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In this episode of Building Texas Business, I welcomed Jen Sudduth, CEO of Sudduth Search, for an insightful discussion on her journey in the executive search industry. Jen shared her story of transitioning from Taylor Winfield to launching her boutique firm focused on transformative growth companies. I learned how Sudduth Search crafts a supportive work culture that prioritizes both productivity and well-being. Our dialogue also uncovered nuances around balancing work responsibilities with life's pleasures. As we wrapped up, Jen reflected on life lessons from mentorship to her commitment to the Special Olympics community SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jen Sudduth shares her transition from Taylor Winfield to founding Sudduth Search, focusing on middle market private equity and emphasizing the need for leaders who can drive change. We explore the importance of having a business and marketing strategy before starting a venture, as well as considering when to hire based on company growth and values alignment. Strategies for maintaining work-life balance in recruitment are discussed, including setting boundaries and fostering a culture that supports employee well-being alongside business success. The episode delves into the comprehensive selection process for executive search, particularly for pivotal roles such as CFOs, and the role of retained search firms in this process. Jen reflects on the role of empathy in leadership and the importance of mentorship, drawing from her own experiences and her involvement with the Special Olympics. Personal joys, such as a preference for Tex-Mex cuisine and planning for sabbatical destinations like Maine and Santa Fe, are shared as part of achieving a joyful living. The conversation covers the initial opportunistic hiring during COVID and the shift towards a more strategic hiring approach to raise the team's overall expertise. Chris and Jen discuss the benefits of leaving a company the right way, honoring agreements, and how transparency can lead to unexpected opportunities. Jen advises on the importance of planning for success, not just the startup phase, by having operational projections and growth strategies in place. The episode also touches on Jen's past experience as Director of Talent at a consultancy, highlighting how internal hiring insights can improve external recruitment advice. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Sudduth search GUESTS Jen SudduthAbout Jen TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In today's episode, you will meet Jen Sudduth, co-founder and CEO of Sudduth Search, a boutique executive search firm. Jen's advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is to be intentional and purposeful in your business planning, and don't forget to plan for success. Okay, jen, first off, welcome to Building Texas Business. Thanks for being here. Jen: Thank you. Chris: So I'm excited to have this conversation with you today. I want to start by just allowing you to introduce yourself and tell us what your company, Sudduth Search, is known for. Jen: Sure. So we are a seven-person boutique executive search firm, but I think what we do is a little bit unique. We work with the middle market private equity. Probably 75% of our clients are private equity backed. The other are public, private you name it individually owned, it doesn't matter. I think the common denominator with all of them is that all of the companies are going through some sort of transformation, and most of the time that's growth. It could have been that they raised capital. That's a trigger to bring us in and go and replace some of your leadership team. Could be some of our bigger companies going through some sort of culture change. We did 10 positions for a Blackstone-backed company and basically they wanted to pull from outside of their industry and they didn't know how to do that, and so we helped them come up with a concept of how to do that completely, you know, changed their recruiting processes from how they were doing them before, and then they brought in a whole new culture and that's what they wanted. They wanted a different culture than they had before. So it's just, it doesn't matter what the trigger is, but it's usually some sort of change, transformation. You need a leader that can drive that change right. You need someone that is fearless. A lot of times that can come in, and they're you. You know they can make things happen. Right and that's where we play most of the time. Chris: Well, what I find interesting about that is how laser focused it is what inspired you to kind of start a search firm that was so focused on that kind of niche industry. Jen: So I've actually done it for over 20 years and the firm I was with before was called Taylor Winfield. I only bring that up because a lot of people know Taylor Winfield. I started with Taylor Winfield and kind of worked my way up and that's what they focused on. They were more. You know that was 2000, so there was a lot of venture money out there, there was Silicon Valley and they worked a lot in California we did. I was just a lowly junior recruiter back then and that's where I learned the business and that's where I kind of learned that world. And it's not for everyone, both as a candidate and as a recruiter, because sometimes candidates will go well, what are they going to sell? Am I going to still have a job? I'm like, well, you're really not, you're not right for this, because that's not the mentality that we look for in a candidate. But so that's how I got my start and that's how I learned it. And then when I started this up my practice five years ago, I kind of I don't do a whole lot of venture. I have a few here and there. Usually they're a little bit more mature as a company. I think. As I've aged I'm not as patient with the venture. I think they've got a great thing going. But it's just a different world and I think sometimes those, the people that are willing to go and do something really earlier stage, are not the same people that I'm looking for the middle market series, b series, c type folks. So so that's how I had got into. It was really that's kind of what I've done my whole career. Chris: Gotcha. Well, I know that you started this company Suddeth Search around five years ago. Jen: Exactly. Chris: So you had to make some decision to leave and just start fresh on your own. Let's talk about that a little bit. What drove that decision? Jen: So the company that I worked for was actually owned by and I don't usually say this, so you're getting new information here by my stepmother, connie Adair, and I bring that up because she's fully retired now. She's been retired for about two years. But she brought me into the business, not as a multi-generational business. I had to earn my keep, earn my way Right, just like everyone else. She was very big on treating me like everyone else. Chris: The benefit for you that she did that. Jen: Absolutely and I learned from the best. She was really known as one of the best in the industry so I kind of got to see that world and that process. But she sold to private equity and it was a private equity roll up. Like some of them, it didn't go really well. The integration piece was a little rough. Chris: Not unique in that regard, right and I got no benefit from it. Jen: To be quite honest. I stuck around to try to support her and she did well. And then she got another bite of the apple and I tried for two years. I wasn't a big company person and I realized if I can make this kind of money for someone else, I should be doing it for myself. And so I kind of did it because I could, and she fully supported me. She knew that retirement was on the horizon and so when I told her she said you know, I think you should go for it. So that's what I did. Chris: That's great. Well, I mean good to have that encouragement for someone that you were close with but considered to be a trusted mentor Absolutely. So got to be a little bit trepidatious to just start out on your own, even though you know what you're doing and you, I think you can't do that unless you have confidence that it's going to work and confidence that it will work isn't a guarantee that it will Absolutely. But you know what were some of the things you did to kind of set yourself up in those early days of starting your own company, to try to pave the path towards success. Jen: So I will start with the fact that I had a very strict non-compete. I did not get any clients from the company or from her, and I am a devout follower of non-competes. Chris: Well, it's funny, you say that you bring that, yeah, you know, now we devise people, I mean literally every day, on both sides of those, and right because because they exist and obviously you know there's a lot of buzz recently because the ftc came out with the rule to ban them, uh, which is, you know, probably not going to take effect because lawsuits have already been filed to challenge it. Jen: But it's going to be interesting to see how that plays out yeah in the next, over the next few years, I think yeah, and not to say I don't think some non-competes go overboard. I have heard some ludicrous non-competes as I'm interviewing, so sure, I do think a lot of them go overboard. I think the fdc is in the is moving in the right direction with some of them, because I think they're a little too restrictive. Chris: But that's not your question yeah, and even as the rule's written, it doesn't apply to executives, so it wouldn't change your world. Jen: It wouldn't, and I'd been there a long time. Everything I got was under their umbrella. So what I did do was I planned for a long time. I've owned businesses before and so I had a business plan, I had a marketing plan, I had a strategy. The other advantage I had was that I had been I've been asked to be on the board of ACG and so that was a. I knew that was going to be great PR. It's gonna be great relationships there. That's how I met Steve Kasten here at the Boyer Miller and a few others, and so I knew that was coming. But it was pretty far out. You know my tenure had just started. Didn't know I was gonna be president, but I knew that was gonna be on the. I'd have a lot of visibility. So that helped quite a bit. I think that was one factor. Fun story unrelated to your question the day before I quit, the day before my last day, I gave like four months notice and they knew I was leaving. I was unwinding. I had some really big searches, so I was unwinding those and finishing those up for clients, kind of on the bench, but just doing that. So the day of the last day of employment I get a call from that client that I just mentioned wanted to change their culture Blackstone Back Company. He said I got 10 searches for you, jim. I said, well, I can't do them, I'm leaving, today is my last day. And he's well, I'm not doing it without you. And so I called the company and I said here's what's happening. Would you, would we, can we do a fee split? Didn't know that was coming, but that was really great cash flow. And they said yes, and so we worked out a fee split. I continued I worked with that client and then they brought in their team, but it was great cash flow right out of the gates. And and then they brought in their team, but it was great cash flow right out of the gates. And then I developed brand new clients from that point on. But I knew the industry. I think the industry knew me. Chris: So even if it wasn't somebody, I'd worked before, I had a plan and I went after those people. That's a really cool story to hear and there's a lesson. There's probably many lessons, but one that just struck me right between the eyes is the lesson in leaving the right way, when you leave a company versus leaving the wrong way and you just laid out a roadmap for the listeners. If you're thinking about leaving, you left the right way, honoring your agreements, and then, with the transparency to get the slug of business for your new business, for your new company, because you went to them and said here's the deal, because you've done everything else right. It's good to hear that. I guess they could have not honored that, but they did the right thing in my mind too, yeah, by saying yeah, it'd be fair to share this and, by the way, we should. Customer comes first. That's what they want. Let's make them happy. Jen: So customer comes first. That's what they want. Let's make them happy. So, yeah, and I completely agree and I try to tell people and I know there's exceptions, I know there's bosses that are just difficult and if they know you're even looking there, you're gone. I know that happens, but I think majority of the time people are reasonable and if you come to them and sometimes I'll have friends come to me and say I'm thinking about making a change- Grass is greener Right and I'm like I know they're in a great situation. I'm like have you had a really difficult conversation with your boss before you leave, before you start thinking about? Have you told them that you're unhappy You've been there? Chris: 14 years or you've been there seven years. Jen: Have you talked about it? And usually the answer is no, and so I try to encourage them to say go talk to them first and then if it's still you know, in a month you still feel like it's just not fulfilling then talk about leaving. Yeah, but you need to give them a chance. Chris: It's great advice. People unfortunately right. It's kind of human nature to avoid the difficult, uncomfortable conversation, or at least I'll say this, the ones we perceive have it that they're going to be difficult or uncomfortable. And to your point, I think, a lot of times if you actually have the courage to go have it, they usually aren't as difficult or uncomfortable as you work them up in your mind to be. Jen: Absolutely. Chris: And you know I can speak. You know as well as you can. If you give your employer, where you've been otherwise happy for a while, the chance to have that conversation most people if there's a tweak or two that would keep you there, it's probably going to save the company a ton of money. To consider that. Jen: And it might benefit the company. Talk to them about. You know I'd really like to do more sales. You know I'd really like to take on bigger projects. You know what We've been looking for someone that wants to take on bigger projects. You just never know what the company needs. Chris: So we can go back. You mentioned, and just for the listeners ACG Association of Corporate Growth. Jen: Yes. Chris: Indice Group industry in the kind of M&A, a lot of private equity. So sounds like part of that marketing plan was to plug yourself in to the right kind of networking system where you would meet people and build relationships. Jen: That's correct. Yeah, yeah, and I eventually was asked to be president I don't know if you know that and so it was a lot of it was a lot of visibility as well. That's half the battle. Chris: Yes. Jen: Because there's a lot of top of mind search firms out there. Yeah, getting top of mind and helping them see that. I understand private equity, I understand what their challenges are. I understand what they're trying to achieve. I understand how capital's raised. You know I've got the knowledge base to be able to convey that to candidates and to help find the right one that's going to fit that. So I think that helped a lot and it's it was educational for me. You know, going to conferences, hearing panels speak. I know a lot about a lot or a little about a lot. Chris: Let me rephrase that I shouldn't admit that, but it's true, but it does. Jen: It's real educational to hear those conversations and to hear what's happening in the market. You know from your peers that are in the organization. Chris: A couple other takeaways from what you said. That I hope people listening caught is that you had a plan before you did this right, absolutely. You sat down and put it to paper a business plan, a marketing plan, a strategy. Look, I think those are so important and can be overlooked. When people say, look, I'm just going to go chase this dream, that's great because you need the inspiration, but you also need some substance behind it, because if you eventually do go to and most will go to a bank or an investor or something, they're going to be asking about that. So you better be prepared. Jen: Absolutely. Chris: So one of the things and you and I were talking about this, I guess before we got the recording going, and that is you know about this, I guess before we got the recording going, and that is you know, you now have seven employees. Let's talk a little bit about you know. I think there's a few conversations. One is what was it that triggered you each time to make the decision Now it's time to take on an employee or another employee, because those are big investments and then how did you go about making sure they were the right fit? Jen: Yeah. So it was growth that predicated the need. That was the part I didn't plan was when am I going to hire what? You know what? At what point do we need to bring on another person? At what point do we need to bring on a junior person, et cetera, et cetera. I didn't plan that piece of it and I probably should have, but it was really just my bandwidth and being able to do what I needed to do. You know, we were super busy during COVID, which sounds really strange, but I had some. I had that one big client that was still going. I had just so, if you think about I had been in business for about a year and so that year I had been really busy doing marketing and business development and getting out there and making relationships, and so it just it paid off and I think a lot of those people one of my biggest clients I don't know if you know Dave Marchese, he'd be a good guest. Let's do it. He called me out of the blue in the middle of COVID and we had met like five years prior, but he had seen my posts and my marketing and my emails and so he said I can't go out. I'm not going to go out and interview five interview candidates, but we're in the or excuse me search firms because we're in the middle of COVID. So what you got Jen, and so I took it on, and we've probably done 15 different positions over three or four years. Wow, so he's one of our biggest clients. So there that, I think the prior relationships definitely helped us make it. You asked about employees, though. Chris: Yes, well, before we go there. Yeah, one of the things you so interesting. You said I didn't plan for growth. Yeah, probably should have. Jen: Yeah. Chris: So, looking back, what do you think you could have done in that regard that you might offer as advice to someone that you know is maybe about to do something similar that you did five years ago? You know, what have you learned? Looking back, to say I would have, if I was going to do it again, I would plan for growth in this way. Jen: Plan for success. I think I was so focused on how am I going to get there that I didn't say if, when I get there, if when I get there, how am I going to get to the next level? I never did that. I never said, okay, I can handle 12 searches, or whatever it is, at different in different phases. So if I get 14, what do I do? At what point do I, you know? Do I need to start hiring when I get to 9 searches, whatever it? So maybe it was a revenue. I think I should have projected and said, because I've been in the business a while, I know how many searches I can do by myself or with a team, and so I think that would have been very helpful to do kind of like an FB&A analysis, but on the operational side. Chris: Right, Very helpful, that's very helpful. Okay, so now let's go back to kind of set a search. You starting to decide I've hit the point, I can't do this all, I've got to bring someone on. Yeah, you know how did you go about sourcing. I know obviously you've probably had a lot of contacts, but you know just the whole process of how you interviewed to make sure they were going to be a good fit for your company. Jen: So my first hire, I got really lucky because she was a neighbor, a friend who got laid off during COVID and so we brought her on just to do some of this data pushing type stuff. She made phone calls, cold calls, she's fearless, and then she grew into being a really good recruiter. After that first hire it was, oh my God, I can't handle this. I just need a body that can help do, a professional person that can do all this. After that hire I was much more purposeful. After that it was we want experience. We want, you know, degree Now she was degreed. But we want degreed individuals that understand the business world, that understand you know degree Now she was degreed. But we want degreed individuals that understand the business world, that understand, you know. I think every time I made another hire I kind of elevated my expectations. Chris: Right. Jen: And not to say the first hire was. She was a phenomenal employee, but I think every time after that I was much more purposeful about how I, who I wanted to hire and what my expectations of them were. Chris: Yeah, that makes sense to me and you're right, it's not a condemnation of the earlier hires. It's if you're doing things right, I believe you're always learning and your processes can always get better, and it doesn't mean you didn't make bad hires before, but you can get more intentionality around the decisions you're making and I think that's part of growth and when you're a one person show or two because my husband did join me about six months in it's harder to attract talent you know, Now we're about to make an offer to a pretty senior person and we had a really good slate of people that were interested, that were like, yeah, I want to join a boutique firm, I want to do what you're doing. Jen: So it changes too. Advert: Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Well, that's validating. So you've gone through this process of sourcing people for your company, right, and what have you? What has that process and the learning? Jen: through that done to help you better advise your clients or vet candidates for them. What else about that I'm actually gonna go back to. So I took about five years. I left the executive search world and went to a consultancy and they I was director of talent. We tripled in size in about five years time and then they sold to Accenture about two years after I left. When I left, I think oil and gas was zero. The barrel, the barrel. Chris: I remember that yeah. Jen: So they made a strong comeback and then eventually sold. But being on the inside like that was the best education I could get, because it was. This is what happens when you make a really bad hire. This is what happens to the entire company when you make a really good hire. And we weren't huge I think we ended up being about a hundred but but it was really helpful to me to see. I also learned you know really short tenures on people's resume. There's a reason you know, I know there's reasons that people have to leave jobs absolutely there's good reasons, but when it's over and over and over, and then you hire that person because you're desperate for a data manager or whatever it is. You're desperate for that skill. You're going to find out why they can't stay in a job longer. I learned a lot being on the inside, you know, and I think that job is really what taught me kind of the hard knocks of making a mishire. Chris: Right. Well, I think you're to your point, right, it's if you look there are red flags, pay attention to them, and I know from our we're not perfect either in this business that I have, and you know sometimes you can convince yourself to overlook a red flag here or there, and more times than not you shouldn't. Right, there's exceptions to every rule, but we don't want to run a business based on exceptions necessarily You've got to be purposeful about those hires is really what it taught me. Jen: You know very purposeful. Chris: So just to kind of come back to Sutter's search a little bit so you have seven, about to have eight, and you talked about doing a search for a client where it was a culture change. Let's talk about culture at Sutter Search. What are you, as the kind of co-founder and CEO, doing to try to cultivate a culture? How would you describe it? And what are you doing to kind of, you know, foster it and breathe life into it? Jen: Yeah, it's hard with seven people, eight people, you know, to kind of create that, because you're like oh, we're just eight people, but they need it. Employees need training, they need to be developed, they need to evolve, they need to expand and grow, and so we actually started EOS at the beginning of this year. Are you familiar with entrepreneurial operating system? Chris: Yes. Jen: I think I don't know if Allie was the one that told me about it, but you know I've heard a lot of business owners that have done it, and so we actually started it and I think it's been evolutionary and I'm not selling it, I don't sell anything they do but it has really helped us be very purposeful about what we're doing for our employees, and so my one of our other managing directors is. She's in charge of kind of the HR and training, and so we have a weekly training every single week and it's sometimes it's heavier than others, but we have a weekly training every week and one of the employees actually gives it, so they have to go out and learn themselves and then they come and teach the rest of us. I try to. I'm a big advocate in the old school headhunting world is just dog eat, dog work, and so when I started my firm I was like I don't want to be that way. We're not working 12-hour days, we're not working both coasts, we're going to have a great and I hate to use the words work-life balance because I know it's overused. Chris: That's right. Jen: But we are, we're going to edit that part out. I'm kidding it is overused, but I think in some aspects it's important because you're a better employee if you take your vacation, if you didn't have to work until 9 pm the night before, if your managing director isn't calling you at 6 in the morning because she happens to be on the East Coast that is not the culture that we have. I'm always telling them you're going on vacation. Who's taking your emails? You're going on vacation. Who's taking your emails? You're going on vacation. Who's taking your calls? Did you put your out of? We require out of office messages to be turned on and I'm just, I'm always preaching that. I really think it's important to separate yourself and give your brain a break, because what we do is very, it's very repetitive, it's very. You know you may, if you have ten searches, that you have four candidates at least on what we usually have a hundred, but you have four finalists going through to offer yeah you think about the ups and downs every single day. Chris: It's a lot well, I mean, to your point, what you're doing, I mean, has to be stressful because you're affecting people's lives. Absolutely right, you got four candidates and or maybe see this as a great opportunity and are very hopeful, and you got a, a client, that needs to fill a hole and every day they don't have that whole field, they're losing money. So I can get that yeah to your point, the work-life balance and we could do a whole podcast on that. But I think what my experience has shown, or at least what I feel like I've learned through that, is our work-life balance is different at different times of our career. So it's hard to institutionalize that when everyone's at different stages. We try to use the term more like professional development. Developing our people to be great professionals means you tend to your business, but you tend to you have a life as well and you got to figure out how to manage both in a healthy way, knowing that the way it works for me now is totally different than it was 15 years ago right and that's okay because everything changes and we have new employees here that are going through totally different life stuff than I go through now. but how do we help give them the tools, the training to manage that and still be successful both in the office and in their personal life? Jen: Yeah, and we do we have different? Everybody kind of has a different work methodology. I shouldn't say hours, it's more like hours, you know a 20-something. They like to kind of work late in the day and have their workouts in the morning or whatever. Like everybody's kind of different. And then Hazel and I are about the same age and we like to not be disturbed until 8.30 or something. You know, like we like to go do our thing in the morning and work out and whatever. Read the paper and everybody's a little different, but we are very understanding of each other's different lifestyles. Right To your point. Chris: The key there comes to communication right. Yeah absolutely Absolutely, and so do you have. What is it that you're using as such to make sure those conversations are happening? Yeah, so that people understand how each other works differently, but together you can work for success. Jen: Yeah, we talk about it when they're hired. I say I'm not going to track your hours unless your productivity is not working Right, and then we're going to talk about it. Do you have too of a workload? Or, let's be honest, are you not working enough? You know, because last week you didn't have very many searches. This week you've got a lot. So if I need you to work till six, you gotta admit that last week you didn't have to. And they're very honest with me. A lot of times they'll say, hey, not going to be online until 10 or so, but I'm going to be working late or whatever. Or I stayed up for four hours last night sourcing. So you know I'll be available on phone but I'm not online. Perfectly okay, and we're very flexible that way. It's a little hard sometimes. You know, I'm always like are you working? I'm on the back of my brain and then I have to call myself and go. Of course they are, it's not producing. Chris: So that comes down to two fundamentals no matter what industry, communication, yeah, and what you're willing to do is have what some people might feel like is the harder conversation or uncomfortable conversation, but you approach it with kind of support and transparency. Jen: Yeah. Chris: The other thing. It comes down to productivity. Jen: Yeah, right. Chris: Absolutely. If we're running a business, we're running a for-profit business. We have to be productive to make the business go. So you can't lose sight of that. Some people, I fear at times the extracurriculars overweigh what we do to make our money and what is our. You go into the. This is what fuels our economic engine. We can't lose sight of that. It won't matter how many out-of policies or things we do, we won't have a business to support it. Jen: So it's finding a balance there, right? Yeah, I'd say the common denominator with all my employees is they thrive on success. They thrive on accomplishing things. They're not going to just shut things off if they're not done and they haven't accomplished what they set out to accomplish. They're very driven that way. That's a common denominator. Chris: Very good. So a little bit about your business. So you were saying you know, middle market focused, we're kind of approaching mid-year 2024, which is like just blows my mind that we're, you know, that far into the year already. But you know there are businesses out there that either use services like yourself or maybe contemplating that, and I know, at least in your world there's at least two different ways to go about it Retain, searches or kind of the contingency model. Can you just share maybe a little bit about what each is, the differences, pros and cons, and maybe flow into what a company should consider going one versus the other? Jen: Yeah. So I want to make it clear that I am not pro or con. Either way, I think there's a contingency, there's absolutely a place for it. I have several friends that are in the contingency recruiting world and they say I will never be in the retained world. So there is a place for it and I think if you have a large number of hires, you have a position or a company that is attractive to candidates and you want to get all the resumes you can get and then choose because they want to come to you, that's great. You can use contingency. What we do is a consultancy. So if you're a middle market working with a middle market firm right now, it's a downhole tool. Cfo position this position is critical that they get it right because they have big plans. I'm not going to tell you what those big plans are. They're private equity backed and they have big plans and it's going to happen, but if they don't have a financial expert that can devote time and devote, then it's not going to happen. And so it's critical, and in that situation you absolutely need to find the best person that you can find, and you need to interview a lot of people to make sure that you are choosing the right person, and so that's what we're doing. That's where we come in, and it doesn't have to be a CFO role. We can do. We do VPs and we do directors sure directors but we're going to look at 150 people that we know could do this job, and then we're going to reach out to every one of them and then we're going to interview 20 or 30. I'm going to interview half of those and then I'm going to present and rank the top. So it's not like we're going out and finding five people that are qualified and handing them to you. We're going out and finding 10 times that many maybe not 10 times, but a lot more than that and then finding you the best and ranking those for you to interview. So if it's a critical hire for your company to succeed, I would absolutely recommend retained, because they should be a retained firm, should be a consultancy, they should help you find that person. Chris: So that's really helpful, and hearing you describe it makes the difference very clear for me. I hope for the listeners and what I hear is you're doing a lot more upfront work on the retained side and I guess, as a consumer of these services, you should expect that your retained firm will do a lot more upfront work and vetting the best clients to bring to you. Jen: Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing I think that's important for my clients to know is our database is completely open. Our kimono is open. Is that a bad thing to say? Chris: No, we don't have video, so we're good. Jen: They can see everything we're doing, when we're doing, how we're doing. It's not a we'll talk to you in a month or two and we'll give you three great people. There's no magic thing that happens like that. It's a database they can go in. They can be like ooh, I know that guy and not going to work. Chris: Right, whatever reason, work right, whatever reason. So through, I guess, an online portal that you give them access to. Jen: okay and so it's a process to get to the fine. We meet once a week and I say here's why we chose, here's why we interview these people. What do you think? And a lot of times I'll say you know what? That company doesn't hire well, or they might be an acquisition on the horizon with that company. We can't talk to their people, so we have weekly conversations that get us closer and closer to the best person. And so it's a process, it's a very thorough process that gets us there. But that's 15, 30 minutes a week from our client, that's it. Chris: Okay, Well, they have to be invested, especially in these that are so critical. The positions to fill the client has to be invested. That's right and I like the somewhat. Maybe it's not. It sounds innovative to me that you are creating that opportunity for them to vet and see what's going on whenever they want. Right, but have those weekly check-ins. You know, it sounds like a kind of a white glove service, if you will. Jen: Yeah, and I think a lot of times people are scared, overtained. They're like what if it doesn't? What if you don't find someone? I'm like never happened in the history of 23 years, because we're talking to you and if we're not finding the right people, we're going to pivot, we're going to merge, we're going to figure out why is that happening. Is it the company reputation? Is it our pitch? Is it the way we're describing it? I mean, we're going after the wrong people. We will figure it out. We always fill the positions. Chris: Right Always, because you're invested in it. Right, right, it's not which. Jen: Because it's and it's not a. Here's three resumes, let me know. Chris: Right. Jen: That's not how it works. I got it. Chris: That makes sense. So a little bit, I just want to ask you're obviously, you know, leading this company. What, what would you or how would you describe your leadership style and how would you say that maybe has evolved over time based on your experience? Jen: So I would describe my leadership style as real. It's too real. I like to be pretty open with my employees and I have weekly calls with almost all of them I shouldn't say almost all of them. My fellow managing director we talk almost every day, so I don't have a weekly calls with almost all of them, I shouldn't say almost all of them. My fellow managing director we talk almost every day, so I don't have a weekly call with her. But the others, who I may not speak with, I have weekly calls. We talk about what's happening, what's going well, what is their workload like? I ask them what was the most challenging? Because we all work remote, so that's the other thing. We don't see each other every day right and I'll say what was the most challenging thing and what are you most proud of. And sometimes I had no idea. They're like oh well, I met that candidate at that event. I went to one of my. One of my employees told me that I'm like, I had no idea. Like you went to this networking event and happened to meet the right guy. So you know, just things like that. I try to have the communication very open yeah and they can tell me listen, I'm just not feeling well today or I'm mentally having some issues with home. I'm not going to tell you what it is, but I just need to sit back and I'm like, take the time, whatever you need to do. So I like to think I'm a pretty real manager. Chris: Yeah Well, it sounds like there's a lot of empathy that comes across in those calls, so they feel safe. Yeah, empathy, that comes across in those calls so they feel safe, and I think that's an important thing for a leader to be able to show empathy so that people will be more open and responsive, at whatever level your leadership is in the organization, is an important quality. It's interesting too, I think, that you asked about challenges, because I find it to be helpful to if you're kind of forced to reflect on what was really good about the last week and maybe what was a challenge, because we learn from both. Right, well, that's really good. Anything that you mentioned your stepmother earlier as a mentor, any learning from her that you kind of feel like you're implementing today and kind of carrying on some of the things you learned along the way from her Well, she is my free consultant, so you know, so I call her all the time. Jen: I'm like, okay, more free. Chris: Don't let her listen, she might start charging. Jen: She's fully retired, so she's like no problem. No, I think, being a peer to your clients and telling them no, sometimes you know she's not a yes man and I think I learned that, that you know you've got to push back. When you know, because of your 20 years experience, that something's wrong, you have to call the elephant in the room yeah and you have to say you, you may not skip this recruiting. You know, a lot of times my clients will get very excited about a candidate and they're like, well, can you just come see me tomorrow? And I'm like, no, he cannot because that's too fast for the candidate. They need time to process. You look too eager. I had one client that said it. He said I'm not coming to the first date with a diamond ring. You cannot come to the first date with a diamond ring, you have to let the process happen. But she was always very good about not being a yes man and I've learned that works and it pays off to help your clients be successful. Chris: It's funny that works and it pays off for to help your clients be successful. It's funny that reminds me there's an analogy that applies in all kinds of situations. But it's the cake right. So, just like you were saying, don't be too fast. Yeah, you can have all the right ingredients, mix it up, put it in the oven. If you pull it out too quick, it's going to flop yeah right. So you got to let the process, trust the process, let the process play out, and that applies in so many different aspects of business yeah, and these are humans that we're dealing with. Jen: These are people and they weren't thinking about a job change most likely. Chris: So you've got to let that change management process happen in their head, you know, let them go through that as well so good point to make and we'll repeat it that for what you're doing with these targeted executive searches, most likely the right person was not looking. The ones that are looking there could be one of those red flags there, Not always right, not always, but yeah. So, jen, this has been a fun conversation. Congratulations on your success, thank you. I want to ask you just a few things to wrap up. Yep, so obviously you've been in the search world, or executive search world, for you said 20 plus years. What was your first job? Jen: I remember you asked somebody else this, so I actually worked at a daycare for intellectually disabled kids and adults. Not that fun story that you wanted to hear, but it was fun. I absolutely loved it. I worked every summer. 0:36:20 - Chris: There had to be a lot of life lessons learned in that. Jen: Very challenging. These were kids that were not accepted at other daycares, even for special needs kids. And so I made $4.25 an hour. I was just telling this story because now I'm the chairman of the board for Special Olympics. Chris: Are you really? Jen: I am, and so they asked me my why, and I was like well, I did this for about five years, six years, all through college. I did summer camps and stuff, and so that population has a very soft spot in my heart. Chris: I love how that's come full circle in your life to be able to be doing what you're doing with Special Olympics. As an aside and maybe a plug, isn't Houston hosting the Special Olympics? Jen: next year, next year, I did not tell you that you didn't, but I just know we are right at rice, and is it 2025? Yeah, so that's a big deal, so huge those. Chris: Any listeners in houston, be on the lookout to go support that, what a great cause thank you, appreciate that all right. So my favorite question tex-mex or barbecue? Jen: tex-mex. I'm not a barbecue fan. My husband loves it, but I don't. Chris: Well, you know, you had no problem answering that question. Jen: Some people struggle so I love that In Texas only probably Right. Chris: So another question I get travel ideas from. So if you could do a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Jen: Maine. Chris: Maine. Jen: We. If you could do a 30-day sabbatical, where would you go and what would you do? Maine, maine. We went to Maine last year. Oh my God, it's beautiful. We're empty nesters and so we're doing two-week working vacations. We just got back from Santa Fe and then we're hoping the next spring we're going to do Maine. Chris: Good for you. Yeah, I like that, kenny. Jen: Bunk or somewhere around there. Chris: Okay Well, you didn't let me finish a sentence, oh sorry, no, so I know you meant it right. Some people have to think about it. Jen: Oh, I knew. Yeah. Well, we're thinking about where we want to go now, so we've got a whole list. Chris: That's a fun process to go through. Yeah, it is so well, jen. Thanks again for coming. Special Guest: Jen Sudduth.

In this episode of Building Texas Business, we delve into the remarkable journey of Jason Hayes and his family's business, Top Coat Fabrication. Despite the tumultuous nature of the markets, they managed to emerge as an industrial leader, a testament to their resilience and adaptability. He shares Top Coat's blueprint for navigating change while excelling in oil, gas, and petrochemicals. Intentional culture-building through staff gatherings and challenges instilled trust and community, cornerstones of Top Coat's prosperity. In conclusion, his journey to company president wove together personal learning, workplace achievements, nurturing customer bonds, and proactive growth to create the powerhouse that Top Coat is today. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Jason Hayes discusses the transformation of Top Coat Fabrication from its sandblasting roots to becoming an influential player in the oil, gas, and petrochemical industries. We explore Jason's early involvement with the family business, starting straight out of high school and eventually becoming president, as he emphasizes the value of hands-on experience. Jason shares how Top Coat navigated the challenges of the oil industry's downturns and how strategic diversification into fabrication opened new opportunities in the petrochemical sector. Jason and I delve into the pivotal moment in 2010 when Jason embraced intentional leadership and continuous learning, transforming his personal and professional outlook. Jason highlights the cultural shift within Top Coat, illustrating how he cultivates a positive work environment through team-building exercises and weekly staff meetings. We discuss the significance of building strong customer relationships, with Jason explaining his personal approach to post-project follow-ups and the search for honest feedback. Jason reflects on the importance of networking and trusted advisors, detailing how open communication within the leadership team is essential for resolving conflicts and fostering growth. We delve into Jason's leadership style, his efforts to understand team members' goals, and his commitment to maintaining a balance between work and family life. Jason explains the importance of hiring for culture fit, noting that while skills are necessary, alignment with the company's ethos is crucial for long-term success. Personal anecdotes are shared, including Jason's love for Tex-Mex, his first job experiences, and his aspirations to travel more with his family. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Top Coat Fabrication GUESTS Jason HayesAbout Jason TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Jason Hayes, president of Top Coat Fabrication. Jason is the second generation of leadership in a family-owned business and tells how he went from hope to learning to be more intentional about growth. Jason I want to welcome you to. Building Texas Business. Thanks for taking time to come on the show. Absolutely Glad to be here. So I think the best place to start is just tell us a little bit about Topcoat. What is the business and what? Jason: does it do? Okay, we're an industrial fabricator, so we fabricate oil and gas and petrochemical equipment, a lot of welding, piping, structural steel, pressure vessels pretty much anything you see when you drive by chemical plants. That's the type of stuff that we fabricate. Chris: Okay, and y'all been in business. Now for what? 40 plus years, 40 plus years. Jason: This is our 44th year. I think it started in 1980. Okay, yes, it started as a sandblasting and painting company, and that's how they got the name Top Coat. Chris: Oh, okay, that makes sense. And so started by your father, I believe. Mom and dad, okay, still 100% owners. Very good, so what was the I guess, the inspiration that had them start Top Coat to begin with? Jason: I think honestly, if I remember the story right, my dad was working for a contractor down in Freeport and I don't remember the whole story but he didn't get treated right so he got let go or whatever happened. So he decided he was going to start his own thing. So he did they and they started this blasting and painting and it just kind of took off. His work ethic combined with everything else and industry in our area, so there was a lot of oil and gas in our area at that time. Mobile had a big shore base down there, so his contacts led to him doing some blasting painting for mobile and then they asked him if he could do some work offshore on their platforms, because they have platforms out there. So that that led to that part of the business and it just kind of started growing a little bit from there so it's interesting. Chris: So many people that I've talked to have you know unique stories, but there's a there, there's some that have a common theme that it's kind of, out of that hardship or disappointment or something, they decide to go on their own and do it their own way. It sounds like that was the case for your dad. Jason: Yeah, absolutely. I don't know exactly what drove it, you know, but yeah, that's what led to it. Chris: Tell us a little bit then you know how did that lead to. You know what the company is today as it relates to you know the focus and the mission and the purpose of the company. How has those early days influenced where you are today, some 44 years later? Jason: Well, let me give you a little bit of history about that. So when he started working offshore for Mobile at some point, he was just doing sandblasting and painting, well, on a project. They had asked him if he had any welders or knew any welders, because they needed some welding done out there. So he said yes, as a matter of fact, I do so. Welders because they needed some welding done out there. So he said, yes, matter of fact, I do so that he started hiring welders and doing construction on the platforms as well. So the offshore oil and gas was our bread and butter for many years, 20 plus years at least. So that even when I came on board in 98, that was our biggest business was oil and gas offshore construction. We'd send crews to the platforms and do maintenance and platform installations, platform removals, kind of everything in between. So that was great. The downside was, you know, when oil and gas is great, it's great, but it's dead, very cyclical too, right Big time. So we had a lot of struggles and I didn't see any other struggles that they saw. My mom and dad went through so many downturns that it was everything they could do to survive, but they did Well. Then, after the BP spill, macondo incident. Then the government really cracked down on offshore industry. So pretty much all the platforms we used to work on started coming out of the water. So all the stuff that we used to do existed no more. So that's when we really had to decide and make a big pivot in the business and say you know what we've been doing? A little bit of fabrication that supports the oil and gas, the offshore let's, let's focus on that. We have the knowledge base, we had some experience in it. Let's let's focus on that. So we literally changed the name to top coat fabrication and we didn't do anything off-site anymore. We focused strictly on fabrication and we would ship our stuff, you know, kind of all over. So it opened another big door to us for the petrochemical industry, because down in our area, you know, we've had Dow Chemical, all these chemical plants right in our back door. But it was almost like we swore we'll never work for the plants, we'll never work in the plants, just because it has that stigma of okay, once you get in, you know your foot in Dow, you know it's, it can be great. But then they people say they own you or you know whatever, and so we never did. Well then now with just the fabrication, that's when we started reaching out to these chemical plants and started really digging in and started doing a lot of work for them. So, and then, another big blessing was not too long after that, we got approached by a big company that had property next to us, had a, a facility, and then they wanted to buy our facility for an expansion. So we were on the water, we were on the intercoastal canal because we had crew boats coming in and out. We did a lot of dock services, so none of that existed anymore. So this was just a huge place that we didn't need, so that we used that to actually buy a piece of property, built a brand new shop where we're at now, a brand new facility. We built it the way we wanted. That was, you know, based on fabrication. So that's where we still are. Chris: Okay, that's great. So you know, I guess, a good lesson in the adage of don't put all your eggs in one basket. Yeah, y'all learned to diversify pretty quickly, right? Yes, yeah, exactly. Jason: So now you know we still do oil and gas work, but it's fabrication. We do a lot of stuff for West Texas oil and gas and we ship our stuff out there. We do a ton for the petrochemical industry right in our back door. We're getting into commercial building fabrication now not the buildings themselves but the structural components that go into them. We're looking into the offshore wind generation, solar, anywhere. We can do our fabrication in different industries for that exact reason to diversify. Chris: It's a good lesson right for people out there that you know. Start a business, maybe with that one big customer, that focus. It can be good when times are good, but you got to think about you know what. If this goes away, what else do we have? That is a compliment to it. It's a big liability yeah, if you don't, yeah, it ain't no different than what you were saying if, if you got too far in with someone like Dow, that'd be no different than you know, kind of that singular focus. So let's talk a little bit. How did you get involved and kind of come up through the business? Because you're now the president, I definitely want to talk a little bit once I hear kind of the back story about at some point there was a transition in leadership, so I definitely want to dive into that. Sure. Jason: So right out of high school I worked for Topcoat for the summer between high school and college and I went off to college that next semester. I went to Texas A&M. I was in mechanical engineering program. I wasn't ready for college, so I was there for two semesters and then they suggested that I leave. So I left. After that I came home and started working in 98 at some point and started at the bottom, started as a helper. The summer before college I was just a weed eater. We had this huge facility on the shore basin. I literally just weeded it all summer pretty much. So then when I came back I was a helper, just doing whatever you know in the shop around the facility. At one point we also made a realization or my dad did, because I had nothing to do with management then, but he made a realization that we needed somebody that would take care of the safety. We always had good safety records and good practices, but we needed somebody that could take charge of the program. Right? So I got volunteered to be the safety man. There you go. So I did that for a few years. They call that voluntold. Chris: Yes. Jason: I was being polite, you're exactly right. So I did that for a couple years and then I don't remember how the transition it was kind of a slow transition into just kind of taking more of the reins of the management. So at some point I can't tell you when, but he named me as the general manager. Okay, so he was the president, I was the general manager and then so I had, you know, a couple of people that kind of reported directly to me and then all the work happened underneath them. So that, and that was the case for a pretty good while. And I mean I'll be brutally honest that I was not into leadership back then. I wanted to be the top dog, right, I wanted to be the guy in charge, but leadership as I understand it now was not in my repertoire. Chris: Yeah, well, I mean, it's easy to want to be the guy, yeah, but there's a lot that goes with it that not everyone understands. Right To do it, the right way To do it right? Yeah, I knew nothing about leading people. Well, what have you done to try to help educate yourself, get some experience to become a better leader? Jason: I think it started with a desire wanting to be better. When you hit that point in 2010, I hit a really low point in my life. That's when I turned my life over to God and became a Christian. It just really changed the way I was thinking. So that kind of led me into leading my family and at some point, you know, I started reading books, I started learning more, listening to podcasts, and that just literally flowed into work. Okay, there's a realization. Okay, now I need to be a better leader at work. And what does that look like? So I started going to conferences, reading books, listening, just consuming as much content as I could, yeah, and then just slowly started putting things into practice at work, which was awkward, you know, at times when you try to bring some new thought processes and stuff to the team where it's never been before. You know, this is the way we've always done it type of mentality, and I was the same way. Chris: So it's a struggle, it's a beautiful story. It's an easy trap to fall into, right For people. Well, we were just doing it this way, because we've always done it that way. That is a eventually that becomes a death sentence for a company because no one will. Eventually that becomes a death sentence for a company because no one will innovate or think differently. And so I definitely applaud you for coming to that point. And you know, and as you know, now it's a, it's an everyday. You know you got to keep learning and keep growing, yeah for sure. So let's go back to the kind of the transition, because at some point you become president I don't know what your dad's title is now, but you kind of take over the reins. Let's talk about how did that decision kind of come about? And then how did y'all manage through the transition where you became kind of the. Jason: It was gradually happening already, so my dad is still the CEO now and he was like saying he was the president back then and it was just I, I probably just. It was a combination of me taking more and taking more initiative and him being able to release more right. So there wasn't anything set like, okay, I'm going to give you more, I need you to take more. Chris: It was just kind of I started pulling and he started giving well the given parts, probably the hardest of those two, oh, I'm sure'm sure, allowing himself to let go and trust. How did y'all manage the communication within the company? Did you just let it happen by kind of osmosis? The actual? Jason: leadership just happened. So I've worked really closely with most of my leadership team for gosh I guess 16 or 17 years now several of them and so it just happened. We started really clicking together, growing. A lot of us have the same kind of mentality we want to get better personally, we want to get better in the business. We're, all you know, looking at the big picture type of thing. But the actual transition from me to GM to president, I didn't even know about it. So we have a staff meeting every Monday with the entire company. We have breakfast and I typically show some type of motivational video, tell the whole staff a few things that might be going on within the business. And in one of those meetings my mom shows up. And my mom, she just doesn't. She's never been involved in the business since I've been there. She's part owner but never been involved in it, and so she's. So you know, I said hi to her before I'm going to the meeting and I didn't think anything about it. Well, during that meeting my dad gets up and says okay, I want to announce that jason is now the president of the business and I'm he. I don't think he said this, but he was stepping up to the ceo. So it was like a we both kind of moved up okay. But he mentioned, you know, that he just that he just wanted to. He knew I was passionate about it, I was passionate about the business, passionate about the people, and he knew I wanted to take it to new places. So he named me president. So nobody knew, not me, not anybody else, it just happened one day oh, we don't. So it was a cool honor and you know it didn't change much. It didn't change much because the structure was already there. Yeah, it was just a matter of a title really then. But I think I started taking it even more serious then. Chris: Makes sense. So I guess we talk about as it exists today. Then you're still working with your dad, but more the responsibility for the day-to-day falls on you, Right? Yes, definitely. Jason: He's there almost every day. I mean he's there every day that he's around. If he's not, you know, gone out of town or something, he's there. He's typically in his shorts and flip flops or you know shorts and shoes and fishing shirt. But he is there, which is great to have him. I'm honored to be able to work with him. He still lets me pretty much do what I want. I mean trusts me. Chris: So one of the things I noticed in getting ready to meet you today was on your website, the company's website. You're very big on your people and your culture, so let's talk a little bit about how you would describe the culture at Top Coat and what are some of the things you think you've done to help kind of build to get to that type of culture. Jason: The culture is amazing at Top Coat and that's my passion. My passion is the culture. That's one of the biggest things I think spend most time thinking about. One of the first things I did was start having a just a like a weekly meeting with my, the leadership team. We started doing that, I would bet, six or eight years ago, Just a weekly meeting. We didn't really have any structure, I just wanted us to meet, put our heads together and talk about things going on. So that was the first thing I started. And then, after that, we started the full staff meetings. After we moved to our new place, we actually had a place we could meet, but we started having our full staff meetings once a week too, and we kind of used that as a transition. I don't remember how it came about, but we started doing a type of physical challenge where every Monday after our staff meeting, we'd have some kind of challenge where it would be, we'd do push-ups, we'd do dead hangs. We've done just about everything you could imagine. Some of them are physical, some of them are not, but we do that and it's we literally make the people pay. If you want to play five bucks, Everybody puts in five bucks and wants to do it. Winner takes all, unless it's a team sport. You know, we've done tug of war, We've done dodgeball tournaments and little things like that. It just creates like maybe 15, 20 minutes of fun and there's trash talking from all the you know, the audience and everything else. But it's that's just a tiny layer that just it just adds a little bit of fun into the workday. It makes it a little more human, right? Yes, and that's one of the biggest things my dad fought me on at the very beginning was doing these. You know his mentality was you know, think about what that's costing the company. You know you have this entire crew shut down for 30 minutes additional. What do you think that's costing us? And I wrapped my head around it and I thought about it and I understood. But at the same time I tried to make him understand. I think it's way more valuable to spend that time and spend that money on this time, because I think overall it's going to be well worth it. Chris: Yeah, kudos to you for that, because it's easy to look at the black and white and ensure there's a cost to that. But I think you're right when you evaluate it holistically. If you're creating engagement and fostering that environment where everyone kind of knows each other better and feels more like a team, I think the returns are exponential. Right, you can't necessarily put dollars on it, but you probably can't look at lack of turnover, maybe better productivity once they're back at work. So I think to your point it was it's a wise investment to making your people yeah, I agree, and I mean to this day. Jason: If you look on our LinkedIn page or Facebook, when I put up videos of the challenge that we do, that's even on LinkedIn. Those are the posts that get so many comments, so many shares. It's people connect with it and so many people say, man, I wish we did that at our place, or I wish my company would do stuff like that. And it's like it's those little things that people I don't know if they don't think about them or they just don't think it's worth it, but for us it's been kind of a game changer. Advert Hello friends, this is Chris Hanslick, your Building Texas business host. Did you know that Boyer Miller, the producer of this podcast, is a business law firm that works with entrepreneurs, corporations and business leaders? Our team of attorneys serve as strategic partners to businesses by providing legal guidance to organizations of all sizes. Get to know the firm at boyermillercom. And thanks for listening to the show. Chris: So one of the things you mentioned kind of as the company's evolved is, you know this diversification into fabrication and doing other lines of business. What are some of the things you do as the president of the company to kind of create those relationships with the new customers, new vendors, and maintain those strong relationships? Jason: We have a sales team that does a lot of the actual interaction. But most of our customers I'll know their name, I'll know their contact information and I'm the one that reaches out to them personally. For if we're going to do it, then let's say we sponsor a lot of golf tournaments, you know skeet shooting teams for fundraisers and that sort of thing, and I'm the one that normally reaches out to the people and ask them if they want to you know, participate with us. We had an industry night a couple of weeks ago and I call all the what the customers that I know and have the contact information. I'm the one that calls them and I also do customer follow-ups. With every project that we do that ships out, I do a customer follow-up call with everyone. I call them personally, just as me, thanking them, number one for their business and then number two just seeing if there's anything we can do to improve that I love. Chris: And I'll tell you we tried here and we're not consistent with it. Love, and I'll tell you we tried here and we were not consistent with it, but that kind of what I would call customer survey, satisfaction survey. So you've got it baked into your routine to do it on every order. Jason: That's amazing, I learned that from Mattress Mac. Okay, we bought some furniture from him and I think twice now, and every time sometime afterwards he calls personally and just thanks us for his business. Oh we darn. Chris: Yeah, Well, I think it's a great lesson for people you know that are listening to this and have their own business. That personal touch and that follow-up can go so far in creating that customer loyalty Right. So that's amazing. I guess you report back to your people on what you learned from that so that's amazing. Jason: I guess you report back to your people what you learned from that. Yeah, so we have a Teams, our Teams folder that we open up every day or every week in our leadership meeting and I keep the spreadsheets in there so we review it every week. Any ones that I call, you know, I'll be honest, I'll let them build up, because our project coordinator sends me. Every time we ship one out, he sends me the contact, you know, until I know what the project was, who the contact name is and so forth. And I will, all honesty, I let them build up because sometimes I'll procrastinate doing it, you know, because I'm like, oh, it's one more thing I gotta do, right, right. But then after I do, let's say, just the day before yesterday I called six, six clients and every time I do it I'm so glad that I did because I feel better, I'm sure you know, I feel better because I let them know, number one I that I them. Number two we're trying to ask them if there's anything that we can do to improve and be better. We want to know and I don't think. I think it's so uncommon that people don't people say they want feedback. But I think they want the five-star rating Right. They don't want the honesty, they just want okay, how many five stars can we get? Chris: Yeah, they want the high google rating, right right which it feels good to get that. Jason: But we're not going to get any better if, especially if there's a client that's not happy about something, some most of them aren't going to come and just out and tell us, hey, so and so went wrong. But if I ask, is there anything we could do to better, that's when they're going to say, as a matter of fact, there is. Yeah, I haven't got that yet, but we will sure you will. I mean, that's the point, that's what I want. Chris: I think that's great. You know, sitting here thinking I need to do more of that. You know that, as I told you before we came on, I learned from all the guests and I've at least learned that from you today. I think that's wise advice. Jason: And it has to come from the top. If my project coordinator is talking to the clients, you know 24 seven7. It's not going to be the same Right. Chris: That's right. So let's talk a little bit. I mean, it's been up and down in the economy the last few years. What have you experienced at Top Coat kind of as it relates to the last four or five years and kind of the you know turbulent environment, and what are some of the things you've done to kind of manage through? Jason: that We've stayed pretty steady the last several years. Now. Last year ended up being our best year in history revenue-wise. Revenue and profit-wise. Several stars aligned for that, some great projects from some longtime customers. But the few years before that we were okay, we were steady, right, and that's. I think that's one thing that Vistage taught me is to be proactive. I'd sit back for years and say, man, I hope this company grows, I hope this company grows. And then, with you know, the Vistage group and just everything that I've been involved in so far with that has just really taught me that you have to be intentional, you have to, we have to make it happen. So we going to grow, how are we going to make this happen? So that's where the big focus is now. I mean we since I've been there, you know, 26 years we've had some horrible years. I mean when we first take great story, when we first built our new facility beautiful shop, beautiful, everything we had no work, zero. We got down, I believe seven people in the company completely, and I remember just like it was. Yesterday we're having my staff meeting, so it's a small group, but I'm kind of telling them look, we literally had 75 grand in the bank and we said this is all the money we had left. We had all this money from selling our property, but we'd spent on this new facility and we had some money, but it had just dwindled down to nothing because the work had died, and so that was in 16, I think 2016, 2017. Okay, so I'm telling the whole team look, guys, I don't know what we're going to do. We're going to figure this out, but I really don't know what I do, what we're going to do. And then, literally during that meeting, our phone, our office phone, rang. There was nobody in the office, so I turned around and I answered the phone. Quick, five-minute conversation. It was a guy driving by our facility. He was an inspector for Chevron, phillips and Sweeney and he said I'm leaving the shop and I'm the inspector and I can't stand Something along the lines of I can't stand working with these guys. They keep lying to me, I need to find another shop and I've just been driving by your place. I want to see if I can come talk to you about doing some fabrication work for us. That led to us doing $2 million to $3 million a year for them almost every year since. Oh, wow, and so that was. It was like that was. Since I've been in the business, that was the lowest point that I felt, because I was really feeling that pressure of what am I going to do? What am I going to do? And there was no strategy to this. It was like it was a God moment of having him drive by all this stuff at the same time by having a new facility help? yes, absolutely if we had not been there, he never would have driven by our place, because where we were before nobody drove by right, so nobody knew so so that's it. Chris: I mean well, that's an incredible deal. So 2016 is seven employees, $75,000 in the bank. How did you end 2023? How many employees and what was your revenue? Jason: 2023,. We had $22 million in revenue and for most of the year we were probably around close to 100 employees. Wow. Chris: That's an amazing turnaround, congratulations. Appreciate it yeah, congratulations, appreciate it. So, yeah, I like what you said earlier, when it was you were hoping to grow and you've learned to go think about how to grow and be intentional, because that otherwise you hear there's another cliche hope's not a strategy, right? So sounds like you mentioned vistage, so you're a vistage member, that sounds like, and other vistage members, including myself. I know how valuable it can be to grow as a leader, but then how you think about your business. Jason: Sure, absolutely yeah. And, like I was telling you earlier, the network that you meet the people, the different people in every area of business yourself for legal, whether it's taxes, insurance, whatever has to do with business. There's people that I'm connected with, literally one-on-one, that I can call, I can sit down with. Most of them will just meet me for lunch. If I need to bounce an idea off of them. That's the biggest thing. Chris: Something I tell people that have businesses all the time is you've got to build a solid network of trusted advisors that you can reach out to, whether it's a banker, insurance person, accountant, lawyer, another entrepreneur or business owner right, that you can just reach out to, because even when you're having a bad day and maybe they can you know, hey, I've been there before, so you'll feel, because a lot of times you feel alone. What are some of the things I guess, as you've evolved as a leader that you've found to kind of whether it's a particular book or conference you go to that have really been valuable to you to kind of grow as a leader? Jason: I can't think of a specific book, but I think, the mentality of giving your people the tools that they need to do what they have inside their head. You know, I think so many times I've learned that even our leadership team at work they have so many ideas and great ways to do different things, but they don't always let them out. So I think creating number one, creating a safe place, like our leadership meetings that we have every Wednesday morning, that's a safe place. Whether it's a conflict that we have, whether it's an issue that they've been holding in, whatever it may be, that is the place where we draw those things out and we squash them or whatever we need to do. To me, that's probably been the biggest thing. Chris: It's a hard thing to do, but you're so right that safe place where people feel like they can share without being judged or criticized is unique, I think, but so important. Jason: And it's so simple, but we're all humans, especially at work. Yeah, and it's so simple, but we're all humans, especially at work. I'm sure we all swallow a whole lot more at work than we do anywhere else, because maybe we're afraid of our job, we're afraid of whatever. But I think it's been really good for us. We've solved so many issues just because we've created the structure for it. Chris: So one of the things I like to ask folks that come on is can you tell us a setback you've encountered in your professional life? Maybe it's your personal life, but something that sets you back. But you learned so much and you grew from it that you're better off because of it today. Man. Jason: I know there's plenty of them. Chris: That's what most people say. Jason: Yeah, there's plenty of them. Chris: I'm just trying to think what would come to mind, maybe something right after you kind of took over being either general manager or president at Topco, maybe something in those early days. Jason: I think one of the real struggles is it's not a moment but learning the business finances. You know I struggle a lot with okay, we need this piece of equipment to get better, we should just go buy it. Well, my dad has the finances and the history of the accounting behind it and I've struggled because he and I butted heads quite a bit on things I think would be a good investment and things he thinks wouldn't be a good investment. So that's become something we both had to work on. Really, I mean, I lean on him a lot for his knowledge and different things when we're purchasing, making big purchases or expanding our facility, whatever we're doing. But I think having those conversations was probably some of the toughest things we've had to do. Gotcha, and it's just like anything else, it's just like with the leadership team. It's creating a space that we can have those. I mean, he and I have worked together for literally 26 years, so we work well together and we communicate fine together. But it's me getting up the courage to ask those questions too. That's been a struggle. Chris: So what I hear you saying in that and I think it's a natural struggle for people in leadership because, like you said, from day one, you wanted to be the top dog. Sure, it's having the humility to ask your father or mentor someone that you don't know or don't know enough, right. Sure, so that takes a lot of humility, yeah, for you, and I think it's also a blessing that you have the courage to use it. Jason: Is you have a built-in, you know, advisor, mentor, right there, you know, letting you grow and being there to kind of guide you along the way yeah, and I don't utilize them as much as I should, but every time we have a conversation like this, it reminds me how much I should I, how much I do and should you know, put more value in that another thing that you mentioned was mentioned was y'all can butt heads. Chris: So what have y'all done? Because I guarantee I've had other people that have done what you've done on the show, that have taken over a family business. I guarantee there's people who are going to listen to this, that are doing that or see that in their future when you get to that place of how will you and your dad communicate on big issues. If you all kind of got it agreed upon, let's do this in private and really hash it out and not let other people see what's going on. I mean, is that something that's one that you all kind of have a practice of doing? If so, how does that work? Jason: Yeah, definitely. I mean, he's in our leadership meeting. He sits in our leadership meetings pretty much every week. He's pretty quiet, you know, off to the side, he's just mainly listening, but there's plenty of times where I'll you know if I have an issue with something he said, or vice versa. He'll either come to my office and shut the. I always, I constantly, have to remind myself that this is his baby. This whole company is. I've had a lot to do with the growth and where we're at in you know the current state, but at the end of the day, this is his and he. He created it and I'm just a part of it. Yeah, so I have to constantly remind myself of that. And then he I mean, he tells me multiple times that you know I'm doing a good job of running it. So he's constantly having to remind himself that he gave me the authority and the power to run it. But it's definitely a team effort. Chris: I think it would have to be. The other thing that comes to mind again, kind of unique to family-owned business and second generation of leadership of that family-owned business is how well do you and your dad do at leaving the issues at the office versus trickling over to the Thanksgiving table or anything like that? Jason: Yeah, he's probably better at that than I am, but even I don't know. From the time I was born, he and I have had an absolutely solid relationship always. He was gone a lot when I was growing up for many years because he was doing a lot of offshore work. So he was gone a lot when I was growing up for many years because he was doing a lot of offshore work. So he was gone a lot, but we always had just a top-notch relationship. Yeah, so I think without that it would have been a hundred times worse. Yeah, but I don't think I can't remember a single time where any tension between me and him ever stayed very long period, but certainly much less made it out the door. Yeah, yeah, we could have this tough discussion and then say, all right, let's go get some lunch yeah, you know that's good here and you know. Chris: The other thing is, I think when you're an entrepreneur and you own this business, you live and breathe it, so you you're going to be thinking about it when you're at home and those conversations could come up versus, just as natural, when they happen at the office right it. Jason: It always has. Yeah, I mean, whether we're at my house, his house, it's typically something with work is going to come up and we're going to talk about it. Chris: It just happens. So let me ask you this just about your own personal leadership style. How would you describe your leadership style today? How do you think it's evolved or developed over the last several years? Jason: I would say my style is to. This is just off the cuff, but I would say my style is to help anybody that I'm leading, make sure they have the tools to do what they need to do. You know I'm really passionate about I haven't been extremely proactive about mentoring all of my leadership team, but I want to know their goals, not just professionally but personally too, and I think a lot about like, what can I do to help them succeed? If the person is going after what they were put on this earth to do and I can be a part of that and help guide them to that, I think that is the ultimate definition of success when it comes to leadership. Yeah, so that's kind of my passion. I haven't been as good at the mentoring side and maybe the personal side. We talk about business roles and stuff quite a bit but I really want to be more involved with their goals in life overall. Sure, Not involved in them, but what can I do to help? How can I help? Chris: Well, at least understand them, so you know how you can be a resource. Jason: Yeah, and again, I want all my resources to be their resources too. Chris: So that brings up kind of a good subject. When you think about that, and maybe I'm going to ask you about yourself, what do you do to try to maintain some type of balance in your life right between work and family, knowing that you're always thinking about the business, right? Jason: I've done pretty good with that for the most part. I've never been a workaholic, just not me. I've been a huge family guy always. I have four kids, ages 15 down to 7, so we stay busy, sounds like it, but that's another. Passion of mine, too is just the kids and the family. I've never had a struggle with staying at work when I should be at home. Chris: Now having the leadership team that I have is what makes that possible. I was going to say you got to have some tools in place to help facilitate that. So hiring good leaders to work with you, Anything that you look for, or when you do interview or interview someone for a leadership position and or think about promoting them to one. Jason: Culture is the number one thing. That's what I always start with. Will this person be a fit for our culture? And that's typically if we're going to hire not just leadership team, but maybe even the level right. You know, underneath that, most of the time I'll. I want to know the person. I want to have a one-on-meeting. You know, I've met several people for coffee that we were interviewing for a project manager position, just because I want to just get to know the person. The resume says what they've done. The resume says everything that they've accomplished. But I want to know are they going to fit with us? And if they don't, then that's an immediate no. So I think that hiring for the culture is the number one thing. Chris: So many people, including myself, believe that right. Lots of people have skills that could fit with what you do, but are they a type of person that fits with who you are and who you want your people to be? Right, and I believe the people that are culture fit. Jason: You never know where they might end up, even with the company. We've hired a couple of people that were a great fit for us and they were doing one thing. Well then, as soon as we get, they get in and they're a great fit, and then we start seeing all the stuff that they're capable of. Then they start getting snagged by this person and next thing you know they're just keep moving up because everybody's starting to see. Chris: You know they're capable of yeah, but it started with the fit right. That's great. Well, jason, I love the story and the family transition. I think it's a beautiful story when they're done right. They're not always are. I want to always wrap up on a few off-topic personal things. Okay, what was your first job? Was it something at Top Coat or something other than that? Jason: Yeah, it was Top Coat, the one right after high school, so weed eating, yeah, it was great. Chris: So great. All right, what's your preference? Tex-mex or barbecue Tex-Mex? I could eat it every day. I mean, I didn't even finish the sentence. Jason: I know you jumped on that one, I know. Chris: No question. Jason: So I always ask people if you could take a sabbat Ooh 30 days, oh man, for at least a week I'd take my wife and we'd just sit on a beach somewhere. Yeah, without a doubt. Yeah, and then I would just do some traveling, a lot of traveling. I want to do a lot more traveling. The only place out of the states I've been is to Mexico, for me and my wife on our honeymoon. Okay, so I've got so many places I want to see, but I just don't make the time or make the plans to do it. Chris: Well with the four kids as you described, you got your hands full right. Yeah, well again. Jason, thanks for taking the time to come on the show. Really enjoyed getting to get to know you better and meet you. Jason: I appreciate the opportunity man. Special Guest: Jason Hayes.

In today's episode of Building Texas Business, we have a discussion with Devlin Lyles, President of Improving, about AI's evolving role in business. With his extensive tech leadership background, Devlin offers insightful perspectives on strategically integrating AI and shifting workforce mindsets. He explains how AI enhances personal productivity and compels a transition from manual tasks to advanced system management. Other notable topics include vendor resiliency, learning cultures, and personal growth's influence on business innovation. Wrapping up, Devlin shares his views on AI's future impact through emerging tools and personal assistants that boost productivity. Join us for this enriching exchange at the intersection of technology, leadership experience, and work-life harmony. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS Devlin discusses his transition from a young programmer to a leader in technology, emphasizing the role of AI in changing business strategies and operations. We explore the psychological aspect of AI adoption in businesses, addressing how the workforce adapts to the enhanced productivity and evolving roles that AI tools bring. Devlin makes an analogy between the historical rise of ATMs and their impact on bank tellers, to the current transition from manual task execution to strategic AI system management. We dissect common misconceptions in AI implementation, such as the belief that data must be perfectly curated and the pitfalls of building bespoke AI solutions from scratch. Devlin highlights the importance of focusing on problem-solving over the technology itself, encouraging companies to differentiate between truly valuable AI applications and those simply following trends. The conversation delves into vendor resiliency, with a focus on the legal protection offered by large companies like Microsoft for their AI services. We discuss the cultivation of a learning culture within Improving and the impact personal development has on managing technology and fostering business innovation. Devlin shares insights on the future of AI, such as the potential of a "cloud of things" and personal AI tools that can enhance daily productivity and support memory. We examine the transformative effect of AI on mundane tasks and its potential for significant impact on industries like logistics, supply chain, and manufacturing. Devlin and I reflect on the importance of hobbies and personal interests, such as golf and video games, for maintaining a balanced life while engaging with technological advancements. LINKSShow Notes Previous Episodes About BoyarMiller About Improving GUESTS Devlin LilesAbout Devlin TRANSCRIPT (AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors) Chris: In this episode, you will meet Devlin Liles, President of Improving. Devlin is a leading expert in the application and use of AI for businesses. Devlin shares several helpful ideas relating to AI for businesses and believes that a business's readiness for AI is mostly psychological. Devlin, I want to thank you for taking time to join us today. Why don't we start by just telling us a little bit about yourself and your background and your role with improving Sure. Devlin: So Devlin Lyles. That seems like an odd thing to say. So I'm a technologist by kind of trade and training, so I started writing software when I was very young. I was 8 when I started programming. Chris: My dad got me into it. Devlin: I started my first software company when I was 16 in high school, building used car websites and that kind of thing Right at the kind of dot-com bubble expansion, and so decided I was going to not do that as a career. I was going to become a professional soccer player. That didn't work, so I kind of fell back into it as a hobby and kind of continued on that. Chris: Most programmers think of a professional soccer player as a dream, right yeah absolutely. Devlin: And so I ended up kind of falling back into my hobby as a career and then came up through kind of corporate IT at Tys Foods and then got into IT consulting and been doing that for the last 15 years. So that's a bit about me. Chris: Okay, and let's talk a little bit about improving where you serve as president. Tell us a little bit about what improving does in your role there, and then you know one of the things I really want to focus on, as you know, is things on most people's minds over the last 12-18 months is AI, so it's kind of couched in that context. Devlin: Sure. So my role with improving has kind of evolved over the years. So I actually started as a consultant delivering to our clients and I came in kind of two and a half three years in and so we have an equity share model. So I grew an equity share at improving and then took over as president here in Houston in 2017. My global role for improving is chief consulting officer, so I own client delivery, thought leadership, go-to-market and employee growth kind of that space, and so AI has been a big part of that conversation. Now the interesting thing is I get to live in a time machine somewhat in this space of AI has been a big part of that story for us for five to seven years. The world with chatGPT, kind of making it a part of the zeitgeist, is really catching up, and so it's cool to have these conversations and really talk about it, because a lot of our excitement and like oh, it's going to be utopia from 2017-2018, when there were some big strides being made forward and we get to kind of relive with everybody else. Chris: Interesting. Yeah, so you're living it for the second time. Devlin: Yeah, and it's. The thing is that, going through at the second time, you get somewhat of the hindsight in real time, which is interesting. Yeah, because we ended up helping a lot of customers apply some of these technologies, and technology always has this kind of pull to off the shelf right Systems. We used to pay tens of millions of dollars to build custom right. Think about CRM, a client contact management system, right Almost everybody has today. Chris: Yeah. Devlin: In the 1990s that was a multi tens of millions of dollar project for only the biggest companies to really have a unified customer relationship management system. And today I can go, put in a credit card and sign up for HubSpot or Salesforce or Dynamics right off the shelf. There's this pull to off the shelf that happens in technology, which leads to the middle market and small businesses being able to take advantage of what used to be incredibly expensive technology and that's actually what we're seeing in the AI space is it's driving from. I no longer need 100 million to approach this problem. I can actually apply this for 20 bucks a month, yeah. Chris: It's a great observation and yeah it's so true that it becomes, I guess better, efficient and more economical right Each time, I guess, as technology is with us and develops longer. That's a great kind of segue. I want to just kind of start with what are some of the key factors a business should consider when evaluating their readiness for adopting AI into the business. Devlin: Interesting For adopting AI into the business. Readiness is mostly psychological, because there are pieces in the business today that you can do better. We break this into kind of three parts when we talk to business leaders about this. One is how do you do your job much more effectively, right? What's the superhuman version of Chris? Right, there's AI tools to make that happen. Like, I'm a very well augmented human, I have tools that analyze my notes and make sure that I don't forget things. I've got tools that keep reminders and stuff on my personal network. Now, they're not spamming my friends with, like text messages to buy things, but it's going. Hey, you haven't talked to Bob In two months. Here's what you talked about the last time, so I can reach out to Bob. Hey, man, we haven't caught up. How's your wife doing? How's your son doing? Like those kind of things. That's the superhuman version of me, because I want to stay connected with my friends Just bad at it and so it covers that gap for me. So that's the first part is like that personal productivity side, which is mainly just a resistance to change. That you'd see in any technology adoption. It's psychological, organizational. People have tied their identity to the work they do and so changing that means like an existential crisis sometimes, right? Sure, think about a bank teller when the ATM came out. Right Now, we still employ a lot of bank tellers, but their jobs drastically changed. It's that moment where we're not going to get rid of a bunch of humans and have robots doing those jobs. What we're going to do is change the job of the human to guiding them, controlling and managing the robots. Chris: I think that's an important point to kind of reemphasize for the listeners, because I think so much that's out there. You see these news headlines and articles. I think people think robots are going to take over the world and I think the point you just made that that's not the case. But the role the human will play will adapt and change and while that sounds scary in a vacuum, if you actually take a moment and look back, that's what's happened throughout our evolution, especially in the industrial world and the business world in the United States. Right, jobs have evolved and changed over time, and I've heard you say this before, so this is nothing different. I want you to dig in a little deeper on that to help the listeners understand and maybe some historical points to compare to. So it makes it a little more tangible. Devlin: Absolutely so. Think about the way we did accounting before the PC was invented, right? So before the Apple II, we're talking in the 1970s, right Before computing devices were in everybody's office on everybody's desk, right? The way we did accounting was we managed the book and you wrote entries in and you had somebody checking the math and you had the you know 10 keys sitting there with the stream of numbers coming out of it. Right, and your accounting department was massively larger than it is today. To be able to accomplish that, it had to be right, which was a big overhead for a business to bear. Right, and you had these big accounting firms who would help with economies of scale or whatever. But like, that was really the ballgame, right, and it took a long time to like, close out the books and do tax audits and those kind of things. Now fast forward to the introduction of broad computing power. That sped up that process. We still have accountants, we still have bookkeepers. In most businesses you can close the books on a month in 10 days, 30 days if you've got a lot of moving parts. It's not. Hey, we just closed January. In June, a crude accounting became far more prevalent. We had less financial fraud overall, the stories about it happen more often, but we have less by volume and we're actually getting more insights out of that, because it's no longer just tracking all the pieces but going hey, did you notice last month you had increased expenditures in this area without the increased revenue tied to them? And so we get business insights on top of what we used to get was just transactions. We not only have lower accounting costs, but we then have better outcomes from it. Ai is going to do something similar From a business perspective. It's going to allow us to get. It's going to allow us to get better outcomes or lower our costs, to give us pricing power in the market. Because all technology is labor compression right, what a welder by hand used to take hours to do on the original factory floors and structural integrity of the original cars that we were rolling across an assembly line right. Think 1930s, 1940s. We now have robotic welders who can do in 15 or 30 seconds with far more precision, with less human injury. Right Now, the quality checking, the x-ray and all that is still reviewed by a human to make sure that weld is solid, and even that we're automating some of. But like that, evolution allowed us to produce stronger, faster, cheaper, safer cars. I think we're in that space where AI is largely going to be applied to the problems that are on the edges of humans do a lot of it, but we're not very good at it because, like our bookkeepers, there's that whole notion of human error. Chris: Yeah, not that there won't be computer error as well. Oh, yeah, and so you kind of that's where the check and balance comes in. Devlin: And the idea of technology is just going to solve everything. Hopefully, as a civilization we've moved past right the 1970s to today. I used the 1970s because that was kind of the broad evolution of available computing right To today. Every new technology has created new problems. A joke with our team that yesterday's solutions caused today's problems. And that's a good thing, because, one, we always have problem to solve and, two, we don't have yesterday's problems. So AI being introduced is going to create things like we now need to manage bias, the computer error, right. That's not something we do today very well. When we talk about humans, right, like how do you manage bias at scale? In a thousand person company is like all right, hr and an army of training, but with a computer you can actually try to start tilting at some of these things. Now, does that mean we're going to do it Well, we're going to do it better than we do today. Probably we're going to do it wrong and have to create tomorrow's problems. Chris: Yeah, I love that perspective. So what are some of the obstacles or pitfalls that you've seen that businesses encounter when they're trying to implement technology, and maybe even specifically, obviously specific to AI technology? Devlin: So there are two. One of them is perfectly valid and it's going to be some learning that we have to overcome, and I'm going to start with that one the belief that I have to spend a ton of time and money to correct my data right. Because, traditionally over the last 20 years you've had data engineering and data warehousing and data lakes and, like you, had to clean it and curate it and do all this work. That belief is a little antiquated, right. You can bring in raw data and then actually use a lot of these automated systems AI systems to clean it up with you so that the labor of that is way less scary. Now that's the pitfall most people fall into is all I got to get my data cleaned up before I get any value. And so that ends up raising the price tag of going after these technologies and ultimately keeps companies from getting some of that benefit because they don't want to pay that cost. And then the second pitfall is building your own. And what I mean by building your own is every business has unique challenges and they have their particular flavors, right? It's why, where SAP works for one, but you know, acumatica would be better for somebody else as an ERP system. But you don't have to reinvent the wheel and we keep doing that, right? I was just talking to a friend of mine, houston based company yesterday. 500 million in revenue and we're like talking about one of their AI initiatives. It wasted $6 million, didn't get anything out of it Wow. And we're talking about them like. You can do that with almost off the shelf tools everything you guys were trying to accomplish in about four months for about half a million and the difference is that they try to reinvent all the wheels. We don't need to do that, just like you're not going to build your own email system, right? You don't need to build your own baseline architecture for a large language model. Use one of the foundational ones that's off the shelf and you don't waste a lot of that time and effort. Chris: And that gets you that good way to get started. Devlin: Yeah, it may evolve from there, may evolve from there you may hit a problem where you do need to build your own. Chris: I kind of the rule of thumb I use is if your IT budget doesn't start with a, b, you're probably not building your own machine learning models, so that raises a good question, and that would be how can companies distinguish between an AI solution that actually is going to offer value real value versus just a company following the hype right and being misguided by the solution. Maybe they choose. Devlin: Fall in love with solving the problem, not the tools. So if let's take my company right, we spend a lot of time trying to solve one big problem. That big problem was knowledge. We grow the acquisition We've done 14 acquisitions in 14 years and we always create knowledge silos. And so when we bring in somebody, our current team doesn't know their stories for, like, selling their skill sets, what they're good at, those kind of things, and they don't know all of our stories. And so we had this big knowledge silo gap problem right Right Now. Ultimately, what that means is when a customer goes, hey, do you do X, regardless of what X is, they're going to say no because they don't know the stories. Now, how do I overcome this? I could do training, all right, but then I got to do that training every time we acquire a company and we're doing like we're aiming for two to four acquisitions a year, which means that's not a sustainable thing because of the labor cost. Right, it's like, okay, well, maybe I allow the silos to continue and just accept that's part and parcel of the business. It's possible. Chris: Possible, but you're a miss out on a ton of opportunity. Exactly. Devlin: Or we take all their stories, their case studies, their customer testimonials. We loaded them into what we call echo, which is a AI enabled chatbot, and it literally reads SharePoint. Right, it's not like it's not parsing data. There's no big data engineering effort. It's loading Word documents, PDFs, all this off SharePoint and they just chat with it and they go hey, have we done a deal with a major energy company? And it goes yes, here are the three, they're most relevant to you. And then it embeds the PDF and goes and here's where you find more details, so that the sales team on a sales call can have echo up on another window. Like, hey, have we ever done that? And it goes yes, in this office, here's the people to reach out to that level of knowledge. Access would have cost us thousands of hours of training, Right, and so it's that type of thing. Focus on the problem. Where do you have pain and where are you wasting hours? You don't actually care as a business owner unless you're selling AI as a product, Right. You don't actually care if it's an AI solution, an automation solution or just really clever software. You just want the problem solved, and by not falling in love with the tool, but falling in love with solving the problem. You focus on the right thing Because the value add, the ROI, is all about the problem, not about the tool. Chris: Look, that makes sense. It's easy to remember, for sure, and I mean I think you're right. Devlin: I think most business owners agree. Chris: I just need this problem solved effectively and efficiently. Devlin: By the way, you find these problems by going. What would it take for me to 5x my business today? The things that immediately popped to mind? You're like, oh well, this would break and this would break, and this would break and this would break. That's your list. For me, it's like well, I need five times as many account managers and my accounting staff's got to grow and I'd need better hiring. That's my list. Do I need five times as many account managers or do I need to help automate a lot of the account management and administrator to make them more effective? How do I upskill and get my recruiters leveraging AI, sorting and those kind of things to pull more people into the pipeline? That's my list. By simply going. What would it take to get bigger? Buy a big number. If 5x isn't scary enough, tack a zero on there. Chris: That definitely would be scary. Devlin: So let's, talk about. Chris: There's a lot that's been written and it's something we're doing here ourselves and that's with AI out there. What are best practices that businesses should be considering around policies for using, evaluating, adapting AI technology in the business, ai technology in the business. There's a lot that I think it's probably best practice. There should one. Yes, you should have a policy, but anything you can kind of guide the listeners on on those issues around a competent and well thought out AI policy. Devlin: So it's got a few pieces. Number one data privacy needs to be forefront in that conversation, primarily to protect your business and to protect your competitive advantage. So if your AI usage or acceptable usage policy doesn't include something about how data privacy should be evaluated, that's a big gap. Now your opinions about data privacy are gonna be your company's opinions, but those tools that are cheap and freely available today are largely cheap and freely available so that they can use your data to train a better tool. Is that okay with you? Some people will like yeah, it doesn't matter, and some people are like no, I absolutely can never allow this data out of my control, at which point you gotta choose different tools. So data privacy is number one. Chris: To that point. You may be aware of this and I recently wrote a little, brought it on it, but you had the New. York Times lawsuit saying that all trained on copyrighted material. Trained on copyrighted material, so that's kind of to me somewhat akin to data security and privacy, and that's a whole other issue about copywriting and licensing around information. So we haven't talked with that in a minute. Let's keep on the data or AI kind of policies. And so you said, most important thing, data privacy. What's next? Devlin: Second is vendor resiliency. Now, this is gonna sound a little tough to like the indie developers who are trying to launch their product, but last year in the US there were 6,000 plus tools launched on the AI Hype Wave. Now the punchline to that story is over 4,000 have already failed Already, had to either pivot or gone out of business. Vendor resiliency if you're gonna start pulling these into your business, evaluate the vendor. Are they gonna survive long enough to be valuable to you, or do you now have a broken tool that's no longer being accessible that you've woven into your business? That is gonna drive you towards some of the bigger vendors, the ones that have been around for a while, and, as it kind of should. If you're weaving it into your ops Now for experimentation, use the little players, Like that makes sense to me, but when you're talking about a broad policy, vendor resiliency is gonna be a big thing. The other side of vendor resiliency is how are they going to indemnify you from the inevitable lawsuits in this space? Right? Microsoft, Google, Amazon have all said if you're using our tools inside the license agreement, there's indemnity. Right, that's a pretty big shield, right? Microsoft actually said that they would. If you're using their AI services. They would protect you and defend and pay a settlement if one ends up happening for copyright infringement. So, like the Times article thing won't hit the consumers of those AI tools. Microsoft has stood in front of it and said we're good, that's a big shield. Now if you're a small to mid-market software player, can you put up a shield right Right To your customers? As a customer, I need to start caring about this. And then, lastly, in that policy, some centralized knowledge repository, some centralized store, Because what we found is everybody's play. Everybody's trying, experimenting using these tools. They're wiring in their favorite one. I do this almost on a daily basis. I kick out unapproved tools from meetings that somebody like wired up like a meeting transcriber, listener, bot, and I kick them out of meetings and send a note to whoever did it. I'm like just to be clear not approved. Chris: Right. Devlin: Here's the approved one. Don't use that one and everybody's just so. Expense control and some kind of central review. It doesn't have to be heavy handed. Ours is literally just a let us know when you're experimenting so we can check in on the experiment because it might be something we want to share. Yeah, right, but some kind of central right. Yeah, because a lot of these are SaaS based. A lot of them are out, kind of in the ethos of like knowledge tools, like note taking tools that I use. There would be no way for improving to know that its IP is in that tool if I didn't tell them. And so you've got to. You've got to have kind of a reporting and honor system for the employees to tell you where your data and vendors live. Chris: So one of the things that I know that improving and the leadership and improving which includes you. You've done a great job of building a culture and a company that embraces technology, embraces innovation. What can you share about that experience and that journey at improving to maybe help others understand, you know how they may be able to do the same thing. Devlin: Absolutely so. I have the oddity of looking at this kind of if I look back down the mountain, it seems like it's a long way, but all I can see is looking up the mountain and it still seems insurmountable. So I guess first would be the journey doesn't end. Don't let the size of the mountain scare you, Just take a step Right. For us we have a lot of like growth and planning kind of baked into our employee management model. We call it PATH, that's our employee growth systems, and part of that is maintaining your marketable job skills, literally what we call hard skills right, the marketability of a person to maintain. Because there's this kind of natural degradation If I stop learning, I become less and less valuable because the market moves ahead of me. Right, and so, recognizing that truth and going okay, what are you doing this quarter to grow with technologies? Then we go okay, what new tech are you learning or playing with or experimenting with this quarter? What we have found is, as long as there's a vehicle for them to share that back to the company and make an impact, people are highly engaged If it is just playing over here and then they have to come back over here and do the same thing that they've been doing for 15 years less engagement, and so creating the vehicle in which their experiments can have a long lasting impact on the business created a lot of engagement. And then the other side of it is we recognized a while ago that if you're not growing, you're dying as a business, and that's true for all of our people. It's what we call the plateau of slow death. Like you've just decided to coast that will have an accelerating decline in your value to the business. How do we help people stay on a plateau of slow growth where they're still incrementally investing? Sure, Now for us that's five hours a week because we're a technology company, it moves quick. Right, that might not need to be five hours a week for somebody in manufacturing, distribution etc. But probably an hour a week just reading. Like there's the Wall Street Journal podcast, there's this podcast that's phenomenal for staying abreast of what's happening. Like consume an hour a week of new information for you and your team, and you'd be amazed at what doing that week after week will do to the business. Like it just accelerates. And it sounds very simple. It was one of the first steps we took. Chris: You know that the dedication to being intentional about the learning and self improvement on a weekly basis, I think is amazing that any business right I believe so I am amazed how many business owners and friends I have that work in businesses and they're so busy that they're too busy to survive. I've said here in this firm before and you have to repeat it, and we're all can be victim of it and guilty of it, but busy can't be an excuse. I'm too busy to do X when X is strategic work on how to improve the company or yourself. Busy can't be an excuse, Because if it is, then nothing will ever get done because you always feel too busy right, and so I pay for a lot of tools. Devlin: I'm a well augmented human right. One of those tools is summaries of like business articles and books and all that. And so while I was sitting here waiting for this conversation, I was reading one of those. And it's that overarching approach of like how am I getting value out of those moments, like when a meeting wraps up early, do you sigh in relief and like, walk out and waste 10 minutes? Maybe that's good recovery and you need that for emotional balance. Okay, but is it intentional? Did you go hey, you know what I need emotional balance and chose that. Or did you go? I got 10 minutes. I'm going to read that book summary, or I'm going to read an article, or I'm going to check out what's on HPJ innovation stuff, like those questions. Right, just making the consumption of data an option mentally for all this. This is why I say like, a lot of our barriers are psychological, because the technology is actually not scary Once you start exploring it. It's only scary when it's like Skynet and Terminator from the movies, and so then it's scary and that makes sense. Chris: But let's get this right, let's bring this full circle from the beginning of the conversation. Right what you're talking about and recommending people. Be intentional about that. Self learning, that discipline around self learning and improvement, is really going to be essential as new technologies come online, because we you said earlier right Technology is going to force the worker to adapt and the only way you can adapt is by continuing to learn. So, to be successful alongside technology like AI, it's going to be essential. Devlin: This is actually. I'm a future optimist, and what I mean by that is I think that technology elevates humanity right, Very similar to capitalism. Elevating humanity it has made life better. It's increased longevity, it's done a lot of things. Now, that's not to say technology is perfect and we live in utopia Like, but it is. Technology elevates us, but it makes us do the harder version of life right. Technology allows us to play life on hard mode. So, like social media, I can doom scroll forever, which means I have to own the choice. Right Before that, technology enabled me to stay connected with all my friends. I didn't have to make that choice Right. Right, ai, by taking a lot of the complexity, a lot of the time consuming tasks off my plate, means that all that's left are the difficult tasks, it's the hard mode tasks, and getting really good at the hard mode tasks is the value creation in the future. It's hey, I got to go write this software. The writing of the software, the actual typing, is going to get much easier, just like accounting, just like bookkeeping, just like going through and like automatic scanning of discovery documents in the legal space. Sure, used to be very time consuming Now is being accelerated by AI and automation. So now then, the hard part is understanding what software I need to write and why, understanding what those transactions mean to the business and why, understanding what, in that discovery, is pertinent, important and relevant to the story I'm telling. Right, like all the hard tasks, get left the difficult task, because those are the ones AI is really bad at Right. Chris: Basically for now. So before we wrap this up, I definitely want to ask you your thoughts on regulation and what you think Congress should or shouldn't do around putting some regulations in the AI space. Devlin: So AI regulation is coming, like that's going to be the case. Any sufficiently developed technology ends up getting regulated at some point. Should do. Transparency to empower a educated consumer is phenomenal Like stating if you've baked an ethical bias or a political or religious bias into a model so that the people who are using it can choose, right, that makes sense. Chris: Realize that the output is tilted in some way. Devlin: Right, that's great to know as a consumer. Right, and luckily that's where a lot of the early regulations in this space are tilting. The shouldn't do side of it is dangerously close to that, which is then publish how you built the model to prove that statement, which is a lot like saying give everybody your proprietary trade secrets. Right, there's a reason that open AI stopped publishing a lot of their and here's exactly how we built it, and that's because a whole bunch of other companies took that research that they poured tens of billions of dollars into and created additional models that were almost identical in performance. Right Now they're different and they were developed by different teams and all that. But, like, there's a reason it went from we have one major version of this to we now have 15 publicly available commercial models. Right, that gets dangerous when you start regulating people to destroying their business, and so that's the line I'm hoping we walk the stifled innovation that happens on that second one we're seeing in the EU when they passed the and here's all the restrictions of AI you have to publish your training set and your methodology and all this stuff. It's like awesome, and there was a mass exodus of AI companies from that area. Like yeah, they're like nope, we are not going to, not going to participate if you require us to kill ourselves. Chris: Right. And so we're going to invest time and money in something that they can't then have a return on. Devlin: I mean, if you look at the open AI side of it, this is tens of billions of dollars in decades of research and development and work to make this happen. Imagine if you then had a law that said and you have to enable your competitor, who doesn't have that cost, to then rapidly get to the same point for a 10th Right, and so there's a balance between you want to democratize some of it, you've got to balance the investment side of it, and if you go too far which I believe personal belief that the EU did it just causes a significant drop in investment. Chris: So you know, kind of with that in mind, where do you kind of foresee the evolution of AI over the next five to 10 years? Devlin: We have largely looked at AI as the Jetsons robot or terminator, where it's this one thing that is omnipowerful, omnikable, right, omnipresent. I don't believe that's where we're going. The best minds in this space, of which I get to talk to I am not one of, I beg the difference. Go ahead. They would tell you that it will be a cloud of things like imagine that you're surrounded by Chris's swarm of empowering bots. You've got a bot that helps you manage your schedule. You've got a bot that helps you take notes from a meeting without having to like jot them down, and all of these save you 10, 15, 20 minutes an hour and a half a day. That means somehow Chris is doing 50 hours of work in a eight hour day because you've got this super human capability that's empowered by all of these things. That's where we're headed. I just saw I was playing around with a toolkit that there's been a lot of hype over the last few weeks is the video generator, pica. It's like mid journey or Dolly or stable diffusion for images, but does videos. Chris: Okay. Devlin: Like cinematographic grade quality. The problem is you have to also get really good at understanding camera movements and placement and blocking and all these things that directors have known for decades, and so it's not built for this average consumer. It's built for making folks with that knowledge massively more successful. Right, being able to go and here's a rough of my movie idea. Right. Here's a short of my movie idea for $1,000, not 70. Chris: Right. Devlin: Right, that will accelerate the creative space in movie making, but it's not going to get rid of a need for that knowledge base. Same thing's true with geophysics and well-planning and the energy space. How do we conceptualize all of this and make a human significantly more powerful? So this team that includes a drilling engineer, a geophysicist and all this can plan wells and make financial analysis, and all that in days, not years. Right, that acceleration is where we're going to see it. We're going to see it through these kind of micro enhancements. I carry several of them with me. I've got a note-taking system that maps all of the connected topics that I've been researching and digging into and it's wicked, fun and crazy. But I built a chat system on it that runs on my laptop and so I can ask questions on my notes. I'm like, hey, in my last Vistage meeting there was a speaker who talked about this what were the key takeaways? And it goes. Here's the notes. Here are the key takeaways. It's that kind of empowerment, because human memory is fallible, and so how many of us have wished like I wish I had a better memory. Chris: It doesn't have to live in my head. Yeah, Kind of like what it. There was something five minutes ago I said I needed to do and now I can't remember what it is. How often does that happen? Devlin: I carry around to do this and to do this integrates with it, and so at the end of the day, right before I typically leave the office, I get a reminder set from the automation I hooked up to it. Now it looks at my calendar and goes where's the right point to remind a Devlin to do those things before the end of the day. So like folks literally like I don't know how you do this, I'm like I don't, I'm very well augmented that yeah, you said that more than once. Chris: I know you mean it very well augmented. So I was going to ask you what some of your favorite AI tools are. I think you've shared them just now, but maybe just a quick summary of maybe three or four of your favorite tools for the listeners who were trying to frantically take notes. Devlin: So I for network management. So my personal network management I use clayearth. You literally go to. Clayearth is the URL. I think it's phenomenal and I use that to manage my network. It does not spam or reach out to, it just helps me reach out and stay connected the kind of in my business version of that one is dynamics. We use sales copilot for dynamics. Einstein in Salesforce does the same thing. Chris: So in the business. Devlin: We use a different one because different needs, right? Sure For note taking, I use obsidian. You can use ever note or one note in this same thing and it'll do a lot of the same AI enablement through plug ins and those kinds of things. Chris: And then you mentioned one about just the main of the reminder. Devlin: So I use to do is and power automate. I've combined those two tools. So if you're in the Microsoft stack right, you use office 365 or Microsoft 365, you have access to this one already I didn't know it and so you can go to makepowercom. It's a Microsoft tool. You'll log in with your Microsoft thing and you can describe what you want it to do. I did this yesterday. I was presenting to a group of CEOs on this topic and I was like take the notes, my handwritten notes that I emailed a picture of myself. Take the notes I emailed a picture of to myself, parse them, put the text in my notebook, scan it for action items and put those action items into do list. Literally, that's all I described. And it goes okay, and it's got this massive library of these tiny little tasks and it pulls them all together and goes. Here's the automation that will do that and it writes the rough draft, the prototype of the automation for you and you just click all right, create. And it goes. This is the permissions I'm going to need. Are you good with that? Yep, go. And it's there and it's running. I had to write no code, I had to wire nothing together, it just did it and so we're using this for, like, back office automation all the time. Like, hey, take this output of our financial system, slice it, dice it in this way and it writes the pivot table creation and all that in Excel. Like that's might be half an hour or 45 minutes that I just saved our business partner in accounting, and so it's a lot of these tiny little bots. Chris: Wow. So when you think about AI and how it could be disruptive to industry, what are maybe one of the top two industries you think it's going to be the most disruptive to? Devlin: So oddly, I think logistics, supply chain and manufacturing are probably those two. One, they've typically been under invested in technology and so there's a lot of low hanging fruit. But two, it gives pricing power. Like, imagine that I can compress the labor to accomplish a task. I can now out price my competitors who aren't doing that, and in those two spaces where they're very commoditized prices can't. If you can be 3% cheaper while maintaining your margins, that's the ballgame and you can just put people out of business. So I think those two are going to have massive kind of immediate six to 18 month impact. If you look slightly beyond that, the construction space is huge in this AP great Houston story here has a robot called Dusty that they helped to develop. It takes the construction documents for a high rise and it prints the lay down onto the concrete. It uses basically a Roomba guided by AI. It parses the construction documents and, in color coded paint, prints the lay down. And it reduces the labor of manual labor, construction labor, of building out that building, because they don't have to snap chalk lines and measure everything and everything else, they just follow the color coded thing, which also means I need lower scale labor, which is the labor savings. And so these things are changing the game and changing the pricing power on a lot of these fixed bid contracts. And so you see some interesting spaces where traditionally non technology based business has a lot of low hanging fruit, like fintech and financial services has been heavily invested in technology. Less low hanging fruit there, sure. So the disruptive stuff I think is going to be in those three over the next few years. Chris: Okay, Devlin, this has been such an interesting and fun conversations. Thank you for doing that. I want to just turn just to a little bit of the fun side of things when I have a guest in, and what was your first job, I guess you told us today you were programming, but was that where you get paid to do it? Devlin: No. So my first job there was a pool near our house and I love like there was a cherry seven up, like you got the bottle cap thing and you could earn points and order stuff. Like that moment in time and I my parents like I didn't have enough allowance to like as much cherry seven up as I wanted, right, and so I talked to the owner of the pool that we were a member of near our house into letting me like, do the chlorine and the cleanup and scrub the pool for cash when I was 12. Like this was definitely not legal. And then so like I'm moving buckets of chlorine and doing all this stuff while my friends are playing at the pool, because I was earning $5 a day that I could spend on cherry seven up. Chris: I grew up from an early age right. I love it. Devlin: So hopefully I don't get anybody in trouble. I'm not giving you names of pools, okay. Chris: So what do you prefer Tex-Mex or barbecue? Devlin: Oh, barbecue Hands down. Yeah, I have a massive pit smoker in my backyard Like oh, for real Okay. So we throw a barbecue in Dallas every year for fourth of July, feed like 400 people. We throw one here at our office for Labor Day, memorial Day, which one's at the end of the summer. Chris: Labor Day, labor Day. Devlin: For Labor Day feed like 250 folks. Chris: Like I'm bigger than barbecue. You're serious? All right, I love it. And what do you like to do for fun when you're not out speaking? Devlin: on AI. So I play a lot of golf with my wife and she kicks my butt, or I like video games and stuff like that, and so my brother and I play a lot of video games Very good. Chris: Well, like I said, Dylan, I love the conversations we've had in the past. What you shared today was so enlightening and I know we'll be valuable to those listening, and I said that they probably, like me, took a lot of notes that they'll try to implement into their daily life. So thanks again for being here. Thank you, thank you.

Intimidated by the daunting world of finances, specifically in the voiceover industry? Tag along with the BOSSES as we demystify the intricacies of money management. Our banter-filled conversation is set to shine a light on the critical role of financial discipline, understanding taxes, and the art of investment categorization for your business growth. We provide crucial insights on all things expenses - from domain names and web hosting to the nitty-gritty of audio editing software. We also tackle home studio costs and the relevance of physical inventory for product sellers. And for those lean times, we've got you covered with our practical strategies that ensure you stay on top of your game. 00:01 - Intro (Announcement) It's time to take your business to the next level, the boss level. These are the premier business owner strategies and successes being utilized by the industry's top talent today. Rock your business like a boss, a VEO boss. Now let's welcome your host, Anne Ganguzza.  00:20 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VEO Boss Podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I'm here with my superpower boss co-host, Lau Lapides. Hey hey. 00:30 Lau. How are you? Hey, I'm fab. How are you? I need to activate my accounting financial superpowers because it is a new year and I've got a business that I want to grow and I need to make some investments and I need to really, I think, get my finances in order. So I think we should talk. I know people hate talking or even thinking about finances. However, I think we need to discuss what could be on the agenda for your business this year and how can you financially prepare.  01:09 - Lau (Co-host) I love that, and if we don't understand our status with our money and we don't have a good relationship with it and we don't have trust with money and we don't know how to treat it, then we will not have financial discipline and therefore not have the cash for the investments we need to make throughout our year. And I speak about that at every level. I mean, if you're making millions, even more so because I know colleagues of mine that are millionaires that are busted by the end of the year because they don't know how to save, they don't know how to spend, they don't know how to invest.  01:43 They're used to being managed by other people, and I think management is wonderful when you're at a certain level, but it can also be a curse and take a lot of that micro management over you and then you're left with like, wow, how do I live life? How do I earn money? What do I do with it?  02:01 - Anne (Host) Absolutely.  02:02 I've always tried to be so independent, just in my life and financially independent as well, and so it really behooves us as business entrepreneurs to understand even if we do let's say, I always talk about my accountant and the best thing I ever did was outsource my accounting but you also need to have an underlying understanding and concept of financials so that you can direct your accountant or also understand where's your money going, because maybe sometimes your accountant I don't know maybe they're taking it or maybe they're putting it in place is that you're not familiar with. So not that I want to infer that there's anything shady going on, but hey, we want to be educated.  02:43 - Lau (Co-host) Yes, I also want people to think let's talk taxes, baby. Oh yes, I am not an accountant, my husband is.  02:50 I do not get into that, but I will say running businesses, as you know, Annie, everything at the end of the day, whether it's quarterly, whether it's annual, you have to put you know one of the first things we say and we're fairly conservative fiscally my husband and I we joke. We say, oh, we just got a ton of money and that's awesome, what are we going to do with it? Put it away. I'm going to say I'm going to put 50% of that away from taxes for the next quarter and I'll say good move.  03:16 - Anne (Host) And I'm so glad that you brought that up. As a matter of fact, for the next three months I have a certain amount of money that is coming out because it might escort. I need to pay myself, and so I need to pay myself. I need to prep. So by the end of the year I'm not going to be paying tons and tons of money and taxes.  03:32 - Lau (Co-host) And has that ever happened to you? Because that happened to us a couple of times. It's devastating.  03:37 - Anne (Host) Gosh, when I first started off in voiceover and I started making money and I wasn't prepared, right At the end of the year I was just like, yeah, I'll do the taxes at the end of the year, put it off, put it off, put it off. And then, ultimately, at the end of the year I was like, oh, my God, I owe. And then it was like, oh, I don't just owe a little, I owed a lot. And then I was audited one year. I'll be very frank in telling you that?  03:58 Not because I mean, I wasn't doing any funny business, but literally sometimes you're a small business, right, and a lot of times if you are making claims, they want to substantiate those claims and make sure that you're doing your taxes properly.  04:12 So it was a random audit. Actually, I was audited twice. I passed both audits with flying colors. As a matter of fact, the last audit they owed me. So it really goes to show that I was prepared, and thank God I was prepared.  04:24 Again, like I said, I don't wait until the very last minute and I don't know if I was intending for this episode to be talking about taxes the whole time, but it all comes down to the end of the year, right when you got to pay your taxes. And so you have to understand, like, where is your money going, where is your investments going, what costs do you have? And I think that's super important, what are your costs and what is your income coming in? And you should be looking at your profit, your PNL statement. What is a PNL statement? I have people like I'm not even sure what a PNL. It's a profit and loss statement. So that is something that you should be familiar with, and if you're not, we're here to kind of talk to you about the basics at least. I'm not a financial advisor. However, I can share my experiences and I can tell you how important it is to be educated and to understand that there will be investments and you need to categorize those investments and you need to categorize your profits.  05:19 - Lau (Co-host) Yes, and at the end of the day, even though we don't want to talk about taxes the entire time, we're not on a barter system. If IRS comes, they're not going to take a cow right. They want money, they want cash. So, just being honest, having integrity about your business, just doing everything by the book, being very careful, having a bookkeeper, having an accounting team having the people you need on your side couldn't be more worth.  05:43 It just couldn't be. But let's talk about money in terms of, like, fixed costs. Putting together your understanding what are my fixed costs versus my movable, shakeable, flexible, variable costs, which do vary month to month? How do you set it up, Annie? When you set that up?  06:01 - Anne (Host) Well, I don't remember which episode it was, but I did touch upon this at one point. In terms of fixed costs, like for running your business, there is the cost of I'm an S corp, so I have to pay a certain amount of money every year right to maintain that license, and so I also have to make sure that things that it costs for me to run my business so not only the cost of the business itself, which I pay to the state or I pay to the federal government I also am paying things that would be like my website, my web hosting right. That is something I pay on a monthly basis. That happens each and every time. So those recurring costs I found to be well managed, number one by my accountant and it's categorized in my system.  06:46 But also I downloaded an app. I pay for this app on a monthly basis called Rocket Money, and Rocket Money will go out and grab all your subscriptions, cause a lot of times you can be subscribed to things that you forget about. This is the new way of doing businesses those subscription models which I pay monthly for my domain names, for my web hosting, which is the place where I host my websites, kind of think what else, my subscriptions to my audio editing software, twisted Wave or Adobe Audition. I also pay Adobe because I have Adobe Acrobat, the Adobe Suite that I pay for. Goodness gracious, this is so much, and I pay for a lot of things too, like my Riverside subscription. Right, this is what we record our podcast on. I pay for my Zoom connection. I pay for gosh, all these backblades, which is my backup system Right.  07:40 - Lau (Co-host) So here's the key, though, annie, is like we're lumping them all together because that's everything that you do every month and in your mind because you've been doing so long. Those are fixed costs, right To a new person coming in for the first couple of years. Some of those may be more variable in cost because, let's say, let's say hypothetically, you're ready to do a blasting service like Constant Contact or MailChimp or VO Boss or VO Boss, but we're blasting things out to your hundreds or thousands of leads, right, and you're gonna pay for that monthly. Now, we consider that kind of fixed because we've been doing that collectively so long. But someone coming in who's fairly new and say, well, can I spend that $40, $50 a month or $90 a month to do that? That's more of a variable cost, because they may or may not feel like I'm at a point where that's gonna be beneficial. I may not have enough leads to do that too. I'll do that in a year and see where I am in a year, but I can't do that with my rent or my mortgage.  08:39 - Intro (Announcement) I have to do that every month.  08:41 - Lau (Co-host) That's a fixed cost right. So that's really interesting for us to just reevaluate every year or every quarter, like what are our variables that we're thinking of as fixed, Like if I think of Google or I think of like storage on?  08:57 - Anne (Host) Zoom, or I think of this. My mind it's fixed. My iPhone, my phone bill for myself, I'm paying on a monthly basis that to me. I consider that a fixed cost. But you're right, I mean, it all comes down to what is it that is necessary to run your business? But, interestingly enough, because most of us are home-based businesses, now, brick and mortar, brick and mortar. Are you paying Brick and mortar as well as I mean, we gotta consider our offices, our home studios, right? Yes, as part of it. So for me it translates into I've gotta pay the mortgage because if I don't have a house or I don't have my home studio, I don't have my studio in my house.  09:33 - Intro (Announcement) You gotta pay.  09:33 - Anne (Host) Your insurance, gotta pay the water bill, gotta pay the internet, oh my gosh internet.  09:37 - Intro (Announcement) Utilities yes, Gotta pay electricity.  09:39 - Anne (Host) Otherwise I'm not gonna have all of that to be able to run my business at home. And you law have a brick and mortar as well, so there's all of that which is considered fixed for you as well.  09:50 - Lau (Co-host) Yes, it is, and that's not to say it can't shift and change. So if I decide to move to a different place, then the costs would shift and change, but they're always there. In other words, they don't really leave, unless the caveat is I'm 22, I'm trying to save money. I move in with my parents. They're gonna pay a lot of those bills for me for a year. I don't have to worry about that. They're gonna let me save money. Okay, that's your caveat. But other than that, when you're in the world, those are now part of our business, because if we don't take care of those, we literally can't run the business.  10:22 - Anne (Host) And, believe it or not, on a very small scale. Right, I have physical inventory because I sell a vocal throat care line and a vocal spray along with my vocal essentials, right? So there's inventory. I need to purchase inventory so that I can create those sprays, also to run that business.  10:41 - Lau (Co-host) And we would have merchandise Exactly that we may wanna take to a conference or we may wanna do a swag bag giveaway at a networking meeting or whatever. That's the inventory you speak of. That is really variable, it's not really fixed, it's still a variable cost. But for us it's important that we continue to do that to promote the business.  10:59 - Anne (Host) Absolutely absolutely.  11:00 - Lau (Co-host) Right, I love this conversation. This is so good. So what happens? I get in trouble. I find that I'm not doing as much voiceover work this month as I see happen Quite often times. People come in, they start crying, they're upset, they're like I might have to get another job. I might have to pull back on my spending. Where do we go first to pull back on that spending? We go to the variables.  11:24 - Anne (Host) Yep, great question. Yeah, absolutely, the variables. I mean, what can I do to save money, number one, or cut down on costs? And again, as your business evolves and as things evolve, everything, that's really important that we take a look at that, gosh, at least I mean I look at that every month, if not more than that. And I know that, especially when things are lean right, you've got more time right. If you've got more time, you've got more time to. Let's take a look at our marketing. Let's take a look at our investments. What are we spending right and what can we cut back on?  11:59 And I know, for me, some of mine was subscriptions that were no longer serving me, right, I was like, okay, well, I guess I don't need that. And then I've got things like I have a Peloton subscription. Am I using it? Because that's a certain amount of money? Am I watching the Discovery channel? Can I cut back on that? Those subscriptions? And in reality, by the way, my cable, and well, I guess, do you call it cable, my streaming, my streaming subscriptions are part of my business because I am researching the market, right, and I'm listening to commercials, I'm seeing what's out there, I'm educating myself on trending sound, trending voices, educating myself as a coach for my students right. So that is considered a business expense.  12:45 - Lau (Co-host) I would add a personalized list to this. So you have your fixed cost, you have your variable, but then you have your very personal expenses. That could be one or the other but if I'm hurting for money and I gotta go skinny one month, I'm gonna go to that personalized list.  13:01 So a very simple example of that is I'll always ask a client. I'll say listen, what are you doing this weekend? What did you do last weekend? Oh, I went to the movies cool. What did you spend on that? Oh, that was 15 bucks great. Did you get any food or drink there? I did. I think that was about 30 bucks great. Did you go out to dinner Super. I think I spent 25 bucks on fast food great. Did you spend on gasoline? Yeah, I think I spent five or six bucks. Add that up. That is the money that can go into your investment piece when you really need the coaching session.  13:32 - Anne (Host) You really need that event. You really need that. Can I skip the Starbucks? I remember that's the biggest thing. Can I skip the Starbucks? I'm gonna skip the Starbucks.  13:38 - Lau (Co-host) And I have to say, annie, I'm not a financial advisor, so I'm not advising you financially. I'm advising you from a logical perspective of saying be careful of saying to yourself, lying to yourself and saying I don't have the money, when really you should be saying let me find the money or create the money Absolutely.  13:59 We used to go under the cushions to find the change and put it in a big jar. Now we can go to what we're spending, what we're actually spending, and find the change in that jar. A Starbucks which we love five, six bucks. A cup of that that I may need to put into my coaching session.  14:17 - Anne (Host) Absolutely Hands down. One of the smartest things I ever did was create that business savings account. And then where are you going to put that business savings account? I literally just moved my business savings account from my bank to a higher yield interest bank and I'll tell you what it made the difference between oh gosh, I might have made gosh my bank was paying me nothing. I was like 0.001. And I think I was making like maybe $5 a year.  14:42 Well, guess what? I'm 5% APY 5%. And when you invest that now, I've made thousands of dollars for this year and then that can be reinvested in my business. So that savings account also is what saved me from when things get lean, when the jobs aren't coming in, when things slow down and then all of a sudden, oh my goodness, what am I gonna do. And it saves you from that panic where you probably do yourself more harm than good with that guttural like oh my God, I am gonna have to like get a job or I'm gonna have to quit.  15:17 Voiceover it's just not working. It's in that panic that I have a lot of people they come to me. I just I can't. I can't invest in a demo, I can't invest in coaching, because I'm just not making it back. And again, that is something that you really do need to understand that there are investments to be made. If you have the money put aside to make those investments right, that makes you feel a whole lot more comfortable and a lot less panicky, whether you're like oh, I said I gotta get out, I can't do this anymore, or you become discouraged, and then it really becomes a whole mental game. And that, I think, is the toughest part about voice acting right Voice acting the acting we can always practice.  15:55 We can hone our skills, we can become better at what we do. But that business sense that when the business is slow, when all of a sudden it's like, oh my God, this isn't working or how do I survive, you go into that like fight or flight kind of mode and really having that nest egg, having that savings account that can be earning interest, having that passive income, all that good stuff, that can be that little pocket of confidence that's what I say that little pile of financial confidence is huge in, I think, growing and pursuing your voice of our business successfully.  16:32 - Lau (Co-host) Yeah, and we all know those of us who have been in business for a number of years it's never what you make. It is never what you make. It is not about gross, it's about net. So it's about what you take home. That is, showing us how you are spending and investing your money, your gross income. And so having that level of sacrifice, of humility and of modesty to understand that just because I want something does not mean I need it or should have it. So if you're willing to sacrifice and give up something, you probably have more shot of building an actual business, because the business has the needs. You don't have the needs as much as the business has the needs.  17:14 And I wanted to say too what you're talking about, which is so important and we're doing that as well as diversification of your money. So not only if it's not making interest, if it's not building wealth for you, then you move it. But here's the thing there's a couple of really important reasons to move the money. Not only does if your bank goes bust. You don't have everything in one pot.  17:34 - Anne (Host) Exactly.  17:35 - Lau (Co-host) You're only insured, too, for a certain amount, right, but also you're literally setting up accounts for yourself that you hopefully will forget about. So you're not spending it, you're not touching it. It's growing, it's working for you, right? So that you don't have this. Don't think of it as like one clump, one lump of something. It's really different pieces that you're diversifying into the world. You may want to invest, you may want to go into the stocks, you may want to do that kind of thing, right? So the point is is like okay, I've got my business, it's great, it's moving in the direction I wanted to move in, but what am I sacrificing? What am I doing to make money and make it grow for me, and how am I treating it? Like? How do I think of money? I hear a lot of people, especially women, talk about money, talk about negotiation, talk about contracts in a really negative light, like in a very heavy way. They are either fearing it, they don't want to talk about money.  18:30 - Anne (Host) I think most of it is fear absolutely Based in fear, and most of it is fear right.  18:34 It's kind of like I don't want to go there, I don't want to talk about it, I want to kind of just go back to something we were talking about in terms of investing and kind of making sure that you have the money to invest in that next piece of equipment, or do I need that new microphone? Do I need? I'm going to give you an analogy and I'm going to be very frank. I have in my clothes closet. I have these little cubby holes for my shoes.  18:59 Now I bought them gosh a long time ago and I think I I don't know if I got them in IKEA, but they're great. They're little cubby holes and you can fit a pair of shoes in each cubby hole, and so I bought a series of them to put around. We have a walk-in closet to put on the floor and my husband has one of the boxes which holds 12, right, and I literally have probably eight. I have 70 cubby holes Okay, 70. Now I made a deal with myself that I would never buy more shoes than could fit in that cubby hole, and so if I wanted to purchase a new pair of shoes, I had to give up another pair of shoes or donate it or sell it on Poshmark or what.  19:34 - Lau (Co-host) Wait a second, annie, I just did some math. Are you saying you have 98 pairs? If you have 12 and you have eight of those right, or 90,? What is that? 96? All right, so I say 70. Should I call?  19:49 - Anne (Host) you a melda now.  19:50 - Lau (Co-host) Should I really name you a melda?  19:51 - Anne (Host) I'm going to say it's 70. I don't know how many boxes there are, so, whatever right, 70. I have 70 holes. I have 70 cubbies.  19:57 - Lau (Co-host) You just have to stay in that denial, stay at 70. Stay at 70.  20:01 - Anne (Host) Now I can't purchase a new pair of shoes until I decide that I'm going to let another pair of shoes go. And if I can't, I'm going to try to sell those shoes. But if I can't, I'm going to donate them right so that they go to someplace. I'm that kind of person where I have to love my shoes right, do you wear?  20:17 - Lau (Co-host) all those shoes? Be honest, do you wear all?  20:19 - Intro (Announcement) Not anymore.  20:19 - Anne (Host) I don't no but I used to right and so, literally, as I've aged a little bit, I mean the heels got to come down a little bit.  20:27 - Intro (Announcement) I can't quite fit in those.  20:28 - Anne (Host) Well, I can't walk in those higher ones anymore, but I still love to look at them. But that is like I feel like your business needs to operate in that way, right, you cannot make an investment more than you have. Like, you should not spend more than you have. I should not have more shoes than cubby holes, right? Because then it starts to look cluttered, it starts to look like a big mess, and so, therefore, I have put myself on a plan, right, where this helps me to. This helps me to manage my shoes, like I would say, manage your finances in the same way, right, you don't want to make investments with money you don't have, right, and you want to make sure that, if you have, how many microphones do you have? Like, you should not have more microphones than places to put those microphones right, okay, all right, I have a term for that.  21:14 - Lau (Co-host) This is from my husband, jeremy, who is actually a controller CFO type accountant his whole life.  21:19 He says listen, and I always hated this, it always made me cringe, it was cringe worthy, but he's so right. And that is don't live above your means. Absolutely Don't live above your means. And he's not only talking about financially, he's also talking about emotionally and spiritually as well. So I have taught myself. My father, who's an entrepreneur, taught me this too. He said buy something, get rid of something. Yes, oh my God, buy something, yes, yes, and not just kick it to the curve, but give it to the right place.  21:47 Give it to the right place, give it to the right place and boy, did that save my day learning how to do that and really learning to let go and learning to move around it. That's really good.  21:57 - Anne (Host) That's really good, for I mean being frugal and being wise financially and also like mentally, like I feel like you can't have too much clutter, because physical clutter turns to be clutter in your head. And I actually took a feng shui course many, many years ago. It was like a six month course. I mean, it was intense.  22:15 - Intro (Announcement) I love it, I love it, you should never put things under your bed.  22:19 - Anne (Host) Don't store things under your bed. Don't store things because it's kind of like clutter anywhere, really like clear out your corners.  22:26 - Lau (Co-host) Clutter anywhere physically means clutter in your head, right so when it comes to your money, you need to compartmentalize it Absolutely. How do you call that when you label it like we would give away key?  22:38 - Anne (Host) Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. What do you call that? We label it. We're Maria Condoing, right Condoing, but that's what it is.  22:44 - Lau (Co-host) It's like knowing what you want to do with each piece of your life financially. Yeah, it's very freeing. There's a very openness to it, there's a breath in there, you know. Yeah, absolutely I love that. I love clearing the financial space.  22:58 - Anne (Host) That's what I like.  22:59 - Intro (Announcement) Clear the financial space.  23:01 - Anne (Host) Especially in the beginning of the year. It's always a great time to do that, to really sit back, and it may be hard. Right To sit back and take a look at where is the money going. How much are you spending? Are you spending more than you're bringing in? But again, like no more shoes than you have cubby holds.  23:18 - Lau (Co-host) And also test yourself, like once you give it away, like let a month go by and test yourself, say what did I give away? Do I even remember what?  23:26 - Intro (Announcement) it was, and I never remember.  23:28 - Lau (Co-host) I never remember the clothes or whatever.  23:31 - Anne (Host) If I haven't thought about it or used it in a year, it's good to go right.  23:35 - Intro (Announcement) It's good to go right. As much as I love it, that's most things.  23:37 - Anne (Host) I'll kiss it and I'll give it away and I'll say this deserves to go to someone. I'll donate it. This deserves to go to someone who will love it as much as I did. Really.  23:46 - Lau (Co-host) And then you're very Native American about it. It reminds me like, take the shoes to the river and just write a note and let them float away. Absolutely you know To someone else's feet. But that's what we need to do, because it makes us open to what is coming, like if you're so cluttered in your financial portfolio you can't invite anything in and allow the money to flow to you like a river right?  24:10 - Intro (Announcement) Oh, I love that you don't want your river to stagnate.  24:12 - Anne (Host) You don't want to block your river Again. No more shoes than cubby holes. Don't block your river with twigs, Just say allow the river of money to flow, I mean we're out of all here. Let's just imagine that financial flow coming to you and manifesting that.  24:28 - Lau (Co-host) Hallelujah and manifesting that Amen. I feel like doing a song right now, but I mean it's like language. If you're scripting, be careful the language you use to describe your money and your financial status. Don't be cheap, don't be dumb, don't be unknowing.  24:46 - Anne (Host) You're not greedy. If you appreciate money and you invited it, you are not greedy. That's like an old one. People say, oh, you're greedy. Although rich people are greedy, they just want more. Honestly, people who are wealthy are some of the most philanthropic people that give.  25:00 - Intro (Announcement) And we've had that discussion before.  25:01 - Anne (Host) But I mean really being rich isn't rich right Money rich, financially rich and spiritually rich.  25:09 - Lau (Co-host) It's all about you allowing the flow and not blocking it right with clutter and paying attention to details, Don't ignore it and don't act like you don't know how to deal with it. It's like treat it as if it's a person and you have a relationship with it. Would you say some of the things you say about money, about the person like, oh, I don't know how to deal with that, I just ignore it and I just let someone else deal with it? I don't think that relationship would go very far. You know what I mean. It's like treat it like a person, in the sense that there's a lot of potential movement and liberation that can come with that and what it represents. It's just symbolic of the kind of life and lifestyle and mindset that you want to have.  25:52 - Anne (Host) Absolutely.  25:53 - Lau (Co-host) And I always say too, you know, someone says to me Law, why do you want to make a lot of money? I've had the executive coaches ask me that and I said the first thing that comes to my mind is because I want to have more money to pay my team members. Yeah, oh, I love that. Yeah, I think in terms of investment, I always think in terms of what can I do with this money? That empowers even more, versus, oh, I'll buy another thing or I'll have another, whatever, I don't really need it. I would rather see it move in directions that can make a lot of people happy and things going on and that can only help your business, because, honestly, I feel like you're in toys.  26:30 - Anne (Host) I think about myself in the corporate world. What does it makes us miserable in the corporate world? Oh God, we don't like our colleagues, we don't like our boss. We're boss. It's a toxic environment. I don't make enough money. Exactly Like, if you think about it, if you're treated well in your environment, if you have employees that you're paying and you treat them well and you appreciate them, they're only going to work that much harder for you and you have to incentivize them to want to work for your business, and that is one way to do that.  26:58 So I love this conversation. Again, it's probably something we could have. 20 episodes on Law, I think we will somehow. I think we will. But speaking of allowing yourself to allow that money to flow, if you have a local nonprofit that's close to your heart and you would like to keep the cycle and keep paying it forward, if you've ever wished you could do more to help them, you can visit 100voiceswhocareorg to learn how and big shout out to our sponsor, ipdtl you too can connect and network like bosses, just like law and I. So you guys have an amazing week and let's keep that river flowing. All right, bye, have a great week, bye.  27:40 - Intro (Announcement) Join us next week for another edition of VO Boss with your host, ann Gangusa, and take your business to the next level. Sign up for our mailing list at vobosscom and receive exclusive content, industry revolutionizing tips and strategies and new ways to rock your business like a boss. Redistribution with permission. Coast to coast connectivity via IPDTL yeah.  28:07 - Anne (Host) Hey, hey everyone. I don't know why I wasn't ready for that. Take two, Take two, hey everyone. Welcome to the VO Boss podcast and the Boss Superpower series. I am here with my super power.  28:26 - Lau (Co-host) Take three.  28:27 - Anne (Host) Hey everyone, welcome to the VO Boss. Hey everyone, welcome. God, take five, yeah, take 105.   

Host: Peter Serefine – https://Liberty-Lighthouse.com Two hours of common sense and constitutional discussion with: – your phone calls – guest Paul Engel of ConstitutionStudy.com, and Scott Thompson of Right To

Host: Peter Serefine – https://Liberty-Lighthouse.com Two hours of common sense and constitutional discussion with: – your phone calls – guest Paul Engel of ConstitutionStudy.com, and Scott Thompson of Right To

Today's Book: Creating Consent Culture: A Handbook for Educators by Marcia Baczynski (she/her) & Erica Scott (they/her). Published in 2022 by Jessica Kingley Publishers https://us.jkp.com/products/creating-consent-culture This book for educators outlines a series of fun and interactive exercises that teach young people a variety of consent skills. We're THRILLED to be joined by Erica Scott, one of the book's authors and hope that our conversation inspires you to have more conversations about consent! Erica's website: https://www.creatingconsentculture.com/ Marcia's website: https://askingforwhatyouwant.com/ Cuddle Party: https://cuddleparty.com/ I Have the Right To: https://ihavetherightto.org/

I have known for many years that Christmas was Never About Yahusha. Neither is Easter, and other holidays. It was either in 2015 or 2016 that I threw out the tree and took down all the decorations and decided I was not going to be apart of pagan holidays when they felt wrong. I knew Christmas was Tamuz or Nimrod's birthday. But it never seems that we know our Messiah's Birth date. Well, I pray that changes today. Abba Yahuah says to Test Every Spirit and so much more in 1 Johns 4:1-3 1 John 4:1-3 4 Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. 2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God: 3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world. Here we read that we are to try the spirits to see if they are of Abba Yah or not. Normally it takes 3 months for me to know the real role of the man in my life, and by the time I actually see his spirit, it's time to go. Sometimes they understand, that I saw them for who they are and just leave. Sometimes they, would argue and tell me I'm crazy while holding the proof in my hands. The LION'S TARES Ministry hold firm on the Right to Free Speach and The Right To a Free and Clear Conscious and to Practice Faith and Belief in Abba Yah as He Sees Fit: AS DECLAIRED IN THE FIRST AMENDMENNT TO THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION. I declare that I am a Born Free Woman who know the truth and has been Called By Abba Yahuah to Share His True Words with The World. ~Reverend Elisabeth Marie Jackson~ The LION'S TARES MINISTRY. https://www.thelionstares.com/post/the-true-word-of-yah-yahusha-hamasiach-s-birthday-changing-of-times-part-2

 1st half: Additional news  2nd half: Susan Swift is an Attorney with the Right To...

Death, Hope, A Woman's Right To choose, Gay Pride and loss.

It's been a while since I told my story about why I became a private investigator - what finally moved me to action. I was feeling restless, and I wanted to make a bigger impact on the world, or at least on my little corner of it. I'll bet you do too. True crime stories have always fascinated me, and one was unfolding right next to me. A young woman was kidnapped, sexually abused and murdered and all I could think was, “What if that was MY daughter?” Our book this week is “I Have the Right To” by Chessy Prout and Jenn Abelson. Our guest is Jamie Kirschner, podcast post, Christian Teen Life Coach, and keynote speaker. Jamie's passion is to help teen girls overcome real life challenges they are facing in a way that helps them stay true to who God created them to be. This episode does discuss sexual assault, so please use discretion when deciding to listen. I'm very excited about this week's practical action step. It's not hard, it just might be a bit uncomfortable. But if Chessy can do what she did, we can make things better for young women in our communities. Think about this as you listen to this episode - “it was hard to decide who or what was worse: the perpetrators or the people and institutions that protected them.” Get your copy of "I Have The Right To" Visit the #ihavetherightto website Date rape statistic source New York Times article #ihavetherightto on IG My episode on "Missoula" by Jon Krakaeur Visit my website and join my email list Get your free report (Meet the Christian Who Married Faith and True Crime)

On this episode, Leo talks with Chessy Prout, an author, advocate, and high school sexual assault survivor. In 2018 she published her memoir I Have the Right To: A High School Survivor's Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope, and co-founded the national non-profit called I Have The Right To with the goal to support survivors of sexual violence all over the world. Chessy Prout Twitter - https://twitter.com/chessy_prout

Don't you think we've earned the rightTo go cheating on the blues tonightCheating on the blues tonightLet's go out and do it rightThrow it into overdrive

One of the frequent questions from health coaches who encounter my work in the non-diet approach for the first time is this: How do I make money as a non-diet coach? I get it. I had the same question 6 years ago when I first came to the world of anti-diet health coaching. If we don’t tell people what to eat when to eat and how to eat, what will they pay us for? Right? To help answer this question, I’d like to give you an inside view into my anti-diet health coaching business more precisely what I wish I knew before starting my anti-diet health coaching business. In today’s episode, I’m going to share with you what I wish I knew before starting my anti-diet health coaching business. What you’ll learn listening to this episode about my anti-diet business journey: How I started my non-diet business What I wished I knew before starting my non-diet business My top 10 lessons over the last 6 years My biggest learning in this non-diet health coaching business Mentioned in the show: Beyond The Food PRO Mentorship Program Free Intake Forms PRO Series – Free Training & resources PRO Podcast Series - Full Listing

Fuzzy logic is an approach to computing based on "degrees of truth" rather than the usual "true or false" (1 or 0) Boolean logic on which the modern computer is based.  It is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth values of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1 both inclusive.   Govind's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gov218/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/govindmohan218/?originalSubdomain=ca   Deep's Social:  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neuronsrcool/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Deepneuron LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepprasad/   Pouya's Social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pouyalj/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/pouyalj LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pouyalajevardi/   Episode Transcript:----more----   SUMMARY KEYWORDS reality, true, logic, people, thinking, idea, language, point, universe, objective reality, humans, thought, fuzzy, experiment, paradox, nature, question, probability, false, thoughts SPEAKERS Pouya LJ, Govind, Deep   Pouya LJ  00:16 Hey guys, how's it going?   Govind  00:19 Nice, amazing. Toronto. Good weather.   00:23 Yeah, no, it's surprisingly hot. Yeah.   Pouya LJ  00:29 So it's been a while, since we talked. Let's see each of you. What's up with you. Let's start with you guff?   Govind  00:39 Well, for those that don't know, I have a startup called Virtual systems that focuses on network security using information theory, principles, and networking, to have a flat internet that's not built on data centers where data privacy can be controlled by the user, as opposed to any corporate corporation that is controlling your data, which is the case these days. So that's a little bit of my background. I like a lot of things like mathematics, philosophy, computer science, and software development.   Pouya LJ  01:11 Well, that's for philosophy. All right, I bet you the What's up? What's up with you?   Deep  01:18 Um, yes. First of all, I just want to say that just sounds like the life of a polymath, so I can really appreciate that right on COVID. Yeah, so I similar to COVID. I also run my own startup, we do quantum computing. Instead, we are looking to use quantum computers to accelerate the materials discovery timeline. Right. So right now we do a lot of things that are mostly trial and error based plus some compute, for doing materials discovery, let's say you want to discover a new cathode or new electrode material, right? How are you going to do that? We want to automate that process and and speed it up by thousands if not millions. That's our goal. It's pretty ambitious, but that's what we do you everyday, or try to do. Uh huh. Yeah. So that's what I've been up to.   Pouya LJ  02:11 Yeah. Thanks. That's amazing. Are you in Toronto?   Deep  02:14 Yes. Good.   Pouya LJ  02:15 Good. You're enjoying this weather?   Deep  02:17 Totally. Yeah. So nice. weather wise will enjoy it. Well, us.   Pouya LJ  02:21 Yeah. Well, that's true. That's going on soon. Probably next week. Still not that bad? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, so today, we are tackling a subject that I am very inept in? I have no idea. I mean, I know abstractly what it is, but I don't have any readings on it. I think you guys are more educated on this than me. But let's see how it goes. So we're talking about a bunch of different stuff. Actually, it's not one thing, but it's centered at logic propositions. And quantifiers. Do you want it? So this was the pathway was introduced to this conversation was introduced by golf? Do you want to start it off yourself?   Govind  03:06 Sure. Um, so when we think about logic, what comes to mind? Generally, it's things like, debate, you know, things that logic is associated with, or things like debate, and truth and false, maybe people who are in software development or would think of code. You know, there there are so many of these, these these concepts that come to your mind when you think of the word logic. You know, what, maybe maybe you guys can chime in with like, premium fallacy. When I say the word logic, one of the one of the things you think about,   Pouya LJ  03:35 no, I think I mean, I guess it depends on their perspective, as you were saying, but I think what you're saying it makes sense. I think, generally, people think about logic as reasoning, like step by step thinking. Thinking about, like, it depends, if you're asking a philosopher is a little bit different than a mathematician than a software, regular person going about their lives, not thinking about these things. But I think that just remains for most people.   Govind  04:05 Sure, what am I?   Deep  04:07 Yeah, when I think of logic, I think of two things, the more intuitive idea of logic, which is what I think every human has, right? We like to all believe that we're logical beings, right? What does that mean? We all know that mean something when I say it, but what does so I think, the intuitive idea that humans are logical insofar as they have a set of consistent rules that you can codify that have some sort of basis, right, you can derive next set of actions based on a set of let's say, axiom true principles, right. And they're logical in nature. For example, humans get hungry where you're cutting off I don't is that does that me or?   Govind  04:46 Oh, I can I can hear him fine. I think   Pouya LJ  04:48 that's me.   Deep  04:50 Do you want me to restart for you?   Pouya LJ  04:53 Okay, now that's better. Sorry. Okay. Sure. That's fine. Continue. Sorry.   Deep  04:56 Sure. So I was just saying that like from from the preset preset Something that's logical, or I would consider as logical is the idea of hunger, right? Like when a human is hungry? What would be logical next is that they're going to try to get food. Right? To me that's logical. And that and so that's an intuitive logic or system of systems are sets of logics that we just know from by nature. Then I think of the logic, when when when Govan asked me, What do I think when you know about logic, right? Like what comes to mind? Or how would I define it and whatnot. The second one is the formal, abstract idea of logic that we humans have that I think that maybe other creatures don't have. And and that's the mathematical ability or the mathematical perspective of logic, where you can look at, you can create systems like Boolean logic, you can generalize Boolean logic and look at how you can construct quantum computations in Universal computations. And propositional logic is totally different than what I just talked about. And so that's all these things are abstract logics, and it's different than the intuitive logic, sometimes.   Govind  06:07 Yeah, yeah. No, that's, that's a great way of like, you know, describing the entire breadth of what logic? Thanks. Well, I think it comes down to the concept of truth and false, right, because you have to start with things you know, are true. And then you string these things that are true in certain ways that allows you to create certain implications, right? You, you, you start with a few facts, like, as a classic one, all men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal, right? You know, you have these propositions you have you start with these facts, and then you put them together using some inference rules. But what I wanted to discuss in today's topic, as today's topic is this concept of truth and false itself. We really, as humans, we take truth and false kind of for granted as a discrete binary thing, right? You have something that's true, and it's not true, it's false. But is that really the case? And to further grounded discussion, I have a few quotes from this book. It's called fuzzy thinking. And it has it really explores this concept of how truth can be continuous or fuzzy, right? It's it's not it's not truth. It's like an on off switch. But it's actually like, on and goes all the way to off with like, several, maybe infinite steps in the way. So one quote I really like is, there was a mistake, and everyone in science seemed to make it. They said that all things were true or false. They were not always sure which things were true and which were false. But they were sure that all things were either true or false. So I thought that that is a really cool quote, because it points out this fact that this is really taken for granted, we don't really think about, you know, like, What is it? What does it mean for something to be true or false. And another quote, I think, would be interesting not to make this all the quotes I made this last one is a quote from Albert Einstein. So far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they're not certain. And so far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. Because, I mean, if you say something is true or false, the universe does not give a shit, you know, universe is going to do whatever it's doing. And we're just we're just creating these models where we say, Okay, these things are true, these things are false. And, and we're going to construct our models of reality based on it. But these models of reality are pretty much mental experiments that we perform across humans right? Now, it just so happens that it happens to be incredibly good at modeling reality, to the point where people can get confused and say that reality works based on the principles that we create, and the facts that we create, the things that we assign as true or false is what is allowing reality to work the way it is. But it's it's always important to know that there's this detachment between what's reality and what's what's, you know, our our collective, our thought experiment, which is, you can call it mathematics, philosophy, whatever any anything that we have, when we come together, we have discussions, even discussions like what we're having right now. They're, they're just, like, there's a separation from this and reality. And this is kind of exemplified by what's known as the law of the excluded middle in, in logic. So where if you have a proposition a, let's say, let's just call it P let's let's work in the realm of the abstracts, if you have a proposition p p could be something like, this is a fruit or a gob is a person, you know, things like that things, something that I can assign a truth value to true or false. So the law of the excluded middle is that for all propositions P, P, or not B, that is something can either be true or not true. Now, this this sounds like stupid, simple, right? It sounds kind of like okay, sure, something can either be true or false. But now, what's crazy is that several mathematicians in over the 20th century, were actually pushing back against including this principle and logic, they were saying, No, I want to construct a mathematics which doesn't have p or not p that is, p or not P is actually not true. According to these people. They were called the intuitionists. And this cause Like a massive, massive debate back in the 20th century. But I'll pause here and I'll get some comments from you guys like what do you think such a mathematics could actually look like?   10:11 So   Deep  10:12 the first thing that comes to mind is the idea of structural realism. Structural realism basically posits that whatever scientific and mathematical understanding that we get of the universe, it does not necessarily reflect on the true structure and nature of the universe, right? So, if you have a quote, of creations that describe gravity at the macroscopic scale, that does not mean that those equations are the true structure and nature of reality. And that's important because when we're, as you sort of alluded to Govan, like when we define something to be true or false, nature doesn't give a shit. Right, so to speak. And that's like, like, interesting enough, there's a philosophical question right there. Because what if it happens that structural realism is false. And ironically, there is some sort of mathematical truism, at least in the physics perspective, that we can define, and that it is actually a true reflection of reality. It is objectively the truth. Right? Like, we may not, it may actually be possible, who knows? So there and because we haven't actually answered that, you know, what I mean, that that philosophical idea yet, whether structural realism, is true or not, is very hard to it. Yeah, extend or resolve the conflicts that have occurred in the 20th century from logic? Because this is just an extension of that. What do you think?   Govind  11:50 Um, well, I think this this, this time in history was very interesting, you know, because, well, maybe, like, some historical context would be that, you know, this is the first time you have like, several extremely smart people from across the world coming together and creating a global, you know, like, hey, let's tackle the biggest questions in, in humanity, like any point in your thinking, right? So like, and I think this kind of resulted in probability, right? probability is something that emerged from the 20th century, I mean, some could argue the roots extend way back, but you know, like the roots for everything, then way back. But the reason I bring up probability in this in this argument is like, as, as humans now in the 21st century, we, our process of science is so fundamentally grounded in probability, right? Like, to the point where our models of reality are the closest models of reality, we have use probability necessarily, right? Think of all the discussions you've had with your friends regarding COVID, or all these other things. Most people tend to make arguments related to probability and case fatality rates, you know, these kind of like, almost baseball statistics, right? Like I say, baseball statistics, just to kind of ground that and make it more like, you know, you see where I'm going with this, right? It's just that probability has created this kind of way that of making seen things our model seems so real, that you can actually see them and you can actually see their measure their impact on them. Right, this in fact, in mathematics, this the, let's call it the backbone of probability is called measure theory. Right. And I think this kind of lends itself to, well, some of the stuff you're working on, right, the quantum models of reality. So I think I think structural realism is something that is extremely effective, because it's, it's, it works on observations of reality, behind the scenes, and it actually kind of gets there. I mean, I'm using structural realism, maybe I'm, I'm conflating it with some mathematical context that are quantitation that it does not come with out of the box. I hope, I hope my point is clear.   Deep  13:51 Yeah, I understand your point completely. Um, quia. What do you think about this idea of an objective truth in nature? Um, do you think that it actually exists? And should we possess it? logic around that idea? Or the, or the rejection of the idea? Yeah. How important should that rule be?   Pouya LJ  14:12 Um, that's a very good question. Actually, I have started this long project, which is in the background for my own sake, I actually came up thought of this question a while back. I mean, everybody thought of thinks about these things, but more seriously started thinking about this insert. Getting onto some avenue to, you know, think about Yes. Is there an objective reality? And then that's literally the question to ask myself that started me on this journey. And you know, I I talk to some people from different walks of life, from psychology to philosophy to physics and what have you, some people who are at the top of their fields. I didn't. I mean, I did ask them this question, which is not the point. But from there our conversation, my conversation with them. What I got is that, no, from, from, from the real essence of the question, like the deepest sense of the question. And what I gather from all of those conversation conversations is that, again, we not the way we understand our world, our universe, maybe there is maybe there is a formalism that will get us there. But at least not with anything we have this, you know, far we've gotten discovery in science and philosophy thought. So. I, I think ultimately there is that's just a guesswork, obviously, like hypothesizing, but not in the sense that. So, let me put it this way. So for example, when GM Govan was saying that there's a spectrum of truth, I think that is, that is, that is true, until you get to the, to the resolution to the, to the, to the pixel of reality, essentially, at some point, it has to be one or the other. But we didn't get there yet. So that's my sense of it. That's my sense is that yes, it will eventually be some sort of objectiveness in reality, but it requires a better understanding of that reality that the fundamental laws of our universe, and that is not just gravity, gravity is, for example, gravity is emergent, from my perspective, and that that sense?   Govind  16:49 Well, I think you're gonna be happy, because initially, you wanted this discussion to be more about the nature of reality. And I think it's creeping into there. So I'll talk a little bit about the nature of reality as examined by Western philosophers. So there's a Descartes, notably, in the in the history of Western philosophy in like, let's say, the early modern period, which is like on 1600s, to like present day, or 1600 to 1800, is about the early modern period, we had these different movements, we started with rationalism, which is that, you know, like, we just, we just say things like, create these elaborate logical models. And then, and then we, we kind of examine, we use this as descriptions of reality. And then this kind of God rejects. And notably, Rene Descartes was kind of like a huge figure in this movement, because he said things like, the mind is its own soft, separate substance. And to tie that back to this discussion, what I was saying earlier about the realm of, of imaginary, thought experiments that we work with, in different fields like mathematics, computer science, and so on. He thought that it was its own separate universe that was completely detached from our, the universe that we live in. And he, I mean, these are the things he's saying, right? Like, I mean, he could be right, he could be wrong, but like, he's like, he's using logic as a means to tie together his his arguments. But at the end of the day, these are just things he's saying. And he's just using logic to create an elaborate story, an elaborate logical model. And this is the criticism that the next movement kind of gave to the rationalists. They were called the empiricist. People like David Hume, and I think mill or Locke, john Locke was in there. But they were like, hey, you're just saying things, you know, you're just you're just creating, you're just like, this is basically a story that I'm reading. And you're just like, Well, God is this and God is that. Savage. Exactly. And they're like David Hume, one of his famous philosophical quotes is like, you know, you can, you can't say for sure that the sun is gonna rise tomorrow, we see it rise every day. And we take it for granted, we have these explanations for it. But at the end of the day, these are just explanations, you know, I mean, at this point, they hadn't invented spacecraft and all that stuff yet, you know, they couldn't just go up there and see the sun.   Deep  19:09 Well, even then, like it did, there's still a philosophical point to that, like, even then we may not, despite everything we know, today, you know, I mean, the sun might not rise like there's   Govind  19:21 exactly that's, that's, that's   Deep  19:22 apparently physical reasons. I'm not even saying like magical reasons. But yeah,   Govind  19:26 So so they completely dismiss these, the rationalist arguments using this, it's like, if I don't see it, you know, it doesn't exist. So, you know, show me the proof, show me the reality of things. Got it. Um, and eventually, this kind of got resolved somewhat by Kant, Emmanuel Kant, who came in the, I believe, late 1700s, early 1800s. And he, he, he's like, Okay, guys, how do we resolve this? Because there's clearly some value in using logic to describe reality. And there's definitely value in talking about things that we can see and perceive and sense right. So his Way of reconciling this was to say that was to bring in the human aspect of things like how we perceive things. And he thought that that played an important role. In fact, what we call space time, were intuitions, he described them as intuitions. So humans have an intuition of space and an intuition of time, which is what allows us to perceive these things in reality. To make that more clear, he's he's telling the Emperor says, Hey, the things that you think you perceive, so clearly, maybe they're not that clear, you know, you are trapped behind your veil of perception at the end of the day. And again, like this is all to talk about the objective nature of reality, right? As humans, we can't help but be stuck behind the fact that everything we're perceiving is just what we're perceiving. There's another quote from Descartes, you know, it's, I think, therefore I am. It's one of like, the most famous quotes from philosophy, I think. But it's, it's basically that, for him thinking was such a rational endeavor, right? He thinks that just because he has this stuff running on in his head, like this voice that goes like, blah, blah, blah, and in his head, that's, that's why he knows for real, that He exists, like, no matter what, I have this thing that allows me to, like, perceive and like, you know, like, I don't know, if you guys are real, I don't know, my computer's I know, there's something going on here. You know, that's kind of his point there. And Kant was saying, you know, there's a human element of things you just can't strip away from, from anything real, right. So that's a little bit of a background in this in, well, let's say Western philosophical thinking about this, this this topic.   Deep  21:27 That's awesome. Um, and, you know, a lot of its circles, it's all circling and tying back in to itself in an interesting way. And here's what I mean by that. So, to your point about how deep you know, probability is in quantum mechanics, right? It plays a huge role, a fundamental role. For literally since the birth of it, you know, physicists both on the quantum computing and sorry, quantum physics side of things, and the classical physics side of things, believed that there should be some sort of a clear description of the wavefunction and information that we can eventually have access to and predict perfectly. So like, just, there's there was this idea that we'll eventually be able to predict the exact nature of the collapse, the wave function will know when it will collapse, and into what outcome it will collapse, rather than just knowing the probability. And you know, fast forward 100 years later, we've made essentially zero progress in making that stochastic process any less stochastic to us. And so it's really like sad react Sony, right? Like for the people who, who believe like, go when you and I've had tons of discussions about determinism and whether the universe is and Buddha unites was actually all three of us. And so quantum mechanics quickly touches on that. And then there's the objective reality question. There's the witness friend paradox. experiments, right that were recently conducted, again, two years ago, where you had two different labs instead, posing as a weakness friend, basically, it's a witness paradox is a paradox that was created in the 60s it was proposed by the famous physicist Wagner, and essentially, what he said was that if there are given the fact that the wavefunction encodes the all the possible measurables and observables, for a given observer, then the wavefunction is going to be different for different observers. And if that's true, then they're going to have eventually conflicting facts about the universe. And so he said, that's a paradox, right? And it turns out that it's true that two years ago, in those days, it is insane, because two years ago, we actually ran these quantum physical experiments where we took a well being split using beamsplitters, we essentially used quantum entangled photons. And we've been into two different labs, and you have people, you have what's called witness friends inside the lab, and then Wagner or like the observers outside the lab. And so all four people in this experiment, none of them can observe each other. We're measuring each other's photons directly, they can perform measurements to see if a measurement hasn't done, but they can't. Yeah, so that so if you want to think about it physically, they're splitting at the end of the experiment, one particle that was turned into four quantum entangled pairs, so through Bell state pairs and beamsplitters you really have these so if you want visualize that, so imagine, like I take a ball of physical ball, and I cut it in four pieces, and I give it right to four different people. Here's a weird thing about the huge We're gonna experiment what ended up happening is that Imagine if I asked those four people to look at, if I to record the color of their ball, right, let's say I cut up a red ball. And and I gave a piece to everybody, everybody has a red ball in theory right? v a piece that's red. What ended up happening is that these people, of course, were quantum mechanics, there's one caveat, right? You can expect the ball to change colors, that's fine, you can, you can expect it to change either red or green. So that's let's say, you can measure spin up, spin down totally fine. What and what what we did was, let's say I did this, I took a red ball, I gave it to four of my friends. And then they did measurements, knowing that it'll change red, green, red, green, sometimes. I, it turns out that when they did those measurements, and they all got back to each other, and they looked at their lists, and the measurements that they did on each individual piece themselves, the colors didn't add up. So So I so imagine this, like, imagine if I looked at my list, and I observed red, green, green, red, green, red, and you observe green, green, green, green, green, red. So you were looking at a different piece of the ball. How's that even possible? When I physically split the same objective ball? It's not it's, well, technically you shouldn't have been, but it is like, in fact, what's happening is that literal conflict and objective facts about reality, where you have people who participated in a physical experiment, use the same physical measurement tools and came up with different conflicting facts   Govind  26:31 that is completely wild. Yeah, no, that's physics anymore. You know, this is like something just so beyond anything.   Deep  26:41 Yeah, I mean, it is very edgy. Yeah. See? What we know, dude.   Govind  26:45 Yeah. Oh, my God. That's, that's insane. Everyone reminds me of the banach tarski paradox, right? Like, I mean, these kind of things happen on mathematics, and we're totally fine with it. Right. So the banach tarski paradox is like, imagine you have a sphere, a sphere that's composed of like, let's, let's call them like, an infinite number of droplets that are holding together this fear, right? It's like this basketball. So the banach tarski paradox says that there is a way to separate out, like, just choose all the points, like a whole bunch of these points that are in here, like these droplets, and then you take them out, and then you move them away. And these are just solely choosing the points, while granted infinite number of points, you're telling them to go somewhere else. And using this, you can actually create a perfect clone of the ball, right? You have two different copies of the ball using the exact same number of particles. So you can do all these weird things with infinity in the world of the abstract, you know, where we're fun things happen, and everyone's everyone's happy and dancing all the time. You know, like, yeah, they're like, we're okay with all kinds of crazy things happening. But man, when this spills over into reality, it's like, we all lose our shit. Because, you know, yeah, literally not believing.   Deep  27:54 That's right. That's right.   Pouya LJ  27:57 Yeah, and so, um, so what, what, what do you do, but especially because you're, you're actually very close to these experience. What does that what does that make you feel? What does that? What? What does that? Do you think it means? What does that say about that objective reality, if you will? What is your thought?   Deep  28:17 Yeah, it will, what it tells me is that there's likely some sort of, clearly a multiverse situation going on, where almost it's like, we're maybe that maybe each agent that can be concerned, considered an observer or anything that can be considered capable of measurement, right? We don't know how far that extends. We just don't know those answers. But I believe that everything that can is on some unique multiverse, and we all just have our own timelines intersecting with each other. That's what that told me. It no longer feels like, we share one objective physical space. It's like, you know, I mean, we just have like, the these rays instead. That intersect. So it, I found, frankly, I found it psychologically disturbing when I read the experiment and the results. And I don't think that there's no way around it. It's just but it's fascinating stuff. So yeah,   Pouya LJ  29:17 yeah, no, I, it does make sense. Yeah, what you're saying like, I mean, obviously, there has to be so that to me, either. There's another explanation such as the multiverse situation, or maybe there is no objective reality. Well, in a sense, at the end of the day, if you're living in a multiverse with different set of facts, and you're building all of your rules based on those axioms that you get from FX x, or whatever, a different set of axioms will say. Then, who's to say which universe is the reference universe, or the main universe or truth? So maybe maybe there isn't any objective reality which, which to me, And then that's my whole thing. That was my whole thing about this objective reality. I asked this question going in thinking, yes, there is, and we can't just find it yet. But let's pose the assumption that Yeah, no, there is no objective reality, then to me, it's a little bit more humanistic again, talk, but it just shows me how arrogant we've become of a thing called, you know, science and discovery. And we're just, we're just going forward thinking that we're supposed to know the answer to, to everything, we have to figure it out. And that and that's fine to try. But also I think it this whole phenomena should should give us some notion of Okay, there is there there should be a little bit a bit a degree of humility, in what in what we do as discoverers of this universe, which is, to me the most beautiful parts. Again, I'm like, this is being poetic as a human thing. But that's at the end of the day. That's who we are. And I think I think we should appreciate that part as well. Sorry, I'm just going to close this loop on this poem that I just composed here. But Okay, back to Golf. How does that make you feel? from someone who's a little bit more distant? Personally,   Govind  31:28 I think it's very interesting to use the word pool there because, well, since since this, this discussion has kind of been underpinned by logic and language and all that kind of stuff. There's this philosopher Martin Heidegger, his his entire take was like, we need to kind of escape from the confines of language and the kind of thinking that is inevitable, just because of language being the way it is, right? Because it's like, realistically, we all have our own personal language. It's like, I have my own language. And when I say that, I don't mean like my own version of English, I mean, my own, let's like, composition of thoughts, experiences, feeling senses, right? Like, if I remember, if I smell a perfume from my past, like, I'm gonna have like, these nostalgic experiences and all that stuff, right? And, and that really, that's part of that's a word or like maybe a phrase in like, personal language. And whenever I'm talking, what I'm doing is I'm converting from my, I'm translating from my personal language to English, right? In this case, and then and then you have to, like convert that back to your personal language. And men composition is really hard, like, how do we do it? Given this this context, but Heidegger, his his attempt to improve language, was by positing that we move to poetry as a way of expressing ourselves purely because he thought poetry had this innate ability to capture our personal language, right? Because when we write poetry, it's such a, like, poetry is a hard thing to understand, right? Like, sometimes you read poetry, and I'm like, What the heck is going on? But it's just because it's, it's the poets like attempt to try to bring out their personal language as much as possible, right. And I would argue that most of art is the same process. So I mean, in, and I want to tie this back to like, the point I made earlier about us trying to escape the confines of our own existence, right, like, the the confines of our of our human infrastructure, the way we do that, I think poetry is a very, very cool way of and it's kind of cool that emerged from this discussion as well. That's kind of a case in point.   Pouya LJ  33:23 Yeah. No, I I think so. Yes, I think I understand. So it's the least amount of filters like art, I suppose, like, closest to you as it gets, I suppose. So, so yes, I, and that's what I've been going back and forth a lot. Like I obviously, as somebody who cares about, you know, methodical thinking, logical thinking, and, you know, rationale, reason, etc. That is very valuable, especially if you if we want resolved in this in this world of ours, because at the end of the day, we can get a lot with the our version of you know, reality that we have in this very pocket that we are living in, in the whole the whole universe and in space and time. But going beyond that, I think there there has and that is where I think they kind of, you know, overlap the the field, let's call it science and art, if you will, I don't, I don't like to make huge distinction, like borderline distinction distinctions, generally personally, but I think in an entirety, society does make it very, like black and white distinction between these two, which I think there is a good amount of overlap, and that is, we're   Govind  34:44 talking fuzziness, right, it's all about being fuzzy and accepting it for what it is as opposed to what we want it to be that maybe seems more perfect to us, right? Like these molds seem more perfect to us. But the reality is, nothing is a mold like everything is fuzzy, right? Like I think the example is like such a mind. looming realization of that.   Pouya LJ  35:02 Yeah, no, that's that's true. And what one way one can raise a question. I suppose that what makes us want the I mean, I have I have one answer. But let's let me just pose the question first. What makes us as who we are humans, again, within this infrastructure, once this clarity of binary of, you know, not being fuzzy, but rather completely distinct or True or false? Well, what are your thoughts on that?   Govind  35:35 Well, I remember we actually think I think we did a podcast on this a little bit ago about like the nature of chaos, right? Some people, most people I think, are very averse to chaos, because they like things being simple and easy to understand. Right? What I mean, the more, let's say, foolhardy among us, for lack of a better word, like kind of naturally as gravitated towards chaos, because I think chaos is just such a good description of reality. But the problem is that chaos, by definition is incredibly, incredibly complex, right? So you don't you don't have the simplicity of like, you know, two plus two equals four, right? You're like, what's two? what's plus? What's four? What's the quality?   Pouya LJ  36:14 That sounds like you checked, you just say, yeah, smoke some weed or something? Like what is to man?   Govind  36:23 I thought this was Joe Rogan.   Pouya LJ  36:27 Oh, it could be anyway. No, I think so. Okay, let me go back to how about you do and don't share my thoughts?   Deep  36:38 Yes. So, first of all, it's super interesting about the nature of fuzziness, especially when we think about Zeno's paradox. Because even that is a great example. You know, I still contend that we have not resolved the paradox of why is it that we can make contact with anything, right? Why is it that I'm even touching the floor right now, despite the poly exclusion principle? And, you know, Zeno's paradox, right?   Govind  37:10 xenos paradox.   Deep  37:11 Sure. So So, so xenos paradox. It's really a family of paradoxes. But it all comes down to the fact that, I'll give you an example. Let's say that you want to reach the end of the hallway. And your rule that you impose on yourself is that you're going to have your distance in order to get to the hallway, and you'll have your distance, every single time until you get to the end of the hallway. And so let's say the, you're 10 feet away from the end of the hallway, then the next time the next move you make you're five feet away, then two and a half, then 1.25, and so on and so forth. And until you go to point 000000125, blah, blah, blah, but it'll never be zero, right? It never touches zero. So at no point, will you ever actually reach the end of the hallway. So Zeno's paradox, what basically asks, Why do you never, why do you touch the end of the hallway? Why is it that in real life, we end up making it to the other side, despite the fact that these infinite distances, you know, taking any slice of an infinite still infinite so so he just had all these questions about it. Yeah, spacetime. Very deep questions to the thousands of years ago on so and we still haven't answered them properly. And yeah,   Govind  38:34 well, I have a point about that. But I know if we are you're you're itching to talk about your, your perspective on it. Go ahead. Oh, you're on mute. Oops, sorry.   Pouya LJ  38:45 First of all, I want to say that I, I sent a photo and chat A while ago, and I think I diverted deeps attention to that kind of concept, which was I don't know if you saw the, the the rabbit or whatever it is. It wants to go get a haircut. I'll put this in the show notes, by the way, but it's a half off haircut. Did you guys see that one?   Deep  39:12 Right now? That is funny. Yeah, I'll put this   Pouya LJ  39:16 in the show notes. So that people who are listening to this, they can just find it out. But I know this is exactly what you're talking about. It'll gonna take forever. So yeah, you're right. But why do we actually get that haircut and the half of haircut eventually? No, I think so. First of all, all of these are exactly to my point that there's there's there is probably a sea of things that we just don't know about the nature of our universe, the one that even forget about objective reality, the one that we even perceive. And maybe one can make an argument that the reason with the fatalities of our of our views are the questions that we cannot answer is because of the fact that our realities are not completely overlapping the objective one, and that's where those those are the the edge cases that are actually creating these problems, perhaps. But true. Beyond that, I think there's a, there's a degree of obsession amongst many, many people, most people probably besides besides the ones who are embracing chaos, I suppose as go and was putting it, that we did a good good amount of like humanity essentially once a clear answer to two things and sometimes takes shortcuts through through, you know, ideologies that might not have, you know, rational rationale behind them. Just to get to those answer, why am I here? Why, like, because I have to be tested here to go to heaven, part of the some of the religious ideologies, or, or what is the nature of our unit? Why is the sun come up? I feel a first of all does is going to come up tomorrow or, and then we come up with these answers, and everybody through their own ways try to answer these definitively. And part of that is I think, now it's a little bit of more philosophical questions, I suppose, or answer rather thoughts, I suppose. But I think part of that is because we understand our own mortality by binary, which is the most did the deepest, probably driver of our existence, and that is either we're dead or alive, there's no, I'm half dead. I was like, well, maybe you're sick a little bit, but you're not half dead. So I and there is there's a degree that we and there's an understanding that when I die, I there's like, there's no coming back from that. I mean, I'm obviously there are exceptions, sometimes. Some people, some people, flatline they come back. But if you're flatlining for a week, you're not coming back from that, right? So so there's, there's a permanency to that experience that and and, and our deepest drive is to avoid that. So to avoid that clear, at least, at least from our mortal, mortal perspective, clear, true or false If true, being your dead and false being your life. That is clear that okay, if I'm, if I'm talking right now, as the card would say that I exist. In a more biological setup, sense, I'm not dead. And, and, and it drives all those questions, I suppose. But again, like, also going back to language as a logical tool, essentially. What do you think there's going to be a funny question, what do you think people before language would think? Would they have similar thoughts to these things? Now? I mean, obviously, in a simpler case, and not thinking like quantum physics, I suppose. But what do you think all of these are fatalities of language that we're carrying with ourselves? Or is it drive by language? Or is it more fundamental? So if we didn't have language for people who didn't invent language yet, back in? I don't know how long ago? Would they have similar thoughts? Do you think?   Govind  43:11 Well, I think we do have animals, right? Like, I mean, when we have these, you have any pets? Do you   Pouya LJ  43:17 mean no? Okay, before, but I know Okay, yeah. No, but I can understand what you're where you're going.   Govind  43:24 But when you have, like interactions with animals, I love animals. It's almost like you have this communication with them. That's that's not like you. I mean, I don't I can see versus and they probably don't understand me, unless all animals know English, and they just choose to ignore us. And they like humans are too stupid. There was a   Pouya LJ  43:43 cabal of animals deciding that this is not a good idea. Yes.   Govind  43:48 Lots of Rick and Morty episodes. But yeah, no, I think I mean, it's just that that awareness that being that's that's just there right? I think that is rooted in language fundamentally. Like I don't I don't know if we can actually get past this. This like our art like the language that we have developed evolved and developed is like it serves a very good purpose which is sharing thoughts with each other sharing these these like awareness experiences with each other right? But at the root of it all like I mean, it's all about that awareness and you brought up such a great point about death right? And how death is that binary which kind of makes us realize like you know, like there is such a thing as a clear like a clear line drawn in the in the northern sand like a line drawn in the concrete You know, this this is it like you know, there's life and then there's not life so so that that is actually such a such a great point about why negations work in this in this sense. I seem to have lost you guys   Pouya LJ  44:47 know, we can hear you. Okay. Oh, yeah, your picture froze, but I can hear you so that's good. Excellent.   Govind  44:53 Yeah. Well, yeah, that's that's the point I wanted to make. You know, it's a it's like these these ideas do exist, but I'm sure Animals have a notion of death as well. Right? And animals. Oh, yeah. Their their experiences and all that.   Pouya LJ  45:05 Yeah, no. And that's true. The notion of death is obviously at least in its more primal sense of obvious. Obviously, they're, they're trying to avoid it. But there are no but my point was, so so the rabbit holes that we go to and get stuck in it, then half of the way to the destination, and then half it, and then half of them and have it is this. My This is what is this? Now? Now this one is not as outside of language, actually, some, I'm kind of negating myself, but is a lot of these problems with language and and how we're communicating with each other. Because honestly, like, there are instances that I think I should have been thinking about this. Do I think with myself, like when there's nobody else, I don't have to communicate with anybody else. I don't need to use language, English, Farsi, whatever, to communicate with other people. But is there any any? Do I communicate with myself with my thoughts, in language or outside of language? And I've been thinking about this for a while and trying to observe it? And part of it is that, yeah, yeah, most of my thoughts are us using language. But yes, there are pockets sometimes that I feel like, there's a thought that I can't even express it to myself, using language. It's that the, maybe that that's the that's for, like, there's a fog. And I'm perceiving it. There's some sort of experience behind it. But I can't even describe that experience for us. Like, I mean, what what is like, so what is it sounds like an impression of a thought, right? Because a thought is a thought when you're able to express it, maybe? Yeah, so i think i think that that becomes super clear. Well, okay, let me let me give you so this is a, this is going to be a little bit of an exaggeration. Like, it's not what I'm thinking about. So the one that I'm thinking about is more of a thought. But think about this, when you're extremely fearful for your life at a very moment notice of, you know, hitting, you know, you have to you have to run there's there's a, there's a specific quality to that fear. And you're thinking, Okay, maybe there's a bear in front of you. And your thought is that we're going to grab this knife, but are you really thinking in terms of wars, I am going to grab this knife, you see a knife, you you want to grab it, you know what I mean? That's a thought that I'm going to grab this knife, but it's not really in any language. And that is really forced when I think I can see myself doing that, at least, when it comes to the precipice of like some sort of when it combines with some sort of very strong emotion such as, okay, I have to grab this knife or gun or whatever, shoot this bear, I'm not thinking to myself, okay, I am going to grab a gun, and I am going to pull the trigger at this. No, that's not it, you just know, right? That's a   Govind  48:01 possibility. It's like you're like, the way I think of it is like, it's almost like a design space of everything that could possibly happen given what's around you. Right? So it's like you're sampling from this design space. Like one of these events, for example, is like you picking up a knife or like, you know, you punching someone in the face. This is around you. Something like it's like these are these are just, I think the mind is really good at generating these kind of things, which is just sampling points from, from this design space of what's around us, right? Yeah. And then and then these are actions or like, these are these are impressions. Yeah. It's like, yeah, we just, we just like, we have all these things around this, like stimulus. And our mind is generating these things. And most of the time, it's like, it's pretty pragmatic. It's like, Oh, you have to put on your shoes to walk. It's like this thing you tell yourself, but you're not really thinking you're doing things. But like, sometimes it's just like random thoughts. Like it's our mind is a pretty interesting random number generator. Deep. What are your thoughts on that?   Deep  49:00 Okay, it really is. I agree with that. I mean, you can always say that, uh, you know, all of our output all of our, I've always wondered, you know, the, what is it the thousand monkey or the infinite monkey experiment or thought experiment where what would happen if you let monkeys play with a typewriter for an infinite amount of time, right? There's the idea that they would eventually create Shakespeare. And it makes me question the idea of creativity and thought, is it a linear combination of what you already know? Or is it truly something that will eventually appear emergent from random fucking monkey? Monkey actions, right? Like, what what is true intelligent creativity? So with that being said, I really had a I was thinking, though, you know, on that note about us looking at death and life is binary. That's true. We are classical creatures, like we observe the universe in classical sense, right? Everything is and so because it's macroscopic to us, I wonder, what if? What does life look like for, let's say, micro organism that doesn't experience the world classically like we do, right? What if there are, there are quantum organisms that are only experiencing the world and quantum mechanics? To them, there would be literally no such thing as a classical I am dead or classical life. What does that mean? What What does death for that organism look like? So yeah, I was just thinking about that. But you guys think,   Pouya LJ  50:34 yeah, no, you're you're dragging us into the pan psychism   Govind  50:41 the movie arrival, right? With the whole concept of like, circular time and all these things, right? Like, this is some I think, innovations of the 21st century like, exploring this, these kind of ideas. I see so many outlets for this in different TV shows and movies and all that stuff. Like this, this like convergence of everything, how everything is one and many at the same time. Right? Well, I guess the fuzziness of everything, right. Like everything is just really fuzzy. And we're, as humanity starting to accept it, which is, you know, really freakin cool.   Pouya LJ  51:12 No, no, it is. And you mentioned an arrival It reminds me of, so I think if I'm not mistaken. Okay, maybe I'm mistaken. But let me let me just make it maybe, you know, I think Stephen Wolfram was an advisor in that movie. I don't know if he really I don't know. That's that I I'm doubting myself now. So anybody out there listening. Please double check for yourselves. Don't quote me on it. But which reminds me he actually I don't know if we're familiar. Actually. I   51:40 don't know why I did a quick Google and   Pouya LJ  51:43 it is like it's okay. Yeah. And he came up with this new What is it? What do you call it? Geez. new stuff. Yeah, he is hypergraph.   Deep  51:56 Physics.   Pouya LJ  51:57 Yes. Yeah. Have you heard about that? Did you look into it?   Deep  52:01 Yeah, I   52:04 I liked it.   Pouya LJ  52:06 So what are your thoughts on that? But super quickly, I don't want to go to a different deep rabbit hole right now. But it reminded me of him when you mentioned arrival.   Deep  52:14 Sure. I mean, various.   Pouya LJ  52:16 I don't know, Dad Galvin. Are you familiar with what it is? Oh, yeah, sure. Sure. Okay. Okay. Cool. Cool. Good.   Deep  52:22 Yeah, just very briefly, I mean, the idea of like, Come complex, physical phenomena from simple rules is nothing new, right. Like that's been talked about for 100 years. What was really interesting was the idea of using causal graphs or attempting to use just like these hyper graphs to encode physical rules. Yeah, I think it's promising. I'd love to see experiments and math and more rigor. But the ideas are cool. Like Stephen Wolfram is really, like he has some fundamental thoughts there that are interesting, unique worth pursuing.   Govind  52:56 These are usually a pioneer of this kind of this kind of funky fuzzy stuff. Right, right. Yeah. Yes, geez theory so much with his work on automata and all that stuff. Well, this release. I mean, I wanted to bring back this point from about 15 minutes ago. We were talking about Zeno's paradoxes. Yeah, a conversation topic for a future podcasts definitely should be the nature of calculus, right? Because, yeah, the way we as humans, resolve Zeno's paradoxes was to create this notion of a limit, we just throw a limit on it. And we say, at some point, it does, it does converge on to this value, right? Like, and I'm like, okay, so you keep cutting the half of your hair. And at some point, you're, you're going to get a full haircut, right? Like, even if you get the convergence now that that notion of convergence, it turns out is not strongly understood by by humans. But I think that's something we need to discuss. And I it stands out for me, because this is one of the first discussions we ever had. Right? Exactly. Yeah.   Deep  53:57 Yeah, absolutely. Talking   Govind  53:58 about limits and how like, that's what I think I first realized I'm like, this doesn't make any sense, does it? It's just, we just put   Deep  54:04 it is it is a great because some that is it all stemmed from some Berkeley kid asking us like, like, about it, right? Like he's like, yeah, this like this. And then yeah,   Govind  54:15 yeah. Yeah. Cool stuff. No, but I think we should explore that in in the next podcast or though sounds good. Sounds good?   Pouya LJ  54:24 No, I think I think okay, well, we made the plan. I don't know about the dates. We'll talk about that later. But next sub subject of the next conversation will be calculus, and its origins, its fundamentals. axioms, I suppose. Okay, I think that's a good. Here's a good stopping point. We almost went full hour here. Is there anything else you want to, you know, close the loop on before we leave this conversation?   Govind  54:54 Well, for me, I think I learned so I mean, I had these thoughts about fuzzy fuzzy thinking and all that stuff. And it was Kind of like in the let's let's see the disk of my, the my external hard disk of my brain is just forgotten there. So it's great to brush the dust off. And I feel like I really kind of added to these models based on this conversation. So yeah, it was very cool. I think we achieved fuzziness today. Yes.   Pouya LJ  55:18 That's great. How about you?   Deep  55:20 Yeah, I would just say that I really appreciated the perspective of the history of history philosophy, with respect to logic, a super neat perspective that you brought to the table or Govind and yeah, just different perspectives that were shared today. Um, it's awesome. It does make things more fuzzy. And yeah, let's keep it going. Guys, I, I think that there's a lot of interesting questions. We post here today. So   Pouya LJ  55:47 okay, and if anybody wants to share their thoughts, feel free you can reach go in and deepen their respective social media, which I'm going to put in the show notes. Don't need to repeat them here. You can you can find them there.   56:01 And comment guys.   Pouya LJ  56:04 Make it make it dirty. No, keep it clean. And all right, stay fuzzy until later episode.   Deep  56:11 Cheers, guys.  

Michelle Oates: A promise tomorrow is worth a lot less than trying today. I am Michelle Oates and I'm a Tri-Cities influencer. Paul Casey: But really this is the core philosophy of what I teach in time management, and that is manage your time around your values and vision. This is your foundation for everything else in time management. Speaker 3: Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington in Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast where local leadership and self-leadership expert, Paul Casey interviews local CEOs, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams, so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey: Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Cari McGee. 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Like, sometimes if somebody gets caught in a crime syndicate or whatever, they can say, "Oh, I was brainwashed or this..." Nothing like that happened. Like, why was I married to two people at once? I have no idea. So thankfully I woke up. Paul Casey: Thankfully I woke up. Cari McGee: And that was not my reality. Paul Casey: That's a good T-shirt message as well. Thankfully, I woke up. Cari McGee: Yes, totally love that. Paul Casey: Especially in these trying times that we're in, maybe we're all going to get to put that on our shirts. Cari McGee: Oh, right, right. That's a good message. Paul Casey: Well, we're going to dive in after checking in with our Tri-City Influencer sponsor. Preston House : Hi, my name is Preston House and I'm the local owner of Papa John's Pizza right here in Tri-Cities. Jesus Melendez: I'm Jesus Melendez, vice president and commercial lender with Community First Bank and HFG Trust. Preston House : When I moved here in 2009 with my family from Boise, Idaho, I knew I wanted to move from a franchise to a local business owner. I've been working with Papa John's since I was 16 years old. So when it came time to open my own location here in my own community, I knew I needed some financial guidance from an organization who understood my needs as a small business owner. Jesus Melendez: Small business owners often have a lot on their plate, employment and retirement plans, payroll, bills. Our mission is to become your financial partner for life and is motivated by providing people in our community like Preston, with all the information and support they need all under one roof. Preston House : It's really simple. No matter what I need, all it takes is one phone call, no automated prompts, no call waiting. It's just a local business, serving another local business. Jesus Melendez: For more information, how Community First Bank and HFG Trust can help you get back on track. Visit wwwcommunity1st.com. That's www community one st.com. Paul Casey: Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. So, Cari, I think we met years ago, our children are the same age, both kids, same age, both a male and a female child, same grade, Wiley Elementary, Enterprise Middle School. Cari McGee: Yes. Hanford High. Paul Casey: Hanford High, right? Cari McGee: Yes. And our daughters are these amazing graduating kids. Paul Casey: Yes. Yes. 2020 kids, which is sad that they don't get the fanfare or some of those rituals that all the other seniors get. Cari McGee: I know. Paul Casey: Man, but we're making the best of it. Cari McGee: Absolutely. Same here. Paul Casey: So help our Tri-City influencer listeners get to know you. Tell us through a couple of your career highlights that led you to where you are today. Cari McGee: Okay. I began in real estate in 2004. And funny story, I decided to get into real estate. I had been in retail for years, but then I decided to get into real estate because there was somebody else that we knew that was in real estate. He was very successful, but I didn't understand why he was very successful. So I thought if this person is successful, I can probably be more successful. Cari McGee: So I borrowed a computer because in those days everything was not online yet, but you had to run a computer program to do your coursework. So I borrowed a PC because we only had Macs and it took me hours and I got it finished. And then I've been selling real estate full-time since 2004. Paul Casey: Wow. Why do you love what you do? Cari McGee: Oh, my gosh. It is a different job every day, number one. Number two, it's such a privilege to be a part of that particular aspect of a person's life because where you live obviously is hugely impactful to whether you move into a particular house as a kid or as a grownup, you're living there. Right? And I know if I had not been a Christian before this, I would be a Christian now because I've seen the way God works and orchestrates things like the money will come in at the last minute. Right? Or a house will be delayed closing because somebody else is supposed to move to town because they're the real owners. It's weird, and it's such a privilege to be a part of plans for people and what's going on for them. It's really, really cool. Paul Casey: That is really rewarding. So throughout that journey, you've hit obstacles to success. I'm sure. Cari McGee: Yes. Paul Casey: What is one of the biggest hurdles you've overcome in your career? Cari McGee: I would say that sometimes there have been people that either they see what I'm capable of and are scared by it or threatened by it and try to kind of rein me in or they don't see it and I haven't seen it either. And so I have not progressed or done as much as I could have/should have because of those other things happening. Does that make sense? Paul Casey: Yeah. What kind of people try to rein you in? Cari McGee: Well, there's a book called The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller, famous book, awesome book. And in 2004 or five, I think, my husband gave it to me as a Christmas present and I read it and I was so excited. I went into my broker at the time and I said, "Oh my gosh, I just read this book, and it's amazing. And I'll implement these programs and plans and I'll make a million dollars and it'll be great." My broker at the time said, "Cari, you're a wife and a mom. You really should just focus on that." Paul Casey: Ooh, wow, ouch. Cari McGee: Yeah, I was like, "Ooh." Well, I'm kind of mad at myself though, too, for... I mean, I didn't say you're right, but I didn't say you're wrong, either. Paul Casey: But it's something well up inside of you like, "I'm going to show everybody." Cari McGee: A little bit. There's all this... Yeah. Paul Casey: You have that competitive juice in you. Cari McGee: Oh, I totally do. I'm super competitive. Super competitive. Paul Casey: Well, leadership is difficult. Being an entrepreneur is difficult. What's one of your biggest ongoing challenges of being a realtor, and what really stretches you to the limit sometimes? Cari McGee: Change used to be my big thing, but now I've learned to embrace it. So, yay change! Paul Casey: Yay. Cari McGee: But I think that understanding that not everyone always looks at things the way you do, right? Everyone comes from a different perspective and a different background. So if I am like, "This is the way it gets done," and sometimes I'll be so far down the path and I'm like, "Where are you? Why are you not here with me?" And they're like, "Well, I still need to understand step four when you're at step eight." I'm like, "Oh, okay." That's hard for me is to not understand that everybody is where I am in the thought process. Paul Casey: They're at a different place in the thought process. Cari McGee: Exactly. Paul Casey: Well, you said you're better with change now. Was there a time where... Tell us about that. Cari McGee: Well, for years, any sort of change, I would just be like, "Oh, this is awful. This is ick." I want everything to stay the same as it was, and let's embrace the status quo and let's not change things. But three years ago, I needed to make a pretty significant change. And I kind of looked around when the dust settled and I was like, "Oh, this is better. This is better than where I was." So change can be good if you stop fighting against it, and instead say, "Let's see where this takes you." Paul Casey: So, that was your mental shift that you had to make, and it sounds like it stayed with you, too. Cari McGee: Oh, 100%. Paul Casey: That it can be way better even though it's going to be painful for a season. Cari McGee: Yeah. 100%. Paul Casey: Awesome. Awesome. Well, if you had a philosophy that you would put front and center on a bulletin board in your office or on the back sticker of your car for everyone to see, what would some of those messages say? Cari McGee: One of my favorite quotes ever is from Paradise Lost by John Milton. "The mind is its own place and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." I always think about that because if somebody is... I'm a big believer in mindset. You know, you govern everything that happens to you by how you interpret it and what happens in your brain. If I encounter someone who's like, "Oh, this is bad." And they're gloomy Gus or whatever, it's really hard to not almost shake them and say, "Listen, you're creating this in your brain because literally you can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. It's just all how you perceive it." Paul Casey: So your thoughts are everything. Cari McGee: Yeah. 100%. Paul Casey: Yeah, yeah. There's a life coach, famous one out there named Brooke Castillo. She puts out this formula of CTFAR, which is circumstance happens to you, and then you have a thought. Usually that thought is somewhat automatic. If we can be careful about that thought, which is what you're saying, because it immediately is going to turn into a feeling. And the feeling could bring you down this downward spiral, which is ugly, or it could be a very empowering feeling that like you said would change. Like, what's going to be better if I just go on this journey? Paul Casey: Well, as soon as you do attach the feeling to it, now an action starts to manifest. That could be your body puts out signals that make people go, "Are you okay, Cari?" Or "It seemed like you're offended. Are you angry?" Or whatever that is. You may not like the signals that your body is putting out, or they could really inspire someone. And then the R is the result. And that's what the effect has on everyone around you. So circumstance, thought, feeling, action, and then result. Cari McGee: Makes sense. Paul Casey: So it sounds like that you definitely have that. The John Milton quote really talks about mindset. Anything else that you'd put on the sticker of your car? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. I'm really blessed because I've always been an optimist. Paul Casey: I know this about you. Cari McGee: You know? Paul Casey: Yeah. Cari McGee: I'm always positive. And so I guess that it would be that just like, "Look on the bright side." There's always a bright side. Find it. Paul Casey: Some of that is natural for you and your personality style, but you have to choose it every day. So if you're talking to these Tri-City influencers, why would you say choose optimism? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. If you're not choosing optimism, you're choosing pessimism or you're choosing a negative side of realism, and I mean, that just drags you down. It doesn't move you forward. You don't grow where it's dark. You grow where there's light and you move forward where there's light. Think of sunflowers, right? They follow the sun because that's what makes them... You know, that's doing their job. They're optimized, I guess, would be the best word for that. Paul Casey: Things grow where there's light. There's the bumper sticker. We found it. Cari McGee: There you go. Okay. Paul Casey: I love it. I love it. Well, most influencers I know have a bit of a visionary inside of them or that like, "We've got to take the next deal. I got these ideas." So for you, where do you take time to dream about the future or new ideas? Where do you play with that kind of stuff? What does that look like? Cari McGee: Oh, a couple of places. I'm in my car a lot as a real estate agent and so a lot of stuff... I'll be listening to podcasts and something will be said and it'll make me think, and I'll pause the podcast and I'll start to think and dream. One other thing, and this is funny, my husband used to be in broadcasting. So this is where this question comes from, but my whole life, I've interviewed myself. Like, "Well, Cari, tell us about this time." Right? To help me kind of walk through or figure out a problem. I was telling my husband that once, and he said, "Do you ever ask yourself a question you can't answer?" I said, "What?" He said, "Well, that's the mark of a good interview." Okay. The point is not though to be- Paul Casey: To stop. Cari McGee: Right. I'm talking to me. Right? I'm not going to ask myself something that I don't know. But anyway, I'll use that time in the car to do that, and then oftentimes too just out sitting on the patio in the evening, watching the sunset and thinking of the future. Paul Casey: Little patio time. Cari McGee: Yes. Paul Casey: Yeah. Well, that's really interesting. Interview yourself. So Matt McGee, was he sports? What was he? Cari McGee: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yep. Paul Casey: Yeah, he was sports. What years were that? Cari McGee: Oh gosh, '94 through '97 I think he was at KEPR. Paul Casey: Okay. Okay. But asking yourself questions. And I do, I find that, too, like... Because you're on social media a lot. Right? Which platforms do you enjoy the most by the way? Cari McGee: Facebook is my milieu. I love it. Paul Casey: Okay. Okay. So, of course, you have to be self-promoting, which is hard. Cari McGee: Correct yes. Paul Casey: Which is hard, and sometimes when you just try to come up with a message on your own, it's difficult. But if you think about the interview, like if I just have somebody ask me a question, for some reason, it makes it easier. Have you found that? Cari McGee: Oh, 100%. Yes. Yes. Paul Casey: I don't know if it just brings out our authenticity or you don't feel quite as plastic to put it out to the world, but if you can get someone else to ask you a question, I think that's just easier. Cari McGee: Well, I mean, I did something at the beginning of when the stay at home order was released. I did a thing for 30 days on Facebook. Every day I asked a new question and it really helped people because the purpose of it was to remind them that we were in this situation, and to think about times in the past when we were not, and times in the future when we won't be. Paul Casey: Oh, I like it. Cari McGee: So that was the purpose of it and it was a different question every day. It was things like, What's your favorite color? Or do you have a middle name? Do you wish it was a different middle name? What would your last name be if you could change it? I mean, so things like that. You're right. It's when you ask questions, people just are... They jump on it. They get so excited. Paul Casey: So a good strategy on social media for engagement, because you've got a lot of engagement from that, too. Right? Cari McGee: I did. I did. Paul Casey: Yeah. So asking a good question. Really the power of a good question is really essential to leadership and of course, to entrepreneurship. That curiosity really brings out the best in people it seems. Well, before we head into our next question on how Cari starts her day, let's shout out to our sponsor. Preston House : Hi, my name is Preston House and I'm the local owner of Papa John's Pizza right here in Tri-Cities. Jesus Melendez: I'm Jesus Melendez, vice president and commercial lender with Community First Bank and HFG Trust. Preston House : When I moved here in 2009 with my family from Boise, Idaho, I knew I wanted to move from a franchise to a local business owner. I'd been working with Papa John's since I was 16 years old. So when it came time to open my own location here in my own community, I knew I needed some financial guidance from an organization who understood my needs as a small business owner. Jesus Melendez: Small business owners often have a lot on their plate employment, retirement plans, payroll, bills. Our mission is to become your financial partner for life and is motivated by providing people in our community like Preston with all the information and support they need all under one roof. Preston House : It's really simple. No matter what I need, all it takes is one phone call, no automated prompts, no call waiting. It's just a local business, serving another local business. Jesus Melendez: For more information, how Community First Bank and HFG Trust can help you get back on track, visit wwwcommunity1st.com. That's www community one st.com. Paul Casey: So Cari, what's your typical morning routine look like before work and once you hit the ground running at work, and if you have any rituals that help you start your day strong? Cari McGee: I actually do. I don't know if you've ever read The Miracle Morning. Paul Casey: I've heard of it. Cari McGee: Okay. It's really, really good, and it talks about having, it can be as few as 10 minutes, or it can be as much as an hour of SAVERS, S-A-V-E-R-S. Paul Casey: Oh, yes. Is it Hal Elrod? Cari McGee: Yes, yes. Paul Casey: Yes. Okay. Cari McGee: S is silence, moment of silence, meditation, prayer, whatever. And then A is affirmations. V is visualization. E is exercise. R is reading and S is scribing or journaling. I started that. It was so funny. I started it three years ago, I think. What I love about it is that it centers me because I wake up and I don't look at my phone first thing. I don't look at my emails. Cari McGee: The problem with that is you immediately, you're in reactive mode when you do that and that's so bad for you, and the hormones of your body when you're waking up and everything. So if you start the day really centering and being grateful and then also dreaming, you're affirming the visualization. Probably it ties into the dream thing. I mean, I have a really active imagination. Visualizing is not a problem for me at all. And so I love that part of it. And then I've always loved to read and then journaling, too. I love to write. And so all of that is what I generally do probably about five days a week. Paul Casey: That's great. So take us through SAVERS again, so our listeners don't have to rewind. Cari McGee: Sure. S is silence. So silence, meaning a moment of silence in prayer or meditation. A is affirmations. V is visualization. E is exercise. R is reading and S is scribing, which is the old-fashioned way of saying journaling. Paul Casey: Yeah. Yeah. I heard Brendon Burchard, he's another podcast guy I listen to. Cari McGee: Oh, I like him. Paul Casey: He said, "We need to take our MEDS every day and MEDS is meditation, exercise- Cari McGee: Yeah. Meditation, exercise, diet, and- Paul Casey: Sleep. Cari McGee: Sleep. Yeah. Paul Casey: Yeah. So SAVERS incorporates that, but even takes it to that next level with the journaling. What does journaling do for you? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, Paul, I've always been a writer. I write stories. I write everything. So for me, it's helpful because I will read back over old entries and remember where I was at any given time. And if it was a bad time, then I'm like, "Oh, look at me. I got past this bad time because this is not my reality anymore." Now I'm over here, that happened. It helps me remember and realize that I've gotten through bad times before. Paul Casey: You grew. Cari McGee: Right. I've gotten through bad times and here I am on the other side of it. Maybe sometimes in there, I'll talk about how I did it, but mostly it's just recording how I feel at any given time. Then I'm like, "Oh, I remember that place. I didn't like that place. I'm glad I'm here now." Paul Casey: Yeah, I've heard journal is a place to protest. Cari McGee: Oh, sure. Paul Casey: You know, it's like when you write an email to someone you're mad at and then you don't send it, but it's just getting it done and then you're going to delete it. Cari McGee: Right, exactly. Paul Casey: A journal can also be that place where you're just talking about your feelings to the world, but to no one. And then you don't have to show it to anyone else. It's your own private place is doing this journaling. Cari McGee: I like that. Paul Casey: That's why that's a good one, too. And sleep, well, it's so important, especially during this COVID crisis. A lot of Zoom meetings where you're talking with people on the phone or, and they just... The research says you need eight hours of sleep. I don't know if you're an eight-hour person. Cari McGee: Oh, no. I totally am. I'm a huge sleep believer. It bothers me when people are all like, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." Okay, well, you're going to die sooner. Paul Casey: It's going to catch up to you. Yeah. Cari McGee: So why don't you sleep now? Right? That's my thing. Paul Casey: It's going to catch up to you. So if you're getting by in five, six or seven normally, you need the eight now because boy, you just... Sleep puts your life in perspective, I think, if you have enough adequate rest. And when you're on burnout, you lose your perspective and that's a scary place. You ever been in a place of burnout before where it's just- Cari McGee: Oh, gosh yeah. Yes. Paul Casey: Now what does that feel like for you? Cari McGee: Oh, I get snappy. I get really, really snappy with everyone I love. I'll do a lot of screaming in the car. You know, "Move your 'beep.'" Do you not? My mom always used to do this thing where she would drive and we'd be at the intersection and she'd say, "Beep, beep." And then they would move. And she'd say, "See, Cari, they heard me." I was like, "What?" But I will be like, "Move." You know, and it doesn't work for me. Anyway, I snap. I get pissy. Oh, I get snotty. I have attitude. It's awful. Paul Casey: Any other tips you'd give to listeners about avoiding burnout? Because it's a grind. Running your own business is a grind, but even for those that are in a regular work job, a day job, a burnout is always a threat. Cari McGee: Yep. 100%. Sleep is important. Like we just talked about, you've got to get enough sleep. Otherwise, your last nerve gets reached really fast. But also, one thing that I'm not really good at doing, but would help if I did is take time to notice the things you have done well and where you are now, like you did land that big client or you were able to accomplish this task that you didn't think you could. And then you're like, "Okay, you know what? I really am further along than I thought I'd be." Paul Casey: Yeah. Take time to celebrate, I think is what you're saying. Cari McGee: Yeah. Paul Casey: On my whiteboard, it's my scorecard or whatever I call it, and at the end of every week... I'll do it. I'll do it tomorrow. It's my weekly review, and it's all the things I did get done this week. Of course, I'm just a party of one as a solopreneur. And I just went, "Yes, I got that done, that done, that done." Nobody else sees it, but me, but it makes me feel good like this was another good week. Cari McGee: See, and that's really good. I need to do that. I don't do them enough. Paul Casey: Yeah. When I ask my coaching clients, the very first question I usually ask of them, the icebreaker question is what wins can we celebrate? What did you get crossed off your list? What did you make progress on? Because most people at least can feel like, "Well, I moved the ball forward in these areas." It's not done-done, but it's better than it was last week. So I really love that as a burnout avoidance technique or else you just feel like, again, not anything done. This is a- Cari McGee: Same crap, different day unless you take a minute to say, "Wait, this was a very different day because I accomplished X." Paul Casey: Yes, yes. We're trying to avoid Groundhog Day. Cari McGee: Right. Paul Casey: That is a great way to do it. I love it. Now, family is a big deal to most people. How do you prioritize your family time whether it's with your husband, with your kids and yet still be a high performer at work, right? It's this constant tension. Cari McGee: It is, it is. Well, this is a slightly different thing for women, I think, as opposed to men, especially in my job anyway. I heard a long time ago and I have always lived by this. Say, for example, if I'm going to take my daughter to a dance class or I'm going to do something, right? If I tell a client that that's what I'm doing, then I'm a mom primarily who also happens to work in real estate. Paul Casey: Oh, okay. Cari McGee: Right? But if a dad says, "Hey, I can't show you this house, because I'm going to take my daughter." "Oh my gosh, you're the best dad in the world. Oh, my gosh, you're really taking time for your family. Oh, my gosh, absolutely." Right? So I have always said, even if I am doing something with my kids, nobody knows that. I'm like, "Okay, you know what? I have a lunch appointment." Paul Casey: I'm just unavailable right now. Yep. Cari McGee: Right. Exactly. "I have a lunch appointment. Blah, blah, blah." So I draw those really clear boundaries around stuff. They don't necessarily know what those boundaries are around, but I mean, that's why when I need to do something with kid one or kid two, I'm there when I said I'd be there because that's super important especially when they're littler. My daughter, it's funny. She hasn't been in daycare for... I don't know. She's 18 now. So like, I don't know, 10 years or more, probably 15 years. And she remembers the one time we were late. Cari McGee: Every time we passed her daycare, "Remember when we were late, when you were late to get me?" It's like, "Stop kid." Right? I mean, it's a testament to the fact that her dad and I worked so hard to get them on time that she remembers the one time we were late. Do you know what I mean? As opposed to it being a constant thing. Paul Casey: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Well, it's our brains who remember those traumatic times- Cari McGee: Oh, my gosh right. Paul Casey: ... more than all the times you're on time and all the gifts you gave them. Cari McGee: Exactly. Paul Casey: Do you have date times with your husband? How do you carve? Do you carve that out or as a realtor, do you have to move blocks of time all over the place? Cari McGee: No. Sometimes... I mean, he'll say, "This Marvel movie is coming out on Saturday and I got tickets for us already" or whatever. And then I'm like, "Okay, that's perfect." Because if I know in advance, then I'll schedule around it, so that's fine. Paul Casey: Okay. So that's blocked out in advance probably through good communication, because there's probably times where you just got to show house and that has to be moved around. Cari McGee: Right. Paul Casey: And of course, Matt is the biggest U2 fan on the planet. Right? Right? Cari McGee: Well, usually. Actually, he's no longer a U2 fan. Paul Casey: No longer? Cari McGee: No. Paul Casey: Oh wow. Okay. Cari McGee: There's a new band called Gang of Youths that he loves. They're from Australia, and they're amazing. Paul Casey: Okay. All right. I was going to say, did that impact your marriage? Cari McGee: Actually, this is funny. I was really worried because I thought... Because they predate me and I thought, "Oh, if he could lose interest in them, my days are numbered." My daughter was like, "Mom, please." I was like, "Oh." Paul Casey: Funny, funny. Okay. So as an influencer, we know you're not a know-it-all. You're a learner, right? Cari McGee: Right. Paul Casey: So where do you go for the wisest advice? These can be live people. Well, they probably all have been live people. Cari McGee: And once live. Paul Casey: I mean, people around us in the Tri-Cities or they're authors, motivators. You've mentioned one already. You've talked a little bit about podcasts. There's probably some industry professionals because what I know about Keller Williams is it's like the best training company, because I get the magazine. I get Trainer Magazine. I know I'm sort of a nerd, but Keller Williams always wins the awards in there. So tell me about your influencers you go to. Cari McGee: Well, one of the number one real estate coaching companies in the world is Tom Ferry coaching. I've had a Tom Ferry coach for four years. Paul Casey: Nice. Cari McGee: I was a Tom Ferry coach for a period of time. I have a new coach now outside that Tom Ferry organization. She's amazing. So ever since I realized how important coaching is, that's really... I mean, holy cow, my business doubled. It was amazing. Paul Casey: Really? Wow. Bam. Cari McGee: Yes. It was really remarkable. So coaches for sure. And then part of that reading of the SAVERS is reading books like Principles by Ray Dalio. Paul Casey: I'm reading that one right now. Yes. Cari McGee: Okay. It's so good. Right? So there's so much to learn, Paul, from everybody. Oh, my gosh, I'm just always reading, and like I said, always podcasting, listening to podcasts with great interviews with people, so that I have to learn more. Paul Casey: Do you have a few favorite books or podcasts that you could recommend so that generally entrepreneurs or leaders would enjoy? Cari McGee: Sure. One is not actually about anything entrepreneurial, but it's called 99% Invisible and it is just stinking great, fascinating trivial information, really good stories. It's been going on for 10 years and I discovered it a year ago, and over successive hikes at Badger, I've made my way through 10 years of that catalog and stuff. It's so good. Paul Casey: Yes. 99% Invisible? Cari McGee: Yes. So good. And then Matt does a walk through or does a podcast called The Walkthrough and it's about real estate stuff, and so that's fantastic. And then also, gosh, I would say Tom Ferry's podcast is really good, too. Paul Casey: Okay. These are good ones. Cari McGee: Oh, sorry. And Gary Keller does one and I can't remember what it's called, but it's really, really good. Paul Casey: I have listened to Gary Keller's before. Yes, it is good. So finally, Cari, what advice would you give to new leaders or anyone who wants to keep growing or gaining more influence? Cari McGee: Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. I mean, it's really scary, but you are a better person on the other side of whatever it is and your whole life will be better on the other side of whatever you're scared about. Paul Casey: Yeah. I think I've actually heard that as a quote. Cari McGee: Yeah. That's better on the side other of fear. Paul Casey: Everything you want is on the other side of fear. Yeah, yeah. That's great meme. And has that been true for your life? Cari McGee: Oh, gosh. Yeah. Yeah. Because again, as I said earlier, I used to hate change. It was really in the last three years that I've changed a lot of stuff and became less resistant to change, and that's really when the growth started to happen. I'm in a place now where I didn't know I could be where things are fantastic and only getting better. Paul Casey: So if someone would say, "But Cari, I'm just scared. I see this obstacle in front of me," what would be a baby step that would get them? Either what's their self-talk need to be or what would you say to hit the go button for them? Cari McGee: One thing I heard a long time ago, which was really, really good was that as babies, we all learn to walk and what if the first time we learned to walk and we fell down, we just said to ourselves, "All right, well, I guess I'm not a walker." Right? Paul Casey: Yeah. Cari McGee: No, none of us does that because when we're babies, we don't understand that there are points where you get scared. Babies don't have fear like that. They're just like, "Okay, this is where I have to go." And you have to tap into that primal part of you that's just like, "All right, here we go. Let's go. Let's do it. I'm a baby and I'm moving forward." Paul Casey: Love it, love it. So how can our listeners best connect with you? Cari McGee: Call me, text me, email me. Phone is (509) 430-5342. Email is cari@carimcgee.com. So first, then first and last. Paul Casey: Fantastic. Well, thanks again for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great optimistic place and keep leading well. Cari McGee: Awesome. Thanks, Paul, so much. Paul Casey: Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. It's from The Wiseman Group. What's interesting is there's a term called an Accidental Diminisher so you can actually take a little test to see if you inadvertently are becoming an accidental diminisher of the people that you lead. Even though your heart's in the right place and you have good intentions, there are some things that we can do to actually diminish the people around us. Of course, the author is trying to get you to be a multiplier instead of a diminisher. So you can check that out at The Wiseman Group. Paul Casey: Again, this is Paul Casey, and I want to thank my guest, Cari McGee from Keller Williams for being here today on the Tri-City Influencer Podcast. We also want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you making this possible, so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's Anthony D'Angelo. And he says, "Become addicted to constant and never ending self-improvement." So until next time, KGF, keep growing forward. Speaker 3: Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Speaker 3: Paul would also like to help you restore your sanity to your crazy schedule and getting your priorities done everyday by offering you his free control my calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool or open a text message to 72000 and type the word "growing." Paul Casey: The Tri-Cities Influencer podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.

Cynthia Marquez:            "Sometimes to begin a new story, you have to let the old one end." Author unknown. I am Cynthia Marquez and I am a Tri-City influencer. Paul Casey:                         Keep reinforcing that everyone must place the common good of the team above their own agenda. If one area wins, the whole team wins. Speaker 3:                           Raising the water level of leadership in the Tri-Cities of Eastern Washington, it's the Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast. Welcome to the TCI podcast, where local leadership and self leadership expert, Paul Casey interviews local CEO's, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit executives to hear how they lead themselves and their teams so we can all benefit from their wisdom and experience. Here's your host, Paul Casey of Growing Forward Services, coaching and equipping individuals and teams to spark breakthrough success. Paul Casey:                         Thanks for joining me for today's episode with Bob Wilkinson. He's the president of Mission Support Alliance and fun fact about you Bob is? Bob W.:                                Let's see,, I'll go with I'm a big fan of candy corn. So some people love that, some people hate it. I got requested to have some desserts from my family, so I brought some cupcakes that are candy corn cupcakes, much to the demise of my daughters, who were very unhappy with that. Paul Casey:                         I too am a candy corn fan. So we unite over that. Well we'll dive in after checking in with our Tri-City influencer sponsors. Neal Taylor:                        Hello, my name is Neal Taylor. I am the managing attorney for Gravis Law's Commercial Transactions team. The CT team helps business owners, investors, and entrepreneurs accelerate and protect their business value. Today we're talking about employment law and alcohol and cannabis licensing. Josh Bam and Derek Johnson are both here with me now to describe those practice areas. Take it Derek. Derek Johnson:                 Thanks Neal. I'm Derek Johnson, partner at Gravis Law. We find that many employers in Washington state simply don't have handbooks, employee policies, or any other written materials to protect themselves and their employees. Without having these types of policies in place, an employer can run into trouble by firing employees, even if the employee isn't properly performing or are causing issues at work. Even if an employer fire someone for performance issues, for example, but fails to take the proper steps, they may run into trouble by inadvertently exposing themselves to a wrongful termination suit. We build strong, predictable and protective employee policies to protect our client's business. Neal Taylor:                        That's true. Thanks Derek. And having employment policies in place when you're dealing with cannabis or alcohol licensing is especially important. We know that clean employment policies, clean corporate structure, and having an attorney that can work with the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board is critically important to protecting your business through licensing. The attorneys at Gravis Law have this experience. Visit us today www.gravislaw.com. Paul Casey:                         Thank you for your support of leadership development in the Tri-Cities. Well welcome Bob. I was privileged to meet you at a Leadership Tri-Cities conclusion. You had come in, you had mentioned Mission Support Alliance had supported Leadership Tri-Cities and the class and you came in on the last day and you shared some leadership tidbits. I'm like, I want to interview that guy. So I remember that day. Bob W.:                                I must have had some good notes given to me. Paul Casey:                         Yeah so take us back a little bit. What did you aspire to be when you grow up? What's been your journey along the way to the positions that you're in right now? Bob W.:                                It's interesting, I think my journey was a little bit by happenstance, but as I look back on it, it kind of ultimately fit where I really wanted to go in life. So my original career aspirations, like most kids my age at that time frame, was to play professional sports. And so- Paul Casey:                         Of course. Bob W.:                                Started off wanting to be a professional basketball player and height was a problem and had a significant influence in my life early by a high school football coach in a local community at Troxell, who really turned me on to football. And football became my passion. I went on to play collegiately and while I was in college, I was given the choice when I went from a scholarship to Montana State University, I met with the counselors about what career path to go and I said, "Oh I think I want to be an engineer." Bob W.:                                And they proceeded to write down on a piece of paper how much it would take, time to take to be an engineer, plus go to practice, plus do all those things. And summed me up to 26 hours in a 24 hour day and I hadn't slept yet. So ultimately I went into general studies and started general studies, went to business, took a couple of business classes, thought I wanted to be an educator. Started to take a couple of engineering courses and ultimately ended up getting an electrical engineering degree. But in that process, and one of the things that... The second part of that, that I really always wanted to do was coach. I wanted to be a football coach, wanted to be a basketball coach, wanted to coach at high school and maybe even on a college level. Bob W.:                                And ultimately I decided that money was more important to me than coaching at that time. Right, wrong, or indifferent. So my career started off in electrical engineering as a construction engineer. And slowly but surely kind of went from construction engineering, got thrown to the wolves right out of the gate, joined a group that had five or six project engineers that were running construction jobs and they all left in the first three months. So I was fresh out of college in charge of about $50 million in work scope that I really didn't know what I was doing. So I learned very quickly to rely upon a lot of people around me to be able to help me through that process, which was a big influence for the rest of my career to this point. And influenced a little bit from my dad. Bob W.:                                So long story short is, that went into operations management and supervising and then eventually becoming more of a little bit of in the management and general management. And at the core, the thing that I probably enjoy most about what I do is I've come to the conclusion I really like building teams. And allowing teams of individuals, whether those are engineers or managers, or anything else for that matter, kind of centered around a common focus and executing to that common focus. Paul Casey:                         The building teams part, was that from the sports or did you have some other lessons that sports sort of stayed with you and you bring to now leadership? Bob W.:                                I think it's a little bit of both. I take a great deal of pride in watching people succeed at whatever they're succeeding at. Not everybody has the same trajectory or wants in their lives and not everybody brings the same talents to the table. The nice thing is when you can put them together. And I'll use it in a football analogy, when you have linemen, defensive players, offensive players, quarterbacks, receivers, but everybody's working to a common goal, it's truly impressive to watch. And I take joy out of that and I take joy in watching people do things. Bob W.:                                It stems a little bit from me, my father told me when I was young and it has resonated with me for the rest of my life, is always try to get those around you that are smarter than you and more capable than you and let them be successful at what they are. And take every opportunity you can to learn from them. And so I've always attempted as best I can, no matter who I'm working with, for, or peers, or they report to me, to be able to find the highest, most talented people I can and help encourage them. And in the second time and then try to learn from them. Right? Paul Casey:                         Yeah that's fantastic. Along your journey, were you sort of summoned into positions or to did you aspire to be promoted as you made your way up the ladder? Bob W.:                                I would say I had interest in attaining the next level. I'm a highly hyper competitive person, so when I roll into a new role or opportunity, I'm always evaluating what it would take to be the person above me's role. I think that helps me provide them the service that they need to help manage up. But embedded in that, my opportunities in many cases stem from I've been a little bit young in my career in many cases into roles that I've moved into. And most of the roles I moved into for a period of time were roles that nobody else would take. They were troubled spots. I've had a couple of... One of my first plant manager roles that I was offered to take, the exiting plant manager that I was replacing, that he'd hired me into, told me I would be fired within a year. Not because I wasn't capable, because anybody that was in that role was not going to be successful. Bob W.:                                So part of my journey has always been along the roles of we have a problem here and this is going to be nasty. And I was more than willing I guess to kind of step into it to try and make a difference. And really that difference in many cases just had to do with, back to the point of I've been very fortunate to have a lot of very capable people around me that I either reported to, that worked for me, or that I worked with. Right? Paul Casey:                         I love that principle leading up that you said that you were always watching to see what does it take to do that job above you. And that's a great principle leading up for those that want to move up the ladder. Bob W.:                                Yeah. For me, it wasn't so much necessarily to move up the ladder, but in order for me... If your boss isn't successful, you're probably not going to be successful. Paul Casey:                         Very true. Bob W.:                                At the same time, in order to make sure that I could meet my expectations, part of what I always try to analyze is how do I give my boss whatever they need? And or, how do I help my boss in their weak areas in some cases, right? Everybody's got weaknesses and how do I supplement those weaknesses to where they're not weaknesses for them? They're strengths. And so that's just something that I've kind of always attempted to do. Sometimes better than others, but it's something I've always attempted. Paul Casey:                         Bosses love that. Bob W.:                                Yeah. Sometimes. Paul Casey:                         Well when you got in this position at MSA, what was your original vision and how has that morphed along your journey at the company? Bob W.:                                Well my current position as the president at MSA has been interesting. I've been there almost now two years and so a couple of years before that I was offered to become the COO and at the same time was with my predecessor, the president of the company, Bill Johnson at that time and came into Mission Support Alliance. The reason, frankly why I was selected for the COO role was I was there to supplement his weakness area in that he hadn't been a long-term Hanford person, so he didn't know the Hanford landscape. But he was considered to be a very good leader and he is and was and one of the best individuals I ever worked for. So together, really what we came in to do was Mission Support Alliance is there to really to enable the other Hanford contractors. We're the supporting role to do all the things behind the scenes to really to allow the other contractors that are doing that critical high risk work to do that. Bob W.:                                Being on the other side and being one of those other contractors at that time, one of the things that I think Mission Support Alliance was always struggling with was an understanding of truly what was needed on the other side to really truly enable them and be a true service provider. And what I mean by true service provider is not only give a service, but give a service in a way that they actually help them enable to do that. And so that was really what I aspired to initially as the COO and together as the president. And we made some adjustments, we brought some balance I think to people that actually spent time in the field and other venues with what I'll say, a kind of a commercialized approach to how to do that business and tried to meld those two together. Bob W.:                                And I think we had some success with that. So when I became the president, it was really to kind of continue the journey of really enabling and streamline in that part of the process and continue with some of that momentum that we built. I was able to bring in a lady by the name of Amy Basche that I've worked with before, that's from the business side of the house, where I'm really heavily strong in ops, back to pick the right person for the role around you. And she's been an incredible talent that we brought on that's helped us really start to shift into the next phases of this larger Hanford landscape as the mission continues to now kind of shift focus into eventually doing vitrification. Paul Casey:                         Yeah, I met Bill. Before I started doing this podcast, I did an old John Maxwell thing, which was take a leader to lunch and so I would do the same thing I'm doing now, asking questions to learn and grow myself. And Bill was the last one I think I had done that before I started the podcast and then the next month, he announced that he was leaving. And you were in that position of COO at that time. And he showed me in his office the... Was it an assessment that you guys took to what everybody's personality and strengths and weaknesses? Do you remember that? Bob W.:                                Yep. Oh yeah. We use an individual by the name of Luther Johnson that kind of came in and really kind of did an assessment that really told you, basically from about two years, two on, what you really are as an individual at your root base. So when you're on your high, high stress, you go back to that root base. It really is the phase you're acting in now, but also the base. And so it was interesting. So there's the thinker, the harmonizer, a rebel, and a couple of other ones. And it was interesting. So the harmonizer is one that's really highly tied to emotions. And the video they show is basically a couple of people up on screen crying. And sure enough, I'm a harmonizer. So I'm sitting there watching this thinking, wow, that doesn't look like me. I don't remember crying like that. Bob W.:                                But then we got into a little bit more depth about it's really about your emotions being kind of how you feel and what you do. And so anyways, Bill... Coupled with Bill, who's a strong thinker, who's a very logically based individual. And they start talking about the dynamics of how people interact when they have those different perspectives and they go on under stress. And so Bill and I were able to compliment each other very well there and it helped us give us insight on how to do that. Because Bill is very logical, very, very thinking, very smart. And of course I'm passionate about certain things, so we balance each other sometimes. And then sometimes we rotate it. So he'd always commonly joke that says, I just want everybody in the room to know that I'm the harmonizer today, not Bob. Right? So when he was being the nice guy in the room. Paul Casey:                         That's funny. Yeah. I'll still never forget the answer when I asked him, "How do you achieve work life balance?" And he said, "It's the team I put around me." Which it sounds like that's your philosophy too, from what you've already said a couple of times today, is I know that when I leave work I can shut off. Obviously I can get an emergency call or whatever, but for the most part I know all my people are carrying out the mission. And that is my best secret to work life balance. Bob W.:                                Yeah. And I think he's 100% right. I think in society we have a tendency to want to overload and within America, it's work till you drop. I think at some point you lose productivity if you don't have a fine balance of literally working and then having a balance of whatever your life is, to a degree, right? Whether it's your family, whether it's a hobby or whether there's having a balance. And I think a leader's responsibility is to ensure that they instill that culture by having the right amount of people and the right people in the right situations. And then making sure that you stay true to that. Paul Casey:                         Yeah. Well let's go there. You mentioned culture, you mentioned teams. So when you build a team, you create a culture. I know that starts with getting the right people on the bus. So what are you looking for when you're hiring? How do you assess everyone's on the right seat on the bus? What are the values you try to instill? All that stuff. Bob W.:                                Yeah so for me, I think it starts with when you go to hire somebody, you obviously need to make sure that somebody checks the blocks and has the skills that you're looking for. If it's an engineer, that they're an engineer. But that's really just I think a check in the blocks. For me, it's finding the right personality, the right type of individual that can interact and establish relationships and work in different cultures and climates and different people. And so to me, it's more the person, is who the person is, is more of a factor on whether they're going to succeed or not. From there I think it's when you get them on the bus, whatever the bus is that you're on. We all bring, even if we are a good relationship builders or good at working with other people and have a good skill set, we all have our natural tendencies, right? Bob W.:                                Some people are really hard pushers, some people really need to digest information for a period of time before they can do that. And then it's really identifying that and taking advantage of that from a team perspective that allows that person to be the most successful that they can in that environment. I once had an individual work for me that was a strong thinker, super, super intelligent guy, and I got frustrated when I first started working with him because when I was younger in my career because I'd ask him for something and I'm a quick decision maker. I make decisions pretty rapidly, but he's not. He's one of those ones that really had to digest information and it took me a little while to figure that out. Bob W.:                                But after I figured out that, okay, I can't give him something and ask him to give me an answer back in three seconds. It's not fair. He's not cut from that cloth. But if I give him something in advance and let him digest it and bring it back, usually what he always brought back to me was far better than anything I could have ever thought of. And so back to having the right people and then use them in the right situations. And that was a way to identify how to do that. Paul Casey:                         Yeah, studying your people so you know how to custom communicate with them. That's good. That's good. How do you keep your people affirmed, inspired over the long haul? Bob W.:                                That's a great question. I think that never ends. I think that's always ongoing. And I think that to a degree, it has to do with instilling value and purpose for everybody. Constantly evaluating that value and purpose, giving people a voice and allowing them to actually execute on that voice. So if you don't ask people for his opinions and don't allow people to act upon those opinions when you ask them and allow them to be successful, even though it might not be exactly what you wanted to do, you're probably not going to inspire them in a longer period of time to go off and achieve. And I think that is kind of an ever ongoing evolution that your kind of constantly evolving and constantly giving people opportunities and allow them to succeed in those opportunities. Paul Casey:                         Yeah. So Tri-City Influencer, it sounds like giving people a voice really is critical for their full engagement. No one wants to get stale in their leadership. So Bob, how do you stay relevant and on the cutting edge in your industry and how do you foster innovation in your organization? Bob W.:                                A couple of ways. That's a pretty round question or pretty large question. So I'll try to hit it in a couple of different areas. I'll start with the innovations. So we are in an ever evolving world right now that technology almost can't keep up with. We work in an industry that I work in with the department of energy industry that's highly regulated for a lot of reasons, right? There's a lot of hazards and you want to make sure to protect people. And those high regulations sometimes comes with a lot of hoops that you've got to jump through. Bob W.:                                So part of ours for innovations is to make sure that we have identified the right innovation that we need to bring to the table that has the right purpose because the effort to go put that innovation in place is quite a large lift. But if you've got high talented people, which we have some very, very innovative people, we just need to let them, once again, tell them what's the right one... Or ask them what the right one was and let them tell us and then give them the backing to actually go do it. And so that helps them with the inspiration part. Paul Casey:                         Yes. Bob W.:                                Right? So that was the first part of the question. I don't remember what the second part of the question was. Paul Casey:                         Staying relevant. Bob W.:                                Staying relevant for me, from a leadership perspective and to me is I have always... I do a lot of reflecting on myself, probably to the detriment of myself. So I do a lot of reflecting and look at myself and then try to adapt or modify myself to continue to enhance my capabilities. But I don't look for radical changes. I think at the core is you got to know who you are as an individual and stay true to that, who you are as an individual. And then I take obviously leadership opportunities. I take some leadership classes and from those you get something, right? There's a little bit of something. So I always just try to find that little something, then maybe I can go make a change. Bob W.:                                And then been back to the people around me, I learn a lot from those that I work around, watching how they do what they do well. Because frankly, I have leaders that work for me that are better leaders than me and in certain aspects and maybe all aspects. I have a great boss that I work with and I learn a lot from. So I take a lot of opportunity to try to learn from others and watch what they do well, as well as what they don't do well. Paul Casey:                         That was fantastic. Every person and every opportunity is a learning experience. I used to be a school principal in another life and I visited 52 other schools for that exact reason because there was something to learn in each one of those schools that I... What is it? The R and D, rip off and duplicate? I think that's what it's called. A little R and D on those visits to make my school the best it could be. So yeah, learning is awesome. Bob W.:                                The one thing I'd just like to add to that is I once went to a leadership seminar, it was women talking about leadership, inspiring leadership. And it was Carol Johnson from the local community that used to be a president of WCH back in the... Seven, eight years ago. And she said something that really resonated with me, is she said that she struggled to be a leader for a part of her career because she was trying to emulate her bosses. And her bosses were strong minded, strong willed- Paul Casey:                         Totally different style. Yeah. Bob W.:                                Yeah totally different style. And she just wasn't doing very well as a leader in that. And she finally realized that in order for her to be successful as a leader, she needed to be who she was. Which she's a very empathetic person, makes you feel very comfortable, very good with relationships. And she finally shifted to that. And she said that then she finally realized who she was and what her strengths were and stayed true to her strengths and tried not being somebody that she wasn't. And it worked well for her. She had a very good career and she was a really good leader and so that resonated with me a lot. Paul Casey:                         Yeah, authenticity and staying true to your strengths. Well hey, before we head into our next question, asking Bob what a good day is for him, a shout out to our sponsors. Paul Casey:                         When you purchase a new car, you hope that the warranty will be there if there are any problems. When men and women choose a life partner, there is no warranty and we're essentially committing to a relationship on an as is basis. That's great when the romance is high and the challenges are few. What about when the demands of career, finances and welcoming children into the mix happens? If it's a car, you know that regular service and maintenance can keep it running so that it lasts far after the warranty expires. Even the best model on the road however, will run down and begin to have problems if these crucial steps are not done. How is this like a longterm relationship? Do we just assume that it will last without periodic maintenance? Making certain that quality time together, staying connected physically, or communicating daily can support the ability of the relationship to last. Paul Casey:                         Just like anything of value, a committed relationship needs periodic maintenance and tune ups to keep it connected and exciting. When was the last time you considered a tuneup or engine check for your relationship? Sadly, many couples wait on an average of five years before they seek counseling or therapy to help them sort out what's not working. Don't wait. If communicating has become difficult, if trying to solve the smallest problem is leading to arguing or not speaking to one another or the challenges of parenting are driving each of you into different corners, be willing to seek help to get your relationship back on track. You know it can help you with that? Lynn Stedman, marriage and family therapist. Call (509) 366-1023. Paul Casey:                         So Bob, what makes it a good day for you personally? When you look back at the end of the day and you go, it was a good day. What kinds of things went on in that day to make it a good day for you? Bob W.:                                To me it was a good day is feeling like progress was made. I'm a very progress oriented person that I got to see something move forward. Sometimes that's a little nebulous on moving forward so and obviously finishing a project, making a progress on it. But to me, even more so is watching the excitement and folks being proud about what they do to deliver whatever that is. Watching the individual complete their task and in many cases watching a leader be successful with their group to show growth, to show accomplishment, back to that almost that coaching and that kind of that coaching, that teamwork part of it. Those are really important to me. Bob W.:                                And then probably one of my best days is finding out well after something's gone a long time ago to talk about legacy and leaving legacy, about seeing somebody be successful that you had some positive influence on that may have been years and years past that now you're watching them in their career and in their role do well. Or acknowledge, hey, I just did something that you told me I could have done a while ago and look, I just did it right there. That is... It's almost- Paul Casey:                         Like a proud papa. Bob W.:                                It's almost like a proud papa kind of to a degree, But it happens a lot. Right? And so you just never know the legacy that you leave behind with you. And I think to me, that's an important part is to make sure you left things better than when you came in. Paul Casey:                         Yeah. Because leadership is hard. So those moments where you get to relish in seeing someone in their sweet spot rock something with their team, is a very fulfilling leadership. Bob W.:                                Leadership is a very up and down heartbeat type of a role, right? There are highs and there are lows and there are everything in between. And so you got to focus on the highs when you have them and try to minimize those lows, whatever they happen. Paul Casey:                         All right, let's go behind the scenes in your life. Here are your best habits and your worst habits. Mr introspection. Bob W.:                                I don't know that I have a good habit. I'm not so sure. So I think my good habit is probably that I recognize to a degree that I am average. So I don't mean that in a bad way. I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed. I didn't get the best grades in school. I'd call myself a mediocre leader when it comes top to bottom. And I think I share the fact that I recognize that and use that to my leverage to allow other people to be better in those areas is something that I try to resonate and be proud of. Be humble about, to recognize that I'm not better than somebody else. Paul Casey:                         Yeah, I was going to say humility is what you're trying to define. Bob W.:                                Yeah. Yeah. And so my bad habits, some of my bad habits are... Geez, I've got a lot of them, right? I like to eat too much. I still eat like I'm a football player in college. I struggle with my weight. So my wife reminds me that I'm... She would define it as passionate about certain subjects that sometimes I really dig into and am hard to get off that subject. And I have a great wife and great daughters and great friends that remind me when I'm off center on something. With a baseball bat sometimes across the head to remind me that I should not be that way. So that's probably my worst habit I would say, minus my eating. Paul Casey:                         So since you're introspective, do you have your own personal growth plan that every year you either re-up or modify or anything like that? Bob W.:                                I don't know that I do. I don't have a written personal growth plan. I clearly have items that I am always striving to decide where I need to improve upon and evaluate. Being the reflective person that you called introspective, I think I drive my wife crazy in that I have a tendency when I know I have a big conversation coming up the next day with somebody that's going to be a potentially a controversial one, a hard conversation, I will play that conversation out in my mind before the conversation 55,000 different ways. Paul Casey:                         That's called rehearsing. Bob W.:                                It is to a degree. If this happens, this individual might react this way. I mean do they do that? And then on the backend of it is... And I drive some of my team nuts sometimes too is... And I'll do it off today too, is when I walk out of here after this podcast and this conversation with you, I will process this podcast and I will dissect it six ways to Sunday about where I did good, where I didn't do good, where I could've done something, said something different. I should've done that right. Oh I did this pretty well. And so my reflection is almost real time and never ending, which is I guess maybe a bad thing. Sometimes it's hard to get out of my own head when it becomes that. But that's just how I've always been. Paul Casey:                         Yeah. The good thing is everything's worth evaluating. Anything worth doing is worth evaluating. So that's the good part. The bad part is that rehearsing in your head- Bob W.:                                Stop the evaluation. Paul Casey:                         Yeah. At what point do you just go, all right, it's over? How about a favorite quote? Do you have a favorite quote? Bob W.:                                No, I don't know that I have quite a favorite quote. But I have up on my wall, one of the presidents, and I can't remember off the top of my head which one it is now, that really talked about the man in the arena. It's called the man in the arena if you look it up, right? Paul Casey:                         Roosevelt I think. Bob W.:                                Yeah I think it was Roosevelt. And in summary, it kind of goes along the lines of there is always those that are on the periphery of things, but not willing to step in the fight. But the man or in this case woman or person that's willing to step in the fight and have that move forward is really the true winner. And so to me is and it stems back to these roles that I've taken is, there are always those that are willing to sit on the periphery and throw rocks and stones at everything you do. But the people that I really admire are the ones that are willing to step in the middle of that arena and attempt to make it a difference. Right? To go off and try to do something to make things better. And so for me that's important and that quote resonates with me a lot. So I can't... It's about three paragraphs. Paul Casey:                         I think it's whose face is marred with dust and blood or something in that one. I'll have to put that in the show notes. I'll dig it up. How about a book that every leader should read? Bob W.:                                I like Maxwell books just because they're simple to read. Paul Casey:                         Me too. Bob W.:                                I like the 21 laws. Paul Casey:                         Classic. Bob W.:                                To me, I'm a simple digestive information and if you get things too technical, it just goes right on top of my head. And that one you can pick up, you can easy to resonate with, you can get your mind wrapped around it. For me, that one resonates well with me. I think every one of them you can learn from. It just really depends on what you like. Right now I got the General Mattis books, right? The Call to Chaos and I'm just getting into that. But I find him to be an incredible individual and somebody that I've always seen to be very forthright in how he talks to the point of being blunt, but in a way that doesn't offend. And so I think that establishing trust with people is willing to have a hard conversation and a hard dialogue to tell them the honest truth, which in society right now, today, in some cases people don't like, don't want to have honest truth conversations. Paul Casey:                         True. Bob W.:                                Or they can't have it in a way that doesn't completely offend the other person. Right? And so I'm kind of finding that one pretty intriguing and pretty interesting right now. Paul Casey:                         So if you left a letter on your desk for the leader who came after you, there's going to be a day. All of these contract renewal things, right? There's going to be a leader that comes after you. What would you put in that letter to that person? Bob W.:                                I think it would start with just trust yourself and trust the people around you. We in society sometimes have a tendency to not want to trust people around you or think that people are doing something with ill intentions. And I've said this and I say this to our company a lot and to our folks in leadership, that nobody comes to work or nobody does anything on a day with intentions of causing ill harm. Paul Casey:                         Right. Bob W.:                                They come to be successful and do something successful. So trust those around you, that they have a noble intention. Paul Casey:                         Some positive intent. Yeah I love that. Bob W.:                                Yeah they have a noble intention and then encourage them to attain that and give them the backing to allow them to do it and stand back and watch them do it. Paul Casey:                         Mm-hmm (affirmative) any other advice you'd give to new leaders or anyone that wants to keep growing and gaining more influence? Bob W.:                                I don't know that there's ever a new leader. I think you always in your life are always leading in some way or another. Whether you're trying to lead your sibling into a game or lead your parents into making a decision to give you McDonald's or whatever the case is. So my thing to new leaders is don't be afraid to be a leader. Don't be afraid to step up and take the assignments and don't be afraid to take the hard assignments. And then take every opportunity you can to learn. Paul Casey:                         Good stuff. How can our listeners best connect with you? Bob W.:                                Oh boy. Well I obviously am a Tri-Citian and I've been here most of my life. I work out at Mission Support Alliance. We're in both the Hanford system as well as in the Tri-Cities. You can hook up with me on Facebook or on LinkedIn. I'm a lot more active on LinkedIn than I am on Facebook. My wife, I let them do the Facebook stuff for me. I should probably do it more often, but I'm in both those LinkedIn and Facebook space. Paul Casey:                         Yes. Love LinkedIn. Well thanks Bob for all you do to make the Tri-Cities a great place and keep leading well. Let me wrap up our podcast today with a leadership resource to recommend. Started a new aspect of my business called leader launcher. Leader launcher is for emerging leaders and young professionals who want to go on a leadership development journey. And so it's a monthly, two hour workshop on one leadership proficiency and then in between the months seminars is a mastermind group where you get to apply what you have learned with other leaders here in the community. So you can go to leader-launcher.com to sign up and hope you'll be a part of that community. Paul Casey:                         Again, this is Paul Casey. You want to thank my guest, Bob Wilkinson from Mission Support Alliance for being here today on the Tri-City Influencer Podcast. We want to thank our TCI sponsors and invite you to support them. We appreciate you both making this possible so we can collaborate to help inspire leaders in our community. Finally, one more leadership tidbit for the road to help you make a difference in your circle of influence. It's an Albert Einstein quote. "Try not to become a man or woman of success, but rather try to become a man or woman of value." KGF, keep growing forward. Speaker 3:                           Thank you to our listeners for tuning in to today's show. Paul Casey is on a mission to add value to leaders by providing practical tools and strategies that reduce stress in their lives and on their teams so that they can enjoy life and leadership and experience their key desired results. If you'd like more help from Paul in your leadership development, connect with him at growingforward@paulcasey.org. for a consultation that can help you move past your current challenges and create a strategy for growing your life or your team forward. Speaker 3:                           Paul would also like to help you restore sanity to your crazy schedule and get your priorities done every day by offering you his free control mind calendar checklist. Go to www.takebackmycalendar.com for that productivity tool. Or open a text message to 72000 and type the word growing. Paul Casey:                         Tri-Cities Influencer Podcast was recorded at Fuse SPC by Bill Wagner of Safe Strategies.  

Jeff Banman:                 This is going to be a fun episode this week. I've got Benjamin Martin with me. He's a captain in what we will term as a pretty large Metro fire department there in the Virginia area, not Northern Virginia where I grew up, but the lower half of Virginia. Uh, and you know, I getting to know Benjamin reading some of his other stuff in the past, you know, and man, I know you like, like engine company work and I'll forgive that you know right now, but, uh, uh, we'll have some banter about that. But listen, you know, Benjamin is been a pretty, uh, kind of a rising star in some of the areas, was a really unique look at leadership, emotional intelligence, organizational culture. Uh, you know, I listened to you speak here last October, uh, at firehouse expo talking about toxic leadership. Uh, you've had articles across fire engineering, fire rescue, uh, fire department training network, uh, and a bunch of others. And I know now, uh, in conjuncture your full time job, you're also running, uh, embrace the resistance. So let's actually start there cause I think that'll give us a good baseline. And understanding why today's conversation gets to be important. So, Benjamin, thanks for joining me today. I really appreciate it. And you know, give me some, give me some background on why embrace the resistance and what are you resisting?Benjamin Martin:          Well, thanks for having me on Jeff. I've been looking forward to this for a long time, so hopefully we'll, we'll give them something entertaining and informational. So when we talk about it and embrace the resistance, it's really a journey that started 18 years ago. I was a volunteer and I was asked to be a duty officer, which was basically the equivalent of a frontline supervisor. And for me it was, you've been here the longest, which I think at the time had been a year. So a volunteering and I had the seniority and uh, that was it. Like I went in and I worked with people and I barked at them and they barked back and whether it was effective or not, like I don't even know. Looking back now, I don't particularly. It was, but uh, like, so then you freeze that for another eight years and I get hired by a professional department and I decide that let's not make that mistake again.Benjamin Martin:          Let's take some time to develop. But I'm the type a go getter guy. Thank you. You know, and I had some early experiences in my department where I was just working for some terrible, terrible leaders, uh, not human beings, great people, good hearts, just not same boat, same boat. They were never prepared to lead people. And if you think that's not important, then you're probably are way early on in your leadership journey or you're way late. Uh, which is I hope where we can get you in this conversation with kitchen, looking at what you could be doing right now. So, uh, I made it eight years and I worked for good leaders and I worked for bad and then I got promoted and I don't know why. I don't know whether it was because I considered myself a well-read and into the job. So I knew admin stuff.Benjamin Martin:          But I also knew ops and I love pulling hose as much as I do coaching and just building people up. So I really thought that with my energy and with what I knew and my passion is training that it would just fall in and it was just click and it did for about a year. And what I found was, uh, we had a, a senior firefighter that I worked with. He got promoted six months after I got there and then they sent us another senior firefighter and then he got promoted three months later and then it was a spoon, like what's the secret sauce over here at this station? So they sent someone that, uh, affectionately called George now and that's not his real name and his name changes as I traveled throughout the country. But George is the one I usually settle on. And George was a firefighter that was senior to me and George was in a bad spot.Benjamin Martin:          He was going through some stuff that involved a domestic realignment and he was having some issues with accountability for his actions. There were some kids in the mix and young Lieutenant Martin at the time too, had a one-year-old and a pretty steady rock solid marriage. Tried to be empathetic to this gentleman. And that worked for maybe a few months and then it didn't. And when I say it didn't, it was oil and water, it wasn't anything close to mixing. And I realized, and then over the next four months when I finally got to a point where I watched him break down and just cry, that I was probably the most ineffective leader I had ever seen. And I always used to joke about all the people I complained about, but I wouldn't want to work for me back then. Looking back, it was, it was bad. And so, uh, I obviously got in the rumor mill, I got a lot of resistance from folks, even folks that I trusted, you know, I would go with them with things.Benjamin Martin:          And you know, this situation with George wasn't one side and it was very complicated. You know, leadership is, you know, just not black and white at all. And I was trying, I always had it. I always had his best intentions at heart, but I really struggled and communicating with him, I just couldn't seem to get on the same page as him because I had the expectations of a leader of a player and he was looking for the minimum and maybe even below that a little bit. And uh, I forget who said it. This isn't novel, but I love it and I try to let it, you'll know a good leader because they'll understand what it takes to lead someone from where they are instead of where you want them to be and the ability to go from where you are currently to where they are and spend time with them and build them up and encourage them and forgive them when they screw off and be humble about your success and acknowledge that you will have failure coming and walk with them.Benjamin Martin:          That journey, like that's a true for me, leader, follower, dynamic. And I don't see a lot of that and I didn't, I didn't deliver that to George. I just didn't. Um, and more so, you know, we're going to talk about today. Uh, it got to a point where George, where he was getting affirmation and confirmation that he was doing the right thing by fighting me from people, even other leaders, even people in my chain of command. And by the time all the facts come out and you've got, you know, basically dereliction of duty and subordination and not checking truck shop, not wearing his uniform, downloading copyrighted, uh, pornography on the station, wifi, just like ludicrous thing. Uh, and he stayed resolute to the whole thing of like, you can't touch me. You can't touch me. You can't touch me. And then when I finally was able to get him on paper, he still never technically got a writeup because of the events that happened where he broke down and I was like, Oh crap.Benjamin Martin:          Like we know this guy doesn't need to be fired. He doesn't even need it to lose money. He just needs to be loved a little bit. Like, let's get them in a safe place. Let's figure out who the people are that can help him. And I wasn't, I wasn't that guy. And we realized that. And I actually left that team, that place that I wanted to be because it wasn't fair to move him and let him catch the rumor mill, you know, a why of you are only gonna move after six months. And I took that one across the chin and I watched people that knew me and knew my heart just turn a blind eye and a cold shoulder to me. I watched people as I reached out, tell me one thing to my face and then turned around and stabbed me in the back and it was lonely and it's led to depression and weight gain. And now fast forward a year and I'm in counseling myself and my own marriage and I'm like say what an arrogant piece of crap.Benjamin Martin:          Like, like I had it together, which I obviously didn't. And it was at some point during that year where I was dealing with the rumor mail. Um, and I was working, trying to redeem myself and I was trying to get where home was the priority instead of work. Cause I was way in over my head at work and committed to too many things and I was flowing a handline teaching recruits, uh, about nozzle reaction and I set it down and turn it off and turn it off and then set it down and the said, so basically the only time you experienced this reaction is when it's flowing and yeah. And he's like, okay, so just don't flow it like joking. And I'm like, well yeah, I guess, but that doesn't make for a terribly effective fire attack. And I was like, you know, that's the same damn thing for leadership really. When you think about it. Like anytime I've set something in motion, it's reasonable to predict that there's going to be some kind of counter reaction. Unfortunately the fire service as a whole on its culture has gotten to this. Like there's only so much value that I can have. And if this guy has a little bit of that, then I can't have that. And so they try to take it like character assassination and gossip and rumormongering and just nasty things.Jeff Banman:                 And I had to hide somebody. Yeah, I had somebody to go a couple months ago, you know, and I can't remember if the fire service or law enforcement, it's across the board, military fire service across the board, any of ours and out of services we are great at one thing and that is eating our own and we want to just devour our own people and it's absurd and you know, it sucks that it's still going. I feel like it's getting better, but man, it's still like so prevalent. It just, it's tough. Yeah.Benjamin Martin:          Yeah. And just a sidebar here before I've finished that thought, if I can even remember, it was like what you and I are talking about, if not hugs and kisses, we treat each other with kid gloves all the time and we don't, you know, get raw and get real with people and tell them where they need to improve and even demonstrate that by letting people make fun of us. That's not at all what I'm proposing, but there's a difference in my mind between busting somebody's chops and taking them in the balls. I should talk about. It's like dad versus a haymaker. When you jabbed somebody that's friendly, that kid, you know, that's, that's playground stuff. But when you try to land a haymaker on somebody, especially when they don't even know they're boxing with you, that's bullshit. Right? And then a lot of times leaders get in positions where they feel threatened, they feel challenged, and so they throw haymakers.Benjamin Martin:          Uh, and then people on the other side of that respond by throwing more haymakers. And if there's one thing about the fire service, we love to run and tell our peers what's happened to try to build support and get our version of events out there first. And if you're in a formal leadership position, you're really hamstrung in that race because you can't, it's their privacy. So you sit there and you take it and you hear things about yourself and you're like, that's a, that's not true. See, that's certainly not true about who I am. See that never happened. And it's like cow, like day. How do you, how do you even start to get to the root of these things? And you can't. And so in that moment flown that hand on, I made a decision, I was like, listen, you know I'm gonna, I'm going to do everything I can to get better as a leader using George as kind of a near miss.Benjamin Martin:          And then it's in my heart to travel and speak to anybody that'll hear me about this message, hoping that they never ever make the same mistake. And there were other things happening concurrent, which we could talk about where I took a disc assessment, which is basically like a behavior tool, you know about personality traits and dominance and influence themselves and the woman, God, I remember this woman, Jeff from HR looking at me and I knew her. We had a relationship. She had been my coach for about six months and she's looking at this thing and I'm like, just say it. And she's like, ah. And I'm like, Nancy, aK can't like whatever it is. Say it. I need to hear it. And she's like, you ever been accused of being arrogant? And I'm like, yes, all the time. They're clearly wrong. Move on now.Benjamin Martin:          I'm just kidding. No. Tell me about that. Like, tell me about this, this arrogance phase. And so we went through and, and I thought about it and it basically was, you know, overconfident, arrogance lacks empathy and it's like, wow, I didn't think I was coming across that way. I'm a fun guy. Like I was a bartender for years. I played rugby. Like I love socials. Like I'll, I have friends, I have relationships. Like why am I so ineffective at work and this, and about the same time that that disassembled assessment was happening, that I got that feedback. I went up to Lieutenant and I didn't get it. And, uh, I was, uh, I guess I had enough of a relationship with one of the guys on the interview panel that after they made the promotions and then three months later they made more and I got in that round, he was able to talk to me and he goes, you ever has anybody ever tells you that you're arrogant and, or, or her confident?Benjamin Martin:          I'm like, Sue, are you kidding me? And he basically, I almost felt like Nancy had emailed him the notes from the district assessment because he was going for batim and so I called Nancy up and I'm like, tell me more. And that's when my journey down, this emotional intelligence piece started, which was like, and I'll fight this to the death. Great leaders are not just made, but they die and they're reborn and they, they start over from scratch and then they learn and they, and they get better that way. It's just, there's no pinnacle success where you stay there and you certainly don't arrive knowing everything. And to think that is just ludicrous. Which takes me back to the volunteer thing. Why didn't anybody ever like, Hey, what do you like? What do you think about leadership? What do you think a good leader is? What do you think a bad leader is? What would make somebody feel good about you? What would make somebody not trust you? And just to even have that conversation would have been a good platform of, well maybe I don't have all the answers, which is a leadership. You're clearly not going to have all those answers. I'm getting to a place where you can be humble about it.Jeff Banman:                 You're spot on man. I mean, I think that that even, you know, my first massive touch, you know, with like Swift kick in the balls, uh, you are completely failing as a leader, you know, came. And then on the flip side of it, the first book I read is Daniel Goleman's 6,000 leadership. Uh, you know, what she takes and brilliantly lays out, you know, a deep seated understanding of emotional intelligence as it relates to, you know, very distinct styles of leadership that have to be applied in the right time with the right individual, right in the right context. Like there's so many components to it. And, you know, I, you know, I, I tell this story a bunch and because I'm listening to it and he's talking about like the commanding style of leadership and you know, I had just grown up in the fire service, gone in the military, came back from the fire service fire service culture changed, was not doing great with the shifts in the culture if you will say that, you know, late nineties, uh, changes, they're different.Jeff Banman:                 Uh, we're touchy feely for when I grew up and the expectations that I had, you know, for people. And, and it literally, you know, he was talking about, you know, all the great things about being in that commanding solid leadership. And I'm like, yes, yes, yes, we're going to turn around, we're going to try back from my house. We're going gonna make sure everybody listens to this. And they started talking about like all the consequences and all the negativity and all the crap that comes on. You exhaust your people and exhaust. And I was like, shit, he is totally right. And I totally screwed their thought. Yeah, man. I mean it's, I think you're right when you say leaders aren't, aren't even, you know, they're definitely not born. They don't even necessarily grow into it. They may grow into it a little bit and then they fail and fall on their face and then they pick themselves up and they keep going. So it is a moving target, you know, perpetually you will never arrive at a destination where you can look around and be like, okay, I got it. Because everything around you is changing constantly.Benjamin Martin:          Yeah. I can tell you that I think the best leaders, when I look back, and this was what I'm trying to model myself, is when you work for someone who's on their leadership journey and is introspective of that journey and willing to share what they're feeling and thinking about it, right? So that's not even confident, but they're just that secure that they don't have all the answers and they're willing to let people look in, you know, to see what's on the other side of them, including all the, I don't know, I don't know what to do in this situation. Let's try to figure it out together. That's where people buy in. But presenting yourself as arrived and pretending just because your vehicles cross now that you have everything that you need to be successful and everything they need to be successful, it, it just doesn't happen that way.Benjamin Martin:          Um, and saying like, you know, I know there's people listening that are like, Oh, this is crap and this is what I would tell people. Have you ever had a moment where you're having an argument with someone and you realize they're right and you're still not relieved that you know the correct answer, right? The feeling isn't enlightenment. It's resentment that this individual has the correct answer and whether they're your boss or your wife or your husband or, or whatever, it's just so counterintuitive. Like if we're trying to get the right things so we can move forward and, and be successful and experienced success as a group, then I should be happy that this guy or girl has the answer. And all I can think about is discounts. If we can know it all or this guy's an asshole. Of course he has the right answer. And that's the kind of unpredictability that, that people, because even you may never even know as a leader that they're thinking that like I was before the disc assessment had no idea. So yeah, I mean just this introspection and self awareness and social awareness is way, way, way more important than I think. Anything else out there that's been written about leadership? Well that's just my opinion.Jeff Banman:                 Yeah man. No I cause listen, it's a, you know, it's uh, there are so many pieces to this when you begin to, you know, break things down in one, you know, we have this idea of ourself and you know, last week I was telling you in the last week you had bill McKernan on and we really kind of talked about identity and just this very challenging conversation to be a part of. It was phenomenal and challenging all at the same time. But you know, we have perception of self and then there is the perception of who we are from the outside and rarely do those ever really match up. Right. I mean, I internally, I see myself who is, you know, who I am, where my intention lies, you know, I mean even with my wife I will like, like I will screw up. I didn't mean to you, I didn't intend to, but I still did.Jeff Banman:                 You know what I mean? And that's then that triggers for me this shame and guilt and Oh, I'm such a fuck up arm, such a screw up or whatever it might be. Right. And so this internal battle triggers and it's kind of designed around what body didn't intend to hurt you or say that or be mean. You know, that wasn't like at my core, but she can't see that. And it's the same thing in the firehouse. Like we can't see inside each other as to how we feel or what's going on. And yeah, you're right. It's not about giving you a hug. I'm happy to kick you in the ass and move you down the road. But at the same time, I think the biggest thing I've learned in youth, you feed back to this, I try to now, I kind of look at everybody like a five, six or seven year old.Speaker 3:                    AndJeff Banman:                 when they're kind of acting out, when there's some behavior out of the norm, it's like, okay, what's going on here? Because you're a little kid is showing up and you know, you, you feel unsafe, you feel unheard. You know what I mean? There's something causing this, this reaction, you know, cause I was, the more I've gone even deeper and deeper and deeper into some other areas, man, I, I really see that we're all kind of, you know, six year olds running around in grown up bodies. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, we are, because we don't feel great about ourselves. We don't feel safe in the environment. We don't feel safe to communicate things or say things, you know? Now we're scared we're going to be judged. I mean, there's all kinds of behavioral patterns that come out when sometimes all we need are like, you know, a little Jeff just needs a hug. You know what I mean? Like a little George pulled George just needed somebody to freaking, you know, needed it, needed to crawl up on dad's lap somewhere and feel safe for a minute. Cause he's unsafe at home. He's unsafe in the firehouse, he's unsafe in his own career. He's unsafe and his own decisions, like he's just completely unsafe everywhere.Benjamin Martin:          Yeah. And a lot of times people, no go, sorry, go ahead Jeff.Jeff Banman:                 No, I was going to say, and, and, and you know, and he's looking around and like nobody's providing it. You know what I mean? So goBenjamin Martin:          right. Yeah. So a lot of leaders, and I don't know whether this was because we grew up under Maslow's needs or, or what it is, but we focus a lot on physical safety, right? So they're turning men and women to the firehouse from the fire scene and then getting them home. Uh, and that's how we're wired biologically. What is rumbling in the Bush? Is they're going to eat me or do I need to run away from it? Can I punch it in the face and survive? But that's not what threatens people. On a day to day basis at all. Um, if you've read anything, uh, David rock, uh, I think you and I have agreed eight days of the neuroscientist and he talks about that five times a second. The brain is scanning for threats in, uh, social domains, which are status, any press, a status, any threat to certainty, autonomy, relatedness or fairness.Benjamin Martin:          And it's a scarf model for short, but most of the time, our subconscious, and if it's extreme, our conscious, but at least our subconscious is hijacked scanning for these things. When you're asking someone to show up completely to work and tune out the fact that they're going through a divorce or that their son has an appointment with the pediatric oncologist on Monday and then say, I still need 100% of you. It's like, no, ma, you got 50%, you can have 50% of my a game today. And you're like, Oh, well, no, I told you 100% no, that's less. And so that's when you get into this idea of having empathy and you know, recognizing how someone could feel in that moment of uncertainty about their son's life or I'm certainly about their marriage and then no matter what they're doing, they're completely helpless, at least in the cancer scenario. So there's no autonomy. Nothing they do makes it any better. It's completely reactive and that kind of stuff. It's just, it's like a backpack of rocks that people are walking around with. And we joke about how heavy arts here is. People are walking around with life circumstances that are way heavier on themJeff Banman:                 way. Yeah.Benjamin Martin:          Yeah. I love this stuff. Keep, keep going. Sorry.Jeff Banman:                 Nah dude. Keep going. Keep rocking and rolling. Now this is part of the show man. We just get into conversation and we just go interrupt each other, cut each other off. Jump in. This is, this is the way this show works, so just go, don't worry about it.Benjamin Martin:          You know, I wish, I wish what I talked about with sexier so I could have pack rooms and it's just not, it's never going to be fire attack. But I've tried to train people to anticipate people's reactions the way we would fire behavior, right? And just pulling it off and giving them chances to van and safe places and not allowing themselves to get in where they shouldn't be. And really approaching it from that fire service angle. Some sets, what we know, but what we're talking about here, like there's always a go or no go with a person or go and no go yet. And whether you have that conversation with them, whether you give them this thing that could potentially crush them, this feedback, uh, whether it's a friend who's struggling with alcoholism or whether it's a, you know, buddy who's got a wife, who's cheating on him.Benjamin Martin:          Like at what point do you have this conversation and how do you have this conversation? And there's so much thought that needs to go into that rather than just having a knee jerk reaction. And that's why a lot of times you get leaders when they feel challenged because I said so. It comes out, which is the utmost dumbest thing that you could ever say. And I know we're modeled after after the military, and that's very chain of command for you, but if you're not looking for feedback, you're going to lose your people at some point or another because of what's happening in their lives. And that's how I lost George as I was completely confident in the direction I was going, and I was not willing to consider how he was doing in that moment. And I pressed on and I dragged him with me through the mud because he couldn't walk because he had no strength to, and I deserve every bit of of the Slack that I get from that time with him because I did everything right by the organization or policy, and I did everything wrong by as just a human being.Benjamin Martin:          And I really wish I could have that back. I really do.Jeff Banman:                 Well, you know, I, and I would challenge you to say it's good that you had it. Yes, I understand what you're saying. Yes, it would be great to have it back, but yes, you wouldn't be, you wouldn't have the introspection today having not had it. Like you know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't have that anchor to really understand. I mean, this is, this is where I boil down today and, and you know, most of the listening audience gets it. I mean this is, this is the deal. You, you know, either listen to the podcast or you don't, right. You either want to grow and develop yourself in your career and your home life in every aspect of your life or you don't. Right. And we've got plenty of cross fire service, military law enforcement community that are just very rigid in their beliefs, in their processes and where they sit and you know, as it should be.Jeff Banman:                 And you know, they'll figure it out one day or they won't. That's kind of where it comes down to. But what I believe fundamentally, like all of the labels we put on things, you know, leadership is not 10 things to do, right. It's not an act of doing to me is leadership is how you show up, right? It is a state of how you are being, not what you're doing in the context of leadership. And, and I've really over my time now across the fire service, a military agency doing business just across the board. Here's what I continually come back to. And this is really where I've sat. So this is how we're going to pack your next room. Uh, it is the ultimate human question and it was running all day all the time. And it is, am I safe? That is just the ultimate question.Jeff Banman:                 And like you said, you know, we're so well developed in physical safety and creating physical safety for ourselves as AR, as across the service for our community, for our country, for our people around us, like work 20, 24, seven. It's our job, keep everybody safe and we've become great at that. Where we fail. That's a physical aspect where we can fail mostly miserably is creating an emotional level of safety for everyone around us at firehouse, at home, right? With the family, with the friends like this, this place where I can say, listen, I'm not doing great. Listen, I need some help. Listen, I'm struggling at home. Or Hey, I've gone back to drinking, or Hey, I'm thinking about killing myself. Like I'm really struggling here and we don't do that. That to me is now becoming a 21st century leader across the services is being the guy or the person or the woman, whoever it is, being the person that just generates a level of emotional safety around them, that people are willing to come speak and communicate. That to me is the secret sauce today.Benjamin Martin:          Yeah, and that's your, I mean, when you're talking about trust, that's all that is. It's just emotional security that, you know what? If I tell you something for if I follow you, it won't. By late any of the things we talked about, it won't violate my sense of status. It won't violate certainty about the work. It won't violate my autonomy, you know? And that's not to say that I get to do whatever it is I want to do. It just means I don't feel like you're not battling my opinion that you've considered me or you've heard me and yet I understand you've chosen to go a different way, but at least you authentically heard me. And if you've ever worked on a committee and submitted something and then the fire chief did whatever they wanted to do, that's a complete waste of time. And there's nothing like that hurts.Benjamin Martin:          That gut punch hurts as much as tripping and falling and skinning your knee. You know, it's the same pathways in the body, social pain and physical pain. But that's when you look at leadership leadership, for me, it's like a technology, right? It's no different than the gear that we have, right? But the problem is that we're carrying around 2020 gear where we can go deeper and further and survive hotter temperatures than we ever have with advancements in technology, like thermal imaging, with all this crazy training about re COVs and whether in the Pfizer's campus, there's another conversation, but you've got all this investment in that. But the leadership theory is still stuck in like late nineties right? We, you know, we're, we're still on this servant leadership mindset. And that's being generous. That's seen like I think the best departments are in this are in the servant leadership, but the majority of the fire service, we're still a little bit stuck back in theory ex, uh, leadership where like people are inherently lazy and I'm supposed to tell them what to do and the gap that's gonna come that, that I feel like, you know, I follow the statistics for people that are killing themselves in the fire service and law enforcement.Benjamin Martin:          And I'm not an expert on those. I just know that it's going one way and I think it's going off as fast as it is one, because we've got reporting thanks to people like Jeff Hill on firefighter behavioral health and you've got people that are advancing this peer support narrative. So we're talking about it more, which obviously is gonna make you find more instances of this. But I also think at the same time, that is in response of living in a world in which you're always expected to be on with technology and social media. And you've got so much pressure socially to have a lifestyle and for your wife and your kids that's competitive with what you're seeing on Instagram. And then we text each other instead of call, we email instead of visiting them in person and our physical relationships. Your period like I mean Thanksgiving is a perfect example.Benjamin Martin:          We just celebrated that, right? And I'm guilty of this too. I texted five of my closest friends instead of calling them because I was able to do that in five minutes instead of what would have taken me five hours. But Lord, help me if I find out six months from now that one of those phone calls, I would've found out my buddy's wife was leaving him and I could have talked with him about that. And like that's the piece we're missing. And because leadership's is technology and technology always improves in response to need. It's going to be a little bit, it's going to be you and I on the fringe talking about emotional intelligence and being authentic and humble and, and demonstrating humility. And there's going to be a core group of rock stars, air quotes, rock stars, like do whatever I say do it how I do it. You know, fuck you. If you don't like what I say. It's like, no man, that's, that's, that's crap. That's absolute crap and that's the best way to run somebody into the ground and ruin an organization. And when those jackasses promote high enough where they get the right audience that's promoted high enough, then that's what tanks organizations. And you do not have to look far to find legacy fire departments with toxic cultures because of that.Jeff Banman:                 Yeah, I was the Jack. I was one of their jackasses, you know 20 [inaudible].Benjamin Martin:          Yeah, I was. I totally was.Speaker 4:                    All right, we're going to take a quick break to let you know that this episode is brought to you in part by brute force training. When you're ready to be in the physical condition necessary to meet the rigors demands and expectations of your profession and check out the team over@bruteforcetraining.com and pick up their gear. I promise you, it will put you in the condition you need to be in for this moment. And the next you can use the discount code op mindset that's open mindset in the team will take a little bit off the top for ya. Now always remember, train accordingly. Now let's get back to the show.Benjamin Martin:          I totally was too. Um, but you're at least smart enough that to learn and value the mistakes you've made and leverage those so that others don't have to make that. Whereas most people are just either embarrassed or they're too proud to look back and it, you know, like in my instance, it would be all the fault lies with George. That's not true. George has some responsibility in that I as a leader, should automatically as a default be at 51% automatically and could go higher. But to think that George has all of that flames now, now there's, there's many, many, many, many things I now know that I could have done better, which is why we go around talking about these things.Jeff Banman:                 Well, I man, I think, I think this is so I'm going to like banter with me on this one. I'm just going to idea coming to mind as we're talking. You know, it's interesting, right? Because we live in a world and I'm gonna, you know, fire service, law enforcement, military, and we have a very specific job to do. And in doing that job, we need to operate at an entire different level. Okay? And we do need to do things successfully. Like they know, compartmentalize the emotional content and separate ourselves from what's going on at home or you know, what's going on in the firehouse or you know, what's happening there. We have to, we have to understand how we kind of turn those channels down or close, you know, boxers, channels up for the time that we need to be fully present and in action, right?Jeff Banman:                 To respond an emergency, to fight a fire, to make an arrest, to do X, Y, andZ to go to war, to do whatever. Right? And all of our existence is centered around those moments. And the reality is, we all know this. If we're honest, those moments are so brief in, Oh, what is it? I don't even know what the statistics is. Like how many, how many did you spend a 25 year career in the fire service? How many years did you spend actually on a heightened emergency scene? You know what I mean? Like they're required maybe to, you know, maybe five if you're in a bust ass department, right? I mean it's not that much comparatively, but all of our world is centered around those few moments in time. Like all the training, the culture of the conversation, you know, fuck that, settle down, shut up, do your job kind of stuff.Jeff Banman:                 All settled for that one moment. And then we've left the 90% of the rest of our time to try to assimilate into those moments. Cause I mean I was awful dude. I in the firehouse, I'm mean on the fire ground. Great. No problem. And if firehouse total shit show what an asshole, you know, I mean I was a deck amongst Dick's. Like I ran the firehouse, like we were on fire 24 seven and exhausted the crap out of people. Right? And so yeah, but that's what you quote unquote do. That's how you do it. And so I think what's happening here is we're starting to chip away to be like, okay, listen, I need to, I'm going to fully, and this is where, this is why I call it an operational mindset, because it is the ability to execute the mission with absolute perfection and confidence and capability and everything you need to have in that moment in time.Jeff Banman:                 And then transition mentally, emotionally, physically from that environment to the next. And the next may be back in the firehouse. The next may be, you know, I got to give my buddy a hug or whatever it is. And I've got to have that bandwidth and that capacity to maneuver. And so guy, you know, people that are out there that are, that, that don't think this is necessary, are living in a fraction of their career, not the entirety of it or a fraction of their marriage and not the entirety of it. That's just me calling myself out along with, well, pretty much everybody else listening.Benjamin Martin:          Yeah, no, I totally, so there's a couple of things if we can play this out that I'd like to talk about. So, um, I hear a compartmentalize talk about a lot and that's definitely something that I'm not sure if we can do. So I'm sitting here, I'm looking at the computer, which is running the program that you and I are talking on and I've got all the books that I've read in the background. I've got things on the wall, family pictures on the desk. Uh, but in the moment it's what is getting my attention, right? The computer, making sure that this conversation is happening and if there's anything that I want to reference having it up on here. But if you ask me the specifics about the book covers to my left or you know, what the brand of TV was in front of me or what dress my wife was wearing in the photo.Benjamin Martin:          Like that's not important necessarily in this moment. So I'm not going to be able to tell you and it doesn't have my full attention. And that's where I think we've got to focus. Here is where you want to call. You know, you may have something going on at home, what the call is, what gets your attention. It gets 100% of your attention. Even though we know science has shown us it's subconsciously we're being distracted, but all of our conscious minds has gotta be able to focus on this. I've heard guys tell me that they don't feel like if they talk with their family during the day, very good a firefighter because all of a sudden they're distracted by the thought of their family.Jeff Banman:                 Would that be the worst thing you were saying you can do? The worst thing you can do on deployment is call home.Benjamin Martin:          Yeah, and so it's like, all right, well if that's true and your family distracts you, then don't let me see you on social media. Right? If your family is going to distract you from the mission, don't let me see you do anything in your 24 hour period that would distract you from the mission. And that includes playing on your phone, playing a video game at the station, watching TV, having a conversation that isn't about the mission, which is not life, it's, it's not reality. So what we're really admitting is that we can tune into out of the mission. It's just a lot about our ability to maintain focus and attention. And part of our problem is that we were manta sized. We way over romanticized leadership because of what we see in culture and movies. Like we're like you talked about, you're like, you're waiting for this one moment where you're like Braveheart and you're Mel Gibson and you're giving this speech and you're like, John, like I got juice.Benjamin Martin:          And the reality is you may you, you may get that, but probably more so where the goosebumps are going to come from is when you're able to have that one on one conversation in the parking lot of the food line. You went to get groceries where a guy breaks down on you and you have a safe place for him to land or whatever else it is that was occupying his attention. Like that's reaching a person. The other thing is just talking to them. Maybe they get the same feeling you get, but it's just like you and me. And they're like, we push them harder. We push them fast and like you're like, yeah. And they're like, no, no. [inaudible] but you're so focused, you know, just like on the computer, not paying attention to the color of the books. You have no idea that people have completely checked out around you and they're not, they're not buying into it at all.Benjamin Martin:          So like, yeah, there's gotta be a healthy way to process what you're saying cause that's obviously important. Um, and we want to get away from where we're compartmentalizing too much. But at the same time it's like, all right, well, I want to do everything I can to be, to get home to my kids. And I tell people that training is the answer to that, right? When I don't have to think about how to do fundamental skills, that leaves up more brain power to think creatively and figure out solutions to problems that will arise. You can't plan for everything. So that's the goal. Train the shit out of people so that they can focus on the right thing when they call comes in and then when they get back to the firehouse they can make the switch back to maybe they want to tuck their daughter in over family time or a FaceTime or call the wife and see how her day was or something.Benjamin Martin:          But I really failed like where I would go 24 hours, not talking to them and life just kept going on here. But the first steps I missed the first steps, the first words, Christmases, birthdays like. So it's like, all right, well I can make a decision to consciously not be a part of any of that if I'm at the firehouse or I can try to find a period where I can blend where I'm able to focus and not get distracted by them. And I think, Jeff, probably what I'm trying to say here is if you, if you can do this correctly, then your family life will be healthy and you will be in a healthier place and you'll be more emotionally stable and your leadership or even your followership will be more efficient and more effective. And then because it's all in balance, which really you probably won't ever happen because it's more imbalanced, you're not going to have all of the distractions you would with a divorce or with counseling or with a sick kid. And with any of those things. Um, it's just like span of control.Jeff Banman:                 Well, we, it is like span of control and we forget that we live, especially in these environments. Like most, most normal people, those people out there, right? They get up in the morning, they go to work, they sit at their desks, they do whatever they come home. And I'm not saying they're not without challenge and now without issue, but heightened in our worlds is this understanding that we need to be transitional beings like transitional, like, and, and transitions are we, you know, we've, we book end our day, we get in the car, we go to work, we getting in the car, we go home, right? We've, we book in our shift or whatever it is, we book ended. But in the context of every day, we are constantly transitioning moment by moment, by moment I'm at the firehouse. I want a new mass call. I'm helping him old lady get back in her bed.Jeff Banman:                 I'm, you know, pulling a kid out of a burning building. I'm cutting somebody out of a car who may or may not make it. I'm, you know, chasing somebody down the street. And then I'm counseling the domestic dispute and I'm, you know, helping the rape victim. Like, dude, that's, and by the way, that's Justin today, right? And, and yeah, exactly. And so, you know, what? We lose to me, what I think we lose sight of, and this is where things start to mound for us. We don't execute transitions well that's, you know, when we talk about emotional stability in the six pillars and, and mental acuity and emotional stability is the ability to transition rapidly. Right? To be able to say, okay cool. Done was a call. I what do I need to transition? Well I need to go for a walk around the block or I need to, you know, grab Ben and take him outside and scream cause I'm pissed off at whatever and then I can go home.Jeff Banman:                 Right. And so what I'm able to do, and when I talk about compartmentalization, it is more a transitional segmentation. Things not like isolation, not shutting people down or locking things out. Yeah. Yeah. Cause if I'm going to call home, if I'm overseas and I'm calling home, I don't want to dumb what I just did into my family. So I set myself up, I feel like it, what I need for the next moment and I put myself in DOE in the condition I need to be in for that moment. Not, you know, cause my family doesn't need firemen or you know, cop or military per, do I need any of that? They just need lesbian dad. Right? So what, what condition do I need and what do I need right now? Like just simply asking yourself that question, what do I need right now to call home to be the best dad, her husband or whatever, or mother or wife or whatever it may be. What do I need and what do I need to help me be that? Uh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I, dude, I think,Benjamin Martin:          I think the difference, cause I've never served in the military, so I don't, my father was in the air force, so I have no authority to speak on this at all. So I'll, I'll very softly lay this up there. And then anybody's willing to slap it away. They can and they won't hurt my feelings. But when you're looking at the sacrifice of the men and women make that serve our country, where they go away for six months to a year to a year and a half. Like I could understand Jeff calling home, finding out his wife's cheating on him and then having another year on his stent and thinking about how distracted he would be with that. So we borrow from that with the fire service problem is I'm only gone for 24 hours or 48 hours or worst case scenario, I get forced hot over times and it's 72 hours but then I'm right back in their life.Benjamin Martin:          And so I think when you look at military service members coming home, and Jeff, you can speak to this like we're going to have the most problem. And I think it's transitioning back into the people's lives because it never stops happening while they were gone. And that's what it was from my mother, you know, with my father. And you know, I was too young to remember any of that. So thankfully that wasn't an issue. But I think, I think for the fire service, like the idea of compartmentalizing. And here's a story, if we have a moment, I'll, I'll, I'll tell you when I was a new, when I was a new Lieutenant, right, I had all the status pressure, like really wanting to come across as a, you know, a subject matter expert on everything. I'm also a paramedic, don't judge me for that. So I've got two hats to wear, you know, I've gotta be good at on the fireside, but also good on the paramedics and sob.Benjamin Martin:          And I'd been there maybe three months, still building relationships with everybody. Still hadn't caught a fire so nobody knows if I'm any good or bad anything. And we catch a pediatric shooting and I can remember driving and I didn't know the district that well. So I've got all this pressure about like I hope I'm going the right way. And the whole time I'm like, you know, looking at a four year old shot by his older brother or younger brother and it's like, ah crap, crap, crap, crap, crap. Like, just this gut wrenching feeling of like, shit, shit, shit, shit. Like, you know the big calls that can create that out. And I get there and I'm running up to the house and a police officer comes out and he's holding the kid in a, in a blanket and he goes, it's just a graze. And it's like, Ooh, right.Benjamin Martin:          Subject matter expert. He's telling me it's just the grace. Thank God DEFCON level five back down the level one, like we're good, can't cancel the air strike. We're good. So I started getting into patient assessment of it. The mom is a mess, right? She had had people breaking in to the house or a neighborhood houses. So she got a firearm out, tuck it under a sofa question, I think. And the youngest son found it who was like two or three and accidentally fired upon his, um, brother, who I think was four or five at the time. So, um, I mean you can imagine just like in the back of her mind, subconsciously, am I going to lose these kids? But at the forefront of her mind, is my child going to live? Right? So when the police officer says it's just a graze, everybody can collectively breathe a sigh.Benjamin Martin:          And I go in there and I recognize, I look over the kid, I peel the blanket back. If he's in a diaper and there's nothing, you know, there's nothing wrong that I can see. I look and it looks like a grave, like an almost like an abrasion. I'm like, are you sure he was even shot. Maybe this is a bug burn, whatever. And it's, it is, um, it's going in is like five, right? Or I guess what looks like wound to his inner thigh. So after like I took a, Paul says, profusions good kid, not even crying like, alright, is a healthy kid, let's go and ride on the hospital just to be on the safe side. Get you outta here. So I put mom on the back. I'm not even going lights and sirens to the hospital. And I look at her and she's just a wreck.Benjamin Martin:          And I think to myself, if this was my child and is my oldest, so ALA was like one at a time. If this was a loss, nothing could stop me from holding this child. And I'm like, I'm not going to be in the way of that man. Would you like to hold your stone? Yes, I would. Right. So I give her the sun, she sits on the stretcher with the son, we go to the uh, trauma hospital and we get over to pediatrics and I'm talking to the attending and then the freaking department head walks in and I'm telling her about what's going on. It's just a graze. And then I hear, well, what's this then? And like I hadn't even looked over there yet, but I could feel myself getting nauseous just knowing what was coming. And I look over, they had taken the diaper off and it's like, I know your listeners have already figured out the end of the story.Benjamin Martin:          They already knew this was coming, but I, I couldn't, I didn't, I left the type or on, I exposed everything else. Like it was a lower leg injury. There's no way that this child could shoot up this kid's leg and have an exit his button. But that's exactly what he did. And then all sudden details start coming back where the mom was like, be sure is filling up his diaper. He's seeing a lot. And I'm like, well shit, that was blood. Like it wasn't a lot of blood. It was just oozing blood. Thank God. But what if it had been so they did an X Ray and the kid who was an in and out, um, and I told, I told the department head, I was like, listen, I, I fucked up so bad here. I'm going to call the OMB. I'm going to own this.Benjamin Martin:          I'm going to use this as a lesson. You do whatever it is you need to do carte blanche and you're not going to get any resistance from me. No embracing the resistance on this one. Like, just do what you need to do. And she's like, well, I can see it in your face. You feel terrible and I trust that you'll follow up on this and I will, I will talk with your own team to make sure you have, and she's like, you'd go do what you need to do and we'll see where it falls out. So I came back to the station and I talked to the guys and they're like, Oh, we should have prompted you. And I'm like, well listen, like if I'm going to be successful here as a leader, I don't ever want you guys to feel afraid that you can't challenge Lieutenant.Benjamin Martin:          Like there's going to be critical moments. And I don't even think that this was a critical life threatening moment because it wasn't a flashover. It was a life threatening, but it had time to play out. I want you to challenge me. Please don't ever let this happen again. But I'm owning this like I don't hold any of you guys accountable. This is 100% Lieutenant Martins. Fuck off. And I'll own this. But just so you're aware, don't let this happen to you guys. Let's work together to have each other's back and let's not be so caught up in our egos that we're afraid to say something because we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings or that we're going to be resistant to it because we've got to maintain the ego. And so I got home and I was telling my wife about it and you know, she's Sam there in tears and I started doing some research in a corner costs role ambiguity, which you know, basically is you wear a lot of hats.Benjamin Martin:          So it wasn't just that I was wearing a hat of a firefighter or hat of an officer or hat of her medic. I was wearing a hat as a father, as a husband, you know, as a brother, like all these different roles in my life. And in that moment when I should've had the paramedic hat on, I took it off on it, put the father hat on and I thought about her needs more and I failed her child and her in the process. And what happens is when we put our, we allow ourselves to get in situations where we haven't had training and we haven't had at least a discussion on it, we get into role conflict where doing one role conflicts with the outcome of another role. And a lot of times you see this in buddy to pause where it's like, well, I want to be the guy's buddy, but it gotta be his boss.Benjamin Martin:          And you're not either you're just marginal at that. You think you're maybe winning because the guy's not actively shit talking to you. Maybe he has your back, but just because he's not, you know, confrontational to your face, you're like, yes, I'm winning as a leader. But that's not the case. And that's exactly like what we're talking about with this. What's getting your attention? You can say you can compartmentalize things that and leave it at home, but clearly you can't. That's not a, and it's not a bad thing. That's part of being human. That's part of our humanity. Like empathy is a core construct of our humanity and the more we express that, the better. And that I would argue, Jeff, that is why we would go into that fire because we want to that kid with their parents to give them a birthday, to give them an anniversary, like to see them get married one day.Benjamin Martin:          Like we'll take significant risks that are counter to our best interest because of our empathy. Our empathy is not, it doesn't not handicap us, it does not distract us. It empowers us as long as we're valuing the right thing. And it's pretty obvious when somebody is demonstrating powers and not doing the right things. But that's what type of leader I want to work for. That that has the ability to come in and in one minute basis silly, bad-ass, but the next minute be completely humble over a mistake they made or sharing the mistake they made with me 10 years ago to establish level footing with me because I want to feel related to them because that's another fundamental construct of safety is relatedness. That's the next level stuff. And that's the stuff that's not being taught. I'm not reason why we're going to have this gap and this, but you know, and every gap you get people like me and you that are like, we're not, there's a need.Benjamin Martin:          There's a technology that's not out there. So I'm going to, we're going to speak to it and literally build this, I don't want to say from scratch because we were studying research that's been done some, you know, sometimes the thirties but in the fire service it's all new and novel and you all, you, anybody listening here knows if it's new and novel in the fire service, it's the first to get, you know, an arrow swung at it. So like that's the hits were taken because we believe so passionately in it and like I've seen it, I've seen it affect my marriage and make it better. I've seen it at work and make my relationships better with people. And the reputation I have now is, so it's like one 80 from what I had seven years ago and it's all been about humility and learning and shared experiences. That's the only recipe that I've had any kind of success with. It's not ever been one class I took, well one moment I had. It's just a consistent showing up for people. And that's really what I think a leader needs to do.Jeff Banman:                 Dude, I, I can't disagree with any of that. I mean, I think that's exactly, we are human and as humans we are emotional beings. You know what I mean? We feel, we sense, we connect, uh, aid is just part of our lives and we can't shove it down. We can't turn it off. It's not going to go away. I level when people are like, well I don't really have any empathy or I was born without empathy. I'm like, yeah, I know you aren't. Uh, you know, cause I've had those kind of, I've had people say that, you know what, I've had people say that about their partners or other people in the, in the, you know, in their work environment. Like they just, I, they don't have any empathy. They do, they don't know how to unlock it. And there's probably a huge wall of fear there around it.Jeff Banman:                 So, yeah, man. I mean I think it's a, I think it's indicative on, on us as one, it's indicative on the leader today to step into this role period. You know, if you are, if you are in any of the services, uh, any, you know, if you, to people I hang out with across the platforms, the special operations guys, intelligence guys, the fire service guys, law enforcement across the board. Anybody who's been in a career for any length of time and has a sense of themselves, understands the value of this conversation of constantly looking at themselves, constantly develop things, you know, willingness to understand their people around them, you know, and really, and take action around it. Right? It's not just, Oh, cool, there's was a great podcast or, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. What now are you doing with it? What are you, what steps are you taking?Jeff Banman:                 You know, if you are a leader in the firehouse or you're, you know, a Sergeant in the law enforcement community or the Lieutenant or a captain or a chief, I don't know. You know what I mean? I've got chief officers that listen to this. It's like, how are you creating the environment for your people to really get all of this like through, through and through. And you know, that's not just, you know, let me go see Benjamin talk at firehouse expo. You know, it's like, how do I engage, how do I bring this conversation forward? I mean, I think that's, you know, you touched on the aspects of suicide in the rise around that stuff cause they ours. I mean, those are, that's why I created the operation mindset foundation because I'm a big believer, there's a big difference between prevention and intervention and 90% of what's done is intervention because the thought train has already started.Jeff Banman:                 And I know I speak openly about years, even prior to the services, this constant conversation of I shouldn't be here. You know, maybe I should just go now. Um, and my own challenges then, you know, enhanced by the stupid life I chose to live. Uh, you know, it's crazy what's out there and you know, we've gotta be more real about it. We've got to be more in tune with it. We've got to be available, the people around us, because that, you know, that person sitting with you at the dinner table in the firehouse, like you said, needs every ounce of the same person that will run in and snatch that kid out of that burning building like 100%. And if you can't be in, especially, you know, I don't care, I don't care what your rank is or whether you showed up yesterday or whether you've been here for 20 years and you're a grouch.Jeff Banman:                 That's the condition you have to live in now. Uh, because it's across the board, man, the game changed, like firing and getting shot at, it's a little bit more hay day. There's a lot more judgment from across the board. It's not just centered into law enforcement community, you know, or it's not just military stuff or whatever. I'll say it's across the board. Like you've gotta be ready for anything and everything and you're only gonna do that when the team is a whole, you know, is completely whole and able to perform in moment. So dude, I love it. We're going to have to schedule another time. And you know, have a whole nother conversation. Uh, anytime, anytime. I love talking toBenjamin Martin:          Jeff. I think you're doing great work and it's humbled to be a small part of it.Jeff Banman:                 Well that's it dude. And we're gonna we're going to work together a little bit more in 2020, uh, through the operation Whiteside foundation and really developing and preparing guys, you know, people to step into harm's way and delivering the conversation early. Cause I think this needs to start like day one. This is the conversation. Yeah. This, this needs to be, I'll say this if you think you are an influencer in any of the services, you know, I, I feel like I served a little bit of that in my time in a couple of places. Like I was somebody people trusted or they listened to or they came to and talk to. If you're in that role, this is the conversation that needs to be had like this, you know, and I, and I was lucky I had some old school, gritty, gritty, gritty guys growing up that actually had these kinds of conversations with me.Jeff Banman:                 You know, may not have been this formal, may not have been in these particular words. You know, cause now we're talking almost started years ago, but they had conversations like this with me and that's what I love about these programs cause all that's still embedded in, in a lot of this, this old school, you know, old school hard ass mentality is to me I think is actually a big falsehood. And maybe that's what you and I'll attack on the next time we get on. It's like this, this perception of what I should be versus you know, you talked to the Al Dutton retired battalion fire chief from DC fire department who we know went to deep, went to work for DC the year I was born. You know, telling me how this stuff is radically important to success. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we'll have to unpack that. All right man. So I'm going to make sure all the show notes are up. You and I are going to collaborate a little bit to recreate some of the conversation for everybody out there and get some key topics and some key learning points. So they've got them up there in the show notes. I'm going to make sure Benjamin's wonderful bio is up also in the show notes and a link to him at embrace the resistance but soon by checkout, embrace the resistance.com. Are you speaking anywhere? Anytime soon? You got anything coming up?Benjamin Martin:          So then uh, I got uh, I got a small gig in Indiana for a department and then I'll be at the big show in SEIC April. So hopefully it will, we'll see each other there.Jeff Banman:                 Yeah, absolutely. So if you're going to FDIC, make sure you check out and Benjamin and get into his class cause it's, it is 100% worth it. I had a chance to sit in at, he spoke right before we prep the audience for them. We prep

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.

Brendan Kiely, author of THE GOSPEL OF WINTER, THE LAST TRUE LOVE STORY, and co-author of ALL AMERICAN BOYS. His newest novel, TRADITION, is an exploration of the insidious nature of tradition at a prestigious boarding school. Brendan talks about the nature of authorship, the heroic value of humility, and working hard to not have an office.   Brendan Kiely Show Notes Victoria Aveyard (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here) Jessie Chaffee (Brendan’s wife) When I Was the Greatest by Jason Reynolds Rob Weisbach (Brendan’s agent) Leigh Bardugo (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here) Chris Lynch (YA author) John Corey Whaley (listen to his First Draft interview here) Black Lives Matter Boy in the Black Suit by Jason Reynolds As Brave As You by Jason Reynolds I Have the Right To by Chessy Prout Paradise Lost by John Milton Wildfang’s Wild Feminist line (Portland clothing line) Four Forms of Identity, the concept of Achieved Identity

Join Laura Dunn and Mike Domitrz as they discuss justice, the #MeToo Movement, and advocating for survivors. Both Dunn and Domitrz have extensive experience working with educational systems for working to reduce sexual violence for students. * You are invited to join our community and conversations about each episode on FaceBook at https://www.facebook.com/MutuallyAmazingPodcast and join us on Twitter @CenterRespect or visit our website at http://www.MutuallyAmazingPodcast.com**   Laura Dunn BIO: Laura L. Dunn, Esq., advances victims' rights through legislative and policy efforts, as well as direct representation of survivors in campus, criminal and civil systems.  As a nationally-recognized victim-turned-victims’ rights attorney and social entrepreneur, her work has been featured by National Public Radio, PEOPLE Magazine, Forbes, the National Law Journal, the New York Times, and many more.   While a law student, Dunn contributed to the 2011 and 2014 Title IX guidance issued by the U.S. Department of Education. She also worked with Congress to pass the 2013 Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act and its federal regulations. For this advocacy, Vice President Joe Biden and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy have publicly recognized Dunn. Upon graduation from Maryland Law, she founded the survivor-led and DC-based legal organization, SurvJustice. It is still the only national nonprofit representing victims of campus sexual violence in hearings across the country and is currently the lead plaintiff in a pending federal lawsuit against the Drumpf administration over Title IX.   As an attorney, Dunn is now a published legal scholar, an adjunct law professor, a member of the American Bar Association’s Commission on Domestic & Sexual Violence and its Criminal Justice Section's Task Force on College Due Process, a liaison to the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code on Sexual Assault and its Student Sexual Misconduct Project, an accomplished litigator who helped win the first-ever recognition of a federal victim-advocate privilege, and an expert legal consultant on various campus sexual assault lawsuits. She is currently a practicing attorney through the Fierberg National Law Group.   For her work, Dunn has received a 2015 Echoing Green Global Fellowship, the 2016 Benjamin Cardin Public Service Award, the 2017 Special Courage Award from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime, and a 2018 TED Fellowship, along with other honors and recognitions over the years. 8.9Laura Lynette Dunn   WEBSITES:  http://www.lauraldunnesq.com/ www.survjustice.org    Book Recommendation:  “I Have the Right To: A High School Survivor's Story of Sexual Assault, Justice, and Hope” by Chessy Prout   READ THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW (or download the pdf):   **IMPORTANT: This podcast episode was transcribed by a 3rd party service and so errors can occur throughout the following pages:   Mike:                       Welcome to the Respect Podcast. I'm your host, Mike Domitrz, from mikespeaks.com, where we help organizations of all sizes, educational institutions, and the U.S. military create a culture of respect. Respect is exactly what we discuss on this show, so let's get started. Mike:                       This week's guest is Laura Dunn, and her track record is amazing. I want to give you a little bit of background on Laura. She advances victims rights through legislative and policy efforts, as well as direct representation of survivors in campus, criminal, and civil systems. Mike:                       As a nationally recognized victim turned victim rights attorney and social entrepreneur, her work's been featured on NPR, National Public Radio, People Magazine, Forbes, The National Blog Journal, The New York Times, and many more. Mike:                       Some of this I'm going to save for our discussion because she's done so much, and the bio here, it's incredible, but as a highlight, for example, she's obviously an attorney now, representing cases with SURVJUSTICE, S-U-R-V-J-U-S-T-I-C-E. They are the only national non-profit representing victims of campus sexual violence in hearings across country, and currently the lead plaintiff in a pending federal lawsuit against the current administration over Title IX. Mike:                       Her work has received awards and recognitions, including the 2015 Echoing Green Global Fellowship, the 2016 Benjamin Cardin Public Service Award, the 2017 Special Courage Award for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime, and the 2018 TED Fellowship, so thank you so much for joining us, Laura. Laura:                     Thanks for having me on. Mike:                       Absolutely, and to get right into it here, you know, the show's all about respect. How did you come to the place where you are today, doing the work you're doing? Laura:                     That's a great question. Unfortunately, like too many people, I had a negative experience in college. I had two men that I knew and trusted from being on the same sports team with me, and they made a decision to sexually harm me when I had been drinking and was unable to either consent or defend myself, so because of this unfortunate experience with sexual violence, I became an advocate first in trying to fight for myself, but I realized that I was fighting for many more. It is now my career. Laura:                     I did found SURVJUSTICE. I'm no longer there, I've moved on and transitioned. I'm at the Fierberg National Law Group, where I continue to do litigation, not just for sexual assault survivors, but all survivors of campus crime, including gun violence and hazing. Mike:                       Oh, okay, and so there, when you say representing survivors, for those who aren't aware, so survivor on campus comes forward, they file a complaint, at what point is there a need for someone to reach out to an attorney such as yourself to be represented? Laura:                     It's a wonderful question. I think there's a very big norm in our society that if you're accused of something, you right away get an attorney, get advice, and you're very cautious and careful. There is this belief that if you're a victim, that you can just access the process, and it'll work perfectly, and you'll be fine. Unfortunately, so many survivors find out that systems that are meant to protect them don't always do that, so campuses aren't always acting in the best interest of students who are victimized. Law enforcement, campus security, other organizations sometimes try to push away survivors and their voices, so it's fully fine to make that initial report and to go and right away try to get organizations and institutions to support you if that's their role, but if you're skeptical that that will occur, if you're already getting signs that there isn't support, I would actually contact an attorney or an advocate immediately because the moment you start making a complaint, things can either go really well, or unfortunately, sometimes in the cases I see, they go really poorly from square one. Mike:                       Yeah, and when we're traveling the world talking about this, we always tell [inaudible 00:03:53], in reaching out to a local advocate, a local crisis center, who has been down this road with other survivors, who knows the possibilities of support that are available to you, and when somebody's showing red flags in that system, the troubles there, is helpful to at least help you understand that, no, that's not okay, what they just said to you, or what they just asked you, and you do deserve to be represented and supported. I think it's wonderful. I think a lot of times people think, 'Oh, a student goes forward, the system failed them, nothing they can do.' For them to hear from you, no, there's people like you out there, who are saying, "We can represent you, we can fight for you because you deserve that." Laura:                     Absolutely, and we see so many cases where if we had gotten involved a little earlier ... I would say this all the time at SURVJUSTICE, if someone had just called us first, it would be a different game. If you're in a situation where you're not getting academic support, there's no safety measured, they're encouraging you to take a medical leave, get off campus, you definitely need to be making a call. Laura:                     Advocates can be very helpful, but sometimes real action is needed. Attorneys and advocated alike can offer confidentiality and privilege, which is very important to protect your privacy, and getting information about your rights, and then starting to advance them. Mike:                       Yeah, and you and I know that due to the media coverage of Title IX, a lot of people go, "Well, why is this necessary? I mean, Title IX is tilted to survivors, and if they come forward, everybody's going to believe them, and the system's going to protect them. I mean, this whole Title IX thing, that's all it does. In fact, it's slanted against people who are accused." These are the comments we hear in the media all the time. Mike:                       Can you explain the reality of actually how this works on many campuses? There are campuses where it's wonderful, and it's supportive, but this is not always the case. Laura:                     Yeah, I definitely think it's important to recognize that in the last decade there's been a shift, right. Back in 2010, the Center for Public Integrity, National Public Radio, really exposed campus sexual assault for the first time through an investigative series, and showed the opposite of all the comments you were just saying, that actually victims weren't being supported, weren't being believed, and even if the rare case, where someone was like, "Yes, you were in fact harmed. We're going to give the consequence to the person who harmed you," it was meaningless. It was writing essays about how not to rape someone, and that was the only consequence. It was watching videos, again, from student orientation, for a second time, or having a summer suspension. Laura:                     Really, the media dialogue, at first, was exposing how survivors are mistreated. There's obviously been a backlash, people who represent those who are accused saying, "This is unfair," and in my opinion, I'm obviously a victim's rights attorney, so you can obviously say that I'm biased towards my side, I think people just aren't used to what accountability looks like. Accountability does mean someone is found responsible through an appropriate process for sexual violence, and they're not being favored and catered to, and allowed to continue threatening, or otherwise harassing someone in the interim. Laura:                     You know, there's a lot of accusations on both sides, and really, it's important to remember what Title IX is. It is a federal civil right that protects any person, not just men, not just women, any person from discrimination on the basis of sex, and that includes in the form of sexual harassment and sexual violence. This is on the campus level, and at the civil level, you can also go to court and force it. Laura:                     That's very different than the criminal level, which has a whole different process enshrined in the constitution. The campus and civil level are lower level means of legal advocacy, and of course, can give meaningful results to survivors, such as academic accommodations and support, but at the end of the day, are trying to make sure someone who is harmed by sexual violence can continue to access their education on campus free from any hostility created by someone who's accused of perpetrating against them until there has been an ultimate finding whether or not that did occur. Laura:                     I hope that answered your question. Mike:                       Absolutely. Mike:                       Often people are saying, "Hey, why isn't this" ... There's been a few states that have tried to, and one that did put it through, that have tried to say, "This should all be criminal, this should not be dealt with by schools. This should only be dealt with by the court systems and the judicial system." Many of us who know this work knows that that could highly deter survivors from coming forward in the first place. Can you explain what the problem is with that, with this idea that the moment a campus knows about a case, it should all be handed over to the police, to the judicial system of the authorities outside of the campus environment? Laura:                     Yeah. What I always do, even in going into legal settings such as the American Bar Association Taskforce I've been on, or the American Law Institute, when we were debating different polices and procedures to put forward on a national level, even with attorneys, they say, "Okay, we need to back up. Let's not even think about sexual assault, let's just think of a physical assault." Laura:                     You're a student, you're physically assaulted by another student. Let's say you're drunk at a bar, so you get punched. You, of course, can go to the police, but that's not your only option. You can also sue the person in civil court that just punched you. You can also just go to the campus level and say, "I want them removed because they're an unsafe student, and they're going to impede my access to education," or you could do all three. That's true of many scenarios. Laura:                     Any type of crime, not just sexual crimes, allow you to go campus, criminal, or civil. You can pick, you can choose, you can do one after another, you can do them all at the same time. We have more than one legal remedy for harm in our society, and that's on purpose because there are many different ways that people can advance their rights and interests. They don't only have to rely on police, and of course, we know that the criminal standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, which is very different than the civil and campus standard of preponderance of the evidence. It is a different burden, it is a different ballgame, and that's because criminal is removing someone from society, imprisoning them often, fines in some places depending on the type of violence, potentially even death, so very serious consequences call for very serious due process and highly protective measures. Laura:                     On the campus, you don't have a right to be in college. You don't. It's privilege. A college can choose you, or not choose you. You have no rights to get in. Once you are in, your rights are limited to stay there, especially if you have, in fact, violated any of their policies and procedures on students. Laura:                     So, we're at a very different level with the lower standard of proof, and again, it's very important hat survivors have different options; campus, criminal, and civil, because they might need different things. One survivor may need all those damages from a civil case to get medical treatment in the future. Another one may want to keep the campus safe, and have that person removed for a criminal process from society. Another person may say, "You know what, I just need to continue my access to education," so they need to go elsewhere. Laura:                     Lots of different options, lots of different remedies. There is no one size fits all, and there is not just one option for survivors. Mike:                       I'm so glad you brought up the different standards because this is so important. I think a lot of people forget that the campus has the right of who they want to have on their campus, and so often people go, "You can't convict them." It's not whether they can convict them, it's whether they have the right to say, "I don't want that student as part of our community. We have that right, and whether we're a public or private institution, we actually have that right because we accepted them in. They had to apply to get in, they were not forced to us. We get to choose." Laura:                     You can be removed for underage drinking on college campus, right. Mike:                       Right. That's right. Laura:                     [inaudible 00:10:57] over something that I would consider a less serious than committing sexual harassment or assault against someone. Mike:                       Do you think- PART 1 OF 3 ENDS [00:11:04] Laura:                     ... serious in committing sexual harassment or assaulting someone. Mike:                       Do you think the push back that's happening, that people try to argue this is going to too far of an extreme now, do you think this is out of a fear that adults look back and go, "Well I could have been kicked out for this," or, "I could have been in this?" So there's a subconscious level of I'm gonna push back because this goes against what I did back in the day. This would force me to look in the mirror and go, "I didn't always do everything right according to these standards." And are you saying that I'm this person, this perpetrator or whatever? Well I'm not, so this is crazy. This is going extreme. Is that what's happening? Laura:                     I think there are three main drivers of this idea that there's a frenzy on campus and it's unfair to accuse. I think one driver is very much political, president Obama of course advanced title nine, listened to a bunch of student activism that was going on all across the country. There's tons of rallies, tons of protests, and tons of timeline complaints. We went from 30 to 300. So there was a big demand. The president, at that time, listened. And of course in certain circles he's not very popular and there has been a backlash within America with the new president. And so some of it is destroying that legacy, undoing everything that he has done. A different driver- Mike:                       Can we pause? I wanna pause on that one, because I think it's so important. You remember when the first 30 were listed? When it came out in the news that here were the first, I don't even know if it was 30. It might have been like 19, but here ... I think it might actually be higher like 50 or 60, I just remember the first list of universities that were listed and people were like, "Oh my gosh, you are one of the 60," and those of us in the field were like, "Give this another six months to a year, because you're gonna see a lot of schools pop up on there." Because people don't realize what a problem this was. What they saw was the first list of people of offenses and the universities that were named, and what those ... Can you believe them? And I was sitting there going, "Yeah, but we're way too small list right now. This list should be way more comprehensive," because what it means is that somebody on that campus had support to come forward and file this in some way or form. Laura:                     Yes. Mike:                       I don't think schools should go, "Oh, no. We've been named." It should be, "What do we need to do to improve." Laura:                     Yeah, possibly. It was definitely a way to shame schools into having to deal with it, and the positive is that many schools embraced when there were complaints and said, "We need to do better. We need to do more." Amherst is one of those schools. There's several others. SUNY, that school system. A lot of them were proactive as a result and said, "Well, it's coming out. We might as well take ownership and try to change that narrative by accountability for ourselves, and pushing the envelope for how to be the most progressive school with the best policies and procedures and prevention effort." Laura:                     So definitely, I think, a good thing. We talked about the list. It's all colleges. There were K through 12 and over 80 school districts were on the list last I knew. So it's not just campuses. Unfortunately this is a K through 12 issue. Laura:                     But I wanna finish talking about two of the drivers [inaudible 00:13:59]. Mike:                       Absolutely, yes. Laura:                     One of them is absolutely what you mentioned. I wouldn't frame it as I'm worried that sounds like me, as much as I don't really believe what sexual assault is. A lot of people want sexual assault to be the most violent of, and most egregious of the actions in a sexual setting. So physically abusing and raping someone, and they don't wanna think of it as, "I ignored the no," or they were too drunk to consent. They don't want it to be anything lower than the most egregious standard. Because yeah, it may be conduct that they themselves have engaged in because we, unfortunately, live in a rape culture where there are narratives that sexual aggression is okay, that pushing someone into certain sexual activity, whether they're sober, whether they're aware or not, whether they're comfortable or not doesn't matter. And all that rape culture really does allow people to perpetrate a variety of offenses, whether they be criminal all the through or just misconduct at a campus level does really matter, I think, at the end of the day because someone's harmed. Laura:                     So there is a little bit of that. I think it's rooted in the lack of understanding of what sexual violence really is, and when acknowledge that it's not just no means no, it's only yes means yes. That's really how we start protecting society, and that's why so many campuses have affirmative consent standards. Laura:                     The other, which is somewhat related, is a lot of people think women lie. And that is the narrative I see most prominently pushed. I have no problem with people who are due process advocates. You want a fair process? So do I. I'm a lawyer. I care about it being done right. We don't, of course, want anyone falsely accused. I just think that's very rare, and unfortunately a lot of those advocates think it's very, very common because they don't believe that women tell the truth about their experiences. Laura:                     And a lot of that is grounded in really old narratives that, quite frankly, I don't understand how they haven't gone out of fashion. A lot of them are regret sex. Well, we've had the sexual revolution. We're pretty comfortable with consent. We understand that most people are having sex before marriage. It's not really this shame factor. Slut shaming is not as much of a factor to deter people from being truthful, and there's a lot of other related narratives that contribute to rape culture in society that these people have bought and sold, and are selling now publicly saying, "These are lies. These are untruths," and as a result we can't take any victim seriously and they want us just going back to the day where no one believes the survivor when they speak forward. Laura:                     I don't think that's gonna happen, but definitely there's a cultural war happening, and thankfully the MeToo movement is pushing for others to keep believing survivors and realize this is a relevant problem. The norm is survivors not getting justice. It's not false accusations. Mike:                       Yeah, when I'm in front of audience, when people bring up false, one this that I'll do is I say, "Okay. Could everybody in the room raise their hand, not to identify themselves, but if you know a survivor of sexual assault. If you just know a survivor, raise your hands," and the far majority of the room raises their hands. "Keep your hands up if you know multiple." The far majority know multiple. Okay, great. Mike:                       I mean, typically we're talking 80%, 75, 80%. Okay, "How many of you know someone actually accused and you guarantee know it was a false report?" Now I'm not gonna get into whether the ... because that might not even be right, what you think is a false report. And they actually went to prosecution, all the worst nightmare you think happens, happened, and they're in jail. The worst case. What you think happens in false report, maybe one out of hundreds of people in the room will raise their hand and say, "I think that's a case I know of," but you want us to talk about that one injustice more than the hundreds of injustices of everybody having their hands in the room. Mike:                       And so we try to show them why. If we only have an hour to talk about reducing sexual violence, or two hours, or three hours, the students, we're gonna focus on survivors and we're not gonna focus that time on the one. That doesn't mean that false reports aren't horrible. As you said they are, but we have limited time for education. So in my work, what I focus on, that's what I'm focus on. I'll say to somebody, "If you're worried about the false reports maybe you could do that work," but I'm not gonna take the time of education for reducing sexual violence for that time. Mike:                       And it's because it's so important people realize that pushback is so unfair. Well this one false report, therefore we can't talk about the 999 cases that take place. So I'm so glad you brought that up. Mike:                       You also brought up rape culture, and this is one that people get very defensive about, angry about at times. An argument that I'll hear is, "I was never raised to think rape was okay. How dare you tell me I've been raised in a rape culture. When a rape case happens everyone's appalled. Everyone would want to kill the person if it was someone they love, therefore we do not live in a rape culture. How can you say we live in a rape culture?" What's your response to that? Laura:                     I actually normally do a very brief activity, that maybe takes a most three minutes with people, I say, "Okay. Just give me all the words that you know for women who are sexually active." You hear slut, whore, skank, all these negative terms. "Give me all the words you know for men who are sexually active," player, positive, he's the man. Anything that's a thumbs up. They're doing well, so it's positive. Women are negative, men are positive. And I said, "Okay. Give me some slang for sex." Screw, nail, bang, hitting it, beating it, all terms of violence. And these are words that the audience provides me. I just give them the prompt, and I say, "You have just, with your own words and choices with these prompts, shown me rape culture." Men can be sexually active. Laura:                     Sex is often described as violent, and women are the ones who pay the price for that and are demeaned as a result. That is rape culture. So I, personally, wasn't raised doing room-sized classes and things like that, but when I saw that activity when I was an undergrad student I was like, "Yeah, rape culture is real because I just gave those words without any other connotation," and I realized it is within our language. It's within our norms. Mike:                       Yes, definitely. And you brought me to movement, and you've been very active from the start of the MeToo movement, and yet there's controversy around the MeToo movement. It wasn't at first. It was interesting, and I've talked about this in my work, that at first some of the cases were so blatantly extreme that the whole world was, "Yes." We were united. This was a movement that needed to speak out until a couple cases came forward of celebrities that didn't seem as blatantly obvious sexual violence. Seem like more the norm of people going out and having a good time, and then the regret defense is used in that and suddenly we saw backlash. Mike:                       The most common one was the comedian ... Oh, my gosh. I'm having a brain freeze right now, Aziz Ansari, there we go. And that was one where he didn't defend, but other people defended the situation. So let's talk about one the co-oping of the MeToo movement early on, because that's an important discussion that often gets forgotten, and then the strength though of the current MeToo movement and then the backlash. So let's start with ... I don't think a lot of people realize there was a co-op that began this, and so you, Ana, speak to that? Laura:                     Yeah, and correct me if I'm misunderstanding you in any way. A lot of people timed the MeToo movement to The New York Times breaking the story about Harvey Weinstein- Mike:                       Exactly. Laura:                     ... very differently because there was a whole campus movement. There was a whole military movement, and then there was a workplace movement. So I see a continuation. MeToo was the hashtag for the worker division, but this has been a movement that's been going on for a while if you'd been paying attention. And in all of these movements have had their day in the sun and everyone's like, "Yes. We agree. It's wrong on campus. It's wrong in the military. It's wrong in the workplace," and all of them have seen the inevitable backlash. I don't wanna sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do live in DC. There are conservative ... PART 2 OF 3 ENDS [00:22:04] Laura:                     I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do live in D.C. There are conservative think tanks. This is a topic that national attention is being given to, to change the narrative, to push certain policies throughout our country. I do think tactically there has been attacks by conservative groups, saying, "This is not a good narrative for a lot of our political positions and views. We really need to co-opt it, and push it, and so- Mike:                       Can we pause there, 'cause I can hear some people thinking, "Hey, I'm outside of the D.C. world. I don't understand what you're referring to there. What do you mean think tanks are conspiring? Laura:                     Yeah, just different think tanks. People are literally paid to sit around and create campaigns and efforts to change public opinion and therefore ultimately be able to push certain policies. Heritage Group is one of them. There are several others. If you're not familiar, you can just Google it and look up conservative and/or liberal think tanks. They exist out there. Mike:                       What we're saying here, just so I understand correctly, is a think tank is thinking, "If I make this an issue, if we make the need to movement a bad movement, that will gain our followers into political. They're more likely to come out and vote. They're more likely to be active ... that group's followers, so let's use this issue. Let's fight against it, 'cause it will draw people into our way of voting." Is that the overall idea there? Laura:                     Yeah, that's definitely of the idea and you can kind of see it with the Safe Campus Acts that was put forward not all that long ago into Congress. That act was backed by Greek organizations, fraternities and sororities. It literally ... more so fraternities than sororities, to be honest ... so it was a PAC. It was a group, a group that was influencing Congress and politicians to advance their own interest, which was not to have schools take any action against them, to allow them to be able to stay on campus, keep having parties no matter what crimes were reported there or being investigated. There are groups that do have incentives. Fraternities often do have a lot of connections to political offices and place a lot of their members there, so there is, unfortunately a relationship. Laura:                     It's very sad to say, but right now Stephen Miller, who's in the White House advising President Drumpf, has been outspoken in his backlash against Title IX, against efforts on campus sexual assaults. A lot of that narrative is pro-men and women are liars and that kind of narrative which appeals, unfortunately, to some conservative groups. Mike:                       Understand. So MeToo today ... Where do you feel it's at? Where do you see it going? Laura:                     Yeah, I think MeToo has been very powerful in having survivors kind of come out in the numbers. We always knew, right? People have debated and been skeptical of statistics. You can't be skeptical when almost everyone on your Facebook page is saying, "Me, too. Here's my experience." I always knew this was a big issue. I always knew the statistics. Even I was shocked one day going on Facebook when the MeToo hashtag was really popular how many friends I still hadn't known had had these experiences, and from any level, from being harassed on the street all the way through being assaulted or having childhood experiences with this issue. It's been great in showing this is a real problem. It affects way more people than you think it does. Laura:                     Injustice is the norm, often because powerful individuals go out of their way to create scenarios where they can perpetrate with impunity, such as looking at the Weinstein cases. He was so powerful in Hollywood. He held the keys to the kingdom if you wanted to be famous. A lot of people knew. It was an open secret. Same with Bill Cosby ... That had been going on with decades. Laura:                     We see a lot of power and privilege being associated. MeToo is on tenuous footing because it has to move into action, in my opinion. It's fine to have awareness. That's step one. A lot of people have been using MeToo to out people publicly. I think that's been important for some of these cases, but really we do have legal systems for a reason. It's not just about publicly shaming people, because sometimes you can be sued for defamation. You really have to be thoughtful and careful and know what the legal risks are. Laura:                     Ideally, it's to change our systems, to make them more effective. We shouldn't have open secrets and perpetrators allowed to continue with impunity and that requires tactical, political, legal change at every level ... campus, in our courthouses, criminal and civil alike. Mike:                       You created SurvJustice to help have a source, a place people could go and get that support. We were talking earlier the campus example of reaching out. How does somebody do that? What's the best way to contact SurvJustice? If you're listening right now and you're a survivor and you're thinking, "Hey, I wanna talk with someone. I wanna know my options," what's the best way to do that? Laura:                     Absolutely. SurvJustice is spelled a little uniquely. It is S as in Sam, U as in umbrella, R as in Reagan, V as in vase, Justice, and that's one word ... SurvJustice. You can go to the websites ... just SurvJustice.org, or obviously also on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. There's many ways to reach out. Again, SurvJustice is the only national non-profit representing victims in campus hearings across the country, having transitioned on and now with the Fierberg Law Group, I am exclusively working on civil cases. When it has gone to the next level, when damages and recovery are really the only options for survivors, that action is being taken on by myself and my team. Laura:                     There are, of course, other lawyers all across the country that specialize in Title IX, in sexual harassment, sexual discrimination and sexual assault cases. There are many resources out there. I am proud to have founded SurvJustice. I think it's a good first stop if you're not really sure where to go and what kind of sources you need. They'll route you there if they can't assist you. Mike:                       We'll have that website on the show notes absolutely. We'll also have your website, which is lauraldunnesq.com, so people can find you, reach out to you, which is so important. You also are a proponent of teaching sexual respect. How do you do that through your work? Laura:                     It's built right into the vision of SurvJustice. A lot of people think of mission where you're trying to accomplish. Envision is where are you trying to go? If the world is perfect, what does it look like? Laura:                     Sexual respect is the norm in my vision, because really if we just make sexual respect a norm in interactions, I think a lot of these issues melt away. There may always be sexual violence, but I don't believe acquaintance rape has to be such a norm if we treat one another with sexual respect. It's about making sure your partner's comfortable. It's making sure that you are not being aggressive in pursuing sex at any means to any ends and you're really rejecting that in our culture and calling other people out to say, "It's really important that you treat everyone dignity and respect." It's not about romance. You can just be having fun, but at the end of the day, consent is important and not just in the way you interact with others, but the way, of course, people interact with you. You wanna feel respected and cared for in those interactions and safe. Laura:                     I often do trainings. I don't just talk about response, which is, of course, my specialty as a lawyer, but how response has to be full circle with prevention. We have to give these right messages of, "This is how we should behave. This is what we should be doing," and we've got to back that up with serious responses. When someone breaks that norm that we're creating, there has to be a consequence. We can't allow there to be impunity. We have to make sure sexual respect is accorded by all our institutions. Mike:                       That's awesome. Laura, what was a book that you think can benefit people? If they're listening, going, "Hey, I would love to dive into a book on this," what would be a book you recommend? Laura:                     Oh, there's so many. I have a really big library on this topic. I'll just say what I'm reading right now, which is "I Have the Right To," which is by Chessy Prout. I will have full disclosure here. She is a former client of mine. She had a very high-profile high school prep case in what which she as a freshman was targeted by an 18-year-old senior boy for a senior salute, which meant taking her to an isolated place on campus and trying to get as much from her sexually as possible, and he ended up raping her. Laura:                     There was a criminal trial with a partial conviction. He wasn't convicted on every offense, but on some of them. She really was attacked and defamed in the media as a minor, as a minor survivor, and so SurvJustice came in. We protected her privacy. We spoke to the media to keep her privacy moving forward. Laura:                     As a result of having that conviction at the end, she went forward, sued the school, and this story really talks about her experience through this struggle and against such a powerful institution, but of course also gives messages of, "How can this not be the case? What could we have done and what can we create moving forward where sexual respect is the norm, where we actually have institutions that know how to respond and don't support perpetrators?" Really, in her case, her school is fundraising for the person accused to support his defense, so really, again, shedding light on what survivors go through and also calling out how we can change moving forward. I hope people check out that book, "I Have the Right To." It's also a hash tag and on Twitter and social media. Mike:                       She's been all over national media. She is an example like millions of survivors out there with their strength and their courage in sharing thing with the world. You just shared so much brilliance with us and expertise. Thank you so much, Laura, for joining us. Laura:                     Absolutely. Thank you for having me on and thanks for all the work you do. Mike:                       Oh, our pleasure. Mike:                       Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Respect podcast, which was sponsored by the Date Safe Project at datesafeproject.org. Remember, you can always find me at Mikespeaks.com. PART 3 OF 3 ENDS [00:31:30]  

This is part 2 in The Authentic Series! It's scary to show our true full selves. What if it's not enough? Or a little too much? Vulnerability sits at the cross roads of truth and courage. Let's be brave this week! Listen in to get tips on how to use your vulnerability to ignite strength. Authentic awesomeness awaits. Let’s do this! // Show Notes // I wonder if it is possible to use our weakness to bolster our strength. Weakness has got to be good for something. Right? “To share your weakness is to make yourself vulnerable; to make yourself vulnerable is to show your strength.” - Criss Jami “Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren't always comfortable, but they're never weakness.” -Brene Brown "The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress and grows brave by reflection.” - Thomas Paine **Weekly Challenge** Find time in your day to insert truth and courage. Say I’m sorry. Forgive someone. Help out a person that annoys you. Be the person that you needed.

Techno Bully does battle with Hackers from another land over ransomware. John exercises his fat lazy South Jersey Tongue. The Who’s Right podcast cries about their plug. John has a great idea for a weight loss app using Sarah from Ice and the Face. Also, listener feedback. Nonsense in the News Couple moving grill in SUV injured in explosion after one lights a cigarette - Sent to us by "The Jimmy" Tainted Buffet At Jackson Strip Club Blamed After Severe Diarrhea Incident On Stage Paris Hilton thinks she would have been social figure like Princess Diana if it weren't for sex tape A 14-year-old boy sneaks away with mom’s SUV, buys fireworks with friends — what could go wrong? We are proud to be a part of the following Podcast Networks Radio Vegas Rocks Mondays 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific Thursdays 4pm Eastern 1pm Pacific Slings Flings and Dingalings Wednesday 8:00pm Eastern Hush Your Face Network Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent The Whonan Show Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

We are Joeless this episode. Nonsense in the News British Woman Shot In Vagina After Sexual Fantasy Goes Horribly Wrong Arkansas Man Accused Of Sexually Assaulting Neighbors' Donkeys 15 Teenagers Treated for Rabies After Engaging in Bestiality with Donkey Female teacher had sex with schoolgirl in car 'then bragged to friends about it' Woman Who Lost Her Arm Has A Hilariously Brilliant Tinder Bio Find Lauren on twitter and Instagram Intoxicated driver yelled racial slurs, tried to flee on bike Woman Buys Female Slave, Cops Horrified By What She Kept Putting Inside Her Man, 73, banned from Volusia beaches for handing out cards seeking 'sugarbaby' Company tries to re-brand swastika as ‘symbol of peace,’ fails miserably We are proud to be a part of the following Podcast Networks Radio Vegas Rocks Mondays 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific Thursdays 4pm Eastern 1pm Pacific Slings Flings and Dingalings Wednesday 8:00pm Eastern Hush Your Face Network Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

John wants to start “The Jimmy” podcast if Jimmy wouldn’t clam up. John charges into Dunkin Donuts to complain about being shorted in the drive thru only to find the wake-up wraps were stuck in between his seats. Pete Rose is even a bigger alleged scumbag than we thought. Friend of the show, Mark Des Cotes from the Resourceful Designer Podcast, a Canadian clears up the Canadian money debate Nonsense in the News Baseball Legend Pete Rose, Accused of Sex With Minor in 1970’s The gene pool once again tries to cleanse itself. Jersey Girls Take on the Carolina Reaper Death to Meat Eaters!! Jess, I am Vegan & I'm judging you video Freely the Militant Vegan Death threats over an insufficient amount of cucumbers. The Ta Ta towel!! Special Ed Teacher has sex with two students We are proud to be a part of the following Podcast Networks Radio Vegas Rocks Mondays 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific Thursdays 4pm Eastern 1pm Pacific Slings Flings and Dingalings Wednesday 8:00pm Eastern Hush Your Face Network Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter

A hard drive crash the morning of recording had John scrambling to get everything back online for this episode. But the show must go on! Luke the star of the Bold and Belligerent podcast got a 12 hour twitter time out for jumping into the Rob and Slim show fray. Luke told us that we now have to do a good show to avenge his ban. Also, Jason Bryant from the Matt Talk on Line Podcast about spanking children can lead to mental issues. Nonsense in the News Man grades ex-girlfriends apology letter. Man Uses Fireworks To Remove Bee Nest From Garage, Promptly Burns Down Garage Man shoots AT&T truck tires CEO of Barstool Sports: Interviewees must text back within 3 hours Australian Businessman dies parasailing Wild monkeys roaming Florida and breeding like, well, monkeys We are proud to be a part of the following Podcast Networks  Radio Vegas Rocks Mondays 8am Eastern / 5am Pacific Thursdays 4pm Eastern 1pm Pacific Slings Flings and Dingalings Wednesday 8:00pm Eastern Hush Your Face Network Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod.  Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and Joe talk about how Rob from the Rob & Slim Podcast got into a Twitter war and was sent to Twitter Jail over a misspelling in a direct message. Things were rolling along just fine. There was laughing, joking, and busting balls as usual. Until the topic of Net Neutrality reared its ugly head. Then the show went nuclear. Nonsense in the News Bestiality brothels are 'spreading through Germany' Man marries video game cartoon character Man Arrested After Shooting Compressed Air Up Other Man's Butt Amazon Alexa calls police on man allegedly beating girlfriend Teen Dies After Cell Phone Electrocutes Her In Bathtub Man gets penis stuck in wrench for 17 hours We are proud to be a part of the following Podcast Networks Radio Vegas Rocks Mondays 8 am Eastern / 5 am Pacific Thursdays 4 pm Eastern 1 pm Pacific Slings Flings and Dingalings Wednesday 8:00pm Eastern Hush Your Face Network Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and Joe discuss: John’s quest for porn knowledge after a Bukkake death in Japan. Should stupid people be allowed in the drive-thru lanes? The Governor of NJ shoots himself in the foot again. Doug & Anthony of the Who’s Right Podcasts proposes that the Hush Your Face Network Shows cum together to show support for the LGBTQ community. Nonsense in the News Popular Adult JAV Actress dies by Bukkake - I'm a porn watcher!! Dogs kills landlord Florida man sits on gun, shoots self in penis Man scams Pseudo IRS scammers by scamming back Pregnant woman in NC runs down robbery suspect with her SUV We are now on Radio Vegas Rocks Mondays 8 am Eastern / 5 am Pacific Thursdays 4 pm Eastern / 1 pm Pacific Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #PodernFamily. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and Joe fight off all kinds of technical gremlins throughout the show. It’s also the start of our new regular Friday night recording. Nonsense in the News The Gene Pool cleanses itself - YouTube stunt with gun leaves boyfriend dead 111 terminally ill patients took their own lives in first 6 months of California right-to-die law Cheating Slut Gets Owned Syrian Female sniper almost shot in the head (video) We are now on Radio Vegas Rocks Thursdays 1 to 4 pm PDT Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and Joe discuss: The lost episode and how John published it against his better judgment. Still no sign of the Tom & Steve Show. Nonsense in the News Smoking Hot 25 year old Teacher Arrested for having sex with students Why This Teacher Who Slept With Students Will Not Have to Register as Sex Offender Erin, go braless. It's good for you. Cosby taking the hit for men who've wronged women The End of Chinglish! We are now on Radio Vegas Rocks Thursdays 1 to 4 pm PDT Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

This episode of the Brand X Podcast was very heated. So much so it was not going to be released. But, John had some personal issues to deal with and couldn’t record. So he blew the dust of of this episode and here it is. Even though these debates are heated, at the end of the day we are great friends. So buckle up Buttercup, here we go! We are now on Radio Vegas Rocks Thursdays 1 to 4 pm PDT Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and discuss:   We are changing our live recording schedule because of Radio Vegas Rocks Jerry from the Bad Cop Bad Cop podcast pointed out that John has an issue saying Lorne from Bold and Belligerent’s wrong. John has a fat lazy tongue. Deuce is drinking Two Roads Brewing Road 2 Ruin Double IPA Jason and Mindy from the Three is Comedy podcast calls into the show. Three is Comedy now has gear - Eat a Dick Sandwich T’s are coming Jason’s whoa song of the week: Shine John’s Mom passed away June 7th. John doesn’t handle death well. The boys discuss the proper way to order a cheesesteak at Pat’s or Geno’s in South Philly. John is on a break from Poker. The Jimmy might be part of the reason Jimmy found The King of Shave. Deuce and John want to get a barber straight edge razor shave. John has cut the cord! No more pay TV. Regular Radio is dying. Extended Poo Haiku stories John had a code brown story  Nonsense in the News Naked man attacks, urinates on police car Sex Robots Are Coming, and They're Not as Skeevy as You Think TV reporter fired after obscene tirade against police officer in viral video Video of 28-year-old Colleen Campbell, reporter PHL17 verbally assault a cop Vitamin Vape? What the Heck We are now on Radio Vegas Rocks Thursdays 1 to 4 pm PDT Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and Joe discuss: John thinks it might be time to throttle back his aggressive posture on social media. Is President Trump the Rodney Dangerfield of Presidents? Kathy Griffin tap dances after her photo shoot. Nonsense in the News Teen cuts off his own Manhood and stabs Mom over Skunk Weed Man sues dating app Grindr after 1,100 men show up expecting sex Drug Raid Live! Man who mowed lawn with tornado behind him says he 'was keeping an eye on it' 8-year-old girl disqualified from soccer game because she 'looks like a boy' We are now on Radio Vegas Rocks Thursdays 1 to 4 pm PDT Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind WTF of Success Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and Joe discuss: Nonsense in the News The Biggest Prick in the World award goes to..... You Tube video of the incident The Bunny Ranch gets run down! Man supplies boss with extra cream for her coffee for over 4 years! Luke from Bold & Belligerent Isn't a fan  We are now on Radio Vegas Rocks Thursdays 1 to 4 pm PDT  Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind WTF of Success Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter

Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind WTF of Success Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Pull My Finger Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Pull My Finger Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter

In this episode of the Brand X Podcast John, Deuce and Joe discuss: Jayson Bryant from Mat Talk Online is a bit of a squirrel Terminator Tom and Steve Show - Tap Dancing on the Mine Field Again!! Earth Wind and Ozzy Nonsense in the News Factory worker sticks a 1.6ft long eel into his anus believing it could treat his constipation Colorado: Hunter claims he was sexually assaulted by a Sasquatch Fussy First Dates contestant's 22-point checklist of what she wants in a man - including low sex drive People are marrying themselves, it's called 'sologamy' Zimbabwean Pastor Eaten By 3 Crocodiles While Trying To Walk On Water Like Jesus Get Your Brand X Podcast Gear!! The Brand X Podcast is now a proud member of the Hush Your Face Network Podcast Shoutouts: Three is Comedy Bad Cop Bad Cop Bold and Belligerent Now That I’m Older Toe on the Trigger Ice in the Face The Story Behind WTF of Success Unwritable Rant The Tavern Podcast Horribly Awkward Podcast Horrible Gamers Podcast The Nerdowells Podcast Pull My Finger Everyone Has A Podcast Ped and Mellor Rob and Slim The Naked Porch Pull My Finger Who’s Right To find other great independent podcasts search the hashtag #Podernfamily and if you have a podcast you enjoy please share in Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram with #trypod. Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please SUBSCRIBE on iTunes | Stitcher | Google Play | RSS and leave a rating and or review. This warms our heart and makes us smile. Please, we would love it if you joined in on the conversation! Find us on: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram Deuce on Twitter | John on Twitter  

Qual è il ruolo del giornalismo nel racconto urbano? Si cercherà di rispondere a questa domanda durante l’Urban Journalism Academy, uno degli appuntamenti di Right To the Future. L’evento si svolgerà a Palermo tra il 6 e l’8 aprile ed è organizzato da Push.In questo podcast parliamo con Alessandra Pirera del segretariato delle Nazioni Unite di Habitat III che modererà l’Urban Journalism Academy. L’incontro è pensato per giornalisti, blogger e chiunque abbia a che fare con i media. Ci saremo anche noi di Start Me Up!!! Per capire meglio cosa aspettarsi dall’incontro di Palermo non dovete far altro che ascoltare questo podcast.PERCHÈ ASCOLTARE QUESTO PODCAST?Per capire il dibattito in corso sulla vivibilità delle cittàPer capire come cambia il ruolo del giornalista in questo contestoSOSTIENI GRATIS START ME UP ———> www.bit.ly/supsmu

Qual è il ruolo del giornalismo nel racconto urbano? Si cercherà di rispondere a questa domanda durante l’Urban Journalism Academy, uno degli appuntamenti di Right To the Future. L’evento si svolgerà a Palermo tra il 6 e l’8 aprile ed è organizzato da Push.In questo podcast parliamo con Alessandra Pirera del segretariato delle Nazioni Unite di Habitat III che modererà l’Urban Journalism Academy. L’incontro è pensato per giornalisti, blogger e chiunque abbia a che fare con i media. Ci saremo anche noi di Start Me Up!!! Per capire meglio cosa aspettarsi dall’incontro di Palermo non dovete far altro che ascoltare questo podcast.PERCHÈ ASCOLTARE QUESTO PODCAST?Per capire il dibattito in corso sulla vivibilità delle cittàPer capire come cambia il ruolo del giornalista in questo contestoSOSTIENI GRATIS START ME UP ———> www.bit.ly/supsmu