal Facebook page, I welcome Dr. Mark Milligan, PT, DPT from Anytime.Healthcare as he discussing how we can implement telehealth services into our physical therapy practice. In this episode we discuss: * How to set up a telehealth platform * How to perform an initial eval and follow sessions * How to bill (at least what we know right now) * The paperwork you need to start seeing patients today * And so much more! Resources: Anytime.healthcare Doxy.me Connected Health Policy/Telehealth Coverage Policies State Survey of telehealth Commercial Payers Telehealth Paperwork For more information on Mark: Dr. Mark Milligan, PT, DPT, is a board certified, fellowship-trained orthopedic physical therapist. He specializes in the intelligent prevention and treatment of all human movement conditions. He is a full-time clinician with multiple patient populations and is the Founder of Revolution Human Health, a non-profit physical therapy network. Helping others create the best patient experience and outcomes through his continuing education company specializing in micro-education is also a passion. His latest venture is creating the easiest pathway to access healthcare for providers and patients with Anywhere Healthcare, a tele-health platform. He is an active member of the TPTA, APTA, and AAOMPT and has a great interest in the pain epidemic, public health, population health, and governmental affairs. Read the full transcript below: Karen: (00:07): Welcome to the healthy, wealthy and smart podcast. Each week we interview the best and brightest in physical therapy, wellness, and entrepreneurship. We give you cutting edge information you need to live your best life, healthy, wealthy, and smart. The information in this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as personalized medical advice. And now here's your host, dr Karen. Let's see. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I am your host, Karen Litzy and in Karen (00:40): Day's episode. I am sort of re airing a Facebook and Instagram live that I did last Wednesday with dr Mark Milligan all about telehealth. So a little bit more about Mark. He is a board certified fellowship trained orthopedic physical therapist. He specializes in the intelligent prevention and treatment of all human movement conditions. He's fulltime clinician with multiple patient populations and is the founder of revolution human health, a nonprofit physical therapy network, helping others create the best patient experience and outcomes through his continuing education company specializes specializing in micro education is also a passion. His latest venture is creating an easy pathway to access healthcare for providers and patients with anywhere. Dot. Healthcare. This is a telehealth platform. He is an active member of the Texas PTA, P T a and a amped and has great interest in pain epidemic, public health, population health and government, governmental affairs. Karen (01:41): I should also mention that he is also on the PPS coven task force. So if you want to get the most up to date information on how the coven pandemic is affecting physical therapists in private practice, you can find that at the private practice sections website. It's all free even for non-members. All right, now onto today's podcast. Like I said, this is a recording from the Facebook live that we did last week. And in it we talk about what is telehealth. We talk about how to set up telehealth, how to implement telehealth, how to conduct a telehealth session for an initial eval or for a followup. We talk about how to get paid for telehealth and this is the information that we knew at the time. That was last Wednesday. Like I said, things are moving really, really quickly here. So the best thing to do in Mark says this is to check with your individual insurance providers, check with your state things are moving really, really fast. Karen (02:45): And of course finally we talk about answer a lot of viewer questions. So a big thanks to Mark and I think this is really timely and I hope that all physical therapists that if you're listening to this, that you can set up an implement your telehealth practice ASAP. Thanks for listening. So today we're talking about how to implement telehealth into your physical therapy practice. As we all know, the COBIT 19 virus is causing a lot of disruption in healthcare and we're hoping that telehealth can help at least mitigate some of that interruption for the sake of our patients, for the sake of our own practices and for our businesses and for our profession. So Mark, what I would love for you to do is can you just talk a little bit more about yourself, where you're coming from and why we're doing this interview. Mark (03:34): So Mark Milligan, Austin, Texas physical therapists board certified fellowship trained, but also for the last few years have stepped into a telehealth space and have anywhere healthcare, which is a digital platform for delivering healthcare. It's agnostic to provide her, so PTs, mental health providers, anybody that needs a HIPAA compliant platform to connect with patients. So the current situation is it's pretty mind blowing, right? We're seeing a, a world changing epidemic that will change the landscape of healthcare as we know it today. For several reasons. One is that people will be now exposed to a delivery of care method that they weren't otherwise are supposed to before. So telehealth and tele PT and tele medicine had been out there for a long time. Teladoc started in, in 1987, somewhere in there. So it's been around for a long time, but a rapid adoption of telehealth has really occurring right now for physical therapists. Mark (04:30): What we need to know and what are the most important things right now are how it applies to us in this landscape. How can we be the best providers to meet our patients? Demand to help quell fear, doubt and an anxiety for our patients as well as, as providers and our businesses. And so stepping into this space is, it's been a little bit overwhelming. It's been a nonstop 70, 96 hours really. And so everything that I say today may or may not be true and four hours or smart [inaudible] because of how fast things are changing. So yeah, I think that tees it up. You want to kick it off? Yeah, Karen (05:10): No, I think that's, that's great. That's perfect. So let's start out with, we got a number of questions from people from different therapists from around the country. And I think let's start with the number one question is how do you actually set it up? Totally basic one Oh one. So let's start with that, Mark (05:33): Right? So the first thing you have to make sure is that you have patients that want this. And right now everybody wants that, right? So patient adoption of technology can be challenging, especially especially generational. So the issue with in, yeah. Pre COBIT has been adoption by, by therapists and by patients just because of ease of use. Now it's a, it's a forced adoption. So now we're in a set up where we, where are going to want this regardless of whether or not they want it. So first thing is patient population. Second thing is you need to look at your business, right? You need to look at your patient workflow and your business flow. So you need to have the appropriate from a business standpoint, you need to have a liability to make sure that you're covered in the telehealth space. So in my experience over the past few years, almost every liability insurance cover, it doesn't see telehealth as a, is a different delivery mode for physical therapy. Mark (06:26): But with everything changing rapidly, it would be real. It would be highly advised that you contact your liability insurance provider and make sure that tele-health is approved as, as in your cupboard. All right? So that's logistics. Secondly, you need paperwork, you need onboarding paperwork for digital visits. You'll need a telehealth consent form and you'll need the digital release form. And if you're recording visits, you need to have a very specific form that that allows you to record patient visits. Some States don't allow recording some. And so you have to be very mindful of that. So onboarding paperwork, it's, it's good to have in fillable PDFs so that a patient can fill it out and then send it back to you digitally. Making sure that that transmission is is secure. You can also have E faxes, right? So they can electronically fax to you over a secure portal as well. So just basic things that we haven't really thought about as providers we need to adopt as mobile providers. Right. So, Oh, go ahead. Karen (07:24): I know, I was going to say, so when we're talking about who is the best, what is the easiest way for us as a clinician to get that paperwork Mark (07:32): Right? So they can email me. I've gotten a tele-health consent. I've got I've got that. So they can just email me at market anywhere. Dot. Healthcare. And I can send 'em I'm been sending that out over Facebook. I'm happy to share that with people. And of course you need to make sure and adapt it for your state in your practice. It's a word doc so you can switch out the logos and everything, but I'm happy to provide that for people. They can pass that that step. Karen (07:57): And then one more question on paperwork and things like that. So when we are calling our insurance, our liability insurance carriers, aren't there specific questions we need to ask them or like what is the best way to have that conversation with our liability insurance providers? Mark (08:16): Right. Just say in this facing time that we're starting to provide care digitally. Am I covered for providing telehealth as a physical therapist? Simple. Straightforward. Karen (08:25): Okay. And so you may already be covered in your current policy, it might be part of your current policy, you just don't know it and then you're not, is that then added as a rider to your yes. Mark (08:38): Typically it's a very inexpensive writer. Okay. Karen (08:41): All right. So before we set everything up, we get our liability coverage covered and we get consent forms, which can email to you or you can share them on under this post. It's whatever you feel more, most comfortable with or what might be easiest. And then we do what we got the paperwork covered. Now what? Mark (09:06): So you're sending that out to the patient. So they need to agree to be treated digitally. Right now it's really an interesting space. The CMS has waived temporarily a HIPAA privacy with when it comes to digital communication. I'm can't stress this enough that this is a temporary wave in, in the absence of mass abilities to communicate or HIPAA compliant platforms that patient that people are able to communicate via other means of non HIPPA compliant video software. So right now Skype and FaceTime are considered and what's the other one? Zoom and zoom and those well-known platforms are, are open, enable all those zooms just increased their prices yesterday. Yeah, so I would argue that you could use the, what's free and what's available right now in preparation as you prepare after this is over, you'll need to go back to HIPAA compliance. So in the immediacy video platforms are readily available across all. You cannot use public facing video platforms like tick talk or other things that mass put out your video. Okay. Karen (10:22): Instagram live or Facebook live. You can have your patient video, you can have your patient treatment sessions over live video, Mark (10:30): Right. That it means sounds, it sounds obvious, but you never know where people will do right by a group session. You can just do a giant group session. I'm going to train everybody on the East coast of America on a Facebook live. Karen (10:42): Yeah. Okay. All right, so good to know. So no one social media lives like we're doing right now, but for the time being during this outbreak, we can use face time, we can use zoom, we can use Facebook, zoom, Skype, Mark (10:59): Right. Totally. And you need to make sure that in your notes and documentation for your intake software or your intake paperwork, that you are waiting, that the patient is waiving their HIPAA rights during this time due to the COBIT outbreak and you are using this unsecured software and you will return to it as soon as possible. Right. Okay. This is a window. This isn't something that will last. And you need to note for your own CYA that you are, you acknowledged the existing coven scenario and that you will prepare for post that with, with my platform. Yeah. Yep. So technology on the technology side, it's really easy because you can plug and play as long as you get someone's if they have an iPhone or if they have Skype, easy set up, you can connect technology there. So once you get the form signed, you have the informed consent, the HIPAA, the HIPAA included waiver as well to sure that they understand that they are on an, they have to understand and agree to an unsecured network. Mark (11:58): Even though you can provide it, some people may not want it because FaceTime, that's all easily hackable. Right? So so they may not, or may, they may, they may not want to agree to that. So just have to be transparent with them in the, in your services. Right. So once you get that, I mean, it's really a matter of getting the patients, depending on your system, everybody's so different. So if you're, if you are a concierge PT and you're practicing out there for a fee for service cash base, you handle all your own scheduling when it comes for their time, you just flip them and you just call them on FaceTime, right? You collect their face, their number and you connect that way and you do your treatment, which we'll talk about in a bit, some other scheduling systems. You may have to, you know, type in a telehealth visit and your scheduling system or have some type of a demarkation for a telehealth visit versus an in person visit. Mark (12:47): And so work with your scheduling software, work with who you work with in order to make sure that that's appropriate so you can have the right amount of, or the right type of scheduling so you know where to go and what to do and how to bounce it. A billing, again, for the concierge practices out there, this is fee for service. Tele-Health doesn't take as long as normal to as normal PT. So I have my hourly rate broken down into 15 minute increments because it's roughly about 15 to 30 minutes. Is it an average tele-health followup evaluations in the last 40 to 50 minutes? But it just completely depends. So fee for service, it's really straight forward. You just charge per time, per minute, dollar, dollar, dollar, $52 a minute to 15 minute depending on your price point. Karen (13:29): Okay. All right. So now let's get into, so knowing how to actually set it up. So we've got a lot of these different things. What are some other platforms? I know anywhere. Dot. Health care. Doxy.Me. Mark (13:46): Yup. Doxy.Me co view. So anywhere. Dot. Healthcare is the platform that I created. It's straight forward. Right now I'm offering you a $10 a month, unlimited use for anybody for three months while onboarding everybody. So to, to help people get to see patients doxy dot. Me actually has a free version where that's a, a room where people meet. So you can actually sign up. The patient is sent a link, they click on a link and it drops them right in a meeting room. Super convenient, super easy. There's no bells and whistles and it's free right now. So you can do that. I think a couple of other platforms I've seen throughout the Facebook live of Facebook groups that I'm in a few platforms are pushing out a free entry level software right now. So it's everywhere. So I think Karen (14:31): We'll use G suite Mark (14:32): D suite, right? So G suite, if you have a BA with, with Google, you can use Google meet. Right now actually with the, with the HIPAA waiver that's happening right now, you can actually use Google hangout. That would be another appropriate thing to use as long as the other person has the G suite or Google doc, a Google suite downloaded on their computer. So there are lots of, there's literally lots of options now there, there are other companies that offer other features, right? As you get into anywhere that healthcare, not only as a platform, but also as a billing feature and a scheduling feature. Doxy dot. Me if you upgrade to the higher levels, has a scheduling feature, a messaging feature, all types of stuff. So it really looking for different platforms. You need to be, do your due diligence and test them out to see what fits your practice best. I mean, some, some have exercises that are completely a part of the package that you can just have an HTP that sends right out from the program. Some have an actual, a range of motion measuring system so people can move their arm or their body in front of them. The then they can actually measure range of motion live on camera, which is pretty cool. So it just really depends on the need for your, your practice and also the practice size. Karen (15:44): Got it. Yeah. Okay. So that's a lot of options for people going from free to low priced too. Mark (15:52): $200 a month for co for HIPAA compliance zoom. Karen (15:55): Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So lots of options there for people. So we know we need some onboarding paperwork and we need to call our liability insurance carriers to see if they cover telehealth. Presently. And if they don't, then we need to ask them to put an addendum on and you can, they can do that immediately. It doesn't take like 30 days for that to happen. Right. Should be immediate. Okay. And so once we have all of the right paperwork and everything we decide what platform we're going to use and you just gave a whole bunch of different platforms that people can use. So all of those platforms are pretty easy to set up. And like you said, you send a link to the patient, they'd drop in and boom, there you go. And at this time we can use Facebook and Skype and, and not Facebook, sorry, Facebook. We can use Skype, regular zoom face time, all that. Okay. All right. Now Mark (16:58): You may need other equipment though. You may, depending on the situation you may need. So some people, a desktop versus a computer are versus a tablet versus a phone all matter, right? So a desktop computer tends to be really well for you to have good communication and see the patient really well. But it's also very challenging for me to move my desktop to show somebody how to get on the floor and exercise, right? So the part of being a a digital physical therapist is that you have to be able to move and your equipment has to move with you. So some people use, I, you know, some people use a selfie stick to demonstrate exercises, right? Some people have one of those little iPhone holders that can be multiple or wrap around something so they can have different angles or show people at different places. Mark (17:41): So understand that desktop can be good for this face to face interaction and the, and the immediate subjective interview. But maybe moving towards the objective exam or, or showing the exercise parts you may want to find or have a different device that's more mobile. So just thoughts for that. And you also need to think about your area or your headphones, your microphone and your lighting that can all add or take away from the experience of the digital experience. So making sure that you have those things. I use, I'm old school. I just use the old wired ear buds. They, when you're on the computer a long time, the wireless can die, right? And then all of a sudden you don't have new headphones. So I'm always a fan of just good old fashioned things that won't die on you after a long day of work. Mark (18:26): So something to think about. You also may want to get a tripod to hold up your computer or you can get a standing desk. So there's lots of options in that space. But also you have to be considered for your backdrop. I love your backdrop that you have there in New York here and with the, with the cherry tree, that's all. It's very Boston's. That's awesome. I just have a plain white wall. Just be mindful of the environment that you're delivering this care in, right? You don't want you to be distracted. You don't want the patient to be distracted. You need to connect with the patient. Some of the key things that you need to think about are the connection that you're going to have with a patient. Something you can do easier face to face. It's challenging to get the connection and to have the emotional connection with the patient by a digital care. So setting up the environment for not only you to feel safe and, and that you feel comfortable that you're, no one's going to bust in, but also your patient needs to feel safe in that space too, so they can communicate to you in a free way that their patient information isn't being broadcasted to other people as well. So backdrops, microphones, computers, tablets, all have to be taken into consideration while you're doing this, while you're doing this intervention. Karen (19:32): Okay, thank you. Those are great tips. How about cats that could, that could help or hurt you. Right? People love a cat. Great. If not, it can be a problem Mark (19:44): Or at least they're not allergic to it. They're alerted to it. It doesn't matter. Right? So Karen (19:47): Right. So pets can help or hinder, just kind of depends. Okay. So we've got, let's say now everyone has a better idea of how to set it up. And then the next question I got was how, Oh, they said this is great. Sound isn't great. I don't know why this sounds not great on, on Instagram, but, well, I mean it's going to be out on it as a podcast as well. So we'll, you'll be able to hear full sound tomorrow. At any rate, I dunno what to do. I could get my earbuds, but as we just said, what if they time out on me? Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about let's talk about how do you, what was it? How did, Oh, how do you actually execute a session? Mark (20:40): Yeah. So once you've got somebody on the line, once you've got a patient in front of you, right? We know from our PT and our PT exam that about 80 to 90% of your differential diagnosis occurs in the subjective. So you go back to your old way of being, you shut up and you listen to the patient. Right? So, you know, so this is also assuming that you're doing an evaluation via telehealth, right? So most people at this space have patients that they'll flip from brick and mortar or in person into telehealth. So that's a different beast, right? So that's followup. That's exercise progression. Those are obvious things, right? That you're going to show them. You're going to talk them through their progression and talk to them about what they need to do next. Maybe show them a few new exercises when you're, we're, we're going to get, what we're talking about right now is the new patient that you'd never met before and what, how do you gain information to get them treated? Mark (21:33): So subjective is key, right? You need to have your differential diagnosis hat on. You need to ask the next best questions, their intake form. You should have looked over, created your hypothesis list and make sure that you have a good idea of what you're trying to discover. It's your responsibility as a provider. I know it's written in the Texas legislation that if you, if the patient is not appropriate for digital care, you have to get them to an in-person provider, right? So doing your, you still have to do your red flag screens, you still have to do your due diligence and your differential diagnosis and make sure the patient's appropriate. Right? This is, you have to consider a digital visit to be no different than an in person visit. You have to take every precaution that you would take. I'm minus taking vitals unless the patient has their own, you know, portable, vital kit. You're gonna have them do that. But you have to take every precaution you would from an initial evaluation perspective as you would in a digital space. So going back to forms, you also have to have your intake form and consent to treat in there as well. That needs to be signed off as well. Karen (22:31): So the, the same sort of forms that someone would have if they were coming to you or if you're like a mobile practice like me, you have them sign that initial paperwork regardless of whether you're seeing them in their home, in your clinic or, or via telehealth completely. Mark (22:48): This is, you cannot be this any differently. Right? So take it, having all the consent to treat forms, signed all your intake paperwork done, differential diagnosis, red flags, you know, your three tiers. Are they appropriate for physical therapy or are they a treat and refer or they refer. You have to have that, you have to have that hat on. And so if they're presenting with sub with symptoms that aren't musculoskeletal and presentation, you need to be mindful of that and get them to the approved provider, right? So you have to be a triage at this point. So once you get through and determine their appropriate for intervention, you have to get your thinking hat on, right? This is where, this is where things change. And as a mobile PTM, I know that you have walked into somebody's house and been like, huh, how are we going to do PT in here today? Mark (23:32): Or you have to completely be a problem solver. Think about being a problem solver on steroids when it comes to digital health. Right? Because you didn't have, at least in someone's physical environment, you can see what they have available. Right? If you treating me right now, all you would know is I'd have a white wall behind me. You don't know what chairs I have. You don't know what equipment I have. You don't know anything that I have. So asking them about what equipment's available is important. I take all my patients, depending on what they have, if they have, my most common thing I treat is, is back pain. So most commonly about 20 to 40% of patients, that's 20 to 30% of patients will fit into some type of directional preference when it comes to low back pain. So I take them through an active range of motion our digital active range of motion to see what exacerbates or relieves their symptoms. And if, and if repeated extensions and standing it relieves their symptoms, I go why? Clear out other things, but I go right into treatment. Right. So you can use progressive movements, repeated motions right in your treatment from the get go the same way you would do in the clinic. Mark (24:35): Some of them prior, Karen (24:36): It's New York. I don't even literally grown even here at anymore. It's just did with something there. Is there the engine going up, I don't even hear it. Anyway. Mark (24:46): White noise. White noise. Yeah. So you have to go through your objective range of motion in your objective measurements just like you would in home or in the clinic at home. So knowing your physical exam and having a musculoskeletal screen is super important. So if I have somebody with radiating arm pain that I'm treating, where's my arm on my camera? If I have somebody with radiating right arm pain, I'm going to take them through cervical active range of motion. I've actually even had people do over pressure to themselves. Right. To see, I've had somebody to do their own spurlings to see if it's ridic. So you have to get really creative teaching someone how to do a UNL TT a on camera is because you have to back up. Right? That's another thing. You have to have visibility and you have to have the ability to see what the patient's doing and also correct them while they're doing their motion. So I take my patients, do as many physical exams that they can do on their own without, without me being present to do it. Karen (25:45): Yeah. So I think it's important to note cause my good friend Amy Samala said, can you do this for brand new patients in your practice or is this just to be used for existing patients? So I think Amy, I think we're covering that right now, that yes, Mark is sort of taking us through how he might do an initial evaluation with someone via telehealth. Mark (26:05): Totally. Totally. Now I think we should probably circle back to billing again and payment. I think we, we've, Karen (26:12): Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's definitely talk about that. And one other thing that I, I want to make people aware of, Mark, is how using you want to have space. So not only you want to make sure that not only your patient has space or depth, but that you do as well as a therapist because you may need to step back to show them something and then come closer. Mark (26:33): Right. And I've I often, so I have a flat couch in the back, so I have this couch that's right behind me so I actually use that. I pushed my chair of the way and I show repeated extensions and prone. It's a six or seven foot long couch and I show double needs to test and I sh if I mirror exercises for patients. So you cannot do everything verbally, you can't. Could you imagine telling somebody, okay, I'm going to walk you through a double a single knee to chest with words only. It becomes extremely challenging. So you get up and you move. I just hop on the couch. I'm like, all right, so you're going to lay on your back. You'll grab both knees. You see my hands on the outside of my knees. Knees are slightly apart. We're going to pull that all the way up until you feel a big stretch in your back and I show them. Mark (27:13): I walked through the exercises with them. Same thing with, same thing with nerve glides, right? If I'm doing a U L T T a I'm going to say, I'll bring your a shoulder all the way up. Like you're going to put those little, or you CC that you're going to put the little ion right and then you're gonna lift your elbow up and see if that changes it. Right. And so you have to walk them through. It's easier for them to mirror you than it is to say, okay, you need maximum shoulder flection with external rotation. NOLA deviate. Like you can't do that. Karen (27:39): Yeah, we know jargon doesn't work. Yes. You can never say that in an NPR. If you are face to face them, you would never just sit there with your arms folded and be like, okay, flex your arm to hear externally. Like if you just want to do that, you wouldn't do it. I think it's important to know that we can still certainly in well versed in strong verbal communication in this space. Oh, that's nice. From work. Yes. Or there was a delay. Oh, okay. So I think we're good. So Amy said, yes, sorry, there's a delay. She's all the way in New Jersey, so forgive the Jersey part. Yeah, New Jersey. Okay. all right. So I think people get an idea that yes, this is how you can set this up. You just want to make sure that each of you have enough physical space to do everything that you want to do. That yes, you can do your initial evaluation. It's all about the subjective, in my opinion, in that initial evaluation anyway. Definitely. and then once you see them for the initial evaluation, as you start progressing them, like you said, it would be like any other exercise progression you're just not putting hands on, but it can be done. Mark (28:51): Definitely. Definitely. If you think about the interventions that we do in the clinic that you can apply to home. So I work with people that you know, that don't, they may not have good balance. So safety is a, is a concern in that space. Right? So I talk people in a corner, I show them what it looks like to get into a corner with a chair in front of me or in front of my couch or the chair in front of me and teach them how to do single leg stance while having my fingertips on the chair. Right eye. You have to physically show people what to do so they understand that better. And so like you said, it's about being able to show and speak at the same time, right? Because a lot of the field like nerve tension testing, a lot of times it's, you can feel the tension before the symptoms ever get there. Mark (29:34): So you have to educate somebody that has a really angry nerve that's a, it's a hot nerve and say, look, we're just going to take this up until you barely feel it. Right. We're just going to touch it. And then if you feel it there, just bring it back down. Right. You, you can't rely on your hands to feel that tension anymore. Not that we can reliably feel it anyway, but we want to make sure that we prime the patient for success. Right? Communicate expectations. Like we're going to do some discovery today. We're going to walk through a lot of different movements to see what's happening with your body. See if we can figure out ways that we can help you feel better through movement. Cause that's what ideally what we're going to do, right? We need to make sure that we enable patients and make them feel safe and comfortable that we're going to help them. We're going to take them through this. We just need to, we need to communicate to that. This is going to be something that I should be completely comfortable with. Yeah. Karen (30:24): Perfect. All right. Now let's get to the part that everybody really wants to know about billing. Someone. let's see. Oh, Mark Rubenstein also New Jersey. He had kinda some of the same questions. No, I have nothing against New Jersey, New Jersey. So he kind of had the same question I had before we went live. He said but Medicare will only pay now for existing patients as per info yesterday. So this is the info, I guess on that evisit versus tele-health. So can you kind of give us, cause I know just for background, Mark is a part of a PPS task force and he is really being updated a lot. And I'll let you kind of talk a little bit more about that and, and how you are helping to work the billing aspect of things and the difference between an evisit and tele-health. Mark (31:20): Right. I'd like to first shout out to the PPS members, Allie shoes and the I and alpha are our lobbyist for the APA. We are meeting for hours daily and we are, so everyday we have scheduled calls on this task who have a task force. We're pushing out content on the APA plus the PPS site. So there are 18 to 20 people that are hard at work to get, to gather information, to interpret it and then to question it and then make sure that it's legal. Right. Because there's information that comes out that it's great information, but it may not be legal for us to do based on practice act. So there's, there's a federal level, then there's the, then there's the PTA level, then there's the state level, then there's your individual insurance levels. So there's a, there's so many different paradigms. It's not just a cut and dry situation. Mark (32:06): So right now, some of the biggest things that we're working on behind the scenes with this PPS task force are really are defining out what it means from Medicare as it relates to the visit ruling. So E visits technically are not telehealth. Medicare is not calling these eVisits tele-health. They're calling them eVisits because they derive them from the medical, from the MD coding as, as a bra, a brief and abrupt follow up to a situation where the patient is in an engaged patient. So imagine somebody who may not be feeling well after seeing, having a doctor's appointment just to follow up to touch. So the visit codes right now can only be billed based on time, so their cumulative time and there are three levels. The max level is 21 minutes to be billed one time over a week. And so you add all the time for one week and over 21 minutes is the third code. Mark (32:59): And that can only be a build a once every, well in seven one time in seven days. There is a question right now about whether or not that code can be repeated the next seven days. That information has not been gotten yet. We have not had a clear answer on that. So please be patient while we investigate whether or not that code can be repeated the next week. So right now, currently we are still working on whether or not now that these eVisits have come out, the question is now whether or not CMS sees us as telehealth providers, which upfront does it look like they do. But we still haven't gotten for Bay. We still haven't gotten the, the appropriate word from CMS whether or not we are. We are providing tele-health, which they said we're not. So we can assume we can assume anything. Mark (33:49): But so they said we're not providing tele-health, but we think they will. They won't include us in the, as a telehealth provider, which is extremely important because if they don't consider us Medicare providers, then we can, well, I'll wait about Medicare billing Medicare patients, we'll, we'll wait to hear what happens. I'll have to have an update on that. And so right now we are not approved providers for telehealth, for Medicare. And we can build he visits with an established patient that has to make contact through a patient portal to the provider to request their evisit. Now it's been clarified that you can notify a patient that they have the option of that type of care. You can tell the patient, Hey, you know, we're not treating people in person, but you do have the option for an evisit. Here's how you do it. If you choose, if you were to choose to have an E visit, you would go to this part of our website to our port, your patient portal and request a visit so you can prime patients to go utilize that service. Whether or not you can only do that for one week or multiple weeks, that's in question. Karen (34:52): Okay. And a patient portal is not Skype zoom face time or any of the telehealth platforms that is not a patient yet. Mark (35:04): Well, some platforms have a portal, some, so it has to be a patient portal. So it has to be a place where a patient can log in and request a visit. And so we're still also waiting for a clear definition of a patient portal. But for our understanding the patient, it's a place where the patient goes to get their information or connect or message their provider. Right. So right now that's still being clarified through CMS on the other private payer front and medicate well, so Medicaid is being rapidly adopted by payers all across the country. Right. So we've seen, I know Louisiana is about to release a wording today at some point. I know that I think Minnesota, I think that a few others have already, Medicaid has already blasted that inflammation and that are, that are, that there are approving and paying for telehealth or physical therapists, payers on a national level are all over the place. Mark (36:00): So if you are a, in the work provider, you need to call your payers and ask very specific questions and we have people working on this across the country. You have to ask them if your patient has tele-health benefits, you need to ask them if those benefits are payable to a physical therapist. So if a therapist is a PT, a paid as a payable provider of telehealth services, if they need any modification codes, right? So like an Oh two location code modifier, right? That needs to be asked and then what CPT codes they reimburse for. Okay. Right. So manual therapy is not going to be one, but neuro, our neuro they're ex their acts home care, self care, all of those codes should be available. And it just depends on the, on the payer and the carrier. Okay. I have a Google doc that we can link that I'm trying to collect that data from across the country. Mark (36:58): So people can have open access to it that I can send you that link here and it's on a couple of Facebook pages. But we're trying to collect that data so people can see because, and you don't put any reimbursable fees, don't breach your contracts, don't talk about a fee per schedule, but where you're scheduling fees or your fee schedule. But I'm just put whether or not they pay if it's parody, right? Some States out parody. So here's the kicker. Parody States doesn't miss it necessarily mean payment, right? And this is a, this is a very confusing, a very confusing thing. So somebody says, Oh, we have parody in the state so that, and then we are going to get paid equal in person as we do digitally. Just because you have parody doesn't mean to pay your pace for telehealth, right? They may pay for physical therapy, but they may not pay for tele rehab, right? Yes. Check. Karen (37:47): Why can they just not make this easy? Mark (37:50): Right? So you can have parody in a state and you could have a parody law and then the payer not even pay for telehealth. Right? So there's nuances upon nuance, on nuance. And in some States, some carriers have contracts with larger telemedicine providers and their members can only have telehealth through that tele provider and they may not have tele, they might not have tele PT. So then they had no tele-health, physical therapy option for that payer. Does that make sense? Karen (38:28): Okay, so I'm going to just do this. So for example, I'm just going to take a for example, and tell me if I heard you correctly. Oh one more thing. So Rina said, we're talking about the visits, that's all specifically for Medicare patients only the egoist. Yes, yes. Mark (38:46): As of now we have, we are unaware. I am unaware. I'll say that of any payer that's adopted the evisit policy and that's as of our Medicare Copa. Our coven call ended at noon today. So I don't know. That may change. Karen (39:02): Okay. So let's talk about your individual. Let's talk. Oh, somebody said, Oh Mark, can you bring your microphone closer to your mouth? But you've got the ear buds in, Mark (39:13): Right? So I have my phone a lot. Loose ear buds are going to the computer, but now you see if you can bring the microphone closer to your mouth, then they see my giant fivehead here and I'm like, I mean, how about if I go, that's fine. We'll do that. Karen (39:32): We'll do that. It's fine. It's fine. Okay. Oh, so here, let me just ask some, get some of the questions. So Kim wants to know, she's in New Jersey also. He lives in New Jersey, but her practice is in Brooklyn. How do we find out if our state has parody? Mark (39:51): So again, I, the, I will link you guys to the center for connected health policy and I also have a link to the parody in the different States. So I have links to both of those that I can give you, that we can add to this. Karen (40:07): Yeah, we can put that in the comments under this Facebook under the live here. Mark (40:12): So where, and so the, the commercial parody book is only 150 pages of nice, easy light reading. Where should I go for Facebook live? Karen (40:23): Just go, if you go to my page, just go to me and then you can put it in. You'll see, you'll see us. You can put it in the comment section or we could put it in the comments section. When we're done with the live, we can add it in as well. Mark (40:35): Oh, there we are. All right. So I'm dropping it in the, yeah, Karen (40:37): You can drop it in right now too. Mark (40:38): There's the parody laws. Here is the fact sheet on the UpToDate. This is a live document on what's happening in the world right now. As far as tele-health policies and procedures across the country. So those two documents should have a lot of information. But here's the kicker. Just because the state has a parody law doesn't mean that, that, that the payers have a policy that reimburses tele PT, Karen (41:08): Right? So parody and, and just to be very clear parody means because you, you can do tele-health because you see them in person. So it's like Mark (41:20): No. So parody only means parody only means payment. So parody means if they have a parody law and they both reimburse for inpatient physical therapy and for telehealth benefits, they paid equal. Karen (41:32): Say again Mark (41:33): If the, if the, if a payer say let's let's say blue cross blue shield, if that, if that patient has a blue cross blue shield policy and they have a physical therapy benefits and they have tele-health benefits that a physical therapist can provide, they pay equal. Right. Okay. So it's the same face to face as the say. So because a lot of insurances will the 75% or 50% of impersonal versus digital. So it's literally a payment equality clause. Karen (42:02): I see. Okay. Okay. But you have to call blue cross blue shield because they may not actually, that patient's policy might not include tele-health. Mark (42:13): Right. And then even if they have a parity law, you're not getting paid for it. Karen (42:17): Got it. Right. I got it right. It's okay. Kim. I hope that my inability to understand help you. Dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. Can hear Mark fine. I'm physic. Oh, Deborah joy Sheldon. She said, is there a particular language that needs to be included in the documentation? So when we document the visit, how, so? Let's say we know how to set it up. We have the visit, how do we document it? Mark (42:47): Right? So you typically documented as a telehealth visit. So there's no you, your billing will coat it with an OTU location modifier, but you need to denote specifically that it was a digital visit. Okay. Yeah, that's the, Karen (43:02): Because we just got a question on what's the location coding for telehealth and you just answered it. So Abby, I hope that that helps you. And [inaudible] can we skip insurance and just bill cash or has this new E health stuff messed that up? Mark (43:26): So that's unsure right now. So the visit has, it's not considered telehealth by early information. That's not considered to be telehealth. We are still not telehealth providers by Medicare. So that should not impact that. That's my, that's my personal uninformed or relatively informed opinion. Please don't take that to anybody else. We're still discovering that. And private payers still do not, are not adopting that yet. That we've heard of. And so you should, Mark (44:01): If you are currently billing or having people pay cash in there and they do not have coverage, then you should be able to continue doing that. Does that make sense? Okay. Right. I mean, you need to check your contract language. Where we get sticky is, is this considered a non-covered service by a policy? Right. So this is where the sticky sticky comes in. Okay. Is tele-health considered physical therapy just delivered in a different manner, not a non-covered service, right? Yeah. Yeah. Well that V that opinion varies. And so if it's a non-covered service for Medicare, you can, they can, you can charge cash for that service. Right? And so, and that also applies to other payers. Correct. So if, if your payer has a policy that considers telehealth to be reimbursable by PTs, you wouldn't be able to pay, have them pay cash. But if Karen (45:03): Your individual patient's insurance does not cover telehealth right, then can you charge the patient cash? Mark (45:12): I'm not a healthcare attorney. But we're doing that. Karen (45:16): Where the heck, I know she's on here somewhere here in Jackson. I know she's watching, I saw her log on, Karen (45:23): Come on or Jackson answer that question for me Karen (45:25): Or an answer that question please in the comment section if you're still watching if not, maybe we can ask her or care Gaynor through the APA might be able to answer that question. So again, that question is if Aaron's still watching is if your patient's specific policy does not cover telehealth, again we'll use blue cross blue shield. So they have blue cross blue shield, they do not cover telehealth. Can you charge cash to that patient if they don't have it covered on their policy? Mark (46:02): That is a good question. Yeah, that's a great question. And I think, I mean I, I think I know what my answer would be but I cannot speak as Karen (46:12): Brought any information to anyone or misleading information. So maybe that's something we can ask Cara Gaynor on Twitter. Maybe she can answer that or if Aaron is still listening, maybe she can pop that into the comment section at some point. So Mark (46:28): And having amazing people that are listening that can help. Yeah, exactly. Taking, cause this is a, this is a mad house right now when it comes to legislation and information. So it's all over the place and apparently so yeah, it's just all over the place. We can't information that was [inaudible] I did hear that. Some of the bigger things for Rhode Island and for Pennsylvania this morning, that the governor, the governor assigned legislation that would massively require all payers to pay all providers for telehealth. All right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay. One other big question that comes up is location for these for, for billing. Right. And so the word from CMS is the, the, the POS code is the location of the billing practitioner. So in the case where remote services are rendered it does not matter where the corporate address of the billing provider is either, nor does it matter what the beneficiary's address, it matters where the services was rendered. That is where the biller is located. Okay. All right. So when that happened, Karen (47:43): Put that into like example. Mark (47:45): So when that happens, let's say yes. So if you are, New York has parody, right? Or you got to know you guys have compact revolution, right? Correct. I thought you did. So let's say you're a large provider and you have multiple States that you are in charge over that or multiple States. You treat patients and you're billing Medicare that the, the, the service in the, in the billing, in the service location code is the place where the provider is located. Karen (48:18): I see. So like for example, if we use something like Athletico like a big gigantic company or maybe someone like, I think Michelle Kali has some places in Rhode Island. I think she just went to Massachusetts, but the headquarters is in Rhode Island. So if you're a therapist in their Massachusetts office, you're using Massachusetts. Mark (48:40): No, you're using wherever you are and delivering the code. Deliver. Karen (48:43): Where do you get where you are? Okay. Mark (48:45): Okay. Yup. Karen (48:46): Okay. and then Michelle Townshend said, how does this work with EHR? Ours? Mark (48:55): Yeah. So eeh Karen (48:57): So she is looking at a separate telehealth provider from our EHR who also does our billing. Mark (49:04): Right. So EHR is, there's only a handful of the HRS in the physical therapy space that offer tele-health as a part of the platform. I think PT everywhere is a platform that has that has it built in. And self doc is another ER EHR that'll be live and in the next couple of weeks they'll have a platform within six weeks. But most of them are stand alone freestanding. So you just have to find the best system that are set up that can work simultaneously with your other systems. There's really no way to unless the company has an integration with your EHR, which the HRS don't like to integrate with people because that's patient data and it's a, it's a whole hot mess. So most of these are just freestanding side by side. So you'll have your EHR on one side and you're in your camera on the other. So you just do, and that's what I did with anywhere healthcare, it's just basic connection so you can document everything ever somewhere else. Okay. Karen (50:03): All right. And then Debra says, Mark, my state has parody related to my hospital being F, Q, H C I do not know what that means. Any insight on that? So what does FQHC mean? Any thoughts if not, maybe Mark (50:25): It's a federally qualified health center federally. Okay. So they have parody. I don't think I understand the question. Karen (50:33): Yeah. In my S my state has parody related to my hospital being FQHC. Any insight on that? Mark (50:40): Oh good. So she Oh, she said they have parody. Karen (50:43): Yeah, they have PR has parody. Yeah. Mark (50:46): I'm unsure on that. That has to parody is I've, I linked that doc into the live on Facebook. I can look up parody by state and by organization. Okay. Yeah. Karen (50:59): Okay. Let's see. Let me we already touched, so I'm just kind of, what paperwork do we need? We talked about that. Oh, what if you're not a Medicare provider? Gosh, all right. Dah, dah, dah. Oh, we are usingG suite and doxy.me. This is from,uKelly Dougan, I think. Yeah. But haven't started officially yet. We have an ABN and I wanted to have liability form as well. So those liability forms, that's something that we can, that you can maybe share also on this link here and people can make it their own. Is that by liability? Like the patient has to sign off on saying yes, I'm okay with having telehealth. Mark (51:51): Is that of course for me. Yeah, I would assume that what she's saying. Yeah. So I'll, I'll create a, I'll create a Google drive folder and drop a link in to the chat Karen (52:05): And then one other, we've got two other questions. So to clarify for service location code, so that you said that, is that like the OTU code? Right. Okay. If I or any of my PTs are in their own home while tele-health with patient, is she using her home address? Mark (52:28): Oh, that I can't answer that I haven't gotten, yeah, that would be a billing question. That hasn't been brought up, but I, we have a meeting tomorrow morning and I'll ask that question. Karen (52:39): All right, Kimmy, we will get to that. Mark (52:43): We're saying the PTs can just stay home and bill from there. But Medicare has specific guidelines on origination sites. And I know if origination sites apply to eVisits versus telehealth. That very question. Do origination, do originations, I'm writing it down so we can ask this to origination sites. Apply to eVisits. Yeah, cause that's, that's a game changer too. Karen (53:11): Yeah, yeah. Oh, sorry. She said, sorry, I meant to say service location. Did you clarify for service location address? If I or any of my PTs are in their home while doing telehealth, do they use their home address or does she use her address? So Kim, like lives in New Jersey, her practice in Brooklyn. So that's a really good question. So, Kim, maybe we can get back to you with that answer. Mark (53:33): And is she a Medicare provider? Karen (53:35): Kim, are you a Medicare provider? I think so. We'll see. We're on like a 22nd delay. Mark (53:43): Yeah. So I'll ask, I'll ask service location for employees versus brick and mortar versus mobile provider. Karen (53:52): Perfect. And then Sarah Catman says, if you are licensed in more than one state, but only practice, may single state, can you only do telehealth in the state you practice in or can you do, hello, hello, hello. Telehealth and States you are licensed in. Mark (54:12): Yeah. So that's where it comes to state rules and regs and yeah. So everywhere that you have a practice reciprocity or you have a licensed in other States, as long as they, you are allowed legally to practice tele-health in that state. Yes, you can practice telehealth in that state. I mean it's, but you have to sit, you have to make sure to abide by the rules and regs when it comes to our the licensure compact of the rules and regs of the state that the patient abides in or they live in. Right. Cause that's just compact language. So like I can do tele-health and Missouri, but they don't have direct access. So I would still have to have direct access or I'd have to have a referral for that patient if I want to open Missouri. Right. So like example. Yeah. so I think, yeah, so we have to make sure that you abide by the laws of the state that the patient resides in. But yes, you can do tele-health across the country. That's the beautiful thing about the compact, right. Compact allows for us to practice across this country with with little, with, without a lot of that a lot of restraint or not restraint, but a lot of challenge. Karen (55:20): Okay, perfect. All right, so we're at about an hour, which is as long as I think people's attention spans are, and I think we have an apparently as long as Instagram will go live. So if anyone has any other questions, please you can keep adding them into this feed here and we'll try and get to them as, as best we can. Thank you Mark for dropping that stuff into dropping those links in here. And again, we'll get some of the, the onboarding paperwork from you and maybe can drop it in here as well, or you can point us to maybe where it's been put in other Facebook Facebook links. But yeah, everybody, you're welcome. You're welcome. And Mark, thank you so much. This was above and beyond. I think what you had to do but I think we all appreciate you so much because we're in a time where there's a lot of uncertainty and tele-health is at least a way to one, keep our patients healthy and moving and to kind of keep our practices going as best we can in these times because we don't know. Mark (56:38): Yeah. We don't know. Karen (56:41): Okay. Mark (56:43): Yeah, I think, I think, I think as a profession we need to remain calm and PT on, right? Like there's a lot of things happening right now. There's to be the, the future is unknown for us as a healthcare profession. All I do know is that it's going to be changed on the other end. This will no longer be an exception to the rule. This will be an expected method of care. People will, will now grow to understand that digital health is a real opportunity in every aspect, not just in, in telemedicine. So I think if I can say one final thing is just be prepared to adopt this and, and, and set up your systems for the long game. Not for this short, immediate, even though the immediate needs to happen. We have things in place like the waiver for using different platforms just to make it happen while it is, but set your practice up, set your systems up for a long game to provide digital care to your patients. Because that's where we're going to go. Part of it is so yeah, but be patient with each other, love each other be kind and wash your hands, Karen (57:49): Wash your hands and don't touch your face. Yeah. And be mindful of the people if you are still, if your offices are still open, be mindful of the people coming into your office. If you are a home health therapist, be mindful of the people that you're that you're going to be treating because they may be in that vulnerable population. And because we, there's so much that we don't know, just be very mindful of how you're doing that and utilizing telehealth is a great way to have that extension of care for our patients, so. Mark (58:27): Right. And feel free to reach out to me market anywhere. Dot. Health care. I'm here as a resource. I'm trying to be as available as I can. I have to go to the bathroom occasionally or drink some water, eat some food, but I'm trying to be as available as I can in order to help help us transition and get through this, navigate this time. Karen (58:45): All right, well Mark, thank you so much. Got it. You've got everything there. Check out. Also, check out Mark's platform anywhere. Dot healthcare. I'll be happy to give a plug for that of course. And thank you so much. I really appreciate it. This is everyone else on this, on this call, so thank you. Mark (59:01): Beautiful. Thank you. Karen (59:04): Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest! Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!

Guest Lucie Mitchell

Warrior DIVAS | Real Talk for Real Women

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 12, 2020 86:50

Hello and welcome to warrior divas real talk for real women. Our show is specifically designed for divas. divas is an acronym for Destin inspired victorious accountable sisters. And we will be bringing guests on our show who will help in our mission to equip and empower a global community of women change agents as we make a positive impact on the world we live in. When we started doing this impact about four years ago, we quipped that we wanted to change the way women think and speak about themselves and others. And as we progress that was our thinking and our intentions and we want to talk about things that are impacting women. So that means we will talk about faith, family, fitness, finance, dude, and a lot of other words that don't even begin with that. So today I'm excited to bring on the show Lucy Mitchell are fierce in beautiful wellness, and I met Lucy through her husband I've been watching her for a little while and have fallen in love with her beautiful outlook on life. Lucy is a mindset and wellness coach site. Colin fitness fanatic food lover look, we got some of those f words in there. And all around personal development junkie she helps women break free from their inner mindset demons and create healthy relationships with food and fitness and define their self worth and find the confidence to live a life of purpose on their own terms. Welcome to the show, Lucy. Thank you, thank you. Well, I am so thankful to have you on the show and you know, it's a little bit of one of those things that I'm listening to what you're talking about and and what your mission is and, and it lines up so much with what we wanted to do and what we are hoping to accomplish with empowering and equipping women. I think it's it's just beautiful. So first off, I want to tell I want you to give us a little bit about what Why this is important to you? Oh, gosh, I mean, I think that I would probably have to go to a little bit of a backstory in myself. I mean, I'm first of all, I'm one of four daughters that my father had. So that in itself, there's lots of events going on in that house with my mother. And in fact, they always had a habit of choosing even female animal that was all about a daddy, there was a glutton for punishment, or he was a sweetheart, through and through. But he did raise him and my mother always did raise us to be very strong willed, very independent woman. And I said something that I've always carried through my entire life and probably proved very difficult and a lot of my relationships that I was not so much of what you call quote, unquote, a submissive woman. I just always do what I want. To do what I wanted out of life, and I wanted all my relationships, no matter what they were friendships, personal relationships, my children to live vicariously through that just, you know speak your truth. Speak your mind and and live your life to the fullest. And I really, it really hit to my core when my dad passed away suddenly, actually yesterday he realized it was five years that cancer took him from us. And in fact I woke up this morning going oh my gosh, I didn't even reflect or or anything about that which is a good thing because that means that we're you know, we're at peace with you know, his passing but I had decided about a couple of years ago. A that that cancer is is one of those that doesn't put the word I'm looking for it's it's it knows no boundaries. It's not just hereditary. It can affect anything. One right and, and that it's really important that we look for the signs and that we pay attention to ourselves. And as women, we spend so much time taking care of others that we don't stop and listen to ourselves and and listen to our own bodies and take care of our own needs. And that's where I decided, you know, that's not okay, we should be able to speak out and take care of ourselves. And so I just started like looking inward and decided I wanted to become a transformational nutritional coach. And I wanted to start working with women and in the pyramid upon women a problem phase of their lives, because that's the phase where we just given up, we have no purpose. We were just, it's all about our kids. It's all about our husbands. It's all about everybody else, and we no longer have a voice and by the time we have a voice, we feel it's too late. And I'm like, I'm techno sister. You have a voice and it's time to use it. And that's what my purpose has been. Is, is taking this drive that I have to live healthier to speak your truth to link arms with other sisters and just, you know, whatever it is, whether it's licensing, whether it's spiritual, whether it's sexual, whether its food, whether it's fitness, no matter what it is, it's like your children will be fine. Take the time to take care of yourself. Exactly where I'm at. Well, I think you bring up a beautiful point because a lot of the times those of us that are in those older years of life in we're not old, we're not dead. We we have a lot to give up, live up to and, and one of the things that I hear all too often is it's not only that they've given up, it's because a lot of times they've been so invested in helping their children. Or their spouse build up their dreams that they forgot how to dream. They didn't they don't know how to dream anymore. And they just don't have the energy to move forward with anything anymore. And a lot of that has a lot to do with Fitness, Health, the food you're putting in your body, your hormones, and like you said, they give up. I can relate to this because about a year or two ago, I was pretty much in the same place. I was. Okay, something has got to change. This is not right. Some I feel like something's hijacking my body and and what I found is there's a lot of women out there that feel that they just have to suffer silently. And I love that you're saying that's not true. I agree. And I think the other F word that we're all set is fear. Mm hmm. Exactly. Here I have the women that I have talked to is fear not a change but of making a change because they have gotten so stagnant are so used to a certain routine, a monotonous routine of doing things. It's, I want to say and I mean I'm 45 years old I've had three children I have four of my stepdaughter, but I've had four children and mentally and physically I do not feel 45 but I've also made that my passion drive like not because I remember watching my mom grow up and personalities eyes is probably today 65 right and and even then some 65 there are 45 I mean, all just depends on on your your drive to be something different, but I remember there was a cartoon and I'm gonna really date myself but way before I was born, Black and White, probably from Disney, but it was just as monotonous black or white. Whether they were just a repetitive cartoon like they had briefcases and they were just walking slowly along the line to work. And it just, it was just repetitive. They're just doing the same thing. over and over and over again, in no power, there was no life, there was no activity. And I feel like I see so many women feel that that's what they're supposed to do. Get up, feed the children take care of the husband clean the house, go to bed, right. And when I reach out to when I reach out even to some of my close friends about like, hey, there's this amazing women's conference downtown and we're going to put samples of face creams on our feasts and, and and you know, sample whatever is in here from concept. Well, I'm not no I don't and, and, you know, what will people think? Right now Like First of all, let's see if we can find something new and something done and and like let's get away from the kids away from the husbands and you know we're old I've discovered this amazing you know, like I lost 35 pounds in August give a listen to my body and I and I, you know I it's like to share all the different things that have worked for me for stepping outside of what the norm is. And I want to link Everybody with me I want to take all my sisters with me. And there's so much more there's so much fear. Well, yeah, and I agree with you on that. I think I think we have a lot of women that I listen to and and I'm surrounded by a bunch of strong women so a lot of my friends are kind of in the same boat I am their husband goes to work their husband goes on business trips, they just keep on keepin on they don't let their life be dictated by their their spouses schedule or their kids schedule. They still make time for friends. They still make time for their business, they still make time for living their life. But I realized that there's a out circle of women that I'm connected to, that that's all their life revolves around. It may be for the season, it may be that that's all they know how to do. And one of the things that it like it goes back to that fear word, word, you know, they don't want to rock the boat, so to speak. But I think it also goes back to how we're raised and what we're seeing and what's emulated for us. You talked about your dad being outnumbered by daughters Do you know? Well, he probably didn't, he didn't probably run the house, the house probably ran, you know, by the daughters more than then he would have liked to admit it admitted. But there's that that sense of confidence and ability that he instilled in you to where if your kids or your husband move on, yes, you're going to be you know, to business or to A career path or off to school, you're not going to be wrecked by that because you've got things of your own to do. It doesn't mean you're sitting waiting for Eric to come home. It doesn't mean you're waiting for your kids to come home for your life to be complete. And that's the part that we're wanting to women to realize is you are a complete human being with or without them. They are just, they are your life. You love them. It doesn't disqualify their role in your life, but they are not your your wholeness, and we want to talk about your wholeness. Yeah, yeah, exactly. My mom and dad were married for 44 years. And my dad did work. He worked. He owned his own landscaping business and then he was also a longshoreman. Very tough job. Yeah. So my mom did raise us Basically solely, I mean, our celebrations were around food. Because God was home, right? Um, you know, and it's funny when we were just together. My sister my younger my baby sister just had a baby. And he's where we sold. I just went home to go and meet him for the first time. And we were reminiscing and we were talking about how I remember when it was like Danny was home we celebrated with hungry man. You could put it in your body. Yeah, the look of joy on my dad's face wanting to meet that sounds very state hungry man dinner with the apple cobbler and the water down mashed potatoes. But it was all of us watching him eat and sitting with him because that was a rare key. Right? And what I look back on and see is that there wasn't a lot of light and color in my mom's face because what What he did in those hours to work for his daughters and his wife versus the hour during the day of what she did to keep the children alive in the house of flow. I saw that color changes we got older because she had more time and she was able to start doing things for herself. She ended up becoming a professional chef for a very small company. When I think it was close to me more moving out and still to my younger two sisters. Wow. And it was one of the things I took with me even later on was that, okay, it is okay to find your own interest outside like you're talking about outside of your role of wife and mom. And what I loved was that my dad always encouraged that. And my sisters and I have been very, very fortunate to marry husband to have always encouraged and supported any of our ventures and I believe me for I've had many years, for 21 years, I went to college for 10 years to either become an accountant, a business something and blatantly Was it a master's degree in education, I was going to be a teacher. Oh, wow. And now I'm going to become a I'm a transformational nutritional coach. Um, and God bless my husband for supporting every single one of those ventures. It but it's it was for me it was going back and like, knowing that my mom had that supportive my dad because she supported him. So just keep the house afloat, like keep food on the table. and whatnot. Exactly. And, and, you know, I think, I think we think, how do I phrase this? I think a lot of the times we as modern women think our role has changed so drastically from the quote unquote, olden days, but when you look back and You know, I'm going to use the Bible as a reference here. If you look back in the days of Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and all of them, the men went off, they went off to tin the sheep, they went off to hunt, they went off to gather, you know, they did all of that. And the women were left to take care of the home to take care of the children to take care of, you know, things that are holding the fort down, so to speak. And even even as recent as yesterday, it was Texas Independence Day here, somebody was talking about that as well. Excuse me, but in talking about that, women are afraid nowadays to be left behind by their their spouse or their children, and we're hearing more about the empty nest in their lives being just totally distraught over their children going off to college. And I'm not gonna say that I don't miss my kids. I'm not gonna say that at all. But what I'm going to say Is it opens up the doors for us to spread our wings and we need to be focused on spreading our wings not hiding away and into a shell of ourselves. It's funny that you say that because I have this is my philosophy and I have my mother philosophy of your viewers or your listeners think this is harsh. It's my philosophy. Once you're 18 you graduate you go, right need to go you need to spread your wings. Now, I understand if there might be a maybe a there's an emotional or a non mental but there's some type of a disconnect you haven't connected yet. I'll give you a little bit of time back just gonna kick you out and send you have you fend for yourself against wolves, but I came home one day and they were boxing by the German moms and she got a time we got to go. Right I was almost 19 she had found me a place. I had a job. I think that you know, but that was how I was raised. I do not understand. And I think I've done a post about this somewhere. I do not understand mom's neighbor say, No, no baby, you don't need to you need to you want to live here till you 30 you use you stay there done. Right. Right. Your job. It's your time now. Yeah, I agree. And I was raised in a very strict Christian home, and I read the Bible five times, through through, I did not see anywhere. Then it said in any fine print. You know, they can stay as long as they want. They need to go and you know, create their own household and, and live their lives. You raised them. And now it's your turn. I mean, I have the nice Do we have it like a countdown on them. Turn I've been raising children since I was 12 years old. I am right. It's my time. I want time with my husband. I want it to be just we'll check on you guys. We might even give your address Well, I think I think there's a term called leaving cleave, you know, leaving cleave to something else, not us. Do not give me grandchildren. Raising children, younger sister, so do the world a favor and get a dog grandchildren. And so I'm technically a grandmother. And they look at me and I and my girlfriends are like, really? I'm not saying I don't like babies. I love babies. Right? Like people. In today if you need to travel you need to see the world. You need to contribute any to You need to contribute to charitable causes you need to help other you know, other countries. Now we need to we need to go to Nashville we need to help Nashville right now like right. so horrible what happened in the middle of it. There's so many more important things that need to be focused on then Okay, you're 18 go get married and have children. Exactly. They go and do that they can't fend for themselves and then they come back well in and and i agree we've had we've had a we've got a son that's in the military. We've had had daughters that went off to college, they came back for a period of time and we're we were at the same place of Okay, the clock has started. What What is your action plan what you know, will be a safe place for you to land come back and land if you need to, but yeah, what's the action plan? What's the end result? I kept resetting the timer on the microwave. When my son came home from college. I was like, go take it. And and I, but they appreciate that they think it's hard, you don't understand they're like, No I do sweetheart, things have got changed just because it's, you know, it's 2020, the millennial state of mind is not a mind, I understand, because you do not understand the hardship that those of us who are our older actually went through. Well, and I think I think we also understand how important it is for them to have their independence and to, you know, it's not even just about me for for for my kids, I want them to be strong and solid and independent on their own right, and making good decisions and making a good income and making, you know, good life choices. I don't want them feeling like they're under my wing the whole time because I haven't trained them all these years to stay under my wing. I've trained them to push them out of the nest. Yeah, well And it's like I even told my elder to I have given my mind my body my soul My spirit my everything to raising you and keeping you alive right now trying to invest all of those efforts and energies back into myself. Right? Because I still have the second half of my life and that is equally as important as the rest of your life. So if we're going to roll the dice and mover important at this point, you know it's and and that is I that's what I like to also talk to my clients about it like this is now your time and dive into I really big about faith about whether when no matter what it is, God fear if universe angels whatever it is that you believe in. That is a huge when you lose that you lose yourself, yourself, your sense of self worth, right. And when you tap back in to that through meditation, through prayer through journaling, you're able to kind of like have your eyes reopen to who you really are as an individual, especially as a real woman as a woman. And a lot of times, it's a very uncomfortable process, but it's, it's step one, before we can do any other type of change, it's like, you've got to step back in, tap back into that spiritual sense of who you are, who you were created to be. Right. And, and we're gonna be going to break here in just a few minutes. But when we come back from that break, I want to I want us to talk about the difference between femininity and feminist. I think the feminist word gets, you know, thrown out there and everybody already thinks, you know, angry, bitter woman. But more so than that. I want us to talk about embracing our femininity because that's where our true strength is. I believe and and I love that you talk about this on such a transparent parent level. But I want us to dive into that when we get back from the commercial break so that we can really break that apart just a little bit. And then then we'll go into the fitness side of things after that, but we're gonna take just a couple of minutes to pay for the show with our sponsors, and we will be back in just a second. All right, we are back. And I know we talked before we left for the break in said we were going to come back and talk about embracing our femininity. So So Lucy, let's talk about that for a minute. I know years ago, I went to a women's conference because yes, I go to women's conference, biggest tomboy out there and I still go to women's conference conferences. And one of the ladies was talking about how The color scheme where you had pink for women and blue for men nowadays used to be actually the opposite. Back in the late 1800s to 19 hundred's blue was for women and pink, pink and red were for men. And so we keep mixing things up a little bit. And so when we talk about our femininity I've I left high school I joined the Navy, I worked as an aircraft mechanic then worked in the aviation industry. So in the military, I was called a dude with long hair, basically. But when we go into embracing our femininity, it took me a while to even figure out what that looked like because I had struggled so hard to try and fit in with my male counterparts that I didn't know how to be feminine. And I really didn't understand what feeling comfortable in my own body was and I really did And understand how that led to having close relationships with girls, you know as girlfriends, and what that was all about, because all my guy, all my friends were guys, and then I'm married. And you know my husband and I have this little competition going back and forth because I was trying to compete with him basically for his role in the family. And it ended us in a hot mess. But I want I want to hear a little bit of a taste because I've watched some of your Facebook posts and I've watched some of your talk about femininity and embracing it and really just discovering yourself and I want to hear how you feel to best translate to women the importance of embracing their femininity. I, first of all, I can honestly say I'm right there with you. I had more guys But I do call friends I just don't understand. I don't understand women. And again, I don't know if it was because of being raised by my gentle father I'm not sure what it is, but I know for for me I I can see I'm both sides of that sword in a sense that I can handle my own. But I am a I am I'm a I am a woman I am sweet, I am kind I am sexual I am I incense sensual, I am in tune with my my body and my senses and I'm comfortable in my own skin. I I don't feel and this again is my own opinion based on who I have seen and dealt with who is considered a feminist femininities the harshness that I'm not kidding. competition with my husband in the fact that who has the bigger package or however you want to work that right? Um, there is a role that he has and he is supposed to have. I want him to have that role. That's why I married him. He is our protector. He is our fighter. He, he's the man of the house. But if he needs a warrior right beside him, I am that woman. Right? Doesn't need another man. I am that woman. I am his Joan of Arc. As I like to so eloquently put that and I think in my messages when I am doing my posts or doing my stories is I like to I think I had done one A while ago where I was describing a road. So what from fairway you look at a rose and the roses Beautiful, beautiful, soft, pedal, scented beauty Mostly comes in a variety of colors, whether it's a tight flower or beautifully blooms, but if you get too close, you are going to get pricked by a thorn. Now, is that for the feminist part? Or is that the Thor's disorder protecting her femininity, right? It's all in how you want to look at the flower. But for me, I feel like all women are beautiful roses like we are. We have our authority to protect ourselves, but we are they're beautiful, we are feminine and there's no reason to hide that. to, to be ashamed of that. Is that's what that's how we were created. And not in a sense I mean, that's that's my, that's where I stand on that part of it. I mean, I feel I raising a daughter, raising two daughters when one's out of the house. I look at my daughter and I'm like, I want you to be as strong and I bought her this bracelet. And I said, always remember to adjust your crown. And don't have mine with the train thing. But always remember to adjust your crown. And remember the queen who gave it to you. Hmm, something along those lines, and she was amazing. I just want you to understand that no one is no one is to not knock you down. Because you need to remember where you came from, right who your queen is. Because people knocked me down. had a lot of horrible things happen. I've experienced a lot of things. I've experienced a lot of judgment. Even in the course of that I'm in now I get a lot of messages about some of my posts of like, I don't understand why you talk the way you talk or how you feel the way you feel. And there and it's a lot of times it's from women. And I just looked at my daughter and I said But it doesn't stop me. I'm just gonna get back up and I'm going to keep spreading my message because somebody needs to hear it. Somebody somebody else Can you benefit from what I have to say? Just like someone out there will benefit from what you have to give. And and I wholeheartedly agree with that. You know, one of the things that has happened over the years we started divas impact, like I said about four years ago. And right off the bat, we started getting a bunch of hate mail, mainly from feminist organizations, a few from guys, because they mistakenly thought that we were going to do this as another male bashing organization. And quite honestly, I've told everybody this is absolutely not a male bashing organization. We realize the need for men in our lives, just as we hope men realize the need for us in their lives. We we don't I'm not as concerned about what the guys of the world are saying about us women. I'm more concerned with what we are saying about ourselves and each other. You know, we you know, when You've got examples out there, like Real Housewives of bad behavior or bad girls clubs or whatever that's going on out there. They have the, the opportunity to, to send a such a empowering message. But they don't, you know, because drama sells. And when I was, you know, kind of whispered in my heart to start this organization and and get things going I was like but God I don't like women. I really don't like women their main they're nasty, you know and he's like, Yeah, you've had your episodes too and I'm like, okay, you know to Shay. And I remember a few years ago, whenever, whenever the Donald Trump and Billy Bush news broke, I got a lot of hate mail. You know, why aren't you denouncing Trump and why aren't you denouncing billy bush and why aren't you denounce? In and even with the Harvey Weinstein and, and all of those, and I said, because I'm not focused on them, I'm not letting them dictate my worth, I'm not letting them dictate the worth of all women out there. I'm working on me, I'm focusing on me. And, and and the women that I speak to, and I encourage and I empower and let them know that, yes, bad things can happen to you. But you don't have to live in a victim role anymore, you can live victoriously, and that's, you know, what we're focusing on is walking women out of those dark places. And so for the feminine femininity side of things, what I've also realized is, the more I've embraced my femininity, the more intimate my relationships have become with my girlfriends, the more intimate relationships have come with my family and with my spouse, it because I'm loving myself first before I learned how to love Anybody else and, and to me, that is the difference I see between, you know, saying I'm, I'm into feminism, or I'm into my femininity and and opening myself up to really love myself now loving yourself has a whole other series of side effects, I guess is what you'd call it kind of like a rolling blackout. There's just you start loving yourself and then you go, Oh, I love myself. So I'm gonna go to the doctor and get checked out and make sure I'm healthy. Oh, I love myself. The doctor says I could I could work on fixing these things. So I'm going to work on fixing these things to make sure my body is optimal. And I'm going I'm going to change the way I eat. We've got Kim Slater who does our magazine and and does a lot of the things behind the scenes for us. You know she's in that season right now. We'll have her on the show here in a few weeks. To talk about her health journey that she was flung into, as at the beginning of the year with a massive heart attack and, and in the lessons that she's having to learn for herself, but that whole femininity thing feeds so much of your life. It's what builds up your confidence that gets your husband looking at you with a little bit of, Hey, what do you do? And he's doing it in a way because he's more intrigued because he sees the woman that he was attracted to in the first place. It's interesting that you say that I'll quickly say that, you know, when I started my mild personal transformation last year, before that, you know, I was trying to help other other women men, it didn't matter. I just wanted everybody to be aware about cancer, you know, after losing my father and other health issues that attributed that I just didn't. My goal was I don't want anyone else to lose up Father a husband a daughter of themselves, like listen to the signs so I'm so like, driven like everybody needs to work out get up cheapest way to eat this much water. It was like what I woke up every day but that was my passion and I was ignoring my own health. I was ignoring my own grieving process I was ignoring my own fleet, my own health but mental health spiritual health all the things and as I I got a I did a post about this is something I can recall but I remember looking at a picture of myself. I think it was this past summer and I was like, I thought I was in optimal health working, working out six days a week, eating 1400 to 1600 calories a real food healthy greens all blah, blah, blah. meditating journaling, praying all the things that when I looked at myself I was pale bloated 45 pounds overweight. I just had to like look in my eyes and I was like, I stopped. And I was like, on this task to help other people, when did I stop and take care of myself first? Right. And as soon as I did, I mean as soon as we got home from that trip, I don't remember we went to sun river something. I immediately called a nutritional coach. But I knew right away my doctor just oh my gosh, yeah, go take a nap, you'll be fine. You know, I was like, okay, it's got to be deeper. And I started working with the nutritional coach and I and I stopped helping all the other people. I put everything on hold because I was like, I really wait. I'm suffering from vertigo. My hands are numb, my feet are numb. These are all things I was experiencing but ignore right because I was so passionate about helping other people live their best life and be healthy so you don't die like my daddy. That I I didn't you know, pay them for myself. But as soon as I did that the glow came back the weight when I found out I was insulin resistant. So Kyle was a huge thing. I was borderline type one diabetic. Yeah, the bad one. Yeah, um, I changed my eating habits. I, you know, we changed how I work out, changed how I slept, all of the symptoms went away, the weight falling off. And my husband even looked at me He's like, Oh, my God, baby are glowing. Right? People like, we're looking at my pictures, like, what filter are you using? Now using a filter, you're glowing, but your hair is shiny. And it was like, and I looked at myself, and I was like, I feel beautiful. I don't think and I'm not ashamed of this. This is what I want. Everyone's like, so I reevaluate everything but it was like I'm taking care of myself and like And I had no problem looking at. And hopefully it's okay to say that I had no problem looking in the mirror naked. Right? Because that's a woman as a woman, especially after you've had children. Right with the lights on girl, right? Ugly bathroom lights on, right? Like, that's hard to do, but I didn't know I was like, I am feeling myself right now. Now I'm not gonna go into a changing room lighting and I'm loving and feeling beautiful. I feel sexy. I still sleep. I feel gentle. I feel happy. Because I took care myself first. Right, feel feminine. And that wasn't a feeling I felt all before that is so harsh, hard, poor like, ready to take on the world and compete with everybody else and that wasn't feminine. I don't know if that was coming. Right. Well and I think one of the one of the things we we hear a lot of the times is or you know, I worked in the faith base area before I started out on my own after leaving the corporate arena and I went from dressing like a dude because I was always in jeans and T shirt and then I went to work in the church offices. And I knew I needed to look female but I was just how do I I was putting the outer surfaces on it was like treating the symptoms without treating the actual cause. And I would put on an outfit that everybody go oh that looks so cute on you and I would feel the most uncomfortable ever. And it had nothing to do with the outfit. It had everything to do with the skin I was walking around in I did not feel comfortable in myself. And you know you're talking about people sending you the hate messages and and then asking you what filters you use. You use and things like that, which, you know, they're thinking You look amazing. But on the other side, they're also kind of giving a second backhanded compliment, you know, oh, you can't look that good person. And I remember when we started getting those hate messages, first thing I did, I stood up, I dropped my laptop down, and I stood up and I did a little happy dance. Because it's getting people off their balance a little bit. It's getting them to look at things through a different perspective. Making them question something for themselves will have so and so can do it then maybe I can too. Or what the heck is Angie, the biggest tomboy, we know doing starting a women's organization. What gives her the right i mean, i i've had women go, Oh, that's cute. I'm like, okay, you know, and now they're going well, how do we get in your magazine? How do we get on your show? How do we do this? I'm like, well, there's a process but we're friends. Okay, but there's still a process. And I'm not doing that to be mean or ugly. But, you know, I am looking for the people that want in and want in at the at the ground level, because that means that they understand the vision and the mission, we're going after they're not coming in with ulterior motives to go, Hey, you know, this is great, but let's do this. And, and let's steer this your vision, your goal, your passion, let's steer it to the right a little bit or to the left a little bit, so it fits more of what we want. No, this is what we're going for. This is our niche. This is what we're working on, is equipping and empowering women period, in a variety of different ways. And they're like, oh, bitch, it'd be so much better if you'd sign on with, you know, this organization or that organization and I opened up the organization's page and it's just male bashing and, and hating on each other and Like, yeah, not what we're about. It doesn't resonate. Yeah. And so, when we start talking to women, I've watched women open up after going through all that they've gone through, I see what you're talking about, you see that physical transformation, the light bulb moment that comes on, and their whole life changes. And in, you know, I've shared before that, you know, being a veteran, I'm tied to a lot of veteran communities and and I'm telling you, my veteran sisters are the worst of it. I love them to death. But oh my gosh, they wear me out, because they are so stuck in being a victim, but touting that they're a warrior, but they're living in a victim role, because they don't want to fix anything. And I guess that's our biggest uphill battle is how do we get them to hear it enough to where finally they get fed up and start doing something about it. Yeah, I know I that's it. That's an interesting question. I'm not sure. I mean, I again grazers to me I have all my outside family was actually own Navy. Okay. My first husband was Navy. I'm attracted to the servicemen and I think I got some army leaves in there somewhere. I'm not sure but my dad did not serve the police officer and then my mom got pregnant but and she was like, heck no, you need to come home every day. But I don't know if it's the year you spend. You know, somebody you're being told what to do, when to do how to do it that when you're out, right of that environment. You're like, what I mean, because I know that was part of the premises of like us starting the Lightfoot media. My husband starting that I mean when way back even when he was doing Your podcasts and things that when we first started this whole thing, it was like helping veterans get started because they spent so many years being told. When when to eat, when to make your bed, where to put your shoes on, when to shoot when to do all the things. And then when you're out, it's like nobody's telling you what to do. Right and when to do it. You don't do anything, but you got to do something. And, and I know that that that was that was helpful for a lot of veteran entrepreneurs with being able to go to Eric and him saying, Okay, this is how you start, but I'm you I can only get you so far. You've got to take it from there. Exactly. That might be it for the women desert you know, maybe that's that mindset of like, okay, switch it just a little bit and and remember what that authoritative voice of you being told what to do, and now tell yourself like, speak to yourself in that. Yeah, I mean, I and I like I said, I I'm just speaking from, from experience, veterans wife. Well, and you've had a front row seat to watch all of that. And do we want to go ahead and give you a shout out there? Because in addition to your hats that you wear for fierce and beautiful wellness as a coach there and leading people there, you've just been named CEO of life flip media, haven't you? Yeah. So yeah, yeah, that that is an amazing thing in itself as well. I asked if they came with a pay raise. He says, Wait, we get paid. Yeah, so tell us a little bit about that for just a few minutes. I'm not sure exactly what to say. I think he just woke up one day with a brilliant idea. No, actually, I think it's it's a great power move for him. Because he was actually wearing way too many hats and I, I think it's a great obviously it's a great move for it to be a women ran and owned business. It's a different type of demographic with a power move. So I know that there was a lot of driving behind that. But he takes a lot of guidance and advice of mine. And I really wanted him to be able to focus on what she's really good at, which is working with our customers. And you know, the me I don't understand that part of the business you know, the media bookings and the article places I that part of it I'm like I have too much going on and this three little head of mind when it comes to business when it comes to making sure that we are on the right path. And that our business plan, our business model needs tweaking or just seen or we're not that's my forte. Right? So we just decided to to do a title change. And and I think that puts us a little bit ahead of the game, especially being a woman. Yeah, having that see I mean, I my LinkedIn is blowing up ever since I changed that. Yeah, we're having a business meeting, in fact today because since he made that announcement, just that I know, but I mean, what we're getting into because I'm like, at the end of the day, this is his baby. This is his dream and his but we talked about it for the last year or so. And I just said when you're ready, then I will not lead you astray. Well, that what that is fabulous. You need to change your LinkedIn. I made it official. Yeah. Did you find out From one of his Facebook Lives, or did he actually tell you in person? He told me in person. But you never know. You know, Facebook or my Instagram Stories like what we're doing what I just saw that she didn't tell me. Oh, I literally in the next room. Yeah, you could just tell reviews. Exactly. All right. Yeah, it's an exciting experience for our business. We've had a massive amount of growth. And I want that growth to continue. So I needed him to be in the right, roll on to focus on that, right. Yeah. It's gonna be good. Yeah. And I think we are going to have him on our leading moment show in a few weeks. I've got to get him to get all the stuff together for us to do that. But having him on our leading moment show, to really talk about how to get started and how to do what he does. And encourage and inspire some small business owners on that page for us. So maybe you can join him when we do that call, but of course, yeah, it'll be a black. Yeah. So we're gonna take another break real quick and we will be back after these messages. All right, we are back with Lucy Mitchell. We are talking about her fierce and beautiful wellness and mindset coaching and all that she does that makes her glamorously beautiful, inside and out. So as we go into this next next segment of our show, what I want to talk with you about is more. I'm going to tell you, this is all purely selfish. I'm going to preface that right off the bat. So a few weeks ago, right before Christmas, peloton came out with that commercial about the bike and everybody lost their flippin mind over it. You know, that was sexist. That was this that was that and I'm sitting here going well, what we didn't See, he was maybe she asked for the bike. Maybe she didn't because you know, quite honestly, I would like a peloton. But my husband kind of refuses to buy me one right now because I made such a big deal at a date. He took me out on one night he took me to dinner as he goes, you want to go to Jason's deli, so not particularly. He goes, come on, we can go get a salad bar. Fine, you know, so we go to Jason's deli, and we get the salad bar and we eat our dinner. And then we go to Walmart, which we had to get dog food or whatever. And he goes back to the bike bicycle section back there. And he's like, Hey, I was looking at these the other day. Did you see this bike? Do you want this bike? This bike would be a fun bike to have. Don't you want? Don't you don't want a bike? I do not want a bike. He's like, Oh, come on. You'd have fun with this one. You'd like this one. Are you sure you don't want this bike? Come on. We ended up walking out of Walmart with a bike that night. So I told him I said the theme of that whole date was Hey, you're complaining about not feeling good. So why don't you lose some weight and ride a bike, you know, eat a salad ride a bike. So we give him grief over that all the time. But my biggest thing is not about riding that bike. It's about I've had some balance issues, I've had some things that I just don't trust, the agility of my body right now. So balancing myself on two wheels is kind of a freaky idea to me, but I like the peloton idea because I feel like I could slowly progress until I got that confidence back. But, you know, you said that you the reason I'm bringing all that up is because, you know, you said that you like to cycle and you're a fitness fanatic and in So talk to me about I know some people that say jump all in, go all in and go as hard and as fast as you can until your body stops you and then there's people that are going, alright, if you're going to fail at that, then you need to ease yourself into So, I know you kind of help people break down their mental hurdles over things like this. So help me break down mine for a little bit. Okay? Nothing like putting you on the spot. the peloton is amazing. Um, and that ad was ridiculous because we don't know the backstory, right? So why people got all on the Tuesday just because she happened to be skinny doesn't mean anything because there could have been a whole mental thing. She could have been skinny because she had an eating disorder. And you know, and so moving her body was going to help this so she could eat real food, there could have been a myriad of things, or it could have been that she had social anxiety to go outside. So she got the bike so that she could like, start to connect with people. There's so many different things that I deal with on a daily basis. I You know, I use a virtual workout platform, through Beachbody on demand. Mm hmm. Because I do work from home so a lot of my workouts are done through that platform. I do have the peloton and then I do love my local cycle bar cycle bar and Tiger get your shout out. But he has always been when I talk to everyone is you start at step one, do you look at a baby and prop them up and tell them to run a marathon? Right? No. Step a step by step. I've been working with my mother who has bad knees and it's always been an excuse. What has not worked out a day in her life. She's 68 years old. She talks every day about losing the weight. And I say okay, Mama. Well, it's, you know, 80% nutrition, it's 20% movement. So you've made your choice. If you want to eat the way you want to eat that by the left Work on the 20% of movement. Maybe it's just you sitting in a chair with one pound weight, and you're doing bicep. Right? And you're just working on understanding the movement and we go up to two pounds until you feel confident and comfortable. You know, or I'll work with other people that say, Okay, if you have a problem with consistency, do not find an eight week 10 week program, because you're going to be done after two days. All right. Start with something that is and there's so many apps out there, I'll backtrack there so you don't have to do just what I do, which is Beachbody. I always say there are so many peloton has a free app and that you can use on any bike on a treadmill. They have weighted programs, they have yoga, they have wonderful meditation programs that I love to use. And there are other apps as well that you could download that has on if you Have a beginner where you start at and that and you start at basically what you're comfortable with. And if it's just one day you conquered that one day you're winning. And you could go on to day two. And there's been many times that I've started over. I mean, I had three babies, I had to be one. Sometimes Mondays every Monday is my day one, especially if you're a football team. Day one, right after the Super Bowl is day one. But I think you know, I you always want to talk to your doctor to start and talk to your doctor about any current medical conditions that you have. And then be you have to have an internal conversation with yourself and be like, how important is this to you, not to others to yourself. Right? What changes are you wanting to see logically, ideally, we want to wake up tomorrow and be 50 pounds lighter, all because we took two steps down the street. I ran a marathon there. Go I should eat 50 pounds lighter, right? It doesn't work that way. I ate a salad. And I bought a bike at Walmart. I lost 50 pounds. Right now, that doesn't work that way. It's a great start. But I but I always say you have to write out a plan and you have to write out a plan that will work for you. And if you can't do that alone, and that's when you reach out to people like me, who says, Okay, we're going to start with just the day one we're gonna do a four week plan. And after you talk to your doctor, you've gotten clear that there's nothing you have stability issues. I'm not going to say I want you to start balancing on one foot if you have stability issues, that's not you're going to get discouraged and defeated. But if you can handle you know, you can go for a 30 minute walk. Walking is one of the most beneficial 30 minutes a day walking is one of the most beneficial kick starters to a weight loss journey out there. Not cycling, not weightlifting. Plain old, angry dog. Well, I think just being outside helps mentally and emotionally and then and then the movement, you start waking up parts of your body that you don't realize were asleep. Well, not only that, but then you're also you're getting if you're, you're getting a break from the kid. Maybe it's a stronger and go for a walk. But if it's, if you're cooped up in the house all day or you've been in an office all day long, you get outside you get the fresh air, you get the oxygen from all of the plants that are around you. You get cute you're around nature, you could put the personal development into your ears and start a good book. Listen to an amazing podcast. I don't know maybe warrior diva out there. Um, you know, and and you're not only working your body, but you're working your mind. Those two working together will kick start an amazing weight loss sustainable journey. Well, I think that's where I start. I think a few years ago I I lost roughly 100 pounds and I did that strictly by walking there was there I changed you know, I'd done some intermittent fasting I had done some other things you know as far as weight loss goes, it was all around nutrition and walking. That was it. And I walked five miles a day. I didn't start off walking five miles a day I started off being winded walking down the street and back but it you know, by the time I was to a good steady pace, I was at five miles in under an hour. But I kept you know, going okay, well I've kind of nailed this I'm, I'm one of those people that are not consistent. So I'm adaptable is my number one strength I'm the Strength Finders thing, which means I can roll with the punches but I always strategic backs it up. So I always have something else. I'm planning in background to if this goes awry, I already know where we're going next. So the whole walking thing was fabulous for me because it helped with the weight loss. It was, whenever I tried to stretch beyond that, I started pushing my limits. And about that time is when the doctor says, you know, you really don't need to be doing any hit right now. Any high intensity, you need to keep it low. Well, that kind of took the wind out of myself and I kind of sunk back into. Oh, but see, I like the CrossFit stuff. I like some of those things. And he's like, yeah, just not right. Now. He goes, let's get some of this other stuff under control. And then we can go in there. And then it just made me feel old and grumpy. And there was a mental game that I was having to battle for a while over that. Because, you know, that was there was almost like I was accepting a sentence that he wasn't even giving me he was just saying, Let's get you to a certain point before we start doing that. And I was like, Well, if I'm not there, I don't want to I don't want to work any harder to get there. It's not coming off fast enough. It's not doing what I want it to do fast enough. And like you said, We live in an instant gratification society, you order in a box, and you drive to a window, and it's there. So we want the weight loss to come off just as fast as that burger is delivered through that window. Yeah, and I think I was talking to a potential client, in fact, just this past weekend, who was like, I have been doing keto for six weeks, and I've gained six pounds and I'm doing CrossFit. six days a week and I don't understand why nothing is moving in. And I said, Okay, well, that's what I'm hearing is what you're doing for the last six weeks isn't working. So we're going to start over and she looked at me and I said, don't get defeated. What I've seen because I have not been working with her and I've been what I would recommend. Okay, continue to CrossFit. That's it. Yes, that's it, you live naked. But women over the age of 40 do need weightlifting. cardio is not as important once you get past the age of 40. Because our our muscles and the way our bodies work, our muscles will hold on to fat. Because there's a fight or flight like, Oh, you don't want to have babies anymore. So we're going to hold on to this fact just in case you change your mind. So that way we have a way to support a baby. And I'm like, when did my muscles get to decide if I'm a child Barry like right yours anymore, like you could release that fat anymore. Done and done. It's the science behind it. So weightlifting expands your muscles to release the fat. It's the right type of weightlifting. If you're doing strenuous weightlifting like crossfitters do and I didn't cross it for two years and my father looked at me and said, I'm finally getting the son. I never had Alright, we're going to stop doing that. Yep. Um, so I was like, okay, it's CrossFit works for for certain individuals, and it is great, but just tone it down, don't need to be deadlifting 75 100 pounds or whatnot, stick with just the barbell, and maybe do just four days a week, if you really love that community in that workout, right? And give your body two days of full rest. And that one day can be a day of restoration of yoga, and meditation of maybe walking or whatnot. And I said, and then we'll look, then we look at the diet. And let's maybe do low carb instead of keto, because keto is not long term. No, it's not. If you're gaining weight on keto, which is meant to put your body in a state of ketosis, you should be losing weight. So something else is going on. And I gave her a list of recommendations that I would you know, I'm not a doctor. I just say I would take this list and talk to your doctor about the certain tests, maybe check if your insulin resistant. What's your glucose level? How's your body reacting to certain sugars, things of that nature? And, and it gave her a little bit of hope but but, you know, you've got to do your research and there's sometimes there's a little bit of adjustment and whatnot that I mean, and that's the recommendation. And actually, she just emailed me a little while ago. And then she'd like to work with me. Because her doctor didn't give her the answers that she wanted. And I wish she got more information from me, which is like, amazing, but it's just like, the information is out there. You just have to know how to educate yourself, as well as know the right people to talk to you. And a lot of times doctors just want to get you in and out. And it's just knowing how our bodies change. But once I found out that our bodies want our money, they want to hold on to that because they want us to still have babies. I was like, no, that's not okay. So, yeah, it's that's what I that's what I tell women. That's how I work with with some of my clients. is just sometimes you just got to read That's the wheel just a little bit and it'll kick start your journey and do it the healthy way. Well, I think, I think you also touched on something else as she was paying attention to her body and listening to it going, Okay, what I'm doing is not working. So therefore, something's off. I need to have another person come in and give me an outside view. Because a lot of times we don't even talk to other people about this. We just kind of suffer in silence. Oh, well, I tried this diet or I tried this exercise or I tried this lifestyle change. It didn't work for me. And a lot of the times, it may be just one turn of the wrench to get you running optimally. You know what in NASCAR, they talk about a quarter turn on the the car could totally make the car loose or tight. You know, and a lot of the times it's fine tuning what our lifestyle is and and it's not a throw it all out mindset it's a let's keep making the adjustments until we find what's working and and I think that's where a lot of people give up is they just go oh well I tried that it didn't work well let it's not cookie cutter it's definitely not cookie cutter. And that's why I share so much of my journey on my social media because that's how she found me on and watch how I went from being so cookie cutter to not sharing too much to them all the sudden sharing this new way, you know, when I discovered what was working for me and then really just sharing that it's it's individualistic, right to listen to how your body is responding to, to certain foods to certain movements. And when the ultimate goal I know for me was that I'm not going To be a diabetic, I that's just not what I want my children to see, that's not the life that I want to live. And this is my time right now to change this. And it goes back to making those sacrifices, you know, as a mom and as a woman, like I have to I have to be selfish right now. Right? Because I can't be a mom to my kids, if I'm constantly having to give myself shot. And I'm drained from all these doctor visits everything and what kind of mom Am I going to be for my children? What kind of wife Am I going to be for my husband? What kind of business owner Am I going to be for my clients and for a company? If I'm confused by this, you know, that I'm now I didn't take action. Right. Well, and I think I had I had a friend a couple of years ago that that passed away and she passed away from a recurrence of her breast cancer after her first recurrence of breast cancer she got healthy, she ate the right foods. She did everything right. And the cancer came back and, and she did have a genetic disposition to it as well as you know, other things that that brought it back. But I heard several people say, Well, if she ate everything and did everything right, and she got the cancer again, then what's gonna keep me from getting it and just trying to shift people's mindset to go that you can't go down that road, we are all created differently. We all have a unique DNA to us, that keeps us keeps our bodies moving. There are things in my family history, you know, I've got diabetes on both sides of the family. So I have to be mindful of that and I have to start putting things in place to to not go down that path. But on the other side of it is I also got a couple of cases of cancer on one side of my family. I could park my boat Go, well, you know, diabetes and cancer, they're in the cards for me. So I don't really need to work out, I really don't need to do this stuff because that's what's gonna get me in the end or I saw them try these things, it didn't work for them, so I'm not going to try them. Even though they're my relatives, I'm still uniquely created. And I it does not mean that it's an end result that I will catch that or that I won't be able to beat it. What what I think I've heard you say most all today in several different ways is taking care of yourself sets you up for so much more. And even if it is an illness that comes your way, you're better prepared mentally, emotionally, physically, for taking that that illness on head on, head on because if you're already out of shape, you're already feeling frumpy, you're already down in the dumps. You're definitely not in the mental and emotional state to take on a major illness, that if you're taking care of yourself in so many other ways, than if something comes out of left field, you're much more better positioned to go in in a warrior stance against that. Exactly. Yep, that is correct. And so, so you also do I mean, we talked a little bit before the break about how you do. You're the CEO of life flip media, you you do this as well as, you know, the fitness coaching and mindset coaching. So you're talking about, you know, feeling comfortable in your skin, not letting fear of missing out, you know, derail you. As we get ready to go into the last part of our show, I want you to kind of talk to us about what is the overall message edge that you really feel like you are here and put here on earth to accomplish share anything you want to share about your story and and how you can encourage and empower other women. You shared so much already it's gonna be a rich rich show but we just want to hear from from you as to what what you feel is your mark in the world and how you can help the women that are listening today. Well, I think I stop by called by many a unicorn. And that's that, you know, one of a kind, type individual. And I really do embrace that label. Because I've actually worked really, really hard to to be what other women cannot be And then turn around show them how they can be. So when it comes to self love, you know, we I know personally I have experienced so many things in my life that have shaped me to who I am today and why I want to help other women, my innate need to help others I was a hairdresser for 21 years I was an accountant, I helping my husband, I've PTA volunteer, room volunteer pretty much you need help moving I'm that person. My Drive was always to make other people happy. And and I realized that the end of the day was to fill the void of the lack of happiness in my own life due to abuses and whatnot that I experienced in my childhood. And in working with a life coach over the last year when I was able to finally understand what self love really meant, and how to forgive Others for what was done to me, I really, there's so many women I've even come across in my life that are experiencing that lack of self love. And they're masking it with food, with alcohol with shame, with abusive relationship with a lack of connection to their face. Blaming the world blaming society blaming others for their experiences. And my whole purpose in life is to use the platform that I've been given and my voice to a let them know it's going to be okay. That it's, it's not your fault. Everything is fixable, everything is figured out a ball. And if you need help figuring out that first step, no matter what it is, whether it's your relationship with food, whether it's emotional weight, whether it's physical weight, whether their spiritual weight whether it's figuring out how to take that first step on a treadmill, whether it's that first step on how to learn how to write a letter to your younger self, to forgive your younger self to connect with your younger self. I'm here because that's that's my that's my purpose now. And and it brings me joy I wake up every single day now hoping I'm going to connect to just one, even if it's just one person, and sometimes that one person is myself. It's like I reconnect with myself in some way I discover something more amazing about myself that I had buried or hidden deep down below. Because when when we carry all those burdens, when we feel like our only soul what job in this world is to be a mom. Or are we have no value as a woman in today's society. Or we've only known what it's like to be in the military. We don't know what it's like to be a veteran or are we were a mom and now we're an empty nester and we have no purpose and we were away for now we're divorced and we have no we have no wives or whatever it may be. You can lose yourself and you can lose that definition of what a What a beautiful woman really is. And that's where I come in. And then unconventional. Just sit down have a real talk over a glass of Chardonnay in our closets and that's what we need to do. kind of way I am not I I'm serious. I mean, I have been there I am sat in the closet with a bottle of Chardonnay. My husband's like what do you do and go away? Right I'm in a moment Hmm. And and it's okay. And and I don't I don't have it all figured out. I am not the leading expert in this you do not see me sitting on Oprah couch. I am one of many in this field. I just feel like we need as many voices as possible right now. Exactly. It's it's a layered approach to one I think, I think a lot of what I've seen you say and I've heard you say, we're watching you on social media and listening to you today is, you know, there's a lot of women out there looking for somebody to be an accountability partner for them to lead them to give them to you know, just actually listen to them and hear them and and you're willing to be that person you're willing to take that task on for them if that's what they need, until I told people for the long This time, one of my best friends I worked with her at the church before and, and we would go to the gym and her name was Kim Yates and we would go to the gym and we'd get on the treadmill and she'd go, I go, Okay, how how long do you want to go? And she goes, I want to go for 30 minutes at a two mile pace, he you know, and I'm like, okay, so I punch that all in, and we get going. And about three minutes in, she's like, I'm really not feeling it. And I'm like, sorry, you said you wanted to go for 30 minutes. We're going 30 minutes left, right, left, right, come on, let's go. Let's go, let's go. Let's go, you know, and and we finished the 30 minutes. She'd come to me, I'm like, we're gonna do a five mile an hour pace. You know, this is the incline we're gonna do. We'd get on and about five minutes and I'd say I don't feel like doing it. And she'd go great. Let's go get some chips and salsa. She was great for certain areas of my life fitness was not one of them. And so one of the things I want to encourage women that are listening today is if you've got those friends that are great and holding you accountable in your marriage and your spiritual life and all these other areas, I guarantee you most of the time, it's not the same person that can handle all of those areas for you. So I encourage you to reach out to someone like Lucy, who is great in what she does and in the fitness realm and, and in the mental mental improvement mindset improvement sorry, in the mindset realm as well I went mindset blank on that. You too can be a professional radio show host. But anyway, when you when you are coaching them through the min

008 - Ron Kerns - Autism Diagnosis Later in Life

For All Abilities

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 17, 2020 50:56

For All Abilities – The Podcast Episode Eight - Ron Kerns - In this episode, I interview Ron - Autism and Neurodiversity Advocate and Graphic Designer. On the podcast, Ron talks about his autism diagnosis later in life. We discuss how Ron uses his Neurodiversity in his career and how he found a career and a position that allowed him to work to his strengths. To connect with Ron, please follow him on LinkedIn (Ron Kerns) or email him at ron@StudioKerns.com. Check out his work at www.studiokerns.com Go to our website www.forallabilities.com for information on our software that enables employers to support their employees with ADHD, Dyslexia, Learning Differences and Autism. Thanks for listening! Betsy Thanks for listening to For All Abilities today! Share the podcast with your friends, they’ll thank you for it! Get our newsletter and stay up to date! The newsletter link is on our website www.forallabilities.com Follow me Twitter: @betsyfurler Instagram: @forallabilities Facebook: @forallabilites LinkedIn: @BetsyFurler Website: www.forallabilities.com Full Transcription from otter.ai Betsy Furler 0:00 Hi, everybody. Welcome to for all abilities the podcast. Today I have a special guest. And this is Ron Kearns. He is going to introduce himself to us talk about his diagnosis, which was later in life. And what that diagnosis means for him now in his life, and what it might have been like if he was diagnosed as a child, and how he uses his brain to be a highly successful person. So Ron, welcome to for all abilities, the podcast. Ron Kerns 0:44 Thanks for having me. Betsy Furler 0:45 Yes, thank you so much. Why don't you introduce yourself to my audience, tell us a little bit about where you're from what you do now. Anything else you'd like to tell us about yourself? Ron Kerns 0:59 Okay. See Where am I from? I grew up. I grew up in Detroit, in Michigan, and then four and then after college and all that for many years we lived in for 20 years. We lived in Dallas. And then 2016 we decided it was time for change and we moved to rural northern Arkansas. And that's where we are now. Betsy Furler 1:32 Yeah, I saw that and one of the articles I read about you that you now live in Arkansas and you do have some fishing. Ron Kerns 1:40 Yes, I'm that we live just a few miles away from the White River which has some of the best rainbow trout fishing in the country. It's absolutely fabulous. Betsy Furler 1:49 That is great. I love fishing. Ron Kerns 1:53 I am a professional graphic designer. I have done work. in pretty much any environment, you can come up with over my almost 30 years career in house corporate, working in ad agencies on my own as a freelancer, and I could, and I currently work for a university. There is a small campus for Missouri State University. And that's a short drive away. Just across the border over into Missouri. That's how far north we live in Arkansas. Wow. So that's since I guess, so that's so that's I've been there at the university for it'll be it'll be two years in May. And so and that that particular job has just been going fabulous, best job I've ever had. Betsy Furler 3:00 That's nice to hear. And you were diagnosed with autism as an adult, correct? Yes, I was 46. So tell us a little bit about what you were like when you were a little boy Ron Kerns 3:15 there. The one overpower the one overlying theme from when I was a kid was when I was in school. I can remember pretty much walking into kindergarten for the very first day, all of a sudden feeling like I did. And the bullying started pretty much right away and continued K through 12. So I stayed within the same school system trait the entire time. I was in school and it just so that was a huge part of being a kid when I was a kid. I did find some some relief from that I would say refuge from that I when I was about seven or eight my parents got our family a piano. And so piano playing became my, my, my blanket. security blanket. I played and played and played forever. There. Oh, here here's an idea to give you an idea how That became such a huge thing. I can remember being in fifth grade and I would take a pledge black magic marker and draw all the keys on my desk. And so that way I can sit there and play the piano in my mind playing Wow. Wow. I'm Betsy Furler 5:23 so you could kind of escape to that that would be right now Ron Kerns 5:28 that was my that was my escape. I'm teachers in the janitors didn't care for so much. All right. I didn't have a quick didn't know I didn't have a reasoning for it. Um, there was one particular date with the entire class was heading to a field trip. So the class entire class was just abuzz with activity and just kind of overall madness is everybody was excited about going on this field trip. I just kind of hunkered down and was gotten to just zoning everything out, playing my panel on my desk. Then, at some points, the teacher put her head, her hand on my shoulder. And it kind of got me out of that. And I realized that everybody had left and they all got on the bus. And I was and I had no idea. And the teacher was like, it's time to go now. Kind of a thing. Betsy Furler 6:40 And you really were able to hyper focus on that. Ron Kerns 6:45 Yeah, um, so piano playing turned into once I got into junior high and was able to get in the band. I went into that played a couple of different instruments in band That led to later on within leader in junior high in high school, attending a performing arts camp in the summer, and then through that, I toured Europe with an orchestra for a summer when I was 17. Wow. So all of that kind of all started from all started back from know the piano thing. Betsy Furler 7:30 Did you were you a good student academically or did you struggle in school? Ron Kerns 7:35 I struggled terribly. Um, a lot of it had to do with the, a lot of it had to do with bullying. Just self esteem, self confidence, all that kind of stuff. Just going into survival mode, I guess is the way to put it and then There was so much that I just couldn't comprehend. But like everything else, there was no set attribution to why I couldn't. So all through school. It was, well, he just needs to focus more. He needs to find himself. He needs to just work harder. You know, he has the potential to do this and Betsy Furler 8:34 write some but they were seeing you as a smart kid, but they couldn't figure out what avenue to reach you. Ron Kerns 8:42 Right? Because nobody knew anything about any of this sector. Right, right. So I just kind of muddle through and past I guess And so there was a, I remember, yeah, so Um, so yeah, so that was basically school for me. Betsy Furler 9:12 And did you go to college after high school? Ron Kerns 9:16 After high school I did. I didn't go to college, I had a very difficult time trying to figure out exactly what it is I wanted to do. And then I didn't even really pick even art classes when I was in high school, or anything like that. My older sister in the meantime, we had been going to this small business school in northern Michigan. And it was kind of my mindset that a, I knew in the back of my mind that going to a much smaller school. Were probably be better for me which it was and then going to school where my sister was already wouldn't hurt either. So I kind of focused it on Northwood University, which is a school in Midland, Michigan. And I looked at their offerings, and I saw the advertising marketing program. And I thought, Boy, that sounds like something that could be interested in. So and I realized that they were going to have a day for potential students in that program. So we went up there in and then I was so it was just seemed like to be a really good fit for what I wanted to do. And So I went there and did find it was from there by the chairman of the apartment was a huge factor in me doing what I do today. He hit his background, because that played a big part of his background was in the 50s 60s and into early 70s. Working with being working when advertising for Ford and Lincoln mercury. He was a major. He was the he was the creative director for when the Ford Mustang first was introduced. Oh, wow. And other other monumental advertising campaigns and such over the years through that time period. So When he would come to class, he would bring in all of these old big boards and storyboards of all of these campaigns that he worked on when he was in the business. And using that as an illustration for what he was teaching that day or whatever. And so one day, he sat me down and he said, Have you ever thought about going to art school? No, I've never had an art class in my life. And he goes in and he showed me all the stuff that I had done as projects in his classes and said, you really should think about it. So um, I did and, and after getting my advertising marketing degree there, I went to art school in Cincinnati, and did very well there. And then it's through that I earned an internship with Cambodia. Well, Detroit. They were the Advertising Agency at the time for Chevrolet. And so, especially with that with once I earned the internship there. I just did that really solidified that, wow, I'm, I'm where I want to be. Betsy Furler 13:19 That's amazing. And it kind of shows that there can be one person in our life that we run across that can have such a large impact. You know, obviously he saw that talent in you and was able to communicate it to you know, you Yeah, really? That that was she was so pivotal in your life and sounds like Yeah, definitely. Um, so how did you finally get diagnosed? what led up to the diagnosis? Ron Kerns 13:52 That's it. That's quite an interesting story. I've been interviewed about that before because it's such an odd story. Before I began to suspect that I was that I was autistic, I would have never have guessed. Um, anyway, so it was around 2011 when I was watching the show parenthood on NBC, huh? And we watched from know when Elizabeth recently aired from the very first episode. I was familiar with a movie that had come out us before, so I thought it'd be a good something nice to watch. So, um, as the episodes went on long, and there was that kid max who eventually got diagnosed on the show. I was just sitting there watching and watching and going, man. He was thinking, he is a lot like I was when I was a kid. Uh huh. And parent teacher conferences his parents would have won over that whole Same thing with not having Well, he's got so much potential for he just used to focus on the road. And then having all that same conversations, it was just like no. mean it was like me being on the show. And so one just just one night. I was like, Okay, that's it. So I was just sitting on the, on the couch, I grabbed my laptop and I was sitting there watching show I started Googling, like, undiagnosed autism, adult saroo, something like that. And as soon as I hit return, it just, that's just when the light bulb went off. And I started seeing what was out there about this and starting to reading the list of You just might be artistic F and then you have the list of different characteristics or traits. And it was like, Oh, my goodness. And I'm, Betsy Furler 16:24 well, that's really interesting. Ron Kerns 16:27 So while doing the googling, I came across a title of a book. The book is, which I recommend everybody by the way, it's a book called pretending to be normal, written by Leann holiday Willie, and she was also diagnosed later in life and like in her mid 30s. Mm hmm. And, but when I saw that when I saw just the name of the book, pretending to be normal. was like, that's me. Cuz especially in the workplace, it just always feeling out of place, like an intruder, and all that stuff. I always just, and I never really could put my finger on it. But when I stopped pretending to be normal, I was like, that's it. And, and so I just felt like that's what you've been Betsy Furler 17:27 doing your whole life. Ron Kerns 17:29 Exactly. And so, so and so with that. I just dug in and got more and more and then in 2014 a couple years later, it came to a point to where I was pretty much self diagnosed at the time. And I just knew that in order to get any kind of support services, that kind of thing, you know, I needed an official diagnosis because at the time I was without a job. I has my throughout my career while I've done some pretty cool stuff and have worked with some great clients and done some great projects. My career has also been huge difficulties landing a job when I needed to get one. The past decade 2010 to 2020 I was unemployed without a full time job for seven of those 10 years. Wow. I'm thankfully doing what I do, I can I was able to kind of scrape by doing freelance work. And so it says that was getting them from a diagnosis got me in This with this nonprofit that was in Dallas that helps people with autism and other similar things, you know, help provide some assistance with no landing shops or work. So Betsy Furler 19:15 yeah, that's a great point. I, I, I'm really passionate about workplace accommodations and understanding in the workplace about diversity. But it's a really great point because I often say to parents, yes, you need to get this diagnosis for your child, if nothing else, but for the services. But I, you know, we don't think about that as an adult, that there are still services out there that you can access but only if you have Ron Kerns 19:42 the diagnosis. Yeah. And unfortunately, for adults, they're very, very hard to find because everything is geared towards children. I even I even had a hard time finding a provider that would do an assessment or evaluation for me Because I was an adult Betsy Furler 20:03 Yeah, and not about that area and that was probably expensive as well. Ron Kerns 20:09 Um, I got lucky on that, um, during this entire time of struggling to find a job and knowing that was self diagnosed, I got a wreck. I get somebody I know through one of my facebook group artistic Facebook groups messaged me one day and she said, Here this, this place might be able to help you out with the whole job thing. And it was a agency for the state of Texas called Texas Department of the system and Rehabilitative Services and our health, those with disabilities and such to find appropriate work. So I said oh, well that could they could possibly help. So I made it, I made a appointment with the person there at the office, which wasn't too terribly far away from home. And I went there, and and then she started asking me about my diagnosis as well I don't have one yet. And then she proceeded, explain that you're having a diagnosis is necessary because to be eligible, so you can determine eligibility for services. And then she said, because you came to us seeking services, will give you a list of providers, and we will provide you with that assessment to determine whether or not you're eligible, which means getting the diagnosis, right. So um, I just got lucky with that and I'm in so I Just the assessment and it was all taken care of by that state agency. Betsy Furler 22:07 And now for people who are listening and might be in the state of Texas, it's now called the Texas Workforce Commission. They change their name a few years ago. So Ron Kerns 22:16 yeah, I remember when they did that. Yeah, they kind of melded together with the Workforce Commission. Yes. Betsy Furler 22:21 Yeah. Yeah. So well, that's the I hadn't even thought about that as an option for people that thank you for bringing that up. That is helpful. So once you got the diagnosis, how did that change your life? Ron Kerns 22:36 Everything all of a sudden made sense. Yeah, it was just it was just so much. It's almost like overwhelming for a while. Even looking back at, you know, being autistic, one of the things one trait is being able to vividly remember Member finnstrom had many many, many, many years ago, to me, our youngest age and and just thinking back at all these little different situations. And then now I know why or how I did that or this or whatever. And now it just like just makes so much more sense. It's it's almost indescribable Betsy Furler 23:34 and I think one thing that's so remarkable is that a lot of people think that people who are autistic don't have much self insight. And you diagnosed yourself on by by being able to look inside yourself and see your traits and other people. I think it's a I you know, I think it kind of breaks the surface. Yeah, type of what it's like to be autistic. Ron Kerns 24:03 Actually, it's work. It's quite common really for people for autistic people to be introspective, because Betsy Furler 24:10 i i agree. I think they I think it is. But I think it's a stereotype that Yeah, you're not that people with autism are not introspective. from working with lots of people who are autistic over the years, I have found it to be totally the opposite, like, so it makes sense to me that you would be able to do that. Ron Kerns 24:33 Right? Because right now, amen. It's quite, it's becoming more and more common for like adults like me to finally get that diagnosis. And probably one of the more common ways that adults are realizing that Ooh, maybe I should go get assessed or evaluated is they first have a child who is diagnosed Once or child gets diagnosed, they're like, Man, that child's always been just like me. I wonder you know if they have the same traits and difficulties or problems and and so once the kids diagnosed it's not easy stuff to, to say a person No. More and more. It's becoming more widely believed that autism itself is genetic. I for instance, I can I even know my father passed away in 2011 before I was diagnosed, I can almost guarantee you that if he would have gotten us assessed somewhere along the way, he would have been diagnosed. Right? Right. Just knowing how that all happened and all of that kind of stuff. Betsy Furler 25:56 How do you think that your autism allows you to be successful in what you're doing Ron Kerns 26:06 can sometimes be a tough one because especially with all my job in career difficulties with having a job and retaining the job, it's can be very hard to find that what's positive about a Geass? so often I see the negative. Betsy Furler 26:34 Right, right. Ron Kerns 26:36 And then a few years after I was diagnosed, I saw the movie saw the movie. Thinking in pictures. The story about Temple Grandin. Yes. And that just blew my mind. It was like that's a that's another So, I've always done that, but never realized how or why. And so that ties in perfectly with me being a graphic designer, I think in pictures, Betsy Furler 27:16 right. So that makes that job, your career, the perfect career free for your brain. And you kind of accidentally happened upon it. The Ron Kerns 27:30 the difficulty lies in being in the marketing, corporate communications field. So much of it is personality driven, Betsy Furler 27:49 right, relationship and all of that's Ron Kerns 27:54 Miss so that's what's really been the hindrance more than anything. great example of that is, you know how I was, before I got this job at the university. I was without a full time job for five years. And so last my last full time job in 2013 1313. And then anyway, so it was during that time when I was out and I was constantly getting interviewed, it wasn't like I had a terrible habit, bad resume and I was constantly getting new people said that it was in the interviewing process. It was the interview and that would always be the barrier. And, but I was also from the freelancing. I did the I did an annual report for an organization in Baltimore called abilities network in 2014 2015 From like that, and I did an annual report for the Arctic, North Texas, and about the same time, maybe a little bit after. So here I was, I was designing and creating these annual reports for these large organizations. And these are projects that it would typically be done by a large team of designers with the nice, top design firms. And I was doing them all on my own. highly acclaimed, I was winning awards, you name it. And yet I was still having difficulty in finding a job. And that was the frustrating part of it. I knew I could do the work, but it was just getting past it in the whole interviewing thing was a massive hurdle. So in 2004, so 2016 comes around, I had a couple of interviews that were really should have been a slam dunk. My one of my previous jobs was with one of my previous jobs was with a multinational veterinary pharmaceutical company. I was the art director and graphic designer for the entire consumer brands division, I was a sole designer. So all of the packaging, point of purchase displays, advertising marketing, you name it was all done by me. And so all of my work was seen and put within Petco and PetSmart all over the country. And, um, and so then that job ended in 2009. But then, when I was in sometime in early 2016, I was able to interview for a job with a local chain in Dallas, a chain of veterinary clinics, who also had their own private label branded products that they would sell within their clinics. So it would be marketing the clinics and and the packaging and all of this all of the stuff for the products they had. And I was like, How can I not get this? Right now that's just what you've been doing basically. And I didn't get it. And I got some very good sets the flimsiest flimsiest excuses to why they chose somebody else. And that's what pretty much and so I was unemployed for almost five years at the time. We were getting close to getting foreclosed on our house. And in addition to that, my My wife's dad who was living who had lived in northern Arkansas for many years. At that time. His wife had passed away. And so he was up here all by himself. We were several, we were 810 hour drive away. And so she was certainly like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if we could up there be up near my dad, all that kind of stuff. And we'd always love the area. And I thought, well, maybe once I retire, we can move up here because there's really no jobs for somebody like me around here. Uh huh. But once those job opportunities just kind of continued coming and going away and I, we came to the conclusion, especially with the foreclosure house. It was like, let's just get out of here. I'm like, I'm done. got going. So I'm We sold the house. Thankfully, we avoid foreclosure and the market Dallas was just going crazy. So we we did quite well on the house in the long run. And so I did be opposite of what you would think instead of staying in an area where there's countless jobs, I came to an area where there's a mere handful of jobs. And so I was doing the tons of freelancing at the time so I figured hey, I could get by a few minutes and we could while just working from here at the office phone and, and doing what I do. So for two for two years, that's what I did. I just worked from home, doing my work for my clients from wherever in the world they were. And that worked just fine. And and then I saw on an on host one day for the job. at Missouri State, it was so perfect. That was perfect job. So my whole mindset was what I knew would eventually happen was how many other people could their candidates could they have possibly been have had my background experience applying for this job. We live in this extremely remote and rural area. Right, right. And so I go to the interview and it's a panel interview about six or seven people. And one of the people read this statement about how the university values, diversity, inclusion, and, and all of that kind of stuff. So I thought, Okay, that sounds great. And then came to the point where I showed him my portfolio and they were raving about my portfolio and the stuff I was showing enough work I've done in the past. And so then then it came to strengths and weaknesses, asked me about my strengths and weaknesses. And so that's what I had a pretty good idea that they would be perfectly fine with it. So I said, well, the weaknesses that goes along with me learning I was autistic just a few years ago. And it kind of went into my strengths and weaknesses, as far as you know, being a graphic designer, that sort of thing. So that was one of the few times I know. That's always a big conundrum for people who are on the spectrum, when the right is Betsy Furler 35:57 whether you disclose your Yeah, quote unquote disability or not just Ron Kerns 36:03 the disposer you to try to fake it. Betsy Furler 36:05 right all right. Ron Kerns 36:07 It was at that point to where I felt comfortable enough. I knew that of course, I knew from the get go like this is a major university they almost certainly are going to be understanding and even somewhat appreciate the fact that I've accomplished what I what I've done and being artistic. Mm hmm. And and so then that's what happened and, and I got the job. Betsy Furler 36:38 That's amazing. I think that I think disclosing your condition was absolutely the right thing to do. proud that probably got you the job because then they realized Ron Kerns 36:51 that Betsy Furler 36:52 you know, the things about the interview that maybe you're the things that you do or say during an interview that maybe wouldn't get you the job in the past. They're like, Ah, that's why his brain works in this way. And he gave us the interview, clearly and then and then ended up with a job that is a great fit for you. Ron Kerns 37:17 Yeah. And a lot of it was just having that feel for the people that were there. No. Had a good feeling that Okay, there. It's going to be okay to mention it. And, you know, it just, it's, it's no, so whenever somebody brings it up is like, it just depends. Yeah, because I can think of other times in the other jobs I've had to where I would mention it. So I'm on my first. So after I got the notification that just you have the job. I contacted my caseworker with the agency in Dallas who is a, it's a organization called lunch ability. And they're in Dallas. And they're now merged with another organization called my possibilities. And they help people just like me find appropriate jobs and work. And so I called my caseworker. And of course, she was excited and very thrilled that I finally landed the job. And so we talked through the one thing that we've always wanted to talk through was, okay, I have the job now. And, you know, making sure that no one can I had everything, all my ducks in a row for that first day, week, month, because how important it is to kind of get it off to a good start. And so we were able to talk through all of that. And so then on my first day or so, I'm kind of set my manager down and Well, as you know, I'm autistic. And I said I and I explained to her that I really didn't need any really accommodations really a whole lot. But I gave her a list of things to keep in mind. For thankfully, I do have my own office with the door. So I said no, quite often, I'll have the door closed, depending on what's going on elsewhere in the area there. I try to keep it open. My lights, my fluorescent lights are always off all the time. She even bought me on this small little desk area. Because I will I think for the huge I have a huge massive window on one side of the office. That's plenty of daylight and most times, but I'm really I'm really cloudy days. I have a little desperate that you got me help with light. That's not nearly as bright as those big fluorescent things. Right? Right. I'm just told her my difficulties with the whole executive functioning thing with, you know, organizing, organizing and prioritizing projects and work. And that can sometimes have 20 projects in varying degrees of in the queue 20 years old projects and varying degrees of completion or, and that sort of thing. And so she's always been very helpful with never hesitated to help in any way when I've come to her and say, again, we talked about this from insert, make sure you know that. I'm working on the right projects at the right time for this because I have a lot going on at the moment, or whatever. And so just share her being very, extremely Understanding and patient with me is just been, it's been a huge Betsy Furler 41:06 well, and that sounds like you have there, you have some accommodations at work, but they're not expensive or big deal type of accommodations. They're things that make your life so much easier and allow you to do your best work. But it also wasn't super expensive for the university to put into place. And it probably actually that kind of back and forth on deadlines and, you know, possibly, you know, asking her to break down tasks or, you know, kind of getting her feedback on that. That's great communication for anybody. Ron Kerns 41:47 Right. And so, then some of it goes back to learning. Things are learning difficulties now that I know I'm watching Stick. For instance, before I was artistic, I never would have never thought to get your plugs for when I'm in a crowded restaurant, I just grin and bear that. And then and then been an artistic adult Facebook group. People mentioned here places. And I was like, wow, that could actually be a really cool idea. Now I have several sets that I carry with me. So I'm never without a pair. Because I've never know when and where I'm going to be. And and it's like, well, why haven't I thought of this before? Betsy Furler 42:38 inexpensive things that you can do and easy to do and make the world a difference. Right. Right. Right. And so Ron Kerns 42:45 then with the accommodations, I'm a lot of I've read a lot lately about standup desks, dusted can put on your desk and then raise up to where you can stand in kind of Move around a bit more and all that. And so that's what I have. So I talked with my manager about that. And so what is being ordered for me right now? That's awesome. To get one of those, so that would that is I think that will be helpful. Betsy Furler 43:19 Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. I'm so glad you found that job and you made that leap of faith to move from Dallas to rural Arkansas and it sounds like that was just the best move you could have made. Ron Kerns 43:35 One thing I just thought of about the move to Arkansas was after I got diagnosed sometime or along the way I started having meltdowns and panic attacks like while driving and traffic. Safety imagine the freeways and highways and roads in Dallas are Always very congested. just crazy as crazy as can be. Yeah, and the meltdowns and all of that we're amplifying. And that was something that was an eye. I gave up driving for the last couple years we were there as much as I could think he lived fairly close to the train station where I could take the train into downtown or wherever I needed to go. And that was another factor in the moving here was she I wonder how it would be if we moved out of this sensory overload of the city and out there to where it's calmer and the traffic is almost non existent. Right little thing. And so I'm just with In a few months, my wife and I had the conversations like the changes almost instant. I'm just the change of environment. It was just amazing. Betsy Furler 45:13 That Yeah, that's a good point. I was actually thinking about that for myself the other day cuz I live in Houston, Texas, and traffic is terrible. And it's like, you know, I, I wonder, you know what it would be like, if we didn't have to have this traffic, we didn't have to be on traffic all the time. And I think we will eventually move out someplace that is not as bad because I think we're all of our brains. It's not good. You know? So that's, yeah, that but that is if if sensory overload is a problem for you, traffic is and just the big city bustle. That's a lot of that's a lot of sensory information you're having to process Maybe not for any good reason. Ron Kerns 46:03 Yeah, again, that's just something that has. Because there's a there's a thing called it's autism fatigue, I think is a word for it. And so that was something that started popping up. And so basically the idea that I was handling all of that for years, fairly well. But having the mask and camouflaging Bailey all the time constantly, constantly becomes the point when you come to a certain age when you just the mask starts slipping and you just can't have it on as much all the time. Uh huh. And, and so that is what I really think kind of was happening. Just started losing the ability to tolerate a That all the time because it just can't keep the mask on all the time as much because it's because as you get older, it becomes more exhausting more effort to do that day in and day out. Betsy Furler 47:13 Right and then you're taking your energy that you could be using at work and with your family and all of that. You're having to use that energy to try to to put the keep that mask on for the with the sensory stimulation. Well that I'm I am so glad you moved to Arkansas. I think that was such a great I think that was such a great thing. And I I loved hearing your story and your your later in life life diagnosis. I think this interview is going to help so many people that are listening to my show, and how can people get in touch with you if they want to learn more about you. Ron Kerns 47:58 I'm pretty much everywhere. In Social media. Ron turns Kieran s on Facebook. They can go to my website, studio Kearns that. I'm, I'm very active on LinkedIn. You can find me there round Ronald. Ronald Kearns. Um or just send me an email at Ron at Studio Kearns calm. Betsy Furler 48:31 Awesome. I will put all of that in my show notes and the book suggestion because I think that I'm going to I haven't ever read that book either. I'm gonna I'm gonna read it. I'll probably listen to it on Audible, but I Ron Kerns 48:44 pretended to be normal. Yeah, definitely. Another book that's also along the same premise that I found it. really helpful was john elder Robison, his book Look me in the eye. Betsy Furler 49:03 Yes, yes, that's a good one. Ron Kerns 49:07 Both of those help was so helpful to me because, you know, both were on the same premise about this is how my life was. And then I found that later in life I was like Betsy Furler 49:18 I will say, well, I'll put both of those in the show notes. And thank you so much for joining me today. You were a wonderful interview and great information for my for my audience. Ron Kerns 49:34 Thanks for having me. Betsy Furler 49:35 Yes, have a great day. You too and audience Thank you for listening and please subscribe to the show. You can also follow me on social media at Betsy Furler f you are le er or for all abilities.

The Visibility Strategy w/ Kim Kuhteubl

Design Tribe Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 11, 2020 58:39

Kim is an author who works with designers on creating better business strategies on an emotional and strategic level. Buy her book: https://www.mebydesign.com/shop-2/branding-interior-design-visibility-and-business-strategy-for-interior-designers QUESTIONS: 1.) What are some of the biggest problems you see designers facing? 2.) What is the best piece of advice you can provide designers when it comes to networking and getting their designs in front of the right people? 3.) How much does mindset play a role in designers feeling ‘stuck’? 4.) Do you believe that designers are lacking the right marketing or PR strategies? Is there something deeper going on or is it a little of both? 5.) How would you advise designers to become more ‘available’ for the life they truly want? What are some action steps they can take to become more available? 6.) How does gender play a role? 7.) So, explain to us your Visibility Strategy. What are some step-by-step things designers can do to be more visible online and in the real world? 8.) A lot of artists and designers are introverted, myself included. We’re not necessarily shy, but we don’t enjoy being ‘on’ and being in front of people all of the time. Do you have any tips for introverts? Would it be better for them to hire a PR manager or to outsource some of the extroverted tasks involved in becoming more visible? 9.) Do you have any suggestions for ways designers can earn more money in 2020? 10.) What are some of the biggest emotional hurdles designers face surrounding money and what are your tips to help them overcome these hurdles? TRANSCRIPTSpeaker 1 (00:04):What's up design tribe, but welcome back for a another episode. Now if you want to tune in to the live streams, then be sure to join in my design tribe Facebook group will where I go live with guests and do new episodes of the design tribe. To watch past episodes. Be sure to check out my playlist on YouTube for the video version and of course check out the design tribe on iTunes and Spotify for the podcast of version if you are wanting to listen while doing something else or getting crap done. All right, let's jump in. Speaker 1 (00:40):Hello. Hi everyone and welcome to today's episode with Kim Kuhteubl where we're going to discuss the her visibility strategy and also go through all kinds of questions. So Kim is an author who works with designers on better business strategies and some kind of like emotional blocks that designers sometimes have. So Kim, if you want to introduce yourself and kind of give a little bit of your backstory to everyone in the design tribe, I'm sure. Thank you so much first of all morning for having me on the show. I really appreciate it. I work with interior designers on their branding and visibility. As you said. I actually am a producer by trade and I spent a lot of time in television and contributing articles to different publications and then when I was sort of looking to transition out, I started working with a success coach and put together a package of services for interior designers and then realized, Oh wait a second, they like what I'm offering here. Speaker 1 (01:39):And it was initially video and it was blog production and blog content sort of things that I had done inside of my job as a producer is a content creator. But then I started to put together trends that were happening in terms of visibility and leadership and things that were getting in the way of designers actually getting the press or putting out the book in the world or getting the next level of client. And what it's, what I started to understand was that I was learning about women in leadership because 80% of interior designers are women. And so as I was working with them, I was learning about how women lead and also what gets in the way of them leading at their full capacity when they're creative. Right. So then what are some of the biggest problems you see designers facing? Like you said, 80% of interior designers are women I've kind of noticed as well. Speaker 1 (02:39):It's the same as true in textile design, which is my background. So yeah, I worked as a graphic designer for a little while and then I was a textile designer for seven years and I love, love, love textile design. But I did, I have noticed some kind of different design industries that women gravitate towards as opposed to men. Like a lot of industrial designers have more men tend to be more men. Yeah, it's interesting. I think that from the perspective of blocks you could, we can look at it a couple of ways. There are the business blocks and then there are the emotional blocks as a creative because fundamentally what you are as a creative, that's my dog, Ramona. Speaker 1 (03:25):We are as a creative is we're selling our creative work. And I don't know about you, but for me, when I'm being creative, I learned through my creativity. I'm a writer. I learned through my writing, I learned through the things that I create. And so when you have to offer those for sale, a lot of times there are going to be personal blocks that are involved there. So you might think, can I charge that much for my work? Is it worth it? Is it good enough? Or this work is not good enough? Because a lot of designers and creatives in general are perfectionistic. We're trying to get to our next level in terms of our creativity. So I like to look at things as done better than perfect. Otherwise nothing would get out in the world that that took a little bit of time to get there because at first I was just trying to be a perfect creative, you know? Speaker 1 (04:19):And I was like, no, well not show you that it's ugly. Or you judge it harshly. You say, that's really terrible. And meanwhile somebody else who's on the receiving end of that is finding beauty in that is finding wonder in that end. You've done your job. I think we all come here with gifts. I look at it spiritually too, that my creativity is a spiritual expression. And so there is somebody who needs to connect with that creativity and who's going to be moved by it. First it was just for me, but then eventually I'm here to serve with it. And so when you're here to serve with it, you have to get out of your own way with all of the, like the inner brouhaha that you might be telling yourself, whether you're, you have an inner mean girl or an inner insecure girl, designers. Speaker 1 (05:04):You mentioned to me that you were an introvert. And I'm an introvert as well. Most creatives are introverted. They love spending time alone. And what you have to do is choose the time that you're going to be in communication with as resists and how you're going to be in communication with others. And that's more important in that moment because you're here to be of service. Right? So I think what I'm hearing you say is that, you know, a lot of designers have these emotional blocks with, you know, kind of on one hand and I worked this price that I, that I need to charge really in order to make a decent living and support myself and also, Mmm, okay. Trying, dealing with perfectionism, you know, being afraid to really put yourself out there as, I guess what that boils down to is another block and then, Mmm. Speaker 1 (05:56):Also like when you're thinking about some of the blocks on them as an aside, at least like when it comes to something like pricing, how would an artist maybe know the market just isn't receiving what they're putting out there? Because I see that happen a lot too, where it's like, you know, you might love what you're, you know, you might love your work, you might believe in it and you're putting it out there. But if you're not seeing results, like when is a good time for an artist and maybe say, okay, like this isn't really viable for the market because you really have to have both, right? Like you have to have the emotional strength to really like put yourself out there like what you're talking about. But also there has to be a market for the product that you're putting out there and there. Speaker 1 (06:37):I don't know, there has to be someone who's willing to buy it. I I do. I love this question and I've never been asked it before in this way cause it's sparking a whole lot of things for me. Normally how I would answer it is that there's always a market for what it is you're doing. There's always a somebody who wants what it is you put out in the world. You just have to find them. And what happens is we get in our own way by thinking, Oh nobody wants to buy this. Then we start to focus on all of the reasons why nobody wants this or maybe it's not the right timing or all of those things. And so we focus on that instead of well where are the clients who want to buy this? And they might not be in your normal sphere of things, especially when it comes to design services. Speaker 1 (07:23):And this is a very common common, the problem with designers is that they have an idea in their head or they want to express their creativity in a certain way and the client wants the creativity expressed in another way and those things don't match. So they think, well I can do what they want but I'm not going to be creatively fulfilled so I can either be creatively fulfilled or I can be paid. But it can't be both. And that's not true. However, what sparking for me, when you were asking me that question was that there are many artists, the majority of artists are ahead of the curve. They're ahead of the cultural curve in terms of emotion, in terms of visuality, in terms of all of those things aesthetic. So you might be a visionary with a product that is not currently of the marketplace and you really have to figure out, I think a way to have a conversation. Speaker 1 (08:20):Cause some people are like, well they just didn't hit, the timing didn't hit. And we do see that that some people are so far ahead that they can't permeate the Geist. They can't get into the conversation, but I think a lot of times designers give up too early and we get caught up in this, again, the emotional trauma, nobody wants it. Oh maybe I suck. Well maybe this is too expensive. We go down that rabbit hole much quicker. Then we would spend the time trying to figure out who needs this now. Yes. I'm also of the belief that if you get the idea now for the moment, now you, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about this in her book, big magic. And you see this out in the world that a lot of people will get the same idea at the same time in different parts. And I think there's a, there is a reason for that, that that idea is trying to get out. Speaker 1 (09:19):So some people are more confident about that expression and if the idea doesn't get expressed, if it's not meant to be with you, it will go looking for another home. I do really agree with that. Have you read that book? I have read that book and I had kind of forgotten about that part. But yeah, I love that part. Where it was like an idea for a book and like she had, was it an idea for a book that she had and then one of her friends yep. Manifesting with one of her friends and she said it was on a kiss. Like she kissed her friends, like congratulations or something. And then she felt the idea, leave her and go to her. Her friend and her friend brings up the book. And I, I, I of, I do believe that I believe that ideas have a home. Speaker 1 (10:01):And sometimes I'm like, I, I, you know, I know for me, my creativity, I'm not always taking care of it. And so if I don't take care of my creativity, I don't feel happy as a human because it's so much a part of me. So I think as creative people, the real art for us in business is learning how to express ourselves at the highest level and then have the conversation with people in such a way that they understand the value of this work and we'll purchase it from you. Right, right. I love that. Mmm. It does kind of also bring me back to my days as a textile designer when, you know, sometimes the market just wasn't quite ready for something. Like a lot of times we would talk about something looking and I designed rugs, right? So it's not like it's not like a cool book idea or something. Speaker 1 (10:54):It's totally cool that you're doing it as a creative. It's just because, you know, me can, not everybody can, I can't design a rug. Not everybody can design a rug. So that's another thing is that we really diminish the gifts that we have because society doesn't necessarily understand it in the same way we do. But the fact that you could visualize something that goes in a room that grounds a room, that's pretty powerful in my mind. Oh, thank you. Yeah. I love designing rugs. I think what I was trying to say is just that, Mmm. I think it was pretty clear when the market was either not ready for an idea. For example, when we would do like our color research, we were seeing like a lot of [inaudible] like tans and Browns and like more warm neutrals come up. But everyone in the market in the last like five to 10 years just perfect, purchased a gray sofa. Speaker 1 (11:48):So we were like, all right, we might feel like a little too early with some of these like warm neutrals and Brown's that coming back into rugs, like people are probably still going to be going with the grays. But also at the same time, like sometimes the design might look too dated that's been in the market for a while. Like we don't need to keep designing something that looks a little bit tired or dated, so. Mmm. Yeah. So I think that, I think it's an interesting conversation. I do. I, I hadn't thought of it that way. It is an interesting conversation. Yeah. Because you, you might be ahead of the curve too far ahead of the curve in terms of, but I do believe there's always an a, a way in, otherwise you wouldn't have had the idea. And sometimes I think ideas come early to people so that we have preparedness too because they take longer to execute than we think. Speaker 1 (12:37):So that they hit the site guys like, you know, there's the book by Malcolm Gladwell that talks about the tipping point and the early the early adopters and all of the, you know, the different categories of people. And I always feel like I was always a little bit of occur ahead of the curve, but I wasn't the head a head person. Hm. But for that person, they have an audience. And I do think for creatives, we don't spend enough time cultivating our audience. We might get into judgment about who they are. We might be afraid we're not reaching them. I think a lot of creative spend a lot of time in their head, quite frankly, worried about their work and does it suck? Does my work suck? Is this worth it? Is it, should it be out there? And part of that, I have to say too, is also part of the culture. Speaker 1 (13:26):Because the culture, traditionally we'll value somebody who's coming out of finance school more highly than somebody who's coming out of sculpture school. Absolutely. Yeah. But they also value industrial designers more than, there you go. Yep. It's interesting. I dated a guy a while back that was an industrial designer and he also hired, he was a manager and hired industrial designers and they're starting salaries were like way more than a textile designer. That's a different rabbit hole. But yeah, I was like, why? Yeah. And you know, and I I T to that point, I, part of the issue is that we don't speak up whatever sort of marginalized body we are as women. A lot of the time we don't say, Hey, this is not okay. This is the value of this work. We're like, Oh, this is what we have to accept. No, we don't. Speaker 1 (14:23):So there are always people who break the paradigm who break the rules. And so if we start to say, this is actually what this work is valued, that this is how many hours it takes, this is the level, the number of years of experience I bring to this work, this is who I am as a human being. This is my original creation and this is what it's worth. And then we hold that, which is not always easy when you have bills to pay, but we hold that. Then that's kind of the work that we're doing with designers too is having designers, you know, able to ask their value and when hundreds of designers are asking for their value, then everybody starts to understand, Oh wait, Hey, I can't get this service for free. Right. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I do think it's definitely systemic as well, like at least with talking about starting salaries and all of that because Mmm. Speaker 1 (15:22):I think about it from the business owner's perspective too. And if I was a business owner and I had a rug company for example, and I said, Oh well this is like the going rate for textile designers. That's what I would offer someone as well. Right? So yeah, but no, and it's true cause you're starting you, we want to be fair and you want to know what is fair, but then there's all you're always willing to pay. I use the personality, right? If you want the Chloe purse, you're going to pay for the Chloe purse [inaudible] so you have to and how do you position yourself as that person? And then we get into a whole rabbit hole of money and our perceptions of money and what does it mean to have money and a lot of creative people and I was definitely like this before as well, like money. It's like I didn't want to have that conversation. I was having a a higher conversation than just dollars and cents. Right? It wasn't just about I was having a much higher, more important conversation but being broke. You can't have the conversation in the way that you want to because you end up struggling so much. Speaker 1 (16:31):Yep. Okay. Well, what is the best piece of advice that you can provide designers when it comes to kind of like networking and getting their designs in front of the right people and kind of like becoming that Chloe purse that you just talked about? Like how do you, how do you have leverage, especially if you're just starting out or, yeah, I like trying to get your designs in front of the right people. I think we're in a time of unprecedented access for creative people to reach their audience. So so many of you, you are Jane this as well. So many of us are actually reaching our audiences on our own with our Instagram feeds or with our Facebook feeds or our YouTube channels. So building your audience, you don't need to have [inaudible] pending on what you're selling. If you're in a product based business, it's a little bit different. Speaker 1 (17:20):When I work with interior designers, their jobs can be a lot bigger. But when you're selling [inaudible] services, you don't necessarily need a ton of clients to actually earn a decent wage and earn a really good wage. You have to have the right people who are the super fans who are focused on what it is you're doing. So I would say first of all, call two eight your audience, figure out who your super fan is, who that person is, who likes to buy from you and learn all the things about them. Where do they hang out? How do they purchase, why did they purchase, when did they purchase? All of those kinds of things. And then in terms of networking, it depends on what your ultimate goal is and putting yourself, understanding how you do fit into the market. Good place. So back to that conversation, are you more cutting edge? Speaker 1 (18:12):Are you doing what other people are doing so that you can create some press for yourself? And again, myriad outlets available to us. Now, loggers, Instagram feeds, podcasters, all kinds of people looking to tell other people's stories. So find the people who are excited about your story and share with them. Because even one fan, one super fan making a purchase, it can be that purchase that tips you over the edge. So that that's something I would do. And in terms of networking, you know, for a lot of designers will I'll say do a speaking engagement for an audience that you love. For us, like getting in front of people where you can interact or if you were, if you were a textile designer, you were saying maybe it's a workshop. If you're hosting at workshop four other artists to learn how to paint, there's all kinds of creative out of the way out of the box ways you can do [inaudible]. Speaker 1 (19:12):What I would say is this, but what it relies on, more importantly, and this is the part about visibility strategy, is that it's internal. So you really have to look at what is my mission here? What is my why? Why am I here to do, what am I here to do with my work? And then the strategy will present itself and associate itself with that. So as an example, you know I, my book branding, interior design and when I was writing it I was writing at one way and then I sort of started getting as you do when you create like different ideas and different research and I started taking it in a totally other direction so that when it to be published there were certain publishers for whom that was a fit. There were certain publishers from, I could have that conversation. The same with you, with your creative work, whatever it is that you're making. Speaker 1 (20:04):There are certain things that are going to be more people who are going to be a more natural fit for that. I had a client come to me once, it sounds like an odd thing and she had an idea for caskets. I know it sounds bananas, but she had an idea for caskets and then earns really modern earns. And I loved that idea because it was so specific and narrow that I, I mean everybody dies, right? So, but she could have, there's a handful of manufacturers who were doing that so she could have a conversation with the ones who didn't have, who had that gap in the market where she could potentially put her product. Now she, it, she didn't have the, the energy to go forward with that. And I think she thought the idea was crazy and I thought it was brilliant. I almost say that more crazier your idea, the more likely you will find an audience for it because it's crazy. Yeah. Speaker 1 (21:08):Sorry. I think of a, like the Snuggie like how popular it was and I'm like, what is silly idea? I dunno. I mean, I mean or, or you're too young for this, but when I was growing up there was like the cabbage patch doll, right? Or like all these doll, like all of the toys that come out and become like hits. I, you know, and now I have a one year old and he, he's singing like we're listening to the frozen soundtrack on Pandora radio the other day. I'm thinking to know how huge this movie was. They didn't know. I bet you that though it's going to, what, what was it about that film? And they couldn't do it in the second one, but what, what is it about that film that takes off? I think there are some things we don't know and that we can't contain. Speaker 1 (21:53):But if you ask testing this out by self, but if you ask to do the creative work that it's for the highest and best good of you and the highest and best good of others, you'll be given that. And if you stay committed to that focus and you don't drop it or let go or give up, you find an audience for it. So how much does mindset play a role in designers feeling stuck? Cause it sounds like that's something that you kind of deal with when you are working with designers. A lot. It is. I think it's, it is definitely a important for all human beings. We're, we're, we put so much emphasis in the culture on the money and the financial aspect of it, but business is human beings doing business. So we're emotionality where relationships where all of these things. So I think there's a point at which you can shut down your emotionality. Speaker 1 (22:48):But design is so personal. Creatives are so personal. This is where we get into trouble with boundaries a lot of times. So boundary setting is a huge problem for creatives because you want to help somewhat sometimes with your creative work and you're willing to help them more than you're willing to be paid well for what it is that you're doing. So mindset too, in terms of getting to your next level, how you feel about what you're doing in the world, how you feel about the people you're working with. I'll see a lot of designers get stuck after a month, bad experience with a client. So they've had a horrible experience with someone that they keep replaying over. I don't want that to happen again. I don't want it to happen again. And then what happens is they're attracting more and more and more of those experiences because they're focused on them. Speaker 1 (23:41):Hmm. I've been having a conversation about mindset for the last nine that I've been doing this with clients, but I'm also now having a deeper conversation about your soul as well because you're not your thoughts and your thoughts or things that you practice there. They can be good habits, they can be bad habits. You can be telling yourself good things all the time, but somebody is telling yourself that and whatever that entity and our energy is, that's who you are. And that's what she came to do. So I'm really more in touch with that. Like how are you here to serve? What lights you up, what makes you excited? And then we work on releasing whatever feelings or habits or practices that you've kind of gotten your way. And this ties very, this is what the visibility strategy really is. It's about being available. It's know visibility is about not only being seen in the traditional sense of the word, it's also about are you available? That's one of it's underused definitions. And for me, available is an internal game. We do things from the inside out. So once we have clarity on the inside, Oh, okay. Or vision is and who we want to serve, then the strategic portion like what is, do I use Instagram, do I use YouTube, how much do I charge? All of that is a lot easier once you have clarity on the first two pieces. [inaudible] Speaker 1 (25:09):Okay. So I'm going to skip ahead to a question that I think kind of relates to this conversation a little bit more and it is something that we kind of touched on earlier, but it's the fact that, you know, a lot of artists and designers are introverted and myself included some of the you know, things you were talking about, about, you know, reaching out or doing a speaking engagement. I can just like feel designer's like cringing, you know, like it's not that we're necessarily shy, but we just don't enjoy always being on all the time. And you said you're introverted as well, so I'm sure you can relate to that. And just being in Toronto people is, it just takes a lot of energy out of us. Yeah. Do you have any tips for introverts and would it be better maybe for them to hire like a PR manager or to outsource outsource, excuse me, some of the extroverted tasks that we don't necessarily want to do all the time that are involved in maybe becoming more visible. Speaker 1 (26:05):So that way became sort of reserve our energy for those times that we do need to be available and on. Yeah. Yeah. I think it has to be on a case by case basis and it depends on what your business and what it involves. So I would say I'm better at one on one connection. I actually really, I'm introverted, I like my alone time, but I like one on one connection quite a bit. So I will say seek to have those kinds of meetings and that's the way that you can accelerate your business is having, if you're a D a textile designer or designer or a maker, having the meeting with one decision maker or having a meeting with, you know, reaching out to the sales person or the vendor who you know, or that super fan is just like the one on one connection. Speaker 1 (26:54):So what I try to do is build relationships with people who don't mind being in front of many and then, and then I can have the one on one relationship and they can be the foot soldiers. Then there's also that you need downtime so that when you are going to be out in the world, you are militant about scheduling your receiving time or your downtime so that you can recover. Right? Because you have to recover. I, because I come from a production background and because I started, I started in theater, so I started getting my own press for theater and productions that I did. I'm a big fan of you doing your own press because you formed the relationship with the journalists. So it's again, that one on one and then they go to publication. You go with them. It's not rocket science. Most creatives I find have a natural instinct for where their stuff fits. Speaker 1 (27:48):No. Well, if you're a good creative, you, chances are you don't know. It's not a fit for that, or I don't want it to go there. You just, you have that innate discernment and I think you should naturally do your own press until it gets, until the requests are so great. Or if you can't say no, then you hire someone to do it for you. But I'm a big fan of starting on your own and doing it by yourself because you know your work best. You're going to have the best kind of conversations and people like you, they'll form the relationship with you as opposed to with others. And I'm sure you're good a one on one. You're happy one-on-one. Yeah. I like doing one on one. I love doing the podcast. Yeah. Interviewing people like you. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, I do enjoy that. Although if, I think if I had, if I was doing this all day, like back to back, you know, like I don't know, five hours a day, I think it would be too much. It's too much. Yeah. So we, I always have space between interviews. I actually did some coaching today. I'm like, Oh, I'm actually, I'm okay. It's okay because I was a happy group. I love my clients. So that's really important. That's really important for introverts too. All aspects of not only your supply chain, but your client chain. [inaudible] Speaker 1 (29:04):Have a, no, I don't know if we can, can we say swear words? Are you okay? I don't care. Have a no asshole policy. Right. Or don't work with pittas pain in the ass. Don't work with them. Right? Like no. And, and that's going to be different for everybody because my Pitta is going to be somebody else's dream client. So really honoring how you feel. You know, when I'm in the company and this person, I feel like crap or they don't really understand what I'm saying in terms of the collaboration. I don't want to work with them and just being okay with that and releasing them to go find somebody who's going to be great for them. But really being fierce about fit and fierce about what your fit is so that when you, or in a situation or you have bigger demands on your energy that you feel comfortable giving [inaudible]. Speaker 1 (29:58):So do you believe that designers are maybe lacking their right marketing or PR strategies or something deeper going on? Or is it a little of both? And I know we kind of touched on this, but yeah, I think I have a lot of clients who are like, and again, it really depends on what it is you're selling. For interior designers perspective, some will say, Oh well Instagram. And it just depends on, again, their age demographic and also who they're serving. And I'm like, the first question I usually ask is, is your ideal client on Instagram? Well, have you ever really gotten a job from Instagram? No. Now some clients do. And then I'm like, perfect. That's where you should put your efforts. If you don't get a client from the place where you're putting your marketing efforts, don't do it. Even though everybody's saying this is what you have to do. Visibility strategies are individual, so you need to choose and figure out where your people are and then have a cover. I've noticed that I'll have a different conversation with someone. I'm sure you noticed this too. I've had a different conversation with somebody on Facebook that I do on Instagram. I get a different kind of client from Instagram than I do from Facebook, and so.Speaker 1 (00:00):We really pay attention to that. So what I'm posting here is different from what I posting over here and sometimes it's the same, but I'll tweak the way I come into the story. And I think again, that's something that creatives do very naturally because you're trying to fit and to please. But I think also from a visibility standpoint, what we talked about earlier, which is not thinking that your work is good enough to get press or to be seen. So not even trying to pitch or not even trying for, for years and years work goes by. That's a problem. Your work is if, if at least people who are not your mom, at least three people who are not your mom tell you I love this work or this is really beautiful [inaudible] then figure out what those people read and pitch that Daisy because you're onto something or where do they hang out online or what would they be willing to buy it? Speaker 1 (00:58):I have a friend who's a Facebook friend who I was somebody who I went to school with. I didn't know her actually very well then and on Facebook. Now she's been posting all of these paintings and I said, Oh, I love that painting. I would love to buy it. And she's like, okay. So she sells me the painting and the now she's been developing this website and she's kind of coming out as an artist because she didn't think that her work was that great. She's judgment on her work. Okay. Just because you're learning doesn't mean that I will enjoy the output of the stage you're learning at. When I looked back at my earlier films or when I look back at the earlier thing I've written, sometimes I'm like, like, or I that doesn't resonate or I like it, but I'm like, I don't even know how I got to that. I would've never gotten to that place now. That's okay. Be grateful that you did that work and then now you're onto your next set of work. Speaker 1 (01:57):From my own personal standpoint, I feel like I've gotten on these little PR cakes where I've tried to like reach out to some press, but I haven't really heard back that much. And so I think maybe designers feel like, at least for me, I felt like I needed to have maybe a little bit more of a success story before I started. You know, really putting myself out there a lot more including like being on other people's podcasts and things like that. Well I think it's more you need a story in the moment. So if you had like a new release, that's a story. If you see, you know, if you're exploring something in a way that nobody has, like you're setting a trend in the market, that's a story. So there are ways in, well what I will say about press, it's, it's a Sisyphean task. Speaker 1 (02:42):So you really have to just keep doing it. Just have to keep doing it. And you will get a lot of nos for every yes, we get silence, radio, silence or nos and you can't take it personally. So we have a three rule follow up. We kind of, we pitch, then we wait seven to 10 days, then we follow up with an email, then we follow up with a phone call, then we drop it. If we don't hear anything and then six months later if they haven't told us to like bugger off orF off, then we will follow up again and again. You just keep doing it because chances are the, in this climate, the journalist has left and gone to another publication that also, and this is a good point which I'll make quickly, but is this the idea that if your energy is too loaded, when you're pitching, you're unlikely to get the response that you want. Speaker 1 (03:40):So if you've made it by loaded pen, this is couple things. So if you've made it mean too much. Okay. Or if you are in any way hesitant. I find it such a delicate thing. I had a client, her work was stunning. Two clients we were working on, we were working on that for them and she was pitching, we were trying to picture it. I'm like, this work is beautiful. We had three yeses from publications that all of a sudden disappeared and I was like, that is weird. This is you. So we had been journey. We had this conversation where turns out she'd had all of this like, well, I'm not really sure about that publication. And then she had all this like internal stuff going on that and I do believe in energy and the flow of energy and how that impacts things. And so she left it up with that like whole, you know, brouhaha going on and just today we were talking, she's like, Oh, this publication came to me and this one came out of the blue. Speaker 1 (04:38):And I said, yeah, because she's in a great space, she's ready to be seen. She's ready to be seen authentically for who she is. She's not afraid to be seen. She's like, it would be nice to be published, but it's not going to make her break her career if she doesn't. And it comes in really easily. So I never had anything on press in my early days. And so when I was producing theater and being and shows and things, so I would get a lot of press, which could piss people off, but I just didn't have anything on it. I was like, Oh well this is what you do. Okay. So I did it and then I would get the press. And so if you have that fun, make it a game with yourself and you're like, well this is going to be fun. Let's see if I can get two or three interviews, podcast interviews or let's see if I can get like an article in this publication. Speaker 1 (05:26):Like wouldn't that be fun? And you just make it really light. Right? You're more likely to have success with it. Cool. So how would you advise designers to become more available for the life that they truly want and what are some kind of action steps that they can take to become more available? And I know you kinda just mentioned that with just kind of knocking on the door and not putting too much pressure on it. Yeah, they do some research, create a list. Maybe people that they want to reach out to podcasts that they want to be on. Blogs are, yes. So that's from a traditional visibility standpoint. From an availability standpoint, I'll, I'll address that two ways from the availability. The internal game is first getting clear on your vision and your vision of what you want your life to be like. And you might not see that. Speaker 1 (06:16):I think visions, we talk a lot about manifestation. I do believe that visions are received and they're received. When you're in an open space and you're ready to receive them, a lot of people say, I don't see what I'm supposed to do. I can't, you know, I don't understand it. I'm like, because you're probably not giving yourself permission a lot of the time or you can't believe that it could be possible. You could have the life you see in your head. So once you've, yeah, get clarity on that and you start to do any kind of release. We have visibility. I talk about visibility blocks. I'm going to be adults on it in March and talking a little bit about the visibility block and the removal process, but a lot of it is this kind of internal energetic work. Then you can create the strategy from there. Speaker 1 (07:03):So yes, in terms of the the practice physical visibility standpoint, it's understanding what you're selling, what your product is, how it, how it is, the story of [inaudible] the product and then who needs to hear that story the most and then which publications are speaking to the people that you need to speak to. I will say though that cultivating your own following, it's really one of the best things that you can do. So building your own audience, friends upon friends, doing a newsletter. I'm a huge fan of the newsletter once a week talking to the people who want to hear from you about things that are of interest to you. [inaudible] One of the best things you can do about creating business for yourself. And I guess the question I would ask with this is, you know, what is the goal of the visibility? And this goes back to that lightness piece because sometimes people think, well if I get the press then I will have made it, but the press is just one more step in either audience generation or in sales generation. Speaker 1 (08:13):So deciding what you think the press will do for you before you get it. And then saying is pressed the best way to achieve that goal. And then saying being prepared for the unexpected. So clients who have had projects published, I had one client in a show house this year and the, the room she did got picked up in multiple publications just all over the place. It created this snowball effect. It was the best case scenario. We would have never, you didn't see that happen [inaudible] and she was getting offers and meetings and all these things were happening and she was like, and we had to just breathe through that and allow her to receive at that level. Yeah. So I hope that answers the question. Yeah. I think I'm with my audience and for myself included. Like I, yeah, I'm trying to actually license my patterns now. Speaker 1 (09:13):So one of the best ways to get in front of people is to actually exhibit at trade shows. Yes. I was going to say you need to go to the licensing show. Yeah. Yeah. But it is really expensive. So Sirtex just happened in February and I did not go to that show because I now have, I'm working with an agency. So they were there representing me and my work and I love my agent, but I'm not sure, like I'm still kind of like, Oh, do I want to work with an agent, you know, longterm because I kind of miss being at the show, but I didn't really have. And that's, you know, funding to be able to, did you have you considered partnering with like five or six other designers and having a booth? Yeah, I've, I've discussed this with other designers and they, I feel like you kind of get lost in, you know, in six designers, you know, maybe with one other designer. It's, I've seen that work really well. And I did go to blueprint show last may. Yes. But with licensing, part of the problem is that you're earning royalties, which can be great, but it just takes a very long time to like really get the ball rolling with that, you know, finance. So, so this, so this is what I would say is why is the goal licensing? Speaker 1 (10:25):Mmm aye. [inaudible] First of all, you, you can maintain your own copyright on your work. Yes. You can use the same design over and over again for different industries. And it really, your name is on the work as well. So you know, you're kind of like partnering with a manufacturer who maybe sells dishes or it could be, again, rugs or pillows or any kind of home decor. It could be Carol, it could be really any product, but you're kind of partnering with that company and you get to do the artwork side of things, but they kind of handle the rest. So you're not a lockdown with the logistics and operations and trying to sell your own product. Mmm. You are also, you have more creative license because it is your brand. It is your so, and I would dig deeper with you. So then you want to maintain creative license. Do you want to have your brand? What do you want your brand to do? Speaker 1 (11:26):Mmm, but okay, I get that. I guess that's the very basic answer, but I know you have a deeper answer. But why I began, this is the work. Yeah, the word. I think it's more about leaving a legacy and kind of being known. Like when I look at other designers that you know, that we still celebrate today and their work is still being licensed you know, like Sonya Delaney or William Morris, you know, is one of the most famous examples. But I would love to leave a legacy, whereas, you know, of course we're all going to die at some point. Like we times on earlier. You think of William Morris with the agency though, right? So what do you want to be known for? Aye? To whom to whom do you want to have this impact? Speaker 1 (12:20):I mean, I don't really mind. I mean, I guess it's more women. My designs tend to be more feminine, more modern. Okay. but you see how that gives you, you have to know that. And the reason I'll say that, it's maybe not from a licensing perspective. When somebody got you in a booth. I'm just gonna just challenge the thinking a little bit. When six designers say, well I would be lost in a booth with six other designers, how is that any different than having an agent who has 30 different designers to represent inside of a booth? Yeah, I actually would argue, yeah, I would argue that six of you and I used to, because I used to do t-shirts and underwear, so this was in another life. I had a tee shirt and underwear line and we got up to 44 stores. This was like pre-internet and before I kind of knew about an inventory was like, it was like never again. Speaker 1 (13:11):And I was like all excited about licensing too, right? Like at that point. But, and it wasn't doing pattern design, it was doing words. So it was words on the tee shirts. And they were embroidered. But the thing is is that I would say this is that knowing who you are going to serve and what you wanted, like the emotional experience you would like them to have. Like, I made this and it makes me feel happy and I want them to feel happy and then fine meeting those women and then thinking to myself, well, what products could I make? Because there's ways for designers to make products in a way that actually is not fulfilled by you. Thank God that other people are fulfilling it. So it's not a licensing revenue. There's still some work involved, but maybe you're making cell phone cases or you're making key chains or you're making however you see your applications. Speaker 1 (14:01):So really going deep on how, how do I see this pattern in application and then who and then who is going to have it and then building that audience so that you have somebody cause yes, an agent. I've had multiple agents over my career fundamentally and it's been helpful definitely at times for sure. It's like a partner and it's a collaboration. It really depends on the agents. But I do think in this time you owning your art as you said, but also reaching your people in the way that you want to is actually going to be a greater service to you. So I would figure out what is it that I want my patterns to do? What applications do they have? Will these women be winning, willing to buy it from? And then creating your own strategy from that. Speaker 1 (14:56):Is that a helpful? Mmm, there might be resistance for that. Yeah. I've definitely sold products before and it's just not something I want to do again. [inaudible] Yeah, I don't know. Okay. It was, I ended up spending a lot of time selling and that's what I don't want to do. And that's the reason why I went with [inaudible] an agent. It's because they already have those relationships with a lot of the buyers and, right. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, if it doesn't end up working out longterm, that's okay. And it's, no, nothing bad about them. But it's early days. It's early days. So what you can do from their perspective and from a buyer's perspective is to have an audience. Because when people want your things, they want your things and that incentivizes whoever is on the selling or the buying end to buy it. But like, Oh, this person, we know her because of that. Speaker 1 (15:58):So coming to the press and that visibility from a very practical standpoint, but I do think you have some deeper work to do just with those questions about who is my audience really like seeing her so clearly on the other or him on it, but it's her seeing her so clearly on the other end and then figuring out what would she like me to do with this? Because you might get some brilliant idea. It might be going two women's goods or babies goods or something you've never thought of before that your agent might not have thought of either that you can give that idea to the agent to help sell or that you can create an agreement around. Because the only thing I'll say with the licensing model is that you have to have a lot of licenses. You're going to have to have a lot of licenses or a huge volume to make it, but even then it won't. Speaker 1 (16:48):It won't happen. So you have to have a lot of licenses to make viable and it's possible. But that means you're going to have to like dig down into your emotional reserve and say, okay, we're in it for the long haul and you know, show me the fastest route and just start really you can still continue to do some of that work on your own. Like identifying people for your agent. [inaudible] Doing like little letters, not sales letters. It's hard to be a creative and just be creative. So if we can reframe the conversation two, how are we connecting with people, with people who we love, then it becomes less tedious when we have to. And if you only have to have two or three of those conversations with people you like, it doesn't feel so much like sales. Yeah, that's definitely true. And I think that's definitely what I'm trying to do is kind of build up that audience. Speaker 1 (17:49):Youtube and Instagram and I'm on the Facebook group as well, so hopefully that will, well, it will help. It will help. And designers, you know, designers should be seeing depending on are you doing on on fabric as well? Yeah. Yeah. I'm having, I have some licensing deals with a fabric company. Another with a girl who's has a bad company. Right. And then my agent has been doing a lot of work and reaching out to a lot of people, but nothing has really landed yet. So she is going to land. So all I'll just say for you is put your focus on this is where it helps doing the vision. Put your focus on what it is you want, what are the outcomes you want. Put your focus there as opposed to why isn't it landing, why isn't it landing? Why isn't it landing? Speaker 1 (18:39):Cause then you just get more of that. So put your focus on, huh, I bet when I get X it's going to, we're going to do this and this will be, and then you'll get ideas based on it being done because at some, at some level it is done. Just like the design you've seen, your head is done. Right, right, right. That makes sense. That's cool. I like that. Okay. Okay. So do you have any suggestions for ways that designers can earn more money in 2020 if they are kind of struggling to get that full time income? Ask you have to ask for more money. So set a goal for yourself about what would be a stretch for you, what did you earn last year? You might may or may not have tracked that, track it, figure it out, and then say, well, what would be more and what would be a stretch? Speaker 1 (19:28):And then ask for that. So clarity of the vision, I cannot stress this enough. So much of the plan comes from that. And the way that you'll bring more money in comes from that. And then also not making any one client or way of being your source. It might be your source, but I'm thinking like what if you got a private commission from a designer to design their fabric line? You would probably be okay with that. Is that fair to say? Yeah. Yeah. So, so there are other ways then the way that you think that you're going to make money and be open to receiving those ideas and diverting from that track if the goal is more money and then back to what is the money for because the money comes in a lot faster when you know what it's for. [inaudible] So what are some of the biggest emotional hurdles that designers face surrounding money and what are some of your tips to help them overcome that? Speaker 1 (20:39):Again, it's that worthiness piece, right then I'm not worth it that I can't ask for this, that I shouldn't ask for this. And then the other thing is being in an other client's money stories so they don't have enough money for this, which is why I should charge less. That's probably the biggest one. Or they can't afford it or they're going through a rough time for now or whatever it is that you've told yourself. So staying out of that story and staying in, what is the value of what I'm doing and asking for that. The asking is important. You'd be amazed how many people just don't ask. So you can't get, you can't negotiate if you don't ask. Speaker 1 (21:23):Yeah, that is so true. And I have this one freelance client that I haven't raised my prices and okay. A year. So it's probably time to do that. There you go. Yeah. And yeah, and you know, if there's somebody who has worked with you constantly, then they like your work and you can say, look, it's time that I'm raising my prices, I'm going to raise them by this much, by this goal. And that's, that's, that's, there you go. Right. Okay. So we'll end on how does gender play a role in like everything that we just talked about? I really do think it does play a role in the way that women are socialized. And as I said, being able to look at mostly women in terms of interior design. There are recurring themes that pursuing our creativity is selfish, that we're being selfish, that we're supposed to take care of everybody else, that we don't really need to have this creative expression. Speaker 1 (22:21):And that's just not true. Also in terms of the value piece, we're schooled to be less, less weight, right? Less in age, lesson size, less. All of these things were schooled to be less, but we are in fact [inaudible] and we're, we're taking on that programming. I think if you, you know, there's that boo ha happening with the Superbowl right now and women saying, Oh, you know, I gender looking at Jennifer Lopez, his body made me feel bad. And I think to myself, well why didn't it make you feel bad? What does she have to do with you? That is for expression or expression. But it's because we've been trained [inaudible] for feedback. We've been trained to look for other look to others for our value, which is why we have such a hard time setting it. And if we go inside and really get the full view or when we do state it, other women sometimes end men especially too, depending on who we're dealing with, we'll police this and say, well that's not where, or what do you, why do you think you can ask for that? Speaker 1 (23:36):Well, why wouldn't I be able to ask for that? So it's us really standing in our value and speaking our, so you use it and have you visibility will demand that you use your voice and it will demand that you ask for your value. Because, and again, back to the spiritual perspective, you're an expression of unlimited source. So why wouldn't you be able to ask for X amount or Y amount and why would you be here to live with this creative gift that can allow you to be in service on a very high level and live in, in poverty? That doesn't make sense. So we have to start changing the conversation about what we're asking for [inaudible] and creatives. Because what I noticed with creatives when they get going and when they understand their value, when they're receiving more income, they're in service to everybody as a whole. Speaker 1 (24:37):They're really looking at solving problems. Creatives look at solving problems, answering questions that, that a lot of other disciplines don't even ask. Yeah, that's a really good point. So I'm, I want to pop over to the design tribe Facebook group and anybody has any questions? Who's watching live? We do have a comment from Jen, Hey Jen, if you're still watching. She says yes, it's so important for women to be empowered in their work in creativity. So I think that you've definitely helped inspire a lot of people today. If anyone else is watching, feel free to drop us a question live and I'll wait for just a couple of minutes to see if we get any questions. But other than that, I'm Kim, thank you so much for coming. Thank you. It's been so much fun. I'm like, Oh, I'm live today. It's been fun to be live there you go live very often. Speaker 1 (25:36):I go live in our Facebook group once a week and it's sometimes I'm happy if there happens to be one eyeball and I can just order no eyeballs and they can turn it off really quick if I mess up. It's just but it's nice to be interviewed and ask the questions cause when you're, when you're having to think of things and I'll script pain sometimes, but I'm not always as eloquent as I'd like to be. Oh, you are. Thank you. Or Juliet. I was, I was by today, or my baby gets crying, or the dogs get barking and then I'm like, I don't have to worry about that. You don't have to worry about that right now. It's all good. Right? Well, any other questions from our Facebook group right now, but I'm sure a lot of people will be watching the replay, so if you are watching the replay, drop us a comment below and we'll get back. Great. Thank you so much. Thank you. I appreciate it. Love it. Okay, bye guys. I hope that you enjoy today's and make sure to hit that subscribe button and click the little bell to get notified every time a come out with a new video and of course, make sure to subscribe to the actual podcast so that if you are busy and trying to do other things, that you're still not missing an episode. I love you guys and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye guys.

#53 Qi - The Transformational Force with Mason & Tahnee From SuperFeast

SuperFeast Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2020 85:16

Mason and Tahnee come together on the podcast today, to take a dive deep into the wonders of Qi, the second Treasure in the Taoist system. In the West most of us are familiar with the concept of Qi being energy, however the Taoists understood Qi in a more expansive context. Today we're excited to explore the philosophy and application of the Qi Treasure and to introduce our SuperFeast family to our new baby - The QI blend! Tune in to get the full download and learn how these beautiful Qi herbs can help you activate your potential and feel truly vibrant. Tahnee and Mason explore: Classical Chinese Medicine vs modern acupuncture application and diagnoses. Qi as a force present in all things, tonic herbs included. Dis-ease as a manifestation of blocked/stagnant Qi - "the only time we get ill is when our Qi is blocked" - Tahnee Inherited physical, emotional and mental patterns as factors that can interfere with an individual's free flow of Qi. Personal practice and Qi cultivation. Constitutional typing and Five Element Theory. The new SuperFeast QI blend. The relationship between Qi and Blood. The Taoist concept of humans being the bridge between heaven and earth. The Three Treasures; Jing, Qi and Shen. Qi as a subtle but transformational force. The self healing capacity of the body. When and how to use the QI blend. Wei Qi and external environmental pathogens. Who are Mason Taylor and Tahnee McCrossin? Mason Taylor: Mason’s energy and intent for a long and happy life is infectious. A health educator at heart, he continues to pioneer the way for potent health and a robust personal practice. An avid sharer, connector, inspirer and philosophiser, Mason wakes up with a smile on his face, knowing that tonic herbs are changing lives. Mason is also the SuperFeast founder, daddy to Aiya and partner to Tahnee (General Manager at SuperFeast). Tahnee McCrossin: Tahnee is a self proclaimed nerd, with a love of the human body, it’s language and its stories. A cup of tonic tea and a human interaction with Tahnee is a gift! A beautiful Yin Yoga teacher and Chi Ne Tsang practitioner, Tahnee loves going head first into the realms of tradition, yogic philosophy, the organ systems, herbalism and hard-hitting research. Tahnee is the General Manager at SuperFeast, mumma to reishi-baby Aiya and partner to Mason (founder of SuperFeast). Resources: Yi Jing - The Book Of Changes Rhonda Chang Digesting The Universe Book Karma and Reincarnation - Dr Motoyama Book The Power Of The Five Elements - Charles Moss Book Q: How Can I Support The SuperFeast Podcast? A: Tell all your friends and family and share online! We’d also love it if you could subscribe and review this podcast on iTunes. Or check us out on Stitcher :)! Plus we're on Spotify! Check Out The Transcript Here: Mason: (00:01) Hello, lovely people. I'm here with the lovely Tahns. Tahnee: (00:04) Hi. Mason: (00:04) So we wanted to tackle one together on this beautiful Saturday morning. We're in the podcast room. We've had torrential rain overnight, so the Qi of the land is absolutely pumping. It's conductive out there. And we thought it'd be a really good, beautiful time to chat to you guys about the concept of Qi. Obviously we've got a little bit of an understanding in the West of what's Qi? Qi is energy, everything's Qi. And we wanted to go a little deeper into the nuance. We're going to talk about, Tahns is definitely going to be going in through everything that she's studied with yoga, Taoism, anatomy and all her, everything else, Tahns will go into it. Being an abdominal masseuse, being a Yin yoga teacher. Mason: (00:47) Tahns works with Qi a lot, and is developing a really nice understanding of this huge concept. And so we're going to be looking at what Qi is in the body. Going to be looking at how many different layers and variations there are. But also then we're going to be looking widely in the body, in the three treasure system of Taoism. That's a bit more of a macro view of what Qi is in the body. We're going to be looking at what it is, how to cultivate it, in that context. How Qi herbs work in the body, because one thing I think you guys, you should be understanding by now is that Taoism is appropriate for the lifestyle. Yes, We're talking about there's Taoist's, hermits in the mountains, just going on doing nothing but Qigong all day, living off one grain of rice. And then the rest is tonic herbs and spring water and constantly meditating. Mason: (01:39) But the concept of Taoism, they can cross over to a mother of four, simply being able to manage her health and her family's health through some very basic principles. So Qi can get incredibly complex when you go into all the different ways that it can be deficient and rebel in the body and so on and so forth. And so there's that clinical understanding of Qi, we can get a little into that, and how it's represented. But then there's a very accessible, I guess, conversation around Qi that we want to be having at the same time. So no matter how much time you have or interests you have, you're going to be able to get a dialogue. Tahnee: (02:23) Yeah, hopefully we keep it in the accessible realm today. Mason: (02:27) Well I like getting inaccessible as well because it's interesting and I think it's nice as well just to have that context for everyone to reaslise, you don't have to remember all this. And at any point that it gets, if you're dealing with something heavy internally at any point it gets too much and you reaslise you can't retain it, there are practitioners, and we like teaching you how to find particular practitioners. I'm down the rabbit hole when it comes to acupuncture and that. I'm down the rabbit hole of Rhonda Chang stuff and finding a practitioner that it's actually ... I think it's getting more and more difficult to find an acupuncturist that's actually practicing what Rhonda calls Yi, actual medicine that isn't layered over with Western, basically biochemistry or Western symptomology. But that's- Tahnee: (03:09) Or pathology. I'm studying Health Science degree, majoring in acupuncture at the moment actually. And it's interesting how little we really touch on the more shamanic aspects I suppose of Chineseedicine, which is definitely what I'm more interested in. And as someone who's received acupuncture for a long time, the people that are more versed in that are definitely, in my opinion, more effective practitioners for me. So yeah, it's interesting to think about that, and even in terms of when we're talking about herbalism, what we do at Superfeast, to taking a herb that has a lot of Qi, and has a lot of intention in terms of its cultivation, its processing, versus taking a lot of just things you can buy over the counter. I'm thinking about this little compressed tablets and all that stuff that are... You can take them and they can have an effect for sure. But I don't have the same connection to them that I do to the Taoist Tonic Herbs. It's a really interesting nuance for me and something I'm exploring. Mason: (04:18) But you can feel, in a clinical setting, it's more steely. It's more, and especially when it gets symptom, when it becomes pathology based, and symptom based, it's very much okay, this is the diagnosis and... Unfortunately it's going, it's starting with ... I think what we're talking about guys before we jump into Qi, and yes we're going to talk about the Qi blend, and Qi herbs and all these kinds of things. But these tangents are why we get the big bucks. So we're talking about if we start with, okay, you're having headaches, so we start with the symptom and then we go, hh, there's four different types of headache. There's going to be a hot headache and a cold headache, and a deficient headache. Mason: (05:10) And I'm not an expert on this, I'm just enjoying it because it's slightly anarchist from what the current Western Chinese Medicine looks like. It's not Yi, it's not medicine, it's not traditional medicine. It's washed into this Western approach where it's what's the symptom? Okay. Oh, you've got, gosh, I don't know, you're nauseous. Okay. Generally the pattern is it's going to be one of these four or five different types and we're going to find it and then we're going to treat you by hitting, via the dictation of what we know to use. If it's this type of nauseousness we're going to use these points and this herb. Mason: (05:52) So there's this tendency for a lot of practitioners these days to be, feel tickled by the fact that yeah, wow, I found someone had a headache and I had options in how to treat them because everyone's different. But it's still a textbook version of treatment. And just going through Rhonda's stuff. She's just, it's still not medicine. It's still not proper Chinese Medicine, based on the classics. The classics would be doing a 100% ... Well we don't know, you don't make any assumptions. We just go in and find what's going on within the Yin Yang- Tahnee: (06:27) Individual treatment. Mason: (06:28) Very, super individual. There's, what's going on within the Yin Yang, and what's going on within the five elements, the Wu Xing. And so in that sense, there's no rules ever. And it's hard, because it's hard to commodify that, it's hard to bring people into- Tahnee: (06:46) Well it's hard to systemise and teach that. And I think when you look at the history of anything that gets codified and systemified ... I don't know if that's a word. You lose a lot of the nuance that when you work one-on-one with someone and learn something in a oral tradition based on apprenticeship and just doing the thing with supervision. That was what really got lost in China when Mao Zedong came through and he really created these colleges, these places to go and study acupuncture. And you could do... Or Chinese Medicine I should say, not acupuncture, the whole scope of practice that they decided would be most useful for treating the masses of China. And that's what we've inherited. And there's people Rhonda doing amazing work, trying to keep the old tradition alive. Tahnee: (07:34) And I think that's certainly where you and I lean toward, in our interests. But I can sort of see how you have to learn, you have to go to school because there isn't really another way to do it. But then you have to take responsibility for actually going and immersing yourself in the art of healing, which is a really different thing. And it's the same with the Che Nei Tsang I do. I learned with Master Chia and I've had lots of friends go and study with him after receiving treatment from me. And they're Oh my God, when I got there it was totally different to what you do. And it's yeah, because I'm bringing my whole life of experience, all the things I've done, all the different trainings I've taken. Tahnee: (08:16) When I work one-on-one with someone I'm bringing that plus my own Qi and my own Je ne sais quoi, every individual has their own special gifts. So I think you can't ever copy someone else, but you can definitely learn from other people. And I think as long as we remember that these things are both a science and an art, then we can be really ... It's the same with the herbs. So we would get, people write to us and they say I have a headache or I'm exhausted. Well we can only give a general answer to that because we're not seeing you. We're not talking to you. We're not investigating your history and really our duty of care, to do that over the internet or the phone is not there. We can't manage and support that. But that's where a practitioner- Mason: (09:00) Well it's not even- Tahnee: (09:01) Well that's where a practitioner is so useful because that therapeutic process of sitting down with someone, having them hear you and witness you and mirror you, and then also treat you. I think that's really powerful, and especially if they're an educator or there's someone that's going to help empower you toward your own understanding. Those are the best kinds of practitioners. And if you find one, hold on because I have had people that I've worked with for five or six years because they've just done so much for me in terms of getting me to be my own practitioner. To become responsible and sovereign for myself and you outgrow them over time for sure. Tahnee: (09:39) There's probably three people I've outgrown but I really, I value them so much as teachers. I think that's just the constant journey of life is wherever you are in your path, find the people that can support and nourish you. Know when to let go, know what to integrate and transform it yourself. A lot of this stuff we're talking about today is really relevant to this. Qi, it's that ability, once we start to get everything flowing and harmonise then, if we're talking about treasures, we've got strong Jing, we've got strong Qi, then we've got strong Shen and we're really potentiated and in our Dharma in the world, to cross our traditions a little- Mason: (10:16) Well not cross, but put them next to each other. You can have them next to each other, it's fine. Tahnee: (10:19) Well they're actually very similar. And I teach yoga, definitely with a huge, I guess, eye on the Taoist tradition because I think what the Taoists do is describe the subtle body really well, and describe the alchemical processes that happen. The yogis talk about it as well, but it was quite secretive and because of Muslim invasion and all sorts of things it got a little bit lost. So it's really cool to look at it from both sides. And if you believe that we all are incarnated spirit, which is what these two traditions point to, and that the purpose of our lives is to fully embody our spirit in this physical form. It's not to ascend, it's actually to descend the spirit and to have that spirit fully animate and penetrate this organism and its expression in this life, that's Dharma. Tahnee: (11:10) That's this idea of us living our true path. And that could be everything from nurturing a child, to creating an empire. There's so many, and it doesn't have to always be a positive Dharma, because depending on our karma, and the things we bring, we may have different things we have to express. But I think when we look at this idea of potentiating the human, which is what we're doing here, at the end of the day it's yeah, we want to be really conscious of how we choose to work with people. The kinds of information we choose to integrate into our home practice, into our culture. It's something you talk about all the time, this idea of creating culture, and these are constantly slippery conversations. It's never black and white. It's never, I'm this, because this is the Yi Jing, right? Everything changes. The Book of Changes is the foundation of Chinese Medicine. It's this idea that nothing stays the same. Mason: (12:08) It's a good point. If you go and find a practitioner, you go, have you studied the Yi Jing? Tahnee: (12:13) Well yeah, I think it's definitely not, to my knowledge, taught very extensively in acupuncture school, in inverted commas. But yeah, I think this curiosity, but you can go study the Yi Jing, it doesn't have to be this mysterious, this thing. And if you're interested we'll put it in the show notes about the YI Jing. I'm just making a note to do that. Mason: (12:34) Well, I feel like, sorry to butt in, the reason that it's brought up a little today, because I think we're going to be talking about a lot of concepts of Qi, and within this system when we're coming from a Western system, and when we're interacting with, especially at the moment new waves of Chinese practitioners, sometimes we don't see a lot of effectiveness. I think that's fair to say. Tahnee: (13:04) Yeah. Mason: (13:04) And I think what I want to bring up is that one, we're not putting the complete expectation on you here to be able to immediately affect your own Qi. However, at the same time we're talking about, this is so beyond proven and effective. And just because... You talk about it as well Tahns, when women going through menstrual issues, which can be blockages of Qi and you go and see a practitioner and it doesn't work. You haven't gone to someone who's practicing Yi medicine, and that's just the reality. And Rhonda talks about this all the time, a lot of the practitioners... And I just want to make sure everyone listening is just, we're trying to give you enough space and opportunity, what I call, to activate the placebo. Mason: (13:45) These Qi herbs, whether we're talking about tonic herbs, or whether you know what, there's some more severe stuff going on. Maybe the general tonic herbs aren't going to do it and you need to go to a practitioner that's going to get a little more nuanced. These things, they just work. They work. For thousands of thousands of years they've been working in the most complex system. At the moment, now, even in Chinese Medicine hospitals in China, they've got a Heart department, the Kidney department- Tahnee: (14:14) The stroke department, I just found one last night, what I wrote you, I will tell you about this later. Mason: (14:19) Which is interesting, but there's no stroke in Chinese Medicine. Tahnee: (14:24) No, but they don't, they just say, if you come with these things, we can treat you as an individual in our hospital. Mason: (14:30) No, they don't. That's what's happening. Sometimes it's happening. They're not doing that a lot at the time. They're having, well I'm going to treat you for- Tahnee: (14:37) Oh, that's when they're mashing up the Western piece- Mason: (14:38) No, they're it's a Western thing, and the prejudice is, in certain instances Western Medicine is just going to be more useful. And more and more and more I see how amazing ... Don't get me wrong, I see how amazing Western Medicine is and how incredible, to an extent, drugs are and can be. And I can see how people need an institution. But that's the placebo of the Western Medicine. It's so compartmentalised and institutionalised and there's theoretically all these safety checks, which is an absolute bullshit... On its own it's amazing, but it's unwarranted faith that they're being given by the population. Mason: (15:17) But the whole prejudice, although the whole, subconsciously for a lot of people, even in these Chinese medical hospitals is that a lot of the time the Chinese Medicine just isn't as reliable. Where it's, from what I'm understanding, not that I understand it necessarily, but I'm awakening my own reality. You saying it's shamanic, and then shamanic is scary therefore that mustn't be effective, That must be very ambiguous and we're calling in spirits to do the healing verse... Of course that's not the case. The real old Chinese Medicine, especially in relating to what our Treasures are and nourishing our Treasures through Qi herbs and a lifestyle that's generating our own Qi, we're generating our ability to have our Qi go through phases of transformation constantly so we don't have blockages. Mason: (16:07) This is extremely effective and it's not this thing that's, well it's not actually, not as reliable as Western Medicine. Western Medicine might be really reliable to get you back to a somewhat normal state for the next couple of years without actually dealing with your core problems. And if you're going to go to real Chinese Medicine though, you need someone really working closely with you, and educating with you, and going deep into what your issue is. And we just don't have time for that in an institutional level. Tahnee: (16:37) Well I don't think it's unique to Chinese Medicine, but I think when you look at all of the ancient traditions, it was very much around community based model and individual personalised care based on diagnosis that really took into account the whole organism. So it's talking about symptom management, which is what Western Medicine is really good at versus healing or, you talk about with Rhonda's work. This idea of true medicine, which is more to do with... My teacher always says, you're trying to put yourself out of business as a practitioner. So you're trying to get the person to the point where they are self managing and they're sovereign in their health and they'd only need to see you maybe seasonally, maybe once every couple of years just to check in and make sure everything's going well. Tahnee: (17:26) And as educators, that's something that I'm really passionate about, for me anyway, I don't want to speak for you. But the more people expose themselves to different ideas without judgment, without needing to make something right or wrong, it gives you this capacity to hold, that F. Scott Fitzgerald quote, hold multiple opposing ideas at the same time. So the Chinese Medicine says there's a universal force that is animating and that turns this sack of fluid and chemicals into a body, And when it goes away, we become chemicals and fluid again, and we dry out, and we dissolve and we become food for the bugs and bacteria. Right? So this is the foundation of Chinese Medicine. It starts with this underlying idea of universal consciousness. Western Medicine doesn't have a underlying theory. It starts with pathology, Mason: (18:17) Well that's fine. But as long as it's kept in its little place over there. Tahnee: (18:21) Yeah. But that's what I'm saying. I think as a culture we have gone, Oh, okay, we're going to worship the altar of modern science, but we forget that it has limitations. And similarly, Chinese Medicine has limitations. It's great to have a sterile surgical environment to operate in a car crash situation- Mason: (18:41) Absolutely. Tahnee: (18:42) Yeah, I know you know this, but I'm just trying to explain it for people that are listening. If I am in a car crash, I want to go to Western hospital for my immediate treatment and then I'd love to go to a Chinese doctor to maintain and improve my health over time. It's this idea of childbirth, in Chinese Medicine that's an opportunity to get healthier. And in Western Medicine it's, cool, you had a baby, see you later. We don't ever want to see you again, basically. They might check in on you for six weeks or however long the process is. Tahnee: (19:10) And so there's this two very different ways of looking at health, really. One is coming from a educative... And almost a faith based type of health that the natural state is health. That's what I feel is for me the big difference. Whereas Western Medicine is almost, things are going to break all the time and we're just going to keep patching them up. But it's the roof is going to collapse one day. You can't just keep putting screws in and polls in, and bandaging shit up and expecting it all to stay there. It's going to just all fall down one day. Tahnee: (19:45) And so that's where I think I prefer to sit in this idea that, we are by design, whether it's intelligent design or evolutionary design, I don't know, but we are by design healthy, and we are by design moving always toward health. And the only reason that ever happens is because our Qi gets blocked in some way. And it's either emotional or physical or mental, either we have a thought recurring that creates a blockage or we have an emotion recurring that creates a blockage, or we have some physical- Mason: (20:16) Something structural. Tahnee: (20:17) Mass. Yeah, that creates a blockage. Mason: (20:18) Yeah, or even the Qi blockages from parent to child, you'll see a hunch or something go from mother to a daughter and that's going to create- Tahnee: (20:28) Yeah, inherited. Mason: (20:29) Inherited, and that creates a blockage in an organ, that's going to create an emotional pattern or expression. Tahnee: (20:33) It's 11:11 everybody just letting you know. But yeah, I think, for me, just that idea even of inherited physicality is so interesting, because if learn how our parent thinks, and how our parent relates to the world, then we model that and then our bodies express that as well. So I find that really interesting when you look at, I used to teach yoga to people in families quite regularly and you would see that the genetic, it's not even the structure is inherited, it's the mental and emotional weight is inherited. And you would see that manifest, and you would see how they would react and respond in similar ways to things. And that's one of the things I love about yoga, is because it offers us this opportunity to hold space for ourselves, to examine that and decide whether or not we really want to carry that on. Tahnee: (21:30) Because, sometimes those things are great. Sometimes we have power house parents who are super rad and really give us a lot of gifts and help us to really express our own unique gifts. And sometimes we have people that really just pass on a lot of trauma, and a lot of suffering. And this idea of, and Chinese Medicine talks about this too, around the ages of 28 to 30 is this transition out of the ... Jung's work in particular is really interesting on this stuff. And he took a lot of that from the Indian and Chinese traditions. But this idea that we start to release our parents and we start to forgive them for what they couldn't offer us. And then we take responsibility for what we need to manifest to really fully become ourselves as we move into our 30's and 40's. And I think that's, we don't talk about that much in our culture. There's a lot of blame and there can be a tendency to just go to therapy and to stay in this loop. And I love therapy, don't get me wrong. I think it's really powerful, but I think you have to graduate from therapy at some point. Mason: (22:30) Well, this, a lot comes back to the concept of why you'd have a practice to cultivate Qi, and move Qi, and why you'd be moving every day and why you'd be working on your emotions, why you'd be taking Qi tonics, why your diet is appropriate for you to cultivate Qi. Because if you've got this Qi moving, Qi needs to transform, that's why if anyone, if you are relating to your body in a stagnant Western model, if you're trying to be optimal, if you're trying to be balanced. There's just no such thing as a stagnation. Everything is constantly moving and moving into these stages. Moving into that place when you're 30, or if you're going to therapy and you're identifying these patterns and things that you've picked up from your parents. If you're healthy, if you've got strong Jing foundation, and Qi is said to be in the Treasure system, the child Jing, if your Qi is moving, then you're going to be able to actually transform things internally. That's the alchemy. As long as you keep on moving, I think that's what you were leaning to as well. Tahnee: (23:26) Yeah. Well that's what I think is super important because I think sometimes people just keep bumping up against themselves and they get stuck. And that's what I mean about, sometimes these external things, therapy or yoga, or meditation, all these things, they can almost become traps where we continue to validate ourselves through the external thing that we do. You can see that a lot in the spiritual community where it's okay I don't the way I was brought up. I'm going to really change that and then I'm going to push back against that culture, instead of really integrating the parts of you that are really from that culture. And this is a lot to do with that shadow work that Jung talks about. But we need to have really strong Qi, and strong Shen to do that work. Tahnee: (24:11) And a lot of the time when we're pushing back against something all the time, we waste a lot of our energy and this is our Qi, and so we don't have a lot available for healing. Even for clear thought, it's this idea of when we're depleted, which can be exhaustion, that's Jing Qi, because this is always, this was really confusing for me when I was first learning Chinese Medicine, it was Qi, Jing Qi, this Qi, that Qi, Yi Qi, so many Qi's. Mason: (24:36) Gu Qi, Kong Qi- Tahnee: (24:37) But everything is Qi. Yes. Everything, you're Qi, I'm Qi, matter is Qi, the bookshelf is Qi. Mason: (24:37) The laptop is Qi. Tahnee: (24:37) Yeah. But then the force is Qi, and this is where the idea from yoga of Shiva and Shakti is really helpful for me, because if you think of Shiva as form and Shakti as ... I'm sorry, Shiva is consciousness and Shakti is form. So this idea of the union of consciousness and form is the expression of Qi in the manifest world. So we see in this 3D reality form because of Qi, and because of its interactions and from that Yin and Yang in the five phases, this is this snowball I guess of creation. And then when we want to transform our Qi, we have to really engage those two forces. We have to engage the Shakti, which is more the Jing. The Shakti is the reproductive force. It's that cellular force that regenerates and if you want to have healthy cells and not have cancer, and all of these things, it's, yes strong Jing, strong Shakti. Tahnee: (25:43) I actually read a really interesting study last night. This is a small tangent, but they studied, I think it was a hundred and something people who had Alzheimer's, and they were looking at the types of patterns, because you know how you were saying before that a headache can be Liver Yang, it can be this, it can be that. So they looked at the percentage of people with which patterns, and 100% or maybe, it might have been 99%, a hundred people of 110 or something, had a Kidney deficiency, basically a Jing deficiency. And then on top of that they had extra things. So it's 70% had a Liver thing, and this many had a Spleen thing and whatever. Tahnee: (26:24) But nearly everyone had a Jing thing. And I was isn't that interesting? We talk about brain function all the time, we talk about this ability to maintain the health of our brain, which is the sea of marrow in Chinese Medicine, which comes and originates from the Kidneys. And this simple study, just looking at the patterns of every person with that, every single one of them, nearly, had a Jing deficiency. Mason: (26:49) And what I was alluding to before, just so there's a clearness in tonality, having those kinds of patterns, just being recognised that normally if this, it's going to be a Kidney at the source of it. What is limiting and what Tahns isn't talking about is going, oh okay, so if you have Alzheimer's, we treat the Kidneys this way. That's a Western model. That's starting, so if you're going to an acupuncturist ... I'm not throwing shit at anyone, they're probably going to be able to be effective, but let's just say me going in my new cracked out, reading Rhonda Chang stage. Mason: (27:24) If you go to an acupuncturist and they're I treat diabetes, I treat Alzheimer's. That's what I specialize in. Just be careful because in that instance of we see a pattern most of the time with Alzheimer's, being there's a Jing thing. Well you can map that back to the sea of marrow that Tahns is talking about, being governed by the Kidneys and the Kidney Water. But then being able to go out, if there's rules that arise through studies, then you're stepping outside of medicine. Mason: (27:58) Australia is stepping outside of the Chinese Medicine. You need to be able to recognise patterns and then be able to make sure that you can go in and break all rules if necessary, in treating what's personally going on within that person's Wu Xing element. Because why is that going on within their Kidneys, for some it might be, they've been around too much Fire burning up their Water. There might be the Spleen, it might be a Spleen thing, Spleen might be- Tahnee: (28:22) Yeah for sure. Mason: (28:23) So anyway, just wanted to put that caveat just in case anyone was confused by my tonality before. Tahnee: (28:28) Yeah. Well I think, I guess if we can just make it clear that each individual gets treated, not the disease. There's no pathological identifying, often in the translations of the texts it will be febrile diseases. But at the end of the day we're looking at, what is this individual pattern, what is this individual treatment plan for the person presenting in front of us. And it will change in time depending on the season, depending on the state of their life, depending on all sorts of things. So how you would treat someone when they're pregnant is going to be very different to how you would treat them when they're not pregnant, because their body's operating in totally different states of- Mason: (29:09) Yeah. Which is really annoying for a Western mind. Tahnee: (29:13) Well, I think it is a different head. And I know for me it took, I think it took me a few years to really be able to put on a Chinese Medicine hat and- Mason: (29:25) You almost have to be in a bit of a parasympathetic state to be able to rest and digest actually what, the gravity of just that personalisation. Tahnee: (29:32) Yeah. Well there's a book that I read recently that I really loved, which I felt really encapsulated a lot of the stuff I learned and- Mason: (29:39) What's that? Tahnee: (29:40) It's called Digesting the Universe, I brought it for you. Mason: (29:42) Yeah, that's right. Tahnee: (29:44) But yeah, he talks a lot about just this idea of literally digesting the universe. This capacity about bodies, not just to digest the food that we eat and the air that we breathe and all of these things. But also to digest our purpose, our emotions, the energy coming from the universe. That's the purpose of the human is to sort of be this bridge between heaven and earth. And it's a really powerful mission, I suppose. And where, I guess this gets pretty esoteric, and we probably should start talking about Qi a bit more, but it's this super important thing because it's well, if we're looking at why we want to be strong and healthy, why are we want to cultivate Qi? Tahnee: (30:33) It comes back to this idea of so we can really embody our full potential in our time here. So we aren't just fighting with ourselves and suffering. There's a certain amount of challenge involved in every life of course, but we can meet it with grace, or we can meet it with more pain and more suffering. And so I think this is, for me, this idea of the Triple Treasures is a really powerful one in terms of just how to best move through life in a graceful way, I suppose. Because it's Jing, that foundation, the form, the structure, Qi, the animating force, the metabolism and the movement of energy in the body- Mason: (31:13) And emotions. Tahnee: (31:14) Yeah, and emotions and thought. And then Shen, the ability to really be tapped into the higher source of consciousness or whatever, in the 3D reality. Not needing to go live in the astral plane. Because the Taoist Masters can do that, my teacher can go astral travel till the cows come home, but- Mason: (31:33) And then the cows are come home Master Chia, I'm bloody hungry mate. Tahnee: (31:38) Yeah. And my other teacher, Paul's teacher, he would do a lot of healing in the astral, he would work a lot with spirits and ghost and- Mason: (31:45) [crosstalk 00:31:45] that was? Tahnee: (31:46) Dr.Motoyama, I'll put his links to his books in the show notes. Mason: (31:51) So that's especially around karma. Tahnee: (31:53) No, he did a lot of work, actually scientific work in measuring the Meridians- Mason: (31:58) Oh that's right, he was the groundbreaking right? Tahnee: (32:01) Well his work hasn't been accepted by mainstream science yet, but he put people in ... I've got an interview with Paul coming up so I won't tell the story too much because listen to Paul. But yeah- Mason: (32:10) Paul Grilley that is. Tahnee: (32:11) Paul Grilley. Yeah, he put people in the Faraday cage and had the Taoist Masters on the outside and on the inside, so a Faraday cages impermeable to magnetic and electrical force. Right, so if you're in a Faraday cage, you're isolated, there's nothing can get through to you. And they had machines in there that would measure Qi, and they were able to see that the Taoist Master could transmit his Qi through this Faraday cage, which is wild because you can't send an electronic signal through there. You can't send a mobile signal through there, whatever- Mason: (32:42) Were they picking it up as an electrical signal? Tahnee: (32:45) They have really sensitive equipment that can measure Qi. So he divides this thing called the AMI, which measures the Meridians. And Paul and Suzee both had, they were both attached to it, and he could use this machine to tell what people's constitutional weaknesses were. So his was heart, Dr. Motoyama's, and he died of a heart thing in the 80's- Mason: (33:03) Well he predicted that before that? Tahnee: (33:04) Yeah, in his 40's of something, he was, ah that's my weakness, that's how I'm going to go. Mason: (33:09) That's even our acupuncturist, even just relating to what type of constitution are you? In that Charles Moss style of what's going to dictate, are you a Fire constitution, are you a Water constitution, and then associating that somewhat with where your constitutional deficiency is. That was an interesting thing for me. Where's your constitutional deficiency? If you're deficient there, that's essentially ... You're going to die of something, and that is going to be a dictation of what constitution you have. Tahnee: (33:41) Yeah. And I think what's cool when you know that is, this is what John, our acupuncturist says to me all the time, he's live in your element. So it's actually, even if it's your weak... Not that it's your weak spot, but you'll feel best in your element, but you'll also, that will be where you'll show imbalance as well. So I'm a liver constitution. And so for me, moving fast, being creative, thinking, ideas, those things will really stimulate me. Getting shit done, that's my constitution, and when I'm in that, when I'm full of blood and full of Qi and rested and juicy, my upward Yang can express. But if I start to deplete that, then I'll get Heat, then I'll get digestive stuff, then I'll get my Kidneys tapped out, which is all related to this Liver system getting overwrought. And me overdoing my constitution. Tahnee: (34:39) So it's learning to embody the gifts of your constitution without flogging your constitution, I suppose. Mason: (34:48) Yeah. Tahnee: (34:49) A fire person might be really charismatic and great at speaking and really enthusiastic and able to bring all the joy. But if they overdo it, they're going to get depressed and tapped out and want to hide from everybody. So there's this Yin and Yang, I suppose, of the constitution embodiment as well. But I love these ideas, Ayurveda has prakruti and vikruti, which are your foundational constitution and then what you're currently out of whack in. So I might go and get acupuncture for my Spleen if I'm out of whacking in my Spleen, but my underlying constitution is Liver. And often the acupuncturist will still treat the Liver Channel as well because ... and this is what Rhonda talks about a lot, if someone's a Livery person, you can treat the Spleen, but it's not going to do as well as if you actually treat the Liver and the Spleen, or just the Liver in some cases. Mason: (35:39) Yeah right, that's what Charles Moss talks about a lot as well. That's what, what's his name? That was- Tahnee: (35:43) Wellesley. Mason: (35:43) Wellesley's, not Matt Wellesley- Tahnee: (35:48) I can't remember. Mason: (35:48) Anyway. Tahnee: (35:48) John Wellesley's maybe. Mason: (35:50) Wellesley, whether ... I'm not complete- Tahnee: (35:53) 1. Wellesley he is. Mason: (35:58) The J stands for, Jay Wellesley. I'm unsure of the effectiveness of his work. All I know is the work, that Power of the Five Elements book by- Tahnee: (36:15) Charles Moss. Mason: (36:15) Charles Moss is super interesting. So I don't know whether it actually works too well, but I assume it does, in some instances. But their thing is find the constitutional deficiency, or typing, and then just treat it. And if you treat it, you're going to create such a dam release of Qi that it's going to essentially clear up other blockages. I think that's a very simplistic, I think however there's so much truth to be able to, you need to know where to go, where's the pinnacle point? Where's the king or queen pin that you can just hit? And then, at the same time, go and find where the almost symptomatic deficiency is, and then treat it that way as well. Until you can get back to that constitutional deficiency. Tahnee: (37:00) Yeah. Well I think this is where, if we look at Qi and for example the Qi blend, it gets interesting because ... So we have a culture of anxiety and overthinking and doing a lot and worry and- Mason: (37:12) Not being able to digest the universe. Tahnee: (37:14) Yeah. And at this particular time, especially, we've just had crazy bushfires raging through Australia, it's flooding now today, the M1 is flooded, which is the big highway near where we live. So this is within three or four months we've had a bushfire and now we're having a flood. And so these things challenge our ability, they challenge of Shen, right? They challenge our ability to understand and integrate, and so they can really deplete us, because we're trying to hold on and- Mason: (37:43) Make meaning. Tahnee: (37:44) Make sense of these things, which really comes through our Spleen, Spleen Stomach pairing. I'm just going to say Spleen now because it's easier for me. But this Spleen organ, which is the digestion and transformation of the things that we take in, which is everything from food and water and stuff, but also information, ideas- Mason: (38:04) And heavenly Qi. Tahnee: (38:06) Yeah. And so when we're looking at how we use Qi herbs and what, it's with Jing, so many people are exhausted and they're burning the candle at both ends, so by working on the Kidney Channel, they get results. But if you understand your constitution, I'm constitutionally Liver, so I'll take Liver herbs all the time, and then I'll have things Jing and Qi herbs regularly, because they support the main organs that support or draw from my Liver. Right? Tahnee: (38:39) So just from my understanding of the elements, I just know that if I stay in that triangle, it really helps me to stay balanced. Whereas other people might be more Heart, Lung, Tiver people. So the different constitutions are going to have different combinations of formulas that work well for them. And if you look at all the longevity formulas, they were really working with the Triple Treasure herbs, the Jing, Qi, Shen herb's and they were working, probably in my opinion, with herbs that were good for their constitutions. You look at the guys that lived on He Shou Wu and Ginseng, yeah they were using these herbs to really bolster their capacity to hold Qi in the Meridians. And so what we're looking for is to get stronger. Tahnee: (39:23) And to get stronger is, I think of this as the great analogy that, I don't know who taught me this, but it's always stayed with me, You want to increase your capacity to hold more bandwidth. So it's if you dig a channel and run water through it, if it's only shallow and you put a lot of water through, it just floods out and you can get quite unwell from that, putting too much Qi in too soon. So people that do Vipassana and lose their marbles, which happens, they hadn't built the Qi capacity, the Pranic capacity to hold what they were- Mason: (39:57) What's coming through. Tahnee: (39:58) What's coming through, yeah. Mason: (39:58) The same with plant medicine, you see people just- Tahnee: (40:01) It's just getting electrocuted. It's just too much energy through a system that wasn't designed to hold. Mason: (40:06) Too much insight. Tahnee: (40:06) Yeah. And you can't integrate it because it's too much too soon. So what we look at with herbs and meditation and physical practice, and this is why if you look at Chinese Healing, it does include not just herbs, but Qi Gong, it includes breathing practices. It includes acupuncture, massage, meditation's, these kinds of things- Mason: (40:26) Taoist yoga. Tahnee: (40:27) Yeah, because we have to work on the multidimensional experience in a multidimensional way. So just to meditate all the time is going to put you out of whack, but just doing exercise all the time and never meditating is going to put you out of whack. So you need to find the middle ground between all these things, and it's going to be a little different for each individual as well. But this is what we're looking to do. So when you start taking tonic herbs, you take a little and you just let your body adjust and you start to open up to that. And it's the same with QI blend, right? Tahnee: (40:59) This is going to nourish the Spleen, it's going to nourish the Lungs, it's going to support the capacity of the body to draw energy, which means you're going to have more available energy, but you don't want to go crazy hard on that at the beginning. You want to make sure that you just ease into that. And in time your body will get used to running more Qi through the Meridians. Which you can think of the Meridians if you need a physical analogy, as the spaces in between the tissues and the bones. So they're correlated to the fluids that run through the fascia. Tahnee: (41:29) And if you look up extracellular tissue, extracellular matrix, look up fascia, F-A-S-C-I-A, you can have a look at this gelatinous gooey substance that exists inside of the body. And the theory at the moment is that this is where the Qi runs, because when you look at the myofascial Meridians and what the Taoists, where the Chinese and the Taoists lay it out in the Meridian points, they correlate to these fascial lines in the body. And they're individualised to each person. So again, you'll look at an acupuncture book and it'll say, this point is too C-U-N, Cun from the midline or whatever, but that's going to be based on the individual's body and their size. So for someone who's a giant like me, it's going to be slightly different to someone who's really small and compact, their Meridian points will be closer together. Tahnee: (42:18) And it's just on account of that the scale of their body is different. And so you want to look at increasing your capacity to hold energy. And this is where we, in our lives, use movement practice. We use breathing practice, we use herbs, we use good food. We use rest, because all of these things allow the body to grow and change. And this is the purpose of life, right? Is to learn to be with change, be with the Tao, with the flow of life, and to become really capacitated and powerful and strong in ourselves. Tahnee: (42:51) And so I think this blend really excites me because I think, when we look at children, when we look at our culture of poor digestion and the amount of people that have crap digestion is just out of control. And when you look at this ability to digest life, and as a metaphor for digestion, it's well yeah, if you're having digestive problems, what aren't you digesting? What in your life, this was a huge one for me. I, in inverted commas, can't eat gluten and certain things and it's a lot to do with, for me it was a lot to do with working through the emotional as well as the physical stuff that was required for me to be in a capacity to digest and to receive and to take in nourishment from what I was eating. Tahnee: (43:39) And so when we work on our Qi, we work on strengthening the Organ Systems involved in that. And that's the Earth Element. This is, Rhonda talks about it as a soil, and it's tending our garden, it's creating a really fertile bed in which to plant the seeds of our Dharma to spring forth. And I feel it's a really foundational, if you look at a lot of the ways the five phases are drawn, the Earth is in the center. It's the middle of it all, and it's the beginning of the all, and the end of it all, we begin in the soil and we end in the soil. Tahnee: (44:11) And if you look at chemical matter, which is what we are, we're carbon based life form, the soil is full of carbon. It's this idea of composting, transforming the food with heat into nutrition for the body. There's our alchemical transfer- Mason: (44:26) In a big bag of bacteria. Tahnee: (44:29) Yeah, where- Mason: (44:31) That's the human body I'm talking about. Tahnee: (44:32) And soil, soil is bacteria, we're bacteria. There's a lot of correlation when you look at these analogies they chose were really, really good. They really encapsulated something that is so easy to understand and so simple, but has such depth. And that's what I find so inspiring about it. Because I feel like sometimes the more I learn, the more I reaslise how simple it is. Mason: (44:54) Well that's it, the simplicity is what there is. And that's why, it's an interesting thing. I watch my own Western mind, even to an extent wanting to go and carve it up and explain it. What does it mean? And what were they meaning by that? Ah, now it's almost validated, because I can see that correlation between soil and the human microbiota. And that's really interesting, I've made a mental connection. But in your mind, you're essentially going to be able to go take yourself further into a sympathetic state. You're not dropping down feeling, rest and digesting place, which is where healing happens. And so you see where this ineffectiveness of modern Chinese Medicine starts coming through because we need to make it all mental verse. Just being able to sit in the simplicity, which is where we're going to need to be sitting in our households working on our Qi for decades and decades and decades. Mason: (45:43) Does it make sense for us to go, right, I'm going to use these Qi herbs because I know that QI is an electromagnetic force and it gets collected in this part of this spleen, not the actual Spleen element, the actual spleen organ, and I have to know about the spleen organ and I need to know about its relationship to the pancreas. It's not realistic when you're just trying to enjoy your life and spread more awesomeness. To an extent, going into, specialisation is interesting and it's good, but the simplicity, what you're talking about there, is just, that's always what's going to make this accessible and then allow there to be consistency. Mason: (46:15) What you were talking about before with heavenly Qi, I think it's got everything to do with the Qi herbs. It's got everything to do with these herbs, Codonopsis, White Atractylodes, and Poria and Astragalus, in that humans being the bridge between heaven and earth is what, it's a core in many philosophies and it's a core Taoist belief, which is, just being a metaphor in itself. I don't mind it just been that. So we've got that relation, so it's Tian, Ren, Di, it's sky, human, earth, and each of those, they're Three Treasures in themselves. Right? Mason: (46:52) And so we see, same as with Shiva being that Yang and being that consciousness, and then that Qi, humanity being associated with that treasure of Qi. And then we see the Shakti being that earth and that Yin, it makes sense. It's the same as, Pachamama being mother earth and earth, and Pachacarma, that father son in the shamanic circles. But you can see then there's Three Treasures in, for sky we see sun, moon, stars, humans, we see Jing Qi Shen, and then for earth see water, wind, fire. So they've got their own Jing, Qi ,Shen. Mason: (47:31) But humans sit in the middle, We are most appropriately, if we're going to be a bridge, Qi is going to encapsulate us the most. And that's why you, we see ... that's why I'm excited to have more and more Qi blends coming through just in our little, and being able to educate about Qi and the cultivation and Qi and movement Qi in our little circle. In our little circle here, because Jing has been such a focus because everyone's been I need energy. Everyone's been so exhausted and so that's not a place to start. You need a foundation, you need an actual ... You need to be connected to say the gas, you need wood to burn in order to actually have digestion, or to have immunity. To have physicality, to have the possibility for your skeletal system to stay appropriately strong throughout your life, for your knees to stay strong, so you don't just start deteriorating, which we see. Mason: (48:22) Celebrating Western Medicine, but everyone's deteriorating at 60 years old. And that's well that's what happens, the thinning of the artery wall, that happens when you're 60, we can hold that off a little. But that's not what I believe is the normality. But at the same time that Jing, once you've got a lifestyle where you're not leaking that Jing, as we know, well where do we move? That's why a lot of the Taoists would be, Jing herbs would be there, in their circulation. The less stressed they were, the less they had to continue to take Jing herbs, you would take them every now and then. Mason: (48:59) Maybe water was, they have a Kidney Water constitution. And so that's why they enjoy it. And maybe sometimes they just putting a little extra money in the bank by taking a Jing herb. But a lot of the time you're going to see them sit. A lot of people sit, in their tonic herbal practice, on Qi herbs longterm. Okay, so why is that? Because it's the bridging force, it's that bridging Treasure. And yes, we're going to be talking about how digestion wise, the Spleen Earth system is what is taking in food, and able to cook and ferment our food. It somewhat controls that metabolic fire, and our ability to then extract what we need from what we're eating. Especially if you're eating a diet, something that's appropriate for you and your diet. Mason: (49:49) You were speaking to that before. It's why you've personally had to move away from a bit of a vegetarian diet, because you need lots of blood, and if you don't have lots of Blood, your Liver is going to be deficient in Blood because it stores, and you see things go wrong. That's why you can't go into this Chinese medical, Western compartmentalise, symptomatic external idea based of how to treat. The same way you can't go into external diets, this diet's correct, just with some nuance. You can't start with ideology, you can't start with institutional thinking. You need to start ... and you can't just go, offhand, but everyone's individual, everyone needs to personalise. Yeah, you do. But that's where you absolutely need to start with no prejudice in terms of how that person needs to live. Whether it's in a medical system or whether a dietary system. Mason: (50:44) But in that nature of us being that middle treasure, and that bridge, it's why, also with this lifestyle that we've got a movement practice that's moving out our Jing. We're increasing our ... What was the analogy you were using, in terms of you don't actually have the bandwidth. We need to slowly, with consistently, through a good diet, good Qi herbs, through our, whatever it is, you're own type of meditative practice, and breathing practice. Even just breathing well, they don't need to be real clinically done either, it's just a lifestyle that's hopefully not too stressed out. So you can breathe. You don't need to be this monastery, two hours a day practicing yogi. Mason: (51:32) I think that's another big thing, there's too much pressure. Find your own way. You can go your own way, with finding how to cultivate your Qi, without prejudice of what it's going to look like. So in that sense, we're in a rest digest place, so that we're able to actually digest the food that we're eating. But once we're in that place where our lifestyle is becoming extremely individualised, but it's visceral, it's felt. I'm moving, not because the CrossFit person or the Ashtanga yoga person, or whatever it is, they told me to move that way. I'm connected to my body and how I'm going to move myself and move my Qi. And that's going to increase your bandwidth. All of that, allows you to digest the universe because you're moving your Qi, and you're cultivating Qi, and that's all you need. Mason: (52:22) We don't need to theoretically understand the in's and out's of how the universe is working, in order to do this. It can't be done solely, or even in a dominant sense, in this mental framework and especially within a sympathetic nervous system turned on. Fight or flight, which we're all doing. We're all fighting. We're all fighting to justify our existence, especially with social media. Definitely feeling that come up in myself recently, trying to personalise more and more. Just nuances of it, but can you really just sit in a rest and digest place? Then you're actually going to be able to cultivate some Qi. Mason: (52:58) When you start cultivating your Qi, you're actually, and through the Qi herbs they're going to be focusing on your Spleen Earth and your Lung Metal, to make sure that you're getting a lot from your food, get a lot of Gu Qi from your food, and a lot of Kong Qi from the air that you are breathing. And then beginning to cultivate that electromagnetic charge within those organ systems, but then also unifying those two daily forms of Qi so that that can, in the Yang form, be distributed into your subcutaneous tissue, into your surface Meridians. That's known as your Wei Qi. And so that's what keeps you protected. Mason: (53:34) And then also down into your deeper Meridians, the 12 major Meridians and beyond. To actually nourish your tissue, or to nourish your organ system. Sorry. And in that sense, when you can get a lifestyle flow going down that route, you're drawing less and less and less and less and less on your Jing in order to get through the day. And more and more and more via your movement practice, breath, food, Qi herbs, right? You're drawing on, you're increasing your capacity and your bandwidth to utilise daily Qi. And the idea is, you get so good at that, which is, this is where the Taoism comes in, whether it's for everyone or not, but you can actually start then creating so much, and cultivating so much that then that can percolate down and start to be stored as Jing. Right? Because remember Jing is just Qi. They're not completely different things. It's just different- Tahnee: (54:25) It's our chemical form of Qi. I think there's ... I can't remember the numbers, but there's in one of the Taoists alchemy texts they talk about, it takes seven whatever's of Qi to and make one whatever of Jing, I don't know if you can remember the? Mason: (54:41) No. Tahnee: (54:41) No. And the same with, that much to create Shen, it's this really huge process of refinement. And one of the things I think that's really important to think about, is that idea of exhaustion, if you're going through the day and by three or four you're completely knackered and you still have to push through. Let's say you have small children, we know all about this, you have to push through till eight or nine until they're finally in bed and you can start to unwind and rest. Then you've basically just used all your Qi by three, and you're now tapping into your reserves. And this is having to go into a savings account every week to live. You're going to run out of cash at some point. And that's when we hit that exhaustion that people contact us about. Mason: (55:27) Yeah. Can I talk to ... Because there's a nuance there that is, I think it's useful for people, just remembering, you, may have been working on your Jing for a long time that you might get to that three o'clock or that four o'clock and you feel fatigue. So for that fatigue or that fatigueness in your limbs, mental fatigue, that's more closely associated with that treasurer of Qi. Tahnee: (55:51) Yeah, like heaviness. Mason: (55:52) Yeah. Tahnee: (55:52) And even, if you imagine sagginess ... I don't know how to best explain this, but you know when you've been on a plane for a while and your feet get fluidy and heavy and swollen and stuff, that's because your Qi is stagnating, is not able to circulate, and you've run out of battery power, I suppose, to move your Qi. Mason: (56:14) And there is, don't mistake that for the fact that when you get to three to five o'clock, it's bladder time in the Organ Wheel, and that is a time for less intense energy. Tahnee: (56:28) Yeah, but that's where you would have a yoga nidra, or go have a cup of Qi, and do a meditation or something that recharges you. Mason: (56:37) Absolutely, do a ... That's what I did, I went live yesterday on Superfeast, and I was having a little rebound, and I had my afternoon Qi. But just to, you might have your lifestyle dialed in where you don't become exhausted necessarily. It might take a few months of you not really changing until you really actually start going, shit, I'm getting exhausted here. So in that instance, it's a perfect time to be working with these Qi herbs, right. Verse, if you are actually exhausted and you need external stimulus to give you willingness to get up and get going. That is a Jing deficiency, and you need to use lifestyle and Jing herbs. And that's when you potentially need to make big changes in your life in order to ensure that you're not leaking your Jing. Mason: (57:25) But it's almost, with Qi, it's almost a little harder, because the subtlety, you can't just do a 30 days of Qi and then completely change the direction of the way your emotional patterns work, and the way you've constructed your workflow and all these kinds of ... you can't just do, 30 days of Jing, people get off stimulants, get on Jing and then can feel completely recharged, in terms of what it's it changes their lives. My gosh, I'm not leaking Jing, you were able to do something. Mason: (57:57) Qi is, it's more subtle. It's more transformational and rewarding in the end, but it takes that little more consistency. It's less extreme, but the rewards of you altering your lifestyle in minute ways. Oh, I need to do a little less exercise, a little less, more of that exercise. I need to alter my diet. So this is where it challenges ideologies, right? So when you're Jing deficient, you open yourself up to ideologies, because you don't have a foundation of who you are, and what you are. But then once you've plugged that Jing deficiency, you've still got those identities externally attached to ways your parents lived, the way we live in the West, the way a liberal voter lives, a way a vegan lives, or a carnivore lives or whatever it is. Mason: (58:45) But in the Qi stage, when you're cultivating more and more Qi, you are personalising more and more for yourself. So you need to know yourself and understand yourself. And that can be confronting, because you need to know yourself emotionally. I'm definitely confronted by it, it's difficult work. You need to start understanding what's actually going to work for you. So it's going to challenge every prejudice that you had about yourself and every little external identity grab that you had. So just know, that's where you're really getting alchemical internally, when you get to this point when you can sit in the middle and cultivate that Qi. And when you do have that Qi flowing and cultivating, through these things that we're talking about, that's when you naturally, your flame gets bigger, and your light, your Shen, you can start actually really learning some deep things about yourself. And learning from life experiences and bringing that forth in your own wisdom, which is your Shen. Tahnee: (59:42) I think, what I'm really thinking about while I listened to you talk about that is, this idea, I think we were talking about it before, not in the podcast, but before we came on, but about, how basically the idea is to become a wise child. And if you look at a child, if they have an emotion and they're permitted to have it, it just gets expressed. They have a tantrum, they kick, they scream, it lasts for five, 10 minutes and then it's done. And then they're hey, can we go play in the muddy puddle, or whatever. And it's, that energy hasn't been stopped in their body and it hasn't created a blockage. Tahnee: (01:00:24) And what we do as adults, over time, and we learned this from childhood, and thi

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The Power of Language and How it Can Transform your Business with Renee Dalo

Wedding Video Boss

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2020 80:06

Episode transcript:PAUL SANTIAGO: Thank you for being on the show. I really appreciate it, Renee.RENEE DALO: I'm so happy to be here. This is going to be great. PS: How long have we known each other? We've known each other--RD: For so long.PS: Yeah, but it's just from a distance all the time.RD: We're at the same networking events all the time.PS: Yeah, we just never get to chat, so this perfect for me.RD: Yeah, we never have a sit-down.PS: I've always wanted to talk to you, because you're always the most colorful person in the room.RD: Oh, you're so sweet.PS: And always catches my attention. RD: I love that, thank you.PS: So yeah, of course. And thank you for being here, really appreciate it. Before we start, I would love it if you tell the listeners and the viewers something about yourself that they would probably be surprised to know. RD: So I have been to every state in the contiguous US at least once, if not twice. Because when I was younger, I was a musical theater actor, and so I toured the country in a bunch of shows. So I've literally been everywhere except for Hawaii now. But I can't really tell you where anything is, because all I've ever seen is the inside of the tour van and the inside of the theater. So super well traveled, minimally.PS: Nice. But you've tried to hit the touristy spots of every--RD: Yeah. When we were in Memphis, we didn't have time to go to Graceland. I've driven by the sign that says "Grand Canyon" four times. This is just life on the road. You're always off to do another show and you're always off to do something else. So I always joke with my husband that eventually I'm going to make him get an RV and show me all the things I missed in my twenties. Even though I was right there, it's just we couldn't go.PS: We've always thought about renting an RV, but me and Stella, my wife, we're not really outdoorsy people.RD: Oh yeah, no, I'm not an RV person. I'm a Four Seasons person. I'm a room service, down comforter person for sure. Stella and I are the same, I think, in that, and you as well. But something about, I just feel like getting an RV and seeing the country is the way you do that particular thing.PS: Yeah, it's easier. And it's probably the most American thing you could ever do, going around the country, right?RD: Yeah, I agree, yeah.PS: And it always confuses me, because I always felt like the most American thing you could do is just hop on a plane and just fly and travel. But no, it's just getting into the nitty gritty, and do it like Walter White.RD: I don't think we're going to make any meth.PS: Okay, hopefully not.RD: That's next level, I'm not going to do that particular thing.PS: Okay, so I'm always curious about how people start out, and I really want to know what your origin story is. How you started, and what got you into this industry. And also, what you're up to right now.RD: Sure, so how did I go from being a musical theater actress to a wedding planner? So when you're an actor, especially in New York City, a lot of times you're working hospitality as a side job, and that was very true for me. I worked in a lot of fine dining restaurants in New York City. And then when I moved to LA, decided didn't really want to do musicals anymore, kind of didn't want to live out of a suitcase anymore. That life, really, it was great while it was, but then I was approaching 30 years old, and I thought, "I kind of want to lay down some roots somewhere." And I thought LA would be as good a place as any. So I got a job in hospitality. I opened a restaurant, which is one of the restaurants at The Grove, which is a big outdoor mall here. It was a big deal to open this place, they built it from scratch. And I was part of that opening crew. And in the time that I worked there, I went from hostess to waiter to bartender to banquet server, banquet captain, banquet manager. And so what ended up happening is that I was running the banquet rooms at this restaurant, they were six rooms, and I was one of the people that ran them. And I ended up doing a lot of weddings that way, because it wasn't a luxury venue by any stretch, but people would have weddings there, and they would always give them to me because, "Oh, Renee can do the weddings, she's good at that, she's good at the weddings." At the same time, that was in my season of life where all of my friends were getting married. So I planned a lot of weddings as a hobby right around that same time, because they were like, "Well, you're doing it at work, and you seem good at this. Can you help me?" So what ended up being-- I planned my best friend's wedding 12 years ago with $7000, like no money whatsoever, like nothing. What ended up happening is that people who were at that wedding, or people who knew my friend would say, "Oh." I would get random emails from people that were like, "Oh, can you help me plan my wedding? I was at this wedding," or, "I heard you do this." And so I created a business before I even realized what I was doing, because I was getting emails and referrals from people that I didn't know. I remember one time, I got an email from this girl who said, "Jeanette sent me to you." And I was like, "Who the hell's Jeanette? I don't know this person." So I realized that I liked it, and I was good at it, and people were coming to me for it, and so I probably should do it. And then it was a few years after that that I really started my business now, which is Moxie Bright Events. So it took me a few years to get really clear that it's a business that you could run and make a living. But I've been doing it for so long at that point, that it seemed silly that I wasn't doing it professionally. But that's what I did. After I got married, my own wedding planner, because I got married in Philadelphia, said to me, "I don't understand why you're not a wedding planner in Los Angeles." And I was like, "Well, there's so many." And she was like, "So who cares?" And it was that weird-- sometimes you just need that one person to say the one right thing to you. And it's so simple, but having Erin say to me, "Who cares? Just go do it. It doesn't matter if other people are doing it too." I was like, "Oh, you're right." So yeah, it sounds silly, but it kind of just happened.PS: Yeah, all you need is that one person to push you. And fortunately for us, it's someone close to us, so it's easier to be like, "Oh, okay, I'll give it a shot." Because they know you already.RD: Yeah. She said, "You needed me less than any client I've ever had. I don't know why you don't do this professionally." And I was like, "Oh, I don't know." But again, this brings me back to what we're talking about today, is I had a lot of limiting beliefs about myself and about this work, and I had to work through those in order to be able to do this at the level that I'm doing it now.PS: It's funny, because when you said your friend got married for $7000, which is pretty much nothing.RD: Nothing.PS: Stella and I got married, our budget was $6000.RD: I love that. Well, how long ago was it though?PS: I have to answer this correctly. It was 10 years ago.RD: Yeah, see? My friend was 12 years ago. So back then, you could make something of that a little bit, a little bit more than you can today.PS: Well, it was bare bones. We got married in a church, and our reception was at an Indian restaurant, an Indian buffet, which is $10 per person or something like that.RD: Oh yeah. This wedding that I did for $7000 was in a photography studio. The power went out, because I didn't know enough to check the power. So when we plugged in all the lights and the DJ plugged in, all the power went out. And the DJ came up to me during the ceremony and whispered in my ear, "Do you want to have lights, or do you want to have music?" And I was like, "What are you talking about?" And he's like, "We have a power outage." And I just started crying, because I was like, "I don't know." Now, I would check the power. But it was so bare bones, minimal, minimal everything. We had a craft services caterer do dinner, it was crafty. It's so funny.PS: Those things make you really, really stronger when it comes to accepting challenges as soon as you start out. How do you feel about that? When you start out your business, should you take more risks when you start up? Or should you take more risks when you're a little bit more confident?RD: I think we should always be taking risks. I think if you own a business, I believe that inherently, you are a risk taker. I just think entrepreneurs have to have that little bit of-- we have a little bit of crazy up in our brains where we think, "I'm going to try this." And I think that if you are someone who really loves safety, maybe owning a business is not for you, because there's not a lot of safety happening all the time. I think at the beginning, you've got to throw yourself into the fire. Honestly, at this point, I tell my clients or potential clients, there's nothing that rattles me. Your venue, God forbid, could burn down around us and I'm still not going to yell. Nothing gets to me, I've seen it. But the only reason I can say that is because I had a wedding where the power went out my very first wedding. So once you've lived through it and nothing bad happens, you figure it out, nothing can rattle you. But at the beginning, I think, just starting is a risk, right? So calculated risks, of course. Smart risks, hopefully. But you've got to take risks, there's no way around it, I think.PS: Yeah, because once you take risks, I guess your senses are sharper, you're more aware of what's happening around you. For us, when we started out, we had our first fist fight in a wedding on our third wedding, and it was the groom and his groomsman in the bathroom. RD: Of course it was.PS: Yeah. So after 10 years of doing this, after nine years of doing this, I'd be like, I know exactly what to do and how to handle a fist fight, or prevent someone from-- yeah.RD: Oh man. Courage is a muscle. Everyone thinks courage is some value that, oh, this person is courageous, they're brave. That's just a muscle. If you never exercise it, it's going to atrophy just like anything else. So jumping into that fist fight, or knowing enough to not jump into that fist fight, that's the things you learn on the job. There's no other way to learn this job, I think. PS: And I feel like for people who are starting out, well, at least for me, when I was starting out, I didn't really have anyone to ask, or have anyone to mentor me about these things, what to expect. So I feel like when you're starting out also, make sure that you approach the people who have been longer in the industry, just so they could give you tips. Because I feel like people want to see other people succeed, at least the good business owners, right?RD: Oh yeah. And I think too, the climate is so different now. When I was starting, yes, I did have support, I did have a mentor, I had some really good friends. But there wasn't all the podcasts and the blogs and the education, the online education. There's so many other ways to get knowledge nowadays. Yeah, find a mentor, and then really listen to them. Intern with someone and follow them around, soak it up, don't just take it for granted. Because sometimes the best business people aren't necessarily the best educators, but they still have a lot to share. But you just have to be the person that's super aware of them and what they're doing and how they are presenting themselves in the world.PS: I love that, I love that, because that's actually my main problem right now. I know a lot about business, but I guess I don't know how to say it or how to ask people online. If I'm in a Facebook group, I ask them about something, and they react differently, and then I reread it, I'm like, "Oh crap, I said it wrong," or something like that. Now my question is since we're already talking about this, and you've been saying that you tell your clients, "Nothing can faze me, the building would be burning down." So the way you say stuff, I feel like it's really important, right? So our topic for today is the power of language in your business. So why does the language really matter in our business? RD: I think it's two things. So one, obviously we're using language all day long. I used to call this the power of words in your business, because I think words gets it down to the base level, right? Because we're communicating all day long, we're communicating when we talk to each other, but especially via email, and especially on our websites, there's words everywhere, right? So we have to choose them carefully. And what I know about modern life, because I know, and I do it myself, is that I try to be super casual and approachable and friendly. But oftentimes, what that means, especially for women listening, it means that we sometimes use a lot of unintentional subconscious limiting language, right? And what I mean by that is if you're ever talking to someone, just about anything in life, and you say something that's kind of a bummer, or you say something not great, and they go, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry." And it's a weird phrase, right? That we use. We use "I'm sorry" a lot for things that we have no control over, nothing to do with, no jurisdiction over. We just say "oh, I'm sorry" as a way to express empathy, right? But it's a weird phrase, because you're taking responsibility for something that isn't yours. And it's just one of the many ways. If you ever answer a client email, how many times, just off the top of your head, have you answered a client email with, "Oh, so sorry, sorry for getting back to you so late."PS: We don't say sorry, we say "apology". We apologize. RD: Yeah, which is great. When I first started talking about this, I went through my Gmail, my business account is a Gmail for business account. In there, you can search your mail, and I searched the word "sorry" just to see what would come up. And it was hundreds of emails, hundreds of times I had said. And in most of the time, it was like, "Sorry for not getting back to you within an hour." I was apologizing for something that was ridiculous. "So sorry it took me a minute to research this." What? No, that's my job. So the language we use matters, because we are subconsciously giving our clients and other vendors and everyone we talk to, we're letting them see who we are through the words we use. And if we're starting with "sorry, I'm so sorry", it already puts you in a position subconsciously, their trust is eroding in you, right? They're thinking, "Oh, this person, they didn't get back to me? Oh, they think they were late getting back to me?" It's these little things, it's super micro, but it's the reason I always want to talk about it, because I think so many of these little tiny things that we do, when you add them up, end up really coloring how someone else looks at you, how they view you. And if we can make these tiny changes, then over time, it's going to have the most impact, because it'll start just becoming the way you talk. Like you said, we don't use "sorry", we say "apologies". That is a different thing, those two words mean very different things when you're taking them in as the person who they're being said to.PS: So it's so funny, because I use "I'm sorry" a lot when I email, right? And I know this person who's a grammar Nazi. Stella, my wife. RD: I'm a grammar Nazi, too. PS: So she's like, "Never say you're sorry. Always say apologize, apologies." My goal is, since English is our second language, I want people to know that we know how to speak proper English. No offense to the Californians, but California English, there's California English. Water is "waa-d'r" here. So there's a thing. And it took me three years to adapt to the California English, because I wanted to make sure that, at least in my head, it's a little bit more flawless, and eliminate my accent just so I could blend in a little bit more. But just heading towards the proper English, which is British English, I don't know, without the accent, just the correct pronunciation.RD: Right. I'm from New York City, so my actual accent is ridiculous, you would laugh. The accent I was born with is crazy. And I do the same thing, I work very hard on not sounding like I'm from any particular place.PS: So I think me too, my Filipino accent is wow, once you hear it, you're like, "Oh, wow." So that's the thing. I feel like heading towards the proper English would benefit your business as well, you as a person. Because now, more than ever, social media has evolved into this thing where people spend a little bit of their time with, now it's just everywhere. People, when they're not doing anything, once they're on their phone, you know they're on social media.RD: Oh, for sure.PS: And the way they talk reflects their personality now. RD: Have you ever gotten an email from a vendor or from a client where they're using text talk? Where it's like, "C-Y-A," and you're like, "C-Y-A? Cya. See ya. Okay, got it." Honestly, me, Renee, when I get language like that, I always think, oh, this person must not be very smart. That is just where I go to. And so consider, if you're listening, and you're someone who emails in text speak, maybe that's how you're being perceived, right? We all have these predispositions to how we think of someone when we hear them talk or when we read what they write. So I love that you said you're really trying to go with the correct English, because you want people to take you seriously. You want people to know that you're smart and you're capable, and so therefore that translates to you in proper English. For me, what I want to communicate with my emails and my language in general is that I'm capable and that I'm in charge, right? Because I'm a wedding planner. So for me, my emails can't be too soft, because otherwise I don't think I'm sending the right message. One of my clients left me a review last week. Can I cuss?PS: Sure, yeah.RD: She said in the review, "Renee is a badass." And I honestly walked around all proud all day that I was like, "I'm a badass." Because as a wedding planner, I am the captain of the ship, right? So my emails have to come from a place of authority. So if I'm sending emails that are like, "I just wanted you to read this timeline. I don't know, I think that they think that maybe we should do it this way, but I don't know, what do you think?" And just like, "Let me know when you get it," and then like, "Just no big deal, whenever you have a sec." If I sent emails in that tone, no one would ever respect me or take me seriously or listen to me. So my emails, my communication, has to be pretty clear and direct, and dare I say, almost masculine. And I don't use a lot of phrases like "I think". At least I try not to. I know I say that more when I'm speaking, I say, "Oh, I think da da da." But I hardly ever say "actually, I think", because that also makes it sound like I'm surprised by my own thoughts. "Oh, I had a thought, actually. Get ready, I had a thought, guys." I try not to say the phrase "does that make sense?" Because what I have found with "does that make sense" is, especially when it's a client email, right? So a client will email me 12 questions in a row, right? Which is pretty typical for me. And I'll answer every single question. And if at the end, I say "does that make sense", and I read this in a book and it stuck with me, so "does that make sense", it's saying two things. It's saying to the person you're communicating to, "Are you smart enough to understand what I've just said?" Which is insulting, right? Or, "Am I so crazy nuts that I can't communicate properly what I'm trying to get across to you?" So I have now really tried to get rid of "does that make sense". Instead, what I say is, "Look forward your thoughts on this." Or simply, "Thoughts?" Question mark. What are your thoughts on the things I just explained? Right? Because we have to be really clear on what we want people to take away from the interactions that they're having with us, right? I know that I in the past had tended to overexplain something, feel weird about it, and then say, "Oh, that was too much of an explanation, I know, but hopefully it made sense." Well, if you don't think you're making sense, rewrite the email. Just rewrite the email. We don't need all of the fancy rigmarole. But I do think with social media, like you said, I think we're moving toward a place with our language, just as a culture, where we're super getting super casual. PS: Super casual.RD: And I don't know that I hate it, I definitely don't hate it. But I also wonder, I don't know, on some people's Instagrams, like Jenna Kutcher for example. Do you follow Jenna?PS: Yes.RD: Jenna writes these really beautiful captions to her Instagram pictures. And they're frequently paragraphs, right? And they're like a little mini blog post, and she's always really expressive. And I think that is her authentic voice, I don't think someone else is writing that for her. I think that's how she feels, what she wants to communicate that day. But I also can sense that some other accounts who follow, and the reason I mention her is because she's a huge account. Some other accounts that I also follow who are smaller, who are looking to others maybe for guidance, are using that same sort of authentic speak as, quote, unquote, air quotes "authentic speak", and I wonder if it is authentic to them. Because I think we all have our own voice. I know when I write something that sounds like me, it gets better responses from people, people can hear it in my voice. I think if we're all moving toward this casual social media authentic-y speak, that it's all going to sound like the same voice.PS: So before we move forward, let me go back to when you said "does that make sense", that phrase. Is there a deeper impact when you email it, as opposed to saying it to someone's face? Or is it--? Okay.RD: Yeah, I think so. I think the words that we write have a lot more weight than we give it credit for. Because 99% of the time, my communication with my clients is email. And that's the way I run my business. So I'm not dying to jump on the phone with people. Which is funny, because I'm a podcaster, and you would think that I love talking. And I do, but something about getting my workday interrupted with a phone call is really off-putting to me, I just want to get my work done. So more often than not, I'm emailing. I feel like if you say it in person, if you say "does that make sense" in person, that you're possibly reacting off a visual cue, right? If someone's looking at you like I'm looking at you now, obviously it doesn't make sense. They're telling you with their face, "I am confused." So it's easy to say, "Does that make sense? What part should I go back over?" But if your emailing "does that make sense", you have no visual cue. What you're hoping is they've read the email and you haven't confused them, but you don't need to say it in that way. "Does that make sense" is a really triggering thing for me. When I read that a while ago, I was like, "Oh my God, I do that." The other one is the word "just". "I'm just a wedding planner." How many times have you heard someone say that, when you say, "What do you do?" "Oh, I'm just a DJ. I'm just a..."PS: Yeah.RD: It's so damaging.PS: It is. It's very like you're not really proud of what you're doing. Some people, when they say that, they actually mean it. So that's okay, right? Whenever he says, "I'm just a doctor." No?RD: Can you imagine? "I'm just a doctor?" Have you ever? I believe this is a systematic problem with the wedding industry, because I know for a fact within the world of events, weddings are sort of looked down upon as not as serious, not as lucrative, not as whatever. Which I think is a bunch of BS. but I know that in the wedding indistry, because I talk to so many other vendors, I think we all suffer from a little bit of impostor syndrome. And I think that's where that comes out, right? When you're talking to someone, and they say, "Oh, I'm just a blah blah blah," I'm always the idiot in the group who is like, "You are not just anything. You are amazing."PS: Oh, good for you.RD: I've been calling it out, right? To be like, "How dare you say that about yourself?" But I think when we feel self-conscious, when we feel not enough, when we have the impostor syndrome, it comes out in these little ways. PS: So here's my struggle going back to "does that make sense". Because the first time I heard that, I'm like, "Is this person mocking me? Do they think that I'm an idiot?"RD: Exactly.PS: And then I realize that everyone is using it, because I'm trying to mold my California English. And I've been using it for quite a while. And so I was actually talking to one of my guys, we were at a shoot, and I was trying to explain it to him, what we're going to do. Instead of me saying, "Does that make sense?" I asked him, "Okay, do you understand what I said?" Is there a difference? Because with "do you understand what I said", I actually wanted to make sure that he understands, because we're parting ways, and he's going to reception, I'm going to the-- is there a difference?RD: I would probably, in the future, say, "Do you have any questions for me?" Because it's more open-ended and it gives them more agency to participate, right? Because "does that make sense" is yes or no. "Do you understand what I said" is yes or no.PS: And then he never understood.RD: He didn't. See? "Do you have any questions?"PS: Okay.RD: And oftentimes, especially when I'm dealing with my assistants and stuff, if it is something that is different, unusual, anything out of the normal, I will say, "Repeat it back to me." Because I'd rather have them take ownership of it, even if it's wrong, right? Even if what they're repeating back to me isn't right. And then I can go, "No, that part's not right," and sort of help them and educate them in that moment. Because I think we can be asking better questions, I know we can all be asking better questions of people. But I think "does that make sense" needs to be fully retired, just get it right out of there.PS: Yeah, there's a lot of words, phrases that shouldn't be used, coming from me observing.RD: What else do you think? What else shouldn't be used?PS: Man, right off the top of my head. I'll think of something. But there's a bunch of words that irritate me when someone says it, then I'm like, "You're not using it right." Because we came here 2008, so I was 28 years old when we came here.RD: Oh, I did not know that.PS: Yeah, so that's why I spent three years talking to people on Yelp, the telemarketers, I would just talk to them on the phone. Stella said, "What are you doing?" I'm like, "I'm trying to practice my English."RD: Oh, I love that.PS: So I was just trying to convince them that I'm from here. So, okay.RD: That makes me so happy, I love that. PS: So now here's another struggle of mine. My authentic language, the way I talk to people, is different from my business language. Because we came from Filipino to English to California English, and now California English, we kind of need to dial it down a little bit more, because we're trying to cater to, I guess the higher end market, who doesn't talk like that. So my question is what's the difference between using authentic language, as opposed to speaking or writing off the cuff?RD: I love this. So oftentimes on social media, I will see fellow wedding vendors who I know wrote a caption off the top of their head. And the reason I always know it is because they frequently assume that the reader understands where they're coming from, understands the wavelength that they're already on. So sometimes the off-the-cuff ones sort of tend to start in the middle of a thought, or I'll read it and go, what are they talking about? I remember, this is a a while ago, someone posted a photo, it was a candid photo of a fire pit, right? But the caption said, "This place would be great for a rehearsal dinner." But it was a fire pit. And I stared at it for a few minutes and I was like, what is happening? It was geotagged with a location, so in theory the person posting wanted to communicate that this location would be great for a rehearsal dinner because of this cozy fire pit. But what we needed as the reader was the whole thought. We needed you to start us at A and end at Z. "One of the things my clients always ask me for is a cozy spot for their rehearsal dinner where people can really gather around and talk. And this restaurant, with this cozy fire pit, has that for you," right? So that's the way, you have to sort of connect all the dots for people. When we write something off the cuff, especially Instagram captions, I think sometimes people think, "Oh, when I see this image, it makes me think of the following thing that I'm going to put in this off-the-cuff caption." And then you read it and you're like, "I have no idea what they're talking about." Because we're not in your brain. You have to draw the full picture for people, you have to connect all of it together. But you still have to do it in your authentic voice in a way that doesn't seem so business-y. Because I'm sure you follow those more business-minded accounts that are like very stilted language and everything sounds like business, and you're like, "Well, that's no fun," right? So on social media, what the people want to see is the person behind the brand, so they want to hear from you and Stella. They don't want the voice of "Boffo Video does good video." So it's a really specific new skill set that we all have to have because it's part of our businesses now.PS: I've tried so hard to stop saying "I can't". Those things, it's so hard, because you see it on social media. And I have to be honest, if I were to just speak my authentic language, I probably wouldn't even post anything, because I'm too lazy. But I have to. So whenever I'm on social media, the first five posts I scroll through, I absorb the way they speak, and that's what I just type.RD: One of the things I think we can all be doing for our businesses is really drill down how your business sounds, right? How your business, what your business cares about. So for Moxie Bright, which is my wedding planning business, we really care about hospitality, we really care about taking care of guests, we really care about those moments at a wedding that you can't even predict that are going to happen, that are going to be awesome. So a lot of times when I post something on my Instagram, I'm calling out those moments, right? I'm calling out that moment of amazing service or I'm calling out this moment of friendship between the bride and her bridal tribe. I am specifically angling because it's coming from my head, my viewpoint, what's important to me, right? So I'm always putting it through that lens. I feel like if someone else were to look at the same images on my Instagram, they'd probably come up with a million different captions, because of what's happening in their brain, what's important to them, and what goes through their lens. When I'm doing posts for my education brand, for my online courses and stuff, that's a completely different language, because I'm talking to different people, I'm talking to other wedding planners, I'm talking to them about making more money, about being better at their jobs. It's a completely different audience, and it has to be a completely different language. Now for me, right now those are on the same account, right? So you can literally look through my Instagram and think, "Oh, here she's talking to clients, here she's talking to other wedding pros." But for instance, I call my students rockstars. So if you're a student in one of my classes, I'm going to address you as, "Hey, rockstar," no matter what. I don't know how it started, it felt right and I went with it, and now it's a thing. And I think to that, you have to honor that too, what feels right? I'm definitely not someone who's hashtag blessed, right? You're not going to see that on my account, it's just not my thing. You're more likely to see an F-bomb on my account with a (makes explosion sound) emoji.PS: Yeah, that's the thing. I guess it's just so hard to come up with an original idea, I mean an original text, in such a short span of time. Because I feel like people who post on social media, at least the ones who are really good at it, schedule everything.RD: Oh yeah.PS: And I suck at it, because you know what I'm really good at scheduling? Podcasts. Everything else, I suck at.RD: See? There you go. Scheduling is much easier, because then you're not having to come up with a caption on the fly. I use Planoly, and I schedule at least two weeks out if I can. I took a social media break this year, I didn't post at all for the month of June. I just wasn't feeling it. And I was like, "I'm not going to force myself. The world's not going to end if I don't put up a square every day." And I didn't do it. And then I got back to it when it was time. And then I was able to be like, "Okay, let's write some fresh captions." For me, I don't stress so much about the caption. It could be because my background, I have a background as a writer as well. But I look at the picture and I go, "What is this? Oh, okay." Sometimes it's so simple. I think my post today was a wedding bouquet from two years ago, and I think I wrote, "Never tired of this gorgeous bouquet from Shindig Chic." That's it, because it doesn't always have to change the world. Sometimes it's just appreciation for this beautiful thing. And that's okay, too. You don't have to write the mini blog posts that Jenna Kutcher is writing. By the way, Jenna Kutcher is writing those from a sales language perspective. She's writing those to convert. She's selling things. Even if you don't think she's selling anything on that post, girl's still selling something, because she's got an entire empire full of things to sell. So if what you're doing as a service provider is wanting to get people to contact you, right? Wanting someone to like you enough to reach out. Then all you really have to worry about is talking to the right people, being your true self, and hopefully the right people will be attracted to you. Because you're not trying to sell a course or preset filter. She's got a ton of products.PS: Oh yeah. And she's really good at posting something and asking, "How's your day going?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, she's talking to me."RD: And at the end, you're like, "I think I need her podcast course." And you don't know what happened. You don't know how it happened. She's very persuasive.PS: She's really good at that.RD: That's a whole other language. We don't need that. If that's not your goal, that's not what you need. You just need to be putting things out there that are authentically you. I post a lot of photos of food on my Moxie Bright account, because I love food, my clients love food. And I've had people say to me, "You post a lot of food." I'm like, "Uh huh, okay, thanks for noticing." What, am I not supposed to post the things I like? I'm going to post what I like.PS: Yeah, it speaks to your followers, it speaks to your tribe.RD: Yeah, but I also like it. If my followers decided suddenly they liked, I don't know, what's something I don't like? Country music. I don't really love country music. But if they were super into it, I still wouldn't be posting it. Because I'm just like, "Not my thing," right? I can't talk about something I don't know anything about. I feel bad now that I said I don't like country music. I like some country music, you guys.PS: To be honest, when I started editing wedding videos here, and some of the clients, it was like, "Oh, we want Brad Paisley." Before the whole copyright thing, I fell in love with country music.RD: Did you?PS: Yes, but I'm not deep into it. I'm kind of like you. I appreciate country music.RD: I like all the girl singers. So if there's a girl singer, like Martina McBride, I'm into her, love her. Faith Hill, love her. Any girl who can sing, I'm in. But no, the guys, I don't know anything about.PS: Okay. I'm the reverse. Well, you know what? I know Shania Twain. Because I'm Filipino, so we sing a lot. So now my question for you now is, since we were talking about "I can't" or "slay, girl" or whatever. Because for me, on Instagram, it's me who's talking. Stella, she sucks at social media, she doesn't want to do that, because she hates being on social media, so I do all of the captions and stuff. So when there's, "Oh, wow" or something like that that's weird, it's never going to be her, it's just always me.RD: I love it.PS: My question is how can we stop using limiting language in our business and life? How do I get to stop?RD: Well, I think first, you have to have the awareness that you're even doing it. So a lot of times after I talk about this topic, I've presented this at conferences and stuff, I'll get emails months later from someone who's like, "I was at your talk, and I went through my email, and oh my God, I've been saying 'sorry' and 'just', and I've been doing it all." And I'm like, "Yeah girl, you got to figure it out." You have to first understand that it's happening, right? There are some, especially when you're writing, there are some tools. So if you use Google Chrome, which you should all be using, because I love it, there is a plugin. The name of the plugin is called Just Not Sorry, which is great. And it literally will underline for you in your emails if you're using any word that is a limiting language word. But the other thing that's fun too is that sometimes you actually are apologizing for something, and sometimes you're like, "Oh, so sorry, this email got missed" or whatever, it'll still underline it. It doesn't necessarily understand the context. But it will tell you, "Hey, are you sure you want to use the word 'just' here?" "Just" is a big one. "Just" is the one that people go, "I don't use that," and then weeks later they say, "Oh my God, yes I do, it's everywhere." Of course it's everywhere. Because it's our culture, right? It's in our vernacular to use these words that make us sound soft and approachable and agreeable and easygoing like everyone wants to be, especially in California, super chill all the time. And I get it, but that doesn't necessarily mean it has a place in your business. Because you have to understand, you have to determine and figure out for yourself how you want to be perceived, right? Because a lot of times, I'll talk to, especially groups of women, and I hate to keep saying that, but as a woman, it's a big deal for me. And they'll say, "Well, I don't really have control over how I'm perceived." Absolutely false. You 100% have control over how you're perceived. You can script that for yourself. You can make that happen for yourself. But first you have to have the awareness of it. So one, awareness. Two, tools like Google Chrome plugin. Three, start noticing it in other people, too. And it might make you less liked for a minute to be like, "You just said," call out your friend, be like, "I thought we weren't doing that anymore." Because it's pervasive, it's everywhere, and so it isn't just a quick fix, it is an ongoing thing. The other thing that I did for my assistant and for anyone who's in my inbox is I have a little, small document of "these are words we don't use". This is language Moxie Bright does not use, right? And even in my interactions with my clients on their wedding day, in my employee handbook, there is a list of things we don't say. So if someone were to come up to one of my assistants, a guest on the day of the wedding, and ask them a question, and if they don't know the answer, they're not allowed to say, "I don't know." What they're supposed to say is, "Let me find out." And that's the biggest example I can always give. It's taking that negative "I don't know" and turning it into something open and curious and positive, which was, "Let me find out. I'll go find out for you," right? So that person is then taking ownership of whatever the situation is. They are coming to someone else who might know more, finding out the answer. Saying "I don't know" is closing a door. That's like what you said, we don't want to say "I can't", right? I can't. Well, maybe you can't right now because you don't have the right information, right? So what do you say instead of "I can't"? Are you retraining yourself to think a new thing?PS: Well, the "I can't" that I'm talking about is the RuPaul Drag Race "I can't".RD: Oh.PS: Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. But if we're talking about the "I can't" that you're talking about, I usually say, "I'll see what I can do."RD: Yeah, I'll see what I can do, exactly. Perfect, it's perfect.PS: "I can't." RD: I need to watch RuPaul's, I haven't watched RuPaul's Drag Race yet. But it's come up a lot lately, and so I feel like the universe is telling me to watch it.PS: Oh, they have a really, really extensive vocabulary of all the really fun phrases that people use.RD: Someone referenced a death drop to me the other day, and I was like, "I don't know what a death drop is." And then I Googled it, it was like, "Oh, that looks painful."PS: Yeah. I've seen comments that say "typing from heaven because I'm dead right now" or something like that, because the thing is so beautiful. So now I really want to ask you about this, because that kind of language attracts a certain kind of tribe, a certain kind of group, right?RD: Totally.PS: If I want to charge more and target the more luxurious market, should I continue saying that? If I were someone who does that.RD: I think if it's authentic, you should.PS: Okay.RD: I think in our industry, we have a really effed up thing about luxury, I believe. Every luxury client I've ever had has not come to me from social media. They have come from 100% personal referral from someone who's a friend of theirs. There's a little tight-knit Beverly Hills group that I work with all the time. Some clients, I've done all of their events, and then they refer me to their best friends, and that's how it works. Those people never read my reviews. They don't care. They want a personal referral, and they want you to show up and be professional. I think this marketing to luxury market doesn't really work. I hate to burst everyone's bubble, but I think be your authentic self. Listen, if you are-- let's just say I start watching RuPaul's Drag Race, and I feel compelled to post about it, I'm probably going to use that language because it's fun, right? It doesn't mean that that's who I am as a human every day of the year, and I have to say "slay" on all my posts, right? But I think it's fun to let people in to see who you are a little more. I'm a huge fan of the Canadian sitcom Schitt's Creek, which everyone, have to watch it immediately if you have not watched it. So lately, all of my Insta stories have had GIFs of the character David Rose making faces, and I've never explained it, I've never said, "I'm a huge fan, and so this speaks to me now." I'm just doing it. And I've got people message me on Instagram, "Oh my God, you watch that show, too?" I'm like, "Yeah, of course I do." But it's a way to let people in authentically without having to have a big deal about it. I'm sure the moment will pass in a few months, I'll be moved on to some other show, it's fine. But it's like you have to be able to play. And if you want to use "slay" one day, then you slay. But as far as a luxury market, I don't think they're looking for anything specific. I think they're looking for people who are really good at their job, who their friends have already worked with.PS: Okay. I was thinking about that.RD: I don't know how to tell you to break in. Everyone's like, "How did you get that first Beverly Hills client?" I'm like, "Through her yoga teacher." Through her private fancy yoga teacher. So you just don't know.PS: So let me know what you think, too. Because I feel like as long as you're authentic, social media caters to, especially if you want to target higher paying clients, right? Social media caters to the people around you. And if the vendors who know these luxury market clients like your personality, then it's an easier sell, right?RD: Absolutely.PS: Instead of targeting the luxury people.RD: Yeah. Think of it this way. It's like dating, right? If you want to impress someone, you put your best foot forward. So this is a different example, but I'll use it anyway. My friend who is the private yoga teacher, she works with very high-end clients. Russell Crowe used to be a client of hers. She used to go to his home and teach him yoga. And one day he was looking for a masseuse. And she texted me and said, "Who do we know who'd be good for Russell to get a massage?" Right? Because it has to be the right person. At that level, when you're talking about that person, that level of celebrity, that level of luxury, it can't just be the person we saw on Instagram who we think might be cool. It has to be the right person. When we went through a list of people that we knew, and she was like, "No, that girl drives a-- no, that girl's bad, she'll talk too much," or, "Oh no, that guy has a weird energy," right? There's nothing you can do at that point. You just have to be who you are, and you'll be right for someone. And it's the same with your language. You just have to talk the way you talk authentically in full complete thoughts ideally on social, and the right people will be attracted to you. And you know what? The other cool thing is you'll repel the wrong people. I think we spend a lot of time worrying about who we're attracting, but sometimes I'm like, "Who am I unattracting? Who am I sending away?" Good for that too, right? Because just in using not only limiting language, but inclusive language, right? If you're only posting the same kind of couple all the time, right? Perhaps you're sending a message that you're not open to working with everyone. Same thing with your language. If you're only ever talking about brides and grooms, brides and grooms, brides and grooms, you're leaving out a whole other section of people who are getting married.PS: So it's pretty much just curating. When it comes to business, you just make sure you curate. Be yourself, but you curate.RD: Yeah. Curate inasmuch as you feel comfortable curating. I'm certainly not someone who wants, you see those Instagram accounts of "everything's pink and white". And you're like, "How are you doing that? That's so much effort." I'm not about that life, I don't have that kind of time. But definitely curating your words is so important to me, because I know that none of us are spending enough time thinking about it. We're all just going off the cuff and saying what we think, and saying what we feel, and writing what we feel. And in the end, we're ending up too much in our feelings, and too much in our apologies, and too much in our self-doubt, and not enough standing in our power with our words, and really, intentionally communicating clearly and effectively and efficiently and with authority, what we mean.PS: Okay. I like that, because I feel like social media has changed the way. Before, when we started out, the "about us" page is the only page that tells about you. Now, social media. In the "about us" page, you're like, "I like riding horses and eating hamburgers." Now everything is out there.RD: It's true.PS: People are addicted that they can't stop just shooting out information about themselves, that I feel like when it comes to curating, when we talk about curating, at least for me, I feel like curating is cleaning up. You invite someone to go to your house, and the first thing, once they open the door and see your living room, you're like, "Shit, there's so much stuff on the floor and I need to clean up." So curating is kind of like that. Just make sure that when people Google you, they see a really nice-looking-- doesn't have to be perfect, but just clean. RD: Yeah. I love that you said, too, about the curating. I feel like when we say the word "curating", people are automatically like, "Ew, I don't want to." But what I hear in what you're saying, obviously correct me if this is incorrect, is that you feel like there is a fine line between sharing who you authentically are and who you want to work with, and the kind of work you want to put out there. And then there's people who really overshare, right? And they're telling you, or the people who go on Insta story and Insta story their entire day every day, they're living in some weird reality show that they've made for themselves, where this is their breakfast, and then they're walking the dog, and then they're answering emails, and then they're getting a haircut. And it's like whoa, hold on. What I like to think of for these things, because I'm certainly not someone who wants to Insta story my entire life. I was an actor, I got that amount of attention back in the day, I'm good. I always think if I want to share something that seems kind of tricky or seems kind of maybe challenging, or I don't know. I just always think, is this thing that I'm sharing, is it something that is a wound, an open wound, or is it a scar? Have I learned something from it, right? If it's like a client cancelled their wedding, and we're in the thick of cancelling it, and emotions are high, I'm certainly not going to go on Insta story and be like, "Here's how to cancel your wedding." No, there is a time and a place, right? You have to talk about that once the moment has passed, when it is a scar. The people who overshare, the people who do that thing where you're like, "That is aggressively TMI, I don't need to know all that," I think they're operating from a different place where they're not. And that's what I think we mean by curating. Come at it from a place of what is it that I want to share and teach and educate, or just simply communicate about, and not from a place of, "This just happened, and I'm gonna sound off on it," right? PS: Yeah. So I was talking to a social media expert, I was talking to someone, and we were talking about-- because when I post something on social media, especially the stories, because I always believe that Instagram feed has to be clean, that's about your company. And your stories is where you get dirty. And by dirty, I don't mean sending--RD: Yeah, you can play a little fast and loose with the stories.PS: Yeah, but then when I post something on stories, I just go about my day, right? I take photos of a tree or, "Oh, I'm going to this restaurant." But I never post until the next day. Because I want it to be purposeful. "Oh my gosh, that experience at the restaurant is the highlight of my day," and that's the only thing I'm going to post. So I feel like people need to learn to step back, because the pressure of posting something right now is just tremendous that it's not really healthy anymore.RD: I agree.PS: And I feel like I should have one episode, podcast episode about mental health, because it's just so draining. Especially for me, because I'm not really a very public kind of guy. If I had a choice, I'd probably not post anything. But the pressure of trying to put something out there, yeah.RD: Yeah, I agree with you. Posting while you're in the moment of something takes you out of the moment. You're no longer in the moment, you're now looking at it from a distance, going, "How are people going to react? Oh, what should I say about this moment?" Just be in the moment, man, just post later. I tend not to post when I'm at networking events like the ones you and I have gone to for so many years together, because I don't want people know where I am. There is a weird part of me that is like, "If someone were to follow me around, they could, if I were posting in real time." And I know that sounds very paranoid, but that's just how we are, that's how I am today.PS: I actually saw and read an article, oh, I think it was online, a forum, and I started implementing it. When we go on vacation, I wait two days before I post something. Because we're on our way back, and we just started our vacation online, just so no one's going to know that oh, their house is empty, no one's in the house, stuff like that. It's me being paranoid.RD: But then again, these are all things we have to think about when we're talking about our businesses and our social media. It's such a different world now than when we started.PS: Yeah. So now my question for you is, if I want to change my copy, my language, how do I go about that for my business?RD: So first, I think you have to drill down what your core values are as a business. Mine are online, you can look at my core values on Moxie Bright, on the website, on the "about me" page. But I think once you have those core values, even if you don't publish them, even if you just write them down for yourself, right? Then make sure that all your language points to that. For me, I always want my language to be really uplifting, outgoing. I don't like passive voice. So if you don't know that means, not you, but if your listeners don't know what that means, active voice is like, "I am eating a sandwich." Passive voice is "I am going to eat a sandwich", right? I always want to be in the active voice. I want all my copy, all my Instagram captions, even if I'm talking about something that happened in the past, I still want my reaction to it, my comment on the image, to be in active voice, because it's important to me. It's one of the things, one of my pet peeves. Even when I listen to podcasts, when people say, "We're going to talk about blah blah blah." Just talk about it. You're already here, we're in it, just do it, right? That's just my impatient New Yorker, I think, coming out. But so that's something that's important to me. It's important to me to not use limiting language. It's important to me to communicate in a voice that allows people to easily feel comfortable with me being in charge. Because again, that speaks to what I'm doing for a living. If I were someone in a more creative primarily field, maybe if I were an interior designer, or maybe if I were a photographer, maybe my language would be a little more creative, a little more flowery, because you want to communicate that I have that sort of creative spirit. I'm not so concerned with that for what I'm doing currently. I more just want to be seen as an authority. Because it helps my clients trust me, and then it automatically takes out so many problems in the long run, because they're like, "Oh, Renee's got this," right? Because all of my language and my demeanor speaks to that. So that's what important to me. It doesn't have to be important to other people. But that's one of the reasons that I'm so passionate about this topic, is that I find it so prevalent in our industry. I've been at so many networking events standing next to someone, and someone says, "What do you do?" And they go, "I'm just a wedding planner." And it makes all my skin crawl right off, right? I'm like, "You're not just anything. You're a business person, you're a CEO, you're the president of your company, you're the founder, you're the creative force behind your company." We're so much more than the titles we give ourselves. Because everyone wants to be modest and humble. And I get it, you don't want to be a jerk. But also, you have to own your shit, you have to own your own expertise. Because as a business owner, nobody's going to give that to you, right? No outside force is going to come in and say, "Paul, you're the CEO now." And you're going to go, "Oh my God, am I? I made it." It's like, "No, we're making it ourselves," right? So it might sound arrogant sometimes, and you don't have to say it all the time, but you have to believe it. You have to believe that you are the CEO, whatever inflated title you think is too much, you have to behave as though that's true. PS: I love that, because for us, we've been doing this for nine years, our business has been existing for nine years. And we've never seen ourselves as the owners, right? So for the nine years, we've been just slaving away, making sure that we have work for everyone and blah blah blah. But then, just one moment, we were talking to our friends, and they're like, "You're the CEO, you have to do CEO shit. You can't just do secretary stuff, just hire a secretary. Do owner stuff." And the way that you say that to yourself, it makes you feel more empowered. People who say that they're just wedding planners, and they go to conventions, you're not just the wedding planner, you're already at a convention, that means you're serious. This is a real, real business. So yeah, people have to own up to--RD: Yeah.PS: Yeah. I love that.RD: You have to change your mindset, and you have to learn. It's going to sound so woo-woo, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but I believe it. You have to vibrate at a higher frequency for stuff like that. You just have to let yourself be up here unapologetically. And because, listen, at the end of the day, our businesses are our babies, and we are solely in charge of them. So if something in your business isn't working, it's our responsibility to fix it. And sometimes, it literally just is-- the mindset is off. Your mindset isn't working in your favor, right? And but again, this mindset is pervasive, it comes out in our language. So when I hear someone say, "I'm just a wedding planner," I'm thinking, oh, what's going on with them, right? Do they not have a supportive spouse, maybe? Maybe their spouse is saying, "Well, this little thing you're doing is just for now." Maybe they are not natural leaders. Maybe they have to work on their leadership for their team. Maybe they just have to change their mindset around money, right? We didn't even get around the topic of language around money, but it's the same deal. It's learning to control the language that you have around all of these things. Because once you start acknowledging it and changing it, then it becomes second nature, and you don't have to say to yourself, "Oh, I said 'just' again." Right? Now, when I say "just", I think, oh, did I say it? As opposed to I'm always saying it, and I'm training myself out of it.PS: Yeah, I love that. So my last questions, it's plural because-- it's actually just one question.RD: Okay.PS: So it's basically what language should you use for rejection when you feel like the couple doesn't really fit with you? For example, I saw last night, I saw online, someone asked, "So what do I tell the couple if I see a lot of red flags?" Before they sign, how do I talk to them and say "eh"? RD: I, in the past, have said-- well, first of all, I don't give anyone any sort of pricing or any information until I've spoken to them. And I firmly believe that that is the way everyone should be doing this, because what we do is so personal that it's really hard. It'd be hard for me to send out a price sheet and have someone be like, "I choose you." You'll be like, "Wait a minute, who are you? What is even your deal? I don't know if I want to work with you." So first, we have a conversation. And if I see a lot of red flags, oftentimes I won't send them a proposal. What I'll send instead is an email that I think I have in my canned email that's letting them down easy. And I just say, "It's been really lovely speaking with you and getting to know you. Based on what you told me in our conversation, I don't think that I'm the right fit for you." And I don't necessarily give them reasons, right? Because it doesn't matter, because they're not going to change. Or more accurately, nothing that they can say at that point will change my mind that I don't want to work with them, right? So I had a client, or not a client, but a potential client, many years ago, describe herself as a bridezilla six times during the consult. And she would say it and then laugh, like haha, like it was the funniest thing. I never laughed, I was just taking notes. And she didn't have her fiance on the call. She never even told me his name. She never referenced him, like "my fiance Joe". She just said "my fiance" as if that were his name. By the end, I said, "I'm sorry, you never gave me his name." And she goes, "I didn't?" And I said, "No." She was, "That's funny," and then went into something else. And I was like, it just was clearly not for me. So I wrote her an email and I said, "It was really lovely getting to know you. Based on our conversation, I don't think I'm the right fit for you. Here's who I'd recommend for you." And I always send at least two referrals to people that I really genuinely think could handle that situation, right? That I think they'd be a better fit for. And I don't necessarily feel the need to overly explain myself. In that particular case, she did write back and asked why. And I said, "One of the things I love as a wedding planner is working equally with both halves of the couple, no matter what that couple looks like. And because your fiance wasn't on the call and didn't seem very present in the proceedings, I just know that it's ultimately not going to be a good fit for me." And I never heard from her again. So I think when you're strong in your convictions and you know your core values, and you know the people you want to work with, it's much easier to say no to the ones you don't. But I also don't think we need to be writing diary entries about how much we don't want to work with them. I think that's when it pays to be super almost masculine in your responses, just like it's a hard line, right? Because the other thing you can say is like, "I don't think we'd be a good fit because you said something about being a bridezilla." And then she'd be like, "Well, I was just kidding," and blah blah blah.PS: That's it.RD: Then you're opening it up for more drama. It's a no.PS: Okay.RD: It's hard though, hard to do that.PS: It's super hard. I feel like the person who posted that online, he was just afraid to piss him off or break their heart.RD: Yeah, of course, you don't want to be a bad person. And also, not all of us are in a position to say no to the money. But then again, once you have a bad client that you've taken for money, you always realize that's bad money. You don't want that money anyway.PS: I think it's good that people have us, people like us to tell them that it's money now, but it's going to be a headache in a few months.RD: I feel like everyone has to do it once, and then they go, "Oh yeah, that was bad." Yeah, that was bad.PS: Okay, so the last one, the very last one, because I said language for rejection, right?RD: Yes.PS: What language-- how do you say-- how do you deal with a really livid couple when you did something wrong? Or you didn't do anything wrong, and they're super mad, how do you talk to them?RD: So I always try to figure out where they're coming from. Oftentimes, it is not about us, and the hardest thing as a business owner is to not take things personally. Weddings are emotional, right? A lot of times, we are getting the brunt of something that happened with someone else. And I know as a wedding planner especially, so many times I'll get an email that's like, "We're behind and da da da da, and this and that." And I have to read it and go okay, this person feels panicked, because they think something's not happening that should. I always deal with the facts first. I take the emotion right out of it. In fact, sometimes I actually ignore the emotion, right? Especially if they're coming at me hot, I'm just like, "Okay, what are the facts here? The facts are this person feels scared, this person thinks that A, B and C was not done. That is incorrect, A, B and C is done, here's the proof of when it was done. What else can I help you with?" I always try to move it forward, especially because my clients, or some other brides or grooms or whomever, tend to get a little worked up. Sometimes I always tend to just go okay, don't take it emotionally. Sometimes you got to close the email, walk around the house a little bit, walk around your office, burn it off, come back and be like, okay, what are they really saying, right? Because it's hard when someone's like, "You didn't do something." If they're pointing fingers, "You're bad at your job." And they might not have said that, but that's the tone, right? It's hard to divorce yourself from that and be like, "Okay, well, that's their opinion. Let's deal with the facts." And listen, if you didn't do something that needed to get done, or there was a misstep, of course apologize, absolutely apologize. And oftentimes, what I try to do is I make it right and then apologize. Fix it before you even-- fix it, just whatever it is, fix it. And then go back and say, "You know what? You're right, that did not get done, but it is done now, and here is the outcome." Because basically, all those emails are, all those communications are, is them throwing up a flare going, "Oh my God, something's really bad, we have to fix it." And so your job is to just fix it. Just fix it, fix it first. The other thing with communication, and you didn't ask this, but I'll just say it now. So many times, our clients are frustrated with us because they don't know what we're doing. And oftentimes it's eas

20 - Why Should You Be Humble?

Speak Life, and Lead with Eric J. Watts

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 3, 2020 23:52

You've got it goin' on like Donkey Kong and Rae Dawn Chong. So, there's no need for you to be humble about anything. Right? Because humility is for suckas. In this episode, find out whether or not it's beneficial to be humble.

109 FIFM - Trees Don’t Grow in a Day

work greek trees planting right because right not

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2020 15:59

In today’s modern world, we like things to come instantly. Because of technology, we can do things as fast as possible. We believe that our time is so valuable that spending time on something is almost impossible. But we have to remember that the trees that we have today didn’t grow in a day. We have to put in a lot of work if we want to achieve our goal because patience is a virtue. Dean will teach us a lesson in this podcast episode relating to why trees don’t grow in a day. Stay tuned! ---------- Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of freedom in five minutes calm and pro sulum.com PROSULUM.COM. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this trees don't grow in a day. That and more coming up. Well hello, welcome back to the podcast. Nice to hear from you. Nice to see you What are you chickens looking at? I'm looking at some chickens that think I got you think I got some treats for your chickens ain't gonna happen. Once you come mix my compost over here needs you to mix my compost pile anyway. Not gonna mix my compost pile get get a step and so, back a couple episodes ago, I had mentioned that we had planted a whole bunch of treats and not just that I have a ton of raised garden bed. Actually, I should say four raised garden beds in a in a garden enclosure now. And the so they've got these raised garden beds also got a what's called a roof stout potato patch. And so what I've reached out potato patch is is essentially you take a whole bunch of straw, or mulch or anything like that, you put it on the ground, and you do it again, and you do it again and you do it again and you do it again and you do it again, you just have a whole bunch of mulch on the ground. And you put potatoes and you put potatoes at the very bottom of it and with with the water from the rain and everything like that, it should grow. It should all the water should, should be all trapped in there and the potatoes should grow. So as I was doing All of these things, one of the frustrations that I was feeling one of the frustrations that I was feeling because this is the first time I've ever done this, right. We've been here nearly three years. This is the first time I started venturing out into actually building a homestead and started gardening and, and things like that. I mean we have chickens, but planting is different. Right? planting something is it's a pain in the butt it from from, from my modern mind to wrap my head around. It's extremely difficult. And why is that? It's because I'm so used to the microwave. I am so used to that which we've gotten rid of we actually don't have a microwave, but we're so used to the microwave. And And once I've planted so I'll tell you all the things Is that I've planted so we have four raised garden beds right. One of those garden beds actually has seeds in them and has a we planted spinach, carrots, and I think broccoli and a couple of other things. The other garden beds don't have anything in it because we we put a bunch of bunch of organic matter in it and we're just waiting. I'm just waiting. That's my wife's thing. Okay, planted, I'm trying to create a food force as well. So planted a whole bunch of stuff in this area that has just a lot of lot of stuff going on already. And, and got 12 to 14 trees or something like that have all these things that I kind of listed before. Plus the rooster grind. Out of all of that work out of the out of the tons of work that has gone into into all of that so with the even with the food for us I sorry I had to go back to this because just to give you an idea, planted radishes in this food forest or your radishes, cantaloupe, radishes, cantaloupe, oregano, parsley, time, carrots, different types of carrots, different kinds of watermelon, whole bunch of different whole bunch of things, whole host of things beans, peas, I want to say All in all, we probably planted over 50 different things in the last few months. And what has been the major frustration what has been the thing that I literally have such a hard time with? It is the fact that I do not see quick progress at all. It's so hard. I'm like Oh my gosh. Okay, so do I see do I see progress? Yes, that the spinach is growing and went from being super duper small to now it's now it's a little bit bigger. The carrot seeds went from being dirt to actually seeing the seeds starting to sprout, which is cool, right? But, but the trees we got it was it's it's wintertime as a recording this the trees well the thing that sucks about the trees is that they went dormant, right? So they're just sitting there doing nothing, at least as far as I can tell, which is of course not the case they're doing what they're supposed to do. But I want I want to see these things grow. Oh, the other thing. The other thing is that the brew stout potato patch. It actually shows that It's starting to show some some growth. It has some potatoes growing, which, which makes it so I'm looking at it going, go go faster. It is so hard man, I can tell you right now it is so hard for me to get a wave mosquito. It is so hard for me to look at this. Even though I see progress, even though I see these things to look at this, and I just like just come on already. Let's go. But here's the deal is that trees are not, they do not. They do not grow in a day. Right? Because we've also planted I've already direct seeded some persimmon trees, some plums, trees, some apricot trees and those ones Gonna take even longer than the ones that are planted that are saplings. But trees do not grow in a day. And so often, often we we take, we want to see these huge results, right in the beginning when we're trying to do something, we want to get the thing right now that's the way our culture is, let's get all of this as as quickly as possible, right? But there are times whether, especially if you're in sales, sometimes the sales cycle is two months, three months, six months, seven, maybe even a year. That'd be a really long sales cycle. But often we we don't do the things today. Now the That that will bring these the simple, simple little things like people. So our pro sulim clients, the ones who see massive success, the ones who see like massive results are the ones who take the five minutes a day to create the video that their virtual systems architect, their virtual assistant on superpower with superpowers does used to create the standard operating procedures and grow and everything like that the ones who the ones who simply want to say go do this thing and get a task. They actually see really poor results. Right? Because they go say they go go manage my social media account and give no direction, no clear process, no clear documentation, no nothing like that. They don't do the system. That even though the system takes five minutes is like planting a little seed even. It didn't take me long to plant seeds. The the system is there to allow you to plant these little seeds that once the documentations created, the person can go and do it without ever coming back to you to ask how to do something. They they're set up for success and and we just see Matt like massive like quadrupling revenue, you know that are the business owner spends like zero time doing any work on their business in like 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. Right. But those who want the tree, they want the fruit right away without doing without planting the little seeds. They lose more often than not. They lose, they lose. And so so this is where we really have to look at See, are we willing to go with the season? Are we willing to go with the system? Are we really willing to? This is why, you know, when people go to, say, psychologists to fix their marriage, you know, they, they, the psychologist says, you know, hey, you know, it's going to be, you know, let's do this once a week for the next three months. And you need to he need to actually apply what we, what we're what we're actually doing during this thing. Those those who actually have success and see their marriage grow, typically, are the ones who follow the system, follow what the psychiatrist or psychologist says. Those who fail are the ones who go they go one week. They try it out, and they they get into a big massive fight. And they go, Oh, this doesn't work. I'm we're done and I go, there's this doesn't Work, I'm not going to do this anymore. Right? Not gonna do this anymore. And so so the, the big thing that, that I think a lot of us, especially in today's age, fail to see and fail to even have the habit of is seeding and waiting for those seeds to grow, knowing, knowing that, okay, if I want X amount of dollars in six months, these are the things I need to do now. If I want to have a happy marriage, these are the things I need to do now. Because when you start trying to get the fruit, so if I if you start trying to plant something right in, and you go, Hey, this isn't working and you dig up the tree. The next you dig up the seed as it's starting to sprout. What happens the whole thing dies there's no established route there's you try and you're trying to get the fruit but you end up killing the entire thing very quickly you know if it's if it's trying to save your marriage it's I this isn't gonna work I want good feelings now. I don't want to put in the work. I want good feelings now. The you run the risk of killing the entire thing, right? I want a business that automates that that has a standard operating procedures that everyone can follow that I can replace anybody at any time. And that that a somebody who wants to buy my business looks at and goes, whoa, this is a totally automated turnkey system, and I want it now. I just want to tell this person do do all these things. And and it's done. It doesn't work that way. I want a fit body I want muscles I want I want to look like a Greek god. But I want that by next weekend when you're 300 pounds, not gonna work. Trees do not grow in a day. And so the big thing is spending those five minutes a day, literally could be five minutes a day, planting those seeds, planting those things. Planting those new habits planting, planting the the standard operating procedures, planting the the the love notes to your wife or your to your husband. It's those things. Those things that over time you doing them will blossom into huge trees with amazing fruit that people will look at envy and be inspired by. I love you too big boy. You're gonna go with Jen. Okay, well she's coming back up right here. She's coming back up. She's right there. Alright, so freedom in five minutes.com go check that out or go to prosulum. com if you want to virtual systems architect they are virtual assistants with superpowers to transform your business in 30 60 90 days into a fully automated system that you can sell at the highest price if you wanted to. You don't have to You can just enjoy your your business that works without you and makes you a lot of money. Go check that out PROSULUM.COM and I will catch you in the next freedom in five minutes episode.

S2E2: Raise Your Glass, part 2

Technically Religious

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 15, 2020 32:41

Working in IT can often feel like long periods of soul-crushing depression and frustration as we work through a technical issue, punctuated by brief moments of insane euphoria when we find a solution, followed by yet another period of soul crushing depression and frustration when we move on to the next problem. In this light, learning to take time to celebrate and express gratitude is essential. In this episode, Leon, Josh, and Doug explore the habits we've developed as IT pros to get us through the hard parts of the job; and the lessons from our religious, moral, or ethical tradition can we bring to bear. Listen or read the transcript below. Leon: 00:06 Welcome to our podcast where we talk about the interesting, frustrating and inspiring experiences we have as people with strongly held religious views working in corporate IT. We're not here to preach or teach you our religion. We're here to explore ways we make our career as IT professionals mesh, or at least not conflict, with our religious life. This is Technically Religious. Leon: 00:53 This is a continuation of the discussion we started last week. Thank you for coming back to join our conversation. Leon: 00:59 Another area that I think, um, we can in it build a sense of gratitude is in the amount of work that we do, um, that we need to recognize in IT the difference between hours and accomplishments. How much time we spend, and how much we accomplish. Um, and I'm gonna have a really radical idea and anybody who's listening to this, who, who manages people or runs or owns a business is probably not gonna like me saying this, but salaried employee employment cuts both ways. Do not try this at home. Do not push this at work if you are in a shaky situation or whatever. But I am telling you right now that if it is okay for work to say, "Well you know there was an emergency or you have to get this done and if it takes you 50 hours to get to do it, then I guess that's what it takes." Then equally so is if you get your work done today in four hours you can go home because you have got it done. And I think sometimes we need to recognize that "I got it done, I did it, yay me." I don't need to spend more hours sitting here pretending or looking like or looking for trouble again or picking that next thing off the pile because this is what I intended to get done today. Doug: 02:09 Absolutely. And I mean even on the flip side of that, I've had days where things just weren't going well and all of a sudden I realized if I keep going, I'm going to break something way worse than it is. And it is much better for me to just walk, get up and walk away and come back tomorrow. Now, by the same token, I'm not currently a salary employee, so that should indicate that it hasn't always worked well. Speaker 4: 02:30 Right. When you're in trouble. I think that that's a technique, but I just, I want to hit this again for just a moment and say that when we're talking about gratitude and talking about appreciating something, how amazing would it be if at two o'clock in the afternoon you realized "I got it done. I fixed the problem, I, I did it. I'm going home." You show up at home to your family, your dog, your TV, whatever it is, your, your Halo, your Quake cooperative. Whenever you know, World of Warcraft team, whatever it is, they're like, "Why are you here?" "I got my work done. I had, I get extra time. I'm finished. Free recess for the rest of the day. Yay me." That is powerful. Josh: 03:11 I recently had to go through an experience just like that where for 20 years I have been the person who has always been present. I learned from my parents that showing up to work is, is even more important than doing well at work. And not that my parents did a poor job, but they were there. They taught me that always being at work showed value. And so I fell into the trap, Leon, that you talked about. I routinely would work 50, 60, 70, and 80 hours a week, uh, during my 20 year career because that's what I thought I had to do. And in my new job, I am very much have the autonomy to decide when I've had enough, and that I'm expected to not be at work all day when I don't need to be at work all day. And this is, it's a really weird dichotomy for me because I've had to reprogram my mind to work around that. I mean, I think again, another podcast episode another date, another time, but we need to, we need to realize that again, Doug's sins aren't my sins, right? Doug: 04:24 I hope not for your sake. Josh: 04:28 So quote a famous Mormon, um, whose name was J. Golden Kimball. Uh, he was also known as "the swearing apostle". Um, he, he used to say... in fact he used to swear over the pulpit at the conference center in Salt Lake. Um, but he used to say famously, "I'm not going to hell. I repent too damn fast!" Don't worry, Doug. We're, we're fine. Doug: 04:54 All right. Leon: 04:55 Another habit I think that can lead to a better sense of gratitude is, um, actually just thankfulness, which I know is kind of buzzwordy these days. Saying thank you a lot. Just say thank you to other folks for the things that they do a lot. It has an incredible effect on you. It has an incredible effect on people around you, but just get into the habit of saying thank you. Doug: 05:25 And it's important to be able to do that, to actually be aware of the people that are doing stuff for you. I mean, I, I actually went to an exercise program today. I know, hard to believe. Um, but it was our first time going and I didn't know how it worked. And I got my wife there and she's settled and I was looking around. I could tell that we were supposed to get some equipment, but I couldn't tell what, you know, how some people had it and some people didn't. So this lady came up and she said, "Let me show you where to get this stuff." And she took me over there and I got all my equipment. We did the exercise and... But I made sure that when I went back I said, "I really appreciate you finding me wandering around and putting me in the right direction. And because people don't do that, you could have just let me..." There were 50 people in the room, one person came up to help me. And so, but I made sure that I went, I noticed that she had helped me, of course, but then I made sure I went back and thanked her. So it just, it's so you're grateful when people do stuff for you, but you have to, people do things for you all the time. And you may not even notice. Josh: 06:30 And I think this ties back to the authentic comment that I made earlier. You were appreciative for a very specific thing and you went and found someone and you didn't just say, "Hey, thanks for your help." You said, "Hey, thank you for helping me to do this thing you saw me in need. I'm grateful for that." That is way better than getting the traditional hallmark "Hey, thank you for being a great person." 'Cause, why? Like what, what did I do as a great person? I mean for me, Doug: 07:03 participation award! Josh: 07:07 In Canada, we used to call them the "partici-paction". It was an exercise program. So very... And I..., Anyway, Canada's weird and you used to get a participation. It was, you know, gold, silver, bronze, these little, um, knitted, uh, medallions and did, yeah, well kind of knitted. And then if you didn't get a gold, silver or bronze, then you got a participation award? Uh, anyway, it was growing up in the 80s was weird, man. It was really weird. But I wanna I'm curious for, for both of you, how do you show your true, authentic nature when you're expressing gratitude to others? In Doug, you gave us a great example, uh, an evidence of how you do it. Are there any other ways that we can pull that off? Because I want to be more authentic in 2020. Leon: 08:01 I think that that some of your comments hit on it. First of all, recognizing what the person did and that it was, and also understanding that it was exceptional. I mean, it's always important to say thank you to your wait staff. It's always important to say thank you to the people who are, who are, there being paid to help you because you know, yes, they're being paid. You don't go, you know, you don't fall on your knees for that, but you still thank them. Like "I recognize that you just did something for me." But when somebody is not there in that capacity or role to say, "Hey, I know you took time out of your exercise routine just to put me on the right track. I saw that. I see you. You are not invisible to me." I think that that in itself is powerful and then also expressing how it helped you or how it made you feel. And Doug, I know feelings are not always things that you are, you know, thrilled about talking about or sharing or anything like that. Um, again, we've known each other a really long time but, but saying you know, it really, you know, "I was, I was really uncomfortable. It's our first day here. I didn't know what to do and you made it a lot easier for me." Tells that person how they impacted your life and you want to call it positive reinforcement. Fine. You want to call it paying it forward, fine. But it, you know, in the same way that you would probably want to be thanked and recognized by a stranger on the street. Doug: 09:31 Yeah. It's just being appreciated for what you're doing. I mean when, when I go through checkout on a holiday when I can just tell that they are just being slammed. I tell generally tell the cashout guy, I said, I really appreciate you being here cause I needed to get this food today. And the fact that you're here just made my life so I could do this. I mean if you think of that, think of none of the cashiers showed up. You'd have to steal all the food. I mean, excuse me. No, you, they wouldn't open the store. Josh: 09:59 I was surprised. I recently took a trip and I went into the airport lounge. First time in my entire life that I've ever gone into an airport lounge. Um, had to look at the, the podcast episode we did where we talked about, uh, you know, the travel hacks, right? So that, that was good. So I went into the lounge and I, one of the times I spent seven hours in this lounge on a layover. I always surprised how many people in the lounge did not say thank you when the staff in the lounge came by and picked up your, your plates and your cups and stuff. Come on, people! Say thank you to the, the people who are like, you don't tip these folks that they, they, they're only thing that they're there for is to make your life in the lounge more pleasant. The least you can do is look up, smile at them and say thank you. Leon: 11:01 Right. Again, I see you, I see what you did. He appreciated what you did exactly. Doug, before we started recording. You talked about, um, something else about hearing the 'thank you' when it's not said, and I want to give you a chance to tell that story over. Doug: 11:15 It's really, it may be big because this is the flip side. This is, yeah, we were talking about we should be grateful. We should be thanking other people, but we're also looking at ways that we can go ahead and find gratitude and in our own lives. And sometimes the reality is we are not thanked for the wonderful things that we do for other people. I know this comes as a shock to everybody, but it's true. And when I had my own consultancy, uh, for the longest time I would base it, you know, I would be doing work for clients and doing work for clients and doing work for clients and clients never thank you. I mean, yeah, they pay, but they never actually thank you. But then all of a sudden I realized every time they said, "Okay, now that's done. Now what I want is..." They were essentially "Thank you for the thing that you just did." Because they wouldn't ask me to do the next thing if they weren't grateful for the fact that I had accomplished the first thing. So every time from then on that I heard now what I want is in my head. I just flipped it to, "Thank you Doug," and we were off and rolling. Leon: 12:09 That's why I wanted you to tell it over it because that's really powerful. If you think about all the times at work that people say, "Okay, next I want you to do blah, blah," and just realize that there is an implicit, not explicit, but an implicit, Thank you. Great job. Because if you screwed it up, believe me, I would have told ya." Doug: 12:31 Right and they wouldn't be asking you to do work on anything else ever again. That there's a, there's a very strong thank you every time they give you something new and if it's bigger, it's a big thank you. Josh: 12:41 I want to point out to our listeners because I'm sure a number of them have had these moments, the weekly team meeting where we all start off by the usually the managers saying, "I just want to point out that Josh showed up to work today." Or or something really mundane. Those co, those scenarios where you as a manager or a team lead are compelled to call out the things that your team does well, completely backfire on your team. Don't do them. If you're going to do them, make sure that it's for things that are exceptional to the norm. For example, me showing up at work today is not normally exceptional. May showing up to work today after I worked all weekend. That might be exceptional. "Hey Josh we really appreciate the fact that you worked all weekend and that you're here on Monday morning and that you have pants on." So those are exceptional things, but don't, don't force that gratitude because that just hurts your team. I don't know. Leon: 13:48 This goes back to the authenticity, but I had a very different experience. I had a manager who was himself exceptional in this regard that he would first look for, and then began to solicit and curate recognition... Points of recognition for the team. And, um, I'll post an example of it in the show notes. So if you're listening to this on a Tuesday, it'll be posted on Wednesday. But, um, it was really remarkable the effect it had. Because to your point, Josh, he was recognizing the exceptional mostly. Mostly he would say, "Okay, we saw that, you know, we, I noticed that you were online at two o'clock in the morning. It wasn't your on-call, but you just noticed it and that's really incredible. Please don't feel obligated to do that. But I know that you did and we appreciate it." But there was one thank you in the example I'm thinking of where he said, uh, you know, "George or whatever his name was. Um, there was nothing really noticeable about you this week. Um, you're fired. No joking." He said, "Really what was interesting was that everything that you accomplished was remarkably normal and under the wire it was consistent and it was typical. And it's what everyone has come to expect from you because you do it all the time. And I just want you to understand that that consistency is also appreciated." So here is a way to take a person who had had a normal week. Nothing to your point, Josh. Nothing exceptional. No 2:00 AM Sev1 calls, no working the weekend and say, but that's valuable too. Doug: 15:24 That's managerially brilliant. Because the problem is when the only thing that you ever reward is people putting out fires. You get a lot of people who put out fires, and so they let fires happen so that they can then put them out. As opposed to the person that goes ahead and does their job day in and day out so that there are no fires. They never get recognition. Leon: 15:45 Charity majors, uh, about a year ago talked about this, that one of her techniques was to recognize people who, um, first of all, people who pay down technical debt, that that was one of the things and that got higher praise than, uh, either fixing a bug or you know, resolving a crisis because that was valuable. But also she made sure that she recognized people who submitted things to, you know, submitted their code and there were no defects. That submitting with zero defects was more valuable than bug fixes. Because it meant there weren't, you know, cause it meant everything that it meant. And I think that that was really good. Josh: 16:28 I would suggest that being consistently good at your job and our job is to either build things, fix problems, whatever it might be. That individual who did everything that they were asked to do and the things that they weren't asked to do without being asked. That is unfortunately, truly exceptional. Doug: 16:49 It's true, New Speaker: 16:50 I hate to, I hate to be that type of person, but I tell my kids all the time, "It is not hard to be exceptional. You just need to be consistent and transparent. That makes you exceptional because so many people are not both consistent and transparent in the things that they're doing." So my name, maybe for us, we're like, Oh that, that's cool that they're, my boss recognized somebody who wasn't exceptional. But what's your boss was really saying was, "Hey Sally, that was really awesome that you did those things." And you know, the backhand was "All the rest of y'all need to look at what Sally's doing and say, Hey, this is what's valued, not you off saving the world, you know, from a calamity that you created." Leon: 17:41 Another point just bringing in, um, a Jewish habit. So there's a Jewish tradition that you're supposed to say at least a hundred blessings a day, which is actually not hard in the Jewish tradition because there is a blessing for just about everything from the moment you wake up, before you even get out of bed, there's a blessing for, 'thank you for letting me wake up this morning' to a blessing for going to the bathroom. Yes, there's a blessing for it to go to the bathroom. There's a blessing for every bite of food in your mouth... Every bite of food you put in your mouth, there's a blessing for everything. And so that's the first thing. And, and uh, we can recognize, I think regardless of your religious tradition that when you say a blessing, you're saying 'thank you'. But there's a deeper level that I think is worth pointing out, which is that in, in the phrasing of a blessing, it's not. "Thank you for this thing." "Thank you for this apple." Thank you for... You're saying 'thank you for this moment.' "Thank you for this moment where I get to have this apple; where I get to get out of bed; where I get to go to work." I get to, you know, all these things. "Thank you for bringing me to this moment in time because that wasn't a guarantee." And the result of that for many people being that thankful, being thankful for every moment and saying, did I get my hundred blessings in today? Because that's, that's the goal. Okay, fine. That you become more grateful for things because you're looking for the things to say thank you for. Josh: 19:13 I'm disappointed Leon. I thought when you were going to talk about Jewish traditions, you were going to invoke the holiday where we all get drunk. Leon: 19:21 There is one of those, there's the get drunk holiday. There's also the eat cheesecake holiday was also, yes, there's also the eat fried foods holiday. This is an entirely other podcast episode. Um, Josh: 19:34 Holy crap. I should have been Jewish. Doug: 19:38 Well now that you're an ex-Mormon you still have an option. Leon: 19:40 There's... Okay. There's no, okay... Yes, I'd like to point out Judaism does not have a tradition of proselytizing. Uh, everyone, everyone goes to heaven. You don't need to be on the team. And everyone can, can participate in some of these holidays even if you're not on the team. Uh, and, and my house is always, we have an open door policy. So you're welcome to come for the cheesecake holiday or the fried foods holiday or the get drunk holiday. Josh: 20:02 I was going to say, who needs to proselytize when you've got holidays, like get drunk, eat cheese cake and eat fried foods. Like, Oh my goodness. Leon: 20:10 Okay. Not all at the same time. There are separate days, separate days, Josh: 20:14 But I thought you had like Christmas every day as a... Leon: 20:18 Okay. Alright. And I think what we're doing is we're a.tually demonstrating another idea, which is really to experience joy and laugh, laugh at things, laugh at moments, try to bring more laughter in. If you feel like you're work in IT is becoming really hard to take, finding ways to bring some laughter in, whether that's listening to a really good funny podcast or I know some people who watch, you know, slapstick, they watch, um, old, you know, 1930s, um, like the Marx brothers movies or whatever. Whatever tickles your funny bone, you know. Three Stooges or um, Monte Python or whatever it is that that does it for you. But bringing more laughter into your life makes a difference. That just laughing helps. Josh: 21:08 I agree. I also recommend laughing at yourself. Leon: 21:12 For some of us it's easier than others. Doug: 21:14 I have no problem with that. I'm about the funniest thing. I, uh, Leon: 21:20 right. Doug: 21:20 I don't have to wait too long to see me screw up. Josh: 21:22 I mean, being self-deprecating is something that I do really well and I don't know if it's a me being Canadian or me being British or me being Canadian and British, but self-deprecation is a way for me to laugh at myself. I I, for a long time I took myself pretty darn seriously and to be blunt, it nearly killed me. So now I take myself seriously when I need to be serious, but I also know that there's an awful lot in life that is not nearly as serious as we make it. Leon: 21:53 Yes, exactly. Now I will say that laughing at yourself, especially as a way to diffuse a tense situation, even if a tense situation is in your own head, is wonderful. Sharing that at work is sometimes not safe. And I want to recognize on this podcast that not everyone is in a situation where they feel like they can highlight and laugh publicly. "HAH I just screwed that up, that was pretty funny, wasn't it?!?" Because not only will the answer be no, the answer will be "and it's going to get you, you know, everything you say can and will be held against you in a court of public opinion." Doug: 22:27 I did. I did that. I, I've, I've rarely worked for a large corporation because I always thought I wouldn't do very well there and I have now proved it because, well no, there, there was a situation where we just, we didn't meet something and it didn't, it didn't work and everybody was like really down and there was nothing we could have done to, to have actually accomplished what was supposed to been accomplished, so I made a joke. Cause really what are you going to do? And it was not taken well at all. It's like I was, I was accused of not taking the problem seriously. And the answer is yeah, no I knew the pro... And I also knew that it wasn't our fault. There was nothing we could have done. We were torpedoed by another department intentionally (because big corporations do that) and everybody was down about it. It's like why should the, why should this team be depressed? Because of what happened. But the humor was not taken well in that situation. I no longer work for that company. That's not the only reason. But enough episodes like that pretty much made it easy for me to be in the 10% that get chopped. You know, any place that automatically chops 10% of their, their people every year? You can get, I'm going to be in that. I'll eventually be in that 10% for some reason. Josh: 23:34 Oh, that two letter company that we love to hate, hate to love. I don't know. Leon: 23:40 Yeah, yeah. No, that's a, that's a challenging one. But I think also, Doug, what you're talking about that, um, again, contextualizing what you're doing. You know, putting it into context, put, you know, framing it in a way that says, Hey, you know, let's just be clear about this. Whether again, for the good or the bad, especially when something doesn't go well, the ability to be grateful, the ability to be thankful, the ability to see the humor in it also means recognizing that really, what are we doing here? Like at the end of the day, we're writing software. And just one story about that. Um, one of my really good friends that I grew up with is Lee Unkrich, who for many years was a director at Pixar and just retired from there not too long ago. And he was on the team working on "Monsters, Inc." And they were in a, they were in a meeting room. It was day one and a half of what ended up being a three day effort to come up with one particular sequence in the movie, which is where they got thrown out of a door and they're in the, you know, the Arctic or something. And they meet up with the abominable snowman. And they're trying to work one gag and they couldn't quite get it. And in again, at day one and a half, Lee stopped everything and he said, "I just need us all to recognize that we are here being paid a not-insignificant-amount of money to come up with the perfect pee in the snow joke. That's what we're being paid to do right now. And we just need to recognize how incredibly awesome our jobs are." Josh: 25:17 I want that job so badly. Oh my God. Leon: 25:20 Right? Because there was a lot of pressure in the room. Like we've got to get this right. Josh: 25:25 I used to work for a major automotive manufacturer, one of the big three. And when the line shut down, it was, it was an awful lot of money a minute that was not being realized because they weren't working. And I used to say to people, I worked in support, uh, in, in one of the, in a couple of their facilities for a period of time. "We're not curing cancer here folks..." Cause people, I, I, I have never been, I've never been in the military, but I have been torn up one side and down the other because of the line going down and some shift manager freaking out. And I'm just like, we are literally not curing cancer. I switched companies and a few years later I was working for a company that was helping cure cancer. Leon: 26:17 Okay. Context, Josh: 26:19 Jokes on me, right? Uh, but I, I think we need to remember that even when we're trying to cure cancer or... There's only so much that you can do, you can only move mountains so far and then that's it. I mean, don't it. Yes. It's not a laughing matter. When you, when you fail to deliver in spite of your best efforts and someone dies. Not a laughing matter. But we can be grateful. The effort that we put in, I could never be a first responder because I would want to save everybody. And that just is not what happens as a first responder. Uh, uh, an, uh, a friend of mine, uh, is a doctor and I, I remember listening to stories from him being an intern and the people dying on the gurney as he was doing his ER rotation. And I thought 'there was no way,' just no way I can do that. But on one hand, I'm very grateful that I, I'm not a doctor. On the other hand, I'm also very grateful that he had the wherewithal to understand that he couldn't save everyone, but he was going to give 100%. and every day he was like, I give it, I give him my all. I can't save that person who came in with, you know, shot seven times. And being grateful that you put in the effort. That is really okay. Doug: 27:41 I was going to say, even though we're looking for ways to be grateful, when you know that you've done the best job that you can do, that's the time to be great. That's the time to be thankful. Even if nobody else knows that you did the best you could and that's assuming that you bring your, you know, the best you got at any given day, sometimes the best you've got is not all that great. Leon: 27:59 A number of decades ago, Doug and I were working at the same company and I had a situation where in the evening I was working on a, a co, a client's computer and the hard drive completely and utterly crashed. And this person lost all of their data and I really kind of lost it, uh, because I was working on the computer at the time and the hard drive crashed and I, it was early enough in my career that I did not know what to do and I did not know how to take it. And I spent some fairly emotional minutes in your office. Like, "I don't know how to face this person. I don't know how to deal with this. What am I going to do?" And you said, "You know, the system died on you, but you didn't take a hammer to it. It just died. Hardware does that. And you did everything you could. They didn't have backups. That's not your fault." And put, you know, both putting it in context and basically saying everything you just said about you did the best you could, you don't need to carry this. And I did anyway. Because, right. And it was a sleepless, you know, sleepless night until, uh, the angry words were said and the client recovered their composure. And you know, we moved on from that and a week later I was able to look back with a little bit more perspective. But, um, a, I was grateful to have somebody who had a little bit, you know, a little bit better perspective on it. But also, um, I was eventually able to have that point of view that I had done everything I could and this happened anyway and you know, I, and I was there. And in one respect I was there to at least be able to say "It was a blah... It was at this and a this and this and then this happened. "And explain to the client coherently the sequence of events so they could at least be prepared for it next time and wouldn't, you know, at that client took religious backups after that. So, you know, lessons learned, Josh: 30:06 Call me, not surprised. Leon: 30:08 Um, any final words, any, any last thoughts before we wrap this up? Josh: 30:12 You know, I, I do. And because I know Leon how much you love when I quote songs. And because I think in this particular case we missed talking about something that we uh, that we should be grateful for. I am going to quote James Taylor from his song. "You've Got A Friend." The first verse says, "When you're down and troubled; and you need a helping hand; and nothing, nothing is going right." I mean it sounds like every day in IT, right? "Close your eyes and think of me; and soon I will be there; to brighten up even your darkest night..." (When you're on call.) No... That's not what James Taylor said, but I mean you just shared a story about how Doug was there for you. Having friends and IT having friends when you work in IT that aren't in IT is really powerful. But I think that having friends who also have been there, they've gone through the experiences that they, you can commiserate with them, you can laugh and have joy with them. You can cry and probably string together a fairly long sentence filled exclusively with curse words. That is also very powerful. So my final words have, have friends and listen to James Taylor. You've got a friend. Doug: 31:31 My final word is you can't be grateful enough. I mean, if you think you've done it all yourself, you're wrong. If you think you've screwed it all up yourself, you're wrong. Just be grateful for what you've managed to accomplish and that just makes everything goes so much better. Leon: 31:45 All right. And with that thought, I'm going to close it out with a quote from Mr. Rogers. Um, there's now a movie out that highlights this, but it's something that I have, uh, kept up on the wall here in my office and talk about from time to time. Mr. Rogers, when he received a lifetime achievement award, uh, he said something that just has stuck with me forever. New Speaker: 32:05 "All of us have special ones who loved us into being. Would you just take along with me 10 seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are, those who cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life? 10 seconds. I'll watch the time." Destiny: 32:22 Thanks for making time for us this week. To hear more of Technically Religious visit our website, https://www.technicallyreligious.com, where you can find our other episodes, leave us ideas for future discussions, and connect to us on social media. Josh: 32:36 To quote Jacques Maritain, "Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy."

Ep. 125: How statistical analysis improves PPC ROI Ft. Adam Lundquist of Nerds Do It Better

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2020 43:21

How does a Harvard-trained digital marketer use statistical analysis to improve the results he's getting from pay-per-click advertising? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Nerds Do It Better (how great is that company name?!) founder Adam Lundquist pulls back the curtain on the process he uses to build, execute and test high-performing PPC campaigns. Adam started his career as a shock jock and when he saw the business of radio giving way to digital, he embarked on a new career path that had him attending Harvard to study digital media and teaching himself how to do everything from social media to digital advertising. In this episode, Adam shares the exact process he uses to create high performing ads. He covers everything from his tech stack to the frequency with which he reviews and adjust ad performance. It's a replicable process that any business can copy, so check out the full episode or the transcript below for details. Highlights from my conversation with Adam include: Adam says that the key to success with digital marketing is to understand statistics and human psychology. The work he does is inspired by the story behind the movie Moneyball and he believes that most marketers don't use data correctly so those who are able to do it right have a competitive advantage. Marketers need to understand the difference between digital marketing-based goals and profit-based business goals. Marketing goals are leading indicators - things like the number of clicks or the conversion rate, whereas profit-based goals have to do with sales and revenue. Adam focuses on profit-based goals. When developing an ad strategy, Adam suggest starting by going to the Google Ads search query report to look at what you're actually showing for. If there are search queries there that are not relevant, add them to your negative keyword list. When you have your list of desired search terms, put them each in their own ad group. Adam uses a combination of Zapier and Unbounce to do attribution reporting on his ads, but says you can use other tools like Click Funnels as well. Because he sets his ad campaigns up as single keyword ad groups in Google Ads, Adam is able to pull the keyword that drove a visit or conversion into Unbounce using a hidden form field. He then uses Google sheets to track and report on ad performance, and automatically pulls data in to Google sheets in real time using Supermetrics. This system allows Adam to track the return on ad spend (ROAS) of individual keywords. When he finds a keyword that is yield a 3x or 4x ROAS, he puts that keyword into its own campaign and sets the budget to unlimited (because he knows, with confidence, he'll see a positive return on that investment). Adam uses Unbounce's dynamic keyword insertion functionality to create multiple, customized landing pages from a single template. Adam reviews and adjusts the performance of his ads on a weekly basis. He recommends starting your ads with a top of funnel offer such as an ebook that people will be more likely to convert on. This leverages the principles of compliance psychology which dictate that once someone says a small "yes," they are more likely to say a bigger "yes" after that. All of Adam's ad groups are single keyword and set to exact match. Resources from this episode: Visit the Nerds Do It Better website Follow Adam on Twitter Read Adam's article in Search Engine Journal Listen to the podcast to learn how to create high performing Google Ads. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth and my guest today is Adam Lundquist who is the founder of, and I love this agency name, Nerds Do It Better. I just have to take a moment and tip my hat to you Adam for the best company name I've had on this podcast to date. It's awesome. Adam Lundquist (Guest): I mean, we do. You know, you got to be a nerd to be in this business. Adam and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I love it so much. So much. I kind of wish I had thought of it myself. But you're interesting to me and I'm excited to chat with you about some of the things that you guys are working on, specifically with pay-per-click advertising and leveraging, like, statistical analysis and, you know, all that nerdy stuff because nerds do it better. About Adam and Nerds Do It Better Kathleen: But before we get into that, can you do me a favor and just tell my audience a little bit about yourself and who you are and how you wound up where you are and what exactly Nerds Do It Better does? Adam: Sure. So, hi, my name is Adam. I recently moved to London, England but I grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. Pretty average childhood, but in Boston, it's a little bit of a different area. Have you ever been to Boston? Kathleen: I have, I grew up in southern New Hampshire, so. Adam: Okay, so you know. Oh, by Salem? That's where I got my first car, I don't know if you knew that. Beautiful, tax-free Salem. But so it's not like in California where I ended up moving to, and Boston, really, the two big things were sports and radio. Like, when I was growing up either you wanted to be on the Patriots or the Bruins, which definitely was not going to happen for me. Or you could be on radio, were like kind of the two big dreams. So, I wanted to be on radio. I kind of wanted to be the next Howard Stern, was a person that I really idolized growing up. And kind of I was going to school in the mountains of Massachusetts in a place called North Adams and I just basically got tired of the cold and I moved to Santa Barbara and I kind of applied six or seven times to be an intern at the local rock station. Got the internship, worked my way up there and eventually got my own radio show. My morning show, just like I thought, would be awesome, and it was awesome. We became number one rated and things were going really well, but around 2006 or 7ish I started to see that our advertising revenue was going down despite the fact that we were the number one rated show. So, I kind of knew that there was a death knell of radio because radio was supported by ads. Public radio, terrestrial radio, whatever, it's all ad supported. I started to see that the ads were actually going towards more of the internet and this was still very early on. I think YouTube came out like 2006. So, I thought well, I better get involved in this internet thing and I wanted to have a viral video. I thought that would be a cool thing to do and I thought it would be easy and it was not easy at all. So, I tried my hand in it. I had an interview with this guy called Sam Cassell on the Clippers and like, just to let you know where I was at, like, I know eventually I learned all this stuff, but at the time, like, I knew nothing about the internet or really marketing. I had no money at all because the pay was terrible. I couldn't pay to promote it. And I was in like pretty much the most expensive place I've ever lived and keep in mind, I'm living in London, but Santa Barbara is incredibly expensive. I mean, I did have my successful radio show but, so I did this interview, I put it on YouTube and nothing happened. Literally, two, three views maybe. So, I started to learn how to work the internet basically. I learned about email marketing, finding the right blogs, getting in front of the right audience, compliance psychology. So, at first I was saying, "Hey, would you put this video on your website?" Which was way too big an ask. I had to kind of go down and use an easier thing saying, "Hey, would you watch this video?" And when people start watching it, they would then post it on their site. Eventually, the video got picked up. Its number seven on Sports Illustrated's Viral Videos of All Time. It's on VH1s Best Week Ever. It really blew up, which was great. I needed to use the internet. I then got picked up to run six radio stations on the Central Coast internet presence. Wasn't even on the air for much, just running their internet presence. And I just basically got tired of radio. They were asking for stuff that could definitely happen in the 70s but could not happen in the 00s/10s, like a country station asked me to get them a team of horses which is just not going to happen in this day and age. So, I went back to school. I got accepted into Harvard. I got a master's degree from it and then went to a start up and from there, it was a very small start up. I was maybe the fourth employee or fifth. We became the second fastest growing start up in San Diego. Our biggest client was a water proof cell phone case company. We took them from about 20,000 in monthly revenue to over a million. But at some point I realized I needed to start my own company because basically I'm just a control freak and I kind of have an independent streak. But my company has grown quite a bit. You'll see us run at PPC Hero, Search Engine Journal. I spoke at Philly Tech Week maybe a year or two ago and Hero Conf, whatever. And you know, things are pretty good. I mean, I live in South Kensington, England. Kind of travel wherever I want. My wife and I were just in Bali and it's just a very comfortable way to live. As long as you can understand statistics and human psychology, you can pretty much run your part of the internet. Kathleen: Yeah. Your story is so interesting to me for a number of reasons. I mean, when I read your bio and it talked about you being a shock jock, I was like, "Oh I want to talk to him so much about that." But I feel like we won't have time. That's like a whole other podcast. But now I'm curious because I have a theory and I want to see if it turns out to be true. What did you major in at Harvard? Adam: What was it? Digital Media Arts and Instructional Design. I thought that I was going to be part of those massive online open courses. And I actually did, one of my teaching fellows pulled me aside and wanted to do something with it, but the pay for those is pretty bad. You'd be surprised. So, they're prestigious like it's definitely prestigious, but it was not the pay that I was looking for. Kathleen: Yeah. No, I've had this theory that many of the best marketers are not actually trained marketers. You know what I mean? I have a graduate degree in marketing so maybe I'm taking myself out of the running for this, being one of the best marketers, but a lot of the greatest marketers I've talked to, they didn't study marketing. They came from other backgrounds but they are super driven learners. Like, they have this sensational curiosity and so they wind up in marketing because there's a challenge they're trying to figure out like you with your viral videos. And they kind of like sink their teeth into that challenge, they figure it out and then they kind of like follow the thread and that takes them into marketing. And it sort of sounds like that's what happened to you with like trying to figure out the video, leveraging the statistical analysis, trying to figure out pay-per-click and solve for this changing landscape of radio and such and such. It's just interesting to me that that's what your background is. And just how you kind of rolled your sleeves up and figured it out. I love that. Adam: Yeah, I mean, I kind of had to. I saw the writing on the wall. So, at the point I was doing radio, I was teaching a course at a city college and working the newspaper like, might as well have been working the silent film era. Like, I was like, "I am in some really bad industries. I need to get in some really good industries real quickly." You know, a lot of my radio friends have wanted to transition into this, but at this point it's a little bit late and they don't really, the background doesn't move as much as it used to, right? So, if someone comes to you and they say, "Hey, I'm in the radio. I can make you have a great internet presence," you know, maybe they can do good on the radio. They're probably good at podcasting but yeah, for me it was the challenge and then seeing how it could scale. Like, just taking that first company from like 20,000 to over a million and it probably took me two months. Like, I could not even believe how this stuff scales. It's worldwide, it's incredible. Kathleen: Yeah. Now, shifting gears for a minute. You're doing some interesting work at Nerds Do It Better with pay-per-click and again, when I read your bio, it talked about leveraging statistical techniques developed at Harvard to get better results with pay-per-click marketing. Can you just start by kind of giving an overview of that and then maybe we can dig a little deeper into exactly what you're doing? Using statistical analysis to get better marketing results Adam: Sure. So, a little bit of this comes from that movie and book, did you ever see Moneyball by Michael Lewis? Kathleen: Oh yeah. Yeah. Adam: One of my favorite authors, but also a really good book. So, the book was about how the Oakland A's -- they're like a major league baseball team -- how their front office hired this big nerd status statistician who kind of noticed market inefficiencies and how players were value based. I mean I won't get too, too into it but it was basically like batting average versus on base percentage. What you do need to know is that they took people who are undervalued and using that, were able to make the, I think it was like the ALCS, and they were able to basically, like, win way more games than the Yankees. That's the basic premise of it. Kathleen: And now all of baseball uses those same techniques, is my understanding. Like, that's not only baseball, but like, many sports have essentially adopted that approach of like, looking at the data and using more data-driven decision making because of that situation, that case. And it was so successful. Adam: Yeah. That's exactly right. They ended up hiring the guy for the Red Sox and he won the 2004 World Series. Football does it. I mean, Amazon does it. A lot of my friends who are stock brokers or financial people do it. Like, data is kind of like the new oil. Like, if you can really look at it and look at it correctly, which is what I want to talk a bit about, you can do amazing things because so many people are looking at it incorrectly. So, I kind of want to talk about the difference between a digital marketing-based goal and a profit-based business goal. So, a lot of times I'll have a sales call and people will be like, "Well, how many clicks can you get me?" Like, you really can't pay your workers in clicks or Facebook likes. So, what I try to look at and optimize towards is towards profit-based business goals rather than digital and marketing-based conversion goals. So, what I mean by that is a couple of things. So, a lot of what I do is lead generation for lawyers, hormonal therapy doctors, just a lot of lead generation. But every lead isn't created equal, right? So, I might have say a search query in Google which gets me 10 leads at a cost per acquisition of say 10 bucks a lead versus another one that will get me a CPA of 30 buck a lead, however if we're optimizing towards profit-based business goals, which is really what we want to be optimizing towards, you can handle the higher cost per acquisition because you're actually optimizing towards your return on ads then return on investment, whatever you want to call it. So, I really try to look at the gap between digital and the real world because well, for one, my clients wouldn't be around all that long if I wasn't actually tying it to real world profit. But also, people need to realize that the internet is amazing but it's not magic. Like, you still have to have good solid business principals and look at the statistics that way. Does that make sense? Kathleen: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, and I love when you talk about shifting your focus with pay-per-click to having that more profit-driven approach because one of the questions I get all the time, all the time, and I come from many years in the agency world. I owned an agency for 11 years, I then worked in another one for two. And I can't tell you how many times people have said, "What should my budget be for pay-per-click?" And they think that there's some magic like aggregate number like oh, you should spend $3,000 a month, right? And you're right, it's exactly the opposite approach that you should be taking. It should really be how much are you willing to spend to get a new customer, and if it's working, and you're getting new customers, then your budget should really be limitless because there's that return baked in. So, I don't know, I've always thought that was really interesting that people think in terms of budgets instead of cost per acquisition and return on ad spend. Adam: Yeah. I do, too. And with some of the bigger companies I work for, like, it has to be because people have to sign off on it. But I did want to say, because I promised you when I came on I'd tell you how to make this actionable, so, let's talk about this in AdWords because there's a whole, obviously, variety of networks, Facebook, AdWords. But I want to at least give people something to walk away with. Getting better results from Google ads Adam: So, in AdWords, your keywords aren't actually like what you think they are. So, your keyword that you tell Google that you want to search for might be "DUI lawyer." That's an example, I have a lot of lawyers. But if you don't have the match type, that could match for things like "cool movies about DUI lawyers." So, the first thing you want to do is in AdWords, go to the search query report to look at what you're actually showing for. So, that's the first step and if you do that alone, you're probably going to save yourself a lot of money. Now, what you want to do is you want to take the search queries, which again are not keywords, and if they're bad, make them what's called a negative so they don't show. So, say you're a DUI lawyer and your keyword is matching for "cool shows about DUI lawyers." That is not going to be a profitable keyword ever. That's just not going to work. So, you want to negative out shows, you might want to keep cool, like, that's fine. Usually for my lawyers they want "cheap" removed or "free" removed. And then you want to put it in its own ad group. So, if it's a good one, say "best DUI lawyer," now you can show up for that. Of course you can't put that in your ads. Anyone who is a lawyer knows that any claim has to be verifiable. That's a tip for you. Don't put "best" in there. Kathleen: Don't lie. Adam: Don't get disbarred. Yeah. I mean you can say "best plumber" but you can't say that for a lawyer because lawyers will get disbarred. Kathleen: Right. Adam: Okay but so then you do that and what you can actually do, which is really cool, and a bit more advanced, but I know you have more of an advanced audience, is if you use something called Zapier, and I use Unbounce but I believe you can just use Click Funnels as well. You can pull the actual name with the actual search query and then follow it through. Now this works really well for, one, seeing the quality of the leads. But if you have a client who you can track to the end, which you can't do with the DUI lawyer or really any of my lawyers, but you can do that with other types of clients. you can see the return on ad spend on an individual word. So, what I do then, is what's called alphabeta. If you have a keyword that's, say, delivering you like a three or four times return on ad spend, I make its own campaign, which is where you allocate budget and basically set it on unlimited. You know, you obviously want to talk to your clients about it, but if it's coming in at four times, and you have the individual search query and you know that that's the case, I say that's a great series of steps to do to look at statistical analysis to then increase your actual real world profit. How to track attribution for your PPC campaigns Kathleen: So, I want to back up for a second. You talked about using Zapier and following the keyword all the way through to profit. Can you just get, like dig a little bit deeper in there and explain exactly how you do that? Adam: Sure. So, Zapier is a way to connect different apps. And anything I recommend on this program, I don't get a cut of any of it because- Kathleen: And Zapier is great by the way. I will second that. I've used it a lot. Adam: Yeah. I want people to know that if I recommend something, I don't think I get a cut of any of these. It'd be cool if I did. I once got a free Unbounce t-shirt. Zapier connects different apps. So, the way that I do it is I use Unbounce, which you can pull in the keyword from a hidden form field. And, if you have your single keyword ad groups, which is what I recommended from the search query report when it's good versus bad, it'll pull it into a hidden form field in Unbounce. Now, I do all my reporting in Google Sheets. I love Google Sheets. Again, don't get a cut of it but I just think it's the most amazing program. I use a program called Supermetrics to pull in data in real time. Clients love that. I guess not exactly real time, it pulls it hourly because that's the max Google's API will let you and Facebook. But that way you're not filling out things all the time. Now, Supermetrics or Zapier can pull in the keyword, the name which will typically be an email, which you want to use as the unique identifier into Google Sheets. Now, what I- Kathleen: And this is assuming so they've converted on the form. So, you said you have a hidden form field which, I've done that before with some things but I want to make sure I'm understanding directly and that listeners are understanding correctly. So, you have an ad that's associated with a single keyword. Adam: Right. Kathleen: Are you directing them back from that ad to a landing page that has a form and that form is specific to that keyword and that's why you're able to have that hidden form field that says, "this is the keyword"? Or is it somehow using the referral URL to populate that? Adam: Yeah. So, in AdWords when you have, well, really any ads, and they're auto-tagged, which it's set to by default, it has something called a GC, I think it's LID. Or GCID, I can't remember off the top of my head. But that pulls in the keyword. It's actually how Google does it with analytics. You might wonder how where do they get these keywords from. That's how. And then in Unbouce, I have that just pull in. Now, one of the cool things in Unbounce you can do is called dynamic keyword insertion. So, if I don't know, like, I have a long distance medical transportation company as an example, as a client. If someone types in "Alzheimer long distance medical transportation", that will show up in the headline just because it pulls in from the keyword which is a really cool trick to do. That way you don't have to make a million different landing pages. Also makes it easier to split test. But the keyword itself, you can pull in variables from the URL into your form field. SO, I mean, if you've ever filled out a form like on the, say, the first page like, "Hey what's your name?" And I put Adam. The next page is like, "Hey Adam. We'd like to know whatever, x, y, z." That's how it does that. Kathleen: Cool. So, they convert on the form, there's a hidden field that's the keyword that associates their conversion with the keyword that first brought them in. So, sort of that first touch attribution modeling. And you're then dumping that data into Google Sheets, from there you're automatically pulling it into Supermetrics which by the way, if you're listening and you want to learn more about it, I did just interview Anna Shutko from Supermetrics. I think that's my last episode actually. So, check that out if you want to learn more about Supermetrics. We're bringing it all full circle. So, you pull it into Supermetrics and then where does it go from there? What happens next? Adam: Well, actually, so Supermetrics pulls into Google Sheets. Kind of think of it like a database. So, everything I do is a hub-and-spoke model which, I don't know how much you want to get into that but that's a business model where these hubs and then little spokes that come out of it for a reporting basically. So, as far as Supermetrics, that's just really going to tell you your ad spend. It can also tell you how much that actual cost per click is if that's something you're needing to know. With lawyers it is, you know it can be 40, 60 buck a click. So, you would see, all right, so this single keyword ad group which is what we started with, let say it spends, I don't know, you want to look at things in a two week period generally, $40 just as an example and you see you got three leads and two of them signed up or a $3,000 product. Probably a pretty good keyword. And you're probably not going to be blasting through Google's entire search inventory with whatever it was, 10 clicks, whatever the example was. So, what you would do then is looking at that, and what you again want to do is use the email as the unique identifier because people use different first names, you know, Mike, Michael, whatever. If it's the kind of, say, software as a service, you can track lifetime value of that. So, if someone is on for a long period of time, you can track lifetime value to a keyword. And you really just want to stay on top of the value versus just the digital part. And the digital part matters, right? Like it's not coming into your funnel otherwise. But you just, from the point where it's in a Google Sheet, you just look at the data. It's simple but hard to do if that makes sense. Like, kind of like doing a bunch of pushups. Like, you know you could do this but you have to stay on top of it. How often should you adjust your ad strategy? Kathleen: So, what does that look like? When you say "stay on top of it," is there a certain cadence that you maintain as far as, like, how frequently you're watching the data? How long do you let an ad run before you make a decision to, like, keep or cut? And based on whether it's working or not and how often are you making changes? Adam: We usually make changes weekly. Depends a little bit on the size of the account and the size of the keyword. So, what I try to do is have multi ad group testing so that there'll be two ads but they'll be variations. So it will be just two variations but the headline will be dynamic based on the keyword. And generally two landing pages as well. Now one thing to think about is a local maximum verses a, I forget what the other one is called. But local maximum is like, I could change the font, I could change the color, whatever, I can do these little minor changes. The other one is I can change the actual offer. Now, where you're going to see the biggest change is when you change the offer. So, if you're looking at someone coming in through the display network versus the search network, you're going to want a very different offer, right? So, the search network you can go right for a consultation, it's not problem at all. For the display network, I typically recommend you start off at least your funnel with an e-book or something directly of value that's a low threat. Because while you think, and I like to think as well that my sales calls are full of value, and they kind of are, realistically the person seeing is like, "Oh, I don't want to like stop what I'm doing to get on a stupid sales call." But they may want to do it for an e-book and again, this is a bit of compliance psychology. I don't know if you have show notes but I wrote an article in Search Engine Journal for this a couple of weeks ago. Click here to read Adam's article in Search Engine Journal Kathleen: Yeah, I do, so I'll put the link in for sure. Adam: Perfect. And that article did really well because it makes a lot of sense. So, again we're talking about compliance psychology. So, if someone takes a small step, they're much more likely to take a bigger step. It's like, BJ Fogg out of Stanford is doing this really interesting study on tiny habits. If you floss one tooth, you're much more likely to floss all your teeth. Intuitively that makes sense. I don't know if, intuitively, it makes sense to have someone downloads an e-book they're much more likely to sign up for a consultation, but they are. So, I mean I don't know how else to say it. Like, that's the basic gist of what I do. So, I would look at if I was going to be changing, which I do change. I tend to change the offer much more readily than I would change say something small like the copy of an ad. Kathleen: It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. There's a great book called Influence and if people are listening and they want to learn more about compliance psychology, like that book is fascinating. It's not really about marketing, it's about how to get people to do the things you want them to do and all the different ways you can approach it. And they talk about that kind of like the little yes before the big yes. They also talk about the principal of reciprocity. It's a fascinating story in there about the Hare Krishnas and how they were struggling to get donations and when they started giving out, I think it was flowers, all of a sudden their donations sky rocketed because people felt obligated. They got a flower they felt then obligated to donate. Even if they then threw the flower in the trash right after getting it, they would still donate. So, you're absolutely right. There's concrete scientific evidence that these strategies work. We just don't always apply them in marketing. Adam: They're like timeless strategies. So, that's what certain people ask me. They're like, "What network should I use?" They can all work if you look at the strategies. I actually noticed this, so I was in Santa Barbara for my wife's 40th and there are people on the streets with clipboards, you know? And they say, "Hey, do you have a second just to sign something that says you care about the environment?" And I watched this and people would sign it and then once they signed it, which is the small commitment step, the next step is well, will you donate money? So, at that point they can't say no they don't care about the environment because they've already signed it and taken the small steps. If you start to learn this stuff, you start to see it all around you. And it's like seeing the matrix, it's really cool. And you're right, that book is like when I'm not doing good in marketing and I need to really think things through, I almost always come back to that book and I say all right. He had like six principals. I'm like what is it? Is there not enough authority? Is there not enough reciprocity? And that's usually what the issue is, or it's too big a step which is an internet thing. But is it too big a step is usually the other problem. But I mean those are the ones I look out for. Adam's results Kathleen: Yeah. That's so interesting. Yeah, I could talk for hours about that book and just, you hope people are using it for good, right? And not evil because it is so persuasive, some of those tactics. So, let's talk a little bit about this in practice. You've discussed, kind of, how you do this and how often you watch it and make changes. Can you give me some examples of how you've used this strategy with pay-per-click to improve results and how quickly those results maybe happen? Adam: Yeah. So I'll give you actually an example with that last client I was talking about. So, they do long distance medical transportation. So there's a lot of ways to phrase that. So, the first thing I did is I asked, "What is your definition of long distance?" Right? Because for me it might belike whatever, Massachusetts to New Hampshire or even within Massachusetts because I don't like driving all that much. But for them it was 300 miles, right? So, that's the first thing we did is define. And then we started looking at the keywords. So, for them, there's two different options for a lead because we're only running the AdWords search network. So again, Google has a whole bunch of networks, but this is the one that you type in and it will say, you know, your ad will show up based on what you type in. So, they can either have a phone call which they would prefer because we're talking about business metrics again. And phone calls are statistically much more valuable. That's because someone's right there ready to answer, right? So, sometimes if you write back to someone they'll be like, "I don't even remember filling this out." And I don't know what to tell you. Tough luck, that happens. So, try to get back to people as quick as you can. Or you can also do chat. But in their case, it is not a chat thing. It is either a form fill or a call. So, what we did is we ran this for about two months as it was. I cleaned up their pages and we looked at it coming in. So, because it's in Google Sheets, and essentially everyone knows Google Sheets, right? So, this isn't like when it comes into Salesforce and you have to show someone Salesforce which is such a pain. I just have them put was it a good lead, was it a bad lead and why? This is good for me for a couple reasons. One, it keeps them honest about their follow up. I say if you don't follow up with someone four times before they're a dead lead then we need to talk because leads aren't magic. But it also lets me know, right? So, if somebody types in say "long distance ambulance transportation," is it a better or worse lead? If someone types in "state to state medical transportation," is it a better or worse lead? So, we did that for about two months and then we took the search queries that were the most valuable and by that we decided which ones produce the most good leads. We took those, we added them as negatives to one campaign and we created a separate campaign called an alpha campaign and that alpha campaign essentially had an unlimited budget. And we had very specific single keyword ad groups in them that went to very specific landing pages and basically all of those leads are good leads. Now, we ran into search inventory issues because I believe the top one was in fact "long distance medical transportation" kind of like you'd expect. But that's fine. Like, if we cap out in Google, then there's really not too much we can do about that. We can move to Bing possible. But we're still getting them all sorts of really good leads with that. And then we just repeat the cycle. So, we continue looking and mining. Getting granular is really important with this. So, we wouldn't do a multi keyword ad group, it's all single keyword ad groups in what's called exact match. When it's an exact match it has to be that, it has to be in that order. The ads are very specific, they'll say in the headline, it'll say in the display link, the display URL which people don't always know is actually, I guess I would call like a vanity URL but you can put in "long distance medical transportation" actually send it somewhere else. And then for the actual landing page, that also says "long distance medical transportation" in the title tag as well as the headline. Kathleen: So, okay, so you did these ads, you looked to see what was working, you implemented, you refined the campaigns to really focus on the things that worked the best. What kind of results did they see from that? Adam: The return on ad spend has been very nice and I mean, I guess I don't really know off the top of my head. I mean, I could tell you- Kathleen: Like what would be a good return on ad spend? Benchmark that for me. Adam: That's tough to say. So, I guess like kind of anything else, it's tough to say. So, my job stops once they get a good lead, right? So, I do help people with sales training sometimes but if you can't close the leads that we both agreed are good qualified leads, then you need sales training or something along those lines. So, there have been cases, I think I have the quotes on my website where I've gotten people like six times the amount of leads within the first month, triple the amount of leads within the first month just by cleaning it up. But those ones who were definitely quotes up on my website were really good at closing. Like, they're lawyers who are just, they know how to do it. So, I guess my answer is, I would want to define that with a client. For me, anything over what your getting, like what you pay is a fine return on ad spend but you know, people do see two, three, four. In the case of contested divorce lawyers, it's much more than that because contested divorce, not that I am, but I know this from doing this for so much, is incredibly expensive. So, I try to find niches for me where the return is very good for the client because then they stick around for a while. Like, my first client sold cookies online. So, basically every click had to be sale and that was just, it was untenable. I couldn't do that. So, that's why I work with lawyers, long distance medical transportation, hormonal therapy doctors. The return for them can be very, very high, in the thousands. Kathleen: So, you're focused on how you can increase lead flow. Can you give me an idea of like how quickly lead flow increases and by what volume? Is it like 2x, 3x, 10x? Adam: Kind of depends on what I'm inheriting. So, typically I take over accounts. People come to me because their accounts aren't doing well. They either read something I wrote or of course I run my own ads, too. But typically they've already tried it. Like, it's very rare, when I started this people would be like, "I've never tried it before." But that's just not the case with most businesses now. So, it can be definitely two or three, sometimes even six or seven times if I can see immediately, look, your offer is just we use a letter F, and if we simply just change your offer, then you're going to do much better. Like, that's a slam dunk. If it's something more along the lines of like, "Hey, look, we need to dig in and we need to see is it the ads? What's going on here?" It can be a bit murkier because often times when people come to me they say, "Look, I feel like this isn't working." It's a red flag. It's probably not because they're not tracking it appropriately. I mean, and this stuff can be a pain to track, right? Tracking phone calls, how do you do that? Kathleen: Right. Adam: How do you track your leads? I mean, we're essentially doing the whole show on that. And it is, it's hard. It's really hard and I'm not taking anything away from anyone, like it is really hard to do. But it's really necessary to do. Kathleen: Yeah. It's so funny, listening to you talk about like how you deliver the leads and it's up to the client to close it. I have a funny kind of anecdote around that. As I said, I owned an agency for 11 years and I actually had a second start up for a little while that was an online sales training business. And I started it because it was all inspired by this one client who I worked with for six months and he was early stage. And in a very short amount of time were able to deliver a very large volume of marketing qualified leads, his definition. And he didn't close a single one of them and he called me really angry and fired us. And I was like, "Wait, I delivered the leads you asked for. Like you still have to close them." And he was like, "I didn't get any customers." Like I can't deliver customers. I'm just your marketer. And so, I actually had this other company that I started that was to train people on how to follow up on those kinds of leads. So, I just want to say amen that that is totally true, that marketing is not a magic bullet for revenue, you still have to understand how to sell. Adam: And I tell people, and this is really important. Like, I sucked at sales calls, too at first. Like, my first couple sales calls were like George Costanza level awkward. Like, I got off and I was like "oh, that was bad for everyone." I took courses and courses and courses and courses and now they typically close but I think a lot of times people are used to hot leads coming in. So, say as an example, like I have dentists, you know, it's very easy to close someone when their friend is like, "Hey, you should check out my dentist," right? And that's what they're used to. But that's a really small, like you're' not going to get that many clients. Whereas cold leads which are what essentially paid search is, you have to do it differently and you have to really kind of see where the problem is and get them talking. And it's just like you said, like yeah, when that client cans you, it sucks, right? That's definitely happened to me. And that's kind of why I'm so paranoid. Not paranoid, what's the better word? So upfront about it where I say, "Hey, look, I'll get you the leads," I won't take on anyone I don't really think I can do it. And at this point I've done it so many times. But if you can't close them then like what's the point of even doing this? Kathleen: Yeah. Adam: You know, you need to follow up. And I found that in the bigger companies, maybe the person I'm interacting with isn't the person who follows up. Like, as an example with the lawyers, a lot of them are, what are they called? Paralegals at the front desk and they're not incentivized. Like, they don't want to call back people. So, it's a matter of really tracking it and having people fill in, like literally fill in, like I call them back at 1pm. Because I found if I didn't do that, well once I did do that rather, all of a sudden the leads got a lot better. Kathleen: Right. Adam: Which means they were calling them back. Kathleen: Yeah. I have a friend who is in the sales training world and he always talked about, like, you referred to them as hot leads. He always called those layups. He was like, "That's a layup, not a lead." Like, you have to work your leads. Adam: That's exactly right. Kathleen: Layups come to you and they want to buy from you and if you don't close them, shame on you because it's really easy. But yeah. Adam: I mean that's exactly what I talk about with the internet not being magic. Like, people think that look, we're going to post this, it always starts with, "Hey, I'm going to make a web page and everyone is going to come." Then everyone doesn't come. "Well, I'm going to spend money on Facebook." And then nothing happens. And then you know, I get them the leads and then if they don't know how to close them, or if no one warns them ahead of time, it kind of does them a disservice. Like, you know, that's why I'd rather work with a good business that wants to be great than like a business that's essentially bombing and I'm like their only hope. So, yeah, that's exactly it. If they're used to layups, you kind of got to get used to a jump shot from my sporty analogy. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Well, I love this whole approach and I appreciate you sharing a lot of these details. Shifting gears for a minute, there's two questions I always ask my guests and I'm really curious what you're going to say about them. The first is, we talk a ton about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a specific person or company that you think is really knocking it out of the park with inbound these days? Adam: Yeah, I think Drift is. And I will say, like, this is fair. I did just write an article for them, but I wrote an article for them because I found out about them and their book Conversational Marketing blew me away. So, I wrote to the head guy Dave, who actually just exited. I was like, "This is incredible. Like, I want to write an article about it." And again, they're a company I don't get a cut of, but the idea of it is that you should be hitting people basically as fast as you can. So, they're all about this chat bot which I actually have on my site. But their inbound marketing is just like mind blowing. It's just such good articles and such good content. Kathleen: They are the company that is named the most when I get answers to that question. And we actually had Dave Gerhardt as a guest on the podcast so I'll put a link to that interview in the show notes for anybody listening who wants to check it out. It's a really interesting story about leading with brand and some of the backstory on how Drift has used marketing to grow. Adam: Yeah, he's the guy I was referencing who actually just left. Kathleen: Yeah. Adam: I don't know what he's doing but he left. Kathleen: He hasn't said yet. He's starting somewhere new in January. Keeping it on the DL. I know. Second question is the world of digital marketing is changing so, so quickly. How do you personally stay up to date on everything? Adam: I'm kind of obsessed with education so I get here at five in the morning everyday and my first hour and a half is education always. And that's what I think is something really important just like, Adam piece of advice, right? I don't have any kids but if I did, I would tell them this. You know, you might have all the advantages and disadvantages in the world, right? But you can always show up on time and you can always learn stuff. Like, the only difference between me and everyone else is that I got obsessed with learning this stuff and I just do it. Like, you know, people are like, "It's so hard." I don't see anyone else here at five in the morning. So, it's like, you know, you're going to have as many advantages or disadvantages as you want, but like you can always learn the stuff. And I've spent more money on education than I would ever recommend anyone else to do actually. Kathleen: Same here. Adam: But it's worth it. Kathleen: Yeah. And the good thing actually in the world of marketing is that there are so many free educational resources. Like, so many that I don't think it's possible to exhaust them all. So, I don't think budget is ever a deterrent as far as staying up to date. There's so much you can do with no money if you just put the time in. Adam: Yeah. You got to put your excuses aside and just think of them as a challenge. So, you might say, "Look, I don't know how to make a landing page." Well guess what? I didn't either at one point. So, I went to the Unbounce Academy or whatever they called it years ago and learned how to make a marketing page. Like, I didn't know how to do things on any of the networks at one point. Like, I wasn't born on Facebook. When I was born I don't even know if the internet existed. I'm 37 so like it probably didn't. Adam: So, yeah, I would say to anyone who's interested, like, first read that book by Cialdini, we were talking about Principals of Influence to learn marketing. Like, that's basically a marketing degree. And then just do it. Be willing to lose some money, be willing to look stupid, and do it. Like, that's the only way to do it is to do it. Kathleen: Yeah. I love it. Just do it. It's like the Nike slogan but for marketing. Adam: Exactly. Exactly. How to connect with Adam Kathleen: Well, Adam, if somebody wants to learn more or connect with you and ask a question about this, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Adam: You can always go to NerdsDoItBetter.com. Like I said, we got that little Drift bot there. Or you can reach out to me on Twitter, it's definitely where I'm most active is @AdamLundquist. I also got a bunch of articles coming out to look out for in Search Engine Journal, PPC Hero, Drift. Kathleen: You're a busy guy. Adam: One more but I can't remember. There are more. You know what to do next... Kathleen: That's awesome. Well, I will put links to all of that in the show notes. So, definitely head there to check it out and connect with Adam. And if you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new please head to Apple Podcasts and leave the podcast a five star review because that's how more people discover us. And I would be grateful for that. Kathleen: And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, as always, tweet me @workmommywork because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much Adam. This was really fun. Adam: Yeah. Thanks for having me.

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471: Joseph Reinke: Student Loan Debt Solutions

Healthy Wealthy & Smart

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 6, 2020 45:23

On this episode of the Healthy, Wealthy and Smart Podcast, I welcome Joseph Reinke on the show to discuss student loan debt solutions. Joseph Reinke is the CEO and founder of FitBUX, Inc which is introducing innovative finance products and technology to the student lending industry with a specific focus on physical therapists. In this episode, we discuss: -How family, work and financial goals effect your loan repayment options -Why refinancing public loans may not be an optimal strategy -Practical examples of loan forgiveness strategies -The personal and societal importance of financial literacy -And so much more! Resources: FitBUX Website FitBUX Courses A big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring this episode! Check out Optima’s Top Trends For Outpatient Therapy In 2020! For more information on Joe: Joseph Reinke is the CEO and founder of Fitbux, Inc. FitBUX is introducing innovative finance products and technology to the student lending industry with a specific focus on physical therapists. Thus far in FitBUX’s beta test, they have helped PTs develop financial strategies on over $11mn in student loans. Joe has been in the finance industry for over a decade and is one of the few CFA Charterholders in the world who has experience in both wealth management and business valuation (globally, there are only 120,000 CFA Charterholders). He has hosted numerous live chats about student loans with SPTs across the country, presented at the California Student Conclave, appeared on podcasts, and written numerous financial blogs. Read the full transcript below: Karen Litzy: 00:01 Hey Joe, welcome back to the podcast. I am happy to have you back. Joe Reinke: 00:07 Glad to be here. It's been a few years. I know that we see each other at different conclaves and different events and stuff, but it's been a few years since I've been on the podcast. Karen Litzy: 00:16 It has. I know, I'm happy to have you. And, we'll talk a little bit about what a difference a couple of years make in a second. But the first thing I want to get to is student loans. So let's talk about first, cause I know you have a lot of data on this. You have a huge data set within fit box. So what is the average debt? And we'll stick with physical therapists. We don't have to go across the board, but the average debt for physical therapists loan debt. Joe Reinke: 00:45 Yeah. So PTs or student loan debt. So we now have about 7,400 students and our platform, it comes out to about $900 million of student loan debt. The average is about $144,000 for PTs. We have some other graduate students that we also work with too. Before PTs, it's about $144,000 in debt. And like you just said too, it's like a moral, I know when we first came on the podcast years ago, we had like $30 million or something like that on the platform. And when I tell people we have like 850 $900 million down there, like, you know, congratulations like you know all the growth that you've had. And I look at it, I'm like, that's disgusting. Like the fact that there's graduates and it's like, okay, $900 million of debt, that must be a lot of people. It's like, no, that's only 7,400 people. Karen Litzy: 01:35 Yeah, it's criminal, it's criminal. So let's say you've got 900 million in loans, the average of $144,000 which is mind blowing. So what are the options for these students coming out to help repay that loan? Joe Reinke: 01:54 And the first challenge is trying to figure out how these things even play a role in the bigger picture. But then the government doesn't do us any favors. So right now there's nine different student loan repayment options and it's a minefield trying to figure out which one you should use. How does it play a role? Like what happens if I do this? What happens to my retirement, what happens to family planning? Can I get a mortgage? All these different things. And instead of just being like, okay, I'll pay back my loans, here's the answer. You've got gotta dig through all these things and that's where people get lost. So what we've done is simplify that into two strategies. Either you’re going to pay off your loans, or B, you're going to go on some type of loan forgiveness strategies. And the pay off loans is really dominated by the headlines of refinancing because that's what we get bombarded by in terms of advertisements. Karen Litzy: 02:38 And what exactly does that mean when someone says they're going to refinance? Joe Reinke: 02:43 Yeah. So refinancing means you go to a brand new lender and they offer you a brand new rate and a brand new loan and you're literally replacing your old loans with a brand new loan to get a lower interest rate. Okay, so like I know PTs they get bombarded by low road, which is one of our partners, but they get bombarded by a low road because a low road has a partnership with a PTA. So they just get bombarded. So we get everybody, everybody comes to us and like, well, I'm thinking about refinancing. I was like, well, why? It's like, well, I've got these things. That's what I see in my mailbox. And on the other side of that, they hear all these headline news articles about loan forgiveness and public service loan forgiveness and whatnot. So those two things dominate the headlines. But really it's even upload from that is either you're going to do a payoff strategy or loan forgiveness strategy. Joe Reinke: 03:34 And what I mean by a payoff strategy is what we typically think about when we get a loan. Like you get a mortgage or a car loan, you make payments over a certain amount of time after that, it's over. You could do different things to be strategic with that. Like instead of doing a 10 year plan, you can do a 25 year plan. So you can make prepayment strategically and save money. You can do refinancing, you can see if refinancing is right for you. And those are the big things with the payoff strategies is just figuring out what's the most effecient way to make my payments. Now, unfortunately, one of the problems is that the loan servicers don't always apply your prepayments correctly, so you got to stay on them and make sure they're doing the right thing. But that's, that's a whole nother topic on that. Karen Litzy: So quick question. When you say making prepayments, can you define what that is? Joe Reinke: 04:16 Yeah. So when you have a payoff strategy so most of us on average, so like when a DPT graduates, they actually have between 10 and 20 loans. So when I say $144,000 in debt, it's not just one loan, it's like 10 to 20 loans. They're all different sizes, they're all different interest rates. And so what a required payment is the payments. They add up every payment on those loans and then say here's your required payments. So they might say it's $1,000 a month. So on that required payment, you don't have any say on that. You have to make that payment every single month. And then you don't have a say where it goes. They just throw it across all your loans equally. Okay. A prepayment is like the complete opposite. Joe Reinke: 05:06 You have a hundred percent control of it, meaning you determine the dollar amount, you determine when you do it, but most importantly you can determine which loan that you want to go towards. So like if you wanted to pay your higher interest rate loans faster because that would save you the most money, you can do that. So the trick with payoff strategies is just knowing that general idea of the difference between a repayment, a PR, a required payment. And a prepayment is, well, how can I drop my required payment so I can increase my prepayment? Right? And so that's a lot of the tricks that we go through and mix and match the different plans to allow people to do that. And then you throw a refinancing on top of that and you can save even more. So that's really the payoff strategies. Karen Litzy: 05:58 Yeah, it would seem to me that everyone should refinance to a lower percentage but like why wouldn't someone do that? Joe Reinke: 06:03 It really depends. I'll give you a few examples. We might work with a travel PT for example, and with travel PTs. First of all it's harder because of the stipend. This is for OTs and nurses as well. It's a stipend, so it's actually hard to get qualified because they don't qualify that as income. So like we have nine lending partners, only three of them will do travelers first of all. So that makes it a little bit harder. But in that situation you're traveling so you don't know the cost of living when you're moving from place to place. You don't know how long it's going to be between contracts and you don't know, most importantly what your income's going to be when you stop traveling. So it's really hard to lock yourself into a refinance loan, even though you can always refinance again later, you might not qualify later to refinance. Joe Reinke: 06:54 So oftentimes we do do refinancing with that, those types of individuals, but it's more strategic. So instead of doing like a 10 year loan, we might do a 20 year loan and instead of doing all their federal loan debt and refinancing, it might only be three or four of their higher interest rate loans. So just in case there's something there that they can't do they're not obligated to this huge monster payment every single month. So that's one example. Another example we see often times is, I'll give you an example. I just actually talked to somebody today. She had about $210,000 in student loan debt and she's paying it off. Mmm. And my thing was the tail are like, look, you know, slow down. Because when you do your budget and you're doing paper and pencil, all the numbers always looked like they make sense. But this individual just started working. Joe Reinke: 07:49 They've never had a budget in their life. They've never had like real expenses in their life. It's like wait three or four months because you might decide that you can't make those payments. You rather do a loan forgiveness strategy and if you refinance, you can't do a loan forgiveness strategy anymore because private loans don't qualify for loan forgiveness strategies anymore. So just different situations will dictate. Does it make sense? And then sometimes the refinance rates are just not that good. So it just doesn't matter. Yeah, exactly. It's like stay there and just chip away at your loans. And I'll give you one more example, Karen. When you refinance, you also consolidate your loans. What that means is you merge your loans into one big, big, big loan. Karen Litzy: 08:37 Got it. So for instance, if you took a loan from a bank or a federal loan or whatever, when you refinance did, so let's say you have a federal loan, does that federal loan is no longer a federal loan, it becomes a private loan. Joe Reinke: 08:54 That is correct. And instead of having like 10 you might only have one big, big, big loan. So sometimes what happens, you have to understand how federal loans work though too. Like I said earlier, you have 10 to 20 loans, so every time you pay off one of those loans, your required payment actually drops. With the refinance loan, it won't drop because you have one monster loan, you never pay it off until the whole balance is zero. So sometimes people come to us and say, look, what am I goals is to buy a house in five years? And so if that's the case, we might turn around and say, okay, we'll stick in your federal loan. Because if you keep making prepayments and you pay these specific loans off, your required payment would go from $1,000 down to like $500 when you want to buy your house. Joe Reinke: 09:37 Why is that a big deal? They use the required payment in the ratios for qualifying for a mortgage. So a lower lower required payment on your student loans, the easier it is to qualify for a mortgage. So that's some of the analysis that we would do to say, okay, well how much does a refi actually save you versus are you better off just trying to drop your monthly payment over time so you can qualify for your number one goal buying a house? And so that's what I meant earlier when I said these things. It is more than just the student loan strategy. Karen Litzy: You've got to look at how does this thing play a role in the bigger overarching strategy, right? Because oftentimes I would think the student loan debt isn't the only debt. So can you explain how maybe you have to work around other debt as well and how to navigate all of that? Joe Reinke: 10:27 Yeah. And I'll give you an example. We just did a poll and we also took some of the data from our members as well. And it was something like 68% have more than one form of debt. So that could be cars, mortgages, credit cards. And again, another example, I just talked to somebody today, and actually we get this probably four or five times a week where somebody calls us to talk about their student loan debt and we noticed that they have credit card debt. Okay. And we're like, look, you want to do this strategically with your student loans to drop your required payment as low as you can and focus on paying off your credit card debt. And it's like, I didn't even think about that. It's like, yeah, credit card debt, socks, get all of that stuff like as fast as you can and use the flexibility of refrigerator loans. Joe Reinke: 11:10 That's another reason why you might not run a refinance is because the federal loans are more flexible. There's more options of what you can do. So if you have other debt, it may be allow you to pay that off faster. And that's why sometimes people go into the student loan forgiveness plans also in the short run is the drop that lower payment focus on something else and then go back to their student loan strategy and say, okay, now I'm going to go focus on that. What do I need to do to focus on my student loans now. Karen Litzy: Got it. So it's all part of a bigger plan. So let's talk about quickly the student loan forgiveness because that's been in the news lately. I feel like there's been rumblings of that. It may not exist anymore, Betsy Devoss may cut it or what's the story? Joe Reinke: 11:51 Yeah, so there's actually two different forms of forgiveness. Okay. And this is where people get confused. The actual repayment plan you're on is called an income driven repayment plan. And the government also says that these are things our student loan forgiveness plans. Long story short on these plans, your payment is based as a percentage of your income. And the payments really low is like 300 $400 a month. But for most of us, that means that we're not paying the interest that's being charged on loans, which means the balance of your loan Rose. And that actually will happen for about 20 or 25 years. And then under normal loan forgiveness at that 20 year Mark or your loans are forgiven, but you have to claim it as income and pay taxes on it. Joe Reinke: 12:44 So your balance of what you owe will grow because they just add the interest of your balance, just like in your differing interests cause you're not making payments. Happens in these plans. Okay. So then you worked for 10 years or 20 years or whatever, and then your loan is forgiven. So in these plans loan forgiveness, they last for 20 or 25 years. Department of education forgives them. Okay. However, in this country, it doesn't matter what type of loan it is, it can be an auto loan, a mortgage, student loan. If it's forgiven, you have to claim that as income. Yeah, so like let's just use that example. $144,000 is the average person on our platform. If, you're single for those full 20 years, just working, whatever it is, your loan balance might grow, does being worth $200,000 in 20 years? Joe Reinke: 13:44 So at that 20th year, the $200,000 is wiped out. You don't have to pay it anymore. But you have to claim that $200,000 as income, which means your ordinary income that you made that year. It's just here it is. You got to pay it. And so the goal on these plans is like the complete opposite. You're not trying to pay it off as fast as you can. You're trying to save for that tax liability as fast as you can. Cause like what we always tell people the number one risk on those plans, you don't know what the tax rate is going to be. That's right. It could be 35% it could be 80% it could be 60% now you also factor in like we just moved from California, so if you had $200,000 plus you made 120 grand because you're, you know, 20 years in as a PT in California and federal taxes, you're going to be in a 35 and 40% federal tax bracket. As of right now, plus a 12% tax bracket in California doubled on top of that. You should definitely move to Texas. Joe Reinke: 14:50 But that's a big thing there. So that's normal loan forgiveness. Now there's another form of loan forgiveness. And this is the part that's been dominating the headlines where if you're on one of these plans, but you work for a nonprofit hospital, a hospital, it could be a full time teaching job. I mean you can say I don't even want to be a PT, OT, whatever anymore and I want to go work at Goodwill full time. I mean it just has to be at a nonprofit full time. And if you're on one of these plans working full time and you make 120 payments, your loans are forgiven in 10 years cause that's 120 payments and you owe nothing in taxes. Okay. And so those have been dominating the news recently because there's been 110,000 people that applied and only about a thousand people have gotten it actually approved. Joe Reinke: 15:40 And people are like, Oh well that's less than 1% so that's like the big headline. You know, Loan forgiveness is failing. But when you actually dig into the numbers, over 90% of the people that have applied for that, it should never have even applied. Meaning, they don't even work in a nonprofit or they do work at a nonprofit, but they haven't worked for 10 years. Mmm. So they're finding the people for forgiveness and that they shouldn't even been filing it yet. And so that's where the news kind of distorts that stuff. But then at the same time, you have that percentage, two, three, 4% that is told the wrong thing by fed loan servicing. That's the company that, that does this. They're told the wrong monthly payments. They're told that their payments are qualifying even though they're not there. We're told that their employment qualified even though it's not. Joe Reinke: 16:26 And so that's where the mass confusion comes in on that. I'm actually shameless plug. We just rolled out a new technology that actually tracks all that for you to make sure if you're on public service loan forgiveness, you're actually doing everything you need to do to get it forgiven. And we rolled that out. We rolled that out specifically because of all the headline news of all this stuff. People getting this stuff forgiven. They have nowhere to go to get the answer. So it's like well we can build this pretty easily. And it took us about three months to ramp it up and build it and it's like here it is and we're actually going to release that. We just got done testing it. It's going to be out in about a week or two. So yeah I'm excited about, it's given me a lot of gray hairs and a lot of sleep aside. I'm excited for it. Karen Litzy: 17:07 Well I mean that's such a gift though. That's such a gift for people because there are a lot of physical therapists who work in hospital systems that would be considered nonprofits and so if they can just sign up for that and have something else, keep track of it for you. Like automation is so much easier in our lives. So this is a way to kind of automate your student loan forgiveness programs so that you don't have to keep track cause we've got a million other things that you have to keep track on. Because like you said before, you've got student loan debt, but then you may have credit card debt, you may have mortgage debt or you have a car loan. And so there's so much that kind of goes into this puzzle. I mean to say I did not realize that it was so, all this is so complicated because I graduated like in the stone age, you know, so I didn't really have all, I didn't have $144,000 in loans. Joe Reinke: 18:01 Yeah, I mean it's amazing. And, that's why the big thing that I'm excited about. So like the average person that's gotten their loans forgiven so far has basically saved $62,000 okay. That's a lot. We're rolling this plan out for $5 a month and when we roll it out for the full 10 years, we're just charging a one lump sum fee of $300 if you just want us to track it for all 10 years. And it's like, you know, and we did that cause it's like guys, yeah cause somebody has, some of the people that signed up to beta test it for us. They're like dude we pay like a thousand dollars a year for this. I'm like no, no, no, no, no, no. Like the technology doesn't cost us that much to run like this stuff needs to be out there because again it plays a role in a bigger picture and fast forward, we haven't really disclaim this to very many people cause I don't know when it's going to actually roll out but it's supposed to come out next year. Joe Reinke: 18:50 Like you said, all this stuff plays a role in the bigger picture. We're developing a technology where instead of just tracking the student loans, we track everything. Like, we help you set up the plan and as your 401k your retirement, your budget, your student loan plan, everything. And so to me, like when we say, Hey look, we're only charging, you know, $5 a month for this thing, it's making sure that it works. So when we roll out that bigger plan, it's like we got this piece checked off. We don't have to worry about it anymore. Cause again, I bring up those gray hairs. It gives me something else to worry about. Karen Litzy: 19:25 There's always something else to worry about. So just one little part of it. So now, so let's talk about something that you had mentioned before we went on the air and it's, people don't really understand money. Karen Litzy: 19:42 Tell me why you said that and tell me what people can do to better understand it. And on that note, we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and be right back. Karen Litzy: 19:57 This episode is brought to you by Optima, a net health company. Optima therapy for outpatient is a software solution enabling therapists and staff to do their jobs efficiently and accurately. Their software provides anytime, anywhere access to documentation, even while disconnected and workflows that streamline patient care and save valuable time. You can check out, optimize new on demand video to learn what's in store for outpatient therapy practices in 2020 with some of the biggest industry trends along with tips and best practices to successfully navigate these changes. Learn about these trends for the new year at go OptimaHCs.com/healthywealthy2020 Joe Reinke: 20:36 Yeah, so we have this big thing that like if you watch our courses that we released or go on the new website that we just released, we talk about our method and it's understand, plan, implement those like the big three things. You've got to understand, you've got to have a plan, you've got to have a way to implement that plan. And there's been a lot of chatter because it's political season and we've seen all the stuff about, Oh, this politician is gonna forgive X amount of student loan debt. And then another politician wants to one up and then say, well we're gonna forgive X amount and another politician wants to one up them and say we're going to forgive everything. And so it's like, well, you know, went up in each other to see who can get the most votes for this. And you know, I get the question all the time is what do you think about these policies? Joe Reinke: 21:18 And I just turn around and say to people, it doesn't really matter because they're missing the root of the problem. You can forgive all the student loan debt. But like I brought this statistic earlier, over 60% of the people on our platform have more than one form of debt is not just doing loan debt. And it's not like these things like money problems didn't exist before. Student loan debt. I mean just before this we had the mortgage crisis. Okay. Like before that we had savings crisis. We still have people savings crisis, like retirement savings. I mean we talked about baby boomers and stuff like baby boomers. Like it's something that I saw a report the other day that 65% of them don't have enough to last like more than five years. Karen Litzy: 21:58 Yeah. And they don't have student loans. And then isn't it true that the majority of Americans don't even have like a retirement plan or don't have that savings? Joe Reinke: 22:12 They don't have anything and that they're dependent on social security, which the social security was never meant to be a retirement plan. It's supposed to be a supplement to retirement. But for a lot of retirement age individuals, that is their retirement. And I'll give you even more. I discussed the statistic I was about to write an article about this. Is something like 43%. It's somewhere in the forties, I want to say the low forties. I've got to look at the article again. It's in the low forties, that the super, that percentage of people in this country don't have enough money in their bank account to cover a $400 expense. Okay. So when we sit there and we talk about, Oh, well, you know, if we just forgave student loans, the problems of the world would be over. Joe Reinke: 23:03 And it's like, well, no, no, no, no. You know, like, I give this example in a workshop all the time. I used to work a lot with athletes and statistically 60, the 70% go bankrupt within three years of being out of league that's in the NBA and NFL. Well, in those three years that they work and play football or basketball, they will make more money than the average American makes their entire working life span. Yep. They go bankrupt. Within three years, they had the complete opposite problem. They had all the money in the world and they still went bankrupt. So it goes back to that fundamental root of not understanding. And that's actually one of the reasons why, like we used to do, or actually we still, I shouldn't say used to, we do workshops. Oh, it's the last time I came on the podcast, like it was, I don't think we had any workshops before that. Joe Reinke: 23:55 And then we started doing them. I've done over 120 workshops at different DPT programs and conclaves different conferences. And that was one of the big things that like, everyone's like, we love his workshops. Well, where can we learn more? And it's like, how, how do you explain this? Understand, plan implementing? And I couldn't find anything. So I was like, well, we're just gonna roll out our own courses. So we rolled those out about two months ago kind of in a soft launch type of beta test. And the feedback that we've gotten off of them is fantastic. So that's like our new thing that we just rolled out was the courses. The next new thing is that that public service loan forgiveness solution and the next year is like the big solution that we're coming out with. So it's exciting. But yeah, those courses, it's fun to see people taking them and being like, Oh my God, like this stuff is, makes so much more sense now. And it's, it's actually simple. That's my big thing. Keep it simple. Don't make it complicated. So, that's the bigger thing when I see the student loan forgiveness hype and all these political things, like it doesn't matter what happens there. You got to get that understanding. You've got to develop your plan, you've got a whole way, have a way to implement it. Karen Litzy: 25:02 Yeah. And just so if people want to learn more about it, if you go to the fitbux website, it's under monies. Joe Reinke: 25:10 Yeah. That is cool. Yup. Karen Litzy: 25:13 What would you say in your opinion and in your work with people, what are maybe one or two fundamental misunderstandings about money that people have? Joe Reinke: 25:18 I don't even know. No, I will narrow it down. This is one of the big things and this how we start off our workshops now when we start explaining some of this stuff. So, you know, and this is about a minute or two explanation on this, but then when I was back in wealth management, I would ask people what are your goals? And I started bucking those into three main groups. They would basically say my family goals, I have my work goal and then financial security. And what I mean by like family is like, okay, I want to do this. I wanna be able to buy a house because I want to provide for my family, my daughter, whatever it is. My work, my work, I want to have my work, have a meaning on life and an impact. Joe Reinke: 26:07 People like I joke around with all the time. No, none of you went to school because you couldn't wait to have student loan debt. You went to school because you wanted to help people. That's what I mean by career goals or life goals. And then the third one was financial security. And when I started asking people, yeah, rank these, it was always in that order, family, their work and then financial security. But when I would ask him, where do you spend the most of your time? They'd be like, well, I spend about 90% of my time on financial security. I'm like, well, that doesn't make any sense. That's like your third goal. Like that. And then I would ask them, here's like, when you say a misconception, I would say, what is financial security? And they kept telling me a lot of money and I'm like, wait, wait a second. Joe Reinke: 26:47 I just gave you that example of NBA players and NFL players. Lottery winners are the same statistics. They all go bankrupt. They have all the money in the world and they can't manage it. I used to manage people money that had millions and they were financial train wrecks. I know guys on wall street that were making million dollar bonuses every year that are financial train wrecks, so that can't be the case. So then I started looking at it and saying, well, what is it? And that's where we came up with the understand plan implements. Like those things is you've got to have a simple understanding. I mean I give examples of people that I know that are, have been barbers for 40 years. I mean they have no college education, they have none of this stuff and they live in San Jose, California, the most expensive place in the country. Joe Reinke: 27:30 And they’re millionaires, like they had an understanding, a simple understanding of money. They had a simple plan, you know, and I joke around all the time about my dad. Like when I was 22 years old, like I come home from college thinking I'm like this big investment guru guy, right? Cause I'm a 22 year old punk kid and I'm just like, Oh I'm going to tell my dad. I'm like dad, you know, his strategy was always just, you know, he started a business when he's 18. Yesterday, he started, he bought it from my grandma and you're just put money in the bank and they would buy a piece of property and that's all he did. He never did the stock market anything. I'm like, dad, dad, dad, check this out. Like, if you would have done it, you know, in the stock market it would've been worth like $10 million. Joe Reinke: 28:09 And he's just like, I don't give a shit. Like I don't know anything about the stock market. All right. That was his plan. It was simple and it works for him. Great. And then you had a simple way of implementing it. That was a thing that really lacked Mmm. Is everybody that I knew that had an understanding it and had a simple plan, it would taking them hours to implement it because it would have to do their own Excel sheets or they had these files all over the place. I've got gotta do it all by hand, but they did that. But those are the three big things. And so actually that's why people always ask like what's the technology behind FITbux and why do we do this stuff for free? Like why do we actually have people call us? And if we walk through their plan for free because we say the understanding and part is free and then the technology that we're building, especially for next year is going to be the part that helps them implement it. So they have to spend hours and 90% of their time doing that and they can spend that time doing something else. You asked about the biggest misconception that is the biggest misconception is what is financial security? It's not having a lot of money. It's those three things. Understanding, planning and implementing. Karen Litzy: 29:13 And if someone, let's say someone were like me, so I don't have any student loan debt or credit card debt or any debt really. So if I wanted to use this technology, like does it apply to someone like me who's like, well, I don't have any debt, but I definitely want to try and buy an apartment in New York city, which we know is like not cheap. I mean, in all seriousness, to buy an apartment in New York city to get a decent apartment is $650,000. Yeah. And that's a lot of money. If I want to get an apartment with two bedrooms, it's like over a million dollars. Joe Reinke: 29:43 Yeah. I was going to sell our apartment in San Jose and they got appraised that $900,000. And instead I was like, I'm just going to rent it and it's like $3,000. And then like I tell people, so I moved to Texas cause really I wanted to have a backyard for my daughter. And we bought like, it's like 0.3 acres and it's almost a 4,000 square foot house. It was a way too ridiculous. Like I don't use half the house and it's just ridiculous. And it was like 300 grand but yeah they like the technology but really on the next year. Joe Reinke: 30:37 Yeah, definitely for people like you, it's actually for anything, and this is why so many people, we talk about the student loan stuff, but we already have a piece of the technology out to help people plan. And this actually leads to like the number two misconception that I would have to say when we sit down and people talk about budgeting. They used to always come to me and they still come to me and say, Hey Joe, I spend like $1,200 a month on my student loans. Is that a lot? And it's like I have no idea. Right? Because $1,200 for one person might be nothing for somebody else. Okay. And so what that means is when it comes to money, absolute numbers mean absolutely nothing. It all has to be relative. And the way we do that as percentages, so like when people sit down and look at their budget, they always look at absolute numbers. Joe Reinke: 31:23 So if you go onto these budgeting apps and all this stuff, it's all absolute numbers and it's like, Oh well I'm going to cut, stop drinking coffee, you know, and boil and make my own coffee. It's like, great, you save $2 you know, a day or $50 a month. Like that might be 0.04% of your budget, but you don't want to learn something about retirement savings and taxes. I can save you like 10% like learn the learn. And so when you start looking at percentages, you start seeing where you should focus your time on. And so that's number one thing. But the number two thing would that allows you to do is then we could sit there and say, look we break this down very easily here, right? So we say the first formula is income minus expenses equals discretionary income. With that discretionary income, you can then do two basic things. Joe Reinke: 32:09 You can either build assets or pay off debt and before you even decide what to do with that, we can upload it and say, okay, on average, a new grad PT for example, can take 30% of their gross income and put it to those two groups, assets or debt. You just got to figure out how you want to do that. And so if you have no student loan debt like yourself, Karen, you'd be like, okay, well can I do 30% can I do 35% can I do 40% once you figured that out, then it's, well, now what do I do? Do I do my 401K you know, do I have self-employed income? So can I do a SEP IRA? What about a Roth IRA? What about HSA? What about just brokerage accounts? Oh, well I also want to say for a down payment for the apartment, what do I need to start saving for that? Joe Reinke: 32:50 What do I prioritize first? And then that, so that's the part that we'll have the technology that we have built now what we're building for next year is where we can say once you say, okay, this percentage is going here, this percentage is going here, this percentage is going here, implement link all your accounts into the profile. And they would automatically track to make sure you're moving those percentages and that you're doing it correctly. And so yeah, right now we only help anybody with student loans. And then we track the student loan strategy to make sure they're doing it the efficient way. And then next year we're going to roll out the bigger piece of the technology. And that was part of the preview with the courses is the courses talk about all that stuff. And that was like the first phase of what we're launching for next year. Joe Reinke: 33:35 We just got the courses down early and we're like, let's get 'em out. Like people are asking for them. So happy to get those out. But yeah, next year if you want to sit down and talk, let me know. Karen Litzy: I think I might have, I'm thinking about a lot here. So is there anything else that we didn't cover that you're like, Oh, I definitely want to talk about this. I wanted to get this in. Joe Reinke: Like we've talked about the percentages. The reason why I'm so adamant on that is because then it makes life easy. And what I mean by that is if you say, look, I know 5% is going here, 10% is going to here, percent going there. Joe Reinke: 34:21 Well guess what? You get a raise every year, so all you have to do is calculate and say, okay, well no, I just have to increase how much I'm going into those, those different areas. It's automatic discipline. You don't have to think about it anymore. And not only that, but like if you get a bonus or a commission or a tax return. Yeah, you already know the percentages. Take this here, take this here, take this here, put it here, the rest I can go use on vacation. Hell have fun with it and you don't have to think about it anymore. Instead, I see a lot of people being like, Joe, I just got this $5,000 bonus. Like I'm stressing about, do I put it in my investments? Do I pay off my student loan debt? It's like, well, if he's had those percentages that you don't have to think about anymore, you already know what you're doing with it. Joe Reinke: 35:00 So that's, you know, one more like they played it was one last thing to add. That's one of the big things is those percentages I strongly recommended. It doesn't matter who you are, where you're at, if you have student loan debt or not. If you're saving for a wedding, saving for college, saving for you know, kids. By the way, if you do have kids and you're saving for college for them, don't do it. Save for your retirement first please. They can fund college other ways. But make sure you fund your own retirement first before you can fund your kids. That's one of the biggest mistakes I see parents make. They want to fund their, call it kids' college education and their retirement is lacking. It's like no on your retirement first on their stuff later. So those are the big takeaways. Karen Litzy: 35:42 Awesome. I mean, such good information. I really appreciate all of this. And now this question I been asking everyone lately who come on the podcast and it's given where you are now with your life, your business, what advice would you give to yourself as that 22 year old punk going home to his dad more than he does? Joe Reinke: 36:03 I wish I would draw my ego level way before. That was, I was an athlete at that time too. So you get once, yeah, once you stopped playing sports and reality starts hitting then and all of a sudden it's like Mmm, well not on this pedestal anymore. You get shot down a little bit. But no, actually at that time for me, my big thing was I grew up around, you know, the rule of finance because that's what my degree was and everything. I was around wall street guys. Joe Reinke: 36:41 I had a plan for money coming out of school, but it was simply just to make a lot of money. And you quickly find out that if your motivation is money, you're going to end up burning out. It doesn't matter what you do. If that could be going to take a certain PT job simply because it pays more because you need to pay off student loans. So I guarantee you, you didn't go to school for student loans. You went to school to be a PT. So if you're going for income and that's your only reason you're going to burn out. Okay. And like I said earlier, I've seen guys making half a million dollar bonuses on wall street that don't even work in finance anymore because they're so burned out off of it. And it took me a long time to realize that you're not money that shouldn’t motivate you. Joe Reinke: 37:28 It's whatever you're trying to accomplish, that it'd be building a technology that'd be treating patients. And if all you do is strive to be the best at building that, that certain thing or focusing on those first two goals, I talked about your family and your work and you're really focusing on those, that the monetary side will take care of itself in the long run. Like stuff will happen and take care of itself if that's what your main focus is. And like, I mean, fitbux is the living proof of that. I've said it from day one to our investors and everything. Don't ask me about revenue. Don't ask me about shiny objects. Like we talk about business owners all the time. It's one of the hardest things to do because you see so many opportunities out there. You're like, Oh, if I just do that, just a little shiny object, it's going to make me a couple extra thousand dollars, but it's going to be a distraction. Joe Reinke: 38:18 It is not part of your main thing. Now you're chasing money instead of being focused on why you are doing what you're doing. And so that was one of the big things that I had to learn was, you know, it's not about making a million dollars or $5 million or $10 million. It's focusing on what you love doing and the recipe, it will come true. I mean like Karen and you're, you're a perfect example of that. You love doing the podcast, you love getting out there doing that stuff and helping people and guess what you've been successful at doing it. You've been successful as your PT career, all that stuff falls in line. If you're focusing on the right things and money's not the right thing to focus on is the bigger picture. What does money actually represent to you? What does it mean to you? Why do you want it? Because you can have all the money in the world. Do you want it to do something? Focus on that. Do something first and then the money will come from that because you're going to be the best at what you do. Karen Litzy: 39:10 Great advice. I love it. And now where can people find more information about you? Contact you find more about Fitbux. Joe Reinke: 39:20 https://www.fitbux.com/ As the website. As you said with the courses, it's just underneath money school. If you drop down the header underneath solutions, there'll be money school on there. That talks about our courses. If you want to come on and, you already know for example, that you want to do the student loan forgiveness strategy and you just want to sign up for our $5 a month tracking solution. You just go into solutions and sign up. We have a payoff strategy. We also had the loan forgiveness strategy. If you want to go in and use our refinance service, it's free. All you got to do is build your profile and schedule a call. We'll walk through making sure that refinancing is right for you and then go shop nine lenders. And if you have no idea what you're doing Joe Reinke: 39:59 And don't feel ashamed, about 70% of the people that come on our platform don't have a clue where to even start. And that's statistically true cause we asked them have you looked at anything? And they say, I have no idea. And so we, that's all free too. We'll have you come on, you build your profile, we go through the payoff options, we go through the loan forgiveness options. And then depending on which one you feel more comfortable with, we'd go deeper and deeper into how to actually implement that strategy. I mean that's all free too. You just go to the website and click join now and sign up, schedule a call and we'll be talking soon. Karen Litzy: 40:30 Perfect. And just so if people aren't familiar, it's fitbux.com. So Joe, thank you so much for coming on. This was great info. I learned, I learned a lot. So thank you so much. Glad that we can teach and it's always fun and hopefully we'll see you at another conference or conclave or something soon and I'm sure talk more. And everyone, thanks so much for listening. Have a great, great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy, and smart. Thanks for listening and subscribing to the podcast! Make sure to connect with me on twitter, instagram and facebook to stay updated on all of the latest! Show your support for the show by leaving a rating and review on Apple Podcasts!

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Your Business Will Fail Without These

Influence School

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 5, 2020 13:15

Every entrepreneur wants their business to succeed; that's just a given. In this podcast, Nate Woodbury shares with us the nine key ingredients for business success. These he discovered in the process of running his own businesses for a decade. Stay tuned! Okay. You want your business to succeed. -Yeah. -Right? And there are 9 ingredients or requirements that if you're missing one of these, it's likely your business will fail. -Okay. -So, we're going to cover all 9 and hopefully you're taking notes and checking these things off to make sure. Otherwise your business is likely to fail. -9 things. I'm curious what they are. Is that, is it like a specific order thing? -Not necessarily specific order. This first one should be obvious. I'm going to say you need to have a really good idea. -Okay. -Right? Because there's a lot of businesses that will fail just because their idea really isn't thought all the way through. So, how do you quantify that? I don't know how to tell if your idea is good or not. Everyone thinks that their own idea is good. -Yeah, yeah. -So, that's all I'll say about that. That's number 1. You have to have a good idea. -Great. -To succeed in business, you've got to be disciplined. Because you're not just filling one role but now you're the boss. And you're the security guard, or you're the accountant. You're the marketing team. -Yeah. -And you control your own schedule. And you get to work where you want. -And it's the best part. -And you get-- you get full control of the budget. You get to spend the money how you want. -Which could be the worst part. -And so, I think that's the biggest reason why a lot of people don't go into entrepreneurship. -Okay. So, we're talking about discipline. Like, what do you mean by discipline? -Really, the ability to focus, to prioritize, and to make sure that you're working enough. You know, I mean, that 8 to 5 schedule is common but that was just arbitrary. -Right. -Divide the day in 3. You sleep, you work 8, you play 8. -Yeah. -But if you're going to work for 8 hours, what are you going to do? -I could especially see that being you have to discipline yourself with those 8 hours, right? Because if you're working from home, we're pretty easy... -There's an office just around the corner and it's a big video game console set up in there. -That's a pretty idea. -Maybe they're gamer. I don't know. And that brings me the third requirement here is tenacity. -Okay. -And what I mean by that is... Because I had 8 and a half years of a financial rollercoaster. -Okay. -Like for real. -Yeah. -Like some of the lows, one time I was in the Walmart parking lot in tears because I couldn't afford to buy diapers. -Oh. -Right? That's legit. -Yeah. -It's a hard time. Why didn't I get a job, right? Okay, then another time, this is not too long ago like 4 years ago if I were to guess. Maybe 5. Asking my mom if I could borrow money or not necessarily borrow. "Can I... can I have some money?" -Mm-hmm. -And my mom asking me, "Nate, why don't you go get a job?" -And you have to have that conversation. -Yeah. -Yeah. -And I still stuck with it. -Yeah. -And now, my mom and dad will say, "Wow, we're sure proud of you, Nate." Well, what about a few years ago? I was doing the same thing then. -Yeah. -So, even just a few days ago, somebody emailed me and asked me about that tenacity. Like, how do you stick it with it? And it's really... I have something that I really believe in. It's like, I believe that what I'm creating and I believe that entrepreneurship is noble. And, like, quitting on that is like failure at life for me. -Yeah. -That's what it feels like. -Yeah. -To go back and get a job, I just feel like that would be a failure. And yeah that's just my mindset. I'm not saying that employees, or anything like that, that they're failures. I'm just saying that's for my purpose and whatnot. And so, I'm putting tenacity as a requirement because I think I took longer than some. I mean 8 and a half years before I finally... -Yeah. That's a good long time. -But yeah. I mean, I would still... You know, I'm 10 years in. 10 years in now. I'd still be going even if I were still in the financial roller coaster. -Yeah. That's a great one. I think that's... And that's inspiring for myself as a writer and actor. It's very easy sometimes. Or actually, I won't even say myself. "Are you someone that more people know?" Chris Hemsworth. The guy who plays Thor. He talks a lot about how he and his wife for a long time were like, "Can we keep doing this?" Because he was a freelancer and it's the same thing where he's totally an entrepreneur, right? And and they talked for a long time like, "Why don't I just go get a job?" And they decided that they were going to stick with it. And I totally agree. I think it's like.. It has nothing to do with going and getting a job being a bad thing. But it's if you've put your mind to doing something and you don't have the strength to keep doing it, then it's not going to work. And that's a failure on you. For, like, for yourself personally. And I feel that all the time. I'm like, if I give up on this, that's me. That's not anyone else. And so, I have to keep going, right? I love that tenacity, it's a great one. -Okay. So, those are attributes. Talking about the business. I put one category as a brand. -Okay. -Like a business really needs a brand. And what I mean my brand is not necessarily a logo. That's a cool thing to have. But like in my case, I've had different logos. I've had different brands. But until my brand really had a track record behind it. So, that's what I mean. Like a brand that actually means something that... -Yeah. -And you can do things to really ruin your brand or whatnot. So, that's what I mean, is it's important to have a good brand in order to have a successful business. -That makes sense. Brand kind of being like, "What's the feeling? What's the vibe I want people to feel?" Right. So, what's next? What do you... What comes after that? -So, then you've got to create a system. -Okay. -And that's going to sound really official perhaps. But think about the most successful hamburger chain on the planet. The most successful chain -- period -- in businesses is McDonald's. -Yeah. Yeah. -They really have a system that they sell. They don't have the best burger necessarily, the best fries, or yeah it's shake. But they-- they have a system and they have a brand. -Right. -Their system is that they can hire a high school student. And they'll just run the system. And so for me, when I hire a new editor, we have a process that we go through and we just train them. They bring their skill set. But we train them to follow our system. It's like a checklist or whatnot. So, there's a difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. Somebody who's... A business owner will actually create systems and those systems either run automatically through software or they hire somebody to run that system. So, a business owner can take a step back and look at how's the business running. "Ooh, here's something that's broken. Let's fix that. Let's create a system that will make that work better." -So, if someone feels like maybe that's kind of intimidating. Someone feels like, "I've got a really good idea. I know what my brand would be and I want to get there. But a system? That's kind of intimidating", right? -Actually, I'm going to recommend a book. -Okay. So, it's called E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. "E" stands for entrepreneur. -Awesome. -So, find the book the E-myth and it will really just like open your... It will cause a paradigm shift. You'll see the world of business in a whole different way and understand the value of systems. Yeah, my company would be chaos and non-existent without systems. I'm going to talk about another one. -It's another kind of big word that might be intimidating. And I'm going to talk about what leverage. Leverage is required for profit. It's like, if I can create a service that's valued at this high but it only costs me this much, that's that's where profit comes from. And I found a great opportunity and hiring people in the Philippines. Because I can hire people in the Philippines for $3 per hour that are college-educated and that's a dream job for them. So, that's cool. Because that's a huge blessing to me. And so, what that allows me to do in talking about leverage is I can assign them tasks that normally I'd have to pay people here 20 or 30 dollars per hour to be able to do. -Right. -And so, I can create services and sell them at a cost that's extremely competitive and yet still be having lots of profit. I guess going back to systems, leverage can be applied to that too, is it's you're making things so efficient that I don't know how to explain without using the word leverage. But you're just really leveraging things like a lever allows it to lift something heavy. -Right, right. -With small effort. And so if you create systems or tools or resources or leverage people or money or time to create more work. Than you have something of value that people will buy. -So, we've talked about some like good mindset, right? You to have your good idea, you need to have discipline and you have tenacity. Right? And then outside of that, we're like, "Now, how do you have a brand and making systems and then turning all that into leverage so that you can make a profit?" Right? And that's how you're going to get going with your business. So now, it's like, "Okay. Now, how do we see that in action?" -Well, let's break it down. There's going to be 3 different areas of your business. Okay? You need to have traffic or some source of customers or lead generation. So, let's call that what traffic. -Okay. -I use YouTube for a lot of traffic. And I can I can link to a video right there my my leaf strategy video, okay? So, where are your customers going come from? Do you have a storefront in Times Square? -Right. -Or do you advertise on TV or radio? Do you have banner ads online? Do you have a YouTube channel? Where's your traffic coming from? -Yeah. Then you need to have the ability to sell. -Okay. -Alright? So, how do you take a lead and turn them into a customer. -Okay. -So, you've got to have a some type of sales system in place. -Right. -And then you've got a fulfill. You've got to have some way of delivering that whether you're manufacturing and delivering a physical product or you've got a service that you're providing. -Right. -And whatever it is, you've got to provide good fulfillment that... Like good customer service that you get good reviews that's not going to hurt your reputation. That's going to have happy customers that's not going to have lots of returns. That your products aren't breaking. So, if you have a good source of traffic, you can turn that traffic into leads and sales. And you can keep your customers happy because they're getting what they expected. Those were the 9 requirement ingredients to have a successful business. -Okay. -Okay. Now, with that foundation, the next video that I highly recommend that you watch is my leaf strategy video. I mentioned traffic and I mentioned YouTube. My strategy really, really works and it's so much so that on one of my channels, we brought in 7 figures last month just from one channel. And this is the strategy. So, click this video up here. It's my leaf strategy video so you can learn how to get lots of traffic from YouTube.

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Episode 170: Ryan Narus, Destroying all excuses.

Fuel Your Legacy

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 19, 2019 74:34

This weeks guest is Ryan Narus. Ryan is a double graduate from Wake Forest University with an undergrad in Psychology and an MBA with concentrations in Operations and Marketing. Graduating in 2009 left him unable to find a B2B sales job, so he settled for car sales. Flash forward 4 years later and he won several awards, wrote a book, and discovered he was completely disillusioned with Corporate America, so he started a mobile home park business. Now he has been a part of 10 MHP deals spanning 1,245 pads and over $20MM in acquisitions, all with starting with more student loan debt than cash to invest in deals. He is going to share with us how to destroy all our excuses!Links: http://www.archimedesgrp.com/Connect more with your host Samuel Knickerbocker at:https://www.facebook.com/ssknickerbocker/?ref=profile_intro_cardhttps://www.instagram.com/ssknickerbocker/https://howmoneyworks.com/samuelknickerbockerWelcome back to the fuel your legacy podcast. Each week, we expose the faulty foundational mindsets of the past and rebuild the newer, stronger foundation essential in creating your meaningful legacy. We've got a lot of work to do. So let's get started. As much as you like this podcast, I'm certain that you're going to love the book that I just released on Amazon if you will, your legacy, the nine pillars to build a meaningful legacy. I wrote this to share with you the experiences that I had while I was identifying my identity, how I began to create my meaningful legacy and how you can create yours. You're going to find this book on Kindle, Amazon and their website Sam Knickerbocker com.Welcome back to fuel your legacy. And as always, we have some more incredible guests coming on. And today we're talking somebody who has made his millions he's crushing it in the mobile home park industry. If you've ever thought who owns that trash heap over there. I'm just kidding. His are probably nicer than the average. But no. So Ryan, he was fed a lie when he was younger, much like, probably most of us are you who are listening to this, that if you study hard to graduate from top universities, you're going to get a job, and everything's going to be hunky-dory and you're going to retire with ease and everything's gonna be fantastic. Well, he found out much like I'm sure you're finding out, which is why you're listening to this podcast, that not everything turns out as advertised. Thankfully, he has rebounded, really got into his rock bottom, and launched from that with a solid foundation. And now he's here to help you understand, hey, kind of where did that aha moment happen? How did you launch and how did he overcome the fear of failure? So I'm super excited. Ryan, take it away. Awesome. First, of foremost, Samuel, I want to thank you. I'm flattered to be here. We have a ton to talk about offline, because we're both huge fans of a very Reading and Writing I haven't even told you I've written a book which we can get into again offline but yeah I am so pumped to be here I really am and I don't have anything to sell I am literally doing this because I want to help you the listener escaped corporate America cuz it is awful awful awful man and you know what stinks about it it's that you're forced for this line which you hinted at which is work hard in school you'll go to a good college and then from there you'll have a job and then you work really hard at that job and then you get to retire. Well, it turns out like quite literally none of that is true you can work hard and still not to go to a good school. You can go to a good school I went to Wake Forest University, a very good school made the on Becky list. And so quote-unquote were elite or whatever, because people are on Becky's of the world, are paying to get their kids in on fake scholarships. Right so like a good school, not Ivy but a very good school is no guaranteed job. Oh my gosh, don't get me started about that. My wife's a huge Full House fan. So I like to give her trash for that good, but it's like did I went to Wake Forest twice I went once to get for undergrad, I got my degree in psychology and statistics, literally, to be a salesman. I wanted to be in sales. And I figured what better way to sell them to understand the psychology of the people you're trying to persuade. And it paid dividends, especially because I got a statistics minor, which also helped me optimize my selling schedule, which we can I did Moneyball statistics to opt I was a car salesman, I optimized my day based on a whole bunch of data I put together which is cool. But long story short, even after graduating with first an MBA, there's no gear I hadn't no guaranteed job coming out of it and both times I was going out of undergrad and grad. And I found myself stuck at a job where I did not want to get promoted because I hated it. And I didn't find any meaning or purpose in it. I found myself not wanting to go up. So not wanting to and not wanting to stay put. And then it's like, well, I'm making too much money here. Where am I going to go? Because I've adapted a lifestyle that has become part of my identity. And it's not just a sunk cost of racking up student loan debt and putting it a bunch of hours and years playing the office politics game, but it just becomes part of your identity. It's hard to let that go especially if you're used to a certain lifestyle, right? So you're living a middle-class lifestyle, you drive a certain car, you go to certain restaurants, you have certain friends, really hard to let that go. To give a teaser about where I'm going with this. Eventually, I gave all that up and moved into a mobile home. Chase my dream. Sosacrifice is a big part of where I'm going with this but to kind of go back so we don't do a huge Quentin Tarantino. Its where my journey started when I was in, obviously, when I was in high school really when even before that when I decided Wake Forest was my dream school and I wanted to go I did everything I could to get it. And I did. And I had several key moments in my life where I realized if I don't get my stuff together as I got like 1980 on the essay T, other PSAT so in the average at the times, this is when it was based off 1600 Wake Forest average was 1320. It wasn't even close. So I was like, Okay, well, we've got to get this score up and flash forward. Several years later, from my freshman year to my senior year, I scored a 13 to one out of 1600. So I got the average as T score. Then I had slightly above the GPA and I got accepted the way I can. It was like a dream come true getting to go to my dream school, I loved it. And I was following that trajectory, right? Like, hey, go to a really good school, you have a really good job when you come out. Well, turns out, I did it. It turns out I got a lot a job down. So I graduated in oh nine. So you can't be like, well, you just graduated right at the start of the Great Recession, well, actually had my job locked off, locked up before the economy took a tumble. It was that I picked the wrong job. Because I didn't know myself well enough. I didn't self assess well enough to know who I was at heart. So even though I had a psych major, and I took a ton of classes that basically browbeat you into the really trying to come to the realization that you need to understand who you are, what you like, and what you do not like, or you will make a decision based on what you think other people want you to do. What Are you real? Whether you realize that or not? Whether you're consciously going well, I'm going to do this because I don't want to make dad unhappy? Or you're going, Well, no, I want this. But really, do you want that? Or do you want the world so for example, investment banking, I know a ton of investment bankers that are doing it, quote, unquote, for themselves, but really, they're doing it because they want to impress other people. So the thing that I came into really, really hard and fast is I didn't have my dad was a college professor and marketing. He was not a psych person, right? He wasn't there to tell me, Hey, you really should figure out like really drill down into who you are at heart and what you want to be when you grow up. I didn't have that. And so I picked a job that was selling. It was a sports sales. And so I was like, Oh my god, sports and selling done right. This is going to be my life. And it ended up being I tricked myself into literally taking a telemarketing job, which was horrendous. And then It was like July, June or July of 2009. After I had graduated answer, everyone who just graduated who was going to get a good job, got a job. And so I was like, I can't find a sales job because number one, I'm not. I've already graduated. Right? So I can't read the graduate. And number two, the only people were hiring business to business sales, wanted someone with five years of experience and a Rolodex, who could roll in day one and be effective. And that was not me. What I needed was someone willing to take a chance on me. Thankfully, my karate instructor from high school was a car salesman who's a manager at Hendrick, Honda, and Charlotte, and they gave me a chance. And I could have easily been like, I went to Wake Forest University car sales is beneath me. I want the business to business sales, not consumer, not business to consumer. But instead, I said, You know what, I am not going to sit at my parent's house and feel sorry for myself. I'm going to go and do Do something to make the most of it. What I ended up doing was I ended up tracking my data, literally using Moneyball statistics with multivariate regressions to optimize my day and figure out who are the best leads to follow up on which ones can you let go? What part of the sales process is vital. And what I found during that process, literally just using a basic, very regression analysis, is if you can show people numbers for a car, even if they're like, I'm not buying today, your likelihood of selling them jumps from like 25% to 60. So better than a coin flip. So then all of a sudden, I craft my entire sales process around how can I convince someone to test drive their car and to just sit down with me for five minutes, and it absolutely revolutionized the way I sold cars and in my first full year, I hit Honda's highest award right out of the gate. I sold 200. And I think was 241 cars, so about 20 cars a month, right out of the gate at 24 years old. And I had a moment which where they shipped me up to Washington DC for like to stay at a five-star hotel. And it was this weird moment in my life where I drank way too much.And, and it wasn't that it's not that I'm I went up there to dress nice and be a party boy. It was that at the moment, I didn't realize that I was filling a void in my soul. So I thought I wanted to be a salesman. I thought it was good at it and an old boy I have made it. But at that moment when I was shaking hands with the district manager, and he looked me in the face and said, are you going to do this again next year? Like I better see you here next year. Of course, at the moment I was like you're going to see me here next year when I walked away without a warm To have my dinner and just sunk in that I was completely unfulfilled. It sunk in how many hours I spent doing that how much of my life I sacrificed to get to that moment. And basically, I was told, go do it again. You better do it again. And also it. It was pretty lucrative, relatively speaking, but it wasn't. It's not something that would ever make me millions unless I owned a car dealership. You know, I had a great I had a meeting with my general manager who told me point blank, he makes what, 300,000 a year, some huge number, but he's like, I never seen, my kids. He's like, you need to think long and hard if that's what you want. And I kind of realized at that moment, talking to my general manager, that if I wanted the car industry, I wasn't getting promoted up, because it takes me 20 years to get to be a general manager only to miss my kid's entire life. I realized around that time that I needed my name. On the side of the building Henrick Honda right and used to be Henrick Honda, because Mr. Hendrick rolls in and his Ferrari once a year to shake hands have dinner and tell everyone they're doing great. And then he drives back to Quail Hollow and hangs out with other multimillionaires, not billionaires, right? So to me I was like what I need is time freedom and I achieve time freedom by having my name on the side of the building but flashing back to hitting Hanta gold. What I realized then in there at that moment, was how completely unsatisfying making decent money is getting the literally the highest award you can get out of the gate is and, and at the time at 24 years old, I'm in the moment I filled that void without call and was totally embarrassed the next day. But it was one of those moments where I knew something was wrong at the moment and I didn't know how to fix it. And it wasn't until a few years later. Because I never hit that award again, by the way, because I've tried to make my life I tried to have a life balance that I couldn't achieve selling cars. And it wasn't until I sprained my ankle playing basketball, where I was sitting at home with ice on my ankle, where I went, I am not going to make money today. I'm 20 something, it was maybe 2526 years old. Not making money that day. And I went, I can't do this. And I went out and I bought the crutches. And I went out to sell cars using crutches, that same day, and just muscled through the pain. And it was really around that time where I realized I can do this in my 20s. That's annoying. If I get hurt when I'm in my 50s or 60s, or God forbid, I don't plan my retirement correctly, and I'm working in my late 60s. I can't afford to not have a paycheck coming in if I get hurt. And so it was the Several pivotal moments where I realized, number one, I don't want to get promoted upwards at the car dealership,I can't really go out because a car sales experience doesn't really translate somewhere else directly, I would really have to start at the bottom of the rung and I had gotten used to a lifestyle that is really hard to give up with, like I mentioned earlier people that whether you really truly want what you think they want you to have, or whether or whether you are just like falling victim to the pressure you think they're putting on you to live a certain lifestyle. It gets to you. And so I realized after a lot of reading, so I realized first and foremost, if it's not owning a car dealership, I need to own a business period. Because it's a lot of introspection and I went I meant to be my boss. And also during this period, I realized that Hate cars. What the heck am I doing here, but I utterly hate cars. They're depreciating assets. It was a really bad investment. I love investments. I ended up getting my series seven one day because I just loved it. And so I was like, I love investing. I love the idea of owning my own business. I love the autonomy. I love the idea of time freedom. So I'm a guy who likes to work 80 hours a week, but then occasionally I like to work 20 hours a week. So I want that flexibility and know that money is coming in and the only way to do that is to start a business. And so then I went step one self-reflection understand self assess. Who am I What do I like? Do I like my coffee completely black or like cream and sugar? Do I even like coffee? Do I? Am I a night owl? Am I an early bird? Like who am I at my core? What am I truly passionate about? And it's as soon as you can answer that question and even me myself after taking many many years of asking myself very hard. Questions, I still cannot look you in the face and tell you I confidently know myself. So if you're listening in, and you're like, I know myself, I know you don't. And it is, really, really painful. But it is worth it to just absolutely obliterate cell phone, deliver it, liberate your self-esteem and then rebuild it with a proper foundation. And like Steve Jobs says, and a bunch of other people says Warren Buffett to the best word in your business repertoire is the word No. Because I looked at over 100 businesses, I even started a couple that didn't go anywhere. But because I said no to a lot of sexy opportunities that ultimately didn't fit, who I was at heart and it made deciding things so much more efficient, so that when I eventually found mobile home parks, which is what I do full time now. It was, it was, my wife hates that I say this, but it was just like meeting her. The stars just aligned. I was like, Oh my gosh, this is who I'm supposed to be with. Like when I met my wife, we, we just, we clicked. And we just knew that we were getting married and very quickly, and we've been together seven years now and over seven years now, and I am in love with her. And we are happier now than we've ever have been. And I knew that early on. And it was the same thing with mobile home parks. So sorry, sweetheart, I know you're listening to this.But if you can't get there if you don't know who you are, and it's very similar to dating, right, like you want to go after the thing that looks the best, or the most popular thing or the thing that you think your friends are going to be proudest about. And what you need to realize is it's not that it's someone who fits you like a glove and compliments you so flashing back to the car dealership, I spent four years there. And then I decided you know what I need to do, I need to get my MBA because I don't understand business. And this will allow me to pivot into another company. And I also realize too, that at the car dealership, I was gaining amazing skills, how to sell how to market, how to do operations, how to take a really angry customer when I am the bad guy, because I'm the quote-unquote scummy car salesman and then have the and completely flip that on its head, have them leave with the warm and fuzzy and go next time I'm buying a car I'm coming to Ryan and I'm sending my friends here, because he's not a car salesman. This is a professional. So learning how to do all of that and so much more we're skills that I use, I used this morning at my current business. So I realized that whatever job I have is going to pivot into I was going to start whatever company I was going to start getting my MBA would and taking another job would not I can take something that is Even if I look at it, I'm like, well, that might be below me. I need to take it for the experience. And so I ended up going to work for Wells Fargo, which is their leadership program, which taught me many great things. And I was very thankful for that opportunity. But I realized very quickly at that opportunity that I was not meant to do that. And thankfully, while I was getting my MBA, I had discovered mobile home parks, and I was a year into it when I started at Wells Fargo. So I hate to say that I had one foot in the door and one foot out, but basically what I was doing during that first full year is proving that mobile home parks could make me money. And then the second full year was at Wells Fargo. I needed to scale that up and also plan to go full time. So it took me two full years from discovering mobile home parks, and three acquisitions to even go full time. And that's not to mention the three years I spent reading any book I could get my hands on so I used to challenge myself to a book a week and I've read well over 100 bucks, probably well over 200 bucks now, definitely slowed that down a lot like we were saying offline. But I forced myself to read. I forced myself to learn, I forced myself to network. And most importantly, I forced myself to self assess and understand who I am. So that way when it was time to make the jump to full time, it was time for a sacrifice. And when I did that, finally, I cut my salary big time, so I pay myself $35,000 a year $35,000 a year, I make more than that. But every penny above that I forced directly into my net worth. So it's like injecting steroids into my business because every penny I make since I'm an S Corp, it only gets taxed once. So I'm forcing funneling all that money into my business and not paying myself but just a salary, right and a measly one at that compared to what I probably could make in the open market. The reason is that it forces me to live a frugal lifestyle. So when I quit my job at Wells, I moved into a mobile home when I realized it was and I live there every other week for 14 months. So it wasn't like for a week, it was over a year. What I realized it was to get full time I had to make a sacrifice, I had to cut some crazy expenses of mine that I didn't truly make me happy. I had to live extremely frugally. I slept on a mattress. And I had two lawn chairs and a TV without a stand. It was leaning against my wall. And what I realized at that moment was I could pay myself to the property manager salary. So all of a sudden, I could make 35,000 a year, be an owner of a business. And if I get lucky, and I make a whole bunch more that year, I can funnel all that directly into business which I was lucky and there's a lot of luck involved to which I cannot stress enough luck and timing is completely out of your control and A huge part of it. But because I made that major sacrifice that allowed me to get full time and then the crazy thing about going full time and your side hustle is out of seemingly nowhere, you will see opportunities everywhere. And you're like, Oh my god, how did I miss this? And I will tell you how you missed it. It's because you're working 50 to 60 hours making someone else rich. And even if you're making 35,000 or less or not paying yourself at all, like I think the founder of Nike didn't pay himself for like 10 years. Yeah, he.He struggleduntil he struggled. Oh my goodness. And so you got to look at soda for a lot of reasons. I've been very lucky. So for a lot of reasons, like you have to, you have to make a massive sacrifice. And I have to tell you, from the moment I quit Wells Fargo today, I've been writing this Hi, it was June of 2016. 17 it's now October of 2019. So it's been two years and change. And I am so happy not being in corporate America anymore. I have a bunch of wonderful stories about achieving time freedom and how I've had my son, and how having time freedom it allowed me to literally be there for my premature babies birth, which never would have happened if I had to request PTO or early paternity time or get worried about being passed over for promotion or worse, work a commission-only sales gig. So if you hear my story, and we're about to dive into this a little deeper, I'm excited to see what questions you have for me, by the way, because I've seen you take some pretty furious notes there. If you're listening to this, know that it's going to require it. The word sacrifice means if you look it up the definition inherently means you're giving up something valuable to you and the hopes that you're getting something more valuable and exchange, right? But inherently, it's going to hurt. And in some cases a whole lot. But what you'll realize in very short order, once you destroy your self-esteem and rebuild it, the right way from the ground up, not with lies or not even lies, lies is a bit of embellishment. It's a hype story that other people are pitching to you that they're perpetuating, and they don't necessarily know that it's not true. So it's not necessarily a lie. It's just that when you are if you're the product of the five people you spend the most amount of time with, you know, and your, your mom is a plumber, your dad is a salesperson, like they're going to attack problems like a plumber or a salesperson, right? Like one of the best books I ever read. Besides four hour workweek, which is an amazing book, by the way, was the Millionaire Next Door because it makes you think like a millionaire like Rich Dad Poor Dad, brilliant book. It makes you think like a millionaire. So if you're you don't come from money because I didn't. I never thought like a middle-class person. So you have to think like a rich person. You have to make sacrifices, you have to self assess. And you have to be patient. Because it took it's not fair to say, Oh, I found mobile home parks and it took two years, and then took another two years and changed to get where I'm at now, it's not fair to say, well, in 2012, Ryan discovered he wanted to own his own business. And then three years later found mobile home parks. It's not fair to say that, that you know, that time was it because before then I was developing skills. And before then I was getting degrees from universities. And before then I was self-assessing to a smaller degree and reading books. So it takes a lot of time. And that's just not a sexy thing to say. And for someone who is stuck in a job that they're miserable that because I was there more than once. It sucked Here, but you need to hear that and you need to prepare yourself. Like Heidi Halverson says in her book motivation. The most successful people are the slight optimists. They're the ones who go, not who go, oh, I'm going to do this, or the ones who go, oh, I'm never going to do this. It's the ones who go, I'm going to do this, but it's going to be hard. So if you can have that mentality, you can look at it like it's a marathon. You will be like Bill Gates says you will be you'll probably overestimate what is it the quote is like, you'll overestimate what you can do in one year and underestimate what you can do at 10. And to end before we go to questions, I'd like to say I made a LinkedIn post recently, where I copied and pasted my goals. So that's the first meeting that my business partner and I had in July of 2015. Our first meeting, we wrote down very specific goals, very specific goals with dates that we were to accomplish these goals by For a five-year time horizon, and actually up to a 10-year time horizon, I copied those goals. And I pasted them to LinkedIn, just a post. And I put where I'm at today, and I smashed all of them. So if you're listening to this, and you're going, oh God, Ryan took seven years to get to where he's at today from discovering he was meant to be an entrepreneur, I will tell you, it will go by a lot faster, and you will accomplish way more than you think you will. Because there's a lot of, there's a lot of time in a day. And there's a lot of time in a year. And even I'll give you a good for example. Just I'll make this my denouement I do do a lingo every single day because it's been my life call to speak Spanish and I'm on like 855 days in a row or something like that. 15 minutes a day in Japan. Mucho Espanol our hit that I can speak Spanish now because not because It's not perfect, it's a disaster. But home is what we say works. And because I practice for 15 minutes every day no matter what, in two-plus years, I'm fluent. If you ask my tenants, they'll laugh and they'll be like as we go MCO up arrow as they own brave where they have large Espanol. So it's really funny, but he can see this man can speak Spanish, right? So what I'm getting at with all of this and where I'd kind of like to end and right out to the sunset for questions here is a little bit every day goes a long way.Yeah, absolutely. Okay, we are going to dive in because I have I love this. It's one thing that I love. Well, there are multiple things that I love in life. But when you find people who think like you, and express themselves the way you do, and yet have completely different passions in you, it's exciting. Right? I would never feel like Finding a mobile home park is like meeting my wife yet, However, no, no but to be honest though, what I do right now is that's how I feel about what I do right now that my broker profession of helping people understand how money works. I am as in love with that as I am with my wife. And sometimes that's a struggle because it's like, oh, man, I wish you'd love me more, right? That'd be nice, you know, but really, this like I love this in every fiber and core of my being I love helping people understand money and prepare financially for their future. And I love what it does for my family. On the income side, so like there's, there's, yes, there are hard days, there are things that you don't love about your job. And there's probably stuff in the mobile home park when you have to evict somebody or have to clean up a trashy site, right? There are bad days, right? But it doesn't matter how bad that day is. I love every part of the bad as much as I love every part of the good and finding and that is I love this. If I were to be a relationship coach, I am on the money side, but not the, on the human side, right, but it's something that I've told all of my single friends who are and my siblings who are looking for a spouse. And it's something I learned through a lot of reading stuff before. But when I was looking for a wife, I said, Look, and this may be a little graphic for people who are whatever, just know, but but I was looking for a wife is like, Look, I have to be able to like wake up in the morning and have sex with you. That's like something I got to be able to do. Right. I can't marry somebody who I'm completely not attracted to. But attraction is a very small part of this equation. For me. I'm looking for compatibility over attraction every day all day. I'm looking for compatibility. If we're not compatible. I don't care how attractive you are. It will not make up for a lack of compatibility. And that is as true and relationships as Ryan pointed out as it is in business as it is in a career, if your career is not as like compatible with who you are, that's not possible. So Ryan I, just met briefly before we record this, I'm busy, I read his stuff. And he's probably seen me a little bit. I don't know if you pick this up or not. But my tagline or one of the taglines that I use when I'm speaking on stage is to identify your identity. That is like the core of my message, the core of fuel your legacy. I believe that your legacy is the enactment and the living of your identity. But first, you have to identify your identity. And then the fuel your legacy is a financial component of gaining the financial confidence to live your legacy regardless of the outcome, right and that's where that sacrifice comes in. But that sacrifice is only possible after you know you're backed up against the wall and you know, without a shadow of a doubt. This has been identified and I'm living it out and it's a gift to the world. And so I love that that you recognize that your, the lifestyle that you adopted had become part of kind of an identity that you had adopted. But not that you reallylike when you pulled back all the core, it wasn't who you were. Right? And that is lives where you reach.Yeah, it's so crucial to get to that point. And it is hard to hear it is hard to say okay, everything you believe about yourself, I need you to question everything, not leave anything on unsewn stone unturned like I love it said like, what do I like with my coffee? Do I even like coffee right? Question everything. How do I like to do my hair? Do I like to do my hair? What color do I like my hair right? What kind of clothes do I wear? Why do I wear these type of clothes do I want to end before we got I'm in a shirt and tie right now he's in a polo. And he's like, man, should I go put a tie on? I feel how to dress. Like, did you just do you? I mean, I have a meeting. So I met a shirt and tie today, but like, just dress how you're comfortable. Like there's no reason to dress a way that you're not comfortable if it's inauthentic to you, and I love that.So, I'm going to go way back to the beginning, because I think this is another crucial thing, and I want to hear your thoughts on this. But you said something that I think only aneither an experienced person and human development or, or somebody just thought a lot about it, but you persuade people and so many people think that a salesman is there to kind of be that sleazy person or manipulate them. So how would you define the difference between persuasion and manipulation I don't think there's a lot of difference. I know that's probably not what people want to hear. But manipulation is basically in layman's terms, doing things to affect someone's behavior to get what you want out of them, right. And persuasion is a form of manipulation. But at the same time, I think persuasion comes with a lot of negative connotations in that you think you're just going to wave a magic wand and persuade someone and the truth is, outside of a cult leader, that's not something that happens unless you're lying to someone. There's persuasion, you're not going. It's really hard to be that charismatic, that you're going to convince someone to do something against their will. Right. So in other words, in car sales, I sold Honda's reason why I picked is number one I drove the product, and I believed in the product. And so and also it carries its value. It doesn't break it last forever. I have a 2900 fit, stick shift, love it to death 250,000 miles on it, I'm gonna keep it as long as the thing goes, I've paid it off a long time ago. It's cheap. It's great on gas, I can do that. That's easy to sell. Right? Because when people come in, oh, you know, I don't want to make the wrong decision. Dude, I've had this for a while now I've had it for 10 years, right? Like, if you're looking to have something reliable, that's going to hold its value and be cheap, but safe, like a no brainer, right? So what you're doing in a sale, is you're presenting the facts in a way that allows someone to make their own decision. Now you have things like strategical missions where you might weave out that it's not as comfortable as the Toyota. Right so like, I'm not going to just volunteer that information or maybe you do so like there's a lot of gray area and sales which kind of opens the way for you to lie. And so my thing was when I got into car sales, I was like, I'm going to do this the right like I'm not going to be a scummy car salesman, one of two things is going to happen. I'm either gonna go do this honestly. And the whole world is just gonna implode. And it's not gonna work, or it's gonna work and it's going to wow people because they're going to be like, Oh my god, I curse that. Like if someone asked me like, what's more, comfortable Toyota, or Honda, I'm going to tell you the truth. The Toyota if you want to ride a couch, go get a Toyota. But here's the thing. If you want to enjoy if you want to feel like you have more control of your car, you pick a Honda. Right? So in other words, like persuasion to me, is it manipulation? Yes, it is. But that manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So for example, towards the end of my years at Honda, Toyota got rocked with safety issues. I mean, rocked with safety. And it wasn't just the car pedal thing getting stuck. It was they failed really big tests and I can't remember what it was. But I remember showing people like, hey, look, just FYI Toyota's are great cars, they hold their value, but just FYI, here is a serious issue that Toyota has that they have not addressed yet. And it's funny when even though I was presenting the facts in a way that was knocking down my competition, people didn't like that. I don't know. It's just not even bringing up period. And I think the takeaway there is manipulation doesn't necessarily have to be nefarious, right. So in that instance, I was like, Hey, this is a safer car. Check these third party sources, right. So am I manipulating someone for my self-gain? Yeah, absolutely. I want to sell you a Honda and you had not had you buy a Toyota. However, it's safer for you to buy this Honda right now at least right. So in other words, it doesn't always have to come with the various connotations. And kind of where I also think it's important to make note of if your incentives are aligned with your prospective buyers, that's everything. Right? So in other words, it becomes nefarious and deleterious for someone in an in a situation where they're being persuaded where it doesn't incentivize them to buy whatever you're selling. Right? So you're selling some snake oil, right? And truly, you know, in the bottom of your heart that the snake oil doesn't do anything, right. But the person trying to buy it is seeing something that's not there. And you are allowing them to see that and you are planting seeds there, whether you're being truthful or not. Whether you're omitting key details or you're directly lying to them. If somebody is looking at a story that you're telling, and they are buying that story, even though you know It's not true. That is a really bad thing. But even still, like that person is actively wanting to believe in something. So if you're a critical thinker, like you said, you ask tough questions of yourself and your surroundings. Even if it is really hard to ask those questions. You're never going to get persuaded. Unless someone directly lies to you. And even then trust but verify, man always checks the facts. Yeah, I agree. I, in my mind, I would say kind of the difference between if I had to separate the two words, I would say manipulation is, is more of mal intent. And persuasion is to help people be to get what they need. And it comes down to what is your intention? And are your values aligned? Are your values aligned with the buyer or are they not if they're not, and you're still trying to get them to buy something that at that point, I would say it's more like manipulation. It's mal intent, whereas persuasion it's a fine line, right because you're employing the same techniques. So, to use an extort a story from my past, I did door to door sales for five years for four and a half years. And, and I did it one year. And then I went out and I served a two-year mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And when you're talking about Jesus Christ, the last, the last thing you want to do is like sell somebody, Jesus Christ, right, because maybe they're going to join for the wrong reasons and all this, right. There's some there are some ethical things there that for me, I was like, I want to sell them this, but I have learned all these sales tools on the door to door sales and happened to be that I knocked a lot of doors on my mission. So a lot of the skills and tactics applied to both to both situations and I would go through kind of ups and downs where I like I would be using the sales, tools, and tactics but I felt kind of dirty using them because I was I didn't want to sell somebody the Jesus Christ. But on the other hand, when I wouldn't use them, I felt like I was not giving them the best opportunity to see Jesus Christ in the best light. And so part of it is you're using these skills, these are skills you've been given, and it's okay to be persuasive, that I think comes down to what's your intent in being persuasive, because part of and this is where I would separate a salesman from a closer, right. And a salesman is somebody who is they're just with their pocket bolt book in mind, and they're how, how much money can I get out of this person? And they're just selling them anything. And then a closer their objective is not to get not to sell them something as much as to get a yes or no and help their client make a decision. If they can try and make a decision, yes or no, everybody wins, right? Most of the time. The client really respects that and will actually buy from you just because you were objective about the whole process, rather than going even though they probably could get something or they might have liked the toilet a better in the end right out of respect for knowing that you are living in alignment, that they'll do business with you because they can trust at that point where the salesman they always feel like okay, what's your not telling me? What, What's he trying to do just get my pocketbook. And I think that that's an important distinction, especially when we're going to start talking about kind of how you grew your business and how you overcame some different challenges. And that's an important thing to understand where you're coming from and the intention behind what you're doing. And I think, to identify that you have to go in and identify your identity, do that self-assessment, and, and start thinking about this.If you're lying to yourself, you're going to lie to other people, whether you realize you're doing it or not.Yep. And I say all the time, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. Andto, to further that example, I didn't This is a great conversation but before we started recording, he, Ryan'sjust told him to hit record because of our conversationso good. So so I was telling him that sometimes if I've read three quarters or half or a quarter of a book and I feel like I've got the main idea and it's just becoming repetitive and multiple stories of the same, teach the same principle, I will stop a book halfway. I'm not committed to finishing a book just because I need to finish a book for my own like to see the finished bar on my audible. Like, if I've got it, I'm moving on, where he's like, man, if I open a can of beer, I've got to finish my can of beer. And so we Chuck all these and maybe that's a bad thing. And I think, no, there are advantages to both mentalities depending on what angle you're taking it. But I think the the the commitment to finish that commitment applied everywhere in his life. And it's about what is the finishing for him it was about finishing, identifying his identity and continue to live by his identity. And he's not going to be satisfied until that's completed. And he already told you, he's still working on it. He doesn't know exactly who he is, and he doesn't think you do either. And I would agree. I'm fairly confident with who I am like I can function knowing who I am. But I'm still questioning everything I believe every day and I'm seeking to have associations with people who question everything, I believe from a just aspect of business aspect to where I'm uncomfortable. I disagree with some people and maybe get a little bit angry about other people's opinions. But I put myself in those situations voluntarily because I want the challenge I want to grow. And I'm not satisfied until I've, I've completed my growth. And so it's just an interesting thing to think about. And then Say I want to touch on one thing before we go further. But there's this thing that you talked about. And I wonder what's the emotional thought process? You kind of talked about it, but when you realize that your time is worth more, your life is worth more. So many people they're working and they think it's okay like I'm surviving. But how do you value your life? How did you get to the point where like, Okay, my life is worth more than this job and I'm done with this job because my life the actual experiences that I could operate or have are worth more than this, this income. So I mentioned earlier one, one thing I challenged myself to do is meet everyone I could write it Everyone says, Oh, it's all about who you know, like, it's not who it's not what you know, it's who you know, everybody knows that. But almost no one applies that in their life. So I was like, Okay, and this is true axiom wisdom of those passed down through the many years. Like, let's see if there's any credence to this. I talked to anybody with a pulse. I don't care if you're a janitor or a CEO, or anywhere in between, I wanted to talk to you. And that's still true. Today, I'll talk to anybody. It's a big reason why I want to come on here too, by the way, like, I want to give people free content. So they can escape corporate America to like, I'm not selling anything. I'm not raising any funds for my properties. I just want to help people, but also like, What's in it for me? Well, I'll tell you what's in it for me. Hopefully, someone listening now will go, I need to get on the phone with this guy. Even if I don't offer him anything. And I want that because I want to hear from you. I want to understand your thought process. And I've met thousands of people in my life thousands and I've just, it's amazing how everyone is unique, yet. Everyone is very average. And it's until you realize how average You are where you realize like if you're a fan of the office like I am, I love Michael Scott as a character. He has this one episode which is Jericho, where he promised a bunch of kids that he was going to pay for their college. Evan, they graduated then they're like, hey, Michael Scott, where's their money? Hilarious episode. And, and he doesn't have the money, right? And so they like someone asked him like, why would you promise that you're going to pay all these kids colleges 10 years ago? And his answer was, well, 10 years ago, I figured by now I'd be a millionaire.And has funny as that is, it is so true across the board. So many people are like, I'm going to be rich one day. And when you ask them, they joke, oh, the lottery, or I'm going to get a promotion or this is going to happen or that's going to happen and no one wants to actually take the steps and To do that, right, and it's not at your job, unless you're crazy unless you're LeBron James, right? Unless you're like 1% of the 1% as athletic or smart or anything. Like, just think of think about basic statistics. If you want to be in the 1% of the wealth, you need to be 1%. good at something, you there needs to be 1% good looking, or 1% smart, or 1%, hard-working, or 1%. Lucky, right? You're not just going to get into the 1% because you exist even if you're the 90th percentile you that's not the 1%, right. So what I realized is, well, what's a really easy thing to be 1% in the 1% in what no one else is willing to do. So for me, it was easy it was like, Let's go meet everyone in the world because that's a really basic truth. Like to meet everyone you can and I've met some incredible people and Go and do things like living in a mobile home. And in my industry, no one wants to everyone wants to syndicate money. And put the guild deals together, no one wants to operate their deals. And not only do they not want to operate, but they also don't even want to go to their properties. Two hours ago, I was sitting in one of my properties, I go almost every day if I can have my properties, and for a long time, I was the physical property manager before I was able to start hiring people. And it's like, you need to be able to do those things. To do that, so So getting back to I think, ultimately what you're getting out there is like, you know, emotionally How do you get there? Well, step one is, you have to like you mentioned earlier, you have to understand that no matter what you pick in life, they're going to be awful things, awful things about it. Like the subtle art of not giving an F by Mark Manson where he's like, dude, any. Any job you pick is going to come with a pile of crap. You just have to pick the pile of crap. That, you know, you can live with every day and for me. For me, it's that I knew I wanted to do real estate. It just fits my skill set well and I and I knew I wanted to help charity somehow. And more specifically, I knew I wanted to help underprivileged kids, and name a better way to help underprivileged kids than to help give them a clean, safe place to live. I started as a partial scholarship, I offer to pay for college applications. I do free food giveaways, I try my best to help remove the stress from these families so that kids can focus on their school. And for me, that helps me through really bad days, because I have a lot of really, really bad days. But ultimately, it's like, it's like this man. I want to talk to everyone I can talk to and if you're listening in, I recommend you do the same because you'll never know who you're going to meet. And it could be a janitor that gives you the best information about your life. Never know. And you know, you got to find a way to escape the fear. A great book I can recommend is Susan Jeffers Feel the fear and do it anyway. And really what that book kind of taught me is that like that in four-hour workweek it's like, dude, imagine the worst-case scenario it's not that bad. Like if you vividly imagine the worst-case scenario, you're going to survive and that's the point not to be a spoiler on Susan Jeffers. That book is full of amazing things. But her big thing was right out of the gate. She's like, fear. It comes from thinking you can't handle a situation.To convince yourself you can handle it. Yep. Then.You can. Exactly and it's like courage. It's not you. Courage is not the absence of fear courage is feeling the fear of doing it anyway to quote her book.I completely agree. So how did you when you decided to quit? I mean, it sounds like from timeline if I got everything right. You got married three or four years before you quit your job completely correct.I got married in November of 2015, which was a couple of months up to Korea, every mobile home park and Okay, it was about a year and a half before I went full time.Okay. So about a year and a half. How did so one thing that a lot of people face when they try and move from corporate America and entrepreneurship, everybody faces it? If it doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside. Tell me the story of your biggest naysayer. And how you silence them in your mind and said, Look, I'm doing it anyway. Oh, man, there's a lot. There's a lot of people. There's a lot of people in corporate America. One guy laughed at me and was like, you're going to be a real estate agent. You're going to leave this at the Wells Fargo leadership program.The way that it's investigated by our government, yeah. Oh,yeah. I don't want us about things about Wells Fargo.I had a bad I was Think I was in a bad culture at Wells I there's a lot of folks at Wells I know that just absolutely love it so I think I was just unlucky in that regard but there's it you know I again if my way when my wife listens to this you get really mad but one thing that I think needs to be said is that whether somebody the closest people to you may be the biggest naysayers I'm not saying that my wife was not supportive or that she wasn't a native she was a naysayer so to speak, but there are a lot of things that she was saying and doing that she will if she was here to defend herself, she would be like, That's not fair. I didn't know what I was doing at the time. But she grew up like a lower upper class. So like if I was like upper-middle class, she was like a lower upper class or like Country Club big house. Meanwhile, I was like, middle class, my dad's college professor, my mom's a salesperson, a good income, get private school. Wake Forest is private. You know, so I wasn't rich by any means, but we're middle class. But her parents were, I want to say wealthy, but they're definitely over that threshold of being considered coming from wealth. And so when I rolled home and was like, guess what, I've got amazing news. I found the one I found it around the one I meant to be with its mobile home parks. She said a lot of really bad words in a very elevated tone of voice. And I think that you know, I don't want to say that she was a naysayer saying I couldn't do it because she never said I couldn't do it. She was more like, you're thrusting our family and our future into literally recourse debt. In other words, if one of my properties goes belly up, they're coming after all of my assets. So I have full recourse debt over myself on my properties. So in other words, Ryan, you're going to put our family into full recourse debt. Literally, to a certain degree a trash can. I hate to say it, I'm supposed to say modular home communities, but a lot of people have looked at me and been like, why are you you're buying garbage cans? This is a horrible thing to say. But I get it if you come from a country club lifestyle, right? So number one, you're taking a recourse debt number two, you're going to pay yourself nothing. Right? $35,000 a year. I was it for the first few years I lost money. Well, the first year I lost money in the second year, I made money but I didn't pay myself anything. So I really lost and then the third year pay myself 35,000 and then I'm in the fourth year and change and it's still on purpose paying myself 35,000 a year. So from her perspective, this is awful. And she has no said as basically, I was I basically in an awful way was like you're being a dream killer.a horrible thing for me to say but I'm I think this is a story that people need to hear because when you have a Significant Other that was that loves you, and wants to build a life with you. And you come home one day, unannounced, and you're like, this is what I'm dedicating my life to. That's a crappy thing to do, especially when you're going to follow up by calling or a dream killer. So I did a lot of really lame things. And she will tell you, first and foremost publicly that she did a lot of really lame things, too. We recorded it on my podcast, I gave her the mic. And I was like, You know what, say whatever you want to rules, no bad words, and no giving away any of my secrets. And I let her just rail on me for like 10 minutes. And then for the light, it's like a 15-minute episode and the last five minutes, we just kind of have a cute little back and forth where we together talk about marriage through the lens of entrepreneurship. So ultimately, who's my biggest naysayer? You know, I don't know. I'm a person who hates losing. I'm competitive and it's not winning. To me is not nearly as much fun as not losing. I kind of make sense like the magnitude that I have an emotion I feel when I win is dwarfs the magnitude of the pain I feel when I lose. So it was tough the first year from someone who was my best friend and my spouse, right and so I reason why I say that because my wife is gonna get really mad when she hears that I told this story. But Sweetie, we have that episode so you can ask for it. The reason why I want to say that is I know that there are listeners to this episode right now who have a significant other who, for whatever reason, haven't bought in yet, or given them a lot of flack, I will tell you, you are not alone. And if you truly know in your heart, that you are meant to do something, you will find a way to persevere through that. And if that person that significant other is meant to be there with you, you will find a way to get through it together and come out even better because, at the end of that episode, we were both like, yeah, we love each other more now than we did going in This, I think that those are all really, you know, it's kind of lame for me to basically pick my spouse to answer that question. But the truth is, I think people need to hear that man, I do. And you can if you're if you know yourself and you found the spouse that like you said earlier you want to have sex with but also fits who you are at heart and you want to build something together. And they're truly supportive. Right? They're going to stand by you even if they fundamentally hate what you're getting into. Yep, I completely agree. I was. I was fortunate enough to when I was dating, I already had found what I was doing for eternity right before I got married. So that was part of it was kind of baked into the cake. However, I will say that over the last like a year and a half I've ramped up a lot of my public speaking a lot of my traveling and it's hard. It's been a topic of conversation in our marriage are saying K, well, how can we manage this? She doesn't she thought she would love being a mom, she doesn't love being a mom, which is hard because she also doesn't necessarily want to go earn all the income. So it's like, Okay, well, how do we balance that there are still responsibilities that have to be done. Now we have two kids, we can't send them back. So it is a management thing. And it's not necessarily I think what you said is actually, probably that the rawest and real if people love you, and you potentially are bringing them into something that they didn't feel like they signed up for, and better ways to deliver that message and to get the buy-in. Absolutely. dropping their head and say, well, baby, join me or get out. Right.Exactly. And so so with that, though,I love all this. We're going to have to have you on again because this just is not enough time to have this conversation. And we're going to talk a little bit after this about some things that I think could we might be able to work together on Elsa sounds like we have some similar missions. But I'm going to go through there are two more sections here. Well, first, how can we support you? How can we get in touch with you? If we did want to have a phone call with you? Where would we reach out to you to kind of hear more of your story or share our gratitude for you being so vulnerable? Yeah, absolutely. So literally just google me My name is Ryan and I are us that's and like, Nancy, LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me second best places my website, Archimedes GRP. com. You can drop me a line on either place, I'm pretty much so wide open door I have a lot of people that reach out to me that is like, Hey, can I buy your coffee? Or can I take you out to lunch or this or that? And it's like, dude, honestly, I just want to meet you like how does it benefit me? Just getting on the phone with you. I want to hear who you are. I want to hear your story. I want to know where you came from, where you're at and where you want to go. And I thoroughly enjoyed teaching. I thoroughly enjoyed Helping, I thoroughly enjoy connecting so offline when Samuel, I were talking I was I thought of two people I would love to introduce you to. That's who I am. And if I have you in my database, then I can connect people to you and you to people and I love that. So I like I said, I'm not selling anything. I don't have fun, I'm not looking for investors. I'm not self-promoting for anything. I just want to help people because I have to tell you, being stuck at a job is is torture. It's torture. I look from quitting to like six to 12 months after quitting corporate America, I lost something like 15 pounds, and I changed none of my habits. I was depressed. It's true. So if I can help people because I don't think you know, you can argue like AI is going to come in and take over thought jobs and automation is going to take over thought jobs. So we need to reinvent jobs going forward. You can make that argument but truth be told, go find your happiness because I got to tell you, when my son was born premature, being able to be there by my wife side, she's in the hospital for almost a week and then my son in the hospital for over two weeks and then Nick you to be there by their side when they needed me the most and not have to worry about work. That was worth the I don't care if someone was like, I'll give you a million bucks to miss this moment. I would never take it to be there at 3:45 pm on a Thursday in the middle of a workweek, watch my son be born. That was the most amazing experience in my life. Why there is no amount of money you could ever give me that would make me forego that experience. So to me, it's like, like what I am like, you are helping me by allowing me to help you because I want you to achieve that. So please reach out to me. I mean that Again, Ryan nearest anywhere us, Archimedes GRP. com Find me on LinkedIn. Connect with me I'd love to. Okay.So this night, I encourage everybody to reach out to him. I'm so grateful that I get to know him. I'm excited to connect with the people that he'smentioned to me offline. And I said I think there's some potential there for us to even work closer together. This is my last two sections here, and they're kind of my favorite. So we're doing legacy on rapid-fire. It's five questions. I'm probably only gonna ask you four of them though.And one word to one-sentence answers. Cool. Okay. The only caveat to that is this first question you must clarify.Okay. And you'll understand that when, when I ask it because everybody assumes that especially these more enlightened people that have been talking to everybody answers that same and I'm like, okay, expand. Okay. So, so here goes. What do you believe? is holding you back from reaching the next level of your legacy today.Timeand I'll expand on that. I think that the concept that I have works so I bought 10 mobile home I've been a part of 10 mobile home park transactions now. So far, I've made a ton of mistakes along the way. But truth be told, it's going to take a lot I'm not you can't just go to the mobile home park store and buy a bunch of good mobile home park deals. It's the industry is flooded right now with people trying to enter the space so there's not a lot of good deals out there period. And even if there were, I wouldn't want there's my time is limited. So number one, it's like buying it's like planting seeds you the limiting factor there is the time you plant the seed and then you watch it grow but have to wait. You know if I buy it a great deal today. It's not like I make a bunch of money today. I will make the money when I sell or refinance and I'll get cash flow along the way. But, you know, you buy a property in the big jumps in your IRR. And you know the money that hits your bank account comes after many months or many years after you've executed a turnaround. So for me, the limiting factor is absolutely time. Okay,awesome. And what is the hardest thing you've ever accomplished?meeting my wife. Okay. I was abysmal with women. I could not I was annoying, unlikable, and it took me years of my life to learn how to talk to people. And my wife. I met her at the car dealership, she showed up to buy a Honda. She ended up buying a Volvo. So I was not. I was not manipulative. I was persuasive. And another, another light, but yeah, I was just god awful were women. And I taught myself how to speak to people and through getting proficient in interacting with people. When my wife presented herself it was, it was just it everything fell apart. It fell into place so easily for both of us, to get married and to grow our lives together.Awesome. And what's the greatest success than to this point in your life?Other than my sonI would say escaping corporate America. I mean, that's more than getting my black belt in karate or hitting a hundred gold or getting a master's degree or teaching myself Spanish. I got to say if you're listening to this and you think you are meant to be your boss and to escape corporate America, I am telling you, you are right. And it is. It is on par with getting married and having a child. That is amazing.Awesome. And what is one secret He believes contributed most to your success throughout your journey, habit, mindset or behavior.So many things, man habits, habits are everything. But I, again, I think the self-assessment is got to be the most important thing there.The 1% rule that I talked about earlier where you've got to find your 1% is huge, but I mean, if I have to pick only it's like I mentioned earlier, life is a marathon man. You will do a lot you will overestimate what you do in a year and underestimate what you do at 10.Totally. And then, so that's the end of that section. This is my favorite section. Okay, this is this question that is why I do this podcast. Okay. Okay.So we're going to pretend that you are dead. So your family sad now butsix generations from now. Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren. They're sitting around a table that discussing your life, right? They're discussing your legacy. They're having this conversation. What do you want? Your great, great, great, great, great-grandchildren? What do you want them to be saying about your legacy and six generations from now?I want them to be saying, I'm glad he taught us to leave the world better than you showed up. So for me, I, you know, I don't want to divulge how much I'm worth. But it's gone from effectively negative to a lot. And it's because I take that mentality into my properties, right? So I want to buy something at or above appraisal value. So in other words, I'm happy to pay an unfair price advantage seller, because I know that I'm going to make that property better off for having been there. And the reason why I mentioned my scholarship and paying for college applications and doing things like Bible studies on the properties and going to my properties and talking to people face to face. Because I want the people on my properties to be better off for having been there. It's really easy to be like, Well, I hope in six generations I've amassed so much like I'm the Vanderbilts, right? So they have wealth and they can do what they want and not worry about money ever. But the thing of it is, studies show that by the third generation, most wealth is gone. And I have a friend who's third-generation wealthy and he, he's told me multiple times. He's like, I am breaking this, I'm going to be abnormal here. I am going to continue my family's wealth. He's a wicked, ambitious guy, right? There are a lot of people that once you hit that third iteration that's gone. And not only is that gone, but I think I possibly hit a really big milestone in my life to

Ep. 119: Category Design As a Marketing Strategy Ft. John Rougeux

Birth Words: Language For a Better Birth

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 2, 2019 52:22

How do you market a company that is selling something fundamentally new and different? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, John Rougeux of Flag & Frontier talks about category design. It's not a tactic for every company, but when used strategically, category design can drive truly remarkable marketing results. John digs into who category design is right for, how long it takes, what a category design go-to-market plan looks like, and how to gain organizational support. He also shares examples of companies and marketers who've successfully created new categories. Highlights from my conversation with John include: John is an experienced category designer who has also owned and exited a business. He says that compared to traditional inbound marketing strategies, category design requires a much larger lift when it comes to educating the market. Every business has a choice to either compete in an existing market or create a new market. If you're creating a new category, you have three choices: 1) try to fit your product within an existing category; 2) ignore category in your marketing and focus on the product's features and benefits; or 3) create a new category. John says options 1 and 2 don't work. When considering whether category design is right for you, you need to honestly evaluate your product and determine whether its simply a niche within an existing category or something that has truly never been offered before. If its the latter, then category design is really the only logical solution. Category design takes time. John says you should expect to spend six to nine months just designing the category behind the scenes, and then once you roll that out publicly, it can take another few years before it really takes hold. Category design needs to be a business initiative, not simply a marketing strategy, because it affects product roadmaps, sales and more. When executing a category design strategy, it is critical to focus marketing messaging on the problem that your audience is experiencing and the outcomes that they will experience as a result of your solution rather than how the product itself actually works. The companies that have been most successful at category design have evangelists whose job it is to go to market and talk about the problem and why there is a new solution. Its also important to build a consistent conversation around your new category. That might mean holding a big event (like HubSpot's INBOUND or Drift's HYPERGROWTH) or building a community, like Terminus's FlipMyFunnel. If your company is venture-backed, it is also important to get your investors on board with the idea of category creation so that you have the funding to support the strategy. There are examples of category design all around us. Some of the bigger and more visible ones are minivans and music streaming services. The category wasn't created overnight, and in many cases, people don't even realize its a new category, but we see it is as fundamentally different from the status quo, and that is what successful category design looks like. Resources from this episode: Visit the Flag & Frontier website Email John at John@FlagandFrontier.com Visit John's personal website Purchase a copy of Play Bigger Listen to the podcast to learn more about category design, when it makes sense, and how you can use it to dramatically improve your marketing results. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host, Kathleen Booth. And this week, my guest is John Rougeux, who is the founder at Flag & Frontier. Welcome, John. John Rougeux (Guest): Hey, Kathleen. Thanks for having me on. John and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: Yeah. I'm really excited to have you here for completely selfish reasons. I am deep, deep into the weeds, trying to learn everything I can right now about category creation because it's something that I'm kind of working on for a little project at work. And I stumbled across your name. I think it was in a LinkedIn post mentioned by Sangram Vajre at Terminus, and he mentioned you as somebody who's doing a lot of work on category creation. And I immediately thought, oh, I need to have him in on the podcast. And here you are. I am so excited, so welcome. John: Thanks. Thanks. I actually want to come back to something that you said a minute ago. You mentioned this was a little project for you, so I'm going to pick your brains about why it's not a big project. Kathleen: I think I might just be downplaying it. John: Okay, all right. Kathleen: It's a huge project. John: All right. Kathleen: Yes, yes. It is a giant. In fact, it's probably bigger than I think it is. No, it's- John: Well, Sangram told me a few weeks ago. He said, "If you're not doing something that scares you a little bit, then you're not setting your sights high enough." So I think you're on the right track there. Kathleen: Yeah, no, I think my whole career has been a succession of choices that consistently terrify me. So hopefully, that means I'm on the right track to somewhere. So you have an interesting story. You started out or your career really grew in B2B tech, and you worked in some companies that were looking at category creation as a potential strategy and it seems that that wet your appetite and led you to where you are today. Can you just talk a little bit about your background and how it got you to where you are now and what you're doing now with Flag & Frontier? About John Rougeux and Flag & Frontier John: Yeah. Yeah, happy to. So the thing that I like to tell people is that I always wish that I knew about category design earlier in my marketing career. I think it would have helped me be more successful and make better choices and think through the strategy of what I was working on at the time a lot more thoroughly. So the reason I say that is in 2013, I co-founded a company called Causely. And I won't get too far down into the weeds of what Causely does and the business model, but we were basically using cause marketing as a way to incentivize people to take action. And specifically, we were looking at incentivizing referrals on social media. And at the time, I was looking at marketing through a fairly narrow lens, like a lot of people do maybe when they are kind of earlier in the middle of their marketing careers. We were looking at things like you know how do you improve the performance of an advertising campaign? How can you write a better better blog post? All of those kind of tactical things. And I didn't realize at the time that what we were doing was something categorically new. People didn't have context for what that meant, what they should compare it to, what value they should expect, what things should it replace or not replace? And so we had a reasonable trajectory. We scaled the business to a few thousand locations. It was acquired. But when looking back on it, I know that if we had had this lens of category design of how do you describe something when it's different than anything else out there, I think we could have gone even further. And so when I joined a company called Skyfii in 2018, I had started to kind of understand what that meant, so I had read Play Bigger. I read some, the works by Al Ries and Jack Trout that talk about how if you can't be first in a category, design any category you can be first in. And at Skyfii, that business, it's a publicly-traded SaaS company out of Australia and they found that they were participating in a fairly commoditized space. Or I guess to be more accurate, the perception was that they were a competitor in a fairly commoditized space. And their business had evolved past that and the product did all sorts of other things that were much bigger than the category the market thought they participated in, but they didn't really have a framework for talking about that. And so we went through a repositioning exercise where we defined a new category that better reflected what they were all about and and how people should kind of relate to that. And that was a really, I think, powerful and challenging exercise to think through.We've got something new in the market, but how do we describe that? How do we tell the right story? How do we tell the right narrative so that people know how to relate to it? Why category design is a fundamentally different approach to marketing Kathleen: This is so interesting to me. There's so much I want to unpack here. I guess, starting with something that you kind of started with, which is that there is this typical marketer's playbook, right, where people come in and they think, "Oh, we need to top, middle, and bottom of the funnel. We need to create content and attract people," this and that. And when it comes to category creation or trying to market something that is different than anything else people are used to, that playbook doesn't really work. Because as I'm quickly learning, especially looking just at the top of the funnel, traditional top of the funnel marketing, it's like well what is that problem that people are having and they start to look for a solution. And the challenge you have is that if the solution you're offering is something they've never heard of, it's such a steeper climb to try and gain their attention. It's like they don't know the right questions to ask even, if that makes sense. John: No, that's absolutely right. And I always like to mention a really thoughtful post that Mike Volpe, the founding CMO of HubSpot wrote a few years ago because it lays such a great groundwork for any discussion around category design. And the blog post simply says that look, every marketer has two choices on their strategy. They can pick an existing category and try to carve out a niche within that category. Maybe they can dominate that category. But basically, they have to pick a space and then do the best they can within that space. Or they can try to design a new category. And when you look at kind of the underlying product or business model and you really take a close examination of what it is and whether it's different or whether it's something better, you almost don't have a choice. If you're doing something that is new that people don't have a framework for, you really have three choices. So I want to pack these for you. So choice number one is you can try to shoehorn this new thing you've built into an existing category. And we'll come back to why that doesn't work in a second. Number two is you can just talk about the products, like features and benefits but not really think about a more underlying narrative for that. And then number three is you can design a new language, a new framework, which is called category design. And so here's why number one and number two don't work. So again, number one is if you try to shoehorn something new into an existing category. The reason that works against you is that people will make the wrong comparisons for what you're supposed to do, how you're supposed to be priced, how you deliver value. That just works against you. Secondly, if you just try to talk about the product itself but don't provide a larger context, you're not giving people, you're not giving them really any framework, and it makes it difficult to understand what you're all about and why they should be interested in you. I'll give you a great example. A friend of mine works at a company and I won't mention the name of the company, but they combine two different categories kind of in an existing platform. So one of these is VoIP, Voice over Internet Protocol communication software, very established, known space. The other thing they do is they have these marketing automation functions that they add to their software to at least in my view very disparate types of software, but they combine them together. And so far, they haven't really given their buyers a context, a category for what this thing means. And so they're basically letting people to their own devices to understand and come up with their own conclusions about what that is. And that just puts a lot of work on your buyers when they have to think about who they should compare you to when they need to think about what department is this even for, or what products does this replace or not replace? That's generally too much work for people when they're trying to understand something new. And like you said, Kathleen, if you're not telling them what questions they should ask, then chances are they're just going to be too confused before they'll even really be interested in having a conversation with you. Kathleen: Yeah, and there's two other aspects to what you just said that I think are really interesting, which I'm beginning to appreciate more with the work that I'm doing. One is that human nature is such that people want to slot you into something that they already understand. They don't want to have to think outside the box. So when people hear about something new, that their natural inclination is to try and categorize it in with things that they already know. And that's a hard thing to battle because you are literally battling human nature. And the second thing is if you do allow yourself to be put into a category that already exists that maybe isn't really truly what you're doing and you are actually successful in selling your product, you will wind up having a lot of problems with churn once you do sell it because people are still going to be thinking that you are like that other thing that you're not actually like. And they're going to be looking for your product or your service or whatever it is to solve for them in the same way that other thing does, when in reality your thing does not solve those problems. So it's like you're setting yourself up for a very long horizon of failures that you might not see at the outset, but it's kind of a you're failing before you've even begun. John: Yeah, that's a great point. And yeah, people do... They tend to... The world is so complicated, and there's so many things that we have to deal with and try to understand that we use this rule of thumb of categorizing things. Sometimes we do it explicitly, like smartphones are a great example of a category we all know about and buy them and we know why they're different than a mobile phone. Sometimes we just do it implicitly. We don't necessarily have the language or the terms to describe that category, but we know that we try to group likes things together because it makes it easier to understand the world. Kathleen: Yeah or we use analogies. So many times, you hear things like, "Well, that's just the Uber of," and then they list a different industry. Or, "That's the Airbnb of something else." John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: And so we're constantly trying to put these things into comfortable mental frameworks, which I think is fascinating. So you mentioned there were three things. The first two, I think you covered. And then the third is really designing a new category. John: The third is designing a new category. That's right. That's right. When does category design make sense? Kathleen: So how do you know... I guess the first question is how do you know when that's the path you should be taking? John: That's a great question because I've heard from some people that they have this idea that every company should try to design a category, and that's really not the case. It applies to some companies. But for many other companies, like if you're developing a CRM, a better version of a CRM, don't try to build a new category around that. So yes, so the way you would look at that is there's no formula you can put into Excel and calculate and churn all this out, but it really comes down to does the thing that you've built, does it solve a problem that has not been solved before? Or does it do so in a way that the world isn't familiar with? So is there a new business model behind that? Is there a new delivery mechanism behind that? It really comes down to those two things. And maybe if you want to look at it at a more fundamental level, you could ask yourself do the existing categories that my market is familiar with, do they accurately capture the type of thing that I'm offering? If they do, then one of the reasons you may want to choose to carve out a niche in an existing category is that people are looking for established products in established categories. People are looking for marketing automation software, they're looking for smartphones, they're looking for video communications tools like Zoom, like we're using today. And so, if you say, "Hey, we have the right tool within this category for this specific market or for this specific need," that can be very powerful. And arbitrarily forcing yourself out of that category just because you like that idea of category design is going to work against you. Now, that being said, again to kind of flip it around, if you find that the categories and the language that are used to describe existing products your market is familiar with just don't capture what you're doing or they limit it in some way, then ultimately you need to find a way to break out from that and that's what the process of category design is all about. What does it take to create a new category? Kathleen: Now, one of the things that I've come to appreciate just the more I look at this is what a big lift creating a category is. As you said in the beginning, this isn't a little project, right? I would love it if you could just talk a little bit about sort of expectation setting. If somebody is listening to this and they're thinking this really sounds like it could make sense for me, from your experience and what you've seen and you've talked to people who've been involved in category design, how long does it take before you can really expect that the market will recognize a new category? John: Yeah. It's a pretty long-time horizon. And so I mentioned Mike Volpe at the beginning of the call and I'll mention him again and Kipp Bodnar, the following CMO of HubSpot mentioned the same thing I'm about to tell you. And they told me that when they first started talking about inbound marketing, it was like standing in the middle of a town square on a soapbox just shouting into the wind with nobody paying attention. And that was the case for two to three years before that phrase really started to work its way into the lexicon of marketers. Salesforce, they pioneered, not so much CRM but cloud-based software. And even today, they still talk about other applications to cloud-based software that's 20 years later. And another example might be... So at Terminus, they talk about the account-based marketing gospel. And maybe this kind of hints to the challenge of how difficult it is to build a category. Sangram used to be there, I think he was their head of marketing if I'm not mistaken. He's definitely a co-founder, but his role is chief evangelist. And so they recognize that to really get people to be aware of and to understand and use this terminology around account-based marketing, they've had to invest very heavily in evangelizing that market or that message out in the market. Kathleen: Yeah. The other story that I've always found interesting... I followed all the ones you just mentioned really closely. And then the other one that's been fascinating to me is Drift because they came on the scene. And if they're listening, they may take issue with what I'm about to say, but look. A big piece of what their product does is live chat, website live chat, and then they have chatbots. Well, those things have been around for a while. That was not anything new, but they were really smart and they coined it as conversational marketing and they really focused more on, not so much the how and what the technology does, as what it enables the business to do, and kind of wrapped a methodology around existing technology in a way that made it feel fresh and new. And it was pretty genius. And I feel like they actually moved really quickly by comparison to a lot of the other examples I've seen. So it's interesting to me why in some cases, businesses are able to gain traction faster than others. John: Yeah. I would have to think that a lot of it has to do with the culture and how quickly or rapidly that business has gone through change in the past. And the other thing we should probably discuss is just the timeline of everything that happens before you share your new category with the world. I was talking with... There's an interview I did with, let's see, Anna and Cassidy at a company called Narrative Science. And they expected just the category design process itself to take about six to nine months. This is before they released language out publicly. And at Skyfii, that was our experience as well. And for that situation, that company, I think they were founded in 2012 or 2013. So they were five, six years into the business and there had already been a lot of discussion around the space that they started in, which was Wi-Fi marketing or Wi-Fi analytics. And so anytime that you're going into a space where the culture already kind of thinks and has a mental model for what their business is, the process of reworking all of that and getting everyone on board, especially the leadership team and perhaps even investors, getting them on board with that new message in a new way of thinking about the business, it takes time. And I would argue it should take time. Because if you rush the process and you ask your team to start using maybe even radically different language about what you do, people need time to really think through that and maybe they need to push back or challenge you a little bit or ask questions or provide suggestions. There's just this change management process you have to go through. And if you rush through that, people are not going to feel like they're a part of that process. And then ultimately, that's going to undermine your efforts in years one, two, three and further as you're asking your team to help you share that message. And at Skyfii, Skyfii is publicly traded in the Australian market and so they have investors and they have a public... They're very thoughtful about the message they put out into the market. And so they really wanted to take the time to make sure that message was right and that it made sense. And so, yeah, it took us, I don't know exactly how many months, but yeah, around six to nine months to really start that discussion and then get to a point where we were comfortable with the category name and the underlying narrative to support it. Why category design needs to be a company-wide effort Kathleen: Yeah, and I think there's... To me, one of the most important things is consistency because you kind of said if everybody is not on board and everybody isn't speaking from the same playbook, all it takes is one or two people to diverge and talk about your thing and language and terms that puts it squarely back in with all of the other things out there that... And it destroys your effort. John: Yeah. Well, and this is probably a great segue into another really important point about category design, which is that it's not a marketing project. Sometimes, it can be spearheaded by marketing, and marketing will often do a lot of the legwork, but it's not something that's relegated or exclusive to marketing. It has to be something that that CEO is involved in. It affects the company vision and is affected by the company vision. They kind of play off of each other. It affects the product roadmap. It affects what the sales team says. It affects what you might tell investors. So if your CFO is in charge of investor relations, he or she, they have to be on board and educated on the message. That's another misconception I heard a few times and it was... Personally, I thought it was a marketing initiative when I first read about it. But the more I dove deep into it and the more people I talked to, I realized it's actually a bit more of a business initiative, more so than a marketing one. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great point. Having that buy-in top to bottom, it's really important. John: Yeah. What's been your experience at Prevailion in kind of leading your team in that discussion? Kathleen: So it was interesting because I came in really excited to make this a category design play. And shortly after I came in, we hired a head of sales, who also had some experience with category design and saw that that was a really strong play for us. He and I had both read Play Bigger, and we just kept talking about it until we basically beat the rest of our leadership team down into buying copies of the book. They've all now read it. They're all super excited about it, and it's great because it's given us a common language and framework around which to talk about what it is we're doing. So we're still really early stage, but I think we have that excitement and that buy-in in principle at least is there. And now, we're at the stage where we have to figure out our plan. What does a category design strategy look like? Kathleen: So along those lines, let's talk a little bit about somebody who's listening and they think, "Yep, this makes sense for me. Okay, I'm going to set my expectations. I understand I need to get top to bottom buy-in." What are the elements that you've seen in your experience from the companies that you've studied that have done this that contribute to successful category design efforts. In other words, what would be a part of a company's plan if they were looking to move forward with this? John: Yeah. So I'll mention two things that come to mind. So one I touched on a moment ago, but it's making sure that the CEO and the leadership team are involved and to the extent that they feel like they have a stake in the success of the project. What I mean is it's not enough for them to say, "Sure, that sounds great. Category sounds great, Mr. or Mrs. CMO. Go for it. Let me know how it turns out." That's not sufficient for getting buy-in. So getting them to be a stakeholder and have a real level of participation, that's absolutely key. And there's an interview I did with Chris Orlob of Gong.io, where we talk about that in more depth. So if you want to link to that, I'm happy to- Kathleen: Yeah, that would be great. I would love that. John: Yeah. The second thing is category design, it's all about talking about a problem that you're solving and less about the product. And so one thing I always like to say is that problem... Let's see, so your solution, your product. Solutions don't exist without problems, right? And then problems don't exist without people. And so you have to go back and understand the people that you're trying to work with and serve, and understand the problem you're trying to solve and the language they use to describe that problem, and the context for which they're trying to solve that problem or maybe they're not even aware that it is a problem or they think it's unsolvable. The point is you have to really understand the problem first and use that to lead your messaging. If your category is all around, here's why this specific product is so great and it's called this category, you're kind of missing the point. When you look at the language and the marketing that companies like Drift, for example, do, 80% of it is on the problem. Drift likes to talk about how the buying process has changed. Buyers are not interested in waiting hours or days or weeks for someone to respond to them. They want a response now. And you even see that word, "now", used. Kathleen: Yes. That word, that one word... I went to HYPERGROWTH. I think it was not this year, but the year before. I went this year too. John: Okay. Kathleen: The year before, their whole keynote at HYPERGROWTH was all about the one word, "now." And it was so powerful, the way they distilled that down I thought, really, really simple but effective. John: Yeah, yeah. And they've written a book around conversational marketing. If you've used Drift products, you can kind of see some tie-ins but it's really about the problem that they're trying to solve. And people smarter than me have said lots of times that if you can articulate that you understand the problem better than anyone else, then people will assume you have the best solution. You don't have to work so hard to talk about every single little feature or benefit that you offer. Showing that you understand the problem creates empathy with your audience, and then again, they'll assume that you have the best solution to address that problem. Kathleen: Yeah, that's interesting that you talk about that because I think that's a really easy mistake for marketers to make, which is to say that, especially when you talk about B2B technology, it's really easy to fall into the trap of talking a lot about what the product does, how the product works. And I think many times, that's facilitated or even encouraged sometimes by the customer asking, "What does the product do? How does it work?" John: Right. Kathleen: And yet, I think the challenge as a marketer is to try to really get ahead of that and take control of the conversation and steer it towards not only the problems as you say and really deeply understanding them, but the outcomes that come from the use of the products. There's problems, and then there are what is the outcome for the user? How does it make their life better? How does it change them for the better? If you think of those as two different poles, and in the middle, lies the product and all the stuff it does, if you can keep the conversation more at the periphery on those poles, then I think you can be really successful. But that's tough. John: No, I've never heard it described that way, but that's a really clear way of describing that. And it's funny you mention that because I was having the opposite experience just this week. I was there was looking for a new email client for my computer. And that's a pretty established category. There's a million email clients. And in that context, you don't need to talk about the problem of communicating with people. Kathleen: Right. John: You know what email is. You don't need to talk about the outcome so much. There were a few features I was looking for and I was trying to find a client that had those features. And so you can talk about that a little bit more upfront when the category is established and people know what the category is, what it isn't, what it's supposed to do. But to your point, Kathleen, if that category doesn't exist and you're really trying to sell a vision around solving a problem, emphasizing what the problem is and then emphasizing the outcomes are really what's necessary to get people interested in just having a discussion around this new idea. And then from there, they're probably going to ask, "Okay, this sounds really good. Tell me about that product itself. What does it actually do?" Then you're in a perfect position to go into those details because they're ready for it. And they get the larger idea. Kathleen: Yeah, and that's where I think the traditional framework of top, middle, and bottom of the funnel comes back into the discussion, right? When you do get towards that middle to bottom of funnel stage, you can get into the weeds of how it works. And I know in our case, for example, it might not even be the same person we're having the conversation with. Our ultimate buyer isn't going to ever care so much how it works. They're going to hand that part of the decision off to somebody on their team and say, "Validate this for me." And it's almost like we've talked about it. We just need a spec sheet, but that... It's kind of like when you're going to a conference and you get the convince your boss letter, but in reverse. We're selling to the boss and the boss needs a convince their engineer letter that they can just hand to them and say, "Here, take this. It's in your language. It'll answer all your questions." Right? To me, that's the steps that we need to go through, but if we get too stuck in the weeds of convincing the engineer early, we're never going to get to convince the boss. John: Yeah, that's right. That's right. Building your category design go-to-market plan Kathleen: Yeah. Well, have you seen... So there are those foundational elements of how you talk about what it is you're doing, how you talk about the category, how you begin to gain share of mind. And then there's the actual go to market. And I've seen a lot of information written. For example, in the book, Play Bigger, which we've mentioned a few times, which is kind of like the Bible for category creation and other places. They talk about the concept of a lightning strike, which is just really a big kind of splashy go to market. It could be an event. It could be some other, something else that really makes an impression on the market and gets it talking about your thing. What have you seen or have you seen anything that has worked really well as far as like quick, well, I don't know if quick is the right word, but very high impact kind of strategies for really making an impression on the market? John: That's a great question. I'm not sure that I've seen a ton of really great examples beyond the few that we've discussed. So back to HubSpot, I don't recall a big... They have their INBOUND event, right? I don't recall that having a huge kind of blow up the world moment at the time when that conference first came out, but they've certainly been consistent and they made it a very conscious decision not to call it the HubSpot User Conference or even put the word HubSpot in there. It was about inbound, something bigger than themselves. I've seen Terminus, they have focused on this idea of a community of people who are interested in account-based marketing. Sangram told me they started with a fairly small event, relatively small event. And they've kind of built it from there. But that's more of an ongoing exercise, I guess, an ongoing process. Drift has their HYPERGROWTH conference. They came out with a book called Conversational Marketing. That's probably the biggest kind of high profile thing they did that was explicitly around that category. I think one of the things around lightning strikes is that, at least the way they're described in the book, is that they feel like they could be appropriate for a VC-backed company, or maybe a publicly traded company who's launching a new category and wants to really make that big splash and can afford to do that. I would say if you're earlier on and you don't have millions to drop on a big event or a massive campaign of another nature, it seems like other companies can can be successful with more of a process-driven approach of who are we trying to get to care about this category? What are they interested in? Where do they spend their time? And how can we just have these conversations with them on a repeatable basis? Because, like we were talking about earlier, it's not like once you name your category, the whole world suddenly cares about it and there's all these... Gartner doesn't give you a ring and say, "Hey, I guess we're going to create a Magic Quadrant because we saw your lightning strike. That's good. This is so great." Everyone who I've talked to anyway, who's done it well, has had to dedicate consistent resources over time to really get people to understand it and think about it. Kathleen: Yeah. You're talking about something that strikes very close to home for me because I've looked at those examples too and I had an opportunity... I've interviewed Kipp Bodnar. I've interviewed Nikki Nixon, who was one of the first leaders of the FlipMyFunnel community for Terminus. I interviewed Dave Gerhardt at Drift. So I've had a little bit of an inside peek into some of those companies. We didn't talk about this topic specifically, but what did strike me about all of those conversations and all of those examples is, as you say, consistency but also not just consistency, volume. There's a difference between, "Hey, we're going to consistently blog once a week, and it's going to be a great blog," and that's just an example. All of these companies not only have been super consistent, but they have turned the volume dial way up in terms of the amount of content they're creating around their category. I think every one of them has written a book actually, because Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah wrote the book, Inbound Marketing. You mentioned the book that Drift wrote. Sangram has written a couple of books. I don't know if that's a requirement or it's just a coincidence, but I think it certainly has helped. But it's also a reflection of that turning up the volume. We're not just going to write a bunch of blogs and use this keyword on them. We're going to write the book on our topic and really own it. And to me, there's something to that. If you're going to do a category creation play, you don't necessarily have to have the biggest budget in the world. Maybe you're not going to throw a HYPERGROWTH type conference, which is a cool conference. But you are going to need to really be prepared to just saturate the market with content, flood people with educational content around what is that problem you're solving, why it matters, why it's new, and why the new approach is better than the old one. John: Yeah. And that comes down to having patience and the right time horizon. And like you were asking about earlier, if your expectation is that category design is something maybe you can do for a few months and then you can go about business as usual, that's a wrong time horizon. And it will take months or probably years for people to really get what you do and talk about it, independent of conversations with you. And you have to have the content to support that, whether that's an event or a blog or a book or a podcast. And I think you also have to make sure that your investors understand that vision. They understand that you want to create something big, you want to create a category that you can dominate and design to your favor. And then if you do that, five to 10 years from now, you will be in a very good position. But also understanding that the first few years will have a different trajectory than someone who's just really trying to scale growth right off the bat at a very high level. Kathleen: Yeah, I feel like you just brought the conversation perfectly full circle because we started talking about how important buy-in was, top to bottom. And you can think of top to bottom as like CEO to the bottom of the organization. But honestly, if you have investors, that's really the top. Your board has to be totally bought-in because you'll get a ton of pressure. I mean we do have investors. We just got a series A round, so I'm dealing with this right now. And we're very fortunate that we have a really bought-in board, but I completely agree with you. It's also fascinating, you mentioned earlier analysts. That's another thing. If you're working with the analysts, what are the expectations you should have there? Because I recently read a quote that was like, "Gartner will never create a new market if there's only one player in it." Right? Because what's in it for them to build a Magic Quadrant for one company? They're not going to do it. So by definition, if you truly, truly are creating a new category, your thing is new and different and not like anything else and you "don't have any competition" which is like the bad words to ever say... Because even if you don't have competition, you have perceived competition. There's nothing in it for an analyst to say, "Well, this is a new category because a lot of work to produce a Magic Quadrant or a Forrester Wave." They're not going to do it for one company. So that goes back again to the conversation around time horizon. So it's such an interesting play and not for everyone certainly. You mentioned a couple of really good examples from the marketing world, Drift, HubSpot, Terminus. Can you think of any examples from outside of the marketing technology world that are really great examples of category creation? So if somebody is listening and they want to kind of look out in the wild and see who's doing this well, who would you point to? Examples of category creators John: Yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. Once you understand what category design actually means, you start to see new categories all over the place. So I'll mention two. So in high school, Kathleen, I drove a minivan. It had wood siding, I hated it, and it was just the dorkiest car you could drive. But at the time, I didn't know- Kathleen: We have to come back and have a conversation about that in a minute. John: So at the time, I didn't know that minivans were actually representative of a new category in the market. And I can't remember when they first came out. I think it was maybe the mid-80s, and I mean there were these full-size work vans, but people didn't conceive of this van that you would use to haul your family around. It was a completely new category. And it continues to be... I've come full circle. We've got a minivan today, another one. And so anyway, that's kind of a great example. You see that in automotive all the time, so hybrid cars. The Prius was a great example of designing that category. Tesla now for electric cars, SUVs as well. So that's one. And then another one is, I was actually thinking about this on the way to work this morning, the way that Apple and Spotify have really created, I guess, a new category around how music is distributed, I think, is another interesting example. And I think it's a... The reason I bring it up is category design isn't so much about a specific name or a specific taxonomy or a word that Gartner has capitalized. It more has to do with the business model and the way people look at a space. So when Apple launched iTunes, they completely changed the way music was distributed from buying a full album to buying individual songs and to needing to have the physical copy of the media to having a digital copy you could take anywhere. And now, I would argue that maybe Apple or iTunes created that category. They are the first to do that. But I would also argue that it's really Spotify, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think their user number is larger than Apple's for Apple Music, they're the ones who have actually designed the category. They're the ones who said, "This is what streaming music looks like. This is what you're supposed to pay. This is about how many artists or songs we're supposed to have available. This is how we're going to curate music to you." And that's a completely new way of using music or listening to music. I don't know what the official name for that category is. Maybe it's just called streaming music. It's not something I'm an expert on, but that was a very long answer to your question but those I think are two that come to mind for me. Kathleen: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I do feel like we're surrounded by category creation. And it's happening even faster than I think it used to because of the pace of technological change. We just don't necessarily recognize it as such. But when you have that framework through which to think about it, you do start to see it everywhere and it's really interesting to watch. And I think it's kind of like the whole frog that boiled in the water analogy, which is actually a terrible analogy when you really think about what you're talking about. But the notion that- John: Who's actually tried that by the way? Do you know anyone? Kathleen: No, God, I hope not. That's like, don't they say serial killers start by torturing animals? No, no, no. Do not boil any frogs. But the whole idea being it's happening to us. We are experiencing category creation. It's just that it's happening at a pace that we don't like see it. It's not like a yesterday it didn't exist, and today it does. That by the time the category has happened and has become commonplace, it just feels like it's been there all along kind of. It's really interesting. I think there's probably a whole psychological aspect to this that hasn't even been mined in a way that it could. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: But all right, shifting gears because I could talk about category creation forever, but we don't have forever. Inbound marketing. We talked about really what the podcast is about, and I love talking about category creation as part of it. Because when you talked about consistency and HubSpot and Drift and Terminus, really they were all phenomenal examples of companies that really did inbound marketing well. So when you think about inbound marketing as it is today, is there a particular individual or company that you really think is killing it? John: I'm going to say that it's really like a style of inbound marketing that I think is starting to get a lot of attention and it's this idea of having an evangelist be a voice for the company. And the reason I think this is so interesting is because, like our world is, there's so many messages we get from brands today, both on the consumer side and on the B2B side, that I think people have a real... They started to see that you can have a brand say anything, right? It's a construct. But when you have a person who's a real human being talking about the vision and the values and what their brand represents and how it might be able to help, to me, that's a much more authentic way and it's just very relevant in the world today because I feel like people just crave more human-to-human interaction. So a three examples of that. We've mentioned a couple already, so Sangram and Terminus does that very well. Dave Gerhardt does that. He doesn't have the title of evangelist, but he's much more of the face of the company I think even than David Cancel or others. And then, Ethan Beute at BombBomb is doing that really well. Kathleen: Yeah. John: I know you had him on a previous episode, and yeah. I know there's others out there, but those are the three that come to mind. I see their content very regularly. They all do a different job. They have their own styles. They have their own voice, but they're very authentic. And I think they're adding a lot of value for the respective companies through what they do. Kathleen: I totally agree. Those are three great examples. And picking the right person or settling on the right person to fill that role is such a critical decision for the company. It has to be somebody that truly, deeply understands, as you said, the problem that the audience is experiencing, but that also can come across as charismatically and passionately believing in that shift that needs to occur to create that new category. So it's an interesting mix of skills that you look for when you try to find your evangelist. John: Right, right. So does this mean you're going to step up and be the evangelist at Prevailion? Kathleen: I don't know. We actually... I'm really lucky. And one of the reasons I joined the company is that we have this amazing team of really smart people, who are also very invested in participating in marketing. So our CEO is unbelievable. He could sell ice to the Eskimos, not that he would. That makes him sound like he's a smarmy sales guy. He is so smart and he really has been in the market a long time and knows it, and he's also incredibly well-spoken. So while I would love to get up and talk about it, I think I'm really lucky that I have an executive team that is full of people who could probably fill that role better than I could. John: And you know what? I don't think it's entirely an either or situation. Some of those companies I've mentioned, they have someone who's maybe has the largest following or the loudest voice, but there's others on the team who can contribute to that. And I think that's what's really exciting, is it's not just one person, but you can have a whole series of people on your team evangelize for the company. And I don't know about you, there's something about when I just see the people behind a product that I'm thinking about using. I feel so much more comfortable having that conversation and and exploring what they do than I would if I was just reading pure brand messages. Kathleen: Absolutely. It all comes down to trust, right? And if you feel like you can trust that person who is the chief spokesperson, somehow or another there's a halo effect from that that shines down on the brand. And it really saturates the brand with that feeling of trustworthiness, that makes you want to buy from them. John: Yeah, that's right. Kathleen: Yeah. I love it. Well, digital marketing is changing so quickly. This topic of category creation is so fascinating because conceptually it seems like something that will stand the test of time, but then how you implement it obviously will change over time. With everything changing so quickly, how do you personally stay up to date and stay educated on all things marketing-related? John: Yeah. For me, both listening to and hosting podcasts has been a big driver of my growth. And so conversations like this one with you are really helpful because you and I could swap ideas. The episodes I've done... So I co-host a series on the B2B Growth show around category creation. I also did a series on FlipMyFunnel. That's given me the chance to talk to people who have done more category design work than I have and learn from them in the process. And for me, that's been so much more valuable than anything I could read or stumble across in a newsletter, not that those things aren't valuable. But having one-to-one access to experts, there's few things that are... I'm not sure if anything is going to beat that. Some of those conversations have led to ongoing relationships, where I've been able to ask questions and dive deeper into other topics. And so that's where I found the most valuable use of time, is just having conversations. I love to read, love to listen to podcasts, but anytime I could just talk to people and listen to them and then talk through my own ideas, man, I'd do that every day if I could. Kathleen: Amen. I just filmed a LinkedIn video about this, about how I learn. And the number one way I learn is through hosting this podcast, which when I say that to people, I know that that's not something that's going to be feasible for everyone. Let me just spin up a podcast so that I can learn. But it is the most amazing vehicle because you get to meet such incredible people like yourself, pick their brains, really get into detail that you can't get into in other ways. And it's amazing how much I take away from it. Second for me is I love to listen to Audible business books on 2X speed as I do my commute. John: What are you listening to right now? Kathleen: I am finishing Crossing the Chasm. And then before that, it was Play Bigger, From Impossible to Inevitable, and I come back. I'll listen multiple times to books because I feel like you absorb more the second time. John: Right. Kathleen: So yeah, lots of good ones. There's never too many books to read or never too few books, I should say. I always have more. John: Right, no shortage of content, yeah. How to connect with John Kathleen: Thank you. That's what I was trying to say. Well, if somebody has questions about category design and they want to reach out, learn more about what you're doing, or ask you a question, what's the best way for them to get in touch? John: Sure. So you could email me at John@FlagandFrontier.com. So that's J-O-H-N@FlagandFrontier.com. You can also just put in John.Marketing in your browser, and it'll bring up a really simple page with just my contact info. Sometimes that's easier to remember. Kathleen: So smart. That's great. I love that. John: I can't believe no one bought that domain, but it was there so why not? Kathleen: Genius. John: It's easier than spelling my last name. And then you can find me on LinkedIn as well. I won't attempt to spell my name here, but if you want to link to it in your episode- Kathleen: I'll put that in the show notes, absolutely. John: Yeah. You know what to do next... Kathleen: Great. Well, I have really enjoyed this. I've learned so much. I feel like I probably could have made this podcast three hours long, but nobody wants to listen for that long. If you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, I would really appreciate it if you would take a minute, go to Apple podcasts, and leave the podcast a five-star review. That is how other people discover us, and that is how we get in front of a bigger audience. So take a minute and do that. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thank you so much, John. This has been fun. John: Yeah, my pleasure, Kathleen. And hopefully, we can have another conversation later on as you go further into your own category design process. Kathleen: Yes, about that and also about the minivan that you drove in high school. John: All right, sounds good.

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Collaboration: Birth Geeks and Birth Words Unite! with Hillary Melchiors

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 18, 2019 30:59

In this episode, I collaborate with Hillary Melchiors from the Birth Geeks podcast, as we discuss three guiding principles for positive language during pregnancy and birth. Transcript: Hillary Hi, Sara! Sara Hi Hillary! How are you? I'm just fabulous. I'm so excited to be talking to you. Hillary Ditto, I'm a big fan. I totally fangirled when I met you, by the way. Do you remember that? Sara Oh, I totally remember. It made my evening. I was so nervous. And then I was like, people know me and appreciate me! It was very awesome. I really appreciate it. Hillary Oh, anytime. Sara Okay, good. Let's set up another meeting time so you can fangirl again. Okay, so yeah, this is Hillary Melchiors, right? Hillary Yeah! Sara I actually just listened to your podcast so that I would say it right. But just the little intro part, like how does she say it? Okay, and Hillary is a podcast host too, over at the Birth Geeks. I'm going to see if I can remember your slogan... I know it's something about...oh: "Upping the--" but up is not the verb you use-- "Something, the professional something, getting the conversation, upgrading the conversation and something your professional mox--" Hillary --helping you renew your professional moxy Sara There we go, ok! "Upgrading the conversation, helping you renew your professional moxy." Hillary Do you know, one of my daughters, actually, we had our kids record the tagline. And she kept saying "PROfessional" and we were laughing so hard. It's really cute. And this is Sara Pixton. Sara is a doula in Utah, but she's also a podcast host of Birth Words. So she's also a linguist, which I love, as a language nerd myself. Sara One of my very favorite things that happened on social media was on Instagram a couple of weeks ago, somebody tagged me and was like, "There is literally a podcast for everything. If you're a word nerd and a birth geek, I just found your thing!" And I was like, I'm so glad I fill that niche for you! Hillary Right? And now we are here. Sara Yes, the word nerds, the birthy, wordy, nerdy geeks. That was a really, really good introduction. Hillary Yes. Sara I just have to comment one other thing, that your pin from the EBB conference, that "I'm a Birth Geek" pin that was like in the swag bags or whatever, my daughter found it the other day and was like, "What does a birth geek mean?" And I was like, "It just means you just know and love every single thing about it." And she was like, "Great, can I wear the pin?" And then she had this kind of like identity crisis throughout the rest of the next few hours that she was wearing it where she was trying to defend her right to wear the pin, but like not totally sure that she wanted to commit to everything that it represented. She was like, "I'm a birth geek, because that means I love everything...well, I don't know if I love everything about birth, but like, I really like the pin." Hillary Yeah, so we're recording this on Halloween it's going to be a little bit before we publish, but I wanted to tell you that my Birth Geek friends always have the best costumes. So one of my Birth Geek friends in Texas, she actually is dressed up as the IUD today. Sara Oh, wow! Can you put a picture of that in the show notes? Hillary I should. Well, I have to ask her... Sara If it's with consent. Hillary I mean she's, she's technically, like, the reproductive system, because her hands have the ovaries on them, but very much the middle of her sweatshirt is a big IUD. Fantastic. Sara Alright. Hillary So hi! So today we're going to be talking about... what are we talking about Sara? Sara We're talking about your top three tools to improve communication during pregnancy, birth and the postpartum period. Yeah. Hillary Well, and as a doula, I really do try to get my my clients to communicate with their care providers more effectively. I think that's really important. Especially,because you have such a limited amount of time with them before the big day. So, you have to really be careful. Sara Yeah. And you're probably one of many, many clients that they have, right. I mean, depending on circumstance, but especially if you're at a ob clinic, right? Right. Um, so yeah, knowing how to have that effective communication, really important. Hillary Absolutely. Well, and also, you know, as a doula, making sure that I'm communicating well with my clients and in a way that they want me to, I think that that's also good. Sara Yeah. And then I think from your clients perspective, obviously, they're communicating with you, they're communicating with their care provider provider, they're communicating with nurses in the hospital, they're communicating with friends and family members who have maybe just different opinions, or thoughts, or stories about pregnancy and birth that might be thrown at them at any moment, with or without warning. Hillary That sounds like you have personal experience there. Sara I have just, you know, like, maybe not even, I mean, some personal experience, certainly, but also just experience of listening to others stories, and experiences. So, I think that the things the tips that we're going to touch on will help you navigate all of those situations, because I think that the way that we talk and interact with other people makes a big difference in our experiences. Hillary Absolutely. Sara We're going to first talk about being intentional. Hillary What does that mean to you, Sara? To be intentional, with their language? Sara That's a really good question. Um, to me, it means a few things. One, is being aware, like we've been talking about, of the effect of the words that you produce, and also the discourse that you've been bathed in throughout your life, whichever ones they are. Just being--and now I'm kind of branching over into reflective, you can't really separate all of them, but we're trying--So intentional, just being aware that the way that I speak, and the words that I choose to incorporate in my belief system, and my feelings, and my experiences, make a big difference. So, I'm going to make sure that the ones that I'm using are positive and confidence building, right? Hillary Absolutely. Well, and as a doula, I feel like I'm combating a lot of the messages that my clients are getting from elsewhere. And so, when I'm more intentional about my language with clients, I think that that's very helpful for them. At least I, maybe I'm fooling myself that I'm not. Sara I don't think so at all. I'm totally going to jump on board with that and say, yeah, because I think sometimes we're not intentional, but we're just, like, using the lingo that is used without pausing to consider, like in my Birth Words Community Facebook group yesterday, we just had this big discussion about the word deliver or delivery, which some people have strong feelings about, some people not as much. Some people feel like "I don't mind it if the mom is saying 'I delivered my baby,' but really mind it if the doctors are saying 'I'm going to deliver you, or deliver your baby,'" right? So we just had this big conversation about it, and one thing that just was brought to light is that some really, often not intentional, or, again, reflective is the next thing we're going to talk about, but we just choose words because, well, that's the one that was in What to Expect When You're Expecting or whatever. And so, I figured that's the word that we use. Hillary Right. Well, I think also being intentional about even something really minor, like pronouns, for example. You know, making sure that you're intentionally using inclusive language. That's very important to me. It's not for everybody, and that's okay. I don't know if it's okay. But it's a thing. And I think that that's important as well. Sara Yeah, and, in addition, like, okay, we talked about pronouns, and nouns, and this can be from a gender neutral perspective, or just from a perspective of being empowering, which we'll talk about as our third prong. Now I've revealed all of them, there's no more dramatic tension except that Hillary's going to apparently surprise me with something down the road. So, don't tune out now, just because I've spilled all three beans. But yeah, I've been talking about just the words like client versus patient. What am I saying when I'm calling somebody a patient? What am I implying about their position and their abilities to make decisions and to, you know, just be an empowered participant? Hillary Yes, you're making my medical anthropologist heart very happy right now. Sara Oh, good! Tell me why. Hillary Well, that, that distinction, actually, between client and patient, I think, it's a powerful one, because of power distinctions. Right? Because a midwife, they intentionally say client most of the time, at least the ones I work with, and that's intentional because they work with people, right? They don't work on people, working on people. It's a little different. It's just a different perspective. Sara Oh, I was just getting excited about like we've talked about pronouns, nouns. Now we're talking about prepositions. Like it's all so important! We're working with people not on them. I love that distinction. And, yeah, I love it. Okay. And my other, back to nouns, my preferred noun is birthgiver because it's empowering and inclusive. Hillary No, it's great. I think that's fantastic. I think it's important. Sara Oh, I wanted before we move on from intentional, I also wanted to talk, just from the birthgiver's side of things, being intentional in the way that you and interact with your care provider, like we talked about the importance of, you know, making sure that you're having those conversations, but also being intentional about what you let in too, you know what I'm saying? Hillary Yes. Have your earmuffs they filter everything, right? Sara Yeah. Or I mean, or maybe there are things that have already been led in decades ago that are just like part of your identity as a birthgiver that are not helpful. Like, what do you do with that? Well, maybe you need to intentionally work through them and figure out, and again, we're going into the reflective portion... You can't really separate it out. But saying like, "Where did this come from? Do I place value in that? Can I separate myself from it?" And just like working through until you're left with an identity that is intentionally chosen and not just, kind of, what was thrust upon you. Hillary I love it. It's almost a bridge from like being intentionally reflective. Sara There we go. Let's bridge Let's go there. Hillary Yeah no, I think we should reflect more on our own language, before we open, as we sit here and talk. No, I think that a lot of there's a lot of unconscious bias and things that we say and we don't realize it. And I think, so, reflecting on the reasons for your word choices, I think that's also important. Sara Yeah. Again, like just pausing and saying, "Oh, what just came out of my mouth?" or "What am I about to open my mouth and say?" would be the best place to pause. But sometimes, like a random example that comes to mind, I, for a while, was a volunteer doula at a local hospital that has a volunteer doula program. And so, I had a couple of women that I talked to that were maybe interested in my sport but they were, kind of, not quite ready for it yet. And I was going to go take a lunch break, and I was just telling the charge nurse, or, I don't remember who I was, the care coordinator that I was going to go down to lunch, but there were these people that were maybe interested in my sport so here's my phone number if they get to a point where they're like "Yeah, have her come," call me back up. Um, but I remember having this conversation with her and saying like, Oh yeah, I have these two or three patients in rooms blah blah, blah, blah blah. And then being like, wait, okay, A) I'm not even a care provider. Like I'm a volunteer doula. B) I had purposely avoided using that word, I wasn't quite as mindful about it at this point, but from that point where I was like, "What just came out of my mouth?" I've been really reflective about like, why did I say that? Where was it coming from? And part of it, I think, was like wanting to be savvy with the nurses, and use their lingo and whatever but if we're really reflecting ...Wow, yeah, yeah. Hillary No, I was just gonna say like, it sounds to me like you were mirroring, right? Like, no matter if she said one word to you at all, you know that she's a nurse. So you're almost, you know, like, "Okay, now I'm talking to the nurse. So we're going to talk about patient." Sara Yeah. So from the other side of it, when I was pregnant with my first two babies, because they're twins, I was on hospital bed rest for four weeks. And that was totally something that I did during my time there, is that I started to mirror the nurses lingo. Because I wanted to, you know, show them that I was smart and could like play their game and whatever. Not that they were trying to play games. They were taking good care of me, I was in early labor at 30 weeks and we didn't want that to happen. And they came at 35, so we hung on for a while. But yeah, I kind of wanted to use their lingo and very much became, I don't know, it was kind of this tricky place between, I was trying to empower myself as a patient, right? I was trying to be like, "See, I'm the savvy patient!" But I was very much assigning myself in the role of patient by just using all of this terminology that was very much placing me in that position. And a lot of ways, I was, there were a lot of medical needs that were needing to be cared for. But then I think it really affected my birth experience, when I was in labor that I had been in this position as a patient, using all the patient lingo and wasn't as intentional or thoughtful about the choices that I made during my labor. Hillary That is interesting. Well, I was just thinking, as a doula I tried very hard not to, like overly use the medical language. So, I feel like sometimes I'm like this cultural broker, not to be too anthropological. But, you know, I can speak the medical language, I can give you the two minute rundown of everything that's happened, with all the abbreviations. Like, I know how to do that. But I intentionally try not to do that with my clients. Sara Right. Because what position does that put them back in? Like they're part of a medical system, and if they're trying to birth in a natural physiological system, whether that's at the hospital or not, Hillary I was going to tell you, I did have a client who made me much more reflective on my language than I ever really thought about before. I got the opportunity to serve surrogate clients. And that really made me much more reflective about how I spoke to her. And, you know, she was excited, but for much different reasons than a lot of other people that I had the opportunity to serve. And it was a very interesting, it was very interesting, it made me so reflective, it just made me think, "Oh, wait, no, no, you're not, that's not your baby." And I took a really great training online actually, that made me think more about, you know, how I was going to speak to this person. Sara Yeah, I think that's a really good example. Because like, because then I bet going forward, you were more reflective about the language that used with all your other clients, even if they weren't surrogate parents because you realized that they are unique individuals, right? That should be spoken to in unique ways based on their-- Hillary I may or may not have revised my entire website. Because I really enjoyed that process. And, I mean, that person in particular, is really lovely. And I was like, "Man I would love to do that again, I should make sure that, you know, my website and everything that I publish, you know, reflects that I want to be a part of that." So, and I know how to serve those people in a way that they would like to be. So that that was a really, it was I felt like it was on the job training. But really, really rewarding. Hillary So the last one is empowering. How do you make sure that your language is empowering? Sara Well, we've talked about a couple of things and obviously, they're all intertwined and it comes a lot from being reflective saying: "What am I doing when I refer to my client as a patient? What is that implying about our relationship and her abilities to make decisions to birth without assistance?" etc, etc. And so we've talked about that, we've talked about using intentionally empowering terminology like birthgiver, like, giving birth versus being delivered, right? I also think, as we're talking about reflection and the unique experiences and needs of each client that you serve, or if you are the one giving birth, as you're reflective, as you're considering, something that I do with my clients is have them just sit down and think about "Okay, what are my feelings and beliefs about birth as a process?" Okay, next step, "What are my feelings and beliefs about myself as a birth giver?" And then if a partner is there doing it, "What are my partner's feelings?" Well, the partner fills out: "What are my feelings about my partner's abilities or role as a birthgiver?" Okay, what about the roles of authority figures? Because that comes up. And different people are positioning themselves in different ways, and you're accepting or rejecting different authority figures throughout the whole process. Hillary I am a big rule follower and Robin makes fun of me for that. There's a story, I'll tell you later. Yeah, no, no, it's just, we were driving and I was like, "Oh, I can't do that. That's against the rules." And she was like, "It's okay. Going somewhere..." It's silly. Sara Yeah! Okay. But like, that's, okay so, but let's go with that. Because, we're talking about being reflective about various things that are going to come up in birth. And then, I was gonna say for the empowering part, then you work through, like we've talked about, the reflection: where's this coming from? And you choose, intentionally, again, looping back to being intentional, those things that are empowering. So, if Hillary's giving birth, and is a total rule follower, it really matters who you see as an authority figure, and what role you're going to let that authority figure play. Like, if you see, if your care provider is, like, I don't want to do a negative stereotype, whatever, but if it's an obstetrician with a 50% cesarean rate, and you are induced for some medical reason, and you see your care provider is an ultimate authority figure--who has proven through their practice that, you know, they often choose those choices that lead towards the path of a cesarean--and you're just saying, "Okay, yes, yep, you're in charge," then you have a 50% chance of having a cesarean birth, which, obviously, is not in alignment with, like, the actual physiological medical needs for necessary birth. Hillary Yeah, and sometimes I feel like, well, so again, to put on my anthropologist hat, a little bit, I think that, you know, we're taught in our culture very much to respect the medical profession. And I think that that's a, it's a good thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but respect versus, like, doing literally everything you're told and never questioning anything is a very, very different thing. And so, respecting authority versus, like, bowing down to it, I think that you need to make that fine distinction. Sara Yeah, like you're saying that we are absolutely, I'm not and I don't think Hillary is, advocating for, of course you're not being disrespectful to care providers, or like we are not saying like, go be a belligerent like, "No I won't _____!" That's not going to be a helpful way to communicate with your care provider, A). B) It's not the respect that a human being deserves, especially one who is in a service oriented profession and serving you. C) I don't know... all the things! Hillary I feel like you should be empowered to be as respectful, like to be mirroring respect, right? So if someone is being completely disrespectful and talking down to you, that's different than someone coming to have a conversation with you, like, "This is my opinion. These are the reasons why I'm recommending this." You know, that's a different story than, walking in and saying, "Hey, you're going to have a cesarean because it's 4pm and I have a tee time." I literally never heard that phrase uttered by a physician before. Never. Sara Mutual respect, and I think that that goes along with being intentional about who you place in authority as an authority figure. No matter how you position yourself. In some ways, whoever you choose as your care provider is going to have some level of authority at some point during your birth experience. And so, you want there to be that level of mutual respect that, "Wow, my care provider respects and honors my authority as the one with the baby in my body, with the intuition to know the best choices for this circumstance, and with the power to and the ability to birth this baby." And not choosing somebody who doesn't respect your position as somebody bringing life into the world, somebody, you know, a care provider that sees you more as a patient who's a passive recipient of care, that's not going to be able to have that mutual level of respect. And really not going to be an empowering position for either person. Hillary I really loved how you incorporated all three resources into that. Sara Oh, well, there you go! That was my concluding. Hillary I think that was fantastic! Uh, Sara? Sara Yes, Hillary? Hillary Are you ready for my silly question? Sara I'm ready for your silly question. Hillary Have you seen the BFG or read the BFG? Sara I have read it. I have not seen it. Hillary This has inspired the question that I chose, so that's your warning. Sara I'm a little scared. Hillary Would you rather burp bubbles or fart green fumes? Sara Burp bubbles!! Bubbles are magical. Hillary Agreed. How fun would it be to just be drinking soda all day and have little kids follow you around the zoo while you burped bubbles? Sara I mean, like, I hope that I could do it kind of politely Hillary Oh see and I was imagining you, like, leading a parade while you're burping out bubbles! Sara Well, either way, I still would prefer the bubbles. Hillary I would be so proud if I could burp bubbles. Green fumes not so much. It would be a little more embarrassing. Hillary I really appreciate you taking the time, Sara, I know that we're in different time zones, and you only let me fangirl once so far when we met in person. I really, really appreciate you taking the time. Especially because I know that your podcast is typically much shorter than ours, because we are chatty. Not that you're not chatty, but Sara I like to be chatty. I just restrict sometimes. Hillary I love it. I think that's fantastic. Sara Well, thank you. Thanks for chatting with me. I appreciate your perspective. And, what are you laughing about? Hillary I was like, "Oh, I have a perspective!" Sara Yeah! Your medical anthropology perspective, you pulled that hat out two or three times. Hillary I honestly I never take it off. I got to interview one of my grad school professors for the podcast and I think it was after we were finished. She was like, "You're doing such a great job using your PhD!" And I was like, "Aw, that was maybe the best compliment I ever got." So, I just, it never turns off. That's all right. Robin did get upset. Robin got upset because I, we were in Las Vegas together and she said, "Do you ever turn the anthropologist off?" Like, no, not really. Sorry Sara I like it. Keep it coming. Hillary Thanks Sara! Sara Thank you, Hillary.

227 - Catching up with the Johns of Smooth Ambler

Bourbon Pursuit

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 14, 2019 64:02

John Little and John Foster of Smooth Ambler are good friends of the show. We’ve had them on before and they’ve been doing a lot of stuff recently to keep their audiences engaged. They have a new video series, divulge their plans for future whiskey production, and talk about their latest launch of their MGP based Old Scout. Tune in to hear their take on what’s happened to American Whiskey in the past 2 years. Show Partners: Find out what it’s like to taste whiskey straight from the barrel with Barrell Craft Spirits. Learn more at BarrellBourbon.com. Receive $25 off your first order at RackHouse Whiskey Club with code "Pursuit". Visit RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Distillery 291 is an award winning, small batch whiskey distillery located in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Learn more at Distillery291.com. Show Notes: KDA Press Release: https://kybourbon.com/2-barrels-for-every-kentuckian-distillers-top-9-million-barrels-for-first-time-in-modern-era/ This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about blind tastings. Tell us about your video series on YouTube. What's been happening in the past two years? When are you going to use the new make? What is the game plan for Rye? What's the plan for the American Whiskey? Let's talk about sourced whiskey. Do you see Big Level as always evolving? Do you consider yourselves a craft distiller? What impact has Smooth Ambler made in West Virginia? What's the Whiskey Wagon? What benefits have you experienced from the Pernod Ricard deal? Where does the name Smooth Ambler come from? 0:00 We can play a game of like, which john is not wearing pants right now. 0:04 Neither of us are. 0:18 Welcome back, everybody. This is Episode 227 of bourbon pursuit. I'm one of your host Kenny. And we've got just a little bit of news to run through. And that's because last week, I forgot to report that the Kentucky distillers Association came out with a new press release that was pretty impactful. And that's that they are announcing that there are now two barrels for every Kentucky and aging in Kentucky last year by filling more than 2.1 million barrels of bourbon and aging 9.1 million total barrels of spirits. That is now the record of the highest inventory in the past 52 years that has been kept by the KDA. And this is the first time since 1967, that distilleries have failed more than 2 million barrels of bourbon 1:00 production has skyrocketed more than 350% since the turn of the century, triggering a $2.3 billion building boom expanding production and warehouse capabilities and growing the tourism experience that you have seen that is now significantly boosting Kentucky's tourism profile. But distilling still remains one of the highest tax of all 532 industries in the state and distillers this year are paying a record $25 million and barrel taxes, which they say is discriminatory tax that is going to hamper growth and investment. You can read more about taxes and its impact even more with tariffs and safety and responsibility with the links to the press release in our show notes. After winning the 2019 World Series last month, Washington Nationals first baseman Ryan Zimmerman decided to celebrate with his favorite drink. Of course you know it bourbon. He had a group of friends that spent the weekend in Kentucky choosing their own personal selection of Woodford Reserve and 2:00 Zimmerman said he planned to celebrate the World Series by gifting a bottle of Woodford Reserve of his personal selection to all of his teammates and also is going to give them this friends as well as other people that came to Kentucky and also for other wedding gifts down the future. You can check out Woodford Reserve social media for the pictures from his visit where he got to hang out with who's been on the show before assistant master distiller Elizabeth McCall heaven Hill is unveiled a $17.5 million expansion at the bourbon Heritage Center in Bardstown and this now includes new tasting rooms, interactive experiences, and much more. The expansion which is only phase one of a multi year multi million dollar project is marked by three new tasting rooms, the Fitzgerald room, the library, and the founders room, all which look out on the Kentucky countryside. There are now two exhibits featuring the story of the Man of Steel. He credits as the father of bourbon, Elijah Craig, and the larceny exhibit where you can learn more about Johnny Fitzgerald. Lastly, guests can get 3:00 More immerse themselves by doing it all new you do bourbon experience. And this allows you to be a quality control agent and heaven hill where you get to look at bourbon in the microscope, learn how to nose taste bourbon in bottle and label your own bourbon to take home. But there's still more to come as they just added a roof top restaurant and bar that overlooks all the barrel warehouses. You can plan your trip now by booking your experience at heaven Hill calm. This past weekend, Ryan and Fred were invited to emcee the auction at the bourbon Crusaders barrel through hunger event. This is an annual event where the incredible single barrels and other older bottles get offered up for charity. And there's a few special barrels that went up this year for auction. First is a nine year will that went for $55,000. Next is the oldest private selection of four roses bourbon ever, that one for $65,000 and a very unique single barrel of EH Taylor that we've know if you're been around long enough 4:00 Never seen any more. It's only happened a few times on rare occasion but that went for $75,000. There a few more barrels overall as well as other bottles, but this event in total, raised $375,000 for God's Pantry and dare to care food banks. This event happens in Louisville every year so be on the lookout to purchase your tickets when 2020 rolls around. Now for today's show, we've had the John's a smooth Ambler on and you can catch those episodes back on 79 and one to four or you can go to bourbon pursuit calm, sort by distillery and click on smooth Ambler. We love having these guys on because they're fun, light hearted and very transparent on how they operate. Definitely what we would call role models of the bourbon whiskey industry. Now here's a quick message from Joe over barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the char. 4:53 Hi, this is Joe Beatrice from barrell craft spirits. Tasting whiskey straight from the barrel was truly a life changing moment for me in 2013 5:00 I launched barrell craft spirits so everyone could have the experience of tasting whiskey at cask strength. Live two spirits with barrell bourbon. 5:09 I'm Fred Minnick, and this is above the char. If you've been watching my YouTube channel, you know about my Pappy versus the field series. Well, I want to take that a little step further. What I'm doing is is I'm tasting these whiskeys blind up against Pappy Van Winkle, which is largely heralded by many to be an incredible iconic bourbon that people spend booze and money on. I have this belief that what you taste one day, you may not taste the next day. And that belief was proven true in the first two episodes of Pappy versus the field. And one week I picked Pappy Van Winkle to be my favorite out of the flight which had some heavy hitters in there like old forester birthday bourbon, and then the next week, I pick Pappy Van Winkle to be dead last now. 6:00 The week that I picked it dead last, it's worth noting that I did come off a vacation. I had been traveling a lot, and I wasn't really consuming a lot of bourbon. So my palate was, I would say more was fresher, cleaner, less hardened by, you know, bourbon tastings and days previous and the first time I had tasted the field. And so you have one piece of evidence that you do indeed taste differently every single day. And then in my comments section, a geneticists wrote me and said, You're absolutely right, and that your taste buds are like fingerprints. So everybody has different taste buds, and I find this whole concept fascinating. Now, it's worth pointing out that for years, I have written reviews and I have stated that I believe that you really shouldn't, you shouldn't give a score unless you've tasted it three times and that way you can 7:00 Really make sure and confirm those tasting notes. I've gotten busier. And it's more difficult to tastings three times. And so you don't see as many scores from me as you have in years past, but I want everybody to do this experiment on their own. Find a bottle of bourbon that you really enjoy, and you taste frequently. And I want you to taste it on three different days in three different weeks and just jot down your notes, tell me what you're feeling what you're tasting, etc, etc. I think what we might find here is we might find one of the great puzzles in not just bourbon, but really everything. Why is it one day you want a hamburger? And the next day you want to talk? Oh, why is it some days? I think the Big Mac is the most beautiful, delicious thing in the entire world. And there are other times that it makes me want to hurl, you know so I think we, as humans, we have this incredible fluctuation of what we want on a constant basis. 8:00 I want to nail it down for us in bourbon. I'm going to find out what days that I like certain Bourbons and what days I do not. And so this this experiment begins and I hope you will join me on this journey. So that's this week's above the char. If you want to follow me on this journey, make sure you're subscribing to my YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and search Fred Minnick. And if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook. Just look for Fred manic until next week. Cheers 8:38 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit the official podcast of bourbon getting here talking to some of the guests that we've actually had on the show before but we're here wanting to get an update to kind of see what's been happening because the last time we talked to the John's of smooth Ambler we were kind of talking before the show started and I was looking back and, you know, we talked to Joe 9:00 Little it was back on episode 79 before we start even hitting that, that three digit count back in December of 2016. And we talked to john foster back for a few minutes, it was part of a series of interviews that were taking place at whiskey live that were in Louisville, back in July of 2017 is when that one was released. So, you know, coming here today is really an opportunity for us to kind of get an idea of like, what's, what's new, what's happening, what's been changing, you know, they got bought out, are they driving Porsches and Masada is everywhere nowadays, right? So it's, it's it's going to be interesting to kind of see like, what the influx of capital and everything like that is really doing. We've known for a while that the MGP days of the old scout brand had been dwindling down and now they're revamping and something new and so we'll kind of get an idea of like, what the differences and where the go forward mentality is. We've got a lot of fun questions and a lot of good catch up to kind of see what's been going on with with me 10:00 Ambler out on the West Virginia side of the side of the nation over here so I'm happy to do welcome back on the show we've got both of the John's here so john little the CEO and head distiller and john foster the National Director of Sales and Marketing fellas, welcome back. Thanks for having us, man. It's gonna be back. Yeah, that'd be back a lot of changes mere into since the last time we spoke. You know it i mean it's it's been crazy it's it's it's finally I think it's like finally happening. People start taking podcast a little more seriously. So it's like I feel like I feel like we finally made it at this point. I don't want to seem like I'm kissing up here but people say good podcast seriously. There you go. Yeah. 10:42 And so but you guys also you do something fun as well. You guys do your own kind of like video series that you post on Facebook and YouTube. You want to talk about that one a little bit? Yeah, that kind of started is really a couple things. It was it was 10:58 the idea of sorta 11:00 Talking to talking to people and talking to customers the way that john and i sort of normally shuck and jive when we're together and to talk about 11:13 let people have a little insight into our brand and what we're about in, in our personalities and kind of do something different. You know, it's like, what what, what can we do that other people maybe are not doing or maybe, maybe won't do, which is, you know, put themselves out there and answer these silly questions about you know, what would you rather be a ninja or a pirate or, you know, what's the proper way of installing a roll of toilet paper? And you women have been we've been having fun with it. It's got a huge, huge reaction. And, you know, we'll we'll get around to talking about whiskey eventually. But you guys are doing a pretty good job with that already. And we thought you know that that end of the spectrum is covered. So let's, let's answer the real hard pressing questions. Yeah. 12:00 Would you rather fight a horse sized duck or duck size horse? Right, exactly right? 12:07 things that are really going to be important, those are the topics we want to discuss 12:12 here around the distillery like that, that dumb shit comes up all the time, you know, 12:18 john and i walk in the bathroom, the toilet papers installed incorrectly. And so we have to have a big company meeting and review the proper way to install the toilet paper or, you know, like, just that kind of stuff comes up here all the time, and we just thought it'd be a little little slice of that and it that'll keep going and just keep get better. It reminds me of just like, like Seinfeld a little bit, you know, you're trying to find just like the humor in everyday life that you deal with and try to make it make it like the really the big topic of what it is. Yeah, well, you know, the most recent one that we did, involved, involved quite a bit of bad language that was bleeped out and of course, we 13:00 passed it through through our legal department, let them look at it. And at that point, I realized that it really didn't matter to me whether they allowed us to do it or not. I was just satisfied that me and john had forced this billion dollar, you know, thousand dollar an hour legal team to sit down and watch, sit down and have to watch this thing and analyze it. were like, just that alone is worth the price of admission. 13:24 I mean, that's, that's awesome. Because we don't have a legal team here. We just we basically sit there and we record we're like, all right, is this gonna piss anybody off? Because 13:35 we understand there were enough podcast discussing, but you know, what makes what makes the, at least in my opinion, what makes a video interesting in the in our world is is not necessarily the discussion about the whiskey. It's the discussion is the story that makes it interesting, right? 13:55 I think you can do a review of whiskey to a fairly short thing and it's an ad All right, but the stories are what 14:00 I really enjoy whatever that is whether it's a personal struggle or finding history about, you know, how, how a brand came to be or, or, or some history about how the whiskey came to be. And so that's really what we did. And we felt like there was enough of that out there. And, of course, it was hard for, you know, for guys like us to have our own brand and to talk about just us all the time. So we decided just to do something that was a little entertaining, right? There was not so much stuff and so much about the whiskey. And there's plenty of people already doing the story. So, you know, like, you guys, so we thought we would just do something a little bit funny. That was kind of a break from the norm and let people see inside about the silly stuff that we talked about here or, yes, it's a good way to do it. And a lot of that is serious whiskey made by mostly serious people. 14:47 That you know, we're we take our business very seriously. We take the quality we put in the bottle very, very seriously. We take it very seriously that that hopefully people enjoy what we do, but we sure as hell don't take ourselves too seriously. Well, that's good. I mean, 15:00 is really what this is all about, you know, the idea of when we started this podcast to was to was to really bring the personalities behind the brands. And and that's something that you all have been doing for a long time, because you've got, you know, of course, you've got dedicated Facebook groups that are all about smooth Ambler. And you come on there and you'll talk Exactly. I mean, you make you have fun with the community, right? The community that's built around it. And you're also very transparent in what you do. Whether that's somebody that says something on one other form, you know, I know I've seen john in there, and we'll go and correct them or anything like that and be like, no, this is exactly what's happening. Right. And so what you're doing is, is providing a good value to the customer base. And not only that is we think of a customer base, we think of like what the Facebook groups really are. And that's like, it's like the one percenters of bourbon. Right? Let's be real. Yeah, right. Then we sure sure it's an important 1% but you're right. There's for everybody that knows me and john and you and, and and knows every little thing about 16:00 Whatever we put the bottle there's a bunch of people that don't know any of that stuff. And it's just a delicious whiskey that they like. 16:07 So let's let's kind of talk about the whiskey and the brand and kind of what's been happening in the past like two years. Because we've had a few different releases, there was some drainage of the MTP stock. So kind of talk about really like, where, what the timeline of what's been happening here in the past few years. We've been making whiskey for a long time, and we started sourcing old scout in 2011. And, you know, we never dreamed that the amount of whiskey that we own was something that we could actually sell. I'm going to be quite honest with you. When we first started sourcing whiskey it was, I was, I think the most we ever had at one time was about 3800 barrels. And I never imagined that we could sell 3800 barrels. Turns out, it was easier than we thought. 16:53 It happened quicker than we ever imagined. Do You Do you remember the cost that you paid for for those NG 17:00 barrels when you first started. Yeah, they were I mean, I think we had barrels as low as maybe, you know, $650 as high as we can haul money for them but even back then they were 950 bucks is probably a $900 average or something I think. I think I'll work that out one time for Fred minute on story. thing was about 900 bucks was the average and higher prices than that to the crazy crazy ridiculously low prices, given what the prices of barrels go for now, and that's a that's another subject I once had an offer to buy 10,000 barrels and turned them down. The most costly mistake that we ever made that I ever made, and all of us a lot of money. In hindsight, thank thankfully my business partners only laugh about it and don't feel bad. 17:48 pretty lucky about that. Yeah, I mean, that's what we we all kind of see like the MGP priceless nowadays. And yeah, you can't even get any h doc and the stuff that they do have. That's only just a couple of years. 18:00 result. It's outrageous. And so it's it's it's very very hard I think for a lot of people to look at sourcing today is like the main part of their business too. Yeah you know so you're right and it has crazy we're we feel fortunate that years so our business was climbing you know like this and we were buying like this right there was it was it was climbing exponentially and we were buying a much much smaller pace and and that that really came to hurt us right we can we feel the thought we had some deals throughout the years to acquire more barrels wants the market got got hotter and all those things kind of fell through. And so really what happened isn't about to that we were that's why we never really slow the pace that much. We kind of went from was like two steps. We went from wide open to Okay, maybe we'll slow it down a little bit too. We just cut it off. And the reality of it is that we never could just never found that that stop. So in about 2016 we pretty much stopped selling all of the old scout that was old scout 19:00 Everybody calls seven, but we never call it about that. We just call it old scout bourbon. And we had old scouts in. And then we had a old scout rye and pretty much all of them just stop. And then we transition to some whiskey that we had for a while, which is the old scout American was. And so the in terms of old Scout, we had a bunch of things right old Scott was never intended to do what it is done. I think when we first bought the barrels, we were we had bought the whiskey thinking that it was like antique shopping for whiskey. So we would go out and find some really cool barrels. Now very similar to kind of what what you guys have done with this thing. Are you going to find a barrel here in a barrel here, we were going to do it on a larger scale, but the idea was to about 40 years, 50 years at there and 100 a year and that's kind of how we were going to go to market. And what happened is that it just it was really well received. And so we were trying to take advantage of a situation that we had fallen into amongst and and that's kind of what started the the part of the old scout. Now we're in a position that sort of 20:00 About that, that was in 2011 was when we first started doing the started selling old scout. And of course, we stopped selling and 16. So in about 14, we started buying whiskey at New make new make contracts, and we would buy it whenever we could afford it. And then over the years we've gotten some more steady purchases and then of course with the promoters transaction, we've entered into larger new make contracts as well as growing our own plan. So that's why old scout is being reintroduced, is because in 14 we bought we, we bought old scout products as we make so the products that we're buying are not spot purchase, we differentiate between a new made contract and product that's already on the market. So you either have new made deals, you have spot purchase, and those are not spot purchase. These are products that we bought under contract as new money. Okay, so it's the progress is happening, right? It's there. So where do you kind of see the 21:00 I guess the tipping point of when you're going to start bringing in some of your new make because I think that you had been doing that with big level and some other ones you were kind of introducing your own stuff, aren't you? Not in contradiction? I think that was as well. Yeah. So so all scout bourbon, the old scout bourbon that we had for several years and and unfortunately eventually ran out of we just ran out of stocks that's being relaunched and re released this fall at the same age at which we first bottled it and the same proof at which we first bottle it. So it's five and a half years old, 99 proof and that'll that'll return to the marketplace of this fall and that of yours that that's based on five years. That's based on what john was saying. Whiskey we purchased in in 2014. Right, I got you now. Yeah, the American whiskey that we've had for a while will eventually be will eventually go away. The old scout the high rise 22:01 We'll come back in a 99 proof. And we'll also have a little bit of a custom pick a barrel program, also, as we used to do in the past, with that whiskey that will return later in later in the fall or early winter, this year as well. So on the on the sourced end of things, the old scouts coming back on the homemade stuff, a big level will will continue as not highly allocated, but at least partially allocated. It's not as readily available as for example contradiction is and it's getting a little older, you know, as as well, but that will continue this year. So really, all three of the families, as we talked about them are all going to continue to roll into into 2020. The old Scott Bourbons back contradiction continues to grow and be a healthy part of our 23:00 brand and as well as the homemade stuff and the level plus gift shop stuff. Yeah, absolutely. I mean and you mentioned the ryan there because there's a lot of diehard rye folks out you know you know that you've you've got a you've got a big consumer base of these these Ramblers that that love to collect and love to the bodies and a lot of them have the those old rise that are on there so kind of talk about what the game plan is for that. So we come from first of all contradiction is the biggest focus of what we do. Like the fact that it is what we think it's a delicious whiskey is now at a proof that's in price that are easily accessible. So it used to be 100 proof in about $50 bottle. Now it's 92 proof and it's a $40 bottle. And we one of the reasons we like it is because it gives us the ability to scale up and we still have a small plant even compared to some of these whatever mid majors some of these new places right the riffs or rabbit holes of the world. 24:00 You know, we're, we're small compared to those guys. And so the contradiction gives us the ability to scale up. 24:07 We The first thing that we will bring back is in this will in a timeline sense. The first thing we'll bring back as, as john said, the old scout and the old scout custom barrel pick. And then in about a year from now, we will add to the contradiction family. We already have contradiction, bourbon will add contradiction right into the portfolio, which will be a blend of some Bry made and replaces Indiana, Tennessee and West Virginia. And we're excited about that a lot of people I know have it tasted right out of Tennessee. So it is delicious. And of course another year of aging never hurts, right. So I think it's ready to go now. But we're going to wait a year so the old scout stuff gets good score sort of settled, and then we'll bring back old scout an old scout right in the future but in a limited way as well. And of course will bring out some of our own right but most people know that we that we only make we did very 25:00 But we've been making a ride based bourbon and we've been making rye whiskey for a number of years. And we'll we'll start to bring that out. It's still relatively young. It's still about four years old now. little less than four years old. And it's good, but I would rather I'm forced, I would rather wait wait for everything to be seven or eight years, all of it. Sometimes that's not financially feasible. No, absolutely. It's sometimes you just got to figure out like, how can we how can we squeeze this out just a little bit to buy us a little bit more time? You know? That's right. And we've had that we've had a market in the past it's been pretty extreme right bottles that are 65 to a couple hundred dollars. But the products that will be launching in the in the near future are much more about accessibility for us. So we really want to be in that kind of 40 to $60 range. Look, I know you you joked earlier about whether or not the deal made us drove miles or robberies and Porsches or, and the 26:00 reality of it is is no, we dropped out as your 2008 Nissan Maxima and I love it on the side of the road, I'll cry a tear and go get another one 26:12 before pickup drive, right? I mean, neither one of us came out in the promo deal, right? And, and so we still go to work every day, just like just like we always have. And in fact, we were motivated to do more than do more than we ever have. Yeah, I wouldn't want to touch on that little bit more here in a minute. But you also had talked about the American whiskey and maybe seeing that you say that's going to start sun setting as well. It is you know, 26:39 you know, as we always thought it was really good. And in fact as a bourbon group out there that's pretty well known and they did some blind taste on it was I think 13 other whiskeys and it came back to be in a blonde score it one hauling it straight bourbon. But it just doesn't. It's hard. It's a hard sell. Right? If people who doesn't say bourbon, it doesn't say straight 27:00 bourbon the store doesn't know where to put it, people aren't sure what it is or sure of the provenance format. And so it's just, it's a hard sale. So for that, for that reason alone, it's going to sunset. Yeah. And part of that reason be part of that challenge is 27:17 to be quite honest, if if the handful of people that had been doing American whiskey for eight or 10 years, whatever had been honest about what it was, and the groundwork had been laid for clarity, for American whiskey, I think it certainly wouldn't unseat bourbon or BB in the same zone, but I think it would be more well respected than it is. problem was, you know, you had you had a handful of brands that had a quote unquote, American whiskey, and you didn't know where it was from or what it was in the, you know, it was just sort of this mystery. You know, I remember in high school at the cafeteria was mystery meat like it was just whiskey like mystery whiskey or is it front row. 28:00 We can't tell you what what's the magic but what we can't tell you that, you know, you gotta waterboard the rep to find out whether it's even she'll filter not the work was sort of laid out that it was a redheaded stepchild from its inception. And we tried to be the opposite of that with our American whiskey. We tried to tell everybody as much as we could about where it was from and the way that we treated and all that kind of stuff. And sadly because it is still in a barrel getting older you know, the best probably the best bottle will ever sell will be the last ball 28:31 Well, I mean, I guess there's there's two sides of this right? I think you you kind of I'm sure it was a tough call to sit there and say like yeah, like we can't we can't fight this uphill battle much longer. Right? Because you are right it with with how hot bourbon is. It's hard to come in and try to bring in a new category. And think Yeah, like, let's try to try to play this and try to capitalize on this because yeah, I mean, it's it's tough when people don't see that that. Just that that seven letter word 29:00 Right there burger, right. And, and so when I when I think about this, 29:07 you know, if, you know you'd also mentioned 29:12 they'll have the last bottle or whatever. It also kind of gives you an opportunity here to say, well, let's just quit selling it will sit on these barrels for I don't know how much you know how longer and maybe the time will come around and then we can capitalize on it because once you get something that's a 10 1418 year old product, who knows from there, it might be something that people are going to go ape shit over at some point. It's the you're right and that's the sad part about first of all that's the sad part about selling any barrel that young Yeah, you really wanted to say a look out what about this five year old barrel taste like when it's 14 years old. But it for even for our size business or especially for our size business. That's a big gamble. 30:00 Right so we basically elected to what a little bit we have left to move all from and, in essence swap that for a high bourbon product in terms of in our, in our source category, right? We're going to we're going to say that and that we know what high ride did us and we're going to use this money let's use it to know what we know what basically was the the thing that got us here, which is the high Rialto and and you know when that person comes out this fall, you we all know somebody is going to taste it and they're going to say yeah, you know, I like it but I don't like it as much as that 14 year old cast drink single bear. Well, no shit. 30:39 Yeah, yeah, it's it's taste different than something that's nine years older. Yeah, yeah, we got it. I think. You know, I think that was part of the things that maybe you were alluding to Robin when people were talking about old scouts select. 30:53 Being you know, not being as good as a 13 year old scout select is not being as good as 13 year old MG 31:00 P. Well, yeah, that's right, right, there's a reason that one is $175 at the gift shop 160 $5 all over the all over the country, right? It's worth about 35% as much as the FTP juice, and there's some skin, that's kind of a joke. There's some scarcity to it as well. But we also we jumped in with that the Tennessee stuff that we have is, you know, is really a pretty for the most part. So one time release, it was a spot purchase, he thought it was really good use. And so we brought that out this 31:30 you know, over the spring and summer as well. I think there's, you know, we've been, you guys know what we've been doing too. So we know that going in and doing a Tennessee product was also going to be fighting a little bit of an uphill battle. But we also think there is the opportunity to help change the minds that are out there. You know, for the longest time people just in building their own people thought Kentucky was God, and then all of a sudden now you've got these MGD groups and now people think MGP is God. And so it's I think there's just going to be a circle and at some point 32:00 People are going to realize like, Oh, crap, there was all this high age, Tennessee stuff that was available. That was really good, too. And so we're going to see this where I mean, and I'm sure that you all are kind of seeing it too is that if you have a demand and you have a market demand for something that is 910 1415 years old, it's not available unless it's coming from a different state. Right? None of that stuff is available anymore. And so if you're looking for something that has that openness, that richness and complexity, some of that buttery tastes like, yeah, like, that's all you're only going to find it in one place now. That's right. That's right. You know, did it bother you when I came out? And people said, Well, you know, we just don't drink Tennessee decided that, that upsetting the dog you pick a really, really good barrel and then people say, Oh, it's just whatever because it's from Tennessee. Of course. I mean, I think like I said, there's the people have this. They have they have a blind think have blind thought about it. Most of them said 33:00 Most of them just haven't tried it. They just don't really know what a killer single barrel could be, especially at cash drink because a lot of the Tennessee stuff that is source there, it's on the market. It's not cash drink. It's not a single barrel and you don't really have that. Really that that background to sit there and say like, Oh, yeah, like now not going to do it. There's too much Flintstones vitamins everywhere. But you know, one of the things that john and I laugh about quite a bit, or at least, chuckle about and find a little bit funny, which is the first time we sent old scout raw out for a really good review. It was crushed. Seven years old 99 prove MGP ry. We stand alongside the 99 proof bourbon and the old scouts in and they were all sort of the two Bourbons were kind of mediocre and the ride was crushed. And I can tell you that if I had a chance to buy 10,000 barrels of old scout rye, I wouldn't leave this conversation right now. And 34:00 Don't 34:01 know for the money because that's how much you 40,000 I don't find to the money for it's just it was in such high demand. And so I think you have to remember that negative review are burdens that burden folks who are as you know, we we call them the whiskey nerds and that's a badge of honor. That's not anything that's that's a sort of, we're trying to diminish them. But they are they are emotionally involved in the brands and they get serious about their whiskey and they have very strong opinions and thankfully they're here because that's what grew our business but you know, there's a whole world out there there's the boat are right at seven years old and would still buy it if we had seven year olds. You know, I'm not I'm not a student of this I'm probably going to get the timeline completely fucked up. But it reminds me a little bit of, you know, the the MTP and now Tennessee and then little guys like us all over the US. 35:00 Where the cream is going to rise to the top with you and not just on bourbon but on some of the the American single malt. So been 50 years ago, good wine only came from a couple of places and it wasn't California. And it wasn't Chile, and it wasn't Central Virginia. Now, go Go tell somebody in California, California can't use good wine. Right? But in the 70s somebody in France would have told you you're out of your mind to think that any quality wine will ever come out of California. So I you know, maybe that'll happen with them. Maybe that'll happen with these Bourbons and rise and the single malts and, and as that cream rises to the top, you know, nothing against nothing against Kentucky. We love Kentucky we wouldn't do we do without an affinity for what they've done with that spirit. But I think the tide will eventually turn when people more people will accept it. You can have a kick ass ride from Maine and you can have an amazing vodka from Pennsylvania. You 36:00 La. I hope that happens. I will say this I think the difference is right is that within your scenario that looking for better to craft beer when craft beer came out the beer guys weren't making necessarily great beer in the craft beer guys were the Kentucky distilleries aren't making bad whiskey. They're making great whiskey. And so the craft distillers have work to do. And as our as this industry as a craft distilling industry evolves and becomes more mature, whiskey is going to get better. I know the whiskey we make today is better than the whiskey we made four years or six years ago, eight years ago. If you're not getting better today than you were six months ago, you should stop doing what you do and go do something else. And that's that's where we feel right. So some big level, a big level has a love it or hate it relationship. 36:49 And we wouldn't put it out if we weren't proud of it. But I can tell you this the big level we made four years ago, and two years ago, and six months ago, continued to get better and it got 37:00 by a long shot because we got better, we also run a different still right? But we got better, we got better at everything we do selecting grains and fermentation, distillation, distillation, style, aging, longer aging, whatever that is. So that's our goal is Johnson really early on our goal is to be really, really serious about what we've done and we've taken every step we've been obsessive about our productions of getting better. That's what that's what hurts your feelings a little bit when somebody tries something and they're just like, yeah, it's a drain pour. You know, I couldn't even drink it with a could even drink with Coke, you know, whatever. Like, I get it. I mean, and just because we like it doesn't mean anybody else has to. I completely understand that. But it's, it's as though you didn't think we tasted that whiskey 100 times before we put it in a bottle. It we just went out and blindly just chose some barrels and didn't pay any attention to how they tasted and put them I mean, not at all. Like we panel everything and no 38:00 anybody's gonna like it. That's okay. But, you know, trust me, if you don't like it, that's okay. But that because we didn't like it, because we don't bottle anything. We know what I mean. So I guess you kind of talked about that because big level was sort of that like hit or miss with a lot of the community. Right. And I know john, you mentioned that it's even kind of getting on location in some states and stuff like that. So do you see big level as kind of always evolving or transforming with releases as it comes out? 38:33 From forest to still, Bull Run distillery whiskeys are using some of the best water in the US. They're also experimenting by agent them in different types of barrels, including cognac, Madeira, and Urbino nor barrels to their whiskeys are being featured by rackhouse whiskey club in their October box, made from 96% corn bull runs American whiskey is the lightest and sweetest product they offer and has very little barrel character to it. A company that in the rock house was 39:00 Club box is a penal new or finished whiskey. It's the same American whiskey but finished in French oak barrels, you really have to try these two side by side to see what barrel aging can do. And you can do that by checking out rock house whiskey club, their whiskey the Month Club on a mission to uncover the best flavors and stories that craft distilleries across the US have to offer rock house boxes ship out every two months to 40 states. Go to rock house whiskey club. com to check it out and try these unique whiskies. Use code pursuit for $25 off your first box. 39:33 What defines distillery 291 Colorado whiskey is it spirit passion permeates every city since day one distillery 291 distillers from grain to barrel to bottle by hand, distinctive Colorado whiskey, utilizing grains from the Colorado plains and water collected from Pikes Peak reservoirs 291. Colorado whiskey is handmade the Colorado way everything matters 291 Colorado whiskey has earned both 40:00 of national and international awards for its spirits with the unique character in the flavor of a bygone era. Named world's best Bry in 2018 by World whiskey awards, seven liquid gold from Jim Murray's whiskey Bible, 291. Colorado whiskey embodies the traditions of the past, married with the boldness of the future, find a bottle near you at 291 Colorado whiskey.com write it like you stole it, drink it like you own it. Live fast and drink responsibly. 40:31 So do you see big level as kind of 40:34 always evolving or transforming with releases as it comes out? Absolutely. Well, maybe not always evolving, but over the short period. I think in a couple of years, it'll reach its you know, where, where it wants to live in age and discipline and everything else. So I wouldn't say it always has got involved. But yeah, I mean, if the first big level you ever had was batch three, and now we're on batch 50 41:01 Give it a shot you I think you'd be really surprised at the change. And you know, it's it's not that we have this 41:09 badge of honor that it's improved now over maybe the first couple of batches. That's just a natural progression of our business as john said, you can't do something over and over and over again without getting getting better at it and, and I'm not ashamed the batch one big level, no matter how much anybody may or may not have liked it. We tasted it. We're in love with it. We made it with our bare hands. And I'm not ashamed of it, just because a later batch is better. 41:37 Absolutely. And so there was something that you still talked about a little talking about craft. I mean, do you really guys still consider yourself a craft distiller? I mean, because you guys are pretty big now. Yes, of course. I'm not sure. I'm not sure what the definition of craft is. 41:54 Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if there's like a minimum or volume or anything anymore. Yeah. 42:01 I think my first of all make it a habit to never talk poorly about anybody but 42:05 this is not talking poorly but I usually don't talk about other brands with me as Buffalo Trace craft is four roses craft, yeah, who's making better product and some of these other brands right. So I think that they're really good at their craft right. 42:21 There a lot of brands like that. But if you look at the way that we used to think of craft distilling as being some small plant think all of the whiskey that we have on the market right now is definitely sorry, all the whiskey that we made is on the market right now is definitely craft was right. It's whiskey that was made, you know, loading bags of grain, 50 pound bags of grain and us still and turn it vows by hand and, you know, the sort of more hands on really handmade product, right? There's this definition of like, what is handmade, these were really made really handmade, we still do a lot of hands on stuff, but it was a lot of labor and a lot of love. And you know, if it didn't work, john and i don't just go get other jobs. 43:00 We move, you know, there's not a lot in West Virginia. So we're putting a lot of risk. That seems very seems much like a craft to me. We have certainly evolved. I don't even know what our term is. Now. We're not even a mid major, maybe we're, I like to say that we're a large craft distillery. So that's kind of the way I think about it. So it's a hard term that we don't really use it anymore. It's also been talking here, we don't use it any sort of publication. I don't think we use on our website and yeah, I mean, nobody knows what it means. And as you know, there's so much BS in the market with market fluff right now, which is, which was the whole other problem that we have, right. We don't have a more our marketing story as we don't have a marketing story. 43:41 Yeah, um, yeah, we, I usually refer to us as a small producer, which I mean, you have to we don't use the word craft a whole lot of craft distillery a lot. And that's the distinction right, there's a quote unquote craft distillery and then there is the craft of making great whiskey and 44:00 Buffalo Trace and heaven Hill are good at the craft of making really great whiskey we think we are too. But sometimes you have to say craft distiller because other people expect you to, or you're introduced as, Oh, Johnny foster from craft distillery, but I really think of us as it's just a small, small small producers by the way. Yeah. So there's a you also mentioned West Virginia I think we kind of talked about at the top of here that you know, that's where you all are based kind of talk about what you know, over the past few years, kind of what smooth and was done for the area done for the community and stuff like that, too. 44:35 is interesting. We, I missed a meeting at the CDB today. I double booked myself for a 10am the convention Visitors Bureau year and one of the one of the things I was going to talk about, so I wrote some notes on that, or vows. It's interesting that you vows doing that for us Valley runs our tasting tasting room. Yeah, well, I think, Well, I know we're is proud of the impact that we've made in our small community. 45:00 As we are of the whiskey that we put out and at the end of the day, in any business you want to do, you'd like to make someone's life better. And whether that's with your podcast with whiskey that you guys go out and source or, or what we do the the goal that you're making you're improving someone else's life is something that you should always take with great pride and honor. And so we know we started with three employees, john and i and and one other person and we now have 23 employees, and those they pay we pay them way more than anything in the geographic norm. They get free vision and dental and that's how they subsidize medical care and they start with three weeks of paid vacation. And it doesn't seem like maybe doesn't seem like the world but we feel like we're doing a really good job. Our employees love what they do here. We treat them well. We just took a group of salespeople. They come in remember visiting here we took them whitewater 46:00 rafting and got sporting clays. And so we bring some of our employees to go along with those. Those things, I think we have something that's pretty magical. When when promote comes over, we bring the sales people in here and we're getting hotel rooms or we're spending money at bars and restaurants or say going to shoot sporting clays or spending money at the rafting companies that in essence, which is some agritourism 46:23 and the visitors right, so we have Graham Larry, and so there's gonna be 175 people from out of town, they're going to come in here and stay to room nights. And that's a big impact in a town of 35 people that they're going to this will be 350 room nights over two days spent here. And and that's a big impact for us, or for our community. And so those things where it's really super brought up and, and somebody Anna yesterday, so may that. Thank you for making me. Thank you for having some for having something for us to be proud of. And I said what are you talking about? And she says, You know when I go somewhere 47:00 I tell people that oh we have the distillery smooth Ambler in our backyard they go oh, we love some of them. And so they feel proud that they're from this little bitty town in rural West Virginia and they have something that is export across the world and is a really good product and that people can be proud of and that doesn't motivate you to be better every day. 47:19 We've also you know, when opportunities arise, to try and raise money for good causes. We've done that I mean, we had a terrible flood here in West Virginia as you may remember, a three years ago and we pulled out all the stops to raise some money for that. We had a live bottle auction in Kentucky. I think it's one of the one of the only places you do that legally anyway. In in Northern Kentucky, couple of years ago raised a bunch of money that we would 20 grand that we that we gave to an organization called Team Rubicon that deploys experienced first responders. 47:59 Usually 48:00 former military personnel in disaster situations, 48:04 the smooth Ramblers got together and raise some money for Val so that she could start a local dog rescue business which is her, which is her passion. 48:16 We helped out a friend of ours who used to sell used to be one of our reps with a different distributor and we moved away from from that with the porno thing. But you know, her brother was was having some medical issues and we saw an opportunity to try and, and and use some of our leverage helpers like we really believe in in giving back and doing everything that we can to help our community far and wide. Sometimes that community is here in West Virginia and sometimes that community is anywhere we could affect some change in and help people out if we are also in the middle of rural West Virginia and there's not a lot of diversity here. So we're proud of the fact that there are four or five members of our 23 person crew here that are in same sex relations. 49:00 Right, you want to be welcoming to everyone. And we we've been really bad about not talking about those things, the money we raised for flood relief twice the other community things that we've done that patients, we make charities in West Virginia, we've been we've been we've done a really bad job of doing that because we felt like we were pandering to people and we never want to feel like we're doing it just for the business. We do it because it's the right thing to do. That's a good way to put it. It's good to see that you all are advocating a lot of diversity because I think that's something that this industry is really lacking and and there's a lot of push forward as well. So it's great to see you all being on the front lines of that too. But there was one thing that you all talked about that I kind of want to do with you all and I'm going to go whitewater rafting with the John's maybe that'll be fun. Come on there we we love that. We do it again in two weeks. We got we got a crew from Texas coming in. I'm not kidding. Yeah, that we have people when people come here they go oh, this is they're amazing. I've been on 35 of these or I've been on the street 50:00 trips for 35 years is the best we do. And I tell them, this is what we do for for us, I want to tell them that we're treating them special, but the reality is we're not we just treat them like we would treat our friends, if we have the money personally to go do those. 50:15 That's kind of what we do, you know, that talking. 50:19 That's not talking about any other specific brand. But I one of the reps told us when they were here, like, you know, we get on the trips, and sometimes it's overseas, and sometimes it's here, whatever. And he, he was just, he's like, I really appreciate the time that you and john spent with us, because normally we go and we get if there's a founder some of those big brands, you know, the founders have been dead for a long, long time. But if they're around, you know, he was like, they might come down from their mansion in their body for a little while and like, hang out with you at a dinner and then leave. He's like you and john are like driving us around and cooking burgers and like, you know, we don't we never experienced that before. We just 51:00 treat everybody like like family here because it will say this for real reason, but I like shooting sporting clays. I like going whitewater rafting. Yeah. 51:10 It's not laying bricks. Yeah, we're not digging ditches. Yeah. And let's consider how lucky we are. But it's also not a it's also not just a marketing ploy, but it's who it's who we are. It's out it's how we roll so it comes very naturally and again, at the at the end of the day, it's like well what what can we do that that maybe somebody else can't or won't do and you know, we can buy we can buy 10 million smooth Ambler cocktail shakers and we can carpet bomb all of our significant markets with those but that's something that's really easy for somebody else to do and very common for somebody else to do we we just try and always when we can put up a personal touch on Yeah, just have a good party at the Johnson hopefully get a good TripAdvisor review after it. Well, and then yeah, so listen, we drive your ass around five stars, five stars. 52:01 You know, that says your Uber rating john Tesh? 52:04 But you know, that's what that's what the the whiskey wagon is all about. I mean that that the whole impetus for the whole idea is, let's take, you know, the way we would treat somebody in my backyard or over John's house or here at the distillery on the road, and that is Turn up the music and lay out some whiskey and put out the corbel. I mean, that's, that's not just a marketing affectations. Hey, we think this is a good idea to sell some whiskey. I mean, I should hope it sells some whiskey because that's what my job is. But it's also who we are. And that's what we do. Yeah, talk about that for a second too, because I remember seeing pictures of the whiskey wagon, but for our listeners who may not have heard of it, go ahead and kind of explain what it is. So it's a it's a mobile tasting room, in essence. You know, we saw a lot of those wagons, people pulled around these air streams and they were more like food trucks right. So bartender sits inside customers outside. 53:00 You serve to the customer and they leave. The whiskey wagon is a is a box trailer a big box trailer that it's got a stage trailer and the doors, the sides of the trailer open up become floors. It comes pretty big when you open it up. It's about 31 feet long by 16 feet once open and it has a guardrail around it and so the idea is that people come up into the vessel and hang out so it's just like well it says much like our tasting room is that box trailer can be so that's red walls which are in our trailer or in our tasting room rather it's real cabinetry real bar, you know saying that people can work in two coolers so we can keep stuff for cocktails or bottles of water in their speakers air conditioning. It's It's It's amazing and the reception has been amazing. We're we're doing crazy numbers we go to these festivals these beer bourbon barbecue festivals and showcase their we're going to want to knock it gets all the way to Knoxville right now john leaves here in one hour. 54:00 goes to Knoxville this weekend, and will have 1200 to 1800 people visited during a six hour span. It's absolutely getting crushed and we we love that, you know that start down fo one of the first of all Kentucky makes a lot of great whiskey as I alluded to earlier. But it also has a really good location, other places that people come to kind of in the middle of nowhere. So if you're here you've made you've made a real effort to get here. If you can't come to us, we're going to come to you and that's what the whiskey wagons purposes it's basically like a you see the one of the some of the Transformers movies. Yeah, like a transformer. If they were like a redneck transformer that like Hank Williams Jr. and whiskey a lot. That's what this thing is. 54:44 That sounds pretty awesome. I'm on board with that. 54:48 So we're going to kind of start wrapping it up real quick. But I you know, we talked about the porno deal a little bit and I'm sure not sure you get into specifics, but kind of talk about really, what more the benefits that 55:00 It really drive for you all. Is there kind of like a sense of relief a little bit that, you know, it's not completely just bootstrapped on you anymore, like kind of talk about what that means to you? Well, certainly from a financial standpoint, there's a sense of relief, right, as though as I talked about earlier, this didn't work, john and i move. Well, now we have a little bit more financial security. Certainly the business does, right has more financial security. They have been really wonderful to us. But that doesn't mean it's been it's always been right. It's always been wonderful, smooth sailing. It's, it's just integrating a small business into a corporate situation is not always easy. But as a friend told me, a friend who'd been in the business a very long time a former master distiller, they were as much like a family business as a corporation can be, and I believe that to be true. The things that they help us with are endless. You're talking about the ability to access everyone from audio 56:00 Ours distillers, to folks at Hiram Walker about production details, everything from grain receipts to bottling they know about it, they've been through it, they, they and we actually send samples here three times a week to them and they test them on some other equipment that we don't have, which is a really wonderful thing to have from a production standpoint. So we're better by a long shot than the way we used to be because of that. And because we now have a an operations manager, because we can afford to have those things. We're better at our legal stuff by long shot because they have a legal team and by human resources and helping us to put together these wonderful manuals and diversity policies and and help us to not just to put them together but to live them even better. So the whole deal for us has been absolutely wonderful. From the sales side, they have a really large distribution footprint and they have a ton of help and there are jobs job is is to find out how a small business is an 57:00 Actually a strategically significant to their district distribution partners or, or to them as well. And so that's what that's what our task is or our job is to find our place and then to grow that become more important in their system. And that that that's the challenge but that's not unique to pronounce that when I say there's not something it's not unique because there's an Oprah knows wonderful, that's the that's the the issue that any small business faces when they try to go when they try to grow and they try to get bigger and and the bigger is not just about money for us the bigger again is about opportunity. We want to share the whiskey with more people we want our employees to have better lives and we want them to go vacation more often and have nice cars and whatever that is that makes people happy in the world. And so all of that comes with with the deal and you first started I know you didn't mean it but when you say we got bought out 57:49 and it is I guess that's one of the terms but we like to think of it as a buy in. Right they own the majority of the business but they don't own all of it and and we are partners with them. Stay 58:00 So that's kind of the way we think of our business. It's sort of you know, whenever those acquisitions take place, particularly in the in the craft beer world, I mean, those guys are and their sir fear when their favorite brewery gets bought out by AB or one of these bigger companies. But the but even I think in the whiskey world, the for people like us the temptation is to think, Oh, well, you know, so now they're going to start, they're going to fit me in job with mind control chips, and you probably, I probably need one or start forcing stuff down our throat and you know, you're going to do this, you're going to do that. And I can tell you, I'm sure john agrees with me from a production standpoint, and certainly from the sales and marketing standpoint. 58:45 It's been like the opposite of the movie Field of Dreams instead of building and they will come. They had been very much like we come to them with a good idea and they'll help us build it. And I don't know what else you can ask for from a corporate partner beyond that. 59:00 Absolutely, and I guess, john or Foster, should I say, I gotta, I gotta make sure I'd say this right? Because you'll probably be like, Huh, what, who's this directed to? But so Foster, you know, little said something about, like how they helped you with distribution? I mean, that was kind of like been that was kind of like your deal for a while, right? I mean, how how was that like kind of really benefited you? Well, I mean, their network is vast and varied. And so it's a little bit of a challenge to because the relationships that they have inside of their distributors can work a couple of different ways. And that that's a has been a difficult navigation, just understanding it and understanding what's important to each sort of layer in that relationship. And sometimes you have teams that are completely dedicated to promote products. Sometimes you have teams that are full book, sometimes you have both sometimes you have combinations of both and 1:00:00 Think as john said that, that layer and understanding how to drill deep into those things. And as john says, and we've said for years to figure out how to become strategically or financially important to to those reps, 1:00:17 everybody's got that problem. That's not a, I'm not taking on PR No, when I say that, that's been a bit of a challenge. But everybody's everybody's got that issue. Because your average street rep at at a at a distributor, or your average manager or your average manager, even inside of PR know, they have some big brands that they're really responsible for making sure continue to be healthy. And so the challenge for all of the small producers like us is how to live in that world and navigate those waters in a way that produce results. And that when we say strategic or financial, the two ways that that can happen is you use a small, esoteric brand to leverage this kind of get in the door. 1:01:00 Get in front of a buyer or get in front of a buying group that you might otherwise, you know, have trouble getting into with one of the commodity items. Or the other thing is to really start to see some critical mass and sales. I mean, man, I can tell you as somebody who was in sales for a long, long time 100% commission when your brand starts to show up on somebody's commission report, they start to pay attention 1:01:24 and and that's the most powerful thing we can try the real us fantastic so let's go ahead and we'll kind of wrap this up because there's always one thing that if you'd listened back on episode 79 I know I had asked it when we talked to john little but kind of for our newer listeners tell them where the name smooth sampler comes from. A smooth Ambler is a enabled as a game. A horse is typically born with a gate on a gimbal and it is between a walk in a run. And that spoke to us about the area in which we live. 1:02:00 It's people think we're a bunch of maybe a lot of people think maybe we're a bunch of, you know, a bunch of country folks. 1:02:07 And we're certainly not New York City. We know that right? But we, we live in this really wonderful place in West Virginia, this really wonderful community Greenbrier County and Lewisburg, West Virginia. And it's just got a really nice pace of life. It's an anvil. And we like to think that that's the same way we run our business in the same way that our whiskey tasting. So that's where that's where some of them are came from. There we go. Well, john, thank you once again, for coming back on the show. It was good to kind of get this this catch up of what's been going on with you because there's been a lot of changes to really kind of follow along and get those updates and help maybe in a year. We'll do it again. Man, thanks for having us. We really appreciate it. Are you gonna you gonna be at the hometown rising and bourbon and beyond? I guess, or no, I will be there bourbon beyond Sure. We'll get we'll see you there. Thanks. Thanks for what you do. You got it and also want to give a opportunity to plug if people want to come visit you. I mean, of course, you probably pull it up on 1:03:00 Google Maps but kind of give a shout out to how they can learn mo

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LLP132: Why we have to be aware of Endometriosis with Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2019 56:16

Let's talk about Endometriosis... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord, a wife, mother of 3 hilarious children and a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist. She is a motivational speaker, a 2-time bestselling author of The New Laws of Mommyhood & Marriage: From A New School Mom With An Old School Hustle and the co-author of The Making of a Medical Mogul. She is a media personality whose passion is to encourage women to address their health care concerns and fears, giving them a voice and empowering their best lives, mind, body, and spirit. This week she is on the show to talk about endometriosis, a disease that affects 11% of women, can responsible for painful menstrual cycles and even infertility. Listen to how Dr. Ricks-Cord has to deal with this problem in her current practice. Text LUNCHLEARNPOD to 44222 to join the mailing list. 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 My Amazon Store – Check out all of the book recommendations you heard in the episode Links/Resources: Facebook Instagram Twitter 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 132 Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like. Episode 132 Transcript... Episode 132 Transcript... Introduction Dr. Berry: 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 Pierre Medical Consulting. Helping you empower yourself with better health with the number one podcast, for patient advocacy. Today I get to bring you a special guest today Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord which is a good friend of mine and an expert in women's health and what she calls vagina land. She is hilarious, first of all. But she is really an expert because you guys know I'm not the biggest women's health discussion, right? Because there was a reason why I went into medicine but so I figured. Let's bring someone on who can kind of help me, kind of grasp what is knowledge and I really kind of avoid it when I was a medical student in medical resident. So today we're gonna be talking about endometriosis which depending on when you listen to gets its entire month of awareness March is Endometriosis Awareness Month. So I figured if a disease gets a whole entire month, it has to be important. And if it has to be important let's bring an important guest on. So I just want to talk. I'm just gonna give a little bit of a bio just so you can kind of understand exactly the person we gonna talking to. First of all she’s hilariously funny. You definitely gonna enjoy today's episode. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord is a wife, mother three hilarious children. She's a board certified obstetrician gynecologist. She's a motivational speaker. She's a two time bestselling author. She's a media personality whose passion is to encourage women to address their health care concerns and fears giving them a voice in empowering their lives, mind, body and spirit. Can you know the theme: Empower yourself a Better Health. She currently resides in Texas where for loving spouse, three children and two lizards. She attended college at Indiana University. While there she performed research and published articles on rats in order to help curb alcohol behaviors in humans which is absolutely hilarious. She did move to Baltimore to perform research and publish articles at John Hopkins University. This time investigating acute respiratory distress random at the molecular level. She attended graduate school at Johns Hopkins and pursue a master's degree in biotechnology. She was accepted at the University of College Medicine. Experience significantly shaped how she practice medicine culminating her receipt of the Leroy Week's Award for Outstanding clinical skilled bedside manner and commitment to service. Again, she is absolutely amazing and I get again especially from my fellows who are probably not sure this is a podcast. I listen to this is a disease process that could affect your mom, could affect your sister, it could affect your cousins. So this is something you may well listen to just be able to kind of pass it on, right? Especially if you have a female friend or spouse or a wife or a sister who has these very vague complaints and no one seems to know what's wrong with her. And then you start kind of attributing it to maybe in her head. This is a disease process that may make you think different right. So sit back for another great episode again if you have not had a chance, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Leave a five star review for the podcast. So we are on the radar of everybody so everyone can be empowered for better health. So again thank you. Let's listen to another amazing episode this week with Dr. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord. Episode Dr. Berry: All right. Lunch and Learn community. So you heard that amazing intro with Dr. Anila and we're gonna, you know, really let her speak and introduce yourself to the community. And of course, you know guys, I've said this before, I am not no women's health expert. One of the reasons why I went and turned on medicine is because I kept getting kicked out of their rooms when I was a medical student, right? So I figured if we're going to be talking about women's health, especially disease course like endometriosis, right? I figure let's get the expert to talk and I'm just going to sit here and listen. So really, I'm actually going to be listening along with you guys and you know this, this expert kind of expand her knowledge on this and tell us what endometriosis in the show. But first and foremost, Dr. Anila, please again, thank you for coming to the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Thank you Dr. Berry so much for allowing me to be able to be graced by your presence and share a little bit of knowledge. Dr. Berry: Just the feeling is, oh, a hundred percent mine. I've told Dr. Anila, a friend of mine and I told her, I said, I'm gonna get you on a podcast. Like you can't be given all that amazing information out to the community on Facebook and everywhere else and not give it to Lunch and Learn community. So I already, I had already pre-warn she would be on the show. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord That’s you did, that’s you did. And I'm honored to be here. So. Dr. Berry: For those who may not know, you may not be following you, you give a little bit, you know, outside of the bio, little bit about yourself. Tell us why you do what you do and you know, kinda how you got to where you at now. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Sure. So I am a board certified obstetrician/gynecologist. I'm a wife of 22, going on 23 years. Praise God, Lord willing. I’m a mother of three awesome kids and I'm a two time best-selling author and a speaker. So through my books, my patient care, and my coaching programs, I encourage women to address their health care concerns and fears, giving them a voice and empowering them to live their best lives, mind, body, and spirit. So I'm originally east coast native. I'm the eldest of three children and a big science geek. I openly where their pin. I attended school in Indiana University, Purdue University at Indianapolis. And that was where I met my love and my biggest cheerleader perform research at Hopkins before having the privilege of attending Howard University College of Medicine and then completed my residency at WellSpan York, Pennsylvania. So I was inspired to practice medicine and led to become an obstetrician gynecologist secondary to the death of my mom. She was last 22 years old. She was misdiagnosed with the flu and subsequently died of Septicemia. For those who don't know what that is, it's essentially a bacterial infection in the blood, which basically causes massive organ failure and death. So this is why I do what it is I do. So. Dr. Berry: I love it. And you know, thank you for sharing that story with us because I think a lot of times people outside of in fact very, you know, full disclosure, we're actually recording this on like, you know, national doctor's Day, right? And I love this day. Because a lot of times physicians really aren't getting a lot of the fanfare and the good light that they should be getting. Right? You know, a lot of times there's a lot of misconceptions of why we became physicians. For some reason people think it's all about the money. I keep trying to tell you, trust me. (Most assuredly is not. Fannie Mae, Sallie Mae, she visits me on a regular). Can you chat and tell folks that, and it's really the love of wanting to see that next person get better. Right? And understanding that is, you know what, I wasn't there. I wasn't able to maybe make the steps I wanted to. It's like for my mom. Right? But maybe I can do for someone else. Right. And I, I'm, you know, I'm totally feeling that because I remember being a second year medical student and getting a phone call that my father was in the hospital and again, I'm a second year medical student. I didn't even know my dad had like medical problems. But you know, that's a whole another discussion. They don't, you know, patient guys don't like to talk about nothing. Right? And you know, subsequently from that he passed away and I said, you know what, there's no way that I'm not going to let people know, like, hey I only, I’m physician but I can't help you right from that day forth, I just kind of took that man once again, thank you for kind of taking your mantle and kind of really running with it. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord It is what I was called to do. I feel like knowledge is power and my angelus says, when you know better, you do better. And my goal is to make it so that people know better so they can do better. Dr. Berry: I love it. So the topic at hand today is endometriosis. And I could tell you from a, I'll be honest, I'm an internist. I take care of patients than I used to take care of patients outpatient where I knew a little bit about it. But once I went inside the hospital, you know, my knowledge of it was very, very weak. Right? So I know that again in March where it's actually National Endometriosis Month, right? So any disease process that gets a whole month is one that I feel like the Lunch and Learn community needs to know. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord So I happily, I will tell you about endometriosis. So before I can tell you what it is, allowing me to describe what's normal. First told you I'm a big fan of that Geek and women who become their menstrual cycles every month. The body attempts to get itself ready for the possibility of pregnancy. So I like to describe it as your brain calls her ovaries and says, hey girl, we're trying to get pregnant this month. Under the influence of your brain. Your ovaries make estrogen and progesterone, which causes the lining of your uterus to get nice and thick and fluffy, and it causes you to ovulate. The thickness of this lining. This thing happens every single month where every month we get nice and thick and fluffy, so we actually do get pregnant. There's a nice and nourishing space for a fertilized egg to implant and grow. If you don't get pregnant, that lining dies and peels off. And that peel, that lining is actually your menstrual blood, and so if you don't get pregnant, it starts all over again. Better luck next month. Maybe it'll work out next month. Exactly. Just like we bleed out of our uteruses and out of our vaginas and owns or whatever, you know, products you used. There's also something called the theory of retrograde flow where we actually need backwards too. So if you imagine that this uterus has like this cavity on the inside, and whenever I talked about my lives, whenever I do them, I use my face as the uterus and I take my laps and I separate and pull them up to the side and said this is the fallopian tubes. You bleed backwards into the uterus are actually from the uterus into the fallopian tubes and into the pelvis. You know, this is where it's an issue and some of us, that tissue, that lining, endometrial lining, the supposed to regenerate itself every month. Some of that tissue takes residents actually in your pelvis and your abdomen and so come next cycle, the tissue does what it does and it sickens to try and make a lining where it is, but it's in the wrong place. Yes, exactly right. Right. So you've got this out of bounds, bleeding going on, which triggers inflammation. Kind of like if you hit your elbow, you hit your knee and it swelled up. Right. Nice. And is sore. Your body responds to this perceived injury and your immune system kicks in and gets involved. And this is where scarring happens. So what is endometriosis is when you have your period in places other than in your uterus. And these endometrial cells, once they get access to your pelvis, they can then travel to other places and get access to your blood vessels and your root system and go outside your covas, to other places. So it is primarily a disease of your pelvis, but because they don't have any limitations and they don't know down, they can go other places too. Dr. Berry: So once that I retrograde bleeding happens. There's really like, oh all fair in love and war pretty much. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Yes. For some of us, we all do it. Not all of us, we all have this, this retrograde flow, but not all of us have tissue that are like boundaries. I don't know things like no boundaries. And so there's a, there's a thought that there's a genetic predisposition where there's a subset of people who have tissue that decides, Oh yeah, I'm going to be a topic, I'm going to grow wherever it is I wanted to go. Maybe, maybe it's like living in a large city, you need to get to some places not so highly populated. So you decide, a lot of people live like on the pelvic. The actual prevalence of endometriosis is not exactly known. So they say that you see it in between 25 to 38% of adolescents that have chronic pelvic pain and in 10 to 15% of women that are reproductive age. And so there's a substance and we talk about this theory of retrograde flow and then there's also a thought process to or told you big baggy claim. I apologize. I put disclaimer on it. Dr. Berry: We trust. We're just, we're all here for this. I'm sitting there, I'm listening. I'm like, okay. Okay. All right. All right. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Cool beans. So from an embryo logic perspective, I know you remember, you don't tucked it back in the rule that dig somewhere because it doesn't serve you anymore. But those of us who are women, when we actually go about being formed in our mother's womb, we have got a fallopian tube and a uterus and another fallopian tube and a uterus. And what happens is these two halves come together to make a hole. The center hollows out. And you've got, if you're lucky, you have one normal functional cavity. There's a subset of people who have what are called Mullerian anomalies where the two little pieces and uterus don't get together where they're supposed to. It doesn't hollow out the center and become one. And so these people are also a set up for endometriosis because they have topic endometrial tissue that ends up in other places. And so about 40% of these children that have these genital check defects will have issues with individuals. As they say, 50% of women that have infertility's had endometriosis and 70% of women and adolescents that have pelvic pain actually have endometriosis. Dr. Berry: And because we don't know the true figures, do you feel like the figures maybe higher than what we're even picking up? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord I would say so because unfortunately it takes about nine years to diagnose endometriosis because it's a disease of exclusion. And so when people present, so you have a patient that will come and see you in and they've got these vague multitude of symptoms. So like in women in grownups, people who are not adolescents and adolescents have defined 10 to 19 years old. So reproductive age women, you can have a lady that comes to see you with a complaint of pelvic pain either with her periods or with sex. And so if it's pelvic pain with her periods and call a dysmenorrhea, which is this dull crampy pelvic pain, that might start about two days before your cycle starts last. The entire length of cycle might occur a couple of days afterwards. Or if it's chronic, we're, it's been present for more than six months. It can be dull or throbbing or sharp or even in one of my patients, she has a burning sensation every month on her cycle shows up. She's got a spot in her left lower quadrant or her anterior abdominal wall where it's like a hot poker. That's how hers that she has pain all the time, but when her period's shows up, it just burns in this one little spot. So that's what cycle you're paying with your period. If you have pain with sex, you will have patients that have complaints of pain with penetration, particularly deep penetration, and so when you go see your Ob-Gyn, one of the ways that you can kind of mimic this is the thought is when you get these endometrial implants in such a personal space, you can get these. It starts off as a microscopic disease and you can get nodules or uterus has got this support system inside our pelvis is kind of like the ladies who wear bras, kind of like a bra strap. So you've got the same call, uterine staples that supported on the inside of your pelvis. You can take your fingers in a lady who has endometriosis, put them in the back part of her vagina, separate them like a peace sign and stroke and practically make her leap off the table because she has nodular implants in the back. So you can simulate this, this pain with sex when you stroke on these easier to cycles on the back issues that nodules implanted inside. Ladies who present with infertility and so infertility technically is defined is a chick, is less than 35 years old, has been trying for a year to have, has been having regular sex for a year and trying to get pregnant and hasn't. If you're over 35 is six months essentially, but they say the 30 to 50% of women who have infertility had endometriosis. If you have a lady that presents and she has an incidental finding on ultrasound which has got some pain and you do an ultrasound, she's got a mass on her ovaries, there's a particular. Endometriosis implants can actually implant anywhere inside your pelvis, on your bow, on your bladder, inside the wall of the uterus to, and I'll come back to that one. And inside the ovary you can get what it called Endometrioma where when you look at them on an ultrasound where essentially the equivalent of blood clots inside the ovary, a lady that's got an ovarian mass and is an Endometrioma, if you have a high index of suspicion that she has endometriosis, you know, also present in ladies and have bladder issues. Like if you have a feeling like when you do not have a UTI but you feel like you go into the bathroom all the time or you feel like you've got to go right now or you have pain when you go to the bathroom. That could be a sign of endometrial implants in your bladder. If you have bowel issues where you have issues with diarrhea or waxing and waning diarrhea and constipation or pain when you desiccate or colicky bow, that can be a sign of endometrial implants in your bow. There is a version of endometriosis called adenomyosis. Which is what Actually Gabrielle Union had. Heavy menstrual bleeding is is a possible sign of endometriosis and by heavy menstrual bleeding. Allow me to clarify. A regular period is supposed to be no more than 80 cc's so in simple terms in an English Dr. Berry: Talk to the men. I hear. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Right. I'm about to say so. A normal period is for hotel bottles of lotion. That’s 2.7 fluid ounces or it's about a third cup. That Mixing Cup that you have in the kitchen when you make us up on one third cup size, that's ATC seats. Anybody who has more than that and some of the patients that don't have had that have had heavy menstrual bleeding, they making crosses and ease and the underpants they've got multiple two, three second. I'm like mattresses. Or they're use tampons. If you can use a super plus tampon and that thing falls out in an hour or two you have heavy menstrual bleeding. For Gabrielle Union. When she was talking about her fertility struggles, what she suggested was that she was in it to her doctor with heavy menstrual bleeding. Traditionally put her on OCP is birth control pills in order to be able to regulate her flow. She subsequently was found after having her struggles with fertility so she could, she had gone through some ivs cycles. She got pregnant a couple of, actually, she’s pregnant more than a couple of times. I think she suggested maybe nine times. She got pregnant, something along those lines, seven to nine times. But with her, she has endometriosis in the walls of her uterus. And so you've got this glandular tissue that's supposed to do right and be nice and fluffy like a comfort in the winter time for this egg that's on fertilizer on the wall. But it has a place where it's supposed to be. It's only supposed to be on the lining of the inside of the shoe is not deep with them. A muscle for people who have the endometriosis inside the wall of the uterus or the Adenomyosis. They actually have bleeding that occurs within the muscle itself. And this leads to inflammation and issues with fertilization and implantation and being able to carry a pregnancy. So again, heavy menstrual bleeding was also a sign as well as irregular menstrual bleeding. Endometriosis can also make itself manifest in the form of low back pain or chronic fatigue. This is why it's so nondescript and it takes forever to diagnose. Dr. Berry: That’s I think about. Nine years? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Nine years. Yeah. In adolescence, which is that group between ages 10 to 19 and there had been some documented cases of little girls who didn't have Mullerian anomalies I talked about what you just didn't come together. Right. They had the babies that have been documented to have endometriosis as young as eight and a half years old. Those little girls will have symptoms that are, that can be cyclic, like only a time with your pain and not having anything to do a period. But they can get pain that gives worsening and more severe when they actually start having periods and they can have rectal pain, they can have constipation, they can have pain with defecation when they go to the bathroom associated with their cycle. Rectal bleeding, pain with urination, and even blood in the urine or that need to go right now and so is so nondescript. You can see how a physician would run through a litany of tests before finally getting to the point where you even considered endometriosis at all. Dr. Berry: Nine year seems so long. (It is). Should it not be like more ahead of the line or do you really have to kind of rule out some big stuff first before you can say like, okay, let me let's think about endometriosis inside of them. No, cross my t's of everything else. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord So I think that because it was a diagnosis of exclusion for the longest time to truly diagnose it, you need a tissue staff and so the thought process, (Tissue it's in the muscle. How do you get, wow, okay). Right and endometriosis, you only get, if you have a uterus of the path lab, that's how you diagnose that otherwise is I take you to the operating room. I do a diagnostic laparoscopy where I poke a hole inside your belly button, do you up the carbon dioxide, took another two holes inside your belly in order to be able to get camera inside there and some graspers to move around and look to see if I can see signs of disease. And it's not four stages to what you could have minimal disease, which is microscopic, and you don't see nothing to stage four disease where you have everything stuck like chuck on the inside. But ideally if you get to the point where you have to do laparoscopy, then you go inside and you biopsy this different parts of the pelvic sidewall underneath the uterus cycles. If it's on the ovary where ever you see there'll be, sometimes it looks chocolate, sometimes it looks white, and so any abnormalities you see you're biopsying them in order to be able to confirm the presence of disease and that's part of it. A lot of us who are conservative would want to try. I think old school thought was if you had endometriosis, let me try all these other things to make sure it's not that before I'd used last resort and take you to the operating room. (Which is operating room. When I talked to some people and say operating room, what? ). Exactly and yes, just when you think about that, if at any time you poke a hole inside anybody, anytime you performed surgery, there's a risk of it. It’s a disease thereafter and so it's a risk versus benefits kind of thing. But I think that the thought process, I think more people are becoming more aware about how much of a big deal this is. Because you think about how often do when you were seeing patients that were women, you joked that you got put out of the room all the time, that it's a comfort level that's got to exist between you and your physician and I'm sure you've seen the commercials talking about the meds and the chick the study have had endometriosis. When people don't feel comfortable talking about what's going on with their period, how much they bleed. Like you'd be surprised the number of women that have gotten Menorrhagia or heavy menstrual bleeding where they practically write their name on the floor in blood and cursing every time their period shows up and they think it's normal and they ask anybody about anything. Dr. Berry: Wow. Have you have trouble in the past and tried to even pull that type of information out of your patients? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord You know, I think for me I'm fortunate in that I laugh and joke with my patients and then because I have also had issues with Menorrhagia like so black people are real good at making fibroids. Sidebar, I have a fibroid. Uterus is about the size of a 12 week pregnancy. And as a consequence, I think God has got a funny sense of humor cause at the Ob-Gyn, if somebody thinks that I have experienced it, I can relate to with my patients. And having been one of those chicks that has been a Menorrhagia without, not that people want to know what my contraceptive option is, but I use a Mirena IUD in order to control my Menorrhagia. Without my Mirena IUD, I can use a super plus tampon and it falls out every two hours. And I could write my name on the floor of blood curse using a regular tampon. Using a regular tampon, about Mirena. I don’t know what that was. And so I use humor in what are the bridge the gap in order to be able to ask those kinds of questions. So tell me about your menstrual cycle. How long does it last? What products do you use, how often do you change them? Because a large number of these people who have, who should have hemoglobin hematocrit of six. They eyeball rolling because they believe, they think that's absolutely normal. They think that's absolutely normal. And then because it's, it's your period and you're not comfortable talking about that stuff anyway. It's a don't ask, don't tell, unless you have the kind of relationship with your physician where you feel like you can talk about. Dr. Berry: Can you talk about it and if you can't, if I want to say you can't take their relationship isn't there to talk to it with your OB, you definitely not talking to the hospitalist. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Of course not. If the person see it on the bottom, you can to the physician. Why talk to people that you are not close? Exactly. Dr. Berry: Okay. All right. All right. So let's see. So you mentioned liking me and I told you I was going to get some learning today. I already let her know, oh we're going to do some learning today. Cause again this is, I'm taking those right along, which I'll be going again. I've experienced in taking care of patients with this disorder. But of course you know me, I'm referring out to the OB clinic when I, well I think is what you got. Go ahead. See my OB friends, see if that's the case. So definitely. Wow. Okay. So what about, so we talked about it. I, I hear somebody, you know, some of the signs and symptoms kind of really associated with it. Now, is there anything that these patients are doing that may have attributed to getting any endometriosis? I mean because I guess they have to have a menstrual cycle, right? So it's not all about the retrograde bleeding, but is there… Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Well in theory, remember there are some babies eight and a half and haven't had periods that have issues with the document in endometriosis. Wow. The vast majority of us have this menstrual, heavy menstrual cycle related signs and symptoms. We were, we're cycling and we've got this retrograde flow, but you don't necessarily have to have a period. You can have these, these girls. So when you're talking about risk factors for it in the materials, as we talked again about the, the developmental conditions that predispose you to basically having your belly tampered with endometrial tissue. We talked also about the fact that there are some people who are believed to have the genetic predisposition. So if you have a first degree relative that has endometriosis and by first degree relative is either your mom or your sister or your children, if you have a first degree relative that has endometriosis, you have an increased likelihood of having it too. And there's a thought process that, and these people who have a genetic predisposition for endometriosis, there's something about the way their cells signal that they don't respect boundaries and go from one place to another. Like tutors, I'm going to the pelvic. And then there's also a thought to that if you started your period early, like 10 or less that you're an increased risk for endometriosis. And then it has unfortunately has awful side effects too. Awful side effects. Dr. Berry: Now are, those are the, especially because we would kind of lean on, they're kind of starting to period early. So of course, you know, we're talking about like kids and then obviously this is an issue that a dose deal with as well. But I'm always kind of fascinated, especially as I'm an internist, I really only see 18 and up, you know, as an OB, you know, you're seeing all kinds of ranges. Do the complications associated with it? Like are they much worse off in the child than adult or is it still kind of tight? I gets bad either way. Like we know the rectal bleeding, we know the urinated, we know all this. But like if you, if you had to I guess choose, right? Like when would you rather start dealing with these problems? Would you rather deal with it as you know, in, in the younger age or more of that old, they're 35 40? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Well, oh, sorry. That's interesting. Thank you for reminding me. I forgot about that. One might tell you a little sidebar about that one. So in theory with children, the thought process is again, 40 days, 40% of adolescents with general tract anomalies, 50% of them have issues with infertility and 70% of women and adolescents with pelvic pain, it's got it. But the thought is that you've got longer in, would it be repetitive or your belly with these things? And so as a child, outside of the symptoms that we discussed beforehand, okay, the issue is think about all the years particularly undiagnosed, that you've got your belly, your abdomen, and your pelvis, your bowel, your bladder being peppered by these implants inside your personal space that then may not reflect or respect boundaries. Hop a ride on your vasculature or in your lymph system and go to other places. You can actually have endometriosis implants in your chest. Dr. Berry: The chest wall? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Yes, you can actually, it's this thing with, with so you know, cells and how they're supposed to respect boundaries and go to confluence and owning by protein signaling. Endometriosis implants can end up inside your lungs. You can actually get a collapsed lung as a consequence of endometrial implants. You can actually have Hemolysis when you cough blood for people don't know where that is. Yes. Or you can actually have, what is the other one is there's the collapsed lung, this coughing up of blood. And there's one other, I'm gonna circle back. When you talked about the difference between adults and children from the standpoint of what it is they have, you think about you have longer to be able to develop the side effects which are infertility. And if he's a disease which distorts the tubes and the ovaries, you have inflammation which is going to cause scarring and you've got pain and so you've got a longer time in order to be able to do this. So yeah, it can give you chest pain, collapsed lung, a blood in the lungs and coughing up few months. And then also with endometriosis, which I'm a sidebar in people who don't have one, you talked about the difference between adult versus children. You can be a perfectly normal lady who went to go have a C section. And as a consequence of having a c section because the uterine lining was disrupted, you can get into endometriosis impulse anywhere along that incision line. So where when I do C section, so we, after the scan we cut that we cut through the Fascia, separate the muscles cut. So the organs are online with this peritoneum is what he's got his own thought casing. Your bladder sits on top of your uterus and there's this thing called the physical uterine peritoneum that you cut your, put some letter out of the way you cut inside the uterus, you deliver the humans, you close uterus one layer and then folded back on itself. You can get into the endometriosis implants from the opening of that uterus being out in the abdomen, in the Fascia, in the anterior abdominal wall, and in the incision site. In my residency program, we had a lady who had a complaints of pain every single time her periods showed up. And actually when we imaged her, you found what looked like a small little one meter hole and it was actually much larger when you got inside her and started dissecting out where it could be. Endometrial lining had implanted in her incision and every single time she had a period it would bleed in her anterior wall and that incision site. I had a lady who when she was a child she had, I can't remember what her particular condition was. She had some kind of condition where she ended up having anomalies with her legs. One was rotated backwards, the other was rotated in a strange way and so she ended up having to have one of an amputated and was a compromise. Actually had that, she had booked a mandated bilateral amputees and there was something going on with her belly when she had some kind of surgery or maybe there was a challenge or something that was playing. She presented with complaints of belly button pain at one point in time and on further inquiry when you talked to her, she said that she could milk her belly button around the time of her period, showed up and get a round discharge to come out. And sure enough she had endometrial implants in her belly wall were when she started cycling because she had surgery when she was a child. It was enough to disrupt stuff and literally she blown through her interior wall where there was a defect of a wall with the implants would bleed right inside there. She'd get a little know what’s inside. Another chick who came to office, same kind of thing, complaints of just barely walk. She had an endometrial coma in her anterior wall as well. And so you, you go to the treatment modalities for endometriosis cause she's got endometriosis. And then outside of what it does from a standpoint of being a child and you having all this time to pepper your belly and being able to get it being a normal chick who just had a c section or a disruption in the lining of the uterus. Now you have it causes all kinds of pregnancy complications. We causes miscarriage, increased restricts topic pregnancy. You can get bleeding during pregnancy and hemorrhage afterwards sets you up for Preeclampsia. You can have a Placenta Previa where ideally placement of the placenta is hanging from the top of the readers like a chandelier. It increases your risk for a preview where it covers the opening of your cervic for a c section, such your upper preterm labor and delivery, a c section and low birth weight babies. So it's just all unpleasant. (Oh Wow. Okay). And the thought is that because you have got these ectopic implants, this endometrial tissue inside your pelvis within triggers an inflammatory response. As women when we get pregnant. So we have relations, the sperm travels up of vagina for the rest of, it's through our uterus, Fallopian to define the egg, fertilizes the egg, and then the Fallopian tube pulls the egg, desperate lives towards itself. And then in the tube you got these hairs, these silly or that kind of push the egg through the tube and into the wall of the uterus. It is a thought process that with people who have endometriosis, that'd be inflammatory. Mediators are chemicals and their pelvis are so high that it's toxic to sperm. And that's part of the compromise with your fertility too, that this from getting sad then go. Dr. Berry: It's just not the place for me. Right? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord No, I can't work on these conditions. I cannot be. So, no, it's crazy. Dr. Berry: That's and I guess the question is like, especially in your stance, like how, what's the likelihood that you're going to, you know, you see a young who is complaining of a lot of these issues and say, you know what, let me let, let's open you up and see. Right? Like let's do a laparotomy, right? Like is that, does that also ate into it as well that you know maybe the surgeons aren't likely to open them up to check because of like I don't want to put a surgeon. I don't want to put a kid through that. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord And you think about the fact that if it's a child, some of us are comfortable with adolescents, some of us are not. There is a branch of gynecology that is specific to pediatrics and so you think about asking about whether or not people are even listening to what the complaints are. How many people with a child who complains of having constipation would ever think that has endometriosis and that you just eat too much junk or you need to drink some more water. I think that there's such a vague complaints that unless the child has been complaining about them the entire time and you've done a complete workup and I can't tell you the number of times where we'd endometriosis, it comes down to the gastroenterologist and the Ob-Gyn they've been sent and would it be able to get a colonoscopy in order to be able to be assessed to see what's going on with this presumed abdominal pain that once they ruled them not that is not GI in origin. Then it becomes, well the only other thing you got left down there is your reproductive organs. So it's either your guts or your uterus, which is where the attachments to it. Dr. Berry: I'm scared, scared for you. I don't have any of those issues with it being clearly, clearly this is why the disease process like this needs whole month. Right? Because it average nine years to like that, we got to move this out, right? We got to move this up quickly. That should not be the case. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for you. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord I think things are getting better. Again, we used to treat it like it was a zebra and you go through everything before you, and even from the same point of you ask about what's the like of somebody performing surgery. So ideally the founder to do laparoscopic surgery, but you think about people who manage conservatively, they would put you on everything first. Exactly. Birth control down to see what exactly you would. You would go through all the other conservative options before definitively going to surgery and, and the data suggests that even if you do surgery alone and that’s it, there are people who have defended over get relief with surgery, particularly if you have adhesions where you imagine that you've got with a good example of an adhesions? Where you have an abnormal connection of one thing to another. Maybe like imagine a ribbon and not inside your uterus but still if you had a connection between your uterus and your bowel or your uterus was stuck to your anterior abdominal wall because this inflammation causes this scarring and this is music disease that take place. If you want surgery, you just… Dr. Berry: Almost like a fly trap where like it's like it's stuck to that. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Yes. That’s a good analogy. Yes. Minus the dead flies. Exactly. Well you have things sticking from one point to another and it causes for the people who have chronic pelvic pain and have that disease, just going to the bathroom causes them problems. If they have issues with constipation and near bowel is stuck to the anterior abdominal wall or stuck to their uterus. A contorted in some way, shape or form. Can you think about how though the bow has got this motion where kind of squeezes fecal matter from one point to another? Just being constipated is enough to cause you wicked pain. And so people who have chronic pelvic pain secondary to disease, secondary to endometriosis, have to do things to alter their lifestyle to make it so the consistency of their stool is more like saucers. So the bowel doesn't get over distended and pissed off and cause pain. Dr. Berry: Wow. So we didn't scared Lunch and Learn community enough. They want to hear now. Like all right, you scared us. We believe you. We notice issue. Please tell me how to treat it or at least prevent it, right? Because I guess that's a two part question, right? Is this a way? Again, little kids is getting even before there, you know, they're menstruating, right? Is there an actual way that you could do anything about this? And if there is like how do I treat it? Like I, I know we've mentioned a little bit about the oral contraceptives, which again, I'm an internist. I don't know none of those things. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Oh that's hilarious. So I'm trying to be really, really good. But all I could hear you say…Nope, and I don't do that. So treatment options and prevention, unfortunately at this point, because we understand its mechanism of action, but we don't really understand what causes it. So because we don't really understand what causes it, we've seen the clusters of people that look like this and clusters of people that look like that, we don't know how to prevent it. And so the thought now is with treatment options, there are a couple. They thought ideally as you want to decrease your inflammation, and initially I didn't mean to scare anyone. Knowledge is power. I wouldn’t scaring anybody at all. Dr. Berry: Lunch and Learn community knows that you know, we're going to talk about a lot of disease courses. That you know what, if you're not, if it's not taken care of, it can cause a lot of problems. Yes, yes. Yeah. Take care of the problem. If you don't know that the problem is out there. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord This is true. You're absolutely correct. And so with treatment, so ideally, first line is nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories, Ibuprofen and Naproxen. Back in the day we used to give people for chronic pelvic pain narcotics. And unfortunately we turned them into crack heads. So ideally the goal is to stay away from opioids. You want to do what you can do to increase, decrease, I'm sorry, inflammation. That's first one. Second is you use hormones. So you either have a couple of choices. You can either use birth control for non-birth control reasons. If you're not sexually active and you just have wicked pain or you get a two for trying to decrease your pain and make it said that you don't get any unplanned babies. The thought as you can use birth control pills, you can use injectable, which would be depot, you can use the implant, which is the next one on the ring. Do you either use them continuously when you get on a method and you stay on a method or use it cyclically in order to be able to make them. Dr. Berry: And from a, you know, from a non OB, I'll even talk about the guy on the guy's perspective, right? When y'all take birth control pills, so that it bleed less? So, yeah. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord So yes. Ok I got you. Thank you for asking. In my case, I can write my name on the floor in blood and curse if mine is definitely about, not having or bleeding less. And so earlier when we talked before about how the brain calls the ovaries and tells the ovaries, we tried to have a baby and the ovaries go about thickening of the lining of the uterus and making it so you ovulate. Your body doesn't care how the hormones are made. You can either make them or take them. Your body just wants them to be present. And so the thought with the use of birth control pills or contraception, depending on which condom use is to thin the lining of the uterus. So you don't have a nice fluffy learning for an egg to implant. And some of them that modalities actually shut your ovaries down so you don't ovulate. In this case, the goal is to be able to thin the lining of the uterus and if you're using it continuously to shut down those ovaries so that that you don't have that tissue, that's another places. It's getting nice and thick and then after it gets nice and thick, it dies and you've got all this inflammation. You're trying to stop that process. Just shut it down. Thank you very much. Where you, you're in these other locations. Yes. Where you're living, where you've traveled abroad with this issue… Dr. Berry: We trying to starve those areas off. (That is exactly right). All right. All right guys, trust me guys. I got, y'all are here. I know. This is a woman's cell phone. Trust me. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Yes. From the standpoint of endometriosis, the goal is to starve that estrogen sensitive tissue that sitting out in the periphery. So you can either use hormones in the form of birth control or they're another batch of medicines you can use called GNRH agonist. I'm not going to have moment over this cause this term too much. But old school, there was a medicine called Lupron, which was a shot that you could get. New school, is this the one that you've seen on TV called Orilissa. They're both GRNH agonist and what they do is they cause the equivalent of a medical menopause. They shut you down, allow the implants to starve and die. But they can only be used short term, like the Orilissa. Depending on what your symptoms off, you can only use a six months to 24 months. And the same with Lupron because there's some side effects that go with it because it puts you into a medical menopause. It can actually decrease your bone mineral density and make it like a little old lady. The snap. Exactly. So those are treatments and if you do hormones that thought as if you do hormones, you do insets to so hormones and insets. And the goal was if you use the hormones when the same one of the contraception, the goal is to trick your body into this sort of false pregnancy state. Shut down your ovaries and make the implants die or go into a coma and decrease that inflammation. The next option would be surgery. Like we talked about laparoscopic. Laparoscopic surgery where you fill the belly up with carbon dioxide, drop the camera on the inside, put in some graspers in order to move things around. See if you can find some tissue to biopsy to confirm the diagnosis. If there adhesions, you disconnect those adhesions. And then if there are lesions that you can see, you do what's called ablation, you literally go and you burn these adhesions on the inside of the belly. Now, the lovely thing about surgery, but the bad thing about surgery is that anytime you have surgery, God makes all of our organs have their own organ case to them. Even your belly, it's got aligning cause like the inside of your mouth, anytime you pop inside somebody's belly, you risk the possibility of causing them adhesions as a consequence of the surgery. And if the surgery alone… Dr. Berry: With a c section? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Yes. Well, the endometriosis actually tracks. So all of these layers that you put together, it actually tracks into all of these. So imagine anywhere your nice touch, your skin fat Fascia, peritoneum, the endometrial cells can be in any of that line. From the inside of the uterus all the way out from the incision site in the uterus to the peritoneum, to the Fascia and the muscle wall in the back, all the way through in the skin itself, all the way through. And the lady I was talking about in residency, she had a tiny little lesion in her skin. But when you went to go dissect this thing out, it was huge. And it was in her Fascia. So it was like a mountain top. You just saw the top of the mountain. And when he got up on the news, right, you saw the rest of this mountain down inside, they were like icebergs. Now that…so. Dr. Berry: I'm not gonna lie, I might not wish endometriosis as my enemy. That's what I'm hearing. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord It’s not a pretty thing to have at all. And the problem with surgery is that if you just do surgery here within a year, you've got symptoms that returned. Yeah, definitive treatment for endometriosis once you have done having your baby. So ideally for ladies who are reproductive age, the goal is to shut you down so you're ready to get pregnant, you get pregnant, then we shut it back down again. And then when you're done, depending on the severity of your disease process, some people respond well to hormones, some people don't. And definitive treatment for endometriosis is removing your uterus, tubes and ovaries being without hormone for a period of time to allow the implants to die off. And then restarting the hormones afterwards because you really need to be on hormones. Still menopause up in this country and average age is 52 otherwise you look like a man about to blood vessels and you snap crackle, pop in, all kinds of stuff. So outside of that, there's a thought process that there are some alternative medicine options that may or may not work. Now traditional data says it doesn't work. But you have to bear in mind that we are unique individuals. We have bio individuality. And so what works for one person may not work for somebody else but may work for the person that's using it. So this on is that acupuncture, herbal remedies and homeopathic May. I worked for some people outside of that. From the standpoint of you asked if there's anything you can do to prevent it. No. The thought process is to try and make yourself as healthy as you can be and to have coping mechanisms for the pain. So exercise. Dr. Berry: Health wise, you're talking about food or? Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Right. We talking about food. We talking about balanced diet with very little processed food in it. We thought, I'm like getting enough sleep because you feel yourself when you sleep at night. We're talking about exercise and what it be able to decrease inflammation and meditation in order to be able to help cope with the pain. There's also in the DDA goes a suggestion to they're people who have endometriosis are deficient in vitamin D and so when we talk about how this tissue response and how we can say, Oh, you have to say the curb, but I'm going to go outside the boundaries and do other stuff. And these people who have endometriosis and are found to have vitamin D deficiencies. Folks believe this supplementation of vitamin D you might make a difference in any woman who is of reproductive age needs 800 international units of vitamin D a Day. Anyway, some of US Brown people don't spend a whole lot of time in the sun and don't generate the vitamin D and I'll give you an example. A lot of people who drink milk, they get milk and eat cheese. Drink milk and eat cheese. They get all the calcium and vitamins they need, I don't drink milk because I'm lactose intolerant. The last time I had my labs on, I'll tell you my vitamin D level with 17. I'm the surprised Dr. Berry laughing at me. Normal is considered to be normal to be 30 and in Vagina land as the OB Gyn. We lasted to be around 6. And so vitamin comes supplement outside of of finding that people who have endometriosis are deficient in vitamin D. There's also a thought process that vitamin D and depression have a role with deficiencies in vitamin D and colon cancer. There are deficiencies in vitamin D, so just bone up on your vitamin D. Dr. Berry: Get your Vitamin D. Right. Like I say that again. I kind of scoffed at first. I was like, what is this little thing had his own month? This ain't heart disease. This ain't, you know, verbally like, okay, all right. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord It affects quality of life. Talked about seriousness of disease. The reality is the endometriosis isn't going to kill anybody at all. There's a thought process that when I talked earlier about the ovarian masses that you can get the Endometriomas. The endometrial tissue that invades into the ovary and obviously takes residents can actually give you so with ladies who held a Sidebar, I'm making a correlation. I apologize, I coming back. For the Ovarian Syndrome who don't have regular menstrual cycles are at increased risk range and mutual cancer because at lining become can become atypical and find it. That same kind of thing can happen in the ovary where the endometrial tissue that is implanted in the ovary this now cause this chocolate fiscal of blood, which is the endometriomas. He can take on abnormal qualities just like the lining of the uterus when it is a typical he ladies are at PCOS. They haven't found words actually become for lung cancer, but it has the capability to change cause it's inter-mutual tissue crazy stuff. Right. The bad thing about endometriosis is, like I said, if you, if you have it, it's everything. Unfortunately it can cause infertility. It can dictate whether or not you can move your house and function without pain. The patients that I have had that have had chronic pelvic pain secondary to endometriosis sometimes have to be selective about the kind of jobs that they take. Because if you have a pain syndrome that's present, say 21 days out of the month where you might have eight had a 10 pound most days. But maybe you get a break in on some other days, you've got five out of 10 pain interferes with your ability to be able to live. If you can’t get up to bed and get functioning because your belly is his feels like his demonically possessed and it's telling you all kinds of things from a pain standpoint and you can't function. Pain was, and how can you hold a decent job? There are people who, because they have issues with endometriosis and the pelvic pain is exacerbated when they have relations. If you are single and not all of you in an intimate relationship, you have a difficulty with engaging in relationships and if you're married, it can interfere with your ability to be able to have an intimate relationship with your spouse. And then that over time leads to depression because is a chronic pain syndrome. Intimacy is a huge part of having relations or we're having a relationship and imagine not being able to be intimately associated with the person that you've vowed to spend the rest of your life with because it hurts so bad you can't stand it, but it's like having a nails in the back of your personal space and so you'd much rather that than have an intimate relationship. Dr. Berry: Wow. Okay. All right. You and Endometriosis. Before we let you go. Right. I got a couple more questions are, you know, but more on a, on a lighter note, right. Because endometriosis is scary. Again, I might have to tell my residents like hey, that patient who comes in for this vague abdominal pain. We might've needed to move it up a couple notches on the differential. Now can you talk about how what you do can help women take just take better control? Not necessarily just for this show, but it's just in general. Right? And this is a question I like to ask. I just want to, and I want to kind of get my guesses thoughts on like what do they do to help people empower, especially in your world, women empower themselves for better health. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Sure. So what I like to do with all of my encounters be an individually as a patient, either in the hospital or in coaching or when I was in private practice in private practice is I encouraged them to be their own healthcare advocate. When you're looking for a physician, the purpose is to find somebody that you can partner with, with the ultimate goal of optimizing your health. Medicine is no different than customer service. It actually is like customer services for women. For those of us who like to drop some coins every now and then in places like say Nordstrom. Nordstrom is pricey as all get out, but the one thing that you can bank on with Nordstrom is they have customer service on luck. You know, they're rumored to have taken back a tire from somebody who said that they bought it there even though they don't feel tight. Medicine is no different than that. If you don't have a relationship with someone who listens to you and is genuinely vested in you being successful, you being healthy and your money someplace else, this also puts the onus of your health care on you. So I think when I think about my patients and they come and they talk to me, they say that nobody has listened to them and I think that's crucial. I think that you have to bear in mind that however old you are, you have had that body and know how that body works for however many years God has allowed you to live on the face of the earth. Dr. Berry: No one gonna knows better than you. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Right. You are your own healthcare advocate. You got this on lock. If you go see somebody and you were trying to talk to them about what you're experiencing and then listen to what it is you say, go ahead and pick up and walk right on out the door and take you off your money and your insurance card with you. Because you wouldn't take bad customer service at a restaurant. You wouldn't take bad customer service in a product that you purchased. (Nope). So why would you take it with your health care, which is more important and lasting than product you going to buy, meal that you eat and pass on through it. Dr. Berry: Please tell Lunch and Learn how can they find you? Right? Because I know some people are probably energized right now. You know, and I kind of alluded to your Facebook, like give them all the ditails because I need people to be able to kind of track you. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Sure. On the sly, I'm a firm believer that food is medicine that tells the body what to do. And so I have invested in becoming a health coach. So in addition to being an Ob-Gyn, I'm a health coach. And with that said, I love answering questions that Dr. Berry's alluded to. So on Wednesday evening, 7:00 PM CST cause I'm in Texas, I do Facebook live on women's health topics and you can find me across all social media At D R A N I L A O B Gyn, that’s Doctor Anila OB Gyn. You can also find more information on my website, which is also www.drnilaobgyn.com. That's D R A N I L A O B G Y N.com. And if you tune into any of my lodge will find that I love answering questions. I think that as I alluded to earlier, my mom died because there was nobody there to advocate for her. And at 22 years old I didn't know the questions to ask. My goal as a health provider is to make it so that you know what I know. So your arm to take better care of yourself. Dr. Berry: I love it. Absolutely love it. And of course Lunch and Learn community, like always, if you're running out, you're in the car, you're driving, wherever you doing, you don't have to worry. All the, all of her information will be in the show notes. So you we will make sure and, and you really just got to watch one of her Facebook lives because she gets very animated, right? Like she really make like, okay, yeah, this one was health really is, that's why I say that, you know, you're going to be on my show because I need someone animated to educate me. A women's health to really educate y'all. So again, she is always, which she seems to be when you listen to her and you could just tell the love that's there. I like that and have everything right. You could just tell the love that is there to educate, to help you. Right? Get to where you need to be. And that's what I love about her. Right. She's absolutely amazing. Again, we're going to make sure she will be a repeat regular on this show, especially again at ya'll. Y'all ask me a lot about women's health stuff and I'd be like, I'd be like, hey they, and this, I know what I know and I know that I don't know. Once I realized I know what I don't know. That's when I get the console. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord It has been my privilege and it would most assuredly be my pleasure for wherever it is you'd like for me to talk about from vagina land cause I have it on low. Dr. Berry: All right. Again, I appreciate everything that you do for your community. Appreciate everything you do for just the world and allowing you to take your amazing talents outside of the clinic and outside of the one on one and being able to talk to the master. So again, thank you Dr. Anila for coming on the show this week. Dr. Anila Ricks-Cord Thank you so very much Dr. Berry. I appreciate it.

098 FIFM - There’s No Such Thing as Success and Failure, Only Signals

california park signals kuwait costa mesa success and failure paul paul right because paul tran

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 4, 2019 13:39

There's no such thing as success or failure when it comes to marketing, only signals that would lead you to an absolute gold mine. What’s that one thing that you can change and try to get that signal? In this episode, you'll learn how understanding and interpreting signals will help you attract more clients, increase your sales, and help your business. Whether you are making every effort in getting more leads or are just curious about how these so-called signals can impact your business, this is the podcast for you. ----- Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this. There's no such thing as success and failure only signals that and more coming up. Well, hello. I am so glad to be back with you. This is a wonderful day and a really cool story that I think is going to resonate with you. Well, so, my, one of my partners, Paul, and Mr. Paul Tran, and I went and spoke at we work we spoke we work I think I mentioned this maybe in the last podcast or one of the podcasts. But we went and we spoke at we work in Costa Mesa, California, both at Park center And Park tower which they're right next to each other. It's it's pretty hard to it's actually, I should say it was pretty hard to miss them. But I we actually did miss them when we first went there because they're so close to each other we didn't know if we were in the right one. But anyway, it was it was awesome, really interesting experience both days. So the first day, Paul, and I got up and so the way this the that the talk is structured, Paul, at least for now in this particular trial trial of these talks, Paul gives the the brunt of the presentation. He's been wanting to really break into the public speaking realm. I've been doing public speaking for a long time to include a full year of public speaking. While I was deployed in Kuwait, like literally every weekend it was doing public speaking with a given a doing some something with some kind of presentation with a military general Every weekend, it was not fun in the beginning, but afterward it became second nature is really awesome, actually. But I digress. So he really wanted to get into the public speaking realm. And with that being said, is really cool because he, he really had a lot of courage and took the opportunity to, to develop himself really by putting himself in fire, just really going through and getting trial by fire. And so the first round, the first round and structure of the presentation, he got up there did extremely well that was one thing is that he had a really good stage presence about him and did extremely well and was extremely credible. And then hot potato the mic to me in about eight or 10 minutes, and I pretty much delivered the rest of the presentation. Just improvising the entire thing. But it was cool because people seemed to really love the presentation. They loved it, even though it was winging it. So we went later on that day, we went back to his house. And we ended up restructuring the entire talk, because of just how it just wasn't structured. Well, it didn't sell well, it wasn't it was just kind of odd, just in general, but people loved it because it was really informative. And, and I in Paul Paul was really, really good. And then I, you know, I've just been doing this for a while. So the first talk was just it just worked out really well. The second talk was structured really well, but I don't know if it was delivered well on both of our ends, really, Paul, Paul really hit hit a couple great base hits in the very beginning, and really had some awesome awesome things. But it was more it wasn't really the from the comparing. When he started the first one to this one. He was was like 900 times better. And Paul, I know you listen to these. So this is some good constructive criticism because I think you were night and day better. I mean, it was so good the second round. And I think it was more of the structure of the presentation, that it just didn't lend well to the topic that we had, which the topic was how it was blessing, the blessing the growth of your business. And so everything had to be put into this blessing type of it's kind of this frame that we're trying to put people into and trying to put this presentation into. And so he, so he did a really, really well, but it was hard because because we had we were trying to get Pete credit, put the presentation into this one frame, and it just wasn't working too well. So even when I got up, it was it was just very it was awkward. It just was an awkward thing all around. Right and And so it was cool because people enjoyed it. But at the same time, they gave some good criticism, one of those things being well, we don't really know what you guys do, like, you know, you're kind of there was kind of a little bit of a pitch, hey, you can work with us and so on and toward the end, but they honestly didn't know exactly what we did. And so it just was it was, it was a better structured presentation. But But even with that structure, there was a little bit more confusion than the first one. And so it so it's interesting, because that coupled with the fact that we were waiting, you know, we're waiting, we had this questionnaire and I was we were both actually afraid to look at these questionnaires and get them back and see if there's anything negative and so on. It's just, you know, you don't want to get I don't know, it's, there's that feeling in the pit of your stomach of Oh, I don't want to look at these because someone's going to say something bad or whatever. And, meanwhile, ignoring the fact that the majority of people are say nice things, knowing that they're going to turn this in, you know. So, all that being said, threw out everything that I just said, As for this story, one thing became clear. And Paul was so good at really reframing my mind around this, and that is that, really, there's no success or failure. When it comes to these things. There's only signals. Okay? And what I mean by that, you could say that, well, if you made a ton of sales, or you got a ton of claps, or people were super happy with your presentation, that was a success. Or if people didn't like the presentation, people didn't buy people didn't do what you expected them to do. That's a failure. But in reality, in reality, that is just the market that is those are people telling you something telling you that maybe it wasn't a good fit. Maybe the structure of the presentation wasn't good. Maybe the structure of the presentation was great. Maybe maybe the maybe the venue, people are not apt to buy something right away, or sign up for something right away or meet with people right away. Whatever it is, people are giving you a signal. At that point in time, they're giving you a signal. They're telling you this works, this doesn't work. We want this, we don't want this. And that is totally fine. Even the best part about it is either signal whether it's a negative or positive will help you to push your business forward. So if p if you go and you start launching a product or you come up with a new product offering or service or something like that and people don't resonate With with the webinar that you did, or the email campaign that you did, that does not mean it's a failure. It might mean that you can't sell this particular thing directly from your email. Or people don't want to buy it off a webinar they want they want to buy it off a tele seminar or they want to buy it in person. You know, a lot of people will try to sell a high high ticket item by just putting up an online shopping cart and asking people to fork over $10,000 Well, that doesn't really work. The not all the time, but it could it depending on what, what, what industry you're in. But it's not always it's the day you're not always going to be able to do that. Right? You Some people like to meet you in person prior to forking over money. Some people don't haven't had They're mindset converted yet before, before even being able to give you money, right? Sometimes people look at what you have, and they're like, I just don't understand it. Because they don't, they don't know that they even have a problem yet. And so there's so many factors, there's so many things, so many signals that that people give you that once you interpret them once you see what they're trying to tell you because you have to, you have to be good at interpreting these signals. Once you see them, and once you look and and really ascertain what they are trying to tell you. They can be a gold mine. It could be so valuable to you and to your business. It can be an extremely profitable translation. If only you see it as data, if you see it as a signal as you see it as, as somebody trying to tell you how they want to buy from you. So what are you doing right now? What's one little thing that you can change or try put up? Maybe it's maybe it's sending direct mail to your customers, maybe it's sending email to your customers instead of direct mail. What is one thing that you can change and try to see if you're going to get the signal that you want? What's one thing that you can change and try to get the signal that you want? For me, just an example is I'm trying direct mail a lot more direct mail newsletters in the mail, like direct mail meaning in your mailbox, you will get this with goodies and goodies in sales letters and postcards and things like that. trying something that most of my market does not do. Right? Because they might be because they tried it and it doesn't work. Or it might be because they haven't tried it. Right. And so that's something that I'm going to see. And I'm going to see what the signals are. I'm going to see very quickly whether the market is telling me Yay, or nay. And it's fine. If it's an A, and it's great if it's a Yay. But even if it's a Yay, how much of a Yay, is it? Is it enough to wear to warn to continue or not? But that's how you have to look at it. This is all data. Don't take it personally. It's hard. It's scary. But don't take it personally. The more that you're able to not take it personally. The more you're able to turn this into an absolute goldmine for you, for your business and for your customers. Alright, so is Dean Soto freedom in five minutes, go check out freedom in five minutes calm And when you do you're going to see the business process scorecard you're going to see the masterclass there, get introduced to the freedom in five minutes methods so you do not have to you literally can every five minutes, you know, five minutes a day, you can outsource something so that you never have to do it again five minutes a day is all it takes. And you can literally outsource your entire company and automate your entire customer company systemized your entire company in five minutes a day. Often we see it in about 60 days or less. People are able to completely exit their business and do the things that they want to do. So anyway, Dean Soto freedom in five minutes calm and I will see you in the next freedom in five minutes episode.

Ep. 114: How to Use Public Relations With Inbound Marketing Ft. Kristen Ruby

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 28, 2019 45:11

How (and when) should you use public relations in tandem with your inbound marketing strategy? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Ruby Media Group Founder Kristin Ruby breaks down the myths surrounding PR and inbound marketing. In this conversation, she gets into detail about who should consider using PR, when to use it, how much you should expect to pay, and what kinds of results you should expect. In addition, Kristin covers the difference between PR for brand building and PR for SEO, as well as the difference between reactive and proactive PR. There's lots of practical information here for any marketers who has ever considered using PR as part of their strategy. Highlights from my conversation with Kristin include: Kris is a PR specialist, which is different than a media relations specialist. PR can encompass anything in the communications plan and marketing plan whereas media relations is specifically about interaction with the media. PR is a good strategy for any business that is looking to build a long term, sustainable funnel of leads, as well as to build their brand. One of the big benefits of PR is that it can contribute to building your domain authority, which is great for SEO. In terms of setting expectations for a PR engagement, Kristin says that the results you can get are very dependent upon the news cycle and what journalists are interested in covering. Kristin says you should expect to commit to working with your PR firm at least one hour each day. There's a difference between reactive and proactive PR. Kristin specializes in reactive PR, which entails responding to reporters' requests for sources, as opposed to proactive PR, which she characterizes as going out to the media and spamming them with unsolicited pitches. When it comes to PR, its important to build up on line authority and get others talking about you so that the media sees you as a credible source. For clients looking to get started with PR, Kristin recommends that they begin by publishing content that is aligned with what they are hoping to get coverage about. This can be published on their website, LinkedIn profile, etc. The cost of a PR engagement can vary widely depending upon the scope of services and the type of media coverage that you're looking for and then the size of the firm you want to work with. A reasonable range that PR services start at would be anywhere from $3,500 or $5,000 a month, but some of the larger firms could be charging $35,000 or $40,000 a month. If you plan to be on TV at all as part of your PR plan, it could be worth investing in media training as part of your PR package, as it will prepare you to be on camera. Resources from this episode: Visit the Ruby Media Group website Check out Kristin's person site Visit medicalpracticepr.com for information about PR for doctors Get Kristin's Ultimate Media Relations Guide Listen to the podcast to learn more about public relations and how you can use it as part of your larger inbound marketing strategy. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth. Today, my guest is Kristin Ruby who is the founder and CEO of Ruby Media Group. Welcome Kristin. Kristin Ruby (Guest): Hi, thank you so much for having me. Kristin and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm so happy to have you here. You are in the field of PR and we don't get to talk about PR a lot on the podcast so I'm really excited to dig into it with you, but before we do can you just tell my listeners a little bit more about yourself, and about your company, and what you do? About Kristin and Ruby Media Group Kristin: Sure. My company is called Ruby Media Group. I have been a practicing public relations practitioner for over a decade now. I work with clients and businesses of all sizes from small to midsize companies to even Fortune 500 companies, and particularly with a lot of medical practices and doctors as well. We assist with brand building, content creation, social media, public relations, and really help people get found online. What we're really best at is taking people of thought leadership offline and translating that online. Kathleen: Great. It's interesting. When you and I first spoke what I really liked was... My question to you was obviously this podcast is all about inbound marketing, and people have mixed opinions about where PR, public relations, fits within that mix as an inbound marketer. I think there's also a lot of misconceptions about what public relations is, especially today, like as it's evolved over time. You had some really interesting viewpoints on that, and I wanted to just actually start by having you explain what you see as what PR is, and the different uses of it, because there's obviously PR for SEO, and then there's other types of PR. Kristin: I mean, so it's a really interesting question. To start with I think there's a difference between PR and media relations, so I want to also explain that to your listeners. PR can encompass anything in the communications plan and marketing plan whereas media relations is specifically about interaction with the media. To clarify, I do a lot of media relations work whereas some public relations practitioners will sort of do community outreach, and sponsorship, and a larger umbrella of what PR is. So in terms of public relations basically a publicist will help you in terms of all your interactions with the media, getting you out there, handling media inquiries, anything of that nature. When should you invest in PR? Kathleen: Okay, great. What do you see as the value of PR for the companies that invest in it? Who is it right for? When should you do it? That sort of thing. Kristin: That's a great question. PR, it really depends with what stage you're at in your business. For example, let's say you're a medical practice, and a doctor, and you've been around for 10 years, you already have a waiting list of patients, but at this point you have other goals. Maybe you want to become a paid speaker. Maybe you want to write a book, and you want a publisher, and you need a social media following for that, or maybe you're at a different level in your career where now you just want to focus on putting out educational content to reach the masses because your time is limited, and you can only see a certain amount of patients a day. For that type of practitioner I think PR is ideal, because it fits in the brand building bucket. I think if you're someone that is saying, "I need more patients in the door tomorrow, and I've just launched a practice," I would still say more traditional inbound marketing would make sense for that, including some direct marketing and advertising as well. I really think you have to evaluate are you looking for sales and leads tomorrow out of this or can you have a longer sort of sales funnel in terms of what you're doing with all of this? Kathleen: Yeah, that's a good point. I often hear about PR a lot from startups, especially B2B technology startups. There seems to be this assumption that in the beginning PR is something that you should invest in almost before marketing. I think part of it is this desire as a startup to plant your flag in the ground, in the marketplace, and get your name out there. But then, the other part of it is also, from my perspective as a marketer, it's building domain authority. That goes back to the PR for SEO thing, so I wonder if you could just talk a little bit about that. PR for brand building v. PR for SEO Kristin: Sure. I have a great case study in terms of PR for SEOs. We worked with a client, and we started everything from scratch for them with a new website, and we had not done any direct marketing, and we've only done PR for them. Their ranking right now is a 32, Domain Authority, and that's only from public relations. So all of that authority they have not done any paid advertising. It's all back links from PR articles that I've gotten them. Now, again, that was never even a primary goal of why we did PR for this person, but I think one of the amazing things about that campaign is that it just sort of compliments, and comes out, when you're not even trying for it, right? I think public relations practitioners there's often this sort of disconnect with SEO, and with PR, because they're so focused on getting the hits, and working with producers and journalists that they don't actually realize they really are building someone's back link, and Domain Authority while they're doing ... Now, of course you can never guarantee any placements, and we could talk about that as well, but if you get them it can be great, especially if you are securing it for a client in that third-party national media outlet, and that outlet has very high Domain Authority, well then, you're benefiting from that. Kathleen: Yeah. It is tremendous potential if you have a well known media entity. Those back links can be worth a lot. Kristin: Yes. What should you expect from a PR engagement? Kathleen: I want to talk about expectation setting because that can seem very alluring, and I'm sure you have clients who come to you and say, "Get me mentioned in the Wall Street Journal, or on TV, et cetera," so can you talk me through when you first start working with a new client how do you, A, determine what's possible, and B, how do you set expectations around that? Kristin: Sure. The first thing that we ask a prospect that's interested in working with us for public relations is what does PR success look like to you? So how are you going to evaluate the engagement here, and what do those metrics and KPIs look like? For example, if they're saying, "We want to be on the today show, within a month." Obviously that's going to be an unrealistic expectation. If they're saying, "We're looking for around three or four press placements, and digital mentions a month." That's a realistic expectation with my firm. I'm not sure if it is with every firm, but for us I know that I can deliver that. If they're saying, "I want you to guarantee a set amount of bookings whether that's on radio, or television, or any outlet." That's something that's not realistic, because no PR firm that's worth their salt is going to be able to give those guarantees, and the reason for that is because we are working with the media. The media dictates what they want to use and what they don't want to use. I think the problem is that people hire publicist and think that the publicist have much more power than they do. I don't know if that's because PR just misrepresents what they can do to try and close a deal, or what it is, but it's just not realistic, right? We are working with the media at any given time. For example, if you look at any week on the news cycle there's a lot of political stuff happening, whether it's Trump, and whether he should be impeached or not. What if you had a client that's booked on TV this week? All that's going to be canceled, because of the news cycle. Kathleen: And if it wasn't canceled no one would probably pay attention anyway because everyone's attention is diverted somewhere else I would think. Kristin: Exactly. But this is why it's so important if you're doing PR right now, especially in this news cycle, people need to understand that the news cycle, and breaking news, dictates what's being covered. It's not your client that dictates it, right? So if you can come up with some great tie-in to the news, or if your client's a political expert and they can comment on what's happening, then great that adds value to whatever story's happening. That lends itself back to your original question, which is how do you sort of determine if someone's going to be a good client? In this heavily political climate that we're in right now a lot of PR people will definitely gravitate towards clients, or prospective clients, that can comment on those things, because they know that they can get them booked, and get hits for them. So you have to think about that as well. So we sort of go through an internal checklist about who's going to be good. It has to do with expectations, are they realistic? The next is, do you have at least one hour daily to work with your PR firm if you hire them? People make the mistake of hiring a firm and then they don't give them what they need to do their job. You have to supply content to your firm so that they can get you out there. You have to let them know if something's going on that you can comment on, tell them. If there's a link that you think is interesting share it with them, but this notion that you're going to hire a PR firm, and then you're not going to talk to them, and they can get you hits is just very unrealistic. What makes for a newsworthy story? Kathleen: Yeah. Now, someone comes to you, and their expectations are realistic in the sense that thy say "Hey, I would love to get four press mentions this month." I'm assuming that as you say there's some kind of content that's needed, like you can't just call up a reporter and say, "Hey cover this company," full stop, period. There needs to be some kind of a story. So how do you work with clients to determine what that right story is, and kind of cultivate something that's newsworthy? Kristin: Sure. There's two different types of PR. There's proactive PR and there's reactive PR. I'm a specialist in what I call reactive PR. So reactive PR is when you're using different databases, whether it's a HARO or a Profnet, or Cision. There's a lot of new ones coming out right now where those journalists are saying, "We're writing this story, do you have an expert to speak on X?" That's when I plug my clients in to be able to comment on those stories, reactive. Proactive PR is I think a more traditional old school approach where you're sort of just going out to journalists and I would call it spamming them, which is saying, "I have this great idea, why don't you cover it?" But the problem is they may or may not be writing that. So I think just the success rates are significantly higher when you practice reactive PR, which is what I call it. Because you're giving them what they want, want they're already working on and it makes their life easier. Kathleen: Okay, so you really, in that case then, don't have to necessarily have a breaking news item or a piece of content. It's really just authority and expertise that you're pitching? Kristin: So it's authority and expertise, but it's also answering a lot of questions, and usually those questions tie into something. So if someone is working on a vaping story. Right? You could have authority and expertise, but you also need to have expertise in that new's component that's happening with vaping in the country right now. So I think it's a combination of all of those factors together. But to answer your other question about, how do you sort of package that? I have a motto. My motto is, "Package, pitch, promote." Phase one when working with someone is how can we package this story. Who are they? What do they look like? What does their brand look like? The first thing I'll do is do a deep dive on Google. I want to look at their website. Do they have a usable working site? If not, that needs to go up before we even work with them because journalists are going to look for that. Next, what has been written about them online? Do they have a critical mass of authority online? If they don't, again, that needs to sort of be created. Third, who are they? What do they want to be known for? What is their area of expertise? If there is going to be a lower third for their title tag on television, what would it say? Expert in what? Right? So we need to sort of figure all that out. Finally, do they have a higher res headshot for the media and do they have an executive bio? All of that sort of has to be done in the first two months of us working with someone. Even though it sounds sort of simple, most people don't have all of that ready to go. So we definitely get that lined up for someone before we start with them, and then next we start putting together an FAQ document in Microsoft Word. I actually just put together a helpful media 101 pitching checklist that I can definitely share. Kathleen: That would be great. Kristin: With your listeners. Kathleen: Yeah. Kristin: That would be great. As well as a media guide too, with a lot of answered questions that for them that are helpful. Building online authority Kathleen: Now, I think it was the second thing you mentioned there, was they need to have... After the website, they need to have some sort of critical mass of online authority established. What does that mean? What are you looking for there? Kristin: I'm looking to see that other people have talked about them and have quoted them. Right? I think that sorts of lends itself very nicely to the new Google... I recently put up an article on this since we last spoke about the Google's authority and what they're looking for in this term called Eat. It's very important. It's all about having authority online. That's where PR can really help if you're trying to increase your Eat on Google, you need authority. So Google, one of their quality raters what they look for is, it's not... I'm going to actually say this. It's not about just you saying that you're great. When we look online we need to see that other people are saying you are great and that you are an expert in what you're saying you are. So I think this is a very interesting time, and this is sort of changing the game in general for PR. So you can't just pivot. You can't just say that you're an expert in everything anymore. You have to say you're expert in one thing and it doesn't matter how many times you say it. If no one else does it, you're not an expert. So this is going to be a major game changer for PR. How to get started with PR Kathleen: So if somebody comes to you and they don't have a lot of mentions online, can you work with them? Can you get them coverage? How do you start? What's that first step? Kristin: So the first step is that I feel like for them we have to do more of a brand audit and it's sort of different campaign where we're building that out for a longer period of time before we ever pitch anything to the media, and I think how you start with that is definitely content marketing. So if they want to show their expertise, they have to put out content that aligns with that expertise. So the best place to start if they don't have other people mentioning them is to start putting out their content on their own site or on LinkedIn where they're showing what they know, or doing an Ebook, or any sort of other inbound campaign, which I think is just very important. Having people link back to that to start to build up the authority even if they have no other outside media coverage. Right? That's where I would start for something like that. Why inbound marketing is necessary for PR Kathleen: That's helpful because when you think about how inbound marketing and PR go together, like I've said, I've talked to lots of companies that think you start with PR, then you do inbound and then maybe you do PR again. But if what I'm hearing what you're saying is correct, it sounds like it does make sense to begin with some inbound marking first so that you have that content already created. You have potentially gotten mentioned, you're starting to establish some authority. Is that accurate? Kristin: Yeah, it is accurate because here's the thing. You can say that you're an expert and have no content to back that up and expect people to write about you. Kathleen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Kristin: Because you're only... At that point, you're just a self-proclaimed expert. If a PR person is going to pitch you and that journalist looks you up, and they don't even see content written by you, how are you an expert? It doesn't make any sense. So I think that's a major mistake that a lot of people make. So there are some PR people who obviously skip this whole content marketing part and that's not really practicing the new method of PR. I would say that content marketing and inbound is critical to work in silo with public relations. I don't think it should be separate. What does PR cost? Kathleen: Yeah. Now one of the questions I'm sure that anybody has if they haven't worked with a PR firm before is, this sounds great but what does it cost? I'm not asking what do you charge, but can you give me a sense of if somebody's considering beginning to do some PR and they're going to work with somebody outside of their company to do it, what sort of budget should they have just to get started? Kristin: Sure. It really depends on, for example, are you willing to work with a public relations freelancer? Are you looking to work with a larger size firm? So the scope of services and the type of media coverage that you're looking for and then the size of the firm all dictate the answer to that question. Typically, I would say a reasonable range that PR services start at, you can see them anywhere from $3,500 or $5,000 a month and then up. For some of the larger firms, they could be charging $35,000 or $40,000 a month. So it really, again, depends on the size of the firm. It also depends on the other ancillary services. So for example, do you nee media training? That's typically going to be a cost. If you need a press kit, that's going to be an outside cost. If you need a personal branding website, that's going to be another cost. If you need photography and head shots, another cost. So a lot of times those costs are not actually built in to the ongoing campaign. I think that managing scope creep is also very important in PR to understanding what the role of a publicist is, and if not, it definitely matters too. What is media training? Kathleen: Let's talk about media training for a minute because this actually came up in a conversation that I recently had. Can you explain what happens in a media training and what are you being trained about? Kristin: So media training is really supposed to prepare you, a lot of the times for on camera interviews, and how can you be prepared, particularly in television in a breaking news environment. How can you answer questions? How can you not say things like um while you're doing interviews. Anything like that. So typically when I do media training with executives, I will record them and we'll go play back what they sound like. If they do a segment, we will sort of rigorously critic that segment, and say, "This is great, but here are all the things you need to do to improve that." So for example, can they maintain eye contact. That's what we look for or are they sort of looking all over the place? Are there a lot of transition words? Can they cut back on that? Are they using modifiers like in my opinion. That can be cut and that don't add to the interview. Are they talking for way too long and have they not been trained in speaking in sound bytes. So all of those things are components in media training. Kathleen: It's so funny because listening to you describe it, it makes me think of podcasting because I've been doing this now... I'm on episode 110, and when I podcast, I always send my audio off to be transcribed and then I have to edit the transcription for the show notes. Reading the written version of what I say is the most horrifying thing in the world. I have discovered that I start just about every sentence with yeah. My guest says something and I'm like, "Yeah, let's talk about that," or, "Yeah, and I have a question." It's just so funny and I imagine it's the same thing with media training when you play back a recording. All of a sudden you're like, "Wait, I say that, that much? I had no idea." Kristin: Yes, exactly. That's why it can be scary and that's why it's really important though. For example, in addition to running a PR firm, I'm also a television commentator. So I've personally been on TV more than a hundred times on Fox News or other outlets, and still even if it's segment 101, I'm still rigorously assessing what I sound like because if I'm not doing that I'm not learning and I'm not getting better. So I think that people don't realize that people that are on air all the time are still doing this very same thing. It's not just something that you start when you hire a PR firm. You have to keep doing it. How to handle the tough questions Kathleen: Yeah, and one other... See there I did it. I said yeah. One of the other questions I had is... Because this is part of what came up in the conversation I was having, how do you advise people to handle it when they don't want to answer a question? Is it, "I don't comment on that"? Is there a certain way to gracefully avoid answering. Kristin: So I think there's two things. One, I'd call bridging. So if you don't necessarily want to answer something or if you're not sure how, I would bridge it and transition it into something else. So you can say, "This is a really interesting question, however I think this is the larger question." So that would be bridging. That's one option. Two is always be honest. So if someone asks you something and you are not qualified to speak on it, literally just tell someone that. Say, "That's a really interesting question, however I'm not sure I'm the best one to answer this, but if I had to take a stab, here's what I would say." You can say something like that as a modifier or you can say, "I'll get back to you on that one" I don't have time to Google it right now but you could do what Mark Zuckerberg did at the congressional hearing, which every single question he said, "I'll have my team get back to you on that." That's a perfect question of answering your question. Which PR opportunities are worth responding to? Kathleen: Okay, that makes sense. So circling back to PR for SEO and in tandem for inbound marketing back links. When you're pitching and you mentioned that you do reactive PR, how do you screen through which opportunities are worth responding to and which ones are not? Kristin: Sure. The first thing I will do is I will look at the outlet. Is it a well-known outlet, or is it a random blog? I'm not actually the... The back linking part I don't really like look at until the very end until something comes out because you don't really know if they're going to include a link or not. For me, if I'm going to send something to a client, I'm looking at it to think, is this an anonymous query? If it is, we're not replying. Is it a large national media outlet that we've heard of, which would be great to get a mention in regardless of the back link? Then yes, I'll send it to them. Is it worth their time to answer this? How many questions are on there that they want answered, and do I realistically think the client can answer it by the deadline that's given. So all of those things factor into whether or not I think that they should look at that. Again, I look at back links as great added bonus of doing PR, but if people come to me and say, "You need to guarantee back links." I tell them, "There's no way any public relations professional can guarantee back links. Reporters don't even know." So there's a lot of scams out there right now where people will... I'm sure you've received them too. Where they send you this nice long sheet and go, "Oh for X thousand dollars, for this one off I'll get you informed for this mention." Well Google's changing the game right now, rather, with how all of that's handled and if you look at the quality rater's guidelines, they also clearly mention that they can tell and that those links, they're very aware of that and they don't count for much. So I would say that's a waste of time and a waste of money. Spend your time and resources doing PR the right way, and if you get links out of it then that's an added bonus. Kathleen: Now you mentioned anonymous queries, and this is something that I've always wondered about. So I look at HARO all the time and like you said, some of the calls for sources they say, "I'm with this particular news outlet," and then others are just anonymous. I've always wondered about that because sometimes I think, "Oh, well if they're anonymous they're some podunk place." But then other times I think, "If they're anonymous maybe they're someplace big, but they don't want to let people know that." I don't know. What has your experience been with that? Kristin: It's a gamble. It's 50-50. It can go either way. So sometimes it could be like a major outlet, but they have an internal editorial policy, which may state we don't want someone else scooping up this story or we can't use HARO. So that reporter may put it in as anonymous. So technically they're not using HARO. That's one option. Another thing is that it really is a much smaller site and they know that no one is going to answer their query if they say, "This is for my hole in the wall blog that no one has ever heard of." So, it can go either way. How to identify PR opportunities Kathleen: So for somebody who's listening and thinking, "Gosh, I'm not ready to hire a PR firm yet, but I might want to dabble in to trying this out for myself." Are there... There's obviously HARO, which is Help A Reporter Out, which is a great free source that you can read and respond to. Are there any other really helpful places that somebody can go to on their own to see what kinds of stories other reporters are working on and potentially respond? Kristin: I think the best thing that they can do is really just read the news. I know that sounds so simple. So many people don't do it. Everyone is looking for this cheap quick fix on how they can do something, which is why I'm not really a fan of do it yourself PR for a number of reasons, but the main one is that people really... Do it yourself PR can actually be quite dangerous. I've seen people make major mistakes because they're not media trained. They say all sorts of things. They don't really know what on the record versus off the record even means, and then they want someone else to fix it. And that part... And they can't. Right? Because they read some advice somewhere and told them to try it and then it hurt them, and then their CO is not happy. I would say you have to be kind of careful. However, if you're interested in sort of figuring out, "What is the media really writing about?" So maybe you're a digital marketer and you want to get quoted in the news. Go into Google and then click news. Then put in digital marketing. That's the first step I would take. If you don't want to hire a PR firm, that's what I would do and I would set up Google Alerts for that and set up Google Alerts for your name. I would use a site like Mention because a lot of times Google Alerts doesn't pick up everything it needs to now. Then I would start seeing... For example, let's say I comment on Instagram. I have Google Alerts set up for Instagram. Or for Trump's tweets or anything relevant to what I talked about, and then I get... that's just becomes part of my day. So maybe you're a cardiologist and you're speaking on artificial intelligence and cardiology. I'd set up an alert for AI Cardiology. So you start having... That's more of an inbound approach to PR really because it all comes to you. Then you start formulating an opinion on that. I would then take that opinion, write content around it, put it on your own site, and then I think what you're going to start to see is that if its good content and you optimize that content, you can be found for that content by a member of the media. I will say this, people always say, "How did you get started in television?" I got started in television because of content. I wrote a really cool article on how social media was impacting the world of dating and it was for Jdate.com, and this was like 10 years ago. I tweeted that article. I did not have a PR firm at that time and I was still more so in social media. A producer found my article on Twitter. Again, no PR firm. They found the content, they liked the content, and they said, "This would make for an interesting segment, would you like to come on the show?" That's literally how I got started in my career in TV was because of content. I would urge your listeners here to consider that when you're thinking how to get there. That's sort of a do it yourself PR approach, but it's not dangerous because you're not necessarily reaching out to the media directly. It's a content first approach. Why Twitter is key for your PR strategy Kathleen: Now do you find that there are certain channels in which you can publish your content that make it more likely that you will be found by a reporter? Kristin: Twitter. Kathleen: Really? Kristin: Yeah, Twitter and LinkedIn. I mean, just 100% because journalists are the biggest users of Twitter. We have clients that say to us, "I don't want to be on Twitter," and I say, "You don't have a choice. You have to be on twitter because if I'm getting you hits, I need to tweet those hits because reporters want traffic to their articles." So that's my end... Like, I have to do that. Right? That's the other thing. This old school notion that PR is just take, take, take and not give is so antiquated. You can't expect that someone's going to write about you and then you're not going to help push traffic to those articles. Which is why whether it's a podcast, or it's a reporter at a different outlet, they want to see that you're pushing it out too. Social media's an integral part to that process. Kathleen: Twitter is so incredibly misunderstood. I find that with every client I've ever worked with... I was in the agency world for, oh my gosh, 13 years and almost everyone, including the heads of many agencies would say, "Twitter is a waste of time. I don't want to be on Twitter." It always blew my mind because not only is that where all the reporters are, but it's the only platform where you can directly reach out to anybody regardless of where you're connected with them. So the access on Twitter is unbelievable. Kristin: I mean, if you want to get on the radar of journalists, they're on Twitter. The other thing you could do is create a favorite list and look up some reporters and then add them to a favorite list and start favorite them for what they're doing, or replying to them and get on their radar in that way. It's a great way to use Twitter, and obviously, it's strategically hashtag. If you really want to learn how to use PR, go on Twitter and use #PRfail. They will actually grill different publicists or do it yourself PR people, and you can learn from that. You learn a lot. It's just amazing. They'll put out bad pictures on there. I think there used to be a blog called Bad Pitch Blog. I don't know if it's still around, but I mean, you learn how to do PR the right way by looking at it the wrong way. Kathleen: Yeah. See I still say yeah. Even though I try to get myself not to. Now I've also heard that YouTube is really valuable. Especially for getting picked up for television because that allows people to see your on camera persona. Have you found that? Kristin: I think that definitely makes sense more so in the entertainment space. I think it adds to credibility and I think anytime you do a TV segment you should put it on there. Do I think that like, for example, would I have gotten discovered from YouTube if I was just doing something on my own? I don't necessarily think so, no. But entertainment, yes. If you're a singer, if... So that's just a whole other area of PR. You don't as much as I think is valuable for that, and sort of the corporate world, I think it's a little bit different. Kathleen: Interesting. And you mentioned LinkedIn. How do you see LinkedIn playing into this? Kristin: I think publishing articles on LinkedIn is very valuable and using hashtags on LinkedIn can also be very helpful to get found for your content. LinkedIn is at this amazing point right now where they are really almost giving away views in organic traffic, more so than Facebook is at this point because they want to become more of a social network. So there's this massive opportunity, especially with video on LinkedIn right now, if you want people to find what you're doing. So from what we've learned with clients, video definitely does the best. And you could put the same video on Facebook, or Twitter, and Instagram, and you're just going to see the views are so much higher on LinkedIn. Kathleen: Absolutely. I have been testing out LinkedIn Video now for several months, and I did a LinkedIn video recently about it because I looked back at all of my posts and the posts that had video in them, almost in every single case got 10x the number of comments and views as a post without video. It was so starkly obvious what a difference it made. So I completely agree with you on that. Kristin: Yeah, but I mean, they want to incentivize users to be doing more videos. So that's why you can see it. If you look at the analytics, you'll see that that's what they're trying to do. Kathleen: And it won't last forever, I'm sure but right now it's a great opportunity. I want to talk a little bit about results. Obviously, you can't divulge client names and things like that, but can you just, in an anonymized sense, can you give me a sense of what kind of results companies that you've worked with have seen from PR? Kristin: Sure. For example, one company that we work with, they have received over 35,000 visitors in search alone over the past year. Again, we're not doing any paid marketing, any paid advertising. That's just because of content marketing and PR. That's all inbound traffic. Another company is actually ranking in search engine results on page one for specific... In the snippets, which everyone is trying to get in right now. There is content that we created for them years ago that's ranking now. That content hasn't even been historically optimized yet, and it's still ranking. Why? Because we answered questions. That has to do with our approach that we started on Facebook where we grew that audience from zero to over 5,000 fans right now, and basically used their business fan page as a community and group page. Because of that and because we took the time to answer their questions and sort of ask the expert type of format, that has just skyrocketed their search engine results. So I would definitely say that that's something people should be doing. Answering questions is so underrated. People spend so much time on SEO but don't actually answer questions. If you want to appear in snippets you have to do that. I would also say podcasting as been, for that client, a big part of their growth strategy, in terms of being a guest. They've probably recorded over... I don't know. Over 900 minutes of time on podcasts and I can see the analytics for that and I can see the conversion rates. I see people's like, "I heard you on this podcast. I'm interested in coming to you now." I see on their social media page where they say, "I read about you in this article." Well, I know what those articles were because I placed them. So that's PR. I read about you. Are you taking on new clients or new patients? I can actually literally track it from the PR hit to them then going to the social media pages to saying, "Are you taking on new patients?" Or direct messaging that, and then to a new lead going through the contact form, and becoming a patient or a client. So I would say, again, that's not any sort of... that's happened across the board for several clients. Kathleen: It is interesting how it snowballs too, right? You get your name out there and that is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy because you're building that Domain Authority, which helps you get found more. As you said, the content that you create that lives in the snippets can live forever. Kristin: Yes. PR is an investment Kathleen: So it is sort of an investment as opposed to, you think about paid advertising and it's like a drug. You can't ever stop. But this is more like an investment. Kristin: It is, and I would say... I mean, you're right. It does snowball. Media snowballs in other media. That's what people have to understand, and I think people that have the short-term approach to PR, then they shouldn't hire a PR firm. If you're going to hire a firm and you're thinking, "You know what, I need you to do X, Y, Z by this date, and I need it now to do X." It's just not going to happen, and even if it doesn't happen, it's the wrong approach because you're not building a community. You're not building anything that has intrinsic value to others. So you just getting hits is good for you, but how is that good for others. So the clients that I've had great success with are... The one thing that they all have in common is they are other-centric, they're not me-centric. So when you're other-centric it allows us to do the best job we can for them because they're building out something larger than themselves and all of it is around education. So I always say, "Egocentric PR is not a PR strategy." It's very important for people to understand that. The PR strategies that we deploy are education focused, and I think clients get the best results, and again, even if it's education focused sound very similar to inbound marketing. Kathleen: I was just going to say, that's basically the premise of inbound. It's a give before you get kind of mentality. Kristin: Exactly. What's so funny is that these people that work with me and hire me, they just really wanted to get great educational content out there into the world and build up their brand. When they're working with me they're not necessarily saying, "I need more clients or patients or people in the door," because they've achieved a certain level of success and they want to do other things. The most amazing things that happens is all of this happens as a result of it. But it's not because they were even trying to achieve that goal. It's because they put their users and their audience first, in terms of just giving, and giving, and giving great advice and content. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: Right, well that's so interesting and thank you for explaining all of that. I want to shift gears now and I have two questions I always ask all of my guests and I'm curious to hear what your responses will be. The first one is when it comes to inbound marketing, is there a particular company or individual that you think is really killing it and doing it well. Kristin: I thought a lot about this, and it's hard for me to say that any one person is doing inbound well is because the way I look at this is I look at different attributes of how someone is doing something well. So I can't necessarily point to one person. I can give you all the answers that I think everyone else points to all the time. I could say Gary V, and Gary's great, right? Of course Gary V is doing it. I'm sure every single guest in your show says that, so I want to give you a more unique answer. I think that doctors that are taking the time to answer patients questions are doing it well. Again, I don't want to name any specific ones, but I think that in general if you take the approach where you look at the most frequently asked questions that you're asked all the time and you write them down, and you write content around it, I think it helps you and it helps your patients and it helps your clients. Kristin: So anyone that's doing that gets a gold star in my book. Kathleen: I've always really admired Mayo Clinic for that. They are like the Wikipedia of medicine. It almost doesn't matter what you Google, they pop up with an educational article on that thing. Causes, symptoms, treatments, yada, yada, yada. Though we can not name specific doctors, I would say the Mayo Clinic, in general, is an institution has really done a great job and committed heavily to inbound. Kristin: I think if people wanted... just a tip for inbound is use the notepad in your phone, and when people ask you questions or if a prospect emails you a question, literally save that question. That can be a great part, a foundation of your content marketing strategy. People spend so much time trying to figure out, what do I write about? Well, just write about what you're already answering. Kathleen: Yes. Yeah. It's staring all of us in the face, right? Kristin: Exactly. Also, when you write that, write how people are... The language that they are using to type into Google when they ask you those questions. But I think something that most people are not doing today is that they're just missing the boat on optimizing their content for questions. I think that's something that... The term is called historical optimization, which I think is critical of any sort of PR SEO campaign right now where everyone has to do it. Refresh older stuff that you've written. And also, I would say, use PR to amplify the content that you've written. So if you've written a great blog post and maybe you've done a podcast, you should include that podcast link into whatever relevant content that you've already written around that. So you're constantly just adding value to your audience. Kathleen: Yes. It's so funny because I 100% agree with everything you just said, and it's so interesting to me that it's like, somebody from the PR world who so intuitively gets what it is to do inbound marketing correctly because that's really what it is all about. Kristin: Well, I just want to say one thing about that. What really amazes me is I don't understand how people can practice PR today and not have an understanding of inbound because if you don't, you're not helping your clients. Those clients are setting their money on fire. You can not be doing all of this stuff and have SEO in a different area and content and inbound in a different area. It doesn't work. It doesn't help your clients. So you need someone when you're interviewing a firm, you need to make sure that they have an understanding of all of this because what I see is, you could hire a firm and they could get you all these hits, but if you do nothing with the hits then it's all a waste. It's not just about getting press covered. It's about what you do with the press coverage. If you do a podcast and no one hears the podcast, was there any point to doing the podcast? No, there was not. You have to mark it the coverage that you get. Kathleen: Yes, yes. Totally agree. Second question because you are a PR person who clearly understands marketing. The world of digital marketing is changing so quickly. You talked about Google updating its quality rater guidelines. How do you personally stay up to date and current on all of these things? Kristin: Sure. So I read a lot of different search engine blogs currently. So I think one thing is Search Engine Land. I have a lot that sort of come in that I've subscribed for that are kind of helpful. I know even just a PR... I think there's PR Daily that I get. I get so many of these different newsletters. The other thing, again, is that I truly go to Google News and I look for the terms. I will actually go. I will click Google, I will click news, and then I'll put in SEO or I'll put in Google or I'll put in rankings. I mean, that's my own approach because I want to see things that are happening by the hour and not everyone is necessarily searching that way. For me, I think it's important. Same thing with PR, with everything else that I'm researching. I think the reason I got into that habit is from doing news segments. I could literally be booked to talk about something and then two hours later that story has changed. So I constantly... It's one thing to sign up for newsletters, but it's another when you're in a breaking news environment and the story could have changed. Kathleen: That's a really good point for anybody who's preparing to be interviewed to just do a quick Google news search right before your interview to make sure that nothing has changed. Kristin: Yes. Because a lot of the time everything changes. And then you could be- Kathleen: So true. Kristin: ... watching a teaser and they go, "Coming up, so and so is talking about this." And you don't want to be caught off guard by saying, "Who is so and so," and they go, "That's you, and you're live and go." Kathleen: Right. Kristin: You want to avoid that from happening, which again, goes back to the importance of media training and being prepared. I'd also say try not to check your email, especially from clients right before you go on air. Kathleen: Yes. Kristin: Because that can really throw you. A really important media training tip. How to connect with Kristin Kathleen: That's a great piece of advice. Well, so many good nuggets here Kristin. I really appreciate you sharing all of this with us. If somebody is interested in connecting with you or learning more, what's the best way for them to reach out? Kristin: Sure, so if you want to reach out my website is rubymediagroup.com and my other site is krisruby.com. And then I have a third site for PR for doctors at medicalpracticepr.com. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn and let me know you heard me on this podcast or email me at kruby@rubymediagroup.com. Kathleen: Fantastic. I will include links for all of that in the show notes so head there if you want to reach out to Kris. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you're listening and you learned something new, or you liked what you heard, of course, please leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That's how we get found. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Kristin: Thank you for having me.

Ep. 112: How Yale Appliance Became the Most Trafficked Appliance Website In The World Ft. Steve Sheinkopf

Commercial Real Estate Investing with Don and Eden

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 14, 2019 41:42

How did Steve Sheinkopf and the team at Yale Appliance use blogging to grow the company's website traffic from 30,000 visits a month to one million visits a month while increasing revenues by 350%? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Yale Appliance and Lighting CEO Steve Sheinkopf shares his company's journey from a small Boston-based lighting and appliance store that relied heavily on advertising for business, to the world's most trafficked appliance website and a business in the process of adding its third store. Central to Yale's success was Steve himself, who blogged five times a week in the early day's of the company's content marketing efforts and continues to create key blog posts to this day. Highlights from my conversation with Steve include: Yale Appliance is the most trafficked appliance website in the world Steve started blogging in 2007 and at the time, Yale Appliance was spending around three quarters of a million dollars on radio ads. From 2007 to 2011, Steve blogged five times a week, but despite the volume of content he was publishing he wasn't seeing any results. In 2011, Yale was getting 30,000 visitors a month to its website and today, it gets close to a million a month - all due to the shift that Steve and his team made in the way they undertake content marketing. Yale doesn't talk about itself on its blog - it talks about statistics and facts relating to its products, and that is what makes readers trust them. Steve says blogging is all about building domain authority and to that requires a sustained and consistent effort when it comes to content creation. Steve sees blogging as a core competency of his business at Yale and as such believes strongly that it shouldn't be outsourced. Steve still writes blogs for Yale, but today, the company's sales people blog as well. The company tracks the ROI of its content marketing efforts and can show, using data from HubSpot, that views of its blog and buyers guide have driven millions of dollars in business. Steve writes all of the posts relating to reliability, "best of" lists, and articles detailing problems that frequently occur with certain brands. One of the biggest benefits of Yale's content marketing efforts is that the leads it generates are very high intent. His team can see the content they've consumed on the website and it shows exactly what they are interested in. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained probably 15 to 20% in revenue. We've, increased our revenue probably 350% in the same time. 37 about 122 million in a 10 year period. So that certainly plays a part of that in terms of stores. We've gone from one store to we're adding our third in November which will be our biggest store. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained approximately 15 to 20% in revenue. In that time, Yale has increased its revenue by 350%, from 37 to about 122 million in a 10 year period. They have also gone from one store to adding their third in November which will be the company's biggest store. Resources from this episode: Visit the Yale Appliance and Lighting Website Follow Steve on Twitter Connect with Steve on LinkedIn Email Steve at steve.sheinkopf@yaleappliance.com Listen to the podcast to get learn how Steve Sheinkopf and the team at Yale Appliance and Lighting used content to drive traffic, leads and sales. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth and this week my guest is Steve Sheinkopf who is the CEO of Yale Appliance and Lighting. Welcome, Steve. Steve Sheinkopf (Guest): Good to be here Kathleen. How are you? Steve and Kathleen recording this episode. Kathleen: I'm great. I am excited to have you on and I can't wait to dig into our topic. But, not everybody who's listening may know who you are, so can you just tell my listeners a little bit about yourself and your business? About Steve Sheinkopf and Yale Appliance and Lighting Steve: Sure. We're a 97 year old appliance company located in Boston Massachusetts. We sell appliances, lights, we do a lot of service work, and our company's powered by really content marketing and not advertising. That's pretty much what we do. We sell all brands of different appliances, from Sub-Zero down to Samsung and we compete against pretty much 60 Brick and mortar competitors in a 20 mile area plus Online plus Amazon, Wayfair and all the people, Home Depot, that sort of thing. Kathleen: You're being very humble and so I'm going to toot your horn for you because this is like a David and Goliath story. You guys do compete against 800 pound gorillas with huge budgets. If I understand correctly you also in some respects, at least for content and search engine share, you compete against the manufacturers of the appliances that you sell. So on paper this story shouldn't be possible which is what I love about it. But you guys have one of the most trafficked, if not the most traffic to appliance websites in the world. Correct? Steve: Yeah. I think so. Kathleen: It's amazing. So all right, for people who are listening, I have been bugging Steve and his team to try and get one of them on this podcast for about two years now because I first started hearing this story of Yale Appliance a couple of years back. It was before I joined IMPACT I had heard about it from Marcus Sheridan, who plays a role in the story. And then I had the opportunity to get to know these guys better through IMPACT and all along I've just been so impressed. The reason, and it is a classic content marketing story, and I say classic because it's the things we're all told to do. Only you guys actually went and did them which is the big differentiator. But the reason I was so excited to have you particularly on is that most of my guests are marketers and they're already drinking the Kool-Aid. The biggest challenge they tend to have, is getting the C-suite not only to buy-in, but my gosh for them The Holy Grail is to actually participate in the process. And you've been doing this all along. So that's really what I want to talk about. But let's kind of rewind the clock if you would and start back from when you first began. I've heard the story a couple of times but I'm sure everybody hasn't. So maybe you could just tell the tale of how did you guys first travel down this path? Because you're a 90 year old company and you were not always the most trafficked website for appliances in the world. How Yale Appliance discovered content marketing Steve: Oh, clearly not, clearly not. It's a long story but really it starts in 2004. I went to this thing called The In-Planet and it was absolute genius. There's a bunch of it was I think Boston visors or the Bain or McKinsey guys, they were talking about the future of marketing and they were talking about how digital one day overtake outbound and to prepare for it, it wasn't happening yet. And they said. "The least you can do is get on the whole review side, that reviews are going to play a big part of how people are going to purchase from your company." So that's the first thing we did is we got on with all the yelpers and instead of berating them for giving you bad views, we looked inside ourselves to say. " Maybe we're really disappointing people organically." So we started in 2007 blogging. And at the same time it was doubling down on radio. We did a lot of radio at that time I think it was the final number was somewhere around three quarters of a million dollars. And we doubled down during the recession and the more we advertise it was like diminishing returns. I used to ask the phone people anybody called them radio ads. When we started doing it in 2000 it was popular by 2010 no one really seemed interested. So we started blogging in 2007. It was 2011 when I met Marcus Sheridan and I thought it was going to teach Marcus something. The first conversation we have, everybody loves Marcus. He's like a folksy guy and back if we rewind the clock in 2011, at that time I was blogging every day but I wasn't blogging by keyword. I wasn't- Why the CEO of Yale Appliance dedicated himself to blogging Kathleen: Now you yourself were blogging? Steve: Yeah, I was. Kathleen: I just want to clarify that. Steve: I did that five days a week. Kathleen: That's amazing. Did you publish, was it five blogs or was it? Steve: Five posts a week. Kathleen: That's great. Steve: Well it's great when it's good stuff, not so great. And it was well-meaning, but it wasn't... Even when it answered the question I never titled it right, I didn't met a tag it. So our first conversation was just absolute beat down. It was pretty bad, but he was right. At that time we have 30,000 people a month going into our site, which on paper doesn't seem bad but we started blogging strategically and now we expect a million visitors a month, we were busy and somewhere out six, 700,000, we're not. And with that comes certainly more leads, more traffic, more business and that's what this is about. And I can't believe that, I can't believe. But if you were to say to a CEO, look we're going to start this program that's not going to be effective in six months, then you probably not going get much buy-in on the C-suite. But if you say to somebody, I'm going to reduce ad spend to zero and increase revenues disproportionately to your market share - I mean, what does the bottom line look like? And it's a great learning tool and it creates trust and it creates distrust for your competitors that aren't doing this. They're selling products that maybe they shouldn't be. That's a pretty compelling case so if you structure like that, I think people get more buy-in from the people that need to buy in to say this is a revenue expense game and it's what, how people really want to consume stuff. Because nobody really wants to listen to me say how great I am. In fact, we never talk about ourselves. We talk about statistics and facts and helping people make purchases because you go to all these content marketing seminars they talk about trust and that's how you really trying to do. If they trust you and your pricing is good and your execution which is the back half of what I really work on is are we executing to, what our value proposition is? Because blogging without execution is just bad. Work on execution first then blog. So that's the whole story. Kathleen: You raise a really interesting point and I've been in this inbound or content marketing game a long time. I had an agency for 11 years. Something that you said really struck me because you talked about if you say to a CEO, we're going to create blogs and you're not going to see any results for six months, that is what I would say the disproportionate percentage of people in this space say it when somebody says, how long will it take for me to get results? Which everybody wants to know, right? Because that's what it's all about is the results people will always answer with, well it takes time. Six months to a year you'll start to see something. And while there are aspects of content marketing that that is true for, there are also aspects of it that that is absolutely not true. Where you can see some sorts of results right away. And I think you're right when you set that expectation that's going take a while. That's not exactly the best way to sell it. Steve: Well, I mean, blogging is about domain authority. Strictly we use words to cover up what we really mean and you don't become an authority figure with one or two posts. You need to show over a long period of time that you know what you're doing, whether it's getting a client, business, life, whatever it is. You don't become an authority with one good post. That said, if you write about something that's brand new that nobody else's, you could probably rank high pretty quickly. Kathleen: Oh, for sure. Yeah. I've always said that the best moments in my content marketing career have been when I googled a question and didn't find an answer for it and I was like, ha ha, I'm right that answer. So what I'm curious about is you actually were convinced even before you met Marcus, that just that blogging in and of itself had value now obviously there was a better way to do it. Why you should insource content creation Kathleen: But what I'm really interested in understanding from you is when you first had this realization that hey, we might need to blog as part of our corporate strategy. What was it that convinced you personally to write? Because I think most of the CEOs I know who have that Aha moment and realized blogging is important. Their first thought is, I'm going to assign that to somebody or we're going to outsource it. Very few think I'm going to do it. Steve: Well, it's like anything else. You want to outsource things that either you're not good at or someone can do cheaper. If you want something to be a core competency you have to do it yourself, right? You can't be good at something, outsource it and then hope it gets better. Right? If you want it to be a core competency where every year, like every month, every week, every, if you're part of it and you're interested in it and intrigues you and it touches the customer it's important. That's something you don't outsource. So it's a matter of I think people that are outsourcing, the losing the whole kind of how do we get better? How do we read, what are customers asking and how are we better solve the problem? Goes into merchandising, it goes into everything we do, what lines we sell, what lines we don't sell. Because we have the finger on the pulse of what we think the customer reacts to. But you're never going to get good at it... Let's forget about if we call it something else, like social media or writing or customer outreach. If you're outsourcing it as a methodology, nobody's going to know your business better than you do. And it doesn't matter which content conference we go to whether it's Impact or Inbound or HubSpot or whatever those. Anybody that's outsourcing with writers from whatever, what Fiverr from Indiana they're just not getting the results they could if they did it themselves and treat it like a crucial pillar of our business of ,your business which it could be, which it should be. Who creates content at Yale Appliance Kathleen: Now in the beginning you were writing five articles a week. What does that look like today? Are you still actively writing or are there other folks in the company that are primarily doing it? Steve: Well, it really depends, but the sales people. Sales people write blogs to varying degrees. I still edit most of them and I still write the important ones. And again, some of the ones I've written have, there are two that are over 2 million, 20 million views. But forget about the views, we have a report that shows people that go into our buyers guide from blogs and how much money we derive from that on a monthly, yearly basis. It's certainly well worth doing financially to do that, be part of it. And again my time spent at the CEO and culture and metrics and enforcing standards, after that really social outreach which I can reach a whole market of people by writing a blog. It's just so worth my time I think. Kathleen: And you mentioned that you write the important posts and that there are certain posts that really take off. What are the topics that you feel like best come from you? Steve: Well, the ones that resonate are the ones that are reliability posts that we were ranked manufacturers based on a service in the first year. I think some industry problem ones, are best from me, I think some of the comparisons other people can do. Again, when you look at blogging, if you want to figure out if your sales people know what they're talking about, you read their blogs. And if they can't tell you what the five best gas range tops are and in a blog they probably won't be able to sell if the customer comes into the store. So is a good learning tool for new people to just read Wiskott-Aldrich. So the time to get a new person up is much quicker. But I write reliability, best and problems ones. Kathleen: Were you always just really comfortable with writing? Is that a format that you gravitate to? Steve: Not initially, I realized the value of it but if you look at what I wrote back in 2007 versus what we write now, it's much better, much different. And that's true of anything. Everyone always says. "I'm an awful writer." Everybody is awful. This saying that every expert starts as a beginner. If you stick with it and you write three articles a week every week, if you're new, by the time one year rolls around, you've written 152 articles. That's enough for authority, but you're going to be much better after a year than you are in the beginning. Everything you do that you practice you work hard on you're going to get better at. Whether it's blogging or anything else in business. Kathleen: Now, do you find that you've gotten faster also? Steve: Yes. I think in blogs now. I've been doing it for since 2007 .I think in blog posts like comparisons and invest because I've been doing it for that long. Kathleen: How long does it take you to produce a blog? Steve: Me? Kathleen: Yeah. Steve: I can produce a blog in probably a couple of hours. The ROI of Yale's content marketing efforts Kathleen: That's great. I think it's interesting because a lot of CEOs would hear a couple of hours and think there's no way. My time is too valuable for that. So you mentioned that you guys have systems put in place to track how he is this content turns into revenue. Can you give me a sense of what that looks like and what that's produced? I don't even know if you can get it down to like what is a blog worth? I'm sure each of them is worth a different amount, but I'd love to understand better what kind of ROI you're seeing. Steve: Well, let's forget the fact that basically the path to purchase goes to the Internet. It has since probably 2005. Alright? So but the way we do, we use a very crude metric. I have Google analytics where I can... that our time on site jumps when you talk about a blog posts really, time on site pages views equal to consumers. But we can talk about store visits, but in terms of share revenue the number that we look at over a 12 month period is anybody that's downloaded a buyer's guide. So let's say you download a buyer's Guide and get 20th. If you come into the store buy with that same email address, we track them and let's just say your friend, partners, significant other, spouse buys under theirs, that's not tracked. So just from the people that download buyers guide, they buy it comes out to be about a million or a million and half per month in revenue. Yeah, that's just that not including... What we tried to do when you look at when anybody looks at Google analytics, typically Marcus said for his pool company, once they hit pages 30, his conversion goes up. For us I think it's seven minutes or 10 and a half pages and blogs play a big part of that. You want to get trust and then you want to execute. And that's kind of how businesses and the blogging is in marketing is half that or say a third of it, the sales and execution, delivery, install, all that stuff has to be in order for this to work. Certainly the articles have to be good, but the delivery experience, the installation experience and the service experience of what we do, which is our differentiating factors have to be as good if not better. Kathleen: So this has had a major implication for your overall business. Obviously it's not just revenue, clearly you're getting a lot of traffic and that's turning into business for you. But can you talk a little bit about some of the new directions that you're thinking of heading in as a result of this? What Yale's success with content marketing has meant for its business Steve: What we've been able to do certainly on the revenue side. The average appliance store in 10 years has gained probably 15 to 20% in revenue. We've, increased our revenue probably 350% in the same time. 37 about 122 million in a 10 year period. So that certainly plays a part of that in terms of stores. We've gone from one store to we're adding our third in November which will be our biggest store. But really what we've done is we've taken that 2% that we normally two or 3%, we normally take in marketing and we put it in customer touchpoints and really the customer touchpoints, are systems and people. We've been able to keep good people because instead of blowing it on $3 million worth of say, Glow Buds or radio spots or something, we have a better medical, we have 401k matching. To me that's... You market to your people first and those people market to your customers. So we've been able to take that wasted spend and put it into areas that people really appreciate. And that's people, systems, displays, warehousing, all that stuff, that's the other half of it. Is to take that money you would have spent and put it where people really want it. The first thing during the recession when we change management, first thing I said is we're going to answer the phone, right? We're going to answer the phone and we're going to be good on the execution side. And we put our money towards that rather than putting money on marketing. And it wouldn't take off if we didn't have some kind of social profile, which that whole blogging is a part of really, if blogging is a core competence that helps people come into the stores and then it's the execution side. It's two parts to this it's not just blogging that drives the revenue. It's the execution that keeps the revenue. Kathleen: It's funny because there's lots of buzz that I hear at least that we could be due for another recession sometime in the next couple of years. When you think about the evolution of the company and how you've done marketing and consider that there is this prospect that we may get hit again with another recession. How do you think the company will fare given your new marketing approach? Because it's very different than what you did the last time around. Steve: I think we'll do a lot better again because one of the things is we're not wasting money. We all know that outbound marketing is a negative ROI deal. I think as long as you understand who your customer is and you're straight and transparent with them, I think you have a leg up over people who do not do that. And that's pretty much everybody in our space. There's some people that are doing it, some people that are doing well, but they don't understand the whole execution side. Kathleen: Now the other thing that I think is interesting is historically you've been a local business. You're in the Boston area and well that's a big local market. It's still a local market and now you're getting all this traffic. I have to imagine a considerable amount of that traffic is not from the Boston area. Some people might hear that and think, well that's great that you have more traffic, but it's not really, that's not valuable traffic because they're not going to be able to walk in the door and buy from you. How do you look at that? Steve: Oh that's very true. 88% of our traffic we cannot sell to. Because delivering an appliance it's not like delivering Sharmane tissues.Especially in Boston because we got brownstones and walk-ups you need very specialized delivery people. That's why we pay the delivery people well because we're not spending it on marketing. But the worst thing you can do is ruin your reputation by not execute. It's a fair question a lot of this traffic is not really valid traffic. Let's take a million people say that we got last month on the blog or 800,000 or whatever it was, say it's 800,000 we'll minimize that means 12% of 800,000 in your market. How many people... We write to a specific audience. So how many people? 12% of a million or 800,000 it's still a lot of people that's still you're writing to 70,000 people. They're not reading your blog because they want to get to something else. It's still a significant amount of people in the market. There's no way to hit, it's like the old days they talked about radio ads. It's like they sold it to you. There's 100,000 home owners but only 2% of them are in the market and only 2% of those will listen to ad. The people that are clicking on a blog posts are showing intent, right? So those are 70,000 people showing you intent because they're clicking on something. It's not like the old radio or TV metrics. So that's still a lot of people looking to buy from you. Kathleen: Do you ever foresee that there might be an opportunity for you to somehow monetize that other 80%? Steve: No, unless we're directly involved in the actual fulfillment of the order. I don't want to be involved. If we look at... There's a lot of really good online appliance stores that have really good interfaces. They put their money on the front end, but if you look at the reviews on Yelp or Google, they're so bad and over time that'll catch up to you. Right? Because really, the one thing that I always tell the people in the marketing department is don't forget that your consumer and the path to purchase is okay, you'll read a blog everyone talks about what's the one thing, it's all about attribution. You'll read a blog post, you'll go online and you're mobile, you'll sit on your tablet, but somewhere down the line you're going to read reviews before you decide to purchase from that company or not. And you don't want everybody loves Impact because you guys do good work. But if you had a two star reputation on like Yelp or Google, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Right. So, I'm willing to... First of all, there's enough business in a local market. I want more, it's cheaper in, and easier and better to be in the Boston market. Than being partly in Boston, in somewhere in L.A. which is actually our biggest market for the blog, New York. I think it's better logistically to stay where you are. Kathleen: I was going to say maybe someday you'll have... You have three stores now maybe you'll someday have 30. Steve: The way it works from a business standpoint, this goes a little bit back to blogging is you have a warehouse. You want to maximize that warehouse, then in a third store you need a bigger warehouse and you want to maximize that warehouse and then you run stores up that warehouse, that's where it becomes the most efficient to do business. Going to L.A and having logistics there and hiring and hiring service people in a whole new network is much more difficult. Steve's advice to other CEOs Kathleen: It's a good problem to have too much traffic and more than you can sell to. I want to go back to this issue of most CEOs don't necessarily see the justification for being personally involved in this. If somebody is listening and they are a Content Manager or the Head of Marketing and they're passionate about creating content for the company and they want the CEO to be involved, As a CEO yourself, do you have any advice for the best way for that person to approach the CEO and get them excited about taking part in this process? Steve: It's like we said in the beginning, there aren't too many opportunities to increase your brand in the profile of that brand. There's not too many ways to create trust and there's not too many ways to raise revenue and reduce expenses at the same time. What is your bottom line look like by raising revenue and reducing expenses? And that's really my job is to... We used to be happy if we reduced expenses by 30, 50, 60,000. Well now we're talking about reducing expenses at our level 700, a million, $2 million in increasing the top line revenues by since we'll be doing it anywhere from eight to 15% a year in a highly competitive market. There aren't too many opportunities to do that. In fact, there aren't any opportunities to do that. And if you're a CEO and your other face of the brand of the company and it comes from you and you're answering people's questions and handling people's problems, that goes a long way in building your brand there. If it isn't that, what else would you be doing? I could sit there and run the warehouse, but there are people that run the warehouse better than me. I could sit on Ops, the people that run operations better than me. It's important for a CEO to understand the metrics of success in the company, but terms of really the overall of really the fundamentals of a P&L we have revenues, we have expenses. If you raise one and lower the other one, that's what we're paid to do. And this is a unique opportunity to do it. Now, do you have to do it to my extreme? No, clearly not. I got involved 12 years ago but if you were to do a post or two a week and maybe handle a couple of dicey problems and show that you have kind of deep seated knowledge of the industry. Especially if you're selling services, which many people do and you show that you handled that problem, a person with that problem is probably going to give you due consideration. Right. That's the way it works. Kathleen: It's very interesting that you brought up the thing about personal brand because that's something that I've been giving a lot of thought to lately. There are so many companies creating content now. You were fortunate or had the incredible foresight to start doing this very early when this wasn't as ubiquitous. I just went to HubSpot's Inbound event there were 26,000 people there who are all drinking the Kool-Aid of content marketing. And you look at crowds like that and you think, wow, all these people are bought in. It's getting harder to stand out and I really believe that one very effective way to stand out is through personal branding. Because anybody can kind of copy generic content, but you can't copy a personal brand that is inherently individual. So I'm curious in your experience for you personally, aside from the business results, what have you experienced as you've put your personal brand behind the content? Like has that resulted in anything for you? Steve: First of all let's not give me so much credit. I ran out of money. I didn't have a choice. Most good content marketers will tell you during the recession, we all ran out at doe. That's why- Kathleen: I owned a business in the recession. And I can definitely second that. That's why I started blogging too. I was like, I have all this time and no money. I'll write. Steve: Exactly. I could've just as easily destroyed a 90 year old company, which I was very close to doing. That's it I'm not really interested in my own personal brand. Really having gone through the recession as both of us have, it's more important for the company to have a strong balance sheet than it is for me to build a personal brand. And personal branding is, brands are like sponges. They can't they get everything, they keep everything that's good and bad about the brand. And the fact that my personal brand, your personal brand impact Yale, we don't know own the brands anyway. It's what's being said out there that really shapes what the brand is. Kathleen: Don't they say that your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room? Steve: Your brand is what other people say. We've lost control of our brand when the Internet became popular. So, really personal branding... I think people appreciate I still answer most of the questions on the blog and I think people appreciate the fact that it's not me I'm not building my personal brand. I think a lot of people need help they're not getting in other places. And what I do is just, I give them the what to do and how to do it. And it's not about building a personal brand at all. Kathleen's two questions Kathleen: So interesting. I love your story and it's unbelievable what you guys have done. We don't have too much more time, so I want to make sure before we wrap up that I asked you the two questions I ask all of my guests. The first one being we're all about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular company or individual that you know, who you think is really killing it with inbound marketing right now? Steve: Obviously great adversary Marcus Sheridan his killing it. I think back to our first conversation, there were two thoughts and went through my head as A. I need to do this B. I want him to eat his words. And you know the funny thing is it's like I want it to be better than him. But it never worked out that way because he was on other things it's almost like you go into the battlefield and you get a note from guys saying. "Hey, the land is yours and by the way I love what you're doing and all the rest of it, but I'm busy taking over France or whatever." His journey into his personal brand of videos is really compelling and I think his role with the pool company. I think they do a great job. The person that I liked the most in this space is a Crystal Cornea and what she did at Block Imaging I thought was fantastic. She made buying refurbs cool. She made people in that company feel cool writing about it. For me, I tell people it's good to do because it's good for your personal brand that I shouldn't control your brand. But she made it cool to do that. I've kind of lost touch with Block and what they've done since but I know she's left and she works as a consultant for other people, but I really love the way she goes about it. She's very inclusive and she did a great job with Block. Kathleen: Yeah, she's really impressive and you know, Marcus is, you're right. I interviewed him I think he was my first episode of this year. And the thing that I love about Marcus and you totally hit the nail on the head. He's constantly evolving. And the reason to me is that he's such a student of human nature, which is what makes him great at content marketing. He is not a marketer. He is a student of human nature. And so that is what led him to realize that, hey, we just have to answer people's questions. Right. This isn't super scientific it's almost once you tell somebody they sh they're like, Duh. But it took somebody who wasn't a marketer to figure it out. And somebody who's a keen observer of people. And that's the same thing that he's doing with video. He's a very keen observer of people and how they interact and communicate and so it makes them incredibly successful. Steve: Oh yeah. I think I the fundamentals to content marketing is the same fundamentals of everything else is. A. Do know what you're doing? B. Can you communicate it? And that'll come if you know what you're doing and C. And this is the really important part, this is like the C-level stuff is, are you executed once you've said that? And those three, if you put those three together, you have some special. Kathleen: And I always say also, can you get out of your own way? Because often marketers are their own worst enemies and they take their human hat off and put their marketing hat on and they write like robots and it's just, it's interesting. Steve: So they write and a lot more people are starting to write for search engines and that's troubling too. And they can't basically answer the question. There's so many people that... Everyone talks about tips, hacks, it's got to be 2000 words now or whatever it is. But the person that answers the question that best will get ranked because Google's not stupid they'll give the best experience wins. And if you can answer the question on a 1,000 words and is more compelling than the person writing 2000 words and you'll win. Kathleen: Right. The only correct answer to how long does an article need to be is as long as is required to answer the question. Second question is, the world of digital marketing is changing really quickly. And obviously your a CEO, you're not wearing the marketing hat in the company, but you're somebody who is keenly aware of marketing. How do you stay up to date and make sure that you're not falling behind the times with marketing? Steve: That's a great question now that I'm in Boston now I've commuted to stores. I actually have a commute. So I podcast a lot and there's some good marketing podcast. Patel has a very good one, Tony Robbins has a good one, some of the paid search guys have good ones. There's five or six, I'll listen to I'll read blog post and then I'll go to some conferences. Impact has become important over the last couple of years.Certainly HubSpot, we've been going to HubSpot they used to have it at the, at the Hilton hotel and [Copley 00:37:51] two rooms. When I was there initially I think it was 400 people in two tracks. And RF, which is the Retail Foundation in January they put a good one in New York, such marketing conferences and other one I'll go to like four or five conferences a year. If there's a good class I'll do that, Linkedin learning is apart, Social Media Examiner, they have to get some good stuff too. So it's a constant because everything changes and you want to be on top of that certainly. Kathleen: It Can be very tough to keep up with but I do think it's a matter of picking your five or six sources that you really love and just sticking with those and you've got anything else on top of it. That's gravy. Steve: The one thing is it's you can only be especially if you're a small team and I think this is geared more to a small business maybe, but you've got a small team or if you're a single person, like me and Pat were initially. You can only be very good in it one or two aspects. You can't be great at blogging, great at Instagram, great at Pinterest, great at Google ads. You can't be great at like there are 10 things that you can be really great in marketing that can move the needle, but pick one or two. That A. Figured out where customers are and you learned Google analytics for that. And two figure out what your passions are. If your passions with photography, like I'm not, Instagram would be a good one for you, Pinterest would be a good one for you. Wherever you think you can really dominate a certain aspect, rather be just mediocre at everything. You do not need to everything you needed to one or two things really, really well. Kathleen: Right. That's the old Jack of all trades, master of none problem. Right? Steve: Very true. How to connect with Steve Kathleen: This has been so great if somebody wants to learn more about Yale Appliance or connect with you, what's the best way for them to do that? Steve: I don't really know. Kathleen: Visit your website I would assume, right? Steve: Yeah. I'm on Twitter I guess like everybody else. I've got 3000 followers. I have no idea who they are. Certainly LinkedIn, my email address, you can certainly give steve.sheinkopf@yaleappliance.com. This community it's been really good to me and I'm happy to really answer any questions that anybody has. About marketing or inbound marketing or anything else. So email, Linkedin. My name is Steve Sheinkopf obviously, Twitter that type of stuff. I'll get back to you eventually. Kathleen: Great. Well, I will put the links to all those things in the short notes. And of course you already said that you answer all the questions on the blog. So I would think that people could go there and if they have questions about appliances, they know who to ask. You know what to do next... Kathleen: And if you're listening and you learnt something new, or you liked what you heard, of course, please leave the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That's how we get funds. And if you know somebody else who's doing kick ass inbound marketing work, tweet me @workmommywork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thanks Steve. Steve: Alright. Thank you Kathleen.

tv ceo new york amazon head google internet marketing guide france work online sales impact indiana ceos pl pinterest roi yale goliath tony robbins samsung lighting patel brick mckinsey home depot hilton yelp aha holy grail hubspot kool aid bain fiverr duh strictly inbound ops master of none figured wayfair appliances sub zero boston massachusetts trafficked content manager social media examiner copley marcus sheridan kathleen booth right because steve it steve oh sharmane steve well steve yeah steve no steve so kathleen oh steve yes steve first alright so hubspot's inbound

How To Get Better Results On YouTube

Influence School

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2019 11:11

Nate Woodbury produces 10 YouTube channels daily, and being in the industry for quite some time now, he has acquired knowledge on how to maximize your YouTube marketing results. Today's episode is going to be all about how to get better results with your videos on YouTube. Check this out! Welcome back. Today, we're talking about how to get great results on YouTube. You may or may not know. I'm a producer for ten daily YouTube channels. Some that are brand new and some that are doing very, very well pulling in $400,000 a month. So, I've got several topics I'm going to share with you today on how to be successful. We're going to talk about the must-haves when starting out. Kind of the bare minimum. We're going to talk about how long your video should be. How often you should be posting and how fancy your YouTube videos need to be. And then we're going to wrap up with a conversation about how to get people to watch your videos longer. What can you do to keep your videos interesting? This is going to be an action-packed episode. Okay, so that first question. What are the must-haves? How do you get started? What's the bare minimum? This question comes from Danielle Dinkelman. Appreciate you asking that question, Danielle. So, to get started on YouTube, this is what you need right here. This is it. So, I have rented this space. This is not my home. This is a vacation rental. I filmed here with a client yesterday. A few weeks ago, I rented it for the whole week and filmed with a different client Monday through Friday. This is my filming studio. But you can just film in your home, okay? And I've got some cool lights here. I've got a light that's lighting up. It's actually nighttime here. So... And I turned off all the lights and I've got my own studio lights. But the best thing that you could do is use sunlight. So, right there is a window. You can't see that. But if I were facing the window, lights coming in on me. And I've got my phone on a tripod. Aim it this way so you got the HD camera. So, it's aiming at me. That's going to make for a great episode. And if you're close to the camera, the audio is going to be great. If you're gonna be further away, then you'll need one of these. See this lav mic right there? That mic is recording to a device in my pocket. It's just recording to an SD card. You can get a lav mic that actually plugs into your phone. That's the bare minimum. That's what you need to get started. Now, that's the equipment you need. You need a message, you need some information. But I'm guessing you have an expertise. See, people all around the world are asking questions online on YouTube. And you have the answers to a lot of those questions. So, if you just make simple YouTube videos that answer those questions, then you'll get views. You'll build a following. You'll start to build influence and you can grow a business off of this. So Danielle, I hope that answered your question. If you have follow-up questions to that, go ahead and comment below. So, the next question or set of questions came from Leanne Webster. Another great friend of mine. Thanks, Leanne. She asked me, "Alright, how often, how long, how fancy?" Well, how often to get really good results where YouTube actually promotes you and shows your videos as suggested videos? In my experience, you've got to post at least 5 episodes per week and you won't see any of that until after doing that for 4 months. Okay? So, that's 4 months worth of daily episodes. I call 5 or more per week daily. You've got to go 4 months of daily. And then at that point, you'll start to see spikes in your views, spikes in your subscribers because YouTube is showing you as a suggested video and showing you on the home page. So, that's how often. How long? I typically shoot for an average of 10 minutes. Sometimes I go shorter. Sometimes the topic that I'm addressing or sometimes the topic that I'm teaching, it's only a 3 or 4 minute topic. And I don't want my videos to be boring. But ideally longer is actually better. What YouTube suggests is between 7 and 16 minutes. So, somewhere in that range. That's kind of why I shoot in the middle and say, "Let's go for 10 minutes." One of my best performing videos of all time. It's approaching 5 million views now. It's actually over 20 minutes long. I used the sequel technique that I teach about in another episode. But we had a video on our channel that was performing really, really well. It was one of our better performing videos. We created a similar video. we use the same title same content. The original video is only 5 or 6 minutes. We wanted the other one to be longer. We didn't plan on it mean 20 minutes. But we just added a lot more movement and activity and added some fun elements. Same content but we knew it would perform well. We ended up making it 20 minutes long. And YouTube likes watch time. In fact, YouTube loves watch time. So, if you have a long video that people actually watch the whole way through, that video is going to get a lot of views. And this one has it's got almost 5 million now. Okay. And this question about how fancy, like what about text effects and adding in motion graphics and stuff like that. You know what? I've tried that, I've experimented with it and I found it's not worth the effort. I have team members that know how to edit and create custom effects in Adobe After Effects. And we can do all sorts of things but it didn't lead to more views. It didn't lead to more engagement. See, that type of stuff is for more corporate type videos. And when you're creating a video that you're just talking to one person. Just like me, I'm talking to you right now. I don't need flashy text on the screen. Whether you're vlogging or creating talking head videos like this, typically, you're not going to see text effects on some of the best channels out there and so I don't think you need them either. Okay, that last question came from Stacy Kirsten and she asked how do you get people to stay longer? To watch longer? Okay? Let me talk about vlogs first and then I'll talk about talkinghead videos second, okay? On a vlog, vlogs are interesting. With vlogs are going on an adventure, you can talk, you can show b-roll, you can mix in music. You can come back and talk. A great example to follow which most vloggers do is Casey Neistat. If you haven't heard of Casey Neistat, look him up on YouTube. He's got a really good vlogging style that I copy. That all the other vloggers I know they copy his style. That's a great way to keep people watching throughout the whole episode. And the majority of his episodes are 10 minutes plus. Now, for Talking Heads, what can you do? Well, number one thing is keep your content interesting and amazing. I mean deliver tons of value. The more valuable your content is, you could just be holding still, one spot, the whole video kind of like I am here. But you're delivering such amazing content, people don't want to leave. They want us data for the full 10 minutes. So, if I've got say 5 points, I might stand right here and give point 1. And this is where I'll be for point number 2. And I might be here for point 3. Now, I'm making it easy. I'm just moving my feet but I can actually change locations. I could film part one in the living room. Part 2 in the kitchen. Part 3 outside. Part 4 back in the living room. You know, so you can really mix up locations and that keeps things interesting and engaging. Here's another idea. My client Kirk Duncan, he likes to use a chart and write things on the board. But what he'll do is if he's got 5 points, he'll cover them up with five pieces of colored paper. And I'll say, "Okay, these are the five hacks to have a better relationship." Alright? Number 1 is and he'll pull off the paper so we can see number 1. But we still see the other 4 are covered. That makes us curious. What are the other 4? What did the other 4 say? So, we'll keep watching the video. Then we pull off number 2. That's the second hack. Okay, we'll stay watching until we know all five hacks. That's a great idea. Now, something that I always do in my videos, we certainly did it on this one is we tighten up the episodes. So, maybe when I hit record and when I hit stop, maybe that was 9 minutes and 30 seconds long. But I might have paused a little bit too much. Or maybe I had some Azure arms or I didn't like a sentence and so I started it over, my team edits out all of that and they'll do crop edits where you know, I might be standing here and then team do a crop edit. Se,e how I'm a lot closer to you now? That's called a crop edit. Well, if I stop and I say, "Mmmm..." And then I keep talking, my team can edit out the "Uhm" do a crop edit and you don't even know that I said the Uhm in the first place. So, really tighten things up. That can keep a higher energy or keeping things moving at a faster pace. Now, here's a strategy for you. Kris Krohn uses this one a lot. At the beginning of the episode, he'll introduce what the video is about. Then he'll share why you should watch. Okay? He'll kind of give a hook for the video. But then he'll tell something, "And at the very end, I'll tell you about how I did this." So now, there's a seed planted in their mind that's like, "Wow, this is gonna be a valuable video. And I got to make sure because at the end, I'm going to get this special thing. This special tip." So, people will watch that video and they wait until to the end. And you can drop seeds like that all throughout the video. It's like, "Okay, I've got 4 points for you. But then I'm going to share a bonus which is really what helped me buy this car." You know, so then you get in there to share on the 4 tips. Okay. "How I bought the car is.." That make is sense? Okay. This last if I'm going to share might sound obvious. But if you've got 10 one-minute videos, the likelihood of you getting 10 minutes of watch time on that compared to one 10 minute video, you're going to get more watch time on the one 10-minute video. Right? Because you've got to have one person click 10 different times and watch all 10 episodes. Whereas if you just put all that content, made a 10-minute one episode, they're going to be a lot more likely to watch that whole thing. So, what is trying to say there, if you do make longer episodes that are entertaining, that keep people entertained, right? Or captivated, then you'll get people to watch longer. You just got to create longer videos. So, what'd you think? Was this helpful? What other questions do you have? Comment below and I'll answer those in future episodes. Be sure to subscribe, I'll see you tomorrow.

aim sd leanne azure talking heads casey neistat get better results uhm okay so okay let right because kirk duncan

Ep. 4 - The Science of Fear, Mummies in Pittsburgh, Hockey Season and Crazy PA Town Names

P100 Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 8, 2019 28:19

In this episode of the P100 Podcast, our hosts Paul, Dan and Logan welcome Nicole Chynoweth from the Carnegie Science Center to discuss the center’s new exhibit on mummies. From there we move on to the science of fear, and then on to hockey with their guest, Jeremy Church. This episode wraps up with a review of some unique Pennsylvania town names. We bet you have your favorites.----more----Full transcript here:Logan: You are listening to the P100 podcast, the biweekly companion piece to the Pittsburgh 100, bringing you Pittsburgh news culture and more because sometimes 100 words just aren't enough for a great story.Dan: Hi everyone. Welcome back to the P100 Podcast, we're happy to have you back for another episode. I am Dan Stefano, I'm here with Logan Armstrong. Logan.Logan: How's it going?Dan: A pleasure to have you with us and Paul Furiga will be joining us in a little bit. Today's episode we're going to be talking about mummies. Not your mothers, not like that Logan. I see you, that's what you're thinking. No, just having a pleasant thought, thinking about dear old mom. No, Okay.Dan: Now, we're actually going to be talking about the mummies that you might think of whenever you think of ancient Egypt and other parts of the world here. There's a new exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center - Mummies of the World, and we're really excited to talk with someone from the Science Center about that.Dan: Afterward, we're going to be discussing the science of fear. Keeping with us, somewhat of a Halloween type of theme here. Then, we're going to be talking about, what everybody knows, it's the beginning of hockey season. Logan, you excited about that?Logan: No. Dan: No. You're not excited about hockey. Okay. Well, I am and some other people in the office, and we're going to be talking with one of them about the growth of youth hockey in the region, which is really something that's taken off in the past few couple of decades here in Pittsburgh. And we're going to finish up with Logan and I being just as serious we are now. We're going to talk about strange Pennsylvania town names. So if you make it to the end, you're going to be in for treat on that one.Logan: Oh yeah. Stay tuned.Dan: Okay, so let's get going. All right guys, for this segment we're going to talk about mummies. In particular, mummies of the world, the exhibition. It's a new exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center and from the Science Center, we have Nicole Chynoweth. Nicole, thanks for being here.Nicole: Thank you for having me.Dan: Absolutely. Thanks for being with us here. And can we talk a little bit about your own role within the Science Center here. Can you tell us your position and a little bit what you do?Nicole: Sure. So, I'm the manager of marketing, public relations, and social media with a focus on exhibits and the Rangos Giants Cinema.Dan: Great. What does that entail then? I mean, that I imagine you you are working with a lot of different positions there. Right?Nicole: Yeah, it's a really fun job. I get my hands in everything from new movies that we have coming out at the Rangos, educational films to the exciting new exhibits that we're bringing to the science center, from space topics, planetarium related things, and mummies-Dan: Really cool, it seems like a fun place to work. Right?Paul: Nicole, you've had your hands in the mummies?Nicole: No.Paul: Okay. The promotion of the mummies.Dan: The promotion of the mummies. Paul: I'm sure we'll talk about some of the technical aspects, but that would seem a little gross, but...Nicole: I don't think so. I find the exhibition more fascinating than I do creepy. And I'm not a fan of scary movies or I did not watch the Brendan Fraser mummy movie.Paul: You didn't?Nicole: No interest in that.Paul: I did watch those.Dan: You're missing out on a classic from the 1990s.Paul: Yeah. Well, classic is a little strong-Dan: I think it should have won an Oscar, but that's just me.Paul: Okay, Dan. We'll talk about that another time. So Nicole, when I think of the science center, I think about some of the other things you mentioned. Space, technology, mummies?Nicole: Yes, mummies are, especially this show, the mummies featured in Mummies of the World, the exhibition is, have so much to offer in terms of scientific, anatomical, biological information that we can still learn from today. So what I find really exciting about the mummies of the world is that it focuses on both natural mummification and intentional mummification. So, you might be more familiar with intentional mummification. That's the type that was [crosstalk 00:04:15] practicing in ancient Egypt. Correct.Nicole: And we do have some examples of Egyptian mummification in the show, but this also takes a look at the natural mummification process that can happen when conditions are at such a level moisture wise, temperature-wise that is able to naturally mummify a body, be it animal or human.Dan: Right. Well, it sounds like some pretty amazing things to see...Paul: Yeah, it's fascinating.Dan: What are some examples maybe of the intended mummification that we'd see there? I mean, is there anything from, I guess everybody knows about Egyptian mummies but then, they're also South American. What else might you see?Nicole: So an interesting example of the intentional mummification process that aside from like the Egyptian mummies that are featured in the show, there is Mumab, also known as the Maryland Mummy. In the nineties, two scientists at the University of Maryland decided that they wanted to try their hand at an Egyptian mummification process. A man had donated his body to science, and so they started the process of mummifying him. So, you can see Mumab in the show.Nicole: That's just an interesting way of seeing how we are still learning thousands and thousands of years later about how this process works and the tools that they had to use to complete the process and what the body has to go through for mummification to occur.Dan: That's really cool.Paul: Did it work?Nicole: I've been told that it's still in process, it's not completely... He's not completely mummified yet.Paul: Take some time?Nicole: Yes.Paul: Wow. Something I never knew.Dan: That's pretty awesome. Can you tell us what else is in the exhibit then? I mean, are there any, you say interactive portions to it. What should people and families expect whenever they're inside here. It's not just, as you'd be at a museum taking a look. I mean one of the great things about the science center is it kind of hands-on.Paul: Hands-on. Yeah.Nicole: Yes. So in addition, to the 40 animal and human mummies and 85 rare related artifacts, visitors will also be able to look through several interactives related to different topics within mummification. I think a favorite among children will definitely be the, what does mummy feel like a station where you can touch different types of mummified materials, so there's like frog skin, fur. Mummified fur, different things like that they'll be able to touch these like textile panels that are examples of what those things feel like.Nicole: Another great interactive is there's a large map that shows where different types of mummies have been found all over the world, which I think is really important to look at from the perspective of which, like you said, we are so used to just thinking about Egyptian mummies.Paul: Yes.Nicole: And really there are mummies all over the world, [crosstalk 00:07:15].Paul: So not to be surprised?Nicole: Yeah.Paul: You never know where you might find a mummy!Nicole: Right, right.Dan: Okay. Well, people will hear, we can see Mummies of the World through April 19th that's correct, right?Nicole: Correct. Open through April 19th. It takes about 60 to 90 minutes to get through the exhibition, for parents that are maybe wondering if the exhibition is appropriate for their children. We do have a family guide available at carnegiesciencecenter.org/mummies, that might answer some of the questions parents have before they take their kids to the exhibition.Nicole: But I really believe that it is appropriate for all ages and I think people will take something away from the show, be it a new interest in archeology or anthropology or just being able to connect with the backstories of the mommies that are featured in the show. You get to know them. They're more than just a mummy in front of you. You learn their story, how they lived, the way they lived, where they were from. So, super excited to have it at the science center and to be able to offer this experience to Pittsburghers.Dan: That's great. Anything else happen at the science center lately?Nicole: Yes. So, it's Halloween season.Dan: Yes.Nicole: What better time than to experience a scary movie on Pittsburgh's largest screen?Paul: Very good.Nicole: The Rangos Strengths Cinema teamed up with Scare House, this year actually for Rangos x Scare House. We co-curated some Halloween movies together to offer Pittsburgh a really exciting lineup for the Halloween seasons. So we have coming up the Universal Studios Classic Monsters. We're showing the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Frankenstein and Dracula, on October 11th through the 13th.Nicole: We also have Dawn of the Dead 3D showing October 25th and the 26th. And that's a really exciting screening because they don't often show the 3D version. So if you've seen Dawn the Dead before, I can guarantee you have not seen it like this.Dan: This is the original one?Nicole: Yes. This is the original Dawn of the dead. Yes.Paul: In 3D.Nicole: In 3D.Paul: Have you seen it, Nicole?Nicole: I have not seen it. I'm not a huge fan of the scary movies, but I've been told that if there's one I should experience at the Rangos this year. It's probably this one.Dan: All right? Just how big again is the Rangos?Nicole: So we are a certified giant screen. The screen itself measures 72 by 38 feet.Paul: Wow.Nicole: We also have 45 surround sound speakers. Your average theater has 14.Paul: Dan, if you and I can get that past our spouses and into our basements. I think that'll be good.Dan: I might have to tear down a wall or two in my basement, but I think I can handle it.Paul: You know, it's all about the purpose, Dan.Dan: You know what, we're trying to fix more damage to begin with. So I think I could get this Rangos a screen down here. That'd be perfect.Paul: It'd be very nice.Dan: Nicole, how can people find out more about the Carnegie Science Center, both online and in social media?Nicole: Sure. Visit us at carnegiesciencecenter.org or find us on Facebook. Carnegie Science Center or Twitter and Instagram @Carnegie S-C-I-C-T-R.Dan: Okay. Thanks so much for coming on Nicole. We appreciate it.Nicole: Thank you.Paul: Yes.Dan: All right guys. We were just talking about mummies and now we're going to... mummies, if you'll look back at it, they're famous movie monsters, some of the old ones from the 30s, some of the more recent mummy movies and whatnot.Paul: Brendan Fraser.Dan: Exactly, yeah. I love those horror movies and I love being scared. I love this time of year whenever we get a chance to go out to a haunted house. Me and my wife try to do one at least once a year. She's not wild about them, but I have a great time. Even right now in a couple of days. I believe the scare house is going to be reopening the scare houses. One of the more popular attractions around the area of this third winter.Paul: Award-winning.Dan: Award-winning, correct. Yeah. They had to move from Etna and they're in the Strip District. I think they maybe even changed the name to reflect that, but I think, it's interesting that people love to go to these things and they're so well attended.Dan: You see the lines around the block just to be scared and so I've had a chance to go look at the psychology of fear here, and there's an interesting phenomenon that researchers have found called VANE. It's V-A-N-E, and it stands for Voluntary Arousing Negative Experiences. Logan or Paul, you guys ever felt anything like that? Do you have any voluntary experiences?Paul: Yes. Dan, some people call that work?Dan: No. Yes.Paul: I've absolutely. So, I mean, I'm the old guy in the room. You think back to when I was a teenager, the voluntary arousing negative experience was to take the date you really like to a scary movie.Dan: Okay.Paul: I think we're going to get into this Dan, some of the why this is in... Things that people will voluntarily do you, you might not have expected a certain level of affection from your date, but if you took her to a scary movie, there would be the involuntary reaction when something happened on the screen of-Dan: Them getting closer? There you go. That's clever.Paul: Yeah. Well, and it's all this time at least all the scary movies.Dan: I think, when you look at some of the research here, what they point at, one of the most important parts of that is that it `is voluntary and that people were making a conscious decision to go out and be scared. And a lot of that is about overcoming stress. And you might go in with another person, you're working together to try to get through this shared experience here, fighting the monsters, try not to punch the actors who are just trying to have a good time and scare you.Dan: But they get a chance to get outside of themselves, and as we said, face a fear and there's really a great quote here from a woman named Justine Musk. Her quote says, "Fear is a powerful beast, but we can learn to ride it". I think that's just a very good succinct way to put it. But our good friend Logan here, you were actually a psychology major for a couple of years at Pitt and you know a lot about fear.Logan: Yes. So, as you said, I was a psychology major for a few years. I really enjoy just kind of how humans work. But so basically what it is that you have a part of your brain and it's a little almond-shaped lobe called a medulla. But, so basically what happens is that you're, when you see emotions on people's faces or when you see something that would cause you to emote in a certain way.Logan: So, say you see you're out in the wild and you see a lion and you're like, well that's not good. So that message sends to your medulla, which then sends to your limbic system. And if you guys are aware of the limbic system, it's your fight or flight response.Dan: Yes, okay.Logan: When you experience these negative arousals, that kicks into high gear and that pumps adrenaline through your entire body, your pupils dilate, your bronchitis dilates, just you're in this hyper-aware zone, and that's where adrenaline junkies get it from.Logan: It's a similar thing to where you're experiencing fear where you might be scared, but your adrenaline is pumping so much and it's releasing so many endorphins and dopamine that you end up enjoying it.Dan: Well. Okay, now we know whenever we either go to a haunted house or if we go see the mummies exhibit at the Carnegie Science Center, none of us are going to be scared because we know all the science, and we just know what's going on in our brain.Paul: Well, I mean this is also why people like roller coasters shout out to the steel curtain at Kennywood. Because they know it's safe. Right?Dan: Right.Paul: The experience is scary, but it's safe. When you go and see a movie. Yes. You sure hope so. You see the movie, you know it's going to be an hour and 20 minutes or two hours or whatever and when it's over, you may have been scared during the movie, but you're okay. The same with the rollercoaster, three minutes and then you're back in line, right it again. Right? Because you've enjoyed that safe experience of being scared.Logan: And it's the same concept where it's going back to my earlier example. If you see a lion in the wild or you're going to be scared. But if you go to the zoo, you're going to think it's cute or whether somebody else tickles you, you get a reaction, but you can't tickle yourself because your brain knows it's not a threat.Dan: Well, we do see a lot of alligators on the streets of Pittsburgh these days, so I don't know. You know what I mean. Maybe we'll see a lion the next, but I don't know that's all there is to know about fear or at least a good introduction for it. So, yeah. Logan, thanks for the knowledge there.Logan: Sure thing.Dan: Yeah. Maybe you should have stayed as a psychology major.Paul: He won't be here helping us today.Dan: That's a fair point.Logan: Now he's like "you really should've stayed a psych major"Logan: Centuries before cell phones and social media, human connections are made around fires. As we shared, the stories have shaped our world. Today, stories are still the most powerful way to move hearts and minds and inspire action. At Word Wright, Pittsburgh's largest independent public relations agency. We understand that before you had a brand before you sold any product or service, you had a story.Logan: Word Wright helps clients to uncover their own Capital S story. The reason someone would want to buy work, invest or partner with you through our patented story-crafting process, visit wordpr.com to uncover your capitalist story.Paul: All right guys. It's a fun time of year because the penguins are back in action. We're all hoping that they can get back to the Stanley cup this year. Who better to have on our vice president Jeremy Church here at one of our vice presidents here at WordWrite. Jeremy, you're involved with hockey and can you tell us a little bit about that?Jeremy: Sure. I've been fortunate to be involved with the game for nearly 40 years now as a player and a coach. Grew up starting about eight I guess in Michigan. Then we moved here in 10 continued to play, went away to prep school and played all through prep school Junior A, was fortunate enough again to play in college and then the last 17 years at various levels. I've been able to coach.Paul: That's awesome. Yeah, Who do you coach with?Jeremy: Right now, I'm coaching my younger son. With 11 Hornets, youth hockey organization. Prior to that, I helped with the high school in Mount Lebanon for five years. Coached at Shady Side Academy for a year and again using the word fortunate was able to go back to the Prep school. I played at Culver Military Academy and coached there for six years and it's a pretty storied program.Paul: That's fair and awesome. Well, Pittsburgh's got a long history in hockey going back to the turn of the century here, pretty much and but from a lot of people, the history and hockey didn't start until Mario Lemieux got here in the early eighties and Jeremy have a fun story about Mario Lemieux actually.Jeremy: I do. There've been two big booms locally when it comes to the growth of the sport. And certainly the first one had to have been when Merrill was drafted back in 1984 so we had just moved here from outside of Detroit and moved to the South Hills and we went to South Hills village one day and the mall was still there. At the time it was Kaufman's Department Store, which is no longer there.Paul: Oh yeah, the mall's there now just no Kaufmann's.Jeremy: So we're walking through and there's a little table set up and there are two or three people sitting there, one of them towers over all the others. And as we get closer and closer, there's no line at all. Mind you, it's Mario Lemieux sitting there signing autographs before he'd ever played a game.Jeremy: So, we walked up to the table, got his autograph. He still really couldn't speak English that well. But if you could imagine today the kind of stir it would create if Mario were around talking at to anyone in any environment. It was the exact opposite back then. I still have the autograph today.Paul: What did you get autographed?Jeremy: They had little teeny pamphlets of him in his Junior A Laval and from the Quebec Major Junior League Jersey, and that's all they had to sign. I think it was him. And it might've been Paul Steigerwald because at the time he was head of showing Mario around town and Mario, for those who don't remember when he was 18 actually lived with a host family in Mount Lebanon for the first year that he was here when he was 18.Paul: Yeah. Well, like I said it, whenever he first got here, he lived with Lemieux.Jeremy: Yeah, he returned the favor.Paul: Well, since that day, whenever there was no line at Kauffman's, today there was no more Kauffman's and you would have a gigantic line. But so what can you say about just seeing the growth of hockey? Especially from a youth hockey angle here, you've been front and center with it your entire life?Jeremy: It's pretty remarkable. Doing a little research earlier and in 1975 there were basically two rinks that you could play out of indoor rinks for Youth Hockey: Rostraver Gardens, which is still around and Mount Lebanon Recreation Center, which is still around.Jeremy: By 1990, when I was in high school, there were 10 and now that figure is roughly doubled to around 20 in the region. There are 62 high school teams and there are 28 organizations in the Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League. And within the Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League, there are now 5,600 players. And that's for those who are around playing in the eighties or growing up in the eighties and early nineties here, that's almost hard to believe there's, you know that there are 28 organizations, but if you go down through the ranks of 18 and under 16 and under 14, 12, ten eight and under age groups, there's dozens and dozens of teams at various levels all throughout that.Jeremy: So, for last year at the ten-year level, ten-year-old level, there were 80 plus 10 new teams in PAHL, Pittsburgh Amateur Hockey League League. So pretty remarkable.Paul: Right, Yeah. The majority of those kids, they're probably not going to be heading to the NHL, but a lot of kids want to at least, pretend that they're one of their heroes and get involved in the game. And I think one of the problems, maybe not a problem with hockey, but one of the issues surrounding it is there is a perception that there is a bit of a barrier to entry. You've got to have skates, you've got to have pads, you've got to have a good helmet, you've got to have a good stick. There's a lot of, there's a lot to that kit there. Jeremy, there are easier ways for kids to get involved in the game today though, right?Jeremy: Yes. Part of the Testament to the Penguins organization and certainly as Sidney Crosby has been, his emphasis and involvement with youth programs and youth hockey initiatives. And not just in Pittsburgh, but I know as well back when he returns to Canada in the summer and throughout the year, he likes to give back to the community.Jeremy: But a big initiative that started, it's now celebrating it's 10 year anniversary or 11 year anniversary is the little Penguins learn to play hockey, where Sid partnered with Dick's sporting goods to give, what is now I believe more than a thousand sets of free equipment out to kids who want to start playing the sport. So that goes hand in hand with a program that I think runs six weeks, eight weeks, in January, February to get kids introduced to hockey.Jeremy: But to your point in that, the big barrier to entry is the cost of equipment, which can be several hundred dollars even for kids that are five, six, seven years old. So that's certainly got a lot of kids involved in the game and has led to those massive increases in participation that I cited before.Paul: All right, that's awesome, Jeremy. Well, thanks so much for coming in and talking to us about hockey. We're hoping for another good season from the Penguins. Maybe a longer playoff run than last year. We got a bit of a break last year. I think they earned it after winning a couple of cups. But yeah, thanks again and yeah, we'll talk to you soon.Jeremy: No problem. Thanks to you.Dan: Right. This next segment. We're going to learn a little more about our co-host Logan Armstrong. Logan is from Eighty Four, PA.Logan: That I am.Dan: Now, we got talking about this and it got us, we started, you know, going down a rabbit hole and we got discussing why 84 was actually named 84? At first, I thought it was named after the construction company the-Logan: 84 Lumber.Dan: Yeah, 84 Lumber, and it turns out I was wrong. That 84 is named after 84 PA, and there's a lot of history and a lot of different theories about how the town was named. Logan, do you want to go through some of them maybe?Logan: Yeah, sure. So there are a couple theories. 84 is quite the town. There's not much in it other than 84 Lumber, but you know, it's nice. There are a lot of theories on how it was named, the most popular of which is that it commemorated Grover Cleveland's 1884 election victory. Some other theories were that it's on mile 84 of the railway mail service. My favorite though is that it's located at 80 degrees and four minutes West longitude. This seems like the most probable to me.Dan: My favorite actually is apparently in 1869 general David "Crazy Legs" Hamilton had an outfit of 84 soldiers with them and held off an attack of Outlaws. Now that just sounds fantastic. Yeah.Logan: That sounds quite heroic. If that is the case. I am proud to be from 84 PA.Dan: Maybe you're a descendant of general David "Crazy Legs" Hamilton here. Is that possible?Logan: Yeah. I believe I'm Logan "Crazy Toes" Armstrong.Dan: Okay, keep your shoes on man! We don't want to see anything. Well, after this, after we talked about 84 we also started taking a look at some other weird names for towns in Pennsylvania here and if you go online, you can find quite a few of them. Logan, what were some of the interesting ones you like you?Logan: There are quite a few to choose from. A couple of my favorites were, while the all known intercourse, PA, which is actually the most stolen sign in Pennsylvania, where it says "Welcome to Intercourse" for good reason.Dan: Obvious reasons.Logan: Right. Going along that same route, a rough and ready PA was, they named it after a California Gold Rush town, so I guess they're rough and ready to get some gold out there. Can't blame them for that.Dan: I imagine that sign is also been stolen many times.Logan: Right. Okay. Then, well, let's play a game here. I'm going to give you some Pennsylvania town names and you're going to tell me how you think that those names came to be. How's that sound?Dan: Bring them on. I'm a repository of knowledge.Logan: Okay, great. Peach Bottom.Dan: Peach Bottom. This is simple. This is extremely simple. Everybody in the town of Peach Bottom is very short, and they're, but they're also Peach farmers, so they can only see the bottom of the peaches that come from the trees. It's kind of a shame because they've never seen the peach tops.Logan: That is a shame. Those peach tops are so beautiful.Dan: We have an actual reason why it's called Peach Bottom?Logan: In fact, Dan, you weren't too far off, Peach Bottom. Got its name in 1815 from a peach orchard owned by a settler named John Kirk.Dan: John Kirk was very short, as we all know.Logan: Right? Yes. Okay. Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. What do you think of that?Dan: Schickshinny. Ah, got it. Okay. Shickshinny is named after a famous dance created by the person who created Schick shaving blades. Fun fact, a few people realize that he had a dance. Whenever he would cut his face on his old rusty blades, he would do a little jig-Logan: A little jig!Dan: In a big thing because it can... to get the pain away, and so he decided I've got to create a better, more comfortable blade and so he created the Schick shaving blade.Logan: Well, I foresee-Dan: Everybody knows this.Logan: I've foreseen the future...We had the Whip, we had the Nae Nae. Next, we're going to have the Shickshinny going on in all the clubs in Pittsburgh.Dan: I think this one is actually one of those Indian words that have made a lot of Pennsylvania names here.Logan: Yeah. Yeah. It looks like an Indian word that either means the land of mountains or land of the fine stream.Dan: Or land of the cutting your face on your favorite razor.Logan: Yeah, I think that's the most common translation. Yeah.Dan: Sure.Logan: We are well beyond 100 words today. Thank you for listening to the P100 podcast. This has been Dan Stefano, Logan Armstrong, and Paul Furiga. If you haven't yet, please subscribe at P100podcast.com or wherever you listen to podcasts, and follow us on Twitter @Pittsburgh100_, for all the latest news updates and more, from the Pittsburgh 100.

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DE 17: Utilizing Connections to Invest in Real Estate Even After a Different Career - with Andy Vaughan

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2019 35:02

Andy Vaughan from an early age knew that he wanted to attain financial freedom as an adult. After working in the insurance industry for about 25 years, he knew he wanted to make some new changes in his life and decided to start investing in real estate. From his connections in the insurance industry, he noticed he had quite a few high net-worth clients that were interested in investing in real estate but had no desire to be a landlord. So he transitioned to helping those connections/clients to invest in multi-family units to generate passive income. In this episode of Multifamily Real Estate Investments with Don and Eden, Andy discusses everything that happened since that decision to transition into real estate took place in 2016. Andy also shares his strategies behind the number of units he typically looks for to invest in. He will also go over his take on the Southeast real estate market, where he primarily invests and the outlook for the current market today. Highlights: Andy’s Beginnings in Real Estate Southeast Current Market How He Helps Investors Create Passive Income Number Of Units He Typically Looks For In A Deal Current Projects and Future Outlook How to Connect with Andy Website: backnineinvestors.com Email: Andy@backnineinvestors.com Phone #: 318- 614-0681 -------------------------------------------------------------- Transcription Hey guys. Today I'm going to host real estate investor and syndicator Andy Vaughan. Andy was working in the insurance industry, but wanted to make a few changes in his life and decided to start investing in real estate. Today we're going to discuss everything that has happened since that decision took place back in late 2016. What I like about this episode is that it is very inspirational in regards to the fact that Andy had no experience whatsoever in real estate, but his persistence and determination paid out. So stay tuned and let's get started. Welcome to the Real Estate Investing Podcast With Don And Eden, where we cover all aspects of real estate investing with special attention to multifamily apartment buildings and off-market strategies. Hello Andy and welcome to the show. Thanks. Glad to be here. All right, tell us about your day. What are you up to? Well, I'm in sunny Louisiana. Hot, humid Sunny Louisiana in August. So it's very uncomfortable outside, but yes it's at least clear here - you should see the weather in Florida. I mean we've had a lot of rain, but fortunately, there are no hurricanes at all. I'm not going to be surprised if there is one on the way. Yes, so tell us a little bit about your real estate background; how you got exposed to real estate in your story so the audience here can get to know you a little bit. Well probably like many people I mean I just, through the years all going back to college were always interested in real estate interested in things that could produce. Some people call it passive income and some people call it residual income, but always intrigued with the business itself in general, and I can't dunk a basketball or write a song or sing a song, so I figured I needed to find another way to produce that. Also, the two things that made sense to me in college was insurance, real estate, and background golf. I played on the golf team in high school and college and then worked at golf courses. I would see these grown men there in the middle of the day at the golf course and being inquisitive I would always ask them, what kind of career did they have that allowed them to do that? So the vast majority of those guys were either in insurance, real estate, or sales of some sort. So that's what, being the deep soul that I am has wanted to play golf all day, when I'm in my 40s, so that's what got me interested in it. So it started going down the road, I guess back in 1993, I graduated from college, got in the insurance business, and then insured business now for 26 years. However, as far as real estate, I was one of those that back and forth for years, I would get interested and wanted to do it but didn't know how to do it. I looked at like vacation rentals, condos at the beach one year, get excited about that and didn't do anything with that. I thought I needed to get into long-term rental houses, and kind of felt that everybody had to start as a slumlord, and I didn't want to do that. I liked to play golf, I can’t imagine getting a call; I was on the back nine, and ‘hey man air conditioner went out’ whatever, so I would always talk myself out of it. So I would say fast forward to 2016, so whatever that is. Twenty-three years after the insurance, having been in the insurance business, I was frustrated with the insurance business because in church companies changing rules, you get set up to where you're pretty successful and they change the rules on you at another agency where we did a lot of group health insurance through the Affordable Care Act coming down in 2010, then finally getting implemented in 2014. All those rules changed in sizing the groups and all those sorts of things changed, which affects the income. So I was looking, I mean I was looking for something else; I didn't know it would be real estate. However, started going down that road, I've been involved in several coachings, like just business coaching programs through the years and I was a part of one in 2015 in Atlanta. One of the guys in there was a syndicator, so it was the first time that he didn't call it a syndicator. He just said that he bought apartments and flipped them. He said he did. But that's the first time I looked at it. So then you start researching things and of course, I think everybody comes through a Bigger Pocket. I think to do things that everybody has in common, and this is either Bigger Pocket or ‘Rich Dad, Poor Dad’ right? Yeah I read it years ago when it first came out I guess early 2000s and all that made sense, but still I didn't know how to how to get involved, and through the years I had a number of clients that invested in real estate; several different forms from single-family housing to flips to commercial warehouse space and kind of everything in between. I had this one particular client that he had a single-family house that he had torn down, and he was going to build duplexes, he's going to be late duplexes of 16 units had the plans all drawn up and everything ready to go. Then he decided to retire and move to the beach. So he was back in town one day and one of his grandkids ball games, who happens to play the same team as my daughter. We were just in the stands talking. I ask him where he was on it, and he said that he had decided not to do it; he's like ‘you oughta do it, buy the lot from me, I've got everything ready to go, plans are drawn you need to look at doing it’. So that got me interested again. That was the fall of 2016. That's what kind of started me down this road to use the general term real estate investing. Still didn't know which direction I wanted to do, but multifamily duplex, all that sort of thing made sense to me. The more units you have under one roof, it just, it made so much more sense. So by not having any experience in looking at all the cost and carrying costs of development. That scared me. So I spent four months evaluating that deal and come to the realization of how much it would cost, which was how long I have to carry that cost without having any tenants paying rent. Then I kind of got scared and didn't want to do that. But, through that process, one of the guys that I reached out to help me evaluate that he was aware of Bigger Pockets. So, of‌ ‌course, get on there and start looking around and listen to podcasts. This led me to another month or so down the road, and I heard a gentleman on podcasts one day mention the term real estate syndication and they just closed some apartments. So they got me interested in going down that path doing some research with syndication, was how it worked and all those sorts of things. So that's what I landed on as far as a strategy. There are so many different strategies out there that you can focus on. No, I don't think it is necessarily better than the other one; it's just what's better for you. What kind of fits your skillset what you're looking to do. So for me, multifamily and in syndication the way I look at it is you have lots of different tools in the tool chest right? Syndication- I think, I'm not going to say it's the end all be all, I think it's one tool. So that's where I chose to get started in learning the business of real estate, long term real estate investing. Yeah, I mean I remember the first time that I heard about syndication I was like my eyes lit up and I was thinking to myself, Aha. That was like that moment that I realized that you could buy apartment buildings without actually having the money, right? Yeah. Which is not surprising because it looks like in America you can do whatever you want. You could buy anything if you don't have anything. So I mean I think that's amazing that you started in 2016 when you first got back into the real estate investing. Kind of gave it a second chance if I'm getting it right. So now we're in the summer of 2019, and you're already in control of how many units? Well I mean I'm on the general partnership side of, I don't even know. I would have to do the math honestly. Let's see, give us a ballpark. Six hundred and twenty-six units. We got one deal that set to close the next couple of weeks. We're supposed to close last week, but the seller had some issues with their current loan that they had in place or whatever, that we've got to get taken care of. So, after that closes, we'll be at six hundred and twenty-six units. Okay, so when you say when you're saying we'll be. Who exactly are you talking about? I believe it's a different partnership. I don't I'm involved in four different deals. So full and all four of those deals have various partners, different partnership arrangements. So it's different on every project. The first project I got in it was it's myself and one other guy, that was a thirty-six unit. That's kind of where I got started and then from there as you go to more significant projects, you'd have more people get involved. So when you got into your first deal of the thirty-six units, obviously you're not bringing any experience, just the desire, and motivation. So how did you how were you able to get on the GP side of that acquisition? That particular one I'm trying to think back here. I had been to a couple of conferences and boot camps throughout 2017. In early 2018, I bought, probably three different tools to help kind of analyze the deal. Help with run all your numbers and things, you just shot, pretty much spent 2017 educating myself, through online courses boot camps things of that nature, reading books, obviously listening to podcasts. So coming out of a boot camp the first part of January last year, I decided that I needed to find a mentor or somebody that was actively pursuing deals and doing deals that I could learn from. So that's what I did. I spent probably next month and a half looking and deciding whom I wanted that to be. So I found a guy that I liked what we're doing here. We had a Zoom call set up once every two weeks. It consisted of him, myself, two others, and we were just all learning the business. I mean how to analyze a deal how to know how to build relationships with brokers how to determine what markets you're looking at I mean everything that you have to do in this business. One of the students when I got involved though, already had a deal under contract and just 36 units out in Greensboro North Carolina. I got involved in that at the end of February and so fast forward to the first part of April, he got on the call that day and he and some friends or family or whatever that last-minute maybe decided to back out or not invest. So he said he was going to be a couple hundred thousand dollars short. I liked the Greensboro area already I mean that was one of the markets I was interested in. I asked if you would send the information to me about the deal and ask him if I want to pursue it if he'd be willing to partner on it. So we spent the next week or two going through that deal and looking at everything suddenly jump on board with him. So that's how the first deal with the 36 unit came about. It was the partner I mean that's I guess, that's the name of my story is, partnering. You don't have to do everything so A to Z. I think if you find, for me anyway, you find good partners and learn from them as you go. I mean it just everybody wins right? So team together everybody. So let me see if I'm getting this right. This guy that you were partnering up with, they got the deal, they did the underwriting. They found it through a broker relationship or whatever it is that they did over there in Greensboro, and then you partnered up by bringing the money on that specific first deal right? Well, not all of the money. I mean he had already raised a good bit of the million together. We had raised, I mean what he thought was going to be a couple of thousand dollars short, he ended up being 400,000 dollars short altogether in that first deal he and I together raised right at eight hundred thousand. Okay, so you helped him with raising the 400,000. He was short. So how did you go about that? Where did you have the connections? Well, I had already I mean 26 years in the insurance business through the years. Number one I had lots of clients that were already quote-unquote real estate investors or landlords or whatever you want to call them. Then number two I had a lot of other clients, note high net worth and top income-producing clients, a lotta professional whether they be engineers, physicians, things of that nature; very interesting system in 26 years, you have lots of conversations and friendships. So yes, I knew that I had many people that were very interested in investing in real estate quote-unquote, but with no desire to be a landlord. So I knew that I could call you and talk and have conversations with them about, ‘hey guys I found a way that you could invest passively in real estate without having to deal with tenants and being a landlord’. Yeah, also pretty safe. I would say it's safe to invest in apartments when you're on the LP side because you're getting a preferred return and that's going to come out anyway. So I mean you could always lose the money, whatever investment it is you're making but I would say that if I had like five-six million dollars that I was looking to invest. I think I would put everything on real estate syndication or had the majority of it on real estate syndication. So I could see the benefit for a passive investor. So I think it's beautiful that you seized the opportunity of everything you've gained so far in your life even though you were not in the real estate business, but you have realized that investors and people that have money and people that are interested in investing, so I love it. You seized the opportunity once again to an estate end, and you knew how you could use your experience and your skillset and tools to get what you want. Now you're in a better place, and I think I truly find that amazing. That's a beautiful story, so tell us more about that 36 unit, give us the details of that deal. So what was the value adds and what was the common? This one is kind of you to know; it's that story that I guess we all kind of look for that says, it's an old tired property in a great area. It was in an area of Greensboro that you see as it sits next to a huge bank, it sits next to an assisted living facility. So then right down the road like maybe an eighth of a mile in, a Starbucks, a Chick-Fil-A, a Panera Bread, Harris Teeter grocery store, kind of a shopping center. It was a 1970 construction, so it was old in the interiors. Now next year the property looks great. I mean the owner that we bought from, I mean he'd redone all of the asphalt outside on the parking in the exteriors, it had two euro roofs, the exterior does look great. It's the interiors that were just the 1970 construction. So there they're compartmentalized apartments, real small, choppy kind of dark dingy and they just really haven't been putting money into the interior renovations. Yeah. We analyzed the market as far as our competitors in that area, and the market rents even though we were smaller. I don't know, a quarter of a mile down the road the other direction is an over 200 unit apartment complex. So we don’t have the same amenities as them. However, you get real comfortable as to what the market is, and what kind of rent they're getting, and ripper square foot and all those sorts of things. Then see how far under market this property was. That was the plan, to go in there and spend money on interior renovations and increased rent. What's the premium you've got on the rent? Well, it's turned out to be a good chunk better than what we thought when we underwrote it. For instance, when we underwrote it, it consisted of twenty-four two bedrooms and twelve one-bedrooms. So at the time that we underwrote the property, we were planning on crossing the six hundred dollars a month for the one-bedrooms and seven hundred dollars a month for the two bedrooms in year three. It was kind of two bedrooms. Were they’re two-one or two-two? No, they're all two-one and one-one. Yep. That being said, let's say we closed at the end of June last year and started our renovations and leasing up the renovated units, and I mean we're already, even the ones that we're not renovating, like full-blown renovation, just going in there and freshening up we're achieving seven-twenty-five on the two-bedroom, and six-twenty-five one-bedrooms. Wow. So yeah we're already leasing up to above year three numbers on that. It is just a matter of our most significant learning curve is on a thirty-six-unit; you run into issues with property management. That's big, with it being at home, we don't live there, so you're relying on third-party management and finding the right property manager to manage that. So yeah. So let's get back to the rent before we move on to the property management. I want to clarify the right. So you brought it to seven-twenty-five and six-twenty-five even though you forecast at six hundred and seven hundred, and that was after the renovations of a few units, or just the way it was? Yeah, I think today we've rented renovated so far probably six-seven units something like the players' thing. You're saying okay that the owner and I hear about that a lot, the owner of the property did not raise the rents because they just didn't. So sometimes they just don't know that they could right? Or they get in touch and get close with the tenants, so they complain honestly about this particular deal; what the issue was I'm going to say the owner so much as it was the property manager that he had, he just didn't believe that he could push the rents. They were good at what I would say bringing a D class property up to a C class, but they were only used to dealing with C to C, C minus tenants if that makes sense. We planned to push it to with the location that it was in, we thought that we could renovate, at least some B tenants in there. Do it that way but so we had a difference of opinion on our demographic, our avatar if you will for our tenant. So what was the rent when you guys got into the deal? I mean we had, some of the one-bedrooms were renting for as little as four-fifty-five. Wow... And the two-bedroom, we had some two bedrooms that were five-twenty-five, five-fifty. The average rent across the thirty-six units we bought it about five-sixty. We've pushed the rents now. What we did was we know neither one of us having experience with Fannie or Freddie, which means we had no experience with a property manager. Then Fannie wanted to see that the property manager that was already in place, stay in place even though we had a difference of opinion on the business plan. So that was the big issue. We closed the end of June just call July 1, June 29th is what it was. So we finally got it, proof from Fannie to let them go, let the property manager go. And we changed property management firms in November. So from November to June of this year, we were with our second property management firm and there again to a small property management firm. It just, everything's bottlenecked in there. Sort of like every decision had to go through one person and nobody was given, so if they're out of the office or whatever nothing happens. So it just a lot of issues with, project management, issues on timing, budget, issues on the renovation. Just all sorts of issues with them. So long story short we changed to our third property manager June of this year and we just decided to bite the bullet with a larger firm, that I mean they manage over ten thousand units. Yeah obviously we're paying more for them, but we know what we're getting. This was the firm that we used during the due diligence as well it's just that we're probably the smallest apartment complex they manage. Yeah. So we're actively trying to find other deals there in Greensboro to add units to scale. Yeah. So what is the average of the rents right now? You said it was five-sixty, so what do you think about the average right now? I'd have to pull that information and look. I mean we're probably the six-fifty range, six-seventy range, and the cap rate that you bought it for was when you bought it for what the corporate calculation based on it was like, six-point six caps, six-point six. So essentially, let's say you sell it on or refinance that property on the same cap rate. I just want our audience to understand the value add and the amount of money that you guys added to the property's value. So you think it's safe to say that you've got ninety-nine dollars for each unit in value-add? Right. And that's thirty-six units? Right. The way that we've got cash out if you want to go through the math, but I mean the way that we are projecting it is for the number one, they didn't have the prior management everybody was on a month to month. So there were no long term leases in place. So yeah that's what the new firm is not only out there leasing up and getting twelve-month leases in place but getting rents, getting the rents up to the market to where they're supposed to be. So, yeah I mean with all the value add and everything I mean we ran it probably a month or so ago and looked at it. We're hoping we'll get everything in place in another twelve months to eighteen months from now. We've got it projected that it should be worth two points three, so that would be about six hundred thousand dollar value. Yeah. So from my calculation, I just got at five hundred and eighty-nine thousand and that's before you even reduce the expenses which I'm sure you could. And what's funny is that you're saying all the things that are really like, the jams that you're looking for when you're after properties between the 10 units and 50 units. Which is, by the way, it's what I'm after at the moment. What you're saying is that all the tenants they had a month to month leases. And that's already a flag that as an investor, somebody is trying to buy multi-families, and that if all the tenants are on a month to month basis then that property is not being managed correctly. So there's always a value-add and that's the key. That's why you're looking for and I think that is why I'm going over with you the deal and the numbers, because I know that when you're first starting to look into multi-families and especially if you're doing a transition from resident to residential real estate than it's very difficult to comprehend what it is that you're looking for. Right? Because when you're looking for, if you're looking for a property single family that you're trying to renovate or flip, or fix then you're looking for a distressed home, and then you just try to get a discount. When you're looking for an apartment building than what you're looking for is something that's not managed correctly, and that is exactly what you're talking about. I love that, we can see it as we break down the deal. I'm sure our audience would appreciate it, and that is why I'm doing this and you probably learned so much in your first deal right? Yeah. And then actually, I mean to that point is what you're looking for. I mean that's the big thing right? I mean being where you can communicate with a broker exactly what you're looking for, in the exact location, the size, the vintage, the unit mix the whole deal you want. You want to know what you're looking for. And to that point is, I think today you hear, you just talk to some different people, and you hear I'm staying away from the larger properties, the three to five hundred units. Because of your competition with institutional investors and things of that nature, conventional money and yeah everybody. Well, I'm going to focus between one hundred and a hundred fifty units or whatever, but then you got tons of people like us running around in that space, and there's so much competition especially when you look at markets like Atlanta and Dallas. So it's coming, what you just said I mean, so we've kind of changed our thought process with that, and hey, we've got thirty-six units there in Greensboro. So, instead of looking for that hundred and fifty to two hundred units, why don't we find four more thirty-six units. Yeah. There's a lot less competition for thirty-six units; it makes sense obviously because all these property management headaches you have at that level. But if you put four of those types of properties together, now you're closer to one hundred and fifty of their units, and a lot more manageable. You get good property management and all that. Definitely. And what else I think everybody is talking about in the podcast and on the shows. They're talking about how they've done the big deals, the ones over a hundred, and how it's the best thing to do. But sometimes you hear it like an episode on somebody's podcast and that episode is from two years ago or one year ago and the money's already changed. Now it's more difficult to find these things. So right. Yeah. So right now when, as investors when we look at the market we can never see what it's doing right now. We can only look back and see what it did, but we never know what it's doing. So that is my perspective too. I share this perspective. I'm looking for, I know you, we've already discussed in yours, you said that you're going after this. You have a deal that's about to close, it's more than a hundred units and I think that is great. But I'm very, I feel very confident about what you said before about finding properties that are in the range of the thirty units, forty units right now because there's less competition. You could find things directly from the owner and not necessarily through a broker, which is what I'm going after and that's my strategy for dealing with the situation. That there's so much competition for multifamily right now. Right. Yeah I mean I believe that there is no right or wrong way necessarily to do it and there are so many different tools. I mean we're talking about syndication whatever but, I mean obviously, if somebody has them. Wherewith all or if you're able to work out a deal with an owner where he'll finance it for free. You mean there's many different to rules? It doesn't all have to be pigeonholed into this perfect hundred and twenty unit value, it adds to class C property and Class B area and we're going to syndicate it. Yeah, it was simple. Yeah, that's right. That's right. So and that's one of the things that I love about this business is as you expand and grow and partner in different deals, you get to meet people from all over the country and learn about different markets. You can even do some joint ventures rather than syndication. I mean obviously, syndication is expensive, you got all the attorney's fees and all those extra reporting to investors and all these types of headaches and stuff that you don't have to deal with. Yeah. If you have three or four guys that can take down forty units. Yeah. But there's more reward obviously when we talk about a hundred units. Sure, but there again, that's what I'm saying. I mean I just don't think there's a right or wrong, it's just what is your strategy right now. It's like you said we can always look back, and obviously, there's been lots of people that the syndication strategy has done very well of less than five to eight years. Yeah, I think you just need to focus on your strategy and just stick to it. You need to come up with your idea and the way that you see things and just to continue doing it until you find something. If it's too hard or you find out that it's not something you can do, then yeah maybe it's a good idea to change the strategy but not to quit. Right. Right. But I do agree that you've got to have your way and do things the way that you see them. I'm not saying that it's impossible to find a deal of a hundred units or more, I'm just saying that that's not a strategy that I chose. I'm aware that there are deals out there that you could find, even two hundred units. I've heard about a person that bought two hundred units from a mom and pop. Believe it or not. You see it's not even a sophisticated seller. So how did he do that? It's a low chance but it happened. That's what I like about real estate everything is possible. Everybody has their way, and I think your way is remarkable because you were looking for the knowledge and you just did actions and you took stuff into your own hands. You went there. You went to a coach and you partnered up with people and you involved your connections, and so you made it happen. I think that's beautiful really. Well, thank you. Yeah. So what are the best ways to connect with you if anybody's trying to partner up or do things or even learn something? Well, my web site is back nine investors spelled out, so backnineinvestors.com. You can reach me there. Email address is Andi@backnineinvestors.com. I'm giving up my phone number I don't care, my phone number 318- 614-0681. I’m on LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook and all. I like that you give out your phone number so people talk to you because this is a business of people and networking. So if anybody listens to that and you guys want to connect with Andy it's a great opportunity to talk to an investor that's experienced and knows what they're doing. Yes, that's one of my favorite parts honestly. I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago in Dallas and we went out to dinner they were looking around the table, there was a guy from Oklahoma City, Columbus Ohio, Rochester New York, Boston and myself from west Louisiana. So now you get to meet all kinds of different neat people who build relationships and who knows, I mean help out in the very least, maybe partnering on some deals together with him, so yeah. And sometimes your phone rings and you don't know. But that bet could be one hundred thousand ringings right there and I missed it. It happens in real estate though. So yes Andy thank you very much for participating in the show. I want to wish you the best of luck in your future ventures, and thank you. That was an amazing insight. Thanks for listening to the real estate investing podcast with Don and Eden, stay tuned for more episodes. Till next time.

29. Stop Feeling Exhausted And Get Focused

Naturally Surviving

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2019 26:13

Transcript of Episode: Hello. So I'm going to record, and this is my last episode in this batch and series. So who knows what will come out of my mouth, but I would like to welcome you to another week. After this I am going to the gym and work out to get some energy. And that ties in perfectly to what I'm going to be talking about today. So today's episode is about how do I get focus or energy. So I received...I Asked folks to give me their questions on Instagram. That's how I figured out what would be the best thing to talk about. And I got a lot of responses about, you know, feeling like don't have energy or I can't focus. Feeling like I should quit my job and then maybe that'll help me finish my dissertation quicker. What else do I have? Health issues. In what ways have you found it helpful to set up yourself for a good night's sleep? Which I also will lump into this category. So yeah, and people just come to me. I mean, I had an episode what, two weeks ago about How to, Now, I just went blank. Y'all. Oh, how I balance it all. I'm in a lot, some of that I'm going to talk about this week. But I really want to talk about this feeling of like burnt out. Yeah. Burnt out just over it, exhausted. People will tell you that this is a common thing throughout the phd process or in life. I don't believe that has to be true. I don't believe that at all, especially being on this side of things. Cause it's different when you are working towards a goal and you are like, your body is tired because you've been doing a lot, right? You've been performing but you don't feel burnt out or stressed versus you feel burned out, stressed exhausted and your body feels that way as a result and you don't feel it. You don't find any joy in the process whatsoever. So, you know, like my favorite thing is to look at it particularly like athletes or just even performers, you know, Beyonce, the GOATs. And just thinking about like, you know, like watching your interviews and whatnot and Them pushing their bodies to the limit to achieve a goal right? To 'em that the way I'm drinking my water. So achieve a goal or to be a better performer or in the field or arena or whatever. That's a different type of stress on the body and energy output. Right? But their mental state is that they're focused on their goal to be the best to win the game, to have more ticket sales. Right? That's a different type of energy and mindset it's not depleting energy. It's building up cause you're working, building momentum towards something. Whereas where most typically I find that people are asking me about is that they feel depleted. They feel like, you know, this dissertation process does not fill them and in, in any way, in any capacity that they're not, they can't find any joy. They're falling out of love with their dissertation and they don't, they are actually thinking of leaving their program and quitting. And I want to talk about how to get from that energy to more of the, this process. I'm learning a lot. It's filling me up. I feel joy from it. Okay. So I hope that like makes sense. So a lot of what I talk about is like the process and the focus on one thing at a time, right? You can't go from step one to step 10, right? We got to go from step one and step two and how do we do that? And even when we get to like step six and step seven and we can see step ten in the distance, how do we stay at the step six or seven instead of trying to hop over to step 10? Cause again, it doesn't matter how far along you are in the process, you need to continue to do the steps cause that's how you get to step 10 quicker. Than you trying to jump over all the steps. Okay. so to you know, I had to talk about Beyonce. It's been weeks. I haven't even talked about her. Y'all. Okay. So now I'm big Beyonce fan. And be honest. I had just reached a new high of fame and her career after her third solo album, I feel like a Beyonce historian or something. But after her third solo album, I am Sasha Fierce, right. More people started to know who she was. You have singles like like Single Ladies Diva and the biggest Halo, right? That it's international success. And that tour was bananas, right? She was on a tour for a very long time. And she started to record her fourth album and her but I actually started thinking about that because those things overlap. And her Mama said to her, hey girl, hey, you're doing the absolute most right. You don't even, she was, she, Beyonce even said like, it got to the point where she didn't know what city she was in country. She was in. Everything started to look the same. She couldn't hear like, she couldn't see like all the fans, it just all became a blur. And she was working all these hours. And if you follow Beyonce you know, like for her to say she was working a lot meant that she was probably working 20 hours a day and not sleeping very much. And so her mom said, hey girl hey, you need to take a break. I don't know what you're doing but you need to take a whole break. So she decided to take a whole year off to experience life. Now you know, that may have been some other reasons why I have my theories, but we don't go with it at face value. So she took a whole year off where she just traveled the world, she got to reconnect with loved ones. She got to take her nephew to school and be with him and spend some time with him in Paris. I felt like a stalker that I have this information anyway. Uhang out with her husband, get married. Ujust have all these experiences that she said gave her time to reflect and really think about who she was and who she wanted to be and where she saw her career going. Because for all intents and purposes, she had made it to the point that I'm sure she dreamed about right when she was nine years old and wanted that first record deal. Like she had reached a height of success that most people wish they could. Like most recording artists wish they would get to like diva was,uI am Sasha Fierce, excuse me, was like the album of this is it. Right. And the next level above that, it's a whole new level that most people don't even get to. So this year that she took off I think gave her a lot of time because then when she comes back to introduce album four she also makes the announcement that her father would no longer manage her. She will manage herself, that she will own her own management company and manage herself and have her own team. She will have her own production team. She will be in control, complete control of her whole career. She got married, she got pregnant. And it was also like a new sound because a lot of people don't like four the album. It sounds different than I am Sasha Fierce. It felt more mature it felt, I don't know, it just felt to me, I don't know other language is failing me right now in terms of, it just felt different. But it gave her space to be able to say like, if I'm going to go to the next level of my career, right, if I'm gonna go to Michael Jackson status, I'm gonna have to get some people who can help me get there because what got me here is not going to get me to that level. The people who I'm grateful for who got me to this height in my career can't get me to their next level of where I'm trying to go. So she cleaned house for the most part, got some new teams, still had core people around her who've been with her from day one. But people rose had to change and they had to adjust and she had to get a new team around her. She had to become more confident or knowing herself because to manage yourself, it's a whole other thing. Find people who could get her in markets and avenues that she hadn't been in before. You also see differences in Jay z career, but this not about him, and we don't talk about him really that much, but you know, you see them two, that there was a different type of alignment between them two because it's title and all those things started to come out. I'm digressing, we're not talking about Jay Z. But yet you see all these changes and then after four, right, self title comes out, that's a whole new level of success. Lemonade comes out, it's exploding, right? That high is like it is it, but it has, she not taken that year off, got a chance to refocus, change her team around. Right. And then do something different. We wouldn't see the first black woman to headline Coachella though we are today. Now. What does Beyonce have to do with the dissertation process? I use that as an analogy to say this is your year of, Four like the year before your quote unquote "Four" dissertation comes out. This is your like defining moment up to this point. You've been in school for 20 plus years, right? Like some of us did Pre-k, you got k through 12 you got Undergrad, some of us have master's degrees and then you have your whatever your program is like two to three years of coursework. Right up to this point, we've been in school for a very long time. Meaning we've been showing up to places where someone hands us a syllabus or some sort of information that says this is when you need to meet, here's your schedule. Classes are these days. Here's the topic of the class, here's what we're gonna hear, the sub topics that we're going to cover and use. This topic that you will learn over the next 16 weeks. Here are the readings that you need to do. Here are the assignments and very great detail to make sure that you understand those sub topics and to make sure you understand the larger topic and here's your exam dates, right? You've been showing up to our room where other people are there in some form of fashion when most of it has probably been in person. Maybe as you have grown in your educational journey and made me more of those classes have been online, but in some capacity you have shown up with other folks to learn about these, this one thing in each of this, in these classes and doing assignments and activities to make sure you have mastered that topic. Someone has been checking in with you weekly if not more. Someone has been responsible for giving you feedback on your mini assignments, someone who's been responsible for planning class discussions, right, and it has helped you to get to this far like get this far in this far being now you're at the dissertation stage in the final thing for you to become Dr for everyone else to know that when they see those three letters behind your name or they see doctor in front of your name, they now know that you are an expert in your field. Right? Because that, that's what that denotes, that you are an expert about this building. You should in theory be able to talk about this and this one area in very great detail in day, you should be a producer of knowledge within this area of focus. Right? So I equate you getting to this point in your dissertation to Beyonce getting to, I am Sasha Fierce, because before that she had what? That would've been four albums, five albums, cause there was a Christmas album, five or six albums with Destiny's child and she would have had three albums of her own, if not more. I'm probably missing some things plus some random singles or whatnot. Right. She had put in a consistent amount of work to get to I am Sasha fierce. Right. She had made it and people had been telling her to do things and is very cookie cutter type way a course like Yeah, she brought her own thing to it. Right. That's what made her successful. But up to that point, people have been telling her like what's been working over the years and for her to have achieved what has been working and get to a level of success that most people don't get to. She did that, but now it's like, what's next? This is your, what's next? It is up to you to figure it out. So how are you going to now be like Beyonce and manage yourself? Be Your own manager because your chair is there, yes, to guide you and to help you. But really you're leading this ship, especially if you listen to last week's episode, you're leading this. So what are you gonna do? And I would say that one of the biggest reasons why you probably feel like you can't focus and you don't have energy and you're burnt out and you're over it. It's because you haven't either realized that, that you're the one leading this ship or you have realized it and it freaks you out and you're like, I don't know what to do. I'm not ready. So I always say that everything comes back to mindset that you have to come to terms with. I'm the one that's leading this process and I have to show up for myself and that I'm willing to put into the work, put the work in and take ownership of this dissertation process and that I'm ready to do it. That is really what it is. You believing that you are ready to be the one that's leading your dissertation ship. All these analogies. That is the first thing. Even if you can't fully believe that you're ready, at least me in saying at least saying that I'm ready to take the next step. Right? I'm on step four. I'm at least ready to go step five. I may not be ready to be at step 10 but I'm the least ready to be at step five. I'm at least ready to figure out what I need to do to be at step five. So that is the first thing of the first way to like shift energy of like getting out of victim mode. Nothing is happening to you. It's happening for you. So you can get out of that mode of like, oh, woe is me. And being like, okay, great. I have control over my actions and my thoughts. I am willing to do whatever it takes to get to the next level. Okay, what do I have to do? That's step one. Step two then is getting some first. So in this, in this this vein of like mindset, I'm taking control. How do you keep this momentum going in your mindset? What is going to be your routine for managing your mind? I believe that you should have some sort of spiritual component, whether that is God, whether that is meditating, whether that is some eastern practices, whether that's like yoga, having something, being able to believe in something bigger than you to lean on in terms of that you can have faith in. Will help keep you grounded. The third piece is having some sort of daily routine to remind you that yes, you have control over you. And you have something that's bigger than you to help keep you anchored in having some way to reconnect with that thing that's bigger than you and reconnect with yourself. So having some, a daily practice that helps you with that. The next thing is picking one thing to focus on in the moment. So we're not trying to do the whole dissertation right now on step four. We're just trying to know that our topic and get really clear about what our topic is. And then step five, we're just trying to get done with chapter two. That is it. We're not trying to do chapter three and then jump to chapter two and then think about IRB and then come back to chapter one. Then go to chapter two again. That is how you gotta slow yourself down. Find that one thing that if in the moment it feels like this is too easy or I'm never gonna finish this way, if I just focus on one thing, when you start to think like that, that's how you know you're in the right spot. Finding that one thing that you feel like in your mind. And so easy that you will finish it in no time. Focus on that. Do that first, and then move to the next thing. How am I going on a rant? I'm avoiding going on rants, but finding one thing to focus on finishing that one thing and then movingq to the next thing. No more doing all the things, because that is why your energy has been divided. That's why you're feeling all over the place. And that's what leads to feeling burnt out. Focusing on one thing, finishing that one thing. And remember when we're finishing that one thing, we're giving it a B minus c plus effort when it gets to that level, right? We're just passing. When we get to that, that's how we know we're finished. We finished it, and we're gonna move on to the next step because we're not getting stuck and making things perfect. Or a is there a plus? No. A a. We're not doing that. We're, we're about making progress over perfection. Okay? And then the final thing going back to Beyonce Who's going to be your people, who's going to be your team? And your team's going to have to change cause we're, we're at a different point now. We're no longer just going to class and being real cute with our assignments and what not. We are writing a dissertation and many of you are writing a dissertation that a lot of people like there's not a lot of other people who have done it before. A lot of you are writing dissertations that is speaking truth to power. This talking about equity and justice. And that's gonna require a different set of team around you because not everybody is woke, quote unquote, You'll chair might not getting your committee may not get it. They might not have the level or depth of analysis about systemic oppression as you do. And that's a whole separate mistake that you may be making an assumption you may be making that you think everybody knows what you know, that is obvious to them like it is to you, but it's not. And so you're gonna need a team of folks around you who understand what it is that you talk, that you're talking about, that believe in what you're talking about and sees the importance in what you're talking about. Because even if that's not your committee or chair, who else is going to be around you to help you prepare for presenting your, your research and your data to your committee to get that passed. So you can be doctor who's going to be those folks and it doesn't got to be a lot of folks, but having someone who can do that, having people around you who will help you make sure that you're showing up for yourself and for your dissertation consistently having folks who you can bounce ideas off of. Who can push you and make sure like they're giving you things that you probably haven't thought about who can read over your stuff and give you feedback. Yeah. Who can love on you when you just having a moment. And you just over it. Cause we all have our moments. Getting you a team in place. Okay. When you have those things. So when you have your,uwhen you take ownership for your life, when you have, you believe in something bigger than you, when you have a daily routine, when you get focused on that one thing that you need to do, and when you have good people around you, I promise you, they, you will see a major shift in your energy and focus. You will even probably believe that you don't even need to quit your job to finish your dissertation because you believe that you know how to do it. Now, there are some other things about schedules and whatnot and like time management that you need to do, but that is like nothing compared to these five things. These five things are what really will keep you going. And I talk about the other time management productivity, productivity tips on like two weeks ago, that podcast about how I like balance it all. But this will give you a renewed energy because then when we look at Beyonce and we look at after Four the momentum that has happened, the shift in her career to shift how she even showed up, the risks she was, she was able to take the more confident that she even appeared to be. You know, going towards the area of like talking about feminism and women in business and like being free to explore. We started to hear from her more like in terms of her philosophies and career and whatnot and not necessarily her like during the interviews, but that's a whole other thing. My point is you, you see a shift and so this is now your time to shift. This was the make or break. This is your year that you like reorganize things and get it together because your dissertation is just the beginning. The goal of this is just to be the beginning is not meant to be the best thing that you've ever written is meant to be your starting point. It is your year before you produce. Album four is your year to figure out what it is that you want and where you're going, what you're going to do, and how you can do it. Because after you have those three letters and you are called doctor, there's a what's next? What are you going to do next? Cause a dissertation and a phd is just starting point and I want to see amazing things from you and I want to see you do great things, but it starts here. So I would love to know what you thought about this week's episodes. Any ah-has, any takeaways. Come on over to Instagram at @Marvettelacy and let me know. Or you can come over to Facebook at Qual Scholars Facebook group and we will be happy to talk with you about the podcast. That is all for this week. I'm going to the gym. I'm going to eat lunch and enjoy the rest of my day. So until next time, do something to show yourself some love. Bye for now.

Are you properly protected and financially independent?

Activate Your Best Self Morning Inspirational Show

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 29, 2019 39:54

Would you leave you child with a stranger? No, Right? Because it would lead to them being mistreated, raped, or death. Well don't you think that's kind of the same thing as having no life insurance. Leaving you family with a ton of debt, your finally expenses, and having to create a GoFundMe Account. This is why I show my clients how to be properly protected and financially independent. Where in the case if they die prematurely that their family will be able to live their same lifestyle or better after they have passed away. They will feel comfort in knowing that they made the correct decision to properly to protect their family. The Bible says in Proverbs 13:22, That a good man will leave an inheritance to his children's children. The question is today: Are you leaving an inheritance for your children's children? --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/activateyourbestself/support

bible leaving proverbs protected financially independent right because go fund me account

096 FIFM - Going Independent as a Financial Advisor w/ Aaron Hattenbach

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2019 56:00

When you're working in the financial industry, most approaches are very cookie cutter. But if you want to be your own person, how do you really break out of the mold? How do you start your own practice to emphasize where your passion in finance is really at, and do so successfully? In this episode, Aaron Hattenbach, founder of Rapport Financial shares his journey from working for bigger financial service firms to having his independent service firm which to date has now managed over 500 million in client assets. Schedule a Meeting with Aaron: https://rapportfinancial.com/ ------ Automated Transcript Below: Dean Soto 0:00 Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of freedom in five minutes.com. And we're here again with another freedom in five minutes podcast episode. Today's topic, is this going independent as a financial advisor. That and more coming up. Alright, cool. So we have a really cool show we had we actually been talking right before this a lot. And I'm like, oh, man, we gotta we gotta save this content for the actual show. But I'm here with Aaron Hattenbach, man, is this gonna be awesome. So Aaron, he is the founder and managing member of Rapport Financial. It's a boutique independent advisory firm, with a decade of experience in wealth management in the wealth management industry, having managed over 500 million in client assets. That's crazy man. Aaron works with young tech professionals in the early stages of wealth accumulation, as well as high net worth clients, with a particular focus on physicians and business owners. So without further ado, man, I'm so glad you're here with us, Aaron, how's it going? Aaron Hattenbach 1:17 Happy to be here. It's going well, for a Monday. Dean Soto 1:22 Well, it's cool. So one of the things that piqued my interest about you so so obviously, I have my claws out there trying to find really interesting podcast guests. I've reached out to several, you know, CFPB, sort certified financial planners, financial advisors, things like people like that. And there's one thing that is very different about you, when it comes to financial services in general. And that is, right off the bat, you you can tell that you are you, you have your own way of doing things, you you, you kind of have broken the mold. And we can go into this a little bit. But it seems to me in when you're doing any type of financial advising any securities, anything's like that. It's very cookie cutter people are very much on the defensive, because there's so many regulations and so on. And so when I saw you, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this guy's doing content this guy's doing like, just, he's teaching other people how to run their firms and things like that, I need to have this guy on this on the show, because that is one of the hardest things to do in your industry. So all that being said, I want to get your entire background, you used to work for these big Merrill Lynch, bigger financial services firms. And now you are your own person, and it was not an easy ride. How did that happen? Give us a little bit of background on your entire story. Aaron Hattenbach 2:54 Yeah, so Dean, I started working right after the financial crisis graduated from from Brandeis in 2009. And really, this all came from an experience working at the attorney general's office on a case against some of the largest financial institutions and lenders that essentially contributed to the major mortgage meltdown that we saw, and I felt a passionate need to work on the side of the consumer and financial services, not on the side of the sales side, selling the institutions, and creating products, I really wanted to help shelter individuals, families, high net worth individuals across the gamut, and educate them really. So my passion is financial education. And I felt that I needed to start my own practice in order to emphasize that without limitations. So to backtrack to that to 2010. I started with Alliance Bernstein, they're very large, firm publicly traded, it worked for a couple of independent firms, one of which is hopefully going to go public, and I can cash out my stock at some point. And then found myself at Merrill Lynch and the advisor training program, built up a decent practice for myself. But I continue to find the same issues where I wanted to really be a holistic financial planner, cover everything that's beyond investing, because quite frankly, I think there's this misconception that, that building a portfolio is what an advisor gets paid for. I think in order to earn 1%, on a portfolio, you have to be doing full financial planning, and that, that covers retirement planning, tax planning, estate planning, stock options, planning, looking at an employer benefits package. So what I did was I saw this trend at the large institutions that were focused primarily on portfolio management, and recognize that the future of financial planning and wealth advisory for that matter, is helping people with everything personal finance related, and if you're not doing that, you're going to lose clients, or you're going to have clients that are going to question what you're charging them. So I created Rapport Financial back in early 2017, with only a few clients and with a vision that I was going to go well beyond the investing in helping my clients, but specifically focusing on young tech professionals that were from age 22 to 23, to 35, in the accumulation phase of life, trying to accumulate for a home purchase to start a family for a number of goals that quite frankly, in in this economy where the price of goods are going up, wages are staying stagnant, was becoming I think, less and less of it over reality. And so I wanted to show people that through a full financial planning process that I created, that they can attain these goals and a time window that is feasible, and not have to be waiting decades to to eventually, you know, be a homeowner. Yeah, it's, it's worked out really well. I really love my client base, I pick who I want to work with. And, you know, I cover everything from my clients even as far as if a client is going off on their own and creating a marketing consulting business, how to negotiate compensation, how to, you know, position themselves, with with the with, with, with strength, so they're, they're going in there and saying, you know, what, I don't need this opportunity. I like it. But here's what I'm worth. And so, there's so much more than just the investments, and that's what I get excited about is, I can actually make an impact on people's lives beyond picking ETFs and funds. Dean Soto 6:52 I love that man. It's it's, it's definitely something that is different, because I've had a couple of clients in the financial services realm. And, you know, it's, it is a very, like, we like I said before, it's very, it's a very defensive industry, they that you you can, that you had your you have your standard cookie cutter, typically focused toward like what we talked about prior to the podcast toward baby boomer type, folks, and anytime you wanted to go any do anything that was outside of the box, you have to go and get it through compliance, right? content, it can be a whatever structure, you want to do it just tons of having to go through compliance when you're working with a big business. So like, so I can see how easily that can be frustrating if you're working for a bigger company like that. What were some of the pitfalls, that or it's not pitfalls, but like what is something that you just did not expect once you left? The big companies that that you feel what it that pretty much every single financial advisor is going to run into? Aaron Hattenbach 8:10 Yeah, so I think advisors are trained on how to advise, right? Very, very plain and simple. I'm not going to get into the nuances of what a financial advisor does, I think, you know, it's very, very well publicized. But we're not taught how to own and run a business. We're not told how to hire employees, how to select vendors, how to really create a business from scratch. And I think that is the challenge for any entrepreneur is you might have an area of expertise, and a knowledge base. But if you haven't started a business before, you're in for quite the experience. And I know that you know this Dean. So when I started this business, I had done months of preparation. And in fact, probably about five or six years of preparation in my head. And in collecting documentation that I thought would be used fault. I created a dropbox folder that I knew at some point I was going to tap it when I was writing. And and it really token a conversation with a client of mine who was working with me since 2010. I'm only 32 years old now. So that's that's saying a lot that he stuck with me for 10 years, and hopefully, many, many years to come. But he said to me, I'm not moving my account and the relationship, you must be starting your own practice. And so that gave me the confidence that I don't think I don't think anybody is ready necessarily to start a business. Yeah, but there's no perfect time, you're not going to have everything mapped out. It's not all going to line up like a puzzle. But I think what I found in running a business for the past two and a half years, and even going back to Day One is you need to be willing to adapt, you need to be willing to constantly put time and resources into learning. And and I quite frankly, I'm constantly looking at my business and poking holes in it and saying, Where can I improve the client experience? How can I improve the infrastructure of technology? What can I outsource on a day to day basis, that is not my core competency. And quite frankly, also is compliant. Because I it's I you know, as much as compliance is talked about working at Maryland, Morgan Stanley, I still have a compliance department that I outsource. And I'm still subject to the same regulations, it's just a very different experience in terms of, you know, day to day, if I send a client an email or a personal note, I don't have to run it by someone to, you know, in order to get this to the client, I can, I am my own compliance officer, in fact, but I do still have to be subject to the same regulations. But I would say, you know, in a nutshell, being your own boss, setting up the infrastructure, really making a lot of decisions in a short time window and saying, Okay, well, you know, I'm going to do the best that I can do. And then the other thing to do is, is I kept all my contracts very short in nature, because I realized that if I made a mistake and selected a vendor that that wasn't appropriate for the business I was creating, if I did a month to month model, where I may be paid a little bit more instead of an annual contract and that I was locked into, at the very least I could get out of that and select a different vendor that made more sense for my business. So there are a number of things that I did and including, I would say, reading a lot of kids this articles, you know, I given back to that that blog, in recent years, because ultimately, I relied almost exclusively on kids, this is content. And I feel like there's there's enough content out there that if you're an advisor, and you're saying, You know what, I feel stuck, I'm not Merrill Lynch, or Morgan Stanley, I'm never leaving the sandbox, or I'm going to move from Merrill the Morgan because I don't want to go independent, I would challenge them and say, there's so many resources out there on the internet, and so many people that are willing to help that all of those pain points and all those reasons to not go independent. I can respond with here, here's what I think and give them the tools and show them how they can empower themselves. It's really, really neat. And this didn't exist, you know, 10, 15 years ago. Now, there are technology providers, we're talking dozens for every category that are that are built for the independent advisory channel. I mean, I can build a better tech stack than Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley has internally that is cool, and do so cheaper, and have and have the ability to say, you know, what, if I don't like what they're doing anymore, there are 10 more competitors that I can go to. Dean Soto 12:51 Oh yeah, I love I love that. Because like, because it's, it's, it's it's riding the wave of well not really the wave, but actually, you know, like, breaking the mold, and then just riding the wave of, of the fact that things are changing. I mean, you could have just sat there and complained and just been like, well, I'm just this is what I do. I you know, I was trained as an advisor, and I'm just going to, but you took on the entire the entire business, which involves marketing, involves bookkeeping involves it involves, like you said, still involves compliance. But how can I do compliance where I'm still flexible in in various ways? And how can I give? How can I, with where I, where you're at right now? How could you do what Merrill Lynch does, but do it faster? Do it more in with with a more caring touch with your clients? Because that's one of the things about you is you actually go after you you are I shouldn't say go after but you are, you will definitely take on different type of client than your traditional advisor. Traditional advisors go after boomers who Aaron Hattenbach 14:07 Yeah, boomers is an older and younger, that are that are retiring or nearing retirement, and have accumulated enough and assets to work with, quote unquote, a traditional financial advisor. Yep. What's interesting is, I noticed, in my time working at Merrill working in Hightower, working at concentric, that a lot of my peers were looking for financial advice. They didn't trust automating all of their finances. So you've got a lot of these robo advisors, which I think provide a great product, but they're not in comprehensive planning service. Yeah, um, you know, they're not going to tell you how to max out your employee benefits package. Yeah, they're not going to tell you to fund an HSA, when you have a high deductible health care plan. They're just there. They're intended to fill a gap. But they're not necessarily there to cover everything personal finance related. Yeah. So I saw a gap in a really in need in my field where advisors were not gearing their practices towards young professionals that are high income earners, what I call Henry's high earners, not rich yet. Yeah, I didn't come up with that term. But as an - Dean Soto 15:20 That's an awesome term. Aaron Hattenbach 15:21 Yeah. But being here in the Bay Area, you know, incomes are, are substantially higher than the median income in the country. And people here have to face high cost of living. But what I've noticed is with with some simple tweaks, and putting them through my five step process, I can get them from a point where they feel like they're not saving anything to where they're maxing out their retirement accounts, they have monthly ACH is going into their investment accounts. And they feel like they're in a position now, where they financially have a understanding of what the future looks like and why they work. Yeah, like, I challenge my clients. Why? Why are you working? Like, what is it that you're working for? Is it the money? Is it the passion? Is it a combination of the two, but at the end of the day, if we plan ahead, and we we build a full plan for their finances, which I do for them using incredible technology, that, quite frankly, I think, is on par if not better than some of these larger institutions. Um, I think I can provide the same level if not more, of a of a comprehensive planning service at a lower cost, too. So that's the other thing is that I think financial planning in general, comes with a high ticket cost, right at a high, high price. How can we lower the costs so that people that aren't high income earners, but really need my services, I can sit down with them, build them plan in a couple hours of time. And now they can sit down and every year and say, Okay, here's our plan of action, here the things I can do to improve the efficiency of my overall financial livelihood. And then at the end of the day, they start making better decisions totally. Dean Soto 17:11 And what what better way to what better way to keep clients and to grow with them? Because I know, in I mean, in my industry, when people when people work with me, like, my goal is to make them more money or save more time. But usually, the making them more money is is the one that people they they're like, Oh crap, why would I not keep on going? Aaron Hattenbach 17:38 Right? That takes a precedent. Dean Soto 17:39 Yeah. And so like, for you, your immediate, you know, if even if they're not making a lot right now, every little time they're making more than they would have, they're like, why would I not keep on working with Aaron, like, I'm just gonna continue as they start becoming rich, because they're Henry's, as they start becoming much more it building different egg, acquiring different assets becoming their portfolio actually growing, getting better jobs, or building bigger businesses, whatever it is, you're the first person they're going to go to, because you've already proven with these small things, as it keeps growing, that you are that you know what you're doing, and you're you're always building their best interest. Aaron Hattenbach 18:25 Right. And the whole thing is the trusted advisor capacity where I think I go beyond the traditional financial advisor. And there are there are many advisors, I know that do this, it does follow the same kind of narrative, which is, you know, they get invited to their clients, weddings, they become kind of a pseudo member of the family. But really, what it comes down to is like, I think you can't have three 400 clients and do this, you just can't, because clients are going to move to new cities, they're going to start families, you know, they move to a new city, you've got to make sure that they buy renter's insurance, and they're renting, or they buy homeowners insurance, that they're purchasing, helping them getting a mortgage and pre qualified. I mean, there are so many touch points in my clients lives where I want them calling me and I've essentially built this practice. And I've, I've trained them, in essence to call me anytime they have a major life event. Okay. So if you have a kid, we need to look into life insurance, right? So there's just so many ways I can help the client and this is my passion is the educational component. And then, as one of my clients put it recently, a hand holding, like knowing that you're not going into this experience, and and going on one website and doing some research and questioning the decision you made, because you were short on time, or you didn't have a second opinion from someone who does this full time. Yeah, right. And at the end of the day, it's like, I look at myself, as a general practitioner, physician in finance, Oh, I love that. That's where my job is if my job is really to diagnose, and then if I I'm not the expert on that subject matter whether it's insurance, mortgage, I have resources, I have people I can that I trust that I would go to for insurance and a mortgage myself. And I can connect them with my client. And I can also be involved in the process and make sure that my client is aware of everything, right from that financial standpoint. And it's really, I think it's one of those business models that it doesn't pay as much as advising two or 300 clients and putting them into mutual funds and meeting with them once a year to check in on them. But I do think that this is the future for my generation, they're going to want this hand holding Yeah, they're going to be willing to pay a premium for it. And I really firmly believe that if you don't migrate your business towards this, this more white glove level of service, you're going to get caught with your pants down. And I certainly would rather be ahead of the curve, make a little bit less, but know that I'm a fiduciary. And that I'm building a sustainable long term business that I can bring other advisors into, and feel good about what we're doing. Right like and make a good living eventually. Dean Soto 21:10 Yeah, I love it. So so with with all of this, it kind of leads into the fact that not only are you helping your clients, but you're actually helping other advisors, do what you're doing and and start, because really, this is the way that you're doing this is a is a new model, Aaron Hattenbach 21:31 a new blueprint, Dean Soto 21:32 it's totally a new blueprint. And you're spot on with that with the hand holding. I mean, my father in law doesn't want any hand holding, you just like, take my money, give me return. And back for me. I'm like, and everyone that I know, that's of my age, or younger, is there like, you know, I want someone that's a little bit of a mentor, and a little bit of have some coach? Yeah, Coach were great making decisions. They're also saying, you know, you should do this as well, because, like, it's just because it's I don't, I don't you know, for me, I like that hand holding so. So how are you training other people? How are you? How are you building up these other advisors, like advisors who are really given their new different type of client, right? Aaron Hattenbach 22:25 Sure. So advisors come to me at different stages of their careers, I'm finding most of the advisors that want to work with me, on an ongoing basis are advisors that have worked in the industry for a decade or two, they've primarily worked at at large institutions like Merrill Lynch, Morgan, Stanley, UBS, and plenty of other firms for that matter, and they have a large client base, but they are now realizing that, you know, for a number of reasons, it could be headline risk, you know, a major financial firm has a huge lawsuit, or, or a, you know, you can even point to the Wells Fargo opening up of fraudulent accounts are opening up of accounts that clients had not, you know, had not approved. So, I think a lot of advisors are finding that the institutions that they've relied on for name brand, and and and that power has kind of dissipated post 2008 2009. And I think, you know, it rightly so, right. Yeah, these institutions lost our trust, and got bailed out by by the government. And so, you know, it's really interesting, the ones that come from these institutions, what I have to do is, is basically overcome their obstacles and fears of growing independent, yeah. teach them about the infrastructure that's available to them. And what I'll do is, after this podcast, I'm happy to provide you with a couple of links for your listeners, for various, you know, whether it's finance, tech solutions for CRM, and billing and all that. I think it's an educational process. And if the advisors is experiencing so much pain at Morgan, or Merrill, or UBS or Raymond James, whatever, they're going to want the education. Yeah. And if they want the education I have, and I can teach them, why it makes sense for them to go independent. You know, what, it's going to end up costing them annually to run their practice based on what they're looking for, because no advisory practice is the same. Yeah, this is what I found. And I'm not going to say, hey, my model, and the way I work is the right one for every single advisor that I consult with. Now, of course, now I get to know them understand what they're looking for, what are they specializing in? where their clients, what services they provide? What do they charge? You know, I have a whole list of profiling questions that I have to rely on in order to get a comprehensive intake of who that advisor is, and what they're looking to do with their business. And ultimately, at the end of the day, it's educating and it's basically telling them here are the different vendors that I think makes sense. And then also coaching them on how to negotiate because they've been a big enterprises that have done the negotiating for them. So, you know, say Salesforce is offering you this financial services cloud for two grand here. Well, you know, you should know that they have sales people that have quarterly goals do. So if you can get them at the end of the quarter and say, hey, look, you know, $2,000 will read for me, but I can I can do 1400, well, a lot of this stuff is negotiable. And so I think you have to be your own advocate, you have to not just accept the answer as is. And it's ultimately it's like going back to school, again, you've got to go and you've got to embrace it, and realize that you're making an investment in not just your business, but your clients futures. And yeah, for me, this is, this has been really exciting. It's something that I added to my practice after doing this for two and a half years. But in addition, what I've done is I've taken the best of Maryland's the best of Hightower, the best of Bernstein, the best of like working in these different models within wealth management, and said, okay, because I've been exposed to all these different technology vendors, now I do have the ability to say to you, okay, well, your reporting needs are more extensive than mine, here are the reporting platforms that work. So that's been in essence, what I am, is I'm, I'm an advisor consultant on the side, and I do this not because it's going to make me a ton of money, but because I want to pay it forward. And I do feel like there are so many advisors that are capable of doing this, and just with a little more education and knowledge, they can, they can go off on their own, and they can not just build a practice that they're proud of, but a practice that they can eventually, you know, give to the next generation. Yeah. And, and set up and set up a practice that, that is sustainable, long term, and isn't reliant on an institution, it's, you know, it's, it's cool, you're setting up a legacy for yourself. Dean Soto 27:12 I love that it's instead of instead of, you know, working and building somebody else's legacy, which was like a big, you know, the big Merrill Lynch or whatever you're, you're spot on like, you can, you can totally give that to the next generation. Now that it's now that it's becoming possible. And you're showing that this is actually becoming possible to be to that it's much, much easier now than it was 10 years ago, to become an independent financial advisor. Aaron Hattenbach 27:41 There's just so much I think, because of the growth and if you look in financial services, right now, across the map, outside of wealth management, you know, most areas of financial services are experiencing a slowdown, because of technology out there, the fees are going down your tech companies doing direct listings and avoiding an investment bank. But what's really interesting is the one area that is expanding and expanding at an amazing clip, is this rush to independence. And you're seeing, I get emails every day about, you know, firms that are leaving a big, or teams that are leaving a big, firm and going independent. And it's like this has been going on the past 10 years, you're seeing the RIA channel, the registered investment advisory channel, grow double to double digits, and you're seeing the Merrill Lynch's Morgan Stanley wire house model, really just trying to hold on for dear life. And and they're also I think, really, I think, not geared towards the next generation. And the advisors are in their 50s and 60s, the average age of an advisor in those models. And ultimately, what they're doing is they're not setting up the next generation of their client tells kids and grandkids with a service model that's going to run with them. And so for me, it was okay, I can't be at a firm that is not going to really embrace the fact that a the next generation of wealth is looking for a different experience, different fee structure. And they're just holding on for dear life and trying to just keep keep the boat, you know, sailing, right, I'm for lack of a better analogy, I wanted to be ahead of the curve and recognize that the next gen of wealth is coming to me with with a different, a different service need. And if those big firms were not going to embrace it, I was going to create it. But what's interesting is Merrill Lynch and Schwab have created digital monthly subscription models in the last couple months, which I did two and a half years ago. Yeah. And it just it boggles my mind that they're now rushing into this. And, you know, who knows how their how that how that, you know, how the actual service model works? But it's just like, too little too late. Dean Soto 30:03 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, and and the Met, it would be hard to get a resonating message from one of those big firms to the younger generation? Aaron Hattenbach 30:17 Well, I mean, I'll give you an example. I use Google Apps for a lot of a lot of my client intake. And it just feels like there's so many cool free ish, bringing tools available to advisors. And because those firms, unfortunately, for them, they they have to go through their public companies. Their their approval process is lengthy. Yeah, it all has to be built internally, you know, they're not able to use the best of, of technology tools that someone like me or another advisor has available Dean Soto 30:51 and and Aaron Hattenbach 30:53 open architecture model. It's Yeah, we I compared as it's like, you know, Apple and Android, right. So but, you know, in many cases, people love Apple, it's a closed architecture system is it's great, it's safe. But there are people that prefer more customization. And, you know, I would say, my model makes a lot of sense. And a lot of independent firms models make a lot of sense for people that are not looking for that very, like simple, I would say, archaic way of managing wealth, which is charge a person on a whim, and and set up a quarterly meeting, it's purely based on the portfolio returns. Dean Soto 31:36 Yeah, no, I love that, man. I love it. I love it. And it definitely is. Even with, with utilizing those apps and the free the freemium type apps like that, it's what it's what my generation and and younger generation are used to. Right, and you're speaking the language, just even in something like that. So. So that's, I mean, I love it and actually kind of corresponds with so I always ask the five minute mindset shift question like the five minute like, strategic business decision that people can make that you that, that that you made, that changed the trajectory of your business? And and so in your five minute one, because you're so thorough, and you actually do the questionnaire, when I said to podcast, get you talk about your five minute mindset shift question is, it is based actually on questions, and asking your client questions, whether it be someone who's your financial advising or somebody, you're trying to help become an independent advisor. Can you talk more about that? Aaron Hattenbach 32:50 Sure. So I don't go into any meetings without an agenda in advance. For my existing clients, and then for prospective clients, they book a time with me on my calendar, a tool, countless booking appointments. But I send them this financial planning checklist that I'm happy to offer to your listeners as well. And the checklist is really meant to gear the client for a conversation that is going to expand upon the investments. And so this checklist has a series of items that think of it as you know, an intake form when you go and see a doctor like. So in this case, you'll have your previous three years of tax returns, disability benefits, coverage, 401k, and other retirement accounts. And it goes on and on. So really the point of that being I want the prospective clients and know that like this call is going to go beyond just talking about my investment philosophy, or what you're looking for in a portfolio. Yeah, that's secondary. Primary to me, is the number one question I ask is, what are you looking for in a relationship with a financial advisor? Yeah, advisor, financial planner, investment advisor, there's so many monitors and names for what we do. But at the end of the day, it's not about me, right? When I am sitting down or having a zoom call with a prospective client, I need to know what they're looking for. If I can provide a service that matches what they're looking for, then let's move forward in the process. Let's, let's have you contact a few of my clients and ask about their client experience for reference checking, and then continue through my five step process. But if they're looking for something where they're like, hey, I want to be hands off entirely, I don't want to participate in this. I just want my portfolio manage, then I'm out there advisor. Yeah. And I have to recognize that and see that for what it is. Yeah. So I started off every call with that question. And I I completely shut up. Like I asked them this question. And I hope bit before the call, they've reviewed the checklist and the questions, and they've given it some thought, as far as what they're looking for. Dean Soto 35:09 I love that. Aaron Hattenbach 35:10 Right? Because in essence, it's like any other service that you that you look for out there. You're the consumer, you're empowered. Yeah. And you have so many different options. Well, why should I work with this service professionals? Yep. Because I like trust, and feel that their service model resonates and speaks to me, right? Yeah. So if they're looking for a comprehensive financial planner, that is going to help with budgeting that's going to help with with selecting of health insurance policies, and then their employer plan, then my firm is going to be the right service provider. But again, that they're looking for just a portfolio manager to babysit their money. Don't get me wrong, I can do that. But I get so much more satisfaction out of really building a full financial puzzle for my clients, and putting the pieces together. And also, what I what what I found is my clients need to be participants in this process. Yeah. And they're unwilling to complete intake forms, and complete some of the homework that I asked them in order for me to give them the best advice, then it's going to be more of a hassle for me, if I have to chase them down and remind them to do something that is actually going to benefit them. But at the end of the day, at the end of the day, some people quite frankly, don't want to put in the time. And kind of where I go back to the advisor, consultant practice. If I see that the advisor wants to independent, but they're unwilling to put in the time, then it's like, Is that going to make for good consulting client? For me? Probably not, yeah, I would rather make less money and have an advisor. That is that is a go getter that is committed to this, that is saying, I've got both feet out the door. I'm not dipping my toes in the water, I am convinced that this is the model I need to pursue. That's a good client, someone that is just looking for an answer to one or two questions is probably not ready to go independent. And I seen that so much. I know. It frustrates me because it's like these people are like, being successful at a wire houses is hard. I mean, one out of 100 advisors eventually becomes a million dollar producer. Yeah. So it is not for the faint of heart and the success percentages at these firms. We're talking in the the low single digits. Okay. So the fact the matter is, these are these are talented people that have the ability to both build trust, and they understand capital markets, and clearly have been able to build rapport with their client base. Yeah, yeah. But but the final step of the process is, you know, building a product of building a practice that you're proud of, but also that you feel you're giving your clients the best possible service offering. Yeah. And I just firmly don't believe that cross selling my clients, and making commissions on a variety of products is in my clients best interest? I just I don't I don't subscribe to that model. And I think, probably 80 to 90%, if not more of advisors don't as well. Dean Soto 38:32 Yeah. But but but to have to actually build something around that belief. You have to be able to put in the work. Aaron Hattenbach 38:44 It's what what it comes down to is your any life transition, whether you're taking a new job moving to a new city, getting married and starting a family. None of this stuff is easy. Like you can you can read books and and arm yourself with a ton of knowledge. But at the end of the day, it's Do you feel confident enough to be able to know that you can make a mistake or two, and it's not going to be Armageddon? Yeah. And what I realized is, when I took my clients and set up my own firm, sure, they had to be very patient, there were documentation issues, there were process issues, but they knew that they were getting somebody that was going to always look out for their best interest. And they were willing to be an early adopter, like the by the first year model of a car. Yeah, right. It's like the people are buying Tesla's right, you have to be a believer in the product and be willing to put up with some of the potential mishaps. But the service the offering is, is so much better, that it makes up for some of the small hiccups along the way. And that's what I would say to most advisors considering independence is you got to be okay with the fact that is not going to be perfect. On day one, certainly not perfect on day 365. That you're you're going to become a better advisor, by owning your own business. I really think I firmly believe that. And for me, it, it was probably the best decision I made in my life was finally going off on my own. And I think that there are too many advisors out there that don't buy into the process. And I would suggest the following. Had I not had all those experiences at those other firms, I wouldn't have been equipped with the knowledge, I would have been going in dark, I would have been just as scared and concerned about compliance, and an operational infrastructure and, and and all the things I don't know, that I'm not aware of right, like the fear of the unknown. And so what I've said to advisors is sure, you can read my 26 steps article, you can read a ton of stuff on the internet. But at the end of the day, when you're making a decision about probably the most important asset, your business. It pays to actually work with someone, it's a knock, but this one, for sure. And so I'm not trying to like be an advocate, you can go to another advisor consultant know who does the same thing that I do, it's just a matter of I don't think this is something that you go out alone. Dean Soto 41:19 Yeah, no, it's it's, it's totally, I mean, you don't you don't go to school, you know, you don't you don't, you don't try and become an advisor in general without actually being mentored in some way, you know, and just any business, I was, gosh, this even just this year, I spent a lot of money, on advice on mentors for my business for people who, who guide me into places that I just don't know. Because, you know, if I looked at my time, I'd be spending a lot more in opportunity cost than spending the money that the capital that I'm spending that I'm giving to my advisor, mentor [lus, you by even just by doing that you get not only gain all the knowledge, but you have somebody who's going to watch your back. And then at the same time, you are also now part of their network. So if something does come up, that you need something, now they're the ones who are that who can introduce you to a whole bunch of people or if they have, if you I'm sure if at some point in time, you're going to end up mentoring and a financial advisor that sets up their own practice that specializes in something that you don't, and you go up well, here's some clients that I think would be better for you. Aaron Hattenbach 42:40 Absolutely, absolutely. I think I think it's like the benefit doesn't just end with the consultation. It extends and had a number of advisors reach out that were even at smaller firms that were like, Hey, I'm gonna rip off the band aid, like, well, you don't have to rip off the band aid. And my suggestion is you don't, you don't wait until you leave the firm to start your own firm. Yeah, for for compliance purposes, you can't go and register your license, and set up your own RIA while you're working for another company. But you can certainly educate yourself on all the infrastructure, think about the business you want to build, build a business plan, marketing plan, value proposition and start really compiling all of your, your template form documentation. And that will take time. And so what I tell advisors who are like, well, I'm about to leave, I'm going to spend another month there, but I'm committed to leaving, and, and then I'll get started with you, I say to them, that's going to be too late. Like I hate to be the bearer of bad news. But when you leave, you know, you want to provide the best possible transition for your for the clients that are entrusting you with their money. Yep. And that are committed to you as a client. That's that speaks volumes, right? So you better put in the time, while you haven't yet. Really setting everything up for success. Because like I said earlier on the podcast, they're going to be things you're not aware of, they're gonna be mistakes that you make that are inevitable to being a business owner. Yep. But if you convince yourself that you have to wait until you have a clean break to get started with at least some of the educational process, yeah,you're going to be too late. Dean Soto 44:29 Well, and you were like, even with, like the template forms, I mean, their systems, their systems that we're in a large organizations that you don't, you don't even you take, you take for granted. Exactly, you don't realize how many things, different template forms different, different little processes that are there, that if you, if you took the time to set up while you were at the firm, they if you would be you that would cause tremendous chaos, if you're if you had no income coming in, or if you had clients who were like, okay, now I'm Aaron Hattenbach 45:03 ready, I'm ready. Me, it's embarrassing. If If you go to a client who is committed to working with you and moving their, their business, they're moving their their, their, their accounts, or their relationship to you. And you show to a meeting without the right documentation. Yep, that's amateurish. And so what I tell advisors is, you know, get started with learning about what the process looks like, it may take several months for you to get approval from the state regulators, which you know, that's three months, four months of potential downtime with no income, no clients, and by the way, the longer those clients stay at your predecessor firm, the more likely they're not going to move with you. Because they're going to say, like, what's been going on the past few months, like, you know, you can't, you cannot legally work with a client, unless you are registered with with the firm, right? As a independent advisor, investment advisor representative affiliate with an RA, or if you're, you know, registered as a, you know, working for a broker, dealer, whatever you may be doing, but the point being like, downtime and silence and not advising your clients, because you're legally not allowed to is a tremendous risk to your your enterprise. And so what I say to them is spend a few months, I spent five or six years compiling documentation, thinking about like, about my process, like obsessively thinking about the client experience standard that I wanted to create. And even then, two and a half years later, my practice looks a lot different than it did when I started. It's just it to me, it's like you've got it, you've got to embrace it, and you've got to fail fast. And you have to be willing to put out the resources, ultimately, say you're spending a few thousand dollars working with someone, well, they're going to save you thousands of dollars in negotiation, negotiating contracts. And in time, in so many ways that it's like, you're going to get multiples of what you spend. So I can't emphasize this enough, I just feel like advisors just need to be more open minded and less concerned about, you know, the fears that they've created the narrative they've created in their head that going off on their own is going to expose them to so many risks. And and these ultimately these firms are, they're lowering payouts. They are are telling advisors if you don't sell four or five different services, we're cutting your payout? Yep. And so it's about selling the enterprise. Yeah. And what happens is when you sell the enterprise, your client associates you, as a relationship manager at Merrill Lynch, or Morgan Stanley, and not as their advisor. And so then the clients never going to leave that institution. Yep. And good luck setting up your own practice, once you've sold your clients, a mortgage credit cards line of credit securities based loan, your clients are going to be like, Well, you've talked, you've talked about the institution for the past 10 years. Dean Soto 48:13 And I now leave, why would I? Why would I leave? Aaron Hattenbach 48:16 Right? And then advisors come to me saying like, what's the narrative that I can create, to get my client to move their assets? And it's like, well, if you've sold your clients on the enterprise, and your clients have four or five different service offerings, you the institution can be very hard. Yeah. And I'm not I'm not a magician, I can't wave a wand. Dean Soto 48:35 Yeah, I mean, in just in, in moving things. It's hard even if the client loves you, and is willing, it's like, man, I have, I'm tied up in all of that. Aaron Hattenbach 48:46 All of that. And I'm getting discounts on my mortgage, because I've got five different services. Yeah, you can't compete with that on the independent side. What I can do on the independent side is say, hey, look, I'm not captive having to provide your mortgage from the event, because I'm at Merrill, we can go shop around and hire a mortgage broker to go shop around for the best rates. Yeah. And ultimately, you know, that alone, I think, is worthwhile in terms of giving the client access to the the, you know, services of other institutions that may be better equipped, that maybe providing a better price, you know, so yeah, I would just say, like, for advisors that have sold their clients in the enterprise, it's, it's very hard for them to ever go independent. And if they do, it's, it's a one time thing. And you better put in the hours, you better hire someone to really help you navigate the complexities. But for an advisor that has worked at one of these firms, and is looking to go independent, don't go at this alone. Yeah, right. Go to go to kids to start calm. I don't get paid anything from kid says, I think he's his blog is the best in the industry, it's won many awards. It's ultimately actually was ranked higher than the Wall Street Journal in terms of influence on financial advisors, which is saying a lot. Yeah. And if you want to get free education, go there. But at the end of the day, you know, don't go out this process alone. It is, you know, you're risking your business. Dean Soto 50:21 Yeah. But the best option is going with you. So how can people actually work specifically with you? Aaron Hattenbach 50:31 Well, Dean, you're far too kind I, you know, I'm learning every day. So you know, I'm not the best for everyone. But my suggestion is if advisors interested in working with me, they go to my website, rapportfinancial.com, there is a button to contact me and they can actually access my calendar. And I would encourage them to go to the prospective client meeting and select 30 minutes time where we can learn more about their practice what they're looking to accomplish. They can ask me any questions as far as you know, my service model for advising advisors, financial advisors, and you know, I do offer to a limited amount of advisors, the ability to retain me for a certain amount of hours. You know, this isn't my core business, it's just something I love to do in helping other advisors accomplish what I was able to do two and a half years ago. And so if they're looking for help on the tech marketing, business strategy, compliance, operations, practice management, really it covers the gamut and they're going to get 10 years of experience running businesses for within multiple advisory models. So you know, I think they're going to get a good mentor that is going to help them select the right vendors and and build a practice they're proud of all while saving some tone in the in the process and not hitting their head against the wall trying to figure all this out. It's it's a lot putting an entire business together I wrote this in my 26 steps article and quite frankly 26 steps was probably only half of what it took to create this business so um, I wish I hadn't gone at it alone I would have hired someone with the experience and would have prevented some money lost some mistakes and you know, what if i think i think we're shorten up my ramp up period to getting my clients on board and and operating so they can contact me they can go to my website and schedule 30 minutes of time they can also go to my homepage and there's an intake form where they can send me an email goes to the info that gets forwarded to my my email address but yeah, I'm would recommend going to my website, that would be the first step. Dean Soto 53:03 I love it man so yeah, so go check out if you want to connect with Aaron and if you want to have that mentorship or if you just want to you if you even just want to see if that if Aaron would be right for you with you know 30 minute call go check out rapportfinancial.com so report as in building rapport RAPPORTfinancial.com and head down to the opt in form and connect with their and he is if you can't tell he is one a wealth of knowledge and he freely gives out a lot of value and actually cares cares about the people that he works with if you can tell just through what he's been sharing right now so just go check that out once again it's rapportfinancial RAPPORTfinancial.com and go connect with Aaron. Also have that in the show notes as well as in the blog posts and and other places where we syndicate the actual publishing of this podcast episode so but all that being said, dude, Aaron, thank you so much for being on man. This has been this has been pretty awesome. Aaron Hattenbach 54:17 Yeah, this is a pleasure. I really enjoyed it and you know have to do some more podcasting I guess right? Yeah. Dean Soto 54:24 Yeah, for sure. That's I mean, that's one thing that that you have you have you're definitely a wealth of knowledge and and can bring so much value to everybody in the financial advising financial services industry. So that would be that'd be awesome. So Aaron Hattenbach 54:42 well, really appreciate it was it was enjoyable and we'll be in touch.Thanks, Dean. Dean Soto 54:46 Yeah, no problem. So go check out Aaron last time at rapportfinancial.com or RAPPORTfinancial.com. This is Dean Soto with the freedom in five minutes podcast. This this is the end of the episode but it is not the end of the podcast because we will see you in the next freedom in five minutes podcast episode.

28. Keeping Your Committee On Schedule

Naturally Surviving

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 28, 2019 32:25

Hello, it's Marvette! I'm back again. So this week's episode comes from a question I received on Instagram from the impressive educator who said how to keep committee on schedule so I can finish. And this is a pretty common question that I receive from folks who in some form or fashion, they are having trouble with communication from their chair or their whole committee. They can't get everyone in the same room at the same time. They are trying to get feedback, but it has been like weeks and they haven't heard anything. And this can make for a very frustrating parts of the process. So what I'm going to share is some things that you can do at the start of your dissertation journey. When you have all your like committee members in place or even just if you're starting us off with your chair. I also believe that this would work even if you're in the middle of your process and you find yourself like, you know, things were cool in the beginning, but now they're not in, you're having trouble. I would just say also adapt some of these strategies. To help make life a little bit more bearable when it comes to committees and whatnot. Again, the short answer I would say is people have whole lives. Your chair and your committee, they have whole lives. They have other folks that they are advising or serving on other committees. They have their own research projects in writings that they have to do. They have classes that they're teaching other service things, life, family, friends, right? Like their whole thing isn't about you pause, full stop. And so it is really up to you to do everything in your power to make this a very seamless process as possible, right? Because at the end of the day, it is your dissertation. It is your degree, it is your journey. And so the dissertation process is very much guided by you. You're controlling it. And up to this point you have been used to people telling you, being very prescriptive with you and telling you exactly what it is that you need to do and where you need to show up, how you need to do those things. And you learn really quickly that the dissertation process is the opposite. It because it depends on you. Like if you don't show up and write and do what you need to do, they can't do what they need to do for you. So that's a little mini rant there. I just wanted to make that note of like, that's my short answer of like, you need to be the one that is driving this process as much as possible. Not that you're telling your chair or anybody when you're gonna like that, you will be defending and they have to, you know, agree to that. That's a whole other thing. What I am saying is, as much as you can control, the communication part, and I'm using the word control, and maybe that's the wrong word, but as much as you can be organized in, get clear on expectations for the process, the more that like, the easier or simpler it will be for everyone involved is really where I'm going with that. Okay. So I wrote my notes on an old envelope, let's hope that, I can remember what order I want to go in. Yeah, I'm going to be better. I'm going to get a system that's better. But you know, again, if you know me and listened to last week's podcast, I'm over here about the B minus, C plus work. So yeah. Okay. So you get to the point where you are ready to do like the dissertation process. You're like, I'm good. Let's go. The first thing you need to do is create or think about a plan for the dissertation process. And I would even say take it one section at a time. So section meaning dissertation proposal is one section, collecting data and analyzing data as a second section, and finishing writing, chapter four and five edits and all of that is a third section, right? So depending on what stage you're in, just choosing that one part, we don't need to have the whole answer yet. Just choosing the one partner that you're in. So for the sake of this conversation, let's just say you're working on your dissertation proposal, right? You're at the beginning of it. Hmm. Deciding when is your ideal end date? Like when would you like to defend your proposal? If you have a process in which you're defending it, but when would you like to defend it? I suggest for people to at the least say four months out. Okay. But if it's even longer, six months to give yourself even more time, that works too. Because life will happen, other things will come up and it's a whole journey. So you want to give yourself as much time because even if you finish early, then that's fine. You can just move the date, but there's no point to stress yourself out trying to meet this very quick deadline and trying to do it in two weeks. And you'd stress yourself out and you don't meet that and then you're beating yourself up. And then it takes you even longer to finish your proposal because now you have to go through months and months of saying like, I'm a failure. I didn't do this. You know, the whole shame spiral that many of us go down. You have to go through that process and you have to pick yourself back up and then you have to start back all over again because you don't remember what you were writing before you went down a whole spiral. And so you look up a whole year has passed and you still don't have a proposal. I don't want that for you. So I would say my suggestion would be four months from today or whenever you're planning is a good timeline to say, I will have this proposal done and be ready to defend it. Or at least I'll be submitting it to the committee for final review. Okay. So being clear about, okay, that's your overall goal, right? And then breaking that down into chunks and saying roughly how much time is it going to take you to do each portion of your proposal. So I say aim for four to six weeks for each chapter or section. Now some of you may have panicked a little bit but if you work with me or been around me on any length of time, then I believe in you writing very... I'm not going to curse on here, "workable" drafts. And then the editing is a whole different thing in with that system you, you are able to get chapters done in the four to six time period. Plus when you, wherever you start, which most people start with chapter two, I say that that whatever your starting point takes the longest. And once you get into a groove or writing the chapters that follow go much quicker cause you're already, you already have a system, right? So I say give yourself about four to six weeks for each section and I want you to write down those dates. So your first date is I will have my dissertation proposal done by x date. So four months out and then for each chapter, four to six weeks. These are the dates, right? So where we are in, I think this is September, we're in, I record these ahead of time. So I had to like do the math in my head. So like just say this is September 1st right at the time of recording. So let's see that October, November, December right. So say by January 1st right, you're gonna have the whole proposal done, ready to send to your committee for final review, right? So then September could be by like October 1st I'm going to have chapter two. This will be the system I would use. October 1st I'll have chapter two November 1st I'll have chapter three. December 1st I would have had chapter one, I would spend all of December editing, make, polishing, APA, all those things so that I can then have a final draft to submit to my committee by January 1st. That's a very simple plan to follow. That's what I would do, okay. So first you need to figure that out because you need a plan. Have a very dear mentor who said that you got to show up with something where you're asking folks for help. So this is, you're showing up with something. So having that plan going in, right? The second thing is having a topic, I would argue to say that you have your topic, you have, this is the problem I'm solving with this topic and having the why we need to solve this problem. For the topic. Those are the three main things I would say you need to know before you talk to anybody, chair, whatever. So you have your schedule of when you want things to get done and then you have your topic, the problem and the "so what". And really take time to work on the topic problem. And so what to get it down to. It should be three sentences at most 50 words at most. Nobody wants to hear you ramble on and on trying to explain. They just want to know what it is. You will notice that a lot of this of what I'm going to cover is you being concise and clear on what it is that you want to do. Okay? And again, it doesn't have to be perfect. We just need a starting point. So once you have done your pre-work, then you want to send an email to your chair. Most people know who their chairs are before you necessarily know who your committee members cause that. I mean that's a whole process. Sometimes it takes a little bit, but I would encourage you to follow the same process for each committee member, if that makes sense. Okay. So then you have your pre-work later you're going to send them an email and you're going to be like, hey chair, it's me. I would like to schedule some time with you to talk about my dissertation process. I have taken some time to think about and outline like a rough schedule in the rough idea of what I'm going to do. And I will love to meet with you to discuss a few things. I want to talk to you about my overall dissertation plan. I want to talk about communication styles. I want to talk about feedback, expectations. And, I want to talk about scheduling additional meetings. This meeting will only, take no more than 30 minutes because I want to be respectful of your time. Please see the following questions that I would like to discuss to give you some time to prepare answers. Here is some times that work for me. What works for you. Look forward to hearing from you. Have a great day. Your favorite doc student, that's what your email should say. You want to treat this relationship in this way to set up, especially in the beginning. It's just, it's helpful for everybody to know expectations and being clear about what's going on. Because when you start flying by the seat of your pants, is that the saying? And even if you have a very close relationship with your chair, things can start to get really muddy. When you get deep into the dissertation zone and you are frustrated and you're over it, things can get muddy. And so it's best to set up clear things or to start this off this way. So you both know and, no matter how much you enjoy being with your chair, they enjoy being with you. No shade, nobody has the time to sit with you for hours and hours and hours. Okay. And if they are doing, if they're doing that, yeah, if they are doing that with you, they're doing it out of the very kindness of their heart. But they got shit to do. I said I wasn't gonna curse. It didn't last. They got, they got things to do. And that's only so long you're going to be able to do that with you. Now this is like a summer or as a slow point then maybe they've got time to sit there, but more than likely they don't have time to sit there with you for hours and hours. And so that means you've got to come prepared and being very clear about what it is that you want to talk about. Here's a side rant, please stop scheduling meetings with anybody, whether it be your chair committee member or the faculty member telling them you just want to go in there and talk. Now it's different if both of you are on the same page and you know that y'all are scheduling meeting for the purpose of kiki-ing. That's different. However, if you're scheduling a meeting with the intention of you're supposed to do actual work and talk about your actual dissertation, then it is up to you as a doctoral student to come in there with a plan of what you want to talk about and what you want to accomplish, right. To have a starting place. So everybody is clear on the focus of that meeting. Second of all, it is very important to before the meeting send an email to say, here are the things that I would like to talk about because you give the other person a chance to prepare for that and to prepare their thoughts. Especially my introverted friends, you give them time and they're not caught off guard and you're not using precious meeting minutes, minutes or time to for people to have to look up stuff and have to like figure out things they could've done before so that your meeting can be as productive and short as possible. Because again, nobody likes meetings, especially when you open up your calendar and that's all you see. Nobody likes it. And then you know, that meme that goes around us at this meeting could have been been an email. If you have, if you would've put down the things that you wanted to discuss and your questions ahead of time, most of them could have been, could be answered before you even step foot in the office with your chair. Or you can eliminate that time and get to work even quicker. But this is not this. No, this is not social time. Your chair doesn't need to be your best friend. It's good at it. You can have that relationship. However it is time for you to graduate, for you to finish a dissertation and not, we don't have time for you to keep scheduling meetings every week to go chitchat. Okay. I'm done with my rant. All right, so that first email, you're going to list some questions and I'm going to talk to you about what those questions and those topics are for the rest of this podcast episode. Okay. So so the first thing is I highly encourage people to use some sort of scheduling software or a scheduling system. The most frustrating part is going back and forth with a person about what time do you have available, oh, is that day open? Well, this does this work for you. It takes too much time and it's too many emails speaks. Like from someone who hates checking email. I hate that even more that we got to go back and forth and figure it out a time. So I highly suggest that you find something like I use acuity scheduling A, C, U. I, T. Y, that's there's Calendly, C, A. L. E. N. D. L. Y. Um, I've seen folks use, she's like Google and sharing like a spreadsheet and having available times and slots. Now this is going to require you to be organized on your end to say, when am I available and when I'm going to, when am I going to do meetings every week? Side note to the side note: I would even suggest that you have one or two days per week where you only do meetings with other folks no matter if you are a full time Grad student, you have, you work nine to five or whatever. Organizing your life in this way makes you so much more productive because you don't have a meeting over here, a meeting over there or I go do these things. Have one to two days, two days where you only do meetings right? Go set up a free account on one of these apps because they're free and you block off chunks of time. So say like you're going to do meetings Tuesday and Thursday from nine to 12. Great. You put that in the app and then when it comes down to scheduling meetings with people, you just send them the link. And say find the best time for you. In admin world. People love to, especially in student affairs. That's why administrators love to use outlook. You know, people quick to put a meeting on your calendar. And so I would also suggest that you block off times that you are not available and only have those times free again, if you're going to do those two days, Tuesday and Thursday from nine to 12 at your nine to five, that you're only going to do meetings with folks outside of your office. Just make sure those, those are the only times available for people to make meetings. Okay? So yes, get your nap, organize your life. Have these set times so that when you write this email to your chair committee member, you have that link in there. Now they have their own process even better cause you can go ahead and just schedule the first meeting but a lot of people don't. So you be proactive and you have your own link to say here's my link for scheduling or my availability. If it doesn't work for you, please let me know. Right. Cause we also want to be flexible that everybody's on your time. Okay. So the first thing is having the the app, the email scheduling app, right? The second thing then is you want to ask them what their preference for communication is. So you know, I want to make the most of our time. If I have a quick question, what would be the best way to communicate with you? If I have something where I want to talk things out, what would be the best way to communicate with you? And what what frequency of meetings do you feel works best for you when you're working with someone in their dissertation? Right. So some preferences for communication could be people prefer email to communicate by email, especially if it's a quick question or something like that. People, some people prefer like face to face meeting meetings. Some people prefer you call them or text them, but you want to ask them how they prefer communication. Again, because we're setting up expectations. So it was very clear to say if it's a quick question, if it's something where you know, you need to talk things out or if you need to share progress, asking them their thoughts about that and then asking them how often, would they like to meet with you throughout the semester or throughout the dissertation process. Okay. as far as the frequency of meetings, I would say to give more structure around that, tell them, you know, like as a starting point, I was thinking that if it's your chair, I would say scheduling at least three to four meetings per semester. If it's a committee member, I would just say two meetings a semester or in this four month period, whenever that is starting for you. And say, you know, I think two to four meetings a semester works well. Each meeting will be no more than 30 minutes. These meetings would be used to share with you my progress, what I've been working on. It will be used to tell you where I'm stuck or that I have questions that are not able to be answered by the quick question method that we have. And I'm going to tell you what I've done to work on the problem that I'm having and how I believe that you can help me. So I'm a side note again. So whenever you are asking someone for help and you are scheduling a meeting with your chair or these update meetings throughout the semester, you again, you always need to be doing your work before the meeting. You want to ask yourself before you step foot in our office, you want to write this down and be able to clearly articulate what have you been working on since the last meeting? Where are you stuck? What haven't you been able to do? What questions are lingering? The third thing, what have you done to answer those questions? To get unstuck, to solve your own problem, what have you done already and then for how do you think your chair or committee member can help you get unstuck? Again, we're not going to meeting in nobody's office to just ramble. You are taking ownership of your process. You are taking ownership of what you can do and what you have control over and we are not expecting people to do the work for us. So if you don't have answers to those four questions before you walk into somebody's office, you can give me to cancel your appointment because no one is doing the work for you. This is your dissertation, it's your degree. This, I'm saying real harsh. It is what it is, but I'm willing to bet that the reason why most of you are having trouble with your committee or with your chair or keeping them on track is because you didn't do what you was supposed to do. You're not like, and you're not doing what you need to do to organize yourself and you're not putting in the work to solve your own problems. But instead you think everybody else needs to solve your problems and you're probably saying, oh, it's unfair and that nobody wants to help me, but you're not doing what you're supposed to do. So if you can't answer what you've been doing, what your progress is, if you can't identify for yourself where you're stuck and what you've done to get unstuck or what questions you have, and if you can't clearly articulate to the person and you're asking for help, how they should help you, then you need to cancel that meeting. Okay? Sure. Sometimes you can't all the way, like figure out what it is and you, you can't know what you don't know. However, you can sit there and try. You can try to write some things. I have some sort of starting point. So putting in some effort because why should someone put more effort into solving your problems than you are? Okay. End rant. Y'all, I'm getting hot. I'm getting hot. Okay, so we have, you did your pre-work, you're going to write an initial email to your committee or chair member. You're going to email them this outline that we're going over right now. You know, I'm also going, I'm gonna make this like, I'm going to put this on the website, like the transcript of the podcast is already on the website, but I'm going to make this something that you can download so that you can have it for your reference when you are setting up this process. Okay? So you're gonna send the email, you're going to set up your own scheduling app, right? You're going to ask them about their preference of communication. Whether that's a quick question, whether that's something more that you all have to talk out. You're going to ask them about their, their preference for frequency of meeting and how they want to do that, right? For every meeting, it's gonna be no more than 30 minutes unless you all decide that it's going to be something different. But are we're going to try our best to be respectful of folks' time. So no more than 30 minutes and you're going to come into that meeting saying what you've worked on, where you're stuck, what you've done to get unstuck, and how you think they can help you, and you're going to send that email like you're going to send it and answers to those four questions ahead of every meeting. So every meeting needs to have an email of an agenda or things that you want to talk about to give folks time to prepare for you. And then whether they do or they don't has nothing to do with you. It's not your business if they prepared or not. It is your business to know that you did everything that you could do to make that meeting as efficient as possible. Okay. For that first meeting, you're also in, periodically you're going to ask them about their schedule. Right? So you knowing your pre-work that you have planned to finish your proposal in the next four months. Right? Asking them, do you have any significant days that I should be aware of for the next four months? Are there going to be times where you're not going to be available or you're going to be off contract, you're going to be on vacation, you want to be on sabbatical. What is that like so that you can prepare that during these times they're not going to probably going to be responsive and so you can plan accordingly. Okay. You want to ask them that because most people know that ahead of time. The final thing that you want to ask about is feedback, you want to ask them about their philosophy as it relates to feedback. What type of feedback do they provide? Are they like Oh it's good if they read your whole 30 page thing, I'm gonna come back to that too in a minute, but, or are they someone who get very light? It gives very detailed feedback. Like are you going to open up the document and want to close it back because you see all these bubbles and marks and things of whatnot. Asking them how they give feedback. If you don't know that already, ask them about how long they need to to review a document and to give you feedback in like when you should expect it. So if you turn it in on Monday, when should you expect it back? Do they need like 72 hours a week, two weeks? How long do they need? So again, that you can plan accordingly. And then do they prefer that the thing that they are giving you feedback, does it have to be absolutely Polish and perfect or would they like to see more consistent drabs even if they are not as perfect as you go along? Asking them and asking them what they care most about. So some people really care that they don't care about your content because they know that you can edit, but they really, they're a stickler for APA. Or maybe they're like, APA can come later, but I really care about if you're using citations or I really care about that, this is a readable paper and it's structured properly. Again, asking them these questions and being very detailed about that again, will help set the expectations for you. So you know you can prepare yourself. This may seem like a lot in one meeting, but again, this is why we're going to put it all in one email because you need to know what you're doing and what you, how you should be working for the next four months because these, this is the person or these are the people who decide whether or not you move on or not and you want to make sure you know who they are, their expectations, what you're getting yourself into. Right. And then you may also want to ask them, do they have any other suggestions for you as a student who is completing our dissertation? Any like things that worked really well with other advisors that they have things that they've done in their own process that they think would work well for you at any piff pitfalls to avoid. Doing all of this and getting all of this out of the way will help tremendously. It will help you avoid feeling as frustrated and annoyed. Right? Because again, we don't have control over what other people do or don't do. But you do have control over what you do. And so if you again, can make sure that you do these things ahead of time as much as possible. And again, go ahead and download the pdf and use that. I don't care if you use my words verbatim, I just care about that you are getting what you need. Okay, so that is all, I hope that is helpful. I would love if you came over to Instagram at @MarvetteLacy, and tell me anything that you are taking away from today's episode in Aha moments. Let's just continue the conversation there. Also, you can come over to the Facebook group, Qual Scholars. We are there talking to them about today's episode too, and it's just a community of awesome doctoral students supporting, helping one another. So that is it for this week's episode. I hope you have a great week and until next time, do something to show yourself some love. Bye for now.

google committee deciding polish organizing grad apa aha calendly okay so right because

Ep. 105: The Email Sequence That Alex Berman Uses to Book Sales Calls With Billion Dollar Brands

Achieve Wealth Through Value Add Real Estate Investing Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 26, 2019 35:47

How does Alex Berman consistently get sales appointments and land deals with billion dollar brands? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Experiment27 Chairman Alex Berman pulls back the curtain on the email strategy he uses to close deals with Fortune 500 companies. From identifying your target audience, to developing an offer and writing cold emails, Alex goes into detail on his campaign blueprint and shares how both he and his clients have used it to win business. Highlights from my conversation with Alex include: If you want to get in front of big brands, Alex recommends that you start by identifying industries where you've had strong performance or a great track record. Then develop a "no brainer offer" for other businesses in that industry. Alex says that enterprise level companies want to see that you've done work with other companies of their size and in their industry. If you can nail those two things, then cracking into big companies becomes much easier. If you don't have a relevant track record, he suggests going after a smaller company in that industry and then gradually working your way up in company size. Once you have identified the industry you are targeting and you have your no brainer offer, the next step is to build a landing page for it. Alex recommends creating four different variations of the landing page and testing to see which performs best. When it comes time to email the target audience, use a short subject line. Alex says "Quick question" performs best for him. The first sentence of the email is then a custom compliment aimed at the recipient (the emails are one-to-one). Alex has found that adding this in produces 10X the responses. That is then followed by a one sentence case study highlighting work you've done for a similar company in the same industry, and a pitch to meet with the recipient. Start by testing different subject lines with small audiences of 50 to 100 people to see which ones work best. The goal is to get a subject line that has an open rate of 80% or greater. Alex generally strives for a 4% meeting book rate (so, four meetings or every 100 emails sent). Alex likes to test different times for sending emails, but has found in general that Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday at 10 am works best. The strategy that Alex uses works best for companies that sell a product or service valued at $1,000 or more. Below that, Alex says that a company is better off using Facebook ads. The biggest mistakes that companies make when implementing this strategy are outsourcing it, not customizing the emails correctly, and giving up too soon. It can take several tries at testing to land on a really powerful subject line and offer, and the best marketers are the ones that stick with it. Resources from this episode: Visit the Experiment27 website Subscribe to Alex Berman's YouTube channel Check out Alex's Email 10k course Listen to the podcast to get the details on Alex's email campaign blueprint and learn how to use it to close deals with your target prospects. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Alex Berman who is the chairman of Experiment27. Welcome, Alex. Alex Berman (Guest): Thanks for having me, Kathleen. Alex and Kathleen recording this episode together . Kathleen: Yeah you know, I was intrigued to read your background and your profile. It talks about how you help clients get meetings with billion dollar brands. So like, land the big whales, if you will, and I'm really excited to talk to you about that, but before we dig into it, will you just give my listeners a little bit of background on who you are, what you do, and what Experiment27 is? About Alex Berman and Experiment27 Alex: Sure. So Experiment27 is part of a bigger holding company that I run. X27 does "done for you" lead generation. So we help companies match with billion dollar brands, but then we also have Email 10K which is of course where people it for it, or they can do it themselves following the course, and there's also consulting for advanced entrepreneurs, but we just kind of help them with lead generation. So basically, if it has something to do with lead generation in the business to business space, that is my specialty. We've been doing this for almost a decade now, and also I run a YouTube channel where we have I think over 28,000 subs, and all we do is post about free business to business sales training. Kathleen: Oh, I love it. And how did you get to be such an expert in lead gen? Alex: A lot of trial and error. It's the same thing that we talk about ... I mean, it's like any marketing channel where the first time you try lead gen, the first I tried it I tried it all wrong. I was spamming a lot of people. I didn't have the offer down, and what I learned is by sending in small batches and by customizing the messages, it allows you to get a lot more feedback quicker, and if you're able to get feedback quicker, you're able to improve the emails constantly. So the main thing that I teach is it's an iterative process of testing a campaign, sending it out there, seeing what the results are, improving it, and then getting a new list of leads that hasn't seen the previous campaign and testing that optimized campaign with email, and then continuing to improve that over and over again. And what that allows you to do is, one, you can get a bunch of sales with cold email which is really cool, but the other thing it does is it really strengthens your offer. So when you do use inbound, you use social media, you use YouTube like we do, it makes the offer that much more likely to convert. Designing Marketing Campaigns That Target Billion Dollar Brands Kathleen: Hm. So walk me through this. If I am a marketer, and I come to you, and I say, "I'm looking to reach people at these huge companies," the billion dollar brands that you talk about, those can be hard target markets to crack into. Walk me through your process from beginning to end if you're going to do this for me. Alex: Sure. So if you're an established company, the first thing I'm going to do is ask what case studies you have and what sort of companies you've worked with in the past. And from there, what I want to do is try to find patterns. So for instance, a lot of our clients are software as a service businesses or services businesses where, let's say, you had a good case study with a potato chip company like a consumer packaged goods company. Then what we're going to do is create an offer just around that company. I call it a no-brainer offer, and what we want to do is come up with an offer that is so good that people can't say no. For instance, for lead generation which is what I sell, it might be something like we're gonna book ten meetings in the next week with people in your ideal customer base, or we're going to give you the money back. Something like that is what we really want to nail down in an ideal situation, and you could do it across ditches like video production we help some people. Usually it's coming up with either a video idea that they like or their money back or coming up with a list of what the video is going to be like bullet points, an outline. From there, once you have the no-brainer offer, it's writing that in a way that highlights the case study, and we could talk about this in a second what to actually put in that email because it's very similar to what we put in Facebook ads when we do that too. But once you have that no-brainer offer and you frame it in a way that is extremely niche specific, then you test it in the market and see what they say. What I've found is with enterprise companies, what they want to see is ... they want to see you've done work with the companies of their size, and they want to see that you've done work with companies that are very similar, as similar as possible, to them. If you can nail those two things, then you're all set to scale the enterprise. If not, I would not approach someone like a Fortune 500 but instead go after people that are $5+ million in revenue, and then try to get one of those smaller case studies that you can then leverage to get these large enterprises. How To Get Started Kathleen: Okay, so that was going to be my question which is, obviously everybody's got to start somewhere. So, it sounds like what you're saying is you start within the same industry or product service, vertical, but you just start with a smaller firm. Correct? Alex: Exactly. So one mistake that a lot of companies make, even big enterprises, is they don't have marketing that's specific for one vertical. So for instance, let's say you're running a software as a service business and you're crushing it with live events, and you're also crushing it with CPG, or you're also crushing it with retail. They will be sending all three of those customers to the exact same funnel, they exact same website. So one of the things that we focus on is not only separating the marketing, so we'll have three different websites for each of those, or one different website for each one of those verticals. Kathleen: A full website, not just a landing page? Alex: Well, a landing page is basically a website. Kathleen: Or a microsite, a microsite. Okay. Alex: It's like a microsite, it's a one or two page site. Usually it's just a headline, some kind of testimonial, some case studies, and then the contact form. Maybe a breakdown of the services. But yeah, and then it's not just coming up with that, but it's coming up with three or four of those options and then testing all four in the market, seeing which one gets the best response, and then only at that point doubling and tripling down on the marketing. Because a lot of entrepreneurs, they have a theory for what their customer looks like, or they have a theory, even if they've been running a business 10-15 years, they kind of know who their customers are, but they actually haven't done a real analysis and figured out one, who are the customers that will be most successful when using this, and then two, who are the customers that I actually make the most money from? And it's cool to do that analysis and then also compare it to which one of these offers actually gets people to buy most often, and then hopefully you find an overlap there. If not, you need to do more research. Developing An Email Outreach Strategy Kathleen: Okay, so you craft the offer, you develop your case study, and then you're sending ... it sounds like you're starting with an initial email. Is that right? Alex: Yeah. It's normally a short email. We can breakdown what the email says if you want. Kathleen: Yeah, let's do it. I love to get as specific as possible. Alex: Okay. So the first thing that I like to test is the subject line. Normally I'll just say if people are writing their first email from scratch, I would say just go with "quick question" because I've sent over 2 million emails now, and that one still outperforms cross niche. So the highest chance to get an open rate is with "quick question." So sending that as a subject line's good. Then what we do is the first sentence of the email is a custom compliment towards the person's business, and this is not something you can outsource, this is not something that you can kind of fake, especially at the enterprise level. It needs to be a custom compliment, and it sounds something like, "Hey Kathleen, really love your Inbound Success Podcast. Long time listener. Love the interview you did with Alex Berman." Just something like that. Or if it's someone at Sony like, "Hey," director of marketing name, "congrats on the Q4 growth. Loved the latest earnings report." You know, just something that's very specific to their business, and what that does is it gets them to keep reading the next part which is the one sentence case study which usually goes like ... Let's say you are talking to Sony, and you worked with ... Who's a competitor to Sony? Like Hitachi. So that custom compliment. So, "Hey, I really love what you're doing with Sony. Love the Q4 growth. We just wrapped a project with Hitachi where we optimized their entire backend, and we were able to generate a 14% increase in," I don't know like new user engagement or whatever you guys did. "We'd love to do the same for Sony. Are you around for a quick call later this week? Let me know, and I can send over a couple times." Kathleen: You know, and I can serve as a testimonial to the fact that this approach works because all right, I'm going to actually read the email that you sent pitching me for the podcast which totally follows your formula. So the subject line was "Huge fan," and you said, "Hey, Kathleen. Just listened to your interview with Sangram Vajre from Terminus, and I was really impressed with the idea of using AI to fit data and automatically build landing pages and ABM campaigns for prospects." That was the initial compliment line, and then you said, "It would be incredible to come on your show as a guest. I run a YouTube channel with over 23,000 subscribers and have been on more than 100 podcasts including," and then you listed some out. So totally following the format you just described which is awesome. I love that you practice what you preach, and it worked, and I got back to you and said, "Yes!" So there you have it. Alex: Yeah. We practice what we preach because every other way is inefficient. Like okay, what I found is when we started doing the personal lines, when we started doing that we got a ten times increase. I know it takes more time. That might have taken four or five minutes. Like I had to look up that podcast episode, we had to listen to part of the episode and figure out what it was, and then after we booked, I did check out the actual episode so I wasn't lying. That all takes time, for sure, but the response boost is worth it, and the conversion rate increase which you might not even see when you send the emails out, but you'll see it like three, four months later. The number of people that work with you or get you on their podcast or whatever from an email like that is much higher than one of these generic cold emails that people are sending out. Kathleen: Absolutely. Now, you mentioned ... I love that you have this formulaic approach. I mean, it's formulaic, but it's like customized formulaic I would say. It's a blueprint more so than a copy and paste. So you apply this blueprint to the email, and you mentioned sending it out to a smaller group in the beginning. So define small. Alex: Small would be anywhere from ... So you want to make sure you get enough data. I would say a minimum of 50 people, a maximum of 100 people with a pitch like this. And what you want to test is a few things. So for instance, what was the subject line that you just read? Kathleen: Huge fan. Alex: Huge fan, okay. So huge fan might have been iteration number four or five, and the first thing that we're looking for is, and by the way this is all broken down in our course, Email 10K, email10k.com. What we want to do is you want to find the subject line that gets over an 80% open rate. So for instance, for podcasts if you open that, that's amazing. Quick question might have gotten under 80% so that was optimized out. When we were sending to breweries, actually the one that won when we were doing ... It was digital marketing for breweries in the United States, it was a beer emoji, and when we were sending to the entertainment companies like Netflix and TV Land and stuff like that, what was booking meetings was, "I was born to work with HBO," or "I was born to work with your company." Benchmarking Success Alex: So that is found through ... Yeah, just hardcore testing. 100 at a time. That's the first thing you're looking for is ... Well two things you're looking for, one is are people opening the email? You want at least an 80% open rate before you even touch anything else, and then two, are the emails any good? Meaning if you get a super high bounce rate then you're going to want to change the way you're finding leads. Kathleen: Now quick clarifying question on that. So you're testing these subject lines. Are you testing simultaneously different subject lines with different small audiences, or are you testing sequentially? Like, you send one, it doesn't work, you send another one? Alex: Sequentially's usually enough. Because the numbers that we're talking about ... So what you want is an 80% open rate. You want at least a 4% meeting book rate. So every 100 emails, you're getting 4 people signed up. So when you're dealing with numbers like that, it's a little easier to see when things are failing or they're succeeding. You'll be able to see pretty quick because you're either going to get a 14% open rate or like a 30%, or it's going to be 90. Right? And that's ... You're really going for those major win emails. Kathleen: All right. So it sounds like shorter subject lines work really well also. Alex: It completely depends on the niche. What I've found is in some niches, yeah, "quick question" works really well, shorter subject lines work really well, and that's because your custom compliment can be seen. If you look at Gmail or even Outlook, you'll see the subject line, and then you'll see that first line of the email. So if you have even just "Quick Q," which also works pretty well, they see that subject line, but then they also see the first line of the email before they open. So a good first line also will improve open rates. Testing Email Copy Kathleen: Yeah, that makes sense. So all right, you test this out, you land on a good subject line. You already have the body copy within the email written. Are you testing that as well? Alex: Yeah. So the main thing I want to make sure first is the subject line gets over 80% before we touch anything to do with the body. I would stick to the exact template that we talked about earlier. That's the baseline template, and then from there if 80% of the people are opening, and you're getting ... Usually it's about 20% reply or less, then we're rewriting the body of the email. Usually it's messing around with the case studies or messing around with the personalized compliments. A lot of people when they first start the compliments, they either go too far in one direction. So for instance, if I was sending this email to you and I had pointed out something specific about the Terminus podcast and written this long paragraph to you, the chances that that would work, especially to an enterprise level company, would be very level. But what people are trying to find and what we're trying to find is you want a compliment that's short enough but it's not super creepy. Like, you don't want it to look like you did a crazy amount of research. Kathleen: Yeah, you're stalking them. Alex: Yeah, exactly. But you also don't want it to be too generic. So part of it is finding that balance. How Long To Run Email Tests Kathleen: Now how long do you wait after you send those initial emails out to kind of close the test? Because obviously, I don't know, in my experience I find that some people look at their email right away, and then for other people it could be a day or two, and they might still open it. What's the right amount of time for that? Alex: After seeing hundreds of these campaigns, it's kind of evolved a little bit because I don't want it to say ... Like, the gut feeling is we should wait a couple days on our tests. What I've found is when a campaign works, it works so well that you can tell after like three or four hours. Kathleen: Wow. Alex: Especially if you're sending at the right times. For instance, the best time I've found actually is a couple hours before this. It's like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 10:00AM Eastern time is usually the best because it overlaps early morning Pacific, and then the other best time is later in the afternoon. So like 3:00 Pacific so you hit like 3:00-4:00PM Pacific. Kathleen: Okay. Alex: But if you're sending on those times, you should be able to see opens and engages. And then the other thing I'll do sometimes with replies is, and this is a little bit of an advanced tactic, but if someone does reply to your email and you're trying to follow up, you can see when they reply and then queue your followups to go out whenever they're checking their emails. Kathleen: Yeah, there's actually a great platform that we've used called Seventh Sense that does that for you which is pretty cool. It just tracks email open times, and then it develops a personal send time for everybody in your database. It's like magic. Alex: Yeah no, it's sick. Because I just sent 50 followups the other day, and it was crazy. Some people only do emails at like 3:00AM Pacific, or maybe they'll do emails at like midnight. Kathleen: Yeah. Yeah. Alex: You just can't tell. Kathleen: So if you have such a short amount of turnaround time that's necessary to conclude a test, it sounds like you can go through this entire process within a week. Alex: You can, and one of the things that I talk to new entrepreneurs about is especially when you're starting your business or if you have a business for a while and you're trying to find what market is worth investing in for your inbound, I would run 10-20 tests. Just even test different offers and different positions within that. Like before you even deal with optimizing or making sure the subject line works or whatever, stick to that basic template of "quick question" and write an email, and then write 10 different emails for 10 different offers. Like maybe one is selling your company like you only work with chip manufacturers. Or only work with software as a service startups, whatever. Just doing what we talked about with the case studies. Because what I've found is one of those ten, or even two of those ten, are going to blow away all the other tests, and then you only focus on those two. Kathleen: And then you just slightly change the contents to adjust for different industries and roll it out? Alex: The ... Yeah, you change the one sentence case study. So we just worked with this company, and we did this thing. Following Up On The Initial Email Send Kathleen: Okay, great. So I love this format. So is there something that comes after the email iterations, or is that it? That brings in the meetings? Alex: That brings in the ... So there are followups on top of it. One, and I broke all of these down in the course, but one is just like, "Hey, I'm sure you're busy and wanted to make sure this didn't get buried." That's a couple days later. Then the third one is, I call it like the big win. So something like, "Hey, we just had a big win working with this solar manufacturer we did that ..." like basically a second one sentence case study, and then asking them for another call like, "Hey, we'd love to talk. If you're around ..." I always try to end emails with question marks, too. Kathleen: Yeah. Alex: "Would you mind if I sent over a few times for a quick call?" is how I'll usually end them. Or I'll just say, "Let's talk?" Alex's Results Kathleen: Great. You teach this method, you've done this with different clients. Talk me through what kinds of results you've seen, and is it specific to a certain type of business or industry or company size? Alex: Is it specific ... So anyone that sells to people that check their emails. That's ... This is what I like to think about, so- Kathleen: A narrow target audience. Alex: It's narrow ... Well so if you think about it though like some businesses aren't good for this. So for instance what I found is loans or mortgages aren't really good because with those you just have to hit so many people that Facebook ads is a better thing. Used cars is also not a good niche for this. But most of the B2B. Anyone that's selling to manufacturers or anyone that works in an office. Things like that are best for this sort of thing. Revenue size I've found does not matter. We've met with most of the Fortune 500 for our clients and for ourselves, and we've met with smaller ... Like everyone from local businesses up to billion dollar brands this is good for. I try to avoid companies under $5 million in revenue because I mean, I like dealing with people that can actually afford this service. I don't like dealing with local businesses. Kathleen: Yeah, yeah. But I guess a local business could presumably take your class or if they heard this they could test out executing it for themselves. They could DIY. Alex: Yeah, for sure. Okay, so what businesses are benefiting from this? Kathleen: Yeah. Alex: I thought you were talking about what businesses are worth selling to. Kathleen: Oh, oh, oh, oh. Yes. Okay, got you. Yes. Alex: So what businesses are benefiting from this? It's usually any sort of business that has a higher ticket. Because this sort of thing like we're talking about, we're personalizing the emails. Every single email, it takes a decent amount of time. So I would say if your cost is under $1,000 per user, it's probably not worth doing this. You should probably do like Facebook ads or something. But if you're selling a service, like my background is selling mobile apps to the enterprise so we're used to selling $100,000 apps, or like $200,000 applications, websites, that sort of stuff, or even a lot of our clients will sell like $25,000 packages, $30,000 packages. Cold email is perfect for those. Kathleen: Great. Okay. So considered purchases, if you will. High dollar value sales. Alex: High dollar value sales, and sometimes they're not considered. I mean, you get the right no-brainer offer. Our initial marketing reviews were $8,500, and we would sell those after a couple weeks, and then that would just go into the retainers. It all depends on the type of client you're going after. Right? Because like for Sony, or for Home Depot or whoever, like $8,500 is very small. Kathleen: Yeah, that is not a considered purchase for them. Very good point. So talk me through the results that your clients are seeing with this, and how long does it take to see those results? Alex: So if you get an email right off the bat ... I actually just saw something in our private Facebook group this morning, some guy sold ... his name was Mark O, he sold $4,500 and then $4,000 off a month like two days after starting, but that's when everything goes perfectly if you get the offer right. If you're willing to put in the time and you're willing to test and you're willing to be wrong 9, 10, 11 times and just keep going back and iterating, I mean it could work pretty quick. It 100% depends on how fast you are, how intuitive you are with the data, and then how much you're willing to actually put into it because a lot of people, they find cold emailing extremely boring, and I did too until ... I had to purposely reframe each email as, "Okay, this email's worth $3. This email's worth $5," like whatever, like I had to reframe it just to get myself to actually work because it is super tedious work. Kathleen: Yeah, but it sounds like it gets easier over time. Alex: It does, and it gets faster. And once you have an offer, it's much better. The hardest part and the thing where you can get stuck for months at a time is trying to find the way that your business should be positioned to get massive amounts of money, and I know it sounds kind of weird, but it's like there is a way to frame any business where it becomes a no-brainer for clients, and then everything else becomes easy. And if you're not at that point where it feels easy and things are like going, until you've been there it's hard to describe it, but there's ... And you'll see it once you get it. There's such a difference between a business that works and a business that just kind of works. Kathleen: Hm. Interesting. Well I love it. 10x improvements like you were talking about are certainly attractive, and the fact that you can do all of this in a week is also very attractive. It's just it sounds like it's really just a matter of time and elbow grease. Alex: Yeah, and if you compare it to something like Facebook ads, like we run Facebook ads as well, and it's a similar strategy where you're filming 10-20 ads and putting budget behind all of them. Those actually take time to get the data in, and it costs money. Right, if you compare it to something like cold email, all that costs is time which for some people is money, but if you're a new entrepreneur and you're not charging like $700 an hour, it's not that much money. Common Mistakes Businesses Make When Targeting Big Brands Kathleen: Yeah. Now what do you see as the most common mistakes that people make when trying to do this? Alex: First most common mistake is they think they can outsource it all, and they don't want to do the customization. I recommend against that, especially in this initial ... the hardest phase, the research phase. Once you have something that works, you can scale pretty easy. They try to outsource too early, too. They customize in the wrong way. A lot of our clients are ... well actually, not a lot of our clients. Some of our clients are international. And so English isn't the greatest for them. Even if they come from like Germany or some Western country. So framing that compliment in a way that doesn't come off as like too crazy is actually something that I struggle with a lot with our coaching clients. That's number two. And then number three would be giving up too soon. And actually giving up too soon/settling too soon. Because you might try three tests, and like test one and test two book zero meetings, and then test three books two meetings. Then you might be like, "oh, I'm going to put my entire business onto test three," when really if you had tested like four or five more times, you might have sent an email that got eight meetings. Kathleen: Yeah. How do you know when to stop testing? Alex: So I would never stop testing. I know even with our ... so with the course part of our business, we spend 30% of our revenue on research and development. So just testing new ads and doing all that stuff outside of scale. I would never stop testing. It's always surprising. What we saw our add to cart cost go from $100 to $6 this week just by testing a new series of ads. Kathleen: Wow. That's crazy. Alex: Right? You can only get those improvements by constantly throwing stuff out there and seeing what works. Kathleen: Yeah. Very cool. And I love how specific you've been just in terms of sharing guidance on the actual wording of subject lines that works and the wording of some of the emails. It's really helpful. If somebody wants to try this, how do you recommend narrowing down your list? Because a lot of the people I know ... You said send it to 50 or 100 people. A lot of the people I know have lists that are much larger than that. Is it just literally a matter of, "All right, I'm going to export this list of 10,000 people, and I'm just going to take the first 100," or is there some other way ... Do you start with like a certain subpopulation? Alex: So what I would do is if you have an inbound list, I would actually ignore it for now. So you have marketing that works for your inbound list, right? Keep that going. What I would actually do is go over to Upwork or go over to LinkedIn and just start making lists of your ideal clients. I would send 100 cold. I would make a list of these people cold instead of going through the people that are subscribed. Because what you want is you test with the cold traffic where you can quickly iterate, and then once you have something that's working with those cold people, then you can take it back to your main list, and you know it'll work versus burning your main list on an offer that may or may not be okay. Kathleen: Do you have any concerns around if somebody does that, jeopardizing their sender score just because people hitting spam or what have you? Alex: Yeah, so normally ... And actually if you "Alex Berman how to avoid the spam box," on YouTube, I broke it down. But normally I'll recommend starting with a brand new domain for cold email, and then you warm it up over like two weeks. You subscribe to some newsletters, you make it seem like a normal email, and actually I would have a different domain for your cold emails, a different domain for your inbound like your email list emails, and a third domain ... actually even a third and fourth domain. Like third domain for cold ad traffic lists, right just in case, because spam is an issue there. And even a fourth domain for just customer communication. That way you protect everything. You keep it all super segmented. Kathleen: Does that get really confusing? Alex: Not for me. I mean, for our ads we've got like alex@X27.io, like alex@X27Marketing.com is our other list. alex@Experiment27.com. It's all pretty easy. Kathleen: And I'm assuming they all redirect at some point to...? Alex: They all redirect ... Yeah they all go to my normal inbox. Kathleen: Okay, got you. Very helpful. All right. Alex: It's a good way to protect your sender score there. Because what you'll also do is a lot of times if you want to test a bunch of different cold email campaigns also, you might, and what I make people consider a lot is you might want to buy a domain for each one of these different niches as well, and then that domain will just redirect to a website that's specific for that niche. The Impact of GDPR Kathleen: Do you worry at all with European like GDPR rules and the increasing focus on doing something similar in the US, do you worry at all that that approach is going to get tougher to use because cold emailing will begin to become disallowed essentially under regulations? Alex: If it's illegal, I recommend not doing it. What I've found is there's always a place for a personalized compliment. The personalizing the emails thing is ... that's what increases our response rate, and it's also what takes it out of the spammy territory. We're not sending messages to 10,000 people. We're not robocalling. It's nothing crazy like that. But I would ... Yeah, if you're in like ... Especially if you're in Europe or the UK or Canada or Australia, definitely consult a lawyer before working with someone like us or doing anything related to this. Kathleen: Yeah, it is getting- Alex: As far as I know, in America it's totally good so far except for maybe California is a little iffy right now. Kathleen: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. But it's interesting the direction everything's heading. It'll be interesting to see where it goes. Okay. Well- Alex: It will be, but it's not like these go away. You can use these same strategies ... Once you get this testing strategy down, you can use it for Facebook ads, you can use it for cold LinkedIn messages. You can use it for text messages. You can use it at events just like testing your elevator pitch at events. It's all the same kind of thing. Just taking words and trying to test the way that you're phrasing things to find ... it's almost unlocking a lock. You want to find a way of wording your business that gets people to buy. How To Learn More About Alex's Strategy Kathleen: Yeah. I love all of this. You've mentioned a couple things like you have a course and you have a YouTube channel. Can you say a few words about if somebody's intrigued and wants to learn more, where they can go to find more information? Alex: Sure. If you want us to do this for you, I would actually just start at the YouTube channel, AlexBerman.com will go right to the YouTube channel, and if you do want to learn this kind of stuff, it's Email10K.com, that's the course. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Okay, love it. Now, we can't finish up this interview without me asking you the two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one being we talk a lot about inbound marketing on this podcast. Is there a particular person or company that you think is really just killing it right now with inbound? Alex: Really killing it with inbound. I'm actually not ... I haven't been impressed with very many people when it comes to inbound. Even the greats, I don't know if they're testing or what they're doing, but I see a lot of weird stuff. Kathleen: Oh yeah? Alex: Who have I really ... I actually like Russell Brunson, what he's been doing with his ad strategies, and he runs a SaaS. It doesn't even seem like it. He's selling a software as a service, but he's selling it like an info product. There's some real next level stuff that Russell Brunson's doing. Kathleen: Oh, I'll have to check him out, and I will share his name and the link to his stuff in the show notes. Alex: He does a two week free trial, and then it's only like $150 a month for his software, and somehow he's been able to frame his thing in a way where it appeals to B2B, it appeals to entrepreneurs, and it appeals to ... He's going after like people that are selling multilevel marketing. He's got everything down in terms of how he's framing his thing. Kathleen: Interesting. I can't wait to check that one out. Second question, the biggest kind of complaint I hear from marketers is that digital is changing so quickly. There's so much to keep up with. It's like drinking from a fire hose. How do you personally stay up to date and keep yourself educated on latest developments? Alex: So this sounds kind of counterintuitive, but what I've found is if you stick to the basics and you just try to get like those fundamentals right, everything comes into play. So for instance, when I was getting into Facebook ads, all I had to do was take the offer that I knew worked and put it in general targeting, and then the Facebook AI figured out what it was because we knew the offer worked. Same with YouTube videos. We just have to create content, and it'll find an audience because our offer system. So I think if you create a product that people want, and you phrase it in a way that is very hard to say no to, you'll win, and it doesn't matter if you're at an event or if cold emails get banned, or like cold calling doesn't work anymore. None of that will matter if you can crack that, and then number two is just go where your customers are. I've gotten a surprising amount of work off of Instagram recently. Like to the point where I barely even use LinkedIn anymore. Kathleen: Wow. Alex: But that just comes down to who my target audience is, right? I'm going after younger people now, especially for this course offer, and they're mostly on Instagram versus when I was going after office workers ... Actually, all the office workers are on email versus any of the other social media channels. So I honestly, I don't worry about that at all. Kathleen: That's great. You have figured something out, then, because the vast majority of the other folks I talk to stress about it a lot, so there's definitely a lesson to be learned on the approach that you're taking. Alex: Ooo, okay. So I actually did figure this out. So if you want to figure out where your clients are, write a super targeted Facebook ad and put like $100 in it, and what'll happen is you put no targeting in. The way that Facebook works now is they'll find buyers, and what I've found there is not only will they find out who your ideal buyer is, for instance one of our ads is targeting ... it's converting really good with women between ages 25-65+ which is crazy, and then one of our other ads is only for men which is great, but the main thing that I've found was if you go to placements, it'll tell you exactly where your ads are converting. So for instance, some of our ads do really well on Facebook. Actually, one of my consulting clients was only selling on Instagram. Like hard pitching Instagram, and when we did this ad test we found out a bunch of his people were on Facebook, and he went out and did the same cold pitching on Facebook, and it was like 10-20 minutes, and he already had a bunch of leads coming in. So that's another easy way to find it out. Kathleen: Yeah, you know it's interesting you bring that up because I found that too that paid ads in general are the fastest way to test messaging because you instantly can see what's working and what's not. Alex: Yeah, exactly. You can test messaging there, you can test placements, and then the way that Facebook ... Facebook's getting so smart in terms of their machine learning. So it'll give you data you didn't even know you had. The ad that I wrote, I had no idea it would appeal ... The one that hits women, I think it was getting add to carts for like $10 for $1,000 course which is crazy, but for men it was $16 with the same ad. So I had no idea. Kathleen: Which is still reasonable, but $10's better than $16 every day. Alex: Exactly. Especially when you're comparing it to ... I was at $100 before. Kathleen: Oh, that's great. Alex: But no, you have no idea. It's only the machine learning that taught me that this type of ad works for this market. Kathleen: Yeah, it's crazy what Facebook can do now. It's a little scary sometimes, but it's also really cool. Alex: Yeah. How To Connect With Alex Kathleen: Great. Well if somebody wants to connect with you, has a question, wants to learn more, how can they reach out to you? Alex: Best way to talk to me is to grab the course, Email10K.com. I'm in the Facebook group right now. It's unlimited consulting. If you do just want to like, talk for free, I would go to the YouTube channel. AlexBerman.com will go there. And just leave a comment. I'm usually in there. You Know What To Do Next... Kathleen: Okay. Great. I'll put those links in the show notes, and if you're listening and you liked what you heard or you learned something new, of course I would really appreciate it if you would leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That goes a long way to getting the podcast in front of other listeners like yourself who could find value, and if you know somebody doing kickass Inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love to interview them. Thanks, Alex. Alex: Thanks.

Ep#16 Underwriting Jacksonville, FL with Omar Khan

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 20, 2019 66:18

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

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Bob Sager: Start Where You Are, Use What You Have, Do What You Can

Success Champions

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2019 53:44

Becoming a Champion Course http://bit.ly/2MYWs1e Champions Table Mastermind http://bit.ly/2YW00Yv Success Champions Podcast https://link.chtbl.com/R76Z4v0O Success Champions Facebook Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/Succe... Free Stuff http://bit.ly/2KGWwji Website https://www.DonnieBoivin.com Sponsors https://www.pointblanksafety.com/ https://bluefamilyfund.com/ Transcription: Here we go. Alright guys gonna be another fun episode, which you guys don't didn't get to hear. This is my second time trying to start this show because Bob got me giggling already. So I sound like a little schoolgirl over here, but this is going to be a fun show. So Bob and I talked a few weeks back and we just had a really good conversation and went all over the place. So I was looking forward to this one. But I'm Donnie Boivin. This is Donnie success champions. I almost screwed it up again. Bob say you're welcome to the show, my friend, please. Hey, Donnie, Listen, man, it's good to be here with you. You know, my story is probably you probably don't have enough time on your podcast to hear the long boring parts. Trust me, nobody wants to hear all that anyway. So now listen, you know, I think you're going to find this maybe to be kind of weird, and your guests might find this to be a little bit weird, but Had the the advantage of growing up on the on the border of poor. And you people look at that and go an advantage. And then listen, I don't mean we went hungry or anything like that, but man, there were no extras. And and so that inspired me. I still remember being 10 years old and asking my parents for something and then telling me you wish don't have the money for that. And I don't even remember what it was Donnie, but I remember deciding, well, you know what I want it. So I'm going to figure out how to how to make the money to buy it. And that was sort of that was sort of the start of my ambitious journey, I guess. And I, you know, out of out of five kids, I think I was the only one with an entrepreneurial gene. And I guess some people are just wired differently. But I mean, you know, my sort of entrepreneurial journey started. I spent six months selling new Oldsmobile. That was an interesting business. And frankly, I really didn't like car business a whole lot, mostly because it didn't really fit my core. And I think when something just doesn't fit, kind of your core values, personality, whatever, you're just not going to be as successful as as you could otherwise be. Nothing listeners at all. So long time ago was 1986 when I was in the car business, but one thing that I did like about it was I in that business, I started earning four or five times the money that I was used to earning. And I said, Man, I don't like the car business, but I could get used to making this kind of money. And so the car business led to my really kind of first chance I had to be in charge Myself, which is four years selling residential real estate. And then that led to a 17 year career in frankly, what I thought would be my career portal, which was in financial services, love that business. But I found that I would see both clients I work with, and reps I hired and trained sabotage themselves and their financial success. And the more I saw it, the more bothered me and it but it was kind of the impetus that led to me studying the psychology of what I call the psychology of human action in action. You know, what in the world makes people do the things they do, or not do the things that they don't do. And I learned a lot about what, what really are the drivers for people, and it helped me a lot personally. And so I ended up writing my first book, and after 17 years in that in History, I decided I was going to start my own company strictly to do personal achievement training. And wrote the book, it was sort of a has a basics of what that was all about. It's called discovering your greatness. subtitle, the higher level thinking and action guide. And, interestingly enough, a couple years into running a new company, we're doing okay. But okay, wasn't what I had in mind. And I thought, you know, we need some better ideas here. And I really started studying about creative thinking and innovative thinking. And what I discovered was teaching people how to do that. Help them get a better image of themselves. And when you're thinking better about yourself, and especially if you can have some During that process, it's just a whole different world. And so most of the work that we do now with spearpoint solutions, is really involved with innovative thinking, training on that. I do do some consulting with companies to develop strategies, you're using those principles that I teach. Because I find sometimes, you know, I talk to CEOs or managers and they go, you know, you're pretty good at this stuff. Why don't you just help us develop some strategies and instead of training our people, so either way, it's good with me, and it's kind of a long and winding road to get where I am now, but I you know, what I found there's almost nobody. Now almost no successful person that I've ever met, had a straight pathway and Okay, well, what's your experience been with that? No, it's the same brother. It's the same. Yeah, I'm really fascinated with this whole idea of these kids. Right, you know, because that wasn't me, right? That wasn't my story. That wasn't my journey. I, I didn't think about starting a business until I was 40. You know, I tell everybody, I'm a late bloomer. You know, so I'm really, you know, this whole idea that that you're born an entrepreneur really, really floors me kind of a bit because I don't fully wrap my head around how you got to that space. Do you think it's mean? I mean, I know you said it was because you were 10 years old. Right. And that, you know, there was something that you wanted to buy, you couldn't buy, you know, but how does that translate to years of creation? years ago? Well, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, no, that's a good question. And I don't know that I was necessarily born an entrepreneur. Exactly. But I think some people are common one. wired to be ambitious. And some people just are okay with just being okay. And there's nothing wrong with either, you know, whatever fits you and your lifestyle and your goals. I think what, that's fine, right? I make no judgments. I just know that, you know, for for somebody like me to aspire to average it's just not in my DNA. I love that phrase. Here's why I'm catching a lot of buzz because of something I say on stage. But I mean, you pretty much just said it. It's really just this quote, you either get okay being okay. Or you get in the game, otherwise Shut the hell up. Because because there's a lot of people that keep telling the world I'm going to be great. I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But in truth, they're not Taking the action to do the things they need to do, to level up, scale up and go for it. So I, I wish people would, you know, stop taking on the world telling them how awesome they would be and truly just start enjoying the life that they have, versus making themselves feel miserable, because they're not doing the things they thought they should. That makes sense. Well, it does. And two thoughts come to mind as you're saying that I heard a long time ago, a phrase that stuck with me, says, When all is said and done, there's usually more said than done. True. Right. And look, talk is cheap brother. Nope. It's easy to do. It's way easier to do than taking action and getting your nose bloodied. Right, and tripping and falling, that it's much easier. So anybody can talk a good game. Yep. Right. But it's it, but it's people who it's the doers of the world. You know, I talked about a lot about developing better ideas. And I think that's a key critical component. Right? Because a bad ideas even perfectly executed is still a bad idea. Yes, but but, you know, I think you ought to start with with better ideas and better strategies. But having said that, the greatest strategies with the most perfect plan, not executed don't add any value to anybody. So you know, so you've got to have, you know, if I could make an analogy, in physics, you've got theoretical physicists and experimental physicist, and they're both necessary to move That field forward. So, so but the the theoretical, the theories of the theoretical physicists are only proven by the experimental businesses, right. But the experimental physicists are maybe not the best theoretical physicist. So it's sort of like the symbiosis between a songwriter and a gifted performer. A this is a this is a bit of trivia here. You know, Elvis Presley had I think 38 number one songs, or 38, top 10 songs. It was a bunch, right. Okay. And and how many of those did he write or co write? Man I don't and to have an answer that but but since you're asking I'm going to say zero It is zero. Now, you can become world famous as a performer. Right? And you don't have to be able to write songs. But the flip side of that is, you can write great songs and other people perform them. And you can be great that way too. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the way I look at as a at creating winning strategies for people is, you know, I'm like the songwriter, and they're like Elvis Presley. Right? They gotta go perform those strategies in order for them to be great. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I there's and you I'm sure you've heard the hero's journey by Joseph Campbell. Oh, sure. Yeah. And I love this because one I grew up you know, watching the fantasy movies and reading the Lord ring books and all that kind of stuff. So I can totally vibe with this whole theory and philosophy out there. But but to what I love about it is this whole dynamic of the guiding the hero. And I think what you're saying is, in a sense when you're working with these companies, you're the guide but they're the hero and the hero is still gotta go slay the damn dragon. Right? They still gotta go execute No matter whatever plan you build out or anything, you know, you put together for them. They still got to put the work in and do the things to make it a successful endeavor. It's like in sales. You know, you can, you know, talk about cold calling all day long, but until you pick up the damn phone and actually dial the number, you know, you know you've got nothing is that pretty much? Hey, listen, that's that's a My apologies. I Hey guys, I failed to put my phone on Do Not Disturb. Let me let me let me correct that now. Sorry about that brother. Okay, so yeah, I should have known better. This is not my first trip around the block on. Oh yeah, we're gonna make this one though. Yeah I know I deserve it. I deserve 50 lashes with a wet noodle at dawn. You know it's kind of like in you in Lord of the Rings. These guys get these special weapons. Right Aragorn got the special sword. Frodo via Bilbo had the the special weapon his size, but they still had to wield those weapons. Yeah, right. So there's no doubt and I think you're spot on on what you're saying and You know, it's like, I've got a new book that's going to be out. By the time this airs, it should be out on Amazon. And it's and it features 101 great, sort of many business strategies. And and it's dinner can innovative thinking methods in there that people can use to come up with their own. But they still got to apply those things right, no matter how brilliant they are. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm sure you've experienced this, you know, you're standing in front of a room, you're talking to a crowd. And after the you're done talking to them, whether it's a speech or a training, whatever, someone walks up to you and says, that is one of the greatest things I've ever heard. And I take it two ways. One, my ego gets stroked, and I'm like, Yes, awesome. I did my job. And then the second thing goes through my head is wasn't great enough. And I'll usually ask that person, you know, are you going to go back and implement what we talked about today? And it's weird the responses. And I'm curious, you know, one, have you experienced it? And to have you watched the almost shocked reaction sometimes when you've asked that question? Oh, yeah, I listen, I think anybody that's done any, any keynote speaking or any training and you're in front of large groups has experienced that. Look, I think if you're a decent speaker, you can get people motivated. Yes, but the but the challenge with motivation is, is it's temporary, right? It's easy to get, you know, people's adrenaline pumped up and, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think you ought to live your life in an excited enthusiastic fashion but What I prefer to do, and this is where I think, you know, the training on the skill set of innovative thinking, especially the way we do it, where it's, you know, it's practical hands on, it's not standing up in front of a room with PowerPoints, or just about, you know, me being a keynote speaker is, you know, inspire people with, with a mindset of, Hey, you know what, I can do this, because they've actually experienced it right there. And they've, you know, when we do our training with the game I invented, which is kind of a basic innovative thinking game, but it puts it into a competitive format and it's fun and people laugh. When we're doing that. In a training. I say here, two things over and over one people laugh their heads off, and and second is your people go As people coming up with ideas and strategies, like Wow, that's really good. But I'll tell you afterwards dying. People come up to me and some people, they'll tell me overtly, and some people just kind of see by their to change in their physiology. That, you know, they surprised themselves at how they were able to think in a way and come up with ideas that they didn't expect. And, and I can totally relate to that. But they you can tell, right, that it's just like, No, I'm over sharper than I thought I was. Right, I'm all better than maybe I've been giving myself credit for. And when you get that, then you know that you've inspired you sort of, you sort of inspire something that they had inside them all along, but they just weren't aware of it. Yeah, I love those things go ahead is most people have never bet on themselves. Right? So when you can put them in an environment where they are forced to do something they haven't done and I'm not talking about walking across a rope bridge or you know, some tire swing thing or something, you know, but taking an action that will mentally allow them to grow and get them out of their comfort zone. You are, in a sense, forcibly helping them to evolve, and you can see it, and it's awesome. I mean, I it's a really cool change in people. So how does your game get them to do that? Well, the game is structured in a way that I say it has three elements. One, it's got some structure in it, there's a gameplay format to, it feels like fun rather than work. And three, it embraces competitiveness. Right? And everybody, I don't care, the most non competitive person, you know, when they feel like they've got a chance to win, they get competitive. Yes. And so what the game does is a little difficult in just an audio only environment. But you've got two teams. One is the entrepreneur, the inventor, we sort of use those terms interchangeably. Second Team is the competitor. And then the third team who's not competing in that round is the customer. And so each team A and B, gets a set of 10 words, and they use this innovative thinking process to match any of those two words together. And come up with an idea for a product, a service or business. And it gets three minutes to do that you will think three minutes is that long. But people surprise themselves. There's there's great power I found there's great power in have to. Yes. Right you when you have to get something done, you will. And when you don't usually want this Chan. Yeah. So so then each team, you know gets a separate set of words, they're coming up with an idea in three minutes and at the end of three minutes. They each take one minute and present to the customer team, what their product service or business is, how it works and what the benefits of the customer is. And then the customer decides, hey, do I like this team's idea better? Do I like this team's idea better. there's a there's a scoring system and play moves around the board where everybody's playing each Roll, you know, at any given time, and listen, I had a client come up to me after a training session once and he said, you know what the greatest part of this game is? And I said, What says a with David? So let's that David, he said when you when you were and when you lose, you still win, right? Yeah it's a blast. I love that you know, and here's something else that that I think your game is is getting people to do. It's forcing them to make decisions and and you know, a lot of life people get stalled with the inability to make a decision. So when you put them in a group atmosphere and you say you got three minutes to come up with a service, you know, a product or anything else. That's awesome, because I mean, that's a fast decision. And a lot of people struggle with making decisions at that speed and living and dying with the consequences. That's brilliant, but I commend you for for coming up with something innovative like that in a training format that, you know, one brings people together makes them think outside of the cliche word the box but also forces them to make those fast decisions because you know, studies have shown you know, the faster you make decisions, the better you can do in life and business because you don't get stuck. Good. I Where did this whole game evolved from? It was it was it? Yeah, that's no, that's a good question. For most of my adult life, I really didn't picture myself as a creative individual. But as I alluded to before, it's great power and have to and and in aspiring to take our company to a better level. I said, You know what? I don't really think I'm great at coming up with good ideas, but probably some books written on creativity, right? And I've got a book, which I highly recommend you have in mind that's coming out. I highly recommend this one the most. It's called Tinker toys. sinker is thinker toys like the child's toy Tinker toys. Okay? Think toys, and they're probably, they're probably 12 dozen different creative thinking techniques in there. And I tell you, if you are not used to thinking creatively, and you don't really view yourself as being a creative person, some of those look a little bit complex at first, but I discovered one in there called combine a story play, which sounds complicated, but it's not. That I learned later was both Einstein And Da Vinci's favorite creative thinking method. And look, all it is, is combining two things together and seeing what a third four possibilities occur. Do you mind if I give you an example? Please do I'm fascinated. If I let me, I first have to let you know that people don't think in words they think in pictures, true apps, right? So if I say the word dog, you're not thinking about the characters for the letter D, oh, and G you're thinking about a dog that you know, have no right and probably a dog that you owner have. If I say the word kitchen, you're thinking, the the image of the kitchen pops into your mind, right? Yep. But if you start combining words together, especially nouns, if I combine dog and kitchen together, or kitchen and dog together the new possibilities, start eliminating From my imaginative ability, you know, here's what's crazy about that is kitchen dog, I didn't have a whole lot of thought process around. But when you said dog kitchen, the first thing that popped in my head was, could there be a company I know there's our that that could make dog biscuits, or you know, you know, dog food, things in it. I know there's a ton out there, but I would never start one of those type of companies. But that's where my mind went to really cool thought process. And if you have an imagined you had a set of those nouns, right, not just a couple of work from, but if you had a set of those, and you had a direction to work with those. That's the whole point of come up with an idea for a new product service or business or an improvement on something that already exists, right? And some of the stuff that emanates from from just that little simple method and playing that game is It's practically astounding. Have you had anybody come to the game leave their company and because they started a business? I have had, I've had a number of people tell me stories about the things that they're working on. But look, it goes back to the challenges you were talking about before. You know, just coming up with an idea. Even if it's a multimillion dollar idea. It doesn't do anybody any good, even you right? If you don't act on it. Like, I have people tell me all the time when they when they find out. I have written a book. Our company published another one that I curated the content for and I have another one coming out. And so I can't tell you it's hundreds probably people told me Oh, yeah, I'm thinking about writing a book to write right now. How long you gonna think about it right? Now so and yeah, it's it's the inaction and people man it's a we're all guilty in some regards I mean, with our businesses and things we need to be doing, you know, and then help, you know, for me going from an employee to business owner was such a damn leap because I didn't realize how badly ingrained I was, you know, ingrained with this employee mindset before I started running my company, and I still find it, you know, not creating a job versus a business for myself. And, you know, it's it's that when when you get mired down with all the stuff, it's remembering to put one foot forward and start knocking things down. So you can keep moving forward because what, as soon as all those spinning plates like you're the clown with all the plates Getting up in the air. You can sit there and be mesmerised, how pretty all those plates look. But until you start knocking those plates off the frickin sticks. You're not gonna be able to move anywhere and go anywhere, you're gonna stay mesmerised, and action takes care of all that. And the biggest thing people always say, Well, what action do I take? I'm like the first one in front of you. Hey, listen, amen to that. It's hard to steer a car that's in park. Yes. Said. Right. So, look at start taking some action. You know, in my first book, there's a after, after you set your goals, then what should you do when you start taking action and what you think is the best direction, right? Because I found that as you begin to take action, you can Little signals and clues on which way to go. It's like, it's like your goals, the destination you've determined to get to. They act like a GPS that you get off track. You're going to figure that out as you go. Right. But that phrase as you go, is the critical one. Yep. Yeah, yeah. This is gonna be fun. So I love it when people bring up goal setting. And here's why. You ready for this? I'm ready. Goal setting doesn't work is actually a D motivator. And here's what I mean. And I love having this conversation is when somebody sets a goal. They are nine times out of 10 setting a goal they already believe they can achieve then They're going to fake it till they make it, in a sense lie to themselves that they're going to get there. When you set yourself up immediately for failure, not planned failure, but to fail, you lose. So I quit setting goals A while back, and I flipped it. And I set milestones and here's what I mean. I believe you should have a general vision of where you want to go. Okay, General vision, what you want to do. But I'll always take it back to sales. Let's say you've sold $10,000 a month. And you come back to your sales manager and that last year, you sold you know, $120,000, you look at your sales manager and say, this year, I'm going to sell a million dollars. And that manager is going to ask you a cool how you going to do that? The answer is always I'm going to work harder. Right? You know, which never works. Right, you know, so what I would tell if I was that sales manager tell that young sales person is let's do this, instead of setting that million dollar quota let's see if you can do 11,000 Let's get you to 11,000 get there, and then we still do 11,002 months. Can we then get the 12,000 and then 13 and you start teaching incremental growth and start getting people to learn and evolve, how to level up and then start moving forward. And and I'm curious now hearing my philosophy of course, it's my show so I have to be right. Your opinion make it mine. Right, exactly. Right. thoughts. I mean, because I mean, for you We were brought up in this world of set goals, set goals. And as you get this executive area, and it's a big, hairy, audacious goals and all this stuff, but people don't do the work. Right goes back to our whole thought talking around action. They're not doing the work. So that's why I flipped everything over to milestones because people can wrap their head around. How do I just get to my next, my next small level so I can grow? Well, this is my philosophy on goals. goals should be two things. Now, I'm not saying that you should not have a one year, five year 10 year vision. You should, but five years is a long time. Right? Especially in this age, unless there's over 1800 days in five years. So there's no sense of urgency. So I think you should set your You should have a vision for one year, you should have a vision for five years, maybe even for 10 years. But your goals ought not to be any more than 90 days at a time. For the second thing, and here's why, because there's no sense of urgency. If you miss one day out of 1800. That's not that big of a deal. But if you screw up one day out of 90, much more of a big deal, right? Right. So there's a so there's a, there's a an urgency of action in that. But here's the other thing and you you alluded to kind of a 10 x goal, which I know is kind of a catch phrase in today's world. But the problem with a 10 x goal is it's not believable to you right? Right. And I tell people look set stretching Lee realistic goals. And while I say stretching Lee realistic, I use those two terms again. For reason, you know, the most you've ever made in a year. And this funny, I just laid a couple different mastermind groups. And we were just talking about this very concept and in a mastermind group session an hour ago. And I said, you know, it's the most you've ever earned any year. Or let's, let's break it down to a quarter most you've ever earned in a quarter is 50 grand. And you set a goal to make to 50. The first thought you're going to have when you look at that as go, there's no way Yeah, right. funnel, see how I can get there. It's too high of a plateau. But the example that I was using in in that group, I said, you know, $100,000 in a year, used to seem like all the money in the world to me, right? until I got there. And that became anyway Listen, once you hit that, then you can start looking at 150. Right. And once you hit 150, you know, it doesn't seem like that far of a stretch to 250. And you get to 250 and 500 doesn't seem too far of a stretch. Now I have a friend of mine 2018 and I think he made about two and a half million. And I remember years ago, we were together in the financial services industry. And I remember he had he had just hit his first hundred thousand dollar month and income. And he was going to hit over a million that year. Total. And he said, Bill, he said his bill, he said Bob, earning a million it. I don't work any harder than when I was struggling to make 60 grand. Right. But the thought process, the focus, the execution was way different. Right. Right. So, so that I, it's been my experience, you know, everybody has their own philosophy and I think you're, whatever you're doing that works for you. That's what you ought to keep doing. So, I think we're saying a lot of the same things because you were talking about, okay, you know, if you did 50 a quarter, you know, getting the 250s a leap. What if you're going from 50 and 60? Alright, cool. Next back believable right, next quarter, can I get to 70? And, you know, because you have to evolve as an individual because the person you are right now is not the person you need to become to get to where you want to go. You have got to level up or get okay being okay. Because because, yeah, there's so many people that are They're, you know, telling the world how awesome they're going to be, and not executing. And all they're doing is making themselves miserable. Enjoy the life you have. And understand that your income level if you live inside your means you'd have a very happy life. But most people don't want to do that. Right? Yeah, they look, most people would rather grow their income to meet their dreams instead of tricking their dreams to meet their current income. True, was it right? So, but look, so many people are trying to go so far they're trying to make quantum leaps. And I'm not saying that you can't do that because I've done that a couple of times, right? But it's not the quantum leaps that matter as much as the consistent growth. system it can be consistent, small group, right? What if you're What if each month or maybe even each week, you try to get 1% better? Just 1% right mean 1% that it sounds like nothing. And yet over time, if you got 1% better, even a month, right 1% better a month, over the course of a year or two or three. That's massive growth. Very much true. And you know, but people want to believe in the overnight success, which is there's no such thing. They want to believe that there's an easy button. They want to believe that there's, you know, some magic pill or something. They don't want to do the work. You know, and they don't understand that you've got to go through it to become it. Oh, that's a great phrase. Absolutely, I'm gonna get a T shirt, maybe with a habit. You know, but that's it. I mean is people want the soft and easy and sweet and fluffy route when they don't realize that if you go in to fail on purpose, you can actually level up faster. Wow, that's where you learn the most. Right, right. I mean, when you screw up it, I tell people, Donnie, the reason I know how to do a lot of things, right? It's because I've done a wrong almost every possible way. Right? Right. I've screwed up so much. Right. And you alluded to this before. Your most overnight successes take at least a decade. Yes. You know, but people Well, people don't see that right? Or maybe they're willfully blind. And so I will No, I don't see that you know this person. You'll put in all this extra effort that they, they did things I like to tell people look, you got to do stuff to be consistent about about progress, even when you don't feel like it. Yes. Right. Even when you feel like sitting your butt on the couch and watching that episode of Laverne and Shirley that you've seen three times, right? You just age the hell out of yourself. Just so you know. Well, okay, how about that, that that that rerun of Grey's Anatomy. There you go. There Big Bang Theory. Yeah, frankly, I'll gonna make happen. Your audience mad probably I don't get the appeal that show. Oh, I love it. Love it. Yeah, but you know what? That's why they make different colors of car exhaust. Everybody don't like the same stuff. That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah. I never know this show is gonna go sometimes it's always fun. It's always fun. You know, you've been really doing some cool things on your ride. some really cool things on your journey. I mean, you've done some cool stuff. Where's all this taking you? You know, you got new books coming out. You've had a couple of books, you're doing some speaking. You know what's what's being on the horizon for you. Then the next big thing is happening in 2019. Hopefully in the first half of 2019. I'm not 100% in control of this. So I can just tell you this is my intent is We are launching up to this point all the training that we've done has been face to face. But we are launching an online training portfolio or a portal I should say. That is going to train people up on how to think innovatively. But listen, the, the most exciting part of that is, is we're creating a, an interface where that small business person out there who might have 25 or 50 or 100 people that are working for their company. They'd love to be able to be like Procter and Gamble or International Harvester GM, some of these big companies that have thousands and thousands of employees and, and they can sort of crowdsource innovation internally. Well, if you got a company that has 100 people, you can crowdsource Internally, but it's not a very big crowd, right? So what if what if there was a way for that small entrepreneur to access the knowledge, experience and imagination of this vast army of people that have been trained how to think innovatively and they don't have to add anybody to their payroll? Right? They don't have to, nobody's taken up any more room in their building. They're paying no more benefits, and they only pay for the solutions that fit them. Well, that's interesting. That would be kind of a big deal, wouldn't it? Be that level the playing field for them, it would make them able to compete and have all that talent, access to it, just like big companies do. And on the flip side of that, Donnie is these people that have been Train to think innovatively, they bring their own set of knowledge and experience to the table. And they can look at that and they can exercise that entrepreneurial gene without having to go start their own company. Because it gives them potential extra source of income. So, the win for everybody? Yeah, yeah, no, I like that a lot. Was this was this concept born out of y'all need or you saw a gap in the marketplace? No, I just see that that look. There's a yo you got now this advent of so much automation, especially with AI. that a lot of jobs that are being done by people now are going to be done by people in the future. They're going to be done. And I don't mean the final need mean along the way future I mean, the near term future right, the next 135 years 10 years at the most. And so those people are going to need different skill sets. I think, as I was telling him on his podcast recently, it's temporarily terrible for those people when they lose their job, right? But it's only temporary, right? Because once they acquire the new skill sets needed to do the 21st century work, they're probably going to end up doing work that's more fun. It's probably more fulfilling, and frankly, because it brings more value to the marketplace, it probably pays more. And so they've got to learn these new skill set. And Chief among those, I believe, is how to think innovatively and apply that to practical solutions in business in life. And the sad part is, is our traditional education system isn't doing that. Yeah. So, you know, you can complain about that. But as opposed to complaining about things, I like to do something about them. And I see this big gap that's unfilled that companies like ours, so I'm sure we're not gonna be the only one are going to fill in the gaps there to get people trained in the skill sets that they need, you know, to thrive in the 21st century instead of just barely survive. Absolutely. That's well done. But it's a it's a really, really, really cool concept. I think you're going to help you know a lot of people on their journey level up. Good on you. Good on you. Thank you. We have a goal to help millions. Yeah, I know I should. I know I shouldn't set a goal Donnie, but can be taught this whole time. I wasn't sure but dang just proved. That that's my vision. Anyway. I love it. I love it. I love it. You know You know, here's here's the thing. There are certain individuals in this world that can set a goal, like a guy like Gary Vee Gary V's biggest thing. He tells everybody he's gonna buy the New York Jets. Right? Right. Right, like Gary Vee may very well get there, because that drives him that motivates them that charges him up. But it's such a few minority of people that are that driven, you know, innately to get there. So I like your big vision. Now bust your ass to get there. Well, if you're right, it can do you mind if I throw out sort of another thought in terms of goals? What I have found is that people don't set goals based on what they really want. They don't set their true goals. If they set goals at all. They're setting them based on what they think they ought to want. what somebody else wants them to want. You know, my sales man, my sales manager said, This is my quota. So that's my goal, right? What does that mean? There's no, if you're not setting goals that are your true goals, then there's no emotional power to them. So there's no driver for action. So you're setting yourself up for failure. If that's the kind of goals you're setting 100% agree. Hundred percent agree. Well said, Well said. Well, brother, can you believe it's been almost an hour already? Time flies when you're having fun, brother. Well, you know, I mean, when you're around me, you have no choice but to have fun. So So. Yeah, well, no, I this has been a blast. And by the way, time flies when you're having fun or not, so you're exactly right. Exactly. Well, my friend, how do people find you? How do they get in touch with you? How do they reach out? How do they make funny Yeah, you know, look, LinkedIn. Like my home on the internet, I just I love that platform. If it's done right, I think it's extremely productive. And, and you can meet people from all around the globe. And so LinkedIn is probably the best place to find me. It is linkedin.com slash IN slash Bob Sager VOB SAG on. love it love it. Well, this is how I like to wrap up every show. And I do stump some people on this. So So stand by, if you are going to leave the champion to listen to the show entrepreneurs, business owners, people from 78 countries around the world that tune in Listen to this. If you are going to leave them with a quote, a saying a phrase, a mantra or a motto, something they can take with them on their journey, especially if they're stacked up against it and going through it. What would be that quote or phrase you would say? Remember this? Remember this this is from Arthur Ashe. Arthur Ashe said, start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can Love it. Love it. That's Sage sage advice, my friend. It's been so fun having you on here. I've really really enjoyed it. Thanks for you know, coming in sharing your story and having some fun conversations and some laughs So So thanks for doing this but hey, Donnie, it's been fun being on what you Thanks for having me. Awesome. Well

Bob Sager: Start Where You Are, Use What You Have, Do What You Can

Success Champions

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 14, 2019 53:44

LLP114: How the social relationships of men affects their well being with Dr. Jameson Mercier

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2019 47:30

Let's Talk about Men's Social Relationships... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Jameson Mercier, a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Doctor of Marriage and Family Therapy. His areas of specialization include Marriage/Family Therapy and fatherhood and this week the Lunch and Learn Community is in for a treat as he comes on to discuss the importance of social relationships for men and what happens when the correct ones are not in place. As we wrap up the end of men's health month I thought it would be extremely important to touch on mental health in men. When we talk about men's health month quite often we focus on the big diseases such as prostate cancer, colon cancer, and addiction but I know that I have come across many men who have these poor social habits and how it affects all their relationships. I talked about this before but as a outpatient clinical specialist one of the top 2 reasons why men would come to see me for an appointment was either someone was dragging them to the office or erectile dysfunction complaints. A recent journal article noted: "Social connections can act as a buffer against the impact of stressful or negative life experiences on mental health, the onset of mental ill health, including depression and suicidal behavior and can increase the likelihood of those with mental health problems seeking professional help." Social relation is defined as the relationship between two individuals and I know that after listening to this episode you are going to come away with a much better understanding of why your male family member acts the way they act. 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: Mercier Wellness The Couples Counsel - Apple Podcast Creole Adventures Guest Appearance on The Couples Counsel 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 114 Transcript Episode 114 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 CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. And this week we end Men's Health Month. Again, we’ve had some amazing guests this month. And I want to touch on a topic that I think gets brush over when we talk about men's health, right? And that's the mental aspect of it. And most importantly, we're gonna be talking about the importance of social relationships in men, right? And when they lack it, what's the problem and what happens when they have a good social relationship, right? And when I was thinking about the topic of hand and I was trying to figure out who should we bring on this episode only had a couple people in mind and I was very fortunate enough to get Dr. Jameson Mercier on podcast to really drive home the fact that if our mind isn't there, if we don't connect. And again this is a very tough topic for men to talk about because when it comes to our emotions when it comes to the mental health when it comes to getting ourselves together for other people, is that something we do willingly. And Dr. Mercier, as a clinical social worker who has a Doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy and he deals with it on the mental health aspect. I've talked about it all the time wherein medicine, I sometimes have trouble getting my men to open up to me to tell me like, hey, I'm having these medical related problems. So you can only imagine the difficulty he may be experiencing and not maybe he actually does and experience when dealing with getting men to open up about their mental health wellness and wellbeing. So again, I wanted to kind of give a little quick little bio just so you can understand just how important this guy, Dr. Mercier is for not only discussion but just the topic of mental health in general. So Dr. Jameson Mercier is a licensed clinical social worker. Like I said, a doctor in Marriage and Family Therapy where he got his Ph.D. and family therapy from Nova southeastern university. He also earned a bachelor's and master's degree in social work from the University of South Florida and Barry University, is areas of specialization include marriage and family therapy as well as fatherhood. He is a qualified supervisor for the state of Florida for clinical social work, family therapy, and mental health counseling interns. Dr. Mercier provides counseling for families, couples as well as individuals. He consults with businesses, nonprofits, churches, and government organizations. He has been featured in various media outlets including Hot 105, The Miami Herald, The Discovery Channel, Bustle, and Huffington Post. He and his wife own a private practice called Mercier Wellness and Consulting. And ladies and gentlemen, most importantly, especially if you have a kind of been up to speed on everything, he and his wife actually have a podcast as well, which is called The Couple's Counsel. And me and my wife had actually had the opportunity to join onto the show and really talk about our relationships and how we deal with growing up with a child with autism. Right. So if you had not had a chance, I will link that episode, link in the show notes as well. Just like you can get a chance to obviously get in touch with their podcast. You listen to their podcast, subscribe to their podcast here. Me and my wife kind of discuss our journey parenting a child with autism. Of course the theme today is Men's Health Month and we're talking about mental health. We’re talking about social connections and relationships and I really wanted to hit this home because again, I've talked about the cancer's a lot, right? You know, earlier this month I talked about just making sure they go do their wellness exam. We had doctor Jen who actually hit home erectile dysfunction, sexual health. So again, we've talked about a lot of huge topics when we talk about men’s health and I figured there was no way I could end this month, a discussion on men's health without speaking on the mental health aspect of it. Right? So like always, if you have not had a chance, go ahead subscribe to the podcast and leave a five-star review. Again, I want you to follow Mercier. All of his information will be in the show notes as well. Get on their podcasts, subscribe to their podcast, five-star review their podcasts as well because it's actually amazing. And get ready for another amazing episode here on the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Episode Dr. Berry: Alright Lunch and Learn community, you just heard another amazing introduction to Dr. Jameson. I've actually had the opportunity to not only meet in internet spirit out, you know, a lot of us get a chance to talk to, also met personally and been able to collaborate on different events here and there and definitely fortunate enough to get this gentleman. A personal actually well-respected on the podcast. Dr. Jameson Mercier, first of all, thank you for coming to the podcast and educating the Lunch and Learn community today. Dr. Jameson Mercier: It's my honor. Thank you for the invite. Dr. Berry: So you know, I gave your introduction, which again amazing. Again, it's been this running theme that a lot of our guests have our resume that I'm sometimes in awe of as myself. But for someone who, you know, they read it, they read your bio, what is something that they may not be able to know about you that isn't necessarily in our typical bio? Dr. Jameson Mercier: Funny, you should ask I guess a little known trivia or the little known fact I suppose because of the line of work that I'm in. So mental health counseling, I realize maybe a long time ago, but really a few years ago just how much I needed to be able to do something for myself to be able to disconnect and separate and recharge. And so I am, I want to call myself an avid outdoorsman, but living here in South Florida and the city, there's only so much outdoors. (You’re right.) But I enjoyed being outside. I enjoy camping. As a matter of fact, tomorrow we leave for a camping trip and then we leave for a road trip that involves another week of camping. It's going to be a four-week road trip. (Wow.) So I do that because if you do 8, 10, 12 hours sometime working with people, counseling, mental health medicine, as you well know, you need to be able to separate that and give your mind something to focus on other than people's problems and patients who may not be compliant. And so for me, the way I kind of maintain some of my own sanity and my own mental health, getting outside, whether that's fishing, whether that's just going out by the water or anything, really that's something I enjoy and I've started taking the kids, my wife, her dean will join me sometimes. We're documenting some of that. Just side notice, a little passion project. We have a new Instagram and YouTube channel that's called Creel Adventures. Dr. Berry: Okay. Alright. And the links will be in the show notes because I definitely wanna hear about this. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. And so all that is, is simply, you know, me disconnecting, being out in nature, doing some camping, fishing and just something just to recharge my mental, my emotional so I can come back and be just as good. Dr. Berry: I love it. And when you're doing these things right, you're like there are no cell phones, as disconnected as can be. Right? So it's not like you're going, but you're bringing all the technology with you? Dr. Jameson Mercier: No, no. As a matter of fact, when I go out and I go camping, I tried to get as primitive as possible. Right. You know, so I don't need no hookup for electricity. I don't need anything. (Oh, wow. Okay.) But when you bring your kids, and especially when you bring your wife who maybe lacks the creature comforts, (yes) there's some compromise that needs to happen there. But I could go without it. I don't need it. And you know, that stemmed from a couple of years, three or four years now did I did a show with the discovery channel where I was in the woods for two weeks. It was a survival show. So no, it was not naked and afraid. It was not naked and afraid. There was another show. But when you spend two weeks in the wilderness with a knife, some matchsticks and a canteen of water, you really begin to realize how little you need to survive. How little you need and how much, how good that does just to be disconnected and totally in nature. And so that really was a boost for me and I tried to get out there as often as I can. Dr. Berry: That’s amazing. Again, we'll definitely make sure where he got the links to that because I'm very interested as well. I'm not outdoorsman but you could probably convince me to go for a day or two, where you're going on for a week. So I'm definitely alright. (Do it man. Do it.) A question I ask, obviously when we talk about the disconnection, right? Your primary field is therapy. My wife's mental health therapy field as well. And it's definitely something that I know has made me a better physician because of it and because of the acknowledgment that I can only do so much. Without addressing the mental health aspect of a person. What drove you to that direction in the first place? What was it that made you say, you know what, this is something I could see myself doing? Dr. Jameson Mercier: So there's a couple of stories that come together to answer that for the sake of time, I'll give you the condensed version. When I was young, I was about eight or nine, my dad died and my mother was left to raise my brother and me and my sister. And at the time we did, you know, you have the church that supports you and they come and they kind of sit and pray with you. But we did not get any kind of counseling, traditional counseling, professional counseling. And in hindsight, we could have definitely benefited from even just a few sessions as a family, of grief counseling or of just some regular run of the mill counseling, whatever that might be. You know, just to kind of process what's going on. Because as I got older, I was angry. I was rebellious. Looking back, I was not as destructive as some would say, but I could see how some of my actions stemmed from the loss of my father. And so when I got into college and I was struggling. I was like, you know, let me just kind of figure this out. And when I realized that if I had gotten some counseling, things we've gotten did go different from me as it there's got to be more people who could benefit from what I didn't get. And so originally I wanted to do psychology, but I'll leave that to the guys who like to do the testing and assessments. I wanted to be in the homes with the families dealing with some of these issues. And social work is what I discovered with social work. And once I found social work, I hit the ground running and then I decided to specialize in marriage and family therapy because the issues that we are seeing in society, a lot of times really do stem from dysfunction within the home and within the family. (Let's talk about it. I love it.) What happens, they go unresolved. They go unaddressed and then they cycle and we talk about this, you know, there's that generational cycles. Some people will call it a generation occurs. It's simply a matter of not resolving what you know exists within your family and these patterns we just hand them down. One generation after another. And so I resolved myself to break that cycle within my family and to help other people who are willing to break these dysfunctional cycles and patterns within their relationships. Dr. Berry: What’s very interesting and especially the focus of marriage and family and understanding like where it starts and within. We talked this month, this is Men's Health Month. And when I was thinking about the topics that I wanted to kinda touch on, which is very typical, right? You know, the prostate cancer, colon, all of these things that happen to men and know men do not get in themselves together. I think a lot of times the mental health aspect is when that kind of gets brushed over, unfortunately. And more importantly, especially when we're talking about men and, and I know you, obviously you have kind of established a niche, right? Where you like talking to men. Like that's your thing, right? Which is always interesting. Because like I always figured we'd probably be the most difficult, the niche to deal with. We were terrible. Dr. Jameson Mercier: We are terrible. And I recognize that. I recognize just how bad men are when it comes to talking and communicating. Even with our wives sometimes, you know, the women in our lives, our kids, and it isn't that we don't want to. In my own experience has shown me that everything we want to say or should say is right there behind our teeth. It's on the back of the, on the inside of our lips. A lot of us, yes, we're not taught how to communicate like that. A lot of us didn't see it modeled for us. And so it isn't that we don't get the urge, we just can't bring our lips together to say those things we know are there, you know? So in my practice, when I get dad or a man or husband, whatever he is in life when I get them while they're in my office or on a virtual call, I hold on to that guy. I do not take it for granted because I understand all the things that had to happen (before you could get to it.) Oh man! (Wow. Okay.) You know, and it's interesting when it's almost like a friend, you know, it's almost like bro, I've been for you. And he's like yo, that unspoken conversation that happens and if there's a wife or girlfriend there, they don't understand. But I am just so glad to see men who show up to have those conversations. Dr. Berry: And what I love about, especially the motivation behind episode like this is when, and of course I'm doing my research. I'm looking up mental health and you know, all of the issues that men need to deal with. And I came across this a very interesting article. It was actually in the Journal of American Men's Health. And it hit me. Because it talks about social connections and really the lack thereof. It talks about men's health, it talks about the lack of proper support which led to a lot of the different issues I deal with on the medical side. Whether it's noncompliance, whether it be alcohol and substance abuse, where it on all of these things that I do from a medical side that this article really said like, hey, you know what, if they actually like established some good stuff, in the beginning, it wouldn't be a problem. But unfortunately, we don't. And then we ended up dealing with me, unfortunately. And so I want to talk about like, this was one of this first sentence kind of hit me right off the head. It said social connections can act as a buffer against the impact of stressful or negative life experiences on mental health. The onset of mental ill health, including depression and suicidal behavior and, can increase the likelihood of those mental health problems from being sought. And I didn't realize. Again, I may be naive because of course that's not my field. How important these social relationships and social connections are when it comes to men, that was something that kind of like took me abreast. Is that something that you find not just to be a common thing, but sometimes like it's in that issue where like wow, like yeah, they really have problems from the beginning just talking to people? Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yes, men, we do. But let me give you an example that in my mind and in my opinion crystallizes that phrase that you just read. When you look at the military and you take these 20 men, 50 men, hundred men, whatever the case is, and you put them in a group, you put them through some very difficult stuff. This is even before they go to battle, but you put them through boot camp, you put them through whatever school they're going to together. They eat and sleep together. They do everything together. When they actually do, then go and see theater, they go to war. They have much better cohesion. They operate so much better. When you compare one guy who did not move with them and was dropped in after the fact. So the one guy, for example, was not part of this community. Okay, so there's something about being in a group that does buffer you, that does keep you safe. The guys who are suffering depression, the guys who are battling thoughts of suicide, they're not part of a group. They're not. It's very hard to remain sad and depressed when you are amongst a group. It's hard, one, the group on lets you, but even if you just kind of stay on the periphery on the fringes, there's something that happens there, you know, and they've studied this all along, especially in guys who are in the military. When you move together with a group, when you have that accountability and we don't need 50 guys, one or two good guys, good friends, it is a protective factor. Totally. This is why an AA, they do the group thing and they have the sponsor thing. This is why they are designed like that because that accountability from the groups, it's hard to recreate that. Dr. Berry: Does that kind of like lessen the burden? Does that kind of lesson, oh it totally causes they're gonna face the stressors? But like because you do it within a group setting it's not as much? Is that the thought process? Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. It's not that you don't face it. It is that when you do face it, you have other people on which to share the load. It's funny, we go to school and we study all these things and I realize if I just watch women when it comes to this whole social contract thing. (Okay.) So much because women have this thing down the pack. If you're with five or six women at work or at a conference one we'll get up and they'll say, I'm going to the bathroom and then two or three will get up. I'm coming with you. As men, we don't do that. (No.) We don't do that. We don't even announce it. We just get up. I'll be back. If if we say that much, you know what I mean? And I had this conversation with a colleague of mine. I said, why do you guys announce that you're going to the restroom? And she looked at me, she says, I do? It's something they didn't even notice that. (So kind of like ingrained in them to say, like hey.) Something they do, anybody wants to come. And so go into the bathroom is not about going to the bathroom for them it's about, it's a social activity. Dr. Berry: Especially because the theory that adds there, right? Like that's either ingrained in them. Right? Versus from a like either genetic standpoint or just a social construct. They've grown up since they were little with these similar patterns. Do you find that's the case for men? Right. We're just ingrained to be individual. We're just ingrained to be alone and we almost have to be placed in army barracks type situation before we'll go out and join forces and hold hands. I wonder about that? Dr. Jameson Mercier: Well you know, when I think back and I observed kids, boys play like that. Boys and girls move and little cliques and groups and herds, but there comes a point where we make boys feel like that's not cool. You know, in elementary school boys will go to the bathroom together and boys will actually do like girls do and play in the bathroom. But somewhere along the line, they get this message that boys don't do that. And what we don't realize is, we begin to eat away at something that is very much beneficial. And so when they're young, we tell them they can't hang like that. When they're teenagers, you definitely don't do that for whatever homophobic reasons for whatever negative stereotypes. Men just don't do that until you find yourself in your mid-twenties and 30s and forties and now for you to say to a guy, hey, how are you doing? It's very awkward. (Let's talk about it.) It's awkward. It’s unfortunate, and I'll even take it further. I think there's something about black men in particular where this kind of seeing another man and just kind of approach, hey brother, how are you doing? Are you good? How are you feeling? Approaching another brother, another black man and saying, hey, how's your day going? Are you good? You know, the man, being a man, if we're to be a man, we can't be like that. Dr. Berry: And you know, I'm glad we kind of touched on this because of this kind of segues into my next concern. What is like the role of masculinity? Because I think we've kind of danced around what that it is, right? When they go from elementary school to middle school to high school too, you know, I think we danced around it, at least in my thought. Right? I've talked about it and sometimes I don't want to say sometimes I do blame masculinity in a lot of the different concerns, at least I see on the medical side. Versus them coming to see me for physicals for them even allow me to do certain physical exams that I need to do properly, like a dresser. What has been your experience on the relationship of masculinity and mental health and these social constructs when we talk about their social relationships in general? Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. You know, if you're gonna be a man, if you're going to be masculine, you gotta be tough. You got to keep whatever issues you have inside. And so on your end, it's the medical stuff where at your legs been hurting, your back's been hurting, you walk in all crooked, hunched over, but you gotta be a man. You can't complain about that. On my side, yeah, you might be feeling sad. You might be depressed. You might be crying in your car. You might be sitting in your truck for an hour, just unable to pull it together. But you can't tell nobody that because men don't cry. Nobody wants to hear men complain. All kinds of just jacked up ideas. You know if you're going to be tough, if you're going to be a man, there are just some things that you don't do. Right? All the emotional stuff or the soft stuff, whatever the hell that is or those are, it's unfortunate. Dr. Berry: First of all, I think that’s 100% head on. Right? And for those who, Lunch and Learn community, usually when I talk about, when men come to my office to do the yearly physicals and I see their significant other or family member there, a lot of times they usually won't say nothing unless I ask the question like, oh is there anything else going on? And they'd be like, no. And I'm like, hey you better tell them about this. This is like, they're ready because they just assume like, like this person I'm sitting in there isn't going to tell you the full story. Dr. Jameson Mercier: They know. And so in my case, especially if I'm working with couples, I'll see them together a couple of sessions and then I separate them still. I see them on individual sessions and it's not until I get the guy by himself in my office, I get this whole narrative and I'm like, bro, we've been together for a couple of weeks. Why didn't you say this? And the reason why is because his wife or his girlfriend was there. And I'm like, whoa, how much are you not saying? Because you live with this person. Dr. Berry: Exactly. Interesting. Okay. Alright. Let's see. Let's see. Alright. I don't want to say I'm glad it happens on the mental health side, but I'm glad it's not just a medical. Dr. Jameson Mercier: No, no. We as men have a lot of problems, man. And I say that as lovingly and understandingly as possible. (Sure.) Because we just, I'll tell you a quick story. When I was in college, I was at 24, 25. I went to see my primary and I was working like crazy. I was studying, I had two and a half jobs still broke. So the stress was this way and heavy. And I came down with what I thought was a fever or a cold, and I went to see my doctor and they were like, ah, after a couple of tests they thought I had lymphoma. And so I'm like, I don't even know how to spell that. Like much less what that is. (Wow.) You know? And at the time my wife and I were dating, I go to the doctor and I come back, she goes, how was the doctor's appointment? How did it go? I'm like, eh, it was ok. Dr. Berry: Oh wow. Lunch and Learn community, I'm really laughing because you'd be surprised how often, like that conversation occurs and they'll be like, I just told my husband, he said, nothing went and his appointment was fine. I'm like, no. It wasn't like I told them this, this. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Man, listen. And so the week I went, my wife was supposed to travel for a little bit. My wife, my girlfriend at the time. And so I let her leave without telling her anything. And so I think the following day, however it played out, I had a biopsy scheduled and I'm living with a bunch of guys at this time and I said to the guys, hey, I'm might need a ride to the doctor. I didn't say hospital. (You didn't even tell them why?) And I'm living in a room in a house with four or five guys, including my brother. And so they dropped me off. I walk in, I have my biopsy. In a biopsy, they put you under and it down there like all day. And my wife was looking for me later that night. She was out of town, she couldn't find me. So finally she calls my brother and she's like, hey, I can't find Jameson, what's up? He's like, Oh yeah, I took him to a doctor's appointment. She's like, what doctor's appointment? And then he says doctor’s appointment at the hospital and my wife, she like, (hold on.) sharp tool, man. She goes, who the hell has a doctor's appointment at the hospital? And it's like nine o'clock at night and they're still there? Bro, and so I had to come clean and so, and again, I look back and I’m just like, that is so dumb. That is like so dumb. I'm not too hard on myself because I was in my twenties, but still, that is dumb. And I can excuse the young, my youth, the ignorance of my youth to some extent, but at 40 and 50 and 60, my God, there is absolutely no reason at all. Dr. Berry: And it still happens, for sure still happens. Which is wow, it's very interesting because you aren't telling a unique story bro. (I wish I was. I wish I was.) Okay. Alright, see. Like I said, I like this kindred spirit that we got going on here, right? Because like now I'm seeing how much on the mental health side, you guys clearly have the deal. We have just as much, if not more than we deal with on the medical side because you know, we were so personal. We think like, all right, maybe it's just us, right? Maybe they just don't want to take care. Clearly, even when they're on your end… Dr. Jameson Mercier: Always, universal man, it's universal. And the thing is I think, and maybe this is my bias, it's a little worse on my end because you can see a bad leg, you can see the physical manifestations. Me, I don't know anything. If you don't tell me. (Nope.) If you're not having an episode in my office, if no one saw you having an episode, if you don't come to my office smelling like alcohol, I don't know that you have a drinking problem. (Cool. Let's go.) I don't know that you're not sleeping because even if you're not sleeping, you get a quick nap in you look fine for an hour session. So, and we as men are like, we're just, forgive me, full of shit sometimes. We are manipulators and we've learned the art of covering up the pain. We mask it well. We hide it from strangers and unfortunately, I loved ones in our family. So whenever I get the chance, I sent texts and my friends or I see the campaigns that just say, hey, ask a friend, is he okay? Because there's guaranteed he's going through something and if he tells you he's okay. Call him a liar. (Yes.) Check your boy. Dr. Berry: Talk it. I love it and the reason why I love that because the article, right? I kind of started it all right? It broke down very typical relationships that men tend to have. Right? And then we've touched on, we've already actually touched on quite a few of them and they, they broken out to kind of four categories, right? They talked about the type of man who likes to like compartmentalize their relationship, right? So this is a person who treats his boys like boys, but treats his girl like this girls, right? So he is open. To be emotional to his girl, but not his boys. Right? Like, so in your situation, where you're in the house with not only your friends but a family and you're like, alright, this is the position I'm putting you in this box, but I'm going to tell my girl all this other stuff here. Hopefully, I'm going to tell her all of these, my emotional support. And I think what was interesting is that they found that even a person who has that type of relationship does it really consider themselves emotional. Right? So even when they're talking in the sense of like, I'm just talking to my girl, I'm living my girl, know how she feels. Oh, she just kinda tells me her stuff. They don't even consider themselves the emotional type, even on the, for the women's side, which I thought was extremely interesting. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Yeah. We can't even allow ourselves to consider that. Dr. Berry: Wow. And then there’s another type where we talk about a person who just has some difficulty and confining. Right? So this is a person who, they understand like, you know, I need to tell the person something that, let me just see where he's at. But because they have poor judgment, they don't realize like, oh, Berry not the type you tell that to in a way he's going to laugh at you and make fun of you and then they regress, right? (Yup, Yup, Yup.) And then they're like a closed shell and then it's even harder to get them to open up again. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Listen, I'll tell you another story, does that tell you another quick story. And some of my boys and I, we try to catch a football game every year, right? So whether we drive somewhere or fly somewhere, some years we get it in other years because of work, we can't. One year I was just, I was having some difficulties. My wife and I, we were like disagreeing on some stuff. We were disagreeing on some stuff and for whatever reason, I didn't feel like I could talk to her. I knew I could, but I don't know. We were just bumping heads. And this trip was coming up and I was so grateful for this trip (it's almost like an escape.) Oh, it gave me a way out for a few days and so I go to pick up my boy and then I think we were two or three in the car and we're driving and I'm sitting in the car and I said, man, they say, yo Jay, how are you doing? I'm like man, you know what man, is kind of messed up lately. That's what I said. And I can't tell you how much energy it took me to just kind of slide that just to say that. Right? But then I said that and then the guys in the car, they didn't say anything. (Silence. Just like as if you never even said anything.) They didn't say anything and in my mind I was like, look at these mofos right here, here I am screaming for help and blah blah blah. In hindsight, I was talking to one of them, this was maybe last year or two years ago, and I said, yo, you remember that trip? You remember that time? And he was like, kind of. I was like yo man, I was going through it and he goes, what? What do you mean? I said, yeah, and I said this. And he goes, what? That's all you said? We had a good laugh about it, man. But I'm just like, oh my goodness, it is insane the things that we go through. All I had to say was, guys, I'm struggling. If I had said, guys, I'm struggling, they would have rallied around me. (Right.) But I hid that or I pretended. Dr. Berry: I guess the better question is, would you have been able to get that type of insight where you would have realized that that was the code word you would have needed, right? Because it sounds like you said it, but not in the way they were willing to like, oh I can't, I'm not sure how to interpret this so I'm not going to go in that direction. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Well, here's the thing though. One, I mean these guys are not counselors. So, I've got to give them that much. And so I didn't necessarily communicate it in a way that they would've gotten it. I communicated it in a way that was as painless and easy for me to get it out. And sometimes the two just don't connect. Right? What's easy for me to say doesn't translate into someone understanding that I have some challenges going on. But we spent the whole weekend together, tailgating, drinking, eating and the whole time I'm worried about my relationship and my marriage and they didn't tell crap about that. Dr. Berry: Wow. It's funny. (It’s insane.) It’s insane, it really is because that really is how a lot of our relationships are formed. And whether we, the ones are actually forming that way. Right? Because again, like you know like your boy said, he's like, well why didn't you just say this? Like I would've been ready to help but you didn't say. Dr. Jameson Mercier: If nothing does, he would have been like yo dog, we got you. And you know what? That would have been all I needed at the time because again, I know they can't treat me. Yeah, I understand that. But I could have used a shoulder to lean on but I had to make the first move. Right? I had to be vulnerable in that sense. And that is something that we do not do well. Dr. Berry: Do you think we are capable of doing it well? Because I know we've talked about women because they've been ingrained in society. Has provided and allowed them that space. Do you think we're actually even capable of being that type of person who knows to reach out when they see that social media posts like, hey, reach out to my strong friend. Is that something that we can even do? Dr. Jameson Mercier: Without a doubt, man. We are capable. Because again, as men, as people, we have the capacity to do so much. We have the emotional capacity, we have the mental capacity, we are capable beings. The challenges, we are often not in a community, in a setting that creates a space for that. If you don't grow up observing that, if you don't grow up seeing your father, your cousin, your brother surrounded by men who put a hand on him, who hug him, who embrace each other, men who will cry together. Then you don't do that. You don't do that. You know, if you don't witness it, because it's a skill, right? We're talking about communication. We're talking about personal and interpersonal skills. It is a skill. The same way we can learn to communicate better with the women in our lives. We can definitely communicate better with the men and our friends and our buddies, guys who come to rely on in other capacities. This would just simply be just another form of support for us. We are totally, we are more than capable. Dr. Berry: Okay. Alright. So for the men who are able to grow their skill and practice this skill and be actually proficient in doing it, what has been your experience as far as how has it affected the other parts of the relationship, just in general? What has been your experience for that type of guy who's able to reach out and say, hey, I need help or reach out to them and honestly be the person who someone reaches out to? What has been your experience in those types of men especially from a positive standpoint in regards to their other experiences and health and wealth and everything else? Dr. Jameson Mercier: You know, it opens doors and windows you didn't know was there. Two things I said, you know, the two things that change your life - the books you read and the people you meet. And I've met some brothers who have totally changed my life. Whether it's business connections, whether it's learning about this new place I need to visit or whether it's about just have to find someone with a similar interest, you know? But guys who are able to say that, you know, listen, it sounds cheesy, you feel just a little bit freer. You feel free to move because you're less concerned about all that baggage and all that crap. You got to hide and you got to make sure nobody sees and at the same time you're hiding it, but you're trying to look like you just gliding on the water all the damn time. It allows for so much more to happen once you are able to just express that. Once you are able to say, hey guys, hey, I'm not doing so hot right now. Or if you don't hear from me over the weekend, just a quick phone call. You know, just those little things. It totally changes people's, I know for me being able to do that, and again, it's not always easy. But with the guys in my life who I am able to do that with, the quality of my relationship with these guys, my quality of life and that's not an exaggeration, has dramatically improved. Dr. Berry: I love it. So first of all, I really want to thank you for being able to really come up and kind of open up some of the eyes. And even if it's a right, just some of the mental locks that are there, especially for men. Obviously, it’s Men's Health Month. They’re going to get talked about prostate cancer and all those stuff to deal, right? But the fact that we're not allowing that to do blow over that mental health is important too. Right? A relationship is important. The fact that we're not allowing that to happen. I definitely want to thank you for coming onto the show and really driving home that fact. That I'm not, I don't think anyone else could have, especially because again, and I'm dating myself like as we speak, you're currently doing a Dadfident series, right? On Your podcast which I've been listening to, especially the one with Mr. Tracy Martin. (Yeah.) Another discussion. I mean the fact that you're able to kind of reach out and recognize and you're taking that mantle that it's difficult, right? I know it's difficult because it's difficult on the medical side, I love when, because I know the women are just easier, unfortunately. So I know when I got to do deal with men man, I got to put some work in it. But you're like headfirst. No, this is the group I want to go after. Dr. Jameson Mercier: That's my people's man. That's my people. You know when you recognize somebody going through something that you went through and you learned a few things, so you learn one thing, you got one thing in your pocket and you say, yo bro, just do this. Like, don't even think about it. Do just do this thing. And I'm sure you in in your field as well, you said, yo, just do this one thing and you'll be fine. You know, like I feel like that's what I'm here for. I say, bro, just try this and you'll be fine. All this stuff that you got going on that you're struggling with. Trust me, trust me. (Yes.) Do these two things and you'll be good. Dr. Berry: I love it. Before we let you go, I always want to really highlight the amazing guests that we have here and just really the amazing stuff that they do. So this I like to call is more of my promo type hour. I want you to tell Lunch and Learn community, obviously, you know, what do you get to offer, books, obviously you're everywhere, right? Like, again, if you listen to his bio, this guy's been everywhere. But you have anything you've got going on right now, whether it be courses, books, seminars, speaking engagement, what's going on in your world, obviously outside of this camping trip and that you've got to get off? Dr. Jameson Mercier: The easiest way to find out about us, I'll put this in upfront is mercierwellness.com and so that's the website, everything Mercier. And so by Mercier, I'm talking myself and my wife, Herdyne. We have a podcast where we talk couple stuff, whether that's communication, finances, parenting, we're wrapping up season one and prepping for season two. And so that's a lot of fun. It's a lot more fun than we thought it would be. Dr. Berry: Oh yes. And I can tell you Lunch and Learn community, me and my wife were on there. It was an amazing time. (Yes.) And I will make sure that link is in the show notes as well too. Amazing time. My wife and his wife know each other very well. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Of course, they do right? They’re women. They just know. And even if they didn't know each other, they would know each other because that's what women do. Dr. Berry: You know, so funny story especially that, I hate to cut you off. When your wife was actually reaching out to my wife, she even realizes like I was the husband. So she's like, oh can you get your husband, was like, oh, Mercier. She was like, who’s the husband? Berry Pierre. Oh, Berry Pierre! Like it was totally oblivious. Right? Everything was all about my wife at that time. Dr. Jameson Mercier: That's it. As I tell my wife, you're the connector here, you do it all. That's just how women are and we need women in our lives. So, Mercier Wellness. mercierwellness.com (That’s right.) The name of the podcast is The Couple's Council. That's what it's called. And that's everywhere on iTunes, that's everywhere. Once you're on iTunes, Stitcher, Google podcast, we’re there. We're getting ready to do, Herdyne and I were getting ready to do like a couple series, a couple’s couple series. One about intimacy because this is also another area when it comes to sex and intimacy. Couples are not communicating about that. Dr. Berry: Wow. And if you think you were going to communicate with anybody, it'd be your significant other. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Who you laying in bed with. Who you just living your life with day in and day out. And so recognizing this need where we were putting together a workshop about couples and intimacy. On the flip side, we're also gonna be releasing some new, starting up some new webinars, online webinars. People can log on and watch about different topics. So in addition to the podcast, we have those things that are dripping out and on the dad fit in front dead. You know, once I say this and I have to follow through with it and I almost don't want to go. Dr. Berry: Let’s go. He’s on record right now. Let's go. Dr. Jameson Mercier: I know, right? There’s a book that semi-done right? It’s called Dadfident: Black Fathers as Primary Caregivers. (Oh! I like that.) The idea that the black fathers don't do that. And that's a bald-faced lie, not all black and brown fathers are locked up or absent. So that's going to drop soon. And there's a couple of things that follow that. So we're busy around here and just trying to do some good work, man. Dr. Berry: I love it. And before you go, I always ask this question, how is what you're doing really helping to empower the men, especially obviously the dads and whatever they're at in life, really improve their mental health and wellbeing and social relationships and everything above. Dr. Jameson Mercier: We are empowered. Once you begin to see that it's possible, you know, seeing is believing. And as men, you know, listen, you could tell me what you want, but show me, show me if you can show me that it works, you might have a chance. And so not only do I preach this and I teach this, but I strive to be even a role model. I don't like that. But I understand why that word exists. You know, I started to be an example to say, hey, it's okay. You know, do this because I do it too. So I understand I'm not selling you something I don't know. And I recognize that seeing someone who looks like you, talks like you, eat with you, who lives your life, do these things that you've been told historically you cannot do. That's where the empowerment comes from. Dr. Berry: I love it. Again, Lunch and Learn community members, definitely an amazing way to end Men's Health Month. But understanding that Men's Health Month is just a mouth. Like we gotta be about our health 24/7, 12 months out the year, right? So again Dr. Mercier, thank you for really blessing Lunch and Learn community, in a podcast with just such amazing introspection to what you have to deal with and really what men have to deal with and how to get better. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Listen, this has been awesome for me as well. Listen, I could talk this all day. I appreciate the invitation and anytime you want to get out there, man, get out in the woods. You let me know. We'd been saying we gotta Hook Up, man. (Yes.) We’re in the same area. Dr. Berry: We were probably like less than half an hour away. We were really in the same county. (There's no reason why we can't make it happen Dr. B.) All right. You know what? This is what we plan it right on the wax here, right? So I will be camping out. I'm putting it out. I'm going to camp. I'm going to go out and camp. Dr. Jameson Mercier: There's gonna be footage of it too. (Yes.) That's fact once it's documented. Dr. Berry: Yeah. Alright. You have a great day. Thank you again. Dr. Jameson Mercier: Thank you. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

Episode 20: STAY IN YOUR LANE

Braze for Impact

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2019 19:57

This week, I was accompanied by Ryan Doyle (Digital-first AE) and Shezeen Ali (Customer Success Manager) to discuss a few companies that try to expand outside the scope of their main product offering to seize up some auxiliary revenue. Facebook is getting into crypto, Salesforce wants a cut of the CDP game, and Sony wants to give you a ride. Stay in your lane! TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] P.J. Bruno: Hi, again. Welcome back to Braze for Impact, your MarTech industry discuss digest. I'm your host, P.J. Bruno, and with me today...two close friends. I have to my left here Shezeen Ali, to my right, Ryan Doyle. Ryan of sales, Shezeen of success. Hello to you both. [0:00:35] Shezeen Ali: Hello, thanks for having us. [0:00:37] Ryan Doyle: Great to be here. [0:00:37] P.J. Bruno: Yeah, thanks for coming on short notice. I just realized I'm going to be away next week, so we need to get into this week and I don't know what brought us about this topic, but this week's topic is, stay in your lane. [0:00:50] Ryan Doyle: Stay in your lane. [0:00:50] P.J. Bruno: And we're going to be discussing different companies that are trying to expand their company operations and revenue streams into, maybe, some things that are more trends, but definitely opportunities. [0:01:00] Ryan Doyle: Right. [0:01:00] P.J. Bruno: How you doing, bud? [0:01:01] Ryan Doyle: I'm doing fantastic. It's a back to back to back day with customer meetings. I'm glad that we got to do some of the stay in your lane content because I haven't even had a chance to digest some of the stuff that's gone down this week. [0:01:13] P.J. Bruno: Be a good refresher. Shezeen, how we feeling? [0:01:15] Shezeen Ali: I'm feeling good. You know, it's been a good week. This morning I had some good calls with clients and I feel that...I'm a customer success manager for those of you who don't know, and I feel that it's really fun when I get to put my own experience into my client's questions. This morning, I have to tell you guys, because I just felt so cool, a client asked me...a dating app client, was just asking me some questions. And it was so cool because I got to tell them how I use their app, what I think about the space, what I think about New York City, you know? [0:01:46] P.J. Bruno: A dating SME. [0:01:48] Shezeen Ali: Yeah. What I think about New York City dating, which is where they're targeting their customers, and it was just really fun. Guys, I just love my job. [0:01:58] P.J. Bruno: That's awesome. That's great that you were equipped with the advice, too. As this is the stay in your lane episode, let's jump right into our lane right now and get going. In case you haven't heard yet, Facebook is moving into cryptocurrency. Their subsidiary, Collibra, will offer a digital wallet for the coming Libra Coin. Now, you turned me on to this, Ryan, and as soon as you did I just started digging and learning a ton about it. It's an interesting topic and Facebook moving into something as secure as sharing money, or currency, it's a little scary, actually. [0:02:33] Ryan Doyle: When they've been so loosey-goosey with our data before. [0:02:35] P.J. Bruno: Right, exactly. [0:02:36] Ryan Doyle: And I think we've all seen how this space is also ripe for scamming and really bad things going down where people take the money and run. And what could Facebook do? Given some of the secrecy around cryptocurrency. [0:02:48] P.J. Bruno: That's what I'm saying. I think they need to repair some trust before this happens. But quickly, let's kind of digest and understand what it is. Obviously, we know the popular cryptocurrency, which is Bitcoin, and the whole idea behind it is it's not run by any sort of government body. And their trying to do the same thing with Libra, but further than that, it's not governed by any one anything. It's governed by all the different data miners. They all need to validate and approve every transaction. The whole point of crypto is it's decentralized. Libra, it seems like, it is centralized in a way. It's not a government body, but with Libra came the Libra Association, which is 28 companies that will partner in governing the currency. The likes of Uber, Lyft, Spotify, Visa, Ebay, PayPal, Stripe, Vodafone and more. And each company has an equal vote when it comes to decision making, but Facebook owns subsidiary Collibra, which will be the app that the sharing will happen through. It's tricky business because, yes, no government body is ruling it but... A large group of corporations, and obviously, they each have a vote and there's checks and balances but there's no sense of protecting the consumer as much as protecting their own hides. [0:04:05] Ryan Doyle: I would say first and foremost, in the old crypto paradigm you described, it's the miners and the people supporting the transactions that get the earnings of the newly minted Bitcoin, or whatever crypto they're working within. It's not just in this Libra example, something that is governed by a consortium of companies, but they are also going to earn a percentage on every transaction that comes through. So, it's less of Facebook saying, "Hey, we are going to make something great that the whole world and the un-banked can use." And more like, "We're going to start putting out our own currency now, we're going to make some money off of it, and we have the reach to hopefully make it successful." I think that it's a little bit of a wolf in sheep's clothing, and I would prefer Facebook didn't go this route because I'm really scared of them. [0:04:52] P.J. Bruno: Yup, terrifying. [0:04:54] Shezeen Ali: I think when I read that some of those partners are governing the currency, like you said, I kind of thought, "Oh, maybe this is okay, because we have some big companies here and they don't want to have their name attached to something that's going to go horribly wrong." But I still think Facebook claiming that they have some sort of process to verify the identity of users...I feel like we need to see that, before we actually trust it. [0:05:16] P.J. Bruno: Right. Already, House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, called on Facebook on Tuesday to halt development of Libra until legislators have a chance to evaluate the plans, and take action. So they're kind of already getting warning signs, and stop signals from various politicians. It's also been flagged to me that there's other associations that would be concerned with this sort of thing. The whole point was that, with Bitcoin, there's no agency as far as the governance. But now that we have this group that's kind of monitoring the governance, that comes with responsibility. And so, Libra is a permissions-based system, and the validaters are known, and I don't think they're ready for the implications. Because the U.S. Treasury has regulations and there's the know your customer and anti-money laundering laws and money made from currency exchange volatility, these are taxable events. So there's even more implications as far as IRS holding payment processors accountable. It just feels like there's a lot more- [0:06:17] Shezeen Ali: It's complex. [0:06:18] P.J. Bruno: Oh man, there's a lot at play. There's a lot of hoops to jump through and, for my call, I hope that it's enough to shut the thing down. Because even if you frame it as this thing that could be better for the world, right? Non-government run currency, the idea...I love it. But you still have to earn back some trust after Cambridge, you know? [0:06:37] Ryan Doyle: Right, and you see that the House Oversight Committee has already tried to bring Facebook to Capital Hill to have them testify before, and they just did not understand Facebook's business. The senator asked, "How do you make money if you're not charging users?" And Mark Zuckerberg says, "Senator, we run ads." They just don't understand how Facebook makes money. What won't we understand about them once they get this? If they have it their way just one more time, what's going to happen now? In a bubble, it seems cool. Maybe even safe. But even the U.S. Dollar is used to do bad things. What happens when the currency here is out of the consortium's hands and out into the world? Who will use it to do the next bad thing? Even when the money was coming directly to Facebook, they still accepted those Russian ads to influence the 2016 election. Stay in your lane. [0:07:24] Shezeen Ali: What made Facebook, do you guys think, even want to venture into this avenue? [0:07:29] P.J. Bruno: They see the opportunity in it, you know? And I think maybe to them it seemed like the cross-hairs of...honestly, opportunity for control but also an opportunity to seemingly give back. The whole idea philosophically, is making governments the bad guys, because they are controlling currency. So I think that's the positioning for it, but still it's not enough. [0:07:52] Ryan Doyle: Yeah, I would say they're always trying to become a layer of the internet. So they've become a authentication layer for so many sites, they've become an advertising layer...a way to make money and sell space for so many sites. And now they're getting even closer to that money by getting into the financial realm. Think of how much their advertising business could be bolstered if they understood the financial transactions of two billion people, and think of how well their financial business would do- [0:08:19] P.J. Bruno: Geeze. [0:08:19] Shezeen Ali: I don't want them to know any of that, please. [0:08:23] Ryan Doyle: So this is just one layer deeper for them, but a broad, reaching layer. [0:08:28] Shezeen Ali: Those are good points. [0:08:28] P.J. Bruno: I don't want them to see all the moisturizers that I purchase on Amazon. They wouldn't have access to that, right? [0:08:33] Shezeen Ali: I hope not! I was genuinely confused why they went down this avenue so those are both very good points [0:08:39] P.J. Bruno: And you know what, let's wrap this one up because I feel like we're staying on it awhile. But one thing I will say is a book that Ryan first read and shared with me, The Four, which just kind of talks a little bit about, really, the magnitude of the...for lack of a better word, treason that was involved in what went down with Facebook. I think people don't really understand the gravity of that. And there still has been minimal to...yeah there's been fines but, any other media company in that situation would be shut down immediately. [0:09:10] Ryan Doyle: There's a certain likeability that protects them at the end of the day, I think. [0:09:13] Shezeen Ali: Exactly. [0:09:14] P.J. Bruno: Anyways. So Facebook, please- [0:09:16] Ryan Doyle: Stay in your lane. [0:09:20] P.J. Bruno: All right, next up. Ryan, you want to talk the helm on this one, buddy? [0:09:23] Ryan Doyle: Salesforce lent its hand to the CDP industry this week. A long time legacy technology who has a history of acquiring and bolting together different technologies has finally announced that it would like to integrate those technologies by having a customer data platform. Customer data platform, for those listening and not familiar, is a way of tagging events, attributes, moving data around in your tech stack to different ends. Like Braze, even, where we could send them engagement data and they could send us customer actions as they occur. It's just a great way to make sure that data flows seamlessly between all systems and Salesforce has finally decided that they would like to do that even though they have preached for so long, "We're helping the next generation of marketing companies. We are enabling real-time marketing." To see this now, after CVPs have already been in a space for so long, it's just like, stay in your lane! What are you doing? You're already so far down this path. What makes you think this is going to work now? [0:10:28] P.J. Bruno: In a way, it seems like a natural progression. Just because we talk about the Salesforce Frankenstein monster, you have so many pieces to the puzzle, the customer data platform seems like adding some grease to the wheels. Right? Because you're just going to ease the sharing between all those pieces, but you know, that said it is yet another layer that you're stacking across all of this fragmented ecosystem. We should have seen it coming, though, because they acquired Datorama in 2018 and then less then a year later, "Hey, we have a CDP." Do you have a CDP, or did you just purchase one, and slap a sticker on it? [0:11:05] Ryan Doyle: Hot take. [0:11:06] Shezeen Ali: Oh. [0:11:07] Ryan Doyle: It's in service of saying that they are trying to stay next gen by releasing all these new features and now we can enable all these use cases, but to quote Dan Head, who just walked us through our legacy marketing battle card, or how we approach conversations with people who might be of a legacy marketing paradigm, "The architecture is just fundamentally misaligned with the purpose you're trying to solve for." So, in that sense it will never work. [0:11:35] P.J. Bruno: Was that Dan Head, as played by Tom Hardy from Peaky Blinders? [0:11:38] Ryan Doyle: Yeah, Alfie Solomons, in the Peaky Blinders, yeah. [0:11:42] Shezeen Ali: So good. [0:11:43] P.J. Bruno: Do you know how he closes every deal? He literally just slams the paper in front of...what have you got there- [0:11:46] Ryan Doyle: Just sign right there. [0:11:47] P.J. Bruno: Just sign, right there- [0:11:49] Ryan Doyle: Your name. [0:11:49] P.J. Bruno: And then I'll own fifty percent of Shelby Company Limited. Oh my god. [0:11:56] Shezeen Ali: Wow that was great. [0:11:58] P.J. Bruno: Peaky Blinders shout out. And so, we'll say to that, Salesforce- [0:12:01] Ryan Doyle: Stay in your lane. [0:12:03] P.J. Bruno: Stay in your lane, bro. All right, moving on. Shezeen, what have you got for us? [0:12:07] Shezeen Ali: Awesome. Sony...which...you all know Sony- [0:12:12] P.J. Bruno: Oh, we know. [0:12:15] Shezeen Ali: They have officially launched a taxi hailing app to rival Uber, specifically in Tokyo. When I think of Sony, I think of all their electronics. I think of PlayStation, that's a big one. [0:12:29] Ryan Doyle: Headphones. [0:12:29] P.J. Bruno: Yeah, love it. PS4. That's like how me and Ryan became friends. [0:12:32] Shezeen Ali: Oh, there you go. [0:12:33] Ryan Doyle: Mm-hmm (affirmative) That's the only place we are still friends. [0:12:35] Shezeen Ali: So I was pretty confused by this headline, so they actually announced last year that they were planning to do this, and then they have officially kicked off the service in Tokyo. It's called S.Ride. Essentially, what's going to happen is they're trying to rival Uber, and they've claimed that there are 10,000 licensed taxis in Tokyo. Because right now, the way that it works is there's already so many taxis in Tokyo, so Uber has already partnered with these taxi companies. It's there right now, and that's how they get these drivers. [0:13:07] P.J. Bruno: So you're saying there's like a maximum number of licensed taxi drivers that can exist? [0:13:11] Shezeen Ali: Right now. Apparently that's what it- [0:13:13] P.J. Bruno: It's like alcohol licenses in Philadelphia. [0:13:15] Shezeen Ali: Yes. [0:13:15] P.J. Bruno: It's like you need to buy one or pass it on. [0:13:18] Shezeen Ali: Yeah. And I'm not sure of how they could expand that, but Uber's already there and they're already doing it. And there's also JapanTaxi, which... I just went to Tokyo two months ago, and JapanTaxi was what everyone was talking about. That's like the...I guess you could think about it as YellowCab in New York, but most people just use that. [0:13:39] Ryan Doyle: Is it app-based? [0:13:40] Shezeen Ali: It is, yep. It used to not be, it used to not be, and then they integrated it into apps. I had a really bad experience with trying to get cars in Tokyo, you know, they have an amazing subway system. People talk about it all the time. It's like New York City on steroids. Definitely one of the more confusing subway systems I've ever ridden. No one it Tokyo speaks English, so as a tourist, which...they get a lot of tourists, some times it's late, it's like midnight. The subways aren't running anymore. Even though they are efficient, they stop running. So that's when I started to be really grateful for New York and our 24 hour subway system. And we were kind of- [0:14:16] P.J. Bruno: No one speaks English in Tokyo? [0:14:18] Shezeen Ali: Yes! Plot twist. Plot twist. No one told me. [0:14:20] P.J. Bruno: I thought everyone would. [0:14:21] Shezeen Ali: Nope. [0:14:22] P.J. Bruno: It was like the end of Big Little Lies, I just got knocked on my butt. [0:14:25] Shezeen Ali: So that was something no one told me before I went and I was pretty humbled by the fact that I cannot speak anything but English, pretty much. And so, using a lot of Google Translate, and also I was with my brother and his girlfriend but we both were like, "You know, we don't want to just stand on the side of the street and wait for a taxi to come," because we didn't see a lot, "so why don't we use Uber?" And so we did, it took a while to arrive and it was the cutest old man just showed up in his taxi. So it was like a fancy taxi, he was wearing a suit...he had to be 80 years old. Didn't speak English. And it was so bad. We got really lost and it was just not a great experience. [0:15:06] P.J. Bruno: Really? [0:15:06] Shezeen Ali: And he got super lost. And he was so embarrassed but we couldn't really say, "Are we going to get charged for this?" Because he didn't know what we were saying, he didn't even understand the Google Translate app that we kept showing him with the characters, so it's one of those- [0:15:18] P.J. Bruno: But he was very cute. [0:15:19] Shezeen Ali: He was super cute. Japanese people are- [0:15:21] P.J. Bruno: Yeah, that's what you were paying for. [0:15:22] Shezeen Ali: They're so respectful. They're so polite. They love tourists. So long story short is, I started to kind of say, "Oh, Uber in Tokyo? This is not ideal." [0:15:31] Ryan Doyle: But what makes Sony think they have the special sauce to crack this nut? [0:15:35] Shezeen Ali: That's where I'm kind of in a weird place right now. Where I'm like, "Yeah, Sony. Let's see what you can do." If you think that this is a...You know what? I'm speaking from personal experience. Maybe other people have had good Uber experiences but we...we rode it a couple of times and it was not great. So maybe they can launch a partnership with these taxi companies that will allow for, I don't know, a better app or maybe GPS...the better GPS system for these taxi drivers, because most of them are really old and they don't even have GPS systems. So you're kind just telling them, "Hey" and they're not using their phone when they're driving so- [0:16:11] P.J. Bruno: Is this the one time that we allow somebody to- [0:16:14] Ryan Doyle: To switch lanes. [0:16:15] Shezeen Ali: I think it might be. [0:16:16] Ryan Doyle: Sony, feel free to skirt? Merge? [0:16:19] Shezeen Ali: Feel free. So I'm really curious to see what happens and- [0:16:22] P.J. Bruno: Yeah, Sony it sounds like the lane is relatively open. [0:16:26] Ryan Doyle: Wide open, yeah. [0:16:27] Shezeen Ali: You'd think Lyft would do something but apparently they don't have...they've expressed interest in Japan but they haven't officially done anything. [0:16:36] P.J. Bruno: I hope that means that on the inside of the cars that pick you up, the entertainment system is the bomb. [0:16:41] Shezeen Ali: That's what- [0:16:43] P.J. Bruno: That would be so good. [0:16:44] Shezeen Ali: That would be the best. [0:16:45] P.J. Bruno: PS4 in the back seats, what is up? I'm like, "You know what? Why don't you take me around a few more times?" [0:16:49] Shezeen Ali: There we go. PS4. [0:16:50] P.J. Bruno: I got to finish my game. [0:16:52] Shezeen Ali: This came full circle. I'm hoping S.Ride can do something, but you know, JapanTaxi is also used widely, I did mention that. So if they can compete with JapanTaxi and Uber...we'll see. We'll see what happens. [0:17:05] P.J. Bruno: All right, well I'm excited to see. We have one final one and this remains to be seen whether it was legit or a publicity stunt, because of all the back-tracking that happened. So I don't know if you had heard about this but IHOP goes to IHOB. So that's International House of Burgers, and it was to promote some of their new burger specials on the menu. And it received so much hate on Twitter and the internet. [0:17:33] Shezeen Ali: I love Twitter. [0:17:34] P.J. Bruno: The internet was disgusted. It literally chewed up International House of Burgers and spit it right back out. [0:17:40] Ryan Doyle: They just did it with such fanfare. It wasn't like they one day said, "Hey, we're IHOB." They had this pomp and circumstance around releasing it where it's like something big's coming. Like the same type of hype that was built around the Segway when that first came out, and everyone's like, "It's a Segway." And everyone's like, "It's IHOB." They were- [0:17:59] Shezeen Ali: I did think that the hype was overdone. [0:18:01] P.J. Bruno: It's a serious Steve Jobs iPhone level hype. [0:18:04] Ryan Doyle: Well, because of course, you need to...I feel like, for big releases, the hype is hugely important. But you also set yourself up for a huge fall. And that's what they did here. [0:18:15] P.J. Bruno: This is not just a stay in your lane, this is a what did you expect? [0:18:18] Shezeen Ali: But I will say, I had never heard this many people talk about IHOP in years. Unless you walk by one in New York City. I had not heard about, not really, it hadn't come up in conversations. So they got me talking, but maybe not in a good way. [0:18:32] P.J. Bruno: Yeah, it's crazy because IHOP, think about how firmly that is situated in the American zeitgeist, right? IHOP is immediately, you know what it is. [0:18:43] Ryan Doyle: Everybody's puked there once. [0:18:44] P.J. Bruno: Everybody's puked there once, everyone's had subpar breakfast. And yet, sometimes you just get a craving to jump into an IHOP and just crush some buttered pancakes. [0:18:54] Shezeen Ali: There we go. [0:18:54] P.J. Bruno: But the response from the president of IHOP, Darren Rebelez, he said, "But we want to convey that we are taking our burgers as seriously as our pancakes." He said, "Most of the 1,800 restaurants still go by IHOP." Which means, I guess, and handful of them are going to go by IHOB. [0:19:14] Shezeen Ali: I want to know which ones are IHOB. [0:19:16] Ryan Doyle: IHOB. The restaurants for hobbits. [0:19:19] Shezeen Ali: Now really, this doesn't help. Him saying that they're going to take their burgers as seriously as their pancakes just makes me even more mad. Why? [0:19:26] Ryan Doyle: Because they don't take their pancakes that seriously. [0:19:28] Shezeen Ali: Stick to pancakes. [0:19:30] P.J. Bruno: I'm going to go ahead and say stay in your lane. [0:19:31] Ryan Doyle: Stay in your lane. [0:19:32] Shezeen Ali: Stay in your lane. [0:19:34] P.J. Bruno: You know what, that's all we have time for today. Thanks for joining us everybody. I'd love to than Shezeen and Ryan for joining me, guys. [0:19:41] Ryan Doyle: Thank you for having us. [0:19:42] Shezeen Ali: Thanks P.J. [0:19:43] P.J. Bruno: And thank you all for joining us as well. Take care. [0:19:46]

196: Harnessing the Transformative Power of Your Core Emotions - The Change Triangle with Hilary Jacobs Hendel

Relationship Alive!

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 25, 2019 78:35

Beneath anxiety, depression, guilt, and shame, are core emotions that are hardwired into our circuitry. When you’re able to tap into the core emotions - and move through them - you’ll feel a new sense of freedom and empowerment - with the ability to handle anything that life sends your way. Our guest today is Hilary Jacobs Hendel. She’s a psychotherapist and the author of the new book, "It's Not Always Depression: Working the Change Triangle to Listen to the Body, Discover Core Emotions, and Connect to Your Authentic Self,” which will definitely be a game changer for you. Today she has some practical tips for you on how to identify and work through these core emotions, so that you don't get stuck in the secondary emotions that can get in your way. As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Please join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Want to experience a Luxury Suite or VIP Box at an amazing concert or sporting event? Check out Suitehop.com/DATENIGHT to score sweet deals on a special night for you and your partner. Find a quality therapist, online, to support you and work on the places where you’re stuck. For 10% off your first month, visit Betterhelp.com/ALIVE to fill out the quick questionnaire and get paired with a therapist who’s right for you. Resources: Visit Hilary Jacobs Hendel’s website to learn more about her work. Pick up your copy of Hilary Jacobs Hendel’s book, It's Not Always Depression: Working The Change Triangle To Listen To The Body Discover Core Emotions And Connect To Your Authentic Self. FREE Relationship Communication Secrets Guide - perfect help for handling conflict and shifting the codependent patterns in your relationship Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Your Relationship (ALSO FREE) Visit www.neilsattin.com/triangle to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Hilary Jacobs Hendel. Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host Neil Sattin. It's been my mission of course to give you the best tools that I can find to help you have an amazing thriving relationship. And some of those tools are relational and how you interact with other people, and some of those tools are all about the inner work and how we can come to understand ourselves better and experience life more fully, shine more brightly and to get past the obstacles that stand in our way. And today, I hope to synthesize both of those things for you. Though, we're gonna start with the inner work as we unearth how to get to our core emotional experience and just why that is so important. And along the way you're gonna learn how to identify when you're in a core emotional experience and when you are not and learn exactly how to handle that situation. We are diving more deeply also into the work known as AEDP: accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy. Which is a mouthful but if you listened to Episode 176 with Diana Fosha, or episode 189 with David Mars then you're getting a sense for how this way of working with people can be so profound in its ability to create positive change. Neil Sattin: Today's guest has taken the model even further in showing us how we can apply it for ourselves. So, it's great when you're doing it in, in therapy it's great when you're doing it in couples therapy. And this is going to show you how to do it on your own so that you can experience this kind of change in your daily life, using what's known as "the change triangle.". Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Our guest today is Hilary Jacobs Handel and her recent book: "It's Not Always Depression: Working The Change Triangle To Listen To The Body Discover Core Emotions And Connect To Your Authentic Self," is, I think, a game changer for you in terms of deepening your experience and being able to bring that fully into your relationship with your spouse, your partner, and your relationships with others in general. As usual we will have a detailed transcript of today's episode. You can get that if you visit Neil-Sattin-dot-com-slash-triangle, because we're talking about the change triangle, or as always you can text the word passion to the number 3-3-4-4-4 and follow the instructions. So let us dive in to the change triangle and discover how to get even more in touch with who we are at our core and how to bring that into the world. Hilary Jacobs Hendall, thank you so much for being here with us today on Relationship Alive. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Thank you Neil. I am delighted to be here talking about my favorite subjects, of emotions and relationships. Neil Sattin: Perfect. Well we're on the same page then, definitely. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes we are. Neil Sattin: And I do want to mention before we get too deep in, that if you are a visual person and need a visual representation of the triangle that we're talking about then that's also available both on Hilary's Web site, which will announce in a little bit, and also at Neil-Sattin-dot-com-slash-triangle, where we have the transcripts. You'll be able to to see it in front of you if that's required. But we'll do our best to to make it, make it real for you as we're talking about it. Neil Sattin: So Hilary, why, why is it so important to get in touch with our core emotions and and how do we distinguish core emotions from just that emotional wash that can come, come at us or come over us throughout our day? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Well, it's, there's many reasons why it's important to get, not only get it, well understand the different types of emotions and to get in touch with emotions and to be able to discern what you're what you're feeling and what you're experiencing. Because most of us live up in our heads. And thoughts are fantastic and we need them. And I love my thoughts but it's half the picture of knowing who you are and what you need and what's good for you and what's bad for you. And core emotions are these biologically wired survival programs that really tell us, at the core, so much about what we who we are and what we need that if we're not listening to them and our society really teaches us to avoid them and block them, which I think is responsible for the epidemic we're seeing in depression and anxiety and so many mental health issues, that, and we don't learn anything about emotions, that, that without knowing about emotions and understanding how they work, we're really at a huge disadvantage to thrive in life. Neil Sattin: Right, when you're able to identify the emotional experience that you're having, it gives you clues as to how you need to best respond to the world in the moment with whatever is going on in your life. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly and I think what's become more and more important for me, just to say from the beginning to the people listening out there, is that this is not about wearing emotions on our sleeve. This is not about looking for an excuse to act out or behave badly, to rage or to cry, experiencing emotions is a wholly internal process it has nothing to do with what we actually then show to others, or, or enact. It may, but I'm, we're always trying to think about what is constructive for us, constructive for the person we are with. It's not about an excuse to behave badly and I think we live in an emotion phobic culture partly because people don't understand that, they think "Oh my gosh, you know, if we're all into our emotions it's just gonna be you know not good. It's just, it's..." I'm only thinking of curse words now that would come out and explain like a shit show, but I'm just you know that type of a thing. And this is a very thoughtful process that I am talking about that only helps us. There, there is no downside to getting in touch with emotions the way that I am thinking about it and the way that I try to educate others. Neil Sattin: Right, what you just said is such an important distinction that we're talking about a constructive way to meet your emotions and to metabolize them into something that's beneficial not just for you but for the other people in your orbit or for life in, in general. And you know we had Harriet Lerner on the show to talk about her seminal work, "The Dance of Anger," and turning anger into, into a constructive emotional phenomenon. And I love how in your book it's not always depression you talk about each of these core emotions and we're talking about emotions like sadness and fear and anger and disgust, and we're also talking about emotions like joy or excitement or sexual excitement. Lust I think is the way that Jaak Panskepp talks about it. And we're talking about all of those core programs that you just mentioned and looking at how they lead to our common good. The common benefit and also ways to know when, when something's coming at us that really isn't healthy and and how to respond effectively to that. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly right. In particular with using anger to set limits and boundaries and to assert ourselves without being aggressive. Neil Sattin: Right. Right which you're able to do when you've figured out "Wow I'm, I'm really angry. And here's why I'm angry right now." And so it becomes less about telling someone that you're angry and more about setting an effective limit with them. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes, and I would add an additional piece: it's, it's also working with that anger internally to to discharge some of that energy that causes us to, to act too quickly, and act, and say mean things or do hurtful things, so that there's techniques to work with the energy that, that most emotions have and that grip us into impulses right and these impulses have to be thought through very, very up, down and sideways, before we decide to say something or do something that we really want to be thoughtful about ourselves and the action that wants to come out. Neil Sattin: Right. Yeah. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: It's hard work too, this is a lifelong process. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So important to name that and, and for you, listening, we're going, we're gonna get to some of these techniques of how to really integrate and and process your emotional experience in the way that Hilary was just naming. And I want to say too that well, as you know I read a lot of books for this show and I love the ones that just right out of the gate, I'm like, "This book is gonna make a difference in my life." And I definitely felt that reading your book it's so practical and in some ways the title is misleading because I think people see it and they think "Oh this is a book about depression. I'm not sure that impacts me." And so I want to encourage everyone listening that this is really a book about what we're talking about: how do you encounter your own emotional experience and chew it up in a way that's beneficial for you and then bring that into how you how you interact with the world around you. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah exactly. And I think you're right about the title. I guess if the title was exactly what it should be, it would say "This is a basic emotion education that you should have received in high school," and hopefully one day people will. But it's something that every, everybody knows that the title came from the article that I wrote for The New York Times back in 2015 and because the article went viral and so many people responded to it, that Random House said let's just name the book that. And you know it's not always depression what is it? It's really life, and how surviving our childhoods and all the adversity that life entails affects us emotionally and what happens when you block those emotions and what happens when you embrace those emotions and learn to work with them. And it's it's it's a fork in the road. And it matters. Neil Sattin: Yes. Yeah. So let's start with talking about "the change triangle," because I think identifying the three different corners of the triangle will be really helpful for everyone in understanding what we're talking about because why is it a triangle, why isn't it just like well you've got to have your core emotional experience, and there, there's more to it. And this was where your book was so eye opening for me in many ways, was getting to see oh these kinds of things that I experience< they're happening because I'm, I, I'm trying to I'm trying to protect myself from a core emotional experience as an example. So, I think as we as we dive in this is going to make a lot more sense for everyone listening. So, where's a good place to start, Hilary? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: I think just a quickly, describe it and and what I, I'll try to bring it to life a little bit. Neil Sattin: Great. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: So for everybody listening you want to imagine an upside down triangle superimposed on your body. The point of the triangle is in your core, you know, somewhere between your stomach and, and your, under your ribs. And that's because, and that's, at the bottom of the triangle is where core emotions are and they're in the body and that's why I'm asking you to imagine them in your core. And they're, the core emotions to say them again are: fear, anger, sadness, disgust, joy, excitement, and sexual excitement. And each of those have their own unique programs and they're very simple in a way, you know, when something, when somebody hurts us... Well let's just take anger because it's something that we all struggle with in our culture. And there's so many myths about anger, but anger is there basically to protect us. Anger and fear. And when when somebody attacks us. And I always think about how these were designed to be sort of, hundreds of thousands of years ago, if somebody wanted to kill you, and, and had a threatening pose or gesture you would evoke anger in the middle of the brain, like where all core emotions are evoked, and then it sends out a myriad of responses to all organs of the body to ready the body for an action and that action is meant to be adaptive for survival. So anger will make us kind of want to make a fist and put up our dukes and get ready to attack. And it come, it's visceral. We all know that experience of when someone we care about insults us or doesn't do something that we really needed to and there's energy in the body and our, and we get tension in the body and we really feel like we want to lash out. So it's a full body experience and each of the core emotions have their own program that has an, uh, an uh, group of physical sensations that we can learn to recognize and name, and each of the core emotions has an impulse to action that we can learn to recognize, and, and explain and name, and, and an impulse to action, that we are, that it's pulling for us to do. And it's that whole experience that we want to get really good at recognizing and that is really just a part of knowing ourselves. The, the emotions react similarly in everybody. But there is nuance in everyone. So the way that I experience anger will be differently than the way you experience anger, Neil. And that's the same for all the core emotions. Neil Sattin: Great. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: So that's the bottom of the triangle. Does that make sense? Neil Sattin: Perfect. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: OK. Now there's uh, there's three corners of the triangle, which I'm going to explain. But there is a fourth point here and I'm just going to share it real quickly now because when we have a core emotion, we're at a fork in the road and there's base likely two ways it can go. We can bury that emotion and push it away and block it and then we're going to be moving to the top of the triangle. Or, we can validate it, name it, and work with the experience that it's evoking, in which case we get to this place that I put on the bottom of the triangle. That's called the "open hearted state of the authentic self." And what that is basically, a more practical way of saying, is it's a regulated state of mind and body and that when we are with our core emotions, and we let them process through, and we are allowed to experience them, and again nothing has actually happened yet in the outside world it's wholly internal, it's a way that comes the body back down. Because core emotions come up they kind of cause an arousal of the nervous system like a wave. You ride the wave and then they come down. And if we don't block them the energy kind of naturally will dissipate over time, and in ways and techniques that we can help with that, and then we come back to this kind of calm state, where our mind and body feel relaxed, and in that state good things happened, and there's a bunch of c-words that I borrowed from Richard Schwartz with his permission, where when we stay in this kind of calm regulated state, we are more curious, we feel more connected, we have a greater capacity for compassion for ourselves and other people, we tend to feel more confident because we can deal with our own emotions and we feel more courageous in life and we have more clarity of thought. So you obsess less. So this is where we all want to spend more time. Neil Sattin: Definitely. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: And it's not that it's the goal to spend all our time there, right? That's impossible because life happens but that's where we want to spend more and more time. And so working this change triangle to get back to core emotions and to go through them down to this calm state is the whole point of this. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I think it's important to mention that too, that we're describing this, this static image but it implies a process that you can go through in order to get to the openhearted state of self energy that that Hilary's just described. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Right, because we're moving around this triangle all day every day many times and it's what we do that matters and then we're also kind of moving around in this triangle in life on a macro level spending less time in our defensive states and more time in the openhearted state. So. So that's sort of a sort of a micro and a global way to look at it. Neil Sattin: Great. So then when you have that core when you're when some core emotional response comes up, you said you're at a fork in the road and you can head, you can ride the wave and and get to that core self state or... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Or like most of us do, because that's what we're taught to do in our society, is we tend to block them. And so the top of the triangle if we move to the top right that corner is labeled inhibitory emotions and the inhibitory emotions which everyone will recognize are anxiety, guilt, and shame. And again what they have in common is that they all push down, and block, and bury core emotional experience, in purpose for the purpose of pretty much getting along in our society. There are more social emotions, so that if the core emotions are the selfish emotions what's good for me the inhibitory emotions are, "How do I curb my own impulses and desires, so that I stay in the good graces, good graces of initially my mother and then my father and my siblings, my family, then my peer groups, my uh, by then you know as you broaden into society, my religious groups, my, oh, my collegial groups..." That we it's so important for human survival to get along. So in a way there's a fundamental conflict here. So, so the inhibitory emotions when we it's the way that we block our core emotions. And so what we end up doing is noticing that we have anxiety, for example, and if we have anxiety we know that we're on the top right hand corner of the triangle. But what that means practically, is that we also know that we are inhibiting some core emotional experience that if we can get to and name, and, and, and use, we will likely feel less anxious. Feel much better and I can give an example of this, but, then the way we do this is with muscular contraction, all sorts of maneuvers that anxiety, shame, and guilt block these core emotions and for different purposes. And some of us will feel more shame, some more anxiety. You know, we have to mix in genetics and disposition here, and then the environment for why we end up feeling ashamed or guilty or anxious. Neil Sattin: Right and something that feels important to name right here is the way that you can feel those inhibitory emotions from a core positive emotional experience as much as a core negative. And I'm kind of putting those words in quotes because I think what we're getting at here is that they all have the capacity to be positive but one might not think like, "Oh you know, I'm, I'm experiencing shame because I'm feeling too much joy right now," or "I'm too excited. And so my anxiety is coming in to to block that, or my guilt about being excited about this thing.". Hilary Jacobs Hendel: That is so crucial and the more that I do this work in psychotherapy and just observe the people that I'm with, the more I believe that it's the larger emotions. I wouldn't even say so... I think you're right, that people block joy and excitement and pride in the self and anything that makes us feel physically bigger. It's kind of fascinating you can almost reduce all below the neck deep experience into emotions that have energy that makes us feel larger, which is dangerous when we take up more space and we feel bigger, we tend to experience some inhibition either anxiety, guilt or shame. And so people tend to stay small and in a way people go negative... I'm not so sure anymore, which came firrt, err, do people kind of move into negative thoughts to keep them small? Because there's some core fear? Or is it that it's a it's a way not to feel big? I dunno if it gets sort of too complicated. But you can start to think of everything as almost like amoebas like am getting bigger or I'm getting smaller? And to begin to understand one's experience as, "Is this an expansive emotion now, that I'm feeling, like, joy and pride, and anger?" In which case it's going to make me feel vulnerable and then I'm going to come down on myself with some anxiety or shame or guilt. So that's just getting to what you were saying about people struggle with feeling good. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Yeah. So it could go either way. And, and what I love is this sense of, "Oh. When I notice shame or anxiety or guilt that the problem isn't the shame or the anxiety or guilt." That's, the I don't want to spend all my time there, because they're indicating that there's a deeper core experience that's happening and that's where the the gold is. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. That's where the gold is. Now. I think it's also important to mention that that, we're talking about kind of detrimental levels of anxiety, shame and guilt here, that the shame has a purpose too. Guilt has a purpose. Like when we do something that hurts somebody else it's good that we feel guilty. That means that we're not a sociopath and so we want to listen to the shame. Listen to the guilt. Listen to the anxiety. And we also know that we have to look for our core emotions. So, it's, it's both because the inhibitory emotions are going to bring us to the relationship piece. But we also need to know what we're feeling so that we can express ourselves to, to yourself and to others. Neil Sattin: Yeah and I will say just as a side note your, your chapter on dealing with anxiety shame and guilt. I think it's also super helpful along with creating self compassion but for understanding the other people in your life and what might be motivating certain behaviors that you experience from them. That was, in many respects, worth the price of admission for the book because that's part of what's going on is not only understanding yourself but being able to see these things happening in other people and to, and to recognize how it might be impacting them as well. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. So we can understand ourselves and others and I've had so many people read the book and tell me that they thought it should be in the Parenting section of the bookstore because we also want to understand our children's emotions so we don't unwittingly cause too much shame and guilt and anxiety when it can be avoided just by the education and emotions. Neil Sattin: Yeah yeah they should have a "self parenting" section in the bookstore. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Self parenting, and parenting though, there's so much you know parents mean well, I made so many mistakes. If I had had this at this book in my 20s that would have spared me and my children a lot of heartache and I know most people feel that way. Most people have intent to do good. And if you don't have proper information, and you're just basing things on what you sort of intuition and how you were raised and what society says then it's easy to make mistakes anyway, easy to make mistakes, and we're not free that you know there's no way not to screw up your children on some level but you just want to know what's going on in the emotion department. It's really, really helpful. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So we've covered the bottom corner of the triangle the core emotions, and the top right which is these inhibitory emotions that are are meant to block or suppress the core emotions. Neil Sattin: What's up with the with the other corners triangle. : So and again if we go back to that this is superimposed on the body. The point is of course in core emotions as in is in the gut area and then we're coming up. So anxiety and defenses are kind of sitting above the shoulders, is how I imagine them because they're out of, they kind of take us out of our body, they take us up into our head. And so because emotions, core emotions feel so at best they feel weird and new if you don't know what they are, and, and at worst they feel awful emotions and core emotions, and inhibitory emotions when they come in, in large doses and they come, many at one time and they're all mixed together... It's a horrible experience and a horrible feeling. And so we then tend to want to avoid the whole enchilada and we move into defenses and that's the topped, top left corner of the triangle. And defenses are basically anything we do to avoid feeling something that we don't want to feel and I don't even mean it in a pejorative sense I always say that that defenses, as I learned in AEDP training, which was so helpful, are really these brilliant creative maneuvers that humans can do to spare themselves pain as opposed to in my psychoanalytic training... I don't want to sell psychoanalysis down the river because I got a lot out of my studies there, but there was always this negative sense of bad, that you're doing something bad, and you're resisting and that defenses are bad and I think that defenses really need to be appreciated for one when they hold up. They get us through life. And two, when they don't hold up and we break through and start to have symptoms of depression or anxiety or many other things that we needed them at one time those defenses and now they're not working so well and then we need to embrace other ways of being that bring us peace and calm. Neil Sattin: So defenses are like toward the, the last stop on the on the train. They're, they're, they're meant to help you not feel anything. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Exactly. Or to for, to exchange one emotion for for something else like defenses... Emotions can be used as defenses. For example, I would, you know, my whole younger life, if I felt scared or vulnerable I sort of had a more of an irritable, crusty armor and I would get angry and I would try to curtail it a lot because I had a really sweet, gentle mom and a really sweet, gentle sister and I was kind of the, the, the, the tougher one in the family. So I was always working hard to be quote sweet like like my mom. But I felt it. I felt it and I really didn't understand. I would beat myself up for you know, Why, why do I feel angry?" And it was really a big defense against fear. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: I had no idea I had no idea even I was the one that I was anxious when I was younger because it was just kind of covered by this kind of this kind of tough armor. Neil Sattin: Right. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Or how many people do we know that might be feeling fear but instead go to like humor or lightheartedness, instead of instead of being able to go to that place. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. And so there are so many ways we can use defenses can be emotions. They can we can use behaviors as defenses. Self-destructive behaviors like, like cutting just behaviors like joking, making, being sarcastic, eye rolls, shrugs this is like body language defenses, not being able to make eye contact. There is, there is a myriad of defenses and I list a ton of them in the book and on my website. And you can try to recognize your own defenses which is probably one of the hardest things to do. It's much easier to see other people than ourselves and so you could probably much more easily recognize the defenses in the people in your family. But it's good to begin to recognize our own defenses so that we can loosen them up a little bit and know what the feelings are underneath them and then it kind of, gives us more resilience, more choices for how to be. Neil Sattin: Yeah if we wanted perspective from an outsider that we more or less trusted about our defenses what would you say is a is a safe way to ask for that from another person? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: That's such a wonderful question. I think it's not only the safe way to ask for it, but I think you're saying to make sure that person is safe is a safe person to be vulnerable with. Yeah, because what we really want to spare ourselves, as much as possible, is the excruciating experience of being shamed or humiliated. So, I think I would say and I do say this to my to my husband and my children, even friends sometimes: "Please let me know if I do something that..." I mean it's not so much as a defense, I would say, "Please let me know if I do something that you don't like or that hurts your feelings or that doesn't feel right." And then I guess if I was asking it I think I would just leave it at that. I'm concerned for the people out there listening who might say that to somebody they care about who doesn't have a lot of therapy background or understand emotions that might not be so gentle. So, I think you could always say: "But, be please be gentle with me." You know and I believe in using humor and lightheartedness in relationships a lot, but you know be be gentle. But I do want to know.... Yes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. No, I think that's great to name that desire for for gentleness or just to point out like, it's, "It's kind of tender or vulnerable for me to even be asking you this but I know that you may see, something that I don't see." Yeah. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: That's it's such an interesting question Neil. No one's ever asked me that and I think it's because most people get feedback from their family, when they're, when they're acting in ways that are are not pleasurable and they they might not all be defensive maneuvers some may be just like self care. Like I don't want to do this. Setting a limit or a boundary and then somebody reacts badly to that. But some of it would be defensive. So again, it's sort of interesting to think about. Neil Sattin: Right and I think if you're not inviting someone into that conversation, then the feedback that you're getting is most likely not coming at you either at a moment where you're truly receptive to it, or in a manner that's that's constructive. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Mhmm. Exactly. Constructive being the operative word. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So we we found our way up to the top. And let's talk about what the process would look like if I noticed, "Oh I'm about to do that defensive thing that I always do." So maybe for someone like I'll just kind of out myself here, I might go to a political blog or to Facebook or something like that. I'm doing that, it doesn't serve any real constructive purpose in my life. So, even though, you know, you could argue about being informed or whatever but when I notice that I'm doing that, what would be the steps that I would want to take to help bring me into identifying whether or not there was a core emotional experience at work? And I think, especially because we as adults... Like these patterns are pretty well developed for us. So, so it may be a bit of a journey to find your way down into into your core, but what's, what's the map look like? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Yeah but I think very possible, and, and I like your example, which I'm going to address. And you know, we could also use the example of reaching for a snack when you're not hungry or reaching for a drink right after work. Right? These are all these kind of they're just sort of automatic defensive behaviors and they don't serve us. So what I do is, you know, for all these examples is the first thing we have to be able to do is notice, right? If we don't notice what we're doing then we can't work the change triangle at all. And the way you get good at noticing is really by slowing down. We can't really notice much about how we're feeling if we're moving fast, it just tends to obscure or we just stay up in our head and our thoughts are churning and it kind of numbs us out below the neck. So, I when I'm teaching new people this you know you can just set aside, you can write in your, in your inner, in your, in your calendar, in your phone, you know, just set aside three times a day and remember to kind of check in and observe what you're doing. Meditation, obviously, is a great practice for this. So, let's say you actually notice that you're about to go check, what did you say Facebook or the political blogs? Neil Sattin: Right side or more or more likely I'd, I'd be you know five or 10 minutes in, and I'd be like, "Wait a minute here I am. You know here I am on Facebook again.". Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Good. Good. OK. So before, or during... Neil Sattin: Just being, just being honest. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah of course. You know, join the rest of humanity. That's great. So what you would do is stop what you're doing. And you would, kind of feel your feet on the ground like you instructed me to do before this, and, before we started, and maybe take a few deep breaths to kind of set the stage for noticing. And then I personally especially in the beginning would ask myself I would kind of scan my body head to toe, and toe to head, and just kind of see what I can notice about my physical state. Am I tense? Am I anxious? I might even go through all of the emotions and ask myself, "OK Hilary,or Neil, you know, do you notice any anxiety now check? Do you notice any shame? No, not right now. Do you notice any guilt? No. OK, so we've got some anxiety. What else? Let's see if we can get below that anxiety and see what else we might be feeling". And you may want to bring in the context of what's going on in your life also and what might be affecting you. So let's say, uh, this is the day my, my, my kid goes off to kindergarten. What else is happening today? I have work stress, what not. So then I might ask myself, "Is any of these things in life causing me fear? Check." And then we want to go through all the core emotions, do I feel angry? No. Do I feel sad? Check. And you want to name all the emotions that you possibly can but kind of holding them all together like, as I tell my patients, try to hold all the emotions but imagining them with lots of air and space between each one, because we have to, we have to attend to each emotion separately. Another way that I say it, is don't say "I feel afraid but I also feel sadness." I want to change the "but" to an "and." "I feel sad, and I feel afraid, and I feel excited, and I feel happy." And once we get a lot of emotions going at the same time it's a lot of energy. We can automatically push those down because we don't know we can handle it all. Feel some anxiety and then boom. Reaching for a political blog. So, that would be the idea to try to start to name the emotions and then just by doing that just by naming emotions and taking that time to slow down and do that, you might feel much, much more relaxed and in fact it gives you space to think, "OK do I want to continue with the blog? Because this is a good distraction that I need now." Because defenses aren't bad by definition it's only if they're hurting us or if we rely on them all the time. So you may continue to read or you may decide, "You know what. I'm going to go exercise instead or I'm going to go tell my partner how I'm feeling about everything going on." That type of thing, and that's the last step is to think through, what's the best thing for me right now? If I don't feel better and I'm trying to change my state what are some things that, that helped me feel better where I can take better care of myself. Or you may want to work with one of these emotions using some of the techniques that I, that I outline in the book. Staying with them in the body or imagining using fantasy to discharge some of the energy. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I definitely want to talk about fantasy, but before we go there, I, I just want to name that for me even though I knew this to be true it was really a revelation to stop and think about what that's like, that we can be experiencing fear and disgust and joy and sexual excitement that we could be feeling all of those things at the same time. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Neil Sattin: Each one calling out for potentially a completely different kind of response. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Neil Sattin: So, no wonder we get all bound up with anxiety or overwhelm or feel any any of those things that just kind of paralyze us in a moment. Or if we, if we name one and we just kind of go with the first thing, "Oh, I'm feeling sad right now," and then you neglect the others, how you could feel incomplete in terms of actually processing the experience that you're having. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. Exactly and that's why it's so important to keep sort of searching when you notice one particular emotion to just keep looking around. What else is there? And to, it really helps to kind of run through that checklist. I still do that I've been practicing this a long time and I, I run through the different emotions and once you name them and search for them you know you might even find them. I say to my patients, "Even there's you know just check for like a little molecule of joy there, or a little molecule of sadness, and then if you find it you know, Oh maybe I need to actually make space for this particular emotion I spend so much time, you know, really orienting myself towards my anger, that I'm missing out on what the sadness or the fears telling me.". Neil Sattin: Yeah. I was I was searching for a good acronym while, while I was reading the book, I was like there must be a good one for those core emotions to like help people just kind of do the, do the checklist. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Did you find one? Because I looked hard also. Neil Sattin: Not yet but I'll let you know if I can. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Yeah. Neil Sattin: And there's not a good one for all those C's when you're when you're... But I do like how you also offer that as an example of looking for you know am I feeling calm, right now? Am I feeling clear? Am I feeling compassionate? To be able to go through that list to find the nuances of your experience right now and to highlight, "Okay here are ways that I am feeling courageous even though at the same time I'm getting all this, this tremulous fear going through my body. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes, exactly. And I think even sometimes you can bypass the whole thing and just really try to shift into those states if you don't like what you're feeling right now and it's a particularly a great idea when you're about to have a conversation with somebody important to you, to before you do try to, try to just see if you can shift into a calmer, certainly more curious standpoint, more state, where you can try to take a couple of deep breaths and access some curiosity, so we don't make assumptions about another person's motives because they're often incorrect you know we make up our own stories and then we believe them without checking them out. And to try to lean into connection, so that, let's say you know again your partner really pisses you off. It's important, and the brain doesn't naturally do this, you have to push, put energy behind this idea of remembering the good things somebody has done to kind of take the steam out of the uh... You know, we can rev ourselves up with anger and start to think it's like chaining, you then, everything that someone ever did to hurt you comes back with a vengeance. Unless we really pull the other way and say, "OK, what is why do I love this person." Or if I can't remember that I loved him at one point, you know what is it that I used to love about this person and try to conjure those that part of it as well. It takes energy. It's not easy because we're really pulled to tough places and we have to use mental energy to pull ourselves back and it doesn't feel good at first, always. Neil Sattin: Yeah yeah. Wow so many different directions that I'm going in at the moment. I think first I just want to name, it's really lovely the way that you show the integration of AEDP work through the vignettes, vignettes that you offer in your book, and also internal family systems and working with different parts of you, younger parts. If you're a listener for, and you have been for a while then you've perhaps heard the interviews we've done with Dick Schwartz, the most recent one is episode I wrote this down episode 140, where so you can you can get a sense of how the two modalities work really well together, fit super well together. And so all of that work to get to understand and process and metabolize your emotional experience, and to learn how to show up for yourself can come through what we've been talking about today and can also be helped by getting to identify the places in you that are stuck in a past experience. And the reason that I wanted to bring that up is because you were just talking about like the the possibility of skipping to connection and calmness, or doing what you can to to get to that place especially if you're going to reach out to someone that's important to you. And I liked how you also bring in the work of Peter Levine and talk about how all of this energy that emotions bring up in, in us when they're not processed when, when that energy isn't metabolized, then that is what creates trauma in our bodies -- that, that stuck energy that never quite got released. And so some of those stories in your book are just were so moving to me, as I, as I read them and got to see like oh right there's another nuance of how this could apply to me or to my clients. And so really beautiful, I think, to to see it written out like that but let's get into a little bit more of the... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Thank you by the way. Neil Sattin: Yeah yeah you're welcome. Let's get into the metabolizing and in particular let's talk about fantasy, because that use of the imagination and how it can help I think can be so powerful for us when we, when we're wrestling with that question of: "Well, I feel so angry or I feel so sad or bereft or whatever it is, and I don't know like I want to bring it to that person I want them to feel my anger. I want them to see the depths of my sadness." How can we do it in a way that's actually going to be more productive and give us the satisfaction of truly handling and, and, and giving our body some relief from those unfulfilled impulses? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. That's, that's, that's, that's a question that has many levels because I think what I'm first responding to is this idea of wanting someone to see and wanting to really be seen, in with one's emotions. And so I think that is legitimate. And, and then there are times when that's all somebody sees and they get weary. So it's it's really... you have to keep a lot in mind. So, I thought you were just going to kind of ask me about working with child parts and releasing stuck energy as a sort of either, either as an alone process or with a therapist and then you surprised me when you brought in this idea of, if you bring it into relationship and that makes it all sort of like it, I think we have to deal with one and then the other. Neil Sattin: Yeah let's start with a first part.: Yeah, let's start with the first part... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah. Neil Sattin: ...which would be that the inner process that we might go through, and then and then we can bridge into bringing that into relationship. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Great. Great. So, I now I really consider myself a trauma therapist and I now think of trauma as something that everybody has just from surviving their childhoods. And so then we were changing the definition of trauma. This is still very controversial. You hear the word trauma, which most people still think of as a, as a some major catastrophic event happening, that is trauma. I'm adding on to that something that is also called small-T trauma -- which many people in the trauma field object to because it's it's sort of putting a value judgment on trauma. That one is smaller or bigger, which is, I want to say, that, that's not the case it's just some way to to differentiate different types of trauma. And small-T trauma is really what I believe everybody has, and small-T trauma is really, um, can be from so, so many, so many things that actually happened in our childhood. But the bottom line is, and I'm sure Diana Faucheux and David Marr spoke about this in the other episodes, that whenever we have too much emotion which happens a lot when we're children because our brains are full of emotion and very powerful emotion. So when there's too much emotion and too much aloneness at the same time, then the mind figures out a way to kind of block it. So it's not overwhelming. And then once that happens a lot where we're kind of blocking whole parts of ourselves and whole experiences and those are these little kind of child parts that we all have that are alone these kind of child parts of us exist alone because they had to be kind of cordoned off. So this, this happens you know if you have... In most families there's a parent that doesn't tolerate a certain emotion and so when you feel that emotion you are really told, you know, to put it away or get over it or you're yelled at or it's not acknowledged. So that kind of thing, on a small level, becomes big because when we have to exclude parts of our experience then they are literally excluded in the mind, they're not integrated. They're not connected to other parts of the... of us. So these are the the parts when I use the word parts from Richard Schwartz or in psychoanalytic literature they were called interjects. That we might have absorbed parts of our parents in us. It can be many, many different things but these are the parts that sort of live on with us, within us and they can get triggered and then we can start to react. The reaction is, is not really commensurate with what happens in our adult relationships. So, I think everyone can relate to like just when somebody pokes you in that just wrong place and you felt the feeling many, many times before and you can kind of track it back into fourth grade when you were bullied or ostracized, or you can track it back to sixth grade when you started to know that your sexuality or gender wasn't the same as the people around you or you were punished too severely, yelled at, you know all these or somebody you loved died when you were young or got sick or there was substance abuse, active substance abuse in the family, all these type of things and then these parts of us hold... They have their own triangles in a way and we need to be with those parts and liberate those old emotions so that they don't fire off and cause havoc in our adult relationships and inside us and make us feel bad all the time. Neil Sattin: Yes. So we can, so you can get related to in a particular moment. The part of you that is feeling, that is having this emotional experience and to what was happening at the time and the way that you portray that in the book, I think is, is a great illustration of how to go through this process for someone and then talk about if you could, that, taking it to that next level of where you incorporate fantasy as a way of helping either a younger part or just helping yourself in the present with an emotional feeling how you could actually kind of burn off some of that energy before you're bringing it out, into how you connect with the world. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah I guess I'll use the, we could take any emotion and you can change this, but I'm going to, I'm going to go with these big energy emotions that are common like how you burn off as you say anger energy and also kind of feeling good about the self prideful energy both of these create a lot of anxiety and depression in people when they're blocked. And so I really like to, to harp on let's liberate this, this energy and how can we do it in a safe way. So one of the the the most effective ways to work with anger is, and I use this a lot myself... And I'm sort of pausing here because as people listen to this, it may seem kind of crazy. But we begin with the fundamental idea that the brain doesn't know the difference between fantasy and reality in certain, in emotional ways. And we know this from experiments where somebody imagines running and they're hooked up to an FMRI, that they imagine they're running. And there is movement in the in the parts of the brain as if they were actually running. So... And we see this every day in clinical practice. So, let's say I am angry, I'm going to take my sweet and wonderful husband John as an example here because I use him all the time. Let's say John does something, and he really doesn't anymore, we really get along quite well. But let's say he did something that really, really threw me into a rage. What I have learned to do and practice many times is before I go talk to him about it, I will, I know I will be able to identify that I am angry, right? And rage is sort of all emotions are on a spectrum from a little irritation or annoyance to outright rage. I will know, I will be able to say to myself: I am enraged. I will be able to feel that deeply in my body a burning energy in my stomach and a, and a movement of energy that wants to come right up and out, and I will not do anything, but I will focus in on that energy, listening to it with a kind of curiosity, kind of tuning in like a radio receiver feeling it deeply and seeing what that energy wants to do to John and it might want to just, so I and then I try to make it into a fantasy. So the idea is I'm noticing that if that energy could come up and out of me in a fantasy or a movie like, let it play out in a movie I would see myself just like punching the crap out of him. Like that's how angry I am that I really want to hurt him. And then I will allow myself in a fantasy to imagine doing that. And I do this in sessions for people that have a lot of pent up energy from being abused as children and neglected and various very hurtful things that were done to them. So I can see myself actually doing what this anger wants to do and trying to really even feel it as I see myself making contact with skin. And just let it... Imagining it and imagining it, watching it and watching it and watching it, and doing it and doing it and doing it in fantasy, until it feels done. Like the the energy will discharge and will drain out. And then when I tune back into my body, I'll feel probably tired and a little more calm so that I can then gather my wits about me and go back and say, and say, "We need to talk about what you did. I was so furious because you hurt me so badly when you did this this and this. And I never ever want you to do that again." That type of thing as opposed to storming out, I wanted divorce, you know this isn't working or attacking him you know verbally abusing him for everything that he's ever done, and which isn't going to help, it's going, it may feel better in the moment. And then I'm going to feel guilty afterwards. He's going to withdraw. It's going to escalate a fight and it's going to increase our disconnection. Neil Sattin: Yes. . Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Does that make sense? Neil Sattin: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And one thing that I think you mention in the book is how often you can go with that initial like you're feeling all that anger and rage and seeing that. And then when that is finally discharged through imagining this scenario, that it leaves room for another core emotion to rise up. So it may not end there, it may be that after you experience your rage, you then experience your sadness or your fear. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. Neil Sattin: And so there's there's a lot there to be processed and what you named so beautifully was the problem not only with having those experiences, but, or emotions but having them and feeling alone and how showing up for yourself in this way also undoes that aloneness. I think that's such a powerful aspect of the work as you describe it. It's also so powerful in my experience of Dick Schwartz's work in IFS, that it it's kind of undoing aloneness with yourself not that you don't want to get to a place where you're inviting other people in. But, it also just builds such resilience knowing that in a moment like that, a powerfully charged moment, you actually have the capacity to to do something about it. Just you. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. And in that sort of reminds me to say that when you are connecting to yourself in that way, one has to have the utmost compassion and empathy as though you were relating to your own child or pet who you love or someone that you really cared about that you would never hurt. It's really unconditional love and positive regard, and not shaming yourself not judging yourself. Right? Because fantasy is so fabulous it doesn't hurt anybody. Even though some people get scared you know, when a lot of people that have a lot of trauma or even a little trauma, and I first kind of try to teach them how to do this. They... Guilt comes up and they're like," Well I don't feel good about myself. You know good people don't do this," and and I was like, "Well I'll explain. You know, you don't do it out in real life. That's what we're trying to to prevent." But, the capacity to use fantasy is very, very healthy and that's why it's so important when you have little children to use imaginative play and even as parents listening that when you're one child let's say wants to hit your other child, when they're young, because it's not always easy to have a sibling. Just use this as an example. You don't kind of block the anger and say no you have to love your your sister or brother, and, and we don't hit, you have to find a way to, to accept and to channel it, like we don't hit grown ups and we don't say mean thing -- we don't say we don't hit people and we don't say mean things to people. But here's this doll you can imagine it's your sister. And we can beat it up together and have a good old time. And that way the kid is learning to sublimate -- how to use emotions and play at the exact same time and that it doesn't have to be a toxic experience that the emotions are validated and they have to be released. And it doesn't have to be with again beating up like or even a fantasy of beating up like I just shared about myself. It could be writing these things out, unedited, just writing what you want to say to someone drawing a picture of what you want to say or do to someone. The idea is to just get it out, and it has to work so we not only have to get it out but you have to sort of the next step after this is do I feel calmer. Do I feel better. And if the answer is no, there's either more to be done or there's inhibitory emotions that are getting in the way and complicating it or other emotions that need tending. And it may be that you need to bring it to someone who is a professional to help you do this. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I was going to say this could be a good place to get support. Especially at something. If you're like, Oh, that feels like a big river of rage or grief or whatever it is. Well great. Like it's awesome that you identified that and sit with someone who knows how to help, how to hold you in that. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Exactly. Exactly. Neil Sattin: Well what a rich conversation. And before we go today, Hilary I'm wondering if we can just take a moment to bring this back into the relational realm and, and talk about how, like, if you identify something going on with your partner or something is going on with you and we've talked about taking this space so that you can process and metabolize, is there a way to bring what you now know about the change triangle, maybe into your connections so that you and your partner can now be on the same team with seeing how this dynamic is at work as the two of you come together? What's a good first step, I think, for people to bring this into their relationship? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Well, what what I would say as a, as a good first step is to make sure that both of you have the exact same information. So when possible, I really wrote the book to be used in many ways as a, as a workbook and to read the book together with your partner and to go through the exercises gives you just that, you're on the same page. And even though it will take practice over a lifetime to work it together. That at least you have the same bit of knowledge and you've gone through the same exercises which are pretty simple and, and, and, and, and just to say why I put case examples is because emotions have to be experienced. How do you help somebody get a sense for an experience? And that had to be through the stories. So, I would say just to make sure that the person that you're wanting to connect with has some basic emotion education. And... Neil Sattin: Perfect. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: And then after that established ground rules. I wrote a little blog on this for, for, for how to find your life partner on medium that you want to establish ground rules that you won't be mean that nobody is going to attack or retaliate in ways that are dangerous and hurtful and that you don't abandon, so that if a conversation has to stop because it gets hard, and one person gets too anxious, then you then you have to be able to say to each other. I'm overwhelmed I'm not able to really think as I'm talking to you, anymore. Let's take a break but we'll come back and finish this because really in relationships all there, all there is is talking. You have to just keep talking. And then lastly I would say is you want to try to use the change triangle to make sure that, that both people are relating as much as possible from a core place. Either from that openhearted state or from the emotional state of the core emotions where you're saying, you're using I statements like, "I'm afraid," "I feel anger about this," "I feel sadness about this," as opposed to you, you, you, you, you. And that, when you're, when both people move to the top of the triangle, when you're either you're they're anxious or ashamed or guilty or defensive, you really have to stop. Like, I make a time out motion when I'm working with couples or even working in my own relationship, let's stop and then I say let's rewind to where we were going fine and then somehow we went off the rails and then it's usually a miscommunication, or let's stop and take a break and calm down and let's come back tomorrow again sit and have coffee or tea and begin again and see where did we go wrong, where, where, literally if you sort of track moment to moment: You're having a discussion. Everything is going fine. I want to talk about you know, why we, we don't have more fun together and then all of a sudden one person starts to get anxious or you start to, one person starts to get angry then you can literally stop and say, "Let's rewind to right before you, like I felt like I was with you we were connected and then all of a sudden I said, 'Well I don't really you know. You know, you're no fun anymore.' And then I noticed you got defensive." And then that's where you have to work because the person might say, "Yeah. When you told me that I wasn't fun anymore it hurt my feelings. And then I, I went up into the top of the triangle. I started to get defensive." Neil Sattin: That's great. And, and I see to this opportunity for couples who really start to get this together to like, in a state of shame or anxiety or guilt those inhibitory emotions to learn how to show up for each other in those moments to help, settle whatever is going on or to help navigate their partner back into a place of like feeling understood or seen, and that might be a good, a good return visit for you on the show to talk a little bit more about how how they can collaborate in a moment like that to bring themselves back to a core emotional state. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yeah I would love to. Neil Sattin: Hilary Jacobs Hendel, thank you so much for being here. If people want to learn more about your work where can they find you? Hilary Jacobs Hendel: I have a website with tons of free resources all about emotions and that's Hilary-Jacobs-Hendel-dot-com. Or you could just google "the change triangle" and you can also get there by going to "the-change-triangle-dot-com," and there's articles that I've written for major media outlets. There's my blog which the titles are pretty explanatory of what they're about. And then there's a tool box section that has a lot of resources. So that would be the best place. I also have a youtube channel, so I could go over and explain certain aspects of this and I do something called 1 minute videos on emotional health, because everybody's so busy and nobody has an attention span anymore, so that's "The Change Triangle" YouTube station and then my Website. And then of course the book is the whole enchilada because it was what I did is it's got exercises so that you work The Change Triangle along with me as I'm working The Change Triangle with the people in my practice and then there's little bits of no jargon science to explain what's going on because I wouldn't have been interested in any of this had it not been deeply grounded in current neuroscience. That was really important to me. So, that's really gives you the whole kind of flavor of what's going on. Neil Sattin: Great. And again the book is called "It's Not Always Depression" and we will have links to all of that on the page for this episode where you can download the transcript. And that's Neil-Sattin-dot-com-slash-triangle or as always you can text the word passion to the number 3-3-4-4-4 and follow the instructions. Hilary... Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Yes. Can I just say one more thing? Neil Sattin: Yeah of course. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: The book just won two book awards that won the 2018 Best Book Award for psychology and mental health, and the Nautilus Award for personal growth. So I just wanted to share that because I'm hoping that people will read this book and that eventually the, our entire society will be very well educated from an emotional standpoint. I think it can really change things for the better. Neil Sattin: Absolutely and congratulations on those awards. They are well-deserved. You definitely have a gift from taking all of this information and making it really practical for people who read the book. So, big recommend for me. Hilary Jacobs Hendel: Thank you. Thank you.

body guide passion new york times meditation parenting dance staying emotions alive guilt reaching harnessing beneath betterhelp date night imagining transformative power constructive random house ifs fmri peter levine richard schwartz harriet lerner nautilus award best book award your authentic self david marr dick schwartz right because aedp hilary jacobs hendel change triangle relationship alive neil sattin diana fosha it's not always depression david mars suitehop

LLP113: Erectile dysfunction and what can you do about it with Dr. Jennifer Miles-Thomas

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 19, 2019 39:09

Let's Talk about Erectile Dysfunction... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Jennifer Miles-Thomas, she is a Diplomate of the American Board of Urology and is also board certified in Female Pelvic Medicine and Reconstructive Surgery. As we continue the push the message and focus on men's health I wouldn't be truthful to the audience if I didn't stress the importance of sexual health. I talked about this before but as an outpatient clinical specialist, one of the top 2 reasons why men would come to see me for an appointment was either someone was dragging them to the office or erectile dysfunction complaints. Sexual health refers to a state of well-being that lets a man fully participate in and enjoy sexual activity and there is a range of physical, psychological, interpersonal, and social factors that influence a man's sexual health. I talked about this before but as an outpatient clinical specialist, one of the top 2 reasons why men would come to see me for an appointment was either someone was dragging them to the office or erectile dysfunction complaints. Dr. Jenn walks us through her decision to become a urologist, one of few African American women to hold the title, and we get into the importance of sexual health, opening up about erectile dysfunction and all of the different treatment options associated with the disease. 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: Dr. Jennifer Website Dr. Jenn's IG Urology Care Foundation Mayo Clinic Foundation American Urological Association 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 113 Transcript Episode 113 Transcript... Introduction Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, which helps you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. And this week we have a doozy, of course, this is men's health month. And I thought, no other topic, right? If I had to choose one topic that really hit home and hammer home when we talk about men and ways that we can work on getting them to see the doctor more, know the topic shot to the top of my mind as well as my read my mind than sexual health. And today we're going to be talking about those big two letters, ED - erectile dysfunction. And I thought it get, you know what, I do have some experience taking care of patients with ED, but who better to really educate the community and really expand the knowledge base of the Lunch and Learn community than urologists. And I was very fortunate for this urologist coming on the show, this is Dr. Jennifer Miles-Thomas. She earned her medical degree from Northwestern University school of medicine. She cleared her undergrad degree in biology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She did a general surgery internship at John Hopkins and completed a urology residency as well as a separate fellowship and female urology and neurology at the James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute. Dr. Jenn Miles-Thomas is a diplomat of the American Board of Urology and she is also a board certified and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery. So again, I know that may seem like a mouthful, but you know, short and sweet Dr. Jenn is absolutely amazing and she is crazy smart, right? If you had to think about what does all that mean? That's probably just me as those who send in this podcast. She is absolutely brilliant and we're in for a treat. And I could tell you during this interview if I wish you could see some of my facial expressions that I was making during the time when she was really explaining and educating me through Lunch and Learn community members. The different ways and treatment modalities associated with erectile dysfunction. So you guys are in for a treat. Remember like always, if you have not had a chance, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast, leave a five-star review and comment for the podcast as well as make sure you tell a friend, tell a friend, tell a friend to just share podcasts. Especially because I know someone has someone in a family member, especially male, right? Who has not seen a doctor in years. And I hate to say that you're partly to blame, but if someone's not seeing the doctor in years and years, seeing the doctor regularly, that's something that we, we need to address ASAP. If someone is not going to a doctor, especially in male, right? And you're also not going to the doctor, is going to be very difficult for you to try to convince that man that he needs to go see a physician as well. So please take the time to listen, again, we're talking about sexual health, we talk about few things as well, especially associated with Dr. Jenn as far as what she does on the size, especially from a business standpoint. You guys are gonna want to stick around for that. So again, leave her five-star review. Let me know how you feel. And again, thank you for all that you do. You guys have a great and blessed day and let's get ready for another amazing episode here on the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Episode Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community again you just heard this amazing introduction from an expert that I definitely think is needed, right? Especially in this month of men's health month. And I have always joked in the past, but I really, I kind of say half-jokingly, a lot of times when I get men to come in my office to see me on an outpatient visit, right? This was this field, right? It was one of the main reasons why they would come, right? Like there are usually two reasons. One, family member drags him. Two, got some sexual issues, right? And of course, obviously I could talk from an internist standpoint, but I figured, you know, let's get an expert to come in and help educate us and you know, kind of get us mindset ready for the month and really show us, you know, why this is such an important topic, right? Even though we kind of say jokingly, right? This is actually an extremely important topic for men, right? Because again, like I said, it is one of the main reasons why I would get him to come see me in my office, right? So again, first of all, thank you for joining the Lunch and Learn community. Dr. Jenn: Oh, you're so welcome. Thank you for having me. Dr. Berry: So, Dr. Jenn, I told them about your amazing bio and just give the audience just, you know, let's say for some reason they skipped the introduction and they want to know, like, who's the person on the podcast this week? Right? Like, tell us something that may not be in your bio. And it says like, hey, you know, this is why I'm who I am. Dr. Jenn: I live in a very interesting life. I am a urologist who is a female, who is African American. So there's only really a few of us across the country. (Yeah. That is so true.) Yeah. What else is interesting? I'm married with three children, so that's a little bit different. Sometimes it's hard to balance a high powered, stressful career and a family. And I've recently gotten into extreme sports, so I've been snowboarding and I just finished a triathlon this past weekend, so I'm kind of all out there. Dr. Berry: Oh Wow. That's okay, alright. I love it. Okay. That's how you started the show, right? This type of show about to go on. Right? (Exactly.) So Lunch and Learn community, we talked, you know, if you caught the most recent episode, if you caught the live streams, you know that June is men's health month and you know that I have made it a point to try to call out my male listeners and my male friends and family members to really stress the importance of health awareness and why we're dedicating a whole month for that? Cause that's always the big issue, right? Like why am I getting home on this specific topic? And why is men's health month so important? Because really it's killing us. Right? And I've talked about it before. The top 10 leading causes in the world, men dominate those categories, right? Why? Because, you know, we're just not taking care of ourselves. So I wanted to get on Jenn to, again, in urology. And like I say, I don't know if you realize it like, especially when you think about urology is usually not one way you think about. But female urologist, right? So just the how like that subcategory namely African-American is, you know, this is a gem that was actually, you know, we're finding here to be able to kind of talk to her, which I'm definitely excited for. So Dr. Jenn, if you would just kind of give the Lunch and Learn little bit introduction on, you know what actually is the urology? Just so you can kind of get in the same mental ballpark of where we're at. Dr. Jenn: Yeah. So it's interesting. So a urologist is a specialist who also a surgeon who works with the organs of the genital-urinary tract. So in English, what does that mean? That means it's a doctor. I know. So that means I’m a doctor who deals with problems of the kidney, the bladder, the testicles, the prostate, the penis, in men and women. So sometimes it's medical therapy and sometimes it's surgery. We do both. But those are the organs we take care of. Dr. Berry: It is really kind of interesting. I'm an internist. For those for some reason is the first time catching a show, I'm an internist so I practice in the hospital. But what made you say, you know, urology is the field for me? Dr. Jenn: So the real story is I thought I was going to be like the female version of Ben Carson. So I was going into med school, but I do neurosurgery, right? But sometimes that's very hard and I'm a big quality of life person and sometimes there are things you just can't fix. And after a couple of cases that were out of everyone's control emotionally, I didn't know if I could do that every day. Sometimes you'll see a 30-year-old who has a bleed and they'll never be the same and some things you can fix them some things you can't. And I said, well, I know I really want to focus on the quality of life. So one of my friends, of course, who's male was said, hey, you should do urology. And I was like, Oh yeah, that's a bunch of old men. Like, why would I wanna do urology? This is real talk. Okay, why would I want to do that? Right. So I did a rotation like we do in medical school, and every time I went into the room, the wives would be, are you going into urology? Let me tell you about my problem. And I was like, well, what's going on here? Like why are these people asking me? And I didn't know at the time that there weren't very many female urologists. So probably when I started they were probably less than 5% in the country. Now it's like seven and a half percent. But I mean, I've been out for more than a decade. Yeah. There are not that many female urologists. There are quite a few residents who are coming through. The classes are more 50-50 which is great. But still, I mean there was definitely a need. So I decided to go into it and I love it. I would never do anything different. This is who I am and what I needed to go into. Because urology, it's one of those fields where it's very technical, it's very surgical. But what you're talking about on a daily basis is what people don't want to talk about. It's what they're afraid to mention. They don't tell other people, they don't even tell their wives or their husbands really what's going on and you're able to give them back that quality of life. So for me, every day it's a gift. Dr. Berry: I’m glad that you touched on that way because I can tell you I've had plenty appointments where the guy comes in for a very vague reason and you know right when I'm about to try to get out there and say “doc, doc before you leave”. Once I know I get one of those, hey doc before you leave, I already know exactly the direction go. It's so taboo that even when they come to see, you know, their regular outpatient clinical doctor for your checkup, it's very tough for them to even come out and say it, which is mind-boggling. Right? Because you would think like, hey no, that issue. If I'm having problems with that area, right? Like I want to make sure like that's the first thing I'm putting down on paper. (Yes.) Nope. They'll say, no, I had a cold and that's why I'm here. I definitely, and I love that you get that even on both friends. Right? Because I would figure it with women, it'd be a little bit more open. So I interested to hear that. Even on both sides, some people are very secretive on, you know, letting them know like these are some of the problems I'm dealing with. Dr. Jenn: Exactly. And I think it's a little bit different because in my world I just directly ask. So it's not that you have to wait and say, okay, as I'm walking in the door and kind of build up the courage, I'm just going to ask you how your erections are, how many times you get up at night, how are your erections? It's just regular, you know, it's a Tuesday. Why not? Dr. Berry: I love it. That's okay. That's fine. Okay, we like that way. Direct, no sugarcoating. This is why I'm here for it. Clearly, this is why you see me now. Now especially for urologic standpoint is that a lot of the different reasons why someone may come to see you just, I obviously we're talking about sexual health. I like this is what are somebody like the common issues and complaints and that you may see it as like, oh, I'm coming to see you for this. Dr. Jenn: Sure. So it's not just erectile dysfunction. A lot of times we'll see people for kidney stones, we'll see people for kidney tumors or bladder cancer, a lot of prostate cancer. Sometimes people will just have blood in their urine or bladder infections or they'll have like testicular pain or especially for women incontinence or leaking during the day and having to wear pads. So we see people for a variety of reasons. Dr. Berry: And obviously, has definitely, something that from your logical standpoint, I think it's a very interesting, right? Because a lot of times I think when we think of surgical specialties, we tend to think that they all they do with surgery. Right? And very interesting to understand like, no, there's a lot of clinical and you know, even psychosocial if I would like to stretch it issues kind of centered around some of the stuff that people are coming to see you for. Dr. Jenn: Exactly. Urology has one of those fields where you can operate and do very large major cases. You can do a lot of bread and butter, common cases. And then as you get older and closer to retirement, there are many things you can just do in the office. So it's one of those professions where you can do it throughout your career. Dr. Berry: Obviously, we wanna, you know, we’ll hit home because this is definitely, you know, the reason why someone's listening to at least this week's episode. Right. So let's talk about sexual health, right? And I know we alluded to it, but like how important is it, right? Especially from the men and women with obviously is men's health month, we'll give them a shy, we'll definitely bring you on. We need to talk about the women because I definitely don't want to make sure you eat them out. (Okay.) In that regards. But especially for men, like I like how important is sexual health for them, right? Like what is some of the like, oh, before I came to see you this house for a little bit after you take care of me. Like this is how I'm building now. Dr. Jenn: So regardless of what's on the news where people say sexual health is very, very important. Why? Because it's part of you. I mean, we're all animals. We all have the same instincts and when something doesn't work or it's change, how do you feel about yourself, you don't feel the same. So it's not that people fall into depression, but they just, they've lost a part of their life, a part of their relationship that was very, very important to them. This is psychological. This is physical. A lot of times with sexual dysfunction, there may be other things medically going on at the same time. So sometimes it's like the red flag of, Hey, where else do we need to look? What else could be going on at the same time? So I'd say this is very important and I think people realize it's important, but there's such a taboo about talking about it. I mean, of course, our popular media has changed and sex is a lot more out there. But when people are talking about their own personal sexuality and health, it's still taboo. Dr. Berry: Do you find the conversation a little bit more difficult because you are a female urologist when you're in your office or is it by the time they come they see you like they've already kind of cleared that hurdle? Dr. Jenn: So it's funny. So I would say that it's generational. So the Millennials, they don't care. They just want their stuff fixed regardless. Any boundaries whatsoever, everything will tell me what they did, how they did it and what they want to do in the future. They don't really have an issue. The kind of middle age, I would say like 30 to 60 takes a few minutes just for going to comfortable. But then they realized my personality is like, Hey, this is, this is just what we do and we're going to just say it and I'm going to ask you questions and we're going to help fix the problem. They get very comfortable. Over 65 or 70 sometimes it takes them a little while because first of all, they're from a generation where they didn't really talk about sex the same way that current generations do, and sometimes they never were really educated about their body or what was normal, what's not normal, what things should look like, what they should feel like, what are other signs? So after probably one or two sessions, then, oh, they open up about everything and sometimes they'll bring their wives. So we all can have the same discussion and figure out what's going on and how we could help. Dr. Berry: Okay, alright. Let’s make it a group appointment. Dr. Jenn: Yep. I have quite a few group appointments. It's okay. Dr. Berry: So speaking of a normal, what's not normal, right? Let talk about, you know, EB - erectile dysfunction, right? For Lunch and Learn community who may have been living under a rock and you know, we haven't seen one of those thousand commercials. Right? What is it exactly? Dr. Jenn: Okay. So the technical definition of ED or erectile dysfunction is, it's the ability to attain or maintain a penile erection sufficient for satisfactory sexual performance. So what does that mean? That means if you have difficulty either getting or keeping an erection that's good enough for you is what ED is. (Very subjective.) It is. So some people have don't have erections but don't care well, you know, that's perfectly fine. Other people, it takes them a little bit longer to ejaculate or they ejaculate too early and that's fine for them and that's fine. But anywhere in the middle, it's all based upon your own personal satisfaction. Dr. Berry: It was interesting. Do you tend to find common reasons for why that may occur? Is there a couple of things I get they, everyone who follows in this category always seems to have ED or what does someone have some of the causes that you've seen kind of work that are associated with ED? Dr. Jenn: Well, the biggest cause, especially in America is diabetes. (Okay. Alright.) Yeah. So diabetes, like I kind of explained it to people. Well you know what as it affects the small blood vessels and the small nerves and it's kind of interesting because if you relate it back and you say, you know how sometimes your fingertips will tangle or your toes will tangle or they're a go numb and you don't feel them. That's because those little small blood vessels of the small nerves aren't getting what they need because the sugar control is out of control and it's damaging. The same thing with your penis. It basically has really small nerves and sometimes if things aren't going to work it's because your blood sugars have been too high. So you really have to work on getting your blood sugars under control in order to get back some of this function. And when you kind of make it like that analogy, it makes sense. It's something tiny and small and diabetes affects the tiny small blood vessels. Dr. Berry: I love that, especially cause I know for Lunch and Learn community members like we've talked about diabetes and we've talked about all of the effects of diabetes. I even wrote a blog where I said I don't even wish diabetes on my worst enemy just because of all of the different things it's associated with. So now we know, you know, especially for as again, if you're diabetic and you're just blowing it off as just a sugar disease, now you can see, especially from a man, right? Cause we're talking to them in this men month, right? This is another reason why you should take care of yourself. Right? Because you don't want to have ED, you don't want ED to take care of your diabetes. So that's, okay. I love it. Dr. Jenn: Exactly. Now, other things we have to think about too, we’re learning and associating a lot more with heart disease. Because again, it's the small blood vessels that are feeding the penis. So if someone has early onset erectile dysfunction, like their thirties and forties we're also working with cardiologists to screen them and to make sure that they don't have plaques or cardiovascular disease because the small blood vessels are usually affected first. Dr. Berry: Now is that something that comes up just while you're asking a lot of your questions, like, hey, do you have this, do you have that? Do you have this? And then it you just kind of seeing this correlation kind of growing? Dr. Jenn: Yes, definitely. So of course when you're seeing a patient and you have their medical lists, do you know what medications they're on? You know their past medical history, but if someone who's never been in the system, and it's just coming to you for this, this is what we screen for. If you look at the major academic centers, most of them have men health clinics and it's usually an internist or urologist as well as a cardiologist because we're finding that these overall health syndromes, metabolic syndromes are being diagnosed with people first seeking care for erectile dysfunction. Dr. Berry: Wow. Okay. Alright. So again, if you're listening, if you're paying attention, especially for, let's say you have a family member or friend who you know, is suffering from some of these other diseases and it's very difficult to get them to come to the doctor, right? This now you have another weight in, right? You don't want to, hey, you know, you'll take your blood pressure. This can also happen, right? Cause again, usually two reasons. Usually, a family member is forcing them to come to the doctor's office or they got some sexual issues, right? So again, this is another way that we can kind of like start pushing them in back into the doctor's office and getting them right. Again, they're aware of just everything that's kind of going on. Thank you. Thank you for that. (No problem.) So when they come to you and you know what you do your screening and they're checking all the boxes off for ED. Of course, I'm pretty sure by the time they've seen those thousands of commercials. Right? But what are some of the treatment options that are out there? One, what we'll talk about the common ones, the one that they may not even know about? Dr. Jenn: Yes. First of all, of course, I have to say this disclaimer and this warning, everything that you see on TV or can order on the Internet isn't safe for you. (Yes. And then the gas station.) The gas station attendant does not know more than your doctor about your erectile dysfunction. That's all I got to say. But honestly, the FDA did a recent crackdown and urologist across the country got a notification. Some of these medications, I wouldn't say medications in quotes that are available over the internet that thought excellent results in work actually have controlled medications and them like generics and Viagra and Cialis and things like that. And so we get updates and kind of the names of over the counter medications that we need to look out and screen our patients for because yes, everyone knows the names of these brand new medications, but honestly, they're expensive. So people try to find other things that will work instead. But unfortunately, things that aren't controlled by the FDA or go through a rigorous screening process, things that are like natural types of products sometimes aren't always in your best interest to use because they do have active ingredients from drugs that are controlled and there are always potential side effects. You don't really know what you're taking. So I just want to put that warning out there. But the first day and for treatment option is to kind of divide and see what's your actual issue is. So I get the question all the time. Is it my testosterone? Do I need testosterone? (Yes. Let’s talk about that.) Allow me to tell you about testosterone. Testosterone is important for men. So it's actually made by your testicles. So a signal from your brain goes down to your testicles and says, hey, we need more testosterone floating in your bloodstream. When you have normal levels of testosterone, you have a libido. And what's libido? Libido is the desire to have sex or to engage in like sexual activity. Now if you give someone testosterone, you will increase their libido. But that does not mean that they'll get an erection. So you have, when you come in and say, I have erectile dysfunction, can I have testosterone? If your testosterone is low, just know that you may have a libido, but that doesn't always mean that your erection will change. Okay. So what do we do for actual erections? Well, the way I practice, we always go from least invasive to most invasive. I first want to make sure there's nothing medically wrong like there is not a tumor or something else that we can see what's going on that may be causing a problem. But if there's not in the first thing we can try as oral medication, and it's the ones that we know in medical lingo, we call them PDE five inhibitors. And basically what happens is when you get an erection, your brain puts out a signal and the nerves basically send and this transmitter that says, hey, I need blood flow in. And as the cylinders fill in the penis, it cuts off the vein. So you don't draw that blood back out. So your penis just fills and then it stays that way until your brain says, oh, I'm done. And then it stops feeling and it slowly gets smaller as the blood drains back out. So that's actually how an erection work. Now the other thing that's important is an erection is different than orgasm or ejaculation. They are controlled by different nerves. So one set of nerves gives you the erection. The other set of nerves allows you to ejaculate during an orgasm. (So actually problems in different sections.) Exactly. (Okay.) And also you can have an orgasm without having an erection. So that's why we have like a real conversation when we have these things. Because I mean, how would you know that unless you actually asked? It's not like you can just Google it, right? Probably can, but I haven't tried to. It's best if you actually just talked to someone. Dr. Berry: Lunch and Learn community, please talk personal. No Google. Dr. Jenn: So after the medications, there are other things you can do too. So a lot of people know about the medications, some of them are more expensive. But the good news is a lot of generics are now in the market. So yes, there are much more affordable. But let's say you try to medications and they don't work or you don't feel good or right when you're taking them or they don't work well enough. The next one, there's actually a little insert, it looks like a little tablet that you can put at the tip of your penis and it has medication that causes the blood to flow into your penis. That's an option. (Oh Wow. Okay.) There is also an injection. So you know how there are when people have diabetes, there are these little pens that you can inject the insulin. Well, there's a little kind of a little injection that you can inject on the side of your penis and also we'll put medication directly into your penis and cause you to have an erection. Dr. Berry: So let me stop you there. Right? (Okay, good.) When I had my diabetic patients, they're not get drilled and I gotta have that discussion where I'm saying, hey, you know what, the pills not working no more. You have to start injecting yourself and I know the face and the fight against once I have to go that right, like how does that conversation when you're telling the person like, hey those bills aren't the thing for you. We got to start injecting yourself and only if you had to start injecting directly in your penis. Right? Like what is that conversation like in the office? Dr. Jenn: So I get the same response kind of wide eyes like oh that's not going to happen. And then the next question is does it work? And when I say yes it works and people are very happy that can do it, they set out at least try it. Now we don't just send somebody home with the needle to stick in their penis. Like that's not what we do. We actually have nurses. So you come in for an appointment and we have to dose the medication because we want you to be able to get an erection. But we don't want you to have it all day, right? So we have to make sure you get the right dose of medication. So we actually have, it's called ICI, we actually have nurses who would just come see you as an appointment, we'd give you a test dose, we'd make sure you get an adequate erection, and then we also make sure it goes down and usually we have your partner there with you because sometimes people mentally can't do it and sometimes their partners are able to do it for them. Or once they see it they say, oh, it's not as big of a deal as I thought it was going to be. It doesn't hurt as much. I had never even heard that I could do that. So it was a little bit weird. But then once you do it and then you get a great erection and it works, people are happy. Dr. Berry: Okay. Now is there, especially, I'm tripping on this injection thing. Is there something like an office right that reverses it or is it just kind of like supposed to go down on its own over time? Dr. Jenn: So it's supposed to go down on its own over time because the medications aren't long acting. They're shorter acting. (Okay.) That's why we do the first trials in the office because if it doesn't go down then we give you medication to make it go down. Now there's also another option that you can have and it's called a vacuum erection device and what it looks like kind of, look at him. Dr. Berry: Lunch and Learn community you could see my face right now. I am learning just as long as relating, I'm like, okay. Alright. Again, I’m an internist, by this time, I'm referring them to the urologist. I don't. Okay, so now I'm processing right with you. Dr. Jenn: Okay. So if vacuum erection device looks like a little cylinder, and what it does is at one end of the cylinder near the base of the penis, it has like a little, I don't know, think of it as like a little rubber band and you can basically like squeezed a little cylinder. And what happens is it's a vacuum, so it draws blood into your penis and then you roll down the little kind of rubber band on it and that rubber band prevents the blood from flowing back into your body. (Okay.) So this is something that's, it's a little bit less spontaneous, but still, there are no needles, there's no medication. That's something natural and you can do it on your own and it does work. All the vacuum erection device. And then if none of that works, there are penile prostheses. So a prosthetic is a device that we surgically put inside of your penis. And usually what we do is we have a little pump that looks like a little squeeze pump that we put next to your testicles and all you have to do is squeeze that pump and then your penis would pump up because we actually have a reservoir with like saline or water in it that fills those little tubes. So if nothing else works, that's a guaranteed way to get an erection. Dr. Berry: Now is the stepwise approach for this patient, right? Is that the end? I'm like, this didn't work, this didn't work, this didn't work. Alright, let's go to the prostheses. Or is it kind of patient dependent when you're kind of deciding like, all right, which route we're gonna go end up mean? Dr. Jenn: So typically it step-by-step, but it's patient driven. So if I see a 30-year-old who's never tried a drug, we're gonna, I'm gonna let them know that there is the option for prosthesis, but that's not what's recommended. So you try to do minimal to get the benefit. And then if you fail or you're not willing to do it, you can move on. But a penile prosthesis, that's the end. That's what we have to offer. It does work, but you can't go back. So once you have the surgery that means that the medications won't work. Injections won't work. You have the surgery. So that's why it's the last thing that we do. Dr. Berry: You mentioned 30-year-old because that gives pressure someone to my own community. It was like 30 because I know they're probably thinking this is a quote-unquote old man's disease. What some of the age ranges that you're seeing with patients with erectile dysfunction that even someone in Lunch and Learn community might be surprised by like, oh my God, they're that old dealing with this problem? Dr. Jenn: Yeah. So from young in the thirties, twenties and thirties sometimes I've seen college kids who everything was fine and now situationally with the new girlfriend or whoever, I'm just not able to get an erection and we kind of work through what's going on because remember, this is all controlled by the brain. There's something going on in the brain that's prohibiting it from making that message to get an erection and there are actual sexual therapists. These aren't like woo on TV people. These are real people who say, okay, let's break it down. What's actually going on in your life that is causing you to feel this way, is causing your brain not to secrete the right neurotransmitters for you to actually have an erection. And it does help. I've seen people who couldn't ejaculate, couldn't have orgasms. They meet with these therapists and they're like, my eyes were opened and things are all good now and it's real. And you just never thought you'd be talking about your sex life with someone, but you know what? It's quality of life. Either you can stay the way that you are or you can get it fixed and since there are people available to fix it, that's what you do and you move on. And you keep doing live in life. Dr. Berry: Exactly. Oh, I love it and tell you I'm loving this conversation guys. I wish you get to see my face during some of the parts so you can understand. It's a learning process for it all. And it's real because these are real-life conversations that we're having on a day to day basis. Again, if you have to scare, some of your friends or family members to get it into the doctor's office, to get this taken care of, please do so. Right? Cause it, it, it needs to be done because this isn't something that, again, I know you see that thousands of commercials and I know we're going to ask Dr. Jenn where should someone go look, right? Cause I know where it, we're saying don't go to doctor Google. Right? We already know, Lunch and Learn community members you all googling when I tell you don't Google, you're going to Google anyway. Even when I tell you don't go to YouTube and watch that surgery beforehand, you're going to do it. They were like, we just know how you all do now. Is there any viable sources that you will say like, hey, if you got to like read up on this subject, like read this website, like is there anywhere that you would point on to? Dr. Jenn: Yeah. So for urologists across the US we have, it's called the urology care foundation. So it's ways to educate patients on urologic conditions. So it's the legitimate source of information. It's not a company trying to sell you anything, it's just the real deal of this is what you need to do and it's written in plain, straight forward English and that would be urologyhealth.org. So Urology is U R O L O G Y health dot org. The other sites that are good and give straightforward information would be mayoclinic.org or webmd.com. Those are actually good, straightforward information and someone who wants a little bit more detail and are like, okay, I've read all that. It's kind of generic but I want more detail. Our Actual Association for Urologist has a great website too for under education and it'll show you what all the guidelines are. So like if you're hearing this from one person, you're not sure, you can actually see what the published guidelines are and every few years, every like four or five years, we all get together and we revise them and say, this is what the data shows us, this is what standard of care is, this is what you should be offering, this is what you need to think about. And that is auanet.org and that's for the urology association and that's the standard of care. So those are ones that are just straightforward. You can get the real deal information with no bias and understand why this has happened. Dr. Berry: And Lunch and Learn community members, just like always, all of these links, especially if you're driving, you're at work, wherever you're at listening to this, all these things will be in the show notes. So you know, I definitely want to make sure we're pointing you in the right direction. Because it's important to hear it because I know you guys, you guys are gonna want to follow up to make sure we not talking crazy. So we've got to point you to the right direction to make sure that doesn't occur as well. So again, I've done thank you for that, right. Because this is again, this has been very eye-opening, mind-blowing experience. I'm learning, I'm out to go to the website right when we're done, just don't make sure I can educate my patients, and of itself with such an important topic at hand, this is a portion of the podcast that I love, right? Because you know, I bring a guest on to really educate our community. But I'm just kinda selfish, right? Cause I also bring them on, right? Cause I really want to promote them right. And you know, say what, how to cause most of the people I kind of see and follow them. I'm shadow following them one way or the other. So I like to see people who are sending out doing some stuff, right? Like, and whether it's medicine, not medicine, doing some stuff is always something that I love to see out of our physicians. So this I like to call it, it's like our promo, our promo appeared. Right? Dr. Jenn, obviously we know you're amazing urologists. Is there anything that you do that someone in Lunch and Learn community may be able to benefit from or any books or whatever? This is your time, right? You tell us what you got going on and anything going on and let us know how we can continue to support you. Dr. Jenn: Well, I told you I'm a big quality of life person, right? So a lot of times what I see, especially with patients in medicine, is that a lot of times people don't search for answers because of money. Medicine is getting more and more expensive and the way that the insurance companies are moving, they're pushing more and more of that onto the patients. I don't think that's going to change anytime soon. Those insurance companies are really the wealthiest ones in the game. So they're going to determine what we do, (keep that money to themselves.) Exactly. Exactly. So what I do is I actually talk about money. I talk about money on Instagram and online too, and kind of help people figure out how to get a debt, how to build wealth, and how did it get their stuff together. Because if that's one less thing you have to worry about, think about your overall mental health. If you're no longer stressed about having to pay bills if you're no longer stressed about, how am I going to rob Peter to pay Paul, things like that. I think I'm just a person who has a lot of tough conversations and sex and money are the two things that people don't want to talk about in public. (I love it.) So that's what I talk about for sure. So on Instagram now, it was kind of embarrassing because I do put some of my personal life out there on Instagram. So on Instagram, I'm doctor, which is Dr. Jenn, J. E. N. N. M. D. That's probably the easiest place to kind of follow me and kind of see what I do. I put some of the pictures of me out and about doing some of my extreme sports on there too. Dr. Berry: Then that's what I want to go see doing extreme sports. I want to see that. Dr. Jenn: Yeah, well the snowboarding was interesting. I only did the before picture. Right. So it's all good. But yeah, that'd be the best way to follow me and my links to my website. It's drjennmd.com. All that stuff is on Instagram too, so you can kind of get a little picture of my life and how I really role. Dr. Berry: I love it. So we need to talk to Dr. Jenn. Get our messages together and get our sexual health together. Get our money together. Let's get all that. Right? And it’s 2019. We're halfway through the year. Definitely no time like the present especially for a men's health month and making sure we are getting all of our ducks in line, especially when it comes to sexual health and the importance of sexual health and the massive education lesson that we got today. Definitely thankful for Dr. Jenn. Thank you. Dr. Jenn: Oh, you're so welcome. You're so very welcome. Dr. Berry: Yes. So before I leave, how I was like answer this question. How is what you're doing helping to empower men especially when we talk about sexual health? What are you doing to really empower this and get them to make sure that they’ve taken better care to sexual health? Dr. Jenn: I'm asking the questions and I'm educating them because as we know, knowledge is power. If you don't know, you'll get left behind. There are a lot of people out there that have resources that are getting things fixed and done. There's a lot of small little things you can do to change your overall quality of life, but if you don't know what to ask or don't know something is available, you're going to miss out. So I think my role is really to ask those hard questions and educate my patients. People I see, people I come in contact with, that's what my role is to educate. Dr. Berry: I love it. And for those who may know, again Dr. Jenn obviously being a urologist, being African American and female, obviously there's you know, proponent of women's health that really goes into a lot of care to and of course, and I kind of pick and hold there on this episode, really talk about the men, but she will be, I'm going to beg her, we'll be coming back, right? Because I definitely wanted to hear about a lot of the women's health-related amongst sexual health and all the urological problems that I know they got. Right. Why? Because trust me, if you think I'm referring fast when it comes to men talking about sexual health and all the things you best believe once my women patients say like, hey Dr. Pierre, like this is happening. I'm having problems urinating. Anything that goes on in that area, is okay, alright. There you go. So we'll definitely make sure she comes on to really educate us on woman side as well too. So again Dr. Jenn, thank you for really taking the time out to educate Lunch and Learn community. I know this extremely informal cause I'm still like, okay, I'm still thinking about the pump. I was still thinking about it. And you have a great day. Thank you. Dr. Jenn: Alright. Thank you so much. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

LLP112: What should men expect during their annual physical exam

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 12, 2019 26:06

Let's Talk about Annual Physical Exam... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry I am here to start off men's health month with an episode on just what to expect during your annual wellness exams. Last week on the empower yourself for better health series, I talked about the biggest reasons why men are dying earlier is that we are just unaware of our health statuses. Our lack of going to the doctor, being educated on what are our biggest killers has attributed to the majority (8/10) top 10 leading causes of death worldwide to all disproportinately affect men greater. In fact it would likely be 9/10 if not for the fact that Alzheimers usually increases with age but we are dying to soon to experience it. The annual physical exam is the most appointment you can make when you see a doctor because it allows the doctors to essentially check you from head to toe on what is going on. It is also where we can discover the most problems so it is extremely important to make sure your friends and family members are listening to this episode so they know what to expect. 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: Empower Yourself Series - Episode 65 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 112 Transcript Episode 112 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, who start the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry as well as the CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. This week we bring you episode 112, the focuses on men and their wellness exams. And of course if you listen to this on the month of June, it is men's health month. And if you happen to catch my recent live series on Empower Yourself for Better Health where I essentially kind of lay out the fact that men are dying out here because they're not aware of their health and you know, I hope to put a charge in someone's battery or you know, someone's relative, spouse, somebody to like really push the mill, friends and family members that we have to go get their routine checkups. And a few I want to check out drberrypierre.com/youtube where you can check out that most recent episode where I go through the top 10 causes for death in men and I really kind of lay out the law that says like, Hey, we really don't have any excuses to deal with the issues that we're dealing with now. So check if you have the chance. So again, today we're going to be talking about the wellness exam. The annual physical exam. Most people call it and a lot of times is probably the only way you can actually get your significant other, your brother, your father, your cousin. It's usually the only time you can get them to come into the doctor's office, right? Because again, a lot of times I don't see them very often but if I can almost see him one time, it's usually for their wellness exam. So I want you to just take a little step back and take some tips on what to expect for the physical exam and you know, understand why we might like crunch a lot of things in there because sometimes, especially with our male patients, we understand that that the likelihood that they're going to come back at sometimes kind of low. So we want to take advantage of it when we got a chance. Before I want to go I do want to give a shout out to Dr. Coreos who is a friend in the social media space. She actually runs the hashtag somedocs. And reason why I love her is the fact that she is champion physicians to want to get on social media and really take advantage of all of this stuff that it offers. You guys know for a long time I've really been championed that bill that says like, no, we have to get on social media. Our patients are on social media. And if you want to be respected, if you want to be accredited in your patient’s eye. Again, not talking about accredited in the physician’s eye where you know, you have a couple of journal articles and do some poster presentations and you may speak at a medical conference and two. Because for the most part, most of your patients don't care about that, right? One because they don't go to those conferences. They don't read those magazines so they don't even know. But would they do knows that they check their Twitter, they checked their Instagram and they check their Facebook, they checked their YouTube and you're not there. So she's a big part of this promotion and you know, making it okay for your physicians to one get on social media. And another thing I love about her is that with her hashtags somedocs. If you have a blog posts and video posts, whatever, and you feed tag or she will actually retweet it and kind of share it out. So again, thank you Dr. Coreos for that. I'm definitely much appreciated it. Just wanted to make sure I gave her a nice one shout out because she's definitely helped the show grow for the Lunch and Learn community. So it definitely appreciative all our efforts. So getting back, we're talking about episode 112. We’re gonna talk about men. We’re talking about the annual wellness exam. And sit back for great episode and I'll see you guys later. Episode Dr. Berry: Alright guys. So this is episode 112. This is gonna be a solo episode. And it's funny because obviously if you've been rocking with the show for quite some time, you know and that we started out as a solo episode. This is something that we do and I think we do well. And when we made the change over this past season, season three, we really wanted to make a concerted effort to get the best of the best when it comes to topics of discussion, especially for Lunch and Learn community. And I was very fortunate enough to do that. We've got like two months, almost two months in a row of just amazing guests and like I said, definitely happy for all of their expertise and their support and you know, does the knowledge that they kicked over these past couple months. But I am back with a solo episode and it's funny because actually this episode was going to be a group episode as well, but I was unable to connect with this week's guest. His schedule was busy. My schedules is busy so we were unable to connect. But we'll definitely make sure, you know, we get them onto the shows at some time. Right. We'll, it'll happen for sure. But of course this is June. We're talking about men's health and this episode we're talking about the wellness exam, the quote unquote the physical exam that a lot of times it's the only time I can see some of my male patients and it's something that a lot of times as a physician we kind of cherish and we really take advantage of. Because we understand that if I don't order these tests and I don't ask these questions, there's a chance I may not see this patient in front of me for another year. And for most of my patient specialized outpatient medicine, most of my patients, that's exactly was the case. They were like, doc, I love you but I'm not coming to see you more than once a year. So get whatever you need to get, do whatever tests you to do, ask whatever question you need to ask while I'm here cause it ain't happen. And once I leave and I respected it and I love that. And that definitely took advantage. So what I want to do is first, you know, do you listened to the episode 65, right? Empower Yourself for Better Health Series where I talked about how the lack of awareness and our health has been killing us. And like us, I mean men, right? It's been absolutely killing us. And I talked about top 10 causes of death in that episode. So go ahead, check that out on the YouTube page. But when we stress all of these different factors here, a lot of these things can sometimes, and I hate to say it, but a lot of them could be avoided if they would just comfort a checkup and they would just come and see regularly. And that's why we take so much advantage when we do have you in our office. Right? Because we don't know what's the next time you get to come see us. So if you listen, right? If you're able to get that at your male, father, your cousin, your relative, your friend, spouse, whatever. If you were able to get them to the office, right? Like what should they expect when they get there? Right? I think that's always a question at hand, right? It's like this unknown cloud of secrecy, right? Again, they don't go to the doctor often and a lot of times it's out of fear. Right? And a lot of times it's out of this superhuman attitude that men tend to have. Like, I'm not sick, I don't get sick. I'm okay. Like nothing's bothering me. I think one of the most important questions that we'd like to ask, especially in a hospital setting is do you have any medical history? Right? As usually our questions, right? And for my men, I'm usually keen on asking, okay, if you say you have no medical history, what is the last time he saw a doctor? Because it's very easy to have no medical history if you've been avoiding us for five to 10 years. Right? Like if you haven't seen a doctor, and again that five to 10 years, may sound crazy to some of my Lunch and Learn community members. But I know some people who have not seen a doctor in five to 10 years, like that's just the way they're rocking and you know, God bless them, right? God bless them that something's not clicking up on the inside that we don't know about. But let's say you know, it's been five, it's been 10 years, right? And they haven't seen the doctor. And of course when you ask them to have any medical history, they say no cause they really don't because no one's ever told them. Right? But you are able to get this person into your office and you're able to get the quote unquote physical exam, right. Because first of all, let me tell you something. The physical exam, the actual physical part is, you know, the easiest part that probably takes like three to five minutes at most. But what's most important is all of the ancillary questions you're gonna ask your patient in front of you why you got in there, right? So why you got them there, right? And I always like to start head to toe, right? So first and foremost, for people who may not be familiar with the annual exams, right? The annual exam is the doctor's appointment that you go to, it's usually your longest doctor's appointment and not only is it a long the doctor's appointment, It usually has a whole bunch of labs are kind of associated with it, right? So that's usually when your doctor orders lasts for just about everything. And we're going to talk about those labs later. But it's one of those ones where your doctors has to take advantage and get you, you know, while you're there. And they really liked it, you know, strike while it's hot. So they order every test as every question because they aren't sure if they're not going to see you again. Right? And for some people was honest, right? I used to take care of patients who are in their 19, 20, 21-year-old. Like I don't want to see you in my office more than once a year. Right? Cause there's really no reason, especially if you have no medical history, that you should be seeing me that often. Not say that you can come to me if you, you know, you have a cold or you know, get sick or I'm not saying that. But they were just coming just for like a regular checkup and you have no medical history. You're not taking medications. Right. I don't expect you to be seen more often then, you know, once or twice a year. Right. Maybe you might see him every six months just to kind of keep them in the loop, but you're not seeing them any more than that. So you have your male, right? Let's just, we'll call the male Berry. Right? So Berry, you know, finally mustered up the courage and he makes the doctor's appointment, right? And I talked about this before. A lot of times what pushes Berry to making a doctor's appointment is they have a person like Maria screaming in their ear saying, hey, you need to go see the doctor and they finally do it. Or there's something, some sexual dysfunction issues going on. And Berry's frustrated and he's like, no, I gotta go see a doctor. I got to take care of this. Right? I've seen a commercial, I can take a blue pill and I'm good. I need someone to prescribe a blue pill. So those are usually the top two reasons why, you know, men tend to go to the doctor's office, at least in my experience. So you know, you're able to get buried to come to the doctor's office and you know, he's in a waiting room and you know, he finally get stay room and now he's ready. So usually what tends to occur, especially in your annual wellness exam is. Your doctor usually does a head to toe approach, right? In terms of how am I going to assess this person, how am I going to see what's going on? So usually, obviously from head, we start. I always like to check for vision issues, right? As men, because we're so machismo with it, right? Like wearing glasses is like this taboo thing that a lot of us don't like to do unless we absolutely have to do it. And for the most part there's a lot of diseases that are kind of manifesting with vision issues. So a lot of times when you're thinking, we're just asking about your vision and vision history is because we want to make sure that it may not be contributing and contributed to from another disease like high blood pressure or diabetes, which is very common. So we tend to ask for a vision issues. We want to make sure your eyes are checked. If you wear glasses, you want to make sure he got that done. And we want to make sure you're eating well. And again, the eating well is goes along with the bowel habits because we know the older you get, the more likely you are to have these issues with bowel and bowel dysfunction. And if you're one of my 50 year old gentlemen, right, or 45, depending on your race, right? Uh, and really just kind of varies but just kinda in general, you know, its colonoscopy time, right? And again, it's one of those times where we want to make sure the plumbing is working all the way through and through. Because one of the top 10 leading causes of death for men is cancer, right? So colon cancer is something in screen, when you hit that age because it is something that we should be preventing as long as you get a regular checkup. So a colon cancer is a big one, right? So again, I know I skipped down, but like, so we're checked the vision, now we're checking the heart, right? And the heart exam. Not only goals or just you know, just for listening, but you know, we're checking the blood pressure, we're checking your heart rate. Usually when you came in, right? We want to make sure that you don't have this underlying problem that could lead to disastrous effects that rock. Like I tell people all the time, blood pressure is one of those things that your body can deal with and deal with it a lot until it can't. And once it can't, now we're talking about stroke. Now we're talking about heart attack. Now we’re talking about disease in the feet, right? Like you can't feel and you're foot, right? That’s what happens when your blood pressure becomes such a problem that your body says all right, yeah I'm done. And so making sure that your blood pressure's fine, right? Because again, blood pressure is one of those things that you don't really feel symptoms from low blood pressure, especially when it's high, until it's a problem, right? If you're at the point when you're starting to feel symptoms because of blood pressures on the high side, you need to go see your doctor immediately, right? If you're listening to this and you know when your blood pressure is high, like you can feel it. That means I need to go to the doctor because you should not be feeling it. And if you're at the point where you're feeling when your blood pressure's high, that is a problem. So for heart, we're talking about blood pressure, we're talking about a heart rate. I kind of move actually for men, right? And not important for women. Is that the prostate exam? And this is something that I think personally scares men a lot, not only from doing regular checkups, but because of the prostate exam and the digital administration of the endoscopic scope. I think a lot of men dish, you know, shy away from that whatsoever. And it's funny because I've had men who meet the criteria who meet the age. And I said, okay, all right, let me, uh, let me check your prostate, see how that's doing. And they get stage fright, right? Hey, it's so, it's such a terrifying thing for them, right? It's very weird. I in that instance, right. Especially when you know cancer's a leading cause of death, right? All we have to do is this, there's physical exam tests that we do in our office. And of course it was sometimes was hanging out with blood work, right? But in our office, and you still refuse, you know? Yeah. I'm kind of weary of your decision making. So that's definitely something to think about, especially when we're doing about the abdominal pelvic exam is in the men at certain ages need to be checked for prostate, right. In large prostates. Now I've always said this a lot, that a patient will always tell you what's going on before you have to do any tests, right? So most of your patients, if they're going to talk about, you know, in large prostate, they're going to tell you urinary symptoms, complaints, they're gonna punch in that direction. That still doesn't mean you're not supposed to check but they will kind of point you in that direction to make sure you're going in the right way. So talked about the eyes, we talked about the mouth, we talked about the heart, talk about the abdomen, the lungs as well. Lungs is a big one. I know a lot of you may have seen these COPD commercials. Again, COPD top 10 leading causes of death for men. And you may have seen COPD commercials where this random person is sitting by a lake and because of the COPD medication, now they can breathe again and they can go outside again. And that's all great and dandy, but they don't tell you that usually the patient has COPD because they were a smoker and they were smoking for five years, 10 years, 20 years or they always kind of skip that part, right? That's always tell my patients like you can't skip the fact that this person was smoking for 20 years. Right? So it's not surprising that they're going to have some lung issues. So making sure that your lungs are working well, make sure you're not getting shorter breath easy. That is something you want to be very forthcoming with your physician. And for men, I could tell you what tends to happen with men is that we're so secretive, right, that we're so secretive to our family members, to our friends. So that's why we don't go to the doctor in the first place. But you would think once they get to the doctor's office, this, the veil of secrecy would leave? Nope. A lot of them are secret to the end. Like this to the point where you almost have to call them out like, hey, you know what? Maria sent me over here and said you were having issues with your bowels, but yours ain't they're not. Which is true, right? More often than not. If a person, if a male is sent over to the doctor's office by a female relative, a spouse, someone who says like you need to go to the doctor's office, a lot of times they'll, they'll be in the room with you and not because you know, they don't trust you. It's because they don't trust that their partner is actually going to tell them all of the problems. And that happens with men a lot. We tried to internalize everything and you know, try not to seek help and you know, that's where problems definitely will arise because of it. So I think, so we've talked about heart, we talked about lung, I talked about abdominal pelvis. We talked about the eyes making sure eyes are check as well too. And we had Dr. Candrice who talked about skin cancer, a couple of shows back. So again, the importance of, making sure there's no weird moles or rash or anything that your, your family members kind of played off. We don't want that. So making sure, and again, your skin exams, your regular physician can definitely take care of that while they got you here and kind of move. And if you need something else then see to the dermatologist. So skin exams, definitely an important one as well. And I think last but not the least, is it comes some of the blood testing. So what actually gets tested when we go to get our physical exam? So I could tell you this from a slew of tests, right? We don't have to mention the names because the names that are really important is what they're looking for. Some of our testing, right? We'll look for signs of inflammation, we'll look signs for infection. Some of our tests within that will check to see how stable is the person's blood count is? And blood count is a very important a number to think about because if you have this patient who's coming in and they're giving you symptoms concerning that, they may be bleeding somewhere. You want to make sure that blood count is good. And stable. So blood count is definitely something that thinks about. And then we check for your electrolytes. We check for potassium and we check for sodium, we check calcium, chloride. We check for all of these different things here because we want to make sure your electrolyte nutritional status is adequate because if not we have to take care of it. And we'd take a look at the kidneys. Kidneys are important. You'll notice when I stop and mentioned the disease is because it probably hits the top 10 diseases that killed men every year. And kidney disease is definitely in that ball park, right? So kidney disease, and again, this is a routine test. Again, I know my patient Berry's not going to come for another year, so I got to make sure I get all of these tests done while I got him here. So again, we're checking for kidney function, we're checking for electrolytes, we're checking to make sure your blood counts stable, we're checking to make sure you know the signs of inflammation or infection. And then, moving all, we check for the big gun right? We talk about cholesterol. Cholesterol is a big one for us, right? So we want to check your cholesterol, make sure your cholesterol was doing well. And we had previous episodes where we talked about the thoughts of cholesterol and good and bad, and what medications to take. We're not going to do this here. Moving forward, we checking for your diabetes? Diabetes is one of those things. It's one of those, and I wrote a blog post about this. It's a disease I probably not wish would not wish on my enemy, right? Because there's not a system that's not affected by diabetes. And I think what's happening, it's probably our fault, is that when we talk about diabetes, especially in the General Public Forum, a lot of people focus on the sugar aspect. Like, oh yes, my sugar is high, but they don't realize for us, right? When we hear your sugar's high, I hear, wow, you have concerns that you're going to have some vascular damage, right? Because diabetes is an extremely fast schuller disease, right? It affects the heart. It affects the legs, it affects obviously our kidneys, brain too. So every system that can be fed through the blood system, right, which is everything diabetes can effect, especially when it's uncontrolled. So we're checking for that. So again remember and the test that we run lets me know how well you did in the past three months. So not one of these things where I have to be concerned that this like oh maybe a little bit false or you just had some cheeseburger the next day. Like that's not going to necessarily change this testing here and may adjust your cholesterol testing but it's not going to change that you're testing for your diabetes or how severe your diabetes is. I will sometimes check for thyroid as well cause I want to make sure, and again I'm, I'm kind of foreshadowing get right cause I want to make sure all of your hormones are regulated correctly cause we've already seen that when your hormones are not regulated correctly. Because thyroid is out of whack, it doesn't matter if your hormones get back into that normal rhythm. Your thyroid has to be a normal rhythm as well. So thyroid hormones, a big one as well that we checked quite often. We've checked the urinalysis. Your urinalysis is a big one. And it's big one because it's cheap, but it tells us so much information, right? Urinalysis can tell me if you had blood in your urine, right? You're now tell me if you have an infection. Urinalysis can tell me if you have a stone in your kidney. So all of these different things that your urinalysis does a great job and educating us on, and it's a cheap test as a quick test. Definitely, something that I always like to glean information from. Last but not least, and this is the big one, right? Testosterone levels. Because I know, especially for my men, someone's gonna want to know about testosterone, right? They're gonna want to know about, you know, artificial mutation of testosterone when needed. So a testosterone levels. And usually, it's not, it doesn't come with the annual wellness exam. But if you're giving me complaints and concerns that sexual health may be affected. I'm going to do something about it, right? So I will check a testosterone level just to make sure all your hormones are kind of in line. So that's really the big crux of the annual exam for my men and I really try to kinda hit home all of the big take-home parts to really to let you know that it's not a difficult thing to do. It's not a test you need to be scared of. And I think knowing the answer, right? Because I think a lot of times when we talk about disease processes, some people just don't want to know the answer. But when it comes to, you know, taking care of your health and taking care of your wellness, you have to know what the answer is, right? Because we have no choice because it's killing us, right? And I hate to be doom and gloom, but I really want to stress the point, especially when you have this month of June and you know, everyone's hype about men's health month, but I know what's next month comes around, people ain't going to be at hype anymore. So I want to like make sure I'm shouting it from the rooftops, the importance of getting our stuff together men. So again, I want to thank everyone for listening with me - Dr. Berry. We’re back with a solo episode like I missed you guys. But again, I want to thank you guys for all your support, has been absolutely phenomenal in this past season, this season, right? Season three that we're in as far as the support and effort and people downloading and people leaving five-star reviews. You now had a chance leave that five-star review for me and you guys have a great and blessed day. I'm going to see you guys next week and next week we do have a special guest, right? So you don't have to worry about hearing my voice again solo. Next week we do have a special guest. Because like I said, we like special guests. You guys have a great and blessed day. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

Sam Mazzeo, Co-Founder, Wilkmazz

Hitting The Mark

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2019 34:40

I sit down with my lawyer (indeed!), who has not been my lawyer before I invited him onto my show. I came across their site, wilkmazz.com, after hearing Sam speak in an interview and it took me only a few split seconds to know that I have to get him onto this podcast. I believe in a brand being authentic, and direct, and as simple as being bold sounds, it takes a special personality and lots of guts to actually pull it off and to pull it off successfully, and the partners at this San Diego law firm sure pulled it off. Sam and I talk about why they have a bold and authentic brand, how it helps and where it hurts. An episode that any bold entrepreneur and marketer should dive into and learn from when they need a good kick in their behind to take some bold moves. To connect with Sam, hit him up at holler@wilkmazz.com or visit the ever so intriguing 'anti-law-office' law office brand at wilkmazz.com ____Full Transcript: F Geyrhalter: Welcome to episode number 14 of Hitting The Mark. It's still such a baby, 14 only. It's crazy, but today we dive into how one can craft a brand that stands out within an entire industry, simply by being bold. Those of you who follow me closely know how much I believe in a brand being authentic, and direct, and as simple as being bold sounds, it takes a special personality and lots of guts to actually pull it off and to pull it off successfully. Today I talk with Sam Mazzeo, who is co-founder and partner of the law firm Wilkmazz in San Diego. I learned about his firm while I was doing research for an interview I had coming up on Fabio Palvelli's show, and I stumbled upon Sam who was on that program right before me. He talked refreshingly direct about law for visual artists, so I glanced at his firm's website for about 10 seconds and I knew that I had to have this guy on my show. Sam got his start in litigation before diving into the social impact world as legal counsel at Invisible Children, after the organization released the most viral video in history. That's a big claim, but if I tell you what it was, you will agree it was KONY 2012, which is quite amazing. He currently spends his time sending gifs and not jifs, which is very important to him, to clients in between filing trademarks and drafting contracts. He has also served on some legit local boards like TEDx San Diego and Think Dignity. Fun fact, he learned to do a standing back flip for a Teen Wolf costume. And in the few weeks that I have now corresponded with him, I can attest to the gif sending habit, but have not witnessed the Teen Wolf back flip yet. With that being said, welcome to the show, Sam. S Mazzeo: Thank you. Yes, I'm glad to be here. Excited to talk about our brand and all the things that that means. F Geyrhalter: Absolutely. So first off, when I saw your site, which I mentioned, I was just immediately in awe of what you did from a branding side, which we will dive into shortly. But rather important to mention, and in full transparency to our listeners, in the few weeks from when I booked you on the show to today, I actually ended up hiring you to review a massive contract of ours. Which not only speaks volumes about how branding actually leads to sales, but further you were reviewing my contract verbally. So via dictation or voice, since you had a really bad cooking accident on Mother's Day, I learned, and you were not able to use your right hand. Still are not able to use your right hand. And that speaks volumes about you as a person, and how much you actually care about your clients. So how are you recovering from a peculiar accident in the kitchen that most probably completely disrupted your own brand for a little while? S Mazzeo: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I appreciate you checking in on that. It's definitely been an adjustment. And I think that, you know, one of the things that our brand does is hopefully demonstrates who we are. Because I think at the end of the day, one of the things that we'll touch on is transparency. And so in that same vein, you know, as soon as this accident happened, I had a short sort of debate in my own head about whether or not to let people know that this has happened. Because we're a small team, we're a team of three lawyers, and if one person has the loss of the ability to use one of their hands, I could see where that would go a long way to maybe degrade the confidence in our firm, and our work, that our clients may have and that our partners may have. And so I went back and forth a little bit, but like I said, it was a short debate because at the end of the day, you know, that transparency is going to be the one of the most important things to us and to our clients. So I want them to know what's going on, both from the perspective of, I care about my clients as people, as humans, as friends. And I think a lot of them do the same for me and for my staff. So beyond just notifying them for that reason, I thought it was also important to let them know that, you know, maybe there will be a few less gifs, and maybe there will be some oddly capitalized text in my emails because I'm using voice to text. And so it's definitely been an adjustment. You know, I think I'd be lying if I said Game of Thrones that night didn't influence my use of the knife in the kitchen that day, and so maybe I can blame it on that and HBO, but I'm doing well. F Geyrhalter: Well, needless to say, I'm sure you're unsubscribed from HBO now like everyone else. S Mazzeo: Right. F Geyrhalter: Well, I mean look, I think that the way that you handled that, and I was actually part of that, because at that point I was already a client of yours, well last week, right? It is so true that people don't hire the brand they fall in love with what you say and how you say it as a brand, but then to get to know you and in the end they deal with you, and people like you, otherwise they wouldn't work with you. Right? I mean, that's just the truth. That's how it works. People have a lot of empathy, especially when you portray your brand in such a transparent and authentic manner. I mean, on your site, you greet visitors with the line, and I love that, "We're just like you, but lawyers." And once you actually dive into the site, you see an area called a lawyer's shit, which is an assortment of visual notes. Many of them are gift. And now that I started working with you, my client dashboard has the same name. So when I get to look, and the audience has to realize, you know like how this is so different? When I get to look at mundane yet super critical contracts that you send me, you actually push me into an area called lawyer shit. So under lawyer shit, I see my contracts and you further explain on your site that we think anyone taking a , and doing something different, deserves bitching lawyers. While I feel that you yourself are doing something quite different, how did this all start and like how was that bold language being crafted? S Mazzeo: Yes, great question. So yes, in a real quick plug for our own services, is that legal locker is what you're referring to. It's something that we give to all of our clients that houses all of their legal documentation, and it does have a big banner that says lawyer shit at the top. And you know, I think I will get around to answering your question. But the lawyer shit thing is so interesting because, you know, it was one of those things where we went back and forth throughout the branding process. And I think, you know, there comes a point where you have to make a decision, and you touched on it a little bit in the intro, but you have to make a decision on whether or not you are going to go for it, and whether or not you are going to be bold. Because you can continue to sort of toe the line and the status quo is always going to be a very non-offensive, very non bold, it doesn't jump out at you type of website for a law firm and for lawyers. And I think that, that serves the purpose by and large for what lawyers mostly need. Frankly, I want to also recognize and acknowledge that as a transactional corporate attorney, that helps artists, and nonprofits, and businesses, and startups, that we're in a unique sort of field. Because if we were criminal law, or family law, you know, we can't have a fun website to the degree that we can with the work that we do. The other funny thing about the lawyer shit piece is that I've had conversations with other attorneys that are more of the traditional approach to the brand, and to the style of the practice of law. And they've told me flat out that other lawyers have seen that, and we're known as the lawyer shit guys, and that it's totally unprofessional and inappropriate. And so I think that I had two reactions when I heard that. One is, "Oh, I kind of wondered what some of the bigger law firms thought of this." And two, "I don't really give a shit if they don't like it." F Geyrhalter: Well, may I add three to this? It actually showed you that it works, right? I mean if you get negative response from the ones that you want to stand apart from, it's the best flattery. I mean, then you're like, okay, perfect, this is great, because if people start talking about us within the industry that we're different, and we want to be different for our creative clients. Perfect, right? S Mazzeo: Yes, haters are going to hate. F Geyrhalter: Absolutely, absolutely, and they have a good reason. They have a good reason, right? It's threatening, it's insecurity. It's like, oh wow, they're bold and we're not. So obviously we're not going to like that. But you know, obviously, so you wanted from the get go be a no BS type of law firm, right? Which now ended up looking like a cool brand, more so than a law office, which is awesome for your creative clients, because they themselves surround themselves constantly with cool brands. So you fit right into their life. But how much of that was actually driven by your, and your co founders, personalities versus deeply connecting it and understanding that creative target audience? I mean, how did you know or decide that going that bold would end up winning you even geezer clients, like myself? Most others would be so afraid to take that step. S Mazzeo: Yes, well, I think we realized at one point, because we had a different brand before the brand that you see now, and it was a little bit more of the traditional approach, but it was still also younger and sort of a little bit more cooler, hipper, what have you. And so with this brand, you know, we weren't sure necessarily that it was going to resonate with people, but we spent probably ... I mean look, it was definitely longer than we planned on it being, and originally the rebrand was only intended to be an update to our website, and that other brand that we had. And then at some point along the way, and I do have to give a lot of credit to my business partner and co-founder Emily, because she at one point in time said, "Look, I want this to be fucking art." You know, at the time I think I was like, well that seems a little over the top. But I think as we sort of progress throughout the process, and we really brought together a team of individuals that were going to help with this. And you know, one of them, his name is Justin Power, he is in LA, he's a creative wizard. He had a sit down so many times and really just do sort of like brand identity brainstorming. And really to your point as to some of the topics we'll talk about, it really is more about who we are, who we need to be for our clients, and really what we are putting out there. Because at the end of the day, I think the epitome of a good brand is that it is a representation of the people behind it, and not one that's contrived, and not one that's inauthentic. It has to actually be you. Because with lawyers in particular there's so many stigmas and there's so many good reasons for there to be stigmas. And so we realized that people want to work with us because they might want to get a beer with us, or go get coffee with us. And so at the end of the day, you know, there's a ton of lawyers out there, and there's certainly no shortage of lawyers that reach out, and you know, try to get business if you meet them at an event or what have you. And so for us it's a lot about, do we get along with who we'd be working with? Because another thing that I say all the time is, you know, work is work. Do I enjoy every contract that I draft? Do I enjoy advising on the same type of contractual language four to eight times a week? Maybe, maybe not. But do I enjoy who I work with and that they're trying to change the world and that they're doing awesome things? Yes, that I do enjoy. And so I think your brand has to represent who you are, because then it brings who you want to work with. F Geyrhalter: I absolutely agree with you. I absolutely agree with you. And when we ourselves actually as a brand consult, and we are currently going back to that, and actually constantly refreshing that too, of like who are we really? And how do we want to live our days? Right? Because in the end, you know that's how you spend most of your life. Doing what could be considered work, but it doesn't have to be considered work if you actually enjoy the people that you surround yourself with. I totally agree with that and on your about page which you titled Letter, you write the following and I will absolutely a hundred percent read this verbatim right now, because it is just brand language poetry, and it was so good to hear that you spent a lot of time actually massaging that because it definitely shows. So here's how it goes. "This is that page of the website you always skip. It's a love letter to the anonymous many who mainly avoid having lawyers as friends. If you're being honest, then we have to say that we never originally intended on being lawyers. It turns out that we love it. It turns out that being one is about empowerment more than anything. Money doesn't tell you how to be a person. Red Tape doesn't define a business. We're here frankly to be your shit umbrella so you can do your actual work with joy, leave the paperwork, and processes, and awkward, stressful, tense emails to us. You have unexpected places to take your crusade or enterprise. The future is always abstract, but your vision isn't. One creative human needs friends to make a vision real. It turns out you need creative lawyers too. The point is we love you, we hear you, and we want to help you. Signed, just a couple of lawyers with hearts on our sleeves." So what I'm wondering, so it's real, it's really, really beautiful, right? Like on many levels, and what you just said is totally embodied in this. But what I'm really interested in is how did this narrative that you crafted change client behavior? Because you know, I'm wondering, are people opening up? Are they being more authentic in return? Is there a client lawyer wall that you have successfully smashed solely because of the way you present your brand? S Mazzeo: Yes, I think, you know, first and foremost, I want to say, and I think this is probably true of any creative process. It takes, like I said, a team. It takes a village, and we had an incredible writer and editor that helped us with our site. Her name is Amy Boyd and I won't take away from that Letter though because Emily spent a lot of time just with morning pages, and writing in the morning, and she kind of came up with this beautiful sort of outline of what we're doing. And I think that, you know, through the process of having Amy help, and then also the various different brand meetings, we really sort of honed in on that ultimate copy that made it onto the website. And it is beautiful, and it's so representative, but it's also interesting because as your business and as you change, your brand has to, and so we're already looking at how we might want to update that to sort of highlight more of the education that we do now and so on. But to answer your question, yes, I think, it's a gift and a curse sometimes because I do think that we have much more transparent and authentic conversations with our clients. We certainly feel that we're much more on the same page with our clients. And I think that they feel that probably even more so than we do. You know, at the end of the day, we know what we're doing for our clients and we have our processes and our systems. And I think so the differences with them, if there's a wall that got smashed down, it's for the client. They really feel now like when they sit and they speak with us, or when they're talking to on the phone, that it's not this lawyer up here on this pedestal talking down to them, the common folk that need the lawyer's help. It's we're peers, and we're friends, and we want to help you out because we care about what you're doing. So I do think that that happened and I think though that going back to the gift and the curse aspect of it, there is something that comes with our brand. And with that sort of informality that we also have to make sure that everything we do is so buttoned up, and is so pristine, and that we are so responsive. Because if we portray a brand of these casual, fun lawyers and then we screw something up, and not to say that that's something that happens, but you know, if we're a little late on a response, it be .. you know, if we have a typo in a document, or whatever the case may be, it's really easy then for that client to go, "Oh well they're just fun lawyers. They're not good lawyers." And so it really is a double edged sword. And I, and I cringe using that analogy with my hand injury right now. F Geyrhalter: Oh God, yes. S Mazzeo: But it is because, you know, we have to make sure that everything we do is to the utmost level of service in order to make sure that that brand comes across as what I described before. Friendly, approachable, transparent, on the same page. Because, you know, if we do anything subpar, it's sort of, it's highlighted, it's emphasized, it's multiplied. And so I do think that our clients do feel like that wall has been sort of taken down, but at the same time it can go right back up really quickly if we're not on top of it. F Geyrhalter: Yes, you're absolutely right. I mean, you're fully aware of the danger that comes with it. But you know, quite frankly, being bold, and being authentic, and being you, and being a friend brand in that sense. And I hate saying it that way, but that's what it is, right? Completely hundred percent wins over the risk, and I can attest to that because I have been going through the exact emotions that you're sharing now. So when I saw your brand, I'm like, I gotta have this guy on my podcast. And then I ran into issues with a contract, I needed it really quickly, I reached out to you, and I was wondering, I'm like, Well, is that just a cool for facade? Is it just a cool brand? And are these just kids that are just, you know, like fun? Are they actually like serious lawyers? So it is the exact same hesitation that I have, but it's still a hundred percent won over. The transparency, the boldness, I'm like, I want to work with these guys. Like it makes sense to me. And then of course you totally, I'm not going to make metaphors like, you know, pulled an arm or like, you know. But you just came, you just totally delivered. And so that's, that's what it's about. But I believe that someone who would be afraid if they would be able to deliver, they would just hide on their regular law firm website and content. You know what I mean? Like they would just look like everyone else. So I think that there's something about being so bold that makes me realize, well these people know what they're doing, otherwise they wouldn't be able to pull that off. So question to you, Legal Unicorn. It's an attorney network that I think you helped build? How did that come about? And how do the Wilkmazz and Legal Unicorn brands interact? S Mazzeo: Yes, I'll start with the Legal Unicorn Society is kind of a passion project, and I think it's also a really necessary addition to professional services. Generally speaking, not just the legal industry. And look, I would be lying if I said we're full steam ahead with the Legal Unicorn Society because it's been difficult to do that, and, you know, because we've got to run the law firm. I do a lot of local advocacy work through another nonprofit that I helped found. And then with Legal Unicorn Society we did, we actually filed all the nonprofit paperwork for it. We co-founded it with a number of other lawyers. And the reason that I say it's such a necessary thing for professional services, is that what ends up happening I think, and especially nowadays, is that the trend at least is toward smaller mom and pop, for lack of a more modern term for a small business that that cares and is kind of family values. That's kind of where we're going with most of the what we call the millennial generation. But I think that spans a good segment of our workforce nowadays. And so it's people that do several different things, or they have their own small business while they do other jobs. And so I think that in doing that, one thing that is lost, is that with giant law firms, and if you go to a giant law firm, you need help with A, B, and C, they can also do X, Y, and Z. Because they're a gigantic law firm with a million lawyers. And so we don't have that. And so one of the reasons that this sort of came about was we needed to have that sort of big law firm feel, while still maintaining small law firm prices and that small law firm approach to the service for our clients. And so we just started to realize that there were a couple other law firms out there that were doing it like we're doing it. And I think that, you know, traditionally you're going to hear someone say, "Oh no, there's a competitive brand out there." And frankly I could give no shits less about there being competitors that look and brand themselves, and treat their clients the way that we do. As a matter of fact, I think that that's the way I'd love to see the industry go. And we have interns every semester because we want to show the younger generations of lawyers that you can do it this way, and that you can have fun doing it. And so when we found these other brands that were doing it in a fun way, there's Framework Law in LA, there's Kyle Westaway in New York, there's a few of them out there. And we just wanted to make sure that we maintain a network with these other law firms because A, we can all learn from each other. B, we can all share clients if we have different expertise, and C, like we don't ... we can't walk down the hallway and talk to another attorney in our big law office and go, "Hey, am I crazy?" Or like, "What have you seen on this type of thing?" And so we have that now with the Legal Unicorn Society and there's other benefits that we hope to achieve as far as like discounts on group rates for different professional services. And we want to do retreats and we did an event in Venice last year that we called the Legal Unicorn Academy, where we did a day long event teaching people about finance, legal, wellness. You know, we had meditation, we had branding consultants come in and we did the whole deal. And so we really just formed that nonprofit to, I guess, add more value both to our profession, but also to the people we serve. F Geyrhalter: Very, very, cool initiative. And it makes so much sense, everything you said. It's again, it's part of the defense mechanism that, kind of like, you know, like it's being triggered where you're small, you're doing something different, you're going against the grain, who else is doing this? It's kind of like, let's all join forces, so that we're bigger, right? That we can actually utilize each other and the strengths of each other. It's great. So with that being said, you're very much like myself. You're a serial entrepreneur, you know, you have ideas, you want to push them out. You want to actually create businesses, like Legal Unicorn Society, which as you said, there's already enough on your plate and why do you do it? Well, you just have that urge. And that's why I love having people like you on, because this show is definitely for entrepreneurs, by entrepreneurs. But what was a ginormous brand fail that you went through? Like things go wrong. And with your brand specifically, I'm wondering, did you ever overstep it? Or was there something where you just felt like, now we should just take a step back? S Mazzeo: Yes, you know, I had seen that question when you had sent it over in advance, and I was trying to think through. I certainly don't want to act like there hasn't been any fails in my professional career. And I think if I had to point to a sort of a brand fail for us, you know I would have to probably say that right now the brand that we have doesn't highlight a couple of things well enough. And it obviously like overall our brand is a total smashing success and I'm very thankful for that. But I do think that if I pointed to ... the things that come to mind are, it took us forever to get it out and we actually, the update to the website that we originally going to do, that then sort of morphed into a rebrand, was to get our associate attorney at the time on the website and he ended up leaving before we even got the rebrand done. I would say that's a peripheral brand fail. Then I would say also that I really don't feel like ... and I get mixed feedback when I say this, but I don't know if I feel like my ... the brand currently demonstrates enough how much we care about our clients and that we really, really, feel as though our value is that we educate our clients along the way. You know, I really have come to the conclusion that the way we represent our clients is that we help them usually at an early stage with everything that they need to get set up for the short and long term. And in doing so, we really educate them on all of those steps. At least I hope that this is the case. And in doing so, they may not need us, you know, anytime soon or again at all, and that's totally fine. We just want them to tell a friend, so we can help that friend in that same position. I think that our website could do a better job of highlighting that educational component, and that empowerment component. And I do think that just from ... there's too many pictures of my face, and my business partners face on this website. That's the other thing that I think would be a slight fail, is that I'd love to highlight and lift up our clients a little bit more, and our staff a little bit more. F Geyrhalter: That makes a whole lot of sense. It's not necessarily a fail, but I love that story. Because it was a little bit out of your control, most probably when you did the rebrand for one reason and then it ended up actually for a different reason. But I mean I'm so glad that you did, because that's how I found you and I think it is so noble the way that you approach this. When I do my workshops with my clients, it's those notorious eight hour workshops where I like pull the company out of them. Like help them create a brand and define who they are. And one of the things that we do is a memorial speech and so it's basically sitting down if like, okay, 20, 30 years from now, 50, 60 years from now, what would you tell an audience if you're brand doesn't exist anymore? And why does it not exist anymore? And what are they actually missing? And what happens very often these days is that clients say exactly what you just said where, well, I hope we're just not necessary anymore. I hope that in 40 years from now everyone's going to have learned so much from us, that don't need us anymore. Or that everything is just honest, or law is just changing, or whatever. So I think that that idea that you actually want to educate your clients rather than, you know, dictate onto them what they need to forward to their clients to get a contract signed, is a huge, huge, brand trait. And I totally agree, we feel like celebrating that on your website and celebrating your clients. You know, obviously mainly myself I think would be a noble thing for you to do. S Mazzeo: Well brands have to change, you know, sooner or later I think you refer to yourself as a geezer earlier on on this call, which you're way too young to be doing that. But sooner or later, you know, myself and my staff and we're going to be geezers too. And the website won't be cool with, if you know, it looks like it's a young hip website with a bunch of old people in the photos. And so, you know, brands and things change. And so, I think every brand has a shelf life, and that's something that we all have to acknowledge and be aware of too, because then it becomes inauthentic if we just leave it, and set it, and forget it. F Geyrhalter: Absolutely right, absolutely right. And that's why most of the people that I speak to on this podcast, they do say that. They say that every year we meet and we look at our brand, and we say, is this still us? Does this still represent us? And it's such an important exercise to do, especially also for brand agencies. Like people like me who do that everyday with others, but it's so hard to do it for yourself. So it's a super important lesson to learn. Is there any brand advice that you have for founders as a take away? S Mazzeo: You know, I think it's really important when it's founders plural, just period, kind of hard stop there because I think that you always have to have a balance. And I do think that this brand would not be nearly as impactful, and nearly as bold if it wasn't for Emily. And I think that we probably would have went too far over the top in some areas if it wasn't for me. And so I think that it's super important to make sure that you have that balance amongst founders. And I think that most successful businesses that is part of what makes them successful, is that you have that counterbalance of the personalities that run the business. And so, I think at the end of the day that's probably what steered us in the direction that we went. And a lot of the time, I was blown away by the creativity that I saw coming from the team that we put together and coming from Emily. But then there were other times where I would have to say, "Look, I know for a fact that that will not be helpful for us in certain situations that we deal with for our clients." And so there's that competing interest of course, of making sure that the website represents us, but then also making sure that it doesn't hurt our clients when we're doing work for them and we're supporting them. Because one thing to this day that I still have to tell my clients is, "Look, if you need us to send a demand letter, or a cease and desist letter, and someone looks us up, we're not the scariest law firm out there. So you may actually want to work with a different firm for something like that." F Geyrhalter: Interesting, and that's where you have your Legal Unicorn Society where you might be able to reach out to them, or then they refer you to someone who looks really, like big and lean, big and mean. S Mazzeo: Totally. F Geyrhalter: And I think most probably with your continuous rebranding, there's always a way to kind of like balance one and the other. Besides a whole lot, what does branding mean to you? I know it means a whole lot to you, but what, to you and to your firm and what you've been going through in the last months or years, what does it mean to you? How important is it to you? S Mazzeo: I mean, it's one of the most important things, but then also at the same time, as I said, that I wanted to sort of catch myself because the most important thing is the work that we do. And the service that we provide. But I think that you can look at brands as the storefront nowadays. And so you think to the past, and you think about businesses, and how tremendously important that sign out front is and what the windows look like, how nice the store looks and is kept up. And so nowadays that's our storefront, is our brand. So depending on the day you catch me and you talk to me, some days I'm going to say it's the most important thing because look, we wouldn't be sitting here right now doing this. You know, you wouldn't have hired me last week to work on something for you had we not had a beautiful storefront on the internet. But on another day, you might talk to me and I might say, "Look, it's the icing on the cake. If someone hears about the work we did for someone else, and that person was thrilled and that's why they recommended us, then the website is just the cherry on top." It's the icing on the cake when they go and they say, "Oh, I heard good things about them and oh shit, their website's really cool too." So I think, you know, maybe this is a non answer cause I'm saying it's both tremendously important and also not important at all. But I think that somewhere in between is the truth. And I think that you can't do business nowadays without some kind of brand. Whether or not that means that there's a visual presence, or just that's your personal brand and how you interact with people. So I think it really depends on which way you look at it too. Because you know, sometimes I think about how there's a lot of lawyers that just do their work through word of mouth referral and they don't even have a website. And that doesn't mean that they don't have a brand. I'm sure if you talk to people, and you talk about how that lawyer interacts with their clients, you know, they must be doing something right in order to not even need that storefront. And so they have a brand too, and it's just a more interpersonal brand. And so I really think that depending on any way you break it down, brands are tremendously important nowadays. And even more so, I'm going to put the lawyer hat on for a second, because with the way intellectual property is nowadays and how much harder it's getting to protect your own trademarks, and your own brand, and it's so much more important to have a brand because the market's crowded. And so it's just a difficult thing to have and protect in and of itself. F Geyrhalter: I'm so glad that you touched on that. Super, super important and we feel that every day as we file for trademarks, and as we create brands here, it is getting more and more difficult by the minute. Listeners who fell in love with, may I say it, a law firm just now, where can they connect with you? S Mazzeo: Yes, so you can find us online at Wilkmazz.com. Same going to be for the social media handles. It's going to be Wilkmazz, W-I-L-K-M-A-Z-Z. And then also if you want to just shoot us an email, whether you need help, or you just want to give us a shout. We love to meet new people. It's holler@wilkmazz.com. You know, traditional spelling of holler when you want to holler at someone, and then Wilkmazz as I spelled. So those are some of the easiest ways to reach out to us. You know, it's 2019 if you send us a Facebook message, or social media message, just, yes email. If you reach out through the website portal, we're going to get it and get back to you pretty quickly. That's definitely something that we find to be tremendously important. Like I mentioned at the earlier part, is responsiveness. So yes, feel free to reach out just if you want to say hi. We love meeting other cool brands too. F Geyrhalter: I can attest to the responsiveness. Thank you, Sam, for having been my guest and for sharing what you do, how you do it, and most importantly, the authentic manner in which you do it with my listeners. That was absolutely bitching to use your well-crafted brand copy. S Mazzeo: Thank you. I'm glad to have had the opportunity to speak with you, and hopefully everyone that hears this learns that, hey, you don't have to do it the way that, whatever it is you do, whatever profession, you don't have to do it that old, traditional way. You can do it whichever way you want and you can be you doing it. F Geyrhalter: Amen. And thank you all for listening, and even more for rating my show since I am sure that is exactly what you will be doing right this minute. This podcast is brought to you by absolutely no sponsor because I have not had a chance to create an official sponsorship program, or to ask for sponsorship. So if you're interested, reach out. You know where to find me. The Hitting The Mark theme music was written and produced by Happiness Won. I will see you next time when we, once again, we'll be hitting the mark.

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LLP111: Busy Mom’s Guide to Fitting In Fitness with Dr. Slyvia Bollie

"Jesus is coming soon prepare the way" Prophet Dr David Owuor.

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 5, 2019 63:48

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.

APOSTASY IN THE CHURCH

Play Episode Listen Later May 26, 2019 25:03

There is the rider of the White Horse in Revelation 6:2 and now you meet another rider of the White Horse in Revelation 19 from verse 11 to 14, with the armies of heaven following him with fine linen bright and clean. Right?Because when the LORD describes this form of apostasy, he tells us that there is a teaching that will come, another teaching, and it will deceive many and many will be believe it and be deluded. Deceived. Understand? And then something else comes out very powerfully. Because I wondered how can somebody come and say I am the Christ? Remember, He was talking to the disciples, who had known His voice, who had known His teachings, they knew His position on sin, they knew His position on righteousness, they knew His position on holiness, they knew His stand on the renunciation of apostasy.

church lord revelation deceived apostasy whitehorse right because christ remember

202 - A Legal Secondary Market with Nate Shue

Bourbon Pursuit

Play Episode Listen Later May 23, 2019 68:15

What if there was a legalized secondary market? Some may argue there is with new vintage laws being introduced around the country, but then there is the massive flood of online marketplaces that don't have any regulation whatsoever. It's a touchy subject because anyone that is really into bourbon, has seemed to find their way into these corners of the web. And lets be honest, most of us have had to do some sort of buy, sell, or trade to get bottles that we desire. It's the nature of the game and this show looks at the premise of if you could build your own legal secondary market, what would it look like? We are joined by bourbon enthusiast Nate Shue, a Patreon supporter, on this topic. Show Partners: Barrell Craft Spirits is more than just bourbon, they blend rye, whiskey, rum and have a signature infinite barrel project. Find out more at BarrellBourbon.com. Do you have a podcast? Sign up for Chartable Podcast Analytics to track rankings and reviews. Visit Chartable.com. Receive $25 off your first order with code "Pursuit" at RackhouseWhiskeyClub.com. Show Notes: KDA and BIER report on the Kentucky Bourbon industry’s energy, water, and emissions data. - https://www.bieroundtable.com/news/formalizing-sustainability-kentucky-bourbon-industry-collaborates-with-bier/ Whiskey Stocks and the Bubble Burst - https://www.barrons.com/articles/u-s-whiskey-stocks-like-brown-forman-have-soared-beware-the-bourbon-bubble-51557514898 This week’s Above the Char with Fred Minnick talks about whiskey 'first' marketing. When did you start getting into bourbon? What do you think started the secondary market craze? What are the issues with the secondary market? Do you think referral secondary markets like Wine Searcher or Blur Book hurt or help? How does the value get established? What would happen if you removed the community aspect of the secondary market? Do you think other states should have laws similar to Washington D.C.? What about auction houses like Christie's? If you were to have a legal secondary market, what would it look like? Should distilleries price the bourbon so high that it basically eliminates the secondary market? Do you think if they shut down the secondary market overnight, would it just come back? 0:00 Got a two and a half year old. So there's limited things to be done. 0:06 How about you not be a terror this weekend? Hey everyone, 0:21 Kenny here and this is episode 202. of bourbon pursuit. And as usual, we have a little bit of news to go through that bourbon pursuit we try to find new and interesting subjects to talk about in one podcast we thought of doing a while ago was thing what is the environmental impact of urban? And we haven't really found that right guest and that right subject matter because I don't know if that's really what you all find engaging your interesting, so we haven't really done it. However, I find a little bit interesting. And there was a news report that came out this past week. And this was a partnership that was done by the Katie and bear in 2018. And it was the it's the first time report to actually measure the Kentucky bourbon industries use of energy water in emissions data. For roses heaven Hill, Rosie Tyler, Wild Turkey, Bacardi beans, Suntory Brown, Forman and Diaz, you all submitted data, and this ensures that it represents about 98% of the Katie a membership by production volume. Overall Kentucky distilleries use of energy and water consistently declined from 2013 to 2017. And still rested below the global distilleries averages in 2017. The average water use ratio for Kentucky distilleries decreased 41% from 2013 to 2017. This represents a total water use avoidance of more than 6 million key leaders. Now I don't know what a kilo leader is, I don't live in the metric system. So to put it in layman's terms, it's it's enough to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool nearly 2400 times. Now one example this is heaven Hill updated its water source at Bernheim distillery. The company reduced its water usage by 33%. It plays to still condenses onto a cooling tower loop. The distiller now recycles within its operations instead of sourcing new water. This saves around 330,000 gallons of water per day, you can read the entire report in our show notes. stocks have been on the news lately, and maybe it's because of the trade over the China but stocks in general tech usually gets to seem to get the most eyeballs and folks had just seemed to look past the US whiskey stocks. Now if you would have had the foresight years ago, instead of putting money just in the bottles, you would have put it into stocks like brown Forman and GPI. at nearly 30 times at this year's estimated earnings. These two stocks are trading at premiums to my more diversified rivals such as the NGO in GPI alone, Rose 98 rose to $98 last year from $6 and 2014. However, barons com is telling people kind of pump the brakes and hold on and don't really give the money grab yet, because there could be a bubble that's going to burst. And that happened with celebrity vodka not too long ago. Now that you have people like Bob Dylan endorsing a whiskey investors may wonder if we find ourselves backstroking in the bourbon industry, because there's now billions of dollars that have been added to adding distillery capacity and more barrels of booze, aging and all these warehouses. You can read the full article in our show notes that has quotes from our previous show guests such as Joe Beatrice of barrell bourbon, as well as Chuck Cowdery. At today's episode looks at a cultural topic, what if there was a legalized secondary market? Some may argue that we already have that there's new vintage laws that are being introduced around the country. But then you see the massive flood of online marketplaces that don't have any regulation whatsoever. It's a touchy subject, because anyone that's really into bourbon kind of seem to find their way into these corners of the web. And let's be honest, most of us has had to do some sort of buy, sell or trade to get the bottles that we desire. It's the nature of the game. And this show looks at the premise. If you could build your own legal secondary market, what would it look like? At this time, we also want to say thank you to Nate shoe who's on our podcast today, and one of our Patreon supporters for joining us with this topic. Now with that, we're going to hear from our good friend Joe over a barrel bourbon. And then you've got Fred Minnick with above the jar. 4:33 Joe from barrell craft spirits here, barrell craft spirits is more than just bourbon. We blend rye whiskey rum in our signature in a barrel project. Find out more at barrellbourbon.com. 4:45 I'm Fred Minnick. And this is above the char, what sells a bottle of whiskey. If you're listening to this podcast, you know data spent your fair share of money in the liquor store buying those sweet precious bottles of bourbon rye, scotch, Canadian whiskey, Irish whiskey, maybe a little South African whiskey. So you are not necessarily the person the distillers are trying to target. When they are asking the question, how do we sell to the French consumer? You see, you and I were more of what they would consider the base or the geeks, people who are going to buy whiskey, no matter how they market it. So they're always trying to find a way to appeal to that 25 year old freshly out of college MBA working on Wall Street, or in Boise, Idaho at a bank, they're always trying to figure out a way to target that new consumer. And one of the ways that they think they've been able to do this is by saying they are the first at doing something. If you take a look at a lot of the whiskey marketing, you'll see people say they're the first to use this grain first to use this barrel. First to have a distiller with long hair and flip flops make the whiskey Yeah, that's a joke, by the way. But you know, they're always so caught up and saying they're the first as if that new consumer will care. And the fact is, most people don't care if you are the first to do something in American whiskey. Well, we do care about does it taste good? What's the price on it? And can I find a bottle? Now that new consumer they may be interested in like doesn't mix well with coke? Is it good? And cocktails? Does it? Do I like a neat? What is bourbon can be bourbon be made outside of Kentucky? Now there's all kinds of questions that these people go through. But the whiskey distillers are going down this path of trying to own the fact that they are first at something. And I just don't think it matters, unless it's really important. Like you were the first to make whiskey on the moon. You know what I would like to know that. But if you're the first to use a certain type of grain from Guatemala, you know, maybe mention that. But don't make that your entire marketing platform. Because if you have to talk about how you were the first it's something that means you're most likely trying to compensate for the fact that your whiskies not up to snuff. And that's this week's above the char. Hey, if you have an idea for above the char hit me up on Twitter or Instagram. That's at Fred Minnick. Again. That's at Fred minute. Until next week, cheers. 7:24 Welcome back to another episode of bourbon pursuit. Ryan and Kenny here in the basement once again, having our gorgeous backdrop. But today's topic is going to be something that's interesting, I think, to everybody in general, because if you are even entering the bourbon world, which for me, I found that I still find it really crazy that you still have all these one on one discussions on like the Facebook, bourbon or groups. And it's like, if you just started drinking wild turkey last week, you're already going into Facebook forums and trying to figure out your way to learn more about it. Like, I mean, take me back to your first when you started. Ryan, were you actually sitting there trying to like, find more information on the internet after you had your first drink of bourbon? 8:12 No, no, definitely not. After Well, it was a long time ago. And I was inundated and surrounded by it but it was mostly just go into a store talking to friends about it. You know, I think Facebook and the internet is connected everyone and information is so close to your fingertips. That just makes it easier for someone to find out about things how things work and or get, you know, deeply involved in something very fast. And so it kind of takes you down the rabbit hole really quick with how much information there is out there and 8:44 different markets and whatnot. Yeah, I mean, I remember just my my entry into bourbon as well. And, you know, today, a lot of us we go and we look after, you know, how can we find the victors 10s? How do we find a ruling Lou Weller's? How do we find all these ones that are really kind of hard to get your hands on. It took me after I mean, I started I started like drinking bourbon as my regular drink. You know, when I was 21 in college, and then from there, it just didn't stop. But for people that are on the hunt, even to find Pappy Van Winkle, it took me almost four to five years out of college to even know that these even existed like I didn't even I didn't go try hunting for stuff I didn't. I wasn't looking on the top top shelves or racks. I was looking at my price bracket. 9:29 Yeah, like Elijah Craig and Maker's Mark were premium. For me. It was like those were like going on a limb and spending a you're like oh man $30 a bottle man. That's like that's breaking the bank was like it now that's like, that's just like an everyday drinker. 9:45 Yeah, of course, the old sorry. Oh, force was my go to and then every once in a while that splurge on four roses, small batch. And that was like my, that's like, 9:54 that was my my, that's like a graduation or something big celebration. You're like, oh, somebody's got Let's bring out the four roses, or, you know, Elijah Craig 17 or something not? Not the way it is now. You know? 10:06 Yeah. And because at that point, people eventually figure out, oh, they go to this forum, I want to learn more. And then they're like, Oh, what's this whole secondary thing. And then all of a sudden, people are like, Oh, I can make money off this. Oh, I didn't know that. Then winkles were really hard to find. I know, whatever was really hard to find. Now I go and find it. And I try to flip it or try to do whatever. And that's all I'm going to do in oil. It's it's created this elusive secondary market that everybody at least I'm pretty sure that if you listen, this podcast, it's not because you're drinking wild turkey last week, it's because you know, the culture and you know exactly what's what's actually happening out there. And that is really the topic of today. And this idea was brought to us by none other than Nate shoe. And Nate is a huge bourbon enthusiast. He's also a Patreon supporter of ours. So Nate, welcome to the show. 10:57 Thanks for having me, guys. 10:59 Yeah, so I kind of I want to gauge you know, your level here, like, when did you start getting into bourbon? And when did that bug really, really bite you hard? 11:09 Well, it kinda is in my blood. My grand, I came from basically cocktail culture. So my grandparents had, you know, nightly Bourbons. They've been drinking we call bourbon the family drink. So it was literally no matter how all the members of my extended family, sooner or later, you come around to bourbon, whether you start you know, like in college, or you come later on, you know, in your 30s or 40s, it becomes your drink. So, always been around it that my, my family weren't like, you know, fancy bourbon drinkers. They were, you know, my step grandfather was a heaven Hill guy. My, my grandparents were bourbon Supreme, the old one in Illinois, the one before they before the rocket stuff that they have now. You know, it's a little tassel on and everything that was there drink you know, it's unlikely one and and it just after a while, it does affect your what way I mean, like you guys, man, I was in college. It wasn't doing anything fancy when I and I'm, you know, I hate to say this, but my roommate went to UT. So he brought back the love of makers after college, and so makers was my fancy with our fancy bourbon that we would have when they weren't going to grab a handle a jack daniels for everyone. I just wanted to give shots of whiskey. Which, you know, to our mind now, it's like shots of whiskey. Talking about 12:30 a sin. Yeah, 12:31 it is a sin. So So yeah, for the longest time, it was and I still have an absolute love of makers. I'm sure you guys have like that cheaper lower end bourbon that like is just you have a special place in your heart for you go out to a bar and you're not sure what you want to get. You're like, I give me that whatever that is. It's definitely makers for me, but a couple years ago, and honestly, I can't remember what triggered it. You know, it was like you take that first step into Hey, maybe this stuff can get better. I made the time I was at spent many years trying to learn about wines, you know, which is its own rat hole, very expensive rat hole to go down into. And started going to get getting back on the just a regular daily bourbon drinking train. And I'm trying to think back of what basically that first little bridge bottle is what was that that kind of cut you over to wait a minute when we got here. 13:24 And honestly can't remember. 13:28 I can't remember. So 13:31 there was something that just I just added morning it is you just think what the hell was Megan, suppose you go back through your old receipts and figure out what that one was. But basically, once you kind of get like, it became an association of like, I know how, after drinking so much wine, and she were like, you know, there's a difference in wines in that, you know, a red wine tastes like this, but a higher end wine tastes can taste amazing. Why can't it be the same way with whiskey? So you kind of go down that track of like, and then you can figure out what do I like, you know, and so it was advantageous, then, you know, and this is goes back, you know, 1015 years, that the brands don't have the popularity and that cachet and where we're at with social media where everything is in your face, as far as get the get the fancy stuff, get the limited releases, it was just kind of like what do I like to drink became an easy, easy kind of transition into what we have now. Which is, let's just say it's a little bit crazy. 14:28 What do you think was probably the the pushing point that that started making everything a little bit crazy, you know, I I always look at it and think of I measured things by what I would call the Pappy Van Winkle index. And and that's sort of really what kind of started a whole craze of secondary market and some other things that are hard to get. I mean, what did you see is that sort of catalyst. 14:51 That's a pretty good, good one there. I mean, when it would start to show up on TV shows, and kind of the buzz This is again, probably pre social media environment winner. And now so maybe roll back to like 2010 2011 2012, 15:04 I remember seeing an episode of 15:08 Oh, shoot the Norland show on HBO don't recall the name of it this moment. But the famous chef that did a cameo on it, David Chang, I think is his name. He brings out a bottle of Pappy 15 at the end of the show, just to kind of bring everyone together, it was kind of like, hey, it was a total like a name drop thing. But it was like kind of in your face of like, hey, the fancy, you know, famous folks drink it you should do. So there's almost like a top down push of to make it a luxury brand, which for folks that have been buying it and drinking it for so many years. It's kind of like, What are you talking about? This is the stuff that I'm getting up every day, which probably makes the luxury brands consider at least these days luxury brands of bourbon to be strange for people. Other words, a really fine piece of fashion like a close, you know, there wasn't a time that you could you know, by Ferragamo shoes for like, you know, five bucks, right? That's just a fact of life. What we have here is a little bit strange, especially, I mean, you start getting at the dusty room, and you know, stuff that your grandfather bought for five bucks. And all of a sudden, we're, you know, paying 200, 300 500 bucks for it. It's like, what didn't make much sense. today. I mean, even you know, going back to stuff, you know, five years ago, you know, stuff has gone up 300 400, 500%, it's that disconnect, I think, which drives a lot of the frustration in the bourbon community specifically, you know what I mean, it's just, it's when when something was added at a price level, where you were the it's part of the price theory of price takers and price makers, back then the bourbon community with a price makers, they you know, were like 20 bucks a 5030 bucks a fit. That's just what it is, I am the We Are the buying community, we have kind of spoken. Now the situation is reversed. Now their prices takers, because the price makers are the folks with the inventory and the supply. And they can the community at large can be can want to be a price maker all they want. But no one's going to sell it to him for that it's just not going to happen. And so that kind of reversal is very jarring for people, and it makes me definitely has an understandable element of frustration, which is what you guys probably see every day. 17:25 Well, and nothing. bourbon is the like, perfect product. Because for someone to sell because it's rare. scarcity. People love scarcity. They love the awareness of it, you have things like single barrels where everything's unique. And so it kind of like, can dry and like you said, What does these they're not making any more. So it's more rare, more valuable, more collectible to people. And so it's 17:49 it just 17:51 appreciate over time, because they're not making the like they used to and then it's every barrel is unique. So it's like a unique product, and like the perfect product to sell because of that. 18:01 Absolutely. And so the you know, really we were trying to gauge on how do we start talking about what a legal secondary market would look like? If if we could actually imagine one. But let's go ahead and think about the current, the current aspect of the secondary market. And what's that? What I 18:21 ever heard of it doesn't exist? 18:25 Actually, it's probably close to the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth year after raise hands all these times. But let's talk about what what are the issues that are there today? You know, other than a it being completely legal. But what are the other issues that we see 18:43 with with the current state of state of the union of the secondary market? I guess you could say? 18:48 Well, I mean, you really, it's it kind of does begin and with the fact that like Fred said on Tuesday, alcohol is a controlled substance, there's really, for as much as possible market forces can change that, they'll always be an element of control, that's got to go to somebody, it cannot be an unfettered open market, it just can't that that's that's, you know, you got to start from that point, nothing's ever going to change that nothing should be quite honest, it deserves to be a controlled substance. But what the next step that you want to take there is do you want to have a market like by literal definition of market, which is the free flowing information of buying and selling, the way to ensure the product you're buying is what you're at what you're buying, and who you're selling it to transport get transparency, the things that you would see in the financial market, I think I've been reading up again, I liked I think it was Nick from breaking bourbon had a pretty detailed vision about what he wants a secondary market could be. But I think what it lacked was an element of truly a market because in his his vision was you could bottles could go around bottles could go in. And but as a consumer you can, only thing you could take out was bottles. But I think and I think that in itself does not make a market. Because the market involves it's not just products changing, and its products and cash basically changing hands 20:18 on his idea was that your bottles are your currency. 20:22 Right. And in that case, that doesn't mean if we were in a barter economy, sure, or pre or at least in that sub economy as a part of coming, it'd be great. But the reality is, of course, that's not going to that doesn't cut the muster. That's not going to create a true market there, I think. But the secondary 20:36 market is kind of a barter system, really, because I mean, it's gone. Yeah. Because you know, you have bottles that you're selling for, but to get the funds to buy the bottles that you want. And so it's like, it's all this made up money kind of moving around, exchanging hands just to get like, because I have access to certain bottles, somebody has access to certain that I want. And so it's just like, all this moving around trading between people, even though there's money involved, it's like, it's staying within the system, it seems like it's not, you know, going outside of it 21:11 is real element of what the market would need, I think. And again, one of some of the best analogs you can see to this is the financial world is where the market makers, the the end of the end and the role of the person that's going to bring the buyers and the sellers together. And you has to use more more financial nomenclature, who has the order book in front of them, who knows what the offers are coming in, and what the offers in for both sides. Because right now, like we talked about price takers, price makers, it's a one way street, people with a with the inventory, or just like this, the price we're done. I don't know if you guys have been on wine searcher. But I say have very fascinating graphs about offer prices. And so I looked through, you know, the typical ones, happy be tackling the rest, over a five year period. And it's fascinating as the prices don't change, there's the the movement is just not there, you'd think it would appear to be logical that wow, okay, I can't unload as a store, for example, unload this, Pappy 24 1800 bucks, well, maybe I'm kind of old for 14 or 1500, it's, you know, saying as they probably got a retailer at least close to retail, it's, they're still making a good deal of money. It just sits there. And it'll sit there for a long time. And you think if and because they have know, them, since they are their own market or making their own market, they don't care about that no one else's wants to buy or no one's a buyer at that price will just sit there, but a market maker. And given a commission of course, in this you increase the cost of price bottles in general is motivated to make the sale, you know, I'm saying and they're in the what we have now is we really don't, we had the sides are SO FAR Part of that there's no one they're motivated to make the sale, you get a market maker, he's motivated to make the sale. So and that what you know, ideally, of course, that could kind of bring the prices, the the the supply and demand more to balance, maybe get a little more movement in prices. And to actually, you know, so we so give, that would give people a little more opportunity, because of the fair and open market. If people have, you know, again, have the ability to buy it. It sounds, you know, obviously closely like an auction system, like we have at the International round, like with scotch and the rest, but you look at that you look at those prices, and the same thing there. They just the prices Don't move, they sit up, they sit there, and it's, you know, looking at it, you almost say to yourself Is this some kind of ball, setting these things, because they it's just, it's fascinating to me, that for a luxury good life, this, which it doesn't really have a clear set value, you know what I mean, for that, for reselling these bottles, they've it's like it's come into being and it's becomes an expectation for the folks that are selling it. And that become that expectation is then put goes across all of the channels to sell these bottles where the auctions personal, you know, the the, the more gray markets, or the retailers who pretty much at this point are just as much a member of the secondary market as individuals. 24:30 So you brought up a good point, I kind of want to talk about this to you know, you talked about wine searcher, there's also bought bottle Blue Bottle blue book that's out there who and you know, this is these are this is publicly accessible. It's not like some of the secondary markets where you get to know somebody that knows somebody to make sure that you can get in. It's not really that hard. It's just kind of like oh, find it click on this 24:56 actually refer a friend. Yeah, 24:57 no, it's it's funny, 25:00 like the worst kept secret in history. And it's not hard to find it however stuff like wine searching bottle Blue Book, like it's, it's publicly accessible information. Do you think this actually hurts? Or does it help a secondary market or even just the general market? 25:18 Well, value should, there should be some debate about values, they shouldn't just be hidden, you know, think basically behind the curtain. And, you know, at least, to use the auction example, like the auctioneer has the magic value behind him, and he sets it and that's just it. I mean, there should be like, you should be able to kind of challenge from a community perspective, why this bottle is worth why it is valued at this much. Right? Because the other problem we have one of the one of the other problems in this particular market is it's so thin the supply is I mean, we're talking, you know, hundreds of 10s hundreds in some cases. Well, what's up? What's up barrel? Willa, like, what 168 180? I mean, they're just, it's ridiculous. The amount of the the thinness of these markets. So how do you value that? You know, where are these values coming up with? I mean, 26:07 yeah, that's a good question. 26:09 I was just gonna say, because, typically, it's like, Where did the values begin? Because typically, it's like, double, you know, what you paid for it. And then but you have some, like, the band wrinkles, which are like 343 to four x, you know, times and it's like, well, how did those become, because they're not, they're, like, less rare than some of these other bottles. 26:28 And it and it stays, you know, it like jumps people this, this, the three to four or five, x comes up? And I would expect it for it to keep going up? In other words, if it's if it immediately jumps up to a value of that level, why does it stop? You know, it would not, it's doesn't seem logical that it would just stop. Because like, for example, Happy 23 sits at what 2600 or so, and secondary, and it just like gets up there and just stays, you know, I mean, if they're, if, if there's price it if there's people willing to pay that much for that bottle at that price? I mean, you're already so far over what is considered MSRP? Why isn't the price even higher? You know, you're likely to find someone they're going to get, why does these whatever the price movement, I mean, it was to make many, many interesting economic papers. Trying to find the price there this I've read a few just in general and like luxury goods, and doesn't really address this because bourbon such a very unique industry in the product. But it just having the transparency and market makers, apart from the legality, which is a whole nother trick bag of you know, who who's going to solve that one? Right? I mean, just to make it, you know, it. I mean, you talked about on Tuesday, I mean, just from the shipping angle of it. That's a thorny mess. And the, the 21st amendment gives you one sentence about what the states can do, which basically is everything. Otherwise, you don't have a lot of clarity there. And that's why you have the series of decisions, the try to tease out what that precisely means. And if you heard some of the dissenting opinions, and some of those decisions that especially Brian from Supreme Court was talking about on Tuesday, it's a fascinating read, because it doesn't cut across ideological or party lines. 28:17 Yeah, yeah. And another thing about pricing, kind of a few examples that amazed me some like cured oak or tornado, you know, it was $75 bottle with it with two or three years, it was like, only two to 300 bucks, you know, for those. And then like, all of a sudden, like IPOs six, and then now they're not, you know, and it's like, well, how does that how does that happen? You know, like, and then like bottles, you know, they immediately come out, and they're say double or triple x, but then somebody opens ones and drinks one the reviews bad. So it drops down, but then somebody says they like it, then it goes back up. And then it's, you know, 28:54 it's kind of crazy. There's the community aspect, I mean, the community has grown a lot larger and more recent year. And once you know, you have a cured oak or a tornado that was only around for a little bit, and then it it sort of it follows a probably a pricing structure that you see of dusty bourbon. And that is pretty equivalent, because you're never going to have it again. And if you want it, you're going to have to pay for it. And all of a sudden, people are like, Oh, this is great. And there is only what a couple thousand bottles right ever released. You know, you you think of just old granddad from the 1980s, there's probably there's probably hundreds of thousands that are released. So it's it's more scarcity and stuff like that. Sure. It's a name. That's but yeah, it is definitely good investment. That's I think that's part of the reason why people look at this. And you can't, you can't blame them for not looking at this as an investment because it actually is an investment opportunity for for many people, even people that have large collections that have a lot of bottles open, they still invest in by rare things like just rare old knickers, they'll buy rare, very old Fitzgerald's and they'll sit on him because they know, in 567 years, it's going to be worth a little bit more. And they're going to make what they had on their investment. 30:12 Was it the the economists we had from U of L on they said like, they did a research that from 2015. Like now, like if you invested in Berlin, you've seen annual gains of 200%, like, on average, and you're like, holy cow. Like, you can't get that anywhere. 30:28 Yeah, in any investment. It doesn't help that university researchers are helping fuel this. 30:33 Right. Right. Well, CNBC would talk about scotch a few times a year, about the investment and as a category of things to invest in that were, you know, not your typical securities. And it would always be the same way like, yep, it's a great investment along with, with rare wines, if stored properly, and the rest. So yes, go ahead. Okay. 30:57 Well, the other thing I kinda want to talk about was, I talked about earlier is the community aspect. And one, the one thing that's, that's very different with this, you know, we had talked about since it is a controlled substance that needs to be regulated. However, the community is a very, very good job of regulating this market. And if this were to kind of move into a, a legal ish terms, and we can kind of talk about what legal avenues there are here in a second is kind of the next segment. But what happens if you remove that community aspect where you are, you're doing this based on trust, and there is that that sort of connection, because we're all part of the forums, we can read, there's, out of the years, there's only been a handful of times where somebody has actually gotten burned. And so what happens if you remove that that community aspect from it? 31:55 Well, if you have the same level of trust in the individuals that are holding the alcohol, assessing the alcohol, then you'd have something similar. It's a matter of my, you know, trust migration from the guides is that you know, and worked with with some other organization, whatever would happen to be kind of like, it seems to work well, for especially at the UK, the auction international auctions, as people have seemed to have a healthy amount of respect for them, like they're not going to, you know, sell you counterfeits, and they take at least a little bit of, it seems to be a lot of effort to make sure that they're not accepting counterfeits to sell. Either. It's, it's one of the be one of the difficulties and bringing a grey market or black market, if you want to use a more harsh term into the light is, is the taking that trust, because obviously, that that kind of market Trust is everything, you have nothing else, there's no one else to no one else is settling, or setting rules, or anything like that you're trusting the person you're doing business with. So you know, could you be doing this, you could, in theory, be conducting the same business minus you know, a percentage going to whatever is the official are actually more than a few percentages, because you have state taxes, of course, to get in to get their cut, which in the end will mollify a good deal of states, they have their money, they'll have a lot of the complaints will kind of go away. You know, 33:26 it all always boils down to money, but with 33:30 and I'm sure you're seeing the same kind of issues. with marijuana, as you know, as the state's legalize it, there becomes a more formal market, you're moving for, again, from a black market to a to a more open market, where you're dealing with different people versus the trust that obviously folks that deal with illicit substances would do with each other. And certainly, in a case of a class, it was to or what I mean, much more seriously control substance versus vice alcohol, where trust is. So that's a beautiful, difficult, that would be a problem. Like if you were if there would be a formal step forward to do that, you know, through all 50 states is how do you migrate the trust that individuals that are buying and selling and trading bottles now can do a certainly with it, costing them more? 34:18 Right? Wouldn't you think what happened if you remove that, that sort of community aspect? You know, 34:25 I told my like family and my wife about this secondary more, and they're like, Are you insane? Like you're, you're trusting these random people on the internet to sell you are bad, and you're shipping home and hoping and then like, you're taking all the risk shipping and buy, I think that I'm amazed at how well it is regulated within the community, and now would be, I just don't know, there would be as much thoughtfulness from a regulatory as there is now currently with the Barbara community, because it is like a circle of trust and like this little aspect of in, we're not going to let any one mess with it, you know, and so 35:06 I don't know, I 35:08 kind of like the way it is, but Well, I can tell you this if you if you buy a bottle from like Christie's or something like that, an auction house and it gets lost in shipment, they might refund your money, they're probably not going to replace it with a nice equivalent bottle, but they're, they're sure shit not going to send you like a bunch of like free samples, because, you know, 35:26 they feel bad about it, right? We lost in 35:28 the mail. That's one thing that, you know, you can't you're not going to have that that sort of personal connection out of it either. 35:34 Yeah, and because we're all in this, nobody wants to get screwed. And, you know, and when things happen, you feel bad, and you empathize with that person. And so you're going to do what's right to make them you know, feel good about the whole because you are then we are all the same, you know, same bread, same people that are passionate about this. And so I feel like we would do a much better job of taking care of each other versus you know, buying from liquor stores or whatever they probably policy Yeah, your refund or whatever. But 36:04 yeah, I don't know, I think the community so much better. 36:07 So let's talk about what are some of those legal routes today? 36:13 Are you a fellow podcaster like me, the need to go and check out chartable.com, we've been using their tools over three months with amazing results. 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So you've got yourself a bottle of very, very old Fitzgerald or you got yourself a bottle of what Nate was talking about earlier, a really old bottle of bourbon supreme that probably actually isn't worth more the tassel. 38:20 Yeah, that really actually is I do have I do have that one. It's very, it's brought tears brought tears to my mother's eyes, because that was the same kind of Baba, she used to pour for my grandmother. Nice. So it was it was a memory thing. So it was really nice, but it's decent number, but I was like, All right. 38:38 So there are a few different ways that you can sort of regulate some of these things. And you know, in Kentucky, they passed the the vintage spirits law, which allows you to actually take vintage spirits. However, there's still a lot of gray areas and trying to figure out what actually is classified as vintage per se. But, you know, that's, that is one way that is a legal way to be able to sell some of your bottles, but still the unresolved, like the issues, like patties, for instance, if some still in distribution or on shelves, you're not allowed to 39:10 take part in that vintage law or whatever. So it's still kind of leave some holes or things left to be desired. 39:16 Yeah, I was about to say, and you know, Nate, you're, you're in, you're in the DC market. Correct. So that is the, I don't wanna say the Wild West. But 39:26 it's like Wilder, it's pretty 39:30 liberal, and it's like 39:30 or lost, its wilder than anybody else. Let's put it that way. And, and so the the rules that are in DC, for anybody that's kind of unaware about what you can do there. If you're a store, you can buy things on the open market, you can buy them from anybody else, and you can resell them in your stores. That's pretty, it's pretty willy nilly. And how that works. Do you think it would be in for you, Nate, would it be advantageous for other states to kind of have the these laws that allow people to sell through illegal routes, such as what DC does? Or does that hurt? 40:08 It would be useful, but good luck getting it through a control state like Virginia. I mean, it given an avenue to you know, they would have I think liquor buyers in DC kind of understand it's the Wild West, you know, if they see like, wow, this is open sale to Canada on the shelf at you know, my favorite liquor store just appeared there, right? obviously very old. Like, they know, it wasn't just they know the drill like Yep, somebody sold to them, they're going to sell it back to me like kind of understand that's the way it is. And this is a normal thing, but and you would trust them the historic and talk about trust to make sure that it's not you know, someone didn't take it dump it out, put Jim Beam minute versus you do it to the control state. This much more regulated now they have to make sure just like Kentucky the stuff like Kentucky, it's like, well, how do I know that what you're selling me this allegedly dusty Fitzgerald is actually a dusty opens zero. You know, I mean, they as a because they're they as in the control state, they have all the control, and they have all the responsibility. You know, and just just imagine the one time that they resell a bottle with something poisonous in it, you know, not that someone's like literally trying to poison but something got dumped it who knows how it could happen. It would only take one time, like, you know, front of a talk on Tuesday and only takes one really bad event. And in that kind of leads into a secondary market. Like what if we've talked we've seen the stories of folks getting, you know, getting hammered with fake counterfeit bottles, but what if it's something that's worse, you know, and then the and then the investigators follow that trail back to that community. It's over. I mean, it would take one time and it's over. So the control states are would take a very much more strict like, Oh, I gotta figure this stuff out. So you got to give me everything under the sun. You got to give me receipts, you gotta be verified that before they would take it do it versus, you know, DC being very lacks in terms of Asher, it looks like it looks like it's what it is. Go ahead and just resell it. buyer beware. 42:10 Yeah. And I guess, you know, one thing, I was kind of thinking of analogy, while you were talking about this, you know, buying and then reselling, it's, you know, you think of even Justin's House of bourbon and a lot of people that are doing this that they're essentially bourbon pawn shops. 42:23 Yeah, that's all they 42:24 really are. And it's, it's a way for them to kind of make their margins on on whatever that is they need to be able to buy, but you do bring up a really good point. How in you've got to be able to trust the store, in regards of Yeah, is this is this actually a very, very old Fitzgerald. I mean, I can just tell you, from my own personal experience, even being here in Louisville, that there is a store that I bought some stuff from and and then he was like, Hey, I got these other things in a customer sold them to me. And they were bottles of very, very old Fitzgerald. And, you know, he, he didn't really know exactly what the market price was, it's really hard for me to even figure it out for myself. But I also didn't have as much trust in the store to actually know if they are genuine or counterfeit, because they can't prove provenance. They don't know exactly how many times has traded hands. So do you see some some things like that, like as big causes per concern with with this type of law as well. 43:30 Certainly on a state by state basis, I mean, I think to an extent like the internet, the Auction House is the kind of figured out enough. And they understand how their reputation. Really, the reputation as an auction house is relies on the reputation that the items that they set for auction are what they say they are, because they understand that like, again, it only takes one or two bad ones, and then you get a bad reputation, and then even even the big auction houses can can really suffer for it. So it's just I know, it's Kentucky was trying to do a good thing there. But I'm not quite sure they thought it all the way through imitation is just I mean from this from the post that that sip and corn is put on, there's a lot of interesting stuff there and trying to figure it out. But you know, working that into some of these other state, I mean, it all just goes back to the damn 21st amendment. It's states, you got all the control, you get to figure out everything. And what we have is just a mess. And there's everything that we would think, you know, you'd be able to want to accomplish to do and it's just, you know, is it a question if we're not trying to solve the problem of? I mean, we have that the safety aspect is really big, but it's just like, I have a good, I want to sell it. Do you want to buy it? Let's make this happen. You know, give us the avenue to do that. You know, and it applies to, it applies to everything I you know, applies to all I get like the guy in the show talked about, you know, an AR 15. 45:10 He could sell it to his 45:13 cell to his buddy with no consequences. Nothing. But he could do the same thing with a bottle of jack daniels. Absolutely. It's a tough one. It's everything that we want to talk about everything we propose how we're going to get around 50 states 50 laws, 45:30 guns and liquor. 45:31 Yeah, it goes back to. And I think you brought up a good point Kenny about like, you know, having, Justin, I think if the word I have is legalized, you'd have to have a few dedicated store owners who would embrace this and make them like kind of the, because if you just go to everyday liquor stores, and people are buying and selling, like they're not going to give it as but they're not going to put as much thought into it as someone like Justin is because he comes from our community, he knows what to look for. You're not gonna have a dedicated person at each store to like, analyze and determine if these bottles are fake or real, or what are they they're not going to know. And so I can tell you, the average liquor barn employee probably won't know 46:12 exactly like that. Exactly. So I think the way it could work is having something like Justin's house and bourbon in each state or market or whatever to be that kind of go to place for the this kind of sales and the commerce side for total wine and liquor buying it by doesn't make sense for them to even enter that arena, because there's just, it's probably too much time and that they don't, they don't need to worry about. But the other thing I kind of want to talk about is, you know, we brought up auction houses a few times Nate has, and yeah, there's there's a lot of them out there. You've got Christie's there's actually quite a bit that happen. Most of them happen overseas, over in Europe. And yeah, you can you can ship your bottle to them, they'll inspect it, they'll give you a percentage of whatever it sells at auction. And this is a this is a legal route. And you can do this. There's there's nothing that stopping you from doing I think there's one maybe at a New York as well. I can't recall or there's one in California is too but 47:08 Southern beats does some too. 47:10 Yeah. And and I guess the question to you, Nate, is this helpful from a from a legal standpoint? Or does this actually is this is this bad? Maybe from a community standpoint? Because Could this be an increase in awareness, which also means increase in price for these type of items? 47:32 Well, it's very likely will be an increase in price for the things that you want to buy. That's been that the the nature of an auction, the advantage there is, obviously the tradition of auctions goes back a long, long, long, long time. So from a commerce perspective, regulators perspective, they understand that like, Oh, you want to have these things that goes to the things you want to sell goes to an auction house, and then they consider that, you know, a legal entity to move the product and make sure that it can it's not going to hands on people that it shouldn't go into. But yeah, it would definitely they auction based on their commission, commissions on the strike price, they're going to want higher prices, not that they're going to boost it artificially, but the nature of the auction, and the nature of the demand right now would mean that that wouldn't, that might solve the access problem, like you have the x, you have the ability to sell your ability to buy, but I don't think it would do anything for pricing, at least on the on the limited releases. 48:29 You don't think so? I kind of see it a little bit different, I think I think of, you know, 48:35 will say we'll say 2018 bottle of George t stag is will say, today's market at 350, 400, somewhere around there. You put this on a more visible market, something that is freely accessible to anybody to get to and it's it's publicize. It's got Facebook ads, it's got everything that is, you know, you can find through when you're scrolling through your phone and social media. And I think I think the price increases by another 15 20% because of of that right now. And somebody just commented that's a Skinner's auction is getting 23% buyers premium now. So there's there's definitely, I think, I think that would, I don't know, if it hurts values, it just increases them. For people that are trying to obtain it through those legal means as well, 49:27 well, it's just another hand and they they want their cuts. So it's going to naturally just increase because the fifth and sixth, fifth and sixth year and so 49:35 any kind of market you put in, it's going to be a 49:38 cut. It's amazing if you could count from the day is distilled this bourbon to like how many hands is exchanged to the secondary market, there's literally like from barrel brokers to distillers, to the bottling to distributors, retail stores to the it's amazing how many hands and middlemen there are this end. Mm hmm. 50:02 So the other thing that I kind of want to push over to you, Nate is, you know, what will say that it's Pandora's box, you can choose however this is going to work. If you were to have a legal secondary market. What would that what would that look like in your mind? 50:19 We talked a lot about a lot of the principles of it, how 50:24 I think for my personal opinion that the the core of it is to create a liquid market for both the products you're selling, and then the cash coming out. So that's important having a bonafide a market maker that would probably have to double as a Registered Agent to take the set bottles. So it'd be kind of a, they would probably have to have two hats. That was that is ready and willing to make a sale. Like their job is to not let that is to nudge the sellers to not sit at ridiculously high prices based on valuations just kind of pulling out of their behind. Like, no, they want, they're motivated to make a sale. And they like real estate agents, you know, like, 51:13 Yeah, exactly. Everything. 51:17 Right? I mean, it's like, and so I think gradually, that would bring a much more reasonable level more reasonable of of pricing for those bottles. And so you have the transparent you the transparency of the market, you have a motivated market maker, or set of market makers to make the sale. And the ability not only to have the individuals, you know, put bottles into sell and or facilitate trading, which it should absolutely should be a part of the set market as well. But the ability to actually get cash minus the appropriate taxes and fees, which are just going to have to be a part of it. In terms of, you know, then you have how do you solve the state? What How do you deal with the state's problem, apart from giving them their cut, based on the state year in a row is this I don't think this could be like a, you know, this market only exist in New York, you send your stuff to New York and all the transactions takes place take place in the state of New York, I don't think that would necessarily work. So I think, Well, perhaps not a federal solution, at least one that addresses all of the state's concerns. And I think having that again, that Registered Agent, who's also the market maker can do their best and do what they do to ensure that the folks don't get the wrong folks don't get those bottles, no keeps the market legitimate and keeps it legal. 52:45 I think Ryan brought up a pretty funny way to put this in regards of real estate, it could honestly be treated as such like that, you know, you've got your you've got your agents, you've got your your mortgage brokers, you've got all that these kind of people, but not necessarily that that sort of analogous to this, but you would have essentially an online listing market where people have valuations and you can buy at those particular prices. I don't know what the you know, the Zillow for bottle is Zillow, basically. But I don't I don't know like what the analogy is to there to say you default on your loan. And now you have to put your house up for auction. I don't know what the analogy is there that something would actually go to auction, let's say you just felt like, okay, we'll just see what the market will bear on something like this? 53:33 Well, I think like Nate said, it just kind of helps if you do have brokers and agents that kind of helps keep prices in line and what the true value is, versus just some abstract kind of number that we're pulling out, you know, in these markets currently. 53:49 And it's an interesting, I finished a book recently, it's kind of interesting analog here it was, it's all about the concert ticketing business. So the history of pricing and why we're paying such a normal prices that we have today. What it talks about a lot about the concert tickets, secondary market. I mean, they literally use the same word. So I'm listening this going, like, wow, this is just a lot of lessons here. What, you know, obviously, the industry is different, the products are different. But it especially when you get into the realm of Hey, some of these companies that are distilleries, are they they're public companies, right, they're not they're not the heaven hills, you know, the family run companies know, this has been Suntory, right. They're interested in shareholder value, and that the bottles of their product, have a value. And if it seemed that there is another avenue to unlock the greater value of those bottles, why would they not redirect that inventory to this other market where they can actually get that value? And that's what that's what Ticketmaster Live Nation and up to and actually Ticketmaster Live Nation, the promoters, the venues, the artists very interestingly enough for the shows go right to the secondary market. So they're getting those you know, it might have a face value for whatever that's worth of 3040 bucks, but really, the artist is getting a good chunk of the 200 300 $400 that's going for the secondary market. And the same way that again being Suntory they launch I don't know they just told I've taught my head right now that the signature 12 here, you know, they were normally the MSRP being at you know, 50 like wait a minute, we they have a Sastre you know that the value of that is actually 100 or so why the hell are someone else taken that 50 bucks as a beam Suntory shareholder Mind you, that's the you know, the avenue to take their it's like no, we have this is a very valid, we've created now this legal secondary market is a perfectly good way for them to take and unlock the value of those bottles and getting 50 bucks just as a you know, more per bottle. Wow. It's a Pandora's box here opening it. 55:54 Yeah, I was gonna say you opened up a can of worms while we're opening things up here. Because I mean, I couldn't even imagine if that were the thing that Yeah, the beams the will. It's the four roses, the the small distilleries down in Texas, whatever it is the you know, and there is there's too much red tape. There's too many laws today that that don't allow this to happen to just go straight to secondary. And and you bring up a good point of like, God, what what if that day actually came to be able to say, yeah, let's let's break down all these barriers like you, you make the product, you own the product, you figured out how to sell the product? And in the fact that it's a controlled substances is the bad part of being a? How has it has to be in regards to that you can't actually necessarily do what's best for commerce, I guess you could say sometimes, but I couldn't imagine a world that that happened. And honestly, I don't think it would be terrible if it did happen. 56:52 Well, and you kind of have some people doing that sort of art like well, it's I mean, hello. 57:00 They're pricing. But that's, that's a little bit different. Their pricing to be able to make sure that they're okay for themselves. But there's still there's still there's still a hand being traded to be able to make sure that they that, you know, they're still following the three tier system. However, yes, everybody does even doesn't matter what distiller you work for, there is somebody on the inside, that's in the groups that knows secondary values. And unlike y'all, we need to keep bumping these prices up because people aren't going to stop buying. 57:30 Well, not, but they're taking doing these prices to try and to deter, I guess it from going to secondary market. And so they're kind of doing but I mean, it's not working yet, because it's not gotten so crazy out of control. But like, for instance, you know, the Christmas, I went to Willits, and they were having 10 euros for $300, and 14 years for $450. And I'm like, well, that's way out of my way out of my price range. And, and then I just don't see anybody paying six 700 bucks for that for those types of bottles, you know, and but so I don't know, you know, they do that with that kind of help. Do what we're talking about, I guess, 58:15 I guess that's a good question. I mean, should should they should distilleries start pricing things so absurdly that it does sort of start killing this market? Little by little. 58:26 I could be I mean, look at Dave Becquerel, may he rest in peace, that was definitely his view. That's why you know, whistle pig was or the boss hogs or 500 bucks retail. And it's that that has stayed relatively consistent. They still obviously shows up in the secondary market, just good people are, you know, need to resell it's a, it's the role of the secondary market is not just for making money, it's some bits in it just to resell it like I have this good I no longer 58:52 access or anything. Exactly. 58:55 So it's in the end. I mean, there's so many things companies in the bourbon world that are private, you don't have to follow, they follow whatever rules they want saturate being the biggest among Of course, so they don't have that shareholder pressure. I'm just I think you think of the companies with the public companies and that kind of pressure from their shareholders. And it's just, you know, the, the nice things we talked about is bourbon enthusiast, and you know, the way that heaven Hill runs there, but that the family aspect, and we don't want it, we want to keep bourbon, affordable for everyone. So I'll keep prices low, it don't quite fly when it comes to public company and public shareholders have got to stand up in front and wonder, you know, why they're there. Why that X amount of dollars per every bottle sold is going to some own else, when it could be coming to the distillery. So, I mean, certainly will it it will it is like, it's actually a quite interesting example. I mean, because it wasn't just I mean, can you you guys are right there, you know how fast those prices have gone up at the gift shop itself. You know, in the past year or two, I had a guy that lives right around there. A friend of mine that I gave him some, somebody to grab me whatever they had, and it was, you know, a great 14 year bourbon, and he got it for 250 bucks for what, two years ago? And what are they going to said they were for 1514 years or so? They were for a little bit, but then they they kind of dropped down? They've been kind of all over the place. Yeah, really can't put it down. 1:00:18 But they just had a 15 year release. That was 250. So I just want to go back to the days when it's just 10 bucks. Yeah, 10 bucks a year was a nice. 1:00:28 Little, I think those days are behind us. 1:00:30 Oh, yes, they are. And I kind of want to sort of wrap this up with one final question. And that is to say that, you know, we needed mentioned, you know, we're in the media, we are bringing this to light like this is a thing. But we're not the only ones that have brought it to light. Like there's there's countless articles that are out there. There's been spirit industry shows where they have breakout sessions on sort of stuff like this, too. So nobody's unaware of this. But let's just say that the government it is sitting behind the lines right now. And they're watching everything. They're taking notes, and they're figuring out, how do they close down every secondary market outlet in one night? with how large this is gone through a community aspect? Do you think that if they were to close everything in one night, would it actually prevent a secondary market? Or would it be like, just like everything, what else would happen is like, you shut down a Facebook group, there's 12 more, they're going to spin up right behind it. 1:01:34 Well, yeah, the demands not going anywhere, certainly. And the beneficiary or should be the retailers who are charging secondary prices right now. I mean, you want the you can only do a quick check on wine searcher will tell you all you need to know about that, no matter what state you're in. So while you do, you would lose the trading aspect of the community aspect of it, demand wouldn't go away, and people want bottles, they'll just say pay the same price as they're willing to pay, you know, someone over it off. It would just go to their liquor store, go online and get a shift from New York and New York prices. It'll just happen if they want it, they'll they'll get it, you know, through another avenue in this case, you know, obviously illegal one retailer. But yeah, you would lose, you lose the community lose the trading, but you don't lose the demand. I mean, if that's the 1:02:23 demand, I might increase 1:02:24 the demand. Right? You then retailers, like wait a minute, I don't have this whole gray market or black market to deal with? I can make a deal, you know, price even higher, and there's someone that's willing to come, you know, and drop that kind of cash on it. Really, yeah. This problem has a lot of issue. The second year market has so many different angles and so many different things to you know, it means a lot to the bourbon means a lot to people I mean, it's a very personal kind of product. And and in the history of Kentu

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LLP109: Learn about the importance of therapy with Dr. Joy Harden Bradford

Play Episode Listen Later May 22, 2019 36:59

Let's Talk about Mental Health Therapy... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, who is a Licensed Psychologist, Speaker, Media Personality, and the host of the wildly popular mental health podcast, Therapy for Black Girls. This week Dr. Joy lends her expertise to help teach the Lunch and Learn Community about the importance of therapy, how to know when therapy is right for you and helps us fight off the misconceptions with therapy. We also get to talk a bit of shop with Dr. Joy about the origin and motivation for Therapy for Black Girls, some of the hurdles she faced along her way what keeps her going on to the next venture. 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: Therapy for Black Girls Directory- therapyforblackgirls.com/directory Therapy for Black Girls Shop - therapyforblackgirls.com/shop The Yellow Couch Collective (YCC) - therapyforblackgirls.com/ycc Social Links: Join the lunch and learn community - https://www.drpierresblog.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.drpierresblog.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 Introduction Dr. Berry: And welcome everybody 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 Pierre Medical Consulting, helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy here on Lunch and Learn with yours truly, Dr. Berry. And today we bring you a special guest on a special topic. For those who have been rock with me from pretty much way back when, you know that a big thing with me has always been mental health and the importance of mental health especially on the total body health wise. Because I talked, I say this all the time that, you know, I can give you all the medications I want. I can, prescribe all the regimens I can, but I understand that if I don't make sure your mental health is in order, it's not going to matter. Right? Like your blood pressure isn't going to be controlled. Your diabetes isn't going to be controlled and mentally just aren't there to want to take control of those things. Right? So I always stress mental health and of course, obviously my wife's being a therapist, makes me a little bit biased, but I truly believe that the importance of getting our mental health together is paramount and I think that's why they dedicate a whole month, especially depending on when you're listening to this episode, a whole month, a mental health awareness and just really understanding that there’s stigma, understanding that there's help and I knew I could not do this episode any justice, right? I thought bringing someone who not only specializes in mental health, but it has really taking that to the next level with the formation of an entire directory of podcasts, books, everything under the sun, kind of related to the brand in mental health. So this episode we have Dr. Joy Harden Bradford who is a licensed psychologist. She's a speaker, media personality and of course, the host of the popular mental health podcast - Therapy for Black Girls. Her work focuses on making mental health topics more relevant and accessible for black women and specializes in creating spaces for black women to have a fuller and healthier relationship with themselves along with some others. And she's been featured almost everywhere. She's been featured on the Oprah magazine, Forbes, Bustle, Black Enterprise, Teen Vogue, Refinery29, Essence magazine. She currently lives in Atlanta, Georgia now with her husband and two sons. So it's definitely a guest of honor and you know, one that I've admired for the past couple of years. So of course, when this topic came up, a mental health and we were going on and deciding like, hey, who could really, you know, bring the extra off to Lunch and Learn community. The list was very short and of course she was on top of it. Right. So again, get ready for another amazing episode here on Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. If you have not had a chance, make sure you subscribe to the podcast. Leave a 5-star review and obviously tell a friend to tell a friend that, hey, we're talking about mental health, we're talking about therapy. We're talking about getting ourselves together if you want in this new year, like the way it needs to end. Right? Thank you and have a blessed day. Episode Dr. Berry: Alright, Lunch and Learn community again you heard an amazing introduction from person who I've admired from afar and I even got a chance to admire her close. Actually a friend of my wife's and I was able to kind of sneak in from association, definitely thankful you know for to talk about such an important topic. Of course I'm biased. Mental health is one of the essential things in medicine in general that I know. You know if you’re mental healthy together, it'll matter what I do with your blood pressure, no matter what I do with your cholesterol, diabetes. If your mental health ain't there, it's always going to be a problem. And of course, my wife being mental therapist, make sure she presses that bias and make sure I'm always on my p's and q's, as we celebrate this month, mental health awareness month. I said, you know what, we had a short list of names of people we wanted to get in and get on the show and kind of talk and educate Lunch and Learn community on such an important topic. And I think everyone, again, when you're doing your wellness exams, you know, I think that should be one of the first questions which actually. And now that it's starting to become now for a lot of different reasons, but well, can talk about that later. Dr. Joy thank you for joining this episode of the Lunch and Learn. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Thank you so much for having me Dr. Berry. Dr. Berry: Dr. Joy when we talk about mental health and, and I've talked about it ad nauseum, the show in general. Because you know, I believe and is important. And again, like I said, my wife's a therapist so you know, she definitely makes sure she stresses it on me. But as an outpatient clinical physician, as an inpatient clinical physician and I see that the different ranges of what happens when it's not put together. And again, for those who are in Lunch and Learn community, again, May is mental health awareness month. I know you guys love facts, right? So of course we're going to, you kind of hit you with a lot of home facts. But again, I really want to make sure we really kind of pay attention to who that on the show, because again, this is, you know, a special person definitely in our eyes, especially when it come to the topic of mental health awareness. So Dr. Joy before we get into all that, you know, I talked a little bit about you in your bio, but could you explain to people, you know, Lunch and Learn community who you are, why you do the things that you do and why you're so amazing? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah. Well thank you for that opportunity. I always appreciate a chance to share more about what I'm good I got going on. So I am a licensed psychologist in Georgia. Most of my career has been working in college mental health, which I still have a very soft spot in my heart for because I love college students and still have a few of them in my practice. But my job full time now really is the therapy for black girls podcast as well as the therapist directory that is also housed on the therapy for black girls website. So you know, the therapy for black girls’ mission is really to make mental health topics more relevant and accessible for black women and girls. And so all of the content that we put out, all the conversations that we have with our community are centering around helping black women and girls to prioritize their mental health. And so the fact that I get to do this as like my work is like still a surprise to me because it feels like so much fun that I don't even consider it work sometimes. Dr. Berry: I love it. Again we're definitely gonna dedicate a good portion on just the therapy for black girl because I like, I'm so amazed, a mission. But I'm pretty sure when you first started, like I said, we will talk about it. Like when you first started doing probably wasn't a mission that was well traveled, pressure you will probably the first to do it. So I definitely can't wait to kind of get in to talk about specifically, you know, that therapy for black girls and just that brand and that imprint in general. When we talk about mental health awareness month guys and Lunch and Learn community, again, I know you guys love facts, right? So we're just gonna give you some unfortunate, right? And I hate these, have these facts, unfortunate facts that are out there that really kind of drive home the point why we need to have a whole month. And really, like I said, every month, like I said, for every disease that has this month, it really is a 12-month thing. But you know, you got to celebrate when you celebrate. So from a mental health standpoint, one of five adults in the US will experience some type of mental health condition in a given year, right? That's one in five, about 47 million adults face, you know, mental health illnesses on a daily basis. Right. So again, just from a numbers standpoint, this isn't something that every now and then person may fuss. A lot of people suffer from this disease process in that regards. Half of all lifetime mental health conditions begin at the age of 14 young, like 14 I think about it, think about what we were doing right at the age of 14 right? And to think that a lot of people are experiencing mental health issues even at that early age. Just so we can understand that, again, this isn't something that just affects, you know, when you get out of college and when you hit 18 or when you hit that and when you get out to houses something, you know, you're in middle school and 14 is the middle school age and you're dealing with a lot of these stresses that a moment sure you're not prepared to deal with. Suicide. We talked about suicidal out here as a 10th leading cause of death right here in the United States. And we know about 90% of those who suffer from suicide have some form of mental health illness kind of associated with it. Right? So again, this isn’t, you know, unfortunately, this isn't a one off thing, right? A lot of people suffer from mental health related issues and it really is a big problem. And in that regards, right? So Dr. Joy when we talk about like mental health and you know, the fact that yes, they do say, you know what, let's focus a whole month on it. Right? Like what does that mean for you, especially for your practice as you were kind of coming up along the ranks? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah. I think it's really important. Like you said Dr. Berry, that we continue to have this conversations not only in May, but you know, kind of all year long because when you look at those numbers, it's very likely that you, or somebody in your life has struggled with maybe a mental illness in your lives or that you will, right? And so I think a part of what happens during mental health awareness month is that we see lots of conversations about like symptoms and signs to be aware of, which I think is really important because a lot of times people, like the person who is struggling, is not the first person who recognize that something's going on. Right? A lot of times it is the people in our lives who will say, hey, something's going on. You know, she doesn't seem like herself or, you know, it seems like something's different there. And so I do think it's important for people to kind of have a general awareness of like the signs and symptoms of mental illness so that they can intervene in other people's lives or can recognize it by themselves if it comes to that. Dr. Berry: So when we talk about mental health and just making sure we're kind of recognizing and what are some of the things that kind of help kind of motivate you. Right? Especially because as a champion of mental health in the position that you're in, what have been some of the biggest motivation and say, hey guys, we need to wake up especially when we talk about people back. We need to wake up and this isn't really an issue that everyone needs to be like all hands off. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah. I think like I mentioned in the beginning, because a lot of my background has been in working on in college counseling centers, I often will be working with, you know, students when they see the first signs of this. Right. So a lot of times they're away from home. They have to be conversations with parents and other loved ones. And so I feel like that has given me a really unique vantage point about what this looks like and how it impacts so many different areas of your lives. I do think it is important to, you know, like I said, to recognize the signs and symptoms as early as you can so that you can get the help that you need. A lot of times, especially for black women, the people are, you know, kind of walking around in silence and really struggling and either don't know that they are struggling with a mental health concern or they don't want to admit it to themselves. And so, you know, especially with the work that I do for Therapy for Black Girls, that's why it's really important for me to make sure that we're having these kinds of conversations and to make sure that people know it's okay to reach out for help if you feel like you're struggling. Dr. Berry: And kind of going, you know, kind of segwaying right on that when we talk about the reaching out for help and someone kind of makes that connections, hey, you know what? I think I have a problem that I need some assistance, right? When we hear the word therapy, right? Especially in the general kind of public sort of thing. Right? What does that kind of mean? Right? Because I think when we hear therapy, I mean a lot of different things for a lot of different people. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, it does. And I don't know that it's always a positive connotation, right? Because usually I think we think about a therapist when there is a crisis, right? So you know, somebody is maybe struggling with like severe depression or they're really anxious or maybe they’re hearing things or they feel suicidal. Like I think in those situations we readily kinda think about a therapist. But I also like to encourage people to think about the fact that a therapist is not just for a crisis situation. In many cases it actually can prevent a crisis situation if you talk to a therapist before we get to the crisis. So at the first signs that you're seeing, you know something's off with your sleep or something's different with your appetite or you're not enjoying things like you used to. Whatever it just kind of feels a little different that can be a great reason to go and talk with the therapist. And therapist can also just give you great information, help you talk through things that are just good for your own personal development. So there are very few things that you couldn't just talk with a therapist about that would likely improve some area of your life. Dr. Berry: I love that. Lunch and Learn community, I hope you caught that, we’re prevention, right? We stress it a lot, right? When we talk about blood pressure, wellness, we stress prevention a lot when it comes to the medical, right? But like again, I want us to really take this show and make sure that we're understanding that our mental health is extremely important. Preventively you should be going to see a therapist before you get to that point, right? But again, before you come see Dr. Berry, right? Before you get the heart attack, hopefully I can give you some blood pressure medications, right? And before you have that mental health breakdown, hopefully, you can see your therapist and try to prevent that. So I love that drive and that goal of prevention, prevention, that even stems into the therapy work. And I know you get this all the time, right? Like what does somebody who's the common misconceptions kind of really associated negatively and maybe even positively with therapy, right? What are some of the issue that you kind of have, the hurdles that you have to kind of go over to get someone to really accept? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, that's a great question Dr. Berry. So one of the biggest ones we just talked about, which is the idea that you only see a therapist in crisis. That's one of the big ones. Another one is, well, how is talking to a therapist different than talking to my friend, right? Like, I have friends who can listen to me and of course your friends may be great and they can be helpful and supportive, but your friends are biased also, right? So they have all this history about you, they know all this stuff about you as opposed to a therapist who is a objective party who only sees you in their office. That's why you don't hang out with your therapist on the weekends and you don't go play golf with your therapist. Their whole reason that there are those boundaries around the therapeutic relationship and so that you can come into the therapist's office and say things that you likely would not tell your friends because of judgment or you know, whatever it is. So you know, in some ways it is like a conversation with your friend. But in a lot of ways, it's very different because we are not in any other area of your life. And we're also bound by confidentiality, right? So how many times have you had the experience of talking to a friend and you tell them don't tell, but then they tell your other best friend anyway, right? That's not going to happen with your therapist, you know? So that's a huge part of our ethical guidelines and a licensed to protect clients is that we don't talk about what's going on in the office with our client, unless it's to keep them safe or keep someone else. So the confidentially piece I think is also huge. Another big misconception I've heard about therapy and I think this one, is particular to like the black community is that if you're struggling with a mental illness that means that you don't have a strong enough faith relationship or you're not believing in God enough. But that does come up a lot. And you know, I'm really encouraged to see so many congregations and faith communities now bringing therapists in to talk to their congregations about how therapy is different from prayer. The whole idea that they don't have to be mutually exclusive. Like you can still talk to your pastor and pray and do all of those things and talk with a therapist. So I'm glad to see that there has been some movement of people realizing that it's not that you don't believe in God enough or that you have a weak faith relationship. Mental illness is an illness just like anything else. So you know when people get diagnosed with cancer, you don't typically hear people say like, Oh, if she would've just prayed harder, you know, she might not have gotten cancer, but you do get those kinds of things about mental illness. And so I really want people to kind of divorce themselves of that belief that mental illness has anything to do with your faith relationship. Dr. Berry: Yeah, you definitely, you touched on a lot of points there. One where I think, where your friends become that family council, right? A lot of people are placing a lot of burden and sometimes your friends don't even want that burden, right? Like you guys a piece in a lot of burden and stress when you tell your problems to your friends and family members, but they're not really even equipped to kind of deal with it. Right? And I think that's why a lot of times never tell somebody else because I can't be the only one sitting on this type of information. So I love that aspect of it. And then of course the faith. Faith is the one that always, you know, they've always gets an interesting conversation turnabout, because again, you had that kind of where I'm not even sure why it's a dichotomy where they feel like if you take care of your mental health for some reason, your faith isn't as strong. Like I'm not sure where that came from, but it's definitely there. Definitely strong. And do you find that to be more, and again, of course I'm biased because I take care of you know, black families, right? So you find out more on in black families as far as like the religion and mental health bumping heads? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, for sure. That definitely has been my experience as well as that I definitely hear them more in communities of color than I hear that, you know, like in white families. Dr. Berry: Okay. Alright. So we talked about, you know, the thing that we want people to kind of race out at a memory when we talk about therapy, like well obviously the benefits clearly outweigh, right? Like so what are some of the most common benefits that you tend to see, you know, your patients really experienced when they first start and really accept the process? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah. So a lot of that really depends on like what they're coming in for, but some of the things that you can expect or maybe better relationships with other people in your lives. But the downside though is sometimes you lose relationship that likely were very healthy for you in the first place because you learned maybe, oh yeah. But sometimes you know, you learn things like assertiveness and setting boundaries and then when you go and practice that in your life than people who you know are invested in you not having boundaries get mad with you. Right? So you may lose that relationship, but it's very likely that their relationship wasn't a healthy one or reciprocal for you anyway. So that is a caution that sometimes you learn things in therapy. Even then you go and practice it and then it results in, maybe you losing relationships or the relationships change. But that doesn't have to be a bad thing if you're coming in for something like depression or anxiety, typically working with a therapist who has specialization in those areas will result in a relief of some of those symptoms. So not that you may never be depressed again, but you will see likely a very significant decrease in those symptoms. May be a decrease in the severity. If you're having panic attacks, there are things that your therapist can teach you about how to manage those panic attacks or helping you to recognize your triggers so that you don't experience the panic attacks as frequently. And you know, just lots of different things. And like I said, it really kind of depends on what you're coming in for. Dr. Berry: Perfect. I love it. And we kind of already talked about like when you should see him. In your eyes, you feel like the sooner the better, right? If we had to surmise it? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I don't think that there's any, because we're human, right? We're not perfect. There's always something going on in our lives that we would likely benefit from talking to an objective party about. And so, you know, talking with a therapist just about work stress or like how you know, now I am the supervisor and how do I manage people who work under me in a way that feels fair. And there are lots of different reasons why you can talk with the therapist. But definitely if you notice anything going on like changes in your behavior, the sooner the better to talk with a therapist is a great idea. Dr. Berry: So let's see, I come to a decision where at like I recognized, you know, something's going on. I'm not necessarily equipped to kinda handle it, right? How do look for therapist and what should I look for? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: That's another great question and I think a lot of people get kind of stumped here because I think there are a lot of options. It isn't necessarily like your PCP, right? Like, you know, most primary care doctors like treat the same kinds of things and so as long as you probably liked their bedtime manner and it may be relatively close to your home or at work, then it's probably fine, right? But your therapist is a different kind of a relationship and so more than like your PCP, you really want to make sure that you actually kind liked this person because you're likely going to be sharing some very intimate information with them. I mean, you know they're going to kind of be getting all in your business and asking you all kinds of questions that you likely have not been asked before. Do you do want to try to find somebody that you know, that you think you would feel comfortable talking to? I also think it's really important that you find a therapist who has specialization in the thing that you are coming in for. So you may find, so there are lots of different directories. You know, like I mentioned, I have a directory on my website that is primarily targeted to black women and girls who are looking for a therapist. There are tons of different ones. Psychology today, open path, collective good therapy. Like there are lots of different directories and so you do want to make sure that you find somebody, like I said, who has a specialization in which you're looking for. So you may find somebody who looks like they're, you know, maybe really friendly or you've heard him on a podcast like this and it's like, okay, I think I might enjoy talking with them. But then you realize they don't actually have a specialization in what you need and that's likely not going to be a really good turnout for you because wow, most therapists are trained in kind of general kinds of things and some of us do additional specializations and different trainings and certifications in certain areas. And so you want to try to find the therapists who, one, you would feel comfortable talking with, but also has a good expertise in the thing that's bringing you into therapy. Dr. Berry: I love it. And I think that's very important, especially when we talk about it, and especially if you're hearing some of the health insurances, you know, your piece chosen for you, the option of choosing and kind of like, well this person's the one we're going to make you go to. And some people just kind of accept it and understanding that you need to have a great, and I'm even, I'm good relationships. Some, you know, sometimes a great relationship before you embark on such a journey, which, and, and I always talk about, especially when we talk about mental health, is that it's really is a journey, right? There isn't really a point A to point B. Like, all right, let me get off here in and I'm good to go. A lot of times we did something that you have to kind of continuously work on, continuously improve, continuously get better, and if you fall off, alright, I know what I need to do. So I definitely am excited by some of those points because you know, really trusting a person is extremely, extremely beneficial, especially if you're gonna tell them, you know, the things that you know, cause you hurt the things that cause you pain and everything else. That as a primary care physician, I unfortunately, I guess fortunately, unfortunately, you know, I had patients who trusted me enough to at least get to that point. But even me, I'm be like, Hey, yeah, you know what, I think you might need to actually see a therapist. And not that I don't emphasize with what you going through, but I can't really give you that advice and I think you're gonna need in my 15 to 20 minute session. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Right and you mentioned about health insurance, Dr. Berry in Africa to mention that. So if you think that you're going to want to use your health insurance to see a therapist, you can probably save yourself a lot of time and frustration by getting a list of therapists who are covered by your insurance plan from your insurance company. Because sometimes, you know, clients will find a therapist that they really enjoy. They think, you know, they have a great specialization and only to realize that they don't actually accept their insurance which can be really frustrating. So getting a list from your insurance company to kind of start that search may be a really good idea as well. Dr. Berry: Perfect. Again thanks for, you know, kind of really guiding us through a process. And I don't think a lot of people unfortunately experienced, especially because we said the numbers, a lot of people probably should experience it. And you know, whether they're being stopped off and saying like, Hey, let me just go to my pieces of pizza on my piece of me, my problems in a kind of go and they don't get referred up like I feel like they should. And more often. So again, thank you for walking us through that process of, you know, what is therapy? It's a bad things, good things. And then most importantly, like, how do I look for a good one? So now that we say way, so how we look for good one, right? We, let's, we gotta talk about therapy for black girls and then let me just kind of get my soapbox. I think I discovered you a few years ago and I was so infatuated, so interested, right? Because I was like, oh, this is a person who recognizes such a need and it is a need. Right? And sometimes that scares people away because they feel like, oh, if I only focused on population, right? Then what about the others? And I always say, especially in a business standpoint, right? If you are trying to, you know, serve everybody, you're not serving anybody. So when we talk about therapy for black girls and just that motivation behind it, what made you realize, I say, you know what? Like this is it, right? These are the people who like, I need to go like 150% for. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah. So I feel like it really was just an extension of what I was already doing anyway. So therapy for black girls started as a blog and I started it in 2014 after watching the black girls rock awards show on VT. (I like that show too.) Right. Exactly. And it was just such a [inaudible] yes, right, exactly. And then you could just feel the energy you've been through the TV screen. And so I was like, oh, is there a way I could create something like this that gave people the same kind of energy around mental health? So it started as a blog with me just kind of like blogging about topic that I thought would be interesting to black women and girls. So like I started with a blog about how to find a therapist and what is your support system look like? Like just those kinds of like general mental health kinds of things. But it really, like I say, it is an extension of what I was already doing because every time I worked at a different college counseling center, I would always be doing outreaches and groups with the black women on campus. So a lot of my career has also been working on predominantly white campuses. And so I noticed that, you know, the black students weren't necessarily coming into the counseling center at the same rates as their peers. And so I would go out to the multicultural student center or to the sororities or whatever and say, hey, let's do these groups. Like let me see what's going on with y'all. How can we kind of make sure that we are kind of in contact that you know, the resources are here and where to reach out to if you need some help. (I love that.) So yeah, so I mean, so I was already kind of doing therapy for black girls before therapy for black girls ever became a thing. And really the blog just kind of, you know, gave me a way to kind of talk to black women and girls who were beyond my campus. So it started as a blog when now includes, like I said, the therapist directory that has over 1300 therapists in it as well as a weekly podcast that comes out every Wednesday that has topics about all kinds of things relevant to black women and girls. Dr. Berry: Now when you first started with, are there any particular challenges like focusing on getting, you know, black women and focusing on talking about health? The reason why I ask that because I know as, as an outpatient physician and even inpatient physician, I know I see the difference in a person's eyes right when I walk in and they're also black really like this. I see like they just kind of light up. They opened. Like it was almost like a visually open up and like they're just more relaxed. (Yeah.) Doing it. But I know that's in the medical world. Right. And I always feel like when it comes to talking about mental health is a little bit of barrier. Did you find that a little bit easier because you are a black woman and going to black women and saying, hey, this is important too? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, I got nothing but excitement from black women. When I would tell them about the blog, like I would give like, Oh yes, that's needed. You know, that kind of thing. So, but I know the feeling that you're talking about because I think what that is is really a feeling of I'm going to be seen and heard by this person. Right? Like even though you know, blackness is not monolithic, right? Like you as a black man, even Maria is a black woman is different from me as a black woman. You know, like we all have different experiences. But I think that there is a sense of there not being some things that I won't have to understand. There are some things that you're just going to get because of our shared cultural language. And so I think that lighting up that you see in that, you know, maybe relaxing and I'm not as tense is because they feel like okay I won't have to do some of that explaining that I might have to do if this was not a black provider. But yeah, like overall I think people have just been really excited and supportive about therapy for black girls, which is, you know, why it has kind of taken off in the way that it has. Dr. Berry: And when we say that it has, because you say you started out as a blog and you know you're even writing like, hey like this is how you should find one. What kind of push you to say like, oh you know what like maybe I should have my own, you know, like location cause they're already coming to me to read about therapy and mental health topics. Like maybe I shouldn't have this like directory. Like what was the motivation because I think that's even a different step where you always kind of business minded or was it just like made me like this would be a place that people can come to and maybe they can find someone that's local in their area? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: You know Dr. Berry I wish I can say that I was really business minded but so much of it is, has really just been about me paying attention to my audience and having the kinds of conversations with black women that I was always having. You know? So the directory's started because I kept seeing people on social media, primarily Twitter because that's where I spend a lot of time saying like, Hey, I love to find a black therapist. Does anybody have a recommendation for a black woman therapist? And I kept seeing those conversations and I was like, well surely there has to be a way for us to kind of put something like this together, right? So I just kind of put a call out on social media and said, hey, if you're a black woman who's had a great experience with a therapist, nominate them and I will kind of compile all the information and that way other black women may be able to find therapists who other black women have had good experiences with. And so that was in December of 2016 it really just started as a Google document. I think by the end of that year I had like 90 therapists in the directory. And like I said, now there are over 1300. Dr. Berry: Wow and the reason why I love that it's cause I think a lot of times, especially in the general public, I don't think people realize like how many professionals are out there that can cater to our needs. When you put it all in one area like oh my God, isn't it? Like I'm pretty sure that like that probably drew some people back. We were like, oh okay. I didn't know. Okay. All right. All right. I didn't know we were out here. And it's crazy because I think mental health is one of those things that gets talked about but for some reason doesn't get talked about. And in like that same hand and when you see like, oh I can go to one area and you know to search five. For example, let's walk us through like if we were on your site right now, right? I want it to find someone and like say like it is, this is a process that easy. Like it might just click and click and then boom, something like that. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, I mean in some ways that is easy. In some ways it's not. So you know, like I said, the process of finding a therapist is probably going to be a little more involved than like finding a primary care doctor because you do want to find somebody who has a specialization in whatever you need. But if you were on the website and you wanted to search by your area code in your insurance, you could just type in your area code and then filter by insurance and then the therapist who are in your area who accepts that insurance would pop up. And then that at least makes it a little smaller for you to kind of go through those profiles and say, okay, this person feels like they might be a good fit, this person not so much. And then you can kind of narrow down your list like that. Dr. Berry: Yeah, I love it. So again, Lunch and Learn community I hope you hear that. So it's not, again, I know always like uplift like rocket science, but it's not rocket science. Right. You should be able, if you're lucky, right. If you're lucky, you should be able to find someone in your area who can help service their needs. Because again, remember this is Mental Awareness Month, right? We're putting it out on front street that everyone, even if you don't think you got a problem. But you may say like, oh, I could benefit. Like there's possibility that you could possibly benefit. Like I said, prevention is key even when it comes to mental health. And then you're like I said, from that you kind of springboard and I have a podcast as well, again, kind of champion that the call of mental health especially in black women and girls. So again, absolutely love everything that you're doing. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Thank you. I do want to go back to one of your points. I don't want us to make it seem as if like therapists are like plentiful and like anybody can see them. Right? Because the truth of it is that there are still a lot of barriers that might make it difficult for people to get in with therapists. You know? So sometimes, you know, like I said, sometimes you will find therapists who are not like accepted on your insurance plan. I mean, that can be for lots of different reasons. You know, sometimes finances make it difficult to see a therapist. Unfortunately, you know, kind of across the nation, lots of like community mental health agencies have other clues or are so overrun with people wanting the services that they are like at a wait list. So there are still lots of reasons why it may be difficult for people to get in to see a therapist if they want to. But my hope is that the directory makes it a little easier for people to kind of get connected with a therapist who they might want to see. Dr. Berry: I love it. I definitely agree because like I said it's there, especially because I'm thinking look like, and I'm fortunate, I'm in South Florida, right? So I'm almost sure like I'm gonna find somebody in south Florida who does. Right. But imagine if you're in the town, you're in a state, you know that that isn't plentiful. So it can be very daunting just to even look to see like, hey, like I need to find someone. But again, hopefully we can kind of channel people to at least start with your directory cause you gotta start somewhere, right? Like you've got somewhere you got to look somewhere, you've gotta be able to make that first step and says, yes I have an issue and I want someone to help take care of it. (Right.) So you know, kind of piggybacking off the therapy, directory, the podcast. Remember Lunch and Learn community, all of these things will be in the show notes. So you'll have, you'll get direct links to all of this. Is there any other services that you offer or is that really the main two things right now? Or like are you doing any books and courses and in speaking of like where can people find you and talk to you, listen to you and everything from that standpoint? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, so those are the main two things. But I do have other things going on. So my clinical specialty, I do still have a small practice. It's helping women to recover from breakups and so out of that work, I've also developed a workbook for people who are struggling with breakups. It's called questions that need answers. After the breakup though I also have that workbook available. I also developed an affirmation, like a guided affirmation track, which I love. So it's kind of like an affirmation set to music and it's particularly for women who feel like their life doesn't look like what they thought it would look like right now. Like all these questions about like why am I not partnered, why don't I have kids and I don't want to have the job that I thought I would love. That affirmation track is specifically for them and I'm working on a second one too that'll be released soon. But I also have something called the yellow couch collective. So you know, we have a large social media communities around in like the podcast and all of the work that we do. And I really wanted a place that was like a smaller, more intimate group for people to really take the concepts from the podcast and take it to the next level. So that group is called the yellow couch collective. It is a membership program for people who listened to the podcast and really want to do some work surrounding the topics that we're talking about. So all of that you can find on thetherapyforblackgirls.com website. But those are the other things that I have going on as well, the speaking. So I do have typically have at least one or two speaking gigs every month related to like mental health and black women. Dr. Berry: I love it. Again Lunch and Learn community like I told you in the intro, this is an amazing person, for a few years I've been lucky enough I've been able to piggy back the friendship by association acts and my wife's a friend of hers, so like right in there. So before we let you go and we talked about, so we know thetherapyforblackgirls.com the website, again links will all be in the show notes. Is that like the main way like people contact you and you said you were on Twitter a lot too. What's your social media handles on there? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, so my personal social media handles across the board or @hellodrjoy, H E L L O D R J O Y and then you could find the therapy for black girls handles their therapy for black girls on both Instagram and Facebook its @therapy4bgirls (the number four b girls) on Twitter. Dr. Berry: I love it. And before I let you go, last question, how can what you do or how does what you do help empower the women to take really better control of their mental health? Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Yeah, I think that a large part of what we do is giving women the language they need to kind of describe what's going on with them and to help critically think through things that they meet once a better in their lives. Dr. Berry: Absolutely amazing. Amazing podcast. Of course, you know, no surprises because Dr. Joy have your own show, so no surprise that was amazing podcast. Again, thanks you for taking the time to really get our Lunch and Learn community together when it comes to mental health and when it comes to the awareness and just kind of recognizing like, hey, you guys should be seeing this therapist sooner rather than later. So again, thanks for everything you're doing. Dr. Joy Harden Bradford: Thank you, Dr. Berry. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

Yes, brown people can get skin cancer too with Dr. Candrice Heath

Craig Peterson's Tech Talk

Play Episode Listen Later May 15, 2019 50:12

Lets Talk about skin cancer... On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Candrice Heath. Dr. Heath is a board-certified dermatologist and actually comes tripled boarded in Pediatrics, Dermatology and Pediatric Dermatology. She is a nationally recognized best selling author, and speaker and this week she lends her expertise to the Lunch and Learn Community for National Skin Cancer Awareness Month. Dr. Candrice gives us the ABCDs of skin cancer, teaches us what to expect when we go see the dermatologist and helps me try to break down some of the misconceptions associated with skin cancer and people of color. Dr. Candrice also lets us in on some exciting upcoming news about her company My Sister’s Beauty. 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: Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/drcandriceheath/ Instagram – https://www.instagram/drcandriceheath Dr. Candrice’s Clinical Pearls - www.drcandriceheath/clinicalpearls Skin Care Line – www.mysistersbeauty.com Social Links: Join the lunch and learn community - https://www.drpierresblog.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.drpierresblog.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 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 and as well as Pierre Medical Consulting. Helping you empower yourself for better health with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. This week we bring you an episode with Dr. Candrice Heath, who is an amazing person and most importantly is going to be talking to us about skin cancer. And you know, just to kind of caveat before we get into her bio and how amazing this person is. For those who may be listening, especially Lunch and Learn community. I've kind of referenced this before on a previous episode where we talked about skin cancer. I felt like this time I wanted to bring an expert and kind of get their expert opinion on to disorder, right? And if you want to know why this topic is so important, we're actually in skin cancer awareness month and when we talk about the number of cases of skin cancer that occur per year, it outnumbers the number of cases of lung cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer combined, right? So it's an extremely important topic that I think a lot of times doesn't really get the fan fair especially because a lot of times when we think about dermatology tend to think about the aesthetic aspect of dermatology. But we really don't think about the fact that they are really in high demand when it comes to pathology and disease process and education, which is why I felt, you know what, let me bring this amazing guest here. And again. I just want to kind of read her bio just so you guys can understand, how important and how specialized this person is, Dr. Heath. She is a highly respected dermatologist. She's board-certified in Dermatology, Pediatrics and Pediatric Dermatology. And ladies and gentlemen, I mean she is triple certified in her specialty, right? Just so you can guys can get an idea of how amazing, especially she is. She got her undergrad degree at Wake Forest University. Her medical degree at the University of Virginia and her pediatric training at Emory. And then she ended up getting her dermatology training at Mount Sinai Beth Israel in New York City. She was elected to achieve dermatology resident during her final year of training and she went on to serve a role at John Hopkins University, Department of Dermatology. And as well as a pediatric dermatology fellow as well as a dermatology instructor. If you didn't get that right, just understand that this is definitely a very highly specialized person that we're bringing onto the podcast, really to educate the Lunch and Learn community. And most importantly, and this is what I love. She’s the founder of My Sister's Beauty, the official skincare line of the woman of color and founder of a vibrant online community associated with skincare and beauty tips for women of color. So amazing person, Dr. Candrice Heath. Again, she is a personal friend of mine as well. And she has blessed us with the opportunity to talk to us today just about skin cancer. And really, you know, what we should be thinking about when it comes to skin health, right? Because I think when we talk about empowering ourselves for better health, right? We got to understand that the whole body has to be working in unison, right? And I think a lot of times we forget about the skin. Again, I talked about the numbers, more cancer cases worldwide and the majority of these cancers put together. So you know, ladies and gentlemen, get ready an amazing episode. Again, I have Dr. Candrice Heath and we're going to be talking about skin cancer and skin cancer awareness. If you have not had a chance, remember, subscribe to the podcast, leave me a five-star review. And you know, when we leave the links for Dr. Candrice, go ahead and follow her and let her know how she did an amazing job this week. Episode Dr. Berry: All right, Lunch and Learn community. Again, thank you for joining us for another amazing episode. Again, this month being, you know, skin cancer awareness month. I was thinking long and hard and I said, you know, who can I get to really educate you to get us on far, to get us, get those bad thoughts that really shouldn't be in our mindset when we talk about skin cancer but really educated us and you know, kind of go through a lot of the fluff that I know that's out there. So of course if you listened to the bio, you know, we have Dr. Candrice here who is an amazing person in general. This is just an amazing person, an amazing physician. And I was just glad that, you know, she was able to give us some time to talk to us today, Dr. Candrice thank you. Dr. Candrice: Oh, thank you so much for having me today, Dr. Berry. Dr. Berry: We did a little bit of your bio in the introduction, but you know, for people who may not know you and you know, this is their kind of first entry into your world. Who is our Dr. Candrice? How are you going to get us together today? Especially when we talk about this discussion of skin cancer that even when I was doing like, you know, the little research that I did on skin cancer, I didn't realize how serious it was. Still the people a little bit about you that, you know, they may not have gotten from your bio, but you know, they will get, just have to listen to this episode today. Dr. Candrice: So I guess, I mean there are lots of things out there about Dr. Candrice, but what people really want to know or need to know is that I truly love being a dermatologist. I've learned on my journey that not a lot of people can say that they're passionate about what they do. They love it. But I truly love being a dermatologist and I enjoy all aspects of that from the education to what happens in the exam room, with the patients. And I realize that not only am I providing a diagnosis, treatment education but that I am actually impacting how someone feels about themselves. And that is a huge win for me. Dr. Berry: I love it. I love that. And of course, especially for Lunch and Learn community who may not realize, like when we talk about medical specialties, dermatology is one of those upper echelon specialties that if you're able to get through the rigors of medical school and conquer and do what you need to do, right? Like you can attain it, right? So again, this isn't a specialty that people just kind of walk into. Like they really have to put some work in. And again, I know Dr. Candrice as a person. I know her, I noticed she's an amazing person. I do want to really illuminate the fact that we got really a special person to talk to us today about skin cancer, right? Which again is, first of all from the numbers. Just from a sheer numbers standpoint, it was common cancer in the world, right? Boom. Like if that alone doesn't get your ears up and ready to educate yourself on this topic, I'm not sure what is. But Dr. Candice again, I’m an internist. I'm a hospital physician and you know, they've kind of heard the back story of how I got into there. What made you fall in love with dermatology? Like what was the path that kind of led you here to be able to grace us today? Dr. Candrice: Growing up, my older sister has something called nevus of Ota and it's actually a green birthmark that covers one side of her face. And so not only did we spend time going to our regular checkups with our pediatrician. We also would yearly visit our dermatologist in our local town. And I can still recall how excited and with anticipation. We would anticipate these visits because we would hope that they would have something to share that could take this birthmark away. And year after year, appointment after appointment, we were met with disappointment because there were, the technology hadn't really caught up so people with skin of color were not able to use the laser devices that were coming out to take away things on the skin such as my sister's birthmark without leaving significant scarring. But despite the answer being, "no, not yet," there's no solution yet, the dermatologist would take time to address my sister's self-esteem. And those few minutes actually really made the difference to me. And I said, wow, you know, dermatology, that is true, this is a different kind of doctor’s experience. So I could definitely experience what it was like to have a family member that had an ailment on the skin that everyone can see. So it's not like diabetes or having a heart problem where people may not be able to tell from your exterior that you're having issues inside of your body. But to be able to walk around with something that the general public can see. Man, that is an experience. Okay. So I took those observations and thoughts and also that experience that we had in the exam room. And then that's when I became interested in this whole dermatology, this skin disease. So if you can imagine, you know, 10-year old walking around and saying, hey, I want to be a dermatologist. That was me. I did not know about the uphill battle that we're following at it, know about how challenging it would become. And yes, I did set that goal based on my personal experience and I persevered to cross the finish line, but it wasn't easy. So people have to continue to follow me as I share more about that story. The great news is that yes, I am a dermatologist today and I'm so grateful for that so that I can live in my passion. But it was definitely a journey of perseverance to get here. Dr. Berry: I think that's telling because I think a lot of times when I think the common person, kinda hears about dermatology. I think they get kind of skewed, right? Because, they kind of think of more of the aesthetic, the Botox, that type of feel not realizing like no, there’s a lot more things that you know, it's scary. Right? You know, it can be disheartening especially from a self-esteem standpoint. So the pathology alone, right? Like and when we were talking about mythology, we talk about like disease courses, right? The amount of diseases that either originates from the, that show up on the skin is so vast. Again, I'm always impressed that you know, by my dermatologist because I know how much work, when did they put to get there as well as how much work they got to do while they there. Right? Like it's not a nine to five, you just chilling your junior year injecting people and then you're kind of keeping them, you know, a beautiful and healthy whole day. Right? There's a lot of clinical diagnostic procedures and treatment and discussions that go on a day to day basis. Right. Which is why I'm definitely such a fan of the field in general. Not so much offended. I wanted to be a dermatologist but enough that I can appreciate it from the outside. Dr. Candrice: And I definitely, thank you so much for highlighting that I think our other physician colleagues understand the scope of what we do. Yes. I do have colleagues who only do aesthetics, the only botox and fillers and things like that, but there is a large breadth of things that we do under the dermatology umbrella and I'm happy that our physician colleagues are excited that we can actually help them with their patients. Now the general public may just see us as, you know, a skin doctor or pimple popper or something like that, but in actuality, on a day to day basis, I am taking care of people who have severe disease and like brought up Dr. Berry as a dermatologist. It's amazing. I can go into the exam room, I can look at someone's skin and I can say, hmm, I wonder if this patient has diabetes. I wonder if this patient has thyroid disease. I know this patient has an autoimmune disease. And so it's amazing because, you know, the medical students are thinking, how would you know all of this stuff? My mind is trained to look at the skin, look at the hair, look at the nails, and come up with conclusions based on the patterns of recognition that I've seen over the years. So it is amazing. And yes, we do more than just acne and dry skin. We do lots of things and we take care of patients who have a serious disease. Dr. Berry: That was interesting. I know, and I know we're definitely gonna talk about it, you know, a little bit late on this show is the fact that you were introduced to the field very early. Cause I'm being honest, right? Like I've never been to a dermatologist, right? Like I'm 35 years old. No, don't hate me. Don't hit me. Right? I know, I know. I'm bad. I know. Trust me. You know, doctors make the worst patients, right? But I've always felt like, well, what am I going to do it here? This my skin looks okay. Right? So, I'm actually very happy that, you know, you guys were very introduced very early because I think a lot of times we hear, well, you know, let's say, skin color, you know, your dark skin, it is really nothing after you to do, there isn't nothing that he can tell you. I read the books, right? A lot of times when I'm reading books and I'm trying to get the description and I'm like, well what does this look like on a black person? Right? What does it look like on me? I don't know what this rash would look like on myself. Right? So I always kind of struggle with that. And again, we're definitely gonna talk about that later on. But I'm definitely kind of happy that, you know, you got introduced very early. Dr. Candrice: Yes, it is. It definitely has been a passion for a long time and yes, we do need more educational resources that highlight people with skin of color who had these specific things that we're trying to educate our colleagues about and the general public about. Dr. Berry: So with, with me, right, obviously we're recording this right? This is a skin cancer awareness month. I'll kind of all wrapped into one when we talk about skin cancer awareness. Like why for one. Right. Because this is the question I always get when we have these like health-related month. I like why does it stay made a whole month? Right? So like that I, I post you, right? Like why does skin cancer really need a whole month for us to be aware of? And what kind of says, you know what, I need to take this mantle and make sure I'm educating everyone about like skin cancer. Not to say that all your packages are nothing but skin cancer. I, but why is this like particular subjects such an important, I think for everyone to kind of know about it. Dr. Candrice: Skin cancer awareness month is a very important topic and yes, it should span the entire month of May and as a dermatologist, every day is skin cancer. Well you know, I could be a little biased. I mean, the thing is we all have skin and so sometimes we have been ingrained with these things that say, Oh, if you have brown skin, you don't have to worry about, you know, getting skin cancer. You don't have to worry about these things. So you just kind of tune it out. But I hope that every year when the month of May rolls around that people, regardless of their skin tone, learn something new about something that can potentially affect them, which is skin cancer. So it's all about educating, educating, educating. And if we only get 30 days out of the month to do that, or 31 days out of the month and do that, I say, let's go forward. We all have skin and we can all be infected regardless of skin tone. Dr. Berry: When we talk about just like the sheer numbers, right? I kind of alluded to it being the most common type of cancer in general, which is funny, right? Because me being an internist, I hear a lot about long, right? I hear a lot about the prostate, right? I hear a lot about breasts, I hear a lot about those things, but then when I'm looking at the numbers and they're like, whoa, those skin cancers, like I was pulling it out of water. Like I think that was more shocking to me. Obviously, you're in the field so we're probably not gonna be a shocking you. But like I thought that kinda hit me. I was like, oh I have this many people like dealt with like skin cancer. What are some of like the numbers, the stats, you know, Lunch and Learn community loves numbers from a statistic standpoint. Like, like how many people like are dealing with cancer and especially on a worldwide basis. The United States, you know, black folks, some women. Like what are some of the numbers that you kind of run across? Dr. Candrice: So I'm really, the numbers are usually broken down into the number of cases of melanoma that are diagnosed every year, which is a specific type of skin cancer than the most deadly type of skin cancer. There is the other group which is non-melanoma skin cancers. And often non-melanoma skin cancers, you're going to probably get about 5.4 million cases that had been treated in an average year. So that is a lot of cases of cancer. And then if you dive deeper into the statistics, you will find that one in five Americans by the time that their age 70 they're going to develop skin cancer that's taking all comers, all ages, all races of people putting them in the pot and you're coming up with the one in five Americans. So yes, it is definitely way more common than you think. And even when we really dissect out to the most deadly type of skin cancer, which is melanoma, it is predicted that there will be an increase in the year 2019 unfortunately by almost 7.7% so this is something that is not going away and it is definitely increasing. So we have to be on the lookout for it. The prediction of the number of cases for 2019 is over 190,000 cases are predicted to be diagnosed this year. So we definitely enough to be on the lookout for this. Dr. Berry: And what's interesting especially, and I am not sure if it's because it doesn't get the fanfare right? Like again I know we talked about breasts, we were talking about lung and just for Lunch and Learn community just from a number of sake, you know she was talking in the millions, right? When we talk about cases I'm like lung cancer, breast cancer, those are like in the 150 to 200 thousand. Just to give you an idea from a sheer numbers standpoint. How much more common it is right to have skin cancer than it is the other cancers, right? Not to say that no one is better than the other, but just when we talk about media and we talk about the influence of it, but then we had Dr. Amber Robins talked about the influence of media on our health care. This is one of the things that we see, right? Like we, we see like this is an issue that probably should get like more than a month if this many people, right. Ideally, with a skin cancer wet, you know, we got a month so we're gonna focus on and kind of do it here. And you talked about the different types of skin cancer, right? Like especially in your training when you're dealing with the melanoma and again, melanoma, we, you know, I know as an internist, you know, that's a bad word for us, right? We were as the one that's kind of scary for us as one, we tend to see exhibit an in a lot of different functions and especially when we're talking about when it starts spreading everywhere. When you're talking about melanoma versus the non-melanomas type skin cancers, right. And you just kind of start breaking those down. What is it that people should be doing? Right? Like again, what should I do? Should I start like scan to my skin now? Because now I'm getting kind of scared, right? All these people are against cancer, I'm getting kind of scared. I need to be worried about it. Dr. Candrice: Well definitely really the first step is to educate yourself. So you landed in the right spot. So we talked about melanoma being the most aggressive, a type of skin cancer. And then there are also those types which include Basal Cell Carcinoma, Squamous Cell Carcinoma, and even a rare to very rare type that we don't talk about that often called Merkel Cell Carcinoma. So there are various types. And the best thing that you can do is to definitely see a dermatologist once a year to get a head-to-toe, a skin check. But then right in your home you can actually go ahead, advocate for yourself, taking a mirror and looking at your own skin. The first step is to really get to know what is living on your skin already. You know, time and time again, I may ask a patient, how long has this been there? And they, so I don't know. I haven't seen my back in two years. That’s unacceptable. I want you to get to know what is on your skin regularly. That way you can be a better, this hectic just in case something changes or comes up, you can say hey you can go to your primary care doctor and say look I need a referral to a dermatologist because this is changing. This was not there before I'm concerned. Dr. Berry: Okay, get in tune with what your skin is so you know what their baseline is and you do recommend just like once a year? Like I said clearly I'm overdue. Right? So you're just saying just like you're doing your regular annual checkup, you should be seeing your skin screening as well? Dr. Candrice: Yes, I do recommend that people get skin checks and definitely you know if you had lesions on the skin, moles, etc. They should be checked. And people with skin of color, of course, we have to be very very careful because skin cancer can happen on areas of the body that you may not expect. So for people with skin of color that means anyone with non-Caucasian skin, non-white skin, the risk of your skin cancers are going to be higher. When we were talking about melanoma on the soles of the feet, the palms of the hand inside of the mouth. So those are areas that people may not even think about that can be effect by skin cancer. And yet that's where we find the most deadly type of skin cancer in people of color. Dr. Berry: Are we've already dealing with more aggressive types of skin cancer or is it our lack of, you know, just being aware and following up on the skin cancer? Like what would you, if you had to lean one way or the other? Dr. Candrice: The number one thing for skin cancer and people with skin of color is late detection and delayed diagnosis. The patient doesn't believe that they can ever have skin cancer, so that may delay treatment. Also, there are some primary care physicians who are uncomfortable with things on the skin and that stems from just, you know, how physicians are taught and what they're exposed to. So they may not actually get a lot of teaching in dermatology during their training. So it's an area that they may not feel as comfortable with. So it may not be on their radar to even look at the hands and feet of someone with the skin of color and to refer that patient. So basically, usually by the time that patient with the skin of color lands in my office, regardless of the cancer type, it is usually at a higher stage. So it is going to be the worst case scenario I'm walking in. So versus someone else who may have been trained from a child to say, you know, we can get skin cancers, you have to protect your skin from the sun, you have to do this, you have to do that. So they're more aware that things can go wrong on the skin. But if you have no clue that 'that' could happen, you have definitely, there's a long time lapse between when that appeared on the skin when you can actually get your diagnosis. And that definitely affects your prognosis. Dr. Berry: Wow. Okay. All right. Dr. Candrice, she's getting us together. So yeah, I'll know until right now, next week, I am scheduling my dermatology exam because it is clearly serious. And again, this is if, if you, if you had one month to choose to like do your routine skin screening exams, why not let it be in the month of May when you know, skin cancers around us. The spotlight is on from a media standpoint is on it. So this is definitely the month you should be thinking about, you know, calling your primary care doctor like right now. And if you're in Florida, fortunately in Florida, you don't even have to get a referral. You can go straight to your dermatologist. Thank you for Congressman Wasserman for that standpoint there. That's great. So I taught, I hear about skin cancer, I read Baskin cancer a lot. And I always see this is the A, B, C, D, E of the skin cancer. Right? What is that? And you know, how could my Lunch and Learn community, you know, derive and be educated and you know, get on the ball with, in the car and in regards to at ABCD’s of skin cancer. Dr. Candrice: The ABCD’s are really A, B, C, D, E. Now we've actually added E to that as well. (Okay.) It is a reminder for you when you're looking at your skin, what are some of the things that I should look for as warning signs or things that are going wrong on the skin? So let's say you have a mole on the skin and if you were to look at, if you were to imagine splitting the mole in half with, you're just with your eyes a little line. If one side does not look exactly like the other side, we say that that is asymmetrical and that is a warning sign. That lesion should be checked. So A stands for asymmetrical. One side doesn't look like the other, that could be significant. The B stands for border. So if it has a round, nice, crisp border, then we're not going to worry as much. But at the borders brace squiggly and not a very crisp, that could be a problem. Also, the C stands for color. So if your mole all of a sudden goes from being brown to having brown, gray, pink, white, basically changing in color, that could be a problem. So that's something that could trigger you to get that checked out. D stands for diameter. So typically, melanomas are in other things that are going to be problematic are the greater than this, the head of an eraser. Now I've definitely diagnosed things that were smaller than that. But anyway, it's part of the warning signs. So that may be something else that can prompt people to come in. And then the last E has been added in the last several years and that stands for evolving. So basically what that means is even if you don't remember the A, the B, the C, the D with those things stand for if you have a mole that is evolving or changing in any way that may be one that we need to look at more promptly. Dr. Berry: Okay. All right. They added E. I've been out of school for a few years. So when it was my time and they just stopped that d and maybe even add something new. Again, this is why, Lunch and Learn community I tell you all the time I get just as educated from my guest as you guys also. Like I said, I'm getting myself together, get myself mentally prepared, to see this dermatologist, right? So when I do not, again, just like when I go to see this dermatologist, like what happens? Right? I know what happens when I go and get my wellness check and I talked to my doctor about the flu. But what happens when I go to see different charges? I've never been to. So what happens when I go to the dermatologist for the first time? Dr. Candrice: Well, you have to expect to show your skin. I was not born with x-ray vision. So we have to get you out of those clothes and into a gown. Now they usually will ask you, you can leave your undergarments on if you like to make you feel more comfortable and then you will be placed in a gown. And during that visit with my patients, what I do in a very systematic way is that I look over the entire surface of the skin from head to toe looking for anything that stands out. That could be something that is an abnormal and abnormal lesion on the skin. So I definitely will take a look at every area in the extremities, the back, the chest, the scalp, the face, all of that looking to take a look to see if there's anything that looks unusual that needs to be biopsied. So yes, number one is to do expect to actually get out of your clothing, including your shoes and socks and get into a gown. And I think some people… Dr. Berry: Is that something you run into, like people in that really unexpected that part? Dr. Candrice: Yes. Roll up the sleeve, will pull up the pant leg and I said, look, I'm a dermatologist. I need to see the complete picture. You know, that part is very helpful because everybody's moles may not be textbook the same as someone else's. So I need to know your body is making molds and that can actually help me to determine. Is that something that needs a biopsy? Is this just how your body's making them? I need to get a sense of all of that. So I need to see your entire body surface area. Dr. Berry: Okay. I like that. And anything, out there, tips and tricks, get our patients to have it? To get them a full dermatology evaluation? Dr. Candrice: Sure. You know, don't ever be afraid to ask or you know about things that you may be concerned about. Sometimes dermatologist, you know, we lay over the completely benign things, but I often use that as a teaching moment. So I do give those things names and I educate the patient about what those lesions are. But it is important that you get your questions answered as well about specific things that you're concerned about. I think, you know, one of my, some of my favorite instances as a dermatologist is to walk in and you know, there's a someone there for an exam and I start to examine their skin. I see like five circles on their skin with a marker and I'm thinking, hmm. Basically, every time I inquired, basically it's usually a wife that has circles, these lesions because she wants to know exactly what those are and what's the, make sure that those species are okay. So even if you don't have a wife, this makes circles on your skin and there are a few things that you are concerned about. It’s okay to make a list of those things so that we can make sure that we address those specifically so that you leave feeling empowered about your skin. Dr. Berry: I love it. We love empowering here. Because especially when they come to see, you know, the general family practitioner or internist and they're asking a lot of questions. Like I do wonder like what type of leeway do they have when they go in to see their dermatologist? Right? Because again, obviously, you're the expert, right? And you know, if something's like, oh no, that's nothing, but they just want to know, right? Like they read it in a book, they read a blog, they've heard a podcast and they say, oh no if it looks like this, you're supposed to do something about it. Do you run into a lot of that where patients are, you know, they're empowering themselves to be an advocate for themselves. But sometimes you almost have to educate them away from doing extracurricular things that you wouldn't necessarily need to do. Dr. Candrice: Absolutely. I think that's our job as physicians to provide the education and say, this is by all accounts, this is a something that it's benign. It's something that can be observed, you know, you don't have to remove it. So I think just spending time to educate also can be helpful for them as well. Dr. Berry: All right. So I'm in the dermatology again and just kind of preface it. Because again, I remember when I was studying in dermatology type questions for boards and everything else and my number one question was always, well you know what? Like yeah, I understand like how it looks, raised, bordered, redness. Like I already understand how that looks. But like for a person that looks like me, right? Like how does that look? Does it look the same? Should I be worrying? Like is it different? Is it the opposite? I don't know. Do you, when you take care of patients of color and they're coming to you with skin related issues as well, do you tend to find that more difficult or is that just feed your training? You're aware of it? Like I always, because I always want to know, cause obviously when I'm reading a book I don't tend to see too many skin colors and I looked like mine that is examples. Dr. Candrice: Yes. I have specifically sought out training in the skin of color. So I was excited to be able to do my dermatology training with some skin of color experts. And actually my program had a skin of color center as well, so we were known for that. So that allowed me to be able to see dermatology on multiple different skin types. And you're right, yes. Some things do not follow the descriptions in the book at all. So you have to go to someone if you do have the skin of color, go to someone familiar with your skin type so that you can get a more expert exam when it comes to that. Dr. Berry: And when we talk about this is skin cancer in general, especially for skin of color. I know you talked about us 10 being caught later. So does that mean like we're from skin cancer total wise, we're dealing with it a lot more frequently or we just happen to catch it at a much later stage? What are some of the numbers especially for skin color and people with skin of color when we talk about skin cancer and diseases of alike? Dr. Candrice: And this is actually really sad, but people of color, we are less likely to get skin cancers. But for an example with melanoma, the one that is the deadliest tight. When we think about the five-year survival rate after someone has cancer, they, you know, was always these statistics. They go out to say, well, in five years, you know, what's the likelihood this person being alive for an example. So for melanoma, when you compare black patients to white patients, white patients have, you know, it's like over 91% of those patients will have a five-year survival rate. And for blacks, it's only a little over 60% or about 65% or so. So that is drastic, a very drastic difference. And so that goes back to the point of late diagnosis. Particularly when we talk about the most deadly type of cancer. Yes, we don't get skin cancer that often, but man, when we do get it, the prognosis is horrible because it's often caught very late and it has spread beyond just the skin at that point. Dr. Berry: And I can tell you from an internist standpoint, some of the patients I've taken care of, unfortunately in a hospital, you know, we've had skin cancer shows up in the lungs, we've had skin cancer show up on the GI system, we’ve had skin cancer show up in the brain, you know, Lunch and Learn community, give you an idea like this isn't a benign disease that you know a little, you know, biopsy cuts and get outta here. Like once if it does what it's, you know, set to do, it can really cause some problems. Dr. Candrice: Yes, it is very devastating and it definitely will be called metastasizes, which is what you definitely explained. It can go all over the body. Dr. Berry: So, and when we talk about this, some of the reasons why we're coming late, right? The reason why we're not seeing Dr. Candrice earlier, basically for people of color. Like I honestly, I was like, oh, what do I need? Like I'm protected, right? Like, well, you know, I'm protected from the sun, like from it from my peers and my skin color. But what are some of the biggest misconceptions that are out there? People like me, it's getting people of color really need to like kind of erased from their mind when it talks about, you know, just skin cancer and skin disease in general. Dr. Candrice: Please erase the fact that your brown skin and your melanin can embrace all potential harm. Is not true. You can get skin cancer. Let me just hit on my mic to make sure they heard me. Look with brown skin, yes, you too can get skin cancer. Take it from me. If you don't believe the statistics. I am triple board certified dermatologist that looks exactly like you. And yes, I see devastating cases. So please, please, please. It's just, it's not true when people say that it doesn't affect us, it's just not true. Dr. Berry: Lunch and Learn community I hope you I heard that. She’s a triple boarded, right? So again, this is, this isn't just you're running the mill like a physician who was trying to like, no, this is a person who really knows what they're talking about and especially for, I have a lot of listeners of color. You know, if you have not, right, again, don't be like me, right? Like, get just skin check done ASAP. Right? The month of May, get it done by the end of this month. Like, make sure that happens like today. And then make sure you bring family members too right. We didn't talk about, but make sure you bring your family members and get them some chopped too. Because I know a lot of us, a lot of y'all don't already like coming to see us for the world has visited. Right? So if y'all already not seeing us for the wellness visit, I know. Yeah. Not going to see yourselves for that, the skin can visit. So please do that. And you know, kind of get out of that mindset. Right. So, you know, Dr. Candrice can kind of help get us together and get us earlier. Again, that's sad though. 60% of us on a little bit over two-thirds of us are actually making it within five years once we're diagnosed just because we're not being seen early and it has a problem. Dr. Candrice: Yes. Devastating statistic. Dr. Berry: So let's talk about skincare, self-care and I wanna know, right? Like I wanted to know because obviously again for Lunch and Learn community even those who don't know, Dr. Candrice and I, we've been friends for about, like three years now. You know, medical always together. I know how amazing this person is and as she does so much education. That's why I wanted to bring her on the show. Right. So Dr. Candrice tell us about skincare, self-care, and why we need to be with it ASAP? Dr. Candrice: You know, I see so many manifestations of stretch in the skin, in hair disorders, lots and lots of things. And so what I thought about was sometimes for people the moment in the morning before the day gets crazy and they're in the bathroom doing whatever they need to do, that may be their only time for self-care. So I developed this concept, this really kind of mindset that yes, skincare is self-care. So focusing on your skin is a way of taking care of yourself. You walk around with your skin all day, every day, so why not take a few minutes to take care of your skin in those moments of the day when you actually have time to do it. So that really was the impetus to all of this. Just, you know, people stressing out and a lot of, and seeing all these diseases on the skin that all you have to do is cleanser or moisturizer. It's like a really quick fix, right? But people were not taking those few minutes of the day because they said, oh, that takes too long. I don't have time for that. I'm busy. I'm this, I'm that. Well, you at least can you give me three minutes a day to be able to care for your skin? And man, what I saw happening was that yes, people, skin disease improved, but also their attitudes improve. Once I started to pitch it as a self-care, their self-care moments of the day, things began to change. They saw it from being something that was cumbersome that they had to do to something that they actually look forward to doing. Dr. Berry: A highlight of their day to take care of this again. Dr. Candrice: Right, exactly. And you say that with some hesitation, but it’s dermatologist, yes. Dr. Berry: Oh no, my way, she’s about to make up that now. So I already know that when she's in that mood. I don't even mess with her. Go ahead, do whatever. I'll wait. I'm in no rush. I ain't going nowhere anyway. She got a whole routine. It's funny because she's got a morning routine, she's got to go on the bed routine as I'm like, wow. Oh, and of course I'm naive, right? And like I gotta ask you a question like, especially when it comes to men, I'm naive, right? And I'm like, why can't you just wash your face? And they're like, no, you gotta do this and this and it's so it's too funny. That's good care. So can we definitely here for that. I got to ask, right? Because I know obviously Lunch and Learn community what about the men, right? Like how much men are you seeing in your practice? How can we get, and we just, we have this issue just getting them to do their wellness checks, right? Like how are you getting them to come to check their skin out? Dr. Candrice: I see men all the time in the office and as soon as I walk in, I know whether they are there by choice or force. I don't care how you land in there. I'm just happy to see the men when they do come in because it is important for me to have those conversations with them. And then we talk about some of the things that they don't really like. People talk about how, Oh, if I wear sunscreen and, and I'm working out or doing something, and I sweay, it gets in my eyes and this, that and the other. So we have conversations about, okay, well how can we overcome some of those things? Some have been cumbersome for you to get around to kind of get on the bandwagon of protecting your skin. So I really enjoy those conversations. And so I had that segment of men that come in for skin checks. But then also what I'm finding is that even just for general skincare things that men actually care about the way they look. They may not tell you or emphasize it and you know, but they do care about it. They may be coming in for ingrown hairs on the face or a little bit of dry skin here, there. Just you know, things that cap into, to happen to come up. And I've definitely given my male patients permission to actually ask about those things. I'm very active on social media and when I look at the statistics and some of my followers, I was surprised that like 20 to 30% of my followers are men. And no is not because I'm so fabulous myself. Right? (Part of it, maybe.) No, it does not because I am definitely an, I make it a point to really give tips along the way about really, really realistic, you know, short steps that you can do to really take care of your skin. And I said, wow, you know, the guys are actually benefiting from this as well. And they make me feel good that my information can be valuable for both women and men. Dr. Berry: Okay. I love it. Before we get you out of here, I always ask my guest, how can what you do really help empower people to take better control to skincare? Dr. Candrice: I understand that my words are powerful. I understand that my interaction with every patient is important. I can remember being a child in the exam room with my physician and if that physician gave some words of encouragement to me. Oh, you want it to be a doctor? Oh, that's great. Blah, blah, blah, blah. You may have understood that depending on where on the neighborhood that you work in, that you may be the only physician of cover that this patient ever sees. I may be the only physician that ever takes a second to encourage a child, encourage their child. And that one piece of information can be the thing that drives them through their entire schooling to become a doctor because somebody told them that they could. So I always had that in my mind. So I know that I'm empowering that way. And then also empowering beyond the exam room currently. So I know that when I'm giving information to women who come in with hair loss and brown spots and this and that and the other, that I encouraged them to talk to their families about it, talk to their girlfriends about it, talk to other people at the hair salon about it so that my words can travel just beyond, beyond well beyond just my patient, but also to a community. And so I love it when patients come in and say, oh so and so referred me or Oh I heard about you at the hair salon. Oh, I heard about you at church. I love it when that happens because it means that I've done a great job of taking something that can be very scientific and complex and making it very simple enough or just my patients to be able to say, look I saw this dermatologist and she told me x and you should get into. That to me is super empowering. I have now turned my one to one patient experience into a one to many experiences. Dr. Berry: Oh, I love it. Absolutely love it. So Dr. Candrice, how can someone follow you, get educated. Like I said, again this is just one episode but this isn't, this is more of like a blip. Like cause you're doing this all the time and I want to make sure my Lunch and Learn community kind of follow along with you. Where can people find you? When's your next speaking engagement? Let us know some details so we can make sure we get you right. Dr. Candrice: I can be found @drcandriceheath on all social media platforms. That's @ D, R, C, A, N, D, R, I, C, E, H, E, A, T, H, that's @drcandriceheath on all social media platforms. Also. I have launched a beauty line called My Sister's Beauty. So I hang out there a lot as well www.mysistersweetie.com. What we really focused on simple skincare. That is also of course self-care. You know my motto, love that. Very simple. You have to tell your wife about that. And then for my people in the medical community who are always asking me about how do you get these speaking gigs, how do you do that exactly? Why are you so comfortable? How do you do that? I finally put everything into a portal. Okay. So I am debuting very soon, www.drcandriceheath.comf/clinicalpearls. So that you can actually be able to go right there. www.drcandriceheath.comf/clinicalpearls to find out what I am doing in the speaker realm for medical professionals. Dr. Berry: And Lunch and Learn community, all of this link will be in the show notes. So you know, if you're driving, take a shower, whatever you do it, you'll be able to get access to it. And I was just about, I let you go, but you gotta tell us you gotta you can't just like a drop that, you know, beauty line comes and just let you go. Right? What about that right? I know we're talking about skin cancer, were on the self-care now. Let's get us right. Dr. Candrice: I am so, it brings tears to my eyes because this has a long journey to launch this line. And really the primary focus is based on all these experiences that I've had with women. Like I told you before, you know, people feeling overworked, too busy to, you know they have the kids hanging off of one arm, the job doing this and you know the taking care of the home depot, all of these things but yet and still they want to look great, they want to feel great. And one of the main things that people often come in about it, they talk about brown spots on the skin. So I know I wanted to develop something that could definitely help to brighten the skin, give people more, even skin tone. All those things they look for so that they do look refreshed and feel refreshed. So I'm excited about the cleanser that we have. It is amazing. I cannot wait for you all to try it and it is packed with a fruit acid called Mandelic Acid and it definitely helps address those dark spots. And I'm really thrilled about it. It's packed full of botanicals so you will see ingredients that you recognize and like in the line including bringing tea. But moisturizer is my group, My Sister’s beauty. Recovery cream is packed full of aloe and it is just amazing. Like I'm so super excited about this. I have a launch party coming up in my city. I cannot wait. So it's, it's been amazing. It has definitely been a long journey and amazing journey and basically, the best is yet to come and I am just excited to finally be able to birth the thing that has been, working on for so long. And yes that really the focus of all of this is about self-care and that's the most amazing part of this whole thing. So I'm ecstatic. Dr. Berry: I love it. Whenever the launch date we'll make sure we promote. We'll make sure we let the world know Lunch and Learn community where they can get that because that's awesome. Absolutely amazing. Dr. Candrice: I would love that. Thank you so much, Dr. Berry. I would love that. Dr. Berry: So again, Dr. Candrice thank you for really enlightened us, educate as getting us together. I'm like, I said next week this skin care is being made. I'm not sure I'm going to see. I know dermatologist is busy. I might not see off for a month, but the appointment will be made at least. So we were going to get us together. Dr. Candrice: Wonderful. Wonderful. Dr. Berry: And again Lunch and Learn community, you know, this person's amazing. Please. Her information will be in the show notes. Please follow her again @drcandriceheath at all social media outlets. Wherever she's at, wherever you're at, she's likely at as well. Or she'll get there so you know, please make sure. This is a person, a friend that I value her opinion or her expertise or knowledge. And now she's about to drop a line and we're going to make sure we get some from the wife because we're going to get everyone together. Dr. Candrice: Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much Dr. Berry and your awesome Lunch and Learn community. You really know who I am at this point. I am Dr. Candrice, your favorite fun board-certified dermatologist. I am your go-to girl for everything - healthy hair, skin and nails. Dr. Berry: I love it. Thank you. Have a great day. Dr. Candrice: Thank you. Download the MP3 Audio file, listen to the episode however you like.

Cybersecurity Breaches Are Your Fault - Can't Make Insurance Claim - Google's New Automatic Feature - Facebook Is Government Protected Monopoly and more Today on TTWCP Radio Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 9, 2019 28:17

What do Insurance Companies say about Cyber Attacks? It might surprise you. What is two-factor authentication and should you use it? Today I discuss my thoughts on this What automatic feature has Google added, Listen in, for more info on this Should we have government protected Tech monopolies? My thoughts about this and more For more tech tips, news, and updates visit - CraigPeterson.com --- Transcript: Below is a rush transcript of this segment; it might contain errors. Airing date: 05/11/2019 Cybersecurity Breaches Are Your Fault - Can't Make Insurance Claim - Google's New Automatic Feature - Facebook Is Government Protected Monopoly Craig Peterson 0:04 Hello, everybody, Craig Peterson here, Hey, are you a business owner? Do you work in a business? Are you may be a little concerned about cybersecurity? And maybe you have insurance for a hack. I know a lot of insurance companies have been kind of adding that type of rider on lately. Well, I got some news for you today. The whole thing here about two-factor authentication and Apple, you know, the most security you can have the best security is something you have along with something, you know. Well, that's what 2FA is all about. And we're going to talk about that, what Apple's doing, what you can do, and what we do ourselves and for our clients to keep data safe. Google, Oh, my gosh, they are doing something good. We'll tell you about that and how to take advantage of they're forgetting a promise that they've just made. A really interesting response here from this is a company we use called Duo and their CEO talking about cybersecurity today. And he says the businesses are doing a whole lot of it. But too much funding is going into cybersecurity right now. Because there's so much money that's getting into the whole cybersecurity realm. The CEO and founder or co-founder of a company called Duo, D-U-O, Security. They were bought recently by Cisco. And we were using them before Cisco bought them. It's funny. That seems to happen a lot to us. Meraki, we were Meraki guys. And then Cisco bought them. Duo guys, and many others, Snort and the list goes on and on. But he said that cybersecurity and the investments that funding going into them is way overhyped in a lot of breaches because we're getting the basics wrong. That is absolutely true. And I got to tell you that now. It's not overhyped in that you're not at risk, because you are we've seen the statistics, the hard statistics, even from people admitting that their businesses were hacked. More than half of all businesses say they have already been hacked. Okay. So that's not what he's talking about. He's talking about the money that's going into funding some of these cybersecurity startups. And I can really see this, I understand what he's talking about here. Because so much of the vulnerability that we have is pretty darn basic. And it goes back to passwords. And in the case of Duo Security, the whole concept of two-factor authentication. So here are the basics. In case you're wondering, we're talking about fishing scams. A couple more here. But phishing scams, of course, are those emails that come in that make it look like whoa, wait a minute, now. This is a legitimate email or it's not and then people fall for them. Right. So the basics are phishing, scam, stolen password, and employees using devices that are not up to date or patched. And that's what we really, really emphasize with our clients. One of the biggest services we offer is making sure the machines are all patched up. We do it right. So something messes up. You know, it's our problem and we take care of it. Craig 3:42 Stolen user credentials leading cause of breaches. We know about, for instance, Senator Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire and her staff member who admitted to stealing passwords using a keylogger apparently on this senators computer are they. I don't know could even make a movie about this, it'd be pretty boring, wouldn't it frankly. A good book about that, by the way, A Thousand Miles, look it up if you haven't read it already. But smart attackers are going after people now not just systems because that's where the money is. It's kind of the basics. Now, this guy is a very interesting guy. And let's talk about Duo here for a minute, we are the full disclosure a Duo reseller. D-U-O, you can find them online. And they have some very cool technology that we tie into these special fobs, these special little USB keys that allow us to identify ourselves and who we are. So here's what happens too. We have it tied into, for instance, our iPhones. So if we try and log into a system that's, that's privileged, you know, particularly something that has any form of customer information on it, the system comes up and says, Okay, I need to authenticate you. So it now sends a special message to our iPhone. And the iPhone has a thumbprint reader on it. So we have to unlock our iPhone. And then we're going to Duo, and Duo's telling us because it popped up on our phone, hey, somebody is trying to gain access. And then you accept it. You say, yeah, that was me, it's fine. And you give it your thumbprint and a code. And now you can log into that website, you can get on to that computer, you can use that software. DUO is just absolutely fantastic. And frankly, it is crazy important for you to have something like this in your business. And that takes us back to what Apple is doing right now. Some people are annoyed by this, Apple's two-factor authentication. I don't know if you're using anything but remember what I just said the most secure way? Well, the most secure way of securing a computer is to unplug it, rip out all the wires and put it in a vault, right with no electricity. But if you needed to be able to use the computer, two-factor authentication works. And that's part of what Duo is providing here. And just texting, texting, phone numbers back and forth, doesn't cut it, by the way. It sends you a message and you respond because people can steal your phone number. And then life gets really complicated, doesn't it? It gets really competent very quickly. And we've seen that again. And again, people stealing, for instance, Bitcoin accounts, but also stealing access to regular bank accounts and tens of thousands of dollars have been stolen out of it. So what Apple did is this is pre-Duo, pre-a lot of these things, is Apple said well wait a minute, most of our customers have multiple devices. So when I logged onto my computer sitting right here in front of me today, it had a message because this is an Apple computer. And it had a little message and the message said, someone just started using your account on this day and time at this location. And this is the type of computer, was that you? And of course, it was me. So I said yeah, cool. But before I logged into this computer, and I was installing a brand new wealth new to me, right, it's actually kind of old MacBook Air. And I put my account on there and I put my Apple credentials on there. Apple sent a special message to my iPhone saying hey Craig somebody is trying to log on creating an account, etc, etc is this you? So with Apple's two-factor authentication turned on, every time you attempt to sign into an account, you're going to enter your password. And then you're going to receive a second security notification that might come through on your desktop, on your laptop on your iPhone, on your iPad on your iWatch right? Actually, Apple Watch, they should have called it iWatch. Craig 7:59 And then usually it looks like a text message. It's not a text message. In this case, it's actually built-in, it's a utility part of the operating system, it gives you this six to eight digit code, and you entered into the website. Now in most cases, the websites are going to send you a text I already explained why that's a bad idea. And why it's a good idea to use Duo, it usually takes us a few weeks from start to finish to get a company switched over to Duo, because there's a lot of configuration that has to happen and training that has to happen. And you have to get the right little devices for people to use. But here's what you should do. If you have an Apple device, you should be using their two-factor authentication, because it gets around all of the problems you have with Android devices, for instance, that are receiving SMS messages again, that's what I use Duo, it works on Android as well. So make sure you turn it on, don't turn it off, you're going to get it's going to say Apple ID verification code. And you have to pull that up from another Apple device where you're going to click Allow. But what amazes me, frankly, is that there is a lawsuit going on right now and some people are frustrated and upset about this if you can believe it. So here are some claims in the lawsuit. Apple turned on two-factor authentication without his approval. This guy's name is Brodsky. Yeah. Well, he's trying to help you, you idiot. Two-factor authentication takes too long to set up. No, it doesn't. It's difficult to use. No, it's not. It can't be turned off. After using it for 14 days what logging into a device can take up to five minutes. Oh my gosh. So you might think that you shouldn't use it or simply turn it off like this Brodsky guy that's brought this lawsuit, and I'm sure it's just one of these deepest pockets lawsuits, just like these lawsuits that we're hearing about all the time. Oh, you offended me, you have to remove that because it offends me. Really? One person, a dozen people out of how many millions, we're not offended by that. Forget about it. Okay. But you know, Brodsky is correct that you only have a 14 day trial period. But that should be enough time to figure if you want to use two-factor authentication. And after that's passed that 14 days, you have to continue using it. So the bottom line to everybody out there, use two-factor authentication. If you can, don't use your cell phone for it. Craig 10:35 Now, let me give you a little insider secret that I've never heard anybody else talk about. But I think is really handy. You can get a phone number from Google Voice. Have you seen this? Again, another service that I used before Google bought it, Google Voice, they'll give you a phone number, it's free. Now they're going to record your phone calls and your voice messages. They take the voice message, they turn it into text and they text it to you it comes up in their app, it's really, really, really handy. Obviously, you don't want anything too confidential on Google Voice. However, here's the win, when it comes to a Google Voice phone number, or within many cases with a VOIP provider Voice over IP provider, when it comes to these numbers. They can't be stolen from you. Because there's no Sim, there's no little chip, a little SIM card that you put into the phone. That's how people get in around this. That's how people are stealing phone numbers. So if you use your Google Voice number for a website that does not support things, like Duo. So it doesn't support full two-factor authentication, you're going to be all set. It's going to be really nice. So little trick there, right? It can't be stolen it not the normal way anyway, they can't just do the cloning or duplication or try and get your sim move to another phone because there was never a sim there in the first place. Craig 12:40 While we're on Google and before we get to our little warning here about the insurance for cybersecurity and CIOs, I get another Google thing. This is from the Associated Press and it was published in Forbes magazine. This is a win I think for everybody. But you have to know about it. In order to take advantage of this. I'm glad they're doing this. Facebook here another story. They are a government protected a monopoly. And they certainly are. I've had problems with patent law for quite a while particularly when it comes to software and processes. You know, way back when there's a great story. It's up on my website, http://CraigPeterson.com. 1954, you've heard this story, I'm sure if you've ever taken a business class. Ray Kroc does that name ring a bell to you? Ray Kroc, K-R-O-C. How about Illinois? How about just outside of Chicago? Anyways, this guy Ray Kroc in 1954 visited a hamburger stand in Southern California. And Ray was selling milkshake mixers and was very interested in how these brothers Richard and Maurice, were able to sell so many milkshakes, this small stand, and I think it was they ordered a four milkshake mixer. So it did four milkshakes at the same time. So he started to look into this about more, a little bit more a little further. He was really impressed. freshly cooked hamburgers delivered to the customers based on an assembly line. Of course, we're talking about Richard Maurice McDonald here in case you didn't know and Ray Kroc decided, wait a minute now this looks absolutely amazing. It works, so well. Ray Kroc stole the idea. You know, he tried to work out a licensing deal and everything. We're not going to get into the whole story here. But the success of McDonald's led to Burger King, Burger Chef, Carl's Jr. Hardee's, Jack in the Box, that used to be one of my favorites when I lived in California, and hundreds of other small hamburger joints and of course, that led up to what we have today with Quoba and other different types of fast food restaurants. Well, the evolution of fast food in America would have been completely different if the McDonald brothers could have applied for a patent to claim exclusivity for the idea of using an assembly line to make hamburgers. Craig 14:44 Intellectual property, you know, look at article one section eight of the Constitution. Congress was charged to promote the progress of science and useful art by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries. Craig 15:07 Well, the McDonalds brothers, McDonald brothers did not go for a patent. They didn't apply for this federal protection for their design because it was not a writing, or an invention. They just use existing technology more reasonably and more efficiently than others. And the way it's supposed to work in the patent office is that if something is an obvious next step in the evolution of a business evolution of a process, the evolution of a machine, it's not patentable. However, because there are so many patents being applied form because there's so much technology involved and so much knowledge they need patents are being given willy nilly, it's absolutely amazing. But the greater good was served by allowing businesses to reverse engineer these clever ideas that they saw in patents and spread it from sea to shining sea. Reverse engineer, not just things in patents, because of course, you have a certain amount of exclusivity. But people would take it, they look at the patent, they would modify it enough so that they could start producing something that wasn't covered by that patent. Well, today, fast forward to Facebook and Google and other social media platforms that are banning people for their political beliefs. And in reality, in a healthy society, in a healthy economy where we didn't have the type of crazy overextended patent laws that we have here. Facebook would have been reverse engineered 20 times by now. And people who were banned would have simply gone somewhere else. Well, instead of that our government and the way these laws are set up now is protecting Facebook and these other companies at the point of a gun. Right? Because it breaks the law, see what ultimately happens to those guys and gals that show up in your door? Do they have a gun with them? Or don't they right? So Facebook and other social media sites and other companies are government protected monopolies. They've been able to convince the patent office that their business and their business model is an invention that should be protected by intellectual property laws. Now we have the Department of Justice and the federal courts out there acting as strong arms, strong men, making sure nobody competes with them because they say, this is our business process. We have our process patent on that. Craig 17:41 And then, of course, they have enough lawyers to protect it. Craig 17:44 You end up with people like Mark Zuckerberg, who has a crazy, crazy wealth. But is he really helping to further even other sites that are out there social media sites, of course not? He buys them if they're doing fairly well. And he squeezes them, even when he's buying them. So Zuckerberg didn't invent anything, he didn't invent the computer, he didn't invent the microchip. All he did was started messing around with Atari Basic programming when he was a kid. to reward someone who's the first to use an invention to arrive an inevitable function only crushes the competition. And that's what we have today. So that's my word for today. Facebook is a government protective monopoly. And we have to change our patent laws. We've got to set it up so that these obvious inventions if you will, just aren't covered by it anymore. Craig 18:48 Okay, let's get into Google here, let's finished that one up. And then we'll get into the insurance and our big warning to Chief Information Officers and business owners. Google will now automatically delete your data for you. This just came out about a week or so ago. This was in front of the Google IO Developer Festival. That was last week as well. But in their security blog, the product managers for Google search and maps say that Google is going to make managing your data privacy and security simpler. So you can already go into your settings in your Google account, you can get simple on-off controls for location history, web and app activity, which I do I have that turned off. And you can choose to delete all or part of that data manually, which I've also done. First, I downloaded it because I wanted to see what Google had about me, right. And what's going to be rolled out now is what's called auto delete controls. So you can set time limits on how long Google can save your data, that going to be huge. They're saying that this is going to arrive within weeks and new controls are going to apply to location history, web browsing, Google searches, app activity data to start with, you're going to be able to choose a time limit of between 3 and 18 months afterward, the data will be automatically deleted on a rolling basis. So thank goodness. But remember, you can already manually delete it if you want. But the ability to delete automatically is long overdue, and I think it's going to help us right. I don't mind them tracking my searches and saying well Craig is looking for a new car, so I'm going to show him this ad because this new car is going to fit. But I don't want that following me for the rest of my life. I don't want to see the car ads after I bought a new car right? So being able to have that automatically purged I think is going to be absolutely phenomenal. Craig 20:53 You got to see this video. This I found this on Digg and I put it up on my website http://CraigPeterson.com. Wow, this is a video that was taken by a guy working inside a scam call center over in India. This is a webcam view that he shows the software they're using. You can listen in on some of the conversations. And this is in a city called Kolkata. I guess. K-O-L-K-A-T-A. Craig 21:21 I don't think that's Calcutta, Kolkata. Craig 21:25 And there's a group of scammers hunting for victims to swindle and what they do and how they do it. And you know what? You got to watch this again http://CraigPeterson.com, it was a bit of a shocker to me. But these guys think that that they have just as much right to your money to your house to your belongings as you do. And they do everything they can to steal it from you. And why not? You're just a rich American. What do they care? Right? Craig 21:50 Okay, on to this. This is from Forbes magazine. Again, up on http://CraigPeterson.com. A new cybersecurity report is out there warning CIOs if you're breached or hacked, it's your own fault. Now think of that when it comes to cybersecurity insurance so many businesses have been purchasing. In fact, this is one of the topics I'm covering. UNH extension here to mastermind is the insurance side of cybersecurity. And what does it mean to you? What does it mean to me? The majority of businesses in the US and UK are still leaving their doors wide open to attacks. I'm going to be doing some training coming up here before summer. So keep an eye out for that on what to do how to lock up your business before summer comes okay. Craig 22:41 But for all of this focus, we've had on cybersecurity, all of this money that's getting invested. Most of us are still incredibly overexposed. It's just crazy. These attacks can wipe out your business entirely can stop it for maybe a few hours or, or something somewhere in between. But there was this new cybersecurity survey that was conducted by endpoint management specialists. And also some market researchers Van Bourne, Vanson Bourne. They questioned 690 operations and IT security decision-makers across the US and UK found that 60% of the organizations had been breached in the last two years. And 31% said they'd been breached more than once. What's going on people? Are you just confused? Craig 23:36 Make sure you sign up, http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. You can get my free training and I have completely free training, not upselling. Okay, I have my paid courses as well. But I'm trying to get the word out. Okay. The vast majority of the successful attacks are using known vulnerabilities in well-known software that has already had patches available by software vendors. The next one down is people falling for email attacks, which can also be prevented. No, they can't be prevented by going out and buying Barracuda spam firewalls. And no, okay, you got to do this right. But my goodness, my goodness, the CIO's team doesn't actually even know in most of these cases here, what the hardware is, it's out there, what software it's running on how they're going to patch it. They don't even know the machines exist. And we see that even in small businesses, you walk in how many computers you have, well, we just have three. And then you start poking around, you find out Oh, wow, they've got this Android tablet, an Android phone is connecting to the business WiFi. And therefore now the business computers are completely exposed. Plus people are working from home, they're using their laptops, using computers right from home. So now that whole network is exposing, that computers now exposed to the home network to the business network, because they're not using the VPN the way supposed to VPN is supposed to be used because they're using the wrong software. Again, and again and again and again. And again. You know, even the IT people, you know, we run into brake fixed shops all the time and the so-called managed services vendors that just have no idea what they're doing. None. Because all they have to do is no more than you know, listen, everybody, it's your responsibility to make sure your business is safe and you cannot pass it off. Okay, here's a quote again. This is from Samir, in the article you see up on my website about CIOs, it's your responsibility. A Forrester industry analyst who's tracking 150 or so security companies said that he's hearing about 5 or 10 new ones almost every weekend security space. And each one is talking of bigger and worse threats and the rest. Craig 26:09 It's just absolutely amazing. It's I see it again. And again. People go when they take a course. they've got their course on security. And now they think that they're an expert, right? No, a two-week course, a six-month course does not make you an expert. And I know there are a few of you guys because you've reached out to me who listened to this on the radio or on iTunes or on YouTube, who have signed up for cybersecurity classes. I think that's a great thing. But also those people aren't thinking that, well, I've got my shingle I'm now an expert right? No. Six months in an intensive cybersecurity course is going to get your career launched. And God bless you. You're in a great community. Great career ahead of you. Okay, where there's going to be a five-year career or lifetime career. But those people cannot be the people who are running the cybersecurity for your business. You're the one that has to take it. Take that bull by the horns. If you are one of those people, reach out to me, me@CraigPeterson.com. I am more than glad to share resources with you. Absolutely free ok. Me@CraigPeterson.com. I can help you out. So frustrating because remember, this happened to me 25 years ago, and I got it taken care of back then. And so I understand where you're at, I was there. I almost lost my business because of a hack. And I don't want you to lose yours. Okay, or your job or your career. Anyhow, me@CraigPeterson.com. Make sure you subscribe to my weekly newsletter. You'll get security updates what's happening out there http://CraigPeterson.com/subscribe. Have a great week everybody. We'll be back on Monday. Be back with Jack Heath on Monday during drive time and the Jim Polito drink drive time. Ken and Matt and much more. So keep an ear out. Or look me up, http://CraigPeterson.com. Take care. Bye-bye. --- Related articles: Brain Scans Reveal A ‘Pokémon Region’ In Adults Who Played As Kids Facebook Is A Government-Protected Monopoly Google Confirms It Will Automatically Delete Your Data — What You Need To Know Apple’s 2FA Might Be A Nuisance (But You Need To Turn It On Anyway) New Cybersecurity Report Warns CIOs — ‘If You’re Breached Or Hacked, It’s Your Own Fault’ ‘Too much funding going into cybersecurity today’: hacker turned CEO What It’s Like In A Scam Call Center Baltimore City Hall Computer Network Infected With Ransomware Virus, Officials Say --- More stories and tech updates at: www.craigpeterson.com Don't miss an episode from Craig. Subscribe and give us a rating: www.craigpeterson.com/itunes Follow me on Twitter for the latest in tech at: www.twitter.com/craigpeterson For questions, call or text: 855-385-5553

CEO at TransLoc, Doug Kaufman

Vehicle 2.0 Podcast with Scot Wingo

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2019 45:50

EP010 - CEO at TransLoc, Doug Kaufman http://www.vehicle2.getspiffy.com Episode 10 is an interview with Doug Kaufman, CEO at TransLoc; recorded at the TransLoc office on Tuesday, May 7th, 2019. Doug and Scot discuss a variety of topics, including: Doug’s journey from getting a PhD in Psychology to becoming the CEO of TransLoc. How TransLoc went from being a pet project by NC State students to being acquired by Ford Smart Mobility in a 14 year period. Exploring the micro- and macro-level impacts of connectivity in mass transportation. Defining the staggered path towards an all-electric and autonomous industry, as well as the role that TransLoc plays as a part of Ford’s plan for the future of automotive. How transformative 5G technology will be for automakers and software companies alike. Be sure to follow Doug on LinkedIn and Twitter! If you enjoyed this episode, please write us a review on iTunes! The four pillars of Vehicle 2.0 are electrification, connectivity, autonomy, and changing ownership models. In the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast, we will look at the future of the auto industry through guest expert interviews, deep dives into specific topics, news coverage, and hot takes with instant analysis on what the latest breaking news means for today and in time to come. This episode was produced and sound engineered by Jackson Balling, and hosted by Scot Wingo. Transcript: Scot: [00:51] Welcome to the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast. This is episode 10 and it's being recorded Tuesday May 7th. Welcome back Vehicle 2.0 listeners! This week on the show. We are really excited to have Doug Kaufmann. Doug is the CEO of TransLoc, which is a subsidiary of Ford. Welcome to the podcast, Doug. Doug: [01:13] Thanks Scot. It's my pleasure to be here. Scot: [01:16] Doug, you and I have known each other, but listeners don't have that benefit. Let's start off by going over your career path. How did you end up as CEO of a division inside of Ford? Doug: [01:26] Sure. So if I go way back hitting the way back machine here, I actually went to graduate school to get a PhD in psychology. And while I was in graduate school, um, I started making websites for my students. This was before the recourse management systems. And yes, I'm actually that old, uh, and my students really started taking to it and I was getting burnt out with graduate school and I decided when I finished, instead of taking a faculty job, I was going to take what I had made for my students and turn it into a business. I thought this internet thing would be something. So I said, hey, let's make it a business and I can always come back to teaching later. Um, that was very young, naive thinking. Yeah. And so I, I did, uh, I was actually called alley dog.com. It still exists today. Doug: [02:11] It's a resource online resource for college level psychology students. And um, while I was doing that, I met folks that had just founded a company called blackboard, which became the dominant player in the learning space. And they said, hey, we're making this move from software to the web and this thing you built for psychology, we want to do the same thing. Um, but for every subject matter that's out there, can you provide content for every subject matter? And it was just me by the way. Yeah. And I said, well, how many subject matters are you covering? And he said, 253. And I said, no problem. Of course I had no ability to do this at all. Yeah. One thing led to another and they said, why don't you forget about that? Why don't you come and join blackboard and let's build this thing together. They were very much a startup at the time. Doug: [02:56] And so I did, I went to blackboard and that was a phenomenal experience. That was a rocket ship. Stayed there for a couple of years, right before the IPO I left because the entrepreneurial spirit was calling and I left to start another business. And that put me on a path to starting a series of companies, um, where I would s found them, lead them and exit sometimes good exit. And sometimes not so good exits. Um, when I left the last company I founded, which was called spring metrics, I told a few people that I was going to be leaving soon. And one of them said, hey, you should check out this company called TransLoc. They are small company, but they're doing really interesting things and you might work with them. And so I asked what they did and the person told me they build technology for mass transit. And I said, that really sounds awful. Doug: [03:48] I don't know that I could come up with something that was more boring than that and this person assured me just go talk to them. Um, and when I talked to one of the board members and the founder, I really started to see the power of what translate was already doing in the early days and how impactful transportation is to people's lives. This was eyeopening for me. Um, and so I thought, this is definitely something I can do for two years before I go start my next company. And, uh, that's how I ended up at TransLoc. And that was more than seven years ago. Scot: [04:17] Cool. And then, so seven years ago you joined TransLoc and then how, how old was the company when you joined? Doug: [04:23] Company was founded in 2004 and this was 2012 and I, I did not get hired as the CEO. Um, I got hired. The founder was still the CEO, although he was not operating day to day. So he hired me and one other person to co run the company together. And then two years later I became CEO. Scot: [04:44] Very cool. Awesome. Um, and then, uh, what was your Undergrad in? Was it more technical or also Doug: [04:51] no, my undergrad was, was also in psychology. It so psychology all the way through. Scot: [04:58] Yup. We'll uh, selling one of the core things of being a CEO is selling, right? You're, you're always selling employees or investors or whoever. Yeah. Um, so psychology is good for them. Doug: [05:08] Oh, not only is it good for that, but people ask me all the time, I don't understand how you go from being a phd in psychology to being an entrepreneur or a CEO. And I actually think there is no better degree for being a CEO because everything in the company is about people, even the technology comes down to the people, right? If you've got amazing people and they're putting the right situations and you nurture them properly, they're going to build the best technology and they're going to figure out how to sell it best and what have you. So my job really is like chief psychology officer much more than chief executive officer. Yeah. Yeah. Scot: [05:41] Very cool. Um, so, uh, let's talk about TransLoc. So my understanding is it started back in ‘04 by some NC state guys to kind of like solve this pretty big problem of we have these buses at NC State called the wolf line and uh, you know, so you know, a lot of times you'd go out there and wait for an hour or so for this bus to come. Wouldn't it be a more awesome if you had an APP for tracking, is that, does that kind of the right startup history story, right? Doug: [06:07] Yeah. It really was simply answer the question, where's my bus? Yeah. And at the time, there wasn't even apps, right? 2004, it was can I open a browser on my computer and see where the buses, and so Josh Whitten, who was the founder, um, went to the, went to the wolf line and said, why, why isn't there something like this? And they said, well that technology doesn't exist. And he said, well, that, that can't be because I play online games with people in real time across the world. And so he said, if I build it, will you buy it? And they said yes. So he enlisted the help of Dominic fish off another person at state and they built the first version of what we now call real time, which answers the question, where is my boss? Scot: [06:50] Cool. So then, um, so then that seemed to be popular and has expanded to a bunch of other universities and then yeah, then I think it went on into municipalities cause then, you know, it's a logical extension for the city buses to, to have this kind of technology. Doug: [07:04] Yeah, it was, it was actually fairly slow going in the beginning. Um, I mean, even when I came in, 2012 company had 38 customers and have customers being transit agencies, not writers. Right? So that's who we sell to. And you know, the way Josh told the stories to me about the early days as he would meet up with a transit agency representative, typically the decision maker, someone that runs the transit agency and even say, look, I have, I've built this technology, you can see it here on my computer. And it allows you to put your entire system online and show writers where the buses are in realtime. Isn't that amazing? And they said, oh my God, no, we don't want that. Why would we want that? Now people can see if we're running late, if the bus is going too fast, too slow, what have you. So there really was a process of educating the market of how valuable this would be for not only writers, but also for the transit agencies. And then it, then it really did take off. Yeah. Scot: [07:58] Cool. And then you came on board, um, and then you, um, you know, uh, maybe tell a story, but you saw a lot of value in, you know, a ramping that up would be a lot of value in the data. And then thinking about multimodal transportation and a lot of things like that. So we're, where did you take transload to up into the, the Ford acquisition? Doug: [08:16] Absolutely. So interestingly, Josh, when Josh was trying to sell me on joining the company, his pitch really was about sustainability. That if we make transit work really well, people will get out of their cars, get on a transit, and then we'll have, uh, you know, less greenhouse gas, less carbon emission. And that was great, except for me, what resonated more was understanding just how many people were dependent on transit and how bad the service was. Not because transit wasn't trying really hard, but it can only do so much. And so I learned about how many people have literally six hours a days on a bus, right? Three hours each way to potentially a minimum wage job. That would be 30 minutes if they could afford a car. Um, and that resonated with me and I said, yeah, I want to be part of doing something about that. Doug: [09:04] And so when I came to the company, um, real time was our only product, the one that answered the question, where's my bus? And then the data started becoming obviously important. And so we went to transit agencies and we said, what if we could actually show you where the riders are, where they start their journey, where they get on transit, what route they take, where they get off transit, and where they end up. And I sort of had a similar experience with Josh where they were like, that's ridiculous. Get out of here kind of an answer. Um, and, and the technology doesn't exist so you can't do it. It was, I forget the technology, we can make it happen. Um, would that be valuable? And they, they, they saw the value in that. So we actually went on a path to creating a product to answer the question for the agencies, where my riders and how well are we serving them. Doug: [09:48] And from there we actually created a service, um, to turn transit vehicles into on demand vehicles. Now similar to Uber and Lyft, and we started in the university space because they have safe ride. Many universities have safe ride where the technology was, hey, I'm a student on campus at two in the morning and I need to get back to my dorm. So I pick up the phone and I call and I speak with someone and they come and they send a van to come and pick me up. So what if we could just turn that into push a button and the transit agency vehicle comes and gets them. And so we created that these were actually steps to what we call seamless mobility, which, um, you know, our vision of this is that all of these modes of transportation should be completely interconnected and work seamlessly together to create one mobility network everywhere. Doug: [10:37] So that's a fixed route. Buses on demand vehicles, Uber, Lyft, carshare, bikeshare scooters, you name it. These things should just be one connected mobility network. And so we actually, um, in partnership with Uber in 2015 created a prototype at this. Um, this was while we were raising our series a and we showed that we could have walking directions, buses, trains and Uber all work seamlessly together. So as a rider, you can imagine going forward, if you never have to worry about having a car, you can just say, hey, this is where I need to go in the system, learns your preferences, knows what you like, um, is able to say, well, the best way for you to get there is to walk across the street, get on the bus, go to this stop and then take a lift the last three miles. Do you want that? You could just say yes and everything magically happens in the back, right? The ticketing, the payments to tracking, even the hailing of the vehicle happens without you doing anything. Since we track both. Um, so that when your bus arrives, your Lyft arrives and you go from one to the other and off you go. And if we can make it that magical, um, I think we can get a lot of people out of their cars and using transit as sort of the backbone of this seamless mobility network. Scot: [11:55] Cool. So then you guys raised a series a in 2015 and then the fort acquisition was, it was the late 17, early 18 a week Doug: [12:03] closed our round. Are Our series a in uh, may, I think it was may, it might have been march, I think it was may of 2017, 17 and then we were acquired by Ford, uh, in January of 2018. Scot: [12:18] Wow. I bet your, uh, your investors were policemen out. Yes. They always like fast turnarounds. They do have a 10 year timeframe, but they'll take a six months into it. Yeah. And actually, Doug: [12:28] sorry, I misspoke. We closed our round in May of 2016. Okay. So it was a, it was under two years, about 18 months from close to being acquired. Scot: [12:37] Awesome. Uh, and then I know, you know, um, you're now part of a larger company and very limited in what you can say, but um, you know, so, so for, it obviously gives you a much bigger platform, tore up, roll out of this vision. Um, have you felt a lot of momentum from that? And, and you know, it seems like they're very serious about mobility as well. Oh, there they're definitely serious about it. Doug: [12:56] Um, I actually was lucky enough to have conversations with folks like some of the Ford folks actually like Ford family folks. Um, and they right away told me, you know, the days of selling cars to individuals like us is coming to an end. They see it. Yeah, we know the world is becoming a mobility world, but we don't know what that looks like, so why don't we figure, not only figure it out, but why don't we become the leader in mobility going forward? Um, so they're, they're definitely serious about it. What it looks like is the big question. Um, and I often get asked if money was no object would we have still sold to Ford. And for me the answer is yes. And the reason is that our, our ambitions are so big. I mean, if we do what we say we're doing, we have completely transformed transportation forever. That's a pretty big goal for a, you know, 60 person, privately owned company. Yeah. So getting acquired by Ford and becoming part of Ford, which is a iconic global brand, um, really gives us a much better chance of achieving our mission and really changing the world. Scot: [14:03] Brickell and post acquisition. It seems like things are going well. You know, it's probably still pretty early, but you could imagine, you know, having your technology and every Ford vehicle, um, we just announced, uh, if he, uh, you know, that we're partnered with Ford on their connected car initiative. So, so although OEMs are really kind of connecting their cars and that kind of thing. Yeah. Um, is that, that part of what got you excited is having access to all that? Oh, absolutely. I mean, Doug: [14:29] if you, if you look across the Ford landscape, it's everything from us working with public transit agencies and cities to people working on connected cars to autonomous vehicles are self driving vehicles. Um, so it's, it's really exciting to, to have access to all of that. Um, it's also exciting to, to understand to be a part of 115 year old company redoing itself from the inside out and having a front row seat to that is, is really amazing. Um, and they have you asked earlier about how things have gone since the acquisition. They really have gone, I would say about as well as you can expect when a giant company acquires a, a tiny little company. Um, they've been very supportive of us. They've given us a lot of latitude. They recognize we're going to make a ton of mistakes and we're going to run a lot of experiments and we're going to fail. And that's kind of antithetical to what they may be used to, but they recognize they have to have a different point of view now. So, so that's been great. Yeah. Scot: [15:26] I come from, as you know, I come from the eCommerce retail world and it's always interesting to watch this role. Is that very similar to that one and that you had a group of companies that kind of said change is coming, we need to kind of lead it. Then you had a group of companies that kind of put their head in the sand and those companies are like blockbuster and borders and circuit city and you know, kind of going on sales calls across them. You can tell pretty quickly which ones we're going to make it and which ones weren't. And so you know, the early signals of, you know, hey, we realize we've got to get in front of this. Let's go get some innovative blood inside of the company. Sounds seems like Ford's doing all the right things to, to really be aligned with the changes coming. Doug: [16:02] Yeah, I think, I think they're doing a lot of the right things. Um, it's going to, we're going to have to see how things go. Right? I mean, this is a long term initiative. And one of the things I always ask is, do companies like Ford that are this big, that make this much money? Do they have the patients to create something from scratch? Right? Because they think in billions, right? I've asked him if we made $100 million tomorrow, would that move the needle for you? And they're like, of course not. Yeah. Right. So are you going to get frustrated that it's going to take us many years before we are $1 billion con contributor? Um, and that we're going to, we're just going to have to see, um, yeah. So that part is scary. Thinking in billions is, is a, is a scary proposition. Yeah. Scot: [16:50] Cool. Well, um, appreciate the background there. So, you know, I think the punchline is, um, you've been at this seven years in the mobility space, uh, and you have insights into what Ford's doing a, we won't go into morning any more detail on that. But, um, here on the Vehicle 2.0 Podcast, as our name implies, we have this framework where we look at where vehicles are going. Yeah. We look at, for kind of what I call compounding waves of innovation, we have new ownership models, conductivity, electric, electrification and autonomy. Um, let's start with con activity because you guys were really at the forefront of that, bringing, you know, connecting some of these buses and other things there. Um, so where do you think we are today and where do you think that that goes? I know you and I've talked a lot about, you know, kind of what they call con activity to infrastructure. Scot: [17:35] So, so how do you, you know, so, so you guys started tracking buses so the writers would have a better experience and now you can kind of track riders and now the buses can get smarter at some point. Do we like have the infrastructure talking to the cities so the cities get smarter and they can kind of say, wow, you know, a lot of people are going from point a to point B, maybe we should have a road here, or maybe we should do, you know, whatever. Yeah. Um, talk a little bit about what, what you've seen over the arc of your career there. Doug: [18:01] Yeah, absolutely. Um, and let me, let me add one other thing that we're doing that I think gets to this and then I'll circle back. One of the things that we built is this product called architect. And the point of architect is to help transit agencies create and manage what's called gcfs feeds, right? Um, so this is a feed specification that was created by Google and try man, which is a public transit agency, uh, to try and standardize all of the data for public transit, right? So if you actually want to have your transit agency on Google maps, bing maps, apple maps, et Cetera, you have to convert all of your routes, stops, latitude, longitude, all, all of these things into this feed specification. Then loaded up to Google and this can be a massive project and the tools out there are really awful for it. Doug: [18:53] So we created what we think is the most elegant, easy to use tool and we, we give it away to every transit agency that wants it for free. Nice. Now, what's, what's key about this and gets to the connectivity and infrastructure is if we feel like if we become the central repository for all transit data, we can unlock so much power, not only for the transit agencies who can now really do a lot of predictive work and staging and see what's going on. But also, this is the only way you can start giving riders at real time, vehicle location data everywhere, right? So if you go to Google maps right now, there are only a handful of agencies in the world that have provided what's called GTFS realtime to show realtime location on Google maps. All the rest are scheduled. So what we're doing is unlocking that power so that we can give real time locations to transit agencies are to writers everywhere in the world at no cost. Scot: [19:50] Yeah. I was recently in New York and it was really handy because I think they must be the one, one of the ones, because it would say, you know, all right, you need to go to the a train on the northbound thing and uh, and then it would say, and it looks like the train's coming in 10 minutes. So yeah. I would say my family, let's, let's go, let's get going here. We've got a train coming in 10 minutes. That's right. You know, and it looked like it was, and then it would start counting down and that gives a real time. That's right. Kind of view of what was going on. Doug: [20:11] Absolutely. And you can, I mean, it'll be easy for you to imagine the future where we have the seamless mobility network that it will adjust. So it's going to know you're going to miss your transfer, let's adjust so that we get you to, your destination is still on time, but you're going to have to take a different route. Just like when your gps in your car. Reroutes yeah. Right. Um, okay. So, yeah, going back to the very beginning, uh, the way Josh and Dominic connected the buses was with a Nextel phone that they, Jerry rigged and put in the glove compartment or in this case it was a bulkhead of a bus. And that's what was sending the signals back to the TransLoc system to try and then present on, on a web browser. And then we moved to a Linux box that was, you know, this big that had to be installed and serviced all the time. Doug: [20:59] And I'm now, you know, we work with these really pretty incredible, very small about the size of your cell phone if you have like an iPhone, but, but thicker, maybe an inch thick, and they have everything from Wifi to one second updates, geo location, GPS location, cellular connectivity. They can even start tracking all the things that are going on on the vehicle. Um, like how many bikes are in the bike rack, right? How many times has the door open, how many people have walked on and off. All of these things are now possible, um, pulling data off the vehicle itself. Um, and for Ford, you know, certainly as part afford, you know, getting every vehicle connected is key to the vision that we have going forward and for it is absolutely working on that. Um, that, I mean, that's a, that's a big initiative for Ford. Scot: [21:51] Cool. Now our cities, so if you're in a transit, let's use New York as an example. Yeah. It's the city able to Kinda like see that data and then like does it, does it get out of the transportation authority and now the city, you can make smart decisions around, Oh gee, you know, if they had a budget for a new train, they could kind of look at, you know, the, there's people that are going way out of their their way and if they build a train a certain line or something like that. Or are you starting to see the awareness of pop up to the city level or is it still kind of just at the transit authority? Doug: [22:20] Yeah, no, it's, it's a mix, right? It depends on the city. And I think every day the city is getting more and more interested to this, uh, interested in us. So we actually think that in the future, cities are going to have departments of mobility, whether that replaces department of transportation as a sub set of it, who knows, but we actually think that's going to exist because cities recognize that, how people move around and what's involved in moving people around is central to how the city runs, period. Right? But this is everything from curb space to parking to land use to transit, to roads. The city wants to have that holistic view and the data associated with all of it. So we target transit agencies to sell, but we work with cities as well to try and take that next step, uh, to really broaden the impact that we have. Scot: [23:08] Cool. So another trend, we talk a lot about, um, the kind of, yeah, again, I'd call it an intersecting waves cause they, you can't really talk about them in isolation because they kind of overlap. Um, this one's changing ownership model. So you kind of talked about, you know, Ford already realizes that not everyone's going to win a car and, and whatnot. Um, and here on the show we've had a number of guests that have kind of surfaced a lot of really cool models. You have like the traditional ownership model leasing. Um, you know, uh, you know, these kind of micro rentals are coming out, you have car sharing, ride sharing subscriptions, um, and, and it need an infinite number of these kinds of things. So, you know, do you agree kind of individual car ownership will diminish over time and then it will be, have kind of more different models that people use where they're kind of, you know, based on their use case though they'll have access to a vehicle was just kind of what you see things going. Doug: [23:56] Yeah. Um, absolutely. Um, which in some ways I, I'm, I'm conflicted about this. Um, I mean we're playing a very small part in making that happen and car ownership and car human driving go away, which is great because we as humans are the reasons all these accidents happen. Yeah. Um, so if you can get the human out that's really great for saving lives, but at the same time I'm like, God, I love driving. Um, so I'm a little conflicted by it, but it's the right thing to do. Yeah. And yeah, I mean it's not, I don't know that it's worth arguing over is this going to happen in 10 years, 40 years, 80, whatever it's going to happen. I feel very, very strongly that that world is happening. So, um, you know, I've said to my daughter who is 14 years old, it's likely that your kids will never drive. They won't even have the option of getting a driver's license. Um, so I think it's going to be happening soon. I guess the question is, will they, uh, well it all just be car sharing, car subscriptions, car ownership. Um, I actually, if I had to place a bet, I don't think individuals will own cars. Yeah. In the near future. Scot: [25:02] Yeah. Do you think there'll be, it's interesting to kind of think, so, you know, the use case today is Google maps because that's kind of got our, you know, that's the APP that owns in our heart, you know, how do I get from point a to point B? But then you could see some of the, you know, uh, everyone's trying to take a run at this, right. So, so Uber and lift very much want it to be them when they're kind of like, you know, they're trying to go from car sharing or ride sharing to more of a multimodal transportation. They now want to Kinda like, you know, get you an Uber from point a to point B and then a, a bike or a, you know, so, um, and then, you know, it seems like they could also ingest a lot of this public data. Scot: [25:36] I don't know if they are or not, but you know, I bet it's on their roadmap. Yup. Um, and then, you know, um, I don't know if you guys see yourself as just infrastructure and all that, or maybe Ford wants to be on that APP. Maybe you Toyota wants to be that out. So, yeah. And then we also see, you know, the rental car guys, they kind of say, well, wait a minute, we have a role in this future as well. Um, you have any guesses of Kinda like what's going to win in that space? Yeah, yeah. So, so Doug: [26:01] we definitely believe that data is the key to this. And so, um, what we're doing now is we have that architect product, which allows agencies to create all these ttfs feeds and we have an API on the other end that other services can connect to and pull that data into their service. So whether it's the transit app or move it, um, that we have a partnership with, they can just connect with us. I mean, right now they're going in there making deals, one transit agency at a time. They're seeing how difficult that is. So we're saying don't ever do that. Will we have all the relationships and we're gonna keep building them. Here's an API, just connect and you get all the data you need to put in your writer facing app. So definitely see it going down that path. I think that's, it's the less sexy part, but it's probably the most powerful to me, it's the most powerful part and it's probably where the biggest opportunity is. Yeah, yeah. Scot: [26:56] Yeah. And then, um, as we talk about some other topics, you know, data does become the key linchpin of all this stuff because you can't really solve any problems with basic data and then you can't improve user experience unless you kind of can start to look at the paths. And that's fine as long as though Doug: [27:10] that's right. I mean, you know, Uber or Lyft, if it's true that they want to work with transit and that is very questionable right now. I mean, Uber's filing, they made it pretty clear that they are directly competing with transit agencies. Um, so I personally think they all have to work together for this to work. So let's say transit agencies exist in the future for some time. Um, Uber's going to want to connect with those fixed routes, even the on demand, a transit agency vehicles. And so having that data and playing nicely, it's going to be critical for some time. Yeah. Yeah. Scot: [27:44] Cool. Um, uh, the third, third leg of the stool there is a electric vehicles. So they've been around the corner for years. Uh, we're starting to see China, you know, I think is it about 7% of their sales are now evs. They're building out their group in a government sponsored way. Some of the Nordics, the evs are starting to out. So a internal combustion engines. You and I both live in electric car lifestyle. Where do you see EBS going? Doug: [28:07] I think everything's going to be electric. Everything. I mean if you were doing a bunch of CEO to work right now, just trying to understand what effect is our, you know, our fixed route vehicles having, what effect are on demand vehicles having and what size vehicle is the right size, right? Should we have a 40 passenger vehicle or an eight passenger vehicle? And if we can optimize the routing and the sharing of the seeds in that eight passenger vehicle, does that bring the carbon emission downs? You know, you get all this and then once you can layer in electrification, oh my gosh, you can, you can reduce greenhouse gases so much. Um, I mean we both also know it's, it's a lot more enjoyable of a ride. Um, so I, I don't, I mean, unless there's some new technology that's going to overtake it, um, I don't know that that's on the horizon. I think. I think all vehicles are going to be electric, including transit vehicles. Um, and that's not Ford transit vehicles, which I assume will be electric at some point. But transit agency vehicles will also be electric one day. Yeah. All of them. Got It. Scot: [29:10] Yeah. Do you think will have the charging infrastructure for that? Doug: [29:14] The charging is going to be really interesting. Um, so they're, they're different companies now that are, that are experimenting with charging that comes from the top, right. So a bus pulls into a stop and a charger comes down on top of the vehicle and charges very quickly. So it's like little bursts of charging and they do that at every stop or every other stop. So the vehicles never run down to zero and then you'd have to go and sit overnight. They're, they're constantly getting quick, uh, quick charges on the ground as well as another way. Um, so I think there's, there are some pretty interesting things happening in just how we go about charging the vehicle. Um, battery swapping is another thing that I know has been tried in some other countries. I think Israel actually had a company that was, you would literally drive up and they had a service that would take your battery out and drop another one in really quickly and off you would go, which is pretty amazing. Scot: [30:08] Yeah. Tesla tried that for awhile and a users wouldn't use it because they were kind of worried they would get a, yeah. A battery that wasn't as good as the one they had. Yeah. Yeah. I get it. You know, I've got a 5,000 miles on my battery. Just left it, level it at a 200,000 miles, like at the end of his fine for someone. Doug: [30:22] Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, um, yeah, so electric, everything in the future. There you go. There's my prediction. I don't think Scot: [30:29] prediction, everything's electric. Yeah. Um, and then the last trend we talk about is autonomy. You've hit on there. Um, you know, Tesla is kind of flirting with level three right now. Yeah. I don't know if you saw Tesla's Tesla is a day. Um, it was two weeks ago on a Monday. Yeah. But that was really interesting because, you know, in typical elan fashion, he kind of, you know, uh, like drew a couple lines in the sand and one of them was, he talked about cameras versus Lidar, uh, and how he believes cameras and image processing is superior to lidar because you'll be able to get the cost down. And then they introduced a new chipset that kind of blew everyone's mind. Yeah. And then the last one was, he talked about, you know, ultimately with a approval from, from, you know, local bodies. They all eventually have robo taxis where you can kind of like rent a title or for 18 cents a mile. Scot: [31:16] Yeah. Cause you've got the combination of an electric vehicle. So allow low maintenance and then, you know, uh, a Tesla owner while they're at work, kind of check their car into the fleet and it would go shuffle people around. And I'll come pick you up at five when you're ready to go. Um, so, uh, where do you see a bee is going, uh, do you believe in Elan's vision into the future or are you kinda like, think more of like the way Mobar guys are doing? Or maybe you have some other view that, that, uh, where it's gone Doug: [31:42] well, I'm certainly hopeful the Ford fee was going to, it's going to do well. Um, yeah. You know, there's some things about the, about Alan's vision that I think are amazing and I, I am bullish on. And then there's other parts that to me don't make any sense. Um, of course I'm not as big a thinker as a lawn, but, um, so I'll give you an example. So if I spend $100,000 on a vehicle, I do not want my vehicle driving around and picking up random. People know if they limit that, there's ways I can control it, fine. But that may reduce the viability of the model. Um, but you know, I'm very particular about, uh, let's say smells in my car. So what if someone is a smoker? They just finished a cigarette and they get in my hundred thousand dollars vehicle and then I get in my car when it comes to pick me up after work and it smells like cigarettes, I'm going to freak out and never use that again. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think there are some problems and I don't think I'm alone in that. And I talked to a lot of people and that seems to be shared. Yeah. Um, but I do think when car ownership starts to diminish and you just aren't subscribing to vehicles, um, then I think that Robo taxi model, um, that's a different story. Uh, I think we're, another place we don't necessarily line up is I don't see any way that it's happening. As soon as alon is saying it's going to happen. Scot: [32:59] Yeah. He kind of, yeah. Controversially said next year that they could have 200,000 Robo taxis on the road if, if it was approved, we'll see Doug: [33:06] Okay. So here's the key: if approved. Yeah. So I think the technology is going to be way ahead of where the government will allow things to be. Right. So, I don't know how other people are thinking about this, but to me I think what'll happen is there will be test areas where autonomous vehicles will be allowed to go and then potentially they'll start saying, um, if you don't have an autonomous vehicle, you can't go into that area because as you know, these cars need to all be connected to each other with no human intervention to really reach optimal performance. Yeah. Um, all it takes is one idiotic human to do something irrational that the others can't adjust to. Right. So, um, I think just like you're seeing in London where they have these zones of efficiency where if you don't have a hybrid or an electric or what have you, you can't drive in there and you get a ticket if he tried to. So I would imagine something similar with autonomous and then it just starts expanding further and further out until you have giant regions where no humans are allowed to drive. Yeah. Scot: [34:07] Do you think a, an early use case would be long haul? So like, you know, parts of I-40 where you just going for, for miles and miles without, yeah. You know, maybe some of those lanes are designated autonomous or something like that. Doug: [34:18] Yeah. I certainly think that would be, um, a reasonable experiment around run like as, as a first step, um, far less complicated than trying to be and you know, city center. Yeah. With people walking all around. Um, so I, yeah, I could see that happening before, you know, commuter cars are, are really, um, that the Robo taxis are really picking us up. Okay. Scot: [34:39] Yeah. Cool. What, uh, who has Ford partnered with? Are they part of the, so GM has like chariot, right? Um, no, not sure yet. Uh, so GM has an effort. You have Uber and Lyft. Doug: [34:50] So Ford has Argo Ai. Okay. Yup. Well, I wasn't aware of them. Okay. Yup. Yeah. And they're doing some, some amazing things. Nice. Yeah. Cool. Cool. Scot: [34:58] We need to bring him to the triangle here. We do. I keep telling all the, I don't deal with government very much, but whenever I do, I tell him, you know, we should be an autonomous vehicle zone and waiting to get in front of that, you would have my support. I'm counting on you to figure that. Right. I'm there. Let's do it. Yep. So speaking of governments, you, you, you know, because of what you guys do, you have a lot more touch points there. Where do you think that those guys are going to go when it comes to some of these topics? Are the going to be pretty aligned with them or does it scare them? Uh, like the Lyft guys, one of the, when you watched their road show, uh, in the lift founders talk about the reason they started Lyft was, if you think about it as cities are designed all wacky, you know, we use a lot of this space for parking and roads and yeah, it can be much more green areas and bike areas and that kind of thing. Uh, you think cities are, are kind of bought into a lot of this changing mobility? Doug: [35:46] Yeah, I think it depends where in the hierarchy the politician is. So, um, I think they're all risk averse. Even the ones that are really forward thinking and want to take, um, you know, want to be innovative, they're still scared about someone dying. Right? I mean, I mean, you know, this one person dies and everyone says, all right, we've got to stop. We've got to pull back on this. Even though, you know, one person dies and autonomous vehicle and that same day, you know, a thousand people died in human driven cars. Okay. Yep. So, um, I, I think you get risk aversion. The more risk, the higher up in the chain, you are the more risk averse. I believe you are to this. So you may have people that are at the city level that are saying, this is, we want to be innovative in our city. Doug: [36:31] We want to be one of the leaders. And then you get into the federal government and they want to say, Whoa, Whoa, whoa. We need to figure this out for the entire country. Or the way we can deal with this is we're just gonna leave it up to the cities to deal with it. So it's never on me. Right. So I think there are aligned with the long term, I don't think they're aligned with the shorter term and they're just starting to understand all the layers that are, that are involved every, again from parking to like building parking decks. Right. I mean, these things are enormously expensive. They take up a tremendous amount of space. Nobody in the city wants them, but they have to have them. So if you can start testing with areas where you can say, well, we don't have to build these five parking decks so we can save $100 million and these vehicles are more energy efficient, et Cetera, et Cetera, et Cetera, then you might start getting a little traction there. Um, but yeah. Cool. It's going to be like towns, townships, cities, states, federal. Yeah. Scot: [37:30] Do you guys actively get involved in advocacy around the stuff? Because it seems like, you know, you're giving away the, you're the, the architect seems like you're, you're touching a lot of the right parts there. Yes. Or, or, or you leave the advocacy up to someone else. Doug: [37:45] So we actually have, uh, folks in house that do some advocacy, advocacy work. But Ford's really, I mean, I have a whole, yes, this is, this is another benefit of me being part of them. You can go all over there Scot: [37:56] advocacy group and say, Hey, I need you to get me in front of this person, or Doug: [38:01] absolutely, let's talk about x, y, and Z. Yeah. And one of the cool things about four it is, it's not just about smart vehicles, it's also smart cities and a smart world. That's, that's really the vision going forward is how do we, how do we make, take the streets back, right? So Jim Hackett did a ces keynote where he talked about getting, uh, our city streets back and getting our cities back and making them more livable and not just designed around cars. Um, and so there's definitely a big initiative inside Ford to make sure that we are talking to cities and we're helping them. The future, one example is there's a city challenge inside a fort, so it's a group that actually works with cities on becoming more innovative and running innovation experiments and they get, they can win prizes from it and grants and things like that. So it's really, um, it's kind of a grassroots effort. Yeah. Yeah. Scot: [38:53] I don't go to Detroit much, but you go to Detroit a lot now. I'll be there next weekend, the following week. Um, it seems like, is that a city that's kind of like on the edge of this because they have so many of the automakers there and they're there, the motor city and all that, that kind of thing. Or ironically, I would say, you know, another set of issues because they've got kind of this urban blight thing going on on, on one edge too. Doug: [39:13] They definitely have that. But you know, it's really interesting if, if you go up there, what you won't see is massive traffic. They don't have heavy congestion. And so for them it's very easy to be in your, your Ford f one 50 or your Lincoln navigator rolling down the road at 70 at four 30 in the afternoon saying, I don't know what everyone's talking about the cities. Right? So if you're not experiencing it yourself, it's harder to really say, we should put money behind this. We should go lobby the politicians to make sure we're doing this. Plus that's their whole history, right? Building the cars, is there history. So I would imagine if I worked on the factory line and I kept hearing about people no longer buying cars and I didn't really understand what that meant, it would just be terrifying to me. So I think you have a mix of these things going on that don't lend themselves to making Detroit, maybe the leader in innovation when it comes to mobility. Although they do for automobiles. Yup. Yup. Scot: [40:18] We start a program where we send them to La and put them on the 4:05 PM and then let him let him enjoy that for a couple of their way to too nice in Dearborn and Detroit to force that upon them. That would, that would just be cool just as an experiment so he could see what real traffic. Oh my gosh. Um, so some 30,000 foot questions. You've been in the mobility space for a long time. Yep. One of the, a lot of articles I read, they talk about the dealer network as sometimes you can kind of view it as an asset and sometimes a liability. Yeah. It kind of reminds me of the commerce world where we're stores for a long time we're essentially became a liability and now they can kind of like shift from the stores and they've kind of swung back over to an asset. Yeah. Um, where do you see that dealer network? Just kind of generally, um, you know, adding value down the road if we do have these changing models. Yeah. Doug: [41:07] Um, so definitely out of my wheelhouse. I don't have a lot of experience or knowledge about dealerships. I would imagine there are, there are places for the dealerships in a mobility future. Um, maybe not so much selling cars to individuals because I think that's going away. But all of these vehicles that are going to drive 24, seven, which is one of the benefits of all Thomas Vehicles, they never need to rest and they just need to be charged and maintain is where are they going to be charged and maintained? Where are they going to be staged? Right? So if you know patterns that as well as we hope they will in the future with our products and others you're going to want to do staging and you're going to want to be very smart about how you deploy these vehicles. And so I could see dealerships in the future morphing into something more along the lines of maintenance, staging, um, potentially charging service education to the public, these sorts of things. Scot: [42:02] Cool. Um, so, uh, any last thoughts on where we're going to be in kind of five, 10 years? Doug: [42:09] Yeah. So, um, as you know, and now your listeners know, because we talked about being a blackboard, um, early on that that space went through a very similar change. So when I joined blackboard, schools were saying this internet thing is not really a real thing, so why do we need to buy this? Right? So they had to go through that education process and then it became, well, if we don't have this for every student, they're going to go to another college and transportation has going through the same thing, but it's actually happening much, much faster. So, um, I do think we are going to start seeing experiments on the roads with autonomous vehicles, transit agency, electrification, um, bringing these modes together. So you're going to have much more seamless mobility probably in let's say two to three years on that front. On the seamless mobility side. It's going to be much easier for you as a rider to go to a city and just use your phone and it'll just magically take you wherever you need to go. Right. So I do see that coming in the next couple of years. Scot: [43:12] Do you think? Um, so the, the next big thing in smartphones is going to be 5G does that, it sounds like you've already got the con activity you need to do most of what you want. Um, you know, maybe some of these maps are large enough that 5G is necessary. Do you see 5G changing that at all or just another kind of supporting part of this is kind of seamless mobility? Doug: [43:33] Yeah, I I think, um, I don't know how transformative 5G will, it seems like is going to be transformative to everything. So I'm probably an idiot by not saying of course it's going to transform transportation. But I do think if you think about trying to connect all the vehicles until they are all built, you know from the OEMs are with connectivity in them. You may think, you know, it's expensive or inexpensive to get these devices and actually install them on transit vehicles and wire them up. It's time consuming, resource intensive if nothing else. So if we really can get to a point sort of back where TransLoc started, where you can take an inexpensive phone that's running on 5G and use that to connect vehicles around you until everything is built in connectivity that actually might accelerate us getting to a more connected world. Yep. Scot: [44:17] Very cool. Awesome. We'll run up against time and really appreciate you taking the, I know you're super busy. My pleasure. Um, and then so one last question. If folks want to follow you, find you tweet you, um, what's the, what's the best location them to learn more about what you're thinking about? Doug: [44:32] Yeah, I'm going to be really old school and say email is probably the best way. Um, so my, my email address is just doug@transloc.com. And TransLoc is T R A N S L O C.com. Scot: [44:49] Cool. Uh, and I know you are on Linkedin and Twitter, but you're not super active publishing stuff out, but Doug: [44:53] I'm not, but I am on linkedin every day. So linkedin is also another really good way if you want to connect with me. Scot: [44:59] Got It. And your Dr. Doug Kaufman on there, which is Doug: [45:02] Yeah. I don't tell too many people know that people don't. People don't actually believe that I am, but I, I really do have a degree to prove it. Scot: [45:07] Yeah. Dr. Doug. I like that. Cool. We really appreciate you coming on the podcast and taking time and sharing your vision of mobility. Doug: [45:14] No, I appreciate you asking me. It's, it's a really great to do it.

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Episode 9: Brave New World

Braze for Impact

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 4, 2019 26:28

Jon Hyman, Braze CTO and Founder, gives his insights on the future of data privacy, the responsibilities of entrepreneurs/lawmakers, and the pressures on tech giants to comply to a new frontier of legislation. TRANSCRIPT: [0:00:17] PJ Bruno: Hello there. This is PJ Bruno and welcome back to Braze for Impact; Your weekly tech industry discussed digest. Very thrilled to have with us here today, our CTO and founder at Braze, John Hyman. John thanks for being here. [0:00:31] John Hyman: Thanks for having me on the podcast PJ. [0:00:33] PJ Bruno: I mean as you it's been a long time coming. We've had to reschedule numerous times. [0:00:37] John Hyman: It's been challenging, but I've wanted to be here for a while. [0:00:40] PJ Bruno: I know. Well luckily now it seems like the equipment is working okay. Finally, glad to have you on the mic. For those of you who don't know, John Hyman is our MC extraordinaire so to get him in here, for me, is a big deal. So, John where do we start. Privacy. Privacy is in the air. Everyone's talking about the past year has been just a crossfire for some of these tech giants. Facebook specifically. And it kind of seems to have caused a lot of companies to like pivot their focus towards really like catering to that anxiety that some people have around privacy. So, where do you want to start? [0:01:13] John Hyman: There really is so much to unpack when it comes to privacy, but I like that what you just mentioned in your introduction is that we are seeing some companies starting to pivot more toward that as a focus. If I even look at what's been going on this week alone, yesterday we had Apple announce a credit card with Goldman Sachs and a competitive feature that they are really pushing hard is the privacy aspect of it. So, Apple says that Goldman Sachs isn't going to use your data in any way other to than to operate the card. So they are not going to share or sell that data to third parties. [0:01:49] PJ Bruno: Okay. [0:01:50] John Hyman: That information about your purchases is going to exist on your iPhone and not in Apple's cloud. Apple is not going to see it. They didn't even put your credit card number on the card itself, so the card itself is basically just blank with a chip and a stripe... [0:02:04] PJ Bruno: [crosstalk] Oh wow. [0:02:04] John Hyman: ...and your name. [0:02:06] PJ Bruno: Sounds very futuristic doesn't it? [0:02:08] John Hyman: It does look pretty cool and I think will show everyone that you got a lot of disposable income. [0:02:12] PJ Bruno: Yeah. [0:02:12] John Hyman: When you pull out it might be the new AMEX Platinum card or something. [0:02:16] PJ Bruno: Yeah. [laughing] [0:02:16] John Hyman: But, what we look at the line that they're taking is that they're really trying to sell this privacy aspect and I think that if you look at Apple's business overall they are also trying to differentiate themselves from the larger tech companies like Facebook and Google because they want to say that they respect your privacy. I remember back at CES in Las Vegas they had a big, cheeky ad up that just said," What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone." And they were really just taking this jab... [0:02:44] PJ Bruno: Yeah. [0:02:44] John Hyman: ...you know at google and other providers because they're putting that forward as a focus. They release a lot of features. We have one coming out on Safari and on your iPhone that is going to limit the time that cookies can live on your device. It's something called “Intelligent Tracking Prevention” that Apple's coming out with. And so they're really trying to make a deliberate push into saying, "We're a privacy provider for you. If you want your data to be safe, then you should use Apple Products.” And I think its really interesting positioning, because globally privacy is a word that's on everyone's tongue. We see a lot of different scandals... [0:03:18] PJ Bruno: Um-hmm. [0:03:19] John Hyman: ...that are happening in the news and they're not just happening from technology companies. They're really just happening with any kind of big data breach or any other system. We've seen things like Equifax losing and leaking the Social Security numbers of more than half of Americans. We've had Starwood and Marriott leak the names of and information of 100s of millions of their consumers. These aren't great, big tech companies that consumer tech companies like Facebook. And then we just go to those companies and there still countless scandals there on Facebook had. Cambridge Analytica had had... [0:03:53] PJ Bruno: Right. Of course. [0:03:53] John Hyman: 50+ million subscriber information that had leaked. I believe even last week Facebook said that they had leaded, in plain text, the passwords of about ten or twenty million users. And so there's just really this non stop barrage... [0:04:08] PJ Bruno: Jesus. [0:04:08] John Hyman: ... Of bad press when it comes to privacy that consumers are listening to and I think being shaped by and seeing that," Hey, there is all of this data that's out about me in this world and I want to now kind of clamp down on that." Apple, I think, is taking a fairly opportunistic you know kind of look at... [0:04:27] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:04:27] John Hyman: ...how they want to position themselves in it. But, I do think its fairly interesting that we see now other businesses are having to shift toward that. [0:04:35] PJ Bruno: Yeah. Definitely. I mean you know what's interesting to me is it seemed like a lot of these fines that were happening you know just last week federal prosecutors are like conducting a criminal investigation into data deals with Facebook and that was all around user consent. And so it was not compromised passwords. Its not like okay you're potentially losing all of your you know information. It was just more okay they're using your information to sell or to make decisions. Where do you stand? As far as the data privacy person like, personally, because me... I'm like," I kinda don't care." Like I'm sorry I wish I did more but its like as long my information or like my bank account is not compromised if you're using that data, even unbeknownst to me, to like better cater to me I kinda don't mind. Like where do you sit on the fence? [0:05:29] John Hyman: So the reason, to me, that this is a challenging situation is really multifaceted. One, it comes down to the fact that I think the average consumer may not be aware of all of the things that are ongoing about them on their phones, by Facebook, on the Internet. All these little pieces of information that are essentially are tracked about them and I'm not sure that the average consumer may understand this profile which built up. And the reason that I think that is because we do see very strong adverse reactions to when this does happen in the press. So, the New York Times writes a story about some information that's being sent to Facebook and then you see essentially online or through politicians commenting on news programs that there a strong reaction to things that do seem somewhat day to day in the running of what is essentially an analytics company. And so I'm not... I think that's kind of one part of it is people may not be aware of the full scope about it. The second part is, do you think that in some cases, to your point, it may be a bit hard to understand the damages that it can be caused to an individual by having all of this information out there? So a lot of people are using Facebook and Google and they're using it for free and everyone knows that if you're not paying for a product then you are the product. But, I think if you had to enumerate and ask people to enumerate the actual downsides, to them, that might be challenging that goes kind of hand in hand with that first part of it. I mean, literally I think if you had like a Harris Poll and you called a 1000 random Americans and you said," Hi there. I'd like to conduct a survey and I'm curious to know your opinions on why is it bad for you that Facebook has this information on you?” And I think that you might get some responses that prosper anecdotal of, "I know someone that had their identity stolen" or," It seems pretty creepy to me.” But, in term of actually enumerating those problems unto them, I think that that could be a bit hard cause it's such an abstract challenge. So, I think that we're essentially working against that as well which makes it a hard topic to discuss because some people like, "[inaudible] what does this really matter? Like I'll give my information." Its interesting if you just think about the amount of information that I'll give online all the time. Like I'm constantly putting in my zip code and my email address. [0:07:36] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:07:36] John Hyman: Gender. All these different things into different forms online. Not even thinking about kind of what the purpose is there. [0:07:43] PJ Bruno: Do you have your credit card memorized? [0:07:45] John Hyman: I used to [crosstalk] have my credit card memorized. But then Google Chrome started to remember the credit cards for me. So, it does then go back to that convenience factor of I can forget information. I think the same with phone numbers, I used to know [crosstalk] all of my friends phone numbers growing up. At home, we would dial it on the phone lines. And now I think I had if you were a friend before 2006 then I know your phone number I can still go back though elementary school or high school and list out those phone numbers. Even now, I couldn't even give you Bill Magnuson's cell phone number. And I know the first six digits I think. But, I probably just can't because he and I didn't meet until later in life when I already had my phone replacing parts of my memory for me there. [0:08:32] PJ Bruno: Exactly. Exactly. [0:08:32] John Hyman: But, essentially, we come back to where I stand. I do think that ultimately there is a lot of benefit to providing consumers with personalized and relevant information. I do think that that is in the... For the benefit of consumers. [0:08:47] PJ Bruno: Um-hmm [0:08:47] John Hyman: You ever receive an email and it's about something to purchase and it's a product that you'd never looked at never been interested in may not even be right for you at all. You know a lot of us have had direction like," Why am I getting a you know a sale on boots when you know I was looking at you know dress suits" or other things online and... [0:09:08] PJ Bruno: Um-hmm [0:09:08] John Hyman: ... This doesn't match my kind of shopping interest right now. So, I think that it is really a beneficial if we can deliver personalized customer experiences to consumers based on their interests, based on things that are relevant to them, to their demographics... [0:09:22] PJ Bruno: Um-hmm [0:09:23] John Hyman: ... To their behaviors, to what we think they're going be add most value to them. I do think that is extremely valuable and you see that Google can do it to when you ever Google something into a search bar and then your like the auto completed exactly what I wanted. Its like they knew me really really well. And then some parts there's like a ... It feels a little bit creepy of you know if my phone listening to everything that I'm saying. But, on the other hand, you know, we think about of like how many times have you been wanting to think of an actor or actress's name or you're trying to learn more information about something you are watching on TV or on your phone and you just it just auto completes it and it's just like it's a great experience from a consumer. To be able to get that information faster. And so, it ultimately is good to the consumer. But, all of this being said, I will say that brands and companies do have a responsibility to their consumers, and to their customers, and to their users. To protect information that's been entrusted to them. [0:10:19] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:10:19] John Hyman: And not to use it for other purposes that the customers is not necessarily aware of. [0:10:24] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:10:24] John Hyman: Or I think would be like reasonably able to assume. Like I can reasonable assume that Facebook is going to use my information to show me an advertisement or sell it to some company, but I don't think I'd be reasonably want to assume that they're going sell my information to a political campaign... [0:10:41] PJ Bruno: Yeah. [0:10:41] John Hyman: ...to target me... [0:10:42] PJ Bruno: Jesus. [0:10:42] John Hyman: ... Based on the interest or things that they have. They even though it may kind of follow naturally if you think about it a little bit more, but I would say that it doesn't seem that reasonable to me. It doesn't seem reasonable to me if I give information to a food delivery service and then they sell that to someone who is now talking to me about... Moving in my area or setting up my electrical utilities or switching cable providers or any of those kind of things. [0:11:06] PJ Bruno: Yeah. Yeah. [0:11:06] John Hyman: I wouldn't think those things would naturally follow. But, if I do give information to a delivery service I'm going to want them to show me cool new restaurants I might like or dishes I'm into [crosstalk] or help me reorder things I have ordered recently or remind me that it's snowing tonight and, therefore, I should order in and just be cozy. Those things are a boon for me. [0:11:25] PJ Bruno: Right. Well, rather you're someone who cares about consent or not, it seems to be not stopping any of the fines that are being put on some of these big companies. I mean, you mentioned it last time we spoke about how like Facebook they're getting fine after fine. Tons of fines, but still posting record profits. So, I guess the question becomes like what's the incentive? Like, how much longer? What's the longevity around the plan of being able to just eat fines and not change your strategy? Right? Because big company right? It's not an easy pivot. So, I guess that's the question. It's like you can tell they did this whole new shift to privacy focus. Like what are your thoughts around that? [0:12:09] John Hyman: I think that if you want to influence the behavior of companies, there are essential two was of doing it. One, is you can do it through I'll say cultural opinions and attitudes of what's acceptable. This is where we see things like pressure of people talking to having a conversation about what they believe is acceptable or not. Taking to Twitter. Taking to the news and putting social pressure on a company to change. The second part is that you can do it through legislation and regulation and that's really where a government can exercise its power. If you look at companies like Facebook, what you mentioned is fairly true. If you go back to Facebook's Q4 earnings that they announced at the end of January so just about two months ago, we go back to where Facebook was in January you think that they had just come off of you know a crushing amount of different scandals. Their stock price had dropped, I believe, 30 or 40% from its October high. There were a lot of things in the news going on of other people saying that teenagers are leaving Facebook in mass or that advertisers are pulling information from Facebook where there were scandals and it seemed like you're like," Wow! Facebook's really is going to have to do something about this." Then, what they do in Q4 is they just you know had very strong Q4 earnings data. They talked about in January completely beat the expectations of the street and ended up having their stock price go little bit back up. It's not fully recovered where it is, but [inaudible] you do see them performing really well. Though, the fines are a part of it. So, you're looking at fines from Facebook we know that Google I was reading this article that Google pays more in EU fines than it does in taxes. Just kind of a... [0:13:52] PJ Bruno: That's nuts. [0:13:53] John Hyman: ... Preposterous thing on principal alone. But, you really want to just try to slowly get these companies to change over time and I think that companies, ultimately, are can become slower moving organizations just like you might see with governments or anything else like that. And but you can slowly recalibrate them to what is acceptable. [0:14:16] PJ Bruno: Um-hmm. [0:14:16] John Hyman: And over time they'll be paying these fines and it might just be the cost of doing business. But, a long term strategy is going to be that you can't live in that world forever because you're going to have either the pressure continue to fall on you... [0:14:31] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:14:31] John Hyman: ...and this is when you see things like Elizabeth Warren making claims that she wants to break up tech companies so we can get to that and talk about that in a moment. But, you also then just have the massive consumer opinion, which will just continue to just fall down on you or have consumers' opinion exploited by companies like Apple who'll then try to push more fines. [0:14:52] PJ Bruno: It is a sick troll. It is a sick troll. [0:14:52] John Hyman: Yeah, it is grave by them and they you know Apple actually been a really staunch supporter of increased privacy rights. Because, again, it's a competitive advantage for them. So, I think that over time, in the long term view, they're going to want to make those changes. So, I do think that fines are effective in the long term. I don't think that they're effective in the short term. But, in terms of incentivizing behavior it's a really good way to slowly move the needle there. [0:15:15] PJ Bruno: So what about tech giants or CEOs informing new legislation because I remember I talked to Susan Wiseman and you know she was our GDP our queen over here as we were going through it and she mentioned that a lot of that legislation had you know was not informed. It was not informed by a specialist. It wasn't informed by tech CEOs or subject matter experts. So I guess my question becomes: A) Should they leverage to help make legislation and B) Is that dangerous because you know having someone who has so much invested in what's going on help create laws that sounds you know somewhat a slippery slope? [0:15:56] John Hyman: One thing I think is going to be absolutely be true is that... The crafters of this legislation are certainly going to try to use it to maintain a competitive position. So, if you do have Apple having a seat at the table in that conversation they're certainly going to want to do things that allow them to out perform Google. I think you just see this over and over again of just essentially of just lobbying this you're always trying to lobby in your self interest or in your industry's interest or something like that. [0:16:23] PJ Bruno: Sure. [0:16:24] John Hyman: All that being said though, the technology's changing in a really fast pace. And so, one of the challenges that comes just in front of any kind of legislation is are you even legislating the things that are relevant to today and also going to be relevant tomorrow? We also have to think about what the world is going to be like if we have self-driving cars or when 5G is everywhere and, therefore, we have in there meta things connected in our homes. There's a lot more things that we want to think about that maybe we to start to legislating. Like I don't even understand all of this information that Alexa is collecting on me at home. But I see cases of Alexa and Amazon being subpoenaed in murder trails and things like that and we got to even answer those questions of like," What's it going to be like when daily life is just so full of sensors and robots and monitors and...?" Perhaps we've already gotten there. [0:17:15] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:17:16] John Hyman: But, I do think that like the government isn't going to do an effective job at legislating what is going to be effective in the future without talking to the industry. So, I absolutely feel that you have to have industry experts essentially have a seat at the table and just to kind to elucidate this though kind of funny example. If you just go and watch that hearing of Mark Zuckerberg on congress. I mean, it's apparent how woefully ignorant a lot of the politicians are of... [0:17:44] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:17:44] John Hyman: ... How the Internet works, on how Facebook works, on how really anything in modern technology is actually functioning. So, you want to make sure that you got great experts in there for sure. [0:17:55] PJ Bruno: So, what else? What's next? What's the future look like? I know that we have this whole California Consumer Protection Act. So, what's the path forward for consumer data protection? What can American legislation do better than Europe has done? [0:18:10] John Hyman: So, for folks who aren't so familiar with California Consumer Privacy Act I'll give you a little bit of the backstory here. So, we had the EU create GDPR which is their big data protection regulation and this one's effect May 25, 2018. And it allowed citizens of the EU to have a certain number of rights when it comes to their data online. They have the right to amend information that's about them, request information that's being collected on them. Business could only collect data for certain under a certain business reason. Like they had to get other consent or have a valid business concern. You could only collect the information a minimal set of information that you needed to do a job and only had to keep the information around and retain it for as long as you needed and no more than that. And so it really kind of helped businesses kind of one lay out the things that they needed to do and it helped their consumers in the long run. And you saw in 2018 a lot of businesses talk about GDPR. It was kind of the headline of all of the privacy kind of blogs and security blogs. Braze, we hosted a conference on it with some of our partners. I wrote blog posts on this. We had Susan Wiseman, our general counsel, also discussing a lot of GDPR. It was kind of the big news. And then when you look over to the U.S. We still have really nothing comparable when it comes to legislation. So, California took a look at this and said," Look, we can do something about this and we can create our own privacy act that is akin to what the EU citizens have on the GDPR." So, essentially what this would mean then is that California is a state that is going to create legislation that applies only to state residents of California or maybe there's a little more than that. But, essentially only applies in the California jurisdiction. And that would require companies have to understand they need to give different rights to folks in America based on what state they are in. Now, I don't think that that is a great way for us to go about doing privacy and what I mean by that is a state legislated privacy act. Because, if you play that down what you'll find is that you'll end up with a patchwork of different states having their own different legislative agendas and... [0:20:30] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:20:31] John Hyman: ...and maybe you'll have to do something in the one state. You know even it... just even the concept of states is an incredible concept to me that you could do something that is completely legal in one state and then travel 20 miles across a border and that exact same thing will get you thrown in jail. There are a lot of different cases in America of which we have laws of varying severity and varying degree or laws that things that are legal or not and if you think about that with data it I think that it can really start becoming mind-boggling for what that imposes on business and what that imposes on companies in order to do. So, if you look at the political side of this, you have the Republican Party in the United States that wants to do more of a federal approach. And at the tech companies are also in support of that. So if you look at what these big giants are saying it's like, "Look, like we should really do this at the federal level not at the state because otherwise this is going to start getting a bit challenging for us to do." And that is something that I actually support. I do think and it's not just the Republicans that'll say that there's bipartisan support on wanting to do data privacy on a federal level here in the United States. But, I think that's essentially the right level at which we need to operate.It is we need something that is national that is going to protect people not just in California, but also in North Carolina and... [0:21:44] PJ Bruno: Right. [0:21:45] John Hyman: ...North Dakota and Texas and in New York. [0:21:46] PJ Bruno: It's going to get pretty nasty out there. [0:21:48] John Hyman: We need to have it all essentially be this same thing as this great country of ours have the same protections for all of our citizens. Not just those who happen to live on the sunny side of it. [0:21:58] PJ Bruno: Gosh. I do wish I lived in California. I will say that. [Laughter] [0:22:02] John Hyman: Yeah. Every time I go there and then I come back to New York and it's snowing and I just wonder," You know I could be a place where there's great wine and good surfing and beaches and ... [0:22:12] PJ Bruno: ... And they're thinking data privacy legislation like," That's important to me." [0:22:15] John Hyman: Yeah. They're in some things ahead of they're time. [0:22:20] PJ Bruno: [Laughter] Well, all right John, well, that's about our time man. Wrapping up, any words to the wise on any companies that could be dealing with user data in the future? [0:22:29] John Hyman: Well, one thing that I'll just say is I think that the question around privacy is could be just fairly interesting as we move into the future. I was talking a bit about the Internet of things and just really there's a lot of data being collect all around us and, as a consumer, I really would love to just understand what that all is. So, I mentioned Alexa and I have to imagine that Amazon has a different profile of me when I am talking to Alexa than when my wife is talking to Alexa. They must know and have this different personas of okay we got you know they probably figured out how many people are in our house. And also you can then use the things in our house to really track a lot about our lives. I once read some funny article that was something like in Canada they have their water plumbing supply and their plumbers who ever runs their water utility... I don't... It's not the plumbers. But, they have to essentially have someone who manually is kind of sitting at like basically the water power plant and turning up capacity at half-time in hockey games. Because in Canada everyone's watching the hockey game and then it goes to commercial break or goes to half-time and then everyone goes and uses the restroom. [0:23:48] PJ Bruno: Ah. [0:23:49] John Hyman: And everyone flushed at the same time. And they need they have like 10 or 20x the amount of like water pressure that they need to push down there. The reason that I bring up this crazy example is because if you think about all if you just think about that as a thing then you play if forward and think well if you had a sensor on every time a flushed the toilet, you had a sensor on when I turned on the gas on my stove, or when turned on the television , or when I told Alexa to turn on the lights in my living room you could map out everything that I'm doing in my apartment. And I think that it's going to be fairly interesting to think about like what it's going to be like in the world where a lot of different companies can accurately map out what you're doing. Even now just with a phone in my pocket, I know that Google and Facebook have a lot of information about me. If I walk... Go between here and the restaurant and I'm having dinner tonight I sure they're going to know did I run? Did I walk? Did I take a bike? Did it take the subway? Did I take a car? They really could kind of track you back through that. And it's one thing where you got this giant these giant tech companies that really are the most valuable companies in the world that have this information and we're hoping, at least I'm hoping as a consumer, that they're good stewards of that as best as they can and protected as best as they can. But, there will be other companies that then start to get this information. They'll be my utility companies that'll start maybe track or and perhaps it will be like Ford or General Motors as they have a self-driving car and then they know all this other information of what's going on in the car. You know, perhaps the other vendors inside my apartment or my house and I think that really the next thing that we need to just make sure that we're thinking about is just holistically what's going to happen when just have so much data about us available that's very granular that can really paint this whole picture of who you are and what are we going to have to do as a society in order to deal with that. So, and so I think that that is going to be like a kind of fairly interesting next step as we go into the Internet of things and we look at legislation. I think that's really going to be the only way to solve it is make sure that we have tight legislation on all of that different kinds of data there. But, it's just something that I think is one is exciting. I think that it's exciting that we're going to have these things or these pieces of technology in our lives. But, we need to just make sure that it won't be done irresponsibility. [0:26:09] PJ Bruno: Yeah, and I hope it is. It's up to you lawmakers. We're looking at you. John, thanks so much for being here. [0:26:15] John Hyman: Yeah. I had a great time. Thanks so much. [0:26:16] PJ Bruno: And thank you guys for being here with us. Take care. [0:26:19]

HTB 004: Why Some Win Big While Others Don't...

Halfass to Badass Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 6, 2019 17:45

In today’s episode you will hear the difference between the companies who are winning big and the ones who struggle keep their doors open. You’ll also understand how you can go from being a halfass in the marketplace to dominating and crushing it. Here are some of the awesome things you will hear in this episode: Find out what a Tennis pro (ranked 50 in the world) did to turn an injury to victory and how you can use the same principle to grow your business. Find out what the companies who are winning do differently than the ones who struggle. And see the secret to removing overwhelm and burnout in your business and personal life. So listen here to find out how Satori successfully coaches the best to achieve their most important targets and how you can do the same. ---Transcript--- The reason they're winning big is because they’re narrowing their focus while everyone else is going wide. ...AND they lacking precision. So the guys that are dominating and crushing it have a sniper approach that is very, targeted. ...And everyone else, who’s losing battles and getting killed, is because they’re setting fantasy goals without a clear and efficient strategy to execute in an overcrowded market. So that’s why their growth and marketing isn’t working as well anymore. So what we gotta do, is help them narrow their focus and remove distractions in a world that is constantly trying to sell them the next sexy thing, or some new marketing fad, right? There are new ideas everywhere… There are no lack of ideas. Are you following? Here is what I mean by that... If you think about our clients, they come to us for a couple of reasons… Number one... They’re doing great, but they want to elevate their performance. They want a higher level of achievement. They want to do better. I love that. that’s great. Unfortunately, is not always easy. So a lot of times they’ve been doing great for a long time, they’ve been very profitable but they’ve plateaued, they’ve spend a ton of money on marketing and development, but they’ve lost momentum. AND the reason things stop working is what I said a minute ago, they’re going too wide and they lack precision. Because of that, they have a million plates spinning at all times and nothing gets the necessary focus, or attention and therefore, momentum, decelerates, slows down, or stops. Imagine your marketplace like a battlefield and you want to win the war, right? (I know, it may be grim metaphor but just follow for a second. You don’t want to have a million battles to fight, you want to your best effort, your best resources on the fewest amount of battles possible to win the war. The more battles the less chance of winning the war. Otherwise, you just end up overwhelmed, overworked, frustrated and exhausted. You with me? The companies who are winning right now, are the ones who are narrowing their focus and know how to put their best effort, best focus, best energy and resources on the most leveraged, most profitable targets. They are not fighting a million battles, they’re picking the fewest battles possible they know they can dominate to win the war. Makes sense? So if we’re looking at it from the perspective of dominating your market and achieve maximum growth, maximum profitability and maximum impact that’s sustainable, what do we gotta do? We’ve got to do what I call narrowing down to the core and give it a disproportionate focus and attention. Which will accelerate growth, create a deeper bond with your best clients and make you the most trusted advisor, the preeminent authority and highest paid expert in your field. Those that are doing this are hands down the ones crushing it today. If you think about some of the biggest companies in the world, this is really what they do. Apple brag that they are the most focused company in the world. They say NO to more things than they “yes” to. There’s only ONE iPhone. Said differently, there is no competition. If you’re putting a lot of marketing money and effort in going wide and not yielding the growth you want, it's because everyone else is too, and you just become a commodity, fighting too many battles and lacking focus. The good news is, the money is not in doing more things, fighting more battles. The money is in narrowing your focus, removing distractions and picking that ONE thing you’re the best at, that your competition is not paying attention to and you will win the war. You will out-do, out-perform and out-earn your competition. You’ll dominate your marketplace, bring in more revenue and cultivate a team of elite performers, that are focused, energized and love to be part of your brand. This means, that when it comes down to your best buyers making a purchase and choosing who to do business with, who are they going to choose? They’re going to choose you, the expert that has specialized. Your prospects will see that and know you are the most trusted advisor, most preeminent authority and go to expert in your marketplace. You with me? Why because you didn’t dabble. Because you had precision and didn’t do things halfass. So the question becomes number one, what do you do to position yourself as the go to expert? ...And how do you do it so you’re not just wasting money on the next shiny idea or marketing tactic? Meaning, what’s a strategic way of doing this, without overwhelm, or running your team to the ground, right? ...And how do you know what is the right focus that will yield the biggest most relevant results? The secret is called Precision Based Growth. and precision can be a dangerous word because it could be mistaken with, perfection or micromanaging and it's the complete opposite. This is not what this is about. The word precision is key here. We want to remove any and all friction, distraction, any unproductive, unprofitable, unnecessary, meaningless activities and behaviors that slow you down and decelerate your growth. We want precision. It makes you faster, more flexible and gives you freedom. So if we want to dominate our market and accelerate growth we need to ask ourselves... Number one, if all areas of our team’s performance remained the same which ONE area could use the greatest most relevant improvement and growth? And number two, what are all my current key activities that are making me inefficient, unproductive, unprofitable? Number three, What core values drive our company and which ONE target will help to congruently fulfill on those values? And here is the big one, who do I need to become in order to demonstrate the leadership necessary to inspire my team into action? In other words, what's the mindset, what are the beliefs, skills, habits and consistent behaviors I must own to be the type of leader others want to follow? Once you have the answers to these questions and own that stuff, here's the roadmap with Precision Based Growth... Phase ONE: Clarify. We use the information as building blocks. We identify the best most relevant key targets. And which ones do you think are the best? Of course, the once aligned with you core values, most profitable and energizing. What are we doing here? Probably not too hard to guess, right? We’re using Precision Based Growth to strip away, simplify and remove all that stuff that slows you down so you can accelerate the growth of your business. How about I give you a quick example of how it relates outside of business? A client of mine; a Tennis pro who went from being ranked 50 in the world to not even being in the top 100. (He had an injury and had to stop playing for awhile and he took it really hard as you can imagine. It affected his confidence and certainty. This is not only his passion but also his career. I asked him what he wanted. He goes, “I want to win a Grand Slam. I want to be #1. It’s been a dream since I was a little kid.” Now in the world of tennis this is a big deal. It’s the biggest thing you can do in Tennis. (You could say it changes your status and your income drastically. It’s a whole different life if you’re a pro. It will 10X your income for sure). Because of the injury he went from top 50 to leaving the top 100. This is not an easy turn-around… Are you following? Apart from working on the mindset we had to understand where the most efficient focus and energy had to be. It was not enough to just practice for two hour a day, we needed precision. What kinda of practice would make the biggest difference? Are you with me? We had to make a complete evaluation to turn this around. We couldn’t just focus on his footwork, backhand, volley’s, slicing or serving. I asked him, “Which ONE area would bring the greatest level of growth, which would impact your game most?” Right? Because everything is not equal. He goes, “No doubt, my serve.” But then we went deeper, “How many perfect serves can you make in a row?” Without going into the whole story right now... Here’s the point. We had to find a a way to evaluate the most important area of focus (so he didn’t treat every aspect of practice with equal importance) and then we had to figure out the most productive activity to increase the success of his serve. Just by doing this, in his next tournament he made it to the finals. Which is amazing because he had not won a game since the injury. That’s the power of precision. Precision of mindset, precision of activity and precision in knowing the fruits of the activity. Of knowing not only what to focus on but how to focus. If I go to my marriage. We have focused on finding each other’s most leveraged things; where we are the most effective and efficient instead of focusing on being equal and fair. (When I saying fair, I’m talking about splitting tasks 50/50). This is a major point of conflict in many marriages. (This will be the topic of a completely separate episode). But just to give you a quick example. I have not cooked a meal in over 8 years, from scratch. Not that I can’t, I know how to cook, but it’s not where I’m most efficient, where I can make my greatest contribution. When Emily, my wife prepares food, it’s way healthier, tastier, and she enjoys it. (most of the time.) She has a system. Could I learn it? Yes. But it’s not in my values, like it is for her. I wouldn’t put Emily in coaching clients or making sales call. It’s not that she can’t. She is great in sales. She closes me and the kids all the time on what she wants. It’s just not in her values. When it comes to dressing the kids, she loves doing that, and doesn’t want me to do that. (She thinks she has better taste than me.) And I’m sure she’s right. She does a great job doing. Therefore, I’m not going to waste my mental energy of doing something that lowers my efficiency and takes away from what I do best or enjoy most. Like being here with you, right now! Is this making sense. You getting this? I know people struggle with this every day. They try to force themselves to be motivated to do something that is completely out of alignment with their values. Again, this is the topic of a completely different episode. Let’s continue. Phase Two in Precision Based Growth is Execution...How do you implement the most effective, most efficient messaging, packaging, positioning, offers, the most precise sales process that guarantee your best buyers know you are the most trusted advisor, the most preeminent authority and go to expert in your field.It’s very simple… Once we strip away all unnecessary, unwanted and low-productive and unprofitable activities we move into… Phase Three. OPTIMIZE: If you want to remove overwhelm, burnout and stay focused, efficient and be the kind of leader that goes first, that others want to follow, you’ve got to be relentless and engage your team in developing deliberate, habit-forming activities that consistently elevates your thinking, skills and processes so you can achieve accelerated, sustainable growth in the midst of outside demands. It’s a very very simple concept. And it’s extremely powerful. You see, you know what’s great? Nobody’s doing this. The ones who are winning are narrowing their focus. Luckily for us, not a lot of people are narrowing their focus. They’re busy getting distracted. Trying to please everyone and being controlled by the demands around them. They’re very reactive. I say, let them. The best is doing this. If you want to really, really grow your business and really outperform your competition. The money is here. …Focused on precision-based growth. If you want to stand out, accelerate your growth and keep your sanity, I strongly suggest you test this thing out.Remember: Precision Based Growth equals Exponential Growth... In your business. In your life. In your marriage. In your family. In your health and in your finances. I hope you found value in today’s episode and you enjoyed it as much as i enjoyed making it for you… Now if you know somebody who might find this helpful please feel free to share this podcast… This is how we continue to grow and make a difference in the people’s lives around us.Until next time, this is Satori Mateu with Halfass to Badass.com Stay focused and keep optimizing your business and life for massive growth. Bye for now. -------------- BOOM! Here’s a little surprise! If you're wanting to grow and scale your business you're probably studying a lot. That's great. You're probably studying all the different strategies out there, right? That's also great. But the hardest part is figuring out how to remove overwhelm and friction and get done what matters without burning yourself and without killing yourself in the process, right? That's what I struggled with for a while until I learned the secrets of Precision Based Growth. So if you’re wondering how Precision Based Growth can work in your business or life, I created a special opportunity for you to get on a call with me to get you on track with the right focus, and more important, how to maximize growth, maximize efficiency and simplify. You’re not alone. Wanna talk? I’m only one person, so this is on a first come, first basis. Spots are extremely limited, so if you’re serious and you want me to personally answer your direct questions.You can apply for your spot by going to TalkToSatori.com. Again, that's TalkToSatori.com.

From Fake Personas to Real Cash and Clients - Bobby Stocks - FHR #311

ClickFunnels Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 7, 2019 32:05

Why Dave Decided to talk to Bobby Stocks: Have you created a successful advertising agency AND created a fake persona that helped you attain the aforementioned agency? Well Bobby sure has. Bobby Stocks is revolutionary in his tactics of marketing not only for his clients but also consistently for his own business. All these tactics and strategies allow him to live his dream of stretching out along the beaches of Puerto Rico with his wonderful wife. Go ahead and press play to listen in on this great conversation and as always, follow those dreams you’ve always had. Tips and Tricks for You and Your Business: (1:31) How Bobby made DonoHue (6:20) Casting and Retrieving Authority (7:48) Get Other People to Play Your Proof Drum (9:58) Use Your Spotlight on the Right Stage (15:08) Getting People to See Your Proof as Much as You Do (17:16) Do the Unusually Impossible From the Unusual Tactics (19:20) Just See What Sticks on the Wall and Go From There (20:38) Bobby and His Niches (23:11) Transparent Vulnerability Quotable Moments: (8:33) “I call them ‘not in the money lane’ right? No one knows about them. You know they’re kind of waiting for the spotlight to hit them.” (13:56) “What do you want people to know you as? What do you want to be known for? And it’s really important, keep it simple, then from there you can start getting more complicated.” (18:59) “Because you know, in marketing, we all want this cookie cutter thing that’s going to work everywhere. In reality, you just get lucky with this thing that works here and works there but most times it’s some small variation or crazy tweak that’s actually going to get you the results (28:30) “I will step into my role which I’m best at, that is strategy and looking at how we can differently position things, and that’s it. And, I’m fine with that Other Tidbits: The only rule about DonoHue is that you must talk about DonoHue People never see your stuff as much as you are Always remember, you don’t need to find your main niche your first go around Your team needs to be a family. Like any family there’s going to be bickering and that’s OKAY Important Episode Links: https://bobbystocks.comhttps://www.facebook.com/bobby.stocks.18 https://www.instagram.com/bobby_stocks_/ FunnelHackingLive.com FunnelHackerRadio.com FunnelHackerRadio.com/freetrial FunnelHackerRadio.com/dreamcar ---Transcript--- [00:00] Welcome to funnel hacker radio podcast, where we go behind the scenes and uncover the tactics and strategies top entrepreneurs are using to make more sales, dominate their markets, and how you can get those same results. Here's your host, Dave Woodward. Everybody, welcome back. [00:18] Hold on your radio. This is going to be a ride of your life. Now you're gonna. Have so much fun. Listen, this podcast can give you some backstory before I introduce who I'm bringing on. So for those of you guys are coming to funnel hacking live, you probably have heard that we've had these, these cultures, tee shirts. We've had people going out trying to create and build basically meaning if you have your own little culture that is going to be at funnel hacking live. We want to make sure that we created a t shirt for you that is for that. And so we had all these things go on and, and you know, different people. A lot of the people you are kind of in our normal culture you've heard about. And then literally out of the blue, this donahue character just blows up. I'm like, what the heck is daunting? [00:58] I don't even know this person is and it doesn't blow up. This is one of those things where the, the people are so passionate about who they're supporting them like we have got. I've got to figure this out. So trying to figure all this out. I want to introduce you to donahue who actually his body stocks, who has a business strategists, seven figure, eight figure business owner blowing things up all around the world, lives in Puerto Rico with his wife, Rachel on the beach, smoking cigars, having the time of his life, but has this crazy passionate following. So with all that said, welcome to the show bobby, and let's kind of dive in and talk about this whole story. [01:32] Awesome. Yeah, it's great to be here. And I always love talking to um, so just to like open up the curtains behind the wizard of Oz. So a donahue is A. Donna uses social social experiment. So in 2011, uh, I trolled my local town of meet me and my buddy and we came up with a business opportunity called the donahue job site. And we named the opportunity off of a funeral home that's called the donahue, and we took some pictures of us inside, like heavy machinery and we kind of positioned it like we had bought a plot of land that we reminding for pay dirt. So what happened was over a couple of months of us talking about how great this opportunity was and how excited we were about it, people started to message me and they want to, to invest in it. It was just a hilarious thing. [02:33] We, we, you know, it was a joke. So anyway, fast. Let's go back. Last year I had one of my small masterminds in Vegas and one of our attendees was from the town that I grew up in, which is Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania. It's a suburb right outside of Philadelphia. And he brought up donahue. He say, you know, he's like, do you remember donahue? And I'm like, oh my God. I started laughing about it and I said, you know what, let's try this again. But in the Internet marketing space, so that was march of last year that we did that. And um, so, so really what we did was we took the power of a mascot a or this like a symbol, you know, you can say add or something like that. And um, then we also stacked on top of it status and social proof, right? So by creating a small inner circle of two other people that knew about donahue and we said, let's, let's talk about donahue. [03:38] So, so the only rule of donahue is his talk about, Donnie was just sort of talking about it, you know, like he was this guru Internet Marketing Guru and because of, of social status, it created it, it started spreading really easily, right? So when we, when we post a lot of proof in a lot of like our students or our clients or even our own funnels that we run, it's all about proof these days, the more proof you can show, the safer it is for somebody to make a decision, right? And it goes to the lizard brain and you know, I'm just so they're going to die if they buy this. So by constantly posting about how great donahue is his, his greatness, his smartness, you know, and I always envisioned donahue is like the Dos equis guy, you know, I like put that in my head when we were doing it or like, yeah, he's like, he's like the mentor of the DOS equis guy. [04:33] And um, so anyway, people started reaching out to us, what is this donahue, you know, how do I learn more about donahue? And how it started spreading. It was by using status. So I would say, you know, I'm not really supposed to tell anybody about donahue, but I'll let you in on it. Do you promise not to tell anybody? Right. So now I create the separation and they would say, I promise, I promise. And I would say it's a complete joke. Here's donahue, this is what it is, which then would then have them inside the tribe, right? And then they would look for opportunities to create the gap and status. So as soon as I posted about donahue, everybody else would jump in on it and they'd say, Don, who's the greatest? Because everybody wants to be inside the tribe. So that's how it spread. I mean, it got to the point where like I had Jason Horning and all types of people reaching out to me, wanting to know with don, he was, and you know, I pulled the same thing. Well, you shouldn't tell anybody. [05:38] So where we started to bring the mascot as, as, as, um, a little cuff here as the, um, as the status grew up donahue. I then said, how can I pull authority from the mascot? So like one thing that I sort of learned throughout this and we see this, um, you know, you see this in just regular mascots, right? If you were at a baseball game and um, you know, nobody's embarrassed to get a picture with the mascot of the baseball team. Everybody's excited to do it right? But you can't self promote the same way a mascot consult promote itself because you threatened other people's status. And then this guy. So what I realized was I could self promote onto donahue so I could cast self promotion onto donahue and then I could start to actually transfer the authority back loans myself. So the way I did that was I just looked at religion, right? So I said I'm the pope, I have access to donahue. Donahue says. So that's kind of like, you know, there's, there's a lot to it that we did and it worked. Um, but yeah, that's kind of the synopsis of, of what Donahue is. It's just a really, really hilarious, um, example of how positioning status and proof and you know, constantly talking about proof results in a big way and marketing that it's a human beings can not withstanding, um, they can only withstand for a certain period of time. And then curiosity, opportunity and all of that just takes over. [07:35] No, I just want to kind of get out as we were talking about this here is, is for. I want you to, as you were listening to understand the power of proof, the power of La social culture. We talk a lot about culture all the time, but then also that transfer of authority is so critical and I think that in marketing, obviously it can be used for good and for bad. And I'm not gonna that's not what this podcast is about. It's not, that's not the issue. I want you to learn from it. I want to understand it. Um, I was, had a conversation with a very large player, a big influencer, and he was talking about Bob Hope, who knew years ago, Bob hope basically woke up every morning just saying, well, I just want to make sure somebody is talking about Bob hope today. Don't make sure somebody is talking about Bob. [08:19] I've got to keep that name out there on an ongoing basis. And so his whole thing was how do I, how do I make sure that people are still talking about me without doing what you said, and that is without beating my own drum, without know, I'm the greatest. I'm the greatest habit. It's not a Muhammad Ali type of approach as much as it is that that proof is fascinating. How if you can get enough proof to back it up, and again I was looking through, I mean stories of your success in the mortgage industry, in the real estate industry and the fitness industry with coaches and with landscape. I mean all that. You have so much proof that it's easy to use that. And so I wanted to kind of find out how do you some, some people are going to be listening to going know Dave, I'm just kinda [08:56] getting started. I don't have proof. How do I get proof? Then the other is going to go, well I have proof but I've never done a real good job of I'm afraid either asking the testimonials or to use that proof. So if you don't mind bobby talking about both those two things. So I mean this is the game changer was for me was the exact situation I see a lot of people are in. So um, we've raced back to temecula here, but we were interviewing one another. One of our students lives in Lemon Grove, California, and he has the kind of the cookie cutter story of a lot of, through so many marketers out there that are talented that, you know, they have a few clients or they have a few products that they got really great results with, but they're what I call, they're not in the money lane, right? [09:45] Nobody knows about them, you know, they're kind of waiting for the spotlight, the hip. Then when's it going to be my turn. And you know, life is always a paradox, right? It's like you have to pull the spotlight onto you. Um, so because the spotlight is always on the star rating stars through a lot of work to make sure that spotlight is on them. So like when I started to really pick up steam, I'd been nice cheese. My first facebook ad, I think I ran in 2012, 2013. And you know, when I really started to get attention was when I started to point out all my proof and I only had a few clients. I was, I was the master of all, it was doing everything, not the master of all right. You know, I was doing the sales, I was doing the recruiting or retention, I was doing the finances, I was doing it all. [10:44] Um, so it was really hard to gain momentum. But once I really started posting proof and I would say for anybody who's like, well, how do I do it? It's not necessarily like there's so many different ways that we could, we can spread out or like we could take a testimonial video and turn it into a blog and put it on youtube and turn it into an advertorial and it's too easy to get caught up in all the things that we could do. So what I did was, uh, I was doing pretty well, like 10 k a month in and I finally had this moment where basically my wife was tired of hearing me talk about how like big I was going to go to this agency and I was never posting any kind of proof. Every once in awhile I would post something. Let's say today I generated, you know, I had a really great day, I would post maybe today, but then you wouldn't hear from me again. [11:38] Um, so in December of 2016, I just committed to hosting 30 days of proof. So everyday I would post another version of proof. Now if you're on here and you're like, Hey, I have one client, right? You can create 30 versions of that, right? You can break down the process, know you can take screenshots of the landing page, the ad, what's working. And it's really, it goes back to like what, what I saw with donahue, right? Oldies is, is your excitement and you're posting your confidence and you know, uh, December 2016, no, I was doing anywhere between five or 10 k, that whole, you know, the half of that year and because I started posting proof consistent January 2017 to $30,000, right? And I'd never done less than that. Um, and it's just continually doing that. Like, like you said, if you see my feet, I just continually post proof. [12:45] Sometimes I will post proof from six months ago and I'll just reposition it again, like, you know, if this is weird, so I just collect as much proof as possible and it brings in quality people so it creates this like compounding effect, um, you know, and so we've been able to like just based off of that, we were able to scale really, really hard, you know, now we're doing like half a million dollar months and even with like, it just keeps compounding and compounding, but I've seen just the posting approved and being really committed to putting the least one thing out like every day or every other day that just pure results. Um, you know, so luke, we came from and he's grown in the last eight months from struggling to make three or five to, you know, this month I think he surpassed 50 k in revenue, just an agency model. [13:39] He's not doing any kind of coaching or consulting or anything like that and it's just because his marketplace, when they think of, they think approve. Right. And it's like the Donald trump effect, you know, just one sip. Like what do you want people to know, you know, you asked, you know, Dan Kennedy kind of talked about some stuff like that, you know, what do you want to be known as, when you want to be known for and it's really important, you know, keep it simple and then from there you can start getting more complicated in how you're spreading it out and you know, do stuff like announce making a documentary. But I have, you know, I have the resources to do it and I have tons and tons of proof, but just a little sliver of what you have can make it work and even if it's your own results, you know, you just need to really know good marketing really exaggerates it. Promat a car. It's like a, a good play. There's a lot of drama and entertainment in it. Yeah, I appreciate that. I think it was funny, I was reading through your page know body docs.com and just you're about, you're an amazing writer by the way anyone's been here. And uh, you know, in college your big thing was creative and [14:52] that was like that all. I was good at, but it's cool to see if that was the only one good thing you've been able to take that one good thing to apply to your marketing as well and I think it's fascinating for me. I think I want. I want to make sure people that you guys are listening to understand that, that the importance of getting that proof out there on a regular basis. People aren't. People aren't seeing as much of your stuff as you are and you've got to make sure you're talking about it on a regular basis. We've seen the same thing happen as far as click funnels. For us, one of the main things has been telling the story of our our two Comma Club award. Winning stories have been one of the biggest things that have blown us up because now we've got people using those plaques as their ads on facebook and I've got to figure award winners and and it's been a fascinating thing for us is we've looked at marketing is when we first started, it was all about what Russell did before clickfunnels. [15:42] It was tell you about this funnel I created before clickfunnels basically, and then once we got into it as well, let me show you some of the stuff that we've been doing and now for us, our greatest success comes by telling the success stories of our customers and our clients and even more so if we go one level deeper and that is the success stories of our customer successes, meaning whether it's brandon, Kailyn, pullen and lady boss, and we're talking about their, their customer success and all they're having or we're talking about tomorrow, any beginning. One of our, you know, the poster child children that had been used as far as click funnels or ads. Now it's more about their customers and what they're doing and the impact that they're having. And I think it's real important when you first started from a proof standpoint, you may only literally have your own funnel and that's okay and I think it's important that you use it. So I appreciate. I really do appreciate you. You mentioned that. [16:31] Yeah. It's kind of the rock and the hard place. I had a mentor that I paint a lot of money as a mindset guy and I was kind of stuck. I was stuck in that spot, right? Because, you know, if you, if you have a couple of clients you have proofing, you're not posting it. Um, it's, it's really like, it's a confidence issue or, and the competence is you usually land somewhere in, you know, uh, do I have the ability or the skills to, you know, get my clients results and that it's actually a really good place to come from. Right. We know there's plenty of people out there that they're not concerned about. Right? And it's easy for them to go out. So it's a really positive place, but it can also be, you know, an Achilles heel. Um, so I was talking to this mentor and he said, I said, well, I don't know if I can get them the same results and I would always have some reasons why, or it's a different area or I don't know, are afraid. [17:32] And you know, he, he went over a couple of simple things that are true, right? One of which is that, uh, if you want to, if you want to achieve great things, you commit to achieving them and you figure it out how to do them along the way. Right? The guy that ran a minute mile, sandy cook or the four minute mile, so he couldn't do it, right? He did it the next year. Seven hundred, 800 people. Don't, you know, the Wright brothers, mathematically they said that, uh, air travel wasn't possible. The Wright brothers in it way. So if you're in a place of where you think it's possible, I know that it is possible, um, and that it may feel impossible and you just gotta you just gotTa go and be committed to doing it. So the other thing was he said, he said, I hear that, um, you know, I hear that you're afraid you're not going to get them results. [18:23] So let's just play this out. So if you, if they were to hire you and you didn't get them results, what would you do? And I said, you know, I, I would do whatever I could to try to figure out how to get them results. And he said, okay, so can you make that your commitment? And he kinda like, it shifted for me there because what I realized was when I talked to a prospect, my commitment was about that I'm going to do whatever I can to get you results. What that's gonna look like, I don't know. Right? Because in marketing, you know, we all want this cookie cutter thing that's going to work everywhere. And the reality is that like you get lucky and sometimes it worked here at there, worked with this industry, but most times it's some variation or crazy tweak. It's actually going to get you the really good results. [19:17] But if you're, if you're committed to getting them results and that you're willing to do whatever it takes to get them results, likely human beings have a really good eye, a knack at somehow magically coming up with a solution to fix that problem. And I could tell you like all the niches that I've cracked and all the followup, all of it, it's always some random thing that, you know, pardon my French. It's kind of like I'm a professional throw shit against the wall Kinda guy and something sticks. And then everybody you know, throws you a ticker tape parade stuffs, you know. And I mean that's the reality. You know, you like we like to market it like you have some, some magical ball on some back room. It tells me what to do. But the reality is is I got some fundamental stuff, you know, when we throw stuff against the wall and you end up making a lot of money. [20:12] I love it. I totally agree. Kelly, I know you've mentioned a little bit in a ton of different industries. I see it on your website and everything else. You kind of folks in different ones as you're coaching your clients. And thank you made mention as far as luke, he's kind of known as this guy in this industry. Do you find as an agency that is easier to be basically someone who's involved in a whole bunch of different industries or just to pick one industry? What's, what's your feeling on that? Yeah, so I think it's best start out. Um, so I, I had cracked a lot of different niches before I really started scaling and mortgage was actually like my least favorite. But the prospect flow, is there anything like the data flow is there. So I got really committed to like I want to grow the agency. [21:00] My zone of genius is in the lead generation. It's not in talking to the clients, it's not in the delivery necessarily. Um, you know, I can, I can, I like to figure out hat how to appeal a bag of 50 pound status, but then I'm done and I want somebody else to do that. So, so once I, once I realized like, okay, there is, there is a need in this market and I'm going to put aside whether I am passionate about the market or not and I'm going to scale it. So, you know, that's what worked for me. And then once that got scaled, I could start to move into other industries. So I mean rule of thumb for us is we try to, we try to stick and scaling and industry in six month intervals, but like if somebody brand new, what I've seen work really well is pick like three industries that have, that are used the exact same systems. [21:57] So I know whichever one responds on the BW side, meaning like there is a real interest of that. They're looking to get more business, then just go to town on that and then come knock down the other ones later on. I'm usually, you know, you just asked somebody where's your money coming from? And it's usually coming from one niche or you know, they're getting better prospect leads from one than the other. Um, you know, I think too many people put too much emphasis in the beginning on nailing out a particular niche if you don't have any rules [22:32] data. Yeah, I totally agree with you on that. Yeah, it's been one of the things I've seen, especially when you're just getting started, it's like you just have to have a success. Just go, go make something happen, make something stick, and then go, okay, this one's going to work for me here. Yeah, yeah. I mean it's. We have some guys in, we'll pick five and they just blast cold emails out. Whichever ones starts responding the most were like, this one's good to go now let's now let's get more serious and let's start building out the assets and stuff like that. Awesome. One last topic I want to cover with you before we bounce off here and that is you are amazing at being transparent and in today's social media and everything else, there's so many facades on instagram or wherever else it might be, but you're not ashamed of your past. You're not ashamed of of what's happened. Everything else. You were actually use that in your marketing and say, it's because of where I've been that I can't help you. It's. I wanted to have you addressed the importance of transparency as an agency owner, how you've used it, what works and what doesn't and when it's too much. [23:41] Yeah. I mean, everybody's story's different. You know, mine was basically, I'd probably be dead if it wasn't for, you know, the recovery community. So in, in 2005 I our 2008, I got sober at the age of 25 and that's one of my entrepreneurial spirit started to come back alive. And then, you know, I just have a long road of, you know, transformational information and man is workshops and therapy and you name it every book. And that's when I first started learning marketing somehow through my Tony Robbins a obsession or found like Chet Holmes. And I was like, this is interesting. Um, but from a growth standpoint, you know, you don't hear a lot of people talk about it on the front end because everybody loves to buy tactics. But the reality is it's like if you're not doing inner work, it's really hard to grow an agency to a big, big love. [24:54] You know, we have like 25 people that are on our team and our c team has been together for going on my third year and the type of things that we do in order to do that, like that's why I'm so open about my past, like if it wasn't for me being a drug addict, a convicted felon and just really having a miserable life for so long and then basically, you know, my stories. I had a white light experience and I haven't had a drink or drug in 11 years so it will be on February 15th. Graduations by the way. Super impressive. Well, like I said, a white light experience, like I do not believe that it was of my own doing, you know, I experienced something and heard and saw some stuff that is beyond my understanding. Um, and it was just moved to me. [25:43] I felt like I woke up at a different body and in a new experience, but you know, I was also a child when I woke up at that point I had to relearn how to deal with life and what's important, but all that stuff. It's like, you know, our, our, our, our team is like a family and we have discussions with family, you know, we have what we call clearance, where if I have a problem with another team member, we had a safe space where we step in front of each other and I said, this is what my problem is and this is how it's making me feel and this is what my judgment is of when they do that and we, you know, if it's the only way to grow massively and had everybody so committed to growing the agency because it's their, it's their baby. [26:27] Right. I really appreciate your mentioning that, bobby, because I, I see a lot of people who start off as a solo preneur and then as your agency starts to grow and we're doing the same thing inside of clickfunnels where we have our own internal agency and now we've talked about American librarian roll up to yet as far as the waffle and all that. Basically ability to scale a matrix and all that kind of stuff. And I've seen it, uh, as you mentioned, your own c level team. We're in the same situation, you know, clickfunnels is going on four and a half years. We had the same people from the beginning and it's interesting to me to see. I literally have this conversation with Russell just the other day and that was it. We did 100 million last year, but for us to do 250 to $500 million, who do I have to become a lead that because the person who I was to get here will never get me to where I need to go. [27:12] And so I think as you mentioned there, that transformation, wherever you are in your business, you have to always be doing that type of stuff to grow to that next level. You know, we call it the dialogue. We use stuff from a therapist called Harville Hendrix, which is called Imago dialogue, which is really a relationship. So you know, a marital relationship process, but we use it in the business sense and yet it unlocks everything. So we just had our team meeting and Tahoe, you know, for our c level and we had some fun snowboarding, snowmobiling and all that. But you know, the result of that meeting was that I stepped down as leader of our agency and the reason being is because after having a dialogue, I realized that my skill set, I'm an ids strategy, you know, front man, go, go, go, go, go. That, that's what was needed to get us, you know, to the level we are, you know, $5, million, six, that's what we need. [28:13] Right? But now it's, it's not what we need. The last thing we need is another idea. Totally. So now we have somebody who's very operational minded, who's risk averse, who stepped in and you're in charge, you know, I will, I will step into my role what you're best at, which is strategy, looking at how we can different positional things. And that's it. And I'm fine with that because because of the dialogue and because everybody has that voice and everybody's looked at, as you know, how do they feel? How do they feel when, when, when one team member does that versus this, you know, I don't want to hurt everybody else in my business. I would not be where I am if it wasn't for them, you know, and everybody knows who they are. I talk about them. People try to take them away from me, offer more money. They don't leave because the way we have the dialogue because the culture we put together and that's what I mean. Ultimately. That's what makes business fun because you know, I've heard other people say, it's like when you start making a ton of money, it's great. Then you're like, that shine wears off. [29:30] You can't ever get catch if that's the character that you want to stay fixated on. I so appreciate that. It's one of the things that who knows, whatever is gonna happen term at click funnels, but if it ever [29:45] years down the road decide to do something seller beyond that core group will go do something else. I mean, it's just actually, it's just the that nucleus and whether it's here or someplace else, it'll still be fun. The beauty is that connection when you start to, you know what they're thinking, you become like this brain. Yeah. That's a great way of looking at it. Well, I appreciate your time at todd. I thank you so much for taking time. I know you're out. Literally traveling the building's huge documentary on again on proof and everything else that you guys have been doing. So thank you for jumping on. Any parting words you want to give to our audience or our listeners here? Um, [30:25] I don't know, just, you know, I have a mission statement that I said it the other day when we were on TV, but some people messaged me about it and I think it's a good one. It's like my mission statement, I think a lot of entrepreneurs will fit into this, is that I'm committed to living fearless so that other people can live fearless, right? And if you think about the community that click funnels is, and you know, these other communities, you know, we're all looking to those who broken through, right? So you got to share your successes or breakthroughs even to breakthroughs because, you know, the sun doesn't shine without the dark, right? All my breakthroughs came off the back of seemingly the worst situations, you know. So, um, you know, share your share your b list. People can have the courage. You did the same thing. Love it. We're gonna leave on those words, body. Thank you so much. I love having you on. It's awesome day. Thanks. [31:26] Hey, well, thank you so much for taking the time to listen. I can tell you the things I love more than anything else. Aside from listening to podcasts, reading books, one of my favorite books was the very first book that Russel wrote, it's called Dotcom secrets. It's the underground playbook for growing your company online. So if you've already got a business or an idea and you got something you want to get going right away, go ahead and check it out. And we literally give you the book for free. You just pay the seven 95 shipping and handling. Just go to Dotcom secrets.com and we'll go ahead, we'll ship you out the book. You just pay 79 five shipping and handling and the book will be on its way to you. Thanks again so much for listening. And remember, you're just one funnel away.

KP EP26: Breaking Your Limiting Beliefs | Lawrence Kao

Kinjaz PodKast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 7, 2019 73:12

http://www.instagram.com/iamlawrencekao Dance Concepts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXmrgdoh5KQ&list=PLo73mwB-roXJcazCWnwJ20VKZPLCtyoth • Kaba Modern - https://www.instagram.com/kabamodern/ • KM Legacy - https://www.instagram.com/kmlegacy/ • Kinjaz - https://www.instagram.com/kinjaz/ • Honey: Rise Up and Dance (Netflix) - https://www.netflix.com/title/80235025 • Wu Assassins (Netflix) - https://youtu.be/NQNGfq-O-_A?t=128 (Check out 2:08) • Mike Song - https://www.instagram.com/mikeosong/ • America's Best Dance Crew (Kaba Modern) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaba_Modern • Franklin & Bash Season 1 Ep 9 - https://amzn.to/2Fgny02 • Walking Dead Season 3 Ep 3, 5-6 - https://amzn.to/2LV4gyz 33:35 I think the only way TO go at it, is to believe that it is…that the opposition isn't as crazy as everyone else believes or that the noise that provide. I feel like the only way is to look at it like, you know what, everyone has their negative and positive qualities when they go into a room. Whether you're you know, whatever color you are. I don't know I feel like that mindset will make you just want to do good work instead of going into a room and thinking, "Here we go, I'm an Asian-American Man, they're going to look at me differently… • NCIS: LA Season 5 Ep 22 - https://amzn.to/2CStKtg 34:34 Its not impossible, but I feel like people would look at the breakdown and see the name and immediately think, I'm not going to book this part, this is for a white guy his last name is Stikler. Its limiting beliefs I think that people set these limiting beliefs in their minds, its like I can't do this, and they believe it. You know whatever we believe we're going to act out in that kind of way. So…we just can't think like that in anything that we do…otherwise we're just punching ourselves in the face… • East West Players: Krunk Fu Battle Battle - https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/05/theater-review-krunk-fu-battle-battle-at-east-west-players.html • Viet Gone - http://www.eastwestplayers.org/on-the-stage/vietgone/ • Brad Kageno - https://www.instagram.com/whosbrad/ • Justin Chon - https://www.instagram.com/justinchon/ ○ Gook - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gook_(film) 47:34 I have a booklet that I have that I write down…every week I write down 2 things that I'm thankful for, so that during that week if I get into a headspace where I'm like thinking negatively about anything I resort back to those 2 things…and that sort of changes my mindset in that moment. And then I write down goals for the week and they're just simple things like, I don't know "put things away" you know just simple things like I feel like if you can accomplish these tiny things than you can do bigger things. If you can't even do the simple shit then how the f*ck are you going to do anything that’s beyond that. • Arena LA - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnTe2qSt4mE • GI JOE - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJIFat-hjOc • MONSTER - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7mOxySIoGQ • The Princess Bride - https://amzn.to/2LVT7NC 59:15 Yes, because I do feel like with dramatic characters you can still find humor in it, I feel like comedy is more funny when its more real. And so when you get to do dramtic things there are definitely moments where its funny because its just a real life moment and its so obscure and so bizarre. • The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz : https://amzn.to/2LXPoiY • A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose - Eckhart Tolle: https://amzn.to/2SHD6h2 • 12 Rules of Life: An Antidote to Chaos: https://amzn.to/2RycVMj On Regrets: I guess being present in the moments in the past. On Success: Being fully aware of whats happening right now; being present in this moment. I feel like when we ask ourselves whats the most important thing in your life right now it should be this. Right? Because this is whats happening. Enjoying. Spread the Love. Be Positive. I think if you're doing that you're open enough to receive love as well I feel like you are successful in that kind of way. https://www.kinjaz.com/podkast https://www.kinjazpodkast.com https://www.instagram.com/kinjazpodkast https://www.twitter.com/kinjazpodkast https://www.facebook.com/kinjazpodkast DISCLAIMER: This post and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, we’ll receive a small commission. This helps support the channel and allows us to continue to make videos like this. Thank you for the support!

AIP 01: Do You Have What It Takes...

Authentic Influencer Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 6, 2018 24:09

00:01-02:00: Welcome to the Authentic Influencers Podcast 02:31-7:58: Avoiding Spammy WEIRDOS! 8:54- 12:36: Show People Your Strengths and Talents 12:50-19:42: Creating A MISSION STATEMENT Freebie 20:36-22:01: Prizes to WIN 22:31-23:05: Recap Subscribe HERE in iTunes! Brooke Elder: 00:01 When it comes to building a business online, we are surrounded with the idea that the only way to be successful is to hustle our way to the top and bugged everyone you know we are on a mission to prove it doesn't have to be that way. Welcome to the authentic influencer podcast where authenticity is king and prophet or a side effect. My name is Brooke Elder and I'm NiCole Easton. With over 20 years experience in direct sales and digital marketing, we've helped thousands of women learned that being an authentic influencer is the key to success. Join US each week as we bring you new ideas of strategies and tips on how to build a purpose driven business that is authentic to you. NiCole Easton: 00:40 Hey, they're authentic influencers. I am so excited to welcome you to this podcast. We are going to talk about what it takes today and so we are going to go into what does it take and what does it mean to be an authentic influencer. And each week we're going to kind of have this like kind of format where we are going to teach a concept and then we're going to challenge you to apply to your business. We may even have a giveaway or too involved Brooke Elder: 01:08 Are you excited? Super excited about this because there's so many different podcasts and audio books and all of these things that you can listen to. And at the end you're like, well, that was great. I feel so good now. What? You don't really know how to start really implementing that into your life and into your business and we don't want this podcast to be that way. We want you to be able to leave every single episode with something that is tangible that you can do in your business every single week. NiCole Easton: 01:46 And so we will talk. You'll hear us talk a lot about bringing value and so we are not just going to be preaching it. We're going to teach it and apply it to you, our listeners. Brooke Elder: 02:00 Exactly. And so what this looks like is we're going to give you authentic influence marketing tips. So we're going to call them aim and show you how you can aim in your business and when you are aiming and your business, you are being authentic. You are creating that influence and your marketing in a way that you can feel good about, that you don't feel like you're spamming, you don't feel like, oh, you're just trying to sell somebody something. It won't be any of that because you are staying authentic to who you are. NiCole Easton: 02:31 And before I get into the content, Brooke, I'm going to go onto a little soap box right now. Okay? Go for it. Okay. Alright. So in network marketing, we are asked to do things that are uncomfortable, right? And in the name of personal development, we pushed through the uncomfortable. We pushed through those icky feelings. We push through the fear of rejection. We pushed through feeling just like we're doing something out of and we are here to teach you that in some instances it is a personal development thing and fear can get in the way and things like that. But really, if you do that over and over and over again, and you aren't being authentic to yourself, you lose yourself. And that's where exhaustion, burnout, um, when you start quitting on yourself, that's when all those things come into play because when you are being inauthentic influencer, it doesn't feel like work and your heart just sinks exactly. Brooke Elder: 03:37 Because when you want to, you want to have a business that you could do 24/7, talk about all the time and you would never get burned out. So if you're doing things in your business right now where you're like, oh, I hate X, Y, Z, maybe it's reaching out to 20 people a day and messaging them, that was totally not me. And that's something that my upline had told me that I needed to do. And I was like, oh, I just feel like you doing that. If there's anything that anyone asks you to do in your business and you're like, Ooh, I feel icky doing that. That's because it's inauthentic and it is not who you are. And that's what makes you become the spammy Weirdo. And we're on a mission to help people not be spamming Weirdos and become authentic influencers because you can be authentic to who you are. NiCole Easton: 04:23 I feel like we have to like hold back some of the goodness because like I really want to talk about a million things. I'm not going to do that, but I will say that reaching out to people and doing that does work for some people. It does work because that's authentic to who they are. That's right. That's why it works. Yeah. So you'll hear us talk about this over and over and over again, and I will just. I'll just give you guys a little sneak peek, but we don't believe in duplication. We don't believe in duplicating what has has maybe worked for someone else. We believe in replicating a process that helps you find what works for you. Right? Because it really is every single person like we're all different. We all have been given different gifts, different talents. There's no two people on this earth that are the same and because of that, if we're trying to duplicate and become a copy of somebody else, we are being inauthentic to who we are. Brooke Elder: 05:22 And when you do that, that's when you come off Achy, you come off spammy, all of that. So when you have a replicatable system that helps people figure out what is special about them and how they can use that in their business, that is when you see success and that's awesome. And I know that we kind of planned this out a little bit and you were going to talk about tenacity and grit, but I feel like we're already on the wavelength. So I'm just going to talk about mission and purpose. You know, that strength is my jam, but we'll talk about it. So there's no reason to like turn to the left. Let's just stay in this. And then burke, you can talk about tenacity and grit because tenacity is your middle name. Yes it is. And when I met you, it was something that I didn't have, but we'll talk more about that and I'm just, I'm just so excited to hear your perspective, but onto strengths and mission and purpose. NiCole Easton: 06:14 So all those words, while they seem synonymous, they actually each serve have a different definition. And I'm going to talk about each thing. When I was like knee deep in motherhood, I was in the trenches. I had left behind this awesome job as a digital marketer. I was in automotive, digital marketing, and I created my own position because I fell so in love with the marketing training and systems process that I kind of created my own job and showed a dealership owner that he needed me. And he agreed and he kept me for four years. So until I had babies. But along the way of having babies, about four or five years into motherhood, I had three young children. I was in a small group and we went through this thing called strength finder. I am a huge fan and I probably won't ever stop talking about it. NiCole Easton: 07:08 So you might as well get used to it now, but I will point you to some resources later. We'll probably do a whole show on strengthsfinder. But basically I discovered what my strengths were and it was kind of a moot point for me because I didn't have a business at the time I was just a mom, but I recognize that my mission, my strength wasn't. My mission was to raise babies at home and be barefoot and pregnant, but it wasn't in line with my strength. And so I really needed to craft this message of a new mission and kind of figure out like, okay, what are my strengths and how do I serve the world and how do I show up and make a difference. And so if that's you and you feel like you've lost yourself, I mean we all go through it. We've had jobs maybe that we went to college for that we subscribe to and we're like, I'm going to be in your casebook, a teacher, right? NiCole Easton: 07:58 And I'm going to put all my eggs in that basket and I'm going to school and I'm doing it and I'm going to get a tenure. And you got there and you're like, oh, this isn't as satisfying as I hoped. And so in the midst of motherhood and jobs in circumstances, we tend to lose ourselves. So how do we get back ourselves, our mission and our purpose? You have to dig deep and sometimes you're feeling depleted and so you have to look out to get that information. Would you like to hear how I did it? I would love to hear. So just to give you guys some practical strategies on how to kind of discover your mission. Some of you may know what it is, but since everybody's at a different place, I'm just going to start at the entry level and then we can talk about expanding that. Um, when I was challenged with, with the idea of finding my mission, I kind of had to start from scratch. And what I did was I went on my facebook page. I was super vulnerable, being vulnerable and like NiCole Easton: 08:54 Putting myself out there is pretty much second nature to me. So if it's not, this may be a challenge for you, but I encourage you, this is one of those things that you do want to push through. I just asked the question, when you think about me, what's a word that comes to mind? I'm doing some research and that kind of thing. I'm doing some research, kind of broke the ice and it made it seem like, you know, not seem like. But it helps people know I'm not just trying to like, did fishing for compliments. Exactly. Thank you. Fishing for compliments. I'm. But I got some great feedback and it was like they didn't just have one word, they had multiple words and they really were the root of who I am and I, I didn't know that people saw me for who I truly was. NiCole Easton: 09:32 And so that was a really big eyeopener for me. In addition with knowing what my strengths were through the strengthsfinder test, um, I really started to discover who I was and what I was doing and I'm in my network marketing company. I had this amazing testimony that really drove what was part of my why, right? I was going to save people from where I was at, but once I started digging into that and going through the steps that a marketer goes through to do market research and all of that, I discovered that like, well, my story was something in my why was something. It wasn't what was going to drive me longterm. And so crafting that was really pivotal in me even having a business. So I really think that this is the first step and the most crucial step in somebody's building in discovering what they can do and not feel tired or have, you know. Brooke Elder: 10:25 Exactly. It's all about getting that clarity about yourself. And we were just talking about this the other day about clarity in what, like it really means to have clarity and the definition. I'm clearly like the equation. You could say it's capacity, so whatever your capacity is, all of those gifts, talents, things that you have minus contamination equals clarity. So you have to get rid of this contamination. So if you think about like a pond or a puddle of water and you stir it up, there's going to be lots of dirt and things like that in it and you're not going to be able to see through it. You don't have that clarity and that's what our life is like. There are so many crazy things that are happening. You know, we're running from here to there to soccer practice, to karate, to I gotta make dinner and I got to take this one to dance and you know, all of these crazy mom things. Brooke Elder: 11:14 Or maybe you're just super crazy with your business and you have a full time job and you're trying to run your network marketing company or starting another side Gig or whatever it is. We have all of these things that bring up this contamination in our life and so it makes it really hard for us to be clear in what our mission is. And what you did, Nicole was you asked other people to look in because the thing is when other people look at us, they don't have that contamination there are able to see our capacities. That's it. NiCole Easton: 11:41 Really our mission comes from our strengths, talents and our experiences and that's kind of what makes it up. And um, it reminds me that another thing that you can do is you can ask people, I'm sorry, not as people, but you can ask yourself what people ask you about. Like where do people come to you, advice about you. I know it's hard to think of it when you're in a, when your mindset isn't there, but really we're the shell answer man on something, right? Somebody looks to us as the authority in some area and how do we, how do we build upon that? How do we, how can we build a platform just based on these, these little things? And you might just be having an Aha moment right now, people may come to you and ask about like eating right or, um, maybe how you dress or makeup or something like that. And we want to make sure that whatever you're doing right now is in, is aligned with that, right Brooke. Brooke Elder: 12:36 Exactly. And we can show you how to take those things that you are passionate about and you can actually create a whole business around it, you know, and when you do that, that's when you are authentic to who you are. And that's when you're really going to take off. NiCole Easton: 12:50 Well, I can't wait to tell them about our little freebie that we have to give them to help them execute this. But I know that I'm tenacity has been a really big part of your journey. In fact, you named your company after tenacity and I would just love for you to share your insight because I feel like when the rubber meets the road, we can have a mission and purpose, but if we don't have tenacity and Grit... Brooke Elder: 13:16 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I named my company social tenacity. And when I did that, I picked the word tenacity because I thought, wow, t his is kind of a cool word, you know, and, and I loved the meaning behind it of someone who is like, no matter what happens, we're going to push through and they're going to come out tramping. And so the more and more that I have studied this and studied other entrepreneurs and read books about other entrepreneurs' lives exceed this thread of tenacity all the way through. I mean, you think of anyone that you look up to you. It could be maybe an Olympic athlete, it could be one of your best friends that had something horrible happen to them and they've come out the other side, a better person because of it. This is having tenacity. It's taking the things that have happened to us and making ourselves better. Brooke Elder: 14:07 When we come out the other side. It's not giving up when hard things happen. And that's the biggest thing because maybe if you didn't know, newsflash, you're going to have hard times in your life, 100 percent guaranteed, guaranteed. And it's going to be in your personal life is going to be in your business, like things are going to happen there. There's never going to be a time where you're like, everything is just rainbows and Unicorns, you know, maybe like for a split second, but then there's going to be things that come up and it all is about your attitude and the tenacity that you have to look at that problem and be like, okay, where do we go from here? And you can train yourself. This is one thing that I have worked on really hard to do is when things break and when things don't work, I get really Brooke Elder: 14:52 excited about it because you can either get mad or let it shut you down and be like, oh no, like this is gonna ruin everything. I'm a failure. I'm a failure. Totally for what you can do is you can be like, yes, I hit a roadblock. That means I get to create a new system so this won't happen again and I get a move on and not have to worry about that again. So really it's not about like falling and getting back up, it's about changing direction, right? Something comes in the way and you just make an adjustment. NiCole Easton: 15:24 And it's interesting like one of the things that, that entrepreneurship can feel kind of lonely and while we have this, we may in our network marketing company have this big team around us only we really know and maybe our closest friends, maybe not even our upline, but maybe a sideline sister or something, they know the struggles we go through and we don't really have a safe place to talk about it. A nd so we can tend to feel like a failure and not make an adjustment, but the difference between a wantrepreneur, somebody who wants to be an entrepreneur and a real entrepreneur who gets results are the people that can pull up their bootstraps and make an adjustment. And usually they need a coach or someone to walk alongside them to help them see that they're on the right track. They just need to make an adjustment. And that leads us to support, right? Yeah. It's amazing when you have someone that can see that 30,000 foot view and be like, oh, I see where you are, I see where you're going, and yes, this may be a little pitfall, but if you keep going on this path, this is what you're going to achieve at the end and it's just like having like a health coach that's going to help you through maybe a weight loss journey. Brooke Elder: 16:31 That's something that I think everyone can kind of relate to you. Like a plateau would be a really good example. NiCole Easton:16:36 Like if you're doing everything they say and you hit a plateau, you're going to look to your coach to help you make an adjustment. So maybe you go and do a fast or something to help get you past the plateau because when you're on a plateau, even in your business, it can lead to total discouragement. You know, Brooke Elder: 16:52 Even like I'm going back to athletes, like even people who play in the NBA, it's not that they just have like the one coach that you see, like the head coach, they have multiple coaches, they have a nutrition coach, they have a shooting coach, they have all these other coaches that help them. So even though they're playing at this elite level, it's actually like the more that you move up to become to that elite level, the more you have to surround yourself by people who are smarter than you are. NiCole Easton: 17:22 And it's not just the MBA. Brook don't discriminate. I'm pretty sure the NFL and mlb have this. Yeah. Well, you know me, I love my Utah Jazz. So yeah, you're a little obsessed, let's be honest. But it's football season. So if we left out the football players and you know, um, but anyways, this is going to be a timeless episodes. So it doesn't matter what season of sports it is, it all applies. And so it's funny, the majority of our audience was probably, but men, we want to let you know, we see you, we see you. We're not going to leave you out some sports in there every once in a while. So I'm talking about the support. So the coaches a coach is a great thing and I hope that we can be that to our listeners, like I hope that we can bring that value, but in addition to our listeners listening to us, they can listen to each other and an important part of building an awesome business and being successful in a business that you own and is having a community around you. NiCole Easton: 18:20 Right? And I think that's what attracts a lot of us to network marketing is that it's not just, it's not just they say you're not in business, you're in business for yourself but not by yourself. And the community that happens there is, feels like a camaraderie, feels like a girl's cover, a boys club. It just feels like you're all in there with one purpose and one mission, which drives me back to the fact that we can't have the same mission as everybody and stand out in the marketplace. And um, so building a community around you of people that maybe are in the same place of you but are not trying to do the same thing as you is so powerful. Brooke Elder: 19:00 Exactly. Well, Nicole, why don't you tell our listeners how they can aim in their business today. NiCole Easton: 19:07 Okay. So our homework for you today is for you to write a mission statement. So I want you to take some of the tips I talked about when I was talking about mission and about, um, things to ask yourself and things to ask others. And then we want you to share your mission. I think there's one thing to write it down, but then there's that breaking through and actually putting yourself out there and saying, this is what I'm about. This is what I want to do. This is how I want to serve others and show up in the world. So how are they going to be able, what tools are we giving them to help them accomplish this aim? Brooke Elder: 19:42 So first thing is we're not going to leave you stranded out there and be like, how do I want to start a mission statement? We have a Freebie for you, it's you can get it by going to socialtenacity.com/mission and that will give you a walkthrough of how to put through, how to put together a mission statement. Once you have that put together, this is where you're going to take that next step, maybe be a little tenacious, step out of your comfort zone just a little bit and we want you to leave us a review with your mission statement and that way you are putting it out there to the world. This is me, this is what I'm trying to accomplish and can show others that, you know, you learned something today, that week and we are going to go through everyone's mission statements in the reviews and we are going to pick a winner. And what are they going to win the goal. NiCole Easton: 20:36 Oh my gosh, this is so exciting. I'm so glad that we have the opportunity to offer this to people because I just had my purpose call, like I knew what my purpose was. But having that call and actually articulating it was so exciting. So we are going to give you what are the clients in our program experience for free. The person that wins this, anybody can win. It doesn't matter like there's no pass or fail. It's just like you put yourself out there, you tried, you are going to get a chance to get to purpose call. And what that is is we have our purpose coach and she gets on the phone with you in about within about 30 to 45 minutes she can nail down your very purpose, your calling, your mission and all of that just by asking you a few key questions. It's her expertise to do that. Brooke Elder: 21:24 She's very, very gifted in what she does and it really is amazing and a lot of the things I had my purpose call actually yesterday and when we went through everything, like I felt like I knew what my purpose and my mission was, but to have someone to be able to articulate exactly what your mission is, who you are and can just like almost like c down to your soul and be like, here's your gifts and talents that you were born with. And this is what you're supposed to do with them. It's amazing. NiCole Easton: 21:53 Yeah, it's exciting. I'm so excited that we get to share that with someone. One lucky one, lucky listener, right? Brooke Elder: 22:01 So make sure you go to socialtenacity.com/mission. Download the worksheet, fill it out, and then posted as a review and we are going to go through and we'll do it in about a week. So you have about a week to do it. Then you will pick the winner and we'll announce the winner of who gets the purpose call. So that way you can have a very clear vision. There's no contamination there. You'll know exactly what your capacity is. NiCole Easton: 22:31 So let me just recap really quick what we talked about today. So we are trying to discover, do we have what it takes to be an authentic influencer? So the first thing is mission. The second thing is tenacity. Are we going to do we have the stick-it-to-it to get through the hard stuff and then do we have the support that we need, the community and the support that we need. Maybe even a coach to help us be authentic and show up as our true selves in business. Brooke Elder: 22:59 Exactly, so don't forget to do your aim today and we will see you at all on our next episode. Brooke Elder: 23:05 This was an episode of authentic influencer podcasts. Thanks for listening. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't. Don't miss an episode, and most of all, share this with your team. We're on a mission to change spammy network marketers into authentic influencers.

Ep. 61: Building a Media Company Ft. Frank Gruber of Established